Nature Loving or...

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How I Got Over Self-absorption...for Now

On the Green Heritage Walk, which began in Lal Bagh this morning at 7 am, Pat and I, plus Michele, who we met through a colleague, since she's also on a training assignment from the United States for her company, were the only non-Indians.

"The tiny berries on that branch were like little children, playing on a tree; that's how it was in my imagination, so no, it wasn't random," said one of the women I asked:

"Did you come today because you love nature, or was it random?"

What a charming imagination she had. Yesterday, Pat and I were morose from having had our first experience at a beauty salon in India. "Beauty salon" was a misnomer, and I can leave it almost at that, except to confirm that my worst fears became a self-fulfilling prophecy, and just as I had blogged about a few days ago, I've got "v"s now in front of my ears.

But I don't want to get in a bad mood again; I mentioned yesterday especially to contrast it with the fun of today.

Some Notes I Scribbled While Listening to Vijay, Our Guide

"The rock at Lal Bagh is more than half as old as the world itself...three billion years old." It is made of the gneiss -- a combo of granite, mica and quartz -- which is also common, I've noticed while commuting, on the Saw Mill River Parkway and 684N; it's just much younger, apparently.

Later, when we saw Dahlias and Gladioli in the glass house as award winners among the flower show, I was reminded of those species in our own garden in New Jersey. And we also saw the fruit of the Silk Cotton tree whose inside reminded me of Milkweed pods' insides.

Michele and Pat remembered Milkweed, too, though we grew up in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Connecticut respectively.

"Hyder Ali created the garden as an act of piety. Muslims think of garden creation as pious, since they're reflections of paradise on earth; Mohammed grew up in the desert."

A Danish, presumably Christian, missionary and doctor became a steward of the garden after Tipu Sultan and what began as a tribute to Islam was ushered along by people of different faiths and native lands.

If only flowers and plants and trees could distract everyone from what become the divisive parts of our religious differences.

"Looking for a new homeland, the Aryans finally hit the fertile Indus Valley, asking, 'Which were the trees and woods from which God created the heavens and earth?'"

Frames of Reference Frame Our Thinking

When Vijay spoke of Aryans, why did I have to free-associate silently/at all, thinking of the many swastikas I've seen in Bangalore since my arrival? Both terms were appropriated by the Nazis, but had no connection to them in fact.

I would do well to open my mind beyond the two religions I've grown up around, Judaism and Christianity, and learn more about Hinduism's history.

On Friday, two Hindu colleagues were telling me how Krishna's insistence that Arjuna finish the job he set out to do, of killing the non-righteous half of the land-seekers, was all about leadership and fulfilling one's duty.

This was in response to my saying that last time I was here, in 2005, a number of the participants in the leadership development training program I led told me that everything anyone needed to know about management and leadership was in the Mahābhārata.

"They were right," my Brahmin colleague said, and then provided the example of this story. She also said that she was well-versed in the Scriptures because her grandmother used to read her siblings and her a story from them nightly. And when her cousins and siblings and she all got together, her grandmother would read to everyone pre-sleep, and the story would go on sometimes for 30 minutes, which delayed bed-time, which all of them relished.

Divine Trees

Krishna told Arjuna that among tree manifestations, "I'm the Ficus Religiosa, the 'People Tree,'" as it's called in India. It had heart-shaped leaves and grew to majestic heights, like the one we saw in the garden.

We also saw the Ficus Krishna, the leaves of which invert themselves to become spoon-like and it was said that Krishna used the leaves to collect butter.

The rest of this entry features a prose poem made up purely of the trees we saw after the Ficus Krishna, including links to Vijay's musings on particular ones among them:

Banyan...Colville's Glory...Jackfruit...
Indian Satinwood...Australian Chestnut...broad-leafed pine...
Amherst Nobilis...Pride of India...Mango...
Elephant Apple...Silk Cotton...Australian Bottle....