What gives

Trying hard to recollect a poem I read long ago -cannot recall the writer or the poem exactly.....hopefully my rusty brain will catch up sometime... I am no Mary to sit quietly at your feet and dream, I am she , who runs wild and fleet, I am the Magdalene How do I then love you lord? Supreme. To the extreme- like the Magdalene!

I t's Christ alone in majesty, It's Christ alone in purity, It's Christ alone in righteousness, In Christ alone ,I clearly see, It begins with Him to eternity... It flows from Him,the grace gently, It's Christ and Christ and Christ only, The measure,the scale- and the Christ in me!.

Travelled to Kalimpong for the week-end.I remember visiting the place when I was six.Had been there for an interview in SJC and to meet up with my sibling who was in the boarding school then.Allthough a stone's throw away from my state, never got around to climbing the hill to visit the place again. There was a surpressed air of anticipation and excitement as we climbed and did the rounds of the multiple hills-it almost felt like Mandrake's xanadu.The town on the hill-top seemed to be a meek town caught somewhere in a time warp.It had it's old world charm in parts-very much Kalimpongish!!-nothing new or shiny about the place-the baker's shop selling the gigantic buns,little wooden houses with tiny gardens,dirty-market place,the famous mela ground where the 15th august celebration is supposed to be second to none in India and ofcourse the very old Gompus and their momos.A typically company humour doing the rounds during the gorkhaland agitation went something like this-,...

I remember one of my friends commenting breezily-Sikkimese people are ritualistic .Born in a christian family and being brought up away from most of these rituals I wondered if he was right. Going through several works of research done by contemparary journalists on the origin and the rituals of Sikkim ,I realised he had got it right and yet there were several admirable things to be learnt from this land of rituals. 1) Budhism was brought to Sikkim by Guru Padhmasambhava(budhists believe him to be a reincarnation of Gautama Budha, born in a lotus ).He is said to have addressed Sikkim as 'Bayul Demazong'-'a hidden land of sacred treasures'.(a hidden life of sacred treasures!- blessing people and the land !-if internalised how powerfull!) 2)There is this common act of offering traditional scarves as a mark of respect on different occasions-this white scarf known as khada is supposed to be a mark of intent which says I honour you with the purity of flower and yet with the ...

Mangan is getting ready to celebrate the 15th of August. My cousin an ex-beaurocrat observes rather sardonically-why does this place celebrate the occasion with such pomp?It's bigger than any festival.There are series of school putting up their annual performances ,there is the football tournament which starts a fortnight ahead.This year the stars of the tournament are couple of black players from clubs in Kolkotta who are representing some of the teams. Every year we observe with increasing sense of amusement and wonder the workers ask for allowance to stitch new clothes for the occasion as well as ask for leave to attend the programmes. Everyone is involved.There are the local gentries pushing each other beyond the rules of the game putting their best foot forward in the football and the basketball matches .We remember with a lot of fondness our dad and mom playing these matches when we were kids.Dad's nearing eighty but he doesn't miss the matches even now. There is my ...

It’s good to be home.The familiar sounds of the morning and my mother’s voice excitedly waking us up with a warm cup of tea to be a part of the moment,the solar eclipse.My brother’s been all over the compound looking for the best view of the thing to come.Dad’s busy with his chicken even this early in the morning.Sherry,the tibetain apso looking like my puppy Bead in the foopets ,after a much needed hair-cut ,tilts his head ,whines and cuddles up to me.Monu,my mom’s girl Friday’s daughter is cooing in her crib.’Here it is’- my mom declares,beyond the over-cast skies suddenly it is night again.There is silence ,absolute silence , the nature is itself paying homage to this once in a life-time affair. This is my mom ,always involved with wonder in every occasion in our lives.She was describing the two cobras who had been walking the grounds.They have been apparently flourishing and have become so sure of themselves that they walk around the garden...

Mangan,-'Mon'-'gaon' -,which means a place where people meet or a place where you should not be when a war strikes,is a quaint little town in Sikkim and yet so dear to many of our hearts.It's placed strategically in a valley between mountain and hills.This town ,where most people know each other and yet now when I go home I am a stranger amidst the kids who have grown up and the migrants who have settled in. Just as you enter Mangan ,down below in the valley there is a red-roofed elephantine house that has always made many of our hearts beat faster,it was the place where I was born,it was the country homestead where all our town cousins used to congregate during the holidays-oh what memories I have of it!It was this place where all of us siblings wove our fantasies around the large antique mirror that hung on the wall-told each other fancy stories to dozen,hero-worshipped our elder sister,wrote soppy but innocent letters to our mother who was away for a short-while...