In My BAlcOny's ShoEs

Wooden shoes hardly seem like a great idea for one's feet. A few thousand people in and around Holland continue to wear them regularly. These are people who work in swampy grounds and in farms. Needless to say, these shoes offer protection. I can picture myself wearing wooden shoes, trudging through swampy farms and I wonder how much strength it would take for me to pull my foot out of the mud, LIFT IT up, not leaving the wooden shoe stuck in the swamp and take the next step forward. I think I can imagine what this guy from STOMP featured in the brand ID film for Dolby
( played before many movies in most theatres ), walking on painted black drums must feel. Now, THAT is a guy who would want to be in someone else's shoes!

While in Amsterdam, a bright idea struck! Today the idea stands "acted on", has seen the light of day and makes us immensely proud! We paid a a bomb buying 4 large-sized wooden shoes from a shoe factory. With no heed to how they might be packed in suitcases bursting at the seams and the weight they shall add to our baggage! I am glad we didnt think much.

This is what we have done with the shoes.....They are now in my balcony....and it is the prettiest change in our house this Diwali!




As of today morning, each of them plants in each of those shoes has pink, yellow, white and orange blossoms. It was the FIRST time I wished someone (HAS to be a kind soul, or someone who CANT say NO ) was going to Amsterdam and I could ask for 4 more shoes! I am on the lookout.

This Diwali, my Balcony found its shoes :)

RaInBOw

There was no sun in the sky, setting or otherwise on the 4th. The day started on a cloudy note and ended with an unexpected shower. Smug after the day's succesful completion of my supervision duties at college ( it being my first ever, I felt I was taking an exam. There are zillion things for a supervisor to do that require tremendous concentration and offer no place for errors. I had sweaty palms and I am sure the other 15 year olds in the room did too. What do they know about mine? :-), my rising sun and I headed to Thane to see Aai. That is precisely when it rained. And I saw my FIRST rainbow of this monsoon...Words fail me and hence this picture I managed to click from the car comes to my aid. This is what it looked like.



In this picture it resembles a shaft of light from a torch.......rainbow colored light emanating from a heavenly torch.

I rememberd a story I had read in my English texts when I was 7. It is firlmy etched, every word alongwith the pictorial depiction. A weeping sky looking towards the Earth, the two connected with a rainbow. I looked at U and said do you the know the sky is weeping? U listens, I think, because he doesn't say a word. Or maybe he just concentrates on the traffic happy that I entertain myself. It is missing its Earth. They were much in love and wanted to get married. But people on Earth felt they would have nowhere to go if the Earth and the Sky got married. Hence they schemed and plotted and the union of Earth and Sky was prevented. Each time we see a rainbow in the sky, it is the garland the Sky hurls towards the Earth. The garland he could not adorn his Earth with.
I have never stopped feeling guilty for being one of the "Earthlings"!