Summer, why one of my favorites?

Summer is always special in many ways like every other season has its own, and ours is a tropical country, where the temperature rose high during this time turns out to be a holiday season for kids in schools and colleges. And what more special the kids could have in life to refresh from the regular institutional life?

Being a 90s kid, I know how curiously we waited for this time to make some of the best childhood memories.

Though the days are hot enough, the summer breeze is always special, especially to me, and it blows me down with nostalgic memories of the past and a boost to look forward in life. When I think back, many of my poems or inspiration to write wake up during this time, and the silent afternoons are the best to connect with emotions and thoughts.

And also, living close to the sea, the cool breeze that rose from the sea would sway me and flatten the day's hotness!

Beaches are one of the best places to hangout often during the summer, which I guess is the mindset of all over the world, but those living close to one would truly enchant the opportunity. Beaches are my favorite places, perhaps because they're easily accessed here but never close to the water. Beaches provide small amusements watching through the activities of people, stalls, and hand carts and for me, the best time to visit beaches was on the full moon day to see the silvery moon rising over the sea. There was a time where I visited the beach constantly for few full moon days, but it's been a year since I have gone close to a beach.

Summer is also a season where we get to taste ice creams, and this is the time where parents could not deny buying us ice cream when we insist on the sign of summer. On the other hand, there are watermelon, muskmelon, and mangos, the only available fruits of the season to take down the summer heat. 

The vacations are another interesting thing we anticipate over the season and planning mostly for a cold region or hill stations to enjoy the pristine nature and weather. But things aren't the same now as we started to avoid this season esp. to keep away trouble in accommodation, booking rates, and the crowd.  Still, the thought of vacation haunts me whenever the temperature takes a toll or someone reminds me of the time spent together or the mind recollects the moments cherished.

I hope, you guys too have your favorite season that connects you in one or many ways.  If possible, share few interesting things in the comment. Thank you

A walk with youthful memories...

During an evening walk in the neighborhood, the bougainvillea blooming along a street in Besant Avenue couldn't stop me from taking photos. As I cropped one of the photos, I got this beautiful frame of an older man who walked in front of me aside from the bougainvillea, charmed! 

Fields of Marigold, off Veedur

During my Veedur Dam visit in February, we come across a surprising sight of the marigold fields on the dam road, after the Veedur village; and it was a kind of loop road that goes around the backwaters of the dam and links back to the national highway.

It was a refreshing sight of yellow; though it wasn't a large landscape of yellow, I never got to see a marigold field of this much. And it was a great divertissement from the regular and boring sights of the highways and there's also a patch of mixed colors of an orange and yellow and yet un-bloomed bed of dark orange or red marigold. 

It seems it was the dam water that made flourish the marigold. Though the marigold bloomed on both sides of the road, the view towards the backwater (2nd pic above) is scenic, and the blue sky and the sunny day made it glowing. Aside from that, a kind of white wildflowers bloomed in the barren lands, but still, I doubt whether they are wildflowers or a kind of cultivated flowers.

Field of white wildflower

The field of flowers stretched only for a few km on the east bank of the reservoir, and it seems only the land around the dam is fertile, unlike its dry northern part where we drove along before drawing away to Puducherry. This reminds me of the rose fields I saw around Nagalapuram, at the border of Andhra and Tamil Nadu, had Pichatur Dam as its source.

The bed of red marigold ready to bloom

Linking this post for Floral  Friday Foto  

A year into pandemic lockdown!

A year completes today, what begins as an identity curfew on the Sunday of March 22, 2020. PM plea with the public of India to cooperate with a 14-hour curfew, and it was a time the covid-19 cases weren't 100, and we didn't realize that it was a trailer and the main picture is waiting for the release. And then came the announcement of a week lockdown, which renewed every two weeks that extended to two to three months, and the lockdown was then extended every month with some relaxation.

Lockdown is a word we aren't familiar with then but heard only through the news and films where lockdown is implemented during emergencies or violent outbreaks in an area. And 144 belong to the same category, which bans people gathering in public more than four at a time. We never thought we would experience such and had no idea how it would work; however, the solidarity we had been had no meaning today, with people's indifferent behavior and gathering at large.

At the end of the year 2020, life was almost back to normal except for wearing masks and social distancing. The covid-19 cases too drastically came down below 10,000 a day in India; our state Tamil Nadu also witnessed numbers below 500 a day had let us ease and at the same time sent an indifference tendency among the people had forgotten that we hadn't exit pandemic. I could say or see half the population had dismissed wearing masks and social distancing is like belonging to a distant land.

I believed this number would recede as we continued to stay on the line with a gradual decline, and since the beginning of vaccination in January, the belief started to grow stronger. I think this could have become possible if the state elections haven't interfered during this period, because it is time for politicians to mobilize the masses, or as people gather to listen to the campaign, it becomes a camp for the spread of the virus. 

The painful thing here is that the leaders who are supposed to be role models do not follow the rules and do not instruct the volunteers to follow. And when seeing the crowd gathering in the campaign sites without masks and social distancing proves how ignorant and crazy we are and how we fail at the root cause.

I know the elections aren't the only issue as I see students and teachers getting covid-19, since the opening of schools for higher secondary (classes 10th to 12th); it looks certain it's the failure to follow the safeguard. Already there's a conflict among the public about how these numbers suddenly go high or sustain at the same and do they really count or do it for their comfort or need. Anyhow its sudden rise from the beginning of March worries; though we all hope on the vaccine as the only weapon against covid 19, nothing could protect us unless we follow the precaution - the simple handwash, masking, and social distancing.

Compared to March 2020, we’re 10 to 20 times further affected by covid 19 now. The counting of cases in India is close to 50,000, which is the highest daily record, after months of a gap!

In protection of Sparrows

Mom reminded me this morning that today (March 20) is World Sparrow Day; although I was thinking about this day at the beginning of the month, I lost thought of sparrows, like how they lost their habitation from our Indian cities. The song of the sparrows almost lost track from the memories; however, I try to remember their tweet, it couldn't reach my ears; perhaps other volumes have risen to deafen my ears from listening to the sound of mind voice.

House sparrow shot from an upper mountain village near Kodaikanal.

The last time I saw sparrows was in 2018 when I visited a part of western ghats but not away from the human habitat. Sparrows are friends of humans, and we shouldn't have forgotten their friendship when we technically grew and adapt to a lifestyle that snatched their lives. There could be various reason for their disappearance in cities, but we cannot deny that human mistake is a major part of the series of issues.

Until 2015, the sparrows exist in the backyard of my grandparent's house in the neighborhood. The backyard was cleared to build a home for my grandfather's comfort when he was ill, but it wasn't their intention to drive away sparrows, and of course, no one intends of destroying a habitation when bringing changes in lives. And it happens beyond our consciousness and needs.

I remember how sparrows used to build their nest in front of the grandpa’s tea shop, using the hay stored for feeding cows and buffaloes; despite the activities of people who come to have tea, the sparrows lived peacefully and reproduced. Sometimes they build their nest in the cowshed and the gaps of the planks of the tiled roof.

As a society, everyone is responsible for the extinction of the sparrow, and it is the responsibility of the same community to protect the sparrows that remain here and there. Not only sparrows, but we also need to protect all kinds of birds on the brink of extinction. World Sparrow Day is the day designed to move this activity forward and raise awareness of the house sparrows. It is an international initiative by the Nature Forever Society of India in collaboration with the Eco-Sys Action Foundation (France) and numerous other national and international organizations across the world.

Linking this post with SATURDAY CRITTERS