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Who is Howling in Arabian Nights?

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It must be a wolf on a chilling night. The descendant of the one who smelled the blood of the prophet Yousuf. His brothers threw him into a well and lied to their father that a wolf had killed him—the one who undeservedly bore the burn of the blame among all the animals of the desert. We are so quick to assume Arabia is an astronomical stretch of sandy dunes margined by horizons. But it is not like that everywhere, especially in inhabited areas, places of settled life near water holes, valleys, and places where caravans used to meet their suppliers and buyers along the trails in the past but have grown to be modern-day towns. I read Alfa Layla Wa Laylah (Thousand Nights and a Night) in Malayalam copy I borrowed from the college library. I did enjoy it myself. I owned a copy of my own in English much later in 2003 from a used bookstore in Kozhikode. Last week, my son had heard something about a tale from his school and came home asking if I had any such a book in our collection. ...

You, the drunkard!

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What are you fathoming, entirely focused, risking your awareness of your surroundings? This is the first time I've seen you dive deep into flowers to gather nectar. Your resilience in the face of potential predators is genuinely inspiring. Are you so engrossed in your work that you're distracted? Where do you go after you're done? Why are the flowers so stingy with their nectar, making your job more challenging? Why do you venture out alone, without your friends to keep watch, as you dive blindly into the center of the flower? Hey, Zinnia! I hadn't fully appreciated your beauty until you were in full bloom. You’re a true marvel in full bloom! Make the most of the sunshine, dear flower! You're thriving in the light, and it suits you. Keep growing and flourishing. It doesn't feel like a chore when we're passionate about something. While theory and practice may differ in many ways, that's alright. You're still reaching your full potential, even if it...

Call me meow meow.

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            Cats are cats; by any other name, they act like cats only. There are plenty of cats down the streets, and interestingly, a dictionary defines cats as an animal popular in the Middle East and Africa. Cats are usually very photogenic, and our archives have plenty of such pictures. But this one is not seen around here; he behaves as if he owns all the land and is in charge of the welfare of the entire neighborhood. I didn’t care either. Our neighbors Yahya and Jawahir are avid feline philanthropists feeding all the cats around with store-bought cat feed. She has set up a few labor rooms for cats to give birth and for maternity care. She doesn’t mind the thankless demeanor for which cats are notorious. I sat on a stack of hollow bricks listening to an audiobook, Nature Fix by Florence Williams. I usually enjoy doing so during summer nights after strolling down the deserted driveway well-lit by a tall lamppost down the street yet to be called by th...

A Breakfast with Elements at the Heights of Habla

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        There was a time when I lived in a sleepy, cold town all alone, having the luxury of a lovely friend, a small car, and a camera. We roamed around the places, exploring things no mortals we knew ever dared to. Once, he came up with a plan to watch the sunrise and had breakfast sitting on the top of a huge boulder, crowning the edge of a mountainous height and cutting steep slope that people feared to peep down. The mountain peak known as Habla is one of the peaks on the Aseer Mountain range, which is part of the Sarawat Mountains, running parallel to the Red Sea’s eastern coastline, extending the Hijaz Mountain range to the Southern borders of Saudi Arabia.                                               Part of the plan was to start way earlier so that we could watch the sunrise, and December was never kind to the people of this part of the wo...

The Earth in Her Hands

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  The Earth in Her Hands is a book by Jennifer Jewell that covers 75 extraordinary women in the world of plants . It tells us stories of womenfolk who put their life into plants, or the plants chose them to live their life with. Like most exciting things happening in my life, I stumbled upon this title recently while researching a related project online. It was love at first sight, and I got addicted to it while listening to the book on Audible, waiting outside our university dental clinic for my wife to have an appointment. Thanks, Dr. Abdul Qadar, for a three-hour long session on an emergency basis before he leaves for his home for the annual vacation. Each woman has a unique plant journey to relate to, which will take us for a ride through the ever-exciting botanical world. They are cherry-picked from various fields like botany, garden nursery, floral design, garden, photography landscape architecture, farming, seed banks, herbalism, and food justice. The common thread ...

Where have you all been?

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          We have been missing those lovely, feathered friends for a while. We all wondered where all our birds had gone to. Yesterday, as I was helping an uncle prune his garden, I had a realization for an obvious reason. The peaches and figs in his garden have been left mostly unharvested. As the orchard was well-walled, no one dared to step in, and the birds would in no way be prosecuted for fruit poaching. They must have been feasting on it. There were too many fruits fallen and rotten under each. The season’s harvest is too big for little birds to devour. And they can’t squirrel it away for winter. The ground was littered with a rainbow of rotting fruits, the sweet scent of decay filling the air. We had grown friendlier ever since we moved in, and they seldom flew off even when we walked closer. We moved in the winter; at a time, they were desperately looking for food. My wife readily sensed a need and kept a bowl of grain and water in a...

Seeding the silk route feeding on a humble plant…

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         Around 7000 years ago, the Chinese invented the art and science of spinning cocoons of silkworms into smooth thread and weaving it into the lustrous fabric for the fabulously rich world. They raised silkworms feeding on cultivated white mulberry plants. The secret was successfully guarded for thousands of years and resulted in one of the largest travel and transport networks, later known as the silk route, over land and sea. Traders travelled to distant lands on foot, on horseback or by caravan, following a confluence of trails leading to China, and brought the silk and sold it at bazaars and caravanserais en route. (Caravanserais were roadside inns where travelers – caravaners - could rest and recover from the day's journey.) The route connected the civilizations in the East and the West for about 1400 years. I captured this photo of our daughter Aishah holding a bowl of sun-ripe mulberry freshly plucked  in the little garden of our property owner...