Edible Shoots

Hi dears...hope you are enjoying the rest of the cake 🎂. The other day, I took Pearl S. Buck seriously and wanted to surprise my mom by milking the cow before she gets up. As I showed up in the dark, our cow was a bit surprised to see me in a different role. She looked very cool and unusually willing to get along anyway. But the udder felt shrunken and nothing came out to my disappointment. I soon realized that my mom had forgotten to tether the calf a bit away from its mother in the evening. And it so happens once in a blue moon.   To keep a short story short, obviously, it was a  great Christmas for the calf however. And he deserves it for letting us have a nice coffee the year round. In a short while before it is too late, a few of my neighbors turned up with little pots wondering why the supply was late. Mom pointed at the calf and I feigned knowing nothing. The cow and calf looked  indescribably happier as the day warmed up with sun rays. That Christmas was theirs for

“After Harvest” My friend Lourens Erasmus remembers one of the catch phrases of his childhood in a farm back in South Africa. For every reasonable demand he would occasionally make, his parents used to have just one answer “after the harvest”. If the crop was bumper, they would usually be able to fulfill his requests. If not, he knew somehow, though he was just a boy, it is time to remain silent as things are not going well – financially or otherwise. This shot captures an “after the harvest” evening of Al Majamma village in Aseer province of Saudi Arabia. If you move closer, you will be able to spot traditional houses, a watch tower called “kasaba” and green houses for growing tomato, mint, coriander, cucumber, squash, zucchini etc. A dried and narrow water canal runs between stone- walled open fields and a flock of sheep grazing in a dried, little dam valley. The open fields lie in waiting for the next batch of corn, wheat, sesame and barley. There are palatial modern houses and

Proudly owned a pair of sneakers thinking that it would comfortably fit 'jogging' into my daily routine. It is the first of its kind I have ever bought.  I use my old formal shoes that are no longer presentable for office instead. I justified it to myself as it would be better to keep my carbon footprint a little less. Being a believer in recycling and reusing, among other things, I often use the reverse side of papers to take notes and prepare to-do-lists. Those papers would otherwise have gone straight to trash bin. This might have been my first purchase of, but not my first time to actually use, sneakers. I used them for the first time 12 years ago, when I was doing my master's degree on the Calicut University campus. Mohammed Rafeequ, fondly called as Rafi, from Laksha Deep, was kind enough to put me up in his room until got one of my own. I appropriated his sneakers, with his permission and blessing, of course. As a matter of coincidence, I had some downtime