Nita Kapadia’s Reviews > A Time For All Things > Status Update

I went to Mathura at the end of the rains.The fielfs and the trees were alive with strange,beautiful birds ; the long tailed king crow; innumerable doves in shades of blue and green; kingfishers and bluekays and weaver birds; and resting on a telegraph pole, the great white headed kite which some say, was Garuda, Vishnu's famous steed.Armed with his sugarcane bow with its string made of bees ,Kamadeva rides at night

When I stand beneath one of these giant trees a devout and elerly man aproaches with a watering can, andcircling the tree waters the soil around the base of the trunk.I move aut of the way of his sprinkler watching the ritual in surprise.It has been raining steadily for somedays, and the tree should have no need of water.
" Why are you watering it?" I ask.
"Why does one water anything?"asks the old man , "

Flowers On The Ganga

Says the Mahabharata: " To repeat her name brings purity, to bathe in or drink her waters saves seven generations of our race....There is no place of pilgrimage like the Ganga,no god like Vishnu..."

Between the boy and the river was a mountain.I was a small boy and it was a small river, but the thickly forested mountain was big and hid the river.Yet I knew it was there and what it looked like.I had never seen the river with my own eyes, but from the villagers I had heard of it, the fish in its waters , of its rocks and currents and waterfalls, and it only remained for me to touch the water and know it personally

A Mountain Stream
There is a brook at the bottom of the hill.From where I live I can always hear its murmur., but I am no longer conscious of the sound except when I return from the plains.