Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “roc.” Find a word with “roc” in it or use it as a word all by itself. Enjoy!
On a verse in the Mahabharata
It is afternoon, we are sitting in our verandah and reading. Our verandah is enclosed and the roof is a slanting one. In Kannada we call this space Mukhamantapa. Earlier in villages many houses had such verandahs but they were not enclosed. It was a pleasure to sit on the low wall and read a book.
My father planned our house. Long back I had told him that if there was extra place I wanted a mukhamatapa. We bought this plot of land in 2002. There was place and he said I could have my wish. But he felt it was better to have grills above low walls on three sides. Our house is not far from the main road and a grilled verandah is a safer place.
It is our favourite place. Those who visit us also prefer to sit here. From here we can see coconut trees, plants and other trees beyond our gate. Green is my favourite colour. The flowering plants have grown tall. They are like a green wall. Actually there are three plants, their names in Kannada are Mandara, Lambana and Karaveera. All three bear yellow flowers. Yellow flowers against the green background looks beautiful. They remind me of brocade. The tree opposite our gate also bears yellow flowers, it looks like a huge bouquet when in full bloom.
Every evening we sit in our mukhamantapa to drink tea. It is such a relaxing place. Now that we are in lockdown, we walk in our front yard. The star apples keep falling. Due to the rains, they are spoilt from inside. Every morning my husband picks them in a basket and puts them at the roots of two of our coconut trees. In evenings too we do it . Maybe the two trees will bear more coconuts next time 😊 because they are getting a lot of sweet star apples. It will be a relief when all the star apples fall.
After returning from our evening walks , we sit in our favourite place. On the 15th and 16th of this month we had heavy rains due to cyclone Tauktae which roared ferociously along the west coast of our country leaving behind a trail of destruction. The sea is about ten kms from our house. There was wind along with rain and our mukhamantapa was drenched. This also happens during the monsoon season. So we have plastic chairs there.
As it gets darker, the fragrance of the Parijatha flowers fill the air. It is a pleasure to sit out but it also the time for mosquitoes to make their appearance. They are there always. Aravind suffers most from them. I tell him his blood must be much sweeter😊. We then go inside.
All this came to mind when I saw the sun shine and yellow flowers in full bloom and I thought of the book I am reading, The Mahabharata, An Inquiry in the Human Condition by Chaturvedi Badrinath. It is a fascinating read.
One of the verses in the epic says, ‘ Flowers do not proclaim themselves before giving their pure fragrance. Neither does the sun announce itself before shining in the sky.’
Mukhamani 
Comments are welcome :)