Life and Spirituality

I was deeply touched today morning when a surprise certificate of appreciation arrived in my Twitter feed from Mahindra Rise at https://twitter.com/MahindraRise/status/1110046810121404416 I am deeply honored and perhaps there could be no better way for it than through a tree. Readers of this blog would know about my love for trees and my many posts on it, some of it shown on following search list, https://someitemshave.blogspot.com/search?q=tree Mahindra  and  Mahindra  Ltd is a mulit billion-dollar global enterprise headquartered in India with operations spanning over 21 industries in more than 100 countries. Mahindra Rise is their call to action to help improve planet and life of all that dwell upon it. For more information see https://www.mahindra.com/

As a senior citizen and retired person, I have the leisure to look back at life and wonder how the world changed over the last half-century or so. Perhaps the greatest change has been in communication technologies. As a child we had holders with nibs or pens to write. One dipped the nib in an inkpot and then wrote on paper with the wet nib. There were different colored inks, blue, royal blue, green, red and once in a rare while a brown one too. I loved trying out the different colors. At times one smudged the paper with a blob of ink and there were blotting papers to soak it up. After one wrote a letter, one made a trip to the post office to get the envelope weighed, get stamps and then post the letter. It took a few weeks to reach distant lands. The reply came back after several weeks. One could make a phone call too if the recipient had a phone but one booked the call through an operator and then waited a while before she called back if the call was through to a differen

Sometimes one builds a large home when not so old to meet various possible needs of a family.   As one ages, parents depart and children grow up to pursue their own lives visiting only in holidays. One is then left with a large home with a lot of vacant space, most of the time, in old age. Some old persons lock away parts of their homes most of the year to reduce cleaning and maintenance chores. I too have been doing that for the past several years. However, others have found an innovative use for their homes. They let out a room or two to visitors, students or tourists. It creates a homely facility for a tourist who might wish to skip the hustle and bustle of a city hotel and save money; for a student from a foreign land it is a great facility. I lived in one such all through my student years at UBC in Canada at highly affordable rates. It was the home of a dear old lady by the name of Mrs. Cuthbert. She not only gave me a furnished place to live in but also provided al