Close to Nature

I love many things about India; one of them is how close it’s possible to be to nature. On this trip I saw how rice was harvested, it’s the first time I’ve ever seen rice on the stalk and I’ve been eating it all my life! It felt so bizarre when I came back to UK and sat at my PC, 48 hours earlier I had been taking the cows on my uncle’s farm to have their afternoon drink of water!

Memories

It’s good to be home again after three weeks in India. I wanted to start my trip there from the beginning – my earliest childhood memory is of this spot when I was eighteen months old and my parents had taken us on holiday. My mum had told me to stand on the side while she bathed my brother in the water. So I stood and like most small children who are drawn to shiny, bright objects I remember looking at the Golden Temple ahead of me, to the right my mum had taken off her silver watch and placed it on the edge of the water, another attractive, shiny thing to look at for a toddler, until a splash of water saw it disappear into the tank, followed by lots of commotion to try and recover it. I also remember we travelled to places in a white taxi which had red leather seats and I lost my milk bottle so my mum had to improvise with a Coca-Cola one. And the village we visited where there were beautiful peacocks. A few years ago I related these memories to my mum to see if they were accurate, we were both quite surprised at my recall.