Easy Bliss

Hanami is picnicking under the sakura bloom. Sakura is the Japanese word for Cherry Blossom and sakura-viewing is ‘mono no aware’ meaning empathy towards everything. The tradition has been taking place for thousands of years. The Japanese view the bloom, which hardly lasts a fortnight, almost in a meditative way watching it hours on end. They also feel very sad when the bloom starts fading away. It is during March end or April month during which the cherry blossom tree blooms and during which time the hotels in Tokyo and Kyoto are booked years in advance to see the spectacle of the bloom.
Many Indians have suggested starting a similar festival of the Golden Shower Tree or Laburnum in India. The tree too blooms in April, summer time in India. At the peak of its bloom the flowers are so dense that you wouldn’t see a leaf or a trunk or a bark. You will find these trees lined up in many cities of India like Mumbai and Noida and in Kerala and many parts of India. They present a very soothing site during the scorching summer time and are relaxing and de-stressing. Authorities will need to create meadows lined up with these trees to create gardens and picnic spots. The festival has to catch the imagination of the authorities and the population at large. It is also vacation time for schools in India.
The Zen masters have known to teach meditation, relaxing with your body stretched in bath tubs. They have also prescribed meditative walks. In this you can sit on a sofa and imagine you change into a track suit and then wear your sport shoes. You then go out of your house in your mind, remaining in your sofa into a garden lined up with beautiful flowers. You simultaneously measure every step of your walk. You can return back from this imaginary long walk home feeling fit and retrieving on your sofa without moving a limb.
As for me I got up today in the morning to find a blanket of dark clouds on the dome of the sky with a steady drizzle. Sounds of thick drops falling from the 17th floor roof over three floors below me created music to the incessant shower. Green branches of tall thicket trees standing meekly in ovation. Sometimes the drizzle turned awry increasing in intensity to the howl of wind. I gazed at the Mumbai rains for an hour. It was a spell I will not forget for a long time. I recalled a similar hex standing on the bank of a lake in Chhatisgarh scattered with lotus flowers and watching the reflection of birds and passing billows of white clouds on the serene waters. It was bliss.