Love In A Mist, raises a stink

Passiflora foetida,
Stinking Passion flower.


I had found this flower at Tirupati, almost 15 years ago, and researched ever since.

More info from Flowers of India:


Love-in-a-mist is a creeping vine which has an edible fruit and leaves that have a mildly rank aroma. It is native to northern South America and the West Indies. The stems are thin, wiry and woody, covered with sticky yellow hairs. The leaves are three to five-lobed and viscid-hairy. They give off an unpleasant odour when crushed. The flowers are white to pale cream coloured, about 5-6 cm diameter. The fruit is globose, 2-3 cm diameter, yellowish-orange to red when ripe, and has numerous black seeds embedded in the pulp; the fruit are eaten and the seeds dispersed by birds. The bracts of this plant serve as insect traps, but it is as yet unknown whether the plant digests and gains nourishment from the trapped insects or if it merely uses the bracts as a defensive mechanism to protect its flowers and fruit. This is still an issue of debate and research among carnivorous plant enthusiasts.
Medicinal uses: This species can be helpful in treating digestive problems, including dyspepsia and diarrhea; or used as an astringent and expectorant for nervous conditions and spasms.



http://www.flowersofindia.net/catalog/slides/Love%20in%20a%20Mist.html




I chanced upon this ancient post lying in the drafts folder and just posted it; what a chance idea sirji!

to life and all that...

George Bernard Shaw had said, "I want to be used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. Life is no brief candle. To me it is a splendid torch's, and I must it burn as brightly as possible, before handing it on to future generations".


To me, life has been nothing short of a rollercoaster ride, from the highs of childhood to lows of adolescence, the excitements of tweens to the realities of the -ties.

Been there, Done that! Cliched, but true. There's not much left to experience, which hasn't been already done. My five senses have seen, heard, felt and dine them all. Probably one aspect that continues to excite is to travel to new places, meet new people; one desire deep down is to travel across the world, God willing that will happen too, before I pass on the baton.

No plan has been successful, yet life hasn't been a failure; taking a day at a time, taking on all the good and bad that life threw in its path... was nothing short of a potboiler.

Charles dickens wrote in his Great Expectations, the one laaarge book I read end to end as a kid,  'cause it was my father's favourite, "I have been bent and broken, but - I hope - into a better shape; we never need be ashamed of our tears".

Something in me had died, completely, bone cold. I was a pale shadow of my own self; but I started to celebrate the stillness, the tears, the and overtime, they turned up even during happiness! Such is the power of positive thinking and the resilience of tears. Idolise? none. I grew up a vegetable with no idols to emulate, which was good in a way that I didn't have to copy anyone or seek 'healthy' advice; All by myself on the ro-co; and as I trudged along, a list of wishes cropped up. Pretty much young I started into the grind, while kids my age were frolicking, I never turned back, neither to distress nor to de-stress.



Looking glass

Charles Dickens said elsewhere, "The most important thing in life is to stop saying 'I wish' and start saying 'I will.' Consider nothing impossible, then treat possibilities as probabilities."

I started to follow Dickens' words and slowly kindness flowed through... few good people took to the innocent lad, some tried to use it to their advantage, some gave a leg-up and lifted me a notch higher.
Life drives itself on auto-pilot in its rickety rackety jalopy; I seem to hold the steering very hard so that I can control the rattletrap, but it seems to have a mind of its own and determined to take me in its own path.

Glad, though, that through all this, looking through the rear-view-mirror in night-vision mode (just to avoid the harsh headlights of past) my mind and heart were at their right places as far as ethics and morals are concerned, not one bit wavering. Kudos to that! talk of self backslapping!! Anyone ayes to that or not, it is 'the' fact.

There are many unchecked boxes in the to-do list, that I still want to really do, somehow, at sometime whenever I find it, that is... it just a new way of doing things at a different place that gives a totally new meaning to the adage, Been There Done All That.

ramble, babble, chuckle, blah, blah, blah.....! just enough! now get off the couch and get out to experience the life outside!

(Written at BIAL lounge, waiting for airplane, travelling to some-place-else!); 5:25 am.