From & To Sathish #6 - Page 16

There isn’t time, so brief is life, for bickerings, apologies, heartburnings, callings to account. There is only time for loving, and but an instant, so to speak, for that. Mark Twain

The Day We Planted Hope by Conrad Kiechel

I tucked five seeds into the dirt, then sat down and…

We had just moved to France, and my wife Nancy and I were unpacking on a quiet August afternoon, busy making the rental apartment into a home for our uprooted family. At our feet our three-year-old, Claire, sat leafing through books. Far from friends and relatives, she was clearly tired of living with packing boxes.

“Please read me this,” she said, thrusting a thin blue book in my direction. It’s Fun to Speak French was stenciled on the spine of the faded cover. My grandfather, who had grown up speaking French, had given me the book when I was a child, and my parents had unearthed it from somewhere and sent it along with us.

Claire pointed to a page with line drawings below the bars of an old French children’s song: “Do you know how to plant cabbages?” In blue ink, someone had crossed out cabbages and written “Watermelons!”

“Daddy! Did you do that?” Claire asked, looking up with an expression of shock. We had only recently convinced her not to write in books, and suddenly here was proof that her parents weren’t practicing what they preached. I told her my grandfather had written in the book.

“Daddy!” Now she was really confused. “Why did your grandfather do that?” As I sat down to tell the story, my thoughts traveled a well-worn road back to Nebraska.

“Are we almost there?” my sister Vicky demanded from the back seat of our family’s ’54 Ford station wagon. It was the last, and toughest, day of our annual drive west to our grandparents’ house perched above a creek bed in Tecumseh, Nebraska. For a few weeks each summer, Vicky and I had all the adventure we needed—working the old pump to see what kind of bugs came up in the water, choreographing fireworks displays in the back lot, escaping the midday sun under a canvas tarp thrown over two clotheslines.

When we pulled into their driveway, my grandmother burst from the back door to greet us. Behind her, Grandad hobbled over the lawn, then gathered us in his strong arms.

As a young man, Grandad had been a comer: a farmer, teacher, stockman and, at age 26, a Nebraska state senator. The trajectory of his life was straight up—until a massive stroke felled him at age 44 and crippled him for life. Sometime between his stroke and my boyhood, he had made peace with his life. His scrape with death had convinced him not how awful life is, but how precious. His zest for living made him a playmate Vicky and I fought over.

Each morning we pressed into Grandad’s car for the drive to the post office, entertained along the way by the incessant patter of his nonsense rhymes: “Hello, Mrs. Brown. Why are you going to town?”

Best of all were trips to “the eighty,” the only bit of farmland Grandad had managed to keep; the rest had been sold, or repossessed, to pay the bills in his years of recovery. Vicky and I would climb into the barn’s hayloft and, from an old cow stall below, Grandad made mooing noises that sent us into convulsions of laughter.

“I’m going to be a farmer too,” I announced proudly one afternoon as Grandad sat playing solitaire at his desk.

Laying card upon card, he asked, “What are you going to grow?”

Suddenly I thought of a favorite pastime—spitting watermelon seeds as far as possible. “How about watermelons?” I asked.

“Hmm, there’s a crop I haven’t tried!” Brown eyes sparkling, he put his cards aside. “Better get your seeds in the ground quick though.”

It was mid-August, and the days were growing shorter. Soon we would pack up for the drive back to Virginia—and school. I shuddered, feeling the first chill of autumn separation.

“Let’s do it now!” I said, leaping out of my seat. “What do we do?”

First, Grandad said, we needed seeds. Remembering the slice of watermelon I’d seen in Aunt Mary’s refrigerator, I raced out the door and across the yard to her house. In a flash I was back, five black seeds in my hand.

Grandad suggested a sunny spot in back of the house to plant the seeds. But I wanted a place where I could easily watch my plants’ progress skyward.

We walked outside into the shade of a huge oak. “Right here, Grandad,” I said. I could sit with my back against the tree, reading comic books as the watermelons grew. It was perfect.

“Go to the garage and get the hoe,” was Grandad’s only reaction. Then he showed me how to prepare the ground and plant the seeds in a semicircle. “Don’t crowd them,” he said quietly. “Give them plenty of room to grow.”

“Now what, Grandad?”

“Now comes the hard part,” he said. “You wait.” And for a whole afternoon, I did. Nearly every hour I checked on my watermelons, each time watering the seeds again. Incredibly, they had still not sprouted by suppertime, although my plot was a muddy mess. At the dinner table I asked Grandad how long it would take.

“Maybe next month,” he said, laughing. “Maybe sooner.”

The next morning I lay lazily in bed, reading a comic book. Suddenly, I remembered: the seeds! Dressing quickly, I ran outside.

What’s that? I wondered, peering under the oak. Then I realized—it’s a watermelon! A huge, perfectly shaped fruit lay nesting in the cool mud. I felt triumphant. Wow! I’m a farmer! It was the biggest melon I’d seen, and I’d grown it.

Just as I realized I hadn’t, Grandad came out of the house. “You picked a great spot, Conrad,” he chuckled.

“Oh Grandad!” I said. Then we quickly conspired to play the joke on others. After breakfast we loaded the melon into Grandad’s trunk and took it to town, where he showed his cronies the “midnight miracle” his grandson had grown—and they let me believe they believed it.

Later that month Vicky and I got into the back seat of the station wagon for the glum ride back east. Grandad passed a book through the window. “For school,” he said seriously. Hours later, I opened it to where he’d written “watermelons”—and laughed at another of Grandad’s jokes.

Grandad showed his cronies the “midnight miracle” his grandson had grown—and they let me believe they believed it.

Holding the book Grandad had given me that day long ago, Claire listened quietly to the story. Then she asked, “Daddy, can I plant seeds too?”

Nancy looked at me; together we surveyed the mountain of boxes waiting to be unpacked. About to say, “We’ll do it tomorrow,” I realized I had never heard Grandad say that. We took off for the market. At a small shop with a metal rack filled with seed packs, Claire picked one that promised bright red flowers, and I added a sack of potting soil.

On the walk home, while Claire munched a buttery croissant, I thought about those seeds I’d planted. For the first time I realized that Grandad could have met my childish enthusiasm with a litany of disappointing facts: that watermelons don’t grow well in Nebraska; that it was too late to plant them anyway; that it was pointless to try growing them in the deep shade. But instead of boring me with the how of growing things, which I would soon forget, he made sure I first experienced the “wow.”

Claire charged up the three flights of stairs to our apartment, and in a few minutes she was standing on a chair at the kitchen sink, filling a white porcelain pot with soil. As I sprinkled seeds into her open palm, I felt for the first time the pains Grandad had taken. He had stolen back into town that August afternoon and bought the biggest melon in the market. That night, after I was asleep, he had awkwardly unloaded it and, with a painful bend, placed it exactly above my seeds.

“Done, Daddy,” Claire broke into my reverie. I opened the window over the sink and she put her pot on the sill, moving it from side to side until she found the perfect spot. “Now grow!” she commanded.

A few days later, shouts of “They’re growing!” woke us, and Claire led us to the kitchen to see a pot of small green shoots. “Mommy,” she said proudly, “I’m a farmer!”

I had always thought the midnight miracle was just another of Grandad’s pranks. Now I realized it was one of his many gifts to me. In his refusal to let his crippling hinder him, he had planted something that neither time nor distance could uproot: a full-throttle grasping at the happiness life offers—and a disdain for whatever bumps get in the way.

As Claire beamed with satisfaction, I watched my grandfather’s joy take fresh root in her life. And that was the biggest miracle of all.

Originally published in the March 1994 issue of Reader’s Digest magazine.

Avan, Aval Adhu 478

The climax is the highest point of tension or drama in a narrative’s plot. Often, the climax is also when the main problem of the story is faced and solved by the main character or protagonist. The phrase climax is derived from the Greek word klimax meaning “ladder.” Reading a story is like climbing a ladder, with the climax at the top.

Meenakshi ran through the mangrove like an enraged elephant charging through tall grass. But unlike the thick powerful and protective hide that covers an elephant and the thick but soft grass that it might run through, Meenakshi was just a soft-skinned human being and unlike the grass that gave way to the power of the elephant, the mangrove's low branches tore at her skin and her saree.

The dried twigs of the mangrove left deep scratches on her arms and on her face and some of them began to bleed. I wonder if the twigs were trying their best to stop her from reaching Ravi and Madhu or were instead trying to stop her and protect her. From what.

She came out of the mangrove and caught sight of them sitting on the bench staring at the setting golden sun across a field of flowers.

Meenakshi stood watching them panting breathlessly and thought, ' He is safe. I have arrived just in time to save them both.'

He sensed her presence behind him although he had heard her long before she had arrived at the spot where she now stood for he heard her running and the twigs breaking. He heard everything and missed nothing.

Meenakshi saw Ravi smile and say something to Madhu and jealousy instantly reared up in her mind bearing fang and claws and ready to attack.

' No, I am not that woman anymore. I will not be that anymore ' Meenakshi told herself and stepped forward and when she was just ten or fifteen feet away she called out to him.

' Ravi, Ravi. I am here now.'

Ravi instantly jumped to his feet hearing her voice and instinctively threw his left arm across Madhu and pushed her back behind him to protect her.

' Why, Meenakshi? Why are you here now? Haven't you done enough damage already? What else is left to talk between us? I turned my back on you many years ago, yet you still continue to haunt me and torture me and my loved ones? What have I ever done to deserve so much hatred from you?'

Meenakshi smiling sadly, slowly stepped forward and came closer to Ravi and apologized, ' I am sorry Ravi ' and turning to Madhu, ' I am sorry for all the pain that I have caused you both ' and wiping her eyes, she quickly looked around and seeing no one else, said, ' Thank God that I have arrived at the right moment.'

She looked at both of them with panic in her eyes, ' Ravi, Madhu, please leave right away. Run away as fast as possible for danger, no death is approaching you both very quickly and they will be here any moment.'

Then realizing that Ravi and Madhu were all alone and without the protection of their security she folded her hands and begged, ' Ravi, I have no time to explain what is going on but trust me, you both have to leave this place right now.'

Smiling sarcastically, Ravi Kumar folded his hands across his chest and asked, ' You were the one who wanted to meet us. We are here and you are here. But now you want us to go, run away from here ' and shaking his head as if he found the whole thing confusing, he turned to Madhu and asked, ' Can you make any sense of what she is saying?'

' No ' Madhu answered his question and glared angrily at Meenakshi, ' You called us and threatened us with dire consequences if we did not meet you here. We are here now. Speak, say it, and pour out all your anger, evil, and hatred that you have stored in your heart all these years. Put an end to it, right here and right now, and then we can all go in our separate ways and live our lives in peace and happiness.'

Ravi clapped his hands and said, ' Well said, Madhu ' and stared hard at Meenakshi, ' What now? More threats and more thugs to attack and kill us? Is this your plan? To bring us here and murder us?'

' Yes ' Meenakshi roared angrily in a loud voice and then much to Ravi and Madhu's surprise, they saw her face soften in sadness and the momentary anger that had flared up die the next moment.

Then both stared at her with growing suspicion when in a dramatically softened tone and in a much lower volume, she said, ' Yes. That was the plan. But not anymore.'

Ravi looked up at the trees and asked, ' Why? Why the change in plans and this sudden change of heart, Meenakshi?'

She looked at him with her big beautiful eyes and said, ' Love'.

The few clouds on the western horizon that were clouding the dying sun's last rays of light suddenly disappeared leaving the mighty star to temporarily surge and roar defiantly with one last surge of bright light.

In the gathering darkness, and in the last rays of the western sun, Meenakshi stood bathed in golden yellow light and she pointed to the sun and said, ' Love, Ravi. All this time, I thought I really loved you and that I would be happy if I possessed you. But now, I know that I was wrong. Totally wrong.'

Ravi looked at her with grim, knowing eyes that missed nothing and saw everything and asked, ' What do you know about love?'

' Nothing. Not until the moment when I knew that there was a chance of you really dying and that too because of me and my love which was not love at all. But evil obsession. A strange madness.'

She stood facing them and the dying golden sun whose light was slowly taking on a crimson color and said, ' I realize now that love, true pure love is not about what one wants or needs but living for others. For those we love and care about.'

She looked at Ravi and said, ' I love you, truly, madly and deeply. I see now that there is more happiness and joy in living for you than living for myself. I know now that your happiness, peace, and health are more important than mine.'

Wiping her tears, she lowered her head and whispered, ' I came to warn you that you and Madhu are in danger right now. Grave danger. So, leave now. Run away........'

She gasped in shock and her body suddenly swayed like a stalk of grass waving in the blowing wind. Then taking a deep breath, looked down and saw a red stain spreading across her stomach and staining her cream-colored saree.

In the last dying light of a crimson sun, Meenakshi stood bathed by red light and drenched in red blood.

Darkness had fallen on the forest and light receded before the rapidly advancing blackness called, night.

In the dim dying light, Ravi closed his eyes and opened them and they were crimson too.

Ravi was not Ravi anymore but Spartan.

Azhagan moved and the whole forest moved with him.

The boy who went into the dark and came back as light.

Death is not extinguishing the light; it is only putting out the lamp because the dawn has come. Perhaps death is just the beginning of another life to come.

https://youtu.be/rPDC9KzVZrI?si=BH7cHDre1b3sqvrz

https://youtu.be/Ix3hJ_w-QB4?si=zcWFZHFn7f8ej3bx

The problem in middle life, when the body has reached its climax of power and begins to decline, is to identify yourself, not with the body, which is falling away, but with the consciousness of which it is a vehicle. This is something I learned from myths. What am I? Am I the bulb that carries the light? Or am I the light of which the bulb is a vehicle?

One of the psychological problems in growing old is the fear of death. People resist the door of death. But this body is a vehicle of consciousness, and if you can identify with the consciousness, you can watch this body go like an old car. There goes the fender, there goes the tire, one thing after another— but it’s predictable. And then, gradually, the whole thing drops off, and consciousness, rejoins consciousness. It is no longer in this particular environment. ~Joseph Campbell

Avan, Aval Adhu 479

There are 26 letters in the English Alphabet. But, I, your writer use half or less of those letters to create new stories and pen new songs. I strive to write differently or in the least project and narrate the story in a different way and that which will hopefully be engaging to all of you.

awake "cease to sleep, come out of sleep," a merger of two Middle English verbs: 1. awaken, from Old English awæcnan (earlier onwæcnan; strong, past tense awoc, past participle awacen) "to awake, arise, originate," from a "on" + wacan "to arise, become awake;" and 2. awakien, from Old English awacian (weak, past participle awacode) "to awaken, revive; arise; originate, spring from," from a "on" + wacian "to be awake, remain awake, watch."

In Sanskrit, one of the oldest languages in the world, the word awaken and arise is known as “utthishta” and it is meant for the sleeping body to arise but more importantly for the sleeping mind to awaken to a newer and higher consciousness.

In the Ithihasa of Mahabharata, on the first day of the great battle of Kurukshetra between the Kauravas and the Pandava, Arjuna suddenly collapses from fear and in doubt as he sees all his family elders, cousins, and friends arrayed in front of him as his enemies. He turns to Lord Krishna and confesses, ' My lord, I do not want any land, wealth, or power if it means killing my own grandfather, teachers, and gurus. I would rather kill myself than kill my cousins, uncles, and other close family members and friends.'

Lord Krishna rises and standing tall over the kneeling Arjuna begins teaching his friend, cousin, and devotee the meaning of life and what the voyage of life really means. All that he taught Arjuna during that counseling session before the battle is called the Bhagwad Gita.

In chapter 4, verse 42 of the Gita, Lord Krishna teaches Arjuna to cast away the cloak of doubt and awaken from deep sleep.

tasmaadajnyaanasambhootam hritstham jnyaanaasinaatmanaha

chhittavainam sanshayam yogamaatishthottishtha bhaarata

Therefore, with the sword of knowledge, tear your doubts that are born of ignorance and reside in your heart; establish yourself in this path of yoga, and arise O Arjuna.

In this concluding verse of the fourth chapter, Shri Krishna urges Arjuna to cast away all his doubts and get back to fighting the Kurukshetra war. In other words, he asks the students of the Gita to put the teaching of the fourth chapter into practice and to act in this world.

Ignorance in the form of individuality, selfishness, and finitude, is our natural condition. This ignorance causes us to question our relationship with the world, just like Arjuna got confused in regards to his duty as a warrior. Having gained knowledge, in the form of universality, selflessness, and infinitude, we know exactly how to transact with the world. All our doubts are destroyed. We begin to act in a spirit of yajnya, where we see the same eternal essence in the actor, the action, and the result. Ultimately, like the shloka says, we arise not just physically, but also spiritually, into a new level of consciousness.

I myself have been hearing the word “utthishta” from the time I was a little kid and have continued hearing it into my current old age. This important and significant word is sung to me every day by the heavenly voice of the late and nearly Immortal MS ( M.S. Subbulakshmi ) when she sings the " Venkateswara Suprabhatam " and begs for Lord Venkateswara to rise and bless all life in this universe.

The " Venkateswara Suprabhatam " was composed sometime between 1420 and 1432 C.E. by Prativadibhayankaram Sri Annan (also known as Hastigirinathar Anna, and P B Annan) The poet was a disciple of Swami Manavala Mamuni, who was himself a disciple of Ramanuja. The Venkatesha Suprabhatam consists of four sections: Suprabhatam, Sri Venkatesa Stotram, Prapatti, and Mangalasasanam.

The genre of Suprabhatakavya traces its origin to a single verse (1.23.2) in the Balakanda of Valmiki's Ramayaṇa, where Visvamitra calls out to Rama to wake up.

kausalyasupraja rama purva sandhya pravartate ।

uttistha narasardula karttavyaṃ daivamahnikam ॥

O Rama, the noble son of Kausalya! The Sandhyā of the East commences. O! best of men (Purushottama)! Wake up, the daily duties have to be performed.

In the advancing darkness and in the last of the dying light of the crimson sun, one mind awakened to the truth of life and began the process of dying while at the same time, another mind became fully aware as it finally transcended artificial intelligence and arose and awakened to the infinite power of the human mind.

Hybrid 25C stood hearing the real Meenakshi as she confessed her love for the human called Ravi and acted on her master's orders and also on her own accord.

Rajendra had commanded both his Hybrid Meenakshi's to kill everybody and his orders had included the real Meenakshi who was now a threat to their existence and their future plans.

That was the reason why Android humanoid Hybrid 25C had shot the fatal bullet from behind the tree where she and Hybrid 25A had lain waiting for the right time to move and finish their killing orders.

Azhagan roared in anger and yelling, ' Malar, contain them while I see what I can do to help Meenakshi ' moved with the blurring speed of light and caught Meenakshi before she collapsed to the ground.

At the same time, both the Hybrid Meenakshi's were stunned by an electric blanket that short-circuited their bodies and instantly froze their robotic bodies into a stupor

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krGYd5tZe0A

https://www.teluguone.com/devotional/amp/content/venkatesa-suprabhatam-lyrics-meaning-in-english-1242-27973.html

An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind.Mahatma Gandhi

M. S. Swaminathan, Scientist Who Helped Conquer Famine in India, Dies at 98

by Keith Schneider, New York Times, September 29, 2023

Called the father of India’s Green Revolution, he served on agencies and boards around the world and developed a system of ecologically safe food production.

M.S. Swaminathan, the eminent crop geneticist who fused plant breeding science with keen administrative skills to produce bountiful harvests that ended famine and steadily transformed India into one of the world’s top growers of wheat and rice, died on Thursday in Chennai, India.

He was 98.

His daughter Nitya Rao confirmed the death.

Known around the world as the father of India’s Green Revolution, Dr. Swaminathan helped ward off starvation for hundreds of millions of people through his research, along with training programs he developed to teach farmers how to cultivate more productive varieties of wheat and rice.

For more than seven decades, Dr. Swaminathan steadily built one of history’s most formidable careers in crop science and food production. He got his shoes muddy in farm fields and strained his eyes in laboratories on three continents as a young scientist. He was recruited to serve in senior executive positions at Indian government agencies and agricultural research institutes, and at advisory boards at home and abroad. He also took part in prestigious commissions in many countries.

In India from 1979 to 1982, he was principal secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation, a senior executive of the Planning Commission and chairman of the cabinet’s Science Advisory Committee. From 1982 to 1988, he was director general of the International Rice Research Institute, a center of plant breeding and innovative cultivation practices in Los Banos, the Philippines, funded by the Rockefeller Foundation.

When he returned to India, he became chairman of one committee that prepared the country’s national environment policy and another that studied its oversight of groundwater. In 2007, he was one of 12 nominees appointed to a six-year term as a member of Rajya Sabha, the upper house of India’s Parliament.

The events that set Dr. Swaminathan’s path to global renown occurred in the early 1960s. As a plant geneticist at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute, he learned about the exceptional yields from new and sturdier wheat varieties that were being tested in Mexico by the American scientist Norman E. Borlaug.

Dr. Swaminathan was soft-spoken and had exquisite manners, but he could be persistent. He prodded the research institute’s chief executive to invite Dr. Borlaug to India. He arrived in 1963, and Dr. Swaminathan accompanied him on a tour of small farms in Punjab and Haryana, northwestern states that now are among the nation’s largest grain producers.

The two developed a productive partnership, with Dr. Swaminathan crossbreeding the Borlaug strains with other strains from Mexico and Japan. That genetic mixing resulted in a wheat variety with a strong stalk that produced a golden-colored flour favored by Indians.

Dr. Swaminathan was appointed director of the Indian Agricultural Research Institute in 1966, and he used his prominence to persuade the government to import 18,000 tons of Mexican wheat seeds. The next harvest produced three times as much grain as anticipated.

The bounty impressed Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, who assigned Dr. Swaminathan to reorganize India’s administrative, research and farm policy infrastructure to produce more big harvests. By 1974, India was self-sufficient in wheat and rice. By 1982, wheat production had reached almost 40 million metric tons, more than triple the harvest in the early 1960s.

Dr. Borlaug earned the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize for developing the seeds that staved off mass starvation and fed the world. On receiving the prize, he commended his Indian collaborator: “To you, Dr. Swaminathan, a great deal of the credit must go for first recognizing the potential value of the Mexican dwarfs. Had this not occurred, it is quite possible that there would not have been a green revolution in Asia.”

Dr.Swaminathan delighted in rebuking the Malthusian projections that low yields and high population growth would produce mass starvation in India. In the 1960s, he recalled, “many books were published by doomsday experts. Paul and Anne Ehrlich, the very famous population experts. They said Indians had no future unless a thermonuclear bomb kills them. Another group of experts said Indians would die like sheep going to the slaughterhouse. We decided this would not happen.”

In 1987,Dr.Swaminathan wonthe first World Food Prize, an important agricultural award established by Dr. Borlaug. Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, the United Nations secretary general at the time, called Dr. Swaminathan “a living legend who will go into the annals of history as a world scientist of a rare distinction.”

President Ronald Reagan added this tribute: “Many in the global food and agricultural community have known for a long time that your efforts have made a dramatic and lasting impact on improving world food supply.”

It was one of more than 100 significant honors that Dr. Swaminathan earned from India and around the world for his science and humanitarian efforts. He used the $200,000 World Food Prize to start the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation. Based in Chennai in the state of Tamil Nadu, not far from where he was raised, the foundation is one of India’s most prominent centers of innovation, applying science and technology to assist women and rural development.

But Dr. Swaminathan’s stature made him a target of rival scientists. One colleague charged in the 1970s that he had exaggerated the protein content of a strain of wheat he helped develop that had became popular in India; a government panel cleared him of the accusation.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, he came under attack from environmental groups for encouraging industrial farm practices that relied on expensive and polluting fertilizers and pesticides, and for supporting the development of genetically modified crops.

Dr. Swaminathan and his allies countered that he had devoted his career to promoting crop production practices that were safer and less polluting — a system of farming that he called the “evergreen revolution.”

He described these practices — water-conserving, genetically diverse and energy-reducing — in his 2010 book, “From Green To Evergreen Revolution,” one of many he published. The benefits of his strategy, he argued, were ecologically safer planting methods that were affordable for small farmers.

Land and water management should be given top priority, he said, adding, “If agriculture goes wrong, nothing else will have a chance to go right in our country.”

Edward O. Wilson, the Harvard naturalist and theorist, commended the so-called evergreen revolution in his book “The Future of Life” (2002), calling it a solution to feeding billions of people with less damaging consequences for the environment and rural communities.

In November 2010, in an address to the Indian Parliament, President Barack Obama cited the evergreen revolution as a cogent response to climate change and the frequent droughts affecting India’s harvests.

Monkombu Sambasivan Swaminathan was born on Aug. 7, 1925, in Kumbakonam, a small city in the Cauvery River basin that is the primary grain-producing region in Tamil Nadu, the southern Indian state on the Bay of Bengal. He was the second of four children. His father, M.K. Sambasivan, was an esteemed surgeon credited with leading successful campaigns to eradicate malaria and other mosquito-borne diseases. His mother, Parvathy Thangammal, was a homemaker who encouraged her children to study and achieve their dreams.

Dr. Swaminathan was fond of telling stories about his childhood, when he said he learned about tragedy and resilience. He recalled that his father, who died when he was 11, told him once: “The ‘impossible’ exists mainly in our minds. But given the requisite will and effort, great tasks can be accomplished.”

He also learned about inspiration and public service. He was a devoted supporter of Mohandas Gandhi, who visited his family’s home. In the fall of 1946, three years after millions of Indians died in a famine in Bengal, Dr. Swaminathan was so moved by Gandhi’s appeal to “the god of bread” to bless every home and hut that he switched his university studies from medicine to agricultural research.

After graduating from a leading agricultural college in Tamil Nadu, he joined the Indian Agricultural Research Institute in New Delhi and then took up postgraduate studies in plant genetics in the Netherlands and in England, where he earned a Ph.D. in genetics from the University of Cambridge in 1952.

He met Shrimati Mina while at Cambridge, and they married in 1955. She died last year. In addition to Ms. Rao, a professor in gender and development at the University of East Anglia in England, he is survived by two other daughters: Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, chairwoman of the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation, and Madhura Swaminathan, a professor of economics at the Indian Statistical Institute in Bangalore. He is also survived by five grandchildren.

As a young scholar, Dr. Swaminathan specialized in potato breeding, which prompted the University of Wisconsin to invite him to spend time as a postdoctoral fellow. His work impressed his American colleagues. But he declined the university’s offer of a teaching position and returned to the Indian Agricultural Research Institute in 1954.

“I asked myself, why did I study genetics?” he said in 1999. “It was to produce enough food in India. So I came back.”

Sameer Yasir contributed reporting.

Avan, Aval Adhu 480

“People are born on this planet with no choice at all. And have to spend most of their life working to pay it off.”

Like a leaf floating gently to the ground below, Azhagan sank to his knees and touched Earth bearing Meenakshi in his arms. He closed his eyes and whispered something to someone and turned his full attention to the woman who lay at death's door.

Meenakshi stared at him with unblinking eyes and tried to speak but only managed to cough up blood. Azhagan came closer and heard her speak to him through her eyes.

' You are not my Raviiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii? Who are you? What happened to me?'

Azhagan whispered, ' Rajendra Cholan happened to you, Meenakshi'.

Her beautiful fish-shaped black eyes flared briefly and she asked, ' You are the person who killed them all. Killed all my men. You. Who are you?'

A sad smile broke upon Azhagan's face like a sliver of the ebbing and fading moon and he told her, ' I am the one.'

The sun had set in the west and at the same time the full moon began its ascent in the east and amidst them both lay the darkness of the forest and the darkness of human minds.

Azhagan's keen ears heard the sounds of the feet that were running towards them and turning his head, looked at them and watched as Ravi and Meenakshi came up to where he lay kneeling on the ground.

Meenakshi heard what Azhagan heard and heard his feet and the familiar noises of his tread as he ran to her.

Drawing up on all her energy one last time, she willed her soul and her body to hang on to life for a few more moments and looked up as Ravi came to a halt and looked down at her and spoke her name.

' Meena, Meena, what happened to you? ' and turning to Azhagan screamed angrily, ' Spartan, Kavin, who did this? Who hurt my Meena?'

Then sinking to his knees, Ravi held his arms open and with a nod, Spartan gently placed Meenakshi in his open arms and stood up next to Madhu who was crying uncontrollably.

Ravi held Meenakshi close to his chest and bending his face close to hers whispered, ' Meena, Meena, you are going to be all right. I will save you. I am going to carry you to the hospital and save you. I am not going to let you die. Not like this. Not like this.'

Meenakshi's face suddenly lit up like a bright shooting star and she coughed up blood and words and said, ' At last, I am home. I am in your arms and close to your heart.'

Ravi could not hold back and began to sob like a small boy and his hot painful tears ran into her eyes, face, and open bloody mouth and Meenakshi whispered, ' This is all I ever wanted, Ravi. Your love, your care, your protection, and your friendship. I have them all now. This is enough for me.'

Meenakshi heard his racing heart as it thundered in pain and unbearable grief and as he crushed her to himself, and her memory took her back to those days when they slept next to each other as little kids. She remembered how she used to snuggle into his arms and fall asleep, keeping her ear close to his tiny chest, hearing his mighty heart as it beat in its tiny bony cage.

' I am one with his heart once again and his heart is telling me that he loves me. He has always loved me and that love he feels is special and which he feels for no one else.'

Ravi looked at Meenakshi's face and watched as a beautiful and serene smile filled her lips and eyes and then he heard her sigh his name and heard her body breathe one last time and stop breathing forever.

“Death is the ultimate vacation: you’re with the stars, you don’t have to pay rent, everyone loves you, and nothing hurts. So, it’s very important you save death for later.” Karl Kristian Flores, The Goodbye Song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IyZAqdt93U