Rasa No. 5 — Adabhuta: On Awe, Wonder & the Things That Refuse to Be Explained
Wonders across the skies, season and time zones
Five Months In: Wonder Doesn’t Whisper.
It Roars Quietly.
This month didn’t arrive with a grand lesson or a moral wrapped in metaphor.
It arrived with bubbles. With galaxies. With butterflies landing like secrets on your shoulder.
Five months into this journey, l’ve realized: some stories don’t teach.
They awaken.
They widen your eyes. Tilt your head upward.
They tug you gently toward the edges of what you thought you knew.
So this time, I won’t explain the magic.
I’Il simply invite you to notice it again.
Because not everything real needs to be rational.
And not everything sacred needs to be serious.
Welcome back to the Rasa series, nine emotional flavors of being human.
Navarasa:
‘Nava’ means nine.
‘Rasa’ is emotion, essence, flavor.
Each rasa is a doorway.
And this month’s door opens into
Adbhuta-the rasa of wonder.
The nine Rasas:
Śrngāra - Love, beauty
Hasya - Laughter, joy
Karuna - Compassion, pathos
Raudra - Anger, fury
Vira - Heroism, courage
Bhayanaka - Fear, anxiety
Bibhatsa - Disgust, aversion
Adbhuta - Wonder, curiosity
Sānta - Peace, stillness
Previously in the Rasa series:
Hāsya, Raudra, Bibhatsa, Karuna—each story a thread in this emotional tapestry.
Catch up on Substack to feel the full flavor of this narrative journey.
And now, Adbhuta.
Adbhuta isn’t just wonder.
It’s recognition. That old, delicious feeling of:
“Wait! Have I been here before?”
In museums. In Maui rainbows. In moonlit silence at Yosemite.
Wonder isn’t escape.
It’s return.
Here’s to the next rasa in this journey—infused with mood, memory, and the quiet magic of noticing.
🦋🫧🌺
Never Wanna Grow Up
Some things, we’re never meant to outgrow.
Bubbles, for one—shimmering with secret rainbows, vanishing before reason can catch them.
Butterflies—silent proof of softness that survives its own, the most marvelous, transformation in flight.
Fireworks that crack open the sky with joy.
Stars that remind us how far light will travel just to reach our eyes.
Flowers that bloom overnight in quiet splendor.
Full moons that rise like ancient, glowing promises.
These are not childish things.
They are portals.
Wonder is how the soul remembers what the mind has gently forgotten.
Chapter 1: Bubbles at the Birthday Bash
Pinky giggled with delight as she blew shimmering bubbles into the warm summer air at her birthday party.
Each bubble caught the sunlight, swirling with hidden rainbows, dancing like tiny enchanted worlds over the yard amid joyful squeals.
She reached for one, missed, laughed even brighter.
That was her first gentle reminder:
sometimes the lightest things in life leave the deepest, sparkling joy.
Her mother Harsha smiled, eyes twinkling like captured stars.
“Do you know, Pinky,” she said softly,
“each bubble is like a tiny perfect world—fragile and full of magic, just waiting for someone to notice?”
Pinky’s eyes grew wide in amazement. “Like a secret?”
“Exactly,” Harsha nodded. “And the world is overflowing with such secrets, if you keep your heart open to look.”
Suddenly, a flutter of delicate wings brushed past her ear. A sparkling butterfly glimmered in the sunlight. “Hello, Pinky,” it whispered, “I’m Lila. Would you like to discover even more wonders?”
Chapter 2: Wings of Wonder at the Cockrell Butterfly Center
Lila the butterfly gently led Pinky through a magical doorway that appeared like shimmer in the air, opening into the enchanting Cockrell Butterfly Center in Houston—a vast, sunlit rainforest alive with colors.
Hundreds of butterflies, each more radiant than the last, flitted around like living jewels in a tropical dream.
“Here,” Lila said softly, her wings sparkling, “is the magic of transformation. From humble caterpillar to winged beauty, butterflies whisper lessons of change, growth, and joyful freedom.”
Pinky reached out in awe, and a vibrant butterfly landed gently on her finger. A flutter of pure wonder stirred in her heart, as if it was sharing a secret meant only for her to understand.
Years later, in the blooming Portland Rose Garden on a calm spring morning, a butterfly of every imaginable color and exotic pattern, flitted from bloom to bloom.
Pinky followed it for fun, then for fascination, and finally, with the quiet reverence of someone chasing the promise of transformation.
She never caught it.
She didn’t need to. The wonder had already touched her soul.
Chapter 3: Eternal Blooms and the Art of Fragility
During one of their special trips to Boston, Harsha and Pinky visited Harvard Museum of Natural History. There, guided by the lingering magic of Lila, they discovered a sunlit gallery where delicate glass flowers bloomed eternally.
Mily, the glass artist, smiled warmly.
“These flowers never wilt,” Mily said. “Yet their beauty blooms from endless care and patience, just like real life.”
Pinky watched in breathless amazement as examples of the intricate craft unfolded—molten glass shaped into petals that caught the light like fresh morning dew.
“Fragility, isn’t a weakness” Mily said gently. “The world is full of delicate things worth cherishing.”
And this magic insists on being witnessed… not captured.
Later, in the hushed museum halls where whispers felt like reverence, Pinky saw them again—the Glass Flowers.
Over 4,000 exquisite blossoms, crafted entirely from glass. Roots, veins, pollen, even tiny signs of nature’s cycles—every detail a masterpiece, enlarged as if viewed through a magical lens, like a secret whispered in glass. It was as if a stamen’s soul had been stretched a thousandfold under a glass moon.
She leaned closer. The flowers stood still, yet somehow... they seemed to breathe with eternal life.
In Costa Rica, roses carried scents like whispered tales. In the Netherlands, endless tulips painted the fields in vibrant parades. They swayed gently in the breeze, moved by wind and memory alike.
Pinky bent down to smell them both, thinking:
Flowers are ancient magicians.
They dance with light.
Invite bees to their ball.
Outlast empires.
And perhaps...
they hold every secret of time.
Chapter 4: Fireworks and Rainbows
That night, Harsha shared enchanted stories of dazzling fireworks illuminating the New York sky on the 4th of July—bursts of color blooming like heavenly laughter.
When July 4th arrived, the skies above Seattle erupted in celebration. Fireworks thundered like joyful celestial drums, painting the night with fleeting perfection. Pinky gazed upward, not looking for metaphor that night, just basking in the sky’s grand display of wonder and color and brief perfection. Yet even that symphony of light, in that loudest joy, a soft voice inside her whispered:
Wonder doesn’t ask for silence.
Just attention with open heart.
“And then there are rainbows,” Harsha continued, “like those rare double rainbows, arching over the horizon like some divine afterthought, seen over Maui’s shores. Nature’s own masterpiece, woven from light and mist.”
Pinky dreamed of standing beneath those rainbows, feeling the colors wrap around her like a glowing hug from the sky itself. One day, after a sudden storm cleared, she stood barefoot on the shore, eyes wide at a breathtaking double rainbow.
She didn’t even take a photo. No lens could capture it.
She simply stood there, drenched and overflowing with gratitude.
Chapter 5: Moonlit Magic and Starlit Promises
In Zion, under a luminous full moon by the crackling campfire, Pinky and Harsha lay on soft blankets, gazing at a sky brimming with stars-galaxies swirling in silent, breathtaking splendor.
“The universe is a grand story written in light,” Harsha whispered. “Each star, a chapter. Each galaxy, an endless mystery.”
Pinky’s heart swelled as she gazed up, feeling both wonderfully tiny and infinitely connected all at once.
In Yosemite, the natural Fire-fall at Horsetail fall blazed like a ribbon of molten gold dropped by the sun itself.
A full moon rose like a hush, silvering the majestic cliffs. Pinky kindled a small fire, stayed awake long into the darkness, listening to her own breath mingle with the night’s song. It sounded like pure belonging.
Then came Mauna Kea and the Grand Canyon-sacred places where Earth seemed to part its veil, revealing millions of stars and swirling galaxies on loan to wondering eyes.
She didn’t ask for answers.
She simply looked up, and remembered the thrill of feeling small yet utterly at home in the vastness.
That night, beneath the canopy of light, she made a silent vow:
“I will never stop noticing. I will cherish petals over pixels. I will never outgrow the galaxies.”
No, she refused to grow up.
Chapter 6: Forever Wide-Eyed
Back home, Pinky hugged her mom tightly.
“I don’t want to grow up,” she said earnestly, “because the world is too brimming with magic to leave it behind.”
Because growing up, she realized, need never mean growing closed up to wonder.
And some soul are destined to be eternal astronomers of awe.
Harsha laughed softly, eyes shining. “And you never will, Pinky. Because magic thrives in the eyes that forever wonder. The world is truly “Adabhuta”—full of marvelous, unexplained beauty.
Years might pass. But wonder?
It waits.
Outside, a single bubble floated by, catching the moonlight—a tiny shimmering universe, patiently waiting for Pinky to smile and notice once more.