The outcome

Days go by so quick. We can easily let it pass without doing much, yet we do a lot. We go on as though we have no choice. We plan things, we work, and we focus. Many things happen in a day, a day’s work can even change our lives forever. We wake up to accomplish a lot, we sleep to wake up the next day and accomplish even more. We live a lot of days, do a lot of things. Why exactly are we doing all that we are doing? The same schedule that we force ourselves to follow each day, the determination to do all that we think we should be doing, tuning our heads in such a way that we see only things that we think we should see and feel only things that we think we should feel. How would we live our days if we had spent our entire childhood in isolation, growing up and learning things on our own, living life on our terms, literally. I wonder, maybe then we would know our true selves, with no external influences, would we still turn out to be the good selves that we now are? What does it mean to know yourself, when you are nothing but the result of everything that is around you, everything that has inevitably affected and influenced you? You wouldn’t be you if you weren’t born where you were born. So, you are just the outcome of the things around you, the people who lived before you and the things that they did. We are nothing but a result of many odd events; we lose all our instincts, the raw element. We are all about our past.

So, can I say that it is not us who are distinct and unique but the odd events that caused us? Yes, I am saying that again. “I am not distinct, the odd events that caused me are.” The product of the odd events that will continue to happen and of which I would be a big part too, will be the next set of people who come in to this planet. I can’t promise them anything, I can’t promise myself anything, I have no control over anything as it is all external. Like math, division of a huge number into the smallest digit, do we all become lesser in value as each generation goes by? The number of odd events multiplies itself and increase in number and the result that they produce divides itself and become lesser, is that how it works? Is humanity diminishing with time?

However, we have got the privilege to be the result of all that we are; we are the unique outcome of many unique events. I know, I am contradicting myself here. I should probably rephrase the earlier said statement; “I am the unique outcome of many unique events”. The result that we are of whichever odd problem needs understanding. So maybe, ‘know yourself’ means, ‘know what you have become’. The original ‘you’ is long gone, it has hardly had any existence. It is all about what ‘you’ have become.

You are the altered version of yourself that you were supposed to be; you can alter it further, how much ever you want. Become a good person, a better one, bad or worse, it is all up to you now. Living your days the way you want to live is also up to you, yes you have lost the natural instinct, but you sure can manage.

Past is always around

It is always said that living in the present makes you content and efficient. Do not think about the past; stop worrying about future, live in the now. I have tried following it with all my heart but not for a day could I really bring it into practice. How do you not think about the past? I have been alive and in my senses for more than a lot of years and I am sure all of you who are reading this too would have. I find it impossible to not think of all those lived out days, thought out thoughts, worded words, fought fights, flowed out tears, heaved heart aches, and laughed laughs, loved loves. I use most of my ‘now’ time thinking about all that, going over all that as if I didn’t have another choice. I don’t consciously summon my past moments like it often happens with memories, instead these beings of the past conquer me, leave me locked in them. I hate unlocking myself from them so I throw away the keys until an external force, somebody else, do it for me, or rather for them. I often wonder how a person can keep all her memories of the lifetime within her, not spilling them out or cramping them and destroying them. May be that is what happens when one turns old, they are left vulnerable with cramped and distorted memories. One is vacant without memories.

So, is it possible to live in the present or think just about the present? ‘Just about the present’ sounds so silly, present is everything; it is the promise of our existence. If so, why is it so difficult to remain in the present until you wish to take a look into the past? Improve your concentration level; you need to train your mind to focus for a longer period. Yes I know, but why? Why do we have to train ourselves in order to think about the most important moment of our life, the Now? I have heard that animals live in the now. Being a rational thinker definitely has disadvantages. I have been working hard on mastering the skill of thinking Just about the present, I struggle at it. After all, memories make us up; we shouldn’t train ourselves to avoid them!

Future is an even more puzzling thing. I hate day dreaming but I have never been able to get rid of it. Day dreams are eating me up from within. Even though I hate it, I have to say, day dreaming is wonderful and I, more than often, fall for the wonder that it is. If you had a feeling that I was vouching for thinking about the past, you are right, I kind of did. But that won’t happen with the thought processes that are related to the Future, especially day dreaming, it is such a waste of time. We can get addicted to day dreaming in certain situations like, when you are in love or about to be in love or hope to be in love, when you are studying, when you are listening to seminars, every now and then, etcetera. Ridiculous we are, really, spending so much time imagining ourselves in situations that we expect us to be in if we manage to live through to be in that day and age and place and time. Do you mind me saying ‘we’? Are you a person who doesn’t day dream, think, worry, imagine of Future? If you are, you have my apologies. I would still prefer saying ‘we’ so please excuse me. We are thinking about our future based on the experiences and knowledge that we have earned from our past. We might stop thinking about Future if it becomes impossible to have thoughts of the past. By Past I mean the very second that just passed. That is an insane thought.

Past is past, not really. Past is always around, past is in the present and in the future. I didn’t mean the Tense but yeah, that too. I think Past is the best thing about life. We often say as we put our best effort to console someone, ‘it is over, a thing of the past, forget it and just move on’, rather we should probably ask them to learn something from it and make use of the experience in the future. Most of the time, the present is lost in between the past and the future. Present is too short a period of time, too eager to top the list of the past moments, maybe that’s why it is so easily lost. Anyhow, I will continue to train myself to improve my concentration level. After all, Present is the promise of our existence, we shouldn’t ignore that either.         

I am just filling the blank page

 Too much time with textbooks is bad for you; they squeeze out every ounce of creativity that exists in you. I am suffering it; the squeezed out creativity is before me now, mocking me with its ridiculous dance moves.

I didn’t realize that I was vacant of creativity when I opened Microsoft office word; I thought I could write something, feel good even after all those hours of torture by those textbooks. I was wrong as many times before. My creativity acts as though it is scared of this blank page that comes up every time ms word opens up. I tried to write in a note book but that doesn’t feel good, I have to hear the sound of the keys going down as I press them to make words. Also, my handwriting is really pathetic and even I cannot bear to see it. The page isn’t blank anymore. What a relief!

 To me exams are like enormous speed breakers. They slow you down, makes you feel dizzy, make you want to throw up, make you want to scream, and makes you want to get out of the vehicle and run somewhere else. Find a pond or a river or a lake or whatever and plunge yourself into it and stay underwater and blissfully shut your ears from all the noise. Go to the beach and make sand castle, go into water and feel the waves, sit in the shade and read a beautiful book, listen to good music and have a candle light delicious dinner. Go for a long tiring run and lie exhausted looking at the sky, eat a lavish breakfast, watch a good movie, laze around with friends, sit at home aimlessly and enjoy it. Exams make you want to do anything but study.

Let us talk about something else.

Space, let us talk about space. By space I don’t mean the celestial space, but an area. My city lacks space. Space for what you may ask. Well, space to go to when you are bored, or with relatives or guests, or even friends and lovers. My city has a lot of restaurants, shopping malls, cinema theaters, temples, churches, mosques, crowded narrow roads, and crowded reasonably broad roads, couple of parks, a museum, couple of water theme parks, and a lot more but the problem of all that is a lack of organized infrastructure and an excess of population. Wherever you go, you have more than 1000 people around you.

No, I don’t want to go all negative, not today, not without my creativity. I love my city no matter what. I belong here.

Change of topic.

The other day I went for a movie with friends, not to a multiplex. In multiplexes men are in their good selves, in non multiplexes men are in their normal selves, I mean, they are not so good. This time, like any other time, there were a lot of men and few women for the movie. We thought we should be cautious, we thought but that doesn’t mean we were. So we sat, the movie began. After a while, when I am too involved in the movie, my friend pokes me, I look at her irritated, she points at something, I look to where she points and I am shocked to see what I see. Do you know what that was? Obviously you wouldn’t. It was a foot. Yes, you read right, a foot it was, and a man’s!! I was alert, the feminist alarm in me rang, and ‘REACT!’ the alarm screamed. So I turned around in my seat, took a moment to connect the foot with the right head, and when I did, to my amazement saw that the person had his eyes shut. Was he drunk, drugged, or just asleep. Drunk, I decided. I told him “excuse me! Thante kaalu ividinnu mattu”, move your foot from here. He didn’t hear that, so I said again and again. He finally heard, but he didn’t just hear it, he jolted up in his seat and looked around, wondering what just happened. Okay! So he was just asleep. He moved his foot and went back again to sleep. I and my friends turned around to see the movie again and my feminist alarm died away laughing. When the movie was done and we were leaving I looked at that man only to find him deep asleep.

I am not switching to another topic. This is all I can manage without my creativity. I will see you next time, after the exams and when my creativity is back.   

Window seats

I once read a book just because the title interested me. I didn’t enjoy it much but I read the whole thing. ‘Window seat’, was the title.

Every average person has this obsession for a window seat, I do too. I love window seats; I am the most satisfied person on earth if I have a window seat.

In trains I love A/c, SL (side- lower); you get a whole long window for yourself, yes luxury, so what? You can lie half awake looking at the blue sky, even better during monsoon, you can sit up and be fully awake and see the paddy fields that go by, the stations and the people, the cattle and cattle people or should I say cow boys?, and the blackness in tunnels. In busses too I prefer A/c; yes I ‘prefer’ luxury. Feel cool even when the sun is scorching bright hot, get stuck in traffic and chaos and yet not feel any of it, enjoy the silence and stillness. Sit at ease and see people engaged in their lives, shopkeepers and customers, pedestrians, stray dogs, stray people, stray babies. 

It feels like watching a fiction, where you have no part to play, where you can just be a mute spectator enjoying the form of art and where nobody expects you to do anything or where nobody even knows of your existence. You are so free of responsibilities. It is so relaxing to be away from reality, to not care, think light, and feel good. Only luxury lets you do that. No general compartment or ordinary busses lets you to be a mute spectator, they get you involved, you have to take the heat, the sound, the chaos and the air and its smells, and you have no choice but care and when you care, feeling good is tentative.

Behind a luxurious window you see, behind an ordinary one you live. Fiction is enjoyable how much ever tedious it may look but falling into it and being inevitably forced to live in it needn’t be so. You cry watching fiction, you remember it, it changes you, you learn from it and you evolve yet there is always an incorrigible distance between you and that fictional account because you don’t really know how it feels to be that fictional character, to face those problems. How much ever empathetic you are there is a threshold up to where you can go, beyond that it is purely the victim’s own, something that is unique and one of a kind. Every individual has this fortune of holding unique pieces of knowledge, and every individual has reason to be respected. Nobody knows it all and nobody has it all. Whichever window is it that you are looking through you have enough within you of which you can be proud of and you have enough to be ashamed of. Making an effort to go up to that threshold and accepting the fact that there is a lot beyond it makes all the difference.

Some get to see bitter fiction while some get to live bitter lives.

Anyway, I was trying to talk about window seats and I have failed to do so, even there comes up richness and its antonym. Well, what I wanted to say was I enjoy looking out of windows and seeing the sights outside while travelling like almost everybody else. I don’t know where all that rant about fiction and threshold came from. My intention was to speak of window seats and only simply that, may be that was a mistake. I am not good enough to write paragraphs about window seats. So I guess I should stop.

Open all windows, see and live, live and see.

Abyss

My eyes are closed and I am seeing it, I can even feel it. The green tall grass, the shrubs, the trees swaying in the wind, I can feel that wind in my hair, on my face, it is so good. I can see a pond there; it looks beautiful amidst all the green. I am leaning onto a rock, the rock under the blazing sun isn’t burning hot, I wonder why? This is a new feeling, a pleasant one though, to be a tiny speck in a vast land of green. There is nothing blocking my vision of the sky, there is nothing intruding the sound of wind and birds. The woods look rich with the wildlife hidden in there. Everything looks so perfect, so pure. I don’t want to open my eyes but I have to, I don’t want to let go of this beautiful vision but I have to, because that beautiful place isn’t where I am anymore. I am in the man’s land again, the land that was given birth by murdering its own mother, nature. I see the shadow of a broken and bleeding family here, the mother nature married to the dangerous species called human being to have a baby that is monstrous enough to kill its own mother and eventually and inevitably its father too who for now is blissfully ignorant of that awaiting ill fate. I look up from there and I could see that mountain there, where everything was pure and perfect, standing tall and gay, but I could sense the slow movement of the monstrous baby beneath me, nurtured by its ignorant and arrogant father, crawling up towards that beauty, all armed to consume it, to take away the faint heart beat of its weak and dying mother. A dark cloud was hovering over me, plunging me into darkness, the cloud had moving figures in them, white and smoky, and they were featuring a story, a play rather. I saw them act before me and I began to enjoy it.

In the play, the shadowy figures, the beautiful mother, the cruel father and the monstrous baby, enact their story in silence. They spin and turn, they split and shatter. The play ends and the last scene has the baby growing by consuming the dying mother, there is a red glow around the non consumed parts of the dying mother, the father is huge in number, the entire species of human beings sum up that one father and this father has a lot of characters, a lot of cruelty, a lot of anger, a lot of ignorance, a lot of beliefs, a lot of helplessness, a little love, a little purity, a little intelligence and a little joy. All those little characters are white and glowing but they are so small and easily suppressed but one can see a faint glowing line linking all those little ones, and the big black ones going listless and hollow. I felt myself being absorbed into that cloud, I was being pulled into the hollowed black figure but I resisted and I lost the ground beneath my feet and fell into an abyss. I was falling, the fall was forever, and I wasn’t hitting the ground. My eyes were burning, I had to close them, I hadn’t yet hit the ground, but I had to close my burning eyes.

I closed my eyes, I wasn’t falling anymore. I could feel and see things the way it was. I was back in the normal world with normal people and normal stories. All of us had our eyes closed and happy and not falling.

All of us know that the fall hasn’t stopped; we have just closed our eyes and shut off the unwelcome things. The monstrous baby will soon perish with the ignorant father; the mother will be born again.

Humanity is falling and one day it will hit the ground and die. We are falling into the arms of death. We can save ourselves, if together we can open our eyes to things and look out for something to cling on and save our lives from the waiting arms of death. Let us open our eyes together before it is too late, before the arms of death sweep us away. Let us treat the mother right.

Here I am

The silver dawn and the sound of birds, the cold floors and the creaking doors, the cool breeze and the smell of flowers, the dew covered grass and the wet soil. The moss faced walls, the cobwebs, the old huge trees, the dry and brittle tree barks, and the dry leaf smothered earth, the centipedes, the grasshoppers, the ladybugs, the touch- me- not plants.

There is more…

Silent, un tarred roads and the trees that lean into it, the narrow flowing streams and the tiny fishes, curled up snakes and sprinting mongoose, the fierce stray dogs and cats, the wells and the frogs, smiles and tears, games and laughter, genuine bonds and a lot of time.

I am tired, tired of trying to speak of things that I have hardly savored. I have got a glimpse of all that, sometime back, a quick little taste of it, before I was forced to retreat or rather, before I joined the others in forcing it to retreat. I never realized that I would grow up to miss all of those so much, so much that their absence would define me. I never thought that they would go extinct.

That was a dream. In reality, I live in chaos; wake up to the sound of vehicles honking, too busy with technology to take note of anything that doesn’t include technology. Live in the seventh storey of a seventeen storied building, away from the ground, away from life. From the balcony I see similar tall concrete buildings, busy roads, and somewhere in between a lone tree.

Some days I decide to go for a walk and so I step out of this place that I call home, go down and down to touch the ground, walk on the broken and unevenly cemented footpaths of busy roads, inhaling in a lot of vehicle smoke, avoiding the hungry gaze of starving stray dogs and greedy palms of beggars. I walk plugging in music to my ears and trying hard to ignore the honks of vehicles that intrude the music.

The other days I become one among those in the honking vehicles, battling for dear life in the crazy world of automobiles.

I see no grass, no trees, no grasshoppers, no dew, no un tarred roads, no birds, no streams, no wells, no frogs, no touch- me- not plants, no snakes, no mongoose and no smiles and games. I live somewhere else, where nobody knows why they exist, where technology is the supreme power, where life is a mere charade. I live in a country that is developing and here people make homes on top of other’s homes, here we cut down trees to make room for people, here we dig down deep into the earth to get some water to bathe in, here we have time for nothing, here we live and die worshipping technology.

I live in a country that has lost its grip, being beaten and bounced around by others, helplessly going further away from it, plunging into a state of insanity, struggling to find the lost track or finding a new deformed self.

Here I am losing myself in my lost country.

Unveiling of holes

Strangers surround one in this world more than one can perceive. There are strangers everywhere, every time. It is difficult to ignore all of them, and it is difficult to notice all of them. Most we don’t dare to look; others we don’t care to look or we don’t see them. Some meet our eyes, lock our gaze, share a moment, take away that moment, give us a smile, and grant us a brief moment of discarded joy. Some we share with a common plight during that short locked gaze, plight that we don’t speak out, plight that we all know of, plight that is not worth acknowledging, the plight of remaining a stranger, the plight of living with distrust. Some gazes tell us a story; invite us into those deep eyes, deep enough to dive into, deep enough to live in, deep enough to drown in. Those eyes are scary because we recognize them even without looking in; they are so prominent, so loud, so flooded. We carefully avoid their gaze as we are scared of drowning; we are terrified of it, its power of survival. Those eyes are everywhere, every street, every lowly hut, every footpath, in every homeless dog, in the dark shadows of partial development. They are plenty in number, still we avoid those gazes, and we are skillful enough to see through them, to overlook them. Often when our skill backs away our eyes meet theirs, we fail, and we drown. The pang of guilt and sorrow heaves our whole system, it tightens our conscience, and we let them show us their grief, their hatred, their anger. It becomes grueling to hold that gaze but still we do because we feel locked, locked in that grief, in that immensity of injustice. We know what they need, their eyes are loud enough, yet we don’t do it, yet we back away, we reason out and alert ourselves the practicality, the very essential normalcy of our lives that we do not want to give away, we cling to the self centering. We gain the power to restrain the grief from swallowing us, from acting for us. Then we unlock the gaze, we break that invisible thread. The thread through which we saw a life, many similar lives and their stories, their needs and their grief, their hatred and their anger, their power of survival, their frantic breathless souls sinking in the ocean of injustice. We walk away, we let them sink. As we walk away our conscience screams at us, stabs us and makes holes in us, yet we walk, we listen to loud music hoping to silence the inner screaming voice, we laugh and eat merrily, merriness that has veiled the holes that smell of sinking bodies, of murderous grief. In some the holes unveil themselves, the inner voice grow louder than the music, the merriness fails to  survive over the grief, they step up, they pull up the sinking ones, one by one, as many as they can. They realize the beauty is in grieving along with the grievers rather than veiling it up piled up in ugly holes. They realize that the real merriness comes with no veils over nothing, without breaking any gazes, with listening to the inner voice, with giving away the normalcy of life to welcome the excellence, the seemingly impossible. Such people help the humanness survive, the plight of distrust reduce in power. They help the suffering diminish, they save the suffering ones from dying under the majestic footsteps of the massive ugliness of development. It is true; such people are just a few. Can’t we just follow those few? Listen to our inner voice and let our conscience act for us. Yes we can do that, I am sure we can.

The supreme

Feet dangle in free water, searching frantically for something, something to keep life alive. The search goes in vain, frantic feet do not even ripple the water surface, the torso sinks, the hands are swallowed, the face is eaten up, and breath goes lost, like a child separated from its parents in a busy street, lost completely. Underwater is another world altogether, a world with its own ways and customs, beliefs and rules, language and life, death and survival. Penetrating in with frantic feet and stretched out beating arms and the cold fear of death is never welcomed. That world conquers it, beats it, and takes everything it has and then banishes it, useless. As the body is taken, as the penetration unwillingly happen, the cold fear of death slowly seeps out, mingles with the water, take leave off the body to be a mere spectator, a referee maybe, an unfair, partial one. Open eyes get blindfolded without cloth, the green water lie over them, thick and immovable. Closed eyes have visions in them, visions of a familiar world, a lost world, lost breath. Nothing to hold on to, nothing to block you, no obstacle, no walls, no traffic, no ropes, no breath, it is as free as it can get, a small price for the freedom, the breath. The arms relax as hope abandons. The search for the way back to life stops. Body relax, mind surrender. Visions of that familiar world tease you, poke you, and stab you. Water takes the body on a smooth ride, downward a straight path, quite, calm, free. The mind bids farewell to the lost world, prepares to enjoy the ride, the brief free peaceful ride, road to death, to die as an alien, to visit the lost world later, lifeless. Mind embraces the body, scared to let go of it, apprehensive of what lies ahead, if there is something ahead at all? Then a last desperate frantic search for life and mind resigns, body sinks only to rise later, alone, dead.

Water stays calm throughout the process, a smooth operation, an effortless take away.

 One on one battle against nature is a lost battle, nature wins easily. The power of nature is incessant, supreme. Nature sometimes gives us warnings, warnings that can shake us badly, change us forever. It is easier to live in ignorance, but, life is fuller out of it. Nature never stops surprising, all you need to do is keep your eyes and mind open to the sights around. The more you let yourself be surprised, the more you smile, the more you smile at the small things, the wiser you are. Wiser you are, fuller you live.                  

India’s only daughter?

The whole nation is mourning the death of a woman who was gang raped. Protesters are protesting for justice for this woman, the whole nation shoot out different opinions regarding how the convicted men are to be punished while media reports efficiently, a little over perhaps, about the case. The whole nation follows the news intently, waiting for more updates every passing minute. Social networking sites had people gushing out their anger, fear and sorrow. Newspapers reported elaborately by using over a sheet. Every day the size of the reports increased, the letters to the editor became intense. It seemed to look like the newspapers had to have a separate section called Rape, like Business and Sports, because each passing day more than a dozen rape cases were written about consuming a lot of space and print. The very next day after the Delhi incident newspaper along with elaborate portion of Delhi gang rape case report had few other tiny, less space consuming, print wasting reports of other females who were raped, gang raped by other males. One of them being a forty-two year old woman gang raped while travelling in Delhi again. People spoke of it as though it shocked them. Nobody could imagine another such terrible event happening soon after this terrible event. Everybody was agitated, but those cases like the tiny newspaper reports failed to get the recognition that the space consuming one got. Still, rape was the subject; common was the object, female, twenty-three, fifteen or forty-two, the objects were female. The nation went on praying and protesting for the twenty-three, the prayers hopefully divided themselves between all the objects of the subject, all the females who have been, who are raped. All kinds of news emerged, all kinds of descriptions came out regarding what happened to the twenty-three, how it happened and how she is faring, even what she had in her mind right then and right now. Days passed, the year was about to end, rape cases never ceased, newspapers divided their space and print for tiny rape cases and bigger ones. The hard part was only to decide, decide which rape case deserved more space, more acknowledgement, more print. People knew the twenty-three year old well enough, well enough indeed! That now they wanted to see a picture of hers, just to know how she looks. The picture was never released, the twenty-three year old was closer to death, and the government and the doctors decide to take her out of our beloved nation for better treatment. She dies. The nation mourns. The media call her India’s daughter.

The nation praying, protesting, mourning is the people who have access to internet, television, radio, newspaper, education, intellect, purity, goodness and morality. This group of people cannot be called the nation. There are a lot of people who have no access to these gadgets. What of them? They aren’t part of praying, protesting or mourning. They just use their self for the act of destruction and in some cases indifference to destruction. Destruction or indifference doesn’t help but can be dangerous, is dangerous. It is the danger that our nation faces. How to make those dangerous ones listen to us? How to make them have access to the gadgets that we have? Without giving them or letting them or forcing them to have access to these gadgets can we hope to eradicate danger, dangerous men, and dangerous women? The answer is no. Is there hope for a better nation with all this talk, over an issue, when there is dangerous people who are indifferent, angry at all this talk? Is there hope for a woman to walk free at night with all the newspaper essays supporting women’s right when there are people who don’t read them, who disagree to it, who don’t understand them? What do we do? How do we reach them, their brains? How do we alter their intellect?

It is difficult and a time consuming procedure. Women meanwhile can learn self defense, carry around with them a weapon and go on living life to the fullest. It doesn’t help if women stay home, scared. It doesn’t help if parents make the daughters stay home, scared. It helps if the girls are brought up by making them realize their power. It helps if the women overlook the male chauvinist society and the norms and rules that come with it. It is time to act. Face the danger, fight it and you will know that you are capable of winning that fight, and you have always got your boyfriends, lovers, brothers, fathers, uncles and grandfathers. So common women, be prepared to fight the war and raise your sons as good men who have access to all the gadgets.            

Small Things

Rain rained hard, the newly tarred roads looked new and black and the old tarred roads with potholes that were innumerable, like the holes that an inexperienced dosa maker’s dosa made, looked ruined, broken and smashed. The rain drops like silver lines shot down on earth and in it went, never to be seen again. The silver lines made small bubbles in the water in the potholes. The bubbles didn’t form a round, there was too little time for forming a round, and they rather looked like domes, domes of mosques. The sandal colored water in the potholes formed brown- orange pastries once the rain ceased, it stuck like wax to ones shoes if stepped on or in. The thick paste went in deep into the designed dug in roadways on the soles and stayed there like deep ugly secrets that have to be forced out for a light soul, sole. Anything that is sharp and thin would do to force it out, from a knife to a broom stick but not words, how much ever sharp they were. The thick paste if left in the roadways of the sole, it would make you feel them all the time, a bump under your shoed feet, protruding, heavy and irritating. Abandoning those shoes wouldn’t help as the rain would come again and potholes are disappearing nowhere, may be something else would help like not stepping on or in those potholes and not letting the mock brown- orange pastry get under your feet. The wheels of vehicles that go down into the potholes and come out of it paint themselves brown- orange and leave a trail on the new black roads, as a reminder of the past or even a warning of the coming future. The school girls in uniforms wear black slippers, giving their nylon socks and Bata shoes a rest, a monsoon holiday. The boys have brown- orange dots and shapeless patches painted on their shirts and trousers from the muddy afternoon break’s rainy football match. The relentless advertisement on radio and television of Poppy umbrellas leave the common man humming’mazha mazha kuda… ’. The nursery kids refuse to let go of their fancy umbrellas even when they bounce around in crowded buses without a vacant seat or footrest. The biker women cover themselves partly in ridiculous colors of plastic material, raincoats, and the wet sari cling to their legs once they get down from their bikes and walk into their work place. The men on bikes look like mini hulks as the air puffs up their fully covering raincoats. In the traffic signals the travelers in cars listen to the radio over the sound of the wipers. Darkness fills the rooms, humid air shrinks the doorway or enlarges the door making it a strenuous ordeal to close the doors and if closed, open the doors. The cloudy days and dark corridors make the day at college a romantic one. The sound of rain becomes the sound of music and adolescent lovers listen to a lot of music and do a lot of dreaming. The combo of hot chai and parippuvada or dal vada from roadside dhabas tastes tastier but the ice cream shops take a back seat. The washed clothes take days to dry and your favorite jeans are always wet and heavy on you in the rain. Students blame the rain for everything, “why are you late?” “Because of the rain ma’am”, “where is the homework?” “The rain wet it all ma’am”, as if they were inhabitants of a refugee camp with a leaking tent. Wet umbrellas are left open to dry in the balconies, porches, classroom corners, supermarket corners, office corners. Then, gradually the rain ceases, then stops, sun comes back, umbrellas stay home, Bata shoes prolong their leave for some more time, and brown- orange pastries turn into hard cakes, football matches happen in heat, women abandon their raincoats, men are reluctant to let go of their mini hulk form, college is romantic only for the lovers, the dreamers give dreaming a break, the doors and doorways behave better, the jeans dry up, the roads turn grey, the earth becomes dusty, the jingles of Poppy umbrellas fall out of trend, kids forget their umbrellas, students find another excuse for not doing the homework.

I love rain and all that it brings with it, or rather all that I think that rain brings with it. I don’t go around inspecting the world when it rains and see if people are actually humming the poppy jingles, but, I would like to believe they do, even if the Poppy stops manufacturing umbrellas I would still like to believe that people sing that song during monsoon. I think it is so with me because I have this memory of walking through the vegetable market, when I was a kid, near our house and there one of the vegetable vendors happened to be singing this particular song. I remember it so well for some reason and since then without me realizing it I was living with this bizarre belief that people sing this song in the rainy season. It is strange and stupid but I love it and I wish it was true. I also believe that, as you touch a tree bark with your palm the bark from within sends a glowing vibe through your palm into your heart which stays there forever and makes you stronger.

Some things get instilled in your mind and stays there without an effort. You don’t acknowledge them, you naturally over look them. Those small things are always there though, refusing to let go of you, linking you to your origin, your raw true self with that faint, feeble yet unbreakable thread of theirs. Whoever you are, wherever you go, whatever you do, the small things in you decide where you end up, as what.   

Wounded paws

The pain was scrutinizing, deadly. He fell on the ground, his eyes bulged out and through them he saw the innumerable number of human feet running towards him and then it came again, the blow. This time the pain wasn’t as deadly as the first one, this time the blow was just a relief. A relief from the fear that was life…

Statistics say that this year the poachers have done a very good job. Tiger poaching would be the one area in which humans have exceeded far above the expectations. Tigers are killed like they are born to be killed. If tiger teeth are good medicine for one disease, tiger paws are good for another, tail for something else, skin for decoration and I am not very sure about testicles and balls but even that is sold for a good amount of money I am sure. Which part is sold and which aren’t doesn’t really matter does it? A tiger’s life is worth lot of money and that is all that matters. Kill the tiger, skin it, chop it, and sell it. The Chinese are waiting with open arms and tons of money. Money is all that matters. The forest officials work for money and they don’t really bother which way the money comes from. A poacher’s dynasty is surely richer than the government’s and we know all things in the world is inter-related and inter-dependant. Anyway, what happens or how it happens out there isn’t something very well known to me. All I know is that the tigers are killed and the future for them is terribly bad and vulnerable.

When poaching happens in its own efficiency, tigers are also killed when they are spotted in villages one kilometer or so away from the forest areas. “Tiger is a threat to our cattle, to us, to our lives and lively hood”, the villagers say. Yes, they are right. When you decide to make your homes by clearing off forest lands, there would be consequences, it is your fault and don’t you sound so helpless. If tiger could speak the human language it would say “you humans have destroyed our homes, you steal from us, you leave us no place to live in, you intrude in our lives and take away our peace, you gift us fear and we are afraid of you all the time, you torture us, you captivate us, you kill our mothers and leave our kids to die, you are murderers and monsters who conquer our homes and make it your own and evacuate us from wherever we belong, you inflict fear and pain in us so much that we do not know anymore what we are to do once born, our mothers are afraid and so we are, fear is so much a part of our lives that we never for a moment parts with it, you humans stink and we do not want anything to do with you. Why do you come in big noisy vehicles, ruin our soil, take away our peace and torture us daily, every hour of the day? We aren’t doing it to you. You spot one of us anywhere nears the houses that you have built for yourselves in our land, you kill us or you captivate us, and you send us off to zoos. Do you know anything about our lives other than the tricks that you play on us to trap us, to kill us? No, you know nothing and you never will. Even if you do it would not make you any better because your vision is clouded in the blood money that you make out of us. Your lives are wasting this planet. This planet would do much better without your lot.  Our homes are shrinking day by day and we know that you know it better than we do, and that is what which takes away all the hopes that we ever have had. We are living because you are not letting us die. We are your creations aren’t we? We have no right to choice, to freedom, to peace, to contentment, to home, to water, to food, to space, to privacy, to family, to life. We exist because you want us to. We exist for you to kill us. We do not understand what you do with all this money that you make. Do you eat money? Is money the most basic need of yours? No, we know it isn’t. Money is only something that you would like to have so that you can have all the materialistic gains of the human world. For attaining that non-essential luxury of yours you ruin us, you crush our lives. Is that fair? Well, fairness in the human world has undergone a lot of change lately and we haven’t been able to understand it fully. All we can understand is that the world of yours is complex and evil and monstrous. If we had a choice, we would never be a part of it. Our lives in the forests, that you have left to destroy later, have become very uncomfortable. Yes right, you do interfere a lot but other than that, we have very less of an area. We have a territorial issue you see, we need our space and that is all we need but space isn’t available anymore. You have shrunk our forests to such tiny fragments of land, haven’t you? We become independent and move on with lives separately once we are matured and this custom forces us to find our own space which is no more available. The non-availability of space makes us competitors and battlers. We kill each other. Yes, you kill us, we kill each other, and natural causes kill us, all in a way is caused by you, human being. Aren’t you proud of it? Our life is dear to us, and we would like to live and not merely exist for you. Could you please not make your extra big money out of us? Could you not provide us with some space and privacy in our land? Please, we beg you. We beg you to leave us alone.”

Isn’t it such a great luck that animals don’t speak the human language? The world would have been a much better and purer place of course but that is not something we need is it? They have voice and they are intelligent creatures but we the thinking man prefers to leave their voices unheard, to deliberately silence their cries, to crush their voices and lives. We will succeed in this because we are capable of it; we are rational, shrewd and cunning. A couple of decades later, if things go by the same standard, let us proudly then say to our children, “there was once a magnificent creature called tiger. It is no more. It’s gone extinct, just like dinosaurs did. There is nothing as great and majestic as a tiger that trod the face of earth. There is nothing as great a sound as a growl of tiger. There is no such beauty as that of those orange stripes, and there is nothing as royal as a royal Bengal Tiger. You lost your chance of living in the age of tigers because we killed all of them.” Listening to this proud achievement of ours, our children will look up to us and praise us. Just like we praise Jim Corbett for all the hunting he did. Be aware though, when the children gain knowledge and goes back to look up on history, they will realize that Mr. Corbett had took upon tiger conservation as he realized the need of it before he was dead. That is okay though; we can always find ways to justify us, aren’t we good at that?

Is there anybody out there who wants to save tigers for the coming future? Is there anybody who is compassionate? Is there anybody willing to fight the war for them? Is there anybody willing to listen to their cries? Is there anybody who genuinely respects them and their lives? Please, come on let us do it. We still have time to mend our mistakes. They deserve it and this planet deserves it. Let us give a longer life for tigers and forests and thus for our beloved planet. Let us act quick, come on.

Story

Stories make up the world or the world makes up the stories, whichever way, stories are something that the world cannot live without. It is hard to understand many of them but it is always something that all love alike, stories are what a person grows with, dies with. There is a story in every being. Some never heed their stories; some dig in deeper each passing day. Some share their stories, some don’t. Some stories are loved, some aren’t. Some stories help one grow, some stories kill one’s growth. Story is omnipresent, entertaining, intense, powerful, unique yet universal. It takes skill to share a story that engages people. Story tellers are not always loved; their stories have to be entertaining, thought provoking and unique in their way. There is just a thread line gap between a bore and a loved story teller.

I love stories and I see stories everywhere, in every person and every animal. Of course I interpret their stories in my own way and sometimes the stories that I have brought up would have nothing to do with them. I shut it all in my head though because being a bore is not that welcoming. Some stories have the power in them to uplift my confidence, convince me the beauty of it. I share those and I care not if I was a bore, because those stories are worthy enough to be shared. It awes me to think of the innumerable stories that exist in the world. A story is born every moment with every passing breath of every life. All stories are connected, a constantly enlarging web that makes life possible in here.

Train I feel is a living thing that feeds on the stories of those innumerable lives that it carries with it at once. Yes, all modes of public transports carry many at once but I find trains a better patron of stories. Train is alive and real, knower of human emotions, of poverty, of relationships, of bridges and rivers, of slum and sewage. Train is an entity that lives on stories.

Emotions are what that gives story its life. No story is born without emotions. Emotions are the basic requirement for life, for stories. Emotions are complicated, hard to live with at times but impossible to live without. Respecting one’s emotions helps you see the story in them. All emotions are equally great, inevitable and invincible. You cannot beat your emotions, you have no choice but to endure them and live with them. Emotions take their time to move, they make you feel them every second of your life. No, they aren’t cruel, they are just uncontrollable.

Fiction is no lie; it is just a beautified, refined, bettered way of sharing emotions that are true. There is a certain level of truth in every fiction and that is the main reason why fictional stories affect people more than they ever realize. I am a person who is largely affected by the novels that I have read. I have even fallen deeply in love with a fictional character, yes; the lack of true ones might be a reason for that but that is a different story all together.

Story is a traveler and the one who heeds it becomes a traveler.

I summon you!

It was a sunny, lazy afternoon. She stood leaning against the pink shutter like door of her neighbor’s car porch, always aware of the Ambassador that proudly stood behind the door. The door was dusty and had alphabets, numbers and drawings all over it, made by little fingers that were amused by the working of this pink board, trying to imitate their teacher at school who unfortunately had only the black boring board. She was staring at her house, trying to figure out something. Why did the sales men, beggars, rag pickers, those people in white clothes who came as a group and all those random strangers who visited home for something as random always get fooled by her house? What made them think that the two entrances that the house had were of two different houses? It was funny and also annoying because she was always made to run to the other door when those people like fools rang the door bell thinking that it was a different house. She got bored of staring after a moment so she turned around and began drawing on the pink board. Trying her best to match her drawing to a sunflower, she couldn’t ever manage to get all petals to be in a shape and size. Upset by it she left the flower and started on a hut. She was engrossed in the drawing when she heard somebody walking down the road. She turned around hoping to see her brother but found some other man, a sales man. He stepped in through the small front gate and rang the calling bell. Her mother opens the door and tells him that she needs nothing that he sells, he steps out disheartened. A moment later she hears the second calling bell of her house ringing and her mother again opening the door. She stood laughing as the sales man walked away embarrassed…

…

Half awake from the sleep she took in the sound of rain pelting on the asbestos. She liked the asbestos, which her father made the workers fix to not let the rain water fall onto the verandah, for this same reason, it magnified the sound of rain; it added an extra life and power to it. She opened her eyes when her grandmother who was sleeping beside her shifted in her sleep, and was puzzled for a moment. Then she realized that she had slept here with her grandmother instead of the room upstairs that she shared with her brother. This was the better room, she finally decided. It was cool, dark, neat. She thought of the other room, her room. Then she altered her decision and labeled that one the best. It was spacious enough for them to roller skate. She thought about the last time they did roller skating there and suddenly wanted to get off the bed. It was then that the horrifying truth doomed on her. It was a Monday; she had to go to school. She was deeply hurt by the latest realization and was almost in tears. She heard her mother walking in and acted asleep but to no avail. She moved to the next step that is wail out loud. As she did that her grandmother woke up perplexed. A while later the situation worsened as everybody in the household joined in and was obviously against her. She finally gave up and cursed her fate as she got readied by her mother. After a tormenting breakfast along with a glass of milk she, with a heavy heart, awaited the school van to take her away, to that terrible room named LKG- A…

…

All kind of emotions were boiling inside her as she intensely watched the guy, the hero, getting beaten up by the goondas. He was broken and bleeding, she couldn’t imagine the pain that he must be going through. She was hoping him to regain strength and hit the goondas back and win over them but to her dismay it never happened. The guy could do nothing against the goondas. She looked around and saw everybody else watching the film too except for her father who was peacefully sleeping on his easy chair. She was shocked to see him sleeping, how could he sleep when something so terrible was happening? Didn’t any of this affect him at all? She was brought back to the film when the hero screamed out in pain. He was about to die now and still the goondas did not stop beating him. His face was bloodied and looked scary. She couldn’t anymore hold back her emotions and so she let them free. She wept hard, too grieved. It was then that she heard her brother laughing and teasing her for crying, she looked at him through the teary blur. She was so sure that he would be scolded for being so insensitive but to her shock everybody joined in the laughter. They laughed so hard and she felt so embarrassed that she wailed harder. A moment later when the laughter subsided, she wiped her tears away and sheepishly grinned at them…

…

 She was hiding behind the shabby shed in her neighbor’s garden. She was panting after the long swift run that she made in order to hide before he, the police, counted up to 50. She was one among the 5 robbers, all boys except her. She hoped none of them would hide anywhere near her secret place. Once they find this out she would lose the best secret place that she has. Nobody has ever found this spot and she is never caught. She was feeling proud of herself as she hid there, panting. She heard two boys laughing and recognized them by their voice, realized two robbers were down, already. That is when one of the other robbers pounced behind her. She was shocked and let out a gasp. He smiled at her but did not stop to hide there; he jumped over her neighbor’s wall and disappeared. A moment later she was caught by the police…

…

Memories are always there. You just have to summon them when you need them.

   

The inevitable beginning of a journey

To know what you want and to do what you want, the best things that can happen in one’s life.

Knowing it seems to be the hardest, knowing what you want. It is such a stressful and painful ordeal, to know what you want. I think nobody ever knows what they really want! Or maybe they do, I have heard people saying “then, that moment I knew that this was exactly what I wanted to do” well I envy them. I have been trying to figure out what I really want and I haven’t really found the solution, maybe I have but then I haven’t been able to be stable about it. The solutions that I have managed to reach continue to wobble and shift its places. I am not upset about the instability though, I kind of enjoy the wobbling. Every time the wobbling subsides and I am left with an assurance that I can almost reach out stability, I then feel good, the thought in me substantiated.

This process goes on for a while and then one day you feel more stable than you have ever been. You just know what exactly is it that you want, you confirm it, believe it totally.

While all these thoughts were in their process of becoming the final outcome you weren’t exactly doing just the thinking, you were living life somewhere far away, involved yet distant. When the thoughts become that final outcome you find it difficult to stay involved anymore in that real yet distant life that you have always been living, you grow more distant as time passes and that final outcome of your thoughts grow within you to be stronger and larger and hard to be ignored. When something so powerful goes alive in you, you are forced to heed it, fails to kill it and that results in you becoming neither your real life nor the final outcome of your thoughts. You float in the middle, in chaos of emotional conflicts between the two extremes. Leaving one end and running to the other becomes your dream.

When one end is the life you have always known you instinctively tend to fall back in there, out of practice maybe but mostly because you are unsure of yourself, unsure of the life other than the one you have always lived. The period that follows leave you depressed and angered mostly at yourself. Depressed at thought of your incapability to move on, angered at the fear that smothers your dream. You battle the fear by poor means of strategies which fails to get acknowledged and which reduces your quality as a person. Those battles aren’t any battles at all but mere charades, cowardice. The worst fact is that you are aware of it and yet you fail to not charade, you continue to be the coward.

You think of ways to overthrow the fear, the fear to let go. Let go of the life you have always had and still do. The promise, hope, benefit, name, love, support, commitment, refuge that the life had always offered becomes difficult to be neglected. You doubt of your survival without all those offerings. You fear of being exposed in a way that you would be shattered, you fear of failure and humiliation that you might fall prey to, you fear of being deprived of love, of being abandoned. Still, all you dream of is running from this familiar end, seeking the other extreme, renewing yourself, creating a new identity for yourself.

Nothing helps you, no word of comfort helps you, and nobody can help you. You remain as distant as possible from all that you have ever known. You see life through a veil of smoke, smoke that tempts you of your unachieved destination, smoke that constantly remind you of your dream and your cowardice.

Optimism helps you stay alive, helps you maintain the smile, helps you hope, helps you regain your strength and chase your dream, run to the other extreme. You begin running one day, unaware of it initially and eventually miles later you realize that you are actually far away from the beginning point. You smile at the realization; you begin to acknowledge the brightness that had come into your life while you were unknowingly running to the other extreme. You continue running not apprehensive of reaching the destination. You enjoy every moment of the run, because, success is a journey, not the destination.    

Freedom

I am walking on this road, a very familiar road, in fact the only road that I am familiar with. This is the road on which I have done all my walking, running, crawling and kneeling. Everything I know in life is on this road, everything that I have seen and touched is on this road and yet, and yet I don’t want this road anymore; I don’t want to be here or touch or see the things that I have seen and known all my life. How do I go anywhere else, how do I find that way out? Whenever I try seeing the path ahead the road ends dead, and when I turn back something pulls me further into this road, I first struggle to free myself but the thing that pulls me doesn’t let me do that either. I walk further into that road and lose myself on the way, I never bother to find me, and I just walk in leaving me behind. Time passes, I have by then developed a new complex refined me. The new I too begin to want to be away from this road. I am confused. Why does this always happen? Why can’t I just fit in and bring peace within and around? I so let myself obey that smoky vague force which never lets me out and live on losing myself more and more. Time passes, the cycle repeats. Now, all I want is to go away, I am suffocating, I need to go or else I am going to suffocate myself till I can no longer do even that. I beat down the smoky force and run away, I run so fast that the wall encompassing the road passes me in such swiftness as if they didn’t want me there either. I am out of breath, my legs are wobbling and I can no longer run or even remain standing. I fall on the ground and my head goes blank. I don’t close my eyes as I am afraid that the smoky force would win me back. I hope there was somebody to help me, somebody who could show me the way out, I look around and see no one. Not a single soul. Then a while later I see a group of people walking towards me, I am initially scared but then I see them smiling and I am happy. I force myself up and smile as they reach me, but to my dismay, they walk past me, not a single person notices me. They just didn’t see me there. I am disappointed, but I anyway decide to follow them. I resume walking. I walk a few steps and then I realize I am not walking at all but imagining that I am. I shake myself up and try walking only to see before me the dead end of the road. I am broken, tears well up in my eyes, I scream, but I know only I could hear my scream. I also knew that the smoky force was grinning at me from behind. I turn around and stare at it with all the hatred I have never known I had had. I refuse to go near it; I knew it would swallow me if I made a step at it. I settle myself in the middle of the dead end and the ghost figure, the force. I decide to sit there until the dead end clears and offer me a way out. The ghost patiently waits for me on the other side. I am there for a very long time. Loneliness eats me up. I feel miserable, unwanted, unloved. I look at the ghost, it is asking me to follow it, promises me to let me out. I ask the ghost why would it let me out and it says “I would let you out because now you know it’s there with me or nowhere” I am infuriated by that remark, I ask “where would you leave me to if it is there or nowhere?” the ghost, smoky force then says “I would let you out of misery, I would leave you to fit in. I would let you find your way out”. My fury is gone; I say “thank you” but the ghost is no more there. There is no grey force waiting to swallow me up. I am freed. I am free to find my way out, and I guess now I know how. I look up; the grey dull ceiling has disappeared. Now I see the blue beautiful sky, I am overflowing with joy. I am freed. 

Suppression of heaven and the heavenly ones

It was drizzling and the clouds were turning grey or silver. I did not bother to wear a cap or hold an umbrella; I was enjoying the wet climate. I was taking in the smell of the wet earth and green leaves, like a drug it made me light and I guess I was floating on the inside. I was sitting on a swing not swinging but watching my dogs, my darlings in their play time. It is a sight I would love to see each day; it is something so precious to me, something that gives me immense pleasure. There is this particular place where they love to play and I never miss the chance to take them there, just to watch them in action. It is marvelous to watch them, the way they growl at each other and then playfully pounce atop the other.

I love my dogs. They have taught me so much, I have learned so much from them. All my four legged friends have helped me better myself. They have not only loved me with their lives but they have also shown me how empty life would be without them. With love comes respect and with that forms a beautiful relation.

Dogs are pets and human beings find pleasure in having them. A few humans care for them in the way they deserves to be cared but many times the worst happens and the humans find it okay to throw their dogs, pets out of their lives. In India, the developing country, such dogs would be just another stray, about the developed countries I wouldn’t speak of today as I really do not know them well enough. So yeah, those dogs would eventually starve themselves to death or they would get killed under a truck or bus, they would die on the street anonymous and neglected, nobody would know that they once had a name and a master for whom they were willing to die.

This can pass for as an example…

One fine morning the owner finds out that his not very well cared for or loved extra intelligent, innocent pet dog has some sort of sickness in it. The dog would be taken to the hospital, government vet hospitals which hardly know what hygiene is, there the doctor would prescribe a few medicines which the owner would buy the first time and gives the dog for couple of days without fail. The dog might be in pain and it might behave badly or it even might try to bite the owner when he tries to apply the medicine. The owner gets furious at the dog, he forgets that the dog is in pain and he neglects the dog from then on to teach the dog its lesson. The dog is in pain and now its master is upset, it doesn’t know what to do, it is uncontrollably depressed, and all that the dog yearns for is his master’s love even when the pain is killing him. A few days later, when the dog has so badly deteriorated his condition, after long days of neglect and lack of treatment, the owner finds it unbearable to watch. He says that the dying dog makes him feel sad all the time and he doesn’t want to feel sad all the time. The dog now has suffered all the pain and sorrow and the only fact that he finds solace in is that, he is still by his masters side and he knows that he is safe in the house that he has lived all his life. The dog then one day sees his master walking towards him, after many long days of neglect, the dog feels so happy that even with the killing pain and nausea that he feels he wags his tail for his master. The dog wags his tail and right away feels a lot better. He bends his head for his master to pat but only to find that he was being pulled by his leash by his master ordering him to follow. The dog is tensed as he is taken into the car, the dog is afraid of the car; he has never been in a car. The dog goes through excruciating anxious moments as the car driven by his master travels a long time. After a long time when the dog feels slightly better the car halts. The dog expectantly looks at his master; his master doesn’t meet his eyes. The dog has sensed something bad and he panics. The master roughly tugs at his leash and the dog is forced to come out. When the dog is out he tries to hide his face behind his master’s legs, he is scared to be here, and he has never left his home. All the sound of vehicles and people scares him; he is not used to such things. His master starts walking away from the car tugging him by his leash to follow. The dog inevitably follows; he tucks his tail between his legs and starts shaking badly with fear. Then his master ties his leash to a tree and walks off. The dog doesn’t understand anything, he tries to pull himself free, and he starts yowling and yelping. His master doesn’t turn back. The dog do not stop yelping as the car moves away driven by his master. He finds himself alone tied to this tree in a place that scares him so badly. He lies down beside the tree shaking and shivering with fear.

If that dog is lucky some savior human would appear in his life or he might be helped by the gangster pack of stray dogs. If luck does not happen, he would alone try his best to survive by himself, animals never give up how much ever was the conditions against them. Surviving by himself in the street with all the sickness would fail him and death would one day embrace him. He will die there never revealing the story of his life.

Well, this is not always the case but things like this happen, sometimes worse happen. If you are a believer in god it is easy because you can say, ‘god will punish such men for their cruelty’, but if you aren’t then you do not even have such a phrase to live on.

There arise a lot of complaints regarding the stray dogs, of the disturbances they cause the people and the government decides to do something about it and they set up a rule. After setting up the rule the government forgets to carry it over and then the people take over the reins and do the action their way. They do things according to the rules set by the government but the ways that they do it isn’t exactly how the government initially planned of doing it. Once the people take over, things go out of control; nobody knows who is right and who is not. Nobody knows who government is and who is not. Recently a government hospital decided to control the number of stray dogs and for that they spayed a number of bitches. The media covered the news item pretty well and the average animal lovers all were happy.

Nobody knows the number of stray dogs that happens to exist. Nobody knows when litters are born. Likewise nobody knows it when the dogs are killed, how they are killed. A pair of eyes that I trust a lot like my own once witnessed a stray dog captured with the help of noose hit continuously on its skull with a rod until it was dead. So that is also a way in which they are killed, even today. Waste materials is what they live on, the stray dogs. As in our country waste management is so extremely inefficient the strays feast from the heaps of waste that pile up everywhere except on the middle of the road. So it is us who make them, there is no one fault on their side. It is us who make them so don’t we have the right to end them? No, we don’t. We have the right to not make them anymore, but yes that is a right which we would never want to win.

It is horrible to have so many starving creatures in our land. A starving being falls down dead and there our land degrades.

There is suffering happening in each and every dumb creature, voiceless beings. No animal is free to live their lives in this planet, the planet in which the human race is above all. The wild animals suffer the most as they have their forests shrinking down each day. They have nowhere to go but number up within their limited insufficient shrinking area. The striped big cats who rule the forest fail to rule over the cunning human race and end up poached and skinned and packed in cartons piece by piece. The Chinese rule over the world with those minced up tiger pieces that are assumed to be medicines that can cure the human race off their sickness. The elephants that belong in the wild are brought here and beaten up to man’s accord. The celebrities wear t-shirts that say save out tigers and campaign throughout the media while the poachers join hands with the forest officials to make their currency notes. The news papers report each day of considerable improvement that happens in the wildlife and readers feel good. The tourists flood up in the forests and shout and howl their way into the forests in the safari jeeps, takes a few pictures of the irritated tolerating tiger and comes back home and shares the stories of their adventurous trip and preaches for a while about conservation.

With no tiger there is no forest, with no forest there is no life. It is not me saying it but it has been said ages ago in one of the Indian epics.

When humans are killing humans, humans killing animals may not qualify to make headlines. Women are raped, men are murdered, cities are bombed. All this will go on as long as the thinking man does over thinking. Everything has a limit; the suffering too has a limit. One day the suffering ones may decide to revolt and that day would bring the end to this planet, our planet.

Till then I will keep on loving and living for the ones I love with all my life, apparently the ones I love are all the suffering ones.   

   

Lost then retrieved and the sigh of relief (Its all a lie...or fiction)

I walked through the train compartment and peeped over all heads to find my seat number. I found it a while later and was relieved as it was a window seat. I pushed my few luggages underneath the seats and fell heavily on my seat. The window was open and a slight breeze brushed my face. Then I saw, and realized with dread that a group of people had come making a lot of noise, and they were conquering it all, all the seats, even mine and squashing me to the window. Now, there were people beside me, in front of me and over me. They were probably travelling short distance and thus needed no berth. They were all of different shapes and sizes and gushed from nowhere like tumbling pieces of mountain rock. I was suffocating and the heat and sweat of many revolted my tummy. I was nauseating and I realized I would die if my nose was left there taking in all that cocktail of an air. So, I poked my nose out through the window and took in the air outside that was filled with all that an Indian railway track and air was gifted with.

The sky was orange, the sun was hot, the air was humid and the train was packed as I began my journey home one late Sunday afternoon. I stayed like that with my nose sticking out and my body and limbs sandwiched between the train and the very fat Kanchipuram silk sari clad sweaty woman beside me, and a lot of minutes later the train started moving. The woman relaxed a bit as the train started and let out a long sigh and straightened her broad and heavy shoulders cramping me to the maximum. A cry of discomfort escaped my mouth and the woman looked at me with an expression that said “aye! Now where did you come from?” and then it switched to a more helpless and sad face which said “what to do girl, all of us should adjust right?” and she nodded at me as if to make sure I understood and obeyed her. I looked over her gigantic figure to see three other Kanchipuram silk clad over fat women and it doomed on me that I would be squashed no matter how much ever they tried not to. I relaxed and adjusted myself as the line that I was, between the train and the ocean of Kanchipuram silk.

They spoke to each other without a break and the sound of their conversation was capable of even silencing the sound of the train. There were all men opposite us, and I first assumed them to be the respective husbands of the Kanchipuram women, but then later I understood that they were just men that were of the same place as where the women came from and as the women weren’t fit, or they were believed to be unfit, to travel alone, as in without a man accompanying them, these men decided to travel along with the Kanchipuram women, after attending the wedding ceremony which they had been to, to the destination which was common to both sides. As I was stuck there in my seat or rather in a side of my seat I had very little chance for movements. The train was speeding and the wind blew my hair and I was getting tickled as my hair brushed my face and partly blinded my left eye, after a few attempts to try and lift my both arms to tie back my hair failed, I stood up amongst them while all eyes watched me, I  pulled all my hair back and tied it up in a pony, I sat back struggling to find that little space for my butt to fit in and I stared back at them but they were fine with it and after a point of time when the eye contact turned weird, at least for me, I shifted my gaze from the old man’s eyes opposite me and looked out of the window. They resumed their conversations once again and I felt relaxed to have got freed from the spotlight. The language that they spoke was familiar but their slang and the funny tone which they had to their speech baffled me and I almost understood nothing of what they were talking, whenever the Kanchipuram silk lady beside me tried to include me into their conversations all I could do was stare back at her with a stupid stretch of my lips which I hoped could deceive them to be my smile, but every time I did that the woman got upset and left me there with that dumb expression and ignored me for quite a while. I did not exactly want to impress them but I did not want to upset them either. They seemed to be nice and friendly and I didn’t want to be rude, but I felt helpless after a while, as neither did I feel like laughing nor did I feel like talking to them. I found it too stressful to follow their conversation and I wanted to be left alone, but it was hard to do that when so many happy faced people persuaded you to join them. Thus I ignored the view outside and I let myself be entertained with their smiles and laughter and the music of their speech. It was only after an hour or so that they let themselves fall into their afternoon sunny humid sweaty uncomfortable slumber.

 I plugged in my earphones and listened to my favorite songs while the sky with the sun moved closer to mark the end of the day. The sky was turning more orange and the sun was just providing light. The farmlands that we soared past had kids playing and dogs chasing around, the cows were taken home by their men and the birds were in a haste to reach their nests. Journey back home every month is a familiar yet thrilling one and I have enjoyed all of them. The route is always the same, the train too is always the same yet the journeys have always presented me with new experiences because the people I travel along are never the same ones.

I was all stiff after sitting in that cramped space for more than two hours and so I decided to stand near the door of the compartment for a while, on the way I also bought a cup coffee from the coffee guy. The door was open; the wind that came in was so forceful that I found it hard to keep my eyes open, the coffee was hot and full in the paper cup, the door was swaying and I held it with my left hand from banging onto me and the coffee cup in my right hand tilted and the hot coffee was all over me. I jumped in shock as the hot coffee reached my skin through my clothes, I looked into the cup to see if there was anything left and there was half of it still in there. I ignored my coffee stained clothes and sipped the remaining coffee as per my original plan. Thankfully no major stations arrived for more than half an hour and I could be there, enjoying the windy beginning of that another beautiful evening.

As I reached my seat I found that my co-passengers had all woken up and had piled up their entire luggage on one of the lower berths. When one of the men saw me he smiled at me and said something indicating the luggage. I couldn’t really make out what he said so I nodded my head with a smile. The train was slowing down and was about to reach their station. The men took most of their bags and before moving to the door smiled at me and wagged their heads from side to side, indicating that they were going and that they were happy to have met me, so I did the same to each one of them. The ladies too did the same except for the one who sat beside me who touched my face along with the waging and smiling. They were all finally gone, as the train started moving I saw them walking on the platform hurriedly to reach their homes. Only when they moved out of my sight did I realize that I was smiling.

It was dark enough for the lights to be switched on. I was hungry and the dinner that I had ordered had not yet come. The two men who had entered from the previous station were discussing furiously about their work and every few minutes one of their cell phones rang out aloud. After a while, when I was too involved in the book that I was reading and had forgotten about my hunger, the dinner arrived. I continued reading and when I was done with that one chapter I carved into the food that was wrapped up before me.

My tummy was full and my head was sleepy and all that I cared about now was sleep, my good night’s sleep. I needed my blanket to sleep, my blanket was in my bag and my bag was underneath my seat. So I bent down to fetch it only to find the space underneath my seat empty and dark. My bag was gone. The silk sari lady and party had taken my luggage along with theirs. I was numb with shock that I first didn’t realize what all I would lose with that American Tourister bag. When thoughts in my head settled down a bit the things that I had lost and their importance banged their way into my skull. Everything in it mattered and it was all lost.

I didn’t know what to do so I called up my father and then my mother and then I called up my friends and then I again called up my mother and then for a change called up my father and after a while my father called me and we spoke for a while and he spoke out ideas to retrieve my lost bag and when it all turned out too much for me to handle I felt that lump in my throat and I hung up. After a while I called back my father and together we reached a conclusion. The conclusion was not to worry and travel home, which was 12 hours away, and then later what to be done would be decided. And then it occurred to me, my sleep would be ruined as I have lost my blanket too, I should have kept my blanket in my handbag. Even though the conclusion that we arrived told me not to worry, I found worrying inevitable.

I stared out through the window into the dark night and I was filled with a bad feeling. The kind of bad feeling which makes it difficult for you to leave your eyebrows relaxed. I was too immersed in that bad feeling that I didn’t first realize that somebody was tapping on my shoulder, I looked at the man who was standing there who appeared to be a porter. He was wearing a blood red shirt and black trousers, he was trying to smile but there was a quizzical expression trying to hide the smile. It took me a moment to realize that there was something placed by his feet. I noticed it; I noticed my American Tourister and jumped up in delight. The people around me looked at the porter to see what he has got in him to make me so dramatic. I was so happy that my voice came out in a squeak when I asked him “how? How did you get this?”He told me in his broken Hindi which was better than mine, that three men had come to the previous station and they asked him to deliver this bag to a lady who was in the coach S8 in the seat 47. And when I asked him whether he did it for free he grinned at me implying an obvious no. I was so happy to get my bag back that I stood there for a moment looking at it. I was brought back to reality when the porter cleared his throat, he was waiting for me to make his payment, and his eyes spoke so well for him. I took out my wallet and paid him a sum which I thought was reasonable but he found it too unfair. He told me that he had to travel all the way back and it was only fair if I gave him the taxi fair, he could travel by bus too, I thought, but I was too happy and grateful for having got my stuff back that I paid him what he asked and bid him good bye.

I sat back and examined my stuff and was pleased to find it all safe and back in my hands, before zipping it shut, I took out my blanket. In the excitement I called up everyone who knew about my lost bag and told them the happy news.

As I lay down to sleep I thanked those three men who took all the pains to hand my bag back to me. They didn’t have to do it even though it was their fault, but they did it, and things for me were back on track. I couldn’t stop smiling, I listened to some good music before the bumpy, not so deep sleep that nights in a train offered, evaded me.