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.