Eat More Vegetables-So My Doctor Said

Thanks to certain political elements who believe that creating unrest is the only way to be, vegetable vendors in my vicinity have vanished. Poof! The few that had dared to stick around were driven out by other local people who thought that they were invading their posh locality. There still are some vendors, as me and my mom found out last Saturday, who have a specific time when they come out of hiding, and meticulously engage in selling vegetables. It’s all a VERY hushed affair. As you approach their half-hidden-under-a-veil pushcart, someone suddenly appears out of nowhere and asks you, “Madam, what do you want?” to which you reply your choice of vegetable and hope to God that he has it. If he has it, he’ll again go under the veil and carefully pack the veggies in a polythene bag (BAN? WHAT BAN?) And hand it to you, without weighing it. That would be the case if he has what you want, if he doesn’t you move on to the next cart hoping that there is a seller hiding somewhere. Owing to my uncanny affinity to bad luck we didn’t find any underground vendors and had to go to the department store all the way to the other side of town to get some veggies. Oh Lord! Sitcoms can be made out of department store scenarios. There will be enough fodder to provide for creative story outlines for numerous episodes. Most people feel an obligation to bring their entire’ khaandaan’ along with them when they come to shop, also known as- The Great Indian Family Syndrome. So you have aunties who forgot their grocery list at home (how convenient), who glance inside you shopping cart to remind themselves of things that they have to buy. You have a few more aunties who are either accompanying the ones mentioned above or who feel that the store is a battlefield and you have to push and shove your way around and fight till you get the right quality of fresh green peas. Then you have kids whose parents are clueless about their whereabouts. So the kids feel free to do whatever they want, including sliding across the polished floors, charging through the aisles screaming and shouting, touching objects that CLEARLY do not come under the purview of kid’s stuff, running around in such destructive fashion forcing the carefully arranged pyramid of tissue rolls to disintegrate. Then there are the senior citizens. My experience with people from this age bracket has unfortunately not been pleasant in the past so it causes me to steer away from them for my own good. They are the ones who test the patience of the salesperson constantly by making unreasonable demands. They always want that particular brand of commodity or that specific variety of product that is not available. And worse, they feel that since they are senior citizens, they should be given a royal treatment every time they come. And when their demands are not met, they go ballistic. Then there are those belonging to the elite strata, the quintessential snobs that come all decked up in jewels and designer attire suffering from a superiority complex. They feel that they should be given preference over other masses. They’ll have their minions tagging along with them who do all their shopping for them. Then there are the mawkish couples who live for the PDA. They don’t care about a dozen odd eyes lingering on them as they flutter around, indulging. They’ll be the ones lounging around the dairy counter sampling yoghurts and deciding which flavor to settle on. But will still end up as undecided as ever. You might also chance upon a celebrity sighting if you’re lucky. Then there are the gym fanatics, slinging their gym bags, totally bufftastic, on the lookout for all things organic. Then there will be the over-excited teenagers collecting party supplies for the luau themed celebration later. Then there are the mango people, harrowed mothers, desperate singletons, etc. then comes the most tedious part-the race to the cash counter. That is an entirely different arena of sorts requiring perseverance skills and where you have to be very sharp if you want to get home just in time to catch your favorite movie. A little shoving may become mandatory. The concept of standing in a queue and waiting in line for one’s turn does not get inside some heads. That is a challenge in itself. Finally when you get it over with you can then come home and enjoy the fruits of your labor. And then as the weekly supply of veggies gets exhausted again, worry about the next extended errand. Thank you democracy...

This Week’s Random Musings

While watching the movie Up earlier this week I got all choked up. I do occasionally cry over a movie or a book or song (Yes, I’m sloppy), but there was something about this movie that is just on a different wavelength. The story of Carl and Ellie is short and sweet. It’s simple. Yet it is unique. It’s about love. Love is such a universal concept. Just like music, where there will always be scope for new tunes and rhythms to be orchestrated, there will always be room for new stories of love to be concocted. No matter how far-fetched or surreal or flashy they seem. Or even art for that matter, someone somewhere will always excel than its predecessors by differentiating himself with that one stroke of paint taking him to new heights of public marvel. Just like that love will never be outdated, which brings me back to the wonderful movie I mentioned above. It speaks of hope and promise. They weaved such a beautifully engaging story around two people who as kids shared a common adventurous dream of visiting a place called Paradise Falls. Overtime their friendship blossomed into something deeper. We are taken through an appealing montage of their life together, where they deal with testing situations. They have dreams just like everyone else but they are quashed. Be it having a child or setting foot on Paradise Falls. They come to terms with it in their own way, but never leave each other. Through thick and thin they are always by each other’s side. It isn’t an epic saga of love or a passionate romance-just an undecorated story about two regular people that still manages to speak volumes. Why is it then that it strikes a chord with us? Why is it that it tugs our heart strings? It’s because of its utter simplicity. Details that map out an entire lifetime spent together. The clumsiness that they disclose as kids, the way they visualize their aspirations together under the sky, how they support each other through distress, how they save money in order to reach their destination, how they grow old adoring each other. Little things-it’s always the little things. The fact that for Carl, a promise he made to his beloved ever since they met still held so much meaning that he airlifts his entire house with helium balloons and steers it towards their shared pipe dream even after she passes away, is why I love this movie. The fact that every single time their savings for Paradise Falls are spent over some unplanned expense doesn’t deter them from saving again and not giving up is why I love this movie. The fact that Ellie kisses him like it’s the first time every single day till the hair on their heads turn grey is why I love this movie. The fact that Carl stands by her when she’s in pain is why I love this movie. It’s so incomprehensible to imagine a life without love. Sometimes it doesn’t make a difference as to what you are, what you do, where you stand, or what you own, its inconsequential when it comes to being loved. Maybe to people like Ellie, a life lived with someone like Carl was an adventure in itself that could never compare to a fantastical voyage. It wouldn’t have mattered to her that she could never go to that place she wanted to go to as a kid, because she got something much more fulfilling. So what if they could never achieve some of the things that meant a lot to them? They meant the world to each other and their words held true assurance to both of them. And finally, the story’s sharp contrast from our grim reality is why I love this movie. That is what made me cry. The fact that love these days remains only a word spoken too often but means very little made me cry. Something as beautiful as the emotion of love being confined to only a movie or book is what saddened me. Two animated characters emoting what we are seemingly incapable of now.

The Wanderer

Just a little while I promise I’ll stay,

Let me catch my breath, let it grow steady,

I won’t cause any more pain to you,

All I ask for is a moment or two,

I keep running, that’s all I know,

From things I can’t speak about,

From things I hide from you,

Sometimes life is such a torment,

With a fake countenance on display,

So I long to run into someone,

And forget my anguish for a minute or two,

I want to lose myself in you,

This is just an obsession, a cycle that repeats,

When I’m done with you, I promise to leave,

Till I find something else to fascinate me,

Keep me occupied, away from him and all things vile,

I laugh with the day and make merry till it dies,

They think, oh, she’s like the sun, always on fire,

I’ve placed all my sentiments on the pyre,

Ignorance and ego, we go hand in hand,

But I’m not all wrong; no,

I’ve got some things in me you wish you had,

But you can’t see them, try as you may,

The world is devoid of patience and time is slipping away,

So I keep drifting to unknown faces,

Taking in sights and surreal places,

I’m a wanderer in this age,

Searching for something I know I’ll never find,

But I don’t want to understand,

Now my heartbeat’s uniform, my head feels a bit secure,

I must go; my jaded spirit’s quenched for now,

My unstable soul needs to leave,

And pursue some other avenue,

Don’t judge me, don’t you dare,

Everyone’s got their evils to share,

All your mighty words and your deceptive eyes,

A poor smokescreen.

The End.

The End

So here we were a few days ago, thinking that the world was going to end (most of us were). The

Mayans made a prediction ages ago, which we upheld & actually thought of something akin to the movie we all must have seen i.e. 2012. We thought of the sky falling on our heads, the ground shaking beneath our feet, all the four elements of Nature- Earth, Air, Fire and Water wreaking havoc on our poor souls. For years different theories have been propounded by scientists, clerics and people (with no jobs I might add), as to how the world will end. An asteroid landing unceremoniously on our beloved planet, followed by all forms of natural calamities that one can think of and the Ice Age catastrophe, or other interesting theories included a virus outbreak that would annihilate us and wipe out our existence from the face of the Earth and my personal favorite- the Zombie Apocalypse (I absolutely love The Walking Dead!).  A thought struck me this morning when I accidentally glanced at the front page of my newspaper, maybe we shouldn't keep waiting for something like the above mentioned things to happen, maybe we shouldn't hold our breaths for a major event that will be earth-shattering (literally), because we don’t need these things to hasten our end. Maybe that’s not how everything is supposed to end. We are so engrossed in these different concoctions about the end of the world that we fail to see that we are already on the path of our destruction. We don’t need ghastly epidemics or Nature’s fury to finish it all, we are quite capable of doing that on our own, evenhandedly.  This is how it is supposed to conclude. Our race is destined to die destroying each other. We will fight, steal, kill, attack, rape, tear each other’s throats out and do other unspeakable things to each other hiding behind a hollow shield of religion, politics, war, greed, lust, administration, law & order, etc. which we will use as an excuse to justify our behavior, and that is how we will die. We are bound to be terminated at the hands of our own evils and we’re already doing that with aplomb. Our line will go down clawing each other’s life out. And the worst thing is we don’t care. What is drawing public ire will soon turn to just another headline as we reach the end of the year. It will be replaced by other innumerable horrendous and heinous acts year after year. We will again follow the charade of acting as we care for a little while then go back to our mundane lives with dexterity. The joke that we now know as democracy will go on changing its meaning by milking people out of its patience. Eventually one day when there’s no trace of hope left, when there’s no further room for progressive reform, when justice remains a mere word from some long lost time, just like characters in a book you hope to meet in real life but we all know that’s never going to happen, then the world will end. As we lose our humanity with each passing day, we still fail to grasp the true meaning of The Apocalypse. One day we will be completely stripped of our compassion and we will go back to that stage of evolution when we were living like cavemen, devoid of civilization and humanity. Hunting, scavenging, and surviving. Regressing to that point from which we began.

Forgotten...

FORGOTTEN

Master of the universes,

Creator of life,

Annihilator of existences,

Dominator of Time,

Me, one-tenth of a speck,

Part of a particle…

So much to hold, so much to look after,

So many to support, so many to sustain,

Life and death and the food chain,

Good and bad, karma and payback,

Vice and virtue, offense and defense,

So much to rectify, so much to begin…

The leaves that fall, all at Your Will,

The flowers that germinates, awaiting Your Command,

The birds that sing, the creatures that cackle,

The mountains and trees, the valleys and spring,

The streams and brooks, the glaciers that melt,

So much to beautify, so much to begin…

The courses of Nature, the discourse of beings,

The families that break, the ties that bind,

The bonds that don’t break, others that don’t stand the test of time,

The love and the hatred, the unifications and separations,

The greetings and receptions, the goodbyes and farewell,

So much to oversee, so much to begin…

The storms and eruptions, the thunder and rain,

The lives lost, the endless pain,

The war and famine, starvation and infanticide,

The blood and hunger, the greed and lust to survive,

The diseases and plagues, the countries that disintegrate,

So much to look after, so much to take in…

Maybe I’m forgotten, elapsed into oblivion,

Someplace far-flung, the abyss of discount,

From where I’m unheard and unseen,

Living with false hope, under stagnant ashen clouds,

Me, one-tenth of a speck,

Part of a particle…

Life on Earth

Life on Earth

We always do that-that thing, when we’re in the middle of an argument or if we see something violent or atrocious, we immediately start comparing that person to an animal. I’ve heard things like, “Oh! You’re such a dog!” or “How can somebody do that? Is he an animal?” Never for once thinking that we also consider a dog as a man’s best friend or that an animal does not dictate a human beings behavior or thought processes. We were given brains and are placed at the apex of the intelligence chart NOT to blame animals if we did something erroneous. Before you start thinking that this is yet another speech on animal cruelty let me clear it up for you-it’s not. Neither am I trying to get you to give up meat, I am a non-vegetarian myself, that’s how the frigging food chain goes. What you are reading is just a bunch of incidents that I have seen and observations that I have made. After all, it was the Father of our Nation, Mahatma Gandhi who said, that, “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”

                 Just saw the news a couple of days ago, where I came across this piece about how the poachers in our country were killing the tigers for their skins. They were caught, but considering the lax laws of our country, I bet they would be on the streets in no time back to doing what they do best. Astonishing fact that the news lady with the caked face said was that since there are already less number of tigers left in the country, we might have to import tigers like we import cheetahs… WE IMPORT CHEETAHS??? How did that happen? Then there was the news of a crocodile being found in the gutters of one of our suburbs and a leopard that entered a housing complex. And there were interviews of visibly stressed residents who were overcrowding the camera man trying to give their best versions of what would make for a very thrilling story to tell the kids in the years to follow. Never for once did anyone mention the fact that it wasn’t the animals that were invading our space but the other way round. How many of the new breed of towers and skyscrapers are being built on forested areas or stagnant water creeks? The crocodile had to come in our sewers because it was testing the waters or the leopard came into the building because it wanted to play board games with the families.

                Then there was something much closer to home, literally. A 5 yr-old kid sitting on a white horse, waving her hands in the air in glee, her parents watching as she kept circling the lane and the horse keeper tugged on the horse’s reins and directed it back to its holding spot. Except that the horse was not a horse but a pony. A frail looking exhausted pony that was being used as an entertaining way of outdoor excursion by us. Or another incident involving a kitten that was run over by a fast speeding car and the worst part was that the kitten was stuck in the middle of the road, breathing its last few breaths, hurt with a broken foot that made it impossible to move. I was out on an errand and when I saw it, picked it up and placed it on the far side of the road in the corner where it would be safe or I thought so, because when I came back I saw it lying still, not moving, and not breathing.

So I’d like to conclude with a quote from the man who invented light bulbs for you to ponder over:

“Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.” - Thomas A. Edison

Farewell to Goodbye

Recently, I had to deal with a lot of goodbyes. A few of my family members had to go away on an unplanned and unexpected trip to meet a relative who was unwell. When they were leaving we were obviously all teary-eyed and were sad at this turn of events. The goodbyes were difficult and that got me thinking of all the goodbyes that were a part of my life. There are different kinds of goodbyes. And they arise due to different reasons too-distance, time, and death to name a few. Sometimes when you bid someone/something farewell, you are glad, relieved that you are past it.  Sometimes you say goodbye to someone you’ve met only for a minute or two, just an acquaintance, doesn’t hurt much. It hurts when you have to say goodbye to someone even though you don’t want to. They could be anyone, close friends, family, a lover, a husband, or someone special. In my case, one of the hardest goodbyes for me has been to some of my dearest friends. I had to move, unfortunately, and it was all so fast. In one day, everything changed. One morning I woke up happy and then the same evening I was crying my eyes out because I knew what I was leaving behind was something that could never be replaced. Such good, kind-hearted people whom I had in my life for a while as friends were irreplaceable. Today everyone has a motive, an agenda, or a need to fulfill if they have any sort of a relationship with you. To find someone who loves you and cares for you selflessly is almost impossible and if you do find them, letting them go is unimaginably excruciating. No matter where I went, what I did, that hole of pain and loneliness was always there in my heart. For a really long time I was depressed. It healed, though not completely, but it did.

Another form of goodbye and the one that hurts the most is when you don’t know that that is the last time that you are meeting someone; you don’t even get to say a proper goodbye. Someone that you’ve known for years, have grown up together, loved immensely, just gone out of your life in an instant. Relationship severed in just a matter of a few minutes. Unwittingly, a bond based on values of love, trust, care, and affection broken never to be mended again. What hurts more in this scenario is that you don’t remember what your last words to that person was. Was it something good or an angry rant? What if you had said something that you wish you could take back or something that they said that they sometimes maybe regret? When you think of such goodbyes, you feel really disheartened. If there was something that you wanted to say to them, something that you had kept in your heart for a long time, something that could’ve surely changed the equation you shared with them for good and things went haywire before you even had the chance to say those words. That is the most agonizing of all situations.