My parents wake up on alternate days at 3:00 AM to fill water. Such is the fight for water in the "posh" locality where I live. My "posh" locality also has a huge slum flanking it on one side. Every morning that I go to work...and this is at 7:30 in the morning, mind you... I see a water tanker that comes to "cater to the water needs" of this slum. This morning I saw something that prompted me to utter a string of unmentionable obscenitites and it also prompted some questions.

What I saw was some bleary-eyed slum dwellers yawning and stretching as they came out of their "houses" to fill water from the tanker that was going to arrive in the next couple of minutes.

Prompted the following questions:

1. SO, clearly, with all their education, my parents still need to get up at 3 to fill water while these "denizens of the dungeons" (DoDs for the rest of this entry) stretch out of their homes at 7:30 in the AM when I am running to work!
2. If we so much as water our dying plants, which by the way help maintain the ecological balance, we get HUGE messgages saying don't waste water. When these DoDs "fill" their canisters, thereby spilling half the water on the road -and creating potholes in the bargain - no one says anything.
3. If we litter, we're made to feel guilty about keeping our roads and hence our country clean. When the faeces from these DODs breaks free from the gutters and spills on to the roads that we walk on trying not to faint as we cross them, no one breathes a word. Clearly...breathing wouldn't be possible on the road anyway!

A little ahead, a man working with the team that was laying down the asphalt on the road was filling water from some kind person's house. This guy had two canisters filled with water, yet had the hose on. He was yelling to another helper to get another vessel in which to fill more water. The hose, by the way is still on. The water...flowing freely on the road.

What, you ask me, did I do to save that water. Yelled at him, of course. Did he stop? No, OF COURSE not!

Of course, it's the moral duty of the pillars of our society, read politicians, to work for the downtrodden.

I'd just like for you to read my thoughts above and then to decide who the downtrodden really are. My educated parents who wake up at 3:00 in the AM, thereby jeapordising their health - they both like a lot of our neighbors have started suffering from high BP, people who pay their bills on time. Or these DoDs, who get free water, free land - the slum dwellers in my locality have been alloted place elsewhere, yet have managed to get a stay order from the SC which allows them to stay on - and free electricity - how difficult is it to attach your wires to the poor idiots living in proper homes anyway?

Answers anyone?

Heartbreak...with time it goes away and we learn to move on with new loves and new avenues to happiness and fond -or bitter, as the case may be - memories stay. Yet how do you forget betrayal? How do you forget these words of someone you considered a friend for a considerable period of time -" No, I don't know her"! Trust - one of my pillars in life - shaken at its very foundation...by someone I considered a very very good friend. Someone who claimed to stand by me. Someone who claimed to understand me. Someone who behaved as if he did. Yet..."No, I don't know her"... How do I erase that?

And the lone tear meanders...

Why do we remember? Why do we hurt? Where does the pain come from and where does it go? I thought of someone I loved - love - after a really long time - and for some reason, fond remembrance that it was, it brought a strange lump to my heart and I felt a lone tear meandering its way through my wizened cheek.

I have these days - when i'll be sitting, looking into nothingness, thinking of everything, yet nothing - and i'll suddenly remember someone I love. Sometimes the thought will bring a smile, some nostalgic moments and i'll be charged up and ready to go. And some days, the thoughts will bring a sharp pang, a reminder that this person I love and I are far away and the pang is sharper because we are also far away mentally.

What changes love between two people who are crazy for each other?And why does thinking about them hurt?

Do they remember and hurt the same way I do?Do they have the same inexplicable longing too?

Screaming questions to which there's not even a whisper of an answer...

Enough Said

you being in love
will tell who softly asks in love,

am i separated from your body smile brain hands merely
to become the jumping puppets of a dream?   oh i mean:
entirely having in my careful how
careful arms created this at length
inexcusable, this inexplicable pleasure-you go from several
persons: believe me that strangers arrive
when i have kissed you into a memory
slowly, oh seriously
-that since and if you disappear

solemnly
myselves
ask "life, the question how do i drink dream smile

and how do i prefer this face to another and
why do i weep eat sleep-what does the whole intend"
they wonder. oh and they cry "to be, being, that i am alive
this absurd fraction in its lowest terms
with everything cancelled
but shadows
-what does it all come down to?    love?     Love
if you like and i like,for the reason that i
hate people and lean out of this window is love,love
and the reason that i laugh and breathe is oh love and the reason
that i do not fall into this street is love."
    ~E.E.Cummings

In a world ruled by chaos, mistrust and mayhem, violent desire and sweet indulgence provide the respite we seek. In a world ruled by flaming desire and urgent indulgence, unabandoned and hearty laughter does.

My world has all the ingredients of a racy thriller. It has urgency, it has chaos, it has drama, it has high strung-and flung-emotions, it has flames, it has desire, it has welling laughter.

What it does not have place for is mistrust. What I would like to have, of course, like any of us, is indulgence :)

What world do you belong to?

I cooked and I cooked and I cooked and I cooked!!!! I made soy pasta and I made tomato pasta. Then I made a club sandwich, then I made a banana shake, then I tossed some cold salad. Then I took a break and then I made some tofu dosas and I made some sambhar dal.

Phew! Almost the entire day went by in the kitchen today.

And men and women like me have the nerve to ask women who stay home what they do all day!

The wonder of nature

The earth raises herself to meet with the sky who is bending down to be united with his beloved. The concept of man and woman completing each other manifests itself even in nature.

I work with an organization that provides us with transport to get us back home comfortably. How that works is that we don't have to drive to work or back home some 33 - 4 kms everyday. We end up getting some snooze time and also do our bit to save on some serious petrol.

One would think this would make us a little more conscious of our environment. Yet, today I saw a lady, seemingly cultured and educated, after she had munched her way through a packet of chips, quietly roll up the empty bag into a small ball, gently open the window and stealthily throw the little ball right out.

I thought to myself if this is the way educated people behave then what do we expect from the illiterate masses of our country.

And I wondered if this was a lady who would wrinkle her pert nose in disgust passing through some poor neighborhood and say, "Sheee, our country will never progress."