The Nest That Never Gives Up

It isn't long,

Before the wind will turn into a storm.

A storm of unchallengeable proportions.

A storm of carnal rage;

Of catastrophic desires.

A strange melody of a million notes.

A noise that can defeat music.

A want to drift into itself,

A want to reach out and destroy.

And as the wind challenges

the birds' nest flailing and waving,

It watches the nest fall to its death.

It walks in silence.

More for later, it says,

More, for later.

The May-Clouds Paradox

     I was at Marine Drive (amongst other places) with a bunch of  friends, and it rained drizzled. And well, I'd call it rain, because when we were inside the cab, the window-glass-wiper (or whatever that is technically called) was oscillating furiously fast. And I got to taste a raindrop. Well, it tastes like water.

     And no, I am not roping in a figure of speech just so that more and more people might come and read what I am blogging about. Not that I've known too many people mad for (not at, mind you) figures of speech. So, what is the May-Clouds Paradox?

     In May, the sky sometimes is cloudy. How else do you get rain, duh! And it is not pleasant still. It's as warm as warm can be. And then, it gets cloudier and cloudier and before you know it, it's rainy season. I sometimes wonder how things exist right before our eyes and we ignore them, and at other times, we search for things and never find them in spite of paying unadulterated concentration. Like, you are growing each day, but for some reason, it looks all the more obvious on a special day   uh   your birthday, perhaps?

बूँद बूँद से सागर बनता है।

The ocean's a result of many little drops, but doesn't look like it, does it. 

     Uh, today, I'll end it a bit abruptly perhaps. Change isn't at any one moment; and yet, is at each one. For change is one huge confusing concept. And what else is life but change. 

Places

     I am a fan of the beach. And I am a fan of a million other places you can give a visit to. Just now, I watched the 1995 movie Before Sunrise. And I realised that places are defined by much more than what they hold on themselves   that we like or dislike places because they come with a cluster of other factors.

     

     Two people 'with a connection' meet in a train coach.

     They decide to spend a night together, not knowing how else to remain with each other.

     They talk.

     In a bus. On their way. At a bar. On the lawn. They decide to correspond regularly.

     It's the next day.

     The girl has to depart. 

     They trash the idea of corresponding. 

     They decide to meet six months from then. Platform 6, at 6 o' clock.

     The camera moves to the bus. It moves to the road. 

     Then they show the bar. And then the lawn comes in view.

     And you just don't realise, they are the same places as before they were, 

     And they seem to have just lost something.

     And they seem all different. All new?

     That is what I meant to say. It is not the places that seem special, it's the things and people around that make the places what they look to you. 

     Uh, umm...what else do I say?

     Period.

From Amreekah to The United States of America

     Though we have grown as much as could have been possible with the amount of effort we add to what we do, our outlooks have more or less been alarmingly narrow. And this, even in the times of Globalisation, when the world apparently is to shrink into a global village. Well, at this rate of things shrinking, our minds are not far from becoming pea-sized organs.

     The U.S.A., along with some other countries in the Middle East, has been haven to many who fled poverty, monotony and lackadaisicalness in India. Or, as in some cases, to browse greener pastures, to broaden one's horizons of thought; to escape social stigma at times.

     It is but apparent that Indians have been a largely misguided people. Though I have been bombarded with the same crappy philosophy about the U.S., I learned to keep my ground. My hugely misguided grandmother always makes certain things heard:

• The U.S. is a country where you cannot visit your neighbours unless you are invited to.
• The U.S. is a country where people don't know proper codes of dressing.
• The U.S. is America. Plain, simple, America.
• If two different people go to the U.S., they have to be living close to each other    irrespective of the fact that one could be a resident of Alaska and the other of Hawaii. It simply does not matter.

     I realised that what is often spoken of about the U.S. is as fitting to the 'now' India as it is to the U.S., if it is, that is. Like, you can't visit your neighbours unannounced in a good, sophisticated Indian locality either, and that the term proper codes of dressing is rather relative in nature. And it is time we people started referring to the States as the States and not States. "He's gone to U.S." sounds so yucky. Moreover, if Delhi and Mumbai aren't close, you don't expect Olympia and Tallahassee to be close either, do you?

     It's about perspective. With respect to the misleading crap that is accumulating around me, I can only hope that the kids after me succeed in keeping their ground too. For the U.S. is more than just America.