A Mood Swing

You'd blame it on the weather.
The dust, the heat, the noise, the brown.

I'd blame it on you.

A sense of doom.
Nervous anxiety?
Lethargy?

I want a book.
A good book may wash it all away.
The grime, the boredom, the inanity of a day.

Something that makes me forget.

I want a book which would remind me of yellow summers, not brown ones.
Of black roads smeared with tiny, pretty, yellow flowers.
Of huge trees dressed up in fiery, orange Flames of the forest.
Of the sweet smell of mangoes mixed with a tinge of orange.
A dash of cologne and a whiff of nicotine.
Idle banter and insolent laughter.
Match boxes and photographs.
Bus stops and ferry rides.
Cheer. 

What's it going to be then, eh?

Food-iee

I warned you about my sweet tooth!

What songs do.

You had this on shuffle!

As we live our life of ease
Everyone of us has all we need.

If I could play you a song, it would be by -

 So Happy Together

In our yellow submarine.

Sky of blue and sea of green.

:-)

                            

Of this and that

 There are some things I think I will never be able to let go of. One of them is the memory of this shade of sun kissed green.

It stood by the road silently, watching the world go by. Its only friends, the corrugated tin walls and the parched earth.

And my fascination with trees continues. This one - "Droop dead gorgeous"

:-)

Changing the Situation, again

Dee tells me the rain is my muse. She must be right. I have barely written since the last errant cloud floated out of city limits. They've left the skies a deep shade of blue. It's the shade of blue which reminds me of cold mornings a few years ago, when I'd roll out of bed and walk into a class on Modernist poetry. It remained the same shade of blue when we broke for coffee an hour and a half later. It turned a tone darker when the class finally wrapped up after musing on the "throwness" of our existence. Later we mostly ambled back to our rooms to catch up on lost sleep. Other times we tried to smoke away the throwness of our lives, ashing it in a cheap plastic container. Non-recyclable.


It's strange that the blue should bring back these memories now. Or is it the unfamiliar nip in the city air, which lately greets me with a known familiarity? I don't know. Funny that I thought I'd stubbed it all out.


Anyway, I've realized, jumping up n down doesn't shake the earth off its axis nor does it help change the situation. What changes is the city temperature and the hue of the sky and with it, my situation.Sometimes, plain dreaming helps change the situation.

Try it!

Kelva

As much as I hate to love the madness and drudgery of Mumbai, I love to speed out of city limits and peer at it from far away. I like seeing the blue of the sky, uninterrupted by upward scrambling skyscrapers. I like watching cattle amble through fields and people bustle through the weekly market. I like seeing the car lap up black, tarry kilometers as I try to pocket and preserve the green, the blue and the brown.

The drive from Mumbai to Kelva Beach is rather long (120kms), but pleasant. Getting onto NH 8 from Thane is quick and smooth in the early morning. The roads are good, but trucks and lorries of all shapes and sizes lord the roads even at this hour. Hues of gray, brown and blue dominate a major leg of the journey. There is little buzz on either side of the Highway. The concrete stares back at you squarely until you turn right at Manor Naka.

The landscape magically changes. Concrete gives way to an expanse of fields and greenery and a faint smell of the sea.

The four lane highway and the rumbling traffic is left behind. A lazier and prettier stretch, lined with trees yawned ahead, in front of us.

We finally reach a sleepy village which is Kelwe (in Marathi). The locals seem to be used to see cars revving down their narrow roads. Vada pav and Chai shops dot the roads at corners. Some new ones seemed to have sprouted recently to sell the Diwali goodies. We see colorful roadside carts selling diyas, rangoli, lanterns and crackers. The village houses carry no garish traces of glitter and other luminous monstrosities as their urban counterparts.

Our car trundles down a very narrow, rough patch and we enter what is called 'Kelva Beach Resort.'

There is nothing  good about this resort. Except may be a little bit of aesthetic sense here and there.

The final destination, the beach, sadly too is a let down. There is something distant and unfriendly about the sea here....and the sand doesn't sparkle.

 

For what it's worth, it was worth all the while. The best thing about the Kelva is definitely the drive and the sights en-route.

Published!

I believe I'm modest. Quite so.

But I'm taking this one opportunity to be a little immodest.
For shameless self publicity.

(Yes, I can already see some of you out there gawk at my first statement! Hold your tongue!!)

Sharing a link to an article that I wrote, which got published as a cover story in an Indian magazine on School education in India.
http://www.teacherplus.org/cover-story/thinking-about-teach-for-india

Happiness mingled with a small sense of achievement.
Bliss.

Writer's block

"...The school is in a village called Bigha in Burdwan, standing amidst rice fields. It used to be in mud huts earlier. Since after every monsoon half the school would melt away, it has now been built with only bricks, painted red with lush green rice fields all around the school. It is so green even inside the school. When I was walking around the premise, I saw each tree had one name hanging from its branches (there are over a hundred trees within the premise). I asked some children... they said, the names are of children who are in charge of that tree... every child looks after one tree respectively. How wonderful no? 

The classes r hexagonal in shape, no furniture, only wooden planks on 5 sides, elevated by two bricks, where children keep their books and TLMs. I attended one class, where EVS, English and Bangla were taught together. I was so fascinated! 

And the funnest thing was... an old old van pulled by a motorbike has been converted into a library, literally! Is it any wonder why most children there are so fond of the library n reading?! You may be thinking there is a lot of money involved in all this. I was so surprised to hear and then when I saw I understood... there's minimal expenditure to run the school. I've been wanting to go and stay there for some time... may be sometime next month.[...]"

This, from my reluctant friend who claims she cannot "write". Sorry I took the liberty to put it up here, I had a point to make.

Yes, you can!!

:P

Changing the Situation

Would incessant jumping help shake the earth off its axis?
Would it?
I wish it would...!!

No Sunlight

I wake up at 6 a.m.to yet another gray morning.
An hour later I hobble towards the rickshaw stand.
Below the overcast sky, everything wears a brooding look.
Or is it menacing?
...

There is not a rickshaw in sight.
...
May be, it was menacing.
...
Half an hour later, I am seven minutes late for my usual 7:48 CST local.
The bloody F-O-B is throbbing with bodies.
Bodies, bags,umbrellas,fish,vegetable, beggars,peddlers,TCs.
...
It could have been menacing.
...
I'm still on the bloody F-O-B as the 7:54 CST local pulls into the station.
The sea of bodies suddenly gathers more momentum.
Bags jostle against backs, baskets drip over heads, peddlers elbow beggars.
Someone trips over my long, black umbrella.
Aye Maddamm! Dikhta nahi hai kya?
...
It was definitely menacing!
...
Push,pull,nudge,jump.
Miraculously I'm on board the very crowded 7:54 just as it begins to pull out of the station.
...
We hang on to the edge of the bars, like leaves on a bough.
As rain and wind lash us, soaking every possible thing exposed to it,
Co-foot board traveller1, "Umbrella hatao, my raincoat is getting wet."
Co-foot board traveller 2, standing beside traveller 1,
"Pressure mat dalo, you want to push me out of the train kya?
...
Forty five minutes later, I've survived another breezy foot board journey.
I waddle through mucky water strewn with rotting leaves and paper and plastic
The 8:35a.m. bus no.167 is just limping out of the depot.
Gone.
The black clouds have burst open once more,  with more vengeance.
...
God! It's so menacing!!
...
Seven hours later, again on the foot board,
Soggy and damp, disheveled and worn out,
I muse about crossing over, switching sides, changing jobs,
About chauffeur driven cars, high heels, expensive cotton,
And the sun.
When will it be out again?