Shopping Time !

Hi folks, so yesterday I wrote this piece, looking at the photograph that follows.

You decide that today is going to be okay. A normal day. A reprieve from the melancholy. The all pervasive sadness.

You decide that today will be the day you will buckle up and move forward.So yes! you decide to shop. Your idea of shopping wasn`t like everyone else`s regular shopping spree. You are one of those rare few who still believe that shopping in a mall or express shopping with a quick agenda isn`t a soulful exercise. You feel that shopping is an activity where you should use all of your senses to create a sublime experience.

So here you are ! Walking into the by lanes of commercial street, on the staircase display of a clockworks store. Time is limitless, isn`t it? You gravitate towards it, flock towards the store housing devices which let you find the time.

You are overpowered by the sudden energy of the fourth dimension. You were always fascinated by this store with trinkets of time. This place triggers your own biological time, You feel alive with the seconds hands ticking, the sand slowly trickling into the lower stem of the hourglass. The trumpets hanging from the parapet walls leave you energized with a perception of a roaring sound.

You seem lost suddenly in the midst of all time. Isn`t time a limitless entity, you wonder. International travels, regularly crossing several time zones, interspersed by longitudinal boundaries, you wonder isn`t time an entity that ought not to be measured. An experience of age, a beautiful flower blossoming, a butterfly metamorphosing, a passionate kiss of love,  can we measure these with ticking seconds hands? Isn`t it sacrilegious? You are breathing in a store which helps you find time, and you can`t help  but wonder, isn`t time too fickle to be measured!

With every grain of sand, that descends, you cant help stop thinking, that time wasn`t designed to be measured.

Looking up you notice the rustic brass lanterns. You have a wild thought, staring at the ape smiling with garrulous mischievous glint. You feel that blessed is the life of a night traveler, using these lanterns to navigate across marshes and swamps, yet untouched and unexplored by human technological developments.

So yes! this store with its trinkets, does make you feel like a time traveler, transported through time.

P.S. Thanks for the lovely photograph, K.

Disaster Preparedness in a Virtual World.

Before I start penning this down, these are solely my opinions and views. No harm, offense, disrespect meant.

So yes, We had floods, in the reportedly most developed city of South India. If a place receives unprecedented rainfall, in a reportedly measurable sequence, why was it so catastrophic?
India is a tropical country, frequented by depression and cyclones. These were events which at a national scale we are supposed to be prepared to encounter. There are posts citing the El nino, and maps demonstrating the  urbanization. It is true that the magnitude of flooding and water inflows were not anticipated but why is it that we had such a huge death toll?

Is it because there were too many gaps in the disaster management plans? I recount the devastation wreaked upon states of Andhra Pradesh and Odisha by the Hudhud cyclone.  Now just in an year space, we have a catastrophic flood with glaring repercussions, However, we still need to buckle up and pick straws. Count the lives and disperse food packets.

I`m a regular office going citizen who has no idea of the governmental framework and policies beyond what I read out of self interest and learnt in my civics class in schools. However, the devastation of this magnitude observed in staggered manner with a cascading domino effect could have been dealt with in a far more efficient manner. The solutions could be borrowed from the nations which have dealt with frequent events like these. The lethargy and callousness was apparently a thing of the past, or do we still need more time?

I could see the benefits of virtual world unravel, as messages were forwarded across with the contact numbers and people using hashtags and posts to network and communicate. As a civic society, we hear heartwarming tales of grit, bravery and courage. Thanks to the city being a metropolis with netizens and the virtual connectivity, we could all find out, whether the people were safe in a relatively brief period of time. But does that negate the fact that we spent endless hours panicked and worrying about safety of our near and dear? I think it`s high time we buckle up for a stronger disaster management plan in such eventualities.

While I do agree the networking sites have provided us a  huge platform to share and like, and enquire the safety, I find it humorous that people used the same devastation to vent the frustration against the remarks of intolerance. Every other post is blazoned with cultural social and racial integrity. I admit that most of us take pride in nationalistic urges, but at the face of a sad catastrophe, bringing up intolerance indicates huge frustration and agonizingly low levels of acceptance.

It`s amazing that  Chennai is recuperating quickly and heading on its path to recovery. I just foolishly hope that the it would have been lovelier if the recovery period was more brief and the damage well managed.

The Painting

A brief intro folks, So I haven`t really been blogging. Hope to do it regularly. Here`s a short piece of fiction I wrote recently.

Mark was waiting in the gallery with bated breath. He had heard a lot about the art on display, the artist is a known exponent of Russian art, acclaimed all over the world for his attention to detail, capturing thousands of emotions with a few brush strokes. Mark had always been fascinated by his work. Now he was waiting at the entrance of a very known territory,  something he had read and researched about but the thrill of looking at the artist's work in person was    indescribably intense.
Mark tried to rearrange his thoughts,  gather his emotions in a piece and walked down the gallery. Now he was standing in front of the painting. The painting was truly a masterpiece. Hues of lilac,  purple and violet with few strokes of burgundy laced in between. For anyone who wasn't well versed in the artists style of art, it would like a meaningless riot of colors splashed across the canvas. But he knew the purple was meant to evoke an imagery of conflict,  the conflict of self. looking at the strokes he delved deeper into his ideas of life. The lilac strokes evoke  romantic imagery and the globs of  burgundy woven into random circular patterns are  igniting  the questioning thoughts. 
Now Mark was truly satisfied. He had the sublime experience of immersing himself into the artwork. The painting reminded him of his adolescence. His choices of life , the impending confusion tipping him further and forcing him to choose. His adolescent life,  where he was forced to leave his love behind and pursue a career choice. A choice where he waw Forced to forget his past and move further despite not wanting to. Being  thrown into the forgotten memories of the past,  he felt  enthralled by the beauty of the painting,  he decided not to take it home. He decided the fascination of having a one time experience would be joyous enough. He started his walk back.

What are you facebooking today?

We live in a digital world. Uploading pictures, sharing locations and writing long statuses with catchy phrases and fancy photoshopped pictures is a habit for most of us. Virtual signature and footprint and creating a tangible virtual presence is definitely the most “in “  thing of the times.

While creating a virtual space, people forget to delimit and demarcate the boundaries between a virtual platform and a real life. For instance, consider the lovely relationship and breakup status, or a baby shower or otherwise the death of a loved one. I find it appalling that few men or women have no problem sharing the most treasured moments online. Have we forgotten that some things are meant to be cherished and shared with the ones close to your heart?

One of the other end of the fulcrum, lies the denizens who seek to upload everything they do. It may be chopping an onion to peeing. Isn’t it ludicrous that people feel the need to upload and post every place they visit, every food they like to eat? In such a scenario, I would just look at the said person`s Facebook profile to find where he/she is and probe what he is upto.

The problem I have with this virtual presence is most people have clearly forgotten to draw the lines. Moreover, I believe my upbringing led me to believe in manners and some other little stuff whose importance the virtual world refuses to acknowledge as important. Or probably I have come to realise that virtual validation of my real-time experiences is not necessary.

The smell of freshly mown grass, the beauty of first rain, the sweet lingering taste of a piping hot cake, taking in the aroma of a freshly brewed coffee. Can we describe such experiences virtually in a Facebook status?

Another stance many people take these days is using Facebook as a virtual tool for expressing your political, social and religious stands. Rainbow profiles on Facebook. I never knew a filter could be so ghastly. I completely subscribe and endorse to the idea of marriage equality, but I refuse to use my display picture to state the same. In India, Homosexuality is a criminal offense, the 377 section hasn’t been scrapped. The issue of marriage equality is a joke in the current legal scenario if rightly put. By celebrating the legalisation of marriage in a far off progressive nation, I am degrading myself by not seeing the regressive conservativeness of my own country`s political gamut. And folks if you didn’t know already, marriage equality is already seen in quite a few countries, USA just joined them.

So guys, the next time you want to share something, ask peeps ‘to lend them your ears’. You maybe sharing more than a Facebook share.