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.