Air /Time Travel ?

So a very late post in this year, could not really find time for blogging.
So this piece is interesting, because it involves contribution from a friend. We tried out a style of writing, which  can be colloquially called yin yang, opposite streams of thought, with me being the quintessential pessimist(to all obviousness) and my friend the optimist.


Leaves are strewn across everywhere.  I smell the fumes of acrid plastic burning.,  or maybe it's human flesh.  I just don't know.  I am confused.  I am totally lost.  I am unable to see or hear anything.  I try looking around. My eyes finally decide to let me see.
What do I see?
I see that I am no longer in a chair strapped in the aeroplane.  I don't see the elderly lady with her golden frame spectacles.  She was annoyingly chatty in the journey.  I was glad that she dosed off. I knew I had to bear her noisy chatter for 11 long hours.  I knew I had to be nice to her,  because that's what I usually do. Moreover,  she's probably scared to death, of flying like I am.

So every time I board a flight,  I remember airplanes getting  hijacked or crashing into runways.  I realised very early that I had a phobia,  a phobia to travel by air.  I get anxious,  I fidget a lot.  Sometimes I just play with the foldable footrest or sometimes I just take my pen out and pointedly stare at its tip,  with an intensity that ought to have burned it.  And then sometimes I try looking out through the tiny window.  I do it like a ritual,  cos everytime I book a flight,  I make sure I get the one under the aisle.  It makes me feel assured.

One of these days, I was reading a blog on social media,  which talked about runways that shouldn't exist.  Runways that open up into the sea,  or maybe exist around cliffs or mountains.  I just sit back assured that my flight  is going to land at Bangalore. It's one of the safest airports.  So I can sit back and stop hyperventilating.  I don't know when I drifted off.  I don't know when the flight stopped.
I don't know why I am no longer in the flight.  Nor do I understand why I smell flesh and blood.  I hear screams. I am in a pool of blood slowly losing whatever energy I mustered.

I couldn't even look down to see how badly I was hurt because of the shrapnel lodged in my collar bone. The last thing I remember is clutching my GLBT (Galactic Low Beam Transponder). The old lady had kept trying to take it from me. Obviously hers wasn't working and i guess she was having trouble finalizing her destination. I had made my selection before i boarded because of how anxious i get on flight and focusing on anything becomes difficult.

The sharp noise in my head was receding but the screams around were getting louder. What were they saying? Either something was wrong with my hearing or the voices around were speaking a completely foreign language. The word 'miles' was mentioned repeatedly. Given the surroundings, I was clearly miles from where i had intended to be.

I finally managed to get the shrapnel near my neck. Thankfully, I didn't bleed to death. A piece of cloth tied around like a scarf seemed to hold fine. I gingerly got up on my feet and got my first full view of my surrounding. This was not Bangalore or was it?

I had read that one of the possible origins of the name Bangalore is Vengaluru meaning military hold or township. Possibly barracks from over a thousand years ago. That's what it looked like. The strewn leaves, that burning smell which i just figured was boiling lead that was being poured to make cannon balls.

It dawned on me then. The old lady, the chatty old lady .. She kept trying to tell me something and wouldn't let me focus on my pen or the footrest. I found my GLBT lying near my back pocket. As I picked it up, a dread came over. I knew what the old lady had been trying to mumble through her toothless mouth. I had selected Bangalore alright but the arrival time was  wrongly typed. It said 3 PM, 14 Feb, 1016. I had landed in Vengaluru, in the middle of the forest clearing that in a thousand years would become MG Road.

P.S. Thanks Rajesh, for your contributions, and making this piece lively :D

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.