What a start to the day, I couldn’t sleep well last night because of the tenacious mosquitoes and the fluctuating electricity. I swear by ODOMOS, the mosquito repellent cream but yesterday night that did little to deter the mosquitoes that were probably hungry from all the days of Odomos barrier and decided they’d had enough. My forehead is swollen and I look like a big brained alien. I spent the night switching between ceiling fan and AC because the electricity supply was flipping between the two. In a semi conscious state and when the electricity completely failed in between, I turned into an unwilling audience for the talks of the big family/friend gathering in the adjacent house and the father-daughter duel downstairs; sometimes living in a flat sucks. I woke up at 6:30am and try as I may to convince myself that I’m well rested, my body is behaving otherwise. I washed my bike off last night’s dirt that accumulated on it when we rode through the rain and a certain amount of disgruntlement. However you end up thinking that if there’s a chance that what the other person’s saying is true, it would be outstandingly crass on your part to not understand. How selfish but hey, before you throw stones at someone, think about how many times you’re in their shoes. Affection doesn’t require too much of effort to develop between like-minded people but understanding requires effort and some degree of selflessness.
Anyway last night I grew up a little more. I recalled the time—the only time I crashed my bike—when my girl accompanied me. Of the three of us, the bike, her and me, she was the only one that got hurt. However it didn’t show on the outside and since she never spoke of it and I was too busy concentrating on riding and reaching Dehradun, taking a detour to Herbertpur and reaching my sister’s place before a more severe tragedy struck us that I never asked her how she was. She didn’t show one sign of being hurt and I presumed she was alright, just like I was, for some reason, despite the bad fall on a downhill slippery road, I wasn’t hurt a bit and the engine kept running; but the whole psychological trauma suffered due to the same led her to brand me insensitive. We roamed around in Dehradun and had lunch and not once did I sense that she was hurt; for me she was fine, just like I was and just like the bike was. The extended act of sullenness that almost demolished our relation on the return leg of the journey made me brand her illogical and laid the foundations of the bomb that was built up over months and months and despite the love, it was set alight. It didn’t explode loudly, it just poisoned and killed.
Last night’s experience, coupled with memories of that fateful time in the past, was a revelation to me. I was in the other shoes and someone else was in mine. The revelation made it easier to forgive, both this person and myself—for the past—and understand that sometimes things aren’t the way they appear to be.
But hey wait, let’s see what appears in the newspaper’s front page today:
I see Manu Sharma’s plea’s of freedom being rejected: You can’t kill people in the open, imagine if he would’ve used his head, gone hidden behind a bush, aimed and… Shit! These are incriminating thoughts.
I see the handsome Shashi Tharoor walking away from the media hounds; I can almost hear him say “Leave me alone you camera wielding cattle”
I see dejected foreigners stranded at the Mumbai Airport: Iceland’s ash causes air-travel hash.
The local news says that yesterday was a black Monday with a string of armed robberies, an immolation, conning and killing: Ah this is my city beautiful but how safe is it, I think it’s a topic to mull.
Dantewada massacre’s been relegated to…umm! Somewhere inside I guess, if at all. They howled, they barked, bared their teeth…at each other and then they slept waiting for something else to happen.
Over and out
Have a nice day!
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