"me no big chief …

Life was so simple, when we were young,
whatever little we had was there to enjoy.
With time, somehow I had forgotten those moments
Lost within the struggles of balancing ambitions with achievements
then I read or hear something
and it will all return, leaving me to wonder how could I have forgotten …

As children we played with whatever was available,
if one of us had a oft-repaired ball that wasn’t leaking,
it would be football.
If someone had a tennis ball and a cricket bat,
we played cricket on roads
with bricks (11 to be exact) stacked as wickets,
didn’t ever stop us copying the moves of our sporting heroes.

If we went visiting friends or relatives
we never made a prior phone call
just because we didn’t have a phone,
nobody else did,

We just went to others houses and knocked.
if they weren’t in, we came back home,
having a bite somewhere on the way back
just the trip there and back was as enjoyable.

When others dropped in
for a visit without informing,
the unexpected surprise would double the welcome.

Shopping was buying
what was fresh and affordable,
shape, size, colour of the produce was not important
now I stand bewildered in front of supermarket shelves,
unable to makeup my mind,
more than once walking away empty handed.

We had new clothes
once a year for Durga Pujo, our annual festival,
that too, at the the local store,
the same place every year;
and was always given the one choice
from amongst garments that were two sizes too big,
so that they would last another year.

When our neighbour bought a radio, he played it loud.
it wasn’t considered a sound disturbance,
it was for all to enjoy the early morning transmission
of the recitation of hymns from the scriptures Devi Mahatmyam
unofficially marking the beginning of the festival.

Of course there was only one radio ’station’.
And when he bought fluorescent tube lights,
we all took turns to visit and admire.

On the day of the festival,
us friends would meet
and show off our baggy shirts and shorts drooping below our knees;
(what is now accepted as fashionable!)
proud of their crispness and of the smell of the new fabric.

We never had much,
there never would be a second choice,
everything had a value, nothing got wasted.
Whatever little we had we were happy to share
and we enjoyed it all to the full;
now we have so much, we have forgotten how to….

I had spent millions of hours
trying to learn the guitar leads, till I realised,
not only was I playing the wrong kind of guitar,
I was trying to emulate the great Jerry Garcia.
Without success.

I was reading this blog
Climate Change reassurance for kids,
when this song from the yesteryears came to back to my mind.

On the same blogsite,
I also found these Throwaway Lines;
so this is for Sam.

Continue reading ‘Teach Your Children…’

When I was young, very young
If wanted to tell my mum
that I loved her very much
my limited vocabulary (of bengali)
would make it come out as
“Ma, I love you full to the brim”.

With passing years, and slight improvement in
my stock of words and syntax,
it became a proper “I love you”.

I was speaking to her on the phone one evening
as we were finishing off,
I remembered what I used to say as a child,
I said again “Ma I love you full to the brim”
She laughed and said “I love you to the brim too.”

Those were our last words to each other,
next morning she was rushed to the hospital
in the evening she was gone.

I do not know what brought those words back to me,
but I am so glad that they did,
in the end I had returned back to her
as the tiny child
that she always remembered me as, in her mind.

She was my best-est friend.
Its coming up to two years my friend has gone away.
Forever.

Have you ever seen a full rainbow? Not the usual arc,
or a semi circle but a full circle
the full 360°s.

I have.
It was in September,
way back in the when; at the Khecheopelri Lake in Western Sikkim.

A large blob of peaceful water, clearer than crystal,
6000 and some feet high
in the middle of the Himalayan nowhere;
yet to be discovered by the ramblers and trekkers.

We had stopped to set up camp,
on the eastern side of the mountain
looking towards the east over a deep valley
onto Yoksum, on the next range of mountains.

It had rained off and on the whole day.
Suddenly,
as we stopped, the clouds parted
and the rays of the setting sun hit the mist and the drizzle
lighting up this huge circle of bands of glistening colours,
the upper half of which stretched way up into the sky,
the bottom sat in the natural cradle of the valley.

It had no ends,
no pots of gold waiting to be found,
what we saw was priceless in itself.

Cameras popped open,
but no lens was wide enough
to capture the rainbow in its entirety.
Like a switch flicked on it had appeared,
but it gracefully faded, as the clouds closed in.

Since then I have tried to share with friends and family what we had seen,
to convey that feeling of awe and wonder of seeing a full rainbow circle.
I don’t think they even believed me, I had no evidence.

Till today, when I came upon this photograph.
(It is nothing like the real thing, its just to give an idea.)

[Photograph courtesy: www.whiteplanes.com]

Since then I have long lost touch with my many friends
so let me share this photograph with you, here.
if you have never seen a rainbow circle…

Possibilities:

Way back in 1837,
Rene Descartes had written an explanation of rainbows based on refraction and optics.
accompanied by an illustration in descours de la methode:

We can see a rainbow formed by the sun’s rays being refracted back to us by water droplets in the atmosphere.

Imagine a person standing on flat ground and viewing a rainbow.
The rainbow will be half a circle; the two ends disappearing where it meets the horizon.

But if we then move him to an hypothetical cliff edge,
where his field of vision is no longer restricted by the ground surface,
the sun’s rays now reaches the depth of the valley and can refract back from the water droplets below the persons’ ground level.

The ends of his rainbow becomes free, to dip into the valley below – joining up to form a full circle – a rain circle.

rainbowHimalayastrekkingSikkimIndia

WWIII,
the best way of solving the problems the world is facing today.

Wars, so called terrorism, empire buildings, regime changes,
WMDs, or the lack of them,
jealousy, envy, greed,
religious hatred, racial hatred, ethnic cleansing,
poverty, world debt, humanitarian crises,
environmental disasters, holes in the ozone layer, global warming, glacier melting,
energy crisis, water crisis
bird-flu, HIV, cancers
euro replacing dollars as the world’s petro currency

I say, nuke the earth to hell and gone, and be done with it.

What is it all worth anyway?
Wealth in the coffers of <1% of the world’s population.
Nothing more than pain and misery, for the rest.

Why go through life being the perpetual victim,
of something, somebody or someone.
Being lied to, fooled into believing what eventually always turns out to be untrue.

To always have to (seek out and fight) an enemy,
be it communists or terrorists
or just windmills
To have to keep a war running somewhere, so that those in power can stay in power.

Only the innocents die
or the conscripts
those who never have the choice.
collateral damage we are told,
acceptable so that the rest of us live.

WWIII,
thankfully will not drag on like the previous two.
It should be over in days, if not hours or just minutes.

There should be enough nuclear weapons in stocks all around the globe,
that when launched against one or the other will finish the job quickly.

Short and sweet.
Mercy killing,
if you look at it from my perspective.

The power hungry warmongers,
who conveniently stays away,
and keep their near-and-dear-ones
away from the front-lines
will burn as quickly and as painfully as the rest of us.

Those hidden in bunkers, will emerge to survey and rule what is left.
A radio-active remains of this earth. RIP.

Why wait.
Let us get on with it.
Why live a life based on lies and lies only?

Before we discover technology capable
of carrying our evil policies out to the rest of the universe
and destroy whatever is good left out there.
Lets do it.

So why delay the inevitable, let us nuke ourselves and get it done with.

earthlifedeathenvironmenthumanitywarsthe end