UPDATE YAY!!

Quick Update: Now back in Delhi.

Bombay Local

*In Bombay, the train spits you out when it tires of you. One moment I am 20 people away from the door at a station where the train will stop for less than 90 seconds, and the next moment the crowd has somehow made a way for every single person to exit. I always have to stop, look back and watch the train pull away from the station to convince myself that, yes, I actually made it out the door to the platform. In Bombay, every day, every act is a minor miracle.

*Haven't upated my blog for ages. Intially because I was lazy and now because I have very limited access and time for things such as blogging. Which fact of course explains why I would now use my limited to update.

Incredible India

As far as I am concerned, this is the most expensive blog I have ever posted. It has taken me 200 rupees to buy 15 minutes worth of internet time. At home, that would buy me nearly a month's worth of broadband access. Long live India!
And that brings me to the end of my 15 minutes access to the Net.

Air fare

This was where I lived in Arunachal. Having left it and now being totally mired in Dirty Delhi, what I wonder is--what is the price of fresh air and natural beauty? How much would we be willing to pay for it? Maybe our cost of living should also include such elements. There is a cost to living in polluted cities--breathing air that damages our respiratory tracts, drinking water that corrodes our insides and eating food that is laced with pesticides. If there were a price attached to all of this maybe we would find that someone who earns 10,ooo rupees in Arunachal is actually much richer than somebody who earns 20,000 rupees (if not more) in Delhi.
I know I would be willing to pay a lot to wake up in a place where I can breathe in lungfuls of air that smells of flowers and wet grasss. I know that there has to be a negative price attached to breathing air that smells either of garbage or petrol fumes.
Only question is--is it enough to take a drastic salary cut and move to an area where I would get clean air, water and food?
What do you think? Is money for fresh air, rolling hills and clean rivers a fair tradeoff?

Rain

Arunachal remains as beautiful as ever. Would help though if the rain would let up a bit. Seems to me I complain too much. In Delhi, I complain that it does not rain enough and now that I am in a place where it has been raining non-stop for the last seven days, it seems to me that this could be that phenomenon called too much of a good thing.

An aside -- Seems to me like a lot of people coming to this blog are from the United States. Almost 80 percent. I find that puzzling.

The problem with so much rain is that creepy-crawlies thrive in it. Saw a beesa after a years today. That is the Assamese name for a furry, inch-long insect, which if you touch or even brush against accidentally creates a reaction that leaves one scratching the spot for ages. It is not at all pleasant.

There are leeches too. Too many of them.

Now for the good part. It is fun sleeping with a light blanket in peak summer. And not having the fan on.

The greenery is astounding. Lush, blooming, spouting, growing, infringing, inundating. The trees, the undergrowth want to push human beings out. This is their time, their day and their age. They are winning. Soon we will only have plants everywhere. The creepers will enter through cracks in the walls and windows and strangle people while they are still sleeping. The leeches and the beesa will then feast on the corpses. Maybe some other insects will spin cocoons around the bodies and the larva will feed off the bones and the eyes and the rotting flesh. And then we will have a whole new world, where only insects shall reign. Maybe it will be a better world than the one we have created.

You are only a woman

Blurt was pretty but a very blank girl. Seventeen about turn eighteen, Blurt loved all the attention she got from men. She was exactly the kind of girl men loved to love and women loved too. She was aware of the fact that she was pretty, very aware of it. She would spend hours spent in front of the mirror, part in admiration, part in consternation over a blemish that only she could see on her white, flawless skin. Blurt was pretty high on the looks quotient, but very low on the intelligence quotient. Not that women who look good arent also bright or women who are bright are not stunning looking.They are. Wouldn't want to reinforce stereotypes, but this is Blurt's story. Blurt who was so taken with her own beauty, her face, her body, her clothes that she never paid too much attention to the rest of the world, which was a bad thing because if she had paid a little more attention she would not have died the way she did. She was coming back from school on one hot summer day in May, yes, Blurt was still only in school when she died, when she took a ride from a classmate. Rich boy he was too. His daddy had given him a big car all his own that he would drive all over town. So on that fateful day when Blurt escaped the heat in the airconditioned car, rich boy "proposed" to Blurt. "Would she be his girlfriend?" Blurt laughed. She should not have. She should have agreed and gotten off the car, gone home and told her parents. You don't laugh at rich little boys. Oh no, you dont. And if you do, you have to pay the price. So rich boy whose father was a politician was offended. He did the next best thing to salvage his honour. He dint drop Blurt home. Took her to his farmhouse. Called his friends, five of them. They all got drunk and took turns to rape Blurt hour after hour while her parents sat at home and worried about their daughter. And then when they were done, they took her unconscious, battered body and threw it like a piece of rag on the side of some dusty, deserted road where she bled to death. They found her body the next day. Ghastly little rich boy's daddy packed him off to the US where he spent the next four years using date rape drugs, getting drunk and eventually never mustering a degree. Daddy had taught him that women were good for only one thing and that they should be used and discarded once you are done with them. As for Blurt's parents, they did not pursue the case. The cops told them about how powerful the politician was. Blurt's parents had two more children to look after--two sons. They did not want to take on a powerful politician, least of all for a girl and surely not when they had sons who needed looking after.

Written for the Blank Noise Project.
There is no moral or even a point to the above story. It is not even much of a story except that if you live in India and are a woman you had better get used to the fact that for a majority of the population you are a burden, have no right to live, and if you are alive you had better get used to being stared at, groped or raped. It does not matter what you wear or what you do. If men stare of pass comments as you walk down the road, it is your fault. You have to have solicited it, sent some signal you know. If you get groped, it is definitely your fault. What were you wearing? Was it too tight? Why do you walk down that road? Surely you should know better. You are a woman, you know. These things happen. Live with it. And if you can't, either stop going out of the house without a male escort or at least stop fussing about it. You are a woman, live with it. You are weak, you need protection. Just don't become one of those wretched feminists, who are so passe, making issues out of non-issues. Oof, spare me you your diatribes. It is all in your head. This does not happen. And if it does, you have asked for it. Ensnared some poor unsuspecting male to lech, grope or rape you, just so that you could get some attention. So just shut up and keep quiet about it already.

All’s well that ends well

Delhi is hot and getting hotter by the second. This blog now officially takes a summer break till July 15 . Below is the last 70-errrr for the season. Cheers.


Dr. Neha was 40 years old when she married fellow orphan Bhim, a handsome 21-year-old. Initially, it was odd for Bhim because he had to stop calling Neha aunty. But it worked out well in the end. Bhim is about to become a doctor too and the happy couple has a son and a second one is on the way.

Beauty

Ok, here is another random 70-er

Radha was world’s most beautiful girl. When the gods fell in love with her beauty and fought over her, Radha decided to run away to a place where there were no gods. She ran to the ends of the earth and wherever she ran she found the gods still fighting over her. Eventually she stopped running because she realized that the gods were too busy fighting over her to really notice her. And while they continued fighting, she married Hriday, a man who was blind.

Fate

Sheena and Meena were twins. Sheena was ugly, Meena was pretty. Sheena hated Meena for her beauty. So one day she killed Meena and got Meena’s face transplanted onto hers. Sheena then became a model, married a rich man and lived happily ever after. Till her kids were born. You can run, but you can’t hide. Sheena’s kids were uglier than their mother ever was.