A Summer Storm

I stood by the well, and it was about three in the afternoon. The hot summer sun swiftly had vanished and darkness had dawned at noon. I felt the change in the air-the crows seemed to flutter in circles perhaps prodding the others to scamper and fly back to the safety of their roost; the sparrows which are a rare sight these days were hastening to pick up the specks of food they could find and were intent to fly back to their nestlings; the mynas were not to be left behind; the family of squirrels were scurrying up the branches of the old mango tree; the lone ranger –the serpent bird who found roost among the thick green foliage of the mangos-teen moved to a safer branch. The clouds had gathered in thick mass, in dark, blackish grey. The sky looked viciously beautiful! One would wonder if the sun was up in the sky a little while ago glaring down on all earthlings in its full summer fury. The dominance over him was total

The breeze scouted and moments after thunder roared in the distance. The wind quickened and the tall stooping coconut palms swayed ominously. I stood still looking at the sky and felt the swift change in the air seep up from through my feet, through every sinew in me. Lightning broke crevasse of fire-fiery   streaks in the dark rain clouds. The cumulus nimbus was in no mood to retreat, the storm clouds soon spread her canopy of dark grey tentacles and it felt the sky was coming down to meet the land. The chariot of the gods roared swiftly and blazing silver flashes in the dark sky. I thought I saw firmaments in the sky. The earth seemed to shudder and I stood by the well.

Then she arrived in grandeur. Pouring down in torrents quenching the flora and she hit the earth as succor to the soil, dry and parched by the relentless glare of the summer sun. It was April 7 th 1973. The summer rains had arrived. I soaked in her. I longed to melt in her, awash!

Why do I remember that day and the morning after? I do not know. The summer rains, how she arrived and squelched the earth, engulfing all life in her munificence and beauty. And then, the day after- morning when I woke up and walked about outside the house and on to the road still drenched and cold after the rains the evening before- breached branches of trees, debris of broken twigs and tree leaves littered; pebbles and sand carried by the torrents  and strewn on the road; bright red and chaste white hibiscus flowers bowed by the beating of the summer storm albeit still with splendour and  beauty, washed by the rains and carrying droplets of water, peeped over the compound walls and fences of houses on either sides of the road; Kanikonna (Cassia fistula), was in full bloom , being April and nearer to Vishu- they looked bright lapped by the rains and their  yellow gloss prettier in the warm soothing rays of the rising sun. The bougainvillea, kanikonna (Cassia fistula) and the cluster of jasmine flowers were strewn around on the wet earth by the gate in front of the house; their tiny petals still sparkling with droplets of rain water.  They seemed to paint a picture abstract and beautiful, red-pink ,yellow and white. The sunflowers endured the beating in the rain but they invested their majesty and stood beckoning the morning sun. As it was my habit of checking by the fish tank every morning soon after I was out of bed, I went to it. The water was almost spilling over, and was crystal clear. I felt my finger the index and the middle into the glazing water and I tinked in the coldness that grabbed them. The fishes- the Gold, the Angels, the Black-ies and the Sword tails all were in ecstatic play.

By then the sun was up and the warm rays fell upon the earth, through the trees and it brought forth a feeling of blessedness.

The majestic jack fruit tree which stood at the front left corner of the compound was gleaming. Its foliage of dark green leaves looked pristine, fresh and brilliant. The jack fruits that donned along its trunk through the year were resplendent greenish yellow and beamed, tanned by the storm. The huge mango tree was imposing and sweet little yellowish mangoes had fallen down in the wind and rain waiting to be picked up. I looked over the well and saw the water level was only a couple of feet below the brim. The ferns sprouting luxuriously on the walls of the well had driblets of storm water and looked vivid green. The squirrels were scurrying along the trees and squeaking, tails standing up; the sparrows and mynas were intensely devouring the seemingly unending carcass of May- flies that were washed out in the rain.

The feast was splendid, the ambience electric and the wait worth. I inhaled a very deep lungful of air. There was a lyrical quality about the air that morning. I felt I was reborn.

Malarkey

It is not true that one can create an illusion of humility; the membrane is so thin that the world will see through the facade  It is not possible to divorce us from what we voice and write. They are our selves-good or bad, acceptable or outrageous, humorous or livid.

In times gone by when I was young, avenues to see one’s thoughts in print was  rare and success- an achievement as scaling the Everest, possible only to the very few who succeed after relentlessly posting in the mail the works they pen- essays short stories, poems ,so on and so forth to publishing houses, newspapers and periodicals. In fact there were no boulevards that one could trod through to air one’s thoughts. The virtual age has revolutionised all that. And it will be sheer untruth to claim that what we write on our blog, be it as a post or comment is not us speaking, our psyche, our experience and they are only pertaining to aliens or we speak for the reader. Else one must admit that one is a common hypocrite who wants to influence and sway people with clichés like “awe”, “awesome” etc.

An ode to melancholy cannot be penned in an elated state. One has to be feeling sad to write about being sad. Can I say that my poem, my essay are not my thoughts but of my neighbour? It is only when one empathises with the misfortunes of the neighbour or when one is consumed by one’s own misfortunes does the ode to melancholy bears. A man like Mukesh Ambani sitting in the ugliest mansion ever built to desecrate the Mumbai skyline cannot possibly pen or be enchanted by the lines of William Wordsworth

“I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.”

I’m not an afficando of poetry but I understood that the language of John Keats lines

'Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane

 In some untrodden region of my mind'

can be linked to his love letters to Fanny Brawne.

Keats penned one of his famous five odes , “Ode to a Nightingale”, one spring. He felt immense tranquility and happiness in the song of the little bird that nested near his house. He went out sat beneath the tree for hours and thence was born one of the most beautiful odes. What other state of mind other than sheer joy and tranquility can provoke such a creation? A paranoid mind cannot hear nor see the nightingale.

Take these lines of P.B.Shelly:

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains

 My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,

 Oh! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!

I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!'

The poet evinces his aching for rebirth and resurrection. He wants to be as 'timeless, fleeting and lofty' as the West Wind, for he suffers endlessly. The intense emotional distress of the unforgiving life makes him bleed-the life experiences ('I fall upon the thorns of life') and longs to put an end to the agony. I do not think that Shelly would have felt offended or ashamed at this dissection of his verses.

Can one say that the lines were all in humour and jest? There is always our pale self in our words and writings even if we consciously want to camouflage or deny that. One need not be a Maugham or a James Joyce, but life’s experience is in our words and writings.

 Hemmingway’s candid painting of life as seen and experienced by him created the unique literature that give us immense pleasure. Hemmingway’s life and his writings are entwined and are mirror images. “Death in the afternoon”, “For Whom the Bell Tolls” both vivid narration of his love- bullfighting and his experience in the Spanish Civil war, then “The Old Man and The Sea” are undeniable exposition of human relationships, emotions, love, agony, lust and disappointment. Imagine Papa Hemmingway creating “Snows of Kilimanjaro or the Green Hills of Africa if he were a reticent and incipient arm chair explorer? The throbbing emotions packed in the “Snows of Kilimanjaro” would certainly have touched Hemmingway as an experience felt or seen in some ways.

It is life that make a writer or a poet, Mark Twain,Hemmingway or the Bloggers like us and there is no infamy in not being timid and to accept that our words in letters are our life- humour, jest, agony, joy or stoicism.The opposite is sheer malarkey.

The Legacy of Agony

Over the past few days two incidents happened in places distance apart. One, the tragic death of a young woman in far off Ireland and  the other, a timed out death of a volatile virulent man in Mumbai, India. Both the incidents, one a terrible tragedy triggered by religious dogma and the other the due process of a natural law that does not even discriminate tigers!

To tell my personal opinion, the sad story of the young woman in Dublin, Ireland, who was discarded to bleed and die an agonising death after being denied medical intervention to save her life during the miscarriage of her pregnancy and that too in a society and country that is seen as economically advanced and modern is quite distressing. Distressing and macabre because the premises the medical facility based its refusal to terminate the miscarrying pregnancy was on the didactic interpretation of a religious code that says man has no right to take away what God has given-”life”.

The Vatican Council holds the declaration, "Life must be protected with the utmost care from the moment of conception: abortion and infanticide are abominable crimes”. I went through much of Wikipedia and some sites that have posted Christian doctrines, but could not see any reference to Jesus Christ touching upon the subject of abortion. However, I notice that though the Bible gives direct guidance on many topics, but not on abortion. In fact the Roman laws in force during the time of Jesus did permit abortion and abortion was practiced from the times of early human history.

I do not intend to pour scorn on a moral code of catechism or asperse the faithful practicing catechism. But if laws are made to better life then they must be interpreted in spirit and not in a bigoted and outlandish way as the doctors in Dublin did. That was criminal and wanton negligence which will only defile the faith if faith is used as an apron to hide. The bane of scriptures is that the moral exhortations they give are all entwined in jargon and euphemisms, often liable to be interpreted by mortals whichever way to suit them. More often the self-acclaimed custodians of religions and zealots state their versions of a code to thoroughly ensure that the flock stay pliable and unfortunately gullibility is not in dearth. This  may be graver in the present day Muslim world.

The last knell orchestrated by the bigotry in Dublin was the outrageous statement of the Irish Government that they would provide all means for the widowed young man to rebuild his life. What would they do? Provide him with an Irish bride?

“Good riddance to bad rubbish”, was the general expression when told about the passing away of the self-proclaimed custodian of Hindu bigotry and Marathi manoos, Marthi asmita. A person who idolised Adolf Hitler and when asked by the Time Magazine soon after the Barbari Masjid demolition for his comments, infamously said, “kick em out”( meaning the Muslims of India).A person who seldom traveled outside Maharashtra just twice in the past forty years was certainly living in a well. To him perhaps the world was his carefully manipulated and cultivated frenzied following like the GM crop! He ran the State as if it were his fiefdom, his heirloom.  And the rest of the country and the world hardly existed or even mattered.

He was a man who exhorted Hindus to organise suicide death squads and hit back like the Islamic fanatics. Perhaps as a token of goodwill and willingness to sacrifice, as to ensure that charity and philanthropy starts at home and within the household he should have asked his son and nephew to lead the death squads to begin with. But like all such operators he ensured his safety and his family’s safety by assembling and expending the gullible and frenzied foot soldiers of the Sena.

He said after the demise of his wife, that he ceased to believe in God and even dislikes his favourite one of the pantheon Vinayaka, as even this God did not do enough to save his wife. What can one define this thought process- imbecile, demented, ridiculous?

Professional jealousy and rivalry is understandable. Infamously the professional jealousy of the late thespian M.R.Radha provoked him to shoot the late icon M.G.R. But this Sena supremo’s ire was towards the three Khans in Bollywood. He alleged that the Bollywood was being increasingly controlled by Muslim actors and he unleashed his Sena goons on theaters screening movies of SRK. The harrowing time people from South of India lived through in the Bombay of the late sixties and seventies will also be recollected by the Biharis and Northerners. He was a direct threat to the concept of the Union.

It is does not require maverick capability nor is it an achievement to harness and unleash anarchy and unlawful elements on the society and the commoner. Money and power can see to it. To subjugate and enslave by fear and terror is not supreme achievement and iconic. And this was exactly what the Sena Supremo did. He was no Mandela, no Gandhi, no Martin Luther King and no Mother Teresa who all could sway and enslave people not by terror but something apart and distanced that the late don and his ilk will not have known and will understand.

The bane is that bigotry and myopia are growing virulently amongst us sans religion, faith and race. If not, the tragedy in Dublin would be only a nightmare nor would a fanatic in Mumbai been a fact of our times for almost five decades.