In Vacant or in Pensive Mood

(Written when locked up at home, during the Vardah cyclone in Chennai) Every once in a while, God sends a reminder to mankind about the might of the Earth, which He controls. So often we take the elements of Nature for granted, trampling her underfoot as we make selfish decisions and take inconsiderate action in the name of development. We seem to forget that one gust of wind can leave us helpless - our expensive cars can take us nowhere, our HD flatscreen TVs can give us no entertainment, our 50k iPhones or our 5k Nokia mobiles are the same and good for nothing, the Internet (which proudly claims to shrink the world into a village) is nowhere near available. When we sit down in the darkness that envelops our city, all we can do is surrender. When the cyclone Vardah hit Chennai, we watched on as trees were uprooted and crashed to the ground. When we mindlessly cut down trees to build taller apartments or bigger bridges, we saw Nature giving in silently. Is it because s...

I am dreamer. When I say that, I mean it in every sense of the word. I dream when I am sleeping, even if it is when I’m just accidentally dozing off in a bus, and I dream almost every minute that I’m awake! I don’t know what reason to attribute to this quality of mine; it could be because I spent most of my childhood playing with myself since I had no siblings until I was 12. It could also be my left-handedness, as you may have heard that left-handed people are prone to be directed by the right brain, responsible for imagination and all things creative! Well, whatever the reason maybe, if I was asked to describe myself in one word, I would say “DREAMER”. Picture: Mpho Mojapelo on Unsplash I love my dreams – when I am sleeping, they turn my eyelids into my very own theatre and play out intertwined stories that are illogical, but are also so full of sense. When my mother wakes me up in the middle of a dream, I go right back to sleep just so that I can finish watching the r...

I had quite a rough day at work today. My boss kept asking me to rework what was a perfectly good promotional writeup. I was forced to work late, and when I left office two hours later than usual, he still didn't look so satisfied. I was frustrated by the end of the day. When I'm feeling an emotion, any emotion at all, my immediate reaction is to vent it out. As I walked out of office, I decided it wouldn't be such a good idea to talk loudly to my alter ego in public. So I decided to call someone I thought might listen empathetically. I called twice, but there was no answer. So much for empathy! Feeling more frustrated,and a little hurt, I called my dad. When he answered the phone, I told him that I was just leaving office then. He enquired why I was leaving that late; I grabbed the question as an opportunity to vent out my emotional story. My dad heard half the story, and at some point when I paused (for dramatic effect), thought I was done, and hung up! Disappointed,...