C'est La Vie...Really?

Seven peacocks sit on the parapet of our terrace fronting the bay. A murder of crows spearing into the morning silence flies past chasing a hungry Brahminy kite who desires absolutely nothing but a clutch of eggs for breakfast. 

The jails in the country are packed with sloganeering opposition leaders, journalists, activists, and to use everyone's favorite term, 'pseudo-intellectuals'. As elections draw near, the dire need to quash all competition has arisen  within the alpha party. 

More than six months on, the war wages on in  the Holy Land. Yet, the country responsible for it, stands fifth on the World happiness index! According to the United Nations, more than a million people are likely to suffer from starvation in the war-torn region since aid is not being able  to reach the affected populace because of innumerable road blocks. 

It rained last night. An out of season shower, which brought the peacocks out of the coconut grove. The cashew tree now laden with fruits, sparkles with water droplets. Mainas are in a querulous mood swinging on electric wires and firing off a volley of metallic notes.  A white heron cruises the heights, unperturbed. Somehow, I am reminded of Masha, the young Russian woman who was recently in India doing a course in Vipasyana. Every so often she would close her eyes and say, 'Aum Shanti, Shanti, Shanti...' and let out a deep slow breath. A musician, journalist, a journaller of Life, but above all a Traveller, she had touched me in the same way  as the spontaneous combustion of wildlife in my neighborhood  often does: with fascination and incomprehensibility. Wars, conspiracy theories, economic regulations and deregulations, End of Oil, Titanium batteries, Alternative fuels seem to have the same effect on this erring mind. 

Today, Sonam Wangchuk, the famous scientist and environmentalist entered the 17th day of his fast to protect the fragile ecosystem of Ladak, the inhabited crown glory of the Great Himalayan range. Surviving only on salt water and sleeping under the sky in -15 C and sitting in -5 C through out the day, every morning he commits a message to  PM Modi of India in particular and to the world in general, reiterating the need to save the Union Territory from  impending ecological disaster. Even as his voice grows weaker and weaker with time piling up behind him, the PM and the world move on, one on his unstoppable election campaign, the other shuffling its way through warring zones to an illusion of peace. 

The snake slithers past disturbing an empty beer can and shaking the afternoon awake. I look up from the pages of the book and find it sliding up the dense foliage of  pink bougainville. I can only see its diamond like underbelly, and gauge its smooth sheen from where I sit. "Was it a cobra or a rat snake?" They want to know. I really can't say. But, the news has managed to set the indolent summer air abuzz with baseless anticipation. "I am kind of afraid of snakes, but I wouldn't mind seeing one," says Amy in her thick British accent. "We consider snake to be our ancestral uncle," my brother begins. Her eyes widen to resemble green marbles. 

The Doppler effect of a passing vehicle overtaking my steps, coerces the eyes to meet the road. And lo, I am face to face with a bloodied squirrel, squirming, eyes wide open and filled with vacant pain. Shocked beyond my senses to find this helpless critter lying knocked over on my path, I close my eyes and retrace my steps, trying hard to extradite it from the memory zone. "It is just a bad dream", I tell myself again and again. But, it isn't . I am haunted by its eyes and ashamed of my powerlessness to help.

How delicate is this balance between all of us, between space and time, between humans and animal kingdom, between here and there, now and then...how much a day gives us, how many stories, prayers, rêveries, flights, dives, dust, humidity, pull-me-push-mees...dreams:

Three bottles of brandy being carried up the steps of a split-level apartment  slip inadvertently, may be in a tipsy moment fringed by the early morning call of a distant brainfever... crashing and shattering of broken glass perforate the sleep. The thought of wasting precious time trying to clean up the 'virtual' mess shoves me into wakefulness. Grateful to find the morning standing tiptoe by the window, I am relieved that there is no actual mess to be cleaned, no glass pieces to be swept, no floors to be mopped clean off brandy...The house feels as clean as a whistle and quiet as a cat.

Where do dreams end and wakefulness begins? Who knows? Everything is so tightly woven together. So seamlessly I move from one state to another,  half awake, half asleep, wondering what is real and what is not. May be I should ask Sonam Wangchuk, sitting through the 17th day of fasting...or those people in Gaza standing for hours in queues hoping to be the lucky recipients of some food from the aid trucks...they live through life from moment to moment, day to day. People like me just let Life live through them.