Beyond dreams and awakenings

How to sift reality from non-reality? Pry dreams from fiction? 

Our daily constitutional. In an inadvertent raising of the eyes, rust orange of a crow-pheasant in flight caught and released by the irises...scales of a snake dangling from its beak wring the air silver, merciless.  

Further up, on a path crisscrossed by the trembling shadows of coconut trees, an explosion. Anvil hammers away on frail eardrums. Something bounces off the ground, grazes past the right foot: a humongous coconut. Mumsy is unperturbed. "They never fall on people," she reassures me, adding sweetly, "for they have eyes". She points them out to me. I pick up the deadly fruit and shake it: the sound of ambrosial water splashes therein. There is a triumphant smile on mumsy's face, "It is a good one," she exclaims. I am still fazed by this close encounter. 

"How many people die from coconut falling on their head" I google. According to a British Travel Insurance Company, coconuts kill around 150 people worldwide each year which makes them about ten times more dangerous than sharks. Mumsy has her own take on my finding, "you know insurance companies! Do you trust them?" John Grisham's The Rainmaker swims across the mind.

Images of hungry children in Gaza holding empty plates come to haunt. Do they have insurance, one wonders. According to a recent study, the majority of Israeli civilians feel indifferently towards the plight of the fleeing Gazans who have really nowhere to go and nothing to eat.  

"A massacre may be looming in Sudan", the headlines scream, "entering yet another chapter of horror". Why Sudan?, someone asks. Petroleum and gold, comes a world-weary answer. Hmmm. According to a Wikipedia page, Sudan is rich in several natural resources, but unfortunately they have not been exploited to their ample capacity. Exploit: the catchword of global economy. In India, we have our 'cheap labour' to exploit as we move towards becoming the next manufacturing hub and achieve superpower-hood. 

NATO rejoices that following the hi-tech weaponry aid it extended to Ukraine, almost 1000 Russian soldiers have been dying on daily basis for a month. Biden tries to nudge in a boast about the economic wonders of war, and corporations try their best not to dance on live TV as the Fed eyes another interest rate cut... 

 

"Should I get rid of my wardrobe after divorce?" is the question being debated by the fashion critique of NY Times. The conclusion is, "Yes, to find the new you!"

"The new me...!"

Here in the flotsam of Time, we are refurbished, repackaged, down the conveyer belt we go...hoping to awake on cool clean slates, catapulted into yet another tomorrow, into another dream of existence.