[Poetry]: Kill them all!

'Kill them!' she said. 'Kill them all!', she said with more conviction.
There was a perverse joy in her eyes, a perfect future in her vision.
She stomped on them, she jumped with joy.
Her little act had effect, many hundreds died.

She knew they needed to be destroyed, they were pests!
They were not supposed to eat her candy, now the whole lot was infested.
'Kill them!' She shouted with a sadistic pleasure, she was the queen.
This was her ruling and approved by her friends.

The problem seemed small at first, just the few hundred of the minute pests.
But, then after a few hundred that she stomped, she saw the rest.
Something had changed, they were not scattering anymore.
They seemed not scared anymore.

One could, with some effort, feel the pain.
One could, with some effort, hear their cries, in vain.
One could, with some effort, understand their anger.
One could, with no effort at all, sense the danger.

They marched, with a determination, towards unruly feet.
They marched, with vengeance, they would not accept defeat.
They marched, with war cry, 'Kill them!'
They marched, ignoring last pleas of her kind, 'Kill them all!'

[Poetry]: Defined lines

A single tear that soils my pillow,
As it reaches it burns a scar deep.
The pain doesn't flow with it, it chokes
The hurt doesn't numb in time, it simmers

Don't mourn, you have lost only what was already dead
Don't cry, you are stronger than ever
Don't fear, there is nothing more that can kill you
Don't hate, because your enemy is not worth it

Don't forget this day oh! Heart.
Do not let the wound heal over time.
Remember this day remember today.
This day the battle lines are drawn,

Today I am defined.

[Travel/Thought]: Shola forests of Ooty - Aavalachi range

Every encounter uncovers the innate desire to be back. The surroundings seem more unreal now than ever before. The tall buildings and their dull grey colors. The protection from elements, while the elements are what make us. I must say, I think I am falling in love. Recently I met someone whoes idea of love was to miss someone dearly when they were apart. What if it is not someone but something. What if every moment you spend away feels like a ringing hollow inside. The quiet the peace and the thrill envelope you only when you are in its presence. Only in its presence do you feel you exist.

It has been weeks since I have returned to the concrete, the loud sounds and the constant chatter of uninteresting kind. Mind drifts back to the harsh sun that gave me my first sun-burn, and the expanse of brown grass. The whole landscape seemed parched in the afternoon sun. Only respite seemed to escape into the intermittent dense forests that spanned only a few meters. As the fury dialed down with the dusk approaching, the birds sang and appeared out of their cool forest spots and chirped around. The temperature that scorched started to drop by few degrees every hour. Soon, I would search for my warm clothes in the backpack.

Avalachi range Shola grassland and forest patch.
Parched by warm sun awaits the cool monsoons. 

My two glorious days working on the fields of Nilgiri forests are imprinted in my being. I am amazed by the wilderness here. You would know you are in deep forests untouched by human beings, when instead of being alarmed by human presence, the animals and birds just seemed curious. I was seen as a object of curiosity by a group of Sambar deer. They observed the two strange creatures walking on two feet messing the tasty grass that grew in the fences inaccessible to them. Even more surprising for me was the few moments I got to spend in the canopy. The forest here holds more mystique than any enchanted forest ever written. The forest type is called Shola. The grassland covers the hill-tops and intermittently dense green patches of forests spring up from nowhere. The forests seem to occupy any part of the landscape that holds the promise of water in the ground. My friend tells me that they also seek protection from the frost that is common here in the early mornings. Grasses may survive the lack of water and the frost, but the little saplings in the forests cannot. Grasses are hardy, they survive the toughest climates. She is clearly mesmerized by the resilience of the grasses. To find a little respite from the sun, I escaped into the dense canopy. The forest floor is rich with old leaves. Such a contrast to the dense grasses outside. Insects crawling everywhere, and gossimers hang here and there even in the tiny spaces in the lichens that are growing on the trees. Life is here everywhere!

In the forest patch, I discovered many mesmerizing things. I love cinnamon and I found the wild ones. I found wild bay leaves. The aroma is definitely more woody and far more richer. Maybe we could not handle the punch and toned the aroma down to suit human taste. I found curious blue berries that my friend tells me is what is called the drinking tree. A few berries are fine, but after a few one would start to hallucinate! A few tasted very good. I stopped. In the canopy I saw a leaf twirl as it fell and miss the forest floor. Surprised, I thought maybe the two berries also are having an effect on me. I dismissed the event. It happened again. A yellow leaf started to twirl and fall towards the ground, mid-fall it flew and perched on a near by branch. It looked at me, first with the right, then with the left eye then sang a little song. A grey-headed canary flycatcher was curious about the intruder in its forest. It did the swoops several times again. While I was having a tete-tate with the canary flycatcher, my friend was busy with extracting fresh honey for us to enjoy. It is not bottled honey, it is fresh out of the hive. Actually it was a part of the hive that you suck the honey from. There are bee larve all over the hive and where there are fewer larve, there is orange pollen. Some patches seemed free from both. Fresh honey is not as sweet as the one in the bottle, it has a slight sting to it. You will know what I mean when you try it. Do make your pick from the bag. Trust me it is worth the experience and you will never regret it. You might however never like bottled honey again.

Fresh honey, with the pollen, glistening honey and the larve.

I wish all classrooms and laboratory spaces were like this. It was the first time that thought hit me. Suddenly I found myself questioning why we left the wilderness. We did not leave the wilderness, we choose to make it more and more comfortable for us. Now we are so comfortable in the little world we created for ourselves, that wilderness seems alien to us. Wilderness is not predictable, it is unforgiving to mistakes and weakness. It daunts us, we feel overpowered and then some survival instinct gone haywire triggers and we decided to tame it. I observed the efforts of taming in Ooty. There are fir trees everywhere before you break into the actual wilderness. Firs are not native to southern India. They were planed here by the British to make the landscape more "home-like". Away from its own natural settings, the firs overtake the landscape from the local plants, unchecked. Another imbalance thanks to misplaced sense of home and aesthetics. In between grasslands, haunting black leafless trees stand. They are bent into submission by the strong winds that blow over the hills. They are not dead, their roots are alive. They await a spell of rain to spring again. These ominous trees are an attempt by the old local government to green a grassland. Most think that the forest should be green full of trees, but grasslands are an ecosystem in the their own right. Our lack of understanding and short-sighted administration decided to make use of waste-land and plant firewood trees. Now only lichens seem capable of interacting with the unruly trees that are overtaking the grasslands and changing the landscape like wildfire.

Only lichens interact with the ghostly fire-wood trees planted to make grasslands more "useful".

Tame the wild. It seems like the slogan of human kind. Ingenuity, creativity, wielding the power of the elements to fight the elements. We are fighting, always. Sadly, the enemy we choose is our own home. We lack the maturity as a species to understand the course of nature and evolution much older than ourselves. To add to it, we lack the patience to understand and comprehend the consequence of our actions. Short-shortsightedness plagues our decisions, that seem already biased by our greed. Ecosystem is fragile, nature is fragile. Grasses maybe resilient, we as a species may be resilient, but all of resilience cannot sustain after repeated misuse. Ecosystems will falter and so will the chances of our future generations. We may see our doom as species, we cannot regenerate, but nature can. Someone aptly said, Earth has survived a lot, it will survive humans. The question is not if the Earth will survive, question simply is - will we?

A little enraged and deep in retrospect, but unable to escape observing the lovely landscape as my friend and I discussed implication of unchecked human activity. I bounced back to my lessons learning about the various trees and plants and eating the wild guavas here. We headed back, sadly to human jungles.

I was already missing the open spaces, clean air, chitter-chatter of the numerous birds, silence of warm afternoons. I realized that everything is running on clock of  daylight, my watch seemed futile. The most precious currency is water, my wallet seemed heavier. A little berry can intoxicate you, another can kill you, the only food is the one you learnt was safe from collective experience of the family, all the food processing and the packaging seemed futile. The only communication is the one that can add more to the survival of the ecosystem, everything else is useless. I am carrying back a silent determination to see that the silence of wild is not taken as absence of protest, but as the silence due to futility of any protest against greed of a species to tame what is born to be wild. In this protest the desk and the offices seem futile. I am hoping as a part of a species, that someday we connect back and grow with nature rather than fight against it. Together is the only way we can ensure we survive, or maybe we will need a one way ticket to another planet altogether, a little more "home-like". Maybe we can make the buildings in brown and green shades there. Fiction is what we are creating every step of advancement, I hope some reality was retained. I hope to get back to reality, I hope to find my way home, close to nature.

Closer to home.

[Thought]: Womanhood is not pads with wings! Happy women's day btw.

I am stunned. I am a woman. No not stunned by a fact like that, but by the international women's day ho hum. One advertisement after another, must programmes are being sponsored not by the diamond or gold or luxury product companies, but by companies that make sanitary pads. Seriously, I am a woman, on woman's day the sight of a sanitary pad for myself is the last thing I want. I wonder how we as a species even got here.

I can't stop wondering about how half of the species accepts walking almost all their lives with diapers of one sort or another! Let me break the rules and tell you what they did not tell in the gender education class that gave free samples of the pads. It was in high school, just a regular day. All the girls from my class were asked to assemble in a room. There were rumors as always. Rumors said they were giving gifts only to girls. We were happy to be favored over the boys, and hoped we get some nice cakes. The meeting was a haze. I understood nothing, I know most understood nothing too. Some girls would stop speaking for a while. We all walked out with indifference and a small packet that did not have cake. Somewhere it was agreed upon by all girls to be hush about the contents. I had bought some of these for my mom and sister, but was ignorant about what it was. Well, the day ended. I don't think I was much educated. The application of the class came many months later. I did not even think about the class, looked at mom helplessly. For the first time in my life I had hoped to find an instruction manual, but had none but motherly advice to go on. It was not that the advice was bad, just that most of it never tallied. Some moms said play as much as you want, others asked to practice restrain. Some brands were supported while others no. No one said anything about so many things. And even today, it is a hush hush talk and even today I wish there was a manual.

I know like many many girls out there, when I had to sit through play time or was desperately hunting for a pad because I was not prepared, I wished I was a guy. No one is ever ashamed of asking for band aid or dettol, why are we made to feel ashamed of asking for a pad? Isn't being hurt not enough,  why is shame taught with it?!

Most of the other times, I am perfectly content with my allotted gender. On those days I wonder what a terrible engineering fiasco this design is. It's unpredictable, messy, bloody, painful and a great source of anxiety. Inspired by the latest movie on Allan Turing, I must say this feels very much like ENIGMA. The operating principles just reset every month to factory settings. Almost like having customized your browser over a month and it crashes, every pointer, bookmark, app deleted. You just start over.

I have been wondering why sometimes women don't plainly state what they want. Why do words get muffled with emotions. As I am growing up, I realize among the million threads my mind is processing, it is very hard to decipher my own feelings. It's mixed with a cocktail of hormones who's stoichiometry changes every few days. Too little time to decipher things. It somehow is not such a problem at all. It makes one wiser, compassionate and a little more human where you on some days have more patience and on some lose your head with others. All in all it is an amazing joy ride, full of experiences.

In the absence of this chaos I think every moment would be boring. An utter lack of drama, passion, romance, music, good food and just so much less color. All conversations would be limited to facts and very few about dreams opinions and long arguments. This is perfect, just a little restricted because of pointless rules from society.

To be a women, I think, is to be so alive every minute that everything else comes to life because of her presence. For her the world is an ordered chaos, it has all the elements that make things interesting. There is a lot of mystery in her world, even for her. She is alive everyday with a new dream. Once she has that dream fixed, she will chase it with such fierce passion that it will make an epic saga, if you care to hear her. What she is not is just five days of a month. To advertise her limitation is a shame to the society that is expected to nurture her.

If you really want to celebrate womanhood, don't limit the symbol to pads with wings. Give her the wings to be herself, to ask what she needs, to be unashamed about herself. Simply let her be, simply let her free. Change the symbol of women's day to just wings, because she just needs freedom to be herself and that is enough.

[Thought]: Unmasked and exposed

One day the bridges broke and tears welled up chocking my words. Anger poured in the drops and they burned my cheek. The episode ended, but I felt calm. Hurt was not in me, the words were out and the tide had subsided. A period, I thought, was dark. A lot changed in me. First there was a crack and then the mask broke entirely.

Have you been here? The light shines brighter on this side. Air is cleaner too. Must be because I hold no thoughts. There are fewer expectations, and even fewer regrets.

I was born. My species, era, country, state, language, family, sex, color, creed, financial status and so many things I take for granted are just coincidence of my birth. My nurture makes my bias for food, habits, preferences and so much more. Somewhere in all these are my thoughts and my self. I wonder where it stops being everything else and starts being just me.

Have you ever pictured yourself, the true self? Not the body you are in now, not the hair, not the eyes none of those will do. You need not even be human. You just are. Perhaps a formless, thoughtful being passing through space and time for now. Quirk must be with you, because you are here now. There is confusion and slight fear, because the self is so ill defined. Without any metric to judge against, it is really hard to give ones true self any form at all.

I am not just a girl, I am not just 5' 4.5", I am not just this and that. I am a sum of all my past, but more importantly I am so many possibilities in the future. But, if all my attributes are stripped, then I am just alive and a mass of my thoughts. That is what makes me unique. My thoughts, that are just mine and no one else's. They stem from the imprints of years, my experiences, my memory, my choices, my stories and my aspirations from myself and from my future. My knowledge, as I test myself to fulfill my own expectations of my being. All of these are really me.

Slowly, I knew I was invisible. Slowly, I chose to not be a metric for anyone else and not accept any other metric for myself. In this I lived like my eyes are closed and like the ostrich no one is watching. I am not watching me. I am free. I can smile, I can live.

There is solitude just within my reach. Now there is peace. Now, even I am not watching, and anyone who is will not believe my intents to be nothing. The biggest deceit is that there is no deceit. The biggest lie is just the plain truth. I am living the truth. I am speaking my thoughts plainly. I am in my own space and no more. I am just me and nothing else. I am living my own life, one dream at a time. I am free and I am me.

I know you won't believe me. But, beyond your disbelief is my truth. You can keep looking deeper, but there is just this. Like the plain truth I am right in front of your eyes unmasked,  exposed and here. It's just the mask on your eyes that won't let you see me. Can you handle to be free from the mask? Or will you feel naked without the charade?

[Thought]: Has Mr. Murphy been visiting you?

So, it was one day where everything was going exactly opposite to what you expected. You put your hands up and say - " OK! I give up, I can't fight this anymore." Yes, Mr. Murphy had visited you.

I wish it was just one day. Mr. Murphy seems to have taken a liking to me, and many on my colleagues in the middle of their PhDs. He has been staying with me for months now. The stay overwhelms me, and no matter what I am doing, plans just don't take off. No, it's not just work. My travel plans, that were on cards for six months, were canceled three weeks before. There were landslides in the place I was to visit. It has never happened before! A family function was also canceled due to extreme unforseen reasons. I also captured the limelight for a brief period because of a huge misunderstanding with a senior colleague. Even when I did not see large damage in the altercation, everyone else seemed overly concerned. That was irritating. While Mr. Murphy has been active, it's not easy to handle him. However, I think I am getting there. Here is my list of steps.

1. Reduce toxic impact: to start with, I thought the period would end soon. The pressure of deadlines got the better off me. I was a little less human than I should have been. I would call this the toxic phase. I would create a zone of toxicity around and I was in the epicenter of it. Many misunderstood me, I tried to explain, but the misunderstandings grew. I finally got tired of letting myself being insulted politely, and I simplified my friends circle. I took out the unnecessary distraction and excess information by getting off social media. Virtual lives are virtual, the reality of everyday life was overwhelming me, so it made sense to root myself to reality and untangle that first.

2. Laugh and surround yourself with easier people: I kept only the brave ones, who could tolerate my toxicity and sarcastic humor, and laugh at themselves close to me. I laughed and joked about my situations, the humor and laughter have a healing effect, which I cannot deny anymore! If you can't laugh, I don't think you can survive. I recommend this over poetry and sadness or other emotions for a while.

3. Fresh perspective to everything: first the situations hit me, then instead of reacting, like I did many times, I stopped. I now keep a little black book, where I rationalize my own thoughts and listen to my own feelings. It sounds like pop psychology, but the only one who knows your situation best is - you. So, listen to your own problems and deal with them one by one. Even the silly ones. Take an allocentric view and listen to yourself. Take the decisions that you can live with. And yes, swallow your pride. Ask sorry if you feel you did wrong, and give compliments to the ones who deserve it. Don't keep a debt of social contracts.

4. Wake up, brush and eat, don't forget to breath: while everyday seems overwhelming, don't let it get you. Simplest thing I do is actually have a list in front of me of the things I just need to do to make my day complete. It may not be the best day, but lying in bed and not starting it is just not going to make it any better! Yes, on that day when gravity to stay in the comfort zone is starting to get better of me, I look at this list. And one by one I tick it off. Item 1: get up. Item 2: brush. Item 3: stretch and move, sweat a little. Item 4; eat breakfast. Item 5: breath. Item 6: work like you love your work even today. Give it 4 hrs. And so on.

5. Learn and commit: yes, everyday is hard. But, the joy of learning something new is exhilarating. So, get a new hobby, not one but three. Let one of them be exercise. Keep it simple, and keep it to the basics. Make it a part of your day, like brush and stretch. After work I took up birding on my way back home. I took up star gazing before dinner. Don't make commitments you can't keep, especially to yourself. Keep the people who can't honor commitments out, don't undervalue your own time!

6. Take reward and escape beaks: while long holidays work for others, for me a break every six weeks seemed best. I need to get out! I miss the sun and fresh air. So I took up trekking. One trek every six weeks or a travel to someplace I have never been before. A low budget is a must for me. These are my rewards and escapes. I am better prepared to tackle my everyday with rejuvenated spirit.

7. Back to the basics: this is the most important one. In work and otherwise, go back to the basics. I look back and check my understanding, I look again at all the results or the lack of them and try to see if it fits the basics. Just like in the check lists, I need to get the step one right, and somehow it will all follow.

But, the one I won't put a number to is from hitchhiker's - "Don't panic". I have written  it down in many places, it helps.

The reason I am even doing all this is because I just don't want to give up fighting just yet. Actually never. I will not give up! I will however learn to live the fight and fight at my pace. I think Mr. Murphy is just here to help me set my pace.

Whatever his intentions, I know I am stronger and calmer at the end of it. Thanks Mr. Murphy!

[Thought]: Expense of dislike and hatred

Everyone has a choice, there is just a small window of choice when one can choose to go down the path of committing to dislike or hate another one. We all have these people, the ones we hate. But, are you prepared for such a commitment?

Truth be told, hating an another is more complicated than loving another. In love the feelings are good, uplifting and they appeal to the good side of you. To hate another on the other hand is to acknowledge the dark feelings of despise, and the betrayal that brought upon such feelings. The pain and the agony would fade, but the mind is unwilling to forgive. At this moment you choose to commit to the anger and hold on to it for the rest of your life. Yes, for the rest of your life! Love may change forms, but hatred can only grow stronger with time. Even when the evidence to the other party's behavior is contrary to your perception, you would suspect ulterior motives and reinforce the commitment to hate. And in this way, hate grows stronger everyday and you uphold the feelings and reiterate the memories and hard wire them. Slowly a part of you is consumed and is obsessed with hating another one.

Hate is reciprocal, most of the time. To be hated with similar intensity every single day is phenomenal. Even if the people you love forget to remember you, your enemy will remember you, everyday. In the obsession of hate, in the best and the worst moments, the enemy will think of you and tick another milestone on one of the sides.

I know I would be honored to be someone's contemporary with such intensity, on the other hand I lack the commitment to such hatred. I have too many things that occupy my day and night, my energy is dedicated to many more things. Truth be told, I never met anyone worthy of my hate. I never let anyone so close to hurt me that deep and work that intensity. I for one, cannot make such commitments easily, so no I really don't hate anyone.