I think the most important force that drives humans is self-interest. No, not saying this is the only factor, but this is the top one, it is the way humans have evolved, part of the genetic make up, and end of the day, Darwin compels. And that altruism, philanthrophy and others of its ilk are indulged in because they are associated in some manner with a positive stroke. Also, the mind or brain – will not get into semantics- has a limited capacity to absorb information and process it. So we tend to classify, focus, sort and drop information that is not totally key to staying alive. To the extent that information that is dissonant with what we believe (or we like to think we believe, fine line there) we tend to drop or overlook. If we didn’t, we couldn’t function. There are hardware analogies.

There was a study sometime back that measured the emotional responses to situations where 2-3 people were involved, say in an accident; as versus a mass tragedy. The findings consistently showed that singular accidents tend to earn more empathy/ sympathy cookie points so to speak, as versus incidents where masses were involved, with the cut off at about five people. The brain just cannot grasp the enormity of a tsunami or a Darfur. On the other hand, a patient with cancer or a single child kidnapped, anyone can identify with. Maybe mirroring also plays a role here, in your mind you put yourself in that situation. I think there are people with higher empathy thresholds. As also trained professionals- doctors, social workers- with higher thresholds. But at best this can be only baseline incremental. No, a Mother Teresa or Gandhiji don’t fit into this grid,and I don’t know why.


Yes, Shiv, desensitization is one reason. If we weren’t, we couldn’t function, and it is happening too often to register, let alone prompt a shock reaction.
I am not so sure about seeking for a reason to live when we know we eventually have to go (I’m being polite ha). If you remember that tale about Yudhishthir and the yaksha, the secret which everyone knows and no one admits to is his own mortality, this is the greatest con job of all.

Mystic- yes, it is enormous and it is a tragedy but it is way too huge to draw a visceral response. A single mother with a starving child, yes; but a town full of mothers? That’s way too many. If copper or oil or similar is involved, aid will reach, that’s understandable without going into a value judgement, there is something in it for the countries lending a helping hand. Sometimes I wonder if there were no horror stories, no breaking news what would journalists write?

Disclaimer: half baked thinking, provincial and not linear at all, read at own risk.

Darfur. Afghanistan. Chad. Sudan.
So many places.
Too many places.
Bleak. Soul-killing. But now we don’t recoil.
People are tired. The horrified quota’s done.
People are tired Of being weary.
25 mill currently internally displaced. 1 bill more by 2050.
Persecution/ conflict/ run for your life
Add: Climate change/ salination/ rising sea levels/ desertification
Displaced. What a word. Rootless.
Wails, sighs, mind numbing gray.
“Enough already!” they say.
So these tired stories,
Drop off the front pages, tucked in some place.
Not too near that ad for a sale
Or that Wal-Mart story, Wall Street bonuses, all’s well.
People are tired.
So they limit.
The boat people, remember, hungry, wet and abandoned, on the high seas?
They’re going to build a wall, now, to keep people out, land that technically, historically speaking, all said and done, is theirs.
So many more.
Blessed are the meek, the abandoned, the despairing, take faith, for the heavens shall visit upon them.
Too much misery. Too much suffering. Much too much pain.
If there were something like a sympathy/empathy threshold. It has long gone.
Sigma pain is much too much.
An interesting change to observe.

To you I wrote all my songs of life and of love
To you I sent my sequestered why’s
To you I sang of this and of that
Old scars peeled off, loves never had
Childhood prattle and wear-a-mask tales
Twinkledust, makebelieve


In your eyes I saw the immense skies
Rainbows and dreams and the kiss of wet sand
Sunswept coral and wind scorched lands
Church steeples that sprung out of nowhere
My happy head on the line, the stargazer’s nays
furious gales and the gasp of a midnight dream
Twinkledust, makebelieve


My envy at shimmering dewdrops, the bustle of rain
The glimmer in a peepal, silver sighs, why it shakes
a butterfly trembled in a barbed wire web
tiny swirls, duststorms, a starlit desert sky
an eyelash takes wing, before its wished on
Twinkledust, makebelieve


(Shiv- changed it.)

You say: words have meanings.
I nod. Sagely, I hope. Whatever.
You say again: words have meanings.
Sit into slots in the brain.
Words tags. Associations. Random memories stick like glue.
You say all this.
Condensing tomes. theories. Life.
Bite sized pieces. Simplified.
I nod again.
watch what you tell yourself, you say.
Desolate. Despair. Hurt.
Not the same continuum.
So don’t con. Not yourself. No one.
I bristle.
Words have meanings. Words exult. Words laugh. Words sing, speak, weep. Words sweep. the sky, stars, storms and rainbows. Words arranged in lines to look pretty. words arranged with scientific precision.Words like an exalted form of scrabble. Action- reaction- deviation from mean- next line- action- reaction. A superior form of scrabble.
I bristle.

Tell me
And I promise not to be a shrew.
Atleast I’ll try.
Which is good, don’t you think
histrionics ironed out, honeyed smile,
which you’d spot;
anyways these days I mind
my P’s and q’s
edgy over “rude arrogant”.
we could talk,
over latte and masala chai
(personally I think char sau rupya is much too much)
but since we cant, or we wont
just tell me
bet you wont, loyalty, hurt and a funny life.
Don’t you know by now
That people are to be taken
Salt and pepper sprinkled
A bit of garnish
Or like a photo, cropped.
A tape, edited
Free of jump cuts, raised voices, slurs and blurs?
for a voice that jars
best is toned out, stone deaf
Or overlay a sing-song, it always works.
The world’s a stage, play on, Sam.
So tell me
And I’ll listen
I promise not to be a shrew
Atleast, I’ll try

(caution: language)

Sweetheart

“You didn’t pick up the phone?”
“ I was busy. Training. A new language. Programming. Anyway…”, she shrugged, pulling at her T shirt and looking away.
“You didn’t call back later?”
“ I was out. With...with Lopa. You know Lopa?”
“So you couldn’t call me because you were out with some girl. Wow! No. Which Lopa is this now? What group is she in?” he asked, making a note to check with the contacts he’d made at her office on Orkut.
“ Banking vertical. She’s going to US this week. On site. So…”
‘”You’re finance vertical, right? Why is she suddenly your best friend, my sweet arrogant liar?”
“Don’t talk to me like that.”
“I will talk the way I want, you arrogant bitch! Why the hell was your cell busy all the time?” he shouted, pinching her hard.
“The signal…”
‘”Shut up! You’re fibbing again!” and with a change of tone, “ Love, you know I hate to make you cry. You know I can’t breathe without you. Please?”
Pushing a glass of water across the table, “Don’t cry, baby! Please? You know I can’t, just can’t bear to see you weep, oh God please?”
“ What did I do?” she asked, trembling.
‘”Questions! Questions! I don’t like questions. You know that. And you still push me…You dumb floozy, don’t do this, okay, or you’ll be sorry…!”
“But what did I say?”
“You bitch! I’m not good enough for you anymore, right? Got yourself a new lover? You won’t come away with me. You won’t take my calls. All this new-fangled tech stuff. Mad arrogant bitch! But I won’t let you go. No, not now! I divorced my wife. Messed up my service record. Blew up a fortune. Let you go? No, not now, no way.”

(296 words for sub.)
Kaushambi Layek, RIP

Temple town
They stand, still brown framed against flaming sunset, row after row of temple domes.
In the middle of nowhere. Nestled under green hills.
Built in the 17th century, or so the newspaper article says, in an inside story tucked between gossip and an ad for government vacancies.
Built and forgotten, this march of temple domes, brown silhouetted on orange-red.
108 temples circled within 350 metres.
The leaves on the peepal trees that line the roads flutter like prayer flags.A lone bird flies overhead.
108 temples circled within 350 metres.
Built and forgotten, except for the simple people who live there.
They take their pleas and requests to the Gods. They light ghee diyas and offer flowers on special days. They anoint the deities with vermilion and chant fractured prayers.
They tell their children the old tales of the boons, they fast on auspicious days, they invoke the Gods when calamities strike.
Built in the 17th century. In the tradition of a lineage of proud kings, traced to 185 BC. Kings who raced to build temples. Temples that would outshine their predecessor’s.
Maybe a justification, king so-and-so was here, he loved, he lived, he died.
Temples in the middle of nowhere. 108 temples under the green hills.
108 temple spires that drink in the quiet moonlight.
A town of temples. Terracotta and stone dreams for the heavens.
Built 17th century. It must have been grand then.
Now self-professed collectors walk in and leave with a piece of terracotta history, a living room centerpiece.

Karankey
Pruthvi- vayu-tej odhi
Chali jaaun tyare
Paandadu pan nahi haley
Koi akash ghoshna nahi
Ambar shithil
Samay nirantar, moongo, sakshi.
shant saumya
Sumsaam
Koi aakrosh nahi.
Koi vednaa nahi.
Na aagal ulaal na pachal haraal
Pachi jid kevi?
Maangvani, hatagrah ni maney tev nathi.
Munga modhey hasta rehvani tev chey.
Etleyj
Juvo, maru ek kaam karsho?
Vyakti- vishay- naam sarvaney
Smaran maathi bhoosi nakhjo
Halveythi.
Potanu dhyan rakhsho
Ema maaro jeev kyank khuney bandhayo hashey.

“Enabling.”
“How?”
“Like annealing. Eutectic point. Sublimation.
A jump past stages. In that inner- independent-interdependent swirl.
No? ”
Better this, than mention that blue shimmer over Hagia Sophia.
In quick step with those penguins.
An aurora streaking the skies.
Finally free.