Skip to main content

Desolation


Some gates thrust upon us an impression of desolation. They may be left open, but they don't invite; rather, they repulse.  It's not the Nature with her trees and plants or even its aridity that repulses; it's the gate in such a place; a gate that looks out of place; a gate that doesn't look like a gate!


Take a look around and you realise that you are not alone.  There is another creature that looks forlorn too.  Its company is no consolation.


Nor does it seem interested in your company.  Maybe, it's looking for something to eat.  A little water to drink.  A shelter from the heat of the summer sun in Delhi.  Is it wondering, like you, what we have done to the planet?  Why did we make such a hell out of it?  Why couldn't we get along together like the passengers on a train... knowing that the journey will end anyway?


No, it's not interested in your company.  "Good bye."


PS. All the pictures were taken this afternoon from one of the rear windows of my residence.

Comments

  1. nice clicks and stronger depiction !! :) lucky u .. still have so much greenery and wild life(should i say.. coz i dont see them that often in my part of the country :) ) around your house :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, in a way I'm lucky. Very few people in Delhi can afford the luxury of so much greenery in their backyard.

      Delete
  2. It's so poetic.Like the lovely pictures.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Some gates thrust upon us an impression of desolation. They may be left open, but they don't invite; rather, they repulse. - This speaks to me on so many levels. Thank you for the wonderful post today.

    ReplyDelete
  4. A beautiful poetic-prose, Matheikal. Yes, human beings are most likely the biggest threat to many animals, so they have reasons to react/ think that way. Nice blog.
    Brilliant pics.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Without the humans around, the planet would have been a far better place. But planets too have tragedies to narrate!

      Delete
  5. Humans should have stayed the way they were! as Monkeys! nice pictures!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Right Jayant. The evolution was not so good for the planet!

      Delete
  6. Replies
    1. Thanks, Namrota. Hope to see you here more frequently.

      Delete
  7. My takeaway is "Monkey see, monkey not do!"

    I do not believe this is a stand-alone post; I think you took the photographs with the post in mind. Perhaps a series in the offing? Many more photographs where these came from? I am curious.

    I am not exactly sure I agree with sentiments about human beings despoiling nature etc. as espoused in some of the comments. But, that is for a different time and space.

    RE

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The post was not at all meant to be about human beings ravaging the nature. You are absolutely right, Raghuram, about that. The very opening sentence of the post sets the theme... and, yes, I have much, much more to say about it. I can (and most probably will) write a book about it...

      Delete
  8. Peaceful coexistence doesn't exist. We have made a hell out of this beautiful planet and each day we are getting worse.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. People don't want any peaceful coexistence, Saru. Strife is an entertainment!

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

Waiting for the Mahatma

Book Review I read this book purely by chance. R K Narayan is not a writer whom I would choose for any reason whatever. He is too simple, simplistic. I was at school on Saturday last and I suddenly found myself without anything to do though I was on duty. Some duties are like that: like a traffic policeman’s duty on a road without any traffic! So I went up to the school library and picked up a book which looked clean. It happened to be Waiting for the Mahatma by R K Narayan. A small book of 200 pages which I almost finished reading on the same day. The novel was originally published in 1955, written probably as a tribute to Mahatma Gandhi and India’s struggle for independence. The edition that I read is a later reprint by Penguin Classics. Twenty-year-old Sriram is the protagonist though Gandhi towers above everybody else in the novel just as he did in India of the independence-struggle years. Sriram who lives with his grandmother inherits significant wealth when he turns 20. Hi...

The Ugly Duckling

Source: Acting Company A. A. Milne’s one-act play, The Ugly Duckling , acquired a classical status because of the hearty humour used to present a profound theme. The King and the Queen are worried because their daughter Camilla is too ugly to get a suitor. In spite of all the devious strategies employed by the King and his Chancellor, the princess remained unmarried. Camilla was blessed with a unique beauty by her two godmothers but no one could see any beauty in her physical appearance. She has an exquisitely beautiful character. What use is character? The King asks. The play is an answer to that question. Character plays the most crucial role in our moral science books and traditional rhetoric, religious scriptures and homilies. When it comes to practical life, we look for other things such as wealth, social rank, physical looks, and so on. As the King says in this play, “If a girl is beautiful, it is easy to assume that she has, tucked away inside her, an equally beauti...

The Lights of December

The crib of a nearby parish [a few years back] December was the happiest month of my childhood. Christmas was the ostensible reason, though I wasn’t any more religious than the boys of my neighbourhood. Christmas brought an air of festivity to our home which was otherwise as gloomy as an orthodox Catholic household could be in the late 1960s. We lived in a village whose nights were lit up only by kerosene lamps, until electricity arrived in 1972 or so. Darkness suffused the agrarian landscapes for most part of the nights. Frogs would croak in the sprawling paddy fields and crickets would chirp rather eerily in the bushes outside the bedroom which was shared by us four brothers. Owls whistled occasionally, and screeched more frequently, in the darkness that spread endlessly. December lit up the darkness, though infinitesimally, with a star or two outside homes. December was the light of my childhood. Christmas was the happiest festival of the period. As soon as school closed for the...

A Government that Spies on Citizens

Illustration by Copilot Designer India has officially decided to keep an eagle eye on its citizens. Modi government has asked all smartphone manufacturers to preinstall a government app, Sanchar Saathi , on every phone in such a way that no citizen can ever uninstall it. The firms have been also ordered to install the app on existing phones too using software-update technology. The stated objective is to strengthen cybersecurity and protect users from fraud. The question is why any government should go out of its way to impose “security” on its citizens. For over a month now, I have been receiving a message every single day from the Government of India’s Telecom Department to install the app on my phone. I wanted to block the sender, but there is no such option. Even that message is an imposition. I don’t trust any government that imposes benefits on me. “ Beneficent beasts of prey ,” Robert Frost would call such governments. When Modi government imposes security on me, I ha...