Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Delhi morning

These are the kind of scenes one comes across on a gray Delhi morning. The fucked-up truck needs no explaining. The birds here are parrots. There were at least 200 of them all over, decimating the maize crop in the farmlands along Yamuna.

Parrot Gang (by uhbiv)

Can you believe that there roam people on Delhi roads with a streak of utalitarianism?!

First come these folks on scooter, out for catching some morning breeze. They make their mornings worth by helping out the cart and rickshaw pullers on long/steep stretches - by pushing their carts with their left foot, while having their scooters on full throttle; the carts soon acquire great velocities and hurtle down the empty roads. One such person I came across was bent on helping two at a time, time sharing thier pushes.

Then is the tacit agreement between auto-rickshaw drivers and handicaps on wheelchairs. Detailing one such sighting: the auto-rickshaw slows down for a wheelchair-bound-man on the Delhi-Ghaziabad highway, and after the man has a good hold of the machine, they speed away. The handicap finally lets go of the auto-rickshaw when his wheelchair exceeds 60kmph, and then cruises along for as long as the speed holds. Cyclists and motorcyclists, unaware of this mode of acquiring velocity, gawk at the handicap as he overtakes them. The handicap runs out of speed, and looks back for any approaching auto-rickshaws; his face a testament to the taste of speed he's just had. I cycle past him, reciprocating his spirit.
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DU campus and cycling routes - map

Few days back I had a newspaper mention (HT) for a map that was used to introduce Delhi University freshmen to the campus, esp the cycling routes in and around. This map was one of the rare things done outside a personal fad.

I. A rough sketch drawn sitting outside the DU Metro Station, entirely by memory
II. Sketch translated into digital image through scanning
III. The scan traced into a fully-fledged colorful vector map



Reminds me, should make it CC as well.
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With the average human intelligence going down to the capacity of a tweet, its time I follow suit. As it is, my blogging has been thinning out in quantity (blogging has never been about quality, idiot). On retrospection, the inclination seems done with; neither have blogged in the most exciting, nor in the most dull of recent times. Or maybe I'm contributing to a fictional online movement that encourages to reduce our byte usage on servers.

My communication radius has grown smaller - despite the contacts with time. Now I'm mature enough to analyse myself and declare my urban dwelling a cramped exercise. THE CITY HOLDS LITTLE. Even the mango season is over. I'm not the only one bugged out; everybody who isn't with a girlfriend or wallowing in their own ego is. Maybe I'll plan exit for a while with one of my friends - probably, Chandresh - most likely, Aditi.

Leaving out the optional baggage of humanity, Delhi is nothing more than a marsh with the occasional bubble pop. The most exciting Delhi has been in these summers was yesterday, when it rained for hours, resulting in the first frogs/snails/earthworms/cicadas of the season. The atmosphere they create is sensational. I have no idea how great it is on the other side of human nature, one that hates mud and croaking frogs, and lives for clubbing and phrases like 'smack that'; nobody that I know of is like that.

ongoing: Quizzing and cursing myself for the 'unintentional' roles I've played.
heute: prufung kaput
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Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Catdog

Stuff a dry cloth into your mouth, hold it there - not pressing too hard, and feel that urge to throw up. There is no conditioning that can help get over this core instinct. It might be an indicator that what inches towards our food pipe isn't fit for swallowing. Or it might be a misfire of an impulse that was triggered when our ancestors would attempt having unskinned meat - dead things with hair still intact.

Talking about 'dead things with hair still intact', as I was returning back home with Bipasa, there was a dog walking ahead, holding a pup by its neck, or so I thought...it turned out to be a dead, mangled cat. It was the same cat that used to rummage through my neighbour's garbage every morning. The dog paraded it through the residential area - surprisingly without coming into anybody's observation, and finally entered the garden. I followed sometime later. Looking about the trees and bushes at dusk for the dog, expectedly tearing away the dead cat, brought about an alien sensation - like I was stalking a larger animal feeding on its prey in the forests. It was both a nervous and nostalgic moment at the same time. But I soon found that the dog had dumped the cat under one of the bushes along the walls of the garden.

Upon mentioning the death of the cat (with the gory details) to my neighbour, who was never bothered with the cat's activities, and asking him if that was unsettling for him in any way, he replied that it was 'good news' to him.
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Tuesday, July 14, 2009

No respited

The night sky bears a rosy tint, one that is painted about by the clouds that promise rain. This isn't right...there is nothing rosy to speak about them - the weather has been harsh, the crops have shriveled, and the country is pressing my friend to press the govt to declare a drought. I have a friend who now refers to air-conditioned environs as "my land", everything else is "out there".

Delhi has stayed under clouds for the past couple of days; but we only had a brief spell of rain the previous morning - a morning on which I was woken up to the sight of a pigeon directly above me; it had found its way in, and was doing the balancing act on my delicate clothesline; the idiot panicked and took some time to find the exit that lay straight ahead. My second interaction for the day was with my bicycle downstairs, that I rode across the length and breadth of the campus, further on into the greens of Delhi Ridge. The next hour was spent along the serpentine lake (aka the death lake) on the bicycle watching monkey, peacock, mongoose, and snail families equally relishing the cool morning, and bumping into humans on blind turns. The snails made for a tough obstacle course along the route, but to my credit, I didn't crush any.

No respite, the overwhelming heat brings out overwhelming memories.
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