Update for week ended 18 August 2011
The verdant hills were being destroyed. The new settlers came with their ruminants, chicken, dogs and quickly set down to chopping the larger trees first. They used the timber for their huts. For the wall, the red earth was ideal building material, and the grassy meadows provided the grass for the roofs. The green hills swiftly and deftly turned to reddish brown settlements bustling with activity as the men, women and children jostled around pitching fences to the land they had acquired and acquiesced. There was also quite a lot of commotion as 2 women wrestled and jostled about which standing tree was within whose domain. It was a loud and an almost physical skirmish. Thanks to the men in the new village, this was resolved easily, as one of the men just attacked the other spouse with his machete. There was bloodshed and perhaps the first homicide in this small settlement. Uneasy calm settled in the village as day turned to night, and an older member of this hill community tried to bring in some semblance of civil society within this mayhem. As some rules and regulations were being put together for this community, the anxiety of the Mighty Men who had managed to use their might to acquire large swathes of land was understandable. These Mighty Men had used their physical strength and size to threaten the others into obeying them and “agreeing” to their rule of law. These were the minority but started becoming the ruling majority. No-one dared to question them, until the incident. The wise old man was the trigger to get people to rethink. They had followed these burly men and their directions and converted the green hill to a cluster of mud huts, and verdant meadows into farms. And now they were wondering if this was the right thing to do. Day 3, and disaster struck. The rains poured from the heavens and lashed down on this hill. In earlier days, the trees and their foliage would have arrested the rapidly falling drops of water and allowed for seepage into the ground and into the lakes nearby. But today, the grass roofs could not keep the heavens from pouring through into the huts. The mud walls crumbled, the torrents of rain turned into raging streams and gushed down the slopes. They took along with them mud from the walls, the ground and this “mud-balled” into an avalanche of red earth. The hillslopes were giving way and then the mudslide occurred. The village was destroyed as the people ran helter-skelter looking for shelter. A few that could find a tree or two stood under them shivering, looking sullenly at a loss of their belongings and their animals.
D Street was overtaken by street agitations that started from a Ramlila ground in Delhi. The murmurs of intolerance of the majority of people against the minority rulers in far off Delhi was resounding in this street too. So what initially started off as a post Independence Day silent agitation, started getting noisy. So D Boyz who thought that this would be the start of a good turn for the country – got the Boyz worked up on Tuesday, but as the day wore on and an arrest happened in Delhi, the Boyz shivered and got cold feet – sending the SENSEX down some 100 points…… but with a possible mediation happening after the previous day’s skirmish, the Boyz relaxed on Wednesday getting their SENSEX back from the depths…. But the heavy deluge on Thursday across the country got a lot of systems to go haywire – bus drivers went on strike in Mumbai, so did train motormen, causing traffic chaos in this island city, while rain ground much of North India to a halt as rivers brimmed over their banks flooding villages and towns. And D Boyz who either missed their buses or trains just took off their new Gandhi caps and slammed on their trading terminals resulting in mayhem on Thursday —— SENSEX was finally down 371 points – 2.2% to rest at 16469…..
Meanwhile someone from the skies looked down at his beloved Mumbai and he seemed to be wearing a red hat on his head and flicking a red silk scarf, with arched brows, tilted head and looking out for his lady love with fair cheeks and tousled hair …….. while the local radio station played a popular song from the fifties – “sar par topi lal haath mein resham ka rumaal”. Of course, someone also thought he saw a tall Pathan wearing a bush shirt and pants playing the shehnai and dancing like a “Govinda/Krishna” on the street looking for pots of milk and curd to break in anticipation of Janmashtami this weekend.
The red on the streets would soon be washed away as the revived monsoon would hopefully nurture nature to revive, and the exuberant Krishnas and their cowherds will spread cheer on the streets – did I hear someone callout – Roll Number 21?
Have a nice weekend…. Wishing you a very happy Parsi New Year and Gokulashtami/Janmashtami.
And Cheers….
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