Folding a shirt on a windy day.
As I was trying to fold clothes, against gusts of wind blowing through the window, struggling to lay the shirt flat on the bed, I thought:
It’s wonderful to have this struggle, it’s all here only on earth, thus far: the gusts of wind, this shirt struggle, a sunny day in India.
And so here I am, on this side, struggling to fold a shirt dancing in the wind, while there is an airless vacuum of space on the other side, where I could fold it in a snap. For the ghostly creature giving trouble to shirts lives around my house, not on the other side.
[Originally written on 15 December, 2019 in the afternoon in Pune, India]
A paradox in my chest.
There are days when I can hear my heart clear as crickets past midnight when I place my hand over it. And days when there is no sound.
[Originally written on 15 November, 2021 at 5 am in Vashisht, Himachal Pradesh, India]
About a black bird at noon.
A black bird flies parallel to the still waters of the river Tapi, its shadow swims in the river in a perfect jugalbandhi.
[Originally written on 8 December, 2020 at noon in Surat, India]
A pandemic memory.
In a so-called pandemic of the unvaccinated where even the vaccinated get the disease and spread it, I am cool with being the Other for not getting vaccinated, which was due to a well-functioning brain reading stuff from non-legacy media and and reaching the conclusion that I have natural immunity from catching the virus back in July of 2020, when there was no vaccine, no proper information on early treatment, and I was maybe dying, so that the idiots who cancelled and tried hard to ruin lives of those who refused the vax would have perhaps had one man less to cancel had I died, I got the virus in those days when we were forced to sit inside our houses and wear The Mask made of tablecloth, but only when outside, inside the house was fine without it because the air outside and inside the house is different, right? 😂
And while the vaccine booster shots sound cool, I simply do not have the money to buy yet another subscription.
[Originally written on 23 November, 2021 near midnight in Vashisht, Himachal Pradesh, India]
A SpaceX memory from 2020.
I have seen this countless times and I am still almost as amazed as seeing it the first time.
Who knew we’d see a booster rocket in the sky, breathing fire in its tail, and as it falls down, the rocket is on its own but not to crash and burn in the ocean. It has learned how to steady itself, it knows how to spit out a ball of fire to apply breaks, and it lands back on earth straight like a pine tree, facing the sky — as if it never left.
Who knew we’d see a rocket fired to the edge of the earth returning to us with only trivial scratches. Even synchronised returns of two at once.
It used to fall down. Now it does a reentry. A return to the starting point, a return to home.
[Originally written on 31 August, 2020 near midnight in Pune, India]
Silence of the wind.
One of the most noticeable absences in Surat ever since I came down from the Himalaya?
The wind. It’s gone missing. What’s already absent by form (cannot be seen) is rendered more absent here (cannot be felt).
Arrested by the winding buildings of the city, it barely meets the ground. So it appears quiet outside — there are no secret streams of air trying to take me here and there.
I notice this more than anyone else for I have become an expert on optimal weather. Windy atmosphere makes life pleasant and inspires creativity. Its spectral presence is something to marvel at. If you can set aside how something works, if you can sometimes leave intelligence to rest, you can easily marvel at things. If you know how to see, a gust of wind is a fine act of magic.
Shuttling between Kalpa and Surat.
It is past midnight and -1 degrees of very pleasant weather in Kalpa, HP.
It is past midnight and 24 degrees of hot and humid weather in Surat, GJ.
Physically, I am in Surat unable to sleep.
Mentally, I am in Kalpa as if I never left.
MOST WANTED: Unvaccinated entity in the Himalaya.
An unvaccinated male entity — ID #13A06G-20-21 — is on the loose since over a year, roaming freely across the Himalaya and spreading the Covid-19 wherever he goes. A life-threatening danger to everyone else, this degenerate was caught on multiple CCTV cameras riding an olive-green Hero X-Pulse 200 motorcycle with a big yellow backpack tied to the backseat.
As part of the government initiative to vaccinate everyone that we, the trusted Big Pharma scientists, are proudly sponsoring, we will offer a cash prize of 1 CRORE rupees to anyone who brings him to the local authorities so that we can vaccinate him thoroughly like a lab rat for our Wuhan-made viruses.
A memory from 22 December 2021 at 10:29 am in Vashisht, Himachal Pradesh, India.
A blindspot in flight.
Here in the Himalaya, in the upper-Manali valley, as I’m facing and looking at my favourite sight, the magnificent Friendship Peak mountain, a crow flies into my vision, flying from the mountain and towards me, a blindspot in my view of the mountain, I see him from the front, a vague shadow with flapping wings, and I see no other birds, I even forget to see the mountain as my gaze shifts to the blindspot, the bird itself, as I see him come so close and then pass over my head as if he was signalling to join him, then he takes a gentle turn towards the south-west, so I see him from the side like a plane, a pocket-sized Airbus A380 powerfully swinging the wings, I almost wanted to give him a push, I almost wanted to join him.
A memory from 18 December 2021 at 3:47 pm in Vashisht, Himachal Pradesh, India.