Dumbfounded!

Out a brief candle, but light still shines

You mantle us; you guide us and inspire us

You are one and only but your deeds are many

A second to say hi but a life time to say goodbye

Out a brief candle, but your legacy hasn’t dawned.

-Prashant.s

A sea of foliage girds my garden,

In it are blended many things;

It has crimson fragile roses which stand with funny poses,

The jealous plum marigolds become ferocious.

The sunflowers aren’t in the rat race, nor are they vicious;

Their xanthous petals reflect the sun’s glory.

This verdure is overlooked by the watchful eyes of the coconut tree;

Who’s existence is byzantine and experiences are profound.

The unsung embellishes are the haphazard grass and the pesky insects;

Without them this vista would be invariably incomplete.

This picturesque vista is a result of the endeavors of many;

It has unfathomable memories from years gone by so many.

The garden carries the happiness to see a plant flower

 And the profound sorrow of a plant’s demise.

This splendor becomes dead quiet at night,

 Even the grasshopper can be heard under the moon’s dim light.

A solitary place this garden turns out to be,

Is it a seventh heaven you have just seen?

-Prashant Shashikumar 

Music is omnipresent; it is in the mellifluous chirping of a sparrow, the rustling of leaves, the whistle of a pressure cooker, the intermittent honking in traffic jams, et cetera. It’s just a matter of perception. Music is immortal; however it is played in all felicitous occasions and also is played to belittle the lamentable ambience in a funeral. For its creator, it’s his legacy left to echo around the world and for the listener, it’s about encapsulating emotions and memories.

The pros of music are myriad. Music has the ability to intoxicate someone; to create a state of heavenly bliss. Often, music brings back quondam memories…toddlerhood, family or even a high school relationship to name a few. Music echoes everywhere, in a sense it has bonded individuals of various walks of life-which can be clearly seen in concerts and discos. Most importantly, it’s a perfect stress buster. It has a charm of its own…

On the other side of the coin, music has some cons as well. Jaywalkers who are engrossed with their headsets meet with an accident or in other cases high volume in headsets can damage our ears-but these are all human errors. Nowadays, ironically young listeners prefer trendy and newer music compared to the classics of the past; resulting in the silent end of an era.

On an overall, music is and will remain an entertainer for all ages-regardless of all odds. 

There is a cacophony of voices in the delivery room: the beeping of various contrivances, the relay of medical terms between the doctors and nurses, the vehement squeal of a woman in labour. However, the ears yearn to hear just one voice, the scream of the newborn baby as it adjusts to the outside world. The husband captures every precious moment through his camera while his spouse cuddles the baby, admiring her progeny for the first time. That first looks at the baby’s features: the intriguing crystalline eyes, the soft texture, chubby cheeks, etc. –that is in the true essence, for the child’s parents, untamed serenity. 

Like the millions of adolescents around the world, not to mention the many zealous senior-citizens and venturing children…I too keep a treasure box. My treasure box isn’t as extravagant as its many counterparts around the globe, which are adorned with lustrous linen or glimmering silk ribbons. In fact, it’s an archaic rusted cuboid…but within that tiny area lie many indelible memories.

My memories are under the zenith of safety; as my beloved box doesn’t lie in some abandoned corner of my bedroom, but rather six feet underground amongst the propagating roots of an ancient fig tree-in the vicinity of a flowering backyard.

As endearing as the box are undoubtedly its contents, rather a summary of my tragic life…

As I open the rusty box for the Nth time-almost like a mundane sporadic ritual-nostalgia soothes me almost instantly. I first stumble upon a wriggly wax candle in the shape of a crooked ‘5’-which once adorned my 5^th birthday cake. My mother had scavenged through many shops in our desolate town! Just lying nearby is a tiny brownish trophy which I won years ago in elementary school on the sports day. It looked a shimmering golden-yellow the day I had won it-but ironically I was shimmering a million times more with pride! The there is an ugly caricature of the enchanting Mona Lisa which would have thoroughly disheartened Da Vinci-Apparently one of my best creations in the name of art!

Then there are many more heartening relics like my Mickey Mouse watch, a special hand woven shawl, a greeting card, et cetera.

However, after scavenging through the entire box and flipping through the delighting pages of my history, I come across the single most powerful and abominable relic. It had once rattled the very fabric of my life and had turned my felicitous story into a tragic one.

It was a bunch of yellow stained withered letters…penned by my mom before she died of terminal cancer. In those many pages are reflections of her love, care, wisdom, strength, dreams-all encapsulated over the span of a few months she had left to live…

Normally people store only their best of memories in this personal space known as a ‘treasure box’; but both my fondest and distressing memories reside in eternal solitude in my little box.

My maiden proper debate speech…

Ladies and gentlemen, firstly I would like to congratulate the proposition for their “artistically crafted” speeches. It seems my worthy opponents have browsed through many thesauruses and dictionaries to pick out fancy words to create complex sentences, rather than collecting substance to support their argument.

Throughout the course of this debate, the proposition has daftly been beating around the bush. The basis of their debate has been the cost. They have focused on finding other ‘effective’ ways of using funds that are currently being ‘wasted’ to spend on endangered species.

If a first world country like US can afford to spend $700 billion un necessarily on its Military, then why can’t it spend a fraction of it on protecting another species with whom they share their land with? A species that needs much more support than ours. Aren’t they also the citizens of the country too?

Ladies and gentlemen, due to a narrow minded approach the proposition has taken on this largely broad and sensitive topic, they have partly failed to comprehend the big picture. Let me give you a gist of our side.

Firstly, saving endangered species is a must in order to maintain a natural balance. Biodiversity is like a math equation, if you get it wrong at any point, you mess it up completely. It has a domino effect as your entire solution becomes incorrect, but here we are talking about much more than a zero on your test…we are talking about a possible mass destruction caused purely by human ignorance.

Secondly, my worthy opponents have ironically ignored the scientific benefits of restoring the endangered species- which is one of the major reasons on why we should protect them. From Cancer research (Pacific Yew) to natural insecticides (scrub mint), we have got this far by testing just 5% of endangered plant species and we are losing about 100 plant species daily.

More than 3 million American heart disease sufferers would perish within 72 hours of a heart attack without digitalis- a drug derived from the purple foxglove, which is sadly endangered. Due to our ignorance, we are losing these natural treasures.

Give it a thought, if a plant could help us treat a deadly disease like cancer and save millions of life, then why are we after purposely ‘killing’ the perfect opportunity?

It could even help us agriculturally as there are an estimated 80,000 edible plant species in the world. Humans depend upon only 20 species of these plants, such as wheat and corn, to provide 90% of the world’s food! Look at the vast opportunity we have there. Do you still not want to protect endangered species?

The Mangroves help us tackle global warming by performing carbon trapping, saving lives by facilitation of floods and buffering the land against wood storms. In Queensland, Cassowaries are the basis of the survival of the forests and the numerous species that dwell in them.

Plus, on the larger picture, a new ‘conservation tourism’ industry based on the conservation of the endangered species could make millions of dollars-which could be re invested back into conservation and create employment-like the eco tourism industry of the USA worth a whopping $ 59 billion!

A similar system has been tried and it has been proved to be a success. So, as it is profitable too, then why can’t we follow the ‘you scratch my back and I scratch yours’ principle?

Think about some of our dearest endangered creatures; do you the cute furry Panda and the lovely little Penguins to die within a few years?

When we are benefiting so much from saving the poor helpless species than what is the point of mercilessly killing them due to sheer ignorance? Don’t our next generations have the right to view these species in real rather than a picture of them in an old book? Is it only humans who have the right to life and liberty? Is this the reason we were made the intelligent race, then why choose to be the foolish one?

Moments in the motherland- Incredible India.

*

From a thousand feet above ground, the vista of the island city-Mumbai-is pure bliss. There are patches of green on an incessant canvas of earth brown, a few hamlets and villages here and there. However, when you actually hover above the city,  you see the towering skyscrapers juxtaposing every street in the concrete jungle. It is nostalgic to see Bombay from a different angle- as it is a city with infinite shades.

P.S. I even spotted my locality from the plane-which is an achievement in my diction.

*

I step out of the two and a half hours of pampering-The Jet flight-into the synthetic wry air of the airport corridor. After I get out of the connecting bridge, I find myself walking on the endless corridor. To the attentive onlooker, the corridor feels like a sempiternal river with the connecting bridges its tributaries.

I have walked through this corridor a myriad times. The dusty carpet and artificial potted plants still exist as passive onlookers to the shuttling crowd. However, the corridor seems to have been overhauled as I see a few large paintings (by the elite modern artists of India), lining the otherwise bare walls. An indication of Mumbai rapidly escalating on the footsteps of Western grandeur.

when I walk further in unison with my co-passengers in a funeral pace. I notice a lonely jumbo-jet lying idly, taciturnly observing its ‘little’ competitors buzzing around; like an injured cat watching the banter of mice. The jumbo-jet is none other than the mighty yesteryears ruler of the Indian skies, coined as the ‘Maharajah’-Air India. Its lustrous orange-yellow paint shines under the setting sun; somehow symbolizing its hope of regaining its lost adobe of the sky…

*

The roads in Mumbai are like an acrimonious nightmare to the drivers who are used to riding on the smooth roads of Dubai. There are pot holes here and there, perennial traffic and the hordes of people considering the entire road as a big zebra crossing!

While sitting in a classy weathered ambassador cab, I laugh as muse over an episode from MI4-when Tom Cruise’s suave BMW bolts on these very roads at speeds of more than a hundred and fifty kph. In the meantime, I notice the traffic light (which is camouflaged amongst a shoot of creepers) turn red. Hordes of people scuttled from all corners, on the move in this city that is always on the move, all in the rat race.

Beyond the sea of people, I descry the enormous hoardings that line every street; promoting everything from ineffective beauty products to lame-duck and corrupt political parties. Under the merciless sun and the unfavourable humidity, it is not hard to notice a few populous street vendors selling authentic lemonades and sherbets. Then I take account of the buildings of the vicinity; I spot a few Victorian buildings which have a certain splendour and elegance about them as they possess the grandeur of the yesteryears. They lie packed amongst other concrete structures-all closely packed-hardly noticed by the people.

The signal flashes to green and the ambassador jerks and makes a move, somehow reflecting back to the vibe of this scurrying city. 

psychofactz:

http://www.psychofactz.com/

Shadows and Light Painting by Rashad Alakbarov

(Source: artwednesday.com, via hypna)

fairestcharming:

If the world knows who Joseph Kony is, it will unite to stop him. It starts here.
Watch the video: Kony 2012
Kony2012.com

Seriously guys, this is important. Go watch the video and spread the word.

(via looplines)

(Source: psychofactz, via psychofactz)

Your life has only just begun.

(Source: facebook.com, via 14-billion-years-later)

The graduate student path to beer

(via jtotheizzoe)

(Source: psychofactz, via some-a-something)

‘melting men’ installation by Nele Azevedo

Brazilian Artist Nele Azevado carved 1,000 figures out of ice on the steps of Berlin’s Gendarmenmarkt Square. It was made to raise awareness about the rising sea-levels due to to melting ice.

(Source: magnolius, via some-a-something)