Smells that remind me of home.... waking up to the smell of breakfast, sun-dried clothes, jasmine flowers

A dust storm broke out over Delhi a few hours ago. Within a matter of a few minutes, the oppressive heat and haze of the past few days made way for a glorious summer evening. The heat is still there. But there is more clarity. I can see the beautiful sun spreading its rays over the city. The green looks green instead of a muggy grey. The winter-like mist is gone. There is some clarity, at least for now. But the fog will return and catch us unawares if we are not too careful.
How much care can one take to keep the fog away?

Bhopal verdict — a disappointment?

The Bhopal verdict came and went.
Many people were disappointed. But seriously, what were they expecting?
We lost the Bhopal battle long ago, again and again. Yesterday, it was just once again that we lost it.
December 3, 1984: People dying like flies after inhaling the Methyl Isocyanate emanating from the Union Carbide factory. Doctors helplessly watching them die as they did not know what the poison was and what drug to administer.
Warren Anderson CAME to India. You cannot fault him on that. Then we just helped him leave, made all the arrangements and wished him Godspeed... Am not surprised he never came back.
We said it was criminal negligence when it was culpable homicide. If people working at a pesticide plant did not know switching off a refigeration unit would have affected the safety standards at the factory and proved devastating, as they did in 1983, what were they doing there? Why were they allowed to be there? And if they did something so inane, should it be negligence or homicide? It could be negligence if they did not know...but there is evidence that they were informed about the act and the dangers it posed.
Why did we let them off?
We asked for more than 3 billion dollars in compensation. Forget the 15,000 and counting lives lost. That sum, disbursed well, could have helped those who survived live a life of dignity with better medical facilities and probably research that could prevent the disastrous effect the fumes had on generations to come.
We settled for a pittance. $470 million...We sold ourselves and our people for that sum. Whom were we trying to appease?
We let a case that involved the immediate death of 3,000 people and the subsequent deaths of thousands others drag for more than two decades. We never made the attempt to make the man who headed the Union Carbide accountable for the disaster the company caused.
We forged new ties with the company in its myriad forms. We accepted funds from it in other ways. We told the people they were hallucinating when they claimed the water in the area was poisoned.
We allowed the generations that followed forget the Bhopal Gas Tragedy so much so that in Bhopal today there are people who did not what happened on a cold winter night of 1984.
We clamour for justice. We want those men to be sent to the gallows. And we are disappointed when seven of them get two years in prison. Why?
The people who are struggling everyday for pure drinking water, adequate compensation and more may be agitating because they believe in justice. I am sure they will appeal the trial court's verdict.
But I am a cynic. Or have I become one? I know the same politicans who allowed Anderson to get away, who claim the water from the area surrounding Union Carbide's skeletal factory is drinkable, will be voted back to power. And they will continue to spend millions on building a memorial for the gas victims even as they cite paucity of funds when it comes to spending on research into the ongoing effects of the dance of death.
And the same politicians will set up more memorials when another such industrial disaster, god forbid, occurs in some other unsuspecting factory in some other part of the country.
For God's sake, there's more to worry about right now. And public memory is short-lived. We will wait for the next anniversary before raking the same old facts again. Meanwhile, life will go on in the ghettoes of old Bhopal, and in a sunny villa somewhere in the US.

Rain, memories and more

Waking up to the rains always takes me back in time to a city I loved a lot and some wet pages from diary of life.
Monsoon mornings used to be dark, yet cheerful in Calcutta. If the rains had just begun the night before, a trudge to school through flooded roads would be in order, followed by empty classrooms, socks handing from chairs, special tiffin to be shared with special friends and a lot of free periods. If the rain had been on for a few days at a stretch, it could also mean no school, hot pakoras at home, games with the family and television.
It was the same this morning too. In distant Delhi, distant geographically from the place called home in my childhood and further still from the home I go back to today, and distant too from the person I was then to the person I am now, the morning showers bring back the same scenes. A two-room flat on a first floor house, a bigger house a few years later, with a beautiful garden outside my window....the smell of the wet earth was the same throughout and is the same today.
I reach out to pull my favourite blanket from my childhood over my face and laze a while longer when the raindrops on the window in front of me create a haze. I can smell my mom's cooking, hot coffee brewing in the kitchen, nauseating me, even as lovely hot breakfast gnaws at my hungry stomach. I open one eye to call out for my brother sleeping next to me and realise the gas stove in my kitchen hasn't been switched on in the past few weeks. And my brother is probably handling a shift at his workplace miles away. The only smell is of the trash I have forgotten to turn out for the third day in succession fighting with the fresh air struggling to coeme in through the barred window and from under the door.
I wake up, let the air in, let the morning in, let my present in, and stand watching the trees sway in the breeze. I loved that morning long ago, I love this morning too and no matter where tomorrow dawns, it shall also be mine and I shall love it too.

It's amusing, but the only messages I have received in the past few days have been either replies or service messages. Seems very far from everything. But better to be disillusioned and lost than living in one's own imagination.

Storytellers from beyond

It is such a pleasure to visit new places. Some of them you visit in real life, while others you visit through other people. I have loved to hear about such places... where I would then take myself and rediscover it thorugh my own understanding. These are places in the geographical sense of the term. Others are there in history, in culture.
Listening to tales, allowing their magic to wrap itself around you, growing in a different childhood, making friends with people you would never have met nor can ever happen to meet.
Stories that never end. Stories that go on into dark winter nights. Stories that carry over into misty sunrises. Some that take you back in another person's memories. Others that take you into someone else's life, childhood and more.
I wish these stories continue. There should never be an end to what can be shared. There should never be an end to the desire to share.
Share stories, share lifetimes and share lives.

This is a criticism I have been facing for a long time and from many people. About not being strong enough to stand up for what I believe in. And I heard it once again today.
That I did not stand up for someone I should have stood up for. I know I failed, and I don't know what I should have done.
The fear is I don't know if I shall pass the test the next time.