upheaval

theatres are attacked. an individual who was named as the most powerful/influential by a plethora of best-selling cheap gossip magazines can only sit and tweet his anguish. his fans retweeting to give their assurance. an angry mob caught by the imagination of a dubious patriot runs a riot proclaiming its love for the motherland by destroying her buses and her buildings. a few valentines decide to blacken the face of an innocent anti valentine who did nothing but send a few kaamdevs to slap and punch cupid stricken boys and girls and get them married. a few lucky valentines do not participate in this national Babel for they have their own telephonic madness to handle. to shout, to abuse, to cheat, to lie, to patch up. to purr, to bray, to bark. a few others are breathing frustration, searching for love, missing the lost one, running behind the new one. the humiliator and the humiliated. the radios are crooning all time hits, evergreen hits, love hits, disco hits, dard bhare geet hits and then asking listeners to come up with one liners like 'is it just a co-incidence that children's day comes exactly 9 months after valentine's day'. TVs are showing big bindis on foreheads, humans mating and animals making love, headlines and breaking news, ants, elephants, hippos, earthquakes and sharks. then there are those who prayed awake the whole night along with Shiva, the destroyer. it is a night when Shiva drinks the poison churned from the ocean of milk. why O Shiva! Why did you have to drink the deadly poison and then ask Parvati to come and strangulate you with a snake? poor snake. It can't even come and drink water near your cool and nice lingam (don't feel shy. it's okay we worship it here). your bhaktas at this sight will worship the unknowing snake to its death trying to feed it milk and make it hear flute noises which by your very own grace it can’t hear. a million status updates. a zillion comments. nostalgia, anger, sympathy, illness, bitterness. there is pollution, traffic jams caused by cars bigger than the roads. people dying on footpaths because of extreme heat, biting cold and drunken driving. thank god those drunkards on foot did not stamp them. but of course they were walking on the roads because the footpaths are meant for the beggars and the sleepers. few happily married and sadly divorced. a few sadly married and happily divorced. babies being born and babies being aborted. and then there are babies thrown away. politicians die and cities burn. and there is no electricity and candles burn. it rains and there are floods. it does not rain and there's drought. and here you are at the centre of your universe trying to fit yourself in this scheme of things. putting yourself in it for a bit. then pulling away from it. and then doing neither of it. who you are and what you are loses its significance in the multitude of insignificants. then you are left with everything and yet nothing. you are back at the centre to watch and exist. to live and perish.