Of “Beef” and the void

It has been a tiring few weeks. I think weeks but it could be months. I try to remember when was the last time I didn’t feel so tired, and I can’t remember exactly. Probably last year? I don’t know. I don’t care. What difference would that make? All that matters is that I am tired.

I sat through an interview of an intern as he enthusisastically prattled off about all his work over the past 3 years, and I realised I had no questions for him. It was a friday evening and I was tired, and I got even more tired just listening to him talk. I cannot remember a time when I spoke that much. I probably never have, definitely not in interviews.

Yesterday I finished watching the Netflix series Beef. It was supposed to be a dark comedy, but I did not find myself laughing at any point. But I got the “dark” part of it, except that that feels like everyday now. I just found it amazing that someone is still outside of this framework and able to label everyday reality as “dark”.

The main thing is that adult life has become a hustle. You work, you work, you work, and you work insanely just to hold on to where you are, while you keep getting less and less out of it. It isn’t just a hamster wheel anymore, but a hamster wheel whose speed gradually increases with time while the rewards stay the same.

But then, this isn’t about only jobs and what they pay, or your boss and your relationship with them. Your health, your family’s health, your relationships, finance markets, your country’s economy, your city’s economy, your region’s politics, the real estate market, the traffic, the weather, the climate, so much more constitute how we experience life every day on waking up. Every one of them is something you have to deal with, and dealing with stuff costs energy and time. Your choices become about where you are going to spend your time and energy, and once you reach your 40s you realise there’s a lot that demands it and there’s also a lot less for you to spend. End result, you are tired – you wake up tired, you go through the day tired, you go to sleep tired. Every day.

One of the reviews of Beef had this line – “At a recent doctor’s visit, I was asked if I was anxious, and I responded, “Isn’t everybody?””
Exactly. Isn’t everybody? There’s just so much that could go wrong, and everything you have slogged up to till now will be gone in a whisker. We probably live in denial about it, but deep down, we know. A lay-off, a health issue or an accident, and everything you know gets upended, and you don’t have a safety net to hold you up. It’s gonna be a free fall.

I wonder how we got here. I remember reading this review by Will Byrnes about Barbara Kingsolver’s Unsheltered.

You do the right thing. You go to school, spend the years, invest the money, put off this or that temporary form of glee, take on the debt, pay it off. Get a job at the bottom of the ladder, work X number of years and move up. There are mis-steps, of course, accidents, bad decisions, re-directions, disappointments. Some big, some less so, everyone has these. You get married, have children, be a solid citizen, join the board of a local youth council, coach your kids’ ball teams. You do the right thing, and everything is supposed to work out ok. You’re not looking to be a millionaire. But you want to send your kids to good schools, see them go to college, have satisfying adult lives of their own. You do the right thing. You don’t cheat on your taxes, or your spouse. You plan for the future, and have a sane expectation that, someday, you can retire and still have a decent life. You do the right thing, follow the course that has been laid out for a very long time, expecting that the promised rewards will arrive. And sometimes they do. But while you were busy doing the right thing, those with the power and the money changed the rules of engagement. So, instead of an American Dream made real, it is as if you have stepped into an episode of The Twilight Zone.

The rules of engagement have changed. Every one is busy, no one has time because they are fighting the same battles. The safety net of affordable rents, healthcare, EMIs, schools, everything has evaporated, and with that the threads that weaved communities together are coming apart. It cannot be emphasised enough how much of a safety net our community – friends of family – was. You lost your home, you could go spend a few weeks at a friend’s place while you recovered your bearings. Dealing with an illness, your family and friends were there for you. You never faced your battles alone.

Now that sense is gone – because, well, every member of this community has to fight the same battles – they are busy watching their own backs (and sometimes because they are just selfish assholes.) All that we have left is fancy vacations to “rejuvenate” (while we stress about flights and hotels), and mindless consumerism to try to fill the void we feel that just keeps on growing larger.

Most times I keep hoping someone would check in on me, and no one does. In brief periods of stability I reach out, and the expectation tends to be the same – they are exhausted with the every day hustle, and were hoping someone would check in on them.

As the battles get harder with time, you are also truly alone while fighting them. And this is the biggest scam that has been played on us.

A Landscape of Spiders

It has been more than a year since I discovered Bangalore University’s bio-park. My haunt used to be Mallathahalli lake, accessed by a cattle path that took me into a section where the resident owlet and parakeets saw me regularly enough not to be alarmed. The path eventually got closed as walls came up all around the lake, along with JCBs and tipper trucks as the authorities decided that the lake had to be ‘developed’, forcing me and all the residents of the lake to move homes.

The Bangalore University bio-park is a wilderness spread over 1300 acres and lies adjacent to Mysore Road and the Bangalore-Mysore Railway line. The large area was daunting at first, especially for someone coming from a lake, where you walk a path and that is about it. And it took a while for the landscape to reveal itself to me.

Over time I figured out the areas where the birds are – a rainwater pond and a ground-water discharge pond. And more importantly, the areas where the spiders live. It was a small matter to be ignored that I regularly saw the rarer species of spiders and birds outside of areas where I had slotted them to be, but it gave me a sense of order to understand the landscape. It was like trying to learn an entirely new language – you start with a vocabulary of a few words hoping to expand it over time.

And over a year later, the vocabulary has been expanding, while much remains hidden. I walk slowly, slower with each passing day, wondering if every dangling twig could be a spider. Most of the times it is a twig, or as a friend joked “a spider-mimicking twig”; just once it was a Miagrammopes sp, a twig-mimicking spider of the family Uloboridae. They look like thin twigs and lie hidden in single strands of silk. You sometimes need to poke every twig you see to spot that one spider.

The Answer to Life, the Universe and Everything

This was supposed to be the year, the one where I discover the answer to life, at least. The Universe and everything else I consider clearly outside my ken. It was the year I was going to be ‘free’ having quit my job and hoping not to work a corporate job again. But it turned out to be a year where I floundered restlessly, had days where I had nothing to do followed by days having no time to pee; where I ran around restlessly for a full month as if my home was under siege. Days where I struggled to see the light at the end of the tunnel, but still days where I was thankful that I wasn’t answerable to anyone for my time.

This is a year that will take a while for me to process, longer than the jiffy it seems to have taken for the whole of it to pass. I wonder how much repercussions I’ll carry from this year into the future, and what kind they will be. It started with me being two months into not having a job and mostly enjoying the freedom before covid struck for the family. This was followed by a bout of anxiety and depression, a couple of months working with an abusive boss, but a lot of fun doing freelancing, eventually leading to the stability of a job that I am growing into and coming to like.

I try to think of individual events, but I have to work hard to find them, and when I do it is hard to believe many months have passed by; the year seems to have passed by in a haze. I remember those March days where I hit an absolute low, and wondered how to go on, eventually pulling myself back by trying to go back to what I know best – surviving. Those days led me to working in a bookstore for 2 months, and freelancing in parallel.

The ghost of the bookstore stint has to be dealt with before I move on. It was two months of work which I enjoyed. But things went bad for a couple of weeks after that before I quit under a spate of invective-laden emails. Maybe I should see the positives in having a boss go all out abusive in emails rather than quietly moving on, carrying a grudge for the rest of our careers. At least the bridge was completely burnt here.

Those two and a half months also made me realize how far I have come from my impatient twenties, where I was ready to pounce upon and judge people for not living up to my “lofty standards”. I couldn’t have flown higher those last few years of my twenties where I couldn’t put a foot wrong. How things changed once the decade turned.

This time I was frequently surprised with my ability to quietly put up with all kinds of nonsense, which also blind-sided me to the red flags that I should have seen coming ages back, and which I was regularly warned about by friends. The scary part is to think of what I might already be living with and blind to.

These couple of months also coincided with three months of freelance writing. Running around, meeting people, taking photographs, sometimes doing the meeting parts while buried deep inside layers of anxiety. When I look back and read the copies that I sent out, it amazes me how much I could get done while feeling like everything was collapsing around me. I don’t know if it is something to be proud of or be scared of, but it was weird to see how far I have come when it comes to the writing process, that I could compartmentalize my work from how I was feeling. It was particularly hilarious when I noticed that big media houses like Deccan Herald and The Hindu had ripped off a piece that I had written while being in a thick, anxious, foggy haze.

Since August there has been some stability. It is not just in having a regular income coming in, but also that my days are more structured. At some levels it is scary that I need to be doing some work to feel ok, but there is at least the consolation that this work is something I want to wake up to. Hopefully, better stability at home will ensure more independence on the needing to work front.

I remember the ride to Nuggehalli and Shravanabelagola at the end of June. The job with the bookstore was in the past, a potential job (the one I am currently working on) was lined up, and some writing happening regularly. The weather had been nice leading up to it. I hoped for at least half a day of good weather and set out. The weather, however, turned and the rains caught up on my way back and pounded on me most of the way. As the storm picked up, I stopped by a bus stop in Solur and sheltered there with other two-wheelers.

I had a brief epiphany where I saw myself at that moment. I was wet all over as I had foregone my jacket’s rain layer, and I was cold and hungry. But I felt strangely calm, my focus only on riding the storm out. I realized at that moment, that for most of the day I hadn’t thought about much on the whole ride – the anxiety had leveled off. In fact I had not ‘felt’ anything for the whole day, and that’s when I knew that the year had finally turned for me.

As the year draws to a close dark clouds seem to be gathering again on the horizon. I don’t start years well; it takes a while for me to come to terms with the resetting of months and usually by that time half the year is gone. At the end of every year I hope the next will be better, but the trend has sustained.

There really isn’t much more to expect than a bit of kindness from the next year. There will be a lot less floundering about, at least on the work front, and that’s a relief. In many ways, I am where I want to be on the professional front, and there is a job that I can make something out of. If only I could speak for my mind and its shenanigans. So much for answers, sometimes all you want is a year where your passage goes unnoticed.

Blank – IX

Institutionalised.

Today is given to thinking about this word, and the different ways in which it applies to each of us. For most of us the source of this word would also be the same – Red in The Shawshank Redemption, speaking of the state of long-term prisoners who’ve been incarcerated for too long to know what is going on outside.

It’s on my mind during the week I rejoin the workforce, 5 days a week, for the next one year at least. The break lasted 9 months, and as much as what I am embarking on is different from what I was doing before, it still makes me wonder. Have we been institutionalised by a 9-5 job, 5 days a week? And does not having that structure leave you a bit…unhinged?

It forced me into questionable choices – like working in a store with a person I was warned about right at the start. But I went ahead, and got burned badly towards the end. But the journey did lead me in interesting directions – mainly the parts where I was writing about the City.

But I cannot escape the fact that life has been “tricky” leading up to all this, that I cannot see my choices separate from my lived reality. Eventually that’s what matters, and there is no changing that, only coping with it. And that’s what will define everything going forward – whether I choose to quit, retire, work, full-time or part-time, it’s the same old question again – how will I cope with it. As Simon and Garfunkel put it “Hello darkness, my old friend, I’ve come to speak with you again”. Or the one I prefer, as they say in Tamizh – பழைய குருடி கதவை திறடி (Tr: Open the door, old blind woman. The old here meaning not old lady, but known for long). There is no reckoning with life without addressing the blind woman.

And yes, I think of the word “institutionalised” applied here also. You get used to that routine of care not knowing a world outside of it. And where does that leave you without it when it ends? That is life too, when the blind woman disappears and you are back out in the world. Oh well, one day at a time, I guess.

(This is a “Blank” post. Like all earlier Blank posts, I use them to cud-chew. Please do not worry. 🙂 )

Blank – VIII

Been a good week, a good ride with a friend and some fun conversations with cousins over beer. And then the Sunday crash happens. A headache that I have been nursing for a while, and all that I have been ignoring and dodging over the weeks, show up and demand that I address them. So much harder when every one of this is something you have been living with for close to a decade and are going to be for a good while with no end in sight.

I like to think there was acceptance of the situation at some point. And at some point during this year that seems to have broken. There were those getaways away from the situation which one lived for, that helped one get through the day. Those were gone with the pandemic. Maybe I thought I had more in me to withstand and be strong through it. And some days there are doubts in that too, questions on how long can one go on, and what if this “long” is too long? How much is too long in any case?

Sometimes the mind puts up best case scenarios, where things resolve by themselves, sudden change in luck, where you are set free to go be at peace. But those are events which you recognise are too much of a long shot, and you yourself have been working against that. Almost like digging your own prison. But then that is the nature of the prison itself, and your action defines you. Choosing something else, makes you someone else.

Fortresses were built over time, painfully, brick by brick, to survive and get through each day. But time has taken its toll, you close a few leaks and move on, more and more keep opening up. Eventually, you wonder if the fortress is itself unsustainable, or maybe the key here is to be constantly building fortresses and never assume you are done. You are done with one, you step back, move on and start building another. The sustainable part might be the building of the fortress, not the fortress itself. There is no rest, only building. The work is never done.

Sometimes I feel the best option is to just respond. Respond to the situation in front of you the best way you can and leave the rest to providence. Plans are always a tough beast to control, you start making them, your eyes lift up and you start looking longer into the horizon, not prepared for what comes at you from the sides. Or you end up doing worse, ignoring what needs to be dealt with looking only at your plans. Eventually it becomes about prioritising oneself or what is expected of oneself? That balance, I guess, makes one what one is. Maybe your choice here defines you. Again, choosing differently makes you a different person?

Such is life.

(This is a “Blank” post. Like all earlier Blank posts, I use them to cud-chew. Please do not worry. 🙂 )

The 10 year job and other ramblings…

Many years back, before this friend/colleague got married and moved to the US, we would meet once every month over beer and dinner, to chat and crib about work. One of the topics that we’d regularly return to, especially when well into the alcohol was about code as art, truth and having beauty by itself. There’d be mention of a few lines of code, so perfectly written that they never had to be touched again. We’d then move onto “My Name is Red” and the ruminations there about what is art and what is beauty. And then finally the purpose of code, which is where we would hit the philosophical roadblock.

The code we wrote ran in routers which were deployed by Internet Service Providers(ISPs), not your average ACT, but those who aggregate the traffic across the world, basically the backbone of the Internet. This market is dominated by the big players like Cisco and Juniper, leaving a 2-5% share that is fought over by many other smaller companies, including ours. So, a minuscule share of the Internet would pass through our code, and of that, we shook our heads, a majority of the traffic is porn. So, all this beauty only to power some porn? We’d drown our miseries in beer. (Of course, there is much to dispute about this statistic, but hey, think beers.)

Blank – VII

I feel the blog drying up. I try to write something, but nothing turns up. Those birding write ups, those trip diaries, and those occasional book reviews have been the red herrings, that the real blog that I used to maintain, to pen what I thought and experienced is dying.

I wonder why that is so? Is it that what I feel has been wrung dry here so many times, that I don’t feel the need to write anything about myself anymore? Or is it that I’ve passed the stage where I was questioning myself, my choices, my fate, and have finally accepted what is as what it is? If that is so, is this a burning away of whatever was raging inside me, trying to get me somewhere? Or is it a sign that I am there and there’s no further need to seek?

I don’t know. Maybe there’s a flow chart for it? Am I at peace? If yes, all good. If not, what can I do to be at peace? Do that. Get back to the first question. Problem solved? If only.

I still feel the void that was there a long time back, I feel that every day at work, sitting in front of the screen, and not having much work to do. Maybe that is the curse I’ve carried all my career, of not having much to do. It’s a surprise it has carried me this far, but it’s also that you learn along the way how to make a career out of doing nothing. As I explained to my manager, most career movements, like promotions and hikes, depend on luck. You could go a whole year not doing anything, and then a couple of weeks before the big review, a major customer issue lands on your plate. Your manager is busy with other personal issues, you main guy in the US is dealing with his own personal issues, all eyes are on you. You manage fine, even suddenly landing a presentation to big shots because your manager overslept his post-dinner nap of “20 minutes only”. You get your “visibility” and you are set. On the contrary, you could spend 9 months executing from scratch a big project, only to have your 9 months end 6 months before the main review. Which doesn’t leave you anywhere. A bit like having an attack happen just before your elections, eh?

But I digress. Or maybe not. The whole point of everything is, maybe, luck. You coast 30 years of your life. Land a job at the highest-paying company to visit your college during a recession year, travel abroad to the point that 10 years since your graduation, you realise you haven’t spent more than a year or two continuously in your city, and even laugh, not even in the same continent. You rack up the air miles, counting the number of flights you take, some for vacation, some for work. You cannot be flying higher. And then, suddenly things change. That sudden hesitation in your parent’s voice. That sudden health crisis, which slowly consumes you. That hesitation in your life, maybe another year. And before you know it, you are here, writing a blog, about to enter the last of your 30s, a big chunk of your life already behind you.

Where does that leave you? Cynical? Even bitter? Or with (a misplaced) optimism? “I’m going to live my life from now on.” A long time back I wanted to live my life. Many years on, I now realise that you only live your life, you never live others’. Yes, we could think of it as battles that we fight in different forms.

“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.
“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

– Tolkien

When the Mirage 2000 that they were operating developed issues shortly on take-off from HAL the pilots were faced with a choice, and they decided to turn the aircraft around and lost crucial moments to save themselves. The choice to turn the machine around likely saved a lot of lives of unsuspecting residents. I remember reading this thoughtful piece on it.

It was a decision made out of priorities. It only takes a microsecond to take a decision, but the priorities themselves take time to build. Over years, perhaps. It is true that anyone who enlists in the Armed Forces is taught and trained to think about the greater good, and it is possible that it is people who already believe that way are the ones who enlist. But how do we inculcate in ourselves these priorities? Or any priority for that matter?

Yes, there are many things that you wish had not happened on your watch. But as it happens, that is never your choosing. Yes, there will be relief at the end of your watch, but until then, you just have to choose what to do, and how best to respond. What we are and what we become is what we choose to do when things happen on our watch. And everything you do, every choice you make, doesn’t stand by itself, but is a result of making similar choices earlier.

Which could be true, we are programmed to respond in certain ways because we have always done that earlier, and it comes naturally. But, what made you make a choice the first time? Was that also chance? Or is that something ingrained in us? Good person genes vs bad person genes? What makes you a Frodo vs a Bilbo or even a Smeagol, given the same ring? Even easier, what makes a person respond to a road accident the way he/she does, by either driving away, gawking, or being the person who takes over and helps?

How much of what I am is my choice vs what I was programmed to be? Does the answer even matter, though?

P.S: Twitter account deactivated for the weekend, although I suspect I might stay away longer. 😉

Once upon a Goa trip…

I can’t believe it’s been 10 years since Goa! I remember the “planning” for the trip. Anush did most of the planning and booking. I was visiting from the US, and pretty much just turned up for the vacation. Aswin took a flight from Chennai to Mumbai, and the two of them took a bus from Mumbai to Goa. I had taken an overnight bus from Bangalore to Goa. Got down at the main bus stand, took a bus to Candolim, somehow managed to find the hotel in the pre-Google maps era.

But that’s not what this is about. This is about this picture. Dec 21st, 2008. The three of us, the camera probably timer fired, look how low the angle is. A fort in Goa, evoking Dil Chahta Hai and the three dudes. Yes, the photo was intentional.

Aswin, too cool for a reaction, Anush, not sure when the camera is gonna fire, and if it is. Me, having run in within 10 secs, manage to squeeze into the centre, and for a change don’t look like I want to break the camera.

All of us, within a year of having completed our Post-graduations. Our aborted attempts at doing normal IIM type MBAs, me moving to Australia for the masters, then moving to the US for work, the first visit back home. Them, having done their MBAs across Dubai and Singapore, one semester this side, one that side, having started on their jobs recently, one in Mumbai, one in Chennai. It was that time of life. The hectic planning, studying, restlessness in our first jobs having given way to our Masters after trials and errors at different things, having now landed jobs and in fields that we hoped to be in for a while. There was going to be no running around after this. This was the deal for the foreseeable future, in terms of work. We were “settling” for the long march.

And of course, in parallel, machinations were beginning at home to settle us down, now that the period of “freedom” was drawing to a close. It might have been one last hurrah, except that we did another the next year to Palakkad, and one more to Pondicherry, but very short ones. Goa remained our second best trip, after Sikkim/Darjeeling.

And then the decade turned. Life changed. I moved back to India, Aswin got married, then Anush got married, one year after the other. And then they moved to the US, different parts of the country. And the inevitable gaps between conversations began. Weeks before you chat, then months.

One slowly cut all ties with the extended family, one still stays in touch, but just about (he’ll hit me for this :P). I realize as I write this, that I have seen Aswin maybe twice after he left for the US, but a few times before that as he was still in Bangalore, while Anush just once after his wedding, just before he left to the US. Not having the same hometown doesn’t help much I guess.

I remember watching DCH and getting really bored towards the end, the post-college life of the 3 of them. We were 21-22, passing out of college at that time, and that’s the part of the movie that mattered, the fun they were having, so much like ours. Looking back I realize how accurate Akhtar was about the whole growing up/old and drifting away part. You hang out together, you are referred to as a group, but before you know it, it’s been years since you’ve even seen them.

Oh well, lifeu ishtene, I guess. Anyway, cheers to the trip and its memories!

Rest in Peace, Putty Girl…

The Cat came into our lives in Jan or Feb 2011. I had just moved back and saw this scrawny cat sleeping near the house, and not running away. Some milk bowl filling happened, a few kittens were brought along, a few were delivered under the TV, some neutering done, and the cat hung around for 6 years after that. What was a blink of an eye and a maturing decade for me, was a lifetime for a cat.

The year dawned with her meowing less, and soon stopping making all sounds. I made fun of her, some sound came, and then even that stopped. She looked weaker, and her movement more trying, that feline grace was no longer there, she scaled 4 ft high walls, but was knocking the milk bowl when trying to gain her stepping, things she never did all these years.

She became more bent, people who visited commented about it. It was harder for me to register the changes. Most likely, I refused to notice the changes. It’s summer, she gets thinner now for the heat. Will be alright once the Monsoons come. Then she started drooling, and not grooming herself, which meant she was now smelling.

A vet visit happened, with a photo taken. I waited inside the one room setup, while a pug was brought in. The elderly vet suggests a chest belt, gives it a few injections, and suggests some diet changes for its weight. How much? Rs. 300.

My turn. I gave him the whole history. Does she drink water? Yes. Then no rabies. Of course not, she’s been vaccinated for that! Plus she’s not afraid of light, craving for it rather.  A couple of meds were given, one an antibiotic. Try feeding her these in milk. What’s wrong with her? Baayalli Happale, mouth ulcers. She can’t swallow because of that. How much do I owe you? He waves me away. It’s nothing.

The cat refused to drink, refused to eat anything. Next morning, she isn’t seen. Once the Sun is out she’s seen lounging by a neighbour’s compound wall. I ask them permission, go in, and pick her up into the common compound wall. She goes to sleep where I can reach her. She’s no longer drooling. Has the drooling stopped or is it dehydration?

Afternoon, I call him. Give me half an hour. I drive down to his clinic. A she-goat outside, with her owner and an auto-driver he’s arranged to bring it. Three injections for her standing by the road. Once in, the farmer gets called. How old is your goat? 40 years sir. Amused vet. How many times has she delivered? Twice sir. He writes down 4 or 2 in a diary. The farmer gets instructions, bring her tomorrow for more injections, give her some bevina soppu (neem) and agase soppu(Flax). She’ll be ok. Don’t go and sell her just because someone offers you a deal. Arthavaaythenayya? OK sir, he leaves.

The other guy waiting before me, gives some sample of his pet for a lab. He gets a long list of meds to give, when to bathe, how much to bath the dog. After 20 mins of lots of meds, and a Rs. 800 bill, he leaves. How heavy is the cat? Must be just over a kg. He fills up three syringes, antibiotics and a couple of general meds. On the way I ask him about the previous guy. German Shepherd. Has skin issues. Skin issues are caused by diet. Which is surprising because this guy is a regional head for Pedigree (food products corp). Most people can’t care for their dogs properly.

We reach home. The cat still sleeping. Be careful, if she wakes up in shock, she might go into delirium and bite. Get a cloth. I find something. Now cover her head and her front body and hold tight. I try holding her, she escapes a bit. Tighter. No loosening. I hold her tight, the cat struggles, then gives up. He checks using his stethoscope. A sanitary wipe comes out, she gets the 3 injections one after the other. I release her. She goes and sleeps a few feet away. He confirms dehydration. She needs to drink water or milk. She’s blind in one eye, he announces, but she’ll be ok. Cats manage.

I drive him to his clinic, my nerves jingling. He gives me an ORS bottle, maybe she’ll drink. Clean her with a wet cloth, and then this antiseptic swipe (which he gives me). How much do I owe you? Rs. 200. I come home, wipe her with a cloth, see if she can drink some milk, she drinks a bit, eats a bit. And goes to sleep near the door. I have lunch, and then can’t find her.

She’s found at a neighbour’s keeping her back towards a wall. Happy to say hi, but not coming anywhere. I give her some food there, she eats and leaves some. Next day I see her in the middle of the road drooling slightly. I carry her in, give her some milk which she drinks, and some cat food which she eats. There’s a faint meow, a sound of relief. She goes to sleep near the door and is missing again in 15 minutes. I find her at the same neighbour’s, but leave her there.

I find her today at the same place, she eats a bit, but the neighbour confirms that she’s meowing a bit. I feel hope, she looks a bit better. No drooling, but no grooming either. I feel a bit hopeful, but I know I no longer will see the cat running up to me, tail up, her meow Dopplering towards me. She’s now an old cat who’ll need to give up her independence and trust humans to look after her, and also forgive the guy who closed her face and got her 3 pricks in the back. The choice will be hers to make, I won’t get a say in this.

Update:

I never intended this to be an obituary. But it is now. A while back a neighbour saw a dog dragging what looked like a cat and leaving it in the opposite site. It was Putti. There was no doubt. I called Kashappa, the area gardener, packed her in a garbage bag, and carried her to the BBMP park. We dug a pit for her, and I buried her, taking one last look at her lifeless body in the glow of the phone’s LED flash. I left a part of me there in the park, under 2 feet of red soil. I’ll miss you girl, miss you loads.

This and that

Well, it’s been a while, but I knew this day would come. A day when I’d be staring at an empty post, needing to fill it in, and not having any pictures to describe. Nope, I haven’t gone gallivanting anywhere, so no photos to share. My bike is running good, so no problems there. Touch wood.

If anything, my stomach is throwing a lot of burn. A bad infection does that to you. And medicines to fix that. I guess they are working, as the pain and incidences of it have been reducing with each day. I am staying away from coffee, with just tea and milk.

Not sure where I got the infection from though. Depends entirely on how long a bacterial infection takes to show itself. If it’s a few days then it would be something from Saturday evening. I really doubt Sunday evening, as no one else seems to have been affected. Even Saturday sounds a tad doubtful cos of the same reason. Could it be a water based one? But the symptoms of those are a lot different! Oh well, enough discussing my stomach problems, I’ll plow on with a bit of pain in the stomach.

June has traditionally been the month I fall sick. The onset of the monsoons and the change from summer to a cooler weather does things to me. Or maybe it is plain bad luck. Can’t beat last year though! That has to be the worst, needing a whole week off from work. To save a day’s leave I tried to get myself up to work on the Friday. Couldn’t manage more than a few minutes.

The arrival of the Monsoons also means that I put on hold all travel plans, except for Monsoon specific plans. It doesn’t help to go get drenched anywhere. It’s not a time for safaris, nor a time for beaches. Treks are interesting and I am really keen on trying one out this Monsoon, maybe one at Agumbe with the leeches. Need to see.

I miss the times spent around the Jog belt in 2013 and 2015 though. The 2015 one was depressing, with not a spot of rain, dried up rivers and waterfalls, and people all over complaining about the lack of rains. Last year seemed to be worse, although from what I’ve heard it was better further North of Karnataka. Only the Kaveri onwards things have been really bad. I really want it to rain well this year. With a strong El Niño looming over the latter half of the year things can get really bad next year.

Talking of climate, it is interesting how Trump’s pulling out of the Paris accord has brought climate change into the conversation. And am surprised, in fact, shocked, to notice how many people around me are deniers. These are educated engineers who I work with every day, who’s opinion goes like “Do you expect me to believe that we humans who are such a tiny portion of this large planet can actually influence things on it?”. And “This is natural. Earth goes through such processes.” I tried the usual things. But making people understand and shake up their opinions and facts isn’t really an easy thing. It goes way beyond facts.

And then there was another who agreed with me, but kept insisting that nothing will happen to the planet. This is the usual George Carlin line of “we’re fucked, the planet will still be here.” Of course, who is complaining about the planet as a physical entity in the first place?! But it is good to make sure you set your viewfinder from time to time. He also added his own thing to the list – magnetic poles might change soon, exposing us to cosmic rays.

It is pointless to argue that life is threatened on the planet by our activities – “Life always goes extinct from time to time”. “We, humans, will find some way to exist.” Unless you really care, it is hard to convince a person that species going extinct in the planet because of you is not a good thing. Yes, we might continue to exist, but it’ll be a lot more precarious existence, where we have to deal with a lot more intense climatic events in a cooked up planet. As a species, humans will not likely be wiped out, but the evidence increasingly points towards it. And more importantly, we don’t know what’s in store. We’ve never lived in such a warmed up planet. The duration when we seemed to have multiplied and prospered is a mere 100 years. We reached 1 billion only in 1800 and the next 1 billion in 125 years! The last 5 have been added in 90 years! Remember that until then our growth was kept in balance by a combination of war, disease and other factors. The larger chunk being disease, not war.

As Yuval Noah Harari argues in his book, this period of 100 years(less if we consider the post WWII timeframe) where we seem to have seen a lot of “prosperity” might just be a calm before the storm. It is unprecedented. Of course, you cannot talk to people all this. Belief systems aren’t about facts, as the oatmeal so clearly puts it.

But then, having individuals believe or not believe in something that is going to fuck with most of your species is hardly going to make any difference. The biggest difference has to come top-down. One only hopes it does. Although these days am rooting for climate change to do its thing so that the planet can get this over with. And start afresh.

Until then, would be better for me not to get worked up when I hear so much idiocy. God knows, there is no shortage of it!