Monthly Archives: January 2011

The slippers, the clothes you left away

Picture Courtesy: Photoblog MSNBC

A dog, “Leao”, sits for a second consecutive day, next to the grave of her owner, Cristina Maria Cesario Santana, who died in the week’s catastrophic landslides in Brazil, at the cemetery in Teresopolis, near Rio de Janiero, on Jan. 15. Brazilians braced for more rain Saturday, fearing further landslides after walls of muddy water tore through towns and claimed some 550 lives in the country’s worst flood disaster on record.

It is not that I am under some sedation or this blog has turned into a sad dead blog but this picture above was seriously touching. So I couldn’t help but thinking about the loved ones who go away. But it goes like this:

The slippers, the clothes you left away, who is going to use them? Will you come back to regain back your props someday?
Your spectacles are still lying there on the table, your writings, that stationary there is unmoved, will you come back to tell me some fable?
Your wit, that toothless smile was yet so clever, we discussed politics, and well of course Cricket, when will those day come back, I wish forever,
You advice which I tried to always listen, as a mission, I tried to complete your banking transactions, will you come back the next summer season?
Your diary which still holds addresses of people you met, I am amazed by the memory you had, will I ever be able to reach the standards you set?
By the way did you meet other people who left us unexpectedly? If you meet, tell them I loved them as much I love you, I wish them to live that part of after-life very happily,
I am sorry if I ever did something wrong, Sir it was unintentional, I cannot even promise to take care of people you left alive, I am here no, you know it, but I will try,
There is something stuck in my throat, I don’t know what, but I am coughing as I am writing, what effect is this? With your wishes, I did reach somewhere in life. Should I cry or gloat?
Ahh, I am unable to complete this post, so stopping it now, I try but I cannot be ever again your host, out of everyone in this world I miss you the most…

Why should I bother?

‘Not my job’ is the first thing you say when you see a dead dog on the street. Job is to get rid of the carcass by either calling some municipal corporation or D-I-Y (doing it yourself). Do it yourself? Are you insane? You think you can put that body, half rotten, half-open, intestines hanging from one side, and a distorted head falling from the other, to somewhere where the ongoing traffic won’t crush it more.

Bangalore is a busy city. And also sleepy when it comes to traffic at 9 AM in the morning. Now if someone has to rush to office, one will. No matter what lies on the road in front of one’s vehicle. As I was coming to the bus stop in the morning, there was a dog, lets name it Tommy, dead, on the middle of the road. Most of the vehicles were avoiding Tommy but those big buses and all won’t care for a dead dog, and named Tommy.

Now as a sane citizen of this country, anyone could have joined hands to remove the body from the road because, in a way it was disturbing the traffic badly. Also, the holy place called Silk Board was already traffucked ahead. So it was adding ghee in the fire. I could have done it but should I do it? Why should I do it? Not my job. Mornings are not the right time to touch a dead body, that too of a dog, named Tommy. Isn’t it derogatory for a person like me, a Brahmin, to touch a dead dog?

Thankfully, a guy couldn’t handle it more. He looked yet-another-IT-person with fully dressed up to wrestle the traffic and the chores later in the day. He came forward, showed hands to stop the traffic for 5-6 seconds and picked the dead body and put it in between the divider which was the only place he could have done.

I felt sorry for sometime seeing that. That guy then moved ahead as if nothing happened. I adjusted my ear-phones, kept singing to Eminem and concentrated on the traffic which was again in full flow with no dead body to avoid.

Bloody hypocrites we are. What we expect other to be. What we are. What I am.