In dodo's head

Hello me, my old friend and foe, The last I tried to speak to you, all I heard were echoes as if resonating from a cold and dark cave. All I felt was a breeze of emptiness drifting towards me and hitting me face on, the cold air slicing through the unfeeling layer of skin. I returned home that day, feeling desolate and rejected.  The world outside seems to welcome me with open arms and smiling faces, no daggers hidden behind their earthly bodies, waiting to rip my soul apart. And yet,when I look at your hollow cocoon in the mirror, all I see is distrust and hopelessness. Dear me, I often spend hours pondering upon the reasons for this premature demise of the happy soul that once swelled inside. Has she emerged from it, resplendent wings and all, to fly off to a place where there is no melancholy and no disappointments? Or has she faded away, her shrivelled  remains slowly decaying until the winds carried her away to a place of no return. Dear me, the questions I have are many ...

My mother's insistence on living far away from the madd(en)ing crowd has found us setting up a new nest miles away from town. And what a relief it has been, to not wake up to sounds of wailing infants (my uncle being an ambitious pediatrician had a clinic right outside our house) and a barking st bernard (the same uncle has one whose barks resonate in our neighbourhood). Now all we hear are chirps of birds of all kinds, who linger in our garden; and the rumbling of car tires on the asphalt of the road just outside our gate. As I type this, I listen to the calls to God from the nearby mosque, and feel a sense of peace within the walls of my soul. No matter which religion, if we listen closely, with no resonances of bias and prejudices, we hear only words of peace and acceptance. For when the devotees look upward, with honesty and offer their heartfelt prayers, there is purity.

We live in a world where information comes cheap and fast, one swipe of the refresh button on our smartphones allows us to zoom across all latitudes and longitudes of the globe in search of read-worthy news. Our social media friends also go to great efforts to share nuggets of information on our Facebook timelines and Twitter feeds. Whoever said information comes free though, each swipe and click informs us of deaths, thousands each day; most in the name of particular man made social segregations. Variations in Faith and ethnicity often comes at a very heavy price for some, destroying homes and generations in a matter of minutes, eliminated by those who see themselves as warriors or protectors of some sort. All we see through the bright screens of our phones are figures, the sufferers exist  far far away, at least in terms of emotional distance. Tens and hundreds have long ceased to be seen as 'worrisome' figures, for they are wiped out even before our fingers can 'ref...