The Tornado explained.

I enter the bathroom. I see the tap. For the Nth time.Water trickling away.I turn it off. For the Nth time.  Every single time i enter and leave this noxious place. The speed of the trickle isn't enough to even move away the strands of hair that lie around, the black standing out starkly against the white. But the speed is enough to set off a train of nervous thoughts in my head. The scale of the situation across the world opens up in my head like an excel spreadsheet that i am so tired of seeing in the techno-crazy classes. How in a million places across this globe that is our home, people are dying of thirst. Those images of people surviving on water that has been drawn and filtered from the gutters around them. How they are denied water on the grounds of something as illogical as caste and occupation by another group of people who seem to think they rule their world (which is so minuscule, their well.)

Children. Younger, livelier, healthier. Better off than millions. Privileged. Educated. And yet, what do i see? they are throwing covers and wrappers strewn across a beautiful campus that is supposed to be one of the temples of knowledge. That is supposed to be shaping the future minds that will direct our country in a better direction. If they are like this. what education are we giving. And what I am seeing is a minute fraction of this kind of population. And then images of the millions of schools across the world pop up in my head where the kind of factory schooling is taking place where children are being brainwashed so badly they will never be able to unlearn the silent atrocities. How they are inducted into the Culture of Silence. For life. How it will take an eternity for them to realise it and try and come out of the conditioning  and how millions will not. They will just float on in life thinking it is the way and the only way at that. Not realising how much damage has been done to them and how much more damage they will do, all unknowingly.

Bang! Whoosh! Zoop! Firecrackers. It's festival time all around. Beautiful rockets bursting into a riot of colors across the black sky lighting up the faces of many. Many just stop, watch and enjoy the beauty of the rockets - some zipping through the night sky and some sprinkling down in purple red and yellow. I see neither colors nor beauty this time. I see the smoke rising up through the air and adding onto the global warming. Increasing carbon dioxide levels. increasing heat. increasing melting of glaciers. More floods. More tornadoes. more droughts. tsunamis. Earthquakes. The scale of it not allowing enjoyment or appreciation. Just smoke billowing into the atmosphere. And a vision of this planet going up in smoke as well in the near future. time running out and at crazy speeds that maybe impossible to catch up with if we are to save the day,  our life, our planet, our home.

Persons on the street. Small children narrowly escaping death as they move away empty-handed after begging from the vehicles when the signal changes at the crossroads. Some see a huge nexus and mafia behind these children. I see the innocence lost and the childhood ripped apart. I see a wish developing in me to take care of them. People dying of hunger and diseases so very preventable in today's age of advanced technology. People in remote areas never even heard of, living a life from another era of sparse and less, unaware of the single or two digit "growth and development" taking place elsewhere that is also supposed to reach them. People in power using, rather abusing, this situation and completely raping the iota of trust that people still have in them to get them out of this quicksand called life they lead. People unaware continuing to lead lives they have without moving up the need hierarchy! People who become aware being put down by the criminals.

Wake up each morning. Go to work. See so many more things that tug at my heart & soul that i ignore and push away some where so deep that some days it erupts from those depths with such a force that it leaves me thoroughly drained for a long time to come.

I open the newspaper at work. Murders. cold-blooded ones. motives? for shedding light on reality of the so-called visionaries and leaders and administrators of the nation. for going beyond themselves and thinking of something higher. for interfering in matters that are none of his business it seems! Anger. Sadness. Boiling and simmering. Thoughts racing in my head to abandon everything and go out and fight. but practicality and 'sense' return. Patience they tell me. Is it seriously needed or is it just another excuse to postpone?

And then i see and hear people claiming to be educated leading a life so selfish and so self-involved and blissfully ignorant of life at its zenith, of the deeper meaning of waves around them ( not that i am completely aware) that they just refuse to see another's side to the story. Leading me to wonder, how many sides to each story there are? which one am I believing? Am i being judgemental? When am i going to reach the end of this seemingly bottomless pit? Am i doing whatever I am doing just for myself? to hush my guilt pangs? Why do I do what i do and feel so strongly?

And how we, who have everything, seem to be throwing it away and wasting every minute mongering over the most materialistic mundane items when we should be trying to help others achieve at least a fraction of what we have gotten out of life's circumstances. So they can also enjoy some comfort and joy.

You may ask why one should. We haven't taken on the responsibility of the entire world. Thankfully you haven't or else this world would be in worse shambles. This human life is so ephemeral and so short. And when i look at myself (and the millions around me) i find that so many of us, including cowardly me, seem to be using our time effectively on nothing productive. We all seem to be constantly wondering on how we can take the most out of this place before becoming the manure for the cattle. And not on how we can give back what we have got which we take completely for granted. And it is not just a matter of giving back but about a basic concern for another life. And as someone rightly once said, if we cannot give life, what right do we have to take life?

it takes everything to remain positive and keep thinking every single day that something good is possible. Some days it's harder than usual and i succumb to the tornado. Yet i wake up and gather what is left of my hope that was shattered yesterday and piece it together. Just so I can move on in life. To collect the strength to remain & Be. To be something better and thus hopefully be part of the creation of something better.