Nature

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This is the place where my dreams learnt how to fly
This is the place where I blossomed into a youth
This is where my heart grew in pain and joy.
Like a human heart, this is my home
Goodbye my home of four long years
Before I go I have  treasured each and every part of you
Before I leave you I say for sure
That though I may come back
It will not be the same as now.
Time would have changed me and you
You’d no longer miss my laughter and tears
You’d no longer miss the way I make this place alive
New voices will take my place
Yet I know for sure even now
That you will always be the home I love
Because this is where I have learnt to live.

Chingam

When the much-awaited spring is around
You and I enjoy our days of togetherness,
The scent of sweet jasmines on our bed
Your fingers undoing my long braided hair.

My six yards of kasavu sari all crumbled
Around your two yards of kasavu mundu
The sweetness of these long waiting years
That finds its way into your limbs and mine.

We rest together after a sumptous onam feast
Amid smells of childhood and boatsongs
That you sing in your sweet mellow voice.
To the snake-boats across the River Green.

When the spring is finally around for us both
We reign an ancient king and his demure queen.

Lovestory

He was no epic hero of the ancient times. Just an ordinary guy with a habit of dragging his feet. At times, he looked so bedraggled that people might stare at him. He looked as if his life was a tiresome journey with his tousled hair and sleepy eyes. Yet when he walked into the room, her eyes lit up in a smile as if he meant the world to her. It was with her heart that he rummaged his tousled hair, bite his ear and whispered sweet nothings into them. Her body craved for him, to take him out for coffee, make out with him while there was still a little life left in it. This desire for his love and the knowledge of him made her long for the day when he would be his. But for a while, one smile was enough and her heart was bouyant and flew up in the air in circles.

She was like a butterfly most of the time but in the growing years, she had grown more and more heavy at heart that she forgot how to smile. Outwardly, nobody noticed the flaws in her- she had the gentlest word and the perfect smile. In her thirties, she suffered from a sense of emptiness that gnawed inside her. Her soul was dead and she had forgotten how to be the perfect fool in love. But with him, she felt like she can conquer the whole world and she wanted to be with him at any cost. But what prevented her from articulating this desire was her reticence to speak out these in words. But when he smiled at her, it was as if the whole world turned upside down just for her. Like the dance of the peacock before the rains, her heart danced in anticipation of meeting him. 

 

Pensiamento Fantastico: Silent Spring

Rachel Carson is a marine biologist who wrote books and pamphlets on natural resources and conservation of the environment. She has already written a series of books on the sea such as Under the Sea-Wind, The Sea Around Us and The Edge of the Sea. However, her Silent Spring published in 1962 was a turning point in environmental studies because of its harsh criticism of the excessive use of pesticides in farming. 

She ushered in a significant change in environmental studies with the publication of her Silent Spring. This was published in serialised form in the New Yorker and later in the form of a book. It is about the impact of industrialisation and urbanisation on the environment . 

The title highlights the silence that come over nature as the dawn chorus of robins, catbirds, doves, jays, wrens, and scores of other bird species have become extinct.The writer speaks of a springtime world that has become completely silent and no birdsongs are heard anywhere. 

Carson pointed out that the reason for this destruction of the environment in the United States was the uncontrolled use of organic pesticides such as DDT, aldrin and dieldrin used to control pest insects in agriculture. Though these compounds led to agricultural benefits, they posed serious threats to animal and human life as Carson proves by giving scientific evidence. 

She gives several examples of how the pesticides such as DDT, aldrin and dieldrin has managed to get into the human food chain largely through aerial spraying. She speaks of the large-scale contamination of the waterbodies in several places and the subsequent entry of these compounds into human and animal bodies. She gives the example of an egg that a child eats, which might contain traces of these compounds from the grain that the mother hen ate for its food. 

The harmful effects of these chemicals on humans and animals ranged from genetic mutation to cancer. However, what she predicted was the complete extinction of many bird species as a result of using pesticides. Moreover, she was of the view that the pests of the future might be resistant to these chemicals and might even result in species mutations. 

This book was a clarion call for greater awareness about the great destruction that human beings were causing to the Earth and its natural cycles. Though there was much protest from the chemical companies, Carson’s Silent Spring is a key text in environmental studies because it led to the banning of DDT in the US and to a greater awareness about the consequences of using deadly pesticides on the environment. It gradually led to the development of an ecocentric attitude in the latter half of the twentieth century.

www.nytimes.com

www.etsy.com

www.britannica.com

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Poetic justice

Children who are always told what to do,
Who don't really know what they really want.

The storms within and the tears they hide;
The boomerang comes back in slow time.

The impossible

I think the hue and cry is about nothing.
You and I are not impossible.
You and I are too too different to be
Possible.

Heaven& Hell

You have raised heaven and hell
To get the things that you want.

Justice, equality, wages, voice
But never have sought a love.

For years it's been given up
And written away in verses.
An old dog of a heart asks now
Couldn't you've saved it all up?

The image once in the mirror
Was a bold warrior in armour
With no worthy cause to fight for
With no war worth winning.

Yes, it could have lived peacefully
Than the miss the one already gone.

Water Dog

To define oneself, one needs so many words
To define oneself, one needs so many roles.
Elemental water, loyal as a dog in chinese era
Strong and enduring like a lion of the zodiac.

For years, this elemental water needed vessels;
For years, it worshipped you with its loyalty.
Now you are no longer here to define me
I flow again with the wanderlust of a dreamer.

Not that I need this persuasion of soft words
Not that I need this melting of strong wills;
For even without a single word or glance
This lonely wanderer and his song are mine.

For it's from these shores that he drifted off
And to this loyal heart that he'll come home.

Bakra

The lies that you tell
The magic of ulta-pulta
Has brought us here
Where we are.

Learning the ropes
To evade responsibilities
To whine perpetually
For what you get.

May be you deserve
Far more than this;
But you need a bakra
To hang your sins on.

The questions to trap
Shows your real self.

Miracle

A miracle has happened.
A mountain has moved
And a new terrain is here.

In the midst of all this
I felt your hand hold mine
And tell me not to worry.

Days

Where you went hiding those days?
I see the images, I see the shadows
Wasted in fully crowded courts
Without any possible consolation.

What did you speak of? Only my ears
Never heard or did I feel it right, to ask
But one snippet of a story brings smiles
While one bad word shocks me so much.

You must have felt the same one day,
Though I didn't know the reason yet.
The lives are all entwined without
Knowing the why, when, what or how.

But when I find but one missing piece
I celebrate with more love than ever.

Earth Day

Win-win

PIC: Tumblr

Sometimes, your soul might be weary;
But the eyes are focused on the road; 
And a hurdle crossed makes you happy
Not at once, in degrees as it kicks in. 

Harmony

Numbness

This was a path this heart had long forgotten;
Yet you taught me how to tread this again.
In this twilight, you have disappeared quietly
Just when I thought the dawn was so near. 

Tell me why this heart doesn't beat the same way,
Why it does not feel the same way it did with you.
The dream was so beautiful though I asked nothing,
Yet there was a magical aura that surrounded us.

Under the stars, there was a beautiful unwritten story,
Everyday, in those countless dreams we wove in words,
Though you and I never saw each other in reality
Nor did I ever get a chance to know your name or face.

In a few weeks' time you had won over this heart,
Brought back its music and then disappeared again.

Abundance

Mother Earth

Beauty

Haven

Life

The Grasp of Your Hand

Decisiveness

Sunshine