. I AM PARCHED ....I WANT WATER

 

I am tired. I am beaten.

I am trodden every day with feet and bones.

They are a dead weight.

Every day and every night I find myself being dug deep.

Every day and every night I am battered and bruised.

Every day and every night I get scorched and burnt.

Every day and every night I find myself asphyxiating in smoke.

Ah God the smoke, the thickness of it, the stench of it.

Every day and every night I hear the wails and the screams.

Every day and every night  I want to scream in pain, but my screams get silenced by someone else’s that are louder and more anguished.

There was a young lady in red who came to rest on me ...

I could see her pale skin and her red bangles.

I could see her dark hair and her eyelashes so dark and long.... fanning her still eyes... her lashes, almost touching her cheeks.

I could almost smell the sweetness of her body.

And then she lay on top of me.

And then she was engulfed in flames on top of me.

I saw her young husband collapse  like a leaf.

I saw her parents crumble into twisted heaps of bones screaming in silence.

Barely had they left that I felt another weight on me…and another and  yet  another?

Every day and every night I wait for a hiatus.

Every day and every night I am consumed by a conflagration.

Every day and every night I find myself shrivelling, drying, dying.

I want to breathe the fresh clean air, I want water , I am parched

I am one of the many crematoriums.

Are there many of us , I wonder ?

THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE YELLOW ANIMAL AMBULANCE

 

(The Yellow Ambulance for animals )

                                                                                        

I finished work and decided to jog today after days of bad weather (and procrastination)

The sun was shining and there is a nip in the air.

Months of working from home without my regular exercise routine of the spin cycling in the morning has taken its toll and the mirror reflects it so I dare not look at the full length one in the landing.And of course the weighing scale has been tucked away in a dark recess in the loft :-)

The jogging pants (never my favourite outfit) look even worse than they did before !!

But as always, my “creative flair” led me to find an oversized sweatshirt (tucked amongst the laundered clothes) …a sweatshirt meant for a very tall young man….  

Looking very much like an “Empress (Ragamuffin) in “borrowed” clothes “, I gingerly stepped out of the house. Thankfully for me, the village road was very quiet except for the occasional dog walker none of whom, I thankfully recognized.

 There were some road works (as they are always are) at the end of every financial year to justify the exorbitant tax that citizens pay to the state!! The bane of every BRIT!!

                                               (The open fields bathed with sunshine)

                                                       (Looking at my own shadow)

So, there I was…. on a slow steady jog –I have discovered that my newly discovered Punjabi Singer Jordan Sandhu's “Do vari Jat” is a great replacement to the fancy jogging music I had especially downloaded for my run (Apologies to Ava Max)

                        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvtqhIV2n78                   

Now Jordan Sandhu ‘s slow Bhangra feat allows me to walk very fast rather than jog. Also, the lyrics are highly entertaining.

So here I was on this warm May day and I see a yellow van whizz past the quiet country lane.

                                  (The light and shade of it all)

                                 (The little cottage by the road)

The van had a big banner of “Animal Emergency Ambulance” and at that split second, I thought of India.

Here I am, in a country that has such a well-equipped state of the art ambulance -for a cat, a dog, a bird and maybe even a  guinea pig  and across the pond is  the land of my birth , a land that has the  oldest civilization ,  the most talented pool of artisans, a great history of innovation, a land that was once the Golden Sparrow – This  land is  currently on its knees  devastated by a pandemic .

                                      (The Pink Blossoms)                                                       

It does not have enough doctors, not enough nurses, not enough medicines, not enough vaccines not enough ambulances

And Ironically now ,not enough crematoriums.

                      HEIL MODI  !!