Fringe Coexistence: Our Marvellous Ember

Fringe Coexistence: Our Marvellous Ember

The scent of crisp hot dosas and chutney greets the smell of junk piled up on the road which in turn greets the scent of fresh Jalebis being tossed on a pan. Clay modellers perch there tents on one half of the pavement and Pani-Puri vendors on the other half. Silk Traders beside Book Houses opposite rusty Stationary Shops that sit diagonal to computer accessory dealers beside glossy Gold Jeweller Emporiums. Elements of the present splattered onto a palette from the past. Wide ranges of goods packaged in rock bottom prices housed in senile concrete coated in fresh enamel. 

A family of four collaborating to assemble different varieties of chaat
hand out their preparations on newspaper sheets in exchange for a few coins. On the other side of the road sits a cobbler calling out to passerby’s only to be greeted by a woman in a sari, who I assume is his wife screaming at him for not coming back home for the past week. She reaches out into his shirt pocket and pulls out a few hundred-currency notes, shoves him and sets of into a sea of people throwing curses into the air filled with the sound of honks. 

Tired feet walk on the roads meant for vehicles and worn out tires roll on the pavements meant for people battle out  for space to move on and get to their destinations only to be distracted by the vegetable vendor and his rug selling compatriot and eventually put onto a complete halt by a cow comfortably laying down on a heap of garbage. The street seems like an installation in chaos. It’s a melting point of various identities and backgrounds in a disorganised muddle that allows itself to forget their individual identity and backgrounds completely.

A robust array of culture wrapped in the form of business settlements that is in constant dialogue with its visitors whether they are aware or not. It urges and nudges its purpose onto you just about enough for you to take notice but not enough to be bothered by it. An all white wearing dry fruit merchant in a taqiyah (skullcap) breaks his fast beside his cart outside a temple from which an orange Purohit sends out a prayer. Religious and class differences are set aside to make economic hay and eventually put supper on their tables for the next day. It’s a fusion of human individuality from a wide array of backgrounds soaked in differences that eventually becomes one complete identity.

One can get overwhelmed by how this street even functions. It in fact thrives on its own chaotic state and gives it a unique identity from any other shopping experience. The cohabitation is truly marvellous and overwhelming. But if one might observe this coexistence a little carefully, all of a sudden a much more darker and uneasy understanding arises. Avenue Road is like a minute prototype of how this country functions and exists. In this country thousands and thousands of people pertaining to various numerous backgrounds in culture, class and religion coexist amongst everyday.  It is probably one of the finest examples of  human coexistence but there are still non-tangible lines of separation that form boundaries that separate these disparate backgrounds: especially religion. This thin line that separates all these separate groups could in a blink of an eye turn into a thick violent sword and destroy everything that stands on either side. A mighty turbulence can be suddenly sparked of by something as small as a religious difference between two people. Just a simple line in a text written centuries ago can bring us all down to our knees begging and pleading our own brothers and sisters to stay alive. That is our proximity to catastrophe. The foundations of our coexistence exists on are hardly substantial. We live a fringe coexistence in a nation that has been unconsciously treated to be binded and blinded by non tangible realms of suffocative ideologies that have been placed by a previous conscious effort centuries ago. Its nature is like that of an ember with its alluring subtle glow in the dimness but with one swift flicker of fire can completely change its state into a volatile force with a potential to wipe out everything around it. 

-x-

Urban Sketch II

The Integral Nature of Things by Lata Mani : Response Writing to Reading Quotes I

The Integral Nature Of Things

Lata Mani

Response Writing to Reading Quotes

"The goatherd evinces an orientation to the world... appropriateness" 

- I want to throw light on the incident before the last indian elections. The rise of the Aam Admi Party, a party that  soaked its values and emphasised wanting change only to disintegrate eventually into an almost absolute oblivion which was sponsored by the media of this nation on the pretext of being too idealistic. The Inability in people to jump out of an already existing state of familiarity and comfort astounds me.

"Our Life is not merely.... not know"

- I remember Gladis and her Dosa stall and then having to get used to her not being around.
 She was a familiar sight for so long that we all got accustomed to it and her absence really created a stir. But then eventually her absence became familiar to us and we got accustomed to that as well.

" A street is not a road...."
- It could be because roads are usually wider and streets are relatively compact but streets tend to have a more personalised essence to it rather than roads. Roads tend to be more of a means of transportation whereas there is much more interaction with the elements of a street.

Urban Sketching

Fear as a Writer

I'm not too sure that I have any specific fear as a writer  to be honest. Well, at least not when I immediately think of it. I'm not much of a writer myself but I've certainly enjoyed the act of doing so when I have had to produce something on paper. There is always a sense of that Initial haze on what to write but I don't think I'd like to define it as any sense of 'fear'. Its more of a mental block created by a lack of confidence.

Joe

This is Joe.

Joe lives in the not too distant future where most of our conventional jobs have become extinct. In this reality, only jobs in the IT and Industrial sector are available and every other job in every other sector are performed by hybrid machines designed by the workers in the IT and Industrial sector. People who opt to not build their life into a pathway to eventually enter the two are left with menial jobs. Joe might have been an extremely talented carpenter in a different reality but in the one he currently exists in he makes means by keeping an old harbour which is now used more as a dump for old ships neat and tidy. He lives in an oil rig. Joe never had a chance to be or even find his true self because of the way society is structured in his universe. His soul is caged and over a period of time he becomes extremely introverted and unable to relate with in the outside world except the turbulent sea that roars in front of his oil rig.