K Drama, Hailstones & Rain | The Weekly Smile – 02 |04/08/2019

So it was Saturday, and having finished some work pending on my plate, I sat binging on my first South Korean TV series, Hospital Ship. It’s was a nice watch. Made me cry and smile a lot. And it’s so hard to fathom how these Koreans manage to look so young, almost ten years younger than their age (talking of adults of course!).

And as I continued to binge, suddenly around 2 pm in the afternoon, it got all dark. I stepped out to get a feel of the cool breeze which in no time turned into an aggressive storm. While I picked up clothes from the drying line, I saw plastic-bags fluttering and soaring high like hot air balloons. I quickly went back in to put away the clean laundry and shut the windows. And when I came back it was already pouring. The heat evaporated, as the shower dampened the soil and in the momentary humidity rose the scent of the earth. Mesmerised by the petrichor, my mind felt at ease, my eyes closed and I took in deep breaths filling each of my lungs as much as I could. I felt more alive at that moment. Before one could absorb it all in, I heard a rumble of thunder, and  I shuddered for a split-second. With that sound now in distance, I heard tramplings atop the metal roofing nearby. Hailstones the size of blueberries fell to the ground, melting as they touched down. I stretched out my hand cupped to catch some. But the rain was freezing and I fled back to the shade right after I caught a single hail which I slipped into my mouth. It literally sent a chill down my jaw. I was reminded of the simpler times when as a kid I would gather a handful and eat them without a thought. But the present seemed too beautiful to dwell over scenes from the past. Everything looked rejuvenated. I smiled looking at leaves now washed to hues of green from the previous dull tones.

And from where I stood, I saw a bamboo pole – water kept splattering from the niche at the node. I had never seen this before. And that prompted me to pick up the pencil. I couldn’t stop smiling again as I effortlessly drew that sighting later that evening.

Things of Beauty

About
This is a classroom project done as a part of course in ‘Semiotics’. This is a part of campaign aimed at persuading people to donate eyes without showing them the difficulty and pain of the blind. Instead, it tries to mesmerize the viewers with things of beauty and thereafter abruptly gives them a taste of nothingness and darkness.

A Journey: Trivialities to Musings

7-July-2014

Trivialities
As I got out of the bus, I stood under the scorching Sun, ignorant of details of my surrounding not because it seemed like a mundane travel I had scheduled a couple of months in advance but only because it was too bright to look up and around. I didn’t want to be blinded.
Since it was a big carrier, there was a long queue before I got on the ramp; the crowd and the heat was making me restless, like it always does. Then to my rescue comes some amusement.

I find a man who looked like how a dear friend would in another 20 years. I was flabbergasted (I say that with a punch!). The small world we live in now technically, I let my friend know this and he strongly desired a snapshot. He asked of me to send him one immediately. Even I wished to capture a photo, but who does that? I did not want to appear like a creep! Nonetheless, I tried to sneak a shot; but unfortunately couldn’t.
I still wish I had!

When I finally boarded my flight, I sat next to an elderly couple who seemed to be quite non interfering, thankfully. Recently I have become very skeptical about who I sat next to. I am quite intimidated by garrulous people. I like to sleep in peace through my journeys and it gets quite annoying when they go on talking. (Though I always take a book along to read, of which I read not more than a few pages and then doze off to sleep.) And yes, my flights are long enough to sleep well as I travel across almost entire longitudinal length of India.

Monotonously, I picked the menu to see recent inclusions and tried a new beverage only because of its appearance and the cool name. (Yes, I am child born in the era of consumerism!) Honestly, I did not like the drink but I do not regret buying a bottle of ‘Nimblue’. Nimblue is a portmanteau of Nimbu (Lemon in Hindi) and blue, as the drink is basically Nimbu Paani with Blue Curacao, and its quite catchy. Buying the bottle was only my gesture of appreciation for the creative mind which was marketing the product.
(Yes, I tend to think like that a lot of times!)

Transition

I pick up the book and I am asleep the next moment, dreaming and it was one of the rare ones, with dawn of realizations and thoughts. Really I had words as remainder of my dream when I woke up,  and no visuals. I was amazed. In my dream I was telling myself, why had not I thought of it before. This is a crazy idea and how I should note it down before i forget and I tell myself, I shall once I wake up as my notes and pencil were right there within reach. Lo and behold, a new sequence of thoughts start and I wake up with  this another statement ringing in my head:

“The world looks different from this side of the universe.”

It is a beautiful though to wake up to, but not exceptional. (We all have our versions of what it means.) I was remorseful. I knew I had lost an idea, which I think was a brilliant one and of which I had no recollection, except that I had it, and that I had it whilst asleep.
A moment later, I decided to be thrilled about what I had than be sad about what I didn’t.

Musings

Yes, the world did literally look very different from that height. (Specifics being 37,000 feet!) No, the buildings and trees were not even in sight to look like their scale models; there were only clouds, clouds beneath and clouds above. Clouds of all kinds! The fluffy ones that were dense and the ones those were loners, the undulating ones, the streaks which blurred and the ones which didn’t, and the huge ones that looked a like a wave crashing had frozen.