Avian Flu – Mad Cow Disease - (and now) Swine Flu.
Wonder if this is nature’s way of telling us to stay vegetarian to remain healthy...

If I look back and have got my fact rights then all these diseases have their genesis in those pig farm or poultry farm or like. These farms which are men’s effort to play God, to control life and death of lesser animals, to alter the food chain.

And somewhere in form of these flus and fevers, nature is issuing us warnings to mend our ways & to restrict our greed. But, probably we are not going to get the message. In a few months, vaccine for swine flu will be developed and WHO will declare human victory over the virus.

But just as a parent is forced to get tough with a kid when he ignores repeated warnings, I fear that if we keep ignoring these warnings from nature we may just be exposing us to a far more serious lesson. But, I pray that this fear of mine is just that – a fear and nothing more.


PS: Just on a lighter note if we look at the pattern in first line ( chicken – beef – pork), may be next big virus is taking shape in some fishery.

I am beginning to dislike the word sorry. Its just like a mask – hides everything behind it and offer you a straight face. This word is used so often these days that I wonder if it represents “feeling sorry” anymore. Maybe we should no more use the word “sorry” for making show repentence. It’s only good enough to apologize for not switching your cell phone to silent mode during a meeting or to give a $50 dollar note for $5 cab fare. It no more moves you to forgive someone but only make you move yourself to make way for someone.

I have learnt that to apologize is not to say a mere sorry but to throw open your heart and let your genuine guilt show. To apologize is just not a promise to make amends but a sombre plea for repentance. To apologize is just not saying ‘I won’t do it again’ but to share why nothing could ever bring you to do it again. What move people is not how often you apologize but how you apologize.

I am not suggesting that apologies should come with elaborate melodrama. But I think that they need to sufficiently verbalize your regret & repentance. A mere 'sorry' at times does a great disservice not only to others' feeling but to your emotions as well. It leaves you wondering what more you could do to make someone yield and other to wish only if you could have done a little more...

There is a popular saying that “To err is human and to forgive is divine”. I think what it doesn’t say is “If you know how to apologize right then you can turn every human into divine”.

It was raining pretty hard outside. How I figured it – no not through floor to roof glass paned slide door to my balcony. That was shut with curtains drawn. I heard the rain…in one of those moments when TV volume fell off for the reason I don’t remember anymore, I heard the rain. Rain is a chatterbox, she talks and talks and talks continuously. Doesn’t matter if you are listening or not or interested or not, she just keeps talking in that beautiful modulated voice. And she has a few other tricks to catch your attention coz if constant talking can’t impress you then those occasional lightning will definitely leave you awestruck.

But I didn’t walk out immediately after hearing the sound of rain. I vaguely remember I went out to the balcony looking for something and there she had me. It was that fresh breeze blowing that made me go like one of those guys in TV ads for ponds and lux. Scent of rain has captivated me fully in that moment and I never got back to the room (but for fetching my laptop a little later). I just took the chair lying in the balcony and let that fresh breeze make my day.

Rain is not something rare here, what’s rare is walking out to meet the rain. When people ask me about the weather here am mostly at loss of words. Afterall, in the mornings you get out of your air-conditioned flat into the air-conditioned-cab that drops at your air-conditioned lobby so that you could take the air-conditioned lift to your air-conditioned office. For meals there is that air-conditioned passage from air-conditioned lobby that takes you to air-conditioned restaurants. In the evenings again something air-conditioned will get you to somewhere air-conditioned. And when you at home, you should keep your doors shut so that air-conditioners work properly because that’s what they say in manual. I wonder how much fresh air I breathe these days, may be all my lungs get is just this 'conditioned' air. And now as I sat in my balcony with that cool wind blowing right across my face I realized what have I been missing all this while.

I could remember my childhood days, the whiff of fresh air that comes along with rains was not a stranger in those days rather it was like grandkids of of our landlord who used to visit their grandparents every summer vacation but spent most of their time playing together with me us. Back in those days when I was growing up, there were no air-conditioners and we didn’t use to shut our doors when it used to rain ( not always I mean). I never really figured, was it because we didn’t want to or because we couldn’t. "We couldn't" because if it was to rain then it was pretty much a certainty that power would go off. Usual explanation used to be that some tree has fallen over power cables somewhere and so supply is disrupted. Inverters were still not in must-have lists then and so we used to keep the doors open to let the breeze cool things. And trust me that nice and fresh breeze used to make up for everything but the cricket match that one cant watch on TV because of power-cut. It was just so magical. We do have some trees here that flutter as strong winds blow but in those days when trees outnumbered people in university compound sound of all those trees going wild in those strong winds is an experience that I wonder I could ever have again in the concrete jungles i live in now. I wonder if calling that surreal or magical would be exaggeration – i guess not.

Back to present - I can still hear distant sound of lightning but rain has stopped now, so has breeze. All I could listen to now are the water features across my building, the TV inside the room which was on all this while I was sitting outside and noise of air-conditioned cabs making their way to air-conditioned lobbies as people decided to go and grab a meal or a movie at somewhere air-conditioned.