When the Building Came Alive

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Kasturi Dhama Apartments — the play area where many evenings came alive. The lights would go out without warning. For a brief second, the entire building would fall silent. Then, from somewhere in Kasturi Dhama Apartments, a chorus would erupt. “Yayyy!” It is difficult to imagine children celebrating a power failure today. But in the Bangalore of the nineties and early 2000s, a power cut did not always feel like an inconvenience. Especially in the late evenings, it felt like permission. Permission to stop whatever we were doing, leave the darkness inside our homes, and step into the building outside. Before Kasturi Dhama became home, we had moved through a few different parts of Bangalore. My family had begun in Srirampuram and Vyalikaval before gradually cementing ourselves in Malleswaram for the next few decades. My earliest memory is of living in a vatara —a Kannada word loosely used for a building or a cluster of homes—on 15th Cross, near Karur Vy...
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But why?

As I was walking through the dense forest clearing off the overhanging branches that hindered my progress forward, I realised the overwhelming amount of work to be done to build a clear pathway ahead. The rains had lashed the area heavily over the past few days with a soggy ground not making things easy for the amateur. I had not thought about the rain in my planning and certainly it was affecting my progress. The shoes had worn out with different layers of the mud coating encapsulating my sole. The difficulty was all the more noticeable due to the uneven mass of coating adorning both the shoes. Motion through the thick forests certainly required wading through some adverse environment conditions. There were no companions in this exercise, and to reach the other side of the forest, I was left to the confines of my learning, planning and execution. At every stage, I realized that I require more learning, and there began the process of learning new things on the way. The uncertainties at various points played a major role in enhancing my learning experience. There was always a new problem on the way and it certainly required a new line of thought to come up with a solution. It was also a battle to come out in a single piece, what with a large number of carnivores wandering aimlessly until they saw me. Just add the animal devouring plants in the exercise and you most certainly would have to thank your stars to come out unscathed.

I am not in a mood to equate the vagaries of life to that of the forest, for life is a simpler puzzle to solve when compared to the daring adventures in a forest. This post just reflects my state of mind what with a mind boggling assortment of various thoughts creeping into my head. The blog entry started as a random collection of I don't know what, and the forest life equation just found its place in the scheme of things. One of the good things of reading and writing - start off aimlessly and it is not at all necessary to hit any central theme until you realize that you have wandered enough!! On a more serious note, life is one of those words which can be equated to any object and a parallel can be drawn with ease. The wear and tear of life teaches a lot of new things and it is upto the gray matter to accommodate what you want to. It is always easy to absorb ideas that suit a person and ignore everything that falls in the dislike list. Sometimes, you don't have an idea as to where you are heading until you find time to sit back and reflect on the not so good things of life.

One of the many things I hate about myself - Why turn a preachy philosopher when you don't have an iota of wisdom to offer? But, time and again, the introspection in me probes for details to come out with random meandering thoughts and beats all inertia in me to dispel its way outward and create a torrid time for you. I am still wondering...

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