Paradise

The longest day of the year is past, and in the wet afternoons, I smell the coming Fall. My house, it seems, spends the entire Summer preparing for the darkening year and spends the beginning of the year catching its breath. Of course, right now, it is the heat that has stilled us, the cats on the tiled floor and humans surrounded by fans, all of us waiting for the worst of the heat to pass.

This stillness descends every year and yet I never remember it as part of the break between quarters that I so look forward to. Invariably, I wonder where the break has flown, I wonder what kept me from accomplishing the list the end of Spring readies, the list that I review and memorize for weeks in preparation for the break. I do not remember that I spent the break supine on the sofa, defeated by the still, hot air. The very thought of movement, even to get coffee is too much to bear. I spend days without coffee (too hot!), a little vague, a little lost, subconsciously nursing a persistent headache. I wander around the house, waiting for the day to get bearable. This heat is problematic since I hate air conditioning and cannot stand it for very long.

Already, I see that a few precious days have already gone by and I cannot bring myself to revising my rubric, re-constructing my assignments, re-structuring my courses. The sun shining on the gently swaying leaves is so fascinating. The cats seem to understand, since all of them are staring at the same swaying branches that have me so mesmerized.

Perhaps the afternoon (10am-6pm) will have passed when I blink next.

We finish grocery shopping before 10am and do not venture out until after 6. The sun doesn't set until late 8pm, and our entire day has been pushed back, with a giant donut hole of an afternoon squatting in its center.

When the rains wet the earth and I remember Fall, it is not with anticipation of relief from the season; October heat is the worst here. It seems that nothing will stir until the holidays begin, until the Goddess descends and Navratri lights up the nights.

One might very well wonder why I stay here. The days are lethargic and insomnia stretches out the humid nights. Yet I am always extolling the virtues of living in what I call paradise to any who would listen.

Paradise indeed it is, the unbearable afternoons notwithstanding. The dawn and dusk skies are a sight to behold, drama in colors splashed around, covering everything with improbable hues and shadows. It is not unusual to imagine brilliant, clear waters and clean, cerulean skies when imagining paradise. This canvas is a few minutes' drive from my sofa. Of course, I would not recommend seeking out the beach front between 10am and 6pm. But I keep that image in my mind's eye while I stare at the sunlight skipping on the leaves.

There are farmers' markets, nurseries, tropical trails, gardens, and parks with plenty of hospitable shade to while the day, watching butterflies and herbs going about their routines. Sometimes, we go to the movies, the mall, ice cream parlors (I do not partake, of course), and then I keep a shawl because the air conditioning is always cranked up to its coolest in all public indoor places.

Compared to the debilitating cold that regularly grips Northern places, I find this still air much easier to tolerate. For someone who has lived all her immigrant life in Florida, I have shoveled too much snow. If I do not shovel another ounce, it'll  be enough. I hear of horror stories about burst water pipes, failing heaters, cold so biting that one feels it in one's organs and deeper still. And there is no relief from this cold either; no brilliant sunsets to compensate for the day's discomfort, no shining sunlight on dancing leaves, no fragrance of fresh earth with the rainfall.

The terrain here is simple and straight; if one can read a graph, one never needs be lost. The terrain in other places, I know, is complex. It rises and dips, uncaring of its effect on slipping tires and shoes. It demands an ability to balance so that one is constantly looking for that center of being. Often, for months, these rises and dips are hidden beneath inches of snow. Here, the earth centers the being and unless there is something wrong with the internal workings of the organism, no balancing is needed.

I know that the prognosis of this land being the way it is, is not good. I know that this land is being swallowed up and soon, there will be no land. But as long as this land stands, I will choose it; perhaps the oceans will be patient enough to wait for me to be done before they swallow my paradise.

 

Tech-Faced

Facebook just pointed out the many advantages of reading literary fiction; of course, I had to share that on my wall; that is so me! Of late, when I have a few minutes between sets of ungraded papers, waiting for a call back from the pharmacy, or just trying to unwind after a whirlwind day, I find myself scouring Facebook.

Now there is nothing extraordinary or new about this. I would not exaggerate if I claimed that this behaviour is quite common for the 21st century homosapien. It is a sign of the times that I split the people I know into two main group, those on Facebook and those who resist. Since I belong most definitely to the former, I despair of ways of keeping in touch with the latter. Surely, I am not expected to do something primitive like actually making a voice call? My students would shudder at the very idea. After all, even if one were to dial the number (is that phrase obsolete?), what would one say? Every time I do make a voice call, I am aware of an underlying wish that the person I am calling would not pick up, that I could just leave a succinct message and hang up to end the awkward experience. I am also aware that, like the rest of my Gujarati family, I tend to speak louder when I talk on the phone, the logic involving a physics formula about the complex relationship between the volume of the voice and the distance it has to travel. The end of such a call, inevitably, is accompanied with a distinct awareness of the needlessly high tones that one has to own up to.

No. Let us connect on Facebook instead. Or perhaps text. Surely, you have downloaded WhatsApp on your smart phone? Why involve something as personal as, as strange as disembodied voices?

One of the TV channels I watch proclaims Vasudhaiva Kutumbekam (world is one family) as its tag line. I cannot think of a better descriptor for the globalization that I take for granted, an idea that my younger self could only sigh over while watching Star Trek. My child posts pictures from her phone onto my Facebook wall so that now, I know what the EU headquarters in Brussels look like; my cousin FaceTimes with us from Vadodara so that his toddler can show us his new toys; my Google+ holds our clan's photo albums; my Geni informs me when a birthday nears; I can even borrow books from my county library on my Kindle while waiting for my flight connection at Heathrow.

A few of my friends are disappointed at the direction the world seems to be taking; the figure of Darth Vader seems to personify this fear of losing our humanity to technology, very much like the Minotaur expressed the ancient Greek's fear of losing humanity to the beast within. This is a valid fear, of course. However, if being part machine helps us become more human, does it not make the machine more human than the other way around? Take pacemakers or dialysis machines, for example. Would we be willing to go back to a world without those? I remember typing up papers with carbon sheets ensconced in between, which copious gallons of whiteout could not salvage. If given a choice, I would never go back to those days! Many fictional re-creations of post apocalyptic stories explore what the world would be like without the present day's communication channels. My blood runs cold with fright when I read those.

I cannot imagine that devices that help us communicate in varied ways can be essentially malignant. Certainly, some people will misbehave and misuse these devices; however, do we let the fear of misbehaviour guide us? Is it even in our nature to do that? History is evidence that we have always looked for ways to make the world smaller; thanks to Facebook and smart phones, this world is at our fingertips, and it is up to us to expand it exponentially until it becomes real or to contract it to a thumbnail.

I am grateful that I live in the same age as these devices. Worlds I had thought were lost to me have been returned a thousand fold; I am thinking of ancient legends, the dance form I was trained in (Kathak), my favorite painting genre (Indian miniatures), Hindi songs and films from the 1960's, and garbas or Gujarati folk dance music so ancient that most lyrics are derived from oral history. One can enjoy the Gregorian Chant and Sanskrit shlokas with the same crystal clarity as though they were being spoken in one's presence. I can find ancient trade routes or recreate a festival day of an Indonesian wife without much trouble. I wouldn't be able to spark my students' interest in Greek Mythology or Folk Tales if I couldn't bring up Google Images of Echidna or Baba Yaga.

I could go on, of course. I do so love the times I inhabit, may the Luddite gods forgive me! I fail to imagine what the next half decade will bring, but I am very excited about it.

Now my patient reader must excuse me. I must go back to preparing a collection of my favorite garbas on my flash drive so that I can plug it into my car and listen to these ancient lyrics on my way to work. After that, I must find a kidney friendly recipe from websites recommended by my online support group, transfer money between accounts, and order a birthday gift from Amazon; I must flex my fingers and send them racing across the keyboard, and the world I manage. In between these chores, if you are on Facebook, I might wander in and say a quick Hey.