Monday, May 24, 2010

More of putting my head down and getting on with it.
So write that letter. Pay all your bills.
Keep your will updated, and cross that T.

Last week was busy season at work.
And then the horrible news on the crash.
Managed to shut myself from the rabble rousers on tv, limited n’paper reading to a quick headline scan.
Until I visited my old landlady last night and saw the grieving crowds and media vans—the co-pilot was a neighbor, apparently.
Hits hard.

And in the unending celestial balance, the solidly good- a friend held a puja for her new home, a lovely apartment up high, flooded with light and air, every square foot and plastered wall paid with the sweat off her brow…some dreams come true, and some dreams tell you to walk tall.
antariksh shantihi... vayu devo shantihi..pruthvihi shantihi..
be calm the universe... calm the air gods... calm the earth
to the witness of the Lord Ganesha and Goddess of wealth Lakshmiji,
the witness of the nine grahas- the nine planets, the mother goddesses, and Lord Visnu in his many forms, her house was sanctified.


I take a deep breath. And try remember sunlight.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

*takes deep breath*

-Tamanna

PQ said...

I cannot imagine what it is like to see your death coming right in front of your eyes - the survivors said that kids were wailing....really very very sad....my heart goes out to all the families.

austere said...

Tamanna- yes.


PQ- I have a feeling it would have happened too fast for them to know-- have not read the reports.
For landing they shd instruct-- "pls unbuckle your seat belts.."

Anonymous said...

And statisticians will "proof" how seldom an accident happens and how safe flying is ... how strange it is: On one side humans play the lottery to win big with chances like one to a million - on the other hand thousands board planes every day all around the world hoping and praying that all will go well and this one in a million (flight miles or whatever) will not happen. Life's a lottery?

Thank you for the link, I read it just a few minutes ago. She's right, in some words there is so much meaning "filled in", swinging with it it is nearly impossible to translate, something will be lost. So the idea to turn the last sentence around is really great.
What made me smile is all that about the typographical setting of the text. Today we live under the tyranny of DIN A 4 here in Europe, the standartized page size 21 x 29 cm roughly. It is not all bad I know. But sometimes I receive letters that make me suggest that nobody ever heared about (good) typography at all. But I am not as scrupulous as Walser, I happily end the last sentence in the middle of the line! :)

mark drago said...

i heard of this crash...life is so difficult...and sad...it is good to think of this celestial balance

AmitL said...

You can't imagine how many people in Dxb had close ones on that flight..one guy from the hotel I now stay in, had gone for his wedding. Another office pal's wife's relatives-4 or 5 of them..all perished...someone wrote in a newspaper @ his theory of such crashes-he felt that it's people switching on their cell phones before the flight is about to land-so, the cell searches for signals, they interfere with the aircraft's signals and .....Well,it's a theory,surely.Maybe they'll investigate it.
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But then,human life here,as in Dxb has very less value. Give it a week and it'll be forgotten-except for the relatives of the unfortunate ones.
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I did read today that a plane overshot the runway in J&K...whew.