2018

It was post the 2018 floods, even after countless rounds of hard cleaning, the floors at my place felt like it still had mud on it. So I started wearing slippers inside my house. One of many changes that befell post the floods. Even now if I walk barefoot inside my house I feel weird, more down to the new familiarised routine than the residue of an aggravated memory.

I have never enjoyed a rain wholeheartedly post 2018. Before that, I had romanticised rain and documented well on my Instagram feed. Poems, pictures and what not. Mazha for Malayalis is synonymous to many things, Johnson Mashe, Clara or Kattan Kappi. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed every bit of the rain in the last few weeks. It was a joy to my soul and a relief to the next expected electricity bill. But every rain that overstays for a minute gives me glimpses of the sleepless night I had to endure. How I measured a night by the inches of water rising compared to the ticking of the clock on the wall.

I have enough stories to tell about the rescue mission next day and the subsequent days. How a group of people swam against the torrential flood with strong cables, gliding a make-shift traditional raft with a scared lady who was locked onto a wheelchair to safer grounds. My mother! 

Or how a group of twelve people standing on top of the tooth harrow of a tractor banished fear and logic to go through the raging waters. I remember the guy who drove the tractor every time I see one. 

The unity we showed during the floods was unparalleled and has forever made a dent on my life. I have seen that many times after that; 2019 floods, the pandemic. You see the pattern right? Why does it need a calamity for us to stay together! At a juncture in time where hate is served with our roti, where bigotry is played without demand. Are we waiting for the ball to drop again to unite in the banner of humanity? Well, the ball has dropped already, calamity is rampaging through the streets of our country. Floods of hatred has risen cracking all structures that has kept it shut, all it need is the ones who stands in the way to be silenced or taken down.

Every time I see the media standing with the oppressors or a film endorsing communal divide being celebrated, I remember the famous monologue by Carl Sagan. 

"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilisation, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there.....It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."

We may inhabit Alpha Centauri in future but until then this is the only place we can call home. Yet without any remorse or regret we are forced to look at each other with despise and hatred. You and me, where it has always been “we the people”

Cherish this life, cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known!