Stale, yawning, sleepy musings on a hot, humid and sultry noon

 A widow fleeing from a Taliban ravaged town in Afghanistan says: "When there are two girls in a family they take one to marry her to a fighter; when there are two boys they take one to make him fight."

The bloody saga opens full throttle again in Afghanistan. And the outsiders go there to have their share of the pie and then leave. Superpower blocks cannot heal the Afghan soul. They have bled it too much for many decades. Any healing, even cosmetic in effect, has to come through the UN. Afghanistan needs a UN peacekeeping force. With strong Indian boots on the ground, of course.

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Dogs, slums, shit, squalor, stray cows, filthy pigs, poisoned air, plundering rulers, dying truth, abandoned and obsolete god. And in all this, we the commoners lost like plagued rats. Rain lays bare the reality in our so called swank 21^st century metropolitan cities. Flooded potholed roads convey the scars that we carry in our imagination. Dirtier than shit garbage lays the foundation of the karmabhoomi of wormish survivals. Salutes my cities!

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The farmers are shedding blood of their will power for their mother earth. The very same earth whose maternity they have maintained through countless sweat and blood drops falling on her golden crystals. Land grabbers beware! They will stay. Want to test their stamina? Well, do it at your own risk!

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The real skill of we Indians lies in mindless, reckless, profuse and enthralling procreation. It seems to be a full time job. We just love conceiving even more than the ecstatic moments preceding the conception. No wonder, we are a big, buzzing ant-swarm now. Jostling and lost in its own directionless, blindfolding majesty.

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Yamuna is up to a complete facelift this time. More rains, more torrents packed with hilly sediments. The runnels of Yamuna rushing past the flood plains in Delhi but still bear the marks of defecations on her holy brow. There was a time, as close as three years back, when two elephants played on the semi-stinking sand, raised their trunks to pay homage to the inherent holiness. The laws have their claws. They were dispatched to some sanctuary. The mother seems to miss its muddy roly-poly babies.