Heat

Ambavadi manipulated.

It’s 93 degrees in Ahmedabad at 10:20 am on Sunday. You begin to watch the temperature climb by degrees used in your homeland. Fahrenheit looks more impressive as well it should. By 2 pm it will be hitting 110 plus. Your pale western body sprinkled with freckles fears leaving the shade of your rooms. The locals are not moving. The day will not turn out as planned. You will be forced to stay and listen to the sounds of the neighborhood, as tiresome as they have become. The heat changes everything. Tolerance drops. You wish it to be quiet but it is not. How can anyone yell in this heat, you wonder? What happens without refrigeration? You shudder to think. The offal of cows gives you a good idea. The mad ingestion of spoiled food and other toxic waste. A place were hand wipes are rarely available. How utterly inconvenient and unhygienic. It is a mystery why it is like this, your Puritan society roots gasping in despair. Relentless and cruel, there is nowhere to go and nothing to do. A drink or any such diversion cannot be had. Stuck with yourself. There it is. A glass of water. Over and out.

The world has gone mad. Again. Starkers. Most sit by and watch it unfold. An imbecile in the White House, now turning a putrid shade of gray. We languor behind the screen of internet comforts voicing our displeasure. Doing nothing really. Some march and make a stink but nothing changes. White supremacy on parade. Half the country is in tune with it for Christ’s sake. Drop those bombs. It’s a beautiful sight. Rampant blindness tills the land into mudding mire about to drag all under. Thinking? The act has gone off the road to greatness down a back alley of unfathomable depths, despair lurking behind the door to grab any oxygen left. Sick fumes can be smelled for miles. All the world knows this. We have aired out dirty laundry and now there is no cleaning it to be had. Once we were strong but not now, not now. Even the scorchers of the land, who sell the people back their soul at a cut rate price cannot be saved. Their luxurious lifestyles will come to an end. We may find this a good and just thing but in the end it will not be such.

I watch this all from the heat waiting to fly back into the American orbit. I am conflicted. No longer is this world the place of dreams but then the new world, now old, is no longer either. How to put one foot in front of the other. To keep on. To find hope. It must be done for to let such treachery win would upset world order. Bleakness cannot pervade forever. The pendulum swings, it is a known fact, despite what it feels like at any given moment. Physics will win the day in the long run. We keep our spirits high trying to be the better person, trying to extinguish the darkness creeping over the land. It is the miracle of life that good can overcome bad. It is what so many of us seek and if at least half of us strive toward such a thing all is not lost. It is the way of the turning sphere; a hot, cold, and intemperate thing. Round and round. We will peak this crest and see the sun shine again if we want it bad enough. It is history. Read it and know that all will be well enough to continue despite our fears.