Thursday, June 23, 2011

Rain...rain...rain...

Glorious, wonderful rain...dark days, thunderous skies, flashing lightning coming almost down to the earth, and torrents, just torrents of rain....

I know Cal is not made to contend with so much rain---and there are huge, huge issues, heartbreaking happenings....

But the rain--Cal also looks so beautiful in the rain....there is one image that is fixed in my mind's eye - this young girl standing on the side of the road, knowing that she had no protection from the unrestrained rain, looking up smiling, with her arms wide open as if to welcome the rain as it poured down, flowing in rivulets around her feet...

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Exciting times ahead...

Love the way Mamata Bannerjee is going about Kol....just love it.

To paraphrase John Paul Young's 'Love is in the air' -

Change is in the air, everywhere I look around
Change is in the air, in every sight and every sound
And we don't know if its an illusion
And we don't know if it's true
But its something we must believe in
And hope its really going to happen...


The wonderful thing about Ms. Bannerjee is that she talks in a language and manner that people understand, and her sincerity is visible. People take her seriously, only because she comes across as REAL. She is completely artless and candid, and hence is genuine, and, you can feel it.

I once had the opportunity of hearing Ms. Bannerjee speak in a debate. I will admit that I was skeptical. But, 2 minutes into her speech and I was completely bowled over. She spoke in English, and one could make out she was not very comfortable with the language. But that did not deter her one single bit, as she strove to prove her point. If she could be so compelling in a foreign language, imagine the power of her speeches in Bengali? Is it any wonder that she swayed a fractious, debating, argumentative, complaining, theorizing, pontificating, opinionated people? and she still continues to have the upper hand, simply because for each of their pompous statements, she has a ready, witty repartee...