COCKROACH IN THE CURRY

I almost ate a cockroach today. It was in the fish curry I bought for my lunch, small fish with thinly sliced potato and a hint of tomato in a spicy broth. My tongue noticed the roach’s foreign texture. Insects are part of daily food of many people. But many cultures consider them distasteful. Westerners and most of the common wealth are in this group.

To think that our upbringing and cultural differences changed us so much that what some of us think of as a delicacy, we consider as nauseating. How much distant we have grown since the days of Eden.

Once upon a time we used to eat rodents and roots in the fields of Africa. It’s in human gene to survive and when they are desperate, modern men can almost anything, insects, rodents, stones. When the survival mode kicks in we revert back to being biological machines our ancestors were.

Our education, culture and society have overshadowed our original making. We learned to look down upon those we consider uncivilized. We grant Food the honorific of Fundamental Human Right and become horrified when discover the Chinese eat dogs. We feel disgusted when find a tribe that eat other humans. We include people in Believe It Or Not lists because they eat cremated remains of their loved ones. We are still a long way from being truly civilized.

Abstract Rumblings

Life’s been good. And when life is good you tend to forget its ephemeral nature. You bate an eye and the moment is gone. Good times doesn’t last that long.

You have dreams. You dream because that’s what great litterateurs and movies teach you. That’s the whole point of having consciousness and consciously persuading a state of mind that’s both rational and yet accepting of spirituality.( I mean you didn’t turn out like the others of your class, you learned to question, to reject ideas that aren’t to your liking and form your own ideology. What do you call that state of mind in a word? Is there a word for it any language? May be there is.) Then you learn the price of dreaming.

Price of dreaming is too high. Most people can’t pay it. The novel you always wanted to write won’t be written because of the time it’ll cost you. The distant shores you wanted walk on will remain untrodden because you have anchored in a Bay which won’t let you go.

Sometimes it’s too damn frightening to dream too.

Everyday I walk the same road. I know my way. I know I’ll find a t junction and take the way right and walk by the park. I’ll feel the cold morning breeze and occasional warmth of the morning sun. People whom I’ll pass I know where they will be going. I don’t know them but at that moment on the road at 8 am well know each others destinations. We have left some place behind and going to some place. You can always tell if the place left behind is home or not when looking at the face of a morning commuter. Then I’ll reach the main road.

All these are too comforting to leave behind.