Republic Day.
Parade is off.
Umbrellas up.
Drainage down.
Moods off-centre.
It was going to have been fun.
Clouds got in the way.
Soft drops
Persistent,
Turned streets
Into a citywide canal.
Picnics off.
People glum.
Just sit at home and watch the parade on Doordarshan.
It isn't raining in Delhi, at least.
Jai hind.
Or something like that.
Can't be patriotic when it's raining and all grey.
Just sleepy.
And cat-lazy.

Delightful day.

There's something about that picture of leaves being blown away in the wind. It's there in almost every romantic or thoughtful film, at some scene change or the other. The leaves, dry now, break loose from the branches and float sideways and downwards till they come to rest some metres away. They never show the 'coming to rest' part.
I wonder what is so catching about this picture. Something poetic, perhaps, in the leaves coming free and floating away on a whim-wind ? An analogy to attract adolescence, perhaps ? Or maybe a childish confidence in each leaf that is airily carried and carefully set down by the breeze - all the world conspiring towards a happy ending ? Or a moment of respite between the branch and the ground ? One moment of glorious joy between the seemingly endless hanging and the lying on the ground, waiting to be crushed.
Or maybe noone thinks about it at all, they just use it as a 'space filler' because it looks nice and they have the clip in stock already.

prospectus

I like the word Prospectus. 'Prospect : Us' it says. I don't know where it comes from, the wordroot or anything, but it's more interesting to speculate. Maybe it comes from ' pro + inspect + us' : a way of saying, 'go ahead, take a look and see how you like us- go on..' (..looking through material picked from reality in isolated instances, bits and pieces, so as to ensure that you do like us).
And the books themselves are fascinating. All shiny- smooth paper and matte-finish artistic pictures of abandoned places on campus, or simulated 'everyday life' actions in not-even-real-looking environments. Page after page of literary work, detailing the institution's marvellous heritage (even if it only began last year- and sometimes even this year), its extraordinary, perfectly up-to-date facilities (last revamped in 1932), its amazingly qualified faculty ( who mysteriously disappear between one prospectus photo shoot and the next), and, of course, the wonderful atmosphere created there (no comment). There are pages dedicated to delicately, and sometimes not so delicately, bragging about the achievements of previous students, and unnecessarily detailed descriptions of coursework. All in order to impress the best and the richest. All fascinating and largely unnecessary, because the best already know where they're going, and the richest go where the best go. And so it gets pored over by mediocres with high and hapless hopes of, by some streak of luck, getting into the shiny-shiny institution with the shiny-shiny prospectus. Which will be me, in a year.