The tiger
With all his might
Looks inside
Author: Rijul Ballal
There’s poetry in every cloud and a story behind every leaf that flutters down.
We’re all nomads under the eternal blue sky. Check out my work on rijul ballal.wordpress.com, like, comment and subscribe :)
Birds Listening
I had a few minutes between sessions today so I thought I’d meditate. I’ve been trying to master the “no mind state” over the past few weeks but have never managed to get beyond a minute.
The no mind state is when you consciously don’t think of anything at all- not easy at all. I decided I cut off any and all images, before I could tackle my ever descriptive inner monologue. I reasoned my inner eye and inner tongue might be easier than my inner ear My office has an absurdly high amount of eagles and other birds that sorround it, so without any thought deciding it, I sat still, eyes closed, only repeating what the birds said in my mind.
Suddenly it was not the call of eagles flying like little Joves that caught me, but love birds and other tiny birds. I don’t know the names of most of those birds, but I know from observation that a majority of them are tiny, small enough to be behind a few leaves.
Yet their calls, suddenly, were so loud, with interspecies duels and distant cries dominating my world which was now only just a wall clock and their tweeting. One after the other they would sing a tweet, waiting to hear back, and without exception they did recive a response from their own kind or from some other kind of bird. Could they even understand each other?
I imagined the evening, without seeing it, wondering about my village, then my hometown, recalling the distant dogs barking, the still silence of evenings which the sun always seemed to dominate. It felt like the birds were always louds but I never heard them.
Monsoon drive
Does the sunset lingering
The waterfall roaring
Make your first journey?
Pater Noster
A faint yellow rose
Waving as I pass
In the early dawn
Don’t cry insects
If you meet
Snoring gray clouds
Deep in the air
Is the paintbrush
Of this slow river
Younger
Abhishek had just found himself a pocket watch with a yellowed face. It far too weighty to ever be worn comfortably.
The old Bunglow was supposed to be cleaned out but someone had missed this little crumbling box, damp and old, hidden in the nursery rooms cabinet. It was hard to say how old it really was, this mansion was built more than a century ago and had burned through a endless series of families.
Abishek clumbsly turn the heavy clock around, using both hands as one grew tired. It’s chain was abnormally shiny thought it seemed to be of the same metal and make as the watch. It had ivory encasing it, the image of Janus, the two faced God, etched onto the front. No details or other markings were present – not even a date of manufacture.
He rubbed his arm across his sweaty brown and went back out to set the watch right. He made his way back to den and jumped suddenly noticing the icy cold of the watch and more importantly the ticking that had returned to it, like a heartbeat. Amazed but a little unsteady, he sat down to test it. Another chill climbed up his back as he realised it was only off by a few minutes. “A minute too late” he told himself.
He heard his children’s footsteps across the attic and down the stairs. He sighed- they would be before him in a second. As he moved slowly to correct his watch their footsteps were almost on top of him. Clumbsly he set it back by an hour. He sighed again and put his hand on his chin and felt… his bread?!
His mouth agape he went through the events of the morning. He had shaved before starting his work on the nursery. He stepped out of the room to get some quite. He set the watch back by another hour. Then another. He tried setting it right but it didn’t work. He couldn’t change it again either. It kept ticking backwards.
He looked in his dresser mirror disappointed by the watch, then shocked. His beard was no longer full, rather it was scraggly like it had only begun to grow. He looked again at the watch delighted. The watch was making him younger. He struggle to force the hands of the watch back by a few hours again. He was so happy he never noticed his children grow quite. Eventually after several hours before the mirror he heard the screams of babies. He walked back to the living room, and saw two babies inexplicably in his living room.
He ran across the house looking for his children, running faster then he had in years. He came back to the living room with a heavy feeling in his chest only then recognising his children. When people across the world first started noticing themselves growing younger, the oldest were delighted. A few weeks later the Earth’s last human child cried it’s last, unattended.
Lady of the West
mournful squall
sinking into the pebbles
on the riverbed
the moon
under flying dragonflies
even my footprints
are long gone
Muted Hesiod
A kite string has pulled against my palm
The singing call over the Ruby Red above
A misty sprawl shaped cotton cloud
The festival of unknown Psalms
Young leaves over where blood freely flowed
Thieves on the high-road
A broken grasp shaped of bronze
The free hand now an ode
Wake up wake up!
Insomnia, yet
The moonlight caught
Another dream floating
Facing up
Morning cold
Water drops
on burning rocks
early morning
your fingerprints
painted with night rain
The Russian war is a victory at home
I’m not one to engage with the tedious discourse of geopolitics often, but even among those of us curious enough to try and piece together both sides of the conflict I notice a few key take aways that don’t seem to be mentioned which I’ve written down here.
Despite the constant victories Ukraine seems to be winning on social media they are losing the actual war.
For all the exaggerated claims of killed Russian combatants that often suspiciously exceed the number of American killed in the Normandy landings, Ukraine has lost an astronomically higher amount of troops than the Russians. No reserves, mercenaries or militias can replace their legacy technology, bases and NATO drilled veterans.
If there is to be a post war insurgency, as many in the West callously imply- not accounting for how these insurgencies ruin nations- there won’t be many remants of the Ukrainian armed forces to fight it, unlike the disbanded and excluded Ba’ath party members in Iraq who made up the ranks and beuracracy of ISIS.
Considering how the war has progressed I think with hindsight we can say that the campaign wasn’t going to be shock and awe like the US in Iraq, rather it’s the deliberate advance like the Russian adopted in Syria. This time with even less bombing in the big cities. A fairly far sighted compramise since they don’t have the means or the delusions of grandeur that made the US think they could build a nation like Iraq or Afghanistan up from ruins.
This makes me think this will be a long war – probably one that extends beyond Ukraine if Poland & Belarus get involved.
This might also be Putin’s way of calling the economic bluff since there is no one who can replace Russian energy. All exaggerated claims of replacing Russian energy does not account for the fact that no one has the capacity or will to increase and supply production to that extent. Why would they do that and tank gas prices? OPEC has done so many times in the past and fairly see that they have not been rewarded. While Europe puts on a fig leaf with swap deals to hide purchase of Russian energy Putin is now going to force them to prop up the Ruble.
Many often dismiss Russia as a Gas Station mascarading as a country, quoting the plane crasher and war monger John McCain. The problem with this analogy is that gas stations are among the corner stones of modern civilization so it isn’t much of an insult. With the wheat fields that Russia now has access to, the gas station now has a farm attached -another cornerstone of civilization.
Secondly I think Putin was trying to break with the West before they were ready. This makes the many Western initiated talks before the war make a lot more sense, the attempts at deterrence meant that the West wasn’t ready yet – way to show your hand!
It also paints everything from Syria to Libya to Armenia to Georgia to Kazakhstan in a much different light- the plans to hemn in Russia were already underway. All of them have floundered so far, especially in Georgia and Armenia where Western aligned regimes have had to change their minds.
While Polish intervention might be a fantasy and Belorussian troops might only be massing on the border as a distraction – the real coup is how this imprisons all Russian Oligarchs & Europhiles within Russia to Putin’s nationalist vision. This fifth column has resisted for a long time, but now with a war their views have no currency and they can’t flee the country with their cash cows (stolen public assets) either. A true victory considering how much sway and influence these King Makers had in the 90’s – they were the ones who killed the Soviet Union and handed Putin the crown in the first place.
Rijul Ballal 