The Anatomy of Weather

Very strange things have been happening in the recent past. I look up at the bleak dark sky through my window in the morning. The trees have lost their bloom. There are no joggers on the street. The roads look slippery. The air is still and then the wind rattles my window. The air is still again. I get out of bed, brush my teeth, bundle up in three layers, and walk down the termite-ridden wooden steps to take out the trash. I open the door cautiously expecting a surge of cold air and an immediate self retreat. I walk outside to warmth. Sunshine. The smell of spring but the sight of winter. The touch of summer but the sound of fall. Not entirely unexpected. It was sixty degrees fahrenheit today in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Just like yesterday. And the day before. Tomorrow promises more of the same.

[Zoom out into a wide shot of the "city of brotherly love". Zoom out so we watch our cold blue earth from a distance. Pan camera across the globe, around it, until it rests on Northen India. Zoom in to the city of Delhi - the capital city, the metropolis of a zealous nation]

A baby wakes up to screams that scare him. So little, so fragile, but so very peaceful. Papa's been drinking again. But this time the screams are not of a mother facing an abusive wrath. The screams are of a mother who has lost her husband. An abusive husband but bound by religion and her newborn's needs, a necessary husband. He had been walking the streets after a daily shift at the shoe factory down the road. Walking with the bottle that kept him company on every night including this one. This night was special - he had his paycheck. He could pay a prostitute for what his wife would not give. Not because she did not want to. But because her body was in a torrid mess after nights of incessant beating. Sadly, the building is closed - severe weather alert. Zero degrees centigrade. Bah! These officials. With a single t-shirt clinging to his skinny body, he walks the frigid streets with his bottle. He shivers. Maybe a little rest before he walks a little further. His eyelids give up and hugging himself to keep warm, he lies down on the open road. Rest in peace while the cold breeze takes your life. Slowly. Just like you did your daughter's. A baby cries. A mother weeps. A nation carries on.

Unusual temperatures everywhere. I'm not a greenpeace liberal but I can see things are going wrong. And unless something is done soon, the earth will take what we have destroyed. And give back death..and eternal sleep.

©Govind Mohan – http://govindmika.blogspot.com. All rights reserved.

Oh Mother, My Mother

The last few days have been hectic. We travelled to Tirupur, Clothes Kingdom of India to pick up clothes for myself. It's dirt cheap yeah? But the journey proved to be my mother's undoing. It all started on a fateful September 1999 evening. My dad had gone on one of his religious piligrimages (thankfully, on my mother's insistence, he has realized that the God is within and it's no use praying to sullen stone idols that represent "God") and I was studying for my tenth grade National Board Examinations. My mother had complained of acute pains in her joints and fingers a year or so prior to this incident but let it be and ignored it (owing to her philosophy of ignoring ailments and thus curing them - the mind affects the body). On that day however, all hell broke loose. My mother started bloating up like a balloon filling up with water and soon she couldn't breathe. She was retaining all the water as her kidneys were failing - rapidly and alarmingly. I immediately called relatives but until my dad came back, she wasn't shifted to emergency (I'm not sure why). She was soon diagnosed however with S.L.E (Systemic Lupus Erythematosus), a chronic, usually life-long, potentially fatal autoimmune disease, just like the dreaded AIDS [Edit: AIDS is *NOT* an auto-immune disease. It is an acquired immune disease. Therefore, unlike AIDS, Lupus cannot be transmitted and has to do with the body's own malfunctioning immune system. Sorry Mom!]. It isn't easily diagnosed because signs and symptoms are so often seen with other diseases - fever, malaise, joint pains, myalgias and fatigue. The body creates anitbodies against its own DNA - therefore it's autoimmunity characteristics! Women get it on a 9-1 ratio but it's uncommon in Asia. My mother has it however and for a year after the diagnosis, she was in significant pain and suffering.

My mother is an astounding woman however. Her illness is one of the worst. But she is the bravest woman I know. Ever smiling, ever positive, ever wonderful. She did not complain an iota and she stuck to her guns - the illness wasn't going to affect her, it would't affect her family. She openly confronted doctors about high steroid doses (she is well versed in British flower/herbal medication - Homoepathy and Bach Flower Remedies) and without regard to incessant outbursts from her mother, she treated herself with eastern techniques. And my mother got better. She proved to the world that natural remedies work and that being negative was simply foolish. And she greeted me with that same beautiful smile on my trip to India this winter.

However, the last few days has seen the re-emergence of that selfish, sinister disease named SLE. It's been three years since the last "re-emergence". When I came to India last. And it's come back again - on my return. Strange but true. My mother currently has high fever too. And I leave India in a couple of days. The days frighten me and the nights are worse. I only pray she gets better tomorrow. And blogging about it has it's sense of prayer.

To my mother.