Run, Rabbit, Run.

I've been catching up on some long-overdue reading with Margaret Mitchell's "Gone With the Wind" (Yes, that long overdue), and have just finished reading the bit where Rhett Butler has the temerity to claim that the Confederates are fighting a losing war, bolstered only by their land and manners and pride.

I don't know enough about the American Civil War or about Southern motivations to take sides. Pehaps all war is the result of political eloquence and mercenary intention, a rush of blood to the head and misguided patriotism; or perhaps rarely it's the only recourse in a situation with little room for manoeuvring, even when you're willing to sustain a loss of face. This debate is an old one and can be discussed at length, but perhaps another time. I know though that it takes some doing, listening to things like those he said and not being afraid to let the scales fall: once they've fallen, something has to be done.

To face a difficult truth includes a tacit understanding of the need to pull through with a difficult course of action. To accept the need for that course of action implies a realisation of the fact that the success of something does not necessarily depend on doing things as they have always been done. To do things at all does not necessarily mean they will make any difference.

There always seems to be too much time, money and energy frittered away on things that will not count two weeks from now in hope of approval that will probably never be unadulterated. I suspect that it will be the same no matter where I am. Does that reek of cynicism? I think it might. But I know for sure that trying to see things for what they are has led to the unburdening of a lot of deadweight.

There's always enough of that to try to unload, but for now I can be happy because I know what I want: to believe in and do what is right; to love and be loved wholeheartedly; to not care about what people who don't count think and to laugh at myself without being offended when other people join in.

New Routes

This Saturday, the bus took a new route to the hospital. Instead of turning onto Fort Road, the driver took a detour that led us past fields, boys playing cricket, and the other side of the Fort, one that I had never seen.
The beauty of living here is that there's always something new to be seen, if only you can keep your eyes open long enough. It can be difficult to gaze serenely out of a window as you fight for standing room on a bus or shield your face against the dust that embeds itself in your moisturiser, but it can be well worth the effort.

A while ago on a line bus on the No 2 route, I saw a family making rope out of coir. It hung heavy and thick, dropping from the slowly cranked spinning wheel in rough-skinned coils. You pass by fringed donkeys, the fire station, chaiwallas pouring out the day's first cups of tea, young girls riding scooters to college and men in lungis who have mastered the disconcerting art of the hoist-and-tuck.

Today there is a group of goats methodically chewing their way through a wallfull of posters, while others recline nearby with that spotted dignity that goats achieve so well. A short distance away there sits the incomplete figure of a woman made of brick. Around one and a half storeys tall, she has neither head nor arms but sits with disproportionately thin legs spread slightly apart and a cinched-in waist. If she had eyes they would look ahead of her into an empty lot strewn with weeds and garbage, and at the goats that keep her company without meaning to. Dilapidated as she is, she camouflages into the background of tyre- and tractor repair shops, the houses with their grilled-in verandahs, into the nakedness of the unpainted sides of small all-purpose stores. Maybe she was meant to be painted and worshipped as a goddess; perhaps that pot-bellied stomach and the height of her imply some obscenely elaborate chimney; I see no explanatory signboards excusing her existence, so I clothe her in conjecture and pass by.

Course to Course

I've been course-hopping this last week, from epidemiology to a three-day workshop on advanced research ethics. So I've been sitting in classes just like I would normally be, except that the other people taking the course are the people who would ordinarily be teaching the classes I'm used to sitting in.

Things have changed since I've left and returned, and the equations I share with people have changed, too. When I left, I thought that at the very least this would be a new experience. I didn't realise how much it would impact my motivations, or that I would change so much in so short a time.