Thumbs Up!

THE slanting sunrays lose their sting of September; they are mellow like the lions in the older national emblem; benign with their thick grinning whiskers; and, not snarling and sabre-toothed like the new avatar. The wind no longer feels like a slap across the face, but a zephyr, its sweet embrace is soothing and languorous, with political pundits trying to gauge which way it’s blowing. Plump Mexican silk cotton flowers twirl down from the high branches, like Vishnu’s Sudarshan Chakra, sans the firepower, landing silently to make a spongy, pink-purple carpet. The neem and the pilkhan have a blow-dried look, the generous rains and the assorted acids in the air have bleached them to an indescribable green. The parakeets and the barbets, the treepies and the hornbills, the doves and the babblers chirp around, merrily flying hither and thither as if they are in Ashoka Vatika.

- Satish Padmanabhan

There is peace in the mind, warmth in the heart and a zing in people’s step as the festive season is approaching. The entire city is bathed in brotherhood and camaraderie. Shouts of ‘Ram, Ram, Puran Kaka, sab khairiyat?’ ‘Haan, haan Khan Chacha, aap ke aashirwad se’ ring the air. The Gang-Jamuni tehzeeb is at its zenith. The barrier between castes has been long broken. Crime has been bulldozed. Class difference is so minuscule that even Engels will need a magnifying glass to detect it. Wherever there are men, there are 33 women too. The following scene is typical of a day in this just and kind society.

At a traffic signal, a gig worker loses his balance on his bike and falls because of a tent-sized package on his back. A Bentley screeches to a halt, the man at the wheel, a clean-cut millennial in a sheer linen jacket that discreetly reveals his rippled gym-toned muscles, picks him up and rushes to the nearest hospital. The free, super-speciality hospital is a shiny building built for the middle-class (there are no more poor, garibi has been