Thought Overflow

Welcome to the jungle, for the jungle lies not outside the boundaries of civilization, but within.

Let me start this post by first wishing Happy Sankranti/Pongal to everyone who celebrates it, and my sincerest hope that you all wake up with not too much of a hangover tomorrow morning. And now, with that out of the way, let’s return to the jungle analogy.

I realize I haven’t updated my blog in a long time, so it’s quite possible that though some of you may know, others may not, that there’s a building under construction right next door. That means that they have the goodwill to wake me up early almost every morning…of course, it’s of little significance to them whether I want to be woken up or not. The municipal corporation of Hyderabad have disallowed trucks and other heavy vehicles to ply on city roads during the daytime, due to which the cement and sand trucks start piling up early morning. Often, I’ve noticed that the labourers love to do their “bang-bang” early in the morning, and then after a while, they go silent. It’s quite intriguing…almost as if they nod to themselves after a while of making noise, saying “Yeah, I’m pretty sure we’ve disrupted his sleep well and proper now…he’s not going to go back to bed. Job done for the day. Good work, guys!”

I’ve made a post about Sankranti before (do look for it, it’s quite enlightening on how it’s “celebrated” here). However, I think it deserves another mention, even if just a fleeting one. So, we have the loud-speakers, the rustic yelling, etc. Last evening, I believe the neighbours were testing their loud-speakers, and the speakers were anything if not really, really loud. The music blaring out of them was loud enough to drown out the conversations we were trying to have inside our house. I suppose it’s one of the disadvantages of living on the second floor—the compound walls aren’t high enough to block out external sounds.

The jungle is a place of survival. Animals care for no one but themselves, civilization and civility is an unknown concept. These past few weeks have made me wonder just how junglee are the people I share this city with, hmm?