A circus elephant is coming to town

What is it that when a Political heavy weight's visit to a state is announced the town seems to get ready for a circus? Uniformed Jokers make you laugh...

 Whenever a circus came to my town, as a child I used to be excited along with my buddies. Even the older people would have our excitement rubbed off on them giving a hint of a certain extra freedom of sorts to us kids. No one spoke about homework and other tedious things; the teachers seemed a shade lenient too. If the class was on, our ears were tuned to the sound of bells around the circus elephant which was walked through the town to advertize about the circus. The sight of an elephant on a street between  rows of houses and buildings was awesome indeed! And sometimes an elephant would pee gallons of pee and it took a long time for it to finish peeing. Once an elephant peed on a sloped street off the main. The urine ran all along a length of about10 meters down the slope. Everything about the pachyderm is BIG (except the eyes) : the massive frame, the tusks, the ears  the nails, the pillar-like legs, the organ, -even the hair is as thick as fishing line...

However, the elephant which is expected to come to town today is not an animal and it can not afford to pee uninhibitedly on the road in full public view, I am sure,  for it is a man. A big man, a VVIP-, not so much in his frame but his designation and fame. It is the Prime Minister of India, Dr. Manmohan Singh himself, who will "bless", as they say, our town today.

When real elephants came to town there were no security personnel - three uniformed men every four meters. But this delicate man, our PM, seems to be the rarest of rare species.
Yesterday I went to a shop to buy fruit and I was stopped by a police man. " where are you going?", he asked me with authority. "To the shop", I said and he let me pass. Then I had to go to the bakery for bread. Again, this time another pot bellied Khaki clad officer, who had the appearance of a 30 number bidi soaked in rain water, stopped me. " Bakery", said I, but he seemed unconvinced that there should be a bakery in our town. These police-men are from central police force deployed on special duty therefore perhaps do not know the area. A question which comes to my stupid layman-mind is, how can a security officer guard and protect anybody without properly knowing the landscape he is manning? And his ridiculously put-on authority is supposed to send shivers down my spine! I have smoked enough 30 number bidies in my time to be perturbed by that. " When is he coming?", I wanted to know. I was told that the PM was arriving 'nalleke', meaning tomorrow. They were rehearsing! REHEARSING? WHAT?? An attempt to shoot  the PM? Damn it. Somethings I shall never understand. Another thought made me smile to myself. I thought, who would want to kill our dear old Dr. Manmohan? Who is afraid of a Mr. nice like Dr Singh that he would want to kill him? Our PM is harmless; he does not do anything.

Morning vision of BalaKrishna

Rising up early may not be such a big deal for a generally lazy fellow. I do not find it difficult to wake up at soon after five and before six. Of late I have begun Pranayama again, but the reason for my early rising is quite different. Let that pass, because it may be trivial for people with their own reasons to rise-up v early.
I get out around six and ride down the straight AV road which at that early hour is refreshing. The dust of  previous day has settled or has been blown away westwards by the night sea breezes from the bay and I realize how nice it is to breathe clean.

All that apart, on some mornings a hasty driver of those horrendous "pick-up" trucks devilishly overtakes me but I do not feel like cursing! Mornings are good (I wonder why the English practiced wishing everyone good morning? To my mind it is like meeting someone in a cinema who asks you whether you have come to see the film playing in there! Well, a bit far fetched allusion I admit but mostly I almost say, "No, I will only have some pop-corn and leave the cinema!")

Again, that is not what I want to write...

This morning I heard a horrible Vrooom close behind me and before I could glance at the r v mirror this common, mean pick-up scraped a piece of my personal ether. I looked at its behind. There was a picture of a blue boy, who I surmised, from the iconographic symbols, to be Bala-Krishna. It wasn't bad kitsch although being rather familiar with the art of painting faces his os nasale or the nasal bone was quite misplaced. It made Bala-krishna look unduly embarrassed for no fault of his. In his pink palm he held the flute, and he had a plastic peacock feather tucked through his curls. As the vehicle carried further and further away from me my embarrassed looking Krishna I felt glad. More for him than myself, because the worst depiction of the Lord to my mind is beautiful. He is Vasu-deva, the God of delight. Depicting Krishna beautifully must always be relative, I think, for who can conceptualize His absolute form? That embarrassed looking Bala-Krishna to me was as delightful as any Kishangarh portrait of the blue God for He resides not so much in the image as in the hearts of men.  Pictures, even bad pictures,  invoke the dormant reality within. Lord Krishna's darshan this morning kept my day bright. I was not embarrassed for any act of mine today.