It's amazing how words fly fast and furiously when fuelled by emotion. Any emotion. I go dry for months and then on one day, poetry flows interminably. Paragraph upon paragraph of incandescent prose, words gushing. Like there was never a drought at all.

Is this how poets, writers and musicians feel? I hesitate to say 'artists' because I cannot claim to understand much beyond prose and music. Even poetry is pushing it a bit. My drawing / painting skills are limited to house, tree, river, mountains with sun-in-between and such like. 'Scenery', my art teacher used to call it. It always used to be the first topic on the first art class of a new year. I remember thinking each time that 'THIS time, it will be different!' No such luck. Ever. The height of my artistic achievements was probably figuring out how to mix colours to obtain purple, so I could paint my drawing of the Phantom (big fan!).

My dancing skills are quite bad, I'm told. I, however, continue to believe I am a killer on the dance floor, when I actually deign to grace it. Untapped genius, really. People drag me onto the floor, unmindful of my protests. Don't want to give them a complex, I tell them. They watch open mouthed, I smile. Then they burst into fits of laughter. Don't bother covering your true feelings, I say. Envy will get you nowhere, I say.

My skills in other art forms are better left unmentioned.

Anyway, I wonder, how does being high make it easier to be creative? Does one see things one might not when sober? Maybe. Does one feel emotions more deeply? Quite possibly. Surely some scientific study somewhere has spent millions of dollars over several years to come up with results to support this theory. Careful subject selection, extensive testing, hundreds of pages of data, thousands of top scientist man-hours. The sensational results probably reading something like "we conclude that there is a good chance that alcohol consumption may lead to heightened emotional response and lowered sensory perception and general intelligence".
No shit, Einstein.

Well, at least the theory is a good one, proven everyday around the world, by men crying into their beers and talking to and / or bumping into telephone poles on the way home. I'm sure the scientist must be thinking ah, money well spent. No doubt Joe feels the same way and is trying to convince the telephone pole about it.

So getting drunk helps creativity. So does getting emotional.
Is 'drunk' an 'emotion'?

I think I'll just pop out and have a shot at testing this hypothesis. Anyone want to join me?

^

Maximum Pity

A large city is not just a geographical location, a dot on a map. It's not just a place of existence, where millions of lives are lived out, over hundreds of years. It's not just a name in history books, being linked to one gory example of human nature after another.
It's an organism. It's alive.

I hate Mumbai, but I'm beginning to develop an undeniable respect for the city.

Torn apart by communal violence at regular intervals. Lakhs eking out pathetic lives barely on the fringes of what can be called a human existence. Corruption. Politician-criminal/underworld nexus. The suffocation of the madding crowd, the stench of ordinariness, the peculiar loneliness of being among millions. Sometimes, Maximum City evokes Maximum Pity.

How do Mumbaikars stand it? How can they live in such a place, where their lives are at constant risk for no more reason than being in that city? Why live in a place where your obscurity weighs on you so heavily?

Mumbai was rocked by blasts again last evening, at seven locations in local trains and stations on the Western line. Current estimates of dead and injured are moving wildly between 150/500 to 1000/2000 (local word of mouth). Last year there was the flood. A few days ago, Shiv Sainik violence. Yesterday, an artery of the Mumbai organism was cut.

And today, it is bandaged and has almost stopped bleeding. It's hobbling towards normalcy. In less than 24 hours.

Maybe it is this resilience of the city that makes it great. Never say die attitude. I may kill you tomorrow in the name of business but I will help you today in the name of humanity. Here, take my food and water - you look like you need it more than I do. Living and existing are two very different things, and existing itself is an everyday battle in Mumbai. Maybe everyone realises this and thus does not hesitate to go to the aid of a fellow soldier.

From readers' comments on Rediff.com :

"I picked up two people, one of whom had his thigh slit open. I smelled burning fumes. He was bleeding through his nose and ears. Another person and myself carried him to the police jeep nearby, but the constable was not able to tell us where to go. What I saw within an hour shook me to the very core of my heart."

- Hemant Budhivant, Matunga

"The situation is beyond description. I could see charred bodies of four men and one woman being taken away on stretchers. I think they were dead. Nobody was accompanying the bodies, which were being carried in an auto rickshaw. One body fell out of the rickshaw on the turning of the Chamunda circle. A few women on the road fainted seeing the condition of the body. It was really a horrendous scene."

"I was standing at Khar station waiting to go to Churchgate. As the train entered the station, there was a blast in the first class compartment. The impact was so heavy that I actually was thrown back and hit an iron rod. There were bodies all around. Some of them had no face, hands, fingers, etc."

- Sandeep Butaney, Khar Station

"We came walking from Dadar Circle to Mahim. There was a lot of traffic and nothing was moving. But I had an experience of Mumbai I will never forget. Poor people, families, everyone on the street from Shivaji Park to Victoria Church, handing out cups of tea, bottles of water, biscuits, stuff to eat. They didn't bother staying indoors. There were young people managing traffic, helping people share a cab, get transport. It made me feel proud of Mumbai. No one should dare call Mumbai a rude city again."

- Gazala Irani, Mahim

"But the most fascinating sight is of hundreds of people who are on the roads -- not demonstrating, but offering water and biscuits. This is incredible Mumbai. Kids, girls, women, young men, old people -- all are trying to feed the hungry and quench the thirst of the thirsty."

"..in minutes many people lay dead. There was chaos everywhere but the people were trying to help each other without any government official in sight. That's the spirit of Mumbaikars. The perpetrators of this attack are inhuman. How they can do this to innocent people who are no way related to any politics? May god give patience to the loved ones of the victims."

- A Khan, Jogeshwari

"As I got down from my coach in a state of shock and walked back towards the blast site, there were people already from the other coaches, and some good samaritans from the nearby slums and railway yard, who were desperately carrying the injured people down the subway exit to the roads and loading them into cars and taxis.
Residents of the buildings near the Willingdon Catholic Gymkhana were flinging bottles of water and blankets for the injured people."

"Suddenly, the top of the train blew up and people were thrown on the tracks. After some time, the train stopped moving and a lot of people from the nearby Golibar area came to rescue them. I have seen the unity in our people. Irrespective of religion, they simply came to help. I am proud to be a son of India. I hope politicians don't use this as a tool to divide us."

- John, Khar

Is this Mumbaikar nature? Is this Indian nature? I am not sure how my beloved Hyderbadis would react in the face of such a calamity, especially because of its Hindu-Muslim cultural ethos.
Is this human nature? Did ordinary Joes run back into the debris of the Twin Towers to save people, or did they just wait for the trained personnel (police, fire dept etc)? Are the heroes in Hollywood movies for real?

And one question which constantly troubles me is : what would I do? Would I find myself thinking 15 times before getting involved, would I give in to the apathy, as I find myself doing so many times of late? Or would I jump right in with the spirit and passion I had, and loved having, when I was younger? The times when I have let opportunities to help pass me by because I spent too much time procrastinating and debating pros and cons have haunted me for several days after. However small the help I could have given. What happened to deprive me of my sense of concern and my willingness to get involved when immediate help was required? Forget the politically correct causes - an accident happens on the road and immediately Tom Dick and Harry on the street jump in to help, in whatever little way they can. Why do I feel the urge to help but do so only to a small extent, or refrain completely? When exactly did I stop caring? How many of us have stopped caring, as life's petty concerns took us over?

Is there a hero inside us all? I don't know because I sometimes wonder if there is still even a human inside us all.

^