Desert Rose

A year apart they were born. In the same neighborhood they belonged. Being the first to both parents, they were pampered and kept the apple of their eyes. Without a reason, some universal force made them first friends and first sisters to each other. They took their first steps, spoke their first words and sang their first rhymes almost around the same time. The parents and their little girls. Their bright red peddle - cycles with the rabbit face. The Barbie dolls. The alphabet shaped fridge magnets. It was colorful. There were smiles. Only smiles. They prayed to different Gods; Hailed from different towns. But they were girls who learnt to crawl together.  No history, no religion, no society or no ethnicity was going to change that.  Never mind any of it. Years rolled by. But not too many though. The innocence and tenderness was still very much the image the little girls portrayed.  Yet the colorful times happened to be...

“I could have been blank and usual. I would still do my job which was to merely block. But when some minds thought, I turned out to be much more. Much more than blank and usual. Now there was meaning; there was color; I was beautiful and I felt alive. The envying look in the eyes of all those people who walk in to use the pool, especially the gleam in the eyes of kids – and I realize that I am crafted well and have a significant role here.  I feel like ‘the wall’ and not just a wall.” PS: This is the wall along the pool side of one of the latest project I worked on with Good Earth in Cochin. Recycled bottles and blocks with mud plaster – that is all it took to make this ‘the wall’.

For more than a year now, I’ve been travelling by train to my native on a weekly basis and been crossing the vast expanse of land adjoining the Cochin International Airport. Initially, when I saw people at work and panels, I thought it was some airport extension business but now I know that Cochin was prepping to mark its place in the world history, technically. When stray dogs and their ‘rights’ or freedom to kiss in public or a celebrity’s wedding can take up so much attention and writing space, I thought this definitely deserved a little more attention than just a headline - “India’s Cochin is the World’s First Solar-Powered Airport”. If  humanity is to survive , it's going to have to embrace alternative forms of energy and ditch carbon  at  a real fast pace. India's making a pretty big stride in that direction after declaring Cochin International Airport as the world's first facility of its kind that runs entirely on  solar power . So I am jus...