Fecundity

Comes and hits you. You are then suddenly left with many children . . . awaiting another long, barren hiatus.

What do you do with those children in those barren days? Toy with them, toss them around, shove them under your bed and forget about them for days on end. I don't have an answer, why do you ask me? I myself have thrown some of my children out the window when I came back to them. Nopes, not all children can be called mine. They were born unwanted in a fecund phase. So go.

And what do they do? They grow, some hibernate, some turn yellow. Some rot, like only mangoes can. "Rotten mangoes" is a very Indian expression, ain't it? (We don't say rotten apples, because we don't let them rot. I think I can even count the number of apples I had in the last 34 years.)

And being an Indian, fecundity is something you cannot avoid, be it in anything. When you talk, you talk more than necessary. When you write, you digress and talk about ten other things. When you reproduce, you resemble a protozoan. At the workplace, you do every thing other than work.

I'm not here Indian bashing. Just keying in the incessant monologue happening in my mind. Otherwise I might have been caught talking to myself. That is a nonbailable offence I hear. Must be true . . . it's our dear beloved country after all.

Fecund for no reason, didn't I say?

Just waiting to drive his newly acquired Toyota. Left-hand driven, so it should be quite something trying to drive it on Indian roads. He? My self-proclaimed Nazi frnd . . . who I'm very fond of.

No, we spent nights in the same room, even on the same bed at times, but no, not him.

And there is AnandaDasa, another dear brother of mine. Somebody who is very very proud of being an Indian. He made the new British Airways ad "for India, the world is waiting." Drove his car too.

And then one sunny afternoon I carried her luggage across the road. This she?
No, not now.

Is this a suicide note? Why can't I just stop? Is this fecundity as you know it? My pen needs a condom too.