Vacuity, Quibbles and a Trail of Two Cities...

I have been sitting in front of the computer for the past ten minutes without an inkling of what I am going to write. My plaints now are a little interesting and incongruous, for this very void has characterised my stay in the US so far. The past month has seen me cocooning into a vacuum. My mind has been insensate to any kind of non-stagnant emotion, drowsing in the Styx of languor and impassivity. Rotting.

When one has nothing else to talk about, it is manners to talk about the weather. I know my manners well enough. Minneapolis is a nice place to live, picturesque and quiet. The weather is as pleasant as Bangalore right now. The down-jackets (which will come down from the attic with the snow) will take some time coming! The people are as a rule polite while maintaining a distance and the television channels, self-propagandist and hypocritical. Football is played with the hand and the general thought is that baseball is the godfather of cricket. If Clinton were to be stung by a bee, research on the aftermaths of bee-stings will catapult to new levels. If there are thousands of pawned other nationals dying out as excesses of a purposeless war, people will imbue themselves in nationalist pride and make hortatory speeches and laud their forces on having annihilated the enemy. Lives -- lives of non-whites -- are meant to be wrenched out in exchange for a quarter at the laundry. But the white doctor will tell you that, without loss of generality, lives are precious. If hurricanes come about anonymously, the folks here consider it rude. They either ostracise it or christen it, depending upon the need of the hour. The last gentleman, who was finally baptised Frances, barged in unannounced and it sent waves of protest round the country. The next two were ostracised after they chose to ignore the US and finally all these people decided that they would be wary of every stranger lurking in the oceans, and promptly christened the next one Ivan. Wherever you go to shop, the staff will be overwhelmingly polite and trustful of you; only you will have ten cameras behind you always. Everything is automated and unmanned. For instance, you cannot find a soul in a gas-station (probably because all Americans choose to play gas-bags outside it). I guess, the way it is here, you can't find a soul in the graveyard as well!

My Visa status says I am a non-resident alien and I can assure you I am feeling no other way. America, with all its manufactured beauty, seems to surprise me no end. It is one big Lego Set. Very picturesque. And very plastic. And people are those that are moulded in it; inscrutable and informally extremely formal. And very plastic.

But I think, for the moment, I shall take solace from the number of people who are feeling a little down this fall and rally myself back to end this one well. (On a tangent, with the amount of people feeling down this fall, I am wondering whether this fall will be referred to as the 'Downfall' in the annals of history.) (Excuse the PJ - Ed.)

In short, Minneapolis is almost as good as Madras. Not quite as good. But comes very close.

- posted by Dileepan @ 3:45:00 pm

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