If you are the kind who does not get annoyed by animal stories then you could stay on perhaps. Again, if you do not get annoyed by the counselling columns in newspapers where people ask for advice making it sound like they are asking on behalf of their 'friend', then you should not be annoyed with my animal stories. So there is this crab I know who lives next door to me and she saw herself as being very 'clingy'( crass and hurtful word I think....but never spared herself this kind of hurt) It's alright to be clingy if one is an arthropod but then comes a point of time when the young adult arthropod with the hardest of shells, begins to feel mutinous. But there was no running away from this kind of labelling. So my friend the crab did what all crabs do====she moved out, made friends, pretended to be busy and all the while felt glad that she pushed away the spells of self-depreciation under the dining table, although she did occasionally indulge in waves of self-pity. But such spells of bliss are ephemeral and soon the world of squids and fish and seaweed and lobsters made her want to pull the shell over her ears as much as her family did. She had some other crabs she could talk to at these times, a hermit crab and a sea anemone as well. But wanting to lean on fiends bring forth a fresh burst of self rebuke from the crab in her. Doesn't everyone fight their own battles? Don't we?
I was walking to the centre in the afternoon----the trees were all red gold and a powdery yellow and brown hung like an unreal movie on either sides and I felt a little something twist inside me. I always dig and carve these little spaces for me to run away......and find mice and gates and laptops and leaves to talk to. It lets off the steam and helps one think better...about people, relationships in general. But the worlds no matter how alternate, are sanctuaries. But it amazes me how invariably relationships replicate even in alternate worlds. When I tripped up the path to the SSS II, I saw the heaps of leaves and although I wanted to make nests on the lawn and sit for a spell with the dogs, a part of me did not want to talk at all. Comfort and distraction flowed through the earphones playing music from the Delhi radio stations but it is not any kind of world---alternate or otherwise. Sometimes I think that the superego of the crab should let me off more easy.