A potato is dreaming..
He got home dirty,
All covered in mud after a day of play with friends.
He showers and wipes himself dry.
Looking at himself in the mirror,
all clean and shiny yellow now,
admires the view.
He walks into the bedroom, lies down in his big bed.
Then the knife falls..and chop!
From my old blog in 2008 Gone Fishing: ANZAC day (ravitandukar.blogspot.com)
On a TV program this ANZAC eve, there was
a short report containing an interview with a frail
eighty something year old. His casual but humble
and honest expressions matched his watery, sad
looking eyes. On an occasion where he was explaining
how he and thousands of his mates were tortured by
the Japanese in Thai Burma rail works during the
World war, the interviewer asked him if he felt any
repulse of the Japanese today. This was at the back
drop of the event he was referring to, the Allied
PWOs, numbering around ten thousand, mainly from
Australia, UK, US and surrounding local countries,
were made to work almost eighteen hours a day, for
nearly two years thru the thickest forests. Most died
of diseases like malaria, open ulcers, hunger,
dysentery and anything imaginable that can kill.
There are picture of these POWs lying like skeletons,
resembling jews in Hitler’s chambers in Auschwitz.
Thousands of mates of this old soldiers perished,
the brutality they were inflicted were
horrendous and unspeakable, like in China or wherever
Japan invaded. He came home at the end of the war,
lost and poor, shattered both physically and inside.
At the end, the Japanese surrendered, the prisoners
were now the masters.
He held back tears and remembered an incident that happened
in the jungle after the Japanese surrendered. He asked
a mate of his if he wanted to give the surrendering Japanese
the payback, the same torture and brutality, after all,
they had it all within their grasp now. He chocked for
couple of seconds, before recalling what his friend replied,
if a digger were to do the same, what’s the difference,
between him and them, it was stunning, untainted greatness of a man.
Don’t you enjoy 24/7/365 life
On the road, home or away
‘online’ anywhere,
anytime night or day, any day of the week
available in Webex, Zoom, Teams, phone
ready for business
Work is life, life is work
can’t tell the difference anymore.
Living the bubble
having a ‘life’
no one’s looking back
left or right
no one’s got time to take stock
of what you gained
what you lost
Like they say, ‘live in the moment’
why bother checking
where you headed
what you have become
who you are
counting years, like days
a whirlwind of roller coaster
all lanes are high speed
slows are only for the losers
like a firefly, diving towards fire
one day to disappear,
like a fading star far away.
Today I took a small visit to Sydney city to see how things were at the thick of COVID lockdown. These shots are at around 10 in the morning when the city would have just come to full throttle of life with office workers rushing, coffee shops at full steam, traffic crawling and explosion of sounds from cars, people, trains. But the scene today was serene and pin drop silence, not many souls around. A deserted, abandoned, scared place where people avoid each other.
Greetings from Sydney, hope it brings happiness to all and end of Covid-19.
Ravi Tandukar 