Last day of the first month of the year that's entrusted to soothe it all

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The day began really early with a text from Papa. He had left his charger at my place. So I cabbed it to Vashi around 6:15 in the morning. It was a swift, beautiful ride. Took me only 35 to 40 minutes to reach and approximately the same amount of time to return.

I think one of the projects that I really had my heart set on...and I had worked so earnestly on it...I think that my role in that project is off done. I felt sad. I do believe that at some point the project will resurrect in a different avatar maybe. I won't be a part of it. But I suppose one takes heart from the fact that the project will always remain a part of me.

Then V came home in the evening. I had lit up tealights and we were chatting about this and that. I wonder if it says something about our lives and our personalities that in environments such as this, V prefers looking the citylights and I prefer the candle flames but in time, we both settle in on the dark night sky. Something to be said for absence of light then...darkness as the true common denominator.

Today he told me stories of snakes and snake-bites, especially the Russell viper. The venom can start rotting the flesh very quickly, apparently. Interestingly, a quick first aid is that if one gets bitten, one takes a country chicken and applies its backside to the bite. (The chicken's rear convulses and sucks out the poison giving one enough time to save yourself. The chicken dies of course.) Then he told me of another snake that bites only when one is asleep. You don't feel the bite until its morning. 

I have always been fascinated by snakes. I especially love the way the way they shed skins and slither away quickly. Not needing legs for speed is quite phenomenal. 

Once V was in a village where he and his friends were clearing off leaves from around the place where they were staying. While chatting, a villager told him that when a snake passes through, it leaves behind a scent the other snakes picks up on. The other snakes know that a snake has been in the area but they aren't sure whether that snake is more or less powerful than them. They don't know if they are entering the zone of a predator. So it's likely that they will stay away.

On the face of it, these stories seem so far removed from city life. But you scratch the surface and you see that this checks and balances for survival and dominion is the exact thing an urban landscape is fashioned on.

Welcome to Mumbai. 

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