Beauty
Writing from a place of doubt and worry; I remember an exceptionally long bike ride with Shruthi. She was taking me to write an exam, and we passed most of Kochi behind us. Trees drooped into houses, creepers and climbers spread across abandoned walls with black mold cracks running like veins, houses were inhabited by foliage, and before we knew it, the sky was emboldened with giant grey clouds touching one another in their expansion. We saw them merge, creating a vast expanse of wet burden, as we drove up and out of road clearings. Although the downpour slowed us down, I found myself willing again and again for the forces to collapse, and they did. It rained all through the night. We stood on the steps to someone’s house waiting for it to pass. I realised once again, on this day that nature is not alien to urbanity, as often defined by the dichotomy of the modern human. In my mind, beauty exists as a struggle between duality, and its transcendence. As objects fall, dilapid...