Minutes ago, my wife came home. She’d been to a trade association dinner. She's on the phone since she came in, talking business. Talking, she opened the refrigerator, pulled out a bottle, and tried to open it, all with one hand. The bottle fell, breaking the silence I’d been basking in.
"Need help?" I called from here on the second level. "No," she said from below, not coming off the phone.
I'm in the living room, writing. Until now, only the dogs on the street back of my house have been intruding into this quietude once a half-hour. There's not the sound of a motorcar, or of people talking whilst walking down the street. Or the patter of rain on top.
Bangalore is good these days, after many torrid weeks. The temperatures are around 29°/19°. That’s because it’s raining — but in the way it does in Bangalore — discreetly. The town has turned green, which change strikes me best when I arrive at my workplace, where trees recently planted have gained height and stand like teenager before full-grown across the campus, and their huddles are minor woods with the scent of rain among them.
Bangaloreans reading this may raise the eyebrow. Before they call me out let me admit there’s not been as much rain as we should’ve had. I’m only keeping this post steered toward the good.
While writing I’m distracting myself with the Guardian. And the New York Times. They bring into my microcosm big news of big people. I rather enjoyed it when Obama was in charge, and I welcome anything the tough-but-sweet German leader says or does. But, like with most folks these days, I’m locked into the Trump soap, and although I tell myself every day that Trump is none of my business, even if the climate is changing, the Greatest Nation on Earth won't leave a quiet foreigner alone, even if what it’s got now is Trump. He’s bad for the system, its media says, and shoves him through to my gut.
I read this comment by a certain Musteshfaibnalbitar, below one of the Trump stories in the Guardian:
"While I agree with your analogy, he is not, nor is any American, the leader of the free world. I live in a country that's truly free and he ain't my leader. That so called 'free world' thing is utter bullshit and smacks of the worst kind of 'murican (sic) propaganda."
Someone steeped in liberties would invent a username such as Musteshfaibnalbitar. As regards me, and us in my country, I must admit we're some distance yet from true freedoms. My username is the same as my real name everywhere. But I so agree with Musteshfaibnalbitar.
Trump, Merkel. May, Trudeau, Putin, Boris Johnson. And Tusk and Gorsuch and Corbyn and McConnell and Xi. Comey. These names are crowding my head in my home. I sift big names and mull big happenings when in a coop. Out in the wide, wide world I exult in the small things.
But I like my coop. I write and read here these days, rather than in a cafe, for the silence here. But I forgot to mention that I have an inner noise thanks to a recent onset of tinnitus. The doctor said I must practice to ignore it. I didn’t tell him the affliction is rather like Trump, it knows how to get in, in spite of my best efforts. I need sound to counter the tinnitus. So, and also because the writing was going nowhere, I did other things. It is getting to midnight now, and I watched The House of Cards. Wow. Can that Greatest Nation and its White House keel like in the serial? Now or ever?
There's a siren approaching. Our ambulances used to be shy and timid. The city appears to have fixed that. There’s at this time an occasional roar from the far-off main street — kids doing wheelies. During the Ramzan month just ended, local Muslim leaders realized that a good number from their flock were doing this daredevilry during the night hours. They pointed them out to the police, and urged the rest of their young to not sully their community, during Ramzan in particular.
I’ll go to bed. I cannot do anything now, except look for a Guardian response to yet another Trump tweet. I’m liberal, but I don’t mind him anymore. Rather, I’m anxious for him, he has begun to seem to me like a lead from a Greek tragedy. The climate may correct itself in spite of man, but Trump won’t, and I’m feeling anxiety for him, same as I feel when a play approaches end and tragedy. But, of course, Trump has no care for the concern of an Indian plebeian.