Atrophy
Atrophy, atrophy of what? My senses, my worth, my cognition or my entire wajood?
Pooja was sighting the vast Red Rock Canyon with deep cliff walls.They looked formidable with irregular tiers
covering the entire landscape like a crawling alligator which had muddy folds squeezing in and out sometimes
static or fluid.They had motored the whole way and were bound for LA.She found herself amidst
the greyest possible mountain ranges desolate, bald and bare.Scary to the
aesthetics of even a person of indifferent sensibilities. Not a single green
blade of any genre was visible.She scanned it more intently looking to the
farthest horizons touching the fringes
of the haggard mountain ranges.She imagined the descending cascades of waters
flowing through the visible creeks.But
there was not a drop of it.The metallic and asphalted road which ran through
the mountains seemed to be an intrusion into these droning devastated ogres of nature. Pooja and her family drove further snaking through the terrain and
glimpsing the never ending ranges of the
tiered terrains.She mulled over the details which she had come across on the slabs of stone in the tourist spots
where they stopped for sight seeing.It was the story of travellers who in
search of livelihood had trekked these mountains from Central Maxico to California.The remnants of their
settlements could be traced there. The blazing red colour of the soft sand
stone rocks glistened in the clear light of the Sun. The fury
of nature had given them the weird
shapes sculpting them further every now and then. The metallic deposits in
them rendered them multi-coloured- the copper blue,the red oxide, the mixed
shades of purple all of them creating a riot of rainbow colours which spread in
the vast wilderness of Sierra Nevada.They drove further and snaked their way through these squat mysterious misshapen concretions of the mischievous nature which has been lording
over them and subjugating them to its whims and wayward fancies. And these mountains were supposed to be teeming with the rarest of the rare fossils of
prehistoric relics of fauna and flora.A treasure trove for the
palentheologists.
Pooja found herself
in a world which was quite contrary to what she had imagined of this part of
the continent.Her Hemmingway belonged here.So it was his protagonist Nick who was the microcosm of the authors deep nihilism who could not cope with the imperceptible hollowness
of a continent which had a
brilliant shell outside but a dark emptiness inside which could never be opened to the mirth of Poojas country though it being sullied by the muck of deprivations.The Mojave
Wasteland had entered the core of
this continent which ran through the
length and breadth of the psyche of its inhabitants stealing away the mojo of their
godliness and leaving their essential
self to the howling ogres of the wilderness , the avenger of their hubris.
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