Survey on Green-Consumption Behavior

Survey on Green-Consumption Behavior: My co-author and I are doing research on Green-Consumption Behavior. For that we need responses on our survey, which was designed to tap into some of the variables we are trying to test. The survey should take you around 15 minutes. Thanks :)

Isometric projection

I build pictures
Life does, rather
Day after day after day

Things emerge
As old ones purge
Gradually, they accumulate

People come
In packs and lumps
And life moves on somehow

Sporadic thirsts
For new suburbs
Slowly begins to crowd

This mind that thinks
Questions me
Of turns and bends and twists

And little though
My share has been
I still can’t answer like a blitz

And as we grow
A little more
Things begin to make more sense

With plan, section and
Elevation at hand
The master does commence

The stratum drawn
The pencil moves
With the moves of this run

And comes to light
What if I might
Call, life’s isometric projection

Whispering trees

Post lunch solitary walks in wintry afternoons, the canopied roads bathing in sporadic waves of sunshine and the fluttering green leaves glistening in golden ushers with a perfectly untainted blue sky as a backdrop, life is as perfect as can get. And as I walk through the showers of sauntering yellow dry leaves kissing gravity every time the soft winds wake up the hibernating stalks, a thousand thoughts flirt with my mind. Like the shadows constantly changing form beneath the feet. And as much as the onlookers might find me paranoid, I think I’ve never been as self sufficient. Though there is still a lot left to be desired and some seemingly ridiculous wishes which inspite of their devious ways and a knack to leave the feeble wish land in splinters, are most conveniently accommodated. But when such voids begin to take over, I realize that earth in her subtle ways asks me to find solace in her calm tranquil presence. Its taken a while for the conundrums of life to begin getting sorted out. It’s taken a few events which I would’ve called unfair and blamed myself for not gauging well. Like willowy twists in directions far from envisaged. And now I find a perennial cloud of reassurance above me and I know I am never alone. Not in my grief, not in the exuberance, not in the several silent moments or the ones filled with mayhems.

Extremes

Free Verse
Rehearse
Walk free
Dwell deep
Make noise
Keep your poise
Greetings crowd
Over and out

Olly Maple

Olly Maple inspired my rhymes
A country lad in bizarre times
Rambled cause he loved his voice
Olly Maple, my favourite boy

Cared little for fiendish plots
Lost in his brazen thoughts
Phantoms of a world gone by
Observed at stretch, the nothingness of skies

And in the woods, his hidden shack
A carnival of tricks on rustic racks
And twigs and strings and jingles of joy
Olly Maple, you were my favourite boy

On the mountain's sunny side

The little fountain blue and wide
On the mountain's sunny side
With the river on its toes
And pixie-dust upon its bows

Where sprightly little fishes flock past
Over pebbles and water grass
To their school in the magic pit
Where they swim with all their grit

I will one day be with them
As the god of merry may-hem
Elect the young to make all rules
And keep the bullies out of school

And when the sun gets overhead
They can laugh and play instead
In the fountain blue and wide
On the mountain's sunny side

The Mirror

And wings I had all the way
The skies were always open
The clutter waiting to be cleared
And fetters meant to be broken

The stars always shone upon me
The turbulent rivers on the underside
The madness on a platter of dust
It’s dancing shadow in my mind

And I looked up for omens from angels
And dreamt of greens and greys
Of a spring time in my saddle
In the fleeting moments of the day

And no tiny pearl of wisdom
Poured down the mighty sky
Under the bristling winter leaves
It seemed an endless flight

Till I ran into a mirror
Saw a reflection of my thoughts
And I returned to the child I once was
For then I knew what I had lost

The Selfish Gene

It’s strange, the ways of life. The way we’re brought up with subliminal survivalist instincts bred into us right through our childhood. All those years that we’ve spent seeing people around us bargain. And we learnt to do that too. Bargain with the vegetable vendors and the rikshaw-pullers. Bargain with the innumerable people we meet on the streets to the ones working in our houses, cleaning the dirtiest corners of our homes. We bargain, and stay suspicious and wonder how much they might be robbing us at that moment. Overcharging on a KG of onion or a ride back home or for a month’s house work, within which there were easily 3 more days of absence than had been decided.

All that bargain to save us a tiny fraction of what we would spend otherwise on a dinner at a fine-dine or watching a lame rip-off of an English Hollywood drama. Or even worse, what we would spend on that silk kurta that would hardly ever see the light of the day.

That really does skew my perspective of human generosity. Of all the people, whom we could choose to exploit and bargain with, we choose the poorest. The uneducated ones, incapable of defending themselves and the ones to whom a little extra money would mean a thousand times more than to the owner of my neighbourhood spa.

It’s almost hypocritical. We ask and plead god to give us things and care for us when we cannot care for anyone but us. It’s almost like that advertisement by Naukri.com in which the mistreated employee is complaining to a colleague about his boss and then behaves in the same disrespectful way with the boy serving tea at the road-side shop.
And if it is not the indifference, then only one more reason cold possibly explain this hypocrisy. Our high degree of obtuseness, or ignorance, or both that makes the consequences of our actions oblivious to us.

That most of us in-spite of a relentless debate on sustainability and warnings of energy, food and water shortage, can indiscriminately continue to use and waste resources and not once think about the price that the lower end of the pyramid might have to pay for it. The value of their lives for us must really not even be measurable on the same scale that we use for our regular down-town acquaintances.

All we seem to be doing is caring for ourselves and out of our petty concern for our social needs, doing a little bit for our immediate family and friends. That’s as much as what marginally evolved animal species do. Seems like a rather meaningless way of living, doesn’t it?

Jamboree

The songs of the play-ground
Rise up a knot and drape
This rumbling hoot, weaving
A dream of rhythmic tales

Convinced all frog-kind are princes
He croaks loud to greet the sun
As a marching rabbit, the Mad-hatter
Drops by to wiggle his bum

The play-rules gets more chaotic
They’re seeped in the daytime glee
And commanding the aerial universe
Is the tiny freckled Mr. Bee

The chip and the chipmunk
Both dodge past the hovering pun
The parrot which can’t stop preaching
Oblivious to its unpopular run

Tis a day in the life of a dreamer
Who spins a story as bizarre as this
But it’s all for that playful grin
That I see on your face now, Miss

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Reflection

Down came a tear drop
Rolling on the cheeks
Seeking earth, with it's daunting mirth
That fall was very steep

Out came a timid sigh
Steeped in the wounds of time
All of mankind's casual liberties
Reflecting in his stark decline

All the years of greed and grandeur
That had coloured the life of few men
At the cost of agony to others
And the sparse resources for zen

We used it all and more
We fed ourselves and deprived
All we could, and the earth that stood
A testimony of our false pride

Now the waves wash down the islands
As quakes rock shores and land
The droughts aren't far and few between
And the floods, no walls can stand

And lost is the merriment of autumn
The carnivals of an early shower
The fall hues and the cuckoo
The blossoming of the spring flowers

The many delights that held us
That inspired our muse and our rhymes
They were all the poetry in our lives
Now they fade away sublime

And as much as our heart grieves
The script cannot be undone
Lest, the heart feels guilty
Prudence shall not awaken