A simple desultory Philippic

 I think of Zakynthos.
The blue and the green, and all the flowers and colours in between. The quiet of the slow warm afternoon, sun-slanted paved alleys deserted during the siesta, a beige street punctuated with the colours of the shop-fronts, a lady dozing in a chair, a...

 Somewhere to the west, behind me, a single-line railway cuts across town from north to south. Late last evening, and again just now after the sun has passed its zenith, the cracked two-tone moan of a diesel loco rose behind the bungalows of the Civil...

 “Barrraaaa … ter-raaatt!” Sardar Karnail Singh bellowed across the paddock. And twenty sad OTs, Officer Trainees, held on to the reins in quiet desperation as their lives were speeded up an unwelcome notch. We had all been told to lightly spur our horses...

As the light fades across the western sky, I sit immersed in silence that is yet not quite silent. Home at an unusual hour, before the December day has dimmed entirely. I revel in the shadows and the peace. The silence is accentuated by a faint thrumming...