About stones and yellow lamp posts

"....then you better start swimmin', or you'll sink like a stone........for the times they are a-changin' ...."


It is 2.05 a.m. now. Rather it was that time a couple of minutes back. Then I was lying on the bed outside my mosquito-net with the lights turned off. The mosquitoes were yet to locate me in the dark, as they are very active in my room in the ground floor. But they or avoiding them was not of my interest at that time. Recently the road in front of our house got some new lamp posts with yellow bulbs. The street and part of my room is filled with halogen like light, crisscrossed by shadows. The lamp posts, embraced by countless wires going in all directions, were busy with the bugs humming around the light.

The rooms are getting painted. They smell of fresh paint. Oddly its in the night that the smell becomes strong. Its worse when you go to sleep. The smell makes you feel like choking! Some kid probably has his birthday in the flat opposite to our house. Because little lights from wires are hanging from the roof top to the bottom. The lamp posts could use that extra help. Its winter time. So fog/smog tend to challenge the yellow lights from the lamp posts.

The road in front of our house is a small one. Nowadays nearly each lamp post have a car parked for their company as garages are hard to find or maybe people are too lazy to put the cars inside the garage. Like a sight-screen we have the huge South City residential towers. I saw the moon struggling to get higher than the towers many a times. When you look at the towers from the beginning of the road, you will feel maybe the moon is only 36 stories higher nowadays.

In the evening when I was walking back to my house I realized again how huge the construction is! Its bigger than a child can ever outstretch both of his hands side wise and tell I want a ice cream this big. I suddenly had a sinking feeling. It was one of those like taking first swimming lessons. You throw your limbs desperately but still find yourself off balance. Your head bubbles up and down and you choke on waters entering your mouth. Or maybe it was like the space around you is contracting. It wont squeeze you but gives you an eerie feeling. Like suddenly having cobwebs in your face.

Bob Dylan must have written those lines about swimming for the old fashioned people. Advising them not to stop the young ones. The problem is I am quite young and those lines came to my mind easily. Maybe nowadays the old fashioned people are changing things and fresh minds are struggling to float around.