Not to Human Scale!

Can a mere blog-writer comment on one of the most momentous events of human history? An event that left a mammoth blot on a nation, smaller than a mole on the world map?
What must she have thought in those very last moments? That this is it? Or that she was gonna be ok? That she will fight those kafirs, those who broke the very tenets of the religion they profess to protect by aiming at a woman? Of her kids? Of her dead father? Of all the dreams she had for herself and her country? Of the vengeance she must have felt for her detractors? Or her isolation in a world full of manipulators? Or of the Heavens above?
Whodunit? Whocares? It’s not going to bring her back. The woman who was destined to die violently among faceless crowds, but on her soil, the soil that she kissed in gratification when she finally came home. Gutsy, spirited, brave, hardened, vociferous, feminine, regal, sophisticated, earthy, shrewd, lonely, homesick – a hundred words spring to mind.
Politician, leader, prime minister, campaigner, dreamer, manipulator, conspirator, woman, wife, daughter, mother – whatever she was, she is a persona who slowly descended into my consciousness through the million frames seen and words heard and read about her. So much so that when I saw her in person in New Delhi years back, all I could do was stare. So much so that the purported pic of her in a short skirt circulated in recent times offended me.

For the journo in me, she is a name often uttered, analysed and thought about. For the people-watcher in me, she was a suave woman of the world. For the human being in me, a skeletal shell that lost some parts of her flesh and life blood every time she lost a parent, a brother; when she lost precious years of her eventful life in an uneventful prison and the power that came to her as an inheritance of turmoil. And, now her life for a cause that seems like seeking Eden in a desert.

Benazir Bhutto was just one of her kind. Like Rajiv Gandhi, whose beautiful face was smashed into an unrecognizable void, they chose to hit her handsome face. So that, nothing of her remains. Not even the shell. How mean can they get!

The time you won your town the race

We chaired you through the market-place;

Man and boy stood cheering by,

And home we brought you shoulder-high.

To-day, the road all runners come,

Shoulder-high we bring you home,

And set you at your threshold down,

Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away

From fields where glory does not stay,

And early though the laurel grows

It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut

Cannot see the record cut,

And silence sounds no worse than cheers

After earth has stopped the ears:

Now you will not swell the rout

Of lads that wore their honours out,

Runners whom renown outran

And the name died before the man.

..And round that early-laurelled head

Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,

And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl's

My Neverfoundland

Steam from chai mingling with fog. The result a damp swirl that dances before the eyes before floating away into the neem tree. Silence trudges to and fro on the deserted road, carrying the heavy load that the fog has put on its back. Gulp down the first chai so that another hot cup can keep the cord of the warmth from breaking down. Birds are numb, leaves motionless, sky lost somewhere. The chai fellow, simultaneously happy and irritated, with the merry chai drinker of the unearthly hour.

Just then a razor-sharp noise slashes through the white curtain. Wheels trundling on the gravel and even as the clatter cuts through the chill and the chai to reach the ears, something flashes before the eyes. Men, all wrapped up, with their profiles barely visible, huddled over bicycles, furiously pedaling. Bicycles laden with huge bunches of flowers. Roses, gladioli, gerberas, orchids, birds of paradise, anthuriums, angel spray, nestling in green leaves, tied up in ash-coloured fabric. Each cycle slices through the fog and vanishes as a second one replaces the frame. In the monotone of the fog, the splashes of colour coagulate mid-air and stay there as the black outlines of the dozen or so cyclists melt into the fog.

The chai freezes, the hand holding the cup stunned into an askew angle. And, silence shoos away the remnants of the wheel-talk. Was it for real? Or just a chemical explosion in the brain?

Early morning. January fog. Parliament Street, New Delhi. Flower-sellers on their way to Baba Kharak Singh Marg for the early-morning wholesale vending in the bay.

Delhi winters are made up of cameos like this. Trees that drip dew in Amrita Shergill Marg even when it is not raining. Hot Moong ka Halwa at Kaleva’s. Langar at Gurudwara Rikabganj. Rosy apples piled up at Central Secretariat. Planes descending like smoky mountains at the mouth of the runway on Jaipur highway. Chrysanthemums in Defence Colony market. Adrak Chai flavours mingling with the fragrance of mattri outside Metro station, Chandni Chowk. The occasional flash of feminine colour among the grey/black/blue/brown masses of sweaters that walk on ITO road. Women knitting away furiously everywhere – on buses, in offices, on India Gate lawns and in balconies. And steaming Aaloo paranthas in road-side bunks.

It is a winter that haunts and terrifies the spiritless. It kills the cowards. It chases the weak-hearted into their blankets. It tip-toes through sealed windows, from under doors and nibbles at the toes of those who hide. It burns scrunched up skin, rattles chattering teeth.

It is a winter that loves those who let go. Those who run through the leafy streets of delhi like hot blood coursing through veins.

‘Before the stars have left the skies,

At morning in the dark I rise’
I watch the sharp, crystal-clear air
turn into milky fog in a trice

I am indefatigable, I seek romance.
On deserted streets, I do a snowman dance
Chilly air, breaths verbose
I shoo away the stealthy sunrays

If winter be always
If fog never goes away
Over the wintry days and nights
when I hold merry sway

My life’s one-act drama
unfolds amidst curtains hushed
Alone, lost and content
Angst frozen and desires unleashed

Winter!!

So like me?

Bus, itna sa khwaab hai!

It takes three lean days at work for Bharati to finish her paperback. And she has mastered the art of reading while in constant motion, most often on a rough track and leaning on to a metal pole. For the adolescent students of the Govt Junior College in Nampally in Hyderabad, Sheela 'Akka' is a great source of inspiration. And advice and counseling! They enjoy their daily journey with her while getting back from college. And Suneeta confesses to a temptation to ring out a piercing whistle and shout at the top of her voice “Right Right!” – “just the way we saw the bus conductors doing all through our lives.”
All these women are conductors on the Andhra Pradesh State Road Transportation Corporation buses, attached to one of the 21 bus depots in Hyderabad. They are among the 5000 plus conductors recruited across the State during the past four years as part of APSRTC’s implementation of 33 per cent reservation for women in all cadres.
The slightly framed women, who wear a grey jacket over their saree or shalwar kameez, wield the full cash bag as well as the sheaf of tickets with aplomb.
Recruitment of women in the APSRTC – which has the distinction of having the largest fleet of buses in the world under a single owner, 20,000 buses - happened without much ado. While the first conductor was recruited in 2001, the number has now grown to 5098. There are also 126 women working as mechanical supervisors and 146 as traffic supervisors.
And Conductors are only one of the segments. RTC has women in every cadre – from mechanical supervisors to Depot Managers.
When it is time for change of shift at the RTC bus depots, there is a huge bustle with new arrivals checking out their tickets and those who finished depositing their cash. Chai, chat and community interaction has to happen during those twenty minutes because, very soon, the women are on wheels.
“There is the occasional smart Alec or someone who wants to feel you up, but we set them right in two minutes. I once slapped a guy for misbehaving with me and refused to let the bus move until he got off. Others on the bus were more than enthusiastic to throw him out,” Suneetha recalls with glee. “We do get complaints of misbehaviour, more often about the drivers and other male colleagues rather than outsiders. We have an effective mechanism in place to deal with it,” Madhavi, Manager (IT), APSRTC, reveals.
APSRTC has set up a Women Grievance Redressal Cell but the complaints are mainly regarding service matters rather than any harassment. “But we have enough evidence to suggest there is harassment. We are doing what we can even without formal complaints,” an RTC official says.
For Sheela, mother of two kids, the work is strenuous. The seven hour shift, the one hour commuting from home and the long hours spent in motion tire her out by the time she reaches home. “But I am grateful for the fact that we were not denied this income opportunity by labeling it a job not meant for women,” she says.
“In fact, we have strict reservation rules even for selection of drivers. But then it is rare that we find a woman who has a heavy vehicle licence and five years experience driving a heavy vehicle,” the official says. Interestingly, the organisation saw a need to teach the lady conductors self-defence techniques. “All our lady conductors underwent Karate classes for a week. Except for this, there is no other way we distinguish between male and female employees,” Madhavi explains.
And though the crossover has been quiet, RTC does seem to keep the ‘delicate sensibilities’ – of the women in mind while assigning some duties. The women get to take the longest route so that there is no jumping about. Except for the mechanical staff, nobody needs to work on late night shifts and the management effectively quells male colleagues with ego hassles.
Some of the concern Sheela has for her children waiting at home is transferred into solving the small problems of her regular adolescent passengers. Whether it is soothing college blues or discussing the latest film, from hair care tips to preventing an early marriage of one of the girls, Sheela does much more than just punching tickets during her eventful day at work.

Dr. Padmabhushan Megastar Chiranjeevi: This is probably the longest link for any living/dead/legended celluloid star on Wikipedia. And the link takes you to a man, whose life's graphs always shot well beyond their coordinates.

All film stars are larger than life. But this is someone monolithic. His name, fame, his films, family, his business, charity, his presence, his labels – all so towering that no ordinary mortal can even look up at him without being blinded, leave alone summon the strength to sling mud at him.

And when a mere mortal actually tries to recall the star is human too, the retribution is swift, irrational, disproportionate and merciless. Few withstood the tsunami of fury that bubbled upwards from the ocean of humblest of fans to the leaders of the associations, themselves important members of civil society in that capacity.

Let me stick to the strange experiences widely known. A journalist who dared to say a certain mega movie was average had his car burnt down by incensed fans. Another who gave a three star rating was almost killed on Film Nagar road in Jubilee Hills in Hyderabad, involving a lorry and a wonderfully freakish accident, staged in perfect filmi manner. Call it sheer coincidence. And another journalist who committed the blasphemy of saying that it is time this talented actor considered meatier roles and made a special place for himself in the annals of Telugu cinema, is threatened with grave (pun intended) consequences and is asked to 'publicly apologise' since her review in the largest circulated Hyderabad daily does not - for the zillionth time in the history of cinema writing - say the mega star dances well.

When Chiranjeevi’s film is released, it is with a record number of prints, to record collections. When he makes a public appearance, it is mass frenzy. Every award he wins is followed by a million other eulogies, wishing for the sun, moon and everything in between. So much so, another demi god of the Indian screen, Amitabh Bachchan, himself went so far as to say nothing less can be a worthier tribute than the Bharat Ratna for this actor. And when he seeks support, it is Kishkindha resurrected in support of their Lord.

The man himself, once one manages to access him breaking through the purportedly protective layers of fans and well-wishers, is a man worth knowing. Ever courteous, humble and remarkably balanced, Chiranjeevi demonstrates how exactly he has succeeded in winning hearts on and off the screen. And why his one plea can make his otherwise belligerent fans go all charitable, donating eyes and blood to the now-massive Chiranjeevi Blood bank with a visible sense of pride.

And today, as his young, stoic daughter faces a battery of cameras, displaying an almost scary clarity of thought, even those who have been at the receiving end of the wrath of his fans, remember him with a pang of sympathy.

Like always, this is big too. It is big rejection from a chit of a girl, who took three of our largest institutions – media, police and courts - along with her, in her stride against a celebrity father, who never seemed anything but benevolent. And that she should hold the hand of a faceless young man in her defiant voyage. The news is big, the father's reaction shell-shocked, the family's response befuddled. And, for once, his fans are speechless. They just do not know what to say, which side to take in this clash of the Titan and his toddler.

A journalist would understand the media's avid interest in the entire bizarre episode. The tone is of suppressed delight, the frame enlarged to fit in the blown up dimensions of a small flutter. The clamour of statements, interviews and investigations much louder in face of dignified silence from the wounded parent.

It is the first-ever opportunity for the media to peep into a life that has never dipped once it touched the skies of stardom; into the insides of a persona who never let anything but humility appear on his handsome face. It is a chink in armour carefully built around a man who was positioned beyond even reasonable critique. It is a chance to throw pebbles at someone who has, for many years, been a colossus, not a mere human. And, this probably, is the only chance they would ever get.

Stardom disproportionate to human scale spawns anomalous public responses. Glorification of a pedigree generates obnoxious curiosity about roots. And a mega star's personal life and trauma become comic book stuff, dinner-time conversation and luscious dissection pieces for lustful media.

It is another day. Another scandal. The drooling public turns to a new piece of bone. And the story of the young couple is forgotten. But, while it lasted, at least some people must surely have given this saga a dramatic title - Poetic Justice!

Life Elusive!

There are many ways to reach this village. And you have to take all of them. Your car will desert you at the first streambed and you splash out to set off on a rough track. Drivers of passing bullock carts solicitously offer you a ride but remember carts don’t have shocks. Then a moped ride, a bicycle ride, a trek and a trudge and you reach your destination.

The destination is least bothered that it is so inaccessible. Mainly since it needs nothing from outside; it is a world in itself. Thirty families, about a hundred and eighty people, almost half of them children, dirt roads, indolent cattle, sturdy homes, a small temple, a tiny school, and a common granary. The village nestles in a valley, green-sheathed hills sheltering it from belligerent winds.

All the adults are land-owning famers, all the kids study in the school which has a 21-year-old girl teacher cycling in from ten km away everyday. The kids grow up and are sent to the social welfare hostel in the town where they finish schooling, they grow up a little more, get married and come back home to start working on their crops.

This village is Ravan Palli – the village of Ravan – in the Adilabad district of Andhra Pradesh. The village is amidst hills on the Andhra-Maharashtra border and, by default, all villagers speak at least three languages. Why Ravan? “Ravan was a king. An administrator and he ran his kingdom well. He was a great devotee too, so why not?” Bheem Rao counters. “In any case, it has been named generations ago,” his sister Suman adds.

Ravana Palli never communicated with the rest of the world. Not for any transactions, at least. They didn’t need to. They grew their own food, married within their clans and continued with the pattern for generations together. They run their own bio-diesel generator for a couple of hours in the evening until after dinner with each household sporting two bulbs. Their techniques, technology, traditions and traits were all their own. Even after the world decided to poke its nose into the village life.

Something else came to be common to the farmers of Ravana Palli. Organic farming of cotton! The farmers grow their own food and alongside grow cotton that goes directly to branded T-shirt makers of the US. They are all covered under an initiative which not just encourages them to practise organic farming but facilitates for sale at a better price.

And, yet, life has not changed in any way for the denizens of Ravan Palli. There is still no road, still no electricity supply, still no transport, no phones and no gadgets. No external governance, no bosses. They live happily ever after.

Life without technology, gizmos, phones and pen drives. Life without multiplexes, without pubs, laptops. No internet, no chat, no downloads. No eating out, no entertainment, no targets, no projects. Time does not stop here, it is just a kind of timelessness. Just a circle of survival. And of procreation. And of natural fruition. Is this what Gandhiji had called Gram Swaraj?

The village ambience is bright. In spite of the silence that reverberates in wind, the blobs of dirt that softly suck in your feet as you walk, cow dung, clouds hovering over the looming hills, there is colour in the air. The adults look content. The kids are perky. Visitors are treated with polite stoicism, as if the inevitability of their exit is well known. And there is self-reliance to a stunning level. What are we missing here?

Harakiri

From one long window to another, the room stretches out, chequering between shadows of twilight growing long. The window frames birds on trees, settling down for the night like quiet balls of fur but the occasional bird flutters its wings wide and sweeping as if to mock the still figure watching from inside the room.
I sit still because I can’t move. I am transfixed to the 17 inch square of blazing light that attracts me like a deliciously dangerous flame. And the evening slips out of my fingers.
My wings are folded up and pinned to the sides of my invisible spirit. So tightly pinned up that even a flutter tears them. I want to unpin them, shake them up to fall into graceful, satiny pleats. I want to raise them to shield my eyes against the golden evening and spread them and fly straight into the sun. Dip the wings into molten gold and soar into the sky, re-mocking the bewildered little bird and the dead square of light in the long room.
But I don’t. And the bird preens itself and the blaze buzzes on.

I am still sitting still when they walk in. And walk over me, across me, through me. I could be one of the shadows or may be less, may be just half a shadow.
They hoop the questions through my ears, loop the exclamations around my fingers. They rifle through my best laid plans, which just lay there, all dressed up in their best. They clamour all around me, tousle my hair, give me pecks and tug at my sleeves. They are incoherent, don’t know what they want from me, yet speak in a rush, in a garbled tone. Their faces swim into focus and then out. And, they finally walk out. Some in a huff, some on a glide as their remembered chores beckon them. And they walk away from my equally still, virtual life.
They – my well-wishers, my friends, my folks - shake me but can’t stir me. And I sit still as the dirt of footsteps fades away from my shadow. And the nerve ends, that rose startled into the air at the bustle, settle back into their nooks.

I am still sitting still when he arrives. And it is a resplendent arrival. The flashing splendour unseen by anyone else but me! The caprice is packed in six syllables and a million words. He is volatile, predictably unpredictable, he is velvety, rough. He is quiet, vociferous. He demands, he yields.
The 17 inch square is electrified and the current flows into my stillness. It is then a flurry of words, smiles, tears and some more smiles. When he turns away for an instant, it is darkness, when he turns back in a trice, it is like paused soft music playing again.
I fly high with my unpinned wings, I melt into the laughter of the bustling crowds around me. I pause, I dance. When the music stops, I settle down in a velvety heap. My visibility is ephemeral. My wings silver.
I am a moth. Transfixed to the 17 inch square of light, I live my virtual life. I am shrouded in an illusion, my wingtips touched with finely trembling anticipation. And he is the fire that flickers through my stillness.
My stillness is transient. My movement impermanent. And I live in the moments in between.

'Man'ager of the Masses

He hurtles down the pot-holed roads on a fat bike and heads turn. He baritones into a microphone and an auditorium full of women reacts with delight. He flashes a grin and people fall all over themselves to do his bidding. He is young and dashing. Pop singer? Macho man? Casanova? Corporate honcho?

Meet Gaurav Joshi. The dirt roads that he races down are that of Indore in Madhya Pradesh. The women are the slum-dwellers of the small city. And he is the Programme Officer at the NGO, the curiously abbreviated CECOEDECON, which works with women in slums. And Gaurav barely has time to stop and take stock of the waves of admiration and compliance in his wake as he zooms from one task to another errand.

And he works in a State where nearly 40 per cent of the urban population, comprising six million people, lives below the poverty line. A whopping 2.4 million people live in slums, a figure that even officials admit is far below the actual statistics. The Human Development Index ranks Madhya Pradesh as 28th in India, way down the table. About 40 per cent of Indore's population lives in slums and half the children in the slums are born at home.

Gaurav is a social worker by profession. An M Phil in Social Work from Delhi University, he came back to his hometown to work with a slum health project. His area of operations is about 50 slums spread across the rapidly growing city. His constituency: about 3000 women who work variously as maids, labourers, rag pickers and sanitation staff. His mandate: To ensure that the women organize themselves and implement a calendar of ante-natal care and immunization for pregnant women and their children. His brief: Ensure the cooperation among the women goes beyond health and disentangles the myriad problems they face living in such degraded conditions.

What’s so special about him? “Nothing special! Except that I am in a profession that is yet to be recognized as one. I think that is what we need now, people taking up social project management as a serious, academic discipline and training. That’d make implementation of development schemes so much more efficacious,” he says. And isn’t politics another such avenue? “Yes, that too, though I am not thinking about it right now.”

People are the driving force behind Gaurav Joshi. “Whatever I do, I want to work with people. They inspire me, they motivate me. I am exhilarated when I am with people,” he says. As it is evident from his unbounded enthusiasm and the willing participation of the women in the mammoth urban health event he is anchoring. The exhaustion darkening his face cannot dampen his spirits as he implores the gathering to do just one more slogan.

“I try to be as sincere as possible in my work. It seems futile to even have projects like this unless we put in some dedicated efforts to make it happen. It is all scientific, plugging gaps, identifying strengths and shoring up leaders. And then they, the people, will take care of it.”

It is a heartening imagery that Gaurav features in. A growing city in India, slums waking up to better infrastructure, supportive, aware men, confident, smart women, happy, healthy children who may yet see the black of a board in some school soon.

Sheer drive, unerring instincts, ability to build up rapport with and crack the toughest of nuts, hardened in the miserable slum scenario, steely grit sheathed in petals! And an unadulterated, streamlined, spiral-bound dream for tomorrow!

– Meet Gaurav Joshi, the ultra savvy, true-blue, ivy league professional in a social worker’s khadi wrapping. All set to change things wherever he is. He is, indeed, worth writing a blog about.

Koi Lauta De...

That evening in Hyderabad, a baby gurgled somewhere. A woman painted her eyes carefully with kajal, looking into the mirror. She must’ve gazed into the eyes of her absent lover, somewhere in the city, and awaited him with longing. A jasmine gajra bloomed in the seller’s basket on the street corner. A birthday cake glowed in its candlelight. A dog woofed for his master. A song came and went in waves in the slow breeze. And the moon waited. They had time. Before they knew.

A man, a woman, a child. Men, women and children. It is a tragic irony that they were trying to have fun. They probably rebelled mutely against the daily humdrum and tried to have fun. They laughed and chatted. They teased and mused. They watched and wandered. Until they died. They had no time. They never knew.

Getting shocked at bomb blasts is passé. It is just news. Until one steps on the first sticky patch of someone else’s blood. Until one sees gory figures lying prone in undignified heaps. And, masses of flesh, shapeless, bloody and anonymous.

It is not the violence that strikes me most about the bomb blasts. It is the suddenness. The abrupt way in which it snuffs out lives. The swiftness with which it seals our lips, our minds and our fates.

Shouldn’t we have a right to know when we are going to end? After all, there would be goodbyes to be said. There is the warmth of the flesh that we want to leave behind, in the closed fists of our loved ones. There are the apologies we want to make, for the small and the big hurts we caused…since there is no time to make amends. There is the little sweet nothing we wanted to whisper before both sound and sweetness were snatched from us.

For us news folks, bomb blasts are just about the toll, the blood and the destruction. They are about terrorists and police. About conspiracies and security failures. But that is not what goes missing in the melee.

It is about life shattered. It is about the candles on the cake blown out. It is about the jasmines that are reduced to dry, bitter crumbles. It is about the child’s cry in the middle of the night for its missing father. It is about the headless, lifeless body that lies alone, orphaned, anonymous in the hospital lobby. Until, a shell-shocked someone turns it into a person. It is about individual lives, changed forever.

I stood in the hospital lobby where shock made the scene a bizarre stilllife. Even as hundreds milled around, there was some kind of stillness, muffled like there is cotton wool all around and people struggled to move through it. I looked at the stricken faces all around and the bloodied bodies lying around. And I knew.

That bomb blasts are not about terror. We can live with terror. We did. We do. We will, too. We get used to taking the shadow of fear with us, wherever we went and not mind it. We can tuck fear into the folds of our mind and cover it with layers of colourful gaiety and everyday life.

Bomb blasts are about moments lost between people, separated brutally at that split second. Bomb blasts are about what cannot be avenged. What cannot be grown back. And what cannot be explained.

How does one find retribution for the dark kaajal that melts with tears and leaves behind the waiting in those young eyes? For a lifetime to come!

Feverish!

Fever. Like a red flower blooming under closed lids. Like a warm breath whispering into the ear. Fever. Like flame licking across dried grasslands.

Fever like walls closing in. Like roof falling away. It liberates, it suffocates. It gives feet to the nerve ends.

It escalates. It simmers. And plummets to cold sweat only to surge again. It sighs at every joint. Tells tales hiding under the skin. It turns into red whatever the fingers touch. It turns me inside out. And outside in.

It drips in drops from the porch of my consciousness. It rages and rants and raves inside of me. It fights with me but embraces my body in lethal love.

It is spring fever, like reds of tender leaves I nibbled when I lay down in the grass. It is autumn fever, stripping my soul bare of pretended normalcy.

It is red. Hot. Clear. Dense. Chilling. It is black, swirling in the whorls of my mind. It is blue, washing me out.

It is a thirst, quarrelling with my parched insides. It’s a hunger that eats me up and empties me, mercilessly bringing me down on my knees for the next dole.

He gives me fever.

“Fever when you kiss me ..fever when you hold me tight
Fever In the morning…Fever all through the night.”

He comes in the night. Spreads through my day. He pulls me up, by a string of words, out of the honeyed stupor that I slip into. He paints my waking hours. Lights up my sleeping ones.

He hides, he surfaces and my fever undulates like the calm ocean…smooth, velvety and deep. He gives me fever. Even when I am all cold outside.

I hear poetry. I hear a song. The flutter of a bird and the marching band of invisible ants, tickling across my arm. I quiver at the breath that draws images on my moist shields. And tugs me back by the arm as I turn away. I want to go away. I want to be feverish.

He gives me fever. My very own invisible prince. I fret and flame. Burn and seethe. I love and live and walk with a spring in my step. I am a rainbow that lost its moorings, a colourful balloon in the sky. And he is the fire that feeds my flight. He gives me fever.

Where did my fingers catch this fever? In which instant did fever creep up on me?

I love fever. This fever, my fever. His fever.