‘Wild’: Sehri Tales selections, Day 26

I.

The world is a pretty wild place these days. I stop to tell you just this.
Everything around us is a marketing gimmick. You can pretty much spin anything into something that will sell to some people. After decades of making fun of the 'pungent' smell of turmeric in curries (and its lingering smell on hair, clothes, carpets and furniture), after all that bullying, people now happily queue up when white western shops repackage turmeric and sell it in turmeric coffee latte or as golden coffee with a 'dash of turmeric gold', making turmeric palatable all over again. After polishing red rice and modifying it over and over and over again to make it whiter than white, in the west now red/brown and 'wild' rice are sold in health food stores at premium prices, and it is us who have managed to lose it from our own palates.

I mean there are many other things we have carelessly lost (after we blindly followed western cues)–sustainable clothing, pollution free transport–we banned rickshaws and what not, while three wheelers, rickshaws, and bikes parade the streets of Europe to make environment friendly deliveries.

Like I said, everything is pretty wild these days…

by Muneera Mun

II.

The psilocybin numbs the edges of my anxiety, first a little then all at once. We stumble up the hill to the art supply store where a woman is putting together a display of dried flowers. "That's gorgeous", I gush. I touch as many displays as I can—the enamel mugs, the sketchbooks with the thick cotton pages, the screen printed scarves arranged artfully in wicker baskets—while my friends linger by the door. I feel feral in this space, all brown and ocher and sepia in the late afternoon sun streaming through wide windows. I wonder, briefly, what it would be like to sit in the rocking chair by the corner and run my fingers through a bouquet of pampas grass and dried amaranthus. I wonder, briefly, what it would be like to feel this stillness behind my eyeballs, instead of the usual thrum of disquiet that pulses, perpetually, through my veins.

by Shehtaz Huq 

III.

Right before dawn,
The city sleeps,
While the city burns.
What a crazy and wild Mahanagar we live in.

by Elita Karim