Flying over India
The point of the eagle's introspection or its lonely watch-tower withdrawal is also my point of view. This crab-crawl flight through sand-holes of air and the suction of blue, blue, blue makes the jungle below seem a rotation-crops plot grown fallow; nothing moves in the relativity of speed. India lies still in primeval intactness of growth. The great alluvial plains are sodden with trees: neither city nor village intrudes with temples and towers in this sprawling virgin-land decked with flowers
and trees, trees. At the jungle's edge, a river coils out to shed its snake-skin waters to the charm of the sea. The bizarre, purposeless calm of sand, the country's dangerous cobra-glitter l The jet rises up in the ocean-swell of the sky and slides through the air like a shelL
The pilot announces famous landmarks.
But what sand-dune civilisation sank in the mud-banks, what mosquito-kingdom drank up the healing waters? The spoilt monarchs of luxurious empires could not prevent the bush-fires of religious dissent.
Give me the purer air. The flat earth is awful. Give me height, height, with its cold perspective of forms of the earth. Senseless now to dive like eagles to the earth's sparrows. The jungle's beasts are unseen from here. From these heights, one can almost believe in human rights.
ZULFIKAR GROSS
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