As Vayu, the tropical cyclone, approaches the coastal towns of South India and particularly Karachi, I think I’ve found a brand new metaphor for my own religiosity in it.

Recklessly unbridled from outside and hauntingly hollow from the core. Creating a stir all around and changing directions all the same; powerful yet empty in the eye.

I hope it achieves enough in its power, recklessness and destruction that long after I’m gone, it’s carefully preserved, if not in the meteorological journals then at least in my memos, letters and emails to my victims.

Call it a stroke of luck or a sweep of typhoon (if you allow me to drag my metaphor this long), I was able to arrange a reasonably long stopover at Konya, Turkey in my upcoming official visit to Italy next week – long enough to pay my respects to Maulana Jalal ud Din Rumi. If you don’t already know my interest in and association with Rumi, now is not the time to share it because this blog will otherwise turn into a treatise. My feelings about the whole affair are quite mixed. I think this is exactly what I had in mind when I wrote my poem “Tempest“.

Have you been to Konya?