There was a time when meadow, grove, and...

When I was a child, I saw a bayonet for the first time at the museum. The security guard at the gate held one gravely, and did not even smile when I said, "Police jee, jai hind". That is when I discovered that the gleaming knife atop his rifle was called a bayonet, and was poked into the stomach of an enemy if the enemy came too close.

Hand-to-hand combat is a thing of the past today. We are so much remotely controlled that we touch the feet of elders on Vijayadashami through a "pronaam" SMS.

It was in the 1800s that Wordsworth said,

"There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparell'd in celestial light,
...It is not now as it hath been of yore;-
...Waters on a starry night
Are beautiful and fair;
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where'er I go,
that there hath pass'd away a glory from the earth."

It's been almost 150 years since, and if I feel the same as he did, I can only presume that, though things have "pass'd away", it cannot be all that bad.

Which is why, when someone tells me, "Keep in touch", I need not think of the bayonet and the SMS and say aloud, "Define touch."

I need not be cynical.