"Not Exactly Beachside Culture"

So many decorative clocks
Time paused
Batteries obsolete
Appointments postponed
(read cancelled)

A festive event here
A wedding there
Riots ("hartal") everywhere

So much entropy:
abandoned building projects; public walls covered in men's spittle and piss

Progress is boycotted
Youth floats in a bland soup
Life lacks luster
No frills required
Just the quo lull

Music is drowned out
by traffic and barking dogs
Cram cram cram
for fear of failure
in a place where "success"
is token vitriol
and the real "deal"
is exploitation

And why can't I fucking take off my shirt across the sand? These people need to breathe some modern freedom!
 

What I see:

People with a passion for people, not things

A balance of realism (bodies must do what nature dictates) and modesty (yet, give people their dignity and protect innocence)

Immense and effective faith that gets people from A to B across the bridge between heaven and hell called local roads

Beauty in the present, like a delicate festive dance, that defies permanence and disappears as the effervescence of ripples along the beach

Devotional melodies that break in the dawn to savour heaven's dew falling upon the earth like the manna of the Israelites

Human intelligence navigating complexity with extraordinary finesse