Thursday, December 12, 2013

Fleeting introspection from a car window



December 10
Miami, FL

I saw you tonight clutching the wheel tightly, driving an old blue battered minivan. An ordinary-looking woman in her 50s not unlike many we pass unthinkingly on the street. Your chin barely reached over the top of the wheel, and you leaned forward intently, eyes darting, mouth agape, concentrating only on inching the vehicle past us. I wondered – what is your story, Miss? That “I love soccer” sticker on the rear window would suggest a Spanish-speaking matron in Miami-Dade County. Or, maybe you don’t care about soccer at all. Perhaps you bought that pre-owned car dirt-cheap, with the sticker, from Little Havana. You need it to shuttle from one day-job to another. There is nothing special about how your greasy hair is pulled away from your face in a tight ponytail that bares the veins at your temples. Nothing remarkable about the pink face scrubbed clean hurriedly before the next errand of the day. What’s special is the grit that shines through that ordinary face. The grit that makes you invincible in daily life. The patience the family banks on when all hell breaks loose. The cool practicality that soothes troubled children's minds just as well as the cooing and petting once soothed tired little bodies.

Is that your story, Miss? Here's a fan screaming her lungs out for you - you rule the world.

Sunday, November 24, 2013

Subterfuge

If you know my worst, you know me best.

I see in you the promise of tomorrow, the potential of today. When they ask for your innocence, thumb your nose at them.

Wednesday, August 14, 2013

The Higher Entity and I

The aim is not to write something stellar everytime, but to gain comfort in expression.

Arguments about the existence of a Higher Entity, not unlike political leanings, create deep divisions between people. It is a deeply personal matter for some. A topic of debate, for others. My interpretation of the Higher Entity says much about me as a person, my experiences, and how my beliefs have been shaped over time. Therefore -

Self-validation, after falling from grace, quite literally feels like Manna from Heaven.

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Snippets - August 2013


Jeff Guinn's talk on Charles Manson continues KERA'S "insanity focus". Intrigued to hear of Charles Manson's consistent behavior of manipulating people to do his bidding - traced back to his childhood. He twisted his life to appear more gruesome than reality. Begs the question - when are the seeds of insanity implanted in a human mind? If psychotropic drus were not an option, could a caring and nurturing environment turn the tables on insanity?


Reading "The Reluctant Fundamentalist" by Mohsin Hamid. When requested by his girlfriend's mother to give the girl (another loony spiraling downwards) a wide berth, Mohsin's protagonist agrees, but with a certain uncertainty. "Still, I remained concerned for Erica's well-being - and remained also in the grip of a certain, probably irrational, hope - so the ongoing task of abstaining from communication was a struggle not unlike that of a man attempting to rid himself of an addiction."

Monday, June 03, 2013

Baby Mama


Suddenly, it's everybody's business.

"Any news?"
"When do we get to hear the good news?"

Err, probably not until a semblance of stability has been established in swirling world economics. Oh, but you were not interested in that, were you? What you were really asking is this -

"Are you having sex?"
"Are you having regular sex?"
"Are you having sex on those days?"

But, you don't because you are polite. So, you mask these questions with "Good news?" and twinkling eyes and a smile I just don't get. I anticipate, even expect questions from doddering oldies but not from you, a friend or an acquaintance, who has been married for 10-odd years and has barely recuperated from delivery before posing - "So, ....." intermingled with gory details of childbirth. So, the next time you ask me a question like that, please be prepared to field "Have you resumed regular sex after having a baby?"

But, that would not be polite. Or worse, you would reply with gushing detail.

Sigh.


Written Nov '10, in a fit of angst.
Posted May '13, with twisted amusement.

Thursday, May 23, 2013

A man's world?


If you are an Indian Hindu, you are aware of and sensitive to the treatment of Muslims in Hindustan. On a daily basis, you do your bit to relieve your conscience of what Muslims would have you believe - that they are an oppressed religious minority barely surviving amongst teeming millions of Hindus in this kaleidoscopic countryscape.

The Hindu head of the household may well employ a Muslim driver, the lady of the house may well hire a Muslim maid, the children of the house might even feast on Sevaiyan brought lovingly by Rani-Bibi, and the family might even make monthly donations to the maid's son's college fund. The Hindu soul is appeased. Perhaps, a tad like the white-black schism in the West. Where, as a famous black comedian once put it - "All the black people I know have several white friends; all the white people I know have only one black friend"! Do what appeases your conscience, soothes the soul and wear the "I did my bit" badge on your social sleeve. It is an assumption of mine that Bengalis treat their sons and daughters in much the same way. Simplistic, you say? Perhaps, but humor me today.

Calcutta in the 80s was a land where men were men, and women were Femina-beautiful. Most families followed traditional social norms; men were the sole breadwinners, women were homemakers, and a Bengali household would serve up rice pudding on the son's birthday, but not quite as often for the girl-child. Admittedly, we were granting more exposure to our daughters, opening them up to a world of possibilities by showering them with a "convent education", or "something your mother never had". Our sons were well, boys. Sigh. They would roll in the mud, scrape their elbows, jump off brick walls, and would simply not do their homework. You could often hear a mother (of a son or two) prosaically hold forth "I wish I had had a daughter instead". You could perhaps discern that it was even fashionable - to yearn for daughters in a day and age where airhostesses were the rage, female co-pilots were cheered, and Kiran Bedi was on TV. But, while we let our boys be boys and groomed our daughters to be sons, unwittingly we were laying the bricks for the evolution of the "modern family" as we know it today - where the man behaves less like a man, and the woman strives to be more than a woman. That still leaves us with way more testosterone than the world needs.

What has not changed since the 80s though, are our expectations of our children. The MO of the 70s-80s parent brigade was that the girl child needed to be educated to "secure her future", not that of her parents - mind you ["Aajkal-kar cheleder bhorsha nei" banal chatter pervaded the atmosphere]. Which differed greatly from the expectations of the boy child. You could retrace decades into the annals of Indian social history and find legions of sons with familial (I mean financial) chains. The girls were married off, with the expectation that they would raise families, run households, hold down jobs with equal panache. Not to worry about the folks back home. Which raises the question, who truly suffers from this "soft bigotry of low expectations"? When you arm your daughters with an education (not a degree), expect them to be opinionated - don't saddle them with the same traditional marriages of yore. Ask of them what you ask of your sons. Accept from them the helping hand you once lent them. Surely, "To whom much is given, much is expected" was not coined only with men in mind.

Followers