Author: Neerja

One Year Gone


Shall I tell you about my father?

Shall I tell you how brave he was, how brainy, how big-hearted, how honest and warm and fearless and loving? I have stories, a bursting heart full of them.

Or, shall I tell you about my grief?

He has been gone a full year now but it has not become a sorrow yet. It still a raw grief. I don’t like this grief. It is an ugly grief, graceless, shameless, festering and enduring. It rips me apart at most inopportune moments. Nothing I do diminishes its rage.

Perhaps it would be better to say nothing.

Some Cricket Jokes.

The cricketer was visiting the psychiatrist.
Cricketer: ‘It’s terrible. I can’t score runs, I’m a terrible bowler, and I can’t hold a catch. What can l do?’
Doctor: ‘Get another job.’
Cricketer: ‘I can’t. I’m playing for England tomorrow !’

——–

What is the Pakistani version of a hat-trick? 3 runs in 3 balls
———–

There’s a man in Croydon who claims to have invented a game that in certain respects is a bit like cricket.

What he doesn’t know is that the England team has been playing it for years.

—————

George always played cricket on Sunday. This troubled his wife, who asked the vicar ‘Is it a sin for him to play on Sunday?’

‘It’s not a sin,’ replied the vicar. ‘But the way he plays, is a crime!’

Loss and its after effects

When a loved one goes away life seems empty and incomplete, but when a loved one is gone forever life just stops making sense. I will forever abhor 2016 for the teaching me this clear distinction.

You may find, in the first instance, that many things do not please you as much as they did before. Nothing will please you in the second. You will seek out distractions and industry in either case but in the first instance, you will find that you are thankful for it. However, mourning a loss of life tends to make you feel guilty and remorseful and ashamed at times for the same.

No matter how melancholy you are at the parting of a dear friend, you will never stop to find the resilience of life wonderous (or jarring or dismaying) instead you just marvel at the resilience of your heart and shake your head. A loss of life that was part of your own, will make you loathe that same resilience.

Then again, time is supposed to vanquish the first wound and only partially heal the other.

To all my friends and loved ones near and far, I say this, if I appear not my usual self, pardon me and bear with me, for I am finding navigating through a loss a whole lot more to handle that I ever imagined.

To my papa, I want to say this –

“The love where Death has set his seal,
Nor age can chill, nor rival steal,
Nor falsehood disavow.”

Pitfalls of Fame and Wealth based Role Models

It has been pointed out that, those who have the ability to reach a large audience and influence people’s viewpoint, have an obligation to act responsibly.

Not every one, no.

Wanting to look up to people and seek guidance, direction, insights, hints, tips, what have you, seems to be an incurable human condition. The trajectory is laughably predictable, we enamor ourselves of an idea, locate some one who, in our eyes, embodies it, then proceed to create a pedestal, place the person on it and finally, inevitably, getting disappointed and enraged, demolish the altar and the statue; only to start all over again.

We did that with people with abilities ranging from physical, intellectual, mystical, and ideological; then we started settling with people who could speak well and organize and then, settled on those who seemed to amass wealth and fame. Inexorably then, at some point we, as a society, looked at our paid entertainers and found them appropriate role models.

We bestowed upon them our keen attention, bordering on devotion really, and wide-eyed enthralled following and somewhere along the way forgot, just simply forgot, that these are, when all is said and done, paid entertainers. We pay them to dance and act and jump and sing and lure us thousand different ways. The relationship is, or should be, very simple – I pay, you perform. If you do not like the payment, you do not perform, if I do not like your performance I hire another performer next time.

Instead, we string a veritable garland of socio-political expectations and wrap it around the performer’s neck.

Then comes the inescapable moment where we stop the strutting, twirling performer and ask him/her, “What is your take on Israel –Palestine conflict? Where do you stand on the refugee/migrant debate? Do you think our country is doing enough to battle climate control? Have we, as people, become intolerant?”

Cue the uproar, whatever the provided answer may be!

Juggling Pitchers Filled with Milk Of Human Kindness

That is what collectively we, the conscientious humans, seem to be doing these days, don’t we?

It wasn’t always thus. Up untill recently areas of world were not so intimately connected with each other that an American thought could be heard, and responded to, in Ghana or a joke cracked in Chile would  elicit a chuckle in Sweden, or a stone thrown on India would hit a nerve in Australia. We used to come across disasters and tragedies and catastrophes here and there, slowly as the word travelled, gradually as the news trickled and we had time to dole out that precious commodity, that pure and wholesome milk of human kindness.

Now, however, we stand and watch, befuddled and bemused, as more and more keeps getting added to our already quite daunting array of juggling objects.
Ask yourself – have I been paying attention to –
World Hunger?
Refugees/Migrants?
Global Warming/Climate Change?
Human Trafficking?
Potable Water?
Child Soldiers?
Draught and Floods?
Animal Cruelty?
Persecution Of women? minorities? LGBT communities?
Global Terrorism?
Equal Rights for all humans every where?
What about those honey bees?

Take your eyes of of any one of these for a second and there…you have dropped that particular pitcher of milk.

Or perhaps it is just silly old me, with my ratty fine motor skills. Never could juggle worth a damn. But I try, my fellow creatures, I try.

 

 

 

 

 

 

No one should be “roughed up”, OK?

Let us get this straight from the outset. No one should get roughed up. Not the Black Lives Matters protester, as Mr. trump helpfully suggested. Not any “All Lives Matter” proponents. Not the students protesting racial issues and similarly, not the student trying to cover the event.

Why are we so enamored with physical force to shut out any idea that might be unwelcome or even unfamiliar to us? Why not a good old fashioned shouting match? Really, it takes less in terms of resources and energy to do so. Try it people.

Fashion Structure and our place in it.

So, I am reading this article in in N Y Times – “With the Release of ‘25,’ Adele Flexes Some Fashion Muscles“- and it starts with this wondrous opening – “Now that the Adele juggernaut has officially begun with the release of “25,” and as we all prepare to be inundated with her image in related videos, marketing and events, it is hard not to wonder if this album will be the one that finally delivers her place in the fashion power structure, along with peers like Beyoncé, Rihanna and Taylor Swift.”

People, I have questions. Questions that will make me sound like a total imbecile to all the trendy, fashion forward populace, questions that make me question my feminine side, which, in all honesty, should be most of me.

They start benignly enough – Belated release of a musical album from an artist can be termed as a juggernaut now? Huh. Who knew?

Then comes the harder ones.

There is a ‘fashion power structure’? And more importantly, one wonders about the placement of sundry people in this said power structure?

I think I may have to read the entire Foundation series to forget having read this.

 

 

 

 

I am not getting better

I had really expected that I will get better with age. I am really not. I am not gaining more patience, more kindness, more generosity, more compassion. I am better read, more travelled, world weary and oh so, so so so vain. Vanity, thou art what drives me now. Seriously, aging is over rated. Stay young people.

Writing, oftentimes, is a tortured process. Best of the writing is usually done when it is done undemanded. Expectations, of a certain style, content, deadlines etc generally ruin it.

There are times, so many, too many to count, when I come across a piece written so beautifully, expressed so efficiently that I question the need for my idiotic work.

To that end , here is something called “I believe” from Mencken –
I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind — that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking.
I believe that no discovery of fact, however trivial, can be wholly useless to the race, and that no trumpeting of falsehood, however virtuous in intent, can be anything but vicious.
I believe that all government is evil, in that all government must necessarily make war upon liberty and the democratic form is as bad as any of the other forms.
I believe that the evidence for immortality is no better than the evidence of witches, and deserves no more respect.
I believe in the complete freedom of thought and speech — alike for the humblest man and the mightiest, and in the utmost freedom of conduct that is consistent with living in organized society.
I believe in the capacity of man to conquer his world, and to find out what it is made of, and how it is run.
I believe in the reality of progress.
I —But the whole thing, after all, may be put very simply. I believe that it is better to tell the truth than to lie. I believe that it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe that it is better to know than be ignorant.