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.

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!’

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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.

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 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.

From Lord Byron –

if a writer should be quite consistent,
How could he possibly show things existent?

Society is now one polish’d horde,
Form’d of two mighty tribes, the Bores and Bored.

Specially when it does not exist. I never realized how time consuming and how really hard it would be to design a viable, believable interstellar spaceship.