Children

Children are like insects. They are essential to the ecosystem; they are needed to make the world complete. Their hustle and bustle can sometimes even be a desirable add-on effect to the natural surroundings. It is like when you go on a picnic in the meadows, you need the insects to complete the scene and make for an authentic and pleasurable outdoor event. You like them from afar but you do not want to be personally close to any of them. You make sacrifices to secure their survival; you fight passionately to protect their collective existence, but you do not hold personal endearment to their individuals. You do not want them in your kitchen; you do not welcome their intrusion into your personal space.

Red Chinese Laterns in the midst

Quite suddenly I have too much time on hands. Two French films, one Indian mantra in my head and 17 pacing up-and-down the corridor to my bedroom later, I am famished for a G & T. I have an old man's need for an old man's drink. Lime they say! God forbid NOT lemon! should accompany the snobbish drink of gentlemen. The citrusy greenness from the tropics is the perfect suitor to the handsome perfume of juniper. A perfect marriage of east and west!

Why am I writing in a language foreign to my roots, singing in the tongue of an adopted culture and thinking in a voice incomprehensible to my ancestors? What blood runs in these veins, what soul hides behind these eyes?

Kill the lights they hurt my eyes! No! turn them all on they feed my sight! I see red Chinese laterns in the midst.

Peek-a-Boo

The first of January is a practical date: a date for a new financial year, a date for contract renewals, a date for easy recall (History would be a much easier subject to study if all important events happened only on the first of January).

The first of January is the ideal reference date to mark the beginning of any plan, any pledge, any Change.


I never dare commit myself to new year resolutions as they sound too much like promises I can't keep. But in general, making better use of my time is something worth working on this year and putting this in writing would serve as a good reminder to myself. Apart from that, perhaps the personal life Priority List too may benefit from some rearrangement.

Sunday Soap

I am usually no sucker to TV series, especially those with dramatic family scenes. I get quite sick to the guts watching stereotypes. Yet I spent the better half of last Sunday watching one... what more, it was on YouTube. I was searching for something else on YouTube but it dished out some suggested links on another show. I had heard of the show before and just casually clicked on one of the links. Well, one clip led to another and before I knew it, I had watched enough to know the whole story.

The series is about a dysfunctional American family: a recovering drug addict son, a deceased father who had embezzled money from the family business, a gay son, a politician son in-law, and the list goes on. It has all the makings of... an American soap! This particular one has an uncanny way of making you see a little of yourself in some of the characters. Touché!

Alright, Hollywood got me this time. One point for Tinseltown. Infact I am completely smitten by some of the characters in the show. The show in question is Brothers and Sisters.

But this morning it got me thinking. Why are most of us so able to relate to a dysfunctional family? (and that is how Hollywood makes money*). Well, because most of us come from one don't we? Most of us do not live textbook lives and do not have textbook families. A dysfunctional family is really the norm rather than an exception.

(*All things said, it was a rather well done series and deserves some credit)

blooming and branching

Little Korea

With my sense of direction, or rather, the lack of it, I was anticipating a night of many wrong turnings before we could finally find the restaurant; and end up having supper in place of dinner.

I was wrong. We reached there on first attempt, perfect timing for dinner. In no time after we made our order, the waiter was laying out onto the table, a countless number of little plates of pickled dishes. A minute later, we were barbecueing away.

After the hearty meal, we strolled through the cosy Korean enclave and feasted our eyes on the lines and lines of colourful items on the shelves of the charming Korean mini marts.

It was a lovely well deserved night out for two shameless, self-proclaimed chefs: me and mum.

Coup de Grâce

I was driving through the busy road on my way to work this morning. In the middle of the road, in the front, I saw a brownish object moving vigorously, staying in the same spot. It looked like a large piece of dry leaf fluttering in the wind. As my car inched nearer, I could see that it was a small brown kitten.

One side of its head was completely smashed in, red, raw and collapsed. But the kitten was clearly conscious and alive, flipping and twisting violently in pain on the asphalt road. It was clear that its condition was beyond help and that it would eventually die. But it was also clear that at that rate, it would persist for a long time in that state before it would succumb to its fatal injury.

A flash of thought immediately ran through my head: should I run over it to put it out of its misery? I only had a split second to make the decision on that busy road as traffic continued to move.

As I reached the spot where the kitten laid, still struggling, still sufferring in pain, I found myself swerving the car to the side, missing the kitten.

I do not know if I would have felt better if I had had the courage to run over the kitten instead.

After witnessing one of the most painful things I had ever seen, I continued driving away from the spot, hoping that all the other motorists around me wouldn't notice me crying in my car.

The limit set of a chaotic trajectory

I turned 34 two months ago. Aren't we all quickly moving through the passage of time?

With a mere few weeks left before a new year arrives, what have we achieved? What has changed? what has remained the same? The cowboy still rides off to the sunset with the prettiest maid; the glass slippers still fit only the prettiest of the three sisters; glittering gem stones still dorn the costume of kings, dull unattractive common charcoal still burns in the hell fires of a furnace.

Aren't the damned still damned, the doomed still doomed; doesn't the world still stage the same scripted play of injustice from sun up to sun down.