Pain of Discomposure

ENLARGE

Evette Zuriel

Dear Father,

I was walking on the beach when I was first victimized. There had been nothing to disturb me from my reverie, and the world was just the calm sea, the blue sky and the infinite stretch of white sand. Christian, my school-mate was a well-built boy of around 15 years; she must have been about the same age as mine. He shouted at me as I edged the waterline, the incessant waves coming forward and receding.

‘You Jewish filth, why don’t you just go into the waters and drown, huh?’

She said nothing. I continued walking. I tried to control my anger, as you had always taught me.

‘Do you hear me you freak? Save us the disgust of your presence and go away.’

I wanted just then to hit him, hit him so hard that I never had anyone. Yet again, your voice won; I tried to control my anger. In my effort to suppress the hatred and fury swelling inside me, I dug my fingernails into my arm. My eyes bulged; tears and unsolicited anger flowed out.

‘Look, the Jewish baby cries, look at him, LOOK AT HIM!!’

I ran away, as fast as I could. I was not a weakling, yet I did not want to face him. Or her. I could not see clearly. I touched my face to find tears streaming again. When would I find the power and the aggression to fight back?

I locked myself in my room that day. I did not eat. Nor did I offer my daily prayers. You asked me if I was troubled. I didn’t tell you then, but I hated you for having taught me to be a good human being. Uncomplaining and forgiving. This was not a world anymore where people lived in harmony. The child, the man and woman – no one, absolutely no one gave a damn about others. But how wrong was I. I still had to learn a greater truth, and live a long life.

The following Thursday, I saw her outside the Beth-el (Biet Knesset - synagogue). Was she Jew? She looked beautiful in the sunlight that brightened the main sanctuary. I silently walked away. After all, she had been company to Christian.

I started on the way back home. Barely had I crossed a block that I heard her voice. I turned back, saw her running, but started walking again. She pursued.

‘I never saw Christian since …….’

What was that? A testament to her support for me, was she really sorry? Why should she tell me that?

‘I am sorry. I really am’

I said nothing and left her; and her imprint in my memory.

Three years went by. Something changed as my body matured; a change in my mindset that was dreadfully complete. I felt detached from the world. My relations with the outside world were just superficial. I no longer felt the need to socialize. And in some perspective, I welcomed this change. I was labeled a ‘loner’. I imagined myself becoming schizophrenic. You didn’t seem bothered about my strange and sudden aloofness. And perhaps that was the only reason that kept me sane. When I studied, I put so much focus into it that I was afraid I might destroy my mind. I found solace in prayer. After excruciating hard work, I got a fellowship at Georgetown. She came there as a transfer sophomore.

It was again a Thursday evening that I got a glimpse of her sitting across the Georgetown gargoyle on a park bench. I went and sat with her. We were seeing each other after three years. The pages of a book of foolish romanticism that I had read years ago turned in my mind and ruffled me with discomfort. With compassion and nerve that I had been bereft of since days of yore, I held her face in my hands. I still remember that tenderness. A daring that I have never been able to fathom the source of, empowered me. I kissed her.

And so it was that I started ‘dating’, a term that I still find utterly vile and disgraceful. I graduated valedictorian. I had also found my love, the one person with whom I would've liked to spend the rest of my life. Happiness that had eluded me for so long came in such bountiful strides.

I decided to start my practice at Newman and Partners law firm, and marry her. You didn’t approve of both my decisions. It was my will to settle in New York. What had religion to do with my marriage? I had never questioned the decisions you made for me; I had learnt from your wisdom and scolding. Mother would’ve understood.
You never met my wife. I sired Raphael, yet you didn’t set one glance on your grandson. You never set a foot in the world I had built. And thus I learned to live without you. Without your fatherly protection, wise counsel, blessings and love. But she was beside me and Raphael and law consumed all my days. I became a reputed lawyer, yet I never received one hearty appreciation or a single note of your happiness and satisfaction.

Life settled as years went by.

Last Thursday, Raphael and his mother were coming back from school. It was her duty to bring Raphael back from school, mine to drop him. They met an accident. Her black Volkswagen and a materials truck. Not much was left of the overturned car when she and Raphael were rescued out. In the twenty minute ride to the hospital after the call, I thought of what had finally been given finally to me, and so soon… so soon was all of it being taken away. My vision blurred.

Raphael died in my arms. He had barely been able to whisper in my ears, “Save me dad, please. The pain is so terrible. Please… Please.”. I could only see my son dying. Doctors had done whatever they could. My arms gave away. I fainted.

No medication would revive her from coma. Several ribs had broken. Both kidneys had failed. Blood loss was ghastly. She lay in a white sea, so many tubes going in her that I could barely see her body.

In over a month, she gained consciousness; it took another three weeks for her to recognize me. I don’t remember how I spent those days, beside her bed. I was told I was growing paler. I refused food. I needed you then the most, father. I needed you so terribly. But seven years separated us. Alone, I suffered dreadful pangs of pain, perhaps much more than Raphael and his mother.

The first words she uttered after nine weeks of complete silence were, ‘I cannot live like this, Steven. Please free me of this body. I wish to pass on. To peace.’
I winced at her utterance. I insisted that I could never do this to her.

Three days later, I administered her an overdose of insulin. The last I saw of my living wife was then, on a Thursday night.

In three short months, my world had collapsed. I was alone again.

A private funeral at Georgetown cemetery. Tears and silence. Pain and hopelessness.
She lay beside Raphael. The epitaph on her headstone read:

Here lies Evette Zuriel, died September, 1994
Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.

Dark have been my days of late. I am afraid this is the end. I cannot live any longer. I am leaving you alone, but please forgive me. I envision blood on my arms, where, it seems aeons ago, Raphael had laughed and played. I cannot sleep in the room where Evette and I shared the best times of our lives, the happiness and tenderness and faced problems and tensions together. It was only love that made me listen to Evette’s request, but I cannot stay away from her any longer. There is no worth of my existence, I am broke and desolate. I wish life had turned to some other avenue. Some fond memories and remorse are all I have now. I am taking my life before they fade away.

I wish to tell you that I have loved you even in separation, as no child would love his father. I mean not to question your actions or mine, for this is how the chords of our fate meant it to be. I am being selfish, but I am desperate. I am full of guilt and sorrow, but now I must go.

I never told you this, for attenuating circumstances did not let me, but Evette respected you for your values, and Raphael always thought of his grandfather as a noble man.

Goodbye
Your loving son
Steven.

Prolific Bunker Hunters

Grey silhouetted; Grey scavengers
Pouncing in at close quarters
I lay still in my close
Anticipating requests of tumbling twattlers

But they’re perfect and far too many
Years of practice, and shame gone awry
They bug, they pest and smell of gutters
Plummeting souls of Prolific Bunker Hunters

Perhaps they all are not Grey
Minstrels and Mistresses caught in a disarray
Helping or heaping just might pay off
Laughter, skin or sanity aloft

One likes it here on the other side though
Not a hunter with furrowing brows
It takes an effort you see, setters?
To not to be among the Prolific Bunker Hunters

A Legend of Juice and Gore

# 3 IMPORTANT questions and a note:
• How do the bastards fly without a plane?
• How do the young learn to speak?
• How do the old forget how to speak?

PORTHOS was the dog of celebrated playwright James Matthew Barrie, Who, according to him, dreamt of being a bear one day. If you read Peter Pan, his most famous work, you’ll realize that dogs in that particular play, behave particularly oddly.

The Legend of Juice and Gore: A Half Moon Investigation on duality.
How can we be so different
And yet be so much alike?
Is it an unusual display of Pedantry
Or a Fool’s shame that sets us apart?

Just a silver of Blue Grass
And the closeness of the Noon Star
PORTHOS dreams of being a bear one day
And here I thwart his unreal dream.

May we ruin the wool?
And hoist silken flags
Linen draped vassals
In a ghetto of stark naked bodies.

What makes the protagonist shiver?
Nah; not fear, I know it.
What turns him into a ferocious beast?
Naught of anger, nor pain of flesh.

Madness is a tad unnecessary;
We are immortal in this mad cycle.
What remains to be judged however,
Is a chaos of the fleeting past.

Shouts of steel dreams
Guns of dog fights
Gore for the living
And Juice for the living dead.

A Vale of Dreams

I took one of my hands from his and placed my glass of wine at the edge of the table.
“It’s going to fall”, he said.
“Exactly. I want you to tip it over the edge.”
“Break the glass?”

Yes, break the glass. A simple gesture, but one that brings up fears we cant really understand. What’s wrong with breaking an inexpensive glass, when everyone has done so unintentionally at some time in their life?
Glasses are not purposely broken. In a restaurant or in our home, we’re careful not to place glasses at the edge of a table. Our Universe requires that we avoid letting glasses fall to the floor.

How can I let go of my life, my ways, my responsibilities, my likes, my hatred. I know not of another path. I cannot take the bait.
I detest everything; I feel I do not belong here. It is not my dream to be stuck to my world of imposing people, imposing friends, imposing books, imposing teachers, life arresting fears, life sucking disorders.

What is it that is your dream?
One would like to be wise; to preach and predicate my wisdom, to see the gleaming faces in awe. To be natural and always learning. To be knowledgeable. To be understood. To be appreciated.

So you think you become wise by differentiating yourself from the world you live in, meditating and thinking of what you already know, what you have already analyzed?
No, I think I become wise by living life every moment and struggling. But why prevent yourself from moving to a place where you might feel happy. Where there would be more than just your dream. Why not take a new path?
But fear holds one back. The risk of losing what I have created. And the risk of losing the enthusiasm to take on to another path.

But when we break them by accident, we realize that it’s not very serious. The waiter says, “It’s nothing”, and when has anyone been charged for a broken glass? Breaking glasses is a part of life and does no damage to us, to the restaurant, or to anyone else.

Change is good. Especially if it is pleasant.

But what if it’s not?
It doesn’t matter. If one is not satisfied with the present, how much worse can it get?

Are you not escaping from the goals you had set for yourself?
Maybe; but unfulfilled wishes will do me no good, even if I stick to my path till the end.
And why should I not do what seems fairer and brighter? Why have I accepted to let myself be tortured?

Our parents tought us to be careful with glasses and with our bodies. They taught us that the passions of childhood are impossible, that we should not flee from priests, that people cannot perform miracles, and that no one leaves on a journey without knowing where they are going.
Break the glass, please – and free us from all these damned rules, from needing to find an explanation for everything, from doing only what others approve of.

Why is it that I cannot burp in front of even my folks, when Shrek says “Better in than out, eh, I always say, Fiona”? The only reason is that I do not want to be Shrek. I don’t want to be some filthy ogre who is hated and feared by kids. (I already have some lead in this direction).

Why can’t I lick chocolate from my fingers and lunchboxes in the classroom?
Why do my folks tell me to be smartly dressed when I am perfectly okay with my old tattered denims and tucked in t-shirts?
Why can I not say NO to those I hate, and a word of admiration to those whom I like?
Why am I double minded about posting this, thinking about remodeling it, so that it may not look empty and dumb?

Funny world isn’t it?
We are facing the brunt of all those norms in which we never had a say. And now its just into us.
Often I find me talking to myself – would I like to use some techy-crazy-complicated infrastructure in IIT or would I be happier with some IT + Guitar degree from Stanford.
There is so much that the world decides for me, with or without my consent.

That which is good and that which is bad was not decreed good or bad by some divine judgment (though our teachings say otherwise). What we know today to be good or evil is more or less a refined version of what our ancients believed. The ancients, who were close to nature, drew a colorful mythology of what they found complimenting nature, and what they found was aghast to it, termed it as evil, as we know it today. This concept of light and darkness, of angelic and of demonic karma tilted, crushed, evolved, devolved over centuries, but it is core centric.

Whatever the crap, whatever the reason, some element of my dreams is drifting away. And thanks to the world I live in, I will be crushed again for saying this.

---

From By The River Piedra I Sat Down And Wept

Hair it

God has blessed my hair with an overwhelming sense of growth. They see potential in every inch of skin with certain pores to pout into. Not only that, it’s not only growth, its reproduction too. Everyday (or the days when I manage my hair), half of the growth sheds off like leaves from a tree in autumn (severe?).
I wonder where these traits came from. Is it because my father and his, his father and my great-great grandfather and his, have all had abundance in this segment of the body?
Have the genes of the male line of our family been altered to facilitate such hair growth and make us all hounded bears?
And the worst part is, I cannot cut my hair. Why so?
My mother says, “You have been born into a Sikh family. You must respect tradition.”
“Then why, may I ask, have you cut your hair?”
“I spent my days in my parent’s house in the fashion they wanted me to be in. I have outgrown that phase and now have the right to live this way.”
After many heated discussions, she agrees upon a work – to - win condition.
“Clear the IIT – JEE exam and get your hair cut. Anything before that-turn around, bend, I’ll kick your behind and get out of my house”
And here, all matters end.
Is keeping hair, such a bad idea? After all, we are a secular country. Why should one not be what he is?
Not that I have faced any discrimination or anything (except for 2-3 cases. One at the swimming pool, another at Mc Donald’s and even sometimes while just walking on the road)
But I have seen people so orthodox about this whole matter, that I am repelled by the whole package.
To those who are orthodox, I would deliberately go up to, in an ‘unacceptable manner’, and fight for what I believe,
There is an old Sardar uncle on the very next road, who stares up at me like anything when I go in from of him, with my hair untied. And this I do, most willingly, deliberately and HAPPILY.
Many know already, that I love to roam around the entire city, with my hair untied, enjoying people looking at me once, then turning their necks again, noticing my beard (again, a neck-turn), and noticing me in the whole.

Where does it begin from, and where does it end?
Phew!!!

Those who read and don’t post a comment S**K.

Process Description

It is among one of our writing skills in english to describe a process.
And in turn, the process of describing a process is extremely dull.
And if the process to be described is ' How to Recharge your Mobile Cash Card ' .... You can perhaps understand how it is like.

A change however, was brought with a revolutionary yet archaic style of writing. (by me)

Here is what I wrote:

CAVEAT EMPTOR
The valiant dar;eth approach thy mobile dealer.
Sword and mobile in hand;
for there is more weeping in this world,
than you can ever understand.
From the bowels of the service provider,
A cash card shall be woken
and command;eth to obey thine order.
Insert the glitter in your phone;
And thy phone shall rise to life.

84 Riots

What happened to thousands of Sikhs in the wake of Indira Gandhi’s assassination in 1984, sits uneasy on our national conscience. Even so many years after that bloodbath we have not looked it in the eye, politically, socially or culturally

What I bring about here does not attempt to ‘brutally’ depict the brutal killings. Nor is it a passionate encounter of mine with the situation.
Twenty one years ago, for three days, armed mobs had a free run - killing Sikh men, destroying their properties, molesting their women and assaulting their children.
It was the biggest massacre faced by independent India. When one section of the community was trying to survive the terror, the other section of the community seemed to be reliving the trauma of Partition.
In the days following the assassination of Indira Gandhi, mobs of Hindus angry at the assassination of Gandhi by her two Sikh bodyguards killed over two thousand Sikh men, women, and children and burned and looted hundreds of Sikh homes, businesses, and places of worship. The largest amount of innocent deaths occurred in the capital itself.
There is a large amount of evidence that clearly suggests that the riots were already planned and that not only did government leaders plan and supply the mobs, but also led them and actively participated in the looting, burning, and killing.
THE FACTS

It is said that there are always three sides to story - yours, the opposition’s and the right one. And yet, the biggest snug in the equation is that the assassination may not have been prepared by those two Sikhs in the background, at all. Another possibility was completely ignored. On the 31’st October, 1984 Indira was shooting for her life documentary, by a French director and in that ‘shot’ had to be shown as an active woman – run over a sly wall. For accurate visual depiction she was asked by Sonia Gandhi * (the fact yet remains to be verified) to remove her bulletproof vest and was in the following moments, shot dead. The newspapers have it. As such all people moving out of the country were barred from the privilege and yet miraculously ‘The French Man’ went his way.

When I tell about hundreds of houses being burnt or the lives claimed, the facts here, at the present are immaterial. Apparently, 2000 less in the population here or anywhere doesn’t make a slightest of difference.
However there are things that interested me into this. A case that I might consider out of hundreds. My mother’s. It still brings tears in her eyes.

CASE STUDY

1’st November 1984, Kanpur

Things had taken a faster course than expected. It was known that Gandhi’s assassination was bound to cause a hefty turmoil, but my Daddy (my granddad) wasn’t to know that till that morning. The bloody morning.
As he went down the house gates that morning, an almost -fatally wounded Sikh came running into the house gates, begging for help and shelter, trailed by a hungry mob. Daddy couldn’t refuse. No one would. But under the circumstances…

Once inside the locked gate channels, the two were momentarily safe. But the mob was violent and things didn’t seem right. Without any hesitation, the people started stoning the house. The mob asked for the ‘fugitive’, the prey they did not get to feast upon. Three terrible hours later, they burned two weight loaders carrying animal feed. Everybody inside the house was terribly scared. They had to be. The suffocation, all for the flames, called for everybody to move to the terrace, which was a good five flights up. Everybody stayed low, the kids and the adults, for hours at stretch, without food or water. People below had no intentions to leave. The stoning and the burning continued and they tried to break open the channels. But with the lucky intervention of some Hindu neighbors, things were saved. The night couldn’t be spent there, in the ultimate desperation. Thus leaving aside the males, everybody descended down ‘five- floor height’ straight fall, into a helping neighbor’s house with the help of nothing but ropes. The determined mob, by then had started damaging the house by vague ‘hitting and breaking things’. My mother and hers, the children were taken to a friend’s house, where they spent the next six days, for a curfew had been imposed, later next day. The males stayed low in the house during that stretch.
A week later, when the curfew was lifted there had been a family – reunion, but the events that had taken place in the preceding week have been deeply etched in the family.

When I had first learnt about this from my mother, I was deeply moved and was agitated and now when I see things, I marvel at the thousands who have faced this. Not only in the 84, the partition in 47, the Gujarat riots, strife in Tamil Nadu and the north-east… It goes on endlessly.

Now assuming you have read what could possibly be a pile of crap for all, if I say something like - “Where are we going people? Can’t we stop this? “, you’ll definitely regret reading this. So I don’t want to end on a stupid ‘patriotic and humanly note’. One can rightly accept that these politicians can easily maneuver the masses. Simply put – It can not be prevented.
I cannot even think of an adequate and justified punishment for these brutes.

And here, amidst utter confusion and a self – induced grief, I conclude my write – up.