Saturday, October 22, 2011
happened one morning
there was a dream last night, a long, discomforting dream with my mother in it. she wanted something from me, she wanted food, yes i'm sure that's what the dream said, but the food was a sub for something else. yes, i'm quite sure it was.
i woke up feeling incomplete like a part of me, somewhere near my heart was left behind in that dream, right by ma, by that tramcar on rashbehari avenue behind which i saw madhu, the cook and major domo who had taken care of my mother and brother for more than ten years, he was standing between the two tram tracks that carry the cars in opposite directions and i was supposed to make sure his children got a proper education. nothing must come in its way, and i also had to arrange some food for her.
i've been awake some 4 hours now. in that time i've learnt that a 2 and a half year old girl has died in a double hit-and-run accident, actually what killed her probably was the complete indifference of the people who were around at the time on that road and never bothered to do anything about it. long discussions in two papers about what causes this indifference. is it the legal system, is it the fear of dealing with officials, is it the this or is it really the that? how about, it is our complete immersion into nothing but ourselves that is the clarion call of my post teen years.
gaddafi has been killed brutally, syrians are energized by his death and may resume their protests with more vigour, the head of goldman has beefed up his personal security as the obscenely rich get worried about that ordinary people's scream of exasperation: "occupy!", a planet has been born.
yes, a planet has been born and a picture of it is in the back pages of the straits times. tucked away in a quiet corner, next to a prominently headlined column on power outages in a mobile phone operator's network (gosh, when did our everyday language get so dull, mobile phone operator, outage, yikes).
the birth of a whole new planet that has actually been photographed by us humans on this blue planet, third rock from the sun is not front page stuff. we can't see planets, we can't see two and half year olds.
all we want to do is make money, not have outages, not get killed.
i exaggerate, but wouldn't you agree there's something awry with our perspective these days?
i called my 10 year old to show her the new planet taking birth. i told her how important it was to do something in one's life that was to do with real things, she said she wanted to be a chef and was that the kind of thing i meant? yeah, of course, as long as she really goes into it, searches for better ideas, and not just does it to make money. but money is important, said the wise one. true, replied the fool, but not important in itself, of course one needed it but it could be the result of some good, meaningful (excuse the fool) pursuit. then we talked about chefs being scientists, she said she had thought of being a scientist, and she wondered why "when we're born we scream and open our eyes" but we can see only what's in front of us, all around us, but we can't see our own face or the back of our own heads. why? she sometimes thought about that. i said, she must keep wondering about such things. those were the best few moments of mine this morning.
daniel kahneman, the nobel laureate, said his interest in human psychology was triggered by an incident on a street one evening in occupied france when he was six or seven years old and his realisation thereafter that what his mother often said to him was true: human beings are more complex than we think they are. i read that this morning too.
a part of me is still with my mother, maybe it's safe there.
i asked the man i've been with for 28 years where did he think i'd be right now if i were in america. huh! he looked up from the papers, america? near wall street.
thank heavens and new planets, i thought, you still know me.
i woke up feeling incomplete like a part of me, somewhere near my heart was left behind in that dream, right by ma, by that tramcar on rashbehari avenue behind which i saw madhu, the cook and major domo who had taken care of my mother and brother for more than ten years, he was standing between the two tram tracks that carry the cars in opposite directions and i was supposed to make sure his children got a proper education. nothing must come in its way, and i also had to arrange some food for her.
i've been awake some 4 hours now. in that time i've learnt that a 2 and a half year old girl has died in a double hit-and-run accident, actually what killed her probably was the complete indifference of the people who were around at the time on that road and never bothered to do anything about it. long discussions in two papers about what causes this indifference. is it the legal system, is it the fear of dealing with officials, is it the this or is it really the that? how about, it is our complete immersion into nothing but ourselves that is the clarion call of my post teen years.
gaddafi has been killed brutally, syrians are energized by his death and may resume their protests with more vigour, the head of goldman has beefed up his personal security as the obscenely rich get worried about that ordinary people's scream of exasperation: "occupy!", a planet has been born.
yes, a planet has been born and a picture of it is in the back pages of the straits times. tucked away in a quiet corner, next to a prominently headlined column on power outages in a mobile phone operator's network (gosh, when did our everyday language get so dull, mobile phone operator, outage, yikes).
the birth of a whole new planet that has actually been photographed by us humans on this blue planet, third rock from the sun is not front page stuff. we can't see planets, we can't see two and half year olds.
all we want to do is make money, not have outages, not get killed.
i exaggerate, but wouldn't you agree there's something awry with our perspective these days?
i called my 10 year old to show her the new planet taking birth. i told her how important it was to do something in one's life that was to do with real things, she said she wanted to be a chef and was that the kind of thing i meant? yeah, of course, as long as she really goes into it, searches for better ideas, and not just does it to make money. but money is important, said the wise one. true, replied the fool, but not important in itself, of course one needed it but it could be the result of some good, meaningful (excuse the fool) pursuit. then we talked about chefs being scientists, she said she had thought of being a scientist, and she wondered why "when we're born we scream and open our eyes" but we can see only what's in front of us, all around us, but we can't see our own face or the back of our own heads. why? she sometimes thought about that. i said, she must keep wondering about such things. those were the best few moments of mine this morning.
daniel kahneman, the nobel laureate, said his interest in human psychology was triggered by an incident on a street one evening in occupied france when he was six or seven years old and his realisation thereafter that what his mother often said to him was true: human beings are more complex than we think they are. i read that this morning too.
a part of me is still with my mother, maybe it's safe there.
i asked the man i've been with for 28 years where did he think i'd be right now if i were in america. huh! he looked up from the papers, america? near wall street.
thank heavens and new planets, i thought, you still know me.
