Getting used to life without Guy

I've begun to realize that some kind of resilience always steps in to take the place of strength who walks out when I'm in my worst moments. Guy has been on my mind and in my heart from the time I've woken up right down to the setting of the sun and the beaming light of the moon. I've been helplessly longing for him and looking out for him even though my friends say that it's time to let him go. But now I've reached a new stage in my life of not wanting my babies to have anything to do with him anymore. I'm determined to keep them as far away from their father as is possible, so that his negative influence especially when he's underr the influence of liquor, does not hurt their fragile feelings.

Yet at the same time, I find myself making a subconscious effort to allow him access into their lives should he clean up his act and be the nice sober man I once knew - the man who loved me with all his heart and his soul and co-erced me into sticking with him through thick - through thin.

There's a strain of forgiveness in my heart that makes me as vulnerable as to want to open the doors of my heart to him in a matter of seconds should he sincerely apologize to me. Friends say I'm a sucker and that I have to look out for myself and not give him a foothold in my life ever again. Easier said that done when you're in the delicate postition that I am.

Having said that, I've begun to realize that I'm less dependent on this man who just days ago, made my heart skip and beat in love. How is this possible? I can't believe that I've gotten over this pain as quickly as in a matter of days. I feel numbed towards him. Nothing else can hurt me and I've grown as strong as a cactus plant in a dessert!

On a different note, I find that Junior is an avid reader of his mummy's blog. I'm touched that my little baby who is growing up way too soon for my liking, is my precious reader-premiere! I want you to know that both mummy and daddy love you and mummy is going to make sure that daddy remains in your life just the way you want him to EVEN if mummy has her little disagreements now and then!

And mummy is keeping well now, no longer crying the way she did on monday night.

Thank you all for listening to my posts. It's sure nice to have the love and support of my blogsphere at a time in my life when the world started caving in. I can't believe how well I'm holding up. Thank you for reading the ramblings and rants of Just Chillin'. It has helped me get over the pain that I thought would positively kill me, considering the strong hold Guy has upon my life, upon my heart for so many, many years.

KOTTU I need your help ..

In the midst of all the mayhem in my life that just this morning promises to be the best thing that could have happened to me in the light of my fellow-blogger's words, I finally managed to obtain the identity of "Anonymous" who frequently leaves vulgar comments on my posts. "Anonymous" left the following comment ...

Hello Miss Pathetically Patient, how long do you intend staying here plaguing us with your sad sorry tales?

Paul, Wyomi & Natalie

Who in the bloggingsphere is "Paul", "Wyomi" and Natalie"?

All I know is that they are 3 bloggers who constantly leave hurtful coments on my blog.

I have done them no harm and yet they continue to show interest in my life by reading my blog regularly (which I don't grudge them for doing) and leaving anonymous comments that border on the vulgar, hurtful and offensive.

I'me going through a tough period in my life and would really appreciate it if you'd help me atleast know who these 3 bloggers are and why they seem to be lurking around my blog and leaving hateful comments that are really confusing as I see no reason why they'd continuously be such avid readers of my blog if they feel plagued by my sad stories.

To you, "Paul" ..
To you, "Wyomi" ..
To you, "Natalie" .. whoever you are.

The words of a fellow-blogger of mine sums it all up for me. May you apply these words to your life.

"Remember, in the absence of everything else, you are your own judge. CONSCIENCE… I have mine in tact. How about you dear anonymous?"

Lost

The past few days have been days full of solemn quietness in which I've hardly spoken to anyone. I've kind of lost energy though I do perform my duties to a finish, it's without zest or the zeal to look forward to anything better. The lowness of mood carries on until the wee hours of the morning when I flip my phone hoping that Guy might have sent me a text but it's in the negative. Complete silence from him, complete silence from me. I've cried myself to sleep twice, missing him whenever I've switched on the radio and heard some heart tugging ballad from the 80s.

There are times during the day when I long to hear from him. I wish upon wish that my phone beeping is Guy to telling me that he's doing okay. But no. Guy has managed to maintain a stoic silence. And as Sunela advised in a previous post, I've decided to cut off all contact too.

I guess my greatest fear lies in the single sentence.

Will I be forgotten?

The ultimate end of Guy

It's 12:22 in the middle of the night and I'm sitting here after finally ending things with Guy after 2 years, 3 months and 12 days of trying hard to understand him and be there for him however long our long-distance relationship was.

It's with an ache in my heart that I think of the many nights I spent half of my bank account on calls on this man who captured my heart and made me love him so desparately that it all ended like a flash in the pan.

He knows all my secrets. There's nothing I've hidden from him. Half of me feels the insecurity creeping into the vulnerable pockets of the cloak I now call life. What do you do when you've trusted a man so completely that you've never prepared yourself for this end?

But the end has come. And it hurts.

Where do I even start to look for comfort when my heart grieves for him? What do I do when my hand reaches out to the phone and then realizes it cannot type those texts to the companion of my life?

How does one get over the ache in the pit of one's chest that tightens when it realizes that things will never be the same again?

I miss him. I'm ashamed to admit it, but I do.

Where do I go from here?

The end of Guy

Guy almost always manages to break my heart. Tonight he gave me a drunken call from a million miles away from where I stood with my phone pressed to my ear, as he drunkenly started out talking sweetly, only to end up making my heart break with his careless words and insensitive banter.

Guy professes to be in love with me still and I have a special place in my heart for him but as I wrote this post I have an intense and bitter hatred towards him just for tonight and the way he made me feel about myself. That's the key to any relationship isn't it? You guage whether a person's good for you by measuring the way that person makes you feel about yourself at the end of the day (depending of course on whether or not you're a good person to begin with which is almost always taken for granted)

Guy spoke about a girl he could talk absolutely anything with and praised her to the hilt, breaking my jealous heart by saying she's the person he had just taken an overseas call to. He then accused me of keeping something from him when I wasn't doing that in the least, going on to say that I'm the protector of all, the middle man, and that I was keeping this from him as well. I realized then and there, that Guy was very difficult to get on with. He was strongly opinionated and always refused to admit defeat ot confess to being in the wrong.

The manner in which he blamed me for being there for someone when I shouldn't have been and dictated terms through the entirely of the conversation that ended just before I sat down to write this post, made me realize that he was abusing our friendship and hurting me endlessly, contributing little to my life when I have been there for him on more than a dozen occassions. It made me suddenly feel vulnerable and unable to trust again. For Guy was turning around and throwing back at me the very things that I had confidentially shared with him.

I hate Guy for that :(

Tomorrow morning Guy is going to text me and ask me whether he spoke any crap in his drunken state. And he's going to ask it with a smiley face as if it were funny.

What should I say? Does it even deserve a reply?

Authoritarian Bow

Bow has been a great friend in times of crisis, often unfolding his arms to catch me whenever I've taken the big fall. The manner in which he staunchly defends me has touched my heart many a time and there's been one particular period in my life when he has cared and stood with me till the fragments of my heart were picked up and pieced back together as delicately as only he could have done.

Some of you confirmed that Bow seemed to be in love with me on a previous post and I hastened to add that my own feelings dictated so too. I however, have absolutely no feelings for him and he happens to be at the bottom of my list of "favoured beaus" even though he tops it when it comes to being a wonderful friend.

But something about him irked me today and that was his authoratative take on how I should live my life and treat another guy who happened to be my bossom buddy. The manner in which he dissed him and immediately suggested that he was not the best of people just because he's been through the worst of times, made me feel a distase in my mouth for Bow - something which caused a great deal of personal concern in my heart because I couldn't believe that I was feeling that way about Bow who considers me his closest friend.

This was when I realized that one of the keys to real friendship is allowing your friend to blossom and have his or her space without infringing on it or attempting to thwart it with your own opinion. There has to be give and take and being a friend does not give you the right to dictate or hold the reigns to your friend's heart.

I also realized that one of the qualities I most hate about a person is "dictatorship". I am a free spirit and I detest those types of personalities that assume authority over me.

What do you when you have an authoritarian friend? As you may know, it's not something that can be discussed with him as it would be awkward to fight over it. But what can be the rationale for his behaviour and how do I get over this strong dislike for his ways?

On a different note, I haven't been having the best of weeks. Just when I thought I was over the hurdle of addiction I went back to it. I guess it's a struggle and a long wait before I know that I'm completely over my demons. I completely lost it and went back to the things that I have been staying away from so successfully.

Please tell me. With regards to this post, where do I go from here? Have you ever successfully broken a habit or torn yourself away from an addiction? Because I'm certainly in need of help. And I don't know how to help myself because I seem to be doing a very poor job of it : (

Rehani is NB!!!

Or is she?

I'd beg to differ.

There have been accusations, allegations, discussions and debate on the actual veracity of Rehani's identity. There are some who swear that it's NB and they insist so blindly with as much conviction as the donkey who brays for its food.

I for one know for a fact that the 20 year old girl Rehani who has a strong headed opinion on most matters islam-related or otherwise, is NOT the often misunderstood and outspoken NB.

Yet I fail to see the point in attaching such importance to whether or not they were one and the same person when their blogs generate posts meant for reading and commenting on. Why cast assumptions and querry into the dubiousness of their identities when they themselves insist that they are who they say they are?

The situation in itself reminds me of society and its general tendency to judge, misjudge and then insist that the lie is the truth and the truth is the lie, regardless of whether or not the facts speak for themselves. Very often, NB who exposes the truth for what it is, finds himself in hotwater while Rehani picks on the most controversial topics that would make any peace-loving blogger throw daggers at her just for her outlandish content!

Rehani isn't NB and NB isn't Rehani. I'm sure of that.

So let's just leave those two alone and let them carry on blogging, shall we?

Hell hath no fury like a woman's wrath!

I strike till it hurts and feel the pleasant vibe of satisfaction drool through my head and into my body whenever revenge has been sweet and sweetly taken.

"What an awful woman!" you might chide, condemning me to the annals of the archives containing the most horrible human beings on the planet. But I'm just being honest and transparent about how badly I react towards those who have caused me pain. I like to see them sink to new lows and it gives me immense fulfilment seeing them get what they deserved, with a high feeling that lasts me a number of days!

I know I sound terrible but I've realized that that is who I am. And the worst part is that inversely, I never appreciate or laud honour on those who have been good to me. Those people are revered no doubt, but they do not experience the extremities of my emotions in quite the same way.

You see I've been pushed into a corner and butchered when I've been nothing short of innocent and a victim of circumstance in the past. My survival instincts contributed towards making me a stronger woman.

Am I a bad person? Is it only me? Should I change or atleast strive to re-adjust some qualities within me? Do you hate me for being this way? Am I vile?

You're the judge. And there does another personal and honest post straight from the arteries of my heart.

What in your opinion is the BEST MJ song ever?

(If your song is already in the list, state your next best song)

Lessons in life - Easy does it

Personal life-wise, I've had a lot going on than I give credit for in this blog!Sometimes I wonder if anyone in this world could ever fully understand the kaleidoscope of emotions, the myriad of contemplative thoughts that have been working themselves through this head and heart of mine! Sometimes you feel like you really go it alone in this world. Other times you understand that the best person to keep you company on this journey is a self-fulfilled you.

I've felt an amazing amount of peace in my life since last Tuesday or so. The wonder of being at peace with oneself, calm and tranquil in the sea of togetherness as a person has really boosted my self esteem. "Here's another emo girl" you might think, shaking your head! Oh no, I'm not that much of an emo-person actually. It's only because this blog is a mirror-reflection of the inner-most workings of my self that I tend to write this way, bringing all to the surface.

Staying away from sex has been the best decision I've made in a long time. Along with that decision is the decision I made to never sensationalize events by working around them in such a way as would hurt another person. For that I have "anonymous" to thank for. Receiving all those doses of anonymous comments which made absolutely no sense and yet hurt a part of me, made me realize how much a small misgiving can go a long way in hurting another person. I've decided to never be an "anonymous" myself. Whether in anger or in dire hurt. Thus my brush with "anonymous" helped change me into a better person, too.

I've learnt to love myself. Learnt to see every mistake as a mark on the sand, washed away by the still waters that brush my cheeks and skim over every teardrop that falls. I also see that the uniqueness of me is something I alone can boast of. There's no other person in this whole world like me and there never will be. Once I stop breathing and living, the world with all its problems will be over. The day my heart goes into "cardiac-arrest" state like Michael's did, nothing will trouble ot or worry it anymore.

How many of us amble through life, drudging our way along the streets of time or getting stressed over the small inadequecies of life only to pile up many more "complex" sheets that burden our already tired shoulders? It just isn't worth it.

I've gone past that (I think and hope) and learnt that the best thing in life, is to take it easy (Eagles-style). And that's the biggest and best lesson I learnt through this past week. To stay positive and never breathe in the negativity that infuses our soul, only to crush it and squash the life out of it!

Another door closes

Hot on the heels of my gigantic leap up the corporate ladder, I got word today to my dismay, that a position that I've been longing to have and eying for some number of years, is unavailable to me as the door has been shut on my face, subject to an unfair blow on my qualifications for it by a rivalling company that I used to be in.

What is hardest to handle right now is just the mere fact that the basis for my disqualification is something that's completely out of my hands and beyond my control.

I ought to be shattered right now, but I'm going to take a leap of faith and choose to believe that there's nothing in the world that can stop me from being the best of who I was meant to be. If there's to be no more potential in this avenue, I ought to wipe the dust off my feet at its carpet and head on down the doorway to the next post right?

I must say I'm feeling a little downcast and heavy hearted after this piece of news. I'm sorry I've been boring you guys with all of this. I just thought of blogging about it to get things off the recesses of my mind.

Hope you all are having a better mid-week that I am.

Saved from Disaster

I wouldn't want my kids growing up in an atmosphere riddled with constant bickering, lousy moods, smoke, drugs and tattooed uncle's arms raising them up to the sky in some effort to appreciate the babies their women have birthed for them. But believe it or not, that's what was in store for my kids.

If I had gotten custody of my darlings, I would have given them a sober, loving home with peace and rest for their troubled souls. The harmony-less, restless life-style of my husband would surely have killed my babies and caused them to grow up cold, confused, estranged and lonely for sure. But I would have had no choice. The grandmother of my babies would have ruled with her iron rod and interfering bicker while the glum old man who sat by his television set all day would have had nothing of inspirational value for their growing minds. What schools would accept the renegade daddy who'd scoff at the teachers and stubbornly refuse to walk in during parent-teacher's mettings?

A cigarette butt at their lips at their earliest age, a little bit of marijuana, a completel ban on short skirts, absolutely no values, no principles and most of all - no love.

I've come a long way from where I once stood with a man who professed his love to me and promised to be a great daddy to our babies. I've done the best thing any woman can do. I've saved them from the wrath of their father. I've prevented them from being at the but end of his tantrums, his temper, his coldness and his beatings. I could never have stood by and watched while he belted my little son for simply being mischievous. It would have broken my heart.

Looking back I can't imagine that I shared a bed with the man who would have ruined my life forever. But I'm glad I did him good. I never hurt him back, I never hurt his feelings. I negotiated for all that I won with a smile on my face and very little if not absolutely no malice. He was poison to my soul and yet I allowed him to take his own cool time to fizzle out of my life.

I'm glad I and my babies are safe. Safe to enjoy life, safe to feel the love of a caring man whose love would envelope us and provide the security that only a father and a great husband would provide. But every now and then my mind goes back to the hell that was life, the darkest periods of my life and it's during those times that I get down on my knees and thank God my Father for taking me out of a situation that would have seen me living my life - dying just a little bit every day.

Sometimes things don't work out for me and I've wondered why they didn't. But I always realize that it's always been an avenue out of something that could have hurt me for life that I was blind to see at that time.

My love was blind and I would have paid a heavy cost. It it was just myself suffering, it would have been just me and my emotional baggage. But no way could I subject my precious angels to that kind of life. The scars on those gentle souls would have grown deep and I would have been helpless, seeing them grow into a next generation version of their father. Bitther, cold and confused about life. I made a huge mistake falling in love with him and beating all odds to be with him - all against the advice that I got from friends and family who warned me not to go into it. But go into it I did.

Life hasn't been easy but one thing I know for sure. I loved him and I never denied him that love. Not even after we parted company.

At the end of the day, I'm glad I didn't hurt the man I now no longer associate with.

But I'm gladder still that I closed the door on all hell breaking loose, on my family, on my friends, on my babies, on - me.

This song sums it all up for me.

Horny, but without sex!

Here is my latest entry as a girl who's newly (4 days old) turned her back on sex with all its perils and disastrous implications.

I was caught in temptations way but I didn't yield. And the reasons for that are based solely on the feedback and words of most of my blogging friends. And I owe them a "Thank You" for the encouragement and support.

I know it's out of norm for a person to bare it all online and talk about her inadquacies and weaknesses but it's beautiful the way expressing oneself and opening one's heart out to another even via the internet and one's personal blog, can help a person on his or her journey through life isn't it?

I know it's too early to make a prediction but I feel that this is the end of the very things that I wondered if I'd ever quit getting myself into. I feel like my life has been re-prioritised. My head feels clearer and I feel like a torchlight has been shone along the path on which I intend to continue travelling on.

For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, I'm referring to my decision to stop putting myself into positions of having random sexual encounters with even the nicest of blokes.

Life feels good after all!

Being in control of one's life is key isn't it? It's when you lose control or feel that external events and individuals manupilate the steering wheel of your life, that you tend to begin to lose it. Or atleast that's how I felt the last couple of months.

Sure I may miss it. Sure I may be horny ;) but that doesn't mean that I get into something that has me enslaved into it. It's hard to say no to something has brings you a lot of pleasure but saying no to something just because you have decided that you don't want it, brings a far greater pleasure that is unparallelled.

I'm hoping I can remain strong on my journey from hereon. I've never succeeded in giving a thing up before, but I intend to give up many more things in the coming months. Will keep you posted on it.

For now? It's Goodbye Lust. Hello Peaceful Satisfaction.

How we manage our Money, our Time and our Relationships are the 3 most important factors about life, aren't they?

"I'm not going to spend my life being a colour" - Michael Jackson (Black or White)

Why do we leave "anonymous" comments?

Lately I have been receiving some worthless comments that have meant nothing to me at first, but now seem to be getting under my skin. I feel that there are tramps and trolls lurking around my blog and that doesn't make me feel too comfortable!

Sifting through my list of "comments", I re-read some pretty bad ones that shocked and saddened me, considering that we're all here and here for a reason - to blog and share our thoughts in a friendly, clean atmosphere. The comments seem to have been penned by a slightly deviated mind with the intention of causing just a little bit of trouble (if possible) in my waters.

Why do we hurt eachother under the guise of "anoymous"? What can be accomplished by leaving comments that make absolutely no sense sans the repect that ought to be shown towards a fellow blogger or reader?

I was just thinking. It has everything to do with background and upbringing and where we come from, doesn't it? The very intent to abuse someone else anonymously, shows a degree of fear of doing so in the open by revealing identity, thereby proving that the anoymous writer has great concern to not be found out which in turn means that he/she actually fears some sort of repurcussion for whatever reason it may be. Perhaps the anonymous writer is someone known to the blogger who temporarily slips into Jeckel-like shoes whilst playing Hyde at other times.

The most disconcerting fact to me personally, is the fact that Kottu is not the place I knew it to be. Those of us who have grown up in Kottu would remember the days when there was hardly a malicious comment left. Even diagreements were argued reasonably. But times change and newer people come into the fray. I guess that's what happens when you have the option to leave thoughts unsourced. I guess that's the dark side in human nature isn't it? To hurt another person whilst masqurading in the dark unidentified? "Anonymous" just gets away with it, and there's nothing we can do about it.

I don't intend to do ellborate further so I'll wind up this post here.

I'd like to pose a challenge to the trolls - even the "anoymous" ones. Please do reveal your identity (either a first name or your blogging name)and speak in a manner that would make some sort of sense to the reader. I urge you to reveal your identity as this would make you feel some sory of responsibility for what you utter. It's an act of cowardice that causes you to hide behind your "anonymous" peudonym. At the end of the day, it's your conscience that should get pricked, for whatever you chose to leave by way of a comment, on a fellow blogger's posts. May that conscience be re-awakened in you, because none of us can get by in life hurting others along the way, with careless words and hurtful thoughts.

As the late great Michael Jackson sang, "I'm asking" you to change your ways.

100 Posts and still going strong!

I just wrote my 100th post and would like to thank everyone for caring and sharing.

Thank you All!

Breaking my bondage with Sex

This is going to be a very sensitive post and I don't know how this will end up. Whether it will be a cry for help or an admission of weakness. A resolute steadfastness to keep going the way I am, or a complete break down that will concur a change. This will be my most personal post and I hope that it will be well-received and not dished for being controversially out of line.

I seem to be having a problem that troubles me no end. It all began with a flirtatious affair that ended with a sexual twist many years ago. The inception of the sexual awakened in me, a yearning for those still unfulfilled needs to be met. I tried so hard to stay away from those moments I gullibly set myself up for. But I failed each time and ended up succumbing to temptation.

Being a girl, expressing my sexual needs has always been a taboo. But I soon began to experience all the sex the world had to offer, but not without conscience, ethic and a total unwillingness to break another's heart. I'm proud to put on record, the fact that to this date, I have never played - never toyed with another's heart. I have had my own heart broken and dashed into a million pieces, my own dreams taken cruelly away from me, but not one of those guys would ever testify to the fact that I have been party to hurting any one of them and that is some sort of solace in the wake of all that has been happening in my personal life. The most intimate moments I have shared have been moments that have left the guy happy and fulfilled. Sex has never been my ulterior weapon and I am determined that it should NEVER be.

However, I remain desperate at the mercy of my yearning for the act of love. It is found in places with enough ease to make me realize that I will never fall into the category of "desperate and needy", because I have always had a place to call my own. Arms in which to find love and keep love. Still, the patterns my life seems to be inviting and encouraging frighten me. In fact, I've begun to desire a life that is devoid of sex. So great is my keeness to address what seems to be a budding problem in my most personal life.

How does one stay away from sex all together? And with it I intend to attach masturbation and pornography. Fantasy and everything to do with sexual thoughts and lust. I have been told that this is an extreme and completely unnecessary road to journey on but the last few days have had me thinking and thinking hard about the direction my life is heading for. I need to make this change. I just don't know how to.

So please, if you have any thoughts or advice, tips or opinion, please share it with me. I'm tired of living this life. Others who look at me envy me, calling me the "doll" of any and every guy who dates me. But the truth is, my heart isn't happy with the way my life is going. Pornography is harmless, masturbation is a natural release, say my friends. But I know that in my personal life, these things are arrows pointing towards the big event - sex. And I'm desparate to stay clean and live a life that is pure and undefiled from it.

I have found my moments of depression stemming from the "morning after" feel that always accompanies the act of making love. I'm tired of the vacuum and emptiness that fills my mind. Sex is no longer a fun thing to do. Neither is it deep when accompanied with love. The reason for this? Is that I have been having too much of it. I've reached a point in my life where I have to do this for me, not regarding the relationships and ties that are involved. I just know there is an answer, I just haven't found it yet.

How does one stay away from sex?

100 Posts and Still Counting!

I just wrote my 100th post and would like to thank everyone for caring and sharing.

Thank you All!

New Responsibilities!

Today was a landmark in my personal life as I was entrusted the responsibility of handling a group which requires social skill, tact, indepth knowledge of infrastructure and the passion and zeal to carry things out with the least pressure on those I work with. The beautiful thing about the whole thing is that I was the unanimous choice when it came to electing a leader in the department and I slipped into the role with a lot of ease, all thanks to the management who were in charge and more than happy to welcome me in to the ranks as head.

Knowing that the position I am in and the office that I hold requires maturity and a leveled head, felt like a pat on the back and reminded me of the responsibility that I have to perform at my best and give back into this venture which gives me a lot personal satisfaction whilst raising my awareness of issues and the best ways in which to solve them. What I particularly appreciated about my promotion, was the personal improvement that accompanied the carrying out of duties, as the fuctions of a leader always shapes a person into a better person overall.

Here's a champagne glass on my behalf, to the new role that I've positioned myself into. The toast is to me!

There will never be another you, MJ

I can't even begin to describe the sense of sadness that engulfs my heart as I write this post. Michael was more than an icon to me when I was growing up. He was my companion through lonely nights as a kid, and his music videos always make me smile. The creativity of the pharoh scene in "Remember the Time", the innumerable celebrities looking for the king of pop in "Liberian Girl", the everchanging faces in "Black or White", the garage fight routines in his earlier 80s music videos. Who can forget them?

Whether or not he touched the kids he was accused of molesting, noone can take away his unique style and presence in the music scene which was unparallelled. Nobody will be able to do what he did. From his moonwalk to the phenomenal success of "Thriller" to his crotch grabbing "oo-oo"s, he was inimitable and the sweetness of his success was the softness of his heart.

Michael was known for his humanitarian touch. His Quincy-Jones/Lionel Ritchie collaboration for US for Africa birthed the advent of "We are the World" and I can't help tearing as I watch him come in on the chorus in his shining black shoes and white socks, hand in pocket, standing tall.

He had a sense of fear and his stress levels were always at their optimum. There was a time he adorned a face mask for fear of contamination of germs. A publicist states that a human being with that amount of stress could not have gone on living. He was also a sensitive, shy human being who broke down as he sang the 70s Jackson 5 classic "She's Out of My Life" which remains among the top 10 emotional songs to have ever been sung. Rumoured to have been written around the affair he is said to have had with Diana Ross who was many years his senior, his anger at her leaving him is said to have been expressed through the penning of "Dirty Diana" which he sang several years later. Yet there are some who say that theirs was a platonic relationship, the name "Diana" being merely a co-incidence.

Michael is said to have been a victim of his father (Joe Jackson)'s numerous affairs. He was an emotionally tortured child who witnessed the heartache and pain that his mother went through as a result of his dad's infidelity. Unlike his siblings Jermaine, Marlon, Tittie, Freddie, Latoya and Janet, Michael was an introvert who keep his feelings to himself and rarely made a public outcry. He was withdrawn yet confident. The moment he took the stage as the youngest member of the ensemble "The Jackson 5", he would move and dance with the confidence of a veteran and he amazed many during his "Dick Clarke" days.

I can go on and on and on about Michael but I will stop now. Let me end by saying that I will never cease to remember him. The pits of my stomache still ache from hearing his loss.

There will never be another you. You came into this world to make a mark. The world will not forget you.

RIP Michael Jackson : (

-justchillinslow.blogspot.com

Free Again!

The fear that constantly nagged me and knocked at the doorstep waiting to happen during the beginning of this week has sorted itself out! I've got my second chance and I'm delighted as a bunny holding a stack-ful of carrots in her hand!

Dee turned out to be the sweetest reciprocal person out there and completely forgot the one thing that was worrying me constantly. He chose to forgive and forget! We chatted for almost half a hour and he was the same old person that I first knew when we spoke. Awesome!!!

Having said that and breathed a sigh of relief, I'm not going to jeopardise our relationship or take things for granted by ever slipping up again. I'm so happy that things worked out for the best.

We've all got our share of second chances in life haven't we? Well I got mine and I'm eternally grateful for that. I'm a new, optimistic me and I'm thrilled at the turn of events.

Open Mic tonight!

All roads lead to the Inn on the Green when "Open Mic" takes the stage tonight. So all you bloggers out there in the Sri Lankan blogsphere, tonight's the night to meet your friendly fellow-bloggers, share a drink and say hello!

Open mic gives you the opportunity to recite poetry, sing, mimick, read your own favourite posts ... it's open to all and it's a great way to share your prose!

I'm pretty excited about it all and I'm looking forward to meeting you guys this evening.

The past few open mics were held at Tracy's place and this time promises to be even bigger and better!

Here's hoping I'll see you there!

How and Why?

Questions, questions and more questions. You must wonder what all this is about.

Well it's about the startling discovery - the sad discovery, that a friend I admire humongously - (a pure, sweet, angelic being of a woman), turns out to have a personality disorder that has just been classified as "compulsive liar's disorder".

How could this be? She was better than all of us put together. Add us up and divide us by our number and you'd still find double that amount of bad to be missing from her personality. She was a genuine good-hearted woman who never hurt a fly in her way. She was an absolute virgin when it came to men and her moral standards were awe-inspiring. She was the first to help a friend, the kindest out of all of us. How could this happen to her?

I still can't believe that she has turned out to be a person who can look me straight in the eye and spin a lie that streches across my face without batting as much as an eye lid. She has no conscience when it comes to fibbing her way through life.

But this is not the girl she once used to be. I still can't reconcile the two personalities. I long for the old her - the her that used to be able to advise, guide and teach us by example. The her that used to cringe at the thought of telling a half-truth and get hit affectionately, for being so naively good!

What happened to her? How could this angel become a she-devil? Is there any help out there for her? Is she even aware of her psychological make-up?

As her friend all I can do is sit her down and tell her that she needs to pick herself up and quit lying. But is it as easy as that? Compulsive lying is a serious thing which I believe requires professional help.

I'm going to do my best to get her that help.

I just feel so confused. I never expected her to end up this way. And given below are series of random thoughts that started going through my head.

How do you love a person the same way that you did before you found out that he was stricken with a disease that makes him half the man he used to be?

What is it that makes a good person turn bad?

It's kind of like the good milk turning sour when churned isn't it?

What makes the green budding flower fade and fall out of it's place on the branch?

What makes the fresh, smooth skin of a baby end up shrivelled up in wrinkles?

What makes the energy in a battery last long only to run down and die out?

What makes the innocent child grow up to be a guilty villian?

What makes the chalk write against the blackboard till it decreases in size?

Do you believe that there is good in the worst human being?

Can the sinner be redeemed?

How does the compulsive liar start speaking the truth?

How do you teach the thief not to rob?

What makes us turn a 180 degrees, to become whatever it was that we were when we first started?

I wonder if it's too late for my friend. She has already abused my trust. Even if she got better, would she regain all that she is steadily losing while we speak? I guess it's all in my hands and with regards to her, back to that age-old adage "self forgiveness".

But somewhere in all of this, I believe it's God she needs in her life. She needs a miracle to happen to her now, because she's barely unrecognizable to us all.

I can only hope she gets the help she requires. It really hurts when a friend goes through trying times like these. It's the first time I've encountered a compulsive liar! But I have to remember that she was someone else before all this happened to her.

Patience and compassion is what is required of all of us and I'm willing to extend that to the fullest. I just want her to be the old her.

I miss her.

How and why did this happen to her?

All about that "Anonymous"!!

#1 "Anonymous" loves to say what he does with as much guile and lack of common courtesy as possible.

#2 "Anonymous" loves to hide behind the pseudonym so that he can be free to express the real contents of his heart.

#3 "Anonymous" finds boldness to comment only when he stands behind the wall that does not allow bloggers to glimpse a vew of the "real" him.

#4 "Anonymous" says what he says with the confidence that he will never be found out. He therefore says that he would NEVER say had he revealved his real identity.

#5 Is there an "Anonymous" in all of us?

Not really.

#6"Anonymous" is diffident to attach a name to his quotes.

#7 "Anonymous" does not have a blog of his own and even if he does, he prefers not to draw attention to the connection between himself and his blog.

#8 We've all experienced a little bit of "Anonymous" every single day.

#9 "Anonymous" visits blogs and thrives on feedback/responses that may be made under provokation.

#10 On the rare occasion, "Anonymous" actually has something good to say!

Second Chances

Over the weekend I got to see a new side to myself. A side that wants to recompense for all the wrongs she has done. A calm and collected side to me that allowed all the hustle and bustle, the scurry and hurry of life rush past me while I stood for a moment and just absorbed the slow ticking of the hands of the clock..

But just when I was fitting comfortably into the snugness of self-actualization, something happened to burst the bubble of happiness. A bad deed that I had committed ages ago returned on my doorstep to haunt me, accompanied by packages of guilt and remorse. There to collect it were two of my best buddies. One a real darling, the other an "in and out" kind of friend. It didn't take too long for me to find myself knee deep in mud, trying desperately to come out.

To some extent, I have managed to wade through this trial with my face unscathed. But there's yet the possibility that I can find myself in deeper shit if a certain aspect of my past deeds is brought out. Things as they stand, resemble the makings of a time bomb. And I can only sit and wait indefinitely, hoping that the explosion never takes place.

It's funny how I was dealt out my punishment just when I had turned a new leaf in my book and made ammends with my past. I have no right to question life or querry into the advent of my chastisement because I have done wrong. But all I can do is hope and pray that Someone up there sees my heart and doesn't allow the exposure that can break the very heart thath beats to keep me going.

A second chance. That's all I ask for. As I sit and wait nervously with a genuinely repentant heart.

The past has a way of catching up on you. No deed you commit is ever done in secret. It will always be revealed isn't it?

Burn Out!

There's been a period in my life when things have grown stale and the journey weary. The shoes that have been on this pair of feet have been worn out travelling on roads that have been full of self-defamation.

Sometimes we can be our own harshest critic can't we? I know I am. I come down really hard on myself and punish myself whenever I go ahead and do something stupid or silly that I should never have done.

And I seldom reach out a helping hand to myself to redeem me and bail me out.

That's when I realized that sometimes we have to love ourselves before we can love eachother or ever prepare ourselves to receive love from someone else.

The danger of being around on this planet earth for a considerable amount of time is burning out.

Let's never burn out!

Scenes from a War front

Silently she watches,
waiting
in a pool of mud
behind the blades of grass
that sweep over the tips of of her helmet.

Her lover is at war
Shooting t-56 artilery at the enemy
While she watches his back
Heart beating, sweat beads and perspiration pouring
down the base of her spine

Suddenly up shoots a blast of smoke
That infiltrates the air like a cloud on top of a fountain!

She runs into danger and begins to shoot
Desperation fills her heart as chaos floods her mind
She races on with no thought or care for her own life

When suddenly

Her boot tilts over a soft bag of human flesh
Causing her to fall head-down and flat on the nose with a thud

Her gun leaves her hand and flies to the furthest ground
Her eyes turn back to see
The body of her lover

In soldier uniform
Lies the man who made love to her the night before
killed in the battlefront.

She clings to the ground and cries into the dust
Blood and sweat, teats and saliva pouring down
She screams in agony, calling out to her lover

She's too grieved
to notice the enemy's shadow
looming over her quaking body.

Bang!

And she is silenced.

Intense Hatred

How do you react when someone gets under your skin with a pitch fork in hand, to jab and dig at its soft, sensitive layers until it had made a permananent mark of wounded scab?

I'm a scorpio and I find I've got the personality of a rattle snake. For those of you who don't know, the rattle snake unlike anyother snake, never attacks unless provoked to, or under perceivable threat (in fearful situations in which it deems the opponent to be dangerous to himself).

But is it wrong to mark time until the opportuned moment comes in which to attack the very thing that hurt you immeasurably without care or concern for the damage caused? Translate that into a person. Is it wrong to let intense hatred drive you into hurting even in some small measure or quotient, the very person who hurt you until you bled in a previous instance?

How does one live on with old wounds and hearts? Act or react?

In love with Guy

My heart aches for his love and my soul is saturated with bliss everytime I hear from him. He lives a million miles away from me and I live a million away from him too.

He's been away for close to three and a half years now but the love I feel for him is still growing strong. We had the big "talk" and we decided that we'd be friends since both of us weren't going to see the light of the other for a couple of years. But we're still very much in love.

Everytime I think of a girl he's good mates with, it makes me burn up with jealousy and everytime I share my encounter with a member of the opposite sex, it makes him retreat into a mood that's got "sulking" written all over it. He's in love with my body, my mind and my heart. I'm in love with his love - for me.

Yet we're eachother's closest friends. We're eachother's soul mates. He can't go to sleep without confessing that he had a random sexual encounter with a girl that went horribly wrong, without my being the one to console him after admitting to my share of jealousy. He never misunderstands it, because it's exactly the same feeling that he has for me.

But we are friends. We have no right to be jealous of eachother's relationship woes we are - but friends. We can never be together. We've explored all options and avenues and reached the conclusion that we can survive but on texts and calls to eachother on a weekend.

He is committed and legally bound to live overseas, I am committed to living in the land that I was born in.

3 years have passed.

Still I remain, in love with guy.

Going Back Home

Today I'm going to make my way back into the arms of someone I left a long time ago.
Someone who always knew what was best for me and showed me the way.
Someone I've missed all of my life, someone I've forgotten to acknowledge all of my life.

I'm going home.

When depression hits me

I seem to be having a brush with that age-old fiend "Depression" in some small and disconcerting way. There's a dull sense of hopelessness and lifeless weakness in my bones that's making me trudge around the house in despondent routine.

I seem to be remembering the past quite a bit and longing for happier times and good old days when responsibilities, expectations and pressures to conform were as rare as a winter season in sunny Sri Lanka.

The worst part is that the career move I'm embarking on is going to see a regimented "no entertainment" month for me and this is not the best antedote for an already slightly depressive person like me! I'm going to have to live out the next 30-40 days and see how it goes whilst keeping my concentration levels high and my general positive attitude at its optimum.

What do you do when you get this feeling of lowness that just doesn't seem to go away? What makes you feel sad and lonely? Is it the weather? Is it circumstance?

I have absolutely no idea what to do but I'm waiting for this tide to turn.

Fingers crossed and waiting!!

Tired

Of waking up in the morning to the same routine, day after day after day
Of listening to the same old shows with the same old hosts on the radio
Of reading the same war-centered headlines in the newspapers
Of blogging ...

Life is like an elevator ride!

Just a little thought but isn't life like an elevator and the different floors we each get off at like the different stages of our lives in which we die?

The Ground floor where we all get in is like our birth.

The times others get into the lift at different floors are the times they all start living - some of them later than others.

And when that "ping" sound comes and the door opens for some of us, it's time to GO -To get off the lift of life and leave others behind.

And it's upto us to smile and mingle with those we take the elevator ride with.

Of course we can choose to ignore them and keep looking at the numbers by the door, pre-occupying ourselves with nothingess while we take the ride!

Life sure is like an elevator ride!

:)

Pornography stinks

It *** defiles the marriage bed, causing the subconscious to take over during sex
*** corrupts the mind
*** raises expectations of lovemaking to ridiculous proportions that are dangerously unhealthy
*** is proven to increase tendency towards depression
*** stirs up aggravated feelings of loneliness
*** causes alienation from the real world and distorts reality

Comments? Agree? Disagree?

The broken past and the broken future

Isn't it beautiful the way things have a way of sorting themselves out for the better?

I had the harrowing experience of dating a guy who was a horror as a partner. His temper was one noone could reckon with and his defiance of any type of regulation left him pouting stubbornly or sulking outside the door while I waited anxiously inside, waiting for the moment to pass. He's a guy who would get into fisticuffs if a fly as much as stared at him and no amount of begging and pleading would spare the said fly from his wrath.

Broken tumblers, damaged chinaware and the final act - a walk out with the threatening swear never to step in again would follow every visit to my parent's house and there were days on which I would stand nervously, all alone, partnerless at some wedding or reunion, just because he wasn't in the mood to socialize. Very often he'd stand stoically with an air of indifference as I broke down and cried. My pleas would always fall on intentionally deaf ears and standing dumbly as a lone guest, I would never quite have the right words or excuses to save me from complete embarrassment.

He never made an effort to support the family. I would sometimes beg him to go out there and make a living so that we could support ourselves without being at the mercy of debt-collectors but he was almost always out of work. He couldn't maintain a job because he'd get itchy feet, never able to stay in one place at a time and very often getting into blows with his superiors. Out of the goodness of my heart, I would squeeze out my life's savings just to get us both through the day.

I don't know what it was that separted us as a couple but God knows it was for the best. The agony I could have suffered at his hands would have taken away many years from my existence. I would have lost my smile, my passion and my confidence. He would never have made a good dad to my little kids - my precious children.

Today I'm on my own again, living my life and loving it. But every now and then, I remember the painful past and how bad things could have been and it's a bittersweet feeling I have.

Sorry I bored you guys with all this. I just had to vent it all out.

I want my old Kottu!

We have had Chilli Chocolate, The Real Nibras Bawa, Padashow, Padashow's alter-Ego The Maharajah of Bad ...

Starting things off for us who choose to stand on the sidelines, we are able to watch and read with amusement the insults and counterattacks that are hurled at eachother like a ping pong ball speeding its way to the nether ends of a table tennis table!

Some of us bloggers get involved in the game and express our disdain or approval, condonement or disapproval from time to time. And this has gone on for some months on Kottu, with trolls occupying as much of the traffic as those of us who choose to blog seriously and systematically.

But today I was reading a few posts on some of the blogs belonging to the trolls mentioned above and I felt sick to the stomach at how low the persons maintaining these blogs have stooped. From outing to character assassination to blog analysis (which is getting quite tiresome now), the fun of this whole game seems to have waned off, virtually disappeared and all we get at the end of it is a spoilt sport show that gains absolutely nothing out of this whole exercise.

The funny thing is that there seems to be a new advent to the troll phenomenon. The "counter"-troll or "wanna-be" trolls have emerged out of nowhere and continue to creep into the nooks and corners of the blogsphere, feeding on the posts that others have put up on their respective blogs.

I long for the days when Kottu was clean and troll-free. When the blogsphere was a friendly, intelligent, INTERESTING place that held such comaraderie and sporting spirit among us bloggers.

Whatever happened to the Sri Lankan blogsphere? :( It's just not what it used to be.

Bow in love?

I watched a horror movie with Bow a few days ago and spooked myself out to glory!!! The lights were switched off and the place was full of darkness save the fading light of a flickering street light directly opposite the window on the topmost floor of the apartment. As the protagonists started frantically running helter skelter in the dark, every shock made Bow's body shake with jolts that seemed like electricity bolts going through his body!

Somewhere between the scenes, Bow's hand landed on my jeans and wouldn’t move until I had placed my hand above his elbow. As I felt his shoulder affectionately, his hand took a hold of my fingers and he clasped my hand in his very gently.

As the movie ended and the credits began to roll, my expectation that the clasp that held our hands would break was not to be. It took a long while – the end of the movie virtually forcing him to reluctantly stand up and slip the DVD into his cover. But not before he turned his face and landed an unexpected, loving kiss on my surprised cheek.

Soon afterwards as he moved into the kitchen to fix us both some drinks, he sprang up from behind me and held my shoulders, giving me a hug that lasted a very long time. The hold was almost awkward and I had no choice but to end it by drawing his attention to some obscure detail of a compact disc that lay on his table.

Friends who’ve been with him feel Bow is in love with me. And they are not people to speculate without real reason. Something about the way he reacts when I’m around him makes me wonder if he does in fact have a soft corner in his heart for me. I don’t know.

Guys, reading this, what do you think?

Beautiful Sri Lanka

Choral Tribute by the Methodist College Choir of Colombo

And Kottu delays

It's been close upon 6 hours now and I haven't seen any of my latest posts making it to the syndicated log of posts. But that doesn't mean my blog hasn't been read. Or does it? :)

Anyways.

Does it really matter if bloggers don't read your rants and reviews? There is a quota among us who blog for the sheer love of writing or the opportunity to vent.

But there are still others who sabbotage their own dignity by resorting to more underhand tactics to get hits/lure the reader (who glances through the posts on Kottu's blog roll) to take a look at their respective blogs.

One such blog was that of rehani's whose headlines screamed out a title that included NB's name.

On clicking on the link, what followed was her self-proclamation that is was just a ruse to get some attention. An innovative way of getting one's blog introduced to the blogspere I must say! However, I found her latest cartoon-inspired post rather funny :) especially considering the fact that both RD and NB are bigger than that. Rehani to her credit acknowledges her love for them both and signs out only to be accosted by "Anonymous" who bursts her "right click" bubble!

What I was TRYING to say however, is that we've all gotten a tad too dependent on Kottu for our readership. All with the exception of St. Fallen here who cites a variety of optional alternatives including Google Reader and Achcharu. His main area of concern is that the expansion of Kottu results in an obese result when it comes to what we get on our hands as readers and I must say, he has a valid point.

At the same time it's important to keep in mind the sensitivities of those whose blogs may not be "upto standard" in our opinion. You see it's really difficult to stand in judgment over another person's work mostly because there isn't a standard set by anyone here in the blogging world. Or maybe there is - it's just that we haven't gotten down to identifying it. Adherence to any standard would definitely isolate for example those whose English writing skills are not on par with others which in my opinion wouldn't be fair.

And then you have the trolls and the LATEST albeit annoying addition to the bandwagon, the trolls who TROLL on trolls :)I say annoying, because it seems like such a waste! A waste of space, a waste of URL, a waste of time.

While Indi forces his social acts down our throats these days :)(actually I seriously think he's doing a superb job going out there and working among the IDPs. It kind of makes us wonder what we're doing here in the comfort of our homes and offices) Cerno has been endorsing using the Sri Lanka’s Top 100 Blog Posts Book to raise money to help/rehabilitate internally displaced people (IDPs)

So there you have it. The trolls, the ones who perform noble acts, the newbies, the skeptics - the whole lot of them living under one Kottu roof.

Maybe it IS high time we down-sized just a little bit. Perhaps it would be good if we had an alternative haven we could re-direct the rejects to. Or am I being too classist as a blogger? I don't know :)

One thing I DO know is that the Kottu fraternity is a tightly knitted one that has gotten used to the cynic in-laws who occasionally attempt to disrupt the steady flow of interaction.

Finally, we all come in different shapes and sizes and I wonder if this Kottu plate is enough for us all..

Addicted (fiction)

I have an addiction.
It’s a bad one.
I need help, but
I can’t tell anyone.

It’s something that’s keeping me
enslaved to it,
Yet I can’t seem to
break free from it.

The person who’s enslaving me, is the master of my fate.
And who is this master?
No one
but I.

Where do I go from here?
I feel hopeless.
I feel lost.

I see the rosy hue
It sits confidently on my spectacles.
I dare not wipe it
For fear that I may see the dangerous place I’ve gotten myself into.

Freedom, release, the lightness from it all!
How I long for it.

Bird, oh bird in the sky, why do you fly so high?
We mortals below look at you with envy
We ask to be like you.

Have I come here of my own doing
Only to die in these shoes?
Or am I meant to break free from this all
And run away into the night so you can’t enslave me again

Addiction, I speak to thee
Leave me alone. It is enough!
You have taken away my life’s breaths
And wasted them on mere nothings

Here I will not lie to die in my cage.
The bird is not you tonight, it is I.
Singing this sad, lonely song
As I look beyond the bars that crush my tender bones
And pluck at my feathers – one, by one

Until I die, alone, enslaved and lost
Inseparable from my addiction.

© Justchillin'

Hey my fellow Bloggers on Kottu!!

Complete or continue the following excerpt by leaving comments after the post. I will pick my favourite by the end of the month. Come on, try your hand at it. Good luck!
-justchillin'
_____________________________________________

Amir lay his left elbow against the rough tips of his feather-filled pillow and looked up at the creaking ceiling fan.

Outside, the thin drizzle had begun its nightly ritual of slapping the panes of his window. A thunder shower was emminent and he knew that it would soon drown out the clumsy noise of the bedroom door which would keep banging.

"Thud", "thud", against the cemented white wall, knocked the rough wood of the panels - over and over again.

The night had just begun and the snores of his neighbour confirmed that Amir was alone with his thoughts.

There were no eager human ears to listen to him, no flapping ears or earnest faces.

A sense of loneliness invaded the room and Amir could only lay still.

Memoirs from the past

When he walked out of my life, he never walked out of my heart.

It took me years to forget him. Painful memories would clutch the intestines of my lower abdomen and make my head hurt with a pain that few could heal.

But then there were the friends.

Friends who would comfort me, check up on me and see to it that everything was alright.

And of course he was there. In every town, in every place, from pillar to post, he was there. Nothing could ever help me forget this sweet guy whose lips tasted like salt, whose arms felt so secure.

And here I am in the then and now, loving him all over again. His voice still sends shivers down the base of my spine. He's still the love of my heart.

How does one break a habit?

It’s been 21 years and I haven’t been able to break the habit. 21 years is a long time and the times I’ve tried hard to stay away from it far outnumber the number of months in that amount of years.

How does one break a bad habit? It’s nearly impossible in my opinion. I've tried everything from rewarding myself to staying away from the things that trigger the compulsion to perform the said habit but just when I've thought I was nearing a breakthrough, I've given in and failed. The more I've thought about it, the more I've done it and the less I've tried thinking about it, the more I've given thought to it.

Any suggestions or thoughts on how one could break a habit? Would appreciate your comments and/or experience with the deadly "H" word.

N.B - The habit is not "Heroine" in case you wondered :)

Parents, Parents, Parents!

It’s really hard to make a stand when your opposition is as forceful as all the arguments you could make. What’s even harder is when the pressure to conform comes from no less than one’s parents.

Being an adult, the dynamics are quite different to when you were a child.

As little children we know that deep inside is this knowledge that mom and dad are right about nearly everything and possess at least some experience of a given subject matter in greater proportions that we do. We may know that they are right but we also have our own hazy view of things which we don’t have as much confidence as the enthusiasm to see it through.

Then we grow older and stronger in our opinions, likes and wants. The conflicting views are debated on with as much personal belief as with self confidence and an air of indifference to the consequences of disobedience. Hence the title “rebellious teenager”.

But what do we do when we as adults, disagree with our older parents? How do we stand our ground? Do we? Do we grudgingly compromise for the sake of peace? How do we deal with our parents who have no right or say in the matter but at the same time, need to be handled tactfully and wisely? After all, we being adults ourselves, we cannot resort to the arguing operandi that we did during our growing up years but it’s so darn difficult when we also realize that we aren’t little children anymore isn’t it?

What on EARTH should we do in situations like these? :)

Love letters

When Mohamed Adamally and Tracy Holsinger put together the classiest act I have seen in a long time, I can only imagine the energy that was infused into the parts they played with as much authenticity as the original caste members of “Love Letters” would have given it.

Tracy in particular was outstanding in her role as Melissa who grudgingly adheres to her best friend Andy’s request to keep in touch via the age-old method of letter writing which spans almost 6 decades that see them through childhood, love, disappointments, happy occasions, heartaches, career changes, marriage, senatorship and finally, death.

Andy’s level headedness contrasts with Melissa’s carefree spirit but they both do share a bond - an ability to be themselves with each other and as Tracy and Adam alternate their respective parts with a deftness that makes this friendship come alive, we cannot but help being drawn into their relationship which touches our hearts and moves us as we watch them pick up a paper at a time.

The actors who hold heaps of letters in their hands are able to almost personify the emotions of excitement, inquisitiveness, doubt, confusion, restlessness and lightheartedness - indeed the very essence of its contents as they go through them.

It could be said that the myriad of emotions that interplay as the two characters read each letter one by one, is cleverly brought out through the talent and artistry of the actors who did a great job of a difficult task.

Encounters was simply brilliant. Here’s a hat off to the Performing Arts Company for putting on a show to be reckoned with!

The past few days

The past few days have been amazing. Almost too good to be true for me. I haven't been this happy in a long time and the peace that I am experiencing through every situation, the way I look forward to life and embrace it - knowing that my place in eternity is secure, the thought that my life is actually counting and meaning something has brought me indescribable joy.

Work-wise, I'm actually able to make a difference and the voice that I have has spoken. It speaks, every single time. It isn't been stifled or looked over, ignored or given second place. My voice has been given its moment at just the right time and it's a beautiful feeling!

I know this post doesn't make any sense and most of you wouldn't know what on earth I'm talking about but I just can't contain my thankfulness to God for giving me this joy that I carry with me, this peace that makes is possible to live my life anew and make up for all the mistakes of the past.

Family and friend-wise, I'm living my life over and things haven't been this good in a long time. I've started and learned to forgive others ever so easily now. I've come to know myself in ways that I never did before. I've become someone completely new. I feel like a different person! I'm enjoying life completely and it's a beautiful, peaceful easy feeling (as the Eagles would put it!)

I'm truly thankful and ecstatically happy!

Not that good second time around!

Perhaps it's the fact that Susan Boyle was nothing short of absolute brilliance in her very first performance when she stunned the judges and indeed the audience with her breathtaking rendition of "I dreamed a Dream" during her first audition.

Perhaps the fact that she brings with her to stage, the highest expectations of perfection in performance which in turn causes her to feel the pressure and indeed the nerves.

Whatever the reason may be, Susan's semi-final performance of the Andrew Loyd Weber classic "Memories" was in my view, a tad below par (as by her own standards).

As the inimitable Simon Cowell would say (but didn't on this occasion), it "certainly wasn't" her best performance.

While Boyle sailed into the semis and had resounding acceptance from the audience as well as the judges who hardly had a negative word to say to her, it needn't have taken an expert to note that her semis performance was a nervous one. She was off pitch in several key points in the melody - indeed her first word "memories" starting on an off note which surprisingly, went unnoticed by the usually keen-eared judges who had nothing short of good things and supportive comments for the Scottish singer, when judging time came around. There were times when Susan ran ahead of the melody, her words clashing with the backing tracks and distracting the listener from enjoying her performance in entirety. All in all, her previous rendition of the Les Miserables classic was far ahead in terms of excellence.

Still for all, the "frumpy" singer looks all set to take the title and I personally hope she walks away with the crown. She deserves it.

The desire of her heart she says, is to sing for the Queen as is possible on winning the competition.

The Queen had better get ready to be blown away!

Gifted

Dog tired after a superb treck down south, I sat down at my PC and remembered the words of my sister – the sweet, elder sister of mine who told me during what was a very poignant moment of my dealings with her child, that I have a gift. Something that makes me come down to the level of a child no matter what his age, no matter what his background. Those words felt like a welcome splash of icy chilling water on a hot and humid day. We all love compliments but when it comes from your own kith and kin, it’s just especially different isn’t it?

I remembered the moment when my cousin inter-twined her fingers with mine as she walked up and down her garden - something she doesn’t do with anybody else, and I wondered whether my sister was right then in what she said. There was another moment far back in the 90s when a little Australian kid who hates to be with people just wouldn’t leave my side and actually cried when I moved back to Colombo. I still remember the way he sat as close as he could to me in the backseat of his dad’s car and held my hand as we went on those dare-devil motorbike rides together!

And then there is the misunderstood little girl I taught a couple of years back, who had been written off by almost all of her teachers. She was stubborn, arrogant and haughty and no one could crack the hard shell that encompassed her heart. No one but me. She pretty much melted. Melted to the extent of bringing me a rose one day and telling me that she loves me more than she does her own mother.

I know this post may sound too full of self-glorification! I assure you that wasn’t my intention. I'm just typing on my keyboard while I'm thinking out loud...

I feel I may be having a gift then, that’s going to give me a job in addition to the one I have already. My current job is fulfilling and I’m doing so well here! If I were to use my so called gifts, I would have to plunge into something that’s going to take a lot of time and energy off the one that I’m doing now. Not that I’ll give up my present job but I’m seriously considering working two jobs in the soon-to-come future.

On a closing note, it’s my sister who made me feel good about myself by suggesting that I’m gifted and that meant much to me, almost to the point of re-directing my life. I’d like to suggest in return, that you (whoever you maybe who’s reading this right now!!) have a gift too. Something that makes you special. Something that is unique to you. May you find it, if you haven’t already... even if you are in a mundane job that doesn’t seem cut out for you, may you find one that enables you to give of yourself to others. Your unique, one-in-a-million self.

And if by chance you feel that you aren't gifted? I assure you you are. We all are, one way or another. Never look a gift horse in the mouth they say... :)

Have a great June month!

We're only human

Mike Tyson’s little girl died tragically when her head got entangled with a machine which her mom was able to save her from. But not before the damage was already done. A few minutes later the child was pronounced dead.

For those of you who grew up in the 80s, you would remember the heavyweight champion as being the Ali of our times.

Tyson was also known for his aggression and “bad boy” behaviour. Having been accused of raping a young contestant of a beauty pageant, he served his term stoically, refusing to admit that he had anything to do with her – a claim he stands by to date.

His reputation in the ring took a dramatic turn when he bit off the ear of his opponent - Evander Holyfield, an event the few of us who saw will never forget. I can still remember the shock waves it sent round the boxing arena. The cover page of the TIME magazine splashing a bleeding Holyfield right across its front page as the fans that were on Tyson’s side hastily retreated on to the side of his opponent.

Tyson is not the only celebrity to grieve over the loss a child. Steven Curtis Chapman, John Travolta, Eric Clapton – they’ve all lost their kids as a young age. Eric Clapton’s little boy fell of the balcony of his apartment and was killed instantly. Yet another celebrity’s son accidentally reversed onto his little brother, killing him with that knock of death.

Today we have Yahoo headlines and Google news scooping up the entertainment news for us. “Mike Tyson’s daughter dies after tragic accident”.

Today we also have millions of internally displaced people who have lost their little ones to the war. Either voluntarily or by force, these kids have joined the movement and lost their lives to its futile cause.

The civilian families who are seeking shelter and sustenance are also families that have grieved over the disappearance, abduction or killing of their son. Their daughters have paraded the fields of LTTE training camps and worn those cyanide capsules of death. They have been taken at a ripe age, plucked out of their parent’s homes and used up for the activities of the organization.

Their daughters too have died after tragic accidents. Their killing was not purposeful. It happened in the name of war. However they were not voluntary pursuits of death. They had but little choice.

Too late now. They are far gone. But spare a thought for the families out there who are grieving and getting through their days with these losses in their hearts. They may hardly bring it to the notice of those around them. Indeed, their first priority is resettlement and care but we ought to remember there are millions of people in our own land, who are feeling the very same emotions that that brutal, aggressive heavyweight it feeling right now.

We’re only human after all.

Living the dream

There was a time when darkness hovered around my existence and clouded my judgment and self-belief, strangling my sanity into fragments of insecurity, fear, loneliness and inadequacy, when confusion and the terror of the nights made all of my worst nightmares come true. I have suffered in the past and been through the worst of times in my life.

9 years out of that hell hole that was life, the dramatic turn that my life has taken is nothing short of a miracle.

I look at my sad, oftentimes dark journey through life and look back at the paths that have been mud-splashed with loneliness and fear, terror and heartbreak and look at myself in the here and now. Could this all be a dream?

Fast forwarding into life today, I’m a beautiful woman who is in shape, with a figure I never had before. If I may say so myself, I have a beautiful body and I remember a time when I had too many sorrows in my heart to even take care of myself. I would never have thought that I’d be looking as pleasing as I do and feeling so good, too!

My work gives me so much joy and satisfaction that it’s mind boggling that I should be in this place, doing what I’ve dreamt of doing from the time I was a kid. When I think about it, this is what I wanted to the “d”. It’s the exact same vocation I used to daydream about and my personality compliments it as much as my passion and heart do.

I have found myself, and find contentment in EVERYTHING. No matter who I am with or where I have gone, I’m the same consistent person and the peace is something that’s in the core of my being. I know exactly who I am and there are no more hard efforts to “fit in” or gain approval. My confidence is in my own philosophy and that philosophy has been the key to my success.

So many years ago, I felt like an “also ran” one of many who idolized a certain person who I would look at from afar and wish I could just catch a glimpse of. I remember just remaining there, alone, gazing long after the rest of the crowd went away, so full of admiration for this person.

And now?

Here I am, loving the best friend of my life, that SAME person I adored so many years ago, a man that others were crazy about, who never took notice of their attention-getting moves and offers to cook his dinners and lunches or constant encircling but fell completely in love with - me.

He’s the one who’s there to talk to be it night or day. The one I can call up in the wee hours of the morning or the latest stroke of midnight. He holds me when I’m crying and comforts me when I’m sad. He argues with those who he thinks may even vaguely utter a bad word about me and tells them that he will never hear a word if it’s something about his best friend. He cleans up after me and feels my head while I sleep against him. He holds my hand when we cross the streets. He’s the person who’s always been there for me and reflected my best qualities back to me.

The time we spent together today will always be in my memory. I will never forget the movies he brought to my remembrance. One about a faithful wife who remains sweet in the midst of her husband’s adversity and the other about Julia, the beautiful girl who proves that good girls don’t finish last. He reminded me about all those things that I once loved doing. Like the beauty of a movie and its power to distract you to the point of absorbing a fairy-tale. He showed me the efficacy of movies in teaching me about life and intellectualism. But more than that, he just brought me joy, comfortability and drew light on the ADULT that I am, and that is what I treasure the most, about him.

All in all I’m having an amazing re-run of my life, and I just can’t thank God enough for it. It’s all a dream, and I’m living that dream.

Pada Show comments :)

I'm sorry to deviate from the usual posts but I couldn't help wanting to share excerpts from "Padashow"'s post about my blog which had me in stiches!!! Here are a few of the things he had to say, said in its funniest form which is why I'm highly tickled :)

"The moment this page loads your eyes are assaulted by something that looks like it was shat out of satan’s dog. Such a perversion of a blogger template we have never laid eyes on before."

"Don’t bother reading the content, there is none. This pada-head thinks he/she/it will be found more interesting by copy-pasting a dictionary definition into the about box. No you fuckwit, it just makes you look even more shallow than you are, which is about as shallow as a mud puddle on the surface of the sun."

Hillarious!!! Whatsmore, after Padashow critiques my dictionary definition of the word "chill" and expresses how horrified he is by the blinding glare of my template, he goes on to say ..

"Put yourself through the torture of reading text that is just glaring back at you and you will see that really, you would rather kill yourself than read"

Finally he ends up by calling my blog a blog of "deranged ramblings" :)

"You are too confused to be alive. Please go use this ’spiritual, mental, emotional and social tool’ to dispatch you to the depths of hell where you belong and nobody but the vilest creatures of this planet will have to listen to your deranged ramblings."

If there ever was a more entertaining troll, I'd challenge him to combat "padashow" who definitely made my day.. :)

Shaheen or Susan?

AUDITION

He started off a young 12 year old singer auditioning hot on the heels of Britain's sensational find Susan Boyle. Belting out an Amy Winhouse classic, Shaheen Jafargholi was halted midway (and the crowds gasped as did the comperes) by Simon Cowell who said he'd gotten it all wrong. Cowell asked him to sing another song.

The soundtrack of Michael Jackson's "Who's Loving You" began to play conveniently (which confirmed my belief that a lot of these talent shows are staged) and Shaheen started crooning, immediately winning the hearts of the judges who were stunned by his cover (which sounded as good as any little boy's rendition of that song)

SEMIFINAL

Sailing through to the semifinals, Shaheen has made headlines again. Singing the Jennifer Hudson track "I'm Telling You" has made him an overnight sensation all over again and people think he is tipped to beat Susan Boyle at the Finale.

But have you given a listen to Shaheen's performance? It's been nothing short of a ear-sore in my humble opinion. His vocals are forced and adopted. His singing is not his own. He seems to be imitating a forced impression of something far bigger than he is. It's an expressionless farce of an imitation that requires no inborn talent.

Susan Bolye in contrast is streets ahead. A genuine good find, an actually talented singer. But guess what! Britain thinks otherwise and are now of the opinion that Shaheen is a frontrunner who could go on to win this competition.

Britain's got talent. Or have they? They definitely don't have the best of jurisdiction. It would be tragically sad if this competition didn't belong to Susan Boyle.

Anyone agrees with me?

Affair with myself

Today is definitely a very special day in my life, because it’s a day when I learnt to love myself and connect with who I am.

“Love yourself?” you may ask. It’s a simple thing isn’t it? Loving yourself is something almost anyone would do.

So you would think. Well I didn’t. Not until today.

You see I had grown distant from myself and started self-doubting to almost dangerous proportions of lows. I had quit talking to myself, finding out what I think, what I like, what I feel … the interaction I had with myself had stopped almost months, if not years ago.

I realized that my life-schedule was such that I had busied myself with the affairs of activity and its many duties and rituals which were burning me out and making me someone that was barely recognizable to my own self.

The danger in that happening is that you no longer know who are and therefore have troubling understanding yourself. When you have trouble understanding yourself, there is precious little one can do in your time of worry, trouble, anxiety and perplexing need, to help you out and get you into a position in which you could be satisfied and at peace again. Because you lose who you are in the process, and it’s seldom easy to find yourself in a hurry in situations that pose more than a dilemma at a time.

Today all that changed. I took time to get to know me again. - To listen to my own heartbeat, - to get to know how I’ve been doing all these months and years, - to rid myself of all those old hurts and mistakes, prejudices and impulsive wrongs – all of which I had gone through in my life the past couple of months.

- To ask myself why I had gotten myself into those situations and to try and understand myself.

- To be gentle with myself and see myself through the eyes of the eternal God and not my own selfish eyes.

- To know when to draw the line when it came to believing myself and what I know to be true as opposed to what the world has to offer.

- To not be afraid but merely to understand with wise and sound perception that there truly is a difference and to not be afraid to live in that difference.
Today was indeed epiphanic and I’m thankful for this day. This beautiful day that God gave me.

A comic look at language!

The aim of language is not merely to convey an idea that needs to be expressed. Not always do we use words to intentionally communicate a thought in our minds, to someone else. "What??" you may ask. Well, in order to prove that the aim of language is not merely to state out thoughts and our feelings, let us consider a few instances when we use language mechanically.

Greetings like “good morning” or “ayubowan” in Sri Lanka. It is customary to say “Good morning” or “ayubowan” when we meet or greet a person. But do we really at that moment wish that person good life or a good morning with all our heart? No we don’t. Although we may say “good morning” we may be thinking about something else.

So we see that the aim of language used in saying “good morning” or “ayubowan” is not to state our thoughts. It is the same with the colloquial expression “how is life?” or “how are things with you”. We may ask a person how he/she is keeping but we may not really want to know. Thus we expect a simple answer like “okay” or “fine, thank you”. Even the utterance “thank you” is made more as a courtesy than as a means of expressing inner gratitude. Language is used out of courtesy.

When we meet a person who’s sweating in the sun, we sometimes stop to say “the sun is very hot today”. Do we really mean to tell him something that he already knows? No we don’t. We just mechanically say these things in order to establish social-public relations. Sometimes our thoughts are far away but we don’t want to seem rude so we just say “yes” or “I know”. Language is used to be diplomatic.

Exclamations we make when lifting something together or alone, expressions used by sportsmen and women – they only help to lessen the burden. Language is used to release energy. When we are in intense pain, we shout or scream. When we are angry, we raise our voices. We sometimes shout at people but then when we are calmer, we regret what has been said. We ask forgiveness for saying things we “didn’t mean”.

When friends get together, they fool each other. They tell each other jokes. One may tell another “you’re so proud that your head is up in the clouds” but a little while later he says “I was just joking”. This is because he was not in fact serious – he did not really mean that his friend is so proud that his head is up in the clouds. He was just using language to entertain his friend – to entertain himself by fooling his friend.

Little children recite nursery rhymes. Language is used to sing “Baa baa black sheep have you any wool?” But when the child sings “have you any wool?” the child does not mean to actually ask a sheep whether it has any wool. When children play “what’s the time Mr. Wolf?” do they actually talk to a wolf, do they actually want to know the time? No. For language is merely being used with the aim of having fun, being a part of the game.

The language used for songs too proves that the aim of language is not only to let our thoughts be known. We often sing songs when we are alone, when we are bored – yet we do not mean the words we sing. When rocking little children to sleep, we sing soft lullabies, though the child cannot hear. We sing to little babies, yet we know that they cannot understand.

We sometimes talk to animals while lovingly stroking and petting them. In our grief we sometimes talk to the dead person in the coffin. We ask “why did you have to die?” But we don’t mean what we say to the extent that we don’t expect out language to communicate with that person. Yet though we know that that person can’t hear us, we continue to talk to him as if he were alive.

At religious ceremonies, temples, devalayas, language is greatly used as chants and verses. Yet those who listen and take part in the ceremonies don’t really understand what is being said. Language is used with the aim of gaining psychological relief. When taking office, when a person is sworn in, when a person takes oaths etc, though language is being used, it is used more as a requirement than as a means for expressing oneself.

Thus we see that the aim of language is not merely to communicate our thoughts.

Language (and its usage) is a spiritual, mental, emotional and social tool that we use everyday, unknowingly almost mechanically but more as a necessity than to communicate our thoughts.

Little paws

Something I've noticed on my jaunts up and down the street are how the little pawmarks of a puppy appear on surfaces when I least expect it!

Be it on a rough edged pavement or a smooth side walk, the cement shows the scampering of a little doggy's feet that appears to have cristened the virgin wet cement long enough to have made permanent imprints.

Have you chanced to notice tarred/cemented sidewalks and pavements exhibiting these puppy-paw hickies, too?

The singing lesson

“The Singing Lesson” by Katherine Mansfield is a piece of prose that does more than merely describe a singing lesson in a music hall. One of the features of this excerpt is that it is an exploration of many ideas, the chief of which may be that a teacher’s personal life and disappointment can affect every other sphere of her life and work.

The central character and subject of this passage is Miss Meadows and through the author’s characterization, we get an insight into human nature. The prose begins with Miss Meadows trodding the corridors of the music hall with despair in her heart while the girls around her hurry, skip and flutter by. Here the sharp contrast between the fluttering girls and the trodding Miss Meadows, the feelings within oneo and the glee and excitement of the other help to heighten our awareness of Miss Meadows as a symbolic figure of isolation and despair.

Not only is there a contrast of moods between the bubbling girls and the despairing Miss Meadows but also a contrast between Miss Meadows and another character – the Science Mistress. The discourse between them conveys much in terms of different traits in human beings. Miss Meadows is bitter and full of hatred as she stares at the Science Mistress while the Science Mistress is a symbol; of artificiality as she drawls during her conversation “Good mor-ning” “win”ter” “fro-zen”. Thus the language supports the characterization of the Science Mistress. The use of a series of adjectives and nouns further emphasizes the insincerity and gloom of the Science Mistress. For example – the Science Mistress’s “sweet, affected” drawl, her “sugary smile” and “mocking light” in her eyes and the “grim” answer and quick grimace of Miss Meadows.

Having analyzed the author’s device of contrasting characters within a setting, we see how the setting (not only of the “cold corridors: that lead to the music hall but) the setting ofd the music hall itself represents Miss Meadows’ state of mind. The visual and acoustic images too are effective in emphasizing the mournful tone of the piece - “down came Mary on the opening chord, down came all those left hands, beating the air and in chimed those young, mournful voices”.

The author’s use of metaphors and similes to describe the effect the latter has on Miss Meadows is potent. Miss Meadows hugs “the knife”. The despair – cold, sharp despair is buried deep in her heart like a wicked knife. She stands there bleeding to death, pierced to the heart, to the heart by such a letter.

The unvarying monotony of the routine of the singing lesion is depicted through Mary Beazley’s motioning rather than the handing of a beautiful yellow chrysanthemum to her mistress. This is referred to as a “little ritual” that had been going on for “ages and ages” and as much a part of the lesson as opening the piano”. The implications of these lines convey the repetitive, dull motions of the class through authorial comment.

Katherine Mansfield illustrates another human trait – that of self-absorption in times of personal grief. Having pronounced the effect of the letter on Miss Meadows, the author goes on to depict the manner in which others are affected too, as a result of Miss Meadows”totally” ignoring everything and everyone around her. The manner in which her glance sweeps over the students as she looks at nobody, the way in which she assumes her students to be thinking “Meady is in a wax” and the manner in which she defies them in general is an indication of her pre-occupation with herself. Yet the effect that self enthrallment in her moment of personal despair has on Mary Beazley confirms the examination of this human tendency to neglect and ignore others at a time of personal crisis.

Miss Meadows totally ignores the chrysanthemum to Mary’s “horror”. She makes no reply to her greetings but speaks in a “voice of ice” (another metaphor that is used to illustrate Miss Meadow’s tone). Mary blushes as tears stand in her eyes. It is a “staggering moment” for Mary, but Miss Meadows was “gone back to the music stand”.

Finally, “The Singing Lesson” is didactic in conveying the manner in which moods change because of external events. The contents of the letter are heartbreaking to the extent of having the power to influence the countenance, spirit, and mood of not only Miss Meadows but eventually all those in the music hall. The choice and lyrics of the song “A Lament” express Miss Meadow’s state of mind. Thus a fine autumn morning “yields into winter drear”. The deafening noise of chatter changes into a chime of “young mournful voices”

Thus “The Singing Lesson” gives great significance to a letter and its consequent result on the moods of a series of people who are subsequently affected by that initial reaction of “sharp despair: in the heart of Miss Meadows. Therefore it is a piece of writing that reveals the author’s sensitivity and effort to successfully convey the consequences of human grief not only on the grieved (Miss Meadows) but all those she comes in contact with.

© Slow Chills

Wednesdays at the bone orchard

This story is an Orchardeer’s narration of what goes on at the bone orchard on a Wednesday. It is a description of the Orchardeer’s routine of disposing body parts in the form of “deliveries” to their “owners”.

There is perhaps a conscious under-rating and trifling of the solemn task which is subtle to the extent of actually intensifying the reality of what happens at the bone orchard and the feelings of the Orchardeers who work there. For the portrayal of the entire process of handling these body parts, is made accurate and realistic through the unemotional description and analysis of what is a frequent occurrence there. There is also a sense if credibility in the narration as the Orchardeers are not mere spectators but speak from experience as they are directly involved in the process described in these lines. – “we collate body parts”. “We slide howsoever many parts there are…”, “we have no bureau of complaints”. The narrator speaks for all the Orchardeers by not limiting himself/herself to a first person account of a single Orchardeer. (though there IS an instance when he/she briefly steps out of the scene by commenting that “the Orchardeers cannot care where they are sent”)

The Orchardeer depicts the activities of collating, arranging and shipping of body parts as being work done mechanically, with no demonstration of sentiment and no significance placed on the fact that these are parts of humans that are being dealt with. There is a total lack of regular meter, rhythm and rhyme as the author uses the technique of using a direct, straightforward arrangement of words that are free from poetical measures. This perhaps highlights the absence of shock, hysteria and any display of emotion in the Orchardeer.

The author’s use of words is effective in conveying a sense of instant de-humanixation in the Orchardeer’s handling of body parts. The total inanimation of the parts of dead bodies at the bone orchard is made extremely obvious as the author (Orchardeer) refers to “body parts”, “deliveries”, “body parts manufactured overseas”, “ears and limbs” that are intact etc.

The reader is able to recognize and engage with the reality of what is depicted here, for although there is a reference to U.S. Savings bonds, the reality of the death of loved ones who are at war away from “home folks” is universal. This may or may not be a personal event, but it IS a recognizable one; for although the “U.S.” is cited here, this text is not culturally alien to the reader. The reader can relate to the experience (even if not of the Orchardeers or even a recipient’s) at least as one who is familiar with the knowledge of its occurrence.

The visual image of “contents” that are “confused” – the visual description of “green plastic bags and manila name tag” contribute to the making of a distinct mental picture of the activity at the bone orchard in the reader’s mind.

These lines do more than just provide an account of a typical Wednesday at the bone orchard; as they are indirectly draw the reader’s attention to the manner in which “owners” may be deceived if they believe their “deliveries” to contain only the parts of their loved ones.

There is a tone of indifference to (and yet an attitude of awareness of) the unavoidable irregularities that take place and cannot be helped as the Orchardeers tamper with the contents in the packages revoking name tags and sliding in parts. The Orchardeer’s knowledge of the responsibility of sending the “right package to the home folks” becomes ironic as he/she soon after, states: “BUT the green plastic bags and manila name tags are revoked here”.

There is also a hint of irony in the process of ceremoniously dispatching these body parts that still for all, are confused but “rare refused”.

There is a tone of sensitivity (as the Orchardeers “gently” slide parts into the wrapping so they won’t “jar the hearts of the receivers”) and a lack of it (as the Orchardeers “cannot care where they are sent”) not only on the part of the Orchardeers but the recipients too, who “faint and/or put the contents on display”. The author’s tone becomes formal as he/she uses the words “and/or” to describe the varied responses of the recipients.

These lines take on a satiric mode as the author displays his/her knowledge of the compensation forwards to the families of the dead and the sundry of uses they make of it to do whatever they may choose. “Purchase U.S. savings bonds, use it for a trip abroad, or erect a memorial they could not once afford”. Yet the humour is subtle and may escape the reader, as any attempt to be skeptical is not made too obvious as the prediction of the use of the “sum” that is forwarded is not exaggerated or completely untrue, but highly probably as they can “do whatever they may choose”.

Thus the Orchardeer’s narration of “Wednesdays at the bone orchard” may be seen not only as an honest depiction of the reality and inevitabilities that follow death (possibly on the battle field) and becoming “body parts” but also a depiction of the Orchardeers and a reflection of their attitude as they handle and unite body parts with its recipients.

© Slow Chills

Back to basics

I've returned to an age-old habit I had left so many, many years ago!

Reading always completed me and opened my eyes to horizons beyong me, naturally improving my vocabulory and calming my soul as it drifted off into a whole new world of richness and diversity.

It was the world of fiction that gave me my unique gift - the gift of the gab which characterized my writings as way back as the yesteryears I spent in College!

Books as much as movies do, open the windows of one's heart to experiencing and feeling new things, new emotions, new thoughts and new ideologies that make it possible for someone in the here and now, to travel in space and time to a place in which newness is felt in one's heart.

It is this newness that refreshes the very core of one's being as the experience is relived with as much passion and enthusiasm as it is told and therein lies the bond created between storyteller and receiver.

I'm more than happy that I have recultivated a passion that held me in good stead in my most formative years of growing up.

Enough said - I'm off with a new book!!

Self-belief

Staying away from someone has given me so much space that I've been able to breathe again. There's absolutely no inclination on my part to initiate contact again and I feel that this is partly due to the showdown he had with me last Thursday. Like a true scorpio, I haven't been able to come to terms with the fact that he needs me to understand that the reason he's afraid he'd get his heart broken is because I've grown so special to him.

On the one hand I understand him but then again on the other, a part of me retorts to the fact that he would cause me this much pain by not believing in me.

Perhaps the reason for this is that I don't believe in myself adequately enough. Perhaps this is why I've depended so much on someone else believing in me and mirroring back this self-belief.

Then again when I think of all the times I have been far from truthful in my dealings with him, I grow more and more ashamed. He has always been honest with me, transparent and truthful, and as much as he revels in it, it IS his due. He's been a good friend and a good person which is a far cry from what I could say about myself.

Whether or not he is a good influence, is left to be seen. I wouldn't consider him to be a good influence. But I have to say, there are times when he has tried very hard to comfort me and to make me feel secure by offering solutions the best way he knows how to.

I need to believe in myself more. It's time I did that so that I would grow in self-security and be confident enough to stand on my own two feet, without depending on him.

I feel determined to do this from now on.

Emma

“The real evils indeed of Emma’s situation were the power of having rather too much her own way, and a disposition to think a little too well of herself” (Authorial comment – “Emma” by Jane Austen)

Emma Woodhouse, the heroine of Jane Austen’s novel”Emma” (1816) is indeed not only a social snob, but also too sure of her own wrong judgment. Yet I would not consider this to be a fair assessment of Austen’s heroine.

Emma IS a social snob. She is disdainful and conceited and her arrogance is clearly perceptible. Her class consciousness is acute and her sense of superiority over many characters is displayed through her many thoughts and opinions on every one of them.

Mrs. Martin she concludes is “probably some mere farmer’s daughter without education”. Mr. Martin is no more than a young “farmer”. Mr Elton is spurned for “supposing himself her equal in connection or mind” and most provoking, fancying himself to show “no presumption in addressing her!” He should have known that “the Woodhouses have been settled for several generations at Hartfield, the younger branch of a very ancient family” – and that the Eltons were “nobody”. Emma considers Mrs. and Miss Bates – “a waste of time, tiresome women” and shudders at “the horror of being in danger of falling in with the second and third rate of Highbury,, who were calling on them for ever and therefore …” she seldom wants to go near them. She thinks “very little” of Miss Hawkins, whose uncle she guesses to be “the drudge of some attorney and too stupid to rise”. Mrs. Elton she suspects, has manners which had been formed in a bad school, pert and familiar… if not foolish, she was ignorant”. Emma detests “the degradation of being said to be of Mrs. Elton’s party.” She does not want to be classed with the Mrs. Eltons, the Mrs. Perrys and the Mrs. Coles”. Emma’s snooty nature makes her determined not to go to the Coles. She determines to refuse their onvitation as “they ought to be taught that it was not for them to arrange the terms on which the superior families would visit them”. She does not “consent” to Jane Fairfax and Mr. Knightley’s presumed match and considers it a “very shameful and degrading connection”. When Hariied asks how the Coxes looked, her reply – “just as they always do – very vulgar”. Emma could not believe it possible that “the taste or the pride of Miss Fairfax could endure such society and friendship as the vicarage had to offer”. Harriet when assumed to be Mr. Knightley’s object, is considered “such a debasement” on his part. Though interesting and brilliant, Emma Woodhouse IS a social snob.

“In all her novels, though in varying degrees, Jane Austen regards the characters, good and bad alike, with ironical amusement, because they never see the situation as it really is” – A.C Bradley (1911)

Emma IS deluded into believing herself to be right and never wrong in her judgment. The
Success of the match made between Mr. Weston and Miss Taylor swells her pride as she proudly asserts – “I made the match .. and to be pr oved in the right … may comfort me for anything”. Mr. Elton – “the very person fixed on by Emma for driving the young farmer out of Harriet’s head. She thought it would be an excellent match”. Her quarrel with Mr. Knightley cannot result in repentance on her part as “she certainly had not been in the wrong…” Even though she regrets not having been satisfied with persuading Harriet not to accept young Martin, she insists to herself – “there I was right”. How sure she is of her own wrong judgment is distinct, as having believed the Martins to be well meaning and worthy before, she thinks “what difference did this make in the evils of the connection?”. Thus she refuses to even consider the possibility of her judgment being wrong. “-how could she have done otherwise?- Impossible! She could not repent. They must be separated.”

Emma is not only too sure of her own wrong judgment, she imposes it on others too. “She could think nothing better … it must be done or what would become of Harriet?” She is “determined not to allow” Harriet’s visit to the Martins to “exceed the proposed quarter of an hour”. How wrong her judgment is, is illustrated as “…they were just growing again like themselves, when the carriage re-appeared and all was over”. Emma is “convinced” that Frank Churchill came to Highbury “intending to be acquainted with her, and that acquainted, they must be”. Even in the course of a “trivial chat”, she foists her view - “well Harriet, whenever you marry, I would advise you to do so and so”. Her consolation of “knowing that her intentions were good” confirms the authorial comment “but her judgment was as string as her feelings”.

Yet Emma though a “social snob” and “too sure of her own wrong judgment”, does mature and does begin to realize the fallibility of her own judgment.

“Her characters are so rounded and substantial that they have the power to move out of the scenes in which she placed them, into other moods and circumstances.” – Sybil G Brinton (1913)

Emma was infact “beginning very much to consider what she had ever thought pleasing at all” about Mr. Elton. Frank Churchill’s impulsive haircut does not accord with the rationale and moderation “which she had believed herself to discern in him yesterday”. She considers Harriet poor to be a “second time the dupe of her misconceptions and flattery”. Emma is “determined against all interference” or matchmaking/ “… the remembrance of all her former fanciful and unfair conjectures was so little pleasing…” that she moves into a mood of contemplation and realization. She perceives her folly and sighs “does my vain spirit ever tell me I am wrong?” She realizes “…the blunder, the blindness of her own head and heart!” and that “with insufferable vanity believed herself in the secret of everybody’s feelings with unpardonable arrogance proposed to arrange everybody’s destiny. She was proved to have been universally mistaken” – “Miss Austen’s novels – an estimate of human follies...” – R.H. Hutton (1869).

Though interesting and brilliant, Emma Woodhouse is a social snob too sure of her own wrong judgment. But this is not a fair assessment of Austen’s heroine. For with all her faults, her arrogance and domineering personality, Emma is kind. She attends to Harriet – “Emma said with her as long as she could, to attend to her in Mrs. Goddard’s unavoidable absence and raise her spirits… and left her at last tolerably comfortable”. She gives her time to visit “an old servant who was married and settled in Donwell” and charity – is a virtue that pleases her heart.

As Harrriet speaks, Emma fells that she cannot “shew greater kindness than in listening”.

“Come, come” cried Emma, feeling this to be an unsafe subject” – Here we see that she is a keeper of the peace in her family. She “dreaded being quarrelsome” with Mr. Knightley. Emma cannot be considered to be willfully selfish as “the worst of all” the part that brought pain and humiliation to her in the Mr. Elton-Harriet episode, was that “she would gladly have submitted to feel yet more mistaken – more in error – more disgraced by misjudgment than she actually was, could the affects of her blunders have been confined to herself”. She is indeed unselfish as “she listened with much inward suffering, but with great outward patience to Harriet’s detail” regarding Mr. Knightely’s attention.

Emma is humble and modest – “She knew that limitations of her own powers too well to attempt more than she could perform with credit”. She never attempted to conceal from herself that Miss Fairfax’s voice and playing was “superior to hers”

Emma is genuinely concerned for her friend. “Emma felt that till she saw her in the way of cure, there could be no true peace for herself”.

She is sincerely sorry and she acknowledges finer qualities in Harriet –“..Convinced that Harriet was the superior creature of the two and that to resemble her would be more for her own welfare and happiness than all that genius or intelligence could do”.

Emma is loyal to Mrs. Weston as Frank Chuchhill if “deficient there” could make no amends for it.

She is sympathetic – “Emma could not but pity such feelings, whatever their origin, and could not but resolve never to expose them to her neighbour again”. Deslite all her haughtiness before, she is softhearted – “her heart had been long growing kinder towards Jane, and this picture of her present sufferings acted as a cure of every former ungenerous suspicion, and left her nothing but pity…”

She restrains herself consciously, reluctant to hurt Jan’es feelings.

“… it was at her tongue’s end – but she abstainted. She was quite determined not to utter a word that should hurt Jane Fairfax’s feelings”

Emma is a dutiful daughter and friend – “her father” – and Harriet. She could not be alone without feeling the full weight of their separate claims, and how to guard the comfort of both to the utmost, was the question”

Most importantly, Emma Woodhouse though “a social snob too sure of her wrong judgment”, is truly sorry when she realizes the person she is and has been, as is proven through a series of regrets.

“I ought to have been more her friend”

“..How could she be so cruel to Miss Bates! … Emma felt the tears running down her cheeks almost all the way home”

Thus we see that this assessment – “though interesting and brilliant, Emma Woodhouse is a social snob too sure of her own wrong judgment” is not a fair assessment of Austen’s heroine!

© Slow Chills

Haven

As I toyed with the different emotions that were running through my mind, I began to recall an instance when someone who swallowed up my self security with her looming gown of fantasy, actually looked to me to comfort and assure her moments before she took the big stage.

And comfort, I did, managing to let her feel that she was loved, to make her feel she was being listented to and understood. She was so nervous that her face was sour, her eyes welling up with tears as she looked as if she were on the verge of bursting into a panic attack. Her vulnerability amazed me and the safety of my words and the comfort of my touch was spontanous from my side, surprising even me.

Fast forward into a situation when I could see yet another seasoned actor coming into play, a supposedly self confident woman, she was a bundle of nerves, a mesh of insecurity and she flooded my inbox with texts that were begging, screaming for approval and appealing for reassurance.

That's when I reazlied that calmness and reassurance, unfaltering fortitude and a good sense of oneself, level headed sensibility and an unpretentious, unassuming nature is a haven and source of confort, love and inspiration to almost anyone, regardless of what backgrounds they came from. Moreover, even the toughest heart of stone would melt with the constant trickle of water that would work away at its rough exterior until it melted bit by bit, the roughest of hearts.

Love and lies

“I’d lie for you and that’s the truth!”

Ever remember Meatloaf’s constant fascination with the “L” word during the early 90s? Well that’s what my post is about and I’m hoping that you’d be able to help me out because I’m completely lost, lonely, livid, languishing and loving - lies.

You see it all began with an internet romance.

I was the unsuspecting friend, comrade, partner in whine (or crime) and he was the perfect stranger. Time rolled by and the texts came in. We started getting as close as calling. Real time separating us though the boundaries of masses of ocean didn’t mean a thing and the distance made our hearts grow fonder. I however, remained faithful to the descriptive of the complete dictionary definition of “platonic” and what a relief that was, to my soul. It made me free to talk, to ramble, pour out my at times wounded heart, to share, laugh with, to pick up the phone and text some expletive and have my kindred soul – friend at the other end, laughing, agreeing, arguing and advising (the “a”words! – it’s all about the letters isn’t it?!)

And then he fell in love.

And in with the mayhem.

Ever since he fell in love, came the passion, pleas, possessiveness, paranoia (yes – all the “p” words!) But I kept things in “p”erspective and we both knew that we could never have each other. On with the friendship! And this is where I began to crumble, to deteriorate, to sin. For all the attention I was getting, was the pressure to live up to this complete goddess image he had created of me. I could do no wrong, so lies, lies, and more lies. I was never a liar to begin with and I insist that I am and was a good person but I started finding myself craving for those beautiful lullaby- like love texts he sent me. When they subsided and he held back, in with the lies about some dastardly wicked thing some non-existent friend has done to me. NOBODY (other than you my readers) knows that these little white lies have been part of my routine when it comes to my friendship with Mr. Overseas.
I searched my soul and looked deep inside to see this poor soul who was losing a battle with the squeaky clean person I began with, batter my self esteem to the ground with guilt.

Am I in love? Yes. In love with the attention. But not in love with him. I never asked him to fall in love with me. Who’s to blame? Why has he made a liar out of me? To be fair, Mr. Overseas has hurt me with his paranoia. His outbursts of jealousy were all the reasons why I had to lie and avoid telling him the truth at certain times. A typical Cache 21 situation.

I tell myself that I can’t live this way with the only friend in the world (out of a good 500 on Facebook) that knows me the most, yet makes me become the worst. My personality has changed from being a conscientious, friendly person, to a guilt-tripping, “eager to please” person. You see, whenever he gets upset, it’s all my entire fault. No – I mean it. It really is.

I’ve lied for him ... – and that’s the truth..

Heathcliff

“My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath … I am Heathcliff – he’s always, always in my miund – not as a pleasure anymore than I am always a pleasure to myself – but as my own being”

“Wuthering Heights” (1847) by Emily Bronte (1818-1848) is indeed a deeply romantic novel as well as a novel of character presented with compassion. Let us examine excerpts fro the novel which justify this statement, for this is a tale that revolves around the childhood, the love and life of a variety of characters and it is important to consider these characters as it is they who enhance the romance, the character and the compassion within this great love story.

“Wuthering Heights” is a novel of romance. The depth and ferocity of love between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff overshadow the more tender relationships between the other characters. For it is this relationship between Cathy and Heathcliff that makes the novel deeply romantic.

Cathy and Heathcliff share a unique bond that develops from childhood friendship and fondness for one another – “she was much too fond of Heathcliff. The greatest punishment we could invent for her was to keep her separate from him; yet, she got chided more than any of us on his account”. The curate might set as many chapters as he pleased for Catherine to get by heart, and Joseph might thrash Heathcliff till his arm ached, they forget everything the minute they were together again”, misery at the thought of separation – “… my misery arose from the separation that Hindley ordered between me and Heathcliff, to possessiveness and undying affection – “the crosses are for the evening you spent with the Lintons, the dots for those spent with me – do you see I’ve marked everyday?” “…Heathcliff kept his hold on her affections unalterably and young Linton with all his superiority, found it difficult to make an equally deep impression.

Cathy and Heathcliff are emotionally dependent on one another as Cathy declares “… he’s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same, and Linton’s is as different as a moonbeam from lightning or frost from fire”

“Every Linton on the face of the earth might melt into nothing, before I could consent to forsake Heathcliff”

Their deep love is eternal to the extent of not being vanquished even in death. The last words between Cathy and Heathcliff as Cathy is near her heath are passionate, frantic and emotional.

“I only wish us never be parted – and should a word of mine distress you hereafter, think I feel the same distress underground .. You never harmed me in your life”.

“You must not go!” she answered, holding him as firmly as her strength allowed. “you shall not. I tell you”. The romance of a lover willing to sacrifice his life for love, is evident as Heathcliff cries “hush, hush Catherine! I’ll stay. If he shot me so, I’d expire with a blessing on my lips”

The romance does not end with Cathy’s death as Heathcliff explains“… -what is not connected with her to me? And what does not recall her to me?

“Being alone and conscious two yards of loose earth was the dole barrier between us, I said to myself – “I’ll not have her in my arms again. If she be cold, I’ll think it is this north wind that chills me; and if she be motionless, it is sleep”

Wuthering Heights is also a novel of character.

“Having avowed that over much of Wuthering Heights there broods “a horror of great darkness” that in its storm-heated and electric atmosphere, we seem at times to breathe lightning, let me point to these spots where clouded day light and the eclipsed sun still attest their existence. For a specimen of true benevolence and homely fidelity, look at the character of Nelly Dean; for an example of constancy and tenderness, remark that of Edgar Linton. There is a dry saturnine humour in the delineation of old Joseph and some glimpses of grace and gaiety animate the young Catherine. Nor is even the first heroine of the name destitute of a certain strange beauty in her fierceness, or of honesty in the midst of perverted passion and passionate perversity” – Charlotte Bronte (1850)

Yet there lies a truly sympathetic, compassionate understanding of each character. Emily Bronte does not justify or excuse any action through authorial comment, but presents each character with a history that enables the reader to understand that neither for example Heathcliff, Hareton nor Linton can help what circumstances have made them become. She does not judge then. She only presents them – and that she does, with compassion.

George Washington Pech (in June 1848) comments : on Healthcliass’s language as being coarse in many instances i.e when Heathcliff describes to Nelly how Cathy was bitten by a bulldog - :I vociferated curses enough to annihilate any fiend in Christendom” and also when Heathcliff tells Nelly how Cathy was taken care of in the parlour of the Lintons :.. I intended shattering their great glass panes to a million fragments unless they let her of” “.. a dim refection from her own enchanting face – I saw they were full of stupid admiration” etc

Sydney Dobell too condemns the portrayal of Heathcliff.

“Heathcliff might have been as unique a creation. The conception in his case was as wonderfully strong and original, but he is spoilt in detail. The authoress has too often disgusted where she should have terrified, and has allowed us a familiarity with her fiend which has ended in unequivocal contempt” – Sydney Dobell (September 1850)

Yet the novel does present Heathcliff with compassion. For although Mrs. Dean describes him as rough as a saw-edge and hard as whinstone and warns Lockwood – “the less you meddle with him the better”, the description of Heathcliff’s childhood is such that one can understand the reason for hid dark nature – “He seemed a sullen, patient child, hardened perhaps, to ill treatment; he would stand Hindley’s blows without winking or shedding a tear, and my pinches moved him only to draw in a breath and open his eyes as if he had hurt himself by accident and nobody was to blame”

Hindely is portrayed as a wicked young man – “He drove him from their company to the servants, deprived him of the instructions of the curate, and insisted that he should labour out of doors instead, compelling him to do, as hard as any other lad on the farm.

Yet the portrayal is not devoid of compassion. “…the young master had learnt to regard his father as an oppressor rather than a friend, and Heathcliff as a usurper of his parent’s affections, and his privileges, and he grew bitter with brooding over these injuries.

Mrs. Linton begs that her darlings be kept apart from that “naughty, swearing boy”. Heathcliff and this enables the reader to understand Heathcliff’s alienation and humiliation. The innocence with which Heathcliff sincerely desires to be good truly heightens compassion towards Heathcliff whose consciousness of deprivation is further made clear.

“Nelly, make me decent. I’m going to be good”
“I wish I had light hair and a fair skin and was dressed and behaved as well and had a chance of being as rich as he will be!”

The violent atmosphere in which little Hareton is raised – “Little Hareton who followed me everywhere and was sitting near me on the floor, at seeing my tears, commenced crying himself and sobbed out complaints against “wicked aunt Cathy” which dreaw her fury on his unlucky head; she seized his shoulders and shook him till the poor child waxed livid” is self explanatory as we see his unfriendly response to Nelly Deam – “He raised his missile to hurl it. I commenced a soothing speech but could not stay his hand. The strong struck my bonnet”.

Isabella too is presented with compassion because of her infatuation with Heathcliff.
“… You know I liked to be there!” “I wanted to be with –“: with him...” is transformed after marriage to utter hatred. “I do hate him – I am wretched – I have been a fool!”

Linton is condemned by Nelly who describes him as the worst tempered bit of a sickly slip that ever struggled into its teens and happily won’t win twenty. Nelly says “…small loss to his family, whenever he drops off…” But Catherine’s compassion – “I knew now that I mustn’t’ tease him as he was ill; and I spoke softly and put no questions and avoided irritating him in any way” proves a sympathy towards Heathcliff’s feeble child.

There are some critics who would not agree that “Wuthering Heights” is a romantic novel of character and compassion.

“In spite of much power and cleverness, in spite of its truth in life in the remote nooks and corners of England, “Wuthering Heights” is a disagreeable story” – H.F Chorky (1847)

There are still others who are extremely harsh on this book.

“How a human being could have attempted such a book as the present without committing suicide before he had finished a dozen chapters, is a mystery. It is a compound of vulgar depravity and unnatural horrors, such as we might suppose a person, inspired by a mixture of brandy and gun powder, might write for the edification of fifth-rate blackguards” – unsigned notice of “Wuthering Heights” in “Graham’s Magazine” (July 1847)

Yet Wuthering Heights for the reasons discussed before, is a deeply romantic novel as well as a novel of character presented with compassion.

“It is not everyday that so good a novel makes its appearance; and to give its contents in detail would be depriving many a reader of half the delight he would experience from the perusal of the world itself. To it’s pages we must refer him then, there will he have ample opportunity of sympathizing – if he has one touch of nature that “makes the world kin” – with the feelings of childhood, youth, manhood and age, and all the emotions and passions which agitate the restless bosom of humanity. May he derive from it the delight we have ourselves experienced, and be equally grateful to its author for the genuine pleasure he has afforded him” – unidentified review of “Wuthering Heights” reproduced by Charles Simpson.

© Slow Chills

Jane Eyre

I agree that Jane Eyre, a Victorian woman of the early 19th century England, because of her unconventional attitude and fresh portrayal as an independent woman, may be considered a counterpart of the contemporary woman. It is important to understand the position of women in early 1847, for this helps us to understand the plight of the Victorian women who were bound by restrictions, constraints and demands of conventionality that were imposed on them – the convention being that men shouldered responsibilities while women were confined to “making puddings, knitting stockings, playing the piano and making embroidery bags”, thus denying the presence of their will intelligence and activity in society - beyond household chores.

Jane Eyre is a counterpart of the contemporary woman as she was almost revolutionary in resisting the society-imposed conventions on 19th century women. By daring to be strong in her personal beliefs regarding her life, her conscience, her feelings and her needs, by daring to be courageous enough to defy the social acceptance of weakness and dependence as being a part of every women’s nature, she indeed is a counterpart of the contemporary woman who continues to assert herself as being equal with man – independent and strong.

In order to confirm that she is much like the women of today, let us examine carefully, her thoughts, feelings and actions in the episodes of her life as a grown woman.

Jane is bored with her life at Lowood. Tired of the routine of eight years, she desired liberty. “For liberty I gasped; for liberty I uttered a prayer.” We can hear her echo the sentiments of the contemporary woman as she longs for a power of vision which might overpass that limit. Looking out into the fields of Thornfield Hall, she longs to reach the busy world, towns, and regions full of life that she had heard of but never seen. Like the contemporary woman she longs to explore. She is curious. While others tremble, she longs to gratify her “much excited curiosity” of the Gypsy woman at Thornfield Hall. She revolts against convention and almost directly addresses men by declaring that women feel “just as men feel” and “suffer from too rigid a constraint”. She is emotional and passionately against the conventions of her time, thinking in “narrow minded” of men to say that women ought to confine themselves. The contemporary woman’s counterpart she is, as she thinks it “thoughtless” to condemn or laugh at women if they “seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex”. She further resists custom. “Do you think I can stay to become nothing to you? ... I am talking to you now through the medium of custom...”

Jane Eyre is intelligent. “I had a keen delight in receiving the new ideas he offered … never startled or troubled by one noxious allusion”. She is frank. Even Rochester is amazed and mentally shakes hands with her frank and sincere manner. “One does not often see such a manner” he says.” … not three in three thousand raw school-girl governesses would have answered me as you have just done/” She is fearless of men – another indication of the likeness to the contemporary woman who fearlessly challenges men to not deny her equality. When she first meets Rochester, she says “I felt no fear of him, and but little shyness.” Her conversations with Rochester and St. John Rivers, show her forthright nature as she addresses them boldly, frankly. “Your language is enigmatical sir but though I am bewildered, I am certainly not afraid.” “Don’t call me handsome sir, though I love you most dearly, far too dearly to flatter you. Don’t flatter me.” John Rivers is almost starched at her sudden and strange abruptness. He looks astonished as he remarks “you are original and not timid:. Jane places herself between the door and St. John ho is rather embarrassed. She says “you certainly shall not go till you have told me all”, and yet like o unlike the contemporary woman, she does restrain herself. “… I never dared complain, because I that to murmur would be to vex him”.

She is confident in the woman that she is and sees no competition between Blanche Ingram and herself as she decides “she could never charm him”. Blanche Ingram is beautiful, graceful and attractive but Jane who thinks that even little Adele thinks too much of her “toilette” despises the thought of being other than she is. “Don’t crown me with roses; you might as well put a border of gold lace round that plain pocket handkerchief”. Even her wedding veil is the “plain square of blond after all”. Like the contemporary woman, she does not see herself as an ornament to be admired by men merely for her looks as she speaks about getting ready… “this I quickly was; my best dress was spoon put on; my hair was soon smoothed; my sole ornament, the pearl brooch, soon assumed, we descended.”

Elizabeth Rigby in December 1948, reviewed “Jane Eyre” and was particularly harsh on Jane’s character. A quote from her review – “She (Jane) has inherited in fullest measure the worst sin of our fallen nature – the sin of pride.” Do we see pride – a characteristic of the contemporary woman in Jane? We do. “If Miss Ingram had been a good and noble woman, endowed with force, fervor, kindness, sense … I should have admired her – acknowledged her excellence, and been quiet for the rest of my days”. But we do not see jealousy in Jane. “But I was not jealous … she was too inferior to excite that feeling”.

As a counterpart of the contemporary woman, Jane Eyre is sensitive to anything that would degrade her. She is glad to get Rochester out of her silk warehouse and then out of the jeweller’s shop, as the more he buys her, the more her cheeks burn with “a sense if degradation”. At Whitecross (before she encounters the Rivers family) she says “the moral degradation blent with physical suffering.” At Morton she says “I felt desolate to a degree. I felt – yes, idiot that I am, I felt degraded”.

Jane Eyre as discussed earlier sees herself as being equal with men – another feature in her character that makes her a counterpart of the contemporary woman. “… I sat at the feet of a man erring as I. I was with an equal – one with whom I might argue – one whom if I saw good, I might resist.” This was truly revolutionary in the Victorian era as women were by no means expected to seek equality with men. “It is my spirit that addresses your spirit” she tells Rochester, “just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God’s feet. Equal as we are”.

And yet Jane displays a character more beautiful perhaps than that of a contemporary woman who may lose her submissive nature completely in her quest to gain equality with men. She is calm. “You don’t turn sick at the sight of blood?” “I think I shall not; I have never been tried yet.” With all her pride and dignity she tells herself “I must keep to my post … I must dip my hands again and again in the basin of blood and water … I must see the light of the unsnuffed candle wane on my employment” as she tends to Mason. She is obedient. “I did not wait to be ordered back to mine but retrieved unnoticed as I had left” (while the others had to be coaxed to return to their dormirotires) She is not cunning. “but mother, I did not come to hear Mr. Rochester’s fortune/ I came to hear my own,” for she is not an opportunist. She loves Rochester but like the contemporary women, won’t compromise. “Then you will not yield?” “No”.

I agree that Jane Eyre is a counterpart of the contemporary woman (Yet maybe the contemporary woman has much to learn from her) The contemporary women may or may not lack the qualities of loyalty “shake me off, then sir – push me away, for I’ll not leave you of my own accord” and duty “summoning Mary, I had the room in a more cheerful order)”. Jane despite her independent spirit (unlike maybe some contemporary women), sees no degradation in serving her husband as a helpmate. “No woman was ever nearer to her mate than I am. To be together is for us to be at once free as in solitude as gay as in company.”

“You admire Jane – love her – for the strong will, honest mind, loving heart and peculiar but fascinating person” – G.H. Lewes (1847)

Jane Eyre therefore is a counterpart of the contemporary woman, an excellent example of a faithful, loving woman who challenges and yet is everything to the man she loves.

“Unless you object, I will be your neighbour, your nurse, your housekeeper… your companion – to read to you, to walk with you, to sit with you, to wait on you, to be eyes and hands to you … you shall not be left desolate, so long as I live”.

“Unjust, unjust is the burden of every reflection upon the things and powers that be” – an unsigned review in the “Christian Remembrancer” (April 1848)

“We venture to assert that neither conventionally nor absolutely is Jane vulgar and we go as far as to say that with her organization, mental and physical, it was scarcely possible that she should be so” – James Lorrimer (August 1849)

The critics view Jane as a woman who reflects an injustice and reacts accordingly and yet is incapable of being crude and “vulgar”.

Every page of “Jane Eyre” enables us to get more and more familiar with the workings of the vigorous, moral, healthy spirit of a 19th Century Victorian woman. Determined and courageous, Jane Eyre is indeed a woman who mirrors the contemporary woman with her fresh outlook towards life.

“But what I shall never cease to praise is the vigorous, healthy, moral spirit that informs every page of Jane Eyre” - Eugene Forcade (Oct 1848)

The fervour, the bitterness, the boredom, the honesty, the confidence, the loyalty and resoluteness of Jane Eyre – are they not feelings, emotions and a part of the character of the woman today?

© Slow Chills

Wordsworth

The two Wordsworth poems “I wandered lonely” and “The solitary reaper” compliment each other in many, many ways. Primarily, I feel that the experience of the poet – the shared relating of a simple event having a profound impact on the author (Wordsworth)long after the moment of experience has passed, is the binding factor behind the fact that both poems do indeed share a common theme.

It is this theme that summarizes the wealth of the simple incidents – one being that of seeing a crowd of daffodils (“all at once I saw a crowd, a host of golden daffodils) and beholding (“her single in the filed, yon solitary highland lass!) a solitary reaper – that makes up the contents of both poems and this is what makes one compliment the other. Both poems take the reader through the experience with the author in a similar manner which accounts for “the solitary reaper” sharing a similar poetic structure with “I wanted lonely as a cloud”. While both poems are composed of 4 stanzas, both poems consists of a description of the event – a visual description of the daffodils, the auditory impact of the melancholy strains, a person expression of the impact made on the author that comes through which his reflection on the beauty of both events, and the profoundness of the magnifying feeling both these simple experiences have had on Wordsworth.

The importance of the cloud comparison in line 1, lies in the fact that the speaker’s’ lack of purpose and feeling of empty, meaningless wandering that floating feeling being his mood, helps the reader to grasp the value then, that the experience that followed would have had on this “lonely” man who later remarks “a poet could not but be gay, in such a jocund company” (this is complemented by a similar enhancing of mood in “The solitary reaper” (line 13) – “a voice so thrilling ne’er was heard” or line 9 – “no nightingale did ever chant more welcome notes to weary bands”). Had the poet been in a different mood, the experience would hardly have had the value the scene had to the lonely poet who could not but help gazing – “I gazed – and gazed” at the ten thousand daffodils as they tossed their heads in sprightly dance. This is echoed in “The solitary reaper” – “I listened motionless and still”. Indeed both poems share this characteristic of depicting simple events that have made the author pause – stop and gaze, motionless and still. The suggestion that the daffodils accept the speaker as a companion is successfully dramatized as the golden daffodils are described through imagery as personifications of almost human companionship – as jolly company that makes I almost impossible for the poet to remain in his previous lonely mood that disappears as early as the first two lines of the poem.

If we were to look at “The solitary reaper”, omitting the second stanza would make the poem lose its vitality in expressing the sweetness of the strains of the maiden's song.The poet would miss the relating of the capacity this tune had in welcoming weary travelers with its notes, of thrilling, of breaking the “silence of the seas” (which again makes this poem complement the quiet loneliness” of the poet in Daffodils.) The girl-bird comparison and the resemblance of the bird’s song with the girl’s song which makes the special quality and significance of the tune for travelers who overhear it make it go beyond merely suggesting that the girl’s song is beautiful, can be sensed by the reader, as the nightingale, the cuckoo-bird continue to sing, regardless of what happens around, yet the context in which this singing occurs makes the event have an enchanting, influencing effect on the “poorer” recipients as beholders feel an sense of elevation and upliftment.

Both these poems are personal, beautiful narrations of two different, simple experiences in nature that are so successful in complementing one another and at the same time, making the reader deeply aware of the profoundness of experience on Wordsworth. This justifies how believable is, that the poet remembers the event long after its over when in pensive and vacant mood even thereafter, they still flash upon the inward eye and make Wordsworth’s heart fill up with pleasure.

This is beautifully and greatly complemented by “The solitary reaper”

“And, as I mounted up the hill
The music in my heart I bore,
Long after it was heard no more”

William Wordsworth’s two poems are beautiful relations of the simplest events, that continue to bring him joy, health, healing. And happiness long after the moment has passed.

© Slow Chills

A fisherman mourned

Patrick Fernando’s two best known poems have love as their theme - the love between man and woman. Both poems contain themes of love, related through a strong deciphering, reflective analysis of the nature of what relationship each pair of man and woman shared. However the two pieces differ in many aspects, the central matter being the difference in feeling, emotion and very nature of relationship each had, along with the attitude of the narrator or speaker of these lines.

The artistry of the poet in handling the themes of love in two contrasting ways, is evident in the manner in which “A fisherman mourned” and “Folly and wisdom” differ form the other. The very titles are indicative if the difference in the very nature of the two pieces. One is about the relationship that existed between “A fisherman mourned” which is almost as a title had been given to a story, while the other is about two contrasting nouns that involve a more abstract; contrasting feel to the poem that follows in the same direction – “Folly and wisdom”. “A fisherman mourned” consists of 5 stanzas and is a first per son account by a “grieving “ wife to her dead husband at whom monologue is directed, while “Folly and wisdom” is a 3rd person narration by the author who seems to have a deep feeling for what happened, within the context of the relationship between the young woman and man.

“A fisherman mourned” contains a more mature theme of a love grown cold, embittered, between a man and woman who seem to have married not for love’s reason, even because of loneliness but because of “elder’s persuasion”. In contrast, the couple in “Folly and wisdom”, seem to have rushed into the relationship against the wiser jurisdiction of wiser men who are crazily disrobed as they observe, the small minded, sweet girl being taken at first sighting. (“he tool her at a moment’s glance, on first hearing her word” by a man who knew better, yet carried on with her ever as the poet in his artistry, likens them to hopping, winking sparrows who are yet to experience what is before them, as bitterness is still a blur. The use of the metaphor of “exalted eagles” who childe the sparrow birds, is extremely effective in portraying the elders around this young couple who know better, are “greater birds” for their experience and WISDOM who perceive the FOLLY of their hasty decision to join together and who seem to know what possibilities lay in stor tfor them for whom years had not yet “lent them learning”. The cleverness of the poet in enabling is to perceive the realization that the man is yet to gently, too young to “observe that he has erred”, almost makes it definite that the union of this man woman, has been foolish, ill-advised and is heading for some kind of doom. However the couple in their ignorance of experience, also seem to be certain of their decision as they happily chirp “but how could we have erred, we who in spite of all you say are not yet embittered?”

The poet is successful in cleverly enabling the reader to not only understand that the elders are right as they have been through the experience of years and times, but in also proving the point that while bitterness has yet not touched them, they are valid in staying true to their own notion that they are happy and will be happy in the current state of her still sounding as sweet as honey to the man.

This contrasts heavily on the other hand, with the bitterness, regret, realization and confession (“now that being dead you are beyond detection, and I need not be discreet” ) of a woman who has borne children, existed in a relationship with the now dead fisherman husband that in contrast, was encouraged by elders. The two poems without direct comment, make the reader realize the infallibility of the wisdom of elders in advising against/on the other hand, promoting relationships, between man and woman and the artistry of Patrick Fernando in enabling us to experience the deeper conflicts of relationship and the experience of the woman who was in this relationship with a man who are first seemed unembittered, yet ended nothing more than someone “practical”, a husband/father who she has to mourn, makes the theme of a relationship between man and woman a complex one.

The manner in which time passes and e vents unfold, is narrated through typical fishermen imagery. The beauty in the frequent use of gulls – “chaste as a gull flying pointed home” and again “when gulls returned new-plumed and wild” is part of this artistry. “Folly and wisdom” in contrast, is yet to experience the passing of time. Yet early in experience. We neither know the lifestyle of the man and woman concerned, nor see the deeper conflicts of experience as we do in “A fisherman mourned”. It is almost left to be seen whether a follow up poem by the young simple girl in “Folly and wisdom” later in life, would confirm or dispel the fear of the “exalted eagles”.

“A fisherman mourned” is one told at the end of life experience while “folly and wisdom” contains a man and woman yet on the brink of experience who are yet to feel the “guilt”. The “repent or rejoice” dilemma of a man or the bitter reflection on a relationship ended by “death”, by a woman who has lived to bear children and now stands facing the event of realization of “death” that has touched their relationship and caused her to look back.

© Slow Chills

The Path

“Dead Men’s Paths” – the purposeful slighting of a serious title, struck me as an indication of what the short story stood for – a young couple’s insensitivity to the context, promotion and opportunity to succeed as prematurely gifted by the Mission Authorities placed them in the short sightedness of an energetic headmaster (Ob) and the consequent downfall of a man whose end is almost tragic when compared with the hopes, dreams and ambitions the reader finds him basking in at the beginning of this powerful short story. A story about a man (and wife) who slighted what appeared to be serious, important and sacred to the villagers of the school he took over and the grace consequences and sudden ruins of Michael Obi’s work.

The main characters are Obi, his wife, a teacher (with 3 years experience), an old woman Ani (the village priest) and thereafter the diviner who diagnosed the root of the setting in of evil which leads to the revered (in Obi’s eyes) White Supervisor who stands as the Government Education Officer, The characters represent actors from different social backgrounds, who have their own starts. The short story’s clever depiction of the squinted manner in which one status looks at the other for example – that of the villagers with their own cultures and customs is less important to Obi who similarly in the eyes of Ani, is headmaster but of less significance when compared with the “fathers” whose practices MUST be flowed and so on, makes “Dead Men’s Path” a statement on society and an example of disaster that befalls people who fail to respect diversity, Obi shows scant respect fir Ani’s dead ancestors by saying “I don’t suppose the ancestors will find the little detour too burdensome”. This is further re-instated when the diviner states that ancestors were indeed “insulted by the fence”.

The failure of Obi to be open to compromise, co-existence by allowing the hawk AND the eagle perch together and his immediate dismissal of Ani’s appeal by assuming that dead men “do not require footpaths” – an ideology that contradicted what was held sacred to the culture of the villagers, makes this story applicable to modern Sri Lanka and any country in the world today as it seems to have in it ,a theme of cultures, times (modern vs old) clashing because of a lack of understanding, respect and tolerance. Obi did not learn from past experience. He knew that a big row had erupted some time ago – he was not without access to history by way of example – the teacher who attempted to relate the story to him, who emphasized that the path “appears to be very important to them”. Again, this makes the story applicable to societies who fail to learn from past mistakes, lessons in history repeating themselves because of Obi-like attitudes – “our duty is to teach your children to laugh at such ideas”

The garden – a symbol of artificiality to me, the path, connecting village legend and history to the life blood of the children of the school, the fence – forced, blind separation by an impulsive young man who stood opposed to the wisdom of the walking stick of Ani who could not “tap” enough to make the young headmaster understand.

The story is located in a village. There are while men, there are tribal village children. The manner in which understanding failed as a result of the immaturity of the young headmaster whose arrogance is evident in his outspokenness at the beginning as he converses with his wife, is what comes out strongly in the opening paragraphs of the story. We see Nancy Obi as having narrow, almost selfish, shallow ambitions of her own, an uppishness (as she looks down on traders in the Onitsha market) ad a naïve foolishness in her dialogue as we see glimpses into the immaturity of the young couple on whom responsibility has fallen too early – a couple seemingly ill prepared, despite their own confidence and elevated sense of confidence. Achebe beings this out well as he never comments, yet makes the conversation between husband and wife, give us insights into the shallow values the couple share.

Obi “admires” his work. He is “scandalized” by what has been a daily occurrence to the old villagers who have used the path. The imagery of the “beautiful hisbiscus and aldamanda hedges” seem to stand for the artificiality of what is important to the Ovis as it “marks” the school compound form the “rank neighborhood bushes”

The end is sudden. The shot story ends almost abruptly and the sudden change is powerful and impacted me as I read it as the school buildings being “pulled down” almost symbolize the rejection of all Obi to be right and to work. The “carefully tended school compound” being “torn up not just near the path but right round the school, the flowers trampled to death” said much more than paragraphs could have explicitly explained the tragic end to the headmaster whose end is evident with the white supervisor who stands as commentator to the fact that it all arose in part form the “misguided zeal” of the new headmaster.

Obi meant well when he offered to even “get his boys” to help in building an alternate path. Achebe is fair to his characters, thus making this story a realistic portrayal of man and good intentions which were not good enough and eventually lead to the career-wise “death” of a headmaster’s path as well.

I personally found this to be a powerful short story applicable to life because of its portrayal of realistic groups of people in a setting of varying cultures, customs, attitudes ad personal egos.

© Slow Chills

Village in the Jungle

The story of "Village in the Jungle" by Leonard Wolf takes a poignant turn in the events that unfold in the court room scene in pages 121 to 124 and the significance of the scenes whilst being relevant to the plot of the story reaching a climax, (as the tragic element of the sentencing of innocent Babun which ultimately drives Silindu to murder lies heavily in this scene) goes deeper into many other aspects of recent Ceylon history that are reflected naturally and vividly through the entire process of the court room scene.

Portraying village life in Ceylon during Colonial times, the thoughts that surfaced in my mind about the significance of the scenes, were mostly to do with the realization of a justice system that seemed to be very much in tact as meted by the British rulers of the “judge” here who commanded the respect of the locals as “no one else moved, the only sound in the world seemed to be the scratching of the pen on paper”. Indeed this took me back to history in Ceylon when the British ruled while the locals for the most part, experienced righteous hearings on domestic issues that cropped up amongst themselves.

The feelings of fear, the “curious look of pain and distress” in Babun made me think on the issues of the innocent accused, the internal, conflicts between the villagers or local people at that time in history being such that injustice, lying, cheating and false accusations, quarrels etc, in which “evidence was untrustworthy: highlights the fact that such inequalities and threats to fair play based on local monopoly and squabbles (Fernando vs. Babun) undermines as it were even the efforts of the Judge or white ruler, to seek out the truth even when the complainant impressed the righteous judicial system “most unfavourably”; thus leaving even a justice system that was intact, no choice but to accept that the lack of corroborating evidence against the actual wrong doers, means helplessness of a system “I am sorry”.

The manner in which the fleeting hearing, the consequent leaving of court but the judge and the sad manner in which Silindu is driven to work within his madness to bring about justice by taking matters into his own hands also I felt, to be significant in its powerful unspoken relating of a fact that human desperation and frustration is vented when the “old buffalo: who is cunning still, has no choice but to charge, when cornered and hunted down. Babun was innocent and he “sighed and looked quickly from side to side like a hunted animal”. The eyes of the judge frightened him. Could this be an emphasis on the fact that fear was driven into the innocent who had a fair hearing and should have felt vindicated had it not have been his inner realization that corruption would win at the end of the day? Village life and the corrupt dealings among its local inhabitants, the inequalities that existed among Ceylonese because of greed for each other’s land, for possession of for example the wife (punchi manike) of a helpless man over whom the offender has some authority by reason of a system of control which existed, further makes this courtroom scene a significance tone as it portrays the underlying social system of the villages of that day.

The strategy that the “mad” Silindy who takes the place of that “hunted” son-in-law as it were, in executing justice, is described powerfully through the lines Silindu mutters to himself, that no one save Silindu (and the reader) are privy to knowing/hearing. Again the deeper significance of family, poor, innocent and accused, the depths of bonds of family and feeling for the other among the simple local village folk, is depicted in these scenes, not merely though Silindu’s move into action that follows, but through the helpless cry of Babun “there is the woman hamuduro what will becomes of her?”. Thus the scenes are further significant in giving us an insight into feelings for family among the villagers of that time, their helplessness, their dependency and the patriarchal system that existed.

The respect (hamuduro), the authority (silence), the colonial situation (interpreter) and every other aspect of colonial times is packed into these few pages of the court room scene and I personally felt that Wolf did a superb job in portraying events, struggles, systems and situations within local Ceylonese village life most effectively and naturally … thus these 4 pages were packed with meaning I felt, that was relevant to life in Ceylon – like in the “Village in the jungle”.

© Slow Chills

Too detrimental

There is a dilemma of contradiction in my soul. I wonder what I deservedly ought to embrace at this point in my life? On the one hand is a man whose been through the drill and has taken liberties to consider me to be this girl whose kind heart he takes for granted.

And then on the other is this better brought up guy who is mannered, naturally God-loving and exceptionally nice to me, being a blessing to me by contributing to the growth of my own soul by sending me such inspiring and beautiful messages and showering love and genuine concern into my soul.

Most of the time, I find myself enjoying the company of the former, especially when he's good to me and makes me feel special and loved through everything he says and does. But at the same time, I have grown deeply aware of how easily he can drill a hole in my heart by stubbornly and carelessly, nonchalantly and deliberately making changes into my well being and consciousness of God by de-barring me from blossoming as a beautiful woman of God. And the growth is something that I truly need in my life.

The condemnation and self-depreciation that I go through because of him is something that I have thankfully kept to myself and not shared with him, as I am only too well aware that to do that would be to accept that he occupies a central place in my life.

It's up to me now to take hold of what I personally hold dear in my life and take a stand. I am a godly, holy saint and I will never be able to get away from that because that is God's calling into my life.

Anything then that takes me away from that, is something I need to get rid of.

The time has come. I am ready to say goodbye to the relationships that have taken me down and to give myself room to be proud of the person - the woman that I am called to be.

I'm letting him go.

Second and third time around

“That which does not kill us only makes us stronger” - Friedrich Nietzsche

Genesis

"Genesis" proves to be a text that provides a basic background to view the many possible explanations on how the world began, the origin of all things created; possible insights into an unknown area of knowledge which is important to man as man is always interested in knowing plausible alternatives from which to choose from in his quest to understand the concepts of creation, God, evil etc. As a Classical Narrative, Genesis succeeds in providing the reader with one such explanation, to the origin of earth, man and consequent civilization in itself, with an introduction to the person of God whose “power” was moving over the water “in the beginning”.

The text as the name “Genesis” in itself implies “origin”, refers to the beginning of creation in itself, with a poetic description of the very beginning of how the rain, the sea, the sky, the land, plants, creatures both on land and water as well as in the air and finally man and woman, came into existence. A reader would be familiar with all that is, but everyday occurrence in his environment and would find even the creation of man from the soil of the earth, one out of many mythical explanations that form possible world views on creation. However, the text grapples with more philosophical issues with the introduction of the sections in Chapters 2 and 3, as it plunges deeper into issues on disobedience, sin, suffering, consequences of actions and the concepts of good and evil with the story of the snake who tempts the woman to disobey God’s instructions in Chapter 1, and succeeds

Thus Genesis is as a Classical Narrative, intriguing in its description of the story of mankind and his inevitable fall as detailed in its story, for a reading of the text causes the reader to see to understand, interpret and make sense of the deeper meaning to the narrative, as it deals with a topic that is neither alien to man (as it deals with questions to do with the origin of man) nor easiest to understand at first reading which itself makes the text a valuable narrative as it leaves things “open” to the reader who is challenged to look into the deeper meanings of the text because of the poetic nature of narration. For example – whether or not the trees actually existed in order to make the fall occur etc is never explained. The text is direct and tells the story simply, without a view or interpretation included in the writing, which helps the reader to enjoy “Genesis” all the more, because of its ambiguity.

The possible reason behind the labour pain/pregnancy pains women face when giving birth, man having to work for a living in order to survive (physically when he toils the land) and all the more unpleasant facets to human existence being accounted as arising from the consequences of disobedience further help make “Genesis” a text that explain.

“The Origin” is what this Classical Narrative is essentially about.

© Slow Chills

Kril Allen wins Season 8!

When my best friend send me a short message system message stating that “Kris Allen has won American Idol” I felt a humble, deep, personal sense of worth, happiness and elation that a contestant who was less flamboyant than his counterpart - the dark nailed highly talented Adam Lambert, could have won the ultimate crowning glory of television’s most widely watched reality show.

There must be something in us that makes us relate to the common man – the simple boy-next-door – the dark horse! For the very essence of being human and being simple has something endearing about it for me and I felt as though Kris Allen winning was a personal victory for me because in many respects I’m a Kris Allen in my own right!

I have no great talent and I am definitely not one to hold the spotlight for longer than a few seconds at the most. The sincerity that runs through my vein is characterized by a deeply engrained kindness that makes me unassuming to the very core of my being.

Adam Lambert on the other hand, has a more commandeering stage presence and it’s almost impossible to forget his performances because he comes in with the spotlight and goes off with a bang. His amazing vocal range and the manner in which he looks you straight in your eye whilst singing makes him a complete contrast to Allen who looks away and tilts his chin as he sings with all he’s got. Allen is the hard worker and Lambert is the one who makes singing as easy as his a-b-cs. Adam’s phenomenal strength makes him a force to reckon with while all Kris does is to come in and sing with all he’s got. His heart is in his music and he has no other charisma.

Adam Lambert is the man of the moment. He has everyone looking his way. He is able to make almost every song he sings reek of energy and superlative talent. Kris Allen is the ordinary everyday guy who picks up his guitar and sings the best he can until the very veins pop out of his neck and you cannot help but look his way because the sincerity in his performance is hard to neglect. He looks down in humble amazement whenever he is commended and is in sharp contrast to Adam who confidently says in a mannered tone, “thank you Paula”

All in all, the Kris Allen upset-victory is something that brought immense joy into my life and I have a feeling this enthusiasm and happiness is going to last me a very long time!

Having followed Idol for more than four or five out of its eight seasons now, this has got to be my most favourite (and indeed) resounding victory so far. This has definitely got to be the American Idol that I heartily embrace, the most.

Season 8 Finale

American Idol began minus the usual fan fare. It almost seemed as if all was watched and over with because the theatrical Adam Lambert who had an amazing vocal range clearly had an edge over College student Kris Allen who could infuse a simplistic sincerity into his performance that I personally felt Adam could be sometimes found lacking in.

As both sets of proud parents were brought in front of the camera, it was obvious that the two came from closely knit families.

Adam and Kris at the end of the day, had each of their own individualities to reckon with and I personally would push for Allen over Lambert purely because a big upset is always good for any competition.

Anyways, let’s see what happens!

Reversal of loves

I had gotten strangely fond of him the last couple of days and I felt an old familiar love for him creeping into my soul especially when I realized that he wasn’t responding to my love the way he used to. His slightly detached nature, the way he ignored my beauty and never said a word about how sweetly I spoke, the way he removed his arm from my shoulder and refused to kiss my lips only made me thirst for him and long after him more.

My memories slowly slipped back into the times when I would call on the three guys who were manning the station and how wonderfully pleasant it was when they kept me wonderful company. The beauty of those moments when I could express my innermost chatters at midnight, to the trio made me realize that I was indeed a little chatterbox who only had to find her muse. The desperation with which he would long for me to come online was always stretched over periods when he would also ask me to call him later as he had just started catching up on some sleep.

I realized that I was most in love when I was most ignored. It was his pursuing that made me want to distance myself away from him but with every little thing he did to make me feel unwanted, he seemed to rouse my deepest feelings into longing for him all the more!

And this was a strangely nice place to be in.

Of all the movies I had watched in recent times, these two were magical in that they were watched by a keenly thinking mind that could not help but absorb this whole atmosphere in, of being next to this man who seemed to harbour no feelings for me. That in itself brought some dignity back into our relationship and rejuvenated me in ways that I could never ever share with him. It made me long to touch his hand and hold it in mine. For if ever his fingers did brush my fingertips, they would melt me into a helpless baby whose fingers gripped his, longingly.

I felt like I had grown up. Grown into this beautiful person that I could become, the person that he was bringing me into. This person who didn’t just call him for the sake of calling or call him to just breathe silence into the phone, but a person who could make some intellectual conversation whilst being steadily balanced, kind, cheerful and sweet.

The manner in which he had introduced me into the reading habit once again made me realize that life had more to it than my own little world. I was learning to enlarge it and expand it further than my widest imagination. I was learning to dream and to be happy, creative and always shining.

I never thought that I would be the one longing for his calls or wishing that I could call him yet his stance was making me fall terribly in love. But this was something I would enjoy and not express to him! I felt that this was my turn. My turn to have a crush, savour an attraction and feel the flutters in my heart.

It was time to let him go.

The nights at Mandarin Grill

“One day in retrospect the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.”
– Sigmund Freud

Nightlife in Colombo

I had the most eye-opening weekend which began on Friday evening and culminated on a rainy, thundering Sunday evening which has me shivering in the cold, typing these lines and hoping to bore you with my experience.

I made it to Colombo’s highest starred hotel to catch a glimpse of a band that had turned from a solid folk ensemble to a mundane Bob Marley tripping group with all the usual tunes including “Late in The Evening” and what not. I was with my best friend and the conversation was flowing with as much ease as water flowing through a river.

The good thing about best friends is that they know the best things about you and kind of mirror it back to you even when you’re not feeling up to it. My personal best friend was someone who had seen me through my most trying times and always boosted my dropping ego with words of admiration and awe which always made me feel as lifted as a helium balloon on its way up, never to come down. With him there’s no “pressure to perform”. He knows my nature, character, my personality and is extremely fond of it, which is why I in turn, love to spend time with him and feel at home in his company.

After tasting my first Lion Lager for the night, the chilled beer which was guzzled very slowly saw me see through its glass, the entrée of Mr and Miss Girl and Boy along with another friend who made their little intrusion to our happy company.

Out with the happy hang out at the Jaic and in with the suggestions to move elsewhere. Mr and Miss Girl who I thought were a happy couple with a 4 year relationship against their names, seemed to be a mismatch in my eyes. There was a constant bickering and a complete difference in tastes that was stark and obvious, even to the most disinterested onlooker who’d have sat in on their conversations. 2 hours into their contradictions, Boy was of the opinion that H2O would be a happening place to step into, especially taking into consideration that there was a friend’s party happening there and Boy, Mr and Miss Girl were Facebook Invitees to this Event.

Why anyone in their right minds would have a birthday party at H2O beats me! I went up the staircase with said company, refused to taste another drop of alcohol, folded my arms and looked at the bird’s eye view below me, of a dance floor packed with H2Oites.. I have seem some weird dance moves in my day but what I beheld last Friday was really something else! It was obvious that they were on some drug induced trip, because the House Music with its monotonous beat is an attraction – a temptation only when one has had sufficient doses of ecky or weed. To cap it all, two strippers from the UK did their thing on either side of the DJ (who was a pretty smart guy), strutting around in a top that leaked their breasts out to you mona liza style – at whatever angle you peeked. As I looked down on the dance floor I saw all the artificialities surface under the spotlight, with fake “hiiiii”s and “umma. ummma” The alcohol was flowing and the people looked like programmed robots moving like R2D2 would, with absolutely no joy in their strides, just vain effort to shake to the beat that was now pounding in my head.

I began this post by saying that my eyes were opened to something new this weekend. It’s nothing spectacular really. Just a simple little fact. I felt absolutely happy to be me. Happy to be the boring, unassuming, quiet sheep in that fold of halfcrazed with energy sheep-fold. I was happy to just do my thing and be myself. There was no pressure to be anyone else. For that I have my best friend to thank for.

Mr and Miss Girl and Boy on the other hand, were of the chameleon type. (I know I’m patting myself on my back and judging others – I guess that’s the blogger’s prerogative as the owner of her own domain right?)) I realized that they would blend in with the atmosphere and then shift gears smoothly when company permitted. They could be aritifical, they could be simple and deep. I wondered at their peculiar ability to be all this and wondered whether it was a talent, a boon, a good thing, and wondered at my own conscience which always beats me up Mervin Silva-style, if ever I change myself in order to try and strike a chord with whoever I’ve met.

To change or not to change. THAT is the question.

What would you do? Would you fake a smile and change accents if the same was done to you? Or would you smile simply and speak your usual dialect only to be misperceived as someone incapable of going with the flow?

I would definitely like to know.

Bitterness expressed

Sometimes along life’s way, we bump into some pretty attractive people. The last friend I had was one such hugely attractive person who stood out in my memory as someone I could share almost anything with on a common-ground. He was my best friend, my twin soul. The friend I could share almost anything with - until he fell in love with me.

Thereafter I began to see another side to him. The ugly head of possessiveness and bitter retorts raised itself and soon he succeeded in making me lose my faith in a lot of things that I held dear to me. The manipulation should have been enough to drive me away. Do you think?

Sadly, no. You see, I’m a very forgiving person and there’s a streak of kindness that runs through my veins, which makes it near impossible for me to ever retort back or hurt a person’s feelings. There are many things that are arguably in my favour if I were to summarize on why exactly he ought to be thankful that I still speak to him and care about him the way I do, but I have realized that I am the way I am not because I expect anything in return, but merely and simply because that’s the way I am. To be any other way, would be to be a poor duplicate of the original person that I’ve learnt to be me.

Perhaps this only puts me on the line to get hurt again. Or should it be over and over and over again? If it were many years ago, I would have simply run away and put an end to my friendship with him, refused to budge when he brought up some meaningless topic that would strain the energy and arguing life out of me, and stayed away from him.

But now, older and wiser, I find myself adopting a different stance. I’ve learnt to stay friends with him but only with a metal-steel chain around my heart. Its lock is now well and truly sealed and there’s nothing he can say or do to open it again. However, I’m now capable of staying friends with him with no more inner sentimental babyish bawls that would make new wounds open up in me. I feel I have grown up. I am no more dependent on his friendship which has shown a few true colours, to maintain my sanity or inner companionship. My innermost soul knows that he has become more of an acquaintance than a true friend.

Pehaps that’s my defence mechanism kicking in. Just my way of dealing with the guy who I genuinely do care for on a platonic level. But as for any other sort of trust of faith or dependency, I’m not ready to open my heart again.

What do I do with everything that I have trusted him with … all that I did in the past that he seems to not appreciate? I consider it footnotes to a lesson that I’ve learnt in life with regards to him. The lesson being that you do get all types in this world. Some will hurt you unknowingly, and abuse the kind heart that you have. Some may feed on the forgiving nature that they have seen within you. But none of them know that deep inside of you is a heart that watches all, observes all, and makes its own notes in silence.

And I think… I have… a booklet.

Thankful

Dear Sarah,

I was thinking just the other day that I was one of the last people you would have ever expected, to jump on the blogging bandwagon. Why you may ask? Well – time constraints for one thing, and the desire to stay hidden away from the public eye, for the other.

I was never one to share my opinion or views on things with another, unless expressly asked for or duty bound to as a caring friend. That’s just the way I am. I fly from one corner which has me ever so quiet, to another extreme corner which has me jabbering away nonsensically, till the dawn of day! And blogging has been therapeutic in a sense, because it not only helps me to see what’s going on inside of me as a person, but it also has helped me sharpen my writing skills, because if you’ve read my previous posts you’d realize, it’s been a decade or more since I’ve actively pursued writing as a hobby again!

Yesterday, was a day when I realized how far I have come as a person. I sat to have coffee with the once love of my life who was the deepest crush I’ve ever had in short period of decade and 5 year long period called “adulthood”. Falling in love with him had me breaking a few bones and being hospitalized for a considerable amount of time, and that time I spent recuperating, I consider to be as hellish as time spent in a prison ward with the most inhuman of facilities to accompany an already dreary time frame serving my sentence. Anyways, here he was again, seated in front of me, chatting, talking about life and plans and dreams that had faded and those that have succeeded … and I couldn’t help but sit and admire silently, this man who was still as dashing in my memory as he was back then. I was happy for him. Happy to have seen him again. He was married and divorced, with a pregnant girlfriend, hoping to settle down again. Wow, that was a lot to have happened to one person in a matter of a few years, no doubt! I’d had my own stories to tell too, but less drama (technically). Still, the main plot and the very beginning of that story, had to do with him..

If not for him I would never have lost out on what was one of the finest breaks of my career. If not for him I would never have known what falling in love is like and how it can completely ruin a perfectly sane head! If not for him, I would never have got myself into a chain of events that saw me ending up where I am now.

I will not question the reasons why he and I ever had to meet in the first place. I was on the road to success when I had that cruel twist of fate which had me hanging on every word he once spoke. But one thing I am thankful for. And that is that it led me to meet the next love of my life who is still a prized part of my life.
Sometimes we don’t know what life throws as us. You never ever know do you? How can you anticipate things like “heartache” before they are bound to happen, however predictable it may be to someone peering in to the dynamics of your particular situation?

But one thing we can do. We can be thankful for the little things along the way, that happened because of that first painful episode, which for the record, is one period in my personal life, that I can never forget.

Love,
Mary

Letter about change

Dear Mary,

What is truly important in life has been avoiding looking me in the eye for a very long time now. But now I’ve come face to face with the Beautiful Person of God and I know that I have scrambled my way back into His arms again and I feel safe and secure.

I think my previous letters were only an indication of what I’ve been going through the past 4-5 years and the desperation has been spiraling its way into the quality of my existence for way too long for even the most patient person's comfort. There was a frustration, a hopelessness that I left unexpressed, that made me get hurt for the slightest thing, downgrade my super ego to ego level and my ego to its most primitive form of Id … ! And the funny thing is, as is true of any human being on earth, I was wearing this façade of everything being alright on the outside while inside of me was a terribly frightened little girl who was scared to face the world with all its huge issues and what nots and relationships.

I don’t know if you remember my very first letter to you. It was about a destructive relationship in my life that turned me into someone who was constantly battling it out to remain sane just because somebody else had a paranoid way of looking at things. I was too emotionally attached and to that extent, the leeches of hurts and struggles to gain approval overwhelmed me. Despite my former inner insecurities (which I alone knew – and now you do too ) I’m generally a strong, happy, fulfilled and stable person but this friendship had me begging for forgiveness when it was I who was wronged, becoming who I really didn’t mean to, lying (yes I’m ashamed to confess that was true) and giving way more than I was getting.

But I feel renewed within me now and also certain of the fact that some apron strings are meant to be broken, certain relationships and friendships that are destructive to me, have begun to pale into insignificance and fade away.

I’m only a few hours into this metamorphosis in my life but I’m thankful for one thing. When all is said and done, the eternity perspective and the constant knowledge that God is who He is, bigger and greater than all things and ever present if only we’d let Him into our lives through His son Christ Jesus who has cleansed my heart and made it start beating again, keeps me living life with a brand new zest and an innocence that makes me cherish all that is around me. Having said that, there is a strength within me that makes me stick by my individual beliefs, stand up for my opinions and stay with what I have, because I truly have a lot for as long as I have me!

Love,
Sarah

Match Highs

I landed at the 130th Battle of the Blues filled with an all-familiar anticipation and the hope of being in for a truly thrilling time. You see, the Royal Thomian has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember! From those trucking days when the boys actually boarded hefty garbage trucks filled with all manner of nature’s weedy, leafy gifts, to the days in which Wednesday’s Cycle Parade meant lots of boys running amok past the College gates, (not to mention the guttural moans of”R”, “O”,”Y”,”A”,”L” filling the air), there were nothing but pleasant memories that accompanied this annual fixture, for me.

Decades later, I looked forward to catching up with new friends. Friends I had never schooled with. Friends I had never known during those old fun-filled days. I was to spend my Royal Thomian Match for 2009, with a new group of friends she had just begun to hang out with. Fun, laughter, music, a little bit of high spirits… a little bit of revelling (and of course the match itself!). Prospects of being in the company of friends I had just struck a commonality with made me all the more excited to face and spend the match time that was to follow.

What a day it was! The resounding welcome I got as I entered the tent reminded me of how happy I felt that I had found this new group of people who I could really touch base with. Hugs and outstretched arms followed.

On with the drinks…

My first drink was rum mixed into my apple soda bottle which I readily gulped without a second thought. There was music in the background and as I surveyed the grounds and absorbed the little flutters of yellow, blue and black, not to mention long strips of white emanating from the young school boys, I began to remember the days when I’d have some schoolboy crush on one of the boys who in turn would ardently follow me wherever I went. Ah! Those were the days, weren’t they? The days when shyness accompanied every boy and girl and the boldness to express one’s love eluded the fairest of maidens and the strongest of guys!

As the memories continued to build up, my cup was being re-filled. My second rum neat for the day and I was already in high spirits. I turned around and noticed the red t-shirt of a guy I was ever so happy to see – a long lost friend who in turn was overjoyed to meet me in person. As we exchanged pleasantries, my cup was being re-filled. This time with arrack.

A couple of re-fills later, the place was beginning to spin and I could feel myself losing control. Oh well, I was in high spirits and I was enjoying myself! I put my arm around my best girl friend and she put her arm around mine and we continued to sway to the music while we watched proceedings on the grounds. The Thomians were putting up a fight and that was worth being on the grounds for. I had premonitions of a royal victory and it was really good to see the Thomians averting defeat the way they were.

Meanwhile, the buzz was becoming stronger than I could handle. All I could remember was one big slip across the grounds and I was down on the floor, completely high and knocked out! This wasn’t good at all and I knew I was as dead a drunk as could be. My friend came running to my rescue. He together with my other friend lifted me up and supported me. I was now unable to stand my ground and my knees were wobbly. My speech was slurring and my eyes were falling to the ground.

A few hours later I found myself tucked in to bed, washed, changed and cozy. I was safe in my own home and try as I could, I could just not recall how I got there!

I don’t know how much I missed out on by having my match cut short just because I got drunk out of my wits but one thing I know, the friends I had made were friends I could depend on, to take care of Pme, no matter what state I was is in and that was by far, the best shot of the day, for me.

Dear diary

There are times I have failed my God hook, line and sinker. I have doubted Him, lost faith in Him, fallen many a time into sin and refused to come out, and lost my child-like faith, my first love, my simple, implicit trust in Jesus and the Person of God as Saviour of my soul and the world.

I’ve slipped, I’ve stayed down for more than a year, I’ve looked around at my aetheist friends, celebrated their non belief, questioned God, accused God, and fallen out of touch with God.

I’ve hidden away from Him and felt rejected and abandoned and left to live alone, reveling in the things of the world that I’ve looked to to give me longlasting joy, companionship in this lonely world. Direction, meaning and life and hope, knowing in my heart that all this comes from surrendering to the true person of God who I once gave my life to.

Life has changed since I was a kid going to Sunday School. When I was little, my mind was unpolluted, my heart unstained, my body pure and clean and uncorrupted. We’ve all been that way in our childhood haven’t we? I try to trace the roots of disbelief and where they came from and I realize that it all began with a voluntary wandering off on my own into the enticing adult world and all its little sins that were condoned and approved of.

The more I wandered, the more my Father God’s heart seemed distant from mine. I realized that He’s not a God who forces His way into our lives. To that extent, He is a GentleGod (as in “Gentleman”).

Sometimes I wish He did grab me by the scruff of my neck and kept me close to Him, never allowing me to turn my back on Him and grow cold in my heart. Yet time and time again, whenever I have come back to Him, He has been there, with outstretched arms, with all the love I could ever find, pouring upon me. I feel it. I know it. And I embrace that love like a lost sheep. I embrace it with all my heart.

From one to another

Being decadent is a prerogative of the blogger. Whether it be in a comment or a post on one’s own blog, the blogger has the world in his hands, and as his fingers touch the line of its axis, he may make the world spin in whatever direction he likes to. Some people thrive on being negative, complainers, whiners. Others thrive on being intellectuals, political, current and eloquent. Others thrive on simple everyday stuff and day-to-day affairs while still others use their blogs to entertain. Poetry, story-telling, sharing Youtube videos etc etc,

Rock (fiction)

Jealousy and Envy are twin demons
who ought to be chained and locked up
in the furthest corner of the room of your mind.

Set them free
and they’ll play havoc with your thoughts,
driving you to the very depths of depression
with their nagging, never-ending whines
that if listened to for too long in your head,
can have you feeling a very heavy stone
slowly coming down to rest
in the bottom of your heart.

This stone weighs a ton
and cannot be lifted by ordinary people
save some pretty muscled up, beefy men
who would have to draw in a long breath of air

and heave a heavy sigh before laying their arms on this hard, solid form
of rock.

The rock that weighs down your soul
cannot be removed in a hurry
and the demons who precipitated this stone coming into being,
rush hurriedly away into the night.

So think twice before letting these demons occupy your mind.
Don’t let rocks form in your soul, to weigh your heart down.

Devotional

Isaiah 12:1 – And in that day thou shalt say, O Lord, I will praise thee: though thou wast angry with me, thine anger is turned away, and thou comfortedst me (KJV)A couple of years ago, many were the times when I would comfortably scroll through the requests posted on the Daily PrayerLine and wonder at the trials people faced each day. Sickness, separation, failure, death, financial problems always plagued battered Christian hearts.

A few of these people had almost lost faith. Sometimes, in my ignorance, I would feel excessively sorry for these hearts, and almost question Christ, even His very promise: “If two of you on earth agree about anything you ask for, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven.” (Matthew 18:19 NIV)

Never did I think that, months later, I too would be in such a situation, posting a request, more in desperation than in faith that anyone could help me. Often would I say, “Lord, Thou art angry with me,” for I too, like those of us who in our Christian childhood and unwillingness to be patient and trust our God, was quick to label Him as angry with us.

But, oh, how the Lord comforted me! I experienced His healing grace and love through the very same readers who today are my dearest agents of His eternal love for me, and truly faithful to the promise that stands above all posted requests. Jesus did for me in heaven more than I desired as He touched me. He comforted me, and that day when I could praise Him did come.

I bless our God today, for I look at all requests with a different view of God. I know that today’s prayer of desperation and time of need is tomorrow’s day of thanksgiving to a good God who sees us to the other side. Today’s cries are but the beginning of the process that ends with love, peace, hope, and rest through the entire experience, when we once felt that God was angry with us and had abandoned us.

Prayer: Dear and faithful God, thank You for this beautiful thought that with You our lives — in whatever state they be in today — are always destined to end with hope and life and healing grace that comes from a loving heart. Thank You for the angels You send in the form of your devoted children who stand with us and pray. Thank You most of all that time and time again You prove Your faithfulness as You keep Your promise never to leave us. May we too touch others who are hurting, so that they may know how real You are, as the gentlest Comforter who carries us through our pain. Through Jesus Christ our Lord we pray. Amen.

© © Slow Chills

Christmas story (fiction)

(written for kids)

Becky and her little brother Adam sat on the floor as they watched their mother cleaning up the house. It was close to Christmas and Becky's heart thrilled at the thought. Soon school would be over. New books, new classes to look forward to but for now, it was getting a lot cooler in the mornings and Becky was excited as she realized, it was December!

The 1st of December was a very special day as the calendars turned and Becky knew she couldn't wait for the days to go on. Now that it was December, it could only mean one thing - Christmas and it was such a special feeling.

As Becky watched her little brother Adam play, she made up her mind. She would teach Adam, about Christmas, she would show him the meaning of Christmas and tell him just why this was the most magical time in the world, for everyone and how wonderful it was that it happened year after year, December after December.

Suddenly, she realized, she needed to know the true meaning of Christmas if she was to teach her little brother someday. She stopped, she thought and realized - she did not know how to explain it to him except to say that it's the most beautiful time of the year for most everybody.

She put on her coat and started walking.

She asked her mom, she asked her dad, she asked her cousin, she asked her neighbor, she asked her friends next door, she even asked the post man that she met on her way.

Here are the answers she got - "Christmas is a time for Carols Becky, to sing about the Birth of the Lord Jesus." "Christmas is a time for giving Becky, a time to help others and share the spirit of giving and love." "Christmas is a time for - Santa Claus!! Boy can't we wait!" "Christmas is a time for Christmas cake Becky, didn't you know?" "You don't get to have Christmas pudding any other time!" "Christmas is a time for Christmas cards Becky, we send them to people we don't even talk to much during the year, just to show them we care."

Becky knew that something wasn't right. She knew that Christmas was much more than that but she just didn't seem to understand, she wasn't happy with what she heard. She knew that giving was for all seasons, kindness was to be a part of life everyday, not just a sudden change of heart in December?

Becky looked at little Adam and suddenly felt sad.

She sat down in the step and cried.

She loved her little brother but she didn't know to teach him about Christmas.She felt sadder when she realized that she herself, didn't really know why Christmas meant so much.

Becky's grandmother saw her sad and asked her what was wrong. As Becky explained with tears in her eyes, her grandmother whispered gently. "If you don't know, ask the Lord Jesus Becky, He will help you to understand, he is the best person to go to, close your eyes in prayer and just ask him."

Becky did just that. She prayed "Lord Jesus, all the people around me are so happy God, but they too I think, don't know why. Please teach me why so that I can teach Adam and he will learn from me. Tell me Lord Jesus. What is Christmas, why do I love December, why is the 1st of December so special?"

Suddenly an angel appeared in front of her and said "Little Becky, don't cry, I am here to show you what Christmas really is. It's not just the Christmas tree that fills the house with its Christmassy smell Becky, it's not just the presents that you do give with a loving heart Becky, it's deep down in your heart. When you needed help and you were sad and feeling down, you called on the Lord Jesus, did you know Becky that that was possible because He loves you so much that He's right there for you, alive? Listening, hearing you? Longing to give
you peace in your heart every single day, holding your hand, wanting to come into you heart and be your friend?"

"Christmas is the time man realizes that God Himself came down to earth to be born into this world, to go through everything he did just so he could die for you and show you how much he did for you on that cross so that you could have forgiveness from sin and be a Becky that belongs to God?"

Becky knew that there was something deeper in Christmas and she knew that it's - all - about Jesus and what she would do, with him. Not what mom did, not what dad did, not what her friends did, not even what little Adam did but what she did and she decided, this Christmas, she would never again get lost in the things that just made people happy but choose to know for herself, what it would mean to give her heart to the Christ that the carols sang about. The Lord who was spoken about in every Christmas Card.

Becky knew that she could do this if she just closed her eyes and made that decision, to follow Him.

5 years later, it was a very different Becky whose every single day, was lived for her God who loved her very, very much.

Adam was bigger and Becky's life made him see for himself that there was something deeper in Christmas, there was a God to be found and he decided, he would do that just like Becky did, on the 1st of December.

Becky explained and Adam understood. Jesus was, his Emmanuel and he truly was their king. Christmas was never the same for them.

It's the 1st of December today. Would you make that same decision? However old you are, however many Christmases you have gone through, would you let this Christmas be different? Like Becky, look into your heart, seek God for the answer and make a decision to know for yourself what Christmas means to you.

Don't let these Decembers or your Christmas pass you by without realizing for yourself, that there is something very, very special, about Christmas.

© Slow Chills

Hypocritical society

Are we Elitists? Or are we “Godayas” (people considered to be of a lower class) who are snickered at by wanna-be elitists?

What really makes one an elitist and what qualifies one to be a goday person? (note the deliberate twist in intransitive verbs!)

Who’s a “gamey,godey” dude? (person from the village)

Is the person who says “yo, dude!” more elite than the everyday person on the road who says “excuse me mata para pennanna puluwang da aiye?”

It’s mind boggling how inconsistent our labels on people and occupations are isn’t it?

We start off at College.

We get the Local schools and the International schools.

Those who attend Local schools tend to see their multi-cultural counterparts from CIS and Wycherly to be so cultured that they end up with zero culture. They also believe that those who have had an International-school education are frogs in a well. A very elitist well with just a few frogs who go nowhere let alone jump out of that well!

Those who attend International Schools consider their Local counterparts to be boring and out of touch with the latest. Be it fad, music, fashion or style, they find those who school at local government or private institutions to be incapable of “out of the box” thinking and therefore a sheer waste of time socializing with. They’d rather look the other way and pretend they didn’t see a “local school” mate for much of that reason. Those who attend International Schools are more “posh” and move with the foreign fraternity – the international community!

This only serves to tickle their Local counterparts who consider their education to be a tad shoddy compared with their share of Local schooling where people learn, play and end up a “normal” product of society. Note the labeling and tags? (well it’s deliberate!)

And then you get the categories!

Schools like Visakha and Museaus and Devi may be academically far superior to the rest but they are tagged “goday” while Ladies’ College and Bishop’s College are considered the “head in the air, hi-fi” “woman about town” schools. The “Convents” have their own fans and following but are considered to be regimented and indeed “convented” and therefore so restricted that they go berserk once let lose on society! The boys have their own version of much of the same game.

Move on to University and you get the more JVP oriented villagers and the Colombo schools fraternity locking horns for the first time.

Here is a place where the elite and the posh, the convent and the goday all flock together to form one breed of student – the Colombo Schooler! The International School being eliminated (you see – they end up abroad or at “hi-fi” institutions like ANC), it’s just two teams now, and you see that on the first day at Uni as a fresher during the rag period.

“Mama Colombing” (I’m from Colombo”) and you’re in for a hard time. Here is one place where the elitists are given a firm shaking and quietened down to a muffle. They dare not speak when accosted by their villager/outstation counterpart. The tables turn and one dares not be elitist, because he wouldn’t have a legto stand on! In with the plaits and the long frocks. The coolness of being “goday” is a luxury to the Uni student who knows that this garb is what would keep him/her out of harm’s way. He dare not bring out the “Kaduwa” (a term used for the English Language) and in hindsight, had there been an International Schooler with his nose in the air daring to enter this fold, a severe makeover would be necessary if survival is priority.

Move out of University and back to Society and we’re back in square one. In again with the labeling. The pride of place that the “goday” had is lost quicker than a heartbeat. You come down notches so fast that it’s amazing how much of a bad wicket you are on if you speak poor English or don’t have your hair set out just right as a social gathering in Colombo.

And it's back to being “Elitist” or “Goday”

Disclaimer : I know I have stereotyped in this post and I must add that my views or reports are NOT expected to be viewed as factual (so if you happen to belong to any of the categories I’ve mentioned, please note, I’m only striving to create some idea of what I’m trying to say here about it being sad yet true that this kind of cyclic labeling does take place)

I’m ending this post abruptly here, because I’d like you to think for just a moment about what I’ve written.. Think about your school days, your workplaces and your own opinions of people other than yourself.

In conclusion, I'm not chiding you for having your prejudice,. I'm just drawing attention to the fact ,that it’s there.

Letter from a Teen (fiction)

Dear Harry,

Pornography disgusts me.

Every time I as much as think of a porn scene in my mind, I feel helplessly ill in my stomach. The very bottomless pits of my stomach churn in distasteful disapproval and the feeling is awkwardly uncomfortable because it extends to my lips, causing a very poor, dull taste in my mouth.

Porn repels me and it wasn’t always that way.

There was a time in my life when porn really turned me on and arousal was one of the most exciting benefits of a quick sneak into a porno site.

Porn be it on the net, off a movie, or the pages flicked through a playboy magazine left carelessly lying around, always left me gratified with a “feels good to be alive” feel in my lower regions from as far as I can remember. It was one of those anticipated moments where I’d know that something good was in store, even momentarily, pleasure-wise.

But I just can’t seem to lay a finger on what exactly caused this sudden distaste and repulsion to set in and it’s been a good while now.

I can go through an entire porn video and feel absolutely nothing. I’m not turned on one bit. I see nothing more than two people aimlessly trying their level best to satisfy each other and it bores me out of my skin. The boredom causes my mind to wander. I start looking around at the furniture, the watch on the guy’s hand, the length of the heels that are upraised in the air, the scenery beyond that window in the corner, the way she has braided her hair, the biceps on the guy’s left hand or the visible tattoo on his right .. It’s endless, and it almost borders on the comic! But on a serious note, it’s quite an enigma to me.

Some say there is “good porn” and “bad porn” or porn with bad angling of camera shots/bad actors with poor chemistry, absolutely no connection and lots of fake moaning.

Good porn consists of serious lovemaking, home-video style, with live web cam-like records of good foreplay and sex up right up to the scenes of very sexy orgasms.

But you know what? Even that bores me and I’d rather get up and leave the room with a good book in my hand.

I’m not sure how sexually active you may be but I wish I knew why my libido seems to have taken a turn downhill. I’m way too young for all this to set in!

This little predicament of mine has left me wondering if something’s wrong somewhere.

Is this distaste for porn the result of over saturation of my senses?

I wish I had some answers but at this moment in time, I have none.

Pehaps it’s just a question my body and mind have to answer.

But right now, they both seem to be sitting still and unmoved.

Regards,
Tom

Ad perspective (fiction)

Dear Consumer,

The Advertising World has been everything short of mayhem for the past double digit years that I have been involved in it. I’ve lived to see the SLIM Awards progress to the more formidable Chillies. I’ve lived through all the cheering. The banners, the drinking, the pot, the applause, the trophies, the competition, the sulks, the glares, the market to market in-house affairs and relationships, the backstabbing, the clients who’ve been absolute bitches and the ones who’ve been down right difficult, to the crowd pleasers, the gems who’ve listened to a bit of advice from those who share expertise in the field and are willing to share a few tips to sway the made up mind of the clients who come to us with their preconceived notions that squares are actually circles in disguise!

Copywriters always come in for a bit of slack as do those in the accounts division who can sometimes be painfully slow in getting about their business (depending on where you work, ofcourse!). The graphics are always the creative minds who are content doing their thing as long as there’s good music, healthy deadlines and a smoke to get them through the busy day. I’ve seen complete eccentrics who are the artiest bunch in the industry go through intense emotional distress and blog about it to get through their moments and it’s scary seeing the depths of despair that they are flung into.

Is there a reason why it’s the arty, creatives who suffer as much as they do? They also happen to be the nicest. The one’s who’d be the first to stroke your head for you at the end of a long day or offer their arms in hugs when you’re going through a crisis.

And then we have the closets. People come in and go out of them with as less abandon as modern times would permit. The gays are widely accepted and gay pride has taken over us all, making some of us cast assumptions on the sexuality of others while others are content to simply mind their business and work on, being supportive of humanity in general and aware that right is right and wrong just isn’t. There’s more prejudice over people in general over some word outspoken than their sexuality. Nobody cares anymore. It’s no big deal.

Marriages are made and marriages are broken. Affairs are a plenty and divorce is on the cards for many colleagues who end up straying into greener pastures whilst getting themselves into deeper shits (pardon my French) than they envisaged. Yet others make marriages out of nothing and annul them within months without thought for the hearts that get broken at the otherside. There are times when accusations would run miles and bitching would take new heights that would put anyone to shame.

Take a step back and look at the ad industry and you’d see an overall degeneration of morals and basic human values. People take their own lives into their hands (which is their prerogative) but then they also take someone else’s life into their hands too. And they have the mob to support them whichever way it goes.

But then there is the nicer side to working in the industry. The camaraderie, the parties, the get togethers, the sing-a-longs, the jams, the nights of companionship with cups of coffee over a brief that ends up just about right by the wee hours of the morning – nothing beats the satisfaction of seeing something to perfection and giving it a quality touch.

At the end of the day, advertising can be a satisfying business. But sometimes the lives that we lead whilst in it can have us so lost and morally ambiguous, that our lives can see ruin at the end of the day, when we hang our boots and look back at the paths our personal lives have taken. That can be a sad story. And it’s my ardent wish that nobody ends up living to see that day.

Love,
Ad person

Sunday morning

With the sudden blast of crackers continuing on for more than a few minutes while the speaker in church paused to deliver his message on damaged emotions, the beauty of the manner in which the congregation remained unmoved - despite the adjacent walls bearing images of cheering squads clad in Sri Lankan flags, struck me in my heart.

The 25 year old civil war that had torn the little island of Sri Lanka apart for decades was nearing its victorious end and that accounted for the victory chants that were filling the air across the road.

Still, no matter what happened outside of the confines of the church, the people remained unmoved, attentively listening to the preacher this Sunday morning, as he outlined the killing of 2 year old James Bulger in 1993, by ten year olds Venables and Robert Thompson who he explained, seemed to be reaping what others had sowed into their lives. He spoke of this little boy who told his dad that although he was seated on the outside, he was actually standing in the inside.

He reminded the congregation that Freddie Mercury of Queen fame, sang “Inside my heart is breaking, my make up may be flaking but my smile still stays on” (Show Must Go On) and went on to say that no one knows the “inside you” as well as God and you do.

Drawing the attention of the people to Ephesians 3:16-19, he explained that the inner man should be strengthened with power. Knowing the measures of the love of Christ would strengthen the inner man and fill him with the fulness of God, for the extent of the God-life in us is always limited to the stature of the inner man and its confidence in the love of Jesus Christ for us.

Sometimes he said, our inner man can only be seen by the reflections of those closest to us and the three things that could damage our emotions would be what siginificant people say to us, the state of affairs that go on around us and thirdly, what significant people do to us.

He said that just as when a cellphone jack is damaged its charge is hampered, (despite a good power supply and a perfect phone) so damaged emotions do hamper a person’s functioning.

He said we need to break the chains and set ourselves free unlike the grown adult elephant who never attempts to break its chain - believing as a baby, that it cannot.

He told the people that 3 changes occur within us when we are saved.

1 Status change from sinner to saint
2 Ownership change from belonging to satan to being owned by Jesus Christ
3 Potential change – from that of victim, to victor.

Sanctification after salvation being the process through which our inner person is given the opportunuty to grow to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ, we could move from being bad, nervous, weak, fearful and difficult, to being good, confident, strong, happy, faithful and easy to get on with.

And most importantly, we always needed to remember that someone ALWAYS reaps what someone else has sown.

Eyes are the channels through which love is expressed. Teachers contribute a lot, to the sense of well-being in an impressionable child’s young life. Slowly, scenes flashed before me of moments that reminded of my own role in being a part of a child’s life, in which I was able to encourage them, embrace them and show them love, giving them confidence and belief in themselves. I knew that this was my vocation and my gifts lay in planting nothing but good seeds in their lives, so they would know that they were loved and accepted for who they really were, the self same way that Jesus acceps us, for who WE are.

It was only after the preacher had ended his sermon and the strains of Hillsong’s “Still” had finished being sung that I was able to recover my phone from my bag and discover the news, that the army had indeed rescued the last of the civilians and also killed many more high ranking terrorists.

Still, it was the power of that message, that occupied a place of priority in my life as I realized how true it was, that damaged emotions are often the surmountable pieces of baggage that we carry with us as we journey through life.

As I made my way out of the church, I made a conscious decision, to watch what I sow and surrender all that I reap, to the Lord Jesus Christ who was more real than life itself.

Moments in time

Once in a way, it’s important that we come in contact with an article that really tests how good we are, at our respective work places. Something that challenges our decision-making capabilities, our capacity to keep cool under pressure, our ability to stay focused to see an idea though to its completion, our maturity in staying calm in the face of irate albeit irritating co-workers, supervisors, peers, employers and most of all - our belief in ourselves.

Seeing ourselves rise to the occasion helps us know for a fact that we were meant to be doing the type of work that we’re otherwise engrossed and engaged in (almost mundanely) for an entire week’s span of time - week after week, year in, year out.

Being the best, staying ahead, thriving to reach the top, meeting the needs of our clientele, giving the market a good run, staying undefeated in competition and constantly updating ourselves on what’s hot and what’s not. Isn’t this what out current work pace is all about?

Accepting that as fact, I often wonder if we were born to work and die.

Is that all there is to life? Or is there much, much more?

What about that “one moment in time” that Whitney Houston sang about in the 80s when she talked about giving the “best of me”? That finest day that she sang about, in which we race with destiny, knowing that all the answers are up to us and no one else?

Too often, man tends to get about his work routinely, monotonously, mechanically. It’s the same predictable drill. Wake up, get dressed, off to work, get back, bitch in your mind about your bad day, get stressed, go to bed, wake up with office on your mind, get dressed.

There’s got to be more to life than this.

There’s got to be uniqueness to your individuality, the contribution to life and work that you make, that’s happening merely and only and mostly, because of your personal effort. And at the same time, there has to be that satisfaction in the back of your mind, in the veranda of your heart, in the windows of your soul, that you’re not just a statistic of the work force, but a living, breathing, loving being.
Put love and life into your work.

If it’s a cup of tea that you’re making for a colleague or a space you’re leaving for a colleague to have her lunch at, do it with love in your heart for the person. If it’s the phone you’re answering, put your all into it and brighten up the heart of the person on the other side. It doesn’t matter that he’s absolutely nobody of yours. If it’s a client you’re approaching, approach him with a smile. If you see a paper fallen on the floor, pick it up gladly. Don’t forget the little things in life that used to bring you joy before you became an adopted rodent in the rat race.

After all, at the end of the day, that little meter that will measure who we were, will not be by how many achievements we have to our name, but the joy we brought to a fellow human heart.

When all is said and done, let it be said of you, that you gave the BEST of yourself and nothing less.

Clarity

There are times in your life when your whole earth feels shaky and the bottom seems to have cracks in it that threaten to tear the levels beneath your feet solidly apart.

Those are the times when you question the different arrows that point 45 degrees in the most extreme of directions that beckon you along - enticing, coaxing, ordering, threatening and sometimes at its best, propelling you along almost unwillingly, down that hitherto unknown path.

But what path should we take? How does one know which road to take when met with such varying, differing, opposing points of pressure to carry on in a certain manner contrary to the original plan that was set out in your own heart?

Gut feelings, instinct, intuition, the voice in my own heart. I have never failed to listen to that little soft voice inside myself. Sometimes I have to be wary of the tendency to give in to the stronger, stubborn almost resolute part of me that immediately cries “NO” to the slightest of resistance from my outer world to my own plans and thus takes me down the road to oblivion when lessons learnt are exactly the ones mapped out by those who thought wiser than I did, whose advice and words of counsel I deliberately chose to ignore.

In the end, everything is a half chance, a calculated risk or a denial of self and defiance of order.

I believe that life is to be experienced. To be tasted. To be enjoyed. But I also believe in staying safe, only so as not to fall in to the pitfalls that blind obstinacy or careless, lethargic freedom may take me headlong into.

But in order to do all of the above, the best way is to take some time out of the buzz, the noise of this world – the hustle and bustle of all that the media and numerous voices around you well-meaning and otherwise, may crowd your thinking with. Fill your head with. Block the way of your clear train of thought with, and to sit in silence and think. Take time and talk to God. Listen to the beatings of your own heart and temper it with a careful and thoughtful, reflective vision that sees you being the best human being you were meant to be, ultimately taking the best possible path that would be in the best interest of not just yourself but those loved ones around you and most importantly, in line with the values that make you who you are, and define you because you place such importance to those things, no matter what goes on around you.

So if ever you feel that your whole earth is shaky, (and it happens to the best of us at the most peculiar moments of the day, doesn’t it?!) don’t be ruffled, don’t feel lost, don’t act rashly on impulse or on the passionate emotions that fill your panicking head.. There’s always a rational, peaceful, practical, sensible way out.

When I started writing this post, there were questions in my head that needed answers. Lots of potential “paths” to take and an uncertainty that prevailed in my own life with regards to certain relationships and friendships that needed a resurvey in order for me to apply the best options to them, especially when I saw certain “downsides” to a few things that were not quite right in my life.

Prayerlessness, drunkenness and sexual immorality they say, are the black mark hallmarks of today’s society, and my fear was that I was getting drawn to a certain kind of living that wasn’t attractive to me in the good old days when childhood innocence and youthful aspirations made it so easy to decide to shun these banes in my life.

Prayerfulness, soberness and sexual purity. That is the path for me to take and I realize that life needn’t be all that confusing and dark and dreary, depressive, manic or weighed down if only I stay true to and stick focused, to the path that makes me who I am.

There are so many paths to take as we journey through life’s junctions.

I feel I’ve found mine and I hope the end of this post helps you realize that you’ve found yours, too.

Clean-up resolution

Sometimes I have to vacuum clean my heart and blow-dry my head of all the cobwebs that have formed like slime along the edges of the glass of a fish water tank! Prejudices, fears, apprehensions, negativity, bad decisions, lethargy, poor habits, misguided notions that make me feel like life is a pain in the rear end and living it is a strain to the top end thus culminating in one big headache, tends to seep into my subconscious every now and then.

But then I realize that just as I’m not perfect, neither are those around me who are immediately involved with my life. They aren’t responsible for the weight of importance that I seem to place on their bad days and imperfect currents that somehow manage to boomerang and have a ripple effect on my own well being are they? So why am I getting all taken up with whatever’s going on in their personal life? Don’t ask me : )

So as of today, I’m going to try and learn to be a little more conscious about just how far I let anyone’s bad days or bad personalities get the better of mine. I’m getting rid of the slime with the help of some coconut skin, and vacuum cleaning every bit of unnecessary take or absorption into my own life. I’m gonna blow-dry my head and spruce it up all nice and clean so that I can accommodate the good things in life!

Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things. (Philippians 4:8)

Differentiation

We human beings are a curious lot aren’t we? Considered the most intelligent species and highest in the food chain, take away our clothes – strip us naked, and you’d find that we males and females have the same software, the same hardware and more or less the same units as the other with absolutely no exceptions (unless disabled or handicapped).

What then is it that makes some people take advantage of some people and yet treat like royalty the others? There seems to be something in our human nature that asks us to take advantage of the weakest link and twist it to our gain whilst ignoring the moral statements it incidentally voices loud acclaim of, of our own fickle characters – characters indulged in stepping on the already downtrodden or exploiting the vulnerable. What makes us so diseased as to differentiate between one human and the other?

I noticed just the other day, how flattering (and sickeningly so), some people are to me on knowing who I am and yet how undeniably condescending they can be to others who bare the very same traits of quietness and thoughtfulness that I do. Just because one has a pretty face and an attractive personality it doesn’t mean that person is not on par with the more morose looking counterpart with a rough-edge personality and a good heart now, does it?

We Sri Lankans are known for our hospitality. Thoughts of the beaming smile and the pleasant “ayubowan” we are famous for would make anyone long to be here to catch a glimpse of the warmth and to taste Lanka’s love and cordiality. But society in general especially in Colombo, has sunk to the very depths of depravity in its careless segregation of ourselves.

The “Hi” Magazine is one of the biggest culprits of this segregation and one cannot but help shrivelling up one's nose at the gala parties and glittering high society functions that wreak of wine, women, song and dance. The sweaty skin and the bright colours. The champagne and splashing of wine – the elite social group that revels in that kind of living is fine with me, if only they would quit acting baboon and moronic on the simpler unassuming, quieter folk who don’t have the parties and do their living quietly, with almost half as much contacts and as little cash.

I think we are all guilty of making distinctions and treating people differently for whatever reason it may be. But just for a change, lets be nice – lets be AS nice to someone who seems to be of a different “class” than we are, and stretch out a hand to humanity in general. Let’s act like animals for a change, and shed this human trait of differentiating. Shall we?

Cowell Copies

There’s something about American Idol that’s addictive beyond one’s voluntary control. I’ve been an Idol follower for quite sometime now and have watched the series that gave Clay Aitkin, Ruben Studdard, Kelly Clarkson, Fantasia, Carrie Underwood, Taylor Hicks and Jordin Sparks the platform from which they launched into the limelight.

I think everyone’s gotten used to Simon Cowell’s “nasty” dishing out of honest, candid comments by now, not to mention Paula Abdul’s eager-to-please stutters or Randy Jackson’s annoying “okay dawg, check it out, check it out” clichés. Ryan Seacrest’s dead pan commentaries as host makes a difficult job look easy and the audience is quite used to his deliberate dragging of results till “after the break”.

In comparison, there’s the host of “America’s Got Talent” hosted by Jerry Springer (who will be replaced by Nick Cannon in the next season). An epitome of grace, courtesy and mild mannerdness. Seacrest’s know-it-all sarcasm shows up when compared with Springer’s classy act. Jerry treats contestants with a lot of respect and David Hasselhoff, Brandy and Piers Morgan can’t help but toe the line.

And then of course, our very own “Sirasa Superstar”. It's painful to watch the poor villagers who have traveled from afar - to a Colombo they are visiting for the very first time, just to watch and support a grandchild who is contesting, wipe tears with hankies as they fall prey to the sarcastic glares of our very own judges who strip down every bit of confidence with their piercing, menacing looks.

Paula Abdul is a judge who sponataneously gets on her feet and dances away (with a beaming smile), whenever the music moves her. In stark comparison, our local judges take it upon themselves to stare down the participants in the preliminary stages, visibly giving contestants a hard time, just because they’re all aware of the “Simon Cowell” factor.

I have nothing against Simon Cowell. In fact I think he’s the only sincere and upfront judge up there sometimes, because Paula tends to sugar coat her responses (which drives Simon crazy. You often catch him say “answer the question” while she stammers her way through her judgment) But what I do have something against is our local judges imitating the Cowell act. THAT is what I find degrading.

We have to remember the Americans unlike Sri Lankans, have very different personalities. They are more “tongue-in the –cheek” while the rural community of Lanka albeit those who take part in contests like Sirasa Superstar are humble, timid people who may have talent yet hang on every word the judges say. The American youngsters are arrogant, self-confident and of a totally different mindset to us Asian folk which is why I have a bone to pick with the Sirasa Superstar Judges who ought to be educated on a few things.

Here’s hoping that our television shows quit mimicking our foreign counterparts when handling these contestants who travel miles to take part in such contests.

Here’s to the death of Cowell and the birth of Sri Lankan originality in our judges.

Change

When I set foot off the white van I made my early morning way to the airport in and onto the tarred road outside the Bandaranaike International Airport, it was a heart full of innocent anticipation and hitherto inexperienced eagerness that surged through my clueless mind. The trip was going to be a fantastic voyage (as Coolio once crooned). What could go wrong? I mean I was on a journey to the deepest depths of South Asia, and I was to return with a “brimful of Asia” - with beautiful memories that would last me a life time! I had just had a superb morning full of well wises and “come back safe”s from some of the best friends in my life and it was a feeling of warmth and wanted ness that flooded through my soul.

Truth being told, I was to share my journey with 20 odd others who were in their twenties and thirties, even forties and we were going on WORK. It wasn’t a paid vacation, it was paid work! We’d each paid up every cent that was to be given in order to have the most minimum of comforts including expenditures extending to the most basic needs which included day to day food items. This was certainly not some pleasure cruise! We were on a mission. We were focused and dedicated to completing the work that we set out to accomplish in Chennai and Bangalore.

How could such a trip change my life?
To put it simply, it made me quit.

Yes. It made me quit the work that I was involved in that made me a candidate for the journey in the first place, muster up my refusal to rub shoulders with and partner with my co-workers anymore and most of all, lose my faith and belief in the system that was exposed to its weakest tatters during this one off trip to India.
The trip was a farce. I was devastated to realize that I was the only one showing even some semblance of objection to the fact that we were not showing any interest in achieving a single objective or target that had been put forth in our holier than thou “intentions” package.

Time that was supposed to see us engaged in work was spent on shopping sprees and traveling to holiday sites. What on EARTH was going on? I couldn’t believe my eyes.

The group meanwhile had steadily broken itself into cliques. There were internal politics that never existed before the journey began, now coming in swiftly to play miles away from home, turning the sweetest face into the ugliest stare.

I in the meantime, who kept out of it all, started missing home badly. Sri Lanka was a call away but what was worse was my disintegration as a person. I too was in danger of ceasing to be that boy who cried foul in “The Emperors’ Clothes”. I was the only voice protesting aloud.

Soon I became just another voice in my own head. The gentle protests were of no avail. There was no way this single person devout and dedicated to the cause of work, could break through this line of corruption with much success.

I had grown weary.

On my return to Sri Lanka, I was a changed person. I had lost faith in the very Institution that promised so much by way of work experience and advancing myself. I had witnessed how a bunch or seemingly nice twenty and thirty and forty year olds can turn guns at each other within a matter of days and exhibit their true colours if only they were exposed to the right circumstances. And I knew in my heart that this was a sham.

And so I quit.

People say that I was the brightest in the pack. They say I had so much potential! But four months later, I’m free, I’ve embarked on a different journey and most importantly, I’ve left behind a world that was dragging me down to make me one with it – a world that takes your money in exchange for your soul, pitting you against the highest in society who at the end of the day aren’t all that intelligent to begin with.

I’m sorry if I sounded arrogant. I’m not.

But the that trip to India that was supposed to make a difference in my work life, turned out to be one that ensured I would never be on that plane with my co-workers ever again, because I made my decision to leave.

And leave I did. But not without vehement protests and sympathetic arguments that I was the shining star among the group. How would they ever understand that I was way past farcical living, way past shamming for a living and most of all, beyond the borders of pretence when it came to cheating on work? I didn’t cry out “cheat”. Instead I quietly made my way out and by December, I was free of any encumbrances and on my own again.

I guess the reason why I brough this up is because there are so many times in our lives when things just don’t seem right. People may do things their way and they have a right and privilege to. But you also may have your own way of seeing things differently or doing things right in keeping with your own code of ethics or the values you were brought up with. Honesty and integrity may be important to you while your neighbour, friend or colleague may pay scant respect to the things that you hold dear according to your own creed. At such times, don’t be afraid to stay true to who you are. You don’t have to be part of the herd. You are your own person. I quit, because I had to. But in some of our cases, it may just be a matter of listening to your own heart and doing things diligently the way you know they ought to whilst remaining part of a system, that may not always pat you on your back when you do the right thing.

At such times … Pat your own self on the back. Remuneration will always come by way of conscience, freedom, happiness or simply a sense of joy in knowing you lived as you believed. I know I did.

I left, as I believed …..

I try to keep my faith in my people
But sometimes my people be actin like they evil
You don’t understand about runnin with a gang
Cause you don’t bang
And you don’t have to stand on the corner and slang
Cause you got your own thang
You can’t help me if you can’t help yourself
You better make a left
Come along and ride on a fantastic voyage
Slide, slide slippity slide
I do what I do just to survive
Come along and ride on a fantastic voyage
Slide slide hoo ride, that’s why I pack my 45
-Coolio

Chastity and commitment

I don’t believe virginity,
Is as common as it used to be.

- Don Williams

Sex is a strange thing. It makes people get closer to each other in the most intimate of ways and it also has the power to drive people apart.

I’ve come to know real life stories of how sex has been reduced to an activity between two people who are habitually striving to keep their relationships together, as a quest to establish their rights as each other’s companion. On the other broader side of the spectrum, the phenomenon of “fuck buddy” has found its way into the hitherto conservative fabrics of society in Colombo and even social networks like “Facebook” and “Hi5” have the option of “open relationship” as a filler in their relationships status box.

Sex is no longer the sacred, “one man to one woman” seal of a loving lifelong relationship as it was originally meant to be. What’s most interesting is that the common tide of promiscuity being less of a shocker amongst our people, has caused the concept of “21st century thinking” to sweep the sands of most people who look at the generations before them with a squinted eye which sees nothing but “old fashioned backwardness”.

The liberal thinking of society today does not require the standards and norms of yesteryear which frowned upon any sexual relationship outside of the marriage bed, to be adhered to, anymore. Lifestyles have changed. Sex before marriage requires any girl or guy to make love to their serious, “steady” partner and the responsibility of keeping that affair in tact being (thankfully) not a must-do at any stage, naturally leads to a break up. The next commitment made would lead to sex between the two parties once again and thus is established this routine of making love with as many people as you would have gone out with.

Most of us are by no means saints, nor should we ever mean to sound preachy, but could it not be this pattern of making love with the person you’re in a commitment with and thereafter making love to the next person you’re in a relationship with etc. etc, thatis responsible for the ultimate break up of a marriage where making love to more than one person in your lifetime has already been tread on and is thus easier on the human mind and body? After marriage, how does one suddenly become faithful and stick it out sexually, with just one partner for the rest of his or her life?

Perhaps the way in which we live our sexual lives before we get into the institution of marriage then, is a deciding factor (to some extent).

Virginity they say is rare. I've come to realize that good old fashioned morals have slipped off into yesteryear. That is not to say that those who have had sex should be judgmentally chastised, but I am slowly but steadily beginning to realize that there would have been a very good reason for God to have intended there to be one man for one woman, and fornication a no-no, the very definition of fornication being “voluntary sexual intercourse between two unmarried person or two persons not married to each other”

Agony Aunt (fiction)

Dear Agony Aunt,

Far too many times in life, I have settled for second best. If I were to evaluate my life and the feelings and thoughts about myself that I have running through the span of 24 hours, I’d say that I have a very poor ego, zero enthusiasm to give life its best shot, little or no motivation to actually go for what makes me happy, and almost no objectives in life.

This makes me live my life as if I were just meandering through my existence day after day, merely waiting for the right time to come for the bus of life to meet its bus stop. Sad isn’t it? But it’s true, and I’ve found this to be true ever since I hit the big three o.

Being thirty and minus a life long partner has been lingering on my heart for more than just a couple of years, and I feel like I have lost the zest for living because I haven’t really achieved what I should have, which is what I wanted for myself from the time I was a little kid. Having had those plans washed away by the waves of time, I feel that there’s no turning back now. I have to live and keep going on, but I’m inflicting a self-punishment in the living by looking down at myself in disdain.

I never realized that this was the way I’ve been living my life, till I stumbled upon something that I thought would make me happy. The moment I inched my way into giving it voice, I found a release and I saw myself again and the way I used to be before this big change came about, post 30. I was a very happy person, a very pretty person and I was so excited about life and the beautiful person that I was that I could never give up till something was achieved, merely because I liked myself so much.

But now my hair is thinning, its colour graying. I’m no longer in my adventurous twenties and the frightening part is that those days will never come back again. I’m sometimes way too shy for my liking and the reason for that timidity is the fact that I like myself so little that I sort of consider myself a throw-off, salvaged from the bin and kept on a table to just keep growing only because I have to! I see peers happily married with kids and homes and it makes me see myself as a disaster – somewhat a failure, because there’s absolutely no guarantee that I will find a lifetime partner. I mean what are the odds? I don’t want to be a cradle snatcher and go out with someone 10 years my junior or something, nor do I want to find myself having big bellied, ageing guys queuing as prospective partners.

I guess I've hit my midlife crisis way before the middle. And it’s depressing.

Love,

Thirty Plus

Soothing sounds

Driving down Havelock Road with the radio on Lite 89.2, I chanced to hear a song I hadn’t heard in quite some time. (14 years to be precise!) It was the American ensemble “All-4-One” with their follow up ballad to their #1 release “I Sware” that was filling the air waves and something about that song made me stop in my tracks (literally) to listen harder to the strains that were emanating from my radio.

“You like romantic movies and you never will forget, how you felt when Romeo kissed Juliet. I ain’t no Casanova and I know this much is true. I ain’t holding nothing back when it comes to you”

Lyrically, there is no originality to those kinds of love songs that blabbed sweet nothings and simple promises and that I’d admit almost readily but I was amazed at the perfect harmony and beauty of balance in this song that completely blew me away! The music was totally spot on rhythm-wise, and the words were as clear as crystal. The harmonies blended so well and the pitching was near perfect. There was no shouting. Just effortless singing and I wondered at how I’d heard this song decades ago and never noticed just how pleasing to the ears “I Can Love You Like That” is!

In contrast, Boyz II Men have far superior voices, one EXTREMELY good bass singer and stronger choral singing than All-4-One. If you remember their first hit “End of the Road”, we all went gaga over that song way back in 1992 but when you think about it, isn’t it a little bit of a strain on the ears?

“This time instead, just come to my bed ..”

If you remember that line, you’d recall that it’s such an uncomfortable screech that it would make you wince. I know I certainly do! And again “I’ll Make Love To You” has a similar trend. Granted – the same tenor singer does his thing crooning away to glory which unfortunately (again) makes it a little bit of a stinger doesn’t it?

I just love the chorus singing in “On Bended knee” but the vocals on the verses sound a little like intoxicated singing with absolutely no control and the lack of tightness is stark!

Compare “I Can Love You Like That” with “I Sware” and even “I Sware” has its moments of screeching in comparison to the smooth vocals on the former of the two.

So if you ever felt like you were in need of a good four minutes of relaxation and soothing music? I have the cure for you. Give a good, hard listen to “I can Love You Like That” and you’ll find that you really hardly need to listen too hard at all! It’s true music to your ears!

Letter to the Devil

What is it that makes resolutions and good intentions, peace of mind and strength of resolve such a pain in the ass for you?

What’s the matter with you devil, why you get in the way of all that is pure and nice just to stench it with your evil, foul smell?

Sometimes you sicken me.

At other times I entertain you with an air of indifference because your ways are so damn attractive that I cannot help but get drawn to them.

Who do you think you are messing around with my life when all I want is to be the best of what I am? What makes it your business to spoil everything that goes well for me only to confuse me into thinking that nobody cares about me anymore?
Have I left a foothold in my life for you to come occupy my heart so that you can do your thing and deceive me, trick me, fill my head with lies and overwhelm me with your cheap little tricks?

Don’t you realize that you you’re in the “no fire zone” and that I am not an internally displaced person but a CHILD OF GOD and will not tolerate you mingling with the thoughts in my life only to dilute them with your unfounded ways?
Well here’s a note for you coming loud and clear so hear it out.

You ain’t no friend of mine, and never will be. So just take your suitcase – pack your bags and get the hell put of here.

You’re not wanted anymore and I’m not bothering myself with your plans and purposes any longer.

And if you dare come my way again, I’ll definitely kick your sorry butt!

Determinedly (NOT) Yours,
Human Being

Dream again

It’s easy to lose one’s way and have regrets about life especially when your one true passion in life has swiftly sailed away on a boat with “never to return” spray painted on it.

There are plenty of people who would say that it’s never too late to catch up on one’s dreams and find a way to make it all come true. The proverbial “American Dream” concept is always thrown around from one corner to another. Whether it be in movies or television series or inspirational books, there’s always that one clear message that is sent to us all – never give up on your dreams.

But what do you do when you can’t have things the way you wished you could? And what do you do when you realize with bitterness that you have all the resources and passion to make that dream true and yet the very motor behind that dream working out has lulled itself to a steady murmur and fizzled out in terms of infrastructure? It’s hard isn’t it?

I just had a wake up call with regards to my own dreams. I just found out that it was too late to pursue them and that I’ll never have a second chance at them. The strains of Frank Sinatra immediately came to mind – “regrets, I’ve had a few” but then again, I can’t really say that they are too few to mention.

I’ve had my share of disappointments and changes in life but I must say, I’ve had a healthy attitude towards them all and always felt that there must be a reason for things to go wrong the way they have.

I just couldn’t see a viable reason behind my passion having all the odds teaming up against it to block out the little happiness I was sure to have enjoyed had my dreams been given room to realize themselves. I would have been in a different, better place, think I. But then again, what do I know? Maybe things wouldn’t have been that rosy after all and maybe it was to save me from the unknown and prevent any worse disaster or calamity occurring that I was spared the satisfaction of truly following the path of my heart.

We all have regrets and disappointments in life. There’s not one of us who can truly say that life has been a bed of roses all the way. The thorns have pricked all of us at some point or the other, and made us bleed and cry in pain. What’s important though, is to make the best of what you have at your disposal right now. Live in the here and now and go with the flow, giving yourself the best shot at living live right even now, at the very point at which you stand.

Don’t consider yourself half baked, a retard, a discard or a half chance. Never be too hard on yourself. Remember that you’re here today and gone tomorrow. Our life is in our nostrils and we are not meant to live our permanent lives here on earth. It’s eternity that matters, and so the investment of out lives here on earth is what will go into our forever account.

I’ve been deeply disappointed and there’s no use looking longingly at my options when I know that they will not self-adjust to suit my needs. So I have decided to pick myself up and stay determined to look at other avenues and give myself the best by enjoying making myself a hand-made remedy; a mirage of the beautiful opportunity that closed on me, so that I can live life to the fullest and after all, do it .. my way.

What writing means to me

I’ve been a reader of blogs for years and my first nappy-wearing crawl into the Blogging World made me wonder apprehensively, if I might be received well, mostly because I’ve always been a critical analyst of the manner in which thoughts are conveyed within the folds of the blogsphere.

There are times when I have felt bloggers can be self-indulgent and overly so, given the anonymity of source, and I have also seen blogging wars and attacks on one another merely over a matter of diverse opinion which is permissible if only it didn’t attack straight into the heart of the blogger, thus making it a personal war and vendetta.

Online journaling is a funny thing. To me personally, it’s a means of release in one sense, and also a means of learning and widening my scope with regards to a given subject or nagging thought of worry or ecstatic revelation or query – whatever it may be that I blog about.

I have always loved to write. 13 years ago, I was quite a prolific writer and I quite enjoyed the fine art of crafting well constructed sentences in order to express myself in the best possible way.

Thinking of the finest flow of thought and the most finely manageable sequence of the idea-packed carriages and compartments of that train of thought that rushed through my mind always gave me some sense of fulfillment!

As a girl who schooled in one of the “posher” colleges in Colombo, holding the post of Editress of the College Magazine made me not only honour its obligations but pride myself in this little hobby that I enjoyed indulging in from childhood, only to lose it along the way, to other priorities that replaced it so heavily that my pen was put away, never to picked up again. Not until just a few days ago.

So many, many years later, I may have turned rusty and for that perhaps I owe an apology! I haven’t written in years and years and Blogging has opened out an inner floodgate that seems to be making living waters surge through me in ways that I can’t simply explain on text.

The past few days have been amazing in a very personal way and I feel that my inner self, the real me, has some kind of source of expression once again which in itself gives me exhilarating feelings that prove to be quite exciting, given the mundane flavour that was threatening to engulf my day to day living.

I feel I’ve found my pen again. And this pen has so much ink inside it that has always been there (somewhere) needing just a little shake for it to make me write again.

The Tree by the Street (fiction)

The leaves on the tree
they rustle in the air
As the piercing slaps of the wind
brush their tender tips

Some are brown as dryness
encompasses them
Others a reddish green
for they have seen more fruitful years

They are connected to the big man - they call him "bark"
Steadfast he stands, never moving
no matter what he sees

A cyclist whistles past him
as he races to his destination
Others walk nonchalantly on the pavement -
all of them, busy passers by

They've seen murders and births, joys and laughter
Lived to see generations of the Schafters
There's more to this street than a man ever tells
The tree knows it all and alone he reminiscences

The sun falls through its branches
And sheds light on the torn hat that covers the little beggar boy
He leans against the bark and waits
Plate in hand - as passersby drop coins into his dish

The fruits they get ripe and do fall
Some get picked up
others get kicked along
Still others lay squashed where they got trampled
by some tyre or
underneath a burly man's footprint

The world paces on at lightening speed
As cars slide along the tarred black roads
All is movement and mayhem
All except the tree that stands steadfast in its purpose

Flowers fade and flowers fall
A child gazes at the beauty of it all
Everything in its own season
And everything has its own reason

The world rotates
car engines they still
Traffic lights change from amber to green
People pass by - a million at a time
But the leaves of the tree will forever shine

© Slow Chills

BUSHMEN

INTRODUCTION TO THE BUSHMEN OF THE KALAHARI IN AFRICA

“The Bushmen” - the oldest living cultural group of people in Africa (also considered the oldest surviving group, of the original Homo sapiens) are a very special group of people whose ways of living have remained unchanged through the centuries.

With thin bodies and light brown skin which wrinkles very early in life, the Bushmen may be found in Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Angola, with loosely related groups in Tanzania around Africa too. But they are mostly concentrated in the Kalahari.

The Beliefs, Rituals, Customs, Social Organization, Housing, Food, Gender Roles and Language of the Bushmen of Kalahari will be described briefly, in the following pages.
__________________________________________________________

30 000 to 55 000 Bushmen inhabit the Kalahari dessert today. “Bushmen” are also called “The San” and their origins cannot be traced as the history to these “Khwai” (which means “man” as they call themselves) dates back to the Stone Age.

Beliefs of the Bushmen

The Bushmen of the Kalahari worship the moon. They revere animal ancestors and human ancestors as well. Bushmen on magic to make rain so that animals will have enough food to eat.

The Bushmen believe that people and animals live on after death as stars.
The Bushman believes that if he misuses his environment, he will be punished by the Supreme Being. So he never takes from the soil or from the herds of game more than he needs to stay alive.

The Bushmen of the Kalahari also believe in gods and a spiritual being called “Kaggan” who tricks them by taking many forms of a snake or a vulture and at other times, living among them as a Bushman.

The Bushmen express their beliefs through rock art.

Bushmen call themselves “Zhu Twa Si” ("the harmless people”) and believe non-San, whom they call “Zosi” ("animals without hooves") are as dangerous as predator animals.

Dancing has deep religious significance for the Bushmen. Sometimes a dancer will fall into a trance. When this happens, the Bushmen believe they are in a supernatural state where they can see distances and of perform cures.

Rituals

Hunting is a daily ritual in the lives of the Bushmen. Bushmen are skilled and are natural hunters as it is this ability that keeps them alive in the Kalahari.
A ritual by the Kalahari Bushmen is that of teaching their young boys how to track an antelope. The boy is considered an adult when he kills his first large antelope with an arrow.

In the girls' puberty rituals, the young girl is isolated in her hut. The women of the tribe perform the Eland Bull Dance and the men play the part of the Eland Bull with horns on their heads. The Bushmen believe that this ritual will keep the girl beautiful, free from hunger and thirst and peaceful.

Another ritual is the marriage ritual where the man gives the fat from the elands' heart to the girls' parents with the girl later being anointed with eland fat.

Customs

The Bushmen in the Kalahari have a custom of relating stories that are told around a camp fire at night. They are sometimes repetitive but the Bushmen will always listen hard and watch the actions of the storyteller.

It is the custom of the Bushman to aim an arrow gently at the woman he wishes to marry. If the woman does not like the man, she picks up the arrow and breaks it.

Social Organization

The Bushmen live in clans and have no judge and their chiefs keep changing. The father is the head of the family and can punish anyone who displeases him. The family band of Bushmen can have as many as 50 members. A hallmark of the social organization of the Kalahari Bushmen is their utter belief in co-operation within the family, between clans, and within nature itself.

Housing

The Bushmen of the Kalahari live in huts. They never build permanent shelters as they know they would have to move during the dry season. Simple windbreaks of saplings in a semicircle are tied together at the top and covered with grass. This is housing for the Bushmen.

Food

The Bushmen will eat anything that is available, both animal and vegetable. The Bushmen eat over a 100 varieties of plants and roast or boil their meats on a fire
The animals they eat range from bucks, zebras, porcupines, hares, lions, giraffes, fish, insects, tortoises, flying ants and snakes, to hyenas. The Bushmen also eat ostrich eggs.

A great delicacy to the Bushmen, is the food of Elephant’s feet and honey.
Bushmen eat roots, leaves and insects, but they refuse to eat baboons because they say these animals look too much like human beings. Bushmen don’t eat jackal or hyena meat because those animals eat people.

Water is hard to find as there are no permanent water holes. So the Bushmen collect their moisture by scraping and squeezing roots. Bushmen dig holes in the sand to find water when they are out hunting or travelling. They carry water in ostrich egg-shells.

Gender Roles

The men are responsible for providing the meat, although women might occasionally kill small mammals. The Bushmen are expert archers. The men hunt with bone tipped poisoned arrows. They can run for hours at a time, following a herd of eland or other antelope.

The men provide household tools and maintain the supply of poison tipped arrows and spears for hunting. The women cook the meal brought to them.

The women also go on trips. Their role is gathering nuts, fruits, water roots, bitter melon or berries. Children are left at home to be watched over by those remaining in camp. Nursing children are carried on these trips

Dress
Traditionally Bushmen wear very little clothing. Bushmen traditionally wear animal hides and skins and sometimes wear headdresses made from skin and cloth with bits of hide around their waist and fur on their backs. The women’s cloak can be tied into a sling for carrying babies, food and firewood.

The men carry wallets made from skin tied around them and the women wear beads made from ostrich eggs. Bushmen are fond of ornaments and that’s why the women wear many beads made of ostrich shells. Bushmen sometimes wear skin sandals but mostly walk barefoot.

Language

The Bushman’s language is a unique on with Click sounds, which are found only in Africa.

Parts of words involve a sucking action by the tongue and these clicks are as follows.

The "first" click sounds like "tsk, tsk! " and is made by putting the tongue just behind the front teeth The second click is a soft "pop" made by putting the tongue just behind the ridge back of the front teeth. The "third" click, is a sharp "pop" made by drawing the tongue down quickly from the roof of the mouth. The "fourth" click, is a clucking sound like that made in English to urge on a horse.

6 types of click sounds are known in all the Bushmen languages and some Bantu languages (Zulu and Xhosa) have borrowed click sounds from the San languages.
The Bushmen today

Steve Curwood, host of the Series “Living on Earth”, 2004 states :
“The Bushmen of the Kalahari have traditionally been an isolated culture. Their way of life dates back tens of thousands of years, and they may be the oldest aboriginal tribe of humans. Hunting and healing form the backbone of their society. Until recently, they largely kept to themselves, and rarely had to appeal to the outside world for help. Now all that's changed. Thousands of Bushmen, or San, are being squeezed off their ancestral lands, to make room for industries like diamond mining and cattle ranching. In Botswana, this is playing out on a Bushman homeland called the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. The bushmen there have filed a lawsuit against the government to get their land back and they're looking for support”

In Conclusion

The Bushmen of Kalahari are unique for the way in which they try hard to maintain their simple ways of living that are free from connection with the busy world beyond the borders of the Kalahari where they dwell. They may face misunderstanding and lack of understanding from modern man who does not appreciate the beauty of the unique culture and life of these special people.

The Bushmen of today still strive to maintain their life and their culture. However today they find it hard with the modern world imposing their culture upon them.
Researching on The Bushmen of the Kalahari was an enriching experience.

To end, a valuable quote from the brochure of “The Art of Africa” (August 2003)
“Throughout the region the Bushmen have struggled to adapt to a westernised lifestyle. This has lead to a state of depression, low self-esteem, poverty, alcoholism and a need to struggle for their rights”

© Slow Chills

Gambia

Located in Western Africa, "The Gambia" is the smallest country in Africa. It is a narrow strip of land, sliced in two by the River Gambia. Bordering the North Atlantic Ocean, Gambia shares much of its culture and history with Senegal as Senegal surrounds Gambia on 3 sides. Its capital is "Banjul". Gambia was Britain's first and last colony and gained independence in 1965. Islam is the religion of its majority. Approximately 90% of Gambians are muslims. It is a Republic headed by its President, Yahya Jammeh.

The Gambia today, is a multi ethnic and multi cultural society of over 1.3 million people belonging to eight ethnic groups. The main tribes include Mandinka, Wolof, Fula and Jola (each having its own language and traditions). Gambia has unique qualities, which add colour to the richness of its culture. This country paper will describe the following five aspects of its culture.

* Value Systems and rituals, * Social organization, * Leisure activities, * Marriage and * Death

1*Value Systems and rituals

No matter how busy, Gambians always greet eachother. Their value systems revolve around this ritual of greeting and business always comes second to greeting a person and inquiring into his health and family.

The extent to which Gambians attach great importance to traditional greetings is seen through the Wolof and Mandinka people who greet one another with a ritual that lasts upto half a minute. Their traditional Islamic greetings “Salaam Aleikum” ('Peace be with you), go on to inquiring after the family and even commenting on the weather.

The Gambians value this very much. Getting down to subject matter without greeting and inquiring is not common among its people as it is considered rude and disrespectful to the value system of the people.

Handandshaking is done with the right-hand while it is customary to shake hands using the left-hand when travelling out of the country. When Gambians are at work and their hands are not free, they offer their arms in greeting. It is only when angry or hurt that Gambians refrain from greeting each other in this traditional way.

The people of Gambia are friendly and hospitable. Their value systems reflect respect and concern for the welfare of eachother. When eating, it is considered rude to smell food. Giving and receiving food or money or any other item is always with the right hand.

Valuing respect for one another is expressed through the removing one's shoes before entering the house as a mark of respect to the persons inhabiting the home. When knocking on another's door, the words "Kunk kunk" are said. Moreover, pointing fingers at eachother is unaaceptable in Gambian Culture.

Gambians value privacy and courtesy. Taking pictures would never take place without due permission from the one another, no matter however informal a setting it may be.

Gambian families tend to be large and three generations may live together in one household. However it's quite normal in Gambian society to call more than one person 'mother' or 'father'. People with no apparent blood ties are called 'relatives'.

Gambians value educating their sons before their daughters and women are most often employed in some kind of farming endeavors. The father is the head of the house and the wife runs the household. Numerous childbirths are a norm in Gambia as family is valued to the point of being a symbol of status.


2* Social organization

Social organization among the people of Gambia, occurs according to the 8 main ethnic groups. Each of these communities speak their own language. The social organizations naturally evolve according to their occupation.

* The Mandingos - the single largest ethnic group in Gambia, are socially considered to be the agricultural group as they have nobility. The country of the Manding is in the Niger Valley.

* The Wolofs are another prominent group, socially considered to be the traders. They live mostly in the capital city of Banjul. The language of the Wolofs is used in trading centres.

* The Creoles are another social organization of Christians, who are descendants of freed slaves who came to The Gambia from Sierra Leone. Socially ranked among the bureaucratic elite, Creoles are prominent in preofessions.

* The Jola are organized around the cultivation of rice and are mainly based in the Foni district. This group is unique as it never has a paramount chief. Their traditional location is in swamps and deep forests.

* The Fulanis mainly engage in herding cattle and running shops. Because of their lighter skin, their origin is said to be more European. However, they are socially accepted for their role in the herding of cattle.

* The Serahule people are involved in farming, trade and property development. They can be found in large numbers in the Basse region and speak a number of dialects

* The other ethnic groups are the Serer who are predominantly involved in fisheries. The Serer have customs and a language which resemble that of the Wolof.

* The Tukulor share strong ties with the Fulani's culture, history and traditions and are mainly engaged in agriculture and animal husbandry.

These social organizations among the people, have minimum inter-tribal friction. Each social organization preserves its own language, music, cultural traditions and caste systems while yet interacting with one another. This peaceful interaction is unique to the Gambian people.


3 * Leisure Activities

The Gambian people have a variety of leisure activities.

“Crazy eight” is a unique card game that Gambians enjoy playing during relaxation. Each card has an African meaning to it. The Gambians play the heart as a love sign, the diamond as a biscuit, the spade as a black card and the club as the foot of a bird

Apart from engaging in a game of cricket or handball, Gambians also enjoy watching wrestling as a leisure activity. Wrestling is the traditional national sport of Gambia and contests are eagerly watched in most towns and villages.

Gambians love music and cultural leisure tools, like songs, dances and drama, help the Gambian people to maintain unity and lightheartedness of spirit. Music and cultural dancing is very much a part of their leisure activity. The Jola tribe engages in cultural dance while a more modern dance style is engaged in by the Wolof.

The Kumpo Masked Dance from the Jola is enjoyed thoroughly when Gambian Jolas decked in grass, dance whilst carrying poles on their head. People gather around and join in and the happiness felt during this activity makes it a significant activity of leisure to the Gambian people.

The Fulas enjoy dancing to flutes and string instruments and music is a veritable part of the leisure activites of the Gambian people.

Thus sport, gaming, music and cultural dancing is very much a part of Gambian leisure activity


4 * Marriage among its people

While the different ethnic groups conduct marriages in their unique way, Islam is the guide in all ceremonies of marriage. When a Christian woman marries a Muslim man, the ceremony is held in the Mosque with a civil ceremony in Banjul.

While inter marriage among its eight ethnic groups occurs frequently, there is no engagement period in Gambian culture.

Marriage among Gambians follows a tradition. If a man is interested in marrying a woman, after informing his parents the family of the male visits the woman's house. The presentation of Kola nuts expresses the groom’s interest. If the woman's family is agreeable, a date is set for the wedding and this announced to all relatives.

The wedding is held at a mosque or at the woman's home.

Only men are allowed at the mosque. At the ceremony more Kola nuts are handed over. The dowry money is exchanged and speeches and prayers follow. The process at the mosque is called “Takka” which means” to tie”.

Divorce is not considered to be a norm. If marriage turns to talk of divorce, it is considered to be the man's responsibility to write to his wife's parents and say in the letter that he is divorcing his wife giving an explanation of the reasons why. There is discussion among the families before the decision is made. This is something that has to be done under by tradition and the Gambians value discussion.

5 * Death

To the Gambian people, death is believed to be an event in which family partakes and gathers around the deceased. Thus an individual who discovers a death would soon inform the rest of the family in the house and elders would soon inform the wider relatives and friends. It is also custom, that the body be buried within 24 hours.

Burials in Gambia are referred to as “dech”. Gambians believe in the importance of carrying out all muslim practices and rituals that the Islamic Sharia requires of them. However, some of the Gambian communities, adopt variations of the muslim burial rites.

Gambians believe in the need to purify the dead loved one. The corpse is washed out for one last time, by a member of the same sex who then wraps the body in white whilst crossing the hands of the dead of the chest.

Women related to the deceased, sit on a sheet at home while only the men follow the procession. The wooden coffin is always re-used for the next occasion of death. The body is placed on its side, in the direction of Mecca and it is the family that throws soil over the body until fully covered. Finally, branches and leaves are placed as simple markers.
The Gambian people frown upon the use of tomb stones. Gambians believe that money that ought to be used for the living in the community, should not to be wasted on elaborate symbols of death.

Thus Gambia is a colorful African country, rich with tradition and many more facets to the way of living of its people that make it a truly unique culture. Gambian culture is one of diverse ethnic groups closely knit together by cohabitation. "Progress, Peace and Prosperity" is the motto of the country.

In Conclusion, a Quote :
“Don't overlook the Gambia - it's small but full of delights” - The Lonely Planet (http://www.lonelyplanet.com/worldguide/destinations/africa/gambia)

As the “Lonely Planet World Guide” states. The Gambia is truly a uniquely African experience, with good-humoured people and a streetside cultures that have a unique charm different to the daze of glitzier cities the world over.

© Slow Chills

Hypnosis

The Exercise in Hypnosis that I experienced in class during our Psychology Class on the 24th of July, was my first ever experience in hypnotism and it was uniquely different to the perceptions and pre-conceived notions that I had in my own mind about how it would be during what proved to be an immensely interesting exercise that enabled me to have me have a first-hand understanding of the manner in which the human mind may be manipulated through an external source that is skilled enough to understand the power of the mind in order to successfully direct and guide it through to wherever was needed according to her discretion.

What I recall to be my experience of hypnotism, is one in which I realized most of all, that the mind can be relaxed completely and taken through to the most forgotten places in time which included stages in my childhood right to the beginning of time when I was in my mother’s womb.

As Dr. Levalley’s voice slowly faded into the background and became a soothing source of instruction, I felt my entire body relax and my mind felt light and unburdened by willful consciousness. It was that moment after a countdown as I took a step down a hill and then felt the imagery of being in a boat and feeling the water with my hand as I floated out of my body, that I felt myself in the most absolute state of relaxation. As she gently took me through from stage to stage, moving back in time little, by little, I experienced a re-living of a moment in time that came to me with absolutely no conscious effort to recall into memory. It was as if within seconds I was taken to that age that Dr Levalley mentioned. I saw myself in clothes that I had forgotten I wore with friends I had forgotten I had and I know for a fact that it was actually my childhood that I was taken to as I instantly went back to people and moments that I had never remembered in years. From running repeatedly round a stool with my first dog as a child to returning a book to a friend with conversations that included details that were in keeping with that year and time to keeping my head on my cousin’s lap and hearing her talk to my mother and not understanding what was said as I was a child to a happy birthday that I had completely forgotten I had, the most unforgettable moment I had was the vivid experience of stillness, an orange-brown like gel around me as I heard in my mind almost a frequent underwater-like sound, possessing no capacity to think but only feel I re-experienced an almost true-to life moment in my time in my mother’s womb. As I walked through the tunnel, all was pitch black on either side. I walked on with my eye-level being as low as it must have been as a kid. I saw no pictures on either side and I came to a light at the end that I couldn’t enter into but as I returned through the same process that I went back in time to and I knew that I had been carried through my unconscious memories and relaxed to a point of re-experiencing places, faces and moments that make me marvel at the capacity of storage in my mind. Amazingly wonderful to me, it was, that I had within me all these millions of moments in time that I had stored without my knowledge.

The exercise of Hynosis was one that made me believe that one truly can be taken through to the recesses of one’s own mind, as far back as infancy and beyond as I had what I felt was a new encounter with the power of one’s own mind.

© Slow Chills

SOCIOLOGICAL OBSERVATION

With the objective of observing a social situation, I walked into a Photo delivery outlet (“Plates”) and sat down on the waiting couch, taking a few minutes to observe the interaction that was taking place.

It was a rushed morning and the customers were queuing up slowly on the right side of the little room. As I sat on a couch inconspicuously, it took a while to settle down to what seemed to be interaction scenes between customer service salesman and customers who were in line, waiting to pick up photographs placed on order (prints of photographs taken on a previous day). As I was positioned on a couch seat directly behind the queues, I was able to glimpse what looked to be social situation among its actors.

I observed a middle aged lady who stood with her younger son, each with two packets in their hand. In the queue parallel to theirs, stood an elderly lady. This lady seemed to appear restless and I deduced by her facial expressions, that she was impatient. She would keep looking around her in an agitated manner, sometimes murmuring incoherently. As she progressed in the queue, I observed her glancing at her wristwatch at least 7 times. She seemed to be in a hurry. After a few minutes, she was next and she moved forward in the line and placed her bag on the counter and started talking quickly. The salesperson (a very young boy with a cheerful smile and a happy countenance) seemed to have difficulty following the sequence of what she was saying. As he politely asked “beg your pardon madam?” she became increasingly angry. He checked his computer earnestly and I realized that he was finding difficulty locating the picture she had ordered. As I rose from my seat and drew closer to where the conversation was taking place, I was able to understand that the lady had placed an order in January 2006 and had come back with the hope of picking it off the counter today (26.03.2008) The sales person with a courteous mannerism to his replies, appeared to be trying his level best to explain that it would take a while to find this picture. She seemed visibly angered by the situation and I realized that she was irritated as she began to raise her voice. As she began to talk to him, I realized that she felt that she was justified in arriving 2 years later as she had after all, a receipt in hand and she vocalized her position by looking to others in the queue for affirmation. I observed that the others had grown silent. They either looked earnestly at this exchange or looked the other way to the left, appearing uncomfortable and noncommittal.

After a few minutes of exchange, I observed the sales person looking worried and nervous as his voice began to falter as he tried to assure her that they would look into it. She stood straight as she spoke to him and her body posture seemed to indicate a determination - to not go home without her picture. Therein, I observed a conflictive exchange between the sales boy and the lady. I deduced that the disagreement or dilemma lay in the justification from the perspective of a customer who seemed to feel she had a right to receive efficient service and on the other, the sales boy who appeared to believe that it was absurd to expect this service as I saw from his gestures and nonverbal behavior, that he saw this lady’s demands to be unreasonable as he began to include “buts” in his answers. The object of contention appeared to lie not so much in the inability to produce this photograph but in the rights of the two respective actors, to maintain their stand. The social exchange didn’t seem satisfactory enough to the lady. I could see during this exchange that the cheerful countenance had disappeared and the sales boy looked stressed. The lady too was adamant.

At this point, a senior manager (a bigger, broader looking man) walked over brusquely. He wasn’t called upon but he soon take over the young boy. He seemed to be defter as he communicated with her as his mannerisms were different. He was firm and polite and asked her for 1 day within which to locate this picture. He took the receipt into his hand and didn’t leave the counter until the lady still angry, seemed content enough to leave, empty handed. As she fumbled with her purse, the facial expressions of the young sales person seemed apologetic as he said “aunty we’ll look into it”. She retorted at once “I’m not your aunty! You better have it ready for me. I have the receipt for the picture” Another firm but courteous assurance from the senior manager had her walking out of the door. The senior manager with receipt in hand, mumbled to the boy and busily walked away.

I observed a social bond between the manager and the boy as there seemed to be a social connection (formed perhaps as a result of the group affiliation of being employees of Plates) as I observed the concept of Integrators –for the activities of the delivery point of Plates division seemed to be in sync with the higher administration as I observed a keen awareness of each others welfare to be evident as the busyness of the manager, didn’t prevent him from realizing that the younger man at delivery needed a hand in handling the customer.

Just as I was beginning to feel that that particular the social situation had ended, I observed that the young man (who stood with his mother) in the queue next to the one the lady has stood in, was trying hard to make eye contact with the young sales person. Finally he managed to look the sales person in the eye and smile broadly. I saw that the sales person was almost immediately relaxed by that simple gesture as he stopped looking down and started looking up again with a less flustered face. His broad smile was back again as he started serving the next in line. There were repeated exchanges of smiles between the young man and the sales person and things appeared to get routine again. It seemed like that social situation had peaked off into a new one (at which point I ended my observation)

As I mused over the social situation, I regathered my thoughts and reflected what I had observed.

I observed a social scene with many social actors. To begin with, the lady (the customer) and the sales boy. Then there were the others in the queue, the less prominent social actors) The young sales manager and finally, the young man in the queue whose smiles appeared to change the mood and tone left, at the end of the incident.

The employers of Plates, seemed to form a network while the customers formed the other. However, I observed, a bond between the young man and the sales person who was at the receiving end of the irate lady’s complaints about the inefficiency of the system. Judging by the compassionate and reassuring smile that the young man gave which wasn’t evident in the faces of the other customers who appeared to belong to different age groups, I observed what appeared to
be a bonding based on the common factor of both customer and sales person being young.

The disagreement or object of contention seemed to be over the fact that the lady was a dissatisfied customer, who had the receipt in hand and couldn’t collect her photograph. However on the other hand, the senior manager seemed to stand on the premise that it had to be understood that a guarantee could not be given as the photograph had been ordered 2 years before. The lady appeared by her non verbal messages of shrugs and sarcastic looks, to feel justified while Plates felt equally justified in not locating a picture that ought to have been collected before.

The conflictive tugs of war that were strong between the lady and young sales person, seemed to weaken with the arrival of the sales manager. Judging by the dimness and toning down of voice by the lady, I concluded that while one social actor (the lady) was not pleased with the situation, she seemed to wear out of resisting the authorities at Plates. Moments before this, it seemed like the lady (the customer) was the authority. I observed what seemed to be a shift in the balance of this tug-of-war.

Interaction webs between the employees of Plates appeared strong as did the social connections (as integrators) between the workers. I felt judging by the sensitivity of the young salesman to everyone’s reaction to him throughout the social situation, that if the integration was weak, he might have been affected by the incident which would have resulted in him fumbling with his computer the way he briefly did when she began to raise her voice. Moreover I concluded that the interaction web between the workers was strong as the difference in designation didn’t have a bearing on the informal affirmation one gave to the other. This was evident to me as the sales person whilst not engaging in much conversation with the young salesman, was on his side as the brief mumble between them was one that I observed, to be a “dig” at the lady’s expense as the mumble was accompanied with a non verbal raising of eyebrow as much as to say that that customer was “difficult”. This helped to ease things because both manager and sales boy smiled and got about their business.

However it was the smile that came from the customer in the adjoining queue that seemed to wipe out the humiliated look that was evident on the sales person’s face when the comment about not being his “aunty” was made.

Thus I learnt through this exercise that a social situation has interesting facets to it by way of the different social connections. Moreover apart from the influencing power of these connections, I learnt too that the smallest of situations indeed have various perspectives to it, as I personally realized through this observation, that no single perspective could be absolutely “right” as the perspectives of the lady, the lady, the young sales person, the sales manager and others in the queue appeared to be based on their interpretations of the particular situation and the personal stand each took in handling themselves and eachother.

© Slow Chills

PHOTO ANALYSIS

- My Family Photograph, was one that was taken some years ago, outside our home one afternoon, and consisted of all 4 members of my family, (that’s mom, dad, my elder brother and I) standing close to each other horizontally

As Dr. Janet Levalley divided us into groups in which we exchanged pictures and analyzed them as a group, the members of my group found my family picture to be one that reflected a “closely-knit” family. They felt that this was so as we were physically standing close to each other. However, there wasn’t really much more any of us could add to this analysis during our group time.

Dr. Levalley however, found this picture to be an interesting one! She noticed and read into details in the picture that all of us failed to notice or understand as indications of our feelings at that time. Dr Levalley was able to read into the possible deeper meanings behind many of the little things about the way we were positioned and the way we connected to eachother in the photograph, that escaped our scrutiny.

My picture consisted of my brother standing next to mom who in turn stood next to dad, who stood next to me. Dad was with a beaming smile, with his arms around mom and myself and she said at once that the way dad was standing straight with each leg pointed out (one towards mom, one towards myself) showed that he was very proud of his “girls” (that’s true) Dr Levally observed that mom (although with her hands down), was with her elbow touching close to dad. She said that Mom and Dad seemed close to eachother. My brother she smiled and said (who was standing next to mom and standing straight, without much contact with mom), she would (seriously) feel was adopted, because of the way he seemed detached. However, she also noticed that he was standing a few inches behind mom and said that he seemed to also be leaning close to mom which showed a bond with mom. Mom was aligned to me with her feet. Dr Levalley observed that mom’s feet and mine were on the same level. Also, although mom’s elbow was touching dad and both her feet (almost bow-legedly) were pointed towards Dad and myself, her bond with my brother was evident because of the way her the length of her other hand touched my brother. I (I was in the corner) was leaning close against Dad and my upper body was heavily tilted towards the family. However Dr. Levalley placed her hand on the picture and split the picture in two and showed that my lower body (especially my legs) were in the opposite direction! She said that while I seemed affectionately bonded towards my family, I seemed very uncomfortable standing there and “wanted to get the hell out of there”.

After our Photo Analysis was done, I thought back on the day in which the picture was taken, I couldn’t help realizing that Dr. Levalley’s analysis was accurate. You see, I recalled that the day on which that picture was taken, I was in a hurry to get back to my best friend (Thinushka) who was patiently waiting in her car, to take me out somewhere. I was very aware that she was waiting and hoped the picture would be done with soon! I guess I was impatient at that time. (I never knew that the picture would indicate that and a surface reading never made any of our group realize it. Even I never remembered that) About my brother, Dr. Levalley guessed that he too seemed to be in a hurry. She was right. As I went home and brainstormed with my family, they remembered that my brother was just rushing in home when he was hurriedly called to stand in. He too was in the process of a quick “get in/get out” and was passing by when the person who took the picture ( a visitor from the UK who visited mom and dad for lunch) was keen on taking a photograph of the family. (We have this picture because he posted it back to us when he returned to London). She was right about Dad being proud of his family and mom being close to him and “aligned” to me but also bonded with her son who was close to her in return. She was right in saying both my brother and myself were in a hurry and I personally found it amazing that she saw this when nothing seemed to make it too obvious to anyone else who took a look at the picture.

I learnt a lot from this exercise of photo analysis. I never knew until than, that so much can be read into or said of a family by simply looking at a family picture! Dr. Levally’s reading of our body language, the positioning of our feet, hands and all those non-verbal symbols and the manner in which we connected to what was happening (or apparently didn’t) not just to the person next to us but eachother as a whole was amazing to me most of all because of how much she said that was right.

I learnt that much can be seen through photographs with regards to social conections among those in it – much, much more that what meets the eye. I enjoyed this exercise very much.

© Slow Chills

CHAPTER 13 (Robert A Baron)

WHY IT’S MY FAVOURITE CHAPTER

The Chapter I liked best, is the Chapter “Health, Stress and Coping”. There were many other chapters that were interesting and beneficial to my personal life but this chapter in particular, interested me, enriched me and left me with a better understanding of life and stress which is so much a part of day to day living and this is one of the primary reasons for the 13th Chapter being my favourite from among 15 others in this book

I particularly liked the manner in which this Chapter explained Stress and the many causes for Stress, ranging from the major causes, to the minor. The manner in which the chapter had a portion in which it described reasons for doctors not explaining illness and the practical manner in which it directed me to surfing the net for finer knowledge, indeed little things like that were useful and so real in the modern-day world that I am in when it comes to researching on day to day concerns, coupled with the manner in which it discussed the effects of ones thoughts and actions on one’s health, further enhanced the favourite aspects to this chapter.

I also appreciated the less preachy, more explanatory overview on smoking, on healthy eating, alcohol, even illness like AIDS and paragraphs that expounded the manner in which emotions interact with our physical health which again, were interesting and applicable to life.

It’s also my favourite chapter because reading it made me realize a few new things, like the fact that a tendency towards alcoholism is strongly genetic and that there is a personality type (Type D) that keeps emotions to themselves during stressful times. Moroever the manner in which Optimists and Pessimists were described interested me immensely.

One of the finer sections for me, also proved to be the last section of this particular chapter which consisted of practical and very real means by which to promote personal wellness in a world filled with stress. The ways in which this chapter explained that it is possible to develop a healthy lifestyle through prevention that included decreasing risks of illness and secondly, detecting illness early enough to prepare, to cope and be better equipped to face each aspect that would otherwise prove challenging and increase stress levels if faced with without notice, were extremely insightful too.

My favourite sections of this book as a whole, were always the last section – “making psychology part of your life” which always put down to practical use, all the theoretical knowledge that was detailed in the chapter. This particular chapter on Stress, ended with a section that was educative and informative about managing stress with some useful tactics – seven simple ways in which to cope and make the best of one’s day.

I gained so much from this chapter that I could never really see it as a Chapter for academic Study. This was another reason for my liking this Chapter best. For instead of being a theoretically heavy chapter, it was truly a very human, life-applicable one.

© Slow Chills

TRADITION BEARER

INTERVIEW WITH MRS. VAJIRA CHITRASENA:

BEARER OF THE TRADITION OF KANDYAN DANCING IN SRI LANKA

13 – 11 – 2007

(HELD AT ‘‘THE CHITRASENA KALATHANAYA’’)

RESEARCHER: Was this love for dance inherited from your parents or was it nurtured by Chitrasena?

TRADITION BEARER: It was my mother’s idea. I don’t know - my school teachers and all these people I was learning from and I met from school when I was a child, also sort of made my mother feel that I should take dancing as a career. And so as a child I was sort of forced into a class and that is how I first started. I had an idea of traditional dance. And all that was Chitrasena work. He brought traditional dance onto the stage from the rituals, so when I came onto the scene, all that was done by Chitrasena

RESEARCHER: It was not that you had the aspiration to pursue dancing as a career at a young age then?

TRADITION BEARER: It was not like that. I was just a child in a class and it was my parents and my teachers who saw that I had that kind of talent and that I should be going into this thing. But whatever it is, in those days I mean we didn’t choose our careers at the beginning when we were in school but dancing was there as a subject in the school when I started schooling so it was natural that when I participated in the class and so on, my elders would have thought that, that was the correct thing - to choose as a career.

Dancing ‘ before that was brought on to the stage by Chitrasena so Chitrasena started a long time before that I think his career started in 1936 so that was a long period I must have been four years then (“pausing to smile”)

RESEARCHER: So although you were pushed into it later on you developed an Aspiration for dancing?

TRADITION BEARER: Yea that’s after I got to know Chitrasena but even Chitrasena’s class, I tried to avoid! My mother pushed me into the classes when I was quite small when I started around 11 years and there also I was made to dance in front of the others and anyway every time when he came to take a class I hid somewhere and tried not to participate, very hard but it was actually the….. My mother who sort of pushed me into continuing to do it and then it was after I left school that I came under Chitrasena

RESEARCHER: How late in life can a person take to Traditional Kandyan dancing?

TRADITION BEARER: Even if people come as adults, we admit them.
Of course if one is persevering, as an adult even you can achieve something you don’t have to start at the age of 7.

Yes some people might grow to love it and then want to take dancing

RESEARCHER: In Traditional Kandyan Dancing how would you gauge a good act apart from it being the original authentic dance, what skills do you generally look for or look at to say “that was a good traditional dance performance?”

TRADITION BEARER: Hmm ... now that is difficult to say and that depends on each person. Actually every time we went to a performance, we saw how lots of people had changed into many other styles as they are really influenced by the Bollywood style of dancing. We don’t see any kind of our techniques - not even in India. In India also it’s like that! The traditional dances are never used to compose and create new dances. There are the easiest things now – Hip Wriggling dances which have come from Bollywood. Maybe it is an easier way. This kind of technique like ours - any of the techniques that one wants to learn properly, you have to make a real good study from the very beginning. In our style also we have like the western style, a bar where you have exercises on the bar. How to turn your legs out and to stay in the box position like you know? (showing the position) - That position. It takes a lot of learning and practice to get a style and it takes many years for one to get the dance into your system. You don’t find many people like that on stage. Now all our people who have just learnt a bit during school hours or for one or two hours in the evening will tend to turn out creations.

Very few people take to traditional dancing today. You can’t earn much from dancing, in the sense that if you become a dance teacher also, the teacher’s salary is quite low isn’t it? Compared to any other way of earning money? So that way we have much more to spend when it comes to a show so there is never any money collected.

The last performance “Kumbi kathawa” - we had almost 6 or 8 full houses, but we didn’t cover the cost as it came to 4 million. With a hall that has the capacity for just 760 people you can’t collect any money but you can’t also raise the rates because our rates were like 500 a ticket. There are people today, who have Rs. 1000/= and all that for the reserved like the front seat and so on! But we don’t do that so that more people will have the chance of seeing these things and its our duty to give it to the people who want to see know so we keep it low and try to get some sponsors now.

But in the past we had no sponsors. We just did it on our own (Chitrasena and I). At those early stages in the 1960’s and all, in “Karadhiya” Chitrasena even says that we borrowed the money from his servant because he was paid monthly and he had saved it you know, to get food and clothing and everything? He has mentioned that in “Karadhiy”a – how he had to borrow from the person who was working for us

RESEARCHER: You were a pupil of Chitrasena. After that, you fell in love and got married. How did both of you’ll get together and how did you’ll start to teach the others?

TRADITION BEARER: Chitrasena had started his school in 1944 so the school was there before my time though I knew Chitrasena in a different way (I mean like friends my parents knew Chitrasena) but I didn’t come to learn dancing at that time as a profession I started in 1947, left Kalutara and came to a school in Colombo. Then the school was right in front of our house in colpetty so I went to Methodist college at that time and it was Chitra’s father who took me to the school also so I was very much under their influence from the time I was like 15 years old. I was also living in Chitrasena’s house so all those things, the way they worked “Pageant of Lanka” - etc.

Chitrasena’s father was also an actor. He played “shylock” in the Shakespeare plays and he also translated them into Sinhalese. There was a time that he ran the tower hall for many. Chitrasena’s father was having these plays in the tower hall and Chitrasena has been In the audience.

(Vajira proceeding to point at a book that featured snippets from the past of Traditional Dancing)

These are our teachers in the traditional costume and this is another ballet of Chitra’s “Kinkini Kolema” I don’t know whether you have heard of that?

RESEARCHER: Is it true that you were his star pupil?

TRADITION BEARER: (laughing) That I don’t know! That is what people now think because I turned out be what I am today. The first the idea of my taking to dancing was my parents - at least my mother who wanted me to do it so she would have found that I suited this kind of work. Also in school I learnt under several teachers but never as a career so it was Chitrasena influence that I became what I have become now.

RESEARCHER: What discipline is required to maintain the kind of physique needed for Traditional Dancing?

TRADITION BEARER: That kind of living for an artist to develop one’s body - and of course although we don’t have that kathakali massage and all here, Chitra has had all that when he was abroad, so that kind of discipline has been there. Meditating, too. Not only when he was in India but after he came here when he continued the school in the 1940’s, he didn’t have that kind of discipline because no one took it seriously so whoever stayed (there were a few people who stayed in his house and continued the dance) - they followed Chitrasena discipline of the day

RESEARCHER: While you were in school did Chitrasena have classes in your school?

TRADITION BEARER: Not in my school he came privately to our house where I lived in Kalutara at that time and I was attending Kalutara Balika Vidyalaya and there was a dance teacher but somehow my mother got to know about Chitrasena through reading about him and so on and then also there was some other ladies - adults who wanted to study from him (I think people who were his relations) and they wanted to have a class. They couldn’t do it in their houses so they persuaded my mother to have a class there and then my sister was also there (my elder sister) but they didn’t continue

Vipuli is my younger sister. My elder sister also danced at the beginning when we had the class then. Vipuli was quite small then she didn’t attend those classes but later on she also took to dancing and played a big role because she played “Damayanthi” in “Nala Damayanthi” and I played the swan

RESEARCHER: How many hours of practice did you put in when you first started?

TRADITION BEARER: As a school girl of course I had only periods of dancing like 45 minutes and 1 hour or so but when I started under Chitrasena it was a long process where we sort of started at 4 o clock and went on and on and on...

RESEARCHER: What techniques and styles does the form of Kandyan Dancing involve?

TRADITION BEARER: Kandyan Dance is a style by itself. So other styles are not mixed so if you say “Kathakali Manipuri” or “Kathak” that’s the area from which it comes also from different characteristics from that area where people and the technique is formed by that .. but “Kandyan” is a definite style by itself and the low country Ruhunu Dance which comes from the south has a different style but the posture is almost the same and the Sabaragamuwa style is somewhere between the two (the South and Kandyan Dance) and the southern dance has different things like mask dancing which is not there in the Kandyan Dancing.

The Kandyan Dance has much more technique in the “rith” style where you get not only technique but the telling of story in the folk style like “nonji akka” and all ..

In “Nonji Akka” the old man and the old woman have a dialogue and there are masks to portray it. The masks also helped. There are a lot of devil masks and gurulu masks so the elephant and all don’t have a mask or anything. Only the low country style people have masks and the nagaraksha that’s also a mask where you wear the mask and dance

Then “Guruluraksha Nagaraksha” and then there are some things called “Sangyas”. “Sangya”s are all sorts of sicknesses and the sicknesses also have masks which portray hair and lip, lips missing - those are sangy masks where you get different diseases and there are rituals to cure that disease.

With the dance, the low country dance has all those things. The low country ritual is called the “Gammaduwa” and the up country traditional ritual is called the “Kohombe Kankariya”. It is done especially when you have a good harvest and appeasing the gods for having a good harvest. Mainly the dancers were farmers so everything to do with farmers all the occasions that came for dancing - the dancers were mostly farmers in the traditional Kandyan Dancing because in this, Kandy, Kurunagala, Pahatha Ratta - all comes from the south where you get the “Yaka” mask

RESEARCHER: Something like the village stories like aliya diwiya loketa giya hati - can you show it in a dance form?

TRADITION BEARER: Of course you can... you can show the elephant in a cut out or something but going to the “Diviya Loke” and all can be done in movement. This story has quite a lot of dance

RESEARCHER: What do you enjoy and love most about this form of dancing and what really inspired you?

TRADITION BEARER: In the Kandyan Dance its not sort of what do I say you don’t have things that say you cant break away from in this style. There are no hand gestures with meaning so only we have a dance style, a dance style we can use not in a commercialized way or in a vulgar way but in an artistic way. There is a chance to sort of create anything from the Kandyan Dance and also what Chitrasena started was to give a meaning to the dance so in that way also we have been successful in the sense when you take ‘Karadiyal” as an example - it has been shown all over the world and they accepted that as our National Ballet so we told a story about the fisher people with the dance and our technique. Chitrasena and I both learnt Kandyan Dancing more than all the other low country styles so in “Karadiyal” there is only the Kandyan Dance as the base so from there if you can do a successful story that means anyone can use it like the way we have done it.

There are some scenes of “Karadiyal” I think in the book (pointing to the book). Even when you see “Kumbi Kathawa” see all this was turned out and all the dance steps and whatever we are portraying - this is the evil character these are the “Kumbiyas” so that way you can use any story to give meaning to the dance so the Kandyan Dance is our face

So that means any folktale… not any folktale can be taken as a dance

Sometimes in the story where there is drama and of course its your artistry, that will help you create a drama out of whatever story that you do. So “Nala Damayanthi” is also a story. “Kumbi Kathawa” is also a story but it is the person who is doing it. The choreographer that will turn it out in such a way that will give meaning to the dance

RESEARCHER: Can you explain the concept of “Wes bandeema”?

TRADITION BEARER: I have sort of opened out a school for students of the university to come and follow our learning process and technique for two and a half years and when they came to a standard where they can tie the wes costume then we had a wes performance - they all danced in the “Kohombe Kankariya” (the male dancers) The female dancers never danced in the “Kohombe Kankariya” I hope nobody from later dancers will take this because its not right I mean we have created costumes and everything for the woman to dance on stage and not the “Kankariya” which has lot of budhdhistic ideas and sayings and datha’s.

The Wes dancer is a Kandyan Dancer. We call him a “wes dancer” after they tie the wes - the headdress that I showed. In some book there...in this book (picking up a book) and I think there is something about the Wes bandima. So one has to learnt the process of the “Kohombe Kankariya” so all the dance is in the ritual

You can learn all the techniques but we don’t perform in the correct ritual. When it is done for the male we are not using the male costume also so we can’t go into the “Kohombe Kankariya”. For all those things that are necessary for the dance - the wes dance means you have to wear the wes costume and that is the costume that you see in the book. It’s a very elaborate one. You’re not allowed to do it if it’s not the proper way.

There are people who think if you wear the costume and dance it’s okay but I think it’s wrong to get into those rituals because they are sacred...

(Pointing to the picture)
RESEARCHER: This is “Kohombe Kankariya”?

TRADITION BEARER: Yes we had one in our premises there and here also when we first started coming into this place (the place at which the interview is held) we had a “Kankariya” here too to give it the blessing. People do the “Kankariya” for blessing in the premises you do... we are permanently in this place this is our permanent residence.

RESEARCHER: The dress that you wore in 1948 for the “Pageant of Lanka” is now the traditional costume that’s being used from the time you first wore it who actually designed it. It was designed by somebody wasn’t it?

TRADITION BEARER: Yes. There was no women’s costume or headdress or anything that was created for me and it was designed by Somabandhu. We were living in Colpetty and the jeweler who was on the street in front of our house almost on Galle Road, he sort of made this costume that I am wearing and so many other people also have sort of copied the same design so it is Somabandu’s idea and his designs that were done by the jeweler.

RESEARCHER: Do you still have any rituals regarding wearing the costume like in ancient times, any particular rituals?

TRADITION BEARER: Err not really only in wearing but the traditional “Kankari”s called the “Kohomba Kankari”. It is a ritual of the Kandyan technique

RESEARCHER: Did you contribute to designing this first dress?

TRADITION BEARER: Later on when ever I wanted free movement and all I sort of gave them ideas that this is the way I want because when you go up... in a jump or so, your legs are hidden if you wear the Thoti and all that so all my costumes came up to the here only (pointing to the knees) Of course I wore tights and all that. And broke ground for that women’s costume’s but at the beginning it was not like that the first women’s costume. I’m sorry that I can’t sort of show you the designs of these things I don’t know whether its here... (Ruffles the book and Quotes from pointing at pictures in the book) this is my last ballet that I did performing

RESEARCHER: That means now you don’t perform you only teach?

TRADITION BEARER: Yes

(Going on to show pictures from the past in which she performed)

TRADITION BEARER: This is “Karadiyal” my character in “Karadiya”. Now this one is a scene from the ballet “Chandali” from 1951 and this is Chitrasena and myself. This is from 1997 it was my 50 years on stage so I created this. This is Upeka here and myself as the mother. The same ballet I played the girls role and there was another mother and this is Ravibandu in Chitra’s role. That is Ananda giving water to the Chandala girl that was the story. This is when I was a student and this kind of costume (what was here before) but later on the costume changed. And this is also another ballet of mine where my daughter is playing the lead role and this is the “Gajagawannama” and whenever I wanted changes I used to sort of - even the cloth and jacket I used to slit the sides and so that there would be free movement so there were lots of changes which I contributed to.

(Pointing to the book)

This is myself as the swan and there is the “Gajagawannama” on this. This is my practice time. This is Chitrasena and myself in a foreign country. We always demonstrated in various schools and when out of the performing time

RESEARCHER: How was the response different from Sri Lanka and overseas?

TRADITION BEARER: Much more! They would stand and applaud and in those countries people are used to going to the theatre, so they know exactly if you portray some character and do it well. They know that the creation has been something great.

RESEARCHER: Explain the forms of traditional dancing that you and your husband have brought into our culture that weren’t there before?

TRADITION BEARER: Of course the three styles were in the country but it was Chitrasena who sort of brought dance with meaning to the stage. Before that it was just rituals and there are three types you call “Natya”, “Ritha” and “Nirthaya”. “Ritha is without meaning, “Natya” is with speech and “Nirthaya” is all three together

RESEARCHER: It’s like dance Drama?

TRADITION BEARER: Yes “Nirthaya” is where you have meaning to a dance

RESEARCHER: Like telling a story ?

TRADITION BEARER: Yes. Like telling a story. At the beginning. We have also in the traditional forms “Gajagawannama” and “Thuragawannama” - all those things are depicting an animal but of course in their movements it was not visible. When you see a traditional dancer dancing the “Gajagawannama” which has become now very popular it never had the movements of an elephant those things we introduced to the dance that is Chitrasena and myself so because I always did the “Gajagawannama” all the performances when we had this show “Nirthanjali” where we depicted all three styles on stage so all those things were sort of choreographed for the stage and that was Chitrasena idea also and of course I helped him all the time as I grew up and took up more responsibilities to sort of help him to have the shows and the choreography and so on

RESEARCHER: Explain how the tradition is continued to be borne by the generations after you?

TRADITION BEARER: Now there is a sort of incentive for the children because they see and they have seen us also on stage and lots of children like to become dancers but they are very few who continue after their studies to become dancers unless of course they get a chance to come out in a good character or something where they can show of their talent but none of them had been making it their profession where you earn and live by it so there are very few professional dancers in Sri Lanka.

RESEARCHER: Is it that they do it for leisure while doing another profession?

TRADITION BEARER: Now even the teachers who have passed out from the university - they are just teachers they are not performers, so that means that this is not being continued by the people who come out of the university of aesthetic studies. So it’s not a professional thing anymore. They are only teachers so very few people who continue even in their homes and then have a “Kalathanaya” and con