Fail yours...

Three years ago we won the ICDC Debate contest of the Division in Toastmasters. Today, we were Runners up, which technically means that we lost.

So the sham philosopher in me preaches that the best learning arises from a loss. Damn I’m frikking ‘woke’ in that case considering that loss is my current posse.

But not. I’m a sore loser.

With things that matter. With the who that matter and the ‘it’ who matters.

So failure is my best teacher right… let me attempt to list down my learnings.

Life owes me nothing.

Irrespective of how much I invest, be it faith or emotion or sheer drudgery of chores… life dishes out mindlessly it seems, of what it deems fit.

Often quite the antithesis of my deepest desires.

Giving does not necessarily means that you will receive.

Patience does not translate into victory.

Love is not a lofty emotion that guarantees reciprocity.

This path you walk is solitary.

Effort no matter how deep and definite is not a formula for success.

And insidiously the desire to sink into the calm obscurity of defeat beckons invitingly.

Tentatively I test its tepid waters.

Oblivion’s embrace is welcoming, comforting.

Hamlet’s immortal question runs on loop in my head.

I want to shrug, like Ayn Rand’s Atlas.

The quagmire threatens to envelop.

Dimly in the distance as I flail I see beloved countenances of the pair that sired me, the pair that I begot and the pair that sustain me. My Alpha and Omega, unrequited.

From those murky, convoluted and turbulent waters emerges faith somehow…

That I’m a Phoenix… not Icarus.

I will emerge from the ashes and not burn.

That Scarlett was right… tomorrow is another day.

That the bane of my life are indeed it’s boon.

Faith as tested by Christ's famous disciple... is mine.

Fail, Falter, Fall... Fervently

Fall or autumn, as used by speakers of the English language to describe the season has thus far been for me an idea I had heard of and seen visuals of via media and not in person.

It has been a subject I romanticized about in my posts, poems and proselytizing eons ago without having the perspicacity of the real McCoy. 

Again a life lesson, that I have the tendency to shoot off my mouth on topics I have neither expertise or authority on. Sigh. Motor mouth. I could probably use this as an excuse for my bulk, it’s all those words that I’m forced to eat... and rapidly! Karma’s turnaround time is indecently rapid. 

The trees are pregnant with leaves in brilliant hues of red, yellow, pink, brown, maroon, mustard, purple, cerise, amber. Each trembling tentatively, I know not whether in anticipation or trepidation and my wild imagination demands that it’s the former.

As I tread on the kaleidoscopic carpet of dead leaves, my thoughts wander to the reason behind the season. 

By all accounts Fall is the beginning of the end, the harbinger of rot and decay, the living metaphor for death. 

Autumn is also the ‘Fall’ from grace, productivity, health, abundance and life itself. 

The wasting away sustenance and vibrancy of the spirit, the crumbling of set orders and the annihilation of existence. 

The end of the old order. 

With it, visions of the immediate future loom in 4D. 

Tomorrow’s sky is overcast with dark looming clouds and the sun fights a losing battle as it fights to permeate light through. 

Tomorrow looks lonely, desolate and desperate. 

Tomorrow sadness will be the cloak of comfort and no matter how merino the wool, I will be chilled to the bone. 

Tomorrow is the winter of my existence. 

I allow myself to wade through murky waters of self pity and melancholy and as I’m mired in the quandary of my own design. A state I could revel in like a pig rolling in muck. 

And when I’m depleted and quite frankly enervated by all the lugubriousness and thoroughly disgusted by the trajectory of my thoughts, chicken me berates self and I feel the Phoenix in my soul draw strength from the awareness that I may well be alone but I’m enough unto myself. 

I turn my gaze to the inevitable spring that must loom in the horizon, the hope that ‘springs’ eternal beckons gently and I allow myself the luxury of dreaming of a season that will bring a new version of me who, my fervent desire is, will be a better, refined and exceptional version of the current joke. 

“Spring drew on...and a greenness grew over those brown beds, which, freshening daily, suggested the thought that hope traversed them at night and left each morning brighter traces of her steps."

–Charlotte Brontë

I fail, falter, fall... fervently and I think that’s quite alright. 

Hen... pecker

Ok, so the keeda is running amok these days and since the avenues for expression are rather limited, I will resort to the English language and the words that make me think. 

Henpecked for one.

Henpecked is defined as, ‘(of a woman) continually criticize and order about (her husband or other male partner). Synonyms: browbeaten, downtrodden, bullied, dominated, nagged, subjugated, oppressed, repressed, intimidated, ground down, without a mind of one's own, tied to someone's apron strings, under someone's heel.

Living in a multicultural environment and conversing with people of different nationalities, most being non-native speakers of the English language I’m constantly amused by the words used by Indian speakers. Henpecked is common jargon used superciliously.

Quite different from ‘cuckolded’ which means ‘a man whose wife has sexual relations with other men’. While both words are derogatory towards a man, I would think henpecked is the lesser evil.

The female version of both words are ‘cockpecked’ (I know… I know! The wiring in my head is running amok with puns) and ‘cuckquean’. Quean incidentally means hussy or prostitute.  

Now comes the quintessential question… why aren’t these words commonplace?

Going by statistics, I’d think that these words should have a wider representation. Interesting isn’t it that when a woman is ‘cockpecked’ (aiyyo! this word, this word!) the man is considered the epitome of manhood, alpha if you please and when she is ‘cuckqueaned’, the man is simply being a man! Nature of the beast and all.

Interesting no, cock and cuck, peckered and queaned. How phallic the fallacy. 

Me no pause...

I was asked whether I would choose to be reborn as a woman if I believed in reincarnation and mindlessly I said, of course! What do you think!

As always motor mouth sprints like Bolt before the brain can actually assimilate rational thought.

Struggling with menstruating once in two months and then twice a month, chafed thighs, volatile mood swings, hot flushes, bloating like a decomposing corpse, copious weight gain… would I still answer with the same nonchalance?

I know I am on the brink of the dreaded menopause (yeah I said it and it’s not a dirty word, except when the men in question pause when you’re almost at the apogee) and I’m morphing into a creature I do not recognize.

While traditional stereotypes are not who I aspire to be, I mean, Sita and Esther… good for them but they do not titillate my twat, I’m pretty clear of who I do not want to be!

I do not want to be jaded and vitriolic, disenchanted and inorganic, defeated and bummed out as I grow older.

I do not want to believe that the flush of my youth has ended and I have to behave ‘like a lady’ and act my age, I mean, even my body is telling me that apparently.

I do not want to quit yearning for adrenaline rushes, sinful blushes and some action behind the bushes.

Then again, the very question gets my panties into a knot, being reborn as a woman. WTF. Interesting though, the religions that do believe in reincarnation edict that being born as a woman is some sort of a punishment as the souls refines itself through karma and towards nirvana.

Bad karma apparently leads a soul to be reborn as a woman and is an obstacle towards attaining moksha. Forget the panties, my gut just did a Korbut flip and include the bloody uterus percolating crimson too, it just jiggled like hooters sans silicon. You get the drift.

No matter how excruciating the cramp and agonizing this teetering on the brink of mania, I’d do this over and over again. Be a woman that is.

Not extolling the virtues of womanhood, penning this has been exhausting enough and one could give free reign to their bent imagination.

However I will say this, I love the fact that I can allow myself to feel deeply with the core my being and experience emotions that at times threaten to sear me as well as embalm. To girdle my loins with steel while sporting a gossamer garter. To walk away from the unnecessary drama and watch life go by as I chill with  some hooch. To nurture and nourish, protect and cherish and sponge away the blues of those who are mine.

Yup, coming back as a woman. God help us all. I'm on a roll...

Me no pause...

Hype Oh Crite...

Hypocrisy is considered by some to be the eighth cardinal sin of man. Being consistently evil is in some ways better than being inconsistently nice. Inconsistency is thought to be the hallmark of a man of weak character, of one who cannot decisively control his own actions - Mendel Adelman.

I confess I'm hypocritical too, a trait I'm trying my best to minimize.

The current been in the bonnet is the poor unsuspecting ‘bindi’, if I'd known it would cause so much trouble, I'd have tattooed one on my forehead by now. Bindi is a coloured dot worn on the centre of the forehead, originally by Hindus and Jains. Bindu is considered the point at which creation begins and may become unity. It is also described as ‘the scared symbol of the cosmos in its unmanifested state’ - Wikipedia.

When one of the girls who married into my family said she loves my bindi’s and used to wear them before she got married, I asked her what stops you now and she said ‘I’m not allowed to wear’. ALLOWED??? Seriously!!!! By who exactly and the poor girl mumbled something incoherently.

When I narrated this to someone in the family, she says, “I hope you didn’t encourage her”.

I was ‘reminded’ that Protestant Christian women from my family and church in Mangalore do not and should not wear bindi’s as it is against our culture. Now that I am defying the traditions that I was so carefully brought up with, I should be mindful that I maybe encouraging other women in my family to follow suit and this is a cardinal sin (oh we have an entire glossary of sins that yours truly indulges in freely, if excommunication was allowed I’d be first in line for my ‘misdeeds’).

Twenty five blood vessels burst in my head simultaneously and before I could explode I was told, “You married out of the community so we don’t tell you anything but don’t encourage our girls to wear it, if her husband doesn’t like it, she shouldn’t”.

I’m astounded I’m still alive, really. The pressure in my cranium was immense and I asked the woman in question, “how can you even say that? Did you not tell me a week ago that you are not allowed to do the little things you like since your husband doesn’t ‘allow’ it? And did amnesia make its way into your being so quick… talk about double standards.”

Needless to say, our relationship is strained thinner than gossamer strings. I’m only lamenting on the many experiences we are shut ourselves from because of our hypocritical attitude. Women cry foul about subjugation when its themselves they are talking about but when its other women, especially younger women, ‘culture’ and ‘tradition’ are used like Damocles sword and chastity belts to reign them in.

We do not need anyone to clip our wings and shackle us, we do so ourselves dear fair sex, quit then the needless whining about 'equality', it's never going to adorn the portals of your abode as long as you are Janus faced.

When you say you're done with servility and would like some civility, can you please sit down, shut the f*ck up and practice consistency in speech and actions.

Oh come off it… hippo critters!

Symphony…

The end of the year is always a good time to do a recce on the year that passed and the crap I’ve done, the people I’ve pissed and wonder whether I could have done it any better, who did I miss!?!!?

 Fleetingly the challenges and obstacles of the year, the sometimes dignity of handling them with grace, streaks through the mind with Lady Godiva ish grandeur.

The word that’s doing the foxtrot in my head for now is ‘Symphony’. As defined in the dictionary, a symphony is “an elaborate musical composition for full orchestra, typically in four movements, at least one of which is traditionally in sonata form.”

This is a purely musical annotation of the word. A sonata is “a composition for an instrumental soloist, often with a piano accompaniment, typically in several movements with one or more in sonata form”.

Hmnnn… the elephant doing cartwheels in my cerebellum is wondering whether there has been any symphonic element during the year for yours truly.

So, four movements of a symphony are quite akin to the four seasons methinks: spring, summer, monsoon and winter. 

Also to the highs and lows of the year which each of these seasons denote.

Now remember that one of these movements, have to be a sonata... or playing solo. Which one of these have I been spanking the monkey at? 

I gaze unblinking until my eyes dilate better than you-know-what at a D&C procedure until the phosphenes twirl in my orbs in concentric circles.

The psychedelic moment passes and lucidity allows me to reconnoiter that there really hasn’t been one specific season that I’ve been cranking the shank, every individual period has had its fair share of sonatas.

And that is probably what keeps me sane. To be able to disconnect from the melee around me or the fracas in my mind and focus, if briefly on the evanescence and impermanence of it all. My father in law loved the phrase, ‘that too shall pass away’ and I’ve girded my loins (which explains my retroverted uterus) with it.

In the summers of the year when you flirt with the highest point in the bell curve or at winters when the dip reaches the nadir, all one needs is to take one step or maybe two, back and take a few deep breaths and introspect on how much energy one really needs to spend on the triviality that is not worth a tinkers damn in a few years, months or even days.

Now that we have established that the sonatas have been multitudinous, has the symphony been pleasing to the ear or jarred the senses. Did the orchestra have consonance and equilibrium. Did we play in tandem.

Again, those little buggers did the jig in my eyes as I stare at the screen blankly and now I see blue dots do the striptease. 

Fact is that the concinnity has been sporadic and random.

That is what this thingummy jig is after all isn’t it… of irregular cadences, the bass and the tenor going off key at times, the string quartet at loggerheads with the percussionists and the conductor throwing the baton in, only to sigh in resignation and bravely pick it up with hope that each person plays their part to the best of their abilities.

That we will celebrate the composition of different elements, even when the concerto doesn’t play to the audience, to be true to the self and not simply simper... phony.

I'm..fallible

Just finished this marvelous book by Val Brelinski, "The Girl Who Slept with God" and I couldn't have chosen a more opportune time to reading it.
Christmas has always been my favorite season. As a young girl brought up in the devout Protestant faith of my parents, Christmas was a season for love, for festivities, new clothes, presents, sweetmeats, family gatherings and above all, of faith.

Of the birth of the Lord, of new beginnings, of a better tomorrow, in short... of faith.

Val Brelinski with her utterly simple and evocative narrative describes a family that is extremely religious, not a scenario I identify myself with although there are some extremely judgmental passages about the shenanigans of the 'wicked world' and the sins that one can 'succumb' to. The teachings of a conservative church that most 'faithful' ascribe to, when it suits them of course.

The narrative draws you to a web of fallibility that each one of us subscribe to, as children, spouses and parents. Of the decisions we ascribe to thinking that we do so in the best interests of the family and how hopelessly selfish each one of them is.

There are passages in the book that make you want to exclaim with anger tinged with pain and there are those rebellious actions of a fourteen year old that urge you to simply say, 'atta girl!' You want to hammer the parents and wallop the girls at times and there are times when you simply resign yourself to the futility of all the dissent and wish we lived in a simpler world where God was your ally and not this fearsome creature who waits to punish you for every misdeed. Well God knows I'm past master at those!

The book brings back memories of personal defiance as a girl, of incredibly stupid resolutions as a parent and some pathetic behavior as a human that makes me hang my head in gut wrenching shame. Prostitutes may not confess to a priest but thank heavens I have a blog to sate this desire to expunge.

The book has a melancholic ending and you wish with every fiber of your being that its denouement was positive. And yet, though one of the protagonists is but ashes at age seventeen, the fourteen year old (alter ego?) chooses a simpler path although she's the mother of everything convoluted. She chooses to forgive, a grace that belies her age. Above all, she gives credence to that which she cannot see, but can feel.

This for me is the message of Christmas this year, that I'm fallible and will forever be and maybe that's ok... as long as I posses the honesty to accept that, the tenacity to ensure I minimize the damage and the forever faith that there is one person who is Infallible, to whom I can turn and rest my yoke when life turns dreary.

It's a new day, a new beginning and every Christmas is the harbinger of this faith, love and hope, HE's Infallible and I'm fallible.

Merry Christmas to you and yours.