From the outside looking in

Ever have that outsider desperately wanting to belong feeling on coming across an invitingly cozy cocoon of light, warmth and comfort on a cold dark night?

Along Life's Pathway

How amazingly perceptions can change with age and experience. As I was hanging out clothes in the sunshine today, a young teenaged boy on the road across was turning around a gleaming red motorcycle that looked new. He was coiffed and combed and nattily turned-out. Had probably taken him ages to get ready and was obviously anticipating a lot of peer admiration and envy but the impression that struck me was quite the opposite. I wondered if young people who go around flaunting expensive new geegaws are aware how spoiled and shallow they actually appear. They obviously can't afford such extravaganza themselves, especially when they don't even look like they've done a day's labour in their young lives. But with the smug attitude of the cat that got all the cream, they exhibit luxuries with an affected casual nonchalance that's actually quite laughable when you really think about it.

When you're young and impressionable, all you see is what your eyes show you but experience reveal hidden aspects of the very same view.

Turning Artsy

As blogging gets relegated to an increasingly less important activity on my online program, I find myself discovering newer ways of self-expression. One of these being this web-based application that lets you mix, match, collate and collage images at www.polyvore.com. Never having been any kind of dab hand at drawing, sketching, painting and the other things that are effectively known as art in school, I've often wondered if I have any creative, artistic instinct in me. Well, polyvore has let me happily explore and indulge that part of me. My four creations in as many days thus far.

My first - I initially thought the place was just about fashion which explains this rather unlikely montage from me. Steppin' out in style.

My second - I deliberately set out to create a vibrant burst of colours since the first one had been somewhat monochromatic. A happy patchwork this if I may say so - Music and Butterflies.

My third came about purely as a result of all the gorgeous jewellery pieces I picked up. What every woman wants - Bling it on, girl!

And this is something I made just an hour ago. The Angels called Home Too Soon. Brought on in a rather reflective frame of mind following the sudden heart attack death of a friend's wife yesterday. He paid a moving tribute to her saying she had always been both wife and mother to him and he could not imagine how he and their two young kids would possibly do without her.

By the way, this technique is called layering and I find it incredibly exciting to work with in the sense that it's possible for anyone to produce something close to a great piece of abstract art this way! Just loving every moment of this.

Whose perspective is it anyway?

Funny how skewed perspectives can get. I say this with particular reference to the insensitive but widely-held notion in these local parts that spinsters are mostly either all pathetic or desperate specimens of humanity, and that, to put it delicately, once you're past the first flush of youth, you're supposed to meekly accept you're now fair game to being the butt of crude public jokes about old maids etc. My fellow blogger Aduhi vented on all of that here so I don't plan to tread into that territory now.

What I'm more focused on is that having being a netizen for several years now and the Mizo online circle being primarily dominated by people below 30 years of age, I've pretty much resigned myself to being thought of as something of a senior citizen. Even with these handles/nicknames/online personaes we all create, I still get the oh so respectful U attached to my online names. Helloo, that's quite unnecessary since I don't even know you personally and probably never will.

A senior citizen online and an old maid in daily life, little wonder I've been deluded into thinking I must have one foot in the grave. Last evening shattered that idea. Another fellow blogger wanted a picture of an old Mizo woman reading a book and asked if I had one. I said no, being busy harvesting pineapples and other virtual produce. The incorrigible fellow persisted, saying I could take one of myself and he'd blacken out my face. (yes, indeedy, I have the chat log right here, thanks to gmail's dinky little chat log feature) Being the obliging kind, I did as requested and duly sent the picture - all within half an hour, at the very least I'm sure. He examined the picture carefully, said he'd have to edit it a lot and finally said something that brings us all to the point of this post: "ure not old enuff though :( but ill take care of that too." I quickly ran a critical eye over the picture and aha, even to my tired, bleary eyes I certainly didn't exactly qualify for an Old Woman prototype. Anything but.

Thanks, Amos, I owe you one :D

Goofed!

I'd thought I've grown out of those out-of-body experiences. You know, those experiences that leave you so mortified you feel disconnected from your body and like you're in a dream watching yourself being stupid from a hazy, far-off distance.

But I had another one today at work. This academic session, the powers that be finally threw out the outdated chalk and blackboards that rack up so much dust and put up pristine new whiteboards. As thrilled as we were at first with the tech progress, we quickly realised that writing on the slippery boards with felt markers isn't as easy as with the old chalk sticks and rough blackboards. Especially in letters large enough for everyone in a big room to read. And especially in anything resembling our usual handwriting.

My boo-boo today was taking in to class what I thought was my usual, black, whiteboard marker. So on a beautiful, sparkling, white-as-the-driven-snow board, I wrote out in large, crooked letters Hamlet as a Revenge tragedy/play. I did wonder at the time why the pen tip seemed so much finer than other days but it was only when I tried to rub it off that I realised I'd just accidentally used a permanent marker. Ack.

I went hot and cold all over but quickly composed myself and went on as if blissfully unaware of my gaffe. Class over, I wondered worriedly if my unslightly script would remain on the wall forever and what other teachers would think while always having to carefully navigate whatever it was they had to write around my permanent snafu. I wondered if I'd have to pay up for an expensive new board and if the one I'd damaged would be stored away somewhere, always bearing my ignominious bungle upon it.

As it turned out, I went to the office to report my blooper and the office staff assured me that someone else had done the same thing a couple of weeks earlier and they had effectively erased it all with a rag and white correcting fluid. Phew. If only all our slip-ups could be as easily wiped out.

Childhood Vignettes

Been meaning to post these old pictures but only after I'd touched them up a bit. Well, they required a bit more touching up than I'm equipped for so I've finally decided to just put them up and put out of your misery all you poor folks who have been dropping in here hoping to see something new hehe.

I just love this picture. In the wake of the Mizo insurgency, the family fled to Shillong and settled there. At least, us children settled there with Mum's parents while Mum and Dad stayed on in Aizawl since Dad was in govt service. It wasn't often they could come visit, especially Dad, so family get-togethers were rare and pretty joyous occasions.

My grandfather was one of the kindest men that ever lived. His name was Zalawra and he helped start up the Mizo Presbyterian Sunday School. We used to have a picture of him and a little me going off to church together on a lovely sunday morning but ack, despite frenetic hunts for it I just can't find it. Grandfather was the strong, silent, hardworking, bookworm type and one treasured memory I have of him is a beautiful, gold-coloured little pen that came with the tiny little diary he had (they made tiny diaries in the old days) and I loved the pen so much that he eventually gave it to me. That was when I couldn't even properly write anything yet. He was run over one evening in Shillong on his way home from church by a speeding car whose driver was never known.

My youngest sister wasn't born yet here. She came as something as an afterthought. Which reminds me we used to have a lot of pictures of her as a baby, even on the lawns of Roberts ' Hospital in Shillong where she was born so I must go look for those to scan. Childhood memories disappear so quickly without pictures, and the pictures themselves fade, mildew, get misplaced or eventually just lose all significance for the living.

The Practical Woman's Guide to Commonsensical Feminism

Perhaps because I'm a single, working, financially independent woman, people often assume I must also be a hardbitten, raving feminist. The kind who doesn't need a man at all and goes around talking men down and putting them in their place. Not quite.

With no brothers and my father dying young, I grew up in a very feminine environment. There was my mother, grandmother and three sisters. No man to kowtow to or lording it over the womenfolk, expecting to be waited upon or cleaned up after. No male so visually challenged or physically incompetent that he must royally summon a wife or daughter to turn on the radio that's just within his reach as he sits hogging the TV. At least that's what a friend once said was one of her father's most aggravating habits. When I reminded her about it recently, she said that was just what her husband now does, adding exasperatedly why is it that men just cannot seem to find anything around the house even if it's right in front of their noses.

I sympathise entirely with women who have to put up with that kind of running-after-grown-men-as-if-they're-infants-in-diapers affliction. At least infants grow out of their diapers into a happy I-can-take-care-of-myself-now independence. If they're not male, that is, hyuk hyuk.

Snipes apart, I'm not really one for an all-out, virulent feminism. In fact, I think men are really very useful creatures. And that's not being sardonic. I do really, actually mean it.

Precisely because I grew up and continue to live in a feminine environment, I've learnt to appreciate and be thankful for the way Nature has programmed and hardwired the male of the species. They don't think like us, for one thing, and I have the greatest respect for the male thought process especially in practical matters. Time and again, there have been problems around the house that leave me stumped and male friends/neighbours/relatives have bailed me out. Their qualifications and training often don't even begin to enter the picture. Just being male somehow seems to equip them with a natural-born know-how.

Unplugging drains and deflooding sinks, working out kinks in the mechanics of all things mechanical, sizing up a worrisome situation and swiftly coming up with a workable solution, I've lost count of the number of times men have come to our rescue with invaluable help and advice. A few years ago when we first brought my paraplegic sister home from hospital, I remember desperately wanting practical male advice on how to re-plan her room and parts of the house, and later her wheelchair so it could hold a toilet bowl. One by one, things fell into place with the systematic aid and advice of male guardian angels.

So it often seems absurd and unrealistic to me when overly strident feminists raise ex-parte slogans like Down With Men! Women Power! and the like. I believe in the indispensability of the male of the species. I believe in the structure of the male brain that approaches and responds to a problem coolly and logically. I believe men complement women perfectly by providing a down to earth take on things while women open up men's eyes to the emotional aspects of life. Ultimately, in the grand scheme of things, I believe in the perfection of the Maker's design in creating both male and female differently to form a complete whole. And vive la différence.

Sotto Voce

Just back from church and another sunday school session where I once again almost caused myself bodily harm trying to make myself audible to my little class of 8 teenaged girls, some of whom by the way, are much taller than me even in my 3 inch heels. That's the story of my life. Not the everyone towering over me bit. At 5'2, I'm perfectly happy with my view of the ground. What I'm not so happy about is my aggravatingly soft voice.

For as long as I can remember I was always told, "Speak up. Talk louder, nobody can hear you." I was always having to repeat myself. It didn't help that I was one of those painfully shy children who hang their heads and just can't seem to bring themselves to say a discernable word no matter how much they're coaxed. Of course as you get older, you don't find understanding, sympathetic adults supervising and helping your every move so I somehow must have learned to make a few slightly more distinct sounds over the years as I grew up. I have fond, proud memories of loud laughfests with friends and family, heated arguments - even the occasional screamathon with siblings, and then standing up in public and saying things without help of an amplifier. I even ended up with a job that calls for good, loud speaking, of all things.

But my poor voice remains my bugbear. Even when I think I'm speaking perfectly distinctly, people say, "Sorry, what did you say?" My sister constantly tells me to stop mumbling and at work, I haven't been given a large class (meaning something in excess of a 100 kids) for quite a few years now. Even with my smallish, 10 to 20 elite Honours classes, I still occasionally notice kids with furrowed brows, obviously straining against the noise pollution outside to catch the pearls of wisdom dropping from the teacher's mouth :D

Once in a while I do try lung exercises - the deep breaths in and out thing, and once it struck me that blowing balloons might be a great help. But I can never really remember to do it on a regular basis. So much as I'd love to sound authoritative and commanding and have people in splits with sharp, sotto voced repartee, I think I'll just have to resign myself to speaking pianissimo and have people eye me dubiously and go, "Yes dear, what was that again?"