Show me how you look and I'll tell you who you are

Conceded, that at birth, none of us were consulted on the way we might want to look. Nose, lips, hair, body parts, general body structure, nada nada nada. But it struck me this evening as I was on my way home from work, could the way we were born looks-wise have influenced the way we act and behave? Do our looks typecast us into certain behavioural patterns?

In the traffic jam at a busy junction this evening, there was this vai guy driving one of those chirpy little new cars, I forget which, besides not being really able to identify any car other than the ubiquitous Maruti 800. Anyway this guy reminded me of someone I had seen recently somewhere though I couldn't immediately place who or where. So he wasn't to blame for how he looked but that being the way he was, I mentally typecast him as one of those vai men in their 30s or 40s, averagely well-off but not too affluent, conventional but a bit of a lech when opportunity presented itself, reasonably well-educated and bright but not overly so, fairly widely-travelled, a paunch held in by a tight belt (he was sitting and I couldn't actually see anything other than his face), a bit of a fatty chest, probably smelling of aftershave or some sweetish body spray such men seem to favour.

Ok so I was probably stereotyping him but it did bring me to reflect on the question I brought up earlier: do our looks typecast us into certain behavioural patterns? I think it does. And about 5 minutes after I sighted the guy, I realised who he had reminded me of - Principal Figgins from Glee.

A Mindset Reflective

Came across the Mindset List a few days ago and among other things, it forcibly brought home just how quickly time flies and how rapidly things change and get as outdated as fads doing a fastfade into oblivion.

It's an unsettling thought that socio-cultural milestones can disappear so completely from generational memory or morph into something quite unrecognisable. Kind of disorienting. Like goalposts bobbing around like bouys instead of staying fixed in position. It also gives me a niggling sense of disquiet as to what touchstones do we have left that won't shift or drift with time and new developments. Is nothing constant anymore?

A couple of weeks ago I was watching a fellow Sunday School teacher earnestly telling the kids about life choices and how they could shape their own futures by the proper use of those choices. Now I've heard so much negative reports about kids these days, especially school-going kids, I have to confess that I was cynically wondering how much any of the lesson was going down. As usual the kids were sitting quietly and seemingly listening politely but I couldn't shake off the feeling they weren't all there. With all the transformations in attitudes and outlooks that have come with cultural meltdowns and fast changing lifestyles, aided and abetted by technology and the media, kids today have such radically different views and look-outs, and parents and adults seem to be left behind in the dark, fumbling their way through all the dizzying shifts and turns of societal changes.

Change is good most times, and technology is amazing. But nothing comes without a price, and I suspect that's where our age-old constants will eventually be robbed. In Mizoram where the community is still close-knit, society classless and religion respected, I don't look forward to the time when the Mizo mindset might reduce all these to nothing. Or morph them into unrecognisable shapes and patterns.

Of Love and Rain

For my baby. With apologies to Thomas Lowell Beddoes for slight changes to his Song, and credit to John Walford for his breathtaking Raindrop Rhapsody.

Patience on a Leash

Since I got home from work Thursday evening, a neighbour has been treating us all to loud sessions of uninhibited, frenzied drumming. Not sure if he bought himself a new kit or borrowed the gear but the first couple of days, at any time the mood took him, he'd play a snatch of Winds of Change, Always Somewhere or some other 80s rock classic and enthusiastically launch into the drum parts. Drums, cymbals, et al, all smashed with the greatest gusto. The first night, he struck up after 9 which is on the sedate side of the evening in these parts, and the next morning, I could hear him banging away around 5. Mercifully, he hasn't been so inconsiderate with his timings since then, only slapping his trap set in broad daylight when everyone's presumably wide awake already.

Mind you, he's not one of those drug/alchohol-ics. Edging close to 40, he's always been a really nice, helpful fellow, very involved with church activities etc, though when I think back, he always did like cranking up his music system a notch too high on occasion. What's probably set him off the deep end is that his wife died of brain cancer a year ago. It was one of those fast-acting cancers and after a few weeks in hospital, she just gave up, leaving three kids and a young husband. The kids ranging in age from 14 to 7 are schooling in Shillong where his parents live, which means he lives here alone with nothing but memories. Reason enough to go more than a little berserk, I know, and the neighbours are humouring him by sympathetically putting up with the racket. But when the crash boom bang gets a little too much, I wish social niceties and etiquette could just be shoved aside and someone would pipe up in capital letters S-H-A-D-D-U-P!

The way it is

Busy times these. Humid, hectic. The hearing in my right ear is still overly sensitive so I've been avoiding attending church services with the obligatory drums pounding deep into the recesses of my ear bones and making me miserable. It's almost 3 months after the surgery but I have no idea when my ear will acclimatise itself. Also most sounds are still higher on the bass register and I can't wait to be able to hear treble notes again.

I've also put on a lot of weight. Not sure how much precisely since I don't make a habit of stepping on the scales but definitely enough for all my clothes to feel tight and stretched. And that's if I can still get into them at all. I feel heavy, slow and sluggish, and the monsoonal weather isn't helping any. Oh, and did I mention my arthritis? I inherited it from my maternal grandmother who couldn't get up from a herhsawp (a low circular stool made of cane or bamboo) without clutching her knees and yelping "Aaih, aaih, aaih!"

The World Cup was great. The last two passed by with me not really registering much of it because it takes a lot to wean me off the computor and the internet. This time Facebook provided great company. A page called Ban the Annoying Vuvuzela etc gave me daily laughs as people (as in regular, eloquent, adult folks and not silly, incoherent teens) threw in wit, sarcasm, indignation, annoyance, and a generous dose of plain stupidity to make for a very lively discussion group. Unfortunately, the page sank under the weight of its own popularity, and disappeared halfway through the competition.

At work, I've been assigned something new that I'm not sure I can do justice to. Rhetoric and prosody is something that I never formally studied so it's going to be a tremendous challenge mastering all the intricacies involved enough to be able to teach it all in turn. I know I'm going to benefit a lot from it once I sort out what's what but for the moment, argh, my workload weighs heavy. Wish me luck.

With the angels..

Totie passed away this afternoon. He was 13. He was named indirectly after Dodie, the man Princess Diana died with, and who were both in the news at the time. My sister thought the name Dodie was just so cute and begged to name the puppy with it but I said no, so we settled on Totie. 13 years is a long time especially for dogs. I read somewhere that 1 human year equals 7 for a dog so that would mean Totie was 91. While he did have filmy eyes, decaying teeth, incontinence, and not too sharp hearing, our 5 year Koorie kept him lively, dragging him to play when he would have probably preferred to sleep quietly. Totie sometimes snapped back impatiently but most times, he let Koorie tease him around, which inadvertently helped him get some good exercise.

As my sister and I have been leafing through old photographs of our many dogs, we're having problems remembering who was born when, whose mother was who, whose sibling was who and so on. We're also realising that 13 years is also a long, long time for human beings.

My 15 Minutes of Fame

Just when I was thinking I've been there, done that, seen everything there is to be seen in life, along came this. The feeling is incredibly sweet. Having somebody appreciate something you've done to the extent they're happy to fork out money to buy it is just mindblowingly ego-boosting. Especially when it's so completely unexpected.

It's also been something of a major eye-opener. Though I don't really know a thing about art, I enjoy visiting the local art shows and often come across a piece that catches my eye. But I usually psyche myself out of actually making a buy. It's either too expensive or the artist is too unknown or the colour won't suit our walls or something or the other. An artist friend of mine keeps telling me to buy something to "encourage" the young talents but I never do. This experience has shown me how exhilarating, inspiring and galvanizing it is having something you've done monetarily appreciated. Sure, mine wasn't the best piece of photography on display. There were several others with great style, technique, impact and what have you. But this guy comes along and connects with my picture and instead of dilly-dallying like I usually do, clinches the deal. Moral of story: you may not be the most well-off person you know but if it's not going to set you back too badly, pick up a piece that speaks to you and go for it. At the end of the day, art isn't really about technique or colour co-ordination or future investments but something that speaks to your heart.

Who will Love a Little Sparrow?

Who will love a little sparrow?

Will no one write her eulogy?

- Paul Simon

And so in typical airbrained female fashion, after all my angst over my SLR cam, I went and got myself a zoom lens and have been happily discovering the world of difference it makes to my photographs. I still know zilch about the techno aspects of the cam - still in blissfully ignorant limbo about shutter speeds, exposures, ISOs and the like. But even in auto mode, I'm just blown away by the results.

I've been specially concentrating on the sparrows that throng the Mayflower tree right by the house. Leastways, I got in a few shots on a couple of sunny days till the weather turned on its head and has been spewing waterworks endlessly over the last couple of weeks, and just about denuding the tree of its vibrant, scarlet flowers. I've discovered first hand that birds are infuriatingly difficult to shoot because they're so timid and fly away at the slightest sound or movement. Also they just won't stay still unless you catch them at special moments. I have to say I've developed a very healthy respect for birdwatchers. That kind of patience is just phenomenal.

Though I haven't exactly managed to get really, really good shots yet, these are a few that I really like, even if I do say so myself. A couple of them I was even pursuaded to send in for a local photo exhibit that started today. I was bursting with curiousity to see how good or bad they looked so I went to check after work. It felt strange seeing something you had created out in public for everyone to see and though they aren't great pictures by any means, I'm proud of my little sparrows :)