Fine Vintage

So there I was supposedly working on these articles written by the students for the annual college magazine in, uh, not so hot English. Then I see this Twitter update by Pastor Rick Warren who has such a great sense of humour. It's funny and pert and gets me kickstarted on good thoughts about getting mellow with the years.

I am no longer young enough to be right about everything,

lost my idealism,

the fierce insistence I always need to be right.

I no longer see things in black and white,

reality is too complex

and life comes in shades of grey.

It no longer matters that I should always be right,

I'm happy now to step back,

to let life surprise me

and expect the unexpected.

A feel good post. Thank you, Pastor Warren.

A Mother is a Mother Still...

"Mothers hold their children's hands for a short while but their hearts forever" ~ Author unknown

Mother's Day tomorrow. Another trend that's broken out its western confines and gone international. At least online. I seriously doubt any of the worthy mothers in my near neighburhood are aware it's "their" day. Or that they actually even have a day at all. Facebook has been throwing up a lot of reminders over the last few days and after taking my laptop in for an overnighter to get extra RAM added and Windows 7 installed, I finally succumbed today and put my mum's picture as my profile picture. Which led me on to feel the urge to put up a tribute blog post as well.

Everybody thinks their mum is unique and so do I. And though I know I've blogged about her a few times already, well, she deserves this. My mum was one of the intelligent people I've ever known, incredibly sharp and astute and very quick on the button about most everything. Despite that, she was also often unbelievably vulnerable especially after being widowed early with four young daughters to bring up. We used to have this picture of my parents on their wedding day; her veil slightly lifted away from her face by a breeze but both she and Dad oblivious to it, smiling ever so happily into the camera. My sister cut it out to fit into this tiny little picture frame that stood in our sitting room and I remember once looking at it in between dusting, and thinking how happy they looked and how unsuspecting they were that they had only 14 years to live together.

Strangely, though Mother's Day is a concept that we had only read about in western books, in the last year of her life, Mum got to celebrate her day. In Mumbai where we'd gone for her cancer treatment, we went to church on this Sunday morning which turned out to be the 8th of May and all the mothers in the congregation were each presented with a sweet red rosebud on a long graceful stem. What a lovely surprise that was for Mum, and a fitting tribute on her last ever Mother's Day.

Picture, picture on the wall

Another Holy Week gone, a time of forgiveness and new life and fresh commitment, as well as a poignant new reminder that some day because of Resurrection Day, I will be reunited with lost loved ones. My thoughts were specially with Parteii this year - you are so deeply missed, my friend.

~~~

On a happier note, I had been meaning to post these earlier but with one thing after another, I completely fogged out. Earlier last month, there was another photo exhibition, this time with a theme, albeit a rather open one -  My Mizoram. I had wanted to send in a picture of a church captured within a wineglass which I figure epitomises Mizoram best.  After all these are the two most dominant issues here - the Church and alcohol, both with their own teams of highly vociferous supporters. But to my total frustration, I just couldn't get the picture I wanted - my skills just not good enough to translate into digitised form what was in my mind's eye. In the end, without any great enthusiasm I sent in a couple of pictures  and surprise, surprise, one of them actually sold again! And yes, a bird picture again, this time of a red-vented bulbul that remained perched atop a tree in our garden for ages on the evening of Parteii's funeral.

I felt so emotional about having clinched a sale again, despite being such a know-nothing about photography in the first place, I thought I'd return the favour and purchase one of the pictures myself. And this is the one I picked. 

Taken by TZa, I can see now that the black and white layout is actually a better option for an exhibit considering  the local guys don't do colour printing of large photos all that well. I love the arid starkness of the landscape with the rundown tin shack, the giraffe-necked tree with leaves clumped impossibly out of reach at the very top, the barren earth littered with dry leaves and twigs, and the lone female figure seemingly emerging out of the wasted background like a Venus rising out of the sea. Haven't actually got it framed it yet but it's definitely slated to grace my walls very shortly.

I wonder

I keep on searching for the old me

I keep on thinking I can change

I keep on hoping for a new day

Will I ever feel the same

Now I wonder..

*Chris Isaak

Betrayal: the residue

Hurt

Pain

Hollow

Aching

Pain

Can't eat

Can't sleep

Can't breathe

Pain

Heavy

Tearing

Pain

Why why why

What did I ever do to you?

Was this what you meant by

always and forever?

Passage

Winter shreds

the leaves from the trees;

denuded, desolate, defenceless,

they stand in silence.

But Spring comes

and out of the bleak nothingness,

a new life breathes.

The old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.

Getting back to Basics

Seems like a small lifetime's come and gone since my last post, so much has happened or so it seems like. Or maybe it's just me and my perspectives on things. One happenstance being that I've realised how badly addicted I am to the internet. Ok I've known that for a while but never really wanted to own up to it. But it took something devastating in my personal life recently to shock me out of my complacency and realise how my Net addiction has eaten up huge chunks of my time and life. Most damagingly, I've realised how far away I've drifted from the Lord and that hasn't been simply because I sit for hours on end before the computor but in what goes on in that time. I know some of you probably imagine I surf a lot of porn. Hah, if only. No, my favourite online activity for these many years has been chatting and making friends with people I'd never have got to know otherwise. I started out hanging out in MIRC chatrooms, then graduated on to forums, and that was where I think the rot set in. There are so many different kinds of people online as there are offline obviously - some decent, normal, God-fearing folks, some plain antagonistic towards any kind of religious talk, and some, the most dangerous kind I now think, are those who are quite normal, ordinary, fun-loving, nice, everyday folks, born and brought up in Christian homes but have no religious/spiritual personal beliefs or experiences, and so tend to rationalize everything from a logical point of view. Looking back, I know for certain that's where I began to lose my rock solid beliefs and my faith began eroding.

Deaddiction, I've found, is incredibly tough. I've bought a book called Breaking Everday Addictions by a Dr. David Hawkins, which I'd picked up and glanced through idly several months ago but didn't think necessary to actually buy. Obviously it's a huge step forward that I bought the book and am reading it - accepting the fact that you have an addiction and want to reclaim your life being the first requirement. I quote from the book: "Besides taking us away from ourselves, addictions take us away from God. Every hour we spend sitting in front of the computor screen or gazing mindlessly at the slot machine or even texting friends is time we are not spending with God. Gambling and Internet addictions take us away from the real world and an important part of that real world is our relationship with God. Breaking the bonds of addiction therefore must include a conscious decision to increase our contact with God - we must be deliberate about making time for God in our lives."

As I said earlier, it's tough getting deaddicted and I'm only just starting out. But I've also found small ways of getting even, if you can call it that, by consciously making time for God in my online activities by being more careful in the people I interact with and the things I read online. Every little bit helps.

Thoughts that lie too deep for tears

One of the most poignant things I've ever heard about the pain of bereavement came from a Sunday School colleague a few years ago. The older brother of D, another fellow teacher, had died and as we assembled together at their house to condole with him, this guy A, normally the most jovial, joke-cracking kind, spoke of how the dead guy had always been like an older brother for him. Struggling to hold back tears, he wondered why God allowed us to love each other so deeply when we must die and be parted forever. Why couldn't He have made us to love less deeply so that when death came, the parting would be more bearable and less heartbreaking.

Two weeks ago, on the evening of the 3rd of February, a good friend died. Parteii had been diagnosed with ovarian cancer two years ago and I had written about her here. At the time, I had wondered idly how it'd feel if she died. I've experienced a few bereavements in my time: first my father, then my mother, and in between and after, assorted blood relations, well-loved pets. This is the first time ever that a close friend has died.

I don't make friends easily and don't have many either. P and I got to be friends from being Sunday School teachers in the children's departments for several years, and this would've been the 17th. In many ways, we didn't have a lot in common. She had been born and brought up in a village and then came to continue college in Aizawl, found a good government job and settled down here, accomodating assorted nieces and nephews while her folks continued to live in Thenzawl. In many other ways though, we bonded instantly. It was a time when my mother had recently died and the onus of visiting bereaved families and paying condolences, in Mizo social tradition, fell on me. P was also active in Church and lived alone with no one else to rely on to do the condolence visiting thing. With another friend MB, also in circumstances similar to hers, we met up and went for these obligatory condolence visits together. Over time, we became close friends, being in the same age group, and single and childless.

A gentle spirit, steady, consistent, unassuming and unobtrusive, and coming from a religious family, clean-living and church-minded, her cancer came as a shock to us all. But in the months that followed, she remained calm and upbeat, invariably comforting us instead with her cheerful, philosophical attitude. A memory that shames me every time I think back on it is when I had been going through a low time at the beginning of last year. I visited her at home and cribbed about how everyone else seemed to be moving ahead while I was stuck in a rut and going nowhere. She listened quietly and spoke a few encouraging words, not caring to remind me that she had cancer and was in a far less advantageous position.

It saddened us all that she didn't have an adult relative living with her, taking care of her and her medical treatments. But when I once broached the subject with her, she said quite firmly that she had consciously taken the decision not to marry so she did not ever want to trouble her siblings or family in any way. Of course, when her final days came, her family came together for her. By then, she had grown skeletal and gaunt, and it was painful to even see her. We all knew there was no hope of recovery and prayed for a painless release, but when she eventually passed on, it was and still is, something that's difficult to come to terms with.

What I shall miss most about her as I realise belatedly was her always obliging readiness in coming to condolence visits with me. There were times when she'd have already gone with someone else but if I mentioned that I hadn't done my bit yet, she would say, "Do you want to go, Zualte? Then I'll come with you. I don't mind going again."

Rest in peace, my friend. Hon hoi theoi philousin apothneskei neos. They, whom the gods love, die young. And we shall meet again some day.