My Mountain, My Time

No one can choose your mountain,

or tell you when to climb.  

It's yours, and yours alone 

to challenge 

at your own pace

and time.

Nobody Waved Goodbye

How much can a man really take
When he's pushed himself too far
He knows that his mind's gonna break
He's been trying to follow his star..

I don't really know Amy Winehouse. Heard of her, yes, but a little too contemporary for these olde ears. But the drama of her sudden death last night with all the talk of the 27 Club made me remember and hunt down an old magazine article that I'd saved and treasured years and years ago. A time when rock stars were idols, and the more tragic and turbulent their lives, the more glamourous they seemed. The article, beautifully written in the way that only an articulate, high-brow, widely-read,  Indian rock music fan could have written. I'd have loved to reproduce it all out here but it's way too lengthy and my butt is aching to be let off this chair so I'll just post the article in its well worn entirety in memory of once-upon-a-time heroes who died too soon.

Crazy little thing called life

I don't do that - hang out with an older crowd. Just the opposite, in fact. Both in real life and online. Not for any feel young factor but a purely practical reason: I don't have a lot to relate to with people my age. Meaning people my age are all married, with kids, grandkids even, and I don't talk their talk. Which leaves me with not much choice but to hang out and trade inanities with younger and younger people. Kind of a Tithonus situation maybe but I'm not complaining too much. Sometimes my peers make me tired. It's wearying listening to health problems all the time.  I'd rather stay on the loose wire and talk tech...er, fun tech (in case any real techies on this page get the guffaws). I mean, the world's getting techier and techier, right?

To get away from the age thing to another dicey topic - the gender divide, why are guys so weird? There's this guy I got to know from an online games room several years ago -  a nice guy though definitely something of a bad boy. In between the time he dropped out of cyberspace, he got his act cleaned up, became involved in church activities, and met this girl who was lovely and well, a little out of his league, I kind of thought. I often came across them together and they were a pretty solid item for quite a while. Then recently I came across his wedding pictures on Facebook and whoa, the bride wasn't his longtime girlfriend. Turns out the duo had not been on speaking terms for some time, and in between, boy had got another girl knocked up and had no option but to marry her and forget much-loved girlfriend. The common friend who told me this said he'd been the one who'd had to break the news to the girlfriend and that it had been, well, brutal. Little wonder the bride and groom had looked a little grim in the wedding pictures. Why are men so base scurrilious   unable to keep their libidos under control  hell-bent on self-destruction weird?

Just when you thought you knew everything....

So shoot me but being an English teacher can be such a frustrating, aggravating job, it often leaves me seriously questioning the existence of cerebral matter in my students. 

Last week though, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that one of them had actually written and published a book towards the end of last year. No, wait, as it turns out, three kids had published books last year. One was something of a how-to book for teens. Growing-up angst, career advice, etc. I didn't actually read it but I was at the book launch, and the writer, a bespectacled, seriously serious, earnest, old beyond his years type droned on about it at some length. To be honest, it sounded to me like cleverly culled and translated extracts from English books and magazines. Student #2's book was a laugh-fest kind of book, I think. Not sure since I haven't read it either. But this one I discovered last week is a real, honest to goodness, 160 paged work of fictitious literature with a proper plot, characters, dialogue, settings et al. Er, I've only read three chapters so far but it's surprisingly well-written and compact thus far.

The real reason I'm so almighty impressed is that the writer is only 20. Mapuia was born in 1990, the same year as my second nephew. And it puts me to shame, that statistic. I certainly never was that coherent or articulate at that age, never mind mature enough to cobble together an authentic, creative work of fiction.

As Tevye put it in Fiddler on the Roof, modern children, sigh. They drive you up the wall and kill you with their silliness, and then they turn around and teach you a thing or two. Respect, kids.

For Dad

Always wanted to do a write-up on Dad but somehow it was always Mum I ended up writing about. Now since it's Father's Day tomorrow and I have this dearly-prized old picture of Dad carrying a baby me, I figure this is a good time to do a father post.

Dad was always something of a James Bond figure, being the only male in a sea of females. Only son with six sisters, and father of four daughters and no sons, I never once heard him grouch about not having a son. But then Dad was always ahead of his time. 

Born and raised in the southern part of the state, he was an Edmunds graduate and then went on to Mumbai (then Bombay, of course) for a Masters' degree in Social Work. Lots of old photos of him as a skinny, smiling young man with lots of friends, both Mizo and non-Mizo. Then he met Mum and they fell in love and got married, and lived happily ever after...at least for about 14 years. Maybe it was because he loved cancer sticks (I remember the cartons of Panama cigarettes around the house), he picked up stomach cancer and grew gaunt and quiet, and died, leaving behind a houseful of bewildered females, four under the age of 13.

Dad was bright and outgoing, with lots of interests. He liked sports and was very proud of a couple of trophies he'd bagged for badminton during his Bombay days, and he liked coming home after work and hitting a few shuttles with us, never mind all we could manage were clunky sky-high shots in the air. He was also involved with the YMA and the Mizo Academy of Letters, and had a collection of interesting Mizo cultural knick-knacks that he kept in a display cabinet. He was also widely-read, reading everything from the Statesman dailies, JS magazine, Eve's Weekly, Readers' Digest, etc, and had a stack of Louis L'amour cowboy novels. He also loved travelling and it was always fun having him take us to boarding school at the start of the year and then coming to pick us up again at year-end. He enjoyed doing up the house at Christmas time, stringing colourful streamers across the ceiling and blowing  balloons to hang around. He also got a big kick out of making these huge hot air balloons out of coloured tissue paper, and launching them on New Year's Eve.

As I sit here recalling all these memories, I miss my father in a way I haven't done for years. He was always so full of life and ideas and things to do, and perhaps that was because he was only 46 years young when he died. Thank you for a wonderful childhood and a fabulous springboard to life, Dad.  And wherever you are now, rest assured that you were the best father you could have ever been - for me.

So who's afraid of technology?

Argh, it's just so aggravating when people refuse to make use of technology, even the user-friendliest kind. 

Case in point, today I had three colleagues arguing over whether this Mizo poet was dead or alive. Colleague #1 claims the man had died sometime last year. #2 goes, nooo, the man's wife had come visiting her Mum just earlier this year and there had been no mention of the husband passing on. The third colleague who's supposed to be teaching the old guy's poem in about fifteen minutes, talks to #1 about the poet-guy's daughters/nieces et al. They all seem to know his family well  but, and herein lies the catch, it never occurs to any of them to pick up their cellphones to quickly clarify the matter. Finally, colleague #3 wonders worriedly what to tell her class. I say okay, my cousin's wife is a relative so she should know. I pick up my phone, dial her number, ask, and she tells me, yes, the man is still alive and they'd had a big celebration last year in honour of his 100th birthday. 

Case solved, easy peasy.  My colleagues joke they've almost killed off the poor guy and give me effusive thanks. Not me, technology. 

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.