Life, Laughter and Everything Else

It was well intentioned but impulsive nonetheless. Would $5 be enough? Nah, lets make it 10. I keyed in the letters, my credit card details, scrolled down and clicked "Donate". Within a minute, I was $10 poorer, though somewhat happier. After all, had she not stated on her site that Donating equals to Loving? Though just as an afterthought, maybe I should just make sure it went to the rightly deserved. So I googled her name, "Maria Popova" and clicked on the first Wiki link that came up. It started of with the usual introduction. From Bulgaria, started the website Brainpickings.org that had millions of readers monthly, writer for the Atlantic, Wired etc, once one of Forbes 30 under 30. Obviously someone who had started small and grew to be very influential through her website which I frequented now and then and whose articles would, often at confused and stressed junctures of my life, give me much emotional and spiritual relief. As she stated, it was a one woman sho...

It is that time of the week again. I make quick stock of what I need, estimate the total potential size of all the new contents and choose the bag that best fits all, slung it over my shoulder and buzz out.  And from there the choice starts.  Where to? Rewe has a better interior with lighting that makes one feel like one is in a classy establishment. The consumables are of better quality, though that does come at a price. Which is not as much of an issue at Kaufland, which is bigger and more spacious and seemingly cheaper. Aldi, well is Aldi. It is where you go when you do not want to see many humans.  The moment I enter, my mind switches off from everything else. Without me knowing, it scans the plethora of things before me. To call them "things" is but a banal way to describe what is in front of my eyes. The colors, the shapes, the smells, the textures, all screaming out and saying,  "Look at me" "Feel me" "Buy me" ...

“Most people I hate. The rest I tolerate”.                                                                                                                    – Everybody Loves Raymond I walked into the kitchen and he was washing his plates at the sink. I nodded a polite Good Morning and waited for him to finish. Feeling something hot behind me, I turned to see the stove turned to the maximum without any dish placed on it. He noticed my annoyance at having seen this, for the second time in a week, and rushed to defend himself. “Its very cold so I turned it on”. Not that I am a staunch environmentalist, but his statement just triggered me. Instead of increasing the heater temperature...

“Dude. He was a total hypocrite….” “He slept with naked young women to test his sexuality…” “He was racist against Africans. He served to protect the interest of high caste Indians and Whites…” “The Indian Independence movement was slowed down by years because of him…” The accusations came like wildfire. I sat there stunned. I had heard some before, but now it was negative after negative. A man who had inspired peaceful, non-violent uprising throughout the world was lambasted as the biggest, most overhyped hypocrite in human history. What made it more interesting was that it came from an Indian. I asked him for sources and he was happy to give me plenty. Some were dubious self-made videos, others were more credible, acknowledging the failings of the man. Though in one such (presumably dubious) videos in a Youtube channel by a guy called Stefan Molyneux, I saw on the right other recommended videos, all stating ‘The Truth” about every other great men in history. Mand...

Every kilogram of mass equates to about 10N in gravitational pull.  That would equate to about 650N, or perhaps 600N assuming my weight has been going the other way. It always feels like a ton though, almost like Gandalf escaped the realm of magic and, of all places on Earth, chose to come to the shabby room of an impoverished Indian guy. There he placed his hand above me and exerted unimaginable force downwards and roared, “You shall not rise!” I tried my utmost best, but the old, wily magician would have none of it. I could barely lift myself an inch above it. The attraction was magnetic. As I lifted one part of my body, the other side would be inevitably pulled downwards. However, in any battle, true victory lies not in the physical but the mental vanquishing of the enemy and there he deployed his strongest weapon of all. He engulfed me in a soft, warm blanket whose whiteness reassured me of the comfort and security I was enjoying at the moment. Would I rather remain sn...

You wake up with a sense of disillusionment. Ok perhaps there is no disillusionment (yet) but you just find it difficult to wake up. There is nothing to look forward at work. It is like there is no reason to get up. It is like there is no reason to write. Nothing interests you anymore, not even the idea of seeing her. You simply cannot get yourself out of bed. “For what?”, you ask yourself. It’s the same shit, different day. Same mistakes, different day. Same people, different day. In other words, it is a bad spell, which could be unconsciously caused by things that are weighing in on my mind, or sometimes there is no reason to. It just happens. All I can say is when you feel like that, take a moment. Take a moment to appreciate, firstly, that you have the time to feel and then write about this emotion. That this freedom is perhaps not even afforded to millions of people across the world. Secondly, appreciate the fact that you are alive, for tiredness can be the result of a la...

"You know he feels somewhat not so appreciated. That he is doing so much at work, sacrificing so much for his family, but nobody seems to acknowledge that. Maybe that is why I feel he is withdrawing into himself more and more". It was possible, but it never occurred to me that this thought would predominate his day to day life. When you care about or love someone, sometimes it might seem like that would suffice, though truth be told, it might not. I once remember hearing  story, when a frustrated husband, late into his marriage, complained to his wife that she never told him that she loved him. "I have washed you clothes, cooked your food and reared your children. Is that not enough?' A man asking for more would make the perfect fodder for today's feminists. However, we humans are fickle, irrational and ever so emotional. We want our efforts to be acknowledged by our bosses, our status to be seen by the society, our love to be validated by our partners and...

While driving on the roads surrounded by the vast ranches of Texas, I would be awed by the brilliant hues of the sky. Vast and staring down on the man curated landscapes, these skies would take on shades of different colour depending on the time of day, weather or seasons. I remember the brilliant blues of the winter evenings and the bright oranges of the summer morning. When people asked me what I liked about Houston, I would tell them, "The sky. There's something about the sky here that is different from that the one home". A year back home, I realised the sky here was no different. Just that it was often hidden and lost behind the high rise buildings and skyscrapers that dotted the Singapore landscape.  Pity indeed, to have but the occasional opportunity to stare up and get lost in the awesomeness of the universe.  

I despised people who are always staring at their smartphones or smart devices. It was them I saw when I boarded the train to work every morning and them I saw again when I exited the train, those lifeless faces lost in the virtual world they had chosen to replace the present with. It is as if what there was in front of them was not enough, that they were not ready to adjust to the world around them, but instead the world they had to adjust to their tastes. I despised them because they to me resembled the roboticized populations of the future, who moved from day to day without opening their eyes to the world around them, the people around them. As conversations dried up, relationships became more hi-bye and friends too busy, the smartphone, to me, was Lucifer, the one who pulled the strings in a world that seemed to more and more lose touch with its humanity. As such I turned to books. While everyone had their head bent over a LED screen, I chose to turn to the single item that onc...

My left hand lies curled in a tight fist between my thighs, while the right presses stiffly against the coarse leather of the steering wheel, bearing the burden of the task. Though to call it a burden would be an overstatement of an activity that once gave me a sleepless 23 hour flight but now bordered on mindlessness. Now, being on the that road, at that time, when even the sun was too lazy to rise from its sleep, was second nature to me. Thoughts raced through my mind, thoughts about the destination I was headed to. The bulk of them recollected old frustrations and the remainder imagined new ones. My left fist curl tighter as I sped ahead in the air conditioned cocoon. I try to keep to the right of the two lanes as I drove, quasi subconsciously,  at 60 miles per hour on a a 65 mile per hour lane, which still had an additional legally tolerable 10 mile per hour buffer. Lost in my unending imaginings, I stay at that speed until an even slower traveler in front jerk me i...