Micro Life…..

Musings in t dot…

Posted by: sarah083 on: December 11, 2009

I think we all change with time. “It is natural kiddo”. He ignored my sentence stirring in his cup of coffee.
It is almost 3 Toronto time. There is snow on the walk ways and the holiday spirit is in the air. There are certain things in life with which the word ambivalence is rightly attached. You neither love them nor you hate them. They are just there. You have mixed unexplained feelings about them. This city has that certain enigma. It has unexplained power over you.. The kind that makes you wonder about urban sprawl.. crawling life and nightmares right out of Atwood’s novel. It is not only this city that makes me wonder about grey zones in life. It is also the relationships I am nurturing in this city. There are more acquittance than friends. Speakers than listeners. People with fake gold linings shining like a 14 karat neck less that changes into its original brass form in few days. The word fake seems so original now. The more I move into the places people and parties, the more I learn about urban transitions. The fat women with their bulging tummies and corporate skirts. The acquired fake accents.The students with their backpacks and dreams. The not so rich lawyers of bay street flashing their business cards. The withered soccer moms. Desi taxi walla who probably has a Phd from some obscure university in banaras. Frustration and hunger on face of a Ukrainian immigrant. The 54 year uncle and his 21 year old girl friend..Brazenness..vulgarity.. judgmental attitudes..poverty..class structure..race issues.multiculturalism.. you name it and t dot has every thing to offer..
My Facebook list is growing every day And the list of my real life friends is shrinking. How do you deal with all this sanoo?
I stared at my sister who is working for a newly launched magazine..
“you smile when they smile”.
You ignore and keep your information to your self.. And remember the lady who was cursing under the breath and bitching about the smart woman in front of you would do the same the time you turn to fill your cup of coffee..
“yes” yes…..” I am learning new things”. you lived your life in a cocoon, protected by academic environment, family, values and then you stand alone facing the world.
It is the way you learn.. a different kind of learning curve..
The time I take the subway and vanish into the book shelves of robarts, the word like class structure becomes so imminent. This place gives you dreams and this place eats your dreams…
Listen “kiddo” we all have romantic fantasies in life.. they all wither away with time. It is growing up….
I think I am growing… or I think this city is growing on me .. at last…

Apology

Posted by: sarah083 on: November 17, 2009

Morning prayer
numbers.
Dupont analysis
data
trends
In midst of all this
I have been thinking about her
alone,afraid.in pain
probably in morning she is like me
vulnerable
sullen
sad
standing on the prayer mat
asking the divine.
all the whys in her life
Probably she also wears white when she is happy
smiles on your meaningless jokes
laugh at the tingle of your eyes
probably she is also like chai to you
addictive?
I wonder if she fights with you..
argue on useless things
weep on your shoulder
play with your hair?
Does she talk in the late hours of the night?
how does her hair look on the pillow?
is she a frightened woman like me?
Does she long and desire for you?
I think about her in all ways
I draw a potrait every morning after my morning tea
I rub it again for the next morning
some times I feel naked, vulnerable and painful
Thinking she knows
what I know
where desire ends and pain starts
and then I think about writing her a letter of apology
thinking that my reassurance of a dead love
might calm her nerves
make her a bit happy?
She might realize that in this game of desire
all the sunk costs were mine
I was the one without any gains
I have the word loss written on balance sheet of life
she might realize that I was no one
in this story
But when I sit down to write it
I don’t know
how to write an apology for love

Guilt thy name is..

Posted by: sarah083 on: October 7, 2009

These days I am introspective . I look at past events, past lives,past people walking on the familiar lane of memories.
And as I think about certain things in life I feel overwhelming feeling of guilt encasing my whole soul.
I feel guilty for loving some one in an unrequited manner. I feel guilty of believing in a certain different code and practically following another.
At the same time, when the whole feeling of guilt is still fresh, I feel more alive.
This pain is relatively new for me. I have always claimed that I don’t regret about things and decisions I have taken in life..
But yes some where.. some how I feel guilty of not doing what I have done.. or doing some thing I should ‘nt have..
It is a another phase of life..
and this too shall pass.

Tree of life

Posted by: sarah083 on: September 30, 2009

During those days the paint of the left wall was blistered. If you scratched it a bit, you could smell saline walls with odor of monsoon rain. The front veranda had a yellow paint and walls were filled with lizards.

It was an old house, with old trees and old ghosts. There were myths and stories
like all other stories. Most of them were a result of fertile imagination of the people living within the four walls other’s tales like all other tales. I only remember the blue gate, the rough stairs, over grown unkempt grass in front lawns, Bougainvillea covering the left wall and the 8 trees.

Why 8?

Why not 10?

My memory fails here. I only remember 8… only 8..

The first 4 were of Jamun, a cousin of mulberry found in that part of world, 2 of dates and other two of mangoes. They were distributed equally here and there around the house. Old, exotic and sometimes frightening. Old trees are like old relics. They memorize the things around them. Quiet witness to change and agony.

I wonder if trees have eyes? Or if trees have memory?

Can they see and feel things around them. Things dying and growing old. But things remain things only life dies. Or life grows? We were scared of trees. In those days we were taught that genies lived on trees. Not in bottles.And that they can occupy the body making soul redundant, dead. Whatever was the truth, the only thing I knew was the fact that trees were a soul to that house.

Mesmerizing, giant powerful. In evenings when “amman” will place the chai tray in lawn you could see birds flying towards the trees. In monsoon we would have a swing attached with one of the older mango trees. That would later bend because of the weight. Mangoes are not meant for swings.

They are fragile. Another lesson I learned fast.

The date tree was at the end of the house. In a dark corner. It was really tall. Tall enough to give me goose bumps. There was something strange about the tree. It had bricks attached with the stem. Almost 5 feet higher than the ground. Bricks don’t grow on trees?

Do they?

It was another mystery in that old house.

It was the same house when I discovered “Apu”. I have no idea why I called her “Apu”. She was just 3 years older than me. Slighly thinner and much taller.

And she had more stories to tell..

Elaborate.. long ..mysterious stories.

For she believed that there is another world under our world. Where small people lived. People size of our thumb and if we dig the earth we can reach them.

In those humid evening we would dig the earth to find those small people. All of us got worms in the end..

Reality is stranger than imagination.

“Apu” was lonelier than me. She would stand in front of the tree and would talk to it. The date tree..

And she would talk when no one was looking at her.

“you talk with the tree”.

I shouted one evening after our fight.

She became frightened as her secret was out , sucking her left thumb more violently.

She was a thumb sucker, I nail eater.

We were lonely kids in a huge family…

“She is my friend” she smiled

“Who?” I asked again..

“The date tree..

She talks”

I was now more silent..

After the small people I had lost faith in her stories. But still….

There was something there…

We tried to talk to the tree, in our own rituals.

Silent starring, beating at its stem, shouting.

Writing letters to her and burying it under the stem, but nothing happened.

And then she went away. On a white plane like she had done before.

I went on living in that house.

We met again and again.. In her home across the planet, in dreams, on phone but never under that tree…

I always thought that she had some strange powers. She believed that things could talk.

Then she got married. We met again one summer , for sisters are always there to give a shoulder to cry.

“Do you remember that date tree”.

She asked me during our meeting…

“Do you remember the house”.

She was asking in a curious tone as if I had a record of her insanity.

She was now different..

Lady in the white coat. Slightly angry on life.

“why it happened with me? She looked at my face”.

“you need to cry mourn and pray, I said silently”.

“DO we mourn for the unborn?”

She asked me with a straight face,

“lets go back”…

It was a plea..My plea…

That summer we went back to that house…

House that was ours and was of our people.

Silent, dead old house…

In the flight she was silent and depress..

We entered the house. Every thing was same, but new.

Except the talking tree was not there…. It died when we left….

And that day I saw her crying!!

Mourning Love…

Posted by: sarah083 on: September 28, 2009

A box of pills
plan B
The unwanted death
The unwanted life
the water eaten corpse
suicide notes
The candles in the window
eyes looking at the road
wait
promise
coffins wrapped in flags
medals,
eulogies
Dead? can they hear?
Honor ,faith promises
yellow ribbons on the trees
sacred vows
empty homes
overfilled grave yards
the lab across the river
producing death and fear
A flock of birds
migrating
and my age
mourning the word love!

why blog???

Posted by: sarah083 on: September 27, 2009

My own blogging history can be narrated in one word.accidental. I had stumbled upon chowk one evening and there I found the whole enticing world of blogging and writing.
In the beginning I had no idea what I was doing and why I was doing it but over the passage of time it started making sense. It was a quick replacement to my thick black leather journals. It was an outlet to vent my miseries and pains. My happiness and excitement..
I would write fragmented small some times grammatically incorrect paragraphs. The exercise was immensely satisfying .
It was a monologue in a bigger space. At that time I was not oblivion of the fact that cyber space is like a well your voice echoes in all directions. Mundane becomes interesting. Narration become tales and infractions gossips.
Blogging is interesting. But lately I am finding a decline in quality of work.
Even random work..
I clicked on 12 blogs in last 10 minutes and all of them were filled with idiotic “tag me”,”write on me ” crap.
But then it is a voice.. voices can be meaningful.. meaningless..random idiotic. narcissistic and sarcastic..
voice in space is lost unless we don’t find a wall to echo..
The question that why “I write” is complicated…
Probably I live in a self delusionary world where things change meanings with the voice.. Or probably I find writing as an outlet.. a scream ..
Probably it is all what I am at the end of day…
just a 5 letter word.

Memory says….

Posted by: sarah083 on: September 27, 2009

Memory says : want to do right don’t count on me
I’ m a canal in europe where bodies are floating
I’m a mass crave I’m the life that returns
I;m a table set with room for strangers
I’m a field with corners left for landless,
I’m accused of child death of drinking blood
I’m man child praising god he’s a man
I’m a woman bargaining for a chicken
I’m a woman who sells for a boat ticket
I’m a family dispersed between night and fog
I’m an immigrant tailor who says a coat is
not a piece of cloth only I sway
In the learning of the master mystics
I have dreamed of zion’, I have dreamed of world revolution
I have dreamed my children could live as others
I have walked the children of others through the ranks of hatred
I’m a corpse dredged from a canal in berlin
a river in Mississippi, I’m a woman standing
with other woman wearing black
on the streets of haifa,tel aviv ,Jerusalem
there is a spit on my sleeves and there are phone calls in night
I am a woman standing in line for gas masks
I stand on a road in Ramallah with naked face listening
I am standing here in your poem unsatisfied
lifting my smoky mirror
Andrienne Rich from An atlas of the difficult world…

Books and fears

Posted by: sarah083 on: September 24, 2009

Partially a piece of fiction

My mother is a strange woman ,perhaps like all other women. Strange that she has her own hidden phobias. The one she hides behind her smile.She is scared of books , although she has lived her life between books. But then we start hating things which surround us, are a part of our lives and our existence. Things that mean to us in some way. The feelings of loving and hating something usually are born out of ties. In certain seldom nights, she has those nightmares when she wake up screaming panting and weeping. And then she would confess later that it is books. She totally hates the existence of the paper thick leather books. Books crushing and killing her under their weights.
She grew up in a jungle of books. Her father had a respectable library, in a house that was partly Victorian partly a post British raj .vernacular house with Gothic windows and open verandas. Her matrimonial house has white pillars and marble floors. With every room having book racks. There are books of every kind in the house. In her own bed room the rack has a 25 year old edition of Guyton and hall , Book of physiology, Campell walsh urology edition4th with its blue leather binding and then there are some random unknown books on philosophy and history. In the living the racks are filled with old novels, technical texts about computer languages now obsolete, books on economics and mathematics.
There is a rack filled with books in Persian another with books in Punjabi. Another with black leather covered thesis of more than 4 people. It is like an old tomb of people who have lived in the house and left for new endeavors. She is a scared woman. “Can you dispose off the books”.
What do you do once you have cleared exams, written thesis and done research. You throw away the books?
You collect the old painful memories and think about the lost nights with lamp light striving for a better life?
Or you go open the books and look back…
What am I suppose to do with your 4 boxes of books? She called and asked me later one day….
Do you want me to give them away?
Who is interested in “green’s econometrics and old 3rd edition text of Romer. Who wants to read about Monet and Cezanne. And what will happen to the only copy of Ghalib I had hidden in the drawer.
I am scared…. My old bedroom is tomb of my old life.. My whole existance.. My whole history,,
I was never able to understand her fear. But I know my fear.. each book in my life has defined me.. I am nothing but what I have learned….Perhaps I am like her…
I have inherited her fears as welll

The would be honor victim

Posted by: sarah083 on: September 12, 2009

We live in an ever-changing world where chaos and fear have new meanings. Racial profiling, Islamophobia and terrorism are the mainstream words flashed by the media in our daily lives. In this post 911 world where fear rules and war on terror has invaded our lives in different ways, certain civil right cases have stirred political as well as religious debates.
The case of Fatimah Rafqa Bary, signifies the fact that media trial can change the course of the legal arguments and racial biases can sometimes ignite the most irrational arguments. Teen from Ohio, Fatimah Rafqah Barry left her home on grounds that her Muslim parents would kill her on knowing her religious affiliations. She joined a face book group, which later resulted, in her conversion as a Christian. On knowing about her where about her parents filled a petition in Florida’s family court for the custody.
This would be simple custody battle has fumed a debate about the safety of the minor which is based on the religious affiliations of the parents. According to “Time” “the whole affair started in mid july when Rafqa barry took a bus to Florida after having a dispute with the parents. There she took refuge with the Rev. Blake Lorenz, the pastor of a conservative Christian congregation, the Global Revolution Church, and his wife Beverly, whom the cheerleader and honor student had met on Facebook.”
Rev Blake Lorenz and family informed the authorities after 3 weeks . Rafqa is a minor and keeping her without the permission of the family is abduction. Now the case is in Florida and interestingly has been widely supported by the right wing conservative groups.
Honor killing in south Asian and muslim communities can not be denied. Almost a year back Aqsa Pervaz was man slaughtered in her Mississauga home by her own father. The record of Muslim community is gory. However, is it right to base a legal argument on statistical bias?
Is Miss Barqa right when she states that her family is threatening her and going back to the family home would result in her death?
Or is this case, an example of a priest alluring a teenage girl on inter net. Where fear has been installed in her mind against her own family and people? Is it a downright case of abduction of a minor? Alternatively, is it a case about believing what we want to believe regardless of our birth and culture?
There are surely many reasons behind this case. However the family Of Rafqa Bary is suffering the bias on being Muslims. The mosque where the family has prayed had been dragged into the case with allegation of terrorist plots. Right wing politicians in Florida have jumped in this circus to win the votes. Time has quoted that the republican governor has issued a statement saying that he is thankful to the judge for allowing Rafqa to remain in Florida.
Rafqa claims to be a would be honor victim. Her parents have filed a case basing it on the argument that the church has removed their daughter from the safe sanctuary of her home by alluring her.
The case is still there in the court.. we still don’t know the fate of Rafqa but it shows that some times we suffer just because who we are.. and justice is definitely not color blind!

The would be honor victim

Posted by: sarah083 on: September 12, 2009

We live in an ever-changing world where chaos and fear have new meanings. Racial profiling, Islamophobia and terrorism are the mainstream words flashed by the media in our daily lives. In this post 911 world where fear rules and war on terror has invaded our lives in different ways, certain civil right cases have stirred political as well as religious debates.
The case of Fatimah Rafqa Bary, signifies the fact that media trial can change the course of the legal arguments and racial biases can sometimes ignite the most irrational arguments. Teen from Ohio, Fatimah Rafqah Barry left her home on grounds that her Muslim parents would kill her on knowing her religious affiliations. She joined a face book group, which later resulted, in her conversion as a Christian. On knowing about her where about her parents filled a petition in Florida’s family court for the custody.
This would be simple custody battle has fumed a debate about the safety of the minor which is based on the religious affiliations of the parents. According to “Time” “the whole affair started in mid july when Rafqa barry took a bus to Florida after having a dispute with the parents. There she took refuge with the Rev. Blake Lorenz, the pastor of a conservative Christian congregation, the Global Revolution Church, and his wife Beverly, whom the cheerleader and honor student had met on Facebook.”
Rev Blake Lorenz and family informed the authorities after 3 weeks . Rafqa is a minor and keeping her without the permission of the family is abduction. Now the case is in Florida and interestingly has been widely supported by the right wing conservative groups.
Honor killing in south Asian and muslim communities can not be denied. Almost a year back Aqsa Pervaz was man slaughtered in her Mississauga home by her own father. The record of Muslim community is gory. However, is it right to base a legal argument on statistical bias?
Is Miss Barqa right when she states that her family is threatening her and going back to the family home would result in her death?
Or is this case, an example of a priest alluring a teenage girl on inter net. Where fear has been installed in her mind against her own family and people? Is it a downright case of abduction of a minor? Alternatively, is it a case about believing what we want to believe regardless of our birth and culture?
There are surely many reasons behind this case. However the family Of Rafqa Bary is suffering the bias on being Muslims. The mosque where the family has prayed had been dragged into the case with allegation of terrorist plots. Right wing politicians in Florida have jumped in this circus to win the votes. Time has quoted that the republican governor has issued a statement saying that he is thankful to the judge for allowing Rafqa to remain in Florida.
Rafqa claims to be a would be honor victim. Her parents have filed a case basing it on the argument that the church has removed their daughter from the safe sanctuary of her home by alluring her.
The case is still there in the court.. we still don’t know the fate of Rafqa but it shows that some times we suffer just because who we are.. and justice is definitely not color blind!

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