Mumbai Burning...

Just after 8pm this evening, my mom was watching the news on ND-TV, and emergency reports displayed breaking news of terror attacks in Mumbai. All they said was that grenades had been strewn across the foyers of the famous Oberoi, Taj and Trident hotels in and around Colaba, in the south of the city. I was on my way out to supper, and my friends indignant hooter had me out the door before I could get more news. And I thought, it's just the major hotels, hopefully no fatalities; will check it out when I get home.

Later news said, even the JW Marriott in Juhu was under attack by gunmen. Shootouts were reported around the major hospitals, St Georges in particular. I just got home. VT Station looks like it's been the grounds of a genocide. Bodies and Blood pepper the paved court around the victorian building. My phone rang five minutes ago. Mumbai, is Burning. I put the news on once again. It's like watching a badly filmed movie. The Taj, a heritage hotel flanked by the Gateway, is in flames! As of right now, a hundred people have been rescued from the Taj.

The bizarre is being normalised. This has become a regular occurrence. Gosh. There's a death count of number of innocents and number of cops killed. What is this, from the Wild West to the Inferno Ridden East?!

Provoked

What does it take for a woman of modest bearing, to wait till the quiet hours of the night until her husband of ten years is sound asleep, and to douse him in a carefully prepared mixture of cooking oil and other household flammable liquids, and then to drop a flaming candle at his feet, and watch in horror, and relief as the flames sieze and engulf his screaming frame!?

What does it take?

Insanity is a gleaming and rather self-righteous label designed by the self-acclaimed 'sane' and an appeasing banner to the designated who must wear it as a yoke. Why must some plead insanity to obtain justice? Or rather, as a human right's activist in the movie suggests, 'Why must women plead insanity to obtain justice, while men need only lose their tempers for the same?'

'Provoked' is the name of the movie that profiles a young Punjabi woman's plight to restore her dignity from within the confines of an abusive marriage, and in an act of being driven to temporary irrational insanity, she sets her husband on fire. He dies after some days in hospital. She is charged. This, she maintains, is her first taste of freedom.

Battered wife syndrome is, as a result of her case, a legally recognised condition.

Abuse is a messy subject, and many people will shy away from the indications to take the topic by the horns and do real battle with it. How do we break the cycle? We engage in abuse and are abused every other day when we choose to ascribe labels on each other, and when we carry those with which we might be branded. Where does it all stop? And how?

I'm a loser; You're a loser. Its all okay.

Words can sometimes cause more harm than good. I'm not so sure that its about the conscious intention. Rather, its that words are interpreted by our brains already filled with a range of mind drama. And often, words are flung about rather carelessly, with little notion, at first, of the impact that they might make on their recipient. Take falling in love, for example. It's possible to fall in love with a bunch of words on a screen. But it's just as easily possible to fall out of love that way. So then the relationship of words with words and energies from that, is really something that might dwindle to nothingness if it's left to simmer for a while in a pot of mental melodrama. The spice of the inner workings of the mind is not to be underestimated, of course. It has the innate ability to add a wonderous flavour to the energies of a fertile imagination in cultivating the grandiose interest. For a time, souls are convincingly quenched. But then, it also has the skill to deftly carve some doubt and plant some insiduous seeds of resentment, bitterness and even guilt in the garden of an already infested psyche.

Now take chat for practical instance. Words are all you have to work with. Mxit. GoogleChat. Mirc for days gone by. And Facebook, and a whole realm of instant messenger de(vices). While words generate and transport energy, their static one-dimensionality on screen is an easy hoax for their danger to hurt or create misunderstandings. "You're such a loser" may sound like a cool rebuff. It can be read as a deep affront. "Don't be an idiot, dimwit, fag, five-year-old" The list is imaginatively endless. Then there's the protocols unobserved. e.g. "My dear" is not endearing to most independent females. Condescending tone is easily accompliced to an unsavoury choice of words. And the results are disasterous. Catastrophic even. Chat is bad enough, without the real elements, the human interaction, the smiles and facial nuances, the communication of eye to eye...soul to soul. Chat, distorted by unreliable connectivity and words misplaced is a nightmare. Telkom needs some competition methinks.

But what does all this say of the speaker of these arbitrary weapons of mass destruction? It's NOT okay. It doesnt feel okay. I do it. You do it. It doesnt make it okay. We're taught to love thy neighbour. Ideally, we all want to grow up to be astute and loving folk who will honour and respect our fellow beings. Maybe it's time we started with ourselves, for a change.

With love, honour and respect...
Shafs

NB: In tribute to a celebrated individual who has made a profound impact on my life this last year or so. Shabash! ;)

filmi? not!

I have three brothers. One, I live with. My twin of sorts. The male version of me, we're told. Luckily for my folks, we were born some years apart. But battling out a negotiation or spending time with mutual friends and loved ones is like looking at mirrors side by side. Good Cop, Bad Cop. Twin disasters and kindred spirits. The other two are in Durban. Sons of my other mom. My mothers sister. My darling cousin Hish is one of the most theatrical people I know. His antics have left us many a time in fits of hysteria, sometimes in deep thought and other times major concern. Why? It's his personality. Infectious, nerve-wrecking, enticing, provocative, sometimes sweet, and mostly down right scamp worthy! His older brother Rayms is the epitome of the suave, deep-thinking, calm, silent intellectual. His creative talents are yet to be shared with a world sorely in need of his kind of genuine depth. He knows it not. Or maybe its not cool to believe everything your sister tells you :P (that would be me!) After all, people who really love you, tend to exaggerate your qualities and talents. Right? Wrong! Sigh. It's just plain nerve-wrecking when people don't see their god-given awesomeness and then use it to make a difference, no matter how small or seemingly mundane. Acts of creativity are seeds planted from the divine harvest. Someday they're bound to be a shade! I believe this. I know this. How? I can't tell you this in one little post. But someday, when I'm sitting in the shade, I will tell you. For now, believing it is enough. Belief is knowing.

I am thankful. For these people. These sources of good soul filling energy in my life. And I am writing these appreciations in tribute to them, because I miss them. They live out in Durban, and I got to spend an awesome five months with them earlier this year. I miss them much. And because, on Saturday night well past midnight, they were involved in a freak accident that has us all pretty freaked out. Just like the movies, Hish said. In typical animated-about-life fashion that he is renowned for, he described the details to me. Slippery roads, spinning car, streetlight, brother, friend, driving, spinning out of control, capsized, seatbelts! thank Allah! tired of dancing with it's unnamed demon, the car finally came to a stop on its roof. they were locked in. the smell of the fuel leaking. everyone seemed ok. they broke a window and got out. and then once rayms and ziyaad were out, he went back in to turn off the ignition?! the logic beats me. some whiplash. a few stitches. under the circumstances, they came out okay. Alhamdulillah.

But the trauma persists. And he won't get behind the wheel of a car yet. Know the feeling. And I miss them. May Allah protect them, always. May He watch over us all. Ameen.