Inertia, Utopia, CHaOs

I cannot recall a year that went by so quickly, it felt like it had barely begun. Not for lack of having accomplished anything, though. In fact, precisely because of the years adrenalin-filled happenings, do I feel that sense of inertia still making me reel to and fro, and for the most part, vivid images meld into a belligerent blur.

This is a reflection. Not quite the customary year-end ramble.
Which is probably why I cannot find the words to express the stop-start feeling.
And, as luck and fate and the powers that be might have it,
its not over yet.

Do I sound like I'm complaining?

Hardly that.
I'm reading yet another visa script as I type; ready to set off to a desert rendezvous for a week of partying and festivity to round up the year that was.
While Dubai World crashes around us left to the folly of the markets and wanton players, some with tails between their legs, our lot might do the economy a small boost in our lavish outpourings for the next week. Shamelessly said, I know.
Such is the bane and the boon of the clad and shackled.

Ah, its been a year of abundance.
Words flow.
Joy bursts at the seams.
The trickles of sadness, loss and illness linger; keeping a necessary humility in place.
And the mirage of a brighter future looms at eye level.
2010 will be a year of togetherness.
A year of partnering on an equal ground; the dust on the battlefields will settle.
And it will be yet another year to reflect on, to learn from, and to celebrate for its lavish layers of utopia and chaos, in similar measures that maintain our humanity; that sustain all but a crass sanity.

Its not quite goodbye, yet.
But its almost there...

Love and Light,
Shafs

http://shafinaaz.com

Copyright Shafinaaz Hassim (C) 2009

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?

Inside Khalida's head

"Its easy to get married". Those were his words to me. At this point, you know tons of people, or rather at any point you do, and then you decide on whose the one suited to a profile of sorts and you go ahead. Note, he means a general 'you'. Sigh. I disagree. I still want magic and sparks and chemistry; but then I also want this package of guarantees you know. Like someone with staying power. When the going gets rough. Like someone who goes beyond everyday romance (nothing wrong with white roses, guys!). Like someone who will be a shade from those mundane storms of life. Not just some arb (good) person whose hunting for a wife, and the one that says 'yes' will do. Not that. Pretty faces fade, so then it has to be about essence of person. How do people read spiritedness? Do they even? Somehow, it was difficult to believe that people looked beyond the sea of pretty faces and delved deeper into the energies; realising all the while, that the wrong connection could condemn one to a life of lament. Or maybe it was that I was accustomed to thinking too far ahead? Is this where life had brought me to? So many questions, but I knew the answer lay right before me. Hovering in my wake state, haunting in my dreams. The culmination of everything past and hoped for. I know the saying, be careful what you wish for, it may come true. I was wishing anyway. It just took shaking the contradictions of a recent past, and taking that step ahead with certainty in the blessings of the divine blueprint of life. And what would be, would be.