the god of small things

but when they made love he was offended by her eyes. they behaved as though they belonged to someone else. someone watching. looking out of the window at the sea. at a boat in the river. or a passer-by in the mist in a hat.

he was exasperated because he didnt know what that look meant. he put it somewhere between indifference and despair. he didnt know that in some places, like the country that rahel came from, various kinds of despair competed for primacy. and that personal despair could never be desperate enough. that something happened when personal turmoil dropped by at the wayside shrine of the vast, violent, circling, driving, ridiculous, insane, unfeasible, public turmoil of a nation. that Big God howled like a hot wind, and demanded obeisance. then Small God (cosy and contained, private and limited) came away cauterised, laughing numbly at his own temerity. inured by the confirmation of his own inconsequence, he became resilient and truly indifferent. nothing mattered much. nothing much mattered. and the less it mattered, the less it mattered. it was never important enough. because Worse Things had happened. in the country that she came from, poised forever between the terror of war and the horror of peace, Worse Things kept happening.

so Small God laughed a hollow laugh, and skipped away cheerfully. like a rich boy in shorts. he whistled, kicked stones. the source of his brittle elation was the relative smallness of his misfortune. he climbed into people's eyes and became an exasperating expression.

two years later

two years later, originally uploaded by abcdefghivan.

obs recall at al-azhar

whoa!

Image010, originally uploaded by abcdefghivan.

who'd ever think that a mini and a restricted plate go together?

shine

the key to sanity, for kingston, was the ability to shine light into the dark corners where ghosts and uncertainty lurked. this involved making your mind "big", to accomodate all the contradictions and (previously) impossibilities.

top off my mind, E, as is so common everytime i get fixated and obsessed. so i have in my memory, like some sort of mental masturbation, the day we spent in cairnhill, the telephone call, the sentry conversation and now the lunch we had. with promises of wont you book out on weekends and this wont be the last time you see me, what and tennis and simpsons and saw2, the coming months now have a lining of hope despite the whole boc stint. but there is more that is possible, beyond what i used to be able to see. all i have to do now is not ruin everything like i am prone to.

back to the Lunch with E, where he mentions that i grew up on the beach because his family used to be "homeless". i choke on my honeydew sago and adjust myself, and my sentence breaks because i have never known a "homeless". but prior to central, i have neither ever known an ex-druggie, a chain smoker nor an ex-convict. i think to myself that all these people, arent all these people just like ming jing except in a different context? had they had half the opportunities ming jing does, would they not be accomplished and set for life? to become such an outstanding Man Friday with so much circumstances - that too is worthy of recognition.

and then a ghost from my past, D. now 19 (as compared to my tender 17), i think that i might just have idolised D too much. past the regret and longing and oh, what if, D is a lot more mortal than the romanticised version of my dogma.

shine,
i'll stand by you.
dont try and push me away
because i'm just gonna stay.
you can shine, i wont deny you,
and dont be afraid, it'll all be okay.

when it's said and done,
what you need will come,
and time wont let me
let you let me waste it this time .