Old Out, New In: New Year Resolutions

From google

Will 2013 Be A Snaky Year?

 

Every New Year, people make resolutions they almost never keep. Yesterday evening, I tried to think of mine. After a lot of pondering (and a little napping), I couldn't land on anything concrete. There are many ideas, but the moment I remember that 2013 is the Year of the Female Snake, I forget all my resolutions. The snake is one of the most dreadful animals I have ever seen. I simply hate the sound of it. I cannot imagine being reborn as a snake. If I were, I would faint—then die again from looking at my own body. That's two deaths. No thanks.

I am the kind of jumper who looks for a nice flat rock to land smoothly. (Everyone is, really.) I cannot stick to New Year's resolutions. Sometimes promises and pledges fail miserably and utterly—like my attempt to give up tea last year. That lasted until breakfast. Anyway, it's good to treat resolutions as a kind of frontage or reminder for the year. So below are mine, for better or worse (probably worse).

1) I will try to be honest and a kind of well-bred brat, like before.

No, honestly. I have all these good words in my mind this year: polite, respectful, modest, courteous, refined, decent, cordial, affable. I hope to implement some of these in my life in a better way. I will try not to tell a single lie to anyone this year. Last year was a mixture of a few lies—because of the situation, of course. I will try to be true to myself, even when the world falls apart. But I don't know where this snake year will drag me. May it not be a snaky year? I pray. (If I fail by January 3rd, please pretend you didn't notice.)

2) I will try to be an understanding person.

If you fail, or if I fail, I will understand. Not a big deal. The greater part of life is built on understanding each other. Understanding here doesn't mean enlightenment. It just means thinking about others' problems and situations before acting. I pledge to my family that I will become more generous and considerate this year—if they pledge to do the same for me. To my children: I will understand, even if you pass shit on my forehead. And I hope you won't mind too much if I do the same to you. (Fair is fair.)

3) I will try to forget this contentious concept that every action has a reaction.

This thinking has brought me—and others—so many sicknesses. Tit for tat, going against people, becoming unruly—all that has to be minimized this year. I will mind my own business. Eat my own share, not others'. I will become more patient. But truly, I am already impatient of this snake year. I think something will happen to me. Is it good? Is it bad? Something. I pray. (Preferably not something involving a snake.)

4) I will try to cultivate more love for my family, parents, children, and others.

What makes the world go around? Gravity? Money? Certainly not, as far as my recent understanding of life goes. It's love. Hatred stops the world completely. I will oil the wheels of life with a better outlook. I will fire my gun hard so everyone can hear the messages of love. Goodness will be in the air. But I fear love might be one-sided. One-sided love is always madness. And I wonder if I might not become mad this year with love. Then again, madness runs in my family—it practically jogs.

5) I will hook near the warm fireside like a cat at home.

Enough is enough—that's what a protest banner read in India about a raped girl. A girl was terribly raped in Delhi, had an iron rod inserted, and was thrown naked on the road by evil bus passengers. And a few days ago, two Bhutanese women were molested by a bus conductor and driver in Bangalore. Very sad news. India doesn't feel safe. This isn't a good thing to talk about at New Year's—it's time to enjoy—but I am terribly affected by this brutal incident. It was a very bad ending to 2012. If ever I meet those goondas, I will fight to the last fight. For now, home feels like the only secure place. I'm scared my two little egg-like balls might also get smashed by evil-minded people for no reason. So enough traveling. Enough being away from home. Home is where the heart is—and also where my snacks are. Oh my dear, I hope you won't mind or get bored, because I will be in hibernation for a long time. Wake me only for food.

6) And last, but not least, the big resolution is…

Let me leave this blank. This detestable snake may never let me fulfill whatever I have in my mind. I am afraid this big dream will bury my whole life. But it's not a day's task, or a week's, or a month's, or a year's. It's a lifetime achievement. And the lifetime achievement of writing nonsense goes to Mr. New Year himself.

I say: New Year is no new year. It's old. Every New Year, my age becomes older and older. The antithesis of old is new, and old was once new, and new will become old. A moment comes and goes. The moment is always in movement. Christmas has just become "ex-Christmas." Years come and go—2012, 2013, 2014—but one's life cannot come and go. It goes forever. I don't know where. But our bodies become worthless as ash. Sad indeed.

For now, happy indeed to celebrate the New Year. So everyone, have a profuse year ahead. May your snake be friendly, your love be mutual, and your toilet singing be glorious.

Derrida and I

Jacques Derrida—I like this man. He says something like this: there is nothing meaningful as such. No logos, no center, no origin, no presence, no absence, no beginning, no end—and so on. Things exist in a buoyant state. The word "love" is not loved. It doesn't signify anything. It can mean hate, kill, dark, murder, etc. And the word "hate" could mean love—just as Gandhiji treated hate as love. There is no meaning as such. Everyone can deconstruct it. Free play is what I like.

This inquisitive Derrida says, "The center is not the center." Then where is the center? It is beyond—what he calls the "transcendental signified." Who knows if nothing lies beyond the hills? But something does lie there.

This seemingly crazy Frenchman was once asked in a philosophical discourse, "Where does authority lie?" His answer was a toddler's answer: "Authority always lies." Any talking baby could have answered that way. It's like asking him, "Where do baggy testicles lie?" You wouldn't be surprised to get the answer, "They always lie there." Not on your head, not on your cheeks—and you wouldn't like it if they lay there. So they always lie there. Warm and fit. Philosophy, at last, made comfortable.

But Derrida's metaphysical philosophy of absence and presence is not originally his own. Funnily enough, he admits that he created it himself. Yet it is there, and it is not there. Everything is nothing. Nothing is everything. I bluntly argue with Derrida and say he actually took it from my father. My father's philosophy of no logos, no eminent presence—same thing. The concept of no meaning, the transcendental, etc., was already there. My father's religious canons taught me, and my father got it from his father, my grandfather, and my grandfather got it from my great-grandparents, and so on back to time immemorial—no one knows exactly. If you want to know, you must go back to the origin of the world. But there's no question of going backward when we are living forward. So I will pass the same information—"the center is not the center"—without understanding much of it, to my son. And he will do the same to his son. That's what I call a tradition.

I like Derrida's free play, and I like free playing with words. Last time, I played with a girl after reading Derrida's "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences." "Big boobs," is what I said when she was crouching under a chair. She free-played the meaning and didn't talk to me for two days—just because of those two words. That almost killed me. Women always perform chemical analysis on what they hear. If you say "beautiful" to them, they think about "ugly." If you say "my god," they think they are goats. They are stupidly sensitive. They are the real Derridas. That is why I talk very little with women. They misunderstand and disrupt every golden droplet of a word and treat it as ironic.

Derrida's deconstructions have led me into many problems. A few days ago, I told an auto driver that the right is left and the left is right. "So where shall we go? To the center?" the driver asked. "No, there is no center. There is no right, no left, man," I joked. The auto driver looked at me curiously. "Are you kind of out of your senses?" "No, I'm saying, if there is no right, there is no left." That auto driver was blunt-headed. He shook his head, quite puzzled. "Even I am puzzled," I said to him at last. "Let's live simply," the good driver said. "Let's say it is right, and there is left. Why break your head over something without meaning?" "If you find the meaning, there is no meaning in it," I said. The good driver laughed and said, "What's that again? I think you need some medication very soon."

Hearing his remarks, a chilled feeling ran inside my heart. I lowered my head and ran toward my room, cursing Derrida under my breath. I was in a kind of aporia—unable to decide whether I was really mad or sane. I realized after two days of thinking that there was no reality in anything; it was all just construction. That auto driver would never be able to say whether I was sane or insane, because of the free play of meaning that I had taught him during our brief encounter. Or maybe he just went home, told his wife about the crazy passenger, and forgot me entirely. That meaning, too, is free to play.

What Is This Life With(out) Wife?

This is my slogan: Don’t beat your gf ‘hard’ please.

"You are the ugliest creature I have ever seen," she shouted.

"You look like the ugliest witch I have ever seen," he shouted.

"Go away. I don't want to see your face," she shouted again.

"Drop dead. I'm fed up with your face," he shouted.

And blah, blah, blah…

These are some of the words husbands and wives use while quarreling.

But wait… just wait one night. The next morning, everything turns opposite:

"You are the best creature I have ever seen," she hummed.

"You look like a princess to me," he hummed.

"Stay. I want to see your face every day," she hummed again.

"Live with me. I wish to see your face forever," he hummed.

And hum, hum, hum…

When you are young, you fight hard—both physically and verbally. But when you travel further and further down the road of marriage, your quarrels also move farther. (I haven't personally experienced that "further" or "farther," but I have seen plenty of it on my walk.) You look back at your life with your wife and develop a kind of hunchback. And strangely, you feel there was something right in all that hard fighting.

But now? There is no hatred. And there is no love either. It becomes like an overused battery. You have to put that battery in the hot sun for a while if you want to use it again. There is little to no energy left—not even enough to pull the loose trigger of a rusty gun. You become old wine. And then… there is life beyond just you and your wife: children. Very deep photocopies of father and mother. The parents become madder than they ever were before. That's when it's time to sit in the corner, pull your rosaries, and listen to bad remarks from those bad children.

Let me leave on a light note, my old guns.

A man asked his new girlfriend, "Am I the first man you have ever loved?"

"Of course," she answered. "Why do men always ask the same question?"

So you see, you are not the only victims of women. Women are victims of men too. Everyone knows some men like extra things to shine their guns.

Classmates: Who is? Who is Not?

From Right: Omar Esmail, Azad, Rizgar, Me, Deepan, Sabin, Kamal, Omar, Senior(Elizabeth), Bejeta, Madam Mamta, Madam Chitra

Disclaimer: The article below is the views and personal expressions of the author, and may not always be true. These are distant observations and are not intended to hurt anyone, explicitly or implicitly—especially some of our best friends.



A-Z of Our Class

A is for Azad, with his A-plus height.
If he ever happened to be in the army,
he would be the first to die—
an enemy would spot him gangling from afar.
(Sorry, Azad, you're the best guy.)
Except attending class often is his admitting Achilles' heel.

B is for Bejeta, a backdrop of topical blazon.
Catty is the way she barks.
She can sometimes be haughty.
There's something she doesn't believe—
not even to good boys. I don't know why,
if you ask me.

C — there's no C name in the class.
So I have a good chance to write
about the common things in the class.
But there's nothing common as such.
All things are uncommon.
You cannot describe them as such.

D is for Deepa, a difficult girl to deal with.
I often see her serious,
minding her business—
a kind of deliriously dolorous soul.
Look into her eyes:
you'll know she's burning her midnight oil.

And here comes deadly huge Dildar.
I'm always scared of him—
that one day he'll box me,
and I wonder if Mr. Doc could fix my bones.
But Dildar wouldn't do such things.
He's the most delightful and dependable person.
He wouldn't tell a lie, even if everyone else lied to me.

E — there's no E name I've ever heard in this class.
I don't want to show my ego
by writing what everyone dislikes.
But the fact is: there's someone with ego among us.

And here comes F — the failure.
The thought of it shakes me with fright.
To fight with failure is to study only.
There are some who fight tough
but still flunk.

G — when I think of G, only one thing comes to mind:
the great shakers of boys—
the girls, of course.
There are four girls in the class.
I think some love Lady Gaga too much,
or some the latest Gangnam Style.

H is a humbling class,
but sometimes it becomes a horrible humdrum
because some students pick holes in uselessly.
I think some of us badly need hemlock.
I have no say. Everyone has a hundred percent rights.

And here comes I — everyone is an I, an individual.
I is ill-fated students taught by ill-equipped lecturers.
I can imagine an ill-assorted future for all of us.

J — what a jerk?
Keep your eyes on some jabbering jerks.
They believe they're jacks of all trades,
but when it comes to doing something,
they're empty jars. Move on…

To K.
Kamal's presence is very necessary in the kangaroo court.
The class would go wild with him.
The lecturers would take half the class,
and the other half would be his—
and Dildar would close his eyes and ears tight.
Such a loquacious man
who loves killer looks.

And I personally want to add something to this K.
There are some students as small as kids,
and they do everything:
killjoys, kickers, kissers—
and kudos, I'm not that good at any of these things.

L — I'll be very laconic here,
as some people only think of love
and have lachrymal tears in their eyes.
I suspect someone is a ladyboy from the class.

M — yes, Mohamein is a small mombati in the class.
He'd attend a week less per semester
and still pass easily.
I'm a fan of him.
I'll try to follow his absenteeism next semester.

N is for Najiba, a nice woman.
Needless to say, she does her needful.
Who would forget to nag
and drag the whole class like some?
Believe me: she's unbelievably logical and true.

Oh, here is O — Omar, a tough guy to consider.
The future onus of the country's PM falls on him,
yet he doesn't have an even-odd job now.
Someday, someone will write an ode about him, I guess.
But for now, he treats class like an open market—
moving off and on, out.

You know, we have two Omars, making Omar square.
This one is Omar Esmail, whose actions speak louder than words.
He throws his hands hard, like playing coins.
He opines and oscillates on his opinions.
He says, "Hi Sabin," many times
until Sabin is fully tired of replying.
Then he sits,
pokes his opinions, and moves out—outside.

P — here I get to play with words again.
P is for Penjor, one of my colleague teachers in Bhutan.
He pokes his nose everywhere:
in the playground, in clubs, in dancing,
with ladies, with boys, in meetings, in eating—
everywhere. He seems really versatile,
but not as much as you'd think.
He blacks his face everywhere,
so he ends up in everyone's black books.
You know what everyone silently calls him?
"Phallus Penjor" — that's what they shout from behind the mountain.

Q — let me not quack here more.
I'll move quickly to R,
which is quite interesting to read.

R is for Rizgar, a rabble-rouser
who seems to run the race faster than others.
What a racket! He thinks he knows everything
yet comes to class with nothing — not even a pen.
God forbid, alas! He flunks, acheo!
I like your funny rags.

S is for Saacha — that's me, a sophisticated guy.
I sometimes cannot understand myself.
I wonder whether I'm on Mars or Earth.
And worse, I have four balls —
which is why I believe I'm an alien.

Here's another S — not me, it's Sabin.
Sabin is always on the move with her satchel,
ready to flee from the tedious class.
I think Saturday is her best day.
She may be physically a little sore,
but I think her heart is as white as Maida flour.
She's been looking for a boyfriend,
just like I've been looking for a girlfriend!

And here's another S.
The greatest news for the letter S is
that the highest number of names in the world begin with S.
So it is. Who cares?
Srinath's presence doesn't make much hue or cry.
He's a dead log.
He comes and goes like a wounded dog.
He tries hesitantly to poke out,
but the lecturers' hectoring trims him nowhere. Pity, no?

T — now it's time to say Tata.
No — where are U, V, W, X, Y, Z?
They're in the line above.
No need to talk about Umbrella, Virgin, Xanadu,
because after Y comes Z — Zamindar,
who will come and collect all the money
for reading this zany article.