Tag: Faith

Spoiler

Published on by Harpreet ChhachhiaLeave a comment

The thing about life is that no matter how honest you want to get with it, it always wants a show. Something sensational! Something that will make others go, oh, really! How terrible! Or, really, how incredible! When you want to live your life according to the honest, and being truthful and wish to live your life according to your own terms, you can do so – but two conclusions happen. One where the world decides that you cannot be trifled with and so leaves you to their own devices. Two, where the world pretends to assume that it was not you who helped with the creation of your life but everyone around you made who you are and so credit should never come to you.

When I was young, I was bullied, ridiculed and beaten. Society – from my father to my friends – tried to make me behave in a certain way. If I didn’t, I was beaten, thanks to my father, or I was left, like countless friends and lovers. If I came out, it was because I had a fantastic support structure. If I stood up against bullies, it was because my father toughened me up. If I decided I would leave my family if they didn’t accept my sexuality, and they did accept me, it was because I had a fantastic, understanding family. If I was cheated on by my lover of thirteen years, and opened up my relationship so that I could participate in a new world view, my lover was broad-minded enough to accept this change. If my mother left my father, after he nearly strangled me to death, she was brave enough to do so.

I sound petulant now, don’t I?

No.

In this day and age, I have realized one thing. I have made me who I am. I have been broken. I have been torn apart. I have been beaten. Literally. And I have made it through. I have lived my life on my terms. I have decided that the path of honesty is something I want to walk on, irrespective of what and who I might lose. I have been true to every single value that I took up and I have never shirked my responsibilities. I have been through shit, of course, there is this concept of whose shit is more difficult, harder, crueler… but we are not comparing.

I remember a dialogue from Ally McBeal. Georgia goes, “Ally, why are your problems bigger than the rest of ours?” And Ally replies, “Because they are mine.” However, that is not even the issue I am trying to bring about. I am not complaining about the problems I have faced. I am not even complaining about the acknowledgement that goes elsewhere. I am just asking for some honesty. If you don’t wish to listen to me, do not. Do not, however, make the pretence of listening and then realizing I don’t make good matter, because I am unbreakable.

We all want good drama. But I realise I am now a spoiler. I am the ending that is sure. The path already taken. And as I write this down, I realise that if that is so, I should also know that people in general are flawed, like me, and prefer the journey while the destination is unknown. I on the other hand, am comfortable where I am because I know the destination and the journey are all a part of drama any way.

Where the lost things go

Published on by Harpreet ChhachhiaLeave a comment

Mary Poppins was a wonderful movie. It took me to a place where the lost things go. It reminded me of why I was called Peter Pan by a friend so many years ago.

In the middle of life, I grew up somewhere, some time, and I lost perspective of the things that mattered.

Friends and siblings have grown up. The conundrum is that I look for independence and maturity in people I choose to build bonds with. I look down upon the ones who don’t think, who hope extensively. But I’ve also realized, especially when faced with people who are alien to emotion and responses based on the heart, I do not think that they will be happy in life.

I set a lot of score in things that have no real tangible source of happiness. A good wad of cash gets good things that are wanted, tangible, things that can be touched and – perhaps even loved. But these things, along with the cash, do not really matter, in the end. We are human beings – unfortunately – and we need love and we need the succour provided by the Other.

Death becomes final, if there is no love. Memory makes the person immortal. Experience and history are what carries you into the future, into existence forever. The poets and the writers and the painters tried to capture this into art and transcribe it into the tangible. I have known people who have moved away from sensibility and into sense, but I have also seen them despondent and eventually, I have seen them float into the sphere of feeling, sometimes unwittingly, sometimes deliberately and sometimes, fighting tooth and nail.

I have seen how sense takes flight and sensibility takes over, with a vengeance. It is almost as if she wants to wreck love with a violence. She seeks to punish, and she feels it is right as is her wont. But I have dealt with emotion my entire life. I grow weary of her. Sense has come to me while sensibility has been told to wait in the corner. I haven’t discarded her. I just wanted to talk a bit with her sister. It is as Mary Poppins says, it is the time between the dark and light. And sensibility hides quietly.

Some people I loved died, and some, tragically, have grown up. Yes. These elite have no need now of sensibility. They haven’t just taken a break from her… or so they like to think. They wish to do without her. They wish to draw boundaries. They wish for rules. Lines. Space. Independence. Finding themselves. But they do not realise that sense isn’t the only thing that will lead them to peace and fruition.

I know that when my child died in the middle of my home, she left for good. The floor she lay on is just a floor. The home she breathed her last is just a house. Sense asks me to know that death is final. Dreams are dreams and fears are unfounded. But somewhere from the dark within, sensibility whispers, gone but not forgotten. Trust, she says. Love, she reminds. And I turn to the dark, searching for the place where the lost things go. And I trust and I love and find her in me – sitting right next to Peter.

Fangorn

Published on by Harpreet Chhachhia2 Comments

‘When winter comes, the winter wild
that hill and wood shall slay;
When trees shall fall and starless night
devour the sunless day;
When wind is in the deadly East,
then in the bitter rain
I’ll look for thee, and call to thee;
I’ll come to thee again!’

Since the past two days I have been feeling sick to my stomach and generally in a state of being low. The nation is gripped right now in the turmoil generated by two brutal incidents, of people, by people, against people. I followed them as most do in the news, but sometimes the cases aren’t one of many, some speak to your jaded humanity, they make you move out of the darkness that experience and tired wisdom have harboured. They shake you and that cocoon of grey that has covered your life as you grow into not wanting to believe in blacks and whites. Sometimes, the mantle of lassitude brought on by the intellect is shaken from its own self-imposed fatigue and you are pulled up by the collar and shaken and shaken and shaken.

It’s an age-old metaphor I have fallen into. Having tried to reject the world’s problems –
because of all the inanity and cruelty that I have seen in it – the world tells me that she isn’t quite done with me just yet. I feel like Treebeard. I have lived and I have seen and I do not want to participate, but here comes Merry, frowning and demanding to know, “you’re a part of this world, aren’t you?” And I, as Treebeard, am stunned into empathy – something that I do not want to feel anymore. But I must.

I call onto my partner and speak about how I see his community, and my partner reacts by calling onto mine. We both stand offended. And I realise in that moment, what it means to be divisive. What it means to stand on the pretext of religion or faith or family or love or revenge and believe our actions are justified. If we love each other so, and even so, mention a divide and stand affronted, what if we didn’t know, or worse, disliked the other. How quickly could a warmonger get to us… will it be just a matter of time before we descend into violent thought or violence, or will our sanity and erudition prevail?

Am I so different because of the education I received and the Masters I earned? Has education created my mindset or was I always prone to open ended thinking? Was it my upbringing? My experiences? What I was told or taught? Am I rational? Am I emotional? Am I now being divisive?

I lost my faith and my hope over the course of 2013. I felt bewildered and lost. I looked at the cruelty of nature. I tried to understand it. Then I looked at the mean attitude of the justice system and was let down by those who are supposed to be unbiased and fair, within the confines of structured society. But then I learned that life, of course, isn’t fair, and never promised to be. We like to think we are civilized, but civilization is just a very thin veneer that can be torn down in a matter of seconds… Of all the times, I believed I felt ten times the fool. If I moved from humanity to animal welfare, I shuddered at the deepening futility – for if eight-year-old girls aren’t spared torture, rape and bludgeonings, how and in which tattered aspect of this society could I find a hope for an animal?

Humanity is hungry for blood and in so doing, has lost out on being humane. The ones who preached the word of tolerance, restraint and forgiveness are now part of a small mythology that no one seems to acknowledge. As I grow, I have no anger left in me to be passionate, I have no hope left in me to wait for justice, I have no conviction left in me to stand upright. Everything is grey now. Everything except love.

The thing that stands out in books and movies and themes and music – it does linger. The paradox is: the horror sets in because I can still love. Love makes me empathise. What if the girl was someone I loved? The horror of those four days. The confusion. The pain. The smells. The terror of knowing and yet not knowing. The utter horror. And then the horror of knowing that the ones who are capable of this terror did not feel the horror themselves. Did not feel the pain, did not understand what it means to be human.

The mind cringes. The heart wilts. I am lost.

“I do not like worrying about the future. I am not altogether on anybody’s side, because nobody is altogether on my side, if you understand me…” But something has to give. I cannot be Treebeard and wait to rally others and wage war on Isengard. I cannot be Treebeard and let the fires of Isengard reach the ones I love. But one thing I know for sure: “The world is changing: I feel it in the water, I feel it in the earth, and I smell it in the air.”

‘When winter comes and singing ends;
when darkness falls at last;
When broken is the barren bough,
and light and labour past;
I’ll look for thee, and wait for thee,
until we meet again:
Together we will take the road
beneath the bitter rain!’

‘Together we will take the road
that leads into the West,
And far away will find a land
where both our hearts may rest.’ “