Friday is the Devil

(in New Age extra under “Our women Fridays” in 4 installments with a few edits/changes here and there –

1st installment: http://www.newagebd.com/2009/mar/06/mar06/xtra_also4.html
2nd installment: http://www.newagebd.com/2009/mar/13/mar13/xtra_also3.html
3rd installment: http://www.newagebd.com/2009/mar/20/mar20/xtra_also3.html
4th installment: http://www.newagebd.com/2009/mar/26/mar26/xtra_also2.html)

original/unedited version………

<1>

Shakil found Lamia so adorable, that he had no choice but to pretend that he was highly annoyed with her existence. For one, she wasn’t one of the cool girls. In fact her presence was usually unrealized, and she was only sporadically acknowledged as a landmark when trying to locate the misplaced cricket ball or badminton shuttle. These objects were often found lying on the left side, right side, in front of, or behind “that girl.”

Moreover, given his recent outstanding performance in the inter-class basketball matches, he was pacing up the social ladder quite swiftly. By now, he was the recipient of anonymous love letters and innumerable silent phone-calls on a daily basis. His mother’s irritation was a testimonial to his popularity, and he relished each and every chiding like peace treaties. He was a smart boy, and knew not to jeopardize this influx of adulation with a confession of feelings for a nobody with braces and a unibrow.

He felt pity for her when she lay under the mango tree on the otherwise barren school yard during recess everyday, either engrossed in her book, or her thoughts. He felt even more pity for her nonchalance towards her absence in the social barometer.

“Poor thing doesn’t know the joy of recognition. What a pity…,” he thought.

At times when she lay under the shade stretching and twirling around, smiling at God knows what, he felt an urge to go tickle her – not out of affection or playfulness, but rather to disrupt her bliss that spurted out of oblivion. But he refrained lest she misconstrues that as an act of violence or worse, flirtation. After all, the line between vanity and paranoia is quite meagre, and the spheres of neither allow space for the possibility of disturbance without a cause.

He silently chuckled at his aspiration to be like that goblin in the kettle from Radiant Reading. The only difference is, he didn’t want to be green.

<2>

As was her undeclared ritual, Lamia sat at her study table on a Friday afternoon, with her hazy gaze affixed on the same line of her physics textbook for hours; obviously absorbing nothing. She would occasionally try to lend an ear next door to her younger sister Tanisha, trying to learn Arabic from the same lady who taught her.

She was fascinated by the idea of having a “Lady Hujur.” She liked that everyone else she knew of had male Arabic teachers, and that at least something about her was unconventional. Of course, her parents’ reasons for assigning a female instructor were not geared towards making a statement of any kind.

As her sister rifled through the Arabic text racing towards the “Khatm” line, a formality she had already graduated from, Lamia realized that these couple of hours apart from her diction-crazy-new-age-rendition-of-Amy (of “Little Women” fame) sister, were perfect for getting some studying done. It is very difficult to fathom an overtly simplified version of Newton’s Law of Attraction with a ten year old mosquitoeing around her ears with words too heavy for her own tongue, and her audience’s ears.

What’s more irritating, though admittedly endearing, is how she occasionally misconstructs certain words. For example, the other day, she took a quick scan of Lamia’s desk, briefly pausing on the pen-holder. After scrutinizing the pens and pencils Lamia had distorted with obsessive chewing, she exclaimed, “You have oral Phoenix.”

Their father found this unintentional metaphoric rendition of oral “fetish” particularly amusing and humoured her with a further twist,

“Yes, Lamia does have oral phoenix. Sometimes when she argues, a fiery bird hatches out of her saliva bubbles, morphs into words, and burns her opponents.”

Tanisha didn’t exactly understand the reference, but gathered that her sister was being praised for her argumentation skills. She did not agree. She always thought her sister could do a much better job at defending herself when their neighbour Monica tried putting her down with her unjustified over-confidence.

For one, Monica had to do exactly what Lamia did, and then claim to be better at it. On top of that, she had the thorny spine to assert delinquent diagnoses to put her down. Last Friday, Lamia’s first stab at “stream of consciousness” writing was interrupted by the intrusion of this unwanted neighbour. Pulling out pencil splinters from her mouth, and trying to peel off the little paint bits off of her tongue Lamia complained,

“As much as I try ‘stream of consciousness’ writing, I can never finish.” Then putting on a very ‘wise beyond age’ expression sage Lamia added, “It’s like a tennis ball falls into my stream out of the blue, splashing my thought water all over the place. I am too easily distracted I guess.”

“Sounds like you Missy, have a grave case of A.D.D.,” exclaimed psychology prodigy Monica.

Frustrated with her sister’s “hmm” response, Tanisha sprung out of her chair, fidgety and stuttering with rage,

“Well may be she has I.E.E., you know, Interests Erupting Effect! Since when is it a crime to be curious; to be too interested?”

Followed by a moment of silence, Lamia burst out into laughter, while Monica blankly stared at the two sisters, feeling slightly ostracized by the moment. Meanwhile, Tanisha shaking with the jolt of betrayal stormed out of the room screaming, “Your behaviour springs hydro-eruption out of my cornea.”

Lamia wanted to tell her that these words would strike a sisterly chord within her if they were simple. “Lamia, you make me wanna cry,” would melt and (almost) kill her. But she has never given Tanisha the recipe to this kryptonite. She did not need to know that she has a sister who would go to any length for her; even for no substantial reason. Such knowledge is redundant and dangerous luxury. Plus, natal chronology induced hierarchy dictates that she hold her tongue and harness power through negligence and contrived nonchalance. She does not have the audacity to contradict and insult the doctrine.

<3>

Lamia never felt more docile than she did in their art classes. An avid fan of Oscar Wilde, she wanted to believe in the uselessness of art. That’s why she didn’t understand why art classes were made mandatory in schools. What she detested the most was how art was constricted to pencils and colours. When she addressed the futility of imposed art classes with her principal Mrs. Akram, the robotic lady tried explaining the necessity of art as a means of liberating innate repression. But Lamia failed to see the promised liberation in “Draw as You like with a Tree,” or “Draw as You like with Mickey Mouse” assignments. However, she didn’t continue with her argument because she figured a two-dimensional stick figure like Mrs. Akram would not be able to fathom the versatile wholesomeness of art, which cosmically ties it to the revelation of futility in everything. She would not be able to convince her that reading, thinking, doodling on mud with a twig can command liberty with equal success, and are all arguably forms of art.

The idea of doodling on mud was particularly appealing to her, and she did practice it incessantly. On most occasions she would do it with the same zonal disposition of her reading ventures; pretending she is deciphering ancient theological codes. At other times she would convince herself she is an artist of immense talent, too poor to afford stationeries, but will soon be discovered by a patron and taken to her destined pedestal.

During one of these moments she realized that either through, or because of her nonchalance, she was quite desperate to be discovered, and that is why she was so fascinated with, and devoted towards mystical discoveries. Maybe at the end of the day, the discourse of discovery is itself ignited by a desperation to be discovered.

<4>

Lamia stood next to her mother Nasrin, watching her fry vegetable pakoras. She always felt that the way her mother fried the pakoras was a direct reflection of the way she delegated their upbringing, and other household functions in general. Unlike other kitchens, their kitchen never delivered mixed pakoras. At their house, mixed pakoras meant a variety of individually fried vegetables on the same platter, with the same chutney. She thought this was symbolic of the way their mother valued and nurtured everyone from her father to her sister individually, but under the same uncompromising domestic order, uncustomized at the face of individual needs – each fried in the same batter.

“Broccoli and cauliflower aren’t exactly potato-potata even if they are from the same family,” Lamia angrily pronounced to herself.

Lamia always felt that her mother was a lost potential. She did not know exactly what her potential was (though there must have been one by virtue of being human), but now she is nothing but a case lost to intolerable mundaneness. She thought the only thing exciting about her mother was the difference in the aroma of each of her culinary delights. Even the mystery quotient on that was pretty low since they were directly out of her frayed recipe journal – instructions absolutely untampered with, and impeccably followed word-for-word. Another doctrine saluted.

Little did she know that Nasrin was once not only a young bride of a much older gentleman, but was also an aspiring romance novelist of the distastefully appetizing genre. Like herself, the heroine of her first and only secret novel had “the fissure of her dimpled buttocks of her innocence whipped by the pangs of her lover’s masculinity;” that like her, the heroine had “cracked her multi-coloured glass bangles to make vivid little fragments of  kaleidoscope to view different morsels of her life with.”

What made Lamia queasy about her mother the most was how no site on her mind-slate was blank. She was a woman of many suspicions and few illustrations.

Lamia always informed her mother of her whereabouts beforehand. But when she returned home, her mother would invariably ask her where she went, who she was with, etc. She addressed those queries with a lot of apprehension because she felt her mother was not asking out of forgetfulness or curiosity, but cross-examining her out of suspicion of mendacity and misinformation.

She found her mother’s interest in her to be very selective and condescending.

She wanted to believe that she was being paranoid, but that questions (especially those of her mother’s), were meant to confirm pre-conceived notions instead of filling up a scrap of tabula rasa, felt more like an intuition.

<5>

It is true that all food, particularly rice and curries taste better when not eaten with cutleries. But the task of getting rid of turmeric sediments from nail-beds after a meal is quite laborious. Lamia cringed at the thought of touching her books with those fingers, so she scrubbed her fingers with soap as if seeking vendetta against her cuticles. The scrubbing got even more rigorous because the residue of the lunchtime conversation lingered to her fingers.

She felt this way after every Friday lunch at her house. What made her sceptical about these family conversations was how everyone echoed each other’s one-track mindedness. The monotony of pseudo analysis was more extended than the family members strewn across different corners of their living room. She was convinced she was adopted. The hilarious myth of her being picked up from a dumpster hoarded more plausibility every Friday.

One of the recurring topics of discussion was the miracles of God. This Friday people gushed over balance in God’s games. God’s benevolence was exemplified with “tsk tsk” remorse over the death of an elderly relative two years ago, which was shortly followed by her cousin’s pregnancy. Such blanket statements of balance are very eerie and unnerving to her.

She wondered why the rage against such undesired losses only surfaced as a tease, especially since news of one death is generally followed by a few more. She was embarrassed at the oversight of simultaneous deaths everytime; the domino effect on grave-digging.  One pregnancy cannot balance that out. Why did the surprise visit of the stork overshadow the laziness of Azrail? It seemed to her that Azrail convinced God to waiver the multiple-trip memo, and lapped up a few souls everytime he visited the neighbourhood. When it shits, it really does diarrhoea. Or for good measure, when it rains, it really does pour.

She felt lonely in her battle against the rage of unacceptance. What bothered her the most was how she could not explain her unacceptance of the acceptance of others; how she could not fathom the physical paradox of death. As far as she knew, cold preserves. But when bodies grow cold, it is a sign of internal rotting. She cringed at the realization of this bluff; at how frozen bodies corroded in their cold storage. What she cringed at the most, was the crude phrasing of this thought.

<6>

Tanisha made a decision to have some fun with puns before she rolled out of bed that day. “I’ll take some pun-i-tive actions today,” she thought, and curled up to a foetal position, paralyzed with breathless laughter for a good five minutes. When she finally gathered herself, she remembered that she had invited a few of her friends over for a “Hello Kitty Party.”

She had often heard her mother and her neighbourhood friends speak tartly of the kitty party subculture of the elite women – late afternoon meetings of an unproductive club, harping on about jewellery and other people’s marital hiccups, and occasionally loosening their Tk. 35,000 sari strings to make a Tk. 3500 donation to self-validation in the name of breast cancer research.

“I wish I could cure these headaches guised as women with Paracetamol,” Tanisha had heard her mother coon to one of her friends over a late afternoon tea-session. And there! She had gotten her idea for a seating arrangement for her “Hello Kitty Party” sans “Hello Kitty” paraphernalia. She and her kitty friends would say “hello” to each other and take seats on parallely arranged chairs. Yes, she would para-sit-‘em-all.

She explained her idea to Lamia and asked for her help in setting up. Lamia took a pensive look at their living room and started walking around it, stopping on spots for placing chairs that would enable Tanisha to materialize her dream design.

“There…and there…aaaannnd theeeere…aaannndd there….,” she marched in slow motion with extremely long strides, as if playing “Twister for the Inflexible.”

Having completed their arrangement, the two sisters stood on the coffee table they had removed to a side of the room, aligned with the couches framing the design for their anticipated congregation like a moat.

“There and there, yet a square. I think the outer square is engulfing the inner parallels.”

“Well Tanisha, this is the best we can do. Squares are, afterall, a set of parallel lines put together. One way or another, a parallel seating arrangement would put you guys in a square or any other form of parallelogram.”

“Yeah, I don’t have the time to rearrange the place anyway. I have to help mom fry the kitty shaped potatoes, then…”

“Where did you get those?” Lamia interrupted.

“Mom got them from somewhere. It’s by Silky Foods.”

And they both roared in laughter. Catching her breath, Tanisha remembered decorations were still pending.

“Do we have candy sprinkles?” she asked Lamia.

“I don’t think so, why?”

“I want to sprinkle those all over the living room to add some life.”

“Sweet life for ants and roaches you mean. Are you crazy? I have a few sheets of poster paper that you can cut up to make confetti out of. You want them?”

“No, either sprinkles or nothing. Well maybe baby spiders…” she said smirking as her eyeballs elevated diagonally, “…confetti in fretful motion: confretti!

“It’s ironic how you never have what you want. For your birthday party you wanted confetti and there was none, but there were boxes of sprinkles for the cake. And now it’s the reverse.”

“10,000 spoons when you need a knife isn’t exactly an irony, it’s sheer misfortune.”

On that note, Tanisha exited the building. Living room rather.

<7>

Lamia found that boy’s presence to be quite unsettling. “What’s his name again? Oh, Shakil,” she thought to herself everytime he staggered into the classroom with his posse. Everything about that boy was pathetic to her – the way he left the classroom every half an hour to go re-do his spikes with tap water, the way all the girls stopped conversing with each other everytime His Fabulousity made an entrance, and got extra giggly and straight-backed.

This happened every 32 minutes – exit every 30 minute, followed by 2 minutes of copious amounts of whispers about him, and then his return. She could not decide what was more pathetic; his exits, their reason, his entrances and re-entrances, the moments in between, the people around, or the pest himself. Or is it her masochistic and fruitless obsession with this that takes the cake?

Quickly she snapped out of it, embarrassed at her banal indulgence, and realizing her time would be better spent trying to bite dust.

She tried to concentrate on the in-class exercise Manowara Miss had assigned. Lamia realized she gulped a lot in her classes. That was probably because she found an exaggerated resemblance between her Manowara Miss and her Lady Hujur. In fact, the resemblance wasn’t exaggerated at all. It was just on the superficial level that both of them wore abaiyahs and covered their heads with wide white scarves. Also neither of them, Manowara being a chemistry teacher, and Lady Hujur being an Arabic teacher, needed to use English at all, but they both did so with millions of mistakes and unbent confidence.

Tanisha already had a ball picking faults and poking fun at the Arabic teacher’s mistakes. If by the time she reaches Lamia’s grade, Manowara Miss is still there, she would probably do the same with her.

Lamia has an extra dollop of affection for Tanisha because she sees a lot of herself in her, especially in terms of humour. The only difference is, all of Lamia’s articulations are in her head, and Tanisha’s are actually articulations. That’s why on many occasions, despite having an urge, Lamia refrained from asking Tanisha for details about her Arabic lessons.

For one, there was some barrier that she did not know how to overcome to address questions of this nature with her little sister. Besides, she figured if Tanisha did face similar “spectacles,” she would bring it up herself. And if she wasn’t doing so, that is probably okay too, because they can’t exactly confide such matters in their father – they have had a proper upbringing – and telling their mother would bear no or negative results.

Their mother would either refuse to believe the allegation against the female voice of God, or slide it under the carpet with some excuse or explanation. She would however, not do so if this had happened to someone else’s child. In that case, she would dish out some stern advice and be genuinely enraged from the core of her being. We often don’t give importance to the injustice and tribulations of our close ones the same way we give to others. Maybe because we are, in one way or another, responsible for their instigation; or maybe because in case of others it is easier to dodge the obligation of taking action of any consequence, and a stance of any level against the atrocity is always applauded and put under a heroic spotlight.

For example when Lamia’s uncle had an affair, Nasrin was infuriated, supported her sister-in-law to the hilt suggesting she leave her husband (as in Nasrin’s own brother), and move on to worthier pastures. When her sister-in-law almost succumbed to her husband’s desperate pleas to give the marriage another chance, Nasrin explained to her that there really is no remedy or compensation for infidelity.

No one knows that Lamia knows about this, but when her father had an affair with his co-worker, Nasrin forgave him immediately, attributing stress, workload and frustration to this venture. When asked how she is taking it so easily, Nasrin explained that it is easy to forgive when you love someone passionately.

But Lamia disagreed wholeheartedly. She thought passion cannot, and should not allow for rational compensation and immediate respite. All this traditional loyalty hocus-pocus was a little too modern for her to digest, especially since it came from a woman who inculcated values of honesty and stability in her.

“When did modernity creep up and possess tradition, rendering it devoid of any emotion but fear?” she often wondered.

Her romanticism was sabotaged by the same person who instilled it. She had decided that once a grown-up, she will tell her mother,

“The stories you tell me of your courtship days sound like somebody else’s. I cannot identify you as the woman who once contemplated elopement, wrote silly little love songs with jingle-like tunes, snuck out for crazy little romantic escapades. I had always wondered why you began your anecdotes whispering, ‘don’t tell your father I told you this,’ but I now I know he isn’t your beau in those stories. I have stopped wondering why institutionalization of a relationship implies gagging deliberate experiences of raging passion.

You never lied to me when you told stories of ‘him.’ You never said ‘your father and I.’ My presumption should not be your burden, and your unloading isn’t mine now that I know. My only regret is, I have never seen that classical heroine my mother once was. I process your efficiency in all you roles and chores with replicated rationale, but I wish I could have felt you in my gut. At least once.

It pricks like a fang, your modernity in my Neanderthal. You know, you can’t validate people to parallel your expectations.”

And then Nasrin Begum will know that her daughter is actually a mute raven perpetually collecting carcasses of choked stories, but finding them too unappetizing to chew in the end.

<8>

On the last day of school, the kids were quite antsy. On one hand, there lay the excitement of a three month long summer vacation, and on the other hand, the remorse of being detached with most of their friends. This year like all the others, saw shattering crushes and reassuring friendships. The inherited intrinsic doctrine of middle school life dictated that friendships should only be established with people only within their particular sections, and then be recycled and redistributed as sections were rotated. So the partings that day would not only stretch over 3 months, but threatened to extend over a longer, indefinite period of time.

As was the tradition, everyone stayed an extra couple of hours that day to play and engage in mild, harmless debauchery. Lamia too stayed back to absorb the only place that gave her a sense of belonging and ownership. It is not as if she did not feel at home at her home, it’s just that she did not feel so at all times. Those are the gaps that were filled by the shade of this mango tree, which honed all her secrets, talents and musings.

She desperately needed those extra hours at her sanctuary because the upcoming vacation may entail some sacrifices; sacrifices as grave as subsiding brownie points from above by way of deterring divine despotism.

She knew what rape was. She knew it was the physical and emotional incarceration of a female rodent by a male scavenger. She was grateful that she was never raped. She also knew that it is not only the infliction of severe explicit trauma that called for condemnation, but that inducement of morbid awkwardness was also of substantial gravity. She did not need to be told this, she just knew. This realization replaced her mother in the void of her gut.

She felt her fists clenched, eyes dewy and jaws stiff as the failure of identifying the reason for her angst dawned upon her. Although she felt her Hujur meant well, she knew there was something wrong with abrupt stories embodying contrived lessons.

“Whatever Allah has given is divine. You should never challenge God. Once this girl threaded her eyebrows and shaved her arms and legs, and the next day the removed hair was replaced with caterpillars,” said the Hujur, interrupting Lamia’s stuttered skimming of the Arabic text before her.

“She means well,” thought Lamia, and went back to reading.

“I am happy to see you are showing breasts. They are small now, but as you grow older, they’ll get bigger… like mine.”

And she flashed.

That was only the beginning. From then onwards, every chance she got, she would exhibit her blessings.

“I am thinking of getting my daughter married off. Her breasts are almost as big as mine.” *FLASH*

“Your mother might ask you to wear V.C.R. (brassiere) when you grow older, don’t. You shouldn’t try to manipulate what God has given you. I never have and never will.” *FLASH*

“I am so lucky my husband gave me a daughter before he died. I have nothing more to ask for. God is great. The greatest feeling in the world is breast-feeding your child.” *FLASH*

At the time Lamia did not know why she felt violated. She wanted to tell her mother, but she didn’t know what to say. She wished during one of those “flash parties” her mother would wake up from her siesta and walk in on them. But as divine dictations would have it, that never happened.

The maid at their house, Rahima bua, was like a second mother to them. Lamia wanted to address this with her, but her struggle with this avenue resembled that with her mother’s. On top of that, Rahima bua would never take her side and malign the Woman of God. She had immense faith in people of God.

When Lamia used to hide upon her Lady Hujur’s arrival, Rahima bua would help the prophetess hunt her down. She would later lecture Lamia on not disrespecting religious authorities since they were holders of unimaginable power. She would give examples of how at different points in time, making small donations for milaads in mazaars had fulfilled her wishes. She told stories of how chits of prayers had cured illnesses. Apparently once, a prayer had to be written with deer blood for it to work, but the Hujur at her local mazaar was so powerful, that he had attained the desired result with plain red ink.

At the time when Lamia was receiving her Arabic lessons, she hadn’t menstruated, and had no idea as to what menstruation was. No one had briefed her- no mother, no teacher. She remembers that when her Lady Hujur brought it up out of the blue, she had no clue as to what she was being told, but she remembers being terrified. She remembers the skinny dark lady with lines of fatigue on her skin, and eyes too big for her face leaning over and saying,

“Have you had your ‘B.D.R.’ (period) yet?”

“My what?”

“‘B.D.R’… ‘mens’…It is something girls must go through. I won’t tell you anything about it, but if you don’t get it on time, you are going to have to put a glass through you ‘lojjar jayga’ (shameful place).”

Lamia did not know how to process that, and she did not know why she was scared. When Rahima was putting her to sleep with folktales that night, she asked about “B.D.R.,” and Rahima comforted her with,

“If Hujur says so, it must be true. One way or the other, you will be fine.”

Then pausing for a moment she said,

“Even if women can do damage, how far can they go? Your parents know what’s best for you shona.”

<9>

Agewise, Lamia and Tanisha weren’t that far apart, but by virtue of menstruation catching up with Lamia without the aid of glass, they were, like two different generations (at least temporarily), separated by a stream of blood.

Lamia had heard elders speak of sacrifices generations have made for justice, morality, conscience, consciousness, gratification, but mostly for the next generation.

Lamia felt a responsibility towards her little sister. Depending on the situation, she would either warn or threaten the “Woman of God.” She did not care about disturbing divine dignity and the consequence(s) that it might bear.

She conceded that sacrifice was a battle that left heaps of rubble to be cleared off afterwards. Post fulfilling all strata of decorum, warriors are too tired to enjoy the fruits of the sacrifice, and too desensitized to feel its zest. The optimum execution of the “humanness” of humanity rips humanity of the same “humanness.”

For humanity, Lamia was willing to forego her humanness.

<10>

Shakil did not know he was in Lamia’s neighbourhood, and that he was walking right by her house. He was too overwhelmed by the bitterness of a lost cricket match to notice that he had treaded upon an unknown neighbourhood to seek solace with his stars.

While he approached Lamia’s apartment building, inside, Lamia’s mother had just served slices of mangoes to her husband. He had given the aati to Lamia, since that was her most favourite part of the fruit. Lamia being in a sacrificing mood, handed it to Tanisha.

Tanisha felt bad for the crows in the vicinity, and in a zest of magnanimity, she threw the seed out the window so the crows could fight it out. Incidentally, the seed landed on Shakil, who got even more agitated, and threw the seed back at the building. The seed then bounced off the wall, and fell on the Lady Hujur as she was entering the building to teach Tanisha.

It is at this point of bones chasing banes on a Friday afternoon, that these jarred pickles failed to harmonize; unless cancelling each other out at an uncovetted equilibrium can be called harmony.

]]> http://abjectserendipity.wordpress.com/2008/12/30/firstfiction/feed/ 1 edgessofpurple http://abjectserendipity.wordpress.com/2008/09/01/potor-potor/ http://abjectserendipity.wordpress.com/2008/09/01/potor-potor/#comments Mon, 01 Sep 2008 23:22:35 +0000 edgessofpurple http://abjectserendipity.wordpress.com/?p=4 ]]> “Beginning to think is beginning to be undermined. Society has but little connection with such beginnings. The worm is in man’s heart. That is where it must be sought. One must follow and understand this fatal game that leads from lucidity in face of existence of flight from light.”(Camus)

Most of the time suicide attracts a macro perspective – of being a social phenomenon – though, according to Camus, at the outset it is usually not just a consequence of the relationship between individual thought, but rather, an aftermath of its exponential progression in whichever direction. “An act like this is prepared within the silence of the heart, as is a great work of art. The man himself is ignorant of it.”  He argues that though there are many causes for suicide, generally the most obvious ones are neither adequately powerful, nor convincing. “What sets off the crisis is almost always unverifiable. Newspapers often speak of ‘personal sorrows’ or of ‘incurable illness.’ These explanations are all plausible. But one would have to know whether a friend of the desperate man had not that very day addressed him indifferently. He is the guilty one.” And that alone is enough to catalyze all the bitterness and all the boredom.

Suicide may have more “honourable” affiliations – for example, the political suicides of protest, as they were called, during the Chinese revolution. But if it is hard to fix the precise instant, the subtle step when the mind opted for death, it is easier to deduce from the act itself the consequences it implies. In a sense suicide may be looked upon as a confession of overestimating or underestimating life. It may be a statement of life becoming out of one’s league, or too far below an individual to go through with.

There are numerous renderings on the connection between suicide and religion. But it seems to be more of a philosophical discourse than a religious ultimatum, because exploring suicide entails treading upon political, sociological, psychological, religious, sexual and all other paradigms. The extremity of its nature makes it out to be one of the most, if not the most holistic of queries. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering some of the most fundamental questions of philosophy.

However, before getting into the subjective analysis, it is necessary to briefly scan the position some of the major religions of the world take on this issue. Judaism has traditionally, in light of its great emphasis on the sanctity of life, viewed suicide as one of the most serious of sins. Suicide has always been forbidden by Jewish law in all cases. It is not seen as an acceptable alternative even if one is being forced to commit certain cardinal sins for which one must give up one’s life rather than sin. Judaism has many teachings about peace and compromise, which present physical violence as one of the last possible options. Although suicide is forbidden under normal Jewish law as being a denial of God’s goodness in the world, under extreme circumstances when there has seemingly been no choice but to either be killed or forced to betray their religion, Jews have committed suicide or mass suicide.

There were seven suicides in the Bible, but in the sixth century, suicide became a religious sin and secular crime. In 533, those who committed suicide while accused of a crime, were denied a Christian burial, which was a prerequisite for going to heaven. In 693, even the attempt of suicide became an ecclesiastical crime, which could be punished by civil consequences, following excommunication. By the 13th century, suicide was vilified as an act against God and as a sin for which one could not repent. Civil and criminal laws were enacted, and degradation of the body and denial of proper burial were put in place, in order to discourage suicide. Property and possessions of the deceased and their family were confiscated. The main Christian argument propagated is that, one’s life is the property of God, and to destroy that life is to wrongly assert dominion over what is God’s. In point 2281 of the Catechism it is stated:

“2281 Suicide contradicts the natural inclination of the human being to preserve and perpetuate his life. It is gravely contrary to the just love of self. It likewise offends love of neighbor because it unjustly breaks the ties of solidarity with family, nation, and other human societies to which we continue to have obligations.”

Islam views suicide as sinful and highly detrimental to one’s spiritual journey. For those who formerly believed, but ultimately rejected belief in God, the result seems unambiguously negative.  A verse in the fourth chapter of the Quran, An-Nisaa (The Women) instructs; “And do not kill yourselves, surely Allah is most merciful to you.” (4:29)

For Buddhists, since the first precept is to refrain from the destruction of life, including one’s own, suicide is naturally considered a negative form of action. Despite this view, an ancient Asian ideology similar to seppuku (hara-kiri) continues to influence oppressed Buddhists to choose the act of honor suicide. The most well-known instance of this was Thich Quang Duc’s suicide by self-immolation to protest the government of Ngo Dinh Diem. Also in modern times, Tibetan monks have used this perceived ideal to protest the Chinese occupation of Tibet and China’s human rights violations against Tibetans.

Similarly, in Hinduism, murdering one’s own body is considered as sinful as murdering another, with the exception of the currently defunct practice of sati. Scriptures generally state that to die by suicide (and any type of violent death) results in becoming a ghost.

At the core, be it divine or man-made, religion is a disciplinary entity, moderating or mitigating the extremity of people’s actions. Religion may prevent people from committing suicide by labelling it a sin, or may (as Durkheim would argue) fill in the void which may lead to suicide. Either way, simply put, religion has not always succeeded (in fact it sometimes instigates) suicides. On the other hand, not everyone is religious anyway. But for the ones who do attest to a religious doctrine, why does religion fail to stop them from taking their lives?

Religion, according to Bertrand Russell, has many meanings and a long history. Originally it was concerned with certain rites inherited from a remote past, performed  for some reason long forgotten, and from time to time, associated with various myths to account for their supposed importance. The activities of people maybe derived from three sources, which are not identical, but rather similar and parallel in nature: instinct, mind, and spirit; and of these three it is the spirit that makes religion. Instinct includes what people share with the lower animals, and is concerned with self-preservation and reproduction, and the desires and impulses derived from these. “It includes all the impulses that are essentially concerned with the biological success of oneself or one’s group – for among gregarious animals the life of instinct includes the group.”

Psychical origin of religious ideas is illusions, fulfilments of the oldest, strongest and most urgent wishes of mankind. The secret of their strength, as Freud would argue, lies in the strength of those wishes. “An illusion is not the same as an error; nor is it necessarily an error.” In a world without religious doctrines, everyone will follow his asocial, egoistic instincts and seek to exercise his power, and that would lead to chaos.

“Even if we knew, and could prove, that religion was not in possession of the truth, we ought to conceal the fact and behave in the way prescribed by the philosophy of  “As if” – and this interest of the preservation of us all. And apart from the danger of the undertaking, it will be purposeless cruelty.” (Freud)

            Countless people find their consolation in religious doctrines, and can only bear life with their help. He argues that people have imperative needs of another sort, which can never be satisfied by cold science. Religious doctrines tell of historical truth, whereas our rational account disavows it. The store of religious ideas includes not only wish-fulfilments, but important historical recollections. This concurrent influence of past and present must give religion a truly incomparable wealth of power on account of its wish-fulfilling and consolatory powers:

“In view of the difficulty of discovering anything about reality – indeed, of the doubt whether it is possible for us to do so at all – we must not overlook the fact that human needs, too, are a piece of reality, and, in fact, an important piece and one that concerns us especially closely.”

 Many feminists, particularly Simone de Beauvoir, argue that women are more likely to resort to suicide than men. Successful suicides are much more common in men than in women, but attempts to end their lives are commoner in the latter. They are much more likely to drown themselves like Ophelia, Beauvoir argues, “attesting the affinity of woman with water, where, in the still darkness, it seems that life might find passive dissolution.”

Many who hold an intrinsic or otherwise claim to be devoid of all human love look to God for help; Beauvoir claims that it is precisely around menopause, that most women become religious. Amidst the vague notions of destiny, mystery, and lack of appreciation, women seek and possibly find, a sense of rational unification in religion. However, it can be argued that the same is not an exclusive truth pertaining to women, but may as well be applicable to all people. If people willingly embrace religion, it is above all because it fills a profound need. 

So reverting back to the point stated a while ago whether religion is divine or man-made, why is its existence not sufficient for stopping suicide? What is it within human beings that make them overlook religion, and surrender to powerlessness or assume power over self (however you prefer to look at religion)?

Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics may be able to provide with an answer for this. In is book he explains virtue to be a state involving rational choice, which consists of a mean determined by reason, which is relative to us. “It is a mean between two vices, one of excess, the other of deficiency.” Mean in other words is a moderation or balance. Some vices fall short of what is right in feelings and actions, and others exceed it, but virtue both attains and chooses the mean.

One compartment of the soul is reasonable, while the other is the counter. It does not matter whether these elements are separate or whether they are naturally inseparable but differentiated in thought, “like the convex and concave aspects of a curved surface.” We deem the reason of the self-controlled and of the incontinent to be praiseworthy. That is the part of the soul with reason because it urges them in the right direction, towards what is best. But as mentioned earlier, there is within them another natural element besides reason, which conflicts with and resists it:

“For just as paralysed limbs, when one rationally chooses to move them to the right, are carried off in the opposite direction to the left, so also in the soul: the impulses of incontinent people carry them off in the opposite direction.”

 The nature and characteristic of this discrepancy seems irrelevant to this discussion. The element in the soul of the self-controlled person obeys reason and presumably in the temperate and the brave person it is still more ready to listen, since in their case it is in total harmony.

When looking over and synthesizing the various dispositions of philosophical and theological discourses, the question of what suicide is a consequence of, at the face of religious (positive and negative) promises; promises of Heaven or its equivalent upon religious obedience, and penalty upon disobedience, arises. Is suicide an act of cowardness or courage; of hopelessness or hopefulness? Is it an act of powerlessness or surrender to all beyond control, or a perception of ultimate control generated by a realization of power within: is it enslavement or emancipation of the subjective self? Catalysts of the act and conclusions to its explorations are many, but for now, it seems that it is a consequence of a lack of harmony within self, whereby the individual foregoes or loses his/her mean and the subjective self transcends all hope (in victory or in defeat). In such cases, even if religion manages to serve as a successful regulatory entity temporarily, at the brink of all surrender, it may not factor into the given equation(s) at all.

I don’t want my heart to be touched and moved away from. I want it grabbed. Grabbed to feel the pain that would cause the bliss of being grabbed, squeezed, examined and humanized.

PUNCH!! From you to yourself. The self you have hidden from you and put to sleep in your subconscious with a heavy dosage of sedative; the sedative you accidentally created while meaning to create cyanide. How many times have you drenched the apothecary table in your subconscious with the pungent smell of rotten aspirations? The aspirations you meant to kill as a means of eliminating their attempt to kill you with their dead cells…never to be functioning again. You thought you have resolved old issues right? And you hate them looming back and punching your breath out every now and then. Those idiots keep coming back. The faster we shove them aside the sooner they jump on to us, as if progressing time is clutching time back. When time learns to respect our want and need for linear time, will we learn to appreciate our presence…ourselves… kick out linear appearing curves and get sucked into the apparent maze of the present…of reality… by silence– that manages to create turmoil within.

How many times have you been woken up by a knock? The knock at the back of your mind that knocks out the embryo from which a Goddess was to be born…a potential masterpiece…a strip of reverse evolution… the Goddess of Creation that was destined to die before creating a platform for creation.; she who dragged along an entire generation with her – a generation of candidates who could potentially beat the speed…the speed we are all meant to pursue in our exceptionally slow and dragging existences.

Existence in this place that we call the Earth; which Carl Sagan, calls: “ a moat of dust suspended in a sunbeam.” Ironic, how this one statement made him so big. The one statement where he reduced the earth to dust; forgetting how minute his real existence then becomes, with relation to the small earth, which is only a dust particle in the enormous Universe. This one little statement belittling the image of earth magnified his image; immortalised his existence in a mortal place. But do we realize that we are in a way, immortalised? We are becoming a part of history living in the present; immortalised by existing in time, not by individual names. Thus we are all immortal.

Mortal. Mortal we are, and so we crave immortality whether we admit it or not. In some way or other we want to live forever in this Earth. This Earth, that is not mortal itself and in forever, that no one knows the longevity of. Futile. How futile. To avoid destruction we killed the Goddess of creation within and now, we look up to the God above. Is God really above? What if He is beside us or in front of us? But that’s besides the point. Let’s assume God is above. And let’s not get into the argument as to whether he created Earth with a bang or it just started with an accidental bang. The point is it started with a bang. How solid can it be? Has been nursing life for thousands of years now. So it’s bound to die sometime. How will it die? Perhaps God will crush it within his fist or perhaps it will diffuse into the “system”. The system we call universe. But will the Earth diffuse exactly when it diffuses? What kind of a question is that? What I mean is will we realize the diffusion the moment it happens? Science says no. Parallax. It will diffuse into parallax. So will we. Scary thought. We will die moments after we were dead.

BLAH 2

Dichromatic vision penetrates perfection. That is probably why attempts were, and still are being made to erase blasphemers and heretics from the records of existence; shatter all the different genus of dogmatism, criticize fundamentalism standing on a foundation of fundamental antifundamentalist ingredients.

Attempts to eliminate lethal ideologies such as communism to promote “more just” ideologies such as democracy are not unknown to anyone. But why should such attempts be made? Because the parasitically monstrous soul within humans does not permit the existence or even the co-existence of ideals that lead to a picture and print perfect world; because people are driven by an idealism that broods anti ideal sculpts. Why am I a democrat and not a communist? Because I believe in fairness. Fairness for most, for myself, not for all. Because I believe in prosperity…precisely self-prosperity, not equality. Because I am human and I choose to confine humanity to myself.

Utopian ideals reduce the complexities of life; make everything simple and equal…thus ideal. But as creatures that bear cells of complexities in their blood, it becomes impossible for us to accept such perfection. Complexity becomes a meaning in life… gets equated with perfection. Seldom do we realize that complexity gives us sadistic and masochistic pleasures. Doesn’t matter as long as it is giving some kind of pleasure. Thus, I possess anti idealist ideals.

Poets and thinkers I love and hate talk about the beauty of simplicity and how everyone deserves a fair share of it. I agree with them. I appreciate their claims and their notions… all falsely of course. I nod because the world is nodding. On the inside, I want to monopolize beauty. And that’s the only truth for you and me. I want all the beauty in my kitty. Just because you want all the beauty in your pockets or closets does not make you different from me. Let me metaphorize this piece with a dash of economics. Imagine happiness was a product of a few firms. They will hold a large market share but to make the share larger, they merge into one…oligopoly turns into MONOPOLY. Theoretically they all produce the same amount and make the equal amount of money. But they want to be better than each other. So each produces more secretly so that they can earn more. Prosperity then, is given a competitive connotation. Thus, there is cheating on part of the individual firms… to maximize their own profits, to make more than the other, to be happier than the other. What does this show? Monopolistic competition the flesh of a monopolistic skin. What does it mean? Oligopoly is just a hollow theory, unicellular or even multi-cellular monopoly a failure, and unity, a sugar-coated vacant notion. Reason – unique versions of dogmatic parochialism.

And all of this — after “Enlightenment”.

BLAH 3

I could sit and write a million sad words to capture my inner turbulence. But what’s the point? These words can’t capture my feelings. How can they? They are mere words-words that I didn’t create. How can they capture what I feel? But then again, I didn’t create these feelings either. You created them; my soul created them. The soul that is commonly known as “I”. And somewhere in between You and I, I lost Me. Then what’s the point of me writing my thoughts down with words? I don’t know. Re-highlighting the already highlighted futility I guess, with superficial pseudo philosophical attempts once again. How ersatz am I!

But still I prefer to cry than speak; scream than write. That’s how superficial I am. I express myself with tears that are nothing but very shallow drops of water – so shallow that can’t even be measured. Futile. So superficial that it only touches the skin; skin its periphery, vacuum its fathom. Tears are just too overrated I think. They come out of the eyes on to the skin, yet they melt hearts (in theory). Just like screams. What is a scream? I don’t have adequate biological facts to write down but as far as I can remember from my 7th/8th grade biology lesson, scream is basically wind through the vocal chords, some humdrum et voila, a (supposedly) painful sound.

Then why do I put so much emphasis on them when I am dedicating a few pages and a few kilobytes on my computer to them? – pages I could use to do an assignment, kilobytes I could use to save that assignment or even download a song. Opportunity Cost. Substance, an opportunity cost for futility. But seriously though, I am so bothered by their futility, agitated by their superficiality, yet they move me- Why? Not like they come directly from within. It would be a whole new story if my heart cried through my breasts or my soul screamed through my belly button. That would actually make sense and give those idiots (tears and screams) more credibility. But…uffff… Is it because they touch me (even if in a superficial way)? Is it because I long for a touch badly? Is it because I crave to be moved so much that their slight movement along my vocal chord or my skin is transformed into a make believe movement on my part. Is it because I am so sick of mechanism and materialism that at the slightest hinge, I tell myself, “I am moved”?

What is it? I don’t know. But what I do know is I don’t want you to cry. The thought of your tear touching you makes my blood boil. Only I reserve the right to touch you. So I will pump all the tears out of you so that they can’t touch your skin. Then I will peel off your skin so they don’t touch your flesh. Then I will detach your flesh so they don’t cling to your bones. I love you my dear human. So much, that I unearth sheer bliss in dehumanizing you.

BLAH 4

She closes her eyes pretending no one can see her.

He is six years old and still wets his bed. She wants to cradle him in her arms but she doesn’t want to push her blanket aside to blanket her arms around him; doesn’t want to sacrifice her security for his. It’s actually fun watching him get scared in the middle of the night and gazing at her with hopeful eyes that she would grab him and reassure him. It’s a lot of fun taking him out to the veranda–topless on a windy night and watch the chill run up and down his spine, watch his supple red cheeks turn purple and the tears of pain almost freeze with the chill. It’s as if the wind freezes her hormones, her instincts and halts her milk flow forever. Sadistic motherhood—is that what they call it?

He crawls up to her and rests his head on her chest…carefully listening to her heartbeat and wondering what the sound is. Is his Mother malfunctioning?

Kaput motherhood.

BLAH 5

wonder if I can ever tell a story as if it was the only one. As if it was only mine.

I keep myself alive by constantly feeding my existence with things to lose. In other words, things to hold on to. Every time the grip slips, it’s an awakening; a flagging off to continue with this pursuit…this pursuit…I don’t know exactly what pursuit I am talking about…ummm…intellectual vertigo? Or perhaps my own version of affectionate dogmatism, translucent intransigence.

Why can I relate to Shakespeare’s Hamlet or Macbeth or Mary from Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace? Is it because I see in them the fetish for fatality that I see in myself? Is it because I empathize with the bliss that Grace and Mary drown in when practising self-destruction?

Why does anything morbid appeal to my senses? Why is it that the more I try to drive darkness away, the more I find myself in it? Not that it’s sucking me in or anything. It’s just that I cant let go and the more I push myself to shove the sinister aside, the harder I cling on to it.