- 12:21 pm - Wed, Nov 9, 2011
Harijan (23/07/10)
I am Pariah, and my name is Rakim.
My mother told me she named me after the rainbow, because she said she saw a rainbow through the heavy monsoon a day after I was born. She said it was a miracle and luck; much like me. Fortune, was not how I had lived my life in. I am a condemned, an untouchable, outside the rigid discipline of the caste system that was settled into the subconscious, something that seemed natural to the typical Indian as much as breathing.
I did not know why God did not treat me equally as others. It was considered a sin to let my shadow to fall upon other, higher castes than I. I was permitted to drink water drawn from the only permitted wells that my sisters and mothers drew upon. The priest threw leftovers, after a hard day of toiling at sea, at my feet as if I was no better than a half-bred stray. My masters flayed my brother to death because he was accused of stealing a kid goat. I knew the basket-weaver’s son was the thief, I saw him sneaking out at midnight. Nobody believed me; instead the village elder starved me for two days for speaking out to them.
In those two days I was sick with delirium, muttering prayers for God, stomach clenching in acidic agony and my mind numb. I am God’s servant, I repeated to myself like a mantra I heard occasionally in the Temple, I am God’s servant, and I shall endure everything He tests me. I am God’s servant.
I was God’s servant.
But God almost never came. Through my hazed vision and dry-retching, God came. With my senses more painfully acute than ever, God came through the form of meat. I tore it with a vengeance of an animal, the soured juice dripping down my chin.
But with each passing day, I begin to doubt God more. The priests preach about the justness of Him and His equaled shared love to all his subjects, that he grants them a better life if they have done well in their previous life. Did God think I had served him unsatisfactorily in my previous life? How was I to know?
And was this the same God that allowed my brother to be killed? The very same that allowed me to almost die of starvation? That allowed the whole of society to shun me and my family, for a previous and almost-forgotten mistake? Was this the same just and forgiving God?
I do not know. I tell you, with years of hardship and perseverance, I am still not convinced I shall reincarnate into a Brahmin in my next life. I tell you, while inscribing pictures onto the muddy grime of my quarters, that I simply do not know.
- 10:05 am - Wed, Sep 7, 2011
six minutes of your life
Center-stage.
The stage of butterflies have long sped past, your gut now is nesting a whole brood of pterodactyls. The high pitched frequency amplified plagues your train of thought, there is a surge of inexplicable power.
Your throat fills with dust.
There is nothing you will remember in the next few minutes while you speak, you will grapple with your diction until it vaguely crystallizes into phatic oratory, the clamor of screeching chair-legs against the ashen floor a constant loop.
Usually you stare at the horizon, if there is one. Or the sudden wisps sprouting from the adjudicator’s immaculately kept hair. Grimace at the various gestures from the chairs, your aim is synchronicity.
Between your brain and your voice. You hope the neurons spit fire like that, toute de suite. But that’s rarely is the case.
In the glorified times, it’s like war. But like all wars, when it becomes abominable, your vernacular becomes nothing short of petty squabbles, of chickens and neighbors. The collateral damage always being time and effort.
You learn. The price and value of every syllable, consonant, rolled on the edge of your tongue and reverberated in the air. How you can either beg for alms or command emphathy, with one change in inflection.
There are times where you want to whoop in triumph. There are times in which shame hangs over you and all goodwill dissipates.
The honor is in forgiving and forgetting your shame.
If this is six minutes of your life, live it well. If this is six minutes of your life, make the others worth it as well.
- 10:52 am - Sun, Aug 14, 2011
Suffocate.
Sometimes I feel like leaving in the night and never coming back.
I wouldn’t be sleeping through the sun rise, or barely glancing over the sunset. Breathe in the air that won’t be polluted by my own thoughts, worries, selfishness.
Suffocating.
For even then, I’d be gasping for air. One not filled with loneliness. Me, just me.
(See my loves smile, see the birds craw another new day, see the darkness fraught with pain dissolve.)
See me.
- 10:17 am - Sat, Aug 6, 2011
Because I’ve finally allowed myself to open up.
Before this, ladies and gentlemen, my writing was a private matter. Either it was crumpled up in scarce notes hidden under the calloused, rough table’s undersides, or a nameless, almost invisible word document tucked neatly within my computer’s folders. I would sometimes, rarely, compel myself to reveal what I valued the most to my closest of friends only, (my mother will either tighten her jaw at my American writing or my brother will mock it) so although it’s a well-known secret, it was nevertheless a secret.
So here I am. Publishing my thoughts to the open, wilderness of the Internet.
Welcome to my journey.
Sample of my new tumblog: www.breakingmold.tumblr.com
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