ktravula – a travelogue!

Browsing the archives for the Opinion category.

At the DMV

While applying for my driver’s license last week, I had to answer a few questions at the Secretary of State’s office. One of them was whether I wanted to register to vote. I found this very helpful, even though I’m not American and I turned down the offer immediately. But the fact that the system is set up in such a way that voters can register at the nearest Secretary of State’s office even when elections are far away made a lot of sense. It will reduce the rush that must attend such events when elections come close. There are many things to learn from that.

The other questions I was asked was whether I ready to sign up for the Organ-Tissue donor programme. This is a programme of the state where one’s name is put in a list of prospective donors and a card is put on one so that in case of a fatal accident, one’s body would not go to waste but would be put to immediate use to save someone else’s life somewhere else. One of America’s socialist programs that makes sense, but my immediate response to that, which I didn’t immediately understand, was tufiakwa. No way. Why would I donate any body organ? Who needs it anyway? And more importantly, why am I being asked this question right now? Are they saying that I am going to die the first time I get behind the wheels? And, to borrow a thought from George Carlin, would anyone who finds me at a point of death on the road at the site of an accident have any motivation to save my life if he knows that I have a body organ/tissue that he needs to some transplant for some other dying person? Yea, crazy questions in one moment of answering a question: “Yes or no, sir?” It didn’t help that a first attempt to donate something to the Red Cross ended up in a rebuff tied to the part of the world from where I came. Read the very annoying old piece here.

The next time I talked to someone about it – someone who had actually signed up and technically donated all her body parts to science in the case of her demise (in a motor accident or such), I was told a very revealing statistic: over ninety percent of black people answered “no” to the organ/tissue donor question. Is this surprising to me? Not really. Africans have a strong attachment not only to life and its selfish preservation (do they, really?), but also to their own dead bodies for which they really have no further use. What would it do to me, for instance, if after I’m dead, the remaining useless body is cut and distributed to help someone still living, and the rest burned up with the ashes scattered across some peaceful place? The real reason for objection is that we really really don’t want to consider dying. The same reason why people refuse to make wills, immediately one begins to consider dying, there is a prevalent belief that one has set the process in motion.

Now, before I go, I must tell you that while sitting and waiting for my license to be printed – which was like two to three minutes after the road test – three white people answered “no” to this same question, without any visible change in comportment – the kind of which I had experienced the first time I gave the answer. I say this to somewhat debunk the racial aspect to the objection. In any case, the whole matter has got me thinking very deeply about not just what it means to be selfless, but what it means to die.

Why did I decide to get a car and a driver’s license in the first place? Yes, it beats me too. 🙂

PS: Contrary to the selfish sentiments in this post, it is not meant to discourage people from donating organs to save lives. It’s a very worthy endeavour.

Dotdotdot

This is how writing procrastination works: you tell yourself that you have nothing worth saying, and you wait until such a time when you think you do. Usually that time never comes and you stare day by day at the empty page hoping that something miraculous would happen and fill up the page. You could be lucky to have tonnes of other things to do to take up your space and time, but if you have been notorious in the past for writing even under extreme pressures of work, teaching, classes, events and many things else, you would usually not be forgiven for taking any kind of break. Yes, I know the works.

The evil thing about procrastination however is that it never ends. Like the fabled Sisyphus bound to head to the top of the hill with a ball of garbage only to be sent downhill rolling with no brakes, and to be condemned to repeat the same process for eternity, each day comes and goes, and the readers wait, and wait. In some cases the writer gets a kind of cruel satisfaction from keeping them in that kind of wait. Well, I never promised you to publish my everyday thoughts. I keep some of them for private people, or send some of them to newspaper editors in hope that they find them good enough to publish. And well, I’m such a risk taker myself and I wouldn’t mind to hear news that someone actually placed a bet that I would not write as much this month as I usually do. Wait a minute, why am I talking to myself?

All of this make a kind of sense, doesn’t it, and there is a win at every turn. The other thing that could bring a greater fun would be hours spent talking to people about an intending road trip: twenty-three hours on the road towards Las Vegas and California. Now wouldn’t that be something? Yet, it won’t be sufficient excuse to stay off the blog for that period of time. Well whatever, life goes on. 🙂

Of Beliefs and Denials

Living in the America of today, it is unlikely that anyone is oblivious of the raging debate about a religious centre close to the former World Trade Centre buildings. Even those who didn’t believe in anything seem to have something to say about the project. It is like the issue of belief, tyranny and spirituality always manages to bring us together if only to disagree. Last week, I heard a news story of a New York cabbie getting stabbed by a passenger who said or thought he was Moslem, and nearly got him killed.

A few days ago, I heard that a friend of mine had told other people that I was moslem, maybe in jest, or maybe because she was confused after seeing me praise the architecture of the Abuja National Mosque on my blog. Eitherway, it was my response to this discovery that has made my question even my own liberal mindedness. I really won’t mind if anyone thought I was Hindu or Buddhist as long as I am sure that I am not. That’s what I thought, but I found myself vehemently denying the charge on the spot, and later asking a few others if they have harboured the same thought for a while or heard the same rumours. A few days later, after an amount of thinking, I’m wondering why there shouldn’t be a reason for me to have said “Oh, screw it. So what?” It should even have been possible to make stickers saying “I’m not moslem, but I could be if you wanted me to.” and put it all around my living space. The only problem with that would be the ignorant folks, like the New York stabber, who might consider me a good target practise for his bigoted rage.

So I’m thinking, if intolerance and fanaticism are vices, what about a kind of bigotry that might manifest as immediate and loud denials of claims as simple as a mismatching of religious belief? For – as I’ve found out – there is usually more to explain whenever someone in a conversation looks at the other in denial and screams, “Oh me? No never. I’m not a _________”.

Just thinking. It should make for interesting discussion.

The End of the World

There are some things I probably shouldn’t be thinking about, especially since they usually don’t lead anywhere beyond the ceilings of my room and the rotating fan. I dose off, wake up again and worry about other things. One of them is the issue of the rapture, or the end of the world, as we were earnestly taught as kids by zealous pentecostal pastors. It is different from the real “End of the World” as prophesied in the book of Revelation where everything is destroyed and “no stone is left on another”. Actually, when I think about it, they are both very different views of the same event, and pretty confusing. The world ends. Time stops. The sun goes dim. In one other account, things get pretty messy and everything is destroyed. In the other, Christ shows up in the sky, and “all eyes (shall) see him.” (Rev. 1.7)

Actually, it is the “all eyes shall see him” part that has often got me pretty confused, and for good reason: The world is not flat. Maybe technically, the bible didn’t mean that all eyes would see him at the same time but the preachers who preached to us before the age of reason made real sure that that was the impression we got. He would come like a thief in the night and he may catch us doing bad, bad things. So we ought to be careful, and clean, and holy at all times. Well, were that possible, there would have been no sinners in the world. No sin, in fact, and no wars, and everywhere would be happy. Unfortunately, we have crushes (which until I was around 18 I thought was a sin), we lust after people, we have affairs, we lie, we steal and we cheat if it suits our purposes. If I’d known that even preachers had crushes, I’d have had a better luck with the first crush of my adult life whom I met in a church. 🙂

So I’ve figured it out, that part about all eyes seeing him. The Lord, if he would come to the world again, would have to deal with the issue of time zones which would really ruin his surprise. If the world were flat, he may appear to all at the same time, and there will be no hitches. But thank providence for CNN and 24 hour cable, as soon as he lands anywhere on this planet, we will begin to have “Jesus spottings” on TV and twitter, and people of the other parts of the world where he has not appeared will have enough time to prepare for him, repenting of their sins, kissing their girlfriends for the last time, or generally being silly in preparation of his coming. In any case, he could turn out to have a better sense of humour than we credit him for. Or maybe he will turn out like the Jehovah’s Witnesses have described him, gentle and wise, come to make peace on earth so we can all live happily ever after. I’d love that, because I’d really really hate the Statue of Liberty to be destroyed by his coming before I have a chance to get to its crown.

PS: The story of the white cross in that picture, and the crate of concrete beside it is an interesting one for another day.

Brokeback Mountain

I find it interesting that the historic “Proposition 8” ban on gay marriages in the American State of California was struck down on the same day that I’d plan to blog about this movie that I was seeing for the first time. Brokeback Mountain (2005) is a very moving (but to me a little discomforting) story of two men whose friendship evolved into something more and lasted for a lifetime, withstanding even the challenge of their individual marriages and separate heterosexual lives. I doubt that bisexual love has been depicted on the screen with this level of boldness before or since Brokeback. Wikipedia compares it to the great romance stories like Romeo and Juliet and Titanic.

I had also recently seen a German movie called Aimee & Jaguar (1999) set in the Second World War, a true life story of an “abominable” (by standards of the time) relationship between a German woman, wife of a German officer, and a Jewish woman. Adapted from a book which contained photos of the many letters shared between the two, and official correspondences post WWII, the movie was remarkable not only because of the same sex nature of the relationship but because of the way the story depicts the love within the dangerous power relations and politics of the time. I know I could have enjoyed it better if my German was as good as that of the actors. Translations didn’t help much.

Both films – given to me by the same person who felt that I needed to update my tolerance credibility by exposing myself to the two prominent sides of the controversial coin – were refreshing in their own way. They both ended up very sad, yet moving, with very affecting moments, good acting and nice picture. Brokeback Mountain features Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal and it was nominated for the most Oscars at the 78th Academy Awards. It won three but lost “Best Picture” to Crash.

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