ktravula – a travelogue!

Browsing the archives for the Soliloquy category.

Becoming One’s Father

Years ago, as a young child, I remember father as a very large ever domineering presence. He was everything. He was tall, and well known and fun, and knowledgeable, and dreadful enough for a child often disposed to mischief. He was mysterious and full of mischief of his own kind. If you complained to him that an elderly sibling was bullying you hoping that he’d come to your side and tell them off, he would reply you to “leave them. Go play somewhere else or with someone else.”

Father would call from his side of the big house. He usually knew who was in the house by the rising level of our voices in argument over any kind of trivial matter from across the house, or a fight. Usually, he would already have something in his mind to ask the unlucky person to do. If it was a random call not prompted by any kind of disturbance, his first question would always be “What are you doing?”. It was always a trick question requiring both skill and experience to answer.

“Nothing” is always the worst answer. A bad one would be “talking to/with _______”. “I am doing my homework from school” or “I am doing an errand given to me by mum” is closer to a good excuse. A better answer is “I’m listening to _____________ programme on the radio” or “I’m watching the news.” The ones that always made the best impression were ones similar to “I’m writing/reading”, or “I’m making a birdcage from a few palm fronds I went to get from the woods yesterday evening.” He was a weird man.

Every answer was followed by a follow-up which he would have already begun to prepare from the time we began to answer his questions. “What are you reading?” He would ask. If one had been lying, this would be a perfect time to confess to just beginning to open the first few pages of a book one already read before. If you said a newspaper, he would ask you which one, and start a conversation about the content of the headlines. That you were reading a newspaper is enough reason to believe that you would remember the headlines and would be able to make conversations on a topic of choice.

“I’m reading some of the copies of Reader’s Digest you handed over to me last week sir.” I would say, and he would tug at his sparse beard for a few seconds observing me through the lens of his glasses. “Uhm-hmm. Is that right? What do you like the most about it?”.

It was always about starting a conversation with someone to fill his own idleness. Emerging from his side of the house for the first time this day, he has now found the perfect subject of conversation.

“I like it,” I would say. “I loved the story of the man that got lost for many days on the stream and couldn’t get back home because he lost his way. The story was very well written. It moved me. Thank you very much for the issues. I think I enjoyed the story about the shroud of Turin the most though. I’d never heard that story before. There was this report by Dr. John H. Heller…”

“Uh-hmm. I have kept these books for years. Did you see the date on it?

“I did. 1984. That was a while.”

“You were just a crawling infant then.”

“Oh no, you exaggerate. I have already started nursery school by then.”

He would laugh. He enjoyed the retorts. There was nothing he abhorred more than not being able to respond. “You’re not deaf, are you?” He would ask.

“The point is that here,” he continued, “is that I have been keeping these books for a long time. You should take care of them. Your brother used to have a few more of my books. His teachers would take them from him, or his mates – pretending to want to borrow them to read for a few days – and then never return them.”

“Uhm-hmm. I will keep these safe.”

There are many other consequences to a wrong answer to the idleness question: “What are you doing?”

“I was sitting at the dining room.”

“Doing what?”

“Nothing.”

“Oh okay. I need a few buckets of water in my bathroom. Would you see to it that the water basin is full as soon as possible? Thanks.”

Before the Storm

Last week, I rode a bicycle to school again for the first time in weeks. It was cold, as it is meant to be for this time of the year.

But it was after getting to school that I discovered the real reason why I should have been doing this a lot more than I have in the past weeks and months: there are so many cars on campus and I spend too many agonizing moments trying to find a spot to park in the morning, and a few more in the evening trying to locate my car, and then even much more at home trying to find a spot closest to my apartment. I believe that more than 80% of students/workers in this University have cars, and we all compete trying to find the right places to put them.

We’re expecting about fifteen inches of snow and up to an inch of solid ice on the roads in the next couple of days, along with snowstorms. I have a feeling that the bicycle is not going to be of much use now either.

Like Mubarak, Like Gbagbo, Like Mugabe

Tyrants stamp brash feet on winding paths on of wide open lands

and laugh on fart cushions in cabinet meetings of fellow fawning hands.

They mouth verbs at protest noises from the warm comforts of palace bedrooms

on one hand a full plate, and on the other soft triggers of their imported dooms.

Tyrants dance around dials of outside help, counting losses like currency notes,

swapping allies like the last statuettes of their long tortuous days and rotes.

They sing lullabies of aftermaths, of threats and tears, against a glory so long lost

and o, they fear. They dream of dreary wings across the windowpanes of frost.

Tyrants languish on the frail chairs of their vain vacuousness. They stink.

They drawl in the slime of impotence, a dour fire of an eighty year old wrink.

I look through the fog of emptiness, and see dead multiples of power tenths

and all that remains of a gentle tug into bright new days of different strengths.

Tryants live so that they may leave, gracelessly, in a baggage of seasoned trash.

No other way remains but will, bold and strong, and despots’ dicks ash to ash.

PS: Feel free to share with friends and acquaintances who share a distaste and spite for despots.

Our Generation is a Running One

What do I have? Where am I? Where am I headed? These are three main questions that I always asked myself when things looked bleak. There was a stretch of two years not too long ago when I asked myself the same question everyday of the week and every hour of the day while running after very many things that provided not just a way to remain active, but an escape from the tedium of asking. Years later, when many of those endeavours paid back beyond expectation, I became grateful for the chance just to ask them, even in the dark of despair when there was nothing else to do. I’ve been grateful for those moments ever since although I would never hope to relive them.

Today, prompted by many running conversations with a few people, students wondering where their life is headed in these sea of expectation and uncertainty, I want to tell a little of my story and hope that it moves them to do something, or just keep moving – whichever works – as long as they do it with all focus and the realization that everything done with a passion and the best of one’s efforts will always be rewarded, sooner or later, in some form or the other. And a realization that every experience has something to teach that would be useful for the next stage of life.

Our generation is a running one, moving, searching for its own true relevance. In the dark days of those years when the world seemed closed down around my head, I thought about so many things that I could do to avoid waking up everyday to face the bright morning sun that seemed ever so promising, yet not forthcoming with anything but a quandary of many superficial exits. Yet somehow, I got through it. How, I can’t say now, except that one day, it all passed away along with its dark clouds of self doubt and despair. I woke up, and it was sunshine again, with the beautiful colours of a new day. Then I took a shower. (Haha, kidding!)

Many students today in the different areas and levels of school work are worried about the prospect of their future. They are not alone. I remember just how depressed I was in the last weeks of my undergraduate days, wondering just what the world had for me. All of a sudden, I was heading out of this cocoon into a bold new world with its own brand of rules and expectations. The only buffer between that exit and the big bad world was a mandatory national service. A year after the national service – actually many months before – I relapsed into the same state and wondered if anything more than gloom would come out at the end. With nothing but hope, resilience, tenacity and the willingness to endure the long nights, I somehow trudged on doing whatever I could, and here I am.

I guess the only thing else to say is that when life boxes you into a corner is usually the best time to get up and fight. Sometimes it seems impossible and totally hopeless. The good news is that it isn’t. I can call myself a living example. (Knocks on wood.)

It Rained Today

It rained today as soon as the day warmed up enough. Or maybe I was deceived by the wetness on the ground. For all we know, the snow could just have melted and given the appearance of the after effects of rain. The undeniable fact is that it felt wet and warm, and the air smelled fresh and beautiful. Like spring. No, like the beginning of the raining season in a tropical place.

How do seasons operate? Smells of rain stays the same wherever you go. One day you’re running in shorts in the mud of loam in the back garden of a big house, planting corn and peas and swatting roaming bees around your head, and on another, you’re looking behind your back in a lakeside house in the winter aftermath of rain with the eerie feeling of having smelt this before. The humid air, the smell of leaves and the general atmosphere of creation.

So, back to that garden, there was a notable incident that had the little boy staring for long moments at a black heap of loam where he had just buried two pieces of corn. And with a feeling of satisfaction at the work gone before – clearing the little garden, making the required ridges, adding humus from a nearby poultry farm – he stared at the ground and felt proud of himself, until a voice sounded from the house. It was his mother, peeping through the window. “It looks like you’re waiting for it to sprout already. Give it a few days. It doesn’t grow immediately.”

It is the smell of rain that usually defines those times. After months of dryness, the first few days of rain comes with a freshness that can’t be described. Add that to the pleasure of tilling the soil in an innocent attempt at farming, and you have the poetry of the season. It is sweet to the senses. The flower I tried to raise in my apartment a few weeks ago however has not survived. It may have to do with the house warmer and the absence of sunlight. Yet, life’s pleasures endure.

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