POLITICAL FARCE| MY TRUMP RUNNETH OVER*

On By Mahvash K. M.In Fiction, Politics, satire, writingLeave a comment

Jan. 2021 – Feb. 2021:

PROGRESSIVE CAVITY TRUMP

Donald Trump left the White House in the wake of a dithering and irresolute Biden presidency and a looming impeachment. On January 30th, in a bizarre twist of Trumpian fate, Senate Minority leader, Mitch McConnell was abducted by the Proud Boys* for his “disloyalty” to their boss, Donald Trump. He was taken to Waco, Texas where in another peculiar prophetic foible, the septugenerian suffered a massive heart attack and died 2 days later. The abductors were caught and incarcerated but not before becoming inadvertent icons of heroism for the “New America”.

There was another march on Washington DC on February 5th, 2021 led by a brand new coalition of the Proud Boys and QAnon*. Despite a sizeable National Guard deployment, the capitol was stormed in much the same manner as the January 6th, 2021 insurrection. 27 people were killed including Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Congressional Republican from Georgia. She had gone out of the safety of the House Chamber to talk with the QAnon-Prouds*; confident in her right wing sympathies. The raging crowd had seen only a member of the new “fake administration” trying their age old insidious political tactics and had rushed at her with their combined wrath. And so, in another curious turn of events, QAnon’s most ardent supporter became the accidental martyr for the reeling, gobsmacked Left.

53 Republican senators joined the ranks in favour of impeaching Donald Trump.

March 2021 – May 2021:

THE BACK TRUMP PLAN

Donald Trump had watched what came to be called the “Revival Movement”with interest from his Mar-a-lago HQ. Without the megaphone of social media to throw his tweets into the furthest corners of redneck America, he had improvised… or his supporters had. They had set up a ham radio network across the country; Revivalist Patriots manning the amateur radio bands between 7MHz and 20MHz in almost every city. They received a broadcast from Mar-a-Lago and in turn disseminated the message via social media. Almost overnight, a ragtag militia had organized into the pitch perfect exactness of a communications commando force across the entirety of the American geography.

NEVER GONNA GIVE YOU TRUMP

Two months into this new fangled broadcast methodology, DT* being overcome by his ADHD-afflicted persona, got bored. It was too little for too long. He had stopped watching Fox News simply because he had slowly faded away from its screen as its most beloved protagonist to an increasingly dubious and infrequently shown antagonist.

The words Mutineer and Delusional Demagogue had come up a few times too.

How he despised that Chris Wallace!*

Melania wanted out – out of the marriage; of the partnership. He wasn’t having any of it. While his celebrity had diminished into the wasteland of slander and defamation, she was now wearing the cloak of a woman who had bravely survived the madness. She already had 6 book deals and 25 million dollars in the bank. No, he would rather poison her! … that is, lose her through quick, natural causes, than let her bask in reflected glory – his Glory!

Yes, he hated Melania as well.

June 2021 onwards:

PROTON TRUMP INHIBITOR

And now the former president of the United States had clinched the deal of a lifetime. The operation had been highly covert, unknown even to the most ardent of his supporters. In fact, his resentment and even dislike of his base had grown exponentially in the last few months…. how did a man of his bearing and finesse attract these rural, rough-shod bumpkins? He had mulled over it in those rare moments of reflection he was sometimes struck by and could only put it down to Mike Pence. DT had always been mildly suspicious that his VP showed a peculiar preference for the Deep Southern trucker sorts. And now, like some backwoods parasitic mold, they had mobbed together into his adoring electorate. Well, he didn’t have to deal with Pence or his hillbilly, rustic fan base anymore.

He was all set to move to North Korea, as Kim Jong-Un’s First Secretary.

The Secretary General of the North Korean Worker Party had been approached by an increasingly marginalised and entirely desperate DT. The world renowned fascist had an admirer all his own, and no less than the 45th POTUS! Surreptitious talks progressed at warp speed as an established oligarch took an aspiring senior under his totalitarian wing. And on June 5th, 2021, DT was whisked away from the land of the free and home of the brave to a secret facility in wonderfully dictatorial Pyongyang.

The Brilliant Comrade was home at last!

THE TRUMP FOR RED OCTOBER

On American soil, Article III, section 3 and the subsequent Title 18 or the death penalty were filed against DT. In the wake of the Great Escape, the Republican Party was thrown into further disarray as Trump supporters perpetuated and publicised their own version of their supreme commander’s act of treason. The great DT was urging them to incite a revolution, a war, a call to arms for the good old days of sovereign authority and Old Northernism*.

The third bomb in as many months, had exploded; this time in New York City. The revivalists had notched up another 500 fatalities. The Revolution Collateral Damage was already at 1,763 dead.

THE NIGHT THE SUN CAME TRUMP

In Pyongyang, there had been a series of short-range missiles launched between July and August 2021 marking its first missile tests since the Brilliant Comrade had joined their ranks; a superb impetus to boosting both, their nuclear weapons prowess and their global confidence. There were already plans to “rock that horrible continent” as DT liked to say. Long range missiles were being readied for a spectacular North Korean fireworks display in LA, NY, Chicago, Hawaii and Alaska.

Meanwhile DT has discovered a newfound love of snake wine*, and KJ-Un has taken to golf with monocratic zeal, all while the empire plots and prepares for an epic change in world order.

Read the first (rather prophetic!) episode here, written on September 1st, 2020: https://theroamingdesi.org/2020/09/01/existential-fictionthe-age-of-stupid-part-deux/

Glossary of Terms:

**The main and sub-titles are puns on the word “Trump”. The original terms are: My Cup Runneth Over/ Progressive Cavity Pump/ The Backup Plan/ Never Gonna Give you Up/ Proton Pump Inhibitor/ The Hunt for Red October/ The Night the Sun Came Up

*Proud Boys: A far-right, neo-fascist, and male-only terrorist organisation that promotes and engages in political violence in the United States and Canada.

*QAnon: A far-right cult of conspiracy theorists alleging that a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles running a global child sex-trafficking ring is plotting against President Donald Trump, who is battling them

*QAnon-Prouds: In the wake of the Jan. 6th 2021 Insurrection at the US Capitol, the 2 right wing factions came together to launch the revolution for New America under the auspices of the twice impeached 45th POTUS

*POTUS: President Of The United States

*DT: Donald Trump

*Chris Wallace: Christopher Wallace is an American journalist, and television news anchor of the Fox News program Fox News Sunday. Wallace is known for his tough and wide-ranging interviews. He is especially despised by DT for his vague propensity to tell the truth

*Old Northernism: An ideology of racism which views the Nordic race as a superior and sometimes as an endangered racial group.The theory argues that the Nordic race is responsible for most of humanity’s great achievements and any mixing with other races was “race suicide” where the great Nordic race would be supplanted by inferior races. 

*Snake Wine: Snake wine is an alcoholic beverage produced by infusing whole snakes in rice wine or grain alcohol. The drink was first recorded to have been consumed in China during the Western Zhou dynasty and considered an important curative and believed to reinvigorate a person according to Traditional Chinese medicine. It is also the preferred drink of choice of Kim Jong-Un.

Featured

FILM PICKINS| STAR TREK – DEEP SPACE 9 (1993 – 1999)

On By Mahvash K. M.In Movies, opinion, Reviews, writingLeave a comment

It was slow I admit, the glimmerings of a connection with the ST-DS9* characters and their Deep Space shenanigans. But by season 2, I had developed a mild fondness for the Captain and his Federation crew. And by season 4, the affection I felt for the space Station denizens was deep-rooted and personal. By season 5, I was already forlornly anticipating the end of the series and feeling at odds with the rest of the Netflix science fiction repertoire.

That is not to say that i was blinded to the obvious shortcomings of the production; they just became tenderly blurred as the characters became increasingly larger than life. I still remember cringing slightly during season 1 and wondering for the 347th time why i felt such a compelling commitment to see every series through, dubious and otherwise, that I’ve embarked on. Here’s what I remember even as I dredge up the memories from the practical, unemotional series-bingeing depths of my mind:

The characters were more than a tad over-dramatic – Captain Sisko often comes across as a stand up comic endearingly poking fun at would-be space bigwigs; while the good Doctor Bashir appears so entranced by his own look, feel and sound that one would be forgiven for mistaking him for the English, Space version of a Doogie Howser impersonator. Major Kira (Colonel now!) is relentless in her adolescent knee jerk outbursts of anger, vengeance and the insatiable need to be the biggest bully in the Alpha quadrant…. nah… all Space. Then there are the dated special effects: the barely camouflaged fluorescent primary coloured lights blinking on 24th century tricorders and control panels; the landing/ disembarkation pads which look like ponderous railway tunnels; the defiant, brave little ships in space, dithering ever so slightly against their starry backdrop – trembling reminders of their actual minuscule size and mass; the phasers and other laser weapons put to shame by the contents of aisle 15 in Toys ‘r’ Us. But…. like i said, i had to laboriously dig up these first and not so lasting impressions.

What I do remember effortlessly is the superb characterisation of Quark the quintessential Ferengi who’d grown a heart and a bit of a conscience over the course of the 7 seasons; Garak who was as devious and resourceful as he was genteel and intrepid; Dukat the bipolar Cardsassian who fought a war of conscience for most of the 7 seasons, finally relenting with a Bajoran bow and a twisted flourish to his dark side; Weyoun, the Gamma quadrant clone who was as duplicitous as he was “god-fearing”; and of course Vic Fontaine, a holographic throwback to the 1960s Las Vegas rat pack style entertainment who was as good a singer as he was a psychothera-pal for the DS9 crew. All in all, the alien characters of DS9 delivered a far superior performance to that of their human counterparts.

The piece de resistance of the series however, is definitely its ability to take its viewers on a compelling, emotional journey into the lives of its main characters. The cloak and dagger plots set a million light years away from earth still took place in what was essentially a little town with its very own set of the good, the bad and the alien. And that was ultimately what made the series so memorable.

Other Deep Space Distillations:

-The mainstream ethics/ moral compass portrayed by the Federation of planets, while being lofty and aspirational by our boorish 21st century standards, was still shown to be insidiously riddled with intrigue and deception; its Section 31 dutifully and covertly performing all its ungallant business. I suppose some things are so hard-wired into our psyche, a basic distrust of anyone different from ourselves being at the top of that list, that no amount of evolution and sophistication can wring it out of our DNA.

-America, as is customary across the Hollywood universe, bravely endeavoured to save the day or lead from the front. And so unremarkably, Uncle Sam continued to fill in most of the shoes of the DS9 and the Federation nawabs*.

-I discovered a new-found love for Frank Sinatra’s soulful crooning. I’ve had his vocal jazz and swing numbers on quick recall on my phone for the last fortnight. Vic’s repository of the legendary tunes pulls at all the heart strings!

-The MC at Joe Biden’s inauguration ceremony sounded eerily like Worf, the Klingon!

I watched the last show of the last season last night. A net total of 176 episodes viewed, imbibed and psychoanalysed nostalgically during the last 4 weeks. Almost made me forget we’re in the middle of a pandemic as I traversed through space and time with the crew and the citizens of Deep space 9/ Terek Nor.

I leave you with a nostalgic old Sinatra refrain sung by DS9’s own Vic Fontaine, just because it’s such a lovely old song and even half a millennium on, it resonated richly, poignantly, on a space station somewhere in our cosmos.

*ST-DS9: Star Trek – Deep Space 9

*Nawab: a male title which literally means Viceroy; the female equivalent is “Begum” or “Nawab Begum”. The primary duty of a Nawab was to uphold the sovereignty of the Mughal emperor along with the administration of a certain province. In modern times, it is often used to denote men of power.

FOOD SWINGS|The Capital Bar and Grill

On By Mahvash K. M.In food, opinion, writingLeave a comment 
RESTAURANT: CAPITAL BAR AND GRILL AT THE SHANGRI-LA HOTEL
ADDRESS: ONE GALLE FACE MALL, COLOMBO 3
CUISINE:  MODERN, INTERNATIONAL, CONTINENTAL
Ensconced in the modern, luxurious environs of the Shangrila Hotel, this venue is almost a nostalgic throwback to the bars of the 40s and 50s, with a lovely modern twist.  From the repertoire of live music to the atmosphere, it is warm, retro and relaxing.
I’ve been a number of times to the bar and admit, i have had a varied gamut of experiences.  

OPPORTUNITIES FOR IMPROVEMENT:
-The Parking area is dismally inadequate over the weekend as wedding parties, mall goers and hotel patrons all vie for a spot.
-Patrons are not allowed to make reservations at the bar.  So if one happens to walk in later than 8.30pm, there may not be a seat/ table available.  If there are a significant number of no-shows, put in a process whereby reserving patrons are called 20 mins before their scheduled arrival time to re-confirm their reservation.  If they don’t arrive despite the re-confirmation, give the table to someone else. 

THE GOOD STUFF!
-The atmosphere definitely.  It is luxurious yet comfortable - one can sit back and bask in the lap of old world charm at quite its best in Colombo.
-The food is quite good for the most part.  
-The service is good (I do go on about service because it really makes up half the food and hospitality experience.  Having been in the Financial Institutions Customer Experience realm for almost a decade, it is almost instinctive now to gauge every aspect of service delivered, from the front-desk manner of the usher to the culinary/ spirits knowledge of the serving staff).
-The live music sessions have always been fabulous.  The last time it was a lovely myriad of jazz, folk and country delivered beautifully.
FABULOUS BEEF BURGERS WITH A BOTTLE OF LOVELY, MEDIUM BODIED, CHERRY-TART CHIANTI

FOOD SWINGS| “RARE” At Uga Residence

On By Mahvash K. M.In food, opinion, writingLeave a comment 
RESTAURANT: “RARE” AT UGA RESIDENCE
ADDRESS: PARK STREET, COLOMBO 7
CUISINE:  MODERN, INTERNATIONAL, WITH A QUINTESSENTIAL SRI LANKAN TWIST 
This was my first time for dinner at the Uga.  

OPPORTUNITY FOR IMPROVEMENT:  
There was really only one aspect that got to me.  Only because it is so simple to get right... or wrong:

-The bread basket was sadly full of old, crusty pieces of bread which set a somewhat dire tone for the rest of the meal.  The staff was quick to respond and they did bring out a fresh bread basket.  That was a faux pas that is so easily/ cost effectively avoided. 

THE GOOD STUFF!
-The atmosphere was absolutely scintillating.  It was just post a monsoon shower and everything was clean and gleaming.  The restaurant overlooks a courtyard that is especially beautiful.  We requested them to put a table outside for us so we ate al fresco.  It was quite surreal.

-The appetisers were quite fabulous, especially the baked cauliflower.  The Waldorf salad was not bad second.

-The main courses were quite good.  I had the chicken in lemon grass and my partner had the pork belly.  

-The service was quite impeccable given that the restaurant was full and the establishment was short-staffed that evening.

-They had a good/ wide selection of wines available (which is a bit of a rarity even at the better bars around town).  And they served it beautifully with a decanter and the works.  I’m a bit persnickety about how the wine is stored and how it is served since it makes all the difference in flavour preservation.  Good storage ensures the sulphites in the wine don’t ferment and “vinegarize” the wine.  Good pouring service, with a decanter or an aerater ensures that the wine breathes as much as possible from a newly opened bottle, for the flavours to really come to the fore.
THE POST RAIN, GLEAMING UGA RESIDENCE COURTYARD

FEATURE|BY TUK OR BY CROOK

On By Mahvash K. M.In urbanfantasy, writingLeave a comment

I have now been using these four-stroke creatures to transport me around the island for the last 5 years, and I have to say that we’ve developed quite a lovely (e)motional symbiosis. They take me where I have to go, and I help them log a part of their daily distance while we both also get in a bit of a quaint conversation. The tuk tuk chatter ranges from Imran Khan’s political likability (he’s at least universally loved by the SL 3-wheeler brigade), to expertly compressed 6 minute summaries of their lives delivered amidst unexpected swerves, dodges and lurches, as my driver looks back during the choicest parts of his particular narration. I react congenially enough until imminent death threatens our largely blindly-pitching carnival of drama. Then I don my mother superior mantle, cut my voluble driver short and tell him if he doesn’t focus on getting me to my destination still in possession of my earthly form, that I will disembark right there, right then. That works, because losing a “hire” is almost as bad as having an animated conversation killed at its apex – this tuk tuk double whammy is a thing to be avoided at all costs. So the rest of the journey continues in inhaling the toxic and nauseating but thankfully silent, and undramatic fumes of over-taking vehicles.

Tuk Tuk drivers come in all manner of forms, from the road runners to the pavement huggers and a whole colorful gamut in between. There are the staid, honest types who drive in sedate silence (a perrenial favourite and an increasing rarity); the sly, intrepid ones who will take you on wildly circuitous routes to your destination; the meter cheaters who with undisguised enthusiasm will punch in 10 extra buttons on the instrument to awaken the tuk tuk Beast of Deceit; the MI6 Hall of Famers who will glance suspiciously at every other vehicle they pass, with special x-ray vision scans reserved for when they stop at traffic lights. The ones that are big fans of external trappings, their carriages outfitted with WiFi, a DVD player, a 15 inch monitor, sanitizer, a tissue box and, wait for it…. seatbelts! The nervous, anxious ones driving barely intact tuk tuks that groan and whine in anguished protest – (I tend to tip them the most generously. My sentimental, rooting-for-the-underdog knee jerk reactions continue to be alive and well). The Goodwill Ambassador who will, over the 10 minute ride, deliver a heart warming speech on the goodness of his countrymen and the many wonderful bounties of his paradise isle. Then there are the tenacious shopping mall 3-wheeler brigades with ethics that are as dubious as they themselves are territorial – one has to spew some quantities of brimstone and hellfire to get out of their clutches; also probably the only contingent that all the other tuk tuk drivers hesitate to lock their … headlights with!

This endearingly sensationalist lot also believes in pithy, public declarations of the meaning and gist of their lives, emblazoned as they are on their autos. There’s a sweet, almost nostalgic obsession with certain historical personages and quaint adaptations of favored English idioms: Like Che Guevara who always wants the tuk tuk contingent to rebel; Bob Marley who would like them to forget their woes in most likely, a moonshine-steeped, reggae-rocked weekend. Then there is the tuk tuk driver throwing out a barefaced challenge asserting “if you’re bad, I’m your dad“; or the one who’s had it with arrogance saying “fly not high so you fall not low“; or the myriad others who loudly declare that their hearts are up (on their tuk tuk behinds) for the taking, and as many more who have publicly closed themselves to love… certain lady passengers always being an exception!

On wet days, of which there are many on this tropical island, the rickshaw drivers will race home largely oblivious to the desperate hails of rain-soaked pedestrians. The ones with a flair for a bit of perverse drama, will even pretend to slow down and then rev up almost immediately, leaving momentarily buoyed spirits crashing into the puddles forming all around; revelling in the reversal of the supply/ demand structure for the course of the monsoon torrent. I have tended to see the comic relief in this too as I have been lured and then abandoned by the fickle advance and departure of an unoccupied tuk tuk. Like they say, everyone needs their own particular form of catharsis!

As colourful and varied as the character spectrum is on these public carriers, they, one and all, manage to go where no other/ bulkier vehicles can. Through nooks and crannies, brushing, with millimetres to spare, past a lumbering bus, racing down paths barely wide enough for 2 people to walk abreast. There is something of a mild urban censure of these contorting asphalt plyers – many say, a menace on Colombo’s narrow roads that are already burgeoning with their automotive burdens. But for us, the carless, environment-preserving lot (inadvertent as this reduced CO2 footprint state of being may be!) they are our reasons for remaining happily mobile across our neighbourhood geographies.

And so, as I spend my days roaming the city in between bouts of reading, writing and grocery shopping, I have formed an almost affectionate bond with the tuk tuk posse of the metropolis. Despite the ravages wrought by the pandemic of 2020, they remain optimistic, enterprising, courageous and cheerfully defiant on the roads. I still call them out for over-charging, they still respond with outlandish excuses but together we go pitching and careening across the city in a haze of mutual appreciation.

Getting around the island by Tuk or by Crook!

OPINION | A POST PANDEMIC FEIERABEND*

On By Mahvash K. M.In opinion, writingLeave a comment

2020 has induced a knee jerk reaction all its own. The instinct to be glad to have seen the back of it as it goes careening into the past, swept along by our combined tsunami of emotions, is palpable in the various conversations had around it. I have tended to hesitate making my voice one with the rest of the inflamed clamour. I have tended to warp speed away from the present to take a far and away, Space Odyssey-like view of the last 300 odd days, and counting. If you ask me then, it is almost like a universal recalibration of the important things in life, presented to us in cosmic fable form; Aesop and Arthur C. Clarke hitting more than a few psycho-social home runs in the timorous expanse of our current life-space.

I have a couple of friends, lovely people, who, simply put, have been bested by life mentally and emotionally. Who have, over the years of “living a productive life” been inextricably caught up in undefined little crags of disquietude – one could call it manic depression on its bad days. Occasional bouts of frustration and anxiety have, over time, taken permanent space in their psyches. So insidious and sly has this psychosis been, that its backlash of exasperation, rage and the unrelenting need to fit in just so, are now synonymous with the spirit of enterprise, success and community. Caught up as we all are in this crazy limbo between life and the final farewell, the essential catharsis comes in the shape of frequent and voluble sounding off on one another. We rave and we rant about the government’s woeful ineptitude, the kilos that just keep piling on, the hijacking of our religion by the crazed Right and the lack of a glass of wine when you need it most to get just a little comfortably numb. We are, one and all, veritable shrinks; roles we have inadvertently taken on, given the stigma (and cost!) attached to the clinical psychological recourse. But when we’re talking of a chronic mental pandemic, everyone pitches in to do their bit in braving a dear one’s purgative assault on their senses. We absorb until our own cups brimmeth over, and then, we return friendly fire!

The truth is, we have all been existing in some version of a survival mode.

And then the pandemic struck.

As it took root and raged, these friends, through no impetus of their own or the social and professional structures they so meticulously occupied, were suddenly left to themselves. Their ties to the lives they’d lived, severed for a few months. And so, left with no choice, they sat back and healed. The transformation has been stunning. They appear happier, calmer and at peace – at least for now. In all its perverse, blood thirsty ravagement, the Pandemic has somehow also helped to heal in the simplest, most unexpected way – by enforcing long bouts of time-out on us in the (mostly!) safe havens of our abodes, enabling us to once again understand and appreciate what it is like for the mind, heart and soul to realign.

I can make the above keen-eyed observation if you will, with some level of distance from the malady we call a “Successful Life” because 5 years ago, i decided to give a bit of a flying kick to what had become my reality – work, workout, dinner and bed – ad infinitum. I may even have, over time, transcended in some modest way, to a higher plane of mindfulness and centredness: Each new day is a blessing, I value my health, I cherish my peace of mind and the sum total of my acquisitive aspirations now boils down to experiences rather than material appropriations.

This past year of being forced to sit back and smell the Araliya*, has been just about long enough to bring us as a species to that critical crossroad. The question before us is that when we do re-embark on the bandwagon of industry and undertaking, how do we proceed from there? Do we continue to live with each day blending insipidly, blandly and sometimes aggressively, even militantly into the next, underscored always by burgeoning bank balances and power mongering? Or do we embrace the timorous quality of life itself and the need to re-evaluate and make it really worthwhile?

For my part, I have this instinctive gut feel. Gone are the days (or very nearly) when bosses evaluated one’s productivity as being proportional to the number of hours that were spent in the hallowed Halls of Slog, empty and fruitless though many of those hours might have been. The new generation workforce impelled by the way our conventional workplaces and work lives have been altered over the past year, is looking for ever smarter, ever shorter, ever more flexible ways to get the job done. In another decade or so, the look and feel of Human Capital will itself undergo a sea change: it will be about new ideologies, epiphanies and insights rather than the sum total of man hours spent on a project, that will determine success. The workforce will be intrepid, and driven on a whole new level – explorers of the very frontiers of the human equation.

And that universal affliction – that global psychosis brought on by the bullheadedness of the 21st century that our lives are so woefully beset by – that may just finally find its nemesis in a post pandemic Feierabend.

“To create the new, we must first de-create the old, and the reality of de-creation is as strong as the reality of creation”**

Feierabend: A German term meaning the time of leisure and relaxation between the end of the work day and bedtime. It denotes a connection to one’s core, of family, friends, hobbies and ones mindspace. In the context of this feature, it means a whole new ideology of how we gauge progress and success as we more fully embrace our humanity.

*Araliya: The colloquial term for the fragrant Frangipani or Plumeria flower/ tree

**Quote by Helen Vendler, an American literary critic and Porter University’s Professor Emerita at Harvard University. 

VERSE|A WALK TO DECEMBER*

On By Mahvash K. M.In poetry, writingLeave a comment 
Another end of year has trundled in at last - 
Dawned is far too genial a word to use for what’s been a blast 
Of a year, of our lifetimes, of living memory too they say 
So on this blessed December day, I’m wishing it all away! 

May the Corona perish in the gentle warmth of spring 
Helped along by its archnemesis, the grand old vaccine. 
May the dear departed find rest and cosmic grace;
May their earth-bound loved ones begin to make their peace 
With losses, grief and tender hearts;
With new endings and even newer starts. 

But most of all, let us hold on to the quietness within, 
The fruits of all those locked-down hours of introspection;
May that stillness guide us in the years to come,
To live a life more fulfilled, to let our purposes be done; 
To become intimate again with our humanity,
To learn to give, to love, to coexist more easily. 

Another end of year is upon us once again 
Nuanced as it is with a ragged, shadowy mein. 
Even in its greyness, it is ripe with the promise of better days; 
Of togetherness and laughter, of joy and celebration, 
Of birthdays, anniversaries and triumphant graduations. 

May 2022 be a soulful, wholesome distillate 
Of all the growing-up we’ve had to do over the last year;
May it help us recover our little magical moments
The joyful alchemy of all that we hold dear.

So family, friends, neighbours and those merrily blundering on this digital wire
Have yourselves a very merry Xmas and a happy new year.

De Khudai pe aman

*Title inspired from A Walk to Remember, a 2002 American coming of age romantic drama

**Read the highlighted words in sequence from top to bottom for the Blackout poem/ phrase within the poem. It reads: December 2020 a year bound with losses, but our humanity once again is ripe to recover all that we hold dear.

FEATURE|The Bloodsoaked Rhymes of our Nursery

On By Mahvash K. M.In poetry, verse, writingLeave a comment 
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty together again!

A lovely old quatrain, filled with the promise of blood and gore (or at the very least, massive quantities of ill-fated yolk!). Or how about:

Rock-a-bye baby, on the tree top.
When the wind blows, the cradle will rock.
When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall.
And down will come Baby, cradle and all!

The doomful melodrama spanning from the cradle to the grave was never more succinctly played out than in the above poem. Or then:

Jack and Jill went up the hill
To fetch a pail of water.
Jack fell down and broke his crown
And Jill came tumbling after!

Another rhyme, another disquieting tragedy at the heart of which are the children – always the children, as its main characters. The more of these nursery rhymes you recall, the more you’ll be reminded of the copiously sinister top note in almost all of them. Ranging from racism to bigotry to plain old sadism, these rhymes from our childhood embodied them all. Try reciting a few others like, Eenie meenie miny mo”, “London bridge is falling down”, “Sing a song of sixpence”, “Little Miss Muffet”, “Old Mother Hubbard” and “Goosey goosey gander” – all straight up threatening or woeful or just plain evil! Some of them are actually pithy, blackhearted little odes to actual personages and their peculiar quirks, like Mary the 1st’s religious malevolence – (Three Blind Mice), King Edward the 1st’s cruel avarice – (Baa Baa Black Sheep), the wonton love affairs of the royal European courts and its many colorful denizens; and also a myriad plagues, witches and famines. These rhymes were akin to recording history for quick, unprejudiced recall. And so, what better way than as a child’s beloved refrain, repeated ad nauseam, passed on from generation to generation; the rhyme and meter keeping it true to its original foreboding self.

Indeed, for many of us, nursery rhymes were probably the first few words we ever uttered with any pleasure after the general familial ID allocations of Mama and Papa. I still remember the infinite pleasure, comfort and toddler-centredness (there has to be such a thing!) I derived from repeating these much-loved childhood rhymes. And once the novelty of “she already knows all her nursery rhymes” or “tell aunty what happened to Humpty Dumpty” wore off, the adults also became innocently, resignedly tangled in our whole love affair with these refrains. The slightly disturbing thing is, had they known of the morbid origins of the rhymes we were so lovingly taught, how many would have still thought, let well enough alone; if it makes the kids happy, let them sing of old men being thrown down rickety stairs and babies falling out of their tree top cradles. And they wouldn’t be entirely to blame. Generations of painting the malignant with the brush of hunkydoriness quite entirely dilutes outage and indeed, skews the moral compass itself: Atrocity takes on a happy vagueness; racism becomes invisible; patriarchy adroitly sits atop any semblance of gender equality, and so on. And so now we are all quite happily complicit in perpetuating the crazed ramblings of 400 years ago, cloaked as they are in the rhythm of rhyme and meter. The nursery rhymes of our childhood, thus made eternal, are now forever rolling and roiling in the ether.

The attached link details some of the social madness that inspired many of the most beloved nursery rhymes that we grew up with: https://www.vagabomb.com/10-Dark-and-Disturbing-Origins-of-Popular-Nursery-Rhymes/

Now that we know, seems like it may be time to change the lyrics at least, while keeping the nostalgia-laden tunes/ meter alive. That too requires a break from the inertia of tradition. I’ll begin the Great Re-hash with the below rendering of a favourite. Any other shakers of the status quo, give your favourite a go.

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall
Humpty Dumpty had a great thought: 
What if all the kings horses 
And all the kings men, 
Danced a nice foxtrot 
Across Goblin’s Glen!
Hello, I’m the Humpty that didn’t have a great fall
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OPINION|MY 72 HURS* AND I

On By Mahvash K. M.In opinion, writing3 Comments

I probably would not have been able to write this piece as intrepidly as I am doing now had I been in the motherland. And therein lies the basis of the conundrum that is our religion: an ideology that is deeply, consumingly rooted in loathsome patriarchy with a formidable intolerance for debate and discussion.

1400 years after the Prophet Muhammad brought the message of peace, tolerance, equality and most importantly, the elevation of the status of women in the fabric of our religious and social structures, we have not only forgotten the essence of that message, but have regressed in ways that would be considered somewhat extreme even in the wild misogyny of ancient Arabia. Islam, in the developing world, led ideologically by our oil-rich Arab brethren, has degenerated into a cacophony of fear mongering, at the heart of which is a gender bias so sick, it is boggling to the mind in the 21st century. So embedded is that illogical, bald-faced chauvinism that its nefarious cultural roots are no longer visible in the milleu of religious (mis)interpretation and ritual. In the masterful manipulation of all organized religions, Wahabi/ orthodox Islam too wields its power by staunching all debate that questions its ethical and moral viability for the current times – for to question is to be a Kafir* and thus branded, you may be exposed to the unwitting but ferocious wrath of the rest of the believers; or if you’re lucky enough to escape that gory end, you are forever a pariah in the fatherland.

I consider myself privileged for growing up in that little bubble of sanity that floats just atop the rest of the malignant mass that is our socio-religious national fabric today. Our generation of females in the family, led by absolutely prodigious women of substance, has been bestowed with those critically strategic opportunities to break through the debilitating and handicapping proverbial glass, nay granite ceiling. We have been raised to believe that the only people who are better than us are those who bring more to the the table as human beings, and that does not include their inadvertent Y chromosome. And yet, during my time working in the corporate sector which is known for its gender inclusivity with its strategic human capital goals of at least 45/55 percent female to male ratios, I was reminded on not infrequent occasions, that to be a man regardless of your professional acumen was to have a clear advantage. One example of this state-sponsored misogyny is the weight/ bearing of a woman’s signature on a legal document. Two female signatures are required for every one male signature for the document to hold up in a court of law. And so on more occasions than I care to remember, the resident tea boy who had nothing to do with the legal gambit or the event (except for the steaming cups of tea in our hands) has put down his testosterone-fortified signature as a legal witness, because I, the woman who was leading the charge on the matter, was not deemed fit enough by our state legislatures to understand it as well as any male can, including our tea boy – who, quite frankly, was a good soul but had limited knowledge of BPRD* circulars and responses to the State bank.

And so this system of overt bias is perpetuated to keep our gender from ever reaching its full potential – an unmitigating stream of psychological and jurisdictive attacks cloaked in fuzzy patriarchy to keep 50% of the country in a constant state of entropy.

Despite these disabling encumberances, our generation has forged ahead – thinking, questioning and expanding our minds and our hearts to become more of the emotionally, mentally and spiritually replete beings that we inherently are. This has also led to a sizeable denominator of women being essentially left in limbo viz-a- viz workable/ aspirational personal philosophies. On the one hand, the religious and cultural ideologies of their forefathers no longer fit their lives in any manner that is respectful, empowering and enriching; on the other hand, any discourse or analysis that could lead to a more gracious and inclusive embodiment of religious tenets is tantamount to sacrilege. This is the state of half the population of the Muslim world; the state of almost a billion people on the planet. I am one of those women.

As we continue to the top of the personal ideological food chain, the number of denizens occupying those upper tiers get very much fewer. The ironic paradox with this food chain is that the apex means surefire disenfranchisement, backlash and predation. Like I said, it is still a rare privilege to be born a female in a truly enlightened Muslim family – I am grateful to be one of those. But our numbers are few and the patriarchal landscape is vast and riddled with a hatred for dissidents that has only become more fanatical through the centuries. However, every revolution of the hearts and the minds begins with a few intrepid idiots calling out the injustice and the oppression. I am also one of those women.

And so I’m diving into my ideological debate with some essential satire on a salient reward of the Hereafter; a lustful vision so unashamedly made synonymous with goodness that it has compelled the righteous to decimate entire populations and on frequent occasions, themselves too: the 72 Hurs or splendid female companions of Paradise. Promised to every believer. I’m a believer and I think I’m a good human being; (I’m also as straight as they come!) So is that vision, touted as it is in every inspirational Khutbah*, an enticing end to a life well lived? I’m going to hazard a guess on behalf of us Muslim women who are almost a billion strong: Nah!

The religious conversation needs to evolve beyond the all male-corridors of our masjids*; beyond erotic visions of the afterlife as the penultimate reward, to a wholesome, dignified ideology of life itself.

It is time, ladies and gentlemen, to take Islam out of the Neanderthal man caves into the light of the 21st century.

*Hur: a “splendid female companion” in the afterlife epitomising the spoils of a righteously led life for every devout Muslim man

*Kafir: unbeliever/ infidel. The term refers to a person who rejects or disbelieves in God as per Islam

*BPRD: Banking Policy and Regulations Department of the State Bank dictating the rules of business engagement for all banks

*Khutbah: A Muslim sermon that is delivered at places of worship mainly on Fridays which are considered holy days in Islam

*Masjid: Islamic places of worship predominantly visited by only men.

FEATURE|FROM TROPICAL URBANIA, WITH LOVE

On By Mahvash K. M.In urbanfantasy, writingLeave a comment

Maybe it’s the naive rambling of the blissfully ignorant, or the intuitive musings of the arduously life-initiated, or maybe it’s just the endorphins doing an extra merry jig in the face of our pandemic-crippled times – but here goes in the vein of the duly afflicted: I am Mahvash, and i am a true blue urbanite!

Almost daily, I experience some gently euphoric moment in my current tropical metropolis. Gentle because that is the nature of all lovely things experienced in copious repetition; if one’s lucky, the pleasure remains while the mad rapture of the initial days, fades into a fond familiarity. And so it has been with so much of my urban roaming and rambling.

My morning jo – such a simple start-of-the-day ritual and yet so filled with happy anticipation for me. I make an event of it as I tuk tuk it down to my favourite cafe and while sitting ensconced in all that caffeine-warmed intimacy, I absorb the ethereal substance of my environment. I sit with my latte, sipping it hot and gulping it tepid, as i take in the sun-kissed beauty of the Island Downtown. Soaking in the sweet lethargy of a tropical metropolis as it gently undulates into the late morning hours, like a cat languidly treading a much-loved, oft-frequented promenade. Even the busy intersection which the cafe overlooks has the air of the transiently hurried, as the pervasive lagurousness of the place seeps right back into every interval in the automotive street tumult. The verdant green of the Indian Almond and the white-flowered Plumeria trees amplify the constant harkbacks to the tropical abundance of nature even in the heart of the cacophonous city. Two mugs of lacteous latte and my daily dose of spiritual enrichment later, I’m propelled into my daily routine. This early afternoon energy is vitally palpable no matter how late the hour was when I retired to bed the night before – yup, night owlishness is second nature to yours truly!

Most days, I will try and make something of my 11am to 2pm time slot – a much neutralised/ tropicalized throwback to my 9am – 6pm corporate rigour. And in those specially designated hours, i will make my calls, pay my bills online and mostly write. The combined alchemy of my surroundings, the mental vigor bestowed by the caffeine and the relatively recent unleashing of a creative urge long suppressed in the throes of corporate enterprise, has been serendipitously empowering. I write to facilitate not only my flow of self expression, but also to tick-mark the “Productive” box in my day – I realise I’m innately enterprising and even in the midst of time off, i will inject some semblance of stringency to balance work with leisure. I think sometimes, that I might actually have been an industrious worker ant in some not so distantly-elapsed past life. A shining example for my colony, of the love of labour, as I hoisted choice burdens of nourishment 5000 times my weight in the dappled canopy of some tropical fruit tree…. a fruit tree home-base because I would like to believe the spirit of industry came with some smarts too!

Some days, I will give myself a break such as that is when you’re on a never-ending sabbatical, and roam the city. My roaming days tend to be cloudy and therefore more conducive to long, rambling walks across the city’s tree lined avenues. These sojourns extend over a few hours and I may end up circuitously walking 9 or 10 kms. Usually I will detour through shady back lanes laced with copiously flowering trees and creepers nodding their bright-hued heads in the breeze; or strewn almost in staged perfection with all pink or all white or all yellow petals; or adorned with pretty little balconies nurturing their own abundance of foliage, dropping their resplendence across their railings in exuberant, meandering bunches of cats claw yellows and purples.

Six days a week, I will also go for my run in the picturesque surroundings of the neighbourhood park, tree-lined as it is with the Indian almond, the Mara and the Neem*, all casting long eventide shadows onto the flagstones. On quieter evenings which are brought on mainly by a preceding short but animated tropical storm, the beauty and the tranquility of the place are especially sublime. There are only the few weather-intrepid out and about in the aftermath of such a downpour (of which I am one). The trees glisten, the sky clears to reveal entire twinkling constellations and the whole atmosphere is scented with a rich post-rain petrichor*. In the absence of the regular milieu of running, walking, strolling, cycling and otherwise in all manner contorting humanity, the sounds of dusk also find their place in the quietude of nature with the chirp of the crickets, the end-of-day calls of a tardy lapwing and the flapping of occasional wings as nature’s aviary settles for the night.

The weekend also brings with it the cheerful, spirited calls of Downtime for the industriously employed swathes of urbanites. In my tropical metropolis, this translates to an abundance of celebration in the happy torpor of music and tipple as families, friends, frenemies and foes gather to renew love, acquiantanchip, gossip and rivalry. I’m one of those introverted types who surrounds herself with a bubble of solitude and ventures forth to partake of the party; a psychical phenomenon, I have realized, only the reclusively outgoing can relate to.

The beauty of Tropical Urbania* is its rare ability to hold on to its earthiness while manifesting its contemporariness; its deeply organic feel while delivering on its urbanity; and its infinite capacity to feel like nature’s embrace in the midst of all the metropolitan milieu.

This is the city that I love.

De Khudai pe aman

*Neem tree: Indian lilac or mahogany

*Urbania: related to, or of the city

*Petrichor: the smell of the earth immediately after it rains

CORPORATE SERIES|Demystifying Organizational Success – (Part 3)

On By Mahvash K. M.In opinion, writingLeave a comment

Customer Experience Management and Training are probably the organizational success streams that are closest to my heart. Partly because they are usually relegated to the realms of “ticking off the Regulatory checkboxes“ and the “good to have but not the most critical corporate exertions”; but also because i have spent the bulk of my corporate life across 3 separate organisations, methodically trying to disprove the above mindsets. I have met with mostly success as my team and i have doggedly gone after service, process and knowledge breakdowns and shown time and again how, when left unaddressed, they unequivocally cause the enterprise to copiously bleed out customers and revenue.

The service industry is a unique ecosystem mainly because it is the sum total of the experiences and perceptions that its customers take away from it. The fact that it does not deal with delivering any tangible goods or products like a washing machine or an Xbox, means that there is no immediate gratification following a sale, regardless of the intangible/ impalpable awareness of that sale. In the service industry, it is all about the experience as the customer walks away solely with an impression of her hotel reservation or the perception of how easily (or otherwise) her term deposit was fixed. The service industry then, is the merchant of a cumulative array of commerce-driven emotions if you will.

It is no surprise then, that I have always found Customer Experience Management, especially of the financial services variety, a constantly intriguing thing. The service and process culture of any organisation represents its great underbelly; and if there are discontented rumblings therein, the whole corporate beast is innately compromised.

How does Management care for this emotionally and experientially complex creature – the Organization – that is both, its ward and its sponsor?

Via a robust Customer Experience Management and Training manifesto that is tailored to address the unique challenges of that particular organization.

Customer Experience Management: Right from the start, have a robust customer experience measurement and service recovery capability in place. In my experience, some variant of the below four-fold approach, depending on Organizational culture, size and life cycle, has proven to be the most comprehensive, simple and effective:

1- A Service health barometer: This translates to an all-encompassing and continuous gauge on the pulse of your customers. Emotions and therefore experience satisfaction are as fickle as the best laid plans. What is good for today may not be optimal in 3 months time. VoC* adroitness enables the organization to stay on top of what is relevant to our customers both in terms of current pain points, USPs* and future product and process goals. This VoC is mostly externally driven via customer-initiated feedback and complaints and (for bigger organisations) also internally driven, via company-solicited product and service feedback channels.

2- A Service measurement index: Once the feedback is received from across the external and internal channels, highlight the top 5 – 10 areas of customer concern, delight and aspirations to be managed as below:

    • Build service measurement metrics for the areas requiring improvement to identify process, people and knowledge bottlenecks. Institute a regimen to gauge the ongoing health of these areas post a remedying intervention.
    • Actively share the USPs with the product and service teams. Build metrics around the unique selling propositions and measure performance albeit on a less frequent basis to ensure they remain healthy and delivering.
    • Ensure that the customer-identified product and service objectives/ aspirations are made a part of product steering committee meetings to discuss their viability and efficacy vis a vis overall satisfaction and returns.

This measurement and action cycle is not a one-time exercise but a continuous loop to ensure the organization always stays abreast of its issues while proactively safeguarding and growing its customer and revenue base.

3- Process and product Optimization: This is a critical next step to the bottlenecks emanating from the VoC and the Service measurement metrics. Without it, the CE cycle is like a toothless tiger – all roar and no bite. This is by its singularly curative nature, the most laboriously and strategically challenging function. The battles on the improvement landscape can appear many and daunting. Let the VoC be your primary guide assisted by overarching management insight into identifying the improvements which would elicit the maximum bang for the buck in terms of impact on the bottom line.

The last point deserves a special mention all its own because of its substantial effect on the overall wellbeing of the organization. And that is Training or Learning.

4- Training: The issues emanating from the VoC and the service indicator assessments are of 2 main varieties: process/ pricing related (the hard bats) and knowledge/ behaviour related (the soft bats). Usually, the hard bats are the first to be addressed because they bring to the table, the necessary professional complexity if you will, to seem like the exclusive conduits to creating satisfied customers. A lot of times the real low hanging fruits are left to the more astute competition to harvest and feast on. Those fruits are the basic knowledge and behaviour gaps that end up not only creating customer dissatisfaction, but also circuitously lead to an increase in complaint volumes and service delivery re-work, as easily avoided misdemeanours pile up for remediation at best, or walk out the door with, often times, our silently detracting customers.

Some Shrewd Wisdom: if organisations spent half as many resources on addressing the knowledge gaps that are identified via their VoC streams as they do on full blown, overarching learning initiatives, they can cut their complaints by a third and increase satisfaction by over 30%.

These knowledge and behaviour gaps can be bifurcated into 2 main types:

  • The training needs that are more extensive and require a classroom setting to be delivered and learned.
  • The training needs that are quick and easy to fulfil and basically comprise of minor tweaks in the way the frontline staff interacts with the customer at the first point of contact of the service delivery. These are the FPOC* Quick Kills that make up about half of the training needs identified via the VoC. These are veritable process refinement gems and are all too often ignored or just genuinely never perceived, ironically, because they are so obvious. We in the corporate world do suffer from what I call the Penchant for the Highbrow, thus missing the Simplicity of the Sublime!

In conclusion, a strategically relevant Customer Experience and Learning program is a 360 degree protocol, starting and ending with the VoC. The fleshing out of the structure in between is what gives the enterprise its fangs and its claws to cut through corporate gristle and get to the heart of things that are central to the well being of the organization. It is no secret then, that a successful CE enterprise requires knowledge, passion, empathy and grit. The professional that i am today has a lot to do with my embodiment of these values as I, without omission, undertook the role of the resident “fixer upper”. It was also a dogged perseverance in finding solutions even in the midst of the most turbulent corporate maelstroms, that led to success.

*VoC: Voice of Customer feedback streams allowing for customer complaints and suggestions to be formally recorded and actioned.

*USP: A Unique Selling Proposition refers to the unique benefit exhibited by a company, service, product or brand that enables it to stand out from competitors.

*FPOC: First Point of Contact or the point when a particular service stream commences.

OPINION|WHAT IF IT HAD BEEN ME?

On By Mahvash K. M.In opinion, writing1 Comment

I am still unsure of how to absorb/ make sense of what happened to over 60 women at the Hammad International airport in Doha last month. I can’t seem to compartmentalise it anywhere in my head. In summary, a baby (a few days old) was found abandoned in one of the bins at the airport. The authorities found her and did the only thing that any despotic nation in an apocalyptic horror potboiler would do: They decided without judge or jury that all the women in all the planes bound out of the airport were guilty, culpable and punishable. So they summarily off-boarded these women, took them to a waiting ambulance somewhere in the airport, had them lie down and then proceeded to strip them down to nothing so they could be invasively examined to determine IF any of them was the mother. The ambulance was surrounded by male security guards and the only privacy was afforded by mostly sheer blinds on the ambulance windows. (I won’t go into the moral debate of why the infant was abandoned in the first place – ironically, that very act in itself is one of the many wretched backwash constructs of our “virtuous” male driven social and religious systems and is richly deserving of a whole new rant).

Even more telling of how morally corrupt, power-driven and patriarchal our global collectiveness and the international media machine are, is the almost total silence on the issue from everywhere. The self righteous, voluble right wing media that has an opinion on everything has been as silent as the clock in our universal Halls of Justice. The only reasons that i got to know of the incidence were that one intrepid woman came forward to talk of this physical (she describes it as sexual) abuse on foreign soil while she was en route to Australia, and that I’ve subscribed to Austrialia’s current affairs program “60 Minutes”; and so this video just kind of half heartedly showed up on my YouTube feed.

Since i saw that brave woman’s interview, this one recurring thought has been gnawing at me psychologically and emotionally: what if I had been on one of those fateful flights bound out of Qatar that evening? What if I or one of my sisters or my niece or another one of my female near and dear ones had been subjected to that kind of coercion, humiliation and gross invasion of our bodies?

I’ve written about this incidence hoping for a bit of catharsis in not only thanking my lucky stars that as a woman, i was not in fact there at the time; but also to do my part in making it known that what happened was NOT ok. It was ugly, misogynistic and especially shameful for the stalwarts of a religion and an ideological culture that almost a BILLION women are a part of worldwide.

(See the full 60 Minutes interview via the below link)

https://youtu.be/JgIvt9nm_1M