Tag: Broken

VERSE| I Need To Find You Again

On By Mahvash K. M.In creativity, Emotions, hope, poetry, verse, writing1 Comment

I wrote this dedication 8 years ago for my mother who passed away in October 2012 after a very brave, very arduous battle with cancer. She’s missed everyday, but now also celebrated every day. She remains the Queen of our Hearts. 

My heart’s shattered into little pieces.
My mind struggles to synthesise reality.
I find myself suspended in painful limbo - i look for you; catch glimpses of you in everything around me - and then you’re gone.
I’m left staring at vestiges - a vase of flowers you fixed; a shirt you hemmed; a text you wrote.

Your courage, your grace, your love and your compassion;
These are such dauntingly enormous qualities.
With you around, i gave myself false courage: I had your DNA; i was bound to be in some small measure, the Woman of Substance that you were.
Now I can’t find the courage nor the grace.  And my love and my compassion seem spent.
I need to know you’re still around.....

Even as I write this, I see your beautiful, smiling face looking right at me - vibrant, loving, comforting, happy.

I need to synchronise my heart with yours again, Mama.
I need to find my “Woman of Substance” that you have bequeathed to the three of us.
I need to find you again.

And as in birth, so in adulthood, I WILL find you again.

I love you.

VERSE|I Am Dystopia!

On By Mahvash K. M.In Coronavirus, Covid19outbreak, DawnNews, Emotions, Faith, Humanity, Kindness, poetry, Spirituality, theGuardian, TheNews, TheNewYorkTimes, thereset, truth, verse, writing4 Comments

WHEN NATURE ROARS

2020 dawned on us, full of the goodness of even numbers,
Of existential vision perfection, insight, wisdom; all symbolic rumbles,
Of good things to come, of new beginnings and of blithesome continuity,
Of travel and adventure, of togetherness and sunny opportunity.

Just when the new year smile from our lips spread,
To brighten the providential gleam in our eyes,
Mother Nature stepped out of her wooded grove
And resolved to cut all 7 billion of us down to size.
She waved her hoary Staff of Life and brought it down hard to the ground,
And created a little critter amongst us, virile and ergonomically sound.

And then around the globe it traipsed as gleeful as a clam,
Across hills and valleys, fields and plains, aeroplanes and trams;
It skipped across the hot asphalt, into neighbourhood grocery stores;
Hopping along trolley handles, even dancing across binned apple cores;
Nestling onto careless hands, touching sun-kissed faces,
The Covid critter had VOA* for a whole gamut of places.

And then it was a few weeks on, late March, early April
That the malignant, morbid pong arose from the places it had traveled.
Sick and sicker people got, with the older crowd being hit the hardest,
It picked at folks everywhere, taking the killing-spree route that was fastest.
It advanced, armed with its axe and it’s murdering scythe as it went for the weakest,
Ravaging not only bodies, but spirits and souls at its absolute bleakest.

The Covid death knell continued to be tolled as the weeks turned into months;
On and on it butchered and killed on copious, disparate fronts.
They say there’s an existential kind of omen in the raging of this pandemic,
Like a paradoxical panacea for even worse killers that are fundamentally systemic.
Like racial biases, climactic atrocities and economic ills,
They say the Covid has descended upon us to collect on Mothers Nature’s bills.

We owe her for the oceans that are perishing by the hour,
For the dwindling woodland space and the raging forest fires,
For tearing into her lungs with each metric tonne of CO2 emission,
For killing and maiming and cruelly placing her creatures in wretched submission,
For all the unkindness, the hypocrisy and the bigoted beliefs,
She finally stepped in from the depth of the earth to deliver some relief.

While she’s imperceptibly taking back the reins of this planet we call home,
We continue to be caught in the toxic harvest of what we’ve already sown.
She’s spreading her roots like gnarled old ivy across our cities and towns,
Reclaiming, repairing, reviving reforming the blues, the greens and the browns.
Soon her deep dark tendrils will wind around our greed-beleaguered throats,
Choking out the poison, the malady of the spirit that has taken such firm root.

It will be the end of an epoch, but also the start of something new;
An honesty, a tenderness, a Oneness with Nature will slowly start to brew.
For Humanity to thrive again, a death of The Now is essential;
The dreams and motivations caught up in that Now will also become inconsequential.
As Nature beckons us closer to her, one lesson at a time,
The world will poise on a transformational brink while she scours off the grime.

2020 will indeed be the year when Humanity attained perfect vision,
When Mother Nature drew copious blood to finally change our Human Condition.

De Khudai pe aman.

*VoA: Visa on Arrival

OPINION|The Consciously Blazing World*

On By Mahvash K. M.In Faith, Humanity, Kindness, theGuardian, TheNews, TheNewYorkTimes, thereset, Trump, writing1 Comment

A Post-Colonial/ Post Abolition Prescription for Healing and Moving On

2020 has become the proverbial skeleton in our collective human closet that has been, quite clamorously, wanting out. From the Australian bushfires to the Californian wildfires to the south Asian locust infestation, to flash floods, to the still raging Pandemic, Nature has been rapping her well worn knuckles at us. The seeds that we have sown ourselves, such as they are, in our socio-economic evolution of the past 500 years, are finally also bearing insidious fruit. And some of us are being plated out with that toxic “manna” much more generously than others. The world is in a peculiar state of flux as systemic and institutionalised biases and inequities raise their ugly heads, demanding attention and exacting blood.

With the Northern hemisphere facing its most vocal and vehement push-back yet of institutionalised racism, it seems apt to look into the whys and wherefores of how this monster is still not only alive and well, but traipsing around the globe. The dubious start-up credit, of course, rests with the two most notorious schemes employed by the West to own, manage and use entire swathes of humanity: Colonisation and Slavery.

While the colonists eventually exited their colonised domains (for the most part), it is compelling to note that the enslaved were never repatriated or given a homeland to call their own. Most notably, post the American civil war, they were clumsily declared “free men” (the “free women” movement is, arguably, still a work in progress around the world) and left largely to their own devices and spirit of enterprise to assimilate into society. There was no state-sponsored Integration Scheme, no Reparation Act, no real organised effort made by the enslavers to economically lift and psychologically release tens of thousands of men and women from over two centuries of being treated like chattel. Fast forward 200 years and the vestiges of that national lethargy has taken on an even more insidious anatomy in the form of systemic racism and marginalisation. This scarlet thread has woven its treacherous way through every aspect of the fabric of society, leaving citizens feeling like illegal aliens in their own country. This is being exemplified loud and clear in the current state of world affairs, and so effectively described by the black American actor Will Smith when he said “Racism has always been around. Now it’s being filmed for all to see.”

The colonisers departed from their dominions after demarcating entire continents with the assiduity of a baker cutting a cake with the straightest edges possible. There was almost no political, socio-economic or ideological science applied to demarcating borders. Nations were cut up overnight changing not only the cartography of the world but also the lives of millions of people. Thus seeding a post colonial wave of civic and religious unrest that has continued to simmer and boil over between previously congenial neighbours. Case in point: the Indian subcontinent. With its current combined population of 1.7 billion, 40% or 680 million of which comprises the middle class or the engines of economic growth of a country, the south Asian collective would have been a global force to contend with. The Durand Line and the Radcliffe Award ignited fires that are being stoked to this day in the form of radical religious militarisation and exclusionary nationalism.

So where do we go from here?

There is a critical healing/ advancement process that is integral to moving forward from the grass root levels.

  • Accept that it happened: Currently, the baseline of “popular history” is all wrong. There is an almost smug evasion of the truth; smug, because the pall of racial ignorance and apathy has been allowed to thrive for the past couple of centuries. It is time to come face to face with the reality of what happened, starting from the highest government platforms right down to the man on the street. The facts need to be overtly stated and accepted so that the collective social conscience can finally start kicking in.
  • Embed an ethical awareness: Once the truth has been told and confronted, the moral dialogue needs to start, spearheaded by the nation’s academicians and legislators. A Code of Race Ethics needs to be formulated for the body politic at large, to systemically unlearn and then relearn their moral sense around the subject. Building grit and gumption around commemorative events like Juneteenth* in the United States and probably the Amritsar tragedy* in the United Kingdom, will help to embed the mindset. In the spirit of Veterans’ Day, these memorialisations too will serve as a reminder of the courage to have overcome, safeguarded and progressed, while also ensuring the keen cognisance of the atrocities of the past. The goal being to ultimately bring about a sea change in the “racio-moral”* compass of the world.
  • Make Colonial/ Slavery studies a compulsory part of the school curriculum: This is fundamental for both, the colonised/ the enslaved, and the West. For a systemic national mindset change, race related instruction and knowledge sharing has to begin in the impressionable years. Together with the many glorious battle wins vanquishing sundry foes being featured in History books, a thoughtful, insightful study into their dark historical pasts by the largely western/ white nations is essential to methodically build universal understanding, acceptance and empathy.
  • Encourage ongoing dialogue: This is critical to ensure that the mindset change that has begun, is made permanent. Discourse is important on every aspect ranging from the moral issues inherent in the concepts of the “Colonial Imperialists” and “Slave Masters”, to reparation, to active assimilation and advancement of the affected populations in the 21st century.

Humankind appears to be on the brink of another revolution – this time, a moral and ethical one. This modification/ re-formulation of our global conscience will affect how we survive and indeed, thrive in the 21st century.

The question is, are we up for this challenge of an epoch, or are these difficult high-minded decisions best left to God and the Trumps and Johnsons of the world?

De Khudai pe aman.

*The Consciously Blazing World: Title adapted from a 1666 work of utopian fiction titled “The Blazing World” by Margaret Cavendish, the Duchess of Newcastle.

*Juneteenth: A holiday celebrated on June 19th to commemorate the emancipation of enslaved people in the USA.

*Amritsar Tragedy: Also called the Jhallianwala bagh massacre took place on April 13th, 1919, when Acting Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer ordered British Indian army troops to fire their rifles into a crowd of unarmed Indian civilians in Jhallianwala Bagh, killing at least 379 people and injuring over 1,000 others.

*Racio-moral: the global ethics of race and morality

REFLECTION|Something’s Gotta Give

On By Mahvash K. M.In Emotions, Faith, Humanity, Kindness, pandemicdreams, Spirituality, thereset, writing2 Comments

“Now is the winter of our discontent, Made more [in]glorious by this son of [New]York”* or by the son of any other metropolis anywhere else in the world really. The onset of the third decade of the 21st century has become a tipping point for humanity on so many fronts. All grim reminders of where we have chosen to be in our social, spiritual and ideological journeys. And our reflections in the grand old cosmic mirror are far from being reassuring, appealing or inspiring. We have insensibly, doggedly stretched the limits of our humanity and one can’t help but wonder that something’s gotta give.

The unrelenting sequence of chaotic events that has befallen our little blue planet in the last six months has been almost eerie in its timing, tenacity and reach: From the bacillus extremis doing its plunderous tread around the globe, to inexplicable, calamitous plane crashes, to catastrophic bushfires, wildfires and devastating floods, to the snarling, salivating maws of colourism, racism and ethnicism finally distending wide enough to drag entire nations into their ugly depths. The annihilation of our collective psyche such as it is, continues unabated as our benumbed, handicapped spirits slowly awaken to the fact that there may be a deeper essential meaning to all this disruption and carnage. But Existential perspectives can also go two ways; a pawn-in-the-hands-of-fate approach where we remain gripped in our current status quo, or to take that leap of faith and hold up a mirror to ourselves to see the mere wraiths of humanity that we have become. It is a difficult choice, because “better the illusions that exalt us than ten thousand truths”.*

The way i see it though, (and the cringe-worthiness of cliches be damned!) is that the truth shall set us free! We are arguably at the end of an epoch; in fact by most counts, we’ve overstayed our welcome. If this then, is the beginning of the end, let us make it count. Let us listen to the voice of our collective humanity and do what we instinctively know to be right. Let us do away with the concept of the “Billionnaire” – the person who cannot possibly spend his fortune in his lifetime. Let us do away with Monopolies which bolster a few by disenfranchising a million others. Let us do away with Unhindered Profitability which bankrolls some and indentures/ encumbers a billion others. Let us do away with divisive religion, pernicious doctrines and archaic institutions. Let us rip asunder everything we have known to be “true” for the last 5 centuries.

I have a funny feeling in my bones, and it has nothing to do with the weather or the inept clairvoyance born of our disenchanting world. It is like the low frothing of a tsunami, the premonition of something big and dangerous just over the horizon, the portentousness of being changed forever.

Yes, it feels very much like something’s gotta give.

It feels very much like it’s time to start over.

De Khudai pe aman.

*Quote adapted from Shakespeare’s play “Richard III”

*Quote from Alexander Pushkin.

SHORT STORY|2020: A Cosmic Odyssey

On By Mahvash K. M.In Fiction, fictionlog, Short story, Stayhomefor, thereset, urbanfantasy, writing2 Comments

AD 2020 – THE ENCOUNTER

“It was the winter of our global discontent as we looked to the only country we’d been conditioned to, for solutions to all our real and existential problems”. That was a recurring information echo in my head after our last Ripple Effect Round Table* (Re-Rt). There was some compelling information to be had; some momentous intervention to be made, in the early decades of the 21st century. So now that It was my turn to follow the Infinite Ripple, I chose to wormhole* to the 45th President of the United States of America, the most powerful man on the planet in Alternate Reality Earth 42:0.

I had done my regular Ripple Voyage* prep on him. He was usually done with his presidential duties such as they were by late afternoon, and the subsequent hours were spent increasingly in a mixture of bewilderment, resentment and fury. His emotional feedback through the Ripple Effect -Round Table (Re-Rt) had been wildly ricocheting, charged with intensity and disquietude. The last time I’d experienced these wildly inconsistent cognition waves, was in the Enhanced Virtual Reality version of Arthur C Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey*. His primitive man had emanated this cacophony of jangling emotions. I had had vertigo for 2 days after that. But this rubric of primeval sensational commotion had been rinsed from the human psyche centuries ago. So this was an unexpected aberration. Serendipitous really, in the otherwise temperate oceans of evolution. I was ecstatic. I was quite ready to get under the skin of Donald J. Trump.

I had wanted to pick a discourse with him between 3 and 6pm on a Sunday afternoon. These days he was usually at the White House. In the wake of a microbial blight, the world had pretty much changed, and so had the president’s residential habits, albeit, rather more cantankerously: Mar-a-Lago* continued to be an off-hours preference.

Precise 5D positioning in wormhole antimatter is still an elusive art form. And so I found myself in President Trump’s bedchambers at 10.43pm on a Pandesday* – the planet was largely in the throes of pandemic pandemonium and specific days of the week bore only timorous significance.

He was in his red pyjamas and was leafing abstractedly through January’s Issue of People’s magazine. His hair was in a little cascade of a ponytail on the top of his head, showing sizeable swathes of delicate pink baldness on either side. A little wave of Perception Clearance* and I was comfortably ensconced in a wing chair while he glanced up just once to acknowledge my presence.

Experience Log no. 1100/ AR Earth-42:0/ 2020/ Donald J Trump/ POTUS/ President’s Bedroom, The WH

Me: “Hello Mr. President. I’m Maya* from AR Earth 3.14″.

D.Trump: “Yes hello. Have you seen this photo of Meryl Streep? She looks frumpy. And believe me, she’s not. I always debunk Fake News. She should call out these unclassy magazines that make her look like Rosie O’ Donnell”.

Me: “That’s an unbecoming statement Mr. President”.

D. Trump: “Never liked the woman. Never liked the look of her either”.

Me: “There’s a pandemic on the planet. It appears to be quite serious. There are 1,233,402 dead already”.

D.Trump: [looking vaguely interested] “Really? That many?”

[Then looking suspiciously] “You’re not from Fake News yourself are you?”

[Then almost petulantly] “They’ve always got their daggers drawn against me”

Me: “I’m from Earth 3.14 sir, like I told you. Earth 42:0 has been whispering discordantly of late. I’m here to listen. Listening has a very special ripple effect in our shared cosmos”.

D.Trump: “I’ll tell you something then. I ran for president because I was an entertainer, a showman. I got a kick out of it. And I got stuck with the ball that I’m supposed to hoop in all these weirdly incredible ways . I don’t even like basketball. I’m a baseball kind of guy myself. Not that I’ve seen anything new on that front recently either”.

Me: “You’re the President of the most powerful country on the planet now”.

D.Trump: “I didn’t really ask for it. But yes I am! These damned Republicans were like headless chickens. I just wanted to have a bit of fun, get the cheers, the love. And 6 months later, let Clinton’s wife do all the boring presidential stuff”.

Me: “You have an opportunity to make a difference in the USA and indeed the world”.

D.Trump: “I have been doing just that. Been meeting with princes, princesses, queens sheikhs and dictators”.

[A small chuckle at this point] “Should I tell you a secret? …. I love that Kim Jong-un. We call each other all the time to talk about what we’ve had for dinner. Taco bowls are his favourite! That boy likes good old American fast food. I’d have invited him to Mar-a-Lago for a nice vacation but those Fake News people won’t let me live it down”.

Me: “That does sound counter-intuitive politically, but quite congenial on the human front”.

D.Trump: “He’s the king of all he surveys! No fake news there! Gave me quite a scare when he went awol recently. I like the guy…. although he could do with a decent haircut….”.

Me: “Mr. President, the world is in a state of flux. There’s disease compounded by unsurity, fear and disharmony. You’re in the perfect position to lead the global charge here”.

D.Trump: “It’s those crazy Chinese. The morons let the Wuhan Virus loose upon all of us. I’m just bored with all this death, death, death! Believe me, sometimes I think they’re making up all these numbers just to make me look bad….. Anyway, Mike Pence is dealing with it”.

Me: “Sir, some empathy goes a long way. EQ* is so much richer than any IQ”.

D.Trump: “Who’s that? Is that another Arab sheikh? Those Middle Easterners have a lot of money, and do damn all. Got a couple of billion green backs off them though. I am a businessman and I’m incredibly good at what i do”.

Me: “It’s a precious inflection point in time Mr. President. What the world leaders do now will have ripple effects for centuries to come”.

D.Trump: “You don’t say! I had done a great job with the economy. We were winning so much, we were almost tired of winning. The China virus has blown it all. I feel like kicking SleepyCreepy Jo* and Pocahontas* in the knees right now. You know for letting-off-steam reasons. And also because I hate them”.

Me: “Choose the nobler path. Use your office, your position to bring the people of the world together once again to fight a common adversary”.

D.Trump: “Do I look like Saint Peter? It’s every country for itself. America first!”

Me: “Then it’s the beginning of the end”.

D.Trump: “It sure is. We’re the United States Corporation of America. Not a charity”.

Me: “You’re the epitome of what’s going wrong with humanity sir. And it’s odd… but I see no cognizance of it on your part, nor any self awareness. It’s tragic.

I wish you well Mr. President. Goodbye”.

Ending Remarks: Earth 42:0 was/is tilting precariously on its cosmic equilibrium when it had called out to the universe. It’s spiritual cognition is impaired, it’s heart is displaced, it’s leadership is in disarray, and its people, indeed all its creatures great and small, are sick and dying.

Probable Prognosis: The end of a Cosmic Epoch and of Humankind on Earth 42.

GENESIS: The Novel Corona virus is in Transformation Cycle T+1. Evolution to Species Intelligentes*: Approximately 5 billion years.

GLOSSARY OF TERMS:

*Ripple Effect Round Table (RE-Rt): Somewhere in an advanced alternate universe, there are sophisticated human beings that are looking out for all of Earth’s vulnerable alternate versions. AR Earth 42:0, our world, is the hardest hit as its very energy and life force is in calamitous dissonance. The RE-Rt is a select group of people which attempts to bring balance, harmony and synergy to all life across the cosmos.

*Wormhole: a structure linking disparate points in spacetime.

*Ripple Voyage: time travel to fix epochal cosmic issues

*2001: A Space Odyssey: A 1968 science fiction novel by British science fiction writer, futurist and inventor, Arthur C. Clarke.

*Mar-a-Lago: A resort and national historic landmark in Palm Beach, Florida. Owned now by Donald Trump.

*Pandesday: any day in the course of the Novel Corona virus Pandemic lock down.

*Perception Clearance: a shifting of energy to harmonise two alternate realities to facilitate inter-dimensional contact.

*Maya: In Hinduism/ Buddhism, the power by which the universe becomes manifest; the illusion or appearance of the phenomenal world.

EQ: Emotional Quotient- a measure of emotional intelligence.

*SleepyCreepy Jo: Trump’s savaging of Joe Biden – the 46th POTUS

*Pocahontas: Trump’s savaging of Elizabeth Warren – US senator and Ex 2020 Democratic Presidential Hopeful

*Species Intelligentes: Intelligent Species, in Latin.

Some other Trump favourites:

Favourite Actress: Meryl Streep

Favourite Sport: Baseball

Favourite Arch Nemesis: Rosie O’ Donnell

Favorite Words/ Phrases: Moron, Stupid, Incredible, Fake News, Great, Crazy, Believe me, Winning, Damn, (Un)classy, A lot of money, Wuhan Virus, Chinese Virus, America First!

Favorite Food: Junk food including the Mexican Taco bowl

Logic for the Numbers used:

No. 42: the alleged answer to life and the universe as a whole as per Douglas Adams in his book “A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” and a number of other philosophers/ thinkers.

No. 420: a colloquialism used in Urdu/ Hindi to depict slyness/ insidiousness. It is also cannabis culture slang for marijuana and hashish consumption, especially smoking around the time 4:20 p.m., and also refers to cannabis-oriented celebrations that take place annually on April 20 (which is 4/20 in U.S. form).

No. 1100: Mar-a-Lago address

No. 22/7: the value of Pi – the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. It has special significance in nature too.

VERSE|I Sat Alone with Sadness

On By Mahvash K. M.In Emotions, pandemic, pandemicdreams, poetry, Stayhomefor, truth, verse, writingLeave a comment 
I sat alone with Sadness
I felt it’s grainy edges,
I saw it’s grey-bound form,
I touched its dark, dark heart
And then I heard it moan
it’s dolorous dirge.
It whispered of a gloom
that quelled the light inside.
It spoke of a despair 
that clung like gnarled old ivy.
It lamented of an anguish
that congealed the blood within.
And i mouldered in the Sadness....

Then it dragged with it the phantoms
of Heartache and Desolation.
And finally it whispered  
Of a Final Cessation.
And I listened....
And I crumbled...
And piece by piece, I sank ....
Until I had drowned in my Sadness.

And then the vortex glimmered;
There was promise of some light.
I floundered through the tempest,
Struggling to inhale! 
Convulsing with release,
I finally broke the surface,
Of my abysmal grief.

And I wept.... and i wept...
And my ravaged spirit breathed,
As I embraced my Sadness.

De Khudai pe aman

VERSE|The Severance

On By Mahvash K. M.In alphabet soup for the soul, Nostalgic musings, poetry, truth, verseLeave a comment 
I should have seen it coming ... I felt it coming.
The personal angst, both sitting with their own.
The self-deprecation; the momentary loathing; the struggle to dignify; the failure to clarify - 
The ever-triumphant Status Quo!

He speaks; he accuses; he rails and he rants; 
He threatens; he shouts; he’s shaking - he’s livid.

I recoil in disbelief; something sinks beyond the grasp of our shared togetherness.  
I watch him before me, as I watch us within me,
Sink....   sink........    drown.

I feel the cold sweat break out, but I don’t feel my hands or my feet.
I feel my heart thumping against my chest, but I don’t feel the warmth of the blood gushing through me.
I dissociate; I levitate.....

I see a woman.

She sits there transfixed, pupils dilated...
Then something snaps - 
She speaks; she explains; she questions and she battles; 
She shouts, her voice hoarse with tears of frustration.

She diminishes; she’s silent.

She’s broken.

She should have seen it coming - the end of the line.
She just didn’t see it coming.