Her

 Please take a few seconds to look at this picture. Drop everything else, all your emails, work place responsibilities, family ties, personal needs and wants and everything else in between for just a few seconds. Replace the word ‘me’ and ‘I’ with ‘her’ and ‘she’ and divert your attention the focal point of this picture, at this present moment. Focus on her. Not how she came to be there, or what will happen to her in the future. She is now putting together a bead necklace. You don’t know how she got there, or how the story will end for her.  The ‘her’ you see here, carries within her, another child. But she is also child. The world order that went about making this happen is the world order that you and I live in. 

Words fail me if I were to describe the insides of her mind. No one can. I bet even she can’t. She couldn’t possibly put to words the pain and the trauma that she had been made to endure within her 12 or 13 years. Instead she puts it into the bead chain she makes; trying to make sense of how the color of one bead matches the color of the next in the loop that seems to be endless. Her thoughts can probably never be related to by people like you and I who are seated comfortably behind our computer screens. We focus on our emails and paychecks and cars and music and clubbing and gaming and boozing while she calmly sits in a corner and makes her bead chain. Because that is what helps her bring back a little bit of peace and sanity to her new world. The new world where she now knows her father to be the father of the child she carries. The new world where right and wrong isn’t the two sides of a coin but an endless string of multi- colored beads.  

The picture you see is from Emerge Lanka Foundation. They are a non-profit organization that helps young girls who are victims of abuse get back on their feet.  Shunned from society and held back from education, these girls don’t have the confidence or the resources to live a normal life. As victims of rape and incest, the strength that takes them to stand up against their perpetrators, most of the time their own fathers and to have faith in their own strength to rise from their tortured past is a massive step for them. They are torn and battered in ways that you and I cannot imagine. Emerge Lanka wants to restore hope through projects like ‘beads to business’ where they help the girls discover what it feels like to be alive and in control of their own lives, to be financially stable and to learn to live again. Every piece of jewelry is as unique as the girl who made it. 

Each piece of bright metal and plastic are strung together in the hopes that life becomes beautiful in the end. Isn’t that what we all want?

If you wish to help them out in anyway, please visit their website 

Images courtesy http://emergeglobal.org/ 

Booze vs boring

Apparently, I am boring because I do not drink or smoke. Me being boring is quite possibly true. But I am sorry that you have to swallow a ‘magic potion’ to substitute for your lack of personality.
P.s. Feel free to feel sorry for yourself and suck on that information till you die at 42 with lung cancer and or kidney failure.

Recently, I was out for dinner with a few friends when the drinks started to pour in. Bottles marked with x,y and z sat side by side in front of me when I made an announcement saying that I will not be smoking or drinking. This resulted in loud protests from everyone exclaiming that ‘that will not do’ because it was a birthday ‘celebration’ and inquired as to why the sudden change of heart because I had been a social drinker / smoker. I simply said that I was not into it any more rather than going on into specifications. (Same with why people ask me why I am a vegetarian.) There were the friendly jabs on and off but what made me stop and politely smile was the comment this one guy gave me. 

“Nad, you are boring” he said. To which I just smiled and looked away, silently laughing inside my head because I personally consider it a waste of time to talk to people like that, no matter how rude I may seem. I considered this guy to be a little bit of charmer, to be honest, like most men I encounter, who until they open their mouth, seem actually worth a minute or two of my time. It’s like how this guy mate of mine commented on some of the women he encounters. From afar, they look like the absolute bomb, plays the whole ‘acts like summer, walks like winter’ deal, is charming, rich, good looking, curvy hips *add whatever tickles your fancy* until they open their mouth. He described it as his boner actually shrinking back to its unturned on size...I was thinking – no, pleading inside my head for this guy to stop talking because the lady equivalent of the boner-shrinking was happening to me. (aka my vagina was clamped shut) By this time of course the charm had jumped off the window and was running towards the nearby cliff to jump off of it. 

Now, don’t take me wrong.  I am not insulted at that feedback. Not in the least. The comments I have received range from ‘easy to talk to’ to ‘a dickless dude with tits’ to ‘nahadichcha lamayek’ which are all true to the core. Boring is just another one. I probably am boring which, if you look at it, is something I can’t really help. What I cannot understand is how an artificial drink can make me more ‘hip’ and ‘fun’ if I am boring to begin with - unless it contains some magic ingredient which will amplify my ‘funk’. And no one told me that booze has this magic ingredient that helps people be awesome/appealing. If at all it did, it sure the heck wasn’t going in favor of this poor chap.

This I later understood was what some people do apparently. They would try to get the lady drunk enough to not reject their advancement. This is another thing that I do not get. Maybe its just me, as a person who used to get drunk, I do not recall NOT knowing what I did when I was drunk. I knew exactly what I was doing - unless I am passed flat out on the floor. Of course, things would be hazy, but I still knew what I was doing – so the notion of a person’s senses being dulled to a level of not knowing what they did, is to me, a little over rated. [1] Some people also say its okay to cheat on a committed relationship when they are drunk. Some people also say that the Earth was flat and dinosaurs didn’t exist.. But hey, maybe I’m just boring and uneducated. 

Bottom line – booze is just your excuse to be stupid. At least, in my books. So that you can get away with shit you probably would not have gotten away while sober. So all you folk out there who claim to adho-I-don’t-remember-shit – I-was-dead-drunk,  are so totally lying and I can see through you like you were a piece of plexi glass.  

Others say that they feel like they are boring at a party if they don’t drink. Honey, you are an amazing individual as it is. You might as well stay eternally drunk –like Captain Haddock for example -  if you feel that your personality lacks enough substances un-drunk in day to day life. I dunno about you, but I’d rather stay at home being boring than associate with the likes of such people who say or even indicate that. The whole hitha mithra sewanaya line from the good Lord. Know when you are in bad company. Don’t be rude, but do yourself a favour and move out. 

There is also some who say that a celebration isn’t a celebration and there are no amazing memories without a little booze. True. Cannibals weren’t cannibals without eating other human beings. My idea of fun won’t be your idea of fun. And I have the right to my opinion and you have the right to yours. But if you want memories, go out there and make some. With friends or family or whoever. Its not like you don’t make memories when you are not drunk and heck, I know plenty of people who have major fun without getting drunk because they are lively people. They love food, and they spent many a happy hours eating and having funny/intelligent conversations over food.

Then again there are those who say drinking is okay if guys do it but not if girls do it. Unlike domestic violence and the American pay check, health side effects know no gender. I’m not going to write pages of pros and cons of drinking and smoking. I’m not here to say ‘don’t drink’ or ‘don’t smoke’. By all means, do what makes you happy, be the life of the party, have fun, keep on drinking and smoking. It’s your life. But drink for the right reason. Because you want to and not because society wants you to. 

Why I turned down drinks and smokes –if anyone is wondering- is because from what the trusty internet tells me, smoking is bad for the lungs and drinking messes up your kidneys. I am not saying I am 100% health freak who stays away from burgers and eats homemade vegetables. But I do try to give my body the necessary nutrients and exercise it needs so that it can function at the optimum level and also, just maybe can function at its optimum say until another 60 – 70 years (unless pollution or the economy kills me first) without worrying and looking for extra kidneys in the black market or expensive medication for when I am old and cranky. 

That, and I have pretty much tried the entire booze and cig menus out there so I can safely say I've been there, done that to everything. Plus I'm a total buzz kill when I am drunk - I'll be in some corner hugging a bottle without actually engaging in lively conversations / mingling. Also , I'm not very partial to the smell of smoke - and it turns me off to think of kissing people who stink. Just fyi. You'd have a better chance of making out even if you looked like a troll but still smelled nice. And not mention have knack for interesting conversation topics.

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[1] However, I have read of rape cases when the girl was drunk – rape because of the level of consent involved due to intoxication which would over ride my statement above. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/aug/14/ched-evans-rapist-sheffield-united-footballer?CMP=fb_gu

Before and after

He is funny. He used to make her laugh about the silly things people did, like holding the phone yards away from their ears and yelling in to them. But that was long ago, before Isuri was born. Now Isuri cries because she sees him hitting her.

Drowning

The hard tile feels cold against my bare feet. My heels, I had left them in the car. Did I lock the car? I can’t remember. She was all I had in mind. The lights above me flickered as we passed under each square frame on the ceiling. They’re too bright, it must hurt her eyes. But they are closed. Feet hurry past us backwards and forward. I hear people crying out for help, pleading to unseen gods, to stop their pain. The steady beep beep of the heart machine next to her bed is soothing. It hurt me to see her like this. Sweat dotted her forehead. Shivering, clammy skin, wheezing like a wounded animal. Sudden jerks of her limbs were the sign that she was still there, fighting. She was breathing, but with great difficulty. Her breath came out in short, difficult gasps, as though she was in a big tug of war with life, struggling to keep it in her body. My nails dug into her hand and I tried to stop her from struggling. I felt her pulse through my fingers; slow and unsteady, with each raspy gasp for air. Each breath hung on to the edge of her lungs like a drowning man. I’m trying to reach for her, but she is too far away. And there’s nothing I can do to help her.

Simply is

I want to share a little something on this rainy day, for all the young broken hearts out there. For the confused ones who find themselves a little lost because life flipped an unexpected turn and now things are a little difficult from what it was yesterday.  <3

We're young, and fragile, and changing as the tide. We evolve within ourselves and in our roles in each others lives. We'll fall in and out of love so many different times over, each time giving love a new face and a different definition, before we even decide on settling down with our own permanent definition. So relax, enjoy and take it easy. It's a neutral state of being. Love yourself first; Do not expect to love someone else without loving yourself first.

Happiness isn't something you find in another person, but within you. This happiness is what you envelope everyone else with. Extend compassion and understanding rather than arriving into conclusions. Love, not to get it return, but as a form of appreciating your ability to give. Forgive easily. Reach out. Embrace people for who they are, and not what you want them to be.

Love, because it gives you peace of mind. It fills you up like a balloon and lifts you up. It is not a commitment or a chore or a headache or even a ‘drama’. Love, because it is universal and magical. It does not change who you are but changes your view of other souls around you. Love is not difficult. It never had to be. Love does not have to be measured in anyway. I love you in my way and I will show it to you in the way I am with you. And you will love me in your own way. And it will be different from how I show it to you. Or you might not even show it. I don’t mind. I will live my life and you will live yours elsewhere. You might cross my mind everyday or never at all.

We are not who we were yesterday, nor will we be the same tomorrow. So what are we now? We are friends, and lovers, and siblings, and strangers all at the same time. I’ll be me. And you be you. I’m not going to define your version of who we are. Or deny it. Or second guess it. Love was there. It still is. And it will always be there. I love you. Unconditionally. Without rules or theories or what society wants it to look like.

Because ....

A little broken

I know a lot of broken people. They are strong and beautiful. At random times such as this, I think of them and their happy laughing faces flash in my mind and I am reminded of how lucky I am to know them and their pain. Because it is this pain and wretchedness that makes them strong and beautiful. And now when you read this, you know I think of you.

To you

To you, the animals

The ones who taught me to speak, not through any audible language but a language only understood through touch
The ones that are discarded like waste paper, thrown out on to the roads, because they are females capable of carrying life within them
The ones who don’t have homes because they are not pretty enough. Or expensive enough. Or “pure bred” enough
The ones that do not expect any money in return, just a pat on their head and a few kind words in their direction
The ones that live a little while,
but make living all the worthwhile in that little while.

This if for you.