Living in Black and White

If you can choose to be what you should be..
if you can turn around and say what's only perfect and right..
If you could do what everyone else accepts
if everything you touch , smell, taste and feel is all that you like and nothing else..
How easy living would be if life itself is only Black and white..

The story of my life

At crossroads then, one too many a time
With lurching heart to tread yonder
pulling at opposites, I stopped to ponder
One too many times again,
A tug, a nudge maybe even
a reluctant push
To achieve a wayward dream
In a distant horizon

At crossroads still, with wider paths
Too many escapes, too many space
A string of pebbles escape in myriad directions
I follow the hollow ones,
I turn back, sigh, heave, pant
Wrong again.
The good ones are all gone
I will wait
The dream waits
A never ending wait

For another crossroad to come by.

Happiness

Happiness

Happiness is in a carefree smile

In rosy health

In a heart off all heavy sighs

In the crystal specks of light in a baby’s eye

In a trusting friend

In truth; a present here, with not one lie

Happiness is in a quiet mind

Meditative and kind

In a stretched hand with a note

To those who ask for it

Happiness is in giving

Happiness is in freshness

Of divine smells ,

 And when no grudge, no strife

In simplicity and a thoughtful word

A brisk walk on a hushed street

At the break of dawn;

Or watching your child sleep

At night, all care abandoned.

Happiness is in colors blue and green

In the sky

and the fruitful earth

In the fluttering of a butterfly wing

In an eagle’s swoop

In a lark’s cry to the silver moon

In the beauty of a garden pruned

Happiness is riding a swing

When your heart lurch

And grow cold still

Up and down,

 Sweeping you off your feet

The feel of dew touching you

As you lie down

To gape at the starry skies

Happiness is in a book:  lost you are in

Weeping for its protagonist

When then you lift you head and laugh

For your mind’s innocence

Hath not it been for those pages

You won’t see life’s sorrows

 

That’s happiness

Japan oh Japan...

My uncle, whom I regard a genius, made a confession this morning. That he heard of something called Unit 731 only yesterday by one of his relatives and that it shamed him to realize that he hadn’t read up about it nor knew about it all this time. Well that made two of us. I was at office in front of my computer when he called and being the pedant I am, while still on the phone, I typed Unit 731 on Google Image search. The first image was too bloody. Too graphic and too horrifying that it looked ‘treated’. The 2^nd image practically threw me off the chair. For reasons best known to humanity I promised myself not to paste it anywhere in my blog. But readers curious enough can check it on their own. The image was of a woman, spread eagled, laid down on her back with her abdomen cut open to show her intestines and a fully grown baby, with its head engaged in her uterus. 

Unit 731 was a part of the Japanese ‘Imperial’ army during World War 2 that functioned as a covert surgical facility that did experiments on live humans. Heard of “animal testing?” I have and I have always applauded ‘The Body Shop” of UK for speaking and acting against animal testing while elevating the cosmetic industry as a conscientious trade.  Forget about animal testing. Will you be man enough to watch true to life footage of human testing done by Unit 731 during world war 2? “The Men behind the Sun” is a movie that documents the atrocities carried out by this unit in explicit detail. The difference between a horror film and this motion picture is that the latter is based on true incidents. In one scene in “The men behind the sun”, a Chinese woman is bound with her arms outstretched. Amidst her cries of pain and terror, the barbarians freeze her arms, thaw them, freeze them again before peeling the skin and flesh off revealing only the bones. All done while the victim was one hundred percent conscious with her full view aimed at what is happening to her arms. 

Why this torture? I read up more.. and found out about someone called Dr. Ken Yuasa. A living culprit of the atrocities carried out in the name of Unit 731. I leave you space to make your own judgment after reading his piece. The man is in his 90s today and had thought of remorse!. Good for him. 

Dr. Ken Yuasa's confession

George W Bush killed the gravity of words like “Weapons of Mass destruction” “Chemical weapons” “Biological weapons” do you remember how he even pronounce “Nuclear”? He can only muster up to say something like “Nukiller!” .. and Iraq became ‘Airak’ because of uncle Sam. So Just do a simple Wikipedia search on Unit 731 and find out the real meaning of ‘Biological weapons’. You will be damned to find out that Unit 731 had actually vivisected (surgery done on living organisms for experimental purposes) humans without any sort of anesthesia to provide Typhoid and dysentery bacillus in order to develop biological weapons.

Talk about ‘Crimes against Humanity’ . Imagine what workload would Amnesty International have had if it still operated during this time?. 

Japan… oh Japan…

Voiceless Angel

Inspired by "Sex and Lucia" - Motion Picture.....

VOICELESS ANGEL, I HEAR YOU
YOU TALK TO ME, I TASTE YOU
YOU NOURISH ME
A COLLAGE OF IMAGES HAUNT ME
A RESOLUTE GAZE
AN INNOCENT FACE
TEARFUL, SPARKLING
AN ABYSS OF PERSEVERANCE
SILENT AND UNYIELDING....

ARE YOU LORENZO'S ELENA?
BURDENED BUT STRONG?
ARE YOU LORENZO'S LUCIA?
HAVE YOU EVER BEEN WRONGED?
ARE YOU LOVED?
THE WAY YOU DO?
ENDLESS AND TRUTHFUL?
OR ARE YOU EVERY WOMAN....

VOICELESS ANGEL
YOUR WHISPERS MAKE ME CRY
YOU MAKE ME WANT TO TRY
TO BECOME YOU
AN AMAZON
QUEEN OF KINGDOM CHASTE
AN HONEST UNWAVERING BLAZE
UNDISCOVERED, UNDISCUSSED
BLOTTED TO THE BACKDROP...

VOICELESS ANGEL
WOULD YOU EVER STOP...

The Boy and the Apple Tree
A beautiful Chinese Folktale, Videographed for easy viewing.

Enjoy!

Gecko Superstars

People do stupid things to go with the flow or to whet the human element of camaraderie. The stupid thing I did was to enroll myself in one of those “mass” AL classes only ‘cos my friends thought it was the right thing to do at the time. It was more than a decade ago and I still remember the ‘mass’ feeling. 

There I was with 3 of my school friends sitting smack in the middle-most row of a humongous hall that resembled a Daana Shaalawa, with a sea of heads at a bird’s eye view. The infinite rows of teenagers were jammed shoulder to shoulder, knee cap to knee cap. Every Saturday I made sure not to drink too much of water. You can guess why. I couldn’t see the teacher’s face. Noone except the ones sitting in the first five rows could. What I could see was the back of the head of the student sitting two rows in front of me. From the back of that head my sight locked on the back of his shoulder where a grey-black, bloated, scaling gecko had just landed after jumping off student shoulders unawares to them. It dead-locked what was left of any rational thinking faculties in my brain. Sitting alert, now on the shoulder right in front of me smirking, the mini anaconda was looking in to my eyes, its head erect; threatening to pounce on me. I was left with a dizzying ungovernable panic mixed with revulsion. 

I remember my mother petting these creatures, sticking out cooked grains of rice for them to eat. The next thing you know is, too full in the tummy to defy gravity; it would land on your head or on the side of your ear with a soft ‘blop’ straight off the ceiling. 

How about the sight of the wriggly dismembered tail of a gecko who had just met with an amputating accident? Or the cup dregs of yesterday’s tea transformed in to swimming pools by some?

I had heard gecko horror stories from a lot of my friends. Out of many, two are definite brain-engravers.

Scenario number 1. A family of four baby girls. The mother, overworked and tired prepares 4 bottles of milk and leaves them open on the kitchen top to cool down heat. Minutes later, bottles all screwed shut with teats, mom distributes them among the four babies. The three elder girls drink up in a haste while the youngest, the mom notices, struggles with difficulty to suck the milk off the teat. Mom unscrews the bottle and gets shocked stiff to see an absolutely poached gecko drained of color, its carcass standing erect, its face molded to the exact contours of the inside of the teat. 

Scenario number 2. A young man enters his disheveled room. Not bothering to switch on the light, picks up the bottle of coke he left on the table the night before. Taking the bottle straight to his mouth, tosses down the remainder of the drink. With the final swig he feels the Disco wriggle inside his mouth of an unmistakable Gecko Superstar.

Lessons for life – Leave all consumables lidded shut at all time, in all stages of cooking, preparing and consuming. Check right above your head before settling to sit, sleep or even defecate.

Disclaimer: Any defamation directed at all geckos and animal rights activists is unintentional. The write- up was generated as therapeutic means of letting out irrational, phobic sentiments of the writer and to ease attitude towards and foster possibly a more friendly and co-existing disposition towards house geckos.