Daily (w)rite

When you need to decide between the better of two evils, which do you choose and how?

For me, I put off my decision-making till the last minute possible, (I do give myself a logical and feasible deadline till which to put off, though) think over it, dream about it and sleep over it…..then let instinct take over. That is because I mostly have the luxury of time. I realize not many people have that. I have always had a lot of respect for decisive people, those who look a problem in the eye and decide to do something about it.

I wonder what people do when faced with difficult decisions. Probably says a real lot about who they are as people.

Too much of technology in our modern lives: from the cell phone, the MP3 players, the media players: there is just too much input to process, at least for me.

But there is one piece of technology I have come to really appreciate in the last few days: and that, surprisingly, is the Digital Photo Frame.

As one picture follows the other within its sleek contours, I am transported to different times, different places. Pictures of friends, romantic moments, sheer fun, of incredible beauty— all captured at different times of my life, and now displayed in a timed, unbroken chain.

Lines and snatches of writing ideas start coming to me, unbidden, out of nowhere.  Who knew a piece of digital technology would prove to be such an inspiration? But so it is.

Yesterday my father-in-law moved into intensive care all of a sudden, and is still in a critical situation. I am thousands of miles away from the family, in Singapore.

Unfortunately, my husband also had just then taken a flight to Chicago from Hong Kong, a long 14-hour flight.

I called Chicago United Airlines, desperate.

A computer answered me, which is normal. It understood human voice, and when I said Help, Agent, it directed me to an agent. So far, so good.

I finally managed to get thru to a human being.

But I realized, this one was not much better than a robot. She sounded like a dragon lady, silently put me on indefinite holds without telling me she was checking or whatever, was unfailingly rude, and finally told me her computer did not have any data regarding my husband…she needed the ticket number to confirm his existence on the plane.

I called again, armed with the ticket number.

Second dragon lady, just as winsome as the first one, who again put me on various silent holds without telling me what was going on. She finally came up with: He is on the flight, but we do not have the means to pass him a message on the flight. Can pass it once he has landed.

No matter how I requested, I was told that a message cannot be passed on board the flight.

The supervisor who came on line was a little better trained (actually uttered the words I am sorry for the difficult situation you are in etc.,) but said the pilot can only be contacted if there is an emergency threat to the plane: FAA regulations and all that.

But he promised that the message would definitely be delivered once my husband landed in Chicago.

I was disappointed. But I thought, fair enough, they are doing their job, thanked them and hung up.

I waited up till 2am in the morning so I could call my husband, and after a few dozen calls finally found him. He had not got any message so far, so I told him about his dad, and he hung up so he could call his family.

I talked to him now, a few hours later, and realized no one from the United Airlines ever gave him any message.

So much for United Airlines.

For all their snobbish, holier-than-thou and patronizing attitudes, none of the agents did their job.

Welcome to the real United States, I told myself.

I had so far only met very nice, compassionate and extremely competent American expats, and my view of America and Americans had been largely shaped by them.

But with this one experience over the phone (during which I paid full international call charges between Singapore and Chicago for over an hour), I began to have a completely new and different view of the country and its people.

I don’t think individuals realize how much their actions count in the image of their country.

For now, I have this much to say: So much for the United States of America!

Some days, you write. Other days, you simply cannot.

Today is one of those days, when I have a dozen things on my mind, most of them not so cheerful.

After years of writing, I have come to accept that some days you write, other days you don’t, and that is how things are. Today is just one of those “other” days.

I can see the park by the bay as I write, and it is so amusing to see all the joggers early in the morning. There are those that amble along, dragging their feet, barely awake. Probably been dragged out of bed by unforgiving spouses and shoved out of the house to jog for health reasons.

Then there are those who would jog bare-bodied, no matter how puny their bodies, heart monitors stuck across their chests and on the arm. ( A lot of Singaporean men are undeniably puny). And when they pass a woman they puff up their chests, oh, just a little. I know this because I have seen them in action when I used to be a regular morning walker myself.

There are also the athletic types, who  probably run marathons, in their very fancy nike and adidas, both men and women, their ipods letting them set their pace. They look different, even from a distance.

And it is with them that I see the most interesting dramas played out everyday.

There would be one casual jogger or another who would be running along while these chiseled marathon types effortlessly passes him or her by. Most take it cool, but there are some that take it as a personal affront. (Women somehow never seem to take it personally, perhaps because they are not as naturally physically competitive?)

Then they put everything they have into their run, and cross the athletes with a superior look. After a hundred meters, they are huffing and puffing, and have  to stop soon afterwards. The athletes pass them by without a second glance.

Not unlike in school or office, where I have seen everyone always running for the first place.

Running to win is all very well, but it cannot be done in a day. The athletes did not peak their physical condition in a day and nor can anyone else.

But this is a truth we often forget, I guess, not only while jogging, but in life itself.

Appearances and Obsessions

As I lean back on my seat, I cannot see much across the maze of legs. But there it is: a peeping toe, looking pale and polished out of a lady’s dirty-pink sandals in soft calf leather. Cannot see much of the feet though, and not much else at all.

I am tired, we had had a long day exploring, looking around, walking. This is a country where we all walk, like so many ants, we walk and walk our way to trains, to buses, to cabs, and even though most of the way we are carried from one place to the other, it sure feels like a lot of walking. But the toe looks like it is not used to the open road, it looks cozy and homey in there and I wonder about the wearer of the shoe.

In Singapore it is very difficult to guess a person’s age, especially if it is a woman we are talking about: some of them look like schoolgirls, but actually have college-going kids, no kidding. And this is the guess you make when you can see the entire person. What if all you can see is a toe across a crowded train?

Must be in her thirties, I guess. Can’t be returning from her office, very few offices in Singapore allow such shoes, in my two weeks here, I have learned to pick out the office goers from the motley crowd of students, housewives, tourists and shoppers. She does not have Caucasian skin, nor an Indian or black mahogany, so maybe a Chinese or Malay Singaporean, not sure.

On the other side, on the corner seat across, there is a young kootchie cooey couple asleep in each other’s arms. The girl in huge red sunglasses is leaning into the guy’s chest, sitting on his lap, clutching the hem of his t-shirt. He is in small, really dark blue glasses and since he is facing me directly, I can’t help feeling watched.

He has a protective arm around the sleeping girl. But there is something strained about both their postures, which gives me the feeling they are putting on a show, a tableaux of youthful, innocent love.

My eyes slide away from their charade, and quickly check on that toe. Of course, I need to see if more of the owner is visible.

Fingernails are pampered by the women here, and most have tiny, detailed drawings or patterns painstakingly applied in nail salons, where petite girls with beautifully manicured fingers, blond-streaked hair and ever-smiling expressions pore cross-eyed over a foot or a palm.

Men are equally conscious about grooming, but I have passed many of these by in various malls and have never picked up the courage to step into one, fearing ridicule at my over-trimmed nails.

I know they wouldn’t throw me out just because they don’t like the way my feet look, they like their money. But Singaporeans can convey more disapproval by the barely perceptible rise of one brow than any other race, except perhaps the French or the British, can manage in an entire tirade. Women in particular.

This painted toenail, however, is the sort that would win praises from the girls at the nail salon. It is not old, I don’t think, because I see no ridges. No tell-tale cracks in the paint either or maybe I am making it up, I can’t see the toe well enough to figure out any blemishes.

But that is not for want of trying.

I peer, as discreetly as I possibly can, while I nod away at my friend, whose words I barely catch. Intent on the toe alone, I keep watching. I love women with French pedicures, the neat strips of creamy white on their nails, and that wonderful illusion of a naturally perfect nail created by paint alone.

At the next station new people walk in, some go out. But the toe stays put, its owner still out of sight.

So I look around at the new bunch of people. One of them catches my eye, a tall European, probably a German, given his size and air of formal self-importance, in a striped shirt, formal trousers, and square-toed office shoes.

And out of nowhere, I think of him first in casuals, and finally without any clothes at all. This man would act the same, I am so sure, whether in his office trousers, in his shorts on the beach or in bed with his wife: polite, very straight, no slouches, and always full-of-himself: definitely Mr. Stuffy!

From those unpleasant images I skip back to the toe, and my heart skips a beat. No toe! But then I relax, the foot had merely shifted, and is back now. And I can see a bit of the leg. Is she wearing one of those short trousers or a skirt? Again, not sure. Well, I just have to keep an eye and I will know soon enough.

Mr.Stuffy, meanwhile, stands a little apart, and holds the rod for support with a faint air of distaste as if thinking of how vigorously he would have to wash his hands and then scrub in the shower to cleanse himself of the proximity of so many people.

I snort, and my friend looks at me, puzzled. He was trying to tell me something about our new quarters, how it should be airy with a lot of natural light, something I totally agree with. But in my trance the snort at Mr. Stuffy becomes a snort at my friend, who falls quiet. Instead of speaking up, I let him be, and quickly peek at The Toe. Ah, still there, good.

One station down the way, the couple sleeping in each others arms comes awake. They had missed their stop. Maybe they did actually fall asleep in the end after all!

Of course a lot of hushed conversation in singlish follows, every one turns around to stare at them, and the couple gets off at the next stop. Mr. Stuffy sits down on one of the corner seats they had vacated and pointedly keeps his briefcase on the other, as if daring anyone to sit beside him.

Everyone is listless once more, and I go back to my scrutiny of the toe. My friend is dozing off. The toe is till there, and I almost get up to peek at the owner. Then I hold myself back.

If she doesn’t move before we get off the train, I will get over there and have a look. I am quite burning with curiosity now, and try to turn my head away to hide my eagerness.

Immediately, I fervently wish I hadn’t. Hadn’t turned, that is. Because seated beside Mr. Stuffy, who now looks almost apoplectic, a faint purple tinge on his reddish neck, is the most unnerving sight I have ever seen.

Straight from B-grade horror movies or meat-fueled nightmares is a woman, one of her eyes shut permanently close due to a humongous wart.

Each visible square inch of her skin is covered with boils; shiny, squishy, big, pink-beige boils that looked on the verge of bursting at the touch of a feather. Warts between her thinning hair, warts into her sleeve, warts down her aging neck, warts up her wrinkled feet:  I pinch myself to check I haven’t dozed off as well.

I find I have not. She is real. She is nodding off, almost bending towards the Mr. Stuffy. I can almost hear him above the hum-and-swoosh, furiously thinking of a way to get up without brushing against his neighbor.

He does not have to, because at the next stop the lady with the warts gets down, and in that small pause that a metro train allows on each station, I see an astonishingly handsome young man step up to greet her, and even extend his arm for her to lean on.

Mr. Stuffy seems relaxed, now that he is quite safely isolated again. But when I turn back, I do not see the toe anymore.

Relax, I tell myself, no one except the lady with the warts got down at the last stop. The toe must have just shifted, and will come back soon enough. It was still quite crowded on the train, and more people were boarding it than were stepping out.

But scan as I might, I do not see the toe again.

Oh, well, it is there, and I will see it soon enough, I tell myself. But I become a little frantic as the next stop approaches. What if she gets down without me ever seeing her?

I get up in order to post myself close to the nearest door. My friend wakes up, startled. “We already there?” he mumbles. “Nope, I am just standing up to stretch my legs. I’ll call you when we get to our stop.” I say, walking off. A girl quickly takes my seat.

I step near the door, keeping my eyes peeled for those dirty-pink sandals, and that toe which has made me curious for no reason. I feel absolutely ridiculous: I am no foot-fetishist. At least I don’t think I am.

But the train comes to a stop, and though I keep a keen eye on every foot that gets down, I see no pink sandals. The compartment is a little emptier now, so I decide to walk along the length of it.  But after a few steps I realize I am attracting a few questioning stares, and go back to leaning against the panel near the door.

The train whooshes on, and I see Mr. Stuffy get down at the next stop and make his way to the escalator. Funny how he shrank at human contact, and had to sit for the length of a few whole minutes next to a woman even the most people-loving person would have a hard time taking to.

More remarkable still, the lady with the warts had someone so gorgeous waiting for her, and that young man sure cared about and respected her.

Lost in my rambles, I had forgotten about the toe for a while. With a start I now realized that the next stop was ours, and my friend was looking at me, nodding. I nodded back, and tried to locate that toe for one last time.

And that was not a wasted effort. Just as the train halted with a small jerk, I saw the toe.

There was the toe, part of a dainty foot, lovingly cased in those soft pink sandals. And for the first time, I saw the entire person. She was leaning back, the sudden curves on the otherwise hard body relaxed in sleep.

It was not a lady, as I had imagined, but a drag-queen. She could be easily be mistaken for a woman, but was not.

I had heard that Thai drag-queens are respected and accepted, and here was a perfectly groomed, short- skirted example. As I got down, I felt a shudder run through me, a shudder that I told myself was because the station was warmer than the air-conditioned chill inside the train.

But I knew it was not.

As I walked down the station hand-in-hand with my friend, I wondered if he would paint his toenails pink, just to please me.

Writing mostly surfaces from the subconcious, and dreams are our window to our subconcious. Some of the most wonderful ideas can strike you just as you begin to wake up, ideas not necessarily practical, but with undeniable potential to develop into a story.

From the cusp of sleep and awakening it is possible to pull out skeins that can become anything you want it to, a poem, a flash story, a short story, a novella…. the sky is the limit.

I always keep a pencil and notebook handy beside my bed, and on mornings I wake up from a memorable, yet already half-forgotten dream, I make a few notes. That is where I get most of my imagery from, even sometimes for some of my most everyday articles. I was checking the internet for people who write dream journals, and I found an interesting one that reminded me of so many things about my own dreams.

Turning dreams into reality can work out even in the most literal sense.

To write a story, look for one in your dreams.

I was cleaning up one of my study drawers (because I was trying to find a piece of paper and could not find it, story of my life) when I happened on an envelope full of letters from my family when I was away at college.

They were lying there forgotten, having been dutifully carried as I moved from city to city, country to country.

Writing letters was a necessity then, phone calls were expensive and nobody had heard of the internet.

I held up the folded sheafs of paper filled with my dad’s neat handwriting, my aunt’s occasional scrawls and my sister’s quick scribbles and sifted through them one by one. A turn of phrase here, a word of love and longing there, scattered about in those aging pages. The letters smelt of home: of mum’s cooking, of dad’s garden, my sister’s hugs—they were all there, pressed within the folds of those precious letters, a sum-total of my teenage and youth.

I have moved on since then, I call my parents across the seas and exchange emails with my sister. But the exchanges float away in ether. As I grow old, I’m afraid I would have only the fragrance of these frail old letters to take me back to those times long gone.

Facts:

Phoenix is a month-old puppy.

Phoenix cannot walk.

Phoenix was not born that way.

Dad went and picked him up one cold night, after a neighbor left him near our home. Phoenix’s mum was apparently a stray, and the neighbor’s son had picked up the puppy.

The son broke Phoenix’s back, and so the father left the puppy near our home hoping “its mother would come and pick it up”.

My dad could not stand the puppy’s crying at night and picked it up….only to discover the broken back in the morning. The vet said the puppy had permanent spinal nerve injury, would never walk and it would be best to put it out of its misery. My dad, trying hard to be a realist, agreed.

The puppy was euthanised, and the vet gave it a dose that would kill a Rottweiler, because it kept waking up.

My dad left the bag hanging outside, and went to find a spade to give the poor mite a decent burial.

But when he came back, the bag was moving……and a groggy pup was peeping out! So the name Phoenix was born.(The vet nearly fainted when he saw Phoenix at his clinic the next day.)

Phoenix is full of beans and tries to drag himself everywhere on his forelegs. My dad has found a new occupation in his retired life: how to keep a handicapped puppy clean—because Phoenix pees and poos and rolls about in the mess with gay abandon, and does not act handicapped at all.

He has to be restrained with a soft cloth, because the vet says dragging himself around would give him a dangerously sore butt. Not that Phoenix cares.

My dad who had never done much to keep his own progeny clean, is found hovering over Phoenix all the time. He puts the pup in warm water to try and make it swim, massages its lifeless hind legs four times a day with medicines, takes it for a nerve injection everyday(the vet treats Phoenix for free and refuses to take money after being asked a dozen times) and so on.

Dad is extremely proud of Phoenix because he licks up the medicine without complaint, and has a wolf’s appetite for milk-soaked biscuits. (When I think of sheer will to live, I can’t think of anyone stronger than our tiny Phoenix:).

Phoenix has now started wagging his tail in greeting, and moving his hind legs very, very little, which has Dad in absolute throes of happiness.

Love has created many miracles.

Though the vet is not hopeful, I have a feeling Phoenix would walk—he has already come too far not to.

I went for a walk today, because had to make a call and the phone gave up on me. It was early, and people were out to get their bit of exercise, sun and companionship. As I sauntered along, I saw this rather serious looking old couple, straining to keep pace with each other, both actually walking very slowly, hand in hand, both definitely past their seventies.I do not know the secret to their success, I do not know if they thought of it as such a success, biding their time one day after the other, hand in hand.

But there has to be a secret. And I knew I had to write about it, if only because writing it out would sort out some things inside my head.

I thought about my parents, the things they tried to tell me, the stories they passed on. But by the time we begin to realise that our parents were so right in some of the things they said, we have our children already who disagree with what we have to say. That is the way of the human race, I suppose, of our evolution. But I wish there were certain recipes we all learnt, as unbiased, axiomatic truth.

I wish we learned that there is no replacement for human compassion and understanding, and ultimately, love. I wish we learned how to put others before us sometimes and not always think of ourselves alone. That, being human, we all need a tangible expression of the love people bear us. That all of us need consistency from others and the only way to get it is to be it.

I somehow cannot imagine love being born. To me, it is like an endless river flowing into itself.

All life forms drink from it. All of us drink from it, and some of us do so in excess. Becoming drunk, we want to flow with it. Some of these drunken spirits become Christ or the Prophet, and some Romeo and Juliet. But the human frame of body and mind is not capable of handling the excess, so we crucify Christ and let Romeo and Juliet perish.

I realize that intense relationships have to mellow down with time or are else unsustainable. To survive, they have to end in parting or as in the extreme and well-cited cases end in demise of one or the other.

A mating of souls does not allow the bodies to survive for long as these are used up as candles to the flame, and the flame is never stronger than when the candle is at its shortest.

So we cannot all have intense loves in our daily lives; not all of us are bestowed intensity and that is good for the survival of human beings as a race.

Imagine all of us being twenty-one and killing ourselves for love!

We cannot survive it to our eighties and still be madly in love, without the aid of some form of tragedy or deprivation.

So what do that bent old man and the upright lady beside him feel as they walk side by side?

Is it a form of habit? Is it getting used to the other person as one gets used to one’s favourite armchair? I would love to ask, I but am sure there are no correct answers that hold true for each one of us. We have to inividually work out our answers, our desires, our ambition, our wishes, our fondest dreams.

For me, I for sure hope I get to walk with someone I have cherished when I am eighty and the sun on my back seems younger than I am.