a Journey

Resistance is beautiful

Saw the quote in a shop whose owner hadn’t cut his dreadlocks in a decade. Tripping in Arab St was a lovely affair as always: quirky characters, intelligent observations, and sugar-smooth PR replies, angst of some who have been marginalized and wincing truth of the reality of business… twas the street last night.

This will be one of the few places I’ll truly miss when I leave; maybe because it has not been sucked into the vortex of android-perfection where everyone’s into the culture of being busy. 

This is an enclave where people sit on the streets to eat on foldable plastic chairs and tables, chatting under the stars instead of fluorescent lighting. Owners have distinctive cuisines and faces and names; beyond differentiating between names of the eating establishments alone. 

Perhaps this place will soon be over-run by the impending wave of glassy air-conditioned shops, touting wares of perfection. But even so, resistance is beautiful even if the fight is lost. Because at least the war was fought.

So the seeming mind numbness got too much for me to live with, and I stole a book off my brother's shelf: savoured it all in one night, and wondered why the books I've chosen these past few months always seem to twist my insides up as I read them into the cool hours of the early morning. Maybe because the stories they tell are worth the tears that trickle down my cheeks. It's always the darkness of Man's heart that inescapable truth that is so damning and revealing all at once.

The Kite Flyer by Khaled Mousseini gave a face to the stories of Afghanis that we oft hear in the news. In this auto-biography (so I shall assume), I see how Afghanistan was a society once. Here was a city that once housed aspirations of riches & ambitions; whispers of lovers & gossipers; heard the strains of music & accompanying laughter. This was a country which millions called home. Reading this book, I see, more clearly than before, why some chose to stay on in a country that now holds the image of Talibans gone mad & terrorism. Landmines. A country where there are many children, but little childhood. Because Afghanistan wasn't always like this; because it was destroyed, and we do not know, and perhaps many have forgotten and lost hope in what it once held.