The Enemy

Psalms 37 says to not fret because of those who are evil or be envious of those who do wrong. It goes on for 40 verses on how to deal with enemies. Or more accurately how to deal with the issue of why the wicked prosper and the good suffer. A lesson in Karma, in a manner of speaking.

Very recently, I’ve found myself randomly thinking about enemies. I hope I have none. As such. In college, Tenzin would often randomly burst into the room and dramatically announce that we hate some person or the other. I’ve often “hated” random people I don’t know for her. Proxy Hate? I don’t know. It was just what our friendship demanded. I don’t mind. It never really took much out of my energy or my time.

I am older now and my thoughts on enemies have become slightly more complex. For example, I have always thought that the concept of ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ was very smart. However, I have begun to reconsider. I have begun to wonder if the concept is a fundamentally flawed one that can only work in combat. That or it is a very short-term solution. You can't bandy together and ally with someone based solely on the premise of hatred and common enmity for too long. 

In war, I imagine it is a good solution. But in peace time, or for a prolonged war, the internal rot will out. And spread.

I've seen this in politics all the time. But I realise it is largely the same in other areas too. The ends really do not justify the means. That is just a pretty lie we tell ourselves to justify our corrupt deeds. Big or small. Some evils you could consider negligible, and some may even be necessary. But you can’t really call an apple an orange simply because the plot demands it. A rose by any other name and all that.

Psalms 37 would go on to say: I was young and now I am old, yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging bread. I think this is the comfort Scripture has to offer us. Which is quite nice, if you think about it. Much better than unduly worrying over why the wicked prosper and the good suffer, at any rate. Besides, the Universe sees what we don’t see. A lot of people who do us wrong are suffering in areas we wouldn’t even know to wish on them. It’s not our call to exact vengeance. All that Psalms 37 would have us do is to commit our ways to God and hope in the Lord. Basically do what is right and don’t agonize over what others are doing. As much as you can, I suppose.

I think I can try.

Discovering Hell

It’s a good thing I’m not god or that I have any real powers because I very much doubt life would survive overmuch if I were. Free will, for sure, would not. It is a disturbing thought but if I am completely honest, I realise I would not be too opposed to autocracy if I were at the apex. The only thing that puts a pause in me being pro-dictatorship (even if the dictator would be me) is that I also firmly believe that the seed of destruction in any dictatorship lies in the system itself; that authoritarian rules cannot be absolute for long and from the very people being oppressed would be borne a saviour. Inevitable.

The other reason I would not make a very good god is that I am not that brilliant at handing out punishments. It is a sobering thought but I don’t often know people as well as I think I do. Which is very important if you are going to penalize someone because torture is a very strange concept and the same method often does not hold out universally. Even tolerance of pain is different across the multitudes. And of course, some people actively seek out thrill which others would call horror; kinks, as we say.

So what we call embarrassing or deeply terrifying sometimes do not have the same impact on other people. This makes certain prayers quite useless – or at least non-impactful. As in when you pray to god to maybe punish someone by dragging their names through the mud for, say, infidelity or monetary corruption. Clearly that infamy does not bother them because anyone who indulges in those things has already calculated the cost and has made their peace with the possible fallouts.

I’m Christian, so I am partial to: ‘As you sow, so shall you reap’, ‘Vengeance is mine, says the Lord’ and ‘There is nothing hidden that will not be revealed’ as I read them in the Bible. But that’s just a very lengthy, Abrahamic way of saying Karma. Anyhoo, because Karma sees all, Karma also judges all. And when she doles out her judgments, it is hardly ever in the way a mortal brain would expect but when you realise it, you think: of course, it could not have been any other way. Sometimes these penalties are deeply personal and/or incredibly secretive; sometimes all outward appearances would convince the world that sinners and criminals go about scot-free from their crimes because this is their world, but their lives are being eaten up from the inside and corroded from within.

It is hard to not wish harm on some people. Some people are just very disagreeable and generally overall non-likable. You want to maim them; not kill them, you understand, because of the moral implications of it and all the brevity of the retribution et cetera (read with eyeroll). Also if you indulge in these avenging business, Karma will have to sock it to you too and you don’t want to find out what kind of bitch-slap Karma has in reserve for you. In short, you never want to find out what hell is for you. So you do good. And take deep breaths. And hold your tongue. And all those things.

It’s a funny old world we live in. Sometimes I think heaven and hell are already here with us. (Also, sometimes I think it’s a bit like a multiverse, at the cost of sounding very MCU-y, but let’s leave that for another time.)

Sunday Muse: Worship

Amy Farrah Fowler of The Big Bang Theory had this line that I found hilarious: I don't object to the concept of a deity, but I'm baffled by the notion of one that takes attendance.

It often reminds me of a woman I met a long time ago who gave me a conundrum to chew on. She didn’t think of it as such though. For her, it was quite straight forward.

Let’s try to set the scene: Church has decided to embark on Christian Family mission and wants to ensure that all families should try to promote Christian family values. And one of those values is daily Family Worship. In fact, church would go around and ask all families if they have family worship. I think there might even have been a separate register for this. If your family said no, you didn’t have family worship, you guys would be considered weird and outliers.

This woman I met was a church women leader. Following such, she was gung-ho about family worship. To paraphrase her, though: My family is very invested in the importance of daily family worship. But all of us have different engagements all the time and we can’t even eat meals together, leave alone set aside time to sit and pray together, neither in the morning nor at night. But this has not deterred me. Sometimes I’m the only one at Family Worship but it happens every night.

My conundrum therefore is this: Is worship about the attendance?

Now with attendance, I attend church once a week. Anybody else in any novel I ever read would think this was a character that was very church oriented. Not in Mizoram. Not by a long shot. In Mizoram, you're not considered a regular church-goer unless you attend at least 4 times a week. I'm not even kidding. There are 3 services on Sunday. Let's say you attend 2 of those. There’s Wednesday night service and Saturday night service. So that’s 4 (of 5) already. But those are only the services for EVERYONE. It doesn’t make you special. You have to attend one more in a week depending on your station in life, youth on Monday, women on Tuesday, middle-aged men on Thursday. I almost forgot – in between Sunday School and Sunday Afternoon service there’s an additional fellowship service, again depending on your station. Maybe Friday night is the only true Night Off. Friyay indeed.

When I was in SDA Inter-College Roorkee, we attended a lot of church services. Every morning and every evening, we had Hostel Prayers. Quite beyond this, Friday night was Vespers, Saturday morning was Sabbath School, Saturday afternoon was main service, all of them non-optional.

Then in Mount Carmel, Anand Niketan, I again attended hostel prayers every night; in my second year, I was even Chapel-in-Charge! I actually learned to play guitar because of this; I learned a lot of choruses! Sundays we attended church with our hostel warden’s family; our warden’s husband was pastor. I think that was CNI.

Since college, I really haven’t attended a lot of church anymore. It’s not that I have lost faith or anything. It’s just something that has happened. It is what it is.

Add to this my cynical and outspoken nature and a lot of people have asked me point-blank if I was atheist. I really am not. I like the idea of not knowing for absolute certain. It is all in the word: belief. You take something at faith value, pardon the pun. I like for my faith to not be blind and fundamentalist but I take my comfort in short burst of prayers and meditation on Bible verses; Ecclesiastes and the Gospels, usually.

On Bible reading, I don’t know about others but I’ve often heard people say: simply reading the Bible isn’t enough, you have to meditate on them. I respectfully disagree. I have read my favourite books time and again until I can quote them. The Bible is one of those books. When I am sad or lonely or angry, it is passages from these books I’ve familiarized myself with, that comes to the rescue and comfort me. I don’t know the difference between reading and meditating, maybe.

I have wondered, when I was younger, if faith was compatible with science. I no longer do. Where they are compatible, it is wonderful. Where they aren’t, I compartmentalize anyway. It’s alright. It is what it is.

Just to be controversial, and because we’ve talked about Religion and Science in Sunday School for two Sundays now: my take on Evolution v. Creation. I take a lot of the Bible as metaphor; even Jesus always taught in parables, after all. Genesis talked about Creation in seven days. I don’t believe in seven twenty-four hours days creation. But evolution would concur with the general loose theme of how things came into existence in Genesis – the Big Bang of light and everything, everything settling down, life beginning with the plant world, then in the water, then on land, finally culminating in Homo Sapiens, your basic Adam and Eve.

Or the Tower of Babel. Technology and science rise so high that God struck the people and cursed them with a change of language so they can’t communicate. Throughout history, language has changed courses of development dramatically. I believe even now, people are encouraged to learn Chinese? Because while us old British colonial nations still consider English as the language of development, this has not been necessitated by other nations. Interesting. Maybe Babel is about to strike again.

Or Karma. I believe in Karma. Or more biblically, ‘as you sow, so shall you reap’. And that the LORD says ‘Vengeance is mine’. I rest my mind now. I don’t know if you’ve noticed but sometimes we know what some people are truly about, how inherently corrupt they are – either materially or morally or both – but they seem to thrive in the world and people dejectedly think: this world is profitable for sinners. Either that, or sycophantically to their face: God is favouring you so much, look at all your blessings as Signs of Favour. But no, we know so little of people. Karma knows. And Karma doesn’t strike how we wish it would (Job comes to mind) but rather where it hurts people. I’ve had my fair share of bad Karma bitch-slapping me; believe me, I know.

Anyhoo. I digress.

Church Attendance. It is definitely necessary to form your societies, your prayer circles, your pillars of support, your chance to give back to society, your chance to be part of a greater community… Very true. I wholeheartedly agree. But is it the same as worship?

Inkhualtelem Life With Real Money

The Barbie I remember most from when I was a kid was the one called Pretty Hair. I don’t know if it was a genuine Barbie Barbie, if you know what I mean? I’ve realized a lot of things we get in these backwaters are knockoffs. Today in the age of the glocal and the internet, we can usually tell the difference. Although authenticity and ethics and wallet-friendliness tell different stories.

I mean, come on, who wouldn’t laugh at the twin of Puma’s black cat jumping over a lovely calligraphy “Tiger”? It is an art! Con art, maybe, but art nonetheless.

On Barbie, I remember Pretty Hair because she had such beautiful long hair. Of course, when you’re only about 12 inches tall, even hair that reaches your ankles would only be about 11 inches long and then there’s only so much you can do with that hair. But she looked good. And that was what mattered. Her whole purpose was to have long hair and be pretty. She was a doll. She was not real. And whatever role she had in this life, she fulfilled.

Growing up, I came to realize that Real Life was just a world of play-acting for grown-ups. With real money, of course, so the stakes are infinitely higher. It seems like the purpose had shifted but the totem remained the same – to appear nice, to look good. Call me cynical but I’ve come to accept that the totem of Society is a giant non-existent emperor’s robes. Necessary evils aside, how far should we allow invisible linen to dictate our lives? The robe of the emperor is invisible. There isn’t even an emperor!

Yet, we persist on back-breaking sycophancy. Some of us bow so low to money and perceived authority our noses must surely touch our knees. We sacrifice principles at the altar of Acknowledgment of the Rich and Powerful. Mouthful of an altar. Many times, we don’t even hobnob with the R&P; we just want them to know us. We would always rationalize it as acts of not ruffling feathers unnecessarily which is understandable, god’s honest truth! But of basic decency, dignity and loyalty, we can no longer claim to be practicing members. It is always the choice between what is easy and what is right. Always with the choices since the bloody Garden of Eden. What a pain!

Anyhoo. I discarded Pretty Hair the moment my sister cut off her hair to satisfy her curiosity or maybe to test her barber skills. I’m sure Feli would have felt the sting of cutting Barbie’s hair, though, because surely I must have avenged Pretty Hair for such a heinous crime which must not – could not – go unpunished.

Of course, real world punishment for heinous crimes against decency and principles are not as swift. But I believe Karma will out. And actually, constantly does so. Whether or not we choose to see it. I guess for now, we stick to ass-kissing and generally just throwing people to wolves whenever it benefits us. Ah well, c’est la vie!

Greta Gerwig is making a Barbie film and I can’t wait to see it. I want to see what she makes of the doll and her plastic world. I thoroughly enjoyed playing with Barbie when I was girl. I absolutely adored Barbie Girl as performed by Aqua. There’s never really been a Barbie news I’ve not been interested in. Barbie is in a world of structural non-functionality as I call it because she has seemingly everything but in a weird, incompatible size to her and also, essentially inoperative. Yet somehow we accept it. Like real life, really.

Inkhualtelem life... with real money.

Pretty Hair is a distant memory. The plastic remnant of her must lie in a dump somewhere, waiting to decompose, maybe. Hazard to the environment, no less. I wonder where the totem of Real Ethics rest.

Everyday Miracles

I always wanted God to perform magic for me. Instant knowledge. Instant cure. Instant smiting. To recall a few prayers. The last one for my enemies.

Today I know better. I still want magic but I know enough to not expect it. I may have faith the size of a mountain but I doubt if it could allow me teleportation. So I leave the ultra-amazing to sci-fi and fantasy fic.

I implore for quiet miracles now. Not magic.

I’ve made karma my new religion. As you sow, so shall you reap. Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. This thought has deeply affected how I have come to conduct myself. Tried to, at any rate.

I still believe in miracles but I no longer think God performs tricks and magic, bending the laws of nature, weaving illusions and defying logic. It is all just knowledge, I guess.

If we are to accept that God is the beginning and the end and everything in between, then foreknowledge is included in the package deal. So someone who already knows what can or what will happen can ensure a lot of things.

I liken it to a great many things we do in office. From experience and from the rule books, we know a bunch of stuff that can potentially happen. Which is why we methodically work to ensure that the negative is avoided and the positive encouraged. Most of us, that is. Take election, for example. Election rule books are heavy and detailed, accounting for almost all the things that can possibly go wrong. And it keeps giving you solutions to those problems. Should they occur. So when something out of the ordinary happens on Election Day and the officials readily know how to deal with it, it was not magic. Just preparation and foreknowledge.

The best thing I’ve learned about adult life is that nobody knows anything. We’re all just shuffling along, faffing and pretending we know shit. So it’s alright if you don’t know something either. Nobody really does. It is a huge burden lifted. All you have to do is the best you can and leave the rest to God. The Universe. You’ll be fine.

Someone who already knows the plans for you will have prepared the way for you. You just have to live a little on faith. Faith. How simple a concept and yet how complicated and intricate. And if you have a little, how much stress it can lift off of you.

In the end, I suppose the best thing we can do is just be kind and invest in good karma. None of us are islands. Every bit of support counts. And every bit of non-support also affects. We are never useless, unless we choose to think of ourselves thusly. We can be parts of quiet, everyday miracles.

And those are the best kinds.

Getaway Car by Taylor Swift, an Appreciation

One, Taylor Swift has a way with words. Two, I love metaphors. So three, my favourite lyrics of hers is Getaway Car for its brilliant use of metaphors.

The entire song is a story told in pure metaphors. It doesn’t really matter to me if she wrote it for someone or with someone in mind or if it was just something she thought up, like Story-tellers do.

The metaphor is that of someone who pulls off something like a double con. She commits a crime with someone with the intention of double-crossing him because she was already disenchanted with him. She then drove away with someone else in a getaway car, a Bonnie & Clyde story. Then she leaves Partner No. 2 the first chance she gets. To him, she quips: don’t pretend it was such a mystery, think about the place where you first met me. She tells him their partnership had never been meant to last because nothing good ever started on a getaway car.

It is a dramatic telling of a romance that was never a love story. She wanted a reason to leave her current boyfriend but didn’t really have any, and was probably too cowardly to break up with him. She was looking for an out when she met someone somewhere. She broke trust with her boyfriend and got together with this new exciting boy, cheating on her boyfriend and running away with Boy No.2 in a mad daze, a heady romance even as her boyfriend was left hurting. But things that begin with hurting someone that badly has a way of not working out. Karma, maybe. So she left Boy No.2 again and tells him: we were never meant to be, remember how it was we first started out? Us traitors never win.

The song is very self-aware and she never tries to rationalize her betrayal and cheating. Her new romance not working was just what she reaped for the shit she sowed. There is no self-pity. There is just some serious “it is what it is” acceptance and a whole lot of embracing a “well, well, well, if it isn’t the consequences to my actions playing out” deal.

She did know it from the first Old Fashioned that this new romance was cursed. They never had a shotgun shot in the dark, driving around in a getaway car.

Pedal Stools

You only know what you know. Beyond that, you cannot know. And sometimes, knowing can be dangerous, so even if you know a little, maybe you don’t want to know very much.

Ignorance is bliss, they say. How well I understand this! Even more so as a technically functioning adult working a 9-to-5. Used to be there was a time I wanted to know everything but everything is the very thing I cannot know. Maybe the very thing I should not know. In any case, I no longer wish this.

Today, older, wiser, I wish for calm. But then again, not much wiser and duplicitously youngish, I can’t always control my recklessness. Or my curiosity. More often than not, that is the root cause to my life’s problems. One day if I ever learn to control my seemingly insatiable thirst for stories, I might truly start to live under the radar and be at peace. Sounds boring, though.

Drama I am not a part of is something I can’t seem to chill with. I revel in it. Incurable gossip, you might call me. Which is not nice and I am very selective about the people I share gossip with, but the ones I do gossip with… whoo! Zero limits.

One thing I have actually learned finally is to consider people’s feelings and their lives. I have learned to appreciate that people were not brought up the same as me. I have come to understand that even twins could have a vastly differing POV and act in diametrically opposite ways. How much more so your everyday Joes and Jills, your Rahuls and Anjalis, I don’t know a Mizo equivalent – maybe Lianas and Mawiis (those are my parents’ names, by the way!).

It is so easy to judge. And judge away, all you like. But when you do recount your judgments, exercise caution. You don’t know who you hurt. You don’t know how karma can (and will!) bitch-slap you for what you did. You just don’t know who is good and who is bad. Or in fact, are we good or bad really? Even Jesus didn’t answer that question.

Someone wonderful to you can be absolutely loathsome to someone else. So don’t hype people up and put them on pedal stools. Pedal… stools… pedastools? Pedestals? It’s probably pedestals, yes.

People don’t belong on pedestals. They belong in lives. In all its rich complexity.