How can you be optimistic?

What a question to ask? I like to think of myself as an optimist

because most of the time when things are at their lowest I like to think "OK not much we can do here, let's see how we can move on"...because if you keep viewing the glass as being half empty, that seems to be an awfully dreary way to go through life.

K however has another opinion. She's just a kid, 2 years younger than me but only a year junior in college...as Tranquil Roomie's cousin, we get together and bug my poor TR for her various amusing foibles. She's a sweet thing, all rough and tough on the outside but a real marshmallow when it comes down to it. She runs. Whenever you see her, she seems somewhat furtive, always running away from some one, trying to blend in to the background despite distinctly fair skin and dead straight black hair. And she runs. Fast. out of our hostel. To the gate, For the food. Away from the food. She's seated with me on the ledge today...and we're talking as usual about our different views on life, she being the eternal hard-as-nails pessimist. You should not be optimistic she says, because there's nothing good in life! Ah but there is I say! No there isn't says this budding Bhuddist.

I tell her that people like her build walls around themselves so they cna't get hurt and she retorts with somehting very interesting...they get hurt too, may be even more so that others. But they don't want to get hurt further so they shut off. And she runs she says, to escape...because she has something at the back of her mind which says that if she runs fast and long enough, she'll find a place where all her problems disappear :(

Photo Haram!

Field Assignment-Russel Market, Shiwajinagar...gives Pettah and other shady palces a good run for their money.

Most pictures accompanied by "Photos no! Haram!", "Ahhhhh!! Shooting?!", "looking beautiful!!", "unintelligible Kannada" or the ever-popular wolf whistle.

Sir says, "Today, your focus is on faces and hands (pronounced "Hans" ) :D

On pot!

My new credit course at college is a real treat :) Pair up something I've wanted to do for a long time with a German photographer and voila! Photography credit course!! :) Today was our first pucca field trip-to the Pottery town( actually very small village) close by...thanks to the Solar Eclipse and the pretty crazy myths people here have managed to weave around it, much of the pottery town was closed...at least, we didn't manage to catch any potters in action, as it were.

BUT, that didn't mean local colour disappointed.

Premonition

Something tells me next week is going to be shitty.Foe one thing, this entry sounds stupid enough but I'm making so many irritating tyops it's like I never got past 6the Grade English in school.

I mucked up a friend issue, something I manage to avoid doing usually...and I didn't realise that it would have the far-reaching consequences it would have. I, very nicely and as I so often tend to do, thought only of my self.

it also sucks because I can't tell the person I want to tell about it because of the "need-to-know" nature of the damned thing...now I finally understand the meaning of that phrase in all those CIA-related movies and books I used to watch and read.

Plus I managed to let the Aqua Guard run over, spilling precious water and yeah that's it. So basically, our end conclusion here is that the whole thing, including this bloody entry, is stupid.

let'see how the week turns out.

Halleluijah?

I sat down today to study some Puberty and Adolescence. I pushed the digital clock my room-mate and I read the time by every hurried morning two minutes before the bell behind the big plastic bottle of drinking water-which is still is use although it says "CRUSH AFTER USE" in big letters on the label. Distractions thus set aside, we proceeded.

It is a LITTLE hard to concentrate on Lutenizing Hormones and their functions however when yours ears are being veritably ASSAULTED by booming music accomapanied by a voice singing " For the lord is my tower..." or something along those lines. A retreat you see is going on in the college chapel.

Brother Joseph I believe...miraculous victorious.

I could.not.study. I could not think. I listen as the singing segues in to a barrage of voices...Brother's rising voice, magnetic, spell-binding. Accompanying, the gradually rinsing voices of the congregation. Praise you Lord. Thank you Je-sus. Haleluijah. And as I re-write the names of tongue-twisting hormones all over my notes, I can see it. The up-raised hands, the closed hands, that feeling of power trembling through the air and always, ALWAYS, Brother's voice in your head. Creeping through you while the oragn music hammers against your skull. You are powerless. And suddenly it seemed so calculated to me. The rising voice and the matching music. The people blindly responding. Because blind it is, your intellect does not function, you react instinctively like a trained animal to its master's call.

How would I know? I've been there, a very simillar retreat. I only went because I would have got hell ( ha ha) from our hostel warden if I hadn't. And I, the skeptic, felt the same as them. The pain in my side was healed by The Spirit and I as I closed my eyes,trembling because I felt something completely out-worldly, I knew that some thing was going on.

Brother was walking around, going up to the people who seemed a little skeptical, their eyes still open. Let God speak to you he would whisper, give in, give in, my child. And they would. They'd drop in to a damn dead faint right there. All of them, like flies.

I closed my eyes tighter because I did not want that man anywhere near me. Nowhere near me. Because I knew at that moment that if he touched me I would be out. It as frightening, I was terrified. of losing control, of giving in to something I could not by any means explain.

Now I think. What was it? Is it really the spirit. Is it our mind, telling us, do it, give over. Is it brother, the miraculous healer who says don't praise him, it's all Je-sus. Is it just psychosis? What is this faith? And I don't question because I don't believe. I believe in a God who can do miracles. I believe in a God who gave me the mind to ask these questions and this soul which refuses to bend easily.

What I might not strictly believe in are these people. Who might do this today. And tomorrow spurn a beggar or force a Bhuddist to convert if he wants to keep his rented home. That's what I don't believe in.

Geography

Back again.
The faces smile and wave
Acknowledge a friend
We're all sailors on this boat
Education,like it or not.

Different and yet
Familiar as home
The roads, that shop,
The juice bhaiyya,
The guy who tops up
My phone

The accent comes
Effortlessly
The intonations
The emphasis
The rolling of the "r"
Which is softly derided
At Home.

Distance is but a matter
Of miles-
But is geography
That bane of the Eight-grader
More than just a scaled map
Showing green nations
Divided
By thin strips of
Blue?

Or is it
An attitude.
Of now being
'Far away'?

Bus chronicles

Since,
a. I have a driver's license which I don' t use
b. Tuk-tuks drivers are exorbitant
I travel around Colombo during the day by bus, private not so private.
There are the the obvious disadvantages like men who are over-observant when it comes to any exposed female leg and smelly, sweaty armpits which have never know deodorant or hair-remover...but THEN there is also the fascinating cross-section of society which one gets to observe. Mu.ha.ha.
Like that day, I was in a 177 at the back where there was room. Next to me on the left was an enormous guy, asleep and softly snoring, no doubt dreaming of rice and his wife's yummy chicken curry, with his Nokia phone on his gently undulating, well-fed tummy.

On the RIGHT was this other large dude. The first thing that attracted my attention to him was the fact that this joker was in a green and white checked shirt and an orange cap. My fashion-conschious friend Ni would have died a slow. painful death.

Next to him, sort of enveloped by his girth was the Girlfriend, whose face I never got to see!
Checked-Shirt Guy had one of his arms entangled in both of hers and was breathing very heavily. I could swear I tried not to look, but then I'd lie!
The arm on my side was large and hairy and was often engaged in turning the girl's face towards him what was probably a very sloppy kiss, judging by the soubnds emenating from that quarter! These kisses were punctuated by about 5 minute breaks...and several heavy, sternorous breaths. And sweet murmurings of course!!

I just sat there next to them, smirking, knowing I'm a superior bitch but lovin' it anyway!