Tell Me All Your Thoughts on God

"Tell me all your thoughts on God,
cause I'd really like to meet Her."

Counting Blue Cars (1996), Dishwalla

My thoughts and ideas may be considered heretical by some circles. Just write me off as someone possessed by the Devil or Shaitan or whatever the Figure of Supreme Evhulness your cult faith has if you disagree with what I've written.

Hey, why is science in there!

Now that I am repeating it, I'm sure my vernacular is by no means exact - but the essence is this; "So long as you're happy, you're in the right religion." Someone's grandfather told her father that, and she told that to me in turn. My interpretation of that line might be erroneous as well, but heck, that's not going to stop me from saying it out loud anyway.

I have often considered the idea of a creator, of a heaven, of karma, of final judgement and the ever after nothing more than an invention of man - something to make sense of everything we're doing right here, right now. It's a way for the mind to cope with... well, existence, basically. I get how impossible it can be to believe that there is no supreme plan, and that everything that we know and love and hate and suffered for are just some very random permutation of events that doesn't make any more sense than how a pane of glass shatters by the dint of a brick. Michael Swanwick described that futility of living without the belief that we are on our way to something better beautifully in his eerily haunting novel, The Iron Dragon's Daughter. It had lifted from being an outright atheist and dropped me into agnosticism; which was more than any Big Book of Godly Truths ever did. Limitations of my own mind have stopped me from, if the fanatically godless would excuse the term, 'progressing' any further than that.

What I'm trying to say is, having faith fills a void in our very human psyche. God makes us happy.

A few months ago, I've taken an interest in the notoriously unyielding policy of Islam in my own homeland, Malaysia (not that I'm saying it shouldn't be that strict, of course - I am grossly unworthy to opine). In the course of of my curiosity, I have come across a video of an Hindu Indian man and his cry for help - I failed in locating that particular clip again, however. He married a Muslim woman (who converted to Hinduism) in spite of the protests of her family, and they had a daughter together. Apparently, the woman's family have alerted the associated moral police and she was forcefully separated from her husband and dragged off to a correctional facility for wayward Muslims for indefinite incarceration. The child - no more than two years of age, I bet - was given into the woman's parents' care. They had very righteously declared in the video that the child would be brought up in the glorious tradition of Islam.

Like I said, I am unworthy to opine - it can be dangerous if I'm too free with my liberal (and most definitely bedamned) ideas. All I can safely say that in that debacle, no one was happy. The poor Indian man who had his wife and child taken from him, he was helpless to do anything. The apostate, the Muslim woman who renounced her faith for love, was miserable as hell being locked up. The Muslim woman's parents was angry, and might possibly be a bit smug after they have taken custody of their grandchild. I don't know about the li'l girl, but I bet she hated being taken away from her Mom and Dad - don't think she's old enough to get what this... this... 'tragedy' is all about.

On a very basic level, I think something went awfully wrong here.

Because no one was happy.

Of course, what does all this matter to me? I have free rein to worship any Being of Supreme Omnipotence I like (whichever gets me first) and I'm not dating someone who cannot marry me because I'm like, so going to hell (several thousand hells actually since I don't believe in so many different godheads). They shouldn't matter at all except that I know some of these people who got their happily ever after ruined by God on a personal level. Wait, sorry. My bad. It's not God's fault. For want of someone to blame, let's just blame whoever who was too stubborn to convert to the true religion, okay? Blame the infidels, right?

Everyone's going to someone else's hell, apparently.

I'm terribly surprised to discover that faiths that I have previously thought to be more tolerant - like Christianity for one - to be the catalyst of 'tragedies' similar to the one the Indian man, his wife, and his child had. It might be über pious parents. It might be the pastor and the church. I don't know. It might even just be because some jerkoff boyfriend wanted to axe a relationship and decided to sign the tab off to God. These creeps just disgusts me. Of course, by 'creeps', I'm only referring to jerkoff boyfriends.

Well, readers, you'll have to excuse me if i have stepped on any of your toes too hard - I distinctly felt some tootsies underfoot when I write this. Forgive my unlearned opinions and godless ideas. I'm just a creature of feelings.

And when no one's happy, I tend to feel that something is wrong.



Wanted in your God's hell too,
k0k s3n w4i

Midnight Over End Point

"When stars are in the quiet skies,
Then most I pine for thee"

Lord Edward Bulwer-Lytton

The Coldest Days of the Year have arrived in Manipal and several mornings now I have woken up with my sinuses so stuffed with snot and my cranium so airy I felt like my head is hovering several feet off my shoulders. I leak like a faucet in a third-world budget hotel, and two mornings ago, while shivering in the lukewarm stream of my wake-up shower, I discovered (almost in screaming horror) that a bright red rivulet was running down my chest and to regions yet uncharted. Apparently, I also leak like a faucet in a third-budget hotel right after a slasher victim got dumped into the tanks. Gayathri said it was because my nasal mucosa parched up from the cold and dryness.

But the good news is, the last of the monsoon storm clouds have buggered off. We have found the sky once more.

After a series of events leading from the time I left the basketball court at Sharada (where our men killed Batch 17) yesterday night, involving a very random phone call and a late supper I should have known better to eat, I found myself walking though the frigid, hilly darkness of End Point with a friend I never knew I had.

I don't know what made me look up, but I did - and I stood agape at the myriad of stars that winked back down on me. I have never seen so many in my life before, and I felt myself shrink into a tiny animal inside. Everything they say about how the infinite and bare cosmos would reduce a person to insignificance - I guess they were right. For a fraction of a fraction of a second, I thought I've been scattered to the breeze and blown through the dewy golden grass down the hill and all over the endless Indian plains below. For a fraction of a fraction of a second, I have stopped existing. I have lost myself to heaven and the night.

I guess I was just too metropolitan, living all my life in the blinding man-made light of the city, of street lamps and tasteless strings of decorative bulbs which have usurped my stars. I always knew they were there, beyond the noise of electric illumination - but they were just too easy to forget. And I have always been too scared to traipse around after hours in places people with evil intentions can rob me, stab me and left me for dead. I never knew just how much I've missed.

But yesterday at End Point, walking on a long black road bordered on both sides by the wilderness, so quiet I could hear each grain of sand scraping between the soles of my shoes and the ground, and so dark I could barely see my hands - I wasn't afraid at all. I found them. I found the stars again.

And God, they were so damn beautiful.



Starstruck,
k0k s3n w4i

Feeding Frenzy

"You are what you eat."

Unknown author

I am rice.

I have tons of more interesting posts and pictures pending that I would rather write about, but seeing that this particular post has an expiry date on it, I suppose I better write it up before it becomes too stale to tell.

Yesterday, I visited the annual MSA Malaysian Food Fest for the first time (I do so hate crowds) which crash landed for the night on campus ground. MSA either stands for Malaysian Students' Association, Multiple Sexual Assault, or My Sorry Ass - I don't give two pence worth of care about it because acronyms are such a waste of time.

I was there really early, of course - about 7 pm-ish even though I was suppose to meet mi compadres at half-past-seven. I couldn't help that because my dinnertime is about 5 pm everyday. Considering that I customarily skip my lunches these days, it's amazing that I even managed to shift My Starving Ass there without suffering a hypoglycemic crisis on the way.

Of course, no stall was opened yet then. Dammit.

Here's an aerial... well, semi aerial picture of the fête taken from the fire escape beside the lecture hall complex,

Miniature Scene from Above.

I pretty much spent a whole half an hour sitting by my lonesome self at one of those tables they've laid out on the square.

Then the people started to mill in,

Motley Sauntering Aimlessly.

I didn't take many picture, and none at all of the nosh I scarfed. My hand was oily, sticky or covered in some unidentifiable sauce most of the time - I didn't want to grease up my camera's clicker, naturally.

Many Supper Aficionados.

I entered with about 300 rupees in my pocket and went home without two coins to rub together. Everything was grossly overpriced, with the exception of a few odd cheap 'n' chompables here and there. The muachi (some squishy, mucoid stuff which was apparently glutinous rice flour balls covered in peanut bits) from a Batch 17 stall was pretty awesome, costing me only 25 rupees. My personal favourite from the fest was definitely that chicken congee I bought from a Batch 19 all-girls booth, reasonably priced at 30 rupees per cup (yes, paper cup - quaintness to da max).

Besides those and Tze Hau gang''s luo hon ko and dried longan drink, Nana and crew's fusion murtabak Maggi, Su Lin's team's handmade fishballs - there's not much I can remember now. Apologies to all the other maker of goodies whose creations which I could not sample for want of gut space and moolah. My Starvation Act have left me with a Much Sissier Appetite and Massive Stomach Atrophy these days. Trust me, I am truly sorry I couldn't eat everything. Same time next year?

Mess of Stuff we Ate.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention - the main reason I was there was for good ol' Sanjeev's 21st birthday! He's our classmate from Repiblik Sesel, or Seychelles for the rest of ya. That's his cake in the picture right there and he wasn't there yet when this was taken. I have no idea whose hand it was that appeared to be grabbing at the key-shaped strawberry confection though.

I was sorely disappointed that no one was selling Indomie goreng though. What sort of ripoff Malaysian Food Fest is this? Bah OMGsorrysorrydon'tbanmefromvisitingnextyearplease


P.S. Jen pointed out that Many Stupid Acronyms fits too. I still can't believe I missed that! Shit, I is becoming dumberer everyday.


Foodie extraordinaire,
k0k s3n w4i

Lesson #15

Puppies in India have pretty grey-blue eyes.


"I has no teef." *Roar*

Sock's 'ickle pupsicles have opened their eyes for the first time in their little puppy lives today.
Those peepers will turn golden when they are bigger, like all the other strays here.

My Yellow Wood

"Cogito Ergo Sum"

René Descartes

I think, therefore I am.

The two roads.

It looks like something out of a book of poetry, doesn’t it? A fair and bright walk on the left, bordered by an orderly landscaped lawn – alongside a darker one overhung with shady trees with their pleached branches and dismembered shreds of sunlight littering the ground. A single sign stands at the fork – a lone commandment saying ‘Thou must take the left road,’ and with an authoritarian slash of red, it tells you to clear off the right.

This is the way I take through the campus grounds when I have to walk from the lecture hall complex to seminar rooms where we have our weekly Microbiology Self-directed Learning presentation classes. I am always inwardly amused every time I arrive at that divide with the two roads unrolled before me. I wonder how many of the hundreds of people walking through this bit of real-life poetry everyday without even pausing a second to appreciate its accidental symbolism, its inadvertent demonstration of the choices we make and what those choices make us.

Always, everyone would unwittingly take the one on the left, excepting a handful of oddities, square pegs, skews of the bell curve, rogue variables… - call them what you will - who would choose the one on the right. Like me. I’m a rightie. I’m an oddity, a square peg, a skew of the bell curve and a rogue variable. I don’t know why others pick the same path as mine when they do, and I don’t think I’ll ever ask them either. But I know why I do that.

I just want to be different.

It’s like a ritual, a reminder of the person I want myself to be – kind of like how the withering of a flower signifies anitya in Buddhism, how the cross of Golgotha means Christianity, and how the golden double arch represents McDonald’s. Every time I choose the right road, I renew my oath to stand apart and celebrate my individuality, and that I need not ever do anything just because everyone else in the world is doing it. Because I want my life to be extraordinary. Because wanting it is a start.

Taking the road on the right; that choice is inconsequential.

But not pointless.



P.S. So, are you a leftie or a rightie?



Definitely a rightie,
k0k s3n w4i