Just pain, no gain

Khaleej Times (LIFE) / 18 January 2013
 

Even a third grader would know that birds fly southwards to escape winter in the north. But some dumb homo sapiens, like the twosome here, defy common sense and always head the other way by default.

Ours is the kind that is so geographically challenged and directionally deficient that we ask Lady GPS to guide us home every day.

Take this for instance. The price of gold was surging. Go, get the gold, they said. The rich cows flocked, grazed and had their fill, smartly stocking up on the bullion. The lesser ones, like yours truly, kept slavering at the effervescent market with no dough to expend on what the experts said would fetch handsome returns. We waited for the funds to collect and finally went and got the bar. Pity, that we didn’t use the gold dispenser at Atlantis. It would have added glamour to the asset that everyone believes would turn around and help us in old age. But no one told us that we had just hit the North Pole in winter. The metal faltered, got grounded and didn’t take to the air again. “It is good in the long term,” we whispered wearily.

And then, a need for cash arises. Let’s get the gold out, we decide. What we hear at the gold store makes us see red. “It was at a high the day Obama won the election. It has fallen again,” says the gold man. “That was only two days ago. Can’t you do something to get us those rates today?” I plead, staring at the loss. The gold man smirks as if to say, “Lady, get a grip. I am not trading potatoes.”

Scenario two. The Dollar was riding high against the Indian currency. Thank you, said the Gulf Indian who had funds in his local accounts. Some, like us, said, “Where do we go for Dirhams now? Didn’t we buy gold with it? We tracked the rates and queues at the exchange centre spitefully till the Dollar began to flounder again. It was a huge relief to know that the world around us had slid back from an ‘advantage’ point, and we were on ‘deuce’ again.

A few months down, the money collects and we wait for the Dollar to appreciate. Following Murphy’s law, it doesn’t. That’s exactly when there is an urgent need back home for cash. We wait for a week before the emergency presses on us and we dump the money at a six month low rate. We rue the notional loss for days, even as we watch the Dollar’s upward swing. Two months later, the US dollar regains its former glory against the India rupee, and all we do is slump with the currency, stare at our dismal bank statement and swear.

Scenario three. The business channels blare out that the stock market is on fire, and our spirits rally in tandem. As market amateurs, we waver, unsure of where to wager our money, reading up company fundamentals and corporate news, looking for cue.  By the time we do the homework, the stocks have soared and we buy some crap at illogical prices. Soon the market corrects, tanks and we wait to cross the red and exit with nearly burnt fingers and crushed sentiments.

We recently bought the scrip of a beleaguered Indian private airline hoping that it might be revived by a takeover, a la Satyam. The stock promptly slid and we panicked, even as no news about a resuscitation plan for the company emerged. We finally sold it at a loss. A few weeks later, we saw reports of a foreign airline’s plan to shop for stakes in the airline. The stock heaved and we sighed.

“Do you think the creator forgot to put the financial compass and navigator in our system?” I asked my husband.

“Apparently,” he said wryly, and switched the business channel off.

Wishful thinking

Khaleej Times (LIFE) / 4 January 2013

 

I lost two chunks of my heart in December, as the year drew to an unceremonious close. They were prised out of my chest by a maverick 20-year-old in Connecticut and a group of bestial elements in Delhi.

It wasn’t for the first time that I was feeling the rupture at the centre of my existence. It has happened many times before, and it will happen again whenever evil strikes. But strangely, this time, I didn’t feel the usual numbing pain. There was only a fleeting sense of Déjà vu, which induced an initial feeling of nausea, soon settled into the void created by the lost pieces of heart.

I mutely watched the world up in arms against unhindered use of guns, demanding lasting solutions and an entire sub-continent baying for the blood of half a dozen savage creatures, and feverishly discussing means and methods to stop these acts of evil.

It was a coincidence that I had shared little thoughts of a theological nature with my pupils only the other day. They were small, yet significant dialogues, on the existence of evil as an inexcusable, yet all pervading element, in the world. Even as I explained to them that vice existed as a complimentary to virtue, and it was the way nature chose to find its balance, I was looking within me for answers to more compelling questions about the nature of evil and its resolution.

Stepping aside from the surrounding din, I quietly descended into a space that was beyond the uproar and distress that had built up in the wake of the twin events. I watched from my little log cabin the helplessness and misery of a human race lost in the wilderness of its own insensitivity. For once, I knew that that answers lay not in legislations. No civil code, no matter how severe, can tackle the issue of impulsive wickedness and immorality. Fear of retribution can be a deterrent only to a sane, rational mind. It can produce no effect on an insensitive, dehumanised being that has no ethical bearings. If you or I don’t indulge in an evil act, it is predominantly because of our inner sensibilities. Fear of law is only a supplementary binder. Instances of abject inhumaness are fallouts of the combined absence of this instinct to abstain from offence and restraint by law.

So, who in the end is to blame? And when will we find a solution? Does the buck stop with regime controls, or is it an incurable malaise of a doomed society that has lost sense of what’s good, bad and ugly? It is easy to proclaim that the social fabric is in tatters and it needs mending, but pray, can we put things in order with just platitudes on moral behavior and poor upbringing? It is so simple to speak about the other man’s faults, which we tactlessly separate from our own. To us, it is always the government, the justice system and the society (that excludes us) that are flawed. We hunt for punching bags, as if the onus of working out solutions lay outside of us - he, she, they…

Aggression is an inherent quality that hibernates when the soul is in place, and takes evil forms when it goes astray. It is this missing soul that we need to recover to bring succor to a battered humanity. Now, more than ever, we need apostles who can help mankind tap its innate goodness.  We need a genuine miracle that will restore human conscience, and plant our race in a realm of godliness. We need salvation from our own spiteful vein.

As grief and anger coagulated across the US and India over the gruesome incidents, it was for this miracle that I prayed – silently and ardently. It was an inward journey towards finding lasting hope, peace and faith.