June 26, 2021 Commentary from a hotel room

-

June 26, 2021 Commentary from a hotel room: If you were anywhere in the LA area today you would have to believe we are over all our troubles. Pacific Highway was bumper to bumper. I-405 was taking about 45 minutes from Inglewood to Westwood. A restaurant in Malibu reprimanded me for not making a reservation and promised a table in two to three hours. And it is just a regular Saturday morning. No masks. The entire memory wiped away and an unknown new World is being welcome through the blaring rap on Santa Monica beach welcoming the Birders, the Boarders and the cyclists and the gentle refreshing aroma of ganja, legal in LA, whiffs through the air. California is comfortably numb. Sitting on the sand, by myself, surrounded by thousands frolicking on the beach. 600,000 deaths wiped from memory. Summer is back. As I got numbed by the experience of watching life going by me I realized that I am a pessimist in this context. I am trying to find a reason to be anxious. The zoom gathering in the morning was a stark difference of the Malibu pier of the afternoon. There is a lockdown on. The police are stopping cars and offering fines for being out when they were not supposed to be. It took about 45 minutes from Hawthorne to Westwood. Traffic as far as the eye could see on 405. The reality narratives that I live in are so starkly different that reconciliation is impossible. But I try to make sense of the realities, I sit on the beach at Long Beach and I think of the humid monsoon night where the lockdown goes on. My bondhu is in the kitchen preparing a dinner for the invited guests. I listen to the voices from the hot and humid place and I stand by my Jeep Grand Cherokee as the sun sets over Manhattan Beach on this crisp Southern California night. COVID-19 intertwined everything for me. The house across the street from UCLA hospital. Fourth Floor. The raccoon family walking by my front door on Linbrook Drive and the live Parshe Maach (Paarshe Fish) on the verandah. They are now all held together by the elastic on the mask. And the people of these places. There is good in everything if you look deep. Deeper than the 600,000 you may be able to recover some good. The connections that were deepened must remain; I think. But in the meantime, the Universal Studio inspired Southern California architecture of  Bel Air and Beverly Hills call for the all time statement: “I wish they all could be California” And you know the rest.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Are you an honorable person?

-
Are you an honorable person? Or do you cheat on tests? This conversation happened with my students recently. I have been a teacher for nearly three decades, and I have witnessed a lot. I remember the old days of blue books (my American readers will know what I mean), when I used to hand out a cyclostyle question paper (later a photocopy), and I would "invigilate" during the test time, as the students wrote out their answers in a book which had a blue cover, watching to see who the honorable student is and who peeps over the shoulder of the person nearby. I really never spotted anybody doing that. Because they were honorable people. They understood that there is a moral standard to be maintained. Many are not like that. They cheat. They are dishonorable men who cheat in everything they do - from their dishonesty to their bondhus, whose wives they take for the night, to the dishonesty to their professional ethics when they secretly make others do the work that is supposed to be
Read more

You are not welcome

-
You are not welcome. Because you really do not matter. Imagine the moment of hurt when you are told "I am NOT here" when you desperately ask, "Where Art Thou?" And after hearing that, over and over again, you stop asking. It becomes a moment of reckoning specially for people who have spent their lifetime saying, "Here I Am" and suddenly realize that there was no reciprocity; I was with a bondhu recently and I saw the pain. As the person often has said, "there are bruises and there has been blood on the ground." Sitting with a glass of wine we realized that this psychic blood and the bruises leave us strangely stronger rather than weaker. The hours of being there when there was a need, when the call came, unabashedly without any ambiguity you rise up to the challenge. That is when you say, "it doesn’t matter, it needs to be done." And in the same breath you say, "of course I am here and will be right next to you." Most do not w
Read more

End of Memories

-
End of Memories LIVE If today did not happen Then tomorrow would not matter The memories of today makes The stories for tomorrow The mystery of tomorrow Makes today complete In balance lies the memories As a bondhu said "Everyday is a new Day" The potential of tomorrow Needs no calendars All that matters is the  Anticipation Of the new memories That will come tomorrow Tomorrow is A new opportunity For memories No more and no less When the memories stop Life stops REMEMBER To make memories today So that you want to live Tomorrow To tell the stories
Read more