Dubai Jazz

Dear mom,

There are those prudes who regard Mothers Day as a heresy. I really don’t care about them. I’d rather seize every opportunity to wish you a happy, healthy and a content living.

But there is more to this that just wishing, isn’t there, mom? I’ve got so many things to say that can't be articulated through phone calls. So I decided to make my confusion official, I decided to put my concerns in writing.

Life’s good mom. It really is. But I doubt if this is the case for the thousands of men in uniform I meet everyday. There are those whose souls had hardened into faces of perpetual pleading. “They toil under the sun all day“, we kept saying, on and on. Until it was decided that that saga had gotten old. And thus toiling under the sun was outlawed. Now only toiling under a benign sun is permissible. And when the sun isn’t benign, then “laboring in the confines of concrete infernos” is the alternative.

Oh mom, the disparity of income is appalling. Social injustice is appalling. I, as you know, grew up in the protective shell of our household. In an egalitarian society, where everyone was entitled to tastes and colors. (Do you remember the cakes that your students used to give you as gifts at Teachers Day? They were the most delicious.) An egalitarian society that, for all its other ills, allowed everyone a modicum of dignity. Money making, mom, seems to be the archenemy of dignity these days. And we’re not egalitarian anymore. We are going corporate. We’ve joined the trend. And this is why I don’t recognize my hometown anymore. It’s a jumble of indeterminate socio-economical experiments. It’s probably a world-wide ailment; that money-making. The morning drive to work is almost surreal, mom. It’s like a form of liturgy. Where we all end up prostrating before the impotent gods of money.

But I’m different, mom. You know me. I give them a hard time. I ain’t going down without a fight. I’m a prick in the office. Me and the other guys, we’ve got different drives. They’ve got beards and expecting wives, mom. And they are losing. Their commuting ritual is performed with excellence. Not a single diversion from the grand plan. Me. I’m a prick, mom. A prick to them. I’ve got other drives. I’ve got different plans and differing routes. And they know this, but they don’t know what those plans are. So they steer clear. Moral clarity is empowering. Nothing beats a prick with moral clarity.

We have the tallest building in the world now, mom. Or I should probably say the highest. Since tall things are measured in their abstract. While the building we have here must be taken in context. Do you remember how I used to be scared of heights, mom? You instilled this in me. (please, I’m not blaming you, I just need to get this off my chest). I was 18 months old. Out on the vast verandah. My tiny body stuck out over the handrail from the waist up. I was probably about to travel the 15 meters journey into our neighbor’s garden if it wasn’t for your intervention. From then on, I was constantly admonished about balconies and high perches. About roofs and window shutters that open outward. The fear had become real. I don’t know if I told you this. There was a period when I was constantly having nightmares about falling off the balcony. (not the vast verandah fronting the apartment, but the kitchen balcony where I had my first erection watching our neighbor’s daughter peg the laundry on strings to dry.) But the nightmares weren’t always dry, mom……. (I probably shouldn’t tell you this. It feels awkward). Anyway… I’ve overcome my fear of heights, mom. I don’t fear them anymore. It seems pointless from the rational point of view. A thirty storey building is as dangerous as the thirty-thousands-feet-high airplane up in the stratosphere.

Perhaps I shouldn’t complain a lot, though. There are things that had turn for the better. I’m no longer superstitious, mom. I’ve shed all my superstitious clothing. Science have won mom. It’s really over. It’s a matter of time before the dust clears and everyone realizes it. Science took over everything. It even teaches people how to love now: “Want to feel closer to someone, try secret swapping, you both write secrets down on cards and exchange!” !1!one!. Ain’t that amazing? I should probably be thrilled. But why am I not, mom? Why the moral struggle continues to haunt people? Why emotional conflicts continue to wreck havoc on individuals and institutions alike? We’re a flawed specie, mom. Having discovered the amygdala, we’re still under its spell. A quick look at the number of armed conflicts and the volumes of military budgets would tell you this. We’re still lead by the enzymes. The primal forces are still within us. And this is why certain individuals, (not to be confused with the prudes) would stop talking altogether and go seek solitary in nature. They ache to connect with our primal ancestors. They yearn to reverse the mad sequence of evolution and to discard intellect.

But life’s good mom. It really is. Remember when you caught me talking on the phone with a girl when I was thirteen years old? We didn’t have cells at the time, mom. Not even caller’s ID. Oh, how easy and fun it was; phone harassment. Anybody could ring anybody up and say whatever the hell he or she wanted. I’d built my street lingo through these conversations, mom. Until that day when you caught me. Then I promised I wouldn’t do it again. And I kept the promise until this very day.

I don’t talk to girls on the phone anymore, mom. We just text. Everyone is texting these days. Bet you didn’t think of that when you made me pledge. Technology made an end run around justice for us. Although in fairness to technology, we’ve also been screwed by it a little. We can’t phone-harass any longer. Don’t get me wrong mom. I don’t want to harass anybody. It’d just be nice to build up that street lingo once again.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 14, 2010 at 4:34 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.