Someone very dear to me once told me that I wasn’t happy because I never tried to be happy. Fact isn’t that I’m depressed or that I fail at the things I do.  I have all the luck in the world; the best mother who wouldn’t think twice about giving up her life for me, the best grandparents who took care for me for so many years and the perfect health, not considering my high myopia or being immunosuppressed at times. Even more, I have Jane my beautiful cousin sister who adores me deeply and Dhonbe’ whom I’ve looked up to and who has watched out for me since forever. I even got to the chance to fall in love and feel the tingly, mushy sensation of being loved and to love him back was one of the things I’ve for once in my life done for myself selfishly. My career was clear green meadow and I was doing the one thing I wanted to pursue since 4years of age. I even had the chance to make people happy just by listening to them and making them feel like they are worth something. I’ve had the opportunity to hold an old lady’s hand while she was on the operation table and tell her that the pain is going to fade away soon. I have my father’s hands and his hair and his artistic personality. So why did I lie awake at night thinking that I’m not going to make an impact in such a small world in such a humongous universe in which I’m even smaller than a mere speck?

I really need to reconsider things and try some optimism for once. But its just so hard when I’ve seen and heard too much and I keep wondering and asking God and myself if I would succeed in continuing to be true to myself. That very someone who was dear to me was right because I never ever tried to be happy. I was too busy worrying about my friend or the kitten or my grandma’s blood pressure or my cousin not getting the chance to artistically flaunt herself or what I’d name my babies or if I’d ever again be able to see that specific renal failure patient at Port Dickson hospital again and so on and so forth. I know, I worry heaps about the minor details and that is what continues to kill me day in day out. Sigh..

I really should try to be happier…

Medicine; the one word that I’ve been trying so hard to assimilate and make a part of me since 7 years of age. I remember fumbling with needle-less syringes and empty infusion bottles and lines and being baffled by how most dignified doctors save lives each day. Back then I never gave even 1.5^th of a thought of whether I’d be emotionally, physically and mentally fit to be one of those distinguished lot of people whom I continued to admire day in day out. At 15 I gave thought about it and decided that this was my God-sent purpose and what I’m destined to do. I’ve so far proven that I’m not actually ignorant or stupid and that my left hemisphere does function to help me choose the right one of the three choices in the MCQ paper. So here I am, officially a medical student trying to ‘caffeine’ my way through the 5 years in medical school and loving every moment of it.

Why did I choose to go through this ordeal? Good question. Truth is, I didn’t choose to go through this tremendous journey full of epithelial cells and hypertension and long bones. It was already written down for me that this is my ultimate haven. I never had a doubt and neither did I have a loss of confidence over achieving what I am meant to achieve. There are nurses, lecturers, the fishermen who supply me with fish for my lunch and the chefs at the ‘restoran’’s who make me my Roti Canai for dinner who all do what they are meant to do. Atleast most of them do. So basically, I cannot be an engineer or a teacher or a full time vocalist for a band because I am meant to do what I have chosen to do.

Saving lives is not the purpose why people go into medicine although unarguably it has be overrated to be the ultimate purpose in soap operas so that it appears to be the glorified profession that it not actually is. At least my purpose is to understand my race more intently, to ease people’s pain and to help them to help themselves to recover from whatever their ordeal maybe and to let myself be consumed by the emotions of people’s pain and grievances so that their grievances maybe diminished even for a little bit. I don’t want to be emotionally detached from the emotions of a 7 year old boy suffering from leukemia but I want to make him make those days less painful than they already are to him. I think if I were to assume that my purpose is to save lives then I’d go home after leaving the body on the operation table, thinking that I’ve failed my purpose. So my purpose is to help but not to save, emotionally, physically and in any other way possible for people to live the rest of their days the way they were meant to.

So till then, I’m going to ‘caffeine’ my way through medical school to try as hard as I can to get to the point where I can full fill my purpose.

I glanced at the clock squinting my eyes. Almost 3 in the morning. I had been reading the book in the dim, yellow bedroom light since 2230 and yet I wanted to go on. He kept me glued to his past, his virtues, his humility, his obstacles, his struggles and his origins. He who was born to a colored and a Caucasian; an obvious black, Kenyan father and an American mother in a time in which coloreds were discriminated beyond our belief. And yet he stood to be brown amongst the whites, with all his denials, confusions, the victimizations and with the irony that he was neither black nor white, he by passed all obstacles with grace and he is who he is today. Barack. Oh yes, Barack Obama.

He was the revolutionary who spoke with eloquence, defeating the to-be first woman president of the USA. He walks on to stage and waves at his supporters with grace and flair. Not a single person could doubt the determination and humility in his eyes. In the face of dirty politics, rumors and the prejudice that still exists among the whites and in spite of having been shuffled between continents; Hawaii and Indonesia and back, in the shadow of a father who was just a volatile figure in the stories of his grandparents he still became The Obama. It just amazes me.

How could a mere person succeed that far with all those obstacles that were made to pull him down? All that discrimination that America saw in the 60’s and 70’s and all that labeling and stereotyping and all, how could one not give up? With the lack of a father figure to teach him virtues and the lessons about the survival of the fittest and without that masculine protection that everyone needs, how could he have become such a person?

It kept me wondering all through the night and the next day and the next. Most of us aren’t rich, white, or famous. Insignificant are we in this vast world where possibilities are endless. But this, very brown, determined, confident man has proved to me and to the rest of the world that one can be what one chooses to be. As I’ve come to know that when you put your dreams, your mind and your efforts into something, the whole world conspires to help u achieve it.

‘Dreams from my father’ is worth the read. It will transform you. Period.

Thank you for loving me

For the flowers in the window

Those whites, the pinks and blues

And for your aura that filled my days

Thank you for keeping me

For placing my hand in yours

And for guiding me to see

Colours to which I was blind before

Thank you for taking me in

Into a shelter within your grace

That kept me safe from all that’s been

For making your warmth my home

Thank you for consoling me

Convincing me, I wasn’t alone

That you’d guide me through storms

For helping me see the glow

Thank you for loving me

For the life that made me grow

For the flowers, the warmth, the home

And for the love that made me whole

Hidhaya © 15^th April 2008

‘For my guy; for loving me, for keeping me, consoling me and for continuing to love me. Thank you for making me the luckiest girl in the world. I pray that we continue to grow’

I don’t believe that God created me as an individual and I don’t believe that I am alone. I am neither whole nor a complete individual by myself, sole. What completes me and what makes me whole is my mother, who took me into her arms since that day in late July and till today who has stood by me through the most merciless storms and most beautiful springs. I am complete and what makes me who I am is my mother and I believe God created me not as an individual, but as a part of her.

If she was not there, when I became frail I would have died and when I became lonely I would have withered into nothingness. If she hadn’t stood beside me, when I was crossing the bridge to adulthood, I would have fallen into the river below and drowned. If she hadn’t held my hand, when I couldn’t see I would have fallen on the broken glass and seared myself.

She did not draw me a path; she cleared it for me. Neither did she give me directions; she stood by me when I walked across. She didn’t sing to me; she taught me the verses and the melodies and she didn’t cry for me; she taught me the reason for tears. To teach me emotions and feelings, she didn’t read me stories; she made me see them in others eyes. In her own and perfect way, she taught me life.

Nothing in existence, or in the heavens can be worth what she is to me. She more than anything can ever be of value. This is wishing God would bestow her with all the happiness, blessing, luck and love because she gave me a reason and a purpose to see the beautiful things in life.

Sometimes there are necessities which are crucial for a person to be happy. Those necessities give hope and shed light on the beautiful things in life. They give reasons to live to for another day and to wake up every morning. They make you feel safer, protected, important, needed and beautiful.

Imagine letting all that go even for a little while. When its all gone, the remnant is just an empty and hollow space where one sits and weeps till the emptiness feels no longer empty. But the adaptation process seems far to long for one to bear with and it feels like one’s soul is mercilessly been ripped piece by piece. Every second feels like a year and it goes on and on and one gets suffocated in it all.

They tell you to be strong but even strength feels like a weakness when one relapses to that empty abyss with every effort. That’s when one’s heart feels like its no longer in motion and everyday and every moment seems just only as a day and just only as a moment. It simply begins to be really very hard.

Maybe it’s just Him testing me.

I’m scared. Scared that without an omen or a sign, the skies would transform into a ferocious storm that would mercilessly destroy everything that makes me who I am. I fear that the storm would shred me off my strength and that it would cause complete annihilation, devastating, dilapidating the path beyond repair. What then?

I’m still scared that I might be too blind to see the winds gaining speed and the foam on the waves. If I were to be unprepared for the storm, then when the storm pulls in, I’d fall too hard to pick myself up. Let say, that I had an ounce of strength to look up and around, but when I look around trying to see beyond the devastation, what if everything that makes me who I am was shattered into tiny smithereens? What then?

Maybe to console myself, I tell myself that I’m not meant to read the signs and that all happens for the best. I repeatedly remind myself that when the door slams shut on my face, God would open windows for me. I also try to find beauty and happiness in simple things but then I relapse into the fear of the storm that maybe impending.

 Maybe it’s perfectly normal and maybe there is nothing out of the ordinary about dreading what is around the corner. Deal with it, I tell myself, because I’m completely and absolutely helpless with fate.

I looked at her eyes; eyes that yearned for love and for an ounce of affection. It was hard to see beyond her palpable scars that were already bloody and swollen. It was hard to look beyond them and harder to try to understand tha magnitude of the torment she had suffered. She would have once been beautiful with olive skin and ebony hair that danced around her face but now the scars had defaced her, destroyed her and made her unearthly.

I tried not to stare but I was helpless because the sight of her wounds from the agony she had gone though traumatized me. For a moment I seemed to feel her ache and grief; the sting in her wounds and the pain from her broken ribs. I yearned to hold her hand and tell her that she will see a better day, but then it was too obvious that those were impossibilities.

Weakly but yet she smiled. Clueless about my reaction I stood stationary and expressionless for a moment. With effort, I regained my consciousness and smiled back weakly too.

Though she was too weak from the agony she had gone through and though she couldnt utter a word, her eyes seemed to speak to me. They seemed to say that she understood that she wouldnt see spring or the cherry blossoms that line the streets in June. They spoke about her knowing that she would never then get to buy vanilla ice cream from the cie cream man and that she wouldnt see the day where she would be the bride. elegantly smiling in her white dress.

Then it struck to me; I was utterly and completely helpless against fate. I could weep, worry and wither but fate would take its own ugly course with her. I felt powerless and weak because, after all, I was just mere, mortal myself to do anything to help her survive.

‘I’ll pray for you’ was all I had the courage to utter. Then I smiled at her and turned around and walked away on my feeble legs.

Talk to me about the northern lights

About their azure, emerald green

Talk to me about lying on grass

Observing the luminosity

Talk to me about waking up

To the sound of early singers

Talk to me about the sun in the window

And the colours of its rays you see

Talk to me about the tint of yellow

of the daffodils in your garden

Talk to me about their bloom and scent

and the butterflies in the eve

Talk to me about the evening breeze

on a day in late July

Talk to me about the weeping willows

And the lilies that float in glee

Talk to me about what you see

About beautiful simplicities

Talk to me about everything

Things simple yet so divine

Hidhaya(c) 31 July 2007 00.32 am

Leave the reeds in the flowing stream

Swaying to the harmony

Should I leave the floating lilies too

Should I turn and walk afar?

Used to sit amongst the willows

In a place where I belonged

Should I leave the noveltly in the air

Should I turn and walk afar?

With the singing bluebirds above

And the glinting dew on leaves

Should I leave the moist grass behind

Should I turn and walk afar?

Where the rays embrace the valleys

Where the marigolds grow in bliss

Should I leave the soaring ravens?

Should I turn and walk afar?

Hidhaya(c) 7th May 2007 15.12