Something's Missing
Friday, May 26, 2006
Something's Missing
"...I think the God that was making the Indian people was having some sort of practical joke with other Gods.I think he was showing off or something,we were like some sort of experiment.'Hey,hey guys watch this!Watch this!Okay,these people here,and i'll put them in the hottest place in the world.And just for fun,i'll cover them with hair.'Because we're a hairy race man,and that's a shitty shitty deal man!It's hot as hell and we're hairy.How the how can you trade off that,it's bad enough that being hot and then you have to add hair..."
--- Russell Peters
Something was amiss,i told myself.Something was missing from the horizon,the way every day things disappear all so suddenly and quietly,you lose your ability to put your finger on it.It was there,at the same window at the end of the corridor back in camp,when i noticed that little difference in the horizon.
It was raining again,and as i looked out into the misty world i cursed under my breath the way the weather of Singapore is so screwed up all the time.I miss India's weather,India's sun.Despite the poverty,everything in India seems to be so much better than the way Singapore is.I know it's probably that human nature thing working up on me again,the longing for better things,things aside from your everyday mundane life.I cant help it,i just couldnt.But then again,what can we do about it,really.
Anyway,it mustve been the sunset,i concluded.It was a bad storm,with the western sky dominated by rain clouds,the threatening ones with flashing of lightning hidden behind veils of fluffy grey clouds,like looking at streetlamps through a raindrop dotted window.Yeah,i told myself.It was the sunset.It was nowhere to be seen today,as i looked at the horizon with Sarah Mclachlan's "Dirty Little Secret" going through my ears.
Everything is amiss these days,isnt it?I remember the time when i lost my wallet back in Primary One.It was a blue wallet with Power Rangers printed at the front.It had a little less than a dollar then,and that kind of money was a fortune to us Primary School kids back then.It meant five fish balls or two chicken wings.It meant lunch,it meant snacks,it meant food,it meant everything.I cried,as i pulled on Mrs. Raj's sleeves,and telling her that i lost merely a dollar.She dismissed me back to my seat,and asked me to keep quiet and stop whining about the dollar.I couldnt stop crying,and sobbed through the rest of her lesson,and Mrs. Raj i remember,was obviously displeased.
Everybody blame somebody when something is missing,something is gone.I think God is perhaps the most misunderstood person in the world,however often i tend to disagree with some of his works.I mean,we humans love to blame dont we.Anything that goes wrong,anything that's missing,we point to fate or God.We seldom look at ourselves,or other reasons that something happened.It's always God and his practical jokes,his little fun with us humans,his creations.But then again,as i thought about it over the week,some jokes are just more cruel than the others,just too real and coincidental to be mere...fate?
Riding down Upper Thomson Road was a friend of a friend.Let's call him A,and the common friend between us is B.B is an out-spoken person in my platoon,always the quick one to laugh,the one to retort,the one to make funny remarks.You can call him the clown of the platoon,though the word "clown" hardly fits anyway.He had his way of conveying his jokes across,that even though it is not funny,it makes your sides ache with pain of laughter.A is a friend of his,and at 2.45am one morning he was riding down the expressway to attend a friend's funeral on his bike.While negotiating a sharp turn,he lost control of his bike and crashed into the sign post at the side of the road.His body was smashed,sprawled on the edge of the busy street with blood all over,killed instantly by the bike he meant to sell a week later.
How ironic,how big a joke this mustve been to my friend,B,upon reading the news in the newspaper,with his friend's picture at the top of it all.I wonder what went through his head,if his family is holding out okay,if it was true or real at all,if it was all a cruel practical joke pulled by God himself.
He took leave on Monday,and returned on Thursday night.A drastic change was in him,and like the sunset in the horzion on this rainy day,something was missing in him.Something amiss.He was quiet,almost too quiet,as he sat in the corner under the shade as we tossed dummy grenades across the soccer field.I observed him,as he played with his toes,and drew imaginary circles on the ground with his slippers.Some tried to cheer him up,massaging him on the shoulders and the thighs.He gave a forceful smile,almost too fake to be sincere or thankful.To me,i could almost feel the pain of losing something,the way it all seemed like a bloody joke from up above.
Perhaps it was a joke,a practical one.Perhaps it was all fate,the cruelness of it all.It didnt happen to him,but sometimes the way things happen to you without a reason at all,can be troubling.Thinking about the reason,and then at myself,perhaps made me just a tad bit guilty i guess.I mean,for so many times i have blamed God for making her leave me.I've told myself numerous times,that i dont mind the fact that she's with someone else,but the fact that she's not here with me anymore was the painful part.I blamed him,i blamed her,and i blamed God.Despite having not a religion in my mind,i still blamed him.Because i was angry,because i was pissed off,because i just needed something at the tip of my index finger.
But compare to B,compared to this friend of mine,God seems to have played a bigger practical joke.Taking a friend away from his life,like a chess piece off the board.The way the king tumbles off the board after a checkmate.Just like that,perhaps with a tip of a finger,and he is gone.Like that,gone.Isnt that a greater practical joke,as compared to mine,if it was a practical joke at all?It was like a seven-course meal to a plate of peanuts,the way the joke fell upon his shoulders and the way the joke fell on mine.Mine suddenly becomes so trivial,in the shadow of his pain,his anguish.
We should laugh it off sometimes,we should pat the dirt off our knees at times.But right here,right now,there are just some jokes that bares too deep into the bones,too deep into our minds,and we feel like a bathtub of water draining out into the gutter,as the stopper is being pulled out.Slowly and gradually,we dive into ourself,deep into our souls and forget about the rest of the world.The red water sinks in,swirls and disappears into this hole until what is left,what is really left afterwards,just emptiness and thoughts bouncing off the sides of the lonely tub.
"...I think the God that was making the Indian people was having some sort of practical joke with other Gods.I think he was showing off or something,we were like some sort of experiment.'Hey,hey guys watch this!Watch this!Okay,these people here,and i'll put them in the hottest place in the world.And just for fun,i'll cover them with hair.'Because we're a hairy race man,and that's a shitty shitty deal man!It's hot as hell and we're hairy.How the how can you trade off that,it's bad enough that being hot and then you have to add hair..."
--- Russell Peters
Something was amiss,i told myself.Something was missing from the horizon,the way every day things disappear all so suddenly and quietly,you lose your ability to put your finger on it.It was there,at the same window at the end of the corridor back in camp,when i noticed that little difference in the horizon.
It was raining again,and as i looked out into the misty world i cursed under my breath the way the weather of Singapore is so screwed up all the time.I miss India's weather,India's sun.Despite the poverty,everything in India seems to be so much better than the way Singapore is.I know it's probably that human nature thing working up on me again,the longing for better things,things aside from your everyday mundane life.I cant help it,i just couldnt.But then again,what can we do about it,really.
Anyway,it mustve been the sunset,i concluded.It was a bad storm,with the western sky dominated by rain clouds,the threatening ones with flashing of lightning hidden behind veils of fluffy grey clouds,like looking at streetlamps through a raindrop dotted window.Yeah,i told myself.It was the sunset.It was nowhere to be seen today,as i looked at the horizon with Sarah Mclachlan's "Dirty Little Secret" going through my ears.
Everything is amiss these days,isnt it?I remember the time when i lost my wallet back in Primary One.It was a blue wallet with Power Rangers printed at the front.It had a little less than a dollar then,and that kind of money was a fortune to us Primary School kids back then.It meant five fish balls or two chicken wings.It meant lunch,it meant snacks,it meant food,it meant everything.I cried,as i pulled on Mrs. Raj's sleeves,and telling her that i lost merely a dollar.She dismissed me back to my seat,and asked me to keep quiet and stop whining about the dollar.I couldnt stop crying,and sobbed through the rest of her lesson,and Mrs. Raj i remember,was obviously displeased.
Everybody blame somebody when something is missing,something is gone.I think God is perhaps the most misunderstood person in the world,however often i tend to disagree with some of his works.I mean,we humans love to blame dont we.Anything that goes wrong,anything that's missing,we point to fate or God.We seldom look at ourselves,or other reasons that something happened.It's always God and his practical jokes,his little fun with us humans,his creations.But then again,as i thought about it over the week,some jokes are just more cruel than the others,just too real and coincidental to be mere...fate?
Riding down Upper Thomson Road was a friend of a friend.Let's call him A,and the common friend between us is B.B is an out-spoken person in my platoon,always the quick one to laugh,the one to retort,the one to make funny remarks.You can call him the clown of the platoon,though the word "clown" hardly fits anyway.He had his way of conveying his jokes across,that even though it is not funny,it makes your sides ache with pain of laughter.A is a friend of his,and at 2.45am one morning he was riding down the expressway to attend a friend's funeral on his bike.While negotiating a sharp turn,he lost control of his bike and crashed into the sign post at the side of the road.His body was smashed,sprawled on the edge of the busy street with blood all over,killed instantly by the bike he meant to sell a week later.
How ironic,how big a joke this mustve been to my friend,B,upon reading the news in the newspaper,with his friend's picture at the top of it all.I wonder what went through his head,if his family is holding out okay,if it was true or real at all,if it was all a cruel practical joke pulled by God himself.
He took leave on Monday,and returned on Thursday night.A drastic change was in him,and like the sunset in the horzion on this rainy day,something was missing in him.Something amiss.He was quiet,almost too quiet,as he sat in the corner under the shade as we tossed dummy grenades across the soccer field.I observed him,as he played with his toes,and drew imaginary circles on the ground with his slippers.Some tried to cheer him up,massaging him on the shoulders and the thighs.He gave a forceful smile,almost too fake to be sincere or thankful.To me,i could almost feel the pain of losing something,the way it all seemed like a bloody joke from up above.
Perhaps it was a joke,a practical one.Perhaps it was all fate,the cruelness of it all.It didnt happen to him,but sometimes the way things happen to you without a reason at all,can be troubling.Thinking about the reason,and then at myself,perhaps made me just a tad bit guilty i guess.I mean,for so many times i have blamed God for making her leave me.I've told myself numerous times,that i dont mind the fact that she's with someone else,but the fact that she's not here with me anymore was the painful part.I blamed him,i blamed her,and i blamed God.Despite having not a religion in my mind,i still blamed him.Because i was angry,because i was pissed off,because i just needed something at the tip of my index finger.
But compare to B,compared to this friend of mine,God seems to have played a bigger practical joke.Taking a friend away from his life,like a chess piece off the board.The way the king tumbles off the board after a checkmate.Just like that,perhaps with a tip of a finger,and he is gone.Like that,gone.Isnt that a greater practical joke,as compared to mine,if it was a practical joke at all?It was like a seven-course meal to a plate of peanuts,the way the joke fell upon his shoulders and the way the joke fell on mine.Mine suddenly becomes so trivial,in the shadow of his pain,his anguish.
We should laugh it off sometimes,we should pat the dirt off our knees at times.But right here,right now,there are just some jokes that bares too deep into the bones,too deep into our minds,and we feel like a bathtub of water draining out into the gutter,as the stopper is being pulled out.Slowly and gradually,we dive into ourself,deep into our souls and forget about the rest of the world.The red water sinks in,swirls and disappears into this hole until what is left,what is really left afterwards,just emptiness and thoughts bouncing off the sides of the lonely tub.
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on Friday, May 26, 2006 at 9:31 PM.
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