Category Archives: Writing

Poem: Hope

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When life throws you a curveball, it is only hope that keeps our spirits alive.

Hope

When you are so sad and depressed,
When your world feels like it will end,

When you don’t want to leave your bed or room,
When you feel the world is against you.

Then like a little ray of hope, a small flicker which clears the gloom,
Like the flame of light that lights a room,
Like the tiny thread of happiness that clears your sense of doom.

The ray of hope that flows from the heart,
That which warms the ramparts of the heart.

That which makes the world a beautiful place,
That which makes your heart sing and lets it chase.

This is hope my friends, the emotion that lets life befriend
Hope that makes the world being something we can now comprehend

Casual Racism: We are all guilty of this one!

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We are all racists at some point in time or the other!

Did the above line shock you? Did you just tell yourself that you are no racist? I am sure all of us believe ourselves to be free from any racist tendencies, but the truth is that we are unconsciously racist at times, even when we say we are not. There’s a term for this sort of racism. This is now called ‘Casual Racism’

So what is casual racism? It’s a subtle form of racism against family or friends when you ridicule them because of who they are when you make assumptions about a group of people because of the way they look or speak and use those assumptions for everyone associated with that group. It’s everyday racism and is so commonplace and normalised that the person who does it, is not even aware that he/she is making comments what may hurt the person being trolled!

So why this topic today? It came up because, over the last few days, an incident shared by a Singaporean Indian has blown up so much over various social media. What happened was this person, who is an actor went to audition for a role in a popular movie franchise which is based on Singapore’s National Service and at the audition was asked to speak with an exaggerated Indian accent (think Apu in the Simpsons). When he commented that the accent he spoke in was how a normal Singaporean Indian spoke, he was told they wanted it to be more Indian and so funny. He took to social media to comment on this and also said he felt like an outsider in his whole country. The truth is that no one in Singapore who is of Indian descent speaks like that and even in India, especially in the bigger cities, people don’t speak with these exaggerated accents and gestures. This may have been true some 40-50 years back, but today most Indians have had an English language education and speak mostly normally (some accent is given because everyone has an accent from where they come).

The incident has been shared many thousands of times and has pretty much polarised the country. On one hand, you have the minorities who speak of having such incidents happen to them constantly and on the other hand, you have the majority slam the actor by saying since it was an acting job, he should just do what the director asks him to do and that he is being sensitive to implied slurs on him because of his race.

But the truth is that living in a multicultural country like Singapore, a minority is always subjected to race-related jokes and other incidents which happen to them on an almost daily basis. So much so, we always just take them into our stride or just shrug them off. I remember, when I first moved to Singapore, people of the majority race (mostly the elderly) would prefer to stand in public transport rather than sit in the empty seat next to me just because I am an Indian and they think all Indians smell! It used to hurt me a lot initially since this was the first time I had been exposed to something like this, but over the years, I’ve built up a shell and have learnt to let it slide.

Least you think India is not racist, let me disabuse you of that notion. Racism exists there too but is much more subtle. There, it’s because of the way a group of people look or speak. So you have the Punjabi Sikh Santa Banta jokes, the notion that all Biharis are thugs and illiterates and that everyone from the northeastern part of India behaves in a certain way.  You also have the bashing of North Indian/UP migrants in Mumbai because some of the locals believe they are out to snatch their jobs and because of India’s obsession with fair skin, people from South India are looked down upon. This is worse for those who come from the African continent to live and work in India and news reports are aplenty for those who want to know more about these instances.

I could go on and on about instances of casual racism, but I need to stop somewhere. Research has shown that racism, and even, or especially casual racism has a range of harmful effects on those targeted, including limiting access to employment, health services and education and reduced workplace productivity and has been linked to mental and physical health problems, particularly depression and anxiety.

So the next time you make an off colour joke or comment or even reduce a group of people to common tendencies, take a minute and think. If the situation was reversed, would you like to be the butt of such jokes or comments?

Here are some links which explain much more about casual  racism:

10 Signs you might be a racist; Casual Racism Is Not “Bants”; It Stops With Me; Quora

What do you think of such instances of racism? Has something like this happened to you? Please comment and let me know…

 

 

Poem: By the Sea

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I’ve always been fascinated by the sea. I’ve always lived in seaside cities, but unfortunately never actually lived next to the sea. I can look at the sea for hours, the waves crashing into the shore. These lines are inspired by that fascination and the hope that someday I will get my wish for a home next to the sea.

By the Sea

 

Watching the waves crashing on the shore,

Watching the sea spend her debris at our door.

I wonder what lies at her shores, what riches she stores?

She is mercurial in her moods, she is the nurturer to multitudes;

She is calm as a mirror, she is blue, green and azure

When she gets angry, she is tempestuous and boisterous

She is stormy, she is antsy, sometimes screaming like a banshee

She is the source of quiet contemplation, she is my way of relaxation.

I just wish I can watch her forever, but life is not choosy,

My dearest wish is to have a little house by the sea!

Family Stories: Family Adoptions

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Following my last post, I started thinking more about what makes a woman a mum. I have also been watching this drama where a woman is forced to give up her five-year-old daughter to her sister-in-law (husband’s sister) who is childless. She has another, older daughter and is pregnant with her third child, which also happens to be a girl. Her husband had taken loans from his sister’s husband who also pressurises the couple for the adoption. The woman’s mother-in-law also forces the issue as she wants her daughter to be happy since the daughter’s mother-in-law is forcing her son to divorce her since she is childless. The only person who is on her side is the woman’s brother-in-law (husband’s brother), but he is silenced by the others in the family. At this point in the drama, the child has been handed over, but everyone is miserable. I am sure the ending will be positive, as it happens in all dramas, but this got me thinking about something that has happened in my own family.

My mum is the oldest of four girls, and when my grandmother was pregnant with her fourth child (maybe in the hope of having a boy), her sister-in-law (my grandfather’s sister) who was married, but childless offered to adopt the child if it was another girl. My aunt was born and was informally adopted by her aunt. Why informally you may ask? This was because she was betrothed at birth to a cousin who happened to have the same gotra as her aunt. Now because marriage within a gotra was prohibited, the aunt could never formally adopt her or even have her call her mum. She lived with my mum’s aunt all her life, a mere 10-minute walk from her mum’s place and used to meet her sisters often. She always knew who her parents were and used to call them mum and dad and her adopted mum and dad as aunt and uncle, but she didn’t go to the same school as her sisters and perhaps in a small way resented the hold her sisters had over her.

When she got married, it was my grandparents who gave her away and this rankled my grandaunt all her life. She was incredibly jealous of my grandmother and my mum and her sisters and would resent anytime my aunt spent with them. This went on for around 60 odd years until the grand aunt died last year.

She was a mother to my aunt in all ways that mattered but never heard her adopted daughter call her mum, while she had to hear her sister-in-law being called mum all the time. I would think the resentment she had within herself was completely justified.

Then I started thinking about my grandmother. How would she have felt, having to hand over her child to someone else, even though she was her own sister-in-law? Would she have felt pressurised by her family to give her up? Or did she do it with full consciousness?

The person who was most stressed was my aunt according to me. She was constantly under pressure between her mum and adoptive mum and had to play a balancing game all her life. It is only now, when she is past 60 and her adoptive mum has passed on, that she is planning a holiday to stay with her birth mum for a month. How sad is that! She had to always watch her thoughts, words and actions in case her adoptive mum took offence in something she said or did, especially when it related to her birth family.

This situation was something I’d lived with my whole life and was not something I really thought about till now because this was normal in my family. But watching the drama and then relating it to what happened/is happening in my own family made me see it in a different light, one that is more emphatic, I hope.

I hope sharing this family story helps you see adoptive families, especially those who have been adopted by their own family a little differently. Life is never black or white and this is one situation where the shades of grey are more prominent.

What makes a Mother?

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This Sunday will be celebrated as Mother’s Day almost throughout the world. Across the world, children (and dads) will buy presents and flowers for the mums in their lives and also make a special meal for them. Facebook and other social media will be filled with photos and Mothers Day wishes and mums all over will realise how much they are loved.

 

My mum lives far away in India, so other than wishing her via phone, there’s not much I can do, but we do try to take S’ mum and aunt (who is a second mum to him) out for a meal on that day.

 

So what makes a mother? Is biology the only reason someone gets the privilege of being called a mum? What about adoptive parents? They don’t give birth to their young ones but spend far more time and effort in nurturing them, so are they not also mums? Take S’ aunt for example – she never married as a result of a handicap she incurred as a young girl, the result of a sickness. She has always lived with S’ family and has been an equal partner in looking after and nurturing S and his sister. So she’s another mum we honour.

 

So in honour of all mums out there, here’s something I wrote….

What Makes a Mother

 

The first person we know in this world,

She is the one who makes our world unfurl.

She loves us unconditionally and with balance,

Guides us through life with infinite patience.

She is a friend, philosopher and guide, all rolled in one

She is your one guiding star, she is your sun.

She brightens up your life, she fills your world with laughter

For every question you may have, she has the right answer.

We all know that God can’t be everywhere, so he made mothers

She, who is the zypher, the anchor of your life.

To all the mothers in the world, those who gave birth and those who didn’t, but are mother figures in our lives, here’s wishing you a very Happy Mother’s Day!

As for me, I need to wait till Sunday to see what GG & BB have in store for me….