Not a Bird…Not a Plane

My lover said she wanted me too. My lover said, board a taxi and meet me half way. Along the way I met an old hag. Her knobbly finger pointed me away. She said, you star-crossed lovers, your end is nigh. I turned my nose to the sky. Without a backward glance, I told the taxi-man, Continuer! Continuer! Let’s get the hell out of here!

I checked my map. To my surprise the distance had grown by leaps, turned to miles as far as the eye could see. I asked the Taxi-man, how far my good man to my lover, do you know? He pulled out his looking glass. He squinted his bushy brow. He counted off his fingers as he spoke:

My dear boss, I count nine hundred leagues and a half a score. My taxi cannot possibly go that far. My back will break in two seated with you in this car. I beg you dear boss, let us turn around and get the hell out of here. We will be home in time for a hot bath, a hot meal, a warm bed, a kiss goodnight and a good snooze. Don’t you see it’s the right thing to do? The old hag said—

Forget that old witch. Time for me to ditch this ride. Au revoir my good man! Head back. Warm the old hag’s bed for all I care.  My burdens are mine and mine alone to bear. Go, my man! Godspeed to you before I let loose my tongue! Vamoose!

I hailed a rocket on a docket. I boarded in a second and take off got underway. Up we went and up we went. We twirled in circles and twirled in circles. Zigzagged like drunkards. Zigzagged to space. We landed on the moon. Pit stop. Landed on Jupiter. Faulty calculation. We had a breather before we took off once again. We landed on the stars. Finally! I whipped out my laser gun. I am gonna make the stars so cross at my lover and I. I took out my laser gun and bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

The stars…Crossed…The oceans…For me…They crossed…My Lover….And I…I Blasted them…out of the Sky…Our love…Blossomed and Died…And Rose…and Died…The cycle…Of life…It Blossomed…and—FREEZE IT THERE!

Picture perfect.

I was upbeat, drumming my fingers on the rocket dashboard. Humming myself a tune, I was smiling, smiling, smiling. Then I was frowning, frowning, frowning. Unforeseen weather forecast. Plummeting to earth with a super turbo blast. This day, do I breathe my last? I should see my lover! I should see my lover one last time!

<Mayday! Mayday!>

<Is anybody out there?>

<Hello?>

<Somebody help!>

<Dear Lover?>

<Please catch me>

<I don’t want to die!>

<Please?>

<I LOVE YOU!>

BOOM!!!!!!!!!

***THE END***

HINDU TEMPLE IN DOWNTOWN KAMPALA

 According to Hindu religious scripts, Lord Vishwakarma is the lord of the arts, executor of a thousand handicrafts, the carpenter of the gods, the most eminent of artisans, the fashioner of all ornaments...and the great and immortal god (The Mahabharata). Depicted holding a book, a vessel, a rope and craftsmen’s tools in his four hands, who is to say that Lord Vishwakarma, adept in the most advanced of building methods known to man didn’t craft the Shree Sanatan Dharma Mandal Hindu Temple?

Like a jewel amidst dull shards of glass, the SDM Temple looks out of place among the modern buildings in downtown Kampala. Built in 1954 at a cost of 60,000 British Pounds contributed through goodwill, all building materials were imported from India. A masterpiece of Indian masonry, Hindu gods stand sentry on the outside walls of the temple.  To say the intricate stonework is mindboggling is an understatement: who in their right mind would have the time and the patience to handcraft an entire temple in such microscopic detail? The gods actually have personalities--some are frowning, some smiling, and others are downright not amused with the scrutiny we are subjecting them to.  The ridged contours and the curves and towering cream-coloured pinnacles of this beautiful temple were built in accordance with ancient Vedic/Indian principles of art and architecture. 

Contrary to popular belief, the Hindus believe in one Supreme God. Worshiped as a Trinity as the SDM Temple Priest, Chaitanya Upadhyay explains: G.O.D signifies the Generator/ Creator, Lord Brahma; the Organiser, Lord Krishna/Vishnu and the Destroyer, Lord Shiva who altogether form the Trinity. The 33 million different gods in Hinduism, both male and female are simply the forms or avatars of God, but there is only one God, the friendly soft spoken Priest clarifies.

“Hindu religion is like the mother of (all) religions. Hindu is the oldest religion (at) more than 6,000 years,” he states with conviction. Hindu, he says, is like the trunk and other religions like Islam and Christianity, the branches of religions in the world.  

The priest gives us a grand tour of the interior of the temple which is just as impressive as the exterior, if not more. The much stigmatised swastika at the gates I am informed is actually an ancient Indian symbol denoting well-being or luck.  A much-revered cow statue welcomes us at the entrance alongside that of a tortoise draped in pink. Walking into the inner sanctum of the temple, one automatically feels inner peace surrounded by the various statues of gods. Indian faithfuls come in and ring smooth-worn copper bells, we are told, to ward off evil. They prostrate themselves in prayer very much like the Baganda do for the Kabaka.  

On our way out, Priest Chaitanya offers us scented holy water from a temple in India. It smells of flowers and tastes slightly bitter but the entire experience has dropped scales from our eyes. Hinduism as a religion is not as alien as many people take it to be.

Writer's Block

A blank virgin sheet of paper is quietly staring at you, cursor blinking idiotically. You stab the keys in determination, for write you must. Then BACKSPACE sends it all back to the womb of your mind. Half-baked ideas; you jeer. They just won’t do.  You wish that was ROTATRIM and not Microsoft Word, so you would crumple that accursed sheet of paper and eat its innards: Writer’s block! It happens to the best of us.

Three hours have elapsed and your boss’ disapproval is doing havoc to the last vestiges of your sanity. Three hours and that blinking cursor is still mocking you, timing you out, tightening the noose around your neck. The editor is soon making that call and you won’t have a story for him to print. An excuse just won’t do; plagiarism will no doubt come back to bite your nether regions. What to do?

You’re now sweating plasma. This is your twentieth attempt at writing something and it reads worse than the last. The chair you’re seated on is dissolving your butt; it’s frozen and doesn’t feel like yours anymore. You sweat some more and in frustration, you snap the laptop shut. To hell with that!

Rising from your seat of thorns, you strip off your sticky clothes that are clinging on you like a second skin.  A warm shower is in order. No, that cold refreshing beer first. You open your throat and toss that in with cold lunch leftovers. Now the shower, warm, and then cold, with hope of kick-starting that brain of yours that chose the one time you need it to go on holiday.

In the middle of the cold shower, the electricity is disconnected. For the longest 2 seconds of your life, you contemplate sobbing like the big boy you are. Face muscles distort grotesquely as you think about it. Right before you let the Nakivubo channel flood, the bulb flickers on. An idea hits you! You quickly rush out and plant your naked self on your chair to finish your story. You click ENTER and heave a sigh of relief.

Book author Cyrese Covelli is quoted to have said that, Writer’s block doesn’t exist…lack of imagination does. Writers don’t really have the luxury of not being able to write, for writing is their craft. A soldier will not say he doesn’t feel like going through drills in the morning just because of a slight drizzle; the mother won’t say that she doesn’t feel like cleaning her baby up after they soil themselves. They simply ignore those lazy bones and trudge on.  You never know you might surprise yourself and pull out a rabbit at a drop of a hat. Good luck!

Kindred Spirits

It’s no brainer that whoever is reading this has been afraid at some point in the last minute, hour, day or week.  Fear is a constant gardener in our hearts and has cultivated plantations of our closely-guarded phobias. I don’t know what you are afraid of, we all have fears, we all have known fear, but I have made a strange observation; Fear, Love, Heartbreak---They are siblings in the same family tree.  

Whether I am nursing a fear, or blossoming in love or withering with heartbreak, my heart registers all these intense emotions as one. It’s in the quickening of the heartbeat, in the shortness of breath, the dryness in my throat; the symptoms are identical that I could substitute one emotion for another and my reaction wouldn’t vary that much.

They say love and hate are so much alike, but I beg to differ. My heart doesn’t thump in my chest when I meet someone I hate; rather it slows down and looks away in indifference. The people I hate are dead to me and I treat them accordingly.

With fear, or love or heartbreak, the heart flutters with anticipation, excitement, or pain?

What I think is that normally, we live in a nucleus of ourselves, comfortable in our own skin. With the addition of the above mentioned emotions, an imbalance within us occurs and demands we move out of this nucleus or seal the cracks that are making it unstable.  With fear, we strive to get away from this emotion and the imbalance it has caused. With love, we strive to encompass the new addition that would make this new super-nucleus complete (i.e.  a lover). With heartbreak, we strive to either reconstruct the super nucleus that includes our loved one or to reconstruct the singular nucleus that we had at the beginning before the pollution of a lover. This imbalance, I believe is what the heart reacts to and the reaction isn’t specific to a particular emotion.