#even though one near me is run by a sikh family (i know this because they have the sikh decorations in the shop)

[angelgendered]

Yknow considering my mum was a self proclaimed socialist feminist who did work with the campaign for nuclear disarmament in the 80s and other related causes, you sure wouldn't guess it now. She loves keir starmer, casual transphobia and denial that trans people face anh issus ever, being vocally racist, especially against black and Asian folks, being pro Israel and devil's advocate when there's a GENOCIDE HAPPENING, she doesn't think disabled people including herself should have lives (my granddad who was in a powered wheelchair most of his life would hate her now I hate to say it but) she thinks black people are reverse racist when they call her out on her yt privilege instead of just yknow listening to what they have to say nd to top it all off she said the other day that the cass report is right, and earlier today said that she was probably going tk vote reform because 'we need to look after our own'

Like babe

You're a populist nationalist tiptoeing dangerously into fascist territory. No wonder none of your friends talk to you anymore

[jayoctodot]

The Silent Patient vs The Maidens

I will start by saying that I understand the appeal of these novels as page-turners. They are easy to read and if you want a twisty reveal at the end, you will probably be entertained and satisfied. That being said, I am SO CONFUSED by the near-universal adoration of The Silent Patient and the reasonably positive reception of The Maidens. The weaknesses of the two are strikingly similar, as well, which doesn’t give me much hope of seeing improvement from this guy, though I am intrigued to see whether he keeps repeating the same (apparently successful!!) patterns. These books were at least super fun to hate.

(For context, I read The Maidens for a bookclub I'm in, because several of the members had read and loved The Silent Patient, and one of them gave me a copy of the latter to read on my own time. I loathed The Maidens and then read The SP for comparative purposes. And because I'm a masochist, apparently.)

SPOILER WARNING! Do not read on unless you've finished both books (or unless you care not for spoilers). Sorry if it gets a bit shouty.

Here are the similar weaknesses I noticed in both:

PSEUDO-PSYCHOLOGY

-> Weirdly similar “group therapy” scenes early on where a cartoonishly unstable patient arrives late, disrupts the meeting by throwing something into the middle of the circle, and is asked to join the group after the therapist(s) speechify on the importance of boundaries (HA! None of these therapists would know an appropriate boundary if it kicked them in the ass) and debate whether to “allow” the patient to join. Both scenes are so transparent in their design to establish the credibility/legitimacy of the narrators as therapists, but instead both Theo and Mariana come off as super patronizing. The protagonists are less and less believable as therapists at the stories progress (though at least Theo’s incompetence is explained away by the “twist” at the end; Mariana, on the other hand, is confronted in the opening pages of the novel by a patient who has self-harmed PRETTY extensively, and rather than ensure he get proper medical attention, she essentially throws him a first aid kit and tosses him out the door so she can pour herself a glass of wine and call her niece... and it devolves from there).

-> Ongoing insistence throughout the narrative that one’s childhood trauma entirely explains the warped/dysfunctional way a character behaves or views the world, which is why the books go out of their way to give EVERY potentially violent character a traumatic childhood; when Theo insists that no one ever became an abuser who hadn’t been abused themselves, I wanted to throw the book across the room. (That is a MYTH, SIR. GET OUT OF HERE WITH YOUR ARMCHAIR PSYCHOLOGY.)

-> Female murderers whose pathology boils down to “history of depression” and “traumatized by a male loved one/family member.” Because, as we all know, depression + abuse = murderer!

-> The “therapy” depicted in both books is laughable and so so unrealistic, mostly because neither narrators function as therapists so much as incompetent detectives, obsessively pursuing a case they have no place pursuing (or skill to pursue - both just happen across every clue mostly by way of clunky conversation with all the people who can provide precisely the snippet of info to send them along to the next person, and the next… until all is revealed in a tired, cliched “twist”). Their constant Psych 101 asides were so tiresome and weirdly dated (also, the constant harping on countertransference got so ridiculous that at one point during "therapy" Theo literally attributes his headache and a particular emotion he feels to Alicia, as though the contents of her head are being broadcast directly into his mind... and I'm PRETTY SURE that's not how it works???)

CHARACTERS

-> Psychotherapist narrators with abusive fathers and pretensions of being Sherlock Holmes, which results in both characters crossing ALL KINDS of ethical lines as they invade the personal lives of everyone even tangentially connected to their cases (and, in Theo's case, violate all kinds of patient confidentiality. Yeah, yeah, by the end, that's the least of his offenses, but before you get there, it's baffling that NO ONE is calling him out on this).

-> All female characters are either elderly with hilariously bad advice, monstrous hulking brutes, or beautiful bitches (except for ~MARIANA~, who is Bella Swan-esque in her unawareness of her own attractiveness, despite multiple men trying to get with her almost immediately after meeting her. I'm so tired of beautiful female characters being oblivious to their own hotness. Are we meant to believe all mirrors and male attention have escaped their notice? If it’s to make them “relatable,” this tactic really fails with me).

-> All characters of color are shallow, cartoonish side characters, and most of them are depicted as unsympathetic minor antagonists (the Sikh Chief Inspector in The Maidens continuously drinks tea from an ever-present thermos, and his only other notable characteristic is his instant dislike of Mariana, whom he VERY RIGHTLY warns to stay out of the investigation that she is VERY MUCH compromising… the Caribbean manager of the Grove is universally disliked by her staff for enforcing stricter safety regulations at the bafflingly poorly run mental institution, because HOW DARE SHE. There's a very clear vibe that we're supposed to dislike these characters and share the protagonists' indignation, but honestly Sangha/Stephanie were completely in the right for trying to shut down their wildly inappropriate investigations).

-> "Working class" characters (or basically anyone excluded from the comfortably upper-crust, educated main cadre of characters) are few and far between in both stories, but when they show up, he depicts them as such caricatures. We got Elsie the pathologically lying housekeeper in the Maidens, who is enticed to share her bullshit with cake, and then a TOOTHLESS LEPRECHAUN DEALING DRUGS UNDER A BRIDGE in the SP. I kid you not, a man described as having the body of a child, the face of Father Time, and no front teeth, emerges from beneath a bridge and offers to sell Theo some "grass." I was dyinggg.

-> There are no characters to root for. Anywhere. Partly because they’re all so thinly drawn — and because we’re clearly supposed to view almost ALL of them as potential suspects, so they’re ALL weird, creepy, or incompetent in some way.

-> The flimsiest of flimsy motives, both for the narrators and the murderers. Theo fully would have gotten away with his involvement in the murder if he hadn't gone out of his way to work at the Grove and "treat" Alicia and his justification for doing so is pretty weak; his rapid descent into stalking and murder fantasy and his random ass decision to "expose" Alicia's husband as a cheater with a spur-of-the-moment home invasion and staged attempted homicide is ONLY justified if the reader hand waves it away as WELP, HE'S CRAZY, I GUESS (after all, he DID have an abusive father and a history of mental illness, and in Michaelides novels, that's ALL YOU NEED to become a violent psycho). I guess we're lucky Mariana didn't also start dropping bodies (because the logic of his fictional universe says she should definitely be a murderer by now... maybe that'll be his Maidens sequel?). But she especially had NO reason to randomly turn detective - and she kept trying to justify it by saying she needed to re-enter the world or that Sebastian would want her to (??), even though she had no background in criminal psychology... or even a particular fondness for mysteries (really, I would've accepted ANYTHING to explain her dogged obsession with the case. WHY were Sebastian and Zoe so certain she would insert herself into the investigation just because one of Zoe's friends was the first victim? WHY?). As for Zoe and Alicia, their motives are mere suggestions: they were both abused and manipulated, and voila! Slippery slope to murder.

WRITING STYLE

-> Incessant allusions to Greek tragedy and myth, apparently to provide a sophisticated gloss over the bare-bones writing style, which opts more for telling than showing and frequently indulges in hilariously bizarre analogies. Credit where credit is due — the references to Greek myth are less clunky in the SP, and I liked learning about the Alcestis play/myth, which I hadn’t heard of before - but OMG the entire characterization of Fosca, who we are meant to believe is a professor of Greek tragedy at one of the most respected universities on the planet, is just absurd. His "lecture" on the liminal in Greek tragedy is essentially the Wikipedia page on the Eleusinian Mysteries capped off with some Hallmark-card carpe diem crap. The lecture hall responds with raucous applause, clearly never having heard such vague genius bullshit before.

-> Super clunky and amateurish narrative device of interludes written by another character; Sebastian’s letter reads like a mashup of Dexter monologues and Clarice’s memory of the screaming sheep, but by FAR the worse offender is Alicia’s diary, where we’re supposed to believe she painstakingly recorded ENTIRE CONVERSATIONS, BEAT-BY-BEAT DIALOGUE, even when she’s just been DRUGGED TO THE GILLS with morphine and has mere moments of consciousness left… and even before that, she literally takes the time to write “He's trying the windows and doors! ...Someone’s inside! Someone’s inside the house! ETC ETC” when she thinks her stalker has broken in downstairs. WHO DOES THAT?)

-> Speaking of dialogue, the dialogue is so bad. Based on his bio, Michaelides got a degree in screenwriting, which makes his terrible dialogue even more baffling.

-> HILARIOUSLY rendered voyeur scenes where the narrators spy on couples having sex. Such unintentionally awkward descriptions. First we had Kathy’s climax sounds through the trees and then the bowler hat carefully placed on a tombstone before the gatekeeper plows a student. Again, I died.

PLOT/"TWIST"

-> The CONSTANT red herrings make for such an exhausting read. Michaelides drops anvils with almost every character that are so obviously meant to designate them as suspects in our minds. There is absolutely no subtlety in his misdirections.

-> The “crossover” scene between the SP and The Maidens makes no sense - when in the timeline does Mariana’s story overlap with Theo’s? They confer just before Theo starts working at the Grove, obviously (though Mariana appears to be the one who alerts Theo to the job opening there? Whereas in the SP, Theo has been obsessively tracking Alicia since the murder and had already planned to apply to work there?), but then are we supposed to believe that while Theo has been psychotically pursuing his warped quest to “help” Alicia, he’s also been diligently treating Zoe, so invested in her case that he repeatedly reaches out to Mariana to get her to visit Zoe and even writes Mariana a lengthy letter to convince her to do so??? And then a couple days after The Maidens ends, Theo is arrested???

-> But the thing I really did hate the most is how Michaelides treats his female murderers (who are both also victims themselves) as mere means to deploy a “twist”; there’s no moment spared to encourage our sympathy for Zoe, who was groomed and manipulated by the only trusted father figure in her life, and even after spending a decent amount of time getting to know Alicia via her ridiculous diary, where it’s so apparent that she’s been demeaned, objectified, manipulated, gaslit, and/or used by EVERY man in her life, she’s sent packing to spend the rest of her days in a coma… HOW much more satisfying would it have been for her to succeed in exposing Theo and reclaiming her voice? But no, she basically rolls over when he comes to finish her off (SPEAKING OF — ARE WE SUPPOSED TO BELIEVE THERE ARE NO SECURITY CAMERAS IN THIS INSTITUTE FOR THE CRIMINALLY INSANE????), writes one last diary entry, and drifts off forever. And then a couple pages of nothing later, the story is over. GOODNIGHT, ALICIA!

Both books kept me rolling throughout (by which I mean eye-rolling but also rotfl). Maybe I will check out his next effort — I’m morbidly curious what he’ll turn out. It does leave me wondering whether I should give up on thriller novels entirely, though. Are many of the weaknesses of these novels just characteristic of the genre? Maybe I'm just holding these books to unfair standards? I'm mostly only familiar with thriller films — many of which I think are amazing — but maybe you can get away with more in a film than you can in a novel.

...I really only intended to write a handful of bullet points, but more and more kept coming to mind as I wrote, to the point where subheadings became necessary. Whoopsie.

[aion-rsa]

Jacob’s Ladder: How LSD, Tibetan Buddhism and Tim Robbins Combined to Create a Cult Classic

https://ift.tt/2IoUKpW

Screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin still recalls one viewer’s reaction to Jacob’s Ladder.  

“I was stood outside the theatre on the very first day it opened in LA, waiting for the crowds to come out to see how they responded,” Rubin recalls. “As the credits started rolling this guy ran out, probably five feet from me, and yelled at nobody in particular: ‘If I ever meet the guy that wrote that movie, I’ll kill him.’”  

It was  an extraordinary reaction but, then again, Jacob’s Ladder is an extraordinary movie.  

Released on November 2, 1990, the film was only a modest success at the box office, debuting at number one in the US before being knocked off the top spot by Child’s Play 2 just a week later.  But while plastic dolls reigned supreme on the big screen, Jacob’s Ladder would have its day on home video, where it garnered a cult following in the decades that followed. 

It wasn’t difficult to see why; Jacob’s Ladder was the perfect film for the burgeoning format, a multi-layered tale both thematically complex and utterly terrifying. While the film’s main scares were worthy of pausing and rewinding, the fact was that Jacob’s Ladder demanded multiple viewings.

For director Adrian Lyne, that proved crucial to the film’s enduring popularity.

“You probably needed to see the movie twice to sort of understand it. You probably would’ve enjoyed it better the second time,” he told ComingSoon.

Not that his remarks were meant as a criticism – there was just a lot to unpack, in particular that ending.

Set in a grimy 1970s New York, the film ostensibly follows the story of Jacob Singer, a postal worker haunted by his experiences in Vietnam and the death of his young son (an uncredited Macaulay Culkin). Jacob’s damaged existence is shattered further when he becomes increasingly plagued by vivid hallucinations of demon-like creatures and otherworldly realms.

Divorced and living with girlfriend Jezzie (Elizabeth Peña), as Jacob journeys further down the rabbit hole he learns he and his fellow G.I.’s may have been test subjects for an experimental drug known as Jacob’s Ladder.  However, with his haunting visions intensifying, Jacob soon finds himself caught between questioning the very basis of his existence and desperately seeking the truth of his condition with the help of his chiropractor Louie (Danny Aiello).

Featuring standout supporting turns from Peña and Aiello, Jacob’s Ladder is notable for handing Tim Robbins his first major dramatic role. Up until that point Robbins had been better known for comedic turns in films like Tapeheads, Bull Durham, and Howard The Duck. The role of Jacob Singer arguably changed his life.

Yet what makes the movie so unique is that while it is both thriller and psychological horror, Jacob’s Ladder ultimately transcends both to emerge as something spiritual and transformative. It’s in the final denouement that audiences discover everything they have been watching has been playing out in Jacob’s imagination as he lies dying in a makeshift Vietnam hospital (something hinted at in a series of brief flashbacks).

A metaphysical trip of a movie, the idea for Jacob’s Ladder was born out of an altogether different kind of trip Rubin went on while studying screenwriting alongside the likes of Martin Scorsese and Brian De Palma at NYU.

“I guess the seed formed for most of my writing during an LSD trip in 1965,” he tells Den of Geek. “My roommate at the time was a very good friend of Timothy Leary [an American psychologist and writer known for his strong advocacy of psychedelic drugs] and he gave me a tablet of LSD. He said it was strong and that I should take it whenever I felt it was right. So I kept it in my wallet for about six months.”

The day eventually came. 

“The day I decided to take it, a man arrived at our apartment,” Rubin says. “He was bringing a jar of lysergic acid (pure liquid LSD) with him from some laboratories in Switzerland. He asked if he could leave it in our refrigerator before going up to Millbrook, New York, which is where Leary and his guys were all devoting their time to ‘experimentation’.”   

Rubin’s trip began with a common mistake many have made with hallucinogens.

“That night I took the tablet that had been sitting in my wallet and nothing happened,” he says. “My roommate said, ‘well, we have  this pure lysergic acid sitting in the refrigerator, why don’t I get an eyedropper and I’ll give you a drop?’ I said ‘OK’. So he went to give me a drop from the eyedropper and by mistake squeezed thousands of micrograms of LSD down my throat.”    

The subsequent LSD trip Rubin experienced changed his outlook on life, death and spirituality.

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“What came out of that was a mystical experience so profound, but I could find nothing in Western teaching that talked about it,” he says. “But I did find teachings in Eastern religions like Tibetan Buddhism. I decided that I needed to go to places like India and Nepal and meet with teachers to get an understanding of what it was that happened because I entered a world  so much bigger than the world we know experientially, so much more vast and internal, if you will, that I needed some direction.”

Despite bagging a job as an assistant film editor with NBC upon graduation, Rubin had been changed by his LSD experience. Ditching the job, he spent time in Greece before hitchhiking through Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan en route to the east and further enlightenment.

Rubin spent time in ashrams in India, a Tibetan monastery in Kathmandu, a Buddhist temple in Bangkok, and a Sikh temple in Singapore as part of a journey that saw him encounter multiple faiths and cultures.

Yet it wasn’t until he returned to New York and met Albert Rudolph, aka Swami Rudrananda, a spiritual teacher who specialised in yoga and meditation, that he began to find the answers he sought.

A jobbing writer in Hollywood, the idea for Jacob’s Ladder came to him one night in a nightmare that began on a near-deserted late night New York subway train.

“I had a dream where I get off the train and end up trapped in a subway station with no exits,” he says. “I realize the only way out is down through the dark tunnel of the subway into some kind of awful hell. But I have to make that journey, because ultimately it’s the journey to my own liberation.”

From there Rubin began to piece together the film’s plot, recalling an Ambrose Bierce short story that had a profound impact on him.

“I had this recollection of  ‘An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge’ which is the story of what goes on in the mind of a man who’s about to be hung,” he says. “He imagines the rope snaps and he get away. He meets a woman and he’s been running back to find her and just as they embrace he feels a huge pull on his neck and he’s hung off the bridge.”

Rubin was fascinated by the idea of a film that fused that narrative with the Tibetan Book of the Dead and the concept of an after-death experience that offers an individual the chance to achieve peace and closure with what they leave behind.

“It’s the idea of what happens inside the mind of a man as he dies,” he says. “Working out all the things they never addressed when they were alive. It is a confusing, complicated state of consciousness. Time is subjective, so that years could be experienced in a matter of milliseconds. Rather than running away from the problem, it’s about embracing it. For Jacob, that moment comes with his son. He learns that it’s only though the biggest losses and the greatest pain and the most broken heart, that you discover your way to liberation.”

Rubin began work as far back as 1980 on the script for Jacob’s Ladder and even began working on the initial treatment for another film, which would go on to become the Oscar-winning Patrick Swayze favourite Ghost.

“Both films shared a certain kind of storytelling idea, one being more frightening and more horror and the other something more popularized,” he says. “But both were trying to convey this idea that death is not what you think is.”

However, after moving his family to LA to focus on becoming a successful screenwriter, Rubin was dumped by his agent, who told him his work was “too metaphysical and nobody wanted to make movies about ghosts.”

His fortunes would soon change though when the script for Jacob’s Ladder was named on a list published by American Film magazine of the best unproduced scripts in Hollywood.

It was in good company alongside the scripts for films like The Princess Bride and Total Recall with the article stating how it was “one of the very few screenplays. . . with the power to consistently raise hackles in broad daylight.”

Even so, it would take a few more years to get Jacob’s Ladder off the ground with Rubin determined to stay as true to his original script as possible. That required a significant budget and a director with a significant amount of commercial clout.

Ridley Scott, Michael Apted, and Sidney Lumet all expressed an interest but it was Lyne who took a leap of faith describing it as “one of the best scripts I’ve ever read”.

It proved a shrewd move for all involved with Lyne turning down the chance to adapt Tom Wolfe’s satirical novel The Bonfire of the Vanities in favor of Jacob’s Ladder.

“He’s a great artist. He brought a great vision,” Rubin says of Lyne. “If he hadn’t made Fatal Attraction before, it probably wouldn’t have gotten the green light.”

Meanwhile Rubin’s old NYU friend, De Palma, would go on to direct what became one of the most notorious flops in movie history with Bonfire of the Vanities.

With Jacob’s Ladder, Lyne sought to move away from the old testament-like demons that torment Jacob  in the original script, preferring something that would further blur the line between dream and reality.

“He didn’t want the spiritual iconography, horns and tails and things like that, that represent demons and angels, wings and things,” Rubin says. “Instead he wanted to play around with nodules and growths coming out of people’s heads. Some kind of human and disturbing. It sounded great and ended up being quite terrifying. Characters could be both demonic and human at the same time.”   

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Another area they disagreed on was the film’s ending. Rubin originally envisioned a more Biblical conclusion in which Jacob was set on fire by girlfriend Jezzie before ascending to Heaven on the Jacob’s Ladder that features in the book of Genesis.

“Jacob would be burned to a crisp. Louie the chiropractor (Aiello) finds him and comes over to this shell of a person and he looks at this ash in the form of Jacob and then Jacob’s eyes open,” he says. “And Louie says ‘Jacob your body can’t hold you anymore’ and  pulls at the ash surrounding him and beams of light pour out and you realise he is nothing but light. Then he starts walking up the ladder and disappears. That was the original version. I don’t know if it’s any better, but I always loved it and it never got made. But, you know, in Hollywood you rarely get to see the movie you wrote.”

Opting against any post-production special effects, Lyne preferred to offer only glimpses of the horrors Jacob faces, flashes and disturbing moments inspired by the art of Francis Bacon and H.R. Giger and the photography of Diane Arbus and Joel-Peter Witkin and filmed against the backdrop of a Gothic-tinged vision of New York that chimed with Rubin’s script.

Lyne’s eye for experimentation and “less is more approach” proved crucial in shaping the nightmare world of Jacob’s reality. In one neat bit of camera trickery, actors were recorded shaking their head at a low frame rate which, when played back in fast motion, created the nightmarish faceless vibrating figures that feature in the film. Lyne further hinted at the film’s shock ending by having helicopter sounds played over the effect.

For all the visuals deployed, the film might have fallen flat without Robbins’s affecting performance. Coming several years before The Shawshank Redemption, the casting represented a gamble for all involved, given Robbins’s status as a comedic supporting star up until that point.

Handed the role after first choice Tom Hanks opted to star in the regrettable Bonfire of the Vanities, Robbins was determined to make the most of his opportunity.

“I’m always looking for something that takes a left turn, and this was a great opportunity to go in a different direction,” Robbins told the New York Times. “I love doing comedy, but I know I can do other things as well.”

Even so, Rubin recalls that Robbins took a little convincing, having taken a fancy to the other film he was working on at the time.

“He didn’t want to do Jacob’s Ladder. Tim wanted to star in Ghost but he was the wrong kind of actor. He was perfect for Jacob’s Ladder. It took a lot of convincing to get him to say yes to Jacob’s Ladder but I think now he’s happy that he did it.”

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30 years on, Robbins can have few regrets about starring in the film, which continues to find new fans and spark repeated viewings and debate among fans thanks to that unique ending which not only served up a major twist but, with it, a sense of awakening to the idea of a plain of existence beyond the mortal coil.

“I think it’s the fact that you don’t know what’s going on. You’re scared,” Rubin says. “What’s happening makes no sense. The fact that you’re so engaged by Jacob’s relationship with Jezzie to then discover that he has a wife and children. Then having no idea how these things come together and seeing snippets of these scenes of Vietnam.  In your mind, you are watching the film knowing something is drastically wrong and wanting to resolve it. And then in the final moments, they pronounce him dead and there’s this kind of shock of ‘oh my God, that was the answer’. It’s designed to be a big wake up call.”

The screenwriter also finds it fitting that many come to the film in much the same way he came to the idea back in 1965.

“I have heard it’s a rite of passage for sophomores in some US colleges to get stoned often for the first time – or, you know, not the first time – and watch Jacob’s Ladder,” he says. “It’s like the perfect stoner movie, it really is, because getting stoned is like a little glimpse into LSD. Marijuana is a kindergarten step into the graduate degree of LSD.”

Ghost may have ended up bagging Rubin the Oscar for best original screenplay but he’ll always have a soft spot for Jacob’s Ladder.

“I remain very proud of it and I think without Adrian Lyne directing it would never have been what it is,” Rubin says. “So many films just disappear into the ether. But certain films stay with you. Jacob’s Ladder speaks to the human condition. I tried very hard to make movies that offered different perspectives. There’s a lot to talk about in their world and it’s hard to get Hollywood to make those movies. I’m very grateful. I got to speak to the world.”

The post Jacob’s Ladder: How LSD, Tibetan Buddhism and Tim Robbins Combined to Create a Cult Classic appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/32uTBDV

[thinkingisthenewrebellion-blog]

unfortunately, a true story

Perhaps it’s not surprising. Perhaps I’m only surprised because I was brought up to have full faith in common decency. My parents and my community instilled in me the idea that if I needed help, I could depend on the people around to help me- especially authority figures.

Age has taught me that this is a privilege born of being raised in the suburbs and being white-passing. And coming to India has completely dispelled the idea that authorities and administration care about anything other than profiting from their job, especially if they can do the profiting without doing their job.

But I guess some part of me retained those childhood beliefs anyways. Which is why when we stood around the bus with eyes wide and hands covering our mouths in shock, I still wasn’t jaded enough to not be angry at the college.

I wanted authority figures to trust. We’re the only authority figures around who care. If you haven’t surmised from my previous articles and videos, my college inspires very little pride in its students, and for good reason.

As students in our third professional year, part of our curriculum for community medicine is to visit a nearby village to learn how to treat and guide a family over the course of a year. After about half an hour to check up on our assigned family, seventy five students got on the bus for the drive back to the college.

Today on our way back, I had my headphones on and was thus completely oblivious to the world. The first sign that something was wrong was a sudden jolt of the bus, as if it had suddenly gone over a speed bump. This was followed immediately by cries and screams from some of the girls.

I was later informed that at this point, we had only gone over the foot of the buffalo. It was when the driver reversed the bus that the poor animal became stuck halfway under the bus. The girls with a visual of the accident looked near to tears, yelling for the bus to please, please stop, help her!

It was probably the first time I fully agreed with any sort of hysterics from my classmates. I didn’t even have the strength of will to look out the window, to be honest. I wasn’t sure the animal was still alive, and I couldn’t imagine the blood if she wasn’t.

After a moment of shock, the first year postgraduate student in charge of the class got into motion. We were all directed to exit the bus, to at least be able to push it up enough that the animal could move out. Yet despite good intentions, all of the boys pushing the side of the bus yielded no results.

With the help of the villagers, some of the softer dirt was dug out from under the animal, and a combination of pulling at the buffalo and pushing the bus up finally got her free. It wasn’t enough, though- with a broken back and useless legs, the poor animal died within half an hour.

Such an animal is a significant part of a family’s income. With the difficulties being faced by villagers already, a loss like this can be debilitating. Those difficulties are an important topic on their own, one that I’ll elaborate on at another time, but it’s not really necessary to understand right now. Because it’s obvious that the compassionate, and to be honest, the most practical thing to do would be to pay the family for the loss and maybe even help them find a way to replace it.

Compassion is something I feel to be torn out of whatever dictionary our college administrators use.

See, we all knew right away that our college was not likely to pay. Huddled in groups, we tried calculating how much each student would need to donate for different amounts of hypothetical losses. We weren’t the only ones aware that the college was likely to slip its way out of responsibility. Some of the available leading voices in the village gathered to confront the driver and the poor postgraduate student stuck in this mess, arguing that they wouldn’t allow the bus to leave until compensation was given. The students from the school down the lane joined in, angry voices overlapping. We watched from a little ways away until ma’am directed us to go sit in the bus, the strain evident in her voice.

Most of us walked reluctantly towards the bus, though less than half actually sat down. We were frustrated and irritated, wondering where the college representatives of the village were, wondering what the college would do, and attempting to figure out whether they would let us leave in the first place.

They finally did, after another twenty minutes. I’m not sure what agreement they came to, but ma’am came onto the bus and took attendance as quickly as possible to get us out of there as soon as possible.

At the moment I’m writing this, it’s only been an hour since everything happened. I’m hoping the college will do the right thing, to save face if nothing else. But unfortunately I can’t be sure of that, and honestly none of us are holding our breath.

Within a few days we’ll know more about the outcome of this incident. But what happened was terrible. It was an accident, but that hardly matters for the family and the village. Compensation isn’t something that will be needed over time, but is rather an immediately pressing concern. And if the college doesn’t pay up, the family is going to pay for it.

But if the college doesn’t pay up, we the students and future doctors are not going to let the suffering go on without interference. We’re all prepared to donate whatever we can- even if it’s not directly our problem, I’d rather give up money that I know my parents will be able to easily recover than to make a family suffer over our mistake. Whatever donation can be made, please keep it in hand.

Because there’s honestly only so much we can handle our college getting away with, and this is the point where we get angry. If we have to supplement the finances, it’s not going to end there. Know that SGRD, a college run by a leading body of the Sikh faith, couldn’t find it in itself to help those in need, those who they had put into such a position in the first place. Know this, and refuse to let them get away without being held accountable.

It’ll be easy to be angry in the moment and then move on. But the family whose buffalo died can’t do that. The other people who fell victim to SGRD’s practices probably couldn’t either. We have the privilege to make it past whatever they throw at us with relatively minor discomfort. But we’re going to be doctors; we’re in the position to become leaders of the community. And this is where we start making the choices that make us worthy of our responsibility.

[hallsp]

Letter from Beirut

A Letter from Beirut

I write this from the lobby of the notorious Commodore Hotel, in Hamra. This is a hotel with history, like the Europa in Belfast. I got a lift here on the back of a moped belonging to my local delivery man who takes it upon himself to drop me places, often in the face of feigned protest or completely against my will. This is Lebanon.

I came here to do some writing, as is my wont, but Lebanese politics intervened in the person of Wiam Wahhab in an angry interview over rising tensions between him and Hariri. The hotel staff gather with me around the TV to watch his anger boil over. This is Lebanon. Also on the evening news: mass protests in Paris.

I stroll down to Abu Elie’s, the Communist Bar, to make amends. I order a beer but everybody is drinking Jameson. I soon get talking to Ziat, a banker. A banker drinking in the Communist Bar. Life is full of contradictions, and so is Lebanon. There are Che Guevara pictures everywhere. A rifle behind the bar. Bullet belts placed carefully on the wall. Hammers and sickles. Ziat offers me a job with his uncle who runs a school in Qatar and invites me out for the night. This is Lebanon.

This is an average sort of Saturday. I’ve had better, crazier nights: raves in bomb shelters, taxi drivers away with the faeries on a cocktail of drugs, drink and drug fueled house parties, after-hours chats in hidden bars, 6am drunken road-trips to Sour.

Last week, I was thrown out of Abu Elie’s because my roommate, an overbearing American (but with the right politics), made so much noise that other patrons complained. He was doing impressions actually, of Bernie Sanders and the Dude from The Big Lebowski. We were asked to leave. My roommate left straight away, but I stayed to apologize, and got talking to the group who had complained. Soon, we were firm friends. But I left anyway.

Lebanon is a lot of things, though.

Lebanon, for me, is the distinct aroma of warm Mediterranean air, of coffee with cardamom, and of lemon and mint shisha. It’s the sound of katydids chirping in the summer sun, of Fairouz playing in the mornings, of church bells and muezzins, and of Arabic shouted in the streets. It’s also the unrelenting drone of traffic and beeping. It’s the taste of zataar and sugary tea or cheap cigarrettes and bottles of Almaza. It’s endless games of backgammon. It’s dancing debke.  

One must travel north to get a proper perspective on the country, from the coast near one of the seaside towns, Jounieh perhaps. Dark green mountains rise suddenly and unexpectedly from the sea, dotted with cream coloured buildings, the sun sparkling in the water, a bright blue sky framing the canvas.

The main artery of the country is called the Sea Highway, and runs north-south from Tripoli to Sour. You're at sea level on this route but turn off the highway into the traditional heartland and you're climbing the mountains in the direction of Bilad al-Sham, Syria.

The Lebanese are a mountain people. Mount Lebanon gives the country its name, and most of the people their history too. If you keep heading east, you descend into a valley, before rising again into the Anti-Lebanon mountains, the natural barrier between Lebanon and Syria.

In Lebanon, everyone is on top of you. It’s crowded. You walk out onto your balcony in Beirut and there are balconies a stone’s throw away from yours. You can hear mothers screaming at their kids: Shoo bidak, ya Allah?! You witness street fights ignited by traffic accident.

Lebanon is a land of beautiful people, particularly the fairer sex, and fast cars.

Beirut, Lebanon. It’s a city of skyrise buildings on a headland which just into the Meditteranean but, from a distant vantage-point someplace north near Jounieh, looks like it emerges straight out of the glistening sea, glass towers with foundations somewhere on the sea floor. It has the look of an island city. It is a port city, after all, crucially important to the Ottomans and the French. Lebanon is a trading nation, it's in their blood, has been since the rise of tge Phoenicians. Lebanon is a merchant republic, it has a commercial soul. half expect to see the mountains loom even here, hidden by the tall buildings but visible from time to time between cracks, ultra pink in the evening.

There is enormous wealth, and precious little crime. It’s also a land of extreme poverty, and few social services.

Yacht showrooms, rolex stores, skybar, cars on armenia, incredible wealth, then families living under bridges, beggars on every corner, haves and havenots. Huge construction a building knocked down every fifteen minutes. If you leave the Achrafieh bubble, you're confronted with the reality of the situation. Dana, a sunni, expressed shock at my having gone to ashura in nabitiyeh, indra, a sikh, abhorred tripoli and left soon after arriving. There's quite a lot of non mixing. I like going places, travelling long distance by bus or train gives me time to think and write. It's a creative process for me.

It’s also a place filled with rubbish, there’s rubbish on the streets and on the beaches. There are no green spaces. No city planning.

It’s the people that make the place, though. They’ll always stop for a chat, and people remember your name and your face. It’s a nation of communities where people support one another, and antagonistic in-groups. It’s a cosmopolitan place where everyone is taken at face value and of inter-faith dialogue but also of confessional bigotry.

I’ve lived in Lebanon now for almost two years. I’ve been travelling around the Middle East for the since I left Ireland in the summer of 2017. 

You know you're happy someplace when you catch yourself singing as you walk down the street on your way to nowhere in particular.

Worst thing that happened to me in the middle east was scam in cairo. You can walk in the dodgiest neighborhoods and be completely safe. You can walk around at night without a single issue. It's not all sunshine and rainbows, there's petty crime but the number of violent crimes and robberies is very low. The biggest problem is street fights over traffic accidents. They're ten a penny. I'm always warned about being careful of my phone or wallet in certain areas but ive not had a single incident. Obviously this is anecdotal, it could happen, but it hasn't.

I was in a car crash today. This is Lebanon. It happened in Bourj Hammoud, the Armenian district. A woman turned All Lebanese drivers carry a stick or a bat of some description. It’s called an عصاية ‘uSa in Arabic.

Hezbollah is a state within a state, and a projection of another state. - Jumblatt/Hitch

[kwerkykrish]

Rain, Life, Love!

It was indeed a tiring journey - from the sweltering heat and nerve binding crowd of Chennai to a small village in Kerala, the god's own country. Maniyaru near Mukkam is my native place. It has always been a favourite place for me. My home, my secure spot, my love, my go to place, a place where no one judged me. The house and ways of Maniyaru are filled with my memories - memories of me playing, eating and all my naughtiness. Those days were so easy to live. No worries, no pressures and people were a lot simpler too. Oh I just forgot to introduce me I m Ananya, people close to me call me Ammu. I m a writer by proffession and I m in the final editing stages of my first book. In the meantime I m doing a phD too in Psychology. I have always been shunned by my family. Never an average girl who mingles, I was always the odd one out. My cousins found happiness in gossips and makeup while I found happiness in nature, writing and reading. And another point to taunt me constantly is my being plump. I mean I atleast won't fly away when there is a storm. I just don't actually get 'if-you-are-fat-you-won't-get-a-good-husband' point. I mean I know a whole lot of people who are fat and are happily married and also know a lot of people who are stick thin and have problems in their married life. I mean what logic. Any way this is me and my life. I just came down to our ancestral home in Maniyaru because my mom has been constantly torturing me to see this one particular guy who is also in Chennai in some MNC. I actually hate guys who do such mainstream courses. I mean it is well and good if they like that. Half of them do it because of family pressure. A guy who can't stand for his passion, can never love me or accept me. That is my logic. I actually have no interest in marriage as such. And my mom just doesn't get my point. So to drive the point home straight, I just ran away from home! So I don't need to see this guy amd I also can finish my editing work in peace. So I caught a train to Calicut and reached Maniyaru by 6 in the evening. It was all cloudy when I reached. I had to have a quick shower before I could eat anything. So I had a shower and decided to go to Kuttan Chettan's thattukada to have a special chaya and dosa. As I was stepping out, it started raining. What started off as a small shower, started getting fiercer and fiercer. The electricity went off too. Though I was a little scared, with no one to go to, I had to put up a brave face. It was after what felt like a decade that the current came and I saw the time, it was 10. The shops will be closed and nothing to eat, I raided my bag to find a bag of chips and cream bun. Thanking my stars and ever hungry stomach, I gobbled them up. It is then that there was a constant thump on the front door. I was a little freaked out because no one should ideally be knocking now. It was a closed down house and no one knew I m here. I went and peeped through the window. I was in for a surprise. A handsome guy, probably in his mid 20s, with a camera was standing there, shivering. He was wet and had his camera hidden in his jacket so that it's not wet. He was cute. I opened the front door to see the wet guy, shaking terribly. I had him sit in the front, brought a bottle of hot water, a fresh towel and old clothes of my dad that grandma always stocked. He had a nice wipedown and changed into my dad's clothes. He looked kind of cuddly in my dad's over sized shirt and mundu. He wiped his camera and switched it on. To my shock, the footage had me. I mean it was fully me. I was furious and asked him to get out. I didn't wanna hear anything. It was humiliating to think that some random guy had shot me through the whole evening, without my knowledge. He knew my frustrations and asked me to sit down. I was beyond furious and felt like ripping apart his handsome face, to just bite those lips and to just squeeze him to death. Though I was frustrated I just couldn't deny the fact that the guy was a catch - a perfect guy! But no, I m not supposed to look at his beauty, how dare he shoot me. He made me sit down and started explaining that he saw me in the bus to Mukkam when he was on his way to his hometown from Calicut. He was looking out for a girl for the lead role of his first film. He saw me and thought I was perfect. That is why he shot me to show his producers for them to approve. I was angry till then but then he began telling me sorry in the most cutest way possible. Like a puppy. If I had enough guts, I would have just kissed him then. He was an archangel, he was cute, he was so so so so perfect. He had these creamy chocolate brown eyes that anyone can mistake for chocolates. He had a one day one stubble that gave him a cute ragged look. He sported a moustach that he touched every now and then. I had to restarin myself from touching them myself. It was so inviting. He had this perfect sikh bangle in his hand that set off his rugged look. I felt like I could just kiss him to death, then and there. He looked near perfect, like live from a fairy tale. I had to tear my eyes from his eyes as I was just drowning myself in his eyes. Meanwhile he was telling how he was trying to go back when it started raining. There was no house nearby and he had no option but to come to my home. Poor thing. But the fact that he found me interesting was good enough for me. I don't know, till then I wasn't interested in marriage but now I m. May be this is an infactuation but I liked the feeling. May be this is all gonna go away in the morning when he is gone. May be I will forget him in the long run. But what if he is the one. There were a thousand negative thoughts running in my mind. But just one thought that maybe he is the one destined for me, made my day and I wanted to know more about him. But first I wanted to know his name. I had given him the remaining chips and bun. He ate them amd thanked me - 'thanks Ananya'. He knew my name. Wow. My name sounded so different in his voice. It was like my name was just made for him to say. It fitted perfectly. Eventhough I wanted to know how he knew my name, I didn't wanna be a paranoid in front of him. I guessed I could have mentioned it somewhere when he was following me. As this was my opportunity I asked him his name - AARAV. Though it was stupid I silently said my name with his name. It sounded so good to my ears - Mrs.Ananya Aarav. Wow. I was smiling stupidly and he asked me what I was thinking. I just snapped back to reality. Shit what was I dreaming - I m so stupid. I just looked at him closely and saw a small mole on his lips. Goddd they were irresistable. Like how cute can a guy get. He has just swept his fingers through his hair. They felt silky. I just had to touch them, ruffle them and play with them. God how I wish this guy was mine and how I wish he felt the same for me too. I mean I just saw this guy and I don't even know him properly and here I m pretending as if he is my life partner, head over heals in love. May be that's what love is. May be this isn't love at all. May be this is why we call love blind. Gosh, I m so stupid. I m not just able to stop my racing mind and brain. STOP. He was fed and was warm. He started talking about his profession. He started telling me details about his work. He told me how it wasn't so easy following passion and how it was tiring and how he almost gave up, how he got to his position and all that. He said that he had to work in an MNC to satisfy his parents and how left out he felt there. How difficult it was for him to adjust and how he started pursuing his passion even with a job in hand. My respect for him increased. A guy with passion, a guy who chases it - perfect for me. But I really don't think he has any feelings for me. God how heartbroken I was feeling even when he wasn't even mine. Stupid me! When he was speaking, he encouraged me to talk too. The best part is that he was someone who had the patience to hear me out. He asked me about my profession. He asked me how my book was doing. He asked me about my family. We almost had same wavelength. I didn't feel the need to express anything, Aarav got it even without me saying. He encouraged me to follow my desire and wished me luck with my book. Half night passed away in our talks. Both of us were tired. Like a true gentleman he is, he slept outside my room and did not even ask me for a blanket, not to make me more embarassed. I fell in love over and over again that night! I found a friend, a friend forever and was unsure of my love. I did not want to intimidate him. I don't even know his feelings towards me, I did not even know my feelings. With a turmoil in my mind, I drifted off to sleep. I suddenly got up in the wee hours of morning. I stepped out and saw Aarav asleep. That was the most perfect thing one could see. He was vulnerable to the core yet I felt safe. I just felt like cupping his face and showering them with kisses. I just imagined a morning when I will have him all to myself, when I would know he is all mine. A morning when I can awaken him with my morning kisses, a morning that will have me safe in his arms! I slept off near him at some point, holding his hand. I was awakened the next morning with a rude thump. I got up and saw my mom. I was shocked that I wasn't in my room. But before arguing, I ran outside to see Aarav. My mom came and asked where Aarav was. I was shocked she knew Aarav. Aarav came at that time from a room, putting on a white tshirt and a jeans, looking dashing. If mom wasn't there I would have kissed him. But I had to sort things out as of now! Aarav told me that he was the guy mom had fixed for me. He heard that I refused to see him. My mom told him about Maniyaru house and that it was where probably I had escaped to. It is then that everything fell in place. How come I did not think about why no calls came from home, as they would be searcbing for me. Aarav was out searching for me and almost knew where I was. So why call me? Yes I m an idiot of number one order. I fell in love with the same guy I didn' t wanna meet. Life is strange. Life is a little unfair. Life is so full of love. We married a year and a half after our first meeting. Aarav is always there beside me in all my endeavours and my third book is going to come out soon and I m still plump and eat a lot but Aarav loves me the same. Aarav is still walking around with camera and is working for a start up now. He has a lot of time in his hand to follow his passion, but I don't let him follow random girls anymore! My mom and dad are happy and Aarav's parents are also happy. Life is beautiful - no matter what, no matter where you are in life, Life will be good. Life will be beautiful. Life will give you love. It is just that when it comes knocking, just let it flow through you. It will change you for the good like how it changed me!!!! **Note- Though Ananya has a lot of traits like me, this is purely fictional. No part of this has happened, ever!!!!**