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last saturday, we held a small birthday celebration for our boy rauf as he turned one year old. it was a momentuous event to mark the year that has passed; and boy do babies grow up so fast!

on sunday, rauf took uncertain but confident first steps, letting go of furniture and stepping until he stumbled and fell to the ground. before too long, he’ll be running, insya’Allah.

being hassle-free people, my wife and i are super relieved that the birthday party is over, all the planning and execution is behind us and now we can go back to our hassle-free lives, left to our own devices, just the 3 of us.

My mom and aunt are headed to Cyprus later this month. And I think my in-laws are somewhere in Morocco if I’m not wrong. How I absolutely envy them.

Tim Ferriss’ call to arms for lifestyle design, where one does not scrimp and save for a lavish retirement, but rather to enjoy and indulge oneself during one’s prime, is a very enticing notion.

And yet here I am, stuck in the office from 9-6 (not that I can really complain, when it is my own enterprise that chains me down) and not off gallivanting through Cyprus and Morocco.

Oh well, a few more years of this race with the rats and then I’ll get my travel gear together.

hansiong’s comment to the previous entry provokes further thought and soul-searching. i asked if there was a point for me to mull over the question, if tugging at the visible part of the question would uncover its root, if i was prepared to tug hard enough and long enough, and if yes i was prepared, then what would i do with the results of my digging?

i believe that in the last few years, i’ve made a shift in my personality, perhaps most obvious to myself. i have moved away from the romantic idealist character that i once was and now become a number-crunching entrepreneur always besotted with the bottomline. this shift unnerves me. once i was content to sit around and soul-search the whole day away, to mull over issues, to pen down thoughts, to craft words and rhymes. once i did all that.

now i have become ensconced in the very practical world of business, through my own doing of course. perhaps at some point, i just got tired of this whole struggling artist persona, that to be creative is to be equated with not being remunerated proportionately, that the creative soul must always be at odds with ‘the system’.

there was a brief period in between the creative personae and the moneymaking personae. this period was the intellectual personae, when i was doing my degree and i needed to put on another hat, to think and reflect and study and argue and research and deduce. i briefly enjoyed that period. but at the end of it all, once the degree scroll was in my hands, i had to return to the reality of making ends meet to run a family.

and well, i have digressed too far.

stigmas and stereotypes engulf the minority that i am familiar with. some cause us to be self-effacing and retreat from points where we fear to be struck from, some cause us to indulge in our own personal rebellions. and yet there they are.

what is my question again?

i was just thinking how, even if i am aware of these stigmas and stereotypes, i am not one of the people who will rally up a movement to quell these stigmas and stereotypes. once i used to be composed of such material (to lead such a charge), but of late i am moving further and further away from what i was.

i had a call from hansiong the other morning, all the way from ny. he was asking for some input on a paper that he was researching about. he asked, as a minority, if i noticed that there were social stigmas as i was growing up that would cause us minorities to think that it was the norm and acceptable for us to perform under average academically.

i tried to dispel the notion of such stigmas existing or causing such a mindset, trying to distil other possible causes, such as family background, income, etc.

hansiong and i chatted for awhile, but i had some pressing tasks to handle, and he promised to call on me again in a couple of days, to mull it over and discuss it with others.

i brought up the issue with my wife later that same day, the thought of it having hovered in the back of my mind all the while.

‘is there such a stigma?’ i asked.

‘where do you want to begin?’ she replied, and i finally laid to rest my defenses, for indeed the question is, where to begin? how do you get to the root of it?

and even if you do summon the effort to start digging and questioning, what then? what can you do at an individual level? what can you do at a community level? are you happy just to saunter along ignorantly in blind bliss, or would you rather be filled with discontent and restless for change?

i’ve finally shed my skin of shantaram. you know how it’s like when you find yourself ensnared in the hold of a whopping 900 over page book, and you are defenseless, lugging around this bulk with you all over the place, while foodcourt aunties throw you dirty glances. but i finally did it. good read, very satisfying.

the author has a penchant for melodrama, and i’m sure when the movie comes out, it’d be a powerhouse mix of hollywood and bollywood. word on the grapevine is that depp’s got the role of the protagonist, and that’s enough to get me in that cinema bucket seat for 3 hours or more. i just hope the studio’s not gonna be greedy enough to make it into a trilogy or something.

i’ve also been thinking about Lin’s fixation with Khaderbhai as his father-figure. in the story, he has some repressed bitterness towards his real father, (never really did go much into why or what), but latched onto Khaderbhai, the Mumbai mafia don, as the father-figure, who he followed into Afghanistan to wage war.

As I read deeper into the book, and as normally happens when you’re entrapped within the world of one book, I started drawing parallels with my life, unknowingly, and perhaps subconsciously.

This afternoon, while I was at the mosque, I ran into my mom’s friend, a business acquaintance, Uncle Deen. He is a well-to-do businessman, a self-made man, a good family man, and in my opinion, a honorable figure. In the instance I saw him, I realised that all along, as I’ve been reading Shantaram, my mind’s eye had latched onto his image as the substitute for Khader Khan. It’s so uncanny. He is how I had envision Khaderbhai to be.

So bizarre.

these past few days, rauf has picked up the artform of clapping with his palms wide open. as always, he is enthralled by loud noises that he is able to directly make, so clapping is his new thang.

We all need some quiet time; those few minutes stolen out of the hectic pace of our daily lives, and I’ve learnt to unearth this quiet time in the moments when all is silent and dark. As he lays atop me with his head nestled on my chest and his fingers on my cheek, his heart thumping against mine, the seconds and the minutes crash into and against each other, time warps a little.

I whisper my prayer, as he slips deeper into his sleep, I murmur my dreams and hopes for this little boy, That he will grow to become responsible and dutiful, loving and beloved, humble and hardworking, etc. Not for riches or fame, but for pride in the pursuit of a dignified life.

And as I pray, I realise that my prayer outlines not only who I wish him to grow to become, but it is a prayer to instil the very attributes in myself. That the father has to aspire to the heights he sets for the son, so that the shadow I cast will beckon him forth into the path of the Light.

Perhaps one day we might not be so fortunate as to share in this quiet time together, but for now this is what we have, this is what I treasure. In the dark cool night, with the rising and falling of our chests, like waves lapping against the sand, his eyelashes flutter against consciousness, like migrating birds sweeping into the thinning horizon.

I opened the letterbox today and received a letter marked with ‘GST Offset Package’.

Before I could stop myself, I was remarking loudly: “Oh man, can they stop giving me money already? Everytime, give give give….think money grow on trees, issit?”

1. This is supposed to be top secret, but apparently I’ve put on quite a bit of weight in the past year. However, I still hold on to the belief that under all that flab, there’s a set of rock-hard 6-pack abs. Which explains why after all these years, I can still do 40+ sit-ups in a minute without breaking a sweat.

2. I’ve had some fantastic friends at certain phases of my life and they are: Jasmin, Ezaad, Hansiong. Current BFF is still my wife, since we first met in poly days. Sometimes, the chemistry btw 2 ppl just rocks.

3. I was a teenage Bollywood hunk.

4. I am a 5-times published author across 3 different continents. (my sisters are tired of hearing this, of course…)

5. I believe Enrique removed his mole so that people will stop confusing him for me.

6. I was a teenage MJ junkie. I still believe he is innocent. Maybe deluded, but innocent.

7. I wish I was A-kon. (possessing ability to drum out any song and still make it a hit)

8. I wish I was Kanye. (self-deluded and think I am all ‘that’ and then some)

9. I value freedom over money. However, money can buy freedom.

10. Some people I love. Some people I tolerate. Some people I detest. In a way, I have left the idealism of my idyllic childhood and allowed myself to categorize people. I don’t have to love everyone, y’know, and I don’t have to be loved by everyone too.

11. I have learnt to forgive my father. “The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.” - Gandhi.

12. I hate hate hate people who cannot wait to let other people leave the elevator before rushing in. You can take the bumpkin out of the country, but you cannot take the country out of the bumpkin.

13. I wish I was one of the Ocean’s Eleven, er, Twelve, er, Thirteen, er, Fourteen…

14. I believe when I am old I will slow down and chill.

15. I am not interested to get involved in racial politics, stereotypes, generalizations. We are the sum of our own actions and deeds.

16. I am Mr Podah. (don’t ask)

17. I am Fallenangel. (don’t ask)

18. I would like to try stand up comedy some day. Or maybe I might already have, without knowing it.

19. I would like to write a screenplay some day.

20. I think all that is good in me is now in Rauf.

21. I wish my cousins would start getting married already!

22. I wish more of my relatives would embrace Islam with their hearts and not just on their ICs.

23. I can’t believe I just wrote that last one down.

24. I am conscious that I mustn’t think I am overly important in the grand scheme of things.

25. I have found true love and have been holding on to it for the past 10 years. (And isn’t that the best thing to have?)

I spent the whole of the day attending a briefing. Thought that it would only be half a day, but it dragged till 4pm. Oh well, it is nothing unexpected of course, thanks to all the technical glitches that almost always occur. The efficient people attempting to run the show somehow always find a way to keep the masses at bay, without even offering an explanation as to what the hell is going (or not going) on. So everyone is contented to just sit around, exchanging news and talking rooster, wasting their whole day away, a la a day-long siesta.

Where else would you get such a good deal? All your meals taken care off, you don’t have to do anything except drag your feet from one spot to another, and then spend 2-3 hours idling around waiting for the next set of instructions.

Oh wait. Prison.