Waking up is so hard to do.

So, last night, I listened to an audio titled Miracle Morning. And because it was the last thing I happened to do, it was ringing in my ear all night, so to speak.
I woke up late, almost missing my son going to school. There is never enough sleep in my night for me, yet this morning a lingering thought was following me, unsettling me.
Like the heavy smell of the skunk long after it has gone, it seemed to me to follow me, steaming up from my morning mad hair curls.
All the 'chores', all the 'stuff' that is an automatic routine that I was doing just to begin my day, spoke to me in silent rebuke. I could have done all these things in the wee hours of the morning and begun my day at an hour that would leave me plenty of time in the day to do the more and more I want to - not the need to - do.
So, from tomorrow, I will succumb to my guilt and wake up at 5:00 am.
I am excited, because I already have made plans for what I will catch up on with so much more time in my hands at the end of the day.
Thank you.

I did not walk away, I just walked.

Last night, when we started our walk, I angrily brought up the fact that you do not do anything that I ask you to do at the time when I ask you, and that you will only do it, eventually - after several reminders, or that I, in needing that thing done, will just go and do it for myself, rather than face asking you over and over - which I have told you already several times - further fixes my belief that I am not really important to you.

So, last night, (it was a nice moonlit night) right at our doorstep, just as we were about to step out, instead of leaving all my angst on hold for a while and just go out and enjoy walking with you, I brought up the tree branch that I had asked you to prune for me almost a month ago. And of course, it ended up by me asking how come when I say something it is just not important enough to be done, yet when you ask for something, I do it immediately.

And then, thinking I had had my say, we began walking, but in a couple of steps I felt the loneliness crush down upon me as if a meteorite from the sky had dropped down and hit me, because I heard you release your breath and you started walking with the stance as if I had just bullied you. As if I was asking you to do a horrible deed, and not something that will make our life better for us.

I do not want to waste another living second being angry at you because you are perfectly and exactly what I want. For the rest of my life, I want to drop back and enjoy myself and you know this, because I have told you this over and over. Yet, here I am, knowing what I want for the rest of my life, being where I want to be and doing whatever I want to do, even to the man with whom I want to share my life with - you -, yet feeling like you do not want to be that man, or that you do not think it is important for you to be that man.

I know I get upset when things do not work out the way I want them to, and for this I know that I will go to the ends of the world to get what I want, not only for myself but also and more so for you.  Yet, you see me upset and you keep quiet, as if it is ok with you that I am, even though you know,  because I have told you this so many times, that the only sound my ears ache for when I flounder, is the sound of your voice and for that you need not go to any length of the world, you just need to say something, and not small talk, like you do, but something that will change the situation for me and become a moment that will be one of many moments that defines us, not this disconnect that is us.

Yesterday, last night, I was angry at myself for wanting you so much to be my man, or even to be just a friend. In the day, I had to ask you to fix it for me when our daughter was raging at me. I wish I did not need to ever ask you to do the simple things that makes you mine and me yours. And at night, at the tree-branch outburst, I was hurt that you did know how to be my man, nor my friend, and that your worries that I would shoot you down with my words were more prevalent than for you to simply soothe me by saying something meaningful, even if it was to say that you do not know what to say.

I told you I needed to walk alone, and I turned and walked in the opposite direction. I needed to seperate myself from you to find myself again, because I was lost badly in you, and at that time, in that moment, I had lost even the fragrance of myself, so far gone to even remember that I am more than a needy and whining type, that I am a cherished woman, and that I do not need you to sedate me with a few words from your mouth, nor should I crave for the words that you do not say. So that I do not need to tell you, my friend, that the reason was that I had had a horrible day was because my child called me names, and otherwise I had no satisfaction of being alive and being a non-contributor to our world, and that innocent tree branch need not become my outlet for whether you did or did not stand up for me, or that I felt alone and that is why I lost control over my feelings.  I can take a hundred such walks to adjust my emotions but it doesn't recreate my realities and I will only be happy when I drop my addiction to you so that I can handle my life and deal with it on my terms and on my time.

Be it as it may, that my problem was minuscule in the face of the many problems of the world, it is my problem and you are my man and you can at least hold me and make my tiny crack heal instead of breaking my heart with your stupidity at not seeing your not doing anything as a collapse of us.

I had to leave you standing on the driveway so that I could somehow trigger myself to love myself first, and not to depend on another's love. And to not be hurt that you do not see yourself as my sounding-board, therefore you do not ask me why I am upset, that it could not possibly be about that tree branch and that something else was the cause, and for you to want to know what it was and to help me through it. So I walked on my own and felt much better, and I looked up at the sparkling night sky to find the gap where the meteorite had been, but there was only magnitude and I felt the connection to the greater thing we all are part of until the reason that I turned away from you became irrelevant and that terrible silence that settled over you after that desperate sigh you emitted felt like it happened to another life-form in another time, that I know will happen again because that sigh meant that we were on that same old path again, and that no matter how many times I tell you, that I am not going that way, you seem to .... I do not know what you seem to want to do other than to run on the same rutted tracks we've made of our life.

Breathing in by the moment

Finding the joy in my own moments, resting in my own company. In nature. Just breathing.
Tasnim Jivaji
July 24th, 2018

fat lady sings

goodnight my sweet girl

i am taking this show off the road

the fat lady is singing

now

First week of 2011 - Listen to your heart. It beats faster when it is telling you something important, and it sinks when you don't listen.

Resolutions are already broken, people are walking around already like chicken, or sheep, one chasing the brightest not knowing its just got an itch in its leg. Cause they have no staying power with their own lives, their goals don't matter.

Have a feeling this year is going to run by faster than last year. Doesn't it always?

Who knows anything any better than they did last year? People forget.

The Pharma companies already want their bonus, and are sending out their hue and cry for us to take that flu shot, funny how the Government keeps paying for them rather than using the funds or part of to find out whether its a farce or not. Big companies would be no where without the Government.

Imagine drawing up a business plan for that business you always wanted to open and say, will cook up something that will scare the population, send it to the laymen in Government with a stalker lobbyist to chase it, and finally get the Government to finance my life forever! What is happening can happen again, try it.

The homeless guy got a great job because he was at the right place at the right time. Who would have ever thought that the place where he was, was ever the right place. I bet you drivers were passing him by everyday and saying bad things about him. Well, baby, look who's laughing now!

I love this life!

Week Six 2011- I cannot dredge the same lake over and over. I cannot be swept away by the same river. I cannot tumble forever down the same waterfall. I cannot be quenched by drinking again and again by the same drop. I want to evaporate and float back to the stardust from where I came and never ever drop down to Earth again.

Too much seriousness. Too much intensity. Too much. I can not do it anymore.

I am running towards being 50 soon. I do not presume that I might reach it. I made it to here. But if there is a future, I want to live in day tight compartments never again. I want to live in seconds, in moments, in breaths. In now.

I used to think that planning my day, planning my week, planning the month was a good method. But I didn't make time for myself in that grid. Thought I was living, doing the things that life planted within me to do and that was my role. But I am lacking today, lost in a maze. Daughter, Wife, Mother, every role else that I never planned  to be fits me except being Tasnim.

And now even I have forgotten who she is, Tasnim; she is lost. Lost in a dust storm. 

Life is a desert, we go from caravan to oasis, tree to well, dune to horizon, remembering the obstacles and enemies on the way to refreshments and friends. Chasing mirages and finding miracles. The desert takes us, colours our skin, hardens the soul and places sand within us in places no sand should be. I kicked up so much dust forging a path no one else could ever have chosed. Fought battles not a soul would understand. Etched out such a story what no one deciphered. And I am standing here alone, a winner, kept her family together, everyone's here, playing their part.  Grumpy victims winners.

My life became from Stardust. No one saw me coalesce from the Cosmos to this form. And yet it is this dust that I spend all my life in my daily ways to clean away, washing and sweeping, rinsing and repeating. Dust which never settles but which will become of me soon enough one day. 

But today, now, I wish I could have done what Siddhartha Gautama chose. Shunned the chores of the world and faced the reality of my self and taken it easy and found one day at a time a cherished gift, a wonderful embodiment of peace and calm and warmth. I could have been tranquil and satisfied with just me and marvelled at the spirit of well-being embalming me.

But, I'm the mother. The one job, the only job.  The truth is, parents do what they have to do to make you, the child who you should be, and care not for what their children think of that. It is done and that is that, one day rolls into the next turning into a lifetime, my legacy; monster of a mother. 

Parents they want more and more that children will bow and bend because of what they did. I do this too. Well,  the truth is, children do not care what a mother did. No child loves the mother for the sacrifices she made. They do not even want to know, to tell the truth, they do not even believe all the things a parent has done. Until the the robe floats down upon them and they have to play the part, and then, they will vow in your face to do it totally differently.

A wife, I am. The truth is, no husband wants half of what a wife does for him. He wants what he wants and sometimes doesn't even tell what it is he really wants, because he too is up to his ears with other's wants, exhausted  by the chores, the toil that comes as he plays his part and never gets a chance to know what he truly wants, eh, hey who knows?

And that leaves me, ok ..ok who? Who me?

Week 45 - Who made me ?

‎22 years, I see you and I know where it all went.
Would I do it any other way?
Yes, I would ... I would slow time down.
You are more than I was at 22.
I am more now than I ever would be because of you.
You are my legacy. God, what an awesome seed upon whom I grow!
Happy Birthday, Fatema!
 
So here I am, inching to the end of the year and finding myself lost in my own-made warp. But there is another magnet that makes the warp and it goes haywire. I am grounded here because you made me the warping, mangled, funky, Hobbit - who feels like a hundred carat gleaming diamond !

Poor Weather

I feel sorry for the weather. God created the Earth and it is the weather, and only the weather, that we have life on this gorgeous planet. And the whole living and nonliving world glory in each day that the Sun rises and puts on the panorama of weather for us so that we can go about on our prowls. All except the human race. The one race that the creator bestowed the duty to praise and be grateful, begin the day by admonishing the weather. Shame on ye who learnt that dirty habit and double shame for teaching it to the next generation. Ancient civilisations would awaken to worship the weather and this civilization awakens to choke it with criticism. That's sickening the world day in day out. No wonder no one today cares what we do to our climate. And look what that's done for us.
March 26th, 2018

Typewriter

Typewriter 

I had one back home

a Remington, it weighted a ton

grey, not as temperamental

as my laptop, I'm sentimental

Then, one day I found one, on a driveway

A red coloured possible stowaway 

Logo was gone, and so were some keys

I'd take her home, give her a new lease 

But pause, my son was with me

And he asked, as only his ten years see

Mom, who picks up a dinosaur off the street?

O! Son, who throws away a machine that makes life sweet?

We left her there

I turned, a final stare

And a dog came sniffing

I shivered, seeing his hind leg lifting.

Tasnim Jivaji 

Oct, 17 2023

Questy

Each and every human being is born with a Quest - our Quest makes us get up and step up and do something that needs attention, creates conversation, begins understanding, fastens a gaze, awakens the diaspora, digs into beliefs, evaporates fear, nudges the assumption, deepens connection, draws blood, makes tears frightens the status quo, shakes us into laughter, brings hope, shrug obstacles, instigate folklore, lights the world and changes everything!
April 18th, 2018

Intact me

It's about wanting my attention and how much of me I'm willing to give away.
Tasnim Jivaji
July 25th, 2018

Oh Monday!

People wake up everyday to ask about the meaning of life and for the reason they were born. Why is it that Man is different from all other lifeforms? Animals might ask, "What's it like to be born just like everyone else, but to have a higher purpose than just to be food, like those Humans?" Here's a great answer to an everyday question.

Quote
For this is the journey that men make: to find themselves. If they fail to do this, it doesn’t matter much what else they find.
—James Michener
Unquote

So what is it about the beginning of the day that spurs you into asking such a heavy question? It's because at that time while your body awakens there's that someone inside you that's hoping to be woken up too. It takes a disaster to jolt a person living in momentum to pay attention to one's core. Be impatient, just respond when you're asked whether this is the life you want to live.

Flabergasted

Flabbergasted? That is how you feel, America? You know the saying, 'everything has a reason'? This is the one time to believe this. You know why, America? Because the woman who had to come to power needed to know the real truth of the pudding. The truth of the pudding is in the eating? She needed to see the grandiose facade lifted and view the reality openly, because it is hidden in cyber bullying, hidden in the blood that is shed in your schools, hidden in your houses, hidden on the social dinner table and hidden in the most unquestionable people. How else would a woman govern this place with all these dark corners and blind spots?

Clinton is a woman who swam among these comrades, and her persona gave off that air of 'I know this mess that men created. I know what this country needs because I have done this long enough and I know, like no one else knows'. We all fell for that, didn't we? In hindsight, America, the woman who was to come to power was supposed to know this, because intuition is a Leadership gift that women own.

Leadership, is now not in the White House, you say? And you are right! Because Leadership has moved addresses, and it is now living in your house.  So if you want to meet your Leader, you must look at the man in the mirror, and this is precisely where your Leadership was heading, and where it should be. So do not panic, nothing drastic has happened, because this is how it had to be. As if you did not know this when they started feeding you tainted meat in your burgers, or when a lifestyle of growing your own vegetables and having a chicken laying you eggs became a taboo for your home, and now you eat food that is carcinogen and chicken farms are concentration camps, and when the water in your streams became non potable.|As if you did not know this when they sent your children to hell and then shunned them on their return, instead of decorating every Veteran with a life worth living, or when the school-going children never learned to play equally in fun, and who made these angry teenagers who are interested only in their phones, and when they made the only place God's name acceptable is the word on your currency and nowhere else. Oh! and as if you did not know this when you see no hue and cry about huge pay-cheques for an entitled few, or when Americans die just because the greatest country in the world has no medical aid for her own people.

Now you, you have to be purely present with whoever you next to right now, no matter how much of a stranger they are. You must now be unconditionally compassionate, as you are with your own children. Live the village-like way and construct your moments with these 'Four Agreements' so that one by one, you practice being impeccable with your words, and not take things personally, making no assumptions and showing up in your best self.

The time has come for individuals to set the pace by lighting people's fire that lies smoldering within and that is to make people to take up their natural talents which will set them free from the limitations set by unknown forces - forces that seem bigotted and untrustworthy. We individually have to lead people away from sinking deeper in their despair by looking in their eyes and letting them know that you see them, and that they are similarly loved.

We humans are deadly because of our intelligence. It is easy to see in movies, how a room full of people will quickly turn into the most vicious beings when something changes the peaceful environment of that place. This is true for what is happening now. The peace has been disturbed in the greatest nation on Earth. Will the greatest behave itself like it is great, or will it still think that the brute is the force to be reckoned with and continue that way? The hornet's nest is not a thing to kick, you know? The U.S of A needs little doses of niceties happening in little places everywhere for the butterfly effect to really show. When a big tree is sick, you never see it, but the little ants and the tiniest creatures take the Leadership role to cleanse the giant and make it well again. 

Morning Walk

Walk With Me

What are you waiting for?

When I look at Hillary Clinton's face nowadays, I see a woman who has risen against the odds and the mindlessness that women face everyday. She is within reach to make a huge difference for her people and her country that she has willingly and passionately spent her life to serve. Hillary chooses, in the dawn's early light, to go everyday to work with men in the treacherous political field!

When I look at Hillary Clinton's face nowadays, I see a woman who has trudged through the trenches in a Man's world and has arrived over the ramparts ready, gallantly to serve. I see a woman facing a man who has no values nor valour, one who audaciously barks at a woman; a woman who has already triumphed over the disrespect in men's red glare. His words are obnoxious sounds bursting in the air.

When I look at Hillary Clinton's face nowadays, I see a woman who looks at her opponent shaking her head at the cliche that she ended up against this one, and where the hell are all her adversaries hiding? Does she know too much about them or did she defeat all of them, or are they saying at this point, that she is the right one to do this job? She knows all the history and the background of the web they wove: who the smoking guns are, which is the wild-goose chase and about the skeleton closets, and now she, and only she, can take this Pandora's Box and deal with it. Her opponent is himself a hornet's nest, wielding a confusing can of worms, juggling red herrings, and he is about to take the broad stripes and bright stars, through a perilous fight.

When I look at Hillary Clinton's face nowadays, I see a woman who is battling through these days and nights just so that that flag is still there and it does yet wave intact in one piece. Her foe's haughty stance is to punch gaping holes in that flag by removing law-abiding and hardworking people who form the tapestry of her country. He wants to send them off in an exodus, away from the land of the free. Donald Trump, when you tire of innocent human beings and in one instant turn them into huddled poor masses - just because they came to the USA yearning to breathe free - and you make them the wretched refuse of your own teeming shore, sweeping them away as if they are homeless and tempest-tossed, then you shame the Braves of the Americas with the history you smear on their land here - would you understand this?

When I look at Hillary Clinton's face nowadays, I see the faces of women in America who are a leadership power-force today. They take control where they can and are making groundbreaking changes, overcoming obstacles and overturning crippling man-made rules. And even though there are those who are busy pussyfooting around,whining over trifles, and cowering under the minor pressures of this world, I see the faces of the women who are really drowning, living in whirlwinds that make life too difficult to even wake up to in the morning. These are the women who truly need to ask what their country can do for them. They need this trailblazer fellow American woman in the White House who will at least understand who they are in the grand scheme of things, just because a woman will know what women want and will say so, proudly, 'we' hailed at this election.

When I see Hillary Clinton's face nowadays, I see a woman beaming to be the first Madam President of the United States of America for every girl to never half conceal, half disclose, from now onward, and that she can in full glory catch the gleam of her shinning dreams.

When I see Hillary Clinton's face nowadays, I see a warrior who has seen the havoc of war, the battle's confusion, the powers of pollution and the slaves of greed. She has seen walls going up and seen these walls coming down.

When I see Hillary Clinton's face nowadays, I wonder, what it is that Americans are waiting for? Because I see Americans take the freemen stand in a gloom of desolation, too blessed with victory and so lulled by the breeze of peace to know when to rescue their land and to know that day is here.

When I see Hillary Clinton's face nowadays, I wonder, what is America waiting for? When I see them praise a power which they must in fact conquer to preserve them as a nation and that they must do that now.

When I see Hillary Clinton's face nowadays, I wonder, what is the American woman waiting for? She can distinguish between the foul footsteps of a man and the footsteps of a woman with her power-suit sleeves rolled up, and ready to get to work, can't she? She can point to that Hillary Clinton as the trending face to follow, bearing their star-spangled banner, with that triumphant wave of their vote to show that they are free and just so brave in their home, can't she?

When I see Hillary Clinton's face nowadays, I wonder if she wonders, if her People of America in God so trust, will lean in and show up with her for America's just cause.

Tasnim Jivaji
November 1st,2016

Folders

'They' say the best  way to clear your email inbox is to create folders and dump emails to their relevant folders.

Wrong!

In the past five years, I have been doing exactly that. Yes, it helps to store these emails in their respective boxes AFTER I have read them and decided what to do with them. However, channeling the emails into folders to read later, or to deal with at the time when they will be needed is, in my experience, the worst thing to do! Because I should have read them and deleted them a long time ago. Some of the emails have embedded videos which are not even available when I finally get to them.

So - the month of May is get rid of the damn-folders-in-my-email-account month for me.

Yo'll will be happy to note the first folder I have to address is titled John Assaraf, and it is full of his drip content john Assaraf, yes himself, dripped on me just because I signed up for a Neurogym experience! Truly,I have folders that will make any organised person proud of me - that is how detailed my folders system is. So let me tell you how I will address the content in the John Assaraf folder - I will be clicking on choose all and deleting that entire folder. Yo'll know that will save me more than the 8 hours I spent on on the Neurogym experience. So, here goes - unsubscribe, choose all, delete and delete folder. All in under one minute!

The best thing that Yahoo Mail has come up with, in my opinion, is the prompt on your phone the moment an email comes in, it gives you an option to 'Mark as Read' or to 'Delete'! Yes! Delete ! This keeps my email account in check and I no longer have to go back to read an email I really did not want to read, nor have it festering in my mailbox. So, Bravo! Yahoo Mail. Thank you.

freedom

Hi, my name is Tasnim and I am obsessed by the whale of reading material that is available to me at the library, and I am addicted to reading. I have heard this line; 'Hi, my name is so-and-so and I am addicted to alcohol' spoken so many times in movies and on the TV, that I thought it was meaningless. It did not make me feel like this line can be a powerful line for someone who is in denial about a problem in their life, and mostly it came to me as a lame resolution of a line for someone who is struggling with obsessiveness or an addiction. I never thought I was addicted to anything, least of all that I was addicted to reading. For me, it was always a good thing to be known as an avid reader, and really if there was something I was known for - it was for my reading. I am fifty-three years old and I have loved reading books for all of my life. Recently I heard myself tell someone that the Library staff will realise first if ever I am missing because I go here so often. And then, to my amazement, I heard myself say that line again to someone else who happened to affectionately ask me the innocent question; 'where are you lost?' because we had not seen each other for a few weeks. In that moment, something shifted in my mind and I heard myself reprimand myself inside that thought, as if there was someone else who was living in my head who happened to be a no-nonsense guardian, one who was not going to let idiotic words fly from my skull without reason.

From that fleeting moment onward, I found myself not wanting to go to the library again. I wanted to put a stop to this cycle of events that kept playing over and over in my life. I wanted to stop having that errand of dropping library items and for me to stop the trips to the library for picking up my holds, and I wanted desperately to boot that routine out of my routine. I felt this like a bitterness in my gut for knowing I had this habit and the internal disgusted i felt to see the number of items I had waiting for me each time I went to the library. I found myself feeling embarrassed to have to check so many items out in one go, hating to haul those items home and hating to have so many things in a bag, and I felt my deep feelings that I did so love to read these things, yet they would be taking up so much of my valuable time, and I resented that love. I felt repulsed by that bag full of library items sitting on the floor, even though there were some interesting books and DVDs there, some that I had put on hold and waited for so many months to finally get my hands on. Everyday my revulsion grew until I wanted to burn that bag with all those library items in it and I wanted to shred the library cards and to add the shredded remains of the damn library cards to that fire too. The disdain my family members felt over the years whenever I asked them to go to the library for me came rushing to me in a sad awakening and I felt an acute ache for being so blind to my addiction. They had been telling me this for a good many years, but I never felt it like they saw it.

Today it is April 14th, 2016. I have written this down on my things-to-do-today list. ( That list - that list is next to be booted out of my life! This need to write an entire list of things that I must do each day is going to leave me for good too, and very soon.) I sat down at 10:30 am with only one line on that to-do sheet of paper and this is the one line written on it - Once and for all clear all library items and put only the ones I need in one card so that I never again use any other than my own card. You see, I  use four library cards for my reading needs. Four! I use my own card, my husband's card and my kid's cards and at any given time I have twenty and even thirty items checked out on each card! So, I opened my library account on a browser and on another browser I opened my daughter's account. I took the items on hold on my own account, and put them to the wish list, leaving only one item on the holds page. Then, from my daughter's account, I took the items from the checked-out, the holds and the wish list, and copied and pasted them each, because it can only be done individually one item at a time, I pasted each to my own account's wish list. When her account was empty, I opened my husband's account, and I performed the same exercise of moving things from his account to my account's wish list and when I was finished with his, I did the same for my son's account. By 2:00 pm, I got so fed up that I simply deleted all the remaining items from my son's card and called it a day. I need to stop today and I needed this nonsense to be over today and to have accomplished the feat that all three accounts had to be completely empty. 

If you think this was a quick and easy fix, then you are wrong, because the whole exercise took so much time. For every minute that passed I kept saying to myself that this is the last time that I will ever need to use all these cards and for me to have to tend to all these items on these cards. This time that Me, Myself and I were spending now on this problem, this intervention, was so that we never again spend this time on these library items, will never have all the cards working for me and thereby snuffing out the overwhelming amount of reading material that I will ever need to go through. Ever. Starting today, I will have one DVD and one book, audio or paper per week only.

Would you like to ask me whether I truly read all that stuff? My answer is truthfully 'YES"! I found that when I was not enjoying an audio book because it was read badly or that the story was not interesting then I had to stop listening to it because I did not want to endure it and so I needed at least five or six audio books, per week, ready at hand so that I would have enough audio books to find a good book playing on the CD player in my kitchen. I listened to a book or sometimes two audio books here in my kitchen each week. The pleasure I feel of having a good book playing for me like this is an immense blessing for me. I feel such gratitude that I have the luxury to enjoy this pleasure and that I have the access to the abundance of great books at the library which I freely use. On top of this, I read, physically read, a book each week also. However, for this pleasure, I needed fifteen to twenty books to choose from because I refuse to read a boring book or one that is not written with a great voice or with the beauty of the English Language at heart. I had stopped being shackled to reading books restricted by genre many years ago when I threw open my mind and allowed the awesomeness of any written work to flood into my life. With this came the need to have enough books to have at hand so that when a book disappointed me I at least had another book to feed my hunger for reading.

So today, only after I was done, completely sure that I had banished this madness out of my life and that the only library card I had any items on was my own card, and that only one item on hold, did I get up from my work-station to make myself a cup of tea and to have my lunch. An hour later, I came back to my table here and I feel a very strange sensation raging through my body. Wracking a habit was wrecking me. I have gone through the process of freeing myself from a noose yet I am shaking with a fear-like reaction. I have broken free of my bondage yet my hands are trembling as if am scared. I feel horrible, racing through me is that horrible feeling of dread that you feel when you sense that something really bad is about to happen. My knees are knocking, I kid you not, and my teeth are chattering with stress and I really feel an anxiety to the extent that I can say that I am terrified.

I decided to write how this there and then and to write it as it is happening because I am feeling this as a slave would feel it, realising that slavery is not a restraint that when the chains are open that doesn't mean that the enslaved is really released. The joys of freedom do not just pour into being now that the madness has lifted. Sometimes, the freedom is an execution in itself and the unrestricted is now faced with an unfamiliar and truly frightening reality of becoming one's own master and who knows what this equates to, and that really scares me. 

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mY tIME

I waste the day
lounging in my despair
thinking only of hurt

filling every cell
every second
with ache

Anyone who comes to me
I vent my pent up frustrations
Shouting ugly choking slurs

Basically beastly
Nothing good awakens me
Sinking in a phantom quicksand

I like nothing.
and I hate myself
Into a sickening mood

Sick to the core,
Remorse to the bone
Ugliness through and through

Yet needing so much
Just held tight
and slowed down

What am I to do?
Reach out
Grab the fleeting

Over the self esteem
a dose of less, a touch of more
Peace versus the hole?

To say I lived well
With a half better
Left untouched

Margaret Thatcher and Us

Rarely does a woman come out of the fog and into the limelight looking like she had a makeover, especially if she is doing things that she believes is for the betterment of humankind. Most women who leave their mark look just like they would were they mediocre.

Margaret Thatcher, well she came dressed in a frock, seeing her vision through her sharp pointy eyes, and speaking to the men who ruled the world, with her handbag dangling off her elbow, looking just like any other woman of her time.

She was a woman with the passion and fierceness we all have in us as women. She was one of us, living in our time, experiencing the same growing up phobias as we all do, and she took a step ahead, in a single instance, one foothold at a time, because she needed change and she, she took a stance.

All the negative conversations, those same ones we all battle, inside our heads, inside our homes, inside our places of work, inside the mindset of the whole world, come out in us in doing nothing, came out in her as huge milestones which barraged and ceased the negativity in its tracks. Negativity which changed to awe in the worst of the voices.

I remember seeing her in a photograph taken where she is sitting alone on a sofa in her home leafing through paperwork. I see all of us women, in that photograph, sitting in our sofas, contemplating. Only she was leafing through pages that would manifest the future of our world. And we, what do we do really?

And that picture of her at the door of Number 10, she is waving, as if saying hello to a neighbour, just like we do to our neighbours. Except our chores are not cutting a path to speak for those whose labour turns the wheels of our lives in a world ruthlessly geared to feed greed.

How many family confrontations must she have faced, telling her for her own benefit ofcourse, to stop? How many angry men did she have to turn a deaf ear to so they might listen and hear what she must say? How many jealous women had there been who scorned her for simply doing what we all should be doing? Oh, what was the nonsense and the behind the scenes and the back biting and the sneering and the God- knows- what- else, did she have to ignore rather than endure?

She will be remembered as the Iron Lady. No need for a new word to be coined for what she left on this Earth. She made everything very clear, and she made herself understood. This icon of a woman would not have rusted away had it not been for the nature of things on Earth to perish. May the soil into which she will lay send us her energy and her zeal and ground us to our purpose as she was to hers.

Written By: Tasnim Jivaji

Monday April 8, 2013