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Nairobi, KENYA - I have a jigsaw on my wall. It shows two lines of trees in autumn narrowing into a V. The trees are turning from a green to a golden yellow and the floor is carpeted with a mixture of brown and yellow leaves.
A.J. I had never seen autumn. I had only known a mediated experience of it. I had heard about it in books, on television. Seeing it in this picture made it real for me somehow. I could hear the leaves crunching as I walked down the path; feel the fresh breeze rustling through the brittle leaves and fanning my face, lifting the hair off my face.
This year I saw an English autumn. I heard it. I felt it. And I loved it. It instantly became my favourite season. Something about watching the seasons change gradually from day to day, watching the trees shed their leaves and then waking up one morning and finding the earth transformed. The earth carpeted and the sky etched with stark figures. Autumn carries no sorrow for me. Instead I find it comforting to know that even a force as great and eternal as nature, also has its moods and its moments. It too has known the yellowy golden moments of dusk in its existence.
At the end of last year I think I experienced a heartbreak. I have never admitted it and even now am unsure, hesitant to accord the event such an importance in my life. A few days from today I may regret having put the thought on paper and said it to you.
[I have gone through many moments of regret recently, angry with myself for revealing my deepest thoughts to a stranger when I don't even speak them to my closest friends. But in truth you are no longer a stranger to me, having heard so many of the inner whisperings of my heart and mind in the last few years. I have turned to you so often in my moments of distress, that you are closer to me than a friend. No longer a stranger at all. You might even be the kindred spirit that I have been searching for since I was eleven and discovered the term in Anne of Green Gables. Which makes my spontaneous revelations to you harder to look back on. Knowing that I held you at arm's length for so long and yet resolutely you crept in, until you were close enough to hear me breathe. And still I f ought.]In one of my pieces last year, I spoke of someone that I had met with whom I had felt an intense connection. But destiny had different plans for us. Once we had walked different paths. One day our paths crossed. We walk different paths again but every now and then we meet, momentarily.A lot has happened in both of our lives since then, since our first meeting and our last exchange of words. Other people, other events, other moments. And yet there are still times when I want to share a thought with him knowing that he is the only one who would really understand what it is I am trying to say. The moments come and go, as do thoughts of him. And the times when an actual thread of communication is established between us, it takes me a lifetime to forget it.
And so I hate to hear from him since one moment of my joy inevitably means endless, entwined moments of sadness and thought.
In such moments, my enjoyment of autumn and my connection to it is at its strongest. Because autumn visualizes my innermost thoughts. It externalizes my pain. It shows me that even the golden leaves that flutter lifeless to the floor shall return to the branches of the uppermost trees and bathe in sunlight again.
"Laugh and the world laughs with you
Weep and you weep alone
For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth
But has enough sorrows of its own." ("Solitude" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox)This year has been filled with sorrow and sadness for us all.
Tsunami, hurricanes, droughts, floods and earthquakes. Each has claimed its own victims. But the greatest tragedy of them all is the acknowledgement by the media that with the earthquake in Asia, the latest disaster to devastate our planet, the world and its people has had its fill of sorrow. Images of dying children no longer evoke sympathy or financial contributions. We simply switch off the television. We have experienced a glut of disaster, sorrow and need, a surfeit. We are numbed to images of sadness, starvation and death. Our humanity has been tested and found to be lacking.
When the Tsunami hit Asia and only sent moderate waves to the Kenyan coastline, the African continent had an explanation for it. God must have known that Africa has enough sorrow to deal with without an additional disaster. It is already on its knees and a natural disaster on such a scale would only spell its demise.
Dawoodi Bohra Muslims also have an explanation for why the year was filled with disaster. There is a practice in the month of Ramzan whereby -- from the evening of the last Thursday to the second last fast (the day before Eid) in the month -- a special prayer is offered to all the Nabis (prophets) of Islam. It is believed that the greater the number of days when this prayer can be said, the more fruitful and fortunate the year will be. The opposite. it is believed, also holds true.
Out of a maximum of eight Nabi na naam, last year there were only three times the prayer could be offered.
Dawoodi Bohras were concerned, as were many Hindus who had previously witnessed the tenuous link between faith and destiny. As if in preparation of what the year was to hold, a few months after Ramzan ended, the Asian tsunami hit.
With the list of catastrophes and casualties that this year has seen, many looked ahead to this year's Ramzan with trepidation -- earnestly praying that the year would be blessed with many more Nabi na naam and hence greater fortune.
This year, there have been six Nabi na naam.
I have changed my identity many times over since I started writing for this magazine in 2001. You might have noticed that I withdrew one more step further into my cocoon recently when I shortened my name to just my initials. The reason has something to do with the question I asked a few weeks ago. Why it is that you and I are afraid to show emotion to the world?I have struggled with myself over the last few months, in the build up to making the decision and in the months after, in seeking a satisfactory answer. I have realized that however superficial my attempt at anonymity may be, it satisfies a need in me to break the connection between my identity and my writings. It allows me to tell you more, to speak out more. In the context of my previous pieces and the subsequent backlash, this may sound like I am succumbing to societal pressure, repression and constraints. My editor has already conveyed his scathing response. I am not sure if this new step will work but I feel the urge to trust my instincts and to act ... and so I have. I can only hope that good will come of it, for both of us.
[Note: To those of you who wrote in and responded to my question, I thank you for sharing your golden leaves of autumn with me.]
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