Where it all began...

Catching your thought is the greatest spiritual discipline. Spirituality stems from self realization, from first hand experiences and not from quotes and narratives of scriptures. Just performed my morning  or ajr prayer and am now listening to a Ravi Shankar raga on You Tube while writing this entry. The sunrise is happening outside my window illuminating the distant horizon of haze overed cityscape of Georgetown, Penang. What s a 'raga?', it sounds like someone is tuning up the sitar and building up into what is hoped into an awesome musical composition after half an hour later or it could sound like someone whining away about some unsettled business and slowly gathering momentum to higher level accompanied by the vinar and the tabla; it is one of the highest form of meditative music.

This is how my morning begins, a cup of coffee and a bowl of quaker oats and I am on the lap top prying my mind to let itself come out and play. Fed the cat and did the dishes from the night before and most probably will get up from time to time to sweep the floor and do the laundry as the morning progresses. All in good time and accordingly, no hurry and no planning but just doing one thing at a time as i feel like doing. It is Friday and so at the back of my mind I know that I will go to the mosque by noon to perform my obligatory Friday prayer, this is the closest to any indication of planning in my schedule of no schedule; even then it might not happen if i decide to take a morning nap instead. Even as I am reflecting these mundane thoughts, my mind is insisting that i compare my 'waste of precious time in these moment' to how my two remaining elder brothers are most probably occupying their time wisely and productively at their homes in the East Coast. My seldest is most probably already out and about in his garden and my twin brother is on his way to his cattle farm; I should feel guilt no doubt for not having such fulfilling activities to my schedule.

This is how my mind works and has been doing so for the most part of my adult life, comparing and measuring up to my two elder brothers for no apparent reason but to cut myself down.They are there almost at every activity I undertake, if i paint, my twin brother is constantly looking over my shoulder and making negative comments to his wife about how inferior my works are to his wife; they are both great artists. If i am writing, my eldest brother who was at one time my English secondary school teacher comes hovering over my shoulder with the frown of sad disdain on his face that makes me cringe everytime i look at him. Yes, i have been avoiding confronting these two petty tyrants that have been haunting my mind for the most part of my life and for the most part have been the reason i have removed myself from anywhere near them as much as i could to the point of leaving my home and country to seek my own fortune elsewhere far away.

These are the demons in my closet that have been making me feel like nothing I do in this life can amount to any good and which has contributed to my very low self esteem throughout my life. This morning for no apparent reason and out of the blue the dam has broken and the sewage is let loose, God have mercy on them and me. I am unshackling myself once and for all from this bondage that started from the day i was readopted into my own family after haing been raised for twelve years of my life by my uncle in Penang from the day I was born. After  years of looking deeply and thoroughly into the matter i must say i can only blame my own father for this, his negligence of duty as a father has led to my family's decadence; my father was a drunk all the time I had known him and the best memory I have of him is the smell of his drunkenness. My eldest brother has his favorite story to tell of our father, how he watched one evening our father on his way home had stood and peed along the roadside and this had shamed my brother to no end.

The question that i have asked myself all these years as to why was my father a drunk has  been answered at least for me and that being; my mother. my mother was as much as i hate myself to say this was a bitch. She was the most strikingly beautiful lady to look at when she was young and it made me proud to walk beside her to the Hindi movies when I was a child but my mother never loved my father; I felt this and later i knew this. My parents were brought together through a forced marriage by my grandfather who wanted to have a Ceylonese or Sri lankan like him for a son in law and it was a bad mismarriage if there ever was one. How do I know all these? My mother's elder sister, my auntie who was the midwife who delivered my twin and I was my source of information on matters concerning my immediate family. In all my years of living with my parents and the rest of my siblings, after being taken back into the family, I never saw a single moment of true love and devotion between my parents that I can cherish as a child; never!

Yes, we all have our excuses and our blames for how we have evolved to become who we are and more often than not we chose to hide our shame and in the name of decency and fear try to hide what we most abhor about who we are. My birth was mistake according to my auntie even from the beginning as she was not expecting another child after my twin brother was delivered, 
" You almost drowned in your mother's blood had i not realized that you were in there!" Perhaps it would been more merciful if i had been, i always thought to myself.
" Your mother hated being pregnant and having more children and then you have to come and it made it too much for her to accept you." Yes, I felt this even as i was growing up in Terengganu in all my teen years, as hard as i try to remember i had never heard a kind or gentle words from my mother that would touch my heart till today; never. There was a moment when my eldest brother slapped me so hard that i almost slammed to the floor but for the nob at the bottom of the stairs that caught my arm and my mother watched this and for an instant i saw a sense of satisfaction in her eyes that hurt me more than the slap. In my years growing up a teenager in the East Coast, my eldest brother slapped my face three times and he was a body builder and athlete and disciplinary master at my school; he was also my English teacher; how i hated school! I realize that i most probably well deserved these punishments but I also realize that they were delivered out of anger and hatred more so than to teach me a lesson in life. I ran away from home twice and headed back to Penang on my own, hitchhiking. Till this day I still find it hard to forgive my eldest brother for the pain and humiliation he had caused me, try as i may.

Don't get me wrong, i love my eldest brother. He has been there when i needed them especially for my care and wellbeing growing up, an added burden though i was to his meagre budget as a school teacher, he was responsible for the family's survival and for this I am forever indebted to him like it or not; I say this because he had a choice of not taking me back into the family and i would have been well off with my uncle in Penang.The only fault with being raised by my uncle was that i was being raised as a Buddhist while the rest of the family had converted to islam! Not out of love or blood ties, but religion! To save face and perhaps my soul from damnation being a Buddhist; i hated being converted to Islam by force and my having no say whatsoever in the matter. No one thought much f it in those years especially my eldest brother who figured he was doing the right thing and that I was incapable of  any understanding of what was going on. There was a moment in the middle of the night as i was sitting and crying by myself on the verandah of our house because of the pain in my crotch that was covered with sores of herpes and in anguish and frustration I raised my fist to the sky and cursed God for my life, ( the middle finger wa not in style those days.), but i did say fuck you! The more painful thing was I had no one to turn to to share my pain or at least find a cure; I hated being alive.

Oh yes, there are many many more mini dramas or real major ones that I cannot share here but suffice to say I lived a living hell at home among my siblings so much so that i stayed away from home every chance i got. When my mother passed away I was away from home in Penang and my eldest brother called me at work and told me the news and he told me that my mother had asked him to tell me that she forgave me and that according to my brother i need not return for the funeral for obvious reasons of work and travel and so forth. ut my mother's younger sister, my auntie insisted that she and I make the trip to the east Coast and we did. I never got to see my mother as she was laid to rest in the ground already and so i visited her grave and that was the first and last time i did so.

I am beyond hating anyone especially not my parents nor my siblings; it is not worth my time nor my well being, but i have been carrying this rap like the herpes that infest my crotch as a teenager for far too long and it is time to let it all go. I saw my eldest brother a week or so ago when i visited the East Coast and he seemed more friendly this time although I still barely was able to say more than, hi, how are you, much less  let him know how I truly feel about him. It was okay, I touched base with him as is mandated in Islam that I must not severe a blood relationship no matter what. I was not able to visit my twin as he was unavailable then but that too was fine; some bad blood are best left as such.