Sam

    He made it.          It is a miracle that he did. Standing at the edge of a cliff expressionless but full of emotion is the obscure human. You may or may not know him. It could be the man you pray for or the woman you try to encourage. It could be the woman you detest because of her lack of faith or the man no one seems to understand. It could be your neighbour who you think simply needs to hope or your colleague who you reckon just has to believe. To openly generalise, it is a human who merely reached an inevitable milestone of human life. It could be you. No one is immune to life. That he came thus far is a miracle in the eyes of some but only a prelude to it for others.          Most don’t care.          He has travelled a long way. The memory of his journey is magnified by the depth of the valley inches away from him. He was not there by accident though the set up looks like it. Not just ...

      There is light at the end of the tunnel, it is said. How long the tunnel is, no one said.      Even when he hangs by a thread a person clings to hope.      The incredible tensile strength of the thread in the previous statement makes for a good metaphor for hope. The man is so proud of his super power (more specifically, a mutation) to hope until the metaphor morphs into reality and the thread snaps.      As he falls he spots a figure climbing over the cliff. That figure was also hanging by a thread. That figure also hoped. ‘What was the difference?’ the man asks moments before his head is crushed. ‘Hope doesn’t promise; hope doesn’t deliver. Hope only hopes’ the figure from above replies to the corpse below.      ‘Do not lose hope’ a woman was told once. She wasn’t sure if she had any hope left to lose but she was a human and humans have the tendency to dig out hope fr...

     I don’t like it here. I don’t understand why father brought us to this city when we had our own house and farm in the village. At least we had food there, however little. It has been a week since I saw bread. I forgot the taste of meat. My brother keeps asking my mother for food but where can she get it from? The other day I saw people lying next to the road. They were very still. I wanted to go near and see but father said they were sleeping. My father goes out every day in search of work or any food. Mother and I wait eagerly at the door in the evening. It is water again … for breakfast, lunch and dinner.      Nothing can get worse than this. -Anton Shevchenko Kharkiv, May 12 th , 1933. (An estimated 7.5 million Ukrainians would die in the Famine-Genocide between 1932-1933)             I feel alone most of the day. The only friend I ever had left for America. He asked me to go with him bu...

       Day of Wrath, Day of Hope            I wonder how many Chinese living in Nanking on the eve of the Japanese invasion were clinically depressed and how many had just bought their new house. I wonder how many Poles on the eve of the Nazi invasion were facing such problems in life that they were contemplating suicide and how many girls had just said yes to their lovers. I wonder how many people living in Kolkata on the eve of ‘The Direct Action Day’ were unemployed and hungry and how many had just finally cleared all their debts. I wonder how many families were broken beyond repair in Phnom Penh on the eve of The Khmer Rouge victory and how many had just graduated. I wonder how many Tutsis in Rwanda suffering from terminal illnesses had lost all hope in life on the eve of the 100 day massacre and how many had just received their first Holy Communion.                    ...