The Brave Pedestrian

August 4, 2006: “Yaari hai imaan  Mera yaar meri zindagi…” “My love-friendship is my truth, My lover-friend is my entire life…” At 4 am, I am made awake by this somehow unquiet thought which wants to disturb me, and will not let me sleep. Lyrics have many meanings, and I find that a different lyric, with a distinctive meaning, plays in my head each day, depending on my mood, depending on who I am that day. (Because, my friends, I’m becoming increasingly aware that I awaken as a different person each day.) Today, this morning, this moment, I find myself with the thought that we are, all of us, like scorpions. Tender pulp inside, tough shell outside, and a venomous, lightning-swift stinger. The Pulp Inside We are tender, needy pulp inside, aching with the NEED to make contact with the pulp of others, to crush our pulp together, and see and hear and feel the pulp melt into one. To have sex, to make love, to understand, to be understood, to ...

August 7, 2009: My 13-year-old daughter had a nasty spat with a schoolmate today. Coming home in a bad mood with bite marks on her arm, she changed into her home clothes, and headed for her room, her computer, her personal space on the internet… her blog. Then my wife said something about the exams and told her not to waste her time, and got some kind of angry retort. Offended by the “attitude”, my wife switched off the computer, wiping out a few paragraphs of rant on the blog, and triggering an episode of tearful rage. I heard the shouting match and intervened. All the manuals on parenting advise that at such times, parents must pull together in disciplining the kid. But there’s one problem: I identify more with my daughter and her concerns about privacy and freedom, than I do with my wife and her concerns about propriety and discipline. And so my daughter and I had another one of those long, rambling father-daughter talks that we seem to have every six months or so. Much of w...

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