So The Plum Tree Volume-2 has gotten its first award. Thank you Chetana.
I would like to leave it at that, but the award says that I should say THREE things I like about myself. I dread this. Who wants to know strange little likey likey details about me anyway? What does it matter to the rest of the world that I like the fact that I get up at 3 am every morning and eat exactly 62 salted peanuts? I hate divulging private details. Reminds me a bit of the lurid testimony services that used to take place on Sunday evenings in the church I used to go to and into which I stumbled into one Sunday long ago, to shelter from the rain. Horrified paralysis kept me from running down the aisle and out of church screaming while one by one, those who wanted to give a testimony crawled forth and told and made their private agonies public: rebellious children, nasty spouses, abortions, suicides, mental distresses, low grades, strange diseases… and how they prayed and God just swooped down like Superman and set everything right.
One of the women, I’ll call her Usha, spoke about how she was diagnosed with Breast Cancer and how she ‘just fasted and prayed’ and was miraculously cured. Her dramatic and tearful testimony was perhaps the most convincing of all. Afterwards the rest of the congregation milled around her and hugged and kissed her while I scooted home.
Subsequently, I mentioned this to a well known doctor also from that church and asked him, ‘so was what she said true?’
He said, ‘you are daft if you believe that! Usha’s cancer was diagnosed at a very early stage and she took all the medication and chemotherapy required to cure it.’
‘Then why did Usha say what she did?’ I asked indignantly, ‘and so movingly and poignantly too!’
The Doc looked me directly in the eye, ‘she did it for attention’, he said, ‘just like every one of those who stood up and spoke in the testimony service that evening. If their problems have been solved, it is a pity they don’t give themselves enough credit for their efforts to solve it. But then of course, there is always more attention to be received if the name of God is articulated’.
Anyway, having said what I wanted to say, I must now add that saying 3 teeny weeny little titbits about why I like myself is hardly the same as falling on my knees and beating my breast while delivering a tearful testimony in church. So let me indulge you:
1) Yes, as I already mentioned, I eat 62 salted peanuts at 3am every morning.
2) Every full moon night, at the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world is asleep, I prowl the neighbourhood while occasionally letting out a yowl.
3) All my work, every single piece is done while balancing on my right leg only, which is how I get those powerful strokes with charcoal.
Yup, love all these things about myself.
There! Not quite as dramatic as Usha’s testimony, but if you believed any of those three things above, or in Usha’s testimony, well……
