Juggling Words

Colosseum or Coliseum also known as the Flavian Amphitheatre in Rome

What do lawyers do? As we juggle words and shuffle papers, we render our services in helping  our clients to get out of whatever legal troubles they land themselves in and carry out their endeavours by obeying the law.

A woman walked into the office half an hour before our office closed. She needed some legal advice. I decided to see her as I thought that should not take long. As it turned out , I had to ask one of my staff to stay back to type a letter and photocopy the documents which she had brought with her. These days, I find that I have become less independent at work in the sense that I no longer wish to attend to the clerical part of the work. The woman’s problem was to do with her husband’s and as he  had suffered a stroke, she had to deal with a legal problem  that  was to do with a property that he had rented out years ago. After listening to her story for some twenty minutes, I told her that in order to stop the execution proceedings that are already set in motion, it would be practical to offer a good sum of money as ex-gratia payment to the claimant that happened to be the Electricity Board. She had brought along all the necessary documents and it was apparent from those documents  that  they had engaged a solicitor as soon as they got wind of what the tenant had done before absconding years ago. Notwithstanding the correspondences between the previous solicitor and the Electricity Board, the latter had gone ahead and obtained the judgment without the couple’s knowledge. Even though she claimed that the  electricity had been tampered with by her previous tenant, as the subscriber for the particular account, her husband would be liable to settle the outstanding charges for all intents and purposes. I could tell that she was not a push over though she acted like she was just a housewife who needed legal advice and she was apologetic. That reminds me of another incident where the wife had acted like she was merely taking instructions from the husband and that her husband would be very furious with her if she had not executed the instructions given by the husband properly. I could not recall what exactly happened in my other case but all I remember was that it had left a bad taste in my mouth and yet I never learnt simply because I believe that it is our professional duty to render legal help to these ordinary folks.

When I asked the woman how she ended up walking into my firm, she said she happened to be in the vicinity when she went to the bank a few doors from our office and she decided to walk into our firm. As we were preparing the letter for her, one of my office partners returned to the office after a meeting. When I saw that they acknowledged each other, I asked her why she had not mentioned that she knew my partner. Later on I found out from my partner that he had already handled a couple of matters for her. Maybe I should give the woman the benefit of the doubt that  she was just confused. While I do find that clients do not  usually give you the complete picture, I still feel that it was quite unnecessary for her to be evasive about how she ended up coming to our firm for consultation. She must have figured out that since my partner said he would not be available  on that day, she did not have to mention the fact that she knew and had consulted one of our firm lawyers on other matters before. To me, all these are tell tale signs as to whether a client is being completely honest with you. I
became less sympathetic to her plight upon knowing that she had not been completely honest with me.

To Kill a Mocking-bird is  a book that I had been meaning to read for years . There is a copy of the novel sitting on one of the bookshelves in my house and my husband tells me that the book belongs to me. I cannot remember buying the book. As a bibliophile, I have not read all the books that I have  bought  over the years and with a few exceptions, I usually  remember having bought them. Anyway I was very glad that I finally got round to reading the book at the end of my recent trip. When I finished reading the novel on board the flight home , I was touched and moved to tears. I  wonder  whether the story would have affected me as much as the present if I had read it before I started practising law. The author, Harper Lee is indeed a very good story teller. She gradually led us into the story through the voice of Scout Finch who had recalled her growing up years in Maycomb when she  and her brother  who was four years her senior were both children. While the core of the story is about racial injustice,the author painstakingly took us through the scenes and the characters in  Maycomb to help us understand the neighbourhood and their inhabitants. Atticus Finch is a widower and he had to single handedly bring up two young children with the help of Calpurnia, their cook who had been with the family since Jem Finch was born. Lemonade in the morning was a summer-time ritual for their household as Calpunia would set a pitcher  and appeared in the front door and yelled  ‘Lemonade time ! You all get in outa that hot sun ‘fore you fry alive!’ Scout had felt her tyrannical presence as long as she could remember and Atticus always took the side of Calpunia and  ‘Atticus said Calpurnia had more education than most coloured folks.’  Atticus played and read to his children , and treated them with courteous detachment.

 

‘Maycomb County had recently been told that it had nothing to fear but fear itself’  is  how Lee describes Maycomb.

‘ Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it . In rainy weather the streets turned to red slop; grass grew on the sidewalks, the court- house sagged in the square. Somehow, it was hotter then; a black dog suffered on a summer’s day; bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in the sweltering  shade of the live oaks on the square. Men’s stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after their three o’clock naps, and by nightfall were life soft tea-cakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum.’

Atticus went to Montgomery to read law and returned to Maycomb to begin his practice after being admitted to the bar. His first two clients were the last two persons hanged in the Maycomb County jail . As there was nothing much Atticus could do for his clients who refused the state’s generous offer to escape the gallows if they pleaded guilty to second- degree murder, he had a distaste for the practice of criminal law. He practised economy more than anything. Scout started going to school and one day,  someone in school announced that Scout Finch’s daddy defended niggers so she had to ask Atticus.

“‘Do you defend niggers, Atticus?’ I asked him that evening.

‘Of course I do. Don’t say nigger, Scout. That’s common.’

‘’s what everybody at school says.’

‘From now on it’ll be everybody less one – ‘

‘ Well if you don’t want me to grow up talkin’ that way, why do you send me to school?’’

Scout had wanted to avoid school but her dad would not let her quit school as it was the law. She had a profound distaste for school since the first day of school when the teacher discovered that she could read and her teacher had ordered that she should ask her dad to stop teaching her to read.

Atticus explained to Scout about why he had to defend Tom Robinson.

‘Atticus sighed.

“I am simply defending a Negro – his name’s Tom Robinson. He lives in that little settlement beyond the town dump.  He’s a member of Calpurnia’s church, and Cal knows his family ell. She says they ‘re clean –living folks. Scout, you aren’t old enough to understand some things yet, but there’s been some high talk around town to the effect that I shouldn’t do much about defending his man. It’s a peculiar case-it won’t come to trial until summer session. John Taylor was kind enough to give us a postponement…’

“ If you shouldn’t be defendin’ him, then why are you doin’ it ?’

For a number of reasons, he told Scout.

 ‘ Because I could never ask you to mind me again. Scout, simply by the nature of the work, every lawyer gets at least one case in his lifetime that affects him personally. This one’s mine, I guess. You might hear some ugly talk about it at school, but do one thing for me if you will :you just hold your head high and keep those fists down. No matter what anybody says to you, don’t let ‘em get your goat. Try fighting with your head for a change….it’s a good one, even if it does resist learning.’

‘ Atticus, are we going to win it?’

‘No , honey.’

‘Then why-’

‘Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win,’ Atticus said.

…….

‘Come here, Scout,’ said Atticus. I crawled into his lap and tucked my head under his chin. He put his arms around and rocked me gently. ‘It’s different this time,’ he said.’ This time we aren’t fighting the Yankees, we’re fighting our friends. But remember this , no matter how bitter things get, they’re still our friends and this is still our home.’

The character, Atticus Finch is inspiring and his courage and principles are what  everyone of us must try to  emulate and uphold.The story is brilliantly told. 

In the Balance

I believe that kindness, social grace and civic consciousness can be taught just like how Maths, biology, chemistry and languages are taught in school. Although not everyone can master languages and be scientists, everyone should be able to learn the basic rules about compassion, cleanliness, thoughtfulness and etiquettes. However in reality, respect, kindness and thoughtfulness somehow elude us when we go about our daily activities particularly when life becomes too busy and the demands of everyday life is taking a toll on us. Often when we are so zealous in guarding our own interest that we are oblivious to the other people and their needs, we only pay attention to how we can reach our destination in the shortest time possible or how we can complete a task with as  few disruptions as possible so that we can move on with other aspects  of our lives.

To a large extent, everyone should focus on his or her own interest to begin with because if you do not learn to take care of yourself, you may become a burden to the people who care about you. We know that we have to take care of ourselves because it is so rare that anybody can do anything for you when you are unhappy about your life. Many people only care about reaping the most for themselves and you know that if you are not careful, you may be taken advantage of and you may subsequently become resentful when you feel cheated or shortchanged. Sometimes our fear of being victimized make us go a little overboard .It has taken me decades to finally acknowledge that few people think too much about the interest of others  let alone examining their thoughts or reflect about  why they do things the way they have done and why they say certain things and what they have said to others.

I notice that unhappy people tend to be spiteful and their words can be unkind and curt. I also notice that people have a tendency to expect certain kind of behaviour from certain people who are considered successful and they are pleasantly surprised  when these people turn out to be kind and modest. Why should we not expect that everyone to be kind and modest? Whether we are happy or unhappy, I believe that everyone could find joy in one way or another. Maybe if we  appreciate that everyone is coping with his or her own situation, we will give a little more thoughts about the others and try to think of ourselves less. When you think of yourself less does not mean you think less of yourself.  The problem is we tend to think of ourselves more and more and about how we fare in the eyes of others around us. Very often in our insatiable quest for material comfort and success, we look away from the injustice and sufferings  around us.

In Les Belles Images written by Simone de Beauvoir translated by Patrick O’Brian, the protagonist Laurence and her husband Jean-Charles are very protective of their daughters who are not allowed to watch television for fear that they will find out about unhappy and  ugly things in the real world that might upset them. But their twelve-year- old, Catherine has made a new school friend who is worldly, a child beyond her age and she tells Catherine sad stories that happen around the world. When Catherine starts having nightmares and ask questions about the world, Laurence has to figure out how to explain unhappiness to Catherine and to get her daughter to accept the fact that there are unhappy people and to believe that they will stop being unhappy.

‘I tell you what , we will talk about it tomorrow .But if you know any unhappy people we’ll try and do something for them. You can treat sick people, give poor ones money-there are masses of things you can do .’

‘Are there really? For everybody?’

‘Dear me, I should cry all day long if there were people whose unhappiness couldn’t be cured at all. Tell me all about it tomorrow. And I promise you we’ll find something to be done. I promise,’ she repeated, stroking Catherine’s hair. ‘Go to sleep now, darling.’

Laurence knows that is a very rash promise, and her daughter’s questions make her evaluate  the good life she leads and how she has grown to be  detached from the happenings around the world.

Here is another  snippet of the conversation between mother and daughter.

“ Brigitte says that when people are wicked it’s because they are unhappy. Except the Nazis.”

“She told you that?” Laurence squeezed Catherine tighter. “No Granny won’t grow wicked. But take care when you see her ; don’t look as though you knew she was unhappy.”

“I wish you weren’t unhappy either, so I do,’ said Catherine.

Laurence agonizes about what to tell her daughter. The narration sometimes is in the third person and at other times is in the first person.

‘ Essentially what Lucien said and what Papa said coincided. Everyone was unhappy : everyone could find happiness –the one amounted to the other . Can I explain to Catherine that people are not so unhappy as all that since they cling to life? Laurence hesitated. It’s the same as saying that unhappy people are not unhappy. Is that true? Dominique’s voice all broken with sobs and cries : she loathed her life, but she had not the slightest wish to die : that is unhappiness. And again there is that emptiness, that void which freezes your heart and which is worse than death although you are preferring it to death so long as you do not kill yourself. I went through that five years ago and I still feel t

he horror of it . And the fact is that people do kill themselves –he asked for bananas and a towel - because in reality there does exist something worse than death. That is what chills your spine when you read an account of a suicide : not the frail corpse hanging from the window- bars but what happened inside that heart immediately before.’

Laurence  sometimes feels like she does not belong to the group she is with. She is married to an ambitious architect who wants to send Catherine to a psychologist when her grades at school drop. One day in order  to avoid running into the cyclist who  shot in front of her car, Laurence crashed their car in the ditch. Her husband was upset with her for wrecking the car that would cost a large sum of money to repair. Laurence later reflected that Jean- Charles had something to cross about as he was sitting in the suicide seat. Laurence's mother, Dominique who is in her early 50s is not impressed with her father who has not advanced in his legal career. After their divorce, Dominique had a suitor who subsequently left her for a 19-year- old and she was devastated despite having a successful career. To Dominique,  a woman is nothing without a wealthy man in her arm.

Les Belles Images is a simple story about an upper middle class family living in Paris in the 60s. I read the book in the 80s and picked it up again over the weekend. Despite the fact that we are in the new millennium , the story in some respects are still very much relevant. The story is about how we may be at risk of becoming vacuous and vain as we  chase after  progress and material goals.

 

Optimism and Pessimism

In life one needs doses of optimism to stay hopeful and positive thinking. Unlike pessimists, optimists choose to see the glass as half full rather than half empty. Optimism helps us to interpret situations in the best possible light. Perhaps optimism plus a small dose of realism coupled with a dash of pessimism to know that failure can happen are probably the recipes for us to stay resilient through life.

I have often thought that I am an optimistic person until I did some optimism quiz  from some website sometime ago. I came to conclude that the pessimism trait must have  unsuspectingly crept up on me after having  stayed in the legal profession a tad too long. Unfulfilled dreams are quite a few, perhaps it is time for me  to seriously think about how to go about achieving them.

Celebrities make it seem like easy to reinvent oneself. I guess if you have already built a name for yourself, it is probably less daunting to move on to a new line of career that you want to venture into but even fame cannot guarantee success in your new venture. I am never comfortable with building a personal brand through Linkedin nor Skillpage as I find my professional life  ordinary though it is definitely in my interest to build myself a brand in my profession. Writing is what I care about though it has taken me a long while to let friends and acquaintances know that writing is my passion.

Writing helps me to articulate my thoughts and its creative process can be therapeutic. I read a great deal partly because I love to read. Reading definitely helps me to write better. I am eager to translate my thoughts into written words and I  like to tell stories. At night I write even when my mind is terribly exhausted. I make a coffee and I make Chinese tea with the hope that all these drinks will help me stay awake. I get excited in anticipation of watching some films and attending tennis matches at grand slams ( so far I have only been to the Australian Open ) but I feel far more excited just browsing around and finding books that are promising reads. I find that  life can be absurd and yet it is full of surprises that are not necessarily bad. I find the idiosyncrasies of  different groups of  people interesting and the ironies of life fascinating. I am constantly amazed how these published writers can capture the intricacies of life and make their characters credibly complex. 

The 100 Year- Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared is an entertaining read. The Swedish author,Jonas Jonasson  is very clever in weaving a story with a backdrop that spins across several geographical locations around the world and also it takes you on a journey through some major historical events  of the twentieth century. These are some of the interesting facts about the protagonist, Allan Karlsson.

'Allan Emmanuel Karlsson was born on May 2 ,1905. The day before, his mother had marched on the May Day procession in Flen and demonstrated on behalf of women’s suffrage, an eight-hour working day, and other utopian demands.'

Allan’s father was of both a considerate and an angry nature. He was considerate with his family but he was  angry with society in general and one day he lost his job on the railways after punching a passenger who happened to announce that he was on his way to Stockholm with thousands of others to visit the King in the royal palace. Allan’s father left the country and emigrated to Russia where he started to waver in his belief in the blessings of socialism.

Allan was left to fend for himself at the young age of fifteen when his mother died by which time his dad had already been killed in Russia. At age thirteen, Allan was already accomplished in making explosions by mixing chemical ingredients and he continued to develop new formulas for making dynamites in his own company. He lived an isolated life.

'But what finally formed young Allan’s philosophy of life were his mother’s words when they received the news of his father’s death. It took a while before the message seeped into his soul, but once there, it was there forever:

Things are what they are, and whatever will be will be.

That meant, among other things, that you didn’t make a fuss, especially when there was good reasons to do so, for example, when they heard the news about his father’s death. ……………

Allan Karlsson didn’t ask much of life. He just wanted a bed, lots of food, something to do , and now and then a glass of vodka. If these requirements were met, he could stand most things.'

When Allan is a few months shy of a hundred years old, he ends up in a nursing home where he has to abide by the mile-long list of rules and regulation including no smoking and no drinking. “Alcohol kills” is how Alice, the  Director of Malmköping’s  Old Folks’ Home has justified the “no alcohol”  rule. As it happens, despites his complaining knees and body aches and pains, Allan decides to escape just when the staff at the Old Folks’ home has started to prepare for his 100^th birthday. He climbs out the window and embarks on a hilarious roller coaster journey where he meets eccentric characters and has the most unexpected windfall when a young man with long greasy hair and scraggly beard and a jean jacket asks him to mind his big, grey suitcase on wheels when the latter goes to the restroom to relieve himself . The uncouth young man does not seem to hear that Allan has a bus to catch and thus when the bus pulls up, Allan says yes to life and drags along the suitcase which he later discovers that it contains 50 million crowns drug money. Allan  becomes the target for the gangsters who call themselves “ Never Again” and also the  prime suspect for murder after some of  these gangsters are found dead.

While he is at the wrong place at the wrong time, Allan  seems to get lucky all the time and somehow things  work out for him. Allan is a larger than life character whose optimism definitely pays off even in his ripe old age. The story is very funny indeed. 

Follow your passion

Lyon

Your parents or your teachers can tell you how to lead your life, they cannot teach you about how to live your life. Like many things in life, you just have to figure it out yourself. You may think you need guidance and encouragement, your parents and teachers can only tell you the type of vocation they think is best for you, it is entirely up to you to figure out how you want to make the best of your attributes. If you have a passion for something, you really have to go out there and give it all you have. You cannot look for anyone to believe in you or anything like that. You just have to believe in yourself as nobody is going to get behind you and pet you and say, “It’s okay, you can do it.” You just have to do it if you believe in your ability. Period.

Tennis is my favourite sport and I am constantly amazed by the tenacity demonstrated in the games of some of  the top tennis professional players. I think it is absolutely a delightful treat to watch grand slams events and the major tennis tournaments. This July, Wimbledon season ended with a grand final match between Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic. Two years ago, Rafael Nadal was blown off the lawn court in the second round by the world no 100, Lukas Rosaol, who was making his Wimbledon debut after losing in the first round of qualifying five times in a row. Last year Nadal went out in the first round to Steve Darcis, the world No 135. He was having perennial knee trouble. He had to play the whole year with anti-inflammatory drugs in every single match. He was quoted as saying, “All my life it was a real goal for me to play well on grass. When I started my career a lot of people said : ‘With his style, he won’t be able to play well on grass.’ That really motivates me even more.” Nadal did win the Grand Slam in Wimbledon in 2008. Of course he is extraordinary and he has fourteen grand slam single titles. You may say they are sports professionals but their sheer tenacity is something we should emulate.

Amsterdam 

Roger Federer is a sport legend.  On 6 July this year , we watched one of his finest tennis. He did not win Wimbledon final although he could have. A father to two sets of twins, at nearing 33 years old, Federer could have been the oldest man in more than a half-century to win Wimbledon but he did not win the men’s singles. As  an ardent fan of Federer like many other fans around the world, I  rooted for Federer to win as my eyes glued in front of the television watching live telecast. The next day,my daughters asked if I had displayed the same expression as the Duke and Duchess of  Cambridge who had gasped at the action on Centre Court last Sunday when Federer lost a key point during his match with Novak Djokovic. Trailing 5-4 in the fourth set, Federer managed to hit a serve that turned out to be an ace, one of his 29 in the match. Then he went on to break in the next game and force a fifth set and thus  Djokovic had to regroup when they headed into a deciding 5^th set. It was definitely an awesome match to watch and the legacy of  the tennis whiz, Roger Federer  continues. His marvelous artistry on grass is dazzling.

Lyon

 Only a very selected people in this world might have been born with natural talents and not every talented individual has been blessed with the opportunities to demonstrate his or her inborn skills as some of these people may have hidden talents but they probably are never going to develop their special abilities. However we have to acknowledge that these top  talented  players might have been equipped with the genetic make-up, they definitely practise extremely hard and they have the concentration and commitment to tackle their grueling schedules and the right work ethics and attitude in what they are doing best.

I read Double Fault  by the author, Lionel Shriver before reading her orange prize winner :We Need to Talk about Kevin, the chilling and intense read with horrifying twists and turns. I  have a tendency to carry around with me the book I happen to be reading wherever I go just in case I have a moment to read. Many years ago, I had  left the book ‘Double Fault’ in one of the toilets at a shopping mall and when I returned to the same cubicle to look for it , it was gone. Perhaps another bibliophile had taken it thinking that the book had been left by a BookCrosser. Frankly I would be too unwilling to part with any of my books to participate in BookCrossing and  as much as I love books, I will never touch a book that is left in a public toilet. After losing my copy of the novel, I had to get a replacement copy to finish reading the fiction . Double Fault written by Lionel Shriver is a love story set on a tennis court. Willy Novinsky, the female protagonist has been playing tennis since she was four. She falls in love with Eric Oberdorf, a Princeton maths graduate who only picks up the racket at age 18. Willy is focused and Eric is fanatic. While Willy’s progress is steady, it is laborious. Despite a late start, Eric races ahead and his tennis career skyrockets and Eric is one of those smart and gifted men whom it is easy to love and hate . The story carries a not so subtle message that sometimes we may want things too badly that it does not happen due to lack of emotional strength and psychological sensibility. The story tells us tennis is a great test of character and it also makes us look at the battle of the sexes from a renewed angle. Willy is  physically and emotionally weaker than Eric and she lacks the casual assumption of success and the confidence Eric exudes. She had a head start but her career has taken a downturn after her knee injury. When she lost a match to  Eric who somehow proved to be a better player, something more than a tennis match has been lost . Perhaps the fact that her defeatist father was not supportive of her ambition to turn tennis pro might have put a damper on her spirit and somehow compelled her to prove her dad wrong desperately. Maybe her dad just wanted to protect his own daughter from failing since he is smarting from his failed endeavour that probably has prompted him to become practical. As the story unfolds, Willy’s dad could only have the best intentions for her.  This is how Shriver describes Willy.

‘That the institution of marriage had been thoroughly discredited by the time Willy was born didn’t delay her acceptance of Eric’s proposal by ten seconds. Granted her own parents set a poor example;Willy envied neither her glumly patriarchal father nor his cheerfully submissive sidekick. But she might have envied her parents at their first meeting, in 1961:when her mother, Colleen , was a flighty modern dance student, leaping through recitals to the beat bongos inside a helix of scarves, and her father, Charles, was an undiscouraged beatnick scribbler, whose pockets bulged from squiggled napkins and leaky ballpoint pens. Willy clung to the notion that nothing about marriage itself condemned her mother to dismiss an ambition to dance as vain folly, nor her father to turn on his own credulous literary aspirations with such a snarl. And surely had she wed in this more liberal era, the acquiescent Colleen might have told Charles to get a grip and stop moaning and sometimes gone her own way. Despite overwhelming evidence that both true love and domestic balance of power were myths, Willy still believed in the possibility of an ardent, lasting union between equals, much as many religious skeptics still kept faith in an afterlife because the alternative was too unbearable. 

So all through a militantly independent young adulthood Willy had been waiting. At last along came Eric Oberdorf, who radiated the same clear-eyed courage that shone from pictures of her father in the early sixties-before Charles joined the opposition in celebrating his own defeat. Willy had inherited her mother’s grace, and given it structure and purpose. Together she and Eric could rewrite history, which may have been what children were for ‘

Willy rang her dad to inform him about her plan to marry Eric.

“Listen. I have someone I want you to meet.”

“Another brain surgeon?”

“Yes, he’s a tennis player, Daddy,” she said impatiently. “ But with a degree from Princeton.”

“A tennis player with a degree!” he exclaimed.”You told me that was impossible.”

Willy almost hung up. ………….

Although Eric appears to have a much more supportive father who seems to beam at all  his son’s winnings even if they are not important tournaments, his dad comes across as obnoxious and to Eric, his dad is bragging about himself even when he is bragging about him. But Eric is not going to screw up his life just to rebel against his father. Shriver describes Eric.

 One of Eric’s secrets had long been that he did not admit the possibility of defeat.

Shriver’s novel narrates a melancholy story of two gifted tennis pro, the male protagonist being more self possessed than the female character and the conflicts that they each carry within themselves make their union a tough call. Willy’s lifelong dream has become her obsession and she comes across as selfish and self-absorbed. Both are  separately vying for success in the tennis world. As the title of the book indicates, it takes two for the marriage to work or break. Shriver’s novel makes me think . Since your mind tells you what to believe ,it is absolutely necessary to believe in your own abilities. Ultimately you have to figure out yourself as to who your real opponent is and what your nemesis is. 

“Fais de ta vie un rêve, et d'un rêve, une réalité.” ― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Make your life a dream and the dream a reality. Nice quote indeed.

Amsterdam

A letter to My Thirty Year Old Self

Burgundy

You are not as competitive as you think you are. Perhaps when you are young, you thrive on challenges but as you grow older, you realize that life already has its own challenges. You might have enjoyed mooting or debates in class but in reality you realize how you hate  arguing as you find that  arguments are  counter productive. You definitely dread confrontation and not a fan of aggression whether passive or otherwise.

You think the conventional path is safe, in reality there are no safe paths. You have enrolled yourself in law school by default as you do not know what you want to do with your life and you want a secure living. I do not think you want to use law to make a difference in this world. You might find that you dislike any form of  injustice, but you realize that justice is an elusive word as you grow older.  Ultimately law may help to keep some order in a society but it is the minds of the people that need to be examined  and that is a tall order.

In today’s highly competitive legal market with overabundance of lawyers, you have to figure out how to build your personal brand. You either must know how to network or be the one who has the stamina and tenacity to litigate in court  or you can plod through documents  laboriously and churn out pages and pages of pedantic and long  legal texts and documentations that must  hold up in court in the event that parties end up in litigation. As lawyers you have to be dispassionate and are expected to  always hold your chin up and keep your  cool and show that everything is under control even if it is  not going well.

You have an affinity for words thus law holds some attraction for you but you are not  one for legal jargons. Legal reasonings can be intellectually stimulating in the beginning but after a while you will find that they are  very dry indeed. After a couple of decades of practice, you would realize that while it is interesting to look at legal issues, dealing with fellow lawyers can be a real pain as they are usually nasty and most of them have to win their cases at all costs even if it means to mislead or have no qualms in bending some rules.

You have a secret desire to be a writer but you feel that you have nothing to write about. Then you realize your mind is constantly churning out stories and you wish you could sit down somewhere and write them all out. You imagine that you would have a blast telling stories for a living but you lack courage and conviction. You think you are free to choose what you want to do with your life , you are never free as you will never try hard enough to be free. Perhaps that is the way you are comfortable with .

“ Kafka on the Shore” is a page turner. As I raced through the book and when I reached the end, I found that I had to read it again. Haruki Murakami’s writing is never straightforward and there are so much metaphysical stuff that it requires some  thinking to figure out the story and even then there still leaves questions unanswered. Kafka Tamura, a fifteen year old boy beyond his age runs away from his father and on his birthday, he steals his dad’s cell phone and money from his study and packs some bare necessities in a backpack before setting out his journey. Kafka is the  name he has given to himself and he decides that Shikoku, south of Tokyo,a far off town is the place he will be heading to. When he arrives at Takamatsu, he has done the research and is armed with all the information about the libraries in and around Takamatsu. Ever since he was little, he has always loved to spend time in the reading rooms of libraries. During his escape, he looks for the Komura Memorial Library, a private library that belongs to an old wealthy family and has since been open to the public. He has seen a photo of the building with its elegant reading room in Taiyo magazine. Kafka befriends the androgynous librarian, Oshima  who empathizes with his situation and the former offers him a job and lodging at the library.

“Hey, you’re back,” Oshima says. He says at my backpack dumbfounded. “My word, do you always lug around so much luggage with you ? You’ re a regular Linus.”

I boil some water and have a cup of tea. Oshima’s twirling his usual long, freshly sharpened pencil. Where his pencils wind up when they get too short I have no idea.

“that backpack’s like your symbol of freedom,” he comments.

“ Guess so,”I say.

“ Having an object that symbolizes freedom might make a person happier than actually getting the freedom it represents.”

“ Sometimes,” I say.

“Sometimes,”he repeats.”You know, if they had a contest for the world’s shortest replies, you’d win hands down.”

“Perhaps.”

“ Perhaps,” Oshima says, as if fed up. “ Perhaps most people in the world aren’t trying to be free, Kafka. They just think they are. It’s all an illusion. If they really were set free, most people would be in a real bind. You’d better remember that. People actually prefer not being free.”’

Kafka on the Shore is a mind-bender. There are two stories that run parallel and eventually converge. The second story is about Satoru Nakata who lost his memory after waking up from a coma in 1944. Nakata together with sixteen fourth grader fell into a coma when they went looking for mushrooms in the jungle. While all the other students woke up unharmed after a few hours, Nakata did not wake up  till a few weeks later and when he woke up, his memory was completely wiped out. He  lost his ability to read while before he used to be a brilliant student. When he became a grown man, he had to rely on government subsidy and earned some pocket money by being a cat finder as he has gained the ability to communicate with cats. Both the young Kafka and the old Nakata are reclusive and fiercely independent and they seem to head to Shikoku separately. Along the way, they meet companions who are willing to assist them along the way. Nakata forges friendship with Hoshino, a truck driver who meets Colonel Sanders, in his white suit in their quest for a particular rock. Colonel Sanders claims that he has just decided to take on a familiar shape of a famous capitalist icon as he does not have any form. He is a metaphysical conceptual object and to perform a real act, he needs someone with substance to help out. Colonel Sanders told Hoshino,

“ I’m kind of an overseer, supervising something to make sure it fulfils its original role. Checking the correlation between different worlds, make sure things are in the right order. So results follow causes and meanings don’t get all mixed up. So the past comes before the present, the future after it. Things can get a little out of order, that’s okay. Nothing’s perfect.  If the account book’s basically in balance, though, that’s fine by me. To tell you the truth, I’m not much of a detail person…….”

Kafka on the Shore deals with the subconscious mind and in the realm where cats talk, fish falls from the sky and the spirits can slip out of the human bodies, Haruki Murakami weaves a story about a fifteen year old boy, his hatred for his father  and how his world was changed  by his mother and his sister having  abandoned him when he was four years old. Here is a snippet of the conversation he has with his alter ego, Crow.

‘“ But she abandoned me. She disappeared, leaving me alone where  I shouldn’t be. I’m finally beginning to understand how much that hurt. How could she do that if she really loved me?”

“ That’s the reality of it. It did happen,” the boy named Crow says. “ You were hurt badly, and those scars will be with you forever. I feel sorry for you. I really do. But think of it like this: It’s not too late to recover. You’re young, you’re tough. You’re adaptable. You can patch up your wounds, lift up your head, and move on. But for her that’s not an option. The only thing she’ll ever be is lost. It doesn’t matter whether somebody judges this as good or bad-that’s not the point. You’re the one who has the advantage. You ought to consider that.”

I don’t respond.

“It all really happened, so you can’t undo it,” Crow tells me.

 “She shouldn’t have abandoned you then, and you shouldn’t have been abandoned. But things in the past are like a plate that’s shattered to pieces. You can never put it back together like it was , right?”

I nod. You can never put it back together like it was. He’s hit the nail on the head.’

So often there are things that happen beyond our comprehension and the choices we made for reasons we cannot fathom. In life we all come from somewhere and heading somewhere and we cannot have all the answers just like when we read Murakami’s novels, we can just ride with the stories and see where they take you as we never know what will come next just like the way life is.

Comfort Zone

Brighton 

Although on many occasions, I would rather stay home and read my books as I  love to read and cannot have enough hours to do so, I regularly meet up with friends and family members and I  participate in local events to interact with other people and spar thoughts and  ideas. I do not like meeting acquaintances as it can be quite tiresome to have to exchange pleasantries but I enjoy meeting new people as I am curious about strangers as one may get some surprises after going beyond the introductions.

If you ask me how I would describe myself, this is  how I perceive myself. A bit of perfectionist, honest ( though not entirely true), imaginative, trusting, adaptable , sensitive and empathetic. Affable though some people may not agree. I can also be stubborn, overly sensitive and inconsistent in my behaviour. There are times I am comfortable appearing in public while there are also times when I feel like hibernating. I imagine it could be liberating to visit a foreign place where you hardly know anyone but it definitely takes a lot of courage for some people to leave behind their old life  and start a life in a foreign country.  I am not one who can lead a nomadic kind of life so I stayput in one place for decades. Sometimes I wonder if I could have ever done the kind of  travelling Elizabeth Gilbert  described in her memoir Eat Pray Love.

Untold Story by Monica Ali is a fiction premised on the demise of a  princess and about Lydia, an English woman  who had wanted to escape her past and  reinvent a new  life in Kensington, Midwest America. The question was : Could  Lydia ever run away from her home, her children, her family and her heritage? Some part of the story was told by reading the journal kept by her personal assistant, Lawrence who had been extremely supportive of Lydia and a great admirer of her. Lawrence wrote about Lydia in his diary : “ Press exposure and public scrutiny-I hardly know where to begin. She had lived with it for such a long time, why not carry on indefinitely? Perhaps that question is built on the premise that one eventually becomes immune to these things. I wonder if anyone does. We rather assume it when we see the magazines and newspapers full of personal comments on the starlets of the day. It’s the price of fame, we say to ourselves, and loose change at that.”  Lydia  reminds me of Holly Golightly in  Breakfast at Tiffany’s, a novel by Truman Capote although the two characters are very different in that  Lydia is a royal princess who wanted to live an ordinary life while Holly Golightly escaped her homely life and ended up a socialite in Manhattan. Even though both women are vulnerable and insecure, they are determined to break free from the circumstances they were trapped in and take steps to find their own place in the world.