Shantaram

2 months after i first picked up the book, i've reached its end. i thought i'd never finish it, because no matter how much i read, there was always such a long way to go. not that i was in a hurry to finish it. conversely, i wish the book would never end. i feel a weird sense of loss that it's over - that first time experience of reading it that i can never ever retrieve or relive. it is weird because i've never felt this way about a book before. i mean it's just a book! if it's good, then it's good and yeah that experience with it was good. but this book is different. the novelist had that capability of weaving together an incredible narrative with philosophy so richly, deeply, and astutely. there was such an open and immense honesty in his writing that made it impossible to simply read it. at so many junctures, i just had to stop and seriously consider and attempt to understand what it must have taken for him to write that one sentence, to mean what he had meant.

The reason why the book made such an impact on me was the particular honesty he had with the innermost love and evil of human beings and the confusion that often entangle them together. it was his process of attempting to disentangle them - not always explicitly - that really captured me. not that his answer was perfect, or that it was even an answer.
and the best thing that his writing did was to force that honesty upon my own heart. and revealed to myself the danger of its dishonesty that I'd been living. we may think that it is just a small dishonesty here and there with ourselves and our true thoughts, feelings, responses, character. but if we let them be and allow them to fester, some day we may never be able to reach that open, clear, honest and pure part of our souls. and that would be the greatest tragedy of living.

at the end of it all, of all the author's brilliance and reservoir of wisdom and experiences, he knows the two things that all human beings inescapably run after:

"With love: the passionate search for a truth other than our own. With longing: the pure, ineffable yearning to be saved."

and it is true that that is what we live for, whether or not we know or realize or are willing to admit it. to some, that chasing after is so numbed and adulterated by the on-goings of the everyday living, and the world that pours that dilution into our souls... that they think the ceaseless and frantic scramble for truth and salvation isn't there. but it always is, and will forever be there.

from the Christ in the heavens springs the wellness of life

something snapped -
and then i was sinking into the dark and frightful abyss of turmoil in my heart and mind; so nauseating and painful that my body was left hollowed and sickened for a few hours, my head exploding from the throbbing pulse. I'd forgotten, almost completely, how this felt. the same as it was just a year ago.

but God always stays true to His wisdom. where there is hurt and anger, no matter how fiery or rightful that anger is, there will always be humility and forgiveness where Christ is.
His heavens opened and there was Jesus pouring over in all His sweetness and light.
O my Joy, so abundant!
And like the fresh and cold breeze of this night, He washes over;
Healer of my soul and my body.



sing my soul, of the Saviour's love.

being bold and daring

yestersday, daniel was praying during worship and he said something in his prayer that caught me. let us be bold and daring in our walk with Christ.

loving God is like loving challenges. the love of Christ is so high and deep that we have to take leaps and plunges in faith. well.... that's quite a big test for my faint and timid heart. i immediately remembered the article from mr. average christian about what it means to be adventurous and bold as a manly warrior of God. it's not about bungee jumping or scaling the toughest mountain. it's about the amount of courage it takes a person to do the work of God.

it wasn't a joke when Jesus told the rich ruler to give away everything he has of the world so that he may inherit the treasures of heaven, and neither is it easy! and the biggest struggle in leaving the world behind lies in the comforts of the mind and heart. it is scary letting go of the ways of thinking that I'm accustomed to, which have proven to provide a certain level of comfort while living in them. but I know that staying in there will not help in journeying further with God and his work. in yesterday's ODB, the writer expressed it aptly when he wrote about the dangers of "growing accustomed to feeling distant from God". and that "distance" can mean many many things. it's time to get sick and tired of living life at that lukewarm capacity of faith where half of my trust is in God and the other half in what I can see and predict and is safe in thinking; or believing that others, but never myself, will be called to arms or be required to run the extra miles for God; or that I was never meant to fly with Him and I will be happy just living with one foot thrust heavenward and the other cowardly in worldly mentality.

As God is bringing in the battle fields and providing the equipment to fight, right under my nose, i can no longer afford to ignore Him and delude myself by constantly assuming that i'm thinking too much. it is true that God will call other children to do it even if i don't but the point is that God wants me to do it.

and i can choose to sit it out, or dance.

(: just thinking...

my whole home is in complete darkness, save for the light from the screen of this laptop. just a few minutes ago, i stood at my parents' window with my dad and marveled at the Creation of God. only that my dad knows no God. it's the 15th of the lunar calendar, so the moon is shining like a coy beauty. beneath her was a sprinkle of stars resting on stratus clouds, fighting the city lights to twinkle. and he asked me "can you imagine how fast the moon is moving? it moves around the entire earth in a single day. but when we look at it, it doesn't look like it's moving at all." and then i asked him "how come the sun doesn't move?" and right then i realized just how marvelous gravity is! it is how God holds us still while he swiftly arranges the sky for us - with His magnetic fingers, He holds the sun still and hurries the moon on; unfurling the clouds like a blow paint artist or a sand artist! isn't He the most talented ever?

i couldn't keep it in my heart anymore and the words were so loud in my ears and choking my throat that i had to say it. i asked my father "how do you think all these came about? why do you not believe in a Creator?" hmm we went on to discuss it a little bit. he believes in the 'a few atoms came together' theory and i told him that if that was the case, these atoms must be really intelligent because all of nature and your brain and mine came out of that. and i asked him how did these atoms even come about? he had no conclusion. the thing is that no physically entity can ever explain itself (a ravi zacharias argument) and thus the answer to the beginning of physical entities has to come outside of the physical realm. anw he was really tired so we just left it at that. it was such a lovely night with the cool breeze and all. hopefully, the thoughts will run in my dad's head again and God will probe him until he comes to the Truth. Nobody knows my father better than my Father! hurhur.

haha goodnight everybody ~

eating monster

HELP! I CANNOT STOP EATING!
i'm eating at 15min intervals. this is crazy.
and it's so distracting my mind regularly slips to images of a sukiyaki steamboat or a juicy beef burger or a plate of breko's pancakes or a bowl of ichiban's special.

what's wrong man......


i'm gonna cook some tomyam maggi mee now! (:

amnesia

today, elfie (a fellow toa payoh folk) was lamenting the rise of two condominiums in front of his home and how the demographics of the place, and with that the atmosphere, shops, and so on, are going to become hip, young, and modernized. he told me the he liked the place a lot because of its old charm and the kind of breezy laid back-ness that comes with older residents. i've never ever thought of this town as charming. but when he said that, i looked out of the bus at flats from the 1970s and their mildly worn down cream coloured exterior and thought hmm oh yea!

coincidentally, i'm reading about social amnesia right now. this thing about memory and forgetting. and to quote this writer Connerton, he wrote that "a major source of forgetting is associated with the processes that separate social life from locality and from human dimensions; superhuman speed, megacities that are so enormous as to be unmemorable, consumerism disconnected from the labour process, the short lifespan of modern architecture, the disappearance of walkable cities. what is forgotten in modernity is profound, the human-scale-ness of life, the experience of living and working in a world of relations that are known."
and i thought... oh dear.. this is true! pragmatism and efficiency - our country's two favouritest words in the universe. why the hurry to run fast into the future?

with this in mind, i think i've figured out the thing about toa payoh central that i haven't really been able to put my finger on. the central area is very unlike the charming toa payoh 'suburbs' where elfie stays in. it is caught right in the middle of the processes of remembering and forgetting. it is very telling from the array of shops, the things they sell, the kind of fashion on display, the music they play, etc. there are a lot of old school elements that can be found (probably to appeal to the older residents around) but they're promoted as modernized versions of what used to be. it's like you can't survive if you don't flow with the new age trend. the central area is definitely changing with more and more franchises coming in, and upgrading will always be in progress as coffee shops shed their years to look like a mimicry of Food Junction. yea to think of it, this whole place is undergoing botox. And when i'm surrounded by elderly residents who embody the memories of another time and life, the place is a misfit. that is why my neighbourhood is hardly charming and is a jarring mix of the new and the old that doesn't really settle well.

why not age gracefully?

Shantaram

I feel like i've lived in Mumbai for years and i'm only halfway through a thousand pages.

I've been hopping between a never-ending pile of work and a never-ending book. the paper i'm working on right now is a poetry paper and i would rather pay $50 to write 5 papers on the book.

forget all the heart wrenching sob stories. after the bible, this is the most penetrative piece of work i've ever laid my eyes upon. the author has such honestly profound understanding of the human heart and condition. and such an understanding could only be made possible by the kind of experiences he'd tide through in his own insane one-of-a-kind life. to top it off, the book is set in one of the most electrifying cities i've ever read about. it totally, and i seriously mean totally, changed my negligible perspective of people in India and their country. it may be a fictitious book, but it is based on his real life experiences in the city with people who inspired almost all the characters in the book, and it is a far from romanticized portrayal of Mumbai. i'm beginning to understand why so many people are intrigued by the country. i think every person should read this book before stepping into india.

btw, the movie Shantaram will be released next year, starring johnny depp! favourite actor with a favourite book. beat that! there is absolutely no way the movie can capture the kind of literary artistry that makes the book the great book it is, but yup bombay fever! (:

Shantaram

i'm reading this book, Shantaram, now. bad bad bad choice to have opened it to "just have a glance at the first page". i love the way it's written. i don't remember reading any better story telling before this. and the author's life is just. insane.
the book's making me DIE to go to india RIGHT NOW. and also making me think twice about going for i may die if i go there.

i'm at this page that's describing one of the first few shops the author stepped into:

RADIO SICK
Electric Repair Enterprises
Electrical Sales and Repairs, Sanjay Deshpande Proprietor

hahahha radio sick???

hm. i don't understand why. i'm really so drawn into his writing from page 1. it's inspiring

christian

hehehe i thought of something before i fell asleep last night. it's a bit lame.. but still!

i like the word 'Christian' cos it's 'Christ' and 'tian' conjoined by a 't', like at the cross!
it's so symbolic!

♥

I look beyond the empty cross
forgetting what my life has cost
and wipe away the crimson stains
"dull the nails that still remain"
More and more I need you now,
I owe you more each passing hour
the battle between grace and pride
I gave up not so long ago
So steal my heart and take the pain
and wash the feet and cleanse my pride
take the selfish, take the weak,
and all the things I cannot hide
take the beauty, take my tears
the sin-soaked heart and make it yours
take my world all apart
take it now, take it now
and serve the ones that I despise
speak the words I can't deny
watch the world I used to love
fall to dust and thrown away
I look beyond the empty cross
forgetting what my life has cost
so wipe away the crimson stains
"dull the nails that still remains"
so steal my heart and take the pain
take the selfish, take the weak
and all the things I cannot hide
take the beauty, take my tears
take my world apart, take my world apart
I pray, I pray, I pray
take my world apart

- Worlds Apart, Jars of Clay