PURE BAD LUCK: My First Vehicular Accident

Last Friday morning was pure bad luck. I, rather we met an accident.

After four days, it seems the memory of this car accident story returns in slow motion with an astonishing list of details that gets freeze-framed from beginning to end over end over end.

Hey, I am just over-acting. It’s just a little accident but being our first, we were frozen to death, dumbfounded, shocked, shaken, and traumatized.

The car that Sprite was driving had an accident. I was the only passenger and thanks to our seat belts we were very, very safe.
Actually this is what happened.

Sprite and I had a grand time with our own respective friends that afternoon. She has her Deira friends while I had my former Mantakath Hamdan buddies. She dropped me off in my former pad in Hor Al Anz went back to Rigga and videoke-ed herself throughout the night while Jett and I downed one bottle of Napoleon.

I was already tipsy when Sprite picked me up at 2:15 in the morning as I decided we should go home to The Gardens as we still have to attend mass at eight. Everything started just okay as we took the Mitsubishi Lancer straight to Sheikh Zayed while discovering new routes.

On the way down from the bridge, a kilometer away from our place, we were driving behind a shuttle bus that seemed to plod towards the upcoming green light. Sprite was a few seconds late to break as I was panning my view on the skyline of Jebel Ali from DuCal to Ibn Batutta Mall and watching these two people ahead jabber away in same manner the bus was getting out of my Godly mood.

Suddenly the light turned red, and the bus screeched suddenly and Sprite applied the brakes swiftly. OMG, the brakes didn’t hold as I saw the frustration and aggravation in Sprite’s face she visibly gasped at what was about to come into our view

A white Mercedes Benz sports car was at a standstill at the opposing stop light as Sprite tried to stop. But we skidded and our car slid into the Benz’s left rear side. Actually I noticed the car in front of us, but our car was sliding towards it., “Oh God, don’t let us slam into that car.” I knew that we are about to hit it and grabbed the steer from Sprite to swerve the car to the left enough not to hit the bus in the other side of the lane, but with that thought...

Pow!!!... I heard a strange noise and then I was looking through white fog. For a moment...just a moment... I asked if I was dead and honestly, I was waiting for people to step through and greet me. Those expectations didn’t last long as reality fell into my mind that we got to go out and check what happened.

Now I could see cars stopped outside and people from all across the street and in the vehicles were staring. That’s what people do. They stare.

Then I felt frightened. Sprite is too. “Could we been hit from other cars that didn’t see us?” I opened the door. It squeaked as I stepped out not knowing what I was to step into and what to do. I felt the gush of humid Dubai wind hit my face and I felt better. It was familiar. I am alive. I checked Sprite, she is too.

Despite being a bit tipsy I was aware of everything all at once- the trees, the left turn attempt to avoid the Benz that would have caused a different accident, the stuffed toys and Modesh on the rear seat flying, the position of trucks and cars in our front and rear.

I was aware of every other street and car and Pakistani pedestrians and side walk and electric posts that caught my eye. When I looked back in shock, it’s as though I had 360 degree vision. Even in the unlit car, I saw Sprite bewildered, shocked and pale.

The driver and passenger of the car that we hit got down the Mercedes and we heard ourselves saying “We are sorry” and that simply removed the anger developing inside the driver towards us. We were glad we had these two nice Indians. If there were good Samaritans that time, they were. Sprite tried to call the police but always took the wrong number, maybe because she was still trembling. Then the police came. He was too nice to be true, but I never took the chance to be near him or he will smell alcohol breath and complicate the situation.

After that, for me, the procedure was very straight forward. Got the pink police report copy meaning driver is at fault. Call the respective drivers’ insurance agents. Drove slowly the car with a busted rim, dented fender, and a bent axle to the Garden’s basement waiting what to do next without paying a fil.

I know that it is too good to be true and many do not experience the same, but for some reason, that is exactly what has happened to us. As what Sprite later told me in the lift, when she finally had gotten over the shock, “ibang level na talaga tayo.” And we laughed nervously to the room.

I eat, I pray, I…hmmm…I love?

What the heck am I doing with this book?

“One Woman’s Search for Everything?”… about a woman written by a woman. Hello? I have better novels to read. But my cousin Sprite had lodged this book in my face like a Greek masque asking me to read first and tell her what I can say about the book before she reads…and that…if she will have the time. Hello?

Imagine this as a starter. One cold November night in the opening throes of what would be a traumatic and drawn-out divorce, Elizabeth Gilbert found herself curled up on the bathroom floor, praying. Suspense?

Having lived her life reaching for the kind of success American women are supposed to desire--a husband, a family, a country house, a lucrative career--she suddenly realized that despair was threatening to swallow her whole, and she called out to the Divine for guidance…and was answered, not with a burning bush or a thunder from the heavens, but by a sudden internal silence, a moment of perfect clarity, and her own authentic voice.

From this moment, a long and winding journey began--through the abyss of divorce, then onward through Italy, India, and Indonesia, and at last to herself. Eat, Pray, Love is a memoir of that journey.

Gilbert was lucky enough to have the money and resources to take an entire year to travel and "find herself." In Italy, she sought to learn about pleasure by immersing herself in the language and culture (and food); in India, she lived in an ashram and practiced yoga, mantra, and intensive prayer to learn about devotion; and in Indonesia, she studied with a Balinese shaman and along the way encountered romance, friendship, and her ultimate goal: balance.

Elizabeth said she divided the book into three sections, one for each country, and within each section 36 "chapters," totaling 108, the number of beads in a japa mala as well as her age when the story took place.

The section that stirred me the most, however, was the section in India, for it is in those pages that Gilbert really delved deeply into spiritual exploration and devoted less time to her own day to day experiences than to the experiences of resistance, surrender, and ecstasy that led her to extend her stay at the ashram. I always wanted to embrace the lure of the monastic life first when I once visited two friends- a couturier-turned-monk and one dentist-turned-monk in the Monastery of Transfiguration in Bukidnon, famous for its Monk’s Blend coffee, but that’s beside the point. Though I doubt I will ever dedicate myself to a guru or twist myself into a yogic pretzel, I felt a great resonance with Gilbert's life in India. One passage in particular really spoke to me:

This is what rituals are for. We do spiritual ceremonies as human beings in order to create a safe resting place for our most complicated feelings of joy or trauma, so that we don't have to haul those feelings around with us forever, weighing us down…And I do believe that if your culture or tradition doesn’t have the specific ritual you're craving, then you are absolutely permitted to make up a ceremony of your own devising…If you bring the right earnestness to your ceremony, God will provide the grace. And that is why we need God.

So I stood up and did a handstand on my Guru's roof, to celebrate the notion of liberation. I felt the dusty tiles under my hands. I felt my own strength and balance…This kind of thing--a spontaneous handstand--isn't something a disembodied cool blue soul can do, but a human being can do it. We have hands; we can stand on them if we want to. That's our privilege. That’s the joy of a mortal body. And that's why God needs us. Because God loves to feel things through our hands.

Throughout the book Gilbert refers to the Divine as "God," rather than any other title, not out of Christian loyalty, but because it is "the name that feels the most warm to me." She considers all names and titles for Deity to be equal, but realizes that people have to relate to God on their own terms--it is in fact absolutely essential that they do so.

Just like any other books, it has its own flaws and I happen to quote this from another review I happen to read in one blog, I felt the same; for all that I appreciated the humor in the character of Richard from Texas, the sections featuring him tended to get a little pious and holier-than-thou and the conversation a bit stilted, as you might expect from Gilbert trying to distill months of interaction with a dynamic character into a few pages.

Overall, however, this is a beautiful book, both hilarious and insightful (often at the same time). I love reading the stories of people's spiritual journeys. Seeing our own stories reflected in those of others reminds us that, though the real work of the spirit is always done alone, we don’t walk alone on our path, even if it is a meandering one through dark and dangerous woods. Others have walked here before, or there would be no path. Others will follow us, and be grateful we went ahead. I would love to see more stories like Gilbert's more than simply a book of spiritual wisdom, Eat, Pray, Love is a journey that Gilbert and the reader take together, and I found myself changed by the time I reached the end, which is the beginning, which ends without ending.

And my favorite quote?

I'm tired of being a skeptic, I'm irritated by spiritual prudence and I feel bored and parched by empirical debate. I don't want to hear it anymore. I couldn't care less about evidence and proof and assurances. I just want God. I want God inside me. I want God to play in my bloodstream the way sunlight amuses itself on water.

Okay, no reservations, Spritee read the book. Please…

Desert Storm: My First Safari

Actually I don’t want to go to this sand trip today. There’s a sand storm I can see from the Gardens’ deck of my cousin Arlene’s apartment but my Dnata office mates were prodding me for days. If not because Violy is leaving Dubai for good, I rather have stayed in the room and sleep. Besides, Senthil had been calling for my weherabouts and kept on reminding me for the sand adventure. So I told Nasser, my carlift to bring us to Al Nada in Sharjah (Grace’s place).

The Arabian Desert Tours, our organizers picked us up at Grace’s place at around 2.30 p.m. in the afternoon. I had been warned by my friend’s sister and several others to not eat too much before I started the drive. I do not have car-sickness but it’s always better to be safe than sorry; so all morning I was surviving on two slices of bread and tea, an I was saying I am not interested to go, hahahaha! We also took the precaution to sit in the middle seat of the red Hummer3. What a vehicle! I do hope I own one or the likes someday.

Before entering the desert, the tires of the H3 were deflated so as to ease the driving in the sand dunes. After entering the desert what began, was a crazy roller-coaster ride up and down the sand dunes that lasted for an hour or so. The drivers are extremely skilled. They drive horizontally. They speed upwards and downwards and apply the brakes at the right moment! How they managed to go up over those steep dunes and come down without crashing is a mystery I’ll never unravel even if I go on the Safari a hundred times.

I even asked our driver Ali and our assistant Mubarak how they started driving. Ali said that he did not get any formal training. He would come down to the desert with his friends. The most important thing was to overcome your fear, if you can’t do that you could never drive in the desert. Also it was important to understand the desert, getting lost could be very easy as there were no prominent landmarks and most importantly one has to stick to the group as it prevented one from getting lost. That was the reason the tourist companies asked their vehicles to hang around together. Once the drivers were confident, they would go and apply to the companies, who tested their skills. Once the companies were confident they would give the job because one has to remember that the tourists’ lives were the drivers’ responsibility, they could not afford to be reckless.

He took great care of us by asking us every time if we needed to stop and if anyone of us was feeling dizzy. None of us did because we were really enjoying the ride. Ali was pretty a safe driver.

The first halt was near a caravan of camels. They were not tied but let free. I thought they were one of the calmest animals and did not get scared by the arrival of so many humans. People walked up to them and touched them, played with them and they did not budge. But among them all I saw a camel flocked by people crying. Tears were dropping from his eyes and at that moment I wish it were able to speak out why there were tears in its eyes. It moved us both and we just walked away from them, letting them be by themselves.

The second halt was at the top of a dune to watch the sunset. My pals took some excellent video recording of the sunset and the dune driving and if I can figure a way out to put it up; I sure will. Maybe some of you can advice how I could do it?

The sun sets early there around 6.30 and 7.00 seems like 8.00 p.m. here. Past the ride we were driven to an Arabian camp. The camp was a common ground for multiple activities and the dinner. We first drank the super hot Arabian tea and then decided to go camel riding. Sitting on the camel is the toughest thing I have done. It’s like sitting on another roller-coaster. First it goes forward on his front legs, as a result of which you are leaning forward, then it rises, and you keep swaying back and forth! The ride is excellent but once you have to get down the horror begins! Our camel refused to sit down and its owner gave it a jerk, the result my friend Senthil who was sitting behind me had his chin banged into my head when the camel leaned forward to sit! Ouch it hurt!

Then we decided to get ourselves shot in the traditional Arabian costumes. The white robe for Emerson and me and the black robe for Violy and Grace with head covered in black scarf! After that I went ahead to get some mehendi / henna tattoo done on my hands, an Arabic transcription of ARCHIE and by the time it was over the dinner begun. The dinner was amazing. Chicken Kebabs, Mutton Seekh Kebabs, Lamb Chops, Roasted Chicken, Chicken Gravy, Biryani Rice, Sphagetti, Rotis, and my friends’current favourite Hamus ( the vegetable) with Khamus(The Roti). I’m not mentioning the vegetarian menu because I did not taste any.

Once the dinner was over, the final program of the evening started; the belly dancing show. I was most impressed by the lovely Lebanese or German (not sure) dancer. First of all it did not look vulgar at all and secondly she was beautiful and aesthetic in her presentation. She balanced a stick on her head and moved her body without losing her balance. Then she balanced a sword on her waist! How on earth she did that I do not know. She then invited various people to dance along with her and the Arabic songs in the background added to the exhilarating atmosphere. The best part was two good looking Lebanese and French guys who danced in sync with the young dancer. I think they stole the show.

The whole journey was an quite a puking experience I’ll savor all my life. We were dropped back home; I wished the evening had never ended!

Why BALD ARCHES?

I come to think of these two words when asked what to name my blogspot. It took me barely one minute to think of something that is derived from my first name. But my name has a British etymology meaning strong warrior. Why not "word warrior"or "ärchangel", or "ärchetypal"or "ärchetypes"wanting to focus on the first four letters. So I Google-ed the word ARCH and got some points from the ever-friendly Wiki.

I already knew from the Humanities class that I used to teach in college that an arch is a curved structure capable of spanning a space while supporting significant weight (that is, a doorway in a stone wall). The arch appeared in Mesopotamia, Indus Valley civilization, Egypt, Assyria and Etruria, and later refined in Ancient Rome. The arch became an important technique in cathedral building and is still used today in some modern structures such as bridges.

Arches were used by the Persian, Harrapan, Egyptian, Babylonian, Greek and Assyrian civilizations fro underground structures such as drains and vaults, but the ancient Romans were the first to use them widely above ground although it is thought that Romans learned it from the Etruscans. The arch has been used in brudges in China since the Sui dynasty and the tombs since the Han Dysnasty.

An arch requires all of its elements to hold it together, raising the question of how an arch is constructed. I pegged the concept of my blog on this aspect holding together my sporadic thoughts.

Intentionally i wanted to make the arch as a metaphor of my future blog entries wishing that all elements and symbolisms that I may or may not use in it which obviously leads to the consequence of your blog questioned on its validity and the true state of your mental stamina.

I later read that in ancient architectural strategies, old arches sometimes need reinforcement due to decay of the keystones, and they called these bald arches. See the similarities?