Often times I stop and think about my brother who lives in Delhi now, studying his butt off for MBA exams coming up this December. I also then think about my other brother who lives at the moment in Korea, also studying his butt off for, well, that's because that's what they do. And then I think about how I am here at the bottom of the earth (if you follow the earth as mapped by ancient mappers and has now come to be the general accepted version. Because technically, you see, there is no up or down when you are approaching earth from space. But before I get distracted..) I also start to think about my parents back home in Shillong, tending the vegetable gardens, my mother sitting in front of computer working and my father always the busy man never the one to sit tight and be idle.
I think about how up til I was 20 we were kept home and I was getting restless to get out of Shillong, dreaming of places beyond the borders of the possibles, writing imaginary stories and dreams of places. And then suddenly it all happens. Just when I turn 21 I am whipped away from my century old British holiday house in Shillong to the most unthinkable place in the world in Christchurch.
And one by one after me, my brothers also get whipped away, one to Korea and another to Delhi.
I always marvel about how seemingly scripted it all seems. Nothing happens for a while outwardly and then when it happens, everything else that was going to happen, happens.
Man, it must all be scripted.
Ben Ning, Creative Practitioner