Much a do about Everything

I've been procrastinating this post for quite a while, since the 11th of June in fact, when I finished exams. A combination of laziness, laziness and more phases of laziness have halted my progress. Also, the sporting gods prohibit such activity when you've got a World Cup on the go. So, in spite of my obstacles I now present the fifth installment of my highly sporadic blog.

Before I begin, house-keeping issues need to be addressed. I was notified a month after my previous post that I had a spelling error in my previous post's title, where I used the word 'verses' as opposed to 'versus'. So previous readers of my blog should feel equally aggrieved as I do, and should contemplate what kind of world we do live in, where grammar mistakes and errors go unnoticed. Sad times indeed. Anywho, I digress.

This post was actually to kind of review the half year that has been. More significantly, I reach my 21st anniversary of my escape from the womb, within the next week and this is perhaps seen a milestone especially in Western culture.( Date of Birth excluded intentionally to separate real friends from the pretenders/forgetful ones). Usually in Indian communities, 21 is already a few years too late to be joining the marriage bandwagon, but let's move pass that for the time being.

A year ago my primary residential address was 41 English Road, Chase Valley, Pietermaritzburg as I faced the world as a fresh faced twenty year old, but now a year later, my residential address bares no common denominator to the previous one, barring the country of residence. So yes, change has indeed come and change is good. I've also, by the grace of God, entered my final year of my undergraduate degree and at the time of writing, await (uneasily) half year results. And yes, I now travel in peak hours to and from campus, fight for parking spaces on campus like boarding school kids fighting for the last sandwich, have the luxury of grabbing a lunch box on my out the house in the morning and share a room with a ..........................hormonal teenage brother. Yet, these are merely systematic changes and are part of the everyday occurrences. The most significant change in my life, involved a change in psyche, one that left me questioning my impact on the world and my gratitude to the one who created me ultimately.

During the course of the year, there was a period when I personally had two grandparents in Intensive Care units at the same time. These situations can cause a feeling of uneasiness across any family structure. They say that hospitals have seen more sincere prayers than most houses of prayer and ultimately, every phone ring in these times makes the heart rate flutter and the mind wander. This leads me to late April when I visited one such ICU ward and was made aware of a boy, 21 who had been involved in a car accident the week before and was still in a critical condition. As I stood as the bedside of my grandmother, peering across at the unrecognizable figure literally 10m away, life hit me in the face. Within the image of the tubes, screens and drips that lay all around his still body, I started to question my existence and purpose. In Cape Town they say, " die ou mens moes gaan, maar die jong mens kan gaan" (Google translate if need be). The fragility of life all encompassed in one sentence and in one room, which got me to thinking of the major regrets I held at this point in my life and my general perspective.

From a religious perspective, which I deem the most important aspect, I had spent 8 years of my life and sacrificed many hours of sleep memorizing and perfecting Islam's most holy scripture, The Quraan. Yet, the most saddening part is that I understood not a single word of conversational Arabic. From the perspective of an impartial onlooker, why on Earth would you spend almost half your life learning something that you understand absolutely zilch of. Despite this glaring ignorance, I am at present, able to consolidate group financial statements with deferred tax consequences, name most of the high schools of prominent Springbok players and quote directly from Schmidt the character in New Girl, amongst a bunch of absolutely arbitrary talents that have no bearing on my life. Poor form on my part. So I've added "Learn Arabic" to my bucket-list, as a high priority item.

Onto the part of the blog where I ruffle a few feathers and get called self-righteous. In life, the most balanced individuals usually have a list of things that they whole sacred, and rank them accordingly. I'm guessing that words like 'family', 'religion', 'academics', 'health' and 'friends' should be synonymous to most people's lists. And the scary part of this is that, scrolling across that list, you should find that a large portion of those items are truly temporary. Family trumps everything, but life is short and no one lives forever. Friends tend to fade away as you progress through life and even adding a prefix like 'girl' or 'boy' to the word doesn't guarantee anything, to quote a wise philosopher who I believe once said that "These h**s ain't loyal" ,repeatedly. Academia is intangible but the information age makes relevant information redundant in a short period, thus temporary also. Money can't buy you health, which begs the question as to why we are forced to take steroid munching narcissistic Indian kids who bulk up for....... uhmmmm no one knows why and priorities gym over every facet of their life, seriously.
Will your Instagram flexing selfie be sponsored in the future so that your kids will have something to eat ?
Will 'mirin' be a suitable qualification on your curriculum vitae?

These are honest questions that I pose, I kid you not.

Thus, we are left only with religion, which speaking broadly owing to the diverse nature of readers and staying away from Justice Mogoeng territory, is seen as the fulcrum of human existence and the founding moral compass. You can choose to admire a painting of a mountain, but who created the mountain? And who created the painter ? And who inspired the painter? And who fashioned the brain of the painter?

I hope you can see where I'm headed with this. If not, sleep on it.

I guess you have to find what you hold most scared and clinch onto that.
But then again, I'm just a not-yet-twenty-one-year-old-UCT-student-who-rocks-Clark-Kent-wannabe-glasses-and-a-suspiciously-Nazi-inspired-haircut. What do I really know ?!

Sincerely
Me.


In light of Ramadaan in a few days time and the joining of the beard gang by the general Muslim male masses for the month (and God willing, beyond), I leave you with a quote of a Persian philospher, Jaggedus Bathtubbius who once said: " You don't just grow a beard, you have to earn a beard !"

Me verses Life

Well, this has been a while. Like a real long while. It's a Thursday night, start of the Easter weekend and I'm back in blog mode. Though I'm not a regular, I'd like to think I express my thoughts when have something important to say. That could be alternatively interpreted that I'm quite lazy, the more truthful answer to be honest. Before I get to my point of this blog, a quick time check tells me that we are well into the fourth month of the year. Time has no value these days, a minute here and an hour there, you scamper pursuing deadlines like a hare. Wow, the Dr Seuss-like style of writing in the last sentence is becoming apparent, so let me move on swiftly...

It all began this morning, after a roller-coaster test week, which involved me spending the majority of the previous week, a 'vac week', studying for final years first major obstacle. The good people in the Commerce department here at UCT do enjoy the odd torture session, so test week is 3 tests in 3 nights on your core subjects. With that past me, I awoke feeling much lighter as the stress of test week evaporated into thin air over the last 24 hours, and a long long weekend ahead to look forward to. So, to rid myself of the self-inflicted test week look,( unshaven, woke-up-on-the-wrong-side-of-the-bed-vibe) I set forth to my barber. Yes, I have a barber as opposed to you elitists with your hairdressers and hair stylists. In the deep dark alleys (not really) of Athlone, a R30 haircut and a post-haircut head massage would be a good way to start the long weekend. As I pulled up to the shop, a man speaking on his phone outside, was visibly happy to see me. This was a classic case of an elderly man spotting me for the dashing young man I am and foreseeing my suitability for a niece or daughter of his ( happens all the time,NOT!), or the number plate of my car was his concern. It would turn out to be the latter by the way...

So I enter the barber shop and greet in an Islamic manner, to which the man and the barber reciprocate. As I sit down at the waiting bench, I can feel the stare of the man on my left cheek, and the tangibility of the forthcoming question very apparent.

"You're from Mooi River?"

Ah,yes, it is indeed the number plate that intrigues people, not the guy who drives it. Suppressing my bruised ego, I respond that I'm actually from Maritzburg.(Pietermaritzburg to be obviously formal). What followed were textbook Indian follow-up questions, put across in a manner that would have Oom Gerrie Nel bubbling with pride. Anyways, this is getting too dramatic, so lets me get the gist across. The man, asked me what was my surname, to which I promptly responded accordingly. Turns out, he had "grown-up" in one of the Noorgat households in Maritzburg and was obviously quite chuffed by his discovery. To put this in context, there is only one Noorgat family that is originally from Pietermaritzburg. My paternal grandfather had 12 other siblings, thus the offspring that pursued was a sizeable amount of people. The Noorgat brothers were renowned entrepreneurs, a trait that is still continued to this day. Businesses like Noorgat Wholesalers and Solnor Supermarkets are names that are entrenched in the minds of the older generation in Maritzburg. He spoke of the legacy of the family and quizzed me about whereabouts of certain family members, as if I were a participant on the Weakest Link.What stood out was the manner in which he spoke about the now late brothers, the absolute awe and positive manner in which he referred to them. He continued to speak about the good habits he remembered, as I sat waiting for my haircut, absorbing this encounter. My movement onto the actual barber chair did not stifle his momentum, as he continued to state that the Noorgats were indeed a dynasty.

As I sat in the chair, reflecting on what had been said to me by this stranger of 5 minutes, I got to thinking. Every family has a watershed generation in a life-time. and these people were obviously mine. The actions of the past generations, socially, politically and financially are what can give future generations steadfastness and freedom. Our time on this precious Earth is but a journey, whilst your efforts maybe limited, your legacy can be eternal and you could indeed give rise to a dynasty.

Fancy that, an innocuous mid-autumn hair-cut trip, in the middle of Cape Town, a thousand painful miles away from the great town of Maritzburg, the memory of a generation who toiled can still be echoed off the walls of a newly-revamped barber shop. By a stranger, to a member of the dynasty!

The scoreboard read: Life 1 - Z.Noorgat 0

Over and out.