Kuenza's Diary

Being a farmer, my mother has the obsession of staying occupied – all the time. And as a farmer, her concept of land is that it has to be cultivated or else it is wasted. So every year, we fuss over her plan of cultivating potatoes because while she considers it important, we don’t see it that way. And more so because the yield is less than the amount of seed used. But this time, last Saturday when she was making plan of going out in the field to work again, I told her that I would accompany her. This I must say is the result of my being in RIGSS (Royal Institute for Governance and Strategic Studies for one month). We have always tried to reason: we used to tell her that our main occupation isn’t this; that it is a waste of time; we even cited the bad road, the fuel consumption etc. But once she has put her mind into something, she will never give up. We have known her stubbornness and determination all this time, but still, every year, we would oblige to her only after...

I vaguely remember reading a saying that the shoes that a man wears shows his personality. And when I challenged to write about the pair of shoes that one of my friends was wearing at an official gathering yesterday afternoon, I did not know that there would be so many articles on shoes and how they are linked to the personalities of the wearers. I typed, ‘shoes show the personality of a man’ on google and it says ‘ About 145,000,000 results ’. Anyway, it was by way of casual conversation that we talked about shoes suddenly. This person sat next to me, his legs crossed over one another, his shoes prominently visible at the hem of his Army uniform. My friend (a woman) sitting on the left of me remarked, ‘what kind of shoes are these?’ I must confess that I am not sure what she really meant – and what in or of the shoes really struck her. But I took out my phone and took a picture of them and challenged that I would write about it. And I said it nonchalantly without any thought...

I always thought when I loved, I loved wholeheartedly and never really envied others, or got insecure over small things. But this time, I find myself going through emotions I don’t remember going through before. Maybe what I am feeling at the moment is not love. I am not sure. But the butterflies, the anxiousness, the excitement, the feelings of need, all swell up in my heart the same way. Like I said, there are times when you crave for what is not yours and what you know you cannot have, simply because you have other higher commitments that you have already made in your life and it would be morally wrong to go get it. And I think it is only natural that people feel this way – and I guess it is what is called chemistry. But the difference lies in being able to control your desire and knowing where your boundary is. And I would like to believe that I am the latter. I am a human and there may be times when there are temptations, when there are desires, but I also kn...