Kuenza's Diary

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 am attending a talk. The speaker asks the audience, ‘how many of you are the first generation educated lot’? More than 70% of the audience’s hands go up. He remarks, ‘I am the first generation too’. The next question is, ‘who are the elites?’ A few answer that it is the politicians. He adds his opinion and then says, ‘we are the elite!’ Should I be happy? A mixture of thoughts run through my mind but it is definitely not happiness. He further adds that we come from farming background, and then, from nothing, we have become the elites – and in no other countries is there such opportunity. I am grateful for the opportunity I received as a result of the farsighted policies of free education. But a feeling of smirk sinks in me when our farmers, our forefathers who have been farmers, and my parents who have been farmers are called nothing. They might not have had access to western education and formal schooling but in no way were they uneducated. As I write this, ...