A Jar of Rice
Just yesterday, the very first day of 2006 I sat on my bedside looking out the window and deciding what to do the moment i would remove myself from there. Like usually, I would overlook the time i have the whole day and plan in my mind on how much time i would to spend for each task that i have. Just when I have firstly decided what were the tasks of the day and was going on to the time, a sudden alarming sensation swept through me like a feeling of a cat might have get as a mouse runs past when the cat thought the place was free of mouse. As startled as i was then.
OMG! Where have all my time spent on? 365 days does seem long everytime i think of it, but how come i never got enough of them?
2005 was not only a simple year a calendar might suggest. Rather, many things have occured and somehow even trivial things that had happened changed my perspectives a lil’ or more. When i was still 15 I thought before that by the time i reach 21 there would be so much that I would have seen and would be seeing further. This was true and a lil’ untrue in another sense. Because… even before i was 16 I have seen so much… only then, i was in different “shoes”. I merely see anything that happened as another event but never thought of what they could have been to other people who was less naive and had given more thoughts on it. Of course, November 6th of 2005 was a year of 21 and i reflected my whole 20years.
It gave me an impression of a jar that contains raw rice which are like the memories of events that had happened. The jar is myself. Some broken rice are vague memories while occasionally some grains with the husks still intact are hopes and wonders. So much in order and simple when the memories were kept contained but when i spill them out to remind myself of the much things that i’ve gone through, they look so much more overwhelming to myself, but others who view at the spill may thought of them as insignificant as mess.
I see myself as a child who is not very attached to my family. I did not view at all that my early childhood was a very happy one compared with other city girls with pretty pigtails running along the street with their mothers or nannies. Now… I said city girls because I know i would be much of the luckiest girl if i was in a kampung or less developed area. I did not have toys or things alike city kids would normally have. I could not go to parks and play seesaw like any other kids in the neighborhood. Some evenings when a kind neighbour down the street saw my brother and i playing hopscotch in our porch she would suggest to my dad that she’ll take us out to play with her own children. Affections for my parents were scarce. Now that when i look back into the grains i can be only fortunate and appreciative when i saw how much my mother went through just to put up with me and my constant rebellious self at home, and send me to… Scotland. Though much appreciative i am now, there is still the bitterness in me that i could feel that i actually “owe” it to her. Not as a daughter, don’t know how else i can explain, but more like to simply say “ok, when i manage to come out to work and earn my own living i would give her back all she’d given, and we’ll be even.” That feeling’s so sick and selfish in some way. Blah…
Sometimes when i came across someone who died in an accident or incident, i took them as something that would happen naturally. Until my grandma past away in 1999 then i realized what was natural and “unnatural”. Though there are sayings that it is only natural that people go and “find peace” in the end, i see that lives are so vulnerable that they are just hanging loosely at the ends of the thread. More so I felt of the impact from deaths when close friends gone and a few i never had a chance to pay the last respect but only mourn afar.
As one looks closely into every grain of rice scattered one can tell every grain is different to one another. Just as one would put the dye through the rice and realize that the grains absorb the dye differently. For that, I would put that the people who cross our path are ever so much like the dye. Some would have much more involved whereas some just merely there as “kalafe”. However so, they do change the whole lot of things that were bound to happen in the future. Back in year6 i remembered a boy who slapped me in the face just because i sent him a prank birthday card signed by all his admirers back then. I punched him back and thought he would be my sworn enemy in any case. Oh well, still childish mar… Turned out… he’s one of my most valuable cherishable friends that i would never want to lose. That is to say for the husk-intact rice. When it seemed brown (of that husk) you thought you would just throw it away, but if one would just maybe peel the layer away it may just be another good grain or it might have been empty. Why turn one person to an enemy when you’ll never know what greatness your friendship with that person brings?
As i may have been just a cloth bag or plastic bag to contain the rice, i chose not those or others because as a person, one can be as fragile as glass. Then again, not to say the cloth or the plastic are not vulnerable because cloth can be worn out while plastic bags crumple over time. As for a jar, once broken it is obviously quite hard to put them back into a piece although i would not say it’s impossible. As long as i am careful i can still be sane and standing.
And of course, as a living being in the society, we can prove how much important are we as how important air is to us by the contents in us… like how the rice can be used for. Of course, first thought that strike to most people or perhaps the only thought is to boiled rice and served. For any Indian, that rice can be used for kolam or Rangoli decorations during traditional festivals. Rice also can be distilled to be rice wine for other uses, especially from the Chinese and Japanese. They can be made as rice powder. And as how much influence one can have for others, it’s like after the boiled rice, there are other stages to it after. They can be fried, made rice pudding, made as offering to the ancestors as like the rice wine can be used many ways.