Thoughts of a minibus traveller

Rain pouring , place humid, though not cold. Floor still damp from the mop.  Feeling thirsty. The sugarless sorrel is there in the fridge with the Sterling yoghurt I bought to try to restore the bacteria in the stomach which might help with mental health and wellness. It is easy to mix.. and put ice cubes in. Glass is cold as I hold it. It feels nice. The cold water is good on itchy skin for awhile. The itching hasn't gone away.. always there.. lurking. Moon is out.. I try to work against it. Go on the floor to do the yoga and could not get far. Try it again and could not get far.  The dark clouds outside are like the dark clouds inside.  Messages to the loved one who I probably should not be messaging go unanswered.  I realise I should back off and that what I might think is anxious inquiries into well being are overwhelming.  I back off fortunately. Clumsiness in understanding these ways of managing social interactions.. but at least now I know I am ...

("Walk with me - A show" by Akima McPherson, Guyana Women Artists Association Exhibition, November/December 2017 Castellani House ) "There is a lot of hurt here" the man said softly. He and I were in the room with Akima McPherson' s installation 'Walk with Me - A Show'.  It was raining outside. An elderly man had come in to read some of the text on the walls from the story of Jasmine and Neil, but didn't seem to linger. One wall of the room has three shelves with clay ovals. The exhibition notes say that the clay ovals show markings which reflect scars, different scars including hidden ones. And the egg shapes to show a kind of fragility. A part of the wall is used as a screen for a 15 minute video. A woman tells her story of walking away from an abusive relationship. The woman's voice is calm. The face is hidden, according to Akima, to protect her identity. The hands are moving. Gently moving. The woman in the video talks through her pr...

CONFIDENTIAL Dear Sir/Madam Peace and blessings be with you from Santa Claus and all other givers of gifts .  This letter will come as a huge suprise but your name has been shared with me as somebody who would like to do some nice business. That was about white powdery stuff but this is an opportunity for legal business Please allow me to introduce my self. My name is Vidya Oil . I am the wife of the Minister of Oil. I am also the wife of the Minister of Money. And the wife of Minister of External Affairs of Guyana. They do not talk to each other so they do not know that they have the same wife.  Exxon Oil Company has given millions of US dollars to the Government. Fortunately, everything is a secret. Some money is in the Central Bank.  Some of it is not in the Central Bank as there is no agreement on the amount. Some of the millons of US Dollarsh I must transfer immediately out of Guyana. My husbands do not know of this amount of extra change from the signing...

Never mind sorrel, ginger beer, black cake and pepperpot at Christmas, if the year rushed by, then it is bleach, soap powder, old cloth and more bleach and hands bruised and fingers withered from wiping and scrubbing and the shoulders aching because you reaching high when you don't want to climb on a chair because looking up and then looking down again makes your head swing. The year rushed by. Time did not allow the detailed cleaning for Diwali. So this is the last chance. Thanks to prednisolone and piriton, I am on a flow.  Soak cloth, wring cloth, wipe. The cloth is one of my old pajamas. It is soft now, leaves no water drop traces on the wall. I reach for the mop. The mop has to be turned and twisted to reach the far corners. It has been working, two more rooms to go. The mop stick is in my hand. The mop is there. The nail is loose. The stick is not broken. The stick has been used and reused several times. Both ends. This is the fast decaying 'upstairs mop'. ...

GuyBow (Guyana Rainbow Foundation) hosted a discussion "LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) rights are Human Rights" on 9 December, 2017. There were presentations from a panel. The presentations were followed by discussions. The panelists were Melinda Janki - Justice Institute of Guyana;  Jairo Rodrigues - Guyana Responsible Parenthood Association and me. Guybow asked me to talk about Hinduism and LGBT rights so as to get other religious perspectives from the usual ones. Melinda Janki spoke about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the challenge to minorities in societies which were British colonies. It was noted that even though the British had decriminalised homosexuality for over 50 years, many of the former colonies still held out. She felt that the courts had to be used to bring judgements against discrimination using the existing laws and conventions.There were questions and discussions about discrimination in landlord tenancy, and in employmen...

Dear passion fruit, I am grateful for you. They say you good for depression and I am also hoping that you good for itching too., and now the dry cough which is coming and which jerks the back.  So the gratitude for you also with the experiment with pak choy , butter beans, sweet pepper mix up which was slightly bitter. I don't know if you will keep me awake. I had banana to see if the banana would help me sleep.. but it it seems that the night, the beautiful cool nights which start with lovely sunsets are my enemy. It is a good thing to practice gratitude. I had hoped that as things slowly fell apart this year that in practicing gratitude , I would have been saved from the itching. My skin now has red holes of varying shades and my bed sheet is spotted.  Limacol helps with cooling but like it dries the skin. The coconut oil with the peppermint oil feels cool and nice, and smells nice. But the relief doesn't last long , and the skin becomes soft and easy to break. I h...

There is a lull right now as I write this. The skin is tender. There are spots which have been burnt and scratched. My nails are filed down  but still they are too sharp so I have to try using the finger tips to rub the skin rather than scratch. Sometimes the palms turn red and the flesh on the finger swells a bit. Sleep is disrupted. I wake up to itch. Sometimes I can sleep back.  The antihistamine and fatigue has my mind cloudy. I used to count my blessings that the itching had stopped. There was a period in 2013/2014. Nothing worked. No antihistamine cream, nothing worked . Except acceptance and itching when you have to and then having to find ways to heal the skin . Those days the body was not too bad so yoga was there. The itching started  back. I used to say that given the choice of sickness, the itching was the worst thing. I could deal with the mental health issues and the body pains. But the itching is the worst. Unexpected, Different places, outbreaks...