Coronavirus streets in Manchester - LXXVIII

A spectacle of living

Manchester Presents would be a fitting title for a programme that highlights the intriguing peculiarities of this city, demonstrated through its residents and their way of life and pursuits.

I generally consider myself more of an observer than a participant. Usually, I find out about events in my city long after they happen. If I happen to learn about something before it occurs, I might make a mental note, but due to disinterest or lethargy, it often slips my mind.

However, whenever I step out for something as mundane as shopping for essentials, these encounters make me wonder if there’s more to the beating heart of Manchester—something I have yet to fully grasp after nearly 12 years of living here.

But a polemicist

For example, I was on a bus returning from the shops when a lady of South Asian origin boarded. Stylish and quite sophisticated, her makeup stood out—her eyes accentuated with black markings resembling the upper rim of large, rectangular spectacles.

That alone would have been an interesting story. Then she started to speak—at first I thought she was on a phone call until I realised she was addressing us, the passengers on the lower deck. She wasn’t a preacher, a few of whom I’ve seen, but not in Manchester.

When I understood what she was saying—her somewhat coherent remarks—it was polemical, with references to government involvement in fraud, with the citing of sections and paragraphs too. If I had been paying closer attention earlier, I might have laughed at the absurdity of it all.

Achievement without recognition

If I heard her correctly, she was either a professor of Punjabi literature or a close relative of one, and her father was a renowned professor named Kohli. She even spelt it out. Then she launched into a tirade about prejudice, racism, and not being recognised because she had brown skin.

Despite her accent, she exhibited every sign of a good education, with flawless grammar and a conviction in her delivery that persisted until she disembarked. It seemed she was making a case—perhaps a grievance or an injustice still bothering her.

Upon reflection, I suspected she might have been a victim of a miscarriage of justice influenced by prejudice, racism, workplace harassment, maybe denied promotion—situations often encountered in academia—and this appeared to have affected her mental health, reflected in her behaviour on the bus.

May she find peace

At the very least, she probably needs therapy. I was quite concerned about her, and I’m somewhat relieved that no one tried to silence her. As disturbing as it was, we simply let her vent her spleen, though there was more to it than met the eye. I sincerely hope she receives the help she needs.

For a lady who, by her bearing, could be of a certain age above the golden jubilee, there’s little to distinguish eccentricity from being sectioned. On that spectrum, she seems closer to the latter. I truly hope she finds peace.

Meanwhile, no face masks seen, but some of us are still taking Coronavirus booster jabs.

Thought Picnic: Just like a baby, I have not talked

Should we have talked?

I have a compendium of blogs that serve not only as reference material, but time capsules of a situation or state of mind when I wrote those pieces.

Those blogs are somewhat journals of my discomfiture and sense of discomfort, betrayal, annoyance or some other ill feeling that I have decided to write about to help me deal with the issue at hand.

Sometimes, I do wonder if some of those things will have been better dealt with if I had addressed the people concerned directly.

Just like a baby I could not talk

Then I realise that though I could quite bold and forthcoming in some situations, in others I could as shy as to become literally dumb that my only outlet becomes my blog.

Yet, in writing that blog, it becomes a very cerebral exercise, rarely one in which ones spleen is vented with vehemence but something that I attempt to with a sense of English reserve, cryptic enough not to be direct and obvious enough as to make the point.

I’ve been hurt, aggrieved, maligned, belittled, disrespected and abused by too many to mention, some so close as fraternal, maternal and in the clan, the offences rarely dwell on my mind but things can be recalled with a trigger, at a confluence of circumstances sometimes completely unrelated and yet quite palpable.

For silence is still golden

There are reasons why I ignore many things, it is because I do have enough on my plate even if others do not realise that I have my one unique circumstance though I might not have the same kind of responsibilities we should all bear our burdens stoically with dignity and self-respect.

I then went over one of those blogs written over 6 years ago and realised that a very recent interaction of sorts brought to life an unresolved conflict and there are many of those lurking in memory, ensconced in a dangerous pressure-cooker situation that once again for the fact that a lot can be said, the wiser counsel is that silence is golden except for when another blog of obfuscation can be written to assuage the unrest.

There is a certain sentiment expressed in the video, maybe we should talk for a minute.

Beyond planting a suicide in the headlines

Mere mortals at NASA too

Hardly 100 hours had passed since the horror of Virginia Tech when a seriously troubled young man first gunned down two people in a dormitory, then posted a multimedia package of his thoughts to NBC and returned to snuff out another 30 including himself; another saga was playing out at NASA.

A man who had been a NASA contractor for 12 years took two people hostage and ended up kill both himself and one of the hostages. He had a bad job review, but is that all there is to it?

In the passed few months it would appear there is an underbelly of troubled NASA personnel who till recently had probably been sent to the NASA sanatorium but are some are now escaping detection and playing out their desperately flawed humanity for all to see.

There would be inquiries as to how security was breeched in a premier Ministry of Defence location, what psychological frame of mind the man was in, what triggered it and how to avoid such embarrassing shows of instability.

The fear of dying unsung

However, there is a deeper issue to be reviewed here which is now beyond the right to bear death (arms), this is the way fragile people with a grievance now seem to assuage their troubles with a suicide mission and a suicide.

Suicides occur everyday, but are seriously under-reported and they never allow for a decent professional analysis of why it happened as the fear of dying unsung and uncelebrated clouds the mind of the person. So, it has been become a standard activity in America for suicides to include innocent people in their demise as if to properly highlight why they killed themselves.

Whether that gets adequate airing as others grieve for their lost loved ones and recriminations fly as blame is apportioned all around is left to be seen. But a good study of why and the social underpinnings of what lead to the outrage and carnage has to be objectively taken to be able to see the early signs of a disintegrating human before they take out themselves and innocent bystanders.

David in Thoughts of a Naija man begins an analysis of what could have lead to the massacre at Virginia Tech.

References

Inside Cho's head