Short Story #3.

Once upon a time, a man fell into a hole.

It was a deep hole; dark, too. Exactly how deep and how dark it was in there, he had no idea - what did it matter, anyway? He was in the hole and couldn't get out: that was all he knew and that was all that mattered to him.

He had fallen flat on his face, and he lay that way for a long time. The fall had hurt him, and he feared that some of his bones had been broken. The man just remained still, face in the dirt, with a throbbing pain coursing through his body.

After what seemed like an eternity, he finally gathered the strength to pick himself up. His whole body still hurt, but he had learned to live with it now. He tried moving his limbs - thankfully, they all appeared to be intact. Maybe things weren't as bad as he'd first thought.

The man looked around to view his surroundings. Everything was pitch black, however, so it wasn't much use. But at least he now knew how dark the hole was. He still had no idea how deep it was, though, as he couldn't even see the sky - night must had fallen while he was still on his face.

He tried to recall how he had fallen into the hole in the first place. The first thing he distinctly remembered was walking alone through the woods. He couldn't remember why, though - he'd hit his head and his memory hadn't yet returned to him. It would come back in due time, he figured.

The man wondered how he was to get out of this hole. Would anyone notice his disappearance? Was anyone out there looking for him? He didn't remember telling anyone that he was going out for a walk.

He held his arms out in front of him and slowly moved forward, reasoning that he would find a wall soon enough, enabling him to make out just how large the hole was. From there, he might just be able to find some way to escape it.

He'd walked no more than three steps when he felt his foot kick against something. He had no idea what it was, but it didn't feel like a rock. The man crouched to the ground and felt around for it. He hadn't kicked it that hard, so it couldn't have gotten too far.

Sure enough, his hand soon touched something that was unmistakeably metal. Smooth, cold metal. It wasn't very big or heavy, as he managed to wrap his fingers around it and pick it up with ease. What was it?

He brought his other hand towards the object to inspect it with more detail. A hollow cylinder...some kind of nozzle? A small hook...a trigger? Could he possibly be holding a gun in his hands?

It was at that moment that it all came back to him. He knew exactly why he had been walking alone through the woods. He knew exactly why there was a gun in the hole with him - and it wasn't just any gun, it was a revolver. Not just any revolver, either - it was his. And he knew for a fact that his revolver was carrying a single bullet - that was all it needed.

No one was going to come for him. No one cared enough for that. After all, if anyone did care, maybe he would have had help paying for his wife's surgery. Maybe she'd still be alive. Maybe he wouldn't have tracked down that insurance officer and beaten him to death.

He cocked the gun and put its barrel into his mouth. He gently placed his finger on the trigger. This was it. This was how he was going to die - by his own hand, his own gun, in this dark hole, with nobody to see it. Nobody would ever even know.

He suddenly saw something in the corner of his eye - a light? It was coming from above - was it sunlight?

No, it didn't look like sunlight. It was too small; perhaps it was a torchlight? If it really was a torchlight, then surely there was someone was on the end of it?

The man stared at the light - as well as he could, anyway, as it was hurting his eyes - and the light stared right back at him, with neither saying a word. He wasn't about to remove the gun from his mouth now, not when he'd gotten this far. The light didn't seem to make an effort to stop him, either.

Then, just as suddenly as it had appeared, the light vanished, and the man was in darkness once more. The gun was still in his mouth, his finger still on the trigger. His mind could not comprehend what had just happened. Had the light been some kind of sign? And if so, what did it mean? He was utterly confused.

The questions in the man's head, in the end, boiled down to the two words: what now?

Indeed - what now?

Looking Like A Long Semester.

I was recently given a project to work on for my Financial Accounting class. It's got something to do with how Malaysian banks are helping people to grow financially, and the report has to be at least 75 pages long. It's almost like I'm already in the final year of my degree, when I'm supposed to carry out some kind of research paper.

It's this kind of thing that discourages me from becoming an academic. I mean, to become an actuary I don't need a Master's or a doctorate. Heck, I don't even need a Bachelor's degree - all I need to do is pass the professional papers. Easier said than done, naturally, but right about now it seems preferable to writing a thesis.

In any case, the fact remains that I am currently doing my Bachelor's degree, and I do  have to carry out this project if I want to get a good grade for this subject (which I obviously do). At least it's a group project, so that means I won't have to shoulder all the burden. My partner/classmate seems to have improved herself as a student (read: she's more mature towards work now) since our last semester, too, so that's encouraging.

Anyway, soon after I was given that hefty-looking task, another one came my way: I was elected as interim president of the MIU Business Students' Society. Or at least that's what I would have called it, if the rest of the committee hadn't voted in favor of the name 'Business Edge'.

Well, the club hasn't technically been formed yet. It was supposed to have been a long time ago, but for some reason the people put in charge of preparing the documents required for its formation never got round to preparing them, so now a new committee's been set up to finally get the job done.

So we had a meeting to select this committee, which would also double as the temporary committee for the club itself. Long story made short: I was more or less unanimously picked as president. My classmate, by the way, was made secretary, which would make our current task of preparing all the documents necessary for the official formation of Business Edge a whole lot easier to manage.

Besides that, I also have a video to shoot for my group presentation for my Ethnic Relations class. It's a good thing my groupmates are fairly competent and cooperative, so teamwork shouldn't be too much of a problem. What is a problem, though, is the fact that it has to be in full Malay, which isn't a language any of my other groupmates speak regularly or with much eloquence, and also that our presentation topic needs to be based on something from the subject syllabus, which mainly consists of topics similar to those you'd find in SPM-level History textbooks. History was my third-least favorite subject back in my SPM days, after Bahasa Melayu and Islamic Studies, so I'm obviously less than thrilled about that.

Still, at least I'll be able to create a video - it would be my second time doing this while in Manipal - which is something I genuinely enjoy doing. Obstacles are nothing but challenges, and all that.

It's shaping up to be an interesting semester, especially if you consider the variety (rather than just the sheer volume) of tasks that I'll have to undertake. Sure, it's going to be a long, hard slog, and sure, there will be much frustration. However, I believe that this will be good for me, as I'll have learned plenty by the time it's all over. This is why people go to university: to get a good, all-round education. If I'd simply gone ahead and done the professional papers without getting a formal university education, I would have been deprived of all this.

I love it here. I really do. 

When Inaction is Better.

There are some things better left unsaid. 

“Whoever believes in Allah and the Last Day let him speak good or remain silent.”

Prophet Muhammad (pbuh)

[Bukhari and Muslim]

A friend of mine recently told me that I have a talent for knowing when to say something and when to keep my mouth shut. The extent to which this statement is true (and how serious my friend was when she said it) I may probably never know, but to me it seems that for this to actually be called a talent kind of implies that many other people aren't very good at it.

Being an introvert, keeping my mouth shut comes more naturally to me than it does to others. Growing up, I've never really understood how some people can chatter on and on without so much as stopping to take a breath; personally, even ten to fifteen minutes of non-stop talking exhausts me and prompts me to seek out an excuse to take a break from the conversation. Add in the fact that I tend to speak in, shall we say, 'hushed' tones of a volume so low that I am constantly asked by others to repeat myself and it's clear why I don't talk much.

They say the tongue is sharper than the sword. One can only wonder how many arguments throughout history could have been averted had more people been able to hold themselves back from saying words they knew would be better off unspoken.

There are some moments better left uncaptured. 

Image courtesy of iamlostandfound.wordpress.com

The above image is from the movie The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, one of my favorite movies of all time (just because it was released at the end of last December doesn't mean it's not better than other older movies I've seen). 

In this scene, the guy with the camera, who traveled all the way to Iceland, climbed up a mountain and waited for hours alone in the snow just so he could take a photo of a snow leopard, decides not to do the very thing he came all this way for. Simply because he likes the moment.

In a world that is obsessed with recording every single moment of every single day, as evidenced by the popularity of websites like Twitter and Instagram, it was warming to know that I'm not the only person on Earth who doesn't mind not taking pictures as reminders of a particular moment in time, even though I have the means to do so. Sometimes I just prefer to live in the moment, which might just pass me by during the time it would have taken to whip out a camera and snap a photo.

Some memories are just better off sealed away in the mind, where you are free to relive them at any time you please without limiting yourself to having to view something tangible like a photograph. Indeed, it's as if photographs are losing their value with people taking photos of everything from their breakfast to their own distorted faces.

Kinda makes you wonder if old-timers would reminisce so fondly about 'the good old days' if they had stacks of pictures to remind themselves of those times.

There are some stories better left untold.

In the days following my umrah in Saudi Arabia, I'd planned to write a great deal about the ten days I'd spent in the land of the Prophet. There was so much I'd wanted to say, share and reflect upon. However, travel fatigue prevented me from writing about my trip right away after I'd reached home. Eventually, I got lazy and just didn't feel like writing about umrah even though a part of me wanted me to.

I started to wonder if it was really necessary for me to write a whole post about it. I mean, I'd actually uploaded only two photos from the dozens my family and I had taken while we were there. It showed that, for some reason, even though the trip had been immensely memorable, I didn't feel the need to actually tell people about it - not in its entirety, anyway. Most people who asked me how it went were met with vague, generalized narrations.

In the end, I decided that it was a story that was better off kept to myself. People say that the experience is different for each individual that goes to Makkah, and I couldn't agree more. Indeed, why would I share mine with other people who wouldn't ever be able to relate to it?

I'm sure most people might disagree with this stance, and I'm afraid there's not much I can do about that. But the fact remains that umrah had a profound personal effect on me, and I do not wish to let the experience venture much further from the confines of my memory. Just as I said earlier: some memories are just better off sealed away in the mind.