Human rights!

April 20, 2010 at 3:33 pm (Casual notes, Discuss, His contributions, Miscellaneous, Short stories)

My dear blog followers: Arafa was full of Human rights, this post is not Hajj(part 3) 😉 .. certainly not as pleasing but just as important, read on.. 

He (my Mr., my Shahrayar) comes back late every single day complaining, sometimes it escalates to cursing. Not on me (he dare not!), but on what he relays in this little story of his.

Check what the Mr. has to say :- 

Human rights!!

Once upon a time I met this slave, a skinny man with popped eyes, you could clearly see he is overworked. This man has to get up at dawn – and with no time to have any food in his guts – starts working till mid day where he is given a short break to catch his breath and eat so that he can continue working till dusk. By night-time he is completely worn-out as he has his evening meal and heads to sleep to recharge for the coming day. His master – a fat man with a big belly – who uses slave drivers to get the slaves working hard, gives the slave days off to avoid criticism over the controversy of his slavery acts.

The slave drivers – big guys with big trucks which they drive around to check on the slaves – are slaves too. But they are favored by the master because they ensure that the work is done. All the slaves get food and shelter but the slave drivers get to drive the big trucks and punish their fellow slaves. The slave drivers would threaten their fellow slaves to cut down their food quota if they did not perform.

The idea of running away has always lingered in the mind of the slave every night as he goes to bed, but he would think about the savage world out there with no food or shelter, he would undoubtedly not survive a single day … next morning he would wake up from dawn and continue working.

The master – being in the 21st century – has learnt cleverly how to avoid human rights’ laws and pay no heed to human rights activists’ demands to free the slaves. He grasped that knowledge cunningly by reading the law and using the loopholes and weaknesses in the system to keep onto his slaves. Although he does not practically own those slaves – for legal reasons – he surly has leverage on their livelihood in a way that enslaves them with no chains around their ankles.

This may sound by far very uncommon to you. But that slave is YOU, me and everyone who works for big corporations. If you replace the words; slave by employee, slave driver by manager and master by board of directors you will find the story fits you just as well. Oh and don’t forget to replace food and shelter by salary and housing allowance.

Today, big corporations make millions of dollars from the work done by the low-level employee. The ratio of generation of wealth to salary is incomparable, where the most worked is the least earned and vice versa. Today, job security is the chain that is wrapped around our ankles. The 21st century has given human beings freedom within the laws but in reality slavery has just changed name and form.

Open your eyes to how entangled we are in a system that reduces our freedom of time, where we stay and what we eat. A world order that has been created systematically with boundaries that are very hard to break free from. The sad fact is that we are all slaves of the 21st century.

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The Mr.’s journey to the butcher

October 16, 2009 at 10:24 pm (amusing (hopefully!), His contributions, Memoirs)

Here we go again, after the attention he got from his last contribution to my blog here, the Mr. chooses to do more of it again. I don’t mind, it’s healthy for him to vent out on someone other than me and something other than FarmVille (his annoying current addiction!)… Enjoy: 

There is a joke in Egyptian about the barber who used to work as a butcher. Well, yesterday this was a reality for me!

I do not shave in barber shops usually, due to personal preservation on the cleanliness of such places. I have invested the money in buying all the shaving tools that I need to carry out the job professionally at home. And yes, that includes the barber “L” shaped razor blade (call me old fashioned, but I don’t use the fancy Gillette razors as they do not give the precision they claim to give !!).

Unfortunately , I had a bad shoulder muscle for a month and couldn’t shave. I was starting to look like a cave man so I had to give in to my wife’s nagging and settle for the local barber shop (though my cave man look “should” work to her delight because I attract less attention :p).

I stepped into the barbershop, the barber stands up with a big smile on his face, I could clearly see that he is stoned, either due to chewing paan (Indian cannabis) or just watching long Indian movies on the salon TV. As a side story, I once went to a barbershop with my dad. Dad was disturbed by the Indian movie on show, so I took the initiative to flick the channels hoping that I would find something of interest, to my surprise all the channels were Indian !!… and I thought the TV was installed for the guest’s entertainment !!

Anyhow, back to my story, the barber wrapped me in a “yellow stained” towel, smeared my face with shaving gel in an unfashionable manner, while looking away and chatting with the other barber. I could literally taste the gel and could hardly breath without sucking in some of the gel covering my nostrils.

As he shaves my moustache, he takes more from one side in an obvious way. I can only do very little when under the knife, so I sit silent and obedient, hoping he knows what he is doing. He then goes into shaving my neck and hiding every blood drop with a small piece of tissue.

Now my face looks like it has been bashed with a shovel taking part of my moustache away, or like I have a hemi-paralysed face. To fix this, he goes on shaving, with an attempt to move my face centre line half an inch to one side compensating for his mistake (if he was a plastic surgeon he would have probably made an attempt to move my nose too !!)

After finishing his master piece he looks at me with a smile asking if everything looks fine !! whatever I say would not change a thing, I just smile back and leave with plenty of tissue papers to wipe off the blood and an explanation to my wife when she sees me with barely any mustache left.

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my wife, a detergent freak!

July 30, 2009 at 8:39 pm (amusing (hopefully!), Casual notes, His contributions, me, the housewife!)

Shahrayar (my dear husband) has a contribution to my blog, do read and see what he has to say 😀

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My wife… a detergent freak!!

What can I say ?! yes, my wife is a detergent freak. The other day we went shopping and she forgot to buy her exotic shower gel. Once we were home, she found out that she had forgotten to buy one, the world gloomed in her eyes. To comfort her I said “dear, you can have a shower without a shower gel” and that’s how I found out who she truly is !!

Well, not really… I knew her pretty well by then, but she went on and on about how she can’t believe that I would suggest such a thing, and what about the germs? the sweat? the carrion?

So being a mars-ian trying to always make things better “or worse for that matter” I said “soap was probably invented as recent as two centuries ago, people had showers without soap before that and nothing happened to them!!”  well, a valid point but obviously not to her.

I, for one thing would jump once so often into the shower for a quick refreshment and not use anything but water. That – to her – was the sin of all sins. Not to dwell so much on soap, the conversation ended with me losing a point to my wife who would never, ever, ever think of having a shower without a shower gel.

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What’s your take on this matter?

34 Comments