On Characters from Children's Books

Back when I was young ( not just by heart) I read books in which there was a clearly defined good guy character( who also looked good by the way) and a bad guy character( who of course looked bad). You could actually tell just by looking at the cover of the book as to who was the good guy or who wasn’t. Take the name of the story and the picture on the cover together, and there you have it, a working rough draft of the story. It made me feel happy and secure that I wouldn't have to read too much into the story myself. 

But when I grew up, I saw that things weren’t as simple as they seemed. For example sometimes good looking people were really absolutely nasty at heart (most of the times? nah) and really ugly (strong word lets change it) really reasonably okay looking people could be good people. I have to admit, that was a shocker. How was I now ever going to tell good people from the bad ones? My whole worldview had been changed. There was utterly no superficial way to know that anymore. Looks, apparently as it turned out, could be deceiving. Good guys didn’t just do random good things to strangers on the streets and bad guys weren’t always brooding over some evil plans to take over the world(preferably in a dark room at night) Actually all this was making me feel really sad up until again when it suddenly changed to what it used to be like before.

The Taliban are people who live in caves, mostly in Afghanistan and sometimes in Pakistan (that is if you actually know the distinction between the two countries and you don’t think one is a city within the other). Their weapon of choice is an AK47 rifle (mine too actually in the computer game counter strike). Their job is to blow things and people up. They have been doing it for years and as the architect of the Matrix says "have become increasingly efficient at it”. They sport beards and wear the traditional dress from the region which is "shalwar kameez". Most importantly they look and act DIFFERENT. Different than what I am. They are also generally seen on camera almost always carrying a rifle (even when the apparent purpose of the video is to talk to people from the media). They claim to follow the shariah law (at least their own version of it) and have sister organizations or daughter concerns virtually everywhere in the world. Literally anything wrong that happens anywhere in the world is carried out under the guileful command of the Taliban leaders, and only so that there is no confusion they are always quick to accept responsibility for things that happen in Iraq or South Sudan or Syria or well, unsurprisingly Afghanistan. 

So now once again I feel the same thing. I no longer have to think about the bad guys or the good guys. The news channels just do that for me. And then they just tell me what I have to think about. And I like a truly modern man of the 21st century, humbly always comply. So at the end of the day, I again know how/what the bad guys look like, smell touch taste feel say talk do. Yet again you name a news story containing that name and show me a picture simultaneously and I can tell what the story is going to be about. Ahh. It has made my life simpler once again.

Disclaimer: I detest and abhor to my very core the ideals that the Taliban hold and represent and wish that the world soon will be rid of people like them. The purpose of this blog however has only been to state that every time I hear something on the news, like this,  I feel there is more to the story than meets the eye. 

Its that thing you know

Invariably, all the people I have met in Berlin speak more than one language. The last sentence is a colossal understatement because most people speak three or more languages. And when you speak many languages, the most profound benefit that you have is having something else to talk about with strangers you meet for the first time, other than weather and world politics. You can talk about languages themselves.
More often than not, people will also tell you how they have a “thing” for languages. I don’t know what having a “thing” for languages means but it certainly means something cool or else people wouldn't be saying that so often. This reminds me I also used to say the same thing. And I don’t anymore because I speak only two languages and that’s a low number of languages to know if you want the claim of the “thing with languages” to be taken seriously by anyone.

So virtually everyone I have met here I have told this one thing. I generally tell it right after telling them how similar I think German and Urdu are (which happens when I tell them that “I AM learning German” (this happens when they ask me “ARE you learning German”?)). Anyway so when I tell them I think Urdu and German are similar, their response is always “really? How come” and then I pull up my sleeves and get into the nitty gritties. I have told the exact same thing to many people so many times that it almost seems like a script that I rehearse over and over again. Lately I have been thinking whether I have become so old that I do not remember I am repeating myself or not. I certainly do hope I haven’t. This similarity in these languages is telling people the word for “capital city” in Urdu. In my defence, if indeed you can come to your own defence, but in my defence, the word for “capital city” in Urdu IS really interesting and it DOES really remind me of how words are constructed in the German language. For the interest of the reader it is “dara-ul-hakoomat” and it means a region within which the government of a country is located. Wonderful isn’t it. There you go. Now when we meet for the first time, you would know what I will say.

 OHHHHHHHH Now I see why I am so pathetically sad and lonely here. It makes perfect sense now.