Mama O Mama!

So I've just come off dinner and Papa and I were teasing Mama about this prior thing, so she's a little on edge.

I say something to Papa (translated I'm bullying him about something) and Mama responds like, 'why are you saying that to him?'

To which I go, 'aap ko kya ho raha hai? aap ka blood pressure kyun high ho raha hai?' (whats it to you? why's your blood pressure rising?)

To which Mama goes, 'mera blood pressure high nahi ho raha hai, mujhe blood pressure hi nahi hai' (my blood pressure isnt getting high, i dont even have blood pressure).

To which I respond, 'I know. aap ke paas blood hi nahi hai*' (i know. you dont even have blood).

To which she goes, 'yeah, kyunki tu ne saara choos liya '(yeah, because you sucked it all out).

I spat my spaghetti out as a result of that.

*- I was trying to imply that she was bloodless like some kind of evil creature.

Edit: My mother just finished praying. As soon as she wrapped up the prayer mat, she comes up to me, mutters something and goes, "Allah meri bachchi mein se Shaitaan nikalde" (Allah, please rid my child of Satan).

Diss For Sale!

So this is a particular one I just came up with in like the last 5 minutes.

This diss is to be deployed, to my imagination, when you're talking to someone, say for example, saying something that is quite serious and they reply with something that just makes you think, 'Dude, just try for 2 minutes to not exhibit an IQ of -3'.

So anyway, this is how it goes.

You say your piece, the diss-ee reacts in a completely bizarre way and says something completely unacceptable. Right?

You, my friend, in response, start looking around, as though you've lost something.

Repeat this until the diss-ee cannot help but ask you 

"what are you looking for?"

Respond with, 

"Your brain. Pretty sure you had it a minute ago."

You're terribly welcome.

*Leaves audience full of standing ovation*

Love Me... Um, No Thanks. Its Okay.

Quite recently I came across this little 'shared' piece of pie going around Facebook, thanks to the public settings. This particular gem is about husbands (presumably Muslim, because the accompanying image is that of a burqa clad woman and her Muslim husband) and how they should love them. Its accompanied by a geniunely very cool quote about how Islam too states that women ought to be treated well and whatnot, but I cant help but feel absolutely loathe-some towards alot of the qualifying 'love her despite' points on it. I deleted three off the list, because they actually made sense, but if you can compare it to the original, then you know what those three are- and I did it because I wanted this post to be a rant-only post. Whee.

 

"Love her …when she sips on your coffee or tea. She only wants to make sure it tastes just right for you.

I’m sorry but since when did Love’s ultimate sacrifice become tolerating your spouse sipping your tea? Bitch if you cant be okay with me sharing your goddamned morning drink without reason, you sure as hell are going to be a pain when it comes to sharing a blanket. And joint bank accounts? Never.

Love her…when she asks you to play with the kids. She did not "make" them on her own.

What kind of a father has to be told to play with the kids? And what does the second line even mean (no I know what it means) ?!

Love her...when she is jealous. Out of all the men she can have, she chose you.

Trust me, there is no massage men love more than an ego massage. The moment a chick shows the tiniest signs of jealousy, guys like it – it proves that they’ve got game and have enough positive qualities that would fester insecurity in their woman’s mind. Provided of course that she doesn’t go psychotic on his ass and start accusing him of sleeping with every woman he even talks to.

Love her…when her cooking is bad. She tries.

What the fvck. Yes, that’s the ultimate sacrifice. Because if your bloody broccoli is over boiled, its reason enough to not love someone and with all your vegetative might, still attempt, try beyond your capacity to love her.

Love her…when she looks dishevelled in the morning. She always grooms herself up again.

Worth mentioning that Cindy Crawford herself once said that “even I don’t wake up looking like Cindy Crawford”. This point the author has made? Pathetic. Also, have you considered that she might look like a weather-beaten umbrella because she’s up all night…hearing you incessantly snore like a log?!

Love her…when she asks to help with the kids homework. She only wants you to be part of the home.

Seriously what kind of a father are we talking about here? What father wouldn’t even want to be involved in his own child’s education?

Love her...when she asks if she looks fat. Your opinion counts, so tell her she's beautiful.

Right. Your opinion counts, so if you think she looks like a big black plastic bag, say otherwise. Listen, not every girl is a retard, and when she wants your opinion (at least this is what I think) she wants your opinion.  And there’s always a nice way of saying everything. So don’t lie. Tell her the truth, but say it politely.

Love her…when she looks beautiful. She’s yours so appreciate her.

O yeah, because that’s really hard to do.

Love her…when she buys you gifts you don't like. Smile and tell her it's what you've always wanted.

Or maybe just throw her massive hints that you don’t want that peppermint cream tie she’s been dying to get you; instead state what pansy-ass multiplayer game you want; pretty sure a chick with brains will get you what you want.

Love her…when she has developed a bad habit. You have many more and with wisdom and politeness you have all the time to help her change. Love her…when she cries for absolutely nothing. Don't ask, tell her its going to be okay.

You have MANY MORE? What is this? Some kind of sick competition? Who knows who has what? What is this author smoking? Don’t ASK?! That’s the worst advice ever!

Love her…when she suffers from PMS. Buy chocolate, rub her feet and back and just chat to her (trust me this works!)

IM SORRY, SUFFERS FROM PMS? YOU'RE GOING TO GET IT LA.

Love her…when whatever you do is not pleasing. It happens and will pass.

HUH?

Love her…when she stains your clothes. You needed a new thobe (kurta) anyway.

Dude.

Love her…when she tells you how to drive. She only wants you to be safe.

NO. Nobody appreciates a backseat driver. It’s the worst experience in like, ever.

Love her…when she argues. She only wants to make things right for both.

Jesus H. Christ. Don’t love her. Bloody hell, reason with her! And who’s to say that she’s not actually right- I know tons of women who have egos the size of Panama; some women wont back down at anything.

All this forms part of a Woman's Character. Women are part of your life and should be treated as the Queen.

No, its not. Yes they are, and yes, treating them like Queens would be perfect. But please, if loving me means having to lie to me, or tolerate the fact that I drink your chai, please don’t fvcking marry me.

i tweet, therefore i am not.

July to September 2o11. 

Just because I'm still ill, doesnt mean you have to feed me krill. ):

ah the lovely loopholes of lacuna.

(@Tania R) You're so unoriginal it's bordering on plagiarism.

(@doppelhanger) "I was free on the weekend and falling in love seemed like a good idea then."

it takes a bastard of practised calibre to do what you've done.

o good ooogling God. commmmmonnnnnnnnnn!

The curious case of YOUR button.

of a time when what was once magical has now become murky.

(Nadiah)I guess "yang geli hati" is the old way of saying "and the fucked up thing is!".

You say Abeer, tu hai sar se neela, I say you, YOU sarsapilla!

remember how i said i hate people who make promises and give you their word and then back out? yeah, that.

How highbrow of you, Heathcliff.

"I mean seriously la, eat a bowl of yourself"- Shalini Julia John.

bring me close, spin me fast, hold us tight. swish.

wishes it was Bombay and Holi already.

my life is incomplete without a wire fox terrier.

I need to break up with my boyfriend. Aside from the fact that he's imaginary, he gives me waaay too much drama.

My two favourite words: food fight. Followed by my one favourite word: Africa.

UGLY PIMPLE, Y U NO BE DIMPLE?

Hi, my name is Abeer and my hair has bipolar disorder.

When I was a kid, I'd read the words Lager Beer as Larger Beer. I often wondered why it didnt come in servings smaller than Larger.

All this hungama, for such little drama? Hai Rama!

Your noggin is trollin'.

IF I was a werewolf, you'd be extremely fvcked.

Wind. #thingsthatmakemyday The blowing kind, not the flatulence.

got an email from her School's Secretary saying that she wished her little daughter was as active and cheery as me! #wordsthatmakemyday

If I could, I'd dye my hair grey.

Vhere's Voldy?

I'm sorry, I dont speak Bitch. Can I interest you in Sarcasm instead?

You're a pronounced pain in the posterior.

Is fraught with frustration no more! Wheeeeeeeeeeee!

Stuffed like a sacrificial cow!

You say ola, I say pavlova.

There is a place in England called Dumfries. I wonder where the smart fries go.

you know it means something when someone vouches to be your referee.

In the mother of all ironies, I have a missing letter in my Traveller Profile.

Rum is yum, but makes you a little dum dum.

There comes a time when you need to apply greater sense.

I love you like coochikoo.

You're tutu cute.

Write light and rid me of my plight.

Wishes people would owe her hoodies.

is in Vietnamese taxis, Abigail.

Ghoosa marne wali murgi - Boxing Chicken.

Dear God, I dont care if you dont give me a DSLR. Just please snatch away from those that dont deserve it.

Whats the scene, kidney bean?

My name is Abeer, but it could have been worse. I could have been John A. Boehner. HAW.

If your heart is pure, it wont burn. #Vietnam

Hugs only come in one flavour.

General Cuddles. Major Cuddles. Lieutenant Cuddles. Wheee, the possibilities are so exciting!

'What did you have for lunch? A country?'

Whats the scene, human spleen?

A flight attendant is called a trolley dolly. Cool noh?

I'm sorry, but I reserve to the right of the opinion that men look incredibly sexy in tailored black sherwanis with white pyajamas. AWYEAH.

And yet you forget. Tomorrow I will look better, but you will still remain a tactless bitch. Savio.

And if i were to say, pa da pa da parapapa da, would you say pa pa pa da da da rap papa rap?

Nothing is hotter on a man than a vocabulary. Word.

Harp, hark and lark. The new hook, line and sinker.

Keep blogs vacant, not minds.

Shunned, so I'm sunny now.

The world makes much more sense underwater.

Eat my desi dirt re.

God bless our help and may everyone have someone as smiley as her!

Perchance. Retraction. Such goodlooking words no?

Egg crates are by far the cutest pretend chess boards.

If being a writer means having the ability to reflect, then babeh I have loads of mirrors around me.

Of phobes and philes.

You know you're an Arts student when you read a 'Sustainable Development' book cover as 'Subaltern Development'.

"O boy do I have a cylindrical shaft for you". #wordsthatmakemyday

I look better in low resolution.

"He's not a friend la. He's fish food".

Bro, you need methylphenidate bro.

I wish I could live in a crumble bubble, then take the bubble outside and crumbles disappear.

No, I dont want to play A Hole and A Pole.

Sometimes I wish I could somersault just to express my general joy.

Just saw a tooth on a necklace. Who would want to buy a tooth on a necklace? (tooth is fake, but still!)

Whine, but dont ever pine. No one's worth it.

"I wasnt that drunk." "Dude, you were asking my cat why he killed Mufasa".

Man you make such absolutist statements.

Projectile vomiting is always funny. Until it happens towards you.

"One of them asked where I killed the pink elephant to get the pants."

Oh baby you're so foxy, you have so much moxie.

Talking to you is like subjecting my brain to 3rd degree Guantanamo Bay-style torture.

When I grow up, I will educate my children through Banksy's works.

Your existence makes me happy". #wordsthatmakemyday

This year's most critical buy- a copy of books with pictures of Banksy's works. MUST DO.

Dear slightly obese people, they're called skinny jeans for a reason.

Because it is only through discord that you realise how infinitely united you are. #londonriots

Whenever I think of how bad my day has been, I take comfort from the fact that it could have been alot worse- I could have been you.

'What doesnt affect me, is invisible to me' IS the main reason why we are in a society as apathetic as ours.

Does anyone fester dreams of going to a traditional British sweet shop to buy candy, because they've read about it in Peter and Jane? No?Ok.

"Sometimes I think that the one thing I love most about being an adult is the right to buy candy whenever and wherever I want."-Ryan Gosling

Why on Earth would anyone in their minds want to have their candy sugar-free?! Thats like wanting you want lyrics without music.

Abeer, in a court of idiots, you'd be crowned the King lah!

Okay so I'm thinking of renaming myself Abeer Snugglesaurus Yusuf. Or Abeer Huggablesaurus Yusuf. Or Abeer Cuddlesaurus Yusuf. Sound good?

'You're like a Post-It. You stick around'. #wordsthatmakemyday

Dyou have a billi or a billa? #onlyinindia

vIs it a baby or a baba? #onlyinindia

I'll be the Carmen Sandiego to your Waldo. Pakka promise.

Friend: "You my friend, are the only bridge between me and the desi world." #wordsthatmakemyday

Abeer, why is everyone running away from you? #shitmymumsays

Man, the brilliance that is some people's minds and generosity. Up in arms, we longer are.

Buy me a vintage typewriter and no one gets hurt.

Kutte, kaminey, har ek friend zaroori hota hai. I couldnt have said it better myself Airtel.

I dil you. Do you dil me too?

"I'm bringing Abeer. What are you bringing for entertainment?"

Remind me to remind you to not forget.

I cant wait till someone tells me something cool next, so I can reply with, 'thats cool like genda/chameli ka phools'.

I'll wear sprinkles, then wont you take a picture of me.

"Dude, you're the fucking cutest. You know that?" #thingsnuzhasays

"We have all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the power we choose to act on. That's who we really are." - S.B., HP 5 film.

I end where you begin.

Death bears a potent reminder in what you forgot far too often- the purpose of life and the mark you leave on others.

"Are you going abroad to get a new boyfriend?" #shitmyfriendssay

Jack and Jill went up the hill to get a pail, Jill stayed up, She wants to learn how to jive an' wail. #louisprima

You will one day be used by a country to wage an intellectual war. They'll fight over which country is stupider and you'll be priceless.

Word limit? More like mind limit!

Postsecret: "I didnt feel like a child then, I dont feel like an adult now".

Make Lego models, not war.

You cant spell cover without over- which practically means the death of the original.

I wish I were cast as an extra in HP only so I could wave my wand once and feel like it mattered.

Friend to me: "OMYGOD if you think he's cute, he must be really ugly".

Friend: "Know any good looking guys? Wait, why am I asking you?" #wordsthatmakemyday

I'm sorry, but I think some food accidentally got into my oil.

Happiness is only so much fun, misery is more bankable.

I wonder if it takes George Clooney a long time to pee.

I like big bread and I cannot lie. you other butters cant deny.

Way to exoticise and compound stereotypes, Outsourced series.

Was at KLCC and saw monks-taking pictures of the Twin Towers with their very own digital cameras.

why this yours/mine dichotomy?

The hair is always better on the other side.

My mum to me while I was raving about my favourite snack: "Nabati? Not better than chappati". @taniarahman @scharahap #indo

Only those who have known war know the value of peace.

(nadiah) and those who see the end of war are dead.

Your prose, not your penis, should be gorgeous.

May we all weather these terrible storms and come out from it, making decisions right for those around us.

War deserves less apathy and more memory.

If only dust bunnies were made out of clouds.

The next time you want to say dude, WTF, you can just say dude, dont be so Japanese.

You know you're in good hands when your School Secretary sends you an email saying, "Abeer, you rock!"

If you dont have a magic carpet or a flying something or the other, I'm not interested.

Read, because you must; cry, because you should; laugh, because you need to.

"She's had the romantic, she's had the intellectual, how about all that in one fine little brown package." -Manny Delgado, Modern Family.

I wish my superpower was the ability to click my heels.

Hate the calories, not the candy.

That you are only human is not a valid excuse in football. Or Indian cricket.

Seen on Facebook- "My child's first steps will be dubsteps".

The first thing I'm going to do when I get a boyfriend is to call him 'darling darling mozzarella'. #GGM @kulvinderghir

Is part of the Rupe Troupe. Are you too? #rupertgrint #hp

Hi, I'm Abeer and I'm a hoot and 3/4ths. And you are?

Insert populist statement that everyone falls head over heels in love with, then retweets till it becomes a Top Tweet.

I absolutely despise and detest discussions on diasporic discourses. And so does Dinesh.

Boring banal brain.

Proliferation of pretentious people at parties- the idiosyncrasies of our identities.

Perhaps the greatest tragedy is that you cease to be human.

Reflective of a time, a people and a nation.

Express your opinion, but never step over someone else's. Maintain it, but dont silence someone else.

Yes Mr. Bartender, a double shot of nitrous oxide.

Probably the best bag pun I've ever seen- "The Hitchiker's Bag To The Galaxy".

No, I will deny being your cousin if you insist on calling me 'cous cous'.

You, kind sir, dont have a vestige of prestige in my eyes.

Mama O Mama!

Recently Papa was on the phone with his Filipino counterpart, and Mama and I both raised our eyebrows when conversationally he goes, "Yes pare, but you see ..." as though it was such a natural part of his speech and that he's familiar with Pinoy slang. So I look at Mama and I'm like what does 'pare' even mean (to the uninitiated it means friend in Filipino)? And she goes, "well see, Papa's talking to an uncle, which means its a he. That's why he's saying pare, pare is like pyaare (loved in masculine terms). Also personally I think they should have a feminine way to address friend too, like pari, like pyaari (loved in feminine terms).

Ask Mama what her favourite animation movie is and unflinchingly she will tell you, "Up". She does genuinely like the movie, because of the storyline and especially the life montage of Carl and Ellie growing old. But ask her what she likes best about the movie and she'll go, "the title. Because it is UP. Like Uttar Pradesh". Mama happens to be a native of UP, India.

So I woke up today morning not in the best of spirits, and was a bit of a grumpy bear. I lost all my grumpiness however, when I ended up saying "shahi chakkar" instead of "chai shakkar" (a simple spoonerism mistake where instead of saying tea sugar, i ended up saying royal round).  Mama proceeds to take hold of me, shake me while simultaneously saying "Abeer, get up! Its 12pm now! Abeer, are you okay?! Abeer, come back to life. Abeer, ARE YOU HAVING A HANGOVER?!" Let is also be known to the general publics that she has never been near anyone who consumes alcohol OR seen what a hangover looks like, except in movies.

Adele's Best Song.

Abeerism.

It takes either a person of great ignorance or great knowledge to weigh their opinion on a matter of profound importance and say 'I don't know'.

I don't care where I'm buried, all I want is to die in my mother's arms. Honest. I wont be happy anywhere else. I know it.

And before anyone starts accusing me of wetting eyes, they, the unnamed entity, really ought to add 'Watching Your Parents Grapple With Technology' as a valid symptom for Lifelong Trauma, or at the very least a justified cause for Spontaneous Combustion Due To Frustration. Word.

Mama O Mama!

. so i just asked my mum to borrow the broom and the dustpan and after enquiring if i was mentally alright, she passed it onto me. i went into my room to clean up some rubbish and she barged in right at the moment i was looking at myself in the mirror, adjusting my hair clip, seeing which my mum exclaims 'Allah so cute. Looking like baby shaby'. And I'm like 'haun sachi?' She goes 'Haan, ikdum masoom lag rahi hai' (yeap, you look very innocent). I follow her outside asking her 'haan sachi?' again and then she goes, 'yeah, this is much better than your sweeper style look (haan, yeh tere jhipringmangu* baal aur chehre se zyaada behter hai- in mama's world a word that means unkempt, messy and unclean)'. so i go, 'mama thats so mean of you. aap aisa kaisa keh sakte hai. mein abhi pyaari lag rahi ho, lekin aap toh maa hai na, aap ko toh mujhe hamesha pyaar karna chahiye. surat pe nahi jaana chahiye' (how can you say something like that?! you cant just love me when i look nice. youre a mother, you're meant to love me no matter what i look like). to which my mum goes, 'tere se sirf chudail pyaar kar sak ti hai' (only a witch can love you). to which i respond, 'tabhi toh aap ko pyaar karna chahiye' (which is exactly why you ought to love me!). she goes, 'nahi, chudail pyaar kar sakti hai, MAHA chudail nahi pyaar kar sakti!' (no, a witch can love you, but a MEGA witch cant!)

. so Aunty Ira was home and was cleaning and id just gotten up. she met me and starting talking about how she wanted to listen to hindi songs and whether or not i could help her to buy a CD of songs. i asked her what kind of songs she wanted, slow and mellow or the stereotypical Bollywood type. she chose the latter, saying in the cutest accent, Kabhi Kuushi Kabhi Gum, Kuchi Kuchi Hotaaa Hai, etc. so i was like yeah, can do, and Mama goes from the other end, 'ask her if she's seen Kabhi Gum Kabhi Glue'.

. something happened between us and mama started singing a song. Aunty Ira remarked how nice mama's voice was to which she says, 

'saya nyani,

abeer diwani'.

'i sing,

abeer is crazy.'

(obviously this rhymes in malay and doesnt quite have the same effect in english)

. so mama sits me down during lunch one day and goes, 'yknow how youre always talking about your kids and what youre going to name them and youre so shameless that you dont realise you'll need to have a 1o7 kids to give them all the names you want? well, i was reading the Quran the other day and came across the word 'shams', which means sunset and i thought what a lovely name for a child, but then i thought sunset like hot, and with a poor child blessed with a mum whose temper is as hot as yours, any name of the warm kind would just make the poor thing explode. so ive decided that you should name your children- ice kacang if its a girl, ice cube if its a boy. so they can stay as cool as possible and not be driven crazy by a mother as hot-minded and eccentric as you. cool na?'

*- please meet me to know how exactly jhipringmangu is pronounced.

On War.

Anyone who knows me knows how emotional I feel about war and its narratives, be it WWII, WWI, fought in the Orient or Orissa. Anyone who knows me knows how I feel about war veterans coming back home (incidentally, if you'd like to know what it feels like, visit this site). Perhaps one day soon, when I dont have such looming assignment and thesis deadlines hovering above my head, I'll tell you more about it. As such, when I chanced upon this article visiting my Mekkah of daily news, DailyMail Online, I couldnt stop crying because of the various stories reflecting upon a time that I was completely removed from. I reproduce this here in its entirety (without permission, full article here), a brilliant article promoting a book written by Max Hastings, which I will strive to buy soon when I reach India. Or sooner.

Do read.

He longed for his mother. William Crawford was a 17-year-old Boy Second Class serving aboard the storm-tossed British battle cruiser Hood in 1941, from where he wrote home with a heartfelt plea.

‘Dearest Mum, I can’nae eat and my heart’s in my mouth. We struck bad weather today and waves as big as houses came crashing over our bows.

‘I wonder if it would do any good, Mum, if you wrote to the Admiralty and asked them if there was any chance of me getting a shore job.’

Crawford, however, was still aboard Hood when she was sunk with almost all hands, including him.

On the far side of Europe, Red Army Private Samokhvalov was in an equally wretched condition as young Crawford.

He was lining up for battle at Kursk, where the Soviet and Germans armies were about to clash in the biggest battle of the war and a million men would be killed or wounded.

‘Mama,’ he wrote in a letter. ‘I have not known such fear in all my 18 years. Mama, please pray to God that I live. When I was at home I did not believe in God, but now I think of him 40 times a day. I don’t know where to hide my head.

‘Papa and Mama, farewell, I will never see you again, farewell, farewell, farewell.’

Here were two teenagers from different lands, different cultures and thousands of miles apart but with a single thought. Like the vast majority of the millions drawn into World War II, they hated it.

There were many, of course, who fought bravely, proud and happy to serve — and die if necessary.

‘I suppose our position is about as dangerous as is possible in view of the threatened invasion,’ Lt Robert Hichens of the Royal Navy wrote in July 1940, one of the most perilous times in British history.

‘But I couldn’t help being full of joy.

‘Being on the bridge of one of His Majesty’s ships, being talked to by the captain as an equal. Who would not rather die like that than live as so many poor people have to, in crowded cities at some sweating indoor job?’

He was killed two years later but the heroic Hichens was that comparatively rare commodity even in wartime — a happy warrior. For such people, bearing their share of their nation’s struggle for conquest or freedom rendered their sorrows tolerable and ennobled loneliness and danger.

Others were not so keen. ‘I am absolutely fed up with everything,’ a British officer wrote to his wife from the Mediterranean. ‘The dirt and filth, the flies — I’m having a hideous time and I wonder why I’m alive.’

What was it really like to be at war in a world that was tearing itself apart? When, afterwards, men and women from scores of nations struggled to find words to describe what they had been through, many resorted to a familiar mantra — ‘All hell broke loose.’

We may be tempted to shrug off the banality of this phrase. Yet it captures the essence of what the struggle meant to vast numbers of people as they were plucked from peaceful, ordered existences to face ordeals that, in many cases, lasted for years, and for at least 60 million were terminated by death.

All hell did indeed break loose. Many people witnessed spectacles comparable with medieval visions of hell — human beings torn to fragments; cities blasted into rubble; ordered communities sundered.

Almost everything that civilised peoples take for granted was swept aside.

The war was fought on many fronts by many different nations. Some battlefronts were worse than others. Russians and Germans were at each other’s throats continuously for almost four years on the Eastern Front in far worse conditions than British and American forces ever encountered, and with vastly heavier casualties.

‘Death is everywhere here,’ a Private Ivanov, of the 70th Army, wrote despairingly to his family. ‘I shall never see you again because death, terrible, ruthless and merciless, is going to cut short my young life. Where shall I find strength and courage to live through all this?’

He probably didn’t. One in four Russian and one in three German combatants died in the War — against one in 20 British and one in 34 American servicemen.

But the fact that, statistically, the suffering of some individuals was less terrible than that of others elsewhere was meaningless to those concerned. It was no consolation for a British soldier facing a mortar barrage on D-Day to be told that Russian casualties were many times greater.

Pain and suffering were universal, as were fear and grief. Everywhere, young men and women were obliged to endure new existences utterly remote from those of their choice, often under arms and at worst as slaves.

Most of those suddenly thrown into these extremes of excitement, terror and hardship were conscripts, who clung stubbornly to their amateur status. They saw themselves as performing a wholly unwelcome duty before returning to their ‘real’ lives.

An American war reporter looked at U.S. marines on the blood-soaked Pacific island of Guadalcanal and concluded that ‘the uniforms and the bravado were just camouflage. They were just boys — ex-grocery boys, ex-bank clerks, ex-schoolboys, boys not killers.’

Life in the military was a shock for these youngsters from the moment they were called up. Many had never lived away from home before and hated the indignities and discomforts of military discipline and communal barrack-room living.

Some were upset by swearing and crudity they had never encountered before. Among Americans, everything seemed to be ‘tough sh*t’ and no sentence was complete without its obscene expletives — the effing officers made them dig effing foxholes before they received effing rations or stood effing guard.

Even the most delicately reared recruits acquired this universal military habit of speech. British soldier William Chappell never ceased to ache for the civilian world from which he had been torn.

He missed his home and his friends and bemoaned the loss of his career. His feet hurt, he was ‘sick of khaki, and all the monotonous, slow, fiddle-de-dee of Army life.’

But if service life was bad enough before going into action, then combat itself was an infinitely worse experience. ‘With our tent and clothing wet and half-frozen,’ wrote one soldier, ‘I felt numb to the point of almost not caring what happened to me.’

Trench foot was endemic, dysentery commonplace. Eugene Sledge, an American marine, recoiled from the brutish state to which the battlefield reduced him. ‘The personal bodily filth was difficult to tolerate. I stank! It bothered almost everyone I knew.’

Excretory processes became an obsession. In battlefield conditions, many never made it to a latrine. But as one soldier recalled: ‘No one said anything about how you smelt, because everyone smelled bad.’

And then there was fear, an ever-present sensation, for all that some tried to deny it. Sledge was terrified when his unit came under shell fire. ‘Every muscle in my body contracted. I braced myself but felt utterly helpless. My teeth ground against each other, my heart pounded, my mouth dried, my eyes narrowed, sweat poured over me, my breath came in short irregular gasps, and I was afraid to swallow lest I choke.

‘I always prayed, sometimes out loud. To me, artillery was an invention from hell. To be killed by a bullet seemed clean and surgical. But shells would not only tear and rip the body, they tortured one’s mind almost beyond the brink of sanity.

'After each shell I was wrung out, limp and exhausted.’

Lieutenant Peter White of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers recalled a youngster in his troop reduced to ‘whimpering misery’ as bombs fell. ‘He grovelled in the sand moaning: “Oh God! Oh God, when will it stop, sir?” I felt a wealth of sympathy for him, but dared not show it for he would just collapse the more.

‘No one mocked him or made fun. We had all tasted too vividly of the ordeal ourselves to feel anything but great compassion.’

As Lt Norman Craig waited for the Battle of Alamein to begin in the North African desert, he, too, reflected on the universal nature of fear.

‘The popular belief that in battle there are two kinds of person — the sensitive, who suffer torment, and the unimaginative few who know no fear and go blithely on — is a fallacy. Everyone is as scared as the next man, for no imagination is needed to foresee the possibility of death or mutilation. It is just that some manage to conceal their fear better than others.’

But officers like him could not afford to show their feelings. ‘We had to feign a casual and cheerful optimism to create an illusion of normality and make it seem as if there was nothing in the least strange about what was going on.’

Fear could be contagious if it took hold, spreading faster than a fire. ‘Once the first man runs,’ said an American paratrooper, who witnessed it happening to fellow Americans in the Battle of the Bulge, ‘others follow. Soon there are hordes of men running, all of them wild-eyed and driven by fear.’

With experience, men overcame their initial delusion that all those beneath an artillery barrage or manning a foxhole on the front line were doomed to die. They discovered the truth — that most soldiers survive most battles.

Thereafter, it became a matter of personal taste whether an individual decided that he himself was going to be among the fortunate, or condemned to join the dead. ‘Fate, not the Germans, was our undiscriminating enemy,’ wrote a Royal Engineer corporal in the thick of the fighting in Sicily.

Some men resigned themselves to the inevitability of death, and were all the calmer for it: ‘Strangely, the giving-up of hope re-instills hope in you. You concentrate on little things — the next meal, the next bottle of booze, the next sunrise, the next bath.’

Comradeship was fundamental. ‘Nobody has the courage to act in accordance with his natural cowardice with the whole company looking on,’ said a Luftwaffe NCO named Walter Schneider.

But there was much to unnerve them. In combat, the grotesque became normal. An American infantryman watched a shell hit a fellow soldier: ‘He disintegrated, leaving only patches and puddles of flesh and bone spattered in the mud. I sat and ate my food. I had not known him.’

Another young GI was stuck in a foxhole when his buddy was ripped by a machine-gun burst from the thigh to the waist and through the stomach. ‘We were cut off and by ourselves, and we both knew he was going to die. We had no morphine to ease his pain, so I tried to knock him out. I whacked his jaw as hard as I could with a helmet, because he wanted to be put out. It didn’t work, and he slowly froze to death and bled to death.’

A different soldier in the same battle became so desperate in his misery that he found himself gazing with envy at corpses. ‘They looked peaceful. The War was over for them.’

Horrific experiences like these opened a chasm between those who went through them and those who did not. In all armies, soldiers serving with forward units shared a contempt for the much larger number of men in the huge logistics ‘tail’ at the rear, who faced negligible risk.

The gulf was even greater with loved ones back at home. Canadian Farley Mowat wrote to his family from the Italian front: ‘We are in different worlds, on totally different planes. I don’t really know you any more.’

To cope with the horrors they were experiencing, most men under fire focused upon immediacies and loyalties towards each other. ‘Life was free of all its complexities,’ Norman Craig recalled.

‘To stay alive, to lead once more a normal existence, to know again warmth, comfort and safety — what else could one conceivably demand. To be allowed to continue to live — nothing else mattered.’

Although soldiers often talked about women, under the stress and unyielding discomfort of being at war most craved simple pleasures, among which sex scarcely featured. It was home they wanted, whether that was in London, New York, Berlin or Tokyo.

A U.S. Marine officer in the South Pacific fantasised about what he would do if he got back in one piece. His dreams were surprisingly mundane. ‘I’m going to start wearing pyjamas again. I’m going to polish off a few eggs and several pints of milk. A few hot baths are also in order.

‘But I’m saving the best for last — I’m going to spend a whole day flushing a toilet, just to hear the water run.’

Another American officer, 25-year-old Captain Henry Waskow, yearned for toast. ‘When we get back to the States, I’m going to get me one of those smart-aleck toasters where you put the bread in and it pops up,’ he declared. A few seconds later, he was mortally wounded by a fragment from a German shell.

No wonder a powerful sensation among millions of people was that of injustice. They did not believe they merited the plagues of peril, privation, loneliness and horror that had swept them away from their familiar lives into alien and mortally dangerous environments.

Some didn’t mind. The Wehrmacht’s Captain Rolf-Helmut Schröder remembered his campaign experience ‘with gratitude’, despite being wounded three times. ‘We were proud to belong to the German army,’ said another officer, who ended up as a prisoner-of-war in Russia.

But few soldiers were actually eager to join battle. A 19-year-old American recruit was not unusual in openly admitting he had no lust for glory. He and his comrades went to war in the hope that ‘somehow we wouldn’t be in harm’s way’.

It was a tough job for their officers to turn at least some of them into fighters with the guts and the tenacity to close with the enemy, which was the only way to win battles. That meant, ‘conditioning them to enjoy killing’, according to one battalion commander, and it was no easy task with men from democratic nations.

Such qualms did not seem to affect recruits to the armies of totalitarian regimes. Germany and the Soviet Union produced formidable citizen soldiers who again and again fought more convincingly than their Anglo-American counterparts.

With more freedom of choice, British and American soldiers were less willing to accept sacrifice. They expended prodigious quantities of ammunition to secure even modest local objectives and required far larger quantities of food and comforts than other armies deemed necessary. For every pound of supplies the Japanese transported to their garrisons, the U.S. shipped two tons to its own forces.

The same reluctance to endure went for civilians. It is unthinkable that British people would have eaten each other rather than surrender London or Birmingham — as happened during the 900-day siege of Leningrad.

The inhumanity of the war on the Eastern Front was beyond the imaginings of those in the West. A Soviet fighter plane landed back at its base with human flesh adhering to its radiator grille, after a German ammunition truck exploded beneath it. ‘Aryan meat!’ the squadron commander pronounced to laughter as he picked off fragments.

‘This is a pitiless time, a time of iron,’ a war correspondent who observed this wrote in his diary.

Another met a Russian peasant carrying a sack of frozen human legs, which he proposed to thaw on a stove in order to remove their boots

A people who could endure such things displayed qualities of endurance the Western Allies lacked.

Those qualities were an essential aspect of the hell let loose in World War II and, like it or not, they were indispensable to the destruction of Nazism.

All content here copyright Max Hastings

Good Evening World.

Listen to me on a rainy day. 

Would You Like To Be Freaked Out?

1. Read this.

2. Watch this.

Video courtesy Nuzha E.

Mama O Mama!

The Raya/Eid Edition

. Yesterday Mama was upto her usual balcony shenanigans. She saw some Malay woman so she goes, 'Haslinda!' then 'Zulfekly'. Then she saw a Malay guy. She went 'Shahruuuuul!'

. For buka puasa (to open our fast) Papa brought home 'tez aloo' (spicy/ed potatoes) from a nearby Pakistani restuarant. It was heavily coloured, yknow that fake tandoori chicken colour? Yeah, much like that. So I was like 'Wow, whats this?' Mama goes, 'Tez aloo'. I say, 'O'. She goes, 'It should have been tez raang aloo' (heavily coloured potatoes).

. A few minutes ago Mama made tea after buka puasa for herself (and me). Papa had just returned from the Arab store with some 'halawa' of an unidentified sort. Little packages wrapped in plastic, bitesize. Mama goes, 'I wonder what this is and what it tastes like' so I'm like okay, then you eat it. She proceeds to unwrap it and just as she's about to bite in, I deliberately annoy her by asking her 'what flavour is it?' 'is it nice?' 'why arent you saying anything' in rapid succession. Then as she bites into the thing, she almost chews off the wrapper. And I go, 'Mama, you're not meant to eat the wrapper. Please dont eat that'. She responds, 'ab toh mein wrapper bhi khaongi. Akhir mein Abeer ki maa ho naa' (now that you mention it, I'll definitely eat the wrapper. After all, its characteristic of being Abeer's mother). Honestly my mum makes me sound like the kid who ate glue.

. So this little thing I bought today ended up breaking (its fixed now yay!) and I got all worked up about it and sad. So I go into the hall and cry out in exasperation, 'Its broken! Now what do I do?!' Papa replies, 'Where did you get it from?' and I dont respond to that and go, 'meine kitne armaan se le ke aayi thi yeh' (i bought this with so much hope!), to which Papa goes, 'Arman se kyun le ke aayi? Dukaan se le ke aana tha' (why did you buy it from Arman? you should have bought it from a shop). Arman, as you may/not know happens to be the word hope as well as a common Muslim name. Hence the joke.

. I recently remembered something that happened in about o7/o6. I remember this only because it happened in Bombay and it happened in a way that I cant forget the Bombay element. Mama has this habit of taking on dares if you were to give them to her, and I think this stemmed from her threatening that if I dont get up early in the mornings, she'd throw water on my face (which incidentally she has done previously). So I was like Yeah I dare you, and she goes, 'You dare me Abeer? You dare me?' and because I know she never acts on it (well not usually if it involves doing something highly embarrassing in public) I was like yeah I dare you. Okay fine whatever. Days go by and the entire thing (I assume) is forgotten. One fine day, I leave home to go out with my friends or whatever, go down the stairs- all good. I think I momentarily stopped for a minute to check something or do something, God knows what!, but within a second, there's a bucket of water that's been doused over my head. I look up in anger only to see my dear Razia of a mother poking her thumb out at me. Utterly clueless as to why there's all this water on me (thankfully she missed also a little), I am so flabbergasted I cant even come up with a response. On top of that, the neighbourhood's Uncle, Aunty and some random kids are also there, so I cant even swear. Being me, I just walked on out of the gate. I tried to take my revenge by getting a load of water ready when she went down alone next, but it didnt work. Cunning old lady knew how to duck and avoided getting wet entirely, going a fair distance and showing me that damned 'na na you didnt get me' thumb sign.

. Our help is honestly the bestest. I have mention of her before, and do so again, this time with regard to her children. She's awesome and always laughing and smiling and all of that. She's also from Indonesia. As she was going on leave today for Eid holidays, all the Yusufs said bye to her and wished her Happy Holidays. So Mama goes, 'Wish Eka, Raka and Linda for us!', which she was very happy to hear. Now those names- dont you think they belong in a song? I most certainly do, and I know which one too!

Dear You

We'll do that silly little thing of taking family pictures and sending them out as greeting cards to all those we know.

Yes snail mail.

Yes Seasons Greetings.

Yes we will.

A.

This Eid

I hope everyone who sets out from their homes to go wherever they want to go, reach their destinations. I live next to a hospital. Every time I hear the ambulance siren, I pray that it isnt what my mind immediately starts imagining it to be.

I hope everyone takes out a minute or two to appreciate what this time means beyond the food, merriment and fun company.

I hope everyone stays safe happy and content.

Eid Mubarak everyone. I hope you have a brilliant one.

Scroll below to see a reassuring infographic on road safety.

Boo! Reassuring? So passé.