Sleepily I say...

I wanna sleep. I totally lack direction and topic and find nothing better to pick up a book and read myself into a good nights sleep. Whats the last book I read? Harry Potter... Book 7. Light reading. And I enjoyed it. I read 3 chapters a day and finished it slow. Second time. I already knew what happens.
Before that. 'Tis by Frank McCourt. Nothing fancy. An autobiography of the author(i know... i know.. duh...). A good book. Enjoyable. Not too many fundae. But he does manage to turn gears at certain points. He doesn't seem to intend to do so. But he does. Then again, the dude is a teacher. And he won the Pulitzer. So I'm guessing that's what good teachers do. They make you think. There's this nice part. He teaches this bunch of women. Night school. Illiterates trying to get a little education. Read and write. They discuss issues. So they come around to racism. Hot button topic all over the world. And its like the number two way of getting movies to become blockbusters. Number 1 way is Steven Spielberg. Anyway... getting back. So they discuss racism and MalcolmX and Martin Luther King and stuff. Its based in the US... So they talk about how people are bad and how the world is unfair to blacks... All this time, they are also learning to read and write.
Then one day Martin Luther King gets killed. They all get worked up. They discuss the actions of the white man and how he's wrong and bad and all that. Then 2 months later, JFK gets shot. The incidents are unrelated. I think. But it affected them far differently. For the 36 black ladies who want to be able to write a letter to their kids. They sit and now they have no argument. They sit and are confused. They don't know who to blame and how to think. The best thing to do is to continue and to just keep reading.I may have the exact facts wrong. But the premise is the same. 36 ladies put their heads down and go on reading. They have nothing to say. We have no understanding and no idea why the things that happen, happen.
Its a small part of the book. It does its part. I spent time reading it again. It had no powerful meaning jumping out. But you have to figure it out.

The same happened with the autobiography of MalcolmX. It begins and continues quite unremarkably. You begin the book and read all that he writes. I was quite stunned reading it. MalcolmX is one of those people. The kind you hear about and read a few paragraphs about. Pretty much everything is appreciative. Pretty much everything tells us how MalcolmX was a great man who changed lives and brought about the change that the world needed. But he doesn't say that. He lived his younger days among junkies and gangs. He was part and participated in them. And was pretty damn good at it too. It wasn't till later that he reformed. He was caught and sent to prison. He read there. He learnt there. He became a follower of the "Honourable Elijah Mohammed" and became a Muslim. He then became a preacher. He "recruited" for Islam. The error with it all was that MalcolmX was bent on colour. He was a racist too. I was disappointed and sad when I read that. He used to preach that the white man was evil. I was upset intellectually. I didn't like what I was reading.
But the greatest signs of a good movie and a good book is transformation(eg The Godfather)... In an autobiography and true story, it is magnified. On his pilgrimage to holy Mecca, he saw white man and black man pray together. He understood the error of his ways and amended. He never claimed to be enlightened overnight. But it happened. MalcolmX was the most arrogant and at the same time humble person I have read about.
What turned here was morality and past. Everyone runs from the past. I do. A little. And the present too actually. He did too. A great man. He was haunted by his actions all his life. I realise that I am not perfect. But I have an inkling of MalcolmX, Bhagat Singh and Mahatma Gandhi inside me. At the same time, I have Ivan The Terrible, Adolf Hitler and Aurangzeb thumping within me as well.
I hope I will one day choose correctly between the good and bad sides of me. Jekyll lost. I hope I will not. My Hyde is what you see. I am all the right and wrong. I am the example of the purest and vilest of sentient being.

But right now, I am sleepy. And this post is an example of that. Good Night everyone. Sleep happy... Dream that you fell naked on a pile of cow-crap and pig-droppings. Waking up will never be better.
Forgive the tangents of this post. I enjoyed typing it though...:)