Wintersmith by Terry Pratchett

Assalamualaikum..

I'm reading Wintersmith right now written by Terry Pratchett. Its a wonderful wonderful wonderful book. Delightfully funny! Here, I would like to share with you an excerpt from the book:

' Witching was turning out to be mostly hard work and really short of the 'zap! glingle-glingle-glingle' variety. There was no school and nothing that was exactly like a lesson. But, it wasn't wise to try to learn witching all by yourself , especially if you had a natural talent. If you got it wrong you could go from ignorant to cackling in a week...

When you got right down to it, it was all about cackling. No one ever talked about this, though. Witches said things like, "You can never be too old , too skinny or too warty", but they never mentioned the cackling. Not properly. They watched out for it, though, all the time.

It was all too easy to become a cackler. Most witches lived by themselves (cat optional) and might go for weeks without ever seeing another witch. In those times when people hated witches, they were often accused of talking to their cats. Of course they talked to their cats. After three weeks without and intelligent conversation, you'd talk to the wall. And that was an early sign of cackling.

'Cackling', to a witch, didn't just mean nasty laughter. It meant your mind drifting away from its anchor. It meant you losing your grip. It meant loneliness and hard work and responsibility and other people's problems driving you crazy a little bit at a time, each bit so small that you'd hardly notice it, until you thought it was normal to stop washing and wear a kettle on your head. It meant you thinking that the fact that you knew more than anyone else in your village made you better than them. It meant thinking that right and wrong were negotiable. And, in the end, it meant you 'going to the dark', as the witches said. That was a bad road. At the end of that road were poisoned spinning-wheels and gingerbread cottages.

What stopped this was the habit of visiting. Witches visited other witches all the time, sometimes travelling quite a long way for a cup of tea and a bun. Partly, this was for gossip, because witches love gossip, especially if it was more exciting than truthful. But mostly it was to keep an eye on one another. '

I love this excerpt. To me, it can definitely translate into the real world. Of course, we are not witches and we don't cackle, but, we are humans and we do have feelings and act as described by Terry Prattchet somewhat like the witch in the book. We do make mistakes. And sometimes we trod down the wrong path. Also, sometimes we are not aware of it. And just like the witches in the book, although we ourselves are not aware of it, the people around us are. Our friends are. And like it is said of the witches, the remedy is to always watch out over each other. Visit. Hang out. Do things together. Be sensitive to each others' mood, body language, etc. and generally take care of each other.

A Malay proverb said, " One stick is easily broken, But a bundle isn't ".

I agree.

Living here..., overseas and having the freedom to basically do anything (without being reprimanded by family, parents, etc) , I feel this proverb translates strongly more than ever.