Darkness Before Light

2007-01-09T03:28:00.000-08:00

MOving.... I am moving....if you come still manage to come here to read my crap, you can move on to www.tanzilla.wordpress.com Now let's see when word press would get banned! See you on the edge of the brave new world!

2006-12-06T03:43:00.000-08:00

Life’s Threads held Together by a Scotch Tape! He apologized and said that what happened won’t happen again. I forgave him, why? There is no alternative. Was this the reason I accepted him? No? Yes! Frankly I don’t know! Its just that I have realized that the further you go, thicker the water gets, the weirder the people get, higher the expectations go and lower the standards get. Someone told me not long ago: Life z a bitch. We make compromises; we settle up for the 2nd best after our disappointments and then realize that even that 2nd best is not workable.” But the doubts are there, as it’s not about the incident but the psyche that goes with it. Someone who doubts too often, some one who said he didn’t care for looks but does. My life and sanity seem frayed at ends, held together by a scotch tape, a band aid.

2006-11-28T04:01:00.000-08:00

An Untitled Life Thank you, how simple words of familiar strangers become your lifeline. Couldn’t sleep, pray, pee even yesterday bcz of seeing how hard my mother was taking it, of how the parents keep rattling every pre-engagement detail, in order to find out some sign of deception. And I am tried too, still try to recall the person’s words and actions, But the best part is that my parents agree that it can’t go on. These people are trying to get away with so many things (or maybe it’s their idea of a normal relationship), just under the engaged banner. They would want to get away with murder if they would find make the legal claimants upon me. The initial outrage gradually turned into the dread and compulsion of telling people that it’s off, when you have just stopped sending of the methi. Yet we have to face it. But bfr that, it would be about letting the cat out of the bag, allowing the in laws to reveal their true intentions and not just send smoke signals. But in my heart of heart, I know it’s over. For a moment, I fooled myself into thinking that it was easier the second time around. No it isn’t. Today I had a really important session to conduct in front of a full class of nosy adult learners. Couldn’t do it, but couldn’t escape and then it was useless trying to do that. So, I did it feigning flu, whenever that helpless feeling and misery ebbed over me. It was damn hard. By the time, I ended I was shaking uncontrollably. Was in a mood to break down back in my room, but then there were people sitting in the room that I share. Resisted! That’s the way it is – at the moment. I know whatever is happening is happening for the better, yet I feel tired, yet I feel outraged for being doped, for being taken along for a free ride. When would it end? Where is the point when it starts getting any better? There is far more heart ache out there, then I have endured. Yet the part about counting the blessing still doesn’t lessen the pain.

2006-11-24T10:38:00.000-08:00

Drowning in a Cesspool of Lies This is the place, where I unwind, unleash…. Reveal the deepest thoughts, feelings, emotions --- emote, enact the randomness of this insignificant life from behind the mask. The mask isn’t effective enough, as sometimes, I write an entry and decide that it’s too raw to be put forth, to be shared. As saady said…some things are too weird, too personal to be written down, shared. Om once stopped me from sharing an eve teasing encounter of mine. I am glad that he did. I am still perfecting the art of hiding things from my parents (as if my mother can’t read the pain, fear and desperation, the dullness that my very soul, every pore of my body exudes – her face reflects the same, yet she dares not ask). Sometimes, there are things; one has to hide from oneself – lest the significant other reads your thoughts, one that would fuel his insecurities and rage. You want to escape from the pain, the futility of reflecting upon a thing that’s beyond one’s control. I even I am touched with everyone who responded to my last post. Thank you for the prayers…..for the good wishes…. Yet my need is such that it isn’t going away. Resisting since one week, today I succumbed to the power of sedatives, and yet sleep and peace still seem miles away...my mind and body are still numb…The last week has been pretty intense emotionally. My in laws and fiancé have dragged me thru hell and they are still doing that. Society has given them that power. I would have accepted this behavior, had they been hailing from a village. Never in my life have I felt this much humiliated by anyone - my in laws' demands. They claim to believe in god, but they have even reduced istakhara to a sick and cruel joke. They have blackmailed me, and I have gotten blackmailed, just bcz I know that my parents cannot handle any more stress now. They want to be happy, although they don’t know that this happiness is short lived. Screw the hisbah bill, the kind of blackmailing and emotional tortures that go around in the lives of middle class women, who is chronicling those??? Life has come to full circle, I am standing where I was standing 4 years back, in a ditch, maybe this time it’s even deeper. Were those people worst, or are these? Only god is my protector now…..i have just performed the ubulation and now I am going to recite surrah yaseen, and then would try to sleep. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Update: have told my parents on saturday as to what is going on, they agree that this cannot go on and is a sorry shape of things to come. Nevertheless, things are to be settled. How? I dunnow. Shock and disbelief is there, bcz the change in attitude became apparent within a span of 24 hours after engagment. The idea that is often being given is: "if soemthing came so smoothly in our hands, then there has to be something wrong with the thing. That's why it was left around that long." And the outrage is that the "thing" is "me". I dunnow anymore to how to go on. I know taht i would. But i dont know how to carry my parents thru this, yet again! i just dont know!

2006-11-09T04:35:00.000-08:00

Engaged … to One’s Fate! Women - when they enter new relationships, make a commitments, widen their circle, bind new ties, do they really embrace new people, give them access into their lives, or do they abandon themselves further to their fates? Do we get engaged to guys? Or do we get engaged to our fates? Life’s burden is already heavy enough. Responsibilities to carry forth, people to take care of. Where the “I” would only be allowed to be important in the silence of your bedroom, upon the 25th hour. There are lighter moments here and there, but then the quintessential loneliness rules. It rules even now! They, those around you, those so-called ‘well-wishers” tell you always that if you are alone, single, then it’s heavier - they think that u r an idealist, either that or you are plainely a lesbian. You finally take the plunge - another one. Yet it still is lonely, it still is dark. Darkness that u can't cut through - heavy, heavier, thick, thicker... So why does it still feel heavier, when you acquire the ‘twain part’, the significant other? It does because then as your dowry, you get a truckload of expectations, duties, rules, and insecurities. His insecurity, the inlaws’ expectations, your parents’ expectations, your relatives’ expectations. There are whether's: Whether this is proper or that? Would this look or that? Would they like this or not? Then comes the should’s: You should do this and not that. You shouldn’t say this, wear this, go there, talk to so and so; basically, you shouldn’t feel. And if you do, don’t say it. Don’t show it! Then comes the What if’s: What if this happens, what if that happens, what if all this is an elaborate lie, a mini dream in a siesta or a prolonged nightmare? Forever…? Why do my shoulders feel even more heavier now? Why do my independence, tastes, indulgences, quirkiness and the “so-called” emotional intelligence seem like a threat? Why the mentioning of the mere word trousseau give me a panic attack? Why does the lil piece of fairy tale seem to be a cacophony, the third act of a freakish play? Why is it not about you and me, and us, and why is it about your relatives and the whole damn world! But then who are you? A voice at the other end of the world, an image? Just a voice, just an image, a feeling…the feeling or a mere feeling - ironically getting hazier now! Where is the 'happily lived ever after in my fairy tale?' It would be there na? Someone assure me plz! Or would I be cheated, would I be let down again? Who ever said that it would get better or easier the second time around? I have taken a plunge into the dark…pray that I swim and not sink!

Insecurity Knocks from Time to Time Let it in For a Cup of Coffee. Talk With It. Understand It. Then take a Sugar Spoon and Poke It into the EYE.

2006-10-24T13:28:00.000-07:00

Hiding in Another Dimension I know! I have been away; I was hiding in another dimension. I still am. One foot here and the other - in oblivion. Ramzan has made me every bit a procrastinator and sluggard. The combination of perpetually low blood sugar and low blood pressure makes me really really wozzy; hence, I end up dragging myself from home to work and back to home, into the kitchen, out back on to the prayer rug. This is how, life’s rut takes over the pretty and the extraordinary and turns it into the mundane; and vice versa. And it is in this ramzan, I really learnt and practiced the meaning of patience in every sense of the word. The very first week was the toughest, I couldn’t feel the month’s blessing in anyway, I felt really miserable. I renounced the friends, who were trying to feed me philosophical theories. I hung by those, who offered me practical solutions. Sometimes we should spare each other all the philosophy and say instead….. “what’s wrong, need a helping hand?” By and by, things got better. But since my life always had a surreal and unreal quality, hence, things even if are on the verge of working out – they still would carry that a trait that’s almost filmy. Still, allah has blessed me in so many ways. I still get caught in between feeling to much, feeling too little; wanting everything, renouncing it all; the belief and disbelief. I know have got issues, not as many as others [self-praise – wink wink] but I nevertheless have em. People rightly say, once bitten, twice shy! But it doesn’t matter if it works out or not – the only way – is to go forward.

2006-10-09T03:10:00.000-07:00

8th Oct came and went away. The same time, the last year around, was devastating. We were shaken out of our stupors and drunk slumbers – as a nation and as individuals. Remember the 600 girls buried under the collapse roof of a school/ college in Garhi Dupatta? Help came too late for them and too many! We cried! Remember the displaced Kashmiri girls discover in a police raid from Lahore’s hira mandi a month back? We look away! Really how long does it take to stay that way – in where you allow yourself to feel; feel and not judge! We all slip back into our routines. I did that! Maybe it’s humanely not possible to go on feeling sympathy for that long? Or may be it is that life has to go on! I don’t know what it is! There are weird justifications we give for such disasters. It’s the result of people’s sin etc, but what sin those young children that got buried in the debris committed? Who are we to decide on who’s sinful or not? This is what we have been feeding to our children. I was amazed to analyze this piece of data, from a child’s impression about why earthquake struck where it did:

Everyone says that Allah loves us more than 70 mothers and if He took the children, he would directly put the children to the Heaven It’s not the child or women or men, He only sees our sins. I think mostly the children died because a generation of children went to school and they didn’t know that a disaster will strike and nobody knew who will die, who will survive. When they went there, under the debris were bodies and pieces [sic] of small children and elders all dead. Allah loves children but the children who were not following the rules of Allah that, they were not listening to elders, not to their teachers, they were stealing things from their friends etc. They were not praying five times a day and not covering themselves. They were not respecting their elders. They did marriage among themselves. Allah loves everyone but when people do very bad things like stealing and robbing, hurting someone then Allah gets angry.

Why are we using religion to invoke fear in our children then mercy and bounty? Specially us who are watching things from a distance?

2006-09-26T02:56:00.000-07:00

Tagged! Not sure how it works, but since I was tagged by Mansoor – the man; hence, I must write. I am thinking about: promises that are broken – always – people who change, back out – always! Sincerity of emotions that I can never have..... I said, “I give a damn!” Also: “Ho he na jaeee!” 2 of my takya-e-kalams! I want to, be at peace with myself, with the people around me... I wish, I had a cottage by the sea, so I could go for a moonlit walk every morning and night – I swear I don’t need anything else if I have that! I miss, no one, missing something or someone is a useless and exhausting emotion! I hear, the music in my heart, right now it’s dasht-e-tanhi by Iqbal Bano… I wonder, Would I ever be whole and happy again? Happy I am, but in a fragmented way! I guess it’s the wholeness that matters! I regret, Nothing - ever! I am, a person oscillating between the extreme of emotions and situations – too caring, too ruthless, too sarcastic, too supportive, a believer and a heathen. Ecstatic and Depressive. My life is made of contrasting strands, that’s where my wild energies come from! I dance, as in never….just tap my feet! I cry, Often - Just now! I am not always, in the best of the moods… so I cant be a good company 24/7, but I definitely try! I write, what I feel, even if it gets to be too prosaic or philosophical and complex for others to decipher…but then, I am not simple and neither are my emotions I need, a break from every where…friends, family- some of the people around me especially. I finish, my work or anything I commit to, whether hell comes or high winds. This explains my disregard for sluggards!

2006-09-11T12:31:00.000-07:00

Rescue Meow11 I was taking a walk last night around the block along with my mom in order to pacify my paranoia and anxiety. Just as we were done walking and about to return to the road homewards, I saw an uncanny and somewhat eerie thing. I stopped dead in my tracks and made my mom stop as well. It was quite dark as well and we really had to make quite an effort to make out what we were seeing. What looked like a headless furry creature crawling around was a cat – a regular partially stray feline of the neighborhood. We couldn’t see a head just an unshapely shinning thing, where there should be a head. It took me a while to decipher what was what and what must have happened. He had got his head stuck in a milk shopper or one even smaller than that. Probably, the poor Tommy was scavenging through the neighborhood dumpster for some extra after dinner bite [or maybe his owners threw him out and weren’t feeding him anymore], and he must have slid his head into the bag to lick milk or yogurt and had got it stuck. Now he couldn’t see and/or breathe properly, that’s why he was crawling on the ground and whimpering. Upon hearing the patters of our feet, the poor animal stopped crawling and started meowing in the most gut wrenching of the voice. But he was panicky and frantic nevertheless. The more I tried to coo to pacify him and inch towards him; he started moving away from me. I was also scared of getting scratched or clawed in an attempt to free his head, as he was a frisky cat and didn’t allow me before as well to pet him. Anyways, I finally went to the night watchman and politely requested him to help. I was expecting him to say something like: “What can I do? This is not my job? stuff, etc.” He came nevertheless with me! By this time, another white cat had come and was sitting close to the tom’s shrouded head with an extremely frightened and helpless look, and she was meowing softly. While I cornered the crawling creature in the bushes, the watchman freed the cat’s head from the shopper - though with some effort. As soon as the head was free, Tommy skipped for his dear life, ran and hid under my car, and the watchman went his way! What a relief! I know! At this side of the globe, many people guffaw at the thought of being concerned over an animal, when human beings are suffering too from pain, hunger, death….hunger above all! In a world where we give a human life worth less than that of an animal; there, we don’t consider an animal even a living breathing object….god’s creature and creation. Well consider that these creatures don’t have the faculty of speech to voice their pain….This recount was just a freak accident, but do we ever flinch when our children pelt stones at animals, harass them, make them starve? How can we expect god to be kind and merciful to us, when we don’t show mercy to a helpless creature, any helpless creature? This was a Hadees or Riwayaat? I think the latter. But amidst all the hunger, pain, misery and savageness of war and genocide that surround our world, can I cry and feel sorry for “just” a cat? I almost doubt myself. Almost! Being a human being and to be one in essence is the hardest thing! I am misogamist, many a days I would baby talk with a stray cat than bear the small talk of people around me, gaze at a chirping sparrow or menna sitting on the window sill and wish that my weary spirit would glide with theirs. Away…twit-to-woo- away- away- far away! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Update: Ya the tom is fine. Now he has started to recognize me and acknowledge my presence with a meowl. He still doesn;t allow me to touch him; however, now he doesn't run away and come and sit near me and make interesting guttaral voices. In some ways, the animal is better than those ungrateful people that we come across every day. Don;t worry! i am not forsakingo r writing off human beings any time sooner.

2006-09-06T03:33:00.000-07:00

The Color of Loneliness Tanhai phir koi aaya, dil-e-zaar! nahiiN, koi nahiiN. raahrau hoga, kahiiN aur chalaa jaaega. Dhal chuki raat, bikharne laga taaroN ka gHubaar, laRakRaane lage aivaanoN men kHaabida chiraagH. so gayi raastaa tak-tak ke har ek raahguzaar, ajnabi kHaak ne dhuundla diye qadmoN ke suraagH. gul karo shameN, baRha do mai-o-meena-o-ayaagH. apne bekHaab kivaaRoN ko mufaqqal kar lo. ab yahaN koi nahiiN, koi nahiiN aaega. Solitude Is someone there, oh weeping heart? No, no one there. Perhaps a traveler, but he will be on his way. The night is spent, the dust of stars begins to scatter. In the assembly halls dream-filled lamps begin to waver. Small streets sleep waiting by the thoroughfare. Strange earth beclouds footprints of yesterday. Snuff out the candles, put away wine-cup and flask. Then lock your eyelids in this morning dusk. For now there's no one, no one who will come here. Translation by: Philip Nikolayev What is the color of loneliness? Steel grey? A deep blue? After 3 weeks of immense fun and partying, almost everyone has departed. Like the circus clown, I have taken off the mask, got off the tarpaulin, wiped the makeup, and have silently crept back into the attic, and I have closed the door behind. I know no one would follow me; no one would come and stay. One by one, I take out off the bejeweled dreams and desires. In my outstretched palm, they flicker and die. I have blown out all the candles, and the darkness seems familiar and reassuring. I don’t need to pretend any more. I can be myself finally. Resign, abandon, claim and be claimed!

2006-08-15T21:46:00.000-07:00

New Kids on the Block! There is this stray cats that runs amuck in the office lawn ever since i have been here. We call her fluffy, as she is white, very furry and clean, with a bushy tail. She reminds me of Tom's girl friend (from Tom & Jerry - Remember her? With her long eye lashes? Tom used to try to impress her with diamonds and wrappign up and presenting jerry as a gift ). This is the third time Madam Fluffy got pregnant. The rest of her litter didn't survive. I am posting the pictures of her litter - 3 kittens. 2 r white with blue eyes and 1 is of mixed colors. They spend most of their time outside my office under the bench, are most adorable. Since fluffy would be abandoning them after a week or so, as she is too amorous a cat, so in case any one is interested....they can come and take the kittens home ;). P.S.: The credit for the pics and this post's title goes to our IT manager. Update: 2 kittens left. 1 of the white kitten is no more to be found. The remaining two are very frisky. The mom is always begging for food and caresses, but we aren't allowed to feed her. The housekeeping staff takes care of it on their own after hours thru leftovers. But it's darn hard to say no to a hungry feline.

2006-08-09T03:47:00.000-07:00

Life At Pause Lying wide awake at 3 am, I roll around in my bed and bathed in my own feverish sweat. Nocturnal wedding festivities are at full swing at some nearby house. Drums being beaten, claps, chatter and laughter…..While my heartbeat resounds in my ear drums. As spasms of pain and paranoia travel up and down the length of my whole body, I fight back the urge to throw up food and medicine again. I feel like throwing up, no what I really feel like is - giving up, the will to fight back, to hang in there another day. I have been more ill this year than well, and I really don’t know the reason. I recall so many feverish nights like these, of being down and under. The prospect of losing control over the body is scary, as scary as losing control of one’s mind. And I have experienced both. Sometimes, it’s sheer will power that keeps you going, and when that runs out…one just doesn’t know what to fall back upon. Life is at a pause this very moment, in this very phase. It has come to a grinding halt! It refuses to budge forward. It’s easier to rewind the events of the past 12 or 22 years or so of my life, rewind all in just one spin; yet it was harder to live them. It is harder still, of whatever is left of it! Life is seeping painstakingly slow through the sand clock of time, grain by grain. An emaciated, moldy existence, was this all I was to be? All I could be? …..As good as it gets. What do I have to recount for in the past decades? Illnesses, heartaches, misery, struggles…. My life is just a broken record, stuck at a chord, the frozen screen of a movie that refuses to budge forward. The real life is no different than the reel life. It’s only that I am the sidekick, not part of the script but the side bar. Never the show stealer, part of the limelight – never. My life is stuck at two buttons, Pause and Rewind, Pause and Rewind; while the lives of those around me are moving fast forward at a mind boggling speed. Everyday, in every way, they are becoming strangers to me; our points of references are no longer the same. Strangers become acquaintances, acquaintances become friends; Friends change into acquaintances, acquaintances change into strangers. Rounder and rounder goes the merry go round, harder and deeper in to the rut this Marry falls down.

2006-07-18T04:37:00.000-07:00

Silence Reclaimed These days I am cherishing the silence around the workplace, and the leisure as well. Coworkers are busy with their own visits and projects, hence, no chitter chatter, no ringing phones and mobile phones, no gossip, no visitors. This is the beauty of silence, the blissful solitude. It won’t last long because they would be back soon enough. I am listening to Endless Summer Nights right now by Richard Marx. The weather was amazing uptill today. The flu is all gone but a nasty headache or backache kicks in at times. I guess managing to strike all those sexy pillate posses at the exercise mat in the gym infront of all those women struggling on the treadmill, didn’t work! I am getting back to people who got back to me, kept in touch all this while; patiently riding the roller coasters of my moods, waiting as the dramas of my life unfold, the strands unravel. I can be only one thing to them: thankful….People whom you are only beginning to know can crack you up and make you laugh for a very long time. While sometimes even your best friend forgets your birthday and you have to shrug your shoulder and tell him/her: “It’s ok!”, even when deep down you know that it is not, because it’s the sign of time, a reminder that things aren’t the same anymore. This week, I finally I managed to drag myself to the salon for a trim. I do like to carry around the weight of the dead tresses as much as carrying nay pushing forward the weight of my dead dreams. Internalizing things is toxic, but that’s also what fuels some of us to keep on moving forward –anger, disappointments, reliance, and stubbornness! A different kind of dark energy! At the salon, my regular gal wasn’t around and I came to know that her already-out-of-work husband doesn’t want her to work anymore. He suspected her of having an affair, as she was staying back at the salon as late as 10 pm. “But why?” I asked the owner. “She has been doing that since her father’s death a few months back.” I guess everyone is trying to come to terms with some inner wound. I hope she would sort the stuff in her life and get back soon. A different kind of negative energy is in the air; suicide bombing, strife, clashes, violence, planes and trains exploding, colliding, tsunami, earthquake, Israel and Palestine in an open and unequal war. It’s crazy, it’s scary. I don’t want to read newspapers or switch on a news channel. At the end of the day I want to clutch my tea mug, close my eyes and tell myself: “None of this is real!” Those who have been effected by this violence might not be my father, mother, brother or sister, but they were of some body. So I want to bury my head in the sand and pretend that the world is a good place to be. I want silence and I want peace!

2006-07-03T00:13:00.000-07:00

Black Zodiac The unexamined life's no different from the examined life - Unanswerable questions, small talk, Unprovable theorems, long-abandoned arguments You've got to write it all down. Landscape or waterscape, light-length on evergreen, dark sidebar of evening, you've got to write it down. Charles Wright There are 3 types of situations in life; those that you can let go of, those that you can ignore, and finally those you have to live with, because frankly there isn’t much that you can do about it. Parents and their hang ups come in the third category (and so do most of the things in life – sigh!). Sure enough, the past few days have been strange for me in certain ways. In attempting to get rid of things that don’t work for me anymore. I took a break from thinking. Yes somehow it happened. People usually see breakdowns as something where the person just stops functioning and breaks down like a juke box. However, for me, the normalcy of my routines and my idiosyncrasies never cease function. I can’t afford to, I am too responsible for that. Hence, I worked through neck crunching deadlines, through appointments, through coworkers, students etc who were vying for my attention. I listened to them, solved their language and writing related problems, all the while curbing the instinct to plant a big fat slap on their cheeks. Why many of these adult learners chose to get pregnant during this study period when they already are struggling through so many aspects of the academic life is beyond me. And why I have to accommodate, and try to knock some sense into these ultra pregnant women is also beyond me. While at home, I slogged through my routine at home, cooking, laundering, cleaning up, and listening to my parents’ rants and appeasing them (we may try NOT talking for two to three days and then fall back into the routine). Yet that out-of-body and out-of-my-own- mind feeling was there, as if I am looking at the world inside out, submerged under water. I was aware of people’s existence, and yet no one or nothing mattered to me. Whether they were in touch, were caring about me or not, were there or not, didn’t matter. Although I have always wanted to be feeling-less, emotionless, yet when it finally happened, it didn’t feel right. It felt weird. Being overtly sensitive might kill you, but being insensitive or getting thru life without feeling anything, just might kill me too. Thanks for writing and getting in touch all of you! I am ok. I have decided that now I would have several small squabbles with my folks, then having one big confrontation. Not that the confrontation solves anything. They would continue to see life from their own lens, and I would continue to look through mine. The other day I walked in the mid of some unnamed movie on TV and the finale sort of struck a note with me. It was something to the effect: We are all injured! We have to figure out how injured we are. Because it’s always the less injured who have to go carry the more injured through. And I know I am the less injured one, only because I have the guts to walk through the rut of my life, making it work everyday, every other moment.

2006-06-11T11:54:00.000-07:00

I, WOULD CRY - NO MORE……… Silence Before the Storm Thunder Storms Gather….Incessant Crackling The Trumpets Bellow Raised Voices Angrier Exchange Deafening Shouts Verbal Lashings and Thrashings Meaningless Debates Lacerating Wounds Torn Sensibilities Flabbergasted Accusations Battle Guns that Spit Molten Lava – Seers the Mortal Flesh, Sinew and Bones Defenses and Bunkers of Petty Egos Shards and Empty Shells of Spiteful Words Strewn Across the Battle Field Maimed Sensibilities No Dead Bodies, No Casualties… Prisoners of Perceptions Mere Dead Consciences, Carcass of the Soul, the Bleeding Heart Defeat Retreat Defeat Retreat “We ll take you down,” they said. “We couldn’t bury you, couldn’t stifle your outcries at the time of your cursed birth and we had to say: “It’s a girl!” even though our hearts sank thinking of the liabilities. So now we ll kill you piece by piece, day by day. "We ll drive nails into your heart, we ll shred it, we ll feed the pieces to the dogs, we ll let the gossiping tongues devour your flesh. We ll rip your lumnious liquid eyes out, because it is the only thing, in the reflection of which we are forced to see the ugliness of our own behavior, the outrageousness of our own double standards, above all our callousness. So We would Pluck em out!” I know now... They don’t bow and prostate before God, don’t chant His rosary; they bow before the world they live in and its double standards. Meanwhile, I, am perceived as the witch, as the sorceress; I am going to be trialed and prosecuted. I am going to be hung from the noose, till I die. I am going to be burned at; the stake, the pyre, the alter. I am going to be stoned. I am going to be trialed and killed - again, again and again because I refuse to die – once and for all. I make a come back. I am the banshee, as dark and twisted as the dripping coils and strands covering my back and reaching down to the hips. I am the sacrificial she-goat…they fed me all summer long, fattened me up on lies and empty dreams…..Now it’s the bitter winter of destitute – my destitute, and they are sharpening their knives and coaxing me to lie down….sacrifice yourself for respectability’s sake. “Sacrifice yourself to please others. That’s what you are made nay born for.” The reflection in my eyes stares back at them, distorting their own images. I run away…..I run for my life…I run away from life… I keep running… Defeat..Retreat... But then It’s a Cursed Womb that I have stumbled out of! That is the One that Didn’t Deserve Me! One that has still imprisoned me. One that is still sucking the life blood out of me! Only Expectations, Responsibilities for Me….No Rights, No Respite, No Relief. I keep dying from inside, and no body would give a damn. Acquaintances say: “Next time! We are too occupied right now! No No We do miss you and we ll make it up to you – the next time” Next time? This is the last time I asked for something. Don’t you know… it was the flood last time; it would be the fire next time. The end of it all! All stories rise out of fire, Paulo Cohelo said. And hence, into the fire, all must go! I retreat to my bunker...the dark recess…..my grave above the ground…… The tears flow, the swollen eyes keep, being unable to blink keep staring at the walls and the revolving fan, going round and round… the universe, this forgotten life and its tattered sanity spins out of control. I am the axis, yet I want to let go off the reins, I want to see their universe, hurl and crash…just like they crashed mine! Rage … Rage … Rage A storm Rages in My Heart, throbes in My Temples… I want to Become the Fire…Nay I am the Fire...I Shall be Consumed! I Shall Consume All…. I reach my resolve, once the eyes have gone dried – just like the first monsoon – washing away the grit and the dirt…I WOULD CRY NO MORE…enough is ENOugh. THEY SHOULD CRY…FOR FAILING ME… FOR BETRAYING ME…FOR FORSAKING ME …THEY SHOULD CRY…..FOR I, WOULD CRY NO MORE………

2006-05-27T12:29:00.000-07:00

Contradicting Voices in My Head Have you ever done something just for the sake of doing it, without believing in it, without investing passion in it? I undertook such a feat last week on my own choice. It was a sizable task and unlike my usual “let’s do it way before its due” stance, I started at the 11th hour, burned my mid night oil trying to make sense out of nonsense, and mange to finish it only at the last minute. All the while there were 2 contradicting voices in my head. One was whispering: “Do it for what its worth. You might feel sorry later for not trying at least!” while the other one was screaming: “WTF! You aren’t serious about it, so why exert yourself. Why set yourself up to something which (in case of success) would shackle you up for four years. Why exhaust yourself? Move over, give the chance to anyone who truly needs it and can put it to better use as well. And what benefit would this give you even if you manage to pull it through successfully? Leave it, rest up and replenish your energies.” I ended up listening to the whispering voice in my end and gave the chore a try at least. It was just an attempt to resist acting upon either of these i.e. my hopes or fears and negative energies. For this purpose I also got in touch with my former project manger, who was kind of my boss in the former corporate sector job, so I could take a recommendation letter from him. Since I was working anymore for him, and since I declined another job offer from him, hence I wasn’t expecting him to be all nice and accommodating. I was expecting a mere half hearted formal endorsement of my past work life, such as: “yea yea, she is a good girl. A hard worker etc.” To my surprise, he not only wrote the letter promptly and had it dispatched but he wrote some pretty amazing stuff in there about me. Though one of my buddies initially told: “He is incapable of writing anything!” [Arey who kea likhein gaey!]. And I was irritated with him! The way things are, no body seems to be obliged to do anything for you (because people conveniently forget the times you have helped them); but if they do and that too in a far better way then expected/anticipated, then its worth being happy about. And made me specially feel even better after the way my current boss treated me. Sometimes the compensation comes from the divine source in the unlikeliest of places and from the unlikeliest of people.

2006-05-11T15:01:00.000-07:00

Work Dynamics V.S. Life’s Dynamics I couldn’t believe that I could cope up with this sort of a work pressure again… but I had to. I bid leave from the corporate sector and its big pay scale for this reason alone. But it came back to me – yet again! Too many one-to-one and exclusive sessions, correspondence, workshops, interviews, screening, short listing, negotiations, roll backs, re-strategizing and yea counseling…. I was multi- multi- tasking. Sweating it out on and off location, burning my mid night oil, reading thru document even while riding the public transport on my way to and back from work. Working, strategizing and battling it out on too many fronts. Battling it out with goof ups and glitches of the system. People make the system; and people can mess up and be really messed up as well. Messing up is ok with me, we all make errors, blunders etc …occasionally…but there is nothing one can do, if the person is messed up. It’s an illness. While conducting the induction interviews up till now, I came across a bevy of interesting people; my juniors from the varsity, my own teachers, a possibility to even interview my ex boss [the role reversal within a matter of few years was freaky]. Those who talked too much, those who talked too little, those who tried very hard to make an impression, and in the end failed miserably. I am not that good a judge of people. I go by instinct….it fails me sometimes….the rest of the times, it works ok. But how can you make your instinct and your gut feeling a criterion? One that is justifiable to others? That has always beaten me. Anyways. How would you feel if you put enough faith in a person, faith enough to bring him on board, to give him a chance, a chance for him to gain experience as well as good money? You spend time with him (one that you couldn’t afford, time that no one spent with you when you needed it), walk him through procedures, and attempt to put everything in black and white, increase payment rate, when you could have easily held back and saved more. The person commits and then disappears on you at the last minute and you learn through an informal source that the guy plans to “sit at home and sulk” [his exact word] rather than honoring any professional commitment. His reason for sulking? A few disappointments in his regular work place (ours was a part-time freelance arrangement). Understandable to some extent but not justifiable! He didn’t have the guts to tell me this; he never came around to do so! He just vanished, although he knows very well that he is bound to bump into me sooner or later at some other professional forum. It’s sad, it’s pathetic! It reflects the sad truth about what life itself. A commitment is a thing, one can break veryy easily. Sometimes the gravity of our disappointments even more intense and yet no matter what, one has to make it to work, make it to life every day, fulfill your responsibilities, meet your deadlines and its not a matter of work only. It’s life itself. Work dynamics are very much like life’s: chaos, passion, energy, ebb and flow of power, setbacks, break downs, small ululations, dead ends, windfalls, bickering, gossiping, bitterness, lovability, goofiness, rebounds, retreats and what not. I am sure the list goes on and on. Just like life itself, no matter how tough it gets…it goes on, You decide to go on, in spite and despite of all odds. No! No bravados here…This is all one’s got! There is no other option. When I came to that crunch point in my life, I thought that was It! I couldn’t go on. Yet Work helped me to plod on with my sanity wrapped around my wounded soul like tattered rags – but with dignity. Work has been the drug I feed on, it sharpens my dull senses, it keeps me alive, it lends and at times takes away the structure to my life. I have been called a workaholic by those who couldn’t cope up with my single mindedness, my silent and furtive tendency to tread thru work. I wonder why it’s a wonder to everyone else. Sometimes in the stillness of night when u wake up, there is nothing there…nothing to look forward to in my life….besides waking up the next morning and going to work, making to it. It doesn’t matter if the heart breaks, the soul gets crushed or maimed, or the mortal bones creak and crumble….life goes on. Amidst this whole drama of interviewing people, lied the question of my own yearly evaluation. I got a merely “Good” grade and not the “excellent” one. Something my boss couldn’t justify, because there weren’t any unhonoured commitments, failed or messed up tasks. I didn’t press her further, it hurted very very much! I couldn’t change her perceptions and I would never beg for anything that I deserve. My work is my life, I work for life, to be alive. This is my last resort. Despite the disappointment, I carried out my usual activities, survived the pressures, covered up the higher up’s glitches by doing the ‘damage control’ for them, accommodating where I could, taking a stand where I could. And then I get the call from the HR one fine morning…: “errrr good news! Someone messed up in calculating your scores. You have an “excellent”, it has always been an excellent!” Sure I was happy, but I am amused on my own boss’s lack of justification or opinion or even the lack of ability to smell a rat even, even if it was the HR who messed up. And I recall how my subordinates had in the past and have always “opted” to work in my team inspite of my “workaholic ways”. It is for the simple reason that I acknowledge their efforts on personal levels, and I never forget to put in a gud word for them at the appropriate forums. No matter how crazy work gets, I send in a one-liner thank you note to the person. It’s all a matter of acknowledgment and gratitude as well. But all positive feeling sometimes boil over. Today I had a melt down with one of my coworkers, while the other one looked on. Since my presentation a day earlier went better than hers, she was feeling insecure and tried to butt in with irrelevant question during the course of the presentation. I let go of that! I understand how she wanted to be the center of attention always. I have been putting up with her loud and incessant chattering at all hours. But today she tried to butt in my area, my domain with her usual idealistic mish mash, regarding how I should make a radical and revolutionary work structure and dictate it to the higher ups. I held on, but when her insistence begins to eat thru my already over worked nerves, I snapped and told her that “I would rather spend my energies on things that have a tendency of working out, working within the system rather than outside it, achieve my deadline, let results speak my point and speak for themselves rather than waste my time in making idealistic structures that just don’t hold. Top down approach is the reality for now! I work aggressively yet very silently and privately!” Her eyes grew bigger and bigger and then she finally shut up. Later on our third coworker who witnessed this ‘pressure cooker letting out the steam moment’ told me that it was the kind of tone that she heard me speaking the very first time in a year. But then the shut up call was much needed. It’s simple. People need to be put back into the limits. My cordialness and soft tone should be seen as an invitation for all and sundry to barge in. I would be the team leader if the need be, I would be work as a team member, a subordinate as far as collaborative projects go, but if somebody dare tries to interfere in my domain, I would take them apart and tear them down piecemeal. Period!

2006-04-27T09:44:00.000-07:00

Men...Arghhhh! People never tend to amaze me – their pettiness, their insensitivity, their fondness of small talk. If things would be going well in their lives, they would expect the same to be happening in others’ lives as well. It only takes a moment to say an encouraging word, but people in their well meaning yet selfish attempts would avoid doing that. They would contrive all sort of lame and off colored jokes and generalities just to avoid the subject. Why the hell are they then getting in touch then? They don’t want to be suck into others’ emotional whirlpools. Fair enough but this also forbids them to seek comfort from others in the time of their need. And yet they come knocking on the doors. This time around, I am not sure that I am keen upon opening the doors. Case in point, an old friend of mine, who decided to get in touch after a long time and ranted on and on about his seemingly perfect and blessed life. I congratulated but in spite of knowing the kind of problems I was facing for quite a long time, he simply didn’t inquire about my well being. Whatever I wrote to him in response of what he asked, he never bothered replying, saying even one word of encouragement or solace. Another case in point is the friend I ranted about in an earlier post, the one who forgot his ex in just friggin night spent with his 2nd wife. Well he finally decided to get in touch after 5 months or so, only to rant that the 2nd wife has gone back to her own home because she couldn’t stand his keeping in touch with the ex, the first woman. I asked him as to what happened to the marital bliss that he was initially blabbering about. To which he replied: “it all seems good in the start! No she can’t stand this!” What else could I say beside: “why should she? Would you stand this, if you were in her shoes?” He had no answer and what I said didn’t make a difference anyways. Fidelity isn’t a man’s characteristic (Many women are no exception). He is a man; he did what men usually do. Riding in two boats, rocking both! I honestly can’t understand men. I just don’t get it. In this life time, it is very hard to find “the one”, to “have him/her”, to “hold on”, to “make it work every day” and to “not to let go”. And here are people; who have affairs, get married and have affairs, get divorced, get married again, have more affairs! Wow, why get married at all? Why make the commitment when one can’t live up to it? Blahhhh! Then there are friends, intelligent friends, who fall in love with bimbos. There is yet another friend who couldn’t stop ranting about the bimbo he has fallen in love, the girl who talks nothing ever BESIDES her shopping sprees, her waxing jobs, her clothes, her expensive dine outs. Wait till you get married to her, everything that fascinates you now about her, would fall apart! Being unable to support her expensive lifestyle, you would begin to call her a “high maintenance commodity” and then you would start looking elsewhere. Men do like uncomplicated women, those who don’t analyze, who can just look pretty and play dumb (even when they r not). Yes call me bitter, call me callous even – for I can’t seem to be happy for these idiotic friends of mine! But in the past few years, I have seen so many sides of the male psyche and character, in those whom I though were better than the rest. I thought they were better, that’s why I had them as friends (yea I am priggish). But I don’t know them anymore. Those steady friendships of mine for 4-5-6 years, they are falling apart. Who has changed? Me, or them? One thing I am sure of is that my temperament for unconditional acceptance is running out!

2006-04-27T09:39:00.000-07:00

Patterns of An Ordinary Life Amazing highs and abysmal lows - That always has to be the pattern of this life of mine. In the past weeks, I swung between both. It’s heaven and it’s hell, and in between - this present lies like a snug little purgatory. I reveal and unravel the yarns of my soul and mind here. It’s a wasteland of reflections and a degree of forgetfulness - morbid thoughts, recriminations. I lose my faith completely in HIM, strike the board and cry “no more”. And then, like a loser I come back and allow myself to be reclaimed. It’s scary and weird even for me to understand and analyze the variety of emotions that I go through in a single day, even within a span of an hour. The sunlight is consumed by darkness, the fog creeps in, and the snow starts freezing over every emotion and every dream. The pallor and gloom of the heart and mind becomes impenetrable. Then suddenly the wind may whisper some benediction in my bleeding ears and I become whole again, shaking the snow off my shredded soul. Ready to embrace life, I turn my eyes towards the sun. Soon it would be dark again, reclaiming it. That’s why I call myself a creature of light as well as darkness. This city of mine saw dark the day when a sizable number of people died in the name of sectarian violence. A Christian expat student inquired me: “Which side are you on? Did ur side sustain the loss or was it the other way around?” I said: “Hunn???” He said: “yea but I have heard that there are 76 sects in Islam, which sect do you belong to?” And I said: “Yea I too discovered sometimes back that there are 76 sects! But I am a muslima and that has always been enough to me, this sect business can go to hell! A life lost is a life lost. Be it a shia, sunni or who and what so ever. Life already is too complicated, why make it worst?” And he smiled merely! But the violence did get to everybody’s nerves. Ambulances whizzed by, while hooligans did what they always do…created chaos and panic. Ready to smash cars, only to spare them after seeing women and children in the car. Very often I have found myself a degree away from the eye of the storm…the grazing bullet, the fire, the hoodlum, the accident waiting to happen. We don’t realize how many mishaps pass by us daily, not touching us. Maybe the prayers shield us. How long? Not forever indeed! It’s a matter of when your luck would run out. Until then this child of darkness and light battles with the world with her boxing gloves on, ducking sometimes, taking it on the jaw at others.

2006-04-10T03:10:00.000-07:00

Illusions~* Why there seems to be a lack of space in the world, when you want to hide and cry? Why there seems to be a lack of people in the world, when you want some one to be there to listen to you, to hold you when you want to cry, to understand the unsaid and empathize with it? Instead of giving condescending remarks, or the usual “it’s gonna be ok!” Why is it that one feels alone in the bevy of friends and acquaintances? And why is it that when the phone rings, it is some one discussing his/her problem, ranting, bitching, seeking advice? How many of these people actually stop in bw and really really say (and mean it too): “And how have you been keeping? What’s up with you? Do you need anything? Want to talk about something?” The world with its routines and rituals keep spinning. Yet it takes only a moment for eveyhting that has been built so painstakingly so far to come crashing down. Health, peace, friendships, stability. Maybe stability and companionships are just illusions.

2006-04-02T11:52:00.000-07:00

Family Ties Sometimes it is hard to determine if your family does more harm to you or the outsiders? In the past few weeks, I was analyzing this due to the things I encountered – in my own house and in those of a few acquaintances of mine. As for me, it had to come, it was quiet too long. I induced hurt; I was hurted in the process as well. Old skeletons stumbled out of the closet, accusations renewed; the old feud got a new lease of life. It doesn’t get better, it only stops for a while. Maybe the hurt compounds only because deep down, we know that outsiders are bound to hurt us, but when your own family does the same to you; it’s then that it gets out of hand. They are your own blood, people who have known and seen you right from the start. Maybe, it’s our own family’s inability to trust us, understand us which drives us to take solace from outsiders, and thus, allowing them the space to exploit and play upon our insecurities. Outsiders and insiders thus are more or less the same. Yet oxymoronically, it’s these very ties of blood that don’t get served; meanwhile outsiders keep drifting in and out of our lives, creating ripples in the pond. An old axiom says: “Familial relationships are like water, driving a knife through it, wont severe it, merely displace it!” Still, your family should stand with you – irrespective of everything else. What’s beyond me is why they don’t understand, even when things r explained to them. Somehow the act of giving explanations makes you look even more guilty, when you have done nothing, while you see others getting away with murder all the time. This is what’s different about friends, they are outsiders as well, they get to be the family you choose. You get into fights and rifts with em as well, but what amazes me is the fact that you don’t have to explain things to your friends. They somehow get it! For most of the times. You dont have to explain things to them!

2006-03-15T03:33:00.000-08:00

I am a "third-country" Pupil - Hear Me Roar! A few days earlier to the blasphemous cartoon imbroglio, I came to know a scholarship program that a Dutch University was offering in collaboration with an UK-based University. I made an initial inquiry and then forget all about it. Once the cartoon controversy reared its ugly head, I was thankful that I was not interested in the university. I really don’t have to do anything with people who synonymously associate disrespect with freedom of press. Last week I received an email from them, as they were trying to conduct a survey, in which I was addressed as: Dear "third-country" student, I turn to you because you have showed an interest in the European Masters in Yada Yada… Can you believe the nerve of these people? Instead of referring to my name, they are using the adage "third-country". Think you “first-country” folks for reminding me of my country’s poverty level. Thank you for reminding me that beggars can’t be choosers and that they have to be called again and again by the namesake “BEGGERS” or “LOOSERS”.

2006-03-05T10:40:00.000-08:00

The Book of My Life Where is your blog, when you need it most? Well it has fallen prey to the state imposed censorship over the blasphemous carton imbroglio. At times you want to say and write so much, pen away everything you feel, but once you sit down in all sincerity it vanishes, words abandon you. Isn’t life weird? One minute you feel as if you have everything in the world, you are on top of it, in full control. As if everything is going great, as if your cup is not full but in fact overflowing. And at the next day or the other moment, it seems as if you have nothing. As if you have been cheated out of things, people and happiness - always. As if the whole universe is conspiring against you. You carry around that dark pallor in your heart, where every view is tainted, every thought bleak, every memory – a pang. And then you see someone whose situation, pain, grief, worries is heavier than yours. Its then your heart learns to subdue. It’s then your mind learns the purging power of gratitude. It’s not an easy way to learn. And it sure isn’t a long-lasting stage of mind. Because tomorrow you would find other things to gripe about. Managing one’s own moods is half of the battle…most of the time. But as for today, you have least managed to stay grateful…and that’s a good thing. In the past few weeks, my old illness visited me twice, I was literally bouncing off and against the walls. Too disoriented, dragging myself around in a state of semi-consciousness, because the house hold and job related responsibilities didn’t allow me to slow down and take a break. Your illness and the subtle dramas in your life can’t be a center stage of everyone else’s life always. Those brief moments of being down reminded me how lucky I have been to be functional all this while. The glitch ups and break did slow me down but they didn’t stop me, like they did before. Hence, the gratitude makes my heart swell. In the past few weeks, I also have let gone a few of my inhibitions, which wasn’t easy at all. But there - I have set a wheel in motion and would follow it through. It can be another classical goof-up or it can be another chapter in my book. One that the state can’t control, deny or block. The one that is being etched every day in my heart….blow by blow, breath by breath, moment by moment. That’s the book of my life. Hope you are writing yours.

2006-02-17T11:32:00.000-08:00

Walk Away~ A million footsteps, this left foot drags behind my right But I keep walking, from daybreak 'til the falling night And as days turn into weeks and years And years turn into lifetimes I just keep walking, like I've been walking for a thousand years Walk away in emptiness, walk away in sorrow, Walk away from yesterday, walk away tomorrow, If you're walking to escape, to escape from your affliction You'd be walking in a great circle, a circle of addiction Did you ever wonder what you'd been carrying since the world was black? You see yourself in a looking glass with a tombstone on your back All this wandering has led me to this place Inside the well of my memory, sweet rain of forgiveness I'm just hanging here in space Now I'm suspended between my darkest fears and dearest hope Yes I've been walking, now I'm hanging from a dead man's rope "Dead Man's Rope" Sting’s Sacred Love Sometimes at the end of the working day and at times after night, I put on my jogging shoes and start walking away. I walk away from my inner fears, unspoken desires, my unrequited dreams. I walk away from hope and from despair, from pain and longings. I walk away from other’s nagging voices as they unburden themselves day after day in front of me, as they in unburdening themselves, they burden me further. If it’s not enough to carry my own cross, I am obliged to carry theirs as well. Thus, in those occasional evenings and nights, I walk away from all of this deep into the recesses of darkness and sweet solitude. As my pounding feet hit the gravel, I walk on and on, at my own pace…not having to follow anyone or to wait for them to catch on. Here, I don’t have to think, so I can contemplate. Or just feel the gentle caresses of the breeze against my cheek. Once I am through, I kneel on the ground and gaze heavenwards to the skies to see the moon. A stray feline would often come along and would sit besides me, rubbing its warm nose along the folds of my dress, purring all the while; and together the mistress and the beast would gaze at the moon. In the evenings at the sports complex, I would sit on and rest my back against the wide stairs, drawing knees up to my chin, and I would see the rest of the joggers trotting by; walking, jogging, trotting even running in circles. What are they running for, running from and running against? The pretty girl with a heavy but is running in order to lose wait, so she can attract a suitor. The guy in the corporate suit and joggers is running in order to keep a heart attack at bay, yet he is closing business deals on his mobile right on the track. The elderly couple walks hand in hand, while the wife is holding the fragile, sick and comparatively older looking husband’s hand with an affection that makes my ah-so heart tender. It is indeed the eve of 14th of Feb but instead if being in the arms of a nameless, faceless demon lover; I want to be that elderly woman. Love that is nurtured by time, is survived by time and through tests. But I am not there, neither in the arms of the demon lovers, nor in the couple holding hands, I am here. Sitting on the stairs, gazing towards the moon. Me, the onlooker, enjoying my fill of blissful solitude. This week I finally managed to my friend who is on her study leave. I couldn’t up till now bcz our timings couldn’t coincide, by the time I would be home; she would already be asleep in her own time zone. Today, I managed to call her after making my calculations, and yet I managed to wake her up. She said that it seemed like ages since she heard my voice and I told her it’s been only two months. It’s all the same she said and I agreed. It’s gut wrenching to realize that the person at the other end of the line, is no longer there for you in the physical sense, but is thousands of miles and oceans away, in another time zone, in another life time. No luxuries of chattering away on the phone for hours and hours, of swinging by for tea and taking lunches together! No fights and sessions of whinning and bytching. A tele card lasts only a few minutes and then the recorded message tells you that the time is up and then the line crackles. I put down the phone and start walking away - again!

2006-02-04T03:25:00.000-08:00

Reunited- to be Divided! Reunions are tricky affairs. Old class mates and coworkers are just a validation that your past exists…it was not a dream, it was not just a phase. It happened. Though not in vain. These people and the very landscape are the measure of how far you have progressed or how far have you regressed. Since I have always walked with a one step forward, two steps backward, three steps forward gait, I am not sure if I have progressed or regressed. Yes last weekend I was at my academic reunion. It was a much anticipated event put together at the last minute, but it left me with the lingering feeling of sadness, of nostalgia. Was I recognized by others? Yes and No! It hasn’t been dinosaur years for god z sakes. But it has been long enough, to cast a cataract in eyes, a fog in the mind. There weren’t many of us there at the alma mater. Us sentimental fools. Just 4 from our batch including yours truly. 1 recognized me instantly. 2 sat in front of me face-to-face for half and hour, to recognize only when somebody called out my name. Two of em were married to each other, and they have a baby now, who insisted on mimicking me when I was caressing her cheeks. No we didn’t have many love stories in our batch, we did have our small friendships and allegiances of convenience. Yours truly though marched to the tune of her own band. I have always been an outsider, existing on the fringes of the crowd. Being surrounded by more opportunists and bourgeois snobs and less friends, you learn to keep to your own. But you remember each and every gesture of kindness that you received. I remember how Ms. Hina (pseudymn ) inspite of her own grave worries, noticed my ashened, fever drenched face in the exam and quietly deposited her cup of tea infront of me, while I was busy writing away sheets after sheets. Thank you, I remember these small kindnesses… that some how lessened the impact of other’s cruelties… The memories lay strewn all over the landscape of this silly life of mine, a gust of wind opened that long forgotten door, and I feel a warm glow and a chilly stabbing pain in my heart – both at the same time.

They say to me in their awakening, “you and the world you live in are but a grain of sand upon the infinite shore of an infinite sea.” And in my dream I say to them: “I am the infinite sea, and all words are but grains of sand upon my shore.” Khalil Jibran.

2006-01-20T12:15:00.000-08:00

Winter Tales Life has become a quagmire of deadlines and commitments. And I lost some data too due to a freaky combination of short keys. It’s just that I want to be some what dreamy and laid back in the winters. This season does this to me. My body’s thermostat gets set on the hibernate mode. And some how I feel more cold than the others. If you would have a look at me, you would probably start feeling cold yourself, or at least would begin to imagine yourself in Antarctica. And don’t ever try to commit the mistake of shaking hands with me in winters! My frozen paws can chill any friendly emotions that you would have. So would the toes. Except that I insist on wearing socks…in all bright colors…red, mauve, black, grey….now I want to buy an orange pair. Hmmm. The weather has been awesome these days….partly cloudy, partly sunny. The breeze is just right…cold but not severely cold. Winter might be over for others, but not for me! I don’t want to part with my woolies or my blanky. They make me feel safe. The blankey makes it very hard for me to leave my bed in the morning for work. But alas, the deadlines! I was ill for almost 15 days with a severely swollen jaw and then on and off bouts of flu. Had to have a root canal done, 2 other expensive dental procedures are inline. And the best thing is that I don’t even have sweets. Except for post-dinner chocolates. Gosh they are…hmmmm Orgasmic….yumm…. Had been in a weird mood lately. Had one too many weird dreams. Somewhat scared, somewhat irritable, somewhat quiet, somewhat panicky. And one does learn to keep things to oneself in those phases. Because people don’t understand much about them and would keep on bulldozing you down and around. Some times it better to keep what is in your mind to yourself. What else? Na na nothing…..the blankey beckons……let this entry end on a light hearted note – for once.

2006-01-07T12:18:00.000-08:00

Reinventing Myself Yes I have been away. Had gone to reinvent myself! That’s what you can do when the malaise and the rut of life starts gnawing at you! You reinvent your ideas, notions, visions, values. You bring an outward change and hope that it transforms something within as well. Make you better and less vulnerable and desensitized in some ways. So on my way to my reinvention spree, I got a new hair cut on my high priestess S’s recommendation, and I dared myself to get a hair color treatment as well. Something that the old me abhor to have done, just because I used to believe in originality. I no longer do. There is nothing original about anything except pain…that’s primeval, a pre-condition of being. Coming back to the hair, I didn’t want to part with the length as well, thus the options of experimentation were limited. I also don’t want to become a replica of every wannabe blond aunty on the street (I hope I am not!). Gladly, thanks to my hairdresser, I found a solution that was just right. I ended up with auburn and mahogany highlights in my curly hair with a side parting. They look good but are on their annual shedding cycle. You can’t have the winning deal always. Tell me about it. Upon other things, I got hold of a lap top as well, giving up the old one so my brother can embark on intergalactic battles between forces of evil and good or surf porn (if that’s what he wants!). This week, I also bid farewell to the oldest and on-off-best friend of mine. She had gone to a different time zone and hemisphere on a scholarship. A time away from all of the things that binds her and bound her, that bring her up and bring her down. Time to wipe the slate clean and start again. She is supposed to be back in one year but my intuition tells me otherwise. We somehow are not supposed to meet after one year, something I did shared with her and got even more tears. People are to go away, they are to leave. They might come back, they might not. Who can say for sure! There are friends who are there; but I can sense a change in them. I might have been once but no longer am in the list of their priorities. They are busy in the festivities of their new lives, their new commitments. Too busy to get in touch…? It’s ok! Doesn’t matter….and I say this with not much betterment. And no I don’t have any resolutions for this so-called new year. I don’t live by delineation of days in calendar; I live by my own heart beat. And when I am not moping, I do thank god! Though I haven’t gained anything! My insecurities, my fears and aches still glisten on my soul, just like the forlorn tears bedded in my curls. But I haven’t lost anything either…besides a few people who have finally proven themselves to be insignificant any ways. I still have the roof on my head and the ground under my feet. I still have my physical strength. Thus, sometimes not losing anything is actually a gain in itself, won’t you agree? And so this very moment, I feel blessed!

2005-12-09T03:49:00.000-08:00

today being envisioned is tomorrow today being relived is yesterday All my yesterdays are foot prints on the shore of my life. All my tomorrows are the sea shells on the shore of my life... the ones yet to be picked... the colors yet to be seen... i wear today as a cloak around my wet body and i dream of the next wave..... There would be days when u already v tried everything…therapy, jogging, friends, writing, reading inspirational articles, prayers……and u would discover that nothing would work. It’s then you start tossing everything away; one by one, in the pool of your sorrows…along with many things that didn’t work. I guess it has been just one of those days for me, where nothing had the potential to work for me. And so now I am in the quest of new things that may have the potential to work. I have tried my less sucky friend’s patience to the last, while the others have tested mine and they still are doing that. It’s been one of those days when you just want to take a dive under the water and keep your head there… dwelling in the other world, the under world. As this world with all its charms doesn’t “attract” me anymore. It’s not livable, it’s not doable. There is nothing to bound me either. But I would try to work around it so I can “live my ‘act’ ” as my wise priestess says …. Last week, I conducted a workshop, which some how turned out very well! For a shy, anxiety and panic prone person and a “work-from-behind-the-desk” person, that’s an ego booster! 2 more workshops to go!

2005-11-20T08:09:00.000-08:00

Baas Yonhi (Just As That!) (Disclaimer: Written under the drugged, semi-holistic and MORONIC influence of Marijuana [kidding...] Cough Syrup...[Burp]!!!!) There are times when you feel sad, at pain, destitute beyond hope or forgiveness...WHY??? Baas Yonhi ---Just as that! Well-meaning people keep telling you to move forward, nudge you towards the so-called happier times...happier times which you know deep down inside won't come for you, as you are the one who has always gotten things the hard way, the raw end of the deal. Some times the happier stuff doesn't come at all. Sometimes, it does come, but at the time and at that point in life, when it doesn't hold value for you anymore, it doesn't matter. Such is the stuff life is made off. Life's little ironies that are merely inconveniences, small heart aches and not tragedies. You find your own peace, at your own time pace and space. But what to do of those well-meaning people, who don't share your plight, your circumstances, who really don't understand you, but nevertheless care for you, and want you to get well and wholesome - in a snap, right away! It doesn't happen this way! It doesn't work that way! Down with a terrible flu, i feel as if i have been pinned and rolled down under a steam engine. My soul feels like a tattered and besoten rag, fluttering in the wind...holes and all. i am becoming more like a face behind the counter...a face, not even a name...despensing OTC (over the counter) comfort, advice, TLCs to the people who don't care,. who don't reciprocate in return. Just like the editorial work that everybody seeks...two pages of this...5 pages of that...needed in an hour or a month.(but for that i get paid for!) But them...My so-called friends, they come as and when the need arise, dish out their troubles and worries, not caring whether i want to listen or not or what i am going thru or feeling. A superficial "Hi! How r u doing? Hey listen, i need a favor/advice.." or "I am so frustrated..." When they are in trouble, they know where to find me, but when happier times come for them, they forget me altogether! What am i? A punching bag, a sponge??? Needless to say i am disappointed in people, some of my own friends. I am disappointed in the one who got married unwillingly last week (read the last week's post)...all the suicidal talk, all the profession of undying love for the first lady, all the talk of walking out on the second lady (the current wife) vanished away....IN JUST ONE NIGHT! Poof! Gone! I Have HAd my share of worries by the minute about him, prayed for him throughout the 3 days...kept soothing him to ease him through the process, kept by his side so he wouldn't say that i was not a good friend! Did for him everything i expected my friends to do in dire straights, but which they didn’t do for me! And Yet he couldn't find the decency to let me know that things turned out well! Too well infact! He just Couldn't realize the extent of worries i had about him! I would start being happy for him, but right now i find the sudden change in him toooo drastic! Let's admit it! When it comes to man and woman....if all the fluff about companionship, compatibility and the notorious 4 letters (LOVE) is cut away! It's all about the three-lettered word (S*X)! A matter of 11 minutes as put by Paulo Coelho...as against the whole eternity and whole life time of loving! Then why do some of us still believe in and try to hang on to the misbegotten notions of lurrvve, hang on to memories, hang on to pain, purity, fidelity, values....Nothing matters. The meaningful conversation you want from your partner, can only be done in bed! Friends would always come AFTER the beloved, or whosoever you are sleeping with! The next time the man or the woman who has claimed to love the pilgrim soul in you would lie down with his/her partner...he/she would forget all about you! You would not even be a memory, you would be a moment in passing, or even less. There is an ale house in the town And there my love sits him down He takes a strange girl on his knees And tell her things that He once told me! (an Irish ditty) Call me a cynic, a misanthrope...every day i shed another misbegotten notion, question another value, reevaluate my friends/foes (i do need to travel light saeed)....Everyday! i fall a lil bit out of love with life. So this time around when the nice doctor (who was acting as the replacement of the regular one) asked me why i can't manage to be and stay happy? why i keep taking anti-depressants? Why don't i try to look at those who are under me in the ladder of fortune and privileges and try to count my own blessings? Why do i even bother looking at those who have it all or at least some of what i wanted? What is the cause of this sadness? etc etccc..yadda yadda.I told the nice doctor that...sometimes i just wanna be sad...Just as that (baas yonhni)!

2005-11-10T05:13:00.000-08:00

One High and Too Many Lows Sometimes, in spite of being a wordsmith i find myself at a loss for words, but never for emotions. But how would you put those emotions in words that would sound befitting? Comforting? Caring? That is the question. What would you say to: >>a person who have recently had a nervous break down and as a result jeopardized everything she painstakingly built in 5 years? >>a person who went to all extremes to prove his love, was betrayed by the very beloved, is still unable to reconcile with his pain and is being blackmailed into marrying someone else by the well-meaning and concerned but overbearing parents? the same person who sleeps with a loaded gun under his pillow, assures you that it is for official use and that he is strong, but you suspect otherwise? >>a person who has recently fought the most gruesome battle with cancer and cameo therapy, but is still confined to her room for the fear of infections? >>a person for whom occasions like eid are reminders of the emptiness and the family life she never experienced because of her father's battle with Alzheimer and subsequent death? >>a person who spent her whole life in supporting her family and was able to get married only now, and yet her husband mistreats her? Don’t these people deserve some happiness in life? Some hope? Something to hang on to? It’s unfair. And to all of these people i was unable to say anything substantial and meaningful recently. i was there in spirit with them and yet i was unable to say anything. And in all of these people's stories i have experienced a flicker of pain, have tried to relive this pain and have been unable to do so...we can't put ourselves in other people's shoes... i wish life would become easier for them a lil bit, and they do get the break that they have deserved for so long. As for myself...I was really grateful for a few other friends apart from the ones mentioned above to have come down on chaand raat and enlivening it. Thank you saadie for taking the time out for us, even when u had so little time. And thank you clintu for master minding it all and making it all happen. You guys make me feel of being worthy of a million dollar babe. Because in your eyes, i have always seen respect for me, for who I am. You are comfortable with the emotional baggae that i carry, and the horns that i wear instead of the halo. The past few years have been nothing but difficult but i have some how never found myself short of support from you guys' side. A BIG THANK YOU!

2005-11-02T01:24:00.000-08:00

Sleep-Walking Through Life Sleepwalking I feel as if I am sleepwalking Time-traveling Mincing the days Down into a fine Compressible substance Playing with weeks As if they were putty In my hands, bending And stretching the limits Of the fourth dimension Holding them out to Dry in the sun of the arid desert that is my life because it all moves so slow yet goes by so fast these days sleepwalking in the desert parched and hungry-tongued dehydrated, deadly thirsty for some variation searching too early for the one thing that brings some rain. by Dirtywings There are times when I am prone to feel that that I am sleep-walking through life, that I am never really grounded, and that I don’t belong anywhere. Days fall through my fingers like sand. It’s hard to recall the time when I used to be passionate about things. I had ambitions and I had dreams. Not any more. Ambitions take beatings; you are defeated in your own games. Life becomes a matter of getting through one day to another. And when you don’t know what the next moment brings, and if life is to end the very next moment, can you afford to leave things incomplete? The mundane rituals of eating, breathing, deadlines, chores and assignments, they take so much of our time….our entire life. Until one day we get up and discover that it’s all gone. A friend recently shared a rendezvous she had with her brother. He wrote an email to her which read: “..today when I was in the kitchen searching for a mid night snack, I felt a slight tremor. It lasted perhaps 3 seconds, but in that short period of time, I thought of so many things. I thought that if god forbid everything comes tumbling down this very instance…would I be able to save myself and my family? Would I be able to do anything for them? Would there be time? Is what I have done for them is enough? Apart from doing, have I ever told them that I love them and appreciate their presence in my life? What if it is my fate to die just now? There would be a lot left unsaid, and lots of regrets for not saying it “now and here”. So my dear sister, I am taking this occasion to say this to you that I cherish and love you beyond what I can ever say, and what you can ever imagine… with love your brother R. And the brother is not living abroad; they are living under the same roof…too coped up now with the demands of their rigorous careers. That’s the way life becomes, you become mechanized and programmed in such a way that you lose touch with yourself and those around you. You take them for granted because you think that they would be there forever in your life. Sometimes we let our differences stand between us. Sometimes we simply ignore. Until time runs out! So let us take a moment and let us know our family and friends…what they mean to us!

2005-10-12T03:20:00.000-07:00

When the Earth Would be Shaken… By the Name of God who is most benevolent and merciful When the earth would be shaken full throttle. And the earth would spew out all what it has been concealing. And (upon seeing the earth in this condition,) man would ask: “What has happened to the earth?” And on that day the earth is going to narrate all it has gone through (good and bad conditions). Because the Prophet (P.B.U.H) had asked it to do so. And then on day, people would revisit their faith, in order to re-evaluate their deeds. And then, whosoever who has done the smallest of good deed, would see it reflected within the earth. And who so ever has done the smallest of misdeed would see it reflected there within. Translation of Surrah Zalzaal. Somebody once told me that life can change in a heart beat. I didn’t believe it much until then. But now i do! The lives of this nation have been changed dramatically within a matter of minutes – for the worse. It could have been you or me. In thanking God, I am forced to ask myself: “Are we thanking Him for the fact that it was them and not us?” It took me years, a life time to learn to be thankful to Him, but now I have to unlearn what I have learnt. For it is only mercy that I can seek. Every time you check, the number of casualties has escalated. The images speak of a loss of a whole generation and not just a massive loss of lives. And then there are those needing help to sustain whatever is left of them and in them. In speaking what one has done so far in this regard, is to actually shed light on how little one has done, and how much there still remains to be done. But never before in life, I have regretted the choice of my career. I wish I was a doctor or at least a nurse, so I could at least have helped in the sorting of the medicines if nothing else. It is curious how life always seems to be running in two opposite extremes! there are people who are finding means to help. There are those who would just sit and analyze with the alacrity of “experts”. Then there are those who are least bothered and running around the city with music blaring from their car stereos irrespective of the nationwide mourning, planning iftar parties and eid shopping and attending them. But that’s a matter of personal choice and inclination. And i dont want to assume a 'holier than thou' attitude'. But I couldn’t believe the reports of the sudden shooting up of the prices of the most unlikely item i.e. a shroud. But then again, ignorance, insensitivity, greed are personal choices.

2005-10-07T13:35:00.000-07:00

Ramadan Ramadan is finally here! Every time around, it seems that ramadan comes around rather quicker and earlier. Since for quite a number of years I was accustomed to ramadan in winters, hence i am feeling a lil bit out of sorts this time. I don't know if any body else is feeling that way or not. The body's metabolism and my inner bio-rhythms would take time to get accustomed to the new change in routine; the nocturnal feeding, the day without caffeine, chitter chatter and songs, and the eventual feast that follows the sundown, when the fast is broken. The month of blessing is actually a time to hog up food. And since i am not much of a food enthusiast; hence, i feel out of sorts yet again: *Invitations to iftar parties beckon. *Friends make plans to make use of all the ridiculous iftar and sehri deals at eateries. *Silly cookery shows tell you how to make your food even more greasier. *Rooh-a-fza has been replaced by coca cola. *Shopping malls stay crowded till wee hours at night *From sugar to shoes, everything is supposed to be on sale, and yet is horribly over priced. *Holy recitals blare from the teletube,shops and cars. *The taraweeh marathons continue *Pop singers have become naat reciters for the time being. *Guys play all-night cricket matches from night till the wee hours of morning. Commercialized brand of religiosity. Ramadan is so much more than food, partying and shopping. There is a charged energy and activity everywhere...And yet there is something missing in the air...a certain peace...i fish out a memory in order to relive the feeling that i want to experience...the memory of waking up in the middle of the night, of walking bare footed through isles and alleys, specifically through a field filled with grains, all the while with my sandals in my hands, walking towards the green dome encircled by white pigeons...the breeze caressing my face... my slightly dusty feet meeting the coolness of the marble floor....making me feel as if i am striding across water or glass...it was medina...decades back... and i was a mere child…and some what innocent and untainted. Somewhere in the midst of growing up...i have ended up all twisted and mangled out of shape... For me...every year around, the excitement graph that surrounds festivals, occasion, celebrations go down for me, the somberness grows, since i am unable to feel that sort of a peace again. That's why since many years, i prefer to stay indoors during this month.... The train of my low blood sugar induced thoughts gets interrupted... I am ‘here’...and this is ‘now’..the mozzan chants meliferously, and some how his voice raises above all - the sleepy city, just like the pigeons in the holyland...praying to the god unknown, invisible and mysterious god..."God is great...god is great...prayer is better than sleep...prayer is better than sleep..." i recite the prayer for starting my fast and sprawl the prayer mat...I set out to reclaim sleep or wakening…I don’t know… Post-Review-A-Day-After: Man..bad prose!!...the narrative is too jerky for my own comfort...but it was the first draft..and my drafts always need logical connectors and fillers. Right now - i can't manage to provide those... as my brain is going dead slowly from low sugar level in da blood...

2005-09-29T04:56:00.000-07:00

You Are Out of Line Mr. President Sorry for the antics with certain elements of my profile, instead of being a trail blazer, I am trying to cover my trail. I am feeling insecure and paranoid, which some how became the theme of this week. It is a sad truth that a sizable male portion of our society can only be termed as perverts, and when you go out regularly, you encounter them once too often. A few incidents that happened this week made me think if it is safe at all these days to go out alone, and what to do if you don’t have people to chaperone you around? It is not just personal; it’s the general scheme of things. There are days when one wishes not to read the newspaper and watch the news at all. If natural calamites aren’t enough to read about, there are gruesome details about murders, injustices, chaos and rape. And one wouldn't enjoy reading the details of a rape(until and unless one happens to be a pervert). Sometimes there is no point in reading the paper, and it seems more feasible to bury my head in the sand like an ostrich, and wishfully think that if I won’t come to know about it, it would mean that it doesn’t exist at all. This is exactly the approach that the people at the helm of affairs have always taken, isn’t it? Those who know me also know that I have mostly avoided talking on two topics namely religion and politics. But this time something related to the latter has really instigated me to speak up. It is our very own dear president and his glorious statement (which according to him was an instance of being misquoted. "It’s happening everywhere. You must understand the environment in Pakistan," Musharraf added. "This has become a moneymaking concern. A lot of people say if you want to go abroad and get a visa for Canada or citizenship and be a millionaire, get yourself raped." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/12/AR2005091201724_pf.html Although he claims that he has been misquoted, but I wonder to what extent could that have happened. The “brush- it-under-the-carpet” approach that he has taken in Dr. Shazia’s case, the treatment that he has meted out to Mukhatara Mai and the character mud slinging that is going on in Sonia Naz’s case, along with his infamous lash out on a human rights activist in the NY conference is proof enough of his “blame-the-woman” mentality. It could have happened to any one! But it hasn’t happened to anyone related to Mr. President, and it can’t happen to them because they are coming from a ‘privileged’ background. So much for our mushy soft image Mushy! Never before had I been so disappointed in this man. He might be better than the average politicians and their feudalistic, land lord back grounda. But how much better is he and the overall military mentality? The military’s disdain for civilians is a fact and not a myth. I have had firsthand experience of working with them, and it was not a comfortable experience. I am not saying that all army men are like that, but the majority of the uniformed cadre is what it is…arrogant, rude and insensitive. The last time I was up and running a diary, a military brat made similar kind of responses to a personal entry. I could have taken him down, but it hardly seemed worthy of the effort. He would stay what he is because he has been conditioned this way by his family, and the military education has further deranged from the realm of emotions and empathy. There are days when nothing seems worthy of the effort, any effort ….an emotional Inertia. “Sarhaddon ke hifazaat karenee walaee” [defenders of our borders] seems like a clichéd phrase. Can we really expect such people to take care of the frontiers, if they physically and verbally begrime their mothers and daughters? And they are not alone in this. It’s only their uniform and it being the symbol of responsibility and sacred trust, which makes us ask them…WHY...Where should one go to seek justice? The Jirga and ultimately the judicial system (Mukhtara Mai’s case), SHO (Sonia Naz’s case), the military official (Dr. Shazia Khalid), the security guard (a rape case in a park), and the numerous sodomy and rape cases on the hands of the mulvis…it's a long line...a trail of perversion. It seems like the disintegration of the very institutions upon which the edifice of the society rests. And when you feel that you can’t take any more, you again get to hear about the rape of a 4 year old child on the hands of her guardian – the brother-in-law (a mulvi). What do you have to say about this Mr. President? Does this girl child have a motive as well to cash in on this incident and settle abroad? I think we should now stop taking shots at Bushy and his anti-Muslim policies and start analyzing our own mess.

2005-09-23T04:22:00.000-07:00

The Rain and the Tears I have forgotten how to cry, But the sky remembers, Ant sheds the healing tears That experience and years Have taught me to disipline And dry. The sky and I Have agreement about pain, And I love rain. Anon I kept a hope and a heart… and the rainy days did come, thunder and dust storm as well. It was beautiful, maddening and mysterious at the same time. It was dark, then it was bright and then it was dark again. The anthem of the droplets soared on the window pane, while the curtains swelled like balloons and danced as if they had a life of their own. Now as I write this, it’s really hot again, but the very act of recall is making me feel some what fresh. I can hear the anthem still, can you too? Ironically I celebrated my rain enchained in a workshop (yuk) on a Saturday and a Sunday (double yuk), but then one can’t help it. Circumstances…they betray you. I should have been at home, doing a rain dance, maybe sipping tea, listening to Junoon’s Garaj Baras, or may be Iqbal Bano’s Daasht-e-Tanhai, doing nothing and doing a lot. But …circumstances betray you, just like your own mind and body. You think that you are strong enough, that you can cope with anything, take into stride everything that comes your way. But that doesn’t happen. One incident, and another, and then you begin to feel as if the bottom of your life just cannot hold, it’s giving away. There is so much beauty in life, and there is so much pain. That one moment of peace that you get, that one moment in which nothing is happening…is that one moment of happiness. And I clutch at that moment. I savor it. For one it will be gone…I would be empty handed….nay…I would wait for the next moment. Forgive me for the somber tone…I was with some one who was very depressed. And when I think I was making a progress in cheering her up…but then I saw a recently widowed young women walking indoors, and afterwards I was unable to say anything further, and my friend couldn’t say anything as well…or in her own words…”couldn’t crib any further.” Seeing the young woman’s face frozen in a mask of perpetual and mute agony, made us shudder plainly. And trying to cheer the first person up has made me rather sad myself. I don’t know what do friends and acquaintances look for when they talk with you. Do they need a shoulder to cry on? Maybe just a sympathetic ear? Or solid advise? A dose of Hard Core reality? Or a delusional promise, another one? Maybe a heart felt prayer? Maybe all of this! But I get really scared for the task being overwhelming and my own inadequacy. So for this time around, and all the times in the past…when I have had in the past or will fail to say something substantial, something meaningful to you when you are in pain…just forgive me! For I feel but I can’t articulate it in words. And so I cry.

2005-09-04T09:04:00.000-07:00

Autumn in a Megalopolis Yesterday’s resolutions lie heaped upon my feet like a shattered glass and the body and mind find it hard to make new ones. There is sadness in the air and a bout of loneliness. I don’t know why. Autumn in a Megalopolis is the worst fate that can befall you, especially if you are ill and suffering from both i.e. lack of will and lack of imagination. The sky seems as barren and parched as one’s own soul. The trees are coated with dust and smog, and are standing with their branches hung low. The sparrows seem restless. Too bad, if you want to feel all the colors of the weather, in their primeval glory and majesty; sunshine, rain, thunderstorm, snow, autumn and what not. But instead, you are stuck with this deadness. The god of weather seems to be in a bad and rather whimsical mood. It seems hot and yet it is not. It seems cold, yet it is not. Just like myself. The fever lies dormant in the body and the thermometer loves playing a trick on me, giving a 98 reading at one time and a 99 reading at another. I am ill one hour and ok the hour later. All the anti-biotics, over-the-counter remedies; these multi-colored pills and syrups coming in all shapes and sizes are unable to cure me. And shackled in my room like a condemned prisoner, I look out of the window and I find no respite. I don’t know which one is to be relied upon; the weather inside or the weather outside. We have received no rain. Each day the clouds would gather, giving you a false hope that they might rain, but they didn’t. Sometimes the proud sun would shine on mercilessly and my tired eyes are unable to locate even a single cloud on the sky. A single cloud, upon which I can lay a dream and let it flit sky high, here in there. Which is exactly what this tired soul entrapped in this tired body is unable to do.

2005-08-29T04:29:00.000-07:00

The Three Boxes of Life We live in a box. From one box, we move into another and then another one, and in all of these boxes, we feel trapped like a mouse. We wanted to be able to do more, to get out more out of life, but feel unable to do so. We feel frustrated at different points in time for different reasons: initially, the feeling of not doing as much as we should have been doing, then the feeling of not doing enough, then the feeling of perhaps doing too much and consequently, not doing anything at all. I am not fond of self help books, just because I feel that they are quite theoretical and also because I feel that they depreciate the ‘self’. Thus, I started Richard Bolles book “The Three Boxes of Life” with my typical skeptical attitude but it got changed. I liked this book in a limited capacity, as it is about life/work planning. As earlier on I was just managing things and not life itself. And why the hell do I feel that I suddenly need to plan and manage life? Well it is the feeling of the passage of time at a very swift pace. A couple of birthdays were celebrated a few days ago. And all of them had the familiar ring: “Time is passing us by!” In the kind of times where the average life expectancy is not beyond 60 and 50 even, and even lesser than that, I have already lived half of my life. I am no longer young. It is the naivety of youth which gives you everything to look forward to and not much to look back at. Well you can disagree if you want to but I am talking about myself here only. The three boxes of life are: Learning, Work and Play. The majority of us spent life being entrapped in any of these boxes. We study and study, we then, work and work, taking no time out for play. Or, we spend more time at play, neglecting our duties. The result is a degree of discontentment and guilt. We all have experienced it. We strive for completion of things, not for the contentment that result from undertaking them. So now I am managing my days and week in a different manner. After analyzing my deadlines in a particular week, I set aside time for myself without feeling guilty. I try to plan separate set of leisure/pleasure activities: one that involves my family members, one that involves any of my friends/or the maximum number of them, and one that solely involves me. In this, I throw in two days of jogging/walking, bed time and evening time reading sessions, and phone calls to be made and emails to be sent out to friends. I make a list of household chores to do. I do all of my socializing on Friday night or Saturday, simply chill out on Sunday by reading books, watching TV etc. And life is already looking a little bit more productive and a tad bit less hassled. Last week, I finished 85% of the work that I set to do. Went for jogging twice. Finished the book that I was reading. Visited an ailing relative. Fixed some food for him and dropped it today on the way to work. Dinned out with the family. And finally on Saturday, I went to see Imran Aslam’s play "If you have Shakespeares, prepare to shed them now". The humor was OK, not side splitting funny and forced at time, but it did manage to evoke some laughter. And every moment that one smiles - counts! I liked in particular: the rendition of “Friends, Romans, Countrymen…” in Punjabi, and other jokes like Caliban V.S. Taliban, Shia and Sunni - the new alliance being called “Sushi” etc. Anyways, this play hardly makes up for me missing “Ayub” the play 2 weeks back, but at least it was an outing. And above all, I met my blog-buddy neurotic at the post- play tea. It was coincidental but every bit enjoyable. In fact I think I have a happiness headache. I did work a little bit on Sunday but then spent the rest of the time being a lazy assed… Let’s see what the next week brings…

2005-08-21T12:49:00.000-07:00

Resurrection Calm…After the Storm has passed, after the wind has died…but I am not that wind. I am rather that grain of sand that is setting in… Purity…After the Rain has fallen, and the sunrays have worn out…but I am not those rays of light. I am rather that solitary white cloud that is flitting by… Stillness…After the twilight has waned, and all the sparrows have returned to their nests...but I am not one of those sparrows. I am rather the one that is left behind... Darkness… After the Sun has sunk, and the moon has come about…but I am not that moon. I am rather that halo around it… Dimness…After the Moon has come out and the single brightest star has moved close to it…but I am not that lonesome star…I am rather the one that has died and fallen down to the ground… Silence…After the Orchestra has died, and the as the last note of music is fading…but I am not that last note. I am rather that echo that is heard afterwards… Hence, out of elements, out of sorts, and out of place ...I am the one who is re-settling in...Not taking it up from where i have left. The metaphor of the phoenix rising from the ashes is to hackneyed, even for my own stale, melodramatic taste. Lying low in a hibernation of a different kind, i have been doing what i was required to do...re-assessing my life, my lives, my self, and my selves. The selves not killed entirely, just laid to a bit of a slumber. In forging a new cyberdonian identity i.e. torra borra or toora, i have partly killed the older identities. I am back with no solid conclusions. Just a few reflections and a few resolves: I torra borra or toora pledge that.... from now onwards, i would be writing vaguely...though my grudge with life and gods is still the same...But from now onwards i would stop being personal about it(thank your lucky stars that u have been spared). The catharsis would go on but at a different plane and level…I would be writing with the personal verve that once used to be my signature, my insignia, or my scarlet letter...one that i would wear with pride... This decision to share but not share wholly owes to many things...many of u know what they are...and the reasons are profound. This is so because sharing your life honestly means that a lot of shit is going to be hurled back at your face. Opening your life to cyberdonia means keeping it ajar...for interpretation of familiar strangers, boogey men and even friends....taking criticism. Much of what is not going to make you happy any ways....so here i am coming to terms with, acknowledging my own inner darkness. For before every form of light there is darkness and after that darkness there is to be light. And i am waiting for the ultimate dawn. i would like to think that the promise of god is not in vain. I am the prisoner of darkness and i am the perpetuator. Darkness...i became its inmate not out of my own choice...it was deep in my genes...but i have come to accept it and have gotten use to it. For it has also provided comfort to my eyes weary from the glaze of the day-to-day unbecoming worldly realities or illusions. It has helped me discern right from wrong time to time. it is a welcoming retreat in times of doubt, pain and confusion. Darkness is a shelter and a shadow...So here is one to a newer beginning....and each one of you - in a small or a grand way a part of it…