Nameless Faceless

Accidents Happen

2009-08-31T12:29:00.003+06:00

My dad always says that when you're on the road and driving, you need to have two eyes in the back and two in the sides of your head apart from the pair you already have. No one has that many eyes nor is it possible to have that many but what Dad means is to keep your eyes and ears open and not be distracted while driving.

So it was no surprise on Saturday night that a motorbike rammed into my friend's husband's car.

Her husband was out of the city and so she'd asked me to stay the night with her because she didn't want to stay alone. Since she can't drive very well, I was the driver for the night and for Sunday.

Even though it was the fault of the motorcyclist but I have to admit that I was distracted and disturbed. I was only saved serious injury because of the way I was parked. If the motorbike had rammed into the door then I would have been in the hospital. The angle of parking also helped keep the motorbike driver out of the hospital though he was coming at a very high speed.

He had scratches and I'm sure his body must have ached badly once the adrenaline cooled because that's what happened to me too. A policeman came and asked me to forgive the person. He must have been 23 or so and looked so miserable and I knew he'd be too poor to pay for the damages or anything.

On top of that my friend was in a shock as her husband would be mad at her. I had the car fixed. We sat waiting in it while the guys fixed the dents and the broken light. Obviously, the job wasn't good. We got home at 1 am (a very late time for both of us). I couldn't sleep for many hours due to the pain. It was both psychological and physical. I was feeling bad that I had been distracted and didn't look properly at the road. I could have killed the poor guy. I don't care what happens to me but the thought of hurting someone like that is a terrible one.

In the morning I was experiencing the effects of mild whiplash. My arm is still hurting. I didn't tell my friend because I didn't want to worry her any further. Yesterday before going back to my place, we went to pick her husband from the bus station. When we reached my place, he went around the car to see if something was wrong.

It was one of the most embarrassing moments of my life and I haven't had that many I guess. He was suspicious and I felt so bad lying that nothing had happened. Knowing that he'd proverbially kill his wife made me feel less guilty about us lying to him but still.

When I talked to my mom yesterday, she kept asking if every thing's okay but if I tell her she'll not only get worried but then I'll have another issue to handle. Why did that happen? Was I distracted? What was I thinking? What's wrong with me? Why am I always lost? I can't answer these questions. I do know that I am definitely not driving anyone's car again. I can't take these risks with other people's life even if it's not my mistake.

God forbid if something happens, nothing will be left and I will only have myself to blame. So there goes another thing from my life. I can say this shamelessly that I'm feeling very sorry for myself and thus wasting my time rambling on the internet instead of working.

Lost Between the Lines

2009-08-13T02:46:00.004+06:00

(This one was only ever for you because you're the only one. I only ever said those three words to you. They don't mean anything of course. Now I know why you were so sceptical when I sent you this poem. You were always sceptical that I could love you. Was it a compliment or an insult? I don't know. I know this: You're the only one I loved, as much as I did and with so much nervousness, innocence and shyness.

You were right. You never said those words ever first but I did. Now everything is really lost. Now there's static and there's such a distance that you will only cover upon my death. Perhaps just as well. Because I said I love you first. One of my many many sins. My endless punishments.)

Tomorrow I will talk to you
I have thought of every word
I want to say
I have written things on a paper
And now I am looking at them
This is not what I meant
When I said that I love you
I meant more than that!
Try to understand
These are the feelings that are
Stuck somewhere
Feelings lost between the lines
Lost in the static of silences
That have come between.

Now I am talking to you
I have forgotten what I want to say
I have mingled sentences
and minced some words.
The look of surprise in your eyes
Has me confused
I am saying I love you
But I mean more than that...
When will you understand
There are the feelings that
Want so much to come out
Feelings lost between the lines
Lost in the static of silences
That have come between.

(2001)

Birth of the Living Stone

2009-08-13T01:56:00.003+06:00

I was dead
the day I was born.
Why was I born?
why all the pain?

This is no time to ask questions
This is where you cry.
Unwrapped from the holiest of wrappings
All I had on was
Placental remains and blood.
Go and clean her nurse
If you please will.

Why all the pain?
You almost died that day.
Why the anger now
Your love turned into hate.

I was born
Naked, and without a gun
Or I would've ended the misery.
That's to put it without pun
as you like it
So you like it.
It would've been me in the end.

Ignore? Ignored the pain
But deep down you liked it.
Ride it this time
Don't let them ride.

(2001)

The Wanderer

2009-08-06T00:31:00.005+06:00

There must have been a hole in the sky
From where I fell
Because tears filled its mourning eyes.
Not coming to life until dawn
And then the never ending journey begun.

Once a full moon and then

A whole sunless course.

And yes, up there
That Master, the Great Puppeteer
Me dancing to His tune
A melancholy move
Chanting indiscernible notes
Moans and painful cries
Heard over a blue moon
Remind people of what lies behind.

The whole world moved to complete its eccentric turns
Wounded and vain, I walked without direction.
Alone I came to this world of mocking loneliness
And alone I went on this dreary road.
No one to cry over this writhing pain
And now not even that sky.

Where I walked, the earth became grey
It's supply bosom dried
The land weary under this pain
Twisted time and again,
Still carried my weight.

People stood and gazed for some moment
Seeing me burn in my rotten fate
Then again buried themselves in their mortal cage.
I dragged on with a shameful face
For making filthy, the heart of the mother
With unholy games
But it is her that brought me
To my restless wandering
And I even forgot when it had begun.

Lying naked on burning sand
Vultures circling above the head
This is me: the wanderer
A soul embodied in despair.

And now lying in the lap of the earth
With face to the sky
I wonder if ever this wandering will cease.

Waking up, find myself in another world
Coming to life in the darkest night.
Once a full moon and then
A whole sunless course.

(1998/1999)

Forlorn in West: A Heart Broken by East

2009-08-02T01:01:00.006+06:00

Sitting all alone
In New York
in a jazz bar
Way past midnight
With a drink in one hand
and tear filled eyes.
I look out
At dying traffic
And blinking signs.
In the background
Someone tries to sing
For those of us
Foolish enough
to stay behind.
I think she's singing
'Why do you have to be a heart breaker...'
She's ready to go
The make up is wearing out.
I look at her for some time
and think,
'Yeah, she got soul'
Then look at
The snow falling outside.
How many seasons
Since it snowed in New York?
I see it reflecting colours:
Red, blue, yellow and green
I think of the time,
I think of the times
I had thought of being here
But never alone.
I think of the times
I wished to call
Someone my own.
But sitting here
I just watch things go by.
Slowly even the bartender is gone
Someone says it's time to close.
I have to leave.

Down the empty streets
No walking hand in hand
No cabs to catch
No hurrying home
Because no one's waiting.
Snow falling on bare head
But I am oblivious to the cold
There burns a fire inside of me.
The cell phone is off
For who will call
There is no one there
Who would care?
Slowly the wind is catching speed
I pull my coat to my face
I wish someone would hold me close
To keep the cold away.
Suddenly I'm in a hurry
To go back to my empty place.

In the cab
An Asian driver
Chatters away
Absentmindedly, I listen.
The ride into Manhattan
Or out of it
Can sometimes be so painful
For some, because of the memories
For me, the lack of them.
The cabbie talks of back home
I ask him where he belongs
And even though he answers me
It's lost on my ear when
Something outside catches my eye
A man walking all alone
Down the street
Dark hair and brooding eyes
Seems like I've known him
Long time before
He passes by
And then he's gone
Like everyone,
When you pass corners
And lose track of what's behind.
I pay the fare
"Keep the change"
The cabbie waves with surprise.

In the elevator
All alone
The bellboy has left
Long gone.
In the midnight hours
There's no mystery
Just a sorrow that
Envelopes this building,
which I call home
And the silent cries
of tenants long gone
Their souls haunting
The very foundations
of the place they reside.
No one to kiss hurriedly
And then only to be caught,
With a face
Reddened more by love
than embarrassment,
By someone
that lives next door.
No, there is no one.
I'm all alone.

With trembling hands
I open the door
Move outside,
This 5th floor balcony
New York in all its
Man made glory.
No one to share the view
In this apartment I chose
With utmost care
And decorated with all my soul
All the hours spent
Searching, selecting, setting
Painting the ceilings and the walls
Wasted...
Since there's no admirer
In the bedroom
No lover awaits
With open arms
To hold me tight
To never leave out of sight.
With a sick feeling
I watch myself
in the bathroom mirror
Sunken eyes
Half drowned in tears
A heart floats forlorn.

Dressed in a black gown
I sit on the deck chair
And look at the half moon
in the misty sky.
Light a cigarette
and wait for dawn
Too late to sleep
To early to morn.
Think of the times
When there had been
Voices in this world
Now the whole place is covered
In silence and snow.
Far away in the night
Sirens scream
Then all is still.
In the distance
Long Island is just a shadow
Illuminated by lights
And where is Central Park?
Where I jog every morning
All alone
No one for idle chat
And when I come back
There's no one to tease
With the smell of fresh coffee
No talk of breakfast in bed
And no one to fight
Over the morning paper.

Beautiful New York mornings
and
Beautiful New York nights
Spent all alone.

And then I come back
to the present
Back in my chair
As the first rays of sunlight
Kiss my face
And rouse me from light sleep
And the first
Morning birds come out.
In some downstairs apartment
A canary sings
Perhaps a 'Sonnet to Freedom'
I smile a sorrowful smile
All knowing
Nodding my head in
Understanding and admiration
and think,
I am not alone after all.

(24th September 2001)

I Will Marry a Tree

2009-07-30T01:01:00.004+06:00

When I will find not a companion
Someone to lean on,
A shoulder to cry upon,
I shall marry a tree.

It will give me shelter;
The leaves will be my clothes.
In the summer,
It will keep me from the heat.
I shall drink its sap to quench my thirst.
In winter,
Its leave will cover me.
It will keep me safe from harm...
Its boughs shall be my house
And near the top,
When I shall sit
be able to see
Far and wide, the countryside
And the ocean too.
When I talk, it will listen to me
And patiently.
When I sleep, it will sing to me
The breeze's lullaby.
I will talk to it in whispers
The way it would talk to me.

When I am old and dying
I will come down and lay on the ground
I will sleep in its bed
And be a part of it.

And when I find that tree
I will certainly name it thee.

(2000)

The Epitaph

2009-07-26T22:05:00.004+06:00

Every day you grow dearer and dearer to me
It's crazy!
You are going far away, every day.
Wherever you fly,
Take care of your heart.

How will we take care of this,
Bird of Spring,
My illness and your departure?

Over the blue mountains,
and above the Golden Tower
I search,
Second, third: sadness,
Thunder and rain.

How happily the candle of life burns in you!
How happily it shines.

I want to stop writing to tell you
The words I should say:
How I love you,
Endlessly, Wordlessly, Selflessly.

Oh God!
What will become of us, of you?

My jewel,
My flowers in spring,
My water in summer.

You are my daily light:
Moonlight, fire, dawn and dusk.
Firefly and all.

You are the Light of my eyes

(2000)

Alif

2009-07-05T14:32:00.016+06:00

I might love but I'm not beholden to it anymore. I can't apologize for what I feel. How do I know that God loves me? I just have to keep on hoping and believing. Perhaps I don't even care. Perhaps I just want to love Him in the best possible way.

Perhaps I have moved beyond men & women and just want to look at mankind.

Do I need what I gave away freely? Was love not given with an open heart? When you give, aren't you supposed to forget? Why would you keep a tab on feelings? How can anybody?

I am just looking into myself and finding myself happy without being sorry that I loved or for whatever I gave. I love but it doesn't matter who or what.

It just is.

I just am. Alif.

Some couplets by Bulleh Shah from a song by Sayein Zahoor & Noori

Parh parh ilam te fazil hoya
Wei kade apne aap noun parhya nayein
Bhaj bhaj warrna aen mandar maseeti
Wei kade mann apne wiche warrya nayein

(Learning all that knowledge has made you wise
Oh but you never have the time to read yourself
You run entering your temple and mosque
Oh but you have never entered your heart)

Larna roz shaitan de naal
Wei kade nafs apne naal larya nayein
Bulleh Shah asmani udd diyan phharro nayein
Je jeira ghar bheitya onoun phharrya nayein

(Quarrelling with the devil every day
Oh but you never fought your ego
Bulleh Shah stop trying to catch the ones that fly in the sky
You never caught the one who sits at home)

Basein karyoo yaar
Ilmoun basein karein oh yaar

(Stop it my friend
Stop this (so-called) learning my friend)

Ikoo Alaf tere darkar
Haq!
Basein karyoo yaar
Ilmoun basein karein oh yaar

(You only need one Alif (the first letter of the Semitic (Arabic, Hebrew and probably Aramaic?) and Urdu languages)
Haq! (righteousness/right)
Stop it my friend
Stop this (so-called) learning my friend)

Allah!
Sayeinyan!

(Allah!
Lord!)

Nein mein jana jogi de naal

(I want to go with the jogi (wandering ascetic))

Jo na jane haq ki takat
Rabb na de vei oss ko himmat

(He who doesn't know the power of right
God does not give him strength)

Hum mann ke darya mein doobay
Kaisi nayya kya manjhdhar

(I have drowned in the river of my heart
Who needs a boat, (getting lost) midstream does not scare me)

Haq!

(Right/Righteousness)

Bas karein ho yaar
Ilmoun bas karein ho yaar

(Stop it my friend
Stop this (so-called) learning my friend)

Allah!
Sayeinyan!

(Allah!
Lord!)

No Fireworks )):

2009-07-05T05:01:00.002+06:00

Happy Independence Day to all my friends and family from the USA.

Living with COPD

2009-07-05T03:28:00.005+06:00

Life is such a joke sometimes that you have to laugh it off. One has to live and breathe and do everything in this short little time.

I was having an okay time in life, not too good and not too bad and then something happened and the plane went down and something broke inside me or maybe it was broken already and I just felt the broken edges trying to pierce my insides. May it be any reason, you or shall we call it love or happenstance or rose by any other name etc but I stopped living. It was like being suspended in time but with the time passing.

Seeing my x rays for the first time with those lungs like maps meant nothing to me until the doctor explained that mine are like that of a 40 year old smoker. Innocent that I was, I said, but I don't smoke. It's not smoking, it's something else. You have to be more careful than the rest. I didn't give a damn because I suppose when you're in your early 20s, everything is bullshit and you're so high on life and friends and university and colors and trees and driving fast and listening to all sorts of new music and experimenting with that music and trying to discover yourself and God and forgiving and forgetting that you just don't give a damn about a couple of badly scarred 40 year old lungs inside the body of a 20 year old.

I'd been away from the internet for long and away from everything and I started thinking, why has it stopped me from living life. Just because you weren't there, why did I stop breathing. I couldn't breathe anyway.

The realization hit me that it was almost (less than) a decade ago that I was given that black & white plastic picture of my tattery breathing sacks and I wondered if my lungs were 50 years old now. So I remembered that I started smoking to kill myself and I smoked on and off without any conviction of addiction (because other than you, I never got addicted to anyone or anything) and it hit me that now my lungs must be older than just 50.

A person like me is not scared of death, just what they're taking to the next world and what they're leaving in this one. I have known it for more than a year now that I don't have much time and I didn't want to give myself the false sympathy nor take it from anyone about 'making it' but something happened and I wanted to live!

I think it was the hope that you'll come back to me. I kept that flame alive in my scarred body parts. Young old body parts. I used to cry when someone young died. I never wanted anyone to cry when I was gone (the delusion that someone might remember me long enough... ah!).

Then the flame left and I thought what am I? Am I an empty shell? But I wasn't. I have too many scars, killing scars, pustulating scars, itching scars. I have things to show for my journey, shorter though it may be than others but what does it matter.

So at first I faked a laugh. It hurt my lungs. It really did. I coughed. It even made me huff and puff. I couldn't breathe or maybe I was used to the feeling of not breathing so much that I just didn't want to anymore.

But when I actually heard my laughter, I remembered how I used to laugh. Even I used to love my laughter. I, who never much loved anything about myself, used to love my laugh and enjoy it. I was encouraged and I laughed again and again and I smiled to myself. So what if you don't love me anymore and what if you wouldn't care if I died? You won't even know it until I was gone for many many months. Perhaps many many years.

That stopped the laughter but I wasn't going to give up. I wanted to capture that essence. The crazy essence. People still tell me I look like I'm 16. I heard it in the gym that I didn't look a day younger than 18. Someone didn't want to talk to me when I came back from England because they thought I was just 14. It used to make me feel worse not because it couldn't make me happy that everyone thought I was so young but that no one could see how old my heart and lungs had become and how I had let everything wither me so much.

No more. I realized that I don't want to be old. It's been my goal since I was a kid. To die young. I wanted to be the literal member of the 27 club. How Gothic! No more. I love nature. I miss it. I miss that I was lying among pines and listening to the sea.

I miss writing poetry that was based on other people's emotions. I miss writing at all. I miss looking and seeing. I miss talking to my friends. I'm afraid that I've lost them to this old young self. I miss drawing and painting and playing. I miss being quiet, calm and collected. I know that I might not regain any of that but I want to get that essence back. I know it's somewhere inside me, lost though it may be.

That essence is needed for the happy survival. To not pretend anymore. To not wait anymore for someone or something that won't ever arrive. To just be happy in the small things. To listen to my happy self. To leave the darkness behind or to meet it when the right time is there.

I still get sad. I weep more now but I don't hate myself for it. I let the sadness roll off me and like waves leaving me clean and pure. I cried that I was just an innocent. I wept that I was just a baby when I met you. I didn't know anything. Someone had been cruel to me when I was a child but I still didn't understand it. I forgive! I forgive!

I must learn to forgive myself too. The blood of the innocent is on my hands as much as anyone else. I suppose more so on mine than any others. I love myself too.

Now when I laugh, I mean it. It's not like the days haven't been tough but just to hear my lungs making an effort to do something nice is good. When I come home, I wash the stains of everyday. I don't let them ruin my being. I want that when I cease to be, I don't have to carry them beyond this world.

Scars are okay but stains are not.

Gut nicht!

How this will end

2009-05-06T23:43:00.003+06:00

Did I get saved today? I don't know. The guy who was supposed to come see me fell ill apparently. I suppose he got saved. That much I do know.

Whenever I feel happy for even the briefest period of time, something happens to bring me back down again. It makes me wonder if anyone else has such an efficient safety switch against happiness.

Still good things come out everything and I have decided to be dependent only upon myself rather than my parents or my family in general. Being a girl is a big enough issue without having to hear about how you're a burden.

There was a time I used to think that my parents are not like the countless other parents out there, that they are different and wouldn't bend to society when safeguarding the interests of their daughters.

Oh but I should have known that every ounce of trust I put in anyone or any relationship comes to punch me in the face.

It felt stupid that I cried. Thinking about myself lying balled up in pain made my cringe. It's enough for me to bear the physical pain. Emotional pain is torture. I take medicines for my pains but I don't know what to take for mental agony.

Deciding to be fully independent is a great thing but I don't know how I'll afford to live, to feed and clothe myself. It has hit me time and time again that on my own, I'm now one of the poorer people of this country. Obviously not poor but certainly, I have fallen down the economic ladder.

It's time to kick myself for listening to my parents, my family and friends (most of whom are going back themselves) and coming back from the UK. At least, it's not a sin being a female there or to work any menial job. I can't do that in this country.

I have come to a conclusion. It's cringe worthy to discuss ones financial situations on the www but nonetheless. To myself, I'll say this is my therapy blog. So! I'll stop eating. I'll get the cheapest lodgings, which my parents didn't allow but now that I'm no more their responsibility, I don't think it matters. At the end of the day, I bring myself down less than the whole world does.

Why am I going to do all this? I'm saving money to apply for the UK work permit, for which I'm eligible. I'm saving to buy a ticket and then leave. I am hoping to die in peace over there and have a nice unmarked grave most probably.

Since I'm a fallen angel, there are so many things that don't matter anymore. To know that no one loves you truly is a killing thing but also liberating. Then you can up and leave all the beautiful people behind who never needed you.

It doesn't feel bad anymore to be fat and ugly. It doesn't feel bad anymore to know that I was deluded into thinking I'm normal. Normal changes. Normal is relative.

At least I'll be free of conventions.

I want a Giraffe staring down at me

2009-05-06T05:40:00.004+06:00

I came home for the weekend to relax and not think about my worries but my mother and aunt had different plans.

It didn't help that some couple of weeks ago my aunt called up late in the evening to tell me that I should consider my abuser cousin as a future spouse (thanks for keeping my trust like everyone else, mom). When I calmly asked if mother knew, the reply was that she was asking on her behalf. Of course.

The effort it took me to contain myself was more than I could bear. I cried all night. It started raining and then I just stood in the window for many hours until it was time for morning prayers. I don't know if I ever felt as faithless as I did that night.

Sometimes, I feel like it's not my life that I'm living but my life is being lived by everyone else. I don't want to get married but I have to because my mother and my aunts want that. I don't want to have kids but because I'm a woman, I'm expected to. I love someone else but I should jump into a marriage because that's what the society expects me to do.

So here I was in a better mood for the Labor Day weekend when my mother announced that there are two different people coming to see me for their sons. I really wished at that moment that I had not taken the extra day off.

Like all the rituals in this blasted place, one has to get all dolled up and be ready but for people like me, we have to hear how we're not beautiful and fat etc despite everything. Nobody cares how intelligent you are or how many books you've read or how much time you wasted studying.

As of yesterday, one of the people have asked for my hand in marriage (lol... the phrase smacks of barbarianism; oh, well!). It's almost 5 in the morning and I haven't slept a wink because I have been thinking and asking myself why I'm going to do this for my parents.

I've been asking myself for a long time whether it's right to marry just to make your parents happy? I don't even live with them anymore. It's true that our society requires girls to stay at home and then get married and stay at home. Basically, pass the weight to someone else.

It's more than that. There was a brief period when I wanted to marry the person I love and it's true that it made me want to have kids and what not but that feeling has completely been wiped out. I have been trying to tell myself that perhaps getting married will distract me enough to forget everything and that I'll enjoy it. After all, I don't know the person. It's another thing that when he sees me later in the morning, he might reject me. Part of me minds that because the whole of me knows that I'm not a cow or a sheep to be rejected but that same whole knows that's how we are treated and that's how I have been treated even by the persons who claim to love me.

Try as I might, I cannot convince myself. How can I fob myself off on someone like that? How is it expected that we will do things together in life without knowing each other at all? How is it expected for strangers sprung on each other to survive? It's not like we are living 30 years ago in our parents (and I suppose 40 years for his parents) time where everything was decided by someone else because you just didn't 'know better'.

Since yesterday, I have been trembling, not with fear but with a growing sense that I am going to lose my hope forever. I know that despite everything I still love just that one person. I have been hoping and praying that he will come around (thus proving that females are sentimental fools). Added to that is the fear that if all goes like society expects it then I am a hypocrite of the highest order, set to deceive someone in the same way that I fear I have been deceived. I don't know if this other person deserves it but who are any of us to judge.

The counting of hours is so difficult. No one has asked me what I need or want. I'll be skipping office for the 3rd straight day today for nothing. I am 28 and I still have to do things to make people happy when I know that they will still be unhappy no matter what I do.

I am praying that on the way back to Lahore, I have an accident and as I'm flowing out of body, the thin, tall man stares down at me because it is my wish that he should be the last being I should see before I go.

That's how I treat my problems now. Death is my solution to everything. I am afraid of and for myself.

Being stared down by a giraffe is my highest dream.

You Never Loved Me

2009-05-01T02:30:00.008+06:00

My state might be summed up best in Rumi's following verses:

Sometimes I forget completely
what companionship is.
Unconscious and insane, I spill sad
energy everywhere. My story
gets told in various ways: a romance,
a dirty joke, a war, a vacancy.
It took me 20 years to forget and move on and learn to love.
I was just 3 or 4 years old when I was sexually abused by my cousin. I never told anyone for many years. Then I told my parents and my siblings. Before that only God, my cousin and I knew and I wished to take it with me to the grave.
It took me 20 years to stop trying to scrub the skin off my bones and spending hours in the shower to wash away unseen dirt.
20 long years wondering why it happened to me and if I deserved it.
I didn't tell anyone else.
I told you.
I told you because you told me that you loved me.
I told you because I believed that what you told me was true.
And now I'm wondering why I told you because you never loved me.
You threatened so subtly to leave me bleeding on the floor of lost love that I thought life would end without you. I didn't know I was so weak.
It took me 20 years to fight and defeat my demons.
What did I know that they weren't dead but just lying low to surface one night, stronger than ever to maim me?
I used to wonder what it was like to walk with your insides on the out and now I know and I don't like it at all.
As Rumi says once more,
A night full of talking that hurts,
my worst held-back secrets. Everything
has to do with loving and not loving.
This night will pass.
Then we have work to do.
How cruel is this world? I have always wondered. I know that I was much wiser when I was younger. I took risks but I was cautious. I never fell in love. I tried it and you knew it because you knew all my secrets. Then Rumi shakes some salt on my wounds.
I used to be shy.
You made me sing.

I used to refuse things at table.
Now I shout for more wine.

In somber dignity, I used to sit
on my mat and pray.

Now children run through

and make faces at me.
I gave them all to you against all the philosophers' judgments whispering out to me through the books I'd read and what I'd learnt from others.
Now I'm wondering if it was all about sex. Does the whole world revolve around it? I tried to give myself to you. God and you know that. Did you leave me because I couldn't? Shall I be a hypocrite and say it was my morals? But that would be a blatant lie.
For 26 years, I was a violated virgin and then you violated me again but I didn't know. So Rumi says,
Joseph's brothers did not see Joseph's beauty,
but Jacob never lost sight of it. Moses at first
saw only a wooden staff, but to his other seeing
it was a viper and a cause of panic.
Eyesight is in conflict with inner knowing.
Moses' hand is a hand and a source of light.

These matters are real as the infinite is real,
but they seem religious fantasies to some,
to those who believe only in the reality
of the sexual organs and the digestive tract.

Don't mention the Friend to those.
To others, sex and hunger are fading images,
and the Friend is more constantly, solidly here.
How long will it take me this time? I forgave you but I haven't forgiven myself. I forgave my stupid cousin too but it took me long.
Did I hurry in forgiving you because I loved you? Did I forgive you as compensation for my inadequacies? Because my fears didn't let you cross the final frontier?
Is this whole love thing about breaking and entering? You only love because you can break into someone?
But I assure you that my soul is broken and so is my body.
I'm only waiting for my grave as a last salvation. Everything is a punishment to me. To be not able to forget is my punishment. To love without being loved is punishment. To realize that everything was a lie is punishment. From the day I was born, it's been a 28 year punishment.

Isn't it enough God? Isn't it enough?
Punishment is to know that you fooled me. It's no punishment to be proven a dupe. I guess I always knew. Punishment is to be surrounded yet be so alone. Punishment is to pretend that you got something in your eyes.
The pretenses. Punishment is love becoming a habit. To love someone and think about their every second and even dream about them when you finally fall asleep. Punishment is dying so young. Punishment is losing hope. Again, Rumi says,
My worst habit is I get so tired of winter
I become a torture to those I'm with.

If you're not here, nothing grows.
I lack clarity. My words
tangle and knot up.

How to cure bad water? Send it back to the river.
How to cure bad habits? Send me back to you.

When water gets caught in the habitual whirlpools,
dig a way out through the bottom
to the ocean. There is a secret medicine
given only to those who hurt so hard
they can't hope.

The hopers would feel slighted if they knew.

Look as long as you can at the friend you love,
no matter whether that friend is moving away from you
or coming back toward you.
Unfortunately, Rumi never tells what that medicine is. Since he's dead, I won't get it. Nothing is curing this hopelessness. All will has taken flight. The butterfly thought it's wings were broken but it had flown away into the sun.
It may be said (Rumi seems to know much) that
The minute I heard my first love story
I started looking for you, not knowing
how blind that was.

Lovers don't finally meet somewhere.
They're in each other all along.
and
When I am with you, we stay up all night.
When you're not here, I can't go to sleep.

Praise God for these two insomnias!
And the difference between them.
Now there's nothing. When I'm awake, you're there and when I fall asleep, you're waiting there as well.
Is it because...?
When I remember your love,
I weep, and when I hear people
talking of you,
something in my chest,

where nothing much happens now,
moves as in sleep.
Rumi doesn't say how it will end but I know. I've been hearing the echo of a cry for some time now. The echo repeated, the end is nigh. I wanted to die before you. That's true but I wanted to die with you near me. I wanted to die of old age. I wanted to die with a thought that I had been loved. But it wasn't to be. I said that I was you. I lost myself in you and now I can't find myself. You said it doesn't matter to me if you told me that you loved me but it did and it does. If only it were true. If only. I can rub my hands together in the frustration of loss, I can hit my head against the walls. I can jump off cliffs. I can drive into the river. I can turn and gouge out my eyes if only you loved me.
You never loved me.

Dynamic Performances

2009-03-14T18:11:00.006+05:00

Well, it's amazing how some people get so used to losing that they think it's the only way and when life presents chances to them, they go on and lose again.

I don't know how many chances I've been presented with and how many more I'll get before I go, but I'm sure I won't be able to count them. I've been a train wreck that I have watched as an out of body experience, hovering first, above myself and then watching from the sidelines as I've rolled, turned, crashed and finally come to a halt.

I must say I didn't like it at all. The terrible thing is the loneliness and how it's gnawed at me all this time. I hate being alone. I hate that I'm alone and I have to whine about it to no one in particular.

Worse than that I hated that I got back to the person I loved more dearly than life and he sent me a birthday present and then told me that we just couldn't be together. So what am I supposed to do with the present? I don't understand. I've tried and thought about it.

Why do people follow you, make you believe they love you, make you fall for them and then just up and leave giving the dumbest reasons.

You're older than I am.
We don't have the same beliefs.
My family doesn't know yours.

Why don't people ever think things through before they kill a person's feelings and their hope for living? I gathered the strength to forgive and forget and just be happy in the last moments and what do I get?

He asked me to marry him but then told me that he couldn't. I have been asking myself if I ever asked him the same question or if I expected him. I just simply wished to be with him.

At the end of the day, I'm only left with questions about myself: Am I ugly? Am I really that old? Am I not worth anything? Am I stupid? What are my beliefs when I've never forced them on anyone? Am I not enough as a person, as a human being? What are my faults?

Am I so useless that I can be rejected with the most foolish three reasons ever?

Why didn't you think about this before you started following me around? Why didn't you tell yourself that when you ruined my vacation in Malaysia? I went to get better but I only thought about what you said to me.

Why did you remember all your reasons after so many years?

Questions. Questions. Questions.

What is wrong with me? Is it because I'm dying? Do people really leave those who are dying? Is it fair?

I stuck by him. I never asked for anything. I never said, commit to me, never said, buy me a diamond ring, never asked for gifts. Is it because I never asked for anything?

People are such liars. They say they don't want the high maintenance ones but they always go for them. You told me that you would never be with anyone else but one of these days you will.

What about me? I don't even have time to start over. I can't bring so many years back. The investment has all gone down the drain. There are no returns. I'll be dying lonely.

How much have I lost? Everything. My ego, my self confidence, my esteem, my honor.

People say they don't like games but they lie. Everyone plays games. The straight arrows lose. If you don't ask for anything, you've sold yourself short, if you ask for something, you're a hussy.

You just ask for love. That's too much to ask in God's lovely world of hatred and deception. Ask for a bullet and you'll get it. In this world, where an animal is dearer than a human being; your own blood is thinner than water.

Why did I love? Why did I bow down? I don't have the heart to swallow injustice anymore. It's at bursting point.

I'm done giving a tough performance of pretending not to be hurt. But I'm hurt. I'm so very hurt. I might be dying but I don't care. I care that I'm dying alone. I care that I won't get another chance.

I care that I don't know and I'm lost. You told me that you found me but for what?

Was it all just a show? I want to know why. I asked you but you say you don't have an answer.

'We can't be together'.

Down Again

2008-12-21T02:06:00.008+05:00

I've been away for some time now. Don't have my PC here. Still haven't found a place for myself so I'm getting on the nerves (I think, they deny) of the people I'm living with (very good family friends).

There's no Internet access for us (as in the new hires) for now and I don't want to be caught on blogger in the office anyway.

It's been tiring but fruitful. I'm learning new things. They're not just about the workplace but generally so much. I feel like a small town girl (not a good feeling) but I'm integrating (or pretending to?) quite well.

Of course, among all the great big positives that should make one feel like flying is that one nagging little negative that brings one down.

I'm coming close to the date of 1 year and the dread that's unfolding in my heart feels palpable in the night, when I've only got my thoughts to sleep with.

It's too bad that I can't go anywhere because I've to follow the rules of the house I live in. Living here hasn't been bad but I've discovered some things, which I had rather not.

Sometimes I feel like I'll throw up with the burden of secrets I have to keep now.

I'm beginning to hate myself a little again.

As I think about the one year anniversary coming up, I can't help but go over all the mistakes I made. Dumb mistakes, stupid, childish mistakes.

On the other hand, I've realized that if someone didn't want something, they'd reject it just because they didn't want it no matter how perfect it was. You might try to point out mistakes in that perfect thing, just for your satisfaction that perhaps you didn't do it right but it's not that.

Life is presenting me with unprecedented difficult choices and I'm as confused as you Mother. In fact, I know you're more confused than I am or ever could be.

You still asked me if I missed him. I don't know how to thank you for all your kindnesses. I can't ever thank you enough. I can't even begin to thank you for forgiving me so easily.

You are my mother and you love me and we fight with each other and you still love me.

He wasn't my mother. He couldn't stay. His mother is not you, mother. No one's mother is you, mother.

I miss you but when I'm with you, I hide in my shame.

My heart dies every time I can't say it out loud that I'm dying and I'm sorry I didn't tell you.

Tonight when I saw this picture from a Christmas party, shining, smiling faces, it made my heart wither. I go like a widow in this life.

I wonder why?

Why can't I feel anything when someone looks at me nicely? Nothing in me responds anymore. I've died before my actual death.

When I think how all that will come down on you mother, it kills me more. I never want you to forgive me because I neither deserve forgiveness nor love. I don't deserve kindness. I deserve all the punishment I can get. I deserve the burdens of people's secrets. I deserve the coldest and the hottest hell fires.

Sometimes by my stupid mistakes, I find that no one cares and I don't know why I get hurt. I know that but every time I find it again, I get hurt all over again.

You care mother. You care.

No one else does. I'm not their anything.

Why do I care then if it's so simple?

Maybe I'm just mad.

I'm hoping that the act of making cauliflower with the utmost love and affection would get me a punishment that's unbelievable. Cauliflower that he didn't like.

Did I repel him? My air? Perhaps my everything.

So may nothing of me be left in this world. The repulsive being be gone from this world, far far away.

Mother, I only hope that you will forgive me.

Kidney for Sale!

2008-12-09T03:04:00.003+05:00

So it's okay to sell my kidney now if I want to get something that I need.

It's not a thing that I ever thought of but thanks for giving me this great idea. Better use whatever I can before it becomes redundant.

Since I can sell a kidney and survive on one, nothing wrong with selling blood either. Too bad my blood does not benefit anyone because I'm sick but since it's not even dangerous, I think it should be okay.

Come to think of it, you can grow a liver with just a piece. So I guess, that's another thing I can sell: a piece of my liver.

Selling all this 'stuff' wouldn't put anyone in jeopardy. I think there will still be much left for my organ donation when I die.

Eyes, heart and God knows what else.

I suppose it's a win win situation if ever a person saw one. Thank you for this excellent idea. I salute your genius and kindness.

Lost Lamb

2008-12-09T02:04:00.005+05:00

After spending a week in Lahore, I came back home for the Eid holiday. There's no doubt in my mind, at least for now, that I made a good decision and that I have a good job.

But there's something wrong. It went wrong when I moved to England.

Tonight I want to admit to myself that I didn't move for studies but moved for love.

I made a fool out of myself and I lost myself.

Something went wrong. I stopped being with my friends; I stopped responding. I didn't want to. I didn't even realize if I did or didn't.

I thought I'd found some direction but I became directionless. I thought I discovered myself but I lost so much that I can not ever recover, least of all the time that has slipped through my fingers.

I didn't build myself a hermitage but I did live in one. I drifted so aimlessly that it's going to take me some time to find myself.

I lost my home.

I lost and lost and lost.

I didn't even gain any significant wisdom, just bitterness and a thought that I would not be loving again.

More thoughts that I would never have children. The thought of them abhors me and I love them and want to protect them but my own children shall never be.

For a brief period of time, I felt like a woman. I wanted to be settled, I wanted to have kids. That was like a big stain on my mind. I don't know how I removed that stain. I'll never have children.

Someone might force me to get married but no one will ever be able to force me to have children.

I drifted like a ghost in the world's busiest city. I wept stupidly on the bank of the Thames. I wanted to jump in but I didn't want to ruin my expensive business suit.

I wondered if I was just making excuses to continue a stupid existence.

I still wonder.

I didn't use so many I's then because I was gone and it seems now as if someone else controlled me.

Whom had I become then? How did I reach that place?

I lost myself with help but ultimately it was I that lost me.

Sitting lost on New Street Station, weeping quietly and looking for that one familiar face, which I would never find, I was like a lamb. The guards looked into my eyes and so wouldn't confront me.

No one acknowledges lost lambs. There's no one to lead a lamb anymore.

So I'm in a new big city. I'm still lost. I think I've found my anchor by seeing so many things in the first week that told me to be a child.

Be a stupid child and something inside me told me to pray or else I'll be lost forever. I can crawl on all four and walk blind but at least be in the right direction.

Something is telling me to find my faith and maybe that will give me legs to stand on again.

Everything is wrong and I'm not going to try to make it right anymore because I can't.

I don't know if I can ever be sure that I was the only one in love but nowadays, I suddenly discover something and it tells me that I was.

I'm standing somewhere and I'm fine and then I'll start crying and realize I was never loved but something wants me to say it out loud that at least you've been loved. I was the one who loved you.

Now I don't know what love is. I'm confused and I tell myself that maybe I did not.

I blame myself because I get confused. I didn't do this or I didn't do that. Maybe I should have ruined myself further and put myself through more trials than I did. Maybe then I wouldn't be an image of the person I used to be.

I'm not sure at all anymore. I know that I forgave but I don't know if I'll ever forgive myself.

I don't think I can, when I murdered my dreams in connivance with the person who claimed to love me.

All I know is that I'm still a lost lamb. What I don't know is if I'm a lamb lost forever and for good or if I can be found.

I feel bad for the lost lamb that is me. Between pot smokers and acid trippers and drinkers and people who think they're prostitutes and people to whom I've to prove that I'm asexual, I feel like I will reach new heights of madness...

If only I start praying again, I won't.

The only thing that stops me is the fear of finding myself.

And the thought of the fear when I stop loving you.

Because when I do stop loving the fool that I loved is the day I will lose the small fight for life I've got left in my bones. My lungs won't ache with the effort to draw in life.

The fear is because I don't want to die. I haven't even felt loved.

I wish you would have loved me. I begged you, I think, I did.

Too bad it doesn't matter anymore.

I wanted to be like you and maybe a part of me will. I enjoy the fantasizing about exercising power over people who are fools like I used to be; people who think they're going to get me like someone actually did.

Lost lamb or should I be lost wolf in sheep's clothing? So I need faith to help me. I need faith to stop me from being a monster that I love and loathe because I won't have the same feelings if the monster is me.

I'm asking for faith.

So please God, return me to my faith. Today, I'm begging You for Your love.

I was wrong to beg stupid humans. They're all like me. Forgive me and grant me that I love only You. Protect me from sin and help me to not hurt anyone.

Take my life sooner if I ever come near to hurting someone like I was.

Lead the lost lamb to Your mercy and love.

Lead the lost lamb to Yourself God.

Save my soul and spread the dust of my body everywhere so that it touches your dust and mixes with it finally and try as you might, you can't separate it from yourself.

I loved you more than my life and gave what wasn't mine to give; perhaps being lost is punishment and perhaps I should take it.

The only thing that I ask for again is to have my soul saved because it used to belong to a good person even if that person is dead.

I'm leaving because you want me to go

2008-11-29T02:56:00.002+05:00

Something I wrote in '97. Full of teenage angst but I read it after so many years and though it meant something else back then it's taken a real meaning to me now. Nothing poignant here. Just lots of passive aggressive anger (I feel quite so nowadays).

You don't have to say with your mouth
Because your eyes are speaking.
You don't have to say it in words
all that's on your mind;
I know you want me out.
You ask me why I'm going away?
I'm leaving because you want me to go.
I'm leaving because (I know
how much) you hate me.
I never took it to my heart
whatever you said
Because I always thought
that you might always be right.
I made myself believe all the time
that I was wrong.
Yes, I was wrong. I think I was.
But just about myself.
You ask why I'm leaving now?
I'm leaving because you want me to go.
I'm leaving because (I know
how much) you hate me.
When I used to see you grieve
My heart would burn and bleed.
I would feel like it was my pain.
But I guess your feelings for me
were washed away in the rain.
Or I guess
that they just weren't there before.
So now I can't
waste my life with you anymore.
You ask then why I'm going away?
I'm leaving because you want me to go.

Hair there, everywhere; goodbye!

2008-11-27T21:04:00.005+05:00

So after thinking about it for quite some time, I've decided I need to cut my hair as it's not going to last anyway. I know I'm going to actually cry and weep over it once the deed is done. I've had long hair since I was 7. It's a been a good journey.

I always used to think about cutting my hair when I was angry. True to my tradition of taking all the anger on my body, this was the first thing I used to do. I always used to say, okay, calm down and if you still think you need to cut them then go ahead. Obviously, I didn't.

So I'm feeling so weird. I thought I should take a picture of them for posterity. I asked my brother (bless his sweet little heart) to take a picture of them and he did, though he kept saying it was a bit difficult to get them all into the viewfinder. So I allowed him to arrange them as he pleased, which obviously he didn't do too well.

Nonetheless, looking at the pictures later is going to make me feel weird as it is now. I'm also going to change the color though the stylist I consulted said the natural color was great and looking at it, it's really appealing to my eyes but I've told myself that I'm not going to make anymore excuses. I've noticed that my eyelashes have started to fall as well. It was the weirdest thing. I still don't know how to feel about it. I hope that I will die with dignity.

My almost 3 feet long mane

The color and the shape

So tomorrow by this time, they'll be gone. Bye bye my poor hair. Maybe they'll make a nice hairpiece out of it for some rich dude or lady. Who knows? If they had some donation service, I'd donate it but now it will go to the salon and I'm sure they'll really enjoy it.

The world is going mad with terrorist attacks and there are so many bad things but this evening I'm selfish and I just need to feel sorry for myself, just a little bit.

Take Her to the Christmas Dance

2008-11-21T23:23:00.004+05:00

Inflections in your voice say you don't mean it. When you're steady, you're lying still.

When you want to act dumb, you ruffle your hair. What an endearing habit. How cute! I'm to forget that your eyes are scrutinizing me for weaknesses.

Your fingers try to find fissures and cracks, some hole to break open wider. When you don't find it, you get frustrated and leave me exposed and broken.

There's an opening in me but it's not normal because its not at the bottom.

It's right in the middle. How did you miss the gaping hole in me?

Like a black hole, it sucks the sunlight out of every sun and then eats it whole.

Just like my soul, going through spasmodic damnation.

How I hate these pockmarked surfaces, so then I wonder why I loved your face. I despise holes because they remind me of the emptiness.

No holes in my body but the one in the wrong place, right in the middle. A place where my soul used to be.

Extinguished, though not like the lights at dawn but like a life snuffed. Nip the evil in the bud, they say but the evil was left and the best and biggest part of me is gone.

No blazes of glory.

No fireworks.

No marching bands.

No gun salutes.

No mourning.

No dancing. No rejoicing.

So much silence. Such madness.

The morning, that short morning ended so suddenly.

I waited for night but it's always evening now. No one saw where the sun set. No one knows where the sun is. No one knows where the first ray of sunlight has gone.

The last ray is etched on my retina forever and ever and ever.

I prayed for it to end well.

It's ended. I don't know about well.

18. 11. 2008

Postscript: my name has a number of meanings and one of it is 'the first ray of sunlight' among others. No sunlight if there's no sun.

Untitled

2008-11-21T19:33:00.005+05:00

God, take my soul but don't put it into the flames of the hellfire. May this body perish as it would but may the soul live as it should.

God, renew my blackened heart. Remove the dark shadow of doubt from my soul. Make it pure as it was the day I was made.

God, help me in slaying the monster that has taken my body for its home. Shield my soul from its corrupting influence.

God, make me the guardian of my honor and be the Guardian of my soul. Help me root out the infestation of hopelessness.

16. 11. 2008

And so...

2008-11-20T21:52:00.005+05:00

...I finally came to a decision.

I had to but what drove me to the proper conclusion of my life's chapters until this point were a few things and I like to give credit where it's due.

First, I thankfully signed into blogger this morning right before I had to make a big commitment and here was a comment on my previous blog from Tuishimi (would I be wrong in saying he's a great friend?) and I realized that I did have to lay it all out on the table for me. I had to think about myself as long as it didn't hurt anyone.

Then a few things happened and I knew for sure what I had to do. I wasn't feeling confused; I wasn't feeling like the world was imploding beneath me anymore.

There comes a time in one's life when one has to make a choice and it's not just for oneself but also for others because one thing that I've learnt in life is that our choices do affect others whether we accept that or not.

There comes a time in one's life when one has to leave everything behind and start over/anew or just plain start somewhere.

This opportunity couldn't have come at a better time.

I feel sorry to say this now but for a couple of months, I've been planning to end everything before new year's eve. The low points (no singulars here) that I'd hit, not even snagging a bottom or at least something that would help me not slip off further was just not happening.

Self pitying and self loathing became so commonplace, it was just like second nature. Not wanting to do anything and waiting for someone to come and change my world was all I did do (because in the first instance, it did change for worse due to people; but on the other hand, I wonder how and why I gave them such complete rights over myself that it had to come to that).

It's not easy to want to end ones life. Planning it is even worse. I realized this morning that if I wanted to live beyond this December, wanted to not be a part of the non coveted 27 club, then I just had to make a change.

I also feel like I've burdened everyone with my presence far too long and it's time to give others a time out as well. The way I am right now, even I don't want to be near myself. I don't expect any better from my family, friends or the people in general.

I suppose it boosted my confidence to find out that I'd been called for an interview at a great company. Then I got a further ego boost when I got the job offer the very next day.

The only problem was whether I should or could move to another city especially a city that people from my city consider as a fast, heathen city full of sins and colors. Ah! Lahore, the city of my childhood, the cultural capital of Pakistan, the centre of modern drug usage for the refined.

So much negativity: where are you going to live; good for you; good on you; it's too far; why don't you teach, it's safe for 'ladies' (so condescending) ad infinitum ad nauseum.

Such a storm in my mind. So much conflict of interests for everyone else except me. It's about me but I don't figure anywhere. It becomes about everyone else's ego. Relatives from Karachi to Gilgit, from Massachusetts, USA to Birmingham, UK weigh in on it.

Then I read the message and I thought, this is nothing if not from God and God does channel through His people.

Being the least superstitious person in the world, I don't look for signs but today I did and I found them in places where I wasn't even looking.

I've said yes and soon I leave this city of love and hate.

Maybe things will be worse or maybe they'll be better or maybe they'll be the same but I won't be here to bother anyone and I won't have things bothering me. The nomad soul is restless anyway.

I won't have to turn corners thinking here's this memory and that. Worst of all, I'm too weak physically and emotionally to take anymore emotional abuse from things, people and (even) inanimate objects.

Never wanted to commit suicide, no. Never wanted to go like a coward and a fool.

Perhaps, now is my chance to redeem that never again.

So Confused

2008-11-19T23:22:00.002+05:00

I'm so confused. I don't know what to do.

Do right by myself (which I never do) for once or do right by everyone else and be sorry like always?

I wish it were that simple.

I'm so confused I could kill myself to end it all. My hands have this itch, extending all the way to the tips of my finger. The golden revolver with the ivory is so near, so very near. End it all and no confusion.

I just don't know what to do.

Help me.

Get Your Filthy Hands Off My Desert

2008-11-16T00:37:00.002+05:00

Or How Green Was My Valley

So I'm going to Lahore tomorrow and I think it might be for good. Last time I went there alone like this, it was also a contemplative journey but I knew I'd come back. Not so sure this time.

Before I go and God knows when I'll be back, I just wanted to comment on how things are steadily going downhill in the city where I live. The city of Peshawar. Last night, we could hear the bombs falling.

On 12th November, Stephen D. Vance and his driver were slain by terrorists. A day before that an Iranian diplomat was kidnapped just as he was leaving his house. His driver was slain in the kidnapping. On 13th, journalists were fired at by terrorists.

Terrorists. Terrorists. Terrorists.

I've had it with all this. Somedays I wish I could give them the same. Say, come get some. The civilized part of me says how can you lower yourself to their level but the human part says, why? You can't talk to animals. You may train them but they're still animals.

The powers that be don't care about these animals and what they do to us. They're off on their fancy trips to New York or Hajj in the Kingdom (oh God) of Saudi Arabia or begging for oil and money, none of which will trickle down to the stupid masses.

How am I supposed to accept that these people are Muslims (even in name) when they don't accept the basic tenet of Islam that is tolerance?

On the other hand, no amount of condemnation will bring Stephen back to his wife or children. The poor driver, his kids and wife are going to be the worst. Fucking cursed Pakistanis. We're all cursed.

If you don't shake it off yourselves, no one's coming to help you take it away. You won't help yourself though. Just sit, drink your tea with 3 spoons of sugar and tsk! tsk! about how nice it used to be.

You've left nothing for me, for my generation.

Put us on a ship and sink it.

We can't take it anymore.

Bath

2008-11-15T11:22:00.008+05:00

Our story takes place in the ancient city of Bath, when the Romans were setting up the foundation of the modern city... not really. The city is ancient but it's eponymous ancient baths are under the trademark yellow cobblestones and pubs and shops.

Still, if you turn a corner, you might suddenly feel you saw Rome and then it vanished just like that.

I visited Bath at the beginning of this year with a Chinese friend of mine, as part of the University's annual trip program for students. It was just a day trip, most of which was spent traveling to and from Nottingham, so I just got to see the usual touristy places (something I don't enjoy but being a poor student, had to contend with).

It was drizzling when we got there and got colder and colder. Bath is a city to visit only when its sunny. Otherwise, due to all the limestone, it seems dreary and drab (err...).

Still, going with the mood, I don't think I missed the sun too much except when it got colder and colder.

It was somewhat difficult to take decent photographs as well and not just due to the rain but also because it was too busy, including the fact that the camera was borrowed as I didn't have a camera while I was in the UK.

This reminds (I'd forgotten to mention it in the York post) me to thank the Malaysian friend, who not only lent me her camera but also gave me a chance to visit York. The poor kid couldn't go and insisted I go in her stead. Thanks to her generosity, I not only visited York but it also pushed me to forget my finances for a while and just go see a few places before I left; though the only other place I saw after that was Bath (the last one before coming back).

Will post more pictures later.

Breakfast in Bed

2008-11-12T07:23:00.004+05:00

Have tea and your
headache is gone.

your breakfast is ready,
honey and naan.

don't lick my fingers
We have 2 bottles and
a pot full of honeycombs.

stinky mouth, sticky mouth
all is fair in love
and morn.

by the way a woman called,
she says she loves you.

Solitude

2008-11-12T06:41:00.005+05:00

A poem that I (sort of) quote in many of my blog entries as well as in other writings, Solitude has been a favorite but unfortunately, I didn't know all the lines nor the author's name. So I thought I should google the lines and I came up with Ella Wheeler Wilcox. Here's the poem. How it fits the whole life scenario! Especially mine, right now.

Solitude

Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone.
For the sad old earth must borrow it's mirth,
But has trouble enough of its own.
Sing, and the hills will answer;
Sigh, it is lost on the air.
The echoes bound to a joyful sound,
But shrink from voicing care.

Rejoice, and men will seek you;
Grieve, and they turn and go.
They want full measure of all your pleasure,
But they do not need your woe.
Be glad, and your friends are many;
Be sad, and you lose them all.
There are none to decline your nectared wine,
But alone you must drink life's gall.

Feast, and your halls are crowded;
Fast, and the world goes by.
Succeed and give, and it helps you live,
But no man can help you die.
There is room in the halls of pleasure
For a long and lordly train,
But one by one we must all file on
Through the narrow aisles of pain.

-Ella Wheeler Wilcox

How true! How true! But dying is really an act that must be carried alone as is birth. You might be surrounded by people but you are born alone and you die alone.

And sometimes, you even live alone. So I guess it shouldn't bother to make the final transition alone as well.

Die Taliban Die!

2008-11-11T18:22:00.008+05:00

So it happens what I'd been fearing for quite some time now.

This morning's newspaper had a really beautiful picture of the inter-provincial games that were being held for the past few days in my city. These games were special for this hellish city as sportswomen participated freely from all over the country. A couple of years back the radicals had banned women from participating in sports in my city (not the rest of the country)(augh!).

So this photograph showed sportswomen engaged in an excellent game of volleyball.

Even since I'd come back, I'd known and felt that things were much worse in the country overall but worst in the province and my city and it was proven when there were major scale operations in the suburbs (!). Then the terrorists blew up an electricity grid, not just once but 3 times and the same one each time. Needless to say, it was horrible but nothing sort of what happened today had happened but I think most people anticipated it in a horrible way and it was only a matter of time.

To make a statement (of fear) as well as to target innocent people (as usual), the terrorist taliban blew up a car at about 1755 hrs Pakistan time, in front of the stadium's gates where the closing ceremonies for the games were being held. It happened just as the fireworks started.

So far, it's being said that 3 people have lost their lives and as many as 10 are in the hospital with serious injuries. My prayers are with them.

I wish I could do something but all I can say (and mean) is that we're not scared. Taliban, you're not Muslims, you do not follow the religion of Islam.

If you think you're going to heaven and get your virgins or whatever, you're wrong. If you think that God is just going to just let you in, you're wrong.

You murdered many of the people's leaders (we might not agree with them but we don't murder them), you killed innocent people who were just breaking their fasts, you murdered innocents, you displaced 1000s and turned them into homeless refugees in their own country, you made the whole world think we're responsible for your crimes, you made the world make us suffer much torment, because of you, bombs were rained on innocents, you made us lose our policemen, you made us lose thousands of our army men, you made a generation of orphans and widows.

Go back to the part of hell where you came from! Go back to hell, you bloody animals! Die! Die! Die!

I never curse anyone but may hellfire rain on these "$%+@#. Die assholes! May you all have a fire in your arsenal of suicide bombs and go to hell en masse and good riddance that would be. Hope you find your demonic virgins in hell.

P.s. I'd posted this earlier but took it down because I thought I needed to cool down.

Medicines Galore

2008-11-11T04:06:00.001+05:00

I'm taking so many drugs now that it feels like I have a mini dispensary in my room.

Trying and Failing

2008-11-11T03:59:00.004+05:00

I tried not to but I did and now I'm feeling so stupid. I also realized today that I'm actually a little bit mad, as in crazy mad. Not a very positive self discovery.

All day long, I tried to beat off these feelings of I have to. I told myself, no, I won't, because I knew I would end up feeling hurt because I'd been a fool. Here I am. I made a fool out of myself. I knew I wouldn't get a response and end up making an ass out of myself yet again. Anyone else would've killed themselves after being insulted so much, including being insulted by themselves.

I wish I could make myself understand that it's useless to love someone who doesn't love you back. I wish I could just give up on everything and life as well. I hate to fight anymore but I go on fighting.

I try, I fail.

Reminders

2008-11-10T00:04:00.003+05:00

I have this reminder service from Hallmark, which reminds me about holidays and birthdays (obviously).

As I just got online, I got this reminder about a birthday and it said it was xyz murgha's (murgha=rooster, just a nickname) birthday and hopefully I hadn't forgotten. Well, I couldn't have been able to if I'd tried, not that I did.

In any case, I'm beginning to hate these reminder services. What are they for anyway? Just to give you a guilt trip about things you want to forget or things you forgot. Huh!

Anyway, since there's nowhere to send a card anymore, I'm just going to send it to myself and pretend the person for whom it was intended is going to open it (am I turning into a psychonut? do I need a nutcracker?), then open it and pretend that the person is right there. I'm going to pretend that I was told that I was loved for this gesture.

Last night, I even thought that if things were like they are in a parallel universe, then I would've gotten monogrammed cuff links. Nifty, eh? But I know that last years present and card are still here and so am I.

That's what you get if you just imagine love. It's all in your head, which obviously makes you a nutter.

I've even planned a pretend birthday party. Obviously, the person's not going to show up but I'm just going to pretend they got stuck in traffic and wait.

Well, at least I'm going to be there and declare my love freshly.

Happy birthday, it's 10th November in the country of your birth.

Happy Birthday

2008-11-09T22:11:00.006+05:00

You ruined my trip but that was okay.

Then you ruined my life.

That wasn't.

In the end, everything's okay if you are. Others don't matter. Others like me. So have a very happy birthday. Hope you have a great day and a great life. Your life's good and hope it stays so.

Too much to Reject, Nothing to Accept

2008-11-09T10:29:00.003+05:00

1. You have a fat neck.

2. You're too short.

3. You're not fair complexioned.

3. You can't cook that like my sister does.

4. My sister can cook everything.

5. My sister even knows how to cook xyz.

6. You have body hair but my sister doesn't.

7. You're too old.

8. Nobody knows you.

9. Nobody knows your parents.

10. You don't smell like my mother.

11. Girls like you can never be accepted by anyone.

12. Your smell stinks.

13. My parents can't accept you.

14. You're fat.

15. You're simply not like my mother.

16. You don't believe the same bullshit I do.

17. You're different.

18. I am unable to mould you to all my expectations.

19. It's not your fault; it's mine.

20. My sister is just better at everything.

21. I don't like the way you dress.

22. I'm too young.

23. I'm just a little kid.

24. Your breasts are too big.

25. Your butt is too big.

26. You're just too big.

27. You're not what I expected.

28. You just can't turn yourself into what I want you to be.

29. You're boring.

30. I can't talk to you about anything.

31. You look like a little girl.

32. You look like a man.

33. You're too much to handle.

34. You're not woman enough.

35. You're manly.

36. You're not like the women I know.

37. You're a eunuch.

38. You don't wear make up.

39. You don't think like women.

40. You're dumb.

41. You're a sinner.

42. Everything is your fault.

43. You whine all the time.

44. You're not up to my parents standards of perfection.

45. Your face is fat and ugly.

46. Your hands are too small.

47. I can't have children with a woman like you.

48. Your daughter is going to be lose like you.

49. You're a pig.

50. You're just not good enough for me.

Epic Win!

2008-11-05T09:29:00.001+05:00

Obama has won.

I can go to sleep now.

With Bated Breath

2008-11-03T23:33:00.005+05:00

So November 4th is on us. Those that are in the USA and able to vote should and must vote. Though it sounds cliched and somewhat dumb but you hold the world's fate in your hands. At least I'm watching with bated breath for people to make the right decision.

Of course, some of the things that I've been reading lately are so disappointing and feel like they're coming from illiterates or people who get their news from gossip only. I know that if I lived in the USA, my dad would be voting for McCain, if Palin wasn't his running mate.

On the other hand, I know the rest of the family would be voting for Obama. The thing, though, is that many in the USA think that Obama is a communist and a Muslim and terrorist etc.

Some might say a family like ours would support him because he's a Muslims. As a Muslim (okay, not a good one), I assure you that there's no secret follower thing in Islam. You can't be a Muslim secretly. Obama is not a Muslim if he says he's not. It matters not if his father was but if he isn't then he isn't.

Most importantly, I didn't know that being a Muslim was a. a sin, b. a crime c. a slur. Also, if I'm not wrong, by the Jefforsonian edict, religion is not important and this has also been enshrined in the US constitution. I'm sure there are many other Americans who may be called pagans by some, are also voting for Obama.

The other thing is very basic and I don't understand why people who are living right there in America don't know (or don't want to?). It is that the US Secret Service does extensive background checks on candidates etc. and so does the RNC and the Democratic Party.

It's true that in the beginning of any movement, it's the charisma that attracts but as that wears off, it's the character and the substance.

I read this open letter from someone claiming to be from the red states wanting to separate from the blue states (God forbid) because they supported Obama and said that they could keep all the black people. Another one was from a business owner who is going to fire all the Obama supporters in his organization if Obama wins. (Legally, it would just put him up for suits).

I get it about communism. It's all the leftovers from the McCarthy era but I don't get the racism and the hatred. I read things like it's not about race but in the same sentence, the person would mention the color of Obama's skin or something to that effect.

I want to tell these people that you have freedom. You have freedom of speech, freedom to own, freedom to not own as well and the freedom to live and die as you want. There are many in this world, and I'm one of them to be sure, who don't have this thing called freedom.

One, don't abuse this freedom and two, don't take it for granted.

How can someone give up beautiful freedom and rights because someone's pumping them with venom? You have the most resources. Use these to build your knowledge, get information. Don't make decisions based on racist attitudes or hateful lies. In the end, USA is your country and though I know that it's not my country but I know that I've always deeply cared about it.

So wise up America and make the right choice. Make your supporters proud USA!

I'm the loser now

2008-11-03T00:57:00.002+05:00

Four years ago, you told me that you were just a loser and in the quest to stop making you feel like one, I ended up being one myself.

You're not a loser anymore, so that's good, right?

Big Thanks to Your Wife

2008-11-03T00:11:00.009+05:00

The best method of getting rid of daughters in our society is to fob them off on someone else by getting them married. Another method, though popular but not much used due to legal repercussions, is simply offing the daughters (yes, that means killing them in cold blood).

It's much cheaper too since marrying off a daughter costs more, much much more.

If you're somewhat educated and your daughter just can't be got rid off, you try to get her work.

Nothing wrong with this last approach except that sometimes the daughter wants to work in one field while the parents just want her to go into 'safe' jobs like teaching.

It's said that on average in a school year, sometimes there are 3-4 new teachers (this is not an official statistic, there's no research on this in Pakistan; what did you expect?) for the same subject since the last one is getting married.

So teaching is a safe job; you take it and when your parents have snagged you a good proposal, you just leave it. Screw the students of course.

Since most schools pay between Rs. 5-10k (about $60-100 a month) depending on the person's qualifications, they don't care either and also because there are just no regulations for teachers and schools. The ladies that go for this also don't care because they're getting what's sometimes known as make up or dowry or trousseau money.

I've heard so many older women say, but why don't you go teach! You could make some gold jewellery with the money you get...

I would get rich if I got a penny every time I've heard this. Screw you old ladies!

Then there are other safe things to do while you're waiting for prince charming to ride in on his high horse *ahem* like cooking/baking classes, or knitting and stitching classes etc. Of course, nothing wrong again with any of these things except if you're not interested in any of these and above all in marriage, then its just plain stupidity. I don't mind learning but doing things just because you're bored until you get hitched? I just never got it.

So I discovered that to my great dismay and to the increase of my killer depression that the biggest reason my parents wanted me to come back to godforsaken Pakistan was to get me married. Now I must say my parents have never been any of the above type.

Soon enough I found out why they'd turned into these people that I know even less. I'm writing about all of this today because of this small incident that happened on the phone today.

When I was coming back, unfortunately, due to my parents insistence (and other things that are better left unsaid at this time) and my health, I failed to communicate with my University. I was in the process of working on my dissertation and also preparing for exams in April.

I was told that I could take the exam from back home and get better than just go back. For my lonely and sick being, these were just the most golden words and I suppose when you're sick, most things would seem true. I'm not going to go into the fact that I was kind of tricked, which is sneaky and mean but if your parents are the ones being sneaky and mean, it's a hundred times worse, maybe more.

I knew that completing the dissertation in the butt end of the world that is Peshawar, Pakistan wasn't possible. I went for a subject, which is just now taking off in the rest of the world and most people have only heard about back home but I thought okay, I'll be coming back in a couple of months so no problem.

So, forward some 7 months and here I am, dissertation-less and very very directionless and with all these extremely bad thoughts in my mind (kill, maim, destroy: yourself).

As it is, it's not that easy to find a proposal for someone like me, not that I wanted one to be found. I've simply refused to get married all these years. The world's been after my parents and I since I was 14 years old. I didn't know that at that time but when I came to know, I realized why people feel strongly about things like that.

Anyway, here I was talking to one of my uncles, one of the many people whom my parents have forwarded my resume so they can 'help' me get a job. Thanks.

He's telling me I don't need to worry, just take my subject list to the interview I have tomorrow morning. I got a bit confused. A subject list? Yes. I didn't have one on me but I said I'll get it off my University's site. So he's like why the hell do you not have it on you? By now I understood he meant my degree and not a subject list. So I was like, I told you, I'm working on my dissertation so I don't have a degree per se.

There I heard it. He got mad at me. I just don't understand why you people come back without degrees? You really did wrong to come back without completing your studies. Whose going to give you a job like that?

It's not like I didn't know any of these things and I wish my parents would stop helping me this way because I really think I'm at the brink. If I don't die then I don't know if I won't kill myself soon. I was upset with all that. I said, we had a financial situation and I just couldn't stay there. Thanks again.

What I couldn't say and what's a big fact is that it's all thanks to his wife that I had to come back. The lady that put it in my mother's head and eventually in my father's head that I was just wasting my time and the best thing that anyone in this fucked up world could do for me was to find me a husband.

I don't like crying but since the past few years, it's become a habit. It's not easy for me to cry but I do cry. Lately though, it's getting harder. I felt like crying then and I felt like saying, you should've asked your wife. Thanks to her, the time that I wasn't home, she managed to make my younger sister's life miserable too by telling the same to my mother.

My parents are not above the blame but I can't blame them because there's this whole society made of 170 million people that puts pressure on them about what's wrong and right for their daughters or their kids.

I've never felt so stuck, so useless, so pitiable and self destructive as I did today. I just couldn't say, please thank your wife for me.

If I meet my uncle tomorrow, which is a possibility, I'll tell him that but I know I'll lose my nerve. I always say, no more miss nice girl but then I just can't.

Just end up hurting myself. So I still feel like I should weep or cry but I can't. It's just making me hoarse. Maybe I'm just a loser now.

Boo!

2008-10-31T05:16:00.005+06:00

Happy Hallowe'en!

I'm missing last year when the best thing I got was mooning from a 10 year old for Halloween.

I was sitting at my desk, most probably playing a game and feeling lonely on the evening of 31st October, when I hear this bell at the kitchen door first and loud knocks on my window after that. At first I thought its my friend but she's such a scaredy cat, she just didn't get out after dark.

I push back the curtain and see these three boys ranging from 13-9 years. I'd seen at least one of them around the neighborhood on the way to the university and I always wondered why they were never at school. Nonetheless, at first I was surprised but then I thought it was most probably for trick or treating.

Just as I was thinking what exactly I could give these kids, one of them puts his back to the window and viola! lowers his pants and I see a pair of sickly white and red butt cheeks. Well, I couldn't say I've ever had such a halloween scare. Ever. Promise!

I wanted to laugh but seeing as they were just kids, I got a bit worried on their behalf and felt angry at their parents. I got angrier when they started beating the window really very hard with their fists and I thought ok, don't break it or I'll be whooping that ass pretty soon. Seeing as they weren't listening and I wasn't having a very hard time imagining the broken glass and our landlady's reaction, I picked up my cell phone and yelled, you go home or I'm going to call the police now!

Don't go all up in arms because it was just a joke. I pretended to dial 999 (British equivalent of 911) but knowing kids especially boys that age (I have a 13 year old brother so I should know), I knew they weren't taking me seriously. So there I went in my kiddy mode and said, wait until I bring the police to your house, I know where you live and I put on my worst face (my dragon face according to my second sister, another story for another time).

Suddenly the oldest of them just froze, the second one was like no she's kidding but I knew at least one of them had recognized me from my travels from the university to back home. Seeing the reaction, I said, don't worry, when I bring the Police, you'll know. By now, they'd also had a good look at my face and taking me seriously, they made a run for it.

So that was my trick and treat for last Halloween.

I needed to get this off my chest this Halloween because I'm still alone but worst of all I'm not there, where at least I had freedom.

I've this really bad sweet tooth right now, which just can't be satisfied, seeing as I don't have any candy.

But, worse than anything, I'll trade this for those moments. I'll trade this lonliness for that one any day. Sheesh, I still want candy. Gee, I'd even let those kids break the window, if only I could go back and stay.

In the end, it's just a question again of why I came back. I made a mistake when I left but I made the worst one when I came back. It's not like I don't like Pakistan, I do but I love my freedom most.

I had freedom and now it's gone. I miss it. I miss Halloween. I miss the late night wanderings and musings.

I miss myself.

Be Afraid of the BIG BLACK MAN!

2008-10-29T18:45:00.002+06:00

Since I'd been away from home for a few days, I discovered the fun filled story of one Ashley Todd from Texas just today. I'm so amazed that there are people in this day and age in a place like USA, who still think that being anything but non-white makes you threatening. To think that people like Mcalin are going to rule (ahem) USA just makes my knees knock with fear. I'm not American but since America is my favorite country, let me just say that these things scare me and I'm scared for the people of USA. All this coming on the heals of a comment Palin made recently about fruit fly research being useless, just scares me witless.

So what would Palin have the scientists do? This coming from a woman whose country has made most of the innovations of the 20th century. No doubt America is slipping.

If half the population believes the bullshit these people are throwing at them, the other half should start praying for a miracle. As a member of this planet, I'm praying too. I've always imagined that if I have kids (an extremely big if), I'll settle in the USA. Now I'm having doubts. Land of the free? Not so much anymore.

Meanwhile, please don't be afraid of someone whose different from you just because their skin color doesn't match yours. Even animals are better than that.

All You Loved are Dead, All You Needed is Left Behind

2008-10-28T02:43:00.003+06:00

Yesterday I heard you cry
and you wished you were dead.
When I asked you why,
you reminded me how you travelled
all the way from Geneva
to Karachi.

What, for something you imagined
and something you hoped for,
partly, which was such a yearning
as you had never known before?
but if you'd asked me
I would've told you.

All those I loved are dead
and all that I needed is left behind.

You're neither here nor there.
Isn't it the way I am?
Something I explained to you
last year when we had a late night talk.
You tried to suppress those tears
but they just wouldn't listen to you anymore.

You said I was kindred.
I don't know.
To know you as in a mirror
is fear.
The fear that you are there,
failed like me.

All those I loved are dead
and all that I needed is left behind.

When I was younger
my mother told me how people
laugh when you laugh
but don't cry with you.
But in misery, all is one,
now there's no one.

What more could I have told you?
Consoled you? Hold you?
There's nothing in me
unless you accept dustbunnies
of undead love.
You heard me right.

All those I loved are dead
and all that I needed is left behind.

You're repeated and repeated
through me, through you
through all of us.
You come back to remind me of misery.
Misery, I have embraced;
you, not so much, anymore.

Because in my heart is
such a violence that I never
knew was there before.
How I've seen the sky darken and cry.
I hurt when I lost my faith
I won't deny.

All those I loved are dead
and all that I needed is left behind.

I met you even years ago.
Sitting there in the cold darkness, laying tears
on dying embers
of the worst barbecue in history.
So I hugged you but I wasn't a man.
I still wonder what you want from me.

This dead body still wants to commend you
for reminding how it lost its battles,
again and again and again and again.
This is a game, I told you, there are no
winnings, so don't come to me.
Death is beating in me, here you are again.

All those I loved are dead
and all that I needed is left behind.

If you want your wounds to be
scratched deeper than they are,
why come to me when
the lotus of love is still blooming inside.
You're worshipping death on the side,
just in case.

Don't come over to my side
and tell me I'm your mirror;
when yearnings are still burning your insides.
If you're still thirsty
don't ask, I'm only a desert,
it's only a mirage.

海で失われ

2008-10-19T17:55:00.004+06:00

This was my first poem (on my dA page), which is unstructured. I am calling it lost at sea because it shows the feelings of being lost in the vastness of one's emotions of anger at loss of something that one has held precious for long. It is also a curse upon those who take away things that belong to us (though nothing belongs to us anyway). I am including just part of the translation because this poem is not supposed to be translated, rather be taken as anything the reader (or the person looking) assumes it to be.

Disclaimer: I don't know Japanese.

海で失われ
or

Lost at Sea

God
is great
sometimes HIS greatness
is
in HIS punishment.
ruin you for
bringing tears
to my eyes.
lost
at sea
toppled

Tile Designs I II III

2008-10-19T17:00:00.004+06:00

I really had no idea I had uploaded that many images online. Anyway, here's a set of designs I made for tiles back in 2004, the last of which is incomplete.

Tile for Tabby's Bath

Adore Her

The incomplete one

So!

2008-10-19T16:21:00.002+06:00

So I'm back some time after promising myself I'll post more often. Not my fault this time though, it's all thanks to the mighty mighty power company (not so mighty afterall). There's been so much loadshedding that I was afraid, I'd get my computer busted again and I can't afford to lie in bed for 2 days being ill over it.

Not that there was a chance of getting online since I changed my internet provider. Can't say there's any improvement in service and if I may say so, it's worse. I changed it just because of the siblings or rather the parents, who wanted the siblings to benefit from a faster internet connection but they can't benefit from it yet since I wasn't able to set up the network at home due to faulty wiring inside our house...

So many things that are wrong. Sigh... I wish I'd the energy to get angry.

Anyway, I've decided to sort of close down my accounts on deviantArt and post some or all of the stuff here with some new (read old, since I haven't been doing anything) stuff.

It's been a couple of years (I guess; maybe less) since I logged on over there. I think my last post was in 2005 but I can't be sure. I'm gonna head there later and take off the stuff slowly. It feels like it's going to be a bit difficult. Not the taking off or the posting it here again.

I think it reminds me how I became impotent (not fertility wise haha)... Hmm... perhaps reposting it here and the new found freedom (somewhat freer at least) from self doubt might make me gain some sort of potency (haha).

I don't know but I've never been known to be shy of trying.

As long as the Sun & Moon shall be

2008-10-05T22:39:00.008+06:00

(This is something pretty disjointed)

I was reading an article on MSNBC (http://worldblog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/category/1112.aspx) about Pakistan. MSNBC usually has a policy of Pakistan bashing that borders on the creepy sometimes. It seems like an obsession by the sheer number of articles that they write in favor of invading Pakistan.

Going through all the comments, there was so much hatred and negativity. Comments like 'Pakistan is the nerve centre of all evil in the Muslim world' really helps the American cause. Why should anyone love you then? Pakistanis are not obliged to love Americans when Americans clearly hate them. How many times have I read comments like 'drop a bomb and turn it into a desert' or 'turn it into glass'? Too many times for comfort.

Usually the articles begin with interviews with people who can't read or write. There's obviously a bias here to get the most negative comments from people who don't know much about anything in their own country, least of all the USA.

Yet, Americans and any number of nationalities have been given a right to hate us because of our apathetic behaviours in the face of the crises that are facing us.

Right after the 26th September attacks on the Marriot Hotel in Islamabad, it was all either about our politicians (how victimized they are... ) or that 'it was part of a hotel chain by Americans' so that's why it was targeted. No, it wasn't. It was targeted because it is symbolic. There were many people who were there with their families after a long days fast to enjoy the evening breaking fast ritual with their families. This was a hotel, which was famous for drawing people from all walks of life, from businesspeople to diplomats to familes and journalists. It became a symbol to be targeted to make a point: we can hit you anywhere, anytime, we're not scared. Obviously, in the country called Pakistan, the point was not taken. If a world class leader like Benazir Bhutto (I didn't agree with her politics) could be murdered just like that, why would the government (of her own husband's party no less) care about other civilians?

Now let me share something that I've never wanted to speak of to anyone and that's disturbed me ever since I have known it.

I can't forget that I saw half a man on tv that day. Yes, half of him was gone. He was a security guard (he still had half of his uniform on). The people surrounding him were giving him water from a jug full of bloodied water and someone called his name, 'Basharat!' and I'll never forget it.

I'll never forget when my grandmother (may her soul rest in peace) and I were watching CNN (yeah, I'm a big fan of news) and suddenly these images of planes flying into the towers flashed on the screen. We were both crying like anything. Then the rest of the family joined us and we all cried because we couldn't believe what was happening.

That's to say not everyone hates USA. It's not even about just loving someone or something. It's a feeling that we are all human beings and that we all have families and friends and loved ones and that we all belong to God. We didn't know at that time who did it and it didn't matter. What mattered was that we were praying that people were actually able to get out. We were praying for the souls of the people in the planes. We couldn't believe that the planes had gotten inside the city and so close to buildings.

I can't forget the shocked faces of people running away. The shocked cries from all the people gathered in front of the tv when the first tower started to go down. No God, this can't be! Oh God, I hope they got everyone out.

I won't ever forget Basharat and I won't forget that indelible image of the plane crashing into the tower and my grandmother crying. We weren't in the USA. We were right here in Pakistan and perhaps one of the most hated corners of it, called Peshawar. (I also dislike my family's residence of choice, Peshawar; sorry).

I never wanted to write about these things. Not ever. This is such a personal pain and weirdly so acute that many people won't ever understand it (and I'm not going to try). The only reason that compelled me today was all this hatred.

Don't go hating people without knowing them. Media everywhere is so biased, not just against Muslims; in many other countries, it might be biased against one thing or another, which you would only realize is wrong from the perspective of an outsider.

The politicians coddle their public into thinking that the enemies are out there but I think they're the biggest enemies. To cover their ineptness, our leaders have, throughout history, blamed everyone but themselves for the mistakes that were made in their tenures. Since history is no science, it can always be written in a way that suits the taste of whomever it is being written about, we can't ever be sure, who was good and who was not.

All that comes to us is filtered through so many different sieves that when you take it, it's just a whole cup of vitriol and a sense that 'I'm justified in my beliefs, where everyone else is not'.

This is not to say that there aren't Pakistanis who don't hate the USA and obviously, this is not in their defense. What surprises me is why no one tries to find out why. It might not matter to someone living in the USA but since USA has been such a big part of our lives (thank you for the Mujahideen turned Taliban next door, who're now killing and beheading Pakistanis at whim), it should matter to a journalist.

People in general here have a very postive view of USA, as most people would tell you by their desire to move to the USA, given the first chance (yours truly being on top of that list).

The people who don't have a positive view are people who are usually
1. uneducated people;
2. listeners of mullahs (uneducated local clerics, who know nothing about Muslim laws but claim they are clerics based on the fact that they give call to prayers at local mosques);
3. unemployed youth;
4. entertainment starved people;
5. people with a point to prove;
6. psychos/terrorists;
7. people with personal agendas etc.

It's no secret that if one is not educated, one might be clever but one would still be ignorant. Lack of education is a big problem in Pakistan. Officially, the rate of education has increased to about 40% but unofficially it's around or somewhat more than 20% (sorry, I don't have any citations at this time). One reason for the high official rate: they even count people who've learnt to sign their names...

It's easy to ensnare the ignorant into illogical arguments or stupid actions by simply appealing to emotions. I understand that sometimes, education doesn't save one from falling for this fallacy.

Being ignorant means one is now susceptible to fall into word traps. Here come the people who listen to so called religious clerics. When I was at the University of Peshawar, we had heard of two clerics have a fight on the air in one of the tribal areas. It's a well known fact that tribals are not religious but deeply rooted in their own culture and don't like to bend for anyone. So it was amazing that here were these two apparently Muslim men who were not even from different sects, fighting over who's the daddy of the tribals in that certain area and the tribals not saying anything nor the government taking any interest.

Even all those years ago, I used to find it disturbing because things like these have a way of getting out of hands. Flash forward 2008, and we have the disciples of these two mullahs beheading the tribals, government officers, army men, engineers, socialworkers, marrying the tribals' daughters by force, setting fire to houses and schools and hospitals and other civic buildings, holding instant trials and sentencing 'spies' to death.

If someone's telling you that things have gotten better, they're lying. They've gotten worse but an attack at this time would take it from worse to worst. It's a real life slippery slope. The Government of Pakistan let the camel into the tent and now it's time for them to own up to the responsibility of removing it. In this case, the tent is Pakistan and the camel is all of the so called Islamists, Taliban etc.

As someone said, let someone run the government on contract basis and maybe we'll see an improvement. Is someone listening? Can you save us from ourselves perhaps except this time, don't screw it up like Afghanistan and Iraq?

Let's pray that the lyric from the old Pakistani song, roughly translated as

'As long as the sun and moon shall be, so shall Pakistan be',

stays true.

Terence Cuneo - Secret Mouse Man

2008-10-05T08:01:00.005+06:00

Terence Cuneo at the Waterloo Station

I suppose this would be a fairly common angle for this photograph (though it is by no means an example of good photography).

Again, a random photograph from my trip to London last year. I didn't enjoy it much at the time (too much tension) because I was trying to make someone happy. Alas, I failed miserably (usual) as I came to know when I came back home. People make no secrets of their disappointments with me. It is in a sad state that I always find myself.

So why this random photograph? It touched me at that time because of the expression on his face, which is sweet. Like someone who doesn't think children are dumb and jokes are stupid.

I researched Cuneo and found he used to paint mice into his paintings and sometimes they used to be hidden. That oughta tell you what kind of man he was. Funny, I should say. I tried to find some examples of his paintings online but so far I haven't been successful. Maybe another night when I'm not down with flu.

P.s. there's a mouse hidden in the sculpture too but that part is not showing in my photograph.

An Epiphany!

2008-10-04T00:34:00.002+06:00

I thought I should post more often now that I'm free. And unburdened (hopefully). I hope to continue being more frequent (I hope, I hope).

To my mind, it's become even more imperative since someone I love offered to buy me a website and a domain name (why, I never even thanked you...).

Better to just let it out here than burn.

And what about the woman?

2008-10-04T00:18:00.004+06:00

Well, Senor Dali?

London, 2007

The Endless Frame

2008-10-02T02:57:00.001+06:00

1. You wish you had stopped me.

2. I want to terrorize the terrorists.

3. I am sleeping with lonliness nowadays.

4. My life is being lived by others.

Unoriginal Sin

2008-10-02T02:49:00.005+06:00

On 11th March, I'd a dream that I'd died. It started to come true soon.

On 24th July, they hung me by the noose until death.

On 25th, my skulls rolled down a hill to a sea of my decomposed bodies.

I was never laid to rest, I just died and hung between the world, in a shadow from which, there was not extrication.

My sin was birth. I was born. That was my sin.

York

2008-09-30T21:49:00.019+06:00

I went to York at the beginning of this year and really loved it though I didn't enjoy the trip at that time because as usual I wasn't well and I was missing so many things and people.

If you've ever had the famous Yorkie bars, you know where York is and it's (relatively haha) new namesake New York as well.

Of course, they don't make the Yorkie bars here anymore. They're manufactured in Poland now.

A View from the Top of the Gothic Cathedral

Going up the Towers of the Cathedral

A Fine Example of Gothic Architecture

Beautiful Arches

Old Gate & Tower, part of the City's Old Wall

Rest a While

Little Shambles, the Famous Butcher's Street - the butcher's shops of course, are gone.

Another Old Church in the York City Centre

Steps Down to the Canal Walkway

The Famous Bridge to the City Centre

Down the Canal

Catching a loneliness

2008-08-07T01:39:00.000+06:00

To find that you are alone in that place
Where everyone is and yet
You find no one there
You search
You look
Inward and outward
You run and make
sudden turning movements
to catch that loneliness
and put it in its place.

06 Aug. 08

Badar's Wings are Her Legs

2008-08-07T01:37:00.001+06:00

As she opens them up to get

‘what she wants’

Badar flies on magical wings

That’s what the good man told her

That’s what they say

06 Aug. 08

I Wish I Were a Man

2008-08-07T01:12:00.003+06:00

I Wish I Were a Man

I wish I were a man
walk naked at will
without fear or remorse
when the heat wave hits.
Let my navel show full of wool
Be admired for my many smells
Oh manly smells.
What is so great to be a woman?
When I have so much to change:
Remove moustache;
Pluck eyebrows;
Wax legs and armpits;
Shave pubes;
Put on lipstick because my
Lips are not red enough.
Hide one silly scar with cakey creams;
Why, when you’ve seen more men
With craters like Yucatán?
I wish I didn’t have to care
If my belly didn’t fit.
So I broke my tooth
And now I’m not fit for your sacrifice?
Have you never seen men
With their jaws hanging out?
So I wish I were a woman who is a man
Better than to be a sacrificial lamb
Being checked for flaws
Better to be a man
With a fat belly
And stinking breath
Then the most beautiful woman
In the world
Because you’re still a sacrificial lamb
You’re still missing a tooth
You lost in the first loss of blood.
Did it not hurt when they
Told you had a fat neck
How good did it feel
When they said you
Were an inch too short?
Good to kill then be killed
Better to paw
Then be pawed
Better to look ugly
Yet still be man
Than to be the only reason
For going to a heaven far away.
Better to wish to be a man
Then to really be a woman.

Angry Blog

2008-07-18T18:35:00.003+06:00

Since I've been really angry and someone suggested putting down my anger on paper to deal with it, I thought, why not my blog rather than paper; though paper gives you a chance to tear it up in anger. I didn't want to change the name to *drum roll* Angry Blog so I thought why not just post one of my favorite angry songs? Because when I'm so angry, it's hard to get a word out through all the confusion that is my brain.

With apologies to Alice in Chains for making minor changes to the lyrics.

Angry Chair

Sitting on an angry chair
Angry walls that steal the air
Stomach hurts and I don't care

What do I see across the way
See myself moulded in clay
Stares at me, yeah I'm afraid
Changing the shape of her face

Candles red, I have a pair
Shadows dancing everywhere
Burning on the angry chair

Little girl made a mistake
Pink cloud has now turned to gray
All that I want is to play
Get on your knees, time to pray, girl

I don't mind, yeah
I don't mind,
I don't mind, yeah,
I don't mind
Lost my mind, yeah
But I don't mind
Can't find it anywhere
I don't mind

Corporate prison, we stay
I'm a dull girl, work all day
So I'm strung out anyway

Loneliness is not a phase
Field of pain is where I graze
Serenity is far away

Saw my reflection and cried
So little hope that I died
Feed me your lies, open wide
Weight of my heart, not the size

Pink cloud has now turned to gray
All that I want is to play
Get on your knees time to pray, girl.

Return of the Despicable It

2008-07-04T04:58:00.003+06:00

For a long time, I lie thinking. I cannot go to sleep, try as I might. I try hard but in vain to empty my brain of the relentlessly goading thoughts.

It tries to be happy. It tries quite hard. Just like it tried before. At least make pretense. What it did not were the pretenses already there, laid bare too soon. It wanted to go on pretending that it was missed, loved, needed. It had falsely presumed the kindness of its owners. How could it not be fooled? It always gets fooled easily.

It doesn't want to feel. Hadn't it been trying hard not to for long? It had been alone. It had been so alone and no one knew and no one cared.

It saw people for what they were yet it knew what did it know anyway. It called itself a pig and swine. It hurt and then for some time it stopped to feel. For it is just a thing with legs, arms, eyes but it does not have rights. The least of them being the right to feel.

It thought it had mastered its anger. It learnt to ask for forgiveness. And what was it told? It was made fun of. It was laughed at. 'But it is just a fool! It does not have rights.' It doesn't have the right to feel yet it goes on feeling.

It is a foul reject. What does it know anyway? It knows nothing. When it tells truth, it is called a liar. When it tries to hide tears with smiles, an easy task, it is told that it's shameless.

Yes, it is shameless. It is shameless to feel for what does it know of feelings? It must kill itself to be like it was before.

When it said it was fragile, they just looked at the cage it had been trapped in and pointed and laughed, 'Could that be fragile?'

It is sad. It is sad and has been so for a so long that it has despaired for happiness. It, despondent; but what does it know?

It was built through the eyes of others' words. What personality may it have? That of a liar, truant, mischief maker, heartache? It has forgotten what it is so what can it say now that it is not so? It would thus become the suspected liar, would it not?

Yes, it doesn't know. It even forgets. It is most truly shameless. Sometimes it weeps then stops itself suddenly because it forgets why it started.

What shall this tyrant do?

It cannot defend. Cast as it is an evil, the bane of its masters existence. It is a coward. Yet, it knows also, the body is not its own. This mind nor this heart. Yet, it is a coward still. It is tired and still sleep won't come.

It is a most pathetic pig. If it were human, it'd make its duty to kill it in the most perverse way. Bring it death just as it lived; little by little with much pain and suffering. Isn't it already there? But what does it know? It knows nothing.

Contact Me

2007-08-08T19:13:00.001+05:00

Get jaxtr | Login

I am dead

2007-04-05T02:58:00.000+05:00

On to the reason I am here... as usual to take out my frustrations where I know my family won't find out. Back home, my blog was banned. I don't know why. I think it was a countrywide ban but somehow when the ban was lifted, mine was still banned. That's one reason why I couldn't post anything here until I was there. I was pissed off at that but now I'm happy. It's not that anyone knows about my blog but I still wouldn't want them stumbling over it. I hate the Internet, I really do. I had to remove my name, when I read all these articles about employers doing searches on the Internet and then not giving you jobs etc. There's no freedom of information. That's all a load of bollocks (as the English so rightly put it).

Anyway, I am dead. My words are dead and I am dying too. It's good. It's good to shout that into the anonymity of the world wide web.

HEY WORLD! I AM DYING!

Woo hoo! I guess that shows how good I am at dramatics. When words and feelings die, so does a person so this 'I am going to die' thing is just crap, crap, crap! I am already dead. I hate the bed because it will never be as comfortable as a grave. It doesn't have the vermin that will eat my flesh. I hate the covers because they don't feel like the shroud will soon cover me. I hate the blanket because it's not like tonnes of mud that will be piled on top of me. No, it's just not the same. Thus, the insomnia. Not that I fear death and wonder what is on the other side. I want to burn in hell for everything I didn't do. Yes, you got that right: everything I did NOT do. When a person is dead and living a hell everyday, what difference would other hells make? Cold? Hot? What does it matter? It's all been always the same to me.

Meet the Maker you say? What will He say to me? You were a hopeless coward. You never prayed. You didn't ask. How should I ask you my Lord? How? I did. I did everytime.

Now, I am dead dead dead.

Bloggeriffic!

2007-04-05T02:51:00.000+05:00

Visited blogger after a long time, as usual, to vent my feelings and found some pleasant changes to the format. I didn't change my template but changed the layouts. Found comments by old friends: Hello Tuishimi! I miss you! Hey dasfunkyt! How are you?

I think my blog looks a bit more presentable now. I like it just a bit better now. The only thing I feel bad about is that I can't write anymore. The words have died on my fingers or lips or whatever it is.

Harrumph!

2007-03-07T22:15:00.000+05:00

In any society, if one wants to get respected, they need to be able to command respect. To command respect, one needs to respect oneself. Second, one needs to respect their roots, their culture and to be able to identify with it if not agree with it. Third, it is important that same respect is shown to others and their qualities are not just admired (admiration is but just idol worship) but imitated. We think some qualities are inimitable and thus, don't adopt them for fear of being labeled clones or on the other extreme we harrumph when someone is different.

101

2007-01-12T16:20:00.000+05:00

Ah! I hadn't realized I'd reached the ultimate mark of 100 posts after almost 4 years on Blogger. Wow! Goes to show my extreme activity. Why is it that I always post here after I'm totally depressed? And why am I writing like a teenager nowadays?

I will return gallantly after exams! Write my story since I have been A.W.O.L. Now back to my (next to nothing) studies!

Oh this is post 101 btw.

Madar (Mother)-Nashenas

2007-01-05T22:25:00.001+05:00

A very beautiful song. Someone made a compilation on YouTube to go with it as a video. I miss my mom. Brought tears to my eyes.

Stop Motion Life

2007-01-04T22:26:00.000+05:00

Found this really amazing stop motion animation by some unknown talent on Break.com. I give it 5 stars, not just for being talented but for innovation. Check it out to see what I mean.

In other news, I'm bored and depressed. I want to return to photography. I want to get in touch with things around me. I DON'T want to be depressed. I never knew I could be homesick. When I think of home, my mother, my sisters, dad, my brother, aunties, cousins, friends, it brings tears to my eyes. I haven't been this childish since I was 7.

Sometimes, I think I should run away from my room and this city. Leave my cell phone and just take some money. And it's a shame but once or twice I contemplated a sin (okay, I'll be honest, I was thinking along the lines of suicide).

I know I'm despairing and I'm trying not to but I can't help it. I realized that I was being a fool when I realized this morning that my exams are going to start from 15th January and I don't have much time left to study. So I'll have to kill my behind if I ever want to get a distinction. A distinction would mean I'll be able to get a good job that would pay for my fees that I haven't been able to pay. So many things to think and worry about. How can I study then? How can I not be depressed...

Hopefully, I'll feel better in a couple of days. Sometimes, it's good to have a financial kick in the butt. I have been begging for a scholarship (begging is the word for the way the ladies at the International Office treated me :D) from the University but they think that I must have some rich hordes stashed away at home. If that were true! Where's Aladdin's magical lamp???

Hahaha!

I will let it go...

2006-11-16T01:10:00.000+05:00

I came to realize today that other than being a chronic asthmatic for life, I might be suffering from hearing and sight problems too. Received an email from our housing company respresentative pointing to some such problems with me when she writes that it has been denied (quite vehemently, I'm sure ) by the very decent and great people who DID NOT make any racist comments (I must be crazy to have alleged that against such angels) that they DID NOT make ANY comments.

On top of all that, a claim from one of these angels is that he's from Pakistan. I'm sure that since I'm wrong about so many things, he must be right. Afterall, it's me who has been proved wrong (and most probably a liar) so how can I be right?

I'm not going to be cynical about it anymore. What else can I do anyway? I don't have any proof except to trust my senses. I must be a lesser human being for I was not even called to see these angels face to face.

What shall I do now? I will let it go. There is no justice in this world. I will get over it, soon forget about it too but the angels who DID NOT do ANYTHING will always remember what they did.

Speechless

2006-11-15T05:09:00.000+05:00

I shifted to the United Kingdom at the end of September and it wasn't such a transition, I wonder why... The real shock came after I had to face racism and abusive behavior from some of my fellow students.

Why am I writing about it here? This is like my diary (not a very secret one) and one sure does feel better putting down feelings in ones diary.

I'm also hoping for some such thing because I'm shocked beyond imagination after that incident. I feel strange as if some inner part of me, that was before this untouchable, has been violated and my self esteem damaged. This happened on 29th October, 2006 and despite letting my University know, nothing has been done. I'm not even sure if I want anything done. I'm torn between two things: one is (or was in the light of more recent incidents involving these people) that I don't want the students involved to be damaged and the other one is my bruised self, which thinks that it's at lease necessary for those people to know that they've hurt me.

What made it worse is being threatened in a veiled way. How should I take these threats in a strange country thousands of miles away from my home and parents? Some people have been trying to console me by saying that since I'm from Pakistan so I should not find this very strange. Since I was born there and spent 25 years of my life in that country, I have never once been threatened by anyone nor made fun of.

Am I weak? Have I lost my confidence in me?

It's not about that. I'm not weak. I'm brave. I'm confident but I feel vulnerable. I've always looked down upon racism as the worst form of human behavior but only now have I actually felt it and found how much it hurts, how it tries to maim your personality. It made me think about myself. Do I look fundamentally different from the people who were making fun of me? Are my parents (whom they were abusing in that tirade) any different from theirs? Do we eat different food? Come from a different planet?

Even animals are treated nicely by human beings but you can sometimes expect those same human beings to be stupid and mean in a way that can not be explained.

I feel hurt. I feel very hurt. I feel upset. I can't explain my feelings and no one understands.

Editor fired after publication of Islam cartoons - Europe - MSNBC.com

2006-02-02T23:25:00.000+05:00

Editor fired after publication of Islam cartoons - Europe - MSNBC.com

Don't have anything to say except that there's supposed to be a limit to everything. Does freedom of speech mean letting go of morality? Is it ethical? That's the issue. Does being secular give one the right to play with the sentiments of another who might be religious? When it's the opposite, we all go crazy. What's up with that?

Soon I got used to the darkness inside.

2005-10-08T03:47:00.000+05:00

Tonight has been another one of those sleepless nights. Sitting in the darkness, without the fan, then walking around different parts inside the house without making noise and certainly, I'm good at it. Being a heavyweight but lightfoot for sure.

I have this sad embarrassment in my heart. I mostly hurt the people who love me. It's something I used to deny but let's face it. I'm like that. I question all intentions. Is it the inherent negativity in me? I don't know what I want from the people who love me. Do I want love or is it the fear of losing it that makes me hurt them so that I don't have any attachment to them in case I lose them, which would in turn cause me hurt.

My throat seems like it has been sandpapered. My lips are parched. I didn't cry or scream or weep. I'm taking water, swig after swig... I'm still thirsty. I do feel the need to use the lip balm but I'm too tired to do that. Why am I always tired?

There are many questions that one asks but hides from the answers because the answers are well known. Or one might be too cowardly to face those answers or one just asks those questions because one might want to look great in one's own eyes or even less.

Senate OKs $50 billion more for wars - Politics - MSNBC.com

2005-10-08T03:04:00.000+05:00

Senate OKs $50 billion more for wars - Politics - MSNBC.com

Just a fraction of that money could help me get to Harvard, Sloan or UPenn or any of the other Ivy League business schools. Or a fraction of that to an Afghan or Iraqi student. I haven't met Iraqis but I've met a lot many Afghans who could use a good education. Let it not be one of the Ivy Leaguers. Let it be any school, college or university even in Pakistan. But no. Let's fight a war. Kill poor soldiers and civilians because soldiers fight for their countries without asking questions and civilians are of course just collateral damage. In fact, everything's collateral damage.

Or let's say, since they can't give a fraction of that money to fund my education or that of an Afghan or Iraqi, they could give that fraction to the people who've lost jobs due to Katrina or build houses for them, maybe?

Or maybe they could give a fraction of that money to help build a medical and teaching college in Kabul or Kandahar to help eradicate diseases and illnesses related to war and poverty that plagues that nation.

But war is more important. When all the people are dead, we won't be needing those fractions to spend on them.

Though it's an illogical conclusion, but those $50 billion are money well spent.

As for the soldiers and civilians: rest in peace. And for their families? I don't know. Would a sorry help?

Bandeewan

2005-10-08T02:48:00.001+05:00

Bandeewan literally means lost. It means that stage before dying, where one is hanging between life and death.

That's how I've felt for quite a long time.

A person becomes bandeewan but for a few seconds; some unlucky ones might be so for days, but who heard of one who was in such a state for years?

When there's no way out, I just stop looking.

To My Rival

2005-10-07T23:57:00.000+05:00

To My Rival is a poem by the renowned late Pakistani socialist poet, Faiz Ahmed Faiz. I really couldn't capture it's beauty even if I tried. The real fun of Urdu poetry is reading it in Urdu. It's like Persian poetry. However excellent the translation, the actual essence is lost. The intoxiation that is found in Persian can never be found in the translation. Nonetheless, Faiz is essentially an Urdu poet. Here I've tried a hurried translation of one of his very beautiful and famous poem, Rakeeb Se (rakeeb=rival in love, se=to/adressing someone, rakeeb se would loosely mean adressing the rival in love).

To My Rival

Come let's sit together, because attached to you are the memories of that beauty,
which had made this heart the house of fairies.
In whose love we had forgotten the world
And made the end a novel, a fantasy.

Those ways have known your feet,
which her intoxicating youth fancied;
Through which have passed processions of her splendor,
Of which these eyes have been idol worshippers.

Those lovely wafts have played with you, in which
the sad scent of her raiment still lingers.
The light of the moon has radiated on you through that entrance,
Which still holds the melancholy of nights past.

You have seen that forehead, those cheeks, those lips,
in whose imagination I have lavished my life.
Those forlorn and mesmerizing eyes have been raised to look at you.
YOU know why I have squandered my life away.

On us the favors of the sorrow of love are mutual;
Favors so many that I may lose count.
What we have learnt, what we have lost in this love,
None could understand other than you, even if I tried.

I learnt humbleness and devotion to those deprived;
Hope and loss, the meaning of pain and sorrow, I learnt.
The trials and tribulations of the underdog I learnt to understand;
The meaning of cold sighs and yellow faces, I learnt.

Whenever the helpless sit and weep, whose
boiling tears sleep in their eyes,
The eagles snatch crumbs from the mouths of the weak
They come down in calculated flocks.

Whenever in these bazaars, the flesh of the laborer is sold
Then the blood of the poor is spilt on the roads.
A fire boils inside, burns my heart, don't ask!
I cannot seem to control of my heart then...

Just a Change of Seasons

2005-07-23T23:34:00.000+05:00

In a clearing, there's a Jacaranda tree standing alone.

The foundations for a house are being laid around it now. A well is being dug in what will be a lawn in the years to come. Red bricks are lying neatly in stacks.
People are going here and there.
The Jacaranda tree is standing silently: watching. It is mesmerized.
That was Winter.
Now it is spring. Purple flowers carpet what will be a driveway a year from now. A truck unloads sacks of cement.
The flowers are running here and there in the silent breeze. As evening approaches, the men leave and a lone light goes on.
Carcasses of Jacaranda flowers are floating in the well.
Many years have passed. The driveway is red tiles that look nice in the sun.
The well is gone. There is a fountain in the corner, where there is a miniature bridge surrounded by cacti. Empty deck chairs are casting silhouettes in the moonlight.
Leaves and dead bougainvillaea bracts are littering the slightly golden lawn. Soft, white mattresses are being trundled out of the house. The sweeper is trying to sweep all that he can but autumn won't let the lawn clean.
Women are left standing in the lobby. The men are moving out of the gate, past the soft, white mattresses, past the Jacaranda tree.

Only the Jacaranda tree knows that it is just a change of seasons.

Trying Not to Be Earnest OR The Importance of Not Being Earnest

2005-07-23T02:20:00.000+05:00

I have decided. Now I just have to stick with it. :D

I'll try to be funny. Yes, I will try. Or I'll "Just Do It"... I have been accused of not being funny, of being arrogant (an accusation that stems from the first) because I only smile (with a slight twist of the mouth, which makes me look horrible, apparently) and that I never say anything. How can I make people understand that I have nothing to say?

I have nothing funny, intelligent or remotely interesting to say. I love to listen but no one believes that. I say, why would you but you better! Or else you'd also think I was proud and arrogant (the question arises: why would I be that for, but that's for another time), which doesn't really matter this way or that but still...

The main point was about trying to be funny so I've decided that I'll use my MSN Spaces spacethingamajig for posting whatever funniness enters this head of mine, if ever!

Do you have to let it linger?

2005-07-23T01:59:00.000+05:00

She told me to just let it go.

It's not that easy.

Especially when you're holding onto nothing.

I have been wondering lately. If everyone's the same, then does it matter whom you're with?

Sooner or later, everything will end. At least in this world. To finally have found the answer to that question that I asked many years back, is unsettling.

Is there any redemption?

There's none.

And when I look at my life, I know there won't be any in the next either. There's none for the fallen. Will people think about the woman she was? Will they? Will someone sigh, will someone try to wipe off their tears when they think about her?

Colorado lawmaker: U.S. could �take out� Mecca - Politics - MSNBC.com

2005-07-19T03:30:00.000+05:00

Colorado lawmaker: U.S. could �take out� Mecca - Politics - MSNBC.com

Wow! Now that's what I call freedom of speech and nice thoughts. That's really how we should make friends.

Shame.

Mein Yahan Kyon Houn? (Why Am I Here?)

2005-06-27T06:21:00.000+05:00

I don't have the answer to that one. Why are you here anyway? Purpose? Reason? Redemption? Faith? Purposelessness? Nothing? Faithlessness? Intelligence or a lack thereof? Love? Hate? Emptiness?

GOD?

YOU?

ME?

what?

Relax. Laugh a nervous thankful-to-God laugh.

I was only kidding. (:

Tum Yahan Kyon Ho? (Why Are You Here?)

2005-06-27T04:51:00.000+05:00

Because I'm not feeling well and just have no idea what to do about it. A couple of nights back or maybe it was three, doesn't matter, had to take three tablets to bring myself some rest but felt groggy for the next couple of days (or three).

1. Xanax
2. Lexatonil/nal (forgetting the spellings right now)
3. what was the third one? I think it was either Synergy OD or something else but I just don't remember.

Oh yes I had to take a fourth one too. But that's for stopping my hair from falling and my nails from getting bent and brittle and God knows what else. Yes, I'm getting bald and old at the very ancient age of 24. And no I'm not saying that because in my head there lives a fucked up hypochondriac. The worst thing is that I'm a girl. Only now do I realize that. Quite late. I can't even wish to die. It's too early to die but then again. No, this is not self pity. I just needed to get this out of my system. To maintain it's integrity. *laughs* It's like passing feces. You have to do it or you die.

Went out yesterday, in the scorching afternoon heat and lu (hot wind). There was no ice cream in half of Peshawar (that would be University Town and Hayatabad). Let me be more honest about the truth: There weren't any nice flavors in the bricks and the buckets. Wherever we went there was only Vanilla. VANILLA! VANILLA! VANILLA! How one hates it when it's plain vanilla! Oh and this was the first time in many months that I went out with my cousins or let's say went out at all for relaxation only. It was fun even though my head was boiling and so was theirs. Went to the videoshop to find it closed. So we headed to the old bookshop, which sometimes sells these rare and/or old editions of rare and/or old books if you're willing to rummage through the dust. :D Spending time in a bookshop or a library are the happiest moments of my life. Though I was sneezing but I forgot all about it. I always get a strange kind of high among books. Khair! I was going through the titles when viola! I came upon an old volume of plays by Bernard Shaw. At that very moment, I'm sure my mouth must have been hanging open. It wasn't exactly in mint condition (doesn't matter because I don't plan to sell it or anything, God forbid) and the pages with the date of publication were missing but from the cover, I judged that this might be from the 50's or at the very latest, early 60's. Of course, I could be wrong and it could be much older. But I was happy. Pure happiness it was after such a long time. Such uplifting and pure joy. Inexplicable! Then I found a 1930's edition of another book. Then came the real prize. :D An original and rare edition of Milton's Lycidas. Oh my God! Oh my dear dear God! With introduction and notes AND in MINT CONDITION!!! It might be said that my resultant breathlessness might have been due to the moldy nature of the shop and my asthma but I say it was due to this serendipitous discovery. Yes, serendipity it was for sure. In this happy state of mind, I moved to the section on philosophy. Found a book on Marx and Engels. It's a good thing none of my sisters were around to admonish me against making a whole library of books about these men. :P Anyhow, it was that same state of euphoria that led me to the Urdu book section. I was looking for nothing in particular. Then Manto and Qudsia and Ashfaq Ahmed passed through my mind. I was looking here and there at nothing in particular when I just had a glimpse of a red cover (talk about seeing red) and something really interesting written on it. I couldn't believe my eyes. I took out the book from the shelf, had a closer look at it to make sure that what I'd read was correct. Hahah! Palwashay was the name of the book. It's a most funny coincidence. Not because the book isn't good but because I never thought I'd find a book that carried my name. It was a Pushto translation of the famous collection of poems by Iqbal called Bal-e-Jibreel. So, I added it to my shopping cart and thus my happy adventures at the bookshop come to an end. And all these books for just Rs. 600. Even though, as a student and non-paid worker, I find this a bit too much but well! It's better than when I used to get a lot less books at my father's expense for a lot more money. (The bills always amounted to more than 10, 000 or so at a time). As for myself, I can't even afford to go to those shops anymore. (: It's funny in retrospect but it makes me happy because you can never get first or rare editions from the big expensive shops. After that we headed to this place where they sell this sweetened milk, which is super cooled. I'd never had a taste of that before but the cousins insisted. I must admit it was refreshing but still too sweet for my taste. On we went with our universal search for ice-cream all the way back to Hayatabad, at long last we did get ice cream but not exactly the flavors we were looking for. Yeah, I know, this is not a matter of worldly importance but it was just something normal in such a long time that it seems significant. And mostly because I felt like an alien who is being shown around the earth. Finally found an open video rental in Hayatabad (will be writing about that one of these days) and rented a dvd, which had 5 movies on it. I was feeling lucky about it but when I played it later in the evening, I was disappointed. Camera prints! Pirated crap. That's what we pay for in my lovely country. *laughs* But I watched all of them or let's say most of them.

1. Creep (stupid movie, no storyline, only watch if you want to finally make up your mind about committing suicide)
2. Constantine (didn't look anything like the comic. Hello! Constantine is Mick Jagger! So where in the bloody hell does Keanu Reeves look like Mick? So as an adaptation of a comicbook, it was a horror! The soundtrack on the other hand sounded nice.)
3. The Pacifier (this is for kids: not older than 5 or 7. Or retards! Sorry that's politically incorrect, but seeing that those were the people who wrote, directed and produced the movie, it should be watched by the same kind as well)
4. Diary of a Mad Black Woman (if you want to get diabetes, it's better you watch this movie otherwise, totally skip it. Goodness! The dialogues made me want to puke: Knight in shining what??? I'm not cynical, I like those goofy love stories, where I can sometimes shed a few tears as well but this? OH MY GOD! It's better to watch an Indian movie or soap rather than watch this movie. Huh! At least one gets to see hot desi chicks {I know I'm politcally incorrect this morning :D}.)
5. Hitch (Now here's a movie that I might like. I have to get the master print to watch this one. Seems like a good one!)

There! That's all out. Whatever I actually wanted to say has as usual been lost in this flood of foolish words. Just wanted to say that nowadays, I laugh a lot. It's not like the pretention of old days (few months back? a year back? two, maybe three years...?). It makes me feel amazing. It makes me feel young. Not young by a couple of years. Not young like I'm 20. Not even young like I'm a teenager. It makes me feel like a child. Free of cares and I'm loving it so much but at the same time I'm afraid that I might lose it. This brings back my gone-before-time youth. It's not as if I am old in the sense of being aged. Or maybe I even am but leaving that aside, what makes one young? It's the feelings. Or it's the need to feel feelings. It's the need to laugh like a fool over nothing and everything. To giggle uncontrollably. To be mad without a reason. Not mad as in worthy of being committed to an asylum but mad as in ready to do anything. Let it be the most non-sensical thing. It's the whimsy, the capriciousness. It's the flying in the air. The freedom of thought. Yes, it's the laughter of freedom. Free happiness. It inspired me. It made me want to write again. Something fresh and beautiful. Not about sadness and loss but about being. About moments. I don't know what I'm saying and I don't want to know. I want it to be like that. Peaceful and happy. I wonder if the end is near.

Returning to the Garden of Eros

2005-06-22T14:22:00.000+05:00

I think I'm getting better. Healing myself or maybe there's someone or something that's healing me. Then again I wonder if it's healing or an illusion of that? I have been sick for a while now. Getting better always takes time but it also means to leave everything. It means time away from friends, from things that I liked to do usually like photography or painting or just lying down for a rest. Now I'm always sleepless. There's always a storm in my soul nowadays. Or let's say in the past few months but it seems to be subsiding now. Can I say now that I am getting better? That I am getting back to life. Am I in contact with a human being or is it just a dead person like me? Can I have life back into this body? I keep wondering. I think so much it gives me a headache. Then I get feverish all over again. How the rest of my life is going to be effected by that is yet to be seen but it has put strains on my relations with others. On top of that is all the stagnation that plagues Peshawar. At times like these it gets to me in the worst fashion. Am I sick only in the head or is it really a bodily ailment? Heart disease eating the mind? (: I wonder. But I'm getting better and I have to see how long it will last. Can it last forever? This comfort. I have been digging a trench of hate and now when I look over my shoulder I see a mound of love. Could it be love? Or is this mound just a grave for the body of love. I don't know. I think about God. Do I love You God? Do I? I don't know. I have claimed love in the past. So many times, for so many people. Friends, family, earth, this cause or that. But do I love You? What have I ever done for Your love? What have I given in the way of Your love God? I don't know. I am thinking.

What profit if this scientific age
Burst through our gates with all its retinue
Of modern miracles! Can it assuage
One lover’s breaking heart? what can it do
To make one life more beautiful, one day
More god-like in its period? ...

Garden of Eros by Oscar Wilde

Let hope NOT leave us anymore...

2005-04-14T05:30:00.002+05:00

Terre
Michel Deguy

Tu rentres. Tu quittes le rivage. Tu retournes en terre. Les amers quittent la mer. Soudain cette moitié du monde qui était en mer redevient terre – forêts, champs, campagne. A son tour celle-ci devient l’océan. Tu reviens au monde des vivants comme un Grec débarqué tournait le dos à l’inféconde. L’immensité se fait solide, moissonneuse, verte et blonde, guéable. Les nuages sont utile. Tu écartes les buissons de la lisière, rentres dans le bois, retournes à l’épais – l’impénétrable. La forêt de chênes chante.
En même temps c’est le temps, le double régime chaque moitié est le tout, dans l’indivsion.
Celle de la sérénité hölderlinienne: l’oubli de la menace, le vaste, la pérennité, le pour-toujours du s’entr’aimer multiple, pareil au spectacle quand le monde se donne en spectacle, l’oisiveté léopardienne; c’est quand les champs et les eaux, les forêts et les fleurs, les nuages et les neiges assonent dans le zèle des saisons.
Avec celle-ci: repoussé, pressenti, ulcérant, le contre-courant funèbre, le complot du destin, affliction et nuisance, la conspiration de la perte, voici la morition des proches, la contagion des maux, l’acerbe érosion, la calomnie générale, l’abréviation de la vie, l’encombre, la terre périmée, l’extermination du passé, le périr.

Let hope not leave us anymore. May that time never come when we have to leave someone or something we care for. Laissez les bons temps rouler!

And all the many things that I can't say in any language, that which has not been said, nor heard, read, written OR felt.

Wires

2005-04-08T04:54:00.001+05:00

Wires
by Athlete

You got wires, going in
You got wires, coming out of your skin
You got tears, making tracks
I got tears, that are scared of the facts

Running down corridors
Through automatic doors
Got to get to you, got to see this through
I see hope is here, in a plastic box
I've seen christmas lights, reflect in your eyes

You got wires, going in
You got wires, coming out of your skin
There's dry blood, on your wrist
Your dry blood, on my fingertip

Running down corridors
Through automatic doors
Got to get to you, got to see this through
First night of your life, curled up on your own
Looking at you now, you would never know

I see it in your eyes
I see it in your eyes
You'll be alright

I see it in your eyes
I see it in your eyes
You'll be alright
Alright

Running ... down corridors, through, automatic doors,
Got to get to you, got to see this through,
I see hope is here, in a plastic box,
I've seen christmas lights, reflect in your eyes,

Down corridors, through automatic doors,
Got to get to you, got to see this through,
First night of your life, curled up on your own,
Looking at you now, you would never know...

Wish love was a surity. Why does it feel like that only when someone's far away?

Nous y allions chaque jour

2005-04-06T03:32:00.003+05:00

Inspired by Jean-Sébastien Monzani's series of the same name.

Nous y allions chaque jour

We went there everyday, and everyday was the same until that day when she went away...
While people would be home watching movies, we would go there everyday and watch the sun set in the West...
Sometimes our shadows have stood there like the piers at a dawn
Oh, it must have been a grey dawn that day, when she went away...
Remember those wisps of clouds as she slowly turned and walked away
And right before that, her downcast face, those brimming eyes, those trembling lips
I looked away, I looked away...
But in my heart, a hope still tarries,
That she might return and we might carry
But until that happens, I will remember how
We went there everyday...

Needs improvement, I guess but I love it as it is. Phew!

Dedicated to a very special person. You know whom you are

I wrote this for two very beautiful young people, who were a bit shy in expressing their feelings for each other.

24

2005-03-27T03:24:00.001+05:00

Phew! 24 years. Still got many rivers to cross. I want to write more but I have a dull headache. Well, birthdays!

I think I miss something in my life...

I had planned that I'll try to write at least one line every day leading to my 25th birthday but guess that won't be possible.

Here they come, the beautiful ones...

2005-03-10T00:51:00.001+05:00

So I've been thinking about a few things lately. And mostly laughing and smiling... The life of a manic depressive.

The highs and the lows.
The valleys and the moutains.
The crests and the troughs.

That's the beauty of life. To be riding these waves like a maniacal surfer and then getting washed ashore like the pieces of a shipwreck.

When I joined dA, I joined it because I wanted some technical comments on my work. It wasn't because I wanted to be judged for what I did. No one likes that. Did I judge anyone? No. Did I judge the thoughts and the feelings that someone put into what they did. No, I did not but why do I feel that I'm being judged for these very same things. I put my works here so as to be judged for their artistic merit and not for the subjects themselves. If you don't know me and if you're not God, please do not judge me. I don't like it. It makes me feel smaller than I actually am. It makes me afraid of my own shadow. Makes me want to hide somewhere never to be found again.

I get scared easily. All these sad feelings lurking, lying in wait to pounce on me. Sadness scares me like anything. I'm afraid of it just like kids are scared of the bogeman. I actually feel like it's sitting under my bed and I just can't put my legs down because it will come and get me.

Enough of this. I'm happy right now and enjoying it. Happy without any reason and those who've felt this way know that it's like being on a high (whatever that means). Anyway, I don't think happiness actually needs some reason. You just need to create that place inside your head. Yes, lately, I've realized I love a lot many people. In fact, almost everyone I come across I find myself loving. It's never been easier than it is now. I feel like telling them, yes, I love you. Yes, I do, I do. Again, feel scared of being misinterpreted in this modern world. What a beautiful world it is! No, I'm not being sarcastic. I mean it. Being sick has had this affect on me. In fact, I think this tirade is partly motivated by the sickness.

That's another thing I hate apart from sadness; sickness! Being sick makes me sick. Then there's the L word: Loneliness. I had been lonely for a bit. Yes, for a while I was. I've come to this conclusion (maybe others have too, before me) that being alone sucks. It's the worst thing in the world. You realize soon enough that you're not an island. I kept getting a picture of "The Man Who Loved Islands" by D.H. Lawrence. Often, I've pictured myself as that man and that thought runs shivers down my spine. No more lameduck thoughts for me.

So, what should I say now? Guess, I started thinking again. LOL! Too much thinking and then the thoughts go away. Dissipate. Vanish. Just like ether. I think I'll finish this on the fact that I'm in love. Never found it easier. Never been in love this much and it feels good to be in love with so many people and things.

"Love... love is strange...
Many people take it for a game..."

So, beautiful ones, keep coming so I have more to love.

Poem For Cornelia

2005-03-09T23:44:00.001+05:00

Mar 9, 2005

Poem For Cornelia

You looked sad when I first saw you through the window
But then I looked into those eyes, the windows to your soul.
In them I saw a universe taking birth
In them I saw a world taking shape.
In you I saw the changing of seasons.
I saw Autumn change into spring; I saw you blossom
with the plum, cherry and almond blossom trees.
I saw what you could not see and now I know you will see it too
The coming of your spring, for eternity.

MSNBC - Babes Up in Arms

2005-03-07T00:27:00.000+05:00

MSNBC - Babes Up in Arms

So much for workers' rights. Ha!

Untitled

2005-02-25T04:13:00.001+05:00

...

I called out to my God. I knew that He was in that light or maybe He was the Light.

And I realized, I could be light too. I wanted to reach out to that light and be a part of it. To touch that warm light. And I realized, I could feel His warmth even from such millenial distances. I got up on my feet and started running towards it. But still, I was nowhere near it. The source of the light was constant. It neither dimmed nor brightened. There was no day or night. If there was any, then I was in the twilight. Night lay behind me with a gaping mouth and day stood ahead with extended arms that never quite reached out to me. I thought I was being driven into madness.

So, I realized that in this state, madness would be much better than sanity: running but never quite reaching anywhere.

I called out to my God and I thought I heard humming...

And how fast I ran, faster than the speed of light and still I was far, far away from destiny, from that cool-warm light that was so beckoning and enticing that the feelings of claustrophobia were lost upon me. The percepts of my mind became faster than they ever were.

Sadness turned into happiness even though I was still so far away. It was sheer joy...

Na tha kochh, to Khoda tha, koch na hota, to Khoda hota

July/August 2002: from my little book

A thorn in YOUR flesh

2005-02-02T17:54:00.001+05:00

But where was he going? He began to come out of his trance of delight and liberty. Deep within him he felt the steady burning of shame in the flesh. As yet he could not bear to think of it. But there it was submerged beneath his attention, the raw, steady-burning shame.

It behoved him to be intelligent. As yet he dared not remember what he had done. He only knew the need to get away, away from everything he had been in contact with.

But how? A great pang of fear went through him. He could not bear his shamed flesh to be put again between the hands of authority. Already the hands had been laid upon him, brutally upon his nakedness, ripping open his shame and making him maimed, crippled in his own control.

The Thorn In The Flesh
D.H. Lawrence

And how far will you go before you can get away from it? The voices will always follow you as they have been for more than 15 years.

Enjoy the silence now.

Obituary

2005-01-28T00:00:00.000+05:00

As soon as I signed in, Asad asks me if I had heard the news and I said, "What news?" With this deadweight feeling that I knew it was not good I told him not to tell me if it was something bad and then it comes, "Didn't you hear about Sir Hidayatullah?

no
dont tell me

And to make the news come slowly, I said, "I wasn't online."

But I had known what was coming. He had cancer but I still asked how and when. It didn't really matter how and when.

Sir Hidayatullah was dead.

He had died the day before yesterday. I cried a lot when I heard it and I cried even as I typed all this.

"I cant believe that he's dead".

He was a great man. Sir was an institution, an asset, that has now been forever lost.

I thought about his kid, the one who was our junior. I liked him a lot. Not just because he was a good guy but I guess mostly because he was that great's man's son as well. The last time I went to IMSciences, I asked him about Sir's health. It was well known in IMS circles that Sir had stepped down when his cancer was diagnosed, and now he was dead.

I dont' know if many people sound my sentiments for Sir but he was one of the first people in my life as a university student to have impressed me. He never taught any of our undergraduate class but we had this confidence in ourselves due to his leadership

It was this leadership that got him into trouble with many of the authorities in the bureaucratic set up of the university. His dream of seeing IMS as a great and independent institute, one at par with LUMS and IBA was shattered when IMS was broken into two pieces due to the vested interests of a few. Though our part of IMS has gone downhill since, Sir's long term vision led the other half to new heights.

I remember the many who used to say, "Sciences will not take off. Sciences is (sir) Hidayatullah's personal pet." I didn't agree with them and he proved it when he stepped down and let someone else take it from there. Even as he was stepping down, Sciences was setting new standards and many of us saw it when we used to visit it. Today that other IMS is headed by another capable head but it was Sir's auspicious leadership, which has put IMSciences where IMStudies hasn't been able to reach yet and maybe not in the next few years.

We've always been the students of Sir's IMS first. The visionary's IMS, the one that didn't want to churn out clods but kids who turned into businesspeople. It was that vision that I remember from my first day in IMS where Mr. Zia ul Qamar addressed us.

"...You are the future of this institution, of this Province. We want you to be at par with the undergraduates of IBA and LUMS. We want that you should look and talk like business graduates and not just ordinary university folks..."

Though that vision was lost halfway through the middle for us, it's still alive for many other people. I wish there were more leaders like Sir. I know there are among us. We might not know it. We might not believe it but it's true. I hope that our part of IMS, IMStudies, will have a renaissance and that it also gets the visionary leadership that Sir had had.

Sir, we'll miss you.

Ushering in the New Year

2005-01-04T19:40:00.001+05:00

So it has begun... on a sad note, the year 2005. I can't believe that just yesterday i.e., in 2001, I was only 20 years old. :

Nopes, I'm not feeling sorry about getting older. What I feel bad about is that as a 20 year old, I had positivity (believe it or not!), I was very hopeful about everything (yes, that includes myself as well) and I was wiser. As time has gone by, I've become stupid, negative and downright idiotic with too many expectations and far less efforts to put in. Haaa! I don't have any new year's resolutions as usual. They're made to be broken anyway. BUT! I've decided, I'll try to be a wee bit more positive. Things might not always go my way but then who the hell ever says that things have gone their way; so to hell with perfection. :P

Untitled

2004-12-31T05:43:00.001+05:00

For the Tsunami victims...

Ghar hamara, jo na rotay bhi to veeran hota
behr gar behr na hota, to bayaban hota

Tangi e dil ka gila kya, yeh woh kafir dil hai
ke agar tang na hota, to pareshan hota...

Asadullah Ghalib

From Deewan e Ghalib

Crocus: After Valentine's

2004-12-17T22:30:00.000+05:00

I always wanted to write this poem. Imagine that. In any case, one could say it's for the blatant commercialism that plagues Valentine's Day or the concept of love or love itself (if there's any such thing called love). For myself, it's something else. Just ironic how things never last.

10:30 pm Friday, December 17, 2004

Crocus: After Valentine's

Losing their color
in a white enamel vase,
crocuses wilt,
feelings die
after valentine’s day.

A Little White Upon a Field of Yellow

2004-12-17T03:25:00.000+05:00

Completed on 17th December, 2004

A Little White Upon a Field of Yellow

By the river Indus
A white car travels on a road
Through the upper Punjab plains
With yellow fields of mustard
On both sides
Assiduous men and women
Are so you so unaware
Of this beauty
That you can’t hear the children’s banter
The soundtrack of your lives
Or the passing of trucks
Or see the train track that leads nowhere
To nowhere but then somewhere…
Like a snake worming it’s way
Through stones that were
Once part of a sea long forgotten
On a dusty road where it seldom rains
Like a little white upon a field of yellow
Upon your field of yellow…

...and a song of despair

2004-12-16T23:33:00.000+05:00

I got nothing to say and nothing to hide, so just let me go and let me die. Alone.

A Song of Despair

The memory of you emerges from the night around me.
The river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea.

Deserted like the dwarves at dawn.
It is the hour of departure, oh deserted one!

Cold flower heads are raining over my heart.
Oh pit of debris, fierce cave of the shipwrecked.

In you the wars and the flights accumulated.
From you the wings of the song birds rose.

You swallowed everything, like distance.
Like the sea, like time. In you everything sank!

It was the happy hour of assault and the kiss.
The hour of the spell that blazed like a lighthouse.

Pilot's dread, fury of blind driver,
turbulent drunkenness of love, in you everything sank!

In the childhood of mist my soul, winged and wounded.
Lost discoverer, in you everything sank!

You girdled sorrow, you clung to desire,
sadness stunned you, in you everything sank!

I made the wall of shadow draw back,
beyond desire and act, I walked on.

Oh flesh, my own flesh, woman whom I loved and lost,
I summon you in the moist hour, I raise my song to you.

Like a jar you housed infinite tenderness.
and the infinite oblivion shattered you like a jar.

There was the black solitude of the islands,
and there, woman of love, your arms took me in.

There was thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit.
There were grief and ruins, and you were the miracle.

Ah woman, I do not know how you could contain me
in the earth of your soul, in the cross of your arms!

How terrible and brief my desire was to you!
How difficult and drunken, how tensed and avid.

Cemetery of kisses, there is still fire in your tombs,
still the fruited boughs burn, pecked at by birds.

Oh the bitten mouth, oh the kissed limbs,
oh the hungering teeth, oh the entwined bodies.

Oh the mad coupling of hope and force
in which we merged and despaired.

And the tenderness, light as water and as flour.
And the word scarcely begun on the lips.

This was my destiny and in it was my voyage of my longing,
and in it my longing fell, in you everything sank!

Oh pit of debris, everything fell into you,
what sorrow did you not express, in what sorrow are you not drowned!

From billow to billow you still called and sang.
Standing like a sailor in the prow of a vessel.

You still flowered in songs, you still brike the currents.
Oh pit of debris, open and bitter well.

Pale blind diver, luckless slinger,
lost discoverer, in you everything sank!

It is the hour of departure, the hard cold hour
which the night fastens to all the timetables.

The rustling belt of the sea girdles the shore.
Cold stars heave up, black birds migrate.

Deserted like the wharves at dawn.
Only tremulous shadow twists in my hands.

Oh farther than everything. Oh farther than everything.

It is the hour of departure. Oh abandoned one!

Pablo Neruda

From the translations by W. S. Merwin

Original entry published in my journal on deviantArt at Yadwigha's Journal.

All The Way

2004-11-20T01:46:00.000+05:00

All the Way and Back (Not Quite)

All the way
Beauty
Children play
Mini traffic jams
Real big trawlers
All the way
Children coming back
from schools
railway lines
phone lines
electric poles
Train stations
In strange places
eucalyptus trees
dust
Zak CNG
Shahzade driving a yellow van
Green turret of Your mosque
Truck hotels
And nothing
Plains and glimpses
Of Kabul
Trees
Ahista/Slow
You’ve come to Al-Jameel
Old buildings
And a girls’ college
Underground passageways
All the way
Closed to heavy vehicles
Green colored gates
Bougainvillea
Chalk filled stream
Incomplete plazas
On GT road
Three women
Through the fields
In an imperfect file
Modern English Institute
On a wall of drying cow dung piles
Empty gorges flow sand
To the streams
Marble factories
And warnings
All the way
Mounds of refuse
Rows of unbaked bricks
Shaidu and some long
Forgotten memory?
Choosing tours
All the way
Pipelines go underground
River flow over ground
Right beside me
All the way
"Oh now feel it comin’ back again
Like a rollin’ thunder chasing the wind"
Roadside restaurants
Colorful boats in low tide
Ae kikriyan
ae talian o jhoota
Assan chhor ditta babul de weira
The Sind
And junctures where
Rivers meet
Khabi aona factory
People in the fields
Upright sacks of nothing
As sheep rest under trees
And silence, which is free
Read those reeds
Flowing through the mind
Plastic clad fingers
“I looked ahead I’m sure
I saw you there”
Bypasses and junctions
Motorways and roads
New places to see
And thoughts to think
All the way
Remember you
And how you drank
Your tears away
Flaws in perfection
Reeds, reeds, reeds
A sea of reeds
And what song do they sing?
Inherent unhappiness
The fast forward scenery
Swirls of cirrus clouds
And change of roads
These rites of passages
Never known
Earth sucking eucalyptus
Line the road
“When we dance
the angels will run and hide”
Middle Punjab plains
The setting sun behind
A last wall barring light
Dregs of the day wash away
We are going around
Trying to find a way
Out of the high stonewalls
Stains of salt
On ferrous soil
A glimpse of the moon
Through the window
Shifting landscapes
Receding trees
“I just wanna get closer than
close to you”
A white snake crawling through
The heart of Punjab
Patterns move on its skin
[Bye]
Haseenoun ka smuggler has passed us by
“It's quiet now, and what it brings is everything...
Comes calling back a brilliant night, I'm still awake
I looked ahead I'm sure I saw you there
You don't need me to tell you now, that nothing can compare
You might have laughed if I told you
You might have hidden a frown
You might have succeeded in changing me
I might have been turned around
It's easier to leave than to be left behind
Leaving was never my proud
Leaving New York never easy
I saw the life fading out”
Dry riverbeds and emptiness of the sea
Low lying fog
Smell of the burning logs
Desert lights
Yellow reptilian line
Moving along the bus
Light reflects water
Reflects light
Hollow sound of silence
Coughing
Empty check in counters
Tired passengers
Porters walk around me
Crisscrossed ceiling designs
Empty rows of seats
And a blond colored in sadness
A man sitting sleeps
Kids on the internet
Too hot, too cold
Daughter and father duo
Hand in hand
Diaper change
Tough guy in a peach colored shirt
“Sanoun pata tere dil wich chor nee”
Interminable wait of those
Ready to depart
Ten exhausts in the ceiling
Light fixtures, ten of these too, amazing!
Plastic green backed pacifier
Our only man gone berserk
“Oh… don’t leave home”
If I cry…
Sunrise over the same sky
And I am smiling

19-20th November, 2004

Wrote this on the way to Thailand. From Peshawar to Lahore, all the way to Bangkok. (:

Thankful for what I don't have

2004-11-18T04:37:00.001+05:00

Many times in our lives, we're confronted with dilemmas that might have no affect on the health of the world or it's inhabitants but their effects on us are earthshattering. To think that despite everything that one might lose, there is so much beauty in life that even if we spent every second just being thankful for what we have, it would be less.

But how many times are we thankful for what we don't have? I don't think we even give that a thought. Many times we're running after heaven right here on this earth and when we don't get it, how we fight with God! Since God knows His ways best, He shows us soon enough that we were wrong to want that thing and that thing would not have been good for us. But we don't think about that after a while. We're not thankful for that.

After a long time, I've come to realize that I should and I must be thankful also for all the things that I couldn't have in my life. Even though at that time I used to think that there was no life without these. And here's life now. It's still incomplete (but what is completeness?) but guess this is all a path towards discovery of the ultimate goal. Of course when one chooses a different way, one must be prepared for the difficulties that might arise in doing so. I guess I'm ready now. Not that much maybe but ready to say I'm thankful for what I don't have!

I'll be leaving for Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore tomorrow i.e., 19th InshAllah! Just have all these weird feelings about being so far away for the first time from my country and the people I love. I just realized how much I love (but what is love?) this place even though I hate it. Its people. Its colors and the absense of them. Its ups and downs. The bends of Hayatabad. The trees in Cantt. The vroom of the bikes on the Phase 6 road. Even the stupid tommies. The campus. Most of all my sisters and my brothers and my friends. Late night talks and all the plans of glory. These are the things I'll miss.

And I'm only just going for a few days. (: May it all go well.

I'll miss you. So very much.

Eid Mobarik!

2004-11-13T18:29:00.001+05:00

The (possible) eve of Eid is here. Wee! It's chand raat already. Ramadan is over. I can't say I'm happy to see it go but surely the Eid day compensates for all that (and also the lost weight :P and no I didn't lose much hehehe). I hope everyone had a nice Ramadan. I sure did. So it's off to village for me on Eid day. Anyway, a very very happy, sweet and fun-filled Eid to everyone!

{{{HUGS}}} specially for Eid.

A Funeral Pyre as a Bridal Bed

2004-10-30T01:33:00.000+05:00

A funeral pyre as a bridal bed,
These black tears for pearls,
This sadness, these curses
shall be her dowry

Death and destruction
Unholy matrimony
Garlands and bouquets of grave flowers
shall adorn the funeral pyre

Immortality of desolation,
anguish and sorrow;
Many days of reveling in despair
This funeral bed this bridal pyre

Oh! To seek comfort
In mourning and regret
of moments that were momentous
The wedding march or funereal procession

Turn these nuptials into interment
Wail! Oh ghastly is the bride’s veil
These hours of darkness, melancholy
Hush! Let us hear the vows now

Started Friday, September 17, 2004
Finished Saturday, October 30, 2004

Letter From my Conscience

2004-10-24T17:16:00.000+05:00

Lying with the rest of my junk was this letter, which was part of an assignment in the Business Communication class. We were supposed to write a letter to someone, anyone. I wrote one to myself.

Jardin de Fleur
Hayatabad
Peshawar

April 3, 2000

My Foolish Heart
Peshawar
Pakistan

My Foolish Heart

You will be very much surprised to find my letter. Partly because of the fact that we have never met and partly due to this confession that is in all probability my last letter to you.

My Dear Friend, before I write anything else, I must admit not only to you but also to myself that though we have been acquainted for long, I feel as though I have never known you in eternity. You may think otherwise.

Such a confession on my part might rouse your anger or bring confusion to a mind already too confused in the face of rising misconceptions between us. I am not writing all this to clear my name but just to tell that I still have faith in you and the faith in the fact that you can distinguish right from wrong and that you have not turned into a hypocrite.

I believe that the barriers and hurdles being created by events in the way of our friendship may only be removed if both of us try. If it’s just a one-night stand and a one sided issue, how can we right the whole world?

Right now, maybe, you have feelings of hatred towards me due to the third rate interests of conflicting emotions and the trepidations that you have thus come to accept readily as true. Can’t we sit together and solve this problem? If this devil had been nipped in the bud, it would not have caused us this much sorrow.

I do not want to stop you from experiencing life as I can see that your heart pulls you to the fair side of it but should it be at the cost of one’s friendship? You can keep your love alive but should that make you forget your friends?

Oh, but I see I am the only forgotten friend. If fate is playing a game on us, we cannot blame it, but if the devil is causing your heart to play games on your mind, who is to blame?

Like every human being, you need warmth and affection and all this time you have waited for them to arrive without results. But our relationship has reached a cold point where our only communication is a nod of the head (and sometimes not even that). How long, may I ask, can I mask my sighs with sour laughter?

In your heart, you may think of me as an unsound mind but I have written this under great duress from the powers that be. Pride seems to be breaking under this emotional wreckage.

I have sworn my allegiance to you in front of God! What more do you want?

Nevertheless, the ball is in your court now. You may want to clean up or not but at least this load is off my chest. Before I close, you may want to know why I have developed such strong passion for you. My only answer is one that you know. I am a part of you and you gave me the life that I have. You have shown me that I am all that and more.

I don’t know how you made all these miracles but I think it needs a degree of self-awareness and I can tell you that I will always be with you no matter where you go and I will still love you if you don’t.

Waiting impatiently for your return into my world. Wish you were here.

Yours truly
Mind

How to Become a Politician

2004-10-24T17:05:00.001+05:00

I wrote this back in 2000 to cheer up my mom. I don't know why I specifically wrote about Politicians because at that time I was quite young for that stuff. I do think I had a better writing style then. Hmmm... Anyway, I'm posting this here because it seems apt for politicians anywhere in the world. It made me laugh when I found it a couple of days back in my junk. Khair, here's the piece dedicated to the US Elections of 2004. (:

Ingredients

Lies
Bribery
Horse-trading
False promises
Utopian ideas
Black money
Mafia connections
Forgetfulness

Preparation

All politicians are conmen. Therefore, to become a politician, one must first have training in looting people through various schemes. Now, he must lie i.e., white lie, in such a way that everyone thinks it’s the truth. Bribery, mafia connections and black money are the golden principles of a successful politician. “Lie! Lie! Lie!” should be his motto. Make promises and effectively forget them after getting a ticket. Politics is the only field in which Alzheimer’s disease is desired and duly rewarded. The promises should contain such utopian ideas, as “We shall conquer the sun and also the galaxy M-2”!

Horse-trading should be carried out once the ticket is yours.

To become an international politician or have such repute, one needs the same qualities with the addition of extramarital affairs with interns to boost your popularity polls.

By careful following the above steps, the winning result of this recipe becomes visible in just a matter of time and there’s no doubt that you will become a “Great Politician”.

Caution

All regions have some people with germs of sanity who will try to stop you. Crush them with the help of your mafia connections and the ticket to the assembly is surely all yours.

The Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi

2004-10-24T16:53:00.000+05:00

This prayer was in a very old book, from which I copied it a long time back. Just felt like it should be here. It's a prayer for these times.

The Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi

Lord make me a channel of Thy peace,
That where there is hatred I may bring love;
That where there is wrong I may bring the spirit of forgiveness;
That where there is discord I may bring harmony;
That where there is error I may bring truth;
That where there is doubt I may bring faith;
That where there is despair I may bring hope;
And where there are shadows I may bring Thy light;
That where there is sadness I may bring joy;
Lord grant that I may seek rather to comfort than be comforted,
To understand than be understood,
To love than be loved;
For it is by giving that one receives,
It is by self-forgetting that one finds,
It is by forgiving that one is forgiven,It is by dying that one awakens to eternal life.

Last Evening With Her

2004-10-22T20:25:00.000+05:00

A Haiku poem (I haven't really followed the strict rules of haiku writing except that these were spontaneous lines, which is the first rule of a haiku)

Last Evening With Her

a. she is here
vase of roses on the sill
flutter by butterfly

b. quiet whispers
fireworks in the sky
fading evening

c. loud laughter spills
blood vomit on the footpath
emptiness of soul

A Short Flight of Fancy

2004-10-21T03:54:00.000+05:00

There was a time when I was searching for the meaning of love. I was conducting interviews for a research report on love. That was 5 years ago. Now it seems like 5000 years ago.

What was the conclusion? I have to be in love to know it. 5 years or so down the line, I don't know where I stand regarding this surreal inexplicable feeling. I was asking myself today if I really have to be dumb for someone to love me as much as I love them. And I mean love of any kind not just that between a strange man and woman. Am I pretty? Am I beautiful? Am I smart? Am I overweight or fat? Do I only have faults and nothing good to show? Is everything good in the physics of matter?

What I feel doesn't seem to matter. As of yesterday, I've been given a new title of Psycho. I have been told many times before that I feel too much. Maybe I do but I have wondered what is wrong with that? Sometimes, I think, it's because people can't feel much that they want me to be the same as them or maybe it's true about me being a psycho. Oh, it hurts so to be called that. This is the life of a woman who isn't pretty in someone's eyes (or maybe everyone?).

This is the first time, I'm whining like this about my discrepancies. There's no freedom of thought to be exercised. Even the artists today are too arrogant. I could sit down and analyse this like Plato but then what. It'd confirm to some that I really am a psycho.

Why do I suddenly care? Oh, I don't. It's just when it's a specific someone that it starts hurting as if someone stabbed with a blunt knife. Sick. I shouldn't care. Maybe that's how it should be. Already got too many problems and now this. God and studies are more important. I should be more concerned about how I'm going to finance my education then all this. Now I'm focusing again.

Thank you God for letting me spit it all out here and through all the stupid rivers I cried today. May this never happen again.