Scarlet Wings

something new

2011-10-06T03:11:00.000-07:00

Hello my old and new readers! I have moved here http://idlingontherainbow.wordpress.com/.

Fear that stops

2011-10-04T07:57:00.000-07:00

The problem to most of our failures in life comes from the fear of it. At every important turn in our lives when we are making significant decisions, the unknown hidden fear related to our decision clouds our vision. Hence stopping us from taking a step towards it. We may not realize it for its not easy to accept that we are fearful of something especially of things we want the most.

In the course of my journey in life and on accounts of bagging a number of regrets along, this is something coming from a bit of experience. It is simple things such as swimming from example or pursuing some other hobby. There is the fear of failing at it. In someone's life it is the fear of rejection from a beloved, the fear of being called a fool in a room full of presumably intelligent people, that you think know more than you, the fear of applying for a job or a scholarship pondering unnecessarily on the negative.

Why? Because in all the cases there is the fear of rejection, failing, losing but we hardly realize that it is always worth a shot. It is better than trying our luck at something than regretting it later just because we didnt try it at all.

One of my fears may seem ridiculous but it has been so. I have had this love for calligraphy for a long time. I have been a good sketcher and thought that it wont be too hard to get good at this art form. Its been 3 years since I have randomly tried to work on certain calligraphy pieces, bought the pens and books to learn from but never finished anything. Somehow a tiny bit of fear lurked somewhere whispering ' what if I hold the pen and start writing and fail to create a beautiful piece'. The fear of failing in my own eyes, of realising that I cannot get better at it always held me back.

Little do we think that its worth a try. Unless we try, we wont know and when we try, there would be one less regret. At least we would have given it a shot.

Journey with Harry Potter

2011-08-17T03:34:00.000-07:00

‘What made you take out these after such a long time? And I see you are hooked onto them again.’ said my mother a little amused. I looked over my copy of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and smiled at her. ‘Mama, I was always a Potterhead you know’ I said as she walked out of the room.

After 2007, when the final book launched, my Harry Potter book collection some pirated and three original copies quietly found their place in the rack along with other books. This year as the final installment of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows film part 2 came out and became the talk of the town (actually the world) the sleepy Potter fan inside me woke up with full zeal. Hence these days I’m found with a Harry Potter book in my hand around the house.

To some it may seem totally pointless to go on talking about something which is now over. However, love has no limits does it? Justified or not, as a true Potter head from heart and soul, I can never thank J. K Rowling enough for giving us a glimpse of the wonderful fantasy world.

It seems that the marketing of Deathly Hallows part 2 has triggered the Potter fever back into the minds of people, young and old. A lot of my friends on Facebook started putting up statuses about the final film being an awesomely true magical entertainment. Film reviews opine the same. Many who never read the books have expressed that they loved the movie. Even the book fans like me, who have found that all the films on the series could never do justice to the books, seem to have immensely loved the movie for a change.

The timing of the Potter series coming out couldn’t have been better. The first time I was given the first part to read was in 2000 though the book was initially launched back in 1997. Like all the things that come a bit late in Pakistan, so did the knowledge about these books. It is interesting to note that while the first book was released in 1997 in UK, it went to US a year late and so did the second book! Considering this it’s not bad that Pakistan eventually caught up to the fever not too late.

I remember my brother randomly found Harry Potter and brought it home. I read a first few pages and put it away by my bedside not finding it as interesting as my brother. I opened the book again sometime later and then there was no putting it away. When Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows came out, a happy me was standing in a queue in England at midnight to wait for a copy of my book.

What makes us sad to part ways with it is that we literally grew up with an ordinary boy who went onto become extraordinary. A friend of mine said that maybe the next generation will not experience the books as we did. They might not be able to adore the books or wait every year for Rowling to finish her work on another one. The amazing thing is that it’s not only a children’s book. Though aimed at a younger audience, the books and the story, its adventures appeal to everyone. I have grown up brothers and cousins who were in their twenties when the series started to come and they were found engrossed in the books with equal anticipation.

The magic of the novels was such that it made us fear and hate Voldemort and we as readers too took our time in shifting from saying ‘He Who Must Not Be Named’ to ‘Voldemort’. We felt pain with Harry as went through his ordeal of fighting evil. When Harry and his friends hated Malfoy so did we. Gilderoy Lockhart was as irritating to us as they were to Harry and Ron though Hermione dotted Lockhart. Bellatrix gave us goosebumps and more reasons to hate her. As harry and his friends discovered their strengths and weakness growing up, we discovered ours too. Our hearts broke as we read that Sirius Black had died. We eagerly waited for next part, contemplating and discussing among friends, hoping for Sirius’s comeback. There is so much more that connects us muggles to the fictional kid’s adventures. There is nostalgia and reluctance in saying good bye to the fantastical world of Hogwarts, good and evil wizards and magic spells.

Another thing that made Harry Potter special was the themes that Rowling used very intelligently. The books spoke out about some very valuable things in life, like friendship, honesty, bravery, standing up for what is right, the battle between evil and good. There was a lot of food for thought from wise characters like Dumbledore. One is the end note of this post.

“It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live” Dumbledore to Harry in Philosopher’s Stone.

May you live long

2011-08-14T02:18:00.000-07:00

My heart goes out to my country. Yes I love Pakistan. Despite the cynic in me, I love her soil, her rivers, her mountains, her unmatched scenic beauty in the entire world. The entire year I complain and whine about all the things that are wrong with my land. Its the politicians, corruption, nepotism, religious sects and their divide, load shedding, shortage of water, the non tax paying heartless goons, the ugly label of terrorism, low literacy rate and a long list of nerve racking problems and crisis .

There is a rush of anger I feel when something or the other goes wrong with Pakistan. I hear myself not being happy with Pakistan and like many of us, I too dream of fleeing to greener pastures where life would be secure and stable. But I realise that every time Pakistan faces a downfall, every time it bleeds, every time people point fingers at it, it is not my dislike towards her that makes me go red in the face. It is because I immensely love the land where today I live and breathe and it pains me to see her getting hurt and maimed at the hands of corruption, lies and deceit and elements hell bent on tearing it apart.

No matter how much I try or think that I cannot love a place that is ridden with innumerable problems and turmoils, there is an invisible umbilical cord that ties me with Pakistan's soil. It is something in my blood that rushes through me every year as 14th August approaches and forces me to reflect on myself and the situation around.

It makes me think about the hundreds of selfless people who migrated in the dark of the night, in the early hours of the day, on their way sacrificing their lives and loved ones. And it is no easy feat to push your own daughters and sisters down a train or a well or see your fathers and brothers been killed by daggers by unknown faces only to protect your integrity, to safeguard a newly born land. Our people did this. They died in hope to keep the newly born Pakistan alive. My heart goes out to these people, their pristine souls and their bravery.

So what is it that draws us far from the spirit of our elders, far from what is the heart beat of our lives. For me its the lies, the dishonesty, the double dealings, unfulfilled promises of the so called leaders, the blood of my brothers and sisters that dries up on the roads and streets after 'terrorist attacks' and easily gets forgotten by us all. It is this and much more, things very basic, things that are the right of the citizens; something that people in many countries take for granted but the poor in this land can only dream of.

I reflect today and tomorrow and pledge yet again to stay true to the heart of Pakistan because when it skips a beat, my heart too goes restless. It must be realised that we need to unite. Cliched as it may sound, we need to look deeper into the meaning of uniting. We need to look past our sects and languages and provincial boundaries. We need to mend the divides that scar our ideology today. We are Pakistan, one country. If a man in up North gets killed, if a youth is denied a job because of nepotism in Balochistan, or if a sick dies on its way to the hospital owing to the traffic block (read: VIP passing) we all should feel the same pain. We are one. We need to make efforts honestly and courageously in our own spheres of life, if we are doctors, artists, scientists, or simply housewives, we need to think Pakistan.

Cursing the dead

2011-08-09T04:22:00.000-07:00

Finally being on Twitter does come with benefits. For all the time that twitter has been here, on this planet earth and making ‘waves’ in peoples’ lives, it’s today that I have understood how it actually works. This would definitely make me sound technologically handicapped but then you cannot expect everyone to know everything ! one thing that sort of makes me shift in my sofa is the ‘@’ sign on the twitter page, I mean so many of them together makes twitter look a bit shabby doesn’t it? Ok, I see eyes glaring at this piece. Brushing my digression aside, today as I opened Twitter for an umpteenth time sometimes from mobile and sometimes from laptop, hoping something ‘out of the world’ will be waiting for me, I found something bordering on interesting. Tazeen, the blogger of A reluctant mind, now quite famous in blogosphere and twitter had a tweet about someone putting up Zia ul Haq’s album on FB (another of our favourite past times).

One click on the link, opened a huge album, all dedicated to the memory of Zia ul Haq. There were around 70 pictures. First thought, Ok so there are people who create photo albums of dead people on Facebook other than their own posy ones? Second thought was triggered by the name of the album which had Zia’s ul Haq and ‘Shaheed’ mentioned together. Ahan, I thought. Pause. I clicked and clicked and clicked. All black and white, brilliant white where Zia’s teeth shone. Third thought, ok so Zia had met almost the entire world’s leaders with his 32 set of teeth, his flashy smile at the press before he actually died and went onto become shaheed. Fourth, he was exceptionally happy in all the pictures taken in east, west and south. Luminous, even in black and white contrary to what we have heard and read about Zia’s regime.

Nothing new there, leaders new or old, dead or alive in Pakistan have all been on foreign tours and a lot of them while their people suffered in one way or the other. And a lot of people say whats the big deal? So do the other leaders of other countries across the Arabian Sea (where lies the legendary Osama bin laden or is it in some other mysterious waters) lavish in foreign tours and mingle with pretty ladies and gents in suits in prospered lands than their own. No big deal there. True. Sad. Sad like the sorry state of our land of the pure.

With innumerable crisis invading us and our country, we the people, quickly restore to curse the dead or the living of the politicians for that gives us some room for catharsis. This chap/ lady, whoever the brave one was had done the opposite. Perhaps a big fan of great politicians he/she thought better of the pictures than I did. A look around our flourishing media and you will know what I mean. Everyone from journalists to common man to rival politicians- everyone is busy cursing and blaming the dead Zia ul Haq for the party of terrorists having a holiday in our land today. However, we are not that insensitive now. It’s not just the poor shaheed chap but also the ones who still breathe, albeit in green pastures far from the troubled soil of ours. The question is, is it wrong and immoral or unethical to go on bashing our politicians ? I say no because we too have to survive in these dark times be it through verbal attacks or parodies on TV or something else, as long as it doesnt do much harm.

Hence, I go back to my tweeting and facebooking. I think I missed writing ‘pun intended’ in a lot of sentences for a) it sounds cool and b) because I meant it.

Story of the Lost Bag

2011-07-24T11:20:00.000-07:00

We all have a story about our bag(s) that we have lost once in our life at least. Personally I have lost many things let alone a bag. For example, a wristwatch, mobile phones and even a laptop! Though I totally regret the mentioned losses( each of the them calls for a story) but what I don’t regret but rather sort of cherish is the story of how I lost and also found my bag. I think the reason this story has found its way into the ‘cherish able memories’ is because I eventually found it.

This was once upon a time back in 3^rd or 4^th grade. It was a bright sunny, in fact a hot summer day. The school was dismissed and we were free to run and play while we waited for our bus/van. My routine was to put my 5kg school bag in front of the white fence near the school gate along with my water bottle and run towards the playground. This is what half the school kids used to go. Hence there used to be a party of bags squeezed together within 10 minutes after school hours.

That day it got a bit unusually late for my van driver to pick me up from school. By the time my van’s uncle came and easily found me jumping around in the fading crowd of kids, I ran to pick my bag. But lo and behold what was that? My bag was nowhere to be found! I looked and looked and panicked; my bag, home to school books and notebooks, stationery - the treasure of life. What will I do without it? How will I take my exam? Who took my bag and why? Tears were already crowding my eyes as I helplessly searched.

Suddenly, the van driver called out to me from near the gate. Apparently he had found my precious bag (he knew how the bags of his van’s kids’ looked like). I quickly made my way soon to be disappointed that it wasn’t my bag. Only that it looked like mine. Aha! Now it made sense. There must be a student with exactly the same bag as mine. The girl who most probably took it, thought it to be hers! Silly girl! The problem, however, persisted. What do I do? How do I find the non chalant, careless girl? Then came to my rescue the calm driver uncle.

On his suggestion we opened that girl’s bag, found her homework diary and from there got her home number ( as kids we used to fill all our home details in homework diaries, mobiles didn’t exist then plus we were kids!). Since it was not age of cell phones, my driver uncle had to call the girl from the school office and first explain ‘why we were making the call’.

It was already late and on top of that, the girl hadn’t gotten home! So I had to take her bag home with me worrying and crying all the while about my homework due the next day. It felt like the end of the world. Came the next morning and I thankfully found the girl in school and exchanged bags. And yes I got a new bag from ‘abroad’ to avoid having same bags as others: p (just made that up)

Now as I look back at this silly episode and compare it to bigger problems we have to face as an individual and as a nation, I feel nothing but hopeless. There are a lot of unwanted baggage that we as Pakistanis carry and feel burdened by it. The bag of load shedding, the bag of drone attacks, and the bag of tried and tested politicians and the bag of terror we as Pakistanis carry each day of our lives and then question is it our war or is it not? For one we are not able to get rid of any of these bags no matter how much we want. Sadly no one is going to come and mistakenly think it theirs and take it away…

Bon appetit a tous

2011-06-27T10:16:00.000-07:00

Yes. I am back, yet again to my very own blog. It feels good to call something your own. Just as I had thought and knew, I would go on to start the post with a totally random thing. I think I need to sort of renovate this blogging space of mine. I have come in the early hours of the day, during the awfully hot summer afternoons and sometimes way late into the starry night to have a look at this webpage - the space of my thoughts and ideas, no matter how lame. Of late every time that I have clicked my way here, peaked in and thought - 'Great! I have nothing to write about'. Though there is always, ALWAYS a thought up in my mind.

However, though I dont want to sound the problem child here but I need to admit it loud and open that I have been whining quite a lot lately. And I mean A LOT when I say it. There have been days when I wanted someone to pull me out of the ocean of despair and dejection and depression.

The simplest solution was to just lay in my bed, stare up at the ceiling, it too seemed like a feat of tremendous effort to me and then just drift off...only if I knew the direction of 'drifting', it might have helped. Or had I only tried.

Then I happened to watch Julie and Julia, the movie only a few hours back. It did the trick. I have this interest in baking, something that I havent shared on my blog and now feel I have done injustice to no one but myself. As my creative juices shot up, I thought to myself, why didnt I think of this before!! The story was about an American woman Julia Child who went onto become famous by teaching the Americans the art of French cooking (through her books, later TV shows) and the blogger Julie Powell who cruised her way through cooking by using Child's recipes. Both ended up writing books and becoming famous for something they truly enjoyed doing.

As for me, I love baking though I cannot claim to be very good at it. Baking is one of my recent interests and so I have tried my hands at cookies, cakes and muffins, apple pies - nothing out of the world but its edible. And people smile when they eat what I bake - an acknowledgement to my bearable baking.

After the movie session, I feel revived from my past deliberate plunge into the ocean of *beep*. There is still something I can do and get better at IF I remain consistent because that is something exactly both Julia and Julie did.

The resolution is to remain consistent at all the things I m trying to do in life. *sigh*

Peeling off the layers...

2011-05-29T12:09:00.000-07:00

Why have I gone crazy?

Seriously if I knew the answer to the above, I would never put it up for my own humiliation in front of whatever little audience/readers I have on a lonely blog of mine. Lately I have noticed some symptoms of craziness surfacing up all over me.

What has led me to question my lost sanity? This summer afternoon as people hide in their air conditioned room, I too sit in the bliss of this cooling machine as long as the electricity allows me and wonder; have the dams suddenly been filled with extra water?

While I sit and absorb my family’s chat, the blaring television and allow my eyes to dart on the laptop’s screen; sleep starts to creep its way up my feet. The intoxicating cool air from the cooling machine succeeds at dragging me to blissful dose of afternoon nap. I resist. I succeed in beating the overwhelming luring spell.

After an hour of fighting with my deranged, lazy nutty self, I am still sitting in the room with the cooling machine, spreading its spell of delicious druggy sleep. My eyes are still on the computer screen with my ears open to the sounds around me. Once in a while I pitch in my opinion in the family discussion and comment on the bullshit on television. Unfortunately I have done little as far as accomplishing my little tasks, like reading, writing and skimming through newspapers online.

This is the point I realize that I have lost whatever sanity was left of me. I do this every time. I make pious resolutions of doing this and that only to fail at getting things done. There’s got to be some limit to what disasters humans can do! It would save me a lot of my brains and time!

Certain dilemmas, unanswered riddles of life, unaccomplished goals, I don’t know what but it is something big, something ugly that always, ALWAYS, hinders my focus, my concentration. Lately my poor time management, lack of interest in things I am supposed to be good at, short attention span has led me to believe that I m growing senile ! This should be something scary for a woman my age!

Now as I reminisce about what has gone by, it is hard to believe that I, the lame lazy person that I m today, was actually a capable person of some merit. In very plain words, I have sucked in life quite a lot of times. However, there was a wave of potential energy in me not long ago. Yet it is near to impossible for me to recall the times when I had the efficacy of considerable amount!

SO ? Where has all the enthusiasm for life vanished? Why have I accepted the senile side of me so easily? The discovery of my ‘new’ benighted self is astounding but what is more astonishing is that I have ceded my intellectual territory to an unknown fear.

The conundrum continues...

A letter to my mum

2011-05-08T05:48:00.000-07:00

Dear Mama,

There is something special about you. Something very special that I fail to put into perfect words.
It was a very fortunate day when I first saw you beaming at me. I was crying and wailing when you picked me, a bundle of wrinkly and pink little thing. My existence was tiny and fragile but it meant the world to you. I remember that there was warmth and promise in your eyes that our relation would last beyond our lifetime.

The day you brought me into this world, the day I saw you, I knew you would always be by my side; sometimes scolding me, sometimes laughing with me, sometimes sharing my pain and tears. I have run into your arms in moments of weakness and come out with renewed strength. As a daughter I have disappointed you many a times, you have, however, never lost hope in me and always guided me through thick and thin.
It puts a smile on my face when I recall the many times I have put my head in your lap and looked up at your serene face and felt that my world is here, with you, in your warm and nourishing love.

It was only the other day when my hair semi wet were rolled in an untidy chignon and mama you came with a brush in your hands and that annoyed look on your face. Like always you told me how lazy I have become and started brushing through my hair. I have read somewhere that having someone to brush through your hair is one of the pleasures of life and rightly so!

Though a grown up now, I still come to you when I m troubled and lost and without any shame, I shed my tears; you take them away from me. Every time you lift your hands for prayer, I know you pray the best for me. I cannot imagine to have been through life so far without your wisdom and your caring heart.

For all the times that I have let you down, that I have not listened to you, that I have not been a good daughter; I want to apologize. Regardless of my short comings, you have always come to save the day. This piece of writing is only a small token of my love, nothing compared to your abundance of love that you shower on your children equally. Mum, you are the best!

yours
lazy mubi :)

Momentary purposelessness

2011-04-23T02:00:00.000-07:00

I picked up the above phrase from one of the articles on a news site. Shamelessly I thought it quite fitting for my own long pending post here. Its alarming that the last piece of writing I left here was in January. I half abandoned the world of blog, forgetting how important it was to me in the past few years that I found and nourished my love for writing ( not that I m a scholarly one for that matter). I have been locked up in a self made bubble of many hurdles, now that I think of, created out of my own imagination. There is still a vague but strong feeling of being lost in a Grand Canyon of my clustered thoughts. Time and again I have reminded myself of the need to break the illusionary bubble for it is doing me no good. I cannot put the feeling to words, either it was defeat or simply a lack of purpose that glued me to my suicidal comfort zone. I preferred it there, doing nothing and merely being a spectator of my surroundings, close and far off. It feels good, sitting in your own space with no one bothering you even if its about your own bed creaking indicating of a 'bed accident' in the near future. Its intoxicating once you give yourself in to the aimlessness of life.

Today is a long summer afternoon, trees under the new summer sun are giving off long shades, hot breeze occasionally blowing the curtains away from the window.One such slow afternoon of many winds ago, I remember sitting in my cocoon of self destruction, gazing into the blank canvas hanging in mid air. My limbs tired of an exhausting peregrinate, eyes tight and watery and jaws locked from holding my lips together against the dusty desert wind. I gave in, closed my eyes and drifted into reverie's labyrinth. It was a momentary purposelessness that felt inviting, a favourite pastime anyway. Day dreaming, brain trying to gathering thoughts from as far as north and south pole, oil thirsty long strands of hair swaying to the fan's cool air about my face. Nothing felt wrong about the slowly creeping in of the intoxication of the momentary purposelessness that stretched into hours, day, weeks and months right before my eyes.

Capable of more than being a breathing organism, I remained a silent spectator of the revolutionary winds that invaded the world, the price hikes, natural disasters, socio economic maze, lives and deaths. I chose to remain mum on issues that mattered to me directly or indirectly. For it felt like a trivial phase about to pass into oblivion, a train waiting to depart at any second. The train's engine became the background sound to my existence. I was to get on the train anytime, just didnt know when...

The delirium is soon to follow or maybe it is what I m talking out of...

2011, what to expect from it

2011-01-17T07:48:00.000-08:00

Is it the mid of January already? What? Seriously? And in no time this year will flash before our eyes and we will be reading the last page of 2011, the farewell.

My last post was a rather heartbroken tale of material loss filled with anger and regret and a tiny bit of hope in the backdrop as 2011 began. Today when I checked for any updates on the neglected blog, the comments there put a smile on my face. A batch mate, Amna (always goes through the torture of reading my writings hehe) wrote how she has lost some of her stuff and man do I salute her! She lost so much more than me! Then another valued reader, UTP had left a comment “you should be a stronger person after such an incident... my grandpa used to say... when something like a theft happened... "He needed it more..." I think he was right... in all cases...” Indeed I feel that I am a stronger person now and it delights me how grandfathers and elders are so right. After all the hugs that my mother could give me, she said something on the same lines. Maybe those who stole needed it more than I did. Well enough of introspect I guess. It’s another year, another day and another story awaits us.

The rate at which days are passing by, in no time will we be lamenting our half done tasks, lost ‘to do’ lists and hopelessly catching up to the deadlines we set for ourselves as the year began. Before we start regretting more of our actions and reactions in the story we weave around us with every new day, it is better we remind ourselves of the follies we have already committed ( yes I use the word ‘committed’ since I feel, it puts the impact that ‘committing a sin’ clause can).

At the beginning of a new year or while promising some resolutions though already knowing their fate even before the first month ends, many of us would ask the million dollar question - what is the mantra of living a better life; a life with less anger, less failures and more accomplishments, healthy relations and so much more.

From all the failings, like many of the readers must have had, I have learnt, that the backbone of cruising safely through life is attitude. Maybe we have read and heard this before. Ya ya attitude right! Followed by a scornful laughter but it is true to some extent if not all.

We need to tailor our attitude towards life. A lot of things that come to us in life is because we unknowingly attract them. There are energies all around us and this brings us to the law of attraction of the Universe. The energies that emerge from us attract the energies of the Universe. If we emit positive energies, we will attract positive force from the Universe. No matter what religion we follow, most of us believe in the doctrine that a divine energy created this Universe. In Islam too we believe that our Creator asks us to pray to Him for what we need and wish for. That we should always hope for the best, we must avoid falling towards the negative and hopelessness. The long trail of ‘ifs’, ‘I wish’, ‘why me’ ‘another failure’ and ‘I m hopeless’ can easily be controlled if only we channel our thoughts with a clarity of our mind. Channeling our thoughts in the right direction gives way to the right attitude. Things that we think about and that keep us occupied become reality. Unconsciously first we create the thoughts and nurture them either positive or negative and see them turn into reality. We are in control of our life. We are the beings of love, intelligence, success and a lot more good things but at the same time we are also beings who have the power to nurture anger, failure, and revenge. Hence it is entirely on us, either we make it or break it. Whether we are optimistic or pessimistic generates from the kind of attitude we carry in life.

Bernard Shaw said “imagination is the beginning of creation. Imagine what you desire and desire what you imagine and finally you end up creating what you desire.” Thus we need to imagine the best in life in order to transmit healthy positive vibes to the law of attraction. We can only expect from 2011 what we want it to be.

Bye bye 2010! thats the door, just leave!

2011-01-01T09:30:00.000-08:00

Another year has come to its end. A new day is waiting to greet us with a mild winter sun peeking out of the massive caravan of clouds and fog. When I started thinking about the 'last post of year 2010' there were still a couple of weeks left in December ending. When I started writing the title and a few lines there was just one day left till the new year. I ended up hitting the 'save' button instead. Technically I m a bit late in writing the 'last' post of 2010. Writing was never this tough for me. Some days I thought, I have lost interest in what I chose as a career, the line of journalism. To revive my lost enthusiasm for writing, I instantly go to my 'how, why, where' guru, the Google. It always ensures that this feeling is just temporary. Soon the writer's block will end and I will be back to normal. *sigh*

This time even Google didn't have the answer to my otherwise described 'writer's block' condition. It was something else. I knew why I wasn't able to write for more than a month. I knew it all along. It was the excruciating feeling of loss that had send me into my shell. It was like the end of the world ! Nothing seemed to matter much. I was hiding in bed, under the warm blanket and thought this will last till eternity and I will leave the world with a broken heart and zilch in my 'will' for my next generation.

I think I m now brave enough to come out of my cocoon and write what I should have written long ago to rid myself of the angst chained deep inside. The tragedy was that I lost a laptop worth 70,000 Rs along with a hand-me-down mobile phone, wallet, cash, ID card and other accessories in an imported bag from my university during a class lecture while I was in the same room. All my data, thesis work, writings, pictures, songs, everything said bye bye to me and within seconds they vanished almost in front of my eyes thanks to the asses who are on a stealing spree this season. So I went saying %$$#@&^# *beep* *BEEP* and glaring at every person with the eye of suspicion.

The epic episode of the robbery/ theft is going to go down in history books for my generation to come. I was crying, panicking, running to trace the thieves with my head spinning and repeatedly saying 'I cannot imagine this to be true'. Now that I recollect the fateful day, I realise the extent of my stupidity and the amount of tears I shed. if someone 'consoles' me about the mishap, I give it a good laugh and narrate the entire incident and the events that followed as if it just happened with one of the characters in the story I m writing.

The idea was to rid myself from the burden of losing some of my precious and valuable things. The more I think about it, it makes me feel not so me. Since when did I start to fuss about 'material' things. I lost what I claimed to contain half of my life's data. But then what? It was destined to happen that way. What was I gaining from emotionally breaking down for days and regretting the necessity of taking laptop to university.

I may never get my stolen stuff back despite all the efforts made to trace it and neither can I teach the moral less gang stealing others' property a lesson. What else can you expect from people when the rulers of the country are no less than thieves themselves. Its not that other countries are crime free or that the people of my country are evil but the ratio of getting justice drops when the people at the top have excellent moral records. Nevertheless, I realised I cannot complain and whine and hide myself from the big bad world only because I faced this. This could happen to anyone. In fact this happens to a lot of people every single day around the world.

Though I cannot claim to be a 'changed' person after the horrible experience. I sure have realised that there are people suffering from bigger problems than me. In my own country many innocent people lose their loved ones to bombs, ethnic violence, drones and what not. Some people lose their new born babies and children to natural deaths or to pedophiles. What is my loss in comparison to the loss of human life?

As I come to the end of my catharsis filled post, I m shameful of the fact that it took me so long to pen this down. Lastly, IF anyone has reached the end of this irritatingly long whining post, seriously I feel for you. But nonetheless, happy new year! I m more than happy to say GOODBYE to 2010...need I explain why? :p

i was hoping...no regrets !

2010-12-08T11:22:00.000-08:00

Another Islamic year 1432 has started and another year is coming to an end. Soon it will be 2011. Its a shame when I look back and see how few posts I managed in 2010. As I turn back the pages of 2010's diary, I feel how inadequate my reading has been. I turn red to see my long bookmarks and hardly finished to dos. And the list of unaccomplished tasks stares back at me...

The winter breeze turns some more pages back to chapters engraved on my heart. Pages I want to remember but I don't want to recall. Life is such. You try avoiding regrets but they keep coming your way. You protect yourself and your loved ones from happenings not desired and yet they never stop the chase. You prefer to leave some pages of life's book, empty and spotless but somehow, things go out of control. Somehow you lose your balance on the tightrope of life and fall. Lying down, back aching and heart hurting, you still feel yourself breathing. You are still alive, surviving even after the fall. Life is such.

Resolutions forgotten, promises broken, new relations born and faded out, old relations lying on the shelf like a cracked vase, dust covered stories some hidden and some not; all sit with you, contemplating the invisible wings of time. Memories, the ones you want to hold onto and the ones you want to forget, all take the shape of glass menagerie, delicate and sacred. One careless move and it will shatter.

When 2010 started and how time and faith drifted me off to different directions I cannot imagine to be true...I was only hoping for a regret free year...another day, another sunrise, another beginning. its time to unwrap another year and let life unfold itself.

kia likhon, koun parhay ga?

2010-11-27T10:58:00.001-08:00

For quite some time, I chose to indulge in a quick session of hibernation. Though I am out in the open now, for next winters I am going to plan another better, longer, and a completely isolated hide out. Unfortunately, no matter how far I take myself from the humdrum of life and especially from the never changing mess of Pakistani politics and problems (PPP), still some shouts and a spray of dirty politics and inefficiency of our leaders finds its way to my ears. Sometimes its corruption cases, other days’ highlights revolve around blasphemous people haunting our pious state, gas shortage is the chart toppers. Our noble caretakers even gave some ‘in your face’ and ‘how dare you…’stuff to the mighty Transparency International. WOW. Then there is the story of a grand and auspicious inauguration of a magnificent power plant with an entire band of politicians clapping and ribbon cutting running on the TV screens. Sometimes I feel I m living in a fairy tale. *dumbfound sigh*
In such circumstances, hibernation is a totally bad idea. I had to come out and find a positive angel to all of this and I did too. At least, the quicksand we are stuck in is never going to let us run out of topics/ issues/ problems to write and complain about before we take one last breathe and then totally succumb to the fragrance and pleasure and depths of it. Voila! What a wonderful life!

I thoroughly scanned through the newspaper and like a kid in a candy shop, nose pressed against the glass counter; I just couldn’t decide what should be scrutinized in my next essay. It was a tough one. Apart from just regular news of our politicians’ shenanigans, there is a collection of conspiracy theories by media and political analysts. Then there are those who are against them and have their own versions of theories. So the war Pakistan is fighting, is it our war or not? Or are drones just a way of showing America’s affection towards us? Does Pakistan really have a unique geographical importance that has made the superpowers plan their wars for? Or is it another attempt at a bogus theory?
While our incompetent and mysterious MEN’s cricket team is busy colouring their toenails, I m content that at least our FEMALE cricket team managed to win some competition and even our hockey team made it to the finals.
There is also a royal wedding around the corner. Ah the lavish lifestyles of Prince Williams and Kate Middleton. Oh wait, they are British and royal. We have to bear with the weirdly thick eyebrow-ed Bilawal, the apple of whose eyes. I think we should also have a public holiday when he gets married in Lal masjid, our equivalent of Westminster Abbey…right?
Will I ever stop complaining? Oh I just spotted Mr President! There is some gunk on your hands….err… uh oh! He’s coming this way!

originally published on www.borderlinegreen.com

a leap

2010-11-07T05:49:00.000-08:00

I felt i had died,
but it wasnt the end.
my soul had left,
for a sojourn far away,
until i missed it terribly
and found it difficult
to breathe and blink.
one day...
as coffee and cream and a pen
rested on the mahogany top
the sun shone on my face.
it was floating back to me
so were ideas and imagination
words and lyrics.
all dancing in with the suspended mote.
the golden glitter of the sun
fell on my paraphernalia
lying on the mahogany,
like an unsolved math problem
until there was a spill of coffee and cream.
the ink on the page,
the colour on wood,
the pen on the edge,
spoke of the aroma.
it had come back to me...

Forgive

2010-09-05T12:36:00.000-07:00

Flipping through the pages of one of my ever green favourites "Tuesdays with Morrie", I came across "learn to forgive yourself" phrase. Right away, like lightning it struck me. All this while, knowing that there is a need to forgive, I was rather distracted by burdens of unaccomplished tasks. In this world plagued by the urge to first the rat race (though we sadly are humans and not rats), we forget that there is a need to forgive. Forgiving is generally taken as forgiving 'others' who usually happen to be people we 'loved' before the forgive them phase comes. We hardly forgive others ( big egos we carry) so even thinking of that 'forgiving' is not the perspective on my mind right now.

There is also a need to forgive ourselves for the little and the big things in life. We need to breath more and to sit back and look out the window. Day in and day out, all we do is run from one errand to another, from one task at the office to another. With some kind of an invisible time bomb attached with us, we are on the run, from the ghosts of our minds. We want to accomplish so much. We want to defeat time. Contrary to all our big plans and future goals and our larger than life ambitions we fail. We fail to forgive ourselves for the opportunities lost, for the race not won, for the money we didnt invest in some clever deal.Then we sit and lament and whine over things we failed to achieve and how this has made us useless in the market of the fastest rat in the global picture. We pile on the regrets and in our wonderful imaginations make the 'regret lists' and find bitter sweet pleasure in recalling them time and again. But as Morrie says in the book:

"We...need to forgive ourselves...For all the things we didn't do. All the things we should have done. You can't get stuck on the regrets of what should have happened."

Instead of worrying just too much, wouldnt it be more human to take a deep breath, to take a break from the robotic life, to revel into the simple pleasure of staring out the window clean of all regrets and imagined losses. It should also sometimes feel good to be just glad to be living, to be exploring little things in our everyday life. Like discovering that the cake in the oven is fluffy and perfect from one end only but that it tastes better than professional cakes, waking up to the sound of rain though you missed a lucrative opportunity at a renowned magazine and or simply sitting next to your loved ones, feeling good, secretly knowing that you could have traveled across borders to study at some internationally acclaimed university but you didnt.

We let others pass by us but we dont forgive them but we could help and forgive ourselves before we die...this might make us learn that forgiving others is not that difficult after all.

hopelessly in love...

2010-08-21T11:50:00.000-07:00

wait for it....

in love....with bookmarking everything that comes across the laptop screen. "I will do this later thought" automatically makes me hit the bookmark tab. its easy. YES. And regretfully it has turned me into a lazy goon. What is there that i havent bookmarked? Everything ranging from news sites to baking recipes to various blogs to language sties to photography and travel sites. You name it and i would have it bookmarked ! *sigh*

The easy tool of bookmarking has added to my laid back attitude and made me hopeless! Over a year or more i have collected many many and many websites with a single click and now i have no idea how i am going to go back and browse them. I think it will last me my lifetime.

This is not the end to always bookmarking habit. I have been on my butt for longer than it is good for me. I need some serious suggestions from you guys. I want to get rid of this never ending laziness. Is there any hope for me to kick out the bookmarking everything habit and drive laziness to its home? The scary pile of small 'to do lists' is glaring up at me from the coffee table. Before I sink back into my bean bag and dose off please suggest how can I get rid of my current problem and get my pending work done?

lemons, clouds, ya ya

2010-08-15T11:43:00.000-07:00

I think my reflections on life now and then are an extension of my once upon a time series of 'life and life backwards'. life gives you lemons and you have got to make some drink out of it and then dont throw away the squeezed lemon skin. you can even make use of that by grinding it into powder form and then mix it with a couple of other ingredients to use it as a face pack. voila !

However, i m not here to give away beauty tips for natural glowing face ( though i m saving the used lemon skins). there are more examples of optimistic approach to life phrases. for example there is 'every cloud has a silver lining'. life has a lot of lemons to roll your way. I have accepted it but its hard for me to come to terms with it. every time i m confronted with a situation that demands me to make lemonades or look for the silver lining in the clouds above, i just let the lemons roll away and the clouds sail away to some other destination.

It is usually after the lemons are gone and the clouds are far away that i realise there goes another chance for me to do something.

Doing the best with what life gives you is the key. the key is to keep living. the key is to never stop or lose hope. it is an indication that life holds many surprises for you. maybe that there are still many chances and opportunities to benefit from. Provided that you keep on your emotions intact and brain in use and most importantly use the lemons before they go rotten. if they do, toss them back ! or even better...

i say

2010-08-12T11:13:00.000-07:00

I am finding it hard to regularly post on my blog. since 2007, the first time i began blogging, i have fallen in love with the world of blogging. i dont know how promising a future this might hold in the world of internet but i do know that i will always cherish reading and writing blogs. without further ado, i would say what i intended to in this blog post. I thank all my followers and readers for reading and visiting my blog. it means a lot to me :)

life as we know it

2010-08-04T13:30:00.000-07:00

What is life? YES i am asking this question AGAIN. what happened to my life and life backwards posts? i thought i would make frequent posts for that one. Life is HUGE and so much keeps happening how come i hardly came back to the enigmatic topic called l.i.f.e. i think i was way too stuck up with it, busy trying to get myself out of the inevitable mess that is bound to take you by surprise. speaking of life, mine is quite uneventful. in other words, more on the predictable side. MORE like a butter on a slice of toasted bread. Even better, melting butter in a baking pan inside an oven and I outside like a watchdog, hand mittens on, admiring the process, looking at the cake rising up, up and up...

There are bound to be maybes in life. a lot of what ifs. life comes with a big bundle of strings attached.
Unconscious mistakes and conscious mistakes. we want to make them. we want to know them firsthand. there is some guilty pleasure in the desire to make mistakes anyway. We are stopped, guided and told how not to make a mistake.

The cake, rising up...

What if i let it burn. yes, that would be stupid of me, wasting butter and eggs and gas and time and money on something i could have made right. but why is it important to make it right every time? it happens. when you are extra careful with baking. it goes wrong. mistake. you make a mistake somewhere during the process that the cake that eventually comes out of the oven doesnt taste right. its burnt a bit, sticks badly to the pan when you take it out, the slices dont go perfect size. in the end you are in a 'maybe' state. maybe the batter was too thin or maybe its too sweet, or maybe i took it out too soon so its sticking badly. a mistake's been made somewhere...

Life, however, is no cake. It is more than just that. It is affordable to go wrong with a cake but there is no room for going wrong in life. As is said life has no delete buttons, no choice of erasing out a mistake or throwing away 'the cake that went wrong'.

The mistake big or small, stays with you. Like a backup plan, like an extra torch to switch on when its dark. Not to relieve you but to haunt you.

It is not abyss. Life is sunshine and rain both. It is pleasure and pain together. A period of 24 hours has both day and night. Some mistakes leave scar others just leave you laughing at yourself. Why hold back in fear of making mistakes that we will regret for our lives. Why not just take a plunge and see it for ourselves. Why wait for others and stand on a safe harbour. If life comes with strings attached, good or bad, we should be ready to embrace them.

my words and her pain

2010-07-31T12:23:00.001-07:00

So many sun rises and so many sun sets go by. I sit there in a corner of a scenery of solace. the wind billows my hair, the only companion invisible but there. I look for words, desperately but none would come until i plead. There is a moment I lost, in front of me. Something is missing. What is it that I know not...but something of significant value, close to my heart. HEART. Thats it. I have lost the beating rhythm but not to some too-good-to-be-true-prince charming-on-a-horse-back, riding through the beautiful prairie towards me. The stunning smile on the heroic face of my delusional prince charming fades and the horse slows down its gallop. I think he heard me. The distance between me and my savior increases...

My heart beat of the absent heart fastens and in a split second I realise. I feel as if someone suddenly moved the heavy paper weight, leaving the stacks of untamed paper to fly in every direction. Their hidden wings suddenly materalised out of illusion. It was the chaos of realisation.

The space where the well groomed horse had been galloping appeared deserted. The savior was a hoax. No prince was coming to give me the kiss of life. It was not a fairy tale. I was not the damsel in distress. My life did not begin or end in a children's bed time story book.

I was real. My flesh and bones were real, maimed and brittle. My hair, silky and brown mingled with the real wind that carried dust and mote.

A drop of blood slid down my wrist and met with a dried up wound; reminder of my womanhood- a liability I carry for as long as I survive.

postscript: Dedicated to the many rape victims in Pakistan that meet a fate they least deserve though my words cannot heal their wounds.

The goodbyes

2010-07-29T10:31:00.000-07:00

The beautiful day began with a cool wind, snow like cloudy sky and hope. Every thing was in harmony with nature. Rain pattered on our window sills, the trees looked lavishly green, the birds soared in the air like victors of a war. There was peace, calmness and unpredictability. She packed her bags and had one last look in the mirror. A refreshing smile adorned her intelligent face. It was time for her flight.

Hand in hand, they walked together, leaving their foot prints in the sand behind them. A generous wave glided on the shores, she laughed as the cool water waves touched her ankles. The sun was setting on the vast horizon. Their new life together eagerly waited to embrace them. The new sun would take them to Islamabad but maybe it was not their final destination...

The baby wailed loudly in her arms. Tears rolled down the soft chubby cheeks and the baby rested his face on his mother's shoulder. Behind him, the dense crowd was loud, some were laughing, others were emotional as they waved goodbyes. But his adorable eyes were fixed on his granny, who kept blowing him flying kisses.The loud excited chatter of the crowd fainted as the distance grew. The pristine figure of his granny disappeared behind the dense crowd gathered at the airport.

A few images got veiled behind my poor imagination as i thought of those who lost their lives in a sudden air accident.

Who knew the goodbyes were the final gestures of love. Who knew that another sight of the loved ones would remain a dream, a wish. Who knew that a day that started with hope and promises would meet a fate least expected. Life is such. The emotional outburst and panic of the relatives at the airports, their questions and desperation was worsened by the carelessly given statements of our cabinet ministers, who first kindled hope that there are survivors only to refuse it later. There is more which left the pain stricken relatives in anguish for long hours as they waited for information from the hospital and the airport to hear something about their lost loved ones. The tragic accident left many questions unanswered like why was the pilot instructed to take another round before landing on its set time? What other plane was landing before airblue's plane and why? Is the black box recovered?

Postscript: My words cannot fill the void left in the lives of the families who lost loved ones in the plane crash accident. Maybe its the catharsis of an onlooker who helplessly watched the entire tragic episode unfold in front of her eyes.

its something new out of the old

2010-07-25T13:23:00.000-07:00

She punches in the old hard keys of the type writer in an abandoned house...

It was tender outside. The pattering rain peaked in through the window as i slept peacefully or rather oblivious of the nature's play. The jovial mood of the light breeze and the cold soft rain drops settled in contrast to the matters of the heart.The morning hues dawned quietly by my window and the wind softly billowed away thin cream curtains. In a dreamy state i opened my heavy eyes to the beautiful and refreshing fragrance of summer monsoon. Against my desire to kick away the blanket and pop out of the bed like a jack in the box, i laid there, motionless. I knew i was wasting time, staring at the plain ceiling above, with the fan in its rotatory flight, cooling my sleepy hot temper...

For a moment she stops, listens intently, the high and the low notes of silence gathers around her. From a distance her lean figure in the light of the moon pouring in through the clean glass window, resembles to that of a pianist and his piano and music notes...she continues playing her notes and the words spread across the page...

each breath weighs a rose

2010-07-20T12:25:00.001-07:00

Bare foot I walked in the endless desert of my thoughts. The sweltering sun influenced the sand and pierced through my skin. Each step sank in and left a mark to be erased by desert wind. The ever changing dunes danced and pranced around my shadow, as i wandered in vain while my feet burned in the hot bed of sand spread wide and far.

In the middle of nowhere, a television screen grabbed my attention. An illusion I thought and continued the traipse of a reluctant lost person. As I covered the unreachable distance, the blank screen came closer, defying the concept of mirage.

Each step and each breathe that i took weighed a thousand stones on my back. The burden of guilt pressed against my bosom. Ignoring the choking burden creeping up my protruding adam's apple, I tread further merely to get to the misfit television screen. As the sun in the canvas above celebrated, my head smoldered with rage and my feet grew blisters. The parched skin on my bones began peeling off or so I felt. Over exposure to the harsh sun rays could not not quicken my pace towards the only object of interest to my tired soul. A spell of fatigue adorned itself on me, tagged me as laughable and a clown.

The claws of an eagle gripped my head so hard i could feel its sharpness sinking into my skull or was it like being caged in a coconut shell. Something hindered my human abilities to think. When and how I finally stopped in front of the bizarre television set, I cannot recall. My stiff, sun burnt, roasted hand reached to tune a channel. Before i could proceed any further, the machine turned into ashes, suspended itself in the air for seconds and then like confetti, quickly fell down into the desert pool.

My bloodshot eyes saw something again and before my brain cells could comprehend what the distance had blurred exhilaration surmounted every pore on my skin, every thought in my mind, and each heart beat inside me. The wind pulled me back and the sand slipped like a cascade, sweeping me away with it in an opposite direction. Within seconds, I saw myself being tore to pieces like shred of paper. In the background, as a touch of irony, I heard an unrecognizable melody on a violin somewhere in the distance, as vague as things appeared to me in the desert of my thoughts...

When she met him

2010-07-17T12:08:00.001-07:00

As she splashed a handful of cold water on her face, a smile invaded the sweaty beads trickling down her pale cheeks. She let the water fall on her skin. Was it magic or the muses coming out of no where producing ideas forming words and words gathering to become sentences? At last the spell of the wicked witch seemed to have broken. The faded words that meant nothing now revived themselves with a glow that blinded her for a second. It was an exuberant moment.

A sudden sound at a distance astounded her. The giants from her nightmares had quit and were heading home. Thud Thud, the footsteps' resonance echoed around her but only to bring forth the joy of countless army of words marching towards her.

She grew curious to the herald of the magnificent flock of birds against the azure sky. What could that mean she thought. Before she knew it, the group of exotic birds as if from a folklore flew towards her, whistling and chirping to their tune of freedom. They flapped their wings with synchronized rhythm and dived towards her lean figure as she stood mesmerized by the aura of the flying creatures. Their flight grew closer and dropped beautifully sewn garlands of gleaming white roses, the likes of which she had never seen. The fragrance spread its invisible wings and embraced the atmosphere surrounding her.

While she stood there admiring the white of the flowers and their soft velvety texture, something tickled her feet. Tiny dews had gathered on the serene meadow beneath her pale feet. Conspiring something big in their tiny dewy world. She bent on her knees and closely observed their shine diminishing into nothingness. How could this be she thought. Recalling Keats' she whispered the famed lines "A thing of beauty is a joy forever: its loveliness increases; it will never pass into nothingness."

The glow of the meadow left behind by the dew said it all. She knew she was free. Free from the shackles of unknown bounds. The birds had flown, the garland hung around her neck, the air still pregnant with fragrance, she knew it was time to head home. She walked a while in the engraved giant footsteps and jubilantly headed in another direction as the auroral sky complimented her silhouette.

...then she cupped her hands to collect the running water from the tap onto her sticky sweaty face to rid of the humid weather outside...

The Love Post

2010-06-24T22:38:00.000-07:00

On a summer morning, when temperatures' indicating its aggressiveness for the day ahead; I sit thinking about a way to invigorate myself. Though petty a boost to one's ego through 'i love' list isnt the cruelest or selfish thing in the world. Thus i begin my tale in all modest intention . Pardon me if this is a repetition of any previous post. I need to cheer myself through weird ways. I don't have a self talking mirror or else I could be found in conversation with a please me mirror ( little birdy told me that zardari has that kind of a mirror, he stole it from snow white's step mother)

Back to me and myself post that I m a bit ashamed of but if you have come this far reading my blabbing, a few more words wont hurt your eyes :D

I love to buy stationery. The moment I step into a stationery shop, the long lost soul of a kid pops up from inside me and I drool over all kinds of nicely packed and displayed sets of highlighters, pens, post it notes, cards, files, decoration accessories, gift wraps, books. On my trip to England, I window shopped at all the stationery shops in the mall. Quite a fulfilling experience!

I love roller coaster rides. The thrill, the butterfly in the tummy, the excitement it arouses is like the kind of feeling love at first sight brings. Whether my analogy makes any sense is up to my patient readers ( and i see them running away from my blog)

Baking...somehow or the other makes me happy. I have tried it. Whenever I feel out of body and mind and soul, one shot at baking cookies or a simple cake sets things right. This fathers' day I baked cookies for my father, since he likes them right out of the oven. Too bad I forgot to take a picture of my cookies and their presentation; nicely displayed on a white and red flowered cloth in a cane basket with hand made tiny roses ribbons :D

Unsophisticated and lack of manners it may seem but I stare at random people sometimes.Period.

I have a collection of swing photographs for reasons unknown (currently my desktop) and I love collecting more of them. Maybe subconsciously its linked with my desire of going back to my lively childhood :/

I love grocery shopping. Though the idea of malls and super marts here in Pakistan is only a recent fashion, my interest in this sort of a domestic activity goes back to the time of my childhood, when I was made to sit in the shopping cart's red/blue/green fold-able flap :D cruising from one aisle to another in the cart was quite a romance for me at 5 :p

Last but not the least, I LOVE and crave for my mother running her fingers across my, sadly dry and unkempt hair. Its a heavenly feeling. Whenever I catch her on phone, busy in a conversation, I leave all my work and rest my head on her lap and get the VIP treatment until she glares at me with the look saying *i think its enough* :p

I glare at me

2010-06-14T07:13:00.000-07:00

I stand and watch myself in the mirror. Stiff eyed I glare back at the image in front of me. Nothing happens. No words jump out of the top of my head covered with black brown unkempt hair. The air is empty, no words float above my head, darting around to grab my attention. I stand and stare back at myself for a while and then dropping all hope turn around and walk away.

I came to my dellu (my laptop's name, weird and cheesy ya but whatever we are talking about the block) and started googling stuff about writers' block merely out of boredom and a feeling of helplessness of looking at thousands of words everyday in books and papers but not being able to produce something on my own.

Google is like Vicki, remember the little girl robot from Small Wonder? I dont know the connection but its like today's vicki in a way. Something on your mind go google it, even if its your writers' block, go and ask google aka vicki. Pardon me if I dont seem to be making sense or else I pardon you for not being able to keep up with my blabbing.

I think it has answers to my temporary but seems like never ending writing problem now when i have all the time in the world to go on scribbling! Today I spent a good whole hour trying to write a letter to the editor and it was hardly 50 words or so. This is a nightmare. As for google, it has some tips which I have bookmarked with a strong resolution of going back to them. Hopefully...

I go back to my reflection and stare in hopes of peeking into my brain and see what is left of it...

i dont look THIS bad though!

pre graduate and post graduate conversations

2010-06-04T11:12:00.000-07:00

pre graduation

mubi: when will i graduate???? such long years of torturous studies

mubi: it be only be celebrations once my research report finishes *day dreaming*

post graduation ( it means after graduation not post graduation as in post grad/masters blah)

mubi: NOW what? :/

mona: (comes online and cheers) congrats!!!

mubi: for what? -_-

mona: you have graduated

mubi: so? i dont feel any different *yawns*

mona: :@(angry) feel educated!! feel smarter !!

mubi: ha ha ha sometimes married women think differently :p

p.s i owe a thanks to mona for helping me enable my emoticons on msn! *phew* what a relief

but the question remains...now what -_-

moral: married women dont necessarily have the solutions

a slice from a day

2010-05-12T05:31:00.000-07:00

The day had just begun, around nine, yes for some it’s half the day gone by already. Life seemed to be moving in slow motion to me at least. There was a rush where the heart is for reasons I have yet to decipher. The aristocratic sun in its full bloom followed my each step as I walked to the Amal tas Block. The new block in the entire campus stood like a freshman student among the beautifully adorned lawn patches, a variety of seasonal flowers to accompany the trees planted by colonial British.

I walked among the tall trees that talked of their long existence even before I came into this world. I thought to myself of the many stories the wise trees keep as secrets with them; stories of the students before me and the students before them and of the ones before them. They are the very old, sari clad ladies who annually visit this college as alumni to have a little tryst with the trees and attend a function and talk about the days gone by. I resolute to myself to never attend the OAKS when I get old and wrinkly, never come back to this place to share my stories of young days.

I imagine for a while the campus and the strange, ghost like aura it carries when night falls, the trees whisper to each other. I wonder if they talk about the old students, share their secrets with each other. Do our stories also become part of the whisper? I think of the trees and the campus submerged in the pool of darkness because I have seen how it looks at night; bizarre and quiet, the tall trees even taller and the footpaths dark and solemn. The buried stories of ghosts and spirits float in the air, suddenly the beautiful campus surrounded by foliage turns into a haunted place.

The campus is different in the morning. Free of mysterious stories about spirits, strange echoing voices the students before us experienced and passed it on to others to eventually reach us. Some kind of an heirloom.

Morning changes everything. As I walk past the same paths, the red bricks, the tall towers I feel the bond that developed somewhere in the past 4 years. Maybe when I get out I will attend the OAKS.

The trees were a lively green and yellow, dancing to the gentle wind. The waiting part is the hardest I thought to myself and found a marble slab along the red brick building to sit on. Some bird’s shit, dried up, stained the marble slab. I found my space and sat, part of me waiting for the wait to get over, and part of me carrying my heavy heart. The yellow flowers kept falling like belle dancers moving rhythmically and beautifully on their toes. I began watching the peculiar yellow flowers bid farewell to the tree branches, the lush green leaves they paired with. To the gentle wind they twirled and swirled and danced in slow poised movements to eventually fall and rest on the earth like a dead being lowered to its grave. For long I sat there, watching a young bird and listened to its long shrilly calls to someone not in sight.

When later I walked away, I left my heart behind...

i know no name

2010-04-19T01:44:00.000-07:00

the heart break has just begun
only a piece fell off
it broke and fell
i saw it going, down and down
getting smaller and insignificant
as it made its way to gravity

i fancied mine unbreakable
a dream i say
i never woke up from
until i heard the sound of a crack
tickling its way up

i thought myself a phoenix
rising up from the ashes
of my own ruins
what a fool i was

i m but a soul
trapped in my own
my pain an awful cry
bleeding a river flow
i hear a distant melody
its phoenix and her moaning

its just my human heart
bleeding and breaking
drop by drop
piece by piece
into nothingness

the bird of my dream
doesnt know that
the heart break has just begun.
it flies away on its wings
made of ash and smoke.
alluring me to come
mine are only little wings
and a million feathers
too light for the winds

shugum fushum!

2010-04-08T10:33:00.000-07:00

I quit ! yes. I am just tired, I mean TIRED of it! There you go, for good *throws her thesis in the bin*. *rushes back and takes it out, its just too precious*

UGH.

Despite the craziness I'm going through for the sake of a silly thesis to get through with my degree, I dont want to do it. Does my previous sentence make any sense? :s

I m sitting here brain storming on my survey questionnaire, almost on the brink of pulling out my hair with both hands, when I realise my hair is already attracted to gravity. So no hair pulling. I get up and reach for my mobile phone and flip it open, no messages, absolutely no one trying to contact me. No deliberate missed calls from this freaky caller who also randomly leaves encoded messages. Not even a SINGLE missed call...not even he bothered to ring me!!! Outrageous! With a sullen mood, I sink back into my chair and stare at the dirty sheets of doodled questionnaire, strangled in hands in an attempt to extract a magical solution.

I log onto facebook and make a status and log out. I check my inbox, no one emailed. I go back to my work. Occasionally I swing my head to the t.v screen only to find ugly politicians blabbing and pointing fingers at each other. I log back onto FB only to be disappointed to see no response to my status, otherwise flooded with silly comments!

I mean i don't have any excuse to escape my inevitable thesis work!! why is it like i m the only person left on this planet. Am i ? :O

Learn and pass it on

2010-04-05T10:25:00.000-07:00

AD made a wonderful post and i couldnt resist but post it here

Toothpick … to remind you to pick the good qualities in everyone, including yourself.

Rubber band … to remind you to be flexible. Things might not always go the way you want, but it can be worked out.

Band-Aid … to remind you to heal hurt feelings, either yours or someone else’s.

Eraser … to remind you everyone makes mistakes. That’s okay, we learn by our errors.

Candy Kiss … to remind you everyone needs a hug or a compliment everyday.

Mint … to remind you that you are worth a mint to your family & Me.

Bubble Gum … to remind you to stick with it and you can accomplish anything.

Pencil … to remind you to list your blessings every day.

Tea Bag … to remind you to take time to relax daily and go over that list of God’s blessings.

poem

2010-04-01T01:01:00.000-07:00

"Draw a crazy picture,
Write a nutty poem,
Sing a mumble-gumble song,
Whistle through your comb.
Do a loony-goony dance
'Cross the kitchen floor,
Put something silly in the world
That ain't been there before."

Shel Silverstein

coming back to life

2010-03-31T05:39:00.001-07:00

I thought its enough! I haven't written much and the times that I have managed to, only rows and rows of depressing posts have come up on this page. Today it struck me that maybe its my lifeless posts that has driven all the readers away :/

Hence I have come out of my melancholic mask and jumped into the colours of life. *splash* I have also uploaded a picture of the 'happy smileys' in the spirit of change. At the start of the year, I promised myself to write like crazy but as evident I have failed rather obviously. Its the end of march and here I m with only a handful of posts and writings.

'Coming back to life' should be a 'monumental' event, at least this declaration calls for a PROPER gay (used as an adjective) post. HAPPY in other words. However, happiness it seems doesnt spread as fast as poison does. hmmm totally out of my gray matter i will just type about some randomness around me. Ahh the word 'random', saves our ass every time no other words come to our minds.

Sania mirza weds Shoaib Malik. For those of you who don't have even an iota of interest in sports, the former is an Indian tennis player while the latter is a Pakistani (humara apna as we would claim on such merry occasions) cricket player. Ya so they are getting married to EACH OTHER. so whats the big deal? yesterday night surfing all news channels i thought is this the first time two cross border people are getting married?And for some odd reason people thought that their marriage is going to set things right between India and Pakistan. Its just two people getting tying the knot into a new relationship, what does that have to do with the big political agendas?

Since we have come to the topic of matrimony, this reminds me that my friends here and there are getting married. A friend's wedding is just two days away which is a good thing but also a sad thing. Good thing she is going to Amreeka and bad because the entire shadi business is making me emotional :/ By the way I'm not the one who stands with a tissue in her hand, sobbing on weddings. I' m just me, kind of unconcerned to the feelings of the bride :$

Next thing on my mind is the blog awards competition. the competition seems promising but the sad part is that a) i got to know of it quite late and b) none of my followers or readers nominated me :/ not that i own a fantastic blog that would be remembered but still !! :p Alright enough of my complaining :p

With summers at our doors and fans switched on, load shedding is on its extreme. one of my 'summer resolutions' was that i wont say a word on the never ending horrible age of load shedding. *sigh* ya well dont expect me to write any further of this topic, didnt i just mention my resolution? :p

hail randomness and hail writers' block ! ugh !

my clever gora saab

2010-03-12T23:45:00.000-08:00

With Lahore under the shadows of blasts, the night was spent worrying about relatives living near the terror zone and changing channels to see and hear the fate bombs bring. As tension and doubt still hung in the air, I opened my blog page this morning and 'quote of the day' on the right side of the screen caught my attention. How apt i thought, a right quote on the right side at the right time. A cloud of irony floated above my head as i read the quote another time. Here's it below.

The art of being happy lies in the power of extracting happiness from common things. Henry Ward Beecher

How true Henry Beecher! Though i dont know you properly, i do know that your breed also comes from the 'angraiz' / 'goray' people; a race of humans known in my part of the world to have awaken a sense of confusion related to us the day we are born. Its next to impossible to explain what i mean here. A state confusion you see. As soon as we see our faces in the mirror we see a 'angraiz/gora' staring back at us. The moment we open our textbooks in school we read about the long colonial era in Sub continent and a number of scholarly studies that hammer all sorts of theories into our minds ranging from how the 'goray dost' left us handicapped post colonial times, how their shadows still lingers on our minds and souls. How we are still under their imperialism though of a different nature. There is just so much more but the adjectives and details of history betray me right now ( i think i will use this phrase time and again now)

Great! See my 'gora dost' again remained successful in diverting my attention from my very 'imperative' post. Coming back to the quotation under scrutiny, i would say how ironic! First the 'angraiz' made us learn the word 'irony' and then gave us a truckload of irony to deal with.
As these golden words gleam and glitter at me, i realise that the superior breed of humans (of course my white friend) have successfully come up with this equation and also followed it. They have realised that in order to be happy they will have to rob the common things in the world around them. I see the readers raise their eyebrows to very uncomfortable angles ( my assumption) but lets break the statement down and pick out the words that add weight to my argument that originates from a state of mind developed under the shadow of the west. Here i also very skillfully display my art of blaming everyone, even my white friend. All apologies though not meant.

The words 'happiness', 'power' , 'extracting' , 'common things'. Now do you get my point? Power lies with the white man, without a doubt. Happiness is a myth for us brown people, hence the only race on this planet deserving of this 'happiness' remains to be my white friend. Extracting - its a word in disguise for all the amazing maneuvering skills my friends possess while they sit seas away in other fortunate continents. Lastly, common things that would be us?

Oh and did i mention how we, the brown people have been trying very hard to please our friends? The most noticable thing found in our blood today is loyalty. Yes L O Y A L T Y not for our own filthy, uneducated lot found begging on the streets and living in what we term very beautifully 'on the poverty line' but for the superior human race. Some of us are just too keen in explaining that we are very peaceful and modern. Well the truth of the matter is that we are not peaceful. No. No where near to being THAT. we are not peaceful but full of pieces. Yes. Thats much better. One blast of 9/11 and then one attack on 26 Nov 08 many precious lives were lost. Very sad.

Bombs, suicide attacks, bombs, more such attacks in the morning, in the afternoon, in the evening, on random hours at night, around the clock here in Pakistan. People die. Its normal isnt it? What is even 'more' normal than Just normal is the attacks by my white friend from up in the air on people down on the earth because we are looking for the bad guys.

The entire ordeal of writing such a praiseworthy post for my friends leave me exhausted. Hence i take my leave and will continue if my gora saab whispers anything in my ear.

Death lay awake

2010-03-11T03:33:00.000-08:00

He lay there with his eyes closed. A fly came and sat on the wound near his left eyebrow. Someone quickly waved their hand over his motionless, lifeless, expressionless face and covered it with a transparent white 'dupatta' probably rummaged from one of the cupboards at home in a state of hurry and bursting emotions to add to the dead body's paraphernalia. Exhausted by continuous crying and hiccups, lost eyes and minds wandered to their private thoughts. Seconds and even minutes passed by until someone new entered the tents and hugged the daughters, wife, nieces sitting near the sleeping man and made them cry again. A new round of fresh tears laden with emotions and memories trickled down many cheeks. A drop of tear kissed my lips and startled me. I realised it wasnt mine. Someone had hugged me and murmured some words of condolence. The embrace I was oblivious of left a tear with me, on my face, touching my dry lips.

Time had come to a stop like a train that reaches its desired stop and seemed to have enclosed us in its shell. The wait grew longer.We sat in the shell, surrendering our strengths to the reigns of time. We sat around the charpoy as if astounded by the sudden appearance of a unicorn.
Night fell and so did our voices and sobs awaiting few last visitors for the dead. He laid there, frozen in time and we sat there, stood there, did whatever we could to escape confines of seconds and minutes and hours.

It was a long, long period of waiting where we with beating hearts and he with death awake acted according to our roles. Then one last roar of grief and pain escaped into the air pregnant with melancholy and life and death parted ways.

People die. life ends. we being humans forget. In the hustle and bustle of life, lost in the pleasures and pains of it, we somehow, forget about our romance with death until it knocks on our doors or that of our neighbours or relatives...

Tale of a moment

2010-03-05T02:12:00.001-08:00

Illuminated by the pristine sun rays pouring in through the long bay window, a speck of dust floated by. The floating glow caught her attention. Her brown deep set eyes followed the slow rhythm of the dust as it made its way away from the light and into the room.
The pair of eyes stalked the dust motes as they disappeared somewhere above her head. The slanted sunlight kept filtering in through the glass and dust motes continued to invade the room like some magical dust hanging in the air after the spell had been cast. Her mouth agape, she stared above her head as if there was some 'splendor' in the way tiny particles moved about for a while and then vanished.
In the meantime a trail of thought slipped from her and joined the celebrations of the dust mote, now appearing like tiny angels in the slant of the sun's light. Her idle hands untied her untidy bun of hair and let them loose and tied them in a neat braid. The long plait of hair rested on her lean shoulders and touched her floral kameez below her bosoms. Her eyes remained fixed on her thoughts and dust particles disguised as angels in a rendezvous. with her back towards the window, she sat in a trance of an insane person.
An impatient knock rapped on the bay window and startled her out of the bubble. As she turned her face towards the light, a pair of angry eyes met her dreamy pair. She slid her cracked heels into her rubber slippers and trotted her way towards the door.
An artificially exasperated voice said: "Didnt you hear the bell? Where are you lost half the time?"
She said: " I'm just a dust mote". The exasperated voice didnt wait to hear and walked away in her own bubble.

Consumed by the lies

2010-02-17T23:44:00.000-08:00

The reason our elders told us fairy tales was because they carried a moral at the end of all happily ever afters.

Of the many stories Pinocchio's the one that I distinctively remember, at least for the time being. The moral of the story was on the lines of lying and its consequences. The character of Pinocchio was a wooden carved puppet that comes to life and ends up having a long nose due to habitual lying. I'm sure all of us remember it. Either we have heard them from our elders or have narrated to our young ones as bed time stories.

As the mild winter sun shines out my window and the UPS winks green, blue and red lights - exhausted by a continuous 3 hours load shedding; I wonder which planet our politicians have come from. Did they too hear about the story of Pinocchio? Or maybe they all suffer from selective amnesia where all the moralistic childhood stories have just vanished from their gray matters. Or maybe, whichever planet they were kicked out from, the beings there just wiped out all the memory out of their brains and then sent them on earth to seek asylum!

A night before a news scroll herald that some bigwig, whose name now skips my mind, announced that there wont be anymore load shedding of electricity in the country. Suddenly?
They must have stolen Hermione's magic wand ( begging or stealing is habitual in this part of the world) or how else can a problem like that become a solution on its own.

The next morning the bread refused to go into the toaster as I pushed down the lever and then I realised that the magic never happened. That I was pushed into believing a fake promise by the Pinocchios running our government institutions.

Now I wonder at my own self destructive naivety of believing into the lies cooked and served with a pinch of irony sprinkled thoroughly on our t.v screens. I wonder at my own short sighted action of casting a vote for a party whose leader is out on a 'hunting' trip because this the only time for leisure.
I think of my father switching on news channels to hear the much awaited and already delayed 'good news' that was about to welcome our lives. I look at today's paper and see a fat crowd of ordinary people ( yes they live among the Pinocchios) holding placards that read words like 'inflation', 'rising' , 'justice'. Then I wonder do our ruling Pinocchios chops off their noses every morning for the lies they baked the previous night?

I just got the answer from a little birdy that just flew in.

kashmir day

2010-02-05T02:16:00.000-08:00

another day, another year, another 5th Feb. another holiday. this is what kashmir day has become for us. i was reading a column the other day and the columnist asked a very genuine question by the end of the article. he asked something on the lines of what kind of nations achieve anything worthwhile that takes a day off and does nothing?

year after year we live 5th feb as a day to sleep more, do our chores, finish our to do lists or just be. maybe relax. why not go to our colleges, schools and offices instead of taking a holiday on a day that should be very important to us. however, instead of working or studying like on normal days, we should get out on the streets to peacefully protest in a unified manner and make our voices heard. what kind of support do we show to our brothers in kashmir for the sacrifices they have made over the years by celebrating a holiday?

state terrorism still continues

i m but inhuman

2010-01-28T01:54:00.000-08:00

The pair of eyes looked at me through the wires running parallel to each other. I could tell they were intense, in a way observant of me and my movements. The tiny beady eyes remained static, motionless for a while. No matter how many languages I learn in the world i would never to be able to comprehend theirs. This came as an afterthought while I just stood there in front of them. There was a barrier between us, something that i could reach out to and break. Humans can be indifferent at times and i preferred being that. A skill that i had mastered unknowingly as the world around me grew into a hostile place, where only war became the answer to end another war.

The sun and the clouds above met our eyes. Everything was in place. The yellow hanging in the blue and the white carefully sailing past the yellow and in the process giving birth to my shadow. My kneaded eyebrows relaxed for some time. I felt every muscle in my body shiver. The sun's mild warmth had pulled me into a state of listening to a lullaby and fall prey to a deep sleep. I felt my jaw tightened as i made a failed attempt to curve my lips into a smile. A faint smile of pity and sympathy of a man who knows that he is the oppressor but it is fine because its for the good of the world. As this thought crossed my mind, i felt part of the bigger picture, content for my actions. Not wasting a single moment, I took a 180 degrees turn on my toes like a belle dancer, my back towards the expectant pair of dark, beady eyes and walked the walk of a carefree person in the world.

As the distance between me and the beady eyes increased, I grew smaller and insignificant for the life behind the wires. Beady eyes remained perched on the horizontal rusted rod in the middle of the cage. A free bird landed its flight nearby on the lawn swing and spoke a language I would never know.

so um ya!

2010-01-05T17:21:00.000-08:00

Give me some sunshine
Give me some rain
Give me another chance
I wanna grow up once again

ya the lyrics from a film, a fillam! i m so out of words i couldnt even come up with original verses on my own birthday. yes its my D day today, my 'birddaaayyy'. so this song above is all thats been hovering all over me these days. these lines sort of pinched me. i dont know why but ya i do want to grow up once more. no, no i think what i want is not to grow up anymore, turn back time, freeze it where ever i want it to. maybe a carpe diem of a different sort, seize the moment whenever i want. be like peter pan in a land where one never grows.

or maybe i just stop being an impossible person with impossible childish wishes and act my age. now thats boring. wheres all the fun? i think i will go back to that wishing corner and sing the above song hahaha.

or get into the JOE (from Friends) mode and look up the ceiling and whine 'why God why me' except that unlike him i m not yet 30 ! *phew* :p hahaha loved that episode when rachel turns 30

or just peek out the window and be contented with the magical view outside - snow falling from the heavenly sky, feel it on my face and awe at the flakes as they become part of my hands as soon as they touch them.

i like the last thought better, theres life left for other crazy wishes

a new year post edited coming out late

2010-01-05T17:20:00.001-08:00

yes you have read it right. a new year post after a long pause of no posts at all and to be more precise, a sudden rush of emotion to blog SOMETHING after many hiatus that i so conveniently took throughout the year, the inconsistency of blogging, it wont be wrong if i state that on the scale of miser detector, the alarm went shouting, scarletwings scarletwings!!!

why then am i here, at the end of the year? what drew me back to the much loved world of blogging. there was a rush of emotions amidst the cold foggy night in Lahore that i decided, first thing in the morning i will type something here. despite the cold, the frozen hands, the red ears and nose, the rush of emotions did not hold itself for long. it melted soon to be forgotten in the morning. i contented myself with 'burnt shadows' and leafed the pages and re read my favourite parts( the reason my brother is almost done reading it while i m still there on the same pages)

what does the new year post imply? what is one expected to write? about the successes and failures, about the trips taken or the trips postponed. prayers said deep into the night or many a times that prayers were deliberately forgotten as a secret act of rebellion against God. the year spent defining happiness or days spent being consumed by the various blues and grays. endless debates on the pathetic blame games of the politicians, international politics and their gimmicks? a look back at the year you see a horrible graffiti of war, blood, suicide bombings, terrorism, conspiracy theories, how many died on your side of the border? a year began and a year ended full of hopes and expectations, new relationships, old broken ones, a few mended, and some just there like scars waiting to be healed one day... and ya long lists of resolutions.

so what am i doing here? trying hard to write something good but that just wont come out...so i left this post, abandoned it, quit it like many things till i completely forget about it. but had to finish this one, unlike the many that are lying in the drafts unfinished...no matter if its already a new year and everyone's done with their new year posts and wishes.

a belated (but never mind) happy new year to all the readers (of this sleepy blog)

statistically 2009 was a sluggish year in terms of the posts i made here, remained absent i wonder why...but definitely more posts in OH TEN

afterglow..

2009-12-04T08:14:00.000-08:00

as i close my eyes to the sound of the dancing sea waves, my feet feel the soft wet sand underneath. the fading rays of the drowning yellow sun touch very inch of my tired soul. i lock my bare feet on the shores and in the brown sand that matches well with my skin colour. theres a crowd around, mute, silent, not even a sound. the characters in a story just to fill up some vacant spaces but no role to play. figures stationed at a distance to give an illusion of human bodies just not alive.

there is some whisper in the air, some song in the winds, someone pulling in a direction but my feet...the water rushes from the sides of my feet, from between my toes, from above them, touching upto my ankles. just like time i think to myself... like a dream. one minute it is long and endless but as soon as you open your eyes there are just a few blurry images, colours spread in the air but nothing that you could touch.

the beautiful, subtle veils of afterglow reveal a darker sky and the growing twilight cast a shadow on the glittering bed of sea. while i just stand there like a stubborn child, feet grounded deep into the shores, in a futile attempt to stop the bold waves from crashing against my numbness.

i wish for time to slow down a bit, my tired feet cannot seem to keep up with the moments rushing by...there are thoughts clogging up the insides of my brain. there are some thoughts that need to be penned down, some words to be said, some tasks to be done, some moments to be enjoyed, some time to freeze for a while. theres simply a desire to sit by the window and stare out at the view.

time says
i m but a fool
among many
who walk past me
its time
says time
i let go
of the afterglow

reflections.

2009-11-07T06:17:00.000-08:00

"When i was was 5 years old, my mom always told me that happiness is the key to life. When i went to school, they asked me what i wanted to be when i grew up.
i wrote down 'happy'.
they told me i didnt understand the assignment and
i told them they didnt understand life."

Paranoia

2009-10-27T17:16:00.001-07:00

All the benches are wet with groups of dew drops attending a dew convention to debate for an extension in their life span. They banter and chatter oblivious to the sun shining through the chinks in the trees lined adjacent to the benches. The convention would soon come to an unexpected end. Just like that...

Before the sun can see the dew, I walk up to the fading green benches and choose the driest part of the wood to sit on, some could live to see the sun shine on them...

With eyes scanning the words, my ears decide to find company else where. As my fingers, cold and hard from the fresh winter air, scribbles in dirty scrawls, my ears absorb all sorts of sounds. Birds chirp and flutter and greet their neighbours on other trees. The thin film of mist moves serenely through the lawns and the whispering trees - almost like a pantomime if viewed from a distance. The layer of mist dissolves into the air as a group of girls walk past it occupied in their gossips, debates and mere speculations. The sounds of nature are soon defeated by the loud sirens, rows and rows of it passing on the ever busy road. Their 'rhyming' sound hangs in the air for some time soon to be followed by the impatient horns and roaring engines, screeching wheels where the road and the hot tyres meet in a 'friction'. While this happens my mind races back to the images freshly stored and preserved in the corner of my brain. Images of my unmade bed, ma's frowning cute little face scolding me for another late start for college, pops uttering 'inshaAllah, i will pick you by 2, be safe...' , the queue come flock of girls passing by the sniper and through the metal detectors. As the sound of the singing sirens dissolves in dust particles suspended in the air, I quickly bury my images for later reference. At the same time I make a mental note to add more to the collection. For a second everything falls into a silence. No birds, no crows, no whispering leaves and mist, no emergency bells. A silence is soon taken over by the rhythm of the dribbling basket balls.

I survived another day..

unannounced hiatus

2009-10-26T07:42:00.000-07:00

after remaining absent for over two months i have come back...
come back to the ever increasing followers, to wonderful blogs that i follow...
i wonder what kept me away...

like a sleep came over and when i woke up it was today...

when he bowed in Sajda

2009-08-26T11:46:00.000-07:00

With tiny chubby hands folded just below his chest, he stood in line with the rest of the Namazis. The Talawat of the Imam swam in the windy night of Ramdhan. The green lights on the Masjid's minar against the backdrop of a purplish sky was the object of fascination for him. From time to time he lifted his prayer cap covered head towards the sky and took a quick glance at the softly lit up minar with loud speakers emitting the soothing talawat reaching the ears of the Momins.

He stood there in the front most saf (row) among men, some tall, some fat, some sleepy, some with tummies bulging out post heavy iftaari ritual and as a result stood there in a state of dreaminess. Alas everyone stood in front of his Creator. When everyone bowed down to prostrate to the Almighty, he got a little pushed sometimes from the tall man on the left and sometimes from the fat man on the right.

Someone in the masjid coughed constantly. His attention was diverted by the probably old man whose coughing got louder and louder. It agitated some when they should have been more concerned for the ill health of someone than being annoyed. The Imam's Talawat soared the starry skies and the Momins prayed. He could hear his grandma's voice in his unusually big ears. Quickly shaking his head like a child about to throw a tantrum he stood in respect with the rest of the congregation and listened to the message of God. He understood nothing like many around him but listened for it brought peace and harmony.

The wind blew from every corner, it criss crossed the Namazis standing shoulder to shoulder in peace and unity. Another gush of wind blew and the tent at a distance caught his attention. The tent stood like an old lady without a walking stick, wobbly and weak. With every flight of the night breeze, the tent danced back and forth and he wondered what lied behind the tent walls. On the other side of the floral green tent partition women, young and old, submitted themselves to their Lord.

On this side of the tent, where his world existed, once again while being squished between men who occasionally burped or felt itchy, his tiny, long eye lashed eyes closed. After only seconds he woke up to find himself the only one in Sajda. Embarrassed and shocked he adjusted his cap with one hand and pulled up his drooping trousers with the other, jumped onto his feet and joined the rest. For quite some length he didnt raise his head despite the minar's fascination. He felt ashamed of himself. He had fallen asleep while the Imam led the prayers. He had been absent while God looked down at his creatures immersed in prayers. How outrageous He must have felt to discover him dosing off in Masjid.

A delicate film of the purest tears filled his eyes. One drop glided down his bumpy cheek while the rest got sheltered by the long healthy lashes. When the imam and the rest turned their heads for Salam, he followed obediently and attentively. Cupped hands were raised in the air, some old wrinkly, some big, strong and veins protruding, some white, some brown, some rich and some poor, some joined together and some raised apart. Among the many sorts of hands he cupped his own tiny pair and brought them in front of his chest raising them in the air.

another rain post....if love is shelter i m going to walk in the rain

2009-08-20T22:09:00.000-07:00

Its morning and i wake up to a crowded gray sky. then the sky pours down its beautiful gift and rains. just the perfect start to the day in Lahore.

i couldn't resist it and went out. at length i stood there admiring the monsoon weather under my umbrella. the wind was welcoming and the rain inviting. the umbrella soon lost its company and rain found me to play with. soon i was under the out of the world rain shower, it grew faster and heavier, just the kind i was waiting for the entire summer. it got colder and windier and more rainy. the rain fell down generously and drenched me soon. every part of my clothes embraced rain and cling to me to never let go. the wind felt cruel for a while but i surrendered to it. i let it make me shiver. i let the rain overpower me. i stopped moving and stood there to have a rendezvous with the rain as it fell lovingly on me. i looked at the sky, eye to eye trying to figure out how rain traveled from up there. but nature has its secrets and all i could see was a magical appearance of rain out of no where, just falling down. i realised that rain was in love. it came rushing down to its beloved. wasnt it so appropriate for the rain to say "i fall in love with the land, the soil, the earth and kept falling until i embraced it and melted into it"

coming out of my pointless thoughts, i secretly prayed for my wish to come true. it is said that pray while it rains and it will come true. so i prayed and prayed until i felt exhausted by my own whispers. the rain fell and fell everywhere. the clouds above moved faster, like ghosts sailing through God's sky. i walked barefoot on the soft bed of wet grass. the paleness of my feet complimented the green of the nature. then i looked around me; my wet glasses resting on the lawn swing, arch wall darkened where rainwater had embraced it in a blot, wall cress flowers hanging down in a farewell to the dripping leftover drops.

it was a moment,
a moment reflecting divine power,
when the rain danced down,
the purest of winds blew.
it was the rhythm in the air
the thunder in the clouds
when a whisper was let out,
when the world came to a tiny halt,
and a shy breath escaped
from the slightly parted lips.
it met with freedom
to fly away with the winds..

the lemonade genius

2009-08-19T22:41:00.000-07:00

My friend and I had this profound conversation on the above title. She was upset and thus the discussion went forth like this.

Amy: How hard is it to make lemonade ! ..

Mubi: it takes a newton, an einstein, a meera, an ainak wala jin and an amy to make a lemonade.. hm i say not that hard !

Amy: very hard ! .. do u have any idea abt my struggle today !

Mubi: no the lil birdy who delivers news got caught in an accident. what happened :p

Mubi: oh the lemons refused to get squeezed by you?

Amy: no it was horrible in taste mubi !

Mubi: then the following equation would work

amy + lemons + kitchen = disaster - amy - lemons= empty peaceful kitchen

the conversation followed but not in my favour. i also got to learn that there exists a Portugese lemonade :p

when the sky talks to you

2009-08-17T07:10:00.000-07:00

Her feet sank in the green of grass, puddle of water filled her sandals. Rain drizzled down,a tiny baby drop fell on her forehead. She lifted her face up, tried looking at the magnificent canvas of clouded sky. The brightness above mighty as ever made her squint her eyes. She closed her eye lids and let the raindrops dance on her face. The sky began to let go off the long held rain. Then she heard the longest thunder in her life. A lightening might strike her. But the rain, it fell down with force and fervour to the preceding rhythm of thunder . It rushed down towards the thirsty soul. As the droplets fell down, everything brightened up. Everything came to live. The grass, the leaves, the lemon tree nearby, even the birds began to sing a little. The windowpanes glistened to their own lifeless tone that water slid down them.

She stood there, her wet feet rooted in the soft grass tickling her. She observed that her feet looked whiter, fairer, flawless. A tiny red ladybird gave company to the tiny finger of her left foot, like a thief hiding in a narrow alley, silently and invisibly. Oblivious of the tiny life by her foot,she looked at her hands and saw beauty. The wheatish complexion had transformed to a glowing white. The rain fell down on her clothes, absorbed into the fabric and disappeared making it see through. The rain fell on her skin and the tiny hair stood in welcome of it.

A streak of shiver ran through her body and emerged on her skin as goosebumps. She quickly rubbed her hands over her cold arms embedding the standing hair. The softest breeze blew and alarmed her. The rain had stopped. The sky had grown silent and the clouds had swam away to another destination.

between the wish and the life lies waiting

2009-08-15T05:00:00.000-07:00

i have been waiting. i dont like waiting but i have realised that is all we do our entire lives. just look at the oft recited phrase "umeed per duniya qaim hai" "hope keeps us going" indirectly its suggesting that we 'wait'.
we wait for so many things. as Pakistanis we wait 10 to 12 hours daily for this one thing: Bijli, angerzi mai bolay tu 'electricity'

my friend calls and says: whats happening
me says: umm waiting...
my friend says: my waiting just got over, lights back yay
me says: no no i was waiting for the washroom to get vacant :P

so yes, its all about waiting
we wait for electricity to COME and sometimes for it to go.

pop says: what are you doing mubi
me says: pa, waiting...
pop says: but the light is coming, what are you waiting for
me says: pa!! i m waiting for the light to go..
pop says: but why would anyone wait for it to go? we are supposed to wait for it to come to continue our electricity related chores/work etc etc
me says: no pa, ab zamana badal gaya hai :p the world is changing now :p actually i have to ring my friend, so i will call her when the light's out, best way of shedding an hour of load shedding!! :D :D

apart from all this
we wait in a queue
we wait for our turn in an interview
we wait for our favourite program
we wait for our new clothes that the tailor never stitches on time
we wait for a table to get vacant in a restaurant and then we wait for the order that we placed, we also wait for the delivery boy who happens to be lost though hes been to our place like only yesterday?
we wait for our o levels result, a levels, college results and so many other results
we wait for the new movie to release
we wait for some spicy gossip about our exes from our so and so friends
we wait to be logged onto facebook, even though the time span is a few seconds
we wait for the restoration of peace
we wait for the baby to come in the world
we wait for the leaders to change
we wait for our monthly salary/ stipend
we wait for the rain, its raining right now, the wait is over :D
'haan' ya 'naa' honay ka wait, then the girl/guy is engaged, phir shaddi ka wait.
chuti honay ka wait
weekend anay ka wait though we know exactly how many days and hours will it take to be a weekend but we go like this

friend: i thought you planned that...
other friend: i have! but i am waiting..
friend: for what?
other friend: the weekend!!!

we are always waiting. waiting for the right time to confess our love to someone, or to give an equally 'rude' reply to get even with someone.

in fact, the idiom, 'strike while the iron is hot' refers exactly to the 'waiting' bonus we get in life.

lately i was also waiting.i dont know for what but i was waiting. my friends asked why arnt you blogging these days. i didnt know. but i think i was waiting for the right time. hmm

sometimes, the waiting for something takes an entire lifetime. we wait and wait and wait for that one thing to happen to us but miss out on the little happy moments of life. sometimes we just go through life 'waiting' for something to happen instead of making it happen.

so basically, waiting is the transitory phase we all have to go through to reach our dreams, our wishes, our destinations. the waiting phase, however, is not void of thorns and ugly hindrances. getting through it, is like surviving through a war; losing a limb or two in the end.

i never thought waiting could do this to us !!

unheard voice

2009-08-11T11:49:00.001-07:00

Every year on the 1st August we put up our flag on the roof top as a yearly ritual in preparation of the independence day. However, as 14th of August fast approaches this year, i am forced to think over a few things as a Pakistani. Do I really respect the flag that is my identity? Do I feel proud being a Pakistani at this time, when difficulties envelope us more than ever before due to the indulgent and laid back attitude of our caretakers?

I m not a coward to back out and declare I m not honest to my country but I certainly am tired of the games being played with us. I m tired of the politics of the politicians. I m tired of the world politics and the big evil schemes shrouded in the slogan of 'helping developing countries'. I m tired of justifying the killing of my brothers and sisters based on some conspiracy theories and that all will end in good. In the real picture, all the waiting for a better and 'peaceful' tomorrow are distant and blurry. It’s like 'waiting for Godot' something that we are expecting but would never happen. The entire episode of waiting makes fun of our helplessness, mocking us right in the face.

I don’t want to sound a cry baby, nor am I complaining about my fate for putting me in a country lacking in almost all comforts that a citizen has a right to. My agitation is constantly nagging me to find answers to the questions in the dark corridors of power, politics and our caretakers. My lost patriotism, with much shame and disgrace falls on the predators we assumed to be our caretakers. I use the word 'caretaker' because that is what they are who sit on the seats of power, who travel on the taxes we pay, who drive in VVIP cars, who live in huge mansions with continuous power supply, indulge in luxurious activities, dine with super powers while the 'taken care of' face constant negligence.

This is a voice of everyone who has been affected by the turmoil, directly or indirectly. Although I m much disappointed in the power of pen, this is my only outlet. I come from what is called the young generation, successfully hopeless and dejected. I grew up in the times of 9/11 and have continued to see occupation, arms and ammunition, mass killings and bombs almost every day. I don’t want my children to learn that A stands for ammunition, B for bomb and W for war. But despite all the bleakness and the dejection -following is all that I ask for on behalf of my fellow citizens.

I ask not more than is my right. I voice no more than there is wrong in the world. I bleed no more than the pain of my brothers and sisters victimized by random drone attacks, shellings and guns. I don’t want false promises of long awaited peace with rehabilitation plans. I don’t want peace with broken limbs, maimed souls, forgotten identities, lost relations, war scars embedded into my skin, blood dried up on the barren land.

All I ask for is what I deserve. I want to see a blue sky, the green grass, a night sky that I can look up at without the fear of being hit by an unknown war machine. I want to breathe fresh air; open my eyes to a beautiful Pakistan every day. I wish to move around freely without any fear of insecurity, or risking my life to a bomb tied onto someone else. I want a true promise that would put a smile on every face. Do I ask for a lot?

You don′t deserve to live

2009-07-17T03:33:00.000-07:00

it is not easy to be a muslim and live everyday of your life like a normal human being. what is a normal human being. how do you define 'normal' and 'human being'. since all the definitions of our lives come from the west, i m thinking that according to certain definitions, a human being is someone who throws drones, wages wars in someone else's territory to find a few people and then justify it for the good of the world.

i m not a human being then. i am a muslim people are afraid of. i raise the banner of islamophobia and scare people to the extent that they would end up stabbing me 18 times.

a courtroom is a place with people with some conscience i believe. or at least a courtroom is where people go to get justice. what happened to all the people there, especially the providers of justice when a racist man was stabbing a pregnant Muslim woman 18 times? why? only because she chose to wear a headscarf.

a 'normal human being' according to the definition of the west, is concious enough to use his/her reflex action when they see something unusual happening. like someone brutually stabbing a woman ! it is beyond my understanding. what happened? it takes quite a while to stab someone that many times. where were the people? or was the courtroom empty? the husband got stabbed 3 times. no one came to their rescue until she died? there were around 8 people there with perhaps no reflex action/ reaction.

some see the murder as an isolated incident, which i believe it isnt because the reaction was triggered because the stabber was a muslim hater who called marwa a terrorist in a public park.

but who kills a woman who is even pregnant. from a simple humanistic point of view (even the one coming from the west) killing someone is unjustifable.

how can i believe that any muslim that is being killed around the world, be it afghanistan, iraq, darfur, gaza and my own country is being killed to get hold of a couple of people, for some unachievable 'greater good thats never going to come' or because the terrorities are to be divided even if it costs human life.

even an elastic has its limit. after a certain point even that breaks.

did you? yes i did

2009-07-02T23:32:00.000-07:00

Do you have it?
No i dont
Why dont you have it?
No one gave it to me
But why didnt you ask for it?
I think I did ask for one...
What do you mean 'think'? dont you remember?
I would have, but its been a long time
How long?
Maybe in another life?
We just live once...

O now I remember
what?
that i did ask for it
you did?
yes !
and...
well they didnt seem to feel my existence..
that is bizarre...did u tell them you really needed it?
Yes, i told them i NEED it and i have been waiting for it
what did they say?
nothing
what do you mean nothing? they must have...
i just heard something...big
then?
then something hot slid down my limbs and chest..
what was it?
streams of it began to joyously slide down every part of my body
what was it?
something flew towards me and hit me on the forehead
was it a ball?
no, it was someone's some part
what you do mean?

I asked for peace...

I asked for peace and i got flesh and limbs flying towards me
I asked for peace and my blood earned freedom. it broke through my body
my blood and my brother's blood found escape from the false belief in piece

silliness

2009-06-29T11:10:00.000-07:00

i found this scribbled in a small diary when i was looking for something else.
wonder when and why i wrote this...

titled : bare feet robbers

they robbed and robbed. had so much money but why did they never bought a pair of shoes?
or at least stole one? hah !

on being anti men

2009-06-28T04:16:00.001-07:00

when mubi thought that...

Men are pretty little girls

people said...

chacha homer: its good you guys are finally accepting us as one of your own :D

doci anni: that is quite a controversial thing to say :p

mha: someone told me you're really anti men since always, so understand your dissing me :p :p

S.s : leme think.....

I. N: blahhhh

soso: profound insight. btw what gender is it again?

fathers day

2009-06-21T05:30:00.000-07:00

i got a text from a friend

A little girl and her father were crossing a bridge.

father: please hold my hand

girl: no dad, you hold my hand.

father: whats the difference?

girl: if i hold your hand and something happens to me, chances are that i may let your hand go. but if you hold my hand i know for sure you will never let my hand go !

however, in mubi's life things are a bit different

one day
mubi: papa i was thinking....

papa : are you asking me or are you telling me ?

mubi wondering and attempting to sound clever: umm telling you?

papa giving mubi a look

mubi: *sigh* FINE asking you

papa: hmm much better young lady

___________________________________
another one day

mubi driving

papa hands clutched on the handbrake

mubi: papa will you please take your hand off it and let me drive?

papa: it feels good this way

mubi and papa in the car in the garage

papa: so are we there yet?

mubi: ya i guess...

_____________________________________
papa: does my beard look overgrown?

mubi: hmmm no it looks fine

papa: ok im going to the barber to get my bread trim

mubi: ok

_____________________________________

mubi and papa in a conversation from two different floors

papa on 1st floor: where is that covering sheet?

mubi on ground floor: its the green one from the top. there are 3 sheets on my chair

papa: green? there is no green !!!

mubi runs upstairs and smartly shows papa the green one

mubi: see, this one !

papa astonished: and this is green?

mubi: oh i forgot...

papa: what?

mubi being cheeky: that you cant recognize colours

papa: says who?

mubi: a wild guess !

the mystery house

2009-06-16T12:27:00.000-07:00

Back in the 19th century California, there lived a psychic rifle heiress, Sarah Winchester, who built a house continuously for 38 years to keep the spirits of the dead happy. watch the link. i would definitely want to visit this place !

something i googled: Winchester inherited more than $20.5 million upon her husband's death. She also received nearly 50 percent ownership of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, giving her an income of roughly $1,000 per day, none of which was taxable until 1913. This amount is roughly equivalent to $21,000 a day in 2008. WOW !

first day at work

2009-06-12T13:12:00.000-07:00

i talked to the guards outside and they gave me a fancy little OLD overused card that i had to touch it to the oooooooooohhhhhhhhh device and the tada the door opens!!!! ooooooohhhh

the guard took me to a wrong office of a tall and beautiful lady, where the plate said "marketing and planning". she saw me i saw her and we both were like 'eerrrr'. then i told her what i am here for. so the only female person in the building took me to a door, pointed towards it and then made her way forward. for a second i was lost and i was like ''err this door?'' she turned slightly, kept walking at the same time and with her lovely smile said ''yes''.

i stood there disappointed thinking thats the end of the journey for me and the beautiful lady?

the door awaits to be opened. i open it and then follows the conversation

me: er AOA, is so and so here?

he: no hes not

me: err but he told me come here at 1 pm

he: but hes not here

me: then where is he...

he: hes in karachi for a month now

me totally baffled but hid my expression: umm thats weird coz i talked to him only yesterday

he seriously stares at me for a while

i stare back

he chuckled and said: come in come in, i m so and so

me baffled again and then haha hehehe haha i go (exaggerated)

first day of internships are boring. at least it was for me. it involved a lot of waiting for the reporter guy who i was supposed to work with. thus i just sat and sat and read and read all the newspapers they had. the so and so monitering cum funny guy tried keeping up a conversation and we got along well. but me being me didnt say much since he kept telling me that a little more wait and the reporter will be here in no time and so will be the other interns. he tried giving me a good company until he started smoking. then came another reporter. he hurried towards his desk and typing away he went with a cigarette in one hand. that made it two people smoking.

i was afraid i would get cramps by just sitting there forever. to move a muscle or two i turned a bit and inspected the room. i noticed one really really old guy sitting at the end of the L shaped room with huge thick glasses with really weak eyesight doing what? engrossed in reading something and..... yes smoking. so that made it three men smoking and the fourth a passive smoker, that would be me.

when i was done reading papers, counting the number of people in the room, counting the montiers in the room, i was left with one more task - counting the ACs, three they were, SABRO but quite old. i was amazed they were still working. oh and there was one tv as well. which was turned on later when we heard about a blast in Garhi Shahu a busy residential and commerical area.

finally the reporter whom i was waiting for arrived and i was handed over to the non smoker reporter. we chatted a bit after which i said ''okkaaay that means i am at the wrong place'' and he said maybe, its upto you. i was so bored that i felt no way am i going to do this internship. while i was still thinking of running away from the ancient, cobweb ridden room that the senior reporter cum monitering cum funny guy called me to meet their resident editor. i excused the non smoker reporter and rushed to another office. my legs were stuck from sitting in two chairs one after the other. i really wanted to get out of the room. more than pleased i walked to the resident editor's office where he was SMOKING bingo! and watching the recent blast news. i had a little chit chat with the editor and by the end of our conversation cum interview cum i dont know what he gave me an assignment to work on with the deadline for this tuesday. and i said ''hmm thats more than enough time'' mental note mubi try to keep your mouth shut! so i put myself into handing over my report by tuesday when i know i am the lazinest person on this planet for the time being.

it was finally chutiiii time wohoo, yay! home sweet home here i come. so i exchanged 'cyas' with the reporters and editor and rushed out the building but only after i scanned the entry card on the security screen. the end of my first at work. oh and ya the two other interns didnt turn up who happen to be some girls from the same college i go to.

this is the card i got and something funny caught my attention :p

did u notice? ;)

somethings are said and some are said without saying

2009-06-04T07:34:00.000-07:00

you know the funny thing is on the outside i was an honest man, straight as an arrow. i had to come to prison to be a crook
-andy dufresne, shawkshank redemption

"I think I'll be a clown when I get grown," said Dill. "Yes, sir, a clown.... There ain't one thing in this world I can do about folks except laugh, so I'm gonna join the circus and laugh my head off."

"You got it backwards, Dill," said Jem. "Clowns are sad, it's folks that laugh at them."
-To Kill a Mocking Bird

'the guilty commit the crime, the innocent are punished. thats the world we live in .
-the case of exploding mangoes

Landon: Listen, Jamie, I was hoping we could run lines together?
Jamie: Okay, but just not so anybody knows, right?
Landon: Well I just figured we could surprise everyone with how good I get.
Jamie: Like we could be secret friends.
Landon: Exactly, exactly it's like you're reading my mind.
Jamie: Great umm... maybe you could read mine.
[she gives him a cold glare and turns away]
-a walk to remember

Father Janovich: Why didn't you call the police?
Walt Kowalski: Well you know, I prayed for them to come but nobody answered.
-gran torino

Maula jutt: maulay nu maula na maaray tay maula nai marda oye!
-maula jat

chalo chalo lets get ahead of auntie
-some kids in the neighbourhood :/

three eggs cracked...

2009-06-01T23:43:00.000-07:00

mubi was scrubbing and rubbing and polishing the fridge while mum has her best conversation ever

two women are engaged in an intense conversation about the relations of the family, the ones that go like 'woh kis ka beta tha...' 'us ki biwi taya kay betay ki beti thi jo ab apni nand kay shukar ki khala zaat behan hai, us ki ma meray mamoo ki biwi ki phophii thi...' these kind of long LONG relationship talk where the root to the family tree is trying to be discovered.

khala: tanveer ka mian/ shawher fareeda ka bhai hai

mama: tanveer ka?

khala: haan..dekho...jo tanvee..

mama: tanveer mard ka naam hai?

mubi chuckles and bursts in laughter.

mama: kia? tanveer aurat hai?

mubi: obviously ma, Pakistan mai abi tak gay marriages legal nai hoi !!

as an afterthought mubi ended up breaking 3 eggs....

some conversations...many upon a time

2009-05-31T07:03:00.000-07:00

on a hot summer day when standing in the kitchen is unbearable let alone cooking...

Pa: aj khanay mai kia hai? whats for lunch today?

Ma: mattar gohst. mutton and peas

Pa: aur jis nay gosht nai khana woh kia khaaye? and who doesnt want to eat mutton?

Ma: woh mattar khaaye. they can have peas

Me: aur jis nay mattar nai khanay woh? and those who dont want to have peas?

Ma: woh apna sar khaaye! they can have their brain!

________________________________________________

me (in a nostalgic tone): i so want to go back to my alevels days...

brother: start being dumb again

me: what? that was the only time when i wasnt!

_______________________________________________

me: salam, A say baat kerni thi...

A's bro: ya sure, hold a sec

me waiting for many seconds while theres a lot of screaming and shouting on the other line. finally A comes on the line

me: eerr hallo?

A : (shouts) dont wana talk to anyone right now, BYE!

hangs up the line

me: okaay....bye.....whatever! hmpf!

________________________________________________

mubi: how could this be? can life ever be fair? hmpf!

Ma: why what happened?

mubi: its only 10: 55 am !!

Ma:( trying to be funny) hmm now thats tragic! tch tch! aisa roz roz nahi hona chahiyay

mubi: m not joking! can you believe it? they cant even be a little punctual !

Ma: (sees discomfort and annoyance) eerr are you expecting someone?

mubi: WAS! i was expecting someone but no! its either early or late.hardly ever on time!

Ma: omG...is it one of your imaginary friends from the past?

mubi: (looks at ma weirdly) what? NO ! are you sure you are alright?

Ma: i think i should be asking that !

mubi: well in that case no i am not alright. life is so not fair

Ma: yes you just said that...but i want to know more about who came early...

mubi: the light ma, the light! these wapda people will never learn anything about punctuality now, will they? how could they be so careless. if it goes for one hour why is it already back at 10: 55? i dont want any more surprizes hmpf !

and she walks out of the room while Ma gasps in shock and horror at the way WAPDA works...

someone said it so aptly that " All serious conversations gravitate towards philosophy"

when you do the undid and then try to undo the did but then its no use coz the did is done and you cannot erase everything like undo the did

2009-05-28T23:58:00.000-07:00

i have..

updated my hit list

cursed the politicians, burn in hell

cleaned my room, the messy study desk

bought the long desired fairy tale book :D

painted a maroon nail polish on a pink nail polish which made it almost black nail polish 'uber-cool' !!

have just used the compound word 'uber-cool' whose meaning is only available on urban dictionary

slept a lot on random hours with no electricity and sweat trickling down from all ticklish parts of my body

observed that all my previous posts have not been able to generate more than 12 comments on an average but the fan rate has gone up!

*update* ...burnt myself twice once with a 'tawa' and then with boiling water, electrocuted once, two deep cuts on fingers and saved myself from falling on the stairs face down all in a week.

then i havent...

read the zits comics in a long time

had any ice cream in the last 24 hours

had ras malai since last year

picked up a fight with my brother in a 'long' time

crashed the car even once, thats earning extra chances to drive!

stared back at 'men' who are quite keen on singing some song as soon as 'someone' passes by them

taken roadside pictures of a welding, a construction site and a baby

put on any make up in the last 3 years? ok no thats not a 'haven't'

i have never made a silly list like this one before.

*yet another update*
let this post be an open tag :D :D make your lists of haves and havents especially those you have commented and otherwise too..ok mubi stop typing !

It happened one morning and never happened again

2009-05-25T02:52:00.000-07:00

One bright, sunny morning (the way British like) I woke up with a snow white envelope in my left hand ( i m a southpaw, so technically its correct). Rubbing my puffy eyes I opened the envelope with a child's curiosity. Aside: Who could and why would anyone send me a letter in this age of E- mail. Anyhow I hurriedly took out a crisp, neatly folded blue paper. On it were scribbled these lines:

"Lets spare the world! Your times up."
p.s: we are being lenient, you have 24 hours.
Good Luck!
Angel of Death
Human Resource Dept.

Do not expect me to tell you what I had to go through or what my reaction was! Fear? Goosebumps? sweating like a pig while counting my limited breathes, fidgeting? nope, no, nothing like that. I was not astonished, neither did i feel my heart sinking into the deepest, unknown hide outs in my body (what? hmm). And most of all yes, unfortunately i did faint. Fainted! yes. Not because I was on a verge of having a cardiac arrest. No. Nothing that terrible. Just because I thought that 24 hours were so LESS! so unfair! I was overwhelmed with uncontainable excitement. So much to do in such a short time span!

When I finally regained my conscious, I pinched myself quickly and read the letter one more time. I couldnt organise my thoughts; all came jumping, running and galloping, crashing into my mind! Only if they had informed me before time I could have done it better.

I started off by making a long list of things i could do in the remaining 23 hours. I spent one hour fainting dramatically and staying unconscious. I decided I would first go and rob a bank. After all everyone should have a little adventure before they go UP. Talking of UP, theres a new animated movie called UP that I might have watched only if... Anyhow i was off to some of my mischief and violating the law. totally unleashed, no responsibility of being a responsible citizen. Then I went to a theme park and took all the rides, especially the roller coaster a number of times until I felt like throwing up.

Yes, yes you are right about that...the police aka cops (sounds cool) was after me! Of course robbing a bank is no joke! I went and hid in a cinema and watched all the movies they were showing -back to back. This saved my life for more than six hours. My genius mind was gliding, working fast like Mojo jojos!

To keep the long story short, by the time I came out I surrendered and landed in a jail. In this country every politician has to take a nice trip to the jail once at least, the more the better, for a successful career.

Dont expect me to end this piece with the mymotherwokemeup or ifelloffthebed kind of an ending although the whole writing is the 'silly piece of words', as if i care!! Well I did die. yes! The angel took me but now lets have some privacy and peace. I cant tell you what I am doing up here! *smug*

The End
ghostly ever after

OR ....

I COULD HAVE HAD ANOTHER ENDING. You know the kind Shakespeare did. Like he made his heroes tragic heroes and people cried at their tragic flaw and that one mistake they make that costs them their life. well yes that classic tragic ending. So here it goes. Ending number 2. REWIND! Darn the dvd's getting stuck.. and zoom we go back to where I was caught by the cops and ended up behind the bars.

to be continued...
lots of commercials.

To keep the long story short, by the time I came out I surrendered and landed in a jail. In this country every politician has to take a nice trip to the jail once at least, the more the better, for a successful career.

Soon my fame, and luck and excitement seemed like a drag. Like you go through when reading Twilight and thinking why is the same thing mentioned on every other page? 23 hours had long been over; how come i was still alive? i fell asleep while still in an Aside conversation with myself.
The sweltering, suffocating heat within the enclosed cell walls woke me up. i realized I'm still alive. A LIVE. Another tiny white envelope was tucked into my pocket. Only its edge was peeping out from the brown khakies.

I quickly pulled it out. Deja vu. Opened it in such a rush that I tore half a page. It was pink this time. On it was scribbled in an untidy writing, unlike the previous calligraphy font.

We are sorry. there has been some terrible mistake. the virus in our computer gave us your name. you are too bad for our place up here. we only take good people and thank God you showed us your evil side. you have truly saved us. You can continue with creating havoc down where you are. have fun! Toodles! chao! Hasta la vista ( not so soon)
good luck angel of death human resource dept
p.s: my team is saying a big halo to you.

Aside and aloud to myself: Sheesh! Someone free me from this jail!!! *screams*

The audience gets up and leaves the empty popcorn boxes and cold drinks and used tissue papers in the hall. murmuring to each other, 'i m glad the ending was happy', 'ya happily ever afters are rare..'

declaration of a hiatus after an announced hiatus and comeback

2009-05-20T00:57:00.000-07:00

i m back.
finally
out of my secret shell

Sometimes the strangest things happen to people! something to make them jump out of their seats. something to make them believe in miracles. and for those who already believe in them, the faith strengthens.

Those strangest things result in ultimate euphoria. the zone of accumulation bursts and it flows out. the joy, the exultation, everything. you feel like doing a jitterbug dance. without any effort you are jumping around in joy, literally, displaying your mental imbalance due to excessive euphoria. but you dont care, you continue dancing, jumping up and down, twisting and turning in exceptional joy like you own the world; without any worry that your neighbour might be peeping out of their window, looking across them inside another window. you go on singing the first song in your mind in your hoarse voice, the glass doesnt break either.

so whats your motto? nothing is impossible in this world. miracles do happen.

coke vs the guyain (cow) soap

2009-05-17T07:09:00.000-07:00

Never saw it on t.v. but so far the stupidest advertisement i have ever seen. i would prefer watching the oh so famous guy (cow) soap ad from the 90s over the coke one. Too bad youtube doesnt have a clip of it :/ but the tag line for the advert went like this "what a guy(cow)" the cow is 'guy soap's' brand mascot.

of advertisements...

2009-05-13T13:03:00.000-07:00

hmm ads sometimes give you deja vu like this one

omore :/

coca cola :D :D

so omore's is a copy of coca colas :/

Ma kay naam

2009-05-09T12:43:00.000-07:00

hahaha.

but on a serious note this song touches my heart. many have sung this piece of poetry of Shah Hussain but no one sang it better than Hamid Ali bela.

resham da lacha

2009-04-28T06:53:00.000-07:00

this is the song i have been listening to these days :p love it! :D :D

this and that

2009-04-27T02:07:00.000-07:00

blah

i intend to write more

the summer heat is doing its work

the fingers are slowing down

eyes are heavy with sleep

toy bombs are being sold to children in swat

shoe throwing has lost its charm, another politician was a victim of the missed shoe shot. i hope next time someone picks up his/her shoe, they target properly.

the compact laptop is neat!

there was a turkey on the loose in the neighbourhood. i will soon put up two pictures of the lost and bewildered creature.

there is quite a confusion regarding the thesis topic. how is the theory supporting the research? its nerve racking and i have no intention working towards it...not at least today, tonight, tomorrow or the other morrow.

a woman with neck length boyish hair, clad in a track suit walked past me as i trudged myself towards my block. for a second i couldnt figure out if the person walking past me is a guy or a woman.

the Dunkin Donuts shelves were almost empty today. the desire to treat my taste buds with a boston cream donut increased even more as i felt lazier and slow than before.

a few days back two people saw me in their dreams. the same night even i saw myself in my own dream. thats quite rare. talk about being popular in the dream world eh...

i plan to eat ras malai, falooda and a cheesecake in the coming days.

probably the last 'this and that' of the day. i saw Andrew Symonds on t.v the other day and even right now as i see him bowl (against Pakistan in Dubai) i let out a tiny shriek, almost a whisper "what happened to his beautiful locks?" where did all his hair go :/

to be continued till the day lasts

yaw siht ti daer ot nuf ti tnsI

2009-04-13T05:25:00.000-07:00

n
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. seye ruoy esolc woN . nrut thgir dna potslluF

I really cant thing(k) of a title for this post, so i am gona see how long can a post title be? i think its cool to write in this one line space than

2009-04-09T05:33:00.000-07:00

...this rectangular box. ah well the space ended so soon! hmpf! i always want to write proper as in p.r.o.p.e.r posts on my blog otherwise it gives me the impression that i have ruined it. you know the kind of promise you make to yourself when you buy a new notebook at the beginning of a new year at school. its only after a few days that your writing no more remains neat, your patience level drops and you just cant keep up with maintaining aneatnotebookwithnoscribblingsandnodoodlingandnowritingatthelast
pageofthecopyakanotebook...well i just did that on my blog...improper post with no literary element..was there ever such an element before? *thinkingandkneadingmyeyebrowsinweirdshapesexpression*

i walk a million miles

2009-04-07T08:29:00.000-07:00

The new year is no more new. All the fresh resolutions that were made have been long forgotten. All the to do lists have either been torn out or lost, maybe under our beds, perhaps victimized by thin legged spidies and other such tiny creatures or worse, they are jharofied. At least that's what happened with me. O no no, I never got to make any resolutions. I am one of those people who keep writing the previous year on their notebooks and later realize - its new year!

Now that i am done with the introductory para of my "new, lighter, fresh post", I shall take you lot to the suddenly born resolution at this time of the year. Like they say its not too late to start over anew. Well its not really that dramatic. I have finally realized that love handles are not so lovely. Flat abs are things to have and the perfect figure is what one should be able to carry. Thus as soon as this realization dawned on my lazy existence, I pulled up my socks (literally) and grabbed my trainers or joggers or shoes or whatever you call( they are Sketchers, I wear brands :D, [bracket within bracket, ah the joys of showing off]).

My first day at walk, a brisk walk to be specific went quite satisfying. I did two 'takeovers. One I left behind a fat, obese guy and was impressed with myself and two I sped passed an auntie with a pram, baby car or whatever you call that thing with an over sized baby sitting/ crushing it. Then I saw numerous wrappers and paper advertisements of Omore ( the new ice cream in town, putting up all sort of outdoor advertising) lying about the footpath and quickly smsed my brother to bring home the new product. I walked faster as I thought about the peanut butter resting in the cooling fridge along with the Hershey's chocolate syrup and I was almost about to start running when I thought about the big, appetizing, chocolately jar of Nutella in Al Fatah( a local supermarket thats shrinking day by day) I saw but forgot to buy(a private, whispered ugh).

There were more serious issues at hand while I was out practicing my health regime and concentrating on walking with the right posture. The first seriously funny thing one comes across while walking is how others are walking. Its the best time to walk like you are some arrogant Roman ruler and pretend to be looking somewhere far away when actually you are scrutinizing other people as they walk by you and then laugh inwardly at their cartoonish walks. I have witnessed so many aunties and uncles who have their signature styles that havent changed in last 6 to 7 years. None have lost any weight but definitely good circulation of blood, maybe. The second thing that is kind of techno scary is how people carry cell phones with them while out on a walk. Not only carry, they have it glued to their ears, thanks to the new cheap packages and call rates . A good way of concentrating more on the gossips and less on the walk. I wonder who is the poor person on the other side of the line since all the people i pass by are talking and hardly ever listening to the other side! The third annoying problem one confronts while walking on the footpath along the road is the cars. The cars zoom past you with their beam lights ON, little realizing that its not a highway, only a street. so when you are trying to relax, walk and unwind, suddenly a cascade of flashy lights blind you out. that's the last thing you would want. no wonder parks are always a good option. but then driving all the way to the parks isnt always feasible. Fourth was not so surprising- a man sitting on his apparently parked motorbike right in the middle of the footpath while people had to change their track either to the left or the right. beyond basic human understanding.

while I decide how many more walks i would have to trudge myself to, you stay and stare below...........
the page of course! animals could work as an inspiration (:

A moment of eerie

2009-03-31T08:08:00.001-07:00

She lay on the bed. A thought or two bothering her deep into the sleepless night. No toss and turns, a crease less sheet suffocating beneath her mass. She just laid there, still. Static, almost lifeless. The fan above cooled the summer air around her. There were no beads of sweat on her forehead. An unusual night. Her eyes bubbled in tears that slowly traveled from the edges of her eyes to her temple and fell silently on the pillow covers - quickly absorbing the tear dews. The mild , cold wet spots tickled her right temple. The memory rested by her side silently. It seems like Seasons came and passed, leaves fell and grew again. Storms and winds bashed against her open window. She stayed there, there in a frozen moment.Her deep set dark eyes haunted her face and a serene smile danced about her thin cracked cherry lips.

Silent sobs and wrinkles of worry and grays of life push us towards a dark tunnel. lets just not stand here. the key to getting out alive of such moments is to keep moving.

25 things i hate about FB

2009-03-23T10:18:00.000-07:00

Although I claim myself to be a facebook addict, I m sure I am the last person to see this funny and so true video by Julian Smith. Most of you must have seen this before. Since I saw it only today, (though the mail was sent to be on the 6th of march) its something good, funny and absolutely true and worth passing on.

I just don't agree with the bumper sticker part, I like them :D

Hes so right when he mentions the "people you may (not) know" option that lingers on the right hand side...i keep getting names of half the people i dont even know :p i think for me that list works as "remember all these people you never want to add" because there are a few people i know that are always there in that list and its a good reminder for me not to add them :p *evil me*

back to back awards post

2009-03-23T04:45:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Seher. she awarded me with the following award a long time back :$ and i never got around to publish this until another award came along and i thought its time for some back to back award displaying.

The rules of the award:

1) Choose a minimum of 7 blogs that you find brilliant in content or design.
2) Show the 7 winners names and links on your blog, and leave a comment informing them that they were prized with "Honest Scrap." Well, there's no prize, but they can keep the nifty icon.
3) List at least 10 honest things about yourself.

time for some honesty to pour out :

I once said the F word and later regretted for being such a loser.

I sometimes crack my knuckles and thus have 'teri meri' fingers :p ugh

There are times when I want to say whats on my mind but somehow i just choose to be silent..ugh again

I have tried to control my temper and have failed miserably :p

I always come back from the beauty salon and hate my disastrous hair after every cut and trimming :p

I so glad I am down with 5 honest things. Honestly speaking this sounds so much like deja vu :$

Orkut and Facebook are total time waster sites and they have succeeded and i have given into the addiction..

I hate the British Embassy

Sometimes I think I would do anything to travel around the world :p

I have failed not to feel prejudiced against some people...

I don't know Urdu counting after 35.

I cant really tag any of you, most probably because i think i am the last person on blogosphere who still had to do this tag :$

Fame here i come :p

2009-03-19T13:11:00.000-07:00

Pakistani Spectator recently took my interview for their fabulous website, thanks to smacula for recommending me.
so heres my down to earth rendezvous :p *humble me* *yay*

heres the link or down the page.

Would you please tell us something about you and your site?

I blog by the name of Mubi aka scarlet wings.

By profession I m still a student pursuing my Honors degree in media studies and hope to delve further in my field along with my interest in poetry and calligraphy which I am still planning to start off with

Its been a year since I have been blogging. So far I have only one blog which I would like to call a not so personal online journal reflecting my perspective towards life and little, everyday happenings that include some emotional experiences through prose and poetry both, some related to the political mayhem in the country garnished with benign humor and at times dark emotions.

Do you feel that you continue to grow in your writing the longer you write? Why is that important to you?

Yes of course, I have seen a lot of improvement in my writing style from what I used to write a few years back. It’s like the more you write, the more you are able to explore and expand yourself and your limits. For any writer be they popular or not, getting better at expressing oneself is an essential part of catharsis.

I’m wondering what some of your memorable experiences are with blogging?

All the times that I have been tagged by fellow bloggers remains to be one joyous aspect of blogging. Also I think I have met some really interesting people through the world of blogging. Their regular visits to my site have been overwhelming (in the positive sense). Not to forget some of my silent followers who have contributed equally in building up my motivation to write.

What do you do in order to keep up your communication with other bloggers?

I might sound a bit lazy and unconcerned when it comes to my communication with fellow bloggers apart from blogging itself. I have joined twitter but I don’t remain up to date with that. Most part of it, it’s limited to blogging.

What do you think is the most exciting or most innovative use of technology in politics right now?

In Pakistan I don’t think we have any advancement of that sort right now. Parties like Imran Khan’s Tehreek e Insaaf have been establishing their website where people can register with the party. This gives the general public a better chance to get to know the party they support and remain up to date with their agendas etc.

Do you think that these new technologies are effective in making people more responsive?

Technology in any field has proved its effectiveness and I think bringing a new change in politics like this would definitely gather a much better response from people especially those who have lost faith in Pakistani politics and those who don’t even go to vote during elections. I guess online voting system should be promoted in Pakistan.

What do you think sets Your site apart from others?

Do I really have to see my blog as different from others? I think it’s pretty much like many of the blogs I follow. What would make my blog and others different could be the difference of perspective towards life in general and how the encounters with life affect me.

If you could choose one characteristic you have that brought you success in life, what would it be?

It would be my realization of the fact that I used to be very nonchalant. I realized I needed to work hard and gave myself a good nudge but I wouldn’t say that I have succeeded in life already…

What was the happiest and gloomiest moment of your life?

*sigh* hehe *totally confused* I don’t know if I can put a finger on either of the moments in life. For the gloomiest it was perhaps the time when I lost my Nani (grandmother), I loved her dearly. As for the happiest, have had my share of happy moments and I know there are a lot more to come inshaAllah J

If you could pick a travel destination, anywhere in the world, with no worries about how it’s paid for - what would your top 3 choices be?

Cool! Without any contemplation they would be:

Italy

Cedar point, it’s an amusement park somewhere in US, can’t recall. I have an absolute LOVE for thrilling rides. Since there is no money problem, I think I can add Spain, a place I always wanted to visit to see its walled cities and do their flamenco dance :p plus it’s got an exciting theme park to offer too!

And Alaska? Perfect I say

What is your favorite book and why?

Just one? Aww ok…For this year I think it has to be Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom- reason, it says a lot about life, hope and value of it and in simplest of thoughts. Plus it is a story about a teacher and a student and for some reason its really close to my heart. I can read it any time and every time. Apart from this (I can’t resist the temptation) Harper Lee’s To kill a mocking bird and Life expectancy by Dean Koontz

What’s the first thing you notice about a person (whether you know them or not)?

Hmm I don’t scrutinize people so doesn’t really matter. Though recently I have started to notice people’s accent when they talk, have heard many funny versions of English accents :p

Is there anyone from your past that once told you you couldn’t write?

No, no one apart from myself :p

How bloggers can benefit from blogs financially?

So far I can only think of the advertisements that bloggers can put up on their blogs to earn. I don’t know how much that benefit in terms of money but it’s a great idea even if it isn’t a lot.

Is it true that who has a successful blog has an awful lot of time on their hands?

Not necessarily. I think

that depends on the quality of writing and the selection of topics that are brought up on blogs. I know many bloggers who are blog enthusiasts and write a lot but that’s not because they have ample time on their hands. It’s because they are very passionate about what they write and thus successful.

What role can bloggers of the world play to make this world friendlier and less hostile?

Bloggers right now are doing a pretty job in representing their countries on a certain level which I think is a good step in removing any prejudices we hold against each other. Also blogs that write solely about their culture and politics etc are a good way of attracting people from other religions and countries to get to know the exotic side of places they never knew about.

Who are your top five favourite bloggers?

Seher who blogs here http://apromisepledged.blogspot.com/ Through this blog she has indeed been touching our lives plus she also maintains three other splendid witty blogs.

Tazeen who writes at http://tazeen-tazeen.blogspot.com/ her writing is blunt and witty and amusing.

UTP from http://www.umarpirzada.com/blog/ Umar aka UTP has categorized 3 days of the week and writes under those titles with thought provoking stuff and something to put a smile on your face. He also maintains other blogs one of which is related to sports.

Destitute rebel has a photography blog http://lahoredailyphoto.blogspot.com/ His blog narrates a new story, a new face of Lahore through his photography.

Duffer is one of my favourite because he’s one person in my list who has been maintaining a very interesting Urdu blog here http://www.dufferistan.com/

Is there one observation or column or post that has gotten the most powerful reaction from people?

Yes, once I wrote a conversational post http://goldenpages-mubi.blogspot.com/2008/10/to-be-or-not-to-be-p.html about the load shedding problem in Pakistan with an element of humour in it. It has gotten the most powerful reaction so far: p and I think my latest post as well

What is your perception about Pakistan and its people?

I am one of the Pakistanis myself and I see a lot of flaws in us as a nation like we end up electing the wrong people all the time. From a political point of view, we are facing quite an unstable time in the history of our country, struggling for our basic rights against dictator like politicians. Keeping the political mayhem and vulnerability state Pakistan is in due to pressure from superpowers and terrorist groups, I think people of Pakistan deserve some kind of an award or a standing ovation for their undying patience and level of hope.

Have you ever become stunned by the uniqueness of any blogger?

Not just one but something from all the blogs that I follow amazes me. I have been awed by their writings and ideas at one point in time especially those who are younger than me.

What is the most striking difference between a developed country and a developing country?

People in developing countries are still fighting for their basic rights like availability of food and sense of security.

What is the future of blogging?

With so many blogs mushrooming up in the world of internet, I see a very bright and long lasting future for blogging. A lot of competition for bloggers to maintain their individual style and distinctiveness

You have also got a blogging life, how has it directly affected both your personal and professional life?

I think there was a time when I used to talk A LOT about my blogging world in my professional and personal life which was quite an imbalance hehehe :p

What are your future plans?

To maintain a GOOD GPA, this may sound insignificant but it’s really crucial at this time. Besides that there are a lot of wild dreams which I really hope to see come true.

Any Message you want to give to the readers of The Pakistani Spectator?

Don’t miss this issue, it’s my interview in it On a serious note I think Pakistani Spectator deserves an award for their individuality and efforts in representing our country. Now to the readers – I m no saint myself so I can just add that try to forgive others coz life’s short. Also I read in a book that ‘there’s always cake’ which means there’s always a brighter side to things in life, try to see that.

lemonade award

2009-03-18T00:01:00.000-07:00

First a big thank you to Specs for this award :D *jumping around in joy* i love being tagged :D

The Rules:

1. Thank the person who was so thoughtful for giving you this award by linking their blog to this post.

2. Put the logo on your blog or post.

3. Nominate 10 blogs which show great attitude/gratitude.

4. Link your nominees to your post.

5. Comment them to tell them about the award they’ve won.

All rules checked! :D aww i just checked many of my fellow bloggers have already been tagged by this cute award. so i will pick those who are left and award them for their incredible blogs

azra
seher
Dee
nadia
calmcool
Zee for the poems he puts up
mha, its been long i didnt give him any :D
exquisite, though hes been missing from his blog :/
boogiemonster
coolmind

silence we shared...

2009-03-06T23:56:00.000-08:00

it was while you were sleeping
that i stood by the door
secretly peeking
as the moon
cast its white sheen
on your dreamy face

it was while you were sleeping
that i felt
the softness of your cheeks
the smile on your face
the ruffled hair
messed up in the pillow

it was while you were sleeping
that i whispered in your ear
and something twinkled in my eye
i smiled to myself
i don't know why...

it was while you were sleeping
that a song came along
being played outside
somewhere in the distance
into the dark night

it was while you were sleeping
that i ran out of words
stared out the window
while the moon hung in the sky
i sat there praying
for the night to last long

p.s i have no idea where this came from : /

we need bad people...

2009-03-06T05:17:00.000-08:00

...yes we do. How else would we tell good from bad if there is no bad anymore? How else would we be able to prove the halo above our heads? We definitely need some villains in our lives. We have a sack full of them here. the beloved land of the pure. In films the ugly, loathsome villains get enough retakes and makeup and other stuff to add glamour to their character. In real life villains are ugly, full stop.

One of my favourite villains from the fictional world has been Uriah Heep. Remember the cunning, albino looking, snake like ultimate antagonist of David Copperfield?. His hands are cold and slimy. He wears a clever smile and masks it with a 'umble smile'. His wriggly motions, cold heart and subtle yet treacherous moves towards his enemy make him the famous villain from the literary shelves ever created by Charles Dickens. Who is your favourite villain from the world of fiction (books/movies) ?

The other day I was watching Spiderman 3 and Eddie who becomes the victim of alien symbiote said the following lines/ dialogues:
"I like being bad. It makes me happy."

It made me wonder for a few seconds. It is so apt, isn't it? However, how many times do we hear that from our real life villains; the open, straightforward acceptance of how they enjoy their 'villainhood'. Hardly ever I think, take Zardari for example.

The concept of alien symbiote intrigued me a lot when i first watched spiderman 3 ( my brother's a comic books' fan, while i just watch the superhero movies :p) The idea of such a vile alien creature is so aptly applicable and relevant to our current politicians. Either they are the alien symbiote while we are its host for survival. Or maybe they are the victims of the refugee seeker alien. Either way only if loud sound could finish of the bad gays..guys i meant!

Apart from the political villainy and symbiote analogy there is one more thing to shed light on. We also find ourselves ranting about how many people are jealous of us, or complaining about how our friend is such a pest or how people poke their nose in whatever we do. We whine about how someone cheated on us, how someone lied to us, how every time people hunt us for our 'innocent nature' or take advantage of our 'honesty'.

Isn't it strange how no one ever admits that they themselves were the bad guys? Why is the bad guy always someone in the shadows. A scary shadow lurking in the dark. A censored face, always talked about but never seen. Someone we always hear about from the apparently 'good guy'.

If we all are the good guys then where do the hell bad guys come from? who are they? why don't we ever see them? What is there story? Are we the bad guys for the people who we think are the bad guys? And most important of all what would we do without the bad guys in our lives? nothing to rant about?

Moral of the story, totally unrelated. The end narrative from Spiderman :D

" Whatever comes our way, whatever battle we have raging inside us, we always have a choice. My friend Harry taught me that. He chose to be the best of himself. It's the choices that make us who we are, and we can always choose to do what's right. "

One ship sails East, and another west

2009-03-03T06:22:00.000-08:00

The sky was azure.Flawless. Complimented and graced with pristine chunks of clouds spread as far as the sight went. The air was light, cool and fresh. A perfect morning she thought. A beautiful day, nature at its best with the right amount of coolness in the wind and the right amount of sunshine in the sky.

The tall trees stood in groups around the campus. All towering around her as she took fast paced steps through them. she wondered what the sinless trees of nature must be whispering to each other while they swayed to the breeze at the top of the branches. They were green, unusually green and alive today. Like they look after a monsoon shower, washed and bathed with drops of nature from above the heavens. What took place outside in the land of the man was in stark contrast to what God's sinless nature displayed. Ironic she thought -- a mesmerizing weather to compliment the actions of man. Aesthetic beauty against the ugliness of the forbidden.

Nothing bothered her today. She wanted to follow the rhythm of nature. The peaceful aura it displayed while the chaos filled the air outside. Somehow that didn't plague the rest. She continued walking, sometimes stepping into the tiny puddles of water gathered from watering the lawns, sometimes stepping on the fallen leaves. They weren't autumn crisp. Quietly they crushed under her feet. She listened to the sound of the mime crushing of the leaves as the sirens of ambulances sped through the roads...

Today in Lahore....life continued as usual, with God's nature unusually at peace, as if He had given up on Adam's children..