... Historical Matchmaker...

... If Time had no value... no dimension...

I would put the puzzle of the two most good-looking people in history together.

Good-looking and brilliant writers...

Their looks grow on you, like their letters...



~Frank Kafka~



And




~Virginia Woolf~

"I feel certain that I am going mad again: I feel we can't go through another of those terrible times. And I shan't recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and can't concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness... I can't fight it any longer, I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work..."

(Suicide note: The Letters of Virginia Woolf, vol. VI, p. 481).

... Is Love an Emotion? ...

On Sara's request:

(No debate, please)...

While reading one of Dr. Iqbal’s letters about one of his teachers, the neo-Hegelian, McTaggart, I hit upon something interesting, which only fell into context with the present topic after some deep thinking. After all the spirituality, there were two or three places where Iqbal did not sound like the Iqbal we had been taught about in our Pakistan Studies classes. He wrote, “McTaggart’s philosophy was not in his intellect but in his emotions.”

In a consuming state of mind, I could never imagine any philosopher rooting his reasoned doctrines in emotions, rather than intellect. To further this, he wrote in a succeeding passage that “the solution of all problems is found only in love… Love is no passivity. It is active and creative… it is the only force which circumvents death: for when death carries away one generation, love creates another.”

It is interesting how Hajwairi defines love. He points out several etymologies of “Muhabbat”, but an intriguing one follows thus, “derived from hibbat: seeds falling into the earth of the desert”.

Now recall Iqbal’s line, “it is the only force which circumvents death: for when death carries away one generation, love creates another.” Yes, just like those seeds that turn the barren desert into greener lands…? (Think hard, you will put two and two together!)

As a student of psychology, I often see love as nothing but the squirting of a few chemicals at emotional instances. As a being vulnerable to this age’s media, I see love as something between your family and yourself, or the Hollywood-pomp. The rest is just charity. We don’t love the little boy we feed, that’s just charity. But then, of course, as a student of some human beings of Sense, and with blind informality, students of Hajwairi, Rumi, Bullay Shah and Ghazali, I know Love is only something you feel for God.

I may be wrong, but Love is not an emotion. The deeper I think into this, the more convinced I become that emotions are meant to fluctuate, they are literally defined in psychology as the “rising or falling of feeling”. If it falls, even temporarily, it cannot be Love. Another etymology Hajwari referred to is Muhabbat derived from hubb: “a jar full of stagnant waters”. If it is stagnant, it cannot be an emotion.

Ghazali very eloquently describes the role and nature of Qalb, the home ground of Love. The Qalb “catches the knowledge of God and the spiritual world”. Knowledge of God, right, but what is the role of Love here? Again, yet another one of Hajwairi’s interpretations, Muhabbat comes from the word habab: “bubbles of water and the effervescence thereof in a heavy rainfall.”

Meaning, the human body subsists through the spirit and the heart subsists through Love. Love is the current of the heart; heart is the receptive substance for the knowledge of God, and hence, Love is the energy for the knowledge of God? Or is it the energy of God?

What we call love, in our contemporary dictum, is the love of our own Nafs or Id (courtesy: personal experience). Because when God talks about Love, He says, "None will have the sweetness (delight) of Faith till he loves a person and loves him only for God's sake.” No Romeo dies for Juliet, no Juliet dies for Romeo; that is what the misinterpretation of arts and theatre taught us about love. Romeo dies for Romeo’s Nafs, Juliet dies for Juliet’s Nafs.

Maternal love, I believe, is still an epitome of God’s energy, since it is the yardstick God uses to show us how much He Loves us. And yet, every child born in this age can cite the story of Romeo and Juliet, none can cite the story of… well, just look at that! I can’t even think of an example of a mother who killed herself for her child, although we all know there must be a million such cases.

Between men and women, there can only be understanding, the rest is just the soliciting of the Nafs. There was understanding between the Prophet (Peace be upon his soul) and his first wife. Our Islamiat teachers get scandalized when we ask them, ‘Was it love at first sight?’; our Maulvi Sahibs frown when we ask them, ‘They were in love, right?’. That is probably because they are as confused about this phenomenon as we are, susceptible to same media that conditions you and myself.

God said that if you Love Him enough, you will become His Hands. Meaning, God’s energy will be translated through you to the rest of the creation. And so, our charity is not charity if there is no love in it. Without it, charity is just a mechanical process.

A smile is an act of charity, said the Prophet. Again, God’s energy translated through one who Loves God, to another person. This all connects back to what Iqbal said, Love is “the only force which circumvents death: for when death carries away one generation, love creates another.”

To conclude, Love is not an emotion, it is God’s energy, and the perpetual channel for our relationships with fellow beings.

... Epitaph...

We were born on the same date, him and I.
Only ninety-two years apart.



His epitaph reads,

"In my beginning is my end..."




I hope mine will say,

"In my end is my beginning..."

He is T.S.Eliot and he said “immature poets imitate; mature poets steal…”

I have yet to decide where I fall in that scale.

... Mama, mine ...

So, God claims He loves me seventy times more than Mama.

It’s God’s claim, I wouldn’t dare disagree.
.
.
.

I will only ask a further question:

Does He face the same social amphitheatre that Mama faces for me? The same jingles of approach-avoidance conflicts? The same human rushing and human deflation? Human anger, human revulsion, human worry, human fear… and human love?


Or has He only reserved “love” to feel for me?
Seventy times, or seventy thousand times… pure Love...only?
In the absence of all that is so excruciatingly human?

.
.
.
.

God is God, but Mama has a thorny task.
I don’t remember her making any claims of might, though.

... Poetic Liberal...

Sir, what is your opinion on women who pursue higher education?

Hmm, a woman who pursues her career and education is admirable – like an art work, a classy painting.

And, as a wife?

[A snooty, patronizing chuckle] You can’t hang your “classy paintings” in the kitchen, now can you? And that’s where a wife is supposed to be.

[Thinking silence] Ah, well, thank you, sir. I was having trouble defining an ass-hole lately, you just helped me out there. [Smiles] .



Courtesy for this (ouch!) humor:

Dana Tidikis,
December 9, 2005
8:34 P.M.,
My bedroom,
Lahore, Pakistan

...Bright Blue World...

It had to be Bee-Jaan.

No one else had the time, patience or discerning memory to narrate such tales to Chotoo. It had to be Chotoo, too. No one else had the big eyes and dreamy imagination to hear it and more marvelously, even believe it. The rest of them had grown up, regrettably.

It had to be every third night of that winter season.

An every-third-night-ritual of the same story.

“Bee-Jaan, tell me the story about Bilal again!”

“I am going to sleep, now, Chotoo…”

“Just once, just the part when he didn’t give the Aza’an!”

And the story was told and re-told, sometimes even thrice on the same night.

The dark-skinned friend of Prophet was restricted from giving the morning call for prayer by other fellow-faithfuls, and the morning refused to come.

“It just didn’t come, Bee-Jaan? There was just darkness?” Chotoo asked, for the umpteenth time.

“Yes, just darkness.” Bee-Jaan answered as a conditioned response.

“And if he hadn’t given the Aza’an, there would be darkness even today?”

“I don’t know about that, Chotoo. Now go to sleep.”

“Okay, just tell me, there would be darkness even today if he hadn’t given the Aza’an?”

Voices are unfaithful in small quarters and Qaari Yaqoob’s sleep was disturbed by his son’s incessant questions.

“I’ll break your legs if I hear another word from you,” boomed the father’s voice. “Go to sleep!”

May be there would be darkness even today, Chotoo told himself, if Bilal hadn’t given the Aza’an.

Chotoo was the last born of Qaari Yaqoob’s four children. Other than that, he was the little dog, little servant, little brunt-bearer, little errand-runner, little nuisance, little useless-mouth-to-feed, little everything else that human language can succumb to.

Human language, only.
Human actions have a larger scale to drown into.

In a little quarter by the mosque, four children lived with the fifty-five-year old Qaari Yaqoob and his mother, Bee-Jaan. Qaari Yaqoob’s wife was never there, but Chotoo was not sure whether she was dead or had gone to live somewhere else.

No one had the time, patience or discerning memory to narrate such tales to Chotoo.
For this, even Bee-Jaan did not seem to have the time.

Chotoo had his imagination – a bright blue world, where there were answers for everything. His was a magical world of heavens where white-robbed, saintly men and women reside, who knocked at God’s door when they did not hear Bilal’s Aza’an-call one morning; a dark-smiling man who clambered onto the pulpit to give a victorious Aza’an. That world buzzed in Chotoo’s little mind, little large mind, all night… until the sleep world of other colors would take over.

And then, there would be the morning.

Chotoo believed it was his father’s call to prayer that brought the morning, neo-Bilal’s voice. There were other prayer-callers but Chotoo knew it was his father whose voice did the trick. Qaari Yaqoob did not communicate much with his children but it was the morning call for prayer when Chotoo’s bright blue world was full of his father, saintly, heavenly folks rejoicing and white-winged angels bringing out the bluer skies.

But daylight is different in a world yet unknown to Chotoo…

A new Nazim had won local-body elections and he was a man of action. New roads were to be constructed, electricity had to be restored to some centers, water-supply had to be gauged, and sewerage had to be fixed. Since most of his votes had come from the religious faction, something had to be done about a religious center too, the mosque.

There were recommendations for new fans and new carpets but the Nazim was had other plans with such funds. Something else had to be thought of where the mosque was concerned.

“Do away with that old man, first,” the Nazim said irritably to his subordinates. “He squeaks like a dying hen in the morning. Destroys my sleep, get someone new, try one of the Afghanis, they have a good pronunciation and don’t scream as if they’re breathing their last.”

One of the buttering subordinates imitated the morning prayer of the old Qaari Yaqoob and there was a roaring laughter, amid half-hearted pleas for forgiveness.
Beyond that, human language fails.

---

“This is my mosque!” Qaari Yaqoob defended himself against the President of the mosque’s affairs. “I was amongst the builders! I laid the bricks of this mosque and I am strong enough to build it again! You want me to leave it? Shah Sahib, do you even know what you are saying? Where will I go? My children are still in the madrassah and my-”

But he lost the fort.

No one told Chotoo about the events directly but somehow, the news got to him. His father would no longer be the caller for prayer. There was a young, fair-skinned Afghani who was going to move into their quarters soon and would be the five-timer meter for the mosque. Qaari Yaqoob’s family was given a week to pack up and leave, no questions asked. Thank you very much for your thirty-year-long service.

It was the third night of winter but Bee-Jaan had no intention to perform the ritual.

Chotoo did not ask for it either.

This was their last night in that quarter and the morning-prayer was to be given by the Afghani. This was Chotoo’s war with the world, not Qaari Yaqoob’s, not the Nazim’s, not the imitators. It was Chotoo’s bright blue world against the dark world.

Minutes of darkness ticked on as Chotoo heard the unfamiliar voice booming from the loud-speakers. He heard Qaari Yaqoob mumble something and sluggishly get up from the bed.

The morning-prayer was over.

It was all up to those white-robbed men and women in the heavens and the white-winged angels. They were Chotoo’s soldiers, guardians of his bright blue world. The first pink ray entered the quarter and Chotoo felt the first tear drop down his eyes. It was not over yet, Chotoo went deeper into his imagination. Doors of heaven opened and he ran frantically inside and when he could not find any of his soldiers there, he banged at the Lord’s door himself. He kept banging and banging...

There was silence.

May be there is darkness even today, Chotoo told himself, because his father hadn’t given the Aza’an.

This was Chotoo’s victory against the dark world.
Or, if you have the sick humor for it, Chotoo’s delusion?

...Worn-outs...

I understand it now.

People just get tired.







The bell-boy complains he has too many people to attend to, students complain they don’t get enough days to prepare for the finals, boss complains she has too many responsibilities, lab assistant complains he is overqualified for this job, librarian complains (and for a while there, I was afraid he’d start crying) there are too-many-books-too-little-space.

...

Me, I am a terminal complainer.

An entire Monday morning of tire.
One of my closest friends said, once,

“Life is scandalizing”.

That, it is.

...D. B. M...

Alright, Sara says Makki says I am beginning to sound like the Prophet of Doom and should invite more people to an infamous, underground society called DBM.

Here is what the invitation to DBM looks like:

Invitation to Divorced Before Marriage, DBM

Dear Mr. X and Miss Y,

We, the members and founders of DBM, feel honored to cordially invite you to join our convent.

Our senior most founder, Miss MadNas, was kind enough to share your DBM experience with us, via internet e-mail. We were delighted to see the foreign element in your case, since that’s a unique instance. Hopefully, as we spread our DBM empire, we will get to meet more members like yourself. And we hope to increase exponentially, owing to the relative ease with which relationships are falling apart in these times.

Each member of the convent thoroughly enjoyed your misery and The Great Fall. Please understand our motto: we are positive people and absolutely enjoy tragedies and moments of human weaknesses. Therefore, every time you wined with a sentence like, "Why did you tell me?", the members of DBM felt the need to hug and congratulate you, for finally qualifying for our criteria of membership offer.

As a member you get to enjoy the following benefits:

• Free access to the online journal, Lets bitch about Fate,
• Booze parties at Gymkhana, with qawali or Mursia of your choice (available only at Delhi, Karachi and Lahore at the moment),
• Virtual torture rooms, where you enjoy inflicting creative tortures on individuals of your choice,
• Free anti-depressants and psychological therapy,
• Access to the blogs, chats and emails of all other DBM members,
• Guns, knives, revolvers, nuclear bombs (currently available in India in Pakistan), and swords (currently available in Afghanistan and some Middle Eastern countries).
• Ability to sponsor another member into the convent, provided they qualify for membership,
• One million dollars, in cash, annually, but you have to devise and execute the robbery yourself,
• Heavy metal and other forms of dark, satanic music. If you wish, owing to your religious orientation, you may instead request manuals on "Patience", although we don’t particularly encourage that,
• Group therapies with other members of DBM, to share your experiences. Some members have had multiple experiences, making these group sessions a treat to listen to.

We wish to make it clear that we are not a feminist society, but are willing to accept individuals of all races, sexual orientations, creeds, nationalities and religions.

Take your time in considering this offer as we place no pressure on potential members.

However, in case you choose to reject the membership, we offer you two forms of death penalties:

1) we can disclose the content of your conversation to your family, or

2) hang you by the rope until your neck breaks.

Looking forward for a quick, positive response.


Yours truly,
Membership Committee
Divorced Before Marriage
DBM

We are registered in No-Man’s Land as a charity organization.

And here is one example of how invitations are accepted (life-sized example):

...

Dear Founding Fathers, or Mothers....

With a shattered heart, and bottle of vodka, i accept ur invitation to join, I shall do my utmost to uphold the values and rules of DBM. In keeping with the great majnu's of the subcontinent, I shall strive to grow a long beard and hair, and sing toote songs. Since we Indian jilted lovers are non-violent and resigned to our fates, I humbly wish to renounce all forms of violence, and politely refuse ur invitiation to weapons, I am already stacking up a collection of tradegy movies and songs, which i can distribute freely to other potential members to entice them into our fold. I shall do my best to enhance the Indian Chapter of DBM. Hope u consider my invitation.

Your Foreign Element

Mr. X.

:)

...Scruples from the Underground...

.

.

.

In violent times...

You shouldn't have to sell your soul

In black and white...

They really really ought to know(just don't
know)

Those one-trick minds...

Who took you for a working ****

Kiss them goodbye...

You shouldn't have to jump for joy

(jump jump jump jump jump)

You shouldn't have to (shout) for
joy(shout)

.

.

.

Shout 2000,

Disturbed.

...Satire...

And then, there was no need?

There was only the joy of entertaining self-affliction.
Of hysterical pens spitting ink on lined-pages… pages lined with such droning symmetry, they give you a headache – monodirectional.

Just like monotoned songs and monosyllabled lectures.

There was joy of Liberation.
Of not knowing your anima or animus.
Of running stark naked in steaming rain.
Of no role: divine or circus-assigned.
Of bleeding green blood and laughing at that.
Of that sweet, violent Liberation.

Of the world bursting into a million lit speckles,
Of each blasted synapse, tearing down your royal clocks, moment by moment,
Of love – ah, so cold and furious, makes you bite your lip.
Of volatile earth-shakes, soul-quakes.

And again – the rise of that selfless, endless rain



… Why did God create poetry?
Or, did poetry create God?

Or is this just a trick of insincere, self-deceiving linguist?
Or won’t you ever know the answer?
Or won’t you ever know that you cannot know and still continue to want to know.

To have.

Or no, never to have. You must never desire to h.a.v.e.

Your cold-showers, walks-on-flames, joys of open, green, gangrene-ridden wounds bear witness to your acidic strength of never-to-h.a.v.e.


You have no needs.

None.




And then…
At that instant in narration…
They will come in their chariots.
From deflowered skies and frayed earth-
They will bring plastic food, clothes and a satire on something they call love.


Love – Designer made.
Carved, waxed, wrapped in wood recycled from coffins.

.
.
.

And they will touch you.
Touch you – oh, dear God – right where you must n.e.v.e.r be touched.
And you will burn with that cold bite.
Burn anew, you dead, infantile wick.


.
.
.

And there will be pagan celebrations…
To the gods of Forgetting and Retrograde Inhibitions.
Of desires.


.
.

All your lessons of green wounds will disappear with screams of crispy fresh fears and repressed, lip-biting cries.

Receding slave…

You.
Feel beautiful, at least.

.
.
.

...Teacher : A Paragon, in Classical… Forever-al Learning...

“Knowledge without action is like a glowing wick,
It gives light to others, but dies burning, itself…”

Whoever takes up the profession of teaching should observe the following duties:

· (A teacher) should show kindness and sympathy to the students and threat them as his own children… (while) a father is the immediate cause of this transient life, a teacher is the cause of immortal life. A teacher ruins himself and also his students if he teaches for the sake of the world.

· (A teacher) should not seek remuneration for teaching but nearness to God. Wealth and property are the servants of body which is the vehicle of soul of which the essence is knowledge and for which there is honor of soul. He who searches wealth in lieu of knowledge is like one who has got his face besmeared with impurities but wants to cleanse his body.

· (A teacher) should not withhold from his students any advice. After he finishes the outward sciences, he should teach them the inward sciences. He should tell them that the object of education is to gain nearness to God, not power or riches, and that God created ambition as a means of perpetuating knowledge which is essential for these sciences.

· (A teacher should) dissuade his students from evil ways with care and caution, with sympathy and not with rebuke and harshness … (since the latter)… destroys the veil of awe and encourages disobedience.

· (A teacher) shall not belittle the value of other sciences before his students. In fact, the teacher of one learning should prepare his students for study of other learnings and then, he should observe the rules of gradual progress from one stage to another.

· The students should not be taught things that are beyond the capacity of their understanding. The Prophet SAW said, “When a person speaks such a word to a people who cannot grasp it with their intellect, it becomes a danger to some people.”

· (A teacher) should himself do what he teaches and should not give a lie to his teaching. Hazrat Ali said, “Two men have broken my back, the learned man who ruins himself, and the fool who adopts asceticism. The learned man misleads people through his sins and the fool through his evil actions.”

Acquisition of Knowledge, Chapter One,
The Book of Worship, Volume One,
Imam Ghazali’s Ihya Ulum-id-Din

...Raqs-e-Bismil...

… Can simply be translated from Urdu (perhaps even Persian, too) as Dance of the Wounded (or Dying). It can be left at that. It can be left at the good humor of the reader to interpret this further. If that can be the case, there is nothing better, really, than that.


If not, the unassuming attempt below can be considered, to see one possible vignette of what this wound and what this dance can possibly mean.


The relationship between Love and Pain has been an important theme for thinkers of all times but too many words have been written about it, leaving one pondering excessively into these details at the cost of feeling them. One research I read once, suggested that even the neural and hormonal mappings of the sensation of pain and emotion of love are similar. In other words, our physiological response to Love and Pain is somehow related too. Instead of getting carried away into these details, it is just imperative to see that Nature deliberately associated these opposing feelings together.

The price of Love is Pain… and it’s a price we pay unconsciously, sometimes begrudgingly, sometimes passionately. The simplistic and holistic example would be childbirth and I see no point of going into detailed particulars of that event, we all know what Love and Pain have to do there.


Metaphors are Nature’s way of driving points home; metaphors are Allah’s favorite games of language in the Quran.

Raqs-e-Bismil is a metaphor.

I will accept I don’t know who juxtaposed this phrase… the meaning, however, has been a common premise (in want of a better word) for Sufis.

To Dance with (the Pain of) Wounds of Divine Love.

Inappropriate.
Inadequate, rather.
It requires much more.

I am not qualified to explain the more-s of it, no fake humility about it, I just know it’s beyond the scope of language and little minds, and minds ours… are little. Still…



Dance.

Literalistic usage of this word is looked down upon, in Islam. Sufis deliberately used Dance, and words like Wine and Chalice… words that would literally hold negative connotations with reference to Islamic theology, because they were critical of literalistic translations and emergence of ritual theology, as opposed to the spiritual content of Quran. Dance probably has no place in Islamic Shariah, but it has been used as a metaphor here to denote something… very powerful.

One of the faithful companions of Prophet SAW, with an arrow in his back, stood up to pray, asked a companion to draw the arrow out and felt no pain.

Is this Fiction?
Perhaps, yes, for the skeptic.

But not for the Lover.

The Lover knows Divine wound in the heart of that companion was so deep and open, that in his Dance of Praise, or Salat, the physical weakness of blood and skin melted away.

It may still be disturbing for some to see Salat being equated with Dance, but this is not the dance where one limb forgets the other limb. It is too transcendental to have anything to do with the physical.

Another Wounded Dancer, one of my favorites, is Salah-ud-Din Ayubi.

I refer to a biography written by a Crusader about this great man, who was a terror in the battlefield. But his terror was less Genghis Khan-like, it was too awe-inspiring to be malevolent. The biographer remained stunned to see this man of absolute grace and pride weep like a lost man on a prayer mat, as if faced with a power not known in the battlefield. Salah-ud-Din would never twist any muscle on the face if it was about a physical pain, but the mystery of Divine wounds… and the mystery of the those tears on the prayer mat.

The examples of these Dancers are tremendous, in spite of my limited knowledge.



Rumi’s poetry is his Dance, Ghazali’s philosophy is his.

Attar’s metaphor of Simurgh is his Dance, Hajwairi’s treatise is his.



And Rabiya Basri.

You have to silence thought when you think about her because her Dance cannot be pointed at, she whirls too much in spacelessness. It is said that someone went to the Holy House once and said they couldn’t see the spirit of Ka’aba inside the physical Ka’aba. And another remarked, the Ka’aba has gone to see the old woman of Basra.

That’s her Dance.

I know of some people who are my contemporaries and are also involved in this Dance. They will never make it to books and that is, perhaps, better for them and for the vignette of their Dance.


We are all dancers, too… and wounded.

But the tunes we dance to, are all earthly. Too earthly and base.
And hah, we are not even apologetic about it.

Little gods and demigods, ordering us what to wear, who to talk to, how to talk, and we dance to that tune. Sometimes when there is a deep emotional trauma, or even a physical wound, we seek something of the Divine attribute, and we make a little effort in His direction. Reminds one of Hallaj’s instruction for that moment,

Wander as though mad in Love,
Amongst those distracted by love.

Love requires madness, it requires absolute surrender and sincerity; deep wounds and perpetually felt pain; and not a hiccoughing distraction for a short span.


It annoys me, in a sad way, to see these words I have written about Divine Love and Pain and Wounds and Dance … when above everything, what is required is experience.


In the words of the poet of Abida Parveen’s Raqs-e-Bismil:

Aqal kay madrassay say uth,
Ishq kay mehkaday mai aa…



Ishq mai teray koh-e-ghum,
Sur pay liya, jo ho… so ho

(I cannot translate that, I am sorry. And something I just noticed, as I plan to sign-out. “Bismil” is really, just the beginning of “Bismillah”, even if they have different meanings in Persian and Arabic).

And Allah knows best.

...Of these Times...

We were wrong, weren’t we?


Five W’s in that line.


We associated the word passion only with hormones kicking at and around puberty. After that, we thought human beings succumb to social pressures and passions are monitored, dictated and exercised by the collective voice of one’s society.


We were wrong.


Any amount of words spoken for 8th October, 2005, will not suffice. Enough words have been spoken and written already about an event that will go down in our collective history and memory as a mark-point of eons, perhaps. Passion of the youth is ventilated in the forms of words, actions, tears, vows and physical presence at the site of disaster.


But one woman, who probably represents countless other women, remains uncaptured by any lens, human and electronic.



Ahmadi Begum.
Aged 87, perhaps even more.


Cannot walk properly anymore, her eye sight brings incorrect information sometimes… but she remains an Amazon at heart, with strength your prodigious sons would be shy of. She has been too much already, migrating to Pakistan in ’47, the wars of ’65 and ’71… and then, the successive deaths of her parents, husband, siblings, even younger siblings, children, and grandchildren, too. I have driven her to and fro the death sites of some of her dearest, closest people… deaths that brought tears to my eyes, even when if I had never exchanged anything but a greeting with the deceased.


But my Amazon grandmother never cried. I never saw tears in her eyes. In desperate failure to understand her disposition, I even went as far as assuming, may be she doesn’t care about anyone or anything.


Aftermath of 8th October, 2005.
Now, I see her cry.


I see her cry and then, I watch the fluctuations as the resource woman augments within her, asking me to bring yards upon yards of stretchable raw cloth, so she can stitch masks out of them for doctors and aide workers to wear. I have no heart to tell her that such an effort would be wasted, we can buy those masks right of the shelf at a pharmacy now, and send them across. She has braided raw strings into strings for those masks… as she weeps at the sight of mass-graves on the television.


Each day, on my return from work, she hands me a list of point persons to contact, numbers she has taken down with teary eyes and shaky hands, as dictated on the television. Each day she narrates her new ‘plan’ for the reconstruction of this destruction – how we can split our house into portions to accommodate families of wounded people who will travel south for medical assistance; or, how we should pool in all our earnings and reserve a good percentage for at least 2 years to support a specific number of families.



Ideas are endless.
We thought rationality should take over by her age, at least?



There are no strict boundaries between reason and idealism anymore, such is the nature of these Times. The distinct worlds of Plato and Aristotle breathe together under the same roof – at last – the rational and empirical worlds.



Is this what God had in mind?
Effective, very effective.

...The Denuding Pen...

I know the garbage is in these genes, my genes.

Garbage? That’s euphemism, still.

As I write this, the counterarguments of moralists drum in my ears, “How can you be so ungrateful to the Creator, for this, umm, umm… talent…?”

They call the paroxysm (or, should I say pathology) of the chaffing pen in hand a “talent”. I don’t blame them. If you can merge colors into shapes on a canvas, you are known as an artist and you live in your own world of idiosyncrasies with this talent of yours. Along the same scale, if you can string a few adjectives in an original way, coupled with an original idea here or there, your talent is writing. And there are myriads then, a writer, reporter, poet, and further branches up that tree...

I ask myself why I assume such an ambivalent tone, if not entirely a negative one, about writing? Why do I refer to this genetic component of mine as garbage, when I have contentedly accepted the more harmful elements of heredity as comfortably-my-own? Why is it not a compliment, anymore, to hear someone say, ‘Ah, but you were born with a silver pen in hand?’

They say alcohol is illegal not because of what its chemical content per se, but because it alters human consciousness.

And so, there is no wickedness in the pen itself, but its effect on one’s consciousness needs a little pondering. Pen of a scholar (and that’s a tricky term to define nowadays) will perpetually yield a different sort of serum from the pen of a fiction-monger or an opinionated blabber.


Worse yet, the pen reveals everything, in spite of you.

Three sentences composed and the human mind lies flat on paper, for everyone to look at and deal with in their own individual way. Many enjoy that exhibitionism perhaps (and I apologize, not too sincerely though, for the loaded meaning of that word) but worshippers of Silence, seekers of grace in reticence… remain in terminal claustrophobia with words flying in the cosmos, on paper. It is as if the nothing in world seems to exist in silence anymore, every meaningless, meaningful joy, act of love and pain MUST be rendered in words … to paradoxically loose its meaning.

And the counterargument of the philologist (linguist) inside me comes out, “But words came into being to communicate. You are too limited to communicate otherwise…philosophers and historians of all dusty ages communicate with us even today, because they left words behind them, for us…”

And the pious rises at this moment too, “And how can you forget? Your Creator corresponded with you in words…”


Did He?

I ask again, did my Creator communicate with words? Does anyone have an answer to that? Weren’t all divine scriptures revealed as inspirations first, and translated into scriptures by the prophets, saints?

Time for the poet now, to shower her emotional gibberish, “When your limbs are wounded, they bleed with blood… when the heart is wounded, how else would it bleed, but with words…”


…

How to argue with them…
When these voices are a part of me, not extrageneous…?

And when, even with the aspiration to join the amorphous worshippers of Silence up in the Alps, the genetic endowment kick chemicals every now and then to pick up that pen – I can’t keep the vigil of silence up for long.

Write, I must.
Begrudgingly.

Ugh! What a waste of cyber space - - -

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...Identity...

ﻡﻳﺣﺭﻟﺍﻥﻣﺣﺭﻟﺍﻪﻟﻟﺍﻣﺳﺑ.

... I have seen an individual.



I have paraded through stock exchange markets, cinemas, mosques and hospitals. I have seen one body of merchants, one body of entertained spectators, of worshippers, of sickness. One cannot tell brown hair from black hair, skin from skin or high pitch from low pitch. Where does the idea of one person, of an individual, exist? In such places, only the essence of humanity hollers at your senses – unified and diversified.



One can walk through bookstores and art galleries, only to find colors and words screaming at you: "Look at me! I am an individual, a different individual!" But the forms are always the same, whether word or hue. What difference do they preach?But my allegory does not end with this claustrophobic chant to homogeny. It does not end with lack of identity in an individualistic world. I only begin with those wanting to be pompous individuals, when they are but a uniform of delusions.



The individual I have seen was in that stock market, cinema, mosque, hospital, bookstore and art gallery; sometimes a shadow, at other times a thought. When I saw her, I knew I had seen something only I was capable of seeing. I looked at those words, colors, traders, worshippers and noticed a certain daze in their eyes that I felt in my own. I could understand it afterwards, it was my own identity I had come across in this crowd of other monads.

And each monad sees but the identity of its own.



An identity, born again, after a quarter of a century within the Self...