Madnas

... Exodus ...

2008-09-17T10:58:00.000-07:00

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FOR REASONS I AM NOT SURE OF,

I HAVE DECIDED TO MOVE THIS BLOG TO

madnas.wordpress.com

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...Patchwork...

2008-09-17T05:03:00.001-07:00

It's not Kafka, Wordsworth or Ghazali who's inspiring me these days. It's Patchwork Pottery.

Of course, like my pen, my needle is that of an amateur.

Here's something I made for my grandmother's morning tea. She likes it so much, they've reserved this tea cozy (and the tea pot) as an item on display and not to be used. I don't know if I should be happy about that.

Here's something I made from the Al-Karam fabrics.

And here's my favorite... something I made for my sister.

... His-Story...

2008-08-10T02:29:00.000-07:00

The short life of my nephew.

... Kicking Needle...

2008-06-13T03:45:00.000-07:00

While my pen seems to be reposing somewhere, my needle wants to come to life. Fabric shopping, unearthing my grandmother's sewing machine (exactly as old as I am, she apparently bought it two days before I was born), exploring the over-priced and boring lace stores of the capital, I am doing what I always wanted to do with my free time (well, other than writing another novel): CRAFTS:

I wasn't too thrilled with these Al Karam nursery prints:

So, I went out and got more, that made sense.

And the rest is still a mystery ...

Relax?

2008-04-25T08:38:00.000-07:00

The concepts of wait and faith are incongruous, like an oxymoron that somehow has to coexist in nature. I can deal with that, by struggling or pretending. What I cannot deal with anymore is the casual, almost cruel adage: “If you just relax, it will happen.”

For years, I tried to find solace in that.

All I had to do was relax, and it will happen, whatever I want? Sounds unfair but not impossible. But these wise words have something behind them, a simplicity you find in religious scruples too, that makes them more adhere-able than man-made, aureate philosophies.

This event in life has made me question that relax-and-it-will-happen sermon. If I relax, it may never happen. If I don’t relax, it may still never happen. Now, I feel violated and humiliated when someone asks me to relax. If I could go into the future and see the outcome of my struggle, my suffering, I may consider relaxing. At the moment, that luxury is not available to me and so, I choose not to relax.

... Lasagna in the microwave...

2008-02-07T00:29:00.000-08:00

I know, I know... it doesn't turn out anything close to what a real lasagna, baked in a conventional oven tastes like. But when you're in a situation where all you have is a microwave, not even a stove, can you get lasagna?

I sure did. It doesn't involve white sauce, which makes it a little healthier too.

This blog is NOT an online cookbook, but I am going to cut myself some slack this time around.

So...

Ingredients:
Serves 2-3

Uncooked Lasagna : 200 g
Water: 4 glasses
Salt: 1/2 tsp
Oil: 1/2 tsp
K&N chicken tikka chunks: smallest pack
Spaghetti sauce: Use sparingly
Cheese slices (mozzarella): 5-6
Cheese slices (cheddar): 5-6

What to do:

Fill the LARGEST bowl you have with water, enough to fit 3-4 glasses of water. Make sure water doesn't spill over.
Add salt and oil.
Microwave for 15 minutes, or until you can see the water boiling.
Add lasagna strips. Break them in half if they won't fit.
Microwave for 15-18 minutes.
Drain lasagna and wash under cold, running water. Leave to drain.
Spread K&N's chicken chunks out on a plate.
Microwave for 3-4 minutes, on the defrost mode.
Layer a deep Pyrex pan with lasagna strips (3-4).
Spread spaghetti sauce on top.
Break chunks into crumbs and sprinkle.
Continue layering like this.
Top with Lasagna strips and cheese slices, cut into strips too.
Sprinkle ground black pepper/ground red pepper/paprika/oregano (optional)

Microwave for 4 minutes... and you have it!

And yes, these are original images.

... It is 4:05 pm...

2008-01-14T00:13:00.000-08:00

It is 4:05 p.m.: There are men of all ages, walking towards their local mosque, discussing events of the day, politics, inflation, or illnesses. The prayer begins and there is that usual scuttling of people as they make lines to join other worshippers. All of this is normal, of course. and everyone is functioning mechanically, in a fashion we are used to in our automated times.

At 4:07 p.m., all is not normal inside the building. A spine-tearing noise emanates from inside the mosque, turning human lives into a mass of rubble, limbs and cries. Half an hour later, this becomes the breaking news item on television. Location, casualties, sights and sounds surrounding the event are all taken care of by reporters. The presentation on television ends with that clichéd comment: “According to the local police, this is the sixth suicide bombing in our city since…”

Another day, another city: a five-star hotel expecting foreign visitors makes the headline. The alleged suicide bomber only manages to kill himself and one guard. The government vows to identify those responsible for this “heinous act”.

Yet another day, another city: there is heaviness in two homes that were strangers to each other until one explosion and two deaths joined them in an individual mourning. One belongs to an innocent passerby, and the other to a suicide bomber, a victim of indoctrination. And lets remember, all of this is happening in a city that has not seen war in the last thirty years.

This is nothing but a few very common myriads of human reduction. Not only is this not brand new information for you, these are anecdotes we have exhausted our nervous systems over to the point that we don’t feel inclined to ask a highly fundamental question: who did this and why?
We are breathing this very second in a modernized, restructured amphitheatre, where an unknown master of puppets decides who will be the audience, and who will be the prey in the cage. Far-fetched as it may sound, each one of us is vulnerable enough to play either role.

I suppose I must love this country, but it is a country where the term ‘enemy’ has become vague and fluid because of stratification of beliefs and confusion of loyalties. For some of us, the enemy is ruling the country; for another, the enemy is a foreign ideology; for yet another, the enemy is anyone who has more food on his table than him. Provided with the right environment, the right propaganda and tools of psychological influence and persuasion, any of these people will ripen to become carriers of grenades, and the headline of the newspaper you will hold tomorrow morning, with your cup of tea.

Pardon me for carving out such a simplistic view of things that are beyond normalcy and sanity but as we stand in the line of fire, it is imperative to review our own roles as enablers of this hysteria of deaths.

... This city...

2008-01-10T04:35:00.000-08:00

So this town gets its share of frozen, spherical rain...

... Worth of Metal...

2008-01-07T07:37:00.000-08:00

Inspired by a true story.

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You will not find any of them speaking about his underworld life with such hushed whispers as long as he is breathing. But just wait till he dies and those whispers will reach your ears: the whispers you hear when one aspect of a person’s life, however dormant it was during his breathing hours, is casually associated with the end of his time. Those whispers, that is all you’ll hear about him afterwards. It is as if all that remains of him is his name, that one aspect and then, of course, his death. So he smoked? Hence the fatal cancer. So she wasn’t careful with fire? Hence the burn to death. So he rode a motorbike?

But that is the thing.
He did not just ride a motorbike. He approached that machine with deference, learnt to ride it with devotion and gradually rose to make it his hinds, his wings, his slave. He lived through it and to whatever extent poetic aesthetics justify his death through that motorbike, deaths are seldom clean or quiet. With a faded, red baseball cap on his head and nineteen breezy years on his back, he died early morning or so was estimated by the surgeon since his body was discovered later that night, next to a broken pavement, and a broken motorbike.

Years after his death, friends and relatives still talk about that one aspect of his life that led to his death, but not in front of his mother. Mothers seem to have a biological resolve to view their offspring in a bubble not shared by others.

Especially mothers of teen-aged offspring.
Or a teen-aged, dead offspring.

Her bubble remains filled with myriads, like a rainbow, from his first step, multiple spankings, never-ending flu, to matters no writer can fathom to know. The son’s motorbike does not figure so distinctly in her bubble, at least not as graphically as it does for others.

Thirteen years after his last morning, his mother visited a marketplace, far from the place her son was born at, grew up at, or disappeared from. The boy behind the counter recognized her. Unlike others who still condemnably discuss that one aspect in whispers, this boy remembered him with half-forgotten, half-remembered awe. With that unguarded awe, he speaks to her.

This boy mentions some of the things from her bubble, what an unusual sense of humor her son had, how sensitive he was about his family, how good he was with numbers. And how good he was the motorbike. It is not like she had never heard anyone say that, but certainly not with this candidness. A secret, unknowable nudge inside her forces her to probe a little more.

With the motion of his hand, and that age-old fascination, the boy says, “he could slide with his bike under a moving trailer and come out.”

No one had ever told her that.
That one aspect.

That one piece of information, one that would make her bubble swell and pant, unable to break or contain. All the years she spent in an unspeakable loathing of an imagined person who she believed had killed her son suddenly forms into interchangeable specters, from the unrecognizable image of her son at this death, to hazy images of his black motorbike.

Human beings with metal inside meet sensational endings, perhaps that is why there is metal there to begin with. Some clatter, movement, some damage. The rest of the creation is programmed to watch and remember them with a secret admiration, an element of fear and overt condemnation.

But these philosophies can never be a part of her bubble, a re-opened, wound. The only metal she could come to seeing, of his, would be the clamor of the metal around him that slid him to his last breath.

She is alive. Her bubble is kicking.
That one aspect resonates in there.
That one aspect.

I wish I could celebrate something else about that life.

... A step at a time...

2007-12-11T03:44:00.001-08:00

Easy said.

...

...From the Town of Selective Blind Spots...

2007-10-30T08:22:00.000-07:00

Cities have their idiosyncratic temperaments, flavors and side effects. Just the way people look at you in a city, sends some of those flavors up your nostrils. There is something ironic about this city. It is perhaps the latest organized city on the country’s map, but markets here are lined with old book shops and antique stores. Hub of documented politics, colored number plates, plaster-faced people in big cars, labeled houses, guards and trees, but something about the temperament of this place stills any possibility of real life philosophy.
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Is it just this city or the whole country? Like a score board of an ill-fated game, every morning newspaper brings with it a certain number of casualties, from Swat, Waziristan, Islamabad, Karachi and other cities, with phrases like ‘human limbs hanging from lamp posts and trees’. I read somewhere that philosophy is for the rich and poetry for the poor but I don’t know if either of these arts exist anymore. Or perhaps I am a simpleton, unable to filter them out from modern day journalism. When I realized I will be moving here, I was thinking trees, winters and long silent roads, not to stimulate me to write but to pacify some worn neurons. But something about the city has changed. There are hidden blood stains and a post-traumatic silence. Blood of the previously unseen, down trodden articles of this rich city – madrassah going people, security guards, dhabba owners. Before these carnages, people probably thought there was no poor man in the capital.
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A Pakistan Studies teacher once told us about his friend, who had come from East Pakistan. He sniffed the air of the capital here and said, “I smell the jute of Bengal here”, since it was, perhaps, the work of dissatisfied Bengalis that fed the establishment of a capital in West Pakistan. I don’t know, I wasn’t there - I am not qualified to verify or contest the statement. But I smell the blood of many other cities here.
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I can suddenly see the poor people here. They suddenly mean something, like the mountains up North suddenly meant something more after their long silence, on that October day two years ago. Like the blood lost in all other cities is fueling something right here, right at the heart of where the blood is dispelled from. Incoherent, self-contradictory, illogical philosophy – that is all I can produce for now.

I love this city, but it will never be mine, not with its selective blind spot.

… From the town of Headless Mannequins…

2007-07-16T14:44:00.000-07:00

So, we give in.
It’s not so easy to enter Heaven. No secrets, equivocation or exaggeration about it.
So, we give in. Sometimes, we give up.
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How simple it was for him, the Sahabi who recited the qalima, carried a sword and became a martyr, in the real sense of the word martyr. No battle of nafs in everyday things, no prayers, nothing. Faith and martyrdom, direct and conclusive. But I wouldn’t go so far with assuming, who knows, he may have wanted to live through this test here. Allah knows.

Back in the town where the clear distinction between native men and women is black and white, literally. The town where you see two mosques for every twenty houses. The town that almost entirely kneels and bows with every categorical solar positioning. The town with His House on the left, and Prophet’s home on the right. The town, where, like before, I feel protected and a little more honest to myself than my hometown allows, or will ever allow?

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The town of Headless Mannequins.

God says there’s a purpose for all of this.
I believe Him. I don’t see it, but if He says it’s there, I believe it. I’ll try to, at least.

... About the Heart...

2007-04-30T08:35:00.000-07:00

From the time human language began making sense to you, it has been about the colored paper called money.
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It has been about documents.
It has been about rules set down by the convoluted growth of our civilization.
It has been about those with more white hair on their heads than you.
It has been about those born with power through a little game of destiny.
It has been about those whose synapses work out more magic than yours ever would.
It has been about conventions that have passed down, questioned and unquestioned.
It has been about those who profess a little more faith than you do.
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The world has always been about them.
When was it about the heart, anyway?

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One dream or a thousand dreams, who consults the heart when it comes to decisions? When you were a speechless toddler, you could see your dreams through: no documents, rules, synapses or conventions stood between the heart and reality. It was all about the heart for you then. But the minute your secret went out, the minute you began understanding something about how the world runs, your dreams are not seeable anymore. Your heart still goads you to create magic mountains and stardust in a little fantasy corner… and life teaches you to pluck each grain of dust out of that chimera. Something about it bites, but letting go of those dust particles becomes routine work.
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It doesn’t become easy, ever, though.
Take that.

… Rumi Fa’ani … Iqbal Ba’qi …

2007-02-16T06:09:00.000-08:00

“All that dwells on the earth is annihilated and there subsists only the face of your Lord, the possessor of majesty and generosity.”

Surrah Ar-Rehman, 26-27

Fa’ani is annihilation, the third step on the Sufi path: one who is dead in worldly attributes and alive in divine attributes, only. Complicated talk, perhaps.

After roaring expansion in Eurasia, during the medieval era, the thirteenth Gregorian century brought Islam’s political downfall, an affliction it never quite recovered from. This seems to be the course of events in human race: happy times produce extravagance, monuments and babies; troubled times produce criminals, angst and poets. While it cost Islam many lives and lands, the disturbed times produced Jalal-ud-Din Rumi, goading his falling people into rhymes of mystical uplifting and spiritual love.

After ruling the subcontinent for centuries, the Muslims lost it to the foreign powers. While the explicit enemies were Mongols in Rumi’s time and the British in Iqbal’s time, the common implicit adversary for Iqbal, and his spiritual guide Rumi, was decentralized leadership and struggle for power. What added to Iqbal’s uneasy times were the fall of Khilafat, a puppet icon of Islam’s once flourishing history, stagnation of Muslims’ collective intellect, and the academic and professional progression of Hindus the Muslims once flaunted in ruling.

Rumi, in his writings, employed the term ‘qalandar’ to describe a Sufi who has achieved the highest state of annihilation (fa’na) from himself, and all that is left (ba’qi) is the Self. Typing this out on an electronic keypad, in the twenty-first Gregorian century, I wonder if I even know what they mean, all these words I just put down. Isn’t “Qalandar” the word you hear from qawwalis, pseudo-qawwal pop stars, and at pseudo-oriental-drum-banging-burger-class-hangovers of spirituality?

The trick of learning from associations is so mechanical that when readers, who are striving to be authentic believers, see these two words (fa’ani, qalandar) coming from one author, they tend to suspect his ideology.

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I, myself, have always had problems digesting ‘fa’ani’ and my simplistic understanding of it. Does it really mean Sufis aspire to reach such a height of proximity with God that they would annihilate themselves from the world, including the rights of their body and those who depended on them? Is this really what Allah Subhana Wa’tala refers to in verses twenty-six and twenty-seven of Surah Rehman? Or, is Fa'ani just annihilation from the wonts and wants of your nafs, your lower self?

Iqbal, although an enthusiastic follower of Rumi’s spiritual teachings, rejected the Sufi concept of Fa’ani. As R.A. Nicholsan puts it,

“As much he (Iqbal) dislikes the type of Sufism exhibited by Hafiz, he pays
homage to the pure and profound genius of Jalaluddin, though he rejects the
doctrine of self-abandonment taught by the great Persian mystic and does not
accompany him in his pantheistic flights.”

Iqbal’s negation of fa’ani rescues Islam from the seemingly Buddhistic theories of annihilation and self-desertion. He condemned ‘fa’na’ as a concept, which was a complete antithesis to his theory of ‘khudi’ and what he considered “more dangerous than the destruction of Baghdad” (an ironic quote for these times, isn’t it?).

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Rumi employs the term ‘mirror’ for a ‘fa’ani’ and one wonders what that means. My understanding (simplistic, like I said) is that annihilation should be from justifications and explanations of our iniquities. The mirror-self of the fa’ani should be so pure that it should reflect sin as sin, and not diffuse your inner eye into working out a defence mechanism to find excuses for your misdeed. Like Rumi says of one who has annihilated,

“He is neither this, nor that: he is plain”.

It is that pursuit for ‘plainness’ which may bring Rumi and Iqbal on the same table of Fa’ani.

...Art Therapy...

2007-01-31T12:58:00.000-08:00

When words aren't left... anymore.

...Caked...

2006-12-01T11:01:00.000-08:00

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... Solemn Recantation...

2006-10-04T10:20:00.000-07:00

I realize now, how little we know about ourselves and the unfolding of who we will be and what large claims we make in our formative years about the future. How we suckle on some moments of life, and document them on paper, within neural circuits, as if the rest of our existence in this dimension is going to depend on that.

And then, how easy it is, wonderfully easy…revoltingly easy… to let go…

And restart.

Just push the right button.

Like there was no past, you just never existed. Even the name you so prided over, the name you thought made you shine out of the darkness of the rest of creation, it can fall into anonymity and you don’t feel the loss. That’s the strangest part of it, you feel absolutely no loss in this surrender, in this homogeny with something that was never yours… when you feel now, that this is all there was, from the beginning.

And the beginning took place just now.

The hair has grayed and the back bone makes slight crackling noises and the calcium of your teeth is less of what it was. But you’re brand new.

And you grope in the darkness behind you and there is nothing there. You, especially, are not there. This is what frightens you the most, your absence in those foot-prints and the knowledge that you’re never going back there. You will not be accepted there, you’ve burnt the bridges, ships, foot-tracks, pages, tunes, laughter, everything.

Did you really have to do that? Disassociate and start all over? Not turn around when anyone calls out your name from behind you? Never look into pages where you documented even your sighs? Everything is brand new, still wrapped in plastic for you to unwrap and delve into. Even your skin feels plastic. A grand total of zero individuals have asked you to do this. This is your call…and you’re not even scared. You are in a numbing sort of joy. You wonder how remember your language, though.

Some artifacts try to make their way across… but only on the superficial level, some books, some cities, not people though. Not entirely, at least. This is you in a personal world, not shared by people. And you will build the walls yourself and hold the fort. God Willing.

You worry me slightly.
Just that.

I wonder how you survived it, you blog, you.

...Ascension to Grihastha...

2006-07-24T05:38:00.000-07:00

To Grihastha, yes.
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But only in flowery 'spiritual' terms. My own religious scruples dictate me towards a more practical demeanor and I celebrate both rides, flowery and the real one. So, a sailor you are… and a sailor I am. And here we are, with our own pretty little festival of our fanciful Noah’s ark. And yet, here we are, soul-sailors riding out of the non-physical land that will succumb to dust behind us? Temple by temple, pillar by pillar, ash by ash, flame by flame . . .

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Shams Tabraiz asked, "Who is greater, Muhammad or Bestami?"

Rumi replied cautiously, "Muhammad."

"But Bestami said 'I am the Glory!' Muhammad said, 'I cannot praise You enough!'”

Rumi fainted under the force of the question from the strange dervish. When he recovered, he uttered, "Bestami had a glimpse of knowledge and took it for the totality. But for Muhammad the divine glory was continually unfolding."

And Shams knew he had found his worthy disciple.

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There, sailors! That is what ye all need to know for your Grihastha trip. The magic of perpetual amazement and continuous unfolding and the fluid expanse of all that we may never see in its entirety. That we must restrain from even wanting to see in its entirety. God ordained this journey on Noah’s ark, don’t think about what lays beyond. Think of the ark itself, of the companions.

Of the companion.

… Of those Little Messiahs…

2006-05-23T04:14:00.000-07:00

It’s one thing to teach approach-approach conflict.

To roam from one side of the room to another, moving your hands, making collective eye contact with 14-16 pairs of eyes looking at you. One thing to give an example, a sober example and read the looks in their eyes. One thing to follow up on that example with a novel, perhaps even comical example… and watch the ice of seriousness crack down from the first row to the last one… as these individuals come to life. One thing to teach them how to give critical respect to Sigmund Freud, one thing to keep the Freud joke from becoming un-academic.

Yes, all of it is still… one thing.

It’s another thing to deal with the approach-approach conflict.

Faith makes it all so simple, doesn’t it? Just put your trust in Him and move on. Say farewell to those 14-16 pairs of eyes, and twice that many. To feel so little and silly yourself but to speak words of farewell in a tone of some highbrow, wise orator. And cut yourself short, and tell your insides, ‘Don’t do that…’. But such are human roles and expectations. But these 14-16 pairs of eyes, and twice that many, they were Messiahs. They expected something, yes, but gave much more in return.

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I know their histories.

Like friends, sisters, brothers, children.
Even children. Even if it sounds pompous. Even if my insides tell me again, ‘Don’t say that…’.

I wonder how teachers take their work for granted, how the world doesn’t understand the plasticity of a human being when you stand as an instructor in front of 14-16 pairs of eyes, and that twice that many…

Two years of plasticity.

Of laughing their laugh, listening and listening and little more. And talking. And a little more. God, I know even this is pompous… whoever put standards on these things!

My little Messiahs, my buffers, my ‘vitals’… my hope in the world when it really seemed like the world was going to dogs.

“Okay, we are going to talk about…” And 90 minutes of that talk.
Twice a week, thrice a week.

---
And the tug from the Other Side.

The Tug-ger… beyond human language in the first place, and my case is saved as the tug-ger would never want me to scribble a word about the Tug here. Wild impulse one feels when fingers drum on this keyboard… but I will honor your privacy, Tug-ger.

I will, inshAllah...

... Cauterized?...

2006-05-12T13:18:00.000-07:00

Even if I stand in my flowery garden...

... the world far and around still burns.

... Iqbal, on appreciation of art...

2006-05-11T01:15:00.000-07:00

“History has preserved some of the criticisms of our Prophet on contemporary Arabian poetry. But those of these criticisms are most profitable to Indian Muslims whose literature has been chiefly the work of the period of their national decadence, and who are now in search of a new literary ideal. One of these criticisms indicates to us what should not be and the other what it should be:

1. Of the Poet Imra-ul-Qais who flourished about 40 years before Islam, our Prophet is reported to have said:

“He is the most poetic of all poets,
And their leader to Hell.”

Now what do we find in the poetry of Imra-ul-Qais?

Sparkling wine, enervating sentiments and situations of love, heart-rending moans over the ruins of habitations long swept away by stormy winds, superb pictures of inspiring scenery of silent deserts - and all this is the choicest expressions of old Arabia. Imra-ul-Qais appeals more to imagination than to will, and on the whole acts as a narcotic on the mind of the reader. The Prophet’s criticism reveals this most important art-principle - that the good in art is not necessarily identical with the good in life; it is possible for a poet to write fine poetry, and yet lead his society to Hell.

The poet is essentially a seducer; woe to his people, if instead of making the trials of life look beautiful and attractive he embellishes decadence with all the glories of health and power, and seduces his people to extinction. Out of the richness of his nature he ought to lavish on others something of the super-abundance of life and power in him, and not steal away, thief-like, the little they already, happen to posses.

2. Again, the following verse of Antra of the tribe of Abs was read to our Prophet:

“Verily, I pass through whole nights of toil to merit a livelihood worth of an honourable man.”

The Prophet whose mission was to glorify life and to beautify all its trials was immensely pleased, and said to his companions:

“The praise of an Arabian has never kindled in me a desire to see him, but I tell you, I do wish to meet the author of this verse.”

Imagine the man, a single look at whose face was a source of infinite bliss to the looker desiring to meet an infidel Arab for his verse! What is the secret of this unusual honour which the Prophet wished to give to the poet? It is because the verse is so healthful and vitalizing, it is because the poet idealizes the pain of honourable labour. The Prophet’s appreciation of this verse indicates to us another art-principle of great value- that art is subordinate to life, not superior to it. The ultimate end of all human activity is Life -- glorious, powerful, exuberant. All human art must be subordinated to this final purpose and the value of everything must be determined in reference to its life-yielding capacity. The highest art is that which awakens our dormant will-force, and nerves us to face the trials of life manfully. All that brings drowsiness and makes us shut our eyes to reality around - on the mastery of which alone life depends - is a message of decay and death. There should be no opium-eating in Art. The dogma of Art for the sake of Art is a clever invention of decadence to cheat us out of life and power.

Thus, the Prophet’s appreciation of Antra’s verse gives us the ultimate principle for the proper evaluation of all arts.”

... Rumi, after a while...

2006-05-05T04:05:00.000-07:00

…Cogito Ergo Sum…

2006-05-05T03:47:00.000-07:00

I think, therefore I am.
But are either of these worthwhile, what I think, whether I am?

My fundamental reality is dust.
Just that.

And the reality of my thoughts, are the ashes we call words. The paradox is there, thence; words cannot acquire dust-form, for meaning cannot turn to dust. Why one feels disillusioned by a mission, is perhaps disillusionment with life itself, in a macrocosmic view. And this can only be because there is that senseless sprint after purpose…

“Our Lord, You have not created this (world) without a purpose…” Divine words, from a marked Chapter…but carry that spike… that pricks the mind… with thoughts… thoughts… wanting definitions… all laid out. And limited.

Purpose… purpose… purpose…?

Dreams of monotonous rain appear more purposeful than the waking up at six o’clock in the morning routine. The purpose of Sleep, a necessary waste of time, is more defined… more worthwhile, apparently.

Whether Purpose, Meaning and Feeling are divergent or converge somewhere down the path… I don’t know. There are meaningless feelings, and purposeless meanings. There are events, of Feelings… but only the Meaning is carried across, down to the memory lane… and even there, the Purpose maintains its clandestine aura.

The poet with his Feeling, scribbles in fervor, but only the Meaning remains. Sometimes, not even that. And then, all this is not created without a purpose?

Just momentary venting of Feeling?

What is the point of all this prattle? Absolute junk… just hedonistic games with the pen, a necessary waste of time… to sprinkle big words down on the screen, generously, and watch them take form… and feel disgust and love all at once.

Just a luxury of big minds.

There is one thing I cannot bring myself up to agreeing with. There are no incredible minds, except the prophetic souls. The rest must lead a life of dynamic struggle to achieve incredibility. The Bedouin, with his simple-hearted mind, no education, no complex cognitive processes, took the Kalma better than any of us could. He did not ask Mohammed SAW whether he was making a political statement with his monotheistic doctrines. He was tortured and killed for a simple truth.

And he died for no high-brow, artsy philosophy, only love.

And I feel, at times, the rest of us pompous talkers, will just swing between sincerity and insincerity towards faith… as it says in 'The Grande Chartreuse'...

“Wandering between two worlds,

one dead,

The other powerless to be born.”

--Matthew Arnold

SOS, God.
Please.

… Not quite in the offing?…

2006-04-14T04:35:00.000-07:00

This is quite characteristic of human experiences: tempting as it may be for enthusiastic philosophers, these experiences struggle to remain un-intellectualize-able (with a self-proclaimed poetic license, I can invent this word). What is simple, will remain simple. You can dampen it with a million and one unintelligible words and pompous theories but a simple emotion, will remain a simple emotion.

Simple, urgent and yet, unfathomable.

After worshipping Silence for long, I now have come to feel this deference for Simplicity. With caution, yes, since it lies on a borderline with tradition and blind norms. Half a lifetime spent (if not wasted) within the bowels of witnessing life playing its scandalous tunes. And now, here, the unit of my being stands with starry-eyes, witnessing life’s stroke of miracle.

A miracle, really.

How much you end up conveying… when you want no one to know what you are saying. Not even someone. This once, not even someone.

And then, there is the art of waiting. Though popularly known to be a passive deal, it is really… a bloodless war, where you’d like to shed at least a few drops of blood to have ‘something to show for it’.

To be able to show-and-tell… “Look!” Poke, poke! “Blood!”
.
.
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And then, there are dreams.

So fluid, like the rest of existence.

So flexible, you start wondering if you are just justifying it all for the sake of contemporary happiness. Is happiness really a linear thing, thread-like or encapsulated within moments? Meant to be for a particular instant, dissolving therein? Perhaps simple emotions work that way.

…But not where God is concerned. In spite of fluctuating Divine Innuendos, happiness in His realm has nothing to do with transience. Encapsulated, yes, but the moment there is eternal. What is so difficult for many to understand … is the connection of aesthetics with God. No, they may understand it, but find it all too nonviable.

Then, what of divine verses, especially the metaphorical ones… the rhyming ones, the poetic ones… don’t they appeal to aesthetics? Can you not acquaint yourself with Him through that? Aren’t the lives of His messengers poetic? Even their pain and their longing and their words? Their actions…?

I know there are psychometric scales that measure happiness – filthy idea, with due apologies to those positivists who spent their lives validating such scales. But to put down happiness in metric units, in a figure? They are already working on robots who’d be able to tell what emotion you are feeling simply by looking at you (by recording and monitoring physiological changes in your body). And so, imagine a day when an automated being like that walks up to you… “Good Morning, Mrs. S… 14th of April, 2015, the time as we speak is 10:08 a.m., PST, the weather today is 30 degrees Celsius, your happiness level is 10.4 xyzs, your anger level is 4.2 xyzs …”

Dream of someone into artificial intelligence: my nightmare.

What crap.

Well, what do you expect…? My pen has wavered…

... Of Six Days...

2006-03-12T09:54:00.000-08:00

“Lo! your Lord is Allah Who created the heavens and the earth in six Days, then mounted He the Throne.”
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AL-ARAF: 54

It takes my Lord, Allah, to create the cosmos in six days. And adorn it with lights and the firmament and all that is beyond insinuations of language. Six days is just an expression, perhaps… not a scrupulous measure of one hundred and forty-four hours.

For God.

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For me, Six Days is a scrupulous measure of one hundred and forty-four hours…ticking away into a pathologically compulsive tick-tick-tick of the skinny needle of seconds’-hand. Only that in Six Days, I must deconstruct my own cosmos.
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The act of building spaces around oneself, demarcating them superfluously … standing on them and screaming defensively: “Mine!”; guarding them in less-colorful terms than pieces of land are guarded… but guarding, still. The act of collecting words and ideas and self-glorified sacrifices in that personal chamber and shooting untrusting glances at every passer-by.

But at times like these, it is best to return to the basics. Yes, after all these stunts and ceremonial indulgences into the worlds of powerful intellect and philosophies… this is the lesson I have learnt: To give in to the simple, sometimes. Pomp and extravaganza may not echo my real self … loud noises, bold colors and crowded, steaming halls are not my cup of tea. But at the core of all these noises and people and their pomp – there is simplicity.

-
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A certain Basic-ness.

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And so, what is required is to accept this as a novice amongst the novices. Social psychologists celebrate role-playing as if it’s an accomplishment of human civilization. And there is no need for me to become icy-critical about these masks we must wear for our progressive, social Darwinism. These are all basic acts, not base. And not dull. Simplicity is, really, a luxury… a luxury known to many, celebrated by very few, very rarely. The only problem with it is its addictive quality, and hence … the withdrawals.

Six days to teach myself all this.
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Six days to sit down and meticulously undo many eccentricities, those that cannot survive in another nook.

Six days to mould the malleable eccentricities.

Six days to learn to take each bout of life with a sense of wonder and the subtle joy of going through the unknown. You don’t need knowledge or insurance or even reassurances for ventures like these… you just need an enormous capacity of energy… you need acceptability and in the silliest ways, even suggestibility. And redundant as it may sound, you need faith in the One who created “everything” in Six Days.

Human biology is sometimes enough to learn the checks and balances Allah has kept, to ‘maintain’ our existence. If something goes wrong in the body, pain is the signal … to help you identify the locus of injury. And when that pain reaches a threshold, your brain squirts endorphins (natural painkillers) to tame that pain. And so, with that simplistic perspective, nothing can go wrong… there are too many back-up band-aids.
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“Un kahee say durtay ho,
Jo abhi nahi aee, uss gharri say durtay ho?
Uss ghari ki aamad ki agahee say durtay ho!” .
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Hah. What a sermon. Here’s to this six-day-self-indulgent evangelism …
Cheers.

... Depersonalization ...

2006-03-07T01:56:00.000-08:00

They call it the ‘writing behavior’, the psychologists do, when the schizophrenic writes in delirium. Some theorists believe it is just the label that makes one a deviant, nothing is really "wrong" with pseudo-patients. Since my recorded history, I have manifested this writing behavior under stress – who is to diagnose the frequencies of sanity, then. But no tick-tack-toe, cross-checking correlation, everyone in the world knows more statistics than I do.

I remember the real spooky Little Days, staring in the mirror for a hundred seconds and feeling this loss of existence. When the hands, the head and all limbs were no longer a part of the self. It used to happen, and I would run to Api that I was scared. She never understood, I never tried hard enough either. Now Umair tells me he used to experience that flight of the inner being too, when little. It does not happen any more. Wordsworth says in verse that the Child in us celebrates his intimacy with Divinity, which diminishes as we grow older. But Siddhartha learned to carry it across age, perhaps, transcending from the waters to the trees to other organic entities.

It cannot happen any longer. It hasn’t happened in a long time, and it will not happen again – and so, it is not possible any longer to depersonalize, to move through the four dimensions of existence and convey, let alone reach? Or is it?

It is not.

We are limited beings. We do not whistle like the dark birds, where one shrill note narrates the tales of migration. Only rarely, very rarely, can we attempt to live through people, see life through them – or pretend, at least. It is what ambitious mothers call “singing through their sons”. I have attempted that too, with my brother… by sending him to places where I could not go… to speak to a lone, deranged man lying across a railway track, singing to himself. It works for a while, just a spark of a moment of self-gratification. But no, not a melodramatic Shakespearean character, ‘seeing joys through other eyes’, not that. Just to ‘sing through’, that ‘Symphony’…

Those are roles God hands down to us. We are born with labeled relationships.

Narratives cannot be easy things, eyes closed or open. Even as the ‘writing behavior’ was manifest in earlier days, I always believed speech to be better than scribbles. And too, God verifies this, that the greatest sign of His mercy is that “He taught eloquent speech to man”. Yet, to communicate with us, He chose the writing.

… Badsha Khan’s Prophecy…

2006-02-27T11:48:00.000-08:00

I am no political analyst or critic, because quite frankly, like Gandhi, I can’t think of politics and religion in exclusive frames. After all my hysteria regarding these across-the-border wars, Bugtis caught my attention. From the Balochis, incongruently to the Paktuns. From there, the Pakhtun conflict.

From there, Badshah Khan.

That’s what I came to write here. This isn’t about Iraq or the Earthquake. It’s about someone we don’t know about. We know about his children and their children, but usually as ‘traitors’. I cannot decide right away, things like these require lots of research and spare neurons. I am low on both, at the moment. My best friend is a pathan – in our history of eight years together, she has done everything in her power (and she is powerful, in all domains!) to make me hate the Pathans, and has managed to do just the opposite.

While my all-Punjabi-blood friend came to blows with this all-Pukhtoon-blood friend, I had an insignificant role to play (being a cross breed of Punjabi and Delhi blood - raised to the power of Middle East). One narrated anti-Punjabi jokes, the other found her literature of anti-Pathan jokes. I don’t support borders within ethnicities but I am brave enough (finally!) to address and accept differences. Noosing the green-and-white-star-crescent flag around people’s neck is not going fix problems or end grievances.

I have admired the passion in Pakhtuns. My Pakhtun friend doesn’t and gives ugly names to their versions of passion. When she didn’t do too well in exams, she’d casually blame that on her pakhtun genes: “Pathans don’t have brains” (although she’s on her way to becoming an academic giant of peace, irony!). When she lost her temper, it was again, “the Pathan blood, not my fault”. Anyway, before this begins to sound like a love-poem for her… here is her ancestor… the man who led the greatest nonviolent movement ever, whose name is kept from our Pakistan Studies books, for reasons only controlled and contorted by historians.

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"Badsha Khan was a Pashtun leader in the twenties who promoted Pashtun nationalism. He doesn't feature in many history books. He founded a political movement, the Khudai Khidmatgars, to fight for independence from the British. The movement's popular name—the Red Shirts—came from the members' uniforms, which were dyed with red brick dust. Like Mahatma Gandhi, Badsha Khan believed that nonviolence was the most effective weapon against colonial rule, and although he was a devout Muslim, he mistrusted the political influence of the maulanas, or Islamic scholars. The reforms he promoted—education, sanitation, road building—were secular."
.

So, this is for my Paktun friend.

Beyond the senseless fieriness of your genes and blood, there is some prophecy to be unearthed. And if it’s about reforms for education and the like, I can offer my hybrid solution too. I can’t engrave these words on a stone, for you to remember… forever. Cyber pulse is the next best thing to engravings, and so…

... Lobotomy...

2006-02-24T10:29:00.000-08:00

I am told I am on the verge of becoming the Prophet of Doom, with all my murky talks.

Alrighty, then, a little embittered humor doesn't bite.

A cousin sent this: (surely, a man's perception) of a desi female brain.

And since Majaz and I are self-proclaimed defenders of the so-not weaker sex, here is our reply. If only we could paste the conversation we had ... on this...

… Fluid Beings…

2006-02-21T03:41:00.000-08:00

Their weighing machine gave erroneous results, that’s why I qualified as a blood donor today. One metallic bit into the skin, one repressed scream, one giggle from a student, and the fluid of life started flowing out of me, into something plastic.

Donating blood.
Detonating millions of thoughts… as fluid as blood itself.

I remember writing longish tales in 4th grade: “The autobiography of a dollar bill”, “Autobiography of a pen” and silly, sequential autobiographies of other inanimate objects. It would be interesting to write the autobiography of a drop of blood, minus the “unhealthy” aspects.

Half a liter of my blood.

Recipient of my hormones, my emotions, moments, illnesses, food I burnt, gulped, relished… into the veins of another being? Into their fluid, their emotions, their moments, their food?
Sounds sick and intrusive, invasive almost.

But it’s the fluid of life; it will return consciousness to someone, somewhere. No need for noble consolations about it, I am thinking along other lines.

We are, organically, fluid. The rest is dust, if not dirt.

A good seventy percent (give or take a few) of earth and human body is fluid, yet we boast the inflexible form of matter. One fluid purifies you, another fluid contaminates.

It is He Who has created man from water: then has He established relationships of lineage and marriage: for thy Lord has power (over all things).

Quran: 025.054

Fluid, all the way.
Human creation, procreation.

I am wondering how to wrap this writing up. But I don’t really need to do that. Respecting the subject of this writing, fluids don’t have boundaries. They flow into alwaysness, eternally…

... From the Lahore Crucible ...

2006-02-15T03:41:00.000-08:00

It’s my grandmother’s favorite proverb:

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“Saray sheher mai bhugdur muchi, burhia ko apnay nikkah ki puri”.

I don’t mean to ridicule myself but you can’t deny the aptness of this proverb. It saddens me, both ways, when I see Lahore on fire and protestors laughing away and tearing down buildings and when I see the flip side of the picture, where I see some people around me saying, “What’s the big deal, it was just a cartoon and we’re on the roads! Why weren’t we on the roads after 9/11?”

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Who are these people, who don’t understand their own contradictions?

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I am a cynic, I know, but I am sad right now, so everything is permissible! There are people Bullay Shah addressed incessantly: those who will spend their lifetimes trying to figure out what the length of the beard should be, when to pick on your wife for her ‘version’ of the ‘Hijab’, grotesque details of life beneath the surface of this earth, where to keep the hand, the finger in prayer (who cares about the heart, anyway?). I don’t deny the relevance of these issues, but I unapologetically abhor emphasis on it.

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If there is chaos and fire a few kilometers from my office right now, with irrational people, who may never have missed a single Friday sermon in the past twenty years, it’s because the Friday sermons they listened to had nothing to do with what every Muslim has to know and understand today! We appoint a professional Qari Saab to teach our kids how to read the Arabic text of Quran, we forget to teach them that a Muslim is one from whose hand and tongue other Muslims are safe. We start checking girls with glares and threats when it’s time for them to start covering themselves up as if they should be ashamed of how God has created them, instead of telling them they are beautiful, they should respect what they are and they must protect that, themselves.

Women share everything with men today: buses, schools, universities, restaurants, even small cubicle offices – but they can’t share a mosque with them, not even a segregated one? Only a handful of mosques in Lahore have space for women… what is the message I should be getting from that?

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What do you have to offer? A smart son? And do you have money? Great! Make him an engineer, a doctor, make sure he earns a lot of money. Alrighty, you’re doing good!

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And what have we got here? A pretty daughter? Umm… okay, make her literate, save money, marry her off… it’s all taken care of.

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What’s the issue now? Who’s going to talk about Islam in the modern context? Who has the time to intellectually and passionately study Islam and be a progressive think-tank from amongst the Muslims?

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Let me think… well, you see, it so happens that the only protectors of this religion on the forefront are these mullah-dudes or the guns-bearing bipolar freaks. I say we leave it to them… and when the West asks us about them, just say they are ‘extremists’, we are different from them, and save ourselves the trouble of explaining.

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That’s what we are doing!

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And from the looks of it, that’s what we’ll continue doing until …

(Until I feel rational enough to think of practical solutions, soon, inshAllah)…

... Murky Airs...

2006-02-12T10:57:00.000-08:00

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At home, air of festivity.

But you can only be a part of it for a while… before things beyond these four walls start penetrating from their old niches.

Begging children are still being shoved around by irritated BMW owners on these very roads, British soldiers are still kicking Iraqi “insurgents” on Iraqi soils (for defending their own lands?), and heads are still being chopped off in front of rolling cameras, with the kalima printed in the background. I remember what Mama had conditioned us to do with the kalima – every time you are scared, just say the kalima.

It worked.

That’s what the kalima was for. To get rid of shapeless creatures from your dark room, late-night stomach cramps, chronic worries of failing an exam…

To remove fear.

Not to justify chopping off human heads.

What the hell is evil?

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Nothing is more painful than listening to people, in their self-imposed wisdom, giving you explanations for why there is so much misery in the world. I would accept fatalism, even resignation more joyfully than the flowery crap sprouting out of so many mouths around… words that make you sick to your stomach, until you just know you are on the verge of screaming, “Please talk to the mirror!”

I would show far more respect to someone who says, “I don’t know why there is so much misery…”

Or, better yet, “I am still trying to find out why there is so much misery…”

Even angels don’t know why men resort to blood and gore for kicks. They knew we would plunder but not why.

Only God knows that…

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And I wish the rest of us, including yours sincerely, would stop trying to play God.

We don’t know why there is so much misery.
We never will.

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I think I need to sleep.

...فَلِلّهِ الْحُجَّةُ الْبَالِغَةُ ...

2006-02-07T20:57:00.000-08:00

... And with Allah is the best argument ...

... Match-stick house of Peace, blown ...

2006-02-06T10:36:00.000-08:00

We met in Norway, last year, around this time, for the International Student Festival in Trondheim (ISFiT, 2005).

Marcin... from Poland... and Madiha... from her land.

Marcin intimidated me at first and when I told him about that impression on our last meeting, he was so disturbed, I had to console him to the last minute that I am usually intimidated by people on first encounter ... he didn't have to worry about his standing in the female population around the world : )

Here's an email he wrote to me, today...

Hi :) How are you?

I have a queston, so please answer if you have a bit of free time :).

There's a lot of talking all around about caricatures of Muhammad
printed by Danish newspaper and reprinted in mamy other titles
recently, incliding one major Polish title. What do you think about
the whole case - as a muslim, and as an ordinary person. Yes, I know,
you can't tell the difference between being a muslim and being an
ordinary person ;) - what I mean is to put your religious beliefs
aside a bit and, let's say, think about all of this in context of
freedom of speech and civil rights.

Here in Poland we almost have "clash of civilizations" headlines and
some fierce discussions about it, so I'd like to know your point of
view, because you can't tell what ordinary people think about it - the
press is only writing about protests, riots, etc. I have my opinion
about all of this, but maybe I'm wrong. That's why I'm asking.

Thanks :) And take cere
Marcin

And here's my long, boring, heated response:

Salam Marcin,

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It’s been almost a year since ISFIT 2005, which means your birthday must be around the corner. So, let’s just start with an advanced Happy Birthday, in case you choose never to communicate with me after reading my reply … Hah. Kidding… ;)

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Alright, what I am going to tell you right now is my opinion of the situation, and it’s possible that some Muslims might disagree with me… but here goes honesty.

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I remember something Giselle wrote for me on our last day, that I was an ‘anti-stereotype’ Muslim for her. I am not the only one Marcin, most of the Muslim population does NOT represent what the media has carved out for you as a ‘stereotype’.

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Since 9/11, Muslims all around the world, especially those living as a minority, have been on the defensive side. We’ve been answerable for a lot of extremism and have been abused, from our own extremists and the ‘others’. Whether it’s the transit at Germany or Dubai – at both places my passport was checked with an air of hmm-now-lets-dig-something-out-of-this. But this is not something I can sue anyone for, these are inflammable times and one has to attain silence.

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Don’t speak until spoken to. That was the rule of the game.

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I was just reading an article printed in the Newsweek, just this December, about Female Suicide-bombers. If you’re a responsible journalist, you’d talk about incidences of all suicide-bombings where women have been involved, and you’d definitely include the Tamil women (who are not Muslims) who have given their lives for their cause, in this fashion. On the other hand, if you want to talk about Al-Qaeda’s female suicide-bombers, then it only makes sense that you STICK to women recruited by Al-Qaeda.

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That article, however, was a swinging babble with absolutely no grip over time-span or location. It focused on female suicide-bombers from Lebanon, Chechnya, Iraq, Palestine – all in one go, and that, Marcin, is really sad. The only point being driven there was that it’s something Muslim women do, so that every time an average European passes by a woman wearing a Hijab, he would suspect her to be a potential suicide-bomber.

I don’t even blame that average European, this is social conditioning through media and we are all susceptible to it. If we had not met in that environment at Norway, had not gotten the chance to hear each other out, share dinner, you and I would have fostered similar feelings, Marcin. The basic point that that article deliberately (at least that’s what it seemed like) failed to bring out was that the REASONS for all of these women are different.

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I’ll get back to those reasons later but let me talk about the cartoons.

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I understand the importance of freedom of speech in Western culture, it’s something that your predecessors have fought to achieve, at least that’s what my understanding says. Your heroes have been individuals who sacrificed for “freedom of speech” and to tell you honestly, I admire those men and women and it only makes sense that you continue to defend “freedom of speech”.

.

But the context in which “freedom of speech” is being used here, in my opinion, is almost comical. The purpose of “freedom of speech” should be the development and critical progress of human civilization, it should not mean regressing back to cave ages. It should not stimulate anarchy! As a British journalist said, “We do not go about punching people in the face to test their commitment to non-violence. To be a European should not involve initiation by religious insult.” (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2088-2025511,00.html)

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For the longest time now, what you’d call “enlightened Muslims” and even many broad-minded Westerners, have been struggling to convey to the world, despite dim-witted tactics of policy makers around the world, despite irresponsible journalism, that Islam is NOT a religion of violence.

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It’s a religion of discipline and commitment, yes.
It’s a religion that does not encourage passivity, yes.
It’s a religion that does not condone persistently bearing injustice without a cry, yes.

But its fundamentals are not bombs and fire.

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So, here we are, putting up a defensive fight, trying to make the loose ends meet. We are nervous, out of breath, sensitive and we’re struggling … and what do we get?

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A cartoon on our Prophet.

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You have to understand that the Prophet, for a Muslim, is not like a leader of some political or national movement, the concept is very large and I don’t think I can express all that in language. To make caricatures of Muslim leaders or fanatics who profess Islam is different, we put up with it all the time and don’t blame the West for that.

There is a difference between an academic discussion on the subject of religious discord– and a cartoon.
There is a difference when some kid cracks illogical, insulting remarks about someone’s faith over the internet – and when a national newspaper prints caricatures and defends that publication and other newspapers around Europe reprint those drawings.

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This was below the belt.

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I didn’t believe in “clash of civilization”. I thought it’s just sensationalism from academic Americans. But the way I see it now, this is a deliberate clash, and it’s hurtful. This event may go down in Western history as a test of civil liberties but it is doing terrible damage to our motivation as goodwill ambassadors.

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I know this is not what you wanted to hear – you wanted me to speak outside my role as a “Muslim” and this is the point of discord that the West fails to understand about Muslims. To ask a practicing Muslim to set aside her religious beliefs and “speak” is like me asking you to set aside your limbs and shovel snow. And this, Marcin, is not something I would ever be apologetic about because my religious beliefs don’t limit me or make me hostile – being tolerant and understanding is an integral part of my beliefs.

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And now, I’ll tell you what is not part of my faith: to look at a caricature of my Prophet and laugh with you over it. Or worse yet, to say, ‘Hmm, you’re allowed to throw around such filth, it’s a free country, free continent, free world!’

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I will ask you a question now, perhaps I don’t understand “freedom of speech” correctly. If I start tailing you around Poland, swearing at your father or mother or someone you hold dearly, would that be permissible under the “freedom of speech” slogan?

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If no, well, there you go…

If yes, then, I am curious why “freedom” is considered an absolute term?

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Are these the times to ignite a population that’s already quite reactive and victimized? If I were to support the publication of those cartoons under the banner of Western “freedom of speech”, then I would have to accept the burning up of embassies as an Arab version of “freedom of speech”.

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But the truth is, I denounce both.

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If the freedom of one individual threatens the freedom of another, can you justify it as a civil act of equality?

…

*exhausted*

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I am sorry I went on and on about this, Marcin. Just that … I am quite disappointed, perhaps even disillusioned. It’s like building a match-stick house for peace, that’s blown away … that too, because of someone’s black humor.

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I need a little ISFiT therapy :D

What say you?

.

..........................................

... Synapse's Monologue of Discontent ...

2006-02-02T22:34:00.000-08:00

Salam.

My name is Synapse.

I am the gap between two neurons, a tiny space that witnesses the jumping of an impulse from one world to another.

Was I ever born? Or, created simply because two worlds could never merge into one another? Was I powerless to be born? Or, is my birth an example of the power of the distances that must be created for the betterment of mankind? Hah, whatever that is.

Man-anything-but-kind.
.

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I agree my name is not quite mellifluous, nothing you’d like to name your child after, or base your poetry on… just a name for myopic big brains to pronounce meticulously over microphones. They speak of me as if I live with them… but they have never seen me with unaided eyes, ever. They ‘discover’ me behind narrow tubes and technical glasses and jump to conclusions about me. Such is the working of human beings, one distant glance and you are ready to write a book on it.
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Hell, I can't be complaining.

I was not born... I mean, I was not created to be a cynic or a rebel. I was created to watch and remind myself I do matter... even when both neuronic worlds think I am nothing but an impotent gap between them.

There are some out there, in that field of "mankind" who are like me... and they might be able to identify with me. We are those who weren't created to be leaders, we were created out of a need, a sort of need that necessitates our use and telling us we don’t have much of an identity to boast about.

Haven’t the users been extra-gregarious already that they NAMED us something? Just like any Roman citizen? A synapse wouldn’t have such a right in Roman history, if you think about it.

All rise for the present civilization!

All bow to the present civil liberties!

All praise the new world order that exhorts and patronizes nomenclature!

A civilization that names everything, categorizes everything: “this drop of water contains more Magnesium, Potassium, and Carbonate than that drop of water… hence, we label this Natural Spring Water, and the latter Demineralized water." Don’t you dare sip a subjective amount of either before knowing the names, sire…

I am sorry, I am digressing.

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I didn’t come here to write a satirical piece on a world blighted with nomenclature.

.

I came, instead, to tell you… I am just a gap.

Gap.

Brilliant, make that a brand name now…

I can't seem to find an apt conclusion for this letter to you, "man-kind" (can you think of another name for yourself? Homo-homo sapiens! Oh yes!). But then, gaps don't have to finish what they are saying, that's hardly a prophecy that were created to fulfill. And then again, who's listening?

I should go now, the presynaptic terminal is ready to send something across.

I do wish, secretly... to be a neurotransmitter, sometimes... life of action and attention.

Wa'salam....

... Bulleh Shah speaketh...

2006-01-31T03:54:00.000-08:00

... Memory Stains...

2006-01-31T02:21:00.000-08:00

Once upon a time, there was a poetess.

I am glad she is dead now because she was too ... abstruse. People couldn't understand what she was saying and she was becoming too eccentric. I had to kill her and I don't really miss her, she was an added weight ... with all the other people I host in my consciousness.

However, this is one poem... she wrote this in 2002 ... and although it suffers from the same element of being too superfluous … I think it’s forgivable… almost.

Memory Stains

Strings of ik-tara speak, the flute
Hums a rueful tune of enchanting history.
Musk of the wet Arabian sands,
Stain the silk of memory trace.

The medieval hourglass,
Flows down in deathless narration,
Of legends beneath the parched soils:
The tales told and forgotten…

Seeker of the Truth, soliciting in worship.
Calling out to the wine bearer,
To fill his chalice to the brim.
Overcome with rapture,
Loosing his sense, in the Sense.

Ay! Mansur El-Hallaj of Baghdad,
The seeker of light within Light
Paving that way through waylessness,
Other mortals cannot fathom.

The veils unveiled,
Light pervaded darkness.
The “I” annihilated, the self naughted,
Where Love became the enemy of the self,
And God’s Existence accentuated in the self’s nonexistence.

But, words betrayed invocation:
“I am the Truth!”
Cried the words of the mystic.
And thence, the gallows at his feet.

The devout folks, dismembered him
Limb from limb,
To silence, to entomb, to blend
His flesh within Iraqi sands…

“Kill me, my faithful friends!
For in my slaughter is my life -
And my life in my death.”
Cried the lover, intoxicated.

Hush the ik-tara, shun the chronicle!
Kneeling heads of Mohammed’s progeny,
Have rolled within the bowels of this earth-
It is but the nature of these wasteland sands.

But, who can label dust from dust,
The tyrant from the martyr-
The innocent from the oppressor-
And, the lover from the denier?

Tune down your laments, weeping flute,
The speaking tongue belies the feeling heart.
For him who tries to render passion into words,
Sees with Hallaj’s spirit to the gallows.

No alchemy, no elixir of life,
Memory stains, history tarnished.
Hallaj lives in the silent spirit,
Dies in words.

... What was God thinking...?

2006-01-17T00:59:00.000-08:00

There is so much blood laid to waste…

… So many screams, explicit and implicit…

Every corner you turn, every time you switch the television on, someone is being murdered, or murdering, or on the verge...

Was man created for violence?

Is aggression SO innate that we see nothing else?

… What was God thinking when He created us?

This:

“It is He Who hath created for you all things that are on earth; Moreover His design comprehended the heavens, for He gave order and perfection to the seven firmaments; and of all things He hath perfect knowledge.

Behold, thy Lord said to the angels: "I will create a vicegerent on earth." They said: "Wilt Thou place therein one who will make mischief therein and shed blood?- whilst we do celebrate Thy praises and glorify Thy holy (name)?" He said: "I know what ye know not."

And He taught Adam the names of all things; then He placed them before the angels, and said: "Tell me the names of these if ye are right."

They said: "Glory to Thee, of knowledge, We have none, save what Thou Hast taught us: In truth it is Thou Who art perfect in knowledge and wisdom."

He said: "O Adam! Tell them their names." When he had told them, Allah said: "Did I not tell you that I know the secrets of heaven and earth, and I know what ye reveal and what ye conceal?"

II: XXIX – XXXIII
Quran

... God wanted to teach... and for us to learn...

To learn and to teach those who don't know...

And for them to learn ... and teach those who don't know...

Quite simple.

... Kafoor...

2006-01-04T09:52:00.000-08:00

This had to be the first time I heard the word, but the speaker spoke of it as if it were table salt. I was told it looks like table salt or glassy, ground limestone. But the speaker is eighty-seven years old and her chemistry is rather basic.

The context is not very interesting but relevant for this scrap of writing.

“Munjhli apa said when you bury me, bury me with one hundred kilograms of kafoor,” Daddi was telling Mama. “Now think about it, she died so suddenly, it took hours to get hold of that amount of kafoor. What’s the point of such a will?”

I don’t know who Munjhli Apa was but may her soul rest now. She died a few generations, raised to the power of a few more generations before I was born. Her will consisted of nothing but of a burial with one hundred kilograms of Kafoor – a white, powdery substance sold near graveyards, added to the grave during burial. Daddi claims it is supposed to keep the body “fresh” for sometime.

I am not sure how this indigenous method of body preservation differs from the knowledge of ancient, advanced Egyptian chemistry. But the concept is worth a wonder - - - the concept of wanting to make the body live, even when you are medically dead.

Death is either poetic, apparently too distant to be real, or just heavy.

And then, the science of chemistry, for the art of body preservation.

Why would one want to keep their body alive, when dead?
Well, why wouldn’t one… after all the things this body demands, it should sound only just to ask it to reciprocate.

Immortality is a yearning we cannot deny.

Even at the weakest moments, when we wish we had never existed, we still want that suffering to become permanent somewhere, in a depersonalized fashion. Earlier men scratched caves with pictures of mammoths… “we were here”… we smile when we discover two letters scrapped by ambitious lovers on tree trunks… “X and Y were here” And those few letters and images tell stories of synapses and civilizations – ‘please know this, we were here’. Journals, art-work, music… they are not just sublimated derivatives of libidinal energy … they are an attempt to be remembered.

One string pulled resonates forever, sound energy converted into other forms of energy… it doesn’t die.

Kafoor is not just a white powder.
It’s a metaphor for that promise to live on, in any desperate form… God, they come in such beautiful forms, sometimes.

Like signed books, with long-drawn-out signatures…
Marked pages, ear-marked pages…

Is there anyone who wants to disappear, unnoticed… without a mark, without a grain of kafoor? Even the likes of Kafka, who wanted their works burnt after death? Did he really want to do that…? Leave without a trace…? Silent, unspoken martyrdom sounds so virtuous, it almost hurts – but does someone really aspire for that? According to sociobiologists, many species are pre-programmed like that: they will sacrifice themselves to warn their race against danger. But even that suicide is a form of preservation… the preservation of your specie.

…Kafoor…

Children… why is it discomforting to think of them as parasites – something they are, basically? By-products of a biological motive? No… that’s not all...what they are. They will carry you inside them, in their genes, in the color of their eyes, the voice, and perhaps even (God forbid, in my case, at least) your ambition …

You will live … somehow… through them.

What is Heaven…? It is not just a lure of vibrant goblets, silk and wide-eyed maidens; it’s a Promise of infinity. Sufistic annihilation of the self… to merge the self with the Self… not annihilation, then, is it? It’s all about becoming the part of the Origin, a forever-al Origin… a forever-al, non-created, non-ending Being…

… Kafoor…

Rhodes Scholarship…
Ganga Ram Hospital…
Taj Mehal…
Pyramids…

Don’t worry, Munjhli Apa, you’re not the only one.
Others have been less discrete...

...

... Historical Matchmaker...

2005-12-27T02:30:00.000-08:00

... 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? ...

2005-12-26T22:25:00.000-08:00

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...

2005-12-26T00:24:00.000-08:00

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 ...

2005-12-13T22:43:00.000-08:00

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...

2005-12-12T23:22:00.000-08:00

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...

2005-12-10T01:48:00.000-08:00

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...

2005-12-04T22:41:00.000-08:00

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...

2005-12-01T22:50:00.000-08:00

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...

2005-11-30T09:35:00.000-08:00

.
.
.
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...

2005-11-30T09:13:00.000-08:00

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...

2005-11-27T02:37:00.000-08:00

“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...

2005-10-24T22:57:00.000-07:00

… 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...

2005-10-15T22:22:00.000-07:00

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...

2005-10-11T12:25:00.000-07:00

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 - - -

...Identity...

2005-09-26T05:05:00.000-07:00

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...