If the world is thrown at your feet; don't embrace it. Don't even lift it up ...

Just for a change...

The maid holds the child while the couple eats their food. Why not for once the couple holds the child while the maid eats food first or like in a family gathering where women take turns ...

Right & Wrong

What is right and what is wrong? Is everything right? Is everything wrong? Is the world right and I am wrong? Am I right and the world is wrong? Is there any hierarchy of wrongness and rightness?

Perhaps days of pure evilness and divinity are gone. Wrong is in danger of going right just like right is in danger of going wrong.

Imagination is in details

How effortlessly he plugs in the verbal abuse when he barks at the waiter to bring the naans quickly. Considerable height and more than a few sessions at the bodybuilding club entitles him to such mannerism.

Where you desperately want to punch the hell out of him, only if you had the same height and sessions on your side; you also start to feel better about yourself. At least there are people who more perfectly adorn the definition of a jerk.

What feels worst is that you did not have the courage to stand up for that poor guy whose lips were sealed only because he has a family to feed. 

Not unless you are cheated that you realize how much you trusted

On the other side

If you haven't buried them already then make sure that while crossing the bridge of time you throw away any expectations into the stream below. Someone else is always there with the proclivity to take a sip from this stream of life. The moment the water touches the lips the expectations will curse him, fool him to live another day...and when you reach the end of the bridge, you will see that time has not spared anybody.

If you had wanted me to be there at the end, if you had not been insouciant; you should have held my hand and taken me along with you.

Love

At times I get this urge to describe love. I want to define it, enclose it in a couple of words, jot it down in a notebook and then throw it away in some dusty, old, termite-infested cabinet.

The metamorphosis is quick and the shades are beaucoup. Love is too big a word. Its canvas has grown over the centuries; adorned with millions of strokes and now it has become impossible to comprehend what the artist wanted it to be. It is that pain which the patient is unable to point out exactly from where it originates. It’s a venom and the only cure available is the venom itself and not in its attenuated state. It takes you out from the dregs only to throw you right back.

Perhaps the entire beauty and ugliness of love lies in the mystery which surrounds it.

Correction of Mistakes

I am not correcting my mistakes in fear of making them again.

Birthday Betrayal

Memories can be like those obstinate candles on the birthday cake, refusing to blow out. Flickering and reducing but relighting all the same.

In a final showdown they are extinguished and taken out but leave the cake eternally marred.

Similar Yet Different

While waiting at a car-wash I was thinking that at times two people like these keys can look very similar...

But on a closer inspection we realize that they are destined for different fates altogether.

Justification?

Is there any justification not to love those who are so dear to us just because they will leave us eventually and it would hurt so bad?

There goes the nirvana

The bike breaks down in the mid way with mercury kissing 48 °C; I have to drag it to a repair shop hardly half a kilometer away and the rest of the day I am looking around for someone to acknowledge the mega task I have achieved…

Its lunch time and the greasy baingans don’t show much prospect. I don’t have to think twice before I ring up the pizza guy. Well, at least I have to reward my self for the Herculean task earlier that day.

As a matter of fact as I pass through my life, I hardly think about these things for which people have to adjust their budgets for the whole month and still I am capable enough to be critical about the softness of the pizza’s crust. From buying clothes to dining out in a fancy café, it is never a major point of consideration. The ease with which life is being lead is a blessing beyond all measures. Still, I somehow find time to complaint about issues which are worthless when compared to all of these perks.

These sudden realizations make you feel blessed; sitting under the sacred fig you feel tantalizingly close to unveiling the mother of all veils but then you bite at the slice of pizza and to aid its movement you sip the chilled and bubbly coke and with it goes the nirvana.

Decoding or Creating Mess?

It was perhaps Marina Khan, who once said on a cooking show that when we are in school we crave to enter the university where we would have unlimited freedom and once in university we pray to enter the practical life and for the studies to finally end. Unfortunately when we face the pressures of that life we wish to go back to school again.

True, although in my case I want to take an about turn before I have tasted the practical side of life. Life has been good in theory. Internships have been more than enough glimpse into that world. Either I have made a major boo-boo in selecting finance over marketing or it’s just this darn boring internship I am doing.

Either the case, basking under the school memories is soothing, when the biggest worry was that instead of one; two exercises were given for homework. Moreover, 90s were less complex. I don’t blame our elders for remembering their simple yet less complex 60s and 70s.

Between the incessant vibration and ring tones of this age peace and calmness have lost their way. In our effort to decode life, we have created a huge mess and I don’t think we remember which piece is going to go in first.

The Portrait of Myself

‘Only once I have been made quiet and it was when somebody asked me, who are you?’

This statement can be interpreted in equally plausible ways but from personal experience it is like someone holding a mirror in front of me. Like the picture of Dorian Gray it shows all the vileness inside me, the hollowness of my own soul…the fake fat life form.

The moment you think about criticizing someone or even raise an eyebrow, that ugly reflection sneers back at you. Dispersing the illusion of your worth and slaughtering the chimera of being separate from the rest of the world.

Head bursts & Heart breaks

I don't know which one is worst. Is it when the head bursts with anger or is it when the heart breaks with pain?

Think, Not Believe

In the book ‘Labaik’ when M. Mufti asks Qudrat as to why he adds ‘maybe’ to every answer he gives. Qudrat replied, “Because only God is all-knowing.”

I was taught very early in life to be very careful when uttering the words, ‘I believe’. One should rather replace it with ‘I think’. ‘I believe’ is like putting a period; barricading reception and creation of new ideas. It renders one incapable of budging from own viewpoint and does not give way to someone else’s thoughts.

Think of the immense vastness of space and then say, ‘I’. Saying ‘I believe’ is similar to that. It creates the same sense of insignificance.

I have reserved ‘I believe’ for the places where according to Zulfiqar Ahmad Taabish; wings of reason and intellect get burnt. The dimension where a little spark of love is all what is needed to do the trick.

One can always argue that even in those regions one should keep the channels open and not block them with ‘I believe’ but I have observed that you can think only to a certain extent; after which things start getting messed up. This shouldn’t be a good enough excuse but sometimes it makes life a lot less complicated if we just let go. It feels great and of course you're not hurting anybody.

In Search of Originality

In search of the original, it might not be unusual to first tread the swamps of unoriginality. There is always a chance that you might get stuck in it, unable to budge and finally drowning in it. The mud creeps in your body, barricading everything which might have given vent to an original idea.

Count them lucky who pass this swamp and enter that hybrid zone where originality is the toddler, led by a firm hand of unoriginality. At first the walk is shaky and it is difficult for the little one to maintain his posture but he gradually learns, finding his feet, trying to balance himself. Finally considering himself capable enough, he lets go of that hand. Instead of following the old and worn out paths, he can now pave new ways, explore virgin lands and set fresh landmarks.

But it is always a good idea to look back at those old paths once in a while. Maybe there was a turn we missed or a sign we overlooked…Perhaps there is someone out there who needs our hand.

Misfortunes, mishaps, tragedies…When these befall, sense of right and wrong greatly falters.

The Show Never Stops

There are a few facts of life which just don’t get absorbed in our minds. They always find their way out from the attic in head and come as a shock on every encounter. We are too afraid to accept them. Like the fact that fleeting time is bound to take people away from us. Brevity of human life is something with which we might never get accustomed. People closest to our hearts would desert us eventually.

While filling out a bank form I struggled to place a mark in the box right next to the option ‘Either or Survivor’. I don’t blame the form. It was written with profitability in perspective, not sentiments but the sheer brazenness of it shakes you up. Thrown right into your face. Something to bring you face to face with the very grim side of life. The very moment when you have to let go of the armor of denial, bowing down to the impeding truth.

You can never prepare for something like this, even though it as sure as the passing of days. When the time comes, it will hurt all the same. Left behind would only be a long tail of etched memories, keeping the wounds fresh and life hollow. But I have seen time working miracles. The world can be a very absorbing place if one is ready to yield to its temptations. Without our noticing those etched memories start eroding. Sands of time bury them somewhere deep down. Faces get blurred and voices muted. New memories are painted over the old ones. Life goes on. The show never stops.