TIME Cover (29-07-10)

The upcoming TIME magazine’s cover depicting an 18 year old Afghan girl, who had her nose and ears cut by the Taliban regime for leaving her abusive in-laws, is definitely going to create ripples. People have already started to comment on the very graphic cover and it is bound to be interpreted in numerous ways. I have yet to read the cover story but the title, ‘What happens if we leave Afghanistan’, says a lot about what lies inside. Although the managing editor clearly states, ‘We do not run this story or show this image either in support of the U.S. war effort or in opposition to it’ but I think it only takes grade one journalism/psychology to understand what would be the most likely implications.

To me it is another one of those desperate attempts to justify the wars. One could easily bring out a thousand graphical pictures of people who suffered and are still suffering due to incessant bombardment and assault of allied forces but that is very conveniently termed as collateral damage.

Everything doesn’t follow everything. Wrongs of Taliban regime can never be a justification for the ‘U.S. war effort’. They should be rather thinking what happens if we don't leave Afghanistan?

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2007269,00.html

Government Hospital

She is lying on a wooden plank outside the orthopedic department. Two steel rods are tightened across her feeble leg. The cotton has turned crimson from where the rods pierce the flesh. Hardly nine years of age, her wet eyes look around, desperately looking for her father who just promised her that he'll be back in a minute; he has gone to bring a rickshaw.

I stand there, watching her and cursing myself for not having the courage to console her. My perfectly ironed clothes and polished shoes start to make me feel guilty.What if her father never comes back? This is Pakistan and she is a girl. What if the father weighs his options and finds out that it would be better to leave her there rather than to take a disable girl back home, a financial and social burden. 20 minutes pass and the father is still not back; the girl is not crying anymore. Her expressions tell me that fear has replaced all other emotions. I am still standing there at a distance, constantly looking at her. She looks at me after every few seconds. My heart lies to me that perhaps my presence is a little relief to her but I know that I mean nothing. We are both helpless beyond imagination or at least we feel like that.

I know that eventually I'll have to go. I'll be thinking about this for a couple more days, those eyes will haunt me for sometime but then (and I don't know why) I'll forget it. Life would not let me stand on the shore and one of its many torrents would take me away with it. I just wish those eyes could haunt me for the rest of my life so that I could never even dare to complain for how things are or would turn out to be.

__________ I exist because I think but my inability to think what others' think makes me extinct. I am alive because I feel pain but my incapacity to feel others' pain tells me that I am long dead. Slave of the most carnal desires I have the audacity to call myself different_____

The father did come and took her daughter away. The stubborn hope gets the last laugh.

Generating Accents

In an effort to generate an accent, people forget that they are making ‘evaluation’ sound like ‘ovulation’.

A blissful moment

I came home late at night and found the room all cool and cozy but what made it heavenly was that particular homely aroma which never fails to warm the heart and infuse a sense of security. I kept standing there, watching my parents sleep, taking a mental picture, fearing the volatility of life and wondering what my sinful being did to deserve that moment, a blissful experience.

Nothing lasts but it should not stop us from cherishing what we have. Some people think that cherishing would emotionally attach us and when it all fades away it would hurt very much but I think, with a firm belief that everyone is to return to his creator, we can enjoy what life has to offer.

Facebook Ban

When this issue started, I was also of the opinion that only that particular page should have been restricted and not the entire Facebook let alone Youtube and Wikipedia until I came across this blog post. If there is any truth in it then it is entirely a different ball game and there is need to think and ponder over this matter. I came across this audio lecture by an Islamic Scholar Mufti Kamal-ud-Din (LUMS Faculty) and found it very enlightening. Incase I’m unable to attach it here, you can send me your email id and I’ll make sure you get it.

I think that it shouldn’t matter to a Muslim with a mature mindset if some good-for-nothing islamophobic starts coming up with these ideas to infuriate us but still such a page should have been banned for the younger generation, who might be tempted towards it.

Somehow we have instilled in our minds that reacting violently against such mischiefs would prove us as great Muslims but I think what we do in our daily lives is way more insulting to the entire Muslim ummah. Someone very rightly pointed out that where are these Muslims when the government is sitting idle and doing nothing about scores of pornographic material on the internet. We have every right to protest and we should protest against such hypocrisy of Facebook but at the same time we should not forget what it really means to be the ummah of Prophet Muhammad (SAWW).

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.

Punctual or Shoday?

Being exactly on time for a dinner party and finding nobody there..

H: Does this make us punctual or shoday(greedy)?

Remembering Birthdays

Thanks to facebook, even remembering birthdays is not an art anymore. The chance to be the special one who remembered is all lost.

Correction of Mistakes

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

Plashtak

Plashtak/

plā∫tΛk/(also plaashtuck)/ n. Plastic also Slang (plural -s) silly, ignorant

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Plashtak Hojana not gone according to plan

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O Bhaee Plashtak

a friendly call

Spice Alert

Small wonder with this range of ready made spices stuffed inside the kitchen cabinet the food doesn't taste the same anymore rather everything tastes the same.

An Excellent Resource - The Waste Land

Amazing website if you want to read T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land. The screen is split into sections with detail explanations right at your side without the fuss of looking up in the dictionary or googling it.

Exploring The Waste Land

Nietzsche is dead

God is dead. - Nietzsche
Nietzsche is dead. - God
- The Tombs Restaurant. Washington, D.C.

'Wisdom From The Walls,' by Kristen Kammerer and Bridget Snyder

Basant Ban

My post "Basant Ban" on Lahore Metblog.

On the other side

The people he expected to cry were not making him sad but it were the unexpected wet eyes which were making him feel so good. ‘At least give that ego a rest now’, the inner voice was still very much alive.

He was grateful to all of them for not making hoopla.

“We can't do anything for you. Divine Will can't be changed. Eyes shed tears, and heart is sad and grieved for death. However, will not say anything which may invite the wrath of Allah. If there had not been the true and certain promise of Allah that we too shall come after you.”

Exactly what he had wished for; and he also wanted all those people to get on with their lives as soon as possible. He always admired the English for how gracefully they put up with deaths. It must be a cultural effect because it is hard to believe that they feel any less pain.

We always fuss about the unpredictability of life whenever encountered by the news of a sudden death but hardly anyone prepares for it. At 22, who could have thought it was his time to leave. Nature, as they say, is too cruel to give heralds. There were no regrets but there was certainly anger. Sheer frustration on being unable to find what the heck the whole exercise was about. All the things loved and held closed had lost their worth. Every single bit around which the life revolved had been rendered useless. Jumping from one temptation to another, he knew now that all that fretting was over nothing. He fought battles which could not be won, cherished the perishable and had nothing which could have been brought here.

We are a stubborn lot. We learn only from our mistakes and death is one mistake which we don’t have the luxury to make twice. Chance to make corrections is never there. He remembered that peer who spent forty nights in an open grave; the reason behind that ritual is something which dawned upon him as they lowered him down. The stone slabs were placed over, eclipsing any form of light. Even hope, the obstinate one was shunned from there.

‘Life could be so different from this perspective’, he thought. Compared to this pitch darkness; highest of obstacles and bumpiest of roads are nothing. Eternal meaning is found in places where we never bother to look or lies on paths we seldom tread.

Happy New Year

Best Moments in Reading

"The best moments in reading are when you come across something - a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things - that you'd thought special, particular to you. And here it is, set down by someone else, a person you've never met, maybe even someone long dead. And it's as if a hand has come out, and taken yours. " (History Boys-The Movie)

Respite

With the call for the Morning Prayer his eyes groggily let themselves open.

Lying in bed with that distinct smell of hospital ward all around felt strangely soothing. It seemed justifiable to find himself there; a necessary conclusion to all the nonsense that was piling up in his mind. How during the past few weeks he had wished to fall ill just so he can get a break from life itself. It always felt like as if a stage is being set for something far worse or like sitting in trenches just before a massive war is about to be waged; the deathly silence before the first shot is fired.

There was no familiar face around except for that nurse engrossed in a women’s digest, leaning comfortably in her chair. They had got acquainted as he had shifted from consciousness to unconsciousness during the past week.

“Allah will suffice thee, and He is the All-Hearing, the All-Knowing” (2:137), he loved reciting this verse from Quran. It was the verse on which blood was spilt when trying to save her husband; a wife’s fingers were chopped off. He was not sure what made this verse so special to him. Was it the words which consoled him even in depths of despair or the impact of that event where love made someone parry a sword with bare hands?

Lying there in the bed was like being in a state of deep meditation; the lying Buddha. For quite some time he had wanted to shy away from daily routine and spend some quality time all alone. He envied the saints for whom the worth of this world reduced to nothing. What a blessing that could be, he wondered.

The television was muted and one of those nauseating political talk shows was up; Pakistan’s way to tackle Indian soaps. The incessant prattle was getting on nation’s nerves. At least the world hasn’t changed since he was admitted to the hospital.

He had regained consciousness and it would not be very late before doctors discover that. He closed his eyes ridding his mind of all that was past, present and future. He had to cherish those few moments of bliss before he was discharged and flushed out into the world.

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.

Mind: Look! What mess you’ve gotten us into.

Heart: You could have stopped me; it’s not my fault that your reasons failed.

Mind: I admit failure but why do I have to pay for your mistakes?

Heart: As if I have never paid for yours.

Mind: With you safely ensconced in that chest-box, I don’t see a way out.

Grey Wolf - Mustafa Kemal by H.C.Armstrong

Fundamentally a revolutionary and with no respect for god or institution, Mustafa Kemal was a true fighter. List of his achievements can easily confound the mind. From epic victories against fierce enemies to taking out Turkey from dregs, his strength and stamina were unmatchable. Single handedly he fashioned the entire nation on new grounds and paved way for a better and prosperous future. “Turkey for Turks” was the only aim throughout his life.

Conservatives might flinch at most of his actions but there is no denying the fact that he was a mountain in the face of an alarming number of external and internal problems. Abolishing the caliphate and putting an end to the centuries old rotting system was not an easy job. He had to change the whole mentality and induce a new spirit in the nation. Arts were modernized and Arabic characters of language were changed to Latin to end the superiority of handful of priests, remnants of the historical relic, the caliphate.Eons of oppression and manipulation at the hands of degrading clerics had shut all avenues of change. It needed an overhaul, a revolution.

Revolution did come; founded in blood to ensure its permanence. “Some of you may agree or may not nonetheless it will happen, only some of your heads will fall in process”, Mustafa said to the Grand National assembly, on their refusal of his proposal that the sultanate should be separated from the caliphate.

He firmly believed that there are no oppressors or any oppressed; there are only those who allow themselves to be oppressed. With this notion he led his people by hand along the road until their feet were sure and they knew the way.

In an almost story like manner the author, H.C. Armstrong sketches the life and works of Mustafa Kemal, the founding father of modern Turkey. The somewhat boring details which are usually part and parcel of such books are engulfed in such a manner that you feel like reading a great novel. It was certainly a wholesome read.