June 20, 2013 so far

It's almost 11:00 am here at the office and I think I've developed Malaria or some disease. I feel cold at times and my eyes always burn, my legs hurt and it gets so so so cold in the night (please don't forget its the end of June here and technically it should be hot, if not very but it should be hot and here I am, all cold and stuff.
I get tired so much and I just messaged the brother to bring me the multi vits, I hope they succeed in making me feel better. I think what is not right isn't on the outside. There is something else brewing on the inside and it's going to hit me bad if I didn't do something drastic about it.
The husband is very @gilamand@ as we say and he is just not getting happy about the way I am turning things around me. he wants me to dress up for him and be like the other women (hence, his inclination towards others) and he purposely or maybe not is trying to somehow kill that spark in me and honestly, it is dying slowly.
I have work to do, will get back to it again. Just that today, I am very sad.. from my insides.. I am sad..

10–10 THINGS GOD SHOULD HAVE TOLD WOMEN & MEN

WOMEN

1. You can find the keys in your bag by looking inside it instead of fumbling for them.

2. The people in movies are just acting, they are not actually dying of cancer.

3. Men are not magicians, they cannot tell what you want unless you tell them.

4. It is not normal to remember every other woman’s dress in great detail.’

5. There is a rear view mirror and two side mirrors in a car and they are not for decoration.

6. A mess has to be created before you can clean it up. Be thankful to those who help satisfy your desire to clean up.

7. Secrets, by definition, should not be told to anyone, regardless of whether the fact that they are secrets is communicated too.

8. Your children are not the prettiest in the world, its just your motherly illusion.

9. Men who don’t lie are stupid and those who lie and get caught by you are pitiable.

10. Males of every species are more attractive. Look at lions, peacocks……and men.

MEN

1. You are not God!

2. A lie does not become the truth no matter how many times you repeat it.

3. Having the remote in your hand does not mean that you should change channels continuously.

4. Having an organ in your pants does not mean that you should use it for a brain.

5. If stuff was supposed to be on the floor, closets would not have been invented.

6. It looks stupid when you go crazy if some team from the other end of the world wins a match. Nobody from that team even knows you.

7. Ladies’ Tennis is not all about legs, there is also a racket and a ball.

8. When you think you are using a woman, it is actually the other way around.

9. It is okay to make a fool of yourself when trying to impress a woman but always have the guts to admit that you are the one who is being made a fool and mostly you still fail to impress her.

10. Your mother is not the only smartest woman in the world, its just your sonly illusion.

Hahaha!

Remember when:

1. You stared at a digital watch continuously in the last minute of the hour to catch the moment when all numbers changed at once?

2. You tried to control your pee and succeeded for hours, only to fail seconds before you got your pants off?

3. The cop signaled to the car behind you or right in front of you to stop and your heart sank, even though you weren’t doing anything wrong?

4. Your wife or parents or someone called and asked where you were, and you spontaneously lied, without any reason at all?

5. You met someone and couldn’t remember his name and kept making lame efforts to get him to tell it, like ‘how do you spell your name?’

6. You nodded your head when asked if you knew about something even when you had no idea what it was?

7. You told a story claiming it happened to someone you know, when actually you had just heard it from someone who claimed it had happened to someone he/she knew?

8. You laughed at a joke or a witty remark hiding the fact that you did not get it?

9. You did not recognize the voice on the phone but pretended that you did, all the while trying to recall the name?

10. You pressed ‘like’ on a status not because you liked it, but because you wanted people to see that you liked such stuff?

Where are you?!

Where are the people who want to be something? Where are those who want to constantly improve? All I see around me are people who are desperately trying to justify whatever they are or whatever they are not. People who have achieved something keep saying things that have only one aim: to show that there success was not a fluke, that they actually deserved it. Of course there are also those that go to even greater lengths trying to show that it was actually a fluke, this type seems apologetic for being successful or rich. And this habit of theirs convinces more people of the opposite of what they are trying to prove.

On the other hand, those who have not been able to do much or be much in the world keep insisting directly or indirectly that it is not their fault. They spend their time either trying to show that they were victims of bad luck or some conspiracy or trying to establish that the ones who did succeed are nothing more than flukes.

Where are the people who want to keep trying, keep improving and not give a shit about whether their success or failure is justified? Where are those who live rather than spend all their life proving that they deserve to live and forgetting to live in the process?

THINGS YOU WILL NEVER HEAR ON NEWS CHANNELS

1. The head of our Channel has just admitted that he is an Indian Agent.

2. Nothing much happened today.

3. The Prime Minister has just said that the government is unstable and might fall any day.

4. The government has just announced that they have fucked up…….again.

5. A suicide stabber killed himself with a knife in a busy market in Peshawar today.

6. Leader of the opposition has clarified that principles have nothing to do with politics and such filthy concepts must not be mentioned in his presence.

7. Chairman PCB has finally said something that makes sense.

8. Police have actually caught a terrorist today……I swear!

9. And we must remind you that this news was broken first by our rival news channel.

10. A commission has given its clear findings in a week and government is already doing something about them.

KINDS OF PEOPLE YOU SEE AT A TYPICAL WEDDING

1. The chronically starved individuals whose sole aim is to eat as much as they possibly can without any care for decency, manners or their own digestive systems. These people’s time at the wedding is divided into the waiting-for-the-meal and eating-like-animals phases.

2. The incurable tharkis who are just there to check out the girls and try their luck.

3. The girls who are just there waiting to be noticed by the incurable tharkis.

4. The older people who want one more moment in the beautiful sunshine of importance.

5. The kids who could not care less if it were a funeral instead of a wedding and who spend their whole time running around aimlessly and continuously.

6. The baradari who are there primarily in the hope that something would go drastically wrong and they would have a ball telling the story to everyone who didn’t attend. If nothing goes drastically wrong, they do not lose heart and make up some story worth being told.

7. The women who don’t give half as much importance to the occasion as they do to their ambition of looking better than every other woman, including the bride.

8. The mothers who come with only one thing on their minds, a bride for their eligible sons.

9. Those who did not want to come but were forced to by the fact that the parents of the groom / bride attended the wedding of their son / daughter.

10. The poor creatures who don’t even know who is getting married, and had to come just because there was no one else to take their grandpa or chacha or mama to the wedding.

Being Stupid or Not..

When I was born, I was stupid and remained so for many years. What else can you call the kind of things a baby does, crying, drooling, speaking gibberish, laughing for no specific reason. As I grew up, well, I have no idea if I ceased being stupid but I did learn that what is much more important than not being stupid is not being considered stupid. And to do that, all you have to do is not do the stuff the society considers stupid. Of course, if the society itself is stupid, you will not be considered stupid if you act stupidly. However, you might be perceived as stupid if you act wisely. But nobody knows if the society is stupid or not since society itself is the judge of that and nobody would have the shamelessness to admit that he or she is stupid.

So, I guess it is next to impossible to know if I am actually stupid or not. In a world occupied by babies, not drooling or speaking in understandable language might just be considered stupid. I think what I am trying to say here is that a stupid dog among intelligent humans is a stupid dog. But in the company of dogs, he is just stupid and among stupid humans, he is just a dog. But what about a wise human in the company of stupid dogs. Hmmm! He might be a stupid cow since stupid dogs won’t really know what to make of him. Understand? No? That’s fine, just hope that no one understands. That way none of us will be stupid.

Nature

I never liked Biology in school, but then I didn't like any other subject either. However, there are one or two random things that have somehow stuck in my mind. One of the facts I have not been able to forget is how the eye works. If I remember correctly, light reflects off an object and the reflected light rays enter our eye and form an image. The part that most interested me was that the image formed inside the eye is inverted. Our brains then invert the image again so it turns the right side up and only then do we perceive it correctly. In other words, our eyes see things upside down and our brain turns them the right way. I cannot help imagining what would happen if our brain suddenly stopped doing that. We'll see the whole world upside down, and would act on it accordingly only to be frustrated when our actions do not produce the desired results.

Thankfully that does not happen because Nature has designed our brains in a way that they perform this task by themselves. Unfortunately, this automatic functioning is limited to the physical objects we see with our eyes. As for everything else, it is up to us to use our brains and make sense of the upside down images. Since we are so reluctant to use our brains, isn't it possible that we are just seeing everything wrong and no matter how hard we try we just cannot make our actions produce the desired results. If that is true, then the solution does not lie in racking our brains in frustration or working harder. The solution probably lies in starting to use our brains and get our perspectives straight. Everything else comes later.

.........

I sometimes feel that he has this funny tendency of taking things too seriously. At other times, though I think he has a serious problem, he finds everything funny;

Is he the only one in this population of around seven billion who wants to be unique in a manner that he wants to be just like everyone else…..only better. Is he the only one who wants to be different and wants everyone else to be different just like him?

Does he really think that thought is useless? Does he imagine that we live in a world where imagination has no place? He gave a long speech the other day on the complete futility of words. He convinced the audience that no one can be convinced. The audience was so thrilled when he proved that any sort of appreciation is generally counter-productive, that they applauded for a full minute.

I think they all believed him when he said that belief is a mirage. They loved his idea that philosophy and ideas are the domain of the impractical and should be ignored. In the end, he was hailed as a hero and they promised to follow him to the ends of the earth because they trusted him. They were in awe of this man, who was so different from all the others; who hated being a leader and said that awe was the hobby of weak minds.

I find it hard to understand how some people can be afraid of change. It’s not like being afraid of crowds or heights or enclosed spaces, because one can avoid all these or at least try to avoid them. Being afraid of change is more like being afraid of breathing or air or your skin. Change, like all these things, is always there. Anyone who appears to have this desire to avoid change is simply unaware that everything around him is changing all the time. The cells in his body, his thoughts, the position of the sun, moon and heavenly bodies, even the angle of the earth; nothing stays the same.

Maybe people who are afraid of change just believe that things can remain the same only because they are not able to perceive the constant change every moment brings. Maybe by trying to avoid change, they are just trying to perpetuate their misperceptions. Maybe they are afraid to know the truth, afraid to see, afraid to be aware. And that, as I said in the beginning, is hard to understand.

We are but the smallest components of this universe. What happens in far off galaxies or other planets in our solar system has next to no significance in our lives. Then what is important to us? The events around the globe? In our own country? In our city? There is so much going on at the same time that it is difficult to imagine anyone being completely aware of all events that occur at any given time. This is true despite the fact that a number of those unknown events may have serious implications for us. But we don’t know, so we don’t care. Then how do we decide what events are important. Obviously we do precious little to try and gather information that has not been handed over to us on a plate. We restrict ourselves to information that comes to us………….through the media, through people we meet or even through bits and pieces of conversations that we pick up from here and there. And then we decide what is important enough for us to spend / waste our time on. But do we really? I guess we don’t even take that much trouble. We consider important events that we are told are important………by the media, by the people we meet or even by people whose conversations we happen to hear. So, should we trust this information? Is it actually important? Is anything actually important? What about things that we are or at least should be absolutely sure about? Like the fact that it is not a good idea to hurt people or disobey laws or tell lies or commit injustices or make money through illegal and / or unfair means. We don’t need anyone to give us that information or to tell us that it is important. We know. And yet, we don’t. So is anything significant? Are we significant?

Sometimes words elude you. You feel like you have so much to say but don’t have the words to say it. Maybe, such a state of mind is not that bad. Because language and words are only useful for saying stuff that has the same meaning for everyone. For feelings, emotions, and thoughts that are yours alone, things that you experience inside your soul, things that cannot be shared without losing their essence; there are no words.




So, I think without words, I feel without giving those feelings a name, I float in a wordless, timeless, and limitless ocean that cannot be described. And I hope to drown and then re-emerge with a clarity that does not need words, which cannot and does not want to be shared.

Now...

When I was in the kindergarten, I believed in the tooth fairy. As I grew into a school-going child, I realized how silly I had been to have such a belief. I was also a little bemused by my elders who had put the incredible notion in my head and then had gone on with their lives without the least bit of remorse for making an innocent child believe in a thing that they well knew to be non-existent.


As a school-going child, I believed in concepts of justice and honesty and that the whole world operated under a wonderful system and that governments of the world were working hard to maintain peace and ensure prosperity for the population. As I entered college, I realized what a load of crap all this was and I was irritated by the teachers who had instilled these beliefs in my head and then had gone on with their lives as if these were the most obvious truths imaginable.

When I entered university, I started believing in a world that had gone wrong and which could only be rectified by hard work and persistence and a concerted, untiring effort of the youth. I believed in a great future since everyone wanted this country and the world in general to rise from the depths of rottenness and reclaim the heights it was destined for. I believed in a future that would be built on our sacrifices. But when I entered practical life, I realized that people on this planet were not only unwilling to bring about a change, they were completely unaware of the mess they were in. And anyone who attempted to change the state of things would invariably be confronted with the worst kinds of problems created by the very people that he was trying to help. I was annoyed with all those who presented such a rosy picture to me and did not give any attention to preparing me for what was coming.

Now I am in practical life. I work and I try and I fight. But I don’t believe in anything with too much fanaticism now. Nothing is what it seems. Now I don’t believe, I work and I try and I fight and I live.

Some exceptions to me..

1. To be an award-winning actor, you must know how to act, or how to dance or at least have some meaningful dialogues. —- Katrina Kaif is an exception.




2. To win the Nobel Peace Prize, you need to have done at least something for world peace (And sending troops into a sovereign country does not count). — Barrack Obama is an exception.




3. To give religious sermons, you need to know the art of speaking and the science of religion. — Junaid Jamshed is an exception.

4. To be a religious leader, you must stay away from at least a few of the things forbidden in that religion. — Maulana Fazl-ur-Rehman is an exception.

5. To host a successful TV show, you need some talent other than thinking that you are the best host in the world. — Sahir Lodhi is an exception.

You give it a title

Why are we so obsessed with issues that are either too obscure to warrant any sort of meaningful discussion or too large for our tiny minds to comprehend? Why do we feel this urge to keep discussing things like what is the problem with Pakistan, or what is the meaning of life, or what is happiness or what is love or is media a blessing or a curse et cetera? Isn't this absurd when we have much more more more pressing and much simpler issues that need our urgent attention? Issues like how to get to work in time and how to keep our expenses within our means or how to ensure that we get enough exercise and enough vitamins and enough proteins etc.?

Could we be suffering from some sort of a superiority complex? Have we read too many books or heard too many intellec(chawals) on TV so that we are now under the false impression that our foremost duty is to think of solutions to the issues plaguing humanity since before we were born?

I don’t know for sure but I have this strange idea that we must keep our focus on ourselves first. Maybe, the fact that the garbage from my house is daily thrown on some open plot is much more pressing for me than the environmental pollution being caused by the industries of the western world. Maybe my habit of gossiping should be more of a concern for me than the impact of media on national mindset. Maybe my aversion to reading has far greater significance than the low literacy rate of Pakistan. Just maybe!

My issues are more important because if I ignore them, no one else will do anything about them either. My issues are where I should start. Shouldn't your issues be where you start? Maybe such a start will put me in a better position to think about the larger picture. The larger picture is also made up of small parts, and I am one of those parts.

Nothing scares me...........

I am afraid of nothing. Nothing scares me. And yet, there are days when all I see around me is nothing. Everything seems an illusion, a deception, a trick of perception. Everything seems destined for destruction, sure to end one day without leaving a trace, without leaving behind any sign that it once existed. Do things that are certain to vanish one day in the future, actually, truly present in the present. I am not sure, but I try to get rid of such thoughts as quickly as possible.




Because when you start thinking on these lines, everything seems dead, gone, doomed, illusory, false. And then you are left with nothing. Nothing all around. And I don’t want that…….because nothing scares me.

Freedom..

Everyone is free to destroy themselves if they want. Can animals commit suicide? I don’t think so. And if they cannot, maybe that is one of the most fundamental differences between us and them. We are free to harm ourselves, free to live surrounded by our own illusions and fantasies, free.




Sounds weird? Well, it is not. Because success, greatness, glory, illumination, elevation, everything good about this life comes at a price. You just cannot live without choosing; simply because you have been bestowed with the faculty of choice. You must choose. And if you refuse to choose; well you are still making choices, you are just too ignorant to know it or too cowardly to face up to the results.

The price of the freedom to become great is that you also get a freedom to become small. Unlike animals, we cannot go through life on the same plain. We rise, or we are made to fall. Every moment is a choice and every moment changes you. Since you are not likely to even remember most of these moments, it makes a case for giving each one all the more importance; because once it is gone, it is gone; gone from the world, gone even from your memory. What remains is just the effect, which could be destruction or elevation to another level.

Fretting too much about what you cannot do is the worst way to spend a life. It takes one’s mind away from what actually can be done. Why should I care about what I cannot do? Frankly, it does not make any sense at all. But then again, what does!

Probably the most annoying are the stupid questions people keep asking...

1. They call you in the middle of the night and then ask “Did I disturb you?” For heaven’s sake man, even if I was not sleeping, you should be very sure that whatever I was doing, a call at that hour is disturbing.

2. You enter your house or office all drenched and they inquire “Is it raining?” What else did you think, Einstein? That I took a shower in my car?

3. Sitting in a restaurant, they would conveniently point to a dish on the menu and ask the waiter “Is this good?” What response do they expect from an employee of the same restaurant? He won’t say “No sir! That’s awful, the cook spits in it” even if that were the truth.

4. A friend of theirs is sobbing in a corner, and they would ask “Is something wrong?” I wonder if they ever hear a reply like “No no! I am just doing tear Yoga as part of my Kung Fu training.”

5. And their favourite seems to be the question they keep asking every kid they meet. “Mama acchhi hain ya Baba?” Give the kid a break man, I know there are too many dysfunctional families around but you don’t have to mess up the kid’s mind just because you don’t have anything more sensible to ask.

And then there are the completely unnecessary statements of the obvious.

6. “Ohh! It’s ten p.m.” Yes sir I am not blind and I can tell the time from a clock.

7. “It is so hot today.” Hmm! Really? I wouldn’t know, since I live in an air-conditioned hole in the ground.

8. “Light aa gayee” or even more irritating “Light chalee gayee!” I have not come from the Stone Age, I know what it means when the room suddenly goes dark or is lit up.

And Finally the totally illogical ways to start a sentence that are too common to tolerate now.

9. “I don’t think I should say this…” Then don’t say it na! Why can’t you trust your own thinking?

10. “Promise me you won’t mind” Now how can I make such a promise without knowing what you have to say. You could be about to say something indecent about my mother for all I know. Do you really think I decide to mind or not mind something before hearing it?

Facebook Special Dedication

Dear FB Friends –


1) Please stop this stupid WC soccer madness, I don't want to know why you support Germany and hate Spain.
Stop this once in 4 years fake loyalty drama.
If you are really so much into soccer then please name just 3 players of current Pakistan Soccer Team.



2) Stop giving sermons on how one should live their lives. Please.

3) And most importantly, if you want to say something then go ahead say it loud and clear; please stop using your status messages as cryptic messages for someone. Or better use email.

Thank you.

Long time Bloggie! I missed you :-O

SO much to catch up to and so not in the mood to! For now, I started work as a Coordinator and I'm lovin it! Right now at work and listening to songs from Kai Po Che and wai wai! What songs!! :-)




Another year and I realize it when it's half gone!! I guess Nadar's slow motion is catching up on me as well, and surprisingly this time I'm not just conned but convinced that "Two-Zero-One-Three' is going to be a smashing year.




So no resolutions or re-solutions for me, I just want to start to my year with this beautiful ghazal filled with optimism.





Ek brahman ne kahaa hai ke ye saal achchhaa hai


Zulm ki raat bahut jald talegii ab to

Aag chuulhon mein har ik roz jalegii ab to




Bhookh ke maare koi bachchaa nahin royega

chain ki neend har ik shaKhs yahaan soyega




Aandhi nafarat ki chalegi na kahin ab ke baras

pyaar ki fasal ugaegi zameen ab ke baras




Hai yakeen ab na koi shor-sharaabaa hoga

zulm hoga na kahin Khoon-kharaabaa hoga




Os aur dhuup ke sadamein na sahegaa koi

ab mere desh mein beghar na rahega koi




Naye vaadon ka jo daalaa hai vo jaal achchhaa hai

Rehanumaaon ne kaha hai ke ye saal achchhaa hai




....dil ke Khush rakhane ko Ghalib ye Khayaal achchhaa hai



--Sabir Dutt