Kehte hain ke Ghalib ka hai andaaz-e-bayaan aur...

Dil hi to hai naa sang-o-khist
Dard se bhar naa aye kyun
Royein gey hum hazaar baar
Koi humme sataaye kyun....

Dair nahi, haram nahi
Dar nahi, Aastaan nahi
Bethein hain raah-guzar pe hum
Ghair humme uthaaye kyun....

Qaid-e-hayyaat-o-band-e-ghum
Asal mein dono aik hain
Maut se pehlay aadmi,
Ghum se nijaat paaye kyun...

Haan woh nahi khuda parast
Jao woh bewafa sahi
Jisko ho deen-o-dil azeez
Uski gali mein jayein kyun...

Dil hi to hai naa sang-o-khist.....


--Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib

Once Upon Two Clowns

Talha was asking me to blow balloons. I've always been scared of doing that.I blow out into the balloon, but for some inane reason, I feel the air turning around and settling inside my cheeks, somewhere below my ears. It feels stuck there, trapped. And I feel like somebody's stuck two fingers inside my throat and I can breathe but I can't speak out. And the air just sits there like two, stubborn cotton buds, straining against the recesses of the small space beneath my ears, silently strangling my peace of mind. The problem with parasitic relationships, is that one of the two eventually dies.

We believe before we invent the vehicles to explain our beliefs. Two clowns, who had a juggling act together went to a pub and got drunk. "Gay" relationships didn't exist then, so it was all in the spirit of masculine, fraternal bonding. One of them believed in preparing a juggling act before a performance and improvising very little once in the spotlight. The other was more of an impromptu juggler. The first one, (let's call him "God", since he doesn't really care what you call him), asked the second one(let's call him by his full name; "Satan.A.Scientist"--he definitely cares what you call him), how it was, that he could come onto stage with such confidence when he had not planned his act at all. How could it be, he asked in wonder, that Satan.A.Scientist was loved by the audience everytime, despite his clearly less refined act, whereas he, who worked endlessly on minor details, trembled every time he walked out in front of that huge audience.
Satan.A.Scientist downed his fourth glass of Keystone, and asked the bartender if he could borrow his shiny black tophat for "dry purposes only". The bartender was a little dubious.(And he really can't be blamed since Satan.A.Scientist was wearing a bright blue suit with polka dots and a poofy hat on his head. He also had a big red smile and Rudolf's nose, but those are irrelavant details). He, however was having a busy night and in view of avoiding unnecessay trifles, he reluctantly conceded.
Satan.A.Scientist took the tophat and asked God, who was eyeing him curiously, whether he believed that Satan.A.Scientist could pull a white rabbit out of this hat by grace of magical powers at that very instant.
"Well," replied God " If I was perfectly sober, I would consider it highly improbable."
"And why is that?" asked Satan.A.Scientist.
"For one, I am a clown too, and I know all the tricks in your book. Since this tophat is not yours, you cannot have tampered with it and hence, cannot produce a white rabbit out of it. And for the second, if you did, I could probably explain why and it is not "magic" as a consequence."
"Then," said Satan.A.Scientist, "You believe two things. One, that I cannot. Not out of this hat any way. And second, if I were to pull one out, you would still not be convinced of "magic" despite the fact that you yourself just said that there is no possible way I could have tampered with this hat and thus, no possible way that this can be a trick."
"Well," answered God, "That's because I know that if you did, indeed, pull one out, you must have pulled a trick of some sort. I may have been ignorant to some your tricks."
"Ah! Precisely. You accept that you may be ignorant when it comes to full knowledge of some of my tricks, but not to to your ignorance of any elements of "magic" that might exist?"
"But I only believe that because you have explained some of your tricks to me before. Is it not your fault then, that you explain these tricks to me, and then, when I base my opinions on my knowledge of these tricks, you tell me that it is actually "magic"?"
"What, I ask of you, is the difference in "magic" and a "trick"?" asked Satan.A.Scientist."Don't they both share the faculty of wonder? If you can explain the white rabbit, does it make the trick any less skillfull, any less wondrous? Why would you need ambiguity to believe in "magic"?"
"I think, my friend," God said, tapping his finger on the rim of his wineglass, "That you spoil the scenario for yourself. If only you hadn't told me about all your tricks, you may just have been more believable."
Satan.A.Scientist smiled and asked God if he remembered who went first everytime the two of them performed.
"Ofcourse. I always go first because I am always better prepared."

"Yes, and after the audience has seen your flawless act, they start to believe that the juggler will not drop his balls. So when I come onstage next, I don't have to be as good as you. They already believe. You made them believe. It's your fault that that I am as applauded as you despite more time that you put in. They believe in the tricks you've taught them. And my tricks, though not as polished and planned as yours, are just as popular as yours. Even if I were to drop the balls, I would get away more easily with that faux paus and that is also why you make sure I go second. If they stopped believing in me, they will not lose belief in juggling as a whole because they've already seen you.You are the first act, and you teach them to believe. So if you messed up, they would cease to believe, not just in you, but in me too. You are the reason I live. You save both our asses."

The bartender, who had been quietly(and secretly) listening to this exchange, straightened his tophat and turning back to the row of shining glasses, murmured to himself:
"But the problem with parasitic relationships, is that one of the two eventually dies."

Mornings

I spin little webs of time on my hands, and watch the creases mingle with the thread. Miniature sundials drawing themselves on young wrinkles telling stories of adolescence. The sun dawns every day, climbing up a steep hill, and sits on its haunches puffing on a cigar. The smoke spills like almost-boiling milk, over swollen patches of insomnia, and I struggle to wake up. But how do I wake up when I’m already awake?

Fyodor Dostoevsky awaits me.
He silently watches me from his indignant perch on the desk, daring me to pick him up. I stand up, untangling myself from the paper planes that I make of my sheets, and return its bold, one-eyed stare.
Not today, love, not today.
The existentialist rebels in short spurts.
I turn away and I can hear the buzz of noise. It whips around the book in an angry vortex of sprawling gnats, who've laid their eggs in my head. I swipe the air with my hand, brushing away the noise, and immediately, all is silent.

I am following the mechanics of a pre-programmed mind. The only consolation is that I was the programmer. Once Upon a Time.

I need a smudge of red earth from the soles of the Kathak dancer, and a small cup of water from the fisherman’s well of ocean secrets.
I need the gypsies from a once-forgotten desert, to build their sand castles on my legs, to bury me in sand and perform their pagan rites around the fire in my eyes.

I need a messiah.

Indifference

Why do I have this burning desire to prove something? My audience is myself. The world does not matter. To me, I matter. And I too, will die tricking myself. The scientist, the theologian, the peasant, the king, everybody. We all die with our illusions.

Only the man who is indifferent, knows better.

But indifference, they tell me, is a dead man walking. How different, I then ask, are death and life? Both are dreams. We move from one dream to another.

Let me have my dreams. And let me live them. No questions asked.

Little Demons

I am beginning to think that there are only so many ideas in the world. I was talking to a friend today, and we were both experiencing the same state of mind. After you spend some time with questions of God, existence, reincarnation, religion, faith, evolution, socialism, democracy and all the –isms and –schisms that ramble along the rails of language, you start to realize that there are only a handful of truths and non-truths in this world and history is simply a textbook rearranging them under various “factual” skeletons.
It makes me think of walls and large boulders blocking roads. I have reached moments while thinking about an idea, where after running through a tangle of barbed thoughts, thoughts shouting, whispering, tugging, pushing and glaring at each other, I am cornered at the same spot from where I unleashed these demons. Everything works in circles. From the autocracies of feudalists, you came to the blaring ideals of the democrats, and return( for a short while) to a collective autocracy(socialism), redouble, stop at the love child of democracy and self-imposed freewill(capitalism), and after passing the signpost of the Great Depression, come to the understanding that maps are made to be modified—so let’s all jump consistently between as many roads as we possibly can. The Red banner(the “other” God) held that each revolution brings a new set of ideals, changing the course of history. Ahem. I respectfully beg to differ.
The “ultimate” communist society would be an extended version of small “communist” societies that have existed since the days of stone and sparks. They call it “communism”, and the entire world, blindly lashes out against the word as if they’ve pressed their fingers on a pulsating vein. But “communism” with its focus on collective means to lead to first collective, then individual benefits, was very much present in the mind of the man of the Stone Age, when he worked with other men and animals to find food.It sat in its armchair, silent and sedate, but wise.
We are told that the need to grow food led to the establishment of societies, but I would think it was the exact opposite, if anything. “Society”, with its emphasis on the interaction of a species within itself to structure a way of life, lives from Day One. If we go by evolution, the dinosaurs were the first Marxian equivalents. With the exception of my Nietzchean friend, Tyranosaurus Rex, they lived together and moved about in herds to help each other in their survival. I do not, of course, mean ballroom dancing and courtrooms as the defining features of their society but simply the presence of an interactive structure in their way of life.
If we go by the Adam-n-Eve scenario, their society was in each other for the two of them. But it was, undoubtedly there. All history records, is a growth in the number of social interactors in the species we call “Man”. Species interact with other species and have interacted for as far back as the evolutionists/theologians/politicians/random observers want to take us. And we interact with an ultimate aim to benefit our own selves. Our social structures through time, are based on very selfish motives. Though communism may take pride in establishing a structure where everybody works for everybody, if translated, it means, everybody working for everybody to save their own selfish selves. Man is not an individual. He is the rearrangement and realignment of the same ideas and the same thoughts that every other man in his species and his time embodies. It is precisely because he knows that he is not an individual, that he is selfish. And dangerously so. He will die protecting his claim to this sham. Because the day he comes to terms with his own knowledge of his lack of individuality, he dies anyway. One has to die to be reborn.

Similarly, God. The same religions, the same ideas. One God, no God, multiple Gods, Female Gods. Something like Writer’s Block obstructs me from thinking of “God” outside of atheism and theism and pantheism and agnosticism and all the other “isms”. Either we’ve thought of every kind of God already, or we’ve been thinking about the same “God” in circles that sometimes overlap. Every man on Earth is essentially an agnostic. We give definitions to God and then believe or non-believe in him based on those definitions. We spin our own webs. We need a bird that knows its way through these cerebral webs. We need a divine bird. One that kisses the web as it shreds it apart.

Nietzche said it right. We need new Gods.
And words are starting to strangle me. I need a new language.

Absurdist Theatre

Aaina mujh se meri pehli si soorat maangey.....

The Agnostic

I think I'm beginning to get some grasp at what "love for God", truly is.

Little Pieces of Light and Memory

Something faint and slightly spicy,
like specks of fire-hot chilli powder
burns brightly.

In the world of magic,
of smoke and oil-lamps,
Of burning coal on the skillet of a naan-waala,
the heat is felt.

His fingers, they come back
making love to the smoke and ash,
then reaching up to touch my eyes my lashes my lips.
Leaving a trail of red-hot chilli powder.
I taste it. And some of that taste
Lingers.

And comes back.
On nights like these, when
the only smoke I call my own
is from a trembling candle by the snow,
You push my fingers into the flame
And I burn.

The Subway

Lives like a trapped grain at one moment in the hourglass/The world a rushing, rolling smudge/Reds, yellows, blues, greens and browns: streaking past each other, pushing and straining, pulsating, wild./Clotted thoughts of children waiting at home, electricity bills, job interviews, snowed-in driveways, repayment of bank loans, house mortgage, leaking car exhausts, sending money to sick fathers, brand-new peacoats for school/Deep, red resentment rests just below the surface, hovering lightly, like the smell of blood before the shark closes in/ A melted kaledioscope of time, oozes around a box full of people/Thoughts stand still, bobbing like a raft on water/Time spirals down and down and down/Lives in a blackhole, still against the breaking and falling of the stars, still against magnificient movement/ Some screaming out/ Others already dead/Catch me and save me while you still can.

She sits on a corner seat, staring out the window. She is pressed against a man in a tan leather coat. People around her huddle together in the dirty warmth, mingling with patches of melted snow on the greasy, metal floor, and the heady air of cheap perfume. The cold is on the outside, but it crystallizes inside. It changes into a dull metallic smell, into the dead harshness of white light, into soiled skin and sweaty thoughts. Some hold onto bars for support, bracing themselves against the sudden motion of the subway, others grind their feet onto the floor. There is mostly little to be said. Something happens when, in the face of incredible movement outside, the inside is still. Little is said. For everything that is said, seems glaringly conspicuous. Sometimes, even a little out of place. It is as if, any story that may come from you, is superficial and a little empty.
It is as if everybody is set upon proving that this stillness is only temporary, that it is only a means to move from one point to another, from one moving life to another moving life. It is as if, everybody is strangely ashamed of being still and useless. So no one speaks.
She watches how they all avoid looking at each other. We do not butt into any one's lives. She once wanted that, the lack of interference. She still does. But there is something a little surreal about being perfectly still in little box moving at a magnificient speed, with the world a smudge around you, and people caught in the exact same stillness-in-speed, and choosing to remain isolated. It scares her. There is no comfort to be derived from bodies anymore, from lives.

Trains have been replaced by subways. You look out the window to see shades of grey erasing and restating themselves. Rearranging. Realligning. There is nothing new to light a match in the mind. Lives estrange themselves from other lives, we live for ourselves. The patterns start to repeat themselves when the same threads weave in and out of themselves. There is only so much to be said about grey. Or about one life. We need new Gods. And new stories.

Fear

There are moments when she is terrified she cannot write anymore. She sits up in bed, waking from seconds of static, daylight dreams, shaking.
Some people live for what they have to say. Not to those around them, but to themselves. Some of the best conversations I've ever had, have been with myself.

My State of Mind

After three straight hours, of prolonged discussion on God, Islam, Christianity, Judaism, America, Canada, Pakistan, Musharaff, and what-not, my mind had been whipped and thrashed with thought. I realized though, that anyone who thinks independantly, who actually uses their mind, who sincerely yearns for the truth, and struggles to get to it, comes to the same place. There are many paths and they all lead to the same truth.

And this, is mine.(for now)


"I will tell you regarding myself that I am a child of the age, a child of nonbelief and doubt uptill now and even until my coffin closes. What terrible torments this thrist to believe has cost me and still costs me, becoming stronger in my soul, the more there is in me of contrary reasonings. And yet sometimes God sends me moments in which I am utterly at peace."

--Fyodor Dostoevsky

Better to let those say it, who have said it best.

15 Ways to get Rid of Two Infamous Turtles

1. Donate the turtles to a local school
2. Get your mom to leave them at the front door of her workplace
3. Slit their throats and dump them in the trash can
4. Leave them at the edge of a pond and let them swim away
5. Dig a hole in the snow and bury them
6. Give them to the trash collector
7. Make a turtle sandwich and eat it
8. Sell turtle meat to the local deli
9. Light a bonfire using turtles as fuel outside in the snow
10. Make turtle omelettes
11. Put them in your mean neighbour's garage
12. Force your best friend to take them because he owes you a favour
13. Start talking to them to try and convince them to leave
14. Give them to a veterinarian
15. Muffle them with a pillow


Note: All these are quoted from a car conversation between me, my aunt, my uncle, their four year old daughter and their eight year old son(Who aspires to own a pet shop some day--dont ask). The turtles in question were two cushion sized turtles, taken from a family who couldn't keep them anymore. It was thought that these turtles would be smaller and more manageable. Turns out they are your basic versions of "Godzilla" gone wrong. So we sat in the car, trying to decide how to get rid of them.....(Looking back, the whole situation struck me with its high comic appeal and made the blog)
:)

Stuck between Sleep and Wakefulness

I slept early in anticipation of waking early in the morning.Turns out the tactic worked. Too well, actually.I did wake up early. Only it was a bit too early. Instead of 8am, I got up at 1:30am. So here I am, in the glowey light of my lamp, both of us smudged against the dark, wondering what to make of life. Perhaps this is how it feels when you get caught between two dimensions. A time warp. Its still so dark outside. I know, its supposed to be dark, but when one wakes up, one expects that no matter how dark it may be outside, it would still be lighter than the dark inside your room. I suppose that stands correct for when one wakes up at a decent hour. People like us, sleep evades us. We stand guilty for all of those "indecent" hours. There is much too much to think. Too many thoughts, twisting, and swirling and whirling their way into my insides. It isn't just the mind. These thoughts dance around the fire in my mind, until its hot enough to burn its way into the rest of me. So I sit here, on my bed, softly smouldering.
And when it isn't the thoughts, then its just the kind of animal that I am. This species(mine, and not mankind in large, happy quantities), I've come to believe, does not sleep. Sitting in the sublimity of a moment, caught in the silence of the sky, too scared to speak. Sleep scares me sometimes. I'm afraid I may never wake up. And it isn't the death that scares me. Its the absolute oblivion to death that does. I want death to be a storm. Announced and trumpetted. And afterwards, I want to be forgotten. I do not want renditions of what or who I was. I do not want to live other people's versions of my life after death. When we die, we die. For those who love me, know that when I die, I am gone. Everything that is mine, my words, my music, my thoughts, they leave with me. After that, the memories you have are yours. What people say about me is theirs. I hope that you can spot the difference. I do not exist after my death. And thank goodness for that.
I'm beginning to see the surreality in this: writing about death in the middle of the night, stuck between wakefulness and the desire for oblivion. What is sleep, anyway? Relegion gives an elaborate explanation of how souls are lifted when we sleep and returned to us when we awaken. If I believed in a soul, I'd be angry at this rude violation of my privacy. My soul is mine. When I sleep, I do not give anybody license to pull me from me. If my soul existed, I'd hate to know that it's snatched away from me every night(while I sleep, no less), and put up somewhere with "other" souls(and I have no real desire to meet these "other" souls, I assure you), and then when its done being brainwashed and half-hypnotized, sent back to me. I think I'd much rather be left alone with my non-existing "soul". A strictly "don't-touch" policy.
For me, sleep is oblivion. A quick dose of hard core escapism. I never dream. My hours of oblivion are dreamless and snug. Somebody once said, "Ignorance is bliss". For species like myself, I'd contend that. I would however, change it to: "Oblivion is bliss." Knowing, and yet, not knowing. But then, I wouldn't want that bliss for too long. That's just crack. Or alcohol. Neither of which I appreciate too much.
I overslept 7 classes in a row for my European Intellectual History class. The guy still gave me an A+. I'm slightly miffed. So with regard to my criminal history of oversleeping, I asked my roommate and other friends down the hall to give me a wake up call in time for my plane to Canada. They all left yesterday, and are in various parts of America. In another 5 hours, I'll be getting a lot of phone calls. They tell me I'm a demon in the morning. I tell them never to take anything I say when they wake me up seriously because that's my "other" self speaking. A very mean, very rude, very scary "other" self. I hate being awoken. (To say the least).
I'm wondering at what I'm writing. Usually, what I post here is not this candid. I don't like posting candid, personal stuff for everybody on the entire freaking web to read. But I guess waking up at a weird hour, with fog in the mind, drunk on Orange juice, and Damien Rice on a cold windowsill, unleashes something. Not quite sure what. I don't know which one of "me" is real. But I'm beginning to understand that "real" doesn't matter. I am the measure of all things. I'll make what is "Real" real. And that is how we, on earth, differentiate from one man to the other. In the things that each of us chooses to make "real" for ourselves.

It seems that John Denver's "Leaving on a Jet Plane" is the story of my life. In more ways than one.
"
All my bags are packed,
I'm ready to go
I'm standin' here outside your door
I hate to wake you up to say goodbye
But the dawn is breakin', it's early morn
The taxi's waitin', he's blowin' his horn
Already I'm so lonesome I could die
So kiss me and smile for me
Tell me that you'll wait for me
Hold me like you'll never let me go
'Cause I'm leaving on a jet plane
I don't know when I'll be back again......."

Disclaimer: There is a difference in eternal alone-ness and living the moment and being happy. They can subsist. I live them both.

The Origin of Passion

I sometimes wonder how one can sleep while the sky is shifting. In the past couple of days, I've slept to wake up to a thick, white world, muffled in snow. Silence, dragging footsteps, squares of bootmarks, little puffs of steam from ice-burnt faces, curled feathers of snow still hanging in the air, frozen tree trunks, shivering squirrels....it is as if everything changed in the course of a few hours. The sky shifted. And the world beneath the sky, bowed its head and followed.
It amazes me how I sleep through what can only be called half-a-miracle. (Not a complete miracle since science, with an air of scorn, pointed out that snow is a "natural phenomena"). It makes me think that there is so much that I never think of until it faces me in its soft, white, tangible form. One must live the process. After its fallen, its magnificence provides hints to the passion whithin its seemingly controlled power on the world. To live the process, would have been to live that passion. To experience it when it was first born, brimming on the edge of complete combustion, like the eye of a storm when it is created in the womb of the sea, is to find the music of the Origin. It doesn't matter whose origin. Any beginning, in a series of "middles" that form our lives, is precious.
When it's all over, there is only to see. Little to believe. We need the process to believe. The Origin of power. Passion. Miracles do not come from Gods. We make them.

The Vitruvian Man (A study of a man and a woman: Section 3)

There is something about the way that he watches.
There is something about the way that she moves.

There are ways to look at her, and of all of them, he chooses this one. She is taken by surprise. But she catches herself in time. She does not look back.

Instead, she watches Leonardo Da Vinci’s “The Vitruvian Man”, which hangs on a wall in front of her. She thinks men are like women. Just sculpted differently. God might as well be a woman. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that it is still God.
…What matters is that he is still watching her.
Time jumps to its death.

"Sitting amidst pieces of her eyes, and her nose, and her ears, and her hands, and her legs: Bits of her"