nightlife

Wake up with a cold sweat from the agitated slumber which replaces the long, peaceful hours of sleep of the old days. Creep up to each of three bedsides and pierce the darkness with burning eyes to be certain that every breath that is inhaled is exhaled, mumbling a word of gratitude for that. Climb up to the roof and spread out on the hard, heat-radiating terrace. Stare into the dusty skies, caught between thoughts and notions, hopes and memories, all innately contradictory, all demanding big leaps of faith. Sob, as men do in solitude, and wait for the call to prayer to sound above the lifeless. For then, as the world awakens, sleep overwhelms all consciousness of it. Telle est la vie dans l'obscurité.

deathly still

kucch hameen ko nahi ehsaan utthaney ka demagh
woh toh jab aatey hain ma'yel ba karam aatey hain
aur kucch der na guzrey shab-e-furqat se kaho
dil bhee kam dukhta hai, woh yaad bhee kam aatey hain

- faiz

fiat justitia ruat caelum

As much as I disdain to soil my blog with an opinion piece on temporal matters, the times are such that even the most phlegmatic of bystanders goes like ‘what the hell is going on?’ It has been well over a year that the proverbial shit hit the proverbial fan, even though there is nothing proverbial about the ever-increasing stench, and the dark stains of humiliation upon the nation’s face. On the 9th of March, 2007, a dictator, drunk on eight years of unchecked power, and deluded by some notion of his personal indispensability to Pakistan, threw a gauntlet that has since become a massive, nationwide struggle, underscoring disgrace and defeat for some, individual glory and public accolades for others, and a noble contest between right and wrong, justice and injustice, for yet many more. However, as of today, what remains at stake? The restoration of some 60-odd judges of the superior judiciary who were gallant enough to resist the dictators’ PCO and bore the vagaries of the state’s heavy-handedness, all starting from the Chief Justice’s resounding ‘No’ sending shockwaves throughout the country, the first time the commando ordered him to get packing. The questions that have been plaguing my mind, however, are at a bit of a tangent from the larger issue. I do not intend to doubt the rightfulness of the cause for restoration. True to my lethargic self, all I am trying to figure out is whether this entire ruckus is worth all the attention it gets or all the energy that has been expended thus far.

An independent, not free, judiciary, as an institution, is generally seen as the cornerstone of a fair and a just society. The idea of an independent judiciary springs from the theory of separation of powers articulated initially by Baron de Montesquieu in the early eighteenth century, and is said to be successfully implemented in the constitution of the United States, and is also thought to be effectively practiced in the United Kingdom and in other developed countries of the West. This theory attempts to bring about a balance of power between the three pillars of state, the legislative, executive and judicial, such that a check is maintained on the power of one by the collective and simultaneous powers of the other two, ensuring that neither branch has freedom enough to infringe beyond what is sanctioned by law on the rights and freedoms of its citizens. In this we see the raw skeleton of a social contract the likes of which every third world country in the postcolonial era is expected to emulate along with some form of democratic government, presidential, parliamentary etc. This emulation is necessary for survival in the new world order as much foreign aid and international acceptance depends on it. In this blind emulation of these systems that seem to be working quite well in the First World, both the exporters and the importers of such political philosophies forget that for such types of organized and institution-oriented governments and states to succeed, there needs to be a strong socio-economic base, and not vice versa. Domestic stability is the key. Let us examine the stellar examples we have. The United States gained that stability by an extremely vicious process of internal colonialism, that was irreversible, gradually eliminating an entire people, and by its policies of politico-economic imperialism in recent times. The United Kingdom achieved domestic stability through the 400 year long era of colonialism, in which the British Empire was built on the blood and corpses of peoples from the Americas to Australia. In the postcolonial stage, it maintains that stability by being the foremost client of the world’s strongest power, and everything looks to be hunky-dory for sometime to come. Unfortunately, third world countries, newly released from the shackles of colonialism, have no opportunities for similar glory, and are caught in the dilemma of building institutions on the Western pattern, without the requisite objective conditions. Just looking at ourselves, in a polity so fragmented, divided in a million ways, having multiple identities within one state, how is the simple concept of ‘majority rule’ supposed to work? On the other hand, the assumption on the part of the West that since they succeeded with a certain model of governance, it has to work in the rest of the world too is arrogant to say the least. Does the US forget its own bloody civil war over the question of ‘states rights’, which is now cleverly disguised as a righteous struggle against an evil as uncouth as slavery? Or was it that slavery did not pose as big a moral question, as it did an economic and political one. Be that as it may, like they say in Punjabi, ‘jeday ghar daaney, oday kamley vi siyaney’. The situation that countries like Pakistan face is rife with institutional failures. Pakistan, specifically, is currently experiencing one of the worst times of its history.

Our history as a nation-state is short and, therefore, easy to take a bird’s eye view of. In this short history, the history of the judiciary as an institution is way less than glorious. It has been the most honorable judges of the highest courts in the country that have provided judicial cover all sorts of upheavals, military, bureaucratic, democratic, beginning from the first articulation of the ‘doctrine of necessity’ by Justice Munir in 1953. The judiciary has been up for grabs for various players in the power game, facilitating, or shall I say, taking wholehearted part in such acts as the judicial murder of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, or the recognition of martial coups through eclectic interpretations of the various constitutions we have had. This is not surprising to me at least. Was it not out of the Quran that the tyrannies of sultans and shehnshahs justified by over-zealous qazis and mullahs? Was it not that after having raped and pillaged entire populations, proud Muslim generals stood tall and quoted from the Quran, saying ‘And He disgraces those that He desires!’ In this context, the misinterpretation of a man-made constitution sounds almost trivial. Needless to say then that the judiciary, when compelled to choose between justice and political expediency, has often opted for the latter; it has shirked its responsibilities. And this has been primarily because judges have owed their high offices to generals and politicians, and have done exactly what they were supposed to do in a system of never-ending favors and a vicious cycle of ‘you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.’ Most of the 60 judges in question accepted Musharraf’s coup of 1999 by taking oath under the 2001 PCO. Senior Supreme Court judges were superseded for the appointment of Mr. Iftikhar Chaudary as the Chief Justice by none other than Musharraf himself. Is it possible that at that time, a campaigner as weathered as Mr. Chaudary did not realize that there could be strings attached? That the favor that had been bestowed upon him would never be called? Did he actually think that being handpicked by a dictator for such an important post would allow him to function independently, and that all he needed to do was get there via the dictator’s favor, and that the end would justify the means? And when he started showing some signs of independence by striking down prime projects of the regime, did he not expect his benefactor to feel wronged, and do what dictators do best: summary execution? In my opinion, the events of the 9th of March were careerism gone wrong for the CJ. If Mr. Chaudary was concerned about justice and fairplay, he would not have postured and lobbied to get the highest judicial post in the country through the good offices of the President-General in the first place.

This brings me to the next, bigger question. Are these judges, for whose reinstatement such a movement is in action, wedded to the ideals of justice and upholding the law and the constitution, or are they, like the average professional that we see around us, and ourselves are, believe in doing the 9 to 5 routine and heading back home to enjoy all the perks that come with their positions? The cars, the mansions, the butlers etc? For if they are just time-servers like the rest of us, and only come to work a day at the office, i.e. if that is their psychology, the only difference between them and the judges that have taken the oath under November’s PCO is that of names. For if these latter ones are beholden to Musharraf, the former ones, if reinstated, will owe a debt of gratitude to one Mr. Nawaz Sharif. And anyone who was alive in the late 80’s and the 90’s in Pakistan knows that that cannot really be a good thing. Nawaz Sharif is being hailed all around for taking a principled stand on everything, from the judiciary to democracy, which is one factor that has given his party unanticipated electoral success in urban Punjab earlier in the year. I personally know people who flew all the way from Karachi to their hometowns in the Punjab to vote for Mian Sb. Notwithstanding the question as to whether he really is firm on principles this time around, or is just finding it politically beneficial to go with the general mood of the people for the time being, Nawaz Sharif and his cronies are children of the establishment, through and through. In fact, they’re children of the worst military regime in Pakistan’s history, that of the humble Momin, Zia-ul-Haq. They are people who came into the political mainstream on the backs of military intelligence and ISI, and continue to truly represent only a certain segment of Pakistani society, the industrial-business elite, insofar as their party structure is concerned. Nawaz Sharif himself is beset with an upstart industrialist mentality which dictates gauging every action in the narrow prism of profit and loss. Is his commitment to democracy and an independent judiciary only a part of his personal vendetta against Musharraf for overthrowing his government? Will his resolve to work towards institution building only remain strong till the time the General’s ousted? These are questions only time will answer because his history does not support any such hopes. I have to hand it to the Pakistani public though. Even after all the disappointments of the past, their faces had this strange gleam of hope on the morning of the 19th of February. It made a cynic like me wonder if such undying optimism ought to be celebrated or lamented. What I do lament, however, is our collective short memory, and inability to learn from experience.

Our civil society, which is just a more ‘civil’ term for the upper and upper-middle classes, seems to have decided that capitalistic democracy is the panacea for all our ills. However, this strata of society, which includes myself, seems to be more confused than anything else. A friend of mine, a successful corporate banker, and quite active in the movement for the restoration of judges as a part of the Direct Action Committee, attending rallies, shouting slogans, distributing propaganda material, praised the principled stand of the judges and of Mian Sb’s party in their fight against the dictator. Five minutes later, he spewed some pearls of wisdom on corporate success, saying that the first principle of survival in this world is, and I quote, ‘to screw the other before he gets a chance to screw u’. And the first thing that came to my mind was, isn’t that what Musharraf tried to do? Anyway, it’s been more than a month since that happened and I’m still pondering on the apparent dichotomy of principles, and how it plagues our class and my generation. In this respect, though, the media has had a very significant role to play. Like the clergy of medieval Europe, it is the fourth pillar of the state today. I draw such a comparison because the potential for demagoguery appears equally enormous in both cases. In Musharraf’s economic boom, besides banking and telecom, media is the only industry that has proliferated. And now, as is natural, it does not know what it ought to do with itself, since quantity has effectively inundated quality. So, in between the Indian style soaps to pander to the tastes of the wider market, rather than restricting itself to keeping the public informed of facts so that it could draw its own conclusions from them, it has taken to opinion-forming. There is a ‘breaking news’ and every channel has a different story as to the actual happening. Old-timers sit together in talk shows and analysis programs and tell the public exactly what they ought to be thinking. And that’s what the public is doing. Everybody believes in the righteousness of the lawyers’ movement because some droning journalist on TV said so. Nobody seems to be thinking out loud on national TV that if these judges are restored would the lawyers, and especially the frontline leaders in the lawyer community, never try to capitalize on their blood and sweat? Will that not leave the superior judiciary in the same sort of fix that it always has been in? Earlier it used to do the bidding of generals and bureaucrats. Now, it will owe a lot to bar councils and senior lawyers, and you never know what new direction that may lead us into. Everybody believes in the sacrosanct nature of the freedom of speech, not realizing that that also gives a natural edge to the one who can shout the loudest.

Finally, let me bring forth what little I know of the justice system in Pakistan. I will restrict myself to the rural areas since I have little knowledge of how stuff gets done in the cities. This in itself is saying a lot since 70% of Pakistan is still supposed to be rural. To the rural poor, the first adjudicator, or dare I say, the scribe of their destinies, is the Thana incharge. Whatever he writes in his FIR is the basis of all litigation afterwards. Therefore, this man wields tremendous power, and consequently, enjoys tremendous opportunity for making money. This is where the poor soul who got himself involved in such a messy business as seeking justice is bled for the first time. If he gets lucky, he’ll only get away with paying a few thousand bucks in bribes. Else, if the SHO likes his daughter, he might have to offer her up to make sure that the cattle that are his livelihood are returned safely from the robbers who took them. Also, if he is on bad terms with a local influential who is on good terms with the police, or the offending party, he might end up getting charged for a crime himself and might find himself tasting the hospitality of a rural interrogation office. There are a million possible combinations wherein a poor man seeking justice may have to sacrifice his belongings, dignity or honor and I could possibly not list them all. Let’s just say, to get the process moving effectively, u need to have money, contacts, guile and zero self-respect. From here, the process moves into the courts. Here the baser things are truly not en vogue, since judges are educated, refined types, and only work for money, or the right person calling them up. This is where property disputes can take more than a decade to sort out, and where murderers and rapists are let free based on how well they are connected. Although, it must be granted that the level of corruption decreases as you move up from the district courts to the provincial high courts and then on to the supreme court, isn’t the corruption at the lower end, the end closest to the civilian, the deadliest? Because it is here that lives are made or broken. A poor man, whose son’s murderer is acquitted in a district court, may not have the resources or the will or the physical strength to take the case to a higher court. He may just do what people in our parts have been doing for centuries: leave it to God’s ultimate judgment. All the 60 honorable judges have passed through this very system. I do not attempt to associate any sort of corruption or malpractice with them and I am very sure that they are all men of great integrity and moral fortitude. But all of them have passed through this system. All of them know what goes on in the peripheries and at the lower levels. In this entire 14-month struggle, has there been a single cry for reform? For actually taking any steps towards changing a system in which justice is bought and sold like a common whore? Will this system where the SHO of a thana somewhere in some long-forgotten tehsil of a district in the middle of nowhere earns at par with any corporate fatcat, profiting on the misery of the poor, be allowed to persist after everything is ‘set right’? Has any leading lawyer raised a voice of protest against this system in his speeches on freeing this country from the clutches of dictatorship? Or do they assume that with Musharraf gone, everything will correct itself from top to bottom? I am very sorry but people assumed the same about Ayub and Yahya and Zia, and nothing happened. And it is actually sad to say that it feels to me as if this entire struggle has become a battle of egos centered around the basic notion: ‘give them their jobs back’ and ‘I want my job back!’ Hell, at the risk of sounding repetitive, if you’re only going to do what you did before you were kicked out, and what the PCO judges are doing now, might as well stay out. Most I can do is condole with you over loss of perk and privilege. For I feel that we have had enough of a top-down approach in this country. It’s time that we started bottom-up, towards a system in which everyone matters, where justice is just blind, not deaf. Laws that are not uniformly applied at every level of society encompassing the entire body politic of the nation are not worth the paper they’re written on. And all well-suited gentleman who like to fancy themselves the custodians of law and its actual spirit, should also have the courage to fully understand what is truly engendered in such grand titles, and that it actually means a lot of responsibility to each and every citizen of a country in much need of justice, not just posturing to effect a favorable balance of power at the top. And suffice it to say that the top, from the perspective of the people, is way out of reach. Everyone in this country aspiring to do great things at the top, the politicians, the lawyers, the generals, the media, all of them have had their fair share of trying to win the hearts and minds of people. And even when the people have demonstrated vigorous willingness to be won over, they have been let down. Now would be the perfect time for a revolution of hearts and minds, a complete change in mindsets and attitudes, and in deference to an old national habit, it would be much better if that transpires top down.

To keep on repeating ‘how dare a dictator do that?’ is like oversimplifying the issue because then one would have to make an honest inquiry into why the dictator is there in the first place, and soon enough, not much of our ‘civil’ society or the civilized world, will be able to avoid blame. Remove the dictator by all means, but also make sure that the restoration of the judiciary does not simply equate to professional reinstatement. For I feel that justice, rather than any institution that claims to administer it, is the solid base upon which the edifice of state and society ought to be erected. But it will continue to remain an illusory ideal till we can effect a change in mentalities. I believe that that is what our brightest minds should be working on. The nation has had enough of protracted wars of wits and egos, even if the realization of that has not yet dawned fully.

from on high

Snakes, bright and glittering, slithering along, atom by atom, side by side, on intersecting pathways of light, straight and unending, through a jungle of an unearthly aura, alive, breathing, lost in its own consciousness, forbidding to any callous adventurer. A dense jungle; every leaf, a vibrant sign of life, a sparkling dot of color, a thousand different colors intermixed, stretched out till where the eye can see, shaming the stars in their monochromatic night sky. Is this my Garden of Eden?

The Day Before, Act I

He woke early, feet cold as ice on an otherwise temperate spring morning. He had a crick in the nick and a dull ache in the back; the bunk’s nocturnal hospitality. Why was he still there? When he ought to be someplace else? Yelling, screaming or kicking up a fuss was not his method, even if he willed it to be. Patience, a thankless virtue, remained the only logical course of action.

Why had they caged him so? Such that what he had tasted in the days before, he could not savor again, on that day; nor could he nurture thoughts of a distant refuge, faraway but within reach. As his head slowly recovered from the drowsy effects of an unsatisfactory night, a struggle between needs and wants gripped him, the former hard realities, the latter cherished dreams. But where needs and wants clashed invariably amongst themselves, so did wants against desire, and needs against necessity. What was a man, already thus constrained, to do?

Word came from every direction, as if upon angel wings, clearing his immediate path if not allaying the turmoil inside. He hastened himself through the motions of presentability, and rushed out to grapple with the forces of destiny one more time. Life whizzed past him in its raging monotony and he cared not to notice; nor did he think much of the patches of shadowy darkness that peppered his brightly lit way.

The dilemmas of the early hours still plagued him, making him breathe uneasily. As he approached that which he desired, the ubiquitous need to distinguish between right and wrong asserted itself. Amidst the chaos, a voice spoke into his ear. Deliverance was around the corner. An ephemeral flash of color beyond the first, almost ineffectual, barrier released him from the stranglehold of uncertainties. With the first gasp for air, all the warring wants and needs fused instantly into a single amalgam, focused and unerring in their singular intention. He allowed himself a smile knowing that when he turned around, peace, albeit momentary, had come forth to permeate his being.

to the Savior

chaudvan Mustapha Aal-e-Imran da

thheevo Ka’abe te aa jalwagar hay
aye qudrat-numa muntazar hay

aye Mohammad makeen waadi Khazra
chhoro waadi te aa kholo dar hay
dekhoon wasda Mohammad da ghar hay

aye zamanay da moojib baqa’a ay
tussan sa’yel nai khaali valaa’ey
jehray jehray keeta dar gadaa’ey
baab rahmat toon ho’ee attaa’ey
herr mohib dee eeho iltijaa’ey
fulk-e-asmat te hovay sahar hay
aye Shams-uz-Zuha’a, wal ubhar hay

aye Shahnshah ha mulk-e-villa da
aye nusairi de Rab da Shehzadah
aye muhafiz deen Khuda da
deen khaa gya'ey baani hus’bunna da
deen mohtaj tedi zi’ya da
sunr Panah Deen da aye pisar hay
tedi raah te Maseeh di nazar hay

chaudvan Mustapha…

- Ghulam Abbas Shah Bohriyen Wala, Shujatpur, 1975

six years

utth
dekh
keh woh khaak jo rangeen huyee
teray khoon se uss bhayanak lamhey
nahi rahi
bik gayee

aur woh mitti
keh jis ka rizq bana tera badan
saakit hai,
ik afsurdah khwahish liye
ik murdah khwab liye

aur goonj rahi hain falak-bos aahein,
khamoshi se
kayee pardon mein
teri yaad ka nauha kehtay

aur aansoo
jo keh khushk hain kayee barson se
beh parrey hain achanak
kayee sawal liye

per dekh,
ay bujhey huye dil,
teri raggon ka lahu
daur raha hai kis dhaj se
unn jismon mein,
aur wohi payrh
keh jiss ki chhaoon talley
teri jawani ko kaisa haseen urooj milla
jhukka diya hai ussi ko teri furqat ne
kerta hai wohi teri yaad ki rakhwali
keh khud jo muddat se kayee mausamon ki zad mein hai

khuda karey keh yeh saya sada salamat ho
luttey naseeb mein chalo itna toh manzoor rahey
aur kucch nahi chahiye hai qismet se
rahatein millein na millein
ammaan manzoor rahey

Alas! 2007

In trying to talk about the recent turn of events I am moved simply to confront my own insignificance, my helplessness. As I look in the mirror, my eyes mock me: 'kya piddi aur kya piddi ka shorbah?' I am compelled, and heart-wrenchingly so, to see the pointlessness of having a heart for this blood-soaked land of ours. And the only words that I can get past this stubborn, three-day old lump in my throat are:

kal bhee bhutto zindah thaa
aur aaj bhee bhutto zindah hai...

And even though I wonder if desensitising one's self is not prerequisite to survival in the current scheme of things, here is something that has moved me to tears for the nth time since the 27th:

http://www.thenews.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=11951

Bas!

disillusioned?!

Disillusionment, n., freedom from illusion.
Illusion, n., deceptive appearance, false conception, a false sense-impression of reality.

How is it that whenever there's talk of somebody being disillusioned, there are eyebrows raised, in concern, or in pity, or in sheer disdain? Hasn't shedding all that is false for all that is true always been mankind's stated objective? Or is this notion an illusion in itself? Who's to say?

Birthday '07

izzat-e-takht-e-khilafat kuja, sharaab kuja
hasool-e-sharf-e-nayabat kuja, ashab kuja
chara layeen na shavand ghasiban-e-haq-e-Batool
sawal-e-Zehra kuja, talkhiye jawab kuja

- Mir Usman Ali, Last Nizam of Hyderabad Deccan

listening, aphrodite?

when you were not nigh
all was such as it is
the limitless horizon, limitless
the unending road, unending
the empty goblet, empty

and now
the goblet, the road, the color of the sky
is the color of my heart before it bleeds to death

crystal, the color of sweet reunion
and the gray of a desolate moment;
the color of autumn leaves, of a thorny desert
and the flaming red of a rosery in bloom
the color of death
the color of blood
the color of a moonless night

the horizon, the road, the goblet
a story of a thousand tears
of throbbing pain;
a reflection in the mirror
treacherous, deviant, changing every instant

now
that you are come
stay
so that some color, some mood, something
gains permanence
and once again
everything is as it is
the limitless horizon, limitless
the unending road, unending
the empty goblet, empty

- A transliteration of Faiz Ahmed Faiz's 'Rung Hai Dil Ka Meray'

first principle

I
inebriated, repudiated, perforated
resembling that wretched rag-doll
the one the dog hated;
faded,
jaded,
infuriated
but perhaps, as time unfolds,
emancipated?

then again,
whose to say how,
or which way,
things are fated;
at the end,
will only the vow of silence stand consummated?

silence, so vocal, more than the maddening crowd,
silence, so opaque, more than a funeral shroud,
silence, so harsh, so loud,
commanding me,
compelling me,

I, so justly adjudicated,
I, so appreciably depreciated,

to break out, break free
of the bounds,
the suffocating confines,
of me,
myself
and I.

the conundrum

Lately, all my life has been is one big 'I don't wanna!' but with foolproof reasoning behind not wanting to do that which I am not doing. So, here's the deal. I don't want to hit the books for the civil services exam because they just seem so boring to me now. After all, haven't I attained some sort of Confuscian wisdom that really needs no more intellectual augmentation? I don't want to continue with my job at the bank because its too meaningless (as if I have a clue as to what 'meaning' means)! I don't want to socialise or even get out of the house because all humanity is evil (and i'm a reincarnation of the Lord Buddha, albeit a bit farther away from nirvana). I don't want to express my feelings lest they cause long-term hurt and acrimony all around(and there is sufficient precedent for me to be convinced of that). I don't want to let people close, to have them take a peek into my soul lest this pseudo-philosophical facade I have is compromised and I am unmasked for the shallow fool I undoubtedly am. I don't want to be nice to my folks because they haven't been nice to me, but through no fault of their own or mine. I don't want to be not nice with my folks because they're my folks after all. I don't want to believe in God because I have evolution all figured out. I don't want to believe in evolution because them looney scientists change theories faster than I change underwears. I don't want to embrace the world because it is wicked and oppressive. I don't want to embrace the weak and the oppressed because I don't even know where to find them. Do they really exist? I don't want friends because they're all just selfish bastards in the end. But then, I don't want to be alone because that plays with my head, trumps up my insecurities and those childhood complexes of being unclean and unworthy that are beginning to resurface after quite a few years of dormancy. I don't want to view everything in my life through the prism of my own selfish interest because that's just plain unethical. And then, when I am unethical, I don't want to blame myself because it is all about what one wants for one's self ultimately; survival, the most selfish of human instincts. I don't want to pray because what good are prayers that are never answered, what good is faith that does not fulfil its basic purpose, spiritual satisfaction for the believer? I don't want to forsake religion though because the individual is not even as significant as a speck in the greater scheme of things. What if there really is a Hand giving motion to the 'circles of the heavens and the earth'? I don't want to laugh lest they think I'm too expressive in joy. I don't want to cry lest they think I'm too expressive in pain. With all of this going on, should I really be surprised when I guffaw for no obvious reason staring at the walls, or break into tears just like that, or close the door to the bathroom and scream at the top of my lungs, or give my head small, abrupt jerks in the hope that that would return some sanity to it? Should I really be worried about me going crazy? Nonetheless, I am open to all sorts of suggestions for things I might want to do in this mortal existence. Although, it would only be ethical of me to state beforehand that only those ideas will be entertained that are backed up with reasonings as sound as the ones I have presented for my actions, or lack thereof.

Moses speaks

"Said (He), 'O my Nurturer!
Broaden me my heart
Ease my task for me
And loosen the knot of my tongue
So they may understand what I say'"

The Qura'an, Ta'ha: 25-28

Of flights and airports

In times long past there was a child who had known nothing but love, uncomplicated and pure, restricted to people who to him were the embodiment of all goodness. He was loved and he knew how to love back, because love in those days was easy. It could be found in chasing jumbo jets with his Grandpa, betting on what’ll happen first, the airplane landing or them reaching the airport. It could be found in a mysterious wall-cabinet which opened like the sesame to reveal treasures that only a child could appreciate. And the first glimpse of the exquisite bottle which held that burgundy-colored medicine his grandpa took every night and his utter confusion at the elaborate lengths the old man went into to explain that that medicine was only for grownups and that too to help with chest congestion. Such unconditional love lasted its course, changing in form as the child matured. In the final days, it included watching a sexy siren gyrate on screen while the old man took his daily medicine with the steam-machine on and the child listening to anecdotes that flowed more merrily with every sip; eighty-two years of a life lived like a king, like a fearless lion who liked to take life by the scruff of the neck and point it in the direction of choice, with no regrets and the quiet realization that it would all end in not too long. This love was immortal, even as those between whom it was felt were not.

Now, as that child has grown to what would have surely been a disgrace in his Grandfather’s eyes, the memories flood him often, mostly reducing him into a lump of helpless, sobbing mass. While making his way to the airport after many years roughly at the same time of the day as he had done with his Grandfather, he looks up again and again into the sky to try and see any signs of the plane. He wants to beat it to the airport again just like he had done in his foggy memories. Instead, all he gets is eyes foggy with tears. He stands at the airport terminal only to amuse by-standers with the most lost expression on his face, turning around again and again to see the stall from where his grandfather had gotten him crisps and juice many years ago. If only it were proper for a fully-bearded man to break down and cry like an infant. And again, he is reminded of how things have changed, irreversibly. Is his life not the perfect analogy for an airport terminal? People come and go, nobody stays. All relationships are viewed in terms of gains and losses, advantages and disadvantages, in the twisted kaleidoscope of this new age. Where is the love he had known? And without it, are his aching gasps for breath even worth the trouble?

Upon achieving success...

A great man: 'I came, I saw, I conquered'

A determined rat-racer: 'I saw, I came, I conquered'

A loser who gets lucky: 'I conquered, I saw, I came'

ishq-o-masti

jamal-e-ishq-o-masti nainawazi
jalal-e-ishq-o-masti be-niazi
kamal-e-ishq-o-masti zarf-e-Haider
zawal-e-ishq-o-masti harf-e-Ra'azi

- Iqbal

scriptural humor

"You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free." (John, 8:32)

Who in hell does He think He's kidding?

I dance...

nami danam keh aakhir choon dam-e-deedar mi raqsam
magar nazm ba een zoqey keh pesh-e-yaar mi raqsam

keh ishq-e-doost her sa’at duroon-e-naar mi raqsam
gahey ber khaak mi ghaltam, gahey ber khaar mi raqsam

beya jana tamasha kun keh der amboh-e-jaan bazaan
basad saman-e-ruswai sar-e-bazaar mi raqsam

khusha rindi keh pamalash kunam sad parsai ra
zahey taqwa keh mun ba jubba o dastar mi raqsam

tawan qatil keh az bahr-e-tamasha khoon-e-man rezi
manam bismil keh zer-e-khanjar-e-khoon-khwar mi raqsam

manam Usman-e-Marwandi o yaar-e-Sheikh-e-Mansoor-am
malamat mi kunad khalqey o man bar daar mi raqsam


- Sheikh Usman Marwandi (Lal Shahbaz Qalandar)


How is it that at mere sight I am enraptured?
But it is only proper; it is for love I dance

And it is love that in eternal hellfire I am ecstatic
In dust I bathe, on thorns I dance

O life, see me amidst hordes of your fearless lovers
Shouldering my shame before their eyes, I dance

Blessed insolence that I grind to dust a hundred virtues
For piety is when in clerical robes, I dance

Such display may cause my killer to lust for my blood
And meek under the thirsty blade, I dance

For I am Usman of Marwand, apostle of Mansoor the Wise
Creation chides and condemns, and on the gallows, I dance.

rebel cry

Ghalib hai rutba fehm o tasawwur se kucch parey
hai ijz-e-bandagi jo Ali ko khuda kahoon

- Ghalib

an ode to despair

What time is it?
How many hours till that hour
When I lie down, rest these aching legs and feet,
These weary, swollen, bleeding feet?

When I close my bloodshot eyes
Will it go away?
That feeling that I am roped
To three hundred and sixty thoroughbreds
Tall, sturdy, impatient thoroughbreds
Facing in three hundred and sixty directions
Each direction a degree apart from the next

The ropes are agonizingly taut
The animals rearing to go
What if they do
Will each take a piece of me with it?

When all I want to do
Is stay
In one piece
In one place
Silent, motionless, at peace.

the sanctuary

He enters. The silence is deafening. He wonders if this truly is a refuge from the screaming chaos that is outside, chaos that is bent upon breaking in. At least, he tells himself, he has learned some methods to deaden his wits against the relentless attacks of the uncertainty and the confusion that is outside. This hush, however, is pitiless. He looks around. In the bright light a few faces are visible like apparitions from a long-forgotten past, hardly recognizable, distant, uncommunicative. Its nothing like the bustle that used to be in this place not too long ago. All for the best, he mutters under his breath. How would they who are not even worth acknowledging understand the demons and how they plague him? Hell, has he even shut them out properly or have they followed him in? He stares blankly into the light hoping for a miracle to take form from within it. The hope makes him wait, foolishly, quietly, stubbornly. Faces pop in and out, more familiar faces, faces that he wants to touch so as to make his presence felt. But they are in a hurry like always. Cursory engagement and they are out. He is amazed at how they do not seem to need asylum from the outside like he does. Are they stronger than him? Or is it just his perception of things that is jaded? But now it is obvious that the vaccuum around him is widening; just more empty spaces for the demons to inhabit. The wait continues. Every passing moment is heavier than the last. The noise from the outside begins to breach the walls of his sanctuary. He realises that his time is up. Reluctantly, he gets up to leave. As darkness abruptly consumes the light he knows it will not be long before he is back. It is just the wait that he has given up, not the hope.

five years

wasl ki shab thee toh kis darja subak guzri thee
hijr ki shab hai toh kya sakht garaan thehri hai
ik dafa bikhri toh hath aayee hai kab mauj-e-shamim
dil se nikli hai toh kya lab pe fughan thehri hai?

- Faiz

istighasa

qibla-e-deen madadi, ka'aba-e-iman madadi
ya Hussein ibn-e-Ali, rooh-e-ghareeban madadi

sales pitch

Ladies and Gents. Tonight we bring you the ultimate offer in slumberous delight: Sleeping on your left side. At the mere cost of a dull ache in your left arm, you can avoid laying on your back all night. Breathing will be easier and your butt and back will get out of the feeling that they have turned to stone. What more, you'ld be able to curl up your legs whichever way you like. Now what's lying there straight as a plank compared to such nocturnal bliss? However, we do not guarantee against flow of phlegm towards the left. In that case, you might experience heightened pain in your left ear and tonsil. But isn't that a small price to pay for such luxurious comfort? And, ladies and gentlemen, those selling the right side are nothing but absolute bastards!

Birthday '06

Is it true solitude when in teeming multitudes of humankind, utterly silent, with a hush as grave as death upon them, walking down a road with no known destination, you are the only one who can hear yourself screaming? Then, is it any wonder that among the vast crowds, those few faces that could have soothed your troubled mind with a mere glint of recognition, unvoiced but real, remain as cold and expressionless as the rest?

muted rage

ghar mein tha kya keh tera gham jisse ghaarat karta
woh jo rakhte thhey ik hasrat-e-taameer, so hai...

- Ghalib

Of locks and keys...

taaleef e nuskha-haye wafa ker raha thaa mein
majmooa e khayal abhee fard fard thaa

- Ghalib

revelation? realisation?

You don't have what it takes. Admit it, a person with zero ambition, half-baked brains and limited horizons cannot for long delude himself with fake visions of greatness, of doing something worthwhile with his existence. Mediocrity is your lot in life but you refuse to see it. You who finds it hard to survive in an environment where you are protected, bolstered even, harboring dreams of seeing the world, facing it, challenging it? Fat chance. It is your destiny to continue to stumble in the narrow confines of your own head asking yourself over and over again why you have inhibitions about things that seem to come naturally to most of the people around you. And after so many years of looking into yourself, the answer should be plain enough. It is time to toe the line. In your head, you picture yourself as a crazy hippie intellectual who is too cool to care about anything in the world and you think nobody can see through that, no one can tell what you say apart from what it really is, bullshit? Who are u trying to fool but yourself? It is time to step off of any and all pedestals that you may have put yourself at. It is time to get up off of your lazy butt, grab whatever comes your way by the balls and make it work for yourself. After all, it is a struggle to survive. You don't want your inflexibility, your unreasonable stubbornness to be the end of you. That which does not bend is ultimately broken. But then, as you are undoubtedly sniggering away to yourself, who wants to survive anyway?

chaudvin ka chand

chaudvin ka chand ho ya aftab ho
jo bhee ho tum khuda ki qasam lajawab ho
chaudvin ka chand ho....

zulfein hain jaise kaandhon pe badal jhukkey huye
aankhein hain jaise mai ke payale bhare huye
masti hai jiss mein pyaar ki tum woh sharab ho
chaudvin ka chand ho....

chehra hai jaise jheel mein hansta hua kanwal
ya zindagi ke saaz pe chhedi huyee ghazal
jaan-e-bahar tum kissi shair ka khwab ho
chaudvin ka chand ho....

honton pe khelti hai tabassum ki bijliyan
sajde tumharee raah mein karti hai kehkeshan
dunya-e-husn-o-ishq ka tum hee shabab ho

chaudvin ka chand ho ya aftab ho
jo bhee ho tum khuda ki qasam lajawab ho....

Mental space is all that is required to put up something good here!

the day the music died!

August 20, 2006: Formatted drive C: Discovered 2236KB in bad sectors. Reinstalled XP, a pirated version all the way from Indonesia. Bill Gates's genius did not pick up the sound driver. No qawwali, no pink floyd since then. On top of that, most webpages appear in Malay or some other weird far eastern language. Google Behasa Melayu is politely offering to Saya Rasa Bertuah. The system date today is showing 27 Ogos, 2006. Right-click on a file causes the machine to hang and all running programs terminate with a message "Dr Watson Postmortem Debugger failed". And there is no music. And to think that life a week, ten days ago had appeared to reach its threshold of drabness. But no! Seems that like Telenor, the stars controlling dreary and monotonous existences also want us to "Expect More"!

House of Helpers

They push you up against the wall and beat you to a pulp if you dare to snarl back. No protestations, no expressions of dissent allowed in this place. You either come around to thinking like them or you don't think at all. There are set rules and standards that cannot be compromised. You utter foolish and unnecessary words that further incriminate you in their eyes. But do they realise what pushes you to speak like that? To them words have always held more significance than thoughts, effect more import than cause. So, my friend, your indictment is complete. It is you who stands alone again and the decision is only yours to make. Or is it one more sacrifice? There is a gun in your hands but its barrels are empty. They have taken the bullets away. How arrogantly they demand solutions and how conveniently they make achieving those impossible!

little by little

We the people fight for our existence
We don't claim to be perfect but we're free
We dream our dreams alone with no resistance
Faded like the stars we wish to be

Y'know I didn't mean... what I just said
But my God woke up on the wrong side of His bed
And it just don't matter now

Little by little we gave you everything you ever dreamed of
As little by little the wheels of your life have slowly fallen off
Little by little you have to live it all in all your life
And all the time I just ask myself why are you really here?

True perfection has to be imperfect
I know that that sounds foolish but it's true
The day has come and now you'll have to accept
The life inside your head we gave to you

Musings VI

jadanr daang hijjar dee pondee hay
saadi qismet aap koon rondee hay
tekoon kya aakhoon o yaar langah
kehri hasrat dil vich hondee hay

- Hasni Khan

resignation

There is no point doing this when I don't feel a thing. My head is so cluttered with work-related complications and family-related issues and apprehensions about the future that I have stopped thinking too deeply altogether. But then that was always the intent right? Get Hasni to start doing more and thinking less. And I guess this is inevitable once you get out of your self, or are dragged out of it to be more precise, and try to become a part of real life, governed by real rules and constraints, having a real different outlook than the world you had created for yourself in your head. Sometimes it is hard to focus and I drift back in time; but in the real world that is called absent-mindedness. Sometimes I indulge my intellect too but whatever the results of that are are almost always shunned as negativity. Survival is tough and that is the hardest lesson I have been taught yet. But the big question is have I really learnt? Because despite all this conformism that I have been forcing upon myself, there is a sullen, obstinate part of me that puts up a fight every step of the way and I never really can figure out who's the victor: the rebel or the conformist. I do not get this: is this life really worth living like a sheep among a huge flock or is it just my thought patterns that are too rigid? Anyway, there is something in my head that I am definitely not getting a finger on. And I dont even know how to feel about that!

plan of action

koee din gar zindagani aur hai
apne jee mein hum ne thhani aur hai

atish-e-dozakh mein yeh garmi kahan
soz-e-gham haaye nihaani aur hai

baar ha dekhi hain unn ki ranjishein
per kucch ab ke sir girani aur hai

dey keh khat muun dekhta hai namabar
kucch toh pegham-e-zabani aur hai

ho chukeen Ghalib balayen sab tamam
aik marg-e-nagahani aur hai...

Perception

Take a passport-sized photograph of yourself, yes that same one with the fake half-smile that you put on your face just to get the photographer to shut up with his incessant 'smile please', and in which the honest, sincere look in your eyes can be easily mistaken for that peculiar expression which makes itself visible when you're locked in a life-and-death struggle with three days of constipation and you're carefully contemplating that final desperate measure: lubrication. Now invert the picture such that the image is upside down. Please observe how, at first glance, your nose suddenly appears as an excellent pencil-holder and the image looks like a quaint bald man with an asymmetric beard who's been a victim of divine comedy as regards the placement of his facial features. Now hide the nose, mouth and chin of the image with your thumb and for a moment, forget that its your picture, forget that it's been inverted and forget that you're a moron for being doing this in the first place, and concentrate on the eyes. Look at them in a detached manner, as if you've never looked at them before, as if you don't want to look at them either. Are they not the most hideous, unworldly, cruel-looking pair of eyes that you have ever seen? Eyes hovering above black platters that seem to have been placed there merely for added effect. And they say a man's eyes are a window into his soul. But is a window not supposed to show the same view whichever way you look at it? Nonetheless, if you fail to see this as such, you need to alter your perceptions. For doing that, you might want to introduce yourself to Lucy.

Trapped!

Have you ever felt trapped? Its a nauseating feeling. You feel like screaming at the top of your lungs but the sound just does not come out because you know you need to keep up the facade: cool, alert, active. You know what you're getting into is not your thing. But do people understand? No. All they can come up with is fucking advice and 'pearls of wisdom' that only serve to confuse you more. Abrupt breaks from one reality and finding yourself in a totally different picture makes you feel as if someone's got their bloody head stuck up your ass. But who cares eh? Its time to give life some direction, its time to diversify, its time to live up to a hundred expectations. But is this fair? What they don't get is that you're not a salesman. You could'nt sell a bone in a goddamn dog fair if it ever came to it. On top of that, living at others' tender mercies is something that just doesn't come to you. But there had to be a day when your wings were clipped, when you were forced to come back to earth. But do they expect you to live on charity? Every promise has been broken, every word reneged upon. You got a life to make or so you're told. Selling! What in the Lord's name is that? Sales! How would you like to go about on a truck begging khokha-walahs and every kind of goddamn bazari to buy women's sanitary pads from you? What kinda fucked-up thing is that? What kinda diversification is that? Some moron 8th grader could do that. Is there any fun in life? Torn apart from familiarity just so your professional credentials won't have a blank space. Its a pity this world is. Your life is governed by externalities. Is 'internality' even a word? How much say do you have in your life? None. That is because you don't care. You dont care whether you work or not. You don't care whether you become anything or not. You don't care whether people take you seriously or not. Because you don't like to assert yourself. If only you were a born a hundred years ago in the same surroundings, the going would have been good. In fact, if you had been a born a coupla thousand years ago, you might have been one of those loonies people mistook for holy men. But that still is possible, isn't it? Reality check: you're trapped. There is no way out of here and you can't live like this. What the fuck is going on around you? You don't wanna know and you don't really care. At this point, all you need to concentrate on is stifling that scream.

Friday the 13th

On this supposedly inauspicious day this piece is more of a product of the paranoia that comes with the entire ‘its-gone-to-the-dogs’ syndrome than anything else. Even this difficulty I am having in getting started is freaking me out to a great extent. But tonight was to be different with stuff like the Nile crocodile, childhood theories on contemporary political structures and some peasant satire on the agenda. But in a household obsessed with death moods tend to fluctuate without a moment’s notice and normal small talk can take sudden turns toward morbidity. It all started when they told on TV that the eyes in Anne Boleyn’s decapitated head continued to shift around till some seconds after the beheading as if trying to come to terms with what had happened and how her ghost still haunts the Tower of London. And then the regular, everyday conversation on food and obesity and missed opportunities rapidly degenerated into conjecturing on what goes on in a man’s head in the space between when the realization of the end strikes him and the actual moment of demise, in his final moments when he actually feels his soul being torn away from his body, when he is locked in that ultimate struggle that he is bound to lose. Trying to conjecture at the goings on in the mind of a man already on the ferry across the River Styx is extremely frustrating for the living because there is nothing concrete to surmise about. But such frustration could only be a fraction of the frustration felt by the dying man for in his head are thoughts the likes of which he is never likely to have thought before, thoughts that he is dying to express but cannot for all modes of expression fail him, thoughts that are destined to be buried with him for all eternity. Imagine a man being shot like an animal in full view of his children and then dying in a few minutes with his gaze transfixed upon them, trying to speak but remaining unable to do so. What could have gone on in such a man’s head in those few minutes, I do not even dare think about for to my own surprise I still value my sanity. They say time is the greatest healer but there are things that transcend all limitations of time and burn in one’s memory like the sacred flame of Zartusht. Lucky are those whose moment of truth is nothing but a split second because even though all their hopes and dreams are dashed they do not have to face the harsh reality of death full frontal. For death is the scariest thing about life. But what could be scarier still is when life chooses to play tricks on you in the guise of death. There was a statistic in some newspaper a few days back stating that 30% of all people are buried alive. Even though this in all probability is a gross exaggeration, even the thought is enough to lose sleep over. Maybe there is some sense to cremation after all or maybe we should have working telephones buried with us in case they fail to differentiate between death and a coma, or better still, loaded revolvers. But unlike the constitution of this country, the laws of God contain no clauses for necessity. Suicide is a free pass to an eternity of pain. The poor bastard who finds himself alive six feet under with a loaded gun sure has one hell of a decision to make.

The Old Man and the Pipal

The old man is a mere shadow of what he was and yet thousands bask in that shadow’s glory. He sits under the Pipal with solitude as his greatest companion and faith as his raison d’etre. His voice trembles when he speaks but resonates across the land, heard and revered. His eyes that in times long past went red with fury, striking fear in the hearts of men, are permanently red with the tears he has cried. Yet his gaze commands respect and submission. He is unsteady in his gait, yet many scramble to follow his lead. His shoulders are stooped under the weight that time and fate has deposited upon them but retain enough strength to keep his world together. Even though his vision is blurry and his hearing impaired, he sees and hears all that goes on and judges in accordance. His back is bent from delivering fragments of his soul into the earth but he continues to haul the load of the dynasty for he alone is worthy of it.

The Pipal is ancient, yet tall and majestic. It casts a dense shade under which life takes refuge from its enemies. It has a broad base with long, thick branches going up towards the sky, like arms outstretched in prayer. Within these branches lives a multitude of God’s creatures that cohabit in relative harmony. The Pipal has weathered many a test of time. Sometimes nature and sometimes man has attempted to try its strength. But it has withstood these tests with an unshakeable tenacity, with its roots remaining firmly planted into the land, even though it has lost some of its sturdiest branches. It continues to stand tall, a symbol of antiquated power and forbearance.

Many centuries ago, when the Sultan of Ghazni sacked the Temple of a Hundred Idols, a spiritual riddle presented itself to him. As his sword sprung back with a metallic clang when he struck a worshipper kneeling to an idol, the invader realized that in his immense devotion to the stone deity, the devotee himself had turned to stone. Such was his dedication to the god in his head; such was the metaphysical bond between the living and the lifeless, that one’s physical reality was entirely consumed by the other’s. The old man and the Pipal also present a riddle of transcendent spirituality, although somewhat of a different nature. In their story, it is not quite clear whose essence has permeated into whom. But if a crude verdict is to be given, it has to be said that the Pipal is nothing but the old man’s soul tearing out of the heart of the earth.

the debate

"What's wrong with it?", he asked, agitated. "She is one of them. It is not possible under any circumstance," she replied, semi-amused. "What's so different between us and them? Are they not just like the rest of us?", he countered half-heartedly. "They are of that line. Our line is inferior to theirs. Just like this land is inferior to that land, for that land has been watered with their blood and there is no other place like it anywhere," she explained to him calmly, with a concerned expression. "What about the blood of the others? Does it not balance the equation?" he said with a sullen grimace. "That blood is of no consequence since it is inferior to their blood and pales in comparison," she told him forcefully. "How could this make them any different?" he retorted in exasperation. "The laws are not the same for all of us. If she really is of that line, she will be thrown off it," she said matter-of-factly. "But what if it is discovered that she is not of that line?" he asked casually. "If lines have been switched deliberately, that makes her unworthy of ours," she beamed in return. He laughed loudly. "It is like that of those behind the bush!" she commented, astonished. "Perhaps it is," he said, chuckling. She got up. "As to the earlier question, there's nothing to have," she announced carelessly and went away. He waited.

well of wisdom

had written a whole fricken piece that was lost in electricity fluctuation. aur energy nahi hai phir se likhne kee woh saaree qawali. buss yeh yaad hai:

itne sadme utthaye hain mein ne
sir utthane ke qabil nahi hai

aur yeh bhee aaj kee tamaam guftugu urdu mein honee thee. aur yeh waqayah bayan hooa keh Maula ne kaha, 'Mesum, herr raat meray paslion ke darmian aik toofaan sa utthta hai jo bahar aana chahta hai, per mein majboor ho kerr usse aik koon'ein mein daal ata hoon.' phir Meesam ne poocha, 'Amir-ul-Momineen, yeh kaun sa aisa toofaan hai jo keh aap ko itna majboor aur be-chaen kerta hai?' toh Maula ne jawab diya, 'yeh ilm ka toofaan hai Meesum, jo bahar aane ke liye tadapta hai, perr dunya mein koee samajh rakhne wala nahi!' i cant seem to figure out its connection with what i was writing, but it is beautiful nonetheless and i will keep it. baqi ab kucch samajh nahi aa rahee; lagta hai frequency kum karnee pare gee. waqt aya hai apne qadmon per khade honay ka which is the last thing i want to do iss halat mein. lekin kya karein, bardasht karna pare ga. bohat zaroori hai yeh bhee zindagi mein. yeh sala weird al pata nahi kya chahta hai? accha, iss se pehle keh mein gharq ho jaoon, let me take my leave on a wanjhli dee mithdi taan. i still have to mourn the loss of such effort on extraction of lyrics from qawali. lekin haan yeh bhee kehna thaa:

aaye kucch abr, kucch sharaab aaye
uss ke baad aaye jo azaab aaye

and why the fuck is that picture always on?

Birthday!

nunhi si qabr khod ke, Asghar ko gaadh ke
Shabbir utth khade hooye daaman ko jhadh ke

No Man's Land

People who haven't seen this movie, or worse, not heard about it either are sincerely advised to get their hands on it and watch it. I have never, in my entire movie-watching career, seen such profound symbolism portrayed so beautifully. In fact, I think from now on I would look at any other movie with a changed perspective, subconsciously weighing its merits against those of No Man's Land. And as much as I am itching to narrate the storyline here, I realise my literary inadequacies and I know that any such attempt would do no justice to the original and could never even hope to convey the effect, capture the material the movie offers in its entirety. For there is enough material to do a doctoral thesis on. Suffice it to say that the main theme is the Bosnian crises of the 90's and the human tragedy of it. And its awesome how the entire crises is depicted without comprimising the film's basic status as an alternative, low-budget movie and making it into an epic. Hats off to the genius behind this masterpiece, the Bosnian director, Danis Tanovic. As a matter of fact this movie was his debut and has been his only movie to date.

On a more personal note, life itself seems to be in no man's land these days. The trick is to go with the flow and I am trying my best to achieve that despite all apprehensions and misgivings. But I fear that this resolve to conform might blow up in my face too in some time exposing me to their eyes. What then would become of me? Nonetheless, this blog becomes more unoriginal with every post. But I don't feel like doing anything about it tonight. For its a quiet night, can't even hear the music. Looks like the hush outside has drowned out the noise inside. And in such a state, listening to U2's Velvet Dress totally freaks me out. Trust Ghalib to come to the rescue.

kab se hoon kya bataoon jahan-e-kharab mein
shabhaye hijr ko bhee rakhoon ger hisab mein

mujh tak kab unkee bazm mei aata tha daur-e-jaam
saqi ne kuchch mila na diya ho sharaab mein

Ghalib chhuti sharab, per ab bhee kabhi kabhee
peeta hoon roz-e-abr-o-shab-e-mahtab mein

the dog speaks...

murshid sohni keetee bahu
sakoon pal vich cha bakhshaya hu

The music sounds so good tonight!

Overhead the albatross hangs motionless upon the air
And deep beneath the rolling waves in labyrinths of coral caves
The echo of a distant tide
Comes willowing across the sand
And everything is green and submarine
And no one showed us to the land
And no one knows the wheres or whys
But something stirs and
Something tries
And starts to climb towards the light
Strangers passing in the street
By chance two separate glances meet
And I am you and what I see is me
And do I take you by the hand
And lead you through the land
And help me understand the best I can
And no one calls us to the land
And no one crosses there alive
And no one speaks
And no one tries
And no one flies around the sun
And now this is the day you fall
Upon my waking eyes
Inviting and inciting me to rise
And through the window in the wall
Comes streamin in on sunlight wings
A million bright ambassadors of morning
And no one sings me lullabies
And no one makes me close my eyes
So I throw the windows wide
And call to you across the sky.

It's all over!

“But whoever believes, and works righteousness, he shall have a goodly reward, and easy will be his task as we order it by our command.”
(Al-Quran, Surah Al-Kahf: 88)

With an unconditional sajda upon the words of the Lord, the sun has set on all hopes and dreams of happiness that might have returned to the family in two years; the brief respite that Providence afforded us has reached a bizarre ending. The ‘beray da malah’, everyone’s ‘sir da chhappar’, and ‘herr kaheen dee sambhaal lahand ala’ is gone forever, taken away as a consequence of one more random, inexplicable occurrence, the kind that has happened too often with us but is impossible to get used to, reinforcing everyone’s mortal fear of telephones ringing in the night, a fear that had initially crept in on the night of January 4, 2002. Cardiac arrest it is proclaimed to be with no prior history of heart problems. Mind-numbingly difficult his death is to accept; Chacha, though overweight, was the most physically active out of all his brothers and had never had poor health. In fact, he was one of the few in the family who are not afflicted with that most deadly ailment, hypochondria. But in one silent, surreptitious moment, the man who had always sacrificed his own happiness for the people around him, who had what it takes to be a friend in the hour of need, and who had the matchless ability to throw his arms around the world, was no more. Chacha was the base upon which the family’s strength and unity rested and was the main force behind the organization of all major activities, be it a majlis or a wedding or some political gathering. Quiet and seemingly aloof, he was all love for the family but could never bring himself about to express it. One had to spot the sincerity behind a sardonic remark or an angry outburst. Through every domestic crisis he held the family together by refusing to take sides and join in the mud-slinging. Even when haveli intrigue and family politics made married life hell for him, he remained a dutiful husband, father and son. Chacha was a true father figure, the only one with the integrity and the ability to replace Dada as the head of the entire family. But fate would not have it. As my 80-year old grandfather sat by the body of his eldest born and his second dead son, he cried out in a hoarse whisper, ‘Ay meda putr meda vee Baba ha!’ For in passing away, Chacha has orphaned the entire family, from the oldest to the youngest. In fact, he has orphaned the entire ‘wasaib’, from the sardar to the lowest ‘kami’. What would those families do who were fed from his kitchen three times a day, seven days a week, where would the small farmers go who could not afford pesticide and other such supplies and he invariably bought it for them, and what about those poor innocents whom he regularly saved from police victimization without them having to pay a single paisa as bribes. For it is true that Chacha was endowed with a kind of reckless generosity characteristic of old-school zamindars. Common village folk are mourning him as much as the family for this very reason. He would have made a fine sardar someday, a latter-day Rahim Yaar Khan maybe. But this was not to be and he wore the ancestral ‘pug’ into the grave.

Had he lived, today would have been his 56th birthday; he died two weeks shy of it. There are not many Scorpios in the family. In happier times my father used to say how my temperament was exactly like my ‘bara’ Chacha’s. If one is somewhat spiritual with some inclination towards religion, the fact that Chacha was born on the 10th of Moharram and died painlessly on the 15th of Ramadan while sitting on the prayer mat reading the Quran has significant meaning. My elders say these are sure signs that his lifelong services in the way of ‘Hussainiyet’ have been rewarded and he stands in high regard in the eyes of the Lord. I hope in the name of everything that is holy that this is true. But what is bothering my mind is that for a man of faith, is this the promised goodly reward that he lives his entire life on a bed of thorns and just as some semblance of happiness and mental peace begins to enter his existence, his life is taken away from him. For it is true that it was only in recent years, especially after Jaffer was born, that Chacha was truly happy; it showed on his face. He saw all his joys and dreams in the eyes of his grandson. And no matter what many celestial signs his death carried, the question remains: did he want to die at this point in time when for the first time in his life he was at the top of the world? The chapter of Chacha’s life closed abruptly, incomplete, anti-climactic. Iqbal, as usual, gives us false hope:

Jahaan mein ahl-e-eemaan soorat-e-khursheed jeetay hain
Idhar doobey, udher nikley; udher doobey, idher nikley

But in my observation of ahl-e-eeman, I have only seen them sink. With Chacha, the fortunes of the entire family have sunk. Everyone’s going around like zombies unable to comprehend what they could have done to deserve this. And what of the old man who has seen two sons into the grave, sons who did not have a single gray hair on their heads, who were in the prime of their lives, who were his pride and his strength? What has he done to deserve this? In a moment of weakness, even this iron man once cried out, “Maula, eeho sila denday way naukri da?” But his faith is too firmly entrenched. He will spend the days left to him begging for forgiveness and mercy. Who will take care of his legacy? He lost the warrior four years ago, now the heir is gone too. The heart bleeds to see him go to his sons’ graves supported by two men, to hear that in the middle of the night he gets up and makes his way, stumbling and falling, to their graves and goes and lies down on the cold hard earth. Does everything happen for a reason, or is the divine scheme of things a bit too arbitrary. What can one mere mortal say? Ghalib, I think, truly understands pain and the contradictions in the universe:

Sab kahan kucch lala-o-gul mein numayaan ho gayeen
Khaak mein kya sooratein hoon gee keh pinhaan ho gayeen

Runj se khoogar hoaa insaan toh mit jata hai runj
Mushkilein mujh per pareen itni keh asaan ho gayeen

Yoon hee ger rota raha Ghalib toh ay ahl-e-jahan
Dekhna inn bastion ko tum keh veeraan ho gayeen

Asghar Hussein Khan (November 2, 1949 - October 19, 2005)

words fail me...

As the scale of the devastation caused by the quake becomes more horrifyingly clear with every passing day, it also becomes evident that this country is totally ill-prepared for a natural disaster of these proportions, and after crises has struck, completely inadept at efficiently deploying the limited resources at its disposal. But then, when the mighty USA could not manage its hurricane crises effectively, how can the government of a poor, third-world country be really blamed for disaster mismanagement. It has been more than 72 hours since the quake struck and there are many areas where relief efforts have not yet begun. In most of Kashmir, people are working on a self-help basis to find people trapped in the rubble. Watching TV these days is too depressing. Where big machinery is needed, you see people clawing their way through the debris with pick-axes and shovels but mostly with their bare hands in the hope to rescue someone alive. You see little children being dug out of holes with the shadow of death upon their faces. You see people crying out in despair for help that is not forthcoming. And it is not because there is no feeling within the general public. There are massive issues of coordination. In cities like Karachi and Lahore, tonnes of aid has been gathered but no one can figure out how to send it across. And even if it does get sent across, who is to be responsible for its receipt and disbursement. Selfish interests are out to make a profit from this calamity. Truckers have increased their fares from Karachi to the northern parts of the country almost twofold. The price of cloth for 'kafan' has also doubled. So much for Shauket Aziz's free market economy and the joys it has brought to the nation. In the disaster-hit areas, people are beginning to get frustrated at how selectively help is being provided. Rural people looted an aid-carrying convoy on the Mansehra-Balakot road today. It has been obvious from the start that all relief efforts are aimed at urban areas. The rural populations of those regions have been left to fend for themselves against hunger, disease and the rapidly-approaching winters. In Azad Kashmir, people are bitterly voicing their protest against the government. For it is true that in most districts of AJK, help began filtering in 48 hours after the quake had struck and that too mostly in the form of foreign rescue teams. At the most filmed location of the quake, Margalla Towers, the rescue efforts somehow seem to be happening in the spirit of excavation rather than with the zeal that comes with rescuing live human beings.

In my opinion, our President spoke too prematurely when he said that Pakistan needs mostly financial assitance for it has enough manpower of its own. This was a stupid thing to say. We need all the help we can get, especially in the form of specialised disaster management teams who can coordinate on the spot activities to save as many lives as possible. In fact, if we do an honest self-analysis, we do not need as much financial assistance as is being touted. It is high time for our corporate fat-cats to live up to their slogans of corporate social responsibility. This country has enough money, though concentrated in a few hands, for launching and sustaining a large-scale relief effort. But how to get the money out of those hands is the real issue. In fact, the real question is whether the civil-military establishment really wants to take money out of those hands. There comes a time in every nation's existence that calls for honest introspection and a sincere appraisal of the wrongs in society. This is the time when all the if's and but's and should have's become important. And I think now is that time for Pakistan.

The role that media plays in such situations is of immense significance. PTV, the government's propaganda machine, has been a disappointment like always. All its focus is on how high-level government functionaries are doing great things to help people in the disaster zone. There is minimal news of what is actually happening on the ground, what has transpired so far and what still needs to be done. And while, from all accounts, the death toll has reached 40,000, PTV sticks by its two-day old casualty figure of 20,000, qualifying it with the statement that the government expects the number to double. In its efforts to please the higher-ups, PTV is extensively covering the movement of every federal minister in NWFP and AJK. Sometimes one wonders that even if some big government guy hiccups in the field, PTV would report that too. Geo, surprisingly, has been no better. It has also adopted the policy of sucking up to the government. The ruins of Margalla Towers and some aerial shots of Muzaffarabad and Balakot are shown on repeat all day long with useless debate and discussions. The smaller networks like Indus Plus and ARY, however, have been truer to the cause, presenting in-depth analysis of the situation with vital criticisms and ground realities. Although I believe that in such times there should not be criticism just for the heck of it, the government and the authorities need to know that the world is watching their every move.

The year 2005 has wrought terrible natural calamities upon humanity. There have been tsumanis and floods and earthquakes and hurricanes. We hear people around us say that the end is near, that we have invited God's wrath upon ourselves with our misguided lives and disregard for the path of righteousness. It may be so. But is God as insensitive as man that he makes one group of people into examples for others? For we, despite all our tall claims to humanitarianism and sympathy for the affected, are an insensitive kind. We watch TV and get all worked up about the misery and the suffering. And the next moment we get up and go feed ourselves at franchise food outlets. The fact that the Muzaffarabad jail also collapsed and some of the inmates escaped is a cause of amusement to us. We watch movies and sleep long hours thinking nothing of the many thousands who have to spend their nights out in the cold with hailstorms and torrential rain. And it is true that we can never really imagine the suffering for we are far removed from it. But is God far removed from it too? If an example was needed, why did He not strike the cities which are the centers of vice. Why destroy one of the most religiously conservative regions in the country? Or is God trying to make a point that none of us is getting. But who can question His writ. And as the hailstorm continues, and the onslaught of a premature winter threatens to finish off what the earthquake could not, the dead wait to be buried, and the living wait to be rescued.

milestone achieved

Today our much advertised grassroot level democracy delivered the nation neatly from all pretensions of free and fair electoral competition and into the hands of the same man for whose legitimization the whole shebang was originally created and his civilian lapdogs. Our beloved leader must be patting himself on the back, he has achieved what even Zia could not, the complete devolution of power to comprador elite ensuring his survival at the top. And if he can reinforce this achievement in 2007 that would be the last nail in the coffin. As things stand now, that is almost inevitable. The country would then be effectively reduced to a one-party system and he would be the unchallenged despot. From the looks of it, Pakistan is headed straight towards becoming a fascist state, client to none other than the burning torch of freedom and democracy, the great US of A.

The beauty of the entire thing is that elections have neither been outrightly rigged nor the electoral process unfairly tampered with as compared to the elections of the past. In fact, there was no need to. The system is designed such that the prize had to fall in the ruling party's lap. Let's start with a given: in Pakistan, there has never been any real party-based politics per se. People who get elected to the national and political legislatures do so on the basis of their own political contracting at the local level which is merely a function of their families' wealth and influence in the area. This means that the people who are generally elected are from the elite of a given area. And at the higher level, it is this elected elite that decides which party to support and which ideology to espouse. This is how it has happened whenever democracy's been given a chance since 1947. And it is also abundantly clear from past experiences that this political elite, both when in or out of power, is prone to switching affiliations and allegiances to suit its own interests. But the Devolution system offers such incentives that are every politico's dream come true, for it promises to empower them at the local level. In the past, local power had always been the domain of bureaucrats and civil servants and the local political elite lusted after it, and deeply resented the bureaucracy for it. Now the positions of District Nazims and Tehsil Nazims are so enticing that people are willing to give up their seats in the National Assembly for them. And it is this lust for local power that the powers in Islamabad have optimally exploited. The local political elites know that if they toe the line and unite under the banner of the King's party, they would get to share these lucrative posts created at the local level. Else, they would have to face the entire machinery of the state against them. This is why you get to see people who would normally be traditional rivals in the local political arena trying to create an atmosphere of a truce. So the local politico's, using all their instincts for side-switiching and maximum power-grabbing, line up behind the hand that is supposed to feed them. And then with all proper ado, the General's cronies distribute the hallowed posts among these people. Someone gets the District, the other the Tehsil. All major political groupings at the local level are satisfied and there remains no cause for dissent. The ruling party makes a clean sweep in an election that was on a non-party basis in the first place. And so in October 2005, for gaining limited power over limited pieces of land, our political elite has sold out the entire nation to a man who has no business being where he is today, vindicated him and made him even more powerful, if that is possible. In essence, our entire political elite has been bribed without them even realising it. The General and his associates have doled out these positions of prominence and the local elites have lapped them up like hungry street dogs. They have sold their conscience and their souls. And if this trend is strengthened in 2007 and the General's current clients remain loyal to him, this country is headed for absolutism. Then, I think, he would be crowned absolute monarch and worshipped as the image of God upon this Earth, ruler by Divine right. I wonder though who the Crown Prince would be.

profit and loss statement

The family seems to have decided that its going to make up for the losses suffered from 2000 to 2003 in 2005 and make the overall situation a zero-sum game. Well its easy to make up in numbers and that is how i shall keep it, for the sheer magnitude of the losses can never be expressed in words. The cycle started in October 2000, during my first quarter at LUMS, with Chachi. Then on April 4, 2001, Shab-e-Aashoor, Dadi Jaan. Exactly nine months after, on January 4, 2002 the family was shattered forever with Chacha's murder. The weight of the world fell upon a gray head between two stooped shoulders as Dada Jaan tried to keep his flock together and in the twilight of his time took the responsibility of his orphaned grandsons, a responsibility that taxes his every faculty. Someone spoke correctly at Chacha's wake, 'Khan da pahaar da jigger hay.' May he have a long life for our sake. On a tangent though, the exact nine-month difference between mother and son continues to haunt me still. April 14, 2002 Addi Amma. The Lord decided to give us a year-long breather. June 4, 2003, end of Junior year with the final exam of Colex, Chacha Tehroo. And then on November 15, 2003, the night of the 21st of Ramazan, in the middle of the Autumn finals and two days before my 21st birthday, Nana Jaan passed away. Exactly as had happened at Chacha's death, I skipped two exams and made a nocturnal journey back home. Exasperated voices cried out to heaven - no more, please, no more! As the family reeled from one painful shock after another, fate had another cycle planned, a cycle of birth which started not long after. On November 19, 2003, Syed Turaab Afghan stepped into the world, what a kid mashAllah. Can already tell the difference between a fake cellphone and a real one. 'Eeeeee' he calls it. Iblees Jr. Nana Jaan would have called him. April 24, 2004, Jaffer Reza Khan was born and although they put him onto artificial milk which caused the poor baby to inflate he is now the life of the paternal side of my family; spoiling him rotten they are. All his Grand-Uncles are crazy after him; i guess they see their own grandchildren in him. Then came March 2005 with Syeda Itrat Zehra, my Nana Nani's second great grandchild. This one already promises to be a ball of fire with her temper tantrums. April 21, 2005, Mohammed Ghazi Saeed, a baby providence chose to give after years of intense prayer and many a traumatic experience. Ghazi is going to be the wonder-boy of the family inshAllah, may he live forever and make his parents proud. Then came the 'Jahanpur dee pug da waaris' on the 2nd of September, Meekaeel Murtaza. Stately looks this one has mashAllah from the emailed pictures, still gotta see him in person though. Then on October 1 came the 'Sijaalpur dee pug da waaris', Mohammed Taqi, still in peaceful post-natal slumber. Tonight, two days from Taqi's arrival, another one is on its way. And in a few months' time inshAllah, Jaffer will have a sibling. The parents are 'secretly' hoping for a daughter; as am I. My paternal side of the family is in dire need of some 'rehmat'.

If you have taken the trouble of reading this far, I hope you're doing the math as well because i surely am not. My point is that although i pray from the bottom of my heart and even more sincerely than i do for myself that all these babies have long lives and grow up to be splendid people and a source of strength and joy for their parents, it is still a long time before they develop their independent personalities and really start to matter in the scheme of things. Some of the people who were taken away were taken away before it was really their time. And these were people who were already there, who were important to other people in many ways. But the Lord works in mysterious ways. And one can only hope that these newborns, when they come into their own, will surpass those whom they would never see but would hear about a lot in character and personality. But i guess by the time that happens, i would be dead and gone, another statistic on nature's frequency table. And so what im looking at, at the moment, is a deadweight loss. But then ive always been known to be a bit too pessimistic for my own good. Regardless of that, the fact that im writing all of this on a blog for the entire world to see may yet point to another loss that i think i will have to mourn pretty soon. Someday I will write a piece on how to hurt, lose, driveaway people who care. And then i will hopefully choke on my own nasal fluids and die.

Ali Da Malang...

suni awaaz uss shokh kee see
Ilahi yeh jalsa kahan ho raha hai?

az chehre niqaab afgan ay shahid-e-bathahi
aalam ra shavad roshan ba ru-e-nabinmai
der chahsm-e-haqeeqat bhee, w'Allah muamai
Maula-e-huma banda, hum banda-e-maulayi

kahein jiss ko Nabi mun kunto maula, lehma-ka-lehmi
nabi ka woh Vasi al-mukhtasir yoon bhee hai aur yoon bhee
jo Kaabe mein ho paida, aur shahadat paye masjid mein
Khuda ke ghar ka Malik woh bashar yoon bhee hai aur yoon bhee

Ali Imam-e-Manast-o-Manam Ghulam-e-Ali
hazar jaan-e-girami fida beh naam-e-Ali

backwaters...

On the turf, there always had to be a first time. He crushed it under his sandal and turned around. The dog spread out before his feet. He patted it for a bit and it spread out more. He walked on. It did not follow. He closed the door behind him and locked it. The music floated into his ears and he was attracted to the sound. With every step he thanked the Master of the Universe for such bliss. He knew that stuff was bad but he had been making it worse in the past. Now it was good. The urge gripped him. He checked the monitor. It was still coming down. She still wasn't there. He sat down and hoped that history with such stuff would not repeat itself. The traffic was down to a halt and he wondered whether he would get to the page. The thought of the night before came to him. 'Since childhood you're told to fear God, for God sees all. I always replace that with for Ammi sees all.' The thought of his mother seeing him through his eyes was scary. He missed his friend. He had an idea and began hacking away. He wondered why the alphabet was appearing at the wrong side. He was a brave man on these grounds. Brave and safe. She appeared. He hoped she would talk to him. He needed someone to talk to. She did not appear interested. He told her what was happening on his side. Breathing was making him choke. He changed the number. He did not need this crap. What he needed was still coming down. Selfishness like this would get you closer to God, the sufis had taught him. Whose majboori's were these he asked? What had Vital Signs to do with it? Every number sounded different from what he had originally remembered. Too different. But there were no explanations he could give. He liked it though. Thank you, O Noble Deity! She did not like what he had told her and he stopped listening. Had he locked the door or was he unsafe? With a surge of energy, he went and checked. He came back and remembered his friend again. He wondered whether his in-built mechanisms to maintain his personality had loosened enough, as discussed with the Malah, or was he still not fully revealed to himself. Now no one else please. Not in the mood. The voice droned on about a huge search for something. With a slight sound it came down. He smiled and checked. He recognised the name. The voice talked about the secrets of the heart. He dragged it into the list. A momentary pause and then with full fanfare it broke into 'Mun Kunto Maula'. Everything else faded into oblivion.

Musings V

hin mein jayhn een jahan utte budchalan kaee badkaar kaee
bedeen kaee, bemazhab kaee, bepeer kaee, bekaar kaee
safai aapni de keetay hin lafz mekoon darkaar kaee
per such ay hay een dunya vich insaan hin ghutt murdaar kaee

- Hasni Khan

karachi nights...

He drew in a long breath of the sea air and stood up. For a moment he lost balance but then was stable on his feet. It was time to go in. It was a good night, with the stars and the clouds fighting it out for control over the sky. His companion had gone in sometime back. For a moment he pondered on what he might have been thinking when he had left. He looked out into the parking lot and his mind went back to politics. ‘Dirty old Pervaiz Elahi,’ his mind announced to him in a rather annoying British accent, ‘the bastard’s screwed up everything; hadn’t it been for him, we would have been in a much better position today.’ Time to collect the glasses. He picked them up very gently, as if careful not to crack them with his fingers. The door confused him a bit but he figured it out; stepped in feeling very light. Why is the air-conditioning on? He clearly remembered telling him to leave it off. He checked and it was off. Must be the chill he had brought in from outside. He put the glasses in the kitchen. A sudden commotion in his gutt caught him by surprise and he walked to the bathroom. But halfway there it subsided as quickly as it had appeared, and he slumped on the couch. He wondered if this had any precedence in the history of his life. He thought about what he had been told about himself and whether that could be true, but he dismissed these thoughts quickly. It would require more brain-power than he wanted to provide that night. He flicked channels but nothing worthwhile was on. At least nothing upon which he could bring himself to focus attention. Dilemma! Sleep was far from his eyes and he had nothing to do. Two sensations simultaneously hit him. A strange nausea in the belly and the urge to write in the head. Keeping his priorities straight, he headed to the bathroom; still nothing. He went back to the couch thinking where he could find pen and paper. What’s the computer for, a voice shouted in his head. He tiptoed into the room and groped around for a bit in the dark. At first, he couldn’t figure the machine out and wondered if he should call for help. But better sense prevailed and after an eyes-wide-open search operation, he located the power button and pressed it. The computer whirred to life and he waited for it to finish the boot. For a moment, his urge to write lessened. Why not talk to a few old-time friends. But nothing was going through and reluctantly he opened the text editor. He hacked out sentences amidst a series of long pauses, indicating that he was finding it hard to maintain his train of thought. He knew what he was writing had nothing to do with the thoughts with which the sudden desire to write had gripped him. He typed on nonetheless. After what seemed like ages to him, he was done. He checked the time; it had only been an hour. He felt as if he had written a whole novel and gave a small chuckle, which came out like a cackle, when he discovered it was only three-fourths of a page. He turned around to see if he had disturbed his friend with the sound he made. Didn’t seem like it. He went back to what he had written and cursorily read through it. Yep, it was nothing like what he had originally imagined. He stood up. His stomach gave a nasty churn, and his head a delicious spin. Had he ever felt this good before? This bad? His brain rudely reminded him that it refused to process questions on relativism that night. The idealist in him put up a fight. The escapist advocated surrender. His knees felt weak and he sat down. And then with a faint, unconcerned smile on his face, he said to himself: ‘don’t know about the good or bad, but that was one hell of a joint.’ And then there was a hush.

Shakir

the great seraiki poet, Shakir Shuja'abadi, is on his deathbed and the Ministry for Culture is treating this with the same callous indifference it has perviously displayed towards all other intellectual greats who were not Urdu or Punjabi speaking. Be this as it may, Shakir's work clearly depicts the cultural mood of the Seraiki people, colored as it is by a feeling of disorientation and deprivation. i have been making frequent use of Shakir's works in my ramblings, but here are my all-time favorites.

bur koon dedhan, bah'r koon dedhan
dua'a koon dedhan, asar koon dedhan
kaheen de seenay te yaar sumdhin
kaheen dee sikdi qabar koon dedhan

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khoon dunya te peenda vada'een, khaaki thee ke punjeenda vada'een
ajab naseeb hayee ghareeb lut ke ghareeb parwar sadeenda vada'een

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kal tamasha ajeeb ditthem, te raah te kusda ghareeb ditthem
tarapda lasha haa begunaah da, te kol hunsda raqeeb ditthem

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aayee tarf asmaan toon und-chithi, meday aalhnde ne jhad jhad keetee
wal rul ke badal te badliyaan ne hik khauf bharee kud kud keetee
naee tars aya meday Malik koon, today haye haye te rud rud keetee
ghar sarda dekh ke Shakir da, jug taadiyan dee tud tud keetee

Although the mullah's God has traditionally been against the artistic expression that is poetry, I hope that the God of saner people would be a bit more compassionate towards a man whose life has been a bed of thorns and whose only crime has been that he has dared to ask why?

Free as a bird...

Finally, im out of LUMS for good. Ive been told it’s the end of an era but the only thing I feel at the moment is indifference. As a matter-of-fact, it’s just the right mixture of joy and sadness with both these opposites canceling each other out such that it leaves my head in a state of perfect balance; or at least that is what I feel. The first four years at LUMS I will always regard as the best time of my life. But I still don’t understand what happened in the last year…im as confused as the day I was born! But im comfortably numb to everything now. I only wish this devil-may-care attitude had developed earlier…would have saved me a whole lotta pain. Anyway, I still cant say I have severed all ties, broken all strings. They still owe me money; quite a lot of money. And well, there are still people at LUMS I really like, look up to even. So, I honestly cant say that I don’t want anything to have to do with LUMS at least for the time that these people are there. Aur paisa lenay aur recommendations likhwane toh jana hee pare ga!

And since there’s no job now and no parhai, I have too much time on my hands these days. So Im nurturing my irritating knack for philosophizing, and worse still, of articulating my theories with such vehemence it scares even myself. Essentially, what the events of November 2004 to May 2005 have done is they have made me into a braying donkey…and I hate it! I want my old self back; the guy with the spontaneous sense-of-humor which sometimes showed depth, not this half-baked philosopher who thinks he’s too wise for the world. If I were in my parents’ place, I would have beaten the crap outta myself. But my folks are showing remarkable restraint as always! And so, the philosophy grows. Right now, I have this interesting philosophy on drugs and booze. Now what I think is that in a society like ours, there are two kinds of people who actually go ahead and lose themselves in drugs and alcohol. The first category is of those people who don’t give a damn about anything but themselves. They think themselves to be at the top of the world, better than everyone else around them, and ‘nasha’ therefore becomes a way of reinforcing that belief. Now the other kind are those who care about many things in the world but the complex social web that mankind has woven around itself bounds them such that they feel totally powerless. Circumstances spiral out of control and fate deals them such a crappy hand that they sink into a state of utter frustration and helplessness. And in this helplessness they look for cheap escapes. And ‘nasha’ is nothing but a cheap, momentary escape. Although, one must admit, once your tunn or high, you can actually look into alternative realities, different shades of people’s personalities. And it is then that you realize, there are not many people out there who are willing to extend a helping hand. Most just want to see the ‘tamasha’ of someone not in his senses, have a bit of fun and be on their way. And it is in such moments of weakness, moments of truth for some, that it dawns upon you: no matter what you do for someone, no matter how many illusions of friendship you hold for someone, you should always expect to be screwed over by that same someone. Some screw you over and then gloat about it, broadcast their achievement over gossip circles, wear it around like a badge of honor. Others screw you over, turn around and blame you for it, then without the slightest hesitation throw you away like you would hurl a banana peel. And then there is a third category; people who come up to you and try to make you understand how pathetically naïve, if not stupid, you have been. Even if u take it as a given that you are stupid, does that justify how you have been treated? Lets talk in analogies…if you walk up to a blind man on the street and knock him down, who would be to blame? If u steal candy from a 3-yr old, whose fault would it be? Social Darwinists, all of us! It is life you’re told. You’re meant to hurt some, get hurt by others. Well at least the latter’s been done. What you and these self-righteous detractors don’t get is that with each new wound they open, they are giving you strength, wisdom even. They are chipping away at your naïveté, the blind trust you put in the world. They are building in you the ability to detach yourself from human beings and to see people as mere pawns in the game of life. Maybe, the end-result will be the creation of a monster. Right about now, there is indifference; indifference and a stubborn determination to push forward leaving all the mess behind, to engage in the struggle that is life itself and not waste much time in lamenting over notions such as ‘friendship’ and ‘sincerity’ that are obsolete in the modern urban world. You know it only gets tougher from here on, but at least now you have the balls to say:

Haan talkhi-e-ayyaam abhi aur barhe gi
Haan ahl-e-sitam mashq-e-sitam karte rahenge

Manzoor yeh talkhi, yeh sitam hum ko gawaara
Dam hai to madaawa-e-alam karte rahenge

Maikhana salaamat hai to hum surkhi-e-mai se
Tazzain-e-dar-o-baam-e-haram karte rahenge

Ek tarz-e-taghaaful hai so woh unko mubaarak
Ek arz-e-tamanna hai so hum karte rahenge

- Faiz Ahmed Faiz

Musings IV

der teday uttey aa giya haan, kol meday kujh kainee
khaali medi jholi hay, kya lafz akhaan sujh kainee
mataan naal salook ala powein, eeho hasrat hay hujj kainee
taheen gaal medi icch yaar hasni, sawal taan hay lujh kainee

- Hasni Khan