Misgivings and Procrastinations

Perfect beginning and perfect ends, great stories and earth-grating ideas. This is what stops one from writing. For me, it is the wonderfully wrapped box, which a child is afraid to open lest his dreams come crashing down to discover a piece of sensible clothing instead of a toy that he so longed for. So, he prolongs it as much as possible to savour the dizzying feeling of anticipation. Soon, the gift gets lost in the mundane meanderings of life and years go by... until, one day whilst cleaning things in the attic, the eye spies a shiny wrapper. Curiosity urges the dust-shrivelled fingers to coax the sticky grimy tape off the wrapper. With the rustle of the paper, a memory emerges of the gift that was once presented but unopened, misgivings and doubt that were too great to handle. Now that the years have painted more lines around the body, more corners than edges, the mind is wiser to know that it is none-the-wise. It matters only that what was inside, was to derive joy, it was to give and it was to receive.

Many eons ago, I had read an essay on the follies of writing. The author had made a compelling case against amateurs writing and filling their two-cents worth of ideas out in the world and filling it with garbage. It had also said something of the lines that whatever one may do, one will not achieve the greatness of the writers of yonder years because this generation is too polluted and are the breeds of incunks.

That was the time I contracted a strong strain of Idiotoviridae where upon whatever I wrote was never good enough. I was my own best critic and a very fastidious one at that. My other good chum was no other than Procrastination who with cahoots with the Critic went on a joy ride for the better part of half a decade. They almost made it into the dusky, drowsy sunset.

Almost.

There are somethings inside a person that are stronger than misgivings. It lies in the corner of the top most cabinet of the kitchen where you shoved it and can barely touch it now with the tips of your fingers. There is just barely enough light in that dim, web engorged quarter to make out the shadow of its existence. I know it's there. I've been tempted to fetch it many a times. I even know that it is the best of all my belongings. And that is what is scary. The What-Ifs are just so many... so so many.

The quandary nearly deafening, I tremble, stretch and grasp. Initially, it is just air and cobwebs and dust. I push my toes to the very tip until my nails dig into the tiles all-ballerina-style and just touch enough of it to give it shove.

That shove _my ramblings, I present to you. Whoever you may be.

Of Maiming or Because I said So!

I got up today.

Ready to take on the world.

By mid afternoon my head was spinning in multitudinous directions. I started grumbling and bitching in my own head. To get over it I started day dreaming about the next season of Dexter and how would he get out of explaining to his sister (who is in love with him) about the murder she sees him committing and .........

and wham

I could swear it was someone inside me.

The only thing he said was "Seriously????"

I was stunned for a moment. Jumped out of my chair and started pacing and realised that something inside of me was screaming!

Zahra! Good God! Has it come to this? Are you stupid? You ridiculous old senseless ..... umm (and other inappropriate words to myself).

We are conditioned to be parasites from birth.

We are spoon-fed at school. I remember getting lower grades at school because I didnt copy the answer exact same to same from the text book. I used to pour over my answers and question my teachers but I was just told to 'print' my answers.

I was not allowed to question.

When I found some idea contradictory, I was not allowed to contradict.

When I found something new that the teacher didnt know, I was rebuked.

When something did not get through my skull, I was called stupid and told to memorize.

("Who has heard of "other" teaching methods?")

I was told to respect the teachers I didnt respect.

I was told to do things that I was not taught to do and expected to do them like a craftsman.

I was told....

I was ordered...

I was told....

I was ordered...

I was ordered...

.................and I was told not to "THINK".

My elders had already done the thinking for me.

False doctrines were ingrained and hammered into us :

Not tell the truth cause it will hurt others.

Not share ideas that are different, it may cause outrage and ostracism.

I was told to understand and compromise that which I thought was false.

and as I thought about me and my generation being maimed, I realised its been like a vicious circle. This story has probably been going on for generations. Those who realised it, got liberated. Those who didnt, are right now watching Star Plus ke saas bahu dramey and crying over them or busy 'poondying' at girls the age of their kids' or sitting frustrated at some frustrating place doing frustrating work and wishing to just get some sleep without the power going out.

By the time I have finished writing and editing this, they will be calling up their friends and chittering chattering about "oh do you know!"es or sippping tea and watching the latest atrocities on the news or watching cricket (depends if there is a live match going on and lots of gambling to be done or not) or yelling at things and people who are inconsequential or...or ...or ...or...

Incidently I read this and I dont care how long it takes, just shut up and read it!

I have "ORDERED it!."

and do it because "I HAVE SAID SO.!!"

and do it because "I AM TELLING YOU TO!!!."

and because "I KNOW BETTER!!!!." and you DON'T!!!!

so dont you dare........OR ELSE!!!

copy paste material: Queues of Circular Complaints

and for the season finale quote.....

They advertise not to waste electricity. How about advertising about the one thats in everyone's brain?

Conflict....

Its Thursday morning and a weekend here in the cold desert that I have come to call home. Was aimlessly wandering in the web of the web and came across another Robert Frost poem; and wondering why haven't come across it till now. It goes like this.

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leafs a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

WHAT the #$%^$^ is going on?

What the *bleep* is going on with people?

I usually get up bright and early at the crack of dawn, make myself a cup of tea and open google chrome. Check my mails, browse through a couple of newspapers, read the highlights on answers.com and … and ... turn facebook on.

I procrastinate going to this ultra ridiculous website. I admit that I am not the biggest fan of facebook. Infact one of the only truly useful features are the photo album and the marketplace. Apart from its roaring merits… which are that it has totally commercialized friendship and becoming like a big "IN" "CoOooL!" brand… are that it has promoted the human race from a telly tubby couch potato to the high-tech PC cabbage.

  There are these countless applications, quizzes, kisses and hugs and chocolates and cakes and blah blah blah and God-knows-whats that allow you to …hmmm do something. Something like wasting time.

 

 Who makes these things? And on top of that I am amazed at who actually uses them?

 

 Ok this was a roar! Your name is in the top ten SEXY names of ALL TIME!?

Hahahahaaaaa!

For those of you who are curious, the name that I erased is totally alien to a majority of the people in the world. And the thing to think here is what makes a name sexy? By what scale or measure?

 

Comeon! Seriously….comeon!

How many emails and spams etc have we seen this in!

 

 Seriously?

“A hero! Sigh! What about my superpowers of thinking that are getting wasted by doing this stupid quiz?”

  I hear these remarks that ‘Oh no… facebook is so much fun!’, ‘You are being too cynical’ and ‘It’s a good time pass’. And there are those that hear me out but then go home and laze away on the website for hours anyway.  It has created a sad isolation. 

The sport and activity that allowed our bodies and minds to create and simply have fun is replaced with a keyboard and a monitor. Its just sad. 

This is a comment I read on another website: By Facebook you find friends... Is it really true? All of them who are named as your friends on Facebook, are they your friends in real life? If you have friends in real life do you need Facebook? I don't think so. 

  We have mastered a lot of things …and I mean a LOT of things. I am still at times literally in awe of the machine that warms my food all the time to the one that brings the electricity to my home. But even though we are at an epoch , we are still sitting in that chair and giggling to senseless things. We have lost sight of the valuable and the important.  We have lost control … no rather forgotten ourselves.

It is truly truly the ultimate sin.

Because of all things in existence…

We are the ultimate creation.

After a long sleep

Its been a long time. I am refraining from checking when I last blogged. Its not that I haven't thought of it. It was just sitting in the corner of my head. When I came up with words, the keyboard wasn't there and when the screen was staring at me, my brain stubbornly stared back.
I guess its a party tonight cause they are both here with me....I will start off with posting something I had written back in 2009. I had published it and then pulled it back down because of uncertainty. But now more than ever, I think my theory stands. So go ahead and read.

The day I nearly got arrested in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

There are times when things happen, but the mind and body is a mere guest to the scenes played out. And then in the quiet 4 am of an ordinary sleepless night , the mind comes to an utter realization of the profoundness of what had happened months ago.

Well the story is something like this...

We were 5 people. Myself and my husband Ammar, my friend Umaima and her husband Taha, and good old Ali Bhai. It was weekend night and left with only one choice of entertainment (feeding our bellies), we head out to a Peshawari place in the most crowd-infested streets of Thuqba (an old part of Khobar). Usually cringing away from such jammed areas, we are drawn every time by those hot, mouthwatering, sweat-laced chapli kababs and karhai that remind us of Karachi and its dhabbas.

The deal here however is that there is no place for ladies to sit. Or as in Saudia, "No Family Section". With saliva filled mouths awaiting our meals, we ladies sit in the car and try to share our food with the seats we sit on. As it happened that on this fine hot desert evening, I went over to my friend's Camry and hopped in. She was seated in the front passenger seat and convinced me to sit in the driver's seat because it was practical to put the tray on the box in the middle of the seats. At this point I can hear my enlightened reader's go "Aaaaaaah ....". But the Aaaah comes later, after our food was all plunged down our esophagus and the men returned, there came a policeman knocking down my window.

The thing to understand is that its very difficult to make Saudi police or any official for that matter to understand anything at all.

There is the language problem.

Then there is the temperament problem.

Then there is the social problem.

There is the ego problem.

The list goes on.

Anyhow, we made the guy understand with what little Arabic we knew that we were just eating in the car and I had not driven and come out on my own. Oh... did I mention before... women cant drive in KSA??? Yep, this is the world's only country that doesn't allow its women to drive. Its a crime and is severely punished. Jail. Fine. The whole works.

So back to the guy and his insistance that I had driven myself to this place to eat, and to top off the frying pan effect, another greasy substance arrives to add to the fuel; a motawwa.

This word brings with it all levels of negative feelings. Motawwas are the religious police from the Ministry of Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. No I am NOT making it up! Such a ministry EXISTS in KSA. So now the Motawwa who are always all too eager to jump in and pounce on any wrong doing gets involved.

Our story is told again. It gets revalued. The food tray provides evidence.

They reluctantly agree putting all facts that I could not have driven the car to the place, specially with all the men backing us up.

We are told to go.

We sigh ; relieved.

Ready to almost run ourselves out of our skins, we are stopped once again and told that:

"... and if ever ... I am ever ... seated behind the steering wheel ..."

Money is the Root of All Good

I was reading Atlas Shrugged this past week. It is a long and difficult journey through the book. But every second of reading it was worth it. When I finished, I was exalted.

I am posting an edited excerpt from the book. This was being said by Francisco de Anconia, one of the books' heroes ; addressing a general gathering but directing it towards Hank Rearden.

"So you think that money is the root of all evil? "Have you ever asked what is the root of money?
Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is made possible only by the men who produce.
When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of honor--your claim upon the energy of the men who produce. Your wallet is your statement of hope that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on that moral principle which is the root of money. But you say that money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak? What strength do you mean? It is not the strength of guns or muscles. Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. Is money made by the intelligent at the expense of the fools? An honest man is one who knows that he can't consume more than he has produced.' To trade by means of money is the code of the men of good will. Money rests on the axiom that every man is the owner of his mind and his effort. Money demands of you the recognition that men must work for their own benefit, not for their own injury, for their gain, not their loss--that the common bond among men is not the exchange of suffering, but the exchange of goods.
Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's stupidity, but your talent to their reason; it demands that you buy, not the shoddiest they offer, but the best that your money can find.
But money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver. It will give you the means for the satisfaction of your desires, but it will not provide you with desires.
Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the incompetent. Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth--the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started. If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him.
If so, then your money will not give you a moment's or a penny's worth of joy. Money will not serve the mind that cannot match it.

Alarm Clock!!

I admit I have been sleeping. I knew I had been sleeping.
Its so easy to sleep than to be awake in this age and time. My country is sleeping. I see it everyday in the news, I hear it from the people. The country I right now live in, which conjures up the fallacy that to be a woman is a sin let alone let"allow" her to vote or drive a car. The pain is too much. And hence, its easier to not think. To not struggle.
To just watch that episode of 'Desperate Housewives' or watch some neurons-killing Indian film. To not just escape but to stay there. To just be still.
But isn't that what means death?To not think is to not exist. To not want, is to not live.
and I choose to live.[Image]
We have lost many of our virtues. The first one ....thought; the other reason and another laziness. Reason without thought is stupidity. It is senseless, baseless _ a fallacy, an acceptance of darkness...saying yes to a void.If we act on something without reason, without thought, it holds no value. Because it was acted without reason...without spirit...without TRUTH.The contradiction to reason is foolishness, laziness, cowardice and all that is vice.
The question here is even when we know the truth and gain the wisdom of reason... we lack to act. The lack of action is an action unto itself_ its an inaction.When we decide that we are going to act upon inaction, we are making a noose for our own self; making a wreath for our own funeral. I will not fashion some frivolous speech or pump you with Red Bull. Just this that :
Think, Reason, Pursue and Triumph!