Beyond the glass wall

Lately we all have been living most time of the day in incubators, locked away from fresh air and sunlight….hardly do we get to know if it’s sunny outside or have the clouds veiled the big yolk on the sky behind their silvery fluff. Plugged onto one channel of FM or another I get to hear the shifts in the moods of weather, when it gets windy, dry or hot. It’s through the magic toys of telecom that I know about the world of outside. Far away from the real walking talking world I sit locked up in my small semi cubicle like location in a hall flooded with bright yet soothingly milky beams of energy saver lights

 

I am sure most of us work under pretty comfortable office environs…. I am also quite happy with the large hall where I sit with it’s bright yet milky lighting coming from the energy saver tubes. The many split AC’s keep the temperature pleasantly cool even uncomfortably cold too sometimes still being in this  customized atmosphere connected to the world through internet, phones, radios and mobiles I often end up feeling oddly sad and living in an unreal, lonely world.

 

My office is such that its suites are peppered over four floors of the same building and to me it’s a treat to be going g over skipping to one or the other when work needs require. Climbing up or down the flight of steps and deliberately staying away from elevators (not very comfortable in closed in shafts) I revel in the short time for which I can look at the blue sky and feel the power of wind at such height. Just yesterday Summera, Ahsan (both of whom are my teammates) were discussing about Day time light savings and Ahsan threw us a rhetoric: “So what good will it be?”

I promptly replied: “Oh you’ll be able to go home in daylight!!”

Minding the 0’s and 1’s of the digital world I am sure most of crave for the music of true kind…like for example while praying in the silence of a conference room of our second floor I can distinctly hear a quail singing and  subconsciously I pray long and slow…soothed all over from the spiritual and the natural therapies.

 

No I am not complaining, just thinking that how much we are missing with the robotic routines that we have been programmed into…gradually sedating the part of mind that imagines and wonders….

 

How many days it’s been since I saw an eagle swoop down from the sky? When was the last time I saw the sun rise…Day and night have just become one of those normal, generally understood facts with no more charm and  wonder at how it’s really amazing when light fades and darkness engulfs. Or how the tiny ray of light struggles through the thick carpeting of darkness and bursts forth into the brilliance of day. It’s been ages since I looked up and exclaimed, : “Hey that cloud resembles an elephant”….do not remember when was the last time I focused on the  echoes of the wheezing crickets and  tried to find the little insects in the dead of night.

 

My parents and friends think me crazy for often asking my folks not to come pick me up in car and I go home hanging in buses halfway and then walking part of the way home. But I have realized that with privileges comes remoteness. After a long day spent holed up in my office eyes glued to computer’s screen and brain spitting up words for formal documents with smartly dressed semi tired looking people around, I very much more prefer some pumping up of  legs, exercising of eyes, gulping up the fresh air though badly polluted and in all feel the world as it truly is.

 

After moving around the crème de la crème of computer scientists and engineers it is like a realization of a new world, the other half, the majority of the people that are there in my country. Rubbing shoulders with the less privileged makes you appreciate what you have, it gives you recognition of  pain, sorrow, struggle and the blatant face of life out of the bubble in which we exist.  Blended in the hordes of  travelers, occasionally exchanging a few words, I realize that to them I am no one special , I am just another traveler….my education, my family background, my designation at office is absolutely nothing noteworthy…and I learn the big lesson of  equality…I see the bigger picture.

 

Alighting from the bus and walking home while dodging the cars and wayward pedestrians there is a spring in my step as I briskly walk homewards, with the breeze refreshing my senses and the exercise revitalizing my energy. I occasionally look up and smile at the new moon or a spot a star or two… draining down all the thoughts in my brain to somewhere distant because this brief feeling of liberty is somewhat exhilarating.  After the crunch of the day and living through both artificial and natural there is no better feeling in the world than thinking that there at home your parents and siblings wait for you and you think yeah man maybe I am happy to be finally getting home!!

The way we do it…

 It’s a blessing to have people around, especially ones who can keep your brain churning with activity and keep oiling your mind’s cogwheels with creative juices and ideas…..I’m Alhamdulillah endowed with this blessing again and again….besides as a dear friend of mine, who recently got married and heaped up on all the cosmic logic said to me yesterday on the phone:

“You know it’s all about giving people time and then they come out of their shells and you’ll be amazed at what they can be“, she was happy that all her university buddies had blossomed into someone people looked up to. I readily agreed with her….time had taught me just the same lesson….

So anyways now that I come to office each day, I feel happy to have colleagues who help me learn new things every passing hour. Summera has this great love for books and Meta Physics, while Gul is into talking about the realities of life plus the practical approach to everything and making sound decisions. Zehra likes to tell what is wrong with what we are doing and to boost everyone’s morale unfortunately forgetting to buck up when she is entangled within checking a deadly patch from Phoenix…our company’s middleware.

I like to listen and smile at all their conversations and pitch in my two cents whenever I can….every new day adds a little to my grey matter and today Summera showed me this simple but deep quote…she read it in this book she’s reading…”Chocolate for the woman’s soul” (I bet every girl would love to read that book )

“What we are is God’s gift to us

What we become is our gift to God”

Author unknown

Apparently I’ve come across this quote so many times subconsciously but sometimes you need a little push to really see what is obvious. ‘I can’t help the way we look, but the expression I sport is entirely up to me”  said the Orkut profile of my same cosmically logical friend and now that I come to think of it I realize that as Captain Planet said “The power is YOURS” power really is ours. It’s up to us to become ‘SOMEONE’ from ‘ANYONE’. When at crossroads there are always two ways to choose from, the right way and the wrong way….and perchance there may be a mid way but it’s up to us that which path we choose…..the catch being that we do have to choose one or the other else we’ll become stagnant, and stagnant things become murky.

By the end of the day all that matters is how sincerely we tried to bring about something good, good in us, good in society, good in relationships, good in anything …and that is when God smiles down on us because He is proud that His most beloved creation is aspiring and striving for the truth and right….the very reasons Almighty created us for

Being in Al Ain and other things

Finishes the strange year of 2007 also marking the finish of our trip and a very timely end too. We’ve almost depleted all our resources going crazy with all the shopping that we have done… 

The dim lights in my Chacha Jii’s lounge and the slightly cold weather has made me want to ramble on about my trip so here goes 

• I  hail theVisa Debit card….it’s been a lot of fun taking out Dirhams from the Arabic ATMs.  
•  I  have finally bought the PS2 for us three siblings and this has totally depleted my SCB account but why it does feel grand to be able to play the Oldest sister sometimes
• I’m now looking for suggestions for cool strategy games to play on it in the likes of CSI etc
• Al Ain makes me feel as if I’m living in a fantasy town, one that you see in the Tom and Jerry cartoons
• Mubazzira and Jabl-e-Hafeeth, the green and rocky picnic spot is my favorite place over here. Last year we climbed an easy hill but this time our heroics went a step forward as we hiked on a steeper and a dash more slippery slope.
• Though every other person here drives a Land Cruiser, I still like a sporty Charger, Merc or a Porsche better.
• I wish I could have gone on a desert Safari too but God willing I’ll do that some other time
• We are wondering on our mode of transport to home from Karachi airport tomorrow…I wish the Taxis have started running again…otherwise I’m thinking how many days more will it be before we’ll finally be able to reach our door step by foot!
• I shall miss having to sleep in the fairy tale like room with ceiling to floor French windows and through whichi could see the moon travelling as night turned into day
• One thing which impressed me about Al Ain and which I didn’t notice last year is the way the natives always dress in their indegenuous clothes…and despite the ladies being covered entirely in the black abayas they have too much grace and poise…pretty impressive.
• I observed to my Chacha Jii that how unfortunate it is that these filthy rich Arabs may never know how much fun it is to eat a plate of ‘chaat’ or a dirty ‘bun kabab’ sitting by the road side
• Being in a foreign land makes you crazy enough to buy a stupid thing for 15 AEDs just because it’s simply of 15 bucks even though it is 16.50 x 15 in your own currency.
• It’s good to be going back to your home, it makes you appreciate the little things in life…for example you remember to thank God that He has made you fortunate enough to be able to go so many places and learn so many things.
• Dear Allah Mian jii please make this coming year a blessing for our country, our people, and everyone around…and help us through these times darkness and despair…. Aameen
• So before I set to fly home ward….Fee Amaan Allah to ye all and have a satisfying New Year!

letting off steam

Just a thought which struck…

when you are frustrated and angry and just about to snap, you can go ride a very fast moving roller coaster or some such in an amusment park, where it’s all right to scream your lungs out just for the heck of it…..so to let the burst of emotions out you can not only scream but have a hell of a lot of fun too for speed along with fresh air is absolutely exhilerating.

A computer is a Baby’s best friend!

Back then when I was 8, computer was a wonder machine, one you used to play Prince of Persia or Dave on…back then teachers taught us how to put commands in Logo and create a colored square or a circle. Or if we got lucky we got to play that Hangman game or another one where a dragon flew over a castle’s tower while we tried to answer a question…while my brother told me they played Roboman in their branch. At that time we learned what were floppies the big ones and how we operated via the DOS and at home I longed for a colored screen computer and I had never dreamed that their could be speakers as well or that a thing called mouse would revolutionize the transportation of commands within this magic box………….Today my 10 year old kid sister is practically born under the shadow of computers. She knows about cutting, pasting, editing, creating folders and is hot on having a hotmail account to chat with her friends as well as get one on Orkut to stay in touch. she has a half a dozen of her creations on Ms Paint, Powerpoint and Word stored in my computer and she loves to play games on it.

She talks about USBs and CDs and doesn’t even know what a floppy is…I mean the 3″ floppy has also been so out that I remember if perchance someone saw you with one in my university they stared at you with disbelief, like you were committing a social suicide or something. My little one likes to go online to play her games on Barbie.com or just to log in so that her account may not close down. I remember that I made user accounts for each member of the family oin my Laptop, my account is the free one, got nothing to hide my brother has a password, but the most shocking of all was when I discovered that my Baby had one too….”Heeroo, you have a password? how did you do it?” I asked her, and honestly I didn’t really know how we activated one either (So Ok I’m a computer dunce in more ways than one sometimes). Hira looke at me kind of odd and said “Don’t you know Baji, it’s so simple…see you go in there” she put the cursor on START->ControlPanel->User Accounts->Changepasswords and then finished up with : “…itna assaan tou hai”

At another instant, at the desktop in my brother’s room which I am using for the network access (Go Global Net!) now a days because the darned landlines have been dead, like forever…I notice one user account with his name and the other one with the name of Cute Persons…the one with the password. Naturally I did not try to venture in that one but it always hit me as a sissy name to be put by a full grown young man….until one day my Little angel said :

 ”Baji why doesn’t anything open on the net, I open Internet Explorer but nothing opens!”

I told her that she had to dial up the Lan connection using that Global Net icon on desktop just like the dialup to get the service started….she looked contemplative and replied : “but their is no such icon on my desktop….and waisay the password for my account is__________”

“What? Cute Persons is your account Heeroo?”

she replied in affimative, proudly telling me that she created it for herself on Ahmad’s computer so that it will be all hers….

It’s amusing to see how kids these days are so into technology…I remember that on the orientation day of my university, the network incharge had asked if their was anyone in the room who didnot know how to create a folder on the desktop…..Mine was the only hand that shot up…and frankly I wasn’t even ashamed…ofcourse I’ll never learn if I choose to hide what I don’t know, heck I didn’t even know how to create an email account till I was well into the end of my first semester and it became inevitable that I had one because my Literary Club’s meetings and everything were decided on the Yahoo! groups…….WheW!

It’s fun to see the contrast in what time was like when I was a kid( and that wasn’t a very long time ago either) and how it is with the little people today, to them digitals are a regular part of life, mobiles, DVD players, MP4s, cordless,car remotes, GPS devices…things that we saw as the part of Sci Fi movies but Whoa! it’s real life for them.

So what do I say…am I lucky or what to have been born in the age of transitions, the age where I saw the history take it’s leave silently and the ultra modern come in with a at some 100Mbps…

World hold on….

 I could say a score on the disturbed political system of my country and bad ethical conditions and how we are so dead and morbid as a nation but frankly I’m too tired of same old wives’ tale, of too much talk and too little action…also when I know that it is a well understood truth but not necessarily the entire one. Maybe I’ve entered the twilight zone where nothing registers anymore…but the half sun is always shining….that’s me…the strangest pessimistic optimist ever….

Well 10 years down the lane and with perfect periodicity we are on the route to the martial law again (I wish I could search the graph of the martial laws in Pakland but I’m too lazy to do that right now). Democracy, dictatorship, are simply words found in the D section of a dictionary. Right now all I care about is the peace within my land. I fear for the economy, the crash that may ensue. I’m afraid of strikes and rallies and suicide bombers and I most certainly detest the concept of our own brave young men fighting and killing our own brave, young men.

Too early to say anything…the doves are straining to fly south, the eagles have spread their wings and their sharp sight is looking for prey….but most satisfied of all, are the vultures smugly perched atop trees and waiting for the first drop of blood to ooze…

Lost….lives and love

 There is nothing in the world more heart wrenching than a child wailing for a dead parent…..unless it’s a parent carrying the casket of his baby no matter how old he may be…..

I’ve been witness to the former situation and have heard of the latter ones. I remember how a second cousin of mine, just 10 then, cried by her deceased mother’s body. She had cried long and hard and then sat quietly by it tugging at the threads of her shroud to keep with her as a last memento of her loved mother. My Mom had gently taken away those frayed whites from her tearfully telling her that it’s no use, I had never thought my mother did something more cruel. I vividly remember that persistent satisfaction of my Khala’s still face, the glow that comes after a person comes out of a suffering long and intense…. I remember waking up in the middle of that night because my Khala’a  frozen form covered in snow white sheets kept haunting my dreams…I had uttered a cry of horror and instantly my Dad had come from the next room to take me to their room where I had cried myself to sleep between my Mother’s protective, warm embrace….ironically there being no comforting hollow around the grieving cousins of mine.

Two years later my very same cousins lost their father as well…and now almost nine years from hence they have come a long way, older brother working in a firm after competing his MBA, the other one commissioned in Army while taking an engineering degree from NUST, and the youngest, the sister I talked about is doing her Bachelor’s from Punjab University but not all’s well that ends well….Over the years, though not in close contact, I have had been in correspondence with my younger cousin who initially lived in Karachi with her instant uncle but then moved to Lahore with her eldest brother when the obvious taunting and hurting got beyond bearing. She has turned out to be quite a fine young lady, with elegance of carriage and polished manners and not to mention the dark, good looks with her huge eyes clearly reflecting the pain of hurt, anger, sadness accumulated over the years from their depths.

I had observed a few days back to my mother that there is something about the eyes of the people in pain. I had said that there is a certain stillness about someone in agony but who is not willing to open up to the world. When such people smile the mirth does not reach their eyes and that draws an aura of mystery around them…My cousin is rightfully lively and with us she laughs and talks like any other person her age but somewhere deep down she is as bitter and anguished as an eagle who has scratched its wing somewhere. At a very young age she’s experienced what it is lose someone and possibly the only people who care about you without any string attached, she’s learned how people could be saccharine sweet when circumstances want and how they turn into green faced goblins when the world turns around…and say as I might I can never (and I thank Allah mian for that too) really feel what she or people in her circumstances undergo…but don’t I wish there could be some way to suck out the pain from a heart bleeding silently.

It’s so easy for us to overlook the wholesomeness brought in our lives by the people who love us until we lose them. Sometimes you can do nothing about the loss but at other times often we ourselves let these precious gems slip out of our hands. Deep down we all know we love each other but are unable to say so…I seldom go up to my Mom or Dad and tell them how much they mean to me. I’ve almost never said outright to my brother that he is the one who has kept my world rocking and alive (and I’m not sure if I ever will directly either, I’m the cold one J) but I do always say that to my baby sister, I can’t be uppity with little children now can I? From all my heart I wish to hold on to these blessings of Almighty for a long, long time InshaAllah.

There is no replacement for those who go away as there is no immediate remedy for a broken and hurting heart. But there is a chance to live every moment with the people who make our days so much brighter and worth living for. But time is the only solution for people nurturing wounds on their soul and they need someone who’ll listen and understand what the silence in their eyes says, not shower them with unwanted pity. However this just goes to show that people in the world have so many bigger problems than we can imagine and yet we wallow in our small losses and defeats. I just hope we could snap out of our own petty miseries of not having the best car, of not having beauty and a great figure, of not being popular, of not having a well paying job, of not having glamour and fame in our lives, to realize how much other people need us and how we can make life a shade brighter for those around us….Wish we could just thank Allah(SWT) for His great blessings. Amen

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I dedicate this piece of writing to my cousin (who btw may never read this, she’s not into blogging) and to all those people who have lost someone they loved most dearly…I pray that may Almighty Allah bless their souls and give you the courage to live your lives again Amen.

And I also dedicate this piece of writing to a few of my those friends who have lost someone not to mortality (God forbid) but have just lost them because some things just could not be, I pray and hope that you guys could realize sooner than later that some people, as Daniele Steel says, come in our lives just like special gifts, meant to teach us something and then move away….there is a whole life ahead of you guys, Good Luck!

Is the freedom of choice yours?

 Sometimes simple telephonic conversations can trigger a strange chain of thoughts, the following bit of talking got me to write this post…here’s how:

“So when are you giving me that guest post you’ve promised?” she asked annoyed a  bit at my tardiness .

“I will…..soon, I promise, I’ve written it half already but well…“

“It won’t hurt if you’ll cut an hour off your sleep…you lazy bones” she admonished me…

“Oh no! no …this time it’s not about being lazy…it’s about well not feeling like writing….you know after what I wrote about words not being effective?” I tried to explain the muddled state of my mind…

“Well it just means you are normal. Btw you know of late I’ve been observing that ______’s blog has become a bit dry and. _________’s blog is also becoming very impersonal” she paused and after contemplating a second she said ” You know as the popularity of their blog have risen so have the topics become more generalized, I  even see myself doing that gradually……..”

When I had hung up after half an hour of playful bantering I thought back to what she had said, the continual philosopher that she is, she tends to say quite weighty things sometimes, like for instance her mentioning:

” I think that as the popularity of the blog grows so do your limitations, you have to be careful about what you write!”

It’s funny how what we write might directly or indirectly reflect what sort of people we are, what we think, what are our opinions and when this thing goes public even beyond borders….our liberty to be expressive at ease is arrested….kinda like with the famous personalities and paparazzi. With their every move being watched, the high and mighty often lose the originality of their expressions, it all becomes rehearsed and poised…how horrible!

However there is also another side to this as there always is to everything….to people who don’t know you they may see you or try to see you only through the eyes of what you write….and it is so easy for anyone to look cool or serious or funny or sensitive when you are not present in person. I mean it’s so easy to make yourself known as an entirely another person to the people who may not know you or barely know you….but the decision that if it is the real ‘you’ or the ‘you’ you want to be known to the world is left upon the discretion of the readers.

But the question remains that do you care?

Would it bother you if people who don’t know you would start making assumptions about you?

Would you still keep writing or posting what you feel or think?

Let’s face it, once you’re on the web…you are then public property , to be thought about or analyzed in several different ways as there are different people.

As far as my opinion is concerned, it’s more about drawing the line in between what you think needs to go online and what is supposed to stay personal even when veiled under quotes and fiction….this world is a small place and you don’t want yourself being so transparent that every Tom, Dick and Harry would know about your who, what, where and when!

It’s a strange and kind of boring debate I got myself into but what the heck isn’t blogging all about sharing your ideas and opinions so that you not only get things off your system but are able to have a second opinion about them too?