Salt

I was once told by a friend and recently reminded that "Sometimes what holds you together and tears you apart are the same thing".

It was like a tight slap in the face. A tight slap that just appears out of nowhere as soon as you turn your head; a slap before which the wind doesn't touch your face to warn you about the fall from the cliff of self-esteem.

I was floating in a sea of emotions, watching the dance of the crystals on the water's surface. The day had been tiring but very constructive, as I saw it and the sea was where I decided to retire for the night. The crystals danced with the current, intoxicated by the touch of moonlight. The sky was clear- like my heart. I liked clouds but I was grateful for this clarity because I loved the presence of the moon to make my picture perfect. Absorbed in the moment as if I belonged to canvas, without thinking, I let go and then it hit me with a huge splash. Yes, the icy water rose and slapped me. I whirled and hit the ground face down.

I thought it would carry me away and I would lose the parts of me that it hadn't already claimed. I waited for the wrath with eyes closed because I was afraid the sight would be too agonizing. The water receded, leaving me with a bleeding nose, sodden in self-loath. I tried gathering what was mine, the bits of self-esteem strewn across the surface among the shreds of glass that looked no more like crystals. I groped around, making frantic, vain attempts to grab on to them before the salt burned them and they disappeared. I stopped as I smelled my blood, which was no more a surprise than the consequence of trusting the angry sea.

I now understood that the sky was clear in fear of the rising waves, to make way for the storm; not to honour my wish.

Cower

It rained so hard.
We ran for cover.
We hid.
It found us.
It hurt us.
It bored holes-
In the sky
In the shades
In the walls
In us.

It ran on the ground
It didn't seep in;
It only ran out
Gushed out
Out of us.
It rained on us.
It rained around us.
It rained through us.
It rained without us.

We ran
We kept running;
We kept crying
Crying for help
Crying in pain;
Sighing in vain
Drenched in rain.

They saw us.
From their windows.
Under the lights
The mellow lights
The warm lights
That blazed like fire
With stifled ire
Ire we held
In our hearts
Ire that held
The lights on fire.

The rain went bad
The crowd went mad
We looked around
We looked within
We were drenched.
In red.
The rain was red.
Yes, blood it shed.
Our blood.
Then came a flood.
A flood of lies.
A flood of cries
The flood of blood.

They filled their cups
They raised their cups
They made a toast
They laughed
They chatted
They shopped
They stopped
They looked
Out their windows
Out of their world
They checked:
We were reduced
Reduced
As of yesterday
Reduced to sacks
Reduced to numbers
Reduced to ashes.

They resumed:
They fed
On our tears,
Tears we shed
As we bled
With the rain.
They were satiated.

The Phase of Red Haze

One day you wake up and switch the T.V. on to see a blast of red and pink and hearts and fur. If you survive that, you reach for the remote with quivering hands since most of your energy was lost when your eyes popped out and bled to death. By the moment you find the remote, manage to keep your heart beating and your lungs properly aerated (though I could be strangled for using such a layman term when I’m a pre-med), you realize that Valentine’s Day is just around the corner.

Poor old Saint Valentine (s). They could never have imagined they would be remembered centuries later in the ‘ultimate’ celebration of love. I don’t know if their saintly nature would permit them to be happy about it or they would just run off to a cave, take an oath of silence and spend all their lives praying to be redeemed of such worldly fame. However, if they didn’t have a nature quite so simple they could have realized that this fame could mean the success of their mission to spread Christianity, if used properly. As it turns out, they weren’t quite so fortunate because not only were they simple and faced severe persecution at the hands of the Roman dictators but the Catholic calendar refused to recognize their sacrifice and deleted their names from history!

Yes, I know their story is sad. But ours is grimmer. Every year, we set out to celebrate this day with an unwavering sense of responsibility. There are cards, gifts and God knows what not, perhaps all in the spirit of expressing unity with Christendom, because as they say “The spirit is universal!” But what if the whole idea isn’t Christian at all? We are expressing unity with Paganism? Plausible, but the problem lies in the fact that this isn’t even a real festival! It’s a mixture of Literature, imagination, confused history and mirch masala!

According to the Catholic encyclopedia, there are three saints by the given name who died on 14^th February in different years. The Encyclopedia states that Valentine of Rome died about 269 AD and Valentine of Terni died about 197 AD, all we know about the third one through this source is that he died in Africa. Notably, there are no romantic elements in their original biographies and this connection was created in the 14^th century. Those who believe that it was these martyrdoms that came to be celebrated by Christianity as the ultimate sacrifice for love are wrong for the following reasons:

1. Why would Christianity celebrate these ‘persecutions’ as the sacrifice for romantic love?

2. Christianity was not even prevalent at that time. The Roman Empire followed polytheism and roman imperial cult up to 380 AD. The reason why these saints were persecuted was that Christianity was unacceptable for the Romans. Why would these Romans allow a celebration that paid homage to a man they’d killed, when the killing was meant to demean his influence?

Clearly, Christianity had not by then decided to make such a big deal out of it, which is probably why they forgot to take enough notes about these ‘martyrs’. And maybe that is why these characters were an easy target to incorporate into a mesh of lies.

The first recorded association of these events with romantic love came in a great work of Literature in 1382. Geoffrey Chaucer, sometimes known as the father of English Literature made a reference to Valentine’s Day in the popular context in his poem “Parlement of Foules”. Chaucer wrote:

For this was on seynt Volantynys day
Whan euery bryd comyth there to chese his make.

["For this was Saint Valentine's Day, when every bird cometh there to choose his mate."]

This poem was written in 1382 to honour the first anniversary of the engagement of King Richard II of England to Anne of Bohemia, which had taken place on May 2^nd, 1381.

It is invariably assumed that Chaucer was referring to February 14^th as Valentine’s Day; however that was hardly the mating season for English birds. It is thus argued by reliable critics that he was instead pointing to May 2^nd, (the King’s engagement day) which is the saint’s day for Valentine of Genoa. Being a poet of inenarrable profundity and having a wild imagination, Chaucer used birds to symbolize the King’s union with Anne, (hence the origin of the phrase ‘love birds’) and made a historical reference to another saint Valentine, simply to record the event in history. However, Chaucer seems to have achieved a lot more than that.

It has been proposed by various critics since then that the connection between Valentine’s Day and sentimentalities was indeed built by Chaucer but over time it began to be seen in a different context – that related to Lupercalia. In ancient Rome, Lupercalia was a ritual practiced between 13^th and 15^th February to offer sacrifice to the Gods in order to ward off evil spirits and welcome purity, health and fertility. It’s sad that they were deluded into thinking that their wishes were granted because their limestone gods were pleased by their sacrifice and remained unable to figure out that spring – the time of earth’s fertility came after February anyway!

Since this was also the time when most of the saints named Valentine were executed and Chaucer had already introduced the idea, a confused bunch of people – who did not know history too well – decided to mistake Chaucer’s St. Valentine and its context for some other events and construe things into something they weren’t, all in the hope of creating Philosophy/Literature or a place in history. This is how we ended up with what we now know as the spirit of Valentine’s Day: hearts, furs, red and cupid, love calculators, ‘u r da luv of ma lyf’ and the (mostly despicable) likes.

How touching, right? If only I had a heart.

Note: It is not the least of my intentions to offend anybody or disrespect any faith. I have written this simply as a service to humanity because I strongly believe that we get pressurized by the ‘flow’ and do things just because everybody else is doing them, without knowing why. This attitude is not healthy for any society because it reflects that we have an individuality crisis and I simply want my readers to know why we do certain things and that we DO have a choice.

Laws of retardation:Theory Four -Taking over

World in order

I can proudly say that my plan to take over the world is now complete. It took me some 18 years to finally get here and I’m deeply grateful to the Venus-lings for all their motivation and support. All hail Venus!

On a lonely summer day, I realized I was becoming a vegetable because I could not frame coherent thoughts and my vocabulary seemed to be rotting away with a rather putrid stench. It was truly devastating and I set out to investigate the cause, which I was shell-shocked to find: It was part of the greater plan of the Venus-lings to mess with my head. They wanted to turn me into a vegetable so that I would become useless for the Earth and they could take me away to Venus and make me their queen. The question is, why did they choose ME of all people for this prestigious, yet immensely important role? The answer is as following:

1. I love Venus too much and they received these signals confirming that from my heart and brain and the apple-pie I’m going to use soon. They were baffled by those signals and couldn’t find any such signal from a single Venus-ling! I mean I had even written two poems on Venus! They were just overwhelmed by my mis-directed patriotism and totally ashamed that I wasn’t one of them so they decided I deserved to be their queen (there are no immigration facilities up there so being queen was kind of essential or the army would take me down).

2. They realized the Earth didn’t deserve me because it had become too sad for me to live in and my heart couldn't take it anymore, even the apple-pie would crumble away too soon. Nobody on earth except Subata Khalid understood what I said most of the time or not in full depth at least and most of them gave me a hard time about it, trying to put me off. The Venus-lings realized I needed an escape and the power to make things right. That would only happen if I was the queen of some other planet.

3. They were tired of watching the ill-health of the earth and decided it was time for change. I was the only one thinking of a revolution in my part of the world and people were being too mean to me about it so they decided I deserved a chance to lead the change. I also have a blog called ‘Floodgates’ for crying out loud! They just understood the ideology behind it and were too impressed.

4. They had to make me queen anyway so they decided to throw in the Earth complementary for good measure too. I mean what more damage could possibly occur to it?

Armor and artillery

First and foremost, whoever is willing to accompany me needs to have their heart replaced with an apple pie- that is the sole armor we require. We shall then order sets of cowboy boots, enabled with the most modern, efficient, and possibly high-tech spurs. This will be taken care of by Saba’s Babu and we are deeply grateful to both of them in advance.

I know I've mentioned cowboy boots and they have a more ruthless appeal to the barracuda senses but I prefer Jimmy Choos. They are just irresistible!

Mc Donald's has been especially helpful and provided us with  these fresh, juicy and very sweet apple pies at our special request (be grateful all you pie-lovers, Mc Donald's would never have had the idea if it weren't for me). I prefer these over my own because I don't have to work, they're portable and occupy very less space, also easily replaceable (all you have to do is open the window in your chest, pluck out the previous one and replace it with oven-fresh stuff).

There is a wide variety of spurs to choose from. Take your pick!

 

   

Then we need to cat-nap some caterpillars and pack them away in jars (with holes in the lids for Oxygen). Seems like I have learned to make a note of precautionary measures, courtesy of A level sciences. At least they have some courtesy. We shall feed these caterpillars with apple-pies so that they become venomous and then prepare for the major part of our plan.

The Climax

We elope to Venus and after basking in its enchanting atmosphere for a while, raid the world wearing our sparkling spur-enabled, cowboy boots. We grab a random person on earth and say “Take us to your leader, earth-ling!” This by the way needs to be accompanied by our signature action of pressing our temples with our fore-fingers and jerking the head from right to left, making a 180 degrees angle in a robotic manner. The earth-ling (we are superior Earth cum Venus-lings now) takes us to NASA. We unleash the inescapable wrath of our venomous caterpillars upon the NASA dudes, the caterpillars sting them and they die at the spot.

The fruit

We then set out to give quick, painless deaths to most of the lowly beings walking this beautiful planet called Earth, making it a little more blood-stained and dirty by slashing their throats with the spurs! Simple, quick, painless, peaceful, revolutionary, innovative and modern. The world is mine (or maybe ours).

Image courtesy: Subata Khalid, Bisma Farukh, Saba Iqbal, Atiya Rafique and Google.

Cyclops gone blind

I’ve witnessed how the arrival of Ramzan has become less fascinating and dampened with each coming year. There’s a lot to blame but I feel slightly less cynical right now so I’ll just go into the facts that aren’t glaringly obvious. Amiss all the gory, grisly, heart-wrenching bloodlust and hassle and all the other morbid issues, it’s the small things that are depriving us of the barkat and rehmat of this month.

Khatm-e-Taraveeh in a mosque is supposed to be a source of blessings for all living in the area but unfortunately those ‘living in the area’ deprive themselves of these blessings just for the sake of some extra mithai! The children are often seen stealing mithai that is distributed at this event. Ramzan, taraveeh- you would think we are supposed to learn to share and clean the evil of our intentions but it’s really sad that parents cannot impart this simple idea to their children. You don’t exactly need to be ‘Islami’ for it or even respect Ramzan! It’s basic ethics which are obviously non-existent in our civilized society. What’s wrong with us? Where are we heading? Our children are stealing, that too from mosques? After finishing Taraveeh? Is that how greedy we have become? Muslim children stealing from mosques?!

Our electronic media gives life to Ramzan these days, the life that’s trickling away due to our malice. But they also need to participate in the ruthless rat-race to break the news first. The Azaan began and was cut off at ‘AllahHuAk’ to give instant, at-the-spot coverage of the recent Lahore bomb blast. My family and I were shocked, with dates perched between our fingers in mid-air. That is how important it is to break some more bad news, how important it is to disrupt a peaceful Iftar and exactly how much we respect the Azaan. We are true Muslims who respect Ramzan by creating signature music-filled Naats each year.

Calmly, pausing for the desired effect of suspense, talk show hosts tell us that suicide bombers have infiltrated cities like Karachi, Lahore, etc and are preparing in full swing to bomb Eid prayers. It’s actually funny how all our security agencies know when, how, where the suicide bombers have landed but they can’t arrest them. I wonder if it’s because there are no suicide bombers to begin with and even if there are, they’re planted by our own security agencies to help the government and external governments cause more anarchy, drive more people insane with their frustration, possibly get some more to commit suicide without a bomb?

Recently some more target killing ensued at the Natha Khan Bridge near the airport and ambulances were stuck in the resulting traffic jam. Whoever plans all this is amazingly brilliant because they ensure that not only the supposedly targeted people are killed but others are targeted as well. So those who would have died due to diseases much more humble than these ‘humans’ could not have that peace.

In another village another boy who could have been saved by another police squad, died another tragic death when he was not indulging in another crime but actually trying to do something unheard of- saving lives. The young male drowned while saving two other children and eventually died when rescue tams (led by a police squad) deemed it impossible to continue with the rescue mission because it was getting dark! Yes, fire has not been discovered yet and we are apes who walk on all fours. I wonder why this sounds familiar. Oh let me guess, didn’t something similar happen at the site of the air blue plane crash? It did indeed. The rescue mission was delayed by six hours and stopped four hours later because it was getting dark. Consequences: 13 people’s body parts were never found because they were probably carried away by beasts overnight. Their families were deprived of burying their remains.

If only they could understand how much the dark (not just of the night), could swallow.

Queen of Hearts

I know some of you have read this but it's linked to something I'm going to talk about soon.


6th July, 2010, 4 a.m.

Ever thought what it would be like to be heartless? It’s a rather strange time to be wondering so but that’s not the juicy part. Apart from the obvious and mundane biological reasons related to survival, it would actually be thrilling. Let’s take a look at my list of advantages:
1. You wouldn’t get hurt
2. You wouldn’t care about hurting someone else
3. You possibly wouldn’t have to be branded as warm-blooded!

Wow! I am almost tempted to claw it out of my system at this very moment. But there’s just a small problem restraining me: I might feel a little hollow after losing one organ. The insides that are sadly clichéd as beautiful might lose that ‘beauty’ since the heart maintains the soft pulse, associated with the beauty of life and existence, and other not-so-interesting stuff. Although, I can’t imagine how slimy organs coated with blood, fat and blood vessels can be seen as beautiful. It is a disturbing thought, even for me!

Anyway, the bottom-line is the fear of being hollow. So my not-at-all-dear friends, I have come up with a brilliant solution, and it was not triggered by Starbucks or the likes, neither did I rip it off of Wal-Mart. How about we replace the heart with an apple-pie? That would be so cool, or maybe the antonym of cool, literally speaking. 
Advantages:
1. You’ll be able to say “I’m heartless!” Ah, the sense of freedom that comes with that phrase.
2. You wouldn’t get hurt.
3. You probably wouldn’t hurt someone because you’ll be all sweet on the inside (you couldn’t get cold enough for that).
4. You could maintain the warm-blooded façade.
5. You would be complimented by the following words: “You’re sweeter than apple pie!”- Just too much juice for the ego!
6. You don’t have a heart, yet you don’t feel hollow.
7. You’ll probably become immortal because apple pie is unlikely to get coronary disease or go under cardiac arrest or myocardial infarction and blah blah.
8. Since we are blessed with barracuda teeth, we could even devour people! (What effect could the extra fat diet have on the pie? NONE!!!)

However, there’s a small disadvantage. Unlike the heart, apple pies aren’t muscular; they aren’t supported by tough, fibrous pericardium, so they can easily crumble under pressure. I guess you’d have to keep clutching your heart anyway like the Victorian maidens, although they lived in constant fear that it would flutter away at the slightest advancement from a male. I really should have been there to show them the light!

If you feel the above replacement is too feminine or incompatible with your more barbaric taste and you’re looking for something more concrete, then you could probably go for a block of low-weight steel. I wouldn’t recommend stones because they will make ‘where your heart used to be’ heavy. Not a desirable feeling, even for parting with your beloved heart (my eyes waltzed and bled to death on that note). Let’s get back to steel then. It has all the afore-mentioned advantages and perhaps more but the disadvantage is pretty serious. It has a short life. Given the wet, salty and squishy internal environment of the body, steel can make you rust away, literally. Why go through all the time-consuming and tedious effort then? I mean if you belong to my shoal of obnoxious barracudas then you wouldn’t have so much time to spend on a block of steel!

Therefore, after some serious brain-storming and spells of reflective pondering (when I was not too busy thinking about other stuff related to myself, of course) I have come to the conclusion that apple-pies are the best replacements for the useless, grief-supplying hearts we carry. And since I have taken out enough time to be a little selfless and share this with you (I thought I should give my heart a small farewell gift), I expect you all to write sonnets for me as proofs that you did, in some century possess a heart (as you’ll be tasting immortality) and then obviously, part with your primitive way of life. Then we could probably raid some planet and form a pie republic, if you are obedient enough and I would of course rule upon you.

Conjure up some good luck wish from me, be grateful that I at least thought of it and prize that memory for eternity!