Window Pain

There's a window.
Yes, a window.
Do you see it?
Don't you see it?

I know you.
Yes, I do.
Who are you?
Who am I?

There's a streak
Of purple
Or is it blue?
Is it the rainbow?
No, it's a bruise.

There's the rain.
Pattering on the window.
Do you see the drops?
Is it blood or tears?
Yours or mine?

They're colourless.
No, you are blind.
Or am I?

There's your heartbeat.
There's your voice.
It's my music.
It's the sirens?
Or is it the silence?

There's the light
The lovely sunshine
It's warm and bright.
Where's the sun?
There is no sun?
It's fire.

The fire of love.
The fire of trust.
The fire of hurt?
The fire or dust?

Fall

Often, when I've felt I'm falling, I've thought of it as falling into a black hole rather than some dark pit. This is probably because of my love for all things cosmos but I believe it holds a little more importance in the literary department.

Black holes, as I imagine them, are bottomless dark pits. But unlike other dark pits, the kind you simply fall into and keep falling after biting into the forbidden apple, black holes are quite interactive. When falling into a black hole, you experience immense pressure - both psychological and physical. That originating in your psyche comes partly from the guilt and confusion of biting into the apple and partly from the fall into the obviously hostile surroundings. The physical pressure is what we can regard as interesting. It originates due the psychological pressure, that constantly tries to suffocate you (and this is not because black holes are devoid of air); but what actually makes this pressure unbearably painful is the ability of the black hole to interact with your body. Black holes threaten to crush you into a clump no more smooth than gravel and simultaneously pluck apart the splinters of your existence, not to mention quite mercilessly - they can't really feel much, you see.

The apple was forbidden, wasn't it? But you bit into it anyway, didn't you? Why?

You don't know?

That's fine. You will know, once you begin to fall.

The Odds of the End

Death is painful - something we all know.

For some it's serene - an effortless transition from one content life to another; for others it's a matter of relief and for another lot, it's the most excruciating experience of their life and ironically death.

However, for those who stand by and watch, it's always painful. Always.
It doesn't matter how, when or why it happened, but only that it did. It doesn't matter if you were the cold-blooded murderer or the helpless onlooker whose arms became the final abode of the departing soul. It doesn't matter if the blood that stains your hands was a product of the gash you gave someone or it's there because you held the warm, living body that became cold and dead in a matter of moments. Either way, pain is a constant companion- irrespective of who feels it.

It brings us pain to know that we can't do anything to hold onto those breaths that are softly slipping away. Anguish grips us as we realize in essence how the fire of life is about to be extinguished and leave behind the cold, dry embers of a lost life, a lost soul, a lost world. And we stand and watch, crushed by that helplessness, waiting for the curtains to fall and the lights to explode into the creeping darkness that threatens to engulf us and all that's dear to us.We wait for the burns to heal with the light that can burn this pain. And we wait.

But more often than not, light chooses to travel into the distant depths of the universe, up, above and away from where we are. From the stars, to some other stars and infinity - where every soul travels - at some point in its life, or death. Yes, that's where we believe they are: somewhere within infinity, with that light that left us to reach them, help them, guide them, hold them. It is almost relieving to bear that pain, that suffocating embrace of the dark if we believe that the light leaves us and somehow helps the ones we love.

Up, above and away are all so distant and yet so close. They are so hard to touch but they touch our lives so easily. They define transcendence from our troubles, offer an escape, only a very impractical and untouchable one. But they offer something, even if it is another life - that after death.

My exams finished today and I'd thought I'd write a blog post overflowing with glee of some sort or at least something that reflected freedom. The moon was full tonight and oh so beautiful when I went out for a walk and I decided to write something related to that but then I had an encounter with death. Most of us might consider this encounter a very trivial one and it probably is but I just can't feel that way.

Walking back home, I saw a dead eagle on the road-side. My eyes bulged out for a moment when I realized what it was and I got terribly upset. I actually felt my heart getting heavy! I'm not exactly an animal rights activist (although I do believe that animals should be treated nicely because WE are humans), but grief did grip me for long enough to produce this morose piece.

It was not the eagle or it's death that hurt so much, perhaps. It was the closeness of death, right beneath my eyes, the fine line between the two phases that is so easily lost to sight. Seeing the eagle's neck lolled to its left; its body that was previously vibrant with life, turned into a static wooden frame; the grey shutters on the eyes and the beak covered in dust made me want to kneel down and start weeping. It's been so long since I've felt that way and back then it used to be where humans were concerned. I've seen dead animals before but never have I felt quite so broken by the sight.

I guess it's just because I haven't paid attention to any deaths in the past two months. Also, it was the realization that this living body that soared to great heights of blue oblivion would have bolted to the ground and lost its life in a snap. The simplicity of transition between these two extremes of what lies up above and away against that which takes one beneath the ground is just so paradoxical and ironic. This battle between warm and cold, black and white, heights and depths is what maintains the continuity of life - by ending some.

It is an act of greatly low stature to end a life. It is a matter of great pain, patience and strength to watch an end. I can't imagine how great it would be to have the chance to save a life.

Today: A Kaleidoscope

It is not every day that you can get out on the streets of Karachi and have access to fresh air. However, today was just that fortunate a day because most of the city's population was locked inside their homes, huddled away on sofas or the floor, glaring at the TV screen. Those considered pious in every household were glued to prayer mats, praying for the national cricket team's victory in the world cup quarter finals. My family however, is allergic to cricket and we spent the day...well, just like any other holiday.

With mild sunshine and early summer breeze, the weather was quite pleasant for this time of the year. My dad offered to let me drive around, since the streets were deserted but I refused. It causes me a lot of pain to acknowledge this, but I refused to drive, when my dad actually offered to let me drive. This of course had nothing to do with the kind of patriotism that most residing in my nation feel - the kind that comes across through cricket only. Although, it's entirely another story that my patriotism is directed more towards Venus. 

It was simply because I didn't feel well enough to drive.

As requested, I scanned N's presentation for flaws and to provide moral support. I was so pleased when I opened that Powerpoint file because the colour scheme of the presentation was black and blue! I've always loved those colours, they're so rich and deep. Also, they remind me of my blog and how I've deserted it. With that thought, I decided to base a blogpost on that presentation, as a token of gratitude because it reminded me to redirect my attention towards my blog. 

And here it is!

1. Thank you N. The presentation was pretty cool, I just didn't get it because we haven't studied that stuff yet. Under normal circumstances I would freak out because of that, but presently I'm not in the mood.

2. After scanning it, I wanted to point out a few things that I felt could be an issue so I called up N. It was so funny. I mean, there was nothing funny about it but this was probably the second time we talked on the phone and it felt funny to just hear the other person's voice, having no perception of their face or expressions, apart from that your brain can conjure up. I know that's how phone conversations are, but it's just so amazing that your brain associates recollections of expressions from the bank of your memory when you hear a voice, without a visual stimulus. 

Only this year, we were taught in bio how that happens through the synapses in our neurones: When you hear a new voice and see a new face, pathways (in simple terms) are created in your brain, along which whenever signals travel, you can recall and identify the person responsible for creating that signal. So when you hear the voice alone or see the face without any auditory stimulus, signals are carried along the synapses corresponding to either voice identification or face identification, in the latter case. And as one of these pathways are excited, the pathway that was created along with it also responds to the signal and is automatically stimulated to give a recollection of both face and voice together.

This is why I love the brain, it's SO amazing! That is also why I hate it when people fail to use it and act stupid and fake.

3. It seems as if my maternal instincts are now restricted to my blog (before this it was the kittens, but then they died), since I fail to employ them when with human children. I hate that about myself. I love most children, find the annoying ones really scary and crave to learn how to deal with them. I would like to think that it's another universal conspiracy that I am incapable of talking to children and making them happy. That makes ME very unhappy. I am so jealous of all those girls my age who can handle children so easily because I can never make them stop crying, etc. I can't even hold them in my arms for a long time because I'm too afraid! Just the other day, I was at a friend's place, whose nephew I adore more than any other child I've adored in the past few years. She went out of the room for a while and he started crying. I just stood and stared at the child with the most concerned face I could possibly have and I think I was near to tears myself because I just didn't know what to do! 

Anyway, I feel very motherly towards my blog. When I began paying attention to it after a long dry spell of desertion, it looked almost orphaned to me and now it seems to be recovering.

And those who studied alkanes and alkenes without me: That was the only topic I REALLY needed to revise in AS organic at the moment because I make myself exceedingly complacent with the fact that it's easy and I need to concentrate on other things like Acyl Chlorides.

S-da-B, guess what? One of my friends just re-enlightened me with the knowledge that lots of 'mailay Karachi boyzz' are speeding towards the seaside on motorbikes. This is why I prefer 'maila pakistani boy' over 'poor German girl'. They are SO patriotic, 'poor German girl' was fake and kept whining about Germany and the attic.

All: I don't like 'mailay Pakistani boys', okay? I just think their hairstyles are better than that of Ann Frank (or whatever her name was spelled as).

Of Some Precious souls

If you've read my blog, or even skimmed through it ever, you would know that I don't usually talk about my personal life here as most other bloggers like to.

Today, however, is different. I feel like talking about my day, simply because it was nothing special and yet so special.

My lovely friend, whom I love more than the non-existent 'luv of ma lyf' taught me this really sweet phrase in Japanese, she kept saying it throughout the day and just watching her say those magical words made me so happy. Of course, her ability to look Japanese played a great role in accentuating the whole effect and also, my happiness.

That was not all that she did for me today, though. S picked up my bio notes for me when they just threw themselves upon the floor for the sole purpose of annoying me - another universal conspiracy, but guess what? I've learnt to live with them now as they happen all the time!

She picked them up for me because I decided to be stubborn and show those notes I didn't care. During the class, she gently squeezed my arm so that I'd feel better. Later, S made sure I was comfortably seated when I'd been excused from Language class, regaled me with the "Tsu- khasa" story and made me laugh. She attended physics class with me and walked downstairs with me while we were discussing how we can't have an 'inqilaab' (revolution) yet.

That's not all, though. At night she remembered to inquire about my health, although I wasn't visibly sick today - it's very easy to forget how somebody was feeling when they don't look sick. If you do remember, you're just a really great person. Later, I bugged her with a really stupid problem and she gave me some really good advice, which immediately got me out of an awkward, messy situation.

I love S. The fact that I lay quite a lot of stress on 's' sounds when I speak, used to appear to me as a technical problem with my voice box, but now I just think of it as a token of love and gratitude I feel for the presence of S in my life. With thoughts like these, I feel bad about disclosing universal conspiracies to the world, but I MUST voice the truth!

And then there's S-the-B.

She's just SO cool. I never write like this, especially on my blog. I just speak this way but right now I'm breaking all the writing rules I've made for myself.

S-the-B makes me laugh so so so so much everyday, right before physics. I feel refreshed during that class and actually understand what my teacher is talking about, though I may not necessarily understand what exactly he's talking about. For example, I am aware of the fact that today surface waves were being discussed but I didn't really understand, or pay much attention to what they were, etc.

S-the-B came to see me for a second time today -yes, fate was being way too nice to me today, it seems. Maybe I should be scared because it might just be preparing the stage for another huge conspiracy like my bio notes taking a dive. Maybe that's what you refer to as an "academic deep-dive".

This is a moment of revelation. I feel so enlightened now.

The best part of seeing S-the-B however, remains untold. She told me she got me an amazing gift! I was excited beyond what the powers of my description can conquer, especially at this time and in this state. S-da-B (as she might like to call herself, because she's just 2 kewlx), rummaged inside her bag for a minute or two, while I just eyed the opening of the bag with eyes wide and watery with the anticipation of what might come out any moment. I would like to imagine that my tongue was also lolling to a side or that I looked like a character from Japanese anime but well, I guess none of that happened. Meanwhile, S-da-B produced a wrapper (of something) from her bag. It was transparent and pink on the top and bottom. It said the following:

AAA HIGH QUALITY on the top pink part

and

MADE IN JAPAN on the lower pink patch.

We tried to figure out what it could have been wrapped around but failed because I was almost exploding with glee. Why wouldn't I? it was graded with triple As. Yes, that is how HIGH the quality was, of whatever it contained. S-da-B found it on the floor of one of her classes and picked it up just for ME. Cox she luff me so much!

I love you too. Both of you.

I would also like to thank N, for being there and just uplifting my mood with some absolutely random musings.

And that concludes the most prized moments of my day.

Oh and Pakistan Zindabad! Since we've entered 23rd March now. 

P.S. I'm writing this because I couldn't conclude my day without doing this.

Please try and ignore whatever errors you find in this post because I'm not well. I can't make sense of most things, my spine and shoulders are hurting so badly I can barely keep my neck in one position for more than five minutes. My apologies if that sounds like whining but I just HAD to mention all that.

Suffocating Sundays

Pacing in the drawing room, as that’s the only room I prefer to live in through the summers, I spend my days. I sit, stand up, walk and sit down again. The drawing room is my kingdom in the sweltering heat of the desert Karachi seems to be turning into. Since this season is also associated with exams, the most important ones of the year, I pretend to study in the drawing room. In fact, that is why I chose this room to live in, in the first place – I thought studying there would be easier. It was, in the first year. It really seemed so. But now… it just isn’t, bluntly speaking. Blunt – it’s a great word. It sounds so blunt, it gives a blunt feeling that vividly imparts how blunt one feels. So it’s also ironic, perhaps. Or was it oxymoronic? Okay, this really isn’t how I should be at this time of the year because I have an English exam in two months!

Anyway, I was talking about the drawing room and how it no longer seems like Jasmine’s part of the palace. I stack up my books in my drawing room and papers too. Lots of them. It looks like a study but that’s hardly what I do there now. I realized weeks ago that I no longer study there, but it was only today that I realized what exactly I do there. I pace around the room, sit down on one of the sofas, gaze into the sunlight streaming in through the windows; contemplate on how hot it actually is and compare the bougainvilleas I can see on the window opposite mine, to roses. Yes, the bougainvilleas belong to the people who live in the house opposite mine, since nobody in my family has the patience for gardening. I love flowers and all, my childhood fantasy was having a rose garden but I rediscovered this fantasy only days ago, while doing a yoga routine. Yeah, that depicts how much importance I’ve given to the idea in the past few years.

So yeah, we were talking about Sundays. No, I was supposed to talk about Sundays since I titled this post accordingly. I like being blunt. Being blunt on Sundays, because that’s how Sundays are: boring, bleak and blunt. I love power of three, whoever designed this technique in the English Language, must have been amazing. Or well, very fond of details and repetition in the very least.

Redirecting my attention to Sundays, I hate them. They make me feel disoriented, just as this post sounds. I get bored, can’t concentrate on anything, there’s nothing good on TV. I also feel morose for absolutely no reason and that frustrates me, which further leads to stress. And some more stress when I realize that I could be doing severe damage to the mood centers in my brain. In fact I believe I HAVE already done the damage and that’s why this happens to me with a greater intensity each coming Sunday. I think I’m only left with the anger/depression center and perhaps only a molecule of the happiness center. This certainly goes for Sundays, if not other days.

P.S. I’m also certain that I have ADD (Attention Deficit Ooh shiny!) I change my train of thought a little too often and ‘shiny’ corresponds to not only physically shiny objects but also shiny thoughts, metaphorically speaking. Shiny train tracks for my trains of thought, if you will.

Oh and, thanks for bearing with me. Have a great Sunday, or what’s left of it J

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.