"A week ago she was just another pretty face in the class. Now she is a presence in his life, a breathing presence."

J.M.Coetzee, Disgrace

It was upto Saad to discover the 'mean streak' in me. :)

'There is a mean streak in anyone who will destroy another's faith.'
[Quoted in a letter to Einstein]

Crooks said gently, "Maybe you can see now. You got George. You know he's goin' to come back. S'pose you didn't have nobody. S'pose you couldn't go into the bunk house and play rummy 'cause you was black. How'd you like that? S'pose you had to sit out here an' read books. Sure you could play horseshoes till it got dark, but then you got to read books. Books ain't no good. A guy needs somebody-- to be near him." He whined, "A guy goes nuts if he ain't got nobody. Don't make no difference who the guy is, long's he's with you. I tell ya," he cried, "I tell ya a guy gets too lonely an' he gets sick."

John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men

Drawn by Saad Javed

Is my love life really so complicated? Hmm... that's not so complicated! :D

“The alienation is so thick you can cut it with a knife,” writes Peter Gorden, describing the atmosphere of Mohsin Hamid’s debut novel, Moth Smoke. With the richness of historical symbolism, the novel describes the decline of Darashikoh, a person on the fringes of upper-class elite in a Pakistan suffering from economic crises after the 1998 nuclear explosions. Daru’s deterioration is best described by Hamid’s own metaphor: a moth spiraling around the candle, seduced by its flame, revolving, falling, until it makes contact with the fire… the moment of union, and… the moth has been reduced to smoke and ash. The novel explores Daru’s obsession with drugs after losing his job in a bank, his affair with his best friend’s wife and finally his entry into the world of crime. "The book explores the idea of how you arrive at truth with conflicting narratives, which is what you do in law," said Hamid in an interview, and these multiple narratives are one of the best features of this novel. Hamid talks of arriving at truth, but me, I didn’t find a single truth anywhere… I just uncovered different versions of the truth. Is truth just the totality of these versions? The novel begins with a trial, and you are the judge, and the novel ends without a sentence, because it is you who has to decide whether Daru is guilty or not. And unless you are a 'fundo' (a word oft employed in the novel), you would not be able to answer this question of innocence. The life which Hamid describes is dark and gloomy, but his style, with which he does so, is charming and gripping. A highly recommended novel.

My friend H, to his mother: "Agar main koi larki na phansa saka tu main saree zindagi apnay aap ko maaf nahi ker sakoon ga!"

* The blank page
Reminds me so much of—
The void within me

* In his silence—
Is the love, he can not
Show in his talk

Awais and Saad

'... one tall and slender, the other short and fat. The reflections of the same soul in the cosmic house of mirrors, or uncanny coincidence?'

Mohsin Hamid, Moth Smoke

There is only one success - to be able to spend your life in your own way.
Christopher Morley

I tend to agree with it and accept it as a provisional definition of success. But the question arises: what if the way you want to spend your life is 'wrong'... say, if a gangster wants to spend his life killing people, and manages to do that, would we still call it 'success'? In other words: Is success independent of moral considerations? If it is, then shouldn't such 'success' be discouraged.
The biggest problem with this line of thought is that there are no absolute ethical values... everything is relative. When you can't even decide properly what is ethically 'wrong' and what is 'right', the whole issue crumbles.

Looking at all the dissected bodies and faces in medical college, as well as in Atlases of Anatomy, it just makes me think, "Beauty really is skin deep."

"When love is for the highest bidder, there can be no trust. Without trust there is no love."
Moulin Rouge

And this bidding is not just monetary; it could be any form... when you love beauty alone, it means you'll abandon your lover the moment you find someone more beautiful? Or if you value intelligence, you'll ditch your partner when you encounter someone more intelligent? Someone more resourceful? Powerful? Richer? Think about it.

The Lamp

Written by Muhammad Awais Aftab

Blink!
The lights are out
The world is plunged
Into an inky darkness
In which solitary lanterns
Shine weakly like stars
There is another spark
That you see in this negritude
But mistake it not for a lamp
It is my heart
That flickers…

Published in today's Us Magazine.

"In a world of alienation the individual conqueror does not recognise himself in his victory and becomes its slave."
Jean-Paul Sartre, Marxism and Existentialism

I have certainly felt this alienation in a lot of my achievements and victories... as if they don't belong to me... that i didn't have either the ability or the right to conquer, but somehow, i managed to committ that act... it is almost something of a guilt... but people don't understand what is going on behind the superficial events; they are so eager to attribute success or failure to people, they don't even wait to analyse the factors governing that achievement. Even now, if i achieve something great enough, and people praise me, i don't really feel pride... i feel a certain hollowness, a nausea... i am so much aware of my own weaknesses and limitations... these victories don't belong to me; they have been imposed on me by some quirk of fate.

I was thinking about Memory today... the way events are stored in our mind, especially with reference to the sensory data. It seems to me that most of my memory of past consists merely of words and images. The lingual and the visual are the only components that i can discover in my mind. All other sensations are lost, as they have been transformed into words.
For example, if i try to remember the touch of a particular thing, say a piece of cloth, all i can remember is the words "The cloth was soft"... but the actual sensation of texture is absent from my mind. Or say, when i try to remember the taste of a dish i ate some while back, all i can remember is the description of the taste in words, "It was too spicy!" but i am unable to recall the actual sensation of taste itself. Visual data seems to undergo a better fate, but even then the motion seems to be reduced to almost static images. Smell, Taste, Touch, Sound... all have been transformed into words... have been lost!!!

* "This was what we Japanese called the 'onion life' -- peeling away a layer at a time and crying all the while."

Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

* And some days back, Saad smsed me, "Sigh. This is an Onion era. Layers upon layers of selfishness and stupidity. And very unpleasant to see it."

"We are never as happy nor as unhappy as we imagine."
La Rochefoucauld, Maxim 49

And we are never as much in love or hatred as we imagine ourselves to be. :)

If you are unable to refute an argument, does it automatically mean that that argument is true? No, of course, it doesn't. It might be that one is not that intellectually capable of seeing through the flaws of that argument, and that a person with a sharper mind might be able to refute it.

And in fact, this is precisely what an average person thinks like when he confronts an argument challenging his religious or otherwise cherished beliefs. Normally, no person changes his views just because he can't refute a logical argument. At least, i have never witnessed people doing so. And this reveals that we don't lead our lives on the basis of reason, but on the basis of our emotions. We believe in something because it satisfies our emotional needs... and we change our views only when our emotional needs demand a new paradigm for proper functioning.

In a sense, we are all like Rousseau, saying to ourselves, "Shall I allow myself to be tossed eternally to and fro by the sophistries of the eloquent?" whenever we face an argument we cannot refute.

Once upon a time...

X: Did you miss me?
Y: I am not sure what 'missing' means, but yeah, i did think a lot about you.

"Every work of art is an uncommitted crime."
Theodor Adorno

And every love poem is an uncommitted affair... a poet's fantasy... the poem is like a spectre reaching out towards the reality, arms and fingers extended, but the tips don't make it by just a few millimetres... the whisper failing to crystallize into an audible voice.

I had a glass of 7up in my hand and i was staring at the bubbles popping up on the surface, and it occured to me that:

Some relationships are like carbonated drinks (7up, Pepsi etc). After a while, the gas escapes and the relationship loses its "tingle" and excitement.

Some relationships are like wine. The older it is, the more intoxicating it gets.

And some relationships are like water. Nothing fancy like 7up/wine, but it is something you can drink anytime and it's the best thing for thirst. :)

There often come in life certain moments which i call 'moments of transcendence', in which an event or a person gives you a jolt that sends you on a short flight above the normal plane of your existence, and you get to have a view of your own life from an altitude, and many things about your ownself which you had previously thought that you perfectly understood, you see them in a new light... after a while, you fall back down to the your everyday plane of existence, but the memory of that brief transcendental view of life lingers and gives you an added insight. And you realize that something has now changed in you... something has shattered, but something new has also emerged.

"Poets act shamelessly towards their experiences: they exploit them," i hear the wise Nietzsche say, and my gaze falls down; i don't have any answer. "What are you trying to prove?" someone asks me, and the question echoes and re-echoes in my mind. Indeed, what am i trying to prove with my blatant poems? Trying to prove how skillfully i can transform my capricious emotions into poetic expressions? That i am daring enough to speak the unspeakable? That i am subtle enough to leak out secrets in unsuspecting, innocent words? That the guise of a poet has rendered me insensitive to the limitations of other people? There she stands in the corner of my mind, her finger pointed at me, and the word 'Shameless' resonates mercilessly and endlessly in my soul, until it becomes the stinging salt in my eyes, and trickles down on my cheek...

Please forgive me
I know not what I do
Please forgive me
I can't stop lovin' you
Don't deny me
This pain I'm going through
Please forgive me
If I need ya like I do
Please believe me
Every word I say is true
Please forgive me
I can't stop loving you

Bryan Adams

I don't know why i am used to making these stupid impulsive mistakes that throw a completely stable situation out of balance! Ah, what a clumsy person i am!
I am grateful to Saad for his kind words in this regard:

"Ahahahaha. Yaar, things like these remind me that you are still mundane/mortal/normal enough!"

Yeah, as if i am in danger of becoming an all-too-perfect demi-god, if i don't make these blunders. :P

Sigh. What a life, man, what a life!

"My fake plants died because I did not pretend to water them."
Mitch Hedberg

How many fake social identities have we constructed, that stay alive just because we never cease to water them?

I practice every day to find some clever lines to say
To make the meaning come true
But then I think I'll wait until the evening gets late
And I'm alone with you

The time is right
Your perfume fills my head
The stars get red
And, oh, the night's so blue
And then I go and spoil it all
By saying something stupid
Like I love you
I love you...

[Lyrics from the song Something stupid]

* Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason.

* Where no gods are, spectres rule.

Happy birthday to Novalis!