I conducted a survey among my friends and family, asking them the question “Name one thing that matters the most to you in a relationship.” And the answers showed a great degree of similarity. This question was asked to a total of 18 people.
Out of these eighteen, 8 people answered ‘Trust’ as the most important thing [44.4%].
And 5 people said ‘Sincerity’ [27.8%]

The rest were individual answers:
Asad Jehangir…………...Straightforwardness
Nabeel…………………..Two people having the same maturity level
Hamza Hashmi………….Loyalty/Faithfulness
Uzair…………………….Respect
Muneeb………………….Understanding and Patience

Most people would believe that ‘Sincerity’ and ‘Trust’ are more or less the same thing, or manifestations of the same feeling. Strictly speaking, I do not agree, but I do admit that they are linked. Sincerity refers to ‘genuine feelings’ and Trust refers to ‘state of reliability’. However, considering their proximity, it would not be unwise to consider them as the same entry. Given this view, the combined ‘Sincerity’ and ‘Trust’ answers make 13 out of 18 [72.2%], which is an over-whelming majority, showing that most people have a somewhat similar sense of what makes a relationship successful.

What I noticed immediately was a sheer lack of words like ‘affection’ and ‘love’. My sister did mention ‘love’ but only as a second option after Trust. This was somewhat a surprise for me, since I was expecting that love would at least appear on the list.

I read an article today in The News [Pakistani Newspaper] 'Beautiful people' by Ihsan Aslam. And i really enjoyed reading it. I'd like to put some extracts here:

Khushwant Singh's Sex, Scotch and Scholarship lay by my side. I'd given up on it: just wasn't in the mood. No sex please, we're Pakistani. Just how we've reached a population of over 165 million isn't too clear. And, no scotch either, we're Muslim. How we constantly remain in a state of stupor also escapes me. As for scholarship, the less said the better. All the same, we're the Chosen Ones, the best in the world.
...

My eyelids were getting heavy by the time I reached the part where Benazir Bhutto gets called a "Paki". Poor woman! Imagine her feelings when she lands at London's Heathrow Airport during her Oxford University days and gets abused by a racist immigration officer who calls her a "Paki". They won't get away with that anymore, the racist thugs. Instead, Pakistanis would probably get strip-searched and told to wait in a queue for ten hours.

They might even get interrogated for alleged "links" with Pakistan. The following is not as far fetched as it may seem.

"So where were you in Pakistan?" In Islamabad, officer. "Aha, bad, very Islamabad. How long were you there?" Just two weeks, officer. "Fourteen long days. That's an extraordinary long time. Training, eh?" No, just a holiday! "Holy war training, eh?" No, I said I was on holiday not holy war, officer. "What were you doing in Pakistan." Well, officer, I went to the Badshahi Mosque and the Wazir Khan Mosque in Lahore. "Bad Shahi, very bad. Extremist education in Mosques-cum-madrassas. A threat to civilization as we know it."

But officer, you've got this all wrong. You see, I'm interested in history, and the Badshahi Mosque and the Wazir Khan Mosque are excellent examples of Islamic architecture in the sub-continent. "I see, Islamic. So, you're into Islamic stuff, eh?" Look, officer, I'm fasting, it's Ramadan, and I've had enough of this nonsense.

"Well, not so fast, young man. I've not Ramadone with you yet. You've been tampering with the balls, haven't you?" What balls? "Feigning ignorance won't get you far. Inzamam-ul-Haq knows all about it!" What the…

:)

http://thenews.jang.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=26346

An angel's smile is what you sell
You promise me heaven, then put me through hell
Chains of love got a hold on me
When passions a prison, you can't break free

You're a loaded gun
There's nowhere to run
No one can save me
The damage is done

Shot through the heart
And you're to blame
You give love a bad name
I play my part and you play your game
You give love a bad name
You give love a bad name

[Bon Jovi]

The French philosopher Henri Bergson was one of the leading thinkers of the early 20th century, well-known for his extremely eloquent and beautiful expression, most brilliantly put forth in Creative Evolution, and which ultimately won him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1927.
Bergson's intial training was in Mathematics, in which he showed great achievements, including his solution of a problem presented by Pascal in 1877. However, when Bergson joined Ecole Normale, he switched to Philosophy from Mathematics. His maths teacher was extremely disappointed at the apparent loss of a brilliant student, and claimed:“you could have been a mathematician; you will be a mere philosopher!”

Today is T.S. Eliot's birthday, the famous and influential American poet, and winner of the Nobel Prize for literature in 1948. See the wisdom peeking in his words:

* Any poet, if he is to survive beyond his 25th year, must alter; he must seek new literary influences; he will have different emotions to express.

* No honest poet can ever feel quite sure of the permanent value of what he has written: He may have wasted his time and messed up his life for nothing.

* Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.

* Humankind cannot bear very much reality.

* It's strange that words are so inadequate. Yet, like the asthmatic struggling for breath, so the lover must struggle for words.

* The Nobel is a ticket to one's own funeral. No one has ever done anything after he got it.

* The most important thing for poets to do is to write as little as possible.

* I had seen birth and death but had thought they were different.

I suppose every person with a good taste is appealed by beauty... be it the sublime beauty of a sun-set, the abstract images of art, the cold austere beauty of mathematics, the breath-taking brilliance of a starry sky, the acoustic appeal of a symphony, and perhaps the most well-appreciated, the charming face of a beautiful girl.

The debate remains... is beauty essentially subjective or objective? Perhaps if it is objective, like the rules of mathematics, and can only be recognized through dedication and focus. To a certain extent, appreciating beauty requires the building of taste.
But standards of beauty are also universal, ignoring minor deviations. Most of the people are attracted by symmetrical forms and faces... symmtery was essential to Greek aesthetics, and was of such importance that they refused to consider the celestial orbits of any shape other than the circle, because it is the most symmetrical geometrical figure.

I became aware of the connection of biological evolution and aesthetics after reading Will Durant. Surely, it appears a simple hypothesis that aesthetic appreciation developed in us due to its importance and vitality in bringing the male and female together, and hence ensuring the continuation of the species. Many animals especially birds show aesthetic standards, and certain species are well known for the artistic decoration of their nests. Perhaps our appreciation of music began in the 'love-calls', the sounds made by birds and animals to call their mates. And every mature poet is aware of the relationship between Nature and Love, something which has been the subject of much poems. And Russell also mentions in his autobiography the connection between Love and Nature in his experience. Perhaps it was initally the sexual instinct that led to aesthetic development, and which ultimately flooded other areas of our sensation, and led to the appreciation of things as remote from sexuality as Architecture.

Appreciation of beauty is meant to be objective, in the sense that it is not governed by any sort of motive of personal gain. I see Rafael's The School of Athens, and its beauty strikes me and fills my existence. I gain nothing material by it... but a psychological influence which can only be understood by those who have experienced it. A clear view of the sky is enough to cheer up my mood and comtemplate over its scintillating beauty. Beauty in gender, i believe, too will be better appreciated if it is divorced from any other desire, such as that of possession. A beautiful face is a masterpiece of nature in itself. The aesthetic appreciation should not be vilified by the motive of possession.

And even the gloomy, surreal Franz Kafka says: "Anybody who preserves the ability to recognize beauty will never get old." And how true he says. If you are able to understand beauty, you will find a pleasure and satisfaction unknown to you before.

And beauty is only well-appreciated when it influences you in some way, when it becomes a part of your existence, and you feel its fragrance in your life. I shall end with an apt quote of Voltaire: “It is not sufficient to see and to know the beauty of a work. We must feel and be affected by it.”

Everyone, have a beautiful life.

Analysis beyond a limit becomes destructive in nature... reducing the world to different 'categories', and somehow the original essence is lost in analysis... the spirit of unity cannot be revealed in the division of the constituents. The whole is oft greater than the sum of its constituents.

Tagore once compared pure logic to a knife that is all blade: it makes the very hand bleed which uses. I have realised this having cut my own hands with it. Emotions and irrationality is as much necessary to a balanced life as reason is. It their combined and synergistic usage which we must seek, but which unfortunately very few actually achieve.

He took a puff of his cigarette, blew the smoke and observed with purposeless acuteness the amorphous wisps of smoke diffusing into the air, thinning out of existence. His lifted his gaze to a yellow taxi, a few cars ahead of his, at the traffic signal to make sure it was still there. ‘Yellow, yellow like guilt,’ he thought, taking another draw. His eyes fell on the rear-view mirror, and he saw a partial reflection of his own face: black, warm eyes; a handsome charming face in the early thirties. His wife, his former college fellow, had often told him how he used to be the crush of a dozen girls during the college days. He had felt a strange, meaningless pride in that revelation by his wife before, but at that moment, as he recollected this memory, he felt doubt. ‘Could this be a lie too?’ he thought. Doubt— a monster which was engulfing his whole life, his whole mind, robbing him of even a single moment of peace; doubt of his wife, doubt of her fidelity. He looked again at the taxi and saw a brief glimpse of her auburn hair. In the past when he used to nestle his nose against those silky strands, their pleasant fragrance used to fill to his whole body. But since a few days, after he had become a victim of doubt, that aroma had become a pungent odour, setting his soul on fire.

He had never thought of himself as a jealous, possessive husband. ‘I am an educated, cultured man’, he used to say to himself. But time knows better: that even thousands of years of social evolution is not enough to counter an atavistic impulse that runs in the very blood of one’s body. He believed that he had always trusted his wife, but everyone can trust when times are cordial. It is only in the clash of suspicion and faith that the strength of trust is revealed; like yanking a sheet off a naked body. And it was only when those silent phone calls and wrong numbers started coming that he came to realize that he had never trusted her, never even for a moment. It was all an illusion.

And now, driven by this cynicism, he was following her to whomever she was going. What her suitor would look like, he wondered. Would he be more handsome than he is? More friendly? More strong? Or maybe richer. He had never believed himself to be an ideal husband, but he had always considered himself to be a good one: he had loved his wife, shared his life with her. He remembered the first time he had saw her in business school: her fiery hair inviting him like the fire called for Moses on the Mountain. This is what he used to call her with love: ma flamme, my flame. He remembered her dark brown liquid eyes; her coquettish smile and he had desperately desired her, wishing her to be his. He had thought she was his…until now. ‘Perhaps this is my fault’, he reflected, stuck in that sedentary traffic, ‘I treated her as a possession of mine, maybe as more of a concubine than a true wife.’ He smoked and analyzed his own feelings. He felt neither angry nor mad with rage. He felt uncomfortable and troubled, of course, but this was a totally different kind. It was like examining a festering wound on one’s own body. This was his failure as a husband. He was in an exotic mélange of distress and calm.

But where was he going with all this? Why was he insisting on witnessing this rendezvous between his wife and her lover? And what was he going to do after that? Shoot her, that man and then himself? Nah, he was never of the sentimentalist sort. And besides, he was far too much of a coward to do that. He observed the fading whirls of smoke as if they held some answer to his ailment. The problem was: what to do? Even before catching her wife in the act, he had forgiven her. He had no desire to punish her. His mental disturbance had little to do with the fact that his wife was being unfaithful to him; he was disturbed more by the fact that he was confused about what to do about it. How was he supposed to react? What was he to say to his wife? He vaguely remembered hearing about some work of Sartre in which a husband suspected his wife. He wished he would have read that. But what good would that have done. These philosophers only had questions to offer; they were men looking in search of answers. Just like he was… in the moment he was going through, no philosophy, no manual of ethics, no book of religion would come to his aid. This was his dilemma, his choice; no philosopher, no prophet, no god could make this decision for him.

His concentration shifted back to the road as traffic started to move. He followed her in his car, keeping a safe distance behind so as not to be spotted. He already knew where she was going: Hotel Marionette, Room no 192, where someone would be waiting for her. With his business contacts, it was not so much difficult to find out; the hotel owner was a friend of his. He had even obtained a key of the room, which was lying in his pocket. As he drove, his thoughts began to drift again. He wanted to know, why was she doing this? This question hung suspended in his mind, unanswered. Had she been of an unfaithful spirit right from the beginning? Had she ever been really in love with him? Or perhaps her libido exceeded his abilities in the bed? Maybe it was raw sexual instinct? Maybe it was just a meaningless affair being done out of a sense of adventure? So many possibilities, human nature was as elusive as ever.

The taxi stopped in the hotel parking. He parked at an appropriate distance behind. He saw her coming out, paying the driver and perhaps telling him to wait for her to come back; the driver nodded and picked up a magazine. He could make out the cover of the magazine with difficulty: “Politician caught in illicit love affair”. Here too was an illicit love affair, an affair which would never get to the cover of a weekly magazine, which remain perhaps buried in his mind until some night when the warmth of wine would cause him to spill this tale to some friend of his. As she entered the hotel, he came after her, walking slowly as he knew his destination. He took the stairs instead of the elevator to provide them more time. He had heard people talking of ‘seeing God’ during coitus. He himself saw only one thing during the heat of the act: his own animal nature, an ape taking delight in the fulfillment of his biological impulse. But the realization of this monkish legacy did not disturb him; he accepted it as such.

Soon he came to the door of the room. He pressed his ear gently against it, searching for sounds. The creaks and the moans confirmed what he already knew. With no haste, he took out the key, inserted it into the hole, rotated it and calmly walked into the room. He saw a tangle of limbs on the bed. He brought the cigarette to his lips and took a puff. The two lovers were motionless with surprise and shock. He stared into the eyes of his wife as he smoked. This was what he had come to see: her eyes. There was clearly astonishment in them, a little bit of fear as well. But nowhere, not even in a trace amount, could he see remorse and shame in those eyes. She knew that what she was doing was socially immoral, but her soul, speaking through her eyes, believed there was nothing evil in this act. He tranquilly blew out the smoke in the form of a perfect ring; something which he had tried to learn a number of times before but had failed. He looked in her shackled eyes for a few more moments, and after knowing what he had wanted to know, he spoke out in a soft, serene and polite manner: ‘I am very sorry to disturb you two. My deepest apologies.’ Saying this, he threw the half-burnt cigarette on the floor and walked out, making sure to close the door properly. It was an act whose symbolism even he wasn’t aware of. This was what his marriage had turned out to be: a half-burnt cigarette.

THE END

written by
Muhammad Awais Aftab

To love someone is to isolate him from the world, wipe out every trace of him, dispossess him of his shadow, drag him into a murderous future. It is to circle around the other like a dead star and absorb him into a black light.

"If you say, I love you, then you have already fallen in love with language, which is already a form of break up and infidelity."

Jean Baudrillard

And I know that he knows I'm unfaithful
And it kills him inside
To know that I am happy with some other guy
I can see him dyin'

I don't wanna do this anymore
I don't wanna be the reason why
Everytime I walk out the door
I see him die a little more inside
I don't wanna hurt him anymore
I don't wanna take away his life
I don't wanna be...a murderer

I feel it in the air
As I'm doin' my hair
Preparing for another date
A kiss upon my cheek
As he reluctantly
Asks if I'm gonna be out late
I say I won't be long
Just hangin' with the girls
A lie I DID'NT have to tell
Because we both know
Where I'm about to go
And we know it very well

'Cause I know that he knows I'm unfaithful
And it kills him inside
To know that I am happy with some other guy
I can see him dyin'

[Rihanna - Unfaithful]

I read 'Disgrace' by J.M.Coetzee last night, the winner of 1999 Booker Prize. I won't say it as good as to recommend it for reading. It was plain and painful... little consolation in it, revealing the disgraceful state of man.
There was a professor in it who got involved in an affair with his student, and he was forced to resign when the affair reached the authorities. And later during the novel he and his daughter are discussing abt it, and the daughter asks him why he did it. And he tells the story of a dog his neighbours had. Whenever a bitch came roaming in the area, the dog would get high and excited and his owner used to beat him with Pavlovian regularity in such cases, and eventually it happened that at the smell of a bitch, that dog would wimper and try to hide in the garden, his tail between his legs... he had begun to hate his own nature, his own impulses. Maybe it'd have been better to kill him them.

Ofcourse, i am just describing what was written in the book. But this simple narrative kind of struck my mind, and i was forced to sit back and think for a while over it.

"The gossip-mill, turning day and night, grinding reputations." [J.M. Coetzee]

How very true. People like to gossip so much, its strange to see this passion engulfing every one. Its as if they are more interested in other people's lives than their own. All they are looking for a spicy, juicy incident or an affair to discuss. Sometimes, it makes me shudder with disgust, but at unguarded moments, i find myself indulging in this activity, and then i realise that maybe it is some part of human nature to take delight in the insult and humiliation of others.

All that I am
All that I ever was
Is here in your perfect eyes,
They're all I can see

[Snow Patrol - Chasing Cars]

This is an excellent song. I fell in love with it when i heard it.