Bucket List (ca. 2013)

• Learn French, Spanish and Persian.
• Learn to fly a plane. Get flying license.
• Learn to ride a bike.
• Learn to swim.
• Learn some exotic dance.
• Learn martial arts.
• Travel the world – see places, have larger-than-life experiences.
• Go bungee-jumping, parasailing, hang-gliding, scuba-diving & snorkeling.
• Build a cabin (with water, electricity & internet) in the mountains in Rama.
• Build a summer house on a beach somewhere. Have my parents move into it so my Mom can finally have that big bedroom window over-looking the beach & my Dad can finally have some peace.
• Own & drive a 1960s Dodge Charger.
• Write at least 5 books – novels, biography and memoir.
• Read all the classics.
• Build an awesome vinyl collection.
• Have a library that looks like the one in Disney’s “Beauty & the Beast”.
• Have a house big enough to contain my WHOLE family (including the friends who are more like family), should they all choose to suddenly move in with me.
• Have a swimming pool in my backyard.
• Go on Caribbean cruise.
• Learn to be kind & generous.
• Be wise enough to know which bridges to burn and which to keep.
• Find God. Ask him for mercy.
• Find love – the kind that endures and fulfills.
• And truly be a ‘child of the universe’.

Misplaced Ambition

“To be or not to be, that is the question.” My life could definitely be a Shakespearean play.

Even when I was little girl, I knew I wasn’t like all the girls around me. I had a germ that not many around me had. The germ was pretty common in a lot of women around that time but apparently it wasn’t common enough in my surroundings. The germ was “ambition” and it is still germinating in my brain today. I always had a feeling that I needed to be something big, something other than just another “Mrs. Someone”, which is all the girls around me wanted to be. Funny how even at that age, girls are so sure that they can be nothing but somebody’s wife and be content with that fate.

I longed to be larger than life, and for a while, around the end of my high school years, I achieved that larger-than-life status. But shortly after I started college, I realized that I wasn’t all that great, that there were girls who were than me, who had achieved much more than me. That served only to demotivate and confuse me when it should have done the exact opposite.

In addition to feeling like an absolute waste of air, I realized that I had been mistaken about my aptitude and had gotten stuck in the wrong major. Could life get any worse?

Probably it could.

Somewhere down the road I realized, much to own peace of mind, that I didn’t have to compare myself to anyone, that I didn’t need anybody else’s achievements to undermine my own, even if they are only a few. Some achievement is better than none.

So now I have a bunch of choices to make. I can’t just sit around doing nothing. I have to go out and grasp my calling and make it turn me into more than a woman; make it turn into a larger-than-life phenomenon. But what really is my calling? Mass Communication/Journalism? English Literature? Comparative Studies? Politics?!

The confusion has been there since I was child, mainly because I think I am a little bit of everything; 1 part avid reader to 2 parts writer to 3 parts public speaker. I also had the illusion, somewhere in my teens, that I could actually become a world renowned mad-scientist if I focused all my energy on chemistry. I also wanted to be a singer at one point, which I knew wouldn’t really fair well with the majority in my family. I also wanted to be a lawyer, but my Mom was quick in killing that bug.

Most of all I wanted to become a writer, and that bug never really left me – if only it grew bigger and stronger and meaner with the passage of time. I want to write about places that exist in my imagination, about the lies we tell ourselves to keep us from falling apart, about the experiences common to all humanity, about sunsets and mountains and the price you pay for being too strong in a weak-willed society.

So, a writer it is then, eh?

Cinema Woes

You know how there’s this movie that you wait ages for just so you can drag a friend all across one city & into the heart of the other, grab a large basket of popcorn and cozy up in an air-conditioned hall to watch it on the big screen.

& you know how there’s always something that messes plans like these up?

Yeah, well, I know that feeling all too well. I couldn’t watch Thor in the cinema because one of my friends ditched me. I couldn’t watch The Avengers in the cinema because two of my friends decided they couldn’t possibly do a “sista” a solid and pick her up. And finally I couldn’t watch Fast & Furious 6 in the cinema because a friend thought it would be great to go for the after-midnight show – which just happens to be past my curfew!

Keeping with the theme of cinema-related disappointments, today we went to watch my first ever Bollywood movie in the theatre (Initiation time!!). It was going all too well – a little too well to be true. & then suddenly it did turn out to be a ruse when the movie (and the lights and the AC) didn’t come on after the intermission. The generator had failed and everyone knows the electricity situation in Pakistan. (Grrrrrrr.)

The only saving grace was the 100% refund.

But I still don’t know what happened in the second-half of the movie! This is just not fair! How can they do this to me?! x@

But the OCD-ish side of me is consoled by the fact that I was not the only one & the house was full for the movie and everyone else who was there is right now at home & is just as annoyed by the fact that they don’t know what went on in the second-half. (Evil laughter.)

Do you have any cinema-related woe stories? Please offer some consolation.

"To be Indeed A God!"

“There is a tide in the affairs of men.”

I’ve always stumbled on great wisdom in my readings of the greats of the literary world. & Shakespeare has always been a favorite, even though I don’t read him as much as I would want to.

When I graduated from high school, there was one thing that I knew about myself – I might not have the best grades, I might not be beautiful, but I’m destined for greatness.

Sound a little too full of myself, don’t I? Well, I never was. I just never believed that I was an average human being. Maybe I had to believe that I was bigger than everything around me, that I was larger than life in order to overcome some deep insecurity. But then again, I’ve never really been insecure about much. Yet, I always believed that being average was beneath me.

Then I started my undergrad & from the very first day, with just one or two exceptions, people who I thought were my friends seemed to take it upon themselves, however unconsciously, to disillusion me, to force me to be average. And for a while they succeeded. I did believe I was nothing more than an ordinary girl going through the motions of life like so many before me.

But now, 5 years later with still another year to go before I finish my undergrad, I believe again. I believe that I am greater than all of this, greater than all the petty issues that have plagued my life for the past 5 years, greater than all the people who strive to go unnoticed, greater than this small life I’m living.

I might not have the best grades still. & I might not be motivated enough to do something about them. But they don’t define me. I am a good person, a good friend. I am someone who lights up a room when she walks into it. I am someone who makes friends wherever she goes. I am someone who is brimming with talent and only needs a nudge in the right direction. I am someone who dreams & loves without holding back. I am someone who is larger than life and someone who is destined for great things, someone who will change the world someday.

There is a tide in the affairs of men, because a smooth sea never made a skilled sailor. And I’ll be damned if I am going to be dragged down into the trenches to work with the “average” when I am destined to rub shoulders with giants.

“O to have life henceforth a poem of new joys!
To dance, clap hands, exult, shout, skip, leap, roll on, float on!
To be a sailor of the world bound for all ports,
A ship itself, (see indeed these sails I spread to the sun and air,)
A swift and swelling ship full of rich words, full of joys.”

- “A Song of Joys” by Walt Whitman

Monologue [Be human.]

Time has a way of settling everything, and the things that it doesn’t settle, it puts into perspective. Time is also relevant; there are moments of silence and infinities of chaos. There are days when everything feels like its back on track. But you know, somewhere deep in your heart, that it isn’t. You know that these moments of brilliance are the final, desperate sparks of a dying flame trying to reignite itself. You know that the distance has stretched out too far. The silences are not complete now; they are filled with doubts, unsaid words, unvoiced fears.  The chaos is beginning to become routine, a rhythm you fall in and out of with more grace than you ever thought you had. The whole world is spinning just like before, in complete harmony, going full circle, but your own little world is off-kilter. But, hey, sunshine, it’s ok, you know? Because at the end of the day you’re all that you really need. We come and go and we’re never less lonely and our disguises only get tougher with age. So, sunshine, go be yourself, and be absolutely alone – because you can do that. Revel in the solitude, because only in this absolute silence will you find yourself. Not every silence needs filling. Be human, and be proud.

Twilight

I am as if walking through the twilight,
Of my mind and of my heart,
Of the things they both would believe.
The mind says you are lost forever,
The heart is but a romantic.
And I am torn, for there is
A fork as the river of my soul breaks to two.
One flow takes me back to you,
To the person I must have been in your eyes,
Though I feel that person is long forgotten.
The other takes me far away from you,
Where I might forget your face,
Your smile,
Your scent!
And though I would forget you,
As the waters of time would slowly,
Yet surely,
Erase you from memory,
But I would keep a part of you,
Somewhere in the crevices of my broken heart,
For pain forgotten is a lesson unlearnt.
And so, I tear my soul in half,
One to keep and move forward,
And one to send back in time,
For living in the now isn’t possible,
For a person, such as I,
Belonging to a past,
So unresolved,
So unkempt,
So unnervingly beautiful,
Yet so disruptively chaotic.

I Stand Defeated.

There are moments when you know you’ve lost, when you know you’ve been utterly defeated by someone with a much lower intellect than yours, by a person whose understanding of the cosmos is not even a minor percentage of that which you hold. But still, you have been defeated, by this meager creature. And to defeat you, they had no need for sophisticated weaponry or stealthy strategies, but the weapon that they chose to wield was none other than your own faith; your faith in that something bigger that you believe to exist in every man. We are all of us God’s own image, are we not? Are not our souls whispers of God’s own breath? Then why must we succumb to be such meager mortals, the lot of us? Why must we not struggle to be something of the divine? And this belied, my friend - the only, that each man might someday indeed be a God, that is the weapon that they wield against you. For men hold no desire in their hearts to be anything more than men, and that desire to be nothing but the ordinary is what drives our world to go round. You may believe otherwise, you may believe in strive for divinity, but on each turn, each step you will be proved wrong. You will be beaten down; you will stand defeated, as you stand now. But don’t let that drag your spirits down. For the only thing on which Sir Newton’s force does not work is the spirit. It is our spirit that holds the key to divinity – if only we can learn to set it free. So strive, my friend – my only, strive for divinity, for the Existence Extraordinaire. For every generation needs a Robert Frost to take the road less travelled by; every generation needs a Thoreau to keep pace with his own drummer; every generation needs a Whitman to contradict himself! So, go out there and be defeated and defeated once again, because after every defeat you may find yourself either marching to the crowd’s drummer or contradicting yourself even more. And that, my friend – my only, is a worthy risk after all.

Disney turned Me into A Romantic!

I’m a huge fan of animated movies. Spent my childhood watching Disney movies; Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, Little Mermaid, Lion Kings, Emperor’s New Groove – they all made me develop these great expectations from life. I had it in my head that wherever I would go, I would be the princess and people would sing and dance around me and there’d be a Prince Charming just waiting to set the world down at my feet. But well, you know what happened to me, it happened to all Disney fans, life kicked me in the gut and laughed it’s ass off.

But being the romantic that Disney movies made me, I’m pretty sure, still, that “Someday my Prince will come”!

So, when I recently watched Tangled again, and then came across a person selling flying lanterns today, I have been on toes from that point onwards, scouting the crowd for my Flynn Rider/Prince Charming.

If anyone bumps into him, please tell him where I live. The poor idiot might be stuck in a tree somewhere or, worse yet, he might be following Apple Maps. -__-

Danger: Mood Swings Ahead

You know how a car that goes from 0 to 100 mph within 5 seconds is considered to be a(h)mazing? & you know how the only humans to get excited by this fact are the ones from the heavy-object-lifting gender? Then why is it that when men come across a girl/woman/female who can shift from one mood to another within 5 seconds, they fail to appreciate her? Do think it’s easy? Believe me, Sir(s), it isn’t.  There’s so much chemistry involved in that one mood shift, it practically drains us of all our energy & then we have to “carbo-load” (or whatever) on chocolates and soda! And then we have to exercise our butts off because those chocolates and sodas start gluing onto all the wrong body parts!

So, gentlemen, the next time a lady in front of you shifts from one mood to another in a second instead of being a little bitch about it, clap her on the back and hand her a chocolate and tell her how beautiful her eyes are. Because honestly, mood swings are the least you should be worried about.

(Did you know that women have a higher pitched voice and men get irritated when we talk in that a slightly loud voice? What do you think would happen if we made full use of our voices? Let me tell you: Extreme Torture.)

When Fire Loves Water

“The universe turns differently when fire loves water.”

Having a heart of stone isn’t as hard as people think it is; more people give in to that temptation than we would like to admit. But the one thing I’ve always prided myself on is not giving in to the temptation, not losing my sense of awe even for the littlest things in this world, not losing my faith in the goodness of people. I find myself being amazed at the smallest hint of God’s infinite magic; I’ll be the one sitting on a beach after sunset, watching a full moon dance across the endless waves, I was the one who had tears in her eyes when she saw a lake, amid scattered stones of all sizes, with water as blue as the sky. I promised myself that I would not let the childish amazement in my soul die, and I am proud to say that I hold true to that promise.

Yet, I feel so small, because I know God is so big and there is still such a long way for me to go. There is still so much left to do, so much love still left to open up my heart to.

I’ve never been much for religious debates or readings. But recently, on one of winter’s parting afternoons, I came by a book on a not-so-dusty shelf in a bookstore that I had forgot about for a while, which felt as if someone was holding my hand and telling me exactly what I had been thinking about for a very long time. After a very long time, I have found a piece of writing that has created such a ripple in the pool of my mind, sent my thoughts on a rampage and urged me to think about things I thought I never would have thought about otherwise. I never thought I was much of a Sufi, but this book made me want to understand what being a Sufi truly means.

So, in all my earnestness, I urge you all to read “Forty Rules of Love” by Elif Shafak.

It has changed something in me – for the better, I hope. And I hope it brings such a change in anyone who reads it.

& may every Rumi amongst us find his Shams and therein find enlightenment.

On the Eve of Every Tomorrow

On the eve of every tomorrow, I will light a candle for you; in case you decide to come home that night.

On the eve of every tomorrow, I will keep the door unlocked; in case confronting is ashames you.

But on the eve of every tomorrow, I will not stay up waiting; in case you decide to kill the dream once again.

Objective Romance

Movie: Say Anything
Released in 1989

I’m a hopeless romantic; not the cheesy, all red, letters-in-blood type but the stand-in-my-backyard-while-holding-a-boombox-above-your-head-playing-my-favorite-song type of romantic. But despite my romantic disposition, there’s one thing I’ve learnt to be completely objective about: Loss. I’ve somehow become the person who knows people are going to die, who knows that everyday all over the world children are losing their parents and parents are losing their children and there’s nothing anyone can do about it because that is the circle of life. I’ve become the person who has come to the realization that the only thing that is pre-ordained and cannot be changed, is the expiration date stamped on our souls. Romanticism doesn’t have to be all about stars. It should be about nostalgia, reminiscence and of course romance - the pure, non-cheesy kind. It should never be about loss, because that only casts a shadow on everything else that might otherwise be beautiful. Loss is inevitable, and us, humans, should learn to stop challenging The Inevitable, if only to avoid undue heartache.

Entitled to A Burning Desire

Courtesy :leonidafremov.deviantart.com

There isn’t much passion centered within my existance. There isn’t anything in particular I wanted to do with my life, except maybe write. There’s isn’t anything particular I wanted to be, except maybe brilliant. There isn’t anything particular that I ever needed more than my next breath. But maybe I haven’t come by that thing yet. Aren’t people discovering themselves when they’re old and withered and the surge of passion would be enough to kill them, but it doesn’t, only makes life seem more worthwhile? Maybe my passion is out there, standing in a corner, waiting for me to turn down that road so that it can sneak up on me, take me by surprise and change my world. Maybe my passion is something bigger than the human-sized dreams I have right now. Maybe my passion is beyond all that I yearn for right now, bigger than all the little milestones I need to achieve.

Maybe my passion doesn’t even originate from me. Maybe my passion is the reciprocal of someone else’s passion for all the things that I’m too wise to be proud about. And maybe that passion will be enough to take my breath away someday, when I’m old and wrinkled, and when I’ve forgotten all else but the passion burning in the eyes that I had never seen. Maybe that passion will be enough for my salvation.