The hidden mountains...

I keep getting lost in the wilderness of my suffocating, thick, and dark cloud of ambitions. I lose sense of all dimensions and then I visualize an imaginary straight line, only to fake the feeling of having a direction. The farther I follow this line, the darker it gets. The cloud grows thicker, asphyxiating me to an extent that I can no longer carry my feet above the ground to take another step. Drained, but determined, I start dragging my feet on the ground, and keep following the mirage of a path to success.

And then comes a point, where I stumble over a boulder in the ground and fall flat on my face.

Irritated, I turn back to take a look at the obstacle that caused the fall and find it glowing mystically.

Intrigued, I try to pick it up but it doesn't move.

Famished, for even the tiniest bit of ecstacy, I try to dig it out of the soil of my delusional world. Every bit of it revealed glows brighter than what was visible before. I carelessly ignore the effortlessness and swiftness of this labor until I realize I've reached the base of this glowing object.

Confused, I look at the magnificence of what stands in front of me. The tiny bolder in the ground now stands a mountain in front of me. All darkness gone, the thick cloud vaporized...

Belittled, I stand at the foot of this magnate, while the reality sinks in...

I keep getting lost in the wilderness of my suffocating, thick, and dark cloud of ambitions... I keep looking up in the sky for what I need. Ignorant to all the blessings I already have... I just stay lost in this crazy trek... to an extent that I can no longer carry my feet above the ground to take another step. Drained, but determined, I start dragging my feet on the ground, and keep following the mirage of a path to success.

And then comes a point, where I stumble over a boulder in the ground, the tip of a mountain... One of many that exist in my world... in my life... obscured by my dreams... The hidden mountains of bliss...

How to crash into a wall...

There are a number of ways to crash into a wall!

The force of the crash and the selection of a suitable wall is absolutely upto you!

1. Building expectations...
   Outcome: Bruised nose!
   
   
2. Expecting expectations to be expected...
   Outcome: Bruised nose and forehead!
   
   
3. Expecting expectations to be accepted...
   Outcome: Bruised nose, forehead, hands, and knees!
   
   
4. Expecting expectations to be met...
   Outcome: Nose bleed!
   
   
5. Droping expectations!
   Outcome: Concussion!
   
   
6. Falling in love with someone...
   Outcome: Unconsciousness!
   
   
7. Expecting someone to fall equally in love with you...
   Outcome: Paralysis!
   
   
8. Believing yourself to be the ultimately righteous person...
   Outcome: Coma!
   
   
9. Mistaking friends' reliability for dependability...
   Outcome: Skull fracture!
   
   
10. Giving up!
    Outcome: Demise!

Hope it helps to know all of these!

P.S. The author does not profess in recovery from any of the outcomes of any of the crashes!

A drop of insanity...

It's a little funny how it's always difficult to recall when was the last time one cried and what did one cry about once the emotions have eased back to normal!

Even if it was just the night before! Or may be even a few hours!

Because all our grievance just turns into a salty, sticky trickle of tears and leaves the rest of the body to let itself move on!

But there are moments when one certainly knows of not being upset or gloomy, and most definitely isn't anywhere near crying, yet a lonesome tear swells out of the corner of one of the eyes, and is wiped away unnoticed!

A quiet existence of some unfair atrocity that life has incurred upon an otherwise sparingly happy person!

Do you remember when was the last time you wiped your cheek for the cold, wet trail that rebelling tear left?

If you think never! Then think again! Because if it's true it either means you're an insensitive rock or you're a very blessed person!

It just takes a little bit of a touch with the reality to know when did you shed the last drop of insanity!

Nostalgic... Finally!!!

It rained today! Just for a few minutes. It rains often enough in Islamabad so there wasn't anything special about it today. Except that it had been years since I'd witnessed a downpour without having something else on my mind...

There I was today... No pending commitments for the moment... No objective... Pointlessly sitting at the Khokha in the middle of Industrial Area under a gang of trees... Waiting for the Doodh Patti to be served...

But things have changed! Life! Has changed. Regardless of the freedom of that moment, I didn't wish to walk out of the shade into that blissful shower of heavenly pearls much more than a subconscious dillusion!

That moment, the speeding blanket of melting clouds, is what left me truly nostalgic... For I guess the first time in my life... Finally! I know what nostalgia feels like!

Realization(s) of the day...

Saturday, March 22, 2008

1. Nothing lasts forever...
2. Even the best of your friends can fail to realize when you need their support...
3. One must definitely depend on his friends but never rely on them... (I was told so by somebody a few days back but never understood the true meaning until today)
4. Life is a jungle and "survival of the fittest" is the supreme law... And I am NOT among the fittest!

Taking clothes off in a stadium...

There are times, when I happen to be running late for an appointment, a meeting, a party, or even work, and I feel the craving to have one of those Back to the Future cars that could just hop in the air and go flying around wherever required!

Today was another one of those days! I had this craving from the very moment I pulled out of my street this morning. My head was pulsating with the irritating feeling that can neither be called pain nor numbness. May be it was my blocked sinus, or I possibly slept through the night with my head exposed to cold. May be I was just hungry. Hunger! This rang some bells, in my already buzzing head as well as my stomach! Now I knew!! it was that bucket full of Dunkins' cappuccino that I had had before going to bed at 2. So I started munching on pieces of the vegetable roll my mother had placed in the passenger seat as I hurriedly sat in the car.

I had yet not finished either the roll nor the silent appreciation of Mama's tasty cookery, when I drove right into a traffic jam, caused by uniformed policemen dragging the rusted and deshapped barriers in the middle of the road just before the District Courts compound! So much for my indulgence in the breakfast on the roll...

It was 8:50 am when the traffic was blocked, for an unknown reason. And it was 9:45am, when somebody from the office called me back to tell me why the routes had been blocked. The army man was taking off his uniform finally, at the Hockey Stadium on the Mall. So all the arrogant asses who had not stayed at home to watch the patriot's sacrifice on the national tv channel, were now running around in circles, trying to get to the places they would have reached hours ago, if our nation's great leader had deprived us the awareness of this event happening! It is a democracy after all! The public must know everything!

And there we were, the arrogant members of public, wasting fuel on the roads, running late for our commitments, enjoying awareness of the history being made!

It was 10:45am when the traffic finally thinned enough to allow me to shift the car in the third gear. It was a moment of relief!

But happy moments tend to be short lived! An exhausted and probably dying housefly spiralled in front of my eyes, and zoomed straight in one of my nostrils! Instinctively I shook my head as voilently as I could while keeping my hands on the steering wheel. The car swayed between the lanes, the surrounding cars honked curses at me. The housefly flew out of my nose and landed on top of the glove compartment. I pulled the car back in control, looked at the fly with my furious eyes, and slapped my left hand where it was replenishing its energies to make another flight and saw it spiral downwards, probably dead! But I was not satisfied yet. The democratic nation of my car had infuriated me!

So I looked at its filthy blood on my hand and muttered, "Maadar Ch**d..! Dalla!!! Kuttay ka bacha!"

I felt pretty relaxed when I reached the office 3 hours late than usual! My empire had been taken care of temporarily. Hopefully no more houseflies would bother me in my car...

This is how the chili crumbles...

I entered the kitchen, with an air of anticipation, to prepare the evening tea, while mama was busy with some other chores. It is pretty unusual for me to be home on a weekend around tea time. Usually I am away running some errands, or sleeping through the summer heat until the sun goes down. Quite obviously today was an exception. Not only I was at home, wide awake, but I was also going to do something for mama.

So there I was, walking past the familiar yet alienated appliances that furnish the place. The lights were off, and the only facilitator of visibility was dim, suffocated sunlight, escaping through the window, shadowed by a tree in the backyard. While walking towards the cooking range, I noticed a tray full of homegrown freshly plucked Green Chili Peppers on the shelf. I felt happy to see there was plenty of them. It had been a while we had not been able to find any from the market, with so much aroma and taste. When I stepped right past the tray towards the range, I stepped on something that cracked under my foot, with a squishy feeling under the shoe. I swore under the breath, for having stepped on one of the peppers I was just so reverently praising a moment ago.

A bigger concern was mama's anticipated reaction on the mess that was now lying on the floor. So I had to clean it up. Which meant I needed more light. I decided not to turn back, and continued walking to the cooking range. After switching on the lamp in the hood, I turned around to take a look at the damage I had caused to the poor pepper. What I saw was a little confusing... there was no pepper on the floor. I stared sheepishly on the still dimlit floor, pondering on the fact that the crack I heard was definitely not of a roach getting killed under my foot, and even if it was, it was hard to believe it could've crawled out of sight after enduring the weight of a 210 pound monster that I am.

Tea had lost the priority now, I wanted to find out what I had stepped on, and where it had gone! So I walked across the kitchen, switched on all the lamps there are in the kitchen, and started searching the floor again.

For a few seconds, I did not register anything unusual on the brown marble chips flooring. But then I saw it. The pepper was there, but it had turned a very unusual color of beige, and it had its head and tail raised in the air, eyes wide open, shining like tiny orbs of onyx, with absolute pain and shock. It turned its head clockwise, where I was standing, in a very slow motion, just like a robotic replica of a Jurrasic dinosaur would move. It probably did not like what it saw, and I guess did not want to die looking at the monster who killed it. So the head turned the other way, even slower this time, and apparently, running out of life before reaching the desired position, it collapsed half way through, and never moved again.

The beige pepper was dead, a couple of tiny red droplets shone on the floor beside its belly. I looked away, uncertain if I was sorry or actually disgusted, on the sight of a lizard I had just killed.
I never knew before today, that lizard blood was also red...

I did not have the heart neither the gut to deal with gruesome stuff, so I chose to face the music on not cleaning up the mess. Made a mental note to make sure I did not step on the corpse again, and continued with the tea. Mama told me it tasted good, before I told her about the misadventure.

For some reason, the tea did not taste as great as mama had put it... and she also told me the gardner had removed all the green chili peppers from the backyard, the season was over! He planted pink roses this time!