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Baas Yonhi (Just As That!)
(Disclaimer: Written under the drugged, semi-holistic and MORONIC influence of Marijuana [kidding...] Cough Syrup…[Burp]!!!!)
There are times when you feel sad, at pain, destitute beyond hope or forgiveness…WHY??? Baas Yonhi —Just as that! Well-meaning people keep telling you to move forward, nudge you towards the so-called happier times…happier times which you know deep down inside won’t come for you, as you are the one who has always gotten things the hard way, the raw end of the deal. Some times the happier stuff doesn’t come at all. Sometimes, it does come, but at the time and at that point in life, when it doesn’t hold value for you anymore, it doesn’t matter. Such is the stuff life is made off. Life’s little ironies that are merely inconveniences, small heart aches and not tragedies. You find your own
peace, at your own time pace and space. But what to do of those well-meaning people, who don’t share your plight, your circumstances, who really don’t understand you, but nevertheless care for you, and want you to get well and wholesome – in a snap, right away! It doesn’t happen this way! It doesn’t work that way!
Down with a terrible flu, i feel as if i have been pinned and rolled down under a steam engine. My soul feels like a tattered and besoten rag, fluttering in the wind…holes and all. i am becoming more like a face behind the counter…a face, not even a name…despensing OTC (over the counter) comfort, advice, TLCs to the people who don’t care,. who don’t reciprocate in return. Just like the editorial work that everybody seeks…two pages of this…5 pages of that…needed in an hour or a month.(but for that i get paid for!) But them…My so-called friends, they come as and when the need arise, dish out their troubles and worries, not caring whether i want to listen or not or what i am going thru or feeling. A superficial “Hi! How r u doing? Hey listen, i need a favor/advice..” or “I am so frustrated…” When they are in trouble, they know where to find me, but when happier times come for them, they forget me altogether! What am i? A punching bag, a sponge??? Needless to say i am disappointed in people, some of my own friends. I am disappointed in the one who got married unwillingly last week (read the last week’s post)…all the suicidal talk, all the profession of undying love for the first lady, all the talk of walking out on the second lady (the current wife) vanished away….IN JUST ONE NIGHT! Poof! Gone! I Have HAd my share of worries by the minute about him, prayed for him throughout the 3 days…kept soothing him to ease him through the process, kept by his side so he wouldn’t say that i was not a good friend! Did for him everything i expected my friends to do in dire straights, but which they didn’t do for me! And Yet he couldn’t find the decency to let me know that things turned out well! Too well infact! He just Couldn’t realize the extent of worries i had about him! I would start being happy for him, but right now i find the sudden change in him toooo drastic!

Let’s admit it! When it comes to man and woman….if all the fluff about companionship, compatibility and the notorious 4 letters (LOVE) is cut away! It’s all about the three-lettered word (S*X)! A matter of 11 minutes as put by Paulo Coelho…as against the whole eternity and whole life time of loving! Then why do some of us still believe in and try to hang on to the misbegotten notions of lurrvve, hang on to memories, hang on to pain, purity, fidelity, values….Nothing matters. The meaningful conversation you want from your partner, can only be done in bed! Friends would always come AFTER the beloved, or whosoever you are sleeping with! The next time the man or the woman who has claimed to love the pilgrim soul in you would lie down with his/her partner…he/she would forget all about you!
You would not even be a memory, you would be a moment in passing, or even less.

There is an ale house in the town
And there my love sits him down
He takes a strange girl on his knees
And tell her things that
He once told me! (an Irish ditty)

Call me a cynic, a misanthrope…every day i shed another misbegotten notion, question another value, reevaluate my friends/foes (i do need to travel light saeed)….Everyday! i fall a lil bit out of love with life. So this time around when the nice doctor (who was acting as the replacement of the regular one) asked me why i can’t manage to be and stay happy? why i keep taking anti-depressants? Why don’t i try to look at those who are under me in the ladder of fortune and privileges and try to count my own blessings? Why do i even bother looking at those who have it all or at least some of what i wanted? What is the cause of this sadness? etc etccc..yadda yadda.I told the nice doctor that…sometimes i just wanna be sad…Just as that (baas yonhni)!

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One High and Too Many Lows

Sometimes, in spite of being a wordsmith i find myself at a loss for words, but never for emotions. But how would you put those emotions in words that would sound befitting? Comforting? Caring? That is the question. What would you say to:

>>a person who have recently had a nervous break down and as a result jeopardized everything she painstakingly built in 5 years?
>>a person who went to all extremes to prove his love, was betrayed by the very beloved, is still unable to reconcile with his pain and is being blackmailed into marrying someone else by the well-meaning and concerned but overbearing parents?
the same person who sleeps with a loaded gun under his pillow, assures you that it is for official use and that he is strong, but you suspect otherwise?
>>a person who has recently fought the most gruesome battle with cancer and cameo therapy, but is still confined to her room for the fear of infections?
>>a person for whom occasions like eid are reminders of the emptiness and the family life she never experienced because of her father’s battle with Alzheimer and subsequent death?
>>a person who spent her whole life in supporting her family and was able to get married only now, and yet her husband mistreats her?

Don’t these people deserve some happiness in life? Some hope? Something to hang on to? It’s unfair.
And to all of these people i was unable to say anything substantial and meaningful recently. i was there in spirit with them and yet i was unable to say anything. And in all of these people’s stories i have experienced a flicker of pain, have tried to relive this pain and have been unable to do so…we can’t put ourselves in other people’s shoes…
i wish life would become easier for them a lil bit, and they do get the break that they have deserved for so long.

As for myself…I was really grateful for a few other friends apart from the ones mentioned above to have come down on chaand raat and enlivening it. Thank you saadie for taking the time out for us, even when u had so little time. And thank you clintu for master minding it all and making it all happen. You guys make me feel of being worthy of a million dollar babe. Because in your eyes, i have always seen respect for me, for who I am. You are comfortable with the emotional baggae that i carry, and the horns that i wear instead of the halo. The past few years have been nothing but difficult but i have some how never found myself short of support from you guys’ side.
A BIG THANK YOU!

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Sleep-Walking Through Life

Sleepwalking
I feel as if I am
sleepwalking
Time-traveling
Mincing the days
Down into a fine
Compressible substance
Playing with weeks
As if they were putty
In my hands, bending
And stretching the limits
Of the fourth dimension
Holding them out to
Dry in the sun of the
arid desert that is my life
because it all moves so slow
yet goes by so fast these days
sleepwalking in the desert
parched and hungry-tongued
dehydrated, deadly thirsty
for some variation
searching too early for
the one thing that brings
some rain.
by Dirtywings

There are times when I am prone to feel that that I am sleep-walking through life, that I am never really grounded, and that I don’t belong anywhere. Days fall through my fingers like sand. It’s hard to recall the time when I used to be passionate about things. I had ambitions and I had dreams. Not any more. Ambitions take beatings; you are defeated in your own games. Life becomes a matter of getting through one day to another. And when you don’t know what the next moment brings, and if life is to end the very next moment, can you afford to leave things incomplete? The mundane rituals of eating, breathing, deadlines, chores and assignments, they take so much of our time….our entire life. Until one day we get up and discover that it’s all gone. A friend recently shared a rendezvous she had with her brother. He wrote an email to her which read:

“..today when I was in the kitchen searching for a mid night snack, I felt a slight tremor. It lasted perhaps 3 seconds, but in that short period of time, I thought of so many things. I thought that if god forbid everything comes tumbling down this very instance…would I be able to save myself and my family? Would I be able to do anything for them? Would there be time? Is what I have done for them is enough? Apart from doing, have I ever told them that I love them and appreciate their presence in my life? What if it is my fate to die just now? There would be a lot left unsaid, and lots of regrets for not saying it “now and here”. So my dear sister, I am taking this occasion to say this to you that I cherish and love you beyond what I can ever say, and what you can ever imagine…
with love
your brother R.

And the brother is not living abroad; they are living under the same roof…too coped up now with the demands of their rigorous careers. That’s the way life becomes, you become mechanized and programmed in such a way that you lose touch with yourself and those around you. You take them for granted because you think that they would be there forever in your life. Sometimes we let our differences stand between us. Sometimes we simply ignore. Until time runs out!

So let us take a moment and let us know our family and friends…what they mean to us!