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Men…Arghhhh!

People never tend to amaze me – their pettiness, their insensitivity, their fondness of small talk. If things would be going well in their lives, they would expect the same to be happening in others’ lives as well. It only takes a moment to say an encouraging word, but people in their well meaning yet selfish attempts would avoid doing that. They would contrive all sort of lame and off colored jokes and generalities just to avoid the subject. Why the hell are they then getting in touch then? They don’t want to be suck into others’ emotional whirlpools. Fair enough but this also forbids them to seek comfort from others in the time of their need. And yet they come knocking on the doors. This time around, I am not sure that I am keen upon opening the doors. Case in point, an old friend of mine, who decided to get in touch after a long time and ranted on and on about his seemingly perfect and blessed life. I congratulated but in spite of knowing the kind of problems I was facing for quite a long time, he simply didn’t inquire about my well being. Whatever I wrote to him in response of what he asked, he never bothered replying, saying even one word of encouragement or solace. Another case in point is the friend I ranted about in an earlier post, the one who forgot his ex in just friggin night spent with his 2nd wife. Well he finally decided to get in touch after 5 months or so, only to rant that the 2nd wife has gone back to her own home because she couldn’t stand his keeping in touch with the ex, the first woman. I asked him as to what happened to the marital bliss that he was initially blabbering about. To which he replied: “it all seems good in the start! No she can’t stand this!” What else could I say beside: “why should she? Would you stand this, if you were in her shoes?” He had no answer and what I said didn’t make a difference anyways. Fidelity isn’t a man’s characteristic (Many women are no exception). He is a man; he did what men usually do. Riding in two boats, rocking both! I honestly can’t understand men. I just don’t get it. In this life time, it is very hard to find “the one”, to “have him/her”, to “hold on”, to “make it work every day” and to “not to let go”. And here are people; who have affairs, get married and have affairs, get divorced, get married again, have more affairs! Wow, why get married at all? Why make the commitment when one can’t live up to it? Blahhhh! Then there are friends, intelligent friends, who fall in love with bimbos. There is yet another friend who couldn’t stop ranting about the bimbo he has fallen in love, the girl who talks nothing ever BESIDES her shopping sprees, her waxing jobs, her clothes, her expensive dine outs. Wait till you get married to her, everything that fascinates you now about her, would fall apart! Being unable to support her expensive lifestyle, you would begin to call her a “high maintenance commodity” and then you would start looking elsewhere. Men do like uncomplicated women, those who don’t analyze, who can just look pretty and play dumb (even when they r not). Yes call me bitter, call me callous even – for I can’t seem to be happy for these idiotic friends of mine! But in the past few years, I have seen so many sides of the male psyche and character, in those whom I though were better than the rest. I thought they were better, that’s why I had them as friends (yea I am priggish). But I don’t know them anymore. Those steady friendships of mine for 4-5-6 years, they are falling apart. Who has changed? Me, or them? One thing I am sure of is that my temperament for unconditional acceptance is running out!

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Patterns of An Ordinary Life

Amazing highs and abysmal lows – That always has to be the pattern of this life of mine. In the past weeks, I swung between both. It’s heaven and it’s hell, and in between – this present lies like a snug little purgatory. I reveal and unravel the yarns of my soul and mind here. It’s a wasteland of reflections and a degree of forgetfulness – morbid thoughts, recriminations. I lose my faith completely in HIM, strike the board and cry “no more”. And then, like a loser I come back and allow myself to be reclaimed. It’s scary and weird even for me to understand and analyze the variety of emotions that I go through in a single day, even within a span of an hour. The sunlight is consumed by darkness, the fog creeps in, and the snow starts freezing over every emotion and every dream. The pallor and gloom of the heart and mind becomes impenetrable. Then suddenly the wind may whisper some benediction in my bleeding ears and I become whole again, shaking the snow off my shredded soul. Ready to embrace life, I turn my eyes towards the sun. Soon it would be dark again, reclaiming it. That’s why I call myself a creature of light as well as darkness.

This city of mine saw dark the day when a sizable number of people died in the name of sectarian violence. A Christian expat student inquired me: “Which side are you on? Did ur side sustain the loss or was it the other way around?” I said: “Hunn???” He said: “yea but I have heard that there are 76 sects in Islam, which sect do you belong to?” And I said: “Yea I too discovered sometimes back that there are 76 sects! But I am a muslima and that has always been enough to me, this sect business can go to hell! A life lost is a life lost. Be it a shia, sunni or who and what so ever. Life already is too complicated, why make it worst?” And he smiled merely!
But the violence did get to everybody’s nerves. Ambulances whizzed by, while hooligans did what they always do…created chaos and panic. Ready to smash cars, only to spare them after seeing women and children in the car. Very often I have found myself a degree away from the eye of the storm…the grazing bullet, the fire, the hoodlum, the accident waiting to happen. We don’t realize how many mishaps pass by us daily, not touching us. Maybe the prayers shield us. How long? Not forever indeed! It’s a matter of when your luck would run out. Until then this child of darkness and light battles with the world with her boxing gloves on, ducking sometimes, taking it on the jaw at others.

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Illusions~*

Why there seems to be a lack of space in the world, when you want to hide and cry? Why there seems to be a lack of people in the world, when you want some one to be there to listen to you, to hold you when you want to cry, to understand the unsaid and empathize with it? Instead of giving condescending remarks, or the usual “it’s gonna be ok!” Why is it that one feels alone in the bevy of friends and acquaintances? And why is it that when the phone rings, it is some one discussing his/her problem, ranting, bitching, seeking advice? How many of these people actually stop in bw and really really say (and mean it too): “And how have you been keeping? What’s up with you? Do you need anything? Want to talk about something?” The world with its routines and rituals keep spinning. Yet it takes only a moment for eveyhting that has been built so painstakingly so far to come crashing down. Health, peace, friendships, stability. Maybe stability and companionships are just illusions.

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Family Ties

Sometimes it is hard to determine if your family does more harm to you or the outsiders? In the past few weeks, I was analyzing this due to the things I encountered – in my own house and in those of a few acquaintances of mine. As for me, it had to come, it was quiet too long. I induced hurt; I was hurted in the process as well. Old skeletons stumbled out of the closet, accusations renewed; the old feud got a new lease of life. It doesn’t get better, it only stops for a while. Maybe the hurt compounds only because deep down, we know that outsiders are bound to hurt us, but when your own family does the same to you; it’s then that it gets out of hand. They are your own blood, people who have known and seen you right from the start. Maybe, it’s our own family’s inability to trust us, understand us which drives us to take solace from outsiders, and thus, allowing them the space to exploit and play upon our insecurities. Outsiders and insiders thus are more or less the same. Yet oxymoronically, it’s these very ties of blood that don’t get served; meanwhile outsiders keep drifting in and out of our lives, creating ripples in the pond. An old axiom says: “Familial relationships are like water, driving a knife through it, wont severe it, merely displace it!” Still, your family should stand with you – irrespective of everything else. What’s beyond me is why they don’t understand, even when things r explained to them. Somehow the act of giving explanations makes you look even more guilty, when you have done nothing, while you see others getting away with murder all the time. This is what’s different about friends, they are outsiders as well, they get to be the family you choose. You get into fights and rifts with em as well, but what amazes me is the fact that you don’t have to explain things to your friends. They somehow get it! For most of the times. You dont have to explain things to them!

114401167099875799

Family Ties

Sometimes it is hard to determine if your family does more harm to you or the outsiders? In the past few weeks, I was analyzing this due to the things I encountered – in my own house and in those of a few acquaintances of mine. As for me, it had to come, it was quiet too long. I induced hurt; I was hurted in the process as well. Old skeletons stumbled out of the closet, accusations renewed; the old feud got a new lease of life. It doesn’t get better, it only stops for a while. Maybe the hurt compounds only because deep down, we know that outsiders are bound to hurt us, but when your own family does the same to you; it’s then that it gets out of hand. They are your own blood, people who have known and seen you right from the start. Maybe, it’s our own family’s inability to trust us, understand us which drives us to take solace from outsiders, and thus, allowing them the space to exploit and play upon our insecurities. Outsiders and insiders thus are more or less the same. Yet oxymoronically, it’s these very ties of blood that don’t get served; meanwhile outsiders keep drifting in and out of our lives, creating ripples in the pond. An old axiom says: “Familial relationships are like water, driving a knife through it, wont severe it, merely displace it!” Still, your family should stand with you – irrespective of everything else. What’s beyond me is why they don’t understand, even when things r explained to them. Somehow the act of giving explanations makes you look even more guilty, when you have done nothing, while you see others getting away with murder all the time. This is what’s different about friends, they are outsiders as well, they get to be the family you choose. You get into fights and rifts with em as well, but what amazes me is the fact that you don’t have to explain things to your friends. They somehow get it! For most of the times. You dont have to explain things to them!