The Moon is Mute, So Am I - A Page from My Diary.

That day, like all the other days, I said nothing. Not because I didn’t have anything to say but because I knew that those people around me, they won’t grasp it. Because they won’t understand. Because they were so engulfed in the emotions they were carrying at that moment that anything contrary to their rationale that I might had said would’ve fallen on deaf ears - emotionally drenched deaf ears. So I saved the effort. I remained quite again. I didn’t speak. I’m becoming more of a spectator now. A silent spectator. The one who watches everything sitting on the bleachers while the people around that person shout, cry, laugh, scream and do whatever the scene before them makes them to do. Doesn’t that mean that they are controlled by their milieu?
Entirely.
Dependent on it.
Controlled by it.
Run by it.
How easier it would become for them if they’d just free themselves from it. Just brush it off for a little while, and then think and don't just spontaneously respond to their command. Become a rebel. Set their selves loose. Run away. And think with their uncontrolled brains. I believe their brains have the capacity to do much better than that. I believe that but I said that to nobody.

And I watched the moon. It was round and bright - so bright- and at a distance. I stared at it in awe. My weak eyesight made a little bokeh out of it and the bright white light came out of the moon’s boundaries. Hence, the bokeh. Today it was illuminated, both literally and figuratively. Moon is beautiful isn’t it? Just so calm and serene and still and just hanging up there, in its glory. Minding its own business. Providing sustenance. Spreading light. Irrelevant of who is receiving its light. Just doing its business: being beautiful. I like the moon. I always had. It’s like a jewel that the sky adorns itself with. Like a lady wears pearls, the sky, it wears the moon. And the stars? Well they are the perfect complimentary jewelry for the sky. Have you seen anything more beautiful than a moonlit sky complimented by twinkling stars? How simple they are and how beautifully do they get arranged up there, in the sky. I felt all that. Though the sky was starless and it was only the moon and a distant glow of someone’s house bulb they left turned on, that was lying starkly against the dark blue-almost black- sky. But that not-so-wan moon, it made me feel just simply brightened. I felt that and it made me feel good. But I said that to nobody.

June 23, 2013

Skepticism

Why are we afraid to try? Is it that we’re short of ideas or are we afraid of thinking? Are we too afraid about the consequences? Why don’t we get afraid of the consequences that are likely to happen if we don’t try? What is harder? Trying or moving on? Is trying tedious? Is moving on not? Can’t we at least try? Why can’t we take our own decisions? Are we afraid that we lack experience? Well how are we going to earn this thing called experience then? Why do we have to surrender? Why can’t we do what our heart wants us to do? Would it be too dangerous? Why can’t we ACTUALLY live? Why do we have to think a lot about society? Why do we have to get worried about people around us? What are they going to do? Talk about us? Laugh at us? Don’t they do it already? Why is it that we always calm our desires by feeding them endurance? Why can’t we let them taste the flavor of true happiness? Is true happiness expensive? Isn’t it worth it? Why is it that the discussion always ends without any outcome? Why do we feel sorry for ourselves? Why do we want people to feel sorry for ourselves? Why do we expect things to get done without trying? Why can’t we just get up and do it? What’s wrong with trying? Are we lazy? Have we accepted the defeat already? Everyone is running in this race of life so what would we get if we back out? Is our destiny too far away? Can we give up on our dreams this easily? Why do we always have to blame our fate for it? Is life unfair? It seems unfair for everyone, doesn't it? So isn't it equally unfair for everyone? That’s quite fair, no? We’re afraid. Afraid of a lot of things. We’re afraid of the future, of the people.  We care a lot about people, don’t we? Do we care that much about ourselves as well? What’s wrong with dreaming? Can we not dream? Do we want to kill our passion? Living without dreams is one thing. Living your dreams is another. Living without dreams is just like waiting for the ultimate journey, the journey to the hereafter. Would you regret dying without living your dreams or would you regret it otherwise? Is living difficult? Are we fore-worried about our future? Is it okay to spoil our present for the future that we aren't even sure we would see? Do we lack opportunities or are we too tired to search for them? Can’t we take out sometime for ourselves? Can I get the answers to my questions without you trying to impose your opinion on me?

Do I ask a lot of questions?

I Wanted to Write You a Letter

Dear A!

I owe you a lot. For all the things you've done for me since as far as my memory can stretch back. You are an amazing person. I consider myself lucky to have you in my life. Whenever I see you smiling, I naturally get happy. You are an inseparable part of my life and I pray for your eternal happiness.

But sometimes I feel like I’m a liability that has been imposed on you against your will. If 40 out of the 100 things that I do in a day are to make myself happy and satisfied, believe me, the remaining 60 things that I do are for your happiness. And do you know what is it that makes me happy and satisfied? A display of satisfaction on your face!  So basically I've been trying to see you smile, because of me, all my life. When I fail after all my trying and feel like I shouldn't be a part of your life, it makes me want to dig a hole to bury myself in it. I try and inspect the things that’d make you feel proud of me and then I try so hard to achieve it. Of course, all those things make me feel proud of myself too. But it’s always your happiness that I somehow relate to my actions. You get mad on me. Don’t allow me to do things that I don’t see any point in deeming wrong. But, in the end, I always end up thinking that your opinion about what’s in my best interest is weightier than mine. Even after doing all that (which of course is absolutely NOTHING as compared to all that you’ve done for me) when I see you upset, I cannot help but think where did I go wrong. I’d appreciate it if you, instead of keeping it to yourself, would communicate my follies to me so that I’d continue to make myself better. Sometimes, when I accomplish something, I tell that to you too because I think that would make you happy too, but when you don’t seem interested in it, that’s when I think I should just stop being so tacky. I understand everyone needs to rest in their personal sphere that they create for themselves and I’m sorry for all those times when I intruded and disturbed it. Dear A! Do you know what makes us different from robots? The emotions! We can’t control them. Actually, we can.. but to a certain level. And I think we all are living this life to satisfy ourselves. We satisfy ourselves by feeding our basic needs and emotions. And one of the emotions is that of happiness. It gets satisfied when you feed it. No matter you feed it a morsel or something close to a buffet dinner. The point is, you need to keep looking for it. Like, you search for food when you feel hungry. And when after searching, you find nothing but a little candy bar, you eat it just to give that starving stomach of yours a bit of satisfaction. You can never be happy if you don’t want an option of being happy in the list. Happiness, if not inexpensive, is neither unachievable. And your words, your actions, and your reactions can make or break someone’s day. It’s for you to decide how miserable or ecstatic you want to make them feel about them. I've encountered the times when I wanted to apologize to you for just getting into your life to add to your worries. I’m sorry for being an unprecedented part of your otherwise better life.

Nonetheless, I love you. I don’t think I can help it because God has made me so affectionate toward you. But I’d try and make sure that you do not get affected by my nonsense, worthless logic. I just wanted to type it out. Not all the things deserve to keep locked and stored.

Love,

Yusra.

       

Vancany

She is strolling around her room, not knowing what to do with her time. Her stack of unread books lay on the floor, confounded by her unusual behavior of leaving it, untouched. Unaware of the blinking green LED of her phone, indicating that she had missed the calls and hadn't read the texts, she is staring at the plain wall so intensely, that if sight was tangible, it would've pierced through that wall. Why, she’s going to ask herself when she would gain her sanity back, did she start deeming everything so uninteresting? She finally sits on her bed, giving in to the natural human phenomenon of getting tired. Perched on the corner of her bed, with her hands resting in her lap, and her hair loosely held in an-almost ponytail, she displays a picture of an inappropriate youth. Maybe she is bored of the monotony. Maybe she wants to escape from all the drama. Maybe she wants to cease being an actor of this play she had unwittingly taken part in. This play called life. Maybe even though she has a blissful life, there is still a vacant portion that needs to be filled. Maybe that vacant portion has somehow dominated the larger, blissful filled part of her. Like an offspring expresses the recessive trait when the dominant gene is absent. Like the big fluffy clouds hide the even bigger sun and make the afternoon seem like evening. She’s still staring at the wall and not thinking about anything. God knows she is not! I know it because I live inside her. I am her soul. And sometimes I just want to give in anything to come out of her and hug her. To tell her that when there is no other person that can understand her, I am the one who opposes all of them. 

A Page from my Diary - Antimony

It’s like I’m surrounded by a chaos of silence. How contradicting, right? I wish I could comprehend this state of mind. I’m hampered by sugarcoated handcuffs. I’m running freely in a bounded park. They’re stopping me by using irrational logic. I can see the way out but I’m so emotionally attached to the people inside the boundaries of this park that I fear I won’t get back in here to see their faces, once I got out. I’m scared of the freedom. This is the phase when sentiments encounter reason. I want to say I’m happy. And happy I am! But I want to know what’s lying there in the back of my head that doesn’t want to agree with it. I want to fast forward the time but I want to go back to the old time, as well. I want to agree with you. But I don’t want to disagree with myself. I want to fight for peace. I want them to see it through my eyes but that’s a farfetched thought.  Rather, I’d want them to let me see it, without trying to blindfold me with the beautiful sceneries. I want you to let me want it. 

Me. Uni. Time. & then There are These Awards

I used to have time and creativity. My brains used to have the capacity to think and contemplate. Then I got admission in the university. A flurry of events have happened since then. A couple of months back, all I would do was read and eat and sleep, then repeat. Now, I don't have time! All I get to think about is tests and projects and presentations. I miss myself. I miss what I used to do with my time.

But, anyways..

This post is basically for two sweet personages Aqsa & Tanya

Guys! Thanks a lot for the awards. I'd have loved to play that little award game but, well, it's gonna consume my time and that would be the last thing I'd want to do.

If you're neither Aqsa nor Tanya, let me fill you in. Aqsa thinks my blog deserves a Liebster Blog Award & Tanya thinks I have a Creative Blog. That's sweet of them. Let me post the awards here:

Thank you, 2012!

I’ve been meaning to take out some time to reflect at what 2012 has done to me. I’m not sure if I should call it a good year or should I render it 'just another year', gone by with the wind. My doubtfulness isn’t anything new, though. For me, it has always been like that. I just can’t seem to pick one option. But I guess I should not deny the fact that 2012 had been a very good teacher to me. I got to learn a lot in 2012. Ironically, the reason behind all that learning was my decision of taking a year out from studies. I know a lot of people that perpetually taunted me for my decision of taking the year off. To them, I have wasted one complete year of my life. To me, I have learnt things that I could never have learnt if it weren’t for that decision of mine.

The year commenced with laughter, preparation, travelling and practicing. The first ever wedding celebration in my family took place in 2012. I travelled from one city to the other to get all the wedding shopping done. I had a lot of laughing sessions with my cousins while practicing all those dexterous dance steps for my sister’s wedding. 2012 brought me all those lovely times with my cousins, siblings and my amazing brother in law. The never-ending celebration that went on for weeks until my brother in law finally had to fly back to where he came from. That feeling of having received all that happiness altogether, of knowing that nothing possibly could go wrong with my life, and then confronting the reality, knowing how hard it is to say goodbye. That’s how this year started. While I was having the time of my life with my loved ones around me, my friends were applying for different universities. By the time, the normality of life hit me again, my friends had already started going to their universities and I was sitting at home not knowing what to do with my life. The wasted hours of my life stemmed the feeling for applying in any university that still had its admissions open. I tried to apply for different subjects but had to let go for one thing or the other. Time went on. I applied for driving classes, one of the many of my wishes it was. I learnt to drive in the scorching hot sun of June. My dad still doesn’t acknowledge me as a certified driver, though. I didn’t actually drive on the city roads after my classes ended. Nonetheless, 2012 made me a certified driver. I got to read some amazing books, the best thing I needed to utilize the otherwise-wasted-hours. I read a lot. I wrote a lot. I got to know what the world was up to. I got to know where I was standing in the multitude. I learnt a lot. I tried to bring out the best in me. Hard, but satisfying. I learnt to fight many feelings. 2012 made me grow up. I actually grew up in 2012. I realized how wrong I was about some of the things.

Years come and go. Every year we laugh, we cry, we go on with our lives. 2012 had been so different, in the same way. 2012 was something that I loved and didn’t even feel sad when it finally left. I’m looking forward to the New Year now. I’m looking forward to a new set of joys waiting for me to get them. I’m looking forward to goodness. I’m looking forward to experience newness. I’m looking forward to all those blessings I’ve been dreading to have. I’m looking forward to see smiles. I’m looking forward to kindness. I’m looking forward to the right time. I’m looking forward to that certain moment. I’m looking forward to challenges. I’m looking forward to better days. I’m looking forward to get it all done. I’m looking forward to 2013.

Over a Bowl of Soup

Through the open door, I see her standing in the kitchen. It’s one of those dark, muted, chilly, rainy, curl-up-inside-the-blanket sort of December evenings that makes you lazy to the bone and you think over a hundred times before finally deciding whether the task that requires you to come out of your warm blanket is really worth the effort. I spend these winter days (and evenings, and nights) the same way; tucking myself inside a blanket wearing my dad’s over-sized, ultra warm jacket with my one hand holding the book and the other shoved inside the warm, inviting pockets of the jacket. The only time I take my hand out of the pocket is when I have to turn the page of the book. It’s then when the hand that’s holding the book goes in the pocket and I hold the book upright with the other, already warmed-up hand.

But right now I’m sitting at the dining table, still looking at her. She is too busy to notice me gawking at her. I see her stirring the spoon in a big wok set on the stove with puffs of steam coming out of it, then whirling around to find some spice on the counter behind her. I see her chopping the carrots and shredding the boiled chicken pieces. Occasionally, she immerses the spoon inside the wok and blows the inevitably hot liquid before tasting it to check if the soup is lacking any ingredient or spice. Doing that, she reaches for the spice rack, sprinkles in the needed spices, balancing the taste and then tasting it one more time to ensure that the soup is being cooked up in its best flavor. She always does that; pouring her heart and soul in what she decides to cook. During this whole period of watching her cook passionately, I don’t so much as go inside and ask if she needs any help. This is why, after a few more interminable minutes of sniffing in the aroma coming from the kitchen, when I finally see her coming out holding a big, black bowl with clouds of steam laden with the aroma that augments your appetite, I furtively thank her and sink in the bowl to pour down the soup, that is inevitably going to taste good, in my mouth. I thrust in my spoon, ready to get soothed by the hot, tasty soup on a crisp winter evening. The soup is very hot so I perpetually blow off the heat, until the steam stops coming out from it before I slurp it down. Perfect. Just how I like. Every time I dip in my spoon, it comes out filled up with a few shreds of chicken and some corn seeds floating in the spoonful of soup. I chew the al dente corn and the shreds of chicken and gulp it down, savoring its flavor. I love it. I love her. Not because she just cooked me soup. But because she intuitively realized that a bowl of soup is what I’d like the most on this biting winter evening. She always happens to know what I want. I envy her instincts. Even when I’m not around and she can’t see me, she ends up bringing a smile on my face by providing me with what I want. I remember once I was coming back home from college, starving. Hunger pangs were plummeting inside my stomach. I reached home, pushed open the gate and got welcomed by two blessings in my life; her smiling face and a platter of fries in her hand. I felt like dancing with joy and asked her how she knew I was craving food. She smiled and said that she just did. This is how she brings joy in my life. She understands my needs. Tries to give her best to make me happy. I’m still sipping my soup, mentally thanking the Creator for blessing me with a mother. Mentally praying that she and her blessings remain with me beyond eternity. She’s looking at me with a probing smile pasted on her face. “Do you like it?” she asks, eager to hear my answer in affirmative. Like it? Of course I like it. I love it. Too busy to speak, I tilt my head to the side, my eyes wide open below my raised eyebrows, showing how much I’m enjoying it. I do the effort to fill my spoon with the residuum of the soup, guzzle it down, look up at her and say, “Wonderful.” Her eyes sparkle, a grin showing off her teeth plasters her face and she utters one word: “Really?” There. That’s the price of her long hours of standing in the kitchen. That one word pays it all off for her weary hours in the kitchen just to get me a bowl of soup. She smiles a contented smile and with that all those little traces of tiredness hiding behind her face run away. I shoot her a smile back, thinking a mother's heart must be composed of the goodness of the entire universe. But during the creation of my Ammi, Allah must have poured in heaps of sweetness in her as well her while He was at it. I love Allah for that. I love her.