To my fellow flat dwellers

تمهاری اور میری بالکونی کے ساته اجیب رشتہ داری ہے

تنہائ کے وہ لمہے جو ہم نے اس سے بانٹے ہیں

وہ تمام اداس نہیں لیکن

دکه،  یاسیت، نہ پوری ہونے والی خواہشوں کی تمازت

محبتوں میں بهیگی مسکراہٹوں سے کئ زیادہ ہے

اس ایک کونے میں

 رات کے اندهیروں میں

 تنہائ کی بانہوں میں ہم  جی بهر کے روے ہیں

گلی سے گزرتی گاڑی کی ہیڈ لائٹ کو بلامقصد 

کسی سوچ کے حصار میں دور تک

کیا ہے follow

اکیلی سوتی چیل کی  

پہ رشک کیا ہے independence

تاروں کو نہیں آسمان کو دیکهنا

نادانستگی سے 

پے جلتے بهجتے بلب کو تکتے جانا radio mast

خود سے سوال کرنا

سردی سے لڑنا اور پهر ہار جانا

باور کرانا کہ آزادی اپنی بولی بہت اونچی لگاتی ہے

ایسے میں بالکونی گهر کے دائرے میں

 کے صراب کے wilderness
 مناسب کر لیتی ہے

For my non urdu readers

Transliteration

Somewhat translation

Tumhari aur meri, balcony ke sath ajeab rishtadari hai  Tanhai ke wo lamhai jo hum ne us se bantay hain Wo tamam udas nahi lekin dukh, yasiyat, na puri hone wali khwahishon ki tamazat (heat) muhabaton main bheegi muskurahaton se kai zyada hai is ek kone mai rat ke andheroon mai tanhai ki banhoon mai , hum gi bhar ke roye hain gali se guzarti gari ki headlight ko bila maqsad,  kisi soch ke hisar mai, dur tak follow kia hai akeli soti chial (eagle) ki independence pe rashq kia hai taroon ko nahi asmaan ko dekhna nadanstagi  (unintentionally) se radio mast pe jalte bujhtay bulb ko taktay jana khud se sawal karna sardi se larna or phir har jana  bawr karana (to convince) ke azadi apni boli bohat unchi lagaty hai  aise mai, balcony, ghar ke daire mai wilderness ke sarab (mirage) ke munasib kar leti hai

you (flat dwellers) and I share a strange relationship with balcony  the moments of loneliness that we have shared with it are not all remorseful however,  sorrow, longing and unfulfilled wishes hold a greater share than fulfilled moments of love and completion  this one spot bears witness to  many dark nights of solitude, of countless tears  it bears witness to unthinkingly following the headlights of the car until it disappears somewhere in the dark  it holds the jealousy we have felt for the independence of the solitary eagle sleeping across  it has seen us look at the sky and not search for the stars and the blankness of the stare as we keep watching the flashing light on the radio mast in distance it has seen us question ourselves  fighting the cold, and then giving up  it bears witness to our resignation for the high price independence puts on itself  settling for the mirage of the same that balcony has to offer within the security of home...

America Jaisa: Like America

A couple of days ago I had an important work event scheduled early in the morning. 

Being me I had to rush and had no time to do breakfast so I thought if I order food to get delivered it will arrive by the time I get ready and this way I will get to eat and leave early too. 

 To all those who are aware of my constant cry about my weight please stop shaking their heads and think about how jealous you are of the fact that in this part of the world you can get McDonald's to deliver breakfast at your doorstep ... yes I know you can almost smell the yumness of Mcmuffin and and hear the crunch as you almost chew into that goodness called hash browns but let me get back to my story which offers more than a juicy borrowed bite from the company me and my daughter jointly love to devour under the disappointing stares of our health and nutrition continuous beloved friends and family members.

So after i quickly ate my breakfast got ready I dashed out of the door grabbing the accompanying cup of coffee to finish on the way in the car since I cant do scathingly hot beverages without burning my taste buds. 

I walk into the lift, there is an uncle there already (hes around my father's age).. I nod at him in acknowledgement he nods back. I would have been perfectly fine spending the next few seconds in awkward silence strangers go through when sharing an elevator but apparently uncle is not so he attempts to talk and he says, "Aaj kal to Pakistan mai bhi sab America jaisa ho gaya hai" (tr. These days everything i Pakistan is also like America) and am like, "hmmm" and thinking to my self "seriously uncle! I mean I understand how elderly are always about well-meaning ill comments but I dont even know you and you can look at my sleeveless outfit and thin strip of dupatta and can go ahead and comment on how I am not very Pakistanily dressed?... I mean you have the right to comment but how politically correct is it to do it in front of me but since when is the dad crowd politically correct... (long chain of thought for a 5 floor lift ride but i guess brain does think with the speed of light) 

So here I am silently judging an uncle who is obviously not so silently judging me when he interjects my chain of though with an additional comment, "bhaga doori itni ho gai hai ab yahan bhi theek sai beth kar nashta karna mushkil ho gaya hai" (tr. life is so fast here also now that you cant really do breakfast in peace) I respond, "haan sahi baat hai" (tr. yea thats true) and walk out of the lift with my deflated balloon of parochiality...

Perspective

اپنے ہی قید خانوں میں

زنگ زدہ قفس لگے دروازوں کے پیچھے 

کھڑکی سے جھانکتی میں 

آزادی کے دن گنتی ہوں

apnay hi Qaid Khano (prison) main

zang zada (rusted) qafas (lock) lagay darwazon ke pechay

Khirki se jhanki main

Aazadi ke din ginti hoon

tr.

In my own prisons

behind the doors with rusted locks on them

I peak through the window

counting days to my freedom .... argh the translation kills it!

احمقوں کی جنت (fools's paradise)

In dark hours of the night
Those in love erect for themselves
A fool's paradise
A place where in each others warm embrace underneath layers of cover
all problems are solved, all distances resolved
a place where all plans, ambitions and ideas too
become possible and dreams come true

      

Work in progress

Work in Progress 

زات کے جهمیلوں میں اکثر میری جان

تجھ سے کی محبت کہیں کهو سی جاتی ہے

ان لمحوں میں تیری باتیں، تیرا لہجہ، تیری آنکھیں

جو خهوجتی ہیں مجھ میں، میری خاموشی بهی 

وہی سوال دوهراتی ہے

اور اس سے پہلے کے تمہاری یا میری سوچ کی سمت میری چپ تے کرنے لگے
میں آئینے سے کہہ دیتی ہوں

I need to work on this! For you, for me,  for us

Noha

Very little memories you retain as parents when you are growing up with a child but since yesterday it seems I can’t help getting into cycles of maintaining books of all that I had experienced as a mom in past 3 years. You know the most vivid memory I have is of the wrist pain I constantly complained of when she was about a few months till she was old enough to crawl and all. It hurt, it hurt enough to dig a space in my forgetful long-term memory I can still feel the pain and I look at her and the pain gets justified somehow despite being strong enough to remain in my bodies memory. We’ve been listening to titanic from past few days and just last night while we were busy mourning trying very hard to not pass on our misery to her we heard her sing along “once more you open the door” all tuned up all the right words and just then we had an unsaid eye-contact conversation saying so many things to each other “wow, is she really singing all of this” (while she is still matching tunes in the background, she doesn’t know the words anymore she’s just humming), “don’t say anything she will be distracted and become conscious” “God Dammit shes singing titanic!” and then another wave of black suddenly overtook it all ….

I am not reaching out to anyone today I am too stricken to think to talk to complain to show anger most of all I can’t find enough strength to be even angry I am just in that zone where I start grappling with what I saw on tv for seconds coz somehow I can tolerate it for more than that making all these sounds as if the anchor is crying shit man! I am just sitting here and my heart freezes every 10 minutes with one and only one thought “she goes to school too you know” it just stops functioning, my brain gets blank I don’t feel anymore I remain in it not being able think about anything while involuntarily rubbing where my wrist use to hurt. And then I get a grip wipe of my tears stand up and try to do something productive only to feel the same shiver after a bit of time.

I can’t reach out to anybody, I cant tell anyone that I feel their pain because you see I am a mom and I just don’t have the capacity to imagine anything like this how the hell do I know what you are going through where mere imagination glimpse of what it may look like has been shattering me since I heard the news. I beg for forgiveness for not being able to reach out but I am sorry I cant! You see I cant even dare to put her name here! I cant even dare to write what her relationship with me is I cant even jinx it there so I wont empathize and know I will have stop judging all who are using whatever means they have to reach out, to express , to condemn, to show the other side, to remind us of the children of thar, or of those who get killed every day on streets of Karachi, or the boy who was killed in Faisalabad, you see I agree that we go through tragedies every day and we are used to counting how many dead now but I am sorry I cant be that parson right now coz you see she goes to school too and this mantra that I am begging my head to stop repeating is not letting me compare this to anything its made me dysfunctional, I cant be resilient , or dheet or dead or numb right now coz all I want is to shut the world curl up and remain motionless.      

Bidirectional.... is there an ancient learning embedded within after all?

 Wow

I dont know what to call this particular post but just something that touched me so deep somewhere that its hard for me to get out of that wondering, "I am so intrigued" mode. There is an urdu term for it for which I cant think of the right translation right now... I am finding it hard to get out of the "حصار" of this encounter. Oh here i go rambling about the word choice again ....

So this is what happens. A colleague of mine was due to present a research he had pursued with the rest of the faculty members. Now his topic was of corporate governance and using some secondary corporate and governmental data sources he had accumulated 5 years worth of data for more than 1000 US based public companies to examine governance practices. The whole premise or what I understood of it was of examining the nature of relationship good governance practices/ endeavors have on questionable practices from governance point of view. Now with all the tests he ran his conclusions were the craziest ever, With all the statistical tools he used he was able to derive a bidirectional relationship between the two variables. Putting it in non fancy language... i love playing around with the newly and not to mention partially learned statistical/quanti language... thou shalt not be vain :))

Oh well putting it in non fancy terms he suggested that with all the indicators he took to identify good governance practices from questionable governance practices or governance concerns there seem to be a reciprocal relationship between the two. Simply put they both become causes of each other. Governance concerns would yield good governance practices but at the same time good governance would create avenues for raising questionable governance practices. And this is where it got me thinking? forget about policy implications and recommendations what is freaky is how very Ying Yangish this whole thing sounds.    

You see in theory you would implement good governance practices in order to ensure questionable practices were limited if not abandoned but if they reciprocate than the underpinning is that good breeds evil as much as the evil leads to good. How very conflicting but how very "Human". Show me one man who is without a dichotomy within and I would give you a dead man... the beauty of Human beings being that entity that lies in between, always in transition, always in some shade of grey is just so amazing. And we transcend this to organizations we create also haha

Remember that feeding the right wolf story? (if not see here
http://www.firstpeople.us/FP-Html-Legends/TwoWolves-Cherokee.html)

but isn't it that the digestive tracks of the two wolves are connected? what if they feed off each other what if they only exit in twos never one?

How do you attain that which is your true human potential while negating half of who you are? its all if i put it in censored way "intercoursed", lol.... oh i just didnt want to say fucked up ... oops i just said it :)

I dont even know who I should be thanking (sarcastically obviously) for messing up the good old right and wrong for me! In the world of Wicked the evil green witch is justified.....