The Game of Hope.

As custom dictates, I should be acknowledging the fact that this is my first post this year, so I hope every one of you is having a good year so far, and will continue to do great things, which are worth remembering. Forgive me from diverting from the norms and not listing down the new year resolutions that I have so thoughtfully made, which will probably not materialise. Instead this post is about a feeling that seems to be an integral part of everyone's life and yet is so intangible and multi-dimensional that I fail to understand the extent to which one should let it bloom. That particular feeling is of Hope. There's an old saying in Urdu, امید پہ دنیا قائم ہے (umeed pai dunya qaa'im hai),  which translates to the world is existing on hope, that explains how important hope is for mankind. From serious things like hoping to be alive the next moment, to trivial matters like hoping to get more of the purple jelly beans in a box, we all need hope. But I am here to figure out when one needs to stop hoping. 

Understanding when our hopes and expectations become unreasonable is beyond me, fine rationale can be a guiding compass but at times one needs to defy logic and act upon faith alone to get by without being depressed, or even worse, suicidal. So at those times, hope is good, hope is what we need. But as every businessman knows oh so well, with every venture there is a probability of loss, and the successful businessmen are those who take smart risks realising these losses. Similarly, when you hope, surely there is a part of you that is expecting heart break, yes they say that having complete faith can(or maybe they use the word 'will') get you what you want, but I have my doubts, don't get me wrong, faith is good, but for something you believe in a hundred percent, whilst accepting the underlying possibility of heart break.

Now I believe that one can only take so much heart break, and thus it will be wise to not make hope one's first step when doing things, instead it is better to do all one can before hoping for things to turn out in their favour. So how do we know when hope is vain? The best way to learn something is from experience, so from experience I can say, that hoping for someone you love, to love you back in the same way is one of those times when one needs to stop hoping. If you think about someone all the time, it'd be nice to know that they think about you too, but its foolish to hope for such things to happen, because then you're just paving your way towards depression. Another one of these instances which perplex me too great degrees is, when is the right time to stop hoping for someone to come back and just let them go? 

When you love someone, and I mean truly love someone, if they leave you, how do you not hope for them to come back? But then comes the time when this hope makes you dysfunctional, it disables you to love again and when that time comes, I think its best to say that hope is not your friend anymore. Here too the same rules applied in the beginning, when to hope was equivalent to breathe, but now its doing the opposite. Here, I want to mention something which was actually the reason why this particular thought process began in my mind. This isn't about loss of love, its more about life, or lack thereof. 

I have a cousin, who is battling Cancer, and its been such a roller coster ride for her, with many lows and a few highs, and for those who know her, especially her mother, hope is all that there is, the doctors say they are trying their best, some treatments show results, others don't. Several times has she come to the brink of losing this battle and the last time that happened, which wasn't too long ago, talk became circulating how 'there was no hope for her' and at this point.... (I don't think I can get myself to say it) things didn't look too good. I personally didn't go to see her in ICU when she was on a ventilator, but from those who went I heard how there was pain in her eyes, how she was suffering and while she was unable to move tears rolled down her cheeks. It was a decisive moment for her husband, the doctor suggested an expensive treatment, which had a very little chance of being successful. He had to decide if it was time to let go and end her suffering, or go with the treatment. And I am glad he made the decision he did. 

He decided to go with it, and in this matter hope did take us through and even though she isn't in a good condition yet, at least she is not in the hospital anymore. This got me thinking. I really want to tell you that I have a better conclusion for you, but I don't, all I have are a few questions so take it for what it is. When do you know it's time to let go? How do you pull the plugs on someone's life and then live with it? and perhaps the biggest question yet, When does hope become the enemy? 

P.S. This one is for my cousin, Zehra Sajjad, she's 32, has a 6 year-old son and is still battling. She needs all the prayers she can get, please pray for her. And while hope still keeps us afloat, I am confident prayers will propel us ashore. 

غمیں نہ ہو کہ بہت دور ہیں ابھی باقی

نئےستاروں سے خالی نہیں سپہر کبود

  داکٹڑ علامہ محمد اقبالؔ 

(Don't be sad that there is a long time to go

The blue sky isn't short of new stars

Dr. Allama Muhammad Iqbal.)

Daring to Dream.

عمر دراز  مانگ کر لاۓ تھے چار دن 

دو آرزو میں کٹ گۓ دو انتظار میں 

بہادر شاہ ظفر

(Asking for a long life we got four days,

Half went away in wishing, rest in waiting.)

{Find the complete ghazal by Bahadur Shah Zafar here}


They say, "it isn't over till it's over", perhaps the same is also true for beginnings too. This post is about what happened to me when a dream I so lovingly nursed for for years now, blew up in my face. I apologise to all my readers(as few as they may be) and myself for not writing, but I preferred to be numb than take the heart ache head -on. Now I feel disappointed in myself for giving up a passion to a loss that has already taken so much from me, that I must visit that box in my head labelled; 'Do Not Open'.


What happened I think was quite big, as far as I am concerned, but I will not trivialise my post by making it about me, I have considered this a sacred place where the purest of my emotions get to free themselves, and not a place to vent. So I shall try and manoeuvre my feelings towards a general outcome, that can (hopefully) benefit those who might know what it feels like. 


When you have a dream, something that you really want, and in quite attainable, it hurts when that dream doesn't come true, even though you try your best. The first instinct is to hibernate, switch off everything and go in to a deep sleep where you don't have to feel anything else. Makes sense why sleeping a lot is a sign of depression, why wouldn't you want to sleep a lot when that is the only solace you have? When you are done with sleeping, there comes a point where you start wondering what's next, and as you pick up the pieces, you want to just move on. Moving on isn't the easiest thing to do. How can you when it is something that has occupied much of your thoughts for quite a while? I feel like I need to give out a scream, a very loud scream, that should go unheard. I don't know if it makes sense, but in the technical sense, when a sound's frequency gets too high the human ear cannot hear it. That's what I need to move on! 


I haven't moved on, and I don't think you should either, if you feel like you really want something to happen, then take a step back, analyse what the cards in front of you say, maybe you can try again? Third time's the charm I think. But do not put all your eggs in one  basket, have a back-up plan, set your self a deadline, have a project meanwhile. When everything fails you, which I sincerely hope doesn't happen, just know that there is someone or something looking out for you, if you have been earnest in making your dreams come true and things don't work out for you, do not take it as your failure, you tried, maybe the time wasn't right. I am not saying you should take no for an answer. I guess what I am trying to say is, that perhaps the time wasn't right, and when the time is right you will get what you want. Just hold on long enough and not make this one dream the central goal of your life, it is healthy to have other projects, other passions. 


Personally a part of me is some what happy, because I have always wondered how can a sheltered upbringing such as my own, foster true artistic genius, not to say that I have reached that point. But these punches life gives you, help add to the book of experience, which I can hopefully open one day and find enough source material to shape my masterpiece. Although being so empathetic can work for me but I long for first hand experiences, like so many of the work's I enjoy reading.


I open with a verse from Bahadur Shah's ghazal, a man who was destined to rule but was tied with strings and forced to be a puppet. The verse says so much about life, his and ours, and how some of us spend it. I would love to say that we are so empowered as to decide our own fate and nothing's impossible but right now I feel there is an undertone to these seemingly uplifting statements. Nature plays on us perhaps trying to teach us a lesson that is the hardest to learn. Patience. 

Quel est L'amour?

So I was having this invigorating conversation with my friend on the phone discussing the abstract thing known as 'Love'. We tried defining it, categorising it, quantifying it and finally summarising it but to no avail. Love in my head is still a very intangible amalgamation of emotions and experiences which can run in to infinite loops and even though a definition could be correct for you, or even be accepted by the masses, someone refusing to accept the norm is still entitled to call what they feel, love. Another friend of mine said, writing gives clarity to ones thoughts, so here it goes. 


Let's first talk about love as a verb. In the general sense I guess its the superlative form of the word like. When you like something or some one more than the rest its love. But again how do you measure it. Who are these others that you like but not love, and how do you differentiate. Perhaps there needs to be some sort of exclusivity for the action, cream of the crop so to speak. Here I think I should mention why I think Love is a verb, I believe the mind plays a huge part in loving an object, whether it be the aesthetics stimulating the brain in all the right ways or overlooking the short-comings to create an image* that is almost perfect(a very obscure word do grant me the license to use it in this sense) and thus worthy of loving, the brain is actively playing a part. Even on a subconscious level there's the obvious attraction when you really like something but cannot understand why. I think this definition loses all the fireworks attached with love but there are other definitions too.

What about love as a noun? Well the clear case of it would the object one loves, as in "my love". But then there's the abstract feeling Love. For many it's the intense feeling of joy mixed with trust. But I know many a situations where love entails sorrow and pain. So how do you know you are in love when you don't even know what it is? Perhaps the answer is when you don't know what you're feeling whilst being attracted to someone its love.

Moving from that my friend and I talked about the kinds of love. The main categories(as we see them) are Love of God(beautifully put in Urdu as Ishq e Haqiqi {عشق حقیقی} meaning real love) and Love of World(Ishq e Majazi {عشق مجازی} meaning metaphorical love). 


I would like to discuss the latter first. Love of world, is the love you feel for something you see. There are ideas of 'true love' and 'the one' which I honestly find ludicrous. For most of us statistics and science play a huge role in determining who that one person is, the affect of surroundings on ones individual self, the psychological void that is created by what ever one grows up with turns in to desire, and if you are in love, then odd's are the object of your love fills a part(how ever big or small) of that void creating all the feelings and experiences typically called love. Now when I say that I don't want to sound dull and de-romanticise love, for I do think there is something there, something that science cannot explain, a supernatural element perhaps but there is something. This something unfortunately I think isn't the case for most of us. What I am talking about is the love that poets like Mir and  Ghalib talk about, the kind of love that is said to be the love a moth has for a flame, the kind of love that burns you up inside the feeling of longing and incompleteness. That I think is love in it's extremist form, and even though there might be some melancholia associated with this kind of love I find the feeling of being engulfed by the aura of the one you love as something very rare and bittersweet and there is a sense of pathos that I may live my entire life without truly knowing what love is;

جدھر سے میں گزرتا ہوں نگاہیں اٹھتی جاتی ہیں

مری ہستی بھی کیا تیرا ہی عالم ہوتی جاتی ہے ؟          

  جگر مرادآبادی              

(Where ever I pass from people start looking at me

Is my personality turning in to your aura?)

 {Find the complete ghazal by Jigar Moradabaadi here}

According to some schools of thought thats not real, its just symbolic of something else, I have a theory which may link to love of God in the end. I have talked about there being a part of God in every one of us, and the eternal longing to return to the source of that particular part that's a compound in our creation. In simple words The Quran speaks of making Adam(and consequently mankind) from a part of God's divine light, and many literarians discuss how the human spirit long's for the source of that light, that is God. So perhaps this longing translates in to man's need to love, to connect with any glimpse of that light, which exists in fellow beings although getting to the source requires leaving the physical realm behind. Perhaps that's why poets draw parallels between a moth and human beings, they chase after a light they cannot get, until they let it surround them entirely, and burn to death in the process. 

There is one more kind of love, the kind that I think is the purest form of love. This came up in my conversation with my friend when we were wondering what the 'extent of love' can be. We remembered the saying that God loves for you is equivalent to seventy times the love your mother has for you. To me this says that the extent of love in this world is the love a mother has for her child. For example, if I were to explain the amount of a 'Million' to a person who only understands numbers under a 'Thousand', I would say that a Million is a Thousand times a Thousand, as in I would use the biggest quantity comprehended by that person. Similarly the love a mother has for a child is the extent of love a human being is capable of feeling in this world. Another noteworthy deduction can be the nature of this love. Where as worldly love may be classified as metaphorical, This kind of love is 1/70 times the love God has for mankind, that is considered real. So maybe this is as real as it gets here? 

When you think about it, you realise what a blessing motherhood really is. And I feel unfortunate that this is a feeling I will never experience. So no matter how patriarchal this society gets, Love; the thing almost everyone strives for, is entitled to women in all its strength and purity. 

*Image is a topic I have left for another post, but food for thought could be that we live our lives like an optical illusion. We are the only ones who know ourselves, rest of the world just knows me as the illusion it sees. 

I wonder...

I am here to drop a little word about something I was wondering, in fact this post is being written on my phone since I really had to get it out there before I might lose the spark. So consider this a fair warning that what you are about to read may not be one of my more eloquent posts or as orchestrated as the rest(that is if my work justifies the word).
So I was listening to this hindi song that goes; rotai huai atai hain sab, hasta huwa jo jaiga, wo muqadar ka sikandar jaan meri kehlaay ga. (Everyone comes crying, but the one who leaves laughing, would be the one who has defeated {appropriate word?} Fate). I have always thought this song has some profound meaning and isn't like all the other nonsense stuff we heard. And it got me thinking, is life really supposed to be sad? Is fate really the enemy here? And if so why is suicide such a crime (now I am not thinking about killing myself if that's what you're wondering)?
There are theories out there about what some call 'the human condition' about man's(I am not sexist, but the english language seems to agree upon man representing our race collectively) never ending search for truth and meaning in their life, the daunting questions of who brought me here and why. And a theory that I particularly enjoy is that man is destined to be, in plain words, sad in this world since he has left a world which, we hear, is much better than this one. When all the odd's are against us are we really supposed to live?
As far as I can see (which might not be very far) this world is extremely beautiful, and in layman's term it is heaven on earth, for the best thing we can think of, probably exists in this world but maybe unattainable, and at times the whole point of going to heaven seems to be to get those things that we want here but cannot get. Although personally I tend to see it differently, honestly I am God-fearing, but not afraid of hell, of course I don't want to go to hell but I don't think I know what hell is. So I do not concentrate too much on hell and heaven at this point. I do feel that this life takes a toll on me a lot of times, and I don't think I should ever mind not living another day, I am thankful for this life I have. And I know I should put it in proportion with the hardships others have, but I can't help but feel that in a way this world is a disappointment, and I would not mind leaving it as soon as my time comes.
By that I don't mean that I am just surviving and not living, because there are things that I want in life, I do have goals and aspirations. I should hope that what I feel is the longing of my soul to return to the light its a part of and not brush that longing aside.
That's all I think. I don't have a conclusion for you, because there is none, I have to live, strive, but I guess something to work towards maybe leaving a mark before I actually leave?

Life's Grave Ending.

The biggest paradox of life is death, in fact that is the only certainty, the only guarantee we're given when we come to this world, that you will leave. Sounds like a mean prank played by someone, you come here, you build a life, you build relationships and before you know it, you're lying in the dark waiting for yourself to decompose (burning to ashes and being eaten by fish is also a possibility). I am distressed as to how seriously I should  take the ordeal of death considering its so common that each and every one of us gets it sooner or later. I remember this play of Shakespeare in which he builds it up to the point the protagonist's love dies and without giving the audience a real chance to grieve for the loss of poor Ophelia he employs clowns as grave diggers putting in comic relief at the expense of her death. I thought hey, maybe death isn't that serious of a matter, but upon close scrutiny I found otherwise. 


I have lost people in this life and so I understand that it doesn't matter how certain death is, its still sad business and perhaps Shakespeare was mocking society for making such a joke of the situation, for they discuss something that was earlier soliloquised with utmost seriousness and now he injects dark comedy in the play. So as "all the world's a stage" I guess there are those amongst us who decrease the intensity of death, by making 'logical deductions' which to me seem most illogical, for even logic accepts the fact that to those close to the deceased an integral part of  their life is gone and it's a normal reaction to be upset and grave. Here a verse from the poetry of Khwaja Mir Dard comes to mind;

درد دل کے واسطے پیدا کیا انسان کو

ورنہ طاعت کے لیے کچھ کم نہ تھے کروبیاں

(Dard-e-dil kai wastai paida kia insaan ko

Warna ta'at kai liyay kuch kum na thay kar-o-byan)

This roughly translates to; the reason why mankind was brought to this world is to share each other's heart aches, since there are enough angels for worshipping God.

This could be referring to the philosophy that our soul being a part of God's 'Nur' (Light) longs to go back to that source and thus the life of this world is a constant heartache for the soul. It could also be talking about the expulsion of man from the Garden of Eden mentioned extensively in a lot of literary works such as in Milton's "Paradise Lost" or in Iqbal's countless poems. But not going in to the philosophy in literal terms the verse talks of man's duty to be there for one another in time of sorrow, and I cannot think of  a greater sorrow than death. 

There's a law of science which states;  what goes up must come down. And so is the case with us, we have to go back one day (unless of course for you this world is IT) so before we go let's make most of it. Now making money could be one goal in life, but I have noticed, those who worked on their people skills more than their earning skills are revered by all left behind. We lost one such man recently, my cousin, my brother and honestly a true source of knowledge and inspiration. The man had very little flaws if any and left us too soon, his departure has left a hole in a lot of people's hearts' and we are grieving, and though his absence will always be felt I have faith that he is in a better world now. 

In the Loving Memory of;

Ali Asghar Khoja

24.12.1979 - 16.03.2011