Times Gone By

time seems to have a greater significance in my life than i ever imagined. i realise that everything i had ever done is gone and that much of what i wanted to do still remains to be done. life is rolling past me. it seems that i have been left in a void.

i have a very old trouble in life but something i have discovered only recently. i dont know. those three words are on the verge of ruining my life. i have found that this was the most convenient answer i was giving to all questions sometimes even without thought.

this is my status. i am in the ninth semester of medical college with practically four months left to train and venture into the lions mouth, the final year exams. well some part of me says they may be slightly overrated but a greater portion agrees with popular opinion that this might be the toughest of periods i would be enduring in these five years.

i am listening to atif aslam's yakeen. the opening lines take their toll.

i have often had these subconscious images stuck in my head. i can never really identify them, but certain objects, images, words, circumstances bring them out. they are so strong that the emotion is often overwhelming.

reading the book 1984 by george orwell. the man was sheer genius or more appropriately a prophet. a modern day prophet, to have sat back so many decades ago and to have identified this path of decadence that we seem to have so boldly endeared. we are not yet there. but the time is not far away when total downfall will be the only recognizable pattern left to human existence. and that this existence shall be plagued by ignorant grim futures is not an impossible idea. anything contrary would actually be surprising.

...

they are all that i have
all that i can give to you

they can inspire you
change your life

give you love and sorrow
steal from you your pain

show new worlds that you never knew
where moments last forever
yet, ages gone by in a wink

they are my weapons, my strength
they are my refuge

i am nothing
i have nothing
yet, these are my precious gifts.

words.

Send Me Email

Confused

it is sad. really sad. i am dazed, confused, and what not and i have cant tell anyone. the only person i could i am losing now. my mind can't take this anymore.

how am i supposed to be able to know aht to do? i am not god and god surely isnt giving me any huge signals. the choice being left to me is the biggest problem. i hate making choices. it is the most useless thing to do. an absolute waste of time. but then again it cannot be done without.

human relationships are so fragile. even more than this very perishable three and a half cubits. i am lost. i have lost. yet it is not my loss that worries me. i will live.

i cannot make choices for others. and my choices are to be respected and similarly so are theirs.

am i too practical for this world? lots of people have told me live for the moment. may be i spend too much time thinking that the actual needf for action just passes me by.

i am becoming irrelevant without ever having been relevant. obscurity is haunting me. the only thing i will be soon is an indecisive wreck.

my fault is i have a deep sense of conformism. though i display liberal views subconciously somewhere a fixed picture haunts me.

i dont want to speculate. especially on something so fragile as life. who where and what i am is so relative. more so valid in the structure of our societies. whether or not i care to abide by the rules, they will haunt me. maybe there are some elements in my upbringing that make me dependent on such useless things as rules.
may be i lack that individuality.

i feel useless. my life is tied up between what i want, what i dont, what i may want, what i may dont and what they want for me. it is the last three that bother me.

also the burden of approval from them of my actions. what use is that? yet can i renounce it? can i denounce it?

curse all.

Thoughts

is this all a game? or is it that my perception of the nature of this worldy life is so volatile that i cannot ground myself to the much touted realities of life. to deal with the burden of understanding this complex interplay of life's institutions is a challenge beyond comparison.

to each his madness. to me my thoughts. thoughts are the intangible treasure which shape and direct the action sought. but often they can be persistently misleading and baseless. this leads to an intensely anxious indecisive state at the crux of the moment when action is the need. sometimes these plaguing thoughts are the sole reason for lack of spontaneity. the thinking mind has become the bane of my existence.

time lost, cause lost, meaning lost.

envy do i those who can rest their minds in peace.
envy do i those quick in choice.
envy do i those who live here and now.

my inaction is of my own making.

i am the master of my choice yet a slave to its luxury.

i seek freedom from this bondage. if knowledge was to wash away the dark abyss of ignorance, it can also shroud the active mind into indecision. i seek the freedom from having to condone my thoughts and life to tailor the needs sought by others.

from a man of thought to a man of action.

Crossroads

pragmatism. practicability. foresight. probability. these are plain speculative tendencies of human behaviour. if life were a stock exchange then my life index is heading south and the bear is pulling me down with it. or may be the bull wasnt ever really there. i have come to lead my life on highly uncertain and empirical methods of speculation. once i begin to base my choices on these speculative tendencies, risks come into the equation. how now will you ascertain the risks for a still incomplete structure. i know not what i hold now and in the near future so it automatically makes it inconvenient for me to bear the responsibility of making predictions regarding my life let alone those of others.

as in a business, if i were to analyze my resources, my strengths, i have little practical knowledge of what they are worth in the real market place. i have no idea what my value is, no idea of the structure or course of action, the time factor, miniscule knowledge of the risks involved, and above all i am unsure of the result and its magnitude. thus i realise it was a fallible idea to start an enterprise, let alone put out on the market for investors. then we have the angel investors. i have had mine. the eventual venture capitalist who is willing to see you through the risks. but now conditions have it that after a failing idea and immense effort you are still the startup that sank.

this essentially can be extrapolated to a few ventures in my life, never yet in the realm of business. i have learnt as every entrepreneur the pitfalls and the agony of seeing an idea fail. yet it leaves me unfazed. i am not sure when the next vc will fund the next fledgling, but i am better prepared. it will certainly face similar uncertainties and may even fail but yet again i am willing to accept it.

Ignorance

the man, a little more than a slave
of senses, powers, desires to crave

the thought, a useless act
defeats not the fool, but the fact

the question, not yours to ask
for the knowing man, a tiresome task

the meaning, forever a distant dream
forever lost in the elusive gleam

the end, a timeless fruitless search
the eager quest to be left in lurch

JK

"Observation without evaluation is the highest form of intelligence."

something there got me thinking. there is nature in me which questions the nature around me. why? i find myself asking all to often. the anatomy of this inquiry probably is as deep as evolution of the human mind, if such a thing were to be agreed to exist, and sometimes is the principle on which all forms of thought is based. inquiry is the most consistent offering of the human race. irrespective of the environment you are in, it is a question you ask sooner or later.

it does sometimes help me to wonder where all this came from. and the beauty is that the mere act of wondering leads to inquiry. all seeds of thought can be traced to an act of inquisition. but since only a diamond cuts a diamond, it is inevitable for me to ask a few inquisitons.

it is very frequently that anyone asks the question where did all this come from and very similarly i do too. the unique qualities of the sorrounding, the self, the very act of observation are amazing.

uninitiated, it is helpful to start on a hypothesis to examine the entire premise. let us assume that there is one big truth. this truth that everyone seems to be running after shall be the explanation for everything. a grand unified theory of the existent and the non-existent, of all that be. then this truth should also offer the reason to why i am here writing this, whats making this computer the way it is, why if anyone is actually reading this.

now when i assume the possibility of such a truth, it leads me to wonder what follows knowing that truth. it sure can be agreed that such knowledge would obviate existential values like place, time or event. the future has no meaning nor does the past. there is no present. the material and immaterial are all derivatives of this truth. it would constitute everything.

now if such a truth were to exist. then my existence, the computer, some guy having sex in brazil and the thoughts in my head are all the same thing. this means we are all the same.

is there a possibility of knowing such a truth?

let us consider this example. a child asks his father why a balloon rises into the sky? the father replies that the balloon is lighter than air. why is the balloon lighter than air? it contains, say helium, which is a lighter gas and that which is lighter rises above the heavier. to a child this is incomprehensible unless he receives some more explanation regarding the nature of matter, density so on and so forth. all of a sudden with a few hours of some formal lecturing, the incomprehensible explanation is very much understood.

now to understand from the above example, only truth is the observation, the answers are relative. they are relative to the fathers knowledge, the knowledge of science as we know it. every man has observed and tried to reason, where the observation is an independent act while the reason is built on deductions. 5-2 = 3. a deduction can be made from only something that is known. how can 2 be removed if you do not where to remove it from. similarly, how can any deduction be true if the very truth is unknown. in making so called informed deductions, we base ourselves already on what we know and then reason out the most plausible theory to explain it. we did not know at the outset, we do not know when we theorize and finally we lead ourselves into an answer based on ignorance to be the explanantion. in science we create empirical situations to study and then support our explanations. in this whole process of understanding firstly what has remained true is the observation. secondly, all thought, understanding and deduction was based on preexistent knowledge.

you and i as we know it, have always been fed into our minds. in lighter matters it is often agreed that a fresh perspective is the key to solving a problem. but where is the problem and who has a fresh perspective? each one of us from the moment of ourbirth have been illusioned, conditioned, fed, groomed, taught all that is not ours. for example, a baby boy on an isolated island grows to play with a stone and learns that when he drops it it falls to the ground. observation. now what is to be seen would be whether the answer he finds to his problem is the theory of gravity.

how do you expect to find this truth unknown to you, anchoring yourself on a world of knowledge and experience of reality all of which are meaningless with your taught and conditioned perceptions. all these entrapments are the creation, reason and result of everyone around you, before you.

we all, each one of us, are trapped. we are trapped in a world where each discovery into ourselves is preconditioned by external influence. this conditioning will forever keep you in the dark about the underlying truth.

what if all was rejected in this search for true perception. you will have to unlearn what you know, what you think, what you are. from here to ignorance is a difficult jouney. it could be the key and yet it could be another beginning of falsehoods based on prior knowledge, experience.

what if one were to stop asking thinking reasoning?

i know none of this is my own. it is dangerously revealing. these thoughts are not my own nor are these words, nothing around me is my own. if there were such a truth we would all be the same. words, thoughts, lives, you and me. before will be after. there is nothing but the truth.

then if everything is the truth then there is no truth. the lie will be truth, the truth the lie. the assumption itself becomes the truth. our ignorance, deductions, our reasons will be truth. there will be no truth left to discover.

Illusioned

around and round, sense misleads you
the decadent confusion of this magic
its only chaos because you dont understand it
its random when your mind is closed
if you see what your eyes did
your illusion pales
to reveal what lies beneath
the secret reason of the beauty
the peace of truth

Life

another day.
another time.
that’s where i live.
never here.

lost in dreams.
starry eyed.
lazy blinks.
gaze at the sun.
sit by the river.
breathe.

walk like there’s no tomorrow.
walk in the moonlight.
savour a delicacy.
sip golden wine.
dig my fingers into the earth.

roll in the hay.
sail a boat.
talk to the wind.
beat the tide.
shoot the moon.

feed a poor man.
play with a child.
learn to play the violin.
appreciate art.
smile.

desire nothing.
envy none.
love my enemy.
have no fear.
know the truth.
be at peace.

Dried Exithole

i arrested and rested.
i churned and turned
still came no water like a lover spurned.
it gurgled and gargled
at me it spat
leaving me to dry over the shit i sat.

For What It Is Worth : Love

most of us at some point or the other in our lives are initiated into the world of love. for most it is the fluctuant adolesence that brings the spring of this new found emotion. others are a little late. but nonetheless it is assured that all of us know that we have been or will be there.

love, it should be agreed, is the one of the most overrated, overused, least understood words of our time. for different people it elicits diverse emotions. as diverse are the varieties that are out there for you to get. all you need to do is ask. there are the traditional varieties like motherly and fatherly loves, the sisterly and brotherly loves, and there are also in the same family, products of more exotic kinds like the sexual love, platonic love and spiritual love. if only it could be put in a box, walmart would have made a killing. $50 a kilo. well the way the world is headed, the days aren't too far away when people will bid to buy love on ebay. and some of us cant wait for that!!

but what is this word that we throw around? is it a sin to use it in vain (alongside the lord's name)? should there be a code for its usage? is it guaranteed by law? foolish as it may seem, this thing(love)can cause more agony than george w.'s union address and more joy than cold water in the sahara. listed with the merriam-webster are more than 24 entries for love and they range from the motherly mushy definitions to the more exciting amorous sexual episodes. but what i found most apt was " love : 8. a score of zero (as in tennis) ". those four words captivate the beauty of it all with a simplicity only god and the guy who invented tennis could think of. love as a score of zero symbolises the state of nullification of the intellect, the senses, the wisdom and not the least the freedom of the individual spirit. a little harsh? well, bluntly put people in love make stupid decisions(and you thought it was only in the movies). we can lie but cant deny the truth. we have all been there and those that have not as yet will so be there. and as for the senses, the diktat of love is such that for that rosy period of your life when you think you are in love, nothing can get better. yeah right! and finally all my fellow beings who have entered the bond of monogamous commitment to a fellow being will know that the freedom lost, though also in the sexual plane (homo erectus zindabad!), is more importantly of the emotional, private, social, professional and rarely spiritual kinds.

well all this said, is love a bad thing? let me characterise love for you. simply put, love is a syndrome not a single entity. it encompasses several mental and physical states which together lead to the more subjective notion. undeniably, it is first a physical attraction to a fellow being, therefore placing first the need for physical compatibility. the next step is that of personal compatibilty, the nuances of which have been elaborated time and again since the birth of society and its order. these include the usual social, professional, familial and the likes. these satisified does not yet constitute love. there has to be an essential commitment, no matter how brief, and an out-of-this-world feeling to go with it. tada! you are in love.

is it worth the trouble? well let me tell you, ideas like falling in love or that love just happens are far fetched. love or any such phenomenon is all about subconscious calculations based on comparisons of the like with like and a measurement of the unlike and how much of it one is willing to consider. this, for example, simply explains the success of arranged marriages. the couple have a wide bandwidth within which they are willing to accomodate the differences. this however is not universal. all rules have exceptions. other type of marriages, the love marriages, work a lot of the times too, provided that the participants in such a relationship subscribe less to romantic imagination and are adaptable and compromising enough to enable creation of a similar understanding. highly individual choices and independence bring with them the inevitable clash of personalities which is often shrouded by the cloak of love. once the rose coloured glasses come off, these formerly subliminal bombs surface to create all havoc.

life is all about getting what you want, making most of what's available and being content with what you have. these are the lessons learnt over millenia of civilisation which brought with them complexities of communal life, society and identity. an adaptable, understanding relationship based on mutual trust and respect with adequate scope for individual expression is the ideal foundation to experience the higher emotions of conjugation, cohabitation and coexistence. two voices come to sing as one, each retaining its unique beauty.