7/06/07

There are gifts of many treasures,
For both the young and old,
From the tiniest little trinkets,
To great boxes filled with gold.

But, put them all together,
And they could not stand in lieu,
Of the greatest gift of all,
The gift of knowing you

When your times are filled with troubles,
Sadness, grief, or even doubt,
When all those things you planned on,
Just aren't turning out.

Just turn and look behind you,
From the place at which you stand,
And look for me through the shadows
And reach out for my hand.

I will lift from you your burden,
And cry for you your tears,
Bear the pain of all your sorrows,
Though it may be for a thousand years.

For in the end I would be happy,
To have helped you start anew,
It's a small price to pay,
For the gift of knowing you.


Was it really?

Shaam Dhallay

Aaj tanhai kisi humdum'e deirien ki tarah

Karnay aai hai meri saaki qari shaam dhallay

Muntazir baithay hain hum dono ke mahtaab ubhray

Aur tera aks jhalaknay lagay har saaey ta'lay...

I played hundreds of games of solitaire, because I could not sleep. I could deal with the days. I could deal with the worries and the self doubt and the pity - I could survive the days. It's the nights that I couldn't get through. 

At night, when the world is quite, silence pushes you to remember and analyze and think and question. The feeling of loss is intensified by solitude. In the dark, my present melts away to leave only static, and pieces of the past. The future mocks me. I am not so sure of myself in this dark, not as certain of my fate. I miss you.    

Loneliness, like a companion of old

Visits me, as the sun sets, to pour my wine; 

We sit together, waiting for the moon to rise 
And for your image to reflect in every shadow

                                                                                                                             Faiz Ahmed Faiz

Infinite.

For ever and ever, we say when we're young, or in our prayers. Twice we say it. Old One, do we not? For ever and ever... so that a thing may be for ever, a life or a love or a quest, and yet begin again, and be for ever just as before. And any ending that may seem to come is not an ending but an illusion. For Time does not die, Time has neither beginning nor an end, and so nothing can end or die that has once had a place in Time.

- Susan Cooper

Youth

Catching your eye, falling in love,

Holding your heart, moving apart;

Violins for love, soft and blue

Drums of loss, loud but true

Questions, hope, regrets and mistakes

The willingness to put it all at stake

Over and over and over again.

MT - Nov 2013

Aao ke karein bazm pe zar zakhm numaaya'n

Charcha hai bohat baysar'o samaan'iey dil ka

My favorite time to blog...

... is right before an exam or a test.

Loneliness petrifies me

 

Jab teri samander aankh'on main

Iss shaam ka sooraj doobay ga

Sukh so'ein ge ghar darr waalay

Aur raahi apni rah le ga

Aur raahi apni raah le ga...

Questions and Answers

These two years could be very good for me.

For the last twenty-four years I've loved at home: close to all the people I love, surrounded by my family, supported by my friends. I have lived a very busy, full and amazingly satisfying life, accomplishing a lot. But the journey has not been mine alone. In fact, I'm almost unapologetically dependent on my support group, nearly bordering on neediness. Does it help that I recognize it? Maybe. Maybe not.

When mom pushed me to apply for the Fulbright she wanted me to get an opportunity to 'see the world': see places I may never be able to see otherwise, experience the life I will not be able to experience once 'real life', with all its complications and restrains, started - job, marriage, babies, all that jazz. If it were up to me, I would probably never have applied, which just highlights how complacent I was, cosy in my comfort zone.  

Now that I'm out of my own little ecosystem, though, it's not just the world that I'm seeing, but myself too. It's a brand new start, a completely different dynamic, light years away from my real life. Sometimes I feel like a silent spectator, watching myself navigate through this strange and unfamiliar world. I'm free of my past and no one, including myself, knows the future. All I have to account for is my present. I can see myself act and react, and watch as I form tremulous new relationships and establish links with people I could never have imagined meeting. My every action can be, and is, questioned by these strangerfriends who are just getting to know who I am. And sometimes this leads to me questioning myself.

Have you ever wondered:

Why you are who you are

Why you do what you do

Who you want to be

What you want to do

Where you want to go

How can you get there

I wonder every day, and every day I find new answers.

It's a painful process. It's absolutely wonderful.

How much is too much?

What will yours read?

Do practical things if you want your tombstone to read

"They were practical."

Do what makes sense if you think it should say

"Their life made sense."

Do what the world wants if you believe in the epitaph

"They did what the world wanted them to do."

But if you want it to read

"They lived every second they were given 
and touched the sky every chance they had, 
they burned and blazed in all the colours the eye can see 
and left a hole shaped like them in the world 
when they left."

Then do something else.


From Iwrotethisforyou: http://www.iwrotethisforyou.me/2012/11/the-words-on-tombstone.html

Things I've learnt from life so far (2)

57. The people who will leave will do so, regardless of whatever you do to try to hold them to you. You can only delay the inevitable.
58. You cannot change anyone’s nature.
59. There is no such thing as ‘forever’. Nothing is ‘forever’.
60. 90% guys will be exactly like their fathers.
61. Some people will pity you for wanting to get married and have babies. Some people will pity you for not wanting to get married and have babies.
62. Staying happy is something you have to constantly work to achieve.
63. When you obsess and worry over one thing possibly going wrong, something absolutely unexpected probably will.
64. In hindsight, you will always be "better off now" and things will have always "turned out for the best".
65. A broken heart mends faster than you ever think it could.
66. Nothing stops hair fall.
67. The HR people will always be nice, even when there's no chance in hell of you ever getting that job.
68. Guys make better friends than girls, most of the time.
69. There will always be someone prettier.
70. Every once in a while, you need time away from every single person you know, to be able to make some sense of life.
71. The world is so, so big. We really don't matter.
72. You need to BE someone to know what they feel. No other way. 
73. Joy and Misery are equally beautiful.
74. The best way is to ask "what impact will this have five years from now".
75. Accountants have a million methods to con you into believing what they want you to believe.
76.

Work in progress

(part 1: http://aforml.blogspot.com/2010/05/what-ive-learnt-from-life-so-far.html)

Meray yaar meray dost.

My four years at NU-FAST have finally come to an end. We're going through our last week at uni now days, and I have very confusing feelings about this.

If you know me at all, you know that I'm an extremely emotional person. And if you knew me back in my A'levels, you'd know that I spent the last month and a half before high school ended crying. I hate good byes. I cannot stand losing people.

And this is losing them. no matter what we say, regardless of all the promises we make to stay in touch and get together frequently, the truth is, in another month or so, life as we know it will be no more. 

These are the people I've seen every day of my life, through eighteen to twenty-two: the years that have had a huge impact on me; which shaped who I am and decided how I will look at, and deal with, the rest of my life. These people have seen me cry, shout and have nervous break-downs. We've acted crazy, had fun, and gotten in trouble together. I've had arguments with most of them. We've worked together on projects and put together events. We've loved each other and we've hated each other.

We have history together. And in a few days, all we will have are memories.

I'm happy to think of the future. No more assignments, no more worrying about grades. The thought of being economically independant is a huge rush. We're finally "growing up", and maybe that'll be fun. At the very least, it will finally be a break from the constant academic pressure. But I'm going to miss every single one of these people. Even the ones I actively dislike.

FAST is home. I've belonged here, and it has belonged to me. For four long years I entered here every morning, and if I so desired, I could stay here well into the night. We could do whatever we wanted, sit where ever we liked, and do it with the confidence that we could. In my mind these corridors will always resound with the songs we sang here, the common rooms with shared confidences. There were gossip sessions in empty class rooms, dancing in the ladies room, and celebrations in the cafeteria. There were impromptu basketball games, and hundreds of new friendships. We took life changing decisions and made critical choices, and worked through depression, hurt and anger with these friends. There were squabbles over work, class politics, and begging random juniors for lunch money. And there was a whole lot of love.  

This is what I see when I look back over the last four years. This is what I'll always remember. 

This is what I will forever miss. 

Back

I've decided to return.

For the last one month, I've been alone. For the first time in my life, I have been away from the people I have loved the most in the world, the places I call home. I am somewhere where no one knows me. No one knows my story, my past, my aspirations, my dreams, my life. For the first time in my life, I am alone.

And when you're alone, there's much that you can see, and hear, inside you. Maybe this is the best time to account for my life. Time feels as if it has slowed down so I can catch up.

I stopped writing here because I felt I was so happy with my life now, I didn't need this anymore. This blog is full of old stories, the cobwebs of memories and the scent of past hurts. I felt, as time moved on, I needed to as well. I don't know why, but it is always loneliness that drives me to write, and somehow I felt that was wrong. So I stopped.

But this isn't really about me. I am not unhappy, and I'm not depressed or in need of help. But sometimes, when I'm all alone, and the world is beautiful around me, and life is going by too fast, I need to stop and account for all of it. What a lot of people don't understand it is that it's not my own hurt that is reflected in these pieces of writing, but of the people I saw all around me. So many of these posts are the reflections of people I know, and what they were going through.

I stopped writing because people kept feeling that I was the one who was sad and needed counseling or support. I am always in need of support, and I'm not ashamed to admit it. I'm one of those people who need people around them, people they can depend on. And I have always been blessed with the best of friends and family. But when you read a post that echoes sadness, don't assume, is all I ask.