Little boy on the road

I met a little boy on the road yesterday. He must not have been older than 10 years of age. He was selling one of those smiley face plasticine things that change shape when you push or pull at them. I asked him how much he was charging and he said Rs. 25. I gave him Rs. 30 and as I was rolling up the car window he tapped saying 'your change'. I told him 'you can keep it' [rakh lo] and he replied (rather offended) 'I do not take money' [mein paisay nahi leta]. I watched him walk away tall and upright. I felt shallow within. I am five ruppees richer but much poorer than that little boy on the road. I hope his principles survive through time and age.

Random

Overheard at the last company wide meeting:

A: 'Why the need for this meeting'?
B: 'Kampany doob rahi hai afsos ke liyay bulaya hai'

Kampany abhi tak to nahi doob rahi albata afsos ki zaroorat aksar rehti hai.

For fellow graduate students

Little acts

You grow up learning about virtue at home and school. There is religious teaching and plain simple social norm. Also, there is learning by seeing. You watch your parents conduct their lives and try to follow to in their steps. But somewhere along the way a lot of us forget the goodness.

Last night I witnessed a little act of goodness and I thought I should share it here. My apt. mate and I went out for coffee with Anne and Amy. Amy is a dear friend I have known for a while now and Anne is Amy's friend. I have met Anne a couple of times before. However, my apt. mate was meeting Anne for the first time. My apt. mate has met Amy before and they are acquainted. So anyway, we had a nice evening out walking and talking and then sipping away at our tea/coffee at this nearby place.

The little act that brings a smile to my face even the next morning is my apt. mate's insistence upon paying for us all. She paid for all four of us despite protest. She did not have to and she did not need to but she wanted to and she did. This is a small gesture of kindness coming from a big generous heart. Back home it might not have been a big deal but here it is - a BIG deal. And it is such a joy to witness such small acts in the chaotic world we live in today.

Not happy with my bank

I just found a charge that I do not recognize on my credit card statement and called them up to ask what is going on. They said I need to talk to my bank because the charge is for a payment reversal and thus I have been fined . So i call up my bank and they give me the most ridiculous reason one can think of. Yes, seriously they did. I filed a complaint of course but I am so not optimistic about that.

The banking system in this country escapes me. And it is not the only thing. the health system is the real winner. There is no way for me to make sense of it ever. So yeah I am not happy with my bank. So not happy with my bank .

And now that I am here ranting about the health care system. You should watch 'Sicko'. You really should. It is informative to the point of being alarming and almost depressing. So if the health care system here escapes you watch 'Sicko' it will be like catharsis.

Grey's Anatomy

I have totally become obsessed with Grey's Anatomy over the last 36 hours. It is insane and unhealthy but have watched about a dozen episodes already - not in one go of course but still in 36 hours. That is bad right...quite bad.

And I cannot get the song out of my head. You must check it out. Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol. As long as this lasts I'm loving it!

Hypocrisy 101

A halal vegetarian meal with red wine!

Problem? Not really.
I figure you have a skewed way of looking at things and I understand you are another ordinary mortal. I find the contradictions in you amusing at best.

What is it with halal meals and alcohol?

I am not particular about this so I will eat any meat other than pork. How the animal was slaughtered or electrocuted does not bother me. What bothers me though is that I know 'self-righteous' people who look down upon me for ordering a chicken sandwich and proceed to indulge in wine with a 'halal' meal.

Seriously, what is wrong with you?
My problem is not your halal/non halal preferences or your indulgence in or abstinence from alcohol. My problem is your 'better than thou' attitude. It plain simple irritates me.

Go do all you want. Just do not tell me about how you are a much stronger Muslim.

Mazhab 101

I am not a practicing Muslim. I do not pray or fast. I have no inclination to visit Makkah. I would rather donate to a hospital or a school than support a religious cause. I find mosques to be a waste of space and resources. I am just not fascinated by the idea of Islam as an overrated religion.

In fact, I find religion to be overrated in general. The way I live my life has little to do with religion. I have my own morality, my own right and wrong and it works just fine for me - until the 'self-righteous' make it a point to talk to me about religion.

A) My life is none of your business
B) There is a life beyond religion - Get over it!
C) If you make the mistake of taking me up on religion, be prepared. I will prove you wrong on your own flawed logic.

Seriously, what is wrong with people? What is wrong with supposed self righteous Muslims. Of course, they need to get a life but beyond that they need to find a God: a God that can be God and yet tolerate the prevalent notion of religion.

I grew up in a Muslim household. I have prayed, fasted, read the Quran and even taught Quran. Only that I never felt content with babbling Arabic without knowing what it means and I could not make peace with practicing religion without understanding it.

I make no claims to understand religion. I am not proposing I know God. But I know your God does not exist. I know the God you preach cannot be God. And it frustrates me. It irritates me when you go around praying five times a day without knowing what the verses mean. I do not pray but I can translate the verses you recite during prayer for you. I know the meaning of the prayers I do not say. You do not know what Quranic verses mean in your language when you read them. I really do not see whatever gave you the idea you can come talk to me about religion.

Seriously people, stop telling me about what your Imam, Aalim or Molvi Sahib said. I am sick and tired of the Mullah. You would rather believe a Mullah for what he thinks religion to be. I would rather be content with my own interpretation. At least, I know what I know for myself. I am not drowning on the behest of any self proclaimed Jesus.

another long idle sunday

this old friend dropped in...crazy cooking...lots of talking...catharsis...idiocy...weird theories...strange ideas about life love and so much more...love you babes...it's a joy to know that we can still sit and celebrate nothing but temporary insanity

apart from that...still in love with ghalib...still reading singh bit by bit...ghalib's delhi has so much to it especially when singh writes about it

Random

I know can stir affection with a little effort but affection comes without trying doesn't it?

picked this from m&m's blog

http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/001881.html

lyrics i can't get out of my head

and so it is
just like you said it would be
life goes easy on me
most of the time
and so it is
the shorter story
no love, no glory
no hero in her skies

I can't take my eyes off of you
I can't take my eyes off you
I can't take my eyes...

(the blower's daughter, soundtrack 'closer' by damien rice)

I know you think that I shouldn't still love,
or tell you that.
but if I didn't say it, well I'd still have felt it
where's the sense in that?

I promise I'm not trying to make your life harder
or return to where we were

I will go down with this ship
and I won't put my hands up and surrender
there will be no white flag above my door
I'm in love and always will be

I . . .
. . . again
and if you live by the rules of "it's over"
then I'm sure that that makes sense

I will go down with this ship
And I won't put my hands up and surrender
There will be no white flag above my door
I'm in love and always will be

(white flag - dido)

The dilemna

Is it not better to leap towards what you want even when you know there is a fair chance of getting hurt than just sitting back in fear and letting a life time slip away?

found on a random blog

People! Pakistan's home to around 162,419,946 people! Look around! Don't marry your cousins!

revisiting existentialism

Wait a minute, there's a snag somewhere; something disagreeable. Why, now, should it be disagreeable? ...Ah, I see; it's life without a break. ~ Sartre

...here we sit, all of us, eating and drinking to preserve our precious existence and really there is nothing, nothing absolutely, no reason for existing. ~ Sartre

Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time. ~ Camus

In default of inexhaustible happiness, eternal suffering would at least give us a destiny. But we do not even have that consolation, and our worst agonies come to an end one day. ~ Camus

The absurd enlightens me on this point: there is no future. ~ Camus

Every act of rebellion expresses a nostalgia for innocence and an appeal to the essence of being. ~ Camus

At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face. ~ Camus (sad but true :/)

The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world. ~ Camus

A crowd—not this crowd or that, the crow now living or the crowd long deceased, a crowd of humble people or of superior people, or rich or of poor, etc.—a crowd in its very concept is the untruth, by reason of the fact that it renders the individual completely impenitent and irresponsible, or at least weakens his sense of responsibility by reducing it to a fraction. The Point of View ~ Kierkegaard

Above all, do not lose your desire to walk. every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it...but by sitting still, and the more one sits still, the closer one comes to feeling ill...If one just keeps on walking everything will be all right. ~ Kierkegaard

It was as if that great rush of anger had washed me clean, emptied me of hope, and, gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars,for the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe. To feel it so like myself, indeed, so brotherly, made me realize that I'd been happy, and that I was happy still... The Stranger ~ Camus ( absolutely love this one and it is a MUST read book)

Without Music, life would be a mistake. ~ Nietzche

The thought of suicide is a great consolation: by means of it one gets successfully through many a bad night. ~ Nietzche

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you. ~ Nietzche

When Zarathustra was alone...he said to his heart: 'Could it be possible! This old saint in the forest hath not yet heard of it, that God is dead! ~ Nietzche

I can prove at any time that my education tried to make another person out of me than the one I became. It is for the harm, therefore, that my educators could have done me in accordance with their intentions that I reproach them; I demand from their hands the person I now am, and since they cannot give him to me, I make of my reproach and laughter a drumbeat sounding in the world beyond. ~ Kafka

A first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die. ~ Kafka

To die would mean nothing else than to surrender a nothing to the nothing, but that would be impossible to conceive, for how could a person, even only as a nothing, consciously surrender himself to the nothing, and not merely to an empty nothing but rather to a roaring nothing whose nothingness consists only in its incomprehensibility. ~ Kafka

A belief is like a guillotine just as heavy, just as light. ~ Kafka

My life is hesitation before birth. ~ Kafka (could not agree more)

Intercourse with human beings seduces one to self-contemplation. ~ Kafka

some (not so) profound qoutes

I don't know enough to be incompetent. (Shadows and Fog - Woody Allen)

To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not love, but then one suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer, not to love is to suffer, to suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love, to be happy then is to suffer but suffering makes one unhappy, therefore to be unhappy one must love or love to suffer or suffer from too much happiness. I hope you're getting this down... (Love and Death - Woody Allen)

I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying. (Woody Allen) - don't agree with this one at all though

It's not that I'm afraid to die. I just don't want to be there when it happens. (Woody Allen) don't agree with this one too but it's nice nonetheless

nice qoute

To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.
Gustave Flaubert (1821 - 1880)

kissed to death!

wish list

some time back some one enlightenend me with a chinese saying

'as long as you want something it can never be truly yours and when you stop wanting it it's yours to keep'*

somehow this makes perfect sense today ... i guess overtime a lot of things start making sense ... am hoping someday life will start making sense too ... though i have a strong feeling that life will stop being that very day

*(yeah i know i get memory lapses so apologies for tormenting the soul of whoever came up with this to start with)

sadness

read this on a random blog today

Sadness is a feeling that engulfs you... You cannot search for it nor can you deter it... it is addictive and once you are in it, you want to live with it... it's consoling yet it's heartwrenching.. you will want to let it go, yet you will wan to hold it tight... such is the dilemma of being sad..