This is one of the many posts in a "series" that I am going to make. If it ends or starts abruptly, look for the thread. It rolls on like a Qissa Chahaar Dervesh.
...
I turned 14 and got a new body. Life changed in many ways after that, and so did I. I had remarkably good beliefs since I was a child and an outlook that I didn’t find among my peers. I had a lot of intelligence and wisdom, but most of it was natural and untested. I am not proud to say that it was tested through my own will. If I had my wish now, and if I were wise enough then, I wouldn’t put to test what I knew was a good thing. Who would smash a glass of resilient crystal to test how strong it is? I did.
But I never regretted. After all, in the grand scheme of things, it was to be, and I knew it. (Quite simply, whatever is to be is in the natural inclination of each person. Resistance is futile!) There is a fake belief, and a real belief, and I felt that mine won’t be real until I see the “Dark Side.” So I paid a tour to the Dark Side. There I saw many, many things. I saw Envy, and Lust, and Greed. I saw Vanity, which seduced me for a long time because I thought it was going to last. I saw Fear, which is the thing my nature hates most. I don’t think anything in the history of Mankind killed as many good intentions and produced hurried bad actions as did Fear. Complete, irrational, stupid fear.
...
Friday, September 16, 2005
Sacred 7even
This is one of the many posts in a "series" that I am going to make. If it ends or starts abruptly, look for the thread. It rolls on like a Qissa Chahaar Dervesh.
...
Speaking of phases of life, did you know why 7 is a sacred number? I figured out. I learnt a long time ago that in seven years, every cell of the body is replaced. You get a new body in seven years. Early this year, a fortune-teller* told me that the hand lines change every seven years, too.** I understood it was because we get a new body. And if there is any truth to the destiny lines – and I think there is, but they are only a distraction – then the destiny changes with the change in body too. Every seven years.
Also, if you notice, every seven days give a person a complete cycle to discharge any variety of regular duties. In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey called a week the best planning unit as against a day. It’s longer than a day, and gives freedom of adjustment. And it’s shorter than a month or a year, and forces action. (I see this para has some potential for a voodooish pass-around email on the powers of 7. I plead respect.)
I was around 12 when I discovered the piece of information about the reloaded body, and I couldn’t wait to turn 14. That would give me an entirely “clean” body, a tabula rasa. Then, I thought, whatever I consider to be my life will only be a part of my head, my imagination. I could control that. My body would literally be a new body. As for the soul, I knew that the soul does not get contaminated. It is some other layer of us that is spoilt. At any rate, it was harder to salvage a body, to me, than to salvage a soul – over which a person has his or her own control. The body can be enslaved by others, but neither the heart nor the soul. On this lasting freedom, I have forever based my optimism, hope, and faith.
* May I just suggest that do not be influenced by this writing enough to consult a fortune-teller. Ever. I will never, ever do that again. I warn that whatever the fortune-tellers say, comes true. And their art and science isn’t perfect. So do not think that the fortune-teller knows what will happen. But if they say something will happen, it will happen because they said so. Life is short; do something else. Stay away from these people.
...
...
Speaking of phases of life, did you know why 7 is a sacred number? I figured out. I learnt a long time ago that in seven years, every cell of the body is replaced. You get a new body in seven years. Early this year, a fortune-teller* told me that the hand lines change every seven years, too.** I understood it was because we get a new body. And if there is any truth to the destiny lines – and I think there is, but they are only a distraction – then the destiny changes with the change in body too. Every seven years.
Also, if you notice, every seven days give a person a complete cycle to discharge any variety of regular duties. In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey called a week the best planning unit as against a day. It’s longer than a day, and gives freedom of adjustment. And it’s shorter than a month or a year, and forces action. (I see this para has some potential for a voodooish pass-around email on the powers of 7. I plead respect.)
I was around 12 when I discovered the piece of information about the reloaded body, and I couldn’t wait to turn 14. That would give me an entirely “clean” body, a tabula rasa. Then, I thought, whatever I consider to be my life will only be a part of my head, my imagination. I could control that. My body would literally be a new body. As for the soul, I knew that the soul does not get contaminated. It is some other layer of us that is spoilt. At any rate, it was harder to salvage a body, to me, than to salvage a soul – over which a person has his or her own control. The body can be enslaved by others, but neither the heart nor the soul. On this lasting freedom, I have forever based my optimism, hope, and faith.
* May I just suggest that do not be influenced by this writing enough to consult a fortune-teller. Ever. I will never, ever do that again. I warn that whatever the fortune-tellers say, comes true. And their art and science isn’t perfect. So do not think that the fortune-teller knows what will happen. But if they say something will happen, it will happen because they said so. Life is short; do something else. Stay away from these people.
** If you really need to look into future, consult a
...
The most beautiful thing that happened to me
This is one of the many posts in a "series" that I am going to make. If it ends or starts abruptly, look for the thread. It rolls on like a Qissa Chahaar Dervesh.
:::
The most beautiful thing that happened to me is the Umrah that I performed during August 8 – 16 this year (that’d be 2005). It now makes for a quick answer to the question, “What was the happiest thing in your life?” Earlier, I had to tax my memory – not because of want of a good moment, but actually because several wonderful little moments happened and most of them are intensely private. Don’t let the mind wander: many of them were between me and my God, and others between me and I.
Why is the Umrah the happiest and the most beautiful? Because for me, it was one long moment in my life when time stopped. There was no past; and no future. For a pattern-reader, this is an inexplicable joy: to be in the present. Not reading the past, not construsting the future. Just being.
It was like one of those times when you step outside the car to enter a wedding reception, but before you enter, you wait for the one driving to come and join you. And you beckon the hurried ones accompanying you to wait back, until the family have gathered to make an appearance together. The whole family, in one step, makes a “joint entrance” (for want of an un-Pakistani term).
My Umrah is the time when I have stopped, and waited for my life to catch up with me, the life that was behind me, and life that was ahead of me. This was so that I could make a smooth transition in to the next phase of my life.
....
:::
The most beautiful thing that happened to me is the Umrah that I performed during August 8 – 16 this year (that’d be 2005). It now makes for a quick answer to the question, “What was the happiest thing in your life?” Earlier, I had to tax my memory – not because of want of a good moment, but actually because several wonderful little moments happened and most of them are intensely private. Don’t let the mind wander: many of them were between me and my God, and others between me and I.
Why is the Umrah the happiest and the most beautiful? Because for me, it was one long moment in my life when time stopped. There was no past; and no future. For a pattern-reader, this is an inexplicable joy: to be in the present. Not reading the past, not construsting the future. Just being.
It was like one of those times when you step outside the car to enter a wedding reception, but before you enter, you wait for the one driving to come and join you. And you beckon the hurried ones accompanying you to wait back, until the family have gathered to make an appearance together. The whole family, in one step, makes a “joint entrance” (for want of an un-Pakistani term).
My Umrah is the time when I have stopped, and waited for my life to catch up with me, the life that was behind me, and life that was ahead of me. This was so that I could make a smooth transition in to the next phase of my life.
....
Wednesday, August 31, 2005
BlogDay 2005
Mission:
Expand your horizons. Get out of the "friends" room on the blogroll. Step in to the wider blogosphere. Find and list five blogs that are new to you. Diversity and difference are expected!
Me:
1/ TooMuchSexy - don't expect what you expect but get some still. New York chutzpah.
2/ The Trump Blog - "Ideas and opinions from Donald Trump and his circle of experts." From the host of wildly successful real-life business drama The Apprentice. Conventional business wisdom through an unconventional educational medium. My 5-star favorite.
3/ david blaine - Yes, the magician. Got a blog. Poof!
4/ :::::StrapYa Room::::: - A Japanese blog on cell phones accessories. Very cool stuff.
5/ Regime Change Iran - the name says it mostly. A thick news blog with daily [unconfirmed] updates.
Dropped from consideration at last minute:
Bread Coffee Chocolate Yoga - Err, do they go this together? Let's hit the blog
to find out. [link deleted]
I didn't find it appealing enough. Besides, yoga just doesn't get along with all this heavy duty eating. Ew. You'd love the Donald Trump blog I put up there instead!
You:
How well did I do? Had you seen any of these before? I hadn't. I employed some methods to reach these blogs, and these are my top 5 picks among then many random blogs I discovered. (Actually, I lie. I kept one that I wuwed to myself. It's nothing personal, it's just business. ;))
Monday, August 29, 2005
The best of moulds
Media-neutral, solution-neutral. That was the unique point of the marketing consulting firm I started to work with. Simply, it meant: we are not an ad agency. If a brand, say Lux, came to us with a problem we would not say, “Let’s make an ad!” We would find a real solution that will solve the exact problem. May be the solution was to change the product size. May be the solution was to do more research. May be the solution was to speed up production. May be the solution was an ad. We would find out.
But we began with a plain sheet and a blank mind.
We began naked.
And then we clothed in the solution of our choice.
Just because we had no solution to begin with, we had endless solutions to choose from.
For the past couple of years, I have thought hard about this. Because a human being cannot fly like an eagle, swim like a whale, or stay suspended in the air like a humming bird – we can now do it all better than them all. We can fly across the globe (in a plane), swim deeper than a whale (in a submarine), and stay suspended in the air (in a chopper). We can climb flat rocks. We can train our throats to produce a variety of sounds or modify our voice with machines. We can amplify one human’s voice to reach across miles… Our thoughts can travel across the world in seconds through the Internet. We can change the color of our eyes with contact lenses. We can dye our hair. We can put on fur coats or sheer muslin tunics. We can walk through fire and stand close to live volcanoes. We can cook an amazing variety of dishes.
We can do all this because we couldn’t do it all when we were born.
Out of our handicap, arises our ability. In having nothing, we have a choice to have anything, within our resources and context.
We have a naked mould. Which lets us design, choose, adapt the best of suitable moulds.
But we began with a plain sheet and a blank mind.
We began naked.
And then we clothed in the solution of our choice.
Just because we had no solution to begin with, we had endless solutions to choose from.
For the past couple of years, I have thought hard about this. Because a human being cannot fly like an eagle, swim like a whale, or stay suspended in the air like a humming bird – we can now do it all better than them all. We can fly across the globe (in a plane), swim deeper than a whale (in a submarine), and stay suspended in the air (in a chopper). We can climb flat rocks. We can train our throats to produce a variety of sounds or modify our voice with machines. We can amplify one human’s voice to reach across miles… Our thoughts can travel across the world in seconds through the Internet. We can change the color of our eyes with contact lenses. We can dye our hair. We can put on fur coats or sheer muslin tunics. We can walk through fire and stand close to live volcanoes. We can cook an amazing variety of dishes.
We can do all this because we couldn’t do it all when we were born.
Out of our handicap, arises our ability. In having nothing, we have a choice to have anything, within our resources and context.
We have a naked mould. Which lets us design, choose, adapt the best of suitable moulds.
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