Forgive oneself.

Let the past die or slip away
each moment as it passes, passes away
where does it survive? only in our memory
and we keep some moments alive by reliving it
the worst or best of the moments
we relive our tortures more often than our pleasures
why do we punish ourselves
we punish ourselves because we feel we have committed great sins
we become our own judge
we do not have mercy on ourselves and we keep punishing ourselves by reliving those moments when we felt betrayed, insulted, tortured, manipulated, forgotten, ignored, and then we say that it was all due to our sins , our faults, the human errs, why not leave the moments in the past and live the life anew
recreate oneself
love is the healer
forgive oneself and move ahead
live, feel the breath of life
and feel the birth of new moment each moment.

Chinook.: Where it leads me!!

We come across new information and knowledge on daily basis while watching television, reading a book, chatting with a friend on internet or talking with people face to face but often the information is lost as we busy ourselves with the next activity. In each of the new information is the potential to become one's passion and destiny. If we trace the start of our hobbies, occupations, interests, likes, dislikes, ideas and desires we will find that some where some day we heard about our future interest, desires etc and then we build on that information and turned it into our interest and made it part of our personality. For example when I trace my interest in world geography I find that one of my friend in primary school once showed me the map of Africa on his journal and I was fascinated by the squared and rectangular shaped countries ( Ghana, Ivory Coast, Togo, Dahomey) as they looked very beautiful on the map. I asked my father to buy a globe for me. He was pleasantly surprised that I was asking for a globe and he happily brought a globe from his nest visit to Karachi. I started spending hours and hours to locate countries and then started reading about their culture and history. I wonder if I had not built on my interest in maps after seeing that colorful map of Africa in my friend's journal would I be able to develop my interest in history and culture of these countries scattered on maps.
All of these thoughts have given me an idea to pick any topic from our daily interactions and then find more about it and see where it would lead us. It may lead us to new interests, places or people and enrich our life in ways we never expected.

For this experiment I have picked up "Chinook" from the chat with my cousin who lives in Canada. He mentioned about Chinook that it blew last week and melted the snow quickly. I was amazed by the information that there could be hot winds in such a cold climate that melt the snow. I am building on this information and lets see where it leads me.

Sustainable Tourism....seems interesting.

So finally I am at the stage where I have to do my first Independent Study for my MS degree. I have started doing secondary research for my area of interest and it is Sustainable Tourism. In Sindh, what I have seen from my preliminary literature review, much has not been done in this area and I feel that if I do the research to find the potential and problems of ST it could become a seminal work for my PhD. ( I am right now thinking of terminating my studies at MS). The area on which I want to work is Nagar Parkar. It is a small town in the South East of Sindh surrounded by India from three sides. It has Karoonjhar Mountains in its back ground and scattered Jain temples on its plains. The local tourism potential is very high keeping in view the presence of natural and cultural tourist attractions. I have been to the area in 2000 and 2003 and have good local links there to pursue the research the only problem is that its more than 5 hours journey from Hyderabad. I want to work in this area but I am thinking to do my IS first in a near by area on the same topic and then if I things move in the same direction as I hope for than extend the research to cover Nagar Parkar for any funding organization. I am working for my research proposal and do want to get over it as soon as possible to actually start working on the research. It's going to be exciting but I have to keep a vigil on my habit of procrastination because this habit keeps popping its head too often.

Lost but not defeated.

The taste of loss is not as bitter as I was anticipating. The fear of dreadful was killing me but dreadful failed to kill me. It is over and I have lost the battle. I fought till end and never quit. I am bruised and lost in oblivion. Licking wounds, empty handed and alone I reflect and say to myself never mind you followed your dream. I have nothing except my intact self esteem to challenge again the forces who think I am a history. The loss I endure is far more dear to me than the gains that tempt me to forsake my ideals. I am biding my time to reenter the arena.

Of Love and Insanity.

I read a real life story titled "Of Love and Insanity" in the Bangladeshi newspaper The Daily Star. The story is of a young lower middle class guy who fell in love with a girl six years senior to him and belonging to an elite class. The common story is narrated poignantly. I especially like the comment of the writer about love. Here it is

"Stories in real life end in such prosaic ways that one wonders what is the meaning or purpose of all the heart-rending, foolish happiness and sufferings that precedes them. Why do we get entangled in the cobwebs of lunacy called love, when the endings are almost always so mundane?".

Yet we do fall in love, there is no escaping from it. I believe tribulations and elations experienced in love make one wiser not to fall in love again. Love brings pain and severely hampers the cerebral function and eventually brings a period of depression from which the sufferer recovers with phenomenal efforts and at great cost of time. Despite all the sufferings a lover must endure there is no point regretting the experience of love because not to fall in love is to live life too safely and insipidly. I do agree with the conclusion that the endings of love are mundane but without love the beginning and middle are mundane too. With love some part of life becomes exciting and even the mundane ending of love gives life something to reminisce. This isn't a bad deal, is it?

An oozing from heart.

Sweetness oozes from heart and satiates my soul. Time stops and the moment envelops me and I become one with nature. My awe of the universe disppears as I stop seeing myself and acknowledge only the universe. The moon, stars, vast sky, cool breeze and I are nothing but manifestation of only one phenomenon. Love prevails and I float in the river of love all around me.

Its time for decision making.

Now a days I have not too much to do. My classes in one of the institutes are over and at my home centre too students have completed their courses almost. So I have lots of time in hand particularly on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. I have got rid of lots of clutter. I am also reading my unfinished books. At the same time I have purchased few new books in Sindhi despite self imposed ban on purchasing books. I couldn't resist the temptation of purchasing so cheap books on such interesting topics. I couldn't believe that for just Rs. 100 I got 4 books from Sindhi Language Authority book stall. The books are priceless, I have already got worth of my Rs. 100 when I read in one of the books about saints in Jainism, Hinduism and Buddhism.
In the evening I went to see our neighbour who came back from a visit to India. He is above 60 years of age and a fervent traveller. He went to see his relatives in Rajasthan. He went to Jaipur, Sikar and Bikaner and then further south to Hyderabad. He was all praise for the progress in India. He said that now there was no comparison between India and Pakistan. India is far ahead. The salaries are high there but the prices of goods are cheap. Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs live peacefully. While he was narrating his account of Indian trip I felt disappointment on what we have done with Pakistan. He urged me to visist India and see Delhi, Jaipur and Agra in the first trip and if there is a chance then I must go and see my ancestrol town of Mahedragarh as well.
Karachi is calling me again. I have prayed that I take the better decision. I want to read, travel, write and teach and that's all I am doing. But only teaching is giving me money. May be in Karachi I will be able to earn from my other passions as well. I don't want to leave the things that I love most. The time for decision making has arrived and I cannot escape it. I have to make the decision pretty soon.

Wounded Alma Mater.

The massacre at Virginia Tech has blown the hallowed institution of university to smithereens. It is like bombing the mosque, temple, synagogue, or church. No, I am wrong the university is more sacred than the religious centers because here the learned and the learners together are in the pursuit of knowledge the only activity truly epitomizing the essence of being human.

The killer wounded his alma mater and killed her children who were not strangers but his own siblings. Who would now feel safe in the lap of alma mater? The students and teachers will doubt each other; the home of learning has been shattered. I feel the pain of the teachers of Virginia Tech who grope to find the answer to the biggest question of their life why did they fail to pacify the brewing anger of a young guy who had shown enough signs of alienation. Something somewhere must have altered the role of university, teachers and education so subtly that resulting absence of support system for any estranged student turned an ordinary student into the perpetrator of the deadliest massacre in US history.

I do not claim to know America and its culture and how it would feel to be a part of an American university so I am not in a position to comment upon the pressures an immigrant student might have felt that led him to commit mass murder of his own varsity fellows. However as a teacher I think the lacking may lie in not reaching out to the family of the student especially his parents at a time when first signs of diabolical thoughts were detected in his writings. Taking the family into confidence and tracing the causes of his problems might have given the university authorities better clues to know true state of the mind of the embittered student. I feel sorry for the VT faculty and staff who no doubt would have done more had they known what catastrophe a lone student would bring to their institution.

“Give respect to each other, help the weak students to grow, never make fun of any student, never ridicule anyone and always stretch your hand for mutual growth “, this is my message to all the students of the world.

Existentialism. (My 100th Post)

When I got the novel Plague by Albert Camus I had no idea who the author was and what kind of the novel Plague would turn out to be. Later I came to know that Camus was associated with existentialism though he himself preferred not be associated with any school of thought. Camus was once a close friend of Sartre who is regarded as the leading philosopher of existentialism of the 20th century. The meaning of existentialism in philosophy was not clear to me and after searching on net and reading from my introductory book on philosophy I found that existentialist philosophers believe that human beings although have no power to choose the environment of their birth but they do have the power to form their world through exercising the will power. I know that there must be more to the subject than what I have understood but the essence that I got from reading about it is liberating. One can make a difference for better in the presence of overwhelming problems and challenges through resoluteness and will. Plague is such a story where the indomitable spirit of the human beings fought a battle against the plague. Plague struck the people out of the blue and altered their destiny but failed to subdue the will of the people to defeat the dreaded disease. Eventually the people of the town saw the retreat of the plague and began living their ordinary lives again.

My mood is ethereal

The night has fallen and the humming of the fan enhances the silence all around. I am sitting in my study room with a new book around. "...And Another Woman Shall Bear Me" is the collection of articles by Khadijah Gauhar an Afro-Asian writer. I have already finished a couple of articles and surprisingly the first article was finished even before I reached home after purchasing the book. My bike was standing idle for almost a month and I decided to take a ride on it. I went straight to the bookshop to get the book and on my return trip I found my self stuck in a traffic jam. The blockade was so massive that I switched off my bike and opened the first pages of the book to read. I created an island of serenity in the midst of mayhem and started reading the book. As I engrossed myself in the thoughts and ideas of the author I forgot that I was stranded in the traffic jam and the feeling of being in control gave me satisfaction at a time when most of the people seemed frustrated. I read about the author's apathy towards restrictive form of education she got in a school of a Muslim neighborhood of Cape Town in 1930s. As I finished the first article with these words " I believed that the general aim of sound education is to help individuals to grow to fuller maturity; to help them to live well with his or her own world or society", I looked around and found no improvement in the traffic jam. I waited for few more minutes and then turned the bike back to reach home via long route. I am reading the other articles now but I will never forget the start of the book as it was made in very unusal environment for reading. My mood is ethereal.

Heart wrenching

Bob Woolmer's death has shaken the Pakistani nation. "Bob Woolmer has died", the news muted all the tirade against Bob Woolmer by the jingos of Pakistani cricket. In our frenzy to castigate the team we forgot what the toll it would take on the coach and players. Although exact condition of his mind at the time of his death would never be known but the pressure build up following the deafeat of Pakistan may have been too much for the man to cope who had dedicated his life for cricket and in the night following the defeat he collapsed. The Woolmer wanted to quit as the coach of Pakistani team after the completion of his contract in June 2007 to spend more time with his family. He was under tremendous stress and far away from his home in an alien island he couldn't make it to the morning. The headlines of the papers are filled with praise for him but he is no more.