Theory of universal insanity

I have several theories about life, about people and their characters. My favorite theory is that every person is insane-- to some degree or another. There are a lot of facts and events supporting this theory, time and time again. And I get a bit scared sometimes…because I can see my madness more clearly than I can see anyone else’s. I don’t know if anyone else sees this; I used to think I’m good at hiding my feelings, but then I found out the hard way that I really wasn’t. Maybe my madness shows in my eyes, and people are too confused or too scared to point it out to me. It doesn’t take a lot of insight or observation nowadays to note the streaks of madness in people. I mean, just look around you. Isn’t it a bit insane to, for example, sit and watch a movie. Just take it literally; you’re sitting for a continuous 3 or 4 hours doing positively nothing but looking at people whom you probably will never meet, following a story which doesn’t concern you and weakening your eyesight and getting fatter and lazier into the bargain. And they wonder why I’m not a movie buff! What about songs? What are they? I’m not talking about only pop and rock songs, which are the most popular and the ones which make the least sense, but also about classical music. What do all these words signify? I don’t think anyone can ever take any lyrics seriously, no matter how meaningful they might be. Songs are nothing but a handful of words chanted repeatedly, thrown in with some twanging of a guitar, some banging of the drums; anything that sounds good with them. And we all listen to songs not only once, but thousands of times…what is that if it’s not madness? And here you have a prime example of my own madness…I love music and will always watch a movie if I get the chance (it’s just because I don’t usually get the chance is why I’m not a movie buff). I’m not just contradicting myself, I just don’t know what I like and do not like…heck, I don’t even know what I want from life! I recently finished this book, which an unknown writer has written. It’s been written only a few years back but goes back a few decades or so. It’s about this man who has lived many, many times and can’t die, even though he tries to kill himself over and over again. He’s been the woman who was Mona Lisa, the mother of Mary, a maker of stained glass, a shepherd and many, many more people. But that’s beside the point. The doctor who’s in charge of him talks to the man’s friend and oddly enough, say exactly the same words that have run in my mind so many times; ‘Is everyone mad, do you think?’ Sybil asked, recovering her poise. ‘One way or another, do you think it could be so?’ Jung gave one of his shrugs and said: ‘there are degrees of madness, of course. I have found some traces of it in my self, I do confess.’ He waved his hand. ‘But madness is a crafty beast and cannot be caught with theories. Over time, I have learned not only to be distrusting of theories, but to actively oppose them…My own madness is quantified by parentheses—just as all madness is. I have learned not only to deal with it, but to live with it. And most importantly…to function in its presence. It is mine—my own and only mine. Here I must say that this character was not made up, nor were his words…while this was not a non-fiction book, it contained many characters that truly existed and this Jung, a psychologist in a mental hospital, is one of them. And what about those phobias that some people have? Afraid of the dark? Why, it can’t touch you, it doesn’t even have a substantial shape. Or is fear of the dark a fear of the unknown that might pounce on you? Why do people have this theory that the unknown will attack you only in the dark? Why doesn’t it attack when you’re sleeping, or when your eyes are shut? Or why not in broad daylight, for that matter? If it’s the unknown, who can stop it? And all those debates on cloning babies and stuff…why is that? Why can’t they get it into thewir heads that there’s too much population already. The western worlds is all about family planning and are outraged at the idea of people having ten or more kids…doesn’t this cloning also contribute to overpopulation? And what about all those illegitimate kids born every day to teens who are just too stupid to know better than to hop into bed without even taking precautions, let alone the fact that it’s fornication is forbidden in most religions and countries? Why the hell do these westerns claim that they need a kid of their own and so look to cloning for a solution when they’re going to throw him or her out as soon as they turn 18 or so? There are several issues on which I can prove again and again that there’s a serious madness in everyone, but my fingers won’t allow me too…strangely, they never get this tired when I’m chatting. Yes, it’s all human nature, but human nature is itself the essence of insanity…and that’s the quintessence of my lovely theory. You don’t need to take my word for it, you really shouldn't anyway…as I’m more mad than any lunatic you would find, I really can’t be trusted when it comes to my hypotheses.

Birthday Surprise!!!

First of all, I’d give the basis for my not posting on my birthday. The reason is simple; I didn’t have a very good one. I was depressed because one of my friends blundered and told me that the entire group was going to have a surprise party for me, and now there were no plans at all. It was the second day of Eid, my elder sister and cousin had their SAT exam on that very day so when I woke up on the 22nd of January, the whole house was empty except for my nine-year old sister still fast asleep. And my mother…she is so unfair!!! She locked the room in which the computer’s kept so I couldn’t start typing even my feelings on my birthday. So when my parents and my sis finally came home at 1 pm, they brought some balloons and tied them to my chair…then had their lunch and promptly fell asleep. And were they exhausted…they didn’t get up until it was seven! Lazybones, all of them. I just moped around the house waiting for calls. In that time I received exactly three calls….but they were more than satisfactory. I don’t care what people say, I just love the way friends are so sweet on occasions like this. Anyways, Eesha (my little sis) finally badgered me into playing badminton, which we had to play in the house as it was pouring outside. I was sooooo grumpy by that time because it was supposed to be my sweet sixteen!!!! And my whole family just kept on sleeping away…. and Eesha was bent on cheating every moment. So finally I blew up at her and she blew up at me and we sat around separately until she apologized about 3 hours later. Well, everyone finally managed to get up and go to get the cake…and while we were out, Em called, and I wasn’t there! Now that was depressing when I found out, because on a birthday, every call counts. And then? My khala came with my cousins, they ate he cake, we played a board game and they went away again. Yes, I felt a real loser that day…. But I don’t care anymore!!!! Because my sweet, sweet (yes chij, you too, whether you like it or not!), lovely, darling friends really DO care about me, in spite of all my doubts!!! So…this was yesterday, the 25th of January, three days after my birthday, when I was just getting into a bad mood because I was complaining about my life to my mom and she didn’t have time to listen…so I ate about two spoonfuls of chawwals (which I choked on), and was just about to do SOMETHING (it completely slipped my mind what I was about to do), when my mom called me from the drawing room. She’d been calling as soon as I got home from school, for some task or the other, so I assumed she had yet another errand for me to do. But what I did notice was that she sounded really happy…maybe she wanted a cup of tea. So I walked into the room….and got a huge handful of flowers and ice thrown on my face! Through the petals I saw chij’s camera flashing and niqabified and three of my other friends all ready for more petal attacks! My first impulse was to cry, which I did do for about two minutes, but then I just couldn’t do anything but grin my head off. Well, the surprise-givers were more ravenous than anything else, which wasn’t surprising at all, considering that they had nothing to eat since morning and had been roaming around Lahore, trying to get into locked shops to buy confetti, getting the cake and the balloons, which had all burst but one by the time they got into my drawing room. So after niqabified had burst the last balloon by trying to write ‘Happy Birthday’ on it in her famous bubble writing, the food finally arrived, from my lovely mother and sister, who were also one of the many people who knew about it…I think even our mechanics’ teacher knew about it, as he didn’t show up that day for the first time in his whole life, allowing everyone to get away from school early. Then came the stories of three other friends who couldn’t make it, which included Em(really missed you yaar!), and then the various stories after which they all swore that this was not only the first, but the LAST surprise party they’d ever throw…and then they told me all the hints they had placed at my very feet, words slipped from their mouths, strange behavior, and misplace giggles, really stupid excuses…..but I’ll maintain to this day that I never expected this to happen!! It turned out I’d even seen the video camera they were planning to take, but it was in the hands of some uniform wali girl, whom they had begged to hide the camera from me. However, I was a dumb as a dodo and didn’t give it a second thought. And after all that fuss, chij left the camera in her locker, so no vdo was made after all! As the story turned out, another friend S said that she was going to drop the two legendary cousins because they didn’t want to wait for the bus (I should have suspected something there, as S lives quite near to school, and these two live really far away…but I didn’t…so sporting of me to be so stupid that day wasn’t it?). After buying the necessary stuff, the bouquet, etc, they all went to another friend’s N’s house, which was just a few minutes’ away from mine…THEN they called my mom (I think it was at that time) and told her to let them in when they come…. and…THEN I got the best shock of my life. This is the height of brevity, but the actual mishaps, the confusion, and everything else is really too lengthy to put it here. So the presents, the cards, the pleading by chij and niqabi not to open their cards and presents (I’ve never seen two more shy characters in my life) And then…I can’t describe the fun we had! I’m really, really sorry, but if I attempt to post all we did, all I felt, my fingers would be history and you all would punch my brains out ‘cuz I just can’t do justice to that day! All I can say is that my friends are just the best…I admit I didn’t cry then but I did cry when you all were gone…and to think you all planned this since before Eid! And such exquisite acting! I JUST ADORE YOU GUYSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!! *mmmuah* (I think you all have had enough of hugs :D) I can write a whole lot more, such as what everyone wrote on the cards, about how either they felt an ‘old soul’ writing a 16th birthday card to me when they themselves were 17.5(this is, again, our very own chij) or else lamenting on about how I seemed get older every year…but I’m just eager to post this now, before I get another fir of shyness and put it away in my computer forever…so MANY MANY MANY MANY MANY MANY MANY MANY MANY THANKS TO ALL OF YOU!!! AND AGAIN….I LOVE UUUUUUU!!!!!!!!!!

Unfinished for eternity

I have absolutely no originality in me. There’s this ajeeb poem that I’ve been working on for days…and all at once, it just stopped and refused to go on. A poem’s never complete, but it always has SOME degree of finality about it towards the end of the lines, doesn’t it? I hate it when this happens…. because in the case of poems like these, I tend to forget them and when I look at them after a year or so…they just disgust me!!! And furthermore, I have absolutely no idea what I’m talking about here….of course this is a love poem…but who am I in love with anyway? I don’t have time to even develop the smallest crush on anyone…so where did this come from? Anyway, just read it and spit on it if you don’t like it. I think you see it in my eyes, That you perceive the light Shining from the gaping darkness; Just a reflection of your smile. Might be that you have also heard In my silence, the softly cursing words Condemning my childlike heart and soul For their foolish gamble--to love once more Or do you hear the cries in the laughter? Within the gentleness, the pain? And the whispered declarations, In every word that I don’t say? Did the nightingale sing of it last night? Having heard it from the moon? Which must be weary of my cries, I’m sure For I wail your name to it alone Did the impish wind put it in your ear? Playing with your hair, in its immoral guise, Did it tell the truth, of my grief so pure? Having known it from my ceaseless sighs? Or was it me that came at last and told you in your dreams? Or was it the ocean? The tears I dropped; did it splash those tears on thee? ha ha...wishful think there, subconscious! if i liked anyone that way, they'll never get a hint of it...can't stop laughing at my own dreams...

Amma

Today was the first death anniversary of my great-grandmother; who died last year almost to the hour. She was in her late eighties, and towards the end I guess it was a relief to her to finally go. Every time I went to Karachi, she would always be there, in that little single bed in the corner of the large room she had. The room was by no means cut off from the rest of the house; there were both my mamoo’s families living in the same building, and that room was the center. There were no ancient childhood stories told to a circle of grandchildren; she didn’t have the strength for that in my lifetime. That is what my grandmother is for. She was my mother’s mother’s mother, but as it is with old people, we children didn’t regard her much when we were kids until our early teens. But now, I guess there are no regrets. On our last visit to Karachi while she was still alive, she called us all to her and showed us her old photographs of her life in India before the partition. She didn’t tell us any stories, just narrated events: seeing the Quaid give speeches, seeing the political parties’ rallies and what happened when she and her family finally ran away from Delhi, their hometown for centuries, into Karachi: ‘I was already married with three children, the only ones I’ll ever have. Our house in Delhi…ghar kya tha, it was a palace…the grounds, the large, spacious rooms, the decorations! All are ruined now…they destroyed all the houses in their fights. All we had when we fled was a bag of gold coins worth about a million Pakistani rupees in that time. And that was a lot…. a whole lot, I can tell you. it was more than we needed, and a lot more than other people had. And most importantly, there were no regrets.’ That was all she said, and it wasn’t much; after that, I guess I was fascinated and went to her every day. I got no more events, but a lot of satisfaction. The last time I saw her alive, (and this is not the last time I saw her breathing, but when it was actually the last time, she wasn’t there—she was just in too much pain and had forgotten almost everything, including me and her daughters) she put her frail arms around me, wished me a safe journey, and said that there was treasure in me, real treasure that would do the world more than anyone else. She was just the bravest woman I had ever met…so many scary things had happened to her and yet she bore it wonderfully, until she forgot in the end. These are a series of events that Amma (my great-grandmother) went through. The magic was put on her by my great-grandfather’s first wife, whom he had divorced after finding out that she dabbled in witchcraft. My great-grandfather died when his children from his second marriage were very young, but my Amma lived on for a whole lot of years. What exactly the witch wanted, we never knew, but she sure did torture the poor old lady. Strange things happened, with no explanation. When she’d get up from her bed after sleeping or taking a nap, sometimes her back would be wounded, dripping with blood-- I once heard my grandmother telling my mother that it was as bad as if she’d had a car accident. Other times when she rose from her bed, there would be tiny cones of paper, no bigger than half a finger, under the bed and under the pillow, too. These would be filled with a special kind of red sand. This sand is apparently used to stuff voodoo dolls. My family is Muslim, and in our prayers, we have a series of actions that consist of standing, bending, kneeling and bowing, all while praising Allah the Almighty. Once Amma was saying her prayers like this when suddenly, while she was bending and reciting the short prayer that goes with the bending position, a small egg, smaller than a chicken’s, and coloured bright yellow fell on her shoulder out of nowhere and landed on the prayer mat. I was born at this time but was never told what happened next. She was praying indoors and no one was in the room with her. Coupled with these events, Amma suffered constant pain in her heart, her head and her back. The doctor couldn’t find any diagnosis. The pain was not enough to kill, just enough to torture her constantly. We Muslims know that black magic is real, because there is a prayer In the Holy Book, the Quran which guards against it. Amma never went to any fortunetellers, or anyone who claimed to have a method to cure this, but kept her faith in Allah and kept on reading only this prayer. How did this happen? Perhaps the so called logic-minded of you would try to discern how these cones of paper and that egg came to be. It was just pure simple black magic and there are such things. One last event finally closed the chapter of Amma’s sufferings. Well, it was pretty unexpected, and quite sudden. The garden of the house that Amma lived in with my grandmother had a tree right in the center and it was al ways in the way. So, one day the gardener was given orders to chop it down. No the axe did not go berserk, nor did the tree turn into any kind of a Whomping Willow. When the tree was cut, a little hollow was revealed, in which there were, not one, but two voodoo dolls of Amma. Red sand and all. On the back, chest and head of both the dolls were driven huge pins. They did not go all the way in but were at exactly those places where Amma felt the pain. Well, they were taken out, and the pain was gone. Where the dolls were taken or how they were disposed of I do not know. The witch also died some time later and the other frightening things stopped happening. All Amma wanted on the last day was some ice cream, of which she could only manage one spoonful. But her death was painless, as far as anyone could see. My mother went to Karachi that night, but I couldn’t; I had school. I know death anniversaries and birthdays have no place or relevance in Islam, but I guess that’s all I wanted to post today…I don’t want any place where I post my writings to be without some remembrance of her, and my blog’s no exception.

ME????

I was the most wretched person last night-in a pitiful attempt to alleviate my sagging spirits(compliments of the back-to-school syndrome) I went thorough a whole block of chocolate in bed right before going to sleep. But now…I wonder if I’m going to get any sleep at all!! This is not happening to me….this CAN’T be happening to me… I mean, I’m just a nobody, I was never considered ‘cool’ by ANYONE, I’m just this lost little kid w/ a reputation for being a bookworm even though I’m more into writing than redaing, I was duped by many, many friends which culminated in my being this insecure, shy personality…. And I was never exceptional in studies…. I flunked in one of my literature exams these midterms… So how come I world topped in English literature in o levels???? What can I say now? How can I answer all these questions that people are bombarding me eith now regarding my study strategy? How can I thank Allah for His blessing that surpasses all other? How can I ever get over this? How am I keeping from fainting? How am I supposed to give ALL these ppl a TREAT?????? What a day….i guess there’s nothing to do but write down the minutest details… Well, by sheer coincidence, we were supposed to have an extra English literature class (Alevels ki) today until 2 pm…but our oh-so-efficient teacher was showing no signs of stooping to even consider coming on time. After sitting around, I finally went w/ my friend, sarosh, to ask the A levels coordinator whether she was gonna come or had a nervous breakdown over her children…I might also add I was not in a very good mood…but that’s not important. So she was talking on the phone and seemed in a terrific mood (which only served to get me even more irritated, as I can’t stand that woman). After saying a long and loug goodbye she put the receiver down, grinned at me and rubbed her hands together, making me think that I must have done something really terrible, cuz she’s never this happy except when it’s report time. Well Aamna, have you heard the good news?’ I replied ‘nahin ji’ (throughout this dialogue, she was talking in pure English and I resolutely stuck to Urdu. After all, what good is a mother tongue if you can’t fall back on it in times like this?) And then…the world blew up. ‘You are world top in o levels English literature.’ AND just check out what I said: ‘KIYAAAAA??????’ And there was nothing g else! That was it! She shoed me this paper on which all the names of o levels candidates who’d received the best marks in a certain subject in the world…. and I was too confused to look at it. I turned to Sarosh and asked her quickly what I was supposed to do. After having gathered enough wits about me to looks at the paper, I couldn’t find my name in it. I was just abt to yell at her for deceiving me like this when I saw my name, the only one circled in bright red….i think I need another eye checkup. Wellllll…what happened after that was…. heaven? No, it was more like the most unreal dream I’d ever dreamt. I hugged Sarosh, both of us in utter shock…and then I somehow floated out of the office completely ignoring the o levels coordinator. In the corridor, two of my friends were waiting for me, giving me the weirdest looks I’ve ever seen. Later one of them told me that she thought that the reason I was looking so happy and hugging Sarosh was that the teacher wasn’t planning to come that day. When I got to them, I said only two words ‘World top’…I didn’t think I could manage any more just then. After all those hugs and congratulations and disbelieving looks…well, what now? Ah yes, the coordinator also said that I’ll have to attend an awards ceremony somewhere…. that’s the only thing I’m NOT looking forward to…I hate ceremonies and I’ll be sure to make a complete fool of myself…like falling down the stairs or something. But what the hell!!!! THANK YOU ALLAH!!!!!

Would it kill????

When I smile, at them, they don’t smile back. Sometimes they even smirk. That’s why I hate to smile. I’m laughing a lot these days, and I hate it. My laughter appears so…fake, more artificial than any make-up can be. And my smile, that smile which they hate so much, seems like an uncomfortable mask on my mouth. They’ve made it so hard for me that I can’t laugh naturally. Can’t laugh…can’t love…can’t see. At times I can just feel the darkness gathering inside my eyes. I’m said to be hypersensitive. Easily hurt, thin-skinned, touchy, you name it. All I can say to that is: what do you do with a person who is known to be suicidical? Do you taunt and mock them and put them through all kinds of tests to see whether they would or not commit suicide because of something you said? Or do you take extra care; remove all implements of harm from them? What do the psychiatrists do? Don’t they try to make life seem a little worth living to such patients? I don’t ask any of these things. All I want is that they would just stop trying to hurt me every chance they get. It’s amazing that words can be so sharp, to the point of being physically painful. Why should I cut myself when there are all those razor-sharp words slashing at me inside? There so much blood already, what use would it be to draw my pain on my skin? So would it kill them? Would it kill anyone to be nice to me? Or at least pretend to be? Would it kill you to CARE about a human being????

I luv weekends!

The first week back at school was TERRIBLE….I’d rather not talk abt it, it’ll sound very whiny and will get really boring for anyone who reads this. Well,yes, I’m still in the hopes that someone will read this crappy thing. I did go to a few other blogs, but they were of people I ddin’t know and all of them were so old and talked abt stuff I ddin’t understand at all…so what could I do? I’m not patient when it comes to sitting on the net, or rather my mom isn’t. One hour’s all that I can comfortably get, and I already have a forum that I spend most of my time on. But blogs are getting so much attention nowadays…so many newspaper and magazine article shave been published that even my mom’s saying she wants to read blogs! Well, I’ll just have to see if she’s serious or not. And I’ll have to see what becomes of this mess I’ve created on blogspot. Well, one major problem with my family is that they wouldn’t leave me alone. If they’re going out I’ll have to go with them whether I like it or not. WHO do you think would kidnap me? I mean, I’m in the house, folks, no one’s gonna break in when they haven’t done so all those times we’ve left the house completely unattended. And I’ll be completely safe…there are those paid security guards always roaming abt at night to keep the streets safe. That’s unusual here in Pakistan, but the reason is that there’s this politician who lives across the road from my house, and he’ll of course insist on having his street protected at all costs. So is anyone liable to do any harm to me when I[‘m home alone? But no one ever listens to me, and I’m dragged off when there are a thousand poems and articles I have to finish. So Mama, if you ever come across this, please keep in mind that if my book isn’t published by the time I’m 20, it’ll all be yours and papa’s fault. Dragging me abt all night, returning at 12 pm at the earliest…it gets on my nerves so much!!!! Ok chij, here’s some more stuff for you to read…else you’ll never get off my back. I know you won’t anyway, but I don’t feel like posting anything else :)…and DON’T kill me for the bad quality of these verses, my poetry been on a steady decline for some time :( (1) There are a few things that make up my life A few words that can, and cannot Sum it up Some little feelings that are the substance of it The core and the result. There is inadequacy Bu hope in its despair A single gesture, a dismissing hand Just a token symbol Of how low I am Weeping with no reason one could ever find The laughter so mocking, alien yet divine Memories gnawing on my soul Do they take it for a bone? And that pain that’s stinging At the void inside (2) There would be that dark unholy night Above, a sliver of the moon The stars suspended in their silence And there’ll be me And you There would be the breathing sleeping trees Whispering softly with the wind The waves may crash and then draw back But time, sweet seraph Would just stand still The angels may cry or laugh at my love Mistaking you for one of them But what they think I cannot heed For excepting this, I cannot feel