Ishq

I'm sick of the type of conformity that results in helplessness. It kills original thought. Worse, it seizes you by the nape of your neck and drags you through thorns. Popular culture is a myth, a massive entity spun by the psyche's desire for change. So to hell with the chasm between romeo and juliet, heer and ranjha, sassi and pannoo - the chasm created centuries ago that has long since been morphed into a symbol of popular culture.

The biggest realization that I've been coming to terms with is that love is not ishq and ishq is not love. Ishq is not a blazing fire, a rising thread of mercury, nor a seminal spurt of emotion. For if it were, Ishq would be ephemeral, here one second and gone the next.

No, I think Ishq is slow, Ishq takes its time. Ishq has constancy, like land or baked sands...or maybe a song that never gets old. Ishq is massive. That mass makes it slow to start, but once it is moving, it is impossible to stop.

Love is a turbulent foam, enwrought with anxiety and ecstacy. Love is the ever-swinging pendulum, the screaming ride of extremes. Love is a high, its sorrow an addiction. But Ishq is not like that. Ishq is not like that at all. No sir, Ishq is no quick fix.

You can fall out of love. You cannot fall out of Ishq. It can be created, but not destroyed. And if it is destroyed, I don't think it ever existed to begin with.

And all this makes Ishq very rare. One place to find it would be in the hearts of mothers. But from what I've seen, lovers are usually just that - two people in love.

'Tis what I believe now anyway.

Remembrance

You want logic? I'll give you some - I'll step you through its snares and fend you from the snarling beasts of irrationality. Just lend me an ear.

Anxiety, depression, feeling gloomy, feeling old, feeling hollow - we've all been there, done that. In fact, it's been done to death. Sadness is one of the easiest states of mind to slip into and carries its own special kind of solace - an escape of sorts. Like a hug from somebody long estranged. In the end, mood is governed by state of mind. Similarly, how the world is perceived is also governed by state of mind. A joke you find har-de-har-har hilarious when you're happy is dismally irritating when you're pissed off.

Take any state of mind, and call it your baseline state. Your baseline state will be where you find yourself the most. A chirpy person will be pretty happy. A pessimist will have a more negative state of mind. I think most people I know have a negative baseline state. Myself included. Yep, I'm there, shoveling shit with the rest of them.

What makes a baseline state a baseline state? Why does the mind keep returning to it? A simply principle called negative feedback. A change in state is negated by the way you think, the way you've trained your thought habits. If you're a pessimist, even if you're happy for a brief amount of time, your paranoia or insistence in seeing things in a negative way is going to get you down again mighty quickly. Back to your baseline state you go, love. Negative feedback, right there.

So now coming to the crux of this post and tying everything together. How can one achieve a peaceful state of mind, where you are one with yourself and everything, where you aren't in a constant struggle with the demon called self...where, simply put, your heart is at peace? To do this, I think you need to know that there is a constant, immutable presence for which no problem of yours is too big or too small. A presence that is always there, no matter where you are. A presence that allows you to unburden your aching shoulders of all your troubles. A presence you can escape into, instead of trying to escape into sorrow, pessimism, love, self or the bottle.

When you were a kid, that presence was likely one of your parents. Things were just peachy then, weren't they? But grown-ups need something more. Maybe because of the realization that parents are, after all, as helpless as their children. As human anyway.

And there is something more, that ultimate force of negative feedback.

An Ayat in the Quran says, Verily in the Remembrance of Allah do hearts find rest.

It says it right there. And verily, every word of the Quran rings true.

I quoted that Ayat almost a year ago on this blog. I was reminded of it by a friend's poem. And I was appalled at how my remembrance keeps failing me over and over.

New Blog In Town

Presenting the blog of Aadil Farook...one of Usman's and my oldest friends.

http://aadilfar.blogspot.com/

Go on, visit his world - methinks you might not want to come back...

The Shanghai Chronicles

I don't have anything Shanghai-specific to write about today. Actually, I just wanna comment on one trait that's been perfected to an art among desis - story-spinning. Chorna, as it's called.

Tonight, I found my Indian chef friend again (from the last post). The first thing he said was, "Akram, what a cricket match last night! Congratulations on Pakistan winning!"

I thanked him, thinking that this guy really followed his cricket. "Afridi really came through for Pakistan, didn't he?"

He laughed and came clean. "Well, to be honest, I didn't actually watch the match. I only know what I read in the headlines this morning."

I laughed back. The truth was that I hadn't seen the match either - I only knew tidbits from a gmail conversation with friends from the morning. Afridi's name had popped up, so I'd decided to throw it out.

So at night, I was telling my mother all this. She started laughing and said, "Afridi kahaan se aa gaya hai? Kamaal kartay ho Hasnain. Younis ne match jitwaya tha!" I laughed back sheepishly, thinking that my chorna skills obviously couldn't face up to somebody who'd actually watched the match.

Well, it turns out she hadn't seen the game either - only overhead a conversation about it at lunch at some restaurant. A conversation at a neighboring table, no less.

This, my friends is classic chorna in action!

Nothin' Like a Good Meal...

I'm in Shanghai for a few days on a business trip. It's an amazing city - the new york of Asia, you could say. But for somebody who's on halal only, it's a pretty tough place to be in from a gourmet perspective.

As an illustration of this, I was discussing my food situation with a co-worker yesterday. He asked, "Can you eat beef or pork?" I shook my head. "Lamb?" Shook my head. "Chicken?" Shook the ol' noodle. "Eggs?" He asked, but he was smiling. I nodded happily, and he started laughing. "It seems your choices are a bit limited!"

So imagine my wonder when I walked into my hotel lobby, and by the entrance of the restaurant, saw what appeared to be an Indian wearing a chef's hat.

Just so I wasn't clear, he was a) Indian and b) wearing a chef's hat.

Well, that was it then. I literally ran up to this guy like a desert-blinded fool chasing an oasis. Felt around his face to make sure he was real. Felt his hat to make sure it really was a chef's hat and not some sick halloween costume. (And all this while he looked on patiently with a Colonel Sanders' smile).

He was real all right. And an awesome guy too. We chatted for a bit, shooting up the ol' desi breeze. He called me Wasim Akram.

And I had amazing Shrimp masala, dal makhani, vegetable curry, naan and rice for dinner.

Needless to say...BOOYA!

Weird Happenings

Last night, I fell asleep with the TV on, watching national geographic. My sleep was intensely deep, the type that's a surreal vat of blackness.

Until about the middle of the night, when I began having this awful nightmare that just went on and on.

I vaguely remember the details now, but do recall it was about a supernatural "presence" in my house. In one scene, one of my best friends in the dream (she was an african american girl, for some reason) was standing with me outside my front door. She told me my house was possessed after I'd been living there for months. I glanced into the window of the house, and actually saw a hazy shape moving in there, gliding slowly between rooms.

Anything that's mildly scary during the day is outrightly terrifying in the darkness of night. When I woke up, I was literally shivering.

...And I immediately discovered the cause of the whole thing.

National geographic was running a special on haunted houses.

As stewie would say...BLAST!