Surprising isnt it? im probably one of the few islooites that you'll find commiting such blasphemy - but i cant help it!
When i come to Karachi I change. Im not the boring plan ditcher anymore. my uptight nature somehow disintegrates and a certain life fills a certain void that is usually left. Im more at ease, less stressed, and more lively - my alter ego per say. Heck Ive even started blogging again.
I love the hustle and bustle of this city. I love the lights, the attitude and the general liveliness in general. I love the people (ofcourse i have my certain favourites) the places, the sites and sounds...everything. But what I love most is the endearing quality of this city. This moshpit of cultures has this awesome tendency to rebound from even the most trying of times and come out on top.
Sure i know i will probably never settle here...but this city has played a huge part in making me the person i am today...and ill never forget that!
Karachi - I heart you!
Sent from my Nokia phone
Aah, ramadan kareem, one of my favourite months of the year. A time to share, a time to meditate, a time to think about what went wrong and how to correct, to pause and ponder and plan.
Apart from the food bit another thing that ramadan kareem brings to light is the tradition of taraweeh - the daily prayers in which muslims tend to finish the Holy Quran. Being the overzealous muslim that I am, i love going for taraweeh. While there yesterday i noticed something that I have noticed ever since ive been saying my prayers in jamaat and its always bugged me.
If ever ure late, you have to continue the remaining rakat after the congrgational prayer is finished. Weve all been in that position sometime or another...but have u ever noticed how the people who finish on time with the congregation tend to look back at you? Its like their judging you for being late. The expressions tend to osscilate between 'woohoo, i beat you'..OR..'lookime - mein first aagaya'...till the more extreme 'you shall fry on a stick on the day of judgement.
And thats something i really dont appreciate. Namaz is not supposed to be a leverage for mass judgement, especially not in a jamaat and not in a masjid. I personally have never looked around when i finish my namaz, because i really dont care who came in later or before me. This is my space and my conversation with The Almighty, why should i spoil it by letting my mind wander?
The dilemma however remains, am i right about all these expressions or is it my over active and extreme-guilt-ridden-for-being-late mind doing all the crazy talk?
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Posted by
Ahmed Mustafa
5:05 AM
Hmm...i know what you are thinking...frisky little thing isnt he...either he wont write, and when he does, his verbal diarrea knows no bounds...
But im standing at the airport(actually now im sitting in the plane flying somewhere over Sind) and i cant stop thinking about all that our airports signal in the social cycle that we tend to call our lives.
If a metroploitan is supposed to be a melting pot of cultures than an airport of the sites and sounds of a country - especially the passenger exit. You tend to see all sorts of emotions pouring out when the door of the arrival lounge flies open.
Think of this( and then you will realize why i tend to call them emotions rather than humans):
A businessperson walking out tired and stonefaced either met by his personal driver or his cabby, depending on whatever his destination is - the emotion will either be familiarity and relief or formality and a certain resignation that this new city will only bring another empty and boring hotelroom.
A family that has come to a funeral walking out of the arrivals section will try to hold a straightface until they see the affected and will start wailing with open abandon. Alternately the family make come for a happy ocasion either back home from a vacation or coming for a vacation and their expressions will tell you so. The kids will immediately go bonkers as soon as they see sunlight or a familar face, whichever comes first. The parents will as a function of their kids' behaviour will either be extremely embarrased at the reaction or extremely worried about their mental condition.
The list of emotions just goes on and on and on....and i guess thats what makes airports so fun for me. Except for the morning 7am flight ofcourse...that is just criminal!
Posted by
Ahmed Mustafa
5:05 AM
Dont judge me. Not just yet. Not before u have hear everything i need to say.
Im sorry ive been away (not that too many people have noticed). Ive been busy and ive been ignoring my blogging duties. It not that I havent had anything to say, because everyday tends to bring out something that is worth writing about. Ive just been wrapped in so many things all at once that i never found time to blog.
Which brings me to my topic. I am a junkie...and im proud of it. People tend to call me a workaholic, and tend to question the fact that i sit late in office. Its unfortunate for my boss because God bless his soul, because people tend to think that hes a slavedriver that wants me to work late. That,fortunately (for me) or unfortunately(for him) is not true. My boss is one of the nicest guys i know (no i am not sucking up to him) and hes always asked me why i sit so late...and i always have the same answer because i like it.
Its not that im always working. Or maybe i am(although im pretty sure the net takes up more than half of that time). However my late sittings are just mostly dedicated to additional reading, learning new things, new trends, new researches..basically almost anything and everything there is to learn about the field.
I have no clue why i started this post and so since im about to boomerang on a tangent ill just stop here for the moment.
Aloha!
Sent from my Nokia phone
for those of you non existent people who wait with baited breath for my next blog post...im sorry i havent written for a while because id rather not write until i really have something important to say. And as for the rest of you...well heres another piece of my personality for you to decipher.
ive met up with some old friends recently and they asked me whether or not i was still into the whole hullabaloo of drinking and what not. Lets set the record straight first...i was never 'into' it...i tried it to understand what everyone was always harping on about...and then i left it because i realized...it wasnt me.
Let me explain it again...some people arent interested in religion...its not for them...and in the same way...im not interested in the decadent gora lifestyle anymore...because that just isnt me. with time ive come to realize that we were made for something more...the ummat e muslima had a higher purpose...something way more important than getting high on alchohol on drugs or alchohol. i swear to you and i recommend that you try it too...there have been times that Allah has given me a high that nothing else will ever be able to give me.
Thus i request the following from all those who come across this post. I will not join you in ure next hotbox or ure getting hammered escapade. But i will still always be there if you need me if u need to be driven home or cannot walk straight after such an episode :p
Do not invite me to a party because i swear i will not feel left out infact i will love you for the fact that u enjoyed ure evening with the loud chatter of ngo type aunties who have nothing better to do than to live off of foriegn donor loans - and at the same time understood that i do not like being at such events.
Do not call me to a gathering of the rich and elite intellectual uncles who keep talking of change and history, yet would not dare leave their extravagant abode in fear that they be seen with a lowly beggar knocking at the window and may accidently be mistaken and outcast for talking to the 'common man'.
I am not a gora sahab and i do not like being associated with people with mistaken identities.i do not want to act like one, dance like one, talk like one, or have a drink like one.
I am one of Gods better creations and i have better things to do with my life.
let me tell you a little story about my country. We are democratic people, or so we like to think. We also like to think we are an islamic republic - thus the name 'islamic republic of pakistan'.
The problem is we are confused. The people that fight for democracy, the PPP, the PML, the MMA, the PTI and the MQM are completely undemocratic in their own party functioning. They have the same party leaders for the past 20 years unless their leaders have been assasinated by their husbands (PPP) and dont believe in leaving their 'kursis'. We like the idea of democracy, however thats where it stops...
Its unfortunately something my country love to fantasize, but when it comes to walking the talk...nothing happens.
Let me tell you about the new democratic scheme of things nowadays. Our Minister, Mr. Khosa tried to get his brother in law to head the ICTRD FUND which has about 20 billion rupees in its kitty. When the board refused to shortlist the candidate on the basis of a fake degree, 6 borad members were fired. The board members include some of the leading professionals of pakistan which include the country manager of cisco, ex chairman of engro, and the head of multinet pakistan.
Our respected ministers next move was to try to fit his brother in law in the USF fund, which is again lead by one of pakistans most respected telecom professionals, Mr. Parvez Iftikhar, a man that has made the USF a beacon of learning for the rest of world on how to use funds to increase telecom penetration in low growth and emancipated areas.
Democracy has also brought destruction and corruption to our countrys financial sector. The head of NIIT, Mr. Tariq Iqbal Khan another very respected individual within financial circles, who turned around the company to make it the largest mutual funds company in the country was recently removed to make way for another corrupt crony supported by Mr. Democratically elected my foot ten percent zardari.
Our democratically elected government is going back on all the promises that they made and are redoing everything that they thought was wrong with the previous government. When the media tried to bring to light the fraud commmited by fake degree parlamentarians they tabled a resolution against the media. They delayed reappointment of the judges. The list of crap being dealt to the common man on the pretext of democracy is endless...
So for a moment in time I was going towards supporting democracy but things dont really seem to be helping our case. Sure we can say that we need to give it time to develop, but i can...but what about the man on the street who cant buy food for his family? If our elections were truly transparent enough, maybe we could have thrown out and called for change but we cant. Also if this government goes, will the sharifs come back and screw our resources further? And then back to PPP and then another round of pingpong?
Can someone please explain why i should love democracy, because i truly want to, but cannot figure out a reason why!!!
Sent from my Nokia phone
This is something I wrote in my last week at college, but forgot to upload...
As horrible as they sounded, the Smashing Pumpkins did eventually make some sense in their song of the same name in the movie Batman and Robin.
Thats how i feel about my time at IBA right now. Its a constant cycle, this thing that we so fondly call life and when one trial is over the next stage of life starts. You graduate, you get a job, get married, have kids, bring them up to be responsible adults and then they repeat the cycle.
The interesting thing though, is the thing that i discovered while thinking on these fatalistic lines today. Life is more than a rat race, and more than the drudgery that ive made it out to be. Sure its a cycle, but thats what disney was talking about in the lion king, when they referred to the circle of life werent they?
But its not all THAT bad...life is what we want it to be and i want mine to be more than something or someone that will easily be forgotten...
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