The above picture is from an old calendar page that has been in my cupboard for the last six years.
The picture shows thick mud houses located somewhere in one of the deserts of Pakistan. Even in its two dimensional form, the cruel heat of a Pakistani summer is quite evident.

I have been told that the mud houses shown in the picture are quite effective in protecting against the scorching heat of the sun.
It is a fine picture, no doubt, quite appropriate for the month it represents

However that is not why I hold on to it.
I hold on to it because there is a date on this page that divides my life into two distinct parts.
A “life before” portion and a “life afterwards” one.
The date that divides it is June 11 2003.

It is the date Naveed passed away.

It is said that of all the misfortunes that one could encounter in a life time, the worst and the last one happens to be death itself.
But I tend to disagree.
I think loosing someone you love surpasses that.
How can death itself be bad?
You can only categorize something as good or bad if you think about how it has affected you. Though admittedly, death does have a far more drastic effect than any other calamity that could befall one during life, but then again, one is hardly able to compare it with anything or think about it in any way afterwards since all thought process stops with death; at least I think it does, though I can’t be sure. I have never been dead you see.

We all have our different ways of looking at death, of trying to understand something we have not been given the power to understand. Trying to figure out what it means.

And we all come up with different meanings. We all form our own beliefs about a phenomenon which is beyond our comprehension. And it is these beliefs of ours that then act like little mud huts insulating and protecting us from the intensity of tragedy that threatens to destroy our sanity.

It was about a year after Naveed’s death that I came across something which I have taken to believe is the meaning of death.

I came across it quite accidentally in news paper along side the picture of the absurdly handsome young man. Laughing and full of life when the picture was taken, deceased and gone forever by the time it was published. Infect the picture was published because he was dead. It was part of the obituary of a youth who had died before reaching his 23rd birthday.

I copied the words from his obituary (added there by grieving parents as a tribute to the memory of their lost son) and posted them to all my acquaintances on Naveed’s first Barsi. At that time I did not know that those words were actually a poem by Henry Van Dyke.
Though six years have passed since I first read them, the significance and poignancy of the words still remains strong.

So here they are one more time.

A Parable of Immortality
By Henry Van Dyke

I am standing by the sea shore.
A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean.
She is an object of beauty and strength, and I stand and watch until at last she hangs like a peck of white cloud just where the sun and sky come down to mingle with each other.
Then someone at my side says:
‘There she goes!’
Gone where?
Gone from my sight –that is all
She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side and just as able to bear her load of living freight to the places of destination.
Her diminished size is in me not in her.
And just at the moment when someone at my side says:
‘There she goes!’
There are other eyes watching her coming and other voices ready to take up the glad shout:
Here she comes‘!’


And that is death
It has to be
Because death in any other form is un-survivable

Loosing Track of Time

Now that the morning ritual of getting kids ready for school is over, I have completely lost track of the days.

For the past one year, Tuesday and Thursday were sports kit days at school. Monday and Wednesday, regular uniform days, Friday was half day and Saturday and Sunday were the days I could enjoy the luxury of extending my hand toward the bedside table to shut off the six o clock morning alarm and resuming my much deserved beauty sleep. Now with the commencement of summer holidays all those indicators of “which day of the week it is” are suddenly gone, leaving my biological clock in complete disarray.

Up till yesterday I was still on Sunday while the world around me had moved on to Tuesday.

My father says prisoner kept in isolation under go similar disorientation. They scratch marks on the wall to keep record of days gone by and even that is only possible if their cells allow any glimpse of the rising and setting sun.
(Only an ex-military guy like my father could have come up with an example like that.)

So what does that signify; that my mental alertness is even lower than those poor unfortunate souls in solitary confinement?

Unlike those prisoners, I not only have full view of rising and setting sun, (also the midday sun, if I care to look at it, which I don’t. It is hot enough as it is without staring into that burning orb of fire overhead) I also have clocks and calendars fixed on walls in more than one room of the house.

I guess its time to wind up the old timepieces and start referring to them for accurate indication of time and date if I want to remain in the same time zone as the rest of my surroundings for the next three months.

What does the future have in store for us?

Somebody asked me recently if I believed in astrology and palmistry. I suppose the intention was to know if I believed that our future (or parts of it) could be predicted.

Here is what I said to him.

"I am a Capricorn by the way and I do believe in stars. But only the good parts about them. Like I believe I have all the positive qualities of Capricorns but completely ignore the negative ones. I have found it to be a very useful habit. ;-)
As for palmistry, yes I have come across some good palmist during student life even a clairvoyant, so I know that God has given us hints of what is in store for us but I prefer to leave the knowledge of the unknown to Him. Why would I want to know about my future? That would take all the away all the fun and anticipation from life. Remember it is the element of surprise that keeps us going. Can you image what would happen to the human race if they came to know the entire world was about to come to an end the very next day. I think keeping the future unkown to us is one of God’s greatest gifts to mankind. It gives us hope and keeps us praying.
There is another thing I have noticed over the years and that is that the lines on our hands keep changing. Maybe not the major ones, but the minor ones defiantly do. And that is because of the choices that we make in our lives.
I prefer to be believed that it is up to us to decide what we are to do with our lives. I believe God knows what choice we are going to make but does not interfere.
Were it not for our own choice then we could not be held accountable for our actions on the Day of Judgment.
I have read somewhere that the time of birth and the time of death of each individual is pre decided. What happens in between is up to us.
And yes sometimes we are hit by catastrophes and disasters that we did not expect nor had the power to avoide in any way. That is Taqdeer or Qismat. How we react to them is not.
Any way that is what I prefer to believe about life.
You don’t have to agree with it if you don’t want to. Lots of people wouldn’t.
So keep making the right choices and be happy.
And remember being happy is more important than being successful.
May God bless you."

Recovery of a Stolen Mobile Phone

I have not been very lucky with my cell phones. Admittedly my first Siemens one lasted years. It was a typical die hard one that was much abused by my youngest daughter. It survived being thrown in the air by a toddler several times a day from where it would crash land on the floor, split into three separate parts (the front ,the back and the battery pack) which would fly off in three different directions. But press the three of them back together and it would start working again, that is until the day I placed it on the breakfast table beside my plate and accidentally spilled a full glass of water on it.

That was the end of that faithful companion.

The next one was a Motorola razor (which looked better than it performed). I did not even need to place it on the breakfast table. My youngest who was about three at the time took it to the bathroom , rubbed a generous amount of soap on it, rinsed it under the tap then brought it back to me all wet and dripping. What ever functionality was left in it was taken care of by the Motorola repair people who completely killed it while trying to fix it.

Third was a basic Nokia one. No frills, no special features, just a plain simple mobile phone. It was useful, economical and reliable just like a cell phone should be. Alas, I left it in the back seat of my car one day and when I came back the back window was smashed and the mobile was gone. Ironically that broken window cost us more to replace than what that stolen mobile would probably have fetched in the market.

The latest that happened in a series of unfortunate events involving my cell phones is that my newest one also disappeared.

It was a Sony Ericsson Z610i.

Not only was it expensive but I had also grown considerably attached to it.

Well now that it was gone there was nothing that I could do about it except lament.

But was it really gone?

The day following the theft, as I was coming down for breakfast early in the morning I thought I heard the six o clock morning alarm sound on my cell phone. Not believing what I had heard, I called other family members to the spot. (The mobile had been promptly turned off once it had been picked but the morning alarm had not been deactivated)

What followed was hilarious. Every body standing completely motion less waiting for the alarm to ring and every time it did a pandemonium would erupt as every one tried to figure out where the sound was coming from. We finally tracked it down to a vent in the garage roof where it was neatly wrapped up in plastic bag all ready to be collected at a later, more convenient time.

The hiding place delivered a lot more than just the missing mobile. We did have some workmen in the house repairing stuff on the day the mobile was stolen but since only a few pew people knew that vent in the roof was removable plus the fact that it disappeared from inside the house and was discovered within its premises, narrows down the list of suspects considerably. Infect I am pretty sure I know who the culprit is. But since we did not catch the thief red handed I prefer to keep my mouth shut and my eyes wide open in future.

For now I am just happy that I have got my cell phone back.

I love you Z610i and I love the sound of your alarm ;-)

Nature’s Wonderful Spectacle

Yesterday it rained while the sun was shinning.

It looked fantastic.

Just plain fantastic.

Sure music heals but sometimes ....it hurts too

Now we all know about protest group and the things they do to get attention. Don’t get me wrong, I have all the respect for them (well for some of them any way) but I heard of the doings of one that induced laughter more than admiration.
It so happened that while vacationing in England last summer we decided to take a guided tour to see the changing of the guard’s ceremony.

The royal guards traditionally start their daily parade from St James palace and end it at Buckingham palace.

As we waited for the guards to come out, our tour guide proceeded to tell us a about a protest group demonstration that had taken place in front of St. James palace a while ago (unfortunately I neither recall the name of the group nor what they were protesting about). One of the members of the group decided he would be better heard (or seen) if he could lodge his protest from inside St. James palace. As the band that precedes the guards was playing in front of the palace, this guy made a dash to enter the building. He somehow got past the mounted security officials (as well as the unmounted ones) and started dodging between the band players to get inside the building. Now we all know that the guards along with band members are an extremely disciplined lot.
No matter what, these guys don’t leave their positions what ever the temptation may be.
Apparently that protesting guy thought so too.
Poor guy thought he had made it to the palace as he ran zig zag between the band members playing on their respective instruments. Alas, just as he passed the guy with the cymbals, the musician suddenly widened his arc and hit the guy “bang” on his head with the cymbal.

That was the end of the protestor’s efforts as he fell to the ground unconscious.
Whereas the band and the guards, true to their creed, undaunted and unmoved by what had taken place, delicately stepped over him and continued with their parade to Buckingham palace.

The police came and arrested the protestor afterwards.
So moral of the story according to our tour guide was:

Stay away from the guy with the cymbals.

The fogs of Lahore

I vowed to myself that I would not regret my decision to move from Karachi to Lahore.
I never did.

But that did not mean that I wouldn’t miss Karachi. Karachi after all is a bustling cosmopolitan city. Compared to it, Lahore has a somewhat sedentary attitude. It is true that Karachi has a lot to offer, a lot more than Lahore.

But then Lahore is not without its surprises.

Ok so may be Lahore has not got awesome shopping malls ( yet ) like Karachi but there is the Shahi Qila , Shalamar gardens and several hundred years of history.
Since we moved here two years ago there have been several surprise offerings from Lahore in addition to fascinating historic locations.

One of these surprises is the fog of Lahore. Being a Karachite for more than 15 years, fog was something I had never seen before in my life. And we (the family and myself) just didn’t get to see it, we almost got lost in it, not once but twice.
Thankfully we managed to make it home safely both times but I will never forget the experience.

Since then I have seen all kinds of fogs.

Mist that stays close to the ground and slowly creeps forward (like it does in one of those C grade horror movies’ cemetery scenes. The only thing missing were the ghouls that walk on top of it).
Then there is the haze that completely envelops every thing, reducing visibility to zero. It is the zero visibility that is most inconvenient; you can not see anything beyond two feet.

Amazing, that is how I would describe it, not at all frightening, eerie perhaps but never scary.
Now the fog season is gone.

Summer is on its way but I have some photos to remind me what it was like.
And how it will be again next year.