The Unconscious Belief

If I were to tell you my inspiration for this article, you might be a bit surprised. The other day at my office, the people started up a random discussion, which basically went along the lines of, "If you knew that you're going to die in a few hours and that you're going to hell for certain, would you kill everyone you hate?"

Most people said yes. Some people asked how much time they exactly had, as so to decide whether they could kill slowly and painfully or not. Some started wondering what would happen if they met the very person(s) they killed in hell later. But you get the general response.

I had my diplomatic answer of "I'd rather use the time to tell my loved ones that I love them" ready, but as it turns out, nobody really cares about interns.

Anyway, this question led my mind to wander along a trail weaved with reminiscence and deep thought. I remembered certain occasions where some particular friends had proclaimed things like, “Yaar hum to pakkay dozakhi hain”, and, “We're already going to hell anyway, so might as well”. If they are so sure of their state-of-affairs in the afterlife, will they start killing everyone they hate a few hours from their death?

Somehow, I think that even if they had some way of extracting knowledge about the time of their deaths, some certain people I could name but won't would still be safe.

The obvious question at this point is, how come? If a person truly believes that he will go to hell regardless of whatever he does, I'm sure he would cease to care about a lot of things. But while you may come across many people who have a firm belief that hell is indeed the only place for them in the afterlife, they still abstain from utter indifference. The reason being, they don't really believe that will end up in hell. And why? Because,

He is the Most Merciful, and the Most Beneficent.

I personally believe that such apparently hopeless people; or any of us, for that matter; don't truly believe that they will end up in hell, despite of all the sins they may have committed and may continue to do so. It is a fact we just cannot come to terms with, because there is still that small smidgen of hope, based on the infinite mercy of Allah, that we shall be forgiven on the Day of Judgment; that things will somehow work out, and that we can escape the unimaginable horror that awaits the non-believers. Allah is the All Powerful and the All Merciful; in Him we trust.

However, there could be a negative aspect to this too. If this really is the reason and this unrealized-to-most belief really does exist, some people might take this a tad too far, and continue to commit all sorts of wrongs and sins regardless, and simply shrug it off saying, 'Allah maaf karnay wala hai yaar'. I have seen this happen many times and while it's good to have this firm a belief in His mercy, you surely aren't earning yourself any favors by continuing to commit these wrongdoings, whatever they may be. Allah may be prepared to overlook these acts, but why not try giving Him a reason to do so? And what better time for a change of habit(s) than the holy month of Ramazan? 

Of course, this all may be baloney and may not make a lot of sense, if any at all since it is currently 5 in the morning and I wrote this simply because I felt like writing and nothing else came to mind, but as long as it may serve a good purpose, what's the harm?

Shit Got Real.

So basically, I have no idea how to impress the readers of this blog with my first ever legend-wait-for-it-dary post. And therefore, dear amigos I have decided to do what I do best, which is basically four things.
Blab
Sleep
Blab
And blab some more.
Wow. This is as eggmazing as it can get. I doubt anyone can do all the four things as well as I can.
On a serious note, without much further ado, I am not going to blab about some useless shit here. Instead I'm going to give you some tips or life saving advice for the moments when you're forced to think that shit just got real!  There are moments when you find yourself lost, wandering trying hard to make way around the mess and think for the zenith time that why in the hell did I want to grow up. Because apparently you prefer those keechar walay pizzas and not the smart gadgets you have stocked up on. There are moments when you get nostalgic and think about all those moments when you actually didn't know the meaning of shit. Well not to worry because I'm going to save you from such moments.

You know what's really shitty. Summer, heat, sweat trickling down nastily your back and no fan to propel that hot air in your face. Because of loadshedding and no electricity for almost twelve hours, and to put that tasteless cherry on top of the burnt cake, you live in Punjab. Wow. Well to deal with that shit, all you got to do is ask your wife, mother, daughter or sister to make you a cup of tea (because you're a lazy sloth and a male chauvinist) and then go upstairs or out in the verandah and start dancing. It is preferable if you do lungi dance.

There are times when you just can't bear your slippers getting stolen while you're being a good son and praying in mosque on Friday and secretly wish that you were a girl. Well thanks to me your problem is solved. Just don't eat anything for the next two whole days and on the morning of the third day, kaboom, you're a changed man woman. And the best part is you can always change back once you're tired of the male dominated society around you. All you have to do is eat the crunchy wafer-ish chocolate which is basically manufactured to shame real chocolates.

These are enough for now. Go watch football.
And since I can't think of anything good to blab about, I should consider sleeping.
Bye.

A poem for us all

A little poem I wrote for myself and you people, the readers. You know what they say, first post best post. lol. I'll just let the words I wrote do the rest. Here you go.


Why is it that you do what you do?

Why do you conduct research conductive?

Would you still do it if you knew?

Tis to one's self and soul: destructive.

　

Do not douse in the dark,

For black is not a colour.

Black is the colours' absence;

No absence could be more duller.

　

Life is a gift far too precious to be;

Wasted on marijuana and coke.

If you crave, have a cup of tea

But please don't drink or smoke.

　

Hear the rain drops pitter patter,

For them there will be no tommorow,

Don't fall from grace and shatter

Life is not all grief and sorrow



　

Amidst the clouds, see the silver lining,

Alas! All storms come to an end.

Then you will see the sun shining.

It's what's broken that must mend.

A Life Secret Hidden in a Hiking Trip

Well no students will leave a chance to miss out a hiking trip to Monal arranged by University, when they know that there will be no issue of attendance for leaving the most hated lab. I never went on to complete the hiking trip to Monal but I always believed that I’m a sportsman so I had many alternate solutions for that. Indeed it was like sunshine in the dark opportunity, how could I miss it? As most of my classmates commonly thought, I went for the trip. It was the first time I got an opportunity to sit in a University bus. We reached the starting point in no time and it was time to begin our knee crunching journey. Most of us chose the toughest route to reach Monal, trail 3. As our journey began, many of us were enthusiastic and took off aggressively. Moving up faster and sometimes running when finding a slanted plain surface. There were still many students strolling near the start point but as time passed, the distance between me and then started to increase and there were fewer people remaining around me whom I knew. Then I found two of my colleagues Ubaid and a girl name Maheen. They were just behind me and completing their journey like the destination is in their hands. Ignoring the fact that friends could help to complete your journey happily and passing time with them is fun. They were my classmate but we didn’t get enough opportunities to talk or share ideas. It’s always good to know that familiar faces are around you. But then it struck my mind that it represents a disrespectful attitude towards my classmates that I’m not stopping when they are just few feet away from me. With a hint of reluctance, I took a deep breath while stopping and joined them. As we started moving together I came to know that Maheen’s father used to come to hiking and it took him 2.5 hours to complete the full trail and we had just been moving for 45 minutes. I thought to change my mindset and focus that I can still make it in time.  The journey in itself is exploring the natural of beauty of the Margalla Hills and I thoroughly enjoyed the silence, bird squiring, greenery and also the company of people whom first I thought would be a distraction. It all happened because we were determined to reach the destination. It reminded me of the famous quote “safar jitna b lamba ho saathi ache hone chaiye” but it makes true sense when you know your friend is also willing to reach the destination. Time passed quite well and they even stopped by a thorn got pinched in my shoe and they helped me to take that out. We saw few people crossing us so I was expecting that we will be on top in 15 minutes but we were falling behind. It seemed so unlikely when I was moving up. I was moving like a king on a horse not knowing my army had marched forward already. Its human nature to absorb joyful moments but we realize later the difficult tasks that follow.

Like hiking trip to un-measured destination, our approach to our dreams is like same. We know our destination but we don’t know how much time it will take and how much difficult it will be, how many ups and downs there will be, how many times your mind will distract you from reaching to your goal and how many times u will be pinched by thorn (people who will you pull back and discourage you) but you still need to keep on moving. Dreams become reality when you know in your heart and sure of your capabilities and again repeating the quote  “safar jitna b lamba ho saathi ache hone chaiye” make sense because a true friends /family/life partner will help you to achieve your goals when they have faith in you, but if they don’t help you instead pull you back, don’t stop for them , keep advancing and there will be new people arriving in your life and eventually you will get along with them ,they will help you to reach to your destination when you reach there don’t be upset seeing many people already there , because before the begin of journey, nobody expected themselves to be there ,congratulate yourself  for making to the final point because you earned it, than the story of true successful person is written !! Try to think of life with another perspective because every dream deserves to become a reality.

Big The Size , More The Issues!!

Ever since a child, I would tinker with Styrofoam to make model planes. Once the design issues were kinked out, I would try to expand its size. But every time I would expand the size, something or the other would fall apart or malfunction. Back then it confused me as to why a working design would pose a challenge at expansion. Growing up, I noticed these phenomenon’s in many different fields where a perfectly well functioning design or an idea would not work at a different scale, just like my plane design. Let me explain.

Economics: We have been told that Communism does not work. Soviet Union & North Korea bear witness to this fact in history. And we are told that Capitalism works. Many countries adopting free-market policies have prospered (compared to the Communist nations). In a Free-market economy, money is the means of signal for supply and demand. Communist Economies requires Central Planning. What I find interesting is structure of a family. A family runs on communist principles. You do not charge your kids for food. Everyone works according to his ability and need. This model may even work in large families. But as the size of the model expands, communism falls apart. Whereas if Capitalism were applied to a family unit, it would destroy the social fabric and the human element from relationships.

Knowledge:  Pick any major event in history – Roman Empire, WW1, WW2, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The more you read into its details, the opinionated the information gets with conflicting point of views. Plus, when we try to granulize details, we tend to lose sight of the bigger picture. This is very common in the field of Economics. We tend to mix things between correlation and causation, or the arrow of causation. The marginal utility of more details goes from beneficial to harmful. It is important to always keep the larger picture in sight. More information does not mean more wisdom.

Religion: Religion creates a baseline for morality. Practicing an old religion keeps us in touch with our history, regardless we understand it or not. But implementation of religion in its strictest sense twists matters in reality. Let’s take Pakistan for example. My parents tell me that Pakistan was one of the most prosperous nations in the region in the 60s & 70s. It was a very friendly and safe place. I see my parents wedding pictures and I do not see anyone looking too religious. Today, taking a random sample from Pakistan would show more people practicing religion. Yet, the moral sense didn’t improve proportionally. In fact, it’s common that neighbors no longer interact as much as they did 40 years ago. So what went wrong? I feel Law of Proportionality comes in handy explaining that we may have overextended a working principle. Or maybe it’s the ‘Institutionalization of religion’. Who knows! And that’s the thing with Complex social systems – they aren’t linear. In Complex systems causation is noise. Correlations & long term trends are the real signal carrier.

 Science: Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein explained the world of natural laws of gravitation via mathematical equations. Their discovered laws hold well with celestial bodies. But these very laws fall apart when applied to Quantum Mechanics, where there is no such thing as certainty and everything is probabilistic. The Law of Proportionality prevails even in the purest form of natural science. I am not arguing against the size as the factor in complex system but the layers of complexity. The more complexity is layered into a system, the higher its risks of failure. And there is nothing more complex than a human conscious. We can predict the durability of machines, we can calculate the half-life of radioactive materials, energy levels and even molecular processes but we cannot calculate rational or irrational responses of a conscious being. This very element of consciousness restricts us from ‘calculating’ future economic conditions via fancy models. It’s not just that we cannot calculate conscious irrationality but interpretation of data adds our own conscious  abstraction to our conclusion.

A day on the streets

As had been customary for pretty much the entire summer, 11-year old Amir woke up at around seven in the morning drenched in sweat. The fan had been still for almost three consecutive days now; a silent reminder of the bliss it had been that Amir had never bothered to acknowledge when electricity would visit their home a few hours a day. His mother was stretched out next to him; asleep; the fanning mat still clutched in her hand. She had fanned him to sleep, Amir knew, and had finally given in to exhaustion and dropped off herself. Her sleep wouldn’t last long, Amir knew. The heat would see to that.

Soon he was out on the streets, in the scorching heat with the stack of newspapers balanced under his arm. He didn’t have to try hard to appear in a pitiful state as he shuffled from car to car, waving the newspapers in the car windows; his grubbed and torn-at-places attire, matted hair and dirty face saw to that. Whether a disgraceful appearance helped him in selling more newspapers or not was a debate he had forgone a long time ago. There was just no satisfying people, he knew. If he made himself look abject, people might take pity on him, but would mostly just turn away in disgust. If he made himself look presentable, there would be no end to the ‘such a fine young lad you are, and look at you. Begging here on the streets (even though that wasn’t exactly what he would call selling newspapers), why don’t you go out and get a real job?’ stereotypes.

In his scrimpy trade, Amir had come across a lot of different types of people. There were the big, rich businessmen who would ride up in their big black cars, seated in the backseat clad in grand suits. Such people hardly ever bothered to even look up at him. There was the harried father rushing his kids to school, always in bad mood. Often he would vent out his anger on Amir. There were youngsters, whos’ arrival would always be heralded by loud music blaring from the car speakers. Whenever he approached them, they would engage in a loud and raucous discussion, and pretend not to hear him. There were taxi drivers; always mopping their sweating foreheads; and most of them hardly had enough for their own selves, yet would at times try to shell out whatever they could for him. Very few were the relaxed people, who would smile whenever he came up and pay him, and sometimes they would even refuse the newspaper he offered them, telling him to just keep the money.

Rejection was an integral part of Amir’s ‘trade’. He had learned long ago not to let it get him down. And so he had stopped seething at people who would roll up their windows when they spotted him, or the disdainful looks he received, or the snide comments about how he was a perfectly healthy young boy who should do something more worthwhile than selling newspapers. He had even stopped being frustrated at the selfishness of the people; after all, if a person could afford a big car, an expensive mobile phone, maintain a family, why could he not shell out a mere 10 rupees to him, a person in dire need? It was something that used to bother him a lot once; when every window rolled up in his face, or every annoyed expression on a potential customer’s face when he ambled along would be an affront to him, and he would turn away with a sickening feeling in his stomach, his heart aching. It wasn’t just the fact that they were forcing him to move on empty-handed, but also the contempt with which they regarded him. He may not be educated, or have a proper job, or own a car, but he was still human. He too had feelings! But as the days rolled by without anything changing, he learned not to let it get him down. Sometimes he told himself to be strong; at other times, he would compare himself with shopkeepers. He told himself that while he may not have a proper shop, he had the freedom of being able to interact with his customers openly and freely, and he did not have to worry about competition either. Of course, he did not get the respect that shopkeepers get in his case, but after all, you have to give something to lose something. Sometimes he would realize how ridiculous he was being, but he forced himself to believe that, for he needed a way to uphold his pride. He had some of it, if not a lot, and like every other person, he needed to maintain it. To keep himself going.

But despite whatever he kept telling himself, the fact remained that rejection wasn’t just in his ‘trade’; it was in Amir’s whole life. He had been rejected a father who could financially support his family. He had been denied a country which could, or maybe chose to, help people like him all over the country. He had been denied the basic necessities of life such as water and electricity. He had been denied an education. In short, he had been denied a proper life.

He had even been denied a healthy mother. She was sick most of the time; sprawled on the bed, her skin burning to the touch. Fear and worry for her made Amir forget all about his misfortunes though. Amir didn’t know exactly what she was suffering from, but he was aware that they never had enough money to get her treated properly. Amir had even started to save up the small amount he used to shell aside from his income every day for sweets and chocolates, in the hope that one day he could gather enough to get his mother treated. He loved her so very much; the pure love born of innocence that exists between a mother and child; and he didn’t know what he would do without her.

And that, in fact, was his true driving force; not him telling himself to be strong, neither the need to uphold his pride; it was fear for his mother. It was what kept him doggedly padding through the roads, stopping at car after car, waving his newspapers in the windows, steeling his nerves at every rejection, and moving on. That, and of course his self-assurance that this was still better than being stuck at a shop, being forced to sit the hours away. It was something Amir knew, deep down, yet he refused to acknowledge it, and kept telling himself it wasn’t true. Because it would always lead him to thoughts of what would transpire if something were to happen to his biggest source of inspiration; if she was around no more; what would he do then?

And then he would shake his head; telling himself that he was being foolish, for nothing was going to happen to his mother, and that he would soon have enough money to get her properly treated; and then he would move on to wave his stack of newspapers in the next car’s window.

Accord

''Give up!'', says the mind,
and now the heart agrees.
What of this agony? This malice?
That no one ever sees!
What of this peace, i havent known?
Unknown to me, like the floatin trees;
Of Babylon!
Which way do they sway, when a certain cold breeze,
Hits their upside down copses;whither do the leaves
Fall? Down or up, towards the sky?
If so, then why?
Or, are there Djins, and Ghosts and ghouls?
And terrifying ghost-houses with forlorn souls.
Pity! For the haunted, who no one consoles.
Furthermore, on the contrary if we are to think.
Do djins and Ghouls dwell in barren lands,
Stories being stories,
Tales to overwhelm?
And so do they think of us humans
.............as we of them?
And are they afraid of the horror i.e ''Man''
And is honesty really the policy best?
Coz men have failed while being so!,
Or were they; simply put; or else,
They surely would have forseen so!
Hypocrisy; it shines when put to test.
Man notes and progresses,
forgetting the rest!
Seemingly tis a powerhouse of unflinching zest!
But it does make life look like a sorry jest!
Tis new yet the biggest mystery of them all!
Does the heart have any role in feelings.
Does it transcend and mould and bend;
The way we make our dealings?
Or is it a mere organ, devoid of sentiments;
Like the hectic learned man,
Who never diverts an inch or so ever,
From the purposed plan.
If so then Lo!
Tis only brain,
And heart muscle and vein.
The idioms and phrases of yore,
Are apt to go down the drain.
So much hassle bout the heart of before,
All in vain!
Hail the mightiest of organs; the real vital one
The mighty electrical brain,
And yet, i am unsure
and so there is room for contrabands,
And thus ardently the question stands,
Because to this there is more,
And im fiendishly unsure,
And this my brain with my heart grieves,
How can the brain and the heart,
So peacefuly be at ease?