She pranced around the room making conscious effort to keep all her actions flawless. Calculated gestures executed at the exact second of their birth so as not to lose the immaculate shimmer in her language of the body. Silent as the graves she invented a language of her own, understandable to none but acclaimed by all. Pristine beauty trickling down her existence as her lush black hair moved of their own accord, responding to a different life source altogether. Her twists and turns delicately outlined her sensuality as her dress clinged onto perfection of exquisiteness. People forgot to breathe, to blink. As if one blink would lose a million moments in gold. But it’s not the girl they’re awed at, it’s her body. The way her luscious lips are pursed together speaking a tale of a separate universe. Her budding being moves like clockwork; delicate, complicate, magical. People hear her body singing. Telling a story of hurt and sadness, of death and despair, of creation and demise. Tears start to trickle down the girl’s eyes yet they seem part of her act. They glisten in the dim light for a second and portray as diamonds on the fingers of royalty. The tears leave a trail on the girl’s almost heavenly face defining for generations to come what path a tear drop should take. She keeps on dancing that mesmerizing dance of hers. Suddenly she stops. Doesn’t twitch or move a muscle. People around her anticipate something more. Her flowing dress wraps around her in its defined momentum and then unwraps itself to its full form. The girl and her gown are one with themselves. The girl and the gown both say a silent prayer to the universe before they step off the stage, this time for eternity. The crowd stands still, in a satanic trance. The gown comes off her body exposing it to the wickedness of humanity. She sprawls on the ground and next is pulled up by her mime master. The devils work is done. The girl is lost in oblivion.
Tag Archive: opinion
Close your eyes pretty child
Descend into the dark abyss
The demons and monsters have surrendered
Let your fears your strength caress
They’re waving a white flag
Take control of the witch and hag
Wage a war inside yourself
You will a stronger being possess
Cursing yourself will do no good
Nor would hiding even if it could
Your demons have subdued
And caged your dreads
Keep them locked away you should
Your sparkling eyes betray your disguise
The one you’ve doused behind your smiles
You’re journey is still a thousand miles
Don’t let life snatch your paradise
Belief in love and trust you’ve lost
Even your buffer zone you’ve crossed
But if you shut yourself to miracles
How will you get what was always yours?
Whenever you sit dejected and depressed
Look up above at the twinkling stars
They shine and vanish and shine again
Tales of courage and a solid heart
If the stars so majestic and benign
Can flicker out and lose their shine
Yet rekindle of their own accord
So can you relive a step at a time
Lose your sorrows and regrets
Forget your past and move ahead
The world is ripe to pluck its fruit
You linger here and there instead
What’s not with you was never yours
You drown amid a round of applause
Trying to tie broken strings together
Even diamonds can never last forever
A whole new life ahead of you waits
Don’t waste yourself go claim your prize
Try on every shoe you can possibly find
You’ll one day find your Cinderella size
Don’t stop dreaming don’t lose hope
Sometimes life gets tough to cope
The road does get rough
You will have had enough
Insanity will prevail
Your life may derail
But you will live on
You won’t be a pawn
Anymore, in this game of chess
No more people to impress
Be your own church and pope
Dear all who took out the time and showed even the remotest of interest in what i had to offer, it is with the help and zest of you people that i have today reached plus one thousand hits on my blog. Even though 1000 hits is not that much of a deal but then again, i believe, every step forward is an achievement. It means a lot to me, that people go through what i’ve written and feel it as if they can touch it, as if the emotions involved are tangible. What i write means millions to me. It is a part of myself that i spread out across the screen on the computer and scribble down on paper with ink.
This post is dedicated to you all. Thank you for your support.
Regards,
Waleed Yazdani
As the rain drops like pellets from the sky you can’t help but notice how utterly dependant the earth must feel that it soaks all those pellets up. Thats when you start to think; if something as big as the Earth is so dependant on mere pellets to flourish, what are we, us humans dependant on? That’s when you realize we are dependant on each other. But when we look around we see people striving for independence, going against the laws of nature. It is okay to be dependant. Be dependant, but on yourself. That’s the greatest form of dependant independency you can ever get.
People just stare on as he walked with tears fighting with his eyes to gush out. They don’t bother to ask him what’s wrong. He walks without looking where he’s going, he doesn’t know himself where he’s going. The world seems like it’s not bothered in the least but he keeps on walking, brushing elbows with people. On he goes trying to find some place alone, some place secluded. Every corner he takes there are people lingering. He takes yet another turn and finds a dark place, strewn with rubbish and with a small broken stool atop. With blurry eyes he walks there and sits down. Tip tip tip drops water from a broken pipe above him but he doesn’t even notice as his jacket is slowly getting damp with it. As he sits down he surrenders to the might of the tears and breaks down. So hard he cries that his throat begins to ache and his stomach convulses but he doesn’t mind the pain. Pain is good. Hurt is good he keeps on telling himself. He looks at his hands and is surprised to see they are clean. Weren’t they covered with blood when he left? But his tears are so powerful they make him forget what he was thinking. Another surge of memories hit him and the tears begin to pour down again. In the past few hours everything had changed. There was smiles and laughter everywhere. It started to rain but he didn’t notice as he got soaked in it. The tip tip of the broken water pipe merged with the rain. It seemed that everything was turning against him now. He groped into his pocket to find a handkerchief. He fumbled in his pocket and instead of the handkerchief he found something else. He took it out; a picture with its colors blurred by the rain. He saw someone strikingly familiar and wiped away the tears from his eyes to focus on the picture. Next to him was someone very familiar but because of the rain and the tears he couldn’t make out who it was. He turned the picture around and saw the year. April of 1998. He was around fifteen years old then. And then it hit him. The girl in the picture was someone he knew very well. And when he realized who it was he lost all strength to hold that picture and it fell down his hands into the puddle of rain water already piling up. Just hours ago that girl had died in his arms. That explained the blood he kept seeing on his hands. That explained what was happening. His mind had become so clogged with everything that happened that he couldn’t think properly. He remembered every single moment now. She died in his arms. And he lost control. He started crying harder than ever again. The broken stool, the puddle, the broken pipe, the rubbish, all of it slowly faded away and was replaced with darkness. And he fell down the broken stool into the muddy puddle of water. The people kept strolling along, not noticing a man fallen down in that dark alley. They failed to notice the man who’s wife’s funeral they had attended just hours ago. Life moved on.
Introduction
Looking back and understanding the past is imperative to live in the present and prepare for the future. The past is our key left by the people who have engraved themselves in the echelons of history to unlock our future. The past is both the history of the nations and the people who dwelled in them as well as the history of an individual self. But both of these ‘pasts’ help us in answering our plethora of questions related to the future.
The Circle of Life
Life has an uncanny ability to repeat itself. It goes round and round ever repetitive. We do not tend to perceive this pattern because we are too absorbed trying to figure out what the future beholds for us. We strive for the betterment of our future, not once looking over our shoulders to see what the past was when we never realize that the key to a better future is always engraved in the past.
“The further back you look the further forward you can see”
(Sir Winston Churchill)
“To know your future you must know your past”
(George Santayana)
Looking in the Past
Coming to the question that is most frequently asked; “Why should we look in the past for answers to our future when the best way to live life is to take it one day at a time”? Our past is what defines us. The decisions we made in the past, the choices we had and the ones we took while discarding the others are what make us stand where we are today. We cannot merely ignore all our past and live in the present to have a blissful future. We humans are the greatest of all living creatures. We look for a meaning to our life. This meaning is only found in our history. Living in the present only tends to make us purposeless and may slowly drive us towards secularism.
The Link between the ‘Past’ and ‘History’
The relationship between past and history is a very direct one and it also has a nuance about it. Thus, the past is objective or independent and history is subjective or dependant on the past.
For details see annex 1.
Historical Perspective
To achieve greatness, it is said one should read the autobiographies of great people. The theory behind this idea is that all great people had certain qualities that they polished and brought to the front line of their personalities to achieve their goals and ambitions. When we read about them, about their past and their turmoils and their fight against those turmoils, we can understand how they rose to greatness and carved their niche in history. In other words, by reading and studying about their past we can pave our way towards a better and brighter future both inside us and around us.
“I have walked that long road to freedom. I have tried not to falter; I have made missteps along the way. But I have discovered the secret that after climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb. I have taken a moment here to rest, to steal a view of the glorious vista that surrounds me, to look back on the distance I have come. But I can only rest for a moment, for with freedom come responsibilities, and I dare not linger, for my long walk is not ended.”
(Nelson Mandela- Author of “Long Walk to Freedom”)
We learn from these great people. We learn how to incorporate the qualities of these people into our lives to better ourselves. We acknowledge the efforts made by such people and vow to bring a change to the future. This is how we look into our past to find answers to our future, to make our future an even brighter one.
Sun Tzu
Sun Tzu was an ancient Chinese military General as well as a brilliant strategist and a philosopher who is traditionally believed, and who is most likely, to have authored The Art of War, an influential ancient Chinese book on military strategy. He had a significant impact on culture as well as Asian history both as the author of The Art of War and as legend as well. This book (comprising of 13 chapters) is all about victory; victory in all aspects of life. Although it was written keeping military strategies in mind, it is now used for all phases of life. Mark McNeilly is one of the world’s most widely read authors on the application of Sun Tzu’s principles in business and warfare. He is the author of two Sun Tzu books:
Sun Tzu and the Art of Business: Six Strategic Principles for Managers
Sun Tzu and the Art of Modern Warfare
The first book is related to the application of Sun Tzu’s ideas to business strategies whereas the second one deals with his military strategies and their usage throughout ancient times to date. (Both books include the complete thirteen chapters of The Art of War, utilizing the very popular Griffith translation).
Mark Mcneilly summarizes what Sun Tzu has said in very simple six points or principles:
v Win All Without Fighting
v Avoid Strength, Attack Weakness
v Deception and Foreknowledge
v Speed and Preparation
v Shaping the Opponent
v Character-Based Leadership
Sun Tzu and “The Art of War” Answering Tomorrows Questions
In 1772 a French Jesuit discovered this ancient text and translated it which soon became a very favorite of Napoleon. It was later translated into English in 1910 by Lionel Guiles of the British Museum. Sun Tzu’s military strategies gained popularity as they were remarkably precise and well thought and worked out even in those ancient times. Napoleon used these texts in his battles. Later on many famous Generals claim to have learnt a lot from Sun Tzu’s strategies. These people sought the past and used it to achieve success in the future. Sun Tzu’s military strategies paved their way to almost every military setup and laid down the foundations for a set of principles for military training and warfare.
The most interesting thing about Sun Tzu’s ideas in his texts is that they can also be incorporated in the business sector. People have studied “The Art of War” and have come up with brilliant strategies for business. Similarly is the case here. Authors like Mark Mcneilly have studied this book and have devised techniques on how to tackle various sections of a business. As I mentioned above about the summary of the book (the six principles), Mark Mcneilly has jotted down the crux of Sun Tzu’s ideas. These six principles can be applied to business as well as to military strategies.
People want their history, their past to be meaningful. Thus they study it and find that their future is bestowed in their past, if the past is properly understood that is.
The Quaid was one such example as well. For details see annex 2.
Individual or Personal Perspective
In contrast to the historical perspective of the topic, the psychological or the personal perspective (point of view) is how an individual uses the past to find answers to his future. How a person delves in his past or even his history to satisfy his questions about himself. How he searches the folds of his past to allow him to make the right decisions in the future. All of these aspects are directly related to the past of an individual.
Psychoanalysts
A psychoanalyst supposedly deciphers what is trapped in the unconscious mind of a person, which is the past the person has tried to subdue in his unconscious which defines him (according to the Freudian approach), and tries to help him for the future according to what he finds about the past of the person.
It is believed by the Freudian school of thought that a person subdues or suppresses all the turmoil’s and hardships to the unconscious mind so that those memories do not scar him or bring about a permanent damage to his personality. These memories in turn are responsible to formulate the personality of the person in the long run. The unconscious mind is the part of the mind which is not accessible. The psychoanalyst is the only person who is able to figure out what comprises the unconscious mind of the person. Once this is figured out, the psychoanalyst becomes familiar with the past of the person. He then uses this information about the client’s past to treat the client of his disorder. Thus the psychoanalyst is dependent on the past of his client for his future.
Parenting
Similarly, a person who is facing difficulty in a certain stage of upbringing of his child would most definitely instinctively think first of all about how his parents had handled the situation when he was young and going through that phase. He would look into his past to find answers about what to do in the future. Of course if he was subjected to neglect or abuse, his child may suffer the same treatment as well or vice versa.
Take a look at the autobiography of Dave Pelzer which is spanned over three books depicting three phases of his life. His case was the most serious of cases amongst child abuse in the whole of California. He was tormented and abused both mentally and physically by his mother. Yet when he grew up married and had a child, Stephen, he vowed never to let Stephen even remotely feel the way that he had felt or undergo any of the treatment he had undergone. Dave later on learnt that the reason for his mother’s cruelty and demonic behavior with him was because of her childhood experience as well. Both mother and child experienced the same tragedy but one vented it out in the form of violence and the other vented it out in the form of compassion. One learnt from his past while the other sought out revenge from her past. Dave looked at his past and shuddered to even think of it. He knew he could never ever subject anyone to such treatment in the future because only he knew what it felt like while his mother didn’t choose to learn from her past.
Dave Pelzer became a loving and caring father, sheathing his child from what he had to experience as a child himself. The past gave him a loud and clear message as to what he should do in his future.
Religious Perspective
God has time and again mentioned in the Koran about the people who use their intellect and common sense to come closer to Him through His creations. God has mentioned in the Koran about how the people in the past had their eyes and ears sealed to the truth and how they refused to accept His Oneness and how they had to face the wrath of God in return. This has a message for us humans. A message which stresses upon the fact that we must obey God and accept that He is the only God. Here too us Muslims look at the past and learn from it for our future.
For details see annex 3.
Conclusion
Deep down the innate psyche of the human race is always similar and this is the pivotal point that links our past to our future. That is why it is called the circle of life not the road of life because we are infact moving in circles. And every de-javu we have is but a weak memory of something very similar that happened a long time back, to people like us, but a lot before us. You look at the past and see your mistakes. Mistakes they are because if they weren’t they would never have been in the past yet we fail to acknowledge a simple yet evident fact. A mistake is nothing but a ‘miss-take’. You just have to‘re-take’ the lesson to learn what was meant to be learnt in the first place and then you move on. And what you learn from your ‘miss-takes’ in the past is what you apply to your future.
If we don’t take the past as a learning experience and simply dwell in it, we won’t be able to move forward and shall never be able to create the life we were born to live. The past and the future are not and cannot be equal. If we don’t recognize the blessings and learn from our follies in the past, we will merely end up creating a surprisingly similar future. We can plan tomorrow today with the wisdom of yesterday.
Annex 1
Past
The past is the portion of time that has already occurred; it is the opposite of the future. It is also contrasted with the present. Humans have recorded the past since ancient times, and to some extent, one of the defining characteristics of human beings is that they are able to record the past, recall it, remember it and confront it with the current state of affairs, thus enabling them to plan accordingly for the future, and to theorize about it as well.
History
History is the study of the past, particularly the written record of the human race but more generally including scientific and archeological discoveries about the past. History is the field of research producing a continuous narrative and a systematic analysis of past events of importance to the human race.
Annex 2
The Quaid e Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah
Jinnah was the founder of our nation. He was a man of principle, perseverance, dignity and honor. Although Jinnah realized the need for a serious implication of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan’s Two Nation Theory after the death of Dr. Allama Iqbal, the failure of the Round Table Conferences at the end of the 1930’s and the beginning of the 1940’s and most of all after everyone bore witness to Congress rule and the oppression the Muslims had to bear at the hands of the Hindus and the Sikhs a bit late, he never wasted a single moment to indulge in wasteful activities. He had a clear mission to focus on. He never relied on corruption. He was an honest man, an advocate to what was right regardless of the people involved. He focused on students because he believed that they were the future forebearers of the torch he had lit. Beverley Nichols, the author of `Verdict on India’, called him “the most important man in Asia”.
Jinnah of the Future
In this current age and in the present situation Pakistan is in, we desperately need a new Quaid e Azam. Someone who can look into the life of Jinnah and incorporate his ideologies into the present system prevailing in Pakistan, the system of lies, corruption, killing, power games, bribes and dictatorship. Someone who can turn the tables and bring true the dream of Jinnah. Pakistan Tehrik e Insaaf is one political party with Imran Khan as its founder that promises such change. He believes that this nation needs another Quaid. He has looked at the life of Jinnah and is now trying to bring about a massive revolution in Pakistan using the principles laid down by the Quaid. “Unity, Faith and Disciple” was the motto of the Quaid e Azam. This is the motto which is being revived again. Imran Khan held his first rally at Minto Garden in front of the Minar e Pakistan as a symbolic gesture towards a revolution as Jinnah also held his first rally where he introduced for the first time the idea of a separate homeland at Minto Garden.
Imran Khan has looked at the past. He has seen how the Quaid fought for a separate nation and what steps he took to achieve it as well and has learnt quite very much. Khan has always targeted the youth and the student population, keeping them his main priority. He has always held steadfast towards the truth, towards transparency and towards a big no to bribe and corruption. He has learnt from the past to sculpture a better future for the nation.
Annex 3
Hazrat Nuh (A.S)
The people of Hazrat Nuh did not believe in God. Even his sons and his wife refused to accept the message brought by him to the people. In response God sent a massive storm to the city which drowned everyone who did not believe in One God.
Hazrat Lut (A.S)
The people of Hazrat Lut were delved in homosexuality. God was extremely displeased with the actions of these people and Hazrat Lut was commanded to warn the people that if they did not mend their ways they would soon face the music. The land on which the city was overturned and buried all the disbelievers with it.
Hazrat Musa (A.S)
Hazrat Musa was the Prophet sent to Egypt during the time of pharaoh. People believed Pharaoh to be god and he himself believed that he was god. Musa was sent as the Prophet to advocate the message of the true God. When pharaoh and his followers did not bring faith they were ensconced between the river and all of them got washed away with it. The body of Pharaoh is still preserved for all times to come.
Likewise there were many other Prophets that were sent by God for the right guidance of the people and when they failed to bring faith and acknowledge the true God they were punished. God has mentioned in the Koran that these stories are but to remind us of where we stand and that we too if waver from our faith we shall be answerable to God. These stories of the past help us in understanding how to live our future.
References
Dave J.Pelzer, My Story: “A Child Called It”, “The Lost Boy”, “A Man Named Dave”
The Message of the Qur’an by Muhammad Asad, a Translation and Commentary
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080525204423AAmKMc5
http://nspiredadventures.wordpress.com/
http://www.cybercity-online.net/quaid.htm
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