Now you see me , NOW you dont??

The Invisible  Man is a very interesting book by H.G Wells. For those not well versed with this piece of literature, the closest analogy would be Harry Potters invisible cloak . As fascinating as it might sound in the movie, that invisibility factor is not so far off from our own daily lives.

See now, in a given day we interact with a wide variety of people with volatile moods. Those moods being more unreliable than the English Weather, render some of the people to treat some select few as if they were invisible or cloaked in oblivion.
Ignoring someone is fascinating, the excuses people give never cease to amuse me. People are generally not inconspicuous methinks. Then, if someone chooses to ignore another, they can actually be seen averting their gaze, walking past really fast with eyes down and then having the audacity to say "they didnt see the other person!" With all due respect given to being political correct, saying something as daft as "Oh, I didnt see you" makes one wonder, "Really now? You'd give a bat in daylight some serious competition!". Hmph!

Whats more puzzling is when one day someone is all sugar and honey and the next day they see right past you. Its confusing to say the least! I honestly believe we all suffer from a mild case of schizophrenia; how else would one explain why people are as tight as survivors on a sinking ship one day, and the next day they behave as if they have never seen you before. This unreliability is so mind boggling. I remember this one time I went to this persons house, and she stands almost a foot shorter than me and cannot but avoid looking right at me. She would actually have to go to the neighbors and close the doors in order not to see me standing right before her! Now I enter her house and I say Salam. I say it three times before she even bothered to turn around and reply. When confronted with it later, she complained of me not coming to her house often enough and that she didnt see me. A query miss-If you choose to ignore my very "present" presence, what attack of amnesia ought I to suffer to come knocking at your door again? The idea as Miss Havisham would say.

There is a concept in Islam called "Ehtedal". Literally translated to mean moderation. Skyrocketing affection and plummeting cold shoulder are not conducive to human interaction much less an incentive to affection. Moderation in language, in display of affection, even in animosity make it easy to maintain it over a long period of time. Bursts of either extreme cannot simply be maintained because they consume too much energy and quite simply boring!

Our interaction with one another is complicated enough with millions of extenuating factors, without further complicating it by thinking with regards to each person one meets, "Right, now how ought I to treat so and so today? Lets spice things up and just walk right past. Then tomorrow we can go for coffee".

We have to watch what we say, what we see and do in order to make through one brief social interaction to survive. As much we would want to, we cannot foretell the unpredictable attitude of others. What we can do to maintain our own sanity is to try to bring moderation within oneself. A sort of controlled chaos if you please.

So running away from it all, and going and living on a mountain top with sheep grazing outside my door, would seem an ideal scenario, but alas its not to be. Its not to be, and the more "social pms" I have to deal with in my adult life, the more moderation I try to impose on myself.

And when all that self improvement exercise just doesnt work, my saving grace would be, my IPOD, to stop me from running into wilderness for another day.

Survival Games

My brother, bless him, has some weird fascination of keeping pets, and that too in a cage. Now I am strongly against keeping living beings under cages, actual or otherwise. Living beings are meant to be free, not caged and gawked at. The whole affair is rather depressing really.

That said, the peaceful co-existence of the love birds and this tiny fella and his mates was quite adorable to watch, given the caged surrounding of their habitat. Now, a day ago, the neighboring cat attacked the birds at night and bit off the leg of one of the love birds and injured the little speckled one. It was so sad to see the two of them pathetically shivering in pain. What was fascinating though, was how the injured birds were shunned by the healthy ones. A day ago they were all perched together, now not a single flap around either of them! Worse still, after the passing away of the injured love bird, the speckled fella was actually attacked and pecked at by the one of the love birds, and I had to rescue him. The poor fella had beak injuries all over him and his feathers were all ruffled and pecked at! As corny as it may sound, but I got a very quiet lesson in Survival of the fittest. Guess our feathered friends are not so different from us after all.

When one is in the game, its obvious to see how people clamor around him. The bond, the cohesiveness appears to actually last forever. The first sign of weakness, of not hitting the benchmark, can actually be sensed by people around one. That is when the true character comes forth and one can actually see the eagles honing on the kill. No wonder we try so hard to be in the game, any game, just to prove we can fight, as admitting defeat is a luxury we cannot afford.

Oh the games we play! The games that men ( hereafter used to imply men and women) have been playing since the beginning of time. We compete, we strain, not as a competition with another, but with ourselves to prove we can do it, we can survive, because one has only to turn around to see what fate befalls those who show their weakness. Maritime laws, I am afraid, do not apply to daily life.

Olympics are on and as the entire world watches , it brings to mind this fascinating Indian movie I watched one time, Its called "Shatranj Ke Khiladi". Its about these two wealthy Oudh gentlemen who are avid chess players. The ascension of Oudh ( Lucknow) is in process by the British, but these two men throwing caution to the wind sacrifice all just for that game. The movie is fascinating because the moment the pieces are set, its not about the board anymore, its a game of life. So whether it is about actually admitting ones feelings, personal relationships, or to actually admit one cannot hold the strings of ones life together, the game of ones own survival is a precarious one and has to be played strategically.

So, what if one cant play, or is not well versed with the rules of the game? Hmm, one does not have many choices I'm afraid other than to run for shelter, as eagles can sense their kill from miles away!

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For my part, on a lighter note, sink or survive, I love games. Not the scary kind, but the fun ones. At present , Temple Run on my tab has me flummoxed!  As miserable as my score is on any arcade game, the chase, and the drive is amusing and fun. Given the prize I am playing for is not to "sink or survive" the trials and tribulations of a good score are well simulated.

So, I lost one of the many race games, and the little speckled bird lost its life in silence. The price both paid for the games played to survive...

Woes of Spring Cleaning

Oh the mess! I have literally spent all day today, whilst fasting to clean the abominable mess we have in our house. Seems like my family has a habit of hording the unnecessary, worse than the raccoons. Not that I am comparing the two, but the habit is ridiculous! It is amazing how my father resents throwing anything, thinking it will be needed in the future. My question is, if it hasnt been utilized in the past 5 years, its highly doubtful it would be of any use at all. Give that my argument has fallen on deaf ears, the satisfaction of an achievement of such proportions does make me rather tranquil.

Things, usefull and useless seem like an unavoidable excrescence of our mundane existence. We store and we store some more, till one day things become so cluttered that we are a walking talking flea market! Life is difficult as is without storing the unnecessary either in our homes or in our minds. The mind probably has a larger storage space than any and at times it is just essential to focus on something to clear that clutter away and to be able to function in a normal practical manner.

"Shuaq" as the urdu word goes literally means interest. A person without any "Shauq" comes across as incomplete. I refuse to believe that people are without talent and interests and dont have time to indulge in them. As Mark Twain said " A chore is only when makes its so. It becomes an interest when one enjoys it". So no matter extraordinary or ordinary an interest might be, to indulge in it doesnt only make a person more appealing, but acts as a mental hoover to clear away the everyday debris of life and to simply "keep it light".

My mental hoover amongst many things recently has been traying my hand at Calligraphy, in specific Islamic Calligraphy. Not being trained in it, my way is a bit longer, a bit unorthodox, but I am getting there. It fascinates me to no end to have an empty canvass before me and to create something on it. For that period, my brain ignores the deadlines, unpleasant matters, and helps me to focus on creating something beautiful. The sense of accomplishment is immense. I have even tried my hand at Sanskrit Calligraphy for a friend, it has been a pleasure to give such a personalized gift.

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Here is a view of my lil handiwork.

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So yes there will be clutter, but thats part and parcel of this life I'm afraid, so long as I dont run out of pen and paper, I beleive it will be alright.

Mind your Language Sir/Madam

Image Digitized & Drawn by Erik Marinovich 

“Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it’s written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.
Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.
Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation’s OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.
Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.
Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.
Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.
Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.
Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.
Pronunciation (think of Psyche!)
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won’t it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It’s a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.
Finally, which rhymes with enough,
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!"

― Gerard Nolst Trenité, Drop your Foreign Accent
 Having heard the above speech in an adaptation of Shaw's play, I found it exceedingly droll. English as a language is very peculiar and more often than not humorous.
Languages per-se are not merely forms of communication but carry in their essence an innate sense of history, meaning and importance. I simply cannot stand when people take the liberty of "personalizing" a language and not having the guts to own up to the fact that they do not know the right pronunciation, they then have the audacity to hide under the defense of " It is a proper noun, hence can be pronounced any which way" . Really now I say! My name is a proper noun mister, mis-pronounce it and I will make you say it till you get it right. Hmph!

It really is a pleasure reading Wodehouse. Given that it is about foppish English aristocracy, a single page has such gorgeous jewels of English words, that one can easily expand ones vocabulary by merely reading the first two pages. At university we were taught Legal English words in Latin. Sadly now, the English universities themselves have not only done away with Latin, but also proper English words and have dumbed down the books to an obscure street language. From Hieroglyphics, to Smoke Signals, from Frost to Ghalib to Rumi, from English to Persian or  to any other language in the world,  what is said might be beautiful, but its more about how it is said that is captivating. Words of a Language have the power to move, to be as sublime as a soft silk scarf or to scorch as the brightest flame. Why then wont we respect ourselves by respecting what we say and how we say it?
It is not about being pretentious, in my view its more about respect and honor. A well said phrase lingers in ones mind. Which explains why the great poets of our time are still remembered after ages and why the likes of pidgin babble of a language will oft be forgotten.

The scrimped words of text messages are so difficult to decipher now that it is almost a task in encryption to even fathom what is being said.  AH started writing an assignment and after failing to secure a decent mark on it, re- read it and admitted that it made no sense. How can it, when it is written in a manner of conversing as one would in a back alley with a below GCSE level student? We cannot write, the way we would speak, unless the way we speak makes literary sense.

Following is a short list of the abominable pronunciations I have recently come across:
Versace- Verrrssace
Determine- Determiinnee
Pizza- Peeza
Les Miserables'- Less Miserables ( as in one who is miserable)
and so on..

Its not to say one ought to know how a word is to be pronounced in the million languages across the world, all ought to do is atleast be mature enough to learn. Being cocky-self righteous in ones mistake without willing to admit there might be another way a thing ought to be done, is not only an impediment to growth but is plain stupid.
So while I listen to qualified people saying Determiiiinnnee and shiver as if one would have walked over my grave, my only hope is maybe one day, the privacy of their homes, they would have the sense to get a crash course in phonetics!
The whimsy.
PS- Some shows I enjoy where the sanctity of English Language is still preserved:
Frasier and Sheldon's dialogue in The Big Bang Theory.

The action- Pleasure

Related post: http://ub-untu.blogspot.in/2012/07/forthe-past-few-weeks-excruciating-pain.html

Traditionally its always action followed by reaction. I chose to blog the other way around writing about pain and then pleasure in order to better appreciate how there is just one factor -pleasure. All others stem from how we approach this lone factor.

Freud describes the pleasure principle as the concept of people seeking pleasure and avoiding pain  in order to satisfy their biological and psychological needs. At the bottom of it all that's all there is to it, but as to everything related to us Human beings, we don't quite fancy a straight forward explanation, we rather prefer a long drawn one.

This month of Ramadan is about restraint. It's about curbing all urges, involving food, body, speech amongst other things in order to restrict ones attendance to meditation and prayers. It's almost like a month of retreat to purify ones soul and conduct. Deprivation of such "pleasures" helps me realize that I am really not missing that much. Hard as it might be to avoid watching a new released movie, or the urge to cuss at some particular annoyance, there is a sense of accomplishment I feel in mastering my nerve.

As in pain, pleasure is neither good or bad. Tip toeing around the more complicated factors of the ID, EGO and SUPER EGO, its sufficient to say we continually seek pleasure and try our darnedest to gratify it. Pleasure instinct unfortunately exists in all of us whether we admit to it or not. Fetishes of all forms, acceptable or not occur in the realms of pleasure, what makes them "wrong or right" is how society has conditioned us to perceive it.
At heart, us hunter and gatherers will run around like headless chicken not knowing how to balance our own pleasure gratification and the delicate tandem of society we live in, which is why rules and laws were made to curb the instinct to make us more "civilized and lesser brutes". Amusingly the more forbidden a certain pleasure is, the more appealing it becomes. Not our fault, I say, Adam started it!

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My forbidden fruit a fortnigh t ago happened to be Haagen-Dazs. Now this incident brought about a delicious enlightening of my own character forth. First, I hate Ice Cream. I ac tually loathe it. Second, the moment I was half delirious at the beauty of the ice-creams presentation, KK and I were skint. She being of sound reason dissuaded me, before I completely embarrassed myself drooling over the magazine sized menu. The fact that I was not even going to taste it but merely wanted to take pictures because it was so purty, did not seem at all odd to my mind. After all I bought a really expensive camera and I ought to be able to take pictures of things oh-so-pretty. ( One cannot but marvel at the explanations and justifications one would put forth just to satisfy ones pleasure instinct). The image stayed in my mind, mingled with resentment of the denial by KK. Next day MG, being on an impulsive streak became my partner is crime and we went to Haagen-Dazs over lunch from work. We felt like a pair of naughty school children, me being the worst of the two as I chipped in my ridiculous share to partake in a spoon of whipped cream and a chocolat e biscuit. Bless MG's cotton pickin heart, she finished the entire platter.

The point here is not the cost of the ice cream or my lack of interest in it. The point is the  pull of my pleasure instinct burgeoning need of its gratification. And as the good lord is my witness, I admit, It felt good.

As I said before, us Humans are but children at heart seeking new pleasures at every breath. It is who we are. We can deny or curb it, but the fact is, it exists.
Mirza Asadullah Ghalib's words hold true, if not for everyone, at least for me:

hazaaro.n Khvaahishe.n aisii ki har Khvaaish pe dam nikale
bahut nikale mere armaa.N lekin phir bhii kam nikale(There are thousands of ambitions that each such wish could consume my life

My desires , and I experience them all intensely, aren’t enough for this one lifetime.)

So wafting from the pleasure of an uneaten ice cream to my new Galaxy tab, from the anticipation of a hearty Iftar at sundown, to chuckling over Mark Twain's words, my simple pleasures, alas I admit are to me a limitless horizon. 

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My justification, if not for any other, to me is- What can I do?  but accept, my biology and partake in all this wonderful life of ours has to offer.