Silent pledge of Silence

In life, a lot of things happen. And after lot of incidents, you make a lot of promises to yourself, and you claim of a lot of things to the people around you. You say that you won't do this again, you say that you will start doing this and that from now on. But after a little while, as you relax, as you calm down, you realize that you cannot hold up to a lot of these promises.

But sometimes, just sometimes, after some incident, you don't make any promise to others, not even to yourself, but without any promise, a silence settles within you and this silence you propagate around you as well.


You become a quiet person. You lock that talkative, bubbly person somewhere deep down and then you throw away the key.



And not many people realize that. Because some people only knew you as a quiet person, for them you are the same.

And those who did know how cheerful you actually are fail to notice because from where they are standing, you are fine and you are happy. Because you smile when you meet someone and you smile at jokes cracked by your friends and hold back a retort.

But from where you are standing you understand that the smile on your face when you meet people is the smile that you put on to hide the tears in your eyes, so that the focus shifts to the smile instead of the tears.

And you know that when you smile at a joke cracked by a friend and hold back a retort, it is because you don't have anything to say, because silence is your refuge now.

And quietly and silently is how you start spending your days. And quietly and silently you start to remove yourself. You don't remove people from you lives, instead you remove yourself from theirs, because if someone detests you so much, isn't it better to save them the torture of having to look at you, or even seeing your name somewhere, or seeing anything that would remind them of you?

So quietly and silently you step out of their lives. And with a final goodbye you close the door and you never look back.

These are the silent pledges of silence.

The story of Hope and Fate

What we are always told in life, is to hope for the best and expect the worst.. or something to that effect. But we are never warned that, hopes, the unrealistic ones, can be extremely devastating. These hopes have the power to let you sink to the bottom, to eventually leave you hopeless. You start wondering where you are, how did you get there, what went wrong, what did you do wrong, what did you do to deserve this.

We are never told to know when to stop hoping, when to give up entirely. And this is something that can never be told because it is one of those things you learn after bitter experiences. You learn when it is time to stop hoping. This should be the time when you've done all you could to stop something bad from happening, in fact you have done more than you even imagined yourself doing. This is the time when you have given more than you could, more than you were capable of giving. This is the time when you realize that your efforts are going in vain. And if it's not just a personal experience, then your efforts might be given a wrong meaning, a reflection of a thought that never entered your mind. And this is the time when you should stop. All the time you were trying to bring improvement in the state of affairs, you were hoping that things would eventually turn out well, and that you'll forget all of this or at least mark it and put it in the 'Fun and Learning' cabinet of your memories storage. But as it doesn't turn out that way, this is the time when you give up just on the efforts, this is the time when you have to sit back and leave everything on Allah. Allah asks us to make efforts but also to trust Him and to believe that whatever He gives to us is the best for us, no matter if it doesn't seem that way at the time. So this is the time when you keep hoping, but this is also the time when you stop fighting. You leave everything on Allah, and you don't even so much as move a finger to improve the situation. You just let it be. At this point, again, things could go in both ways, they could either be in your favor, or they could either push you to the edge, to the line which separates you from 'living your life' and 'just going through it'.

If all goes well, then you are happy, then all the decision you made seem to be the right ones, all hopes that you had seem to be realistic.

But if this is not the case, then you are quite far away from the happy-folk's land, all the decisions you took seem to be the wrong ones, all hopes seem to be unrealistic. And this is exactly the time, when you should stop hoping that things would ever be the same again. You should always hope that somewhere along the way you'll be able to buy a home in that happy-folk's land, but you should stop hoping that things would go your way at the moment. If they haven't until now, then hoping that they ever would is equivalent to pushing yourself to the edge and then not even wanting to be rescued. If you have left everything on Allah, then accept whatever he sends your way, because whatever he sends would eventually turn out to be the best. The things that you didn't get in spite of working hard, praying hard and hoping hard, are the things which are not good for you, which are not meant for you to have. There are somethings which have to be accepted as fate. But at this point, you should know that at least in the future you'll be saved from the torture of thinking 'I could have done something', because you know that you did all you could have done, and you know that you gave even more of yourself than you should have and than you could have.

I might have not been able to make my point clear through this post. I might not have been able to do justice. But I guess this is something you have to go through to understand, to really understand. And unfortunately, we all go through it at some point in our life. :)

The essence of 'Life'..

A post to collect all the thoughts which have been going through my mind a lot lately. Things I have pondered over. Things I keep thinking about. Things that I keep discussing with people. And things that I have wanted to write a post on for a long time.

Happiness went away on a greyhound bound for Georgia:

(The above is a line from a song :P)
It seems like ever since we've 'grown-up' happiness doesn't seem to stick around. And dissatisfaction has become more permanent since we've started with our jobs and have started earning money. And this is not just my opinion. I have really asked around and this was the general opinion. And reasons have also come up. The main reason being that we've stopped enjoying the small things. We've let go of the small joys and have started focusing on the big things. We've forgotten that it's actually the small things that bring life into our lives. We've unconsciously started running after money.. and tada... we do have money now.. (well to some extent.. at the end of every month.. before we spend it all... :$) and I thank Allah for that.. not that I dislike the concept of salaries.. but we've engrossed ourselves so much into "adulthood" we've lost all essence of life..
Remember the times when we went out for lunch/dinner with family/friends ONCE in a bluemoon. That was the time we enjoyed eating out. Now eating out has become a norm and eating-in has become .. well.. how do you put it.. not very interesting...??!!!
Remember the times when we used to rent movies over the weekend. That was when it was actually we fun. We still enjoy watching tv and movies.. but it has become a routine and hence, not that much interesting any more..
Remember the time when we used to read.. actually read books. When we became so much involved in the 'story-book' that we found ourselves IN the book. That stopped happening for me a long time ago. Now we all have so many other things going on in our minds that it has become impossible to detach ourselves from our real lives and enjoy being a part of the book.. Now every time I am reading a book something steals me away from it, more often than not it's my cell phone, with another forwarded message or sometimes a 'hi-hello' one from a friend.
A few months ago we had a company-sponsored training. The focus of the training was "Communication and Presentation Skills", but the trainer also mentioned a few things related to the topic of this post. She said back when we were children we were not afraid to try out new things. We enjoyed doing something new everyday. She also said to spend time with children, play with them. And she is right. When you are playing with children you are really having fun. And it was also advised to spend less time watching tv. There are other ways of relaxing. One activity which we should all carry out to realize the quality of our life was this: In one minute write down all the things that you enjoy. It seems that one minute would be less and you would have more things to write when the time's up, but that doesn't happen. In my case there was still time and I had nothing more to right. :| (I don't exactly remember the time allowed, maybe it was less than one minute, but I do remember that I was short of things to write. It was like sitting in an exam, writing answers you didn't prepare for.)

Now we are living a routine life.
We've stopped spending time with our families. If I give my example, I spend 9 hours of everyday in office, and when I come back I switch on my computer and start looking for things that I can watch that day. The only hours I spend with my family are the hours where there is no electricity and hence no TV, computer,... but even then I have my cell phone. Why do I feel it important to share jokes with my friends or talk to them but I don't categorize spending time with my family as important?

Lack of Confrontation:

Another thing which is actually sort of related to happiness is that we've started taking ourselves too seriously. (I know it's a quote, but couldn't find the reference. It goes something like ' Don't take yourself seriously, nobody else does. But it's a quite true).
We think we are just too important. We let our egos take the best of us.

As children when we used to have fights with our friends, the next day it was all better. Don't say that then it was on petty issues.. like who'll bring a ball the next day.. we still fight on small issues.. it's just that our priorities have changed. A ball seemed important then. We've changed our perspective of "what's important" now. And our perspectives are still quite wrong.

We've put up a image of ourselves for others so that they would like us. But inside, we are not that good.
Because inside we keep grudges,
because inside we hate others,
because inside we are jealous of others,
because from inside we are not happy,
because from inside we actually dislike our own existence.

These days we don't confront people. And for good reasons. :) We don't wanna fight in front of the whole wide world. So we refrain from that.. which is good. But we still keep grudges, we start ignoring others, we meet everyone with a smile, but no one should know what's going on in those little heads of ours.. because what goes on up there is not something everyone would like to know. We think it's our right to analyze people, and so we focus on all the bad things. We think it's right to criticize others and call it healthy criticism. We think it's right to judge others. We think it's right to be jealous of others, because we don't consider it jealousy, we consider it improving ourselves, bringing betterment in ourselves. Well, is that really true?


I think I have written enough. Comments are welcome. :)

Would we still???

On my way to office, yesterday morning, I was, as I usually do, reciting Ayat-ul-Kursi, durood shareef..
When I noticed that I do this whenever I get scared of Mobile-Snatchers and the likes and I started to wonder that we, human beings,.. well most of us, remember Allah in our times of need. We do remember Him when we are happy but the enthusiasm is heightened in sorrow. And I questioned myself..
"If I had everything good in my life. And I knew that sorrow won't reach me.. Would I still remember Him? Would I still pray?"

And this is what I put up for everyone to think (comments are welcomed)

"What if we have everything good happening in our life? And we know for sure that nothing bad is ever going to come? And we won't do bad to anyone around us, so that we don't have to beg for Allah's forgiveness either. And we had nothing bad happen to us in the past as well. Would we still talk to Him? Would we still cry out to Him? Would we still pray?"

Shadows of the past.....

It amazes me sometimes, how we keep living in the past. How something bad that happened to us a long time ago still has the power to affect us. I am not talking about things that have put a permanent dent on our lives, but things that we have overcome, simple facts that we have learnt to live with, the facts that are no more facts.
A simple example would be not getting something you really worked hard for, and even after you have realized that that something really wasn't for you, and what you've got as a substitute proved to be perfect for you. That not getting that something, not getting your desire, not getting what you wished dearly for, may have been depressing at the moment, but all got better after that. And maybe you got what you wanted to, but a little late. And you know all this, you know that whatever happened, happened for a reason, and a good one. You know that what happened was the best thing that could've happened to you, but whenever you are pushed down the memory lane, and you have to travel through the same depressing time again, why aren't we strong enough to make the journey down that road again with a smile, knowing that it had all passed now, and what you have at the present is good enough for you. Why?

And why, when you keep on telling people, who are going through something like that in the present, that everything will be fine. You keep reminding them that life won't give you anything you can't handle, and you really believe it too.

But even then, why do we still let that past control our today??
Or... is it just me????

We, the "IT" people

Excerpt from a chat session with a uni friend. This must have happened somewhere in July, August 2008.

Me:"The fact that you are not replying to me and am still talking is prove enough of how boooreedd to death I am"

Dhat: "Yeah... they say Software Engineers go crazy after a while"


I have had my share of IT people, and when I joined my job I promised myself I wouldn't join their league. I have this friend, who because of the pressure he has to endure at work, has become very quiet. He spends his entire day at office, and that's more than the usual 9-6 timing. Then at home too, he sits either in front of the tv or spends his time with his beloved laptop. And this is exactly what I didn't wish myself to get into.

And during the first few months, I held true to my promise. After 4 hard years at university, where even when we were at our homes, we had to spend our time working on the computer as we had a lot of assignments, projects and presentations to get done. So naturally, when I joined job and came back home at about 7, and had nothing to do at all, I felt I had a lot of time on my hands, and I spent it sitting with my father, talking endlessly, then I would go to the kitchen and sit on a stool and talk to my mother, both of them now know everyone I know at my office. And then I don't know what happened, but I went back to my old routine, which includes coming back at home, freshing up and then switching on the computer. Sometimes the excuse is;

"I have to submit this presentation proposal tomorrow."
OR
"I have a long overdue assignment I have to work on"


But they are just that.. excuses, mere excuses. And I too have become a part of the league I was trying to evade in the beginning. It hasn't been one year yet and I have broken the promise I made to myself.
In my university days, when I noticed what that friend of mine (the one I wrote about above) was doing to himself and when I thought that his family must miss talking to him, my resolution not to become like him one day strengthened. But now, I have become just like him. And it's not just me, it's the story of every other software engineer I know.

We all wake up in the morning, as late as possible, get ready for work, go to our offices, sit in front of our machines for 9 hours or more, then come back to our homes and then again switch on our machines, and spend the remaining of our day in front of our Home PCs. The only times we aren't sitting in front of our computers is when we are eating, sleeping, or traveling. We don't have much time to talk to our families, or our friends. We don't know what's going on in their lives, and we don't much care either. We get more worried when our computer breaks down, then we care about when one of our friends is feeling low.

The friendships that have remained since I graduated are with the people who have the same routine I have, and this is because we can chat with each other. The rest of my friends.... I don't know where they are, or what they are up to these days.

To prove my point, this is an excerpt from an actual-talking session with one of my class-fellows and now my colleague;

"I go back home, switch on my machine, log in to MSN, and spend my time doing on one thing or the other(all which involves computer). My mom keeps shouting that I don't spend any time at home, even when I am at home. But what to do? I guess she'll get over it"

The truth has been twisted here a bit. But more or less, this is what we are all doing.

And I have realized that this is the reason, why I am exhausted all the time. I have a life, yes I do, but there is no such quality of life to speak of. I never feel relaxed because even during the time I should be relaxing, I do things that get on my nerves and the funny thing is that I don't even realize it.

The problem lies in our daily routine. And the fact that we are not aware of the problem. We are just spending our lives... just spending it, not actually living it.
We all are a part of a marathon, and we don't even know who we are competing against, are we just trying to prove others that we can spend the most time in front of our computers without having an actual conversation with any one, without having any life?????

How long do we think we can go on like this?????

Those moments...

Ever had that moment in life when disappointment reaches the peak point.. or shall I say reaches the pit.. when you think you can't be more disappointed with yourself.
Ever had that moment in life when you are depressed...
Ever had that moment in life when you don't understand how you ended up being like this, how you ended up where you ended up, when you stop for a moment and consider whether what you've got is what you wanted from your life.
The moment when relationships betray.
The moment when you think no one would understand you.
The moment when you realize that the way you've been your entire life isn't the way to live life. When you realize that it's high time you change yourself. When you decide everyday that this would be the day when you'll change yourself, and be like what you want to be and not like what you are by nature and then by the end of every day you realize that you can't change yourself.
The phase when you are exhausted, thoroughly exhausted and you don't understand why you are tired.
The time when you are not tired because you got no rest all day long, but when you are tired of yourself.
The moment when you think about where you'll be one year from now, and you don't know..
The moment when someone asks you what are your plans.. and you don't have any answer for that. This is the moment when you start dreading such questions.

And the moment when you start wondering 'at what point did all the things start going wrong....'

New job... New life..... :)

It has been 2 months since I started my new job, that is to say, my very first job.

(I joined on 1st July, and people told me that I should have taken a break, and now I agree with them.)

I have been meaning to write about my job since the day I started, but never actually got around to it. This is because I didn't know exactly what to write. I don't know now either but have decided to go ahead with it anyways.

So... new job.. a new phase of life. Completely new and definitely different. Utterly new for me because I didn't have any experience of free lancing or internships. Different for the same reason.

We have been doing projects throughout the four years of our bachelors. These projects included not only the programming projects, the softwares we created, but also the presentations we gave, or the researches we did and produced a report as a result. We did a Final Year Project to give us an essence of what professional projects are supposed to be like. But being in professional life in reality is different then any simulation you go through during bachelors.

And it's not only the work thing. It is basically about settling at a new place. With new people, who will play different roles in your career, they can be your supervisors, the people who'll work with you side-by-side on a project, the people who are hired with you and the people who are your seniors. It's about settling with an AC on top of your head, and you are feeling like you are sitting in an igloo. It's about getting acquainted with your workplace computer. :P (People who work with me would know what I am talking about.) It's about getting used to the working hours, though they are less then the time we spent at uni, but definitely more tiring.

It's about calling your office, your place.
In an orientation session at office, the presentor broached a question

"Can a person work at a place about which he doesn't feel like he owns it. Can he work at an office which he doesn't own?"

I sat quietly while the others nodded. My expressions must have betrayed me because the presentor pointed me out and said "Yes you tell me, is that possible." And although I wanted to say yes, he can, I instead said no. And then he explained, again because my face expressions must have betrayed me, that

"yes it is possible if the person doesn't like working at that place."

For me the answer 'yes it is possible' holds true for completely different reasons. My reason being that if I think I own the place, I'll stop working. :D :P
I'll work when I understand that I am doing a job there and I am supposed to work. If I feel like this company's owned by me then I would surely not press even a single key, would not even bother to place a ';' at the end of a statement.
But what he meant by owning a place is not literally owning the company, but he meant owning in a completely different sense. And I won't go ahead and explain what he meant, because I don't know how to explain this phenomena.


And in the end it's about enjoying... making new friends, experiencing a new side of people. And again, enjoying...
Coz it's not worth if you are unable to find an element of enjoyment. Enjoyment encompases enjoying your work, loving what you do, realizing that you chose the right field, the right profession for yourself. And you realize that only when you like doing what you do. No, not like, love it. Enjoying is when you don't really want to get up in the morning, and you drag yourself to your office, but when you start working, you get so indulged in it that you don't realize the time flying by. Enjoying is when you are finally done with a project and you get that feeling of happiness, yes the feeling you get when you have finally accomplished something no matter how small. Enjoying also includes the feeling of nervousness you experience when you are assigned your first project, when you are asked to give a time line and schedule of that project, when you are expected to solve a problem, when you are expected to come up with new ideas and what not.
Enjoying is.. being there, doing it. :)

Still thinking of a title for this one... :)

I have always been impressed by brilliant people...... but it's just till I start knowing them..... and then I think they are no more different than me.

There was this girl in my school, my class mate, and she was good at practically everything. Name any thing and she'll excel at it. From studies to extra curricular activities, from singing to acting, from sports to comparing. From this to that.... in short everything. And I was utterly impressed by her. I wanted to become friends with her (embarrased by this confession, but let me tell you I have never really been friends with any intelligent people, cheetahs as I like to call them, or maybe I don't put my friends under the Einstein List, even if they are really genius. So intelligence is not what I look for in people, coz for me every person is talented). But when I did get to know her I came to know that she was just like other people. No; no two people in the world are similar, everyone is different in their own perfect way. But it's just that intelligent people don't live in a different part of the world either. Don't really know how to explain this.

Sometimes I am content with my life (and that is just sometimes), I thank Allah for blessing me with everything. So what if I don't belong to the elite cohort. I still have a great life mashaAllah. Allah has blessed me with everything before I even thought I needed it. I feel happy with myself, I feel happy with my life.
This is the time, when I hate people who are complaining about their lives. I sit with them and try to explain to them that their lives are better than others.
I have this friend who sometimes start wishing that she was dead. And all I want at that moment is really kill her so that she would learn her lesson. But isn't this something we all sometimes wish for without even realizing the stark reality of what we are asking for.
Listening to this my mother would try to tell me that I haven't done much good in my life to make my after life any good. And I would become more depressed at the prospect.

(I started on a different note and think I have gone somewhere else)

So at other times when I am not so happy with what I have got. Sometimes when I wanted something else and got something completely different, I complain, forgetting that just the other day I was scolding someone for being so 'nashukray' (ungrateful).

It may seem very childish to you, but sometimes when I am not getting the results I expected, I become depressed like something really wrong has happened with me. I start complaining, I become irritating and everything bad. And this is the time I wish I was as smart as other people, more particularly the people who managed to get good results.
And then when I survive this so-called crisis of my life, I start feeling good again.
And then when I see some one behaving in an improper fashion (won't shed any light upon this), I thank God that I am not like them, forgetting completely that I do the same, I too hurt others, and never realize it.

So in the end..... we all are the same yet very different from each other.
Some of us realize that whatever they've got is good enough for them, they have been blessed with something and they should go on and help others, these are the people who have learnt the golden rule of happiness "live with what you have, be satisfied with whatever you have got". These are the people who make the most of what they have.

I would like to mention here about one my friends.
This girl joined our campus after I think the 5th semester.
I didn't know her very well then, I still don't I guess.
One day, I just asked for the sake of making a very short conversation, instead of just the usual 'salam dua' thing. I asked: "How's life"
And she replied with a sweet smile on her face, the smile she almost always has on: "Pathetic, pathetic, pathetic".
And then again, without thinking, and just for making the conversation a little longer instead of abruptly ending it, and because I just love talking with anyone who would listen and care to reply, I stated:
"You have to smile na? no matter how much wrong things go".
I didn't really expect her to agree, even reply to this. But she did:
"Yup, coz if I make a sad face, everyone would get worried about me, especially my parents."
And this is what finally stopped me talking. To this I had no reply.
But it got me thinking of how I never think in this way. If I am feeling low, I make sure everyone around me knows that, although this is all unintentional. I just can't get myself to smile, when I don't feel like it. And this friend of mine, who happens to be of almost my age, just about more than one month younger, and she has learnt to smile in any circumstance. She does complain about her life sometimes, but not as much as I do. She always amazes me with her little stories of problems of her life. These problems are the ones, all of us face, these are the problems I face too, but I never do that with as much courage as she does and again with a smile on her face.
This little dialogue of ours, really got me to like her......

And then there are others like me, who have nothing better than to complain about their lives and about others. Unfortunate people who continue doing this even when they know it's a great big sin.
But in spite of these differences I still sometimes think that everyone is the same at least to some 0.000001 extent. We have all been blessed with some things, some amazing talents, and we all think that we have been deprived of a lot. And some of us only want to get to that deprived part, we try to just get hold of the things we don't have as soon as possible. I am not saying this is a bad thing, it's just that in this race we ignore the things we already have, evading the chances of a much better life, I guess.
But who am I to talk about such things?????
I am just a talker. :)