Eid Mubarak

It's the forth day of Eid (and I don't think there is any such thing as the forth day of Eid :P) and here I am wishing everyone Eid Mubarak. I know I am pretty late, but better late than never, right?

So here goes,

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 book with two faces

Yes, yet another article on facebook. Yes, yet another article focusing on the atrocities and injustice of this social networking site but also shedding light on the exhibition of extreme imbecile attitude from our side. With too many emails popping up with Facebook in the subject line, yet another article on the same topic seems to be a drag, it's like playing the old, old song everyone has tuned themselves out to. In spite of knowing this, I want to and need to have a say in the matter.



Most of us claim that we cannot imagine life without facebook. You don't have to exercise your imagination cells for this diminutive task as we've all been there done that. There was obviously a time when there was no facebook and I think we all survived that dark age.

We claim that facebook lets us connect with our friends. Well, ever heard of MSN, GTalk. It's not exactly called 'connecting with friends' when you update your status every other second as if the world actually cares about what you do the whole day. It's simply called 'addiction'.



And to connect with who, the friends who lack the sheer decency of calling you up to invite you to their party, instead they prefer to send you an event notification. And the people who can't even remember your birthday and need to be alerted by a system. In order to keep up with such friends we refuse to abandon facebook!

And then, of course, there are our farms to worry about.
"Who would plow my fields if I don't log in after every 14 hours or so?"

And all the photos uploaded by 'friends' without looking at which I am bound to contract a deadly disease. At one hand we keep complaining about the threats to our privacy posed by any social networking site and on the other hand we ignore of all such breaches made by facebook which badly needs to go through quality assurance. I am not going to accentuate the loopholes in their privacy policy nor am I going to highlight the bugs in their system. What I am trying to put forward is a simple statement

"Have we actually become obsessed with a social networking site which has put an end to our social life?"

I though socializing meant meeting a lot of people. Actually meeting, talking face-to-face. But yes, in this busy life of ours we don't find enough time to socialize, yet we find the time to 'relax' in front of the pc and meet people simultaneously. Working in parallel, the need of time.


Why am I against facebook? Why do I advocate quitting facebook. If I don't like it I can quit, why force others to do the same?
I do so because of one simple reason;

"I can't stand being humiliated in front of the whole wide world."

I am not going to quote any Quranic verses or Hadiths because to be honest I don't find myself knowledgeable enough to do so. Yeah, shame on me to talk about something I don't have a clue of. But what I speak here is, to the best of my understanding, pure logic based on a simple enough postulate;

"You defend what you claim to belong to."

We cater to our egos at all the wrong times. Now when there is a need for our so-called ego to come in and play it's part we sing a lullaby of our social needs and put it to sleep. The time when our reputation is at stake we choose to hide behind the veils of internet, because who would know if a Muslim logs in or not. They keep insulting our religion and we keep pretending we didn't hear a thing. From all the books they could have burnt they chose to celebrate a day to burn OUR book. And all we have to say is

"they are not actually burning it they have just put an event."

If all it is is an event then why not "Burn all books day".

We keep fooling ourselves with excuses that sound lame even to ourselves. We try to evade the truth by weaving reasons, such as:

"We are not visiting that page"

Would you keep going to a building where there is only one room where you are treated like dirt, like you are made of stone and nothing hurts you?

"In fact we have joined the community against celebrating such events."

Really!? How's that coming along? Has it brought any betterment yet?

"This is exactly why Muslims have been labeled extremists. Quitting facebook altogether is the intense reaction they are hoping for so they can later make fun of us."

NO. Extremism would be to stop using internet. Who is stopping you from using other social networking sites. There are alternatives for all the facilities they provide.

Socializing	Chatting applications, Email groups (where private conversations are in fact private)
Photo sharing	Picasssa, Flickr etc.

It's not going to put even a dent in their business. They have millions of non-Muslim users.

Its not our intention to make them suffer. It is just our way of saying 'No'.

We keep coming up with ideas of how to participate in the event and defend our religion.

Either come up with an idea strong enough to compel them to quit insulting us or.. quit yourself.

Quitting facebook would be equivalent to shouting out to the world, without even raising our voices one pitch, that

"We are Muslims. And we respect our religion more than anything else."

This of all the places is not where you can apply the theory "Can't fight them, join them." It's a situation where you keep fighting till you win. No one's asking to wage a war against them. Just a request to make them understand that what they are doing is not called freedom, it's just simply wrong. And this post is a request to all Muslims to make them understand that there cannot possibly be any other motive behind these gestures,.. other than the obvious one.

Note:
This goes not just for facebook, though the post has been written in a way that focuses only on Facebook. This goes for all entities which are promoting or participating in such events.

The Crash

This post was written yesterday, 28th July, 2010 Wednesday, the night of the crash.

It's been a long time since I wrote something for my blog, and all the recent posts have come from some deep, dark corners of my mind, so I sure didn't want another sad post to be my first post after a long time. But I have to get this out of my system.

Today, at office, concentrating on coordinating with the QA department to resolve the issues occuring at client side, the news of a plane crash in Islamabad landed on my ears. We all have become a bit accustomed to hearing bad news, a bomb blast here a riot there, or maybe it's just me who has become utterly heartless, but whatever maybe the reason, I continued to work on the task at hand.It was after a while when I started hearing from my colleagues that their relatives or acquaintances happened to be in the plane. That is when it started mattering. That is when the environment at my office became what can be called gloomy. Coming from a team where laughter is the evidence of work being done, the quiet seemed to be a bit saddening.
Coming back home, it was the first time when I was actually waiting for 9 o' clock news. All along I beared with the sense of drama being created by the news channel (is there a need to mention the name?), what with focusing on the news caster and going from bottom to top.. really, were they trying to imitate the entrance scenes usually attributed with the lead roles of movies.But still, just focusing on the words and tuning out all the drama they were trying to put in for I don't know, increasing the viewership or something, I watched half of the report being shown. All of us watched the families crying, calling out to their loved ones, while we constantly ignored the question they kept broaching for the audience, "Who was responsible for it all?". Do we really need to ask that? It wasn't like a bomb was placed in the plane that we would need to ask where the security was? It's not like the President of some country was flying that we would ask who wanted the President dead. It was a plane crash!! For crying out loud.. A PLANE CRASH. I went along with all of that. But then the news channel brought in something that compelled me to storm out of the tv lounge, and I really mean storm out.
They interviewed this person, who actually seemed to be a pretty intelligent and experienced guy. And to keep it brief, what this guy was saying was that the crash was due to some HUMAN ERROR. And all of a sudden.. they found the guy responsible.. Yippeeee... Congratulations to the news channel, they found that out all by themselves.. And here's the person to be blamed for the deaths of 152 (is the figure correct?) people including himself.. and the person is.. the PILOT.
Now what I ask is...
We all have been taught never to speak ill of the dead. I think this is not just a teaching of Islam, but all religions. Then how come blaming the pilot is not considered speaking ill.
There have been countless times when the pilots have been RESPONSIBLE for getting the passengers safely to land.. how many time the news bulletin have thanked these pilots?
How many times did this particular pilot flew the plane safely? How many times was he thanked?
Do all planes who face difficulty in bad weathers crash? NO. Then are these pilots ever considered the heroes of the nation. Then how come this pilot is the villain of the story?
And how come we are forgetting that the pilot himself passed away too. I don't think he was out for a suicide mission. How many people do we know of who would gladly and deliberately crash the plane on a mountain?

Okay. Let's just say for a minute that this WAS the pilot's mistake. Let's just say HYPOTHETICALLY that the pilot himself crashed the plane deliberately. That this was in all his and only his mistake. Then haven't we been taught to forgive and forget. Well who would forgive when the lives of 151 innocent people were lost. But when you call something a mistake, then as far as I know, it's a MISTAKE, something that was not done on purpose, but something that just happned. Aren't we supposed to forgive in that case? And it's not like the pilot himself is alive? He died with them all. Who are we to judge? Who are we to decide? Why not let the matters of Allah be His matters only? Why interfere? Who gave us the right?

Just received an sms, informing that an ex-class fellows's sister in law, the mother of a 6 year old girl, is also a victim. Which reminds me of something else. While they were interviewing the affected families, none of the relatives, in their state of immense grief, once mentioned that the pilot is to be blamed. Had any of them said the same thing, I would not have been this angry, because going through something like this, takes a lot from you, and mostly it takes away the ability to decide, the ability to decipher between what's right and what's wrong.And in such a state sometimes somethings are said or done, that needs to be forgotten later on. In fact, that needs to be forgotten immediately. Then if these people didn't say anything like this how come the people who have expertise in planes and in flying, who had not been embraced by grief thought they can blame someone and actually came out and did just that.

And for the life of me I cannot understand how a pilot can say something like this about a fellow pilot. Have they all resigned? Do they think they'll never fly a plane again, and such a thing cannot happen with them? Did they forget all that?

...........

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?"

Note:

Received in a sms. Don’t know who the poet is.. if anyone does, please do leave the poet’s name in comments. :)

 

Zamana dost ho jaye to buhat muhtat ho jana,

K is ke rang badalnay mein zara se dair lagti hai

 

Koi jo khwab dekho to usay foran bhulla dena,

K neendein toot janay mein zara se dair lagti hai.

 

Kisi ko dukh kabhi dena to itna soch kar dena,

Kisi ke ah lagnay mein zara se dair lagti hai

 

Buhat hee mautabbar hain jin ko muhabbat raas aa jaye,

Kisi ko raah badalnay mein zara se dair lagti hai