Places

Severe writers block going on. I havent written in 3 months and cant think of anything to write about.
Something that comes to mind is that recently I have been travelling alot in Pakistan. Only in this year, I have been to Skardu with Florian, Multan Bahwalpur and Dirawar Fort with Flo, Hamza and Zeeshan and then Chitral with Hamza and Zeeshan. This blog entry is taking the shape of a personal diary but I have to write something so writing something I am.

There are only few places left in Pakistan for me to see. Top amongst them would be Balochistan because I have never been there. I might plan a trip to Quetta and Gwadar. I have high hopes from it and feel that it would be alot of fun. I have also never been to Naran and Jheel Saif-ul-Malook. Someday I will. 

She just wants her kid to be happy

Today I am going to write about the maid we have had in our house since as far as I can remember. She has worked for the family for more years than I have been alive.

10 years ago, I overheard her having a conversation with another maid in which she questioned how all her life she basically worked for this one family. That how she couldn’t believe that that was all there was to life. That ALL her life she will work for the same family earning a meager amount and that’s it, then her life is over. There was disappointment in her tone, disbelief in her words and utter resignation in her air.

Quite recently, a relative of mine suggested that she should send her son (who has come of age I think he is 17 now) to some vocational training center where he can learn to be a mechanic, an electrician or a plumber.  She didn’t out rightly deny the idea, in fact pursued it to some end as well, but some days later, she came up to me and told me very directly. She said if she wanted to make him a plumber, she wouldn’t have sent him to school in the first place. She would directly send him to work at a plumber and by now at 17 he would have learnt quite a bit of work. She didn’t want him to do anything that required no formal education.

She doesn’t want to continue being part of the class that she is part of. She doesn’t want that her kid would work at other people’s houses (which she herself did all her life). She wants him to move up a step in the social ladder but the people around him wouldn’t let her.
Another aspect of this situation is that all her life she believed education will help her change things for the kid and now her faith is education is waning. She thought in order to be rich, you need to be educated. I don’t want to be the one who tells us that the number 1 criteria to be rich is try to be born at the right place. 

Death

If you study astronomy, then you are so amazed and appalled by the complexity of the universe that nothing else excites you like that anymore. Well nothing but life. With all its colours, shades, varieties, types and forms contained on earth alone, life remains one of the two most fascinating things ever.

The only thing that does justice to the beauty of life is quite paradoxically, death. I couldn’t have imagined a better end to life than the fact that one day, all of it must end. There is so much poetic beauty in it but only if you care enough to look. What a great end death is. Poems should be written about it and songs should be sung. Songs that highlight all human endeavors and struggles coupled with all the different sorts of feelings humans come factory assembled with. Top amongst them would be ambition, the will to achieve something or the oft heard of and never really scientifically ascertained feeling of love that allegedly fills the cosmos with its beauty. How about jealousy? The “I wish I had more of this thing I see my friend has”. Then there should tales of great kings that thought they were gods or of mighty empires that dreamed of ruling the world. Then there should be music. After all we connect so deeply with it. All the best melodies should be compiled all great records re-mastered and remade. All these things fade into oblivion when compared with the ultimate champion of all cool things, death. For only death and decay is real, everything else is a facade.  

Flowers and Chocolates

On this day which has been deemed by profit hungry corporations to be the Valentines day couples all over the world are showing love and affection towards their better halves. Yet here I am sitting down writing this note, thinking about the following. 

I wonder how this tradition of bringing flowers and bouquets for your girlfriends and wives ever came into existence. This is so utterly meaningless. I think its just another of those things that just happen because that’s how its always happened. Flowers serve no purpose whatsoever. They cant be cooked or eaten, worn, and do not provide shelter, heck they don’t even smell good these days. They are just there. Us men have to give it to these girls every Valentines day, every anniversary dinner, every time they are mad at us and every time we want to make them feel loved.

On the contrary though, I think chocolates are the absolute best way to show how much love you have for your other half. You give her chocolates and that means that you don’t mind her eating all that chocolate and becoming fat. You would love her unequivocally. No questions asked.

Happy Valentines day world. 

Linguistically Speaking

Is there a difference between the words angry, annoyed, irritated,irked perturbed? What about the differences between imitate, emulate, copy, mimic? These words are similar in meaning but do they mean exactly the same thing? Being a person who is very particular about what words I use to describe what I intend to say, I think these synonyms although similar in meaning are not absolutely interchangeable. Meaning thereby when I say I “intend” to say something, it’s not exactly the same as saying that I “want” to say something. I think this is the case with everyone. It is easy to tell the context of the conversation by carefully scrutinizing the words used in it. Albeit small, there is still a difference in meaning we associate with different words.

This makes me wonder. What if we associate slightly different meanings to the same word? What if when I say the word annoy, I intend to say something which is ever so slightly different than what the listener thinks I meant. What sort of problems could this create?

If I were to elaborate on this point a little bit, it would follow that we make sure our friends or people we love associate the same emotions and meaning to certain words as we do. Or maybe that’s how it already is. Maybe only those people become friends whose meanings of words mean similar things.

I suggest we pay very close attention to this phenomenon. We have to be extremely perceptive of it. For if we are not, this has potential to cause problems where there should be none. 

Evolution in Language

Having learnt three different languages on three different points in my life has taught me but one thing only. The way humans construct languages is brimming with flaws and imperfections. Take for example this sentence “I am having dinner”. What if this 6 syllable sound was reduced to only 1 syllable like “lik”. Now every time anyone says “Lik” we know that person is having dinner. Take another sample sentence like “the dinner is delicious”. Let us use the monosyllabic “Rut” to mean this.

What if we could construct a whole language like that. Virtually all the sentences that one can construct in a language will be coded with a single syllabic sound. I concede that it will drastically increase the number of words in the dictionary of this language and non-native speakers will find learning this language more difficult than learning German but just imagine the increase in the velocity of communication between people. Things like “Do you like it?” will be replaced with “Nak” and thats it. The point if across.

However, I wonder what effect having such a language will  have on the culture of the human civilization. Would conversations be shorter? Would we speak less? Would people have thoughts that they don’t have words for? How would poetry in such a language flourish, if at all. How would that language evolve? Would there be slang in it? How about curse words? Or would it be just too hard to learn. After all there can be virtually an infinite number of sentences in a language. Could we ever run out of syllables? We could start using two syllables then. But how do I know that isn't the way our current languages started. These questions can only be answered if such a language were to exist.

But for now, let us put this theory into test and see if the reader understands this piece of communication.

“Lik”

“Nak?”                                                                                         

“Rut”.

The Earthquake; 2015 Edition

Two days ago, South Asia was hit by a severe earthquake that is being deemed the strongest one in the history of Pakistan. The wiki article is already calling it the "Afghanistan Earthquake 2015" for reasons unknown to scientists. Following is what transpired to me as the quake hit Pakistan.

I was on the main boulevard in Defense casually talking to two other passengers when we suddenly realized that there were lots of people outside this particular bank. Upon further introspection, we realized everyone had gotten out of the buildings. We kind of figured it was an earthquake. Either that or there was a meteor approaching us from space and people wanted to get a sneak peek at that. Anyway, thats my version of what happened to me during the earthquake. Needless to say this is as boring as watching Golf on TV. okay I concede not that boring.

So ever since then everyone I meet and everywhere I go, people have been sharing their experience of the earthquake. Things like "I saw the buildings shudder" and " Man! I really starting to pray to God" and what not are to be heard often. I know its not a popular "betrachtungweise"(point of view) but I really feel bad that I have no cool story about the earthquake to share. Now or ever. I mean imagine the year is 2035 and there is like a minor quake something like a 0.7 of the Richter scale and now everyone is talking about the 2005 quake and the 2015 Quake. Imagine my shame when I tell them " hey. I was driving so I didnt feel it."  I also realize that now that I have written this I know for sure I am prone to the spell of the evil eye(that's my translation for "nazar lag jana"). For if anything happens to me in the future, people are going to be like" see! he was making jokes on his blog about the earthquake. Look what happened". This is so going to make the dead me so mad.



Or I could just make a cool story about the whole thing. I mean something like so the earth went asunder and a monster the size of Goalath shouted obscenities in Punjabi at me for no particular reason but wait thats too much. How about something like "hey  I was having a fancy lunch at the fancies place in town (check out the in built check-in within the story) and the manager came and said "oh dear Sir! allow me to escort you outside the building and here are two more fancy drinks for the way"

No. I was driving, and I didnt feel it. Damm