Describing a picture

There are many reasons as to why I like this picture. Top amongst them is the fact the people featured in the picture have made no superficial effort to give out the impression that they are close friends. However, if you look at the picture for 5 seconds you sense that the air between them is those of old friends, who have known each other so well and for so long that even silence between them is comforting. I also like how these two people have made no attempt to pose for the camera whereas both appear to be fully conscious that they are being snapped (assuming of course that the person on the left just stands with his legs crossed). Since we can see the blue sky as well, the impression is that of a relaxed sunny day by the river. This just adds to the overall ambience of peace and quiet where words are a mere stain on silence.

For both these people personally, the logo on top of the building on the right will always remain important, for it is/was their Alma Mater in Berlin. And because of the sadness that comes with getting only one life to live, this name is going to stay with them for the rest of their lives.

There is also a  river on one side, which to me always represents the flow, from one point in life, to another. It symbolizes the unending and quite unnerving constant metamorphosis that our lives are regularly undergoing. The river stretches as far as our eyes can see. Which is just perfect.

The only thing lacking however is that it is coloured, for I have noticed that for a picture to be considered of artistic value, it needs to be black and white. Sadly, this picture isn't.  

Words from everywhere

I have collected some knowledge about people from different countries and cultures over the time period that I have lived in Berlin. One thing that I find myself paying particular attention to these days is how words are constructed in different languages and how some words exist in one language and not in another. Following is a list of words (mostly English sadly) which I think are quite unique.


Weltschmerzen (German)

The beauty in German is that it combines words to form longer words (an "agglutinative" language since we are on the subject of words). So koepf in German means head and schmerzen means ache/pain. So Keopfschmerzen is headache. In much the same way, Welt is world and Weltschmerzen is "the pain of the world".
What it really means is that if you could imagine worrying about everythig in the world, say from hunger and politics to stars and insects to facebook to cars, if you could hypothetically worry about everything, and how temperoary everything is and how meangingful the persuit of happiness is, THEN you truely have Weltscherzen. In essence it the pain associated with just existing and just being alive.


Wanderlust (Loanword from German, now English)

Here we have, something that many young adolescents might associate themselves with. Wanderlust is the desire, the urge, the wish the hope and the lust for travelling to a place, somewhere, anywhere that one has never been to before. It symbolises breaking free from the hustle bustle of mundane life. It is for people who want to seek out "new life and new civilizations"


Alexithemia ( English)


I love words which have a sense of humour about them, and I think alexythemia is one such. This word ( which I am not sure even native speakers of English would even know. I am sure the Americans wouldnt know that , the Brits and others might:p) describes the condition one has when one cant describe emotions in a verbal manner. So they actually have a word, and quite a difficult one at that, for when you cant describe your emotions in a verbal manner. :(



Flaneur ( there is an umlaut on the letter "a" and yes it is a french word)

This word describes a person who wanders around aimlessly BUT enjoyably through life while observing everything that life has in store. All of us have it so some extent I suppose.

Baraye Meharbani ( Urdu)

What do we say when we want someone to do something for us? We say please. this is the Urdu word for please which is made up of two words Baraye ( meaning for the sake of / in order to ) and Meharbani( thankfulness)

So when you combine these two words you have something that would translate in English to "please do something after which I will thank you for doing it)

So if you meet a native speaker of Urdu (like myself) and he/she says please to you. You should picture in your head the following sentence "please do something after which I can thank you"

Adoxography ( English)

and finally I end this blog entry by mentioning a word that means "an elaborate writing on a subject of little or no use whatever" which is quite in itself the description of my blog and this post.

On Characters from Children's Books

Back when I was young ( not just by heart) I read books in which there was a clearly defined good guy character( who also looked good by the way) and a bad guy character( who of course looked bad). You could actually tell just by looking at the cover of the book as to who was the good guy or who wasn’t. Take the name of the story and the picture on the cover together, and there you have it, a working rough draft of the story. It made me feel happy and secure that I wouldn't have to read too much into the story myself. 

But when I grew up, I saw that things weren’t as simple as they seemed. For example sometimes good looking people were really absolutely nasty at heart (most of the times? nah) and really ugly (strong word lets change it) really reasonably okay looking people could be good people. I have to admit, that was a shocker. How was I now ever going to tell good people from the bad ones? My whole worldview had been changed. There was utterly no superficial way to know that anymore. Looks, apparently as it turned out, could be deceiving. Good guys didn’t just do random good things to strangers on the streets and bad guys weren’t always brooding over some evil plans to take over the world(preferably in a dark room at night) Actually all this was making me feel really sad up until again when it suddenly changed to what it used to be like before.

The Taliban are people who live in caves, mostly in Afghanistan and sometimes in Pakistan (that is if you actually know the distinction between the two countries and you don’t think one is a city within the other). Their weapon of choice is an AK47 rifle (mine too actually in the computer game counter strike). Their job is to blow things and people up. They have been doing it for years and as the architect of the Matrix says "have become increasingly efficient at it”. They sport beards and wear the traditional dress from the region which is "shalwar kameez". Most importantly they look and act DIFFERENT. Different than what I am. They are also generally seen on camera almost always carrying a rifle (even when the apparent purpose of the video is to talk to people from the media). They claim to follow the shariah law (at least their own version of it) and have sister organizations or daughter concerns virtually everywhere in the world. Literally anything wrong that happens anywhere in the world is carried out under the guileful command of the Taliban leaders, and only so that there is no confusion they are always quick to accept responsibility for things that happen in Iraq or South Sudan or Syria or well, unsurprisingly Afghanistan. 

So now once again I feel the same thing. I no longer have to think about the bad guys or the good guys. The news channels just do that for me. And then they just tell me what I have to think about. And I like a truly modern man of the 21st century, humbly always comply. So at the end of the day, I again know how/what the bad guys look like, smell touch taste feel say talk do. Yet again you name a news story containing that name and show me a picture simultaneously and I can tell what the story is going to be about. Ahh. It has made my life simpler once again.

Disclaimer: I detest and abhor to my very core the ideals that the Taliban hold and represent and wish that the world soon will be rid of people like them. The purpose of this blog however has only been to state that every time I hear something on the news, like this,  I feel there is more to the story than meets the eye. 

Its that thing you know

Invariably, all the people I have met in Berlin speak more than one language. The last sentence is a colossal understatement because most people speak three or more languages. And when you speak many languages, the most profound benefit that you have is having something else to talk about with strangers you meet for the first time, other than weather and world politics. You can talk about languages themselves.
More often than not, people will also tell you how they have a “thing” for languages. I don’t know what having a “thing” for languages means but it certainly means something cool or else people wouldn't be saying that so often. This reminds me I also used to say the same thing. And I don’t anymore because I speak only two languages and that’s a low number of languages to know if you want the claim of the “thing with languages” to be taken seriously by anyone.

So virtually everyone I have met here I have told this one thing. I generally tell it right after telling them how similar I think German and Urdu are (which happens when I tell them that “I AM learning German” (this happens when they ask me “ARE you learning German”?)). Anyway so when I tell them I think Urdu and German are similar, their response is always “really? How come” and then I pull up my sleeves and get into the nitty gritties. I have told the exact same thing to many people so many times that it almost seems like a script that I rehearse over and over again. Lately I have been thinking whether I have become so old that I do not remember I am repeating myself or not. I certainly do hope I haven’t. This similarity in these languages is telling people the word for “capital city” in Urdu. In my defence, if indeed you can come to your own defence, but in my defence, the word for “capital city” in Urdu IS really interesting and it DOES really remind me of how words are constructed in the German language. For the interest of the reader it is “dara-ul-hakoomat” and it means a region within which the government of a country is located. Wonderful isn’t it. There you go. Now when we meet for the first time, you would know what I will say.

 OHHHHHHHH Now I see why I am so pathetically sad and lonely here. It makes perfect sense now.

On Names

"Hello! My name is Andy" said Andy

"Yeah! But I am  going to call you John" Said Amy

"Well! that's not my name"

"I don't care, I will call you that, and all people who share  language with me will call you that" Amy insisted.

If the conversation above does not seem a little strange then the writer has failed in his efforts altogether. What it should serve is a reminder of the fact that, countries and languages are called differently depending on who is saying the name. So for example, despite the fact that the Germans don't call themselves Germans, and intead call themselves "Deutsch" and their county is not called Germany, but "Deutschland" , speakers from English speaking countries call them Germans and Germany respectively.  I really don't understand the difficulty in calling them what they call themselves. I mean that should be the right of an entity to be at least called what it desires to be called.


A little background check tells me what the terms exonym and endonym are, and no surprise that I am in utter disagreement with them. I think exonyms should only be employed when the identity of a particular group of people can not be ascertained with any reasonable authenticity and it is important to refer to them in some way. But when the identity and "name" of a group can be easily established and merely so by asking the simple question as to what their name is, its endonymistic name should always be used.
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Christmas and New Years'

So recently I have been asking this question from myself as to why do most of my blog entries start with the word "so" but "so" far I don't have an answer. Maybe its because the word "so" "so" uniquely intertwines real life events to the written word. Anyway

The holiday season is upon us. In a few days time, its going to be Christmas. There is a general sense of joy and mirth in the air. Every important place is lit up, and it hasn't snowed. A lot of my friends have been coerced by their parents into visiting them for Christmas. This appears to be a time when people in Berlin give in to tradition and visit their families. I feel Christmas has the same air of festivity in Berlin as Eids do in Lahore. There are fewer cars on the roads, fewer people on train stations, there are lots of Christmas markets throughout Berlin and people are visiting them by the hundreds. Interestingly enough, many people I know who are going away for the Christmas are still going go be back by the new years. Clearly they think New Years would be best celebrated in Berlin.

In a few days, a new year is going to start. I dont know for the world, and 2013 has been quite a ride. With this I must take leave and wish my readers an extremely eventful next year.  

A conversation with myself

Cosmos( to itself) : Ah! It seem like we are ready. Besides I want to talk to someone. I am bored of talking to myself all the time. Oh Yes.

no answer.

no answer

utter silence

Cosmos. Lights please (and the cosmic dark ages are over and the first stars shine). Ah! Much better. I like it when things are bright. "cough cough". oh my. there is wayyyyyyyyyy too much hydrogen. Give us some variety oh stars!

The really massive stars shine bright and luminous, running out of fuel soon and explode in colosal supernovae explosions creating heavier elements and spreading them out into the cosmos.

Cosmos: hmm. New elements. Interesting. But do they just float around in space or they actually do something? Show me some sizzleeeeeee....I like recyling. Recycle yourselfs stars.

The stars form second generation of stars and then the third generation of stars.

Cosmos: Okay Cool! I like this Supercluster. What is it called? oh yeah the Virgo Supercluster. and whats that group of galaxies over there called? Ah yes the local group. Okay cool. Whats that barred spiral over there? The Milky way? Cheesy name but will stick to that. Ah Spiral arms. Is there a sun nearby? What? Several billion? Well lets just take one.  and well lets call it the Sun. anything special about it? The only thing special is that its an average sized average looking star with average luminoisity and surgace temperate. okay. great. what are these tiny specks around it? ah what the heck. the "pale blue" dot looks cool. okay lets visit it. whats going on in here?yuckkkkkkkkkk! a puddle of mud? I hate mud. dammm.

""Thunder and lighting"""

Cosmos: Much better. dammn its gonna take a while. But oh well.

4.5 Billion earth revolutions around the sun later

Human: ooobbooboooboo gagagagag lalalalalall hu ha hy ha.

Cosmos: yeahhhhhhh! (rolls eyes)

Further down in time. I mean waaay further down.

Aristotel: hmm. you know what guys? I am a great philosopher and I cant be wrong. also the earth is flat. and centre of the UNIVERSE.

Cosmos: pesky insects.

Humanity: earth? flat? makes sense great. centre of everything? okay floats our boat. cool.

Galilio: You know what? I would like some moons named after me. Earths moons taken. I call dibs on Jupiters. oh shit

Humanity: What?

Galileo. Jupiters moons revolve around Jupiter. So atleast there is someting that doesnt revolve around the earth.

Church: You crazy nigga? that is so not cool. FINISH HIM!

Galileo ::: NOOOOOOOo actually. I think I need glasses. sorry my bad

Church: Shut this guy up please......

Beginning of the 20th century

Hubble: Aha. Lets have a look at this fuzzy patch of light in Andromeda. I wonder if its a nebula, maybe its just dust. oh . aha. So its a galaxy larger than the milky way itself. pretty smooth. and there are billions of galaxies

Einstein: You know what? Space and time are actually one thing. and on the highway of the universe, the speed limit is c. and gravity is the dent of that spacetime.

the world: crazy old guy.

several successful experiments later

World: Gulp Gulp



and years and years of gazing into the skies wondering where did all this come from. Where did we come from.

Stuff made from the cosmos: I wanna know more about me. More and more, and boy there is so much more to know.