Tag: love

  • Mevlana

    I’ve an unresolved affinity for Maulana Rumi (Mevlana in Turkish) – an intuition that he might be the only saviour I will ever have. I taught myself basic Persian 3 years ago only to read his Masnavi and I still haven’t read it.

    What if he doesn’t live up to my expectations of him? What if I fail to live up to his?

    Konya is home to Rumi therefore, it was hard to come to Istanbul and forget Konya. Though I couldn’t visit it during my first layover in Istanbul while traveling to Italy, I made sure I see it on my way back. If you’re traveling to Europe from Pakistan and are interested in visiting Mevlana, Turkish Airlines will be your cheapest bet. After landing in Istanbul, you’ll have to take domestic flights for Konya and back because it is not an international airport.

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    Landing in Konya on an overcast day. Taurus mountains can be seen in a distance.

    Besides being a small public airport, Konya is also a military base so I could spot Turkish Air Force’s C-130s on the tarmac while my plane taxied to the terminal. I had already booked a motel room near Mevlana Türbesi (Rumi’s tomb) earlier while departing from Milan. Soon after I had landed in Konya, i realized my European sim wasn’t exactly functional here and the natives wouldn’t understand English. I could very well see a disaster unfold – how on earth was I going to navigate my way to my motel and then to Mevlana’s tomb if not with the internet or a local guide understanding my language? Thanks to Mevlana though; he became my guide, my host. All I had to say to the passport control at Istanbul airport, the bus driver, the pedestrians, the random strangers, the beggars and the prostitutes of Konya, was the word “Mevlana”. It seemed to be a word from some universal language. A word powerful enough to warm up a stranger to another, a host to a guest, a guide to a lost traveler. Not long after, I was in my motel with Mevlana just 400 meters east.

    I spent that night in conflicting emotions. It was not exactly spiritual, to say the least. The room next to mine was occupied by a couple who started to let off their steam right after I unlocked the door to my room. I flipped open the Masnavi in my phone to distract myself and tried to read it over the loud thrusting and moaning but eventually had to give in, put my phone aside and wait for them to finish.

    Next morning, I set off early before sunrise. Remember I had no internet so I navigated my way in the morning twilight like ancient wayfarers and caravan guides with the rising pinkish hues on the horizon being my sole sense of direction for east. I went about my usual way, preferring narrow streets over wide roads every time I had a choice. This might have taken me long but led to some hidden treasures too.

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    Nar-i-Ask – a small streetside art gallery I came upon. Nar-i-Ask is a Persian word, written here in Latin and Arabic script, meaning “The fire of love”

    Eventually one of the streets left me at a wide traffic-less intersection and a huge structure stood in the middle of it. I knew I had reached somewhere important. My heart skipped a beat – it could be Mevlana Türbesi.

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    The western front of Cami Selimiye – a minaret of Rumi’s tomb can be seen at it’s back (to the right)

    I soon realized it was not. I walked past the intersection and around the building to reach the courtyard in its front. The wall inscription beside the door read “Cami Selimiye”. The architecture was similar to the mosques of Istanbul and the tiled space stretching in front of it seemed more like a public square due to its vastness.

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    I was confused. Though magnificent it was in its own right, i was too close to the Rumi’s tomb to be happy for finding Cami Selimiye. Mevlana was nowhere to be seen. Or so I thought. Upon my inquiry, the street selling woman sitting on the stairs outside the Cami, told me what I saw to my left was in fact my destination. I zoomed out and yes, there it was. I had probably mistaken it to be an extension of Cami in spite of its very distinct architecture.

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    It was a moment of epiphany, regret, happiness, sadness – quite a turmoil of emotions. I wanted a close up of Mevalana’s final resting place.

    20190629_063809.jpgMy return flight was 1000 hrs and the tomb was to open for visitors at 0900 hrs so this is the closest I got to Mevlana. I could see a series of small minarets of Mevlana’s tomb from the courtyard and wondered what life would be like for dervishes in the cells underneath them.

    Perhaps I was too impure to be let inside. Mevlana might have wanted me to read his Masnavi first before visiting him. So be it. I turn back.

    I’ll see you again, Mevlana.

    I took some steps then turned instinctively, one final time, perhaps to etch the memory of this place forever in my mind.

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  • Peace

    If it were up to me

    I would wish you peace

    of all the things in the world

    because it’s been too long

    that you’ve been fighting

    unknown battles on faraway fronts.

    I can see you

    wearing out

    breaking down

    as the hands of clock

    are running round;

    living the battles alone

    I had once hoped

    to fight by your side.

    As I lay now

    in my comfortable chaise longue

    and you wounded,

    perhaps mortally,

    in a distant battlefield,

    I try to write

    a string of words

    a prayer or a wish

    that might comfort you

    against the ugly dance

    of raging death.

    There are n number

    of beautiful words

    you could say

    to a parting friend

    but I know

    for you

    “peace” is not one

    “not till your last breath”,

    you had said.

    A warrior you lived

    and you hope to die

    nothing less.

    So I’d wish you instead

    all the pretty four lettered words

    starting from “luck”

    and taking the liberty

    to end

    with “love”.

  • Konya – Rumi’s Abode

    As Vayu, the tropical cyclone, approaches the coastal towns of South India and particularly Karachi, I think I’ve found a brand new metaphor for my own religiosity in it.

    Recklessly unbridled from outside and hauntingly hollow from the core. Creating a stir all around and changing directions all the same; powerful yet empty in the eye.

    I hope it achieves enough in its power, recklessness and destruction that long after I’m gone, it’s carefully preserved, if not in the meteorological journals then at least in my memos, letters and emails to my victims.

    Call it a stroke of luck or a sweep of typhoon (if you allow me to drag my metaphor this long), I was able to arrange a reasonably long stopover at Konya, Turkey in my upcoming official visit to Italy next week – long enough to pay my respects to Maulana Jalal ud Din Rumi. If you don’t already know my interest in and association with Rumi, now is not the time to share it because this blog will otherwise turn into a treatise. My feelings about the whole affair are quite mixed. I think this is exactly what I had in mind when I wrote my poem “Tempest“.

    Have you been to Konya?

  • Sb Maaya Hai

    Yeh ishq bhi ajeeb hai
    Kabhi saccha kabhi jhooṭa
    Donon taraf se mann mera mann tera looṭa

    The song Sb Maaya Hai catches attention with its generous understanding that love essentially remains armed with its characteristic capability to devastate whether or not it’s ‘true’. With it’s rather surprising opening, it calls into question the conventional connotations of ‘true’ and ‘false’ love, tacitly implying that they are but meaningless, irrelevant adjectives that don’t and can’t dampen the severity and vulnerability called love. The song might come as strangely uplifting to anyone who has ever engaged in a love that didn’t eventually turn out to be the ‘ultimate’, and hence what’s conventionally known to be ‘true’, love. The importance placed on the singularity of the beloved in the journey of True Love is perhaps overamplified; love can still be true (or if we discard the meaningless adjective, love can still be love) if each beloved is thought of as a step in a thousand miles journey, a moment in an infinity, a vanishing mirage giving way to a new one in a distance, along the same path.

    I like to think I haven’t overanalyzed the lyrics. Here’s the link to Coke Studio’s version of the song:

    https://soundcloud.com/cokestudio/attaullahesakhevi-sanwalesakhelvi-sabmayahai

  • A Beautiful Mind

    My aunt is a lovely human being who I find smiling all the time. She graduated in genetic engineering from KU with a first-class-first (gold medal) back in ’80s and was appointed as research officer in DESTO Labs right after. The tragedy of her life was that one of her series of breakthrough researches on cancer was published by her professor under her own name. My phupho was an empowered, independent and vocal woman who didnt know giving up so she decided to fight back. But when she protested, she was harassed and terrorised by her professor’s hooligans. My papa was a well-built martial artist and remembers having broken quite some wrists when they bullied her with knives. But then papa wasn’t always around, and after a continual torture that lasted for around a year and consisted of phupho been catcalled in the streets when she left for work, physically attacked and harassed, she finally shattered like glass one day and only whithered with time. Now she spends most of her time reading, confined in one of the many rooms of my father’s house. When I was young, I remember having rich conversations with her on topics like plants, God, astronomy and of course biology, her favorite. So this time round, as I got a spare day or two from my job, I came over to visit her and had a nice and warm chit chat. She often trailed off like always, spoke of mysterious terminologies all the while letting a beautiful, beautiful smile play on her lips. So I put it all down on paper to keep it safe, forever.

    So phupho, when did you graduate from KU?
    We simply count LITE. It is said that in calendar, there are impacts with different worlds like shaker, anti-aging English world. Salts can favor us regarding this world. They say if you are load conservative, they will only tell you about calendar year. For example, you’re following blade platinum, press, brass or bronze plate which can also peep in your grid planted at your residence. If you are load conservative, reflecting yourself as a symbol, we will count you that you are represented by calendar of brass, bronze or simply paper telling you about either advertisements, sceneries, transparencies and different historical spots. Tourism too tells us about different spots for tours. Then we will tell you symbol is introduced with calendar i.e brass, bronze or paper. Usually on calendar it’s given that this calendar is produced with association of chemicals.

    If you get a choice to live in either Karachi or Rahim Yar Khan, what would you opt for?
    Admirably we would want to live in Karachi. Its a city of lights. Karachi is a city of lights (sparkly eyes). While RYK is z-cap.

    Where did you get your primary schooling from?
    I was first admitted into Presentation Convent School, Rawalpindi. Later the school was converted to Cantonment Public School. Rawalpindi was a source. From there we had previously planned to shift to Karachi. We planned to move to karachi because it was the city of lights. (Sparkly eyes, again)

    How old were you when you moved to Karachi?
    Rawalpindi simply counts how you stepped on this planet. Chemicals are volatile, they favor you, considering us age-less. They always ask us if we have knowledge about calendars, clocks, watches; i can favor you. You must learn about magnetic fields, watches, clocks, calendars, horsepower. For reading calendar, you have to have knowledge about working on barrels. For reading clocks, you have to learn magnetic fields and horsepower.

    Where in Rawalpindi did you live?
    We lived in our own palace; Paramount Palace. At sources there was only Paramount Palace. Later, there were many people who introduced their chips at Rawalpindi.

    Potato chips?
    (Smiling) No, chips of different planets.

    Okay, so how far was Saddar from your place?
    Sorry, i don’t quite remember.

    Do you remember anything about Rawalpindi?
    Any type of research which was related with recent hapenings alongwith need or requirement. We used to open our showrooms. There we used to sit for research and also used to collect our needs and requirements. Later after collecting it, we used to lock our showroom.

    How was Rawalpindi back in 1980s?
    We have not visited Rawalpindi. Once there was a tour, managed by university. In those days, i had viewed Rawalpindi and Islamabad.

    Do you have any memory about the twin cities?
    No i just viewed the city from bus. We visited University of Islamabad, i just recalled.

    Why couldn’t you remember it for the first time? Was that a faint memory?
    University said that tour bus would give you a ride through the city. You could only view the city from the running bus. Later we went to the univeristy. It will entertain you and give you hints for charming a bright future, will also give you hints of enchantments which can grab you if you strike them. It will favor your bright future but you must not forget that we will not tell you about any hymn or prayer or any type of words given by scientists or monks and nuns but tell you about chemicals, dessicate high chemicals which are evaporated due to heat. This heat can grab you, will reflect itself as a disease like heat stroke as that you can simply follow your laboratory research. When you have knowledge about dessication of salts, how can we collect volatiles in laboratory? How can we consume volatiles for research? Someone had expired because her spirit had left her body. Instead you worked on dessication of high salts and absorb yourself as a student.

    Did you watch television?
    In those days, we have memory about channels simply on letters, codes, literature, mining and music. They usually tell us that it looks that each and everything is in our hands but it itself is simply a box, music box.

  • Where Earth meets the Sky

    Three kilometers into the x-country, i decided it was time to gear up the pace. I looked up at the pacer to my left to check if he was ready for the blast. Raja had just taken his shirt off letting the September sun wash over his sculpted torso, his abdominal muscles gleaming like rippling waves of bronze and his pace perfectly locked with mine with the kind of natural synchronicity that I had doubted before could even exist. In the agony of a race, it was a delight to look at him – his body leaning forward, neck craning slightly ahead of his shoulders and gaze fixated firmly on the dirt ground that rolled beneath us in a flurry – he was strong and steady and didn’t seem like giving up anytime soon. Neither did I.

    Ever since i had discovered him, Raja ran like that. And I have always marveled at his style which is beautiful, child-like and allows him to run fiercely fast. Out of hundreds of people I have run and competed with over the years, he seems to be the only guy who reminds me of Pre. The same lightning quick starts, mid race burnouts and the devil-may-care attitude once the race gun fires. But so long as he is running, there’s no denying the fact that he is a moving, huffing and puffing masterpiece.

    I am a big believer in the fact that where you look at in your run tells a great deal about who you are in life. And if it’s true, Raja, with his eyes always dug into the rolling dirt trail beneath him, in fact, is an earthrunner. Humble, generous, caring and easy to be friends with. I, on the other hand, am a skyrunner. Cocky, cold, private and aloof. And how the two of us can get along so well in a x-country run is a fascinating mystery that I might never be able to solve.

  • Void

    When God created us, he left an aching void in us that could only be filled up by His love. Therefore, mankind embarked on a painstaking journey to find Him back and since nobody had actually seen God or knew what He looked like, the only tool they had to identify Him was the love-void inside of them: whatever filled that void up was to be the God!

    As long as His Beauty transcended the reach of their senses, they kept searching for it until they caught a reflection of it somewhere. Every time that happened, the caravan would halt there, closely inspect the thing that’s apparently exuding the Light of God, term it as mere illusion, discard it (or carry it as a relic) and move on. The ancient journey stretches to and continues up until our time.

    Our unconscious mind is a mysterious, intricate web of memories, lived and default. The Promise of Alast عہدِاَلَست is one such default memory that’s not actually lived by our bodies (although our souls were made witness to it in The World of Souls i.e. عالمِ اَرواح), is weak and hazy and lacks objective details like all other memories – but amazingly, it has a surprising capacity to override much stronger memories in order to storm our conscious mind to remind us that we have a Beloved to seek. The dormant yearning, thus catches fire. The torture it brings is familiar to us all.

    Our love-void is like a massive black hole consistently drawing us into anything that resembles God in the least. It could be anything from purity to strength to character to beauty because God alone is the origin of all likable attributes. Even if we encounter a single one of these traits, in the least of degrees, in somebody or something, we might feel immensely attracted to them because of our predisposition to fill up the void in ourselves, and start loving them. We can love them for as long as they stay true to our idea of God. Obviously, none but God fulfills this promise. So there come disappointments and the love eventually fades away with time as we start again to seek His Beauty until we find someone else. Only this time round, we make sure they last longer in the face of our godly ideal.

    People ask if the journey ends somewhere. No, it doesn’t. They’ll keep asking for more. At least, that’s the case with the perfect lover and the perfect Beloved: no one can love Allah more than Muhammad (S.A.W.) did, yet in His last days He used to say, “Forgive me, God, I couldn’t know Thee as I should have.” You see, he yearned for even more of His love.

    Don’t you hate your Nafs ever. It’s something that eventually gets you to your destination. What happens when you place an obstacle in a fast moving river. The water initially stops, gathers around the obstacle and its level begins to rise. The river gains greater strength near the obstacle until it either breaks it apart or sweeps it along. Same goes for Nafs. While attempting to resist our pursuit of Beauty by engaging us in distractions, it only manages to be an obstacle in the course of the free river of Love flowing inside of us. Every time that happens, our river stops for a while, we feel that we are missing something important though we might not know exactly what it is and we may even fall into depression. But ultimately we break away the obstacle and come out stronger and nearer to God in the journey of love. That’s how it goes. Had there been no obstacle, there would have been no progress either, see?

    Last and the most important question: How can you gain His love in this world? There’s a mystic saying about it: there are as many paths to God as there are human souls on earth. However, there are some baby steps that we can take. Read about the people who actually gained His love. Drop your guard for your inner sense of Beauty in order to let it guide you freely. But above and beyond everything else, read Allah. He, of all the beings, knows how do we get to Him and He has made no secret of the Path. The opening chapter of Quran, Surah Fatiha, consists solely of the supplication that addresses this fundamental need of ours: اھدنا الصراط المستقیم i.e. Guide us to the right Path and it seems like, as Dr. Israr says, the whole of Quran that follows, is a divine response to this supplication.

    So it’s definitely well worth a read. But what happens when you first open it? I’ll hopefully write on this later and I’m quite positive you’ll be able to relate!

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    P.S. This was originally written in response to a host of questions posed by an old fellow who grew up mainly in a liberal atmosphere but felt a growing void and a yearning for the divine inside of her. I just wanted to connect the two using Iqbal, Dr. Israr and Dr. Rafiuddin. Another thing that i had in my mind while writing this, was a casual discussion with a fellow blogger. Please feel free to comment, add, discuss or correct!

  • Love Aghast

    Love grows like weed in your backyard. It needs no water, no sun, and more often than not, its unwanted. Smoke it once and it pumps itself in your veins, in the red gossamers of your bloodshot eyes, in the vaulted archways of your god-damn heart. It fills you up and keeps oozing out until the whole world rolls up and fades away in a distance and nothing, absolutely nothing, is the same anymore!!

  • Mother God

    Though God is an ethereal spirit with no sexual connotations to its gender, the debate over His “actual” gender has passionately raged in the recent decades particularly in the wake of the rise of radical feminism in reaction to the timeless patriarchy that had reigned supreme. The reason i am writing this is that this debate is not distant, irrelevant or academic, it rather dictates how we perceive God in our day to day lives, defines our faith and how we act under its influence.

    The most prevailing understanding of the gender of God is that God is predominantly a powerful masculine figure. This understanding possibly originated and strengthened over centuries in attempts to explain the attributes of God being Strong (Qawi), Subduer (Qahhar), Avenger (Muntaqim) and Compeller (Jabbar). Though there are other equally important attributes like Jamal (Beauty) that are the prototype of femininity but since these scholarly attempts were made in patriarchal societies so it is not very surprising for male-chauvinistic interpretations to have made their way into the sacred religious texts passed on to later generations. This partially explains why today, we refer to, and more importantly understand, God as a watchful man-guard over the universe though theological descriptions leave sufficient room for alternative explanations.

    The question remains: Is God REALLY a watchful man-guard or is He more of a compassionate mother – the love of whom envelops the universe?

    Islam has a distinctive edge over other religions of the world in that its Holy Book i.e. Quran has survived literally intact for centuries under conflicting and sometimes, even battling Muslim governments after the Prophet Muhammad (S.A.W.). Karen Armstrong brings to our notice a commonly recited but strikingly overlooked piece from Quran i.e. the very Bism-illah-irrahman-irrahim.

    …Nor was God distinctively male. Each recitation began with the invocation: “In the name of Allah, the Compassionate (al-Rahman) and the Merciful (al-Rahim). Allah was a masculine noun, but the divine names al-Rahman and al-Rahim are not only grammatically feminine but related etymologically to the word for womb(!)

    It must be a shocking revelation for anybody who recites Quran on a regular basis. In the very tasmiah, God uses one masculine and two feminine names for Him(?)self, which although does not prove that God is predominantly feminine, in the very least points to the fact that God doesn’t want this side of Him(?) to be taken any lightly.

    I was scrolling down a forum when i found this gem posted by MariaS.

    Some people may say when huwa means “he” and “it” and hiya means “she” and “it” then why is God using huwa if hiya and huwa both mean “it” as Allah says : Qul huwAllahu ahad [Say he is One and Alone]? Answer: In A’rabic grammar, there are certain rules and criteria for feminine gender: 1) If it is feminine in nature like ummun [mother], ukhtun [sister]. 2) If the word ends with an A’rabic word ‘ta‘ like mirwaahatun [fan]. 3) If the word ends ‘badha Alif‘- an A’rabic letter. 4) Pairs of the body like yadun [hands], a’inun [eyes]. As the above criteria are not getting satisfied, by default Allah uses huwa-it.

    I am not concluding this piece because i understand that people have different opinions. I do not intend to “establish” anything here neither do i feel the need of doing it nor do i find myself qualified for that. It’s just that i am going through a spiritual crisis where invoking God is, as i see it, the only way out and invoking a mother God feels much easier and more natural. Besides, I feel it’s really important for us to see God in the universe. The watchful man-guard is hard to see, the compassionate mother is hard not to.

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    P.S. In case this article interests you, there are some links that i would like you to check out.

    Islam and the Divine Feminine

    God’s Feminine Side Is Plain to See (slightly offensive but makes the point anyway)

    Shekhina: The Feminine Aspect of God

    Also, in case you are into literature, Paulo Coelho, in his book “By the River Piedra, I Sat Down and Wept”, makes an overwhelmingly beautiful case for the feminine God.

  • Symphony

    Symphony

    There is a fable that once upon a time, right after the town-clock struck midnight, the gangsters gathered in the town-hall and fired pistols at moon. The suburban sky lit up, the stars faded in the brilliant firework and a sweet smell of sulfur filled the damp night air. The moon bled silver that night. The gunshots rhymed. The bats fluttered back and forth through the bullet holes in sky and sang:

    “Watch out. The gangsters make symphony tonight!”