Eastern Vagabond

Essays on travel, cities, memory, and the unnoticed textures of the world.

Tag: motivation

  • The Last Warrior

    Not until i had actually plunged into that untouched valley, did I know there could exist such a divine beauty in the heart of the metropolitan. It’s quite hard to imagine an outback bordered by commercial city area on one side and a state-of-the-art university on the other. In my hunt to run and explore beautiful places around, i had almost given up on the idea of treading a hinterland ever. But last week just after Asar, as i casually walked towards one of the lost gates of the university which was more like a tall, rusty scrap of cast iron and opened to nobody-knew-where, i suddenly found myself face to face with that baffling phenomenon; you know, a-herd-of-cows-grazing-in-a-pasture-right-in-the-middle-of-an-urban-world phenomenon!

    I ran through the huge meadow, mud-houses and grazing cattle and climbed up a hill overlooking the buzzing city. The contrast was painfully stark. Just across the road, the icons of the civilized world stood tall. The meadow on my back was perhaps the last retreat of the handful warriors who were yet not ready to give in to urbanization – and if you get a chance to run through the scarcely inhabited settlement, you’ll know why. Urban life-style maybe too catchy for some, there still are people who just can’t resist the charms of primitive living. Standing there for a moment, i felt just like Jaguar-Paw when he stood facing the sea looking at conquistador ships anchored off the coast and Spanish people moving ashore. He had to decide whether he wanted to embrace the unknown, dazzling civilization ahead or retreat to his woods. Without a sign of remorse, he had quietly turned back. The setting sun that day, saw me doing the same.

  • A Weekend Out Of My Little Universe

    It’s not just everyday that you get to spend your weekend in so much peace away from the babbling about the upcoming assignments and the looming OHTs or the nerds ranting how smart they were to not fall for the glitch in the last quiz in spite of all the odds stacked against them, and the Gilgiti roommates just down my corridor who would never let go of those same gut-churning traditional tunes that have been flying about the corridors of the hostel for the last two years; perhaps they feel good pretending to be the last surviving comrades of an almost extinct civilization.

    The workshop was held in Quba Mosque, Humak Town. As soon as you step in the mosque, you enter some sort of parallel universe which defies all the theories of this physical world. Time seems to have slowed down. Some branches of a tree in the yard creep up to the old-fashioned window-sills and you can see the setting sun through the rusty grills that weave through it (and that makes me nostalgic for some reason). That window perhaps serves as a calendar and a clock because neither of the two did i find in there. The leaves can tell the season and sun, the hour and that is actually more precise of a time than the people there will ever need to know. Time goes by as slowly as does the sun and the concept of quantification of time fades away as does the tick-ticking of the clock. And so in a little niche of the modern world, time still exists as an infinite entity. The building seems to hold a peculiar medieval academic air, which almost magically vivifies the scholar in oneself emanating a yearning for knowledge. There was so much tranquility all over the place and on the faces of Mudarrisoon that i have never wanted more to quit everything else in the world for that.

  • My Long Run

    A rare picture of Kashmir Highway under-construction.
    A rare picture of Kashmir Highway under-construction.

    I have just begun. The road outside the campus gate is so steep, I can imagine it still running through those ancient mountains now been flattened to make room for the city skyline. Though it’s not prudent to do a long run against the clock, that’s the only option I’m left with when in a rush to get somewhere before it’s dark. Once I get past those initial steep miles, the run is predominantly steady-state. So you don’t have to do much except glide along on the windy highway. While gliding past the honking cars, traffic jams, slums and naked children with running noses, my mind slowly drifts off to a semiconscious neutral state and some of the most amazing things happen in there: weird ideas and secret jokes once shared between my old school-fellows which never got old enough through the ebb and flow of life descend my numbing mind in a strange harmony in an almost mystic fashion. A subtle smile creeps across my face. I look at the bewildered faces of the pedestrians passing by who see me running almost daily and yet can’t resist their impulse to find some furious, man-eating abomination chasing me every time I rush past them: they will never be able to make themselves comfortable with a lone guy running madly on the highway, I think, amused.

    The white fluffs of clouds dance playfully as the sky puts up a lovely show of colors. What a perfect adieu, I think while running placidly through the dusty orange glow of the setting sun. Soon the dusk will fall and the darkness will gradually envelop me. And I have always loved that for it always conceals my agony so comfortingly that I no longer need to pull up a nice face for anyone. The darkness is burgeoning swiftly. It’s late, I think and pick up the pace, and a sudden feeling of utter loneliness presses at my heart like an abandoned child waking up to realize that he may not make it back home ever. Racing the crawling cars and rickshaws and dodging the cyclists, off I kick through the final miles until the destination arrives. I look down at my watch. The sticky thing wrapped around my wrist, now dripping with sweat, tells me I have been all my myself for more than an hour.

    The suffering is immense but then that’s what being human is all about, I recall her saying and smile wearily. I might never run out of reasons to run.

  • A Walk Down The Memory Lane

    The hot summer of Islamabad has become pleasant with a recent downpour, also the harbinger of the onset of a much-longed-for monsoon. Being alone in the hostel, far away from home and attending a not-so-important-but-still-a-good-excuse-to-stay-away-when-things-are-not-that-good-at-home workshop, in an extremely hot weather backed up by frequent power-outs is as uncool as it sounds. Anyway, with the recent change in weather the nights have become much more charming and broad black and well lit roads of NUST more inviting for a light stroll after the dinner. When you have spent a day doing absolutely nothing just willing to curl up into a ball and roll away into far-off meadows, you can’t just miss this opportunity to have a time-out from your seemingly meaningless life.

    When I started with it, I did not have the least idea that this apparently aimless stroll will turn into a walk down the memory lane – one of the many things in my life i have always longed for but thought i didn’t have time for. Mud-scented breeze, long smooth black road, yellow street lights and the darkness all around cast a spell on me and memories came rushing…And by the time i came back, i had lived my life all over again. I wondered why keeping aside my pen and books for a while had been so difficult for me for so long, making me miss out on some tremendously fascinating things around me and within.

    Funny enough, my desire to get some peace was destroyed by two chatter-boxes, we normally refer to as ladies, following me down the road. Thinking it to be utterly useless to expect them to respect my wish, I hastened away till I found myself in the quiet once again. On my way, I came to the highest point in NUST from where entire Islamabad and Pindi looks like a scene from some Van-Gogh painting. The rusty, creaky suzukis, noisy smoldering buses, yellow taxis which have turned gray due to the grime and smoke, on a far-off highway seemed like playful fire-flies flying after each other as if playing pakram pakrai. In short, the world seemed much more beautiful than the one I and most of us are familiar with.

    Now look, engineering  or medical is hard and the fact that you are studying this at NUST makes it even harder – I understand. Sometimes you don’t get the marks you think you deserved; sometimes you miss the deadline of an important assignment or a project; sometimes your friends don’t understand you or you don’t understand yourself; sometimes you wake up in the morning with absolutely nothing to look forward to, to crawl out of your bed – no matter how tough it seems; no matter how big a failure you think you are, just give yourself a chance before starting to hate yourself – yes, try a walk down the memory lane. And i bet you will realize so many wonderful things about yourself which you have long forgotten in the daily grind.You will learn to let go of some things clinging onto whom has only been a nightmare for you for so long and help you see the highway of your life as if from the highest point in NUST – all playful fire-flies… 🙂