Eastern Vagabond

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

Tag: positivity

  • Quiet

    Lately, I have been running out of things to write. I am drowning in my own daze. It’s almost peaceful, like death. I guess it’s one reason why people drift towards it; one less word at a time. Until their radical thoughts have dumbed and their wildest imaginations cowered into utter silence, or whimpering Yes, sirs. I’m not talking about the physical death here, of course; it’s not a choice anyway. But the death that most of us meet in our lives; that stills us, turns us into observers, into the audience of a fascinating match, of a scrolling screen, of a rolling routine, of a mindless race that never ends before its runners.

    Bukowski’s thundering voice just got me this weekend. Loathing life is, perhaps, not enough of an excuse to stop living it.

    You can’t beat death but

    You can beat death in life, sometimes,

    And the more often you learn to do it,

    The more light there will be.

    So I have decided to write more frequently about anything that catches my attention, intrigues, bores, repels or fascinates me. I’m no longer seeking to write a blockbuster poem or a scholarly essay or a literary piece anymore. It only inhibits the process of expressing which was also the founding idea behind my blog.

    Today, I want to write about Nadir. He works menacing afternoon and night shifts. People are mean to him. He gets plenty of mouthfuls at work. Yet that doesn’t seem to impact the positive energy he carries around him. His cheerfulness has miraculously survived the most discouraging of circumstances. He is original, straightforward, and not afraid to speak the truth. He is a true embodiment of what my grandmother says about happiness, Don’t search for it outside; it springs up from within you.

    Yesterday, I ran into him while his afternoon shift was nearing the end. The sun had long set but he was in his usual high spirits as he greeted me with a powerful, singsong salaam. I could tell it was not like dozens of other loud, constipated salaams that my subordinates had reluctantly showered at me during the day to confirm their servitude. It was a genuine greeting that one extended to someone, one was pleased to meet. After signing off some documents, I asked him what date it was. He said, It’s 6 Oct, sir. My birthday.

    I was startled at his openness. He had turned 31. We were age fellows. I did not tell him that I was surprised to see in him the remarkable positivity a 31 year old, working menial shifts away from home could preserve. He gave me hope in myself and faith in my grandmother’s wisdom. I sent him a cake wishing that he would keep his torch burning in the darkness that engulfed us. Just like the bright half-moon illuminating the sky outside.

  • 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.

  • The Childhood’s December

    Yes, I remember

    that childhood’s December.

    When in shivering setting evenings,

    sunshine would crawl down the back-yard wall.

    The aroma of burning coal,

    and on my rashed cheeks

    the frozen tear-drops making lines.

    Seeing the freezing fog of clouds

    Mother would call us standing in the door

    and we would all rush to our homes,

    carrying those dirty marbles.

    I’d look at the night sky

    and secretly pray for the snowfall,

    and in the early morning

    pick up the starry flakes of falling snow in the yard,

    gazing the snow-pouring sky

    and imagining to be flying with those flakes.

    Then you came…and the childhood’s December passed.

    Then for hours under that crawling cold sunshine,

    in those shivering setting evenings,

    i kept decorating myself

    with silvery snow tumbling from the sky

    to catch your single glimpse,

    and on that white sheet of Earth

    all my foot-marks

    came to your door.

    Then that December passed too.

    And look…i am still standing at the same corner of the street.

    Shivering setting evening is there too

    but golden sunlight doesn’t slither down.

    Time seems to have stopped.

    The snow flakes in my hair,

    though pouring silver

    can’t make them wet.

    What a strange snowy evening this is

    whose frost can’t freeze my tears.

    The smoke of that burning coal

    tickles eyes,

    but has lost its aroma.

    And look, the door of my home stands open but

    Mother’s call is lost somewhere.

    Why are all the roads to your house

    so desolate?

    How different this snowy evening is from my childhood’s december!

    Hashim Nadeem

    (Hashim Nadeem’s “Bachpan ka December” translated by me)

  • 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… 🙂