Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Today, Tomorrow And The Day After. It Continues

I have already spent 30 minutes wondering what I should write for today. Not that I was constantly on this page and thinking, I have head phones covering my ears and a couple of friends online. In the evening I paid a visit to my grandmother where I studied for an hour. And on Thursday I will be going to college. Yesterday there was some problem with the Internet connection and I watched 'The Departed' in the meanwhile.

It rained today unexpectedly. The streets are dirty again and the usual traffic jams make the world outside home very uneasy. I hope to see a pleasant day when I wake up in the morning. I never tell myself that when I wake up the next day, its going to be a new day. All days are more or less the same for me. Tomorrow is the continuation of today and today was the continuation of yesterday. Pain does appear in the neck and it leaves after finishing its objective.

When I go to college I will be asked by my friends to come along with them to a tour they have planned. When I heard about this idea for the first time more than a month back, implicitly a 'no' came out of my heart. But when a poll was conducted in Yahoo groups, I marked on 'yes'. They didn't ask me if I would come or not. The question was something else and I was positive about that. But its not a time to play and argue. I have IBSAT on December 16th and even if that wasn't there, my parents wouldn't allow. I have been given a lot of freedom but the limits I have put of myself start from here. If I have to go on a tour or a holiday, for me to be comfortable, it should be with my parents or my cousins. Maybe I can even convince my parents but I can't convince myself. I don't even want to talk to my parents about this.

Monday, October 29, 2007

Ghost In My House

I was using Trillain all these days not aware that it was showing me as online even when I was staying invisible. Yesterday I installed a new software named Pidgin. It has a soft and basic interface appearing like a window in Linux. The installation file was slightly larger than Trillan but I liked what it had to offer. The typical messenger provided by Yahoo is full of bugs that trouble me like something that troubles!

Yesterday I went under the blanket around 3 am and I must have been awake at least till 3:30 am. Around 8:40 in the morning I woke up hearing my mother talk on the phone in a grave tone of voice she uses only when she has been shocked by something. I was still in the bed and her tone also told me that she was talking to my father. She sounded very afraid of something. I got out immediately hoping to hear everything was fine. She told that sometime back she saw a man walking in the living room.

That gave me immediate creeps as she kept narrating how she was in the kitchen and saw clearly a man walking in the living room and how she saw her entering her bedroom. She told me that my brother was home at that time and he was in the other bedroom changing clothes. Mother looked terrified with fear in her eyes and touches of leftover horror still on her pale face. I sat in the living room for a while as she started getting ready for office. I was still very sleepy and my eyes closed in no time even as my heart was pumping with fear of something I didn't even know.

I saw several dreams in those few minutes as I lay in the living room. I saw some man walking across the room, some weird happenings and all things we see in typical nightmares. I still couldn't believe what she told me. The only reason for me to fear was that she was telling me all that. And she was sure she saw somebody. I even thought that she must be undergoing a lot of strain at her office.

She left at 10 pm when I called a friend and confirmed that we were going to meet in an hour at Mehdipatnam from where we would go to CL's office at Himayatnagar and collect my last packet. Then we had plans to study the rest of the day. I went inside the bathroom with fear still fresh in my mind. I also remembered that my mother told she saw the man with a towel tied around his waist. I prefer not going for a bath when there is nobody at home but I had to. When I tied a towel around my waist I recollected my mother's words again. I was afraid even walking in the room. Even the curtains swayed by the breeze looked horrifying. I dressed up, fried an egg, prepared coffee, ate and drank, also had a banana and left. Like every time I check the doors before leaving, it did it again but did it several times.

I returned home with my friend two hours later. On our way I told him about everything. It all sounded funny but it was serious. It was serious even if it was just something psychological for my mother. It was something that must be cleared before it took my sleep away. I stay awake at nights and it was the biggest concern for me. Nobody can get inside the house this way. And in a towel - impossible. I was worried.

In the nights I hear so many sounds and I recognise them all. The distant howl of dogs, the sound of newspaper falling from the table in the drawing room on the carpet, the sound of the door-knobs when wind rattles the doors, the sound of the creaky windows, the sound of the curtains rubbing the floor, the sound of the dining table's cover moving over the chairs, the noise of the rat moving in the kitchen - every sound I have heard in the nights in my house - I know them all. But this seemed to be a new problem, and of a different kind. I had never seen half-naked men walking in my house except for my father, my brother and myself.

I solved one full length test paper of CAT's model in the stipulated time continuously as I do in any mock. My friend solved another paper simultaneously. Then we analyzed both the papers together. All this took us more than 5 hours and he left my house around 9 pm. Then I was asked to get 'kabaab' for dinner. We had our dinner. The tension was still there. But there was also some happiness on my mother's face gifted to her by the sharp increase in her monthly pay. We kept talking all the time even when I was enjoying some comedy show on the television. My mother finished her dinner and went to bed with my father, my brother and I still in the drawing room.

I still had the plate in my hands eating slowly when my mother entered the room again. She asked my brother if he came to her room in the morning after talking a bath to dump his clothes in a bucket there. He said he did! We couldn't stop laughing. The 'man in towel' my mother had seen was my brother. He was asked several times if he went there and he kept telling that he had not. But he did go there and he forgot. He said he couldn't remember it when asked because he is used to doing it after talking a bath everytime. I wondered how my mother couldn't recognise his yellow towel and how he looked like a man to her. My father was smiling with a cigarette in his fingers.

Tomorrow again I will be sitting with my friend to solve some more papers. It will be at his home this time where another friend is expected to join us. I have 16 such test papers with me. I am positive that this will help. I am thankful to my friend for giving me company even when he is not so dependent on CAT. It's a part of the luxury in being me!

I won't be forgetting today's incident for a long time. I might never forget it in fact. In the morning the only thing that gave me strength was the truth that only Allah can alter anything and only Allah decides. I knew that nobody could harm me or anybody at home untill Allah wanted it to happen. All this was just another bookmark in the book of my life. My life is good.

Saturday, October 27, 2007

I Am But A Slave

A couple of days back I watched the movie 'Munich'. I had blankly opened the folder containing the ripped file and started playing it. The first few minutes I was wondering if that was really the start of the movie but as I began to understand the story I accepted it to be it. I watched it for 45 minutes and closed. Yesterday when I opened the folder again I found two files. I couldn't believe that my eyes had missed one yesterday. I opened the newly discovered file and watched the movie from the start. I finished the complete viewing just sometime back. It was a fine piece of work by Steven Spielberg.

Many months back somebody asked me why I don't have a blog for Islamic articles. It looked imperative from the number of blogs I was updating at the moment that I have a blog dedicated to topics in religion. But I wondered if that was necessary. I wondered if I needed anything more than the blogs maintained by two of my dearest cousins. One of these two is more popular than any Islamic blog I have opened till date (ibnalhyderabadee.wordpress.com). But I also thought about the religion I had already mixed into the posts I had written and the ideas I have shared. The only difference from an Islamic blog and my blogs, that I could think of, was that an Islamic blog pastes religion with facts, narrations and proofs, and I had written all my words trying to keep them inside the umbrella of religion and I never mentioned as direct references. I did use some quotes from the Holy Quran for explanations, but faith was inherent to my blogs.

I have always hated those who flaunt and I have hated myself. The hatred was for good. I made me learn self-love. It sounds ironic that hatred can teach love and that I talk of love with hatred in my mind. I have written about it once. But I am not turning away from my words. I still wonder why children in schools are taught about the theory of evolution when no religious scripture supports it and no-born-of-a-woman-scientist could prove it. How can we teach faith to children when we ask them to learn about a theory whose author himself wasn't sure of it? Why are we letting children learn lies and let them believe in it? Is this how we educate?

Today I recollected three different days of my past in which Allah had brought be very close to death. These are quite different from what I had written in "My Nights Of Death". The most recent of these three days just a few months back when I was sitting in front of the computer on a plastic chair swinging it by making it stand just on its two hind legs. A swing went too away from the fulcrum and the balance left for space. The chair slipped bringing me close to the floor by some inches just when I managed to put my both hands on the smooth floor and prevent a further slip. I had just missed a nearby table. If I were a little away from the computer while swigning down, the exact center of the back of my head would have hit the corner of this table and perhaps killing me instantly. I was rocking very fast on the chair and blood-spill was guaranteed. The table rests behind me even now and the threat remains. I have stopped playing with the chair.

When I was in the first year of my intermediate days the final examinations' center was somewhere behind the Golkonda fort. It was a government college about three kilometers away from my house. I wanted to have a look at it with my friend on his bike. We found that place with ease but on our return journey my friend got interested in the big walls of the fort and wanted to have a closer look. There were tracks down from the main road leading to a high place close to the wall. From distance we could see the wall and the elevated point and some invisible gap betwen them. We followed the tracks on the mud and we were fast. The bike started climbing the hillock. But the moment we reached the top, there was nothing beyond that. My only instinct was the jump off the bike but I couldn't because I had my friend sitting in front of me. He hit the brakes hard. There was a short skid and the bike stopped a foot behind the edge. There was a free fall of at least 15 feet just beyond that point.

I don't remember the exact location in time of this last incidence. In fact it happened before the two I have already mentioned. I was out to meet a friend in Afzalgunj. He was in Hyderabad for some days when he got free from him college in Nasik. After getting down the bus I had to walk to reach his house and there were several big busy roads to be crossed. It was a turn on the road and the traffic was coming from my right. The moment I stepped down the footpath and looked on my right I saw an RTC bus coming. The bus was at a good distance from the point I was standing and it was turning. As the bus started to turn more, it kept getting closer to the footpath. It was just my instinct that I moved back and climbed the footpath. Less than a second later the huge vehicle was speeding moving exactly above the place I was standing. The gap between the footpath and the wheels of the bus was less than five inches. If I had stood there for a instance more, the bus would have banged me away throwing me into the shop behind. This was closer than the two above. I wish I could give all this a better comprehension. I can't express how happy I was to see myself alive. I don't find it necessary to write here about my interactions with Allah regarding this.

But I am of those who flaunt. I work with everything I can and I like letting it show. I like to see people know what I have done and also sometimes what I can do. The later can hardly make any sense if I am not convincingly telling it, but the former always has truth to speak for it. It shows by itself. With flaunting in my mind, I keep the feelings of superiority away from it. I never think of making any person feel inferior to me. At least I don't try to; intentionally. Sometimes I know I do cause to become an object that inflicts inferiority, but it has never been my intention. I express my happiness, sorrow, pain, fear, satisfaction and thankfulness in different forms. I am in no way superior to any man or a woman on this earth and I am as weak as a black ant. I have what Allah has blessed me with. Nothing belongs to me. He owns everything and he can take it away if He wants. Out of several people I know, I can say that I do not bow my head in front of anybody but Allah. I am but His slave.

Thursday, October 25, 2007

Flagrant Foul

“Don't they[girls] get attracted to themselves when they look in the mirror?”
-A Guy Like Me, Flowing Emotions
Yesterday I opened the edit page and closed it soon after I felt that I can delay the spilling. Putting the reason of not updating the blog would look good if I say the above if asked. But the truth cannot be altered: I didn't feel like updating and laziness was the core backing of this reason. There is always an element of retaliation that focuses on how to blend a debility into a reason that can be flaunted. And the retaliation is to ward off the guilt even before it hurts. The debility is that lethargy preventing appraisals as consequences of brain-work ending up in words. The element exaggerates laziness and justifies it.

Yesterday the football was too soft to be played with and the metal pin that elaborates the nozzle on the ball for the air pump to harden it up was missing. We considered some fallacies that could have helped us play the game but my footwear told me that it wouldn't be worth it. Furthermore, we couldn't take the risks involved. The fact that I should have worn a laced shoes skipped a consideration from my mind and I was in the college in black formals.

There is a good chance of the quote at the start of today's post being misunderstood. Or if its good that it is not understood, then I am glad I could keep it so simple. When I repeated these words to a friend yesterday, he asked me from where I copied. I said I did it from my own blog. He is of those who rarely reads my blogs but is told about what I write. But I hope the quote is not over-understood. Even I tend to give extra meaning to words and ideas hoping that would look cool. This time around, 'cool' can be crazy.

A famous Telugu actor's daughter has eloped giving another reason for the media to make money and news. The actor still appears in the movies as a 'hero' dancing with girls of his daughter's age. And I am sure in at least one of his movies he has played the role of a youngster running away with a girl. His daughter has done what her father does in the movies. I don't find a reason why people say she has brought shame to her father. She just enacted some roles already played in several screens.

On Tuesday I made a trip to the environs of ANGRAU, NIRD and NAARM. I was there to pay a visit to a friend's house. The lovely streets, the dark lawns which appeared dark because of thick surrounding trees and lack of lighting, the empty paths and the lengthy journey was all satisfaction. Immediately after reaching home, my next destination was a function hall to attend a marriage party. Yesterday the reception party fed me with dinner.

Sunday, October 21, 2007

The Ticket

Love works in miracles every day: such as weakening the strong, and stretching the weak; making fools of the wise, and wise men of fools; favouring the passions, destroying reason, and in a word, turning everything topsy-turvy.
~ Marguerite De Valois
I have my lab externals from tomorrow - Distributed Systems on Monday and Web Programming the next day. I finished reading the 11 programs in just 45 minutes including the descriptions but I am worried if that is enough. I had studied them once for the internal test a few days back.

Some days back while travelling the bus, the conductor asked me to show my bus-pass. Then he asked for the ID card too which he even matched with the ticket of the pass and verified the ID number. He made that detailed verification only for me and possibly this for the first time I saw a bus-conductor being so watchful. His act that's making me write this here is that he didn't do such a thing for any other person in the bus.

A buss-pass has two cards - the ID card and another one that shows the validity dates of that card. When I renew the pass every three months, the computer checks for the bar codes on the ID card and prints the other ticket - the other card. Conductors check for the validity dates only and if the pass is a route-pass (valid only between specific routes), the check the route on the ID card. In my five years of bus-travelling with a general pass (free travel on any routes), this was the first time such a checking was made.

As the conductor moved in the bus, I sat watching how many passes he checks that way. I was angry. I keep my pass in my wallet and show only the ticket card when asked for. No conductor asks for the ID card and even when they ask, they just give a glance on it. Other people use a specially made folder cover of heir passes. The cover just shows the validity dates - the ID card can be seen only when it is opened. The conductors check the dates through the transparent cover on the top. Even this conductor was doing the same thing - just check the dates for people with such covers. For me, he asked for the ID card when he saw that I had the ticket in my wallet.

I wanted to ask him why he wasn't checking other's ID cards and why I was an exception. I was getting angry with this. I felt as if he was being a racist; as if he didn't trust because I am from a minority community; as if I were a a foreigner and that I could be a terrorist. I kept patience and waited. I knew that I might be exaggerating my thinking. And then he sat on a seat near me. I wanted till he finished making notes of the ticket numbers.

Turning towards him, in a boldly enquiring voice I asked him why he wasn't checking other passengers' ID cards. I wanted to quarrel with him. I wanted to ask him why he was being rude with me. But he didn't seem to understand the tone of my voice and the anger I wanted to throw at him. He calmly said that it is not always possible for him o check everybody so comprehensively and he told me how people bring ID cards of their friends. That was still not an answer to my question. There were 35-40 passengers in the bus and he could have easily verified the ID cards of those who had passes. But the softness of his reply made me agree with what he said and I told him that people do cheat.

The rest of the journey I sat thinking about a bus-conductor's job. He works for more than eight hours a day walking from one end of the bus to the other wading through people who sometimes leave no gap between them to be walked through. He has to shout and make people purchase tickets and show passes. He deals with all kinds of people, men, women and children. At times he ends up fighting, he has to argue, cope with frustration and still do his work. He does have a difficult job to do. I wished I could tell them how difficult their job was and how much I appreciated their work. But it looked odd to me talking to them at such an emotional level. Not all people respond to emotions positively. Some don't understand them. Some misunderstand.

Though all my anger on that conductor came down to zero, I was still not happy at the treatment I was given. I felt like a part of a subjugated and an untrusted community - we are being portrayed that way. Many people, I have seen, look down on Muslims while travelling in the buses. And when beards and caps are seen, things become worse. There of course people who talk respectfully, but there are many who do exactly opposite of that. I have also felt that because of my formal dressing and the photo-grey glasses I sport on my face, I am stared at as though I am an alien inside the bus. I don't have any complains on that but this ID card thing was bad.

Perhaps I just over-reacted at this. Maybe because the conductor saw me keeping the card in my wallet and not in that cover, he thought there can be something wrong. Or maybe he did find my face a one that can't be trusted. I can't help if I look like a threat to anybody. I have lived with my face for almost 21 years now and I have learnt to love it. I am happy with how Allah has made my appearance. If some half wits find it as untrustworthy, I pity their intellect. But I am at the receiving end and I don't know how to change it.

And in general the Andhra Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation (APSRTC) is well known for its bad, senseless drivers and rude conductors. The buses are parked in the middle of the road near the bus-stops - the width of the road on both sides of the bus when parked at a bus-stop is same. The driving sometimes is very rash and hardly any traffic rules are followed. The engine's power of these buses is not proportional to their weights and the buses can run very fast making them dangerous. The conductors are rude with students, they don't always talk properly, when they step on the feet of passengers they give a damn to that and some are very slow with their work.

But there are exceptions always. And we all like exceptions and get interested in them. There are some very good drivers and a few very good conductors. I remember once a conductor who said 'thank you' to people after issuing tickets. Some are very fast and never make the bus wait. And not to forget a favorite of mine: he was regular on the route '142 s' untill some months back it was changed. Now I don't know where he is. He had a habit of calling every youngster 'Azharuddin'. He was fun and he speard happiness among the passengers of his bus.

Friday, October 19, 2007

LaFortune

in Many things ran through my mind in the mean while that I wanted to write but never got the right kind of time required to type anything for the blog. Yesterday night I recollected all major changes I have seen since the time I started remembering them - right from the time I was four years of age. Before that I had spent some brain on 'dependency issues', on what all Islam has to say about marriage (http://muslimmarriages.wordpress.com), and some politics. Just sometime back I finished writing an assignment of Compiler Construction. I had my ears covered with the headphones, I was sitting front of the computer with the monitor switched turned off, and I was copying the answers from a photocopy of the assignment done by a classmate - in fact I don't even know whose copy it is.

Yesterday after the three tests I wrote, we friends had two plans - going out to Java Green at Hyderabad Central, and playing football. Java Green came first. I was there for almost an hour and came back to college with hopes of playing football with my toe still aching. I was too late to have any time with the ball but we sat in the college for about half hour joking and shouting. Next came a during at a bakery. I went there only for that Coke - I am not sure what it was - but my friends had rolls and puffs. We joked, shouted and discussed a lot sitting around that round table. The topic was more interesting than anybody could get but it can't be mentioned here.

I wanted to meet my grandmother and even though it was getting late, I reached her house a little after 7:30 pm. Before this I even spent some time at a friend's house. By the time I reached home it was 9:40 pm. My visit to my grandmother was the most important part of the day because she had once asked me to keep coming to her place even during weekdays. I spent time listening to her. I wished that my grandfather was still with us.

Monday, October 15, 2007

End Of A Lifetime


I was asked to dial '123' on my phone as I entered the 'Ied-gah' yesterday morning for the 'wajib' Ied prayers. The security was high as the city is on an alert but I could see how easily any heartless and faithless man could rip off a bomb of any size near the mosque. There were half as many men outside the mosque as there were inside - thousands. There were hundreds of car and motor bikes. They can't be checked, nobody can see what the hundreds of beggars with their soiled bags were carrying, nobody could even check if the men dressed up in police and military uniforms weren't fake. I didn't mind being frisked, but if I wanted, even I could have carried an explosive - easily. All the security we see is a show-off. We aren't safe.

A day of fasting missed during Ramzaan cannot be compensated even by fasting the whole of lifetime. Since I started to makes full-month fasts when I was 15, I always missed one or two days because of illness. This was the first time after 5 years that I could fast all 30 days of this Holy month. I am not glad I could do it, it's compulsory for me anyways. But I know how important it is and how I have been blessed this time. Even my brother for the first time fasted all 30 days. Last year he missed many just because of sleep.

I read so many blogs on the Internet and I wonder how these people write so perfectly well. They use all kinds of emotions and stitch them brilliantly into the carpet of wisdom and knowledge. I just remain a fine line between my mood and the neighboring intrigue. Whenever I write I write with an objective - to fondle myself, to tickle some idea or to scrub some irritant. Many times I don't read what I write and sometimes when I do, I try to recollect what made me write it. No doubt I have mentioned this several times. The better thing is to wake up in the morning to a highly motivated mind, and the best thing is to do that daily. I appreciate how these other bloggers write. Their objective must be a lot deviated from mine.

I have mentioned it long back that I constantly track the visitors to my blog. My first tool is sitemeter.com. It helps me find out the time of the visitor, the length of each visit, the browser and the OS used while visiting, the default language of that computer and most important, the ISP (Internet Service Provider) - BSNL, VSNL, Pioneer, Sify, Excelmedia, Beamcable, Iqara and many more. Then of course are the ones who search in google and reach my blog. Though I can't exactly find out who the visitors, I can just track their time spent on my blog. I can never drill down to the node of the visitor and see who that person is or even the location. I can just know the city and the ISP's IP address. This is barely what I need to trace visitors - sometimes I have to do it when they provoke me anonymously.

Some days back a friend sent me a link of islamonline.com as a message and asked me to check it. Somehow I missed that message and finally got to the website a couple of days back. I read many articles relating to Muslim youth.
The Muslim family (http://www.islamonline.com/news/newsfull.php?newid=722)
Dating in Islam (http://www.islamonline.com/news/newsfull.php?newid=761)
Friendship in Islam (http://www.islamonline.com/news/newsfull.php?newid=656)