Oh Allah! You Are Awesome

Patience can't be acquired overnight. It is just like building up a muscle. Every day you need to work on it.

- Eknath Easwaran

It's snowing again today. I could feel it like a deja vu when I was entering my apartment - the parking lot, the walkway and the plants look exactly like they looked the last time it snowed. That was four weeks back when we saw 13 inches of it. We played for hours in the university that Thursday and prepared biryani later in the evening. But back then I had different things in my mind - it was not 4:59 am and I was glad enough. Since that day I haven't had a day off. Though I don't feel it as a necessity, though I don't long to spend time doing nothing, though I know spending time without work would irritate my mind more and bring unnecessary thoughts into it, I would relish spending a day of that kind.

I feel good now that I can live with very little contact back to India. I talk to my mother daily but not to my father - it wasn't easy to reduce my number of calls. I realized I am no longer capable of putting everything into words and silence is generally misleading. My time on phone itself has come down to less than quarter of what it used to be. When I visited India I was looking for a change within me. Now when I am back I see my visit has changed me. I was glad to be with my parents; I have a list of people who disappointed me. I blame them for nothing though it could have given me comfort. I am rather bent on forgiving myself.

Even until a few days back it was difficult for me to imagine how I could hold things limited to me by not sharing them, now it seems so easy. Not that I have anybody I can call anytime I want and say anything yet expect some loyalty, I just don't feel like saying anything. I am not learning anything this way, it's just an optional way of living. I am not afraid of not being understood, I am rather more concerned with not understanding others. I am not an object using which somebody else's debt can be paid back. I have a life and dreams only my parents can put a right on. It just takes one day's of holding, one day of control - any knowledge can be buried.

London

I have 17 minutes more of Internet connectivity on my laptop. Of course, I had to buy it. I wonder why they can't just have some hotspots for free. I checked mails, sent messages to a few friends and let my parents know of my safety alhamdulillah. It was a tiring experience at Mumbai. Right from the terminal-transfer coach to the airport itself. It feels like they want to make things difficult there. It was relieving to see my seat on BA 138. I slept for more than six hours.

It's Raining

Life is not lost by dying; life is lost minute by minute, day by dragging day, in all the thousand small uncaring ways.

- Stephen Vincent Benét

Several facts went through me all through the evening I thought I could write before I decided I can let them go for the moment. I took time for myself today and did nothing. I lay for several hours thinking nothing half the time and trying to think about facts in ways I would have wished them to be for the other half; our thinking doesn't change them - they remain. I went on my house's terrace after it was fully dark in the evening. I watched lights that weren't there 16 months back, I stared at the buildings which seem to have recently appeared and recollected the building phases of my house. I could recollect from start to end. Recollecting this can never really make any difference.

Tomorrow I will be having many of my relatives and a few friends with me in the evening. I had imagined a day like this long back but never could think of how it would feel. This will probably be the biggest gathering in my house in last 19 years. We never had so many people visit us before. We wanted to have this done before we rented out our ground floor again. I had planned for a lunch with a group of close friends but some south Indian terrorists seem to be interested in playing spoil sport. Either ways I will keep myself busy this weekend inshAllah. I have some cousins I need to give time.

I tried for a while to think how I can change this. I felt myself like a fool, tried to think again but stopped. I am more relying myself on things I have already learnt rather than trying to learn anything new to move myself ahead. Things seem to have lost willingness to proceed. More of it is getting random day after day. Occasions are losing connections and ends hang illogically. The coming year is going to be very important. I will inshAllah finish my masters and look for a permanent job. My mother wants me to come back to India once I am done with my studies and find a job here instead of in America. I think otherwise. I believe otherwise. It just ain't happening.

I am pretty sure by now that I am not going to get what I am looking in the direction I am going and with the pace I am walking. It has to be something else. InshAllah this path too will give me a good life alhamdulillah. But that's incomplete. Things don't change overnight; miracles don't change lives of everybody; not everyone of us is a genius. Alongside the things I learnt, there was a lot I unlearned too. Perhaps it shouldn't have been that way. Perhaps that's how it should be. I don't even understand what I should ask Allah for - I get too shy, unsure and some times hesitant. At the back of my mind I keep getting the feeling that it was going to happen this way. It's something I have always been afraid of.

I was asked if I would have cauliflower for dinner today and I told my mother I won't. She heard it, asked me again and I agreed. I am being called now to have it. It's not that I don't like it. It's one of those very few vegetables I don't easily prefer. I have been afraid of few more things and like these fears which have turned into reality I pray to Allah things turn out to be better than how I have imagined. I am trying to make myself more flexible with my thoughts and beliefs. This puts me in contrast with people who have stayed with me for long but have changed in some other ways incoherent to my inclinations. I am losing people I can talk to. I am losing the will to talk.

Losing People

Trust your own instinct. Your mistakes might as well be your own, instead of someone else's.

-Billy Wilder

Grossly around 1 pm my phone rang thrice and I didn't receive any of those calls. One of the caller reached my brother's phone and I ended talking to him. It was a friend who wanted me to come over to Chowmahalla Palace. A friend had come over from some other city and he wanted to meet me there. I didn't commit to meet. Few minutes later I sent a text saying I was going to stay with my parents for the rest of the day. If somebody wants to meet me, he need not ask somebody else to ask me to come over to some place I don't even have a clue of. I slept after 5:30 am and it's always irritating to have somebody question my sleeping patterns.

I sleep when I feel sleepy. I wake up when it is necessary. I am not a slave of what others would term it. I could easily ignore everybody who talks irritating stuff but the problem is with those few who are supposed to be, and expected to be, soothing to my heart. In last few months there have been occasions when I have gone for more than 40 hours with no sleep at all when needed and have slept for 10 hours continuously when I could. I am glad there are many people who understand me. Many of them usually get me wrong.

I never thought it would take me so many days to write for this blog again. I wanted to write something at length but I guess just at the start of second paragraph I realized I was not going to last much longer. I am glad I could make it till third. I can be infinitely patient now. I can even wait for years to let somebody know the mistakes he or she has committed. I can wait to see how people have changed their perspectives and yet never let them know till they might still be able to understand what has happened. I am in India right now for 16 more days.

Among The People Of Menthol

"Hello Rabbit, is that you?"
"Let's pretend it isn't", said Rabbit, "and see what happens."

- Winnie The Pooh, A. A. Milne

Some weeks back when a customer wanted to make some money selling the beer he had, he asked my co-worker "do you drink beer?", he heard the answer "I drink only blood. Fresh human blood. You got some?". I have quickly realized how my body reacts when something annoys me to an extreme in a short period. I feel a rush of blood on my face beneath my skin. Alhamdulillah I always know what not to do when I feel blood on my face. Though I calm myself down quickly smiling more at those who face me, I know it's all amounting to stress.

One of our professors said there is a federal directive that some information on flu is read to all the students in the classes. A thing which many ignore, which he thought should be said prior to anything else, is the point that more people are dying with common flu than with the swine flu which seems to be more threatening. That's a different thing. What was important for the class is that we are not supposed to be in the university even if we are planning to sneeze after an hour. The professor said he would sit with us again to explain what we have missed if that happens. He will give us his time only after we get back to normal. He said he doesn't want to die.

Some medical agency is afraid that the virus causing common flu would mutate and grow into a deadly organism that could possibly wipe out a quarter of the present human race. That sounded like fiction to me. But I understand that's just the worst case. Keeping worst case in front of us helps us make smaller the effect of what could be already less than the worst. The virus will not mutate inshAllah, my co-worker bought no beer that evening - he stopped drinking eight years back, I know my store is not competing with Walmart on prices - every customer who fights will have to leave - and I met a man who spent 37 years in prison - he lives in west Dallas. 90% of menthol cigarette smokers comprise women and African-Americans.

The Story Continues In Texas

I hope you have lost your good looks, for while they last any fool can adore you, and the adoration of fools is bad for the soul. No, give me a ruined complexion and a lost figure and sixteen chins on a farmyard of Crow's feet and an obvious wig. Then you shall see me coming out strong.

- George Bernard Shaw, to Mrs. Patrick Campbell

I had been thinking of writing since evening without even a faint clue of what. I got back to my apartment at 1 am. I knew I had one curry in the refrigerator even if there was nothing else. I thought I could have it with rice. I realized I will have to cook some to enjoy the curry the way I wanted to. Instead I heated three tortillas and had them. It was satisfying but something seems missing. I had cup full of soda with five cubes of ice. I think I will have a banana after I am done with this. I badly need some continuous undisturbed sleep. It could be such a luxury.

The next holiday I will have will be in the last week of November when my classes end as scheduled. I haven't seen the schedules yet but I guess they will end in just around Thanksgiving. In December inshAllah I will go to India. I am looking ahead for that trip but I am worried about a few things. I want to be pretty clear with why I am going there and what I shouldn't be doing when I am there. It's 3:25 am right now and yesterday at the same time I was in the university studying. It gets so good with very few people around. Fall weather is a thing to enjoy. I find no time for that.

Some days back when I sent a message to my brother on Facebook asking him to shave his beard, our cousins interrupted and came in his favor. I asked them in a polite way not to interfere as I talk to my brother. My brother replied coming against me. I realized I was interfering in his life. It's such a great idea to have an evening for myself spending it under an open sky, watching the birds gather before they go to sleep, see the sun slide away and feel the air loose it's temperature. I will do it someday when I get to India. I wish there will be nothing to worry about then.

Today, give a stranger one of your smiles. It might be the only sunshine he sees all day.

- Quoted in P.S. I Love You, compiled by H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

There's a sharp pain in my neck reaching up till my forehead travelling all through the center of the skull. That still seems to be alright. It hasn't reached my cheek-bones yet. I had a good dinner a while ago, of course sitting alone in the living with my laptop in front of me. It's always nice to be in continuous contact with at least one person and talk as if we have been talking continuously since nobody knows when. The day starts and the talk proceeds as if it had never ended. That's always a luxury. The ache seems to hurt my eyes now. I can have a pill but I guess I will sleep in sometime. I have class at 10:30 am.

Some days back I asked my father why wasn't sending me e-mails. He complained that it was I who stopped. I wrote to him the next day. He said he will reply. I reminded him thrice since then. It's been a week since I wrote. He hasn't replied. I am not going to ask him now. It has just become one of those thing I won't be talking again. It might seem naive of me talk to my father daily on phone and even expect him to write to me. They are two different media with different emotions. So much has been reduced to basics. So much has ceased to be exciting. My eyes are hurting me now. I need to sleep.

I need to wash the cup I had soda in a while ago. The ice in it hasn't melted yet. The paper towel I keep with me while having food is still there on the floor and needs to be trashed. I need to brush my teeth, turn the alarm on and go to sleep. All this seems so much and yet I keep typing. There is so much to be done after waking up. I can feel blood moving in my fists when I close them. It's something like waves turning on and off inside my fingers. My forehead's going to burst now. I wish I could stay up longer. Perhaps the best way to fulfill a desire is to shut it off. At least there won't be any artificial looking hope after that. My parents keep breaking the hope often that I keep building repeatedly.