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.

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.

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.

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.

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)

Nothing Poetic

If

By Rudyard Kipling (1865—1936)

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too: ….

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;

If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim,

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same: ….

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch, ….

Yesterday we seven friends had dinner outside for the second time in this month. By the time I reached home it was almost 9 pm if I remember it correctly. By the time I reached home the news of a bomb blast in Ajmer had already reached my ears and it was the same kind of bad management of the government and police in that place as it was when it was Hyderabad some weeks back. Those who kill innocents are sinner but those who don't take the right actions are bigger sinners. They are the politicians of the country who representatives of the people but consider themselves the leaders. Though I am strictly against all the reasons why Ajmer is such a well-known place, the blasts are excoriated.

Earlier in the day I had played football making myself completely tired. I removed my shoes after they flew in the air when I tried to hit the ball high. I ran bare-footed in the ground for sometime after playing with the ball in the basket court. I was explaining my friend about the importance of teamwork when a new player came in his team and won the match single-handed. He proved wrong all my opinions of working as a team. He was a lone warrior in a game which otherwise would have been won by our team. And not to forget the two self-goals I made.

The report that appeared in the newspapers about the chaos in my brother's college was all biased. There was hardly a bit of truth in it. They didn't mention about the comments that floor-in-charge gave. They didn't mention how he apologised to only a few people and how he refused to apologise initially. When I read the news article I had to spend some time bringing myself to normal from a high degree of anger and rage. Then I understood how the media is always against my religion. I can feel my blood heating up even now.

We were expecting Ied-Ul-Firt to be on Saturday and all the preparations were in the swing. I spent 15 minutes on the terrace hoping to find the white 'C' staring at all the starry darkness. It looked liked the stars were laughing at me. The more I kept staring the more number of stars kept laughing. The most beautiful sight was the fainting horizon which appeared in orange, brown and grey shades. I recollected a time I spent once staring at the sun as it disappeared in the distant land. I don't need to see any more miracles to believe in Allah's word.

Death still looks like a myth to me. I simply can't believe that one day I would die and they day can be tomorrow too - or even more before that. It looks to me as if I will live always and never see an end. The thoughts of eternity confuse me. I can't imagine seeing myself as dead. But I know I will understand all this the day I die and I will realize that only death can explain death. And that day I will realize how much bigger a miracle life itself was. But it will be too late. This, today, is the time for me to realize; and act.

My Keyboard

In the morning my mother asked me to take the house's keys and instructed my brother to go to my grandmother's home if he was left early from his college. Around 2:50 pm when I passed by his college, Narayana Junior College, I saw a few policemen standing there. This is a common feature of that place as eve-teasing is prevalent in that area. When I got closer, I saw broken windows and glass on the floor and the cops were holding rifles. I knew my brother would be at my grandmother's house now. I called him and came to know from that some floor-in-charge of his college had given unpleasant comments on the Holy Quran and the students went berserk. Though the comments ignited the fire, that particular in-charge has always been very strict with the students even punishing them for coming late to the college after namaaz in the afternoons. He was known to punish students badly even after knowing that they were fasting.

I asked my brother all the details in the evening after he came home. I asked him why they broke the college's windows and if shouting yielded anything. I asked him why he was with all those students when he didn't know what the comments were. He said he was just with the crowd.

The lab internal I had today went by smoothly. I had no problem with he programs and in the viva the lecturer asked me to name the topics I had studied. I said about AWT and swing, and I was asked very little about them before I was asked to leave. Even though everybody knows that all the students have the same programs (they have been copied by the lecturers from 'Java 7th Edition') taken from the faculty, but still we are being asked to submit print-outs of them. Today they refused to accept photocopies. I really don't understand what difference it makes if the paper has passed through just a different type of machine to have the text painted on it.

The other day when I was at a restaurant celebrating my mother's birthday I heard the cries of an infant. The voices were coming from the other side of a partition and it after a very long time that I heard a baby crying. It sounded so sweet. It was music to my ears. I know how ironic it is that the sound of a baby crying can be music. My parents were exchanging some giggles between themselves but I heard my name being used. They were talking about a 'time to come' involving me.

Tomorrow I have my Distributed Systems lab internal. I am almost done with the studying with only some reading of syntaxes left over. Unlike web programing and Java, this lab has no book for reference. Though we are doing the coding and creating applications in VC++, are have not been taught that language. It's not so hard to learn it either. Just requires a little patience.

A couple of days back after I wrote in my blog that a long time ago a friend told me that I had changed, I fell into some serious thinking about myself. I am not the person I used to be. I used to be more sensible, calm and quiet. I used to think a lot before talking. Then slowly I began to get defeated by thoughts that being my own self is what I must believe in and as long as I am a good person, I can never say anything inappropriate or do anything unnecessary. I understand it is not a good option to try to be ourselves always. The better thing is to think before everything we do and everything we say.

Before sleep, daily, when I think about my day I had spent, it gives me deep thoughts about what has happened to me. I am joking a lot, I am laughing a lot, I am talking a lot, I have given up the habit of listening to people the way I used to and I have even developed a sense of superiority. I know I have friends with whom I have turned very open, and these are the people I can talk anything to. So I have been taking it for granted that I can talk and do anything as long as I am with them.

Now I don't say that I am losing control over me. But the point is that I am not gaining much either. The words which I used to avoid using are surfacing, I am becoming more blatant, easy-going and I am becoming happy-go-lucky. I am hardly left with any kind of fear for exams and tests. I don't mind losing marks. I am taking attendance for granted. Some serious things don't perturb me. For so many things I am ending up telling myself "aaw". This is not how I was and this is not how I want me to be.

The better parts are that I am very much in control of my eyes - I keep them down always. There are still many words that I hear others using and I am alien to them. Giving and taking respect is a part of me - in fact I am a part of it. Realizing where it is my ego and where it is self-esteem is still clear to me. And I still start thinking about all opinions considering me as wrong and then go on to correct myself if there is any need for the correction - this makes me think. I still sort out all misunderstandings with my friends and I never play double-standards with them. At least I am not cheating anybody. I am still being myself - I just need to grow more.

So many times I keep telling myself that I should be a good person. So many times I just tell myself that I am going away from the right path. But telling is not enough. Even writing it all here is not enough. Some dumb might ask why I am sharing all this - that writing such things has become a matter of pride and fashion for me. I won't care for those who fail to understand the essence of my writing (as if I know!). There are some posts directed at others and the rest directed at me. There are some who don't understand what I am writing and there are some who ignore. The last two types are a lot better than the previous ones.

I see the difference in how people used to be with me when I was in the first year of my engineering and how they are to me now. I have made several new friends who are closer than the old ones and I have no complains. I move on, others move on, but it confuses in how people change. It confuses even more when I change. It was slow and I need to change again. I have to regain the respect and the image I once had. I need to lessen the amount of talk and reduce the volume of my laughs. I will start from these two. It's all confusion in here again.