Listen to this!

Nai umar ki nai fasal!

I grew up in a home where hindi films and especially old hindi films were loved, recorded and watched repeatedly. Indian B&W films are world class, ever green, always fresh and wonderful to listen to and watch. There is a long list of movies and songs that I have so many memories of. A very special song is from the movie, Nai umar ki nai fasal, that I have listened to atleast 100 times. Written by Gopaldas Neeraj and sung by Mohd Rafi, I think this is a very unique song with amazing lyrics..

Out of the frying pan, into the fire!

My response to the post

The problem with free speech is everybody have an opinion, very few have a possible solution and even fewer has any knowledge. We need to decide what category we fall in.
Why are we so surprised when we have already seen open flogging, behedding, khoni Chowks, Barber shops closed, direct threats and my favorite (honestly nothing can beat that): talking about past is haram.
Such situations remind me of the movie HULK. Experiment gone wrong, the beast is uncontrollable, nobody would claim responsibility and we dont want to tell anybody about it.

Well, now everybody knows and its destroying everything. What do we do now? What can we do now? I came across this intersting clip and I feel thats where all the reasons are. I do feel quite the same way. We are responsible. My question is are we still ready to claim responsibility, accept the consequences, LEARN, PAY, and then eventually may be, only may be if we are smart enough, we would plant the right seed and create the right values. Is it too late? Are we doomed? doomed for disaster and catastrophe? Not just us, Are most of the world, set for disaster or it can get better? Thats the question we need to ask and those are the answers we need.

Even the regular people on street has no true sense of history, islam, humanity or so called moral standards. We don’t have those virtues to begin with.
It reminds of a phrase in one of the movies: “A crazy horse running towards a burning stable”.

Will we stop, Can we stop? Where do we really go from here?

Andhe jahan ke andhe raaste.. jayein to jayein kahan..

Charmed Life – The Divine Comedy

When I hold you in my arms,
And look back on my charmed-life
My charmed life
I hope, I hope if nothing more
That one day you’ll call your-Life
A charmed life

Well I never really worried that much
About making lots of money and such
And I always seemed to land on my feet.
Though there’s been some difficult times
The good times where never far behind
I snatched all of my victories from the jaws of defeat

When I hold you in my arms,
And look back on my charmed-life
My charmed life
I hope, I hope if nothing more
That one day you’ll call your-Life
A charmed life

Well the course of true love never ran smooth
They broke my heart, and I broke theirs too
And breaking up was so very hard to do
But I knew I’d find the one
And sure enough she came along
And not long after that along came you

Well sometimes this life is like being afloat
On a raging sea in a little row boat
Just trying not to be washed overboard
But if you take your chances and you ride your luck
And you never, never, never, never, never give up
Well those waves will see you safely to a friendly shore

When I hold you in my arms,
I know that this is a charmed-life
A charmed life

Free float

Thinking splattered sporadic movements creating bizzare patterns on an unknown dimension. The unsolved mystery of existence, being, creation and perishment and the continuation of remnants with lifeless, cold immobility.

Umer has passed away!

Umer passed away on Monday 15th Feb, 2010 at roughly 9:00 am. Its been almost 5 days and through really high emotions, sporadic crying, funeral, Namaz’e Janazah, viewing his body in the cold funeral home, kissing his forehead, watching his lifeless body, burial, placing a rose on his grave and saying good bye to him, life continues to drag on, slowly painfully, our distance from Umer in time is increasing as if we are moving in different directions. I am still struggling with the thought that he is not among us.

Painful questions about death, life and life without the people who died, and our own death start to knock on my mind again. It was Friday, 10 May, 1991 roughly 6 in the morning, when phuppo knocked at my door, woke me up and told me that aboo was not feeling well. By the time, we reached the hospital, I could hear amii weeping and Dawar chacha saying something in my ear. I don’t remember what it was but it meant, aboo is dead. On September 15th, 2007, roughly around 2:00 am, I woke up to a phone call from Pakistan. Amee was hysterical and crying, Dawar is dead. Between these two events, Bari Amee died in 1997, somtime in the afternoon, when Dawar chacha had just come from the clinic. I still remember our desparate efforts to bring her back in the car on our way to the hospital and finally at the hospital, how her line was straight except for when they tried to revive her.
One of those days, I had told Amii how Nani Amma was not feeling well, when actually she has already died in the clinic. I am still alive!

And now Umer’s death has affected me in ways, I did not know before. A friendly, nice guy who has left behind a wife, a 3 year old son, a mother, brothers, sister, relatives and friends. At the peak of his life, with all the amenities and blessings, his life just slipped away.

I can only imagine how he might have felt in those last days, how he looked at his son, his wife, his mother and his friends and how he came to peace with the realization of his own death. When I went to see him in January after he was on the wheel chair, he smiled and said “yeh sooratehal hai” and then he did not talk much because of cancer affecting his speech as well. Umer died of brain tumor in less than 3 months. He has given me so much more than I was able to do for him.

Everytime, I hold my daughter in my arms, I thank Allah for the opportunity. I too will die one day when my time will come, and the lights will turn off and it will be the end of me. With greater tragedy, comes a higher realization of what is lost, and what we still have, to savor and appreciate those precious moments and to know and feel that there is no Undo in life, there is no pause in the music of time and there is no restart button. Life unfolds the future while folding the past. We belong to Allah and to Allah we return. May Allah bless Umer and give him place in the Jannat. O Allah O Allah, please forgive Umer and give us the ability to do the right thing so that when we are returned to you, when we meet You, You can be proud of us! O Allah O Allah give Umer’s family strength to deal with this immense tragedy, give his son, when he is all grown up, guidance and love that he deserves. Ameen!

Traffic Ticket – careless driving in Michigan incident

Continuing from my last blog, I cleaned my fancy s2000. right down to the inside the tires in 2 hours. Stood back and appreciated my own work (yeah I am like that) and took it out of the manual car wash, drop 1/10th of a mile, stopped at the signal to turn left. Its a T junction, with 2 lanes turning left and 1 right turn right. I am at the left most. The signal turn green, I take off as usual, normal speed, turn left and the car just skids 180′ degree as if I were on the ice, seriuosly, not a sound, no warning, it just took a 180′ just after the turn, so I gently hit the second car on the left, stopped at the signal. I gently hit his rear door and bumper, scratching font of my car. I am literally shivering. We come out, I make sure, nobody is hurt, we exchange information and I ask, do you want a report and he quickly says, lets go to the station one mile from here. We go to the station. We tell everything to the officer and he looks at our cars. From the moment I told him how the accident happened, his mind is made up. I must have gunned off from the signal. I must have accelarated hard, there is no other way the car would skid like that. Here you go. CArless driving ticket.. 3 points. I come home cursing myself, for going to the police. The other gentlman was nice, he had 0 deductible. We could have gotten away without going to the station. I come home, My wife also wonder why we went to the station, to do the right thing and end up with huge carless driving ticket.
The entire week, i do not touch my car again and I keep thinking how the accident happen. Its not the fear of the accident but the uncertainly of the car giving away so easily that keep me off the road. I did some research. The S2000 tires when washed and in winter (it was below 50′) that day, gets really hard and so easy to skid. The turn was sharp, the vehicle on my right had cut me off causing me to turn more sharply that I would have.

I denied responsibility. I printed all the aerials of the site, measured distance, measured accident location, wrote down all my points and have couple of people look at it and make suggestion on the language. The day of the court appearance. I obtained my report, took pictures of the location and went to the court all dressed up in a nice suite and tie, 15 minutes before the time. Quite nervous and anxious but yet confident enough to discuss my situation. My officer did not show up, instead perhaps a junior office showed up in his place and he offered me plea bargain. He was very rude.
He called me to the side and said. What is your plan and I said not guilty. He said
“oh thats what you are going for straight not guilty”. I said
“if you look at the situation, I really wasn’t at fault”. He said.
“Well you have 4 other charges”, I said four, i thgouth it was 2. and he said. 2 in farmintong hills speeding, 1 in saginaw and 1 in southfield and you got break in all of them.” I was quite.
2 in farmington were speeding in 2003, one in saginaw as speeding 75 in 70 mile at 1 in the morning 2005. and 1 in southfield was in 2006 for avoid the traffic block and turning in the lane with signal and everything on to telegraph from 696. I explained the judge and she took my points off.

I tried to explain to the officer, that I am really not at fault and I tried to avoid an accident hitting the guy who cut me but he said, I am not interested in details. Under michigan law, you lost control of the vehicle and that is under careless driving. If we go for trial, it will be tried for carless driving and thats a major offence. Its up to you.

I thought for few minutes and I said, can I atleast show you that I was not at fault. and he said no. I don’t want to keep the judge waiting. You let me know. and I took the plea bargain. We went in, he told the judge that I have taken plea bargain to a small speeding offence of 1 point. The judge confirmed and we were out. I am thankful that we did not end up with 3 points and that i got out with 1 point. But the truth it. I feel very sad too. I wanted to really fight my ticket, It was not my fault. The other gentleman was also called in the court and he was willing to confirm that I was not driving carelessly.

May be I got off luckily. Who knows, what the outcome would have been if I had gone in the court and fought for it. But the reality that strikes me most is we are quite helpless against police. May be the court is on our side but only if we can afford some hot shot lawyer. I was not really driving carelessly. It was not my fault. We were cooperating. Even the other guy was on my side. I had all the supporting documents but the officer still gave me careless driving and from that point on I was guilty unless I can prove myself not guilty. The officer did not consider or ask for any other possiblity that could have caused the car to sway in like that. If i were driving fast, I would have skid outside the cricle instead of skidding inside.. but anyway..Sometimes you strongly feel, that you were treated unfairly and there is nothing you can do about it and more that how much more worse the police can do to you and you still wont’ be able to do anything about it.. that is a scary thought.

Bad luck – bad days

Nothing big… Talk about embrassment, well it was pretty embarrassing today when I put on my best suit & tie like after an entire year (my job does not require me to dress up like a clown…), came to the office, rushed couple of people to print some material and just 5 minutes before the meeting, the meeting got cancelled. Now I have to sit in the office all day looking like a hot shot who came all dressed up after an entire year for no reason.

what the heck..Earlier, I washed my sports car, at 40 degrees in a manual car wash, dried it like a baby, got out, took a turn and spun, hitting the car in front of me. not much damange besides my ego and esteem, but after than, we file police report and the crappy cop gave me a 3 pointer careless driving…. Dude I drive my car more carefully than you grand mother rides her 30 year old cadillac. What the fuck.. now I have a court date next week.. another crap..

Turned out, I went home yesterday and my apartment had a notice of 25$ fine for not putting the fire extinguisher out for a mandatory building inspection. crapp.. i know its only 25 freakin dollars but still..I looked at the notice and it did have the penalty warning.. dated oct 6th and the date to put out the extinguisher was also oct 6th. I don’t know what happenend, we forgot to put it out there or we got it pretty late to notice Or I was having another warm up fight with my wifie.. what the heck again.. so I have been having bad 2-3 weeks. yesterday morning,, i got out and my mountain bike tire is flat, it wasn’t flat when I brought it home but now its FLAT, so i have to get it fixed before this sat or sunday. What else.. my review went little better but with a threat that my misely tiny non existent raise will cause a firing of another very junior employee. Its not my fault that company is not making any money, I work hard to keep things running not to mention wearing a freaking suit & a tie for a non happening merger meeting..!!ranting of a creless stupid mind.

What if I was born rich!

Yesterday, I was invited to spend a day with my family at one of the nicest house I could ever imagine. On our way back, tired from the whole day of fun and excitement, my wife and I were just discussing what we would do if we have so much money. Will I take a vacation, buy expensive cars, open a charity or build myself a castle.

Well, like they say, easier said than done. Its hard thing to prove but easy to imagine and wish for. If I had all the money in the world, I don’t think I would be able to spend on myself for too long, I would get bored and then I would do things that really matter. Starting from helping the poor and needy, going back to school. I would actually use that money to protect myself from the unnecessary insecurities that I feel only because people around me are somewhat shallow. I will stay far away from them, I will go hiking for days and not worry about payments etc. Well, I will give most of it as a loan to God. What would you do if you had lots of money?

We are good people

I am planning a trip to Pakistan after almost 6 years of staying in US. I am little afraid because of all the bomb blasts and violence, yet I get courage from the fact that my mother, my brother and my sisters live there in the midst of all the chaos. If they can, I should be able to as well. The only difference is that I have a choice to stay out of it and they don’t. Is it wise to be so called wise? and make a wise decision not to go see my family, or should I once again test my fate.

The may 27 Bomb blast in Lahore happened close to where I will be living in Lahore. My town of Anarkali. Such events simply make me feel very sad and quite. Its like a village is burning and you sit on the side, quite, sad and grieving. You are losing your whole world in front of you and there is nothing you can do about it. There is absolutely nothing you can do. Or may be you are shocked by the inhumane, insensitive, barbaric acts of violences and you wonder. You wonder only about the creation MAN and its creator and seemingly meaningless purpose of the creation. Its indeed a thin red line. Why? Why is it so thin and why its so easily crossed by so many. Its actually crossed by so many people in almost all eras that one start to suspect that may be that is in fact the true nature of MAN. Barbaric, restless, destructive and cruel.

I don’t know. All I know is that people of Lahore are mostly illiterate, simple, down to earth, fun loving, happy go lucky, faithful people. We are good people. We are good people and we are good people.

Don’t murder the good people, infact don’t murder anybody, dont do it for any reason and certainly don’t do it for islam. Dont do it. walk away, stay away, let it go. let us go. Let us live, let us live to be with our kids and family. Don’t kill us. We are good people