REVIVING THE DYING CORDS OF MEMORY!

The last dying cord of an electric guitar has so much to give. Its slowly fading away into abyss reminds me of my past that slid away in the most subtle and non-explosive way yet it never failed to leave behind lasting marks of destruction in my soul.

The fading Mozart of memories that keep my soul dancing with each string ...  the smell in the air on a bright day of summer vacations when you would be waiting for the sun to lower down into the west so you could move out of your home and run in the fields with other kids. Times when moving a mile away from home seemed many oceans apart. Moments of dusky night falls and the relief on seeing the light emerging from the front porch of your home reminding you of your nearness to the only tiny world you were going to fall into again till it dawns.

The wasteful hours of school when you knew the only protection you had,  was your big brothers hanging around for you. The naivety of walking arms around shoulders with friends thinking it would go on and on forever. Or the scary delusional figures hiding in your closet at sleep time and covering your head with blanket was the best protection. The nights spent watching clear sky and actually finding time to praise Lord for the beautiful diamonds hanging up there.

 But things change, for change they must, as life moves on. Relations you thought were your biggest crutches in early days turn out to be nothing but ambiguous images of the present. Friendships go into background or maybe buried deep under the dirt of practicalities and livelihood!

The question that pops up in head is what kind of change can be managed keeping the same guileless child of past stuck with life till we die. Does life have to be that much practical that one forgets the tiny little wonders that we were born with .The wonders of unconditional love, relations, friendships or is life wicked enough to drain the very essence of selflessness out of us?

I see people changing faces, paces and places. I've witnessed men torn apart; succumbing to the very delusional practical life they think they could have control over. Human mind is very vulnerable to deceptions. It falls easily into foolishness, thinking it can see the basic wide screen picture of what is yet to come and misses out on tiny details that are deleted from the past. Those little changes prove to have disastrous effects on our perception about friends and relations. Some say it’s called 'life goes on!'. Others fall into believing that it’s what defines how pragmatic you are!

Past seems like a flash of a second and future seems never ending! That’s how fiercely your mind falls into deluding games of time! So when we make selfish morally ambivalent decisions in life we ignore the fact that our mind and our life are ultimately being controlled by time. Thus the decisions we make define how we perceive time!

The only way to keep our innocence and our generosity flourishing despite whatever life throws upon us, is by keeping ourselves clinging to the fragments of our past! Our past memories enhance those tiny details of purity of relations we think we have lost to the world of today and tomorrow. Re-igniting the virtuous heart is hard but not impossible. We just have to lower down the ego and admit how wrong we can be! We just have to give our soul a benefit of doubt and our mind a reboot and start believing that life can mature our minds but not the souls .The souls are the same ones that used to lay on green grass and chat with friends for hours and hours, souls that never hesitated crying or laughing in  front of the world, souls that flourished in the smell of fresh dew drop  of winter and cool breeze of spring ,souls with  ambitions of overcoming all adversities and sticking to who we are and where we belong ....SOULS THAT KNEW THAT NO MATTER HOW HARD A DAY MIGHT BE,ULTIMATELY IT WOULD ALL GO AWAY ONCE WE ENTER OUR HOMES…Till next dawn yields another life…

CAUGHT BETWEEN THE TIDES...NO MORE!

Life has many stages in its effort to develop and nourish our minds.In its flow,life can give us calm,it can make us drill through tides in a forceful random manner and again bring calm to everything around us, as a gentle gesture of its power over our souls.Our soul is a helpless entity when it comes to directing life.It ,however, can be an equally potent tool when its capacity to learn from life, is called upon into action.

To simplify it all,take an example of a leaf floating peacefully in a lake until someone throws a pebble into the lake causing ripples.Soon the ripples surround the leaf from all sides and swing it in every direction as they will.With passage of time the ripples sink down and the leaf remains floating like it was ever before.

In a similar fashion,life throws a stone into the surroundings of our soul.Our soul that was, hitherto, enjoying a steady motion comes into the grip of forceful waves of ripples that are generated due to a setback thrown into the lake like a stone.It swings around, like the leaf,not taking control of its motion and gives away to the wave that randomly toss it in whichever direction it so desires. It is this point in time when the soul becomes helpless.But helplessness does'nt persist forever.Time heals everything.Time sinks down the waves and the soul,once again, is given an opportunity to relax and calm down.Though fate and life are watching our souls with a sheepish smile on their face and another stone in their hands,they wait and watch. Watch if the soul learns the lesson that life and fate is too complex for a soul to control.Watch if it is the intentional apathy of the soul or a deeper learning phase it is going through.

So life hits us in three key phases.I'll rather call them the PRE-RIPPLE, RIPPLE and POST-RIPPLE phase.

In the recent events of life, I witnessed a Pre-ripple phase.A blink of setback that caused chaos in my peaceful life.That blink second of setback when the stone hit the waters was never taken seriously until...Until the waves hit me.The ripples distracted me from my peaceful journey as i blindly and endlessly opened my soul,like a book, to a wide variety of forces.Each force tossing my soul randomly in every direction. Life was no more in my control,waves were too fast and hard to grasp and little by little I started to feel the waters running through my airways.I knew my soul was no longer in my hands. I felt breathless..Until it all went dark and wet.....

And then...I saw light again.I felt the surface again.The ripples had faded away. All so sudden.Those tides that so sullenly made me believe I was no more me,faded away like they were never there.Like it was just a game,a prank to cause my senses to wake up fresh as a neonate.Just to let me realize how it felt to breathe a new life.

So now I am in the post-ripple phase where i am quiet and away again.Away from society and its forces,away from sentiments and temptations of the waves and I lie still often daring to look at the next stone that life carries in its hands,ready to be thrown into the lake again.But O well,as long as its peaceful,as long as I am back to being myself and as long as the next ripples come by haunting me....its time to give the soul some time to understand what life and journey to eternity is all about.

THE HUMAN BODY AND PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE...

The human body is working in a very artistic way, coordinating and reacting to predicaments , with every passing second. It thrives on oxygen or should we say , 'oxygen the life'. Every time the oxygen supply to the tissues decreases,the whole body responds to it and dilates its blood vessels to the affected area.Thus it increases the blood quantity at the site, to compensate for the lower levels of oxygen.

In a similar fashion, whenever crisis hits our life,be it our ambitions or goals,relations or deepest wants and wishes, we react. We 'dilate' our energy sources and invest more energy to the affected part of our life. We get worried. Pre-occupied by the thoughts of the ungranted wishes, we neglect the blessings of the present and become incongruous to the very passage of seconds,hours,days and years, that never return in this only life we have.

Relationships walk the path in a similar manner.Betrayal and hopelessness of one relation starts affecting our other relations too.and so this herd of men and women,all in the name of 'natural response' to the forsaken events, follow similar path to compromising their life,time,goals and above all,their energies, to keeping hold of one relation that was never meant to be oxygenated.Except there is a but in this whole equation.

We can choose a different path!

The path unique to only the wisest ones.A response full of calculations and considerations.Calculation of the time that could be saved, to spend with more sacred, more vital relations.Considerations of what is still there to be enjoyed than what has been lost.yes..THE PATH OF THE LUNGS!!!

In the human LUNGS, counteractions to the lower levels of oxygen are quite different.The lungs in all their mesmerizing wisdom and impeccable calculations and considerations, follow a different course than the rest of the pool.Instead of dilating the blood vessels to the affected area,they constrict them, instead.Thus shifting all the blood to the well oxygenated beatified areas where they could utilize their energy maximally.Turns out their investment yields them profits.The lungs follow a simple lesson of life that the remaining clan of body tissues as well as society in general, fail to follow.The lesson of 'ACCEPTING THE FAILURES AND LETTING GO'!

Let go of whatever travesty or worry befalls you and save your energies for what Allah has kept by you all this time yet your eyes were blind to.The blessings of parents,brothers,lasting friendships, love.The pleasures of sight, ability to hear and speak and walk and talk and laugh and breathe..Let go the failures and the fiascoes and hold on to the viable dreams.

            'The art of living lies in fine mingling of letting go and holding on' - Havelock Ellis

Bedazzled by the simple lesson taught to me by the lungs ,i cannot help thinking of 'Your' Oneness.Oneness in everything we do and everything we are.The similarities between reactions of human body and humankind,to the impending crisis speak sufficient enough, of how immaculately designed the universe is.There are those who shape up to become like the rest of the human body and then there are the sanctified ones lesser in number, who find enough guts to react like lungs.The question is 'which one of the two are you shaping into??

So I Let It Fall Apart!

Tell them I tried hard
Remolding what was ripped apart
Victim to a vicious cycle
Of hopeless patches stitched together
But for every hope ,vanished another
So I let it fall apart
I let it all fall apart...

Every desperate expectation
dwelling in helpless atoms of my soul
Melted away in the heat
Every ounce of pain
I failed to contain
Started flowing away
Its hard to explain
Agony was the first to depart
So I let it fall apart
I let it all fall apart...

I lost time fighting the winds
Until my own being split within
Into bits of shattered dreams
Random bouts of rusted memories
Memories supposedly buried deep inside
Were floating away with every tide
Until I bowed to this reality of life
That fate is indeed a work of art
So I let it fall apart
I Iet it all fall apart...

My brain finally gave up
Setting my soul into wilderness free
Leaving my body best to the vultures plea
Ah! What to say of the old rapt heart
Beating its last to the illusions of love
Now I became a nothing
A nothing to my own self
A hollow that still echoes sometimes
Bitter sweet delusions of well being
Of  unheard laughters and music divine
Far far away into an ocean of the past
An untiring soul had breathed its last
Succumbed to the very fact that
I let it all fall apart!

The Story Of An Unsung Hero ...

In the Land of Azaad Kashmir ,approx. 50 kms north to bhimber , lies a small village called BAROH, just at the line of control between Pakistan and India. The most prominent landmark of the village is a vertical ridge called Baroh Ridge. On the extreme end of the ridge lives an old man almost reaching the age of 100 years,named 'KHUSHI BABA'. With thick long white beard ,darkened skin folds around his eyes,lips strictly sealed and melancholy eyes with a thousand tales of a century hidden deep inside, Khushi Baba walks the land with a stick in his hand and is often seen sitting beside a stream washing his clothes or sometimes comes to my Regimental Aid Post to get medicines.He lives alone with nobody around to take care of him at such an old age.But there is a long story behind such loneliness ,reasons that make this country the 'Land Of The Pure' .Reasons that define the true kind and class of people that made this country possible.So lets just stop time of the present and journey back into the black and white of early 20th century to peep into the life of Khushi baba of the 1940's...

Born in Baroh in 1915 ,Khushi Baba spent his childhood days at baroh ridge in a way that has not changed much even now in this village with children more attached to nature and outdoor games and very little of an entertainment at home.Khushi baba then moved out to take on the world the moment he realised he was strong and old enough to leave home.
In 1942,Khushi Baba enrolled himself in the BRITISH ARMY and mastered in Guerilla training at Pune(Indian) and joined 619 Field regt. He worked tenaciously under the command of English officers. However,during the time of 1940's, Muhammad Ali Jinnah was struggling for Pakistan and separate nation for Muslims. Khushi Baba resigned from the British Army and decided to return back to his village of Baroh.

1946- Kashmir was under the rule of king Dogar. Dogar was building up an Army of his own in Kashmir, owing to the political developments in the subcontinent and more likelihood of the creation of two countries ,Pakistan and India. Khushi Baba on hearing of the package Dogar army had to offer, which included pension at the end of retirement and better scale of wages, enrolled himself in the Dogar Army at Nowshera.( Nowshera is only two ridges to the East of village BAROH).But it wasnt all fairy tale for Khushi Baba joining the Dogar's Army as onset of 1947 brought with  it fresh violence especially the burning down of Muslim villages by Dogar Army in the-presently- Indian Occupied Kashmir.Khushi Baba saw the burning,the killings of his fellow Muslims ,rapes of young women at the hands of hindu Dogars and prejudices of extreme nature. On realizing how biased the Dogars were ,Khushi baba couldn't convince his conscience, to be working under an Army that was going rampant on Muslims.

JUNE 1947-ESCAPE FROM DOGAR ARMY BASE CAMP 
 Pakistan was about to get independent .As Redcliff and his counterparts were busy dividing the subcontinent into two,words had reached Khushi Baba and his group of - planning to be deserters - of how hard the times were coming up for the Muslims of the region.He already had planned to take revenge for the spilled blood of his muslim brothers and sisters, by the Dogars.
So khushi Bada besides others ,decided to desert the dogars. They were at that time,living in the Base camp of Dogars in nowshehra .the only escape route through the base camp lay near the latrines and washrooms.one pitch dark night , khushi Baba along with others finally made a move .Through the small windows of the washrooms ,they jumped out of base camps and started running towards the ridge (Chai Ridge) that would lead them to Baroh.They knew they would be followed and killed as soon as the Dogars found out they had deserted.Khushi Baba tells of how long the night was and they kept on running and climbing the ridge through the darkness until they reached the other side of Chai ridge.
On reaching the safe zone ,it was dawn and sun was rising as Khushi Baba knelt and kissed the soil of Chai village.The moment he saw the Baroh ridge ,he started crying and promised His God that he would take revenge for all the Muslim killings he has seen.

This picture was taken from the Baroh Ridge as sun rises from the CHAI RIDGE.The same ridge Baba Khushi crossed at dawn more than 60 years ago.Across this ridge lies the Indian city of Nowshehra ,once a base camp of Dogar Army 

Post 1947- ARRIVAL OF THE PATHAANS AND QUBAILEE PEOPLE 
Qubailee people arrived to help out Muslims of Kahmir ,following Dogar's post independence annexation of Kashmir to India.In the region in proximity to Baroh, the qubailee Lashkars made their base camps in SAMAHNI and TANDAR villages. Khushi Baba knew the region very well and went to Tandar to help out the pathaans and qubailees.He served as a vital Asset to the qubailees ,showing them the various vulnerable areas and defiles and helped them understand the dynamics of the landscape around Baroh .On reaching Kartan ( a ridge on left end of Baroh) . The qubailees decided to camp before the fateful encounter with the dogars.They ate and danced for three consecutive days.(Khushi baba tells me of how the Pathhaans loved to eat meat and mutton and they spent three days eating and slept at Kartan to revitalize themselves for the upcoming encounter with the Dogar Army at CHAI RIDGE). After three days ,the commander of the Lashkar gathered his men and told them to take on the Dogars and occupy the ridge .(Khushi baba told me in a very candid way every word that commander spoke before the encounter with the Dogars.Khushi baba spoke in pashto and then translated for my convenience.He can speak urdu,pushto,punjabi,persian,all learnt over the period of a century) .

So the qubailees took on the Dogars and defeated them.The Dogars fled back to Nowshera Base Camp and even left their loadded trucks behind. However words had come of the huge Indian Army reaching Nowshera to rescue the Dogars .KHushi Baba suggested that the qubailees must not sit relaxed on the Chai ridge and move forward but nobody paid a heed to his words. On seeing how the Qubailees had given up any further advance,He left and went to the Pathaans and lashkars of SAMAHNI.
The commander of the Samahni LASHKAR was named Capt Khan.He was a wise man and a good tactician.On hearing Khushi Baba ,he took the news of Indian Army's arrival very seriously and planned out how to stop the indians from taking over Chai ridge. Khushi Baba knew the Indian side of Chai ridge very well ,he knew the most vulnerable points and tracks in the routes of Indian Army .Capt Khan gave 600 men to Khushi Baba to ambush Indian Army on its way to the ridge.

This picture of KHUSHI BABA was taken in late 1947,at the time when he was working for Capt Khan,commander of the Pathaan Lashkar camped in Samahni.

Khushi Baba took 600 men and infiltrated into the Indian territory .He knew all the tracks and bridges that would be used by the Indian Army vehicles to reach the ridge.He Half cut the logs on the bridge and placed 600 men around the bridge and created a perfect ambush.Then waited for the night to arrive. ( khushi Baba still recalls how the pathans wouldnt stop talking and laughing despite strict instructions of quietness lest anyone should hear them and ambush plan would fail) . They waited for hours and around midnight

,they saw lights of vehicles arriving their way.It was the Indian Army of 80 vehicles and huge weaponry reaching the bridge to cross it and attack the Chai ridge. Khushi Baba lay very close to the bridge,logs of which he had already cut with an axe.No sooner than the first vehicle reached the bridge,the bridge collapsed with the weight of the indian truck ,taking the vehicle down alongwith it into the abyss.seeing this , Khushi Baba ordered men to fire.The surprise element was achieved and the Indian Army was caught off guard and had to retreat to Nowshehra.

Throughout the 1950's and 1960's ,Khushi Baba continued to infiltrate the Indian Occupied Kashmir and was a very useful spy.He married in 1949 to a woman from a nearby village but spent next two decades away from home ,away from family and kept spying for his country.He still remembers how he would disguise himself like a shepherd and had once brought a herd of 30 cows from Indian territory and distributed them equally among his fellow villagers of Baroh.
But nothing comes easy.Every sacrifice has a price to pay. In Khushi Baba's case,his family left him owing to his long years of absence and his wife settled in Gujrat. This was the biggest price Khushi Baba had to pay for his country and the tragedy is that it goes unheard of.During his whole spying career. Khushi Baba had done eight successful infiltration and had once kept 20 men hidden in the jungle eating leaves and insects until the LOC finally became less hostile to cross .

Khushi Baba at present lives all alone and his kids are still settled in Gujrat. Little do they know how much sacrifices their father had carried out throughout his life in the name of Islam and Pakistan.Little do they realize their father is among the biggest 'unsung heroes' of Pakistan.

The Paths Of Randomness

I see a strange connection between the paths of nerves running wildly through my brain and those of life, marked with unpredictability.There are a thousand paths I've followed and millions more to come in life.Some leading to the disappointing ends ,others yielding the fulfillment of most sacred dreams I had.
so then Why do people lead a very conscious life when these paths of randomness have no fixed pattern.Do we little beings have any control over them?

If not,then Why life, more than often, brings us to a point in time where all other roads end and we are given a choice to opt between only two.Black or White! One road leading to the risky jungles of love and compromises,of risks and consequences ,of happiness and sadness of extreme nature.While the other tells a tale of deserts of monotony and lifelessness,of sands and smoothness,of waking up and sleeping down every day without an element of change.

It is this stage in life where even our neurons are brought to a halt .As if there is a perplex link between the paths of life and those in our head ,both ending up together at this contrasting point of bifurcation.Both cease to grow any further.

Such are the times when we realize our life has  stopped , like a caravan , that calls it a day and rests up to build enough energy first ,to prepare for the fateful journey.The camels are rested and the loads taken off.The head of the caravan weighs the options ,looks into his past and predicts the future, analyzing if he would be able to make it through the days to come.


A similar picture pops up in our heads too when our mind is left with only black or white to chose from.The neurons stop working as if they've called it a day, leaving us to figure out the confusions ourselves.Its this turning point of time in our life when either we become the head of our own caravan and actively contemplate our desires and beliefs,our resolve and strengths to undergo the greatest most dramatic journey of life or we become the weaklings and leave this onerous responsibility in the hands of fate and follow the safer monotonous root to eternity.


One way or the other , whatever be the path actively or passively, chosen by us, whatever be the repercussions,good or worse, years from now when our skin is pale and hair grey and we look back into our life and remember the night our camels sat and our caravans rested and life had generously given us the option to chose the destiny for ourselves, we must then stand by our decisions and take the responsibility for what became of our life.

The bold ones who take matters in their own hands,on the fateful turn in life,would easily take the fame or the blame for the results.The problem lies with the other class that gives up their wits,to the vagueness in their heads.They would even by the last breath ,continue to blame their fates,for they are made this way.They are born to follow than be followed,to drift with the flow than be the flow,to see what life had taken away than what life has given in return.

In short , the fate maybe written up there ,the strings may be controlled by the higher force but the true finality to our fates lies with us.Its up to us if we take the charge of our mind and reach for the glory or fall a victim to our nerves and blame fate for the disarray.

'THE PATHS OF RANDOMNESS are, in fact, the paths we create ourselves!'