#Africa
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Joberg.. Another story unfolded…..
All that time i was trying to realize if she was a good salesgirl or a good human being. I ended up buying couple of skin products apparently originating from the dead sea in Israel from her, even though i knew i was paying more money then i should. I think i figured out her to be a good human being in the end. It was almost a small story unfolded there in that busy Sandton city mall in Johannesburg(S.Africa) where the big smiling statue of Mandela gives hope to all humanity. I was in Joberg on business and found few hours before the flight to buy some last minute…
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The dancing girls of Dar…
Dear Ertyaas, I should have taken you to watch the dancing girls of Dar, when you were here. You can call it my inflamed sense of protectionism or may be i wanted to keep something for you and me to come to Dar in the distant future. You had your Pani Puris and Indian food tasting here but the subcontinent is not just exporting food. There is a thriving and not so underground culture of dancing bars here as well , kind of a mini Chandni Chowk or Rung-mehal in the heart of Africa… can you imagine that!!! It was some months back when an office colleague told me about…
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Zanzibar Dreams….
I remember it happened to me some time back, I was traveling a lot back then, and one day I woke up unable to remember which country I am waking up into, the hotel rooms all look the same after a while. Took me some time to figure out I was in a west-african country with noisy Atlantic ocean. But that was nothing compared to what happened to me this time when i woke up. I was visiting Zanzibar islands and for a change stayed in the old town, in a 500 year old building converted into a hotel, with colored glasses and extended Jharokay (جھروکے balconies) made of wood,…
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Worlds, thresholds, year ends…..
We all create worlds around us. Worlds with self given names, desired dynamics and associated predictability… be it a world of business or worldly relationships where we want ourselves to act in a chosen way for a desired outcome OR a personal world where like a painter’s canvas we expose ourselves to the mercy of other beings who we think have all the rights to create us. This creating of worlds in the midst of controllable and uncontrollable predictability is sometimes i think what we call as living life. I am seeing every day, people around me creating, non-stoppingly, different worlds of all sorts, dark and horny worlds where the…
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“Woofy”…
It was my second day in the cold, sunny Johannesburg. I was staying in a big old estate turned into a guesthouse, with alot of zebras, horses, birds and different breeds of dogs wondering around . A nice place to rest and be with nature. I saw her sitting on the stairs, staring at the birds. Beautifully white, shiny sad eyes, with an unforgettable personality. She was totally unlike other dogs. I took her as a Canadian Husky in the first place. I said to the owner of the lodge, “What a nice dog you have, so beautifully white” And she smiled, ” Its not a dog, its a wolf,…
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Mt. Kilimanjaro . Love you all from the top of Africa
It is day two of my ascent to Kilimanjaro, and I am remembering what Ertyaas said to me earlier .We were sitting in Dar Cafe two days before the climb when she said “To climb a mountain is like being in love with a strong woman….you want to be on the top (on the top she smiled) but you face allot of tears and rain, thunders and anger, rock slides and constant struggle to continue moving and reach the top… and at times one thinks why the hell I am doing this all, is it really worth all the effort? just for that bloody mountain, that woman … but she…
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Work Hard…Party Hard…Moonlight…
Running… Running…Running…. as if playing a video game where all the monsters are supposed to be killed, and only one life line left…. running,running notstop!…this office stuff, that meeting… this offer, those targets….we run and run and run forgeting totally about the absurdity of wasting our prime time of lives in helping someone make more money…harder, even harder… running fast, unknowingly, un consciously ,(Abba’s money money money flashing in the brains!…)) too innocently our habitual state of living letting us fall into a dark abyss; for what is darkness but a feeling of unknowing-ness that can make us shiver even in the broad daylight….. falling like a sky dive in…
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Samsara
I am becoming more and more engulfed with the lures of my physical senses these days. I become easily disturbed by the changing smells around as if these little yellow butterflies are hitting my nose reminding me of old memories and lonely moments, the other day i prefered to hear the slow buzzing of the sea and waited long to see the moon rising from the sea from my apartment, preferring the disgust of waiting for the moon more then waiting for my lazy existence to turn off the mute television showing meaningless images. Is it something to do with my living in africa for so long….Africa where the sense…
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Smelling the imaginition
We were walking in the long Dubai airport transit lounge when i see the shop selling perfumes and told her ” I want to learn making perfumes, someday” “You know their are more astronauts in the world then their are perfumers” said Ertyaas” “Yes, i know, but somehow i am beginning to enjoy these fragrances” “you have to start from the very basics i think, my dear”, she said and added..”First rule, stop infatuating with all the perfumes from these big fashion house and celebrity name brands…. specially the ones who were selling clothes and started selling these beautiful bottles carrying empty smells to make more money.” “That’s not fair…
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August….Partition…Heroshima…Independance
When I say ‘Hiroshima;, Will people gently respond ‘Ah Hiroshima’? When I say ‘Hiroshima, I hear ‘Pearl Harbor.’ When I say ‘Hiroshima, I hear ‘Chinese Nanking Massacre.’ “What is she trying to say?”,I asked the Japanese lady sitting next to me in an event remembering Hiroshima with some poetry recitals, and she replied ,”that was another partition happened somewhere in the far far east in the same month of august, the only difference is you people celebrate on the death of 500,000 people and millions de-homed and we drop a tear every august in remembrance of all the same number of stories that died,and this poem is describing the views…
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Imagining Japan from Africa
I am watching a Japanese tv channel (NHK world) alot these days. It all started when my satellite TV connection expired due to non payment and i for some reason wanted not to watch the hundreds of channels anymore and convinced my self instead to watch the only Japanese free channel coming. Strange, how the whole world starts to dance in the ‘palm of our hands’; me sitting in Africa, away from my land , and getting obsessed with a another culture of a land even farther away. I am beginning to love this channel and the whole Japanese culture in particular. The channel undertones are so serene, so objectively…
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Smells, sounds, Imagination
I was wondering if it is the imagination we associate to a certain music or smell which changes it to a music of longing, or a fragrance of subtle remembrance of life. Or is it in these invisible singing birds carrying fragrances from old times and far off places which reminds us of our mute existence and paint our imagination in their own colors…Yesterday Ertyaas was preparing a potpourri with alot of dry Champa flowers she collected from near by tree, grounded fresh cloves and cinnamon from the Zanzibar island and local sea salt. She imagines the five petals of the Champa flower as the five phases of women (Birth,…
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A sea and a river
She draws strange comparison sometimes and that’s what she did today saying, “to say a sea is to river as solitude is to loneliness is pretty much true” . We were on our ferry back from an island nearby Dar-es salam city, the turquoise Dar sea was glimmering in its usual bright colors,with small waves riding here and there, and we were discussing my recent trip to turkey and the novel by Elif shafak i recently read on the life of Rumi, when she drew this comparison.“And how come you make such a comparison, for i don’t even think there is a difference between loneliness and solitude” I asked.“Well you…
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Liquid Music
“So, my life is in your hands” , I said to erty, who was my buddy for my first dive in the open indian ocean around Dar-es-salam… she said, “don’t worry, in best case, you will die hearing liquid music all around you…” And so it was….a liquid musical world in bluescope, all around me…. though i survived the bliss…The whole episode started on a light conversation with erio and her daughter and I saw my impulsive instincts seeing myself nodding in approval even before my rational self started to think…. my sister was wining over me of doing this first somewhere in Australia and i was looking for settling…
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A fashionable idea
Every human being, every one of us, lives his/her life in an IDEA, or a set of ideas. These ideas that binds him/her in the social fabric around her as well as keeps him/her staying alive with some distant goals to live for. We are nothing but mere proponents and adherents of these ideas that we are in-love with in different phases of our lives, and all our lives, all we do is just refining these ideas.No matter what rational or logical reasoning or explanations we give to ourselves, it is the love of these ideas blossoming in the deep infinity of our minds that drives our conscious awareness in…
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About Journeys in life
There is yet another journey , i know deep in my heart that i have to take. A journey not even started, but is already creating most of the bubbles sparkling in the watery heart of mine. I know i have to prepare alot even to take the first step, even to think of taking the first step and being fearfully bored about it even more to pass through the whole cycle …..perhaps the most difficult to reach the finish line and stop and return, and yet i am thinking WTF , why to go all the way when I can already imagine all the moments of accomplishments and joys…
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On Ghosts and other demons….
“Your mind is full of emotional ghosts” she said in a way as if that is the root cause of all my problems. “And what do you mean by that I asked. ‘Well you see ghosts breathe in the past but live in the present, just like these tiny ghosts in the form of old memories trying to breathe their imagination in your past but stubbornly determined to live in the present narrow alleys of your mind’s grey matter, and you know that is the problem with your country and countrymen as well…too many ghosts breathing from the past air” “Well if that is the case why do you think…
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Identity visualized
She has such a different way of looking at things, making me fall for her more and more as my age goes by. Anyways that was just my emotional outburst, but finally me and Ertyaas after a long time did a real collaborative work together on defining my identity, which she thinks is something people are starting to mingle up in this globalized-terrorized-hypnotized world.All the thinking work I left to her, and all the logical rationality I kept for myself and together we were able to put in some thing really tangible this time. Sometimes I think she is slowly filling the right empty side of my brain, taking all…
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Mastering the art of giving….
“But why can one not start to love someone after marriage” , my little remaining not so western part of soul asked her . Ertyaas gave me a very long smiling gaze, the gaze she seldom gives, and after a long smiling silence said, “ your soul is too small to understand that sort of great love, you will be blown away with that sort of love my dear, its not for the fainthearted” , and she laughed long after that. I was confused as usual by the way she gazed at me and more confused on what she was saying, for we normally always differ on every discussion and…
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Traveling Desires
Am thinking for quite some time, if there is a far far remote possibility that the desires and wishes from our fathers and forefathers may have the ability to travel through the genes and are still alive some where in a dark hidden corner of our DNA code? Off-course there is alot of instinctive behavior that we humans do instinctively, like craving for eating, copulating, survival stuff but i am not talking about that and I am also not talking about the desires that the parents associate with their sons and and daughters.I am talking about the desires that one wishes for him self, I am talking about all the…
