Haunted house

A house which remains empty for a while often becomes a haunted place for the ghosts to live. Perhaps that has happened to me too, but the worst thing to imagine is am I becoming habitual of living with these ghosts ? these ghosts, these intangible invisible beings living in the deep corridors of my mind, jumping infront of me all of a sudden, from this smell door or that feeling window, or popping out of the drawer or even inside the fridge whenever i move from one freezing thought to another..... reminding me of their silent presence in most creative ways possible.
Sometimes they show up in large numbers, dancing and abusing me with their funny sad memory faces, yet sometimes they just send one of them in the most unexpecting time, just to remind me they are still there.....
I sometimes think what will happen to me and my ghosts if i start sharing my soul and thought rooms with a real being, will i be able to keep both together?, will i be able to live without them if they intend to leave?, or will she be able to live accepting their empty presence?

Today i told her about these ghosts . She thinks i am crazy for being sentimental about there feelings, as per her its a typical fumigation issue, and once sprayed rightly they will just disappear. She says its like the left over food, if you donot clean them properly, the roaches come to claim there share. Is that as easy as she says? is this really just a fumigation problem??? I dont think so , the roaches tend to hide and donot tend to show there presence as these ghosts do so ardently....... yesterday it was so funny, this one ghost come in the form of a cat winking with one eye and staring at me from one of the thought rooms, before disappearing with her perpetual sadness.......

The longest night

Yesterday 21st december I celebrated the Yalda night with my newly found persian friend and his mother in Dar-es-Salaam. Shab-e-Yalda is the longest night in the year , and for some reason i enjoyed the persian optimism, of the longest night being over and now the days will start growing, the morning will be coming earlier second by second, day by day, everyday............
We started with the dry fruits fresh from persia, followed by water melon and pomegranates, with the Hafiz recitation of peotry singing at the back. And then our friend played with his first love Santoor, filling the room with the persian musical notes . These persian people, they look so dead from out side, but much more alive inside then the rest of the world perhaps.......

I am finding my self being pulled towards persia for some reason unknown to me, as if a call is coming for me to be in Persia, someone calling me to be with her and enjoy her in the most persian way possible.

Just got a flash back of N.M Rashid writing "Aay mairee hum-ruks mujh ko thaam lai, zindagi sai bhaag ker aaya hoon mai' ( Oh my beloved (death/eternal peace) hold me, i have run away long from life).........I wonder if he may have gone through the same transition and accepted fire to be his final resting place....

We are two nations living in one land. who doesnot understand each other

Right in the middle of a lovely hilly city of Kigali in a land locked African country, lies the white building, built to remember the killing of millions. It was my second trip to this country which is also called a country of thousand hills, and i always felt good about the tranquility of the place, but after visiting this white building i was silent and this silence was not a satisfying one. It was the silence asking all of us on to what level of madness we humans can go.

The building starts with the pictures and history about the divisions of hutu and tutsi tribe by the Belgians; as per the principle, anyone having more then 10 cows was termed as tutsi, and then comes the hatred of the hutu calling tutsi people as Inyenzi" cockroaches" and subsequent killing of millions. the UN and foreign troops trying to secure the white people only, and the dilemma of the UN captain who is ordered not to shoot any one and who asks if he can shoot the dogs eating the dead people....the good people within this madness who felt themselves judged by the tears of the cockroaches obliged to give them a refuge... the big halls full of skulls and photos of the dead ones..... was it not too much to make any one silent and feel embarrassed about his/her own human existence.

In the start one of the rebel leader was shouting " We are two nations living in one land who does not know each other " sounded very familiar to me.... for some reason the whole history of india and Pakistan was playing like a movie in parallel inside my head. May be it was my humanist belief which tends to see more common things in people living in both sides of the border, but somehow i felt I was reading through the history of partition of india , seeing the same movie but in different color... the Britishers dividing us brown men to the extent that we managed to kill millions and draw the lines in blood.....and then the good people being judged by their conscience helping the distressed ones.......
I finally was able to decipher the silent flowery smile of my rwandan driver carrying all the smells of sadness , trying to say so much, but was just silent like a sad flower blossoming in between the thorns which was also a part of there existence........ the last words in the museum ended with a message from the people of Rwanda.. "This was the sad part of our lives but our children should know where we ended and where we began our journey to a better future, so this should not be repeated"

Istanbul to Dar

Dear Ertyaas
A beautiful apartment facing the enormous indian ocean, a long balcony to look at the passing boats and ships,the rising sun from the depths of the ocean, the sea changing its colors from white to yellow to blue to black and then a silvery white, as if a child is born in the morning and grows old with the moon the same day............ my new nest where i am trying to settle just like a ghost trying to settle up in a big palace, not wanting to be disturbed by the events around, and yet determined to live...... some times i think I too am becoming a ghost, a nothingness, which is full of past unfinished businesses forcefully trying to live in the unnatural naturalness of the world.... So here I am in Dar es salam (literaly 'the abode for peace') tanzania, amid a peaceful ambiance but where to find the inner peace, that is no where to be seen in the city inside me. Even complaining doesn't helps now with the pangs of loneliness inside. But then again, this is me, i choose this life and no one to blame to :) , for how can i blame others of not forcing me to live a different life when i cannot.

I had a good long weeks in turkey, ending up walking a whole day in the streets of Istanbul with a turkish family i made friends with. I am astonished by myself if i can still make new friends, i thought that was destiny playing pranks on me, and i thinking of taking it of my conscious effort. You must and must and must go to Istanbul. Its a city where wonders happened and still happening and will happen... a city of history and culture and freedom and past and life and hope and a place where east and west are meeting so humbly together and what not , but may be you don't need to go at all, just think of it and create an Istanbul of your mind and make yourself lost in the grand bazaar with small turning streets which make you loose the sense of direction, the magical shops selling old lamps and backgammon boards and small little chess pieces, all this you just need to touch and they comes to life taking you years behind , in the days of cruel kings and beautiful fairies and the sad princesses smiling sadly and the jinnie awaiting to come out of its lamp......... or just lay at the 500 year old Hamam built by the great architect Sinan and still steaming with hot water for the people who come to relax, you dont even have to bother, just think of the yildiz park and you will be there in an instant, a green hill which used to be the country house of the old Sultan and which as the keeper of the the park says goes white when the winter comes, the small little quarter house which looks upon the whole of Istanbul city and can order a chai without milk to enjoy the minute bitterness coming on your tongue, which may remind you of someone you lost for good, and like a haunted quarter house the mysterious emptiness will fill up with all the memories and good times spent ... i got stray again, but what to do, my insanity haunts me with all the voices I so want to hear but cant, and instead create this silly voices in your mind with my silly words.Yes for you i know i am just made of words or just the empty spaces within those words trying to nullify my life in order to give you hope and meaning.........

The ghost in the palace of Dar is settled quite comfortably now, waiting for the east african magic to happen to him, which may give him some piece of mind, at least for a while. The omens are promising so far.....
till later
S.

Black Jack.....

Playing black jack is like passing a complete life in a fast forward.... each card presenting us with options... each hand representing chances and choices... each deal showing how the people around us are reacting to decisions of there lives, enjoying, celebrating the fruits of mere luck or being concerned of loosing what is already there.... and the dealer like a god in real life, in his own humble way, keeps on inciting people to play though having a conviction of wining in the end all what is laid on the table. Is it not so similar to what life is all about, just a bit more slower in passing in real life. There is even a relation of your choice of accepting or rejecting cards affecting other people chances and luck ; just like in real life where our decisions knowingly or unknowingly changes the whole game plan for the other people around us. You see adventurers and businessman types who open hands to fight on multiple fronts at the same time to maximize their gains, and then you see the banker types focusing more on what is at hand then what is there to gain, and then there are pimp types who are more concerned of other people games then their own having different motives all together then the real black jack, and then there are people who being convinced of the intangibility of real life are there just to laugh and spend one good lifetime in fast forward as intangibly as possible.

A good night of black jack game gives a good idea about what we learn in one whole life if we think of it in retrospect, loosing and winning becomes just momentary emotions of happiness and sadness, with a great learning that even getting the absolute number 21 or getting blackjack on which the whole game revolves may not bring us absolute happiness if one’s bet is too low get a good return…….

With thanks to a kind office friend who tempted me to play Black jack while visiting an east African country…