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 knows,slowly and gradually she is making you capable and worthy of her love...slowly and gradually the desire becomes as white as snow and liberated and finally when you are on the top and give one last glance to her and start descending, you realize that she is still the same and will remain the same but your life is changed altogether...... "

It was my desperate attempt to normalize my work-life balance; the year was hectic professionally but very good, with alot of traveling within and outside Africa and working long hours to meet sales targets and I was looking forward to few days of detachment from the worldly affairs and just walk and think. Tomas Transtromer and Rumi were accompanying me this time. Rumi was unusually silent, perhaps that was the sufi way, silently absorbing the ambiance around  and then saying few words that can encompass eternity and which he did on the last summit day . Tomas eyes however were shining with his snowy sadness. On the first day he said.
"In the middle of life it happens that death comes to take man's measurements. 
The visit is forgotten and life goes on . But the suit is sewn on the quiet"(Tomas)
and I joked with him, "may be some people try to outgrow that suit , constantly expanding the measurements, so they can die in nudity".

The route I was taking was amazingly scenic, starting with dense mossy african trees, to alpine deserts above the clouds and being stopped by great walls before the world in black and white begins. The baranco camp was adjacent to the seemingly unclimbable great Baranco wall  but we manage to pass that and Tomas was also looking optimistic..

It hurts to go through walls, it makes you ill

but is necessary.

The world is one. but walls...

And the wall is part of yourself-

we know or we don't know but its true for all of us

except for small children. No walls for them.

The clear sky has leaned against the wall.

It's like a prayer to emptiness.

And the emptiness turns its face to us

and whispers,

"I am not empty, I am open." 

(Tomas)

We are trekking for few days now, I am consuming alot of food, soups, chicken, potatoes, alot of honey filled tea and it seems i am traveling for centuries, the count of days and hours are long gone, and i am enjoying the freedom. My mind is full of emptiness now, and long gone faces and good old memories are beginning to come and fill that emptiness and dance with me. Even the dreams i am seeing are having happy endings...

Summit day:Its 3am now...We are walking up to the summit for last 3hours starting midnight and still 3 more hours to go. Its pitch black and all you can see is the stars shining and long queue of headlamps shining ahead and behind you, as if a road of these lamps is sewn in the mountain moving with you. The world is reduced to mere black and white, with few variables to think on, breathing, feeling the cold, and few faces apearing and disapearing in the great wilderness of my mind. Still three hours to reach the top. Constant struggle with hope and fears, the hail-storm is making things worse, but the desire is becoming whiter and whiter with each step on the snow filled mountain......

We reached the stella point now, 5700meters, another 100meters to go but the way is not steep anymore. My guide miraculously takes out his flask full of hot tea and honey and we tried to recharge ourselves for the last 45 minutes. The sky is getting brighter with every step and out of nowhere a strange energy has filled us with hope making us move faster and reach the top....... Summit at 6:35am.


The sun is waking up slowly from its bed of clouds....Its MORNING everywhere (ﺻﺒﺢﹺ ﻭﻗﺖ' ﺟﻮ 'ﻭﻗﺖﹻﺼﺒﺢ' ﺳﮯ ﮬﻮ ﻛﮩﻴﮟ ﺯﻳﺎﺩﻩ ﺣﺴﻴﮟ) ...the whiteness is absolute now....the desire purified and freed from the prison of mind, flying like a bird... We reached the top along with a bunch of people all excited, some Russians taking pictures without cloths with body-builder like poses :) .crazy(Chezi Kabisa in Swahili language)......women getting emotional.... alot of hugs and shouts... Rumi finally smiled and said.

The body is a device to calculate
the astronomy of spirit.
Look through that astrolabe
and become oceanic.

(Rumi)

One last glance before leaving the great strong mountain, thinking of all the footprints already forgotton and forgiven by her, the great mountain remaining the same, forgiving and forgetting everyone, yet changing one's life altogether......

Thank You Kilimanjaro!


PS:
Every camping site I was checking the register to see any body from my land is there.Pages after pages, no one from my country.... depressing.. though after turning alot of pages, i manage to find one name "Najia Mukhtar, based in london but originally from my land" I hope she climbed the summit like all the other women. My guide was telling me that out of 16 people he guided this year, all the women reached the summit and not all men could make it up. My solute to Women power.

Music:
I was hearing this Shenai fusion music for a recent film i saw, all over my trip. Hope you enjoy.Its called The dichotomy of fame

(Click play if you are in mood of listening this beautiful instrumental)
 

More Pictures:
Following link for more pictures. Enjoy...!
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150559710966477.435340.628801476&type=1&l=0b1c12d6b0

The wedding night (Sheb-e-Arus)

For no apparent reason today i immersed my self with the Oudh and sandalwood oil i bought from the perfume souq in Dubai, and burned the incense all over my apartment .No apparent reason, just an urge coming from the hidden corners of my heart.  And then i found out that today is 17th December, the wedding night of my beloved Rumi.....How can i forget that. I have to prepare for the "Sema" and I thought i should do it on a much bigger scale this time within my mind.

(The sema is a ritual followers of Rumi perform to celebrate Rumi's reunion with his beloved).

So little by little, the 'thought people' start gathering in the big amphitheater of my mind. The dirt of ussual daily life thoughts was settled and the ground was prepared by spraying rose water of love all over the place.

As Rumi wrote:

Little by little, the group of the lovedrunk arrive

Little by little, the worshipers of wine arrive

They are on their way; Comforting and gentle

Like flowers from the flowerfield they arrive

Little by little, from this world of Being and non-Being

The non-existent leave and the existent arrive

Their essence is grace and grace they unfold and expand

From the garden towards the garden they arrive

(Tribute by Shahram Nazeri)

From the folds of my memory so many long forgotten and unforgotton faces start showing up. I was feeling a bit uneasy when poet Jami put his hand on my shoulder and recited one of his poem. 

You were always sitting in my eye and I saw You not.
In my chest You were hiding and I ran around
searching the whole world, I sought a sign of You.

The whole world was nothing but You and I saw You not.(Jami)

And then shedding all my feelings of separation, loneliness and malice, i joined the whirling dervishi thoughts , and the whole world started whirling within me......... Its just started now and the whole night is still there to celebrate the great Sheb-e-Arusi ( the wedding night) . Nusrat Fateh ali just started paying his tribute to Rumi in his own unique way

Na man behooda girde kocha
Wa bazaar megardam
Mazaj-e-ashiqee daram paye
dildar megardam

Khudaya rahm kon bar man
Pareeshan waar megardam

Khata karam gonahgaram
Ba hale zaar megardam

Sharabe showq menosham
Ba girde yaar megardam

Sukhan mastana megoyam
Walay hooshyaar megardam

(Translation)
No I am not roaming aimlessly
around the streets and bazaar
I am a lover searching for his beloved
God have mercy on me
I am walking around troubled
I have done wrong and sinned
and am walking around wounded
I have drunk the wine of desire
and am strolling around beloved
Though I may seem drunk
I am quite sober

Gahe khandam, gahe giryam, gahe aftam, gahe khezam,
Maseeha dar’dilam paida vaman beemar mi gardam.
Biya jana inayat kun wa maulana e Rumi ra,
Gulame Shams Tabrezam qalandar waar mi gardam

(Translation)Laughing at times, crying at times, falling at times, rising at times,
The savior is at the doorstep of my heart, yet like a sick man I wander.
O Beloved! Come and help your Maulana Rumi
I am a slave of Shams Tabrizi, enraptured I wander.

The night is still long and sweet but nowhere dark. The moon is making sure the Wedding night is visible to all. And I am not missing anyone anymore.....COME JOIN ME FOR THE CELEBRATION............

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 dark deluding ourselves that it will never end...

And then the night comes and the plane running long all through the day,takes off ... and the PARTY begins.....
Dancing on the beats of african music, shivering cold bodies, crowds of lonely thoughts willing to die their deaths in our minds for one moment of forgetfulness.....glasses breaking...people of smoke trying to find their own shadows in the fizzling lights of blue and green, smoky faces blending, dissolving, flikering with unconscious happiness... dancing bodies, distracted minds...the Dar nightclub people.....singing so loud but cannot hear themselves....

Thoughts swim from one edge of existence pool to the other end.....swiming in the chlorine filled loneliness in the plenitude of watery people around....from one edge to another till the end comes......................................

The live band now playing (Sawa Sawa sawale , an old 70's west african classic... Sawa Sawa which also means Its ok, its Ok in Swahili. 

View from my Balcony

Its 2AM in the night now. Am standing in my balcony,tired but consciously more aware of myself, watching the moonlight dispearing in the great dark existense of the sea, just like how consciousness disapears in the bleak hustle bustle of our daily lives. Tomas Transtromer is smiling at me, a smile confirming the understanding of a  similar deja vu, peeking slyly from the folds of his poetry book. "the great enigma" lying open on my side table.

Tracks(Poem by Tomas Transtromer)
2AM: Moonlight, The train has stopped
out in the middle of the plain.
Faraway... points of light in a town, flickering coldly at the horizon

As when someone has fallen into a dream so deep
he'll never remember having been there
when he comes back to his room

As when someone has fallen into an illness so deep
everything of his days were to become few flickering points, a swarm,
cold and tiny on the horizon.

The train is standing quite still.
2AM: bright moonlight, few stars........

Traditions... Gender.... Equality

Last week we had good discussions on gender equality and how it affects traditions and at the end I was thinking we both were talking about two different sides of the same coin. She was talking more about fighting for one's rights and I was more of romanticizing the imaginition-practices one associate himself with, and though everything is fair in love and war but that doesn't mean love and war are the same things.

She was insistent that women should be given even opportunities, and in sweden still most of the C-level and management level positions are held by men.

I was of the veiw that although women should be given equal opportunities, but their is a fine line between giving opportunities and enjoying traditions out of ones own free will. I told her about my mother's grandmother side of the tradition where women donot call their husbands by their names in the public (as a sign of respect; and i leave it to our imagination how these older generations used to call their husbands in private) and though this thing is dying and my own siblings are not following it but still alot of people romanticize about it. Their was also a tradition of calling the the wedded girl "bride" even after years and years of marriage and my mother used to laugh about the incivility of my father's family side of traditions; she got married to a punjabi family where on the second day the bride is called a "budhi" (an old one) .

courtesy:Wikipedia

On the other side the example of man kneeling on his toes when proposing to a woman may be taken as an example of gender inequality but on the other hand i being a non-westerner finding it very romanticizing of someone out of one's own free will(on men's part) bowing to love of his life giving her precedence over one's own respect of self.

I gave her another example. Their is a tradition of "Lucia" in Sweden, where a your girl having a candle throne goes from door to door in the winter mornings and imagine if a young boy is given an equal opportunity their will be a lot of people who may not be able to romanticize that with.

A Ugandan friend was telling about his tribe's tradition where they almost crawl on the land when they meet their parents, somewhat extreme form of Indian people touching their elder's feet. We have a tradition of giving our seat to a women purely as a sign of respect but when i did the same in Sweden the women felt offended.


I am thinking long after these discussions on how to put these two big concepts 'traditions' and 'gender equality' in one thought-place. I think at the end of the day as the winds of globalization is blowing more west to east, we eastern people will be coming at par with the basic levels of gender equality the west is enjoying and  which on the very basic level of existence we should have too, but at the same time we would be loosing the invisible flowers of our imagination blossoming in our minds which we identify ourselves with as a collateral damage...gender specific traditions being one of them.....

Dreams...

Aaah! the world of dreams... What a world... no body wants to come out it if inside, and no body allowed to enter once he wakes up no matter how hard he tries to stop the lights entering into the door of his eyes ....

So it is in this world where the first time i found my self talking to you, in a room ful of smoky noises and dancing shadows. I didnot remember who you were,where was I and how I happened to be talking to you...it was as if I was talking to you for ages, as if I was just born in that fixed setting for eternity... you were telling me about the yellow butterflies in garcia marquez's world and my eyes were lost dreaming those yellow butterflies in your eyes, and then you fell silent....your smile started getting gloomier second by second and then like a fast dying smell of a perfume you vanished....

We met several times after that,in dreams offcourse, like strangers, like buddies, like emotions talking to desires, like hope talking to loneliness, like a little girl talking to his father, like an age old musician talking to her instrument, like dancers whirling on the holy tunes..... each time the same face, the same gloomy smile and the dream ending abruptly ,with you vanishing like the top notes of a perfume, or smoke spreading in the vast skies..... these dreams ussually lasting few seconds but capturing most of my awaken time to the extent that i started living my real life dreaming of these dreams,awaiting just to be in it again...

And then you disapeared.. for a long time.... i tried my self to dream you, but couldn't, i tried all crazy things...sleeping with the lights open, putting alarms at unusual times,lying in bed for hours and hours until the body hurts.. but those dreams of you did not come....i was not able to dream you.... it was always street lights standing on empty streets, garbage papers flying on large parking lots, dense forests mornings with even denser silence....paper-faces talking rubish, but your face was not there... the face i was so used to off, the face i could recognize in millions....

And in this depression when I was about to loose hope in my world of dreams, when the other day, I saw you with open eyez sitting on a bus on the opposite side of the road, looking at me with the same gloomy smile and disapearing yet again with the yellow butterflies flying all around you....
I am still wondering if that was a dream or if i started dreaming with open eyes, or was it just a a personified hope playing pranks on me......

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 of existence is still raw and life is bound to be lived with few variables in mind

OR is it some thing to do with living alone for so long which is making me so much sensitive to things which we donot consider otherwise.  The other day Ertyaas said to me that loneliness is the price I am paying to safeguard just a shady sense of my freedom and i should reconsider if the price is really justified.

OR another remote possibility is  this perfume 'Samsara' i am wearing these days which is making me mad? Samsara which literally means the the cycle of birth and death and rebirth and which its creator made for her long gone wife or rather long gone memories and the curse of which made him loose his 5th generation of perfumery family business.....

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 Erty, you know i love Fahrenheit from Dior" i interrupted

"Well i know there are few hidden jewels in hundreds of these branded contemporaries being created every year, but you need to take a step back... good perfume is not about how much it costs, or how good its bottle looks like, good perfume is about awakening old memories ,you need to feel and smell the imagination, you need to understand the story they are trying to tell in their last whispers before dying...... Ok! lets try with this one, she picked up a perfume named 'Shalimar' from an old french perfumery Guerlain(french-fully pronounced Gaylaa-n) and asked
"what do you say?"

I smelled the perfume, and commented, "The bottle looks pretty ordinary, and smell, it has some thing definitely flowery in it"

"your need to change your ideas about perfume and perhaps about women as well my dear,its not the bottle or outward appearance to look for, its the elixir inside which is worth enjoying. You are somewhat right about the flowery top note. This perfume was first created in 1920s by a 2nd generation perfumer and is still being preserved and produced by his fourth generation Guerlain family. It has survived the test of time and still popular, it brings me memories of my my father prime youth, his old closet of clothes still smell of it sometimes. "

"Now can you smell this perfume again from the same place you smelled before" she asked.

I checked and was surprised to feel the flowery thing was disappearing like clouds and alot of different smells were trying to come out of that flowery wrap, as if different musical notes were trying to emerge together in a single melody.

"Now this is the middle note you are experiencing" she said ," there are so many things happening here, abit of lavender,mint, amber , a hint of lemon i think , as if you are in a garden, alot of these things even i do not know the names, but above all, think about passing through this beautiful garden of Shalimar, commissioned by the great Mughal king to please his beloved beautiful wife.... think about the emotions of that great king having the largest army of his time waiting for his one royal order to crush the enemies but he, still feeling weak to conquer the heart of his beloved wife Mumtaz... think of the king's pain seeing her wife still not happy even having heaps of flowers and wealth around and the king's head at her feet.....imagine the smell of desire by Mumtaz, imagine nothingness wrapped in this rich vanilla velvety heart asking for more..... ah! can you ascertain the boundaries of desire???"

She paused a while and said " Are you ready for the base note"

"Honestly, I dont think my imagination is flying the same altitude as yours here" i said feeling somewhat drained.

"I think so as well, and besides the base note or the last note is very personal, its where the heart of its creator lives, its like a calm quiet sea...a painting hanging for long saying so many things silently.... it is where our stories are exposed to us from deep within us, smell is all about memories you know.....these foreign smells only awake those old memories, and there is much you find from inside then from an outside source".

"You take these stories very seriously, i never thought of these smells like this...wait a minute, is this vanilla i am smelling now or am i imagining...."

"Yes this is vanilla, forming the famous base-note of Shalimar. let me stir your imagination about vanilla. Do you know an un-plucked vanilla pod has no smell. It has to go through a long painful curing process that takes months and months, when each day the pod is sun dried, dipped in hot water and in the evening rolled in wet woolen clothes in a box and the same process repeating everyday to mature and bring the fragrance out... imagine the pain the pod goes through, imagine the pain its grower goes through in making her perfect.... and now imagine all vanilla you have ever smelled or tasted in an ice-cream or anywhere is nothing but just a cheap by product of paper industry, made from the remaining pulp leftover and processed in hours...oh I just hate commercialism sometimes..... : )"

"Perhaps you are right, commercialism sucks... sometimes.... so what do you think i should do to start my journey in deciphering these stories".

"Not an easy short way, i think, first you need to travel to open your nose and perhaps more to open you mind....... I suggest going to Salalah in Oman and look for "frankincense",a rubbery matter extracted by wounding a plant that grows in harsh desert environment and grows only on the hard rocks..... another option is to go to Assam or Cambodia in search of the fungus infected agar-wood tree.... or perhaps going to french Provence to get a feel of lavender fields may give you a start.......important thing is , you need to get to the roots first, before you even start understanding the stories that starts when these people from Salalah or Cambodia or France meet to create this global music, and not to mention this is just a beginning of a long story telling :) "

That night i for some reason dreamed of traveling somewhere in the Arabian desert in search of these oriental fragrances ,or perhaps in search of the understanding of all that is cooking deep inside me, hoping these smells having the courage to take out all within me.........
Photo courtesy "Wikipedia - Perfume"

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 from both sides."

Somehow I was taken aback by the way she compared the nuclear holocaust with the independence of my country.

Long after that on our way back and still disturbed by the comparison of these two isolated august incidents by that Japanese, i asked Ertyaas,"how can she compare these, I love my country and i celebrate for that freedom every august, what's wrong with that" .

She replied, "you need to clear out first if you celebrate the freedom of your country from the Britishers or you celebrate the idea of partition leading up to making of the country that you call your country, or is it something else".

"It was both", I said and continued" but above all i love my land, where I grew up, where most of my friends and family live, where most of my memories are made are and that's what i celebrate"

"Well if it is that, than you could have celebrated anywhere, your land was not created from scratch, it was always there.... but imagine you are living in that land for years and because of some external factors(good or bad), you are forced to leave your home, your associations, your memories, the same land that you love the most, how will you feel...its really difficult to be objective here isn't it. The same happened in Hiroshima.That poet Sadako Kurihara (who was one of the Hiroshima survivor) was referring not just the sadness of Hiroshima survivors but also the views of the the pearl harbor survivors, or the Chinese massacre survivors done by the Japanese imperialist army, and in her subtle undertones asking who is to blame for what. One can criticize on America on dropping the bomb named little boy, but one can also criticize the massacre done by imperialist Japanese army in china...... If you ask a person from your land about partition, he will be blaming the other side, but if you ask the people from the other side, they will tell the same story, remembering your side of cities instead of theirs.......to be honest i can understand the Indian side of happiness seeing the Britishers out but i do not understand your part of celebrations"

"Well, we celebrate the idea of safeguarding our culture, our traditions" i tried to defend.

"From what?" she taunted, " From the people who are wearing the same clothes, have the same food, have the same emotional characteristics(else how do you define culture).... and specially after the fall of Dhaka, seems like the same if not more number of Muslims are living on the other side???? , and besides how will you describe your friends who choose to become economic migrants(already left or leaving your land) after being political migrants for years. I really do not understand their sense of celebration or love of the land they left.

I wanted to deny all her arguments, but apart from my emotions i had no logic to continue further......Perhaps she was right, perhaps the Japanese girl was right as well for at least the compassion can be remembered of so many deaths and affected lives and only the bright future can be celebrated.....Perhaps acute pessimism can give birth to clear sighted optimism, be it Hiroshima, my land, holocaust, Rwanda genocide or slow but mass migration of economic immigrants who worry more about better food and living then a sense of communal life......


P.S:
Remembering a poem from punjabi language

Lali ankhian di pai dasdi ay
Roay toosi vi ho, roay asi vi aan
(By Ustad Daman)

The redness of the eyes tells us
That you have wept as well as i have wept

Picture courtesy: Wikipedia "on ind0-pak partition"

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 subjective about japan, so pure and above all so mellow as if one is watching a culture where time is of no value. Japanese are still recovering from the March 11 earth quake, some thing you can feel in the undertones of every news headline, documentary or soap operas but the sense of community and the calmness of living is visible in abundance.
From the peaceful zen gardens, to the British woman living in Ohara growing flowers, to the Shugendo religion(a religion that worship mountains) whose followers are called Yamabushi(those who sleep in the mountains) and who emphasize too much on experimental awakening then the rituals.... all these individual colors paint such a beautiful still picture conveying much more on human life and perpetuity of living then the usual commercial channels..... a classic subtle french cuisine compared to a spicy fast food living.....

I have cancelled my trip to japan two times now on short notices, but i hear a calling somewhere deep inside me sometimes, on going to this faraway land and stay for few months....perhaps my heart be able to find peace there..........