Note from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky

I finished reading Fyodor Dostoevsky’s ‘Notes from Underground’ and am enamored by his writing style. The book has the power to fascinate, worry and move. Dostoevsky was imprisoned and exiled for alleged subversion against Tsar Nicholas. Hence, the dark and dramatic novel appears to be inspired by his own experiences. The novel starts with a monologue as the unnamed protagonist is talking about his innermost thoughts, his lonely life, and the world around him. His philosophical and historical insights (from Kant to Darwin) reveal that he spent most of his time reading but loneliness filled his heart with hopelessness and bitterness. The world seems to be divided into two kinds of people for him: men of action and lazy fellows. He believes that he is lazy. It is a pleasure for him to hear when others call him lazy. He says “I repeat with emphasis, all direct persons and men of action are active precisely because they are stupid and limited.” The story further introduces other characters reflecting on his troubled relations with acquaintances. He is unable to form friendships and even behaves strangely with a woman who tries to understand him. He exaggerates things in his mind and that often irritates you as a reader. He is an intellectual but at the same time lacks basic social skills. He talks wisely about relationships and yet terribly fails himself in building them with others. There are clear paradoxes in his personality.

The underground man appears to be a symbolic representation of an aspect of our personality. He is often conversing with the reader using the pronoun ‘we’ instead of I. As if trying to include the reader among his own. As Dostoevsky writes, in every man’s memory there are things that he won’t reveal even to himself…the more decent a man appears, the more he has stored up. I think it is possible that any of us can turn into an underground man. For example, You are a hard-working scholar, but you are unknown in the world of academia. You are a writer but nobody wants to publish your work. Rejection, failures, and other professional and personal bad experiences in life can pile up to develop inertia. Anyone who wants to avoid getting hurt and find refuge in the underground. Underground is a dull and dingy place where the mouse and bugs live. To go through suffering and pain proves futile for underground man. He compares himself with a mouse. A mouse of heightened consciousness is still a mouse while a man of action is a man.
When restlessness and isolation stir the heart of a person, he or she needs love and admiration. This is what he lacks in life. He has even forgotten how to love despite having deep theoretical knowledge. As he himself said, “People like to count their trouble not the good things in their lives.” The underground man can be quite an intense and powerful aspect of our personalities. Especially when we have no support to get out. However, in my opinion, no human is completely lazy or a man of action. Dostoevsky himself must have dedicated himself actively to writing down this novel. Dostoevsky would have appreciated what Urdu poet Mirza Ghalib once said, “Bekhudi besabab nahi Ghalib/ Kuch toh hai jiski parda dari hai” (Your distraction must have a cause Ghalib/something is there, of which concealing is done)

Rashid Abbasi

Haircut

I’m not very picky about my haircuts. I usually visit a barbershop when my hair starts getting in my eyes. One morning, I decided to try out a fancy salon. It was early in the morning, so the owner – who himself was bald- did my haircut. I was really happy with the result, so I planned to get my next haircut from there too. Months passed, and my hair started covering my eyes again. When I went back, the salon was busier, and I had to wait. Eventually, it was my turn, but the hairdresser was distracted by a hefty man who had just entered the salon. He even ordered tea for the guy. I thought maybe this man was important or possibly the owner of the property. He talked loudly on speakerphone with his girlfriend/fiancé and other people. I (along with other people) was forced to hear his awkward flirt and also got my haircut from an assistant this time. I was disappointed. .

Time went on, and my wife and I planned our holiday travel. I decided to give that salon another chance so that i would look good in the pictures. To my surprise, the same rude man was there, getting some sort of facial treatment. I asked the hairdresser if he could cut my hair, and he agreed. The hairdresser probably thought that the rude customer wouldn’t object if his assistant attended to the rude man. But that man loudly asked, ‘toh tumne assistant rakh liye kya? (So, you’ve hired an assistant?’ That was another way of asking why you are not attending me. The hairdresser looked nervous and switched back to the rude man. So once again, I had to get my haircut from the assistant. During those days, I was reading Carl Jung. I tried to contemplate about my own psychological type and that of the rude man. I wondered what kind of stimulus I needed to break out of my default psychological condition. Anyway, I was deeply annoyed and philosophizing did not help, however my wife’s approval of my new haircut did work. I decided never to return to that salon.

Months passed, and I tried other salons, but they all disappointed me. I decided to visit the salon again, preparing myself this time for a haircut by the assistant. Thankfully, the rude man wasn’t there. The hairdresser remembered me, but he seemed preoccupied. I again feebly requested him to cut my hair. He asked me to wait on the chair next to the customer he was attending. Another man getting a haircut was talking about his relatives living in Europe and his connections with an IAS officer. He was telling the hairdresser that he will ask his officer friend to help the hairdresser regarding his court case. After some time another man behind me in the waiting area was talking about some tender procurement on phone and boasted about his connection with UP CM Yogi Adityanath. Mentally, I couldn’t help but facepalm. This time I was damn sure that I would be again getting a haircut from the assistant. Since the person waiting was also someone with a strong connection. The behaviour of these men made me realize that the disadvantage of having power or demonstration of it is that nobody tells you when you are acting like a jerk. I was trying to think if I also act like them sometimes. I resolved to become more open to constructive criticism, so I will never be like them. Anyway, the hairdresser managed to fit me in this time, and I could tell he was going through a tough time. It’s a messed-up world. Perhaps he realized that special attention to those customers might be useful to him. I felt so ordinary and useless but I was just glad he cut my hair this time.

Haiku (VI)

A meaningless day

is the day: I don’t read,

pray and see her face

Book Review: Edward Snowden’s ‘Permanent Record’

My first writing for public platform.
This review is special because I read this book in the hospital ward

Cafe Dissensus Everyday

By Rashid Abbasi

Imagine an omniscient surveillance system in which all your online activities are being recorded without consent and become a permanent record. And a search engine used by government that returns results from your emails and messages. Constantly evolving technology creates new ethical puzzles. The State is perceived as a necessary evil, but the question of how much privacy of the individual the state has a right to breach has developed into numerous facets. Edward Snowden’s memoir Permanent Record is about his courageous attempt to unmask the unethical approach of the United States (US) and the corporate entities towards mass surveillance of citizens. It is about his journey from a well-established and high profile government employee to a whistleblower and citizens’ rights activist living in exile.

The autobiographical account begins with his childhood. He grew up in North Carolina and his parents worked for the government. He loved…

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OPEN LETTER

Dear future wife,
I wish I can call you by name. Such a terribly cold and lonely night and I am thinking of you. I wonder if you like to stay up late night or wake up early in the morning. I can’t even guess how you look like, what language you speak and what religion you profess. I wonder if you often think about me and are concerned about your career in the similar way. I wonder if you drink a lot of tea or prefer coffee. Well, I often try to cheat my mind by having hot water like I am doing now while writing this. I had too much of tea today. If you smoke a lot then I must tell you that too much smell of nicotine really puts me off. So never anticipate a kiss from me after smoking. Once I asked a crush of mine if she likes poets or philosophers. And she replied, “Poets”. I read Diwan-e Ghalib to impress her. I actually discovered the book those days and that generated my interest in poetry and other disciplines. I supplied her a lot of poetry. It worked for a while but not after I ran out of comprehensible stuff and she totally lost interest in me. Now i laugh at myself when I think of those days. I don’t want to say much but her car driver was earning more salary than I was. Anyway, I am a grown up man now and I don’t read to please anyone. I read like my life depends on it. And my life now depends on my PhD and the choices I will make in this period. Do you also often think that nobody understands you? And that is not easy to express the way you feel but the same time that helps you to have empathy for others? I have always found kind and intelligent woman extremely attractive and you must be the epitome of those qualities. I admit that I am not so clear about you. If you exist, you will uncondition me from one secretly held perception of mine that every woman I find attractive is attracted towards the other guy, who often seem to me either rich, or popular. I still do not underestimate myself too much. This letter is an example that my idealism is not dead yet. It will not die as long as I am reading good stuff, thinking better thoughts and friends around showering me with their love. I need a lot of improvement and i wish to learn from the qualities of the different people I meet. I try to understand what is likeable or interesting about them. Someone is energetic, someone is generous, someone is so well read, someone is so eloquent and someone is so focused on their work. Nothing is as encouraging as great qualities (that most of the 99 names of God also talks about) are visibly embodied in the people around you. I wish I can I incorporate those qualities in me. I have lot of interesting and secret experiences of mine to share with you as a single man looking for love. I understand money is important, but lusting after fame, money and power is not my style and I am sure yours not too.

Hope to see you in the future,
Rashid
8/9 January 2019

Decaying

Decaying

with time

& timing

its own

solitary decay-

My sensual

and spiritual

body

Share this:

I am alone
Are you alone too?

Let’s get alone together
and order drinks for two

WOMAN OBSERVED AT BATLA HOUSE*

She appeared-

as my hope for the colors

of the ghetto’s narrow labyrinthine lane

a noisy dullness-

teeming with men and veiled women

Her white scarf-

green-blue flowers and fringes

draped over her head and shoulder

A jacket-

dark blue

A long skirt-

kaleidoscopic print over pale white

The stalls-

selling clothes, bangles

and other adornments

fluorescent, or incandescent light above them

ensuring their bright appearance

She walked slowly-

observing-

not looking ahead

bending over a little

looking more closely

Her small, deft hands

over bangles

At our closest distance-

I saw the calm grace

of her face

A sudden sparkle

from her nose-pin-

broke my gaze

Colors that reached my eyes-

reflected subtraction

 of the absolute light

Colors she kept behind

to herself-

non-visual

unrevealed-

painted a mystery transfiguring

I was back again

to the dullness

My holey boots-

rambled

in the crowd

over my hesitant shadow

with hands inside my pockets

Inexplicable to my mind-

the afterglow of colors

Sparkle

of her nose-pin-

revealing itself

as my clear moment

with the light.

*Batla House is a Muslim ghetto in Delhi.

Haiku (V)

Sitting in a cafe
Wasting day beautifully
Looking at rainfall

AFTER CHINESE POETS

Wandering
Aimlessly
Alone

Melancholy
of the penniless
lover-
endless and
unexpressed-
burning
in isolation
will consume him
someday.

And
how sad
to think
that the ashes
of that fire
will disappear
like ordinary dust.

Touch Deprivation

The other day I was reading at the Café and was going through the same page of the book probably for the third time. Maybe the language was too difficult or maybe my heart was not at it. I was aware of a mild headache. That was a kind of headache when you feel some weight on your head. I caressed that part of my head with my hands.
On my left a man explaining a business plan to another. Repeating again and again that poor people remain poor because they do not change their… ways. I tried to avoid his irritating talk, but he was loud. On the other side of the glass wall that is on the open terrace of the café, I saw this rich looking couple. They were well dressed with undeniably attractive bodies. Their bodies have the presence of the kind Walt Whitman talks about in his poetry.
While the lemon slices were floating in their colorful drinks, the woman was stroking his hair and face like he is her child. I started observing other people around to see how many are touching each other. The touch I thought has whole philosophy to it. Perhaps those around me not touching each other might be touching each other through words or unable to do so. After all, one can be very specific about who they allow to touch and where. Touching could be a way of understanding each other. It is how we transfer healing warmth from the one body to the another.
I was looking at that couple again. I was thinking that these two must be enjoying closeness to each other. How healing it must be for him to feel her breast, her hair and her face so close to him. Edward Munch would not have created his ‘Madonna’ without experiencing such closeness. I reached to a conclusion that my headache might be out of a deprivation, especially the touch deprivation. I liked the precise term I coined for my sickness. I can borrow money to have coffee here but I cannot borrow a touch.                   This is where my failure lies?
I carried on with my reading.

On Beauty

<Interesting question asked by friend. I forwarded the same question to my friends and got these responses>

QUESTION:

Vinay Ramki (to me): You seem to be loving beauty. I seem to have an opposite opinion I guess. So would love to know more about your perspective.

Beauty, especially physical beauty is one big unfair thing in the world. We have a particular definition of it (most cases it’s being fair color, appropriate size, etc etc) we see that as beauty/sexy(while typing I’m referring to women). It is just how we define, or more appropriately, accept the definition of beauty as. There is an African tribe I guess where pot bellied women are sexy. There’s an other tribe where disfiguring your face in particular ‘cuts’ is beauty.

There are most people who follow this definition and fantasise that beauty. This is extremely unfair on people who mostly don’t fall in that category. Some might not want to fall in that, but nevertheless… Most want to be seen as beautiful, but alas our definition! They don’t fall in that category. It could be for many reasons beyond their control too.

You on the other hand seem to appreciate in a gentle and poetic way, the same beauty. It is beautiful in poetic sense, but isn’t it the the same unfair concept.

So can you give your perspective on this. Many artists also think like you I guess. So knowing why and what you think would help me understand similar (artistic) people.

ANSWERS:

Indira Krishnamurti Pradhan: In the society we live, our primary scale of value, which is most unfair is in the physical. We are conditioned by factors such as culture, educational background and class and are bombarded daily by the western cultural misogynistic values that emphasize how to remain “young and attractive” for ever. Billions of dollars are generated each year promising the human body a status of “permanent beauty” and also sexuality that are highly valued in western and westernized societies.
Thus our explanation of beauty becomes subjective, when considering beauty and aesthetics. In truth, we all know that the value of an object goes beyond our sensory judgment of what we consider as “beautiful”. It would have to embrace judgment based on emotional and intellectual values of what we are reacting to when we view an object or person by way of beauty.
I would go along with what Aristotle said, which is that it is the experience of the audience that actually determines whether something is art or not. So he does not place importance on the creator’s intention as much as on how the audience reacts to the artwork. It is an absolutely personal decision and conclusion we arrive at when we judge a piece of art.
As far as poetry is concerned, I’d like to quote what Shelley had said: “A poem is the very image of life expressed in its eternal truths.” It is these truths that we are in search of and get sidetracked by externals, which are but a superficial reflection of what lies inside and which we struggle to find. Kant also said: “Whereas the beautiful is limited, the sublime is limitless, so that the mind in the presence of the sublime, attempting to imagine what it cannot, has pain in the failure but pleasure in contemplating the immensity of the attempt.”
Even the rich and famous Hollywood folks whose survival depends on the value placed on their “beauty and wealth” go through a feeling of emptiness and depression beyond a certain point. There is no way they can find permanent joy in the kind of beauty they are programmed to worship in themselves and others. Just as we see beauty in nature or in its natural form externally, we are also infused with its presence internally. This ensures that we live our inner lives too. Beauty is not stagnant; we are in a sense nomadic and travel from threshold to threshold where we discover new possibilities and avenues of creativity and beauty.
In a true sense, we are constantly searching for a state of wholeness, which is a place where we feel that everything is integrated. And until we find that wholeness and attempt to integrate ourselves with our spiritual aspects, ‘beauty’ can only remains “skin deep” in our eyes.

Terry Dalfrano: Beauty counts not for what it is, but for what it suggests: a dream of perfection. A beautiful woman, picture, poem, song are a sort of utopia of a better world. Formal perfection is the negation of the real world. It might sound unjust for the ugly women and bad poets. But it is precisely because we do not like the real world that we like beautiful things. And when we really come to know the object of our admiration, with all its imperfection, we are disillusioned. This is why love cannot be eternal: the real people, and their artistic products, are not eternal, are not perfect.

Please note: Everyone is invited to express their opinion  on the question asked by my friend.

Mysticism

Mysticism

they say is the unity

with the people

and the growing  things.

And our body

is the house

of our soul.

So, let’s fill the distance

of our souls

with our bodies.

 

Urdu poets on mystery, wonder and beauty of woman’s hair

Neend us ki hai, dimaag us ka hai, raatein us ki hain
ye zulfein jiski baazuon par pareshan ho gayin.

 

Sleep is his, pride/head is his, the nights are his
on whose shoulder your curls became scattered/tangled
– Ghalib

 

Javaab naama siyaahi ka apni hai vo zulf
kisuu ne hashr ko ham se jo sawaal kiya

 

The answer for the ink (of our deeds) would be those tresses
if anybody will ask us the question on the day of judgement
– Mir Taqi Mir

 

Idhar aao tumhari zulf ham aarasta kar dein
jo gesu ham sanwaareinge kabhi barham nahi honge

 

Come here; let me straighten your troubling hair locks
when I set them right your tresses shall never ever be entangled again
-Kaleem Ajiz

 

Kya ho gaya hai gesuu-e khamdaar ko tere
aazad kar rahein hain giraftaar ko tere
Ab tu muddaton se hai shab-o-roz ruu-ba-ru
kitne hi din guzar gaye didaar ko tere

 

What has happen to your curly hair
they are releasing your captive now
It’s been long since we’ve come face to face night and day
many days have passed without any sight of you
– Jaun Elia

Painting by John William Godward

A Dream

They were wandering, holding each other’s hand on the University campus.

 

They went to the parking to find a personal space, and like any young couple they were enjoying snuggling and cuddling.

 

He remembered he was gazing at her lips while she was telling him that she likes reading poetry, and is working on a Samuel Huntington’s poem (yes the man from clash of civilization), so he went to Chawri Bazaar to get some books for her. There he saw his father- a teacher who taught him about South Asia- and his dead uncle, talking to each other. Surprisingly they didn’t notice him.

 

Again they are together, wandering on that road that leads to the boy’s hostel from the University’s Post office. Many gossips echoed from somewhere in his mind about her multiple affairs and past lovers. He only remembers there were multiple voices and he didn’t pay much heed to them.

 

Suddenly, a contingent of soldiers appeared marching on the same road. One of the soldiers shot them with his gun. The bullets hit them but there were no wounds, or feeling of death. Instead of blood there was a profusion of perfume from their bodies and a mystical fragrance all around.

 

A woman with too much makeup appeared from behind that soldier’s contingent. She offered them dinner in exchange for the trouble they had been through. She said “it’s a Valentine’s Day party” and they must come. They realized their bodies still had the smell of the fragrance that had emanated from the hit of bullets.

 

She asked the woman, “What cake is going to be served at the party?”

 

The woman asked her if she had a suggestion, and she offered a most beautiful name- but suddenly the boy woke from his dream and that name drifted beyond the reach of his memory….

(Photo credit: Stella De Genova)

Haiku IV

She left, unaware

that her fragrance created

a choir in  my mind

Your lips

Your lips

A red rose

Soft with dew

As the petals tremble

I am vulnerable

 

I long to feel

The flames

Of their touch

Even if offered

With thorns

Of rejection

 

In those flames

I wish to hide myself

Eventually burn

Myself

 

And disappear

 

Into the world

Of mystical

Ecstasy

~Rashid Abbasi

Man of Success

Her last message was not goodbye.

It was like, “you are a nice guy…

but after a certain age,

a woman

can only love

a man of success.”

Next morning he was riding his bike very fast.

Wind with the loud howl was creeping inside

through unbuttoned part of his shirt.

The dark clouds in the horizon were giving a false impression

of a mountain range at the unreachable end.

All of a sudden it was raining.

Rain did not spare any part of his body.

He got himself a cappuccino in a nearby mall.

While supplying warm sips to his solitude,

he was only feeling thankful

that nature

is not

yet

aware

of the fact

that

he

is not

a man

of

success.

~Rashid Abbasi

Haiku III

While I kept waiting,

her ruby lips kissed someone.

Happiness: not mine.

 

Note:
I feel a freedom from the need of writing anymore when I read this first ever Haiku I wrote in May this year. A super summary of my youth.

Haiku II

Warmth for my cold skin:

a sensual beloved

is November sun.

Waiting for you

Passing

through a flower shop

Sensual fragrance

Radiating beauty

Blooming-

like a hopeful youth

Thinking of you-

I‘ll pick one

and it will die

waiting for you

Artwork by Neko Katz Illustration

Haiku

My torment such: not
even a single leaf moves
by storm inside me.

Prayer

I am here again after a long time
My instinct brought me to you.
Give me a sign, when these demons will turn into angels?
I feel too tired and old now.
I wish for a day without pain:
When I will wake up with enthusiasm
and sleep satisfied.
I don’t want to be afraid of people’s questions,
their critical analysis on what is I am doing to my life.
I want to praise beautiful things
and be honest in whatever I write.
I want to be a courageous lover,
who loves passionately the woman he likes.
There are so many things I wish to do,
but I am stuck in this darkness
and unable to get out of it.
Why don’t you take care of me God?
Am I not your favorite child?

– 10th Sept 2015

Note- Lately, while going back home, the sound of Azaan moved me and I found myself inside the mosque reading namaaz. This is an edited version of dua part.

Your shining

Nobody
wins
the inevitable battle
between
your shining
and the halo
of my agony.
They keep surpassing each other.

3rd Aug 2015

Cactus survived
harshness of the desert,
rose
made the deathbed
scream
with fragrance.

All My Praise

In the name of Allah

The gracious and the merciful.

The light of my eyes

that my eyes cannot see.

All my praise is for the mystery of the darkness:

Where there is no shadow, no sun.

The abyss-From where the echoes of God-

And spirituality return.

All my praise is for the space-time singularity-

For the day I will discover the truth, and make peace with it.

And for my death-

For it will reveal to me other dimension of reality.

All my praise is for love-

In love: I must lose myself.

As I will keep swaying like a wave-

Between the life I dream,

and the life

I live.

All my praise is

for all that is truly alive in me.

And all that wish to die in me.

All my praise is for the peace to my soul

The attainment of clarity

And the beauty of unity.

P.S. – I was reading about singularities and black holes. Generally, positive idea of light brings negative idea of darkness. I have tried to contemplate on both of them.  There is an influence of the poem , “Unfound” by my  friend  Talah also.

Senryū

Her glimpse from the car.

He’s burning under the sun.

How to break the ice?

Incomplete reflection on the Kuhn’s Structure of the scientific revolution

I was thinking what should I do after reading a book, when I have no one discuss it? So, I thought of writing about it.

In this note I will try to convey what I have learned or experienced after reading the essay, “the structure of scientific revolution” by Thomas Kuhn. Kuhn wrote it in 1962 after he began teaching sciences to non-science students. The book lays out a schematic theory for the evolution of science in general and scientific specialties. It draws upon several famous historical examples, mostly from physics and astronomy, but perhaps more to illustrate Kuhn’s system than to substantiate it. The book divided in various chapters with a post-script added by Kuhn seven years later. (That I am yet to read in order to improvised on this note)

During the early twentieth century, a group of logical positivists, (for example Bertrand Russell and  Ludwig Wittgenstein), rejected all metaphysical doctrines and held that true knowledge comes from human experience alone (correct me if I am wrong!), particularly via its most rigorously controlled form, the scientific method: the accumulation of data under controlled conditions, construction of theories on the basis of the data, and verification of theories by experimentation and observation according to objective standards of logic.  Although subsequent adherents to this school often call themselves as logical empiricist’ and they insisted that theories cannot be really verified, only falsified, the underlying assumption  of them was that the history of science has been the unbroken accumulation of knowledge in an orderly, unified sequence. (I will soon add citation to this)

 

In the Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas S. Kuhn disagrees with the logical positivists almost completely. Although he also believed that scientists aim for an increasingly accurate understanding of nature, he found that community of scientists, such as physicists or biologists, often goes through period of divisive disagreement of theory and the nature of data. The final triumph of one faction of a scientific field over another involves the interactions of people. or in other words most scientists spend their entire careers posing and solving problems in accordance with an establish paradigm, assuming that they have fundamental grasp of how nature behaves. (Each group uses its own paradigm to argue in that paradigm’s defense. for example, Priestley and Lavosier both saw oxygen, but they interpreted their observations differently).

For Kuhn, Science is a social process as well as a knowledge-gathering enterprise. He has given various examples to strengthen his arguments. I am not sharing them to keep the note short.

The key features of his arguments are

• The idea that sciences relies on paradigms, a term that Kuhn borrowed from linguistics
• Second was Kuhn’s distinction between normal science and scientific revolutions.
• Third, Kuhn’s system presents a scientific revolution as phenomena among a community of workers; therefore, it is social.

So, don’t feel bad if you were never good in sciences or in solving those mind-wrecking problems. They are and they were just paradigms. And this also shows us how our education system has been ruined by focusing more on problem solving (May the problem that does not exist at all) rather than critical thinking or questioning.

A science student has no touch with philosophy or social sciences and social science student has no curiosity for sciences. Everything is job oriented. Or better to say, corporate oriented.  Although, the questions that are still with me are about the link between science and technology. How even after rejecting and struggling with many paradigms has not stopped us advancing technologically? There is definitely a link between science and technology.

Kuhn concerns himself with only the pure science, and he specifically addresses the cognitive (or epistemic) function of science. He does not explore science’s ultimate value of truth of its place in human culture. And please note that Kuhn is not underestimating sciences but he is only questioning it.

 

To hear nothing but your own voice

Silence.

I try to realize

Stillness.

I am the realization

A deep breath (plays within)

I wonder if it is that simple?

Dance of feelings (inside)

Vulnerable

Depressed

Restless

Lonely

Tired

Perhaps, I wish to mourn.

I wonder if it is that simple?

Dance of needs (interior)

Friendship

Respect

Love

Care

Perhaps, I wish to feel connected.

I wonder if it is that simple?

Stay,

in this fire.

Useless

will burn .

Rest

will stay.

Or maybe,

the ashes

will become seeds

and grow up again.

Perhaps, I am forever searching.

And I wonder if it is that simple?

A deep breath. (to hear nothing but my own voice)

I become words.

Conviction by Colleen McLaughlin

From whence comes a man’s conviction

that no stone-crusher could ever destroy?

And from whence comes a man’s conviction

in the court of hypocrisy and greed?

One self-imposing,

the other imposed-

One from heaven,

the other hell-

In this life

we

choose

our

conviction-

and it shall make all the difference.

About the poet:
Colleen McLaughlin is an artist, musician, and a Master Gardener. A native Vermonter, she is the proprietor of Elemental Artworks at Studio 266 in Burlington.

Being-in-the-World with Anxieties

I just finished reading about ISIL’s atrocities in Iraq and I cannot get over the photo of a crying girl displaced due to this conflict; that has made me unutterably melancholic. I am thinking about my grief and that little girl’s grief.  Somehow I am only able to write about my anxiety.

This month of June with its hot, humid weather and other mundane difficulties of joblessness- and reading all day- has contributed to a kind of unrest in my body. Mostly I waste time pondering about being in the world, all of its pain and pleasures, and how it has always been complex and complicated, and will always remain like this.

The frequency of questions about my career interest and advice from concerned friends has increased. My interest in philosophical and poetic forms of expression has definitely made friends close to me have an opinion about my inclination. Although, I believe that it could be just a phase. And not only about me; I have felt this about many people- that there is always something in their inner self that wants to rise to some expression.

It still remains unresolved for me as to, what is the better way of expression? And how can one write without self-doubt or fear of being judged; and why should I even ‘shamelessly’ express my experiences, my dreams or my concerns? Things are never easy to understand as one would like to believe, as there is always something that is out of reach of everyone’s awareness, about themselves, others, and the world around them.

Most of the time out of my laziness and ignorance, I helplessly engage myself with the surface of things rather than allowing my mind to go to a deeper level. Like a breeze constantly blowing the ripples in the pool of water and preventing me from seeing the clear reflection of myself. I do not know if it is possible to watch our thoughts or control them. Neither do I believe in judging them like a criminal. But I do believe in the power of vigilance because when we really go deeper into our thoughts the deepest concerns of our life emerge. It is like trying to extract the most possible truth out of everything or contemplating the infiniteness of the sky rather than engaging self only with the beauty of clouds.

Being-in-the-world: If I investigate the question ‘Who am I?’ I might not have immediately a philosophical answer to this question. On the surface that might simply put down to the fact that I am a complicated person, or psychologically unstable, or unsure of what career I would like to follow. But is not the nature of “being” much more mysterious than this? An individual who is born and dies within the confinement of a palace cannot behold its tomb. I do not know the reality of my being before the birth and after the death. The existentialist writings I have read so far encourages me to be brave and live life with freedom and fullness. At the same time my heart finds comfort in idea of a selfless Sufi.

The chronic persistent uneasiness points out the possibility that most things happening inside us are beyond expression. I call them inexplicable anxieties. The relationship between one human being and another has been hampered by the unshared or unperceived anxieties. The difficulty of love and empathy arise as our awareness about ‘human condition’ has been shaped by absurd materialism, self-interest and dogmatic religious, cultural beliefs. Art has become for art sake especially when artists become synonymous with a luxurious life. As Rilke once said, “nobody likes to explore the limitless possibilities of river but comfort himself at the fallow stretch of the shore where nothing happens.”

Being-with-the-others: These days I am just adapting myself to live with the questions and share them with other beautiful and brave souls. They are brave because possibly having their own inexplicable anxieties they still manage to be calm, composed and concerned about others. They are beautiful because they have managed to do something about others in their own way. My experiences with the others in their multiplicity make no ‘similar’ replies to my opinion how should I live with the others. That means these matters of self and others could not be settled once and for all, like our perceptions about our relationship with God. I ought to take responsibility of the self and live in this potentially unrealized state, rather than taking readymade ideas as it is. So these failures and uneasiness may continue at surface but this anxiety might not be my real anxiety- It must not be-

My real anxiety should be my lack of understanding of others pain and their condition.

Perhaps, some of these anxieties are not meant to be expressed but to acknowledge and make our relationship better with the self and the others. Sometimes we have nothing to say or my mind goes blank and I find that rather than converse with human being, it is better to talk to a piece of paper.

Nonetheless, most of our anxieties demand constant vigilance and action (as great philosophers suggested). Right now I might not be able to do anything for a victim in Iraq, a rape victim in India or Pakistan, or jobless and homeless people anywhere. My anxieties challenge me to create meaning out of my strange existence. And do something about my knowledge of the self in order to understand and improve my relationship with the others. I might like to engage myself with the resistance for justice and equality like a Sufi or any ancient or post-modernist thinker would suggest.  I must create a meaning out of nothingness. I must discover/create myself in order to make myself something useful for humanity.  I consider this moment a beginning.

Poet or Philosopher

Rashid:… I actually want to understand if according to you the personality of a poet and a philosopher is complementary or has potential to merge with each other? For example, a poet shamelessly write about his personal experience but philosopher does not. Philosopher is much more careful about his action and try to control himself while poets are carefree. 

Musab Iqbal: This subject has occupied me for a long but it doesn’t mean that I know the answer. I am far from the answer. I am far from answer for most of my question perhaps this is the answer of all my queries.

A philosopher can be defined in number of ways and so is the poet. The problem occurs that who is there to define. Usually the emergence of knowledge as discipline plays a critical role in defining or subjectivising the objects.

Having said that it is clear that there is an entity called philosophers and there is someone known as poet. Both dwell deep into thought. Both are thinkers. Both reflect. Both go through violent and incessant pain.

The difference emanates in observation and expression. Poet throws himself into situation and philosopher pulls himself out. ‘Miraji’ cannot live without ‘Miraji’ to produce poetry or thought, his love is a pure indulgence and an only source of production or poetic existence while for Plato this is nothing but ‘a serious mental disease’

This play of getting in and getting out is what defines a philosopher or a poet.

A poet experiences and tries to live it, he/she expresses this experience in a lyrical form and as a personal experience while a philosopher sees it as a problem (not mere experience) and he/she considers his/her existence in the experience as mere accident (as Derrida would argue) therefore a philosopher avoids autobiography (historically) and Derrida says that this politeness and impoliteness is philosophy. This may be one of the reasons why philosopher doesn’t commit suicide and poets do.

For a poet entire universe starts to converge in his being while for a philosopher everything starts to diverge and scatter from his being.

A poet is ‘always there’ while a philosopher is ‘never there’.

A philosopher always tries to make even his experience/observation a universal question. He tries to expand it, he tries to broaden the horizon of every single problem, experience and observation. The poet don’t try it, never articulate it – jo dil pe guzarti hai raqam karte rahenge(continue to write from whatever our heart has gone thorough). A poet tries to individualize the pain instead of universalizing it.  Therefore one finds his solace in a poet not in a philosopher.

Controlling one action is also linked to the above-mentioned point. I don’t completely agree with your statement because there were philosophers who lived carelessly, said what they wanted to say, and lived the way they wanted to live, indulged in things in which they wanted to indulge. Foucault is the best example. A poet appears to be more carefree because he doesn’t fear the value judgment; he is not giving lessons in ethics or morality. He can write shikwa (Complaint) and jawab e shikwa (answer of complaint) .

He can expose the incoherence and contradictions of life in the most contradictory fashion while a philosopher tries to find coherence in the incoherence and incoherence in the coherence.  There are poets who are philosophers and there are philosophers who are poet. This is perhaps the most interesting category and most complex one – The epitome of rational – emotional fusion. Jon elia, Iqbal, Ibn e Hazm, Derrida, Nietzsche and many other belong to this category.

To read more of Musab Iqbal- http://musab.in/

24th March 2014

• Rashid Abbasi: Why do people write poems? I mean don’t you ever feel discouraged?

  Musab Iqbal: discouraged with/discouraged for?

  Rashid Abbasi:We belong to a different era. The method to express yourself creatively has changed. Technology has made it easy at the same time everyone is too busy in dealing with information overflow. When people are too busy in other modes of entertainment or communication. who has the time to contemplate or find out hidden meaning of a poem? or is it important for me to think about that? Because at the same time I feel I should keep on writing and my love for poetry doesn’t mean that I am a good poet.

  Musab Iqbal: I think for me writing is the only way not to get discouraged, through writing I get the light, I feel the light. Writing is not only about expressing but it has deeper project the project of archiving the time – the emotion of the time – the tension of the time. My poem is the translation of my time. The question may arise that why am I writing a poem – was it intended?

  In age of absurd material/industrial production or hyper capitalism what poetry has to do may be asked as a question. I think Walter Benjamin in two of his brilliant work raised similar question. One, while writing on poet Baudelaire and one on question of art in age of mechanical production. His both writing might help.

  I can guarantee you one thing even everything is on table, everything is on google – the thinking, the thought has a future. Poetry is a form of thought. It may take new forms of expression but since thinking has a future, poetry has too

  It was indeed a beautiful conversation.
  Now, a Poem* by N.M. Rashid which describes beautifully the preoccupation with creative effort and state of absorption.

  Phir bhii andeshah vuh aaindah hai jis mae goyaa
  miir ho , miirzaa ho , miiraajii ho
  kuchh nahiin dekhte hain

  Nevertheless thought is that future in which, so to speak,
  Mir would be, Mirza [Ghalib] would be, Miraji would be
  we see nothing

  mahvar-e ishq kii khvuud-mast haqiiqat ke sivaa
  apne hii biim-o-rajaa apnii hii suurat ke sivaa

  except for the self-intoxicated reality of the absorption in passion,
  except for our own terror and hope, our own face,

  apne rang , apne badan , apnii hi qaamat ke sivaa
  apnii tanhaaii-e jaan-kaah kii vahshat ke sivaa

  except for our complexion, our body, our stature,
  except for the wildness of our life-exhausting solitude,

  dil-kharaashii-o- jigar-chaakii-o- khuun-afshaanii
  huun to naa-kaam par hote hain mujhe kaam bahut

  heart-lacerating and liver-tearing and blood-scattering
  I’m useless, but there remain for me many tasks.

  *http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00garden/01c/0185/0185_04.html?

OF RASHID(a ghazal for your birthday)

We rise to the ether, for the I Ching of Rashid

Star-soaked words from the mouth of Rashid

Turbulent current, “As above, so below”

We sail on the broken wing of Rashid

Will your book be penned in complete absentia?

Dear friends, what news do you bring of Rashid?

Terrestrial bard, an unknowing Prince

Because only Ghalib is King of Rashid

Word-seeker pierces your heart with arrow

As my muse informs me, to sing of Rashid

-Poetsings Muse

January 14, 2014

Time Cancels All

Dear,

 

Take it as a FAILED attempt to express my attachment

Frustration and misery of being a man.

To write what should not be written

To complete what was not incomplete.

 

You will meet many men in your life-

Some of the men will just cross your path

Being smart you will know.

Some of the men will say they have lost their heart

Being beautiful you will understand.

And also the men you fall in love with

Being human you will suffer.

 

I wish I could have seen myself through your eyes

To had a glimpse of truth and not be deceived by lies.

I am confused, if I was a failed lover, or the poor one?

 

Your actions filled me with jealousy

Other man saw in you what I could not see?

Your sad eyes- to me they were never belong-

Cruel fate never gave me chance to dive into them for long.

I never explored your wonderful body

Never smelt your hair.

But If I become religious for a moment

You will be an answer to all my prayer.

 

I will never forget, our walk together and our philosophical talk-

The new perspectives about life in me you have sparked.

 

I wish another one you have found loves you equally madly

And you have accepted that madness very gladly.

 

I’m afraid, when somebody will speak out your name,

My soul will rediscover its lost oppressive pain.

 

Time will kill our memories

Time will heal our pain

Time will turn our heart into stone

And prepare us to fall in love again.

 

With some injuries

And a sense of loss

This is not the sad end

But a strength provided-

A freshness given-

To the mysterious voyage called life.

March 11, 2014

There is no death

This is not the end but

another beginning.

He has gone back to the place

from where he came.

He found himself out of this world,

more close to

the darkness and the empty sky

then to the people.

A failed lover-

who loved people-

Always prefered roses over yellow, white flowers.

A failed writer-

Who loved poems-

Always prefered poems by others than by himself.

A failed human-

Who loved human beings-

Always prefered grief of other than of himself.

Too much self-appreciation-

Is this another effort of throwing himself high?

Every stone thrown above-

Must fall-

And life is a perpetual falling.

Nobody remembers him

except few grief-stricken.

Not a memory?

But he is liberated

and at much awaited place of his life.

February 23, 2014

What is Worse?

They tore down his suit
broke his wrist watch
they all look like him
& laughing like monsters

He looked all around,
found himself helpless
so he tried to concentrate in his technical book
but he can only see one word in every word

fail fail fail!
[As  ignoring self, he is trying to follow others advice]

Is his condition really worse
but what is worse?
Death of a man
or death of his dreams?
Silence like an ocean
or a loud scream?

Hating someone
or unexpressed love?

Not having friends
or never choosing one?

He couldn’t figure it out
in a state of aimlessness
and thoughtfulness

He is in a continuous struggle
struggle with some kind of fear inside

but is it a fear of living
or dying without achieving?

He runs,
runs to catch the forest
and tries to escape

At each step
the forest distance appears to him the same

Realizing,
he is a loser
a worst performer

If life is a game.

May 8, 2012

Force Beyond Self

Curl  on your face
Your pink satin suit
A nightmare for my wild thoughts
The desirable woman
You look very cute
You frown
You smile,
Talking  with another guy
Looking at me occasionally
Sometime confident
Sometime shy

The curve of your holy grail
A perfect fit for my manhood
My wild thoughts prevail
My flaws as a man
I understood

Your beautiful feet
With nail-polish red
I want to kiss them
Like I never had.

24 feb 2013

Traffic signal

Red
Helmets motionless
like dead

Yellow
helmets creating sound
they exist

Green
Helmets in race to get ahead
its apparent now
who got more power.

October 20, 2012

Thoughts while riding bike

even after loosing all its flowers and leafs,
In its ugliest phase,
the tree is standing silent and still
like gaining back its lost beauty
is one of its strongest belief.
isn’t it inspiring enough
its ideology to live.
like  saying..
live stronger! no matter what,
as nothing more challenging  in life
than to live.

April 7, 2012