Gallivanter's Shibboleth

Pakistan Has Arrived

2010-09-03T00:54:00.000+05:30

No doubt and second thought in banning the four accused in “Spot fixing” (a new phenomenon after match fixing; damn these Pakistanis are real inventors), but who will do it when the entire management made of retired ISI and Army junta, itself is neck deep in running this racket.

Captains are changed and inexperienced payers are asked to captain the team, why? Amswer: They are gullible and subdued and a perfect fit to carry the agenda of the management.

Some data to make Pakistan proud of where it has come today:

Google releases it's porn search list by nationalities, Pakistan tops it. Great searches, Probably the next popular after sex and nude babes, would be, “how to make a bomb and die a martyr to wash my terrible sins”.

UNHCR reports on South Asian sex rackets, and human trafficking, Pakistan defeats entire South Asia, even holds a ranking on the world forum. And we Indians continue to feel they are a closed country. Come on people we might see Karachi as the hub of sex tourism in a matter of some years.

Pakistan floods; a natural disaster of this proportion and yet countries do not open their pockets, why? Lack of trust if it really will go in the right pocket, after all they have a surety that 10% alone would be lost at the very first go; I don’t want to say it but hope you remember Mr. 10%, who is doing the best thing he can do in his entire career, “begging in World Forums”. His first stint was to beg with his better half in front of World Bank for development projects, and so it explains his fat greasy smile.

Why this sort of corruption in every walk of life? The answer is simple. Not to talk of any foreign investors, Pakistanis themselves have lost faith in their country, and therefore they want to loot as much as they can and as fast as they are able to.

When other South Asians are moving towards becoming export oriented economies, Pakistan can not even keep its stock market open regularly for a week, for the fear of rampant selling.

Nations throw their tyrants out forcibly, or by voting, or if they are dead then out of their minds, psyches, folklores. If Stalin can be defeated years after his death why can’t General Zia? But no. No one knows why.

If you are an alien then we have a lot to offer. This same spirit of Pakistan makes it the news everyday. I don’t care for what reason. The world was not able to come out of the spot fixing scandal when suddenly Pakistan suddenly came out with excellent fireworks on the street of one of it’s largest cities. Lot of dead bodies makes good news material.

National Geographic covers Pakistan, and the youch in Karachi and Islamabad have to prove they are tolerant by sipping booze and sniffing cocaine to show they are tolerant. What an irony. One side gun totters the other side cocaine snuffers and boozed generation. Where is the middle path? I remember reading in my history books that India won freedom because of a vibrant and upcoming middle class. Pakistan has none and if there is any, it is pale, dying or running out of the country. Rest is either drowning itself in some kind of after life which they believe won’t be messy as his one was, and rest trying to forget that they are living in that dirt hole, sniffing and sniffing again.

General Zia is smiling. His dream has come true

Congratulations Pakistan, you really have arrived on the world stage.
Abbas Jalis Rizvi

O-BA-MA Chaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaange!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2010-02-13T14:02:00.001+05:30

One year back Obama came with a vision of change.

Now Guantanamo Bay again keeps it status as Yemen descends into a chaotic state. After all friends like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt and Yemen need their subjects to be placed in hospitable conditions. They can not do so, like the cases of some released captives walking straight to the networks and joining them for all wide variety of reasons and christening it to be Global Jihad. So Gitmo needs to be alive at least for some time. (I believe that BSNL, should send a delegation to learn from Al Qaeda about proper upkeep and functioning of network). Ha ha ha.

The health reform has got into trouble with the Republicans getting their breathe back in the by-election. The portrayal of Obama as an inexperienced Leader is complete, with commoners themselves crying hoarse of the same, and many political analysts now dubbing his win as more of anti Bush wave. In fact that is my belief too, for if McCain would have been a democrat in those days he would also have won a sweeping margin, or for that matter Hillary would have done the same easily. (Forgive me if I am making too daring remarks).

Thirdly it is Iran. Ahmedinejad might not be the best of diplomat and would be lacking the suavity and smoothness required at the world stage, but he manages to steal the limelight all the time. Obama had put his hope firstly on Mousavi's win to get Iran on negotiating table, then after the elections he put his hopes on Mousavi to implode the establishment thus ending the Islamic Republic of 30 years. But his horse has lost, as he was not able to run on the Iranian turf. The Ayatollahs are very much there, and the calculation that they have started to speak against each other is the sign of decadence of the Revolution has proved faulty. (Being born a shiite myself I know that this is not new, because Shiite Ulemas have hated each other since time they invented their black cloaks, and they will continue to do so unabated).

And now Obama's words have started to shift the "Bushian" way. Georgia is back from the Orange Revolution, with Victor Yushchenko nowhere around, and Russia smiling, US has started talking of NATO aggressively again. China has refused to vote for sanctions on Iran and so the release of pending arms sales to Taiwan. On Iran it is all bowled over after the Persians first refused to part with the uranium and then after many months agreed to. Now no one knows how to react. Obama is still trying to understand what this means. So now it has released the Israelis to do what they do best, "wagging their hostile tongues" at

Iran

The words are the same that costed McCain a lot in his Presidential run, "Bomb, Bomb Bomb Iran". Though analysts disagree that Israel will do it at all in it's right senses. Iran is a wider area than Iraq, and it's military capabilities are far superior to any "friendly country". And it is not Gaza too. On the other hand it is the founder of Hezbollah, which still is thriving after

Israel

went after it in 2006.

I don't want to blame Obama for everything, as their are no constants in this game. The US influence is waning throughout the world and it's economic muscle needs a lot of workout after the last 2 bad years. No one could have imagined 20 years back of a Chavez just right next door, or negotiations with Latin American Leftist Guerrillas, just like today is being proposed of Taliban. The worst part to it is that Taliban has not requested for it; It's just some 100 countries coming together and suggesting it to each other.

Whether American think tanks agree to it or not, Iraq has settled down, but into the hands of very much pro Iranian politicians (in fact trained for the democratic process which US itself tried to introduce). Obama is not talking of democracy any more like Bush, which is the only change we can see. In fact this was the only silver lining of Bush's term that I can recollect.

So the way out of all the mess of the "American Century" is to borrow a leaf out of Bush's book of survival in American Politics, and that is to talk tough. Obama has done the same. A resurgence of troops in Afghanistan is not very encouraging if one sees the promise of "complete withdrawal with timetable" during the elections to White House. Resurgence is very much a McCain promise, which Obama is delivering now. Many critics of modern day democracy would smile at the very support of their notion that policies and state functioning do not change with the vote of the common man, but it continues to be the same regardless of whoever comes to power. But this is not about it; It is about the ever changing political dynamics which Obama is trying to adapt to. He would never have wanted himself to be accepting the Nobel for Peace within days of taking decisions of troop resurgence. But that is what modern politics is all about.

So Obama is speaking the Bush way now and that is more a confrontation note. Logic of proposing talks to Taliban and getting ahead with a military push at the same time signifies a desperate attempt to get a superior hand if in case any talks start in the near future. The ideas slowly have drifted towards flexing more of muscles and statements like “all options on table” except that the words are sugar coated and carefully drafted for a man who bears a burden of the past. In fact this is the only change which the world has seen till date.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

February 12, 2010 (The day as it was)

2010-02-13T12:55:00.002+05:30

I am back after a vacation.
In order to get back to senses after missing so much of the world, I am trying to "pick up sticks". Doesn't it reminds you of "5, 6, pick up sticks". Exactly like Tasleema Nasreen's book "no country for women" reminds you of an Oscar winning Movie; you guessed it, I don't have to mention it's name.

Iran

celebrated it's day, I don't know what day to call it. In fact they celebrate everyday. Whenever a western politician makes a statement recommending sanctions, or strikes on it's nuclear stations, It knows it has succeeded in making them s**t in their pants, so it celebrates. It is indeed a revolution. The standard of politicians in the west has really adapted to the benchmark of politicians of UP.
Amar Singh is out of news. This is a discovery I did after coming back yesterday. Thanks to Mr. Thackeray, whichever one. They are all the same brands. Lashkar e Toiba, Jaish e Mohammed, Sipah e Sahiba all the same, and so are, Bal Thackeray, Uddhav Thackeray and Raj Thackeray. Shahrukh Khan minted money out of this controversy for another, good for nothing film in which Shahrukh plays Shahrukh (after all the surname is common). My name is Khan. Karan Johar needed it desperately after Kurban. AAAAAAA................. I saw that movie. (I know my respect is receding in every one's eyes after I made this statement). Terrorists from Pakistan travels to india to chase a Hindu girl who will get a scholarship in US so that he can travel on a spouse visa with her and do bang bang (he was not able to do much bang bang in US, but surely he did a lot with that girl). WHAT A PLOT!!!!!!!!!
And yes I missed hail stones in lot of places in UP, while I was enjoying snow in Mussorrie. And Jha ji, (see he is smiling) got engaged. All my good wishes to him.
Maya Memsahab must have added some new elephants to the parks she is constructing in Lucknow. (I love the purse dangling from the hands in her statue; Social upliftment and renaissance at last).
Gauri Khan could be seen on TV yesterday, as she saw My name is Khan, and some unemployed youths enjoyed a day's hospitality in lock ups of Bombay. (Sometimes it pays to be loyal to Shiv Sena).
And rest was the same. Some woman threw her children in some river, before being saved herself. Some farmers committed suicide (I hope they had not seen My Name is Khan). And students are preparing for boards and other competitive exams in the same fashion as usual, under stress, because 3 Idiots is just good for seeing on the silver screen, it is not the reality in Indian Scenario (Let us see how long).

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Thackeray and Thackeray

2010-02-05T11:37:00.003+05:30

My exposure to "Thackeray" brand of politics happened in 1992, when one fine day. India started to burn. That was quite a winter. In December and that too in Dehradun (mind you not today's polluted Dehradun), December 6 would have been a day to sit outside and enjoy the sunshine. But the newspapers made us sit in.

Lots of copycats were suddenly unleashed. As if an astrologer wearing his paraphernalia studded with all colours, lots of known and unknown faces came out exercising their freedom of speech. Ritambhara, Uma Bharti and likes (May their political career's soul rest in eternal peace, and never rise again) were out denouncing the "muslim way of life". Right from how Muslims demean Indian culture, to the way they divorce (as if they had a lot of sympathies with divorced Muslim women whom they were salivating to rape, and kill), and even how they cook their bread. Coming generations would never be able to believe that an entire middle class of India some how went into a trance to these speeches, and called it "exemplary oratory skills". (I borrowed the start of this line from Einstein on Gandhi; never mind till it makes sense).
But amongst them all was a man who had a patent to it all, and he managed to make it the best ever show to watch. He spoke and Bombay (please don't kill me for not calling it Mumbai, I beg of you) burnt, and he went on speaking till more of it burnt and then a little more. He had mastered it in a dry run earlier on South Indians, chiding them to be “gangstas”, taking away jobs, spoiling marathi culture, overpopulating Bombay, living in slums, not worshipping Ganapati, eating through their mouth, having two hands, walking on legs, etc. (Last ones are actually the reasons why I hate them; Sorry).

I had never visited Bombay till then, I was just eleven and a sleepy Dehradun was enough for me to pursue my studies. The bigger goal of a “UP ka bhaiyya” (Uttaranchal, no no Uttarakhand; I am confused, which ever; was still part of UP) like me, that of depriving the "Marathi Manoos" of his daily bread was still years ahead. Can anyone imagine a lull in Bombay, with no man walking (My God, it’s an overpopulated city). Police Flag marches, curfew, dead bodies strewn all over. Yes this was Bombay of ’92.

Things went to normal after that, as we Indians can afford some thousands dead, millions orphans, same number of widows, rape and loot doesn’t even matter to us (till the time it is someone from a socially well to do strata, or a tourist). No, no, I am not going to add another line to it with all the blah, blah like ‘things went to normal at the exterior, but the nation’s soul was scarred”.

It was the birth of a national icon of “free speech”. One who could freely call any names to minorities and be free as ever, one who came to be talked on play fields amongst school children, youths, urban middle class as an answer to “Muslim” Dawood Ibrahim. Long after wards the tirade continued, with defiance to SriKrishna commission, and other calls, till the time the division happened within the family. Between Uddhav and Raj who is the heir to the legacy of the “Tiger”, mandated with the well being of the ordinary Indian, became the question to the syndicate. The mafia family had in all the years understood that riding the tide with BJP was over and the divisive temple politics days were over, not because the average Indian became very clever (because we saw a similar scenario coming back after 10 years in Gujarat, but it started arousing suspicion at least when the issue was raised by the frontrunners, the BJP. With the syndicate already loosing grip within Bombay the speakers for the rights of the “oppressed class” in this case the majority community according to them, turned their guns against them, and bifurcated the entire community into Marathi and non Marathi. Raj departed and carried the legacy better in some way. He could take up cheeky, sometimes non existent, sometimes cheeky issues, and was crafty enough to get the faces of cameras to himself. Who cares if the autowallah you cut the hands of is a Hindu, let him go to hell if this act fetches enough votes for survival of the mafia syndicate. Then train your guns on some candidates for railway entrance exams, after which some billboard burning, and if you have nothing to do then at least to be in exercise slap an MP for taking oath in Hindi. (I had learnt Hindi was our national language; Oh yes! We don’t care about anything that has a national thing attached to it, e.g. Tigers just above 1400 left now, is our national animal, if you have forgotten).

Why I said earlier that I don’t want to talk of national soul, because conscience is something we lack, or then why did MNS and Shiv Sena for all these years was able to even get representatives in elected places. The answer is simple, “we love anyone who preaches hate till the time we are spared. I remember somewhere in ’94 I was in the 9^th standard; Too young to get into politics, but old enough to have an observation, and I walked with some of my class mates during the recess. Temple issue was still very much around and BJP had not even come once in power to get people disillusioned, and fed up with the patented politics of the “Thackeray” kind. Liberalization also was not in full swing so that the average emotional Indian would have been busy making money. We were bhaiyyas till that time. Some of them came up with the idea suggesting that minority appeasement was happening and how Christians and Muslims were up to overflow the Indian land with conversions, and their swine like capabilities to reproduce respectively, forgetting that we were ourselves part of an institution which was of the British era being managed by Irish Catholics. And after a long discussion in which I was vocal enough to compare the Shiv Sena with Nazis, with one or two very much with me strongly, and rest with vocal one or two to the extreme right, at last declaring Bal Thackeray as a man who can challenge the already existing bias in favour of politics and a champion of the Hindu cause.

That debate I lost, not because they had a lot of points to prove, but because some times it is better to leave for time to judge. I know it is time that make things happen, for who can look at Austria and Germany of today to think that these were the birth place of Nazism. Reading the newspapers these days with a lot of condemnation from politicians and public as a whole for these goons who perpetrate terror on the roads of metropolitans, and can sometimes siege entire state machinery in the name of honour, I miss my classmates. I want to restart the debate with them, I want to ask them of their feelings after being condemned by their champion and his successor from entering a part of this country, lately who have also started making speeches on secession from Indian state as a whole if the “Marathi Manoos” is not respected. I want to ask them how it feels being declared a non entity, not a “Manoos”at all, when simply you are entitled being cut into pieces if you are on “their land”.

If, and only if you had started speaking against them en masse twenty years ago, probably they would have become extinct by themselves. But as the story goes, we don’t care till they turn against us. Suddenly today it is a debate on India for all vs. Maharashtra for none other than one. (How wonderful it sounds, I came up with it).

The silver lining is that today the mafias have touched a raw nerve, and the time is wrong. Literacy is on rise in this country and people are hopeful of the future. I firmly believe that this time everyone will speak, and we should. I am writing as an obligation as this time India should speak together and bomb them with their words to the stone ages. (I took this one from Bush Junior as he was going to do to Afghanistan).

Mango Season

2010-02-02T18:01:00.002+05:30

I am now battling summers. Mark my word summers, just not any ordinary summers but the heat of Indo Gangetic plains. Lucknow now; five years back it was Allahabad, where I was studying. Many Delhiites would swear by winters in Delhi and summers too. And when they describe the seasons in Delhi they do it with some arrogance in it, as if it was the worst place at that moment to live in. Actually by this they mean no disrespect to the place but an ego attached with it describing themselves to be battling against all odds, describing their struggle with faces twisted to the last stretching point according to Hooke’s law of elasticity, from where it can never return to it’s original shape.

For those who don’t remember their physics lessons well, Hooke's law states that
F = - kx
where
x is the displacement of the end of the spring from its equilibrium position;
F is the restoring force exerted by the material; and
k is the force constant (or spring constant).

That is the spirit of that place, and a person who has lived in that city starts speaking about the challenges he faces and difficulties he surmounts on a day to day basis, thereby glorifying it’s dwellers.
In Lucknow summers have arrived and people speak of coming sessions of siesta. Sorry I am not talking about unemployed (read unemployable) youngsters, but I am talking about working (read tortured and forced against their wishes), guys. It is the love of merry making that hangs, and this aroma of merry making and infinite joy doesn’t leave the Indo Gangetic plains ever. In monsoon they want to get wet, though they are wet somewhere within their pants always (read the rising population figures of this region). In summers they want to resume another season of mango reaping (read raping). And winter comes and then resumes the love making. Love making exists twelve months, whether they are sweating like pigs or are shivering like a squirrel in winter, which too without any precautionary services government is spending on through dispensers in public toilets.
But there is a calm which soothes the nerves. I have come to know that Maslow was wrong in his assessment of a pyramid. Here in these backyards of an emergent India, self actualization seeps in long before the need of basics arise. Contentment is what impresses any person who has ran across distances, six days a week to keep a steady flow of green bills in his awarded bank accounts. I have done that for five long years, to which when I look back I can only identify months with the organizations I was in and the professional happenings that surrounded me either elating or depressing me for months.
I am learning here and learning that human at the end of the day can also seek happiness just lying on a charpow under a mango tree, sometimes just waiting for the mango season to arrive.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Here I Stand With Nothing in My Hand

2009-12-16T16:48:00.001+05:30

My heart needs a little blabbering. I want to talk about the changes in my life. It can be about anything, right from a busy schedule which I was keeping some days ago, to a marriage in which I was the groom. But somewhere my words were lost, or may be I had become too verbose in front of mortals. I was at loss of words, and so the print inside my mind was getting dull day by day. How to pour it out? How to bring new thoughts?

I have started seeing hope even when I see pain everyday. Cruel inflictions and occurrence of most abhorrent nature, but I am still believing that something good will come out of it.

I saw a bitch giving birth to three puppies, less than the average size with which they would have been born. But I waited for them being healthy soon; I knew that some one will feed them. I could see the imminent death of that female with pale body and weak hind legs, but I was hopeful that the kids will be taken care of. She died and the litter was too weak to survive. Some days later I found them playing on the road and people feeding them and running after them to save them from being crushed under speeding vehicles. And when the white one amongst them got a leg crushed and bruised, it got a dressing of engine oil from a diesel generator vendor. The children are rolling and tumbling and playing. I am confused where is the pain to write about when there hope floating all over.

How to pour it out? How to bring new thoughts?

Where is that dark depressing inspiration gone?

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Lost Light

2009-06-04T13:46:00.002+05:30

Yesterday was not a dark night, because at least it had the street light with all it’s yellowness around reflected by the cemented lane laid down some months back in front of the rented apartment that I live in.
It’s an advantage to be on a height if you are an observer and so I have it for myself. Like a cat purged on at a height I rested myself on the iron grill of my balcony and gasped for some air, after torturing myself with weights which I bought from somewhere, the place which I can not trace back now.
I could see the happiness on the face of some boys in their early teens playing in the lane, which obviously is safe as it ends within 50 meters at a gate of a school which I suppose to be haunted. And so were their macho games going on with everything ranging from pulling each other to running backwards. Every muscle movement is a show of strength in those early years when a man discovers his anatomy for the first time.
And with those boys I could see a little girl, may be less than a third of their age working hard to be a part of the group. I call her “little manga” as she always reminds of that funny but lovable Japanese style of cartoon sketching, or whatever you call it. In all these one and a half years that I have lived in this locality I have seen her journey from her father’s safe arms to running around in oversized slippers. And surely she recognizes me with a helmet over my face and never forgets to pass a smile; once I smiled at her without one and got a cold stare back from her. That is the fun of being an employed guy with late sittings in the office, where people only see you the time you are leaving, and the time when you come back with a roaring engine underneath you. She knows the working face of mine; the one which I leave with and I come back with, “a helmeted face”.
And suddenly my human knowledge of counting raised a red flag. There were three guys, in early teens and this little manga, with her elder brother who was doing anything and everything to please these young chaps who might have been a little more then double his age, to get an acceptance and be the fourth musketeer. I could see societies in making at the same place and humans repeating their tribal history generation after generation; though once they started in a cave and now they were repeating it under a lamp post. What went missing in the circle of friends was a young girl who once used to run around on a bicycle like a tom boy, and had the guts to challenge the guys in a game of cricket. The team was perfect and the circle was complete with all the likeminded people making a story to remember once they grow. And she was the most vocal and energetic of the lot. I could sense long back that she was unaware of herself yet though her presence always made the boys to behave. A battle with a shuttlecock would be a lost one if the racket instead of baton would have to be passed on, but as the manager of the team used to arrive the scenario would change with many a helping hands moved forward to pass their swords to the uncrowned princess of “Neverland”.
And that night she was just absent, nowhere to be seen amongst those whom she ruled, and they did not seem to mind it too.
It takes a change of posture sometimes to notice more than what is in the sight. Suddenly a cigarette got lit, and I started killing myself minute by minute. Moments ago I had gone back inside and groped for a matchbox in the dark. I keep the necessary things to myself and the rule makes it clear that the cigarette pack was in my pocket. With every breath of toxic fume the matchbox became redundant in my hand and so to make it useful I started tossing it in the air.
There was no electricity yet. And I did not mind it. As always I never mind most of the shortcomings in my life, and most of the shortcomings in me. The continuous movement of the matchbox had already become a habit and one had no need to focus on the movement. This happens often on a keyboard of a PC, or even a guitar while changing a chord.
The boys had started resting gasping for breath, and one of them ordered the Little Manga’s “Bhai!” to bring them water. And they broke into discussions of all kinds as per their limited understanding of the world, of science, of sports and what not. Who were they trying to impress, with their berserk philosophies and inflated statistics of world affairs?
And then I caught one glance, staring at the balcony above it. The first floor had a very familiar face looking down trading glances with one of the three musketeers. This was a start of realization and it had started to another generation as many years back it had dawned on me and may be all others who caught me in my involuntary act of stealing the view of what was around.
I immediately went back not to come back that night. Sometimes I think that the surroundings should be made free from external pressures and the mind be made open to judge for itself. And I look back to those lost years when the sweet charm of not knowing oneself and the other day waking with all the knowledge of the world seems somewhat empowering.
I don’t want to stand again in my balcony because I want them to have all the time. I am the facilitator of a beginning. I wish I had one for myself.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Marriage Invitation

2009-04-14T19:43:00.002+05:30

Following is a sample letter to all straight forward and honest people who want to let their friends and acquaintance know that they are getting married and why.

Hi All,

As you all know that Armageddon is very near, as what the evangelists always preach I have made up my mind not to die a virgin.

After a long search from amongst the options available in my work place and other haunting places of mine I discovered that there is nothing like a free lunch, and everything comes with strings attached. (Or may be I was not wearing and AXE deodorant, or for that matter a deodorant of Wild stone).

I even could not muster enough courage to pay a visit to shady alleys of cities that I stayed where I knew sub standard women (in looks) would think me to be a handsome hunk. I would like you to believe that the fear was of God and not the lathi yielding policemen lurking in the corners of all those places trying to make instant money by catching a new comer imagining him to be an IPO in a stock market, where actually it was all about a lathi. And again that whole idea of spending all you energy in one hour, when you can do it for the whole night is very illusive. Though after some time you might discover that you are not even good for some seconds. When I started to earn, readily did I realize that money was hard to earn and it came after getting fucked in the ass by an ass that you call boss, parting with your hard earned money is also not very appealing.

Then it was not just a question of sex, it was more than that; it was about having good and quality sex. So you have to be in love with the person and vice versa. I wish the word vice versa would not have been in the dictionary, because that is where I always failed.

People who are reading this mail of mine and have thoughts crossing and cutting them deep within that why this man was so love lost when he was a lovely person, and if they also share their gender with me the I would like to apologize to all the gay friends of mine that I deprived them the opportunity of savoring my meaty body, and I would also like to apologize to all the nymphomaniacs who after reading this mail of mine would be thinking where was this asshole tharki guy and how could we not discover this jewel while he was always around.

With heavy heart I would like to accept that my parents at last came to my rescue and said that, “boy we have a poor little girl who does not know the real you and just because her father wants her to marry you is ready to love you all her life or at least pretend to the same”. So all you gay guys and nymphomaniac treasures of society please feel free to come on the auspicious occasion of me entering into manhood, and falling in love with a girl who I know would hate me in a very short span of time.

Will see you there.

Yours truly,

XYZ

Note: Actually I had drafted this mail for a colleague of mine to send to his friends. At the last moment he backed out, so I thought I should share it with you.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

A Magnet called Delhi

2009-03-27T17:35:00.005+05:30

Night of March 15, 2009, I took off from Lucknow Airport. A delay of an hour in the flight was I did not worry about because I had already completed the first half of the journey, and surely the difficult one, and that was reaching Lucknow Airport. Sometimes in these awkward situations you start making comparisons, and one should. The development of human civilizations and it’s zeal to compare and improve has made people thrive. I knew even if I landed in Delhi I will get a transport, auto, taxi, or whatever. Ways and means is the soul of Delhi. But I hate it. I hate it for it’s vastness, it’s cold insensibility towards an individual’s existence. I know that Delhi exists, but it doesn’t know the same of me.
And then a pull in my stomach made me realize that I was up in the air. May be in 5 minutes I would have been out of Lucknow skies, and as I don’t know the route can’t even say where I was after it. For me outside the window there was darkness and at the moment there were just two poles; one from where I had taken off and the other where I was heading to.
I don’t belong to Lucknow, and I have never lived there. I got acquainted with the work culture and ethics of the city only after my parents planned to shift to the place after my father retired. This only happened less than a year back. Time is floating in that city. Professionalism float far below the speedy layers of corruption, and every individual suffers from a bug of self vigilantism. There is a belief across that if I am paid I should make sure that I should not work more than the person on the same salary. Might not sound sane, but it is true. Honesty, I don’t know if it exists, though people have a lot of time to care for everyone around, though the spirit in which this religious duty is performed in unclear. May be they just want to make sure what’s happening in other’s life or are bored to death so it’s better to do something, or may be they are sincere in extending a helping hand to the other people. No doubt there are honorable exceptions to the entire episode and they do their level best to make you believe that they are too good to be true.
It has been a little less than 5 years that I have been living in Delhi. The sheer size of this place which looks like unending hell of scorching heat and loneliness is too much for a man of social character. But it is a place of opportunities. Years back I arrived at the railway station with a bag and a resolve that I will start again after quitting a career which I was confused about. It took me a painful time to justify myself, but yes change came. And once I started I did not start, I took off. Delhi was nothing less than an adventure, and the journey from a bus to an auto and then to my owned vehicle. Owning a vehicle was never Delhi style for me. I did not take a loan, but it was cash down. Imagine, cash down in Delhi, and yes people were surprised. Who doesn’t take a loan?
Delhi has its shortcomings and you have to develop a taste for it. It’s like a cigarette, slowly and steadily when you will force it upon you then it will reward you. And once you are addicted it will be hard to bid a good bye. And even when you would not go back to it, the sweet memories of that childhood passion to find an open road and an unsuspecting locality for a fearless drag would make you smile. There is a magic which Delhi creates and a personality which Delhi carves for you. A free, unbounded feeling starts encircling you which gives you a confidence of being able to do anything, with it’s lighted streets you have all the right to roam around unhindered. The absence of moon is never felt by a biker, and then there are dark patches around where accidentally you would bump into sex starved couples fondling their private parts in open parks. Many a times an unsuspecting car parked by the side of road springs a surprise when you think this is the best place to open your zip and let your bladder have the relief. I once did the same and as soon as the warm fluid splashed on the dry leaves by the side of the road, a girl taken by surprise raised her head from the front seat of a parked car to see what the noise was all about. I pretended not to notice her at all, with all that I could do to convey to her; “sorry lady I don’t know you are giving a blow job inside that car”.
And then there are eating joints everywhere, for everyone, and every pocket. Everyone is hungry, and everyone is health conscious, even the aunties who waddle instead of walking. Delhi sleeps late, and still people are there in places working. Delhi is all about comfort and indiscipline and yes it takes pride in it, for traffic rules are only applicable if a man with white uniform or khaki uniform is visible. But yet Delhi has time for yoga which you can see in all the allotted parks of localities, filled with people who don’t want to move a centimeter and plan to loose all there weight. Delhi is about survival, for every man and also every dog while crossing the road. And yet there are people who feed the other without a penny. Stray dogs can be fat if it’s mother gave birth to it outside a restaurant, and beggars can earn more than a struggling executive. Some struggle to make ends meet and some struggle with their end. Decent looking girls whom you could fell in love for their simplicity can turn up to be hookers; and hookers who show themselves on honking of car horns turn out to be transvestites. I know a hooker whom you can fuck and pay when you have money. That is the magnet of Delhi, but without a north or south.
There are no rights and no wrongs in Delhi. These are just perceptions. Delhi salutes success and leaves you to yourself to draw the line. There are no morals in Delhi; they are your personal choices.
Life in this place might be equal to eating shit sitting on the road, but Delhi is all about savoring it to the last. And people do enjoy, drenching in rains that pour out of nowhere and can be seemed enjoying sweat traveling down their torso while sitting in a crowded bus.
And that day I was just in the air, and it reminded me of all the bus rides and heated exchanges with the auto drivers. My bumpy but yet successful ride on the money front just flashed in front of my eyes. My struggle might not be an inspiration at all, but is a story in itself. I remembered the man who interviewed me for a role in his venture in the very first month of my arrival in Delhi, and his words echoed, “Abbas you never sold yourself, so you never had a girlfriend, you are not a seller”. And I ended up selling people and portfolios; I sold dreams, careers and concepts. In some hours I could see Delhi from above, shining lights all around, as it will never sleep. The plane floated in the skies for 15 minutes and that time made me realize that I loved this place. I had started loving it for no reason at all, or may be it made me feel free from all the clutches of relations, and expectations. Delhi’s air might be filled with smell of burnt sulphur, or may be lead, or spewed out carbon, from those millions of vehicles running on fossil fuel, but it reminds you of that closed room which I used to fill with cigarette smoke in my hostel. How morally repugnant it might look for a girl to raise her leg to make space for a man with the intention of having fun just for one night. With each jolt they might burn in the realms of hell. But that moment is heaven. I call that lust, Delhi. After all I could pay that plane’s fair from my pocket because Delhi gave me the means to. Delhi is Sex.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

To be or not to be

2009-03-26T15:29:00.001+05:30

My workplace is at the other end of this world. If you want to eat something you would have to search a long way. Tea is fine but that too is available at one place. This guy has a van which he parks I don’t know what time, and takes off, the time of which again is unknown to me. The mystery is if this van actually has an engine in it. For him it is a lucrative business and also an occupying one, He has actually 5 companies to serve, out of which 3 are 24x7 BPOs.
In the morning I have my tea there, and I don’t miss the faces and aspirations of young callers who are happy to have whatever they get at the end of the month, which can provide for their planning of consumerism. Newly formed couples, adore the small area littered with makeshift fast food joint, and in their eyes I never fail to see a twinkle passed to each and every passer by, declaring a sense of belonging to everyone in their way. And you see there loners, resting on a wooden plank balanced on a pile of brick or concrete. The loners occupy themselves by inviting those others who are of the same kind, though of an opposite sex.
And once or twice I measure the lone bodies to sooth some lost instinct inside me. May be this is admiration or pure lust. No comments, till the time harm does not come in way of any one. No heart is broken and no promises made. And their dark nail polish and their shiny nose rings, and sometimes a piece of skin laid bare, make the atmosphere uneasy, and they know it, and they want it. Hungry for everything and still not out to compromise their chastity. And the volume of the other gender rises as the sweat trickles down their forehead due to the heat of anything that might happen before making love.
And I sit there and watch them smiling and often unknowingly shaking my head at the sight of the entire circus which happens in a social jungle distempering the acts with bright social colours of dressing and appearance. I don’t disapprove because who am I; for what I think might just be a perspective. But may be one day they will understand that it is more than chemistry.
You know, I have a strong conviction that it is more about economics.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Why?

2009-03-26T15:28:00.001+05:30

Why can’t I speak? Because I am feeling sleepy.
And why can’t I write? Because my system has also gone to sleep.
Thanks Microsoft for this stupid facility provided to save power.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Tring Tring

2008-11-24T13:26:00.003+05:30

That shrill tring tring can be from a phone of old make and can be a guitar being strummed without any chords being held. Open strums to make it speak, what one could not have done with not one in hand. The voice trying to defeat the shrieks of the strings, speaks of things one would not say in sanity. Ah! So is the burden of being born a gentleman.

Tring tring, “I just called to say, I love you”.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Hmmmmmm!!!!!!!!!!!!

2008-11-15T11:58:00.001+05:30

“Approximately 1 million teenage girls get pregnant in the United States each year, by far the highest rate of teen pregnancies of any industrialized nation -- and eight out of 10 are unplanned, …”

Aaaaahhhhhhh……!!!!!
Sad…………, I am not even responsible for one.
Ooooohhhhhhh……!!!!!
Now I understand why they call America a land of opportunities.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

See all Colours!

2008-11-11T18:38:00.002+05:30

Ok, so Obama is now the President of United States. And yes he is black. Good, so suddenly Americans are not racist. Fine I buy that idea without batting my eye lid, in fact I believe they are not even half racist than Indians are.
Sorry I don’t want you to think about MNS and Raj Thackeray, and even about Bajrang Dal. I am not pinpointing them because I know they do you proud. I know you Indians, you love them, whatever you may show in front of everyone you strive to be like them. You love Taliban and you admire the idea of Taliban and Bajrang Dal (till the time they ask everyone to behave accordingly except you).
Now get your heroes out of your mind for a moment.
Will you keep a street dog for a pet?
Oh! What got into your head you racist bastards? Mongrel is an indigenous breed, and it is very immune to diseases that most of your imported hybrid beasts are not. Why not adopt an orphaned pup on the road. But no you scoundrel born out of a bitch’s womb. You wriggling cancer of society, you won’t love a mongrel.
So what about Change ’08?

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Freedom

2008-11-01T16:50:00.004+05:30

If the proponent of freedom knew that slavery brought Africans in the free world, would they stop crying hoarse for equal rights? Was the Japanese invasion of China during WWII worth; in the end it ended the British colonialism in China?
Chinese sufferings did not get sweeter by replacing the white man with the yellow man.
Free world for a black man was the place where he was supposed to work hard for free.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Bastard

2008-10-24T17:59:00.001+05:30

Please leave me alone, because I’m too lonely.
Let me bang my head against the wall, or it will long for my warmth.
Now I am going to start. Do let me understand if I sound funny while crying.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

A Life Without EMIs

2008-10-21T12:19:00.003+05:30

Dear Father,
Hope this letter of mine sees you in the best of health and spirit. It has been a long time that we have interacted, even exchanged thoughts. It has been a rough ride and surely a tough one for me. Being independent and that too a fiercely independent one makes all the relations susceptible, and for me the whole ride has been jittery one. I don’t have many great words to cherish from you, and not many lessons as from a teacher to a student to sleep on. But yes there has been something that we all can come to as a common point and make a consensus on.
I miss all the toughening up exercises that you taught me, sometimes breaking my body against a cupboard, sometimes a commando training session with wires, and hockey, and stumps and bats, and sometimes with hibiscus sticks soaked in water. What fun was it to feel strong for all the wrong reasons! Sometimes homework left unattended or a numerical problem wrongly solved.
Dear Father, thanks for all the wise words explained to me in practical. Though we had very less words to share but still you were such a good teacher. Where Bible starts sounding old and lacking words, you pitched in and summarized in your own assertive and meaningful way. “A red mark in your school assignment left by your teacher can leave red marks on your body; long after the memories of that standard has been assigned to a dustbin.”
How subtle is the nature’s way of turning times. Father what emotions I have for you and that I contemplate a lot on. Often while looking at the sky I feel pity for you. What do jockeys do to their best horses while running on a race course? They whip them. But then the horse stops running for them. You placed the bet on your best horse, but you whipped it too hard. In the process did you loose your lieutenant, or got rid of a wild horse, left untamed for a damning society. Was I a wild horse? Or did I loose my mind somewhere in between? Can’t say, can’t comment.
My nature grew as cold as the chilling airs of the Wuthering Heights. And any time your tall cutting ego clashed the cold untended cloud it thundered and rained, and splashed the grass of the meadows painting it in dark colours.
You never risked anything, and never took a chance with what you had in hand. The only gamble that you took was with me. I don’t know if you won, or you lost. But in the middle of that long road we lost each other. I never wanted to be like you, except for the fear you instilled in the heart of others. I am trying to terrorize people more than you. I believe I am successful. But I want to risk more; more than you could have dreamt about. My life, my possessions, money, friends, family, relations, anger, fear, trust, all nouns and abstract nouns that life can earn for you. I have placed on bets of low value and low return. And in the end I have nothing to leave of a worldly possession; how prone I am to fall in your mould Father. Just like you, I am also living a life of no EMIs?
Your unwillingly obedient son.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

My Window Seat

2008-09-09T19:47:00.005+05:30

I travel and the traveling philosophically needs a window seat, where ideas come as if they were a breeze’s desperate attempt to take your hair with it and make them vanish in a place where you have never put your foot on, and in the future you never even think of setting them. Sometimes in winter the window seat makes me believe that I am a soldier caught with no sides in a world war, desperately trying to fight for my survival, in the bitter cold tormenting me and making me realize of my utter poverty. In summers I become a mafia as the temperatures make me courageous enough to stand as a symbol of power who fears nothing.

In the monsoon when the shutters are down and the water starts leaking from any creek it finds, and pour on the clothes, giving a feel of a cave man with fire in front and a wet ground, wishing for an early sunrise and a warm sun.

Window seat is a game for children on a bus or a train; it’s fun on anything, which moves and spins web of dream. For a moment even grown-ups get transformed into medieval warriors seated on a chariot of high speed marching towards victory, where the lesser mortals would be waving for them as cheering for the stronger ones as they have liberated them from tyranny towards a people’s rule. People’s rule my foot, in the end it’s going to be my rule.

The seat always gave me immense power. I took it from people under strange pretext.

“Last time I did not travel on the window seat, I met with an accident”.

“I was here before you, just went to the toilet, and took my bag with me so that no one steals it in my absence”.

I even denied the fairer sex the window seat many a times, for two reasons. First they are not innovative enough and come up with the same motion sickness excuse and vomiting feeling every time. “Hey ladies stop traveling if you are so fragile”. Second they ask you with a smile as if they are entitled to it. “Even a free sex at that time won’t budge me from my would be imagination land when the engines will start roaring. And yes the same ladies who armed with their vicious weapons of musical voice and charming smile would have nothing like it once they have got it. Strip in front of me and dance naked for hours and I won’t let you have it. That’s mine. For the window seat is my only short escape to another world or gratification and satisfaction, when I know that what awaits me on the last stop is another ordeal of my wretched life.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Anger Management

2008-06-23T12:44:00.005+05:30

Breathe in, breathe out. Wasn’t it simple to control your anger?
Count till 100 whenever someone irritates you, or may be you can also drink a glass of water. And all the anger and hatred will be flushed out of your system, as if it never existed.
Swamis of the world speak to me in this manner.
Now as for breathing I do it every day, every moment, and in the very same manner. So what is so new about it? Counting; yes if you are in a serious argument with someone and you start counting loudly, I bet the other person will do what you were planning to do to him, thinking you to be a lunatic of the highest order who is revising his 1^st grade math lesson after some good two decades.
And water is scarce resource which I believe in saving and only consuming when I need it, on the other hand I am not an aquaholic. Swami ji, excess water in a body causes acidity, and acidity irritates me. So again the whole chakra of anger repeats itself in a cycle.
Any other suggestions?

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Provoked Thought

2008-06-16T20:31:00.002+05:30

Smile!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
That very moment two things come to your mind:
One, I should not be clicked with closed eyes, and second is to hope that my trousers fly isn’t open.
But never even once we question:
Why should I smile?
Suppose I smile, and my fly is open, and my eyes are closed.
So next time when are you being photographed try to look serious; at least it will be politically correct. Above all you will not seem to be enjoying your own degradation.
Now Say Cheese!!!!!!!!!!

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

A Hometown Forever

2008-06-13T13:04:00.006+05:30

Dehradun is a valley, located in Garhwal region. It is now the capital of Uttaranchal, a northern province of India. Mussoorie hill was some 20 kms. from my home so it was a regular up and down for me, when I went to college, and had my share of freedom.
Dehradun is wet and cool. October is the best time, when your nose can smell something around and you try to remember the name of the flower, which you learnt last year when that whiff had touched you. Winters are beautiful there and summers are tolerable. No hot winds. And you could hear the strong winds blowing on a winter night. I loved it when it rained and sun was hidden behind the clouds. And then a meek attempt to come back to life would make the wet clothes hanging on a wire, steam.
And rain was something that came as to wash all the sins of life, all bad memories. Roads overflowed with crystal clear water, and I still sometime imagine myself coming back from school on foot with my bag on my back covered with a duck back raincoat, making me look like a penguin trying to make way through every deep crevice on the road which would soak my socks inside the shoes. And then going back home and changing outside the home, and complaining about my younger brother of how he knowingly walked through water and splashed it in process destroying his shoes, and then getting inside to have a cup of tea. And it rained every evening after my father was back from his work.
Lush green, wet roads, and straight cold stretches, as though they led us to eternity. Wherever you turned it ended on a riverbed filled with round fair stones, as if the way was another path to heaven, which men didn’t have to die to reach.
Allah had planned and timed it for me. Those were some beautiful days of happiness I had.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Let's Play

2008-06-10T16:30:00.005+05:30

If you will talk to me,
I will stop writing.
If you will hear me,
I will stop writing.
If you will respect me,
I will stop writing.
If you will kill me,
I will.........................
Become a ghost,
and enter your bathroom,
when you are taking a shower.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Emancipation of Eve

2008-06-09T16:36:00.005+05:30

O Allah! You made Eve to make us fall?
The good old Bible says it all.
Still men fight to get a way.
Spilling blood, on her hanky’s sway.
Hands on the heart I looked for my pair,
In hands, the fruit, in heart despair.
I saw her standing near forbidden tree.
With a tempting smile she looked at me.
We’ll sin and live on the earth together,
But alone she ate the apple, and kicked me for ever.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

You and I

2008-06-07T11:19:00.005+05:30

I wish life had been so simple as a chat on an internet chat room, as sending a mail and then withdrawing it. As subtle as abuses typed in punctuation marks, which derive a smiley for a response from the other side. As smooth as direction less conversations for hours. As escapist as a call to a drowsy corner of the world from a sleepy corner in some other part, without worrying about the weather there. As liberating as an assessment of the other with no hope and no commitment.
A lost you and a wasted me.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

The Lost Sight

2008-06-04T12:24:00.003+05:30

Talking about romance, when not even a dirty thought now crosses my mind. No low tones arouse passions anymore. Even the rhythmic breathing doesn’t make me feel drowsy. The phase has passed, and the fantasies are over. Reality has dawned after a 5 seconds blackout, reminding me of a narrated experience of a childhood peer. It was a complete wash out that he experienced getting up from the bed after consuming 7 tablets prescribed by doctor to make him stand on his feet. “Just don’t move brother, if you move you fall”.
He had his fill, or probably more than that. I went hungry and now my intestines have shrunk.
Self-actualization I have reached, where the hunt for soul’s nourishment starts. Spiritual bullshit. Never admired anything that did not make a material impact on this world and thin clouds do good to none. Except yes romance. Or at least it looked as if it did.
No sensation, nonsense. Why does a couple seem happy in the rain under one umbrella? Pathetic hopes of a continuous bliss.
I never had that sensation of love again, which once I experienced seeing a husband helping his pregnant wife getting seated in a park. Sex is bullshit; there is something more than that. Hollywood, Tollywood, Lollywood, Mollywood, Bollywood, and all may go to hell. One of My kittens sleeping between my chest and arms, with his head resting on my shoulders. How about romancing life?

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Mama's Boy

2008-05-23T11:50:00.006+05:30

For the past two days it has been raining. Only today after a long gap the sun showed it’s face. It was like loving it again. I was drenched twice in two days. First time it was around 2:00 a.m. that I got soaked up on my way back home. Sounded exciting, at that minute, but not for long. The wet roads at night are picturesque if they had been dusty and uninteresting for many months. Though running a risk of wet breaks and slamming into a coming truck is great, because the city roads are open for heavy vehicles at that point and yes the rule it too, but who could have resisted a slight chance of spiraling for a pint of philosophy and thoughts that never come up while you are on your way.

The river Yamuna, was a sad state, I started by moaning it’s continuous degradation into a waste land, and then the wet road suddenly looked to me a revenge from it’s part. It looked as if all the lost water of that poor river had come down on the land from the heaven. It sufficed me till it punished someone. I don’t know who, but still the thought of it brought me a smile. At an odd hour in a big city like Delhi, a smile could have been a cause of enough trouble but still a trap too sweet not to get into. And I fell for it.
Rivers were considered mothers by ancient Indians, though a dominant religion in this country still applauds the idea though only in conversation and rakes it up only as an excuse to continue it’s argument to exist for some more time, and goes on building on it’s breast and eating up it’s way so that one day it may never exist. Mothers all have that sad ending. So then it’s a cipher to which I came back. Solitudes often make me think of my relation with my mother. And yes it has not been a smooth ride. Being a Mama’s boy is not easy so I could never be; I am jealous of some who often are termed by their wives to be one. There is no doubt for me that I am her favorite between us brothers, but the joy ride don’t come for free. So we have turbulences, and adventures and exchanges of unpleasant words. People say this spices up life. But for her my spices have spoilt the pudding altogether. But so what, she still is the only woman I ever loved.
Two days later I am seeing the sun blinding every one with it’s retained glory. We love those who play tricks with us. Allude us , hide from us and then as if to make a fool of us and gain affection come back with a new life to ascertain their existence. These are the things we love. We love what we have lost.
Probably that is the reason she loves me cause I allude and come back, inspite of my spiced up pudding, and I know she will always be there so I am not afraid, to spice it up more.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

What am i thinking?

2008-04-22T14:20:00.006+05:30

To be honest I think I am more of a Sadist, yet an iconoclast.

Genre? No not defined anything for myself. I believe in no boundaries.
Perhaps I write because I want to break some.
I am an iconoclast because to make them suffer I whip their beliefs.
Am I a pessimist? No I don't look at all for another day.
Intellectual Scalpel? Remove the physical one, it would feel better.
Fools you snubbed me again. You took my last hope of dashing the system, which I hate.
I hate you for all my dashed hopes. And I hate you for not being like me. I wish I could have pained you more. Let me take an oath and pain you all your lives.
I hate you so I believe in what you don’t. I hate you so I loathe myself.
I wish I could die sitting here itself. Will it pain you? I doubt, but I am ready to give it a chance.
Fighting for a cause!
Yes, if the end is in some place with wet passages after an evening rain, when the sun is gone but there is still light in the sky.
Sounds like martyrdom.
Ah! The sweet smell of one's own blood; I don’t know how to swim.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Sans Way

2008-04-09T16:13:00.003+05:30

Measure my words of guilt drowned in obnoxious laments of sorrow. I define the parameters of sanity. For everyone though I myself am drunk to the brim of my neck. I have forsaken the glass filled with poison to live again, to see myself dying again. Seeing myself guilty of what I was not responsible for. I blabber so I can be free from your clutches.

O World! Did I give you anything? I didn’t I know. Am I at fault or was I a bystander enjoying the filth-taking place of the entire vacuum? I sell my brain door to door, wooing people to fill their home of a thing, useless to me.

Listen to the tears; they drop with a voice. A sound shattering the silence and disturbing the harmony inside, a human it cuts across the heart for the feeling of pain. I hear and I feel. Sound of tears or the loud wailing, in both the ways the guilt is with the man opposite with no mirrors in front of the sufferer.

I am the labyrinth. What does labyrinth mean anyway? Is it a torturous zigzag of concrete, or a combination of ways to a never-ending hell? I am the source of trouble for you if you dare. If you dare to apologize to me, you are wrong. I am an intricate combination of wrongs; all in dark shades of gray. I am a lot younger to the years I spent in torment. Don’t be like me. Don’t mourn. Nothing will be more unjustified than folding hands in front of me.

Nobody wrongs me. I have wronged everyone.

I have to be stoned to come back to senses. My dear, don’t try to get engrossed in what I spill; just try to read it. A slash here and there would suit me well. I am used to critics. Don’t apprehend the unbreakable. The code is too big being quoted again. I once walking in my sleep said to the bed before stumbling upon it, “Who breaks my stride”.

The first and the last time I spoke with so much confidence.

Don’t fear you never made me meander.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Arrival

2008-03-03T17:16:00.003+05:30

Summers have come because I can feel the breeze carrying dust with it, to infect me with that itching sensation.

Summers have come because I can smell the baked earth, patiently prepared by the sun all day.
Summers have come because the fragrance is one, which warms ones senses to believe to be alive some years back.
Summers have come because sun is red in the evening, and yet it spreads it’s light to the farthest end of the horizon to be seen.
Summers have come because we have stopped questioning God’s logic of making water cold.
Summers have come because we have stopped pitying unclad beggars on the city’s pavements, for they can yet survive.
Summers have come because the streets are littered with newborn animals, rolling and tumbling all around.
Summers have come because little girls are happy, frolicking around all evening in their white socks and black shoes.
Summers have come because I don’t feel like bending my back over my legs to keep me warm while sleeping.
Summers have come because the people have started asking for ice again to cool them after a long day.
Summers have come because I feel a lot lighter not wearing all those accessories, which made me feel rich on a cold night’s walk.
Summers have come because I can feel sweat dripping off from my hair on my cheek, without being frightened of something.
Summers have come because I feel so, and I say so; it's hard to get over the last one's nostalgia.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Dracula defines a Business

2008-01-29T17:50:00.002+05:30

I am a confused man. I work for my client and I serve my candidates (Actually I do nothing but serve my interests). I am the Rasputin of modern age negotiations, acting as a bridge between no one but the Oligarchs and the Imperialist Czars of today. I leave the commoners behind because their udders are dry and of no use to me. In a sophisticated form I call it smelling business and turning towards opportunities.
I wear suits of dark shades and carry darker intentions to the tables of negotiations. Well lit rooms and yet curtailed thoughts of what is there next. Planning and executing what suits me most, carrying a devil’s advocate to make the rounds a success. And he serves none but me for he is my advocate and I am the Devil.
I approach one (and all), whatever bait it might take. I am the well wisher of theirs; (we shall debate on it some other day). My client, my candidate, my commodities, my blah, blah, blah…….. I don’t use knives and I don’t kill any one for trade; I trade meat in whole sale. One human at a time, may be many, depends on the business, and depends on a day.
Hi there, are you looking for a consultant to help you?

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Cartman in Me

2008-01-23T19:32:00.004+05:30

Dedicated to the greatest anti hero of all times Eric Cartman

Should I write just because I am supposed to; but what if my senses don’t give me new idea to scribble on this white sheet.
“Fuck, fuckitty, fuck, fuck, fuck.”
But my dark writings keep you people in a consistent state of self admiration. A feeling of sanity lurks somewhere in your mind. You feel sorry for me and pray for my soul.
“What you lookin' at? You all a bunch of fuckin' assholes. You know why? You don't have the guts to be what you wanna be? You need people like me. You need people like me so you can point your fuckin' fingers and say, ‘That's the bad guy’.”
Don’t mind I don’t want to say anything that hurts you.
“I'm just saying you're just a little wuss, that's all.”
People ask me what I have loved, and I grow blank. May be it has been a loveless life. I never loved anyone. May be on a second thought I loved my cats. I had lots of them, and I always looked for an opportunity to die for them. No this is no love song, but my only love song. It’s amazing to be father, and I was protective for them. Children opening their eyes in my lap, seeing you with a twinkle in their eyes and feeling safe with you forever, and so you fell in love with their innocence waiting for a chance where you can dare for them. And then you make an excuse to frighten people acting like a Godfather to the lives that count on you. Wait are you thinking that you can mess with them.
“You so much as touch kitty's ass and I'll put a firecracker in your nutsack and blow your balls all over your pants.”
Don’t shiver.
“Well, I'm just sayn', man, seriously, don't mess with kitty, man.”
But still there is a point where we can draw a common ground. I have still not grown a psycho. My ego still has not gone out of my hand where I can kill all you people and make this world a better place to live. Kindness still makes me stay where I am.
“I love you guys... eh, screw you guys.”
And yes you would say love would heel me, but it never touched. To hell with all the women I fell in love with. Yes I was the only person to fell in love at a point of time. No they were too busy with their dreams and chasing the Mr. Right popping out of a picnic basket. I was not a bottle of jam, and so I was never carried to a picnic. Love; did you chant that stupid slogan of weaklings, that makes a man rotten like a leftover which is only chased by wildcats out of a dustbin lying unattended for days in a dark suburb. Lets call it raw, and break the philosophical limbo of jackasses.
“Fuck you, May, fuck you, Annie, fuck you, BeBe, fuck you, whatever your name is, and fuck you, bitch!”
No one is invited to the gloomy but picturesque outset of my living. A landscape of the living dead, in which I don’t let any one enter to have athe sweet pleasure of touching my soul and prescribe remedial drugs to end the self induced pain of loneliness. I don’t cry on whining pigs eager to float in the dark and slippery mud of a wasted heart. Not invited on a new year, no valentines to celebrate, no happy get togethers, and yes I do not let any one barge in my birthday.
“Hmm, what could I have done with Pip's invitation? Pip's invitation... Pip's invitation... Oh, I remember. I shoved it up my ass. That's right. I wrote it up, put in an envelope, sealed it, and shoved it right up my ass, forever ruining any chance of you coming to my birthday party. Sorry, Pip ol' chap.”
What you like might not be my preferences and what I enjoy is not what you have a stomach for. I grope in search for food when you go crazy and throw out because you are deep into gluttony. You like happy endings and I stand still at questions. I get elevated at the sight of blood; surely that makes things look far serious and matured, whereas you withdraw yourself seeing pain. Your independence is my slavery and my freedom is boredom for you. I like movies that are independent in thoughts and you love independent movies.
“Naw dude, independent films are those black and white hippy movies. They're always about gay cowboys eating pudding.”
I ridicule you. And I don’t have respect for you.
“You guys are hella stupid.” “Cuz I'm hella cool, that's why.”
I talk and I hurt. I interact and leave a sadistic feeling of depression around. I thrive on dark scenarios. Gloom for lunch, and melancholy for dinner. Hearts slashed and hopes pierced, tears rolling down the cheeks of everyone. All are enemies who conspired to make me cry.
“Oh, the tears of unfathomable sadness! Yummy!”
What a tame sissy; you still are reading curses I have written.
“I hate you, I want you to die” “Butters, remind me to cut your balls off later.”
I am living my life as I never wanted to, but it is fine now that I have grown into it. Adjusted with the ill fated expectations of some people who some how brought me into this world without asking me, and then also the world feels I owe a lot to them. But now it looks well, nice, fine, as it should be.
“Kyle, if you mess this up, so help me God I will rip your balls of with my bare hands! With my bare hands, Goddamn you!”
So what is left to day now?
“Ok, that's enough fat-ass jokes for this week.”
Whatever has gone into you head, I don’t care; for it will not stay there any longer. On the other hand it is a miserable life that you are leading; thought there is nothing different for me. Each one is in a shit hole. Nothing new to sing, may be some lines are coming in my mind. But why should I tell you, and why should I waste my time on you.
“Screw you guys, I'm going home.”

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Split

2008-01-16T15:08:00.005+05:30

“This is the beginning. We're at ground zero. Maybe you should say a few words, to mark the occasion.”

“With a gun barrel between your teeth, you only speak in vowels.”
“Look what we've accomplished.”
“It's called a ‘changeover’. The movie goes on, and nobody in the audience has any idea.”
“I Am Jimmy’s Raging Bile Duct”
See how they plot, in destroying my visions; my values and my clear, unbiased mind. I wash my face every time and spit at my reflection made by the accumulated mirror of fluid that was unable to escape through the limited escape vault provided in the sink. I spit at myself again, questioning my timidity to be fooled by the zealots who made me madder than what I am. Let me throw out on them what I ate out of their hands and out of their favours. Was I intimidated or was it just the smoothness of their words? I am dead for I have ceased to be what I was. Insomnia again.
“I Am Jimmy’s Cold Sweat”
It is just average out here. No one knows you and no one hears you. You crash into someone on a road, or a bus, or a subway, pick up a fight so that you have someone to speak to. For five minutes it is as you have all the pleasure of your life.
“I Am Jimmy’s Complete Lack of Surprise”
Sometimes you sleep while sitting, while talking; you have your eyes open but you are not there. You do not know why you are there. We are masters, but there comes a time when some materials in life start mastering you.
“I Am Jimmy’s Smirking Revenge”
What is important in life? I ask the question everyday and everytime. This question is what makes us survive, especially if you are not one of those people who do not know anything other than what they wear, where they eat, and what they are planning to buy. You stroll and you realize that you are there for nothing.
“I'm all alone. I Am Jimmy’s Broken Heart"
Every minute you are leading a worthless life. In Buses, in Taxis, in Trains, you are depleting the life span that is yours. You wish that either you are important or let it end; but that too does not happen. You know you are loosing time, precious time; you are helpless. You start accepting that you are nothing, not important, worthless, society has left you in drains.
“It's called a ‘changeover.’ The movie goes on, and nobody in the audience has any idea.”
“People think that you're me, because you and I happen to share the same body”
“Sometimes I control it, and you imagine yourself watching me...”
“And, sometimes you control it...”
“You can see me and hear me, but no one else can...”
“But, when you fall asleep, I do things without you...”
“I go places without you. Get things done...”
“There! Happy? I asked for one thing from you... one simple promise. Now look what you've done!”

Dedicated to a masterpiece called Fightclub.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Breaking up the Vault

2007-12-27T17:50:00.002+05:30

I have a closet filled with skeletons. I keep a tight watch on it. It has to be hidden with a zeal formulated by a perpetual fear of being sighted weak; a dilemma of being termed as mere mortal. So I guard my sins trying to break out from the storage. A granary that kept me inflamed in the worst of famines. And yet I starved myself to entertain gods.
So what was in the vault stayed there for ever hidden from the eyes of wickedness and I saved my soul locked in the dungeons with representatives of Satan. And so I guard the hell where I have invested for the day when heaven would have no place for me.
Does it have any for me today? I ask myself and I walk in front of the chained entrapment with my belongings. Every question posed is a challenge to surpass and survive.
May I expose myself?

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Fancy to the Brink

2007-12-26T11:10:00.003+05:30

When eyes see what the mind imagines;
Time waits for itself to pass.
I have suffered long traveling on the clouds;
I miss the subtle earthly grass.

Is it hard to believe what met the eyes one day?
Forlorn belief one had.
If only it was the real sketch;
A man would be at peace with reasons to be glad.

Since vision of one I shake my sense;
Possessed, with nimble thoughts.
Happy to be standing in the shades;
Of a play with a rugged plot.

Are you also in a dilemma I face?
Much to your surprise as I?
Or is it just that I burn down;
Crying in a fool’s paradise; try, try and try?

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

For the sake of a Conversation

2007-12-13T12:41:00.001+05:30

Help yourself with this tea; it will make you feel better in this cold. It is raining outside, but the world is not paralyzed. Still there would be running people on the roads. Trying to get somewhere where they can admire the drops of water smashing their body and ending their lives for the greater good of drenching all. May be some would curse them too. But we all do what suits us. I would be cursing it if it would have happened a little earlier and you had not been able to make it here. All of us are slaves of our perceptions, however immature and unfounded they are. Yes it is hot, be careful, I usually burn my tongue in every day or two; nothing, just in the effort of trying to gulp more than I can resist or take care of. Did you find any problem locating this place? Yes it is beautiful, but marvels also are troublesome to locate. We have to dig hard to find graves of what humans loved to be like. Smiling; and for what? Yes, I sound cynical; ok that is enough, I won’t get into philosophy any more. Oh! It pleases you, fine.

Just look out at the drops and praise their vitality long after they seep into the depths of the earth. The smell of that mix enamors all bringing back nostalgia, long forgotten. I am confused if the rain brings that scent with it or is it the earth that swells in the womb by carrying the wet mercy of skies.
Are you moving out to sit somewhere? Yes we were standing here for too long. It is a scenario when the other half betrays the half which is enjoying. You betray me and yet we are inseparable.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Big Heart, Not Smart

2007-12-05T12:42:00.004+05:30

Babbling all across the brook I am withering on the butcher’s hook.

I took what I took, did all prescribed in a book.
For an earthly look, just for my comfort I terribly shook.

Minding the gap, and avoiding the evil and murderous trap.
I yearned for a nap, donning the good man’s stupid cap.
Seeing all lying in lap, I fixed my gaze on the map.

Played my part, drawn a chart.
Pulling the loaded cart; just waiting to make a start.
Running with big heart, not smart, not at all smart.

The style of poetry is dedicated to Pink Floyd’s Money.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Lola weds Yossarian

2007-12-04T19:28:00.002+05:30

What is the fun of running with them? Who are these "them"? What made Lola a looser if she just runs for the sake of running away? What if she stops running because they are not running? Does running makes her Lola? Or Lola would continue existing even if she stops running? What if Lola was running to find "him" and not "them"? Why should not Lola be left alone and not questioned about her running? What if she enjoys running? What if just running away makes Lola comfortable?
Isn't it sane to run away when all the world is trying to slaughter you? What a "Catch 22" that Yossarian is a coward, and yet, "Yossarian still lives".

The writing is inspired by one of the articles of Ms. Pearl Sandhu, "the running lola"

http://dontmarrythefly.blogspot.com/2007/11/running-lola.html

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

To Crack a Whip

2007-11-22T15:17:00.001+05:30

I wanted to lock myself away from this world, and suddenly discovered I was sharing my space with another prisoner who was too free in spirit.
Two rooms I need today; one for the free spirit and the other for me to cry, and whip my back without anyone getting hurt and noticing me, in discipline of my inflicted corporal mortification.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Writing in Love

2007-11-15T13:12:00.001+05:30

My pen does not work sometimes. I never bought any one of them that I own right now, so I can’t complain much. But, yes they are expensive, because like a true Indian, who is cheap to the core I sometimes go to the shop and check out with a dealer of what worth I got a gift for. Or rather to put it in another manner, how much the other person found my worth for a gift. Fine these people who gave me weapons to pour my brains out, were never a close hair of my beard. Or may be they thought so. Let me be very precise here, I love pens and I love them since I started preserving memories of my wasted life. I remember writing on a small diary my father gave me to own, because it had a year printed on it which had passed years ago; and was of times when the Soviet army marched on Red Square making the West shudder not only in their shoes but in their trousers too. All said and done, I chose to write on it, “I love you my pen and I want to stay with you forever; May be I will choose to be in a profession where I can even sleep with you”. Silly? No, too matured for a boy who had just learnt to join alphabets to make words and words to construct sentences, these were remarkable outburst of love. Love, which that boy was never able to express to any girl in his life again, for if he would have done so, may be his life would not have been wasted and he would be writing something better than a page on pens and the fancy of owning them. Why is it always very different for every person to project himself? Some people love to be seen by the shine of their shoes, some want to be recognized by the brand they wear; sometimes on their busts, beneath their waist, on their wrists, and sometimes even places which are hidden from the eyes in a civilized society. I had no material influences; wrong again. I had no material influences because I had no material to own at all. I just had gifts thrusted on me by my humane friends, who wanted me to feel special on the day when I was subjected to all the harassments by forceps wielding people in white, with no doctorate to own and yet preferred to be called Doctors. Now my friends were considerate enough to glorify me at least for one day in a year, but avoided the pains of making their mind run through a list of options available in the market. They would come, I would smile, they would sit and we would talk, birthday instantly forgotten, and no gifts opened in front of them. I did not open it for there was no surprise in it, and they did not ask me because they wanted to avoid the same old boring routine of being surprised when the other was not. This was a symbiotic relation and that’s how all friendships work; not embarrassing each other. The only thing that changed every year was the content of the card. At least the content writers are not sleeping. So I stacked pens, year after year, and I will be honest some I did not like, so I passed them to another fellow whom the other did not know, usually on his birthday. That age obviously has no other anniversary to celebrate. I learnt two things from all the stacks that use to pile up in a year, logistics and writing. Sorry it was no huge pile, just few cheap sets of two. But I became a pure logistics person in the whole process. Passing on the buck to others before the inventory became unmanageable. And then in many years there would be a pen whom I would fell in love with, and dedicate all my writing to. And many years relationship would cruise and then wane away with times. I shiver at the idea of a similar thing with a human, cruising and then death of all the feelings. It is better with a pen for pens never dump you and never complain on being dumped.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Vitriolic Incense

2007-11-12T17:04:00.002+05:30

Is life really simple? Then why am I so confused sitting in this stupid place?
Or may be the winds didn’t stop blowing it’s just that I lost my sense of touch.
May the world live long to suffer as it made us all suffer; or did we choose to be merrily drowned in our melancholy?
Times they are so changing.
I feel like I'm in a hellhole as of late; drowning in a storm of issues and deadlines which I don't want to do.
I still believe that one day opportunity will spring and the injected enigma and haste of being a part of the civilization will break.
That day human race will be free. Free from the despair of being another face trotting the field leveled by a horse shoe of suppression and glitter of globalization. The wealth that has drained our sense of being human at all, and turned us into free zombies choosing lives of utter uselessness.
That day I wait when the filth is cleared and I am free to roam in open orchards of mangoes. A place which is somewhere else than this, but surely it exists.
Escape!
That is a beautiful word. Who calls an escapist a coward? I have an admiration for them.
To escape is like making a political statement. To escape from the misery of boundaries, political maps, lineage, and nationalism, chest thumping patriotism. I wish I could drain them all in a gutter one day.
And just brave to escape and start a journey to realism of soul. A mandate well deserved, and none to appease but myself, none to congratulate on it’s achievement but myself, and none to glorify for it’s realization but myself.
To escape is neither injurious to health nor reputation. So I prepare myself for that dash one day.
My great escape to the living orchards of dignity.

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Che Guevara Still Breaths

2007-10-09T23:23:00.001+05:30

“I don't care if I fall as long as someone else picks up my gun and keeps on shooting.”
Ernesto 'Che' Guevara

We all look onto the horizon, but who sees.
We all suffer, but who ponders on it.
We all fall into an abyss of disturbance, but who swims against the tides.
We all suffer from injustice, but who dares to fight back.
We all know the rights and wrongs, but who summons the courage to speak.
We all know of our gullibility, but who breaks the shackles of darkness.
We all are prisoners of desires, but who is not afraid to be simple.
We all know of our mortality, but who can see death face to face.
We all hear the stories of bravado, but who plays the leading role.
We all are made to surrender, but who refuses to bow down to his fate.
We all have been sucked dry by imperialism, but who does not fear the guns.

From the jungles of Latin America, to the killing cold of Chechnya;
From the islands of Philippines, to the deserts of Middle East;
From the snowy peaks of Ural, to the Parliaments of neo socialist South America;
From the resistance fighters of Lebanon, to the invincible smoke of Cuban cigars;
From the resisting rocks of Palestine, to the motivated soldier of Somalia;
From the silence in which Gandhi disobeyed, to the podiums through which Khomeini thundered;
Those burning eyes still ask to fight back, to resist, and to put Imperialism to death.
We all are flesh and blood, but few breathe forever.
Long Live Resistance; Long Live The Revolution.

“I know you are here to kill me. Shoot, coward, you are only going to kill a man.”
Ernesto 'Che' Guevara to his Assassin

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Love, Sex, Guilt and the Blue Umbrella

2007-09-30T02:49:00.001+05:30

An effort to be normal it has been for me. Falling in love with long promises of life with a body basking in glory on my bed, of love and the myths of eternity. I tried to make it possible by picking with my eyes for a perfect anatomy to make mine. Long back in ages I left the refined feel of insanity and faith in heart, so it had to be a physical belonging. If I had been young I would have just liked someone of the other sex for the act of sharing lunch. I miss the opportunity of telling a story to my creators of how I sought the other half for myself. Was I ashamed of myself that I kept a secret of every anatomy, I ripped out. A maiden of true vanity who never would shed its exoskeleton of silk. Though sometime I would ask to leave its chastity, and the other day find it a virgin again. How a man fools his desires?
I was desperate to experience being normal and so my eyes drenched themselves in obscurity making my imagination trail every lewd thought in the language of geometry. I was all powerful to command my pleasures at my comfort. Humans have all the power to summon divinity and the fallen angel at the same time. Though sometimes I ask if thinking one to be divine is the same thought that the fallen angel expressed in the Genesis to the Almighty. My bed nurtures divinity of manly power every night when I sleep in the obscurity of thoughts starting the book of Genesis again and again. I rape my piety to be a man as demanded by the forces of social order; the undefined certification powers of normalcy.
And so after falling in love with the lovable fairy of most vapour form, I tread the path of glory to the highest guilt. Love and sex both combined make one drunk with the deadly cocktail of shame. My purity lost; all vanished in one dream of hellish desires. Am I so bad or it happened to one and all. Of all divine and fallen. Some years back I stood in front of myself and hated the reflection on the other side. Was I not to be loved? Am I a person born to make a compromise with destiny and settle for a smaller deal and go thanking Allah whenever I put the first bite of the meal in my mouth, thanking him yet being unsatisfied, unconvinced?
Last night whom did I love? Did I have sex with her or make love to her? How does the guilty answer it, and justifies himself? Or am I guilty because I never got it to my satisfaction. I drenched my holy frame in sewage and yet I never got a moment of pleasure for myself. Am I still going to heaven?
Where is heaven? Above the canopy of that blue umbrella that the Almighty made us be fooled by through all the scientific effects of refraction. Or is it below the aura of happiness and imagination of revelry and pride that Ruskin Bond wrote about? I feel if it all could be as innocent as the reading of that story in my schooldays, when the prefect anatomy was just a piece of blue cloth on a wooden pipe. Everyone’s favourite little “Blue Umbrella”.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Criminals Shouldn’t Preach

2007-09-24T13:06:00.002+05:30

"They killed me a thousand times to pain.

I watched my kins laid down and slain.
I froze my voice for years to come,
And till then put the rage to some.
You kill and laugh, you rape and maim.
I came, I saw, I waited for time.
When I grew strong I breathed out fire.
You planned to crush me but you did tire.
You knew this time it won’t stop.
And you reap the sown for years the crop.
Now where is the promise from their book of heaven?
They run for shelters on dates with eleven.
Wither humanity, when to me you were hostile?
Your excuse was of Bible promises you, land of Israel.
So why are you afraid to fight me gone mad?
Now you find blood and fire so sad!
I know revenge is like chain,
But you have killed me a thousand times to pain.
And I watched my kins laid down and slain.
Not helpless I am anymore, and no mercy on them to rain."

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Stains of Liquor

2007-09-20T20:37:00.001+05:30

Did I lie to myself last night? Or I was on the floor making my whole body lie?

Compassion arises on you O foolish being. You seem no different than the unwanted heaps of man made mountains dumped to make ways treacherous and unattractive. Crammed thoughts out of sleepy vision are coming in and out as if they were nests of pigeons that once had lived a life of hippies, and were finding it difficult to settle so soon.
Vagrancies of my other half; a nocturnal life beyond the living other perceived as common, and normal. I am the abnormal other with blue tinge on my face when facing the camera.
And where was I sailing? Was it a long cruise of fulfillment, or a just a short one night stand with my lies? I am waiting for me being chastised for I have treaded the path a little further of what I could have afforded for myself. I took a long yawn and carried on to my place. I know it lays waiting for me though it suffers from nausea at the very sight of me.
What was I yesterday? A pig I had been that I washed myself in the dirt of others, carrying a refreshing sense of not being susceptible of any further mess. I made myself immune to the sarcasm of different species wandering with my face on this planet. Or was I vulture waiting for the species to die and rot, mentally to enjoy the busted brains. I am not the fullest of animals when I sleep; stomach roars for so many other reasons too.
I have washed myself of all the places I had been to, but how would I wash the intoxicants out of my body? My shirt carries the stains of liquor which I spilt all these years and never consumed.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Sorry For The Interruption

2007-08-31T23:46:00.002+05:30

Lost I was in assisting myself in worldly affairs. My daily doses were of simple bread. Suddenly I had started practicing hedonism.

It is the hunt of something new. May be a pen missing or stomach empty. May be I am hunting for a Marla Singer. Or I have become a Tyler Darden. It's a gunner's dream that has broken my iconoclasm and I am hunting for a new war. A construction of a new table or breaking my well settled chair.

Too comfortable not to think or fidgety enough not having time to write. May be I am thinking too fast to write.

Sorry for the interruption. The crucifiction continues. Enjoy!

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Sedated

2007-08-01T16:49:00.001+05:30

With eyes open I sleep. I am stealing time for myself. In my heart I know the world is alive around me. They see my fingers moving on my lap as if a drummer on whom the success of a rock concert depends. I am designing slurs for myself to consume, when no one can see me. I have my brain in a trash bin served to cats which at one time had known the luxuries of a human house. Abandoned they search for food to survive, and they find but my inedible brain. I am afraid if they would know that my senses are gone. A dead and damaged wit this body lives on living organs.
I can not feel the threads of the chair that I am lying on, though I am playing with the threads coming out of it’s side, after months of harassing usage. I am cruising along the lanes built for people trying to pass their time by the side of the beaches. But I am not on anything to take me in speed. I am resting on the wheels of the lunatic incense carried on by the breeze. I am not in motion though I am travelling with the speed of sound. The images are blurred, and keep on swaying to one side or the other. I wish I had been in a better place; one where I could have opened my eyes wide or slept without any disturbance.
The sounds are not audible but they do come in packets to my ear. Am I dreaming or my losses have sedated me?

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Chasing a Fly

2007-07-31T15:58:00.002+05:30

I got a concept clear last night. A thing which happened to me long back, but I never was able to give it a name. A feeling that was left long unexplained was given words to. We chase the things not worth our efforts, and not a peck of them goes touched by our unending emotions toward them.
They are our foolish dreams that we chase or a simple desire for another human to call our own. Material or immaterial, we run for them animated by their restless movements. Sometimes parallel to them in awe of their vitality; possibility of an idiotic frame of mind do exists too. Not because their motion is zigzag, but because we want them to be felt as inaccessible, invincible. If they had been made available to us, we never would have thought so of them, for there is no fun in having fed unwillingly.
And then there is an option standing somewhere close to us, who is more than an option to us. The image of perfection yet unnoticed because that image is in desire of us. If the standing rival would have it’s eyes not on us but lost somewhere else in the crowd, it would have been another fly for me. It’s because it lied in wait for me, it was ridiculed.
We all are like that if we turn our heads towards the past we would find ourselves chasing the flies sometimes and sometimes being a fly to some.
And this vicious circle continues in this world and would go on continuing for ever. Had it been no flies around would we be having enough inspiration to be so vital. Our memories and experience made us what we are today. Matured, hurt, and still filled with confidence to recuperate from the injury that will be caused chasing yet another fly again.
Some are just lucky not to chase another, but I still find my chance in the basket of options to try my hand to. Let us chase our flies, is it not worth to tell a story to others and learn more from the flies.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Zombies and Heretic

2007-07-26T16:36:00.001+05:30

Is being pious a formal surrender? Or subtracting your vision to the charms of the evil? Keeping the golden bed of pleasure at an arm’s length and compounding the punishments on oneself to keep floating in the water’s of delusion, to feel a saint. Even if the touch of happiness is momentary, will it not suffice the soul to the core with the elusive feeling of achievement? Or will it eat up celibacy and dig a hole in the heart of a celibate? Momentary pleasure it is; a form of fun mistaken for happiness. But will not it bring the effect of divinity, when the sin is committed? Sinner or Gallivanter? Used as synonyms to compare torturous lanes and smooth backwaters. They are choices to make when the blank sheets of individual description are to be completed. Woven together to write a paper on audacious mistakes done by the zombies; once they were builders of civil society, now thrive as visionaries of silk touch to appease the senses.

Surrender never meant to be one. Every prisoner imagines himself to be a revolutionary; a sufferer in the hands of cruel pragmatism which then and again came in between his perfect world. One who walks with the gait acceptable to the common dictionary is a zombie to the heretic. A heretic who lost a whole life pretending to be an iconoclast, troubling the saner world with fundamentals of change dipped in poison. The words of the heretic sound black to the zombies, for a moment at least. The voluminous noise of evil he makes, trying to break the age old culture of society to which he was born in, smells foul to the tamed zombies. The world of heretic is a barren land with saplings too fertile. So fertile are the saplings that even moisture can germinate them. And who selects the vocabulary of evil for the heretic? These are the guardians of sanity. Who today are in power of the zombies, and command them to act as they wish. The heretic is a fighter seeking control of the civilization, of which the zombies are the majority.
So is it the frame of democracy that they are fighting in? No, both have nothing to do with it. One strives to retain power, to save his dictionary from being redundant, the other to replace the order to what he deems right. And the zombies tomorrow would be a slave to today’s heretic. For when the heretic would ascend, that unknown other, who is unacceptable will start being so. It’s a world of two faces; either black or white. Where no grey survives.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Sadists by Choice

2007-07-24T16:08:00.001+05:30

We all have become Gallivanter for ever; still take out time to write whenever you can.

The day those four walls to which you go back to sleep refuse to recognise you, read me.
The day when asked, you pause and recollect your name, remember me.
The day when you recognise the date by what you wore last day, or worst what others reflect on their bodies.
That day my friend you know that you understand the Gallivanter's Shibboleth.
Therefore we don’t have any excuse for not threatening the paper with a nib, for life has harassed us enough.
So take time to torture the soft belly of the paper whenever you have time.
Sadists we have become by choice.
Is the pain in my writing of me or the cry of paper being pricked and mutilated?
Enjoy your ordeals, this is just the beginning.
After all you only have chosen that way for yourself; a profile of an entertainer.
Entertaining the world at your own expense, rushing, when what one required was only inner peace and calm.
We ran for nothing but to prove a point to them; them whom we do not recognise.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Killing Me

2007-07-23T17:16:00.001+05:30

The writing is inspired by the article of Ms. Pearl Sandhu, "Yellow":

http://dontmarrythefly.blogspot.com/2007/07/yellow.html

I wish I had known my colour.
I tried hard in my early years to master the art of pigmentation. I evolved into a chameleon; sometimes to boast of supremacy and sometimes to hide. I was brown when it was cold. I was black when I was evil. I was blue when I was bruised. I saw myself in every colour and I don't remember which one to be associated with now.
Good that you know the word yellow. I don't even remember the spelling of word colour.
Was it color or colou...................

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Paintings of no Colour

2007-07-23T11:06:00.002+05:30

The apples are lying on the field of green. The pastures inviting senses to be suspended; denial of truth, hardships and labour. The fleshy apples are creating confusion in the mind of meanderer for he is colour blind; blind to the glamour of the orchard. Red should I write or green should I call it.

Ignorance I believe is the answer to all the vices. I wish I would have been born with no brain to perceive what pigments fly in the air. What is in store for me in future, I predict and act at the slightest provocation of that mystery. Happiness has escaped my prison and the apple still lies unidentified. Colour of the apple has become an issue of debate.
A term of red. Will it satisfy the criterion of glitter? Or paint a picture blood and doom for generations to decipher? Will they think of me as a violent man of unlimited rage? Or is it that I will be thought as a moron of leftist fallacies? The colour of red will create bias. No one would say that I wrote red, as somewhere back in my dark childhood I was told that apple has to be red or it is not accepted as an apple. A wish of perfection; an acceptance of divinity; surrendering to the secret code of nature.
What if I write it green? Will it be taken as a rebellion? A call for liberation of the world from the pangs of imperialism, colonialism. A promise of a future where we can breath. Or somewhere secretly will I endorse the revolution of Islam. Green the colour of Islam, a covenant of humanity and Allah against oppression. A world equal for all, and all equal for the world. A spirit of discovery and striving for the highest freedom of human spirit.
They will think I am suggesting solutions with colours. They believe that I reflect my leanings with colour. Though never my vision was perfect and I was born with a damaged vision for colours. I see nothing and saw nothing to form a formidable opinion about everything. A clear slate I had, and I continue to carry that. Open to versions, explanation, and logic.
If they have reasons enough to convince me, I can be in their parlour. But, nobody made the reasons available. So today I stick to what I judged on my own.
I form opinions of my own and judge matters on my jurisprudence, so I prefer to visit galleries with paintings of no colour.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Two Sides

2007-07-19T14:22:00.002+05:30

Jimmy is a name of a bystander. He has no affiliation, no biases due to birth. No tears due to world affairs as he has none to own, and his face wrinkles not for a stray remark on the streets. Jimmy is a free bird, which has never been hunted. Not even once by a bird of prey. The name stands alone as an individual from whom no one expects. Pressures do not make him change his course of action. Never has he relaxed the muscles in his mouth, at an unwanted sight. He continues wagging his tongue irrespective of the crowds present.
Jimmy is no mob, for he was never wronged, and so he has no hatred stored in him. He was never impounded by words which were later fed into his small mouth. He tasted no separation; no segregation for Jimmy is the name of mainstream. He is a routine traveler of want on local roads, of welcoming nature.
Jimmy is a perception of normal; representative of lovable people. An honourable citizen with no tags around. A man to be respected and not hurt.
Jimmy is no dartboard. He is not battered by flurry of pinching questions. Never asked of his loyalties, for he is only one, an individual. A man of unique identity.
Jimmy grows with the time, and has ample subjects to be discussed with people around him. He settles down and is allowed to give his first impression and then again he is listened to, so that people can arrive at a conclusion.

Jimmy is my nickname.

Abbas is exactly the opposite. He wears a skull cap, has beard and can quote from Quran.
He is a terrorist.
Hang him.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Manger’s Vista in Kosher Fallacies

2007-07-16T15:11:00.001+05:30

Your thought is a false pregnancy. Nothing hovers above to relieve me of the falsehood. I am an impostor of a different kind, inducing a labour to generate happiness. A created image of you to feel myself on the helm of ecstasy I give birth to. It’s what I relinquish; a pain induced to keep the vision of me in my eyes of a human.

Sometimes at night I hold one hand with the other of mine to comfort myself. The other belonging to you in theory carries the story far. My perception of you as the other of mine long before I found you and continues till today when you are at large. I searched in vain and peeped into faces where I could catch a glimpse of you. But, no face too silver to reflect you, no body so tender to house you, and no soul so strong to keep your virtues safe for me. I fell back every time from the cradle of dreams, with a blue pigment on my knees. I wonder where it came from. Some say it’s a wound, but why does not it pain then? Or may be the colour of the berries on which I landed my knees in the gardens of my fallacy to ask you for myself. I know it’s the bruise I am savoring for years, and it pains not for my knees have grown numb now.
I wish I could see you at night when I wake. No, not to touch you, but to be comforted by your presence in that vacuum for I believe it will heal all soars I have while fighting the shadows in my nightmares. Am I afraid? Yes, I am, but not because of the harsh terrains which I have covered, to find the incomparable. Not of the bleeding scars on my skin for thorns don’t penetrate deep. I am just frightened I might be late and before my reaching you, you would give yourself to another.

“Estella, dearest dearest Estella … Put me aside for ever -- you have done so, I well know -- but bestow yourself on some worthier person … the few who truly love you. Among those few, there may be one who loves you even as dearly, though he has not loved you as long, as I. Take him, and I can bear it better, for your sake!”

And so I have said it again and again in the dead of the darkness. Somewhere hiding under a bed, or wrapped in a sheet I swore it for you to hear. I never cried for it is not in my nature. I had lost my tears to overwork and exertion, in your pursuit when I was young. But do not mistake me for one with no heart, for it still aches. Muscles cover the bones but not skin, and it is still susceptible to elements. See, I did not mention the heart; may be that is where I am at fault, to be perceived a stone.
And you slip from my grasp all the time. My words have been uttered to your name. As an obeisance I present my tongue tipped with ink writing these queer mysteries of a dark night on a paper. Where I am alone, and yet burning my hands with the hot breath of yours. May be I love to be a sufferer at the cost of your nearness. A manger to house the figments of my imagination, none obscene to make me ashamed and not vulgar to make my head stoop once discovered. I want to be seen as a knight vying for his princess crossing the darkest tunnels that this earth can bear in scorching sunlight.
I have slept in my manger of pure fallacies. Of kosher thoughts prescribed by books of sanctity, held in the highest esteem, I surge ahead to keep you interested with my poor diet of tainted misery in black. For I don’t break rules to keep you alive for me, waiting for a day when you won’t spurn me as you have, even being a part of thin air.
Long time it has been and much has gone missing in the by lanes of memory.
Possibilities of your forgetting me can not be counted for I will recall and you would be there to trouble me again, reminding me of a self inflicting corporal mortification, of nimble age. Loosing teeth with a grinding spark of pain, visiting me now and then, and yet I played with the martyr whom I would never see again, with the tip of my tongue. The only difference in that age had been that it was not dipped with ink. May be I used it for the right purpose then.
I envy the days when we were just happy and I had not known my darker sides. When you would plead me to be harsh to you and not let you have all your ways. But then it was just philosophy which we discussed and what I wanted to any point of time. I could see we were drifting back to the trenches of no come back. Where no humans go or if they visit the place are never to be felt again; for you it is different for you are no flesh or bone. For never any one existed as you were. I am the supreme creator of wounded thoughts, who owned them once and then lost at ease.
Feel the yearning of a simpleton in a manger of thoughts accepted in the holiness he has defined for the world. A world of fantasies, and bubonic creations, I have weaved with you in the lead role and they plague the mind long after they have vanished like a vampire with the first ray of sun. Eating me up with your presence and gnawing my mind when you are gone. And I wake with my eyes open as I am dead, and you sleep deep in peace. No more we have ourselves secret and I have started sharing my thoughts on you with some other figment too. And now it’s not “you” that I say for you, but it has become a “she”, to remind me of you. And I ponder over my vision of you in a self built manger which has no place for any impurity but only for kosher thoughts. Those thoughts which exists not, but are sheer fallacies constructed by a wanting heart, an inventive mind.

“May she wake in torment!” … “Why, she's a liar to the end! Where is she? Not there - not in heaven - not perished - where? Oh! you said you cared nothing for my sufferings! And I pray one prayer - I repeat it till my tongue stiffens … may you not rest as long as I am living; you said I killed you - haunt me, then! The murdered DO haunt their murderers, I believe. I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always - take any form - drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I can not live without my life! I can not live without my soul!”

And you brush me aside with coldness, spurning me for everything I lost for you. A bold sarcasm has taken place of that shy twinkle your eyes. I think, both of us have lost our innocence. I used to have you in my loneliness then, but now I often can not muster courage to call you by your name.
Did I, give you a name, at all?

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Worshipping the Invisible: Writer’s Block

2007-07-05T12:53:00.002+05:30

A thread bare, invisible, a prayer referring to allus.
My patience says goodbye, price for being callous.

Have you ever sat with an invisible guitar, playing to the audience invisible?
No impostor makes for gone, yet our perception so gullible.
I have no pen to my hand, but thoughts to fondle.
Songs I sing never to be heard again; that moment to coddle.
Strings I pluck, senses mesmerize, a cheer damsels throw.
As I loose myself, I am desirable, some corners, a kiss throw.
Not long the lights fade and blue turns to black; back I am the commoner,
For some time I worshipped invisible, when I was invaded by a foreigner.

Have you ever proved yourself to be an orator, arousing passions of invisible?
Bewitching own soul, with sense of command, serving fire so edible.
When they know it’s a bird of prey on their enemies, a hawk.
Marketing oneself as not less in their minds to fear, but a roc.
I scold to fright others to let my people go to the promised land.
Though searching one tract for me to own, just a swamp, not too grand.
Coup happens and hanged; dreams break and the reality becomes eye opener.
For some time I worshipped invisible, when I was invaded by a foreigner.

Have you ever roamed through the rosary, awaking spirits within, invisible?
Opening gates of heaven to masses, a gift of High; all bestowed eligible.
Groping for the matchstick to light the silence of sanctity,
Embracing the fallen, following commands from Above entity.
Sick are treated, and they give themselves to the Gallivanter,
Wish fulfilled for distraction from the sins, committed the feeble enchanter.
Lowliness, mistaken for holiness, the writer’s block planted by the Gardener.
For some time I worshipped invisible, when I was invaded by a foreigner.

Aloof in the sands of philosophy, wishing freedom from gallows.
I kept to my promises; I wrote every word to see what follows.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Yahweh’s Secret: Unleavened Bread

2007-07-05T12:30:00.000+05:30

Yahweh’s secret revealed. Mysteries of mankind rolled in a twisted mixture of water and flour. Instantly consumed to keep life running, so the kingdom may last and the slaves be coerced to carry the cycle of life, again and again. Nothing is obsolete till the earth yields the sheaves, and the rains make the creation possible. To the day the depths of this world will provide iron and so the tools to harvest the bounty, we will have hunger in our bellies and our tongues will salivate at the smell of firewood kindled to pass unleavened bread to all humanity.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Roads End for Better

2007-07-04T13:32:00.001+05:30

People tend to find solace in unknown humans, when they are lost in a jungle of no name. Big cities, concrete jungles provide a lot for the stomachs which absorbs everything like being thrown in hell. But, the soul suffers and as the pain increases, and as the circle of loneliness expands so increases the headcount in front of every tea stall and cigarette seller. There you tend to come in contact with the vagrants who finish their day on a positive note of accomplishing the heavy task of completing a day in their long unwanted calendars of life.
And so it is an experience to find different persons of diverse backgrounds, assimilated for a moment of comfort. It’s an irony that a city of heads still has wanderers yearning for company. So alone and yet so lively, to surprise themselves of their still surviving capability to interact with words, when they have spent long hours doing nothing but contemplating the end, and it’s time. You meet and you forget, and then again meet to revive something that was lost a night back or some hours back or even at times days ago.
Some faces are always there; may be they have lost hope or don’t want any show of such nature. One thing common in all and that is the knowledge of them being minions in the big glitter of “the apple”. We all know that “the apple” exists but it doesn’t have any news if we are alive. And every day a new wave arrive, some to be lost in the narrow lanes of “the puzzle”, and some don’t take long to line for delusions of human nature. We have reached many places or this is what some say. We have reached the very roof of this world. Everest conquered, and Moon invaded; Antarctica has all the flags that exist on the face of the earth. Still what a man looks for is faces, unrecognized though; man vies for man.
And they all stand tall in order of their appearance, slouching towards their intended destination, their temporarily chosen resting place. As all the conversations are not intended to achieve a certain conclusion in such environment, every participant avoid the conclusive part by jumping over to another topic or asking for any other service available at such a place. Another cigarette serves good to continue the surreal surrender to another theme flowing in the air. There are no censors, no regulatory authority designed to use scissors and tailor the contents suiting the present environment. Even external environment sometimes intercede to give a new direction to the content.
Some days back I was talking to one of the passersby, and it became a long conversation. And somehow we gelled and from coins we jumped to the political scenarios touching everyone but not us in a direct manner. The content moved and we found sharing common grounds in interests, where I barged with the idea of Pink Floyd as a subject and he seconded it by instantly naming a few creations of theirs’. And after a long round of matured talks, minutes of parting came where everything subsides and boils down to personal information. Perhaps my running profession makes me interested in such a lousy end or it becomes the need of the hour to manage an end with a polite touch of personal consideration.
Religion or political affiliation might play a big role, in moulding the public opinion but age does not matter in such places. Courtesy demands, or curiosity matter had to be taken up. Late at night when men are celebrating a day gone by through which they have survived. Not because they have lived through it but because they have consumed another from divinely provided ration. His morsel was passing eleven more than mine. Eleven more years he had lived than I. And with a twinkle in an eye he explained it all. He was happy to have consumed more than the person in front. He found a worse sufferer than himself that night, who still had to go along way burning his years to reach that level.

I slouched at the end trying to envision the day, when everything would end for good. End at least for me. I envy the twinkle in that eye.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Slimy, Sticky: What Fun!

2007-07-02T16:12:00.002+05:30

It was a long wait, and he had been standing there since life. He could feel that his neatly creased shirt was getting a little touchy with his skin. Perspiration had found it’s way to the lower slopes of his body. It’s too torturous to be nowhere, specially when he had lived only to be a someone. No one was discriminating and even his anatomy had left his treatment to elements. He was particular of being warm and expecting the same from others. The lessons of life are not always so simple. And so the sun today was teaching him the same. Being warm today to him was nothing to expect gratitude for. The humans were ashamed of themselves more than anything. Waiting, and in numbers looked like a cattle waiting for it’s turn to be vaccinated while entering a barn. A catchy situation when entering the barn is the only way to escape and the condition to enter is to be pricked by a needle. Who cares of what flows inside?
Not long it took to be drenched in his own fluids. All the efforts gone in vain. Too many hardships prepare a being more. And a lot of them make him enjoy his state. Suddenly an in house competition started, and it was a surreal decent to ugliness. He did not waste any drop to the dust below, as if trying to quench the thirst of his shirt, nourishing it with the last drop. Spots turned into dark blots, and blots gave way to an image of rain soaked dog, trying to understand what happened to it. Everything cooled down and hot air touching his body made him comfortable with a feel of numbness, and no sensation. His clothes became cold and so his feeling of the day. A restive peace subsided, with legs shivering from weakness. A drowsy man he was who passed his day in effort of accomplishing the task of drying the ocean by drinking it. In this scenario his skin had left everything on his shirt.
There are always different phases to everything and so this also comprised of another chapter. The chapter had begun. The seasonal winds had converted into a perpetual conditioner of another type, filling his senses of breezes tearing his body, by first freezing it. The sunshine felt better, and so did the hot air slapping the face to make the patient better. Slowly and steadily dryness crept and the soaked shirt showed signs of hardness on the lines of salt deposits. The verge of every fold carried a mark of white to remind the left out goodness in everything. No pain felt and yet the show continued to amuse himself. He could notice his surroundings getting camouflaged in the blurry details of his sweat. The struggle of entities, where his shirt was trying to be winner stealing all the whites, and his skin trying to leave it’s white on it.
When every detail of those blots disappeared, he discovered that he could not hold anything in between his two fingers. The oil had found made a no compromise deal with every single space on him. He tried for a while but could not snap his fingers to make that sudden shrill and enthusiastic noise of fun. Lifting his index finger he travelled a passage from his cheek to the temple. Betting of not a place as smooth as that, he continued sensing his win over the elements. Surviving the ordeal in the worst circumstances and getting converted from creased human into slimy insect corroborated his calling himself rugged. He had lasted the challenge thrown in a ring where he was the boxer on the other side. Sticky creature of hell, who needed nothing but a wash to bring his humanity back and being accepted. What criteria; what fun!

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Quagmire and a Lighter: The Battle of Subways

2007-06-25T17:53:00.000+05:30

Subways have a vicious way of their own. You tend to come down from anything that travels on wheels and the only solace that you get is an invitation to your rest out body from the darkest stairways of the opening in front. The tubes or subways whatever the name may be are the safer ways get to the other side. It seems so easy and clear to get on the other ridge of the world with no enemies trying to target you with the speed of a fireball or an arrow gone out of the bow, crossing all the limits of momentum and breaking all rules of physics. What runs in the mind of the man at the steering is to score the maximum number of kills in a day. Sometimes it is a woman too but she is not to blame; she is herself a victim of that game. Not knowing what demon was she going to ride that day her close ones fared her bye but the perspiration on her face, clearly explain that the elephant is not in her control now. And in a “mast” it has taken over the control from the “mahout”.
In those killing fields none wants to venture and so the dark remote staircase in between the busy streets look to be a holiday trekking. The first step in them is easy as the dim light of the sun still illuminates the first few steps of that terrace and guide you into the deepest quagmire of your day. After some initial movement on those easy pedestrian hallways you get accustomed to the depth and the length of each step. Then you raise your head up as you know when the next step would cease to exist for your falling foot. But to your surprise the hall is dark and not a being to see. You are a man off course and your learning of life has made you so headstrong that you can never turn back. Cowardice is something we are not expected off. What if they will see me coming out of it? They might think I was afraid of the dark! Or I am afraid if I’ll get robbed! And so the societal pressures don’t leave you here too. Although you know who remembers your face in the city of no belonging. And even if you have no face for them then even your reputation lingers in your head to be at stake. What we don’t loose is our ego. And so you keep walking.
Further down walking everything seems to have vanished in darkness. Some monster unseen has swallowed it all. Whatever was available in the morning does not exist anymore. There are two monsters at work, one in the sky who has gobbled the big fireball giving light to entire planet and the other assisting him in doing the rest in this subway. The ventilation is reported missing. No ray of light, no end of tunnel, still you hear crackling voices of laughter coming out of the gallows. A metaphorical situation which described in my earlier childhood suddenly bounces back from somewhere behind my brain: “When your right hand does not know where your left hand is”. An idea strikes and, like a match stick to provide courage in the darkest hour of the day. The lightof that idea has no physical use but it has reminded me to grope in my pocket for that forgotten lighter used to light, that forgotten cigarette which looked like all other. The only significance that it had was the time and the place where it was consumed. As we all have our purpose middle way in some big scheme of Allah, the scheme we have no clue of. Providing a topic or initiating a process of no return to all the beings available long after we have been consumed.
The hall is dark with boards all ways. Sometimes even your mother tongue becomes French to you. These are times when you have no idea of all the names spelt and their locations are as confusing as the journey defined of souls after the hellish experience of death. They have not described which one is difficult. It is just a hypothesis. The initiation was tough or was it more drenching to be enroute to the ever after wait of souls for justice. The journey sometimes seems to be difficult and long when one knows the end. There are no surprises left to be given, and no act of being flabbergasted just to appease the audience. It was a long time back I was standing above the dark gallows of suffering. I could see the other side and I knew it was the place I wanted to reach, unfortunately I never learnt its name. Now as a man alone I stand gazing at all the boards of enlightenment not knowing what name I should pick from the pile available for salvation from the hell. I wish I would have known the exact name of heaven in front. I wish I would not have just bothered for how it looked but known what it is called. The address of Allah seems necessary today. I am on my foot and I have to cross a dungeon in his territory guarded by his “once” loyal but now “Iblis”. See I remember the name of Satan. The only one I can remember in emptiness. You don't know who would listen?
The lighter is flickering due to its continuous exhaustion. Whatever it has left it devotes loyally, guiding me through all the alphabets on those signboards. Once again my manly instincts wake up, and I rely on the sense of direction. Men are good at it. Or so men believe. They are happy with this theory as girls are happy with their own idea of having a sharpened instinct of sniffing out an impostor at his very sight. I hope we all have been true to our fallacies, as I would have landed on the right side of the road and many of whom I knew would not have been robbed of their chastity one day or a night on a bed of one who lured them and their instincts called “Prince Charming”. Life goes and so goes the quagmire, the perfect quandary of illusion. A state of virtual ecstasy of relying on no one but yourself, worshipping none but your own self as god who can make difference at that moment. Like that cigarette, unknown, not distinct still creating a soothing impression at the right time, and place.
And then you get a stair to ascend. The first “Meraj” to call your own; the first sign of divinity that Allah promised you. A covenant made in the darkness of a channel. It binds you in a lasting thread, combining two ways of life. One where you were comfortable standing alone yet not complete, and the other inviting you to a sense of completion for which you have to cross to the other side. You are looking upstairs and then a star emerges, which gives way to the still, light colour of the sky: or it looked lighter after the black landscape inside. I can see humans again, I don’t recognise them and they don’t recognise me, but I see the emotions of appreciation taking shape. Slowly in all the lines available on their faces I see the respect and honour given to the knight who came smothered in the blood of the dragon whom he slayed somewhere beneath the realms of this earth. I am the hero who has come out with his heavy armours cracked at strategic places, and as my muscles expand with sheer pride the cracks give way to bigger creeks. And with noises too shrill to tear the eardrums apart they peel off from my body and give way to a commoner; a lay man to be drowned into nothingness again.
I turn my head to see if I was right and if this is the “Promised Land” where I arrive. Not surprisingly I take off to the road this time to fight the speeding killing machines. My aim is to get on to the side where I wanted to, and no I won’t step into the dungeons again to fight the “Battle of Subways”, as I still don’t know the name of my “Promised Land”.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Ink Slinging

2007-06-18T17:42:00.000+05:30

Gallivanter: What winds are blowing you these days? Or is it that you are busy flying, in search of new adventures? Making new charades of art, or absorbed in breaking the codes of the nuisance of “qui vive”? Suits us well to do so than be in our wits. By the way what does “qui vive” means?
Fly: I am editing my film..lukin for work..and doin sm odd jobs..qui vive literally means who shal live only..its a sort of acclamation usd to ask who is d master frm the soldiers? for me its abt asserting tht I shal live beyond the flies!
Gallivanter: Not much of a challenge I believe. Flies don’t live very long. You can be mistaken for a person to fear death. Thinking that we have a small life for ourselves and whatever we have in hand we want to expand it, stretch it to whatever lengths we can. Why beyond the flies then? I suppose living beyond turtles would be a task, too tough to accomplish. Why not turtle then?
Fly: Its not a gud idea to mix metaphors! Besides turtles are too slow! I like flies coz they r mobile and they don’t leave any footprints.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Going Home

2007-06-13T15:32:00.002+05:30

Going to the black alley today. I was waiting for this moment for so long. An excuse to start afresh. A difficult thing is packing the bags, but there is an excitement about it. Many a work pending yet an urge to indulge in the difficulties. I will see the rain again; I will touch the moist ground again; may be I will witness mosses growing on the stone walls, quietly hiding from every eye. Some one sitting on distant platform with four legs on the ground might come first to receive me. I will miss the colour of one; white.

Though I have two reds with me. I pray for the long life of one who survived. I wish to love him forever and continue to love those whom I lost in due time.
I have a comfort with them. Possibly they wait for me. My feet are running already to escape from being no one. Back to the place where it all started; the place where I belong.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Third Degree

2007-06-11T17:55:00.001+05:30

Let me know if I can pick what I want, or is it your wish that I have to carry again. I walked as you wanted me to. In fact you tortured me to have that gait.
I was groomed to meet people that I did not appreciate at all. I studied that I never meant to grasp. I saw that I did not approve of. I missed all that enthused me to the core of my interest.
Teachings were simple, and had a distant vision of seeing me do what you failed at; or even never attempted. Tortured to be what you fancied.
I caught your lips and faked the syllables that you spoke. I have made choices not out of options available but my choices were made because I had no other option left.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Jinxed Trapeze

2007-06-08T17:30:00.001+05:30

From the highest point I see everything small; miniscule and not alive too. I don’t see anyone awestruck by my adventure to do so. Daring it might seem but it’s a routine for me. I am the greatest being alive at a certain point of time. My movements are there to make all wonder if I am human. My chest is expanding with the pride of accumulating all the gazes at me and the crown of superhuman makes me do those stunts again and again. I catch hold of another hand and I fly to the other corner. The sound of applause tears into my heart and the feeling of invincibility overtake all fears present with the assignment. Business is cruel and so is the fun of all the cruelties summed together.
Why they come here to see me? Are they here to see me or they wait to see me plunge to the ground? They arrive to witness my death today or if I escape it again? They cheer so that I overcome hurdles and cross to other side as I wish to? Or they simply want to distract me from catching the other bar? What will make them feel, they saw something worth their money? Standing in the pavilion one pays the price of every second. I twist and turn on the trapeze with all the enthusiasm, and jump one bar to the other. Catching one hand and then the next to show them that I am capable of doing what they can not even imagine to accomplish. Am I the hope of the commoners to grow into forms compatible to marvels or they are here to boo me and my poverty that has made me to become this?
I don’t blame anyone and I carry on with the performance today. This is just like what I performed yesterday. A move before this one I had slipped. But with one hand I clung tightly only to move one hand followed by the other. I want to show them something new. I have different views on this. Should I show them how one can do a somersault with both the hands in air? Or should I, without ceasing for a moment bounce back to the same place where I first started from? Will that please them and they would come tomorrow too to see me doing the same again?
But then I would have raised their expectations from me and they will ask me to perform more, to take more risks in the future. The day they will ask me to do more I will have to or for them I will become a redundant force. And though I will be equally good for them, they will whisper in each other’s ears, “Once he used to a potent performer but now has lost his luster”. This will roll into a snowball and my career will be over that day. My insistence on pleasing them more will ultimately kill me. But will I be able to sustain myself doing nothing new but being consistent on these bars tied up with ropes in suspension? I believe my act to appease might give way to their sinister designs. But my suspension will be worth nothing if I be not able to add something new, everyday. I ask no one but myself to take a decision.
I have skated beautifully across the other side and was accepted smoothly to the other bar. I am showman, for a cause to entertain. Entertainment adds up to glory. I have a limited time for myself. Who know me, clap for me. And those who don’t recognise me anywhere other than the trapeze simply shout and cheer for my skills. In anyway I am the person entrusted with all the good coming out of their mouth, their gestures and their feelings. Suddenly I realize the way to ultimate glory. Kings live longer with their bravery. Battlefields are entrusted with the memories of the fallen. They should remember me always, for what I have done for them everyday. Stories of that one day should stick to their priority list always. A trapeze never lost from memories.
The way to the final achievement of entertaining where nothing is left for tomorrow. No expectations raised, but still the height achieved. Tomorrow they will remember me and yet will never ask me to be better. For the books of achievement I will be in there, and they will say, “He performed very well, and he entertained with all that he could; we never saw anyone dying doing a trapeze, and he made us see that”.
Happy to see me below, and smiling for the spectacle worth all they spent for. Be on the trapeze and smile below at me. Am I below or have I risen above?
The end of all jinxes.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Quiescent Traveler

2007-06-06T17:28:00.001+05:30

Once upon a time a man walked out from the safe comforts of his house in the search of the meaning of life. He had questions about everything, he saw and experienced in whatever period he managed to live and face them. After travelling far and wide people started recognizing him by face. It did not take long and they also came to know his name.
Ordained with all the titles people could adorn him with he continued to be in trance and walked as fast as he could. He started the day running and when his muscles would give way to the acid he would slow his movement. At night everyone said he slouches to his goal. They never made an effort to see him in the morning for they were too busy in their own affairs. Some called him an ascetic, to some he was eccentric. A running sage, a walking hermit, a slouching madman, he became.
After years of search his eyes developed a glimmer in them. People could feel them penetrating to very core of their body. They were scared of him. Was he just near the find? Or instead of it all he was trying to know about them? It might be possible that he already knew about them; that could be the only explanation of his weird gaze.
So the traveler would move as soon as he understood that they have different perceptions of him. He was not harmless anymore. He was a Satan, for he was able to see a Satan in all. Then how to find the truth? The truth of life. So the traveler started going to places far distant from where he had gone earlier. Commuting through buses, trains, and all the things available with wheels to carry.
He met different people all the time, different philosophies, and ideologies. He was becoming wiser day by day, and they realized it too. So one day all the people went to the “Grand Old Dad of Wisdom”. They went to their teacher, their savior. They cried for mercy and asked him to suggest a way to stop the rampage of experience going to shatter their hard earned deception.
So when one day the traveler boarded down a bus and saw an old street peddler seated by the side of the road. He walked to him and asked him too if he knew the way to live, to which the old man handed him out a book. It said, “How to Live”. And he said read it and you will know what to do and when.
Since that day the traveler is sitting on that bus stop and waiting for everything to emerge as it happens. He was born a superior being and was trapped by the teachings and experience of some to be made ideal. He managed to break the chain and got trapped again. Nothing teaches better than ones own adventures. And that is why the traveler came to be known as “Gallivanter” whose “Shibboleth” none understands.
Now people tell his story to children saying, “He bought a book once on how to live life; he is busy reading it now and has stopped living”.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Reasons to Write

2007-06-04T10:57:00.000+05:30

A failed experiment of a time machine sent me some millenium back. On my way I met many forgotten civilizations. Many a glowing ideas which were present on the day of that beautiful accident came to be realized in the twentieth century. They were never documented on paper so I write mine to never be called another man’s mistress. I write to safeguard my intellectual property.
I am in love with those dark rooms of two by two, in which I lived my life as a refugee escaping an all out war in an open field. I was young when last I saw sunshine. Seeing black ink on white paper, gives me satisfaction that darkness still exists. I write to paint the white world in front of me with my favourite colour black.
Many a pigeons nest in my backyard, and we share a bond, an understanding not to interfere in our lives. Senses leave me every night and my words stumble on the ground. Running amok they make too much of a noise. The pigeons should not complain me disturbing their children’s sleep, so I write.
Licking a swine costed my tongue to split into two. Evolution later gave me fangs for free with the forked tongue to bite. People died listening to my poison coated words. The courts of justice bailed me saying that it was unintentional. I avoid getting into those courts again by closing my mouth and writing my abuses instead.
Hashish has stopped working on me, and my eyes do not sink any more. I did not sleep all my life and now I am out of practice. In the morning, people come and console me for my helplessness; they do not let me speak and frustration piles in me. I can not shout at night so I pen poetic slurs on them.
With no one to entertain and none to attend, I lost interest in cleaning my room. I had company soon after this when insects and bugs infested it. So with them one day came a lizard to find easy food in my room. Now we are friends, and we interact a lot. I am it’s typist taking a dictation on important matters of the world. I write to give the voice to those not understood.
It is not fair to charge a political rival with dementia, and they did it and threw me in the dungeons. Standing with one leg on each of both the boats I fancy my servile status. I want to send my speeches outside my cellar. I pass coded political messages wrapped in the covers of ludicrousness, to avoid undue attention. I write in hope that I will overthrow the system and avenge myself.
For that element of surprise, as a packed gift fresh from the store, I cover my writings in fancy wraps of sufferings, wishes, desires and anything about life. I write so that others might also come to know that I am nothing but a sheer mortal.

On rent I stay in my body. I clear the drains inside everyday crying dark tears of melancholy; of what was lost and has gone out of hand. I want to hide the filth from the eyes of those for whom I ceased to exist long back. I write to consume all the dark tears stored in the ink bottles hidden from the world, so that it would not laugh at me.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Bubble Deep: Living Again to Confess Love

2007-06-04T10:54:00.001+05:30

Did you ever notice me crawl towards you? My eyes kept a track of your whereabouts. And when I lost you, in the midst of those dark rooms amongst an ocean of faces I refused to recognize, you must have enjoyed the movement of my neck. I was an ordinary man, no match to you. I was not born to win or be the desire of any female heart and I discovered the truth too early. Starting as an optimist is too much of a daring I could do, so I shied away from you. I spent long hours in front of the mirror trying to convince my indifference to myself. I loved to imagine you as another complimentary anatomy walking in front of me. I failed and it was a disaster. How I wished you would never have happened to me; never would have crossed my way. I started missing my slumber deep, which I had treasured for so long. My brain had all the fuel to ignite my heart but it never pained while burning. Being common is too painful, too disgraceful. My dreams faded when I needed them. My hallucinations left me; I was not a crowned prince any more. If I had been a Rothschild I would have been happy. May be I would have been courageous enough then to approach you or am I wrong?
Did my presence trouble you? Was I indecent enough to unveil my intentions? Or if I had done so would it have been agreeable to you? I was afraid of making myself a fool; a man with human weaknesses. If I had been an animal would you have loved me, and been kind enough to feed me? I wish I had been thrown in this world for you, to be a soft toy with no life of it’s own. Then would you have talked to me with all your softness? It was not in my hands to be born like this. It was not my fault being no match for your beauty. My face I did not chisel. Honest I am and I fell for you. Deceptive I am and I never made you suspicious. Martyr I am, for I died for a self made cause of making myself at ease.
It was too painful to be alive with no fairy singing lullaby, no star twinkling for the pleasure of an onlooker, no sweet thought of past day, no hope of a bright day ahead. Have you ever seen a zombie? Don’t lie. You saw me sometimes. You talked to me sometimes. Your pleasure, your ease, your comfort. Were you just fondling with a teddy bear of yours, or was it a part of a bigger design to add my name in a list of undesirables. I pleaded in front of no one. Never an ear heard my story. As a narrator I stood reciting to you; you pretending to be an innocent bystander.
I have converted into a rock, which stands in the river, strong enough not to be moved by the ripples created due to the flow. Rigors do not move dead. When I was alive I used to flow in the opposite direction of the current. That was a proof of life. I have stopped swimming, to save my life. Surrendering to fate is an option with no other circles to tick in the answer sheet. I succumbed to my wounds; self inflicted injuries to distract myself from your thought. Why did you have beautiful hair that never shaded me from the sun? Why did you have eyes that never curiously peeped from their sides to have a look of me? Why did you have a sharp nose that never yearned for my smell to recognize if I was somewhere around? Why did you have hands that never reached for me? Why did we try to mend fences when alone; couldn’t we have just shared the log at least from which the planks of fences were being torn out?
Never a chance awarded to make up for my faults. See I paid with the movement of my lungs for not being able to love you. There was a difference between us. You were rowing in the ridge smoothly and I was standing not in water but the ripples, and I drowned. Today I have nowhere to go, but stand still, bubble deep.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Dancing over Silver Cups

2007-06-04T10:51:00.000+05:30

Gambling in dens of pure chocolate colour, with smoke bellowing from the top of chimney in the terrain of troubled nature can fascinate many an adventurists of lunacy. Being a traveler of umpteen kinds can find variety in nothing, yet every aspect can make you come close to sound reality of neurosis; nowhere to go and no place to return. The adventurer at heart is stable and still reclusive. He packs his bag every night to launch another day of struggle in full throttle.
How do I know? I am his bag of troubles riding high on his shoulders, to sail along the jungles of merrymaking and cruise through mint lakes. I am no liability but a treasure of a screwed life, thrown to sharks murmuring murder at every drop of blood they smell. Find here in me the identity of the lead chaplain in the promiscuous depth of caves. Here both of us take classes of human anatomy for the medical students interested in decayed format of subject.
Drinking is not an option for both of us. Rugged heights of crystal volcanoes vomiting streams of sweet water which we carry in our muddy hands to give it a more agreeable taste are receding. Not being used to easier ways makes us find better options in the deserts of sugar. The oasis are singing a charivari, in our honour, and so we do not borrow the sweet sand for our wounds but still we stand waiting for the vultures over us to sweat. We have planned to distill the take from the sky to extract salt and apply on the rotten flesh of ours to make us feel at home.
Plains are full with birds nesting on ground and they lay cups of silver; they never buy their crockery from any market and so the shops have closed down, for a lack of commerce. Humans alone can never make the economy boom so they have requested us to take a delegation to the elephants of Xanadu, who had trampled the crockery of birds.
The adventurer is having a cup of tea with the elephants in the backyard. The silver is shining as promised by the birds. The shark wept and an ocean formed. The birds have started complaining of unease, staying at the banks of the river where I was left by my guardian whom I played with as a cat’s paw. He never wanted to carry me; it would have given hope to the owners’ of the silver cups for a return of their babies. I am enjoying my stay here just doing nothing but pestering the people of Xanadu. I might not be trampling the silver for I am not too heavy. So I just stand dancing.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Good for Nothing but Musical Chairs

2007-05-31T12:36:00.001+05:30

All the options are laid down, on the table. The point of burst was right playing in the hands of ticking clock. The eeriness of silence can be compelling even to fishes in aquarium, which looked stunned and stood gasping facing me from inside the fish bowl. Under ordinary conditions this collage of sequences would have made a funny sight. My ears were numb and probably red in colour. This colour had been explained to me on different occasions by people who surrounded me. For a colour blind it would have been a marvel of self explanation pondering into insignificant and sublime at the same time. I knew it because they knew of it. Not my achievement; again at their mercy to know, and feeling enlightened on the leftovers of last night’s act of opening the puzzle section of a book bought on a railway station.
Nothing perceived better and figured correctly by the sunken eyes than a pack of cigarette, afraid of being gobbled by the hungry eyes of one who sits on the sofa. The sound of it screaming cracked the glass table top, or may be I kneeled on it too much. Last night was an awful one. I have not slept for many nights but this one was rather tricky. I forgot how to count. I was not even able to count sheep, the symbol, of vices I committed in a day. One sheep was making too much noise to let me count. It was too heavy to ignore. To sleep one needs to be too thick skinned. There was a time once when I complained in a nearby police station of some peels of my skin missing. That day onwards it has been really a catch to have a nap.
Smoke is all around and the ceiling started to cough too. Thick saliva lashing out of it’s tongue swept the floor which had not been mopped for a long time. I hope it would cough more. I would like them to be welcomed when they find me. The guest list is ready, and there is an early bird prize too. The paper doused with chemical started to breath it’s last, and the butt started to complain of the heat emanating from the boilers of the roll, speeded up by the tremendous effort that my lungs were making to throw it out after extracting all the poison. I am a miser and love to have the last laugh. If the companies around charge for the paper, I fool them by even burning the butt. The butts don’t make a case of civil rights for me to consider. I am inhuman their sufferings don’t cut anything with me.
The gun is not loaded. The cartridges are mischievous in their own way. They can not stand upright, and they love to roll once awarded the table as a bed. Long time back I saw my kittens jumping around when things were out of order while making an internal shift of affairs like a whitewash. It was another moment for children to relish, the disorders of my brain, and solutions on the table.
The glass table made another declaring sound of being in a difficult dilemma, of being overweight. It too came up with an option to give way or at least try by making obscure sound enough for my admiration of it’s sorry state. The gun is doing what it can do best. It has pressured the glass to give away the strength to survive with all the liabilities on it. The guns are not to play flute with. They are not even good to make a kill. Guns are like the packaging of a cigarette pack, statutory warning attached, which makes the smoker honoured to be associated with all the big names of the medical world, like Mr. Cancer from Never land., and Mr. Bronchitis from Wonder Land, and Mr. Tuberculosis from No Man’s Land. For a moment he thinks himself to be wandering with all the big celebrities. The time he turns the pack and looks at the warning he introduces himself to the word health: “injurious to health”. Feeling special and being cared starts from a cigarette pack.
The music has started and contestants are feeling nervous. They are running in line and know that they can not cross each other. The order of winner is somewhere settled, written in the order in which the music will be played. Sheer whim of the person on keyboard. We are helpless when no alpha commands the situation in a field where cattle are left grazing to be hunted. So it’s better to start hunting for the wolves before they find the jackpot. Many a time I have invited and left them inside the barn to feed. Made them good for nothing, with a sense of no achievement. Today they are my slaves, and look for a chain to bind them by my chair, feeling important. I have tamed wolves into dogs. That’s the other option, of waiting for them to realize their potential and tear me into pieces to absolve their hunger. I look into their eyes, every time I get up at night and see them staring at me; their master in bad times, or it might be that they are waiting for me to close my eyes for eternity. My invincibility is thrusted in them till the time I can give a fight. Lick my boots till I am strong enough to be in them.
The gun is spinning on the table. I had left it to do so. My fingers had been putting it into motion. The cartridges are nowhere to be seen. I forgot it was me only who had fixed the bullets in the cavity of it’s holder. Men love to fill any cavity in sight, that’s why we see more men as dentists. We love holes senselessly; I find drunkards being retrieved from gutters every morning. Man turns mad, frustrated; a sense of worthlessness creeps in absence of the vision of spaces. Long back I signed a contract with lunacy. This was my only chance of differentiating myself. My hero urged me to be a part of the gang. He was running it on his own. I funded it. I advertised it. I was it’s member, I was it’s Leader. I summoned the congregation, and I addressed it. I have achieved sainthood in the process.
When life ends everything comes back in a moment. The decision is firm but yet it shows a glimpse of everything for you to enjoy and rethink. I am standing with my legs in air, clutching to hands that wanted me to walk. I am floating in air trying to summersault on the best cushion available to me. I am swimming in the least troubled waters that I could find. I am looking for space on the hills to brood alone. This specie is too cramped to let you sleep on a bed of grass never walked on before. Heartbreaking it is to find flags of another mortal on the peak when you reach facing all the hardships.
My dog is salivating, with hopes of fresh meat. My gun has closed it’s eyes and the bullets have already started to scream, like a first timer on a roller costar ride. The glass table is holding it’s breath knowing the burden is heavy. It is preparing to welcome me getting crashed to the surface. My brain is still working, but my eyes are not interpreting what is in front of me. They have converted into a giant cinemascope producing the archived footage of a documentary on me. Suddenly I found myself running with many children. The picture is a black and white one which has yellowed on the fringes. I have won the musical chairs. Young as a child, perspiring a long time back, a feather to the cap I had. Finding oneself again in the midst of clapping parents, some children crying at their loss. Happy I am to know I made them so. My only moment of glory. I am holding a memento of appreciation, to the envy of all small eyes. Some stained with fresh salt. It was me who stole it from them.
The moment has passed. My belief lingers. I had a flag for me. What if it was just a game of musical chair!
The bullets have opened their eyes. The gun is silent. My wolf has slept. One can only hear someone breathing. The table is panting. It has been saved from destruction. The fish has turned it’s face; no entertainment for the day.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Habdabs of Habakkuk in Habara

2007-05-31T12:35:00.003+05:30

Breeze go on, dwell on shivers.
You don’t frighten commoners, it’s just me.
Look in the way may be stones are lying.
Rocks, and trees, thrown for free.
Messengers of goodwill. Of good news, wealth.
Scattered all proximity to see.
None too available.
Worth controlling you as you flow, with no stop in a spree.

Tied at butcher’s; lame to move.
Pained for days. Not killed yet to eat or sold.
Change your ways; you often get in trouble.
Even nature keeps itself on hold.
When late, none remembers.
No breath to feel. No warmth. No story of you told.
Nothing missed; replaced are all.
Markets are looted, and again filled with gold.

Dry cities, dry days. Dried faces.
Peeping from cracks in their window with fright.
No soul present. War cries fell on deaf ears.
Wall responds with echoes. Sleep tight.
Their home blaze. From down flames rise up.
So what? Happy to have some light.
Carry their bodies at speed too high. Be cold.
Death of some, serve others right.

Unique you are. One I am. Of our own kind.
Blabbering for none to perceive.
Muster courage to know. Learn from the start.
From the time of Adam and Eve.
Doors, breeze offers. I tried to match, momentum.
I’m couched, eyes closed. I grieve.
Buried for so long. I miss my memory.
I nest on collections. Today I fly to retrieve.

Xylophones playing; unicorns running.
Not one but many deceptions lie in waiting.
Many magicians, in line for my crown.
Genuine they sound. My aureole skating.
My exterior of Habara. Inviting none to attend.
To be done something for stares abating.
If I speak lies and promise the undeliverable.
Will then I find you and myself relating?

Thrown Habara. Rags suit me better.
I am preparing to be as I was before. I awe; I beguile.
Perditions do happen. We fall in continuous trap.
Helpless, hands tied. Free only to smile.
No complains from any.
I am just Habakkuk, who laments, on the verge of being fissile.
It’s tough to suffer from Habdabs, but I have adjusted;
Habakkuk has become halophile.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Petrified by Purity

2007-05-31T12:34:00.002+05:30

It is a new experience, to have a confidant at the same place which screams of emptiness. To roll your sleeves and be happy to be in action for nothing. A struggle to stay decent when your mind is presenting the most ravenous picture you can imagine. The pug marks of tiger have turned into an unappealing cow. When bad is bad and nothing justifies it, your heart is asking you to be worse. All the efforts of life to hold sanctity in place are going in vain then you are obliged to think if it is worth loosing for.
Suddenly the past comes to your mind and you compare the meaning of what you left behind to what is in your platter. The temptations of vulgarity are not to be succumbed to. The echoes of present are lashing back to you colliding with the truths of tomorrow. Tomorrow is what you have command over, if it is not formed by the ghosts of past. At such moments people ask to be silent. Silence to mourn the loss; silence to forget the past; silence to think of the future. The only thing that went missing in the eeriness of that room is present. Inglorious, rather ugly.
I love being petrified at the thought of tomorrow. This tomorrow is rising by our present perfect. A perfection with which we are obsessed. Our being, our influences, our existence, our actions, our holiness, our relations, our thoughts. Obscene or sacred whatever they might be corroborate our being human.
Stagnation has crept in the shoes of time. It’s running but no scene is changing. How long can one gaze at the wall, and that too with no art work hanging? For some time we take a cue and start playing snooker with all the images that dampness has painted for us to be a critic of. Then it’s time to count the points; amazed to find the name in the medal tally of nincompoops.
Afraid once again dusting starts fuelled with the fright of those masked men on the wall who were not amused with the game. Looks like they are long lost competitors of some older player who had played his chance. And sanity leaves the afraid. The cloth is dry so it could no clear the damp marks. It was useless unmasking them with dryness. Soaking would have helped if they had not taken a bath earlier. Last night it had rained. The eyes are still wet by the effect of the shower. The left eye has even swollen. It even does not rain pure. Probably the heart flushed itself and the eyes paid for the comfort of showers.
So again it’s back to the wrestling match between the damp cloth and water masks on the wall. The cloth is exhausted and the masks have grown bigger in size. Let us start the witch hunt of all those culprits who fed the villains behind our back. The masks have a cross smile to their face. They are making fun of simple crusader trying to launch an attack on all those who are against a saner world.
Bigger blobs occur and the fight is over. Both sides declare victory over the other. Both would end up telling their compatriots of their bravery. The marks have the last laugh. They shrunk on the wall and one big challenger gave birth to multiple laughing mirrors sharing its mass benevolently. Now it’s the phase of wonder which has started. Amusing it is to see how relations are made sharing space and mass. In the end he befriended many and found ears to share his newly won war.
Turn your face and look at something new. A better reason to think over. May be global warming would serve right, or may be the girl who got screwed last night in a moving car. That man would also do well, who got shot by a spurned courtier of his prized girl friend. Those rags which lie on the floor carry everything. All the diversions to the treacherous mind, are available in these good for nothing barometers of our moving society. Dynamic indicators of our individuality within a complex network of goons and marauders. They give ample reason to fear and live in absolute shock. And if bolting the door is the solution, you might well run for doing so.
Yes you did it. Left alone inside the living room gazing and being afraid of the people who have started to live inside the wall surrounding your safety. The people whom we put our eyes only when we have closed our purity for ourselves. The people who are shocked at your loneliness and still are able to smile at you, seeing you petrified.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Laying Eggs on Needles

2007-05-31T12:33:00.002+05:30

Visionaries are not welcomed. They are just liabilities. They think too much. Out of scope. Being careful not to get out of league is difficult. Solistice of perceptions are round the corner where frree thinking becomes a chain of serpents. There are no admirers around; no followers to be found. The irony of climate is of waiting and agreeing to none. Messiahs are to deliver, but they are having two horns on head perhaps. They fail to recognize the change to come from within. Rejection is the answer to any new idea.
It is hot in the field and pains have already started. The time of delivery has come. For so long I have been carrying these eggs. Not in a basket but in my womb. No takers for these bastards. Not anyone from those from whom they were conceived. Notions of individuality and personal salvation have rusted the entire generation of sufferers. Open field lies ahead, with no green grass. The field is shining and I know it will produce no warmth. No comfort from the sun. No cool breeze blow. Nothing organic to be found. No transpiration to occur from below. Raw ideas and no polish in me. The silver colour is not inviting. And yet I cry for laying on my burden. I could have slept sound. It could have been easy closing my eyes, to reality. Instead I increased my fears. I made myself grow as a radical, a fanatic, the spider clinging hard to a self spun web of unease. Sometimes it’s funny to see tarantulas biting themselves and dying, walking in the silver Kalahari.
Was my life abnormal? I made it for them. Being happy to be unhappy. Thinking of most obscure ideas of reforms. Keeping myself exemplary, where suffering was the ultimate answer to leave the pleasures of company and flesh. I am sitting in a meat shop. Chopping my flesh for my customers, wishing them a good dinner tonight. And thankless they walk out with a notion of being cheated. It’s difficult to be vendor of dreams even if they are shared standing on the stake of death. It was cozy inside my shell, and I broke it for them. I have burnt my house obstructing all passages of return.
No bed of roses, but sands of iron filings. And shrubs replaced by needles by my own. They are deaf, dumb and blind of reality. Prayers are not salvation. Wait is not going to bear fruits. Actions do not speak they shout, and they are unaware of philosophies. They never wanted to come out of their cocoons. Their legs even do not feel the pain. Walking on needles is not making Almighty happy. I don’t even want Him to be happy, I strive for my happiness. An instinct which has been replaced in me instead of a heart.
None to rescue. None to help. I am laying my eggs in barren land, with outgrowths of needles. It might be a possibility they hatch. It might be that they rot, and die before the first drop of rain touch them. They will be an artefact; a case to study later on. I will be an A O Hume, of future; father of “Safety Valve Theory”. Ideas floating in the air. Eggs spinning on the tips of needles.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Damn Resilience

2007-05-31T12:32:00.003+05:30

Geeks we are. Nerds we are. We stick and we eat. We die as if we never existed. We see it happening in front of our eyes and still we produce. We bring more waning souls to suffer. We are criminals or we would have not been so merciless. We would have learnt if we wanted to. Or may be we were decent enough to apply what we have been trained for. What if we were trained not to learn? Just carry on adding more cinders to burn in this ever lasting fire. Ever hungry pyre. Morgues of human life float in the sea of shadowy oak. Build an ark again. Call Nuh back from that age. We need a boatman. An expert. Experienced in the field of crossing oceans of unimaginable depths. We need delivery. The pangs of trivial institutions have chained us. Call Musa to liberate us. We need a land to be promised. Let him take us to the promised gardens, where you don’t till to eat. The food is sent, you work for pleasure. We need the ideal to be emulated. We are waiting to see the practical of all the preaching. We need a teacher well versed with the entire practical to be performed. A life of resilience and an existence of beating all the odds. Allah trusted one. A persona born to save every aspect of life from evolution to ablution. Send Muhammad again. We are waiting for him.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Euphuistic Compendium

2007-05-31T12:12:00.000+05:30

May 2007, Edition of Blogger Chronicle of Mentally Misfits

Jalis has been a sincere and dedicated subject being studied since discovery in 1981. The subject has been certified in his yearly and session reports by the research fellows, to be of restless nature. They have also warned the future research scientists who wish to further pursue their thesis on this topic to avoid any kind of conditions such as high temperature and unnecessary pressure on the subject resulting into catastrophic laboratory accidents.
The substance though still in it’s nascent stage of study has promises to be a great catch if it can provide answers to many of the stalled works of scientific world since a long time. Though the element has been compounded with different matters as a part of compulsive and periodic tests but unfortunately has not shown any volatility in the process which it showed earlier. Scientists are amazed with the resilience of substance’s atomic formation which has not given way to any kind of dispersion even after being bombarded with particles of high momentum and fast moving electrons.
Initial works carried on concluded that under ordinary conditions the material would deplete if segregated as it would not have any other kind of material to fuse giving way to newer formations. But, to the dismay of many constant followers of the experiment the element has not shown any kind of weathering and has proved to be very consistent even after being secluded for five years at length.
During the inception of the study, the scientific community very boldly challenged the rules of elemental behavior and hypothesis that such kind of elements which fall into the confused placement of periodic table can be very unstable. In turn they ended up setting up a deadline for themselves to prove the subtle nature of element giving rise to a number of casualties after which the element was deemed to be of dangerous nature and removed from common reach like school laboratories and classes. The element gained a repute of notoriety when the discoverers, Sir and Madame Rizvi started observing blisters on their skin and developed nausea whenever they came in contact with it. Lately the element has been removed from the category of hazardous list and many curious new age students have tried to link themselves into reading the formation that this element is making.
It is advised to keep children and infants away, as the element can heavily impress the grey matter of their growing brain. People exposed to such influences have complained of hallucinations and vague thought process. This obviously has made it very difficult for enthusiasts to get any quick answers to the real nature of it.
Perhaps it is good if we see the mystery in which the subject has been shrouded become thin with time, but it is a long time till we can be sure if this element would help us in making a positive effect in our lives or would end up being of a disastrous nature as many radioactive substances have been. For the time being we can be only happy that we are going along successfully with this subject, but surely with all the caution at hand.

The writer is an asylum seeker of many distinct ideologies and frame of mind. But his petition has been continuously put down by many mental asylums, sighting their inability in handling his condition and lacking in doctors of enough repute and experience within their folds. Lately he has developed interest in studying chemicals of indecisive nature and writes about their state under different conditions. These days he is engrossed in studying complex, anti social elements staying unexplained till today. His works can be read at www.abbasjalis.blogspot.com, and can be reached at abbasjalis@gmail.com, (at your own risk)

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

A Thousand Epitaphs

2007-05-30T17:52:00.000+05:30

You have started speaking the language of despair and death. Solitudes are looming large in your writing and it is echoing of melancholy.
Don’t dip yourself in this state as slowly this poison starts making the victim enjoy it’s heat which melts no one but the victim.
I have died a thousand deaths and I have lived a thousand moments of loneliness, but I found nothing just anyone to cry on the grave of my aspirations. I don’t even expect them to come on the epitaph when it stands firmly rooted in the soil after monsoon rain. What lingers of this life is nothing but a sweet scent of wet soil. Did I smell it while walking down my childhood home? When it was raining and all water was logged in small lanes left after the weeds had been pulled out. Was it somewhere in winters when I tried to rake the mud and give way to ladybirds out of their homes, and guided them to the tallest towers of mango trees. Was it sometime when I thanked Allah of all that he had created and I had felt pleasure; a calm had subsided in me once, for being a part of all the grey around me. Was it once when I bowed in front of Him and my thanks was too heavy for me to handle that I stooped too low to dig the ground by my nose. Was it the dust of a summer that filled my nostrils and it rained to rid the world of flying mischief maker?
Or everything was just a fake and I experienced nothing. The scent clung to me the day I was handed to perish in the “Supreme Creation”, the last abode of all sad heart, which may have been broken but by my own will.
I grew up in this prison of mine, to be a “Romeo till eternity”.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Salvation of My Eminence

2007-05-25T19:46:00.000+05:30

Dear Friend,

This is just to thank you for whatever you have been to me. I want to thank you for standing with me even when I was going to leave myself. Sometimes I trusted you more than I trusted my soul, for souls depend on external environment, and you were my own.
It was a pleasure walking with you for so long hand in hand. Feeling comfortable that someone was there to understand me when the world was hurling abuses at me for not being perfect.
Our relation started somewhere under a bed in a dark room, where I crept to cry out of everyone’s sight. Not knowing from where you emerged and consoled me that life still has to move on, I held on to you. I remember when we avenged ourselves by killing that shopkeeper that abused me; it was a thrill to do so. With his body on the road in front of everyone we danced around it. And do you remember that we even caught hold of our class mate by her pony tail and slapped her till she dropped unconscious?
Institutions never appealed to us, and we agreed on many such thoughts. We conspired to overthrow everything unappealing. We never wanted lands to be ruled by people we thought undeserving. I was smarter than you and you always were the one to point it out. I fared well in everything and you idealized me. Oh! It might be an overstatement but at least you said I had better ideas. We made plans and we agreed to it at the same time. I think I was just looking for a nod.
How would I have passed those cold evenings when I was thrown out for not liking my food if you had not been with me? Where did you come from I never asked you. And where you lived I don’t know till today. But you always crawled inside my bed and tugged yourself comfortably without taking any space from me. And how many cold nights we spent in front of a bonfire talking about communism, religion, ideologies and even literature. We all have our softer sides. But you were good at questioning. Always having the same questions that I had answers to. Or may be what I wanted to answer. We have a marvelous frequency till today. Do you know I still have that blanket with me, and it still smells of you.
If happiness anytime touched me it was the day when we defended our post together. You saved me from all the assaults and covered me when I jumped on our enemies in the battlefield. I owe my courage to you, for I knew I can rely on none but you. And it was a laugh when you winked at the pretty girls while marching into the enemy territory, victorious.
And how you fell in love with one was a mystery. She is a good cook to be sure and mingled as a family. Why is she always worried about me? What will I eat? Why am I living alone? Why I never married even at the age of thirty six. Both of you are so adorable. Now a serious advise to you, never ever loose her, and never hurt her, and never break her heart or make her cry. I told her the day both of you were getting married that she has got the best man in the world. She is so beautiful and headstrong as you are sharp and intelligent. The latter about you, is just to keep you happy.
We have many tasks unfinished for ourselves. And many battles left to fight, revenge to be taken, attacks to be mounted. It’s just a matter of time when we will be able to raise our flag on every post of our imaginary world. I don’t remember your birthday; I don’t know when I gave birth to you, but what I know that you exist so that I can win. I never felt weak in front of you but I want to do so today. I am full of energy when you are around. I loose myself when I can not see you. Just want to request you to never leave me ever. Thanks for being around me.

Your Friend and Your Other Side,

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

In Peace With Oneself

2007-05-24T18:31:00.001+05:30

Nothing amuses better than your own company. Learn to love loneliness. It's just a sleepless night away. Be amused with your alter ego, as it makes you live longer. You have a mission for something; it doesn't matter if you are lying. Being in love with oneself sounds bliss, because you are the only true lover, you can find for yourself.
I am in love with my imaginary friend, whom I crafted out of my wits.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Fourth Dimension

2007-05-24T12:35:00.000+05:30

Words are intoxicating, confusing and sometimes they produce visions of hallucinations. Same way, words combined can make you doze off into a state similar in which Samuel Taylor Coleridge might have written “Kubla Khan”. I wish my phrases were ecstatic, looking to be a work out of a drunken state or may be making people go out of their consciousness. I would accept both.
But what is the thing that makes the visions lively on a paper? I feel open eyes dream better than closed ones. Possibility of all manipulations is in front of you, being wide eyed. Playing with the dictionary inculcated within oneself, in all these years. May be it is used just to impress or produce a feeler of one’s thoughts. Both ways it creates ripples, or may be it is just meant to do so.
Cause and affect are interrelated. Whether a thought was provoked or it was expressed to provoke. In this scenario was the thought a cause or the effect remains to be defined. For humans this is a bigger and a tougher question than the coming first of hen or an egg.
Imagination is the answer to all the “pink sized”, worms wriggling in our mind. The power of brain, to consciously grope in the subconscious is exemplary and can produce the best results, and answers to mysteries.
Was René Descartes sleeping when he evolved the fundamentals of coordinates, thus giving way to Cartesian Geometry? Was he out of his mind when he provided the basis for the calculus of Newton? Did he really apply infinitesimal calculus to the tangent line problem? Or this is all French as he was? Or he was awake and did not know where his mind was taking him? Did he have the ultimate trance of not knowing what his eyes produced, or his brain was not able to perceive the image on his retina? Or was it the retina which was sleeping and not the brain?
The truth is deeper. The truth is tough to find. Above all there is no truth, nothing like an absolute truth.
What lives later when once a living is dead? Body goes on to weather and mixes in elements. We say it was made of elements and it perished in it. But have we ever thought if the elements came into existence when many bodies were consumed? Weak theory, but sure it excites me, equally as the end of soul and the living of graves do. We are far more tormented by the existence of graves around our abodes than the theory of existing souls.
No absolute truths exist; it’s just imagination which keeps us running in this race. A race, to be best of all species.
So there exists the “Fourth Dimension” of imagination; length, breadth, height, being the other three.
The process of creation starts from a vision. A vision can be confusing when sold as a concept, when written it might end up amusing some people or inviting anger if it challenges old myths. Old myth for the thinker, accepted belief for commoners. Who is asleep? Who is awake? Who is suffering from hallucinations? What is bad to be happy staying contended or grudging for absolute truth, though there is nothing like it.
The thinker is an iconoclast and a leader at the same time. Thinkers are father of free thoughts. They imagine so that we can express ourselves, they are the liberator of species from the darkness of the caves. Thinkers are the true residents of the “Fourth Dimension”.
It’s about living and being kicking to make way for different horizons. However foolish it might look to argue on lessons we were made to learn by heart, let us be open to imagination, the fourth dimension towards getting answers, available on the other side.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

No Excuses

2007-05-22T18:41:00.002+05:30

This is an age of polarization and ideological to individual perceptions, social to communal lifestyles are getting challenged. The new age discoverers are not just adventurous of a conservative formation but people who have no place for adventure, or fear a change in their routines.

So the generation is landing up in a soup and has started questioning the age old practices of lawful union of souls and a social license of respectable breeding. The questions that arise usually are more of sociological nature where we bind ourselves to the tree of traditionalism despite of no faith in the earlier existing norms and culture. Quite a complex picture this present where there is a huge gap between the gentry of ritualistic atavism, and the new age Columbus community, believers of Socrates’ theory of learning through experience.
Burning of hands sometimes in these cases are followed by the end of burning desires of a human body. The revivalists have their own theory of stopping the kid on the block, from tasting fire and going by the set principles ordained by the society. The religious sincerity comes as a big factor, in carrying on the mission of human resource management in a communion form, where attrition starts getting countered by producing more talents or rather to call it inhouse breeding. These justifications might not seem a big factor for some but yes they do continue as a prevalent form of making a sizeable counter team for the other groups, sects, or communities.
The coming centuries will continue to see the closely knit charter carried religiously by that think tank as a divine duty. And to whatever extent the so called liberated non conformists to this belief may raise their objection to, we can agree to the fact that we don’t see it dying out, but flaring up again at regular intervals.
Marriage as a social system is popular in each and every part of this world and human race is surely the best self impostor. We deceive our perceptions making compromises and then packaging it as a necessary evil. The motive behind pursuing this form of social contract and security are multiple. Probably delving deeper into the rigours, provided by the study of psychology we can arrive at a conclusion that this practice has emerged as a solution as well as acknowledgement of humans as a social animal. Somewhere in the dark spaces out of our planets orbit we tend to look for life. We are lonely beings and find out a compulsive partnership which should continue through all the thick and thin of life.
This needs a strong bond of commitment and lots of adhesive of heavenly nature. Therefore the system came up with a seal of sanctity and here is where religion comes into picture. Religions have emphasized a lot about purity of thoughts and a social security of family as a whole. Identity of offspring also is one factor which has shaped this system to success.
Social responsibility would rise up as another dominating reason into the initial design and then survival of the contract. Long before man in itself started to become an island, maintaining the social order was a responsibility taken up by the group leaders. Surviving in those times was a challenge faced every minute and so a strongly bonded team came as a necessity to make this true. Assets were shared equally and ambitions were matched with rewards, so that resentment might not result into breakaway factions. Females obviously as till today existed as an asset to them which was to be distributed fairly taking into consideration the male psychology of complete possession and command. This gave way for the first communions on this planet to happen, which were to be respected and not to be terminated at one’s will or the market of ample would shift to the alpha male leaving him all alone surrounded by plotters and grudgers. We see in this specific scenario that this system also made the early human civilization survive and saving it from being fragmented, which if would have happened the giant leaps that we have taken would not have occurred at all.
Security surfaces as a major factor that helped the form to be accepted especially with the female class, as a contract of such divine nature would make it liable for males to fight for their security and provide them till their last breath. Later on this particular asset gained more respect in terms of getting attached to social honour and family status.
So for many this can be an outright way of keeping the best genes out of the picture and depriving the most wanted genes to fuse into perfect humans, but at the same time the other school of thought might sell it as a way to protect the diversified gene pool of human race and give a chance to every kind of blood to exist and leave a mark.
Coming out of human genealogy, we also have to turn our focus towards the physical needs factor. In turn not to starve individuals and make this amenity accessible to every one, the system has been placed to provide every hungry mouth at least a morsel of food.
So what if we have all the excuses for it, genuine or just a frame of mind they be. We justify our need to follow this age old custom. One of the very fine lines which define our identity and our faiths at one time or the other. How a person carries the vows can show his subconscious submission to a particular ideology and social structure to which he or she belongs to. How we carried our vows give an idea to our coming generations of where their roots are. Excuses they may be but are sounded as grave necessity of life. Long time later when we will see drastic changes in the economic patterns of countries, and may be more reliance on societies and a backtrack towards family systems, this contract will again bounce back as the sacred remedy to everything.
Some may do it for security, same may name it love, some just a custom, and for some it might be money, or just raw sex, but what will long after stay with us would be a forceful and influential custom to reckon with. After all Soviets were successful in locking churches, but they never were able to find an excuse to challenge it. Or may be they also never wanted it to end at all.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Cipher

2007-05-19T18:26:00.000+05:30

Mother I am at the verge of crashing, I have reached my break even point. I ask myself can it be started again and I still can be a child. Mother I feel like crying again, I want to sleep in your lap. I know I have not been a good son but can you just forget it and start it all over again? Mother would you like to be my mother again if even given a choice?
Mother I am all alone, and dark it is all around; would you still comfort me or laugh at me for being so afraid of it? The world is falling Mother, and I did not fix the roof when it was not raining. It is all a dream I wish and waking would make it all vanish. I am sleeping in your arms, and nightmares are at an arms length. Sometimes they do come but I don’t have to open my eyes to be comforted. I tell them in my sleep itself that you are with me.
Mother I dread the day, when you will not be around. Do mothers have to be older than their sons? Mother did we have a good time together, were you proud of me? Can you tell me some things which made you do so, or it was just that I was you son?
Mother was you able to understand me, and why I spewed venom? Is it just that I was afraid that my first love never thought me as me? Mother what made you think so different from me, even when I was from you? There was one time when you carried me with yourself as your extension, was I more beautiful then or when you saw me for the first time? Mother does my appearance matter to you too?
Mother I am a man now I want to be acknowledged. I want to be free and independent. A soul with a mission of it’s own. Mother do you still want me to be only your child or would you just melt in me? I wish I had never grown up and dried my wings. I am flying today but yet want to have you in my sight. Mother, am I selfish or you have taught me to believe in you only?
Mother I have beautiful words with me and I want them to be all yours. You taught me how to call you, and with what name you wanted for yourself. Did you teach me anything more than that or gifted me to the world after it? Mother I wish you understood what I write may be then you would have cried too. Mother I miss your handkerchief, which though smothered with my mucous was yet never aversive to you.
Mother I want to read all that I have written to you. I want to show you what I have gone through; to let you know what all converted me your son into a demon. May be then you would forgive me.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Engulfed in Ether

2007-05-18T20:07:00.000+05:30

Do we keep something in the subconscious, which impresses long after it is gone? Is it always so, and with everyone that scent of past remains? I do have that problem, a long lost tune somewhere relates to the events of past.
A fragrance might remind of humility and triumph at the same time. Things just are chained together, to form a bracelet acting as cuffs to bind us from the roots. We have emerged from somewhere, and that somewhere is what lingers long after it has been surpassed.
I am listening to music and it happened; I suspect rain and it crossed; I smell wet soil and it haunted me again. Beautiful it might seem, and amazing to feel; it is a long thread which has to be pulled to see the end attached to the past.
Suffocating it had been, but it has made a place for itself. The incense sticks burn and remind me of my tramping childhood in the graveyard of my native village, sleeping in the “Rauza” of the third Imam. Sound those beats again; I want to listen to the thumps of hands on the chest of mourners of the “Slain Hero”.
Reminiscence thrusted; burning of fragrances. Are they smells of the past, matrices of my brain, or is it that I am engulfed in ether?

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Drowning in Silence

2007-05-18T19:54:00.001+05:30

“I speak too much”
Does my silence buy happiness for others? Or is it that I make others look like a fool? Sound is a form of energy, and I am transmitting it all across without being a miser.
“I am too loud”
My expressions are from the deepest corners my heart. I burn if I can not express. I want to sleep, so I speak the truth. Do they want me to be not listened to? I am not shouting, it is a fight to survive amongst higher decibels.
“I am too rough and blunt”
Being honest is hard. Will they love me if I lie? My words are dedicated to pin point the loss in which this world is living. Do they not like the transparency which I maintain?
“I am too closed”
What will make them happy? Is it my silence or being too straight? I will either speak sanity or be silent. Criticism is one thing and hatred in another. Will they accept to hate me?
“I do not make sense”
Anything that people do not understand does not make it gibberish. Are they competent enough to grasp my point? May be we do not share the same platform, but does that make me insane?
“I am obsessed with my perceptions”
At least I am obsessed with a quality. Will they be happy if I flaunt my material possessions, or be too cautious of my physique? Be happy that I am proud of what I inculcated in me through all these years.
“I am abnormal”
I acting just like other would make me no notch above them, or below them. Would it be acceptable if I am no different from the rest? Where would my identity go? Where would they like me to bury my thoughts? Does being different makes one abnormal? I think it’s the start of me being segregated.
“I am a looser”
Yes I lost much. May be my youth just went dry. Dry days I am celebrating. But I bought myself a clear conscience that I stood for what I believed. Does it make them unhappy that I am still approachable? Or would they have liked me if I had tramped over everyone? Let me turn my face away from the world, and be silent. I will stay calm, and not speak anything. Will this make me presentable enough? I will keep my thoughts ebbing, and cross my heart again and again. Then will I be the blue eyed boy?

After all it doesn’t matter if I drown in silence.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Of Bitches and Barbeques

2007-05-17T19:06:00.001+05:30

Welcome to the oldest institution of this world. Once you enter it, everything seems wonderful. Shining and glittering with great promises. You will find people giggling and giving their best presentations.

Girls are thrown everywhere, scattered at every place with their fishing rods in hand, trying to find a “bastard” who would save their children the title of “bastard”. You are a catch; especially if you have a comparatively fat pocket and above all impending genes in you to give them the most presentable gifts to this world, or may be if they have missed their buses a long time ago.
Compromise is your choice, it all depends on you. Can be the other way round too, like if you have lost control on those strong kicks from inside, making all effort to break free and fuse to give way to life, or just you are desperate.
And the “bitches” have their agents too; women who have lost all the glamour or purpose of life, and are eager to find a name for themselves in families once again. Sometimes society encourages such decent forms of brokerage. We call them facilitators and mediators, in civilized thesaurus. In dark avenues of cities we call them pimps. One and the same if profile matters.
The choice is simple to get the best bone to live longer. Living longer is to leave impressions and look alike. What they are to become and grow up to be is not of their concern any more after the fish lands in the boat. So hunting ground are the barbeques, to which we are invited. No love, no promise, no past are discussed, it’s just what the future can be molded into. You are nothing but a lamb of “Eid ul Zuha”. A sacrificial beast which would pave the way for their heavenly abode, promised after the conclusion of this rite.
Pretty damsels they might seem to be. Their youth and their passion have now given way to their sharp instincts of catching a prey. A feed for their place in this crooked world, a name to be associated with, a kitchen that provides the food whose cook is worth nothing but just a cook. And what that cook is paid with? He is paid with the oldest desire of masculine body; so pretty damsels cast their spell, and throw their net measuring everything at a glance. They strip you, and even check your “DNA”; measure the depth of your pocket; and garb it all in the name of security.
Lament of nothing should the other side do. For this has continued for long. The barbeques have been there since in the inception of human civilization. No love, just mattresses to sleep on, sometimes to sleep with. Beds to be shared; altars of celebrating human weaknesses, of desires, pleasures, and all the things that I would not speak in front of my father.
Barbeques are wholesome. For whom I don’t know. I love them still. People define them to be the ultimate bastions of guarding divinity of mankind. Making promises that we never mean to fulfill. Is not what we all have been looking forward to? A chance to prove ourselves men in front of everyone.
What so, if the bitch never loved me? What so, if I was just a catch? Caught by a bitch in one of the barbeques that I was invited.
Leave me alone; I am in a pretty bad mood today.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Heavy Impressions

2007-05-17T15:59:00.000+05:30

When peace flies of the window,
And when you don’t have voices that listen to you.
Then pick up the weapon of my choice.
Point it on them my friend and fix them in places with glue.
Rat Tat Tat Bang Bang
See their pieces flying through space
Rat Tat Tat Bang Bang
And then run through the corridor if followed in case

They were ruling the roost some years,
Now it’s your turn to dictate to them your terms.
They called you a coward who listens forever.
What you have possessed my friend from them is their germs.
Rat Tat Tat Bang Bang
See them writhe in pain on the floor
Rat Tat Tat Bang Bang
Fact of life is they are too unsure if it’s their gore.

We are winning what they started,
It’s for us to continue for a thousand years, this war.
Let’s enjoy the battles they won.
Nothing teaches but defeats my friend, of this I’m very sure.
Rat Tat Tat Bang Bang
Feel the cause flying high in air.
Rat Tat Tat Bang Bang
Go and challenge them, do dare.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Liberation of Melodies

2007-05-16T15:32:00.000+05:30

Melodies, they are so rare.
Nothing plays to the ears, aware.

I shout, you hear, a symbiosis of sorts.
Before breaking the rules, beware.

Laden with dust, I carry your burden.
My strength I project, in the affair.

Melodies, they are so rare.

Question on face, upsets me much.
Dark are clouds; when you stare.

Fast I run, but you do win.
Slowed my move; be cautious; take care.

Melodies, they are so rare.

Vain attempts are fighting alone.
If not sword, then scabbard share.

All afflictions pour them; they are nuisance.
Break all shackles of mind; lay bare.

Melodies, they are so rare.

Sapphires can cut, but they are not red.
Wounds are to draw balance fair.

My conscience, learn from sufferings.

What’s wrong in me, we’ll pare.

Melodies, they are so rare.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Lifetime Achievement Award

2007-05-15T12:36:00.000+05:30

My Speech:
I don’t know what to say. It paints a very rosy picture of me. Your observations are all through what you have read of me. But sometimes a person wants to hear something good about him; may be all the time he wants to hear so.
We are all a mix. I mixture of good and bad. The only difference is to what degree we are either of the two. Or may be this is how we want to project ourselves.
Depression makes a person very subdued and docile. He submits himself to his fate. I still have not been able to. I am fighting the situation to be a man or to be what I want to be perceived as.
My life threw me into the darkest chambers of sleaze, but somehow my will to fight made me survive from that and emerge pure.

My Thanks (Concluding) Note:
I thank the jury, the judges and academy for letting me stand here today, and for acknowledging my work. I also like to extend my heartiest gratitude to my family, friends and a long list of my fans. They always stood by me, through all the ups and downs I faced. Thanks again.

My Reality:
The unending list of my close associate is a myth. What I have in hand is nothing but a roll of toilet paper, with nothing written on it.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Lust and Found

2007-05-14T16:49:00.000+05:30

I am not able to find those newspapers. I am desperately searching for them. I think they are lost somewhere. Might have got recycled by now and lost the shine that the first product would have. Somewhere that initial luster of those pictures I think is lost. Those pictures of semi clad models and celebrities have also lost their appeal. I am desperately looking for one to bring those memories back.
We all have our strict code of guidelines in the initial phase of our lives as to how the world should perceive us. And so we lose those years which would have been the golden era of ones being. Those growing up years filled with energy of youth and excitement, an enthusiasm to probe into the unknown and the forbidden.
Grown up I am and I miss those simple pictures of half naked bodies that could arouse me on a single glance at them. It was a simple morning newspaper that would carry those dreams of manhood. Probably a recipe to cater to the growing market of common readers, but it was more to me in some way. It was a marketing tool to make readers go on picking them up from the shelves of stationers or to encourage the vendor to throw each morning in everyone’s home. Not only was I interested in the world affairs but my affairs too that I picked them up.
And there were some pages, probably one in those times that made a young mind go in tizzy. Travel far beyond what could one guess or perceive of a female body. Not much left to discover yet lots to imagine. And like a magic it would work, throwing a young boy into the realms of unknown all alone. This was the only arena where I was not afraid to venture on myself and never looked for any training, teaching or handholding. There are some facets about oneself that we want to grope alone.
This was a discovery of manhood. Lust and love started to come up as different things. Rather I discovered my lust, for love is one thing that a man learns in his cradle. It was a process which I was undergoing and those silly visuals would do wonders for me. I felt a man. That longing made me confident of being in the right direction; a socially acceptable fellow. But I stayed hushed so that they may not know it yet.
I am a man today. That is what this world calls me right now. It has been a long journey getting simple satisfactions for those urges from nothing real and present, to the dark realities where love is lost and all that prevails is that hidden feeling of sexism.
People have already discovered their sexualities. The hidden dark chapters are all so elusive and yet so physically present. People have even lost what I have preserved for so long. My purity had chained me for ages and now it has started to heckle me. I wanted to give it all away to someone I love; does love exist now?
Some nights I reflected; those were the nights that I lived without closing my eyes to the reality. I had missed the bus. But had I lost being a man too? In continuation to those nights are the days when you wake up from not sleeping at all. Now it’s an age of maturity and I have become what I had to. I don’t love anymore I just respect. My relations can not move further from there. They are stagnant or rather my brain is in coma; or I am a zombie?
I have everything to myself. Today there is no fear of what they perceive of me; not because I am a rebel, but for they will never know it. I have the world exposed, I can see far more than those simple pictures in the morning newspaper. May be the other sex wants me to see it, or not only me but everyone. I rather respect them or I am indifferent. I have become cold now.
Where are those days gone? I just did not open that page for the fear what others would think of me, for they might come to know that I have become a man; I too have a desires hidden, that I have lust boiling in him, looking for a fissure somewhere to pour out.
I would simply look at them with the side of my eyes, and absorb them in me better than what a blotting paper does to a wet ink spec.
May I become a chalk and weather away in the pool of water on which it was placed to suck it?
I see nudity; I smell perspiration after years of extended efforts to wrestle the needs of the body. I hear voices moaning and yearning for skin. I have tasted the sight of vulgarity in every part of my world which I travelled; and I have felt hands tarring my anatomy. I kept my virtue, for the day when I would indulge in myself and still, I feel nothing.
It’s dusk and I am looking for something to make me feel a human again. I can not find those papers again, I lost them long ago. Probably the women of those times were far more beautiful, or were it that I was a far better man. I miss being ignited. The pictures were too good, the camera was done great but I have lost interest now.
Can anyone give it back to me? I lost love long way back, and I never knew that lust would also slip away. I want to be a man again.
My lust just vanished one day never to be found.
Pink Floyd is right; "I need a dirty woman, I need a dirty girl".

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Shades

2007-05-11T18:55:00.001+05:30

Is it a rhythm to which you are dancing or it’s just the wish to fly? I believe you are happy having me in some way. It looks you have found the way to loose yourself. Am I somewhere with you in your mad jig?
Come on ground your feet. I am having the sun in my eye, when I lift my head to set them upon you. Is it love, that makes you twist in such motion or it’s just your way to seduce me to join in. How vulnerable you look to me. Should I hold myself to hold you or do you want it to happen?
I want meanings and I don’t even know where I misplaced my dictionary. You have enchanted the words and magical as they might seem are yet so soft to hurt anyone. Are you in your senses or you want too see me out of my wits? Longing for someone; that I can understand.
That’s not fair; you have started playing tricks with me.
Enough of it; now come down. Don’t say you want to fly now, it is a ridiculous idea. I know I always look too grounded to you, too practical to dream. But do you know this stupid movement of yours doesn’t look decent? No I am fine with it; I know nobody other than us is around. But still is it necessary?
Off course you are enjoying it!
What’s the fun of it all?
I knew it would come, “I am drowned in melancholy”. Am I? I don’t think so.
Why I am not forcibly stopping you? May be I am enjoying all the curves you have. It’s soothing my senses, I suppose. Just try to understand my feeble complains. Perhaps I am just trying to act decent.
Could it not have been in a shade? I would have just sit and watch.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

When Flowers Choose

2007-05-10T17:47:00.000+05:30

This is an inspiration from one of the articles of Ms. Freya, in her blog “My Cenotaph”.

http://freyondathegreat.blogspot.com/2007/03/everyone-choses-buds-at-florists.html

It was fresh so I kept my hands off it.
It was tender I didn’t want to hurt it.
It was wait which I was ready for.
It was desire that became the purpose of my life.
It was bud on top of the slithering vines in my backyard.
It was wall that supported it leaving me bereaved.
It was pain that I lived throughout my existence.
It was obvious that I was not even left with illusions.
It was miracle it transformed one day.
It was excitement that made me panic.
It was flower that took place of the bud suddenly.
It was deceiving to believe it would be with me.
It was maturity that the flower was gifted with.
It was choice that it made on behalf of itself.
It was treachery that my luck did to me.
It was irony that I lost my entire sense to the matter.
It was me who loved it and tended to it.
It was honesty that I had not professed my love.
It was mockery of my hope that I had nested on for so long.
It was dream that broke like a glass.
It was lesson I learnt the harder way.
It was fate;
Perhaps, the flower chose the other side of wall for itself.
It was hard; hard to accept defeat.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

I Regret

2007-05-07T18:48:00.000+05:30

It was just nothing for me but pure fun killing you. My testosterone ran high that day and I finished you off for no fault of yours. It was nothing but a feeling of power that ran through me. You had nothing to your defense and I had all the things Almighty gave me. I was the Almighty, long before the truth of bravery and victory dawned over me.
It was a bright sunny summer morning when you were wandering with no quest except of your empty stomach.
I saw you and my dark side blinded me. An innocent; what an easy prey. I had no desire that day but to get rid of the earth with you and the likes of you. It might have been a different equation if you had not been alone.
We crossed sight and the love of life made you run from me. I still was not satisfied for I wanted to see you die in front of my eyes. I made my first move and did not even bother to chase you. It was the oldest weapon that man ever used that I chose to finish you off with. It missed. Sometimes bigger weapons do not hit you for the cracks in this world are too narrow for them to penetrate.
Your throat became dry and I could see you panting. You were staring at me asking with those small eyes of yours of the gravest crimes that you committed. They were none and yet you asked me what was it that made you deserve such an end.
The lust of blood, the enjoyment of murder! What more could a brave man ask for? What more do warriors seek?
I was a crusader, I was King Arthur, I was Richard the Lionheart. And after you would die people would raise me on their shoulders, roaring slogans that could deafen the entire universe. I saved their religion from the corrupt, killed them en masse. They killed for glory and so I also was doing the same. Children fantasize them, adults adore them, men emulate them, women yearn for them. That is what we are taught, to kill for crowns. To kill so that our name should live forever.
My last blow was lethal. A boulder over a boulder and in between the two were you. Your pain was fomenting through those open jaws of yours. The other half crushed and your body reduced to a pulp. Ah! What a manly sight to see. Your enemy writhing in pain, sulking at it’s demise. Thinking of the end which is still not there; yet overdue.
In some time I could make out you were praying for it. O Israeel, the angel of death, rescue me from the poisonous pangs of this life, whose pain kills and yet keeps me alive.
I wish I could at least have done that for you. The only good in the whole episode.
And I left you to rot in the open field being bitten by ants and worms. Being eaten up by them alive. May be crows and may more be more of what I can not even imagine. What I know is you never would survive. Jerusalem was free at last from Palestinians!
No trumpets blew, no roaring drums I heard. No men came to lift me; no maiden dropped her handkerchief for me.
Even if this would have happened, would you have stopped coming to me in your dreams? Would I have escaped your last questioning sight? Would I have felt man enough as those great icons did?
How lucky they killed and forgot.
I repent for killing one for no reason at all, whose existence did not matter for the world, may be. And was not one of the followers of Baphomet. I repent O chameleon! Basking in the sun one fine day, killed by one of the Knight Templars.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Falling Apart

2007-05-03T19:35:00.002+05:30

I am Superman born on Krypton, left to rot in the void called Earth. I am making it a better place to rot.
I am employed to strategize, by psychos and serial killers.
I am leading an ideal life of celibacy; I am in love with actresses of animation films.
I am a chess player, found in every nook and corner of big metropolitans playing with crooks and thugs.
I am a reporter whose portfolio is to cover mass murders. I am even planning one for myself of more blood and bigger appeal.
I am a mourner of people’s character for stooping so low as to think of me as a human.
I am an adventurer, travelling far and wide to distant and far off places. I am not a runner of any cause, I just felt running from home.
I am a kid staring at the window display of an expensive outlet. I am not even mourning the inaccessibility of those toys. I am making my mind to love them or not by seeing their price tags first.
I am pervert who switches the television in hope of getting the news of bigger disasters than ever.
I am a convict who killed none but tried to end his own life.
I am an innocent passerby who fuels the brawl on the road and expects an entertainment to remember.
I am a regular feature in the confession box of churches, seeking forgiveness for bloodying one man or the other for no reason at all.
I am boxer who has no enemy other than his bathroom mirror, which shows the same hated image everyday.
I am seen at all blood banks, to donate blood. I am looking for a way to squeeze myself dry. I am in the hope to get it replaced with better.
I am the keeper of a graveyard, who wishes for ghosts to torment him, rather than sit alone at the dead of night.
I am the wildlife which does not frighten anyone in the living room. I am living inside a television.
I am Dickensian hero, who walks alone in the mist at the end of every novel. I am ashamed at what I am. I am a product of an inflated looser alter ego.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

No Ifs

2007-04-30T19:24:00.001+05:30

The writing is inspired by one of the articles of Ms. Pearl Sandhu, "if ???????????"

http://dontmarrythefly.blogspot.com/2007/04/you.html

Lots of lonely spaces, voids bit me when I tried to gaze back.
If I can not see you in those solitudes, and find darkness instead,
How would I be reminded that someone exists just for me?

I hurt you I accept that. I am sorry; in love I forgot you are mortal.
But we foment where it’s a possibility to be understood.
Be not quiet for your voice reminds me that there is still reason.

I was a slouching youngster, a nomad with no cause. I never knew when I changed.
Remember when I climbed on that cliff to pick those wild flowers for you?
If you would never have noticed me then, would you have fallen in love with me?

My life betrayed me everywhere, and I lost my innocent fantasies somewhere.
Never felt so needed before I met you. I still have a purpose to live.
Don’t stop asking. I loved you so that one day you might ask me for yourself.

My depravities were too hard to swallow. I knew I was not perfect.
Meeting you changed it all. I got my other half which I had left with God.
You compliment me wherever I lack. Stand tall. Don’t shame me by crouching.

I plucked them and I was adamant I would put the flowers in your hair myself.
When suddenly scared you looked into my eyes and asked, “What is our future?”
Then I mustered courage to speak my heart. Go on question my motives.

Yes I get agitated whenever you ask me things. But, I enjoy your desire to rule over me.
Thanks. For even after that you are the one who comes to make peace.
Always being in blind love is too monotonous. Ask me those questions of yours.

I loved you because you were so different from others. You loved me.
We were madly in love with our differences. Dearest, never be different.
For I loved the woman inside you. I don’t know which one it is.

You never were offensive.
The only offense to your name is stealing me from myself.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Buddha Smiles

2007-04-30T17:34:00.002+05:30

Trials and Balances; one penny here and one penny there.

Sooth your sense, justice comes at a price. Are you ready?
My half put to death again. It’s blood spilled at intervals.
Asked to forget. Taught to forgive. They teach me humanity.
I am ready to fight this time. Everything comes at a price.
They shredded my half for not believing in what they did.
Why should I listen to them now? I am different I believe.
I will avenge myself. It's my turn. Now, Buddha will smile.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Free Speech

2007-04-30T16:19:00.003+05:30

Ding dong bell,
If you’re anti, go to hell.
Did you get to find the Djinn;
Who was hiding in the bin?
On what I speak, you doubt;
Then we ought to have a bout!
I want favours pretty flat;
I go acting like a brat.
Just submit under my charm,
And so keep yourself from harm.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Metamorphosis

2007-04-27T16:46:00.001+05:30

Gobbling falsehood, made so easy, that I have started seeing ants, ruling the world.
No tears I have for the bloody road after an accident, I just wish the traffic jam ends soon.
Beggars tap the glass of my car; and I only think of removing the stains on it.
Aliens and their UFOs matter more to me than hungry families under the flyover.
My passion for music drowns the cries of my neighbour’s child, at least I’m enjoying.
Chinese are short and Arabs do not love their family; only I am civilized.
Latins are sexomaniac, Africans wait for us to deliver food; and my TV speaks truth.
Chastity of a girl becomes invisible to me, in heat; I profess love, not knowing her name.
People who fight for their rights, which I have encroached upon, are terrorists for me.
I kick the bitches around my home for their gluttony, I’m ignorant they are just pregnant.
“Realism means pessimism”; I justify my love for stupid cinema by this argument.
Ideas and humans are not what impress; I identify them with what tag they wear.
Deserts, arid and barren outposts do I relate to for their colours, not hardships.
Girls tend to impress me with their personalities; that’s the new name for their contours.
Metro “sexual” they called me; I was deaf before they named the other half; proud I’m.
I am a different man who has walked through the vicissitudes of time; I am stone now.
Underwent metamorphosis; my new name is “Brother Jonathan”, brother to my nerves.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Sentenced to Death

2007-04-25T15:40:00.001+05:30

Some years back I was standing behind a cage. A courtroom it seemed, from the serious look of the residents. Their faces animated to highlight their importance in their eyes, and to keep the mirage working, for the glory of their business should at least be in their cold eyes.
Nobody glorifies the hangman but, he himself!

Voices sinking and surging at the same time. For a moment, black out, and then a silent whisper would start roaring in my ear. Which ear; I don’t know.
There are phases in everyone’s life where right hand does not know where the left one is!

White collars, and black coats forming a sea around me. All seem to be of one face, one feature and no distinction. Which one seeking what objective could have been a case to study. But let it be, I was not interested in the grunting of the pigs while standing in a barn.
A child crying means pain or need; wailing children means a maternity ward!

My fault analyzed and I convicted packed into oblivion. Will they hang me? Or they will make me sit on an electric chair? Do I care? Yes, I do. At least my death should be of my choice. This can make for the last wish of a doomed human, a walking corpse. It’s true that people have paid before, to be killed in the manner that they would like to be. Sword coming in straight perpendicular motion, with the intention of breaking the neck and not severing the head, is a victor’s justice to the defeated. The defeated is respected for he fought valiantly and so deserves a clean death. Gelatin is destined for the hated. Their death does not mean anything to anyone, for they have stopped living long before in the eyes of their victims, who seek revenge. They are insulted to their deaths.
Immortality’s answer does not lie with longer years that you survive, but what brunt your name can absorb and still live to be an idea!

They packed me into a truck. Asking me was no one’s priority, so they did not and covered my eyes. With your eyes covered and your end nowhere in sight all the movements seem true. I was travelling with the speed of light, yet it was taking me years to reach; I don’t know where. Earth was rotating, and the revolutions made pretty good impact; I felt them; I alone felt them. The whole truck was shocked once. The road was rocky; they were travelling through some untried way. No, it was not the road but Moon’s gravitational pull; I felt it; I alone felt it.
To some, a journey is a daily routine; for some, this comes once in life; their end!

I have been brought here chained and it’s too hot here; too hot from the place we started from. This is a hard place, dried and rough. How do I know? Because, I can see. They gave me a shovel and opened my eyes, to the miracle of that arid land. In some time I was digging into the surface of a mound. Not much of a hard work if you don’t know that you are digging your own grave. I realize today, and that too today in all my life; it would have been better if I had been my tailor, my barber, my most trusted friend. One who carries your daily chores. See how neat my grave is; I am preparing it myself. And so it will be the best place for me to reside. My last abode. One has no control of the time, and the way of death, we just keep ourselves happy being in control that we have a place.
We become lazy, moment the word death is uttered; we just want to rest!

Still I don’t know how they will kill me. I am thinking why I did not take more time to dig. Why I don’t want to buy time. They are resting in some shades. And I am waiting for them to come and dictate to me the final command. They are rising from their places, tired. They do not want to waste time. Families to attend, children to play with. I wish them no guilt. And no remorse for my fate. I am emotionless, expressions of a rock.
I was no better; so what if this is not good. I have reserved a place for myself. I earned a grave. A hard earned grave, I have toiled my wish.
Wishes of life are like mosquitoes, miserable if they bite and fly, but we enjoy squashing them!

They asked me to face my grave. And sit with my knees on the ground. They will shoot me in the head. I have struck a jackpot. Not because I like the way, but as if I had broken a code. The most secret of all mysteries. A well kept secret indeed has opened in front of me. I will not take this anymore. I will not stay quiet now. I want to die my own death. I want to face the firing squad. My chest should bear the firing line. Hours ago I was in a courtroom. The journey from there to this place seemed years, but time has started running out. I have risen from death. I have feelings too. I want to turn, face them, mock them, ridicule them, tell them that it's my land, my last abode. They are the trespassers.
Courage and sleep can touch you anytime of the day, any place of life!

Suddenly I turned. I saw three men and an equal number of rifles. I don’t know if they are rifle or revolvers? Or any other name they call them by. I am hearing cracking voices, seeing hardened faces, sunken eyes, lined foreheads behind those guns.

I feel as if my chest is wet. And it’s hot too. It’s a twitching sensation. Thousands of needles have entered my body. My legs are drifting back. I have stepped on a pile of wet soil which I took out from my home. My legs are growing weak, my hands are shivering, they want to pick every needle from it’s hiding and punish it personally. I saw the ground, I tripped, I am in the air. It must have been a height of a man that I fell from. I am in my home, six feet under, gazing the sky.

It’s becoming colder; the night is falling. I am falling asleep. I am getting heavier and heavier. Wet mud is falling on my face.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Innocent Urge

2007-04-24T18:39:00.001+05:30

Is there even a higher state of ecstasy present in this world? A sensation which we all long to have, turning into a sin, an addiction at the same time.
From a state of an unwanted child, it enters into any pleasure, pain, emotion; breaking into our regular course of life, and we need something to quench the lust inside. This is a sensation which we all enjoy.
A problem, when faced we want to end it in the most gruesome manner. Putting everything aside; dangerously crossing the limits of civilized society. They won’t accept it, but for you, symbolism would stop having any meaning, and the need to have it sufficed stand as the highest priority.
Anything available might do to peel off layer by layer of the skin, which you tried to guard from all harm, forgetting that it was there to guard you.
And then when once it starts, you wish it would never end. That heavenly pleasure of skin over skin. Nails digging in the most devilish manner into ones flesh. But, we all cry, "May it never end!"
Time stops and the future become blurred. Circles inside circles appear in your eyes. Was it eyes or the vision? I can’t tell you, for I am a human too. And even for me time stopped when it happened.
Any sympathetic souls around, who would just give everything to see my time halt; my world cease. I will beg for this, I guess, and even go over way to appease later on. I don’t know if I will just turn my face away when the urge ends, but for one moment like that I might stoop to the lowest levels of my dignity. Would I?
Even thinking stops when it gets to your head.
May be if I had experienced sex I would have spoken with a greater command. This is orgasm probably. And the best form of orgasm, any human can have.

My back is itching, and I would accept anyone to scratch. May be any pencil, ruler, pen, pin or pad would do, even if it wounds me.
I got hold of that point. It is continuing; I want it to continue forever. People are watching me with disgust. I don’t care.
Nirvana at last.

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Why not in April?

2007-04-23T19:56:00.002+05:30

It rains whenever you like to have,

Just believe that it's cooler above those clouds.
Wish the clouds would melt sometime, giving way to rain.

It rains whenever you like to have,
Dare to face the sky and exhale with all your might.
Hope your lungs would blow the heat away.

It rains whenever you like to have,
Perception makes difference, and matters whom you ask.
For a lot of times, it’s just faith that heals.

It rains whenever you like to have,
Keep your eyes open, and be ready to believe.
Yes it rains in April too!!!!!!!!!!!!

The writing is inspired by one of the articles of Ms. Pearl Sandhu, "April Rain"
http://dontmarrythefly.blogspot.com/2007/04/april-rain.html

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

Flight in Question

2007-04-19T18:35:00.001+05:30

"You speak and myself do I hear;
Yet the barriers of sounds we crossed none,
Not a leaf's bristle, not a cat's purr;
On which would the dove first fly?”

Abbas Jalis Rizvi

चिन्तन की माला

2007-04-19T12:38:00.002+05:30

सहज नहीं चिन्तन की माला!
अस्त व्यस्त गीतों के पन्ने, रागों का एक तान् नवेला,
काव्य, कृति, कविता यह नहीं है, अनुरागी, श्यामल स्याही का जाला।
सहज नहीं चिन्तन की माला।

मुझको छूने किरण चंचला, पग पग ढूंढें रात नई सी।
अंधियारे का लोभ दिखाकर, शून्य में भी हो बात नई सी।
कुंठा मैं जीवित होकर भी, आतुर है किस स्थान को जाने।
कौन सी अभिलाषा है मन में; क्या कोई धान, किसान को जाने?

पर स्वर्ण मृग बन मरिछ उछले, खाने राम चंद्र का भाला।
सहज नहीं चिन्तन की माला।

अब्बास जलीस रिज़वी

आवाज़ के पीछे

2007-04-18T19:28:00.004+05:30

दफ्तर खाली है, दूर तक किसी कि आवाज़ नहीं आ रही। कहीँ किसी कोने में फ़ोन की घंटी बज रही है। कोई बेचारा वक़्त भूला सा लग रह है। ना जाने क्यों उससे मुझे लगाव सा हो गया। क्यों मैं वोह घंटी ढूंढ़ना चाहता हूँ?
शायद इसलिये कि वक़्त मेरे और उसके लिए एक है। दिन और रात मिल रहे हैं, पर हमारी सोच अभी कहीँ यह मानने को तैयार नहीं है कि जाने का वक़्त आ गया।
घंटी फिर बज उठी। कोई किसी को ढूँढ रहा हैं; कभी हाथ को हाथ सुझाई नहीं देता, ऐसा ही कुछ हाल होता सा लग रह है। उस घंटी में बड़ा दर्द है। कोई हालात का मारा है, मदद के लिए चीख रहा है। मैं उसका रुन्धा हुआ गला महसूस कर सकता हूँ। फ़ोन की आवाज़ में कहीं उसकी साँसे मिल गयी सी लगती हैं।
कोशिश कर के उठा, आवाज़ कि तरफ बढ़ना चाहता हूँ। पर जैसे कोई लुका छिपी खेल रह हो। अब के यूँ मालूम हुआ के पीछे की तरफ मुड़ना चाहिऐ; ना जाने वोह मुझे कैसे जानता है। ना जानता तो मज़ाक क्यों कर रहा होता? आम हालात में कोई इस तरह से मज़ाक नहीं करेगा पर अगर मैं नज़र आ जाऊं तो हर कोई दीवाना सा हो जाता है।
चलो अब आवाज़ का पीछा करने का वक़्त आ गया है।
पूरी दुनिया पागल हो गयी है, बे वक़्त सब की नींद उचाट करने का ठेका लिए लोग घूम रहे हैं। मेरे अकेलेपन का फायदा उठा कर मेरे साथ खिलवाड़ करने के लिए बेताब हैं।
अपनी सूनी सांसों का जाल बिछा कर मुझसे ठ्हगी कर रहे हैं। मैं क्यों परछाइयों के पीछे भाग रह हूँ। आवाजों के पीछे दौड़ रह हूँ। तो फिर ज़रा सांस लूं और हर दिन की तरह अपना सामान समेटूं। सड़क पर निक्लूं और किसी और आवाज़ के पीछे...

अब्बास जलीस रिज़वी

Can’t you see I am dead?

2007-04-18T16:46:00.001+05:30

My carcass is rotting in an open field; a gift to scavengers in all the possible unnatural forms. Then sun with all it’s might spreading it’s light over me. Decaying my corpse, fuelling the process of my end.
I will perish soon from the face of the vast tract which was my last abode, never to be found again physically. To be found is a dream, to be hunted is nightmare.
I was hunted down to this ground and left to take my last breathe. Betrayed even by my hunters. Was I of no use to them? Surrendered to my fate, I accept. I accept my worth. Worth none with open eyes, and even useless when cold.
Look they are not even eating me.
O! “vultures” I pray you rip my skin apart and clear my bones of my flesh. Do I not taste good to you? You have not pierced your beak into me, you have not even dipped your claws in my blood. Don’t make judgement in haste. “My last hope of being valued”, prey on me.
I lost somewhere in between. My way to what I was stands missing till today. I am even lost in the tunnel of death. Still no light at the end; or is it not the end yet? Painful eventuality, a climax of perdition. And I am still circling the barren outpost, where I laid for long and did my final counting.
Wasted life; and it even lead to no utility when I was lighter by the weight of my soul.
Never imagined my inconsolability was to this extent.
I am a feast. Come and tear me apart. Make me feel useful. Don’t be humane. It does not pain any more. Can’t you see I am dead?

Abbas Jalis Rizvi