March 9th, 2018 / 06:11 PM

دل کو توفیق زیاں ہو تو غزل ہوتی ہے
زہر غم بادہ چکاں ہو تو غزل ہوتی ہے

فکر تپ تپ کے نکھرتی رہے کندن کی طرح
آگ سینے کی جواں ہو تو غزل ہوتی ہے

دھیمی دھیمی سی نوا سلسلہ جنبان ابد
پردۂ جاں میں نہاں ہو تو غزل ہوتی ہے

دھڑکنیں صورت الفاظ بکھرتی جائیں
دل معانی کی زباں ہو تو غزل ہوتی ہے

آنچ مٹی کے کھلونوں کی طرح ملتی جائے
ذہن خوابوں سے تپاں ہو تو غزل ہوتی ہے

روزن ماہ سے پچھلے پہر اک شوخ لقا
جانب دل نگراں ہو تو غزل ہوتی ہے

روح شب اپنی اداؤں کی تب و تاب لیے
خلوت آرائے بیاں ہو تو غزل ہوتی ہے

ایک سیال کسک جادہ کشائے تخلیق
فن کی نبضوں میں رواں ہو تو غزل ہوتی ہے

تجربے درد کی شبنم میں نہائیں حرمتؔ
گل فشاں شعلۂ جاں ہو تو غزل ہوتی ہے
حرمت الااکرام

Crime

March 6th, 2018 / 05:01 PM

One of the few pages I never fail to skip in every newspaper are the crimes and court section. My daily start of the day involve five newspapers that I read. No I am not a journalist And every time I have tried to find why I am still addicted to this old medium of news in the age of Twitter especially when it’s polluted by many classless desis. Twitter was one of my most favourite social spaces but with time I have only found it to be declining and declining. The old screenshots that I have from earlier days show that Twitter used to have a better population which created a better space. It was reflected in the hashtags of that time. But stop whatever you are doing and just look at the hashtags from Pakistan now. The quality has deteriorated to a point that you would not want to waste your creative energy flowing through the sewage called Twitter. After stopping my presence and all these social places I am able to finish more than 50 books every year for the last 3 years in a row. But even after all this debacle my love for newspapers still exist. But instead of going for the more traditional medium of paper I am able to read 5 of them online and 3 as their digital editions. All these newspapers a section that I never failed to read is the crime and courts section. The people who commit crimes are humans. Everyone is quick enough to judge them and even prosecute them to the point where the are bound to spend times of your life behind bars. But nobody raises the question of wire crime was done in the first place. Every cube of news from even the remotest parts of the country that bring such news of crime always knock some portions of my mind and make me ask myself why a person who did that did so in the first place? It is very hard to look inside the heart and mind of a person. That is the reason why we judge others based on their actions and based on what they say and if the two things don’t converge, enable the person under our judgement as unworthy. Our words and our actions are just reflections of our mind and our feelings and our intentions. But sometimes no matter how much gold someone has buried inside them what the other see just me and knife made out of gold which was used to murder someone. It is not one person who gets murdered but a part of the social fabric is torn each and every time someone breaks the law. From my earliest memories to the current ones whenever I have read such crime and Courts news I feel as nothing is changed over decades. Man is as Savage as he was many years ago. Would you guarantee that a person who has been to a university or has any sort of higher formal education not capable of any crime or not capable of breaking any law? I was thinking about this when I saw a person in a very expensive car and very expensive suit driving his car in the wrong direction. He might have been a driver but I know that he was not because he is the head of the department where I work. I would suggest everyone to start reading this one section of any newspaper they can get on a daily basis. Trust me it is an inspiration to write fiction. You need truths to tell a lie. And you need to create a lie to tell a few truths.

WickR

March 2nd, 2018 / 11:02 PM

سنا ہے گورنمنٹ سب کچھ دیکھ رہی ہے۔ یہ بھی سنا ہے کہ گورنمنٹ سب کچھ سن رہی ہے۔ اس سے ایک چیز کا دلاسہ تو ہوتا ہے کہ اور کوئی سنے یا نہ سنے کم از کم کوئی تو ہے جو میری باتیں سن رہا ہے۔ اکثر لوگوں کے لیے یہ فکر کی بات نہیں لیکن مجھے کبھی کبھی اس حقیقت سے خوف آتا ہے کہ وہ جذبہ جسے میں کسی تیسرے یا شاید کبھی کسی دوسرے سے بھی بانٹ نہ سکوں وہ کوئی مٹی سے بنا ہوا انسان جو اسی گورنمنٹ کے لیے کام کر رہا ہے وہ ان جذبوں کو دیکھ بھی رہا ہے سن بھی رہا ہے اور سمجھ بھی رہا ہے۔ کسی ایک انسان کے پاس ایسی طاقت کا آجانا خطرے کی علامت ہے جو طاقت صرف انسان سے اوپر کی طاقت ہی کو زیب دیتی ہے. کسی کا پیچھا کرنا بہت مہنگا ہے. یہ کسی کی سنی ہوئی بات نہیں. خود کر کے دیکھ چکا ہوں. لوگوں سے مار پڑنے کا ڈر پولیس سے پکڑے جانے کا خوف اور ساتھ ہی ساتھ اس چیز کا بھی امکان کہ جس کا پیچھا کر رہا ہوں وہ بچ کر ہی نہ نکل جائے موجود رہتا ہے. لیکن اس بندے کے لیے کیا خوف جو میرے لکھے ہوئے ہر لفظ کو پڑھ رہا ہے، ہر پیغام اس کی آنکھوں سے گزرتا رہے، کوئی تصویر اس سے چھپی نہیں. میرے اکیلے کی بات ہو تو شاید سمجھوتا کر بھی لوں. لیکن گفتگو کا کوئی دوسرا سرا بھی ہوتا ہے. پچھلے کچھ ماہ کے اخبارات ایسی خبروں سے بھرے ہیں جس میں حکومت کے لوگوں نے اور اداروں نے عام شہریوں کی گفتگو پر نظر رکھی. میں نے اپنے ساتھ کام کرنے والے ایک ڈاکٹر کو اس حقیقت کے بارے میں بتایا. تو اس نے بھی وہی کہا جو اس سے پہلے پانچ لوگ بول چکے تھے کہ میرے پاس ایسے کون سے راز ہیں جو اگر گورنمنٹ کو پتہ چلے بھی تو میرا کوئی نقصان ہو جائے گا. گھر آ کر میں نے فرصت کے لمحے میں ایک نیی ایپلیکیشن دریافت کی جس کی سب سے بڑی خوبی یہ ہےکہ اس پر کی جانے والی گفتگو کوئی تیسرا نہیں سن سکتا. کم ازکم ابھی تک تو صورتحال ایسی ہی ہے. مگر گورنمنٹ آپکو کب سکون سے رہنے دے گی. مگر جونہی میں نے یہ اپلیکیشن چلائی وہاں گفتگو کرنے والا کوئی نہیں تھا. مجھے ایسا لگا جیسے میں کسی ویران قصبے میں آگیا . وہاں وہ کمبخت بھی نہیں تھا جو میری ہر بات پڑھاتا ہے سنتا ہے سمجھتا ہے. مگر وہ وہاں ضرور تھا جو صرف بات ہی نہیں دل کی ہر خواہش کو بھی جانتا ہے لیکن پھر بھی میری ساری دعائیں پوری نہیں کرتا

Moleskine

March 1st, 2018 / 10:44 PM

I had been writing what comes to my mind for many years now. It is true that words craft history and history crafts words. We have seen many people try to forge history into their own favour by simply changing the words which reach an innocent mind. Just look at the movies from the last month. People from a particular religion are trying to portray a very Falls version of the reality or at least that version of the reality which we already have accepted for many years. But who knows that might be another similarities buy a man or a group of men trying to write history the easier way i.e., by simply changing a few words and monitoring the medium so that people start accepting the truth which is nothing but fabricated. It is very hard to separate truth from what actually occurred. Just try to find a few 20 year old pictures of the place you have studied. Sadly you would not find many because either of two realities. First the data from that time does not exist. Second if somebody even took pictures or collected any form of data from that time the data is in such a medium that it exists in the personal collection of the person who created it or collected it and has not made any way for any person from the modern time to find it. That’s the reason whenever I try to find old pictures of the places I have visited or lived, I don’t find any substantial amount of data because either people have failed to create the data or they failed to let any of the data they created reach us. Now consider the history which was taught to us in our schools and colleges. After the collapse of any civilization people following that civilization come to the reality that what was taught to their students was nothing more than a pro government propaganda. 500 years ago India and Pakistan were one combined piece of land. But after opening any modern History book you would find the same heroes turned villain as you cross the border. It is because the governments across the border at different and they would simply label the heroes of the other side as villains. It is a very old war. The War fought by words. Or if I put it better The War fought by manipulating words. A lot of the things I have done are very boring. Yet from my perspective I still find them important enough that I have documented almost all of them. There have been moments when I had no camera with me and the only memory of that event is what is in my head. That is why I try to write them down before I am diagnosed with Alzheimer’s if I reached the old age. But being human I fear that even I can try to contaminate reality in my favour by manipulating words and creating moments that had never happened. But if I had done anything of that sort, there would be no boring moments at all. Hence the proof of the reality is the boring flavor itself. A very old soul lives inside me that still finds paper for more attractive than any other modern medium in the advent of social media. I have a carton which is full of pages and diaries from the past years. For the first time in life I saw a Moleskine at a stationery shop in Dubai. The shop was closed and I was about to miss my flight which is why I was never able to buy it. That regret haunted me for some years. Even when I moved to Karachi, I asked so many vendors to import them. But every time they had a reason for not doing so. Yesterday I went to a place where I never expected to find a moleskine. Just the sight of that was a pleasant surprise much like the time travel itself and seeing again an ex who now is a fat, ugly mother of a child. But the most time was still as slim as it was many years ago. I Wonder What I would write on it. There are some stories and words that still exist only in the head. I am too careful about my words but the pages on which these words appear have been misplaced more than once. I hope the moleskine I just got keeps them protected, inspired and safe until I pass these words to someone worthy.

Hafiz In Love

February 17th, 2018 / 12:09 PM

I got to know about a Hafiz who fell in love with a girl. The whole story got published in the news and like everybody else I also got to know about the details of the story from the news sources. Hafiz sahab is the son of the caretaker of the mosque who is also serving as the local Imam leading the prayers 5 times a day. No parent never tries to make their children a monster or a criminal. I believe that somewhere down the line they fell short in raising their child as a responsible human which is why even after memorizing the Holy Quran he was not able to get any formal education and works as a welder. He will not be the first person or the last person who make anybody very repulsive towards religion because a lot of the people act as the contractors of religion or if I be honest act like special humans of God sent to train other humans. These are the ones whose behaviour in society has only caused damage to others. The Hafiz Sahab fell in love with a girl who was already engaged to one of her cousins. But because of his bad company, Hafiz was able to acquire weapons which he used to scare the family of the girl and also the one she was engaged to. I am very sure that the father of this Hafiz Sahab would have come to know about the actions of his son from the neighborhood prior to this episode. But a time comes in the life of every man when he is not able to impose his beliefs on his children. The same happened as the news sources have detailed that one evening the Hafiz Sahab lost his patience and went to attack the family of the girl after the evening prayer. Coincidently the father of the girl was not at home but his luck was out when he arrived at home at the same moment and was also shot dead by the Hafiz Sahab, the perfect man of religion. In this incident 5 lives were lost including that girl’s whom Hafiz claimed to love. This is not the first or the last time when somebody had committed such a heinous crime feeding to his emotions and taking the law into their own hands. The criminal is already on the run and the family of a girl comprising of 5 junior brothers and an aunt have moved with a poor uncle who is a taxi driver. This is another example when people fail to understand what love actually is. Many times young men become obsessed with ephemeral attractions for a woman and assume this emotion to be love. Another woman lost her life because of love but who will remember her tomorrow. Many will not even remember her even today. Sassi and Heer were lucky in one matter, their name is still remembered. Here she didn’t even love that man of God as most huffaz claim themselves to be. This is not out of repulsion but a fact that he is not the first Hafiz I scorn. Don’t think that evil can never cross the walls of a madrassa. Many evil are born there, some out of sodomy.

Unwanted Wants.

February 10th, 2018 / 07:07 PM
I am still an early morning person and before beginning my day and leaving for work the first thing I check is the newspapers that the paperwala slides under the door. It is like a ritual that I perform everyday. One of the best things I have been blessed with is living the life of a day-person. At times I feel that my wife would be very angry over this habit of mine. But I guess I love the sun and the sunlight as much as I would love her. I still adore the smell and the touch of the classic newspaper which the modern digital electronic medium lack. Even today I have subscribed to three newspapers which are more than inspiring and not just being traditional old news source. As I flip pages and reach the Crimes and Courts section, I pray that I don’t come across the news of people killing their own children. But still the monsterity of humans lives on. At least twice every week I find such news which has become norm of the society that people dump their kids especially daughters into the trash. Our society has seen one such man who took care of such homeless children whom the society easily labels as a bastard. Abdul Sattar Edhi. There is only one way humans come into existence and we all have followed the same path except for Prophet Adam. We all have remained a product of love so labelling a child unwanted and pushing him to live with the stigma of being a bastard, we are not less of any criminal. What happens to those dead bodies people find in dumpsters, graveyards or open places. We come across such news, we read them, we see them and like always tomorrow we forget that news and continue with our lives. My mood was fine when I woke up. It was fine when I read the political pages. It was even fine when I read that my favourite team lost the match last night. But my mood took a severe hit when I read the news of a child found in a dumpster and the police has already registered a case against an unknown woman. There are some evils that have lived longer than generations of a nation and I think this is one of such evils which will outlive this very nation and the nation that will take its place. God has said it, science has proved it and philosophy points to it that this world is only a suitable place for the fittest. Our moral decline has proven that we are not fit to live in this world and with this momentum someone will replace us eventually. Someone more fit than us. I feel that the biggest evil we as Pakistanis face is the lack of education. People who are lucky enough to go to schools and colleges are also not refined enough to obey parking laws, traffic rules and the law in general. Now that is not a sign of an educated person. What good is that school or college or any formal education if you are not able to live your life as a law abiding citizen. Under good clothes and trimmed beards walk many monsters wearing human skin. The moment people heard about the death of Edhie, people were divided into two groups. One who supported him for what he did in his life and the other who called him nothing but a monster who waged a war against God and protected and raised those unwanted bastard kids. But just imagine for a moment and answer the question that what is the fault of a boy or a girl who are just coming into this world and don’t even know the harsh realities of life. How can one be so cruel or a monster to push such a young and innocent soul towards death. We seriously lack as a nation. Education is the only thing that can save us. But we are so stubborn that we don’t even want to learn. This society is a very evil and a bipolar society. People live at two extremes. On one side are those who claim God in everything. And on the other end are those who claim to be bigger than God. Wanted is this education the lack of which is making unwanted children. Why are people so ashamed of asking for a condom or a contraceptive pill? I remember once being at a Pharmacists when a man walked in and was too shy to ask for a condom. People don’t fear the consequences they bring upon themselves when they push a child towards death, a child that is so unwanted to them that most of them end up in trash. But they are not afraid of stopping all the misery by just opening up their mind to kill shame and taboos. Our morality has fallen to such a level that I feel it would be nothing short of a miracle to bring it back to a level of normality again and the only thing that can do it is the miracle of education. I still remember that news from 2017 when a 5 day old girl was buried in miani sahib kabristan, Lahore. The parents came to the grave of the child the very next day for prayers and were shocked to find the grave wide open and the body missing. To this day nobody has a clue of what happened or who took it. I have a very strong gut feeling that the body of that girl would never be found again. Yet when we pick up books of stories to tell tales to children, all the monsters we find don’t have a face of any human but as we grow up we see the bitter reality that the only monster you need to be afraid of is the one you see in the mirror.

Verdicts

February 9th, 2018 / 05:28 PM

The verdict of the case is out. Two people have been convicted and have been sentenced to death. And a whole gang pardoned or given very light punishments. But the drama has not ended. In fact one of the very evil political parties has taken to the streets and are protesting in favour of those who killed a man in the name of God. It’s not the first time somebody has been killed in the name of god and definitely it’s not the last time either. But in a country where blasphemy is a very sensitive subject we all have seen how it was manipulated in silencing a person for personal interest. It is more shocking that people are still supporting a killer. The father of Mashal Khan has also expressed his disagreement over the verdict of this case. I too failed to understand why everybody who played a role of being an accomplice to a murderer not awarded the same and justful punishment. What has happened to Mashal Khan can happen to anyone. But all the people to whom injustice is done are not lucky enough that for them a political party stages a protest especially when that party comprises only of mullahs standing united under the flag of self-proclaimed God’s good men. The only beard I like is either my own or of a girl who was my classmate in medical college. She had very long hair on her legs which made me imagine her in a beard. Sadly, she is equally violent in my imagination.

DNA

February 7th, 2018 / 04:39 AM
DNA or deoxyribonucleic acid is the chemical that life-forms depend upon to transfer information from one generation to the next. That is why a goat is born to a goat and a lion is born to a lion but there is no guarantee that a doctor will be born to a doctor. Even if the possibility existed, I would still try to throw some X-rays and mutate the genetic information so that the next person is not a doctor and enjoys a stress-free life. In the recent days this word has been in the news because of the Zainab case. A killer has been identified using this biological material. Now that plot is very thick. And I don’t trust every news I get. There are so many suggestions one can bring forth when solving a mystery or a crime but one of the things our system lacks is the human data that is bound to exist but doesn’t in the first place. How many people you know who have their dental records or their DNA record? Most of the people I know are not even careful about the data that they generate on their phones, tablets and computers. They have no records of their travel tickets, old invoices, medical prescriptions etc. That is one of the reasons why a lot of pictures of women that end up being misused on the internet come from all those stolen or lost phones that reach the market. We don’t use encryption and we don’t care about the data that we generate. It is this reason that during many investigations a critical piece of information doesn’t exist in the first place. When any Pakistani signs up for his or her National Identity Card (NIC) he is bound to provide certain information like his photograph and the impression of his fingerprints. What if we incorporate some biometric system that a data of our dental records and DNA exist in a national database which can help in solving difficult crime cases. Money spent at the right moment is a fraction of that money which is spent in emergency. I have heard 1 fascinating thing about DNA that it itself can store tremendous amount of information only in a few grams of it. From the time videos have infiltrated our digital lives and places like Facebook and YouTube exist so much amount of data is being generated on a daily basis that I face the dilemma of shifting to a more economic and stable form of storage. I agree that the prices of hard drives have fallen drastically over the years but how cool it would be to just generate a few grams of DNA and store information on it whenever you want. But being a man I know once you generate a few grams you are not able to generate another few grams instantly no matter how powerful the attraction is. That is one price of being a man.

Murder. Mystery. Mahesh.

February 5th, 2018 / 04:08 AM
I heard the news of a politician and his wife being found in a room after being shot dead. It looks like a plot from the next Hollywood blockbuster but I guess even someone from Pakistan would not try to make a movie or at least a drama on this happening. A famous politician of Sindh was found dead and in two days the police have come to a conclusion that first he shot his wife. Later on he committed suicide. I have lived in neighborhoods where people are more friendly and open to each other. At least that is one way of defining a poor neighborhood. A perk of a poor neighborhood is that people know a lot of about their neighbours. This can be a blessing sometimes while mostly it’s a nuisance. The investigations are still underway but the official statement that comes from the department of investigation states that the politician had doubts about the character of his wife which is why he first killed her and then took his own life. If anyone can get inspiration from this news and even the cast from this country, then that would be Mahesh Bhatt. I mean just look at it. The story has glamour, the story as politics and even a bit of sex. A politician kills his wife. Thick plots. Tall houses. If I had money in spare, I would definitely Invest in making a movie about it. But remember, truth is not always that comes to you from official sources. What if there is more to the story. I tried to follow up on that news story which happened in the same neighborhood a few months back where a security guard killed a boy of a powerful policeman. God knows what happened next but what we heard from the newspapers and television back then was that the Bodyguard had relationships with the mother of that boy and the boy found both of them together in a room one night. That led to a fight which the security guard claims to be just an accident. I don’t know what happened to that guard. Who knows what happens behind tall and thick walls in a posh neighborhood. Many have a fetish about this subject. I live in an apartment the balcony of which blesses me with decent views that sometimes become indecent. Now that is a story I also like especially when I have more than one cameras and long zoom lenses. Mahesh Bhatt is not wanted in this case at all. I don’t like him in the first place, the kharish wala director.

(Random photograph)

See The Sea

February 4th, 2018 / 03:44 AM / Karachi
I went to the sea today. it is not the first time I went there. and it is not the last time I would go there. There are so many memories that are associated with the sea both good and bad. there are few people that always remind me of the sea and the sea always reminds me of a few people. it’s not just the people I remember all those mistakes as well about which I wish I had never committed. almost all my life I have lived in places that are next to the sea which is why sea became a friend from very old time. Like true love or like God himself sea looks very timeless to me.It never ages. A part of me always fantasizes about the romantic element of the sea. even the religious books have so many events and stories that revolve around the sea. Half of the history says that Moses parted the river and the other half talks about a sea. If the world becomes divided on this point I would take the side of the sea instead of a river. The word Samandar has been used at so many places in poetry. but the sea that I am able to visit has become polluted over the years. We as a nation are not honest with the blessings that God has given us, sea being one of them. A polluted sea is like a polluted life. Just like an idea that infiltrates your mind and takes hold of your mind polluting almost everything the mind controls, once the sea is polluted it becomes very hard for life to be normal again. But my trip was tiring, I enjoyed every bit I spent in water even though more than once the tide seemed to take me with it. Like a good friend Sometimes the sea talks back to me.And like every good friend we make an evil plan.What I was too tired at that time to execute that plan.Took a shower and removed all this and that was stuck in my clothes and in my head.Came home and slept with tired and painful muscles.I guess every friend gives you some pain.