Through the eyes of terror

Through his suicide note, I tried to see the world through the eyes of a bright and soft spoken Muslim student, who carried out a shocking suicide attack on a campus in the United Kingdom, killing and injuring many. When I tried to imagine the reasons which would have prompted him and maybe some others too to take such drastic measures, I felt that there might be more to such events than mere fundamentalist idealisms. The event and the character are purely fictional .The opinions mentioned here are just intended to serve as the thoughts of the characters present in this piece, and are not intended to hurt anyone or their religious sentiments.

24 – December – 2007
London
It was Allan's birthday party today. I badly wanted to attend and would surely have gone if not for those gang of poker-nosed snobs. I wonder why they act so important. I just hate that smirk on their face when they see me at college. Hollow blonde skulls and pink cheeks are not anything to be so high-handed about.

What does it matter to them if I don’t shave and I dress up the way I do? It’s perfectly fine if they think that I dress up like some cartoon character with an odd name(I must confess I have never seen that cartoon),and that my beard looks like a beehive, and that the 'resin' on my forehead looks creepy, and that every bearded and traditional Muslim is a terrorist, but there is no reason why they should be telling it in front of so many other people in the room, people with whom I would have to study for three more years, right through my graduation.Are'nt they changing the way those people would look at me?

There are far too may wrong impressions based on appearances in this world and it is nothing short of a criminal offence to force your own malformed judgments upon someone else's conscience.

They would never understand why I look or dress up oddly or why I am a "loner", as they call me. Like my father did, I wear kurtas, the ones which my beloved mother stitched for me. The satanic mark on my forehead, as I heard one of them saying, is the mark of every pious and proud Muslim who grinds his forehead into the ground during the daily Namas.And I skip parties, as I feel it is not exactly a very good idea to be at a place where you know you would doubtlessly look like a startled wet kitten. And moreover, parties are not a thing which someone, who has his own and five other mouths back home to feed from his meager monthly stipend, can afford. And speaking about terrorism, aren’t the unending wars that are waged by these governments terrorism? Didn’t they take lives of thousands of innocents? Does not the terror that they claim is unleashed in the name of Islam, pale in comparison to the widespread destruction they have unleashed, in almost all parts of the world, during the major part of the previous century? And is not wooing hungry innocents with food and money to join their religion and embrace their faith, a kind of soft terrorism too?

Don’t these damned fools realize that they, with their unwhispered-to ears, unshaved heads and uncut foreskins, would similarly appear out of place and ridiculed upon in our homeland, the sacred land of God, The almighty Allah, the compassionate and the merciful? Why do they suggest that I should change, when I and my family have lived this way for all this years? What I do and what I should be doing should be none of their business.

Not that any of those taunts would affect me. Like hell it would. But what disturbs me most is the absurd and unfair set of laws, on which life runs here. Half the assignments and project works in our university are group activities, and by the time the groups are assigned, I along with another guy with a similar fate as mine end up together, forming the only team with two members among many other teams with five. We are so unwelcome in most quarters here that even getting a part time job seems next to impossible. In spite of our best efforts, it is not possible to match the efforts of bigger groups, solely due to the lack of funds and access to costly books and study materials. We end up getting the least grades in majority of the group assignments, and by the time job offers pour in, we would be the ones who land the last and least desirable ones. For none of our fault, we would continue to be second-rate citizens and maybe father underprivileged generations, one after the other.

I now realize that it is payback time. Sometime back, I happened to read a teaching by Ayatollah Ruhullah Khomeini from The English Translation of Pak Sar Jamin Sad Bad. He said-" "Kill all the infidels, as they want to kill you. Kill them, stab them right into the heart and slice them into pieces. You cannot control people without using sword. Therefore, we need the sword. Swords are the keys of heaven. Those who do not want to be involved in Jihad, the Holy Terror, but want peace instead, I want to spit on their face." I could not, and still cannot agree with the underlying thread of severe violence and cannot justify the bloodshed in the name of Allah, but now, I do see a tiny percentage of truth in it. I still don’t think that killing in the name of religion would take one closer to Allah.

But nevertheless, I can’t help feeling that the world would only be purer with the blood of these hypocrites. My fellowmen would have that many less people to contend with.Insha Allah, I have decided that by tomorrow when the sun sets, the world shall be purer, and the hands that shall do the cleansing would be mine.
Afzal Muhammad

The taunts from his classmates might have been more of a constructive criticism, except for the occasional ridicule. Maybe he had taken it a bit too much to heart. When we pass judgments on others we have to be careful so that it never affects their self-belief, and never leaves them feeling left out and depressed. It is much worse if it wounds their religious psyche, in which case the consequences could be even more fearful. Also religions, instead of concentrating on matters like strict adherence to their beliefs, laws and customs, must help people realize the importance of less of provocation and more of tolerance.

Of broken china, cracked tiles and unwelcome bygones

Today morning, as usual, I was sipping my morning tea and pacing around the living room, preoccupied with some pending tasks at office. I walk around pretty fast, so much so that, when my mom entered the room, holding some washed porcelain cups and saucers, I collided head on with her. The cups and saucers went straight down, and in a second, the two hundred and fifty square feet living room was strewn with all kinds of broken bits of china. The scene, inspite of the mess it created, seemed quite beautiful to me, as beautiful as a floral carpet, maybe because it was solely my handiwork. The bits came in all sizes-plain and white, plain with flowery patterns, some slightly discoloured, some exquisitely shaped as if by some strange design, some clumsily, some with their insides out, some big, some small, some nearby, some at the far corner of the room-and as if to add to the china's paisley design, there where cracks in the floor tiles too, cutting a criss-cross pattern across three or four of them.

Mom was palpably angry, the china being new and quite expensive and the floor tiles relatively newly laid. But I was so immersed in the spectacle, that her high octane tirade went in through one ear and straight out through the other, just as a superfast express train would cruise in and then out through a tunnel. Instead, what struck me then was a sudden idea, something I felt I could write down somewhere, without getting it into end up in the waste bin. I am someone, who loves to write a bit, but quite often my imagination lets me down, it does not get aroused as much and as often as I would like it to. That is why I adore and am even slightly jealous of those who successfully churn out one novel after other, each set in a different milieu, with different characters and storylines.Unfortunately, most of my such ideas, spark off literary endeavors which mostly end up as ill-fated works with a more than lavish sprinkling of unintentional plagiarism. Though unintentional, this instantly dawns on one of my friends who gives it the first read, and makes sure that the piece never gets to see the light of day.

The broken porcelain, I felt, drew a parallel to our memories, scattered across our consciousness, some of them vivid and could be gathered with minimal effort, like the bits of china which had fallen near my foot. Some of them, faded like an old sepia toned photograph, are hidden away deep under layers and layers of the past as the pieces, hard to recover, just as the bits which had fallen to the deep corners of the room were. There are colorful recollections as there are pretty broken pieces-the anticipation on holding a wrapped birthday gift, the pure joy as a kid on the homebound journey after the examinations with a long awaited vacation ahead, the mindless indulgence of first love, the first smile from your newborn kid on his hospital crib. And then we have the painful and less pretty recollections like the oddly shaped discolored pieces of porcelain-the memories of separations, of bereaval, of rejection and failure, of being left out, of taunts and ridicules, of the many tears shed in loneliness-which leave wounds in the mind even more prominent and lasting than the cracks on the floor.

The short philosophical mood was cut short by a few more extra decibels from mom, and the whole thing had to be cleaned up soon. The fountainhead of my imaginative juices were cruelly swept away, gathered in a dirty, crude sack, and dumped away in a remote corner of our courtyard. Some time later, when I spotted the sack, sitting desolately in a corner, I felt it had another story to say. Maybe memories, aptly symbolized by the porcelain rubble, be it good or bad, happy or sad, are always a burden, an unwelcome and heavy baggage. Every thought about the bygones takes our time-be it mulling over missed opportunities or basking in the glory of one's achievements which might be as old as the hills-we loose an opportunity to savor the present.
Maybe it is best to dump the past, never dwell on it, and manfully try to live totally in the present.After all,today is a gift, that is why it is called the present.

The Wallet with a Hole

On my last birthday, I happened to get a wallet and a shirt along with some other tidbits as a gift from my colleagues at office. The wallet reminded me of one incident on my last visit to Bangalore.

Ah! Bangalore. There aren't many souls alive who could resist, when the garden city, with her myriad colors and seductive charms welcomes him, with outstretched hands into her lovely cosmopolitan bosom. Sadly, as is the way with any other pretty mistress, too much indulgence with her gifts could leave you a poor old pauper. More so if you're still a student tugging at your parent's purse strings for subsistence. This precisely summed up my plight then, leaving me with few alternatives to ogling and window shopping. Still, too much of the same thing would be boring. Having had enough of the pointless strolls through umpteen shopping malls, I picked my spot. A worn down shop at the end of the road - they sold leather goods.

I was feeling very important. Clad in my odd rainbow colored shirt and tattered jeans, I would have been far from being a fashion statement. I am not telling you that it would be much better if I had worn perfect-fit suits tailored just for me from Suavecito’s. It wouldn’t have been any better. But somehow, I just feel that way on certain occasions-On the walk back to the bus stop after watching a stylish Mohanlal performance in a movie, or after watching a sizzling innings from Sachin Tendulkar, or a jaw dropping dance number from Michael Jackson-the infectious energy of the hero sort of rubs off on me, and it translates into me feeling important and my walk metamorphoses into a SRK-sque swagger. Quite often such idiocies of mine do not last much long, and they end up rudely jolted by some "external entity"(Mostly a reflective car window glass or mirror) and my swagger mutates back into my usual commonplace walk.

So, I swaggered in. I expected to be ushered in by the archetypal fawning salesman, who makes you feel as if you don’t dissuade him immediately, he would bend down and lick your boots clean, then and there. Instead there stood a guy, brashly confident and with a couldn’t-care-less look on his face. And boy, he had killer looks too, with wavy brown locks, hazel blue eyes, red blazer and faded jeans looking every inch the fashion statement that I was talking about,above.And he happened to be my "external entity" for the day. I didn’t even need half a glance at the guy to decide that I would hate him for the remaining part of my life.

Listen, you self-assured and confident ladies and gentlemen who think highly of yourselves, I despise each one of you. You make me feel cornered; you make me stammer for words, you make me nervous like hell, and you stroke the most primitive of complexes in me. If I can afford to, I intend to give you the cold shoulder, nine times out of ten.

"What do you want?" He barked, interrupting my thoughts. Damn me. I hadn't decided upon what to buy, totally lost in my thoughts and my seething hatred for him. I took a glance around, and decided that I would buy the smallest thing there, a wallet.
"A wallet", I blurted out.He took me to a corner and showed me the wallets. He did that with such grace, elegantly flipping the wallets one by one for me to see. It was a sight, when with slender, strong fingers; he took each wallet, placed it back onto the table and took the next one, and all in one single smooth motion of the hand. For each one he quoted the price with a chaste English accent which would have made any convent educated snob go green with envy. I felt a grudging admiration for him, and hated him even more.
"Three hundred, Four hundred, Two hundred fifty..." he rattled off.
I realized I couldn't buy a wallet, unless I decided to take to the pavements with my new wallet for company. I just stared at him, expecting myself to look like a seasoned bargainer, waiting for him to finish.
"Too high". I said, shaking my head in displeasure.
"Three hundred fifty, Four hundred...".He went on, as if he had better business than paying attention to me.

Meanwhile I just took up one wallet and scrutinized it. And I discovered something! There was a hole right in the centre of the wallet, a big gaping hole. Even a blind man would not miss it. And the crook was trying to sell it for Two-hundred-fifty bucks!
"How much did you tell this one costs?" I asked. My tone was so victorious, foreseeing the way the arrogant fellow would be stammering, profusely apologizing and trying to find a hundred excuses when I would show him the hole.
"Two-hundred and Fifty ".
"Won’t go down?" I asked, mockingly.
"Pure leather. Fixed price." He snapped as if he was reciting some ad catchword for the wallet he was holding.
"Ok."

Yes. I was going to flatten him now. I braced myself for the moment. I brought up the wallet to his eye-level, flipped it open and thrust the hole right in front of his eyes, all in slow motion. I congratulated myself. I had seized my moment like all great people do, acting rightly and at the right time, aided by a lavish dose of luck which gave me this opportunity.

"Hey Mister, what’s this, then?" I asked, sneering, pointing animatedly at the hole in the wallet. It was my turn to snap now.To my horror, the bastard didn’t flinch. He continued staring at me as if I was crazy.
"What's this hole? And you want to sell this for two-hundred and fifty rupees?" I stressed the words fifty and rupees, deliberately rolling the ‘f’ and the ‘r’, so that I could sound more menacing. Seeing his reaction, I was angrier and less confident, but the thought of the impending victory pepped me up.

I looked him, in the eye. I couldn’t read the expression on his face then. It might have been contempt, pity or maybe as if he had given up on me. He took the wallet from my hand and placed it down.
"I guess you've never seen a wallet in your life". He said, and with the same dexterity with which he had done earlier, he passed all the wallets through his hands once again, flipping each of them open in the process. I couldn’t believe my eyes. In each one of them, right in the centre, there was the hole.

In every wallet there is a hole in the centre, I came to realize later, so that before stuffing the wallet into our pocket, we can wrap it into two, around that hole. I hoped in vain, for genies, to materialize out of nowhere and swallow me up, for the earth to crack open and pull me down into its bowels. Nothing of that sort happened. Somehow, I managed to mutter something like it was too expensive or the quality of the wallet was abominable, I don’t remember what. With a lot of effort I dragged my feet out of the shop, going through what seemed the longest two minutes of my life, pretending not to hear the peals of laughter erupting behind me. I had just discovered a novel method to make a fool of myself.

Later, with my friends, I recounted this incident and we had a good laugh over it. Even now, when we friends get together, and recollect things ranging from old blunders to sweet old love affairs, over bottles of beer and champagne, this still remains one incident which leaves us all grinning from ear to ear.

Wired Jaws and Great Lessons

It was shaping up like just any other weekend. The only blemish was a late-than-usual half past four start from office. Usually Fridays warrant a 9 AM - 4 PM work day, which more often than not, shrinks further. The particular Friday instead expanded out to half past four. That would mean that I would have to take an auto to the railway station , instead of the usual and cheaper bus ride.

What followed was an hour of absolute pandemonium.The autowallah chose to go with Robert Frost when he took the road less traveled by, but Murphy was not to be left behind. The road less traveled by happened to be more crowded than usual, coming close to resembling a theatre screening a new release. Far from being disheartened by the race against time that we were loosing hands down, he bustled through the traffic and by the departure time of the train, we were a good two miles away from the station. I gave up all hope when the last nail was hit on the coffin - the auto overtook another on the narrowest of roads and promptly ended up with its front wheel onto a drainage slab which immediately gave way, leaving it positioned awkwardly at an obtuse angle to the ground and also toppling my suitcase onto the road. I managed to hang on for dear life .Normalcy was soon resumed and more road rash ensued as we reached the station to find the train just leaving, ten minutes late. I just about managed to hop onto the train without falling off.

If not for the daring driver and the late departure of the train, I would have had to take the bus instead and would have reached home way late into the night.
God's Grace so far. I didn't thank him though. We just do not thank him often.

Soon I was in my room, trying to switch on my computer. It is some computer - seems to have a soul of its own, and chooses to turn on or off on it’s on accord. Usually in such moods, it does not respond to the Power ON button, but today it did. Things seemed fine again, but soon it turned itself OFF. More tries from me, less would it budge. Being pretty used to such behaviour, I hit the sack without bothering much to coax it to turn ON. Late night browsing is the norm on Fridays, but it did not quite work out that way .

The ultimate outcome of my computer's insolence and the drivers daredevilry was that I got up unusually early for a Saturday and even woke up every one else at home. The weekend continued to be unusual, as I accompanied dad to market on our scooter, early in the morning. Another autowallah made an entry into the picture, as he tried to wedge into a gap between another car and our unsuspecting scooter, knocking us down. I crash-landed on my jaw, breaking it into three pieces.

Admitted to hospital, I came to know that there was a surgery to fix the jaws and the jaws had to be wired together for a month, during which period I could take only liquid food and could not speak too. This information drove my family to tears, but first thing that came to my mind was the positive side - was happy about the one month rest and the fact that I could watch all the matches of the Indo-Pak cricket series live on television. Though I am not a born optimist, the initial surge of optimism has never receded since -
even when it was a struggle to talk,
even when it was a struggle to sleep lying upright on my back,
even when it continues to be a bigger struggle to chew and am forced to grind the food into a paste before taking it in.

Such little experiences teach you certain facts in life.
-Never spurn the concept of fate. It uses queerest of routes to direct us to the inevitable. The way it joined hands with the driver and the computer was ample proof for me.
-In response to our anxious queries as to whether the jaw would heal perfectly, the doctor had replied that they would give their best but there was no substitute to God's perfection. I realized it was true.
-When I struggle to talk and eat, I understand the importance of even the minutest of functions that our body performs. Even when one of them fails, the effect it has on the entire system is huge.
-Whenever you feel beset by problems and pains, the best thing is to visit a hospital. Take a look around and it would not take long to realize that there are profusion of unluckier souls around. Be happy with whatever you have.
-I could not smile for the first few days. An involuntary grin or smile would soon end up in a grimace as the skin stretching would cause too much pain. Being able to smile is such a precious gift of God. So whenever we can, smile a lot.

Even now I have not recovered, with eating still remaining the main problem. But I am able to move around, read a lot, browse, spend valuable time with my family and most importantly feel happy in spite of the whole thing. I feel incredibly lucky that nothing else happened and my body bears no visible consequence of the whole episode, save a tiny stitch mark on the chin.

This time I do not forget to thank the Almighty for giving me that ounce of optimism initially. It is the initial outlook that you get about a problem which persists throughout,and decides how well you handle it. As Paulo Coelho mentioned in one of his works , I once again thank the Almighty for helping me believe that :-
"Whatever has to happen has happened, but nothing did".

Welcome folks, and thank you James.

An elegant
tapestry
of quotations,
musings,
aphorisms,
and autobiographical reflections..
So said James Atlas.

Dont ask me who he is . I do not know.
I thought quoting it here would give it a contextual beauty.
Is'nt that a nice excuse for a small bit of plagiarism?
Anway , Thank you James.

By the way ,
Welcome folks.