Referencing kills

All those people who invented bloody styles of thesis writing and referencing, should be thankful that they’re dead…  Because they would surely be dead now if I ever laid my hands on them…

Aaarrrrgggghhhhh.. khud mar gaye and museebatein hamare liye chhor gaye!!  Ufffff!!!

Cleansing

I cried today, long and hard… Sobbing till I was aching and hollow on the inside.

I’ve prided myself always on being a strong individual.  And part of my strength has always come from my faith in Him.  Not just in Him knowing best, but also that I have no need for any but Him because He grants me all I ever need and beyond, whether I ask for it or not.  At the risk of repeating myself, in spite of offering prayers 4 out of 5 times a day, I feel that faith has been lost somewhat.

That guilt plus pressure for studies plus issues at home shook me enough to break down in front of my mama.

My mama is one of the strongest people I know.  Her childhood stories sound like something out of a historical novel, yet all true.  The 4th daughter of the 2nd wife of a landlord who migrated from Iran, and settled in a village in Punjab, who lost her mother at the age of 2, gained a step mother and lost a father at the age of 12.  She grew up with step brothers and sisters straight out of a fairy tale with cruelty and property wars.   And the years in between had her and the other sisters who were unmarried, being shuttled from one married sister’s house to another’s wherever a baby sitter, a washing/cleaning/cooking person was required.

Fell silently in love with her sister’s brother in law at the age of 16 and touchwood is very much in love with him still after 32 years of marriage.

And she survived it all!  And is surviving it still!  Seen so much; the death of parents, and the death of a child; her children’s successes and their failures, personal and professional; lived in luxury in a house of her own and living now in a rented portion and through it all, thankful to Him and all He has given her.

As I cried today, I felt hopeless and despair and all my mother had was hope.  She said that His forgiveness, His mercy is far far beyond the sixty-seventy years of sins that we have to our name.  Where He has given so much before without asking, how can you allow yourself to even think that He won’t grant you something when you ask for it?

She reminded me of how when I was maybe 3 or 4 years old, I saw my papa offering prayers.  Papa got up leaving the prayer carpet where it was.  When he came back, I was there on the carpet, with my back towards the ka’aba, in my little dress, asking the Almighty on a one to one basis for a brother, a car and a house.  My mama said that every prayer that little girl offered was accepted because it was offered with timeless, innocent faith in Him, offered with unconditional love and ownership of Him being the one who can grant her everything.

Who knows, maybe this bout of tears, will allow me to find that girl within myself again…

Yay Me!

First three chapters of the paper written and e-mailed to supervisor…  Waiting to see how much of the copy paste can actually be detected although am hoping that the English switching I did all over, will get me through it…

Actual findings and discussion still to be written though…  But mind has shut down and going through 6 pages of statistical results is a bit much!  Will have a day that’s going to drag in the morning…  work day segmented into small slots of actual productivity and hell of a lot of lean time to waste in between…

Eyes burning…  Sleeping!

Deadlines

Everytime!!  For all my protestations to the contrary and resolutions to refrain, every time I have to work on a research paper, I end up thinking about writing it the week it is due and then spend the night before  it’s to be submitted swearing,  sweating and typing my way through it punctuated now and then with screams of absolute agony…

A Teeming Mind

… And yet, no possibilities.  Today as in so many days, I don’t see much to get me out of this eternal rut that I’m stuck in.  I had read and heard about the realities of life getting one down but never really experienced the helplessness that one endures in their wake…  

Money is oh, ever so important.  I look back at the feeling of having lived in a house owned by my parents with the kind of yearning that can make me double with pain.  It’s been around ten years that have seen us shift every few years into one rented house from another.  I dream of the day when I’ll have that peace of knowing that this floor beneath my feet and the roof above my head belongs to no one else.  But damn it, I don’t have the money for that luxury.  It’s shocking how rent money eats into your savings, with no return, leaving you empty and hollow…

You know, my parents are getting old.  In a couple of years, my papa will retire.  Mama has always been unwell.  Nothing critical but progressively strong medicine to treat migraine over the years has led to hypertension, blood pressure, osteoporosis…  She jokes about how her insides are probably degenerating but it sends a cold chill through me that makes me jerk back physically.  I’m a real mummy daddy bacha who even today at the grand old age of 30, sleeps best in the afternoon curled up next to papa, or whose day isn’t complete until every last, little detail of the day’s happenings is not repeated as it occured.  On the other end, I know my parents rely and trust on me far more than they do on my brother.  Where I am proud to be worthy of that trust, the pressure that I’ll disappoint them is also greater.  Right now, there is something alive and kicking inside of me that makes me just want to do something so I can make that little house where my parents can live…  But damn it, I so don’t have the money.

And then there’s my bro.  Bless him, he’s fine as brothers go but he is an intellectual of today.  He looks and treats all with the same kind of pragmatic, unemotional practicality that can really pinch at times.  Example being, if papa asks him for a loan, he’ll say something like he won’t be giving the household expenses for the next 3 months so that the loan can be recovered.  What is this, a bank?  They’re your parents.  They are the ones who sold their house so you could go to America to study.  They are the ones who spent hundreds of thousands of rupees on your wedding because that is what you wanted.  And this is the attitude you show them.  It hurt to hear that papa asked bro to bring medicine and he didn’t bring it because he was too tired to take the detour to the market on his way back from work and it was hot by the way.  It was the first time my father actually said something to the effect that this is where the difference comes between a parent and a child.  My parents never let lack of money, time or resources be a reason to refuse us anything.  We had the discipline that allowed us to study and study well, get jobs, have a reasonably well mannered countenance but we also knew, rather know that there is nothing that our parents would not do for us.

And then there is him.  Ugh!  The bane of my existance, or my entire world, I so don’t know.  Rationally, my mind knows the limits and possibilities and is prepared for them, somewhat but damn my heart drives me crazy at times.  He talks about all these things, futures, possibilities but there are so many what ifs…  His age, his dependency on his family, his youth and immaturity (not necessarily the same thing) and his damn emotional nature…  His decision making is so based on what his heart tells him to do that his brain has little or no role to play in it whatsoever… You cannot live like that in today’s world..  Besides, to my fault, let’s just say the heart’s decisions aren’t all that for me…  I end up thinking of things like so his heart likes me today but what happens tomorrow when his heart falls for someone else…

I want another job.  I love teaching but I want something different now.  Something more regular and less tiring.  The mileage I cover in a week, driving between the universities I teach at is physically and mentally exhausting.  It’s made me short tempered and irritable where I’ve developed a tick in the side of my eye when my fuse blows.  I want a time out but damn it, I want peace of mind and I want things settled for my parents.  And for that I need money and dayam, I so don’t have it!!

Active-Passive

“What will you do if I was with someone else?  I’ll tell you… Nothing!” 

He’s absolutely right!  

I will do nothing because if all that I am and all that was or is between us is not enough to keep him with me, it means I’ve already given him more than he’s worth.  I’ll cry and rant and rage but in a place where even I would not recognize it although I will acknowledge it.  

And when I walk out into the world, my eyes will have no recognition for him.

…

…

She was babbling.  Talking too fast, words rushing out on top on one another to fill the silence between them, rushing from one end of the room to the other, trying to keep busy…  Except when she turned around, he was right there, too close, and all too real raising a finger to place against her lips…

“Ssshhhhhh love.”

Is it really necessary to say all these words when all you need to do is feel this?  - and a hand lifted her palm to where his heart beat in a reassuring rhythm…

Do we really need to speak when all that is real can be felt? – And gentle fingers caressed her face, brushing down her hair to clasp her waist to draw her closer…

Silent Night

What she hadn’t and wouldn’t give for just another moment like this?

He was there, with her…

Shrouded in the darkness of the room, it was through his touch that she knew him and allowed him to learn her…

Just the catch of a breath here and a sigh there and fingers interlocking, holding on…

Sigh

I hate being the bearer of bad news…  And to tell him, knowing how disappointed he will be is heart wrenching so I just kind of blurted it out… :S

I have no idea how to comfort him because I just cannot use those same cliched expressions.  Ugh…  The dinner I had just turned into a very cold, hard lump in my stomach!

For Swat

Misery, a self inflicted wound;

Festers, bleeds, raw and untreated

Leaving scars and nightmares 

Where there should be the hope of paradise