Colour-blind Dreams

Where did my old life go? It’s as if everything, every remnant of it has been snatched away, and I’m too numb even too go through the memories. Memories…how I hate that word.

I don’t want memories left of anything. All I want is for my cousins to stay. I don’t want my best friends to walk around their house looking like death…and now I realize that they were my best friends, mine and my sisters. We were a group, a group of friends that depended on one another for comfort, support, humour, company, anything and everything.

In school or at home, we were a team.

Was life like a movie, four months ago? It seems like that now…the best days of our lives were spent with each other. The endless nights we spent at each other’s house, the hilarious trips home from school, and the complaints about teachers, friends, and life in general.

And then Kanwal finally got her own car from her father who was in the last stages of cancer…and no one knew. So in the middle of making plans about how we all could finally break hell on the roads of
Lahore without the driver, my cousins lost their father.

There are just some things that you can’t believe…it all seems like a bad, bad dream. That was the day when I was the only one who could attend the phone calls because everyone was either at the hospital or was completely broken. How many times did I have to say it, to the thousands of people who called “Yes, he’s passed away…didn’t survive chemo…the burial is tomorrow”.

That wasn’t me, that wasn’t a part of my life, was it?

The worst thing was the look on my cousins’ faces. That innocent, helpless look…the mask of incomprehension and unbelief and bravery.

It was a long time ago, four months, but it seems like yesterday. Now they’re moving to Karachi…there go all the fun weekends we had, the talks, the laughter, the private jokes which could only come from a lifetime of practically living with someone. We won’t be there to hug them when they couldn’t help crying, we won’t be there for them to talk to, simply because there isn’t anyone that understands them more. We won’t be there to distract them from the worry about the business, which they’re too young to be concerned with. A whole new life in another city with loads of relatives…and to think that here, they had only us…

Why is it that the painful things are the ones you can’t stop thinking about?

Finally, I’m 18…is it too soon? Or is it too late? I was, still am, and always will be the youngest person in any batch I’m in. I’ll always know how insecure I could get, how much I could love someone who can’t even understand it, how jealous I could get, and how vulnerable I am.

What does growing up mean, then? I don’t expect to feel any different, and I don’t, but I’m fascinated by this process. This gradual change in me that led me from one thing to another, from a child to a teen, and from craziness to at least partial sanity.

What matters, then? When everything changes, what matters? Do they all matter, every tear I’ve shed, every laugh, every giggle, every joke, every friend, everything that I ever learnt and saw and felt and which just touches me and passes me by? Or should they not matter at all, because they’re all transitory, or should they matter the most because u would never have been what u are without them?

And lastly, do all these stupid questions have meaning or are they just something that I confuse myself with whenever I’m in the mood?

I can answer that….I don’t think so. As I grow older every year, month, week…after every conversation, after every good movie or book…all I’m doing is asking more and more questions and they are what give my life meaning…they untangle my thoughts, they don’t confuse them.

Anyways, it is my birthday after all, I should be allowed to relax after a really crappy weekend with relatives swarming all over the house (but more presents for me so should I even complain? YES YES YES!!), loads of readings to do and that idiotic philosophy term test tomorrow…urrrgghhh…whatever, I’m not studying and u can’t make me…

This is the older, responsible me…responsible for my own sanity and peace of mind.

If anyone were to ask me what SS 152 Introduction to Cultural Anthropology  was like, studies-wise,  I’d say “Baby mush” Seriously, despite the fact that the subject is so interesting it gives me an academic high, its plain kiddie stuff. For my own sake, I wish it’ll get harder later on.

But forget the studies, we spend half of class time watching videos…and man, are they in good taste. But they’re very, very disturbing, in fact, the hardest part for me in this whole quarter is to sit thru these excruciating videos…they just question you, your beliefs by showing u what other people believe and the extent they can go to in their faith. Yesterday the video was on cults, a history channel feature. It was clearly made for entertainment, and that was the most painful thing about watching it. It seemed like something out of the darkest episodes of the X files, only the scenes depicting rocking skeletons and Black Masses were supposed to be real. There was even the High Priestess of the

church of
Satan for God’s sake! It turned my blood cold, though I do remember I time when I adored this kind of stuff…voodoo, black magic, etc…it sounds crazy, and it was, but then I grew out of my dark early teens. These people…well, they’re living in a horrific world and they can’t get out.

One leader of these cults, when he saw that the government was after him for taking his members’ welfare checks, gave all his followers (over a thousand people went with him wherever he went) a punch made of Kool-Aid laced with cyanide and then put a gun to his head. Over a thousand people dead…lying on top of one another and they kept showing it over and over again…it was unbelievable, worse than any horror movie I’ve ever seen…at the end, I found that I just couldn’t stop trembling.

.

This is only one of the videos that show me how blindly we’re living….has anyone ever seen the movie ‘The Corporation’? we watched part of that too, and for the first time I knew what bliss ignorance is…but that’s just the thing, I’m not studying here for bliss, I’m studying for enlightenment, whether my teachers give it to me, or I find it myself. I’m not supposed to not care about what’s going on in this world…but knowledge can be too painful at times…

wordpress is weird…i just wrote a post earlier, and saved it, and now it isn’t here…ne comments on ur beloved wordpress’behaviour, chij?

Khyr, nothing much is happening neways, so it’s not much of a loss. My social life is being sacrificed for my studies, but who the hell cares? It’s my own fault for having a social life at all…

But still, I had a nice chat with my cultural anthropology instructor today. I went to her to discuss the next assignment, which took abt 5 mins, and then we spent a whole hour talking abt everything unedr the sun. I think she really enjoyed talking to me, because this was about the fourth time she would prolong a conversation. And even when the students waiting outside started coming in (blatant hint?), she said ‘OK, we’ll talk later then’…when exactly, I don’t know. But i like instructors who also show themselves as people with problems and a bit of instability, like she does. One other thing that i really like about her is that she shifted the penholder and mug on her desk to the side so that we could actually see each other properly, not like certain people i kno who don’t even bother to look up from their keyboards or their cells . 

Khyr, its just these little things, continueing a conversation, cracking a needless joke, etc, which can really warm u up to someone even as distant and awe-inspiring as an instructor. Not that all of them are awe-inspiring, but this one is. It’s not just her PhD. tho…tho in my opinion a PhD is a kind of academic god, let anyone say what they might…

*sigh* but what am i going to do abt my dialogue, I still don’t kno

2007 haan? well, it’s about time, that’s all i can say. Abhi to for those who are interested, i am simply caught in a whirlwind of assignments, quizzes, and what not. Oh yeah, the midtrems are also looming up.
and guess what? i used to like my philosophy class once upon a time, but now it’s simply…weird. I mean, these guys are just talking abt nothing and abt everything, it simply boggles the brain. The funny thing is that the instructor says, very aptly, “You will come into this class very confused about the world. And you will leave this class still confused…but confused on a higher level”
And since then, she has been doing nothing but making sure philosophy does just that.
Tension yeh hai, keh now we hav to write a dialogue between a classical philosopher and an east asian philosophers…a discourse between two eminent philosopher on…wait for it…THE MAJOR INTELLECTUAL TREND IN ISLAM! Let me tell u, if u don’t know, Islam and its study, its philosophy is the most mind-bending task known to a university student. U hav the Sufis, the modernists, the peers, the faqirs…and then u have poor little us, who are still trying to pray five times a day. I’m telling u, they just turn the most basic stuff upside down and reach no conclusion…and they do this better with Islam than with any other topic. *sobbing*

what a way to start the new year eh?

it’s not as if anything is going wrong–new friends have been made, reasonable grades have been achieved, social life pretty good, but there’s something that’s been eating at me. I can’t seem to write anymore. Not anything, even a blog post is left unfinished because I simply can’t talk about anything, no matter how important it is to me.
I used to love writing so much, but now, whenever I get some time to myself, i can’t…just can’t do it. There was a time when every single one of my emotions sparked a line, or a word, that was the beginning of so many poems. Sure, a lot of crap was there as well, but it was an outlet, something that made me feel as if i was one step closer to a writing career.
Now i can’t.
I doubt if i could ever have been counted as a writer, but i liked to think of myself as one, at least in the future. Now i’m…nothing. I do everything but my so-called ‘passion’. It’s as if i just don’t feel that much anymore, even though i’m thinking a lot, but i cannot get it down.
I need a break from living…

uhh…today…today…is not going to be a good day. I can feel it in my bones. Today i am going to feel totally uncomfortable during the whole day because of my too-thick jacket and too-thin clothes, meaning i çan either swelter it out in the hot classrooms or freeze. Today, I will see just how badly i did on my Philosophy term test. Today, everyone will be too busy to come online. Today, the one class I have will be without any of my old friends. I will stay late after i’m free because i have to go see an instructor about some missed lectures. The instructor is so sweet she stifles me, and would probably take two hours over a 100 minute lecture. The super store and the khoka will neevr open until and unless i am safely in class. One of the coffee machines in the PDC will remain out of order, and I will never figure out how to operate the other one. The flowers arranged everywhere for the convocation tomorrow will stifle me wherever i go. The lights would be too bright, getting into my eyes and making me look like a yellow zombie with two huge black eyes. I will not be able to speak up in lectures. I will not be able to impress anyone, let alone a teacher. I feel compleetly dumb, mute, and thick…it’s like i’ve lost the ability to think like an intelligent person…if i ever had that ability.

ahhh…typing it all out has made me feel so much better. Not that the day looks any different, but the prospect of it ending is something to look forward to.

I HATE MONDAYS