Tha muskurata aina saath mere, ab apne hi aks se chhota pad gaya hun
Hai sunn sa sannata har su, nahin kharbar zinda hun yaan mar gaya hun
karte hein hum dua ab bhi sham-o-sehar, ab tu nahin mera khuda to asar kaise ho
jee lete gar nahin samahjta zamana humko, jo khud pe uthe sawal to basar kaise ho
The most difficult phase of life is not when no one understands you. It is when you don’t understand yourself.
They say that people “fall in” love. If people “fall in” love, do they “rise out” it ? If yes, then falling in love must be completely undesirable. Then why do people keep falling in love and even those who don’t they want to. So what is it that makes this process of falling spontaneous. It definitely cannot be blamed on gravity.
While I was playing with these thoughts I mind I had put this thought up on my gtalk and a friend of mine Kapil introduced me to on of the sayings of Mr Alok Singh Gahlot which goes like “..bhakti, prem aur gyan mein jo doob gaya so paar ..“† which translates to anyone who plunges into the ocean of devotion, love or knowledge reaches ashore. True, many wise men would second that thought. So probably the plunge or the fall is not the fall in its real sense. Probably thats something everyone is looking for.
This is when everything started to make sense to me. A little thinking led me to the answers. To carry on the thought forward we would look at a term which would come handy to us, philosophers call it “soul”. The word soul has religious , spiritual and philosophical connotations. It may mean different things to different people. But what I want to emphasize is the word soul as a level of consciousness of oneself. The very purpose is to find something worth immersing ones soul into. The soul is incomplete on its own, it needs something to fall for and it is in this fall that the person rises to new heights. Like a religious soul would look for what the say the supreme being or the supreme soul or God and would constantly in the pursuit until, as they say, is one with the supreme being. A romantic soul looks for love and immerses itself in warm ocean of love with the soulmate. The scholarly soul digs deep into books or thoughts or science to find answers to his questions or solutions to his problems, until he achieves success.
So every soul looks for something deeper to add meaning to itself and for that plunges into the depths but in this fall he rises till it reaches the highest point in its existence. Some call it moksha. So life is all about finding something worth falling for and falling in this sense somehow much more desirable than otherwise. So I got the answer to the question I started with, but left me with a much bigger one.
What is my soul in search of ??
_____________________________________________________
† The saying above is clearly inspired from the great Amir Khusro’s:
Khusrau dariya prem ka, ulti wa ki dhaar,
Jo utra so doob gaya, jo dooba so paar.
Desire . The fuel that keeps on man running all the time, the inspiration that keeps him making efforts to forward in life. Probably without desire to make his life better man would still be living caves hunting like other wild animals. Desires, in my opinion transformed human into a civilized being above all animals. So it must be good to have desires I guess ?? The more desires you have wouldn’t it be better for you as you would strive harder in life and be much more successful and happy and content?
But wait a minute did I just say content ? Isn’t it just the opposite of desire? Then what is it what am I looking for here desires or being content ? I am kind of confused now.
One of the wisest men who ever lived on earth, Lord Buddha, said that desire was the root cause for all suffering in the world. He must be right, so many people follow his teachings , the whole world respects him. But is it really sane ? Can humans dump all their desires and walk in Buddha’s footsteps ? Would there be any more joy left in life ? Would there be any more innovations in the world ? Would we still try to reach the new world like we reached the moon ? Would we still be looking for cures for deadly diseases ? Would we still make faster machines to make our work simpler and faster? Thousands of these questions storm into my mind as soon as I think of renouncing desires.
Then what is the right way out ? The answer probably lies in the laws of nature. The laws which say that for harmonious existence of anything or any being in the world we need a balance or an equilibrium of things interacting with each other. So I guess the key is limiting ones desires to a moderate level and not going over the top. But who decides how much it too much ? Who decides how much is just enough ? Well the question seems to be quite subjective, everyone limits for defines the for himself/herself.
When I think of demarcating the limits for myself I realize that I, probably like most humans, have just too many desires. Just like Ghalib said :
Hazaaron khwahishein aisi ki har khwahish pe dam nikle,
bahut nikle mere armaan lekin fir bhi kam nikle.
The above couplet from Ghalib’s famous ghazal also reminds me for some wonderful lines I heard in the soundtrack of the film “Hazaaron khwahishein aisi “. It goes like :
A thousand desires such as these
A thousand moments to set this night on fire
Reach out and you can touch them
You can touch them with your silences
You can reach them with your lust
Rivers mountains rain
Rain against a torrid hillscape
A thousand
A thousand desires such as these
I loved rain as a child
As a lost young man
Empty landscapes
Bleached by a tired sun
And then
And then suddenly it came
Like a dark unknown woman
Her eyes scorched my silences
Her body wrapped itself around me
Like a summer without end
Pause me hold me reach me
Where no man has gone
Crossing the seven seas
With the wings of fire
I fly towards nowhere
And you
Rivers mountains rain
Rain against a scorched landscape of pain
Dekh mohabbat ka sareaam bazaar laga hai, kareedne jazbaat har kareedar laga hai.
Hum bhi hote in rangeeniyon mein shaamil, par apne haath phir wahi intezaar laga hai
Happy Valentines Day 
… they day the dedicate to celebrating LOVE. Well …great idea!!
But on a second thought is it really that great an idea or something else.No doubt Love is the greatest of all emotions , infact this is what makes us “human”.But do we need to single out a day to celebrate it, doesn’t make sense to me. Love is to be felt , revered and celebrated each day.To me Valentines Day now seems to be more of a money making stunt than anything else , everyone seems to be cashing on love around this time. Not that i’m like a fundamentalist VHP or something against Valentines Day just that too much (and ever growing) hype around it turns me off.
Anyways , hope everyone has a great Valentines Day 
ਅਲਫ ਅੱਲਾ ਨਾਲ ਰੱਤਾ ਦਿਲ ਮੇਰਾ, ਮੈਨੂ ‘ਬੇ’ ਦੀ ਖਬਰ ਨਾ ਕਾਯੀ |
‘ਬੇ’ ਪੜà©à¨¦à¨¿à¨†à¨‚ ਮੈਨੂ ਸਮਠਨਾ ਆਵੇ, ਲਜ਼ਤ ਅਲਫ਼ ਦੀ ਆਈ |
‘à¨à¨¨’ ਤੇ ‘ਗ਼ੈਨ’ ਨੂ ਸਮਠਨਾ ਜਾਨਾ, ਗੱਲ ਅਲਫ਼ ਸਮà¨à¨¾à¨ˆ |
ਬà©à©±à¨²à¨¿à¨† ਕੌਲ ਅਲਫ਼ ਦੇ ਪੂਰੇ, ਜਿਹੜੇ ਦਿਲ ਦਿ ਕਰਨ ਸਫ਼ਾਈ |
Allaf Allah naal ratta dil mera , mainu be di khabar na kaayi.
‘Be’ padheyaan mainu samajh na aawe, lazzat alaf di aayi
‘Ain’ te ‘ghain’ nu samajh na jana, gal alaf samjhai.
Bulleya kaul alaf de poore, jehde dil di karan safai.
I have a dream… people call it the American dream , but for me its the dream to be what i wanna be , to do what love to. Finally after a lot of time (I’m not sure I should be saying time wasted or time utilized), I’m now making the single most important step towards realizing my dream ….i.e. ofcourse flying to the US.
Things weren’t as smooth as they were expected to be ( after screwed-up GRE , the pain with the recos, unprofessional and irresponsible UPitts and above all the never-seemed-to-be-ending 221(g) for the VISA) I finally am flying.
What a relief it is 
.
The day started with an early morning alarm waking me up from barely 2 hour sleep ( I didn’t expect even this much of sleep …obviously out of excitement …but prolly the antibiotic played its part) , just to find my worst fear coming true …I have FEVER 
…OMG …. what am i gonna do on the flight …. hope they don’t bar me from flying as i’m ill….. with thoughts like these crossing my mind I get off the bed and somehow make myself believe that everything’s gonna be fine and thank God it did go fine.
———–incomplete——
Yeah !! thats what i wanted to write and not the usual “time heals all wounds”. Thats just my way of saying “History repeats itself”.
Sach hi hai tareekh humesha apne ko dohraati hai
Waqt bhar gaya tha un zakhmon ko kyun hara kar jaati hai
Why do I commit the same mistakes everytime? Why do I fall for the same thing again n again? Why don’t I realise things aren’t any different this time than the last one? Why do I forget I’m hopeless at it? Why do I desprately hope out of hope that things will work out somehow this time? Why do i always hope for a miracle? …and many more Why’s .
I do sometimes wonder more of a quest for questions than for answers, for everytime I try i’m confronted with more questions than answers. Anyways whats more ironical is that these questions are more enlightening than answers would have been.
Life moves on but heart makes me go for it one more time and still hopes…..this time its gonna be…..
As they say Dil ke khush rakhne ko ‘Ghalib’ yeh khayaal accha hai
Ek nazar gaur se dekho to Zindagi hai kya , musalsal Tasweeron ke siwa kutch bhi nahin
Kehte hain jinko insaan,woh duniya ke samandar mein , tanha jazeeron ke siwa kutch bhi nahi
Sochta hun is rishte ko kya naam dun , koi mera sab kutch hai aur mein uska kutch bhi nahin
Is maut ka gham nahin , bas teri ik jhalak ko hum taras gaye
Ek arse se aake ruke the jazbaat palkon pe, bas aaj baras gaye
As I glance through my window glass ,studded with droplets of water , winter rain falling on the pathway , my heart moans.