You got to play!

Islam prohibits gambling. Actually, it prohibits a lot of things. I follow Islam as long as it doesn't hinder my expedition for adventure and allows me to chase my imaginations. Well, illusions most of the time. Now taking in no account of what impressionists and pseudo-intellectuals might say about this, I must say the Islam I follow encourages the search, the logic, and the adventure. Yes, all right but does it allow gambling? Well encouraging is another thing but it certainly doesn't prohibit. Not just gambling but anything. It believes in something like "Go check it out your self!!"...

Gambling can be like living. In gambling, there is just one action leading to a series of repercussions and aftermaths. You might play well, you might not. You might win, you might not! Whether it is lusciously kissing diva or scrupulously hitting security, everything lasts for some tiny edges of time. It’s so ironically amazing. When you are gaming and you have put everything on stake, the wheel stops in just few seconds deciding everything that is going to happen next. The action which segregates and then eliminates the losers from the winners is extremely short-lived and yet incredibly precise. It seems that as the gamblers bet for their lives, the wheel just keeps on playing a much safer game. “Pick The Odd One Out!” I constantly feel that we are gambling with life itself on stake. Choosing career, choosing mate, crossing road, riding bike, there are no tallies how many times in our lives we actually game. Yes, we might be meticulous of the action but just like gambling, the deciding action is very short lived and we are completely unaware of what is coming next. But we play, don’t we? And surely somewhere, somebody is playing that safer game… pick the odd one out!!

Noor.
Thrusday, May 1st, 2008
1:35 AM

the nausea

The Nausea has given me a short breathing spell. But I know it will come back again: it is my normal state. Only today my body is too exhausted to stand it. Invalids also have happy moments of weakness which take away the consciousness of their illness for a few hours. I am bored, that's all. From time to time I yawn so widely that tears roll down my cheek. It is a profound boredom,profound, the profound heart of existence, the very matter I am made of. I do not neglect myself, quite the contrary: this morning I took a bath and shaved. Only when I think back over those careful little actions, I cannot understand how I was able to make them: they are so vain. Habit, no doubt, made them for me. They aren't dead, they keep on busying themselves, gently, insidiously weaving their webs, they wash me, dry me, dress me, like nurses. Did they also lead me to this hill? I can't remember how I came any more. Probably up the Escalier Dautry: did I really climb up its hundred and ten steps one by one? What is perhaps more difficult to imagine is that I am soon going to climb down again. Yet I know I am: in a moment I shall find myself at the bottom of the Coteau Vert, if I raise my head, see in the distance the lighting windows of these houses which are so close now. In the distance. Above my head; above my head; and this instant which I cannot leave, which locks me in andlimits me on every side, this instant I am made of will be no more than a confused dream.

Nausea- Jean Paul Sartare

Mastt Raam!

The Self-Educated are marked by stubborn peculiarities.

Isaac Disraeli

I started off as a model and struggled for some time until I got a break as an actress. I was too stubborn to let go and was sure I was in the right place at the right time. I just fought and I think that's how I am where I am today.

Natasha Henstridge

Chahey koi khush ho,
Chahey galiyan hazaar dey...
Mast Raam ban key,
Zindagi ke din... Guzaar dey!!!!

27th April!

I'm in this city for roughly around a month more. All has been completed today. Visas, accomodation details and other many stuff. I don't know why m I writing this here. May be because my blog has seen some very strange times with me. Sometimes I was happy. Sometimes I wasn't. Sometimes I was angry.. sometimes I was numb. And today when I've got this news, I'm sharing it with this before sharing it with anyone else [Apart from family, ofcourse]. Should I be happy about it? Going to study abroad, living on my own, the way I want.. has always been my dream... but leaving this city behind, all my friends behind.. family behind.. I don't know but I can't feel happy enough. May be this will get right with time.

This is my place. This city. And I will be away from it for like some 2 odd years... will I be able to manage everything on my own? Will the weather suit me? I will miss my family.. my mom in particular. But lemme not get into it from now.. it's like still a month to go!!

There is something that is not letting me be. Somehow my past is not giving me a chance to live my tomorrow. And believe me.. no matter how mad you might call me, I sometimes wish to go back to my past. Those feelings still remain unmatched.

But apart from this confusing personal stuff, I have some very vivid career goals to pursue there. Studies alongwith work isn't going to be easy but I feel excited about it. I want to work 18 hours a day or more than that and make the most out of this oppurtunity. Yes! It will be like this.

From today, I start that count. I have so many things to tell.. but it's like ... you know me, no.

"your" self

“The way people generally live today, have no self. They live within others. In what act or thought of his has there ever been a self? What was his aim in life?

Greatness – in other people’s eyes. Fame, admiration, envy – all that which comes from others. Others dictated his convictions, which he did not hold, but he was satisfied that others believed he held them. Others were his motive power and his prime concern. He didn’t want to be great, but to be though great. He didn’t want to build, but to be admired as a builder. He borrowed from others in order to make an impression on others. There’s your actual selflessness. It is his ego he has betrayed and given up. But everybody calls him selfish.”

Ayn Rand - Fountainhead

constant change...

Since ever, reading has been one of my most beloved hobbies. Something that comes naturally to me. Though the inconsistency of my taste and my wavering nature is well exhibited from the way I select a book to read, one particular genre was successful [till sometime back] in arresting a meaty portion of my time. "Self Help and Inspirationals". Yes! I have quite a few of them at my home. Dale Carnegie, Norman Vincent Peale, Og Mandino, Mark Victor Hansen and Jack Canfield, Anthony Robbins, Robin Sharma, Napoleon Hill, Stephen Covey etc etc.. And the list never ends. My brother has this odd habit of collecting self help books and I, the very reader, continued to read them. And read again. Some tried to teach me how to find love, some tried to signify shortcuts to fame and fortune and some tried to make me a better human. I don't know how much they all succeeded but one thing is for sure, reading all these self help books over the years, I have finally decided one thing. That I 'm NOT going to read them anymore. Atleast for sometime. I think I don't need so much of help.

But I guess this happens with every one of us. Sometimes we just start feeling over filled. We might not know but we yearn to feel a bit empty. Sometimes we suddenly get to know that we know so much. Sometimes, our haggard minds desire for something new. Little bit immaturity. Little bit of childishness. Sometimes getting 100/100 isn't satisfying, as it doesn't offer any challenges or targets to achieve then.

I've observed something salient about us beings. That we, unlike every other creation in the universe, get tired of things. We actually dwell nowhere and are in constant state of search. Search for the subsequent. That search might not necessarily be for prosperity or betterment. It might be destructive and disparaging. We are self ignorant to the fact that changes can swing both ways. From better to worse. From worse to better. But who cares. What a 'typical' human soul wants is a Change. [And the word typical excludes saints and Sufis].

I think this is why anything in abundance just doesn't work for us. Infact, it starts to work against us. Start walking on The Right Path. Be true and speak the truth. One day, Even if you don't ask for a change, you might get weary about The truth, The Angels and The Heavens... Lie, lie, lie... and one day, there is a bright chance that you might start seeking "The Righteous Path". I wouldn't call it a God's blessing on that lier but to me, it is the same need. The Search for the subsequent. The quest that keeps us mortals tangling around two extremes. We leave "Black" in search for something brighter... but even "White" doesn't satisfy us. May be this is why; most of us spend huge portions of our lives traveling and roving in those "Gray" areas.

I believe science can re-create everything. It can make everything seem understandable and logical. But this strange expedition of us mortals is and should always stay as a delicate knot. Who knows, undoing it might change everything...

Noor.
Wednesday, March 19,2008
1:34 AM

Colors!

Sometimes you find life. Unexpected. Life is synonymous to fun, when with friends!