How To Bloom

My dear potted plant,

I love you. I bought you for cheap at WalMart a few weeks ago, but I loved you before then. I loved you when I was transplanting you into your new pot and packing fresh new soil around your naked roots in your new home, the patio of my apartment. I didn't hurt you when I did that, did I? When I had yanked you by your stems out of the broken little plastic cup you had come in, your roots looked so frightened, like a shivering little kitten that had got wet in the rain. You had looked so settled in the cup you had come in, decrepit as it was, but I knew you needed more space to grow. It must've startled you, having no soil to hold on to for a while. It must've taken your roots time to grasp your new soil and get used to the new watering schedule. Could you feel my love when I patted you down with rich, new soil in your new pot? I love you. All I want is for you to grow, for you to be happy. What else is there?

I know what it feels like to be uprooted. I know what it's like to have to transplant yourself time and time again. Maybe you were like me, a young sapling that had never known the soil its parent tree had come from. Maybe you were always the exotic plant whose foreign name no one could pronounce, the plant that no one knew what to do with. Maybe you won't take to your native soil again the way those who were never uprooted do. But that's okay. One can only be where one is, one place at a time. The best you can really do is give yourself some time to get used to your new home. I can promise you that one day your roots will grip your new soil and that your stems will rise crisp and fresh again. There is no shame in adapting to your new environment, and you will flourish if you let yourself just be where you are. It doesn't matter if people can't pronounce your name - they will come to you themselves when they see how comfortable you are in your own pot.

Your mother in all seasons.

The Hated One

On October 30, 2011, some young people I had met at the NDTV media institute became one:

""One year," the old man almost growled as he wagged a gnarly finger at his daughter. His son, his younger more menacing version, darkly looked on. "One year, and then you are back."

The young woman stood looking down at the ground with her arms crossed over her chest. She had been leaning against the wall, and if she had had eyes at the back of her head, she would have noticed the chalky whitewash stains that now ran down her back. Her armpits burned, her forehead had been knotted for a few days.

The old man put his finger away and eyed the Sphinx before him. He didn't trust women, particularly silent ones, even if it were his daughter, especially if it were his daughter. She never listened. Well, she'd hear what he'd tell her, she had no choice, but she never listened. She never confided. She always held back. He could tell. It's when those knots would appear above her black eyes, and when a shadow would pass over those eyes, like as if a dark curtain had been drawn between him and her mind. He knew this about his firstborn. He could never break in. She wouldn't let him. She wouldn't let him reach in and touch her thoughts, guide her thoughts. How he hated the woman she was growing up to be, it disgusted him. He didn't like those kind of women. They were ungodly, sickening. They had too much will, they could never be possessed because they'd just lock you out. It didn't matter if you pushed or bought them things. It was like forcing someone to acknowledge that you existed. It was more like pleading. Pleading with someone who was supposed to be obeying you instead. It was insulting. Humiliating. It made him feel like the tempestuous child, it made her the one with the power. She would have the power to deny him an audience. Him. The father. Repeated humiliations from this child since the day she had been born. Her mother, Allah bless her departed spirit, had not been like this. She would listen to him. She would protest but at the end of the day he was the head of the family, and she knew her place. She never questioned his judgment. She did what he told her, what he knew was good for her. She was a good woman. But this daughter of his, how he hated her. If only she would just listen before she ruined herself, ruined herself, and shamed them all. It was only a matter of time before she did, whether she knew it or not.

"If Zafar knew better, he would not permit this. You must keep your honour, or what shame, what shame you shall bring upon yourself."

Shame. Zafar. The things that had been planned for her. The things she wanted to do. All the things she wanted to do, all the thoughts, all the possibilities that were always in her mind. She could never share them, there was no one here to receive them. No one listened to her. No one had ever listened to her. Zafar?  Would he listen to her, would he see her? She remembered the first time she had stopped herself from telling her father the things that had been on her mind. She felt the same about Zafar. And her brother? They were all the same. There was no one here. No, she would have to do this. She would have to step out and see if there were others like her out there."

Dream Tenant

On October 3, 2011, I fictionalised myself because I thought it would help me make sense:

"The short, fat, smelly landlady had never had a stranger tenant. The girl went to work and came back, she paid her rent on time, she was always polite and spoke in an old accent the landlady had only heard in her childhood. Lately the girl had stopped going out. She still paid her rent on time, but sometimes the landlady could hear her crying in her room. In the middle of the day when all the other girls were out at work or at school. The landlady didn't know but the girl would cry at night too, but on the terrace where she wouldn't disturb her roommate. That strange foreign tenant in that room. Not really foreign, the girl was Indian but had never lived in India. Until now. Now she cried, she howled locked up in that room. She talked to herself sometimes. The landlady once thought she heard the girl say, "what is real?" between sobs, but she couldn't be sure. What kind of a person talks like that anyway, it made no sense.

The girl had first started asking that question 5 years ago. "What is real?" she had asked her mother, but her mother had not understood the question. "Amma, tell me what is real?" They were in America then, the girl had been a success - American degrees, an American job, a green card on the way. An American accent, an American attitude, American dollars in the American bank. But lately, it had all started seeming unreal. The popcorn at the theater had started tasting chalky, her mascara had stopped helping her once sparkly eyes pop. She'd started realising that every hot, young, new Hollywood starlet had fake lips and fake breasts. She'd tried so many things, but before long they'd run out. They weren't real. The female role models on TV weren't real, all the makeup she had bought wasn't real, her beautiful apartment that no one visited wasn't real. One day she realised that soon she was going to stop being real too.

What is real, what is real."

Method Writer

Newspaper cutting from Muscat about an opera set in ancient Egypt

 

I'm writing a book on ancient Egypt, and while I am not allowed to say much more about it, I want to share that this project is different because it treads a fine line between fiction and non-fiction. It's difficult making a setting come alive when no one's really seen it, and I have found from experience that whenever I have to write about an era gone by, it helps to immerse myself in as much everyday detail about life back when. Seems like I write best when I can shut myself in a room and feel like I'm walking amongst the people I am making up and eating the food they are eating and feeling the fabric they are wearing. When I was a little girl and used to live mostly in my head, I had become a little obssessed with ancient Egypt and had wanted to live there. This was in the time long before the Internet or easy access to books, but I still remember a children's book about ancient Egypt that I had borrowed from the British Council library in Muscat, Oman. I can still see the book open before me to a page where the artist had drawn the picture of an Egyptian home. The artist had also drawn people walking about the mud house - through the door, on the stairs, in the kitchen. I felt like they were my friends, that if I went outside I would run into them. Of course I knew them. These little people made of ink, they had names and hobbies.

I later went and rebuilt the house using a shoebox and used my miniature animal toys to play in it. My favourite was the cat that was of the colour of the chicken curry my mother would make. The cat was always the heroine of all my games, and often another animal would be in love with her, but she would be too alone in her great thoughts and adventures to notice.

These days I feel like I'm living in ancient Egypt again. I've come across similar drawings of houses in all the research I've been doing about that time, and I think I've lived in all of them. Everytime I research this way and after my project has been finished, I carry with me a feeling of fondness for that time, that country, those people lost in the dust. I think of them often like I would of an old lover I once sparkled my eyes at because he smiled at me. It almost makes me cry sometimes.

What Happened to Eduard

"Eduard sat for long hours staring up at the sky in Brasilia, watching the clouds moving across the blue - beautiful clouds, but without a drop of rain in them to moisten the dry earth of the central Brazilian plateau. He was as empty as they were.

If he continued as he was, his mother would fade away with grief, his father would lose all enthusiasm for his career,  and both would blame each other for failing in the upbringing of their beloved son. If he gave up his painting, the visions of Paradise would never see the light of day, and nothing else in this world could ever give him the same feelings of joy and pleasure.

He looked around him, he saw his paintings, he remembered the love and meaning he had put into each brushstroke, and he found every one of his paintings mediocre. He was a fraud, he wanted something for which he had not been chosen, and the price of which was his parents' disappointment.

Visions of Paradise were for the chosen few, who appeared in books as heroes and martyrs of the faith in which they believed, people who knew from childhood what the world wanted of them; the so-called facts in that first book he had read were the inventions of a storyteller.

At supper time, he told his parents that they were right; it was just a youthful dream; his enthusiasm for painting had passed. His parents were pleased, his mother wept with joy and embraced her son, and everything went back to normal.

That night, the ambassador secretly commemorated his victory by opening a bottle of champage which he drank alone. When he went to bed, his wife - for the first time in many months - was already sleeping peacefully.

The following day, they found Eduard's room in confusion, the paintings slashed and the boy sitting in a corner, gazing up at the sky. His mother embraced him, told him how much she loved him, but Eduard didn't respond.

He wanted nothing more to do with love, he was fed up with the whole business. He had thought that he could just give up and follow his father's advice, but he had advanced too far in his work; he had crossed the abyss that separates a man from his dream and now there was no going back.

He couldn't go forwards or back. It was easier just to leave the stage."

- Paolo Coelho, 'Veronika Decides To Die'

You & Everybody Else

"'Am I cured?'

'No. You're someone who is different, but who wants to be the same as everyone else. And that, in my view, is a serious illness.'

'Is wanting to be different a serious illness?'

'It is if you force yourself to be the same as everyone else: it causes neuroses, psychoses, and paranoia. It's a distortion of nature, it goes against God's laws, for in all the world's woods and forests, He did not create a single leaf the same as another. But you think it's mad to be different and that's why you chose to live in Villete, because everyone is different here, and so you appear to be the same as everyone else. Do you understand?'"

- Paolo Coelho, 'Veronika Decides To Die'

Madwoman

"She had understood perfectly what Dr. Igor meant, just as she understood that, although she had always felt loved and protected, there had been one missing element that would have transformed that love into a blessing: she should have allowed herself to be a little madder.

Her parents would still have loved her, but, afraid of hurting them, she had not dared to pay the price of her dream, the dream that was buried in the depths of her memory, although sometimes it was awoken by a concert or by a beautiful record she happened to hear. Whenever her dream was awoken, though, the feeling of frustration was so intense that she immediately sent it back to sleep again.

Veronika had known since childhood that her true vocation was to be a pianist.

This was something she had felt ever since her first lesson, at twelve. Her teacher had recognised her talent too and had encouraged her to become a professional. However, whenever she had felt pleased about a competition she had just won and said to her mother that she intended giving up everything and dedicating herself to the piano, her mother would look at her fondly and say: 'No one makes a living playing the piano, my love.'

'But you were the one who wanted me to have lessons.'

'To develop your artistic gifts, that's all. A husband likes that kind of thing in a wife, he can show you off at parties. Forget about being a pianist, and go and study law, that's the profession of the future.'

Veronika did as her mother asked, sure that her mother had enough experience of life to understand reality. She finished her studies, went to university, got a good degree, but ended up working as a librarian.

'I should have been madder.' But as doubtless happens with most people, she had found this out too late."

- Paulo Coelho, 'Veronika Decides To Die'

The Comfortably Numb

"Certain people, in their eagerness to construct a world which no external threat can penetrate, build exxageratedly high defences against the outside world, against new people, new places, different experiences, and leave their inner world stripped bare. It is there that Bitterness begins its irrevocable work.

The will was the main target of Bitterness (or Vitriol, as Dr. Igor preferred to call it). The people attacked by this malaise began to lose all desire, and, within a few years, they became unable to leave their world, where they had spent enormous reserves of energy constructing high walls in order to make reality of what they wanted it to be.

In order to avoid external attack, they had also deliberately limited internal growth. They continued going to work, watching television, having children, complaining about the traffic, but these things happened automatically, unaccompanied by any particular emotion, because, after all, everything was under control.

The great problem with poisoning by Bitterness was that the passions - hatred, love, despair, enthusiasm, curiosity - also ceased to manifest themselves. After a while, the embittered person felt no desire at all. They lacked the will either to live or to die, that was the problem.

That is why embittered people find heroes and madmen a perennial source of fascination, for they have no fear of life or death. Both heroes and madmen are indifferent to danger and will forge ahead regardless of what other people say. The madman committed suicide, the hero offered himself up to martyrdom in the name of a cause, but both would die, and the embittered would spend many nights and days remarking on the absurdity and the glory of both. It was the only moment when the embittered person had the energy to clamber up his defensive walls and peer over at the world outside, but then his hands and feet would grow tired and he would return to daily life.

The chronically embittered person only noticed his illness once a week, on Sunday afternoons. Then, with no work or routine to relieve the symptoms, he would feel that something was very wrong, since he found the peace of those endless afternoons infernal and felt only a keen sense of constant irritation.

Monday would arrive, however, and the embittered man would immediately forget his symptoms, although he would curse the fact that he never had time to rest and would complain that the weekends always passed far too quickly."

- Paulo Coelho, 'Veronika Decides To Die'

Do You Know This Woman?

"It's true that in her life she had seen many things through to their ultimate consequences, but only unimportant things, like prolonging a quarrel that could easily have been resolved with an apology, or not phoning a man she was in love with, simply because she thought the relationship would lead nowhere. She was intransigent about the easy things, as if trying to prove to herself how strong and indifferent she was, when, in fact, she was just a fragile woman, who had never been an outstanding student, never excelled at school sports, and had never succeeded in keeping the peace at home.

She had overcome her minor defects, only to be defeated by matters of fundamental importance. She had managed to appear utterly independent, when she was, in fact, desperately in need of company. When she entered a room, everyone would turn to look at her, but she almost always ended the night alone, in the convent, watching a TV that she hadn't even bothered to have properly tuned in. She gave all her friends the impression that she was a woman to be envied, and she expended most of her energy in trying to behave in accordance with the image she had created of herself.

Because of that, she had never had enough energy to be herself, a person who, like everyone else in the world, needed other people in order to be happy. But other people were so difficult. They reacted in unpredictable ways, they surrounded themselves with defensive walls, they behaved just as she did, pretending they didn't care about anything. When someone more open to life appeared, they either rejected them outright, or made them suffer, considering them inferior, 'ingenuous'.

She may have impressed a lot of people with her strength and determination, but where had it left her? In the void. Utterly alone. In Villete. In the anteroom of death."

- Paulo Coelho, 'Veronika Decides to Die'

Capital Crimes

If my stint in Delhi were to be made into a movie...

One Jewish Girl

She was a petite young woman. It was the 1940s, and she was in her early 20s. Her shoes were chunky yet sensible, her long skirt was thick and a dull shade of light brown. She wore a loose full-sleeved white blouse under her short dark grey jacket. Her hair was dark and tied up in a quiet bun, but not many ever saw her hair because of the scarf she always wore around her head. It exposed her ears and stayed in place with the firm knot she'd tie at the nape of her neck.

I wish I knew her name. She was a serious young woman, but those were serious times. Her skin was of a pale colour that was brown, yellow, and blue all at the same time. She never spoke much. She never looked people in the eye for too long, but her eyes were dark and rich and quick. They were eyes that were meant to be looked into, and if she had lived long enough, she would have met someone who would've gently held her small face in his strong hands and looked into those eyes that never looked at anyone else for too long. He would have undone her scarf and her hair and, when she looked up at him, realised that she was the most vulnerable thing he had ever seen. She was from somewhere in eastern Europe, and if she ever spoke, you knew she'd carry the jagged edges of her native tongue to every language she ever spoke. She had been working as a secretary in a small office for the past couple of years. She was good at her job. She was efficient, neat, and kept to herself, only approaching her employer if she had a question, which she would softly but firmly ask without pretense and without raising her dark eyes. She worked like she lived - sensibly. Like her shoes.

Her shoes were making a dry scraping sound on the street. Sometimes there was a crunch. She was walking down the street with the few belongings she had had time to retrieve. She'd wrapped these belongings in a small tablecloth and was now holding them to her chest. She didn't know where she was going, but neither was the rest of the crowd. They were all women, and they were all walking down that wide street. Most of them were older than her; she was one of the younger ones. She was also one of the prettier ones. Some of the other women had too long straight legs, others had cheekbones that cast long shadows across their sunken cheeks. She had looked at the woman on her left. She looked like she was in her early 40s. A tall woman with dark strands escaping from under the scarf that covered her hair. Her face was long, her mouth was wide, her lips were thin, her eyes were looking ahead but not really looking at anything at all. She looked like she was dying on the inside, but her face never moved. Her mouth was slightly open. She looked like she knew she was condemned.

The crowd was dragging its feet, almost sleepwalking towards a destination I couldn't see. It was too far into the horizon. We were in Europe, or at least they were. I was visiting. I was dreaming. I was in my dream and watching them all.

I didn't know the young woman's name. I saw her sitting in the back of a long metallic bus in the middle of that last long seat. She was smaller than everyone else. She was neater than everyone else. Her scarf, her hair, her skirt, her jacket, her blouse, her shiny eyes, her small mouth, her little hands, her short clean nails, everything was in place. She was a neat and orderly girl. She didn't know where they were all being taken, just that they had all been asked to leave their homes so that they could all be resettled somewhere else. She had had no family for a long time now, and she had stopped feeling frightened in her aloneness sometime ago, but I felt so sorry for this proper young woman who was really a little girl who had been trying to be brave and grown-up because that's just what you have to do sometimes.

I saw her next at a campsite. It was almost dark. The people who ran that campsite wore uniforms, and they had taken all personal items from the women who had been brought there by the bus. The young woman was slowly passing by a pile of confiscated belongings. They had taken everything from her as well, everything that had been wrapped in the tablecloth she used to cover the small bedstand with in the plain dark apartment she used to live in. She had hidden one thing from the people in the uniforms - a book? I couldn't see. She had hidden it in her clothes, tucked it in the waistband of her skirt under her jacket. She couldn't let them take the book away from her. It was her most prized possession, she could never part from it. It meant too much. Then I saw it. It was my book, a scrapbook of my life that my friends in Delhi had made for me. No one had ever given me such a present before. It was one of my most prized possessions. A small scrapbook with a paper mache pink cover. She could never part from it. She couldn't let them take that away from her too.

She walked ahead some more to where the beds had been laid out in a straight line out in the open. It would get dark soon, and cold. She didn't know why they had all been brought here. The people in uniforms wouldn't tell them. Maybe tomorrow they would say something. She hadn't had time to tell her employer that she would be going away, and the landlord would wonder where she had gone. She hoped she'd get to go back tomorrow. There was so much to do, so much to keep an eye over. She would explain things to her employer and her landlord when she got back. The people in uniforms weren't saying anything, and they had taken away the things she had brought with her, but she would never let them find her scrapbook.

Who knows who this young woman was? My dream ended, I never got her name. I couldn't figure out the name of the concentration camp that she had been taken to. I know she died soon after that. She had been surprised when she was dying, because until the very end she had thought that she would be sent back to her job and her apartment, to her life. The camp swallowed her and all the others. I don't know what they did with her body, if it was buried in a mass grave, if it was cremated in one of the ovens at the camp. Her scrapbook disappeared, and her employer, who had been so happy with her work, and her landlord, who was so happy having her as a tenant, never found out what happened to her. They asked around about her for a while and then gave up and found a new secretary, a new tenant. It was as if she had never existed.

She was a good girl, she was a hardworking sincere girl. She was shy but intelligent, and she was supposed to have become a great many things. She was supposed to have met a man who would have run his great fingers through her loose hair. She was meant to have known that kind of love that makes one's body blush, and she was meant to grow old with him, her dark hair turning white because she was meant to have become a petite little grandmother. She was supposed to have family once again and to know that kind of immortality. She existed once, but before anyone could get to know her, she was taken by the holocaust. Nobody knows what happened to her at the camp - the people in uniforms destroyed all their records of the inmates when they lost the war.

I felt so bad for her, for all the things she missed, for all the things she could have been. She did exist, you know, even if there is nothing left to say that she did. But it's okay now, I know she once lived. Somebody now knows that she was once here.

Prophecy

Excerpts from Ayn Rand's 'The Fountainhead', where the brilliant has-been architect Henry Cameron is warning his protege Howard Roark about the pitfalls of genius...

"You're too good," said Cameron. "You're too good for what you want to do with yourself. It's no use, Roark. Better now than later."

"What do you mean?"

"It's no use wasting what you've got on an ideal that you'll never reach, that they'll never let you reach. It's no use, taking that marvelous thing you have and making a torture rack for yourself out of it. Sell it, Roark. Sell it now. It won't be the same, but you've got enough in you. You've got what they'll pay you for, and pay plenty, if you use it their way. Accept them, Roark. Compromise. Compromise now, because you'll have to later, anyway, only then you'll have gone through things you'll wish you hadn't. You don't know. I do. Save yourself from that. Leave me. Go to someone else."

...

"You see, of all men, I'm the last one to whom you should have come. I'll be committing a crime if I keep you here. Somebody should have warned you against me. I won't help you at all. I won't discourage you. I won't teach you any common sense. Instead, I'll push you on. I'll drive you the way you're going now. I'll beat you into remaining what you are, and I'll make you worse...Don't you see? In another month I won't be able to let you go. I'm not sure I can now. So don't argue with me and go. Get out while you can."

...

"Why are you saying all this to me? That's not what you want to say. That's not what you did."

"That's why I'm saying it! Because that's not what I did!...Look, Roark, there's one thing about you, the thing I'm afraid of. It's not just the kind of work you do; I wouldn't care, if you were an exhibitionist who's being different as a stunt, as a lark, just to attract attention to himself. It's a smart racket, to oppose the crowd and amuse it and collect admission to the side show. If you did that, I wouldn't worry. But it's not that. You love your work. God help you, you love it! And that's the curse. That's the brand on your forehead for all of them to see. You love it, and they know it, and they know they have you. Do you ever look at the people in the street? Aren't you afraid of them? I am. They move past you and they wear hats and they carry bundles. But that's not the substance of them. The substance of them is hatred for any many who loves his work. That's the only kind they fear. I don't know why. You're opening yourself up, Roark, for each and every one of them."

...

"No! I don't want to speak of that! But I'm going to. I want you to hear. I want you to know what's in store for you. There will be days when you'll look at your hands and you'll want to take something and smash every bone in them, because they'll be taunting you with what they could do, if you found a chance for them to do it, and you can't find that chance, and you can't bear your living body because it has failed those hands somewhere. There will be days when a bus driver will snap at you as you enter a bus, and he'll only be asking for a dime, but that won't be what you'll hear; you'll hear that you're nothing, that he's laughing at you, that it's written on your forehead, that thing they hate you for. There will be days when you'll stand in the orner of a hall and listen to a creature on a platform talking about buildings, about that work which you love, and the things he'll say will make you wait for somebody to rise and crack him open between two thumbnails; and then you'll hear the people applauding him, and you'll want to scream, because you won't know whether they're real or you are, whether you're in a room full of gored skulls , or whether someone has just emptied your own head, and you'll say nothing, because the sounds you could make - they're not a language in that room any longer; but if you'd want to speak, you won't anyway, because you'll be brushed aside, you who has nothing to tell them about buildings! Is that what you want?"

...

"Not enough?" asked Cameron. "All right. Then one day, you'll see on a piece of paper before you a building that will make you want to kneel; you won't believe that you've done it, but you will have done it; then you'll think that the earth is beautiful and the air smells of spring and you love your fellow men, because there is no evil in the world. And you'll set out from your house with this drawing, to have it erected, because you won't have any doubt that it will be erected by the first man to see it. But you won't get very far from your house. Because you'll be stopped at the door by the man who's come to turn off the gas. You hadn't had much food, because you saved money to finish your drawing, but still you had to cook something and you hadn't paid for it...All right, that's nothing, you can laugh at that. But finally you'll get into a man's office with your drawing, and you'll curse yourself for taking so much space of his air with your body, and you'll try to squeeze yourself out of his sight, so that he won't see you, but only hear your voice begging him, pleading, your voice licking his knees; you'll loathe yourself for it, but you won't care, if only he'd let you put up that building, you won't care, you'll want to rip your insides open to show him, because if he saw what's there he'd have to let you put it up. But he'll that he's very sorry, only the commission has just been given to Guy Francon. And you'll go home, and do you know what you'll do there? You'll cry. You'll cry like a woman, like a drunkard, like an animal. That's your future, Howard Roark. Now, do you want it?"

The Journey to the King

"By far the most famous parable describing the Sufi Way and the stations that a disciple must pass through on the journey toward self-annihilation was composed by the twelfth-century Iranian perfumer and alchemist, Farid ad-Din Attar (d. 1230). In Attar's epic masterpiece, The Conference of the Birds, the birds of the world have gathered around the hoopoe (a mythical bird), who has been chosen by lot to guide them on a journey to see the Simurgh: King of the Birds. Before they can begin their journey, however, the birds must first declare their absolute obedience to the hoopoe, promising that

Whatever he commands along the Way
We must, without recalcitrance, obey.

The oath is necessary, the hoopoe explains, because the journey will be perilious and fraught with physical and emotional adversity, and only he knows the Way. Consequently, he must be followed without question, regardless of what he demands.

To reach the Simurgh, the birds will have to traverse seven treacherous valleys, each representing a station along the Way. The first is the Valley of the Quest, in which the birds must "renounce the world", and repent of their sins. This is followed by the Valley of Love, where each bird will be plunged into seas of fire "until his very being is enflamed." Next is the Valley of Mystery, where every bird must take a different path, for "There are so many roads, and each is fit/For that pilgrim who must follow it." In the Valley of Detachment, "all claims, all lust for meaning disappear," while in the Valley of Unity, the many are merged into one: "The oneness of diversity/Not oneness locked in singularity."

Upon reaching the sixth valley, the Valley of Bewilderment, the birds - weary and perplexed - break through the veil of traditional dualities and are suddenly confronted with the emptiness of their being. "I have no certain knowledge anymore," they weep in confusion.

I doubt my doubt, doubt itself is unsure,
I love, but who is it for whom I sigh?
Not Muslim, yet not heathen, who am I?

Finally, at the end of the journey, the birds arrive at the Valley of Nothingness, in which, stripped of their egos, they "put on the cloak that signifies oblivion" and become consumed by the spirit of the universe. Only when all seven valleys have been traversed, when the birds have learned to "destroy the mountain of the Self" and "give up the intellect for love," are they allowed to continue to the throne of the Simurgh.

Of the thousands of birds who began the journey with the hoopoe, only thirty make it to the end. With "hopeless hearts and tattered, trailing wings," these thirty birds are led into the presence of the Simurgh. Yet when they finally set their eyes upon him, they are astonished to see not the King of Birds they had expected, but rather themselves. Simurgh is the Persian word for "thirty birds"; and it is here, at the end of the Way, that the birds are confronted with the reality that although they have "struggled, wandered, traveled far," it is "themselves they sought" and "themselves they are." "I am the mirror set before your eyes," the Simurgh says. "And all who come before my splendor see/Themselves, their own unique reality.""

- Reza Aslan, "No god but God"

Pretty Woman

He was paying her to look at him that way. It didn't bother him. She was beautiful, soft, clean, and all he wanted was her to spend some time with him. There was no way a woman like that would ever be with someone like him. He knew he had paid for the softness of her eyes, he knew she did not love him, want him, she was only letting him breathe in the perfume in her hair because he had paid for it. He didn't mind. He wanted to rest the scars on his face against the dew on her shoulders, he wanted to feel her soft feet under his cracked soles, he only wanted her to not flinch as he reached out for her skin. He knew that every look of hers, every move of hers, every sound she was going to make was going to be a lie, but he didn't mind. He wanted her to lie to him, he was paying her for the performance. He wanted her to lie to him with all she had, the best she could, the biggest lies she could tell him. He would believe her. He was paying her for the illusion that someone like her could want him, that that was all it took to find a face like hers by his side, looking at him, only at him, reaching out for him with her small soft hands the way he was reaching out to her. It was beautiful. So beautiful. That something in this life could be so simple, such a small easy transaction, it was beautiful.

The Man with the Magazine

The young man sat down next to the young woman at the library. He held in his hands a magazine. A glossy magazine. He was bored. He sharply flipped one page over in her direction. The warmth of his arms carried the dull bitterness of the gloss to the young woman next to him. It startled her as it softly touched her cheek and began to fade away, but not entirely. He flipped another page. And another. It hit her cheek again. Her cheek began to heat up. He flipped another page. Her heart began to pound, her mouth began to water. Delicious. She smiled to herself.

The family that grieves together

"Afterward, for many days, Kunta hardly ate or slept, and he would not go anywhere with his kafo mates. So grieved was he that Omoro, one evening, took him to his own hut, and there beside his bed, speaking to his son more softly and gently than he ever had before, told him something that helped to ease his grief.

He said that three groups of people lived in every village. First were those you could see - walking around, eating, sleeping, and working. Second were the ancestors, whom Grandma Yaisa had now joined.

"And the third people - who are they?" asked Kunta.

"The third people," said Omoro, "are those waiting to be born.""

- Alex Haley, "Roots"

You Can Say That Again

"Somehow this village of roses was not so foreign to him. His intuition told him that he belonged here, if only for a short period. This would be the place where he would rekindle the fire for living that he had known before the legal profession stole his soul, a sanctuary where his broken spirit would slowly start to heal. And so began Julian's life among the Sages of Sivana, a life of simplicity, serenity and harmony. The best was soon to come."

- Robin S. Sharma, 'The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari'

Regarding intolerance

An excerpt from one of my favourite books, 'The Land of Far-Beyond' by Enid Blyton. The travellers from the City of Turmoil carry the burdens of their misdeeds along the narrow and difficult path to the City of Happiness, the Land of Far-Beyond, where they have been told they will lose their crushing burdens. The book is based on 'The Pilgrim's Progress' by John Bunyan.

They went on for a good way, and then met a man who called upon them to stop.

"You can't pass by here unless you tell me what is in your luggage!" he said, looking at the burdens on the backs of Mr. Scornful and the children. "Nobody takes luggage to the City of Happiness. So you must be carrying something you shouldn't!"

"It isn't luggage," said Mr. Scornful, not at all liking the look of the man, who had rather wild eyes, and a hard mouth. "It's - well, I hardly know how to describe it - it's just a burden we can't get rid of till we reach the Land of Far-Beyond. So pray let us pass."

"What's in the burdens?" asked the man, his eyes flashing. "You must tell me!"

"Oh, don't be silly," said Mr. Scornful, getting tired of the wild-eyed fellow. "Let us pass - or I'll knock you down. Who are you, any way?"

"I am called Intolerance," said the man. "I live here, not far from the path. I see travellers going by on their way to the City of Happiness. But a lot of them don't deserve to get there, and I try to stop them."

"What right have you to stop anyone!" cried Peter. "You've no right at all! Let us pass."

"Tell me what's in your burdens first," said the man. Then, as nobody answered, he looked with his mad eyes at the loads on the traveller's shoulders. "Ah - I can see what is inside them! I can see!"

"You can't!" said Anna.

"I can see selfishness - and unkindness - and spite - and greed - oh, what terrible burdens! No one carrying those deserves to go to the City of Happiness!"

"I dare say, we don't deserve to go - but we are going all the same!" said Mr. Scornful. "The Stranger told us that we might go there, and he should know because he came from there. You've no right to try to stop us."

"I detest the things you carry in your burdens," said Intolerance. "I hate sinners! I hate people who do not think exactly as I do."

"It is right to hate sin, but it's all wrong to hate the sinner," said Mr. Scornful, impatiently. "You're a sinner too because you hate people who don't think as you do! Now get away or I'll push you over!"

"If you dare to lay a finger on me I will open the gates of my dam over there, and flood the path!" shouted Intolerance, quite beside himself with rage. The others looked and saw that the gurgling stream beside which they had walked for a mile or two, had now swollen into a rapid river that almost overflowed its banks. Near them was a stone dam which kept the river away from the path. In it was a sliding iron gate. Intolerance ran to open the gate of the dam.

"I'll flood you! I'll sweep you away!" he shouted. "You dare to threaten me - well, I'll show you what I can do. This is my River of Hate. I will let is overflow the Banks of Persecution, and sweep you off your feet. Then maybe you will crawl back to me and beg my pardon. You will say I am right, and will think as I do, and believe what I believe!"

"Stop!" yelled Mr. Scornful, as he saw the man turning a handle that lifted up the iron gate from the opening in the dam. "You're mad, fellow! Why try to drown people just because they are not what you think they should be! Stop!"

But Intolerance was half-mad, and he opened the gate in his stone dam. With a rush the water poured out, sickly yellow in colour, and swirled around the feet of the four travellers at once. They yelled, and tried to run from it, going forward on the path as fast as they could. But the water followed them, licking round their knees now, pouring over the banks and down to the path.

"I hope it doesn't get any deeper," cried Anna, trying to keep her balance. "Mr. Scornful, yell to him to shut the dam."

But all the yelling in the world would not make Intolerance do anything he didn't want to! He stood beside the dam, shouting.

"I'll rescue you if you'll say you're sorry, and will agree with me!"

"Silly fellow," said Peter. The boy had found a firm place on the path, and had dug his feet hard into it to withstand the force of the water. "Anna, Patience! Come here to me and hold on to my arms. I'm steady here."

The two girls were almost bowled over now by the water, which had reached up to their waists. With Mr. Scornful's help they reached their brother, and held on to his arms.

"You're as steady as a rock, Peter," gasped Anna. "I was almost in the water just then! And goodness knows where it would have taken me! It is pouring away into the field over there. Oh, how horrid of Intolerance to treat us like this."

The water rose higher still. It reached to the children's shoulders, and up to Mr. Scornful's chest.

"We shall drown soon," said Anna. "Oh, Peter - don't you think we'd better yell to Intolerance to stop the river overflowing - we can easily say we're sorry, and that we agree with everything he says - even if we don't."

"Well, I'm not going to do that!" said Peter, holding his sisters very firmly indeed. "We've a right to think as we like, and to do what we think is best. Why, Intolerance would be a real tyrant, if he had his way - trying to make everyone think as he does! And see how wicked he is really, for all he pretends to hate evil things! He has nearly drowned us in his River of Hate!"

"The water's up to my chin!" groaned poor Patience. "I'm holding on to you, Peter - but the river is very strong."

"Look! There's a raft!" suddenly cried Mr. Scornful, and he nodded over the water, which was now a raging torrent. The children could just see the raft bobbing on the surface. On it was a sturdy youth, who was holding a rope in his hand, ready to throw it to anyone caught in the flood.

"Hie!" yelled Mr. Scornful. "Hie! Can you save us?"

The youth heard his shout and threw the rope at once. Mr. Scornful gave it to the two girls, and the youth pulled them to safety on his raft. Peter swam up to it and Mr. Scornful waded over and pulled himself up.

"Goodness!" said Peter, shivering. "That was a most unpleasant adventure. Does Intolerance do this kind of thing often?"

"Whenever he can," said the youth, paddling the raft over the water. "But as soon as I see the water rushing over the path I get out my raft of Independence. It has saved many a traveller from Intolerance's River of Hate! My name is Charitable, and I'm quite the opposite of Intolerance!"

"I am glad you came when you did," said Anna, trying to squeeze the water from her clothes. "I should have been swept away the very next minute. I simply can't imagine how it was that Peter stood so steady!"

"Oh - your brother's name is Peter, is it?" said Charitable, his grey, wide-set eyes looking directly at the boy. "Well, you know what the name Peter means, don't you? It means a rock. So Peter is like his name, is he - steady as a rock when trouble comes along! That's good."

After some time the youth reached the end of the flooding water. His raft scraped on the ground and he jumped off. He helped the girls to the dry ground, and then waved his hand to where a big bonfire burned nearby.

"I always light that when I see the river flooding over the path," he said. "Then travellers can dry themselves."

The children and Mr. Scornful dried themselves gratefully by Charitable's big fire. It was a curious fire for it seemed to dry them completely in no time. Even their clothes underneath soon became dry. Charitable piled on more twigs when the fire died down.

"Why doesn't somebody punish Intolerance?" asked Peter, holding his steaming coat out to the flames. "He has no right to treat people like that."

"Oh, sooner or later he will be swept away in his own river," said Charitable. "And I don't mind telling you that I will not be out on my raft that day! He is the one person in the world I won't help, for he has persecuted others so often!"

Yoda Man

Size matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you? Hmm? Hmm. And well you should not. For my ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the Force around you; here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere, yes. Even between the land and the ship.

Do or do not... there is no try.

May the Force be with you.

Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.

Grave danger you are in. Impatient you are.

Always in motion is the future.

Death is a natural part of life. Rejoice for those around you who transform into the Force. Mourn them do not. Miss them do not. Attachment leads to jealously. The shadow of greed, that is.

Named must your fear be before banish it you can.

You will find only what you bring in.

Not if anything to say about it I have.

Soon will I rest, yes, forever sleep. Earned it I have. Twilight is upon me, soon night must fall.

[Luke:] I can’t believe it. [Yoda:] That is why you fail.

Yes, a Jedi's strength flows from the Force. But beware of the dark side. Anger, fear, aggression; the dark side of the Force are they. Easily they flow, quick to join you in a fight. If once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will, as it did Obi-Wan's apprentice.

Powerful you have become, the dark side I sense in you.

The dark side clouds everything. Impossible to see the future is.

Foreplay, cuddling - a Jedi craves not these things.

Ready are you? What know you of ready? For eight hundred years have I trained Jedi. My own counsel will I keep on who is to be trained. A Jedi must have the deepest commitment, the most serious mind. This one a long time have I watched. All his life has he looked away... to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was. Hmm? What he was doing. Hmph. Adventure. Heh. Excitement. Heh. A Jedi craves not these things. You are reckless.

Pain, suffering, death I feel. Something terrible has happened. Young Skywalker is in pain. Terrible pain.

Remember, a Jedi's strength flows from the Force. But beware. Anger, fear, aggression. The dark side are they. Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny. Luke... Luke... do not... do not underestimate the powers of the Emperor or suffer your father's fate you will. Luke, when gone am I... the last of the Jedi will you be. Luke, the Force runs strong in your family. Pass on what you have learned, Luke. There is... another... Sky... walker.

Ohhh. Great warrior.Wars not make one great.

The boy you trained, gone he is. Consumed by Darth Vader.

Lost a planet, Obi Wan has.

Happens to every guy sometimes this does.

Only the Dark Lord of the Sith knows of our weakness. If informed the senate is, multiply our adversaries will.

Feel the force!.

Around the survivors a perimeter create.

Good relations with the Wookiees, I have.

Not victory Obi won. The shroud of the darkside has fallen. Begun the clone war has.

Use your feeling, Obi-Wan, and find him [Anakin] you will.

Blind we are, if creation of this clone army we could not see.

Urm. Put a shield on my saber I must.

Save them [Luke and Leia], we must. They are our last hope.

Always two there are, a master and an apprentice.

When 900 years you reach, look as good, you will not.

Oliver Twist and Optimism

Welcome to post-independence India!

Some say that art is a snapshot in time of a particular society. See if you can decipher the socialist dreams in this timeless number!