musaafir-e dasht

Written in the wake of the Iraq war... Causa Belli By Andrew Motion They read good books, and quote, but never learn a language other than the scream of rocket-burn. Our straighter talk is drowned but ironclad: elections, money, empire, oil and Dad.

Today, Dr I.S. said something that simply shook me from within. He said, Learning is not fun. Learning is labour! And then he quoted and incident in which a person came to Mawlana Rasheed Ahmad Gangohi rahimahullah , saying that he did not 'enjoy' doing dhikr . Mawlana rahimahullah responded by saying that this was an area where one should not even seek after the acquisition of pleasure. If enjoyment is the goal then one should do other things like playing (here, Dr I.S. mentioned a name of some game, which I am unable to recall at the moment, but I hope the meaning has been communicated, insha'Allah )... What actually made me shudder was the thought of my own approach towards learning and the ideas that we as teachers pass on to our students. Do not we always focus on making learning 'fun' so as not to 'bore' our students? Who decides what is boring and what is fun? What sensibility are we creating in young minds? Will it not urge them to go only afte...

  source Were every person to know when to refrain from taking the first step many things would have been changed. - Mustafa Sa'eed in Tayeb Salih's, Season of Migration to North. 

John Keats described Negative Capability in one of his letters as following: Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason-- ... Today, I was taken aback with my own reaction towards certain apparently insignificant happenings. I felt a certain kind of sorrow at the shifting of certain inanimate objects around me. Is it not natural that we do shift things around? It is just that at times we imperceptibly develop such a strong and subtle attachment with things and people around us that we are not even conscious of their place and significance in our lives. They become a part of us. It is only when these things or people leave their assigned places, that we come to realise how much they mattered to us when we did not even take note of them. This, for me, is a mystery. Why is replacement necessary when one has no desire for it. Replacement, as life tells us, however, is necessa...

Alhamdulillah, after a very long time Karachi finally gets its share of pleasant weather. It has been extremely hot lately and now the for the past two days the weather has been cloudy and it's been quite windy! Whenever I look outside the mesh door I find plants almost swinging in delight, and the big palm tree that we planted years ago now stands tall right outside our house producing a wonderful swoosh sound, for its leaves have grown huge, mashaAllah. Alhamdulillah the change in the weather seems to have affected people's moods too. Everyone looks happy despite their constant worries about one thing or the other. I really hope the weather continues to stay like this for a few more days. Alhamdulillahi wa lillahil hamd! 

جب بھی برسا ہے تیرے شہر کی جانب برسا کوئی   بادل   تو  سر دشت  بھی  برسا   ہوتا - ن م راشد