Lessons on going away...

nights have also becum a lil sleepless. i tell my frnd on the phone to hang up at 1:30 in the night sayin tht im real sleepy. as soon as im hung up upon, im wide awake. thinkin, not thinkin, staring into total darkness wondering of what i am doin and how these actions contribute to my life (and if they do at all)

i had a talk wid apa and sammy the other day (on two separate occassions) and i told them tht i am so bored and i have nthn to do at all. they said: u must read. i just made lame excuses to them.

i then spoke to bhaiya this friday, i asked him abt his college life tht he led back then and how he managed alone.

he did not lecture me, he jus simply spoke. he, being the person who inspires me the most in my life, i wudnt miss any opputunity to simply listen to wat he said and think abt it.

abt his inspiring me, im not inspired to becum like he is. im jus simply inspired.


i grabbed a few points and came to a conclusion wid his talk abt the most memorable time in his life.

1. u can read a lot, u can read volumes and volumes of books and things, but u can never ever read enough.
2. he says he started readin when he began college and now being 34 yrs of age and having read more than I can imagine, he says tht he began reading too late
3. read watever is in ur hand. read watever is at hand. jus absorb like a sponge. read pulp. read good stuff. read complete rubbish. but, read.
4. college life begins and frm then on all decisions in YOUR life are YOUR own. ur destiny is in ur hands.
5. never again in ur life will u get tht sort of energy and enthusiasm to do things. if u channelize ur energy you will always get something in the end.
6. always aim to get value of the price you pay. price you pay: not be urself and try to impress other and look cool, value you get: nothing more than sum selfish 'frnds'. price you pay: be urself, be focused, be determined, make goals and achieve them, value u get: probably even more than u paid.
7. wat u giv is wat u get
8. don't get distracted, there will be loads of distractions. u don need to get distracted. u dont NEED to get distracted to get wat u want frm life.
9. u can party ALL ur life, why would u waste tym partyin in the most productive time in ur life.

he tells me now, tht he was never cool material in his college days. he was himself. and now ppl of the 'cool' category at college are either his juniors at work or come to him for work.

and to tell u the truth, i think i love my brother a lil more than b4, jus becoz he thot tht i was worth being told abt his experience and learning frm life.

and yeah, im reading 'eleven minutes' by paulo coehlo ryt now.

- May 20th 2006

'Go DOJOMOTO!' screamed Esa

The men in yellow. These guys have been karting since October 2003. Top left; that's their current team. Starting from left Amit Kapoor, Sunny Deo, Anas Joudi, Shahir Ahmed (my brother) and Anjum Shaikh (in the kart)

The last 24 hour endurance race they participated in was held on the 19th and 20th of May 2007. They stood first in the corporate team championship.

Bottom left; the guys with their winning cup. Esa in the middle (love his expression here!). He loves his Papa racing.

I want to GoKart too! It's so much bloody fun.

She's got strawberry lips!

A very odd thing I came up with. My 3 year old niece and 5 year old nephew were dressed up as pirates one afternoon. They asked me whether pirates had swords. I told them the bad ones did but, we are the cute and nice ones that's why we don't. Now, to get them off the thought of that I had to come up with something. My mother had put a plate full of strawberries out for the three of us. I love strawberries very much (so does fiza!) so I decided to 'share' my berries with the little pirates.

The girl pirate came up to me with the biggest strawberry in the lot. She had already bitten off quite a bit of it. It look terribly ugly. I looked at them for a minute and rushed into the kitchen with my camera.

The other day, while I was breakfasting pancakes and honey (another favourite!), I discovered that honey is a great liner. It can be used to illustrate. So now I had the ugly siren lip shaped strawberry, a dinner plate, honey and a camera.

This is what happened...


(picture: first from top: esa ahmed, fiza khan)
Smack!

November 11, 2006

I am dancing inside,

Sadness watches silently

Alone it sits in the audience

And applauds at my every move

My dance is graceful and my heart is sore

I look at u when you look no more

I stare at myself in the mirror inside

Coz im dancing inside

With sadness, my only friend

The only city which takes u inside is the place where you can go and I sit still at the pavement below where sadness lives

We are not far away now

I am lonely tonight

I could be missing the life that i had before or im moruning over a few more things

Sickness gets me to the core and I scream

I scream to make sure u hear me

And feel what I feel

The quiet ramblings in my mind come out on paper and my heart explodes into a million fragmented pieces,

You’re walking over them, like always

And you must stop before I make you

I wish I were a girl who would be treated more like one.

Do I have to be treated like child?

Im not a child, please not anymore

Im just alone tonight..

alter ego writer

Sometimes I write things and forget. When I find those pages or files on an arbitrary day, I read the words and feel that another person has written it. Just like yesterday, I was thinking of something and wrote down a sentence. I didn't read what I wrote. After a minute my eyes wandered to that scrap of paper and then reading the sentence to myself I realize that at the back of my mind That's what is going on.

"I need to get things right" - That is what I had jotted down.

When I go back to reading the essays that I had written long before, I don't connect with the words there. I feel that someone else has written all that there.

hanging on a line

i dream,
i think,
i am obsessed.

there is nothing else,
my feelings are overpowered by the presence.

i am miserable,
i wait.

in the air

I am in the aircraft right now and the time is 5:00 p.m. My flight from Pune to Dubai via Mumbai was supposed to leave at 2:30 p.m. But, it did not leave on time. Now, I am at the Mumbai International airport which implies that it will take me another 2 and a half hour to reach Dubai.

I don’t like flying. It is a waste of time and energy; also a test of patience. I am bored and tired. A connecting Air India Express flight from the Pune (Lohegaon) Airport is the worst thing that can happen to someone.

Saurabh was to catch a flight to Delhi the other day. He did. But, as soon as he reached the airport, I received an sms from him telling me that his flight is delayed by 3 hours!

Do you realize how much of a pain 3 hours can be on an airport? The Pune airport is a small place. If you stand at a point you can see the hanger with all the aircrafts as well as the people making payments to the rickshaw walas outside.

Poor Saurabh, I laughed at him that time but when my flight was delayed by an hour today I wanted to rip someone’s hair off. Also my anger was tripled. At first they made me open my baggage because they saw my paints in the X-Ray. Then at the check-in counter they got upset with the fact that my last name is Ahmed. So they rang up the Customs officials. These came after 30 minutes to check my profile.

Later, I made plans to visit the bookstore at the airport. Apparently the bookstore falls on the other side of the immigration counter and we were not allowed to go there after the immigration check. What rubbish?! I was annoyed. Now, to add to my annoyance the flight was delayed by an hour. After the delay, we’re still in the bloody aircraft and still in Mumbai.

Also, let me not forget to mention that an international flight requires it’s passengers to report 3 hours prior to the take off time. Of course, I always follow rules. I am such an idiot sometimes.

Leaving,

This is something I can tell my children (if I have children and they grow up to care to listen to me, that is). Tell them tales about the year that I spent living in a hostel. I have finally shifted out and I hope I have a lot many stories to tell about living Outside hostel too. The pictures hanging in mid air above us right now are the ones I captured before I spent the last night in the hostel.

My room number in the hostel was 302. My apartment number now is 301. Strangely the numerals 1, 2, 3, 4 are quite prominent in my life. Especially, in the combination of 13, 32 and 42.

I was just looking outside my large French window and I could see mountains in the distance. I wondered for a second if i should take a picture to show you. At the same moment I realised how beautiful the forest will look in the monsoon when I am back on this chair after the long vacation. Yes, apart from the free WiFi of my college building (which shares a boundary wall with this community) I have a free forest view, sunset and mountains at the distance. Also, let's not forget the wonderfully spacious balcony that I can see all this from.

I should be talking about the hostel and not about the apartment. My hostel warden/rector was quite unhappy that I decided to leave the place. She called me her 'hug-me' doll. Since I got the short crop I have been titled that.

Whenever I look away from the screen I think of what all I have to show you about my new apartment. I think it means I don't know what to talk about the Hostel. Let's not waste more time.