The Vitruvian Man

My favorite sketch is the Vitruvian Man by Leonardo da Vinci. It is significant to me as to me it represents life and human nature; everything exists around man. One of the theories related to this sketch can be derived from the 6th century, the time when Pythagoras and the Buddha lived. We all know that concept of rebirth or ‘jnam’. In mythology there is this concept that life is an endless wheel of reincarnations until we purify ourselves and return to our divine source or simply achieve ‘mupthi’.

This sketch shows life to me as like life this sketch is in perfect symmetry and it holds everything: a circle, a square, and two pairs of limbs depicting that man does have one face but he can have a lot behind that simple face, he can be two complete people which are independent from one another yet so similar, like two soul mates which the same center. Here by centre I mean same interests, same problems the same soul.


The circle depicts the life of the earth and the fact that it revolves around the sun and that every thing in this world is round. We often see how two lovers leave and then reunite at the other end of this world. It is like the concept of a compass by Donne;


If they be two, they are two so
As stiffe twin compasses are two,

Thy soule the fixt foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if the'other doe.

And though it in the center sit,
Yet when the other far doth rome,

It leanes, and hearkens after it,
And growes erect, as it comes home.

Such wilt thou be to mee, who must
Like th'other foor, obliquely runne;


Thy firmnes makes my circle just,
And makes me end, where I begunne.

Its means that in between two lovers one needs to stay stagnant so that the other may drift away at times but have a point to come back to. I have seen men do this that they go around and have their affairs but at the end they return to the same woman. I told all this to a friend once and she told me a story about this uncle: he used to go and have his flings, get drunk and come back to his wife and tell her that she satisfies him the best. Ha ha

Pure Art

Yesterday I saw the drama which I think is going to be my favorite for this fall, Humsafar which is based on a novel by Farhat Ishtiaq. It is a shame that I do not know much about the writer but what I gathered from the story is that it is going to be breath taking. For me, the idea of a love story is usually Devdas. I am kind of lame in that sense I believe in the existence of Ishq and that love being too small a word, my friends say I am a drama queen, I often tell them that I am a writer and that I cannot help it.

Pakistani dramas are and have always been a class apart and I am a regular viewer of them some of my all times favorites are tanhayain, zaib-un-nisa, alfa-bravo-Charlie, angan terah, dhoop kinara. Back in the day we did not have much choice on television so I spent my childhood watching shows like ilaf-noon, pas-i-aina, I hope you guys remember college jeans , I am lead to think that that was where I developed my first love; The National College of Arts. Initially my father wanted me to become an engineer but when he saw my undying passion for art and culture he used to tell me every other day; ‘I will not send you to another college besides NCA.’ And I would always tell him, ’I will not go to another college besides NCA.’

These dramas that I saw as a child I credit them for most of my taste in literature, but as a child I did not realize the importance of Urdu as a language plus I was sent to top notch English medium school, so I barely learnt any Urdu now I regret that I am almost a frangi it is frustrating for me to read any thing written in the Nasta’liq script. I hold urdu literature above English and the kind of passion I have for urdu I read and learn urdu verses from the internet in the urdu written with English alphabets.

With the rise of star plus we dropped class of our dramas, thank god we are back in the game and HUM TV has a big contribution I do not credit Geo much as they seldom come up with good story lines and good screen plays one of the best by Geo were dil-e-nadan, Tum ho k chup and Zip- bas chup raho. The last one, I have seen those things happen around me and it was interesting to see somebody being bold enough to say them out loud. On the other hand Hum came up with the phenomenal DASTAN period.       

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When I was little, I got told once that love is when you put the needs of others before your own and that definition got programmed in my head just like all the things do when you are old enough to ask Socratic questions but young enough to not be able to answer them. You think life is what you think it is, you are told that lying is bad and you are not to do that no matter what.

Then a day comes when realities of this world dawn upon you and as Faiz puts it ;

‘ Kulney lagaey har symth tilasmat k daar’

That is when you realize that your parents are such hypocrites they give you lectures about good and bad but they make you lie to the guests.

It is like the story of Galileo; he was the first person to have stated that it is the earth that revolves around the sun, when the church of the middle ages had stated that the sun is what revolves around the earth. Galileo was charged of blasphemy and imprisoned. While he had stated the truth, he was wrong so, if you go in the details of these things and the concept of existentialism you see that good and bad are very subjective terms and religion has left their details in the tones of grey. There are circumstances under which it is okay to lie, like Shakespeare says, ‘nothing is good or bad, your thinking makes it so.’ The strong came up with this ‘lying is bad’ just so they could over power the weak.

I believe that the way Shakespeare portrays love is not what love can be for real. He always stated the beloved to be high on a pedestal and out of reach and I think that is bullshit, there are three stages of love; mental, spiritual and physical after achieving these can you only fall in love we are humans we need our five senses to be stimulated that is our physical reality and John Donne was the first person to have showed me the real form of love;

‘Love's mysteries in souls do grow,

But yet the body is his book.’

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He's Always on Facebook

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When Mark Zuckerberg came up with the concept of facebook, his plan was far superior to the other social networking sites available. Orkut did not last because there you could view everybody’s profile in other words their personal space and they never updated it, other sites hi5 for instance were, let’s admit stupid so, I am not going to write further about them and twitter is nice but it is not facebook.

Personally I am not a big fan of facebook, I am on it to keep in touch with my friends, to have them in one place and to stalk people (what everybody does that, I am bold enough to admit!). 

The thing I hate the most about facebook is that people have access to your life and I am a very exclusive person I don’t like sharing my friends or things about them what I hate the most is when people come up to you and ask, ‘how do you know falana person?’and

’ooo she add him/her,’

‘oh she unfriended xyz’  

I can know who ever I want too. People take facebook too seriously I like the fact that Mark could make people believe facebook is a real world, he dropped out of college to focus on that. Most of the world’s successful people are college dropouts. Don't i just love that fact!

OVERLOAD NERAY AAAH (2011)

I am using the garnier eye roll on thing; it is not making much of a difference. So one of the lamest thing about guys here is that they until they are about twenty-two, most of them go-out-with “aunties” what the Americans call ‘cougars’ and that makes these kids think they are “soooo cooool”.

Last time I used the word ‘kids’ my well to do Oxford graduate teacher said, “Do not use these American terms, they will not help you.” I have a friend and she believes that teenage for a man is until he is twenty-two. The song on my mind today is overload’s newest venture; ‘neray ah’. I like the composition it features; Farhad Humayun, Navid Shahzad, Sabina Pasha, Amina Haq, Ammar Belal, Models Nomi Qamar, Abdullah Mohammad, Urouj Ahmed, Sadaf Kanwal, Alyzeh Gabol, Amna Babar, Akash, Haroon Shahid and Quratulain Baloch, Farhan Ali and Faisal baig 

I had always loved Navid Shahzad even as child. She worked at my school and I always wanted to go up to her and tell her how I admired her acting. Her entire personality was very impressive. Unlike other teachers, she used to buy her coffee from the canteen and I have often seen her walk home, maybe she lived close by. The thing I liked the most about this video was the half-the-table-and-half-the-farhad-concept. I am not really sure if that man is even Farhad Humayun; I had a friend who used to say this about men, “leen, they all look the same in the dark.”

Rumi's Poem - Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan Qawwali 2/2

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This is my newest found love; Khan Sahib is one of the greatest things about Pakistan, he has made contributions to Hollywood and this is him singing Rumi’s Kalam. If there is one language I wish I knew it is Farsi or popularly known as Persian. Not knowing it makes me feel deprived of a very rich culture of the Muslim rule. I felt the same about Urdu when I was not very well versed at it. Then as my design thesis I took up Mirza Ghalib as my topic that was when I learnt about the reality of Ghalib’s immortality.

He has written about every topic and it is a misconception that all Ghalib is about is plainly unrequited love. For me, love is either returned by your beloved or it is a mistake. But these poets made me discard all my previous beliefs and they showed me that it is a coward who abandons love when it hurts. If I were to fall in love I would want it to last an eternity I would want it to be like the love of these immortal poets.

Back to the poem; I hope it does not get lost in translation:

Na man behooda girde kocha

Wa bazaar megardam

Mazaj-e-ashiqee daram paye

dildar megardam

Khudaya rahm kon bar man

Pareeshan waar megardam

Khata karam gonahgaram

Ba hale zaar megardam

Sharabe showq menosham

Ba girde yaar megardam

Sukhan mastana megoyam

Walay hooshyaar megardam

Rumi

No I am not roaming aimlessly

around the streets and bazaar

I am a lover searching for his beloved

God have mercy on me

I am walking around troubled

I have done wrong and sinned

and am walking around wounded

I have drunk the wine of desire

and am strolling around beloved

Though I may seem drunk

I am quite sober