"You were born with wings-"

muslimwomeninhistory: THE Princess Zeb-un-Nissa was the eldest...

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 10:13:00 +0400

THE Princess Zeb-un-Nissa was the eldest daughter of the Mogul Emperor Aurungzebe of India, and was born in 1639. She came of a distinguished line, in direct descent from Genghiz Khan and Tamerlane. Her Emperor-ancestors were famous not only for their valour and statesmanship, but as patrons and inspirers of art and learning, and, moreover, they themselves possessed distinguished literary gifts.

At seven years old she was a Hafiz—she knew the Koran by heart; and her father gave a great feast to celebrate the occasion. We read that the whole army was feasted in the great Maidan at Delhi, thirty thousand gold mohurs were given to the poor, and the public offices were closed for two days. She was given as teacher a lady named Miyabai, and learned Arabic in four years; she then studied mathematics and astronomy, in which sciences she gained rapid proficiency. She began to write a commentary on the Koran, but this was stopped by her father. From her early youth she wrote verses, at first in Arabic; but when an Arabian scholar saw her work he said: “Whoever has written this poem is Indian. The verses are clever and wise, but the idiom is Indian, although it is a miracle for a foreigner to know Arabian so well.” This piqued her desire for perfection, and thereafter she wrote in Persian, her mother-tongue. She had as tutor a scholar called Shah Rustum Ghazi, who encouraged and directed her literary tastes. She wrote at first in secret, but he found copies of her verses among her exercise-books. He prophesied her future greatness, and persuaded her father to send all over India and Persia and Kashmir to find poets and to invite them to come to Delhi to form a fitting circle for the princess. This was the more wonderful as Aurungzebe himself cared little for poetry and used to speak against the poet’s calling. He had forbidden the works of Hafiz to be read in school by boys, or in the palace by the Begums, but he made an exception in favour of Zeb-un-Nissa.

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You with the dark burly hair and the breathtaking eyes,

your inquiring glance that leaves me undone.

Eyes that pierce and then withdraw like a blood-stained sword,

eyes with dagger lashes!

Zealots, you are mistaken - this is heaven.

Never mind those making promises of the afterlife:

join us now, righteous friends, in this intoxication.

Never mind the path to the Kaabah: sanctity resides in the heart.

Squander your life, suffer! God is right here.

Oh excruciating face! Continual light!

This is where I am thrilled, here, right here.

There is no book anywhere on the matter.

Only as soon as I see you do I understand.

If you wish to offer your beauty to God, give Zibunisa

a taste. Awaiting the tiniest morsel, she is right here.

Source

Wow. That’s…wow. That’s pretty amazing. I really ought to look more into Zeb-un-Nissa. I am a horrible Mughal-e-Azam buff for not knowing about her.

Wilfred Owen/Sylvia Plath - Just what was so bad about the two world wars? Part 1

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 10:06:25 +0400

Let me begin by saying that if you really, genuinely are confused about why WWI and WWII were as bad as people say it is, you’ve either had a terrible history teacher or you…well, I have no hope for you.

As a history student and a lover of all things dead and gone, my particular expertise lies in 20th Century history, particularly post-1919. So while I’m not as well-versed on the Great War (WWI) as I am on World War II, I can still hold my own.

What strikes me most about Anthem for Doomed Youth is how unconventional it was for the time. There have only been very few occasions where war poetry has portrayed war as something negative, as a plague rather than a myriad of blessed angels coming to sprinkle holy water over the rightful country. Now, of course, anti-war literature, media, artwork etc is not exactly rare; but that’s because the veil of nationalism has been lifted from the eyes of many people, particularly after the Vietnamese War, which was the first war to be aired on television (but this would make a good blog topic for another day, actually!).

Now, patriotism by itself isn’t bad. I myself am a patriot. But so were many of the young men who flung themselves head first into the battlefield…and found themselves face to face with the real horrors of war.

Think about it - how easy is it for people to cheer on their soldiers from our living rooms, crying out for them to serve their country? It isn’t until you’re actually witness to how ghastly war is that you begin to realize, “Maybe this isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

That was the case with Wilfred Owen. He too was a patriot. He too wanted to help his country rise above the rest, and he did that the best way he knew how - to join the army as it was recruiting soldiers for the first world war.

All well and good. Until you get Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Until you lose your limbs. Even if you come back from the war alive, you’re an invalid for the rest of it. And at a time where prosthetic didn’t even exist, that’s not exactly the easiest life to live.

And then all those teenagers who had their entire lives ahead of them, blown up on a battlefield, for a battle that wasn’t even their own?

“It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.”

Eid Mubarak!

Sun, 06 Nov 2011 15:40:00 +0400

It’s the first day of eid and the third day of a desperately needed break from school. Honestly, as much as I love all my classes - seriously, I do - it’s just too much.

I’m mentally preparing myself for a lot of crying over the next few months, what with university applications, hounding teachers (<3) for recommendation letters, various extracurriculars, studying etc.

Speaking of university applications, however, it should be noted that writing essays for uni, while not as stressful as for English, is exhausting work. What’s most irritating is how the questions usually have two extremes - painfully specific and painfully allowing. For example -

Painfully specific - “Given what you know about [XXX], what attracts you about its emphasis on creative inquiry and activity and how would you convey what is exciting about your own interests to other students coming from very different intellectual or artistic backgrounds?”

Painfully allowing - “What intrigues you? Tell us about one work of art, scientific achievement, piece of literature, method of communication, or place in the world (a film, book, performance, website, event, location, etc.), and explain its significance to you.”

I have never wanted to shoot a question more.

My favorite essay question so far was hilarious, and there was another one - thankfully optional - that made me cackle but feel ridiculously confused.

“We understand that the college application process often feels stressful, when instead it should be an opportunity for self-reflection. Stop worrying for a minute and have fun with this response.

Much of the work that students do at XXX is a form of storytelling. If you were to write the story of your life until now, what would you title it and why? Please be brief (100-200 words).”

“Imagine you have to wear a costume for a year of your life. What would you pick and why?”

Seriously. As stressful as all these essays are, gems like the two above make it totally worth it.

"This sky where we live is no place to lose your wings so love, love, love."

Sun, 16 Oct 2011 18:58:18 +0400

“This sky where we live is no place to lose your wings so love, love, love.”

- Hafiz of Shiraz.

I’m just going to start off with this particular quote. It has…honestly always struck me as something so beautiful but I’ve never actually conjured up the desire to mutilate such a perfect sentence with my analyses.

So here it is in all its glory. I’m just going to let that hang around there because it’s just beautiful and needs a place in my blog. I’ll probably analyze some of Hafiz’s work at some point.

Reprise!

Sat, 01 Oct 2011 19:15:00 +0400

I never thought I’d be seeing this blog again. Just as well that I didn’t delete it - sheer sentiment is to thank for that.

Less digression and more literature, however, is the key to this blog. So, um, I’ll just go and make this a masterlist as well as a to-do list of what I hope to write in this blog!

Wilfred Owen’s poems//the destruction of the Youth by WWI/II//ALL MY FEELINGS about Anthem For Doomed Youth.
Sylvia Plath and Nazi imagery.
Song analyses (particularly Cocorosie’s imagery)
Persian and Urdu poetry (in English, of course)
Poems and their historical contexts
Lives of poets

As a child, ones capacity for creativity is limitless. This is...

Fri, 29 Apr 2011 17:42:23 +0400

As a child, ones capacity for creativity is limitless. This is true for every child. No child is born “stupid” or “dull” or “slow” as you may call hir. At the most, ze is not… talented in traditional ways. But it is that panic, that hysteria which the child is stigmatized by which stamps out all that divergent thinking, that capacity for “thinking outside the box” which the corporate world so swears by but never does anything to fortify.

Just…do the world and this generation a favor and watch the video.

On the cricket world cup

Sat, 02 Apr 2011 23:23:00 +0400

Before I proceed with this post, can I just appeal in advance against my public lynching? Let’s not forget, people, homicide is wrong.

I realize I’m treading on tumultuous ground with the topic of my writing - i.e. the cricket world cup - but it is something that needs to be said, especially by such an avid supporter of the losing team, and a patriot of the country it represents. A country whose name in the news is annotated by implications of terrorism, corruption, civil unrest, sexism and poverty, amongst other less-than-flattering terms.

But politics aside, it has to be said - well done, India. You were the better team. We were a notch sub-par to you. Our team made worse decisions than your team did. Your team was probably better practiced than ours. You are in the finals. Congratulations, sincerely.

And that said…congratulations, Pakistan cricket team. You did us proud, you made us happy and, most of all, you gave this country something to look forward to, and that isn’t something that happens often. We cried with you, we celebrated, we cursed our bad fortune… but we did it together. Unity. Faith. Discipline. And that last one, even though we lost and were bitterly disappointed, our collective hearts broken and our hopes shattered, we made sure not to tarnish.

Boom boom, Afridi lala. Boom boom.

**

Also, Indian cricket team, congratulations on winning the world cup!

If this wasn't a school blog, your respective eyes would burn from the sheer amount of Sailor Tongue that could have been employed here.

Tue, 22 Feb 2011 22:10:34 +0400

Ladies and gentlemen, meet Muammar Gaddafi - a spectacular, benevolent fellow! Love for his people is oozing out of his every pore and orifice as he makes his monthly rounds to hospital wards, placing kisses on the temples of new-born babies, promising to make Libya - and indeed, the world - a better place for them. He would never dream of using violence against his people! After all, why would they ever protest? The standards of living are fantastic, are they not? And poverty line? What is this “poverty line” you speak of? Libya knows of no such thing!

I wish all of that could be typed without having been dipped in a vat of hot, toxic sarcasm first.

Muammar Gaddafi, I can safely say that you are the instigator of what can’t be called anything but a massacre in your own country. Anything that happens to you now - and something will happen, and soon - is what you deserve. Do not try to garner any sympathy from the international community; you are undeserving of any help that is offered to you and whoever does is equally awful.

Normally, I am quite a liberal, peace-loving person, but massacring your own people is crossing one too many lines and, let me tell you, Mr. Gaddafi, it’s a one-way road.

How would the other planets appear on the night sky if their...

Fri, 18 Feb 2011 13:31:05 +0400

How would the other planets appear on the night sky if their orbited Earth at the same distance as the moon.

Trippy.

I get angry often and out of said anger comes a blogpost.

Thu, 17 Feb 2011 19:13:26 +0400

I have mentioned this woman before, a woman called Suheir Hammad. She is of Palestinian descent. An activist. She lives in Brooklyn, New York. She calls herself a Palestinian New Yorker, a writer, a poet, and again, an activist. She wants to liberate people from war and women from war.

Because, like it or not, do you know who suffers the most in war?

Women and children.

Civilians killings. Rape. Plundering. Misogynistic murder. Girls kidnapped at a young age, gang raped, left for dead. That is the disgusting truth of war that extends beyond soldiers killing soldiers.

You might be thinking, “What about the men?”

What about them? What about the men? Am I not allowed to talk about women without mentioning men? But it’s perfectly alright for me to talk about men without even breathing a word regarding women and girls, am I right? Gender equality! Misandry! Feminazism!

You know what?

You can accuse me of those things after women aren’t paid 70% of what men are under the same corporate position. You can accuse of of those things after the number of poor women in the world is the same as men because, as it stands, the amount of women living in poverty FAR exceeds that of men. You can accuse me of those things when the cases of women raped are taken seriously and not brushed aside by incompetent, chauvinistic police officers.

The list goes on. No, I am not ashamed of being a feminist and don’t you dare call me a feminazi because I am NOT sitting here ordering for men to be piled into gas chambers and mass graves. What is feminism?

1. A doctrine that advocates equal rights for women

2. The movement aimed at equal rights for women

Do you see the word “superiority” anywhere? I don’t.

Now what is chauvinism, a label so many men proudly adhere to?

1. Activity indicative of belief in the superiority of men over women

So why is feminism so much more radical than chauvinism, when the former only vouches for egality and not supremacy? It’s the estrogen that goes with it that people dislike so much.

How about some more statistics!

1 in 6 women and 1 in 33 men will be a victim of sexual assault in their lifetime.
60% of sexual assaults are not reported to the police.
Only 6% of rapists will ever spend a day in jail.

In the US Army, females are more likely to be raped by their fellow soldiers than actually get killed in combat.
Most of the people who scream so loud against the immorality of abortion will never be pregnant in their lives.

This is why I’m a feminist.

This is why I am unashamed to be associated with all the negative connotations that come with women’s empowerment.

This is why being a chauvinist isn’t as edgy as you think it is, my good man and/or woman and/or whathaveyou.

(PS: I don’t hate men so you can keep your misandry accusations out of this.)

Language and linguistics

Sat, 12 Feb 2011 13:00:00 +0400

It’s interesting how language even came about.

A human’s need for social interaction, a means to verbally convey their emotions and thoughts and desires. Something more than just grunting and huffing and signs. Syllables and noises melded together, the different positions of tongue to make different sounds, how each was designated to a symbol, different sounds to different symbols and then a series of symbols, symbols which could be placed and ordered together - to make words and then sentences and then speech.

The complications - the accents and tics and throat inflections that come with it. The beauty of words expanded upon. Of rhythms and rhymes. Something to write and contain memories on - paper. Then, calligraphy. Illumination. Eloquence. Weaving and painting beautiful tapestries and murals but with mediums like the pen and the voice box. A whole different art!

A cry for independence - off shoots of one language, further complications on the alphabet, different accents (some more throat here, some music there) a variance in pronunciation. Language became a claim, something to hold on to while a declaration for revolution was being made.

Compromises, family trees for linguistics, an interest in a completely different culture; the language thereof. A whole new study, a whole new field to add to mankind’s plethora of disciplines.

Many fret over grammar and accents and all those unnecessary words and synonyms. But I don’t share that view.

Language is one of the most beautiful things humans have come up with. To brush off a language is to brush off the history that comes with it - and history is nothing to be brushed off.

openwindows: Manhattan (by Matte Stephens) <3

Wed, 09 Feb 2011 21:52:53 +0400

openwindows:

Manhattan (by Matte Stephens)

<3

So perhaps I haven't exactly been keeping up-to-date with my blog.

Wed, 09 Feb 2011 21:26:00 +0400

Okay, so that is somewhat of an understatement.

Honestly, I have lost my creativity. What I have left of it goes into my schoolwork, evenly balanced between Art and English. My eyes are sore, I’m exhausted regardless of how many hours I’ve laid on my bed, and I’m pretty sure I’m going to develop carpel tunnel sometime soon. I don’t write for myself anymore. I don’t even draw for myself anymore. All my energy is going into acquiring that set of IGCSEs I promised myself I would attain.

But despite all this complaining and whinging and tell-tale massaging of my eyes, I can’t say I’m completely averse to the idea of being kept busy. It’s a better alternative to being restless and craving something or the other to do. Lack of productivity irritates me as much as not having time to myself, if not more.

Whenever I feel like giving up and just sleeping forever in my increasingly comfortable-looking bed, I remind myself of my goals and plans for the future and that is enough to put be back on track.

And it is with those same goal and dreams in mind that I will update my blog more often!

Attempting to organize my thoughts enough to produce a somewhat articulate blogpost is more difficult than you'd think...

Sun, 30 Jan 2011 20:00:21 +0400

I mean, how could I ever relate to a people who got their entire means of communication, save for proxies and the odd open land line, completely taken away from them?

How could I relate to a people whose men stand guard in front of apartment to save their women and children from thuggish brutality and rape at the hands of government employed “officials?”

How could I relate to a people whose right to control their own country has been taken away from them, not now, but that hasn’t existed for the last 30 years?

I can’t. I can’t begin to, and honestly, I’m privileged for not being able to relate. But at this point the world can’t sit by idly and just watch the chaos in Egypt with faux-concerned faces. Even worse is the plethora of comments I have seen pertaining to how Egypt is doing things all the wrong ways-

Who are you, sitting comfortably (presumably) in your home, miles away from the scene of action, trying to dictate a liberation?

We need to support, not dictate. Global pressure goes a long, long way but for anything to happen, you actually need to get up off your posterior end and t r y for it.

Sociology.

Fri, 07 Jan 2011 20:06:16 +0400

Sociology.

I knew you guys would be disappointed if Lady Gaga wasn’t...

Mon, 03 Jan 2011 19:08:59 +0400

I knew you guys would be disappointed if Lady Gaga wasn’t on it.

Boston <3

Mon, 03 Jan 2011 16:14:22 +0400

Boston <3

itslifesaidshe: Teddy Roosevelt’s diary the day his wife Alice...

Mon, 03 Jan 2011 15:35:33 +0400

itslifesaidshe:

Teddy Roosevelt’s diary the day his wife Alice died from Bright’s disease. He was 25, she 22.

On body types and perceptions-

Mon, 03 Jan 2011 15:34:56 +0400

As a child, you have it constantly drilled in your head that, “Oh, you’re too skinny! Eat up, eat up, you’ve got to be nice and healthy if you want to grow.” And so, you do, knowing that with every bite you eat, the smile on your parent, guardian, aunt, uncle, grandparent’s face widens. And so you begin to feel a sense of accomplishment.

Hey, you’re healthy.

But the minute you hit puberty, it all turns around. You’re chastised for eating too much, teased relentlessly for not showing your rib-cage, or aversely for showing your rib-cage. You’re either too skinny or you’re too fat.

Here’s what I have to say - are you a doctor? Do you have any knowledge of how body type works? Do you realize that healthy for someone may not be what’s healthy for you?

Until you understand the difference between big-boned and obese, skinny and malnourished, kindly keep your opinions to yourself.

It's a little known fact that I spent nearly 2 years depressed.

Sun, 02 Jan 2011 15:30:16 +0400

It’s probably slightly more well-known fact that for those 2 years I had trouble distinguishing fiction from reality.

A lot of trouble.

Everyone knows how attached I am to my homecity of Lahore. My heart still belongs to that city and probably always will. I was raised there and, for 12 years, it was the only home I ever knew. And when all your childhood memories involve that one place… moving somewhere else is a challenge.

I had to start from scratch - new school, new friends, new environment. It probably didn’t help that my brother was showing the first signs of what I now believe led up to his clinical depression.

Then I got even further invested into fiction. I already was completely devoted to it, even in Lahore, but in Dubai it was the only thing I had. And then I couldn’t tell reality from fiction. I didn’t want a social life. The only reason I had friends at school was because I needed someone to show me the ropes in this new school. Yeah, I was as bubbly as I am now but-

I don’t think I can properly explain how it felt.

I started keeping a journal which entailed my conversations with fictional characters, deep conversations yeah, but looking back it’s frightening how at 13, that was my world.

This is the first time I’m talking about it properly and I am so, so glad that I have a social life now. That I can distinguish between what is real and what isn’t. That I have muses but I know what to call them - muses.

I refuse to sink back into my depression.