Clicking the flood

A very tragic thing has been upon Pakistan by means of floods and while corporate culture, as it is, can never remain out in the race to market themselves, whatever may happen, they seem not to be alone. It saddens me to report and realize that many budding photographers have started seeing this as an opportunity for capturing good photographs of stricken families, specially kids.

While western world have a lot of sceneries and greenery -clean one, that is- to make those little moments special or add some natural tones in backgrounds of pictures or add green bokeh in background to contrast white skin [works with most of the skin tones, though], we desi people have a lot to pride on too. We have human in their natural habitat, many times desperate for basic necessity too, capture those thousand wrinkles of an elderly, or dirty face of a child whose eyes speaks volumes of innocence. If there pictures speaks of dreamy world, out of books, may be idealistic world at times, our portrays that of reality. Perhaps, that is why every beautiful smile of a child who lives, anywhere, in a third world country, has people flocking over to that image. 

May be I am a cynic, a pessimist and I see negativity in things a lot but I truly pray that these photographers' driving intentions are to aware people of whats happening rather than their ambition to get a photograph recognized internationally and what can guilt people more - even for a minute - than eating and living a good life while a child somewhere is getting sick of eating and drinking mud because thats all it can get.

Photographer on flickr

Episode A

Every now and then a piece of me cringes, shrivels, loves, hates, and clings desperately to hope, all in one moment. It asks for forgiveness from my own self and yet it partially believes that experiences happens and I shouldn't still be asking for forgiveness, I should have moved on. I have been holding my breath and praying for the pain to be over. I do not understand it, for most of the time I believe I have moved on from it, and perhaps, I will not feel the same hurt and pain again but it leaves me cold with its sudden outbursts. 

I do not understand its reasoning.

Am I actually holding on to all that still, somewhere in my unconsciousness?

Is it because I have held myself in too high opinion that I can not forgive myself?

Have I really not forgiven myself or is it a cover of my holding on to the memory too tight?

And then, every now and then, after I am over with these sudden mind swirling emotions and questions, I feel normal again, almost content and I be grateful for it, for my life, for my choices and for who I am. And every time, I hope there wouldn't be a next time to these episodes.

Irony of opportunity

Even as a child, I have always been the one who would try to find out a good thing in worst case scenarios that would happen to me. I have honor of finding a good thing in loosing my friends, of my first ever heartbreak, even my father's death - which gave someone shock when I expressed it once in front of someone. So, I really understand people who try to look for a positive thing in all the negativity that may be afflicted on them. But last night, it was my time to be shocked, perhaps horrified that would eventually lead to sadness.

I do not belong to the clan of super positive and active youth but I have my contacts with them. One of such organisation messaged me last night about how they will be having a sitting soon to decide on ways to help internally displaced people living in camps in our city. Some of their words were

"We might never get this opportunity to work with almost 21,000 lives."

It struck me as if it was a good thing, to have this opportunity and yes, lets go -gung ho - avail this opportunity. Their intentions must be good - they want to help, make a difference in 21,000 lives - but are their intentions really good - we have IDPs in our city and we may never again have them so lets go there and experience how it feels to work with them, we might even get coverage for that and even if we don't, we can say tomorrow we went to help them.

I know I am unable to express truly how I feel, specially why I feel this total sadness - happens quite a lot with me due to my ideas being abstract - but I hope I am able to tell someone what a difference in your vocabulary can make in what you want to convey. I would not try to be judgmental and let them help now, at least, they want to do something, if it has a positive effect, does it really matter -in the end - what their intention was?

[cold] coffee science

It came as a big surprised realization to me. Cold coffee can not be made in any blender.

I thought making a good cold coffee needs a certain measure of of coffee and other things required [including a certain amount of I am going to drink/serve this coffee], to make a good, refreshing, interesting, cold coffee but apparently thats not enough. Apparently, it needs a certain kind of blending in a certain kind of blender. It doesn't like to be blended in my new blender. I had to go through trial and error runs on it to make sure I end up with a drinkable coffee-licious cold coffee. Imagine, demands of a good cold coffee.

And they say I ask for too much.


p.s. I have realized I am using apparently too much in my writing. I need a new word to go with.

I hate throwing up...

I hate throwing up. I truly, madly, deeply hate the process of throwing up. Especially if it means to wait while the bile rises enough to not to just make you sick but actually throwing out contents of your body. I hate that wait most and the sudden outburst of my stomach, that is, if it decides that the torture of being in the middle of somewhere of my body is enough now and it’s time to break up and get out of me, out of my system.

And who on earth write about throwing up anyway?!

But still, I hate the wait. I hate the feeling of being in between. It’s not just my bile; it’s my entire life, my relationships, my career, anything. I just don't do very well with waiting. It sickens me enough that in the end all I want is to get out of the wait, even if it means losing what I am waiting for and it always brings me down to one question; when do we know it’s enough?

When do we know we have gone far enough and should turn back now? What if we are giving up when we are way too close to the final outcome? When do we know whatever we have done is enough? When is it right to turn it down? When is it okay to give up?

And no matter how much and how long I have questioned this, I have never came to a definite answer. My experience with it has brought me more questions. Is waiting for weak or stronger? And I can very well justify it from both sides. Waiting needs persistence, discipline, and courage and giving up, it needs same too. Whichever way you choose, qualities that you need may remain same but your choices are different. And then once again, it all comes down to choices.

Though, we get sick and may be hate it, we never give up eating for the fear of throwing up, or stop walking once we break our leg, then why do we stop living or loving [or writing, in my case].

What and Who - of me

What am I going to do here? I am going to write about everything, specially of things that concern me most. Yes, food, love and dreams and well, love again. And well then there would be philosophies, ideas, God, questions, talk about heels, perhaps nail polishes too, books, movies, life, and well everything else that consumes me and make me myself. That discovering part never ends, nor does thought trains.

Who am I? Someone who can surprise my own self and someone who wants to write but can not get over a writing block of two years.