Beyond factual imagination

Sheer boredom and nothing else would have prompted me to check random profiles on orkut. I already had three cups of coffee , was done with the little work assigned to me to make sure that I deserve some of the huge amount given to me as a salary (you see I am still in my training so am still ‘learning’), and Harry Potter fan fiction stories were finally looking naïve and juvenile to me.
Spinning around in my chair had also given me a headache, so I decided to give my head a rest by not using it for a while. And that’s how I ended up reading random profiles on orkut. I must admit orkut is one place which if not cure your boredom, can definitely reduce it. I am a member of the Ayan Rand community on orkut. So I decided to have a look at my fellow members. While browsing through some boring, some weird and some really hilarious profiles, I came across this profile of a guy who’s about me was really interesting (Yes, I am not shallow like most girls and don’t just look at photographs of men. I read their profiles as well. At least sometimes.) So anyway his profile was very interesting and so were his testimonials. His friends really had a high opinion about him. I saw his profession, engineer, not bad, our choice of books and music was almost similar. By then I was so impressed, I wanted to know where he is from.
I checked his location and paused. Literally I mean. He was from Pakistan, Lahore to be precise. To tell you the truth my first reaction was surprise. My mind forming images of all the news clipping about Pakistan’s internal war, a Quran, a bearded terrorist with a gun in his hand standing alone in the darkness , brownish mist all around a mullah, who was standing around ruins of old buildings and had a long dark beard and beads in his hands wearing a long and very loose light grey kurta and even more loose dirty grey pajama with closed boots with heels, he was talking something rapidly in Arabic. I could feel the gaze of that mullah on me. The intensity behind those kohl lined black eyes stirred something inside me. Something that could be called fear.
I snapped out of my stupor and felt absolutely stupid and shallow. Of course Pakistan wasn’t all about poverty and terrorism. Of course there were people who had a normal life like me. People who laughed when they heard a joke or cried when they their heart was broken. People, who fretted about their exams and enjoyed family dinners. Youngsters, who played cricket, and felt butterflies in their stomach when a smile played on the lips of a secret crush. They spent more time in their college canteen, than in their classroom. And of course their mother’s shouted at them when they come late at night with a vain attitude and a silly excuse. They ate and slept, and read and smiled like us. They even spoke like us. Using the same lingo and expressions.
I felt embarrassed for being so small-minded and sent this guy a friend’s request. He accepted and we started chatting on g-mail. I was eager to learn about Lahore and Pakistan and his views over politics and Islam. He listened to everything patiently and answered all my questions with such clarity in thought, that he might as well have been a professor in a university explaining in detail, things that his excited student knew and understood little. And he was my age! He didn’t discriminate people on the basis of their religion and was quite open about subjects like sex and girlfriends. He was sure he was going to have a love marriage and didn’t believe in the alternative. He had a girlfriend in the past with whom he broke-up recently. But he was still hopeful about the existence of love and was ready to take the jump when he met the right person. He had just taken a trip with his friends, whom he absolutely loves and was preparing for his final engineering exams.
Later that evening, while walking back home from work, I asked my friend if she could imagine a Pakistani engineer, she also paused for a moment and then said, “It’s hard to imagine”. I smiled and said I met one.

Numbness

An empty cup on the working table,
And a few pages of thoughts strewn around.
A lone hand on my lap, waiting for someone to hold it and turn around,
My fate from this dreadful numbness,
Numbness that is thick and dense like fog on rainy days,
Numbness that takes me to a land where only dead reside,
Numbness that has withheld within itself all my emotions,
And thoughts that it stole from me.
I have been robbed off my feelings,
Robbed in a ruthless manner by this cold numbness,
My head aches when I think,
And my mind buzzes when I hear,
Voices, meaningless voices,
Screaming my name, calling for me,
I don’t know who they are,
Or what they want but my numbness doesn’t allow me to get up on my feet and move.
But this numbness feels good.
It’s deeper than anything I have ever experienced.
It’s cold and bottomless, and makes everything else shallow.
It makes me more independent as I don’t have feelings anymore,
I can now look at things and not feel anything and so I can look and think about people and situations, which had me crying at the mere mention of them.
I can now close my eyes and not dream or have a nightmare.
Maybe I am not happy, but I am not sad either.
It’s simply peaceful in here.

Random

I was walking down a street which was dark as sin,
I didn’t know where it ended neither did I know where it began,
It didn’t seem so bad in the start, but then I wasn’t sure when this mirage would blow apart,
I thought I saw shadows of friendship in a semi-dark lane,
But as soon as I was put under a spot-light, the shadows would disappear in the veil of fallacy and behind it, they lain.
Sometimes I thought it was a nightmare and sometimes I thought it was a dream,
Sometimes it made me lonely and sometimes queen of my realm.
I used to fear loneliness before, but later it became my friend,
It was the only thing constant in my life and something that stuck with me till the end.
A ghost of a smile would linger on my lips when people around me would pretend,
Their pretense seemed so foolish when I looked at the darkness within,
This darkness which I had accepted was what they were running away from.
But this darkness was a friend and not a foe as they thought,
This darkness did not seek for a source of light,
Neither did it require one as it was soft like velvet
And when it engulfed me, my life looked more bright.
They were afraid of losing themselves in this darkness,
While I danced around in it, extinguishing every source of light.
As it seemed like it was not illuminating my darkness but rather penetrating it with its harsh notions of truths and lies.
I didn’t want any myths to be a part of this stretch of soothing darkness, which was devoid of any notions of truths and deceit.
It only understood and responded to emotions and only them did it wish to receive.