Malala is important

Malala is recuperating in Birmingham. Hope she gets well soon and blossoms back to life. Malala is important because she symbolises everything that the forces of darkness are afraid of.  A young girl ,who loves education and defies all odds to attain it, is the worst nightmare of obscurantists. Malala is also important because she has the clarity, simplicity and truthfulness of a child. It took 14 yrs old Malala to say what many grownups in Pakistan could not. It was the audacious Malala who told her countrymen living in self-delusional state of denial that "the emperor has no clothes."   

God has been kind

Fourth october, 2012

CSS result of written part has been announced and God has been really kind. Since then I have been trying to absorb the news and allowing it to sink down..It was my first attempt. It has been a long journey with many a up and down...
Although it is the result of only a written part and still a long way to go, it feels really good. For a few days, I intend to bask in its glory and then get down to the work that lies ahead.

My late uncle, you wanted to hear this good news but sadly you are not here anymore. However, I am sure you must be very happy wherever you are. You departed very early...I wish you were here with us. Miss you. (My youngest uncle passed away in nov. 2010)

I know it is not over yet and I have no illusion about the road ahead. But I am happy and relieved.



 

My favorite extract from fiction

God of small things- Arundhati roy

"Estha had always been a quiet child, so no one could pinpoint with any degree of accuracy exactly when (the year, if not the month or day) he had stopped talking. Stopped talking altogether, that is. The fact is that there wasn't an "exactly when." It had been a gradual winding down and closing shop. A barely noticeable quietening. As though he had simply run out of conversation and had nothing left to say. Yet Estha's silence was never awkward. Never intrusive. Never noisy. It wasn't an accusing, protesting silence as much as a sort of estivation, a dormancy, the psychological equivalent of what lungfish do to get themselves through the dry season, except that in Estha's case the dry season looked as though it would last forever.

Over time he had acquired the ability to blend into the background of wherever he was--into bookshelves, gardens, curtains, doorways, streets--to appear inanimate, almost invisible to the untrained eye. It usually took strangers awhile to notice him even when they were in the same room with him. It took them even longer to notice that he never spoke. Some never noticed at all.

Estha occupied very little space in the world"

The Lonely Jinnah

Inside the crowd-puller Quaid-e-Azam resided a very lonely person. Jinnah used to take long retreats, away from the noise of daily life, inside his quiet chambers, behind the walls of his home atop Malabar hill, in the detached environs of Simla and Kashmir or in the self-exile in London. This need for a measure of withdrawal was necessitated as much by his ever-weakening health as by the urge to reminisce Ruttie. The sudden departure of his lovely wife Ruttie stands out as one of the painful periods of his life. Jinnah, lovingly called ‘J.’ by Ruttie, was very secretive about his private life. Thus, one can only fantasize how he must have been seeking out those retreats to remember Ruttie, talk to her spirit, read Shakespeare to her and shed a few tears which the ‘Great Leader’ was not allowed to do in public by some unwritten rules. However, Jinnah did once break down in public. Kanji, Ruttie's closest friend, recalls, “...as Ruttie’s body was being lowered into the grave, Jinnah, as the nearest relative was the first to throw the earth on the grave and he broke down suddenly and sobbed and wept like a child for minutes together.” M.C. Chagla, Jinnah’s legal apprentice, adds, “That was the only time when I found Jinnah betraying some shadow of human weakness.”  There must have been many more such moments of love and longing in those lonely days and weeks of the Quaid-e-Azam. However, he aptly hid them from his millions of Muslim followers who, like many Pakistanis today, would take only a uni-dimensional view of this fascinatingly multifaceted personality.     

my letter in 'dawn'

The following link:

http://archives.dawn.com/archives/50562 

still there....

Hey!!!! How are you doing?
I know i have remained away for quite long.My last post here was back in august last year. Since then lots of things have happened. There is lots to write about. Days preceding the exams, the experience of exams itself, my cousin's marriage, my teaching experience at school and many things in between present a lot of stuff for a number of blogs. I will keep writing about these things intermittently. For now, got to go. I dropped in just to tell you that i am alive and that, hopefully, you will soon start hearing from me more frequently..