Cherished memories…*I miss you*

Today is a weird day. Firstly, it’s a Sunday. Don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against Sundays. Only that I have this thing of HAVING to go out of the house at least once a day and if that doesn’t happen, I become super-cranky.

Then, I woke up this morning after some super-horrible dream. Not horrible, really. Just making me rehash memories and making me feel what I haven’t felt in ages. It was about P, how she has come here only for 2 days ang God knows what.

It felt quite awful. Because it felt exactly as if she really had come. And obviously, when I opened my eyes, everything was the same as before. Didn’t feel too good, mark my words.

Funny thing is…when i woke up, I didn’t immediately remember if I had had a dream or what it was about. But what was funny was the fact that I woke up and started acting all like a baby…the way I used to some months back…I couldn’t really figure out why. But obviously, the dream hit me and I found out why.

Now, the second I came online, Appley sent me these msges:

*apple* says:

i just read that thing

*apple* says:

i wrote for u n P wen she was leaving

*apple* says:

now im sad

Nostalgia struck, obviously. I read the thing she was talking about. Lol. So many memories flooded me, I actually felt breathless for a moment! I thought I would post it up here, just so that you people can have a share in Appley’s wisdom. lol.

P.S. For those of you who don’t know anything about me and P, we were more than best friends for a year and a half but then our school ended and we both moved along separate ways (I came to this excuse of a university, BNU, though I prefer the name Mickey Mouse University, and she is in England doing ACCA) but Al-Hamdulillah, we are still more than best friends, still in contact, still in ‘love’, still eating each other’s brains out every now and then. Hehe.

But I miss her like never before too.

When Z was leaving, I made her an unfinished file of memories and asked a couple of our  friends to write something for us. This is what Appley dearest, the writer, the sage, the experienced, wrote for us.

Salams paijaans, 

I know Sana wanted this to be handwritten but I’m as far from pens and papers these days as Sana has always been from neat handwriting =P lol, yes if I’m going through the trouble of writing this very difficult thing that I have been asked to write I WILL make jokes about both of you. 

So where do I start about the two of you? I don’t think I can add a lot to what you people have or what the both of you should do to make it even better but what I can offer, from my VAST experience in this field is advice about what NOT to do. I realize most of the things I’d write here are ones that you know already but I’ll just write em down for reminder sake. 

When two people are as close as you two are, one often tends to forget the boundaries where your own life ends and the other one’s begins. As close as you might be to each other never feel like you own or possess the other person. Always value each others’ views and respect the boundaries. Very often when you’re this close the boundaries tend to blur themselves and when you try to control the other person and she has to tell you that afterall it’s HER life, it comes to you as a shock. 

The worst thing that people can do is take each other for granted. Never think, uska kya hai who to hamaisha hee meri friend rahay gee. The little gestures, saying ‘I love you’ at the end of every phonecall, surprising each other with lil gifts, listening to each other rant about random things, crying together, laughing together, telling each other five minutes after meeting ‘I miss you already’, tend to be taken for granted gradually. It becomes very routine and the three words ‘I love you’ sound very common. Never let yourself think the other person doesn’t mean what she says, that she is obliged to say it to you, that it’s just out of aadat. Always believe in the love you have for each other, value each other. I read somewhere:  

Never take someone for granted. You might wake up one day and realizethat you lost a diamond while you were too busy searching for stones. 

A’Levels has ended, and we all have moved on and moved apart. As difficult that is to digest it is the truth. But this is where the real test of friendship begins. Nothing binds us together now, not school, not tuitions, not Zarish teaching
Sana Math, not
Sana lending Zarish Paulo Coelho books. What binds you two together is friendship and that alone only. You’re out of school, things will change, don’t expect them to remain the same. You will contact lesser than you used to, not because you don’t want to, just because its physically not possible coz of the distance. The key to any successful relationship lies in not living in the past, but the present and not worrying about the future. Don’t get caught up in the past coz as stupid as it might sound right now, it is very tempting, trying to live on memories. You will miss each other but don’t let that become your obsession. Remember each other in your prayers, write to each other, try to keep in contact but if the busy university life doesn’t allow you enough time don’t let yourself feel bad about it and don’t feel that the other person doesn’t love you anymore. I have never agreed with the ego theory that you people had but I always believe high self-esteem is absolutely necessary for any kind of relationship. I’ll enclose something for you two which was said by Kahlil Jibran in a very different context but I guess it would work for you too  

Love one another but make not a bond of love:Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup.Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping.For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.And stand together, yet not too near together:For the pillars of the temple stand apart,And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’ 

And lastly never let your friendship be a source of displeasure for Allah for such worldly friendships are always short-lived. Guide each other and protect each other, always knowing where your responsibility stops and the other one’s begins. 

May you two enjoy the life long friendship everyone yearns for, may your husbands be best friends, may your kids get married to each other and may you bring loads of presents for me coz I wrote sweet things for you =D 

Love, yours Truly,T and T!

Inspiration…

Gabriel Garcia Marquez: 

(On process): “When I sit down to write, which is the essential moment in my life, I am completely alone.  . . .Whenever I write a book, I accumulate a lot of documentation.  That background material is the most intimate part of my private life.  It’s a little embarrassing–like being seen in your underwear. . . .  It’s like the way magicians never tell others how they make a dove come out of a hat. . . .  There isn’t anything more wonderful than writing when you truly have a book in your grip.  That is what I call inspiration.  There is a definite state of mind that exists when one is writing that is called inspiration.  But that state of mind is not a divine whisper, as the romantics thought.  What it is is the perfect correspondence between you and the subject you’re working on.  When that happens, everything starts to flow by itself.  That is the greatest joy one can have, the best moment.”

Happiness abounds…for real..

Ok…make all the fun you want but this was the second poem I wrote for my Poetry class.

It’s an image poem, really. If I can, I might upload the image too. I like the image waaay more than I like the actual poem, though. I guess that goes without saying. Hehe.

The story behind this poem is amazing, which is why, despite the 3/5 I got on it from the teacher (hehe), I still love it. It’s become something like a cherished memory.

We were supposed to hand in the poem one week after it was assigned to us. Probably I forgot, or probably I just didn’t want to remember it, but two days before the submission deadline, I found out that the time was almost over. I panicked. A LOT!

Now I’m waiting. Waiting, waiting, waiting for the inspiration to hit me. Something to inspire me to writing it. Some image. I thought of the photographs I had, I went through some images online even. Things got so desperate I ACTUALLY considered writing my poor poor poem on Aunty Chij Bachee’s helpless little black sock-clad foot. Lol! Imagine!

Well, the last day arrives. I still can’t think of anything. I’m depressed. So as desperate measures, I ask my brother to take me out for a drive.

It was a rainy night. Beautiful. Silent. Calm. I tried to look around, visualising everything as an image which I could write about. Lots of things were playing around in my mind; ideas chasing one another, but THE idea, THE image wasn’t hitting me.

I put on music to help me dream. Fantasize.

It helped. But not really. But I guess I’ll give it the credit of setting the mood.

The drive with my brother proved unsuccessful. My Bhabhi and I decided to go out again, so as to enjoy the awesome weather. We went to Defence, Phase 5. One really really pretty but isolated area. It has these huge flowing roads with palm trees bordering them and pale street lights showing the way at that time of the night. It was an awesome ride. To top it all off with the most delightful cherry, we had that really great but hateful song on repeat. “Maula mere…”

We were just loitering on the roads when I suddenly looked into the review mirror. It reflected this empty, wet, slippery road, with some random palm trees and a street light shining brightly on the empty, almost lifeless view. As I gazed at it, sitting in the car with my Bhabhi who was in the mood to burn much rubber, I thought the the view that I was racing away from, was just like my life, my past and my mistakes. Things I run away from. Intentionally, unintentionally.

Needless to say, I had found my image.

Believe or not, I wrote this poem (???) in the car on my cell phone as an SMS.

I’m cool, I know.   

Anyway, most of you have read it, but I would still like comments!

                             

HAPPINESS ABOUNDS.

A moment dies when a moment’s born.Every moment carries the stench of hell fireand a breath of Elysium. 

The moments too slow to catch up to me,left far behind, longing, yearning, searching,

the moments trying to reach me,

the moments reaching out to touch me, embrace me

but I’m too hurried, too fast… 

Moments full of light, yet so dark

wet, like the tears shed on a glistening cheek,

yet, a part of the road to me

and a part which i shan’t wish to part from. 

Moments drained, like a half-empty glass,but yet so complete, so full.

The splatter of the rain

on the mirage of painful moments,

the shattering into million

 minor moments of anguish,

thus enough to bear

with pain and pleasure. 

Moments shrouded in darkness, in pain,yet cloaked with linings white,

Moments I can die for,

to let them live forever. 

Never again shall these moments live.Such short lives yet so meaningful.

How I wish to die like one moment

 and to be born again. 

Intentions…

Question:
I forget to form the intention when doing most deeds. What should I do?.

Answer:
Praise be to Allaah.

Intention (niyyah) is an important matter, as it is the spirit of deeds through which deeds become valid, as the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: “Actions are but by intentions and each person will have but that which he intended.” Narrated by al-Bukhaari (1) and Muslim (1907).

The intention turns permissible deeds into acts or worship, hence we should pay attention to it and make it for the sake of Allaah, free from any element of showing off.

It should be noted that intentions are of two types:

1 – Obligatory intention, without which an act of worship is not valid, such as the intention in doing wudoo’, praying, paying zakaah, fasting and doing Hajj. This intention is something that no one can do without. If a person does wudoo’ to pray, touch the Mus-haf or in order to be pure (taahir), he has formed the intention. Intending to pray or intending to remove impurity is forming the intention when doing wudoo’.

When a man stands to pray, knowing that this is Zuhr prayer, for example, and he intends to offer the prayer and gets up to do it it, then he has formed the intention. It is not essential – and in fact it is not prescribed – to say out loud, “I intend to pray Zuhr prayer” etc, as some people do. This was not narrated from the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him), and the place for the intention is in the heart.

Similarly, if a person decides at night that he will fast on the following day, then he has formed the intention of fasting. In fact, his eating sahoor shows that he is intending to fast.

It is difficult for a person to forget to form the intention in such cases.

2 – The second type of intention is that which is mustahabb in order to attain reward. This is what some people forget, which is to keep the intention in mind when doing permissible things, so that they will be acts of worship, such as eating, drinking and sleeping with the intention of strengthening oneself to do acts of worship, as the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: “You will never spend anything that you spend for the sake of Allaah, but you will be rewarded for it, even the morsel of food that you put in your wife’s mouth.” Narrated by al-Bukhaari (56).

Mu’aadh (may Allaah be pleased with him) said: I sleep and I get up (to pray at night), and I seek reward for my sleep as I seek reward for my getting up. Narrated by al-Bukhaari (4088).

He (may Allaah be pleased with him) sought reward for his sleep just as he sought reward for his getting up to pray at night, because he intended by sleeping to gain strength to do acts of worship.

Al-Haafiz Ibn Hajar said in al-Fath: What this means is that he sought reward by resting just as he sought reward by striving, because if the intention in resting is to enable one to do acts of worship, one attains reward. End quote.

What helps to keep this intention in mind is deliberating, thinking and not being hasty. So you should think about what you are intending to do, take stock of yourself before acting, think about whether it is halaal or haraam, then look at your intention: what do you want from this? Every time you take stock of yourself and think before acting, this will remind you about forming the intention, until it becomes second nature and a habit that you adopt, so that you will not enter or exit, eat or drink, give or withhold, without having an intention in doing so, thus most of your time will become times of worship.

We ask Allaah to help us and you to do that.

And Allaah knows best.

 

psssssssssssssss! heheh!

ISNT THIS ONE AWESOMEEEEE PICTURE?

I JUST GAVE IT “THE BEST PICTURE I’VE SEEN FOR A WHILE” AWARD!

AALA!

P.S. “I love my blog post titling ability.”

Sorrow…

I’ve just decided I’m as smart, or maybe a trifle smarter than Rumi. I mean, read this philosophy of his. Doesn’t it seem like I wrote it? LOL…At least it sounds like my philosophy in life! I know Z will disagree, but that’s what I think. Hehe 

The most secure place to hide a treasure of gold
is in some desolate, unnoticed place.
Why would anyone hide treasure
in plain sight?
And so it is said,
“Joy is hidden beneath sorrow.”-Rumi, “Mathnawi” [III, 1133-1134]