Peace!

Exams are over, I survived the disastrous exams of four deathly courses, yeaay! This is just another I-am-so-comfortable-at-home type of post. The changed template design too is in accordance with how I feel. Fresh. It is amazing how dramatically your attitude changes toward things once your situation improves. Just a few days ago, I thought I wouldn't survive to see the end of December seeing how unprepared for exams and how seriously occupied by a situation I was. Now, I have a peaceful, happy feeling.

In fact, I have already planned what I need to do in this semester break. I am going to complete my unfinished novels that keep glaring at me from the shelf. The God of Small Things, Forty Rules of Love, Secrets, The Bride, Blowing It and The Maggot Pie. Quite a diverse collection, nay? I have got two religious books too, Shareekat-ul-Hussain and Chaudaah Sitaaray that I HAVE to read. Also, I had planned to search for different marsiyaah by Mir Babar Ali Anees and Mirza Salaamat Ali Dabeer. The two awesome-est marsiyah-nigaar. Marsiyah is a Persian word. It is basically an elegy composed especially to mourn the brutal massacre of Prophet's family in the burning desert of Karbala (Nineveh, Iraq). I had also planned to learn some of my Nani's special recipes from her during this semester break, but oh the sleep woes! By the time I wake up, she had already cooked her awesomelicious food. Next in line, I have got three incomplete drafts of some vague stories that happened to me; I created a rough sketch of them, and then they just... Vanished. Vanished as fast they came. You must complete them and post them --this is me telling myself.

During exams I get creative thoughts and feel an indescribable urge to write. But once they're over, my mind is as blank as a slate. And this always happens. This reminds me I as well have to complete my research of Bulleh Shah's Sufi poetry, fragments of which I managed to collect during exams. Ohmygawd? I have got so much to do! But I feel as lazy as a sloth ever since I'm done with my exams. I sleep all day long, waste time lying on the couch flipping through TV channels, mess around with my brothers, go over at Nani's to waste some more time, come back home, and eventually fall back to sleep. I am so busy wasting time that I don't even remember taking my meals. I am living on dry fruits and chocolates. But then again, I have a peaceful feeling staying home. Most of the nights I stay up late doing nothing and just letting my mind wander. Sometimes I go out in the open to witness the moonlight falling dramatically at the dewy leaves of slumbered plants in my balcony. Serene, tranquilizing moments. The wintry feeling is still in the air, but it doesn't really feel like it's the mid of December. Winter seems to have stopped paying attention to Karachi. Seriously.

I am trying to bring myself to terms with the fact that I have even less than fifteen days in hand before I tie a final knot to the twentieth chapter of my life. I have been avoiding this question from myself ever since December has begun; where did 2013 go? Where did all my time go?! I had only now started registering 2013, and the time to let it go has already come. The fact that time is whooshing past me sometimes scares me. It is a strange feeling. I am happy and sad at the same time, and I don't know how is this even possible. You know you have an easy cozy feeling, but deep down you're well aware that anxiety is building up about something you can't quite figure. I see this time as a foggy lane. The fog has a numbing affect, but I don't know what the fog has in store for me as I move further. The thicker the fog would get, the difficult it would become for me to see what's ahead, and the fact that I wouldn't be able to see, I am afraid I might randomly stumble over and lose something precious. But then I am also happy, because more than anything, I have a hand to hold which is assuring enough for my soul that I am not lost and I wouldn't be. The feeling is overwhelming. I would like to stay this way. The rest I have left on the Stars to take care of.

For now, my pineapple ice cream is melting and I have to make an immediate decision: whether to watch Friends or complete The Forty Rules of Love?

This. Is. Tough.

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I know a little bit of a lot many things. I know how to wish upon a star, and how to communicate with the softest cloud up to the seventh heaven. I know how to make silent exchanges with the moon, and how to hold my breath and make the 11:11 wish. I know the leaf wish spell, and I also know the finger twining trick of wish making. The ways of praying. Keeping my beliefs alive. Just in case...

So basically yes, I know several of such sorts of things; I have practiced them and memorized them. So I have a lot to do when the lights are off. And there's just me and the serene stillness of the night.

...And when I am done doing all of it, I am blank. Comfortably numb; numbness, that unknots my stressed veins and sooths my bones. It's the kind of peace that I am not getting these days.

The time tells me its twenty past three, yet I can't sleep. I can hear my name being called by a fragile dream that needs to be saved; and not just that, but something that needs to be searched and found and held safely. Despite the illuminating laptop screen, it’s dark in here; but then, despite the darkness, it’s not dark in here. It’s contradictory. This place is noticeably glowing with dim lavender lights. The little wisps, that are creating vivid trails, and something tells me that I should follow them…

*Putting it less dramatically: I am up at this odd hour because I have got to study. I have been focusing on the text, doing quite well, but then came along this golden butterfly and I got carried away with the gold dust fluttering off its waxy wings.*

.... This is the height of surrealism. I don’t know what this state means, I am clueless of what am I really doing here and I have absolutely no idea when and how everything went this… Haywire. All I know is that I need to gather everything, and write. It has been over two months since I have written anything, and I already feel like I’ve lost the touch. I guess it’s the changing weather. Winter is making itself comfortable; spreading its tentacles that have begin filling the air with nostalgia. And I can wager I am not the only one who feels nostalgic at the end of the year, or who thinks that winters happen to infuse the concentrated feeling of déjàvu! ––––No? Really?! Tsk! Never mind.

Four more days before the commencement of the last month of the year 2013, and with that my fourth semester would officially come to an end. Can you believe it? I still remember my first day at the university. That all-by-myself, ‘grown up’ feeling; which didn’t last long enough. Where did the time go! I don’t know how this works. Time keeps running out of our hands and we fail to do anything about it. There was so much I wanted to do, which for one reason or the other I couldn’t. 2013 feels like a dream, the same fragile dream that I’ve been struggling to keep captive. But like dreams, time as well cannot be kept enslaved. It slips out, do whatever you can.

The only way you can treasure the time is by spending it well. That’s what I’ve learned this year. To pursue a dream you first need to believe that it’s real. Similarly, to hold and preserve time you must make every moment that you spend worthwhile. There were lots of thing that I had planned to do. But well. Lots of things didn’t happen, or turn out the way I had thought. But then again, I somehow managed to squeeze out quite a few precious memories, which are worth it.

When this year had begun, I had nothing to look forward to, just like I had nothing in mind when I began writing this post, except for a handful of beliefs. The ultimate driving force that helped me get through. And speaking of belief, I’d like to mention that the wisps have disappeared. This is one of the things about wisps and auras and dusts, or pixies and elves, or dreams and hopes; you stop believing, they stop appearing.

Perhaps I should switch back to my surrealism, since the post seems to be turning into one of Buddha’s lectures from Vedas.

But I'd rather sleep.

So, now that I’ve filled the blank space with a few disjointed words, I feel a little less dreary. And OH! Speaking of dreariness, I might as well mention about my date that I have tomorrow with Peter Barry. It’s going to be intense, I can tell. The idea of a long walk by the shores of  Beginning Theory feels awful wonderful. We’ll be having Liberal Humanism for lunch and Psychoanalytic Criticism for supper. I am so totally not excited.

p.s: I think I’d most probably be writing after the exams now. A mandatory new-year’s post with a changed layout, of course! If I wouldn’t be too lazy, that is.