Short Hi Raj Mor,
Nice article. Though you mentioned IT stocks and shorting them in the same sentence. This has me a little concerned for you. :-)
Take care.

Dreams of Dania Dear Urstruly,

Thank you for reading and appreciating the story. It's ironic, I think, that the masses are swayed by tabloid-like, sensationalized texts. Literature, however, is like photography, for one, as it attempts to capture the perception and observation of the writer as he/ she brushes up against reality only later to articulate it interpretively using a called-for depth. I think that more than trying to sell their stories, writers should, foremost, attempt to share themselves with the world. Connect with it.

FS

Dreams of Dania Dear RMor,

Thank you for reading and appreciating the story.

FS

Dormant Embryo Creative. Hope to read more from you.

Peace!

Guillotine Morbid.

Perhaps you should try to read something by Alan Watts.

Peace!

Worlds Apart Re: # 45

Sometimes, thunder shatters the air too close to us and the dark gaping holes of uncertainty and despair begin to sparingly widen. Sometimes, through time, interjects a moment, this moment, where existence latches on to a slanting ledge. When, then, one hears the squeal of one`s fingernails one realizes that death is just a happening, but the real gist of life is the quest for the avoidance of pain.

May be in theory one can assume, at that instant, for a mind to in inverse polarity counter itself. One can, in theory, profess that phenomena like cognizance, reason, justice, and perhaps devotion hold, then, the same meaning they do when one`s soul is not ablaze.

Monet painted the woman with an umbrella, but could she have seen how she looked in that frame? We can do whatever we want to do in theory, we can create universes out of feeble pebbles of sand, or give life to primordial sentinels of eternity.

Raniya, in making her decision to stay with Ahsan, must have asked herself `why` she wanted to leave him while asking herself `why` she wanted to stay. The answer, her answer, lay interlaced somewhere between a scream, a gasp, damnation, hope, love. (How much time it ought to, for someone in her state of mind, take to chart a map out of oblivion and start to walk it?)

You wrote your story, my friend, but, oh, how I wonder, and desire to know, what the lady with the umbrella is feeling right now.

Worlds Apart My thoughts sprang to the moment in the story, after reading the whole piece, when Raniya struggles to break free from her life in Pakistan. At that moment, at that very moment, what if nothing said or done had been sufficient to change her mind? If she had decided to leave Ahsan and go back to England, and did, would she be at fault? I wonder what really made her change her mind about giving it another try. Seems to me that she defied her (and of human) sense of reason and normalcy when she decided to give her life with Ahsan another try, and that too in a short few moments. But why?

Widows of Banares Metaphorical and conceptual. Good job.

Peace!

Splinter Reading between the lines. Glimpses of the obvious yet oblivious. Multi-faceted realities. Quiet, reassuring tingles of attachment. Colors of flora. Eternity traced backwards. Sinking restlessness. To feel free. Hope. Love.

Some of the phrases and terms that I became momentarily and consciously aware of as I read through this story. I hope that you will continue to write. After all, humans need soul-food, too, every now and then.

Peace!

The Fall Re: #11

Wa Alaikum Assalaam ... I hope you are well ... keep writing. And do recommend to me some Sufi literature when you come across it.

Guddi So palely human, Guddi, and very real. The rest of us barely can know what these children feel like as they brush up against mediocrity of circumstances, ugliness of character, and crude weather. Some 10-year-olds turn 50 from within while some die while still appearing to have been walking around. If any of us have watched these children play, we would do well to ponder on what happiness truly means.

Thanks, Tahera!

The Power of Positive Thinking We are already self-actualized within ourselves, all of us, to a varying degree. Some people manifest this belief, or demonstrate this self-actualization, in little parts which hold for their intrinsic individualities the meaning which enables them to pursue a certain `this` or `that` while for others it is the pursuit of something `grand`. In retrospect, we all need a reason to, in the least, make living worth living for another day, another moment.

My contention is that our primary quest as beings existing in time must be strive to, with clarity, perceive everyday little by little what our true nature is. And it is this very preceding struggle that can define our destiny. In other words, who I am is what I believe I can be and that will enable me to be what I can become. Some may be inclined to think of this in material terms without realizing that that risks in plausibly being in peril of orbitting a recursive loop that can get us chasing our own tails.

For me, I am skeptical of anything that merits a universal definition because it is this very element of attempting to define a certain definiteness that revolves around creating deconstructive subliminally neuro-proverbial structures that sooner or later get bogged down with colossal detail and amid a storm of contradiction and shifting connotations collapse.

Further, for me, great musicians do not think of themselves as an element, one among many, which do their part to follow a beat after a strum after a pluck or those who pay heed to notations and timings and the varying octaves. For me, great musicians are those who, rather than focusing on playing their music, become their music.

Indus Such a beautiful poem. As I read, I felt as if a painting was beginning to come to life. Please keep writing.

Peace!

A Teacup in My Hand Re: # 41

Thank you for your clarification. Hope to read more from you.

Take care!

A Teacup in My Hand Tahera Sajid,

Touching story. It made me think seekingly about the fickle nature of humanity; how one person in a relationship, like a dysfunctional wheel, could separate from the when the road to life became discomforting.

I have heard so many times the cliche: ``Love will survive.`` It almost makes the phenomenon of love sound like an objective, living entity. Well, love is only as real as it is in mutual capacity felt and lived and understood.

I like this piece of prose but would also like to know what the message the author wants to send across. Also, given the cultural and religious tradition in this context, was Umar wrong in obeying his mother or was it unreasonable of Sonya to act the way she did? A further illucidated perspective on these issues would be helpful in understanding the piece better.

However, I can feel Sonya`s rage by these lines:

``She opened the door. There he stood, unshaven and dishevelled. She felt no love for him, only contempt.

With one swift movement, she slapped him hard across his cheek – the cheek she had touched lovingly so many times in the past.

He stared in disbelief.

“Don’t ever come here again.” She muttered coldly.

Umar saw steely resolve in her eyes… and knew he was beaten.``

Peace!

The Fall Umber, a thread that weaves through this tale and keeps in one piece. Umber, a lense through which the narrator and her mother perceive reality and each other. But above all, Umber, a yearning to which the narrator seems to drift toward for a renewed, forever rejuvenated union.

Peace!