तेरी ज़ुल्फो की सियाही मैं पूरी रात बसर कर जाउजागने का सबब हो तो ये के तेरा दीदार कर पाउआँधियों मैं पत्तो के मानिंद, तेरी गर्म सांसो मैं बिखर जाउगर कहीं मुकाम पाउ तो तेरी ठंडी आहों मैं बस जाउसरक़शी है इश्क़ मैं मेरी इतनी के खुद की हयाती भूल जाउचाहत ये भी है की तेरे गुलाबी होठों पे तिल का नुक़्स बन के रह जाउ
Posted by Tariq at 3:39 AM 0 comments
Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.
I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy—ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness—that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it, finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what—at last—I have found.
With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.
Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a hated burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.
This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me
Posted by Tariq at 2:13 AM 0 comments
Posted by Tariq at 9:19 PM 0 comments
WHAT?............ideas, creativity, knowledge, vision
WHY?...............thinking, morals, challenging assumptions
WHERE?..........space, place, the lab
WHO?..............networking, contacts, affected
WHEN?............time, diplomacy
HOW?...............action, execution, efficiency
Posted by Tariq at 9:54 AM 0 comments
http://tehelka.com/story_main42.asp?filename=hub050909personalhistories.asp
I’VE BEEN ASSOCIATED with Saksham, a small NGO that runs a primary school for underprivileged children in Nithari village for some years now and if you ask me to describe the whole range of my experiences in one word, I would say ‘humbling’.
Nithari is a village on the Delhi-UP border which gained instant notoriety after the discovery of the gruesome murders of little children. Saksham started work there years before that incident and this has, in a way, been reason for guilt being a permanent part of one’s psyche now. For one knows that it easily could have been avoided if the rest of us, ensconced in our individual comfort traps, had paid heed.
Poverty is graded in a basti like Nithari. There are those who have a regular monthly income, like a guard in a security agency, an attendant in a hospital or school or a peon in a factory or office. Then there are those families where the father works as a rickshaw puller and the mother is a housemaid. Here, the combined household income would be Rs 6,000-7,000. But much of what the man earns will be wasted on alcohol. Any illness that needs hospitalisation throws them into debt traps with interest rates from moneylenders being as high as 10 percent per month.
The women and the children in this strata are the worst hit. One had always heard about this, but reality hit home for me when, one day, a kid came to school with pinkish welts on the hands and face and explained it away by saying, “Papa ne daaru peeke mara tha”. I squirmed inside, not knowing how to respond and feeling helpless and guilty knowing that he would go back home and undergo the same trauma. Once, I spotted one of the children bending down near an open drain, arm deep in the dirty black water, trying to retrieve a five-rupee coin. Jokingly, I asked him to let it be. He replied by saying he would be beaten up at home if he did that. Unthinkingly, one would begin teaching them a poem or a song or the importance of nutrition and the word ‘breakfast’ would have to be explained. Some kid would look at you, unblinkingly, and tell you that they only had tea in the morning and that they would eat only after their mother got back from work and cooked something. Why didn’t the women cook something for the children? Well, for one thing, we want our maids in our houses as early as possible to cook for us, don’t we? Plus, they could afford only two meals.Pre and post the incident that had brought it into the limelight, the summers at Nithari have been oppressive. The children’s faces would break out in huge red boils, covering their neck and arms; the women of migrant families, mostly working as maids, would grow weary from the tedious work and the long walks from the kothis in the nearby sectors. The kids, both of their parents out to earn a living, are still left to their own. The older one, eight or nine years of age, would have to look after the younger siblings. For someone with a perverted bent of mind, luring and victimising children in a crowded basti like Nithari is not very difficult. What was really alarming was the proximity of the residence where the murders took place to the main road, flanked by similar houses on either side and a line of small shops a little further away. Alarming, for it spoke of a community too preoccupied with their own selves to even notice anything out of the ordinary happening around us.
The mood now, as it was back then, is of total mistrust of the systems in place. None of them really cater to the welfare of the residents and are mostly inaccessible and insensitive to their needs. For this strata, trauma is not a one time affair, it is a leitmotif in their saga for survival, immunity to this being built in even as kids. So the tone of voice of the kid whose sister died after a week of fever is steady when he walks up to the teacher and says “Ma’am, aap meri behen ka naam register se kaat do. Woh toh khatm ho gayi”.Posted by Tariq at 12:11 AM 0 comments
Gosh am so hungry, didn't have lunch today...Shall I go outside? ...All alone. ...Yup cool. Need to think about couple of things as well. Let's go then. ......And thus I arrived at the hotel that I frequently visit when am tired of mess food or just want to be alone while eating... Hmm so now the story begins..I travel all the stairs upto second floor and take a seat meant for 4. Rest all tables are nearly packed... And a guy, no a kid is directed to sit with me as he too is all alone. Age - 14-15 years. Will call him "Akhoya". Thats a good name, a weird name.... Well what the heck, am here just to note my thoughts/events/incidents during those 45 odd minutes. ...Hope, reader will be able to make some sense outta it. So here it goes all in the sequence that it occured/ appeared -
Posted by Tariq at 8:48 AM 0 comments
We call them cool
Those hearts that have no scars to show
The ones that never do let go
And risk the tables being turned
We call them fools
Who have to dance within the flame
Who chance the sorrow and the shame
That always comes with getting burned
But you've got to be tough when consumed by desire
'Cause it's not enough just to stand outside the fire
We call them strong
Those who can face this world alone
Who seem to get by on their own
Those who will never take the fall
We call them weak
Who are unable to resist
The slightest chance love might exist
And for that forsake it all
They're so hell-bent on giving ,walking a wire
Convinced it's not living if you stand outside the fire
There's this love that is burning
Deep in my soul
Constantly yearning to get out of control
Wanting to fly higher and higher
I can't abide
Standing outside the fire
Standing outside the fire
Standing outside the fire
Life is not tried, it is merely survived !!!
If you're standing outside the fire !!!
Posted by Tariq at 8:53 PM 3 comments
To dream the IMPOSSIBLE DREAM
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To run where the brave dare not go
To right the unrightable wrong
To love pure & chaste from afar
To try when your arms are too weary
To reach the unreachable star
This is my quest
To follow that star
No matter how hopeless
No matter how far
To fight for the right
Without question or pause
To be willing to march into hell
For that heavenly cause
I know If I'll only be true
To this glorious quest
My heart will lie peaceful & calm
When I'm laid to my rest
The world will be better for this
That one man, scorned & covered with scars
Still strove with his last ounce of courage
To reach the unreachable star
I'll always dream...
The IMPOSSIBBLE DREAM
Yes, I'll reach...
The UNREACHABLE STAR...!!!
Posted by Tariq at 11:25 PM 1 comments
