Adventures at a Pakistani wedding

The first thing you notice as you approach the outskirts of Birmingham is a yellow haze hovering just above the cityscape. Initially you think it's the car window needing cleaning. But its not. It's a narrow smudge of Haldi yellow, and as the sun sets through it in the early afternoon, it imparts an exuberance not at all unbecoming of a glorious Ethiopian sunset! It's a good omen. The signs are good. Things will be fine at the wedding. I will not babble and bumble my way through the social etiquettes. Birmingham has always been a currypot of exotic flavours - the hues of culture, language, creed and social eccentricity (like plastic wrappings on brand-new carpets). For me, stepping into Birmingham, brings back childhood memories of family visits to the north when I was young. My mum and dad would get me ready (at some godforsaken hour of the morning) and after a dollop of shiny hair oil I was as good as new! We'd get into my dad's yellow Datsun; my dad sporting an embarassing looking Jinnah hat (which is probably also the reason I hated him coming to parents evening at school), my mum in shimmering gold epaulets threading through her ears - and thus attired we'd head north from London - to meet my army of aunties and uncles who babbled in strange tongues and smelt aromatic.

I remember those days vividly; playing with my nephews and nieces amongst red-bricked homes; I remember the leather skinned withered old ladies with jaundiced tongues who smelt of Pakistan; I remember the constant torrent of 'family relatives' passing through the maw of my sisters door all pinching my cheeks red raw; the pungent smell of garlic sizzling in oil; and grey bearded men with skullcaps who had nothing to teach me (and still don't), the putting your headscarf on your head when a man walks in, the frisky women asking me when I'd get married (I was only like 7 years old!). It was a totally different planet.

These memories are all positive and happy. It seems when you look back now that childhood was constantly bathed in blue skies and sunshine. But as you get older you begin to realise that there are dark clouds too. How did we manage to miss those dark clouds when we were young? Answer: innocence.

So as I was saying, here I am now in 2010, older (but not any wiser), approaching the Haldi haze of Birmingham with memories of childhood running through me. I stare at the haze. Where does it come from? I have a theory: the frying pans of hundreds and thousands of evening meals - cooked in the presence of husband, children, grandma and grandpa, and the er next door neighbour Zulfikhar (aka Zulfee) who seems to have a permanent place on the family sofa. But I am digressing. And I am guessing.

The wedding itself was to be held at a plush venue (the Burlington Hotel banqueting hall in the City Centre, for those interested) and plush it was indeed. The carpet as you approached the hall was shaggy and thick and looked as if the animal it belonged to had only recently had its life extinguished. I stepped into the hall and straight into a maelstrom and hail-fire of hundreds of beaming smiles and shotgun colours. Alas the smiles were not for me. I went in unnoticed and uncared for, and was looking out for something. A landing light telling me where I had to land. Luckily, my nephew (bless him) was waving at me from the other end of the hall clad in a bright pink shirt - so at that moment I knew I would land safely. I was saved. No crash landings tonight. I weaved through the obstacle course of tiny children, slightly bigger children, slightly even bigger children, spotty teens, twenty somethings, slightly older folk, hob knobbling grandads and grandmas (not mine) and withered old creatures with walking sticks who had no business being at a wedding. What if they were to choke on their food?

Anyway, I've now seated myself at the table and said 'Hi' to my sisters and nephews and nieces. I have a drink and look around me. It looks scary and I want to hide under the table. I could easily spend the evening under the table and no one would notice. I take another sip of the drink. It's non alcoholic. Damn! The thing is I'm not used to being surrounded by lots of people. I'm not a misanthrope. I do like people. The London Underground trains are packed full of people at rush hour and I have no problem with that, but what I'm talking about is a little different. You don't have to talk or even say Hi to the folk on the London Underground do you? OK, let me say it out plainly: I am not used to being surrounded by so many Asian faces. Not that I harbour any prejudices against them (me?). They are God's people like everybody else. They are God's handiwork; and what a masterful people they are! Full of complexities and layers and contradictions and a thick patina of hair grease. Solving them is like solving a puzzle.

The youngsters are the most fun to be around. Lacking the morose and complaining attitudes of the elders; the youngsters are fresh and cool and minty - like an autumn breeze. The elders are always complaining about some aspect of the wedding and never happy. Either the food is too late in arriving, or the kebabs are too spicy, or the fizzy drinks are in jugs thus loosing their fizz...ad infinitum. The youngsters just want to have a good time and are grateful for the invitation. Where's the gratitude?! Show me the gratitude! And the youngsters wear cool clothes (like me), they have cool hairstyles (like me), they have opinions (like me) and most importantly of all they're sure of themselves. Unlike their parents on the other hand who are constantly struggling with a past that no longer wants them and a future they can't embrace. The youngsters are all 3rd, 4th generation - after the first pioneers (like my dad) who ventured forth from the Indian Subcontinent to forge a better life for himself and his family. The youngsters are more confident. I noticed that. But it's not a faked confidence or a confidence 'purchased' using the currency of ostentatious pretentiousness. And that is gratifying. My parents generation and even the 2nd generation in some cases never had that; for my parents always considered themselves immigrants. And you never really loose that. But not the youngsters. The only immigrants they know are the Somalis and the asylum seekers. And the language they speak is English with a Northern lilt. Urdu or Punjabi is uttered very rarely from their tongues and my educated guess is that in the next couple of generations it too will perish in the smouldering heap of history - as will memories of Pakistan and all thus connected. It is inevitable. A process of dilution. And then one day, the separation from the homeland will be absolute. Like the Iguana Lizards in the Galapagos Islands...but I am digressing.

Anyway, from the Galapagos back to the wedding hall! After the bride and groom had said their vows. and after the mullah had read his overly log sermon - (a sermon he did try to convert into a stand up comedy act - but it didn't quite work out) we we're treated to food. Ah food! The main event! The raison d'etre for being here. And what a carnivorous feat it was too! For starters it was spicy lamb kebabs (with spicy sauce for xtra Oomph), chicken on the bone coated in a sticky tikka massala paste (bright red and fluorescent), a zingy fishy thing (my favourite) and the usual green salads to counterbalance the red hues of the meat dishes. The main course was predominantly organic organism based again - there was chicken, meat and something else I don't recall. Octopus? No, not octopus - I think it was cauliflower. For dessert there was an extremely sweet and bright orange1000 megawatt calorie infused concoction made from distilled carrots - Gajrelah...and, for those on a diet, a lumpy milky dish called Ras Malai. All very nice. All very sweet.

That was the food. What about the conversation? Was is as satisfying? Put it this way. The best conversation I had was in the gents toilet when I asked someone for the loo roll...

...only joking. I would not be so mean and nasty! The best conversations were as follows (in no particular order):

1) On the youngsters table discussing latest hair styles and fashion trends and the merits of doing a degree in English Lit.

2) Asking people to be 'spontaneous' for the pictures I was taking and trying to make the children laugh so that they would show their teeth for the photographs. It's not difficult. You just have to say something silly and puerile like: 'bummblebee bum bum'. Spontaneity is always good in photography.

3) Trying to wriggle my way out of one conversation that had strayed into the perennial 'why are you not married yet Wasim?' territory. This question, usually dispatched with an all knowing smug countenance, is said in such a manner that it makes you feel like you have a lethal disease. Yes, I have a disease. It's called 'love of independence now fuck off and leave me alone before I start quoting Cicero' is usually my response (without the expletives of course)

4) Loo roll (discussed previously)

5) A chat with the bride's mother who was thanking me for coming. Thank you very much for having me!

5) A chat with a little human. A baby. I think it was 7 months old. Not sure who it belonged to though. The baby was just rolling around the carpet rummaging for scraps of food. I placed it on my lap and we talked much. We agreed on much. Like the general stupidity of the people around us. It told me about its nappy and how it was constantly chaffing its bum. I told it about my constant ear ache from the parrot like chattering's of the women in the hall.

6) A girl. Yes a pretty girl. She was facing me 2 tables away and kept looking at me. We didn't actually talk as such. It was mainly communication through facial twitches: eyebrow arching's, lip curling's, frowning's, smiles, and playful twisting of the hair (not mine hers). I think she was attempting to tell me something: 'You there in the smart clothes and intelligent looking glasses. Yes you there! You have great genes and I want to use your sexual organs to make a baby'. I wouldn't have minded her using my sexual organs - she can have them, well not have them, she has to hand them back as I use them, but she can use them - but its the making a baby part that sends shards of lightning down my spine and a rumble through the empty dungeons of my heart.

Talking of which I'm not sure when those rusted joints in the dungeon of my heart will be prised open. Perhaps someone with a bolt cutter will come along and let some air in. And that's that! That was the wedding.

That wasn't really funny was it?

A bit sad huh? Especially the ending huh? With all that dungeon talk huh?

Well I don't care what you think. I love dungeons and I'm escaping into mine now, and no you can't join me. Go get your own dungeon. My dungeon belongs to me!

___________

Coming soon...Adventures at a Pakistani wedding I went to recently (and almost died at)

Warning: This blog post (when it is written) will be extremely funny. There is a real risk of heart and lung failure due to extreme funnyness. If you are unsure whether you can handle such levels of funnyness please consult your funnyness practitioner for guidance. If you do not have a funnyness practitioner then please carry out the following self-test:

1) Locate your tickle muscles

2) They can be found right below your armpits

3) Please find a hand that belongs to somebody else

4) Ask the person whom the hand belongs to, to gently stroke at the tickle muscle nodes (but please make sure you have cleaned your armpits before - for health reasons)

5) If, after stroking of the tickle muscle node, there is a deep expiration of air from your lungs followed by a squeaky-girly tickling sound from your lips - congratulations! You are a tickly bum loaded with tickles. You have passed the tickle test

What a man is

It is quite obvious, to those vouchsafed with reason, that what a man is, contributes much more to a man's happiness than what he has or what he represents.

Happiness ultimately depends on what a man has in himself - for it is this that accompanies him wherever he goes, and everything he sees and experiences is tinged by this thereof. Epictetus says: 'it is not things that disturb men, but opinions about things'. What he means is that two people may see or experience the same thing but their opinion of it will differ. Say, for example, you lose your job. If you are of positive & cheerful temperament than you will see this as an opportunity - to do what you enjoy. To the peevish and irritable, loosing one's job will be seen as a total disaster. These are all opinions. And they depend on what a man is in himself. Thus we come to a certain truth:

It is not what things are objectively and actually, but what they are for us and in our way of looking at them, that makes us happy or unhappy

Shakespeare recognised this and gives a fine description of this fundamental difference in temperament in the Merchant of Venice:

Nature hath fram'd strange fellows in her time

Some that will evermore peep through their eyes,

and laugh like parrots at a bag-piper;

And others of such vinegar aspect

that they'll not show their teeth in way of a smile

Thus what a man is in himself is the sole important determiner of our happiness. There are some of us who are paupers when it comes to inner wealth. The result of this is a mental dullness, an inner vacuity, and emptiness, that is stamped on innumerable faces, and betrays itself in constant chattering and lively attention to everything going on in the world. That is because there is nothing inside to act as stimulus. People with such an affliction constantly crave external stimulation: parties, socials, card games, family and friends, luxuries, amusements, diversions. Put such people in a room with only themselves for company and they will run away from themselves! Nothing protects us from this inner boredom than the wealth of the mind; the play of ideas, the constant ruminating, questioning, postulating, and the more eminent it becomes, the less room does it leave for boredom.

The clever and intelligent man will first of all look for painlessness, freedom from molestation, quietness, and leisure and thus a tranquil and modest life which is as undisturbed as possible. After some acquaintance with human beings and their manifold failings, the intelligent man, will wise up and choose seclusion and, if of greater intellect, even solitude. For the more a man has in himself, the less does he need from outside and the less other people can be to him. Therefore we are now coming to our conclusion: It is a fact, a fact proven when you look at the history of eminences, that great intellect leads to unsociability!

And I leave you now, on this beautiful cloudy Easter Weekend with sunshiny thoughts from our Greek friend Seneca:

'The very thing that makes people sociable is their inner poverty'

Have a happy Easter. And remember, the happy person does not say 'it is a dull cloudy day' but he will say 'the sun is always shining above the clouds, it just can't get through'

It just can't get through, but it is shining all the same.

_______________

Currently watching: 'Afghan Star'

After 30 years of war and Taliban rule, Afghan Pop Idol is taking the nation by storm!

But this is more than just a TV show...in Afghanistan you risk your life to sing.

Should Pope Benedict XVI resign?

Should Pope Benedict XVI be held responsible for the escalating scandals over clerical sexual abuse in Europe? Yes he should, and it's going to escalate a lot further, as more and more victims break through the guilt of their childhood indoctrination and come forward.

Should he be investigated for how cases of abuse were handled under his watch as archbishop of Munich or as the Vatican's chief doctrinal enforcer? Yes, of course he should. This former head of the Inquisition should be arrested the moment he dares to set foot outside his tinpot fiefdom of the Vatican, and he should be tried in an appropriate civil - not ecclesiastical - court. That's what should happen. Sadly, we all know our faith-befuddled governments will be too 'respectful' to do it.

Should the pope resign? No. As the College of Cardinals must have recognized when they elected him, he is perfectly - ideally - qualified to lead the Roman Catholic Church. A leering old villain in a frock, who spent decades conspiring Machiavellin style behind closed doors for the coveted position he now holds; a man who believes he is infallible and acts the part; a man whose preaching of scientific falsehood is responsible for the deaths of countless AIDS victims in Africa; a man whose first instinct when his priests are caught with their pants down and penises in the mouths of young children is to cover up the scandal and damn the young victims to silence. Damn em to hell! : in short, exactly the right man for the job! He should not resign, moreover, because he is perfectly positioned to accelerate the downfall of the evil, corrupt organization whose character he fits like a glove, and of which he is the absolute and historically appropriate monarch.

No, Pope Benedict XVI should not resign. He should remain in charge of the whole rotten edifice - the whole profiteering, woman-fearing, guilt-gorging, truth-hating, child-raping institution called the Catholic Church, this blight on earth, this evil enterprise of sex starved men in ecclessiastical garbs and little child penis infatuations - while it tumbles, amid a stench of incense and a rain of tourist-kitsch sacred hearts and preposterously crowned virgins, about his ears.

It's rotten to the core. It's all rotten to the core. Rotten I say. Rotten. Any organisation that covers up child abuse is rotten to the core. This fucked up world with its false affected pieties is too blind to see it.

I imagine the stars.

And then I am calm.

Coming soon...Midnight Adventure's in London's Arthouse Cinescape

Coming soon...The enigma of Kasper Hauser

Cruel people

The problem is as follows:

We don't see ourselves from the viewpoint of animals. If we could see what we look like, what we are, what we do, from the vantage point of the other creatures with whom we share this world, what would we see? If a monkey, or a giraffe, or a chicken, or a cow, suddenly - by some quirk of biology, became sentient, what would it see when it viewed us? Would it see what we see when we view ourselves? I doubt it. We have an all too lofty opinion of ourselves. With our art and language and science and our philosophy. We think ourselves pseudo-angels, semi-divine, rational, intelligent, smart, clever, and imaginative creatures. We are all these great things, but we are also so much less.

To see ourselves in high definition (HD) and not mere DVD - we must imagine, what we look like, to animals. We look like an upright ape that has, by way of its intellect, managed to utterly control and subordinate animals. A chicken (by way of example) is a biological entity that nature has fashioned with her claws of 'red in tooth' - and now we, yes we mankind, now fashion the chicken. We are God as far as the chicken is concerned. The chicken you eat no longer resembles the chicken of the wild. We now control every aspect of its life. It is ours. When young we give it 4 hours of darkness in every 24. This way the chicken's internally calibrated (evolved over millions of years) biological clock is tricked into thinking it is spring, and thus it eats, and eats, and eats, readying itself for summer and thence babies. And we feed it grain, high energy grain - for the chicken must eat, for it thinks (well not 'thinks' but you know what I mean) that spring is nigh, and a chicken must prepare itself for babies and motherhood. And when it is fat, so fat it can barely stand on its own two legs (and in pain too), and when it has been pumped full of antibiotics to stop the spread of infection from its unnatural existence, we kill it, and then we eat it. We eat it in the environs of a fashionable but dimly lit restaurant where classical music is piped through the airwaves and you can hear the clink of knife and fork on china plates. We eat it braised in a delicious red wine gravy sauce with side dishes of cholrophyl rich spinach and baby potatoes. It is soft and tender when you cut it with the knife, and as we eat it, as we cut away through its fibrous tendons, we sip a glass of wine, and with our dinner guests think ourselves such lofty high brow creatures. And over this delicious chicken we discuss Schopenhauer, and Mozart and contemporary linguistics theory. So intelligent. So superior. So not like animals. Yet - We Eat Animals.

We Eat Animals

We Eat Animals

We Eat Animals

We Eat Animals

We Eat Animals

We Eat Animals

When you say that a few times. It finally hits you. It hits you hard:

We Eat Animals

Because...

We Are Animals.

We Eat Animals

Cos...

We Are Animals.

We Are All of us...Animals.

We go about our lives thinking ourselves so lofty, so aloof, so noble and high-born. So Moral. So Kind. So Good.

[I laugh]

[And then I smile]

And then I see..that I have canine teeth, incisors, for tearing flesh and I sometimes fart and when I look at certain types of women (the one's I fancy) I get the urge to fuck them. Being human is so hard. There's always a conflict between our animal natures and our so called nobility and reverence. A storm constantly raging.

And as for sex! Sex is all animal. Fuck - Fuck - Fuck. We love to Fuck. We try out different positions of Fucking, and sucking, and licking and tasting, and squirting. And my gosh! How we love to Fuck! And exchange bodily fluids - no wonder the Catholic Church hates sex - No wonder all religions fear sex - for in the mirror of sex the true face of Man is revealed - in all it's shame! In all its wildness. If ever you doubt your animal truth, think about sex - think about how animalistic it is. How so inappropriate for such a lofty being!

And the worst, perhaps the most shameful word describing a quality of Man is a German word: Schadenfreude. The very worst thing in Man. Schadenfreude: taking sweet pleasure from other peoples misfortunes. Not because the unfortunate are our enemies or people we hate. Oh no! but because, to feel good about one self, to win a competition, to come first, to get a job, to be promoted, to pass an exam, to win a girl, THERE WILL ALWAYS BE ANOTHER WHO LOOSES...by definition. Remember that. Our fortune, our good luck, our happiness, is always, at the expense, of another not so fortunate person. It evens out in the end. There is no sum increase in happiness - just changes in distribution of happiness. The sum total of happiness has always been the same throughout history. It's the distribution that counts. So next time, you are staring into the opalescent eyes of the girl (or guy - for I also have female readers) whom you love. This sealed individual sitting opposite you in a restaurant over a meal. This person who shines a light in the dark corners of your life...just remember, that moment was brought with the pain and suffering, of that chicken, you are about to tuck in to.

Bon Apetite!

___________

Jelly people

People are like jelly.

Imagine a tower of jelly. Sitting on a dessert plate. Surrounded by empty 'plateness'. You see it sitting there? This tower of jelly. You shake it. It wobbles a little. You shake more vigorously. It wobbles some more but, but it keeps its shape. You throw something at it. You throw a cherry at it - it bounces off and falls to the ground. You knock it on the head with a spoon. It bounces off too.

You stare at it. This castle of jelly. You look into it and notice that it is not uniform or homogeneous from inside. It's like marble. With striations and patterns and whorls and cracks. It has structure. It has form. It has textures. You shake it some more. It wobbles but the patterns inside never change. After a while you recognise them and they become familiar, dependable, boring.

People are like jelly. Set. Set like jelly. Everybody a fortress of jelly I see. With insurmountable redoubts, formidable turrets, crenellations, a deep moat - and views that never change. Try scaling a jelly fortress.

When do we become jelly fortresses? I wonder often. I wondered today. Sealed as we are. In our fortresses. Views that never change. A landscape that see's the seasons shift, but it's the same old seasons, every year. Year after year. And as they go by. The jelly hardens. Toughens. Grows a skin, like crusty cheese. Caked as it is with time. Ah time. Don't talk to me about time. And then, it no longer even wobbles when you shake it! Oh no! Rock solid now. A fortress of mortar and bricks. And the view? It shifts no more. The seasons no longer change. A painting now. By a painter that never sees.

Am I a jelly fortress?

Oh no!

Not me. I'm a puddle!

A squalid runny puddle. Of Jelly. Not set. Globular. With blobs. And bits. Like a lumpy custard. I don't look like anything. I should know. I look in the mirror and see a kaleidoscope. With no form. I occupy whole swathes of the dessert plate. I am runny. And I run. From one end of the plate to the other is my Kingdom. Thinly spread, widespread. The kingdom over which I rule. Of which I am king. But a king with few rules.

If I'm lucky.

Really, really lucky

I'll never set.

Oh no!

Do you know what my wish is?

To fall of the edge

of the dessert plate.

Just to see

what else there is

on the banquet table

of life.

Pale Blue Dot

________

Look again at that dot.

That's here

That's home.

That's us.

On it everyone you love

everyone you know

everyone you ever heard of

every human being who ever was,

lived out their lives.

________________

Out of the woods my master came...content with death and shame

INTO the woods my Master went,

Clean forspent, forspent.

Into the woods my Master came,

Forspent with love and shame.

But the olives they were not blind to Him;

The little gray leaves were kind to Him

The thorn-tree had a mind to Him

When into the woods He came.

Out of the woods my Master went,

And He was well content.

Out of the woods my Master came,

Content with death and shame.

When Death and Shame would woo Him last,

From under the trees they drew Him last:

’T was on a tree they slew Him—last,

When out of the woods He came.

Schopenhauer, Arthur

A sense of wonder was identified by Aristotle as the experience with which the impulse to philosophize originates, whether in the history of mankind or in the development of the individual. It may be that he was also consciously echoing Socrates who had already been quoted by Plato to have said: 'This sense of wonder is the mark of the philosopher. Philosophy indeed has no other origin'.

Arthur Schopenhauer, the subject of this piece, believed passionately that wonder, felt to the point of bafflement, was what motivated philosophy. 'The philosopher always becomes such as the result of a perplexity from which he is trying to disengage himself from...what distinguishes the genuine philosophers from the ungenuine is that the former get their perplexity from looking at life, whereas the latter get their sense of perplexity merely from reading books.' That is why academic philosophers have never said anything original. Most, if not all, the great ideas of philosophy originated, not in the hallowed and dusty corridors of universities, but from the minds of those who were insatiably curious and felt, or had a sense, that the world had much explaining to do. In short, they were perpetually baffled by life, and kept on asking 'why?'. Schopenhauer believed that most human beings experience this sense of wonder very dimly or fleetingly, if at all - a fact which he felt lay at the heart of his feeling of isolation from men. For Schopenhauer was incorrigibly misanthropic and also insatiably curious. He once said: 'The lower a man is in intellectual respect, the less puzzling and mysterious existence itself is to him; in fact everything to him will appear as a matter of course'.

But the attribute at the heart of this is not intellect. There are plenty of intelligent people who lack this sense of wonder - many men of affairs, for instance - merchants, doctors, lawyers, politicians and the rest. To such as these, the world is like a perfectly fitting garment: although it touches them on their skin they are not conscious of it, nor self-conscious in it. Such people are incapable of apprehending the world as strange, let alone mysterious, except perhaps on rare moments, like on Sundays.

The true wonder is that anything exists at all! Why is there something rather than nothing? That there should be anything is not what one would have expected. Nothing is what one would have expected. In endless space countless luminous spheres, round each of which some dozen smaller illuminated ones revolve, hot at the core and covered over with a hard cold crust; on this crust a mouldy film has produced living and knowing beings; this is empirical truth, the real, the world. Yet for a being who thinks, it is a most precarious position to stand on one of those numberless spheres floating freely in boundless space, without knowing whence or whither, and to be one of innumerable similar beings that throng, press, push, shove, and toil, restlessly and rapidly arising and then dying in beginningless and endless time.

To see this whole, this mystery, this thing! as a riddle pressing on the human mind for a solution is something that happens occasionally, in glimpses, to most people, I suppose. But a few are bewitched and engrossed by it. Among these are some of the great artists, great philosophers, great religious thinkers - and these comprise, in Schopenhauer's assessment, 'the noblest portion of mankind in every age and country'.

What am I looking for? Answer: Insight. I am the fly seeking the insight to lead me out of the flybottle.

________

Currently reading...

One September morning, Giovanni Drogo, being newly commissioned, set out from the city for Fort Bastiani; it was his first posting...this was the day he had looked forward to for years - the beginning of his real life...

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Wanderlusting

Brain washing of the masses through satellite TV

There is a plague in the world and it threatens to engulf the minds of the stupid. There is a virus in the world and it threatens to consume the souls of the wicked. There is an infection in the world and it threatens to infect the empty coconut heads of the pathetic!

And what is this infection called? This bubonic plague? This fever? This ague? Satellite (fucking) television! (excuse my Francaise). It seeps into the homes of the proletariat masses through satellite dishes that point to the skies. Images, sermons, Bollywood wickedness, Lollywood silliness and all manner of material is beamed down at the speed of light into the innocent eyes and ears of unsuspecting folk. There is a particularly dangerous breed of programme that promulgates brain-numbing rubbish that masquerades as 'educational television' on some of the so called 'Asian Channels'. I was watching one particular programme today (which I happened to mistakenly land upon by an ill-judged press of the remote control button). Confused 'Daad Mohamed' from somewhere in the US sends his dilemma to an Islamic guidance 'expert' through whom Allah (god) apparently communicates his orders. I paraphrase Daad Mohamed's frantic appeal for clarity: His children watch cartoons, and have stuffed toys, quilts and pillow cases with Mickey Mouse on them. Is all that halal? Is it 'allowed' he wonders? Is it forbidden? Now I admit, many of us detest the addictive and manipulative Disney brand which targets young children. But this fully grown, procreative adult cannot trust his own mind and his own reason and instead seeks instructions from voices of authority. How stupid is that?

Actually, it's not stupid. It's rather scary...

These global satellite channels literally control people. They push through Maoist 'cleansing'. Miserable mullahs are closing down the Muslim mind and the Muslim heart the world over. Meanwhile 'true believers' desperately seek enslavement and thank their enslavers. The questions posed are startling in their naiveté. May we sing? Is it OK for a man to listen to a woman singer? Do I watch a female newsreader? Yes, says a wise bearded one of the 'Apna Channel' – as long as she is properly covered up and not wearing perfume. What a fucking troglodyte. Go crawl back into the primitive slime from whence you belong Troglodyte moron.

Oooooh it gets me so angry (can you tell?!). It gets my blood boiling. Urrrrrghhhhh! - It gets my nerves a-jangling.

Please don't laugh. It is tragic, not funny. I am about to cry. Honest I am. My heart is about to burst. It really is.

Somehow in the last decade or so, millions of believers have been persuaded that they are repositories and godowns of sin because they watch films, love music and paintings, read books, experience temporal pleasures and ecstasies. Muslim children are now programmed to obey – robbed of imagination, independent thought and refinement. UK Muslim parents are increasingly coming out against school visits, music and drama, novels, exercise, scientific facts. Teachers know these parental demands leave Muslim children under-educated and emotionally numbed, socially inept, academically marginalised, economically disadvantaged, rendered unresponsive to artistic words, sights, sounds and hues. There is a whole world out there to discover and learn about! But no! We'd rather live in a vacuum tube!

This is a travesty of Islamic history, its love of truth and beauty, the intellectual energy that throughout history uplifted Muslim civilisations. The current Science Museum exhibition of Muslim inventions that shaped the modern world proves Muslims were never the barbarians promoted in Western demonology. Some of the earliest manuals on surgery and optics, astronomy and flying machines came out of Muslim regions. And those same places were creative hubs producing great works of art, incredible buildings and intricate crafts.

The Pakistani blogger Raza Rumi writes: 'Who are these butchers of culture? What religion do they follow? They have no religion except barbarism.' - Yes, they are a bunch of troglodytes. Many sagacious websites will warn that mixing with people like us (i.e. people like me), freethinkers, beatniks, coolfroods, is definitely haram (a sin). I have only one thing to say: Troglodytes!

An artist and a Muslim I know put it thus beautifully: 'Allah gave me my mind, my hands my eyes, my patience, my selfhood. I use all these gifts and show people the wonders of the world. How can that be wrong? Does God want us to be deaf, stupid and blind?'

No, but God's army sure does.

Beware of the beams that penetrate thy satellite dishes and infect the minds of thy young. Beware the baritone booming of the bearded troglodytes! They want to take your mind and infect it with a robotic soul. Beware! Beware my friends! Much better and wise to throw away the dish and chuck away the remote control, and spend your evenings staring at the stars instead - just like me. Though it can be difficult to see the stars in LondonTown's light polluted skies. But one can at least try and imagine.

And imaginings all you need really.

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Coming soon...

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It is found

what?

emptiness

It is the Steppes mingling with the sky

you see?

How cheap my dreams

are

that weigh less

than a paper moon

But it asks

I say take

It questions

I say no more

and throw myself

away

someplace...

sublime

_________________

Coming soon...

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It aches

I take an Aspirin

It beckons

I look away

It whispers: 'come hither'

I go deaf

It begs

I grow thick skin

It chases

I flee

It catches up

I am tired

It lifts me up

I let go

It takes me away

I let it

far, far away

someplace...

sublime

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A brief history...of something

There was a time during my sojourn in Lhasa (Tibet) when all I did for a whole fortnight was find myself a little room to hide away from the crowds, so that I could plough my way through the monumental tome 'A History of Western Philosophy' by Bertrand Russell. I did nothing in those two weeks but live morning, day and night through this book. I took it at its own pace. Putting the book down whenever I wanted to ruminate on what it was saying, feeling free to continue those reflections for as long as I liked before picking it up again, going out for walks to mull over certain passages, thinking about it in bed at night, or when watching the fresh night sky. There was no time pressure. No exams to pass. No place to be. No people to interrupt me. I would take the battered and bruised book with me to breakfast to my local haunt and I'd sup it over whilst devouring hard tac biscuits dunked in green tea. I would sit outside on the balcony to my room with feet wrapped in heavy blankets sipping something hot in one hand - whilst my book hand froze. I would sit outside the stairs of Potala Palace, book on lap, on my very own stairway to heaven. Such are the pleasures of the simple contemplative life. Those two weeks were worth it! As a result of those two weeks hard work, I now take around with me, in my head, a more or less complete history from the ancient Greeks to the present time. I can quote Cicero and Montaigne just as easily as Diderot and Kant. The fact is, that such a historical-eyed view normally takes years of intense academic study to cultivate. Most well educated people don't have it. Luckily I cultivated those seeds in Tibet and look now how they have flourished into a verdant forest!

For me it means that there is always a historical dimension to my views - whether of music, art, politics or philosophy or anything else. I see most things as how they came to be as opposed to fixed things in an immobile present. I see the present as merely something that is likely to change and not something of privilege. I see us all as fish in a raging torrent - an unceasing historical flow - carried aloft on the eddies and slipstreams of an historical narrative. The ancient Hindus believed in cycles. Their timeline was not linear like the western mould with a past, a present and a future. There's was a cyclical constantly rejuvenating historical narrative that disobeyed the linear forms of western history. Under such a non-linear narrative is there such a thing as progress? What does it even mean to say something is better than something else? Why does anything bother to exist at all? Why have something? Why not nothing? What is this space in which I move? Does anything even matter?

To locate your coordinates and pinpoint your location in the river of history takes some doing. It took me two weeks. Two weeks of mornings, days and nights. Two weeks of hard tac biscuits softened in green tea. Two weeks of cold feet and frost embittered fingers. Two weeks of living in a stinky damp blanket. Two weeks of no baths. Two weeks of stubbly cheeks. Two weeks of no girls. Two weeks of no sex. Two weeks of no concerns. Locked away in a corner of the world in a poky little hotel on the roof of the world.

Two wonderful blessed weeks!

_______

Annapurna

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What is above knows what is below,

but what is below does not know what is above.

One travels. One climbs. One sees.

One descends. One sees no longer. But one has seen.

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Birthday Boy

It's that time of year again (Feb 5th) when one must celebrate another momentous heave-ho towards the edge of darkness. Does it scare me? Does death scare me? Nope. I had been dead for millions of years before I was born without the least inconvenience to my person. So when I am gone it will be the same as it was before. Death is merely the absence of existence. We forget that existence is the exception not the rule in the universe. Unexistence is everywhere more common. Just look about you! On the buses in the morning as you head for work. On the trains. In the supermarkets. On TV. On the radio. Nobody's really alive. Not in the way we think we are. We merely stumble along like the contestants in Supermarket Sweep. The trolley represents the things we accrue on our journey, the aisle the superhighway of our lives, and the till? The till is the final reckoning - judgment day! But there is no final reckoning in the theistic vein. It is our own internal reckoning that we must battle with - did we live a good life? Did we do what we set out to do?

The easiest and simplest way of knowing what kind of life you have lived is to ask yourself a simple question: If I die today, as in right now, how will I feel about it? Living a good life is about perspective to a large extent. Perspective is being able to see your life within the context of all existences. And to see all existences; or to see as many as possible, one must possess empathy, a love for books and of course a disposition for quality travel! Empathy is important because it allows you to experience vicariously - in second hand -what others experience for real. The road that is empathy free leads to evil. Evil is not committed deliberately - It is a side-affect. It is committed when people don't care. And people don't care when they lack empathy. Books are great because they beat a path into other lives and seed empathy. And travel, when conducted without the comfort of tour-groups, state sponsored guides, and when done alone, is the ultimate perspective defining ruler.

'Man is the measure of all things' said Protagoras in circa 450 BC. By this he meant we measure all in comparison to ourselves (and what is relevant here), we measure all things with what we know. Expand what you know and that ruler of perspective will grow longer, will go back in the past farther, and stretch further ahead into the future. The important thing to remember is that a sense of perspective needs a bedrock. And that bedrock; that secure foundation, comes from science. A good understanding of the history of life on earth, its age, how it arose, what it actually is; and on a more cosmic level, an appreciation of the cosmos is a prerequisite, nay is essential, for a truer sense of perspective. Upon this scientific bedrock one can then start building a secure home from the strong bricks and beams of philosophy.

When you master and acquire such a sweeping sense of perspective you begin to see yourself in relation to everything, and only then will you have acquired what few achieve - a supreme indifference to the cosmic lottery. And not only that but an almost spiritual togetherness that can only come from those who know.

And then, and only then, will you have finally arrived.

But then you will be amongst the lucky few. For most don't even get to leave...

Sapere Aude!

'The Enlightenment' wrote Immanuel Kant, 'is man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity'. Immaturity is the inability to use one's understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when its causes lie not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use without guidance from another. Sapere Aude! - Dare to know! - have courage to use your own understanding! - that was the Enlightenment.

Kant attacked the hegemonies which keep the human mind shackled to the need for guidance. In order to mature the intellect needs liberty. Nothing is required for enlightenment except freedom; and the freedom we mean is the least harmful of all, namely, the freedom to use reason publicly in all matters. But on all sides I hear:

"Do not argue!" the officer screams

"Do not argue, pay!" says the taxman

"Do not argue, believe!" says the pastor

Sapere Aude! Ladies and Gentlemen. Have the courage. The courage to think. The courage to question. The courage to never bow before authority! The courage... to stick your nostrils in the clouds, and your head up in the stars. Sapere Aude! - Dare to know! - Dare to live! Dare to be different. Dare to go to Mongolia! Hahaha...

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