A German proverb

‏جرمن کہتے ہیں ‏کتے کو اپنا خوف اور انسان کو اپنی ضرورت سونگھنے نہ دیں، ‏ورنہ وہ دونوں آپ کو کاٹ لیں گے

 

Pendulum of Mind

 

Incredible delivery of poetry

 

Agree!

 

Unmarked Death

 It took me a long time to realized the burden of last few lines of  Leo Tolstoy's Death of Ivan Ilyich

And suddenly it became clear to him that what was tormenting him and would not be resolved was suddenly all resolved at Ollce, on two sides, on ten sides, on all sides. He was sorry for them, he had to act so that it was not painful for them. To deliver them and deliver himself from these sufferings. "How good and how simple," he thought.

{Leo Tolstoy died from pneumonia, aged eighty-two, at the railway station of Astapovo, a remote Russian village, on November 7, 1910. He had left his family home on October 28, in the middle of the night, to die as unmarked person}

Or, why  Thomas Hardy in The Mayor of Casterbridge quoted: 

 Michael Henchard's Will 

That Elizabeth-Jane Farfrae be not told of my death, 

or made to grieve on account of me. 

& that I be not bury'd in consecrated ground. 

& that no sexton be asked to toll the bell. 

& that nobody is wished to see my dead body. 

& that no murners walk behind me at my funeral. 

& that no flours be planted on my grave. 

& that no man remember me. 

To this I put my name. 

Michael Henchard

Or Ghalib said: 

hue mar ke ham jo rusvā  hue kyuuñ na ġharq-e-dariyā

na  kabhī  janāza  uThtā   na  kahīñ  mazār  hotā

How many intellectual discussions end - without much to avail

(As described by a close friend)

I was explaining to a few friends of mine that this morbid fascination with death and the afterlife is unnecessary but oh how we love to dwell on it. Sadly, it’s so unnecessary because consciousness arises from brain activity and ends with brain death. Once our brain neurons finally die, our entire perspective about life or the afterlife quickly disappear, leaving nothingness, blackness… just like before birth we had zero recollection about our existence. In fact our brains are joke at birth, and it takes years to fully develop. 18 years on average!!! 

So this nonsense about heaven, hell and the prospect of life after death fades away with the last neuron flickering towards its end.

Meanwhile one of my friends, Mashooq Hussein, 61, who I thought was intently listening while puffing on a cigarette, pensively said “did you know there are two only types of jinns in this dunya, *regular jinns and londay baaz jinns* and so the conversation quickly ended and I looked at him, raised my right hand and gave him a solid lanath and said “thooo bhenrda” and we all laughed and sipped on tea and lit a cigarette. 

That was the end of that intellectual conversation.

Funny African Proverbs

When a man is stung by a bee, he does not destroy all beehives- Kenya Proverb

It is only a stupid cow that rejoices at the prospect of being taken to a beautiful abattoir - Zambian Proverb

No matter how far an eagle flies up the sky, it will definitely come down to look for food - Zimbabwe Proverb

An army of sheep led by a lion can defeat an army of lions led by a sheep. - Ghanaian proverb

The anus doesn't teach the mouth the sweetness of food - South-African Proverb

The man who marries a beautiful woman and the farmer who grows corn by the roadside have the same problem- Ethiopian Proverb

A short man is not a boy- Nigerian Proverb

No matter how hot your anger is, it cannot cook yams- Nigerian Proverb

It requires a lot of carefulness to kill the fly that perches on the scrotum- Ghanaian Proverb

If the throat can grant passage to a knife, the anus should wonder how to expel it -South-African Proverb

The frown on the face of the goat will not stop it from being taken to the market - Nigerian Proverb

An old lady feels uneasy when dry bones are mentioned in a proverb - Ghanaian Proverb

The same sun that melts the wax, hardens the clay - Nigerien Proverb

If you don't know where you are going, any road will take you there - Ugandan Proverb

There is no virgin in a maternity ward- Cameroonian Proverb

The madman, who throws a stone into a crowded market, forgets that his own mother could be hit by his madness. - Ugandan Proverb

A child can play with its mother's breasts, but not its father's testicles - Guinean Proverb

He who goes to sleep with an itching anus wakes up with smelly fingers - Nigerian Proverb

Faiz Mixed with Van Gogh

 

A Persian Saying

مُلْکِ خُدا تَنْگ نِیسْت، پائے مُرا لَنْگ نِیسْت

- دنیا بہت وسیع ہے اور فقیر چلنے پھرنے سے معذور نہیں

- ایک جگہ سے محرومی ہوئی تو کیا فکر ﷲ تعالیٰ دوسری جگہ سے دے دے گا ، فکر وہ کرے جو جدوجہد سے گھبراتا ہو

One remarkable painting

One remarkable painting.

Note: Gracias to Books and stilettos for providing update in comments: "This is "The Slave Market" by Jean-Léon Gérôme, painted in 1866: It depicts a scene in the Middle East or North Africa, the Barbary slave trade. It is an example of 19th-century Orientalist art. His paintings are located at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown. I have seen another one where a guy is checking a nude woman’s teeth like we do for bakras on eid hahaha his work is fascinating!"

 

One definition of Home

 

Leaving pleasures

From my early days, residency, fellowship, and career in medicine, I had to let go of many get-togethers, gatherings, parties, and late-night pleasures!

 

A woman!

 

Monkeys!

There is a saying in Persian: "every human born is destined for a specific work."

 

 

We are verbs!!!

Oscar Wilde said that if you know what you want to be, then you inevitably become it...that is your punishment, but if you never know, then you can be anything. There is a truth to that. We are not nouns. We are verbs. I am not a thing...an actor, a writer...I am a person who does things...I write, I act...and I never know what I am going to do next. I think you can be imprisoned if you think of yourself as a noun."

Consistency vs Intensity