The Agony of Remembrance

Nice!

I`m reminded of the maxim: ``When you can`t have what you want, it`s time to start wanting what you have.``

:-)

Thanks for this thought-provoking off-beat piece, Ali.

Author, your point is well-made. There is much to the old saying ``you can never go back home again!``

In addition, let me remind you that there is nothing ``nostalgic`` back home, after 15 years in the US, I re-discovered that the ghettos that the US elite manufacture around the globe, one of the ``front line`` ones being Pakistan are more or less the same, regardless of the emotions you attach to your ``homeland``. ghettos stink, ghettos are miserable and people in them are forced to live marginalized and lives full of misery. What the social structure has done to the lives of the people reflects in their personalities, leading to petty immorality, don`t think one is immune from what nthe structure imposes on you. Ghettos are f`d up regardless of their names, Harlem, Pakistan, India, South Chicago, Bangladesh or whatever. Using nostalgia to cover up the inhumane conditions and the traumatic existence forced on the people living in them is accepting the status quo, only an immoral and inhumane person can wrap up a ghetto in happy images of nationalism...one thing though, people that are miserable and not drugged, as in the ghettos, have potential for change, unlike the West where cheerful morons, fully trapped by their system, living their lives of shallowness, thinking that it is something great, don`t even realize how much they lose...

<<< (Remembrance of the past is agony, my Lord
Seize from me my memories) >>>

It`s only agony for those who reify their subjective response to quite benign events, guess the Allama couldn`t rise above that..

Hallo - in college, someone gave me a bumper sticker which read, ``I WANT IT!`` `It` can refer to just about anything. I stuck it on my bedside table in plain view of dorm buddies. Most friends were amused, however, one person said to me... ``Why must you have `it`? Can`t you enjoy what you have without desiring what you don`t have?`` Trust me, that did not make sense back in college, but now that I look back and remember those words, it is very zen... in the `present moment` as you (author: Ali Hashmi) say and not really wanting what one doesn`t have, but just being...

-zensufi-

Gam aur khushii me.n fark na mahasuus ho jahaa.N
mai.n dil ko us muqaam pe laataa chalaa gayaa

Its amazing how subjective memory is. Here in the south people often refer to the 50`s as if it were a decade of tranquility, even though that was a time when segregation (Jim Crow etc) was alive and well.