I Am Sick of Writing Essays.

 

I used to love writing essays before.  During my first and second year of university, I was all into it.  Now I am just sick and tired of this.  I can understand why profs would assign essays in say a 300 or even 400 level course.  But once you get into the higher 400 level and 500 levels, I really do not see the point of having to write a 10 or 15 page essay.  Yes, sure, we need to develop writing skills but I am confident that most of us by now have those skills already.  Those that don’t are probably already kicked out of Uni and working at McDonald’s right now.  A seminar type class where we move beyond formulating a thesis should be the norm in high level classes.  But its not.  Its the same crap that we’ve been doing the past 3 or four years.  Exchanging ideas, participating in mock conventions, formulating policy…that is the type of practical activities that we should be doing in class.  Not writing essays.  This increases the quality of the education, especially that of the social sciences.  We don’t get any funding as it is.  This way, the faculty can at least show that they are making the most of the little money that they have. 

 I have not had a proper night’s sleep in the longest time, all because of this damn essay.  And this is not the only one.  I have like three more to go.  And that is just in one class!  It makes me sick to my stomach to even think about an essay.  Its bad enough I had to choose a stupid country for my assignment of which there is absolutely NO information on.  Good job George Bush.  It is because of you that Iraq has no current policy on the NPT.  And its because of you that I am stressing over these essays and its because of you that I can’t sleep properly.  I can’t wait til this stupid essay is over.  My goal is to get this done and handed in within three hours from now.  We’ll see how that goes.  Whoever is reading this, please pray for me!  If and when I get this done, I will breath a huge sigh of relief…until I realize I have fast approaching assignments in my other three classes.  Ahh yes…the sweet life of a student. 

Best Friends and Life Changes.

There are people out there that have had that one special friend that they have known since they were in diapers.  They hung out together, played together, fought together and cried together.  They went to school together, studied together, took the bus and train home together.  They talked about the past together, talked about the present together, and talked about the future together.  It would seem as if fate were bringing the two closer and closer to each other with every look, every meet, every conversation.  But then things change.  One of them goes away.  Or one of them gets married all of a sudden.  Something happens that completely changes the dynamic of the relationship.  All of a sudden they don’t see each other as much.  They don’t talk to each other as much.  And you have this special relationship that is just lingering in the air…it doesn’t really have a place.  It just…is.  They may call it a friendship but both know that there is more deep down inside it. 

I don’t really know why this sort thing happens.  Is it fate or is it the will of God?  Why is it that two people that are meant to be with each other, end up with people that they really weren’t meant to be with?  It may be a strong word to describe such a scenario but I think its a tragedy that such people don’t end up together.  Kismet ve ek pairi cheez hon di hai.  Some have it good and some have it bad.  More often than none, in my experiences and from what I have seen, it seems that best friends like that always see the bad side of Kismat.  For Kismat to create a distance between two best friends who show all the signs of being meant to be with each other is inherently unjust. 

Its everytime she looks you in the eyes and smiles at you, you know she loves you.  You can see it in her eyes.  The caring, the compassion, the love…its all visable in her eyes.  Its just that destiny had dealt us certain cards which didn’t end up in our favor.  You want to feel something but you can’t because you don’t really know what it is in the first place.  Its just something that is lingering in the air…Its something but its nothing.  An entity with no real identity….no home…

Justin Trudeau To Lead The Youth Revolution

 The eldest song of the great Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau announced today that he will be running in the Montreal riding of Papineau come the next federal election.   You can read about it here and listen to Justin himself here.

I bring this up because this reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend a few

weeks ago at University. We were sitting there having lunch and we reminisced about the good old Chretien days and how its so rare to have a charismatic leader in our country. I told him that charismatic leaders are indeed rare. They come in waves. Some get elected and some don’t. Its just the nature of politics in Canada. When I was at the leadership convention in Montreal last year, hearing Kennedy speak before the delegates, I thought to myself, “How could people NOT vote for him?” He wasn’t the most charismatic leader in the bunch but you could see that he had that potential to be one of Canada’s greats. Moreover, he was attempting to introduce elements of Human Security Theory into formal policy which got me more excited than a child on the last day of school.

But this is where Justin comes into play. The young, handsome, charismatic chap has the ability to rile up Canadians, young Canadians and young Liberals especially in a way that even Chretien could not do. I was of the opinion that Justin would be better off not joining politics and doing what he was doing now. I thought he could make more of a difference that way. But after he introduced Kennedy at the speeches in Montreal, watched how everyone from our delegates to the Dion guys, to the Finley camp, the Dryden people…all cheered wildly as Justin spoke. It was from that point on that my opinion changed.

My experience during the last leadership showed me that our people, young people, become more and more apathetic with every election. The young people in this country are losing faith in the power they hold in their hands. They are losing faith in politics. The change from liberalism to conservatism in this country has shown that young people, now more than ever, must mobilize to form a group to which candidates can campaign to. The continued tuition increase is a good example of how the apathy of young people is being taken advantage of. If young people can mobilize and fight for lower tuition, GST free text books and show politicians that young people can actually make a difference, than they are more likely to formulate policy that appeals to us.

 

But, in order to mobilize the young masses, we need a leader. And that is what Justin Trudeau is. He is a young, charismatic leader who is passionate about change, passionate about politics and passionate about Canada. He is the only person in the Liberal Party, and dare I say the country, who has the very real ability of mobilizing the masses and actually bringing back Canada to the way it once used to be. His passion for politics will rub off on young people. His charisma and charm will naturally allow it to happen. He is the face and the voice that will represent us. He is the single entity in the country that has the potential to bring about a revolution in this country that will unite it like no other leader has. Trudeau Ι united the country in 1982 when he repatriated the Constitution and brought forth the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. But I believe Justin can do more. He is the face of our country. He is the face of young people. He is the face of change.

Assuming he will win the nomination and beat the Bloc guy in the riding, I think Justin will have an amazing political career. Someone who has no negative baggage to bring to the table, someone who has been fighting for social justice his entire life, someone who is passionate about politics and Canada, surely will act as a rolemodel for millions of young people across this country. With Justin in the picture, politics will once again be relevant in this country.

Vive le Canada!

Sisters…

I was at a friend’s house last night. She asked me to straighten her hair and I agreed. While taking the straightening iron to her locks, a thought came to me that had been inside my head for quite some time. I wish I had a sister.

I look at my friends and most, if not all of them have sisters. And almost all of them have very close bonds with them. They fight together, they cry together but more often than none, they care for each other. I am not saying that that a brother would care less for his sibling. But the love that a sister gives to its older or younger brother is far different from that of a brother…at least from what I noticed from my observations.  I truly believe that the love between a brother and sister is something that cannot be compared to anything else in this world.  It is an honour and privilege to have a sister.

Sisters tend to bring a family closer together. They are that link that bond a family together. The relationship that a brother and sister bring to a family is unlike any other. The love they have for one another, in my opinion, cannot be compared to that of any other. They are inherently a blessed entity that bring blessings with them where ever they go. When a brother cries at his sister’s wedding, I believe he is indeed crying partly because he is losing not only someone that is blessed, but he is also losing a friend, a loved one, a bond that he has known for so many years. I wish I could feel that pain.

I am sitting here struggling to articulate exactly how I feel. I notice that many of my closest relationships are with girls. I also note that I wish for my first child to be a daughter. Further, I note that when I lose a female friend (for whatever reason) it seems to be a bit more painful than if I lose a make friend. Its almost as if I have been estranged from a sister. I am not sure if this is accurate or not but I attribute these factors to the lack of a female role-model in my life that I can relate to. Substituting that with a friend can be hard as well. Close female friends that I have had over the years, I no longer talk to or circumstances are as such that we are no longer as close as we used to be. Its an attempt to fill that void that I feel which ends up being futile. I had a cousin that immigrated here to Canada not too long ago. He had a daughter that had just been born. I became very excited at the prospect of having a little sister running around. But even that didn’t go the way I wanted to. They moved out soon after and their life became busy and so did ours and we don’t get to see each other all that often.  I have stopped “searching” for someone that could be my sister because I realize that I will never be able to fill this void in my heart.  Its a futile search.

Through my experiences I have noticed that those who have sisters have a greater respect for women. They are less likely to hurt women physically or emotionally. They are less likely to break another girl’s heart. Again, this is all based on my experiences. That is why I tell all my friends that they are so incredibly lucky that they have a sister(s) in their family. Sometimes I feel that they really don’t know how blessed they are. Or maybe, I just suffer from a case of “you always want what you don’t have.” Either way, and I’ll say this again, those of you that are reading this and have sisters…you really do not realize how lucky and how blessed you are.  It honestly breaks my heart that my life lacks a sister but there is nothing I can do about it now.  Perhaps heaven will have a sister for me (that’s if I ever get in).  Those of you that are blessed with sisters, your life experience is ten times greater than those of us that aren’t blessed with one.  Cherish them.  Care for them.  Love them.

Aaj Akhan Waris Shah Nun

Amrita Pritam

Aj aakhan Waris Shah nun, kiton kabraan vichchon bol,
Te aj kitab-e-ishq daa koi agla varka phol
Ik roi si dhi Punjab di, tun likh likh maare vaen,
Aj lakhaan dhian rondian, tainun Waris Shah nun kaehn
Uth dardmandaan dia dardia, uth takk apna Punjab
Aj bele lashaan bichhiaan te lahu di bhari Chenab
Kise panjan panian vichch ditti zehr ralaa
Te unhaan paniian dharat nun ditta paani laa
Is zarkhez zamin de lun lun phuttia zehr
Gitth gitth charhiaan laalian fut fut charhiaa qehr
Veh vallissi vha pher, van van vaggi jaa,
Ohne har ik vans di vanjhali ditti naag banaa
Pehlaa dang madaarian, mantar gaye guaach,
Dooje dang di lagg gayi, jane khane nun laag
Laagaan kile lok munh, bus phir dang hi dang,
Palo pali Punjaab de, neele pae gaye ang
Gale`on tutt`e geet phir, takaleon tuttii tand,
Trinjanon tuttiaan saheliaan, charakhrre ghukar band
Sane sej de beriaan, Luddan dittiaan rohr,
Sane daliaan peengh aj, piplaan dittii tor
Jitthe vajdi si phuuk pyaar di, ve oh vanjhali gayi guaach
Raanjhe de sab veer aj, bhul gaye uhadi jaach
Dharti te lahoo varsiya, kabraan paiaan choan,
Preet diaan shaahzaadiaan, aaj vichch mazaaraan roan
Aj sabbhe Kaido` ban gaye, husn, ishq de chor
Aj kitthon liaaiye labbh ke Waris Shah ik hor
Aj aakhan Waris Shah nun, kiton kabraan vichchon bol,
Te aj kitaab-e-ishq da, koi aglaa varka phol

Today I Call Waris Shah 

Amrita Pritam

Today, I call Waris Shah, “Speak from your grave”
And turn, today, the book of love’s next affectionate page
Once, a daughter of Punjab cried and you wrote a wailing saga
Today, a million daughters, cry to you, Waris Shah
Rise! O’ narrator of the grieving; rise! look at your Punjab
Today, fields are lined with corpses, and blood fills the Chenab
Someone has mixed poison in the five rivers’ flow
Their deadly water is, now, irrigating our lands galore
This fertile land is sprouting, venom from every pore
The sky is turning red from endless cries of gore
The toxic forest wind, screams from inside its wake
Turning each flute’s bamboo-shoot, into a deadly snake
With the first snakebite; all charmers lost their spell
The second bite turned all and sundry, into snakes, as well
Drinking from this deadly stream, filling the land with bane
Slowly, Punjab’s limbs have turned black and blue, with pain
The street-songs have been silenced; cotton threads are snapped                                                     
Girls have left their playgroups; the spinning wheels are cracked                                                                  
Our wedding beds are boats their logs have cast away
Our hanging swing, the Pipal tree has broken in disarray
Lost is the flute, which once, blew sounds of the heart
Ranjha’s brothers, today, no longer know this art
Blood rained on our shrines; drenching them to the core
Damsels of amour, today, sit crying at their door
Today everyone is, ‘Kaido;’ thieves of beauty and ardour
Where can we find, today, another Warish Shah, once more
Today, I call Waris Shah, “Speak from your grave”
And turn, today, the book of love’s next affectionate page

The Tragedy of Our Reality.

I was watching an interview a few days ago that featured Tariq Ali, the great political activist who some would say is the most famous leftist in the world.  The interview prompted me to pick up one of his books on my bookshelf.  The book is called Conversations With Tariq Ali: Speaking of Empire And Resistance.The conversation is between Tariq Ali and David Barsamian.  I would like to present an excerpt from the book that I found particularly touching.

Barsamian comments on how parallels can be made between Pakistan and Israel in that both countries were created out of partition which have resulted in death, destruction and refugees. Tariq Ali responds:

The Israeli example is, of course, very well known because of great Palestinian voices like Mahmoud Darwish, Edward Said, and others. Here I would just like to say about Edward, whom I loved dearly – his greatest accomplishment was not his literary theory; it was the fact that Palestine because his cause, and he became the chronicler of a dispossessed nation, a people without a homeland. That’s what won him respect all over the world; he was the only real historian Palestine possessed who was not marked by the corruption and intrigues of Arafat or the other Palestinian leaders. He kept the cause of Palestine alive ad explained what had happened.

As far as the Indian partition is concerned, nearly two million people died – there is a big debate, is it one million or two million? – I say, “Look, I don’t know. Its just as bad.” I use the figure of nearly two million, because we know that the deaths of lots of poor people went unrecorded; they were buried in mass graves. Not a single monument marks the victims of partition: the Muslims, the Hindus and Sikhs who were killed in Bengal and the Punjab. Neither India nor Pakistan honored the victims.

One of the most moving poems written about partition was by and eighteen-year-old- Sikh girl who had to leave Lahore because it was now being partitioned. She saw the killings and burnings. And she wrote this great poem that evokes the memory of the Great Sufi poet Waris Shah, who wrote the epic Heer and Ranjha, which is still sung all over the Punjab in India and Pakistan. Shah, a seventeenth-century mystic poet, wrote about the love of a woman for a man and described the scream of the woman, Heer, forced into a marriage against her will – the first line of Waris Shah’s poem is, “As he mounted the wedding palanquin, she screamed.” That scream dominates Punjabi culture. This eighteen-year-old girl refers to that poem and says, “Waris Shah, when one woman screamed, you wrote hundreds of verses to commemorate her. Today, thousands and thousands of women are dying, corpses are floating down our rivers. Can’t we open a new book from your page to commemorate this and open the eyes of the people? Blood flows down the Chenab – one of the great rivers of the Punjab.” Other poets also described the the partition, as in Faiz Ahmad Faiz’s famous opening lines after partition in 1947: “This mottled dawn, this ugly dawn / This is not what we set out for when we started for independence.” The poets have commemorated it, but the historical memory of the tragedy has not been preserved.

He further goes on to say:

We were cut off from each other. You couldn’t go to India from Pakistan; it was just a tragedy. The borders were always sealed. When I was at Oxford, I made Indian friends; it was the first time I had met Hindus and Sikhs. And then, when I went to India for the first time in the early 1970s, people found out I was in town. I was invited to dinner every single night by Sikh families. The kids would tell me, “Our parents want to see you because they knew your parents.” Sumptuous meals would be prepared, and they would sit me down after dinner with a glass of whiskey in my hand and say, “Just talk about Lahore.” That was really moving.

You can find the interview with Tariq Ali that refered to above here, done by George Stroumboulopoulos of the CBC.

Maut Ke Tandi Hawaa…

Jis Ne Kaha Hai
Ke Rishte Uparr Jannat Main Ban Te Hain
Uss Shaqs Ko Yeh Bataao
Ke Main Hoon Woh
Jis Ka Rishta
Maut Ki Tandi Hawaa Se Banna.
Laash Ke Tarhaa
Humara Kuch Nahi Raha.

       -mast malang

Tonight is why I love winter.

People always ask me about why I love winter so much.  And I can never really explain it to them.  It doesn’t happen all that often but its nights like tonight that make me adore the cold season.  I’ll try to explain it here tonight…somewhat anyways.

Right now, its 4:25am (I am working on my essay that is due in a couple of hours) and its -20C outside right now.  Its perfectly still, no wind.  There is a silence that has overcome this city of 1 million.  Its a silence that one will only experience in the winter nights.  Thick clouds blanket the city above.  As a result of the clouds above, the lights from the street lamps reflect off the clouds, giving the atmosphere an orange glow.  And because the snow is white, the light from the lamps and clouds also reflects off the snow on the ground.  So pretty much anything that has a grey to white shade to it is glowing orange.  Its a beauty that words cannot describe.  Its amazing.  The spectacle is amazing.  The peace is amazing.  The stillness is amazing.  The air is amazing.  One has to see it to truly appreciate it.  Its nights like this where I wish I had a wife so I could take her outside and hold her in my arms and just be; add our love to the peace and stillness of the night. Give her the warmth of my heart as we stand in the cold air of our surroundings; kiss her rosey cheeks and view her in an orange glow.  Love her like the very snow we so innocently play in, loves the cold. 

I don’t have a wife.  Nor do I have anyone in mind who could be my wife.  And yet, I know I will love her to death.  I am in love with someone that does not exist in my reality.  Not yet anyways.  But I do know that desite us being bundled up with our winter jackets, our gloves, hats and scarves…despite all those layers, it is her and only her that will be able to really keep me warm when the bitter cold of the north envelopes our city.  People don’t realize this, but I truely believe the firey glow of orange actually attests to this.  The glow of the atmosphere makes me, tells me to believe in love.  People associate love with the colour red.  I associate it with orange.

This is why I love winter… 

• Arky midterm Friday
• Poli essay due Tuesday (10 pages)
• Phil “hardest exam of our university lives even though I think grades are horrible” midterm Thursday.

 One more week til reading week. Come on! Just two more things to cross off the list!

My Light.

Come into my light
And let me here your music.
Allow me to wander in your melody
And get lost in your hymns.

Come into my light
And let me feel your soul.
Allow me to walk through your being
And wrap myself in your essence.

Come into my light
And let me see your love.
Allow me to join my heart with yours
And beat together with rhythms in sync.

Come into my light
And let me smell your hair.
Allow me to shower it with roses
And comb it with my poems.

Come into my light
And let me taste your words
Allow me to get drunk with each utterance
And become sober when you are silent.

-mast malang