Dreams and nightmares

I know you won’t ever understand what I mean

Whatever happened was only a bad dream,

A mere nightmare-

One that was unpleasant, sad and bizarre.

 

I know people may not forget

And for some time I will continue to regret,

Yet the only way I can make my heart heal

Is by believing that this was never real.

 

What I did or said one day

Cannot define who I am in any way.

I have dreams to chase

And happiness to taste.

 

When I will lie on my deathbed

And my soul is about to fly,

I wanna feel blessed

And know I have no reason to cry.

 

(Written by me on the afternoon of 26th April, 2012)

While I breathe

From today onwards,

I will live every day as if it’s my last,

Say every prayer as if at the end of it my lifeless body will touch the dust,

I will be grateful to Allah for every breath that I take

And fulfill every promise that I make.

 

I will obey my father

And respect my mother;

I will stand by my sisters and my brother

So that they, in their life, have nothing to bother.

 

I’ll be like a kite

Flying proud and high,

Until the string snaps

And it’s time to say goodbye.

CHAOS IN LONDON!

As I was watching the news two days ago, I noticed that violence was the topic that dominated the headlines. London was in chaos as the police were struggling to contain the riots that had started after police had shot a young man, the circumstances of which still remain unexplained, as far as I know. There were also reports of bloodshed in Syria and Libya, of clashes between students and police in Chile and ethnic tensions between the Pashtuns and the Urdu-speaking community in the Pakistani city of Karachi. Besides news of violence in different parts of the globe, there were reports about economic woes- about USA having lost its AAA credit rating, about the downturn in Europe and the concern in China and other countries. I understand very little of economics, but one thing was clear- it all did not sound good. Not at all.

The pictures from London and surrounding areas shocked me the most. I perhaps would not be surprised if such havoc occurred in Greece or Italy, but I did not expect riots of such magnitude to happen in a city like London. I watched with awe supermarkets, shops, homes and cars burning with roaring flames. Gangs of young people were out looting, breaking and burning. On the third, or probably the fourth, consecutive night of riots (I do not exactly remember the date), three Asian young men were killed in Birmingham by a deliberate hit-and-run incident by a car when these men were reportedly patrolling the streets in an attempt to protect their community from looters. People were complaining about the police’s failure to protect people’s life and property. Police said they were simply overstretched with too much to do with too little manpower. However, fortunately things are now pretty much under control due to increasing the number of police on the streets and due to other tough measures. Relative calm has returned, according to what I have heard and read on news. Yet I cannot help asking myself why on earth such a large number of young people suddenly started this mayhem.

The riots in London were clearly out of proportion and cannot be justified, or at least that is what I think. I regret the fact that so many boys of my age and some even younger could engage themselves in burning houses and looting shops of their own neighbourhood. I agree that there might have been a growing frustration among many young people about unemployment, cuts in spending by the government and other issues. Yet you cannot make your neighbours pay for your woes. You cannot destroy the livelihood of people because of your anger towards government policies. I beleive that the destruction of property in protest of killing of a man by the police is as unjustified as Breivik’s act of killing nearly a hundred Norwegians for some idiotic ideology he had been nurturing in his head.

As I watched on TV the disappointment and grief in the face of the owner of a furniture shop that had been completely burnt down by rioters, the anger in the voice of a restaurant owner whose business has fallen victim to looting and the sadness and indescribable helplessness in the eyes of the father whose son was killed in the riots, I could not help feeling a wave of indignation towards all these mindless acts of violence.

That simply is not the way of protesting, no matter what.

FEELING LIKE A HYPOCRITE

The feeling of being in a continuous conflict with my own conscience is intolerable. I do not know why but over the last few weeks, or perhaps months, I have been aware of these uncanny echoes from my mind that said I am not the person I ought to be.  I am doing things that I should never have done and I have said things that I have never meant to while I have ignored my actual responsibilities. As time passes by, I cannot help asking myself over and over again, “Am I the same person on the inside and on the outside? Do I really act on what I believe in? Am I working hard enough to achieve the goals of my life that I had set for myself years ago?”

Deep inside my mind, a voice whispers, “No, you are not!”

I feel like a double-faced liar, full of hypocrisy. I look around in vain to seek a soul- a friend, a member of my family or just a fellow human being- who would, or at least try to, understand me and guide me to the right way. With the internal conflicts of my mind still at its height, I turn to the Lord of the Universe, the only One Who is worthy of being worshipped, the One who gave us life and will give us death and resurrect us again on the Day of Judgement, to help and guide this ungrateful slave of His in order to find peace and tranquility in his heart.

DID EINSTEIN HAVE A BRAIN?

The following is one of  articles I had submitted to an online journal to apply to join as a blogger, but my application had been turned down. “Better luck next time”, I had mumbled under my breath as  I was reading  the reply email which said “Unfortunately, you were not successful this time – however, we plan to recruit on an annual basis, so stay tuned for next year’s competition.”  Then i had submitted the same writing for our med school magazine and it was published but, for unknown reasons, with too many typing errors. So, here it is, the original copy of the writing:

A few weeks ago during the anatomy lecture, our teacher mentioned something about how Albert Einstein’s brain was reportedly different from that of a normal individual’s brain. I found it rather intriguing and decided to find out more about the brain of one of the most brilliant theoretical physicists ever to have walked upon this planet. When I came back home from college that day, I sat down in front of my PC and started googling “Einstein’s brain”. After reading through various articles from a number of websites, I sat back and wondered whether Einstein just had a mere ‘brain’.

Einstein had no brain actually. The organ that occupied his cranial cavity was a ‘superbrain’, or at least that is what I think.

In one of the search results, I came across one of Einstein’s statements where he said, “I have no special talents, I am only passionately curious.” Yet years of research on his brain, which had been removed during autopsy seven hours after his death, suggest otherwise. Little did he know that his brain was far from ordinary and he probably possessed a very gifted mind.  Researchers found out that the parietal operculum region in the inferior frontal gyrus of Einstein’s brain was vacant which meant that the Broca’s area (Brodmann’s areas 44 and 45, responsible for the production of speech) was smaller. To compensate, the inferior parietal lobe was 15% wider than normal. It is this part of the brain that is responsible for mathematical thoughts, visuospatial cognition and imagery of movement. No wonder the owner of this brain founded the Theory of Relativity which many of us even fail to understand. Moreover, part of the lateral sulcus on the cerebral cortex was absent. “This unusual brain anatomy may explain why Einstein thought the way he did”, said one of the researchers who had studied that ‘super brain’.

Moreover, Einstein’s brain showed more glial cells than normal, which is why many people suggest that the neurons in his brain had a greater demand for energy.  In the left inferior parietal area this difference in glial cells was statistically significant.

There was another very interesting fact that I came to know while digging for details about the ‘superbrain’. Some people (including some of my best friends) say that an average human being uses only 10 % of his brain. According to most of the search results on Google that I’ve visited, this was nothing but a myth. One particular author of an article says, “It is not that we use only 10% of our brains, it is that we only know 10% of its functions.” Brain imaging techniques have shown that there is not a single “silent” area in the brain. Moreover, if 90% of the neurons were of no use, then all the energy and nutrition that they would use up would have been a huge waste. This useless consumption of energy simply doesn’t make sense no matter whether you believe in the Theory of Evolution (which I don’t) or whether you put your faith in Creationism.

As a medical student, Einstein’s works are of little interest to me (although during my school days, he was one of the few famous people who inspired me). However, the research on his brain was something I really enjoyed reading about. The topic seemed intriguing to me because currently, I am studying brain for anatomy at med school. Anatomy is indeed, a subject full of wonders and elegance. It is only after studying anatomy that one can truly realize how amazing our human body is. Even more amazing was the brain of the great scientist Einstein.

MY RETURN TO BLOGGING AND THE STORY OF ‘WORMTONGUES’

The year is almost over and it has been quite a long time since I had last posted a writing on my blog. Life has become a bit depressing these days. I feel like I am a bit different from most people- some consider me as weird, a freak or even simply annoying. Yet I can live with that and I do have a very very small group of people who still understand me, albeit only to a slight extent, and whom I can still consider to be trustworthy. You need friends and a family to help you go on with your life when things do not turn out to be on your side. You need some people to point out that little ray of hope when all hope seems dead. However, if you keep your eyes and mind open, you can find inspiration from things around you; not only people, but also from nature and other living things.

When I was alone in my silent room this evening, a lovely faint sound came flowing through the window to my ears. The sound of a flock of bird’s chirping. I heard the distant sound for a second or two and then it was gone- the flock must have been flying high above in the sky. It was dark outside and the winter night sky was blocked from my view by a thin blanket of fog. “Birds flying in the dark in flocks during winter- those must be migratory birds”, I thought. Each year, flocks of birds from countries like Siberia cross thousands of miles to reach this country during winter. I have sometimes seen them flying in almost triangular groups at dusk, but it had been at least a couple of years since I had last noticed or heard them flying over our house. With all the noises of the city, it is indeed hard to hear the sound of the birds. The cycle of life makes these wonderful winged creatures make a long, perilous journey every year. Migrations of different species have many amazing and wonderful stories, some of which I was enthralled to know about from Nat Geo’s TV programme “Great Migrations”. Yet when I think about all those, my mind keeps going back to thoughts about my own life- about my own struggle in this short and temporary worldly life.
I know how insignificant I am. In this vast Universe, I am merely nothing to be considered more than some random creature inhabiting this planet just like billions have done before me and still do and will do in the future until the end of Time. Life, full of uncertainties, may end any moment. The heart that is beating at a wonderful rhythm and the brain that is working in such a miraculous way may stop responding any moment and this short life will be over. Yet we are really obsessed with this world. Even trivial happenings and small sufferings depresses us while we ignore the blessings our Creator has blessed us with.
I guess I am talking random stuff. I still need to improvise on sticking to the topic when I talk (or write). Anyway, as I was sitting in the anatomy class two days ago, the teacher rebuked me for not being attentive in the class, although there were a hell lot more people who were less attentive than me. I am not inattentive in other classes but in that teacher’s class, I just cannot find help my mind wandering off. A teacher needs to have some qualities which draws the students’ attention and creates interest in their mind to focus. A teacher needs to be interactive. Yet, unfortunately, she lacks those vital qualities. I asked her questions for a couple of times in previous classes and what I understood was that she is never in a mood to answer a student’s question. She was teaching the class about a transverse section through the mid-brain and I asked something about reticular formation. She almost waved off my question.Nothing could be more frustrating… I always had a habit of asking questions, often too many, during lessons since my school days and it helps me a lot and lifts the fog to a large extent about different topics. There are other teachers in our college and most of them are very different from that teacher ‘suffering from question-phobia’. During the last histology class, I kept asking silly questions about the slides of respiratory system that we were looking at through the microscopes. Our histology teacher never showed the slightest sign of being annoyed and she answered all my questions and explained everything in a calm voice. That is the type of teacher whom I respect a lot. Whatever, coming back to what happened in that boring anatomy class, I was a bit depressed following that happening. Wretched weak-minded idiot- that is what I am, I guess. Sometimes people’s words seem to have a great effect on my mind, especially words from teachers. Some teacher insulted me in front of the whole class one day and his words still haunt me. On the contrary, when the community medicine teacher complemented my performance after the viva exam a few weeks ago, I was in high spirits for the next few days. Perhaps a teacher rebuking a student is justified and of course, he/she has the right to do so if they have good reasons. However, I guess I need to ignore words of those people (not only teachers) who utter whatever they feel like uttering, never caring about how people feel. You just got to ignore fools’ words.

That is how the world is. There will always be someone who will depress you and will try to blow off the fire of hope that burns in your heart. They like speaking ill of people behind their backs. I prefer to call such people as ‘Wormtongues’ and I cannot help feeling sorry for them. Probably they do not have a life of their own, which makes backbiting and poking their noses into other people’s business their only pastime. At the end, talking about the quality of this piece of my writing, I know it is not literature at all. Yet one thing is undeniable: writing these words down helped me feel better after being haunted by some hateful words.

10 AMAZING FACTS ABOUT ANIMALS

1. Frogs cannot vomit. Whenever a frog absolutely has to vomit, it vomits its entire stomach. When the stomach is dangling out of its mouth, it uses its forearms to dig out all of the stomach’s contents and then swallows the stomach back down again.
2. Whale sharks are the biggest sharks on this planet and can reach a length of 40 feet. However, they are completely harmless. They eat plankton.
3. Octopuses have three hearts- two pump blood through each of the two gills, while the third pumps blood through the body.
4. Koalas sleep 22 hours a day. They will stay in the same tree for days.
   

   A Koala (scientific name: Phascolarctos cinereus)

5. A cheetah can reach a speed of 70 miles per hour. Compare this to the top speed of Usain Bolt for 100 metres sprint- he reached only 23.35 miles per hour!
6. Some species of lizards remove their tails when attacked by predators. After detaching its tail, the lizard runs off. The predator feasts on the tail and the lizard escapes to grow a new tail.
7. Bats are not actually blind, contrary to popular belief. They can see with their eyes. However, their sight is not of much use in flying in the dark night. They use their sonar systems to fly in the dark.
8. Dolphins sleep with half of their brain awake and one eye open.
9. Cat pee glows under black light (infra red radiation).
10. Siberian salamanders can freeze solid and still survive. They can endure temperatures as low as -45 degrees C.

Source: omg-facts.com

POLL: DO YOU SUPPORT WHALING?

The practice of whaling dates back as far as 3000 B.C. In the year 1986, the International Whaling Commission (IWC) banned whaling for the sake of conservation of whale species.  However, whaling could not be stopped- whale meat is still a popular dish in some countries, and nations like Japan, Norway and Iceland continue commercial whaling. Indigenous people in some countries still hunt whales for their meat as it remains a part of their culture. Whaling thus has become a topic for international controversy over the years.  Anti-whaling nations and environmentalist groups voice their concern over the possible extinction of some whale species if whaling continues. They argue that whales are already under threat by global warming, pollution and ship-strikes; so deliberate killings would put these creatures under serious risk. On the other hand, the pro-whaling countries argue that many of the stocks of whales have recovered significantly since the time when the ban was put in place and that they are no longer are endangered as they were in the past.

So we have two opposing groups one of which considers killing of whales inhuman and a threat to the whale species while the other group does not want to abandon one of their favourite dishes. Of course, whaling is a billion-dollar business which some nations would not want to give up very easily. So is it justified to kill whales just in the same way as catching various species of sea fishes is legal? Or is it that whaling poses too much of a threat to some of the most important and wonderful species of this planet? What do you think? Cast your vote and let us see what proportion of the readers of this blog support whaling.

A PAGE FROM MY DIARY

(The following piece of writing is one that I wrote on 1st Jan, 2009)

As the first rays of sunlight of the first morning of the Gregorian calendar enters my room through the window, my mind reflects back to the memories of the years that I have left behind. Moments of happiness and sadness, success and failure, hope and disappointment, love and hate- all seem to float in front of my eyes like hundreds of bubbles in the air. A soft breeze blows the bubbles away and I gaze forward to see the path that lies ahead of me- the path that I must thread to continue my journey, the journey that will continue till the moment my last breath escapes my lips. Yet I have no idea where the journey will lead me to; the path, filled with abrupt turns, steep slopes, forked roads, obstacles and hindrances, is not an easy one. Yet hope leads me forward…

Living in this world is like trying to swim upstream against a current so strong that it takes your breath away and at one moment or the other, makes you think to give up hope and let the current carry you away. However, only the cowards give up the struggle while the brave carry on their way to their destination. Yet even the bravest and the strongest may be caught by a sharp rock jutting beneath the surface of the water and be defeated. It is because fate drives our lives. Yet it is said that ‘fate favours the brave’. So I am hopeful and pray to Allah, the One Who has created us all and the whole universe, to grant me success. Hope leads me on…

As I sit in my room, writing, I am reminded of a few lines mentioned in one of my favourite story books:

“The Road goes ever on and on

Down from the door where it began

Now far ahead the Road has gone,

And I must follow, if I can,

Pursuing it with weary feet,

Until it joins some larger way,

Where many paths and errands meet.

And whither then? I cannot say.”

ON A BORING VACATION

I have been looking forward to the vacation but when it did come, it turned out to be a dull and boring one. I have been stuck at home with absolutely nothing to do. I have indulged myself in reading story books as I did not have even the slightest intention to open my academic books before college reopens- I had spent enough time with those books over the last month or so and I will be spending most of my time with them once the vacation is over. So reading story books, watching TV, checking the newspaper for some interesting piece of news, browsing the web until I yawned of boredom and sleeping for long hours like a hibernating bear were all I have been doing these days.

Perhaps I should have written a few posts for this blog of mine but my bored brain was of no use. I tried to think of something to write about but nothing came. The brain cells probably have gone into some sort of resting period when they sensed a sudden drop in activity after the intense studying period during the exams. I just hope those damned cells will wake up in the next few days cause college is opening again and there will be a lot to study. A lot….