#11ElevenLive

Today is the 11th day, of the 11th month, of the year 2011. Little did I know of how this day was being celebrated all around the world, with various events being held on the very same day - all in their own ways and forms - until I was pleasantly surprised to hear of the 11Eleven Project via a TED member, Danielle Lauren. I was elated to be a part of her global venture, thus, I set out with my dad to a mosque near our house where he would pray, and I would take some pictures from the car.

The car clock tells the time, as we set out.

 

                              

   

                          

Friday, is considered a Holy day for Muslims all around the world...

It is a day when Muslim men can be seen visiting their local mosque in hoards; Muslims of different cultures, all rushing out to their friendly neighbourhood mosque to bow down in prostration to their One Lord, early in the afternoon. 

Little kids in their daddy's arms, or holding each others hands...

People who sit on a chair whilst praying, often bring their own...

Old people who walk to the mosque with the help of a cane...

People in their thawbs, their shimagh/keffiyah, their jeans and shirts, their kurta shalwars/pajamas, their lungis, their variations of topis...

All myriads of steps being walked towards the same call to prayer, to bow down together, shoulder to shoulder in prayer...

The end of their ritual brings them back, out of the mosque, off to attend to their worldly needs again. Some start right at the mosque's doorstep with the buying of vegetables, perhaps for their late lunch or early supper...

Vegetable vendors looking for customers, whilst men meet and greet in the background.

What I found most interesting was how I seemed to remember specific people on their way out, from what I had taken in of them when they were walking towards the mosque; the man whose hair could be used in a shampoo commercial, the man with a bling bling dollar sign on his topi, the man with three kids all of the same size, the man with a cane, the man with a chair, the man who ran in, the man who had waved salaam to another, the man in a lungi, the shiny bald guy with the designeresque sunglasses... you get the drift? Sadly, I couldn't get a picture of all those whom I speak of. Nevertheless, I was intrigued at how the mind chooses to hold on to specific things, whilst entirely forgetting the rest. 


And while I silently mused over this thought, we got back home...

It was time for me myself to pray, and before I got around to it, I took some more pictures of my youngest sibling while she performed her Wudu...

And then stood up to pray in the privacy of her room...

The women in our house, in Saudi Arabia, mostly stay at home to pray by themselves - albeit this is not a norm, simply a matter of preference.

I decided to take pictures of how the Holy day of the week is spent in the life of an Indian Muslim in Riyadh - Saudi Arabia, as luckily Friday happened to fall on 11/11/11!

The Maria Tag Report - albeit 9 months too late O_O

Once upon a ''tag'' ago, I had thought about what I would write. Although what transpired was simply a calendar marathon; almost a year since has been tucked in to sleep. Amidst random musings this body was re-awoken to give it a fresh shot, this time, in a more wordy fashion and not just virtual scrawls inside the head. Therefore, without much further ado - Tagged post - On your marks - Get set - GO!

1. Make up and Heels are over-rated. Asides from the Hindustani Nari (2nd meaning on link) must have  kajal - I could do with out all else.

2. I prefer the company of men, in comparison to ''most'' women. Female giggles and shrilly banter makes me try out new techniques in my head, devicing painful murder ideas.

3. I find people who use 'cute', 'amazing' and 'awesome' for most of their descriptions of things, aggravating! We all at some point DID get out of high school, right? So why not - the Im so cool pet lingo too? =S

4. I don't think women need to dress slutty, in order to state their femininity. All their noise over it being for themselves, to me is ***wash! After all, men aren't expected to expose ''their package'' in order to look good for themselves, are they?

5. I don't think all babies are cute --- Based on many true stories.

6. I think loud voices should be outlawed - especially the argumentative sorts. Shrilly voices should be used as punishment against the perpetrators.

7. Prudes are people in denial. Deep down they love it. Yes, I said it.

8. Sometimes I think I need anger management.

9. I often think about running away from home and getting amnesia; in that order.

10. I'd like to speak my mind to some people, but because I don't, it has led to #8.


I wonder if the above were tag worthy. Nevertheless, that would be all for now folks... as the cliche goes, different strokes for different folks!

~Peace out!

Facebook Users

*Picture credits, all individually go to those who made them. I only accumulated them from the web and put them in a collage.
     
*Disclaimer: This is not meant to ridicule Facebook itself, rather just some of it's ''users'' **cough*abusers*cough**

Facebook-ers as I've seen them. Some I love to bits, regardless of their idiosyncrasies. Some... I'd rather not say what I really want to about them. Politeness wins. Nevertheless, my take on them all below:


1) The general social people who are there to keep in touch, the normal acceptable way.

2) The bored social people whose boredom has driven them to stalker standards, nevertheless managing to maintain general harmless behaviour.

3) The busy social people who are closet stalkers and blatant gossipers.

4) The bored unsocial people who are closet stalkers, silent envy-ers, God knows Best whether they are thus harmless or not.

5) The absolutely pretentious jobless narrow minded psuedo-well-meaning advice monger-ers; they read your words off wall posts, statuses, photo albums, comments to others and triple jump to their own conclusions and judgements, dragging in with them a barrage of blind followers.

6) The brain-numbed to the social scene gamers.

7) The finger-happy mindless 'like-ers'.

8) The attention-craving, at the speed of light status changers, who should be elsewhere twittering with their own kinds.

9) The absolutely confused newbies and equally confused old-bies who comment randomly on off-the-subject discuss worthy threads/statuses/pictures/posts.

10) The super cautious mind bogglingly terrified of where my information may go from here no picture false information empty profile thread bare friend list kind of users.

11) The perv kings and queens who want to jiggy with it via inbox... ''dear pls frand me you are beautiful my number is 14M57U91D [if you're visual you can read that as it was meant to be said] 0= )

12) The random friend request senders because you have mutual friends. Yes, we said Hi to each other once. Err... really? No, I knew your mom... Err... okay, so? Yes I saw you at the mall... Err... creep alert!

13) The genuine event, but random organisers who invite you to an event knowing you live across the globe and the event is today or tomorrow.

14) The god awful group inbox reply-ers who cannot see the difference between the ''reply to all'' and ''reply'' under the senders name buttons O_O

15) The picture stalkers who like your picture before you are done editing the caption on it after posting.

16) The friend list stalkers who soon after making friends eat your friend list with their eyes to instant friend request someone from your list to increase their number of **cough*friends*cough**. These are pretty similar to # 12 above.

17) The I know you well enough to make personal comments, ignorants. This lot should ASAP be deleted from your list. Those who are too polite to do so must suffer the consequences O_O

18) The one's who can't type lYk aDuLts or who hv 2 spk in wys tht r sre 2 bst a vA9 in ur i. This is not your mobile phone that charges you for every letter, nor are we in a hurry to communicate letters per second. Please type in full, else I won't read it. Thanks O_O

19) The ''lolz'' droppers at the end of a serious comment/compliment. It's like they're actually saying, '' ha ha ha in your face, FOO!'' =S

20) The one's who love to tag you in every ugly god forsaken picture.

21) The one's who read anything and everything you say, and think it's about them...

... 
... 

... So, which one are you?  0= )

What Men Want

[ Blogadda contest entry for - What men want . Perhaps where my thoughts come from may not be clear to the reader. Perhaps the song at the end of my post would elaborate in some way. Perhaps... ]

Tiny little boxes; the last place, I would dare trying to fit a man into. As far as my experience goes, men don't like hearing others speak from a boom box, explaining what it is that THEY want. After all, men want what they want, and all men -just like women- are different. We can joke about it from this perspective, or steam about it from another, but no two ideas - or more- can ever do justice to the elusive question of ''what men want'', just as none can carve into stone what women do.

She asked her father, ''Daddy, what will I be?''
Daddy said, ''Princess, whatever you wish, you'll see!''

She said to her father, ''Daddy, please don't, it hurts and I'm scared!''
Daddy said, ''Shut up! Or I'll have you do more!''

The above situations (and let's call the last one -insinuation-); both realities, but with an array of spectrums in between. While one man wanted nothing but happiness in the life of his daughter, the other abused it for his selfish needs and reasons.

What a man wants, could be just as giving or selfish as what a woman wants. At the end of the day, it all boils down to the personalities of both; whether they come from a moralistic high ground, or a morally devoid one. I could list pages of things, but that would still fall short in the case of one man, or the other, and yet another, followed by some more. One tag simply does not fit all, is all I have to say.

I could say, 'what a man wants' is to...

- be a man
- be a son
- be a successful human being
- be an inspiration
- be a good friend
- be a brother, a husband, a father
- be a leader, a provider, a caretaker
- be taken care of yet be strong
- be sensitive yet be solid
- be the rock for those in his life, no matter of what essence, role or gender

- be THE MAN of all men.

I could say one thing, then I could say a hundred more, and I'd still have not gotten it right. For, there really isn't one little box in which all the men out there can be placed into, what with their varied wants and history's that stand witness to where they come from, making their actions their talisman.

 Patrick Wolf : Overture

* Official website

What Men Want results announced [It's quite humbling that this post got mentioned by the Judge]

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We Write...

I write. I began writing to get the pain out of me when it began to hurt too much. The writing helped. The angst finds a release thus calming down an inner restlessness that plagues my psyche in that moment. Reading the aftermath of my intensity poured out into the form of letters, spaces, punctuation rules, and their kind has helped me to varying degrees. This has been my therapy, a cathartic effect encases my being irrespective of whether anyone else stops by to see what has taken form or not. I pen it down [or as it'd be more apt to say these days - type it down] and save it somewhere in the memory bank of the web world. I call them, my words that is, my voice as it, that is my voice seldom actually gets to speak. Is it for the lack of vocal chords? Heck, no! It has rarely ever found any company to speak with/in. Sharing that encapsulates within it a conversation, has been something that my reality has mostly been in desperate shortage of. It found its audience, temporary and transient albeit, in a virtual world for some moments of time. The confusion that my words sometimes rouse in the minds of others, has not been discouraging for not everyone is meant to understand the havoc inside my being nor are everyone so important to me. When my voice does strike a chord with someone, my heart finds a tiny amount of solace in knowing that someone out there exists, who is capable of understanding what I feel, but then on a simultaneous plain it feels a pain for that soul too, because if it understands me then it perhaps has lived a pain of its own to draw in on to be able to empathise. I realise that my voice is often sad, sometimes in pain, at other times sordidly lonely, or simply a mix of all these commonly coined as -negative- emotions. But my voice does, in its own little way on rare moments, manage to embrace happy moments and recognise blessings around it (Alhumdulillah). With time passing and years to validate ongoing experiences, this voice of mine has found a person within it, who is relatively new in comparison to whom it was otherwise familiar with in the past; someone far more confident and sure of herself. I therefore began to find peace in my being. Then, smack out of the blue, I discovered a familiar strain in the voice of my baby sister who had also begun writing. Something behind the words that I read reminded me of pains that I had managed to put to sleep in my own world of today. Their reminder began to come alive in her voice, opening up a whole new chest of worry inside me wishing to tap into the soul of this new voice that was dribbling away all kinds of emotions wrapped up in rhythmic mysteries. I was emphatically tempted to try and dip deeper into her being, in hopes of being able to find out what it was that was feeding fodder to her verses. Alas, I became a reader who had to start interpreting the words of a baby sister who has begun to spin her own little tales of pain [or confusing happiness perchance?]. I could only hope her pain was not too lasting, and that she would be equipped with enough strengths from her life to surge through her battles unscathed. Knowing all that I do from my life's lessons up to now, I would be deluding myself if I actually believed that she would have no resulting scars, but my faint heart [as it often becomes when it comes to matters pertaining my baby sisters] would like to think she is untouched and safe. Truth be told, an even younger voice has begun straining itself into verses of mystery. In earlier days I used to think it was just because it wanted to be like the older voices, but sneak peaks into her little world show signs of new stories being etched. I can only hope these voices that I hold so dear to my being will not be steered by pain or loss, rather be beautiful and strong pieces, free of burdens heavily borne. I find something painfully sweet for now in knowing that my sister is a poet, who has another sister traipsing not too far along behind her. They're nothing alike... Yet something binds all our voices together in a surreal mystical world of words, rhymes and history; where voices linger in space, waiting to find home in the souls of others like them.

Coercion?

The beauty of words is lost in a silent battle of sorts, between who gets to wear the crown today. It is all well and good to keep our ideas and expressions rolling, inspired by an endless pool of inborn talent that exists around us, instantly available at the tip of our fingers. But it is when -Tom, Dick and Harry- make a run for an invisible line that marks their win, going all a gong in the race to cross the line first, come what may; this sometimes not just gets ugly - it also makes the avid lovers of the world of intricate words, find a distaste in the meanderings which all and sundry have gotten about to, in general. I kind of feel lost in some crowds, where in there are simply far too many Jacks of all Trades and sadly Masters of none. Perhaps this opinion is a bit too harsh? Lets just say very few Masters have surfaced amidst this foam that is apparent, cast from the implicit waves that crash out onto the certified shores, parched and rabid like in their novial rush to stand out - by hook or by crook; all else be damned! The stigma of I'll scratch your back only if you'll scratch mine, is killing the veracity of the language in use - where in there is no citation anymore of what it is that used to make for an authentic, and a unique good reading experience. Anything goes and everyone has become a prolific master of the pen keyboard/pad; dare you even suggest think otherwise! All this makes one who enjoy(ed)s such literary pleasures, quietly remove them self from this madding crowd of sorts, and go off in search of a pasture that feels more like home; where in one wouldn't have to recoil and shiver while witnessing unabashed sacrilege of a beautiful language. In my humble opinion, coercion in such matters just does not do; not for me atleast!

To each his own and thus, in a temporary silence of sorts, one must recede.