The Word of mAn[S]o0r

Kinda late for it, but i’ll take my shot.

Overall, 2008 was a year of contradictions! miserable failure in some sphere’s of life…. sparkling successes in others..

started off magically, even in the midst of the bhutto incident. Above all, it started with smiles, with gestures and with promises… the very first second that the clock struck 12, i was so sure i was on the right track.

then came the convocation… and it started derailing…you know that feeling where you put in everything you’ve got and in the end lose by a just a hair’s breath? well… i got that finally. while for others it was a brilliant accomplishment, for me, it was no more than a miserable failure.. it was a fathers dream broken.

who would’ve guessed that it would lead to even more broken dreams.

i admit it now, took me 10 long months to come to terms with it, that i didn’t take the convocation day well. it showed. my relationships soured, my outlook on life dropped and above all, my self-worth, atleast the perception of it, crashed and burned.

in april, things turned fell further down the drain. the only piece of rope i had to drag myself out of the whirlpool, got strung around my neck. what i later realized as a series of misguided actions culminated into the seperation of bonds i didn’t think could have been severed. taught in chemistry by a certain bearded professor back in school, i didn’t remember that every bond has it’s limits and given enough force, all bonds seperate.

what’s worse was that they severed so cleanly… it was surgical precision almost… quick, sharp and clean… done to maybe separate the patient and the disease… only the patient didn’t really survive.

the remaining months just kind of flew by. yes, i breathed… i consumed and i excreted. and that kind of defined my existence. everything else was questionable. how do you proceed when the very foundation beneath you crumbles.

for the first time in my life, i became afraid.. seriously afraid.. of what might lie ahead. trying to condemn myself of a reality far worse than i could even imagine, thinking that maybe it was destined to be that way. afterall, looking back, it wasn’t just one.. it was a string of rejections… day after day, week after week, month after month… all i could do was question… analyze… piece together… till it all became hazy and i started all over again.

it was a different story on the home front though, even on the work front. that’s where successes lay. i grew new bonds with the parents… even after having dissapointed them on two fronts simultaneously, they stood steadfastly as supports… i was happy just being with them, because i was safe. they still accepted me, and even though i know parents stand by their children, i never imagined i would be lucky enough to get it. truly blessed i am by Gods mercy. bonds with extended family were renewed, a quick trip of the cousins and long mountain trails and visits to churches, gurdwara’s and temples made for an exciting july.

on the work front, my new assignment began in march. a new office, a new city, a new job description and above all, a new challenge. it was fun, testing unknown waters… never having actually been in a management position, i was thrust here by my boss who asked me to establish and run our islamabad office. the business side of things really sang through to me and after a long time, going to work became fun again. with business trips all through the year, i got in quite a bit of travelling, even had the completed the milestone of having breakfast, lunch and dinner of the same day in three different cities (khi, isb n lhr respectively) as well as getting challaned in these three within a week for traffic violations! fun!!!

with the prayers of my mother, one of the two most amazing people on this planet (the other being my father) and a team of two really great people at work, we pushed through barriers and boundaries, creating both a name for ourselves, and a place here in our own right. we’ve still a long way to go, but i know it will only get better. inshallah!

so 2008 was a year of contradictions… with all the crisis’s looming up ahead in the financial, real estate and security fronts.. 2009 promises to be a year of challenges.

one thing i will say though.. there are always some people who make live worth living again.. strangers at first they slowly grow on you till you realize… how the hell did i think life was gonna be that depressing! thanks jee… even though i haven’t told you in person… i owe you more than you would ever know.

No Comments »

Kind of defines how its going at the moment…

Happy new year…

3 Comments »

In the end it all comes to just one thing, you and me….

Came across this video on youtube recently, and it’s resonating a lot with me. Over the last couple of years, i’ve managed to alienate quite a few people from my life. Better or worse, my only excuse… i’m not perfect, just human.

Yes i’m human!!!! i get angry and i throw fits and i say things which i don’t mean… sometimes it gets really bad, but that’s also part of who i am?! why can’t they accept me in that too? Accepting the loving, caring and devoted side of me isn’t a problem? then why not the complete me?

Someone recently asked me whether i was an easy person to live with.

My answer.. no, i’m not.The thing is, even though i very simple demands from my partner, they’re not that easy to fulfill. All i ever wanted was someone who’d accept me for all that i am, make me want to be a better person because of them, who would accept the fact that i respect my parents above all else and share that respect.

I’ve got my good days, and i’ve got my bad days, but does mean i’m not fit to be with? Does that mean you leave and never look back?

I hate what i’ve become… What’s worse is, i still believe in us.

10 Comments »

There are people like this within our ranks too mashallah. Thank god some people allow the rest of us to have hope. 

http://consumerist.com/5092636/worlds-most-conscientious-customer-completes-botched-software-purchase-over-a-year-later

“Because of an error in a software vendors website-script, people could download the software before paying. One pakistani customer’s payment could not be processed, so when he came to the United States more then a year later, he send a check instead.” (Click the link to read the complete story)

4 Comments »

how right is it to let someone know the truth? especially if they’re going to be hurt by it?

on every TV show i see now, there’s someone saying the line “i think you should know…” and proceeds to tell them something which changes things around them. whether it be a girls best male friend telling her he loves her right before her wedding wows, or someone you invited to the dance telling you they lied to you, it’s all done on the pretense that the truth should be known. 

i’ve grown up with the motto of keep things to yourself if you believe them to be detrimental to someone else, especially if they have to concern feelings. however, today i’m in a dilemma.

so i ask anyone whose reading this…

“is it wise to tell someone the truth that would, at best, ruin their day, and at worst permanently alter their state of mind, especially when they haven’t asked for it?”  

11 Comments »

over the last couple of months, i’ve spent considerable time soul searching. living in islamabad does have it’s benefits, cheif among them being the time i can spend with myself. i’m thinking of recording the results of this search here, in the hopes that maybe someday, they might bring me more clarity. 

this post deals with the topic of duality. one of the things which has helped me considerably during my professional and personal life is the ability to keep both sides of an argument in my mind. what i took as a natural ability and something common to humanity, i’ve discovered that it really isn’t. 

what most people that i’ve run across do, is to generate a point of view and then perpetuate that point of view during the course of their lives. this view can be as simple as a food choice or as complex as state of the national economy. ofcourse, these views are built up on the basis of bias and experiences the person in question has gone through since their childhood. this is the reason, especially in our part of the world, that many people get into heated debates over seemingly nothing, because it is their worldview which is challenged when another view is presented. 

how did i steer clear of it? well, for the most part, it has to do with my grandmothers. yes, the virtues of having grandparents who are still alive and well (mashallah) are many and they’ve taught me a great many things from their life experiences, what i call pearls of wisdom. we often downplay the stories our grandparents tell us for idle chitchat or their need for reliving memories, but these memories are truly priceless to the right mind. 

anyway, back to my grandmothers. while growing up, i was at one point in time, intrigued with my name. what did it mean, what was the origin and so forth. the name ‘mansoor’ fortunately doesn’t really have a single well established meaning and in my formative years, that was a great source of confusion! afterall, in the mind of a child wrestling with making sense of the world around him, how could this crucial detail be so confusing when everything else was absolute? afterall, i eat because i’m hungry, i sleep because i’m tired and i talk because i want to say something. back then, everything was clear, simple and straightforward. the elders had the answers and they were, largely, the same answers. but my name, that was another story altogether. 

so what does my name actually mean? while i had many connoctions suggested to me, according to one grandmother, my name meant the ‘bringer of happiness’ and according to the other, it was ‘bringer of pain’. you see, they were basing it off the literal meaning of the word ’soor’ which meant pain and happiness in two different languages. other variants were ’success’ and ‘the one who gives peace of heart’ etc. 

as you might imagine, i struggled for quite a few years to understand how or why could something as simple as my name have two so opposite meanings! and to top it all off, which meaning should i be selecting? somewhere along the line, however, i accepted both! 

in terms of logic diagramming, i was posed with the dilemma of the ‘exclusive or’ where it can be one choice or the other, but not both. my solution was rejecting the ‘exclusive or’ and making it of  ’and’ logic, where it would have to be both, or none at all. so now, my name means, atleast to me, the bringer of both pain and happiness, complete opposites yet as one. 

how did this happen, and who taught me this, i dont recall, someday maybe i will, but whoever gave me this ability has bestowed upon me the greatest gift of all. from something as simple as knowing the meaning of my  name, i’ve applied this concept to a myriad of other problems over the course of my short life. being able accept many sides of a given situation, from the simple choice of good and bad to the more complex shades of grey in between, i value myself as being free of bias and being able to look at things in a more objective, non personal way. even though i still get into heated debates defending a point of view with various people, the ability allows me to be able to get into heated debates on both sides simultaneously! 

and yes, the fact that i can think in duality might also be just my point of view, and may not be really true. many have argued with me that i just take the opposite side to whatever argument is presented to me, and that i take the negativity as duality, which leads me to think that their argument is also true, which means i’m able to think in duality in the first place! 

yes, life as me is so much fun. that’s it for soul searching for this time.. if you’re thoroughly confused by this post, dont worry. it’s not supposed to make sense in the first place. 

4 Comments »

lately, it seem’s like i’ve been addicted to panadol’s. yes, those sweet little round tablets in the blue packing (no, not the red ones). for one thing, taken at night, they help me sleep a lot better and i wake up refreshed. 

before you negate this fact, let me clue you in. i’m one of those blessed(?) individuals who have lucid dreams. for the uninitiated, lucid dreamining is where your conscious doesn’t really go to sleep when you do but instead, keeps on thinking the world created by the subconcious is actually the real one. thereby keeping itself alert and active all night long. the result is i wake up more tired than when i goto sleep as my body doesn’t have the time to recuperate. 

a lot of people try and induce this state at night…. i get it naturally. suffice it to say, my dreams are much, much, much more real than those people normally have. 

so yea, back to the panadols. in the last week of october, i had a lot of travelling. three cities in 10 days to be precise. the reason? training seminar’s i had to deliver on behalf of my company. as with any pre-training day, i dont take any risks as far as my apetite or general well being is concerned (obviously, it’s doesn’t reflect good on me that the trainer people paid upwards of 7k a day to learn from can’t even keep his eyes open). so i started taking panadol’s before going to bed. 

before i knew it, i was hooked! now i keep a ‘patta’ of panadol in my office, at home and in my bag at all times. (i did think about keeping one in the car, but it gets so hot during the day that it would be all but useless… still thinking of a way for that though)

which brings me to the second topic of this post.. the harkat mein barkat! it’s a line i keep hearing from my elders and others who have been wisened by age and experience. even though the english variant of ‘a rolling stone gathers no moss’ rears its ugly head from time to time, i haven’t had much evidence on that front to make a judgement. 

my ‘harkats’ are happening on many levels, (though physically moving my ass around is still a big challenge mind you) the least of which is the training tour i wrote about above. the number of pre-sales meetings we do here have increased as well thanks to new strategies and targets imposed as well as the general ‘driving around’. but the harkat most i’m apprehensive about is one of the milestone harkats in life, the shaadi. 

i tried, i failed and i relegated control. now, i’m back and making more efforts. 

afterall, if you do get up after failing, that doesn’t really count as a failure does it?

here’s hoping the harkat’s bring some much needed barkat! amen!

7 Comments »

taking risks while trying out something new used to be no stranger to me.

lately, i’ve discovered i’ve gone over to the dark side :S

each ’something new’ is bringing more and more dread to try out…. am i finally growing up?

7 Comments »

the people must prepare by forgetting, wrote cyril in his op-ed column. 

very well put cyril! very well put!

in the last couple of years, while blogging on metblogs and other places, i was an avid supporter of the musharraf government. while i’ve been put down again and again for my support of a ‘dictator’ and that since i’m a direct beneficiary of the military (son of a military officer) my thoughts and convictionsare somehow useless. i’ve weathered through all of them, choosing my battles and answering with facts. 

till the day musharraf stepped down.

since then, i’ve been quiet about mostly everything. and why is that? i’ll tell you. 

the first thing was that however much i believed in the person musharraf, i believed more in the institution he represented. much has been written against him, from calling him a spineless order taker to a evil mastermind hell bent on ruining pakistan, yet my belief in what him and his team was unshaken. 

musharraf was an institution, with think tanks and council’s guiding every move within the country. and these thinktanks were filled with bright and skilled people. that is what i believed in. 

i kept hearing from many sources, that musharraf can’t make a decision on his own and relies on his thinktanks for everything and kept thinking, isn’t that the best form of government? isn’t that what leadership is about? we had a democratic rule guised under dictatorship.

when i did voice these opinions, the first argument i got was, the thinktanks were not ‘elected’. is it really that bad when elected people come to office more on their personalities or their heritage than their capabilites or will of the people? atleast the people in the thinktanks and other council’s are there because they have something to offer! 

alas, those who could not get their share of the loot would not settle for it. it took 8 years, but they finally got their hands on the loot again. only this time, it was many times that of 1998.

musharraf’s institution got a couple of things right. they kept the dollar exchange rate at around 60 for over five years! they largely illiminated low level corruption from quite a few places in the country and kept bringing in huge dollops of international money into the country (from oversea’s pakistanis, investors and aid) all of which fuelled an economy shattered by a certain duo in the 70’s. under them, karachi was growing as was lahore and even islamabad came a long way! other cities were slow but getting there. multi-million dollar projects were being signed everywhere and the infrastructure (roads, telecom etc) which was not available to the masses to build their lives on slowly came into shape. what’s more, they contained a war within a relatively small geographical area of the country which really didn’t affect much of the rest. 

they also got things wrong, like privitization at ridiculously low returns, the mqm & the CJ fiasco and alleged corruption at high levels. 

no, they weren’t “clean and pristine” but they were a hell of a lot better than where we are today… 

maybe it’s just me, but i just want to live a safe and prosperous life! is that too much to ask?

4 Comments »

What is it with people’s obsession with perfection!?!!! 

Coming from a bit of a perfectionist (me!) that might sound hypocritical, but hear me out. We all want it, we all aspire to it, and we indulge so much in the pursuit of it that it leaves us burnt out and often, heartbroken! The question at the end, however, is… “Do we ever achieve it?” 

When was the last time something ‘perfect’ happened!? There will always be something left over, something you didn’t think of, or something which screwed itself up. That one thing, which makes you regret not having thought of earlier, because it ruined your hard work, or that one thing someone else who see’s ur “perfect” work picks up on. 

After a long struggle with myself, i’m surrendering to the notion of “less than perfect” (not the show, ofcourse!) or “good enough”. Life’s too short to spend running after that perfection! Oh, and for those who say, the end justifies the means, those who think that the perfect result will be reward enough, stop deluding yourselves! It’s not! the world will not wait around while you finish you masterpiece, it will have moved on and left you in the ditch.

Best of luck with finding your “good enough”… it may not be the best, but it’s damn better than the heartache of finding that!

6 Comments »