Requiem








('Requiem' by Mozart, better to listen to the longer version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zi8vJ_lMxQI and it helps to read with the music on)


Like most people who enjoy spending their time loitering at cafes; these two were no exemption. The best friends used to live in the same neighborhood when they were little. Maybe it was fated but the circumstances that led them close to one-another was poverty. The two friends were from a poor family living in a middle class neighborhood. They connected immediately and realized they needed each other and acknowledged the importance of having someone that gets it. This led to a beautifully blossomed and sustaining kinship.

Though they don’t live as neighbors anymore the bond they shared acted as a living flame that tied them together and enabled them to trust one another. You don’t see this kind of Friendship too often these days; it is a rare quality.

They were sitting on a set of what appeared as old-fashioned wooden stools that came with a matching round table. Our first protagonist was named Scotter, Scotter was having a cup of hot plain tea and the other, Aslam who shouldn’t be drinking coffee was having his favorite sweet black coffee. They both resented milk in their drinks.



About an hour later of what was filled with updating each other with experiences and stories they deemed worth sharing, Aslam sat up and exclaimed as he remembered something he wanted to talk about.

He began, ‘You know, I have this interest towards listening to a certain type of music that sometimes conjures up emotions, right?’

‘You mean your penchant towards dark and miserable things?’ replied Scotter sarcastically.

‘Well whatever man, we all have our inclination towards certain things that others might deem as weird.’ Aslam continued, ‘here is what happened, it was early in the morning, and this morning I had to take my medications and I wasn’t working that day thus I took things easy and I noticed that I wasn’t stressed out on having to go anywhere or rushing for anything; It was a good feeling, I have to say.’ Aslam nodded to himself as he said that.

‘Well good for you then, what are you trying to say?’ Scotter asked losing patience. ‘Relax man, just listen to me will you?’ Said Aslam.

Scotter looked at his now empty cup and asked the waiter for another hot cup of tea, ‘with lime this time’, he told the waiter. Aslam too asked for another cup of coffee.

‘To be honest, your stories have always been a little weird and gloomy man, don’t you think of anything normal?’ Asked Scotter again with a sarcastic tone in his voice.

‘Haha! I don’t know, I wish! But you know how circumstances tend to make people think and have a different outlook on certain things? So will you stop with your cheap sarcastic remarks and just listen to me vent out? I just need to share this with someone and who better to share it with than you?’ Aslam explained to him.

‘I am privileged.’ Scotter replied carefully and nodded in silent. Aslam took the hint and continued, ‘I turned on the computer and was looking forward to watch a movie or you know anything I’ve downloaded. As I was browsing through the files, I realized that I saw almost everything I downloaded recently’. I then got restless and started moving the cursor to the available drives and started double clicking random folders.’

‘To my surprise, I came across one of the clips I used to listen to all the time and is still one of my favorite till today. So I played it on. It must’ve been the medication I took, because I started to feel dizzy and floating. I stood up from the chair I was sitting and lied down on the floor instead, I was now aware that I was staring blindly at the ceiling.’

‘Wait, this song it’s not the one entitled requiem? As Aslam nodded Scotter let out a sigh and said, ‘Here we go again, you are going to talk about the song you listened to, aren’t you? He said agitated but a little interested. Aslam’s story was always a little peculiar and never normal to the point of entertaining.

Ignoring what Scotter just said, Aslam continued with his story, ‘Anyway the medications affect were getting stronger by the second.’ He paused for a moment and continued again, ‘now that I think about it I might’ve taken extra doses than what was originally prescribed by the doctor; and the speakers started singing out this amazing music. I was lying down on the floor looking at the white ceiling and my ears felt as if it was attending a feast.’

‘I noticed whilst the tunes came out from the speakers and swiftly entered my ears and flowed into my brain. My eyes were closed now.’

I started feeling a deep sense of hunger and I was also feeling weak all over. I opened my eyes and I was now standing on a vast black platform and everything below was black. Around me everything was as white as the ceiling I was staring at. As the song progressed I felt more and more alone.

Due to the stimulation of the music to the brain, I corresponded with the tune vigorously. In a trance like state, I vividly saw myself standing alone with nothing to atone. I tore away my relations with the world. The pangs of miseries stroked me vehemently, before any admonishing it started diminishing every little confidence and self esteem.

I needed a light that illuminates the path. These petty escapisms, I can’t account for them anymore. The self-fulfillment they bring out, little by little dispersed into mundane familiarity. What had done the job before was not able to come close to satisfactory anymore. The self gets used to things too fast, momentary escapisms, temporary happiness all in vain, accumulated into waste and disgrace.

For a moment there I thought I stood stagnant and malignant but how I was wrong, I wasn’t standing still, instead I observed myself moving backwards. I see myself being decapitated, depreciated, degraded, getting smaller and smaller. The choir spat out a melody that touts, the touts consequently sprouts out shame and a lingering growth of unhealthy tumor deep-rooted with pain and agony.

They construe what they misconstrue; they adhere to what they don’t comprehend. Disparity, impunity they attack from all sides. The choir continues singing excitingly, bringing to ground fleeting memories and bounded miseries that I never knew still living within.

All sorts of heavy tragedies passed through the vivid theatrical version, the production of what appeared as depicted by the mind. They fastened their pace and elaborately haunting the mind with melodies of grace. It made my mind race while I was standing perfectly still. And in a daze I started witnessing many strange things.

I was hypnotized, standing upright but everything else moved swiftly around me. I had to lie down and so I passed out but the vision in my mind kept conjuring up pictures and tales. The sudden serene followed by the shocking outburst of iniquity, still evoking and awaking my seething memories.

The orchestra was an inch away from me, they continued putting words into my mind. They mocked and they laughed, they sympathized and showed compassion, they serenaded and instilled hatred.

Scotter by now had taken interest and was amused listening to his friend’s expressing some very twisted tales. He always knew his friend had a weird sense of story telling but this was overly dramatic. He even started to assume that Aslam was making things up or did he really overdose on his medication? He then for some reason decided to test his friend, Scotter interjected and blurted out, ‘Have you ever wondered how rice is composed of flesh, bone, hair etc? Isn’t it amazing how food can turn into flesh and bone?’

Aslam stared at him disapprovingly. They both stared at each other for a few seconds until Scotter sighed and said with a regrettable tone, ‘sorry, carry on’.

‘As the song went on towards the middle, the conundrums in my eardrums were almost unbearable, I witnessed earth quakes, mountains colliding against one another, volcanoes erupting, tornadoes, thunderstorm and it was snowing where it shouldn’t but still the people lived on uncaringly in oblivion.

I could feel the thirst within me drying me up from the inside. The next minute I was in a completely different place, this time everything was great. My thirst was quenched! I was lying on a rich green carpet at a splendid forest. The air was pure, the atmosphere a cure, the flowers bloomed and animals happily loomed. The children were hopping joyously, the adults all looked without stress and worry and appeared sincerely happy.

Soon I once again noticed a change of phase; the conductor began signaling other things. As swiftly as I was comforted, the next second I find myself gasping for air. I knew I was in a state of calamity. I was in a country in way and I saw the face of a worried mother carrying her child running around aimlessly with no sense of direction. A number of other mothers with their children too joined her and they ran around seeking shelter and protection. They came into a dark alley whilst their enemies waited gawking treacherously. The mothers’ eyes were filled fear and tremor, the enemies eyes were colored with deceit and an unaccountable amount of foolishness. The mothers fell into their trap and their journey ended protecting their child.

The melody changed and so did my vision. This time I was bounded and shackled by heavy wooden garments. My hands, feet and neck were chained and I was put to kneel in front of a mad shrieking crowd. Having always been too self-conscious, I was surprised that I didn’t care what the people thought. I hope I always saw it this way, but at that moment, they appeared as merely objects who were moved and pushed around.

A huge man with a charming face came out with an axe. He looked at me and let out a crooked smile. He didn’t waste any time, while the masses were getting rowdy. He lifted up the axe and said goodbye.

I was now in a different state; in a desert where nobody lives; my body was stretched out longer than I could ever imagine. Under the scorching sun and dried by the burning sand. My back was burned and the pain was unbearable. I witnessed then a sudden appearance of thousands of beings walking from a distance. They came out of nowhere and as they neared me, they deliberately walked on me and as they got to my chest stepped unto it bashed and kicked it. I could feel the stab from every step and they proceeded to my head and when they were there they left their crazy thoughts and ideas into my head. Some shouted, some whispered but everything they said were dimwitted.

I was now fast asleep, like a child sleeping. The lullaby carried on. There was a revelation; they were never anything bringing me down, not a single burden. The world is my heaven—I noticed then I dropped my guard and the world started spinning once again, bringing about realism into the reality. As it spun, everything affected me. I was affected by every single occurrence. That led me to believe in my existence of a weak, dependant human.

The song was coming to an end. All these while, while they were punishing me I finally noticed something worth mentioning, I wasn’t at their mercy, they were merely mercenaries, the one controlling them was moving his hands frantically into the empty air. This man too was a tool controlled by certain entities and they too were controlled by other parties and finally every man has to abide and is at the mercy of nature or the one that commands it and as long as you’re human one cannot devoid himself from abiding with the laws and rules of the universe and being human.’

Aslam rubbed his hand that it almost looked like he was clapping them. ‘Is that it?’ Scotter asked. I know you were making this up and you made me listen and I got interested, why didn’t you finish it off with a happier ending?’

‘I wasn’t making it up man’ Aslam replied and paused and thought for a bit. ‘Well, there’s no use fooling you, but I really did dream or hallucinate about most of them. He stopped again expecting a reply. When there was none from his friend, Aslam asked Scotter, ‘was it good? Did you like it?’ ‘I want to go home now and you are paying.’ As he got up Scotter added, ‘I like happy endings man!’ and walked out the café.



(Aslam and Scotter)


Detest the Test

I live amongst torn and throngs of disparity,

Torn into a thousand pieces,

Thrown into the depths of treacherous creatures,

Significance sees not insignificance,

Filled with troublesome questions;

With no apparent solutions,

Hopeful skin shreds in multitude,

Crumbles the insides and lest suffers,

The soul impoverished,

It’s light slowly vanishing,

Brandishing a flag of surrendering,

A crooked smile, a sign poor embodiment,

The right side now broken,

Confidence must be awaken,

A diseased soul now apparent,

In the face of the beholder,

His faults are shown,

Shun into solitude,

Shone did the sunlight,

With anger and torment,

Causing the self to bleed,

The self-reliant no longer self-reliance,

Awaiting and hoping,

Destiny in destitute,

Unfulfilled matrimony,

Distinguished guests look on warily,

The earths spin against me,

A parasite judged unfairly,

He looked into the skies,

Dropped to his knees and begged for compassion,

For answers,

Or what he was destined,

To shine or to go blind;

Enshrine his soul from dreams and fantasies,

The skies looked back at him,

Kept on staring and vanished in hindsight,

I walk amongst madness and tragedies,

Where the wronged is right,

And the right is wronged

But still I shan’t waver,

Since the skies has yet to answer,

I am not just any dreamer,

Soon fate will set free its secrets,

A simple man with humility,

Not great nor mighty,

But stands in truth and piety,

His destiny was his journey,

To unearth wisdom and the self within,

He bowed his head and then prostrated,

With sincerity and his friend purity.

Till then the servant,

Will act with patience and piety,

Hopeful to walk the path to intelligence.

The Dreamer

Like the moon her presence always shines upon him,

So clear and enchanting,

But as he reached out to seize the moon,

She was further than he wished her to be,

She distanced herself and eyed him coldly,

He wasn’t as privileged as she wanted him to be.


From far away your light illumines,

Pure and undeterred,

She glows unbiasedly,

He stood there awaiting, unfaltering,

For a tiny hint, a teeny gesture;

He was hoping to attain,

A pure accompaniment,

A hand of warmth and compassion,

A being that stays together for better or worse.


Her appeal and kindness,

Appeared in torrents,

Overwhelming with strong emotions

A sensation of delight and bliss,

Overcame his whole being,

He closed his eyes and took in the ecstasy.


For the romantic dreams,

Of closeness and thoughtfulness,

Heart longing and addressing,

Writing letters that goes unnoticed,

He kept on daydreaming,

For the maiden to notice.


But her kindness only exist in his imaginings,

The angels appeared pure and untainted only in dreams,

For only in his thoughts she was alive and smiling.

Reality was nothing-alike dreams,

Still he continued to daydream,

He found acceptance and happiness,

For as long as he dreamt.

Sunny Side Up!

In the near, almost immediate future.. Man in their inclination towards going against nature ironically, maybe even expectedly ceased to be ‘manlike’. Whether it was a curse, a gift or merely the fated journey of man and his kind. This being called man continues with life into a journey full of expectations and hope albeit without the slightest power and control over his fate and the dream he wishes to grasp.

You might go so far as thinking of God, you are not wrong but we are here still talking about fate and soul being controlled by other people who scripted and ascribed how certain things should appear like—things that might determine happiness and sadness, success and failure; accordingly these corrupt pioneers then conveniently establish commandments a manifesto of what is right and wrong as depicted by them, these self proclaimed elevated humans. Of course it was inevitable but it doesn’t mean abiding to these pompous, self-righteous man made rules.

Well it now comes back to individual perception. The individual perception; what a bothersome nuisance some might perceive; Especially when most individuals’ intellectual quality are the same as or probably worse than farm animals. Sorry about that the introduction went awry due to my inability to hide my affection towards mere mortals.

Back to the topic we were discussing, let us all try to portray a picture in our mind. Imagine a man leaving for work in his slick executive attire in the morning driving his executive car, he then dwells with people similar to him both physically and mentally in a lavish concrete building, a similitude to success and the stability that paid off after the years they put in to reach such a state. They then adapt pretty well with things like pollutions/traffic jams and the need to party everyday after work as a way of release, of self-fulfillment and escapism and then come back home at the wee hours of the night.

Knowing that we mentioned about individual perception, some almost instinct-ly would go, ‘Oh what a glorious/successful lifestyle!’ Or some might see it as an occupational hazard where one has to sacrifice himself in order to let’s just say buy more lavish items one doesn’t necessarily needs but for the exception to adhere to one’s superficial desire to act as an encouragement to continue with their current ‘meaningful’ life. Some might also see that as, well as we see it: A façade, a beautiful, astonishing painting lying in the center of a mountain of stinking waste. In other words a pretense that is so deep of a pretense that the individual fail to see his own sense of pretenses.

On another note, we aren’t merely talking about careers. We here are questioning the whole works, the system, the way of life, the education system, the syllabuses, the self and everything else that perpetuates and makes on realize of the thing we weren’t aware of before.

Man as computers, as robots. Are man robots? We certainly know that men are able to live life like machines. What is a man’s goal in life? What is the reason of a man put into life in this currently sad not much to say world? What is man? What is life and what is the ideal life for man? We did mention self-perception as you can see again and again. Could that be the answer?

How is working 5 days a week like a robot—going to work at the dawn of light and coming back when the darkness of night has overwhelmed the whole atmosphere; exhausted and drained from the same unproductive routine and instantly falling off like a heavy sack of nothingness into one’s bed and having 2 days they call weekends for yourself and your family to somewhat keep you functioning and going with the cycle called life?

Who was the person responsible for the creation of weekends and weekdays? What an evil cycle of manipulating people into keeping them hopeful and moving. These days’ people’s goals are merely to get to weekends and that goes an as a hope or at least as something to look forward to; Like a light at the end of the week (tunnel). The balance of life has never been as critical as it has been today. We have mindless people wandering the earth doing mindless things.

Who cares if this appears extremely whiny or disobeying or whatever you might have in mind? Well that’s right, you do.

Why don’t you take away my soul and install a chip in my body and give me no choice instead? Instead we were given a soul and a distasteful and almost a taunting amount of choice.

The stupidity, the corrupted mind of man and the short sightedness of previous ignorant leaders that has plagued the world are reigning as they have planned or hoped for. The funny part is history has an almost certain tendency in always repeating itself.

In chasing insignificance that one sees as significant, all light and peace has been thrown out and all we can do is adhere to this stupid dream that turns man into slave for nonsensical, petty goals and most of them involves being able to impress THE dim-witted people that were responsible to uphold sheer stupidity as what they deem as success and greatness. Now we have even imbeciles trying to impress stupid people and fellow farm animals abiding and ending their life in realizing this phenomenon of what we shall come to know as, ‘universal stupidity’.

All of these prestigious leaders with their programmed minds and penchant towards insignificance play the role in lowering the quality of life and making people sign a treaty of enslavement and trap them into lifeless, mindless beings.

How is a man to achieve self understanding, when the environment and the expectation of society is manufactured delicately in a way that the only way he is able to find meaning is to jail himself, lock the cage and throw the key away?

There are idiots like us who are rebellious and unhappy with the state of this almost machine/ computer like life. Then there are the achievers who regardless of their well being continue to strive in order to become someone in society and finds a wife who deems the same and produce more life into this glorified world and again strife to provide their offspring’s with what they depict as the perfect life in their journey towards a happily ever after life. Admirable nonetheless. They would probably say they had no choice, a reasonable argument that even we seem to agree upon. For all you know it was us who said that in the first place.

Time and time again we come to question, surely man has something more significant to realize? That too comes back to individual perception and now there is no convincing of people; hence the proof of choice. The individuals today are all innately born puppets ready to adhere to mock their souls by restricting it to lifelessness akin to an inanimate object.

This too is written in the assumption that people are equal but every Tom, Dick and Terry knows that’s not the case. We are different and the world certainly is not the fairest place to live in. Of course that too is an understatement.

Don’t you worry about us lot, perhaps you might think we share the same goal as you as in trying to impress and get recognized by human beings. Surely you are mistaken, we do not dream to achieve such dreams. To do so would be like trying to gain respect and recognition from a stray animal.

The mind is a powerful thing it sees things as how it was programmed since the beginning. It takes a sound, curious, brave, intelligent mind to go against the stride and waves that would probably overwhelm beliefs and faith.

For we have forgotten, and so we are forgotten, we have not seen the signs, we take many things for granted and are unaware of a lot of things. For who are we to say, we too are the same, on the other hand we are trying to say, we the people should be more than mere people.