Happy Belated New Year 2012

23 Jan 2012 1 Comment

by natashalatiff in Afghanistan, Inspiration & Life, Kabuli Home, Letters, Prose, Travelogue

Memories of 2011, most of which are with Shoaib :)

I am flying already

02 Dec 2010 3 Comments

by natashalatiff in Dance, Hindi/Urdu poetry, Letters, Pictures, Poetry

Anonymous, why give your blessings in secret? Why reign, and hold me prisoner to your deafening silence? I played tunes on the harmonica, and rats ran with me**. The patter of their barefeet, their scatter…. sounded like worshippers in a temple. There is no difference between the angry atheist and devout believer. Both spend as much time thinking about God.

Deserving better than clandestine, unlisted expressions of love, through music. Fingers will dance when body is not well. Fingers can give birth to flowers. Tips like orange petals. Or fly like a bird. Why don’t we set ourselves free…. I am flying already.

Nahii aaye kesariyaa balamaa hamaar.

But he did not come, my dark handsome lover

a.nganaa  baDaa sunasaan

Leaving my courtyard deserted

– Gulzar Sahab

Love,

The Humming Bird.

** This is in reference to a German story from the Middle Ages, 16th C, of Pied Piper of Hamelin, who could play his magic pipe and lure rats with his music. It was agreed that the people of Hamelin would pay him for removing the rats. However they did not pay him for his services. So he retaliated by luring all the children out of Hamelin. Thus the phrase ‘to pay the piper’, meaning to bear the consequences of your actions.

Pied Piper of Hamelin has always been casted negatively in all renditions of this fable through history.

My use of this fable is intrinsically linked to the following sentence, “patter of their barefeet sounded like worshippers at the temple“

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It’s you and me all the way

31 Aug 2010 2 Comments

by natashalatiff in Letters

I know one thing in this life – I am walking hand-in-hand with you. And if this is it – that’s a beautiful life already. We have so much to live for and through together. I can’t wait for it all to happen.

Previous Older Entries

Helen Keller

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable.

Buddha

We are not a permanent, unchanging self; we flow like water, with no place to abide. So with no safe place to stand, the bodhisattva flies, flies on the wings of compassion and wisdom

Thoreau

I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary... In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.