Some thoughts... on Music

Sweet sounds making their way into my ears, there are only a number of things so delightful in this world. A delight coming out of sound even though most sounds are just pain to my ears. I love silence and tranquility but then some music is irresistible. One such case is of Atif Aslam's album JalPari, one of the best compositions ever, a true classic. Songs like Kuch is Tarah, Aadat, Ankhon se, JalPari.... I can just keep on listening these songs back to back. I have been listening to these songs since very long and have never get tired of listening them but there are other limitations, of course. If sometime I distant away from this album, I find myself coming back to it. My fondness for this album took one step further ahead when some days ago, I found the album in FLAC, lossless version/format.

Maybe I actually belong to 2000s, maybe childhood and some succeeding years have a great influential importance in one's life but that was the best decade of Pakistani music, at least for me. And even for many other things throughout the world. Things have changed, people have changed, their habits have changed, screens have increased and they are considered a good thing. I say throw them away and let's go back to the times of Walkman and other such stuff. Pakistani music had a decency, it had a uniqueness. People were not trying fusion and other such stupidities. I remember it was 2005 when we had our first computer. Nawaz, my elder brother brought speakers from somewhere, those small speakers, I still remember their size. Tiny box like pair of speakers, dull white color. He asked me to follow him urgently and told me to just wait and see. Those were good times. He opened Winamp player and guess the first song he played. Ab to Aadat si ha mujko... In the hindsight, it was quite low quality sound, but at that time it was such a great moment. We were both so happy, life was simple. Things have changed, everywhere.

One day when I meet Atif Aslam, I will just ask him, Where is that artist who created JalPari...

Here's a link to one of my favorite album, Jalpari by Atif Aslam:
https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/1x6UUCe75Nj4vDxDZQ2XT0D9NPphLhIrE

Recently I ordered headphones from Amazon and this has been one of my best decisions ever. The quality is amazing. The headphones are:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B072MKR1BC/ref=ppx_od_dt_b_asin_title_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

When an album like Jalpari be out again. Maybe never. It was a combination of so many things, that were only possible at that specific time. Oh Nostalgia....

Review: The Grapes of Wrath

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"women and children knew deep in themselves that no misfortune was too great to bear if their men work whole"

Once in a while you come across a book which shakes you, wakes you and makes you (or breaks you). It makes you want to dig those deep buried beliefs which you have shunned away long ago in your struggle to be compatible with norms of the society. There are some books which ask the same questions as you ask. There are books which even give you answers to those questions. There are books which give you even more questions to think about and grow more. There are quite a few classical works which have no match in their concepts and ideas. This book has the capacity to provide all above to a reader.

As a classical work, this book has all the qualities a reader may expect. Novelty, art, uniqueness, ideas, resonance, a great story, humor etc. This is a book about survival and struggle of the oppressed and poor, narrated and described (too descriptive at times) in a beautiful manner. So there's this family and this family has a small piece of land. That land is taken from them. They had respect. It is taken away. They were a family. It is taken away in bits and pieces as well. They still survive, maintain their dignity, not giving up the richness in their hearts. This family is forced to migrate to a new land with high hopes of happiness and prosperity but they soon find out otherwise. There is no shortage of ignorant, selfish, ruthless, insecure, dumb and numb people, no specific place for them, they can be found anywhere, specially at the least expected places. But this family survives... Interestingly, that's just one perspective. What if one looks at things from the perspective of native Americans. A strange loop indeed.

"they had not grown up in paradoxes of industry"

One of the good things about this book is the ideas which are relevant even today. The amount of lies we share, buy and sell with utmost confidence makes us one of the most strange generations ever. We call ourselves natural species yet we destroy the nature at an unnerving rate and try to keep ourselves as far away from it as one can. Our education systems are nothing more than numbing and debt machines. Huge corporations, having even more power than a state, are new and advanced methods of slavery. Women objectification is at its highest level. All these developed countries pinching others on women freedom are the biggest hubs of pornography. Companies, following practices of sound business, playing with us at subconscious level promoting consumerism, willing to anything for profits. Our eating habits have changed, thanks to all these chemical laden fast food chains. Capitalism. Democracy. Are these systems working. Maybe for the few selfish people...

"not knowing these things are results not causes"

If our systems are working for humanity, why there is so much disturbance, death and violence in the world today. Why people are willing to go lengths to fight these systems. These movements are results not causes...

You don't need to be a Luddite to realize the stupidity these machines are giving us or the stupids they are making out of us. It all started with Industrial revolution but it has advanced unlike anything else in human history. Few people did realize the change and all the seemingly glad tidings it was about to bring. They warned us from time to time but who cares, we want maximum production, maximum profits, bigger empty houses etc. Now we sit comfortably in front of screens... watching 10 dead, 100 dead, 1000 dead trying hard to feel bad. Fighting digital wars of never ending gossips and debates. We try to convey emotions from something which has no heart, no concept of emotion... and we are stupid enough to rely on the emotions received as response from these screens. Screens and screens everywhere, its like you can't escape them now. But there always a choice. We are all part of this.

"owners with rolled-up sleeves. Slaves, neat, deadly, small intent eyes watching for weaknesses."

Civilization has become the biggest joke ever. All these civilized people working in their offices carrying our practices of sound business and then unable to sleep during the night. Finding resort in drugs and whatnot. Numbing themselves to sleep and then next day same routine. Human beings being measured in numbers, struggling constantly to get their scale or graph in a better shape. Need that raise and promotion and everything i can get my hands on. But why need that raise, to buy more and more stuff or go there... where exactly are we running. What's the end result? Working hard towards optimization. Everybody needs perfect people with perfect scores with perfect skills. We need to stop and think, just relax and think this through. We used to be people of creativity and art, now we are trying to imitate machines and trying to make machines which may imitate us.

Oppression is nothing new but the techniques have improved dramatically. New tyrants not learning from the lessons of history because most people don't even read history the way it should be read, they are busy holding their stuff tight and counting money in their pockets and banks. Banks, one of the biggest organizations ever, making money over money and doing no real work, just following the practices of sound business. Let people rot if they rot, we make sure there is handsome interest coming. And they are so dumb and happy about it sitting in their air conditioned offices smiling their fake smiles, typing and... Who is responsible for all this? How did we end up here? One can just go on and on...

Naturally, there are glimpses of hope which let people like me survive this paradoxical and strange place(or this era). Just like shining stars in the darkness of cosmos, there are glimpses...

In 2003, in the city of Bahawalpur, Pakistan, the government allotted a huge piece of land to a Brig. Bashir which included less than one acre already allocated to a farmer named Abdul Karim. Karim resisted this allocation of land and a case was put forward in High Court by Brig. Bashir who had the confidence from the local governing bodies as well that land belonged to him. Ironically, the verdict turned out to be against him.
(An excerpt from Military Inc by Ayesha Siddiqa)

In the historic Abdul Karim Supreme Court judgment passed in September 2003, the judges repeated the following quotation from John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath and cautioned against accumulation of property in the hands of a few:

And the great owners, who must lose their land in an upheaval, the great owners with access to history, with eyes to read history and to know the great fact: when property accumulates in too few hands, it is taken away. And that companion fact: when a majority of people are hungry and cold they will take by force what they need. And the little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed. The great owners ignored the three cries of history. The land fell into fewer hands, the number of the dispossessed increased, and every effort of the great owners was directed at repression. The money was spent for arms, for gas to protect the great holdings, and spies were sent to catch the murmuring of revolt so that it might be stamped out. The changing economy was ignored, plans for the change ignored; and only means to destroy revolt were considered, while the causes of revolt went on.

"in the souls of people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage"

I will miss the time when I was reading this book. Have learned and realized so much. I will miss the Joad family...

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