Blurring the Lights

Blurred

Originally uploaded by ‘mair.

I took this photo enroute to Karachi Harbour, and I was amazed at the level of development that has taken place in the city recently. The Mai Kolachi road and the subsequent overpass, are brilliant examples of projects well implemented.

At night, especially, it resembled the City of Lights that we always loved to call Karachi. We are getting there again… all was amazingly lit and the weather was beautiful as well; cool sea breeze blowing and a fountain in the distance! Drive through MaiKolachi at night and you’ll know what I’m talking about.

There is so much potential in this city, and if the pace of development continues, we could be in for quite a fun ride! Events like the recent Humara Karachi are vital as well, because before you market yourself to tourists, you have to internally market yourself, and Karachiites and Pakistanis sure as hell need to be reminded about how great their land is and how important it is to be patriotic.

Of Faith, Free Will and Destiny

There is a point of argument that centers around destiny and fate, as opposed to free will. Somewhere along the line, faith and hope also make an appearance, and I think they both belong to free will. A lot of us unfortunately believe that if God has ordained all, then we can’t do anything about it, and the only thing we can do is to simply live as puppets. After all, someone is pulling our strings. If we are supposed to survive, we will; it was fate, kismet, destiny… call it what you will. Unfortunately, if you argue along the same lines, you can very easily say that if someone does evil, it wasn’t really his free will, rather it was destiny. It wasn’t his fault, really… it was written.

But see… that’s where it all goes a little awry. Before we dwell on free will and destiny, here’s a thought. What is bad? What is evil? And if we are to think of the said, then what is good?
A salute, at this point, goes out to the brilliant FJ for bringing to light certain ideas. 
So what’s the answer? They are all points of views, but the true essence of doing bad or evil comes when you take away something from someone, whether it be their freedom, their life, their privacy or whatever. Before I go on, I would like to give credit to the wonderfully written ‘Kite Runner’, which puts forward a similar idea.

Another point of view with regards to doing bad, is that nothing positive comes out of it in the long run. In other words, hope is lost, and hence there is a demise of faith.
If you think along the same lines, good can be to give back; freedom, life… and most importantly in my opinion, to give back hope.

Like I wrote earlier, I believe that hope is very important in the pursuit of sustainable contentment or happiness; or to move and improve one’s degrees of contentment.

Now we return to our earlier question, free will or destiny? If it is destiny, then there is no hope. Quite simply, everything is written and nothing is in our hands. We have no hope. We can just sit still and not do anything, and God will bring what needs to be done to us. Somehow, I don’t think that’s quite true. There’s a very famous old story, in which a person in olden Arabia goes to sleep without tying his camel, and before sleeping prays to God to protect his belonging and his camel. When he gets up, the camel is gone. The moral is that you can’t simply and only rely on prayers and on destiny and on a hope that it’s all written.
You need to go and get it done, what you want done.

Now if you were reading closely, you will notice I said that ‘you can’t simply and only rely on prayers and on destiny and on a hope that it’s all written’. Notice anything strange? I said hope. You see, even when you believe that nothing is written, you are hoping that it will all be made to happen for you. Hope is never ending.

So what’s the answer? Free will or destiny? In all honesty, we don’t know. A friend of mine, Ali, suggested that God’s universe and wisdom is infinite, and beyond the scope of our understanding. His plans, therefore, would also be beyond the scope of human understanding. We can only see life through a few dimensions, when in all honesty there is so much more.
How then, when we can’t even begin to understand HIS immaculate plan, must we try to do so? Why must we paint it either in black or white, or think that we know what HE wants us to do?
It may not make sense to us, but it always makes sense to HIM.
HE points to us directions, and shows us opportunities, and sometimes things become so easy. But at the same time, sometimes when certain things happen for you, they don’t come easy, and you have to utilize the opportunity and go against life’s current to make it happen for you. But it does… in the end.
That, what I just described, is faith. Knowing that HE has a plan for you, that HE understands, and that if you look around you’ll begin to see glimpses of your life. What you see in your life, may bring you happiness or it may not. Sometimes it may be hard and sometimes it may be easy; but it’s always the journey that matters.
Faith is having infinite patience in HIS wisdom, even if you can’t understand it. Faith is knowing that HIS wisdom will bring happiness to you, if only you believe; if only you go out and grab life by the scruff of its neck and live it like you want to.
Give hope and you’ll get hope.

There’s a quote in Kathy Buckley’s inspiring and funny “If you could hear what I see” which I thought was most beautiful, and it goes out to my good friend FJ: What you are is God’s gift to you; what you become is your gift to God. 

The Year 2006 in Images

You can now visit my album at my Flickr page here. Otherwise, you can use the link on the bottom right side of this page.

Check out the Year 2006 in Images here.

It’s January 3!

Yep it is… and for some reason haven’t been able to access my blog for the past few days, but here I am! 2005’s been a pretty good year!

I reproduce the following quote courtsey of the amazing FJ.

“Every close friendship offers the same thrill; someone has singled u out and chosen you. Someone who had no obligation to do so”- Jeffry Offill

There’s another quote, this time by me, which I wrote in my old blog. Seemed strangely apt…

“Life is a constant struggle between balancing Infinite Patience and Infinite Hope.”

Here’s to the new year! Cheers!

Casino Royale

There’s been a lot of talk with regards to Daniel Craig as the new Bond and Casino Royale,

and here are my two cents. I read Casino Royale 6 years ago, and I thought that they were very smart not to make a movie out of it. It was Fleming’s first Bond book, and it was very atypical of the style that he later formulated for Bond. The book was a proper novel; with more emphasis on the emotional and psychological evolution of the characters rather than action. In fact, the only action sequences of note were the car chase scene, the torture scene and a scene in which Bond is attacked on the cards table (a scene which wasn’t recreated for the movie). Since I had read From Russia With Love and Dr. No before, I wasn’t much impressed with this emotional James Bond and his soon to be permanent foray into cynicism. The book was sad though, and that remained with me. When it was announced that the next Bond movie would be Casino Royale, I was much intrigued. So intrigued in fact, that I reread Casino Royale, and absolutely loved the book. I suppose it speaks a bit about my own evolution and understanding of character driven stories and my changes in preference (although I still love Fleming’s other Bond books). Anyway, the book was brilliant, and I was much curious to see what they had done with the movie.

I saw the movie, and I was impressed. Daniel Craig first of all: I saw him for the first time in Munich, and even though I was much impressed with his acting, I couldn’t bring myself to imagine the guy as James Bond. But then apparently he got his hair cut!
Seriously though, Craig was a breath of fresh air as Bond. Having seen the movie, I feel that quite possibly this is the truest reflection of the Bond that Ian Fleming wrote. Whereas Pierce Brosnan made Bond too elegant, too perfect and too suave (although I was a Brosnan fan pre-Bond, thanks to Remington Steele), Daniel Craig portrayed him brilliantly. Craig gives bond a raw edge, which is reminiscent of Timothy Dalton,

but he also gives him charisma, charm and class, which I felt lacked in Dalton’s Bond. In fact, I can argue that Craig is arguably the fittest Bond since possible Sean Connery.

Going back to the previous Bonds, although I thought the world of Brosnan, the only movies that impressed me were Goldeneye and Die Another Day. Tomorrow Never Dies never looked like a Bond movie to me, and Dr. Christmas from World is Not Enough was simply not a Bond girl. Timothy Dalton before him, was pretty good with Living Daylights, but flopped with License to Kill, a fact which I felt had more to do with the crap script to License to Kill. Prior to these two, Roger Moore made Bond into a playboy funnyman, which although charming, was far from the way Bond should have been. George Lazenby was unlucky because he got On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, one the of the best Bond books ever, and the script again fell short. Secondly, he was coming into Bond under the shadow of Connery, and well that was quite a huge mark to live up to. This takes us to Sean Connery, who I initially compared Craig too. Connery was fit as a fiddle; suave and sophisticated; and funny and hard-edged. He was quite brilliant, although the movies at the time were perhaps a bit gimmicky. Personally, I felt his best performance came in You Only Twice, and his worst in Never Say Never (an unofficial Bond movie, thankfully).

Back to Craig and Casino Royale. He fits into the early Bond mould perfectly, and the script and direction for the movie are flawless. The movie adds action elements which were missing from the book, and changes a few other elements to give the movie a modern feel. Felix Leiter is an African American and Sony Ericsson has taken over the British Secret Service! The pre-intro sequence to the movie in Black and White is a great touch, and we get to see the origin of the famous gun barrel sequence.

Then comes the movie intro, with the song by Chris Cornell. The intro sequence is tremendous, and for the first time features no silhouetted female figures! It is remarkably done, and the way the Casino theme plays out is simply brilliant.

Enough on Casino Royale… it’s a quite brilliant movie, and I suggest you hop to it and see it on the big screen!