Yashica Electro 35: Making Your Own Battery

These are digital times, roll film is getting harder to find. You must be wondering why I have chosen to resurrect a 35mm film camera from the 1970s.

Well, I have news for you: film is not dead and even vacuum tubes (valves) are still being manufactured. You see, digital is merely convenient, though not necessarily cheap, and has almost become as good as her analogue father—well, almost.

While at a camera shop in Paris, I checked a $1,200 Nikon digital SLR (single lens reflex) camera that I intended to buy and was horrified to feel the flimsy built quality in my hands. China’s cheap products have ruined things for humanity which took eons to learn how to make find sturdy things.

Now compare the all metal-and-glass wonder, the Yashica Electro 35, with today’s plastic digital cameras and you will know what I mean. When Nikon introduced the model EM camera its size was intentionally kept small to suit women’s hands. But our matchbox-sized digital wonders are neither for men nor for women, but for adolescents who drop them, break them and then pester their parents for replacements. Surely, most of us have embraced the global throw-away culture, without reminding ourselves that these megapixel gadgets are not designed to be repaired.

Hold the Yashica Electro 35 in your hands and you will appreciate how well-made it feels even today. After all, it features Japanese parts that were merely assembled in Hong Kong in order to keep the camera very affordable. The Electro appeared in various finishes and model variations and was dubbed “a poor man’s Leica” (the German rangefinder camera that brought the 35mm revolution).

I will not delve into how much I love the Yashica Electro 35 camera; volumes have already been written. Its fourth generation GSN and GTN models appeared around 1973 and sold by the millions; little did I know that I would end up buying a few of these years later.
Right out of the box (you can still find 'boxed' beauties), the Electro 35 is capable of shooting quality images rivalling fifteen megapixel results. You see, real men while shooting with roll film, never worried about LCDs, confusing menus or megapixels.

Now, to get great results with the Electro 35 one need only set the aperture while the camera automatically sets the shutter speed. There is no autofocus facility but this rangefinder is capable of very precise and quick manual focussing aid (split-image parallax method) even in poorly lit situations.

This Yashica comes from a time when one needed to know what one was doing as a photographer. Automatic point-and-shoot cameras have made humanity quite brain-dead. The only feature missing from the present day cameras is a mode that decides for the photographer when a picture ought to be taken, all without human intervention. I mean, must we even torture our brain cells deciding when and what to shoot when the computer can think for us?

Mine is a genuine tirade against modern digital toys which are battery-hogging matchbox-sized plastic things that have made the battery manufacturers very rich. The Electro 35 originally used Mercury TR 164 (HM-4N) 5.6 Volt type of a battery.

Because mercury was declared a hazardous substance, the manufacturers stopped their production. But now I will show you how to achieve analogue nirvana by improvising to save your father’s Yashica from extinction. We will proceed to fabricate a 6 volt battery which will not hurt the camera’s 5.6 volt circuitry:

1. Open the camera’s battery compartment using a coin’s edge that fits the slot nicely. Turn anti-clockwise and inspect the compartment. Clean it, especially if the used battery has left leaked residues behind. The compartment’s lid must also be free of unwanted substances. Use demineralised alcohol on a cotton swab for cleaning. 
2. Peep into your household sewing kit and dig out a paper or plastic spindle. This kind of tubular base is ideal for our DIY project. 
3. Cut the tube to the length that the camera’s battery chamber will take. 
4. The internal diameter of the spindle must be able to house, but not too tightly, four LR44 1.5 Volt batteries. Now pile these four little babies—negative side down—one on top of the other in the tube to get 6 Volts of power. 
5. Over the last battery, drop a metal tube to act as a spacer. 
6. Place over this spacer, a round metal plate to enable the battery compartment’s lid to make electrical contact with. 
7. Close the compartment’s lid. 
8. Press the Battery Check button and watch the lovely green light illuminate the counter. 

And you’re done! The total cost of this project is less than Rs. 86 ($1).

You could still buy a mint condition Yashica Electro 35 for as little as $30. I encourage you to activate your brain, load up a roll of 35mm film, and start shooting now.

If you have any more questions, please feel free to contact me.

©Tahir Gul Hasan 2011

Alphabet For Politically-Incorrect Children

Dear grownups, sit back and let the children enjoy the new alphabet which took us so many decades of American intervention to develop!

A: army, aid, American (interests, ambassador), Ayub (Khan, the military DICK-tator)

B: boot, bomb, barbed-(wire), beheading, budget 

C: collateral (damage), C-in-C, CIA, court, chief(-justice), cartoons (of Prophet Muhammad)

D: drone, Defence (Housing Authority), debt, Dollar, DICK-tator

E: emergency, explosive, economic (sanctions)

F: FBI, fauj, flag-burning, flood, fundamentalist, flour (shortage)

G: Guantenamo (Bay), global (war of error or G-WOE), general, Green-(Card)

H: headquarter, hand grenade, halwa, hides (of sacrificial animals)

I: intelligence, ISI, Islamist, insurgent, IED (improvised explosive device), IMF, inflation

J: jacket (for suicide bombers), journalist, judge, Jew,

K: Kargil, KHAD, KGB

L: load-shedding, letter-bomb, lawyer, lota

M: medal, militant, miswaak, Muslim League (A,N and F), MOSSAD

N: nuclear, no-fly (zone), 9/11

O: Osama (bin Laden), operation

P: Plotocracy (diplomacy through plot allotments to cronies), Pentagon (pants-are-gone)

Q: (al)-Qaeda, Qur'an

R: RAW, rocket-launcher, regime-(change)

S: suicide-(jacket), Siachin, sugar (shortage), stoning (to death), Shariah law, security situation

T: Taliban, torture, terrorist, tax

U: USA, U.N.O, ultra-orthodox, underworld

V: visa (American), veto, veteran (of American crimes against humanity)

W: Washington, Waziristan, WMD, World (Bank), water-boarding

X: X-Ray (camp at Guantanamo Bay)

Y: Yankee

Z: Zionism, Zia-ul-Haq (the military DICK-tator)

Connect With Me

Greetings dear readers!

I have many friends with whom I communicate through different means. Some remain on FaceBook and refuse to leave that ‘convenient’ environment. A few enjoy email messages and the rest are waiting for a sign from up above to make them move in my direction.

It is for the esteemed members of this last group that I am outlining the simple procedure for having their names and photographs included in the FOLLOWERS sidebar on my blog.

Welcome to Google Friend Connect

Procedure:

1. Go to http://writersblocktgh.blogspot.com/
2. I would appreciate it if you add my blog’s URL to your browser’s FAVORITES folder so that you don’t have to type the lengthy address each time you visit me
3. Scroll down while watching the left hand side sidebar
4. Click on FOLLOW (under SIGN UP TO BECOME A FRIEND)
5. A dialogue box appears which tells you that you may use various accounts to become a member (Google, Twitter, Yahoo, AIM, NetLog, or Open ID)
6. Sign in with your ID and Password
7. Fill in your Name, and upload your Picture
8. Click ‘FOLLOW PUBLICLY’
9. Click ‘FOLLOW THIS BLOG’
10. A message appears: ‘Congratulations. You are now following WritersBlockTGH’
11. Click DONE
12. Check the blog to see if your NAME and PHOTO is visible in ‘Friends’ sidebar on the left hand side of the blog
13. To edit further, press OPTIONS, go to SITE SETTINGS (to change data, picture etc.)

Presto! You’re done!

Testing Alan Parsons

Those were such happy days and 9/11 was less than a decade away into the future. Digital audio had arrived firmly on the scene and good old analogue was fighting back with a little help from vacuum tubes. Torn between ones and zeros, I found it immensely rewarding in every sense of the word to regularly attend professional audio trade shows in England and Germany.

Back then, from a humble 4-track setup, I had upgraded to an analogue 8-track recorder that used ½” wide magnetic tape which moved at fifteen inches per second across the assembly of multiple heads and pinch rollers. Not many of today’s bottle-fed digital boys would know what it means watching 10½” wide reels spin. The same machine helped me record many jingles, voice-overs, at least two complete pop albums, and many pop singles, including Pyar Ki Piyas.

Back to the shows now; the one in Germany, called Musikmesse, would be held in April of each year at Frankfurt and extend over scores of stadium-sized exhibition halls. I only attended it once when invited by Studiomaster of UK. It was impossible to even walk casually through all the halls in three days, leave alone stop at each stall to see what was on display. The highlight of Musikmesse was the fantastic booth of Marshall guitar amplifiers. There a tall man, with curly hair covering his entire face, lead guitarist of Guns n’ Roses, stood dishing out autographs to the fans. Of course, Slash signed for me.

 

For all the APRS (Association of Professional Recording Services) shows I attended, the venue was always the Olympia Exhibition Centre in West Kensington, London. The English professional audio trade shows were always delightfully homely compared with other bigger shows held all over the globe. Apart from the relaxed yet professional atmosphere there, the great advantage was that everyone spoke English—even the Americans.

Making friends in the audio industry was as important as getting to know the manufacturers directly. I attended three APRS shows where the presence of rock stars and engineers like Alan Parsons, and knighted producers such as Sir George Martin (Beatles fame), always made the fairs worth attending.

Where professionals from the recording industry came from across the globe, it was important for me to have a neat business card. I would gladly hand out cards at the stalls of my choice and with great pride identify my studio, Sound On Sound, from Pakistan.

Sometime in the mid 80s, I designed the studio’s logo, keeping in mind the desirable elements of sine waves, two open reels with tape, spherical shock waves, and solid green letters placed against a black background inside a rectangular enclosure with round edges.

Soundcraft, Lexicon, Tube Tech, AKG, Neumann, Drawmer and so many other manufacturers quite unknown to the average consumer, would set up stalls at the show to highlight their latest offerings to the recording professionals. For instance, Japanese TEAC was a consumer brand, while the same company had a division called TASCAM that catered to audio professionals.

Similarly, Switzerland’s REVOX went by the name of STUDER for professionals. All through the three days there would be seminars, interesting demonstrations of new technology, innovative products using valves (things that glow in the dark and produce desirable warm sound), free drinks and snacks, all the product catalogues one could carry to the studio, and souvenirs to take home.

Particularly worth mentioning here is loudspeaker manufacturer JBL. When I complained to their European representative that one of the titanium tweeters of my studio (monitor) speakers had begun to distort within only a few years of use, he asked for my business card and said, “I’ll see what I can do”.

A few weeks later in Pakistan, I received a parcel. Inside it was a replacement tweeter for which I was not charged a single penny.

Of course, APRS shows were not meant for selling directly but rather for highlighting products and services. It was during one such wandering from booth to booth that I ran into a small kiosk being managed by a very tall man. A poster in the background identified him as Alan Parsons of the famous Alan Parsons Project.

Many may not have heard of this great British progressive soft rock band, active between 1975 and 1990 and popularly called APP. It had a cult following, produced global hits, and used ace studio musicians who worked under Alan’s recording and production umbrella. The band also released their 1976 debut album Tales Of Mystery And Imagination directly inspired by American writer, Edgar Alan Poe.

Hit albums followed, namely: I Robot (1977), Pyramid (1978), The Turn of a Friendly Card (1980), Eye in the Sky (1982), Ammonia Avenue (1984), Vulture Culture (1985), Stereotomy (1986) and Gaudi (1987). Alan is the same giant who, at EMI Abbey Road studios of London, engineered an album called The Dark Side Of The Moon by a group called Pink Floyd. In case you do not know Pink Floyd, please do not waste time reading this article.

Alan also did three albums for Al Stewart (including, The Year Of The Cat), worked on The Beatles’ Let It Be album, The Hollies (He Ain’t Heavy He’s My Brother, The Air That I Breathe), Paul McCartney and the Wings, and with George Harrison (All Things Must Pass album). With multiple Grammy nominations and Best Engineer awards under his belt, he conquered sound from the English soil. Befittingly, in 2007, the APRS Hall Of Fame inducted him as a Sound Fellow.

But what was Alan selling at the APRS show? In collaboration with Stephan Court (audio consultant and designer), he had produced the SOUND CHECK audio test CD. The disc was not to have songs but rather test tones and white and pink noises that professionals could use for sound analysis and audio equipment repairs. I may as well add here, so well engineered are Alan’s own APP albums that manufacturers still use them to demonstrate new CD players at audio trade shows.

 

Young, brimming with enthusiasm and thirsty for audio knowledge, I just had to have that test CD for my recording studio because I suspected that Alan would not speak to me unless I paid for the CD in cash. It was a perfect stop where I expected some magic to rub off on me if I shook hands with Alan. I was able to get him to mumble something about studio techniques; the man was a mountain of expert knowledge and experience. He was kind enough to autograph the CD for me and allow a picture of us to be taken.

And one last bit of trivia. Mike Myers being a dedicated Alan Parsons fan, named his Dr Evil’s Death Ray, The Alan Parsons Project in the movie The Spy Who Shagged Me.

Yeah baby yeah!

L i n k s  f o r  m o r e  i n f o r m a t i o n

Alan Parsons Project http://www.alanparsonsmusic.com/bio.php

http://www.the-alan-parsons-project.com/apbio01.php

APRS http://www2.aprs.co.uk/

Pyar Ki Piyas (پیاس کی پیار): Will The Real Man Behind It Please Stand Up?

http://writersblocktgh.blogspot.com/2011/01/pyar-ki-piyas-will-real-man-behind-it.html

Pyar Ki Piyas (پیار کی پیاس): Urdu Lyrics With English Translation

http://writersblocktgh.blogspot.com/2011/01/pyar-ki-piyas-urdu-lyrics-with-english.html

Pyar Ki Piyas (پیارکی پیاس): Urdu Lyrics With English Translation

As promised in (Pyar Ki Piyas (پیارکی پیاس): Will The Real Man Behind It Please Stand Up?, here are some more gifts for those who wish to understand what the singer is singing:

1. The Urdu lyrics of ‘Pyar Ki Piyas’

2. A translation in English

The important features of this effort are:

1. The rhymes are intact in English as well

2. The English lyrics can be sung to the same tune

Click to hear the YouTube ('audio' only) version or go to the link below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuyMfBgYXuQ

Click to hear mp3 'audio' only version or go to the link provided below for better sound than the original video’s:

http://www.radioreloaded.com/tracks/?8005

The term lyric comes from the Greek word lyrikos, meaning ‘singing to the lyre’. A lyric poem is one that expresses a subjective, personal point of view. In 1876, the word lyric became associated with ‘words of a song’.

Please appreciate the fact that a lyric is always conversational in tone and is primarily created for a singer to sing. On the other hand, Urdu poetry in a typical Eastern recital gathering (musha’ira) is narrated without the aid of music. Hence, those with a penchant for poetry need not feel vexed reading this matter-of-fact yet poetic lyric. Simplicity, though it appears easy, is a hard thing to do. Of course, if I were to re-do the song today, I would make a few minor changes to the lyric as well as to the melody.

Stay tuned for the next blog and I hope you enjoy this one in the mean time.

پیار کی پیاس

میں نے دیکھا ہے / پیار اس کا جھوٹا

میری خوشیوں کو جس نے دونوں ہاتھوں سے لوٹا

گزرے وہ دن کبھی لوٹ کے نہ آئیں

جوانی برباد میری وہ مسکراے

میرا دِل اداس ہے

مجھے پیار کی پیاس ہے

مجھے پیار کی پیاس ہے

مجھے پیار کی پیاس ہے

کچھ پہلے سے / اس پہ شبہ تھا

دِل میں اس کے/ اک چور چھپا تھا

دولت لٹی / میرا پیار ہوا ضایع

محبّت یه ناچ دیکھو کیسے نچایے

میرا دِل اداس ہے

مجھے پیار کی پیاس ہے

مجھے پیار کی پیاس ہے

مجھے پیار کی پیاس ہے

Guitar Lead

سمجھاتے ہیں مجھے اپنے بیگانے

(مانو تُم کہنا)

جاو تُم بھول / وہ گزرے زمانے

یادیں ہیں تلخ لیکن دِل کیوں نہ جانے

رکھتا ہے یاد بھولے بسرے فسانے

میرے یه حالات ہیں

مجھے پیار کی پیاس ہے

مجھے پیار کی پیاس ہے

مجھے پیار کی پیاس ہے

مجھے پیار کی پیاس ہے

مجھے پیار کی پیاس ہے

مجھے پیار کی پیاس

مجھے پیار

پیاس

مجھے پیار کی پیاس ہے

پیار

©Tahir Gul Hasan 1992

Thirsting For Love

I've seen her love, all of it so fake

Plundered my happiness, she took away what she could take

Those bygone days will never return

My youth is so wasted; she smiles now and it hurts

My heart feels truly sad

Chorus:

O this thirsting for love is so bad

O this thirsting for love is so bad

From the start, I had strong suspicions

A thief hid inside her heart with doubtful intentions

Lost all the money, my love’s not been tasted

The run-around of love, leaves so wasted

My heart feels truly sad

Repeat Chorus...

[Guitar lead]

Guidance comes, from strangers and friends alike

“You need to listen, forget the years gone by.”

Painful reminiscing, but the heart I don’t know why

Loves to recall forgotten stories by the bye

Such a bad state, I might add

Repeat Chorus...

Read Pyar Ki Piyas (پیارکی پیاس): Will The Real Man Behind It Please Stand Up?

©Tahir Gul Hasan 2011

Pyar Ki Piyas (پیارکی پیاس): Will The Real Man Behind It Please Stand Up?

First, I wish all the visitors to my blog a very happy and prosperous 2011.

Second, I just made a leveraged buy-out deal; MTV is my property now and I am ready to launch my own satellite into space.

Third, I just made this up; in reality I have only launched my own video channel, TTV, on YouTube.

Since the world’s dumb fingers are too busy punching ‘smart’ Black Berry and I-Phone buttons these days, allow me to tell you something about the kind of work that I have done in the past. Now please do not get any ideas that might be funnier than my own.

Way back in the early 1990s, I was commissioned to write and compose for, arrange, record, mix and produce an upcoming band from Lahore called Wet Metal. The boys never played metal music but rather excelled at doing pop cover tunes at weddings and concerts.

I will spare you the details that will look better in a book I am contemplating writing and which is tentatively titled ‘The Missing Pages Of Pakistani Pop History’.

The title of the Urdu song Pyar Ki Piyas means 'Thirst For Love’; it was written in an era when men had stopped thirsting for knowledge. Najam Shiraz was then the lead singer for Wet Metal, with Shehryar as the guitarist, Ali at the keyboards and Saeed Hasan Turk on the drums (in the video you see Tariq Tafu pounding away at the drum-kit).

The song’s video was aimed to give the public a taste of Wet Metal’s upcoming debut album for which I was hired to do everything except appear as a regular band member. The song was slated for release as a debut single.

To this day, I retain the ownership rights to the lyrics, composition and the arrangement. It was also stipulated in the original contract that I had the ‘right to later release the same song with an altered arrangement under my own name’. Who knows, I just might decide to release a Pyar Ki Piyas video under the right launch conditions.

It will not be difficult to get people from Bollywood interested in a re-make of the song but then who wants to see scantily-clad women dancing to my song?—not I. As it is, Munni’s notoriety (Munni badnaam huwee) and Sheila’s (Sheila ki jawani) youth has been rather over-exposed in public.

Mismanagement claimed the life of Wet Metal; it split shortly after the release of this video. Najam Shiraz later released Pyar Ki Piyas in his debut audio album, Khazana, in 1996. Although not fully acknowledged for my work, my name was misspelled in the album’s liner notes as Tahir Hassan Gul. You will not see my name on pirated CD versions released later because the album was originally released in cassette format.

I wrote Piyar Ki Pyas in 1991, composed and played all electronic instruments (sequencing) and single-handedly recorded and mixed the analogue audio tracks at my own studios (Sound On Sound, Karachi). Najam Shiraz only recorded the lead and backup vocals. Because since childhood I have been quite comfortable with oohs and aahs, you can actually hear me do the same in the song’s backup vocal track.

Shehryar played the guitar solo whose melody I hummed to him as we recorded the take. Ali is pretending to play the keyboards and Tariq Tafu is doing the same with the drums; such make belief happens in film and music all the time. What was certainly not my idea was Najam getting caught with his pants down, wearing just the shorts, when he sings meray yeh haalaat hein (meaning: this is my condition).

Fast forward nineteen years.

Najam Shiraz is now an internationally known Pakistani pop singer. We still see each other every few years. He says he announces my name whenever he sings this song on stage; I have no reason to doubt that. Not many these days admit in public what ladders and shoulders they rented to get to such dizzying heights. Indeed Najam's success is his own doing.

All the meticulous track-sheets, master mix-down track and contractual paperwork are still in my possession. This is proof of the pudding I made years ago and which—despite the passage of so many years—I enjoy consuming in my memory’s dessert plate once in a while.

By today’s standards, the song might sound a bit dated but listen to it with ears from the 90s. If I manage to salvage the original digital audio tape (DAT), you will be able to listen to a high quality audio version of Pyar Ki Piyas. I also intend to post the original Urdu lyrics and their translation here on my blog.

Stay tuned and God bless you all for the hugs and kisses you will now despatch in my direction.

Read Pyar Ki Piyas (پیارکی پیاس): Urdu Lyrics With English Translation
For crazy Bollywood song parodies, please visit:
Bollywood Song Parodies by Tahir Gul Hasan

What Shall I Preach To You, Doll Rubber?

SEVERE WARNING: Parents who are under twenty-one years of age, must be accompanied by precocious children when reading this. If you are unfamiliar with the Urdu language, decoding my subtle jokes is impossible.

It is indeed a beautiful frog anthem; notice the slow beat provided by a chorus of ribbiting and croaking frogs. Composer Madam Mohan caught and trained the amphibians and had the legendary Muhammad Rafi turn this song into a classic.

I like neither Nutan’s antics nor Shekhar’s (male lead) gestures. Right from the beginning of this picnic in a jungle (complete with formal dress fit for a nightclub), a stocky woman seated on the heroine’s right side is shown making the hero her real business. Frequently she salivates looking at the raw hero, and is quite unable to wait for the arrival of properly cooked dinner.

Now this whole bit of creative Bollywood song parody will be more fun of you open the video in one browser window and the text in another window (press CTRL+T and paste the blog's URL in the address bar), re-size them on your screen and place them side by side, then derive maximum forbidden pleasure by watching the video and reading my text.

• Movie: Aakhri Daao
• Singer: Mohammad Rafi
• Music Director: Madan Mohan
• Lyricist: Majrooh Sultanpuri
• Actors/Actresses: Nutan, Shekhar
• Year/Decade: 1958, 1950s

What shall I preach to you, Doll Rubber?

Right before you is my Hell, hey!

(Its a bait of) just one look from you

(But) its (also) a question of my life, aye! (not to mention my wife)

What shall I preach to you, Doll Rubber?

My ‘kosher’ activities prosper because of you, dumb(o)

My life too is (going great guns) because of your (healthy) gums

[Repeat both lines]

Remain oblivious of your (labour) pain?

How could my heart be such a daredevil?

(It’s a bait of) just one look from you

(But) it’s (also) a question of my life, aye! (not to mention my wife)

What shall I preach to you, Doll Rubber?

I have one eye on your beauty parlour (bills)

What more (back-)breaking news have you in the morning or past dinner time?

[Repeat both lines]

My (each flirtatious) evening is (spent inside) Just-a-Jew (night club)

My dawn is (an excuse for strange) thoughts

What shall I preach to you, Doll Rubber?

Get inside my cardiac arteries and liver – 2X

Why should the distance of a (lustful) look remain?

Get inside my cardiac arteries and liver

Why should the distance of a (lustful) look remain?

Without you, (sweet) Ginnie Joe

This life is a banged up mama’s hell

What shall I preach to you, Doll Rubber?

Right before you is my hell, hey!

(Its a bait of) just one look from you

(But) its (also) a question of my life, aye! (not to mention my wife)

What shall I preach to you, Doll Rubber?

Island Of Blondes

As a young boy l remember reading Gulliver’s Travels and swiftly getting mesmerized by the idea of Lilliputians. Life is much more than Treasure Island or other fairy tales. Since I never seriously contemplated lowering my anchor at an island inhabited entirely by ladies who wished to be my loving neighbours, the fruit of my patience has finally turned out to be exceedingly sweet. Conservative outlook is doomed because a Lithuanian company Olialia (pronounced ‘ooh-la-la’) now intends to create a holiday resort in the Maldives islands that will be run entirely by blondes.

Mankind’s obsession with blonde womankind is half as old as the sponsor of such schemes: Satan. Ever since man set foot on Earth, his attempts to turn the blue marble into a cheap copy of the promised heaven have turned many small rational steps into giant leaps of insanity. It is for the perfect insān (Arabic for man) that the scriptures promise pleasures in heaven but without revealing the colour of the tresses of heavenly maidens who will make the lives of some men immeasurably enjoyable. Heaven is reprieve from the torture chambers of hell. Or perhaps heaven is the death of death itself, lack of taxes, absence of credit cards, nonexistence of debt and an acute shortage of mobile phone ringtones. We shall not know the whole truth until we renounce all modern discomforts, meaning, fly away as a departed soul to the air headquarters for an interrogation session.

It is true; Olialia’s latest scheme to transform a part of the civilized world into virtual heaven by releasing hundreds of blondes on an island is already drowning men in huge waves of lust because the film industry always stereotypes blondes as ‘dumb’ creatures who wear stilettos, have strange hairstyles and invariably speak in high-pitched tones. The end is nigh, the Baltic blonde movement is upon us and the days of raven-haired beauties are almost over.

The ambitious blonde plan has already attracted criticism from the citizens of the island nation of Maldives, who condemned it as ‘racist and discriminatory since it excludes non-white Maldivians.’

The Maldives islands are truly a sight to behold in the Indian Ocean; never attempt to locate them on a map without the aid of a decent magnifying glass. En-route from Colombo, Sri Lanka, only once did I have the good fortune of staying overnight in the Maldives. As for the abilities of the pilots and their flying machines, their landing on a tiny island literally took my breath away. From a distance of a few kilometres on approach, the airport island looked like the deck of a naval aircraft carrier. By the time the airplane approached the touchdown point, I had hurriedly consumed all my ten nails as snacks. You see, on all four sides of the runway, I found what attracted hordes of tourists to that location: emerald green water.

The captain remarked jokingly, “Landing short, overshooting, or veering to the left or to the right of the short runway is not an option here. Who wants to become lunch for sharks?”

Emerging from the arrival lounge, I hired a sea-taxi whose captain did not want to know the name of a road but rather the island I wished to disembark at. It made perfect sense as various hotels were located on one or the other island. Later the same evening, as I poured the famous 1000 Islands dressing over the salad, I realized how important the Maldives were to vegetarians.

Local laws dictated that resorts in the Maldives hire at least fifty percent local staff. The natives were almost exclusively dark-skinned. My eyes never met with a single inactive blonde during the short stay there, and if there were any such creatures, they were busy scuba-diving with incredibly muscular lovers, or lazily getting at an undisclosed location all the sun their fair skins craved for. Going home with suntans was the thing, but having burnt myself once and feeling twice shy, I decided to remain true to my colour.

Olialia knows more than I do about the Maldives and that is why it is run and staffed by blonde women who conduct business in seventy-five sectors, such as computer software, food products and pop music. Had Debbie Harry’s pop band, Blondie, been alive today, they surely would have become richer in old age. The office environment of Olialia is enviable because the few dark-haired women who work there are surrounded by beautiful blondes—a grim situation that leads to the former colouring their hair quite blonde with grief. The girls there are all very smart; some have as many degrees as a thermometer. To the utter disappointment of the local flesh traders, all the blondes there wish to do something more business-like with their lives.

Maldivian criticism aside, Lithuania might be on the verge of contravening European Union job application and employment laws; the future of older men and women with grey hair is bleak. The company, however, says that ‘it does not discriminate and welcomes all applicants, no matter what their gender, age, or hair colour.’

It will be quite difficult to silence the critics who call Olialia’s marketing strategy sexist because it uses provocative images of blondes to sell products and reinforce negative stereotypes. There is truth in a brunette’s comment that ‘it is clear they are not selling the idea that blondes are clever, they are selling the idea that blondes are sexy, because their selling points are Baltic women and selling lust.’ The car bumper-stickers that read ‘California or bust’ will now display ‘The Baltics or lust’.

All of Olialia's products are advertised using images of attractive blonde women in impossibly intellectual situations, such as, glamorous high-heeled blonde scientists conducting strange laboratory experiments to make a cola drink, or a board meeting of blondes applying make-up while discussing corporate tactics. Since advertisers know the minds of men more than their own wives ever do, Olialia’s campaign—offensive or clownish as it might seem—appears to be working. The company expects double the profit this year since ‘most of the Lithuanians recognise the brand’. If this peculiar Baltic blonde movement means ‘liberation from stereotypes for blonde women’ I demand a blonde re-partition of the Indian sub-continent, a re-enactment of 1947 worthy of being televised on a hundred television channels that we won from windmills in pitched battles fought by a hillock called Enlightened Moderation.

In this land we close down our businesses to honour persons of national importance but in the Latvian capital Riga, a two-day blonde festival attempted to cheer up a country suffering from economic crisis. With a clueless Prime Minister and a loveless President running our show, the common man expects no such festival here. Since we are a ‘branded’ state, the learned bearded ones cannot possibly think along Baltic lines, however, the tired masses would not mind entertaining blonde thoughts in their most private black and white moments.

To spice up the occasion, the festival’s organiser, president of LAB (the Latvian Association of Blondes) included parties, a concert and a march of blonde women through Riga to prove that blondes can be independent and show initiative. We too had a march in our federal capital some years ago in which stick-wielding women wore black hijabs (lose outer garments) and niqabs (face-concealing garments) and wanted the rest of the women of the land to immediately become invisible by walking in their footsteps to revive the garments manufacturing industry.

Although the year of my retirement is far into the future, the blonde resort is scheduled to open by 2015. The project was officially unveiled at a party with—you guessed it—a blonde dress code in a nightclub. The over-excited reaction to such events of quite a few male tourists in Riga proved that female emancipation was never the thing that mattered. On a stag weekend, the police detained a young man because he stripped naked—courtesy of strong drinks—at a concert of blonde women in the Old Town. Although the Baltic blonde movement is designed to attract attention but it also has the potential of causing considerable damage to the region's dream of attracting sober tourists who feel repulsed by its unruly stag party image.

In short, the Lithuanian Olialia’s blonde scheme is a corporate reaction to the public jokes about Baltic blondes being less intelligent, and that is the reason they thought of creating a blonde business empire that intends to attract merrymakers by offering direct flights to the Maldives flown entirely by—get ready for this—blonde stewardesses and pilots.

What is a perfect gentleman to do now? I think I will discreetly whisper, without being suggestive, into the ear of my employer just one thing: host the next annual dinner at the proposed blonde island if you wish to boost employee morale and productivity.

First Anniversary Blog

It did not start with the flutter of butterflies and the appearance of rainbows, the desire to create my own blog sprang up because of a threatening situation.

I will not repeat here what I have already written in the blog’s sidebar (see ‘400 Volts Jolt’) but suffice to say that facing the imminent danger of having years of my work vanish overnight, on the night of 16 October 2009 I began to copy all the material from a certain website (which remains damned, literally and in the fullest literary sense).

As I did this, another writer who openly criticised the exploitive policies of western governments saw his work wiped off the same website’s archives. The website had hit back without a warning—much as I expected it would—where it hurt that writer most but it failed to injure me because I pressed the ejection button at the correct time. I also stopped contributing at the same website in order to concentrate on getting my own blog up and running.

It took me two full weeks to copy all my work and within a few days I learnt all I could about blogging. With conviction in what I wrote and a decent following to further encourage me, the timing was perfect for jettisoning the used first stage and propelling all efforts beyond cyberspace’s blogosphere.

On 02 February 2010, after a few months of beta testing, I announced my blog to the public. 8,900 hits later and having spent one year in the blogosphere, my work lives on the blog, categorized under the following three headings:

1. Chowk articles (things I had written since September 2000)
2. Chowk blogs
3. Blogs you’ll only find HERE

The last category caters to original material not published elsewhere on the internet.

The first blog came out on 04 February 2010 and whose title was a twist on Oscar Wilde’s famous quote ("That awful thing, a woman's memory!”): That Wonderful Thing

Right after announcing the blog I headed for FaceBook which undoubtedly helped attract more readers, many of whom I found interested in reading text more than a line long.

Even today the pessimists ask, “So, what exactly have you achieved with your dark socio-political satire?”

Do I need to prove through statistics what I have achieved? Must I look at people’s faces for a reward? The pessimists do not bore me; it is the naive optimists who provide me with satirical thoughts. Only if a certain intelligence agency, whose motto it has unfortunately become, does not interfere globally with the whole truth, ‘the truth shall set you free’.

It feels great to maintain a mailing list through which I am able to inform keen readers about new articles on my blog. The old layout and colour scheme recently received a complete makeover; the blog now has RSS (‘really simple syndication’ through which one can know, via the browser, whenever new material gets added) and Google chat too.

‘Writer’s Block’ is a terrible disease that seems to afflict almost every literary person at least once in a lifetime but perhaps by the word block, I do not mean stop or hinder but rather a chopping board of ideas. The blog is a record of my time, of thoughts turned into digital ones and zeros. They may not outlive the Egyptian hieroglyphics in terms of longevity but they will live until the globalists decide to end our freedom of speech picnic in cyberspace.

So how does it feel after having done it for a whole year? Wonderful is one word that comes to my mind. My blog has also very kindly been listed under the esteemed category of Webblogs/Think Tank at http://www.mazhar.dk/

I wish to sincerely thank all my readers and helpful friends who still visit my blog to comment on issues, and suggest changes in a well-behaved manner. I hope that you will continue to enjoy what I love writing about in this space.

Peace.

And now for the awards:

Most Visited And Commented Upon blog: Noah's Flood And The 9/11 Eid

Top Referring URL: http://www.mazhar.dk/

Top Referring Website: Facebook

Windows Users: 93%, Mac Users: 3%

Country That Most Reads My Blog is: USA (Pakistan is 2nd, England 3rd and India 4th)

Most Interesting Keyword Search: “what does TGH mean”

How NOT To Breast-Feed Foreigners

Thanks to all the foreign aid flowing out of the pockets of western taxpayers and the spins the media conglomerates create, Democracy is steadily taking root, of all the places, in the Middle East. While bearded Arab men are happy wearing abayas (Arab dress) and darting nowhere in their customized sports cars, the ladies are unhappy being mere buyers of Gucci bags and French makeup paraphernalia; the latter now want driving licenses in a certain country that does not permit them to drive.

The women’s plan is very cute by Arab standards; they will launch a campaign under a novel slogan: "We must either be allowed to drive or breastfeed foreigners".

Breastfeed foreigners?—we have no such precedent in the entire human history, leave alone that of monotheistic religions. With the annual Muslim pilgrimage around the corner, the ladies could not have chosen a better time to press on with such a demand. For the clean-shaven rulers, it is a worrisome trend because such overt protests are unheard of in the ultra-orthodox Arab land.

Gulf News has already reported that ‘women intend to turn a controversial fatwa (religious ruling) to their advantage and launch a campaign to achieve their long-standing demand to drive in a conservative Muslim country whose name we shall not mention lest our hunting grounds lose monetary patronage of these oft-invited dignitaries.

“If our demand is not met, we’ll follow through the fatwa which allows us to breastfeed our drivers and turn them into our sons”, said a veiled woman.

A housewife commented, “Our decision follows a fatwa issued by a renowned scholar who said that ‘women can breastfeed their foreign drivers for them to become their sons’, and since every family here needs a driver, our campaign will focus on women's right to drive.”

Who issued this strange fatwa? It was a member of the council of senior scholars and an adviser to the ruler, who sparked this interesting debate. With such a controversial ruling emerging from under the Shaikh’s abaya, I do not see the man remain an advisor to the ruler for long.

The Shaikh said, “Our women can breastfeed their foreign drivers for them to be become their sons and brothers to their daughters. Women can breastfeed mature men so that they become their sons. In this way, they can mix with their daughters without violating the teachings of Islam.”

Nevertheless, what does it mean? As understood by the female population, under this all-new relationship, foreign drivers can mix freely with all members of a family without breaking the local rule, which does not allow mixing of genders. Breast milk kinship is considered to be as good as a blood relationship in Islam but never equal in status. Adopted sons can never usurp the rights of real sons, rules the Qur’an.

Interestingly, the Shaikh based his fatwa on a Hadith (saying) of the Prophet Mohammad (peace on him) which was narrated by Saleem, the servant of Abu Huzaifa. Later, the Shaikh clarified that his ‘fatwa was distorted by the local media which ignored the condition that the milk should be drawn out of the woman and given to the man in a cup to drink’.

“The fatwa is ridiculous and weird, and it has become a hot topic of debate among women. Is this is all that is left to us to do: to give our breasts to the foreign drivers?” said a number of local women speaking to Gulf News while condemning the fatwa.

Another woman questioned, "Does Islam allow me to breastfeed a foreign man and prevent me from driving my own car? I have not even breastfed my own children, how do you expect me to do this with a foreign man? What is this nonsense? The fatwa should also apply to the husbands who should be breastfed by housemaids. By doing so, all will be brothers and sisters.”

A female Arab writer sarcastically asked the Shaikh, "Can the women breastfeed the driver in the presence of their husbands or can they do this alone? Who will protect the wife if the husband entered the house unexpectedly and found his wife breastfeeding the driver?"

It all started when Dr. Izzat Attya who is the head of the department of Hadith in Al-Azhar, which is the world’s most prestigious Islamic University, issued a fatwa (religious opinion) which declared it 'legitimate for a working Muslim woman to breast-feed her male colleague to avoid the sin of khulwa (staying with a stranger in one room).’ Many shaikhs in Middle-Eastern countries have issued similar fatwas in the past by, but this is the first time it has come from a high-level academic of Al-Azhar.

However, there is more to the story, a journalist for an electronic newspaper recalled how an Egyptian driver got infatuated with a female teacher he drove to school daily and finally asked her to breastfeed him. When she retorted angrily, he said, "I want to be your son."

Since Shakespeare claimed ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned’, one must never underestimate the wrath of repressed women. In the preceding paragraphs, we have read how they have mockingly challenged the so-called religious ruling. Handing out driving licenses to chained women might be wiser; having hungry hordes of male drivers at one’s doorsteps lining up to be bottle-fed with mother’s milk is the folly of the century.

After having read the ladies’ comments, I think I now need to retire as a satirist. These are dangerous times for the affluent inhabitants of Pakistan and India, and my advice is to examine all applicants for the domestic position of a chauffeur. Earlier, one needed to worry about their salaries, the food and accommodation, but now one might need to consider their craving for mother’s milk.

I believe hordes of jobless drivers from the Indo-Pakistan region will now begin to beg for cups full of adopted mothers’ milk and work permits since nobody told the poor old Shaikh that milk does not ooze from women’s breasts on men’s or the government’s demands. In any case, women have breasts placed on women’s bodies for the nourishment of infants; their being small or over-sized need not bother grown men. As a man, if you do not believe me, ask any infant who can speak. But then infants are clever little angels who remain mum over matters relating to breast-feeding mummies.

Noah’s Flood And The 9/11 Eid

For some odd reason everyone spells it as ‘Eid’ but I prefer E’ed, just as I prefer spelling ‘Quaid-e-Azam’ as Qaid-e-Azam and ‘Haque’ as Haq. Spelling choices aside, I wish all the readers a very happy Eid.

Before I went to the mosque this E’ed morning, I sent nearly two hundred short messages through the mobile phone to all the relatives and friends. Thus far, I have received almost a hundred reciprocal greetings. Back in the old days, we bought E’ed cards for the near and dear ones, wrote inside the cards what we truly felt and went down to the post office to affix real stamps on the envelopes. Now everything is boringly instantaneous and digital. They claim digital is convenient but I say it is impersonal and most of what one does is destined for the computer’s recycle bin. Hence, when I delete all those E’ed messages sent to me, I cannot ever pull some nice cards out from the cupboard twenty years later and wonder how life was in 2010.

People seldom get creative with prayers so they sent me ‘showers of blessings’ and ‘unlimited bounties of God’. My original SMS to them was simple: "Have a sober E’ed. Too many blessings are a test". Actually, none of them saw in my message what I wished to convey and continued sending me tried and tested replies. The odd thing was that as I stepped into the shower, I could feel the spray of blessings—less the Bounty chocolates. On this E’ed, the Imam (prayer leader) for the E’ed prayers only asked the good Lord for forty-nine items; last year I counted sixty-five must-have things. I uttered a quiet ‘Aameen’ to most of his demands, and at some I smiled because God Almighty could not be expected to grant us world domination while we gleefully disobeyed His direct orders.

Nevertheless, really, is there festivity around us? Last night I drove down to the old city and noticed that the roads had a haunted look. Up until last year, one found it hard to move about due to late night traffic congestion—such would be the festive mood. The shoppers’ attendance at the malls was thin and perhaps the urban population, tired of giving to the flood victims, preferred staying indoors due to the fear of facing explosive terrorism at crowded places.

In addition, exactly nine years after American 9/11 (‘good for Israel’) happened, Muslims are celebrating E’ed on September 11. Some will mourn, the rest will rejoice, this is the way of the world. An American pastor is dilly-dallying whether he ought to publicly burn copies of the Qur’an to protest against 911 (actually, to enrage Muslims globally), while NATO soldiers in Afghanistan have killed Muslim protestors; such is the ebb and flow of Time. As for the recent flood in Pakistan, the citizens and the foreigners are quite tired of handing out aid because disaster after disaster follows us around.

A German friend asked, “I contributed one hundred Euros; what if you face the same situation next year and the year after that?”

I had no satisfactory answer to the pointed query; indeed our aid-fed government failed us five years ago when a massive earthquake shook Pakistan’s northern areas. The government did not rebuild, it gobbled up aid, it became a spectator to the irony of free aid items sold openly on the streets, and it did nothing to prepare us for the next jolt.

We have the flood now that has drowned out nearly half of Pakistan, destroying standing crops, separating children from parents, killing relentlessly, and causing millions to assume the status of displaced persons. I wonder if the media is really helping the situation with its neck-breaking headlines. The TV anchors, interruptive and loud as they are, seek opinions of the ignorant who utter a now familiar mantra: “Nobody from the government is here to help us!”

The government cannot survey and airdrop aid packets over such a large expanse of land unless it utilizes all its resources that are being utilized to serve Project American Wet Dream. I wonder what happened in the Mogul era. Did the rural folks send carrier pigeons with SOS messages tied to their feet or did they despatch fast horse riders to Delhi—the seat of power—to seek royal flood relief? No, nothing of the sort happened because after many months when the news probably reached the royal ears, the reagent regarded it as punishment meted out by the Hand of God to sinners; the most that he probably did for them was forego the agricultural tax for a year. And people fended for themselves or emigrated to get their lives back in shape.

In this age, our government requires a huge machinery to run—one that runs us over every step of the way to real progress. Members of provincial and national assemblies and senators with dubious educational qualifications need to be bottle fed with perquisites such as armed guards, bulletproof cars, protocol services, foreign tours, and free pilgrimage trips to the Holy land. Petty bickering, inter-departmental squabbling, idiotic participation in the G-WOE (America’s Global War of Error), and the inability to pass a single law with unanimity which might uplift the condition of the downtrodden, these are only some of the favourite things these men do non-stop for themselves at a great cost to the exchequer.

Is there a God Perspective to the flood? The destruction appears to be a repeat telecast of the pre-historic flood of Prophet Noah (Nuh). It is clear that sinners do not mean much to the Creator, and though we see their sobbing faces on the television day and night, let us see what might be their intentional and unintentional sins.

To begin with: murderous family feuds that span over decades; property disputes that feed the lengthy and costly legal system; committing ‘shirk’ (creating partners with God) by begging dead saints for help (this is the only sin that is marked out as ‘unpardonable by God’ in the Qur’an); never questioning those they help into offices; always voting the same looters into power; not moving together as a nation, and siding with the enemies of the country and religion. Have we missed something?

So how does God really see the violators? His Word is the command and let there be no doubt that the Word right now is: DESTROY. When the character of a nation fits into each abominable definition given in the Qur’an and it remains heedless and unrepentant, no matter how much one prays for the welfare of this Islamic state, God will do what He has promised the rebellious. To ask Him for the forgiveness of sinners attracts even more Wrath.

“How can that be?” you might ask. The Qur’an explains the entire moral lesson in the following verses from chapter 11:

(11:42) At that [moment] Noah cried out to a son of his, who had kept himself aloof [from the others]: "O my dear son! Embark with us, and remain not with those who deny the truth!"

(11:43) [But the son] answered: "I shall betake myself to a mountain that will protect me from the waters." Said [Noah]: "Today there is no protection [for anyone] from God's judgment, save [for] those who have earned [His] mercy!"
And a wave rose up between them, and [the son] was among those who were drowned.

(11:44) And the word was spoken: "O earth, swallow up thy waters! And, O sky, cease [thy rain]!" And the waters sank into the earth, and the will [of God] was done, and the ark came to rest on Mount Judi.
And the word was spoken: "Away with these evildoing folk!"

(11:45) And Noah called out to his Sustainer, and said: "O my Sustainer! Verily, my son was of my family; and, verily, Thy promise always comes true, and Thou art the most just of all judges!"

(11:46) [God] answered: "O Noah, behold, he was not of thy family, for, verily, he was unrighteous in his conduct. And thou shalt not ask of Me anything whereof thou canst not have any knowledge. Thus, behold, do I admonish thee lest thou become one of those who are unaware [of what is right].”

(11:47) Said [Noah]: "O my Sustainer! Verily, I seek refuge with Thee from [ever again] asking of Thee anything whereof I cannot have any knowledge! For unless Thou grant me forgiveness and bestow Thy mercy upon me, I shall be among the lost!"

There you have it, plain and simple from the Creator Himself! To expound upon in detail the entire moral lesson will require one more article on this site—something that I am better off postponing until the next ‘natural disaster’. Now, by quoting the above verses, I do not advocate that the rural majority be left alone to die helplessly; surely, there are innocent and pious people amongst them. The question now is not how do we understand God’s family planning move but rather how do we brace ourselves against repeated punishments?

Shall we ask the djinns, which the fake holy men claim they control, to build us dams and reservoirs overnight? Should we not repair and fortify our extensive irrigation system? Must all of us pay yet more taxes to the flooded folks—something that we did in the past to help East Pakistanis (now Bangladeshis)? Even Bangladesh has announced it will build more dams and reclaim land from the sea. India already has dozens of dams with their spillways pointed at us—just in case we refuse to watch Bollywood-meets-Hollywood movies.

Billions of tons of river water empties itself in the Indian Ocean each year during the monsoon season, how can we harness water to generate hydel power and also use it for humans and plants alike? We need huge foreign investment, which means more compound interest, more economic subjugation and gradual destruction. The real landholders in this country are the feudal families whose hold over the poor farmers has remained unchallenged ever since 1947. Many of these lustful families have destroyed their adversaries’ lands by diverting floodwaters to save their own palaces and cultivable areas. In addition, the foreign aid the politicians shamelessly seek in our name is actually the bribery of foreign governments who push their satanic agendas in regions they have no business being in. These and nothing else are the bitter facts.

Do I have a grand solution then, a Moses’ like strategy that liberates my people? Thinkers need not be confused with doers.

A Face-Saving Light

Yes, it has been a while since I have posted a blog here; thinking takes time and effort.

This is the month of Ramadan (Muslims remain without food and water from before dawn until sunset) and with so much happening in the world, sometimes it is hard to pick the subject for a fresh blog. Hence, I do not face a writer’s block but only fatigue that requires rest. The Eid festival marks the end of the month long fasting, which is announced upon sighting the crescent for the Islamic month of Shawwal. For all religious events, Muslims follow the lunar calendar.

First came, the awful monsoon floods and all the destruction whose bill we all will be paying for the next few years. Then we saw the Sialkot killings of two young boys. And the cricket scandal in England in which Pakistani players were allegedly involved in shady deals. Just last night, multiple suicide attacks took place in Lahore and Karachi in which scores of Shi’a Muslims died or got injured while attending Ali ibn Abi Talib’s death anniversary. Considering the security situation, they all should have stayed home instead of publicly mourning the slaying of a great figure of Islam.

So what do we have here? One fifth of Pakistan is under water, the judicial system is in dire straits, our food chain is quite literally broken, flood-effected people are homeless, thousands are feared missing, out of frustration some are lynching others or attacking the custodians of law, suicide bombers are exploding themselves, doctors are getting themselves beaten up for professional negligence, and inflation is getting out of control. But do we not have broadband internet and FaceBook?

Does it not feel as if everybody wants to migrate to America? No, that is not true, no matter how much the ex-pats weep for their ex-compatriots; 170 million people still live here without having Green Cards. The end of the world is not around the corner and I tell the morose that despondency is never a problem-solver. Not crutches, but self-help is the answer; holding one’s proud head high is the solution. While the poor remain more patient and patriotic, the rich elites repeatedly sell them off to the lowest bidder.

And life goes on. Fashion show catwalks are alive with party animals, and a hundred TV channels continue spewing worthless breaking news. These news updates break peoples’ emotional backs because after sampling a dose, one feels like breaking open the skulls of the fast-talking presenters and those of the worthless commentators. Not much will be done, yet everything gets airplay for hours.

The mosques here are so full of the faithful these days, more so in the nights, because everyone is busy finding the elusive Night of Destiny (Laylat al-Qadr) during the last ten odd nights of Ramadan. The Qur’an claims in Chapter 97, verse 3: “The Night of Destiny is better than a thousand months” because messenger Muhammad (peace on him) received his first revelations through angel Gabriel.

At the cost of admitting personal failure, I have not found one such night. I asked a friend if he had found it and he admitted he had. Then he narrated a Ramadan night’s tale.

“I saw a strange beautiful light envelope me for a few minutes around dawn. It wasn’t the sun or the stars, just milky white light that nobody else saw. I went to a holy man later on and he confirmed that I had been blessed”, he claimed.

As I probed his mind regarding the effect the light might have had on his life and on those around him, he became irritable and lost all composure that one expected from an almost holy man. Soon thereafter, I left him alone, for he was a lost man who needed to find a truer night than the one that he claimed he had seen.

It is getting dark now and I must switch on the lights around the house; these will be energy-saving lights. I must work hard in my laboratory to soon invent face-saving lights.