And which of the Mercies of your Sustainer will you deny

"There is always the miracle of the by-products. Plane a board, the shavings accumulate around your toes ready to be chucked into the stove to kindle your fires (to warm your toes so that you can plane a board). Draw some milk from a creature to relieve her fullness, the milk goes to the little pig to relieve his emptiness. Drain some oil from a crankcase, and you smear it on the roosts to control the mites. The worm fattens on the apple, the young goose fattens on the wormy fruit, the man fattens on the young goose, the worm awaits the man. Clean up the barnyard, the pulverized dung from the sheep goes to improve the lawn (before a rain in autumn); mow the lawn next spring, the clippings go to the compost pile, with a few thrown to the baby chickens on the way; spread the compost on the garden and in the fall the original dung, after many vicissitudes, returns to the sheep in the form of an old squash. From the fireplace, at the end of a November afternoon, the ashes are carried to the feet of the lilac bush, guaranteeing the excellence of a June morning."

- E B White, January 1943

Portrait of a Young Girl Raped at a Suburban Party

And after this quick bash in the dark
You will rise and go
Thinking of how empty you have grown
And of whether all the evening's care in front of mirrors
And the younger boys disowned
Led simply to this.

Confined to what you are expected to be
By what you are
Out in the frozen garden
You shiver and vomit -
Frightened, drunk among trees,
You wonder at how those acts that called for tenderness
Were far from tender.

Now you have left your titterings about love
And your childishness behind you
Yet still far from being old
You spew up among flowers
And in the warm stale rooms
The party continues.

It seems you saw some use in moving away
From that group of drunken lives
Yet already ten minutes pregnant
In twenty thousand you might remember
This party
This dull Saturday night
When planets rolled out of your eyes
And splashed down in suburban grasses.

- Brian Patten

Unclaimed Body No 16

". . . From the reigning sex symbol of Bollywood in the 1970s, all that identifies Parveen Wali Mohammad Khan Babi alias Parveen Babi (55) as she lies in the Cooper hospital morgue, is the tag on her toe left by the police — Token No 62.

Given her status as a yesteryear film star, the only luxury afforded to her in the morgue is a trolley on which her body lies.

The other 15 unclaimed bodies are of persons involved in road and train accidents and have been packed in broken wooden boxes in the next room.

“We will wait for seven days for someone to claim her body,” said Amitav Gupta, deputy commissioner of police. Under the law, the husband and the children have the first claim on a woman’s dead body, followed by parents.

If they are dead, siblings can also claim the body. If no surviving relatives are willing to claim the body, friends can apply to the police and claim the body to conduct the funeral rites. In case no genuine claims are received in seven days, the police will bury the body.

As of Saturday night, there were two claimants to the body. Late comedian Mehmood’s younger brother Anwar Mehmood. “She was like a sister,” Anwar told the police.

Filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt, who had a relationship with the actress, also said, “I have just sent a message to Javed Ahmed that in case no one claims her body and it doesn’t legally violate any clauses, I will give her a dignified funeral. I only met her mother when she was alive and I did hear of a distant cousin, but I don’t know of any other relationship that she had.”

The body of the actress was discovered by the police in Palm Beach Rivera building flat, Juhu on Saturday afternoon, after the neighbours complained of foul stench emitting from the seventh floor flat.

ACP Gahininath Nimgaonkar of Zone Nine said that the police had to use duplicate keys to enter the flat. “We discovered the body of Parveen Babi, who was dressed casually in off-white long shorts and a top, lying face up in the bedroom. There were no signs of any struggle or foul play. She had a bandage on her left foot, that she had put on, to treat her gangrene which had resulted from a long ailment of diabetes."

“There were untouched newspapers, eggs and milk lying outside the door for the last two days. Initially we did not take the issue very seriously as Babi was a recluse and would often be locked inside the flat for days without interacting with anyone. Our concern grew when no one responded to the doorbell,” said M S Malhotra, a fourth-floor resident.

Malhotra added that in the last 20 years, she must have seen the actress not more than 15 times. “We all knew that Babi was suffering from psychological problems. [Parveen Babi suffered from paranoid schizophrenia.] Things took a turn for the worst when she lost her mother, who was her sole companion, a couple of years ago. In the last couple of months, she could barely walk, even with the aid of crutches,” she said.

Babi had been living alone ever since and had refused to appoint even a maidservant to do the household chores, evident from the mess in her flat.

Even the staff of Juhu police station, often harassed by calls from Babi, would not have anticipated her lonely demise. The actress was notorious for calling the police at all hours, complaining that her former co-stars were tormenting her. “Once she had also complained that the CIA was out to get her,” said senior inspector Shyam Chavan of Juhu police station. The calls had substantially reduced in recent times.

“Prima facie, the death seems to have occurred 24 hours before her body was discovered as it shows initial signs of decomposition,” said forensic doctors Dr Shivaji Kachre and Dr B S Shinde who conducted the autopsy. “She has a diabetic gangrene on her left foot,” the doctor added.

The autopsy also found alcohol content in her stomach and the viscera has been sent for a chemical analysis report to rule out foul play, the doctor said. The cause of the death has now been kept reserved. “Her right leg was swollen and her face puffed. This indicates that her kidney, liver and other vital organs had stopped functioning,” said Dr Kachre, “Her heart was abnormal.”

---

I don't know how many of the readers here would know who Parveen Babi was. If you've seen Deewaar or Amar Akbar Anthony, she's the lady with Amitabh Bachchan. Parveen Babi was quite a name in her day, a very attractive lady who projected a sort of bohemian, free-spirited identity. Or at least that's what the press made her out to be and the public bought it. No one knew the truth of her schizophrenia until after she'd left acting and moved out of the public eye. By then people had found other faces to adore and other images to aspire to and were quite content to leave Parveen Babi to deal with her own demons. It's disgusting really how we reduce other people to satisfy our own desires.

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry

Just finished reading Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. It's a rare book. Make sure you read it.

Eid Mubarak

Wishing you all and your families a very mubarak Eid. Insha-ALLAH, hope you have a great day.

The Mercy of God

If any of you guys have seen the movie City of God, you'll remember the narrator, a black boy called Rocket. There's a guy who comes to our mosque who looks a lot like him. Every time I see him I think of Rocket and that movie, with its fierce carnal pitch and its hysterical brutality. And then I see this young man quietly standing in line for prayer, submitting gracefully to his Sustainer and I can't help wonder at the Mercy and Providence of God. Where would we be without Him?

Alone

"When I'm alone"—the words tripped off his tongue
As though to be alone were nothing strange.
"When I was young," he said; "when I was young..."

I thought of age, and loneliness, and change.
I thought how strange we grow when we're alone,
And how unlike the selves that meet and talk,
And blow the candles out, and say good night.

Alone... The word is life endured and known.
It is the stillness where our spirits walk
And all but inmost faith is overthrown.

- Siegfried Sassoon

Mogambo passes away

Amrish Puri: 1932-2005

We are responsible for what we do

"Satan's influence" on man is not the primary cause of sin but its first consequence: that is to say, a consequence of a person's own attitude of mind which in moments of moral crisis induces him to choose the easier, and seemingly more pleasant, of the alternatives open to him, and thus to become guilty of sin, whether by commission or omission. Thus, God's "causing" a person to commit a sin is conditional upon the existence, in the individual concerned, of an attitude of mind which makes him prone to commit such a sin: which, in its turn, presupposes man's free will - that is, the ability to make, within certain limitations, a conscious choice between two or more possible courses of action.

- Muhammad Asad, The Message of the Quran

Shame

I thought I had a bad day today and then we sat down to watch the news after dinner . . .

Ya Allah, please forgive me for my arrogance!