About The Knee-Jerk

Knee-jerk, the phenomenon:

Knee-jerk is an involuntary reflex jerking of the leg when knee is hit. By the definition of reflex action the muscle is bound to react the same way every time it is hit and is totally uncontrollable by will.

Knee-jerk, the lifestyle:

In my childhood there was an ad to encourage the consumption of iodized salt in order to control mental and physical weaknesses in children which opened with the catchy line of a worried mother of a child: ‘Maira bacha aisa kion hey? (Why is my child like this?). On the same note it has now become second nature of almost all Pakistanis to think about Pakistan in same terms i.e. why is my country like this?

I have found answer to this questions in the phenomenon of knee-jerk. A quick analysis of major decisions made by Pakistan-as a nation- will reveal that these decisions were nothing more than a reflex response to the situation at hand i. e. a mere knee-jerk. This attitude towards personal and societal life is at work most of the time during our daily lives at personal and professional level as well. So I believe it is our knee-jerk lifestyle that makes us what we are. 

What's in here?

My favourite quotation about blogging is: ' whatever you want to bitch about, you can bitch at way larger scale by writing a blog about it.'

So there will be a lot of variety of topics here and you are invited to participate. I will love to see how you find my bitching. 

About Me

Born and raised in Pakistan, (and yet) I am a patriot at heart. I like to analyse events in terms of similes and I can be very talkative about some topics. Most of all, I love to stay optimistic and positive. More about me will follow in coming posts, after all it is a personal blog ;)

The story of a dream that should not come true

Like every normal human being, I have to-do lists. Being a chronic procrastinator,  I keep such lists in the darkest corner of my heart/brain/whatever. Moreover, I take every possible step to postpone working on items enlisted on these lists as much as I can. Creating a blog has been one occupant of that dark corner since many years. Then one day I had a dream that turned my dark corner upside down and stopped me from postponing the blog any more.

The dream goes like this: I have been diagnosed with cancer and I don’t have much hope of surviving. I'm wearing a hospital gown, sitting in a wheel chair which my (dead in reality) uncle is pushing. He is taking me to the operation theatre where I am about to undergo a very complicated procedure and I just know it in my heart that I won’t make it. What makes this dream even more depressing is that I have my laptop in my lap while I'm being taken to the operation theatre and I am writing a blog on it. Just before I pass the door of operation theatre  I press enter to publish my first blog and then think to myself: well I've at least realised one of my long awaited ambitions before I die.

I don’t know about impartial readers, but this was the most motivating and eye opening dream that I ever had. My temptation to write this blog right now (3:00 AM in the morning) is to thank God that I'm not writing it while being taken for my last medical (unsuccessful) procedure.

I never thought of beginning my blogging with this kind of sad/weird piece but after years of experimenting I've found that my strategy of starting my blogging career with a perfect piece of writing isn't going to work. So I guess you’ll have to come back to find more about me and this blog because in coming posts I intend to formally introduce “knee-jerk”, its underlying purpose, and all other formal introductory stuff.

Listening to Alice of Wonderland

“Begin at the beginning,” the king said, very gravely, “and go on till you come to the end: then stop”.

I've tried to follow this advice very sincerely but I just couldn't find ‘the beginning’. Hence I concluded that this advice was not meant for me. So I devised another way to get going: “begin at the middle,” said I, “and then gradually work towards both ends one by one: then stop”.

So this is the middle of nowhere where I am beginning my blog today.