Structure and Coherence? Meh.

For the past few years, I've found myself to be rather fascinated by
eastern poetry and literature. Tagore and Gibran enrapture and humble
me. Bulleh Shah and Omer Khayyam lighten my spirit and mood. Faiz and
Ghalib make me smile in their sweet bitterness. Rumi reminds me how
large my smallness is.
Life for the past year or so has been hectic. When I'm not under
chronic surveilance at work, I'm either working on getting my own
business rolling or sweating it out at the gym. Needless to say, the
current 18 hour workday, six days a week doesn't leave too much room
for intellectual stimulation.
I find myself thirsting for my muse, and my muse finds herself
thirsting for inspiration. And my heart lusts for a little alone-time
that coincides with free-time.
Xeb once recognized that there is far too much Urdu/punjabi literature
that us bit accessable to people like me dye to the language barrier.
The biggest names are mostly available, but there are many other
amazing writers that are either too recent or too obscure (when
compared to the likes of the above-mentioned writers) to warrant a
retired brigadier's or caucasion linguist's attention.
This is not fair. Not fair at all.
Punjabi, with all of it's rustic and charming proverbs and expressions
is largely regarded as a dying language.
This is strange since the language has millions of speakers as well as
an established (and from what I've heard- vibrant) department in the
country's largest university.
To go off on a tangent, academia largely ignores it's ability to
influence the present in significant and immediate terms. Despite the
fact that business and engineering universities are working more
actively towards establishing a mechanism between themselves and
industry, where is art and literature? Why are there no attempts to
make the work of these writers available in the world's most
widespread language?
Economics and commercialism may be the muscle of a country, but art is
the soul.
We are a people who almost invariably want to dance wildly in the
rain, who express love and pleasure with expressions of coolness
rather than warmth. We, who have poets that move mountains in four-
line couplets and create characters who face hell for a moments
peace... That is part of who we are.
When we forget that, we become just another homogenous product. A can
of coke or a big mac that tastes exactly the same whether you're in
New York or the Old City of Lahore.
I speak not of ethnocentrism or xenophobia, but of having something to
contribute in this beautiful process of cultural mingling.
I speak of having an identity to share.