Love Quotes by Kahlil Gibran

When love beckons to you, follow him........................

When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams
as the north wind lays waste the garden.

For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.

Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.
He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God's sacred feast.

All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life's heart.

But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor,
Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.
Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;
For love is sufficient unto love.

When you love you should not say, "God is in my heart," but rather, "I am in the heart of God."
And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.

Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.

O Lal Meri Pat - Dama Dam Mast Qalandar

This has been one of my favorite nos. I have been humming this for years now. It has been a hot favorite with all singers, notably qawwals and these days the reality show contestants. Some of the known names who have lent their voice to this - Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Abida Parveen, Madam Noor Jehan, Wadali Brothers, Reshma, Sabri Brothers, Jagjit Singh, Runa Laila, Lata Mangeshkar, bands like Junoon and this list endlessly goes on. Many college bands have attempted this giving a rock flavour. That, one song could be so popular amongst so many, I wondered, what this song is all about, what's its true meaning. This and last week I spent looking for all the versions and answers to my questions. What a fascinating and satisfying journey it has been.

This song is in the honor of Sufi mystic 'Hazrat Lal Shahbaz Qalandar'. Every word of his name has a meaning - he was known as Hazrat ( prophet of GOD ), Lal ( he wore red robes or mothers fondly call their kids as Lal ), Shahbaz ( Shah - King and Baz - Falcon, king of falcons and an Iranian GOD who led them to victory, a divine spirit ), and finally Qalandar ( a qalandari - a sufi saint, poet, mystic, noble man ). He settled in Serwan ( Sindh, now in Pak ) and tried bringing peace between Hindus and Muslims. Hindus regard him as GOD and reincarnate as well. You can hear many Punjabi singers, singing in his praise. He is also fondly called as Jhulelal.

So the song goes like this :

O laal meri pat rakhio bala jhoole laalan, Sindri da Sehvan da, sakhi Shabaaz kalandar, Dama dam mast kalandar, Ali dam dam de andar

(O the red robed, May I always have your benign protection, Jhulelal (as he was affectionately called ). O, the lord,the friend and the Sire of Sindh and Sehwan ( or Serwan ),The red robed God-intoxicated Qalandar, The lord in every breath of mine, glory unto to you)

Chaar charaag tere baran hamesha, Panjwa mein baaran aayi bala jhoole laalan
O panjwa mein baaran, O panjwa mein baaran aayi bala jhoole laalan, Sindri da Sehvan da, sakhi Shabaaz Qalandar, Dama dam mast Qalandar, Ali dam dam de andar

(Your shrine is always lighted with four lamps, And here I come to light a fifth lamp in your honor )

Hind Sind ( some also sing Ghanan ghanan ) peera teri naubat vaaje, Naal vaje ghadiyaal bala jhoole laalan, O naal vaje, O naal vaje ghadiyaal bala jhoole laalan
Sindri da Sehvan da sakhi Shabaaz Qalandar, Dama dam mast kalandar, ali dam dam de andar, Dama dam mast Qalandar.

(Let your heroic name ring out in Hind & Sindh ( or lets the gongs bell loud ), Let the gong ring loud for your glory day and night by the people ( ghariyal - watchman, symbolism of night )

Har dam peera teri khair hove, Naam-e-ali beda paar laga jhoole laalan, O naam-e-ali, O naam-e-ali beda paar laga jhoole laalan, Sindri da sehvan da sakhi Shabaaz Qalandar, Dama dam mast Qalandar, Ali dam dam de andar

( O Lord, may you prevail everytime, everywhere, I pray of oyur well being, In the name of Ali, I pray to you to help my boat cross (the river of life) in safety)

After learning the meaning, the fondness for this song has grown multifold. I have attached clippings of various singers. You will thouroughly enjoy all the renderings. I have a special mention for the one from Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan from his young days and the young Abida Parveen.
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Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan – see music breaking religious barriers – See the Sikhs getting intoxicated with this music



Madam Noor Jehan – See the class



Reshma – See the simplicity



Abida Parveen - See the divinity



Abida Parveen – In her younger days - truly majestic



Band Junoon – See the contemporary



College of Wooster students – popular amongst students – hear the band wow



Shrine of Saint himself - Lal Shahbaz Qalandar



Sabri Brothers - favorite of qawwals



See this – awesome – Janice Miller an American singing for Jagjit singh – see even Jagjit singh dancing - what a video



Lord belongs to everyone - Sindhi dhamal gathering - lighter note



Qalandari Dhamal – Gulbahar Bano, Saraiki

WINDOWS 7

Windows 7 could be one of Microsoft's greatest operating systems, if it fulfills the promise shown by the unofficial beta version (build 7000) we have been testing for the past couple of days.

Let me preface these quick impressions of Redmond's latest opus by saying that I came to Windows 7 after having happily run the much-maligned Windows Vista on my Intel Core 2 Duo-based PC for the past 4 months.

I found Vista to be a worthy upgrade from Windows XP SP2. Despite its obvious flaws and the acknowledgement that some of its features need to be disabled by default, Vista at heart is a much more stable and usable operating system than XP, which was first released in 2001.

The release of Service Pack 1 and gradual driver improvements have built on Microsoft's somewhat-shaky Vista beginning.

Coming from this background, I have been pleased to discover over the past several days that Microsoft appears to have built on Vista's strengths and addressed most of its weaknesses with the beta release of Windows 7.

I found the a painless install. Out-of-the-box driver support on our test machine was perfect, and it took only half an hour and two quick reboots to begin running a stable desktop environment, though we wondered why Windows 7 created a 200MB partition in addition to its main partition. The 33MB of updates quickly came down the pipe upon loading the desktop.

Basic desktop performance was strong; the reports that Windows 7 is simply faster than Vista appear to be true. Certainly, Windows 7 had no problem simultaneously installing and launching applications, downloading files, browsing the Web, and carrying out other tasks on our modest 2.8GHz Pentium 4, which has only an 80GB IDE hard disk and 512MB of RAM.

Vista's most visible annoyance, User Account Control, has been pared right back on its default setting, and we encountered it only a couple of times throughout a whole morning of installing applications. However, if you feel nostalgic for UAC's old behavior, you can easily change it back via Windows 7's new Action Center, which now centralizes all of the security updates and warning alerts that Windows throws your way.

Windows 7 recommended that we install a third-party antivirus package (it suggested Kaspersky and AVG), but its antispyware package Defender comes preinstalled. Microsoft appears to have an antivirus package installed under the hood; when downloading new software with Firefox, we were told that our downloads were being scanned for viruses.

I particularly like the new photo-realistic device icons, and the overhaul of the way Windows handles and ejects USB storage devices. Microsoft appears to have wiped out a lot of the Windows XP-era interface quirks of Vista; the result is a much more simplistic, unified experience for common tasks.

I also enjoyed the overhaul of the Windows taskbar, especially the slick graphics, but a bug prevented us from being able to use the preview function (it showed a black rectangle instead), and you'll want to play with the taskbar settings to get this piece of the Windows 7 puzzle just right. It's easy to get minimized windows mixed up with launcher buttons, for example.

I want to stress that we didn't test the Windows 7 beta exhaustively, and business users will need to closely examine deployment software and how the operating system integrates into their existing environments, as well as its ability to work well with third-party software. For example, we couldn't get Adobe Systems' Creative Suite 3 to install on Windows 7 beta; the installer told us we needed to quit Internet Explorer first.

But perhaps the most important thing to note about the software is that at first glance, it has much more of that nebulous "Windows XP feel" than Vista ever did. Even on our modest machine, Windows 7 didn't thrash the hard disk or ever feel unresponsive, except when we were installing Apple's iTunes, a notorious pain on Windows systems.

In general, this signals that Microsoft has spent a lot of effort with Windows 7 on delivering a solid operating system that won't "wow" anyone but will satisfy them on a much deeper level. In other words, just what the doctor--and the customers--ordered.

recession

in economics, a downward trend in the business cycle characterized by a decline in production and employment, which in turn causes the incomes and spending of households to decline. Even though not all households and businesses experience actual declines in income, their expectations about the future become less certain during a recession and cause them to delay making large purchases or investments.

In recessions, the decline in output can be traced to a reduction in purchases of durable household goods by consumers and of machinery and equipment by businesses, and a reduction in additions of goods to stocks or inventories. The greatest effect is probably on inventory; businesses stop adding to their inventories and become more willing to draw on them to fill production orders. Inventory declines thus have a double impact on production volume.

Whether a recession develops into a severe and prolonged depression depends on a number of circumstances. Among them are the extent and quality of credit extended during the previous period of prosperity, the amount of speculation permitted, the ability of monetary policy and fiscal policy to reverse the downward trend, and the amount of excess productive capacity in existence.