Of a Story Thief

I've moved.

2010-07-03T23:38:00.000+05:00

http://moonchacha.wordpress.com/

A Day in the Life

2010-06-21T01:39:00.002+05:00

Ali had tuned his girlfriend out. The last he had listened she had been talking about Gaza and a panic attack she had experienced a year ago and how, she believed, the two linked together. It was not like what she was talking about bored him. On the contrary, he found it extremely interesting. Interesting enough, in fact, for him to Google the Gaza issue and anxiety disorders while still providing cursory verbal cues in to his phone’s receiver for his girlfriend’s benefit.

“Ali?”

“Hmm?”

“You’re not listening.”

“I am. You were talking about this religious sect in Turkey with Muslim as well as pagan practices.” Ali knew that because he had Googled that too.

“No. I was talking about my maid’s brother’s wedding. It’s today. I might go to the church to attend it.”

This was followed by a small argument which concluded with Ali closing his internet browser, and starting a game of free cell instead.

“I was saying,” his girlfriend finally continued, “that he’s getting married to a girl he impregnated five months ago. The pregnant girl’s father showed up at their house with his daughter and said that she’s their responsibility now. The boy was already engaged to a cousin of his, and he actually wanted to get married to some third girl. The dad was going to leave the girl at their house but they convinced him to take her home after agreeing to get the boy married to her.”

“Wow. What does he do for a living?”

“Nothing. He’s barely 22. Everyone else in his family works, so he lives off them. The part that really bothered me in this entire thing was what my maid said. She said that her family’s planning to get the boy married to the girl, then get the baby aborted and then get the couple divorced.”

“What’s the point to getting married in the first place, then?”

“Uff, Ali! Of course he has to marry her. The entire mohalla knows what’s going on. They would more readily accept a failed marriage and a convenient miscarriage than a boy who hasn’t taken responsibility for what he’s done. What’s amazing is how unethical and ridiculous the entire plan is. And so unnecessary and exploitative. In any case, Ami talked to my maid and convinced her it’s a ridiculous idea.”

“Ah.”

“There was a bomb blast in R. A. Bazaar this morning. The explosion woke me up.”

“Really? I didn’t know. I slept through it.”

They were silent for a few seconds, after which they exchanged good byes. Ali completed six games of free cell and, after spending a significant amount of time contemplating the pros and cons of getting lunch, headed towards the kitchen.

The kitchen was occupied by his middle aged maid. She was a stout woman who disapproved of Ali, and made no secret of it. Ali always asked her for meals at odd hours. He left wet towels on his bed, and made no use of his laundry basket. The maid noticed Ali and curtly informed him that she was just about to go home.

“My daughter’s sick. I was just about to go home.”

“Oh.” Ali tried his best to look completely clueless. “Is there some salan in the fridge?”

“Yes.”

“And I’ll eat that with toast?” Ali attempted to look even more clueless. The maid sighed.

“I’ll make lunch for you. I really have to go. My daughter’s sick. She has typhoid. After you finish eating please soak the dishes in the sink. Otherwise ants will be crawling everywhere in no time. I would have stayed and cleared up after, but I have to go. My daughter’s sick.”

“Yes. Of course. I’m very sorry.”

During lunch one of Ali’s friends, Alam, called him up.

“Hey. Listen. There’s this thing at Pammu’s house tonight. Want to go?”

“Sure. I’ll pick you up.”

“Okay then.”

Ali spent the next few hours watching back to back episodes of the many sitcoms he followed. During this time he was interrupted by three text messages:

“Now for just 20 paisas/min+t you can enjoy the unlimited variety of songs in Ufone Music Station. Dial 555 and subscribe.”

“I have stuff. Come over earlier tonight.”

“Four Gr8 ways of Living: First, Look back & Thank ALLAH... 2nd, Look forward & Trust ALLAH. 3rd, Look around & Believe ALLAH. 4th, Look within & Find ALLAH. Pass this message 2 your fellow Muslims.”

He then went to sleep while listening to Radiohead. Three hours later he woke up to Videotape playing and his cell phone ringing. He picked it up.

“Hello.”

“When are you coming?”

“What time is it?”

“Ten.”

“Oh. I don’t know. In an hour?”

“My Dad’s an asshole.”

“What happened?”

“He threatened to kick me out of the house if I don’t get better grades. I’m not sure if I should go out tonight given the scene at my place.”

“Wouldn’t he be sleeping by then?”

“Yeah. Don’t ring the bell when you come over though.”

“I never do.”

“I hate Pammu nowadays as well by the way.”

“He asked you before he asked out Mahwish, man. Do you not want to go to his place now?”

“I do. I just don’t want to see him.”

“With any luck Mahwish would be the only one seeing him.”

“Asshole.”

“You like every other girl on the planet. At least Pammu asked you about her.”

“I couldn’t say no. And I didn’t really like her that much then.”

“So whose fault is it then?”

“Everyone’s not a Romeo like you are, Ali. I’m just getting so depressed nowadays.”

“Because of Mahwish?”

“No. Yes, that too. It’s just this life. It’s so mundane. There really isn’t anything to it, is there? There’s just today and tomorrow and the day after and then death.”

“There was a bomb blast in R. A. Bazaar this morning.”

Both Ali and Alam were silent for a few moments. Then they broke in to uninhibited laughter.

Your Stories

2010-03-09T19:49:00.002+05:00

There is no end to your stories of irreversible devastation, of picture perfect, panic stricken, appropriately poor, yelping masses that ooze pus and horror and blood. Your stories narrate, in lyrical poetry, the pain of a lost child, or a punctured eye ball. The relatively complex ones relate in gruesome and tragic detail the rise and fall of some naïve and idealistic ambition – of full stomachs, for example.

Perhaps, in the process of communicating the multifaceted and hopelessly insurmountable obstacles that lie on the path to achieving these overly simplistic and childish dreams, you delve in some detail on issues of global warming, gender inequality, and trade injustice. You reach the novel and surprising conclusion that there is dire need of some sort of immediate action. You perhaps propose the wearing of a specifically coloured ribbon on the seventh of December, or the publishing of a bi monthly magazine.

In other stories your characters deliver inspiring speeches, on sunny mornings, in obscure village squares before – unexpectedly, of course – dying of dysentery.

The villain in your tales remains an unnamed monster, who possesses the physical vagueness, the pervasive control, and the unchecked power of God. However, you and the ghosts of your HIV infected heroes remain untainted by the influence of this monster; you are shielded by your stories, and your heroes are shielded by their idealized poverty.

Soon enough, however, you will realize the futility of your efforts. You would suffer from a few panic attacks, and vow to never bring life in to this world. Your stories and your heroes would no longer shield you from the corrupt world beyond, but gnaw away at your organs, slowly, painfully, and with your consent. From the lone fighter you once were, you would transform in to a moldy fear ridden shell. And before the last of your humanity is chewed away by your very own creations, you would sigh in relief, and welcome your new found numbness.

Quoted

2010-03-07T20:56:00.002+05:00

"I googled you; that's what us modern girls do when we have a crush."

Failure

2010-02-14T00:15:00.004+05:00

"I wanted to be a writer, that's all. I wanted to write about it all. Everything that happens in a moment. The way the flowers looked when you carried them in your arms. This towel, how it smells, how it feels, this thread. All our feelings, yours and mine. The history of it, who we once were. Everything in the world. Everything all mixed up, like it's all mixed up now. And I failed. I failed. No matter what you start with it ends up being so much less."

-------------

Desert Town

Our town’s history begins with a barren expanse of dust and jagged rock. The land where our town would eventually grow was on the tail end of life giving rainfall systems that impregnated the land on either side with lush forests and crops, while leaving our town’s land infertile and grovelling.

It is said that a saint once heard the plea of our desert. The earth was weeping in loneliness, knowing its soil anaemic and whimsical, and its only inhabitants to be crude boulders and scalding dust storms. It craved and pleaded for love and life, and bemoaned the betrayal of the rain clouds. The saint, upon hearing its anguished prayer blessed this land so that who so ever would inhabit it would find himself prosperous and materially content. Soon after, as news of the desert’s blessing spread, our town grew and its earth was never again lonely or anguished.

In another tale a witch found refuge in a cave in our desert land while escaping from some witch hunters. The desert wind assisted her flight by flinging burning sand and minuscule but extremely sharp stones at her pursuers. They were blinded and consequently abandoned the hunt. The witch was grateful to the desert and its forces and stamped her feet on its earth three times, each time chanting, “Spring wealth, spring life.” And from that witch’s heel our town grew.

The truth was that our town marked the midpoint on various trade routes that crossed our desert. It was here that trade caravans would stop and rest. Later, a few rest houses and restaurants were set up. From a resting place and a landmark, it eventually grew in to a centre of commerce since buyers and sellers chose it as a place of exchange, meeting and negotiation. Consequently, one of the first laws that were drafted for our town had to do with the ethics of trade and business contracts. Soon our town grew to absorb entertainers and artists, philosophers and scientists from cities around the desert, and played host to some of the best universities, schools, galleries and libraries the region had ever seen. As its size grew, it developed a complex but highly efficient system of welfare, justice, taxation, legislature, and public service provision. These developments further fuelled its growth and wealth.

Our town’s history was not unique. Many cities have flourished due to more or less the same reasons that our town did, and in more or less the same ways. However, what set our city apart was its complete lack of poverty. In our town, no one was poor. And no inhabitant of our town had ever been poor. While other cities that share similar histories are marked by growing disparity between the rich and the poor or the locals and the slaves, all of our town’s inhabitants were blessed with wealth and material comfort. Hence, while our town’s history is marked with incidents of mindless violence, hate and revenge, it was never scarred with corruption, greed, thievery, and other side effects of poverty. Our town had truly been blessed by some saint.

The only commodity that was finite in our lives was time. All else could never be diminished. So while people did live lives of excess and debauchery, most people in our town preferred a surprisingly simple lifestyle. Only those things that were truly desired or needed were bought, and nothing was coveted simply by virtue of its price tag.

In a way, the prosperity that was afforded to every citizen of our town was irrelevant in dictating how we lived, though personally, I think it to be the determining factor. If diamonds were cheap, they wouldn’t be viewed as that precious. In our town, all that our material prosperity could bless us with were things. Things that would stop working, or be used up, or grow old, obsolete and out of fashion. There was an impermanence to the pleasures our wealth gave to us, and since it itself was seen as infinite in its power and independent of the dictates of time, we quietly rebelled against it.

By the time the second generation of our town’s inhabitants grew up, it had become notorious amongst the retailers of neighbouring cities. Out town used to be the black hole of retail investment. Restaurants that served thirteen course meals at the cost of small apartments and gained popularity, respect and a loyal clientele in the world beyond the desert’s boundaries failed miserably when they began operation in our town. As did stores that sold platinum jewellery, silver ware, precious stone studded decoration pieces, intricately embroidered clothes and bed linen, etcetera etcetera.

For a very long time after its founding, our town retained the aura of a whole sale market place making a sorry attempt to masquerade as a city. It continued to sport nomadic architecture and an unspoken belief that one day the desert winds would turn traitorous and bury it in swathes of golden sand, leaving behind no trace of how it had once conquered the desert’s forces. It seemed that for seven generations out of the ten that our town nourished and sheltered, the people were simply waiting for the opportune moment to leave. Their abode in the desert was temporary.

Perhaps this irrational awe of the desert and fear of permanent settlement in it was based on one particular version of the witch’s myth. In that version, the witch bewitched the desert’s land in so far as it never whored its essential nature to the life and wealth that it had now been destined to play host to. Were the desert to delude itself, even for a moment, that it possessed the capacity to mother life, or prosperity of any kind, the witch’s spell would break, and the desert would return to the barren loneliness that was its actual destiny.

The desert represented an island of absolute freedom. It could not be owned, or laid any claim to. The desert was harsh uncompromising independence that sustained its own clime and beauty with no help from the elements or tools of nature as they existed beyond its borders. The desert could only allow temporary residence.

I was a member of the last generation of our town. By the time I was born the performance of the desert fast had become extinct. One day, my parents invited an aged man for dinner. During the meal he turned his grey eyes to me and my siblings and asked us when we planned to perform the desert fast.

“What is the desert fast, sir?” my brother inquired.

“Living out in the desert for a week with nothing but a flask of water,” the old man replied. Before the conversation could continue, my mother distracted him with dessert. Later, my parents told us that he was one of the last people to have attempted and successfully completed the desert fast. My siblings and I were so fascinated by this man and the desert fast that we began to obsessively research the origins, experience and demise of the ritual. We learned that the practice was a rite of passage for boys and was practiced in the border cities of the desert and had travelled from there to our own town. Its practice was discouraged after a freak desert storm caused three deaths in my grandparents’ generation. Soon after, it was outlawed.

The experiences the desert fasters recorded, however, never dwelled on the pain or hardship it caused them. They spoke of tearful moments of absolute beauty and ecstasy. One person wrote: “One night we all dreamed of being reduced to sand. It was horrifying. Then the sand that our bodies had become disappeared and we saw ourselves as the absence of everything. We saw ourselves as vessels that carried in themselves miniscule slices of absolutely nothing. We saw no beginning, no end, no return, no creation. We could not awaken from the dream till we swore complete submission to the desert and its forces. It was then that our bodies returned to us and we awoke. The desert can only conquer. Its winds envelope us and lift us to new heights of perfection. Here, there is purity. Here, there is no thought.”

The desert fasters always returned as changed men. They would find it hard to adjust to life back home, claiming that the experience of the desert fast made everyday life seem dull and mundane. Some would continue to periodically perform desert fasts till their death. Some wrote obscure poetry and struggled with bouts of insanity and depression till their last days. Most chose to withdraw from everyday life, living every day as if it was a burdensome chore. Every desert faster seemed to have gained some indescribable experience, and in return left some crucial part of his person in the desert.

We later learned that desert fasting caused malnutrition and acute thirst that in turn could cause brain damage and hallucinations.

My grandparents’ generation was the last one to boast of desert fasters. It was also the last one to boast of Godly contact. By the time I grew up the Gods had disappeared. When I was a child, however, there was a God in everything. At that time, our entire lives were merely the result of the dictates of Gods that we may have pleased or displeased. Trees were worshipped, clouds were worshipped, rain was worshipped, the moon was worshipped, dust storms were worshipped, and of course, the sun was worshipped. And what wasn’t worshipped was sacred.

It seems to me that I was born knowing the complex hierarchy the Gods existed in. Every God was related to humanity in a family that was highly intrusive and extremely hard to ignore and get rid of. My favourite God, and I believe secretly everyone’s favourite God, was the Moon God. It was utterly useless to pray to Him, since He ranked so low on the godly power scale, but at the same time He was the easiest to please since He required the minimum prayer time.

In those days, it was not unusual to hear about people whom the Gods had spoken to or blessed. Neither was it considered silly or irrational to believe in the tales of such people. I never really asked myself if I actually believed in their tales, if I actually thought that the sun could talk and control whether someone won the lottery. The Gods were part of everyday life. For me it was never a question of belief, it was just another aspect of how I functioned. People that the Gods spoke to were considered wise and they were looked up to. At the same time, I had never heard of a nobody claiming to be a confidant of the Gods. It just never happened. Nor did it ever happen that these blessed people revealed anything new or surprising about the nature and whims of the Gods. Sooner or later all the respectable elders of our town claimed to have been chosen by the Gods for conversations that varied in subject scope from morality and ethics to jam recipes. Some chose to publicize these encounters, while others, like my grandmother kept their occurrence and tale a family secret.

My grandmother used to pray to the Moon God exclusively. At the risk of displeasing all the other Gods, my grandmother cut her prayer time and offerings budget to one sixth of what it was before, though I doubt she had those reasons in mind when she chose to worship the Moon God exclusively.

In her story, she had been sleeping on the roof of her house when she was woken up by the wet and warm splash of the Moon God’s tears. I can only imagine the kind of fear, reverence and humility she felt once she realized the magnitude of honour that had been bestowed on her. She trembled and grovelled, and through the tears that flowed from her shame-filled lowered eyes inquired the reason behind the Moon God’s sadness.

My grandmother never altered the wordings of the Moon God’s response. Even when she was dying and found it hard to recognize her siblings, spouse and children, she could clearly recall the words of the Moon God and used to repeatedly recite them with a trance inducing rhythm.

“I have not abandoned the desolate landscape of your city before its beginning in some forgotten chamber of my mind. I know the nature of your desert and heart inside out. Your myths have tried to elucidate its mysteries. I know of those myths.

In them your desert has torn lovers apart, driving them to insanity, asceticism, or death. At night your desert has transformed its shape and orientation around those who had dared to invade it, so that they were forever stuck in its centre. During the day, it has breathed in fiery gasps of vermillion dust that has taken too many forms to name. Your desert’s breath has moulded gymnasts, poetry, music and maidens of such absolute beauty that those unaware of your desert’s treacherous nature have found themselves forever lost in it in their vain attempts to capture and own the elusive results of its cunning.

I have lit up narrow streets for you at night. I have guided lovers to each other, and given them darkness when needed. I have spent aeons adorning and then stripping myself of light so that you all can keep time for your mundane and ludicrous excursions. I have listened to you whine and beg and weep and covet, and I have granted you relief where I can. I have given you sight without colour so that you may appreciate forms in their stark nudity – form without the garb of colour. Whereas the desert deludes you, I exhibit for you truth.

But you will forget me. I will alter my cycle and disappear for months on end and you will not notice. I do not weep because of that. I weep because of the pain that by doing so you will bring on to yourself; how inevitably you will realize that while your prosperity was the result of some saint’s blessing, your demise would be due to your own arrogance and ignorance. Such knowledge is a heavy burden. I weep because of it.”

The Moon God’s rant has always struck me as vague, disconnected and perhaps, drug induced. It did however, prove prophetic.

My grandmother’s death marked the official end of the age of the prophets. Between the collective life spans of my grandmother, my mother and me, our town changed in a number of fundamental ways.

By the end of the age of the sixth generation, certain persistent lifestyle retailers had launched a massive advertising campaign in our town. Rather than accept that our town’s inability to support a culture of excessive shopping and obsession with image and luxury was an unexplainable exception to the rules of what the rich want, these businessmen blamed the failure of luxury item retailers for six generations previously on ineffective advertising. One such businessman was once quoted as saying, “If their culture doesn’t support our products’ sale, then we will create a culture that does.”

At first the advertisements were subtle and easily ignored. Public washrooms played host to a few bright posters that displayed thickly lashed women selling gold and platinum watches, and homely plump ladies selling portable, disposable toilet seat covers. In a few days the posters would have torn, or been written over in colourful verse and embellished with drawings of moustaches, beards, hairy moles and elf ears. A few days later they would have been replaced. This time with posters that were brighter and bigger. They displayed women that were prettier, more homely, more thickly lashed, and even more content with their new purchase of a crocodile skin handbag, or an automatic coffee maker. Soon, these posters found their way beyond dank alley corners and putrid public washrooms. They were plastered on the walls of government buildings, schools, temples, homes. Every day they seemed only to grow in size and garishness till the simplistic beige and brown of our desert town was lost under layers of printing press colour, glossy paper and carpenter’s glue. For the first time since its birth, our town saw the erection of enormous bill boards. They cast long shadows and hence, for those living under them, caused much disorientation of time. Of course, there was resistance to such commercial landscaping. Petitions were signed and forwarded to the relevant government departments. Crowds of protestors thronged the market place every weekend, and every government square on weekdays. Young adults climbed up the hoardings and vandalised them with lewd humour, black paint and sharp daggers. However, the more resistance the advertisers faced, the more firmly they resolved to defeat our townspeople. The hoardings climbed higher and higher, eventually forming garish walls around and inside the town, isolating it through shadows and steel from the sun and the desert winds. They put up neon signs and fluorescent lights that frightened away both the stars’ light and the night’s darkness. The townspeople realized the magnitude of power the advertisers had, and the extent that they would go to in order to defeat them. So, before the bill boards could climb any higher and reach any more gigantic proportion, and before the neon signs and fluorescent lights drove night itself away, the townsfolk admitted defeat. The moon waxed and waned every month, and the townspeople would no longer notice it, because the advertisers had won.

Stores of brands that had failed miserably previously, now opened their doors to queues of anxious buyers – all meticulously trained to perform what they had been trained to do by neon lights and hoarding gods. Items of everyday living began to be coveted simply by virtue of their price tag. The list of items essential and greatly desired grew unimaginably long. By the end of the seventh generation’s time, people began to experience something unheard of in our town: a shortage of money. At first the problem was shunned, and ignored, but as more and more people could not own everything they desired, a certain fear spread amongst our town. It manifested itself inside the temple walls in magnanimous offerings to the God of desert winds. Outside of the temple walls the fear grew in to monstrous movements demanding strict adherence to the Gods and their many whims. Out of need, more than anything else, the three generations before my own turned their full attention to the divine forces. However, the hoardings that challenged the might of the sun, and blocked the desert winds, and the neon signs and fluorescent lights that distracted us from admiring the moon remained. And it was perhaps out of spite for such insolence that our town’s capacity to bless with material prosperity its inhabitants steadily diminished.

I was born when religious movements were at their zenith. There were charms and prayers for every occasion and every deed. Different Gods liked being praised in different ways at specific times, and were any mistakes or lapses of memory to occur the Gods would be angered and curse and withdraw the blessing of prosperity from the guilty person’s home. Hence, by the time I was born, the Gods were everywhere, coating all language and action with guilt, shame, and superfluous formality.

As much as the Gods laced every aspect of my functioning life as a child, they failed to exert the same kind of influence on my life as an adult. The God’s faded away in a manner more befitting veterans of a failed war than omnipotent beings free of the constraints of time and mortality.

Perhaps the Gods first withdrew from the academy. Or perhaps, from within the temple walls itself. I would not blame them for their withdrawal, or the factors that led to their self-imposed exile. What became of our town was our fault, and hence, my fault.

Our town began to be bombarded with pamphlets and slogans worshipping movements that had taken the world beyond the desert’s boundaries by storm. Every day, I was chided, ridiculed, mocked and molested by every single wall in our town: clothed in ostentatious coloured graffiti every one blasted hoarse reminders to reason, to think beyond the realm of the superstitious and traditional. Every day each university, academic centre and library would hold a brief talk in an attempt to educate the town’s citizens of the evils of irrational thinking. “Gods’ God is reason” was one of the leading slogans of my adulthood.

The daily walk to the temple door began to redirect itself to the city park. Tearful confessions in prayers and to priests transformed in to hours of lamenting and ranting in psychotherapy. Charms, chants and rituals were replaced by antidepressant and anxiety disorder drugs. And with these changes we could explain why the desert’s blessing of material prosperity had diminished: it was never there to begin with.

Perhaps as an off shoot of this, perhaps coincidentally, soon after, the walls changed their garb to colours possibly more glaring, bright and obnoxious than before, this time, to promote the spirit of patriotism, the bravery of an enrolled soldier, and the glorious simplicity of an honest labourer. While some walls bore stern witness to the absolute supremacy of reason and logic, others coaxed me in to blindly believing in the supreme glory of my town’s people and history, simply by virtue of being my own. For the first time in the history of our town, an official full time army unit was created.

After ten generations we had finally claimed ownership of our town.

My times were those of inglorious gatherings that changed our world. There were banners in white, blue, and red that bloated by the desert winds coiled around our naked, primitive bodies and chanted to us the lullabies of our awakening: lilting, scintillating, venomous rhymes, each praising and celebrating life, each claiming soul guardianship of all its truths. In our waking hours we were lulled, soothed, gently rocked and kindly told that this existence is all there is. That the irreconcilable truths that mankind had created and glorified were the only truths that could ever be, and the only truths that ever were. We now knew beyond any reasonable doubt - satisfied as the laws of logic and reasoning were by this knowledge - not felt, nor intuitively understood, knew that all we truly possessed was this life - and we had been blessed. Armed with this knowledge, we could truly enjoy and treasure every moment we had to our grave. Such wealth! Such glorious riches the people of my generation had! What infinite wealth life provided us! Every passing hour held sixty minutes. Every sixty minutes held sixty seconds. Every one of these seconds could be counted in milliseconds, and so on. In truth we possessed infinite time! There were moments within moments within moments, and between any two moments there were infinitely many more. The banners waved in white, blue, and red, and showered on us the knowledge of life and how precious it was, and the truths, so that we could best live it.

We were shown and forced to comprehend the incomprehensible vastness of time as we knew it. We were told that humanity’s existence on it could be marked as a microscopic speck. Our lives were microscopic specks on this speck. And that was all we truly possessed. Such glorious riches the people of my generation had. What infinite wealth life provided us.

We responded to life’s riches by withdrawing from it completely. We would wake at six in the morning and not be able to crawl out of bed till three in the afternoon. Every day we would gather on some pretext or the other in the town square and move about our daily chores in a sorry sordid sulking parade of gloomy self loathing hollow beings. Our eyes burrowed deeper in to our eye sockets, our cheeks lost all colour and flesh till a fine film of translucent skin spread taut over our already yellowing bones. We would munch on food without tasting it, and obey the gods of material comfort in a zombie like trance that eluded all rational explanation. We gathered plastic shopping bags, and cardboard boxes filled with all kinds of goodies and used them to build walls that lined the inside of our homes. We found no other use for them. Every once in a while we told ourselves that our suffering was for the sake of humanity. We understood how precarious mankind’s future was, and had therefore taken it upon ourselves to worry and dote over mankind’s tomorrow since we were by nature noble, sensitive and compassionate. We also told ourselves that it was a passing phase, that the previous few decades had caused much tumult in our lives, and we were merely finding it hard to adjust. We even told ourselves, after nights filled with opium and restless copulation, that all was good – that tomorrow we would awaken from this horrible dream and start right over.

The truth was that after ten generations of progress, evolution and rigorous learning, we failed to understand, diagnose and resolve an all consuming, overwhelmingly potent feeling of doom. By all standards of knowledge, it should simply just not have been there. But it was. And every day, for five weeks, we woke up hoping that today, it would finally leave us be. That either the catastrophe that it had warned us of would occur, or the ominous whim itself would simply evaporate and disappear.

Since the seventh generation, architectural style had moved away from the construction of portable semi-nomadic to nomadic houses and buildings, to the erection of sturdy buildings that were neither portable nor built with the intention of providing temporary residence. The last day of our town began with the execution of the scheduled demolition of the last standing nomadic structure. It was a dilapidated house precariously perched on termite infested wooden stilts that could be packed and replaced by wheels for some journey that it would now never perform. Some soulless labourers wrapped it in dynamite, and stuffed it with explosives and gunpowder. A fateful match was lit. Flames streamed towards the building, leaving trails of ash and charred dust. There was an earth shattering bang, a shower of splinters and flint from concrete sinks and wooden beams, a grumbling tremor of earthly protest, and then, mind numbing silence. The morning’s work had been successfully completed.

It began with a few harmless flakes of plaster. We woke up with our hair dusted with specks of white plaster and grey cement slivers. We were puzzled but not alarmed. We dusted our selves and showered, swept our houses, and made mental notes to arrange an appointment with the repairman, handyman and painter. Just a few hours later, though, the flakes, specks and slivers returned. This time they were chunkier and left layers of white dust that coated every possible surface in our town – window sills, eye lashes, lamp shades, hair brushes, the bristles of our carpets, inside the spout of our coffee pots. The walls and roofs thinned dramatically, and in their emaciated state, found it impossible to support the structures they had once so proudly supported. Storey by storey, the structures of our town gave way so that, as we stared in wide eyed awe from streets, squares and parks, the mountains of our history and progress crumbled to piles and tangled lumps of polythene, cement, corrugated iron, steel wires, oak, mahogany, and golden bed stands. In their dying breath, the structures of our town exhaled clouds of dust, each seemingly harmless speck loaded with such spite and loathing that it clogged and briefly choked our throats, and charged in microscopic war at our eyes, stinging, and inducing tears.

From within the skeletal corpses of our city’s might, the ruins of its buildings, we saw the marching sands of our desert advance. The tangles of polythene, cement, corrugated iron, steel wires, oak, mahogany, and golden bed stands, seemed to hollow themselves out and collapse inward, on themselves as they were eaten away. The gluttonous sand feasted on the poverty of our town’s ruins, nibbling on our newly varnished elm doors, our newly bought gold cutlery. The gargantuan hoardings of garish colour and colossal beauty momentarily traced woeful arcs in the desert air before crashing on the waiting bed of desert sand that in turn welcomed the collapse with exaggerated leaps of joy. A feast awaited.

Grains of sparkling golden sand found its way in to our clothes and the inside of our shoes. We were drenched in scalding sand till it had swept off of us every last item of clothing or adornment.

We stood in the desert, barefoot and naked. There was no trace of our blessed desert town, its nomadic origins, its decadent demise. The desert winds howled and near the horizon, the dunes shifted shape and position. The sun beat down on us and bathed the desert sands, now placid and content, in orange gold.

Our town’s history ends with a barren expanse of dust and jagged rock.

Visions

2010-01-13T03:46:00.000+05:00

I have visions of sculpted figures with ornate and intricate cavities instead of chests. Like key holes. They hold their arms crisscrossed. One holding out a chest-piece that doesn’t fit, and one perpetually reaching out for one that would.

It’s quite tragic, really.

Elegy

2009-12-30T04:01:00.002+05:00

I was married to Qulsum for 52 years. She died three months ago. She was seventy five years old.

I am still getting used to the idea of her not being around. At night, when I think I’ve heard something, I still reach over to her side of the bed to check if the sound woke her up too. When I come home from outside, I still call her name to let her know I’m home. When the door bell rings I still shout and let know that I’ll check who it is. She need not bother.

Every morning I used to tell her whatever I read in the newspaper. Then we would mourn the state of the world together. She’d make breakfast, and I’ll clear up after. Throughout the day I could hear her do something or the other in different parts of the house. At one, five, and seven, I could hear her in the kitchen, preparing lunch, tea and dinner. At noon I could hear her in the laundry, instructing the maid on how to best wash our clothes. Five times a day I would hear her rhythmic mumbling from our bedroom as she prayed. After dinner we’d watch her stupid soap opera together. At night I would listen to her snoring till it lulled me to sleep.

Now that she’s gone, there are gaps in my life. There are hours that I have nothing to do, because I used to spend them with her. There are sounds I have begun to notice that I never noticed before - of a school bus pulling up outside in the morning, of the neighbourhood children playing in the evening, of dogs’ barking at night – because Qulsum was around. When my children and grandchildren visit I don’t feel the same joy that I used to. They sit around silently and awkwardly, waiting for me to speak. She was my only link to them. She would be the one who’d tell me how to behave around them, or how they’d be feeling, or how their lives were going. Now, they only serve to remind me of her. They don’t feel like my blood anymore.

I miss her.

She wanted to go, you know. About a year ago, something went missing in her. I don’t know why it happened. She would no longer talk about our grand children or children, or their future. She would talk about her childhood, her deceased siblings and how much she misses them. She started teaching me how to cook, how to run a household. She no longer nagged my eldest granddaughter to get married soon. She would worry about property documents, and her will. She had let something go, and it scared me to see that she had.

I really wish she hadn’t given up.

I really wish she hadn’t made me do the same.

Mr. Frandshipper

2009-03-18T01:35:00.001+05:00

The sun is setting. If I concentrate hard enough, I can see the air move. It is the last meal we intend to serve Mother Nature. A gelatinous soup of industrial waste, carbon, dust and disease. The phlegm of progress, industry and mankind’s achievements. Here, in plain sight, is the embarrassing foot-note of our species’ history: air abhorrent even to itself. Air so putrid one can clasp its wispy slivers, hold one’s fist to the sky and declare, “Here, Pandora, is what your curiousity released: disease, famine, death, corruption, poverty, evil. Everything but hope. This is what you have brought us to. Even the elements conspire to murder.”

This is not my home. Home is where my family is and my family does not live here. My family lives in a two bedroom house with cakes of cow dung on the outside walls. My family lives near wheat fields and, luckily, near a government school. Also luckily, my parents are idiots. They chose to spend hard-earned money so that their son could get an FSc degree, rather than make the lazy but able-bodied child work and bring in some money instead. Fortunately my parents were not so idiotic as to leave the matter of me getting a government funded scholarship in the hands of God. My brother in law worked at a bureaucrat’s house as a driver. He groveled, and my sister wept, and the bureaucrat pulled some strings so that I ended up going to Punjab University. Three years later I was the first university qualified electrical engineer my village had ever produced. Of course this is not my home. Here, I’m forgettable, ordinary, useful but dispensable. Here, I’m just another human foot stool. Back home, I’m a celebrity.

After all, what did I expect from a city that feeds, breathes and intimately mingles with treacherous gruel and labels it as air?

What did I expect? I did not expect work to involve polite nonsensical chatter and needless phone calls where the only established punctuation is ‘Sir’, ‘Please’, or some form of self-humiliation. I did not expect girls to rebuke my advances by rolling their eyes and belittling me in English under the assumption that I wouldn’t know the language. I did not expect a nightly coagulation of melancholy, desolation and despondency so acute that I would invent remarkable and intimate conversations out of the most mundane of everyday encounters. And I definitely did not expect myself to become one of those farigh, oversexed, lafanga jahils with too much time and mobile credit on their hands.

I have become the man who calls you too much, whose attention is suffocating and unnerving. The man who has caused Ufone to introduce its 420 service, who has caused Warid to introduce the cheapest SMS packages possible, who has popularized pornographic MMSs, who has founded and popularized an entirely new genre of contemporary literature – romantic SMS poetry. I have become exactly what girls I used to approach used to call me in English: fucking frandshipper.

It has helped, though. Girls in their late teens and early twenties have talked to me night after night – detailing the adventures of their day. They have talked to me about everything: from their ideal husbands and boyfriends, to their favourite hindi movie tune. They have advised me when I’m ill on which herbal concoction would best cure my ailments and they have called me up to cry about disputes they have had with their parents and friends. They’ve told me their life stories, and I have told them mine.

I have made friends with married women, who have stealthily called me up to vent and share their daily frustrations. Stories about nosy mother-in-laws, abusive husbands, stealing brother-in-laws, children that cry too much and spend too little time studying, maids that slack off work, cooks that cannot cook, I’ve heard them all.

Some women call only to say absolutely nothing.

There is a difference between strangers seeking the comfort of each other’s silence and lovers seeking solitude together; the presence of one does not discount the absence of the other. I only seek to fill either vacuum.

In this city, there is no humanity. Its hollow creatures are filled with nothing more, or nothing less than the fetid air that surrounds them. And from their fetid insides, I seek humanity – with no ego and no restraint. I have refused to be merged as one with this rancid atmosphere and with the sub-human sheep it breeds. I am not one of the sheep that curl with and nurse that heavy all consuming lump of despondency, self-loathing, and loneliness rather than seek its dispersal, and their own release. In your eyes I might be despicable, annoying and pitiful, but, like it or not, you envy me.

In Winter Time

2008-11-19T21:53:00.001+05:00

It would start right below her breasts, where the frontal centre of her rib cage would be, inside. It would be the shape and size of a tennis ball.

Those light green tennis balls she had so many memories attached to. They would all wrap them in black or red tape, forming a thicker band around the centre. "This is the seam. Here, hold the ball like this. Now, Mushtaq Ahmed plays it like this. Waqar Younis plays it like this. No. Not like that. That's a vata."

It would start off the size of a tennis ball, below her breasts, the frontal centre of her rib cage, inside. Icy. Heavy. It would palpate and, like a fist uncurling in to fingers and a palm, grow tendrils. Each one, icy and heavy. The tendrils would cling to her arteries and mimic their size and shape, growing finer here, thicker here. Visibly traceable here, microscopic here. They would reach the inside of her lungs and contract. Now, her breathing would become shallow, her arms would wrap themselves around her chest, her hands would massage and rub her shoulders. She would crave warmth.

"Menopopo, you are my dodo. Hug?"

It would continue growing and she would feel the icy heaviness spread to her shoulders and throat. In her throat the tendrils would seek one another and clump in to a knot. Their growth would cease and she would feel their weight increase. Her breathing would still be shallow, her body cold and weak, her throat and shoulders heavy. Now, between shallow breaths she would hear herself choking.

"How many times must I tell you not to talk while eating? Here. Drink some water, you'd feel better."

From her shoulders it would spread to her face. Two thick tendrils would spread upwards from her jawbone. Their progress would be unbearably slow, and halting. Now, they would reach her eyes. And finally, release. Wet, salty, warm and light.

"But, dude, something has to be wrong. What is it?"

She would not know.

Moon Chacha III

2008-10-25T18:16:00.001+06:00

"It kills me when things break. Or pretend to. When things refuse to progress or evolve from the state they are in. When there is talk of erasure, of regression, of return. It kills me when we refuse to acknowledge time, and the inevitable constant change and motion it brings to things, and us. And it kills me when acknowledgement is simply not enough to dictate what is."

Today she follows her short ramble with an aggressive silence. She observes the moonlight mute all colour around her to mere variations of grey, silver, blue and white. Without colour the truth of form is starkly exposed silhouetting, defining, and even inventing the nature of objects around her. A neem tree to her left ceases to shoulder clusters of bitter tasting spindly leaves and instead resembles the silhouette of child drawn clouds. Colour, she notices, masks the innumerable subtleties of form only. Colour makes it easier to ignore a frown, a wrinkle, a scar, and the ladder like contours of ribs caused by emaciation, for example. She resumes.

"Why would anyone want that? Why crave such a magnificent delusion? Why can't the present be enough to reach that sense of purity?"

Again, she pauses. On the floor that she lies on a neem leaf scampers closer as if seeking shelter from the chilly breeze.

"I read a story. In it a person falls in love with a tree. It's a tree with green leaves and white flowers. His, or her, lover cannot fathom what is so glorious about that tree. It's an ordinary tree with white flowers and green leaves. It isn't anything special. The story ends with both of them lying under the tree, silently, at night, watching the green leaves and the white flowers move in the wind. It is such a gorgeous story. What could be better than that? What could be better than lying under a tree?"

Moon Chacha who had grown used to such monthly monologues realizes that this time, he is required to speak. "Why?"

"Why what, Moon Chacha?"

"Why could nothing be better than lying under a tree?"

"Not just lying under a tree. I love the idea. Both of them are refusing, subtly, silently, to do anything more or less than what they want to do. Both of them are just being. One is in love with a tree, and enjoying the feeling of being with his, or her, beloved. The other cannot relate to the cause of such devotion, but she, or he, can understand the devotion, the reverence, itself just the same. For as long as they both are lying under the tree, that gap in experience is insignificant. I don't just mean the tree. I mean the idea."

"And I suppose I am your tree?"

"Of course."

Beyond the neem tree to her left cars, rickshaws, buses, vans, all manner of auto-vehicles zoom by. As each vehicle passes by, its light filters past the neem tree's branches and momentarily returns colour to her hand, then her arm, then her neck, and finally to her face before disappearing. However, it is tainted by the shadows of the neem tree. She sighs and then begins to talk.

"But it isn't aggressive. It isn't an attempt to rein in time. There is no pretence of breaking away to a time now gone – of return. It's merely an acknowledgment that while time cannot be presently reined in, it is entirely possible to refuse to participate in the flurry of activity that time is supposed to inevitably bring. This isn't aggressive confrontation; this is graceful refusal to confront."

The chilly breeze and scampering neem leaves bring Moon Chacha's response.

"Up here, I have a lovely view of how things progress around you – day and night. And I have been here a very long time. Maybe, just maybe, things break, or pretend to, when the craving for predictability, for ritual, becomes overwhelming. Maybe things break because people run out of metaphorical trees to lie down under. But on the other extreme there is always this city of yours."

Her lips are coloured in for a fleeting second. A Honda motorbike had just zoomed by. "This city?"

"It kills you when things break because nothing is worth breaking for in this city you have grown up in. The Heer has moved from charpois in the inner city to PowerPoint slides in lecture rooms. If adaptation is a whore, this city of yours is her most loyal client. As a whole, your city is a violently rippling, cacophonic, orchestra; your city, like many others, is one I will blame if I split (as the story goes) in two, again."

She laughs and realizes, yet again, that she will crumble, and so will her Moon Chacha.

And hence, till dawn breaks, she lies under her metaphorical tree.

Comic

2008-10-19T14:32:00.002+06:00

Happy

2008-10-01T00:49:00.001+06:00

I'll have the sun on my face and I'll lie on grass. Its blades would be bright green and would glint gold and white at certain angles. I'll stretch my arms above my head, and spread my fingers outward. I'll stretch my legs down to my toes and I'll simultaneously breathe in deeply. I'll scrunch up my eyes and smile. And I'll stop stretching. And I'll breathe out, slowly. I'll open my eyes. I'll have the sun on my face and I'll be lying on grass.

Right now, I'm happy.

Hello

2008-09-16T23:35:00.001+06:00

I tried a cigar today.

They've been some moon chacha nights. I'm trying to come up with funny cartoons. And, that's about it.

Gargantuan

2008-08-18T18:45:00.004+06:00

3 stories:

So, one day I decided to murder my parents. It was a brutal decision, but one that had to be made. I realized that I was their life. That it was important to them that I get a good education, that I get a good job, that I get a good husband, have a family, etc. etc. And, I wasn't going to do all those things. Not as they would define 'good' in any case. I tried breaking it to them gently. But I guess I was too subtle. Then, I stood, naked, in front of them, shouting: "This is the monster you've created." They looked away. Well then, I thought that killing them was the only way to go.

I considered my options carefully. I could

stab them.
shoot them.
poison them.
inject them with an overdose of adrenaline.

Then I made a list of the pros and cons of each method. I was killing my parents here, so you can guess how much I valued my life relative to the rest of humanity; I was not going to be caught – so any method that was too dramatic, too typical and too bloody was out of the question. So a. and b. were immediately crossed off my list.

Poison is not hard to procure. There are disinfectants and detergents. There are floor cleaners and toilet cleaners. There's bleach and there's phenol. BUT poison is unpredictable. There's the practical question of how much would have to be poured in to their tea every day to poison them slowly. It would have taken me research on Google and Wikipedia to figure out the exact quantity to be used to poison them for guaranteed and positive results if I was going to poison them in one go. Also, I'm not a huge fan of pain. I love my parents. It doesn't appeal to my sense of aesthetics to see them trembling and thrashing around on the kitchen floor after sipping their morning tea, vomiting blood and gurgling out pathetic 'helps'. That's just messy.

For option d. I did do my research. I researched online and found out how exactly I could procure enough of the drug to kill them off. Local pharmacies are least bothered about prescription slips so all I had to do was come up with a plausible disease, or condition that would require the drug if prompted by the pharmacist. I went to the pharmacy I used to go to as a teenager to buy prescription drugs to get high, and caffeine pills for my exams.

The next day, I went to the nameless stationary shop near Qadri General store and bought two syringes. They're usually available in stationary stores because they're used by people who use fountain pens with refills to fill the plastic refill cartridges with ink. They're cheap and extremely easy to come by. No worries. Soon after, I smuggled them in to my room and hid them under a stack of files resting in my bedside table drawer.

Then, I started planning. I observed their routine, meticulously taking cryptic notes on my laptop when I made any useful observation. I expected to not be surprised by my observations: subconsciously I'd been observing them since I was born. But, I was. My father would, for example, never have one entire piece of toast before munching on another at breakfast. He toggled two pieces – one spread with something savoury, like sardines, the other spread with something sweet, like honey. They did not have predictable sleeping habits either. Some days they would be asleep by 9.00. Other times I could hear the television blaring till two in the morning. They still made love too. I knew that because my mother used to take birth control pills regularly till one fine day my dad got a vasectomy. Some nights I would want to walk in to their room to get a DVD and find the door locked. They'd certainly been very quite.

So, you can imagine how hard it was to pick a date to kill them.

I'm waiting, now. For the date. I've researched on police investigation methods in Pakistan. I've researched on the kind of forensic evidence that might be uncovered if by some evil twist of faith the family allows an autopsy. To avoid that I'm planning to make it seem like a strangulation, which isn't too hard if they're already dead and I'm quick about it. All I have to do is leave marks around their necks, and the police will lap that up as the cause of death. I plan to disappear money, jewellery etc. too. Just the right amount to make it seem like the job of a particularly vindictive robber.

It's also convenient that I live alone with my parents. A maid comes at 9.00 in the morning. She does the cooking, dusting, cleaning, etc. for the day. We just leave the dishes for her to wash after lunch, and dinner. We heat it up and serve it ourselves. My siblings don't live with us anymore and my grandparents are all dead and gone. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, etc.

So, I am not going to get caught. I'm not stupid. I was one of the top students in school. I was great at everything – sports, debates, community service, you name it. I went to a top ranking American college for my bachelors. Right now, I have an awesome well paying job, a promotion on the horizon. People like me don't get caught. Or even suspected. I've had a really steady boyfriend for two years, and a great life overall. I'm not just going to throw that away. In any case, I haven't killed them yet. I might just change my mind.

If my parents are only living for me, if I am their life, then I have the responsibility to take it away from them before I cause them any more pain or disappointment. But I want to be sure about that. They also love each other. And live for each other. If I'm killing them together, than I guess I'm bypassing the question of causing one more pain than the other. But, you know. They have their cute little delights. My dad cares about his work, my mom about hers. They care about the house they've built, and all the material possessions it holds. They care about their cars, their Rolexes, their hi-tech gadgets and their appearance and social standing. They like to watch television, listen to music, plan trips to places like Fiji and Phuket.

I don't believe in guilt. I like to think that if I'm going to do something fully conscious of what I'm doing, then there is absolutely no point in feeling guilty about it. I want to scream at people who feel guilty about the things they did knowing fully what they were doing. I want to ask them "Who are you running from? This is who you are. You are your decisions. How can you function and be comfortable in your own skin while feeling guilty for who you are?" So I like to be sure before I do something. If I do kill them, I'm not going to feel guilty – that's a decision I've made. I'll hurt my siblings and all the people who my parents have been close to. And I've come to terms with that. But, I'm not sure. Yet.

---

With her right hand's index finger she slowly traces a spiral around her navel. As the borders of her invisible spiral expand, so it seems does the blackness of her navel's centre. It swallows the invisible arches she drew moments earlier and advances in an expanding circle towards the most freshly traced loop.

This isn't the blackness of her navel's deepest recession, or the blackness of Indian ink, or of unlit lovers' points in parks and alleys. This is a miniscule slice of the absolute nothing. This is blackness that cannot be defined by what it is, since it isn't, but by the infinite list of what it is not.

Three inches below her cleavage she stops drawing her doomed spiral and with the help of her left hand ties an invisible knot and contains with it the, now stagnant, pool of black.

If she were to lie, in a manner of speaking, on her stomach, you could seek, feel and see the small of her back and her sides - intact and entirely human. It was only in that 'small' lack of a centre that she (ironically) had that the never ending cavity was omitted a window. It could, like the magical rucksacks of heroes in fairy tales, have the capacity to hold worlds and not fill up.

A teaspoon of what proton stars are made of can weigh more than the weight of our entire planet, she absently thinks.

Her hand hovers over the hole she has drawn – it hovers because even she would not risk penetrating the nothing she has revealed – and she asks, naively, absently, "And what would grow here?"

---

How do I begin to narrate what it feels like to be marked so deeply by another person – by their love, their hate, their ego, their insanity, their desire, their addiction – that the invisible, intangible organ within spills out stories to the external reality of flesh and skin. And flesh and skin babble; they tell insensitive tales comprised wholly of facts.

Here on my torso I was punched seven times.

Here on my shoulder blade are five stitches because of a particularly large shard from china that broke once it hit me.

Here on my knees are scratches from when I fell down on the gravel surrounding my house.

Here on my forehead a bump from when I hit my head on a marble table top.

Here is a cast for a fractured arm.

But he begged, and he groveled. He loved me and he held me at night. He held ice to my wounds, and took me to the emergency ward. He apologized with poetry, flowers and tears. He fed on my forgiveness and worked so I would give more of it to his tiny child like soul.

So when my skull cracked open and I died, I didn't lose the usual twenty one grams. A small silver worm emerged from my mouth, and seemed to convulse, cough and then vanish to where the rest of my invisible intangible organ went: to service his.

What can I say? He groveled.

-------------

Most of my Saved Text Messages:

Baryani at Hunza. Nightmare before Christmas. Gilgit and stay at karakoram rooms again.

Rakha poshi restaurant. Hunza… Walking on road… Baltit Fort. Ice cream. Local food at mulberry hotel. Holoi gaza noodles with spinach. Chupp suro naan samosa. Doudo noodle soup.

Gilgit… Shopping, dinner at serena's, sunflowers. Afghani tikka. Naltar… Trekking, dried flowers, dog, sun room, stars. Lots of stars… Being thankful.

Miltary person and his ambitions. Lcd tv… Guest house for gpo, gym.. Local population rant, on america and india.

Ideas.. Nazim rant. Elitist girl scot… About gods, glue sniffing raped 12 year old girl beggar, dawkins, and high Harvard gpa's.

Satpara lake, Dosai plane, lake sosher, chilum, minimarg, astor, potatoes, posh mess.

Skardu… shigar, kharpaacho, desert, palapu, local soup, butter cream, apricots, apricot nut sauce with chicken.

Why wait any longer for the world to begin? You can have your cake and eat it too. (Dylan)

Plutonic will become lovetonic. (Lovely convincing me)

Fewer advertisements! You've sold your soul to the corporate white man!

Truths are illusions that have forgotten that this is what they are. (Nietchze)

A struggling cockroach in a window sill.

Stop drop and roll will not work in hell. (Bumper Sticker)

People are strange. And marriage is an absurd idea. And we are not characters from books or movies. I don't know what that makes them then, though.

Why can I smell durian here?

We all live in a yellow submarine. (Beatles)

Aaj kal client intizaar nahi karte. (A prostitute on a long play on Hum TV)

It's as hot as vulcan's dick. (From Rome)

I will stand on the ocean until i start sinking. (Dylan)

Take care of him or I'll use your children's eyes as beads. (From Rome)

Arithmetic has no mercy. (From Rome)

Happiness is a freshly baked cookie. (Subway advertising their cookies.)

Dasht aashna – desert ko janien wala.

So you might as well prepare yourself for some full fledged battle with disappointment.

-------------

Quoted. (So very literary)

' Give up on me,' he begged her. 'I don't like people dropping in to see me without warning. I have forgotten the rules of seven-tiles and kabaddi, I can't recite my prayers, I don't know what should happen at a nikah ceremony, and in this city where I grew up I get lost if I'm on my own. This isn't home. It makes me giddy because it feels like home and is not. It makes my heart tremble and my head spin.'

---

But you bastard you rummage in my drawers and laugh at my stupid poems. The real language problem: how to bend it shape it, how to let it be our freedom, how to repossess its poisoned wells, how to master the rivers of words of time of blood: about all that you haven't got a clue. How hard that struggle, how inevitable the defeat.

---

'Anybody ever tries to tell you how this most beautiful and most evil of planets is somehow homogenous, composed only of reconcilable elements, that it all adds up, you get on the phone to the straitjacket tailor,' he advised her, managing to give the impression of having visited more planets than one before coming to his conclusions. 'The world is incompatible, just never forget it: gaga. Ghosts, Nazis, saints, all alive at the same time; in one spot, blissful happiness, while down the road, the inferno. You can't ask for a wilder place.'

---

Us fairies haven't a fucking notion what's going on. Then how do we know if it's right or wrong? We don't even know what it is.

---

In this century history stopped paying attention to the old psychological orientation of reality. I mean, these days, character isn't destiny any more. Economics is destiny. Ideology is destiny. Bombs are destiny. What does a famine, a gas chamber, a grenade care how you lived your life?

---

A real bag of allsorts, Salahuddin thought; but marveled, also, at how beautifully everyone behaved in the presence of the dying man: the young spoke to him intimately about their lives, as if reassuring him that life itself was invincible, offering him the rich consolation of being a member of the great procession of the human race, - while the old evoked the past, so that he knew nothing was forgotten, nothing lost; that in spite of the years of self-imposed sequestration he remained joined to the world.

---

We acted the cliché. We melted with laughter. Not the prickly melt that comes from sitting on a hot stove but the cool relaxing melt, in defiance of chemistry, like dropping deep into a liquid feather bed. We did not know or remember the reason for laughing. There was a film, yes: a dumb sad man with hair like wheat and round eyes like paddling pools; another man with a mustache like a toy hearth brush; and many other people and things—blondes, irate managers, stepladders, whitewash, all the stuff of farce. And there was a darkened opera house growing cardboard trees and shining wooden moons.

I shall never know why we laughed so much. Perhaps other films had been as funny, but this one seemed to contain for us a total laughter, a storehouse of laughter, like a hive where we children, spindly-legged as bees, would forever bring our foragings of fun to mellow and replenish this almost unbelievably collapsing mirth.

Nor was it the kind of laughter that cheats by turning in the end to tears, or by needing reinforcement with imagery. It was, simply, like being thrown on a swing into the sky, and the swing staying there, as in one of those trick pictures we had seen so often and marvelled at—divers leaping back to the springboard, horses racing back to the starting barrier. It was like stepping off the swing and promenading the sky.

---

My taste had been central to my identity. I'd cultivated it, kept it fed and watered like an exotic flowering plant. Now I realized that what I thought had been an expression of my innermost humanity was nothing but a cloud of life-style signals, available to anyone at the click of a mouse. How had this happened?

I couldn't understand. There had to be something else. What was a personality if it wasn't a drop-down menu, a collection of likes and dislikes? And now that my possessions were gone, what would I put in their place? Who was I without my private pressings, my limited editions, my vintage one-offs? How could I signal to potential allies across the vast black reaches of interpersonal space?

---

After Corwin dropped me off, I sat outside with my grandfather Mooshum, drinking cool water from tall galvanized water cans. It occurred to me that I'd be all right. I didn't have to do anything, not right away. I didn't even have to record my sensations in a diary. I could just sit with Mooshum, drinking water.

---

This was blue-sky white, heat-haze white, the white of the sheets that you bring in from the line in the garden dry after hardly any time because the air is so warm. It was the white of the sun, the white that's behind all the colours there are, it was open-mouthed white on open-mouthed white, swathes of sweet smelling outheld white lifting and falling and nodding, saying the one word yes over and over, white spilling over itself. It was a white that longed for bees, that wanted you inside it, dusted, pollen-smudged; it was all the more beautiful for being so brief, so on the point of gone, about to be nudged off by the wind and the coming leaves. It was the white before green, and the green of this tree, I knew, would be even more beautiful than the white; I knew that if I were to see it in leaf I would smell and hear nothing but green.

-------------

I've been reading. I'm off to Islamabad in a few days. My best-friend is flying off to another country. I'm reading the stranger by albert camus. I've finished reading satanic verses and le grande meaulnes which I call the French book because I don't know how to pronounce the name. I've abandoned memoirs of a mangy lover because it's not good. Gormenghast is in hibernation. I watched a few movies I loved and I want grey's anatomy's fourth season.

I'll miss the bitch. A lot.

Airport

2008-06-15T22:53:00.001+06:00

We will write songs and serenade imaginary gods with them. We will be our ideologies and realizing the reverberating hollow we ourselves are, collapse on to those we thought our ideologies superior to. We are not superior. We are hollow reverberating shells…we are matter that seeks other hollow reverberating shells, hoping we’d find enough hollows to create matter that is significant; matter that is superior.

We’ve been mistaken, I think.

-------------

I’ve been watching Rome. I watched Gummo just now, which was a pretty interesting movie. Indulgent in gruesome excesses – with a kind of exaggerated honesty. I should clean up my room, or my mother would personally slaughter me. Today I realized that I’ve never slapped anyone. At least I don’t remember slapping anyone. I’ve punched people, but it’s just not the same. I want to slap someone.

And, I’ve been listening to Sea and the Rhythm back to back.

Um, Moon Chacha?

-------------

Hey.

Say it softly, and slowly, as if it’s a gift that you would rather keep for yourself and store it next to other prized possessions you have: a sea-shell that moans for the sea when you put it next to your ear, and a book that sings its verses to you like a dying man’s confessions, for example.

I wish I could listen to all the stories a hello has to tell. All the infinite decisions and moments that occur for those two simple syllables to slip out – and momentarily bridge that gaping chasm between your mind and your tongue – are what I want to know. I wish for the amount of time that it takes to say that hello to be in your skin – thinking your thoughts and holding your memories. As briefly as cupped hands hold water without spilling any, but just the same. That is what I want. To understand every hello I hear.

May you stay forever young.

Over dates with a dehydrated Moon Chacha

2008-05-25T15:35:00.004+05:00

We will watch leaves fall and earthquakes shatter.

We will watch you devour another with your incessant whines and needy pleas. We will watch you create illusions of grandeur, and we will watch you collapse on to another when you realize what exactly your grandeur would be.

We remember watching you engrossed in observing a bird feed her newly hatched young. We know what you felt – that contradiction – of simultaneously being delighted at such wondrous devotion and understanding, and being disgusted by those gluttonous gaping squawking beaks communicating with the rhythm of their high pitched yelps: “More, more, more.”

-------------

I had an enormously interesting day today. I (again) realized that I can be a ruthless person.

I was woken up at 5.30 am by my brother, who enticed me to wake up for gravy chawal and a chance to watch in to the wild with him. I said “Fuck you. I’m sleeping.”

How impolite.

Later I had a session with Zain, I went to watch a play completely spontaneously and then worked for a bit. Wore a frangipani in my hair, and had a good Towel Day. Aaand I think I’m going to write a story soon, that’s highly inspired by On Air, which is one of my favourite books.

I might go to Mina’s farewell tomorrow. Then again, I might not.

Such an insane world this is. All you can do is laugh at it. Oh well.

I've also been on a self-indulgent trip to the inside of my head, which means a lot of introspection, and A LOT of sleeping.

-------------

Why worry, my love, about the quality of your words: about whether they mingle and mesh in to a lyrical lilt that sounds both grammatically correct and lyrically pleasing? We will touch you by the ways our eye-brows tilt and our lips pucker. We will touch you and feel the hollows of your body, the contours around your ribs, and the journey of your angles to the dunes of muscle. Our wrinkles would tell tales that your aesthetically pleasing and intellectually motivating conversations never will. We would stand pinned, scorched, internally wincing, and externally pleading without roof and without shade: “Change?”

We live the lives that make you weep on LCD screens and plasma 42 inches. When we sing, it is for the pleasure of it. Like the mindless click of knitting needles, or the therapeutic pain of a healing scab fidgeted with, neither words nor ideals dictate the childlike pleasure of hearing our own voices – sing.

So, I ask you again, my love, why worry about the quality of your words?

Quoted and potty.

2008-03-29T20:53:00.003+05:00

Sometimes, when you’re taking a dump, and you’re thinking, or singing, or talking aloud to yourself, you think: “Hmm. This must be a pretty sizable excretion.” So you get up, once you’re done, of course, and you look down and instead of a king kong of brown/yellowness, you only encounter a tiny chicken nugget of it.

Why does that happen?

Anyway, M inc. is very very excited about a seminar course on developmental technologies she has enrolled in. And this is my 108th post which is coincidently my roll number at LUMS. I think we need to cut down on the commas. Quoteds follow:

-------------

-------------

TOKYO, Mar 04, 2008 (AFP) - A Japanese pin-up model says that her big breasts have not only boosted her career -- they also helped her overturn a court verdict.

The bikini model, who goes by her professional name Serena Kozakura, was cleared after a court decided she was too well-endowed to squeeze into a room through a hole, as she had been found guilty of earlier.

"I used to hate my body so much," Kozakura, who has appeared in product commercials on television, told the private Asahi network in an interview aired Tuesday.

"But it was my breasts" that won in court, she said.

The case was splashed through the Japanese media on Tuesday, with the Asahi network even inviting her to demonstrate how she could not fit through the opening.

Kozakura, 38, was convicted last year of property destruction after a man said she kicked in the wooden door of his room and crawled inside, apparently because he was with another woman.
Kozakura had said the man made the hole himself.

In her appeal, the defence counsel held up a plate showing the size of the hole and said that she could not squeeze through with her 110-centimetre (44-inch) bust.

"The judges were very good-mannered as they showed no expressions on their faces. I guess they're well-trained," Kozakura said.

Tokyo High Court presiding judge Kunio Harada agreed and threw out the guilty verdict on Monday, saying there was reasonable doubt over the man's account.

-------------

From The Guardian:

We all know that Moses was high on Mount Sinai when God spoke to him, but were the Ten Commandments a result of divine inspiration alone?

An Israeli researcher is claiming in a study published this week the prophet may have been stoned when he set the Ten Commandments in stone.

According to Benny Shanon, a professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, psychedelic drugs formed an integral part of the religious rites of Israelites in biblical times.

Writing in the Time and Mind journal of philosophy, he says concoctions based on the bark of the acacia tree, frequently mentioned in the Old Testament, contain the same molecules as those found in plants from which the powerful Amazonian hallucinogenic brew ayahuasca is prepared.

"The thunder, lightning and blaring of a trumpet which the Book of Exodus says emanated from Mount Sinai could just have been the imaginings of a people in an altered state of awareness," writes Shanon. "In advanced forms of ayahuasca inebriation, the seeing of light is accompanied by profound religious and spiritual feelings."

References in the Bible where people "see" sounds, is another "classic phenomenon", he said, citing the example of religious ceremonies in the Amazon in which drugs are used that induce people to "see" music.

Speaking about his article on Israeli public radio, he added: "As far as Moses on Mount Sinai is concerned, it was either a supernatural cosmic event, which I don't believe, or a legend, which I don't believe either. Or finally, and this is very probable, an event that joined Moses and the people of Israel under the effect of narcotics."

Moses was probably also on mind-altering drugs when he saw the "burning bush", suggested Shanon, who admitted to dabbling with such substances.

Speaking of his own experience of ayahuasca during a religious ceremony in Brazil's Amazon forest in 1991, he said: "I experienced visions that had spiritual-religious connotations."

Mundane etc.

2008-03-17T00:12:00.000+05:00

We connect through the mundane: through jokes about our teachers’ shoes, and what to have for lunch. We connect through musings on the life choices and characters of people we care nothing about, and we connect through similar sights and similar feelings. Every once in a while we wonder why exactly we are as close as we are. Why we call each other up to whine or ramble, or why we think of each other when individually enjoying ourselves the most. But we usually don’t have any answers. Well, here’s the answer:

We connected through the mundane.

-------------

Holly and the Jew ran off together to Timbuktu. They’d never been more than 5 miles outside their neighbourhood. So Holly said to the Jew: “If we’re leaving, might as well do it properly. Might as well run off with some pizzazz.”

The Jew, poor man, agreed. He packed a change of clothes, and all the money he had: earned and stolen. Holly packed a stick of red lipstick, red pumps, a change of clothes and everything small, light and expensive (that she could remember to) from her house. Holly and the Jew ran off together to Timbuktu.

Holly and the Jew silently realized during their adventures that occurred beyond the 5 mile mark that they knew nothing of the world. They were young, naïve, poor.

But slowly, Holly and the Jew made it to Timbuktu. They were older, stronger, and a little less naïve.

And they missed home.

-------------

She has the chills. The goose bumps. There is a dizzy rhythm in the way her thoughts surface. Like a diver searching for pearls in unopened oysters, she’s excited about what each new thought brings to her.

But, like the diver, she is prepared for a full-fledged battle with disappointment.

-------------

This trip was quite interesting. There was lotus lake, dinner in Jinnah super and the panicky recall home after the bomb blast at Luna Capris, piercings, movies and conversations triggered by a readers’ digest published book called Ask Yourself. There was a surreal experience in a committee party, and fun with kids. I like kids. They’re cool. I also crashed the poor guy’s car. I guess I do need to practice more.

Quoted and damn smilies.

2008-03-08T18:08:00.002+05:00

Give me some more conversations, Bob.

-

Jesse was sick with rheums, and aches and lung congestions. Insomnia stained his eye sockets like soot. He read auguries in the snarled intestines of chickens or the blow of cat hair released in the wind.

And the omens promised bad luck, which moated and dungeoned him.

---

Of all things this was saddest, that life goes on: if one leaves one’s lover, life should stop for him, and if one disappears from the world, then the world should stop, too: and it never did. And that was the real reason for most people getting up in the morning: not because it would matter but because it wouldn’t.

---

Profit

-

:)

---

We’re unhappy, dependant, clinging. When we were little, we clung to our mother and father. Then to another boy, then to our child. When our child is taken we cling to our work. Like idiots.

---

Like I’d marry you. You’d be the meanest wife ever, ok. And I know you weren’t bored that day because there was a lot of stuff on TV. And the Blair Witch Project was on Stars. And you were like I haven’t seen this since this came out and we should like watch it but oh we should just make out instead. La la la.

-

I try very hard, actually.

---

“6 people have just died and all you care about is getting lunch. That is how indifferent you’ve become. Do you feel ashamed now?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Now you can get some lunch.”

-------------

I went for my driver’s license today, and after some, eventually, useless principle based stance-taking, I will get one on Monday, without a test. I sat down next to the road and watched the guy with the forms take bribes and persuade me not to take the test. “You’d fail it.”

Mall road is as beautiful as ever.

This morning, and yesterday, I was convinced that I’d lost my centre, again. The last time that happened, I made an insane number of blog posts, all whiney and Prozac craving.

But, I got my centre back.

:D

I’ve been watching a LOT of movies nowadays. I might not go to pindi. Then again, I might. Don’t know. I’m reading gormenghast and other stuff is also up in, um, my life.

Yeah. That's it.

Rawalband

2008-03-03T04:03:00.002+05:00

My grandparents moved in to the house they live in now in 1986. That’s a rough estimate. My parents got married in 1984, and their wedding video shows no signs of the house my grandparents live in now, nor do pictures of my nine month pregnant mother in 1985.

The house is beautiful. It has changed over the years, and parts of it don’t even vaguely resemble what they were before. There is a vegetable garden, and two dog-houses. There is a big cement lined pond with decorative pebbles marking its edge and a huge lawn at two levels, connected by a grassy slope. On sunny winter days and on breezy summer evenings everyone sits outside on cane chairs or on the grass, munching on nimko, walnuts, pine nuts, almonds or peanuts, sipping lemonade or tea, or peeling oranges and spitting the pips out. Some play scrabble, or cards or badminton and two on two foot ball.

The top storey of the house previously had two decent sized terraces. Now, one has been converted in to a study with an attached bath. One of its three original bedrooms, which was once a combination of a study, a guest room and a storage room, my favorite room by far previously, has now been decked out in bright blue and yellow. It has Ikea furniture, a bunk bed, and Winnie the Pooh decorations. It is absolutely nauseating.

Six months ago my grandparents’ house and nineteen others in the same area were walled in. In what the architects of the plan called a mock-mughal style, the entire district has been surrounded by a rusty orange wrought iron and fiberglass wall so high that there are only three times of the day: evening, noon, night. The Wall, though not in itself very sturdy, plays its principal purpose of protection by projecting from itself at intervals of nine inches sharp, twelve inches long curved spikes of appropriately rust coloured (and camoflauged) and glass powder coated gold.

To those other than residents of these nineteen houses and a few shop owners, the Wall was impenetrable. For those foolish enough to venture close enough to it, and intelligent enough to stop a foot short of its deceptively level surface, the Wall could not be climbed, broken or dug underneath of. Its only potential hand holds were covered in already bloodied glass powder; its only foot holds were slippery in shape and in the same deadly adornment. It extended below the ground as much as it did above it, effectively isolating the moles, earthworms, pests, vermin and even the ground water of the district from whatever lay beyond. The Wall could not be broken, chipped or damaged in any way and this was one truth that the residents of the area, and the dwellings around it neither questioned, nor doubted.

At what would be considered dawn to those who live on the other side of the Wall, three middle aged women would sweep the roads of the area, now nicknamed Rawalband, clean. As if attempting to reignite a smoky fire, with each sweep, the grey-black surface would exhale a fresh cloud of dusty breath. Shortly afterwards, a man, again middle-aged, would water the pavements and in a flurry of mute excitement, within the minute canals between the paved bricks and road, the talc like dust would mingle with water and advance.

All of Rawalband’s residents were above the age of 55, except, currently, two people: the shop assistant at Vitamano, aged 24, and myself, aged 19. I was visiting and he would come to Rawalband for work only, from 10 a.m. to 9.30 p.m.

At seven every morning, with the exception of those that had either expired in the night, or were dangerously close to it, or were not the permanent residents of Rawalband, every citizen of the city would set out in the direction of the Mosque Park. Most would jog or walk. Others would stretch and start out their hour long exercise routine. No one in Rawalband would swim. No one had or ever would, in his or her lifetime, consider starting out their day in any different a way.

By 8.15 the mosque park would be empty, and the benches surrounding it full. Those present would sip on tea and munch on rusk. Everyone would exchange pleasant chit-chat: family news brought to them in the mail, weather forecast, the news of whatever occurred beyond the Wall. By 10 everyone would return home, to read the newspaper, watch television, cook lunch. By 2.00 it was time, after lunch and dessert for a two hour nap. In the evening Rawalband citizens would go shop, visit one another, play bridge, chess and occasionally, mini golf. Soon after would follow dinner. By 9.00, everyone would be asleep.

The next day, the pavements and roads would cough up dust, the water would chase it in to narrow ditches where escape was near impossible, the Rawalbandis would rise, eat breakfast, exercise, chit chat, prepare for lunch, eat lunch, nap, entertain themselves in the evening, eat dinner and sleep. The day after, the pavements and roads would cough up dust, the water would chase it in to narrow ditches where escape was near impossible, the Rawalbandis would rise, eat breakfast, exercise, chit chat, prepare for lunch, eat lunch, nap, entertain themselves in the evening, eat dinner and sleep. The day after, the pavement and roads would cough up dust, the water would chase it in to narrow ditches where escape was near impossible, the Rawalbandis would rise, eat breakfast, exercise, chit chat, prepare for lunch, eat lunch, nap, entertain themselves in the evening, eat dinner and sleep.

Every day.

One evening I walked with my grandmother to Vitamano, the only pharmacy in the area. It doubled as a health café. She ordered orange juice and Citrus Soma. “It’s good for the spirits and tastes like grapefruit with lime,” she explained.

I was a gray coloured pulpy gruel that made me feel like I could fly. I tried jumping off a chair and a table to achieve the feat and surprisingly, failed. When I tried jumping off the Vitamano counter, the shop assistant, 24, and entirely Citrus Soma clean gently broke the news to me. “Baji, you can’t fly. This Soma doesn’t work on them the way it does on us. It makes them feel like they’ve just heard a funny joke. That is it. Get off the counter, Baji.” I let him help me off.

After a week I began to hate the place. Vitamano refused to sell anymore Citrus Soma to me, and somehow or the other, everyone in Rawalband believed that the Wall was crucial, irreplaceable, God’s blessing, what would protect them all from being murdered and robbed blind in their sleep. For the sake of politeness I agreed that the Wall did protect them all from a horrible, horrible end. What bothered me was the fanatic devotion to the idea that it was the only means of protection available.

I hadn’t seen the sun rise or set in a week. I couldn’t think beyond what to have as the next meal. I hated the Wall more every day.

I wrote a letter to the higher authorities responsible for the erection of the Wall. I wrote that it was a waste of government funds, since, frankly, nineteen households filled with antique furniture, well pruned plants and almost obsolete models of colour televisions did not require such protection. I wrote about the sky, and how I missed seeing it. I suggested alternatives, like a barbed wire fence, pacing security guards, or the same Wall, cut to a quarter of its original size. It was a well-written letter with its logos, pathos and ethos craftily used. It was sincere and well meaning. My grandparents, though huge fans of the Wall, thought it logical and convincing.

Two days later I left what is now officially named the city of Rawalband. I still don’t know why my letter got rejected.

Cup cakes

2008-02-25T00:41:00.002+05:00

Is it just me or does Nigella Lawson make food seem especially erotic? "Use the olive oil to lubricate the spagetti"? "I know right now this would be very warm but I'll bear the pain for the pleasure that comes later"?

It's an entertaining show to watch....

So after watching her show today I made cup cakes! Lots of cup cakes. Covered them with white icing and sprinkled them with chocolate sprinkles. Then, I watched jab we met with my mother. Now, here I am....

Now for some hard-core two and three variable calculus!

Fuck it. I'm going to watch In the Valley of Elah.

To secrecy.

2008-02-15T00:49:00.002+05:00

So let’s rock. Back. Forth. Back. Forth. Back and forth. It would have been easier if I knew what being was. But I don’t, obviously. So let’s sway. Left. Right. Left. Right. Left and Right. It would help if I knew what the point was. But I don’t, obviously.

What to do tomorrow. What to do the day after. What to do next week, next month, next year, next three years, next decade. Study, give it your best, get married, have kids, have grandkids, have a job you like doing, die. So, I think. And I’m thinking, what’s so great about living, anyway? That you know more about it than you know about the best (and only) alternative?

Well. Maybe.

-------------

Tina wants to hide under the desk. She wants to meticulously peel the paint from underneath it, all day long. She wouldn’t mind doing the same to the wall it’s up against, in fact, she already had.

But her mother wouldn’t let her.

So Tina wants to play in the rain. Stripped down to her underwear she wants to see each drop spatter in to so many smaller ones, she wants to open her mouth wide open and take the rain in, shut her eyes tight, spin in tight circles with her bare arms feeling each drop, spatter, spatter in to so many smaller ones. Oh and the mud. The rich ooziness of it. She wants to feel it in her palm, the zany assortment of textures it offers. There’s the butter smoothness of it, the sponge-cake crumbliness of it and the minute treasures of chalk like dryness, hidden deep inside the delicious mass.

Ooh the mud. And to squeeze the entire gooey, crumbly, dusty fortune, feel it blend, and give way to one another in to a molten surprise that clings and caresses her skin as it squeezes its way through the gap between her fingers. Ooh the mud.

Tina wants to bring the mud in. Fill a glass jar full of it and set it beside her bed. She wants to see it nurture lemon seeds into trees.

But her mother wouldn’t let her.
-------------
I’m going to wagha this weekend. Have make-up mids next week, so I have to study A LOT. The week after I have my finals. Then I have a few sessions with Zain to make up. Then I think I’ll go to Pindi and swim.

I like the place. It just drives me a little nuts sometimes.

Um, yeah. That’s it.

100th Post.

2007-12-02T03:23:00.000+05:00

This is my 100th post, provided my dashboard doesn't lie. I think it's programmed not to....So...happy 100th!

I read in (on, actually) a birthday card that in England the Queen telegrams a birthday wish to you on your 100th birthday. That's how long you have to live before she personally acknowledges your existence. And you don't get much time to show the telegram off as well. You die.

It might not be true. Birthday cards lie. One birthday card I went through said "Over the hill?" on the cover. It said this inside:"To hell with that. We own the hill!"

Both of these were not given to me. I am not that old.

I wanted to plan for this post, but then I didn’t. I might have fancied it up with quoted, conversations with moon chacha, random prose I’ve written etc. But I haven’t written anything since a very short something about Akbar sahb. I’ve stopped keeping track of moon chacha. And I’ve stopped constructing mental quoteds.

-------------

I write posts in parts usually, at my own pace, and since I have a dial up connection on my lap top (yes, I’m rich and spoilt and hence an islami Marxist with not enough idea of either…and enough shame to know it.) I have lots of word documents saved as potential blog posts. I’m writing this part a few hours after the previous one. I just finished watching Diggers. It’s a lovely lovely lovely movie.

I love people. I don’t get them many times but I really really love them. All of them.

When I’m relaxed and happy, I begin to dream. All day I walk around home talking to myself. Jumping, skipping, doing made up dance moves when no one’s looking…and I’m alone for most of the time. I love talking to myself or people I know in my head. They usually don’t speak like themselves, so it’s actually me talking to me dressed up as someone else.

Sometimes I’m afraid to think like I usually do when I’m touching someone. I keep thinking that they might have some super natural ability to read my mind. Sometimes I think some people have the ability to see what other people who are thinking about them are doing. It’s possible. Anything is. Then I think how entertaining that ability might be for someone who is very hot.

I do other stuff as well. I watch Dexter every day nowadays. I look up recipes on the BBC food website and consider baking something sweet. I read. At night I listen to music. Then I sleep. In the morning I practice driving.

When I spent too much time in my head I feel more. I start listening to the lyrics of songs, I start picturing songs, I cry easily, I get people more easily. I feel like meeting people. But then I can’t spend a lot of time in my head. And I don’t want to do a little of each at the same time. I want to have appropriate periods of each phase, alternatively.

I get that usually, so I’m happy usually. Thank god for modern day plumbing and clean bathrooms.

I went paragliding.

I love people.

-------------

She sits on clouds all day long. Sometimes, she jumps from one to the other. Sometimes, she parts her cushion slightly to check the view, the height, and the clarity of the atmosphere. She hates, despises, airplanes. She hates all forms of air transportation. She also hates jumping from one cloud to the next. She likes to sing sometimes. Of course, she’s the only one who can listen to the songs. Her only cloud friend climbed through one. Suicide.

So now she was travelling to where the majority of the cloud people were. They can listen to her sing. Ideally there would also be no air traffic there.

Hey...

2007-10-11T00:33:00.000+05:00

I keep thinking how i don't want the next generation to blame me for handing to them the expotentially revolting planet that this has become. I also keep thinking how i can possibly make this world a better place if i got a 45/100 in microeconomics. They're both probably not as closely linked, but one day they might be.

I don't know how.

: I

On the plus side i'm eating lots of fruit nowadays!

-------------

Where art thou Moon Chacha?

From April to September

2007-09-02T18:12:00.000+05:00

Quoted:

It will perhaps be odd for you – coming as you do from a country that has not fought a war on its own soil in living memory, the rare sneak attack or terrorist outrage excepted – to imagine residing within commuting distance of a million or so hostile troops who could, at any moment, attempt a full-scale invasion. My brother cleaned his shot gun. One of my uncles stocked up on bottled water and canned food. Our part-time gardener was deployed with the reserves. But for the most part, people seemed to go about their lives normally; Lahore was the last major city in a contiguous swath lands stretching west as far as Morocco and had therefore that quality of understated bravado characteristic of frontier towns.

-----

And yeah I'm sorry I was late
But I missed the train
And then the traffic was a state
And I can't be arsed to carry on in this debate
That reoccurs, oh when you say I don't care
But of course I do, I clearly do!

-----

There were too many dangers for Yossarian to keep track of. There was Hitler, Mussolini and Tojo, for example, and they were all out to kill him. There was Lieutenant Schiesskopf with his fanaticism for parades and there was the bloated colonel with his big fat moustache and his fanaticism for retribution, and they wanted to kill him, too. There was Appleby, Havermeyer, Black and Korn. There was Nurse Kramer and Nurse Duckett, who he was almost certain wanted him dead, and there was the Texan and the C.I.D man, about whom he had no doubt. There were bartenders, bricklayer and bus conductors all over the world who wanted him dead, landlords and tenants, traitors and patriots, lynchers, leeches and lackeys, and they were all out to bump him off. That was the secret Snowden had spilled to him on the mission to Avignon – they were out to get him; and Snowden had spilled it all over the back of the plane.

There were lymph glands that might do him in. There were kidneys, nerve sheaths and corpuscles. There were tumors of the brain. There was Hodgkin’s disease, leukemia, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. There were fertile red meadows of epithelial tissue to catch and coddle a cancer cell. There were diseases of the skin, diseases of the bone, diseases of the lung, diseases of the stomach, diseases of the heart, blood and arteries. There were diseases of the head, diseases of the neck, diseases of the chest, diseases of the intestines, diseases of the crotch. There even were diseases of the feet. There were billions of conscientious body cells oxidating away day and night like dumb animals at their complicated job of keeping him alive and healthy, and every one was a potential traitor and foe. There were so many diseases that it took a truly diseased mind to think about them as often as he and Hungry Joe did.

….

There were so many ailments that Yossarian was afraid of that that he was sometimes tempted to turn himself in to the hospital for good and spend the rest of his life stretched out there inside an oxygen tent with a battery of specialists and nurses seated at one side of his bed twenty four hours a day waiting for something to go wrong and at least one surgeon poised with a knife at the other, ready to jump forward and begin cutting away the moment it became necessary. Aneurisms, for instance; how else could they ever defend him against an aneurism of the aorta? Yossarian felt much safer inside the hospital than outside the hospital, even though he loathed the surgeon with his knife as much as he had ever loathed anyone. He could start screaming inside a hospital and people would at least come running to try to help him; outside the hospital they would throw him in to prison if he ever started screaming about all the things he felt everyone ought to be screaming about, or they would put him in the hospital. One of the things he wanted to start screaming about was the surgeon’s knife that that was almost certain to be waiting for him and everyone else who lived long enough to die. He wondered often how he would recognize the first chill, flush, twinge, ache, belch, sneeze, stain, lethargy, vocal slip, loss of balance or loss of memory that would signal the inevitable beginning of the inevitable end.

....

Yossarian also worried about Ewing’s tumor and melanoma. Catastrophes were lurking everywhere, too numerous to count. When he contemplated the many diseases and potential accidents threatening him, he was positively astounded that he had managed to live for as long as he had. It was miraculous. Each day he faced was another dangerous mission against mortality. And he had been surviving them for twenty-eight years.

-----

Now, I'm standing in the kitchen
Carvin' up the chicken for dinner.
Minding my own business,
And in storms my husband Wilbur, in a jealous rage.
"You been screwin' the milkman," he says.

He was crazy
And he kept on screamin',
"You been screwin the milkman."

And then he ran into my knife.
He ran into my knife ten times.

-----

Your application has been given careful consideration by Claremont McKenna College Admission Committee, and I am sorry to have to tell you that they felt they had to vote not to accept you for entrance for the fall of 2007.

Let me assure you that we gave your application a very careful review before making this difficult decision. However, as the number of well qualified and highly recommended applicants to the university has continued to increase, we have had to deny admission to many candidates who could no doubt take advantage of a Cornell education.

Whatever your decision regarding the Waiting List, I do want you to know that we appreciate your interest in Carleton and the care and time you have spent completing your application. We are confident that you will be very successful college student, and we wish you well as you continue your studies.

-----

Excuse him. He’s from Barcelona. – Basil Fawlty

-------------

Continued:

Akbar Sahb used to wake up at the crack of dawn – for two major reasons. Firstly, he was a religious man who believed that the path to heaven simply could not be secured without praying five times a day. Secondly, he simply did not know any alternative routine. The latest Akbar Sahb had ever risen was at 9.00 am, while in the army.

His friends and him had gone out for some late night revelry – gambling, illegal scotch, dirty jokes, the like – and had come back not only late (11.00 pm) but drunk (or ‘pleasantly tipsy’ as Akbar Sahb choose to put it).

It was at dawn that Akbar Sahb was at his most active, creative, jovial, agreeable and annoying. The plan to sell his house, and the daydream of applause, too, had been hatched at such an hour by Akbar Sahb.

-------------

Old:

So, my exams are over and I’ve been living the past few (or two, I can’t remember) weeks in a decadent manner the purpose of which has been occasionally diverted from the usual eat, sleep routine to the achievement of targeted spring cleaning which pays of later with trips to the Old Book Shop. I’ve been watching movies. I just finished re-watching Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. It’s one of the most entertaining movies I’ve ever seen.

I went to the optician yesterday. I need reading glasses, even though I’ve got perfect vision because my right eye gets tired. It’s called astigmatism, which is a pretty dramatic name. My lap top’s enter key has malfunctioned, resulting in quite the problem of when I choose to work and go online. Yes. Tragic.

I can vote!

-------------

New:

Lums has started and the summer holidays were pretty nice. I learnt how to swim, got a new lap top, got my ID card made, got my passport renewed and am still learning how to drive. Islamabad/pindi were fun. I didn’t read much though. Read closing time and an Agatha Christie book. I still haven’t finished Brothers Karamazov, and I quit the Hofsdater book. God knows what the MI MU puzzle comes out to. I can’t think of anything else to write. I most probably will keep focusing on the Roshan Shabnam story…I have to introduce an Enid Blyton crazy Rida in to it soon. I’m still confused about what stuff I should send to Plums, I don’t want to edit Married for 17 years to make it more publish friendly and I don’t want to send my unsolid rambling stuff either. That leaves rabbits and rats and the Zouk and chaat story. Actually, I think I’ll send rabbits and rats and married. That’ll be interesting.

Wow. This was massive.

finally.

2007-04-29T00:36:00.000+05:00

Tuesday:

I sort of signed out of school today. Library, cafeteria, canteen, laboratory dues were signed clear. Paid a 300 rupee fine. Felt mildly sad. Got my statement of entry. My A’ level exams are less than a month away, so I guess I should start studying properly. I’ve been on something of a reading spree the past week. Read the reluctant fundamentalist and brave new world. Reread lord of the flies. Last week I went to pindi, puked mannyyy times and was told and retold that I have the health and stamina of a tissue paper bookmark. In a way, I mean. Friday I got all dressed up for my farewell party. It went really well. Halfway through the dinner lovely tapped my shoulder and said, “I just realized, this is our FAREWELL! This would be the last dance performance we’ll see.” So I say, “I know, lovely. So, enjoy it.”

I should be studying stats right now. The reluctant fundamentalist was nice. I said true and yes and exactly aloud some five times while reading the book. Especially the parts about Lahore and lahoris. It resembled Norwegian wood’s plot in a way and seemed to have been written in one go. Not as good as moth smoke but good. I like.

So I guess there will be a mega issue of quoted after or during my exams. Mega in terms of length more than anything else.

Switching to google blogger was a misake. It’s super slow. Hardly ever loads.

So God’s decided to play a slight joke with the kryptonite discovery. Maybe he thought it was about time something fun came up on bbc news. Last year it was 8 feet long squids’ being caught. Next year, I hope its unicorns.

Today:

Yesterday, I baked an upside-down apple and almond cake and made garlic layered potatoes, did a lot of math and today, I, among other things watched Black Friday. ’Twas nice. You know, sometimes I think my entire vocabulary of positive and flattering words is limited to ‘nice’. Not my fault, I guess.

-------------

‘I’m going to invent a new genre of writing…introspective literature. In classic post-modernist tradition it would entail writing where the writer communicates his introspection to the reader…so a book might contain passages of what the writer thinks of what he has just written. Very innovative, I think. I think I’ll go down in history books.’

‘Already done…in essence, at least,’ you tell your daughter. ‘Groucho and me, Roald Dahl in Going Solo, in countless other books in less subtle ways. It’s been done before.’

‘Oh.’

today, yesterday and dadi momo

2007-03-26T00:47:00.000+05:00

Today:

I just finished watching Little Miss Sunshine. Really really really nice movie. Really really really hot guy. Went to Punjab Club for brunch today and requested the violin player to play Awara. He could play Barsaat best. Classics.

Met teacher Eram there and felt a very distinctive distaste for this aunty, who with her fingers in her ears, told the violin player to play somewhere else or something to that effect. Rich fat arrogant assholic aunty thinks someone who doesn’t make as much money as her hubby or someone who lives off someone who makes as much money unworthy of bloody respect.

I don’t like that aunty. At all.

-------------

Yesterday (2, 3 ish a.m.):

Right now, I am feeling especially articulate. I usually don’t pride myself for my oral communication skills in particular and my social communication skills in general for good reason (or lack thereof…depending on the perspective you adopt) but I know that right now, if I want to, and I do want to, I can talk to virtually anyone for a period of time that would definitely be classified in the longish category. The tragedy, however, is that one can go on talking to themselves, and disagreeing with themselves (for the sake of prolonging the ‘conversation’), for only so long. After that the phase of silent reflection settles in. Here one analyses every easily evoked memory of the mono/dialogue/discussion for contradiction, refutation and improvement purposes. Then the talkative phase passes and one goes to sleep.

That’s one scenario.

This is the other one.

I finished reading fight club a few hours ago. I think I’ll start making mental notes for a quoted soon. Soon. Soon. Sooooooon. SooSooSooSooooooooon.

Maybe it’s the Defence Club Coffee Shop Cappuccino. Or the high of making my room all neat, organized and catalogue-like pretty but me-like-functional at the same time.

S
O
O
N
!

Hahahahaha!

-------------

The Roshan-Shabnam Haveli had been sold. Akbar Sahab’s announcement of the sale was not been going to be received with the unanimous and hearty approval of his family members that he’d been expecting.

Akbar Sahab was a chronic optimist. In his mind at the time of his “passing on the good news”, as he liked to phrase it, the well lighted drawing room would be used, smelling of fresh potpourri, the curtains, cushion covers and sofa covers clean after a date with Bhatt and Bhatti Dry Cleaners and Laundry and, of course, his crystal collection on the shelves would be twinkling, cleaned, washed and dried with soap after a special servicing of his grandmother’s method of cleaning out the base of glass and crystal vases: vinegar and rice. In his mind his entire family would be seated facing him with smiling and expectant faces waiting for his announcement. In his mind his well-phrased, brief and precise speech would end with reactions of joyful tears and gasps…even some scant applause. After all, it wasn’t a very big family.

You see, Akbar Sahab was not born to be an army man as his father had determined for him. Akbar Sahab should have been a romance novelist or the chief editor of some ladies’ Urdu digest, the ones that are filled with poetry, advice, romantic five page stories and sketches of blondes in choridar pajamas. Akbar Sahab had also, very conveniently, forgotten what Roshan-Shabnam Haveli’s drawing room actually looked like.

It was perhaps the combination of a less than perfect memory, an over-active imagination, excellent oral persuasion skills and obstinacy that Akbar Sahab possessed that led all the family members to be now seated in the ‘grand’ drawing room of Roshan-Shabnam Haveli.

Akbar Sahab had been married for a proud forty-five years to Dadi Momo. Since it had been close to twenty-one years since Dadi Momo’s first grand-child christened her with this name, most of the family had buried knowledge of her legal name in the forgotten, dusty, tattered leather suitcases of their memory. The rest of the family had not bothered to inquire. Dadi Momo was the ideal housewife. She ran her household, brought up her children and grandchildren, preached propriety, scorned diplomacy and euphemism and gossiped with zealous, psychotic dedication that can only exist in individuals that have values and ethics carved deep deep deep in to a metaphorical stone. For Dadi Momo’s case, a metaphorical diamond would have been more appropriate.

Dadi Momo, like most housewives of her age, experience, dedication and memory knew that something unpleasant was about to happen. Unlike her second eldest daughter – Mrs. Shaukut, first name Uzma, nickname Puppi – Dadi Momo did not have any psychic leanings or tendencies whatsoever. However, what Dadi Momo did have was forty-five years of experience with a man that was never born to be an army man. Dadi Momo felt, by this time, almost before she saw the manic glint of inappropriately-tagged-as-success success in her husband’s eye, a, by now, almost genetic instinct gong reverberating thoughts that’s crux was unequivocally the Punjabi equivalent of ‘Shit, what the fuck has the old bastard done now?’

At such times Dadi Momo would secretly curse Akbar Sahab’s father. Would it have been too much for him to let his son become a literary personality? He would have brought in more money in for the family and perhaps directed his romantic, poetic and impractical leanings to paper rather than the handling of money (and left that responsibility to Dadi Momo’s responsible and sensible hands).

Or, if marriages were not made in heaven, she would not have been married to the stupid old romantic in the first place. After all, women of Dadi Momo’s background and stature never marry these artsy individuals. Artsy people were not good people, and people of Dadi Momo’s background should have as little to do with such people as was possible.

If only Akbar Sahab’s damned father had let him become a novelist or something.

But, he hadn’t, and so, just before "the passing on of the good news", Dadi Momo was sitting praying that the news was better than the worst, on a once-bright-orange sofa.

Mention: bullshit and elvis-wanna-be-ness

2007-03-19T02:45:00.000+05:00

Today, unlike any other day in the past few months, i actually decided to blog after thinking that I was going to blog today. I don't really have much to say. Today, I figured that the MI MU puzzle can't really be done because no prime number raised to any value can be divided by three or a multiple of it unless three is the prime number being squared, or cubed etc. I went to a dinner. i've been delaying a lot of things-procrastination's the word, i think-and studying for my mocks. The uni things come in the first week of april in all probability so i randomly burst in to silent prayer a lot nowadays. anyway, i still have to read the book through till i know if my conclusion of the MI MU puzzle's right. Moon chacha and almost everything else i like paying attention to is being ignored. I still can and do sit around for hours thinking grandiose things up, but, I don't know, I seem to have lost the stamina to do anything completely or even to think things through before attempting to leave them incomplete or complete. Depends. I've also become something of an anti-social sitter. Or an anti-social walker. Or an anti-social holier-than-thou bum. I mean, this is it, na. Wanting, waiting, getting and losing. What, you ask? Yes, I say, the what changes all the time.

I was thinking about all the people I'm friends with, or people I know, and almost all of them like talking about their lives. They like the drama in their lives to a certain extent because then they can talk about it. And that's very interesting. I mean, i love my life (and myself and all my friends and people and God and planet earth in general) but I have never ever thought that that in itself what i do as i die is interesting enough to talk about. Not to say that I don't talk about it at all, but to sit down (or stand up, or lie down, or contort, or any inbetween position) and talk about what happened to me today is not very thrilling for me. It is if something interesting has actually happened though. And a little while ago I was thinking about the lengths people go to to find out why they think something is interesting and something isn't, or what makes them define themselves by certain facets of their life at the expense of the rest, etc etc. But i didn't have the stamina to reach the conclusion that's worth mentioning. Among the conclusions not worth mentioning are:
-the development of subjects like psychology, sociology, political science, memology, economics and pretty much everyhting else, except math, maybe.
-religious devoutness.
-suicide
-palmistry, astrology, face-reading, magic etc.
-everything else i missed out on.

So, i've come up with a theory that also isn't worth mentioning. The theory is that everything we do in life is to find out why we're doing it in the first place. meaning that i blog to find out what all the fuss is about, then blog because i want to know why i like it. That means that i already know and am to a certain extent certain that i do like to blog. ofcourse why i like blogging was the question in the first place. If whim determines why i like or not like to blog, then what determines whim? This leads me to come up with another theory (also not worth mentioning): something can be based on nothing provided that that something is either whim or vacuum. Now if that theory is true, then we wouldn't go through our lives trying to find out why we're here. It's whim, bhai, whim's whim...that's it. Now, who defines whim in the first place. If whim determines what whim is in the first place then, believe me, life would be ultra simple. Or ultra complicated, if whim wants it to be.

Therefore, I can still bullshit.

Thankyou, thankyou. Thankyou very much.

-------------

M inc. has left the building.

streets of philadelphia 2.

2006-12-23T00:17:00.000+05:00

So.

I finished the hitchhiker’s series this week. Mostly harmless was sort of depressing. I mean as depressing as a funny sci-fi book can be. i’ve been sort of depressed since. And angry.

Nothing new. Chalo. Kuch nahi hota. I guess.

Anyway.

…

Yar.

Fuck ‘Anyway’.

Rant

2006-10-16T23:45:00.000+05:00

I went to the nicest aftari a few days ago. Had imlee barhe and dahi barhe as well as fruit chaat, kabab, some sort of creamy, fruity desert dish, orange drink, dates and water. After that they served dinner: oojhri, chicken aachari, tandor and ghar ki roti, both, and water, coke and sprite as drinks. Desert was chocolate ice cream and rus gulein. Last we had chai.

This morning I had an interesting conversation with abo about cats and dogs. A dog was trying to cross the road and after we managed to not run him over I said that cats were worse road crossers then dogs. So he said that despite that we saw more dead dogs on the roads than dead cats. I asked him why and he said I t was because cats were a very kuti kaum. They’re manipulative and likely to survive. Dogs were loyal unsuspecting cute little creatures that had a tendency to be, well, killed. We ended up calling cats the Jewish lobby of the animal world and dogs the parallel of third world nations in the animal world, that have a tendency to be, well, killed.

Anyway. My grades have been going down. Math 2 is much more harder than I thought it’d be. Lit, surprisingly, is going well. I was planning to unwind relax, reassess my schedule, give my self some pep talk and spend some time with imaad and fahd in quetta for a weekend. Don’t know if that’d happen. I hope it does. I need the break, I think. But then, every day does have 24 hours. No?

To sum up, I think that things are getting to me. I hate that. I don’t want that to happen. I want to be a high class juggler, but apparently there are two things I’m not good at: saying no and prioritizing. This is what my to do list looks like till the end of this year:

Apply to universities.

Finalize the final university list. Submit the basic information forms, get information, distribute recommendations, hence, choose the teachers and so on…

Give Tests.

Nov 4 I have lit and math level 2. December I have my world history. I have to do well in these.

Study

Send ups would be coming up in December as well. My expected grades and transcripts depend greatly on my performance in these. I have to do well in these.

LUMUN

I have to do whatever’s required. Shit, I don’t know what.

Debates

Sessions everyday till 4 are stressful. This, along with research homework kills precious time. This all would only gain in intensity till mid November.

Yes. SHIT

Books and Movies

I have to finish PWC, the God father, globalization and its discontents along with Douglas adams wali books and the murakami book I have. Have to watch being there and water along with the, yes, pink panther series abo wants me to watch.

So, I’m very busy.

Sixth sense and books

2006-09-27T21:34:00.000+05:00

I’ve started reading Ben Mack’s Poker without Cards. If you try going to its site you’re redirected to this site:

http://www.getforgiven.com/index.php

It’s very amusing.

I’ve been pretty blank aaj kal. Not that I mind. I love thinking about nothing. And listening to don’t worry, be happy. I’ve started reading Kafka on the shore. Finished Norwegian wood. I’m also supposed to read globalization and its discontents. I don’t want to, but I’m supposed to. The way I’m supposed to submit a business assignment tomorrow about JIT production method and shareholders. And return Brighton Rock to the school library. I’ll have to pay a 200 rupee fine. I’ll try to wiggle my way out.

I like Ramzan.

I have a very strong feeling that I’ve come very very close to the definite end of this period of my life. I mean I obviously am close, but I’ve never had something of a feeling about anything to do with my life. The only time I remember my sixth sense kicking in was when I woke up one morning and was absolutely positive that we’d have someone visit us. Arooj dropped by to pick up homework.

So anyway, I think I’m pretty grown up now. In a few days I”ll graduate from my 3rd or 4rth Kafo. I’m not very sure. God bless Alex Haley.

The origin.

2006-09-08T00:10:00.000+05:00

It's been a lunar month.

I don't know a lot of math nowadays. I have my TOEFL on the 1st. My SAT subject tests on November 4th. I sleep a lot nowadays. God bless this world.

-------------

So, would the flavour be worth it? Feeling wall to wall carpet on your back, you lie, half naked, wondering, again. Twelve hours ago would you have eaten that? How much could you have changed in twelve hours to risk goodness knows how many diseases in that paper plate? It certainly looked nice. It looked very clean. Very clean indeed.

You stretch and your ribs stick out a little. Smilingly you wonder why falling ill would be so bad after all. You'd lose weight, without any effort. You'd get a chance to rest and retreat. Money can't really be the issue.You'd most probably spend the same amount as the medicines would cost, if not more, when you'd be fit enough with shopping. And you were fit enough to go shopping all the time, except when you were ill with some disease caused by unhygienic food consumption. You might even get some get well soon cards. Or two bouquets of very red roses. Or, even better, both. So the flavour would be worth it.

You sit up on the wall to wall carpeted floor. You stare at the contents of your wardrobe. Red, you think, is a very pretty colour. When you fall ill you'll stay in bed all day, warm in you red pajamas, reading your red get-well-soon cards, smelling your two bouquets of very red roses, comfy and warm under your red duvet. You'd sip red grape juice and read your brand new red leather bound The History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russel. For now, of course, you needed to get dressed because you can't go out and eat that delight in a paper plate half naked. You wear your red shalwar kameez.

After two hours, the time comes. You order it: the disease in a plate.

"Sorry ma'am," says the waiter, " Wo tu available nahi hai."

So, you think. Zouk it is, then.

-------------

Rabbits and rats.

2006-08-10T01:09:00.000+05:00

For the mid month vegetarian.

-------------

We buried them in rabbit holes

Rabbit holes?

Yes, they were tiny enough. So pretty really. Sho pretty. The poor rabbits. We shot them. Had them for lunch. Served with ginger and red vinegar sauce. Lip smacking delicious.

What was sho pretty?

The rabbit holes, of course.

With the bodies?

No, no. We stuffed them with burning wood to drive the rabbits out. Then they looked sho very very pretty.

The burning rabbit holes?

No. Not the burning ones.

Then?

The ones that they were running out off. Looked very picturesque. Rabbits scrambling out of their rabbit holes.

You ate them.

So? For that moment they were running out to dig in to those fresh lovely carrots just beyond the lens view. You really are slow, aren’t you?

Why didn’t you eat them as well then?

They aren’t any carrots.

Not the carrots.

The rats?

Yes.

Bah! Who eats rats?

You drove out rabbits to bury rats and ate the rabbits. Why?

Who eats rats? I mean, really?

Would have been less trouble for you right? Rats. Served fresh. Stuffed with one month old cheese.

One month old cheese?

Yes, yes. The back of your refrigerator dished it up for you.

We used that for the mouse traps.

Yes.

Oh.

Well. Why didn’t you eat them then?

The rats?

Yes.

Who eats rats?

Owls.

Well I’m not an owl.

Do you eat carrots?

Yes.

So did the rabbits. The picturesque ones.

Yes. So?

Are you a rabbit?

No. Look. No one eats rats. We wanted to eat the rabbits so we ate them. Did you want to be invited to lunch?

For rabbits served with ginger and red vinegar sauce?

Yes. Did you?

What makes you say that?

You’re talking slightly like a mad man. Are you mad?

I don’t get it. You eat carrots. You eat rabbit. You eat it with ginger and red vinegar. So you have both of them too. Why didn’t you eat the rats?

They’re dirty creatures.

Ginger grows underground, you know.

I know.

Why isn’t ginger dirty then?

I don’t know. Stop doing this.

No. Were they pestering you?

Of course they were.

The rabbits?

No, the rats.

Weren’t they ruining your vegetable garden? Snatching your homegrown cabbage?

No.

The vegetable garden that you weeded every fortnight with your own hands?

No.

Your back hurt, didn’t it?

We don’t have one.

Back?

Vegetable garden.

Oh. Were they borrowing holes in your garden? Ruining you grass? Uprooting your scarlet rose bushes?

No. What’s with you? They were in the field next to our house.

They weren’t pestering you then?

No.

Not at all?

No.

Do you know what it’s like?

What? Not being invited to lunch? Of co….

No. Not not being invited to lunch. Being in that positon.

What position?

When your back door leads to a firing squad?

How is that relevant?

Your front door is jammed. Your house being slowly filled with gas that would soon kill you. The only option is the back door.

To the firing squad?

Yes. You want to prolong death. Where would you go?

Back door.

Would you like it?

Like what’s happening to me? No. Not at all. I’m very sorry we didn’t invite you to lunch…but isn’t this taking taking offense too far?

Why did you do it? Those poor rabbits. Those poor poor rabbits. Why not the rats? They were pestering you, weren’t they?

What’s wrong with you? They were just rabbits. Someone would have killed them any way. We just had them for lunch. You like to have honey for breakfast, don’t you? How is that different?

Yes. They were just rabbits. That was just liquid God-gifted sweetener. They were just some poor harmless rabbits in an empty field. That was just some poor poor baby bee food. That’s it. That’s it.

Baby bee food?

So this is how it is then. Leave the pestering readily available rats and torture, murder and eat the harmless picturesque rabbits instead. Yes?

Rats are disgusting creatures that aren’t fit for consumption.

So was chicken, beef and pork at one time. So is tap water. Do you shower in bottled mineral water?

Leave this alone.

No. Why not the rats?

Who eats rats?

Owls do.

Well I’m not an owl.

Well, do you eat carrots?

-------------

Young Folks

2006-08-03T02:11:00.000+05:00

My cooking classes are going well. Still haven’t made up with darling. Plan to before we go out to watch pirates of the Caribbean. I made zinger burger, Bavarian cream, pear charlotte and pepper steak this week. I’m listening to Chand nikle kisi janeb by fareeda khanum. I’m feeling a little sad. Honey thinks that I’ve kept my life simple. That I hardly suffer from any emotional ups and downs. I said that it was possible.

Wish I could trust them both completely. It’ll take time.

Elfy didn’t save me. The poor thing would have to go armless. The idiot is lying, ignored and rejected in my room. I really really want to start the brothers karamazov before school starts. I have to give toefl, sat 2s and start working on my applications this term…ai hai.

There’s just too much to handle! I was born in the wrong generation. I pity our children already. We’ve grown up confused and squashed between two massively changing worlds. They, I’m sure, would go insane. I hope not. I really really hope not. Kids should be brought up in places like chunia and westridge rawalpindi and wah cantonment. I don’t remember wah much. I’m pretty sure it has that small city factor kids should grow up in. Or not. Lahore didn’t spoil me up too much. It’s a beautiful place but it’s just being eaten up. It’s spreading and thickening and it’s dieing. Lahore is one large malignant tumor. It’s becoming money hungry and media crazy. Not really. Either way, i love it just the same.

Now Peshawar was an interesting place. Peshawar was the place I was on New Years Eve 1999. In September I think all three of us should take a week off from school/ uni and spend some time at staff college quetta. I hear quetta ka gosht calling me bhai! Thank god I wasn’t born jain, or Buddhist or any anti meat religion. Now to really make me thankful God might get rid of haram halal laws. Not that I bother with them much but for courtesy sake I’ll never ever have pork. Bacon is supposed to be very tasty: crisp and juicy at the same time. *looks up pleadingly*. Please?

I’m planning to read the English translation of the Quran soon. Dado was telling some very interesting stories from it. There was even one about a gay community. The tragedy of reading it, though, would be that I wouldn’t be able to treat it as …disrespectfully as I treat my other books. I like God.

Baywatch is a very interesting show. I’ve never watched any complete episode but I have a female cousin who had watched almost every episode of it by the end of 7th grade. She’s a huge bold and the beautiful fan. She calls it boldy. She’s smart, quiet and extremely caring. She has excellent taste. Hopefully, one day she’ll get her ears pierced.

I want to get four piercings in my left ear and one on the other side of my nose. I want to get my hair cut very very short, but she wouldn’t let me, for now, at least. They don’t hurt much; at least I don’t remember my nose piercing hurting when I got it. Tommorow, I think, I’ll go get the four in my left ear without telling ami. Or, better yet, I could get them when darling, honey and I go out to watch the movie. Now I have a plan. : D

Quoted.Blah Blahs.(FMT)

2006-07-15T17:25:00.000+05:00

26/7/06

I’ve been busy. Pindi was fun. I came back and played around with clay. Went off to gogi phopho’s place*. We walked with a 100 rs in hand to Jammin’ Java. Hotspot was too expensive for us. Then we walked to a park opposite Café de Chaska and pretended to be little children. I love swings at night. Then I insisted on ringing some doorbell and asking for three glasses of water. No one answered, even tough there was light in most of the windows. I come back and my sculpture’s been mysteriously beheaded. Soon its right hand falls off. Now, after molding clay repairs haven’t been successful, drops of strategically placed Superglue should save it. I’ll paint it later in brown with stripes of black. It’ll be stronger then. Had my first cooking class today. Learned how to make Zinger burger, pina colada, moonlight and pink lady. Had a nice dinner: bhel puri and kulfa icecream (called home-made vanilla). God bless Chatkhara.

-------------

He almost smiled at his new thought and turned in to the street where there was the big house with the tower. At the great closed gates of the house, a little man stood with his shoulder leaning against them, wrapped in a grey soldier’s coat, with a copper Achilles helmet on his head. He cast a drowsy and indifferent glance at Svidrigailov. His face wore that perpetual look of peevish dejection, which is so sourly printed on all faces of Jewish race without exception. They both, Svidrigailov and Achilles, stared at each other for a few minutes without speaking. At last it struck Achilles as irregular for a man not drunk to be standing three steps away from him, staring and not saying a word.

“What do you want here?” he said, without moving or changing his position.

“Nothing, brother, good morning,” answered Svidrigailov.

“This isn’t the place.”

“I am going to foreign parts, brother.”

“To foreign parts?”

“To America.”

“America.”

Svidrigailov took out the revolver and cocked it. Achilles raised his eyebrows.

“I say, this is not the place for such jokes!”

“Why shouldn’t it be the place?”

“Because it isn’t.”

“Well, brother, I don’t mind that. It’s a good place. When you are asked, you just say he was going, he said, to America.”

He put the revolver to his right temple.

“You can’t do it here, it’s not the place,” cried Achilles, rousing himself, his eyes growing bigger and bigger.

Svidrigailov pulled the trigger.

-------------

Now I’ll go have the bhel puri jo take away ki thi and read these articles nana and ami have emailed. Khudahafiz.

FMT

2006-06-11T11:50:00.000+05:00

Today:

It’s full moon night! Hello Hello Hello Mr Rusgulla!

So what did I do today? We went to Cocoo’s for dinner. Wasn’t too impressed. Ami makes better pai and magaz, and the tikka wasn’t amazing as well. The funny bit was hwen the waiter told us that dessert wasn’t available because there are too many customers waiting to be seated. Ami suggested that I mail Anthony Bourdain and tell him about it.

We went to old Anarkali and Mola Buksh Paan Wala for kulfa falooda and paan respectively. The best kulfa falooda I’ve had has been Jamil Sweet’s and the best paan I had was in India. I bought gajras. On the way back we listened to a song that went like:

Dum Dum Deega Deega
Mausam bheega bheega
Bin piye mein to gira
Mein to gira
Mein to gira
Hai Allah,
Soorat aap ki Subanallah
Hai Allah,
Soorat aap ki subhanallah.

I did some yoga today. I plan to do it every day, now.

-------------

Wednesday night/ Thursay morning:

I feel like talking to someone. I want to talk about how we went to watch the late night show. How all the elevators weren’t working and we walked the length of Mega Mall before the female janitor told us that they weren’t. How we weaved our way through caution wet floor signboards and rope banisters before we met the cleaning lady all dressed in yellow. We used the escalators. I want to tell who ever is listening about how we walked to eat out and I always walked in front, since I walked faster. I used to hold my denim bag in one hand. It had my wallet, coupons and my trusty 0.5-litre bottle of mineral water…refilled for the umpteenth time. I want to tell them about staying up late waiting for MTV to play the four songs that I’m listening to now. Or was it three?

Then I used to sleep, curling up under the yellow felt throw that was like an African drawing of a very happy lion. I used to make garlic mushrooms and coffee. I’d read. I’d consider going out for a midnight swim then change my mind because of the guard dogs.

Should I call up the radio? Talk. The RJ would tell me ever so sweetly, “Thank you for calling. Bye!” It would be like I’ve entered an air conditioned drawing room after being tortured in the sweltering heat and be pushed out after only a few seconds by aunties and uncles. They have manicured fingers and wear Gucci watches and Rolexes, white gold bracelets and rings with 2-karat solitaires. “No beta, you should eat in the kitchen.”

Or maybe the radio wala person would treat me ever so sweetly. Listen to me talk and then tell me to call again.

Yaar, I guess I should just sleep and read about the mental anguish of our brilliant Raskolnikov. Not in that order of course. Though I have had dreams about getting up at night and continuing my book. The stories don’t make much sense in them though.

Chalo. Ab mera paon so gaya hai. Can’t wait, can you?

Quoted for june only.

2006-06-07T01:04:00.000+05:00

-What really happened to Jesus on the crotch?

-Want to do some colouring?

-Ah.

-Bill Galetly is there with his candles, his Plato, his Gospel According to St John and I wish I could have my own place to myself for a night of whimpering into my pillow but he’s sitting on the floor staring at himself in the mirror and pinching whatever flesh he can find on his belly. He looks up and tells me I look heavy laden.

What do you mean?

The burden of the ego. You’re sagging. Remember the Kingdom of God is within you.

I don’t want God or His Kingdom. I want Alberta. She gave me up. I’m going to bed.

Bad time to go to bed. To lie down is to lie down.

It irritates me to have to listen to the obvious and I tell him, Of course it is. What are you talking about?

To lie down is to succumb to gravity at a time when you could spiral to the perfect form.

I don’t care. I’m lying down.

Okay. Okay.

I’m in bed in a few minutes when he sits on the edge and tells me of the madness and emptiness of the advertising business. Plenty of money and everyone wretched with stomach ulcers. All ego. No purity. He tells me I’m a teacher and I could save many lives if I studied Plato and St John but first I have to save my own life.

I’m not in the mood.

Not in the mood to save your own life?

No, I don’t care.

Yeah, yeah, that’s what happens when you’re rejected. You take it personally.

Of course I take it personally. How else should I take it?

Look at her side of the story. She’s not rejecting you, she’s accepting herself.

He’s going around in circles and the Alberta pain is so great I have to get away. I tell him I’m going out.

Oh, you don’t have to go out. Sit on the floor with the candle behind. Look at the wall. Shadows. Are you hungry?

No.

Wait, and he brings a banana from the kitchen. Have this. This banana is good for you.

I don’t want a banana.

It makes you peaceful. All that potassium.

I don’t want a banana.

You only think you don’t want a banana. Listen to your body.

He follows me in to the hallway, preaching bananas. He’s naked but he follows me down the stairs, three flights, along the hallway that leads to the front door. He keeps talking about bananas, the ego and Socrates happy under a tree in Athens and when we reach the front door he stands on the top step waving a banana while children playing hopscotch on the side walk whoop and scream and point and women with bosoms and elbows resting on windowsill pillows scream at him in Italian.

-Yes. Donuts are fried.

-If I tell you I’m strong, will you play along?
If I tell you I’m strong, will you play along?
Well, you see I’m as insecure as any body else.

-Chaahat hai agar,
Aa ke mujh se mil ja tu
Yan phir aisa kar,
Dharti se mila de mujh ko

-------------

At 11.40 pm on Saturday climbed on to the roof of my house for the first time in my life. I wasted a peach. It’s very slanted. The roof, not the peach.

There was a time…a really long while back when I used to confuse leaking and bleeding. I eventually taught myself the difference by explaining to myself that when one’s blood is leaking one is said to be bleeding. Always packets that advertise blue leak guards bring back such interesting memories.

We walked to Fortress on monday. On our way back we walked in to an almost finished general sahib’s house and admired it. Then after dinner we walked Fareeda to her house. Khala’s ill. Apparently she has a stomach ulcer. I’ll pray for her.

I have this habit of randomly asking God to bless random persons. God bless you.

Btw, june doesn't sound much like you, does it?

Diary 2

2006-06-01T22:01:00.000+05:00

Sunday:

So I have eczema. The nice not-itchy-at-all version of eczema. Ami’s parlour opened today. Visited gogi phopho today. Met maham! I was missing her. Finished Angela’s ashes. Ab I’m reading ’tis. Phir I’ll read satanic verses. Then the Elsbeth Huxley books. Perhaps a few terry pratchetts and p g wodehouses in between. Dostoevsky and Tolstoy have been on my list for a long time. About time I read them, no?

Yes.

But school has the evil intention of destroying this lovely lazy phase I’m going through with some rotten exams. Oh, and I’m grounded for a month, which is the most amusing punishment I’ve gotten yet, since I wasn’t planning to go out this month anyway. Social activities are at an all time low with exams and the heat.

Fahd and Imaad are here, so in between talking and food we watch movies and play endless games of trivial pursuit, oxford dilemma, bluff and monopoly.

Wednesday:

I really don’t like Mcdonald’s that much. Patties that should be drowned in marinate before being cooked taste and look like food spit out after some active chewing. The sauces don’t taste bad but they are usually much less in quantity than they should be and when they aren’t I run out of tissue paper for wiping the side of mouth and hands from the sauce spilling out from the side of the big fat burger. The cheese is pretty tasteless as well. And sometimes my first bite gets stuck to the roof of my mouth. So devotion to McDonald’s meals doesn’t make much sense. The french fries, ice-cream and milk shakes are nice though.

Anyway, we walked through the rain aaj (a very short distance) to Mcdonald’s fortress stadium. (Waise, have I told u the exorcist exercise story? I will someday.) There was this romantic couple who were arguing about where they should sit. The lady wanted to sit in the corner. The banda wanted to sit near the window. “We can watch the rain,” he said. Anyway they sat down in the corner and spooned ketchup in to each other’s mouths. :)

KFC on the other hand isn’t bad. But KFC fries par mar kha jata hai.

-------------

Mahenoor’s engagement was loads of fun. Wrote this that night.

Writing spree

We dive in to silence simultaneously as if planned. We watch 100 watt light bulbs light up roads through glass, our ears pressed to it. With it we feel vibrations we are otherwise oblivious to; even now some of us may be. The car passes through streets we may never see again, ripping through the stillness of man-made sceneries - red brick, paint, tactfully planted bougainvillea - that we may see, but never recognize, again. Every time, there is that undercurrent of similar thought - thoughts that should never have been left unsaid. Every time, every single time, we make the same mistake, saying instead mushy quotations from sitcoms because all we really want is that glossy life: where mistakes and memories can be fast forwarded, rewinded to and deleted. There is always time for that last picture perfect take. Every time we made that mistake and every time we wish we hadn’t.

Every single time we wish we hadn’t.

-------------

Coming up…Quoted.

Moon Chacha 2

2006-05-13T00:08:00.000+05:00

She was wearing a pink kurta with pajamas. Using a blue ballpoint pen she drew five point stars on paper and on her ankles. Every concrete and glass structure radiated heat that the hour was supposed to provide relief from. Some cars zoomed by. One had ‘Baboo G’ written in bold red letters on the rear windshield. She was in a rotten mood. Moon Chacha understood perfectly what she felt, and he didn’t care to know the reason, which was exactly what she wanted. No one was laughing, except perhaps the banyan tree in her aunt’s house, but that’s a different story.

“Tell me a story, ji.”

“As you wish.” He drew in his breath and cleared his throat. A few rowboats toppled over. Apologizing, he set them right again.

He began. “Once an angel stumbled upon the entrance to night. So here she was drowning in stark, crude sunlight wistfully staring in to the night. At night, in case you don’t know, God casts his shadow on the world. And He, being God, has the most beautiful and powerful shadow there is. What other shadow is there that converts the infinitely diverse hues of our planet to varying shades of blue, black and gray, only? Some night, admire the complexity and depth that objects achieve in the night. Theek?”

“Theek.”

“Anyway, so here’s the angel able to listen and see the night but not to feel it. Turning to me the angel asks, “Why?”

Now I was at that time horribly bored and desperate for conversation so I didn’t want to give a straight answer. ‘What do you think this barrier is made of?’ I ask.

And the angel says, ‘I figured it’ll be time, since time separates day from night, isn’t it?’ I shake my great big head and say no. What else divides night from day?

Angels are clever little things. She says, colour? And I nod. Twice. Nod Nod. This barrier, I say, is made of all the colours of dawn and sunset combined. For a few minutes the angel waits for me to continue and then asks why she can’t get through, again.

‘Do you have an ego?’

‘No. We only submit.’

‘Hmm,’ I say, puzzled. ‘And memories?’

‘Yes, I have those.’

‘Of what?’

‘Days and nights.’

‘You must get rid of those then. Babies, for example, find it pretty easy to get through, at least a part of them can, when they’re not born. Get rid of your memories and you’d get through.’

‘I can’t do that. My memories make me. I’d have to die then.’

‘Then die.’ I was a little confused: angels were supposed to be clever.

‘Angels are immortal you…thing.’ Angels are also unable to swear.

‘You can pray for death can’t you?’

‘Of course. And He’s bound to listen; it’s just that angels just can’t pray. It’s like asking a snail to speed up. Nature comes in the way. See?’

‘The catch 22 of angelic existence. How interesting. So what do you plan to do?’

‘Wait,’ said the angel. And right next to the night the angel sat, cross-legged, bathed in crude stark sunlight, illuminated and exposed, waiting for the erasure of her memories so she could get through to His shadow, to be under my light. In case you’re wondering, she still is.”

Moon Chacha fell in to reflective silence and after a few moments forgot to wait for a response. He wove himself though blinds and curtains to spy on MSN conversations. He saw a few people dance while changing in to nightclothes in front of full-length mirrors. He played hide and seek with rabbits. He played cupid by emphasizing some specific crevice of some girl’s neck on her first moonlight date.

Of all the aspects of human psychology that he was an expert on escapism was his favourite. He was, after all, the best escapist there was.

“That was a pretty story Moon Chacha. I have to sleep now. Good bye.”

It took him a few minutes to locate and focus on her. He nodded, approving. Nod Nod. These creatures needed to rest, didn’t they? REM, Non REM, it had all been very interesting. He must look up on it tomorrow.

“Sleep well, dear.” As she left the balcony to sleep Moon Chacha reached for and lifted the paper with the five point stars made on it and handed it to the angel that sat next to the night. “Keep that safe for me, would you?”

“Sure.”

Dress it.

2006-05-08T00:51:00.000+05:00

You both explore each other like children in a cave

Yesterday, you tried a childhood trick for goose bumps on her. “Going on a treasure hunt,” you chanted, “ Cross cross cross. Tiny dot. Spiders crawling up your back. Bite bite bite. Blood rushing down. Spiders crawling up your back. Bite bite bite. Blood rushing down Spiders crawling up your back. Bite bite bite. Blood rushing down. I’ve forgotten what comes next. Anyway, did you get them?”

“Get what?” she asks.

“Goose bumps. Shivers. People say that you get them when your grave calls on you.”

“No. My back felt very ticklish, though.”

Today, she takes a razor to slit your flesh. Right here, she says. Slowly she traces a line along your skin. Along this depression here. She wants to see your body visibly change. “A healing wound,” she murmurs. Very often she reminds you of a doctor explaining the necessity of a certain shot to a scared child. It was unnecessary, really, this tendency of hers to formally explain. Charming and welcome, of course. But unnecessary just the same.

A wound, you realize, as you dress it, is the most contradictory indication of life. You confide in her. She is still fascinated by a trail of blood on your calf.

“Huh?” she says, looking up.

“If I was to live forever, would this wound still heal?”

Not for the first time, she finds herself questioning your sanity. “Of course it would.”

“Wounds indicate death. If there was no death, there would be no healing.”

“Wounds indicate power. Don’t dress it, yet. I like the colours.”

For some time you both stare at it. Had she cut any deeper you would have needed stitches. So where there is time, there is death. Where there is weakness there is power. Your thoughts drift. Is it absurd, you ask yourself, for the millionth time, to not be disturbed by the idea of absolutely no will power, no purpose, the existence of no pure sensation? You ask her.

“No, it’s not. It’s clotted now. It’ll blend so perfectly when you stand up, with this curve here. Beautiful.”

“I’m not one of your bloody paintings.”

“Oh. So you’re afraid of being my object, but not of being fate’s puppet?”

“Shut up.”

She laughs and hands you the disinfectant. “Dress it.”

Neela and Reshma.

2006-04-29T20:41:00.000+05:00

Hello!

Today M inc. went to school. She wore her hair up and noticed for the umpteenth time that she has an interesting backbone deformation at the base of her neck. She wore a green kurta. She hardly studied in school. She joined a group of ladies and witnessed a very interesting discussion on marriage: adolescent girls talking about what elements a perfect marriage requires, what the pros and cons of getting married are, how all men are assholes, how some men aren’t assholes, how accepting the past of ex-playboy husbands is impossible, how accepting the past of ex-playboy husbands is possible, how God’s going to give them a nice match if they believe in Him and how (this was M inc.’s contribution) maroon ghararas look so very pretty.

After school M inc. zoomed (hehe) to Islamia College on Cooper Road and had a seekh kebab from Islamia College on Cooper Road. She came back home and had chicken, Tang and fruit trifle. She watched Barsaat. Barsaat’s an antediluvian (SAT words zindabad) Indian movie about the love lives of two friends: Gopal and Pram. One is a hopeless romantic who composes music for a living and the other one is a womanizing party-animal who doesn’t seem to work. Anyway after many coincidences, too many dramatic dialogues, quite a few nice songs and one reformation later the movie ends with an end that perfectly balances tragedy with the expected happily-ever-after cotton candy. Old movies never seem to want to mimic reality perfectly. It’s charming. I watched the movie with M Inc.

So now I go. Bbye.

Quoted remix.

2006-04-17T01:17:00.000+05:00

We’ll take these pictures again eight years from now.

If she had the choice to intervene in the baby assembly line she would be permanently pregnant. No, this foot needs to be more like this.

You know what our first shopping together was?
Dustbin.
Yes. That set the tone of our marriage.

One day, we’d sleep forever, dreaming up a twisted version of the life before. Maybe judgment would be the responsibility of the subconscious. Maybe your mind is an invention of mine, as is every mind, device, object, colour, scene and event. Death would be the end of one dream, the beginning of another. As we sleep we see visions of shoulder blades and backs bent. We’ll take these pictures again eight years from now. Who needs to calm down now? Jesus. Jesus lives in my house. Every morning I hear my dad say Jesus, get out of the washroom! Such pretty bathrooms on that billboard on M M Alam road. Yaar, one day we have to go shopping together. When you’re engaged and I’m engaged we’d go on a double date!

Yes, love, we would.

Now, I’m sad. Now, I sleep.

Sleep deprived m inc says.

2006-04-10T01:14:00.000+05:00

An hour of stillness as two faces stare at one another. Eyes reflect eyes till eternity. Silk on legs. Silk on legs. Hair framing cheekbones. Hair framing cheekbones. Lips. Lips.

In one mind an angel descends. It wears a robe of pure gold, has the indifference of instinct. For what would have been eleven days time stops. It travels through the colours of a perpetual sunset. It sees acrobats, posing in vermilion nylon custumes. It sees tears fallen in the shape of crowns. It sees men moments before they die: bullets piercing the outer most layer of some vital organ, the final prayer before Izrael, lungs filling with the basic nourishment, water. It sees irony. It sees the first raindrop, the first shy smile to a would-be fiancé, the first expressive reaction to the first tasting of tiramisu. It sees the first branch bow to some zephyr. It sees billowing brick kiln smoke. It sees ripples, frozen. It sees laughter. It travels through the colours of a perpetual sunset for eleven days of a moment, a million moments, one moment.

In the other mind is tragic lucidity. A deathbed, a feuding family, clasped hands, plastered smiles, regrets suppressed and incoherent rage: the future of its partner.

Movement. Movement. The reflection changed. The future changed to termites, invading weeds, dust, rats and eventually renovation.

The angel ascends. The world is again grinded under the millstone of time.

Ah yes…clothes to chose from.

She eventually sickens of staring at her own unexpressive reflection.

-------------

Watched the exorcist and wallace and gromit and the curse of the were-rabbit. met this interesting new girl with a very odd name. had the nicest food. Admired flowers and rain. more or less tension free trip. did have a SAT panic attack numa thing but calmed my self down. lovely islamabad and pindi. the whore with an asshole five times bigger than her. hahaha.

So goosebumps and yawns say sleep now or be anything but healthy wealthy and what ever. Forgotten the last bit.

Good night, sleep well.

Quoted and the blue black hunt.

2006-04-03T00:02:00.000+05:00

Quoted!

“Pink kapre green hanger par kaun tangta hai?”

“Ek tu they’re all so enormously ugly.”

“Mein nahin chahti ke tum kharab ho.”

“They tell me weird stuff. I should be a king, make my house in the skies, play with the stars, that sort of thing.”

“I love the fact that you’re so touched in the head.”

“Have you colour coordinated them as well?”
“Of course.”

“This is the cow. She must be milked every morning so that she will produce milk, and the milk must be boiled in order to be mixed with coffee to make coffee and milk.”

“Subha hoti hai shaam hoti hai,
Umar yon hi tamaam hoti hai.”

“Jungle mein mor nacha
Kisi ne na dekha, hai
Hum jo thora sa pi ke zara jhome
Hai re
Sab ne dekha jungle mein.”

“You don’t do that! He’s a stranger. You never talk to strangers.”

“Meno, note kar lo.”

-------------

Yesterday was a busy-ish. Woke up in a brilliantly nice mood. Took my bi-weekly shower. Sang a little. Frightened Mona. (More beautiful than Mona Lisa.) Spend an hour alone curled up on the sofa in Honey’s drawing room. Did math. Browsed through a wedding magazine. Played Nature Park. Gossiped. Had green tea. Very little sugar, please. Waited for her to dress up, twice. My possessive protector. Aw. Phir play aur Chatkhara.

(“And what does a successful play require?” the Kinnaird wali legend asks. “Applause!” she (another she of course) says. Memory’s boggled (oye, boggle!) who she is.)

(We also/ So, anyway, we) Applauded. Thought about bruises and black eyes and how her mascara, spread, never achieves the same affect. Bruises look nice. That’s my hotness criteria. Now let’s go bruised hottie hunting. In?

Today we went Hajji visiting. Met this talkative girl who made me laugh. Abhi I just finished my meetha paan. God bless paan.

In all probability I’ll only blog my MC posts till the summer holidays. And to think that stupid boycott only lasted for 11 days.

2 in1

2006-03-13T22:30:00.000+05:00

I’m a little sorry. And a little more.

------------

Once we went riding at midnight. We peeked through leaves and allowed mosquitoes to pretend that they’re rooks, knights, queens, kings, pawns and bishops. We sat on dewy grass and fanned a coal fire. We made a pact and nearly froze. We set up a telescope and admired mars. We as usual muddle memory and imagination. Morning brought rain.

We felt calm. We reminded ourselves to study. We had no choice, did we? We told our half chink nephew a story while we completed a cross-stitch picture: a posing horse. Once we went riding at midnight.

Our skin became leathery, our wrinkles pronounced, our eyes a little too weak. We wore red to a party and some one assumed that we were deaf. Or maybe not. Once we made a cross-stitch picture: a posing horse.

We died.

“Oye,” we said, “this feels good. Exactly like that one April night when we sat typing what we were to say now.”

“Wah,” we admired.

And March? I ask

We nod gravely. “Yes,” we say, “March.”

(edited on the 13 of april.)

Flowery Stardust.

2006-03-03T00:48:00.000+05:00

Repetitive knocking and finger nails on blackboards: chalk that shrieks in hopeless anger till it is successfully halved and slaughtered, worn down, used up, its dust swept away to settle on desks painted brown to resemble wood, on uncomfortable chairs, sensitive teenage skin and nodding heads.

They bonded in silence and boredom. They gathered to pick flowers. They argued over the prettier ones. Those with fewer drying or torn petals, with vibrant colour and preferably a stem with two or three leaves placed strategically for aesthetic satisfaction.

They all forgot about the flowers, the leaves, the petals picked out while fidgeting and eventually each other. They wouldn’t even bother exchange contact details when they would meet again, accidentally, at the dentist’s. They’d forget about the wedding plans they made, the politics, the whining, the laziness, and the screaming, shrieking chalk. Rarely, they would gather and discuss about the lives of friends they don’t know the last names of anymore.

Or maybe not. Maybe, they would gather with careful and problematic coordination to gossip and reminisce. They’d travel together. Take expensive desert safaris to admire the stars, sing songs from albums now considered as vintage, loudly. They’d miss their lovers and children. They’d exchange diet plans that they wouldn’t have the discipline or will to follow. They’d try, desperately, to recapture their careless youth.

Who knows? They might be successful.

Garlic.

2006-02-28T00:07:00.000+05:00

Fresh garlic tastes really nice in instant noodles and in pasta. And garlic pickle tastes nice when mixed with cream cheese and (freshly) ground black pepper and spread thickly between two slices of warm toast. Kichri with raita and garlic pickle tastes very nice. So does kichri mixed with sugar and yogurt. And its fun to shape rice like the crescent and star on pakistan's flag. I wonder if eating the flag would be disrespecting it. Cannibals say that the philosophy behind munching on huamn meat is to internalise the victim's noble virtues. Almost the same philosophy behind hunting down humans for head shrinking. Would human meat be white or red? would it taste like chicken or beef?

Seven was scary. Nice movie.

I'm going to do badly in math. i'm not studying properly for econ and i know it. now what do i do?

simple. sleep.

I'll write something pretty next time. about stars and flowers and dust. this keyboard is disgustingly dusty. Dust in lahore is black. Dust in bahawalpur is yellow brown. In Pindi its almost in between.

you know what's scary? when ur listening to music at full volume on ur head phones, with ur eyes closed, and someone comes taps your shoulder.

So, anyway, i like garlic.

Story time.

2006-02-19T23:50:00.000+05:00

An ad about English courses:

An old guy explains rapidly to a junior filling in for him about all the machines he has to deal with. He leaves. The young man settles himself in his chair a waits. Suddenly the radio starts blaring: “Mayday Mayday. This is the (blah blah blah ) ship. We are sinking We are sinking.”

There’s static and then silence. The young man slowly turns and looks at both sides of the room.

“Mayday, Mayday. We are sinking. We are sinking!”

Finally the young man leans forward, switches on the mike and in a heavy accent haltingly says:

“Hello. This is the German Coastguard. What are you sinking about?”

-------------

Last week we pretended to be irresponsible people. It doesn’t take much pretence. Happy reincarnation Round White Face.

I went to India. And I had a lot of good fun. Tommorow I turn seventeen. Seventeen is special for two reasons. First, that in all probability I would only turn 17 once. Second, that seventeen is the only teenage year with three syllables. Unless sixteen is always sweet. Some one probably added the sweet to make sixteen as special as seventeen. Honestly, they’re both just the same. I just have an excuse to get presents. That’s the only nice thing about formally coming closer to your death. And people being nice. And cake. And good food. And birthday cards. And being closer to turning eighteen and being able to drive legally.

Oye, life’s good.

I read The Necklace by Maupassant. That brings the number of his short stories I’ve read to…Drum roll…Second Drum roll…Two!

Here.

The girl was one of those pretty and charming young creatures who sometimes are born, as if by a slip of fate, into a family of clerks. She had no dowry, no expectations, no way of being known, understood, loved, married by any rich and distinguished man; so she let herself be married to a little clerk of the Ministry of Public Instruction.

She dressed plainly because she could not dress well, but she was unhappy as if she had really fallen from a higher station; since with women there is neither caste nor rank, for beauty, grace and charm take the place of family and birth. Natural ingenuity, instinct for what is elegant, a supple mind are their sole hierarchy, and often make of women of the people the equals of the very greatest ladies.

Mathilde suffered ceaselessly, feeling herself born to enjoy all delicacies and all luxuries. She was distressed at the poverty of her dwelling, at the bareness of the walls, at the shabby chairs, the ugliness of the curtains. All those things, of which another woman of her rank would never even have been conscious, tortured her and made her angry. The sight of the little Breton peasant who did her humble housework aroused in her despairing regrets and bewildering dreams. She thought of silent antechambers hung with Oriental tapestry, illumined by tall bronze candelabra, and of two great footmen in knee breeches who sleep in the big armchairs, made drowsy by the oppressive heat of the stove. She thought of long reception halls hung with ancient silk, of the dainty cabinets containing priceless curiosities and of the little coquettish perfumed reception rooms made for chatting at five o'clock with intimate friends, with men famous and sought after, whom all women envy and whose attention they all desire.

When she sat down to dinner, before the round table covered with a tablecloth in use three days, opposite her husband, who uncovered the soup tureen and declared with a delighted air, "Ah, the good soup! I don't know anything better than that," she thought of dainty dinners, of shining silverware, of tapestry that peopled the walls with ancient personages and with strange birds flying in the midst of a fairy forest; and she thought of delicious dishes served on marvellous plates and of the whispered gallantries to which you listen with a sphinxlike smile while you are eating the pink meat of a trout or the wings of a quail.

She had no gowns, no jewels, nothing. And she loved nothing but that. She felt made for that. She would have liked so much to please, to be envied, to be charming, to be sought after.

She had a friend, a former schoolmate at the convent, who was rich, and whom she did not like to go to see any more because she felt so sad when she came home.

But one evening her husband reached home with a triumphant air and holding a large envelope in his hand.

"There," said he, "there is something for you."

She tore the paper quickly and drew out a printed card which bore these words:

The Minister of Public Instruction and Madame Georges Ramponneau request the honor of M. and Madame Loisel's company at the palace of the Ministry on Monday evening, January 18th.

Instead of being delighted, as her husband had hoped, she threw the invitation on the table crossly, muttering:

"What do you wish me to do with that?"

"Why, my dear, I thought you would be glad. You never go out, and this is such a fine opportunity. I had great trouble to get it. Every one wants to go; it is very select, and they are not giving many invitations to clerks. The whole official world will be there."

She looked at him with an irritated glance and said impatiently:

"And what do you wish me to put on my back?"

He had not thought of that. He stammered:

"Why, the gown you go to the theatre in. It looks very well to me."

He stopped, distracted, seeing that his wife was weeping. Two great tears ran slowly from the corners of her eyes toward the corners of her mouth.

"What's the matter? What's the matter?" he asked.

By a violent effort she conquered her grief and replied in a calm voice, while she wiped her wet cheeks:

"Nothing. Only I have no gown, and, therefore, I can't go to this ball. Give your card to some colleague whose wife is better equipped than I am."

He was in despair. He resumed:

"Come, let us see, Mathilde. How much would it cost, a suitable gown, which you could use on other occasions--something very simple?"

She reflected several seconds, making her calculations and wondering also what sum she could ask without drawing on herself an immediate refusal and a frightened exclamation from the economical clerk.

Finally she replied hesitating:

"I don't know exactly, but I think I could manage it with four hundred francs."

He grew a little pale, because he was laying aside just that amount to buy a gun and treat himself to a little shooting next summer on the plain of Nanterre, with several friends who went to shoot larks there of a Sunday.

But he said:

"Very well. I will give you four hundred francs. And try to have a pretty gown."
The day of the ball drew near and Madame Loisel seemed sad, uneasy, anxious. Her frock was ready, however. Her husband said to her one evening:

"What is the matter? Come, you have seemed very queer these last three days."

And she answered:

"It annoys me not to have a single piece of jewelry, not a single ornament, nothing to put on. I shall look poverty-stricken. I would almost rather not go at all."

"You might wear natural flowers," said her husband. "They're very stylish at this time of year. For ten francs you can get two or three magnificent roses."

She was not convinced.

"No; there's nothing more humiliating than to look poor among other women who are rich."

"How stupid you are!" her husband cried. "Go look up your friend, Madame Forestier, and ask her to lend you some jewels. You're intimate enough with her to do that."

She uttered a cry of joy:

"True! I never thought of it."

The next day she went to her friend and told her of her distress.

Madame Forestier went to a wardrobe with a mirror, took out a large jewel box, brought it back, opened it and said to Madame Loisel:

"Choose, my dear."

She saw first some bracelets, then a pearl necklace, then a Venetian gold cross set with precious stones, of admirable workmanship. She tried on the ornaments before the mirror, hesitated and could not make up her mind to part with them, to give them back. She kept asking:

"Haven't you any more?"

"Why, yes. Look further; I don't know what you like."

Suddenly she discovered, in a black satin box, a superb diamond necklace, and her heart throbbed with an immoderate desire. Her hands trembled as she took it. She fastened it round her throat, outside her high-necked waist, and was lost in ecstasy at her reflection in the mirror.
Then she asked, hesitating, filled with anxious doubt:

"Will you lend me this, only this?"

"Why, yes, certainly."

She threw her arms round her friend's neck, kissed her passionately, then fled with her treasure.

The night of the ball arrived. Madame Loisel was a great success. She was prettier than any other woman present, elegant, graceful, smiling and wild with joy. All the men looked at her, asked her name, sought to be introduced. All the attaches of the Cabinet wished to waltz with her. She was remarked by the minister himself.

She danced with rapture, with passion, intoxicated by pleasure, forgetting all in the triumph of her beauty, in the glory of her success, in a sort of cloud of happiness comprised of all this homage, admiration, these awakened desires and of that sense of triumph which is so sweet to woman's heart.

She left the ball about four o'clock in the morning. Her husband had been sleeping since midnight in a little deserted anteroom with three other gentlemen whose wives were enjoying the ball.
He threw over her shoulders the wraps he had brought, the modest wraps of common life, the poverty of which contrasted with the elegance of the ball dress. She felt this and wished to escape so as not to be remarked by the other women, who were enveloping themselves in costly furs.

Loisel held her back, saying: "Wait a bit. You will catch cold outside. I will call a cab."

But she did not listen to him and rapidly descended the stairs. When they reached the street they could not find a carriage and began to look for one, shouting after the cabmen passing at a distance.

They went toward the Seine in despair, shivering with cold. At last they found on the quay one of those ancient night cabs which, as though they were ashamed to show their shabbiness during the day, are never seen round Paris until after dark.

It took them to their dwelling in the Rue des Martyrs, and sadly they mounted the stairs to their flat. All was ended for her. As to him, he reflected that he must be at the ministry at ten o'clock that morning.

She removed her wraps before the glass so as to see herself once more in all her glory. But suddenly she uttered a cry. She no longer had the necklace around her neck!

"What is the matter with you?" demanded her husband, already half undressed.

She turned distractedly toward him.

"I have--I have--I've lost Madame Forestier's necklace," she cried.

He stood up, bewildered.

"What!--how? Impossible!"

They looked among the folds of her skirt, of her cloak, in her pockets, everywhere, but did not find it.

"You're sure you had it on when you left the ball?" he asked.

"Yes, I felt it in the vestibule of the minister's house."

"But if you had lost it in the street we should have heard it fall. It must be in the cab."

"Yes, probably. Did you take his number?"

"No. And you--didn't you notice it?"

"No."

They looked, thunderstruck, at each other. At last Loisel put on his clothes.

"I shall go back on foot," said he, "over the whole route, to see whether I can find it."

He went out. She sat waiting on a chair in her ball dress, without strength to go to bed, overwhelmed, without any fire, without a thought.

Her husband returned about seven o'clock. He had found nothing.

He went to police headquarters, to the newspaper offices to offer a reward; he went to the cab companies--everywhere, in fact, whither he was urged by the least spark of hope.

She waited all day, in the same condition of mad fear before this terrible calamity.

Loisel returned at night with a hollow, pale face. He had discovered nothing.

"You must write to your friend," said he, "that you have broken the clasp of her necklace and that you are having it mended. That will give us time to turn round."

She wrote at his dictation.

At the end of a week they had lost all hope. Loisel, who had aged five years, declared:

"We must consider how to replace that ornament."

The next day they took the box that had contained it and went to the jeweler whose name was found within. He consulted his books.

"It was not I, madame, who sold that necklace; I must simply have furnished the case."

Then they went from jeweler to jeweler, searching for a necklace like the other, trying to recall it, both sick with chagrin and grief.

They found, in a shop at the Palais Royal, a string of diamonds that seemed to them exactly like the one they had lost. It was worth forty thousand francs. They could have it for thirty-six.

So they begged the jeweler not to sell it for three days yet. And they made a bargain that he should buy it back for thirty-four thousand francs, in case they should find the lost necklace before the end of February.

Loisel possessed eighteen thousand francs which his father had left him. He would borrow the rest.

He did borrow, asking a thousand francs of one, five hundred of another, five louis here, three louis there. He gave notes, took up ruinous obligations, dealt with usurers and all the race of lenders. He compromised all the rest of his life, risked signing a note without even knowing whether he could meet it; and, frightened by the trouble yet to come, by the black misery that was about to fall upon him, by the prospect of all the physical privations and moral tortures that he was to suffer, he went to get the new necklace, laying upon the jeweler's counter thirty-six thousand francs.

When Madame Loisel took back the necklace Madame Forestier said to her with a chilly manner:

"You should have returned it sooner; I might have needed it."

She did not open the case, as her friend had so much feared. If she had detected the substitution, what would she have thought, what would she have said? Would she not have taken Madame Loisel for a thief?

Thereafter Madame Loisel knew the horrible existence of the needy. She bore her part, however, with sudden heroism. That dreadful debt must be paid. She would pay it. They dismissed their servant; they changed their lodgings; they rented a garret under the roof.

She came to know what heavy housework meant and the odious cares of the kitchen. She washed the dishes, using her dainty fingers and rosy nails on greasy pots and pans. She washed the soiled linen, the shirts and the dishcloths, which she dried upon a line; she carried the slops down to the street every morning and carried up the water, stopping for breath at every landing. And dressed like a woman of the people, she went to the fruiterer, the grocer, the butcher, a basket on her arm, bargaining, meeting with impertinence, defending her miserable money, sou by sou.

Every month they had to meet some notes, renew others, obtain more time.

Her husband worked evenings, making up a tradesman's accounts, and late at night he often copied manuscript for five sous a page.

This life lasted ten years.

At the end of ten years they had paid everything, everything, with the rates of usury and the accumulations of the compound interest.

Madame Loisel looked old now. She had become the woman of impoverished households--strong and hard and rough. With frowsy hair, skirts askew and red hands, she talked loud while washing the floor with great swishes of water. But sometimes, when her husband was at the office, she sat down near the window and she thought of that gay evening of long ago, of that ball where she had been so beautiful and so admired.

What would have happened if she had not lost that necklace? Who knows? who knows? How strange and changeful is life! How small a thing is needed to make or ruin us!

But one Sunday, having gone to take a walk in the Champs Elysees to refresh herself after the labors of the week, she suddenly perceived a woman who was leading a child. It was Madame Forestier, still young, still beautiful, still charming.

Madame Loisel felt moved. Should she speak to her? Yes, certainly. And now that she had paid, she would tell her all about it. Why not?

She went up.

"Good-day, Jeanne."

The other, astonished to be familiarly addressed by this plain good-wife, did not recognize her at all and stammered:

"But--madame!--I do not know---- You must have mistaken."

"No. I am Mathilde Loisel."

Her friend uttered a cry.

"Oh, my poor Mathilde! How you are changed!"

"Yes, I have had a pretty hard life, since I last saw you, and great poverty--and that because of you!"

"Of me! How so?"

"Do you remember that diamond necklace you lent me to wear at the ministerial ball?"

"Yes. Well?"

"Well, I lost it."

"What do you mean? You brought it back."

"I brought you back another exactly like it. And it has taken us ten years to pay for it. You can understand that it was not easy for us, for us who had nothing. At last it is ended, and I am very glad."

Madame Forestier had stopped.

"You say that you bought a necklace of diamonds to replace mine?"

"Yes. You never noticed it, then! They were very similar."

And she smiled with a joy that was at once proud and ingenuous.

Madame Forestier, deeply moved, took her hands.

"Oh, my poor Mathilde! Why, my necklace was paste! It was worth at most only five hundred francs!"

Mantra of Avalokiteshvara

2006-01-30T22:37:00.000+05:00

As we sleep, we see visions of shoulder blades and backs bent. Bones are revealed. We wanted to pen it. We wanted to share it all. We wanted to let souls unite, mingle, blend till there was no us. We wanted you to feel as we did, exactly. We could never be sure. We blamed the inadequacy of language and the eternal lack of perfection.

Inverse the fulfillment of moments in warm sunshine, with cold wind. Inverse the moments of next to absolute silence, of emersion in ripples of calming water, of power and peace too pure to last, too overwhelming to continue. Inverse those moments and you would understand the inadequacy of this communication.

It is tragic, really, that we all continue to function with an abstract concept of equal judgment and understanding. Why do we pretend to be a 100 per cent sure, to give our best, when we can’t?

We don’t like this. Tell them that they shouldn’t pretend. We don’t like it.

-------------

One day two fish were swimming in the river.

“I wonder what it’s like,” said one fish to the other, “to live on land. We’d carry an umbrella to keep us from wetting our clothes, which we wouldn’t wear!”

“We’d shower and bathe to clean and cleanse” added the other, “because creatures on land are always half in water!”

“How?” asked the other, puzzled.

“Why, they live on land and drink, wash and clean themselves with water. Double germs! But, if it wasn’t for germs, they wouldn’t make money.”

“Money?” said the other.

“Money is to people on land, as water is to us.”

“I thought that was called air.” If fish could frown then that is what this one would be doing now.

“No, no, no. They give equal credit to both. If we lived on land, we would eat fish and wonder why we didn’t do that in the river.”

“We wouldn’t!”

“Yes, we would. A fish once lived on land, and ate his own mother! I would rather stay here for the rest of my life than carry umbrellas and eat my fellow fish.”

“How do you know so much?” said one fish to the other.

“Once, I lived in a tank and saw and heard and learnt. I loved those creatures, but they flushed me down down down. Now here I am. How do you know what umbrellas are?”

“My mother explained them to me.”

The two fish spotted something very tasty and forgot about their little conversation. They agreed later (after some recalling) that life in the river was much better than life on land. They both lived long and happy lives.

-------------

I’ll get a marriage ceremony performed in a Tibetan monastery in a little village with a population of 200 and a priest who chants Om Mani Padme Hum all day long. Nice idea.

Nasha.

2006-01-27T23:04:00.000+05:00

One day, she thinks, everyday, I wouldn’t be able to write, or type, or read, or hear, or see. Her knees creak already. Sometimes, her arms refuse to move. Bodies should come with a guarantee of perfect functioning even if you treat them like crap, she thinks. Nature should be sued for such incompetence. It isn’t her fault. I’m not asking for much, am I? she thinks. No, I’m not, she answers.

Try this cappuccino ice cream. It’s amazing. She’s holding a spoonful, trying to shove it in to her friend’s mouth. I don’t feel like it. I have work to do. It’s bloody amazing. In a little while she’ll begin to pretend the spoon is some car, her friend’s mouth the garage. Fine, her friend says. There’s a moment of no movement. She expects a reaction. Her friend is thinking up one, consciously, unconsciously, whatever.

Mmmm, they both say, simultaneously.

Two hours in to her four hour nap she wakes up. She’s half sitting, with her left arm stretched as if holding something demanding immediate appreciation. She raises an eyebrow and laughs at herself. She goes back to sleep.

A dieing man said that these goras would never know the pleasure of being wrapped in warm shawls, first, and the satisfaction of the Hai, second.

Hai hai, he sighed. And died.

Stories, incidents, legends are connected by that muscles’ twitch, that alteration in tone, the sophisticated delusion of reminisce. The noble purity of pain, for example, the poetry it inspires, the canvas it splatters…it’s the delusion of memory. Nothing else.

Believe me.

Sushi tasted best the first time.

Married for 17 years.

2006-01-21T22:18:00.000+05:00

She has been married seventeen years. She has a daughter and a son, a year apart, and in that order. For the first year of her marriage she slaved through her Bachelor’s and dinner parties. She dressed up in new embroidered clothes, with matching jewellery in gold, and planned and was successfully a week pregnant with her first child two months before graduation. She didn’t look funny at her university and she didn’t waste time. Her husband couldn’t really get why she was in such a hurry. She would finally explain it to him when their first grandchild would be born; she wanted to be a grandmother before she was 55. She would be two months short of her 55th birthday at the time.

After her graduation she refused to work because some auntie had said that children most needed the full time positive influence of a responsible individual before their third birthday. For four years she tackled night school for her Masters and dirty diapers and her mother and mother in law nagging her about over work. Then she started to work a bit. After her younger son turned seven, she started working full time. Some other auntie had said that children needed their mother quite a lot till they turned seven. She believed that as well.

Once, when they needed much more money than they had, and she was over-worked, and he was worried about money, they held each other and cried. He later said it forged a bond of mutual long lasting love that has made their marriage survive. She said that they held each other and cried. Then they made some very nice love. She discovered that someone else’s tears taste just like your own.

Now, here they were, seventeen years later. He’s standing next to the kitchen table, with a glass of orange squash in his left hand. She’s sitting on the table. He’s just asked her what she’s doing.

“You don’t respect me, do you? I can do anything I want. Why the hell is it your problem? I shouldn’t have married you. You waltz in, with orange squash, and you don’t offer it to me, and then you ask me what I’m doing like I’m a machine that isn’t working properly. Like television with no visual, that’s how you treat me. Why do you treat me like a radio with a screen?”

“Do you want the orange squash?” She was like this when she was pregnant. Was she pregnant?

“NO.”

“Are you pregnant?”

“Why? Are you scared of another child? Are you fucking someone else and you don’t want something or someone else binding us together even more? Do you think I’m too old to have a baby? Have I become fat?”

“No.” He pauses to figure if that applies to all the questions asked. It does.
“Are you pregnant?” he asks.

“I’ll lose six litres of blood by the end of this week and you think I’m pregnant.”

Ah. An explanation. He sits down.

“What if we did have another baby?” she asks.

“They smell bad sometimes. And they cry.”

“They don’t when they’ve been given a bath and been powdered with baby powder. They wear nice new clothes, then, and play with their Lego.”

“You’ll have to give them a bath, powder them with baby powder and buy them new clothes and Lego.”

“No. You’ll bring up this kid. Already I’ve worked my ass off on those two retards.”

He was prepared for this. She had suggested this before and he’d always found a way around. Like this: “Are you really going to trust the moulding of a human personality to me?”

She worried about her children a lot. Next week she would walk in on her daughter masturbating and worry about it for a week. Then she would tell herself that she isn’t treating her children equally because she would never be so worried about where she went wrong in bringing up her children if she’d walked in on her son masturbating. Then she would worry about how straight they both were. She would pray to God every night asking Him to make her children straight. It wasn’t that she would love her homosexual children any less. It was just that they’d have a hard time living in this big bad world. Then she would worry about being one of those intrusive mothers in law who doesn’t know when she is being too intrusive. It would go on like that.

“No, I’m not going to do that. You can’t even tie your shoelaces neatly. I don’t want another child. Tauba. No. Never. Shit. I’m going to wear my red gharara to that wedding next week.”

“Which red gharara?”

“My wedding gharara. I’ll wear it with the big round kundan wala tika. I’m going to do that.” She’d decided on wearing a red gharara with a big round kundan ka tika for her wedding day seven years before she met her husband. She decided on her son’s name around the same time. Now, she wasn’t slim enough to fit in to her wedding wala gharara. Besides the female crowd would laugh their ass off when they saw her. But everything makes sense when your sliding down and climbing up the mood swing ride.

“Why don’t you wear a sari instead?”

“I can do that. I want it to be red, though. With this sophisticated palo. Perfect. I’m going shopping for a new sari tomorrow. You’re coming with me.”

He doesn’t want to. But if he says so, she would yell about how he treats her like a TV with no picture, or a blender with blunt blades, or an oven that smells of radish being cooked. He’s confused.

She changes her mind. “I don’t want you to come. Don’t come.”

He’s happy now. He sips his orange squash. She makes herself some green tea, pours it in to a cup and sits down in front of him. Ten minutes pass. Comfortable silences. He loves those.

“Do women actually lose six litres every month?”

“No, honey, they don’t.”

“Theek.”

Stuff...(2)

2006-01-17T21:28:00.000+05:00

I met a new baby today. (Babies above or very near to the age of one become old babies.) This baby was born two days before Eid. It’s a pretty little thing. It, I mean she, has big eyes that glare at you and she frowns. Her name’s Hajra.

Ab lets establish the ways by which this new baby thing is related to me.

1.Hajra’s grandmother, Rizwana, more commonly known as Guriya Baji is Dado’s youngest brother’s wife. She loves wearing velvet. We hardly see her anything else, in the winters, of course. We call her husband Rana Sahb. I think his real name begins with A. This is the simplest way we’re connected. Hajra is the daughter of my father’s first cousin, Haleema, meaning she’s my second cousin.

2.Guriya Baji’s mother was Dado’s paternal uncle’s daughter. We’ll call her Baji Suriya’s sister. Baji Suriya’s lived a very hard life. I think she’ll die soon. She’s been hospitalized for the past few months. She loves fruit chaat. Anyway, Guriya Baji is hence my Dado’s niece. So she’s my father’s second cousin. Haleema baji is, hence, my third cousin. Hajra is my niece.

3.Baji Suriya’s sister (who’s dead) was married to Chacha Zakir. Chacha Zakir is my Dado’s father’s cousin. I didn’t ask her how. I have a feeling they’ll be multiple way’s that Dado would be connected to Chacha Zakir. I have a very very strong feeling he’s dead. About time. Guriya Baji is hence Dado’s second cousin. Hajra is my fourth cousin.

This Hajra baby numa thing was smart enough to hold on to her feeder (without any help or guidance) when she was six days old. Her mother got us hooked on to Monopoly.

There’s another baby I met today. She’s an old baby. Her name is Rameen. The last time I saw Rameen she was a new baby, with no purpose except drinking milk, crying, sleeping, getting people to change her diapers for her and making people smile. Rameen can now walk and talk (she can walk but she can talk provided only that her mother isn’t delusional with MY BABY! Love) and shake hands and be less of a nuisance and be a cute little baby instead. Honestly, she was a cute little baby at that nuisance stage as well.

Sorry to say, but my first cousin, Omar, has never been a cute baby. He used to be quite a nuisance. Now, he’s tolerable. Even pleasantly intriguing. And he’s very well dressed. He loves tea. He was born angry.

Last week Maham and I stole oranges. Later we invited more people to steal them. Then we were invited to this out door lunch by the owners in the same orchard. For desert we had more oranges. Obviously, the ones we stole tasted the nicest.

I also had fresh sugar cane juice from a plastic bucket that was yellow before being coated in blackish brown dirt. We watched some men make gur, which is, by the way, illegal. An old super hyper philosopher gur maker explained how stinky the cooked syrup could become if not constantly mixed by hand. He said it could become as stinky as his clothes. We met an eighty-year-old man who was just as active as his son. He had one eye and wore a black shoe in one foot and a brown one in the other. He smoked Campus cigarettes. Then Gogi phopho and I guessed how many girls from my school would go around walking in to sugar cane fields with out any reason while wearing brand new cashmere sweaters.

I heard some very interesting stories about Maham’s paternal side. Some are scandalous, some are very funny and the rest are very interesting.

-------------

Things I’ve been on that can get me from A to B

Car
Motor bike
Bicycle
Train
Ferry
Airplane
Tractor
Tank
Horse
Camel
Elephant
Tanga
Rickshaw
Bus
Van
Motor boat
Rowing Boat

Now I want to ride on a truck, a donkey, a jet airplane, a donkey cart, a helicopter and that mini car they have at airports or at golf courses. Either one.

Quoted.(mid month.)

2006-01-14T22:08:00.000+05:00

Lyrical Legs. By Fernand Fonssagrives.

A Situation Well in Hand. By Anthony Bruculere.

Milk Drop Coronet (1936)

Kathy Grifter's dive. By George Silk.

Saigon 1968. Saigon Police Chief Nguyen Ngoc Loan executes a Viet Cong suspect. By Eddie Adams

Loveliness of India. By Brian Brake.

Remix.

2006-01-06T18:30:00.000+05:00

Auntie Zubaida came to visit. They’ve both been best friends since 5th grade, and now they’re both around 75.
-------------
Her favourite romantic movie is The English Patient.
“That’s dangerous.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, it’s a different choice.”

Most people would choose, I don’t know, A Walk to Remember or Casablanca or When Harry met Sally or Pakeeza or Devdas or something of the sort.
-------------
Dadi Vaso used to talk to the screen in movie theatres.
“Oye, apne pheche dekh, mare ga wo!”
-------------
M. Z: “Now I’m looking for a word for cruel starting with V.”
D: “Vaso.”
I giggle.
M.Z: “No, no, it’s a longer - don’t say that, she was like my mother.”
D: “To thi to cruel na.”

It was ‘vicious’.
-------------
"come clean, there's no sun yet
the only lights here are made
i can't speak, i can't hear, but i know i'm real
there's no warm here anyway
the darkest lights before the dawn
you remember the sun but it sank
in the water that eats the light
wrapped in cold, late at night"
-------------
I’ve started on the mega horse cross-stitch project.
It’s difficult.
-------------
“I was five and he was six
We rode on horses made of sticks
He wore black and I wore white
He would always win the fight
Bang bang I hit the ground
Bang bang that awful sound
Bang bang
My baby shot me down
down
down
down down
down
down
down down
down
down
down down…”
-------------
A’ levels isn’t undergraduate!
Why am I applying?
-------------
“Jahiti
(Jahiti)
You are so good for me
(You are so good for me)
You are my jetstream lover
You’re how I wanna be baby
(Just how I wanna be baby)”
-------------
She’s going crazy!

They’ll be dancers with eyes that blink like disco lights, milk bottles as stars, metamorphosis, cauliflower as angels, coca cola bottles as demons, fire work buttons with every TV, kittens that make hip hair styles and Inspector Khojee as Big Brother!

She’s going crazy!

Yap yap yap yap! All you care about is sanity. Let GO. Here, try on this starfish. It’s the warmest glove.

She’s going crazy!

I see a future without concrete. A future where Pluto is but an hour away! (Click here for more details). A future where the daily diet of any individual who wants to live for more than twenty years must include a slab of wood with caviar. Birch only.

She’s going crazy!

Birch and caviar would be as expensive as solitaires set in platinum are now.

She’s going crazy!

They’ll be mated in laboratories, and killed at 19. Only Inspector Khojee lives to be 100, with his glass of full doodh.

Stop!

What do you say?

Please.

OK.
-------------
Where have you gone, ji? Come again. Bestow us with your presence again. No, not him. I mean you. Honestly, we enjoyed your company.

Love,
The Three Phoenix
(M Inc.).

How green was my valley.

2006-01-02T13:36:00.000+05:00

You're angry. You know you're angry because you're walking in circular patterns at full speed. You're angry at a lot of things. At how things are bound to be later, at how you've let them become that way, at how you want to throw something at someone, but then, there is no one to throw the something at. You're angrier. You break the circular pattern and you walk in to the kitchen and choose a small drinking glass to break. The telephone rings. "Thank you ji," says the polite caller, and you suddenly see no point in shattering the small sized drinking glass. You put it back.

You break the pattern again and walk in to your room. Again, you walk at full speed in a repetitive pattern. You're feeling a little dizzy now, and your legs ache. You aren't that angry anymore. You think and rethink, then rethink how you've rethought. Like mirrors placed in front of one another. You stop. You've said this before. You think it's about time you stop referring to yourself as you. You stop. You crawl in to bed and sleep. You're tired.

-------------

It doesn't take a genius to figure out why KBD shouldn't be build. Kalabagh is the point where river Indus enters the Punjab plains, leaving its upper course. Hence, sediment disposal is disproportionately high at this point. Now what exactly would the point of building such a massive project be if within two years of its functioning, its capacity would have reduced by half, or more, because of excessive siltation? And why exactly should resources be allocated towards a project from which we can never expect a full return?

And how is Kalabagh going to be financed? Loans. Loans, installments and interest of which would further add to the funds flowing out of the country. Loans, the paying off of which would lessen or at least not improve the government position on the spending on health and education. After 58 years, expenditure on defense isn't going to be decreased, definitely.

Or, these loans could be financed by increasing direct taxation and import duty. Effect? The disincentive effect, further taxation fraud and increased smuggling.

Now, presumably, KBD would help improve or at least maintain growth levels in the long run. I really can't see how. The reservoir would hold back water from the irrigation canals taken from the Indus and the various barrages and dams built on it. The friction between the Punjab and Sindh assemblies as well as agitation by Sindhi farmers would increase due to decreased water levels.

An alternative to KBD could be the diversion of funds to reafforestation schemes, deforestation education programmes, projects bent on reclaiming saline and water logged agricultural land and vocational training schemes, especially IT related ones. Small to medium sized dams could be built for electricity generation with little initial and maintenance cost and could be operated at or near full capacity.

But they'll still go ahead and build Kalabagh Dam.

-------------

I wore my nose pin after a month today. I did wear it for a day in between, but after misplacing it and then finding it, I put it back in my jewellery box. It looks happy now.

Now, I have things to do.

The story of responsibility and age.

2005-12-24T02:15:00.000+05:00

I’ve just browsed the pages of The Little Tin Soldier. Turns out that my edition of the story is not short and as wolf condemning as I was expecting it to be. Probably because the gaps in memory haven’t been made up to make up. I’ve also confirmed that The Tin Soldier wasn’t my brother’s favourite story as a child, which means that he wasn’t a sissy… at least not in the story choice department. Since I don’t lie and also condemn slander (for purely greed related religious purposes) I am hoping that the Devil would be successfully dissuaded by the very understanding God from debiting my account as his debtor for the service rendered titled Slander.

The story will be posted in parts after my exams have finished, after I have watched all the series and DVDs I’ve wanted to watch and before my parents come back and before the excitement for the India trip begins. In other words I’m wiggling out of posting it. In any case, who am I responsible to…myself? *Sticks out tongue and makes weird noise that roughly resembles PHULAHACK in sound*

I started reading Groucho and Me today. I’ll finish it tomorrow night, or today night to be more accurate according to the twenty-four hour clock. I have to study for the subject I’m dropping but would still take the mid-term of for reasons as obscure as - possible? -possible.

The first page:

The trouble with writing a book about yourself is that you can’t fool around. If you write about someone else, you can stretch the truth from here to Finland. If you write about yourself, the slightest deviation makes you realize instantly that there may be honour among thieves, but you are just a dirty liar.

Although it is generally known, I think it’s about time to announce that I was born at a very early age. Before I had time to regret it, I was four and a half years old. Now that we are on the subject of age, let’s skip it. It isn’t important how old I am. What is important, however, is whether enough people will buy this book to justify my spending the remnants of my rapidly waning vitality in writing it.

Age is not a particularly interesting subject. Anyone can get old. All you have to do is live long enough. It always amuses me when the newspapers run a picture of a man who has finally lived to be a hundred. He’s usually a pretty beat-up individual who invariably looks closer to two hundred than the century mark. It isn’t enough that the paper runs a picture of this rickety, hollow shell. The ancient oracle then has to sound off on the secret of his longevity. “I’ve lived longer than all my friends,” he croaks, “because I never used a mattress, always slept on the floor, had raw turkey liver every morning for breakfast, and drank thirty-two glasses of water a day.”

Big deal! Thirty-two glasses of water a day. This is the kind of man who is responsible for the water shortage in America. Fortunes have been spent in the arid West, trying to convert sea water in to something that can be swallowed with safety, and this old geezer, instead of drinking eight glasses of water a day like the rest of us, has to guzzle thirty-two a day, or enough water to keep four normal people going indefinitely.

Conversation, story, plans.

2005-12-21T22:56:00.000+05:00

"I've turned old. I'll die soon."
"No you won't. See? You have a nice long life line."
"See this. My health line cuts my life line here, and that's when I'll become useless."
"No it doesn't. It cuts here. That's where you die."
"No, it splits here. See?"
"No."
"Look at my travel line."
"Nice. Look at mine."
"Oye, you have a nice one as well, but not as nice as mine. Meno ji, I'm sick of travelling."
"Then don't travel. "
"I'm not going to. You know, last year I was in air for 4000 hours."
"Uff."

-------------

I'm dropping sociology at the end of this term. I'm going to study developmental economics then do something related to econometrics, since I like both math and econ. I'm not going for engineering. Yes, that was a stupid idea.

I was thinking yesterday of my favourite story as a child. It was about seven lambs, a mama sheep and a wolf. In it, I think, the mama sheep goes away and gives strict instructions to her lambs to not open the door to anyone except herself. She tells them that they have to peek under the door to identify her front legs/calves/paws/I don't know and peek in from the back window, identify her back legs/ calves/ whatever, identify her voice and then let her in. Then she leaves.

So the bad wolf shows up at the door step soon afterwards, tells the seven lambs that he's their mother and asks to be let in. The lambs know that he isn't their mother because
a. She wasn't going to be back so soon.
b. He had different front legs from their mama.
c. He had different back legs from their mama.
d. He had a gruff voice like a wolf. Mamma's voice was sweet and sheep like.

So they send the wolf away.

The wolf, however, is a hungry, stubborn and innovative creature. So he keeps trying. On his fourth try, four flour rolled legs and a voice sweetening medicine later, he's let in. Once the lambs see that the creature before them is the big bad wolf and not their mama, they scramble to hide. Now, all of them hide in different places, but the smartest lamb hides inside the grandfather clock. The wolf finds six of the lambs and swallows them up, since he's too hungry to chew. Then he leaves to sleep in the open air.

When mama sheep comes back she finds only one of her lambs (the one inside the grandfather clock), so, she wants to know where her cute little lambs went. After finding out the story from her smartest lamb they both formulate a plan. (They both agreed that wolves were too stupid to chew there food properly, or lacked the proper upbringing that herbivore animals had, in any case, to know how to chew.)

They both set out with a pair of big scissors and a threaded needle. They find the wolf, sprawled out and sleeping on his full stomach, in the field and immediately set to work. The cut open his tummy so that the six lambs come bouncing out, then fill up his tummy with stones and sew him up again. They filled up his tummy with stones so that he wouldn't be suspicious as to where his food went and wouldn't show up at their place again.

The sheep family live happily ever after.

As for the wolf. When he wakes up, he feels thirsty and drags himself to the well. He had to drag himself because he was too heavy with all the stones inside him. When he reaches the well and stretches to pull up the bucket, the weight in his tummy makes him loose his balance so that he topples over the edge, into the well, and dies.

I'm not sure if that's how the story went, but it's nice anyway. Next time I'll blog the story about the tin soldier and the ballerina. I think that was my brother's favourite. It's a pretty girly story. I wonder why he liked it so much.

Hehehe...sissy!

MC/SN post.

2005-12-15T20:09:00.000+05:00

ritual complete

Us.

2005-12-05T23:21:00.000+05:00

Cold silver grains slide against warm smooth flesh, killing, again.

We’ve imagined you die, imagined your muscles ripped apart, imagined your bones crushed, imagined some malignant, painful disease chew on your organs. We’ve imagined countless occasions: a car crash, a painful diagnosis, a construction site accident. We’ve seen your blackish red blood spill in streams, we’ve heard you scream, yell, we’ve seen your mangled body crushed to unrecognizable pulp.

We have vomited, repulsed. We have done everything we could to help your imagined helpless self. We have helped to feel superior. We feel no less perverted.

Your chin is lifted.

Look here, we say, this isn’t a joke. You would be strangled to death, electrocuted, raped repeatedly then murdered.

You would not die of old age or pain-free natural causes.

Or you could be starved to death in a pitch-dark cell, infested by rats the size of your forearms combined.

We are not sadists. We do not indulge in rituals for the sake of immortality or forgiveness and favouritism from some supreme force. We hate this as much as you do, but you see, we include you. You’ve indulged in these daydreams with helpless abandon, fearing some mental disease, fearing the purity of your sympathy, of your altruism, of your craving to love and cradle some sickly child, fearing its reality, fearing your indulgence in the fulfillment of your desire to feel pure, righteous, pious.

Your chin slumps.

Why moan, child, we say, when the motive is common? You are, after all, human, isn’t it?

Actual Life for once.

2005-12-03T21:48:00.000+05:00

They’re some funny ideas that pop up in my mind sometimes…like the theory that different Gods that work in this big building manage different galaxies. That angels stuff themselves into elevators and request the seventh sky “please.”
(I do not believe that.)

I also have another now-ancient theory that planet Earth is a cell of the creature known as Universe, and that the survival of the competence of the Earth Cell would depend on fighting off the HOP (Human Over-Population) disease. The Earth cell will manage to ward off HOP in all probability, unless destroyed by external forces in the process.
(I do not believe that, either.)

I also do not believe in soul mates. Now that is as much bull-crap as the non-existence of alien life forms. I do believe in aliens and in everything else that is necessary for success, survival and social acceptance. That’s an observation, not a motto.

Haha.

I do have a friend who believes in soul mates, though. Her name is Zainab. I have another interesting friend. Her name is Maryam. So, this is the first time that I’ve formally mentioned the proper first names of these creatures. It’ll most probably be the last. All apologies.

Exactly six months ago, I celebrated my 16th birthday with them. In their overflowing sweetness, they both wrote down sticky sweet stuff for me. Zainab smeared her written syrup on the first two pages of a comic book about Mohammad Ali Jinnah. Maryam did her share of syrup smearing inside a birthday card.

Here:

Haha. All of them want cards with intimate messages written on them and although I’m still not sure whether you want it, here goes.
You’ve been an amazing, amazing, AMAZING friend and you have no idea how stupid I feel writing this for it’s all understood. You’ve been there all the time ever since we became friends (in grade 8 was it?). And I can safely say, you’re the only person I can blindly trust. I can make you promise and be sure you’ll keep it forever. You have no idea; you’ve almost been a saint at times. It’s really hard to find true friends and I’m glad to say I have one. The way you’ve listened to me rant about all that senseless crap, offered me a shoulder (lol!), its beautiful. Just don’t change and I want our friendship to last forever. I love you!
Now that I’ve buttered you enough give me your blog address. *grin*

Love,
Maryam

Happy 16th birthday to my best friend! I LOVE YAA! This is a book I promised you. I have another copy of it as well. I hope you enjoy it. Even though we just got over with our history. Lolz!
Well meno I really have been sooo lucky to get a friend like you in life. You are amazing and trust worthy. If there is anything I can totally trust with anything at all it’s YOU!
and you are the only one who gets away with yelling at me…hehehe! and the only one I get scared from (seriously you really get pissed at times lolz!) but I respect that coz it’s usually when you feel I’m doing something wrong and well that’s what friends are for! If friendship or even the word comes to my mind your name is the first one to pop up! Look it’s like 6.20 in the morning and I am up writing this for you! You see how much I love you (next page: SWEET 16!; Muah!; Muah!; Muah!) and always will and on every birthday that goes by I hope we can celebrate em together. Even though you become a baby sometimes and get a lil irritating I still love ya! Lolz. And I love ya the way you (are) coz never would I like to change anything about you. You’ve always been there by my side and I’ll always be there by your side when ever you need me. and so the years will pass by from 16 to 26 to 36 to 56 to 66 and we’ll be forever BEST FRIENDS!
Love ya
Zainab.

(Maryam got my blog link, ironically, before I read her card.)

-------------

Evangelion 2

This is perfect.

It must be some drug.

It isn’t

Sleep…or lack of it?

No

What is it?

It’s my heart…beating.
People call this an out of body experience. Only, I’m still inside this body. I think I don’t care anymore…. I don’t. Was this the conclusion you were waiting for, shrink?

Yes.

Beautiful, isn’t it?

For you, maybe, yes. For me, no. It’s called self-delusion.

No, it’s called heaven. Let me stay here.

Stay. Enjoy yourself.

Of course.

Pretty pointless

2005-11-18T22:53:00.000+05:00

I think I'm going to learn Japanese. Then I'll be able to watch Japanese animes and movies without being bothered with the subtitles. And read japanese literature, which I'm pretty sure would be worth reading. And then I can move to Japan and live in this luxurious cottage at the base of mount fujiyama, happily. We both could make a living out of selling overpriced souveniers to tourists, and every Sunday i could go to the vegetable market and bargain over carrots. I like carrots. I also like beef pepperoni pizza - extra cheese, thin crust, after a hot shower, while watching Indochine...uff. I had barbecue beef, deep pan, extra cheese, personal pizza today. Not bad, but not as good. Once we walked to Desa Sri Hartamas to try that Italian restaurant. That's where i tried that very thin cheese, tomato pizza. It tasted nice. I like pizza. But I never liked that Maharaja pizza. It was bad. The sauce was quite sweet, and the toppings weren't and obviously the cheese wasn't either, so it was not so nice. I like saying nice. Eram Rahman told us to stop using nice, bad and good. We never stopped. I want flu shots. Falling ill every month with a blocked nose, sore throat, watery eyes, dried lips and a bad cough isn't very nice...in fact its bad. pretty bad. Next week, I have my sociology monthly test. And tommorow it's ptc time. my teacher reports have always always gone badly, and i can usually draw a pretty accurate picture of what they think of me. This year, I'm really not very sure. At this stage, waise, PTCs are pretty pointless. We're "young ladies" now (proper young ladies, not the 5th grade teacher sabiha young ladies); we're pretty independant now. Why should teachers, now, still have to discuss their problems, relating directly to us, with our parents? It wouldn't help, not at all. abhi I'll read more of this book by Haruki Murakami. It's very interesting.

16th on the 15th.

2005-11-15T19:42:00.000+05:00

Quoted.

“Reeling and Writhing, of course, to begin with,” The Mock Turtle replied; “and then the different branches of Arithmetic - Ambition, Distraction, Uglification and Derision.”
&
“Mystery, ancient and modern with Seaography; then Drawling – the Drawling master was an old conger eel, that used to come once a week: he taught us Drawling, Stretching and Fainting in coils.”

Our fathers were our models for God. If our fathers bailed, what does that tell you about God? Listen to me. You have to consider the possibility that God does not like you. He never wanted you. In all probability He hates you. This is not the worst thing that can happen. We do not need Him! Fuck damnation. Fuck redemption. We are God’s unwanted children? So be it!

Song sung blue
Weeping like a willow
Song sung blue
Sleeping on my pillow
Funny thing, but you can sing it with a cry in your voice
And before you know it, start feeling good
You simply got no choice

Falling out of aero planes and hiding out in holes
Waiting for the sunset to come, people going home
Jump out from behind them and shoot them in the head
Now everybody’s dancing the dance of the dead,
the dance of the dead,
the dance of the dead.

Prime numbers are what is left behind when you have taken all the patterns away. I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rule, even if you spent all your time thinking about them.

The answer to life, the universe, and everything is…42.

How do I know this you might ask? Because I make it my business to ensure that I have ears everywhere in this town. From right in the sanctity of his own office even if it means I must suffer the angular contortions of his assistant in my bed.

Don’t you ever ever ever do that to me again. This is for you. Click

I felt as if I had just seen something perfect. It’s so beautiful.

I have resigned myself to mediocrity.

Mona: More beautiful than Mona Lisa.

Get over it already, yaar.

Tera roop hai
Keh yeh dhoop hai
Khule baal hain
Keh hain badlian
Tu jo paas hai
Mujhe pyaas hai
Tere jism ka
Ehsaas hai
Saans bhi jaise
Ruk si jati hai
Tu ju paas aaie tu
Aanch aati hai
Dil ki dharkan bhi
Mere seene mein
Larkharati hain

-------------

The Story of Spine.

Spine was born soft, hyper active and bent. Spine then hardened into a permanent curve, with the flexibility of a humane bureaucrat. He was considered cool. Spine was at his most active for a total of two decades. Then gradually age had its toll on his efficiency. One sad day Spine was injured. Spine was crushed under a beam when a building collapsed. Spine could never recover again. Spine knew it and so did everyone else. The injury was such that Spine couldn’t even manage the remaining half of the body with the proper zeal. You see, the glory days were long past. One day Spine died. Spine’s owner had killed himself. Spine was as inefficient as ever, but he still felt for a few painful seconds before absolute relapse that he had been cheated. Spine was sent to the heaven of bodily health. His owner was sent to hell. God does not admire cowards.

-------------

Ever felt that? Sometimes I want to slit someone’s wrist with a blunt knife. I want to watch them bleed, slowly. I know that I’ll enjoy it. It would be a huge ego boost: watching someone at his or her most vulnerable.

She doesn’t like to feel weak; she likes to think she’s beyond and above weakness. The fact is our connection is our contradiction, but in essence of course we are the same being. Only the third phoenix is a separate entity in itself. Hence it’s always ignored, tragically.

I want to sleep.

You can’t. Anyway, as I was saying, sometimes we believe for the sake of believing. State for the sake of stating. Be for the sake of being. We might not exist you know…this could all be an elaborate lie. We could all be, well, nothing. We could all be the absence of everything.

That sounds so much sexier than “nothing”. Sleep?

Fine. Are we going to?

No. Enough already, don’t you think?

I don’t think.

Etc.

2005-11-07T16:43:00.000+05:00

(It’s disgusting. If I ever hear anything of this sort happening again, I’ll kick you out of the house.)

You have to stop thinking.

(What makes you think I don’t have the will power to stop?)

I can’t.

(If someone offered me heroine right now, I’ll take it.)

You will. It’s when it seems that time has stopped.

Take me there then; take me to that place of no thought.

-------------

It’s unnecessary to describe how days spent in Rawalpindi have become. The line up for eidi ritual wasn’t fun, and it hasn’t been since the most generous person in the family passed away. And now its Malakwal being played (with no solid dispute but many solid grudges-and no elaborate letters in Urdu) in Westridge. Maybe growing up plays a major role, or maybe the glue of family is actually weathering. Pictionary etc. was fun though. There would have been very little to look forward to if it hadn’t.

-------------

November has come.

-------------

Early morning hungry cats purr and ankles are rubbed against. Early morning the dull blue of toe nails slowly turn into fresh pink, under thick woolen socks. Late at night eyes that beg of caffeine or sleep stare at silhouettes shaped on frosted glass. That bald man? He has too much to regret and very little to deny. He wears the shiniest shoes: mahogany, burnt sienna, black. (Kiwi shoe polish.) Late at night, the most irritating question is: What are you thinking? Late at night, I pretend to be deaf.

Botrytis Cinera

2005-10-25T15:59:00.000+05:00

“And the smell of rot fills the country.

Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.

There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our successes. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate – died of malnutrition – because the food must be forced to rot.

The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards must hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.”

Pages 40 and 41.

2005-10-23T14:18:00.000+05:00

"When did you decide to become an architect?"

"When I was ten years old."

"Men don't know what they want so early in life, if ever. You're lying."

"Am I?"

"Don't stare at me like that! Can't you look at something else? Why did you decide to be an architect?"

"I didn't know it then. But it's because I've never believed in God."

"Come on, talk sense."

"Because I love this earth. That's all I love. I don't like the shape of things on this earth. I want to change them."

"For whom?"

"For myself."

"How old are you?"

"Twenty-two."

"Where did you hear all that?"

"I didn't."

"Men don't talk like that at twenty-two. You're abnormal."

"Probably."

"I didn't mean it as a compliment."

"I didn't either."

"Got any family?"

"No."

"Worked through school?"

"Yes."

"At what?"

"In the building trades."

"How much money have you got left?"

"Seventeen dollars and thirty cents."

"When did you come to New York?"

"Yesterday."

Cameron looked at the white pile under his fist.

"God damn you," said Cameron softly.

"God damn you!" roared Cameron suddenly, leaning forward." I didn't ask you to come here! I don't need any draftsmen! There's nothing here to draft! I don't have enough work to keep myself and my men out of Bowery Mission! I don't want any fool visionaries starving around here! I don't want the responsibility. I didn't ask for it. I never thought I'd see it again. I'm perfectly happy with the drooling dolts I've got here, who never had anything and never will have and it makes no difference what becomes of them. That's all I want. Why did you have to come here? You're setting out to ruin yourself, you know that, don't you? And I'll help you do it. I don't want to see you. I don't like you. I don't like your face. You look like an insufferable egotist. You're impertinent. You're too sure of yourself. Twenty years ago I'd have punched your face with the greatest of pleasure. You're coming to work tomorrow at nine o'clock sharp."

"Yes," said Roark rising.

"Fifteen dollars a week. That's all I can pay you."

"Yes."

"You're a damn fool. You should have gone to someone else. I'll kill you if you go to anyone else. What's your name?"

"Howard Roark."

"If you're late, I'll fire you."

"Yes."

Roark extended his hand for the drawings.

"Leave these here!" bellowed Cameron. "Now get out."

Filtered Light.

2005-10-18T22:36:00.000+05:00

Yes, it’s that time of the month again. The time of nostalgia, make-belief uncles and birthdays. Around the time of staying up, giggling, sketching and gorging down cookies, Lays chips and half cooked mushrooms (served with ketchup, mustard, salt and chaat masala). Staying up, drinking water and admiring the stars. (Yes, it’s also the time of condemning Sorcerers, light and air pollution.) Staying up and talking about everything, from religion to legs. Staying up and matchmaking. Staying up and playing innumerable games of bluff, rummy, trump and chess. Staying up late and laughing, yawning, crying, scaring, swearing not to sleep but sleeping just the same. I miss that, a lot.

Now, I sleep.

done!

2005-10-15T21:18:00.000+05:00

the shipment has arrived. And i'm very happy. So what me cargo does all of these cardboard boxes contain?

lets see....

1. books!

2. CDs

3. Pot bellied figurine with pretty skirt (male) for my bedside table.

4. *thinks hard.*

As married to money and consumer goods that we all are, this has also arrived: a mass of unrequired household shopping, my mother's beautician equipment, bo's books and entertainment things, gogi popo and co's shopping and some storage units to contain all that my parents have bought without thinking about space.

-------------

Today, its my Dada's birthday. This was his response to the question "how old have you turned":

"Bass, old enough. I now don't think it important to tell people my age."

He's a funny, eccentric, the-world-must-be-made-to-rotate-around-me sort of guy. And he gets away with it, chuckling. Luckily, he has a very soft spot for his grand children, Indus Music and Strings. He has a God will forgive me sort of atitude towards life, insisting that he is right and those bloody bastards/idiots/ jahils mullahs aren't. He might just be.

-------------

Things left to do:

a) finish grapes of wrath

b) read the fountainhead

c) read the gormenghast trilogy

d) read Catch-22

e) reread joy luck club and alice's adventures in wonderland.

f) try my level best to try and study thora boht per day and not flunk my As.

g) have another "so tell me something about the most meesni person in our family dado" session with the best story teller i know.

h) shower.

Episode 4.

2005-10-11T22:00:00.000+05:00

Categorised it? How? It's disgusting really, thinking in terms of productive potential decreasing...disgusting. Thinking in terms of a birthday? Disgusting. Thinking of no one at all? Disgusting. Thinking of a cold and irrational hate of medication? Disgusting. Being happy? Disgusting.

Repitition?

Nauseating.

Commentary:

laugh. I am.

Sunday and DeVil

2005-10-05T19:51:00.000+05:00

Miss DeVil was confused. She had absolutely no idea what khwaar meant. So Miss DeVil picked up a fur coated telephone receiver and called up Darling.

“Darling! How are you?”
“Err, I’m okay. You?”
“Marvellous, baby. Now tell me, what does khwaar mean?”
“Tauba DeVil, that’s such a silly question I’m not even going to try and answer it. First you want to know what qualifies a person as a loser and now this. Won’t tell.”
“Okay, tell something else then.”
“That I will do…”

45 minutes later, Cruella replaced the receiver and felt that her most dependable link to the cool lingo world had failed her. Her second most dependable link would hopefully not: Honey.

“Honey! How are you?”
“Why call me Honey?”
“Aiveen. So what exactly does khwaar mean?”
“You, Cruella. You know what you should do? Hang this cardboard thing around your neck. Aage “I am” would be written and pheche “KHWAAR.” Then go around asking people what khwaar means. Sahi jotian parein gi.”
“No, seriously.’
“I don’t know. Ask someone else. Now Mama is calling me so I have to go. Bye.”
“Bye.”

Disappointed, Cruella sat back in her very comfortable black and white arm chair and began reflecting on the the possible meanings of khwaar. Then she thought about her date of birth. Then about Jimbaran beach. She liked it there: sand between her toes, sea water lapping at her ankles, the taste of garlic butter tiger prawns in her mouth. Cruella was sad. She thought about the Tuesday to come. She thought about her new clothes, her hair and make-up (black and white with a dash of red on the lips). Finally she planned the tactics she would employ to join hands with Korean dog importers to bless the world with Dalmatian fur coats.

Also, Cruella finally admitted that “khala ki dukaan” and “khote ki khaal” do not rhyme.

heart beat.

2005-09-22T16:04:00.000+05:00

Let’s bottle up this moment. Then some day, someone, anyone, can uncork this moment, this now, and feel what I feel now. Let’s do that. We can’t? Why? She says she can do it. She wants to bottle herself away and live forever. Hibernating. If she can bottle up her existence, the infinite decisions that form her flesh, her now, why can’t I? (No, she doesn’t lie. Yes, I’m pretty sure.) Imagine every curve, angle, hollow, pore, the erotic geography of her body existing in between heart beats, forever. It can happen; we can defy time and suffer for it.

Define instant. Define me. Pause. No, in between heart beats my love. In between heart beats. Yes, like that.

qouted and more

2005-09-16T15:31:00.000+05:00

"So he says the"truth is a flame against a sleeping lake of petrol," giving an incendiary twist to the familiar "body of water" imagery. But a sleeping lake? A lake of petrol? Let me try my jaded hand: An Orugodawatte of burning black gold?...But the most remarkable metaphors of the book are the ones that elevate the ordinary. Sometimes to the abstruse.Palipana the aged archaeologist is a skinny man. But for the writer, "Palipana was thin, like some lost animal,some idea." As thin as an idea? As in: as skinny as a thought? As fat as an attitude? As obese as vanity?"

-Dinali Fernando bashing Anil's Ghost.

"Repetition I love, and used because it made me feel safe. Repeated words and phrases have a rocking feeling, like a lullaby. They help take away the shock of the plot ."

-Arundhati Roy about God of Small Things.

"Wounded lips."

-Arundhati Roy in God of Small Things.

"You have a blog, right? I think it's so... I mean, why is it that you spend all your life hiding your diary and just because it's available on the internet everyone is using it. They're just too many blogs and then everyone suddenly becomes this dark moody person. And half of them shouldn't even be writing...So, what's your blog about?"

-Fasi Zaka in OTF ep 1.14

"Warning: Smoking can cause cancer, respiratory tract infection, chest infection, mouth ulcer, bad breath, impotency, blood pressure, schizophrenia, etc etc etc etc ........."

-Health warning for TDH cigarettes.

-------------

I think, that if i try crushing maggi noodles and boiling them for 45 seconds only, and draining and drying them and then adding the taste-maker, i think I'll be able to make nimko.

this auntie i met told me that if birth control pills were taken according to a specific dosage they could significantly reduce facial hair. butt-erflies taste with their feet.

-------------

happy lunar birthday ebony silk.

another day.

2005-09-05T00:04:00.000+05:00

A whirpool in my mind. Random incidents, golden words, people I may never ever meet again. A bad habit, resolved by a mind occupied elsewhere. Anger, blown away like dust, as always. Zainy told me I shouldn’t swear, so I won’t. Soon, Sir Nipple will be back. He asked me out on a fairy ball, I refused due to transportation inconvenience. Someone asked me why I didn’t write about an orgasm instead of the beauty of playing and exploiting the vague mush of the past. How can he know about something as earthly as that? Besides, that isn’t like me. Hazrat Mona Lisa. Remember?
Ofcourse.

-------------

I mourn the loss of anonymity. And the loss of something so much more. Come, let’s celebrate my newfound callousness.

-------------

Another rustle, some cigarette and shisha smoke, some pointless laughter: your prime. There should be more, you say. You feel old, tired, bothered about the blood on your TV screen, but only bothered because you should be. You think that there is a cultural clash, your blood is rebelling, but your tongue and mind is not. “We were an English colony since 1857. Unofficially our heritage has been influenced by everything British for a longer period of time. Now the world is smaller, there is no us-and-them no more, just we, we humans, we living breathing, we peace, we love, we tree hug and save world, we.” You, we, confused? You wonder why you know so little about your fucking future? Why you find it very hard to compose a thought without “I” and “me”? Why you think more often of food, sex and randomly swearing then of something more childish? Why we is no happy now? Huh?

“We want biscuit! We want our sexy, fucking biscuit, with extra sweet and rich cream, with chunks of mint chocolate and on top of Haagen Daaz strawberry and cream ice-cream. We want eternal happiness because we no content with this! We need MORE!”

Another phase of irritation, another website, another blog, another whining teenager. It’s 12.00 am. Another day.

conversations

2005-09-01T12:12:00.000+05:00

"Fatima, that guy, one row in front of us, window seat, see? He's nice."
"Hmm, baat karon?"
"Kya baat?"
She grins, "Shaadi ki, aur kiss ki?"

-------------

"She fell off the horse."

"I didn't fall off. I slipped. The most gentle possible landing."
"Jo bhi, you still fell."

"Have you ever fallen of one?"

"No. Not yet."

-------------

"Back straight. Move your chin a bit. Aim through this U here, well below the target for you. Put your finger on the trigger atleast. Chalo."
"How was it?"
"Not bad."
"I'd closed my eyes."

-------------

Memory works when it should, and shouldn't.

today

2005-08-25T15:10:00.000+05:00

this monica phase has started to pay off. my room has been successfully decluttered, the potetial gifts stack has been reorganized and all my o level notes, books and notebooks have been distributed into three stacks:

1. the give away to radi wala stack (largest)
2. the give away to a future O'level candidate stack (second largest)
3. the keep stack (tiny)

the result is

(a) more cupboard and drawer space and a neater looking room.
(b) I'm back to my before holidays weight.
(c) Everyone who wants anything i dont want ends up with more stuff, eg, all of my younger cousins are soon going to be much more wealthier in terms of stuffed toys. I've even given Omar away.
(d) I'm richer since i tend to keep money in odd places.

And, i still don't need dispirin or any anti allergy because of the excess dust i'm breathing in. Nice.

Chapter 1.

2005-08-23T13:50:00.000+05:00

Elm’s Grove was a quiet town where nothing much ever happened. It was situated about twenty miles off the Cornish coast, and, truth be told, was more of a village than a town. It consisted of thirty of forty odd cottages with gardens, half a dozen stores, one large supermarket, the odd restaurants and a cinema.

The village was located in a secluded spot, cosily snuggled in between tall mountains to the north and a dense pinewood to the south. The mountains blocked most of the Arctic gales, but at the same time cool gusts of wind would blow from the Celtic Sea, keeping the weather well below 20 degrees for most of the year.

The place had its own small harbours as well, which mainly docked fishing boats or private rowing boats – most of which were rusty because the treacherous coasts rarely permitted their usage.

Elm’s Grove was one place where everybody knew everybody – one of those places where the most interesting things included how people’s neighbours spent their days, what they said, what they did, and most importantly, how their private lives were going. Even the arrival of colour television had hardly moved gossip down the list of most favourite pastimes.

Among the village’s residents was Dora Mulligan. Mrs Mulligan was a woman of sixty odd, who had settled down after raising three children and burying a husband. Mr Mulligan had died some ten years previous, and had left his wife with a small cottage in the heart of Elm’s Grove. The three children were all abroad, having completed their education. This left only Dora Mulligan, who spent her day washing, cleaning, ironing and cooking for any unexpected visitor who might happen to turn up.

On this particular day, a pleasant September morning, she was sitting sipping China tea with her neighbour Hetty Jones. Hetty Jones was an unmarried woman with a notorious reputation for spreading rumours all over Elm’s Grove. Poor Mrs Mulligan, whose main goal in life was to dote upon her children, was quite blind in other aspects, especially as a judge of character. She failed to see Hetty as an unkind gossiper, and did not understand that the only reason Hetty attached herself to Dora was that Hetty had no other friends – most people preferred to keep their distance from her.

Mrs Mulligan was talking about her youngest son Josh. “And you know, my dear,” she was saying, “I just feel so – so apart from him. I mean, I actually feel a bonding with the other two, but Josh never opens up to me. I worry about him, at night mainly, and he’s just lost his fiancée, you know, Alexa, and I haven’t seen him since. I wrote to him and offered to come to him – he’s in Australia, you know, but he wrote back saying he didn’t want anyone, not even for the funeral.”

Hetty Jones placed down her cup, relaxed her little finger, and then said, “Maybe you should suggest that he ought to come down here, you know, to spend some time with you.”

“Oh no – he’d never want to come here, back home I mean. I don’t know why, but I’ve always felt that he is unhappy here.”

“But if you only suggested…?”

“Well,” sighed Mrs Mulligan. “I could give it a go – I don’t know what good it’ll do, but as long as he’s happy, which I know he’s not.”

“It’s been ages since we last saw him. Why – I think he was only fifteen or sixteen when he left Elm’s Grove.”

Mrs Mulligan loved talking about her children. “Yes, then off to boarding school in Exeter, and then without coming home he left straight for Australia. He said he had more hopes abroad than here.”

Mrs Jones resisted from telling her Mrs Mulligan that most people who left for Australia only went to start small businesses which were so shaky they hardly lasted for a few days.

“I think I have a photograph of him somewhere. Poor Josh, he never liked being photographed, so I asked Raymond to take it when he wasn’t looking.” Dora got up and rummaged through the side bureau of her drawing room. She found what she was looking for and passed it to Hetty, who took it with interest.

The photograph showed a boy of about sixteen, leaning against a tall tree. He was dressed in black trousers and a matching blazer over a crisp white shirt. It was evidently his school uniform, and he had his collar open and his tie trailing from his pocket. Although not the exceptionally handsome teen, Josh still had good looks.

His hair was thick, wavy and brown, and his eyes were of a slightly lighter shade. The portrait was taken a little to the left, so the sharp outline of his nose was visible, as was his chin.

“Ever so proud of him, I was,” said Mrs Mulligan. “And still am. Coping all by himself and all.”

“How old is he now?” asked Hetty.

“Oh, about twenty two, I think. Alexa was twenty.”

Mrs Mulligan paused. “You know, what if I go down to him?”

“You said yourself he didn’t want you there,” said Mrs Jones pointedly.

“Yes, that’s true.”

“I feel helpless – and that’s not how mothers are supposed to feel!”

“Well, Dora, if you want my advice, I think you should get him to come to you.”

“I don’t know…”

Hetty picked up her cup, and allowing her little finger to resume its former jutting out position, drained the
last few dregs. “Even if it doesn’t help, it will at least give everyone something to talk about.”

After Mrs Jones had departed, Mrs Mulligan sat down to the remaining tea and thought over what her neighbour had said. It certainly would be a change to have Josh over, that was true, but at the same time slightly selfish, as she hardly believed Josh would want to return to Elm’s Grove.

Ever since Josh had left England at the age of eighteen, she had been fairly sure he would never come back. As a boy he had been quiet, as a teen he had been clamped up, and in all he had never had many friends – apart from Raymond. Raymond was still in Elm’s Grove, working as an assistant manager in the supermarket. As far as she knew, that friendship was also no more, that Josh had never written to or called Ray, and Ray had not mentioned Josh since.

Dora Mulligan had never actually met Alexa, but once they had announced the engagement, she had immediately written to her mother-in-law to be. Mrs Mulligan still had the letter, and feeling a sudden desire to read it she climbed the stairs to her bedroom, and got it out from her drawer. It was among several other important documents, including letters from her children and the house mortgage. It was a thin piece of paper, folded and marked with an Australian stamp.

Dear Mrs Mulligan (it had said)

By now, Josh must have told you about the engagement. I’m just sorry you can’t be here for the wedding. We’re planning to have it in May, and the preparations are well under way.
I’m writing to you because I feel that until I know you and you know me, I will never be a part of your family, which I so badly want to be because I’ve never had a family of my own. My parents died when I was barely a schoolgirl. I was then left with various aunts and uncles, before taking up photography once I had finished college. I met Josh two months ago in February. Since then we’ve been together, and although he doesn’t speak of his home much, I still felt that it was important that you and I should know each other well. I’m trying to convince Josh to have our honeymoon in England, but he seems set on staying in Australia.

Anyway, if I don’t get to see you soon after the wedding, I’ll pop down to the UK with some excuse myself, and then we’ll be able to meet.

I’m glad I’ve broken the ice, because I know how concerned you must be about Josh, and just want you to relax – I’ll take care of him.

Hope to keep in touch,
Your daughter in law to be (can’t wait!!)

Alexa

Mrs Mulligan had been touched when she had first read the letter. Although she had never written back, she had always felt affection for this honest and sincere girl who had taken the time to write to her fiancé’s mother. From what was going on around her, she knew that most of the time, girls never got along with their mothers in law. Somehow she had felt Alexa was different, more mature – and at least Josh had been happy with her. Josh never wrote to his mother. He had phoned twice, once when he had met Alexa – had sounded blissfully happy – and once when Alexa had been killed in the accident. Then he had sounded bitter, and had only spoken a few words, hanging up early with the excuse that someone was waiting for him.

Dora Mulligan sighed.

Night came, and with it so did the usual evening paper. Mrs Mulligan sat down in her favourite chair, one with a high back and easy distance from the ground (specially designed for rheumatics) and opened the front page. At this time she was usually through with all the washing and household chores, so she had all the time in the world to go through each and every detail of the paper, but for some reason tonight she was unable to do so. She felt something nagging constantly at the back of her mind – something which eventually caused her to put down the page and close her eyes. Her mind flew to Australia, to someone whom she dearly loved but knew that that person no longer returned the love. At the same time she mentally went through what Hetty Jones had talked about earlier in the morning. Should she get Josh to come to her? What if he didn’t answer her letter? That was something which Mrs Mulligan had always dreaded, and the very thought had prevented her from ever writing to him.

Outside the chirping of the birds became quieter and the crickets grew louder. Time went by, and Mrs Mulligan went on thinking, something which was unusual for her. Eventually she came to a decision, one which she felt was not entirely hers, but instigated by Hetty Jones.

END OF CHAPTER ONE

Chapter 2.

2005-08-23T13:37:00.000+05:00

More than nine thousand miles away, the sun was shining, the parakeets singing and the sparkling blue water was lapping against the shores of Australia. A whole new continent, a whole new world.

Josh Mulligan worked as a holiday agent. His job involved sitting behind a desk, spending half the day talking to people who were desperate for a vacation, and the other half answering phone calls from unsatisfied customers (the destinations were too crowded, or the place was too hot). Although his ideal idea of a job would have been one in an office on the top floor of multi-storey glass building with an en-suite air conditioned lounge, the reality was far more down to earth, literally, as it was in the basement of an associate’s house.

The room was sparingly furnished with an uncomfortable settee, a plain carpet, two desks – one for him and one for his mate Carl – and four walls covered with lurid prints of holiday destinations, which were far more colourful than the actual scene that met the eyes of the misguided tourist when they landed at their holiday spots.

In fact, Josh was now so tired of unsatisfied customers that he had made it a point of telling new clients that the prospectus was rarely sincere, and often someone with dreams of visiting the beautiful temples of Thailand would end up in the populated and polluted cities far below, in the refuge of a run-down taxi.

“Yes ma’am… no ma’am … of course I’ll send you the brochure…”

A voluble reply on the other end made Carl wince. “No ma’am, I assure you this time your flight will meet the tour on time…”

Carl made a face. He revolved his chair to flash a desperate look at Josh. Josh returned to his own client – a thin balding parson, who was going on vacation for the first time of his life.

Josh grimaced, as his attention turned to the scattered brochures on his desk. In front of him, the parson was beginning to sweat.

“I really don’t know – I can’t make up my mind…”

Josh mustered his patience. “Let’s see if we can help you. Have you any idea of what sort of place you would like to visit?”

“No.”

“What sort of environment would you prefer to spend your weekend in?”

“I’m not sure.”

Josh gritted his teeth and glanced at the clock. He had spent the last half hour facing the indecisive elderly bachelor.

“Well,” said the parson, “I at first thought of a warm place like Egypt, and then I thought of something mountainous, such as Switzerland. I suppose the jungle wouldn’t be too bad…”

“What did you say your budget was again?” asked Josh, glancing down at the papers before him.

“$50,” said the parson, anxiously wringing his hands.

Josh seriously doubted that a meagre $50 would get the parson anywhere out of Australia.

“How about a holiday within the continent?” suggested Josh.

Again, “Oh – I’m not sure.” A pause and then “What do you suggest?”

Josh was slightly taken back. He had never been asked his own opinion before. He hesitated before saying,
“Well, maybe a weekend at the National Wildlife Park? It’ll be warm, plenty of jungle, you’ll be close to nature, and I’m sure your budget will be able to get you a hotel room for two nights. What do you say?”

The parson looked bewildered. “I don’t know…” he said slowly.

Josh lost his patience. He stood up and took the parson by his arm and escorted him to the door. “Why don’t you think about it at home,” he said pleasantly, “and come back when you’ve decided. Or better yet, ring us up. It’ll save you a trip.” And before the parson could say a word, Josh shut the door on him and turned the ‘open’ sign around to ‘closed’.

Carl grinned at him. “Don’t think we’ll see him again,” he said.

“We’d better not,” said Josh, gathering up the brochures and pamphlets. He stuffed them into his bag, and then locked his drawer. “See you Carl, I’m hitting the weekend.”

Carl waved. “Don’t let the demons get you down.”

The afternoon was warm, and as Josh headed for the tube, he noticed many other private businesses on the streets of Sydney closing for the weekend. He didn’t loiter, and quickly went down the stairs of the underground. He caught his tube on time, and just managed to find a place for amidst the crowded carriage. Sitting was not an option, especially at the rush hour, so he had to balance himself between a woman with a dog and a freaky looking teenager with shocking pink hair.

As the train began to move, Josh did something he had been trying to avoid for a long time: he reflected over how the past few months had been.

One thing was for certain – life had been Hell, pure Hell.

Putting on a mask at work and pretending that nothing was wrong was one thing, but then having to go home by himself and spend the rest of his time enduring twice the amount of misery he had hidden in the morning was another. There was no doubt about it, life had nothing more for him, and he nothing more for life. People consoling and giving him sympathy all around – and saying things like ‘at least you two weren’t married to each other,’ – had they know idea how things had been? Were they so ignorant as to believe that her dying before the wedding had been a mercy on him? They were fools.

When he had first met Alexa, way back to the New Year, life had turned around for him. He would never forget that day when he had first seen her, photographing the outside of the Sydney Opera House. He had then followed her till he found out where she lived, and made excuses to see her. She had found him amusing and charming, he had thought her to be an angel from heaven. When he had pulled together the courage to ask her to marry him, he was quite sure she would refuse. But to his consternation, she had consented without any raised eyebrows – almost, in fact, as if she had been waiting for him to propose.

The next few weeks had passed more or less in a haze of confusing and yet colourful memories, more vibrant than any of those he could remember from before he came to Australia.

And then in April the blow had struck.

He had come home from work, and found the house full of packages –shopping that Alexa had been doing with her friends. But Alexa wasn’t at home. He hadn’t worried. She was probably out having a good time. But at six o clock it had begun to get dark. Her mobile wasn’t responding, and so he began ringing up her friends. They told him that they had last seen her heading home. After that she had most probably left for some other place – the car hadn’t been there – and then all trace of her had vanished.

At nine o clock, there had been a knock at the door. Outside were two police officers, a man and a woman, holding Alexa’s scarf. That was when he had reeled over, that was the beginning of the end. He had lost the one thing most precious to him, and he would never see her again.

After that he had purposely avoided the spot where her car had collided with the truck, always making a detour. Even on her funeral he hadn’t been able to bring himself to look at her face. She began haunting his dreams, and he would wake up sweating in the middle of the night. He had then gone off food, and in the last four months he lost more than 30 lbs. His twenty two year old face was beginning to look like that of a thirty year old. There were now permanent creases at the end of his mouth. He had even forgotten how to smile. Around him was paradise, but inside him was an emptiness which could never be filled.

From the tube he walked the last half mile to his apartment. Around the corner, and he passed a small corner shop, from where he picked up his newspaper. He paused in front of the stand for a few minutes, scanning the front-page headlines – but not really reading them at all, just continuing a routine that he had adopted since had arrived in Sydney – almost four years ago.

His apartment was in a decent neighbourhood, and around his were other flats. Inside, he kicked off his loafers and collapsed onto his bed, with removing his clothes. He ignored the rumbling in his stomach, as he had ignored it for the past few weeks. When it was time for dinner, he would pour himself a glass of juice and have a couple of left over shortbread biscuits, without really tasting them. Then at night he would lie awake, thinking of nothing. And in the morning when he would wake up, he would get ready and shave only half heartedly.

Going through the monotony of the procedures that lay ahead of him was not a pleasurable task, so Josh pulled out the newspaper he had brought with him. He opened the first few pages, played with a crossword for about five minutes before deciding to check his letter box. He unlocked it – it was a small compartment outside his front door, and pulled out the usual faded bills. He had half a mind to toss them down the waste chute when his eye caught sight of something new – something different. It was a white envelope, with three stamps. Wondering slightly, Josh took it out, and then recoiled slightly.

It was from Elm’s Grove.

END OF CHAPTER TWO.

chachi enters.

2005-08-22T00:10:00.000+05:00

Once a lonely caterpillar sat and cried,
To a sympathetic beetle by his side.
"I've got nobody to hug,
I'm such an ugly bug."
Then a spider and a dragon fly replied,
"If you're serious and want to win a bride,
Come along with us,
To the glorious
Annual ugly bug ball."
Come on let's crawl,
Gotta crawl, gotta crawl
To the ugly bug ball
To the ball, to the ball
And a happy time we'll have there
One and all
At the ugly bug ball.
While the crickets clicked their tricky melodies,
All the ants were fancy-dancing with the fleas.
Then up from under the ground,
The worms came squirming around.
Everyone was glad!
What a time they had!
They were so happy they came!
( chorus)
Then our caterpillar saw a pretty queen
She was beautiful in yellow, black and green
He said, "Would you care to dance?"
Their dancing led to romance.
And she sat upon his caterpillar knees
And he gave his caterpillar queen a squeeze
Soon they'll honeymoon
Build a big cocoon
Thanks to the ugly bug ball!

plan

2005-08-14T03:04:00.000+05:00

after i'm finished with my book, I'll post the first two chapters of a book that the author quit. He's written around five plays (agatha christie influenced whodunnits) and he wrote his first book three four years ago. This year he made three movies. I was the makeup and hair stylist in the most recent one called The Masked Avenger. The actors are all aged below ten, but are tremendously talented. And all of them introduced me to the joy of trampoline jumping. *grin*

Eye Spy

2005-08-13T02:45:00.000+05:00

When one is expected to answer a question the eyes must meet at least once. Eyes that flicker or stare obstinately at the floor or above the shoulder are considered to be those belonging to a personality that is nervous or lacking self-confidence. In fact those are the only feeling that eyes betray. Eyes never sparkle, or twinkle, with excitement or the prospect of ever lasting love. An eye without other facial or body expression can only express an inclination for one to be nervous or have deep-seated self-confidence issues or whatever. Eyes never shine like crushed diamonds or reveal anything about anger, or greed, or lust, or evil. The eyes aren’t celebrated by poets, artists and romantics to be the organ that reveals the most about a person’s sentiments. The eye is celebrated as one that expresses only one sentiment: pain. The eye is celebrated to be the soul’s window not because it is supposed to glint with joy or anything ridiculous along those lines. It is famous for its portrayal of only that which may scar a person, physically or otherwise, for life. Pain and self-doubt come to be etched for a moment or for life in a person’s eyes. Nothing else has or will exist in the eye.

And that is there only beauty.

Dishwasher

2005-08-12T00:40:00.000+05:00

This is my marginal utility graph for one session of dishwashing by 1 extra lime anti-bacterial dishwash concentrate.

the y axis is the extra utility gained by every second that passes. the x axis indicates the time line.
I'm not sure if its possible though.

So it's the most disgustingly useless liquid dishwash ever. compared to the last one it takes twice the scrubbing, three times the amount and a million times the chicharpan to get the dishes clean by my standards. The people who are knowingly involoved in selling this useless product should be stripped naked and pelted with greasy cutlery while being forced to scrub innumerable greasy nihari cooked pots and pans with the tiniest amount of their bloody dishwasher.

And, it makes my hands all rubbery.

I HATE IT.

Black hole.

2005-08-10T02:37:00.000+05:00

A black hole (in the words of those scientist numa things on BBC and Discovery) is gravity gone mad. It sucks up anything and everything that comes close enough to it, even light. The largest known black hole in the centre of our galaxy is 6 million times the weight of the sun and at its centre:the size of a speck of dust. If a human body was sucked up in a black hole, by the time it reaches the narrowest part of this funnel shaped monster, it would be reduced to atoms.

No one knows what exists on the other side of a black hole. There is speculation that if one somehow went through a black hole, one would end up in a different time dimension altogether. Human beings could have driven themselves to extiction by then, or boneless organisms could just be contemplating an amphibian lifestyle. Another method of time travelling is for a human being to travel at the speed of light. As a result his or her body clock will slow down. A year in outer space and by the time he or she gets back, ten maybe twenty years would have passed on Earth. But travelling at the speed of light is next to impossible. Even the celestial bodies that orbit the largest known black hole travel at only 1% the speed of light.

There are so many ways that Earth can face its end. It could be crushed to its death when the Milkyway collides with its sister galaxy, or it could be burnt to nothing when the dying sun embraces it in its expanding heat, or it could be sucked down a black hole. Religiously speaking that would be the Day of Judgement/Unimaginable Destuction. I like the third verson best. I like to believe that the seventh sky, heaven, hell and even a very large specially crafted for the occasion plain of Arafat exist on the other side of the black hole.

So now this post is for whoever resides on the other side of the black hole. He gave me just what I wanted and I'm thanking Him for it. Thankyou.

Thankyou very very much.

blank 2

2005-08-06T02:30:00.000+05:00

Frangipani is well known for its intensely fragrant, lovely, spiral-shaped blooms which appear at branch tips June through November. There seem to be several basic frangipani color schemes: white with a yellow center, yellow, multicolor, and red. There is speculation that red is a special case of multicolor.

The tree itself is rather unusual in appearance; the 20-inch-long, coarse, deciduous leaves clustered only at the tips of the rough, blunt, sausage-like, thick, grey-green branches.

Branches are upright and rather crowded on the trunk forming a vase or umbrella shape with age. They are rather soft and brittle and can break but are usually sturdy unless they are mechanically hit or disturbed. A milky sap is exuded from the branches when they are bruised or punctured.

Though the plumeria tree is tropical by nature, when protected from frost, they are well suited to subtropical or temperate climates. Still, frangipani blossoms are associated with tropical tourist havens. Often hotel lobbies and spas in Bangkok, Jakarta, Phukhet etc. are decorated with floating arrangements of frangipani and rose petal.

Frangipani has also become an irreplaceable ingredient in beauty and aromatherapy soaps, candles and incense sticks. However despite its desirability, after being plucked, frangipani tends not to remain fresh for long.

-------------

I was wondering, perhaps you could…

….

I don’t think; feel in fact, I guess…

….

No.

….

I see, but…

….

This would then disappear?

….

Er, six. And six others…good buy. Black, white, pink, peach and two in beige.

….

More than complete. With that I am very satisfied.

….

Yes, maybe.

….

But there has to be some scientific, some logical, some reason behind it, it can’t just be…

….

Oh. Yes.

….

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

-------------

End.

Fight Club

2005-08-02T02:45:00.000+05:00

I love two things more than I might love certain human beings:

1.Fight Club

2.Mohammad Rafi songs

3.Late Night blogging.

Oho...I've forgotten how to count.

Watership Down

2005-07-31T22:20:00.000+05:00

“The full moon, well risen in a cloudless eastern sky, covered the high solitude with its light. We are not conscious of daylight as that which displaces darkness. Daylight, even when the sun is clear of the clouds, seems to us the simple natural condition of the earth and air. When we think of the downs, we think of the downs in daylight, as we think of a rabbit with its fur on. Stubbs may have envisaged the skeleton inside the horse, but most of us do not: we do not usually envisage the downs without daylight, even though the daylight is not part of the down itself as the hide is part of the horse itself. We take daylight for granted. But moonlight is another matter. It is inconstant. The full moon wanes and returns again. Clouds may obscure it to an extent to which they cannot obscure daylight. Water is necessary to us, but a waterfall is not. Where it is to be found it is something extra, a beautiful ornament. We need daylight and to that extent it is utilitarian, but moonlight we do not need. When it comes, it serves no necessity. It transforms. It falls upon the banks and grass, separating one long blade from another; turning a drift of brown, frosted leaves from a single heap to innumerable, flashing fragments; or glimmering lengthways along wet twigs as though light itself were ductile. Its long beams pour, white and sharp, between the trunks of trees, their clarity fading as they recede into the powdery, misty distance of beech-woods at night. In moonlight two acres of coarse bent grass, undulant and ankle deep, tumbled and rough as a horse’s mane, appear like a bay of waves, all shadowy troughs and hollows. The growth is so thick and matted that even the wind does not move it, but it is the moonlight that seems to confer stillness upon it. We do not take the moonlight for granted. It is like snow, or like dew on a July morning. It does not reveal but changes what it covers. And its low intensity - so much lower than that of daylight - makes us conscious that it is something added to the down, to give it, for only a little time, a singular and marvellous quality that we should admire while we can, for soon it will be gone again.”

-Richard Adams in Watership Down.

Stuff...

2005-07-24T08:12:00.000+05:00

When Mano died there were two distinct reactions that I remember.
First there was my mother’s aunt who called her a bachon ka khilauna. She was highly understanding.

Then there was my great grandmother. She comforted me. Stopped me from crying. Told me an appropriate and very true story.

Now she’s dead.

Her husband was a very determined man. He created an empire of wealth after arguing and storming out of his family home. He taught me not to torture tadpoles.

He’s dead too.

They had a son (who is also dead). Recently his American wife emailed her childrens’ photographs to us. One is studying to be a mechanical engineer. The other is doing a major in Art History.

But since they’re not dead, they’re not interesting enough.

People generally become more interesting once they’re dead. Maybe that’s because it becomes physically impossible to contact them and learn about them directly. Maybe that is why suicide makes a person even more interesting. Maybe that is why people like to fight death. They like everything to be the way it is supposed to be. Our species has a problem with agreeing to let go of some things. Sanity is one such thing.

Let me tell you a story. Baji Jamila refused to take her antidepressants. Finally she suffered from something along the lines of a mental breakdown. After a few weeks of recovery she started talking and taking names of people she knew. However, she found it hard to recognize people even if she remembered them.

So we go visit her since that is what we are supposed to do.

“Dekho Baji ji Khala ayien hain.”

Baji Jamila opens her eyes. She looks around the room, looks straight at the Khala, shuts her eyes, frowns and says:

“Koi nahin ayein Khala.”

Now no one liked to hear Baji talk that way. They wanted her to do what she was supposed to do at her age. They wanted her to worry about her children, her grandchildren, her health, her husband, her husband’s health and their money.

Now she does all that. Now she is doing what she is supposed to do.

Obviously most people don’t do what they are supposed to do. There always has to be certain amount of evil to make the good seem good and vice versa. But what happens when evil becomes universal? When the choice is between holding the weapon or being dead? What then?

Then, my lovelies, everything suddenly goes right. People start realizing that they have to tackle the cause of the evil rather than its effects. Then among others the bloody vegetarians wake up. They suddenly divinely realize that while they were trying to save the poor chicken or the poor innocent wabbit something went very wrong. They realize that what they were supposed to do was save the human species only. Do whatever they had to ensure its healthy survival. And they would be delighted to realize that would mean to in some ways tamper with the food chain and at the same time not to accelerate the Green House Effect.

Then they would finally enjoy some escargot, some rabbit and deer, some peafowl, some rare steak. Some chicken and some veal. Some high quality leather products, some honey, some milk, cheese, some cashmere.

Then the cycle restarts…good vs. evil, until the end of time when we all die. But by then death wouldn’t be interesting since it’s so universal. Then Mano wouldn’t be interesting anymore….

Not that this all was either.

Dogs and Nipples.

2005-07-22T19:54:00.000+05:00

The group once called the Thrilling Three is standing next to the isolated swimming pool of Islamabad Club.
“Look.”
There is the full moon with a ring around it at a fixed radius traced in a distinct silver line. There is a scientific name for it which I don’t know. I’ll call it the Moon’s Halo.
“It’s beautiful.”
“Yes.”
“Yes.”
“It looks like a woman’s breast with the moon as the nipple.”
“Yes.”

“Yes.”
-------------

I like bookstores and cinemas.
I like it when people can sit and browse through books that are crispy new but not sealed and impersonal. I read through this book today.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.

Later I’m going to buy it and finish it up. It was a fun and original read.
Ironic.

Parry Otter

2005-07-19T02:40:00.000+05:00

Just finished reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I have the same feeling right now like the one I had after watching The Attack Of The Clones. (When’s the next one coming?)

After watching the Revenge of the Sith and reading this book I see one major similarity. Both had extraordinarily hot villains. Both got themselves mutilated.

I would have preferred the hard back Scholastic version of this book. They have nicer covers. Prettier more animated texts. Pictures.

I feel like Alice now…annoyed at finding no pictures in a book …and sleepy.

Qouted.

2005-07-17T15:18:00.003+05:00

Every once in a while (due to excessive intake of fluids or otherwise) I can’t sleep so instead I imagine stuff or recall events and eventually by building up on these mental tit bits I come up with stuff. And halfway through the final draft of this stuff I usually decide to blog it. But by morning almost all of this stuff is forgotten, or I’m too lazy to post the stuff that I’d thought out the previous night. Once one post of mine never made it from My Documents to my blog. I like to believe God wanted me to delete it. Now I realize that God was very wise then.

Well, obviously.

Anyway “Stuff…” would be posted later. For now “Quoted” is being reincarnated.

-------------

“Well, you know, my family was very scared that I would join the police force. They know that I have a very bad temper. I know that if for a fact I know that someone has committed a crime, and that I have a gun, that I will shoot. I will shoot to kill.”

“Mother Earth will shake us off like a bad case of fleas.”

“Two and three is same. Born in one place lah and settle in another place.”

courtesy postsecret

2005-07-04T15:06:00.000+05:00

i love this one...It makes me feel nice.

Moon Chacha

2005-07-02T22:20:00.000+05:00

I don't remember Moon chacha exactly...So this is a hugely twisted and miamed version of the original...which i was silly enough not to keep a copy of.

-------------

“How are you tonight Moon Chacha?”

“Full, you?”

“Sleepy.”

Moon Chacha was laughing tonight. She could feel his guffaws as they swept the land and caused leaves to rustle, caused her white kurta to flap. The traditional kurta that ran just below the knees. Flap, Flap, Flap

“What is an extreme form of pleasure?” she asked.

“Recalling and changing the past. For example I like to believe this flag perched on me like an ugly protruding pimple wasn’t coloured in crude primary colours, in red and blue. I like to believe it’s coloured in dynamically complex colours. In fuchsia, peach, egg shell, rust and violet.”

Another guffaw reached her. It reached her through the point zero zero something light years, through the curve of wrought iron gates, the rustle of spectacularly green leaves and the dance of the omnipresent dust morts. It brought with it the fragrance of motia and raat ki raani. (She remembered insisting that raat ki raani resembled the scent of kulfa ice cream some time ago.) Again the flap, flap, flap.

Moon Chacha could feel what she felt. Millions of years of understanding and contemplating over his nieces and nephews’ thought process had made him an expert in knowing what a certain smile, a certain form of shrug and what a certain frown meant. Oh he knew.

So he stretched. Through the point zero zero something light years, through the dancing dust morts, the swinging and curvaceous wrought iron gates, around the Lego like apartment buildings, above the ever busy and buzzing traffic, through the spectacularly green leaves, he stretched to reach her.

And just when he was a millimeter away from her he snapped back. Through the point zero zero something light years, through the dancing dust morts, the swinging and curvaceous wrought iron gates, around the Lego like apartment buildings, above the ever busy and buzzing traffic, through the spectacularly green leaves.

“How are you tonight Moon Chacha?”she asked.

“Full, you?”

Dream Dictionary

2005-07-02T18:53:00.000+05:00

He holds a blade in his left hand...or was it the right? He slices through the flesh of each finger of the other hand and then the thumb.

"Is this suicide?"
No.

The wounds disappear. Again he slashes his fingers.

I remember the blade. The angle at which he held it to slit his fingers. I remeber the way he slit them...so effeciently. I remember the colour of his blood. His lips as they mouthed a "no." I remember his posture, his eyes.
I do not remember his hands, his clothes, the lines of his palm. Nothing.

We are alone. The blood has spread to his wrists and drips. i hold his hand, out of curiousity, not concern.
"How often do you change the blade?"
Every week.
"Do you disinfect it?"
Yes.
i pour disinfectant over his hand. the blood disappears...the bloody gashes remain.

Again his hand is covered with blood. i reach forward and with my finger in the centre of his palm i lift some blood.

Who is he?
Why is he here, in my mind, my dream?

i lick the blood off my finger.

i imagine it tasted warm and salty like mine. Or bitter after fusing with the disinfectant. I do not know.

I do not remember.

-------------

Dream Dictionary.

Blood.
Blood is a symbol of vitality. There still exists a general popular belief in blood's magical powers.Blood also symbolizes love and passion. Loss of blood can indicate loss of love, but can also indicate a necessary spiritual sacrifice. A blood transfusion can be seen as spiritual enrichment.

Man.
This dream image is one of the many manifestations of the archetype for which Jung coined the expression Animus. In simple terms this means the male element in the female personality.

bad.

2005-06-07T17:24:00.000+05:00

what happened last night was bad. He's a bad bad person to hurt her so badly.
I heard something crack last night...I hope it heals.
-------------

Birdies

2005-05-13T11:22:00.001+05:00

had my commerce p1 today. it went brilliantly and since i finished it so quickly and since the expo centre seems to attract birds....i observed a pair mating just above the poor invigilator's head....then i imagined what sort of makeup would beautify him...pink blush...layers of mascara( he had lovely eyelashes) gold and silver shimmer on the eyes and nude lipstick.

U LOOK BE A YOU TEA FULL!

haha.

BLOG IT!

2005-04-25T17:36:00.000+05:00

Since a few days ago moon chacha bothered honour us with his company, I thought I might as well give my blog a visit. You see, I blog every time moon chacha's light filters down on us in such a punctual manner.

And after my exams I thought I might rewrite, as I remember, my darling and most favourite creation "Moon Chacha". I might be able to convince Abo to let me do something to improve my CV in the co-cirricular department. Perhaps an internship with the UN...that'll be cool, won't it?As for my reading list...There's definitly going to be more of some classic stuff...I might check out dickens or hardy or read on a not so classic front The Godfather, perhaps? Also, I have to read watership down, the flame trees of tikka, the mottled lizard, grapes of wrath and something new by ondaatje.I might reread god of small things and i so want to read more of pratchett. I might also bother read up something about the Ottoman empire.

Waise, its tragic that after around six months of blogging there's not a single comment despite there being quite a few profile views...

*double clicks on 9 pm Till I Come hoping the depression would subside*

*sigh.*

-------------
This is a diary entry i made more than a month ago and I decided I might as well fulfill the promise a very emotional me (very unlike I'm-high-on-Dance-music me who is typing now) made with herself in her dear kitty.

-------------
It's my first diary entry. Its 16.3.05, not 1999 as the diary states. It's Wednesday.

I blame my anger on people. It disappears, fully, just as quickly. I have imaginary arguments-bad, bad arguments with people over silly disputes. In this mood, i could be a great debator. But I'm not into debating, not one ounce. I don't think I like black and white and switching sides. I don't think I can do that.Besides I'm prone to be nervous. There are always more than two sides to anything ; Blackest of all black and whitest of all white is only a deviation of the ultimate and unreachable gray.

I have a bug crawling on this page. I'll tear out this page later and blog it.

I'm not self-less or self centred and neither is anyone else. I don't want to understand, I want to know. I want eccentricity, intensity- an unpredictable something that a lifetime can only help me predict the pattern of. i don't want to understand, I want to struggle to know....

I'm in a circle again.

Evangelion

2005-03-27T16:34:00.000+05:00

Here's a piece i wrote which is highly influenced by the last few episodes of the japenense anime Evangelion.
-------------

Stop. There’s too much noise. I can not think. I need fluency. I can not think.I can’t think!

Hush. Focus. The fluency has to return, you must focus. Your evolution of mind is necessary, urgent. You must focus. Breathe out the noise. Breathe out the mental blockade. Breathe in the fluency, the confidence, the evolution, your courage.

Yes.

What is causing this havoc in your progress? Is it fear?

I don’t want to die like this. I want the exposure, the nakedness of my soul. I want to relate to people I know and do not know. I fear being an outsider.

Therefore you lack the skill and confidence to correct what in your opinion is wrong. Yes?

I want peace. I want harmony. I want mutual cooperation and universal tolerance. Instead I ignore everything. I create a person of person – I…Are you following me?

Go on.

I create a person of a person. I create clones of a person where each clone carries the specific characteristic, or the possible characteristic, whichever, which does or may represent any action or statement made by the person concerned.It is an orderly system of categorizing and organizing personalities into – into folders – yes, folders containing statements and actions which I, morally speaking, object, agree or do not care about are stored. I hope I’m not confusing you?

Don’t worry. Go on.

I sketch characters, good or bad and justify their actions with such complete indifference that another form of absolute harmony that I seek is achieved.Consider the genius, the beauty of the human mind to transform living, breathing human beings into words. I simplify souls into words.
-
Is that normal?

Why worry about being normal? I see that you have broken through the mental barrier – noise as you call it – and regained your fluency. No?

Yes. Thank you.
-------------

Hello.

I am the therapist, the healer, the philosopher. I am only a voice, a whisper infact. I have been developed over the years and I lack any physical or mental individuality which has carved me into a figure of supreme cruelty and indifference.

It is interesting to see this new level of maturity achieved by the subject. She has the remarkable capacity to fit perfectly into any role assigned to her by social norms. Normally she plays the role of the daughter or the friend. Today, she was the wounded, the child.

I would like to see her think of us as one. If she does do so, it would mean the union of her being’s two most contradictory aspects. Imagine the supremely cruel and indifferent healer and philosopher contained along with the wounded child, daughter and friend in one mental entity.

The third aspect of her soul is the silent observer: the conscience. Sometimes, I fear the absorption of this aspect of her individual in our ramble, that is, in my wisdom contradicting her evolution.

I fear its death.

She is starting to absorb the third aspect of her soul rather than the second. I await a conclusion.

Streets of philadelphia.

2005-03-25T00:27:00.000+05:00

I've spent around half an hour constantly listening to this song again and again and i intend to do so until i leave this room.

night is falling and im lying awake. i can feel myself fading away, so receive me brother with ur faithless kiss or will we leave each other alone like this on the streets of philadelphia?

this feeling this song gives. It's like nostalgia, failure and affection mingled with the feeling of feeling very tired....

uff....

hehehee

2005-03-23T23:28:00.000+05:00

im so super not serious about my O' levels...i spend hours doing nothing...literally, im going to dream my life away ....and im giggling about that.
im going to giggle my life away...sitting online blogging and reading blogs...hehehe
i pissed a friend off today...i giggled about that
tommorow im going to fuck up my o level and get a record 10 C's result....and im going to giggle abt tht
i giggle when i fuck up my day and waste seconds, minutes, hours, days of my life
i just love playing freecell, minesweeper, listening to songs (which include songs that can qualify me as gay...hehee) and giggling....hehehe
--------------
heres a super tragic story about omar mahal in chiniot.

This mansion took no less than 14 years to build. Expert craftsmen from as far as delhi were employed to skillfully carve and craft the doors, windows terraces etc. The tiles laid out on the wallls and roofs of the rooms were imported from japan.

However, two years after its completion the owner (rumoured to have made money by unlawful-in other words bad- means) died.
His only son and child was soon lavishly married off to a beautiful girl. the day after the wedding celebrations ended (which lasted for around a month) the bride groom suffocated in the poorly ventilated coal heated bathroom. The bride left and the mother died soon after.

Gulzar manzil was then systematically ruined and robbed by the servants of the houshold. Finally it came into government hands during the 70's or 80's. It was converted into an orphanage. Later, its spoiled interior and once majestic exterior were converted into a museam and library. It was around this time that the topmost story, which comprised of two impressive terraces holding four mirrors which skilfully reflected the north, south, east and west areas around chiniot, was knocked down due to safety reasons. Other parties think it was antique mafia.
-------------
i found a really funny site yesterday with some awesome photography called
arahman.co.uk

Spiders and slaves

2005-03-09T13:50:00.000+05:00

"The threads by which the tribal slave has been trapped have taken a long time to weave.To create a good slave you must first kill his pride, his self-respect, his notion of himself as an ordinary, equal human being. The slave's body is needed, the man's for labour, the woman's for labour and abuse; but to control the body, the inner spark which ignites anger must be crushed. There are many weapons in the spider's arsenal, both psychological and physical, but the chief one is drammatically simple: hunger. When a generation or two dies of the ultimate denial, delirious for a handful of rice, while a chorus of spiders fatten indifferently in the background, physical and mental slavery becomes an easy option for the dying. The young woman at your feet is not to prostrate through love or devotion; she is there because over many lifetimes she has learnt that the degradation of the spirit is the only guarantee she has against the degradation of the body, that food and safety are not ther right but a gift which a superior may grant if she behaves. "
-M.J.Akbar in Riot after Riot.

a little family history

2005-03-05T16:01:00.000+05:00

Dado and dada had a common paternal grandfather. Dada's father was the older brother and dado's father was the younger brother. The oldest brother died without children.

Dada and dado's grandfather.
known for the worst temper the family has produced. was famous for frightening everyone he met. mothers used to call in their children when his feared persona entered the gali every evening after work. he married four times and divorced twice. He wasn't around much for his children.his first wive's sons were more or less brought up by their maternal uncle.

The Fourth wife.
Was said to be very pretty. her brother moved to bombay where he married a jewish woman...love marriage ofcourse. he even worked with Jinnah. her sister's daughter later became Dada's step mother who is alive today. She had two sons and a daughter, all of which dada is not in touch with, infact has never met. One son's, Bashir's, children actually live in lahore.

The maternal uncle.
a handsome fellow who loved his sister dearly. was married to dado vaso. had no children. Many of Dado's dearest Simla memories were due to them.

Dadi vaso.
Was said to be very beautiful. the most junjo female ever.Used to fully exploit the meek burka clad females qued up for movie tickets. Adored the movies and Mammun zafar (dado's brother). Pampered him alot and called him her son.

Dada's father.
his first wife ( mother of dada and his highly anti-social brother among other names) died when dada was ten. was buried in peshawar. his second marriage to his step mother's neice was a secretive affair.She was in her late twenties at the time and much much younger then dada's father (in his late forties ar early fifties). after all the arrangements for the wedding had been made, he informed his brother, dado's father. The idea was not liked, she was young and likely to produce children which dada's father could not support along with the children from the previous marriage.Dadi vaso didn't like the family anyway.Dada was fourteen at the time, dado was eleven. The marraige produced three sons and three daughters. today, the youngest son from the second marriage is known for his weird and ancient purple coloured car and his ugly wig.

Dada and Dado's oldest uncle.
He owned a very successful shop in lahore. was a very jolly and generous person. once, almond's pilferaged from his shop by mian ji (his brother, dado's father) were served to him in a gajrela. When he found out about it he displayed his extensive expletives' vocabulary. his death was sudden and according to Dadi vaso, may have been caused by piosoning by his in-laws.

Green.

2005-02-23T20:26:00.000+05:00

It's an interesting colour, this green. Passionate, adaptive, tolerant, sensitive. See how it pauses, laughs, abandons me? See how it sings, how it creates this sense of loss, of childhood memories, of lost anticipation and innocence? See how it rejects the fiery shades of crimson and the dusk of violet while it embraces the hues of aqua, lemon and white?

There are four elements: the beginning, blue, the past, peach, the present, green, the future, red. Water, wind, earth and fire.

It's a worldly colour, this green. It's the human atom of the universe, the black.Green is the colour of emotion, of jealousy, rage and desire. Green is the colour of this soul, of this touch, of these thoughts, of these tastes.This isolation, this distance, it is green.
-------------
Moon Chacha is playing hide and seek. This pollution...it'll be the death of the poor guy, already he's so ancient.
This reminds me of the animated japanese movie called wonderful days. And that reminds me of Operation Gibraltar. And that reminds me i have to go study geography.