I am the master evil genius!

2011-10-18T19:21:00.002+05:00

conversations with k #551

k: waiill shrieeekkk spoooo
me (trying to distract ): radio sunogi ya opera?
k: opera!
(i put on the halleleujah chorus thinking she won't know any better)
k: BLAHAHAHAHAHA YEH KAISA OPERA HAI!!! HAHAHAHAAHAHAHA
me: weell...technically tou yeh choir hai... (puts on puccini)
k (listens a bit): haan yeh theek hai.

2011-07-30T21:25:00.002+05:00

conversations with K, #453 dedicated to akka

k: amma suno
me: haan sunao
k: eik chuha aaya, woh kitchen main gaya aur GUMM gaya-
me (interrupting): kyun?
k: -kyunke woh cookie dhoond raha tha. phir woh kamray main aaya aur ussnay apni t-sirtt (sic), sorts (sic) aur nappy bhi utaar di aur NANGA hogaya!
me: hain, sub kuch?! kyun?!
k: kyunke usskey sorts main DINOSAUR tha.

2011-06-30T19:03:00.003+05:00

i'm so tired. i'm so tired i'm not tired any more, it's what i call auto-pilot. i used to be on it a lot in my senior year at college ;) N doesn't sleep much in the daytime so on bad days- like today- i'm still in my nightsuit at lunchtime and eating it standing up with one hand becase i'm holding N in the other and K is wrapped around my leg saying 'amma godi do'. and wanting to murder S because he's at the office doing stuff and having lunch meetings at cosa (cosa! for cryin' out loud! what happened to having meetings in stuffy board rooms?!) and i'm a grubby wreck with one sentence lodged in my head for a story i haven't written yet because someone's bum needs a wash or the lunch has to be ordered or someone is sleepy and no, i won't stay up after the four a.m feed to write because at that time i've discovered the carpet is wet in the dining room since the toofan blew in through the one open window and soaked it, my indonesian carved settee ka gadda and the books on my trolley including two signed ones and a brand new shantaram intended for a pressie so i'm drying everything with a towel and hairdryer.

2011-06-15T13:03:00.006+05:00

S and I are delighted to (officially and belatedly) announce the arrival of

Syeda Naintara Urmila Hussain

born on the 18 of May, 2011 at 4 a.m

with her grandmothers and father in attendance! Please remember her and our little family in your prayers :)

2011-05-10T16:41:00.002+05:00

i watch K snooter around purposefully singing songs and just doing stuff and it amazes me every time how it is possible- and natural, and obvious- that she be growing up and already know things like there is a sky and the ceiling is not the sky but the outside-the-window-blueness is the sky, and there is a moon that is also chanda mama and a sun and stars. and that she wants to go to 'cool' and wants an apple lolly not an orange lolly. that she sings baa baa black sheep and lakri ki kaathi and is right now saying 'come amma come amma utho utho upar jaana hai' and when i ask her to do what she says 'cycle lainay' and i just told shamshad to wash her face while they were at it and K says 'no only amma dooit' and puts her small hand on my arm and looks up at me with her big brown eyes and it's all just too amazing, in the proper sense of the word. i am mazy and enchanted that she was in my belly kicking and sucking her thumb on the ultrasound and here she is, in her shorts and t-shirt and muggermuch faux-crocs, hanging out with me. and i can't wait for number two, who is right now identically the same loved-but-unknown little baby pushing muscularly against my skin and sinews, biding her time for just a while longer. and in a while i'll be looking at her and marveling at all the same things, again. how fantastic :)

2011-05-08T18:42:00.003+05:00

and would it help to hear him say there: there
is the mole i loved, the brow
i kissed, there is the moment

that i loved you most
knowing well how fleeting the moment
how transient the dusk
and how final the night

no

no it would not do at all

2011-05-06T11:09:00.002+05:00

conversations. #322

k: amma, motorcycle hai?
me: (curious, not truthful) haan.
k: acha..phir main jaa rahi hoon.
me: kidhar jaogi?
k: wohhh...rahat bakery.
me: tum motorcycle peh rahat bakery jaa rahi ho?
k: haan.
me: okay.

2011-05-06T11:02:00.002+05:00

N tells me that a prediliction for chomping ice indicates an iron deficiency. my haemoglobin IS a bit low, so perhaps she's right....but i've been chomping ice for months blithely thinking it was just a silly preggy thing and feeling indulgently amused at my eccentric self (i never get cravings for anything when i'm preggers so it was kind of exciting in a really boring way). chomping ice is a vile habit though, i never understood why my cousin would go into raptures over our ice dispenser in the fridge and then sit in a corner making awful khruunchh-khraaak slurping sounds chewing the ice up. NOW I KNOW. it is glorious. there is something visceral and a little violent and something thoroughly satisfying about chewing ice. not to mention thanda. aaahh. it's ridiculous. i'm an addict. even on iron twice a day, every day. even with a gala kharab and imminent zukaam lurking. the other day we made non-alcy frozen margaritas and it was an ice-chomping-khatti-drink-lover's dream come true. i want to make giant jugs of it with a giant pipe jaisa straw and live on them until winter comes. HAII :D

2010-12-10T18:18:00.002+05:00

sorry, after seven months what i'm coming out with is a rant but it keeps bothering me so i'm putting it to the poll, so to speak.

what do you call people who come to your house, eat your excellent food and drink your husband's booze and scrape up the tiramisu and never invite you to dinner? i don't host dinners and things for reciprocity- S and i genuinely enjoy getting people together and serving a fabulous meal and play jazz in the background and have fairy lights on the terrace, but what keeps bothering me is the lack of any reciprocity. i can safely say we're not boring or obnoxious or utterly vapid or have BO issues. S says i should forget it but you know what, i don't think i can. it just feels WRONG. and rude. and i don't think i'm being super-sensitive. or maybe we just 'socialize' with the wrong people.

2010-05-20T19:31:00.002+05:00

so i'm trying to figure this out. facebook has been banned because of an offensive group on it, and by inexplicable corollary youtube have also been banned for a few days. curtailing freedom of information isn't precisely mature. it happens all the time though, all across the world. you can say that facebook isn't the issue, it's an offensive group on it. block the URL. but why is facebook letting offensive groups exist? shouldn't they be responsible for content to some degree?

that brings us to freedom of expression. i do think freedom of expression should be limited in certain ways- offending people's religious sensibilities, specifically. it's not okay at any level. if south park makes fun of jesus, that's a christian problem. muslims or jews haven't got (directly) anything to do with it. a lot of christian groups do protest, and legitimately so. saying jews deserved the holocaust is not okay, and jewish people make sure it isn't okay- being anti-semitic is a big deal. 'the passion of the christ' was banned in some cinemas. so why are muslims big babies, or intolerant fundos, if they say it's not okay to make drawings of their prophet? it's not okay for them, and everyone should respect that the same way everyone should respect people's colour, race, sexuality and anything else. muslims don't make fun of other religions (as far as i know). they aren't making mockeries of prophets they believe in just as much as their other followers do. so why is it too much to ask that people do the same for them? offending people's religious sensibilites is a distateful, disrespectful and highly provocative thing to do. as they say in urdu, teeli dogey to yehi hoga. if you do something deliberately insulting, you're deliberately inciting a reaction. somehow muslims reacting to provocation is a symbol of their obtuse orthodoxy, but anyone else's moral objections to things is a course of matter. not cool. and educated, liberal muslims such as those that read this blog need to make an informed protest.

we live in a time of great complexities- we are liberal and believe in living and let live, but some things deserve more attentions. we think it's okay for people to be homosexual or that a little drink isn't hurting anyone, but we need to be even more vigilant of being trod over in the name of liberality or modernity. we are modern. we move with the times. but we're also different, whether we like it or not, by dint of what we've been brought up to believe in, and we need to remember that that is part of our identities as much as our english medium private school educations or guitar playing skills or awesome jobs are. we, more than everyone else, have to balance. keep our feet on the sand and let the waves flow, not be swept away.

2010-01-12T22:13:00.002+05:00

i've been pruning my sidebar. am tempted to whisk everything away since i no longer swim the oceans of the internet every day. in retrospect, i think that a) i had a lot of time (somehow), b) i lived a LOT in my head and c) there is something surreal about living in a world of words, but being so thoroughly immersed in it is also an excellent place to be, as a writer. my life these days is so external, so external that i sometimes think i've forgotten that kind of total introspective focus; to be able to sit with thoughts, phrases, textures, light surrounding me like eliot's yellow fog. as enveloping, but nicer and less dank. but also lonesome, men in shirt-sleeves, browning's man on the street leaving the city and the bell going dhung-dhung-dhung in the rain. it is nice to have toothy urchin baby-grins and "pleeeaaseee can i have a sandwich" to temper it.

2010-01-11T14:18:00.002+05:00

le sigh. mommy guiltiness is only enhanced by separation anxiety. why! why! just when i was getting excited about being able to leave the baby with Trusted Person for a few hours to have lunch with the girls baby decides that she must keep mommy-target locked down at all costs. now i DO have to nip out places where she isn't allowed to come (aerobics class) or i don't want to take her to (aslam machli wala). so i wave bye-bye and zoom out nearest exit....sometimes she'll wave back and in the lull between a near-reflex and the realization that 'ta ta' means DEPARTURE, mommy is already a speck on the horizon so baby is okay. the days when there is no ta ta waving is the day the "wwwwAAAAAAHhhHHHhhHHHH" and dramatic stretching out of arms happens. and BANG. hello mommy guilt. may i bonk you in the solar plexus? or that part of you that is desperately wanting to make it on time for the vengabus (swear this is the last time i refer to it in one day) but also feeling like a shit for traumatising the baby?

the solace is that the baby is JUST FINE after five minutes and that you NEED to go out, even if its to main market to get fish and he asks you "aankehin nikalni hain?" and you say "yes" because you're not sure so might as well, and then like a dolt you observe as the guy nonchalantly digs it out witht he tip of his churra and severs what your wannabe-doctor self KNOWS is the optic nerve. GROSS.

2010-01-11T14:14:00.003+05:00

YAHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooo

the internet is WORKING
baby is outside dhoop saikoing
i went to aerobics today (i love aerobics. not only do you get to work out to 'the vengabus is coming', but all the aunties are always much fatter than you)

*does a little bhangra*

how fabulous to blog again :D

2009-07-09T08:26:00.001+06:00

knowing what odds and ends i
know about love and life i wonder still
why you won't let wonder be enough
won't let laughter be enough
won't hold the way i look when
i look at you

(all my life condenses into
one bright shining filament
of perfect joy)

in your heart's eyes and
never lose courage

never think twice
but go leaping over cliffs and into
the stars and skies,

singing the wings of your love

2009-05-04T16:48:00.002+06:00

amma and K are sitting on the terrace in the rainy breeze. amma is describing the trees and flowers to her, and she's wagging her arms around and grinning- and listening, and coincidentally looking in the right direction too :)

it doesn't take a village to raise a baby- the village WANTS TO! everyone! from the crusty guard to the grannies. the cook to the gardener, your mother's friends and friend's mothers wants to either a) give you advice b) show you how to do it or c) come and visit you (or you visit them). sometimes this is cute, and fun. sometimes you want to snatch your baby, yell "colic isn't nazar or the result of my eating aaloo!" and stomp away to the nursery. these days my grandmother is on the nazar tangent- K cries because she's nazarfied (not true), hence i must apply to the resident saint in S's family for a remedy (i haven't, i parho the anti-nazar things myself). before it was colic = mina eating anything that isn't boiled, and every time i would pass her door dadi would shake her finger at me and say, in a doomsday voice, "boti nahien khaani!". i grin and bear it, because she loves us both, but don't you touch my botis.

haha, K is asleep.

2009-04-06T10:55:00.004+05:00

people say K looks like me: although this pleases me no end, i know this is not really true because she looks like S- S's dad, to be accurate. genes are mystifyingly interesting, and if i didn't see K be born i would wonder where she came from with her heart-shaped face, straight flared eyelashes, precise chin and rosebud mouth. maybe she'll be like me andar sae? haha! it's such fun to anticipate all the surprises in store for us :) so far K likes to be outside, going for a walk, being danced with and having her diaper changed (this is her number one delight in life)...but the best part about a baby is when you feed them and put them on your shoulder for a burp, and they snuggle their head and face into your neck and fall asleep, and you can feel their taiz-taiz breath on your skin. i would have a million babies just to be able to have that moment again and again. also, you can squoosh her because she belongs to you- and K doesn't mind either :)

this is K at four and a half weeks.

(she has a bit of an allergic rash on her face here)

(her eyes are still slatey grey, brown is very slowly creeping in)

2009-03-16T11:25:00.002+05:00

so K is wearing her 'i love mummy' babygro and squiggling around on the bed doing her pouty mouth and stretching her legs- amma taught her to do it in a certain way and she remembers it :) i was supposed to write something snipey about unwanted baby advice but my short term memory is so short-circuited right now that it's flown out of my head. that, and sana's computer mysteriously turned itself off just as i was getting started so the idea also fizzled out. durrrhh. yeh kaisa post hai? hahaha

2009-03-09T00:00:00.003+05:00

S and I are utterly delighted to announce the arrival of

Syeda Khairunissa Razia Hussain

born 25 February 2009

at 11.52 p.m

WOO HOO!!

"nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals/ the power of your intense fragility...

nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands"

2009-02-06T14:15:00.003+05:00

i am a were-goat, stalker of

millicent bystanders, chomper

of innocent vegetation.

i follow my prey with stealth

and deception, clip-clopping my

Path Of Doom, my eyes glinting

with the light of veg-lust.

nobody is safe: neither your flowers,

your grass, and least of all your

veg compartments in the fridge...

beware, beware

i rise from my barn like air

and i eat ghaas-phoos somethin' fierce

2009-02-04T17:27:00.002+05:00

it looks SO pretty i will take a verbal photograph of it here so i will remember it forever.

this is my dining room.

some of the wall is olive green. there are my rajasthani prints on it, a miniature, a framed piece of parchment from an ancient farsi text. there is a chandelier hanging from the relatively low ceiling: it is tarnished iron and brass, with bits of light glittering from the places where i was able to polish through decades of tarnish. it is italian, and abbu lugged it across two continents in his little fiat as a present for his mother. it is mine now. the murano glass hanging from it glitters in the late afternoon light. beneath the chandelier is my table. it is about sixty years old, a lovely rectangle of teak with smooth clean lines. it has a burnished sheen to it, and you can see the lines of the grain swirling up and down the wood. on the table, in the centre, under the chandelier, is a mat: bamboo woven into some purple cloth. on this mat is a round, squat, high brown bowl and a cylindrical green glass vase that is actually a bottle with the top cut off, i think. in these two vessels are roses. the brown pot are two red and one pink rose, and in the green glass there is one orange, one orange-red, one red, one pink, one yellow and three apricot ones. they are in bloom; their petals are curled at the ends, thick beautiful petals nothing like the prissy squished ones flower-wallahs sell, big blooms on sturdy stems. these roses are grown by hand in flowerbeds for the pleasure of their prettiness, not to sell. and they smell like roses should- a hint of sweetness, a clean fresh joy.

2009-01-24T13:37:00.000+05:00

there is no other phrase to replace the vomitous 'coming-of-age'. what am i supposed to do? how can you review a book that is all about adolescent discovery of hormones and cross-class friendship without saying 'coming-of-age'? i will try my best to keep out of the clutches of this most treacherous of cliches.

this week's Thing of Idiocy has got not one, but TWO items under it's belt! for your head-shaking pleasure, i present Number One (the coarser-minded readers of gorpy will be pleased to know that i am thinking the precise same thing, and also sniggering a little)

1. mobilink has got a new do-gooder campaign, presumably to disguise the fact that their billing system is execrable. you donate your old/discarded handsets to them so that they can.....give them to the pakistan society for the deaf. my cousin-in-law M says it's probably so they can text people.

Number Two (hyuk hyuk)

2. aforementioned cousin-in-law was channel-surfing during obama's inauguration ceremony and came across a local news channel that was broadcasting it, sans commentary or analysis. the only thing they had playing was kaala shyah kaala, mera kaala hai dildaar te goreyan nu paraan karo. gott promiss.

2008-12-20T16:49:00.002+05:00

eishi's gone. it feels a bit strange because like we were saying to each other yesterday, neither of us went away to study or anything extended like that, so we've never really lived in another place since we've known each other. obviously i'm thrilled for her, but feeling funny for me. i will still wave at her house when i pass it, though...how strange. what do you say in a goodbye phone call that can possibly encapsulate years of Everything? you just say 'i love you' and 'khush raho' and then laugh at each other because you've still got those cargo pants and she's still got your nigel slater and the dent in the cookbook is her fault but you don't mind and now she'll be more than a phone call away and so busy and happy- and so are you- that it won't be so bad, but when it rains who will you text to say 'yayyy'?

2008-11-04T13:03:00.002+05:00

i am wearing a soft cloud of a pink robe and eating oranges- musummi, really, i like their tough thick peel and the unexpected juiciness beneath such an unyielding exterior, much like many people i love- and the men are in a tizzy because they are pouring the roof for the new room, and in this utterly masculine task driver guard sweep supervisor and lout alike are united in the thrill of sniffing fumes from the medievally clanking roaring concrete mixer, of clambering up and down railings yelling directions nobody heeds- just the pleasure of pitting one's voice against the din?- and rushing in and out of my little feminine kitchen-haven where i am carefully sectioning a pale orange into a mardi gras bowl, feeling my life edging irrevocably, sweetly, quietly, seismically in a direction i know nothing of only that it is a path waiting newly, growing grass and dandelions to be stepped on or around and fields not yet run or moped through, and the breeze is cool and knowing against my skin so i know wherever this adventure leads i will go, and be happy.

2008-10-16T22:45:00.003+06:00

i was looking at some back 'issues' of kAy's blog when i came across this post, and was reading the associated comments....i started typing in what i wanted to add-which was a lot- and realized it was enough to deserve a post of its own! hehe..the point was how everyone makes it their business to know your business- and not because they care about you or your life, they just want to know. as my wise brother put it, it's just information they will squirrel away to bring out at some later date when you- or your parent/sibling/cousin/co-worker/spouse/in-law comes up in the conversation. and because this is lahore, this WILL happen sooner than you imagine.

if the 'when are you getting married' question is annoying, wait 'til you GET married, girls and boys! then the REAL fiesta begins! that is why people want you to get married, so they can bombard you with more and more questions! it's like a dr. seuss book gone terribly wrong! here is

gorpy's list of Frequently Asked Questions, to prepare the December Lot O' Brides, Hopefuls and Single and Fabulouses.

1. are you married?

2. you don't look married! (can be question. is also either compliment or snootering of your lack of gold joowuls/diamonds/mr. T type sonay ka karra. i always take it as the former- woo hoo for meee)

3. kab hui shaadi?

4. kahan ki hai shaadi? (err, within the human specie? in cantt? PC? i have NO idea what people want to be told in response. badshahon main?)

5. what does your husband do? (i'm sure this is a gender specific question and no men get asked this EVER. S corroborates this observation. nobody cares what i do. hmpf. you also have to include a specific company- saying 'he's an engineer' is not enough. that also includes 'does he own the business' and 'are you rich')
(this question can also mean 'where did he go to school and college')

5. a) where do you live? b) where do your parents live? (for the very thorough)

6. do you have children? (if yes, go to #7. if no, 7.a)

7. boy/girl? how many? how old? (this will lead to infinite number of questions that can range from the birth experience to whom you've bachpan-ki-shaadied it to)
7.a) why?
7. b) when do you plan to? (this is usually a distant relative or REALLY nosy auntie)

the short version is usually 1, 2 and 6, but there is never just the one question, and you can't faff them because if you told someone 'my husband is a professional clown' and they believed you, they'd judge him, poor sod.

i suppose the Part Two to this saga is the Baby Inquisition. maybe cheesoo and jammie should do a post on that ;)

2008-10-12T21:54:00.002+06:00

one day whilst flipping through S's UCL alumni pamphlet i read an article on the guy who invented teletubbies, who went to UCL and read linguistics. he explained how teletubbies are aimed to be memorable to under-threes, how the fact that tinky-winky etc's lack of verbage was because that's how toddlers communicate and how the one that carries a handbag isn't gay, it's because mummy's bag is like amar ayyar ki zambeel and thus simply something lovely to have. this made sense, so i now relent somewhat in my previous horror of the teletubbies. dora the explorer, however, is quite another thing.

i was waiting for spongebob to come on so idly watched some dora, because it was on the same channel and because my stint at stellar has closely acquainted me with such childish horrors as ben 10, the new scooby doo and animated power rangers. dora is one of them so i thought cool, kids are picking up spanish from it so it must be somethin' special. turns out dora the explorer is the most mind-numbing, blitheringly boring and utterly condescending telly show for kids i have ever seen, and that is saying a lot because i really like watching stuff that's supposed to be for kids (although i don't know how kids find spongebob funny because kids these days have no sense of humor beyond farting and saying 'pishi').
this is what happens:
"how can we carry the pig? in the wheelbarrow! wheeeereeee's the wheelbarrowwww? -giant blue arrow clicks on the wheelbarrow- THERE'S the wheelbarrowwww! c'mon wheelbarrow!" YAAYYY!
then squeaky american accent with the faintest hispanic lilt dora and her animal friends do said task, then go onto another. replace wheelbarrow with river/boat/duck/dog/banana at will.

if i had a three year old watching this, i'd be most concerned with a child imagining a big blue arrow clicking on stuff when it puts two-and-two together. this is of course compounded with the fact that it would be mine to begin with, which would give it my over-active imagination and tendency to weave immense tangential narratives from the smallest occurrence. but oh god. dora and barney are in the same boat o' total awfulness, it's SO nasty. if i ever watch 'go diego go' i suspect this list may just expand.

2008-10-06T20:50:00.004+06:00

Jammie has given me a Brilliant Weblog award, so in my khushi- and the rules of the game- I get to:

1. When you receive the prize you must write a post showing it, together with the name of who has given it to you, and link them back.

2. Choose a minimum of 7 blogs (or even more) that you find brilliant in their content or design.

3. Show their names and links and leave them a comment informing they were prized with ‘Brilliant Weblog’

4. Show a picture of those who awarded you and those you give the prize (optional).

5. And then we pass it on!

Hooray! Hooray! gorpy is very proud of herself :) and her nominees are! *drumroll Oscars-style*

*gidadadadadadadadada*

1. Sana! *cymbal crash* for her funny, introspective and honest prose, with the startlingly beautifully syntaxed occasional pome!

2. Huma! *crasshh*, the Great Poo-Bah of blogging, for all my templates and particularly the unread genius of the Secret Sarky Blog ;)

3. Cheesoo! *crrasshh* when she does blog, for just being so cool and funny and fabulous

4. Jammie the Mother! *crash* because it's technically a different blog, for being the yummiest mummy/baby guru online

5. Maleeha! *crash* for her singularly beautiful photography

6. YouTube *crash* but only for the specific content of this particular page :D

and there is no number seven because I like even numbers.

Thank yew, thank yew very muuch. *shower of roses*

2008-09-14T14:29:00.003+06:00

mina muses innocence, and the loss of it

yesterday i was talking to Clever A who is going off to college in england and we got to talking about childhood toys and things (i think it led off from the fact that we were all watching spongebob with the twins), and the Evolution of Barbie- from only homemaker or teacher barbie, she now does everything. barbie is emancipated so that little girls don't get the wrong idea about what women can or cannot do. which makes sense- but from a grown-up perspective, no? this is what i began thinking: we grew up blissfully unaware of any subtext running through any of the toys we played with or the books we read, only to grow up and discover/be informed (because there is a difference) that enid blyton was a colonialist, racist writer and that barbie is the anti-christ of feminism for being an insipid, disproportionate representation of womanhood. does the average six year old know about that, or care if one explained?
"baby, barbies are bad because nobody's hips are that slender and nobody has that many clothes. and you can do ANYTHING you want in your life- that kitchen set is just a toy, although if you want to be a chef that's totally fine too"
of course, there is a lot to be said for the environment in which you bring up a child, and their perceptions of men and women and social roles have a lot to do with what they see their caregivers doing and behaving like. but at the same time, they're probably going to squirm and want to run off and resume dressing barbie for the oscars and brushing her hair into a big foofy mass with the annoying little plastic brush that never brushed their hair smoothly.

take golliwog in the amelia jane stories. i never, ever thought golliwog was anything but a very intelligent little black dolly with curly hair. of course, in retrospect i am faintly horrified that there were little black sambo dollies like that, but golliwog wasn't nasty (except for i think once, when another golliwog comes to the nursery and he was quite a mean thing) and he was always the one who came up with the intelligent and reasonable ideas to Save the Day. he was the Boss of the Nursery usually. what a bad name though- golliwog. wog. haw hai.

but again the point is: at age seven, i didn't know about any of that, and i don't know if it made a difference to my sensibilities as an adult. if anything, i'm a little put out that a cherished childhood story will never be the same any more because of some grown-up theory slapped onto it. i think kids should just be left alone to play and not fuss about whether little red riding hood is actually a story to discourage young women from leaving the house unsupervised lest some predatory man 'attack' them and just let the story BE. there's plenty of time when the grow up to be disabused of all notions of fantasy and make-believe. i know that one cannot, after a certain point, ignore subtexts and the connection of any story to a point in social history but i also know that one can sometimes just have a story or a toy for the pleasure of what one can make of it, and not have to tie it down to one thing or the other.

2008-09-13T17:44:00.002+06:00

this is for the best kids i know.
you have sat the most difficult test He could ever have set you- one that consumed your time, careers, emotional and physical health- and come through with colours that surpass 'flying'. you both are an example to us all of how selfless, devoted and loving two children can be. i didn't know your father, but you two are vivid evidence of what a wonderful man he must have been to produce such creative, compassionate and truly remarkably fabulous children. i am truly awed and humbled by how much you loved him, and how much he must have loved you to deserve that. we can't ever repay our parents for what they've given us in their lives, but i think you have, and for that i salute you. i'm so proud to be part of your lives.

2008-09-11T11:56:00.002+06:00

Today Mina reads the News Online because S has put it on auto-load, so she reads it 'cause it's there, but what does it say jee? Read it and get really, really pissed off.

" Bush allows raids into Pakistan: US official

Updated at: 1105 PST, Thursday, September 11, 2008

WASHINGTON: US President George W. Bush has secretly approved orders allowing US forces to conduct ground operations in Pakistan without that government's prior approval, a report said Wednesday citing senior US officials.

A US daily reported that the July move allowing Special Operations forces to carry out assaults within the borders of a key "war on terror" ally marked a turn for the Bush administration, which has struggled with Islamabad over how to combat Al-Qaeda and a resurgent Taliban.

"The situation in the tribal areas is not tolerable," a senior American official told the paper on condition of anonymity. "We have to be more assertive. Orders have been issued."

According to the newspaper, US officials say they will notify Pakistan when the United States conducts operations on the country's territory, but that they will not ask for permission.

The newspaper reported that US officials have been debating for months whether to authorize such forays against Islamic militants in Pakistan, following US intelligence warnings that Al-Qaeda and other militant groups were consolidating their hold on northwestern Pakistan."

"Orders have been issued"?! Where exactly do you get off being 'more assertive' on the sovereign territory of someone else's country? Granted it's a particularly pernicious habit of US foreign policy, but let me say it quite slowly so you understand: You...HAVE...to...ask...for....permission....arrogant...twerps...before...you...gun...down...women...and...children...and...call...it..the...accidental...result...of...bad...intelligence.

Got it? Not rocket science, is it? When O When are we going to tell these bastards to get the hell out of our butts and go hunt the Yeti/Bigfoot/Loch Ness legend that Osama's become somewhere else? How LONG will we have to put up with such indignities and colossal tragedy of innocent Pakistanis being killed for someone else's obsession with revenge?

Did a generation of people give up so much for Pakistan, only to have us move from under the British thumb to the American one? First we were a British protectorate and now we're an American one. What a miserable excuse of an Independent Republic of The People. I'm so angry.
I'm sick of being pushed around like this. I'm going to go march around with a big placard saying "Hands Off My Country!" or "Piss Off America". Depends on size of placard. Buss. Sub aajaein.

2008-09-09T14:35:00.002+06:00

i'm thinking about zardari. i know he's corrupt and a daghabaaz and excessively chikna-gharra clever-pants. but maybe it'd be good for a change to have a chalaak person at our helm who, if used properly, could use that machiavellanness to get something good for pakistan? of course, the premise is precisely that the chalaak man wants something good for the country. i think i'm willing to give mister ten percent a chance to see what he can do. okay, you want your ten percent, but if you leave behind something solid and long-lasting and genuinely provide help and support where it is desperately needed, i might not even mind the ten percent too much. as long as people can have access to hospitals, clean drinking water, garbage-free roads, schools. maybe a smooth-talking, well spoken, unflappably clever person can do a better job than a bumbling blustering idiot. i'm going to wait this one out.

2008-08-24T22:19:00.002+06:00

so after being caught in the throes of a most violent bout of food poisoning- still not really recovered, my stomach is still making creaky-door sounds and pretty much behaving like a washing machine, i am eating my miserable little khichri bowl with a spoon (supreme comfort food would replace the khichri with matar-chawal and only the aalus from a splendid aalu-gosht but such is gastric distress) and come across the last word talking about it's latest offering, which is supposed to be stupendous and amazing and all other Good Things, but it...it...it's...it's called

THE BUTT.

yes. the butt. i don't know of what yet: of a joke? of a person? a cow? of society's never ending pseudo-intellectual ambition to be seen as intelligent and exotic and interesting, which really translates into putting up a thousand facebook photographs of you on a street in a place not-pakistan? uhh. it's by will self and i'm sure it's probably much better than i think, but it's called THE BUTT dude. i insist on being facetious.

HAHAHAHAHHHAHAHAHAAHAHAHA

ahem.

2008-07-19T18:14:00.002+06:00

Yeh Hum Naheen is an NGO set up by a few expats following the 7/7 bombing in London. What it basically aims to show is that Muslims, particularly Pakistani ones, are not terrorists, are not fundamentalists and do not condone violence and bloodshed. They're having a petition signed all over the country by all kinds of people who agree; the target is about 6 million signatures, which is 35% of the population (I think. My math memory isn't very acute).

You can sign the petition by clicking on the link and putting your name into the blanks. Very easy, and hopefully very effective. You can text your name in too, there's an ad in the paper with the specific number. Again, the number-retention. But kher! Go and sign!

2008-06-17T17:35:00.002+06:00

so today- and i'm thinking i should write something appropriately snippy and delicious for TFT on this- i'm in the pool where i am a happydappy water baby full of good cheer and yoga litheness and a pubescent girl swims across my lap in that painstakingly slow whale-lumbering style bad swimmers have. i have to stop a very rapid, three-lap momentum breaststroke to avoid knocking into her, and when i surface i snap 'bacha, do you mind?' before swimming on. then said child, or her equally odious sibling, decides that tossing your foam board half a foot away from you and then walking the water (a.k.a pretend swimming where i kind of vaguely flail my arms) to it is a really fun and productive thing to do. she does so, and one of the times she tosses it in my direction, and splashes me. doesn't apologize or anything. i roll my eyes in my goggles and swim, swim swim. in between i help a little blue-goggled, red-capped, fish-floatied little duckling get her feet kicking right, and an auntie stridently asks me if i am a coach. this is the Odious Chillun's mother. i tell her no, but i work with kids her age these days and i swam competitively for many years (she asks me to help her kids with their crap swimming but that's another story).

-do you know where there are ballut lessons? she asks.

for a minute i quickly leaf through my head thinking ballot-vote-no-ballut-that's nothing-ballEt-ohhh tutus and pink satin slippers *ting*

-no, i don't

-i want my girls to be graceful, you know, move nicely

okay, quoth i, why don't you send them to a classical dance class?

-i really don't like classical dancing, it's so weird. and anyway they have it at school but i had them exempted

mina is puzzled. why? she asks, naive thing.

-because there was a male instructor, in a girls' school!

mina thinks back to the dance instructors she knows and thinks there is nothing for this woman to fear from the male ones. nohow, she ploughs on.

-but culturally, dance isn't a gender exclusive thing, i say.

-yes, she says disdainfully, but it isn't our culture.

i raise my eyebrows best i can with a swimming cap on and what i'm dying to say is how is ballet culturally relative to YOU, you ignorant, arrogant fat old cow marinating in chlorinated water and thinking it's swimming? and how do you think your horrible daughters would look in a tutu? reality check: ballet isn't meant for south asian punjabi boobs OR butts. good bye you odious woman with odious children yuckthooooooooo and when your daughters get married you'll have the devdas makeup and tab who'll be thinking it isn't your 'culture' HUH?

but instead i throw myself into a faster-than-average freestyle and float at the other end of the pool for a breather.

2008-06-14T12:57:00.002+06:00

the average parent is a pain in the ass. they want to know about airconditioners and fees and how many kids there are in the class. the part about changing the ratta system, helping kids to be creative and be individual and knowing their mind is brushed aside casually before asking whether we're going to do the kids' holiday homework with them. no, we aren't going to do another school's homework for your kid. we are not a tuition centre. tuition centres don't have baby yoga and mandarin classes and they don't have a black belt doing karate and they don't have an ajoka actress doing theatre and they don't have arooj aftab singing with them and they don't have me doing story-time either.

the average parent is the kind who will fire questions at you, listen to none of the answers and when you call them back, tell you they're only interested in having their kid WORK over the summer. or sleep in because eight is MUCH too early (if your five year old is going to bed at one a.m, then yeah, it is).

welcome to stellar, the bunch of aliens who think that kids should be allowed to be kids, who have a crate of hico apple and orange ice lollies and country pine cool boxes ready for your children, who believe that life should be about being happy and creative and original and climbing trees, and that in the process you will get good grades and you will go to college. and you could also be an asset to society too, someone who is thoughtful and intelligent and compassionate, who can speak punjabi and urdu and english and spanish and mandarin, who is proud of who they are and where they come from. how is that something a parent wouldn't want for their child?

so at the end of the day, the airconditioner is more important than the art and music and scouting and creative writing classes. bravo. the good news is that despite all this we've still got a good number of kids, but god you'd think there would be more progressive, intelligent, creative parents out in the world. the irony is that there are people like that, but very few parents. it's good to take your kid seriously i suppose, but i think we take it a bit too far and the priorities we assign to them are very skewed. blaaar. i will get back to you on all this judgement after i have a baby myself. but chahey jo bhi ho it sure as hell isn't going to school before five, will be playing in mud and drinking from the lilypond and reading books and eating aam and playing with the dog and wearing malmal kurta pyjamas like a proper little one should.

2008-06-11T20:00:00.002+06:00

eating a perfect

ripe

yellow-orange sindhri

is a gift only summer can give. you
hold the curving firmness of it in
your palm and gently stroke

a knife beneath the thin,thin skin
and as it peels off in a curled sweet spiral,

you might take a moment to lick the
honeyed juice about to trickle
off your wrist

and slicing neatly, deftly, the mango
falls into scimitar-curved pieces into
a bowl, and then

you find a fork.

ode to a sindhri

2008-06-11T01:54:00.002+06:00

literature gems

if macbeth hadn't been led astray by the witches, the play would have been so much nicer- there wouldn't have been so much bloodshed and duncan would be alive. he was such a nice king.

in the victorian age once the ring was slipped on your finger, the real trouble began. shakespeare's own marriage was quite rocky despite having four kids, so he created in lady macbeth and macbeth the perfect couple.

thank you. literature was my favourite class the whole of ninth grade.

i'll miss you next year :(

add me on facebook!

lady macbeth knocked out the guards. she must keep some strong sedatives in the house.

you can compare macbeth to SATAN!

2008-06-06T20:40:00.002+06:00

gems from the finals

"a mother keeps a child in her vomb for nine months...she endures the pains, the vomits..."

"she wanted our play to be on Macbeth instead of Romio and Juliat"

"rehersals"

"Ah you LOSER!!" (title of a story)

"she must be a psychio monster"

"he was very 'myscheviuos' "

2008-05-26T12:14:00.002+05:00

Look out for this flier!

Stellar's Summer of Fun Programme is set to begin on the 16 of July 2008

Activities include karate, yoga, spoken Mandarin and Arabic classes

dance, dramatics and singing

Summer should be FUN, not boring and horrible

and holiday homeworky- so Stellar is more than happy to oblige :)

Hit the website for more details!

Have a Stellar Summer!

2008-05-18T13:56:00.002+05:00

aaaaarghhh where are the PARTIIESSSS?!!?!?

and WEDDINGS don't count!!!

2008-05-12T15:36:00.000+05:00

mehreen is a mystery. she
is like a folded paper, a letter
one does not pry into to be
polite

yet can see some of the writing,
because the paper is fragile
and one's gaze intent. mehreen

is like a glass bird with
strong dark feathers,
flier of a single arrow

but finds her way home.

pome for a loved one

2008-05-07T15:14:00.002+05:00

My sister is very cool. She writes awesome. I miss female company my age. Everyone is out riding trains and making films and reading Nabokov and going to Paris whilst I am here, teaching poetry and Macbeth, running a new school and directing plays to sufficient acclaim (and one standing ovation). Why do we always think we’re lame in comparison to other people when on one’s own one isn’t half badly off? Duffer Gorpy.

S convinced me into sleeping downstairs last night because the light keeps going off and it’s cooler downstairs. ‘Downstairs’ means his old room- with the single bed. So I abandoned my island of a bed (7 feet by 7 feet is no titchy thing) and, pillow in tow, gamely went down to the single bed. ‘It’ll be cosy!” sang S gaily. Cosy is fine for rabbits. Squashed flat was more of what actually happened, because I chose to sleep on the open side of the bed and made S sleep next to the wall- and between S’s phone ringing across the room, numerous water-drinkings and one loo trip, I was thoroughly S-rollered. Hahaha! S rollered! My pancake foot begs to differ.

Stellar is having a faabullouuuussss summer school! Yay! It’s the kind of summer school I would have gone to if it had existed- languages, dramatics, singing, sports, you name it. It’s awesome. I love the books we’ve got for the kids too- they’re so colourful and creative! Mrs. H was laughing at me as I cooed and exclaimed at them- ‘I think you should go sit in Playgroup too’. I said I would, too!

2008-05-06T12:38:00.002+05:00

bilal is a paper cup on a hot
sidewalk with popcorn
that is crunchy. we sear

our bottoms gently and toss
some kernels to the ants, and
speak of the kind of things

that in their smallness and
infinite mystery are so much
more compelling

than the largeness of trees
or the people passing by.
bilal has faiz, i have myself

and we write little stories
on the air.

summer evenings at lums

2008-03-28T18:26:00.002+05:00

nasturtiums and kutta phool. mummy teaches me flower names
they roll out of her mouth with ease, twisting into my ears

i sometimes remember, sometimes don't and surreptitiously
google them so i don't sound like someone who doesn't
pay attention.

good student

2008-03-27T19:33:00.001+05:00

moment of prat love #451

"what do you think of this outfit?"
"it's very fetching."

2008-03-12T14:06:00.001+05:00

Save this image and use it everywhere you can for this week- your Facebook profile picture, MSN, blog sidebars..wherever you think it'll be seen.

Pakistan Zindabad, no matter what.

2008-03-11T14:15:00.002+05:00

so there i am talking about trimeter in roethke's 'my papa's waltz' and there is a huge exploding sound. it was so..surreal...as if the feeling preceded the actual sound...there was a rumbly sort of ripple feeling/sound, and then an enormous bang. my class collectively gasped and i could actually feel my face going pale.
'relax, it's probably a transformer' i said and the words and their fake casualness actually did sound what books say hollow. some girls downstairs began to shriek, which only made things worse. i popped out of class to see what the other teachers were doing only to encounter a classful of hysterical/weirdly excited seventh graders whose teacher had gone for a pee. after pouring them back inside- 'the emergency bell hasn't rung! calm down!'- i went back to my yellow girls. 'breathe' i commanded. they made their sarcastic 'tree hugger miss' face but i used me best order-voice and they yoga breathed a few times. they say it didn't work but i think it did. since everyone seemed to be doing the drill anyway, i lined them up, grabbed the register and my bag and quickly counted my little line out of the door, down the stairs and to the ground. for ten minutes i was responsible for these twenty-odd girls and their safety, and if- if- khudanakhwasta something had happened closer to us...i had to be the voice of reason, the voice that said 'you can't do anything about it right now so the best thing is to stay calm and stay sane until its over' while inside hating how cold i sounded, as if i wasn't scared and quickly running my loved ones' day's itinerary through my head hoping they were far away from the bomb sites.

back in class i had everyone write what they were feeling, and when they were done with their private writes there was a palpable relief in the air. seeing a lot of jumbled, scary thoughts on a page make you feel like you have some control over them.

how dare someone wreck my city like this? how dare someone try to cow my city-people?

'we're going to die!' sing-songed someone on the way back to class.
'don't talk rubbish' i snapped. the girl behind me said 'well, we just might you know'
'not today' i said.

2008-03-10T17:44:00.001+05:00

this window is beautiful. meter thumps
through my skin- dec, tet, hex, pent-
like a marching band

but this window! this window of springtime
of curtains pushed back and panes that
truly open, letting in

the rioting flowers, the sweet smell
of a petunia spring. a spring of gerberas
and sweet peas, dahlias and tiny

f-somethings i cannot remember, but
know their tri-colour fascination
this window is the last remaining stalwart
of a life where trees shed leaves on
everything

and everything never minded

2008-03-10T17:27:00.002+05:00

chins has made my week by showing me this : pablo bartholomew's recentest exhibition, in delhi. he's amazing...it's a series of a life in the seventies, something that feels truly bohemian in the reallest sense- the rooms have smudgy, dirty walls, women have huge eyes with dark circles, most people look pretty stoned...nobody's wearing awesome clothes. there are rickety wood benches at night with only one person to watch the light glow above them, ganda manda cracked commodes, a baby looking quite puzzled...limp wristed young men and women lolling about with the leonine, effortless grace people's limbs seem to have when they live the way they want to and don't give a hoot about what someone else is thinking of them. it's like what chins and i were talking about- you have your art, your girlfriend and a joint. what else matters?

2008-02-29T13:55:00.002+05:00

today i went to al-fatah to get my mahiney ka sauda without amma!! so after a hurried conversation to the effect of

me: do kilo cheeni ke chaar? chaar zyada hai i think
amma: do.
me: and chawal, should i get four? s eats a lot of chawal, i should get four not two two kum hoga
amma: get four.
me: haan and duss kilo wala aata, or is it fifteen?
amma: duss beti duss!

i put on my nice sweater (because you always bump into someone at al-fatah and one of the two is always looking like they rolled out of bed and you don't want it to be you, particularly now that you're a Married Woman and have lots of Nice Clothes and have no excuse for looking like an asshole) and fluffed out my fringe (that always goes half-pichkaoed when i sleep) and tripped off to get my own loot. the al-fatah oldies were delighted- from the pathan guard who dispenses trolleys and always makes sure i don't get a wobbly-wheeled one to billa and his topi-wala sidekick and farid the opaaan guy...it was fabulous:) i made a list like a true sauda nerd and went trawling down the aisles taking forever and loving it...do you realise how MANY kinds of shampoo there are?!? and best of all, buying all that ridiculous, too-expensive, entirely unecessary junk that amma wouldn't always buy but you promised yourself you would when you grew up- cadbury chocolate chip cookies and exotic iced teas and planters nuts and olive oil with all kinds of strange and interesting things floating in it. wheeee! also interesting? figuring out what kind of shampoo i could get away with foisting on S (something fruity and pyari-botul wala), and remembering to get more strawberry icecream and buying toothpaste and feeling very cosy and domestic. now S will brush teeth with MY marzi toothpaste, not his marzi. hehe. i'm such a silly old coot :) and phenyl DOES come in a tin, not just a plastic bottle. don't believe the guy skulking in the aisle.

2008-02-18T19:43:00.000+05:00

i'm so pleased- i've emerged from voting day with my very first blue thumb with kaala kaata! i'd never voted before, and despite everyone saying that these elections are going to be rigged like nobody's business i feel hopeful. hope is good. maybe i'm on a democracy high, despite standing in line for forty minutes in front of an old crone who kept putting her hand on my waist or back and eventually butt for support.

2008-02-18T15:37:00.000+05:00

VOTE!

2008-01-21T13:52:00.000+05:00

Gorpy's Great Snow-Bunny Adventure Part 1: There Is A Palm Tree Inside!

S and I are on A Trip. He has to work, and I'm tagging along blithely in a self-indulgent Jackie O manner with my big makhi glasses and lovely new jeans that make my bum look like a toned bakery product. Or two. I haven't been to Dubai in years, so this posh airport is new again. There are gold twisty things clustered around all the really high pillars like spun sugar (only golden and plastic) and lots of glass and chrome suspended thirty feet in the air and the suchlike, but what really amuses me is that there are palm trees inside. And not just spindly little ones but great big whopper ones tra-la-laing all over the place as if emerging from a grey carpet was only natural! I miss Smulli because this Lounge is horrendously cushy and I wish he could stay here on his disgustingly long layovers. An Amreekan just asked me if I spoke English (better than yo' Mama) and then asked me to watch her laptop whilst she went to the loo. Chaaalo jee. I will sip my blueberry and vanilla herbal tea (I'm telling you, this lounge is insane) and keep an eye on her laptop. And maybe purse my mouth a little and pretend that a kaala isweaturr and boots are enough to make me just a little Jackie/Audrey. Until the next wireless! There should be snow soon. The Amreekan's just come back and said thanks very much. Sweet. That was one hell of a quick pee.

2008-01-17T12:04:00.000+05:00

"you are like a rich man/entering heaven through the ear of a raindrop"

polly is singing a line from some mournful marsiya sounding song. he is now growling and clicking. horus is being fretful and squalling. it is raining and i am wearing a striped sweater and will by-and-by eat some lunch and drive to rehearsal in the rain in the mad-ant (i.e what happens to big choontay when you touch them and they begin to run around in a hysterical, disoriented fashion) rain traffic.

"when i am old i shall wear purple/with a red hat that doesn't go"

i am also fermenting a pome, which is a characteristically uncomfortable process :) miyaan is handling it well. haha!

2008-01-09T12:57:00.000+05:00

"the room is full of you"

smoke and cologne, that old-fashioned
amber in a glass bottle
you always use despite
hordes of sleeker bottles

what a use of space, what an expansion of a life
this boy who gets into everything
the man who sprawls across this
new sky

2007-12-16T15:32:00.000+05:00

My friend Arun's father was kidnapped on the seventh. The following is the text of the e-mail he sent me recently. I'm stunned- as one always is when 'these things' happen to people we know as opposed to names in newspapers. What's happening to our country? It's such a schizophrenic situation- anarchy on the one hand, and weddings on the other. Don't know where to look any more.

"I am writing this with deep sadness to tell that my father, a Christian leader and a doctor, along with his driver have been kidnapped on December 7, 2007 by some unknown armed persons while he was coming home to Bannu from Dera Ismail Khan. So far, no news has been heard from his side for about a week. His captors haven't made a demand as of yet but my family is in hopes we would hear good news soon.

http://wheresmyfather.blogspot.com/

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Christian_church_leader_kidnapped_in_Pakistan

This letter is a prayer request, asking all that receive to remember my father in your prayers. My mother's in Bannu and is in pretty much of a vulnerable position herself. Although the local Government has assured us they are doing their best, no progress has been seen to have been formulated. My father is feared to have been taken captive by the Taliban but reports haven't been confirmed as of yet. Please pass this on to as many people as you possibly can so that people come to know of this. The Government is only focusing on the issues of elections in the country at the moment and seem to have forgotten about such important issues. Please pray for our family.

Regards,
Arun Reginald Zaheeruddin"

2007-09-28T10:38:00.000+05:00

so i am getting used to being an only child. there is no getting USED to it, only there is more space to do nothing in now. what i hate most is going upstairs at night to sleep, and ali and sana's rooms are dark and mine, in the middle, is alight. it makes a strange lighthouse kind of image in my mind. not that i am a beacon of hope or anything, but it retains some manner of strange poignancy. i have also discovered it is no fun to nick sana's clothes when she isn't there to make her grumpy llama face and yell at me. and she isn't there to turn off my light either, and ali isn't around to make the pankha go at the speed of light. sigh. i think i will go brush my teeth now. so glad for munchie's being here. and there is s, and scrabble practise. ooer, i'm a dork.

2007-08-28T17:49:00.000+05:00

we're all sitting at the table at lunch talking when miss peanut asks her mother,
"is that daddy's friend?"
so s apa says
"yes, but that's also mina phuppo's husband to be!"
so miss peanut is a little mystified, but she gets it. then s apa goes
"do you want to say hi to s phuppa?"

and i was listening and had such a big chuckle at s being someone phuppa, and how fatly waistcoated the word sounds, and just a big happy at the familyness of it all. and miss peanut did say hello, despite being utterly crankypants.

2007-08-05T14:57:00.000+05:00

Can you spell HITAUS? i have missed this space UFF UFF UFF!!!!!! having no internet to speak of at home is such a horrendous thing keh buss. uffff.

i'm betrothed. who'da thunk? haha! will resist temptation to blog about it though, although i did find myself ringing up cheesoo and asking her if the level of insanity of all others is normal (she said yes, and i also got to hear ali baba squawking in the background which is as good as saying hello in my book); wedding blogs are rather reassuring now. heeeeheheehehee i still can't get over this; i'm going to get married in some months hhahaa ME how funny. does this mean i have to grow up and wear less hats? i had to buy an aunty bag because the one i have- khaadi, with rickshas and fish embroidered on it with orange straps and yummy yummy yummy- was a bit off with nice-girl Acha Wala Jora in life generally. so charles and keith obliged with a very nice taupe confection, but it is still a Very Nice Bag and makes me look like a sleek rich girl, not the wrap skirt bead-laden datsun driving hobo that i am, albeit wearing a Very Nice Watch because watches should always be such. uss ke ilawa syd knows what i'm talking about.

HAHAHA who left that typing with fingers message? i've been cracking up about that ever since i read it. hahahahaa!!

BT is gone. MZM is leaving parson. K on the twelfth, Cokepants on the thirteenth, Syd on the twentieth. i feel so bereft. i'm trying to ignore all these dates in some stupid supersitious hope that it actually won't happen- not that i don't want them to go and be awesome but as if both things can happen simultaneously. the other day sana was harassing me about march weddings and i almost burst into tears because i so didn't imagine all of this without the little gang i have and she wasn't making it any easier... woh bhi chali jayegi and then amma and i will stump around the khaali house like rattly peas, and when play season begins and hopefully i get to do a play she'll be alone and i will feel like an errant abandoner. sniff. i detest alonelity.

la la la! i'm loving blogging again WHEEEEE! will be a gooder girl about it now.

2007-05-05T21:03:00.000+05:00

i'm home alone. with my gorgeous anais nin and saturday night fever YES but feeling deadly bored altough i still gloat the fact of waffling about at home comfy whilst everyone else is wearing fancy clothes and making small talk ho ho ho. methinks i'll go watch dat fillum now and think about Current Work and exciting prospect of summer project :D

2007-04-29T11:23:00.000+05:00

oooo what a HIATUS! internet is moste unreliable of late so i don't really use any. and thusly have been traipsing off to khewra [the inside of a salt mine is exactly like being inside a body: undulating walls of various pink, secret tunnels and pools of ancient water] and nankana sahib [a massive courtyard and trees so old they defy time] with the sweet delhi kids who sing in such perfect surr, and all manner of assorted fun things that i will talk about later because breakfast's on the table now :)

2007-03-30T14:32:00.000+05:00

One hour to go and I'm no longer a full-time Simorghi. Ugh, I don't want to be sentimental about thissss!! I hate goodbyes :P

2007-03-29T11:12:00.000+05:00

excuse my french, but wtf?

i'm so angry. i'm getting really sick of how dangerous it is to just EXIST in this country, being a woman. today's DT had this on the front page. read it and shake a fist. i'm religious enough to know what Islam is about and THIS is NOT it. i'm sick to death of mullahs and mullahnis with their incessant crap about morality and ethics. is it decent to attack a policeman with sticks? one against a mob? is it moral to attack someone in their house? the prophet said you should knock thrice before even thinking of going into someone's house, let alone breaking into it and dragging the women and babies out!! how dare these ignorant bastards use Allah and Islam as justification for their behaviour! how dare kidnappers and vandals and trespassers have the cheek to take such a decent, open-minded deen and turn it into something so ugly and closed and disgusting? jamia fareedia's maulana abdul rashid ghazi says his squad will jihad (jihad! JIHAD!?! jihad against corruption and greed and dictatorships! not FORNICATORS for the love of all things sane!) against twenty-two other brothels in the city. wah bhai wah. human rights atrocities are fine, honour killings are fine, stove-burnings and chief justice manhandling is all a whizz in the wind compared to gasp! people having sex! haan granted it isn't fair for the ISI to hold people either, but this is just too much. i want to break out into a string of punjabi epithets, but i don't know enough :P so now if i'm at work someone can break in and drag us all away to some basement because my dupatta is sitting on the back of my chair, my bosses are divorced, my colleagues smoke and we all drive ourselves to work so we MUST be prostitutes running a brothel. it makes perfect sense! or even better, my guy friends come over to have a cup of tea on the terrace (and in the process chat with my head-covering amma and read my tahajjud-praying abbu's latest article) so THERE YOU GO, HO-HOUSE IN ACTION!!! AARGHHH!! what is wrong with peopleeee WHAT WHAT WHATTTTTTT!!! this is the bleakest time to be a woman, a citizen of this state, religious in the sanest way and a person with a brain.

2007-03-28T14:46:00.000+05:00

the trouble with constantly converting experience to text in one's head is that often speech, which is spontaneous and does not benefit from thought or visual approbation, can come out sounding 'blah blee bloo' and grammatically very awkward. phooey.

2007-03-27T09:31:00.000+05:00

ladiss and gentilmain, for your reading pleasure gorpy proudly presents its first guest post:

The Case For Pot, by A.Nonymous

(bharpoor taaliyan)

So we've all heard it haven't we? Don't smoke up it'll kill your brain cells. Say no to drugs blah blah. As a (occasional)smoker, I could not disagree more. Marijuana is probably the best intoxicant out there. It's drinkers we should all stay away from. Remember the last time you were surrounded by a couple of pot heads? You probably just saw them laugh uncontrollably for a long time, then had someone order pizza or raid the fridge, after which everyone went home and slept. When was the last time you heard that a man got stoned and raped someone or that a man got stoned and ran someone over or that a man(or woman) got stoned and had sex with someone really ugly without even remembering it the next day. We've heard of beer goggles but have we ever heard of weed goggles? Stoned people can still spot a fat chick when they see one(and no, big is not beautiful for all you 'overweight' queen latifah wannabe chicks out there so stop thinking you're hot). Marijuana loosens you up, it does not make you lose control. Marijuana has also proven to have many medical benefits such as helping people going through chemotherapy. They can just smoke a joint and chill and forget about the pain. Marijuana also has great historical significance. I personally don't believe that the Vietnam war could've ended without the presence of marijuana. Rock n Roll wouldn't have existed. Great acts like Bob Marley and Hendrix would not be able to function without a proper dosage of weed and we would still be listening to shitty music as the people in the 30's did. Weed has contributed to our past much more than we would like to believe.

I personally think keeping marijuana illegal is a conspiracy hatched by the evil capitalists, and this is to appeal to the leftist monkeys who read mina's blog. Think about it though. Most marijuana and hash is grown in third world places like South America and Afghanistan . Even if it was legal, cheap production and labor costs would not allow the US to compete with these countries. Marijuana would be then be imported, which would not help the trade balance either. It would also harm the local alcohol industry as legalized marijuana would compete with stuff like Budweiser, Miller etc etc. Therefore, big business in the US would clearly suffer. Businesses related to alcohol, such as casinos, bars, strip clubs etc would also suffer greatly as people would just want to smoke up, stay home and order a pizza. Weed certainly could not be marketed in the same way either. I mean you can't really have 'weed light' or 'weed select' can you. The tobacco industry would also suffer as smoking a joint would more often than not replace smoking a cigarette, if a joint could cost as much as a cigarette i.e. If such a policy was ever implemented, it would prove disastrous for the developed world and their evil MNC's, and would be great news for impoverished countries like Afghanistan etc.

Lastly, I don't know if it's the same with you but drunken people just annoy the shit out of me(unless they are pleasant drunks, and yes there's some out there). They slur, they smell and they rarely have the capacity to carry out an intelligent conversation while under the influence. I have had the most philosophical conversations about life, love and money among other things while I have been blazed out of my skull. I still do remember what I talked about the night before. While I'm high, I'm very clear about who I'm trying to offend and who I'm not. Also, the smartest people I have ever encountered have been people who smoke ridiculous amounts of pot while I've never personally come across a smart alcoholic. Moreover, the hypocrisy of people who just drink and don't smoke also annoys me. I believe its equally immoral, and though I do not drink but I would not judge people who do. However, regular drinkers who don't smoke up somehow feel they hold the moral high ground. You just have to remind such folks that just because what they're doing is legal, that does not make it right. So folks, go light up a joint, put on some Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and think about what I've just said. I'm sure it will make more sense to you then.

(cue theme music)

2007-03-20T09:17:00.000+05:00

Inna Lillahe for Bob Woolmer. Is terrible. Bauhat afsos hua, to chime in with cheesoo. And I can't believe we lost to IRELAND. As S rather aptly put it, it was St. Patrick's Day no less...lol darn Irish luck is all I can say to that. But I am SO upset about this World Cup business, we needed a World Cup this time round, more than anyone else in the world...what with the teargas and rocks and policemen with steel-tipped lathes, scuffles and fires and blood.

i wander the way i always do when i'm reading prufrock. i should have been a pair of ragged claws/scuttling across the floors of silent seas. sometimes i think it's true; then i go dancing. it isn't somehow right that it all ends up tied in me, and yet i feel entitled to it: to grab it by the lapels and say yes, to throw these odds and ends into my backseat and drive away a little too fast, to loll in my little pomes and books beneath a tree and defy the mermaids to sing louder than i. these are good visions to harbour sitting in an open window on a sultry night.

good on you, the former hon'ble mr. justice jawwad khawaja (sounds a bit like prince's naming odyssey) for resigning. you rock.

2007-03-15T13:31:00.000+05:00

Over there on the left is what is being called the White Band for Justice. Click the image to sign the petition to reinstate the Chief Justice, have his house arrest removed and demand that any hearing be done in a transparent manner open to the public and media and that the Supreme Judicial Council be reconstituted in "a fair, impartial manner". These are dark times we live in- let's not have to look back to this year and feel like we didn't do anything to fight back.
Click here for a banner to promote.

2007-03-15T11:47:00.000+05:00

am writing a delicious sort of pome in the small windows of time between the various kaam and wedding things (as we speak i am due for a fitting and wondering when the hell i'm going to actually GO between bayan's last minute wrap-ups and rehearsal- i utterly refuse to ditch poor sinused O again)...am also germinating a little story. i have a beginning: a kitchen, a hot water bottle and a bemused inner monologue. this is mostly for my cerebral benefit, putting it down here.

gallivanting is such fun. i love it. of course, it always happens the night i don't keep my keys or take a shawl along, but what of it? H is fun- i finally got someone to do the pinocchio line :D

BUT

the good news i keep forgetting: calculus is OVER (lums eat my shorts, kiss my chuddies, etc)! WHEEOOO! the sproj has done pretty well for itself and the alhamra literary review is finally out and i'm in it [amongst other very talented writers who float about gorpy occasionally:) ] so yaayy! get a copy. i'm still hunting for some here *does little jig o' glee*

2007-03-06T14:40:00.000+05:00

alipur is gorgeous. i kept wanting to wear a frock and ride sidesaddle through the lanes, under the arching tree canopy and orange trees. oh for a shady dreaming place of singular history that isn't somebody else's, in another country!

okay, i can't wax lyrical with such a violent sort of patakha pome bouncing angrily around in my head. i think i will need a rewrite in a few hours. sunflowers, sunflowers! is this van gogh's disease? beautiful! thick paint, fast brushstrokes, self-combusting into starbursts on a navy blue sea-sky. amorphous, explosive, alight. impassioned, what a word!

2007-03-02T09:20:00.000+05:00

it seems a perfect day to die.

it is raining, water cold and just heavy enough to spatter a shawl through. the sky is a strange vibrant grey, and treeleaf stands out against it in a startlingly green indifference. i grasp her too-soft arm as she totters up the slick driveway. her flesh hangs down and my fingers grip more of her bone than her. my shoes are yellow like a piece of lego, hers are a dark brown. her feet are very small."one step at a time," i murmur. she keeps stopping, keeps trying to recoil from going inside and confronting what she knows is true. t mamoon's eyes are a little wide, like a small boy being braver than he feels. walking her to the door has become a small procession clothed in black and silence. it rains and rains, and the marigolds in the flower bed look beaten and rumpled. this is like a movie.

i help settle her into a chair and swiftly look about the room for faces i should salaam. sofas are pushed to the walls, white chandnis cover the carpet. there is a table in the middle of the room. ammi comes to supervise and as if she were my channel to reality, i realize with a startled shock that the table is not a table; it is a coffin draped with a white sheet. i want to say this to ammi but i blink furiously instead, my thoughts scrambled suddenly. i look back at bari ammi but she's telling someone about her fall in the bathroom. i look at s, who is reading a siparah, and feel exposed and cold.

it is difficult for taayi to cry. she is not an emotional woman. her beautiful hands hold a tissue to the bottom of her spectacles, catching tears. she doesn't make a sound, her eyes crumpled in misery. ammi's eyes become bigger, luminous, when she cries but taayi's shrink closed as if her irises huddled closer to her pupils for comfort. ammi's mouth is a little awry. i hope she isn't remembering other white sheets. i feel nervous, raw, as if a thin layer of my skin were peeled away. i want to fold myself up very very small and creep inside ammi, embryonic. someplace warm and solid and completely surrounded- no exposed back, no vulnerable shoeless feet.

you're meant to see the face, ammi says. i don't want to. i don't need to see it to be reminded of my own mortality. i would rather remember her as i do, a pale, downwards sort of woman, a kind of long sadness about her shoulders and running the length of her hair. her bright, expansively rouged cheeks, a flower behind her ear. she looked like the spirit of a woman haunting a lake, a rusalka, only mild and pale and quietly melancholic. a ghost wistfully watching men pass by instead of luring them to a watery death. someone lifts the sheet back, opens a flap to reveal a plastic sheet over her face. abbu comes and gingerly, reluctantly peers in. there is a gaseous condesation on the plastic, so he had to go around to the other side to see her face properly. his face remains expressionless, but his eyes dart anxiously back and forth, fluttering across her face quickly. a finger through a candleflame. t mamoon is next. he gazes down at his mother longingly, directly, and his fingers touch the sheet over the coffin almost unseeingly. he strokes it twice- two loving brushstrokes of farewell- and walks away.

goodbye, goodybe, she says, tears in her old glaucous eyes. it is still raining. there is an unconscious quality to it, as if someone were pouring from a teapot into a cup and kept pouring, distracted, as the cup keeps overflowing.

2007-03-01T11:56:00.000+05:00

'I would love to grow accustomed to being myself.'

- (from a wish list participant)

That's my fantasy. The thing I most wish I could do in my city.

What's yours?

What are the top ten, twenty, one hundred things that you wish your city just let you to do? Email us your dreams for your city. Stay anonymous if you choose. We will create a wish tank on the blog where all your wishes will be announced and celebrated together!

Do feel free to ask the non bloggers- all the other women around you and mail us right away! Dont think too hard- imagine the impossible!

Do email us at blurtblanknoise@gmail.com. While we believe that there should no deadline for dreaming and wishlists, we would appreciate it if you start dreaming and mail us right away!

2007-02-15T14:24:00.000+05:00

wandering word of the week: story

She was a story-teller. They would come to listen, but more
to watch her long hands weave the story. She caught threads from the air and
brought them into her loom of magic, nimbly coaxing colours to wrap around
each other, for moonlight to shine with the sun. And her stories, they slew dragons,
poured with rain and flashed lightning fire, roaring with the voice of the sea. And sometimes
they smiled gently, a spring breeze nudging Persephone up from under the soil, a rainbow without rain, sleeping breath of a beloved. They came from far and near to listen,
enraptured by the words and images she conjured up from a land far, far away, someplace
they tried to find but drowned on the way, lost in the cadence and glitter of what she wove. They cheered and sighed and wept, grouped around her like
children, faces turned to her dumb as daisies and bright as snow, wishing that
she could see them just once, that her blind eyes would
sparkle with recognition and delight for them the way theirs did for her, that strange
and beautiful
story-teller, somewhere in a mossy
amphitheatre of her own creation, surrounded always by the fairies
of her fancy

2007-02-15T14:00:00.000+05:00

[Disclaimer Before Post (prayer before birth. tee hee): i dislike this new blogger nonsense. i don't take kindly to being FORCED to change to google, the blob that is eating all of internet up. BATT. i am looking at wordpress out of sheer stubborn spite. but since anonymouses are fast knuckle-rapping me about my perennial of late grumps i will endeavour to be more chirpsome and write of Other Things.] [a LABEL? how..how...victorian] [yeh buttons kitney badhait hain] [WHAT! why is there an ugly forlorn little profile box on the left, destroying the feng shui of my sidebar?]

the people at merriam-webster are cute:

The Word of the Day for February 14 is:

Cupid \KYOO-pid\ noun
1 : the Roman god of erotic love
*2 not capitalized : a figure that represents Cupid as a naked usually winged boy often holding a bow and arrow

Example sentence: Ricco sent Tanya a card covered with roses and cupids on Valentine's Day.

Did you know?
According to Roman mythology, Cupid was the son of Mercury, the messenger god, and Venus, the goddess of love. In Roman times, the winged "messenger of love" was sometimes depicted in armor, but no one is sure if that was intended as a sarcastic comment on the similarities between warfare and romance, or a reminder that love conquers all. Cupid was generally seen as a good spirit who brought happiness to all, but his matchmaking could cause mischief. Venus wasn't above using her son's power to get revenge on her rivals, and she once plotted to have the beautiful mortal Psyche fall in love with a despicable man. But the plan backfired: Cupid fell in love with Psyche, and she eventually became his immortal wife.

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

2007-02-08T14:18:00.000+05:00

"HOW WE LIVE MAKES A DIFFERENCE. If we fall victim to the ideology of apathy we go straight down into that Dante circle of Hell reserved for those ‘who wilfully live in sadness.’ The sad shake of the head, the worldly-wise shrug of the shoulders, what can we do? Answer – everything we can do, big and small, and bring up the kids to do better. There might still be time. I believe in second chances and miracles, whatever the weather, whatever the science. Oh God, give it a go. Who is to say for sure that it’s too late?"

from Jeanette Winterson's fabulous monthly write, it ties into my mother the ruffled hen this morning at breakfast.
"look at that!" she says, waving the paper at me. it's a front-page article on the hedonist party people in islamabad (why it made the front page boggles me), complete with a wholly inappropriate photograph of a couple dancing together, their faces censored with STN-style boxes. they're wearing the requisite 'western party clothes' and pressed together, the guy's arms around the girl. the article talks about the use of E and other drugs at parties and all the Bad Things anti-WPBers would have a field day with as markers of Pakistan's steady progress towards becoming a Country of Wanton Fornicators (such a quaintly funny word, that) (and as if the anti-es aren't fornicators themselves, the cheek of it).
"amma, you sound like we're responsible for it," remarks sana wryly, eating toast.
"haan, we aren't fornicators," i chip in, eating toast.
the paper also has a little column inside (much more front-page material if you ask me, more important than partiers in islamabad) about a 22 year old woman who went to a hotel to canoodle with her boyfriend and ended up assaulted and murdered by him (and body thrown out of window also). i'm being very flippant about this all, but amma's point was exactly winterson's: bring up the kids to do better. maybe it isn't quite fair to exhort us to bring up better bachay, it being too late for our parents, or for the gooder lot to try and balance the badder ones out- i mean, it isn't fair that the goods feel compelled to stay thus because they 'should' whilst the bads get to have all the parties (because the bads rarely become goods do they) but the point is the doing: the point is not shrugging your shoulders and going with the flow because you can't help it, you can't do anything about it, you just don't wanna. we must remember to push ourselves to do what needs to be done, what has to be, because our shoulds are so flighty and changeable..willfully living in sadness! what a chord it struck, because we really do allow ourselves to flounder in darknesses we could so easily fling aside were we paying more attention. i'm also quite sure wearing my superman t-shirt today has nothing to do with this renewal of noble feelinks. (stop being flippant youuuuuu)

2007-02-06T14:49:00.000+05:00

production-line love

i must say this before i pop! i was in the card company the other day looking for a card for tanya and obviously was surrounded by valentine's junk which i knocked my head against (some kind of khatarnaak looking japanese doorbell gong). i was at the cash register paying for the one card that didn't have a butt joke ("happy butt-day", "the weirdest thing i've ever seen...is your butt") or a fart joke (red faces and explosions. i kid you not.) when i spied....PRE-FAB LOVE LETTERS. JEE. printed sheeets of paper with an ugly envelope included; a love letter!! in printed stimulated handwriting!! the usual unoriginal goop ("you are my sunshine my heart's flower without you the world is as a day-old helium balloon, wrinkled as an old person's bottom"), with hearts and little artistic squiggles. i continue to be boggled. A PRE-FAB LOVE LETTER?!?! and i KNOW some moron will buy one, probably to chuck into a stalkee's house over the gate, but still! it's a truly terrible, tragic state of affairs when you can go to a store to BUY a love letter instead of sitting down with a pretty piece of paper and a pen....yuck, yuck, YUCK!! capitalism is so tacky and upstarty; dis-gus-ting. sure, go wild with your manufactured holiday, but at least try to infuse it with something original instead of letting your love be just like everyone else's- contrived, misspelt and common. yiii its like stepping in something icky, sick ugly mass-manufactured love letters, my sensibilities are so unbelievably offended :P

2007-02-02T12:16:00.000+05:00

i am angry (amongst other things but lets pick this one). i didn't know SHELL (royal dutch-shell) was responsible for killing ken saro-wiwa! DAMN YOU SHELL!! I WILL BOYCOTT FOREVER! bastards! and bastard nigerian government for their sellout! *shakes fist* ooo sometimes i wish we had never progressed beyond hunter-gatherer; good old self-sufficient matriarchies wandering around but nooo let's settle dooowwnn and build housessss and discover spinning jennys!

on a related note, does anyone know the citation for the case lodged by saro-wiwa's brother and co. against shell in 2000? can't find it and i need it!

2007-01-26T14:33:00.000+05:00

wandering word of the week: imagine

i was tiredly driving home one night, dreaming of a long hot bath and pyjamas when out of the blue a huge white dog with pointy pitbull ears leaped out of the shadowy jhaaries, barking its head off like a baskerville hound, and started chasing my car!! startled, i fell out of my reverie with a bang and gasped like sana, my heart racing with fright (as if i wasn't safely ensconced in a sturdy glass and metal vehicle that would protect me from the stupid dog). then the hound vanished. it disappeared! i stuck my head out of the window and looked around for it but it was gone as suddenly as it had come. it's never come back either. maybe it was an imaginary car-chasing psycho dog. stooooopid.

2007-01-25T15:34:00.000+05:00

the constitution of venezuela calls simon bolivar 'the liberator'. i of course promptly transform a sweat-stained cowboy hero into a spandex and cape confection in my head and giggle. i'm such a jaahil sometimes :D

el syd works with me! yayy! this means i now have company car-dancing when we go to lunch en masse- dekha to tuhjey yaar dil main baji gitaaar! dhan dhana dhan dhanna dhishkaaaooonn

yesterday i got such an awesome compliment from one of my kids. they demanded to know why i hadn't been coming in for two weeks in a row, so i told them about the asia pacific forum and why judicial education on gender awareness is important, and then about the minor form of plague i came down with. one of them pipes up,
"miss, you're the coolest person i've ever met!"
hugely flattered i was.
"thank you! what makes you say that?"
"because you know about everything!"
i grinned.
"that's only an illusion of age, but thank you all the same."
i love me kids :)

the play is fun. i love theatre. i lovelovelovelove it. i will direct all your plays for piffling peanuts, just let me have a script and a cast (and a set, a hall, sponsors, costumes and food)!

B sends me pomes. this one is by the remarkable harris khalique. i must stop by SPO with a copy of his little yellow book and beg for a signaychurrr.

An old tale told afresh

Hogging desire
Goes gallop after prey,
Tramples it.

Love, sure-footed,
Walks across the soul,
Comes back, stays.

Seldom understood without each other.

WAH! i tip my invisible hat to you. i also tip it to the newest photographer of my acquaintance, who 'gave' me a photograph that involved a cycle. those of you on my msn will appreciate the on-spot coolness of this :)

yay i can access my comments, finally- and discover a motherlode of horrid pornographic spam!! yuuucckkk.

am writing pomes. am a happy ole bunny, i feel pretty i am creating loveliment i am magic

2007-01-13T14:28:00.000+05:00

i poke cautiously in the forlorn, assaulted trifle with a tired spoon, looking for cake and missing my mother, who makes the most generous trifle in the world. i always end up eating much too much trifle when i encounter it. it's good, my tastebuds nod approvingly at the custard.

the lights look like ornate, inverted toadstools, lit up with a dreamy gold bulb, dropping down from an upside down, shallow jeweled bowl.

justice S has shambled out to sneak a smoke. s and i eye him and i secretly am willing him to break out into a rendition of 'the walrus and the carpenter' and mime the crying oysters :D

on nepali accents:
"no current judge should ask for funding from an organization."
"yesh! no shitting judges!"

s.s smells vaguely of pee sometimes. i rescued a first edition toni morrison from liberty books, whoopeeeee! nothing as delicious as reading a hardback; deliciouser is a first edition hardback :) i adore the fact that i have contemporary writers on the f.e shelf...someday they'll be like having a virginia woolf or an eliot. jeanette winterson has those. ugh, imagine a f.e of 'the waves', or the prufrock poems. i burne moste brightly.

"i keep a seashell from each
shore we never walked"

on stereotypes:
"men are wise. women are?"
"otherwise!"

2007-01-03T14:14:00.000+05:00

Happy New Year and Eid Mubarik to y'all!! Was a strange one for me; lots of family and babies and dikhaoowas- yes, the Great Grandbaby Gatsby is running along- and an unexpected death, surprise parties and surprise encounters. I haven't time to mull any of this over and yet I'm writing a story again...which of course will run its course when it does, but beautiful just to write, really.

I am the Pancake Queen, I mix 'em up and flip 'em off the griddle with speed and skill in my own kitchen. The bliss of a hob I chose and utensils nobody molests to fry kababs with is a special joy I tells you! Now to pinch all of Amma's yummy things and squirrel them away in my cabinets away from the molesty hands of K and R and their overzealous tendency to scrub away nonstick coatings with steel wool.

I did me reports today in a freeeezinggg room hunched over Miss Fouzia's desk...green visor ki kammi thi I swear; took me ten minutes to defrost nearly sitting on the heater back at work...hehe...now to kick Excel into doing the math for me.

I take huge offense to the way everyone's showing Saddam Hussain's hanging on television. It's disgusting and crass to denigrate someone's passing like that. Haan maana he wasn't exactly the best man to walk the earth but nobody deserves such a mockery to be made of something as solemn as a death. Am suddenly very anti-capital punishment now...maybe seeing it actually happen [by a remote control ki randomness I wish hadn't ocurred] made me realize how serious a death like this is. Bad. And what if a kid saw it, then what? What if you're six years old and happen to see it while getting to Cartoon Network? What would you think [and NO, playing Tekken has nothing to do with immunizing you to real violence]? Good god, I'm never buying a television.

There was something else I was pretty annoyed about turn of this year but I've forgotten it. I'm still cold; time to turn chair around and put the stream back into the blood. Call-backs for the play tomorrow, whee! I love theatre as much as I love books. Yeh bauhat barri baat keh di hai :)

2006-12-29T10:43:00.000+05:00

happy birthday bagheeraaaa yayy :))

2006-12-28T15:29:00.000+05:00

wandering word of the week: past

i do not want your monochrome

2006-12-27T09:46:00.000+05:00

i was in shezan the other day buying samosay and sandwich bread for amma's Fammilie Tea [and how angry i am at shezan going all revamped and doing away with the bumpy brown exterior and triangular foyer from my bachpan is another story] when i found myself next to a father buying his son ten rupees' worth of sticky sugar-rolled jelly cubes, and a sandwich for himself. he had an anxious energy about him, pointing out to his little boy what he could have if he liked, unwrapping his sandwich, sniffing it before taking a bite, counting out ten rupee notes with one hand. on my right there were three little girls wearing jeans and barbie sweatshirts, piling the counter with packets of chips and candy whilst their tweed-coated father smiled benignly at them. "i don't want any chocolate," one piped decisively. once their pile was a small pyramid, the father pulled out a credit card. i looked left, and looked right, and felt mighty glad that i was only buying samosay and sandwich bread.

on another note, inna lillahe for James Brown, the #1 soul brother.

2006-12-20T13:13:00.000+05:00

your waist curves, a wavelet
on the shore of your body

a beach i long to walk, sand and
mist i dream of knowing

your voice sounds far away,
a low horn sounding from a

distant ship. you stand next to
me and i can see how your hair

curls at your neck, the weight of
your marine fingers as they grip your arm.

your back is a smooth, ridged reef-
i swim the waters of your eyes and

wish you knew me.

acquaintance

2006-12-19T12:42:00.000+05:00

'White Ninja Longs to be Married'

this one goes out to the mean girls ;) hahahaha!

2006-12-18T14:12:00.000+05:00

on three-row seats on planes
so the big uncle fell asleep as soon as he landed his bottom in the seat, and didn't thus clasp his seat belt shut. his tweed coat smelt like stale smoke.
"yuck," mina thought. "if the plane crashes and he falls on me i'll die of asphixyation by fat uncle, would i be able to push him off me?"
soon, the uncle's snoring became wet. he woke up and coughed
"sickkk" mina thought, edging away.
then he coughed some more, and went KKKKKCCHHHHH.
"OH DEAR GOD NO!!!" mina shrieked in her head as the uncle began to fumble for the barf bag, "I'LL DO ANYTHING PLEASE DON'T LET WHAT I THINK IS GOING TO HAPPEN HAPPEENNN NOOOO-"
"KAACHHHHH!!! PATOOOOIIIEEEEEEE" went the fat uncle.
"AAIIEEE" mina screamed in her head, plastering herself against the window, a horrified expression on her face that remained there until the landing.

on dancing
"i can't do that step! i go to oxford!"

skies
at a quarter to seven, karachi skies are mango-coloured, with a smudge of dark guava at the bottom. even a city that vibrates with such energy is slow to wake, and the roads are empty. a man washes his car at six a.m, i watch him from the apartment window.

having the flu
every beggar, khusra and mazdoor volunteer at the sunday bazaar zeroes in on me, for some reason. in retaliation- because i don't shout at them, which is effective but something i can't muster- i cough like i've been for two days, but make it sound dangerously consumptive; i add a few wheezes for good effect and then croak 'maaf kardein'. they all beat a hasty retreat, the khusra saying 'haw, dil torr diya mera pyarichandsibeti nein'.

2006-12-08T10:13:00.000+05:00

these are the phonecalls i love the best: familiar numbers, familiar voices yelling "malik sahaaaabbb" down the line, texting in deliberately deadpan messages right off the plane...the universe is aright again :)

2006-12-05T12:41:00.000+05:00

so today i went to cal class. calculus. me. okay. first i had an argument with the guard over parking angelita- i wanted to park it on the pakka but he insisted i was blocking the rasta which was eminently not true (i am not obnoxious enough to do driving bastardies like that) so end main i had to park in the kaccha, muttering ominous repercussions if angelita busted a tyre. choti malik siding with the guard did not make the sit. easier (am reading lots of wooster, forgive me). so i grumped off to class where there were freshies. who stare. people don't stare at you at lums- okay mbas do but they're just sad anyway- unless you look super hot or something, and superhot i was not. disbelieving and miserable yes, but not superhot at that mo. so the ugly beanie-wearing (the kind that poofs up at the top as if it housed a gerbil beneath) freshie boys stared and a little friend of mine introduced me to her freshie friend thus: "this is mina. she's a super-senior." which naturally caused visions of a jaahil wanton flunker methusaleh to dance about in my head with sarhey huey sugarplums and TI calculators and the suchlike. so i sat in class with a teacher that has a cowboy accent and conjured up images of him wearing a soft-brimmed stetson and those leather thingums and riding around a ranch to the soundtrack of 'home on the range' while scribbling things like "the product of the limits is also the limit of the product" down in important bullet points. but i did understand why if limit coming from the left doesn't equal limit from the right then "the equation blows up". touch wood.

2006-11-28T09:16:00.000+05:00

You who never arrived
in my arms, Beloved, who were lost
from the start,
I don't even know what songs
would please you. I have given up trying
to recognize you in the surging wave of the next
moment. All the immense
images in me—the far-off, deeply-felt landscape,
cities, towers, and bridges, and un-
suspected turns in the path,
and those powerful lands that were once
pulsing with the life of the gods—
all rise within me to mean
you, who forever elude me.

You, Beloved, who are all
the gardens I have ever gazed at,
longing. An open window
in a country house—, and you almost
stepped out, pensive, to meet me. Streets that I chanced upon,—
you had just walked down them and vanished.
And sometimes, in a shop, the mirrors
were still dizzy with your presence and, startled, gave back
my too-sudden image. Who knows? Perhaps the same
bird echoed through both of us
yesterday, separate, in the evening . . .

You Who Never Arrived
Ranier Maria Rilke

trans. by Stephen Mitchell

[italics mine, as always.]

2006-11-13T13:01:00.000+05:00

I am rather enormously pleased to present Finding Spring by me and Red by Huma. Feel free to read and debate and comment on the site!

[and of course, a thank you to the superstars who already have :)]

2006-11-07T15:00:00.000+05:00

We do not need your money.

We need you to light a candle of support

<http://www.lightamillioncandles.com>.

We're aiming to light at least One Million Candles by December 31, 2006.

Help Eradicate Internet Child Pornography.

2006-11-06T10:25:00.000+05:00

so many things, so little time.

the International Museum of Women has published Humay and my pieces, yay! will put up a link and a pretty banner for y'all to read and comment on.

we have moved. which means that all our stuff is sitting in 24-H whilst we sit in 39, Saigol Estate, and half of what belongs solely to me is currently packed with great skill in every available space inside my car. my books are in the backseat and insist on slipping and sliding with dangerous sounding but deceptive crunchy sounds whenever i turn or brake, much to my persistent frustration (which only makes me scowl at the moron who made me brake and yell "why are you killing my boooookksss jackaasssssss" impotently through the windscreen). there are copies on the front seat, wind chimes in the dash, posters and WAF stuff somewhere in between and a red lamp on the floor in front of the passenger seat. the boot is full of art, shoes, bags, racquets and a guitar. i should just drive to europe, i got all i need with me- even my toothbrush and contacts :P the last time the house was this emtpy was when we moved in and sana and i would roller-skate (jee that long ago, rollerblades nahien hoti thein) around the drawing and dining room as fast as we could. am trying not to indulge in the sentimental and think about how to unpack angelita as soon as i can, and how i'm going to have to finally zabardasti sort out 4 years worth of LUMS reading packages and notes.

H's baby is an adorable mass of cooing, giggly baby smooth as satin and powder. making sure i was smoke-free, germ-free and moving-mitti-free today i finally cuddled him for a bit in the morning. while i love anything that is a baby (except for gross thingses babies which may or may not include humans), this variety of baby, solid little kashmiri ones, are particularly eatable. s khala's ayeza is in the same mold- solid, cuddly baby that sits contentedly babbling on hip/bouncing in arms and does not flop neck about in limp-fish manner. ugh, bauhat zyada eatable :))

2006-11-02T12:06:00.000+05:00

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains

My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,

Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains

One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:

’Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,

But being too happy in thine happiness,—

That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,

In some melodious plot

Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,

Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been

Cool’d a long age in the deep-delved earth,

Tasting of Flora and the country green,

Dance, and Provencal song, and sunburnt mirth!

O for a beaker full of the warm South,

Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,

With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,

And purple-stained mouth;

That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,

And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget

What thou among the leaves hast never known,

The weariness, the fever, and the fret

Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;

Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,

Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;

Where but to think is to be full of sorrow

And leaden-eyed despairs,

Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,

Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,

Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,

But on the viewless wings of Poesy,

Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:

Already with thee! tender is the night,

And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,

Cluster’d around by all her starry Fays;

But here there is no light,

Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown

Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,

Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,

But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet

Wherewith the seasonable month endows

The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;

White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;

Fast fading violets cover’d up in leaves;

And mid-May’s eldest child,

The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,

The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time

I have been half in love with easeful Death,

Call’d him soft names in many a mused rhyme,

To take into the air my quiet breath;

Now more than ever seems it rich to die,

To cease upon the midnight with no pain,

While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad

In such an ecstasy!

Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—

To thy high requiem become a sod.

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!

No hungry generations tread thee down;

The voice I hear this passing night was heard

In ancient days by emperor and clown:

Perhaps the self-same song that found a path

Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,

She stood in tears amid the alien corn;

The same that oft-times hath

Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam

Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell

To toil me back from thee to my sole self!

Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well

As she is fam’d to do, deceiving elf.

Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades

Past the near meadows, over the still stream,

Up the hill-side; and now ’tis buried deep

In the next valley-glades:

Was it a vision, or a waking dream?

Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?

Ode to a Nightingale

John Keats

2006-10-31T15:47:00.000+05:00

after a most successful kidnapping orchestrated by E of Bella the Blue Truck we roared down the shady klashnikov-and-cocaine-smuggling alley where Mullick's daftar is to look at her new-paint and bookshelves wala daftar. where we met Ejaz who is always such a delight to talk to, and we started to talk books (as all people with more books than hair on their head are wont to end up doing sooner or later) and he told us about what i call the Theory of Book Borrowing, or the Physics of Chori. when someone comes to see you, say, at home, and they walk into a room that is full of books ("a room without books is like a body without a soul", cicero) they are struck with a wave of insecurity (he used a much better urdu word that i can't remember right now, alas): oh no!! this person's read all those books and i haven't!! MY LIFE AMOUNTS TO SUDDENLY A SQUASHED PINEAPPLE AND CREAM SHEZAN WALA CAKE! (okay this is my own dramaai tashkeel but it's my narration so there) and thus they immediately yank out books they think will validate them once more and ask to borrow them (of course, any self-respecting book-lover will promptly refuse because books that have your name on them are not meant to stray anywhere farther than downstairs unless person is on Sacred Exit Control List and even then with careful discretion). thus Books are Intimidating Markers of Something Desirable. hahahhahaha we were all most amused- Ejaz says he makes the insecurity worse by saying things like "what? you haven't read X? oh my god! you've missed out on so much!" hehehe. such evil glee :D

2006-10-29T17:32:00.000+05:00

yesterday i found myself at what was supposed to be a nikah but was actually a dholki post-nikah but was actually a quasi-mehndi with tamboo, shiny yellow nylon chaadars and matching squashy gao takiye and a horrid DJ that eventually warmed up and dances to boot. missed having a handy boy around to borrow shawl off because i wore chiffon (season is going), so i eventually threw ladylike decorum to the nippy wind and tucked my cold feet under my legs. very toasty. anyhow, what happened was that as the DJ started to play all the really good indian shaadi songs it turned into a little friend-folder, which was lovely and nostalgic. m for that punjabi song. mo for another. z for yet another; one boy reminding me of ab, the way he was dancing around; balle balle was a's nikah all over again...i may have been cold (not hungry thanks to my awesome raider phuppo H) but i was nostalgic, and bouncing in my seat to the beat...not an altogether bad situation :)

2006-10-23T21:42:00.000+05:00

eid mubarik to everyone whenever they get to have it! despite doing impromptu moon dances in the lawn after iftari and shouting "mooooon! mooooooooon! come out moon!" encouragingly at the sky AND the strobe light some crazy neighbour kept arcing back and forth across the sky, eid is on wednesday here. siiiigh. will have to postpone day-long wanton sugar ingestion for parson. tomayto, tomahto i guess, in the end- have a wonderful eid, whenever it is! :)

2006-10-20T10:01:00.000+05:00

although i meant to self-absorbedly happily babble about how the allende is a first edition and how that discovery sparked a thorough search of all other books to find two more first editions [i must be getting on with Goals of Life, one of them was to be rich so i could have many first editions and lo and behold, i'm mildly affluent and have three first editions sitting on various surfaces in my room..you don't have to be rich to have first editions haha] but i'm distracted by this hijab issue that keeps cropping up these days. first it's jack straw. then it rushdie agreeing with jack straw. then kal it was pervez hoodbhoy calling the girls who wore a hijab/burqa in his class 'abnormal'. i notice that these are all men calling the veil oppressive. hoodbhoy and straw are both uncomfortable with completely veiled women because they can't gauge their reactions or know their facial expressions whilst interacting with them- and thus they are abnormal. straw also makes the veil an impediment to national integration. what i'm wondering is that if one is so concerned about community integration, shouldn't you be acknowledging that the composition of your country is a diverse one and so be working towards accepting difference instead of turning it into a point of conflict? jack straw doesn't give a hoot about "improving integration", he wants to effect an internal mini-colonization: if you want to live here, you better look, speak and act like us. so one could be a terrorist, but as long as one flipped their hair about nobody would notice? [am also recalling henry VIII and the whole separatist movement...sure, it was so that he could get his jollies legally but it was also about having the right to make your own choices about your religion. we have agnostics now but i guess being a king you couldn't not believe in some kind of God]

then there's hoodbhoy, whom i do respect, but whose vehemence mystifies me. are you calling the doctoral candidate in your class a moron because of her personal choices? are you automatically dismissing someone who is obviously not as oppressed as you think if she's sitting in your class with a bunch of boys, studying quantum physics? i don't understand- it sounds like he's judging a book by its cover. there isn't a woman alive who doesn't want to look pretty, so if she's choosing to cover herself there's a pretty good reason- and one that she's okay with. i'm sure there are lots of people who may be forced to wear a veil, but if one is doing it voluntarily, who are you to judge them as being oppressed because of your personal phobias? it's like saying that people who have strange piercings creep me out, and so if your face looks like metallic swiss cheese you're a self-abusing, destructive freak and a threat to society. which is balderdash, of course. the personal decisions i make have nothing to do with you, and as long as the swiss cheeser is not running after people with a piercing gun or a hot needle, what's it to you? isn't that what a democracy is supposed to be, a place where one has the freedom to do whatever the hell they want as long as it doesn't step on someone else's toes? we're down to fundamental ethics here, and very basic concepts of myfreedomendswhereyournosebegins, and also falling into the stereotype trap.

islam's increasing publicity [i.e public nature] is also something that continues to distract me. religion is a private business- nobody's wagging fingers at jews for wearing yarmulkes or going cross-eyed at christians for fasting at lent, so why is everyone after the muslims? one obvious reason is terrorism, that has sparked muslimphobia like nobody's business [the one man's terrorist etc debate is another issue]. methinks it's also got to do with putting religion into government, because that hoists it into the public sphere. which is not to say that there have never been religious governments before, but because of the terrorism all things muslim have been thrown into sharp relief. i'm not willing to believe that clothing is truly the issue. politics are. i honestly believe that a secular state is the only real way to run a government, because my religion and your religion invariably pokes each other in the eye at some point or another, and squabbling over witnesses and clothing and divorce is an utterly idiotic way to run a country. one needs to be concerned with health and literacy and libraries and sanitation and foreign debts more than how to punish fornicators. people will fornicate whether you like it or not, so it's probably in your better interest to make sure children aren't dying of diahorrea or there are no slaves labouring at brick kilns instead. concern for women is directed at them only when it comes to sex: what you look like, what you wear and what you do- your temptation factor, in other words. women who wear burqas are oppressed. women who don't are whores. women who fornicate are adultresses and women who do aren't supposed to like it [if they do then we loop back to the whore idea]. is nanga nachoing a symbol of my freedom? no, not really, just as my wearing a hijab is not the symbol of my oppression. what they are symbolising are stereotypes, and it's a shame that otherwise intelligent men and women constantly succumb to their lure.

hoodbhoy said that women who wear a scarf/niqaab are 'hiding' themselves. life is a series of masks, and wearing a niqaab is the least of them. we can be barefaced and just as inscrutable- e are. i don't know if i would ever have the gumption to get over wanting to be pretty and cover my head, let alone my face, but i do know that if someone chose to do it, props to them. they've got guts. and methinks we all need to learn how to be more tolerant of the choices people make- that's what 'integration' means: living with each other despite one's differences. being a german does not make you a nazi the same way being a muslim does not make you a terrorist. besides, hitler's the one who wanted a homogenous population.

2006-10-19T10:00:00.000+05:00

Gorpy Has Several Things To Shriek About

1. AAAAH!! the Mean Girls've all landed themselves Fulbrights! as have Xebbie and Bilalty and Sammy and yeaaayy :D [happy shriek]

2. AAAAH!!!!I HAVE A SIGNED ISABEL ALLENDE BOOOOOOOK *rushes hither and tither madly waving her arms around* and it was such a random chance, i'm amazed, and aaaaahh [more on this later] [incredulous, avaricious shriek]

3. we're moving soon!! aaaa [sad-ish shriek].

4. someone stole one of the D's at the centre of one of my hubcaps!! and i was parked in front of a masjid! rrarrr [angry shriek]

5. i'm back to square one and a half [silent shriek]

okay, buss :)

2006-10-18T13:35:00.000+05:00

yay i love sammykins :D i tag reenie, bagheera, cheesoo and azka [H and Mo you've already been by sam, don't sulk ;)]

Today

height: 5'6" when i bother to stand up straight :P
color: pale, i suppose- roza hai.
piercing: four...i ponder a nose or a belly off and on but haven't gotten either yet
tattoos: none :(

Right Now

Time: 1:30 in the afternoon
Mood: neutral
taste: none in particular. a little thirsty.
the weather: gorgeous :))
bad habit: interrupting people when they're talking
current crush: none. sniffles.
biggest regret: hhmm i don't think i have one that qualifies as a life's biggest.
Perfume(s): I'm wearing Hugo Woman, which I love :)
Thing I want to do: don't get me started...lol

Favourite

TV show: am watching Desperate Housewives these days.
book: i can't pick favourites...but i love love the Alice books.
non alcoholic drink: apple juice
milk drink: really thanda mango shakes :D
brand: not much of a brand bunny although nine west shoes are yummyyyy and nothing but prestige for cooky stuff :D
color: red!
emblem: can't think of one.
perfume: i wear hugo woman and closer by gap...like ralph and romance too.
designer: i really like karma's aesthetic, but i don't wear it *lol*
Chocolate: the day lindt starts making a mint crisp in its 70% dark i will stop eating all other forms of sugar

Have I Ever

broken the law: i'm quite sure i have
misused credit card: nope
skipped school: yesss hehe
fell asleep in the shower/bath: almost
had children: none that i know of
been in love: yes
been hurt: yes

Random

have a job: two, babiss! and the third temp starts soon.
My CD player has what in it right now: weeeelll not my CD player, but am listening to Indian film oldies these days...deewana hua badal la la la
if I were a crayon, the color? wild strawberry :))
what makes me happy? books, good food, good writing, proper friends, surprises and spontaneous displays of affection :)

When/What Was the Last

I got a real letter: some months ago
got an email: fifteen minutes ago
thing I purchased: a lot of books, and a box of lindt extreme orange dark thins.
TV program I watched: i haven't watched telly for two days yay!
movie I saw in the theaters: Pirates of The Caribbean - Dead Man's Chest. much fun.
hugged: how cheap, YESTERDAY!! haw hai
song heard: the dumb afghan rave song hahaha
place I was [besides home]: LGS, in class
phone call: doing jigs and shrieks with BT over his Fulbright yesterday
was depressed: the weekend, methinks, but only a little

What Comes to Mind When I Hear

car: angelita, bellissima!
murder: she wrote, and also that horrible Indian film
cape: the black and white one amma used to wear eik zamaney main....t'was tres chic to nine year old me haha
cell: freecell, the card game.
fun: rocking out in ayesha's car with the gang to tubthumping, on our way to lunch...classic fun moment :))
shoe: i still need really high sexy black heels...
crush: orange juice :S
music: little music notes
love: is a good thing :)
chalk: the strangely unnerving smooth texture of chalk dust on one's fingers

2006-10-15T14:19:00.000+05:00

so guess what i woke up to today: a dull repetitive thud. i presumed it was some random activity going on in the hospital, that mass of clangs and bangs and dieselly rumbles and things flying off its roof and into our lawn when it aandhis ferociously. it went on for a bit and i looked up from my carol shields and asked amma what was going on and her voice sails in from the lounge, cool as you please, saying "darakht kaat rahey hain." obviously i leapt out of bed like one electrified and ran out to the lounge khirkies and saw a MASS OF BRANCHES on the lawn! and ABBU standing there like some kind of seasoned woodcutter, overseeing the tree-killing!! so i took my horrified eyes and open mouth and ran downstairs and out of the door wailing a plaintive "what're you doooiiiiiinnnnnnggg?' at him. he explained that the branches over there- that i had just kal admired from my nose-pressed-to-the-thandi-glass vantage point in my parent's room during the aandhi, loving the way the bougeanvillea had climbed up the eucalyptus and was growing up onto the roof like a green undulant canopy- were breaking tiles off the roof, so had to be cut back. of course that was all martian to me because i've never seen any tile fly off the roof and smash onto the basketball hoop thankyouverymuch, so i made an impassioned statement about how tiles are eminently replaceable and how it takes years for a tree to grow and marched back inside to secretly cry a little for the poor tree and the horrible chopping sound.. what an awful way to start a day :( :P

2006-10-14T16:15:00.000+05:00

blogword of the week: red

is the colour your skin is when i dream of you,
a thousand glittering rubies torn
from the side of a mountain

of longing