hell revisited

he's one of those guys who always has a girl in his life. and he's so rich, i don't think he's ever been rejected. and she came along, and all she cares about is how much her best friend hates him, how disgusting his pot belly is, and how she'll never convert and how their kids will grow up confused. she says no, very late in the evening so drink and ego fuel his denial.
he's actually sweet and caring, along with all the bad stuff. and i genuinely believe he's a love addict, so it must be painful for him to constantly see her, be all hands on friendly with her, and have some subconcious level acknowledge that it'll stay platonic forever no matter how much he'll try. it doesn't help when the blonde girl grabs him, and propels him forward (think choochoo train style) smack dab flat bang into the dance floor door that should swing OUT but actually opens inwards. 48 bored as hell bitchy people bend their heads down, bring their hand to their mouth and bite on their lips to keep from cackling out loud as their host peels his face away from a glass door.

there are the two girl best friends from school that married to two boy best friends not from school. straight out of A levels. they both ignore the poor bastards who shuffle their feet in a corner where no one talks to them. its been what, 4 years? 6? the boredom that was there from the wedding night still goes strong against all statistical probability. one poor girl child, one unfortunate make out session with a bi sexual (from school) and a guy (from school) later, the glassy eyed stares haven't changed a bit.

the tinker, the tailor, the candlestick maker, rich man, poor man, beggar man thief. the jock, the whore, the bitch, the climber. the nerd, the banker, the doper, the loser. we all happily bounce between conversation, isolated ships hoping for an ice burg to relieve the monotony, some stupid enough to be able to dumb themselves down and think that this is fun.

the world is strange.

line of the day:
"you looked like you were having so much fun catching up with all your old friends."

i take it back, depression is not the epidemic of the 21st century. stupidity is.

F.R.I.E.N.D.S

woke up with this in my head (all paragraphed and everything).

it was a purported dinner on behalf of a birthday, but typically become a black tie catered for fifty event with a dance floor and an open bar. i sat there till some ridiculously late hour in the morning, completely stone cold sober (because i don't drink - or smoke - or smoke up), and was absolutely totally defenseless against the onslought of spending a night with people i had known for 16 years, who i didn't really know at all.

we all dress our outer selves hoping to disguise our inner ones, but no amount of perfume or glitter can hide the inner being that comes through like a pugnent smell. like BO we try very hard to hide with aqua di gio. a frilly insignificant scent to cover the excrement we feel we are.

i have known these people for most of my life, and i have absolutely nothing to say them. well nothing except for several prose pieces and even a poem (refer to source of name nakedfeet). there i was in a room full of glittering strangers, with too much time on my hands to think.

It was all fine till grade 6. Then stupid boys came into the picture and ruined everything. Ruined by mass raging hormone syndrome which ensured that boys would ruin friendships by having crushes on girls, be rejected, and then be horribly bitter (and childish) about it.
Then it became cool to get over the crushes and manage to have platonic friendships with opposite sex. Except no guy wanted to be friends with me because i'd either managed to piss them off by rejecting them, or they were pissed off on behalf of their friend who i had rejected. i spent THREE years, grade 7, grade 8 and grade 9, with my primarily (ok - solely) girl gang, and it was fun. great fun. but we all had our issues. two of them would have slit my throat to have gotten ASA to talk to them. While i chose to tell him he was a moron etc etc every time he was managing some lame pick up line my way, they would giggle and bat their eyelashes at him, and throw their valentines at him in the deep hope he would toss a crumb their way. i ditched them soon enough and got back "together" with my buddies from pre class 6. So then i spent the next three years hanging out with 3 of my best friends, and their 3 guy friends, NONE of which spoke a direct sentence to me for three years. can i say this again? the guys didn't speak a direct sentence to me for THREE years. and i actually blamed myself because there was this whole nasty scene about thirty odd people suddenly surrounding me and shoving him into the circle and he was forced to ask me to dance (it was some stupid sind club gala type thing). and i was horribly conscious because i was wearing borrowed shoes with a GIANT (or so i thought) heel, and i wasn't wearing makeup like the other girls, and i didn't really know HOW to dance, so i said a very public no. It was the stuff junior high nighmares are made off. i think i scarred him for life, because he *still* can't get a straight sentence out to anything female.
anyway.
Then after the three years there was minor fued about something or the other, and girls went their seperate ways, and all was fine again. we would get invited pretty much everything because some boy or the other would at that time convieniently have a crush on me/one of my friends and we would hence be top of the invite list. Except for that mortifying halloween 'bash' right before which one of us had turned some johnny come lately down (why did they bother after all those years? really!?) and then we got black balled. mortifying.
Then there was a fued within the group. three of us went one way, one of us willingly went the other. needless to say mass sympathies were with her for some reason. she thought we weren't cool enough to hang out with, and by gosh she'd had enough of not knowing whether she'd be invited to the next shebang or not. we watched as she pathetically humbled herself into a gang who's prime source of entertainment seemed to be torturing her/making fun of her to no end, and worse, we watched her take it and still run after them showering them with everything she could throw. we might have been a clic, but at least we weren't bitchy (to each other at any rate). loyalty supreme. us against them. blah.
then we thankfully went our ways, into the friendless college and post college years. much has changed, but really, too much hasn't.

so this little thing last night was tantamount to a reunion. i was invited because the birthday boy had a massive crush on my best friend. and she was in a terrible position because she turned him down, and his drunken mind really had not accepted that. for the last three weeks. but anyway. no one really wants to talk to me, except for the guy who pirouetted me to death at the yatch club ball last week, or the other guys who really can't have a conversation with any any other girl on account of them being 24 years of stupid. schooling, college, marriage, work, nothing seems to help the epidemic of stupidity.
but i digress. so against all will some boy or the other would drift my way and we'd greatfully share a moment to DO something (albiet insignificant) like engage in small talk because the alternative was to be suffocated with boredom. none of the girls bothered to talk to me, and my ex best friend was there pointedly ignoring me surrounded by her gang of alley cats who still were making fun of something she did at some coffee thing they all did yesterday. their main fodder for conversation was this poor chick not from school (and hence beyond reprehension) who was an unfortunate shade of blonde, and was cringingly drunk and dancing with some lecherous bastard taking full advantage of the fact. no one made a move to stop her. neither did i for that matter, didn't think she knew she needed saving. but they sat and made fun of her every move. i was trapped nauseated on the chair in the middle of them, none of them really talking directly to me, eating the damn chips and dip like my life depended on it because i don't drink i don't smoke and i don't smoke up. my best friend was somewhere behind me battling off the birthday boy.
once again i wake up, like on days after countless other occassions, and i think, never again.
but i know there's something happening next week, and there i'll be again.

wrath and pride... my twin sins :)
then sloth and gluttony... don't remember what the others are...

well mr. psychiatrist... my father is the most intelligent and idealistic man i know (i don't know how he balances it).. my mother is the most scarily perceptive person i know.. the most intuitive.. and the nicest...
and the older i get the more i respect them.. and the more i find that people like them are rarer than ever

does that explain why i have issues with everyone i meet? does that explain my impossibly high standards? does explaining them really explain me?

yeah i didn't think so.

I never let it get out of hand, not even when I was drunk for dutch courage. Not even then. It was dark (he liked the lights out), and he licked my scar. All the way from top to bottom. And then my ear. It was fun.
I let him do that because he was cute, I was bored, it was about time. Single is a black label plastered to our sad, unhappy, angst ridden foreheads.
I spent the stupid un-sensible years of life being intelligent and sensible, and just as I relaxed my guard into the adulthood I relapse and get blindsided and turn into one peer pressured idiot cliché.
All because of that undesearving bastard.

I’m going to regret writing this in the morning. Oh well. Thats what happens when you have insomnia for so long i guess.

life is weird

we were sitting in the plane, and i was feeling gross because i ate cold pizza for breakfast, then found a hair in my food at Freddie's, then snacked on disgusting gogo club sandwiches. there was a bit of turbulence, and i was seated right next to the emergency exit and had to memorize the instructions in case we crashed and i had to rip off the emergency door (seriously! thats what the air hostess told me... serves me right for travelling with these new airlines.. what if i did that right then in some suicidal frenzy.. how would they stop me?). plus i was annoyed because i FINALLY for the first time EVER had a hot guy was sitting next to me (like.. one of those things you always want to happen but it never does) but my sister in a fit of untimely affection had done some complicated seat swap so i had to get up and go sit next to her (dammit). then she had nothing to read, so she started looking over my shoulder to read my cosmo article on the different types of orgasms that there are, which was too weird so i had to flip to a more kosher page.
so there i was pissed off and nauseous, not able to read what i wanted to read, when she suddenly shot up straight, and looked funny. Like you would if you were passing gass or something. a really introspective kind of expression, like she was looking inward. so obviously her madly-in-love-with-her husband jumps up with some kind of psychic radar and leans over, and then they kind of giggle and whisper together in some totally revolting moment. and i'm trying not to notice but hello we're in a plane so go get a room or something, but then she looks over, grabs my hand, and puts it on her little belly.

and i feel a little kick.

i was three and a half, and my mother asked me if i wanted to feel my little brother kicking. i was holding my milk bottle (hmM three seems kind of old to have a bottle.. but anyway) and i nodded, and reached up so i could touch her belly. her hand dwarfed mine as she held it against one spot, and sure enough, my little brother was playing soccer in there.

i obviously didn't go near my other sister in her i'm-a-psycho-bitch-and-i-will-kill-you pregnancy, so i guess this kind of came at me from no where.

men have it so easy. they can pee standing up (esp useful during camping) and don't have to have to worry about some kind of virtual death sentence to have babies. i don't think i can ever have children. i won't ever look serene and bautiful or have that glow. i'd probably be throwing up all the time. plus 9 months is a bloody long time, and 9 pounds is a REALLY huge size to come out of such a tiny place. but then again i never thought i'd have the surgery, and here i am with titanium rods in my spine. life is weird like that sometimes.

happiness is a nando's chocolate cake

The sedative has made the world pleasantly numb, the strep throat a distant burn, the coughing finally soothed. I close my eyes, and the world spins happily, lazily, like it should. I’ll spiral to pleasant oblivion soon, like i should.
I sit here contentedly, the deadline at 9:00 am tomorrow a lazy excel file too far away to care.
A distant part of me wonders why our souls scratch and claw our way up in every day life. Why everything should be so frantic, so stressful, so full of disquiet and fraught with itchy emotion. Why do I reach so far so high so fast? My body lies broken by the way side, long discarded because it couldn’t keep up. Yet I continue on, running the race, sinew muscle worn down to bone, eyes drooping heavy, key board blurring, writing, writing, writing. Till my being shrinks as consciousness wanes, till my vision tunnels, till my mind can only hang onto one last shred of thought, and still, still that one question of why remains, the one question that seems to haunt me to the furthest recesses of my being, to the frontiers and backwaters of what defines me.

but stiff upper lip jeeves, chop chop, tally ho lad, etc etc.

how can it have been a year? i still refer to her in present tense.

we've only been in this city for two waking hours and three of us have
fallen sick. I can feel my strep throat burn little holes in my
tonsils, and every time i close my eyes a wave of black dizziness
threatens to overwhelm.

i have a deadline on monday. i have stuff to do. lots of it. and so
many things to read. my mind feels like wool filled jelly, expanded to encapsulate so many horizons its difficult to concentrate on excel
files.

we landed and there was a little turbulence. A beautiful arc of fork
lightening connecting to the ground for one brilliant second to
welcome us as we stepped into the waiting car.

my little brother's "bachlor pad" is suddenly inundated with family.
i'm sharing his room, haha. he screams like a little girl every time
he finds some "revolting feminine looking thing" in his personal
space. haha.

my father and sister argue behind me somewhere, over which supara to read. the maulvi's and relatives drone together in monotonous voices in the next room.

tensions are high. we're all trying to avoid the emotional deluge. my father sits a little apart, battling hard, battling silently, and battling alone. like the rest of us. sitting like zombies in a very crowded house full of memories.

but stiff upper lip jeeves, chop chop, tally ho lad, etc etc.

All ye still young enough to believe, still young enough to have that ever terrible emotion of hope, still young enough to look forward to an undefined future, to be ever aware of the eternal possibility of fulfilling the what if’s your lives: read on.

Reality is crushing. It’s a brutal tidal wave that drowns out individuality, it’s a land slide that smothers spontaneity, it’s the gale force wind that smashes your being into fragments.

Graduating is like being hurled into a black abyss. Your life flashes before you, almost tangible, echo’s still present in your bedroom, taunting. The first teenage phase of bouncing off the boundaries not your own, of hatred, passion and rebellion. Then the college phase, growing into your skin, silently screaming, whispering aloud, shouting across a quad and not caring how odd your voice sounds. Closing your eyes and discovering the voice that whispers inside, the voice that defines a ‘you’, a you finally understood. Of screaming out loud your inner being, throwing it out to peers with a bravery you never thought you possessed, being accepted, even successful.
Approaching the end with the last arrogant vestige of youth, facing your question mark of a future and tackling your resume job interview prep like you would write your 7000 word essay which is now a three hour process because you have the formula down pat.

Then realize that corporate life and academia are worlds apart. You struggle, naïve, idealistic, enthusiastic, trying to apply your essay writing formulas and your all nighter skills to getting volume of work done so you can get graded. Then settle in, understand the slow motion lifestyle that everyone works in, understand why work stops at work and should never be bought home, realize that this is not something that will end in a semester or a quarter, this is it, this is going to be happening for as long as the path stretches before you. You understand this is not a 50 meter sprint, it’s a long distance marathon instead, and all your skills, all your motivation, all your formula’s are for the wrong race. You plough on, slowly steadily, running, running, running.
You’re tired, crushed under the monotony and the repetition, the politics and the blue smoke exhumed by carcinogenic lungs.
You look up one day, and realize that the collar that chafed is unnoticeable. That the invisible shackles you forgot about are still binding you to your ankle chains.
You try to rebel, but its too late. You’re all alone, you’ve been assimilated into a faceless entity that is an adult, your life has ended and society has taken over.

And you’re too tired to care.

All you can do is write your mediocre blog, in memory of the what ifs you could have had, of the what ifs you could have been.

(this is a sequel to the untitled story written on Saturday, Febuary 19, 2005)

She comes in, and I immeditely know she’s different from the string of begums I’ve seen who are looking for revenge on cheating husbands. The Light is blinding in her, I could probably have seen it without the nine kajal rings that circle my eyes.

My Siqats scream in terror and hide under every available surface to escape from her aura. The Afrit* trapped in the Numaish-e-Sitara on the ceiling spreads its wings and strains past the blank painted walls of the pentagram that contain it.

She doesn’t even realize the chaos she’s created in the fifth dimension. Ripples of it echo into our world, creating goosebumps on her arms. The Ceflox on her shoulders flaps its wings frantically, keeping the hissing demons at bay. She sits serenely, unpreturbed at the table, waiting for her palm reading, ignorant.

I decide to part the curtain and enter, before my Afrit breaks the strands that bind it to the world. It took me seven years to get it there, and this skinny reed of an untrained girl manages to come in and almost undo all my work. I’ve never seen anyone with such a powerful aura before, and I’m a little apprehensive. I wear the amulet with the six runes of N’atiahs for protection from the Ceflox just in case. I must find out why the Powers have made our paths cross. I will make her regret upsetting my little pets.

“You’ll regret it beta” I tell the girl, but I intend it for the Ceflox. The girl is startled, the words register and echo through to the Ceflox. It quivers and contains itself. It knows who’s in power here.

I light my candle quickly, so the smell can sooth the Afrit and my other little pets. I trace the patterns of N’amahs in the air, and the walls between the dimensions blur. To my surprise, the girl reacts to the Changing. She starts as if she sees the fifth dimention. She peers confusedly at the walls, and the Siqats freeze in terror as her gaze passes over them. Who is this girl? She bears no marks, no runes, nothing that explains her powers. I must do something immediately.

I sit next to her, and the Afrit speaks up suddenly. “She is ignorant! Bind her!”, it screams. The Siqats come running. I hold her palm, and in the other dimension, the Ceflox screams in pain. But it is helpless, bound by the stupid rules of the Light, confined to the dimensions and too brainless to know it should break them. One of my Siqats plucks a hair from her head, another fills the Bowl of Whispers with rat blood. She sits ignorantly staring at me, and I almost laugh in relief. To think I was worried! I hold her palm, and offer it to my favorite pet. Delighted, it takes a bite, its first snack in ninety years.
The girl screams, and the Ceflox rises off her shoulders, something I haven’t seen in even the greatest of wizards in the last ninty nine years. The Siqats all squeal and run, but the Ceflox manages to catch the one with the bloody teeth. It touches it with one silver wing, and my little pet evaporates in a flash of smoke. The ritual is still incomplete!
The Ceflox stands guard at the door and faces the Afrit, each only a hairsbreath apart. I have to act quickly. I drink her blood, sealing her compliance and feel the amulet start to hum. The Ceflox collapses to the floor. The threads binding the Afrit are secure, at least for now. I take the rat blood, hold it to her lips. She screams, and calls the Guardian to save her. But rules are rules, and she is bound by the oath of her blood. She must do as I say. “Drink it”. Her mouth opens, and the red splashes into the mouth of the Ceflox. It screams again.

As always after the advent of rat blood, her soul opens, Ceflox and girl unite, and the walls of the seventh dimension open. I drink from the power, and laugh at what fools mortals be. I taste eternity, see beyond the veil of time. I see N’ataihs himself. I see the girl and her future, I see her downfall. I see her path of white turn to black, and I see how I can point her to it. “You’ll find him soon” I say. N’ataihs laughs. The walls close, the candle gutters. I recline back to my world, sated.

The Afrit laughs, triumphant. The Ceflox, its eyes bleeding, its aura dulled to a pasty transluscent shimmer, crawls on broken wings to the door. The girls gets up, slowly walks out.

I see her friends surround her. Stupid insignificant children, playing with worlds they have no knowedge of. I can still hear N’atiahs laughing across the dimensions.

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

*"Afrit" is a term borrowed heavily from "Amulet of Samarkand"

She was due any minute, and she was cranky as hell.
We’d gone for dessert because she was craving chocolate cake, and we fought on the way back. She scratched my arm till it bled, and I regressed to being 12 and hating her and crying screaming vented to my other sister on the phone. Bitch.

She went into labor a day later, and I knew without anyone telling me because I woke up to sounds outside my door, and then later my mother running in and out of my room to get something from the bathroom.

I had a dream that it was a girl, not a boy as the ultrasounds had shown. I remember we were all in her inlaws type house somewhere, together, looking at the new baby, and I was asking her how it turned out to be a girl and not a boy. “IA’s stupid wussy gene’s you know. So typical” she said, as bitchy, irritable and derogatory as ever. The baby, it was a little cherub with wings and wise eyes a thousand years old. She looks at me, and I feel a spark of recognition. I remember hugging her, feeling her fat cheek on my own and closing my eyes because of the overwhelmed love. They tell me to take her for a walk outside. I’m barefoot, the driveway is drenched in sunlight, and its so bright I can’t see. Ama is there. I think, but she’s dead, and a small part of me realizes its all a dream. Ama – my daadi – is there to see the new born. I give the baby to her, and they walk into the light. They walk to the gate, and then Ama turns around, comes back, and gives her to me. I’m in the shadow of the porch, I don’t want to go barefoot into the sunbaked concrete. We stand there for a second, three generations, three snapshots in time. One unborn, one living, one dead. The light, its so bright when I close my eyes I can feel the baby breathe, I can see my grandmother’s sight from beyond the veil, can feel my heart churn out blood to my living arteries. I hear my mother calling for us, so I turn around and then go back to the dark and close the door behind me.

I wake up to the 5 a.m. phone call “it’s a boy!”. My father, I can’t recognize his voice because its got an alien ring of excitement, ecstacy, and total awed thrill of a first time grandparent.

I go to the hospital an hour later, and I fall in love. My very own brand new nephew, a miracle in the flesh. I look at his little furry head, and his adorable hands and feet, and I vow to fight dragons for this child, to slay playground bullies, to clean his poop and walk him at 2 a.m. Surrendering to total unconditional love, to light, to all that is good and beautiful in the world, I hold him for the first time, and press his swollen cheek to mine, and feel an echo of familiarity, of eternity.

remember?

(i have 10 minutes before my self appointed break is over - i *hate* studying, i loathe it, i thought i had put it all behind me two years ago. figures, fate is bound to bite the ass that isn't looking. anyway)

i've forgotten what its like to be a child. for the longest time i had one foot in the adult world, but could also look back, easing into the black and white world of simplicity. i don't remember that anymore.
i can't:
- meet people and be confident they'll find me adorable
- play outside
- paint on walls and not care about what my mother would say
- wear skirts in broad day light
- eat the filthiest crap from the khoka walla's outside school and not worry about hep C
- get a 10 on 10 after i worked hard for a test
- get a star if i colored in my homework
- talk on the phone for 5 hours at a stretch
- hate my parents passionately and whole heartedly
- love my parents passionately and whole heartedly
- escape to my best friend's house when things got bad at home
- wake up whenever i felt like during vacations
- be giddy with excitement with something as silly as going to the park for a "field trip"
- love reading for the sake of reading, not do it to escape the world /procrastinate
- watch each and every single movie that got released no matter how bad it was
- drive my pink bike and let go of the handle bars
- be afraid of the dark
- believe i was friends with a jinn (a little weird but whatever)
- believe in the toothfairy/magic in general

(oops - times up... but i guess the list could go on and on if i let it.. oh well)

It was a series of impossible events, I got the car in the middle of the day when I wasn’t expecting it, my boss stepped out for an unexpected meeting during lunch so I could take off for half an hour, and on the way back the road that’s always blindingly empty was clogged with trucks and containers because Musharraf or S. Aziz was passing by exactly at that time. And my CD was stuck, so I was forced to listen to FM, which I never do usually. I heard the most hauntingly beautiful Sarah Mclachlan-like voice singing a cover of Hallelujah. Stuck there in a God forsaken traffic jam in the middle of Karachi heat with my boss tapping her foot waiting for my write-up, I forgot everything. Her voice is the closest thing to the transcendental experiences that Blake and the Metaphysical's talk about. I’m thrilled that Pakistan has such a person to boast off (its about time!) I wish Arooj Aftab the best of luck in whatever she plans to do, she deserves it. This story, in a weird way, was inspired by the song. The plot itself has no connection whatsoever to the song or the singer, so don’t look for any.

Soulmate

She sits in the dark, the solitary lamp throwing harsh shadows on her face, waiting, listening.

The room is huge, with a high ceiling, a wooden floor and echoes of library shelves in the shadows. She sits in a leather armchair in the center, with a gramophone by her side. She stares at nothing, just listening to one song. Again. And again. And yet again. Till the grooves are scratched and the needle blunt. And she continues listening, straining. Hoping.
She’s knows there’s something in the music, a sign, salvation. But no matter how many times she replays it, there is nothing but the same old guitar strains. But every time it ends, she picks up her skeletal, fleshless arm, replaces the needle to the groove. And with the start of each note, she listens with renewed hope, simply knowing that this one might be the right time, and the eons would be worth it.

She sits in the dark, the solitary lamp throwing harsh shadows on her face, waiting, listening.

spring cleaning

i'm supposed to be "studying" but decided to spring clean my blog. i'm exhausted and still not finished :/

you know you're in trouble when...

work rocks. never EVER thought i'd say that. can't stop grinning.

theres just something about frantic deadline filled days. squashing four days work into one, having that coffee on your desk but not having time to reach over and drink it, from remembering to do even the little things without compromising on quality, and just looking damn hot the whole day while you're at it.

:)

how far down we can bungee jump without breaking the cord? do we keep trying one more foot at a time? or do we just say fuck it all, lets just tie the whole length of rope and throw ourselves into the abyss?

there's always an excuse to lose oneself in depravity. theres always the daily monotony, there's always the shrieking screaming fights that shake our foundations and push us into the blackness.

we will all reach a pinnacle, the day we grow up, the day we realize that there'll always be temptation to fall, temptation to slide down the easy path, but what truely defines us will be the instances where we don't, the instances where we choose to crawl up on broken knees to the path less trodden, the path of princeples, the path of moral integrity.

history is a patient teacher.

i think i have a procrastination disease. its been a slow downward spiral starting from o levels to date, and a year ago i decided that this was it, i can't cure it i just have to adapt my life to it. this is easy to do in a corporate world environment where i'm pretty much 150 time more productive than most people anyway. in the last company i worked in, a couple of months before i gave in my regination and accepted this job i was so sick of the corporate bullshit and putting in 10 hour days and reaching near breakdown, i opted for the do-nothing-past-4:30 pm policy. any work i got, i did all the ground work immediately by 12 pm, then spent till 4 doing the extra jobs, phone calls, editing stuff. and it still worked as well, and i still reached my deadlines before anyone else. since when does pulling out an article from the internet take 3 days? corporate people annoy me.

what if?

i can't reread my blog. the one or two times that i've tried, i end up noticing all the spelling mistakes and awkward wording and the final product is so rehashed i just end up deleting the whole damn thing. so instead of going through the entire painful exercise, i just don't read anything i've written. for the most part anyway.

anyway. the topic of today ladies and gentlemen.

what if i quit my job tomorrow. what if i started my own business, my clothing line, my column, my own glossy magazine, my own art gallery. what if started taking my art classes, writing my book, taking salsa lessons and working out daily. what if i got healthier and happier and started socializing again, stopped being bored with the small talk and frustrated with the lack of anything to do. what if i took a vacation, starting from visiting M in new york, S in london, gucci in milan? what if i organized modelling shows, what if i did the event management i used to be so good at? what if i went for my masters in journalism, what if i went for a fashion design degree at FIT, or the art degree from Slade? what about my philosophy masters, my number theory masters, my pandering to every absolute whim and actually following through without all the mental turmoil?

would i be happy then? or would i just find out that with the more i do and the more i seek, the less i find? would i just be even more cynical and jaded, having filled out all the blanks in my life and realizing my life is still a blank?

analysis paralysis. too much thought leads to inaction. unfortunately for the intelligent, there are very few ways to silence the voices screaming in our heads all the time.

doogie howser

why doesn't pakistan have its own genius children to brag about? why aren't there news stories about 4 year olds who can multiply 6 digit math numbers in their head? as a nation are we stupid?

Q: if there was such an aformentioned prodigy, what would happen to them?

A: rich; they'd be sent abroad: poor; ignored, whelped and made to beg at the local street corner.

genius and practicality rarely mix. maybe we're just a giant country of untapped potential. maybe the aunty next door negotiating tailor rates actually has an IQ of 300. maybe the buswalla passing my car knows that one physics theory everyone has been searching for for centuries. maybe we go through our lives trying so hard to blend in, so hard to adapt to the rules, so hard to live up the labels slapped on our foreheads since birth that we forget to reach as high and as hard as we can, and in doing so actually achieve something orignal, something beyond medocrity. maybe one day we'll break through our internalized colonial shackles and actually stop running to easier lives abroad and choose to dig in the trenches that will make our country what it could actually become.

till that day, i guess i'll just keep numbing myself to reality as much as possible. i'll continue to do the minimum possible work and "get by" the job and life that i hate. i'll continue to sit by the phone and wait for miserable excrement that are men to make my life complete so i can procreate and eventually fulfill the destiny that was slapped on in small print in my birth contract.

but until that time, from the land of untapped doogie howsers, child protegies and stephan hawkins' this is Ms. Feet signing out.

let them eat cake

i'm bored, but not bored enough to be enthused by some "cocktail" party i have to go to tonight. not that pathetic yet. feel sorry for the person who actually came up with the idea, then implemented it, and for all the idiots who'll probably think its the coolest thing since sliced cheese.

as a social demographic we leave much to be desired.

shit.

why did i read that scrap. why did i go to the profile. why do i feel so gypped. why do i feel jealous? its been forever. why did i just have to remember everything. why why why WHY WHY.
MTHRFUCKERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

its not like a healthy person trapped in a body that doesn't work. thats how old age impacts, not sickness, sugery and recovery.

when you suddenly get hurtled into post operative care, you're drugged. not the flimsy joint by the bonfire kind of drugs, the real heavy duty ones with the self righteousness of pain relief and medical care behind them. you're dreaming constantly, the mind over active as every other sense numbs and turns inwards.

and you mostly have nightmares. waking ones. the ones where you stare at the orange duvet cover, hoping praying staring that you won't get sucked down, but you feel yourself suddenly turning somersaults and silently screaming in terror because you're still awake, you know it can't happen, but it is.

you have sleeping nightmares too. but those stretch out the time. every second ticks by in an hour. till you pray for sleep. till you'll do just about anything for oblivion. but that doesn't work either. because the second the blackness closes in, you're choking, you're being raped, you're being held down and if only you could gesture to the mother or sister sitting by your bedside they'd just wake you up and you'd be ok, but you can't, you're screaming and they can't here you, they want you to sleep and get some rest and not wake up in only five seconds.

you remember strange things in your waking dreams. you say out loud the entire monologue by jon luc picard at the beginning of star trek. you remember that one story read to you when you were three and scream out in your sleep that bloodcats are following you. you mentally solve three times crossward puzzles with your mother only reading out the clues.

every sense is heightened. when a finger accidently brushes you when checking bandages, its like someone took a pickaxe and severed your spinal cord. when someone brushes past your bed, its like you're an empty vessel, and every organ inside you rattles around deafening you.

when you laugh, its the worst. you feel like you're being stabbed with daggers, and the pain is so much that you think that this is it, you're going to die, but you've already inhaled and all that air has to come out and your brain signals don't know they have to stop and you exhale and laugh and cry with pain at the same time.

laughter the best medicine my ass.

then you're made to stand up, and you gasp because the wind gets knocked out of you the second your bare feet hit the cold floor. the room spins and you feel yourself go white, feel your life shrink to the two hands holding your arms.

then you sit up for the first time for ten seconds, then throw up and faint.

then you twitch for the next twelve hours, because your throw up included the muscle relaxant you needed to keep your muscles in check. the sedative makes you sleep, the twitching wakes you up every ten seconds. for twelve hours. you fall asleep every eleventh second because your body is exhausted, and you dream of flying through the air, then falling, then jerking awake. the jerk is your muscles reacting to the lack of relaxant. its so toxic the doctors are afraid to give you another dose.

then you slowly start talking. start singing with your dad for an entire afternoon and the nurses grinning and joining in when ever they come to check your blood pressure and medicatin levels every hour.

then you start getting embarrassed. embarrassed about the hospital gowns that you left wide open and didn't give a secnd thought to. embarrassed about the sponge baths, which you were too sick to notice before.

then you start getting hungry. but the staff makes your favourite food, and even though you're ravenous you can only be fed two bites before you get sick again.

then you start getting angry. angry at lying there stuck in a bloody bed with incompetant idiots surrounding you. angry at your irritating family who have no idea what the hell its like. angry at the doctor and his cheerful prognoses when you don't feel well and you don't feel better and you don't think it was a good idea to go through with the operation.

then you get so angry, that you stop waiting for the incompetant staff to help you out of bed and support you as you hobble your two steps daily. you push yourself up, grunting, spitting, drooling and sweating as your mother tells you to stop or you'll hurt your self, as you grip the hand rails till your knuckles go white so you don't pass out, till you take that first damn step in the walker all on your own and your mother cries because she thinks you're going to fall down before the nurses can come and help you.

and all that is just the hospital stay.

it gets worse when you get home.

remembered the randomest things while doing some very boring work. laughed out loud and made my cubical mate think i was insane

when?

when do we start questioning good intentions? when do we become cynical and hardened? when do we suddenly look at our actions and realize how far we have lost our way? when is the point when we look up and not recognize the pustulent monsters we have become?

is it after the point where we actually say "i am now a grownup". is it when we say "this is the real world". where we realize "the real world sucks, is this all there is to it?".

or is it when we get back into the hamster wheel that is our lives and finally realize that we're going in circles, that nothing is changing but our own perceptions of the view.

or is it when we get dizzy and fall, then dutifully climb back on because we can't take it, can't take facing our own mediocrity, can't take facing the fact that we'll never make the difference we want to make, that we'll never be able to actually do anything in the real world, because the real world isn't some reality show, its not something that can be taught in four years of hellish classrooms, that it doesn't come with a manual, that no matter how many books you read or how learned you are, that no matter what your IQ or what your EQ, no matter what your parents try to teach you, no matter how much your friends try to council you, you'll never learn, you'll never get it, you'll never be able to really get it, you'll never be able to understand it, you'll never own it, you'll never find the permanance and the satisfaction because its very nature is impermanance and dissatisfaction.

we are all just transient expendible pieces of fluff, insignificant, pathetic and mortal.

we are all just bound and gagged in a cave, staring at shadows cast by life.

we are all just miserable, inadequate players, strutting and fretting our acts on stage, full of sound and fury, signifying a big fat spitting nothing.

Damn its depressing coming home to an empty house. And coming home at maghrib at that. It used to be a time I found haunting in a nice way; it now just adds to the weights smothering my chest. It just reminds me about how my dad has more of a sense of purpose and more real work than I’ll ever have, that my mother has more of a social life than I do, that my siblings younger and older have their own lives, that our feuding, cat fighting, nail scratching days are long gone, and that my frantic deadline and caffeine filled day has just exhausted me so much that I can only turn my cell phone off and collapse in my empty room on my empty sofa. All over again.

Anyway.

Instead of writing a profile, or even one of those “stuff I have done” type things, thought I’d write about some of the most far off stuff I’ve done. There are three occasions which were pretty unreal, and which I probably won’t ever get a chance to repeat. I’ll try to keep them brief and not too over dramatic :)

(1)

The rock we’re supposed to climb, its frikkin frightening. We get out of our motorcade and look up as far up as we can see; only then can we see the red dot of a tee-shirt that is to be our climbing instructor.

The hike has been bloody long, the rocks bloody scary, and our flagging academia inclined muscles stretching for the first time in years. We diligently queue up at the bottom of the climbing pitch, spirits intact, a healthy amount of terror slowly sinking in. We wear our safety harnesses, and sit down and wait.

We’re unabashedly ogling the instructors. The youngest one, my God, his ass is to die for. He’s got the whole preppie lean white boy look that could get land him on any cover anywhere in the world. He’s just born with the kind of swagger that makes even a less than hot blooded person like me give him a second look. However, as usual, I’m bored in ten minutes, because what the other girls don’t notice is that he’s just one more pathan newly out of the village. He’s not used to dealing with girls who are ok with standing and ogling him, not used to our fast paced, cell phone wielding life styles. I lose interest, concentrate on the banker who’s flown up to climb with some of the instructors. He’s not very interested in a bunch of over hyper college kids, and he’s trying to climb the most difficult pitch. I can’t help raising eye brows as he takes a drag from what is definitely a joint, then puts on his safety rope, and grits his teeth and flexes surprising muscles on the overhang. Silence ripples through us; without realizing we’ve all stopped what we were doing to watch him.

The pitch juts out at an impossible angle. The rock face is so steep that all his weight is on his arms. He slowly stretches out, and is spread eagled on a rock that is almost sheer. Bracing on one foot, his hand reaches to an impossible hand hold, and his entire body is supported on it. He then does a series of maneuvers that seem so simple (yea rite) and then hooks his legs way higher than where even his outstretched hand lies, and pulls himself up with only one ankle securely held in place.

When he finally reaches the top of the climb, we all clap. He finishes his joint sitting silhouetted against the cirrus clouds, looking far away into some demons we can’t see.

(2)

There’s no one for miles. No people but us were stupid enough to hike for four hours to camp in knee deep snow in the middle of February. Those four hours. My God. Four hours of carrying a bag pack and staggering in an up sloping valley, slipping on ice patches and not pausing to take out waterproofs because if we stopped, we’d never make it to camp in time. Four hours of slow, beautiful snow flakes settling and absorbing into one of my cashmere sweaters, soaking through and numbing my arms as I continue walking. Panting trying to take in air that wouldn’t freeze my nose and lungs, but still bring in oxygen.
Finally making it, staggering into the only tent set up, collapsing into the sleeping bag and huddling up with two boys I had never said more than hi to in my life and my psychology 101 professor (erk) and not caring because I was so cold I thought I’d die.
***********
It’s still so cold, I haven’t felt my toes in the last twelve hours. I can only close my eyes and pray to God that I don’t lose them to frostbite. I can hear God laugh at my paranoia.
The silence, its deafening. All eight tents are asleep. I’m the only one awake.

I’ve been dying to pee for the last hour. I refuse to climb out of my sleeping bag. Soon, I know I won’t have a choice. If I pee in my sleeping bag, it’ll stay wet for the next four days that I’m there (its an option I seriously consider). I wait till the last possible second, then I curse biology and struggle out of my two sleeping bags. I take out my torch, feel through the two zipped up tent doors and grab my snow boots. My tent mates mumble, but stay asleep. I have this hysterical urge to shake them awake and take them with me, but I don’t know them too well. So I remove my gloves, brush the ice off the laces, stuff my feet into boots that I wouldn’t ever thought I’d be caught dead in two years ago. I climb out. Nothing is moving. Nothing. The tents lie like eight mysterious alien eggs in the snow white valley, the full moon so bright that all the snow and surrounding mountains look luminescent. The stars, they’re so many of them that I swear I can see the misty band of the milky way.
I don’t even miss a step. Beauty shmeuty. Its cold, I have to pee, and then get back in my damn sleeping bag before I lose a toe, or a finger, or a nose.
I get to the rock that is designated as the “girls bathroom”. Then I realize what the hell I’ve gotten myself into.
I curse, the biggest, baddest punjabi words I know, because I realize that I have to unpeel six (yes six) upper layers, one pair of waterproof overalls, and three layers of pants (yes three). By the time I do that, my gloves have fallen in what is definitely a suspicious color of snow, my torch is buried somewhere in the recesses of the sheltering rock, my toilet paper has fallen and gotten soaked. Not the mention my ungloved hand, my nose, and now my bare ass which is so frozen it’s lost all desire to pee.
It’s an ordeal, but I manage.
Halfway though the deed, when there is no way I could ever stop even if I wanted to, and as I’m precariously balanced because to date I have never even used one of those hole-in-the-ground indian toilets, I hear a noise somewhere to my far right.
My breath, my lungs, my brain, everything stops. The world stops spinning, and time slows.
I look over, see nothing.
I hope to God its not someone from camp. Smelly unshaven men I'll have to see for the next three years. How embarassing.
But oh my God, I hope its not anyone not from camp. Images of killer pathan tribesmen out in bloody rampage paralyze me as I squat bare assed in the bloody snow.
I still see nothing.
And then I remember the story about the snow leopards.

My God please let it be killer pathan tribesmen.

I manage to finish my damn business, manage to scramble together articles of clothing, one torch and one roll of toilet paper. I still haven’t drawn a breath in the last four minutes or so. I still haven’t heard anything, but I’m pretty sure it was an animal. A big animal. A big white furry animal looking for food.

I get up, and don’t want to ever move.Maybe I could out wait the leopard. I could. But then I hysterically imagine some Readers Digest article somewhere about the girl who got eaten by leopards while camping because she was too stupid to run when she had the chance. I will not let that article come true.
I try to walk slowly, silently, un-noticeably back to the camp. The path stretches impossibly long.

I’m exactly half way through, when I hear a silent muffled thump. Without remembering making the decision, I take off at the fastest sprint of my life, even managing to run at a zig zag to confuse any pouncing predator. I make sure i run through the tents, hoping it would miss me, pounce on some other tent instead (not my most samaritan of moments - heh). I manage to make it to what I hope is my tent (thank God it was). I dive face first into the thankfully unzipped doors, kick off my shoes in a single bound, and bury myself into my sleeping bag, wondering why I'm not being mauled, hoping that if I ever do become dinner, it’ll be with the rest of the ten camping buddies. At least probability of surviving will be on my side.

And with those thoughts, with my terror, while trying to stay awake staking out possible predator hunting grounds, I unwillingly fall asleep immediately.

It wasn’t a leopard, it turned out to be a teensy weensy white rat after our kitchen supplies. My little nocturnal adventure was not repeated to anyone. And I never went for a bathroom break unless I had someone with me to cover my ass after that. Literally.

wishes?

the best lie is 90% truth

[what i wish i could have said]
i met you in that room with so many people. how did you stand out? why did you stand out? how did we hit it off so perfectly? the emails are really sweet and extremely kosher, and i know what your underlying motivation is. i've been through this before.
please get back on that plane, please just leave. the logistics of an 'us' are too difficult. right now, its too easy to turn away, and therefore i must. i've been at the end of these roads, and they're always painful.

i won't be replying. thanks anyway.

bye.

[what i will be saying]

Hey:

Thanks for the email, and sorry I couldn't reply sooner (was out of town on work). Something came up the last couple of days, and theres no way the delivery can be made in time now, so I'll just get the stuff through another source. But thanks anyway, it was *really* nice of you to offer,

:)

Regards,

Confessions of a bitch

I’ve had insomnia for the last month. I’ve been so disgustingly unhealthy and negligent at a time I really can’t afford to. So in case this is the spiral after which I eventually fall into a coma and die of some mysterious undiagnosed-till-too-late complication (heh), I hereby submit my confession.

Tariq: you’re mentioned first, because I think you deserve some kind of award for your absolute steadfastness. Now that I know more of the world, now that I know more about people, I understand that such dedication is quite unusual. If I can calculate correctly, you seemed to have liked me straight from class 3 to 2nd year A levels. I don’t know if that’s because you’re just the type of guy who prefers to be in love with the idea of someone, or maybe its just because you knew me enough to sense that even if I did like you back (I did, briefly, class 5, when we were sitting next to each other), my friends would gag and bind me and stuff me in the nearest trunk till I stopped being a danger to my social standing. However, I will admit to a strong streak of protectiveness I always felt towards you despite my friends, and there was a time (yes, grade 5) where I could have taken out a shotgun, blown out the brains of that Urdu teacher, and then kissed you senseless because she made fun of your stammer. Anyway. Maybe you were better off just liking me from afar. Good luck wherever you are. If it helps, I’m going to die a frustrated lonely dried up old hag stuck alone in my own personal hell. If I was a cat person, I would have 5 cats and they’d probably eat my body before the parents found my remains weeks later.

Ali S: from your class-6-to-current-date semi crush on me, and your denial of it, its been amusing knowing you. I must confess, our stilted msn conversations are extremely painful, and I cringe at your every attempt to flirt with me. No I am not encouraging you. Its been a decade. If it had to happen, it would have. Really. Just give up, show me some attitude and get some self respect back. Don’t come to my funeral, in fact, go spit on my grave. For Gods sake man, show some gumption.

Zeeshan: because I am brutally honest with myself, I will admit that we both have our issues, and we were just not meant to be, no matter how much we both wanted. I have come to peace with it, buried our past despite your attempts to resurrect it. I have also buried you, unfortunately only symbolically. I wish I had just left your sorry ass at CC, I wish I had told you more home truths that day instead of hanging up knowing I would never ever talk to you again. While my problem might have been that I expected you to become the man I though you could be, I have to confess that I tried to convince myself that your problem was that you were too young. I was wrong. Our younger selves are stronger, purer, more rigid, idealistic, stupid, callow versions of our older selves. You have no foundations of morality, you have no sense of justice, right or wrong, and no matter how many large dramatic claims you make, they are as empty as your threats, promises and your pathetic tighty whitey underpants.

(yes, along with every other phoney ‘cool’ thing you force yourself to be, you are NOT a CK boxer person, give up and submit to your true self).

T: we have a history don’t we? I’ve known you since I was 6, and shit, that’s a bloody long time. I’m sorry you hate me, I’m sorry we’re not in touch. We were good buddies in the middle, I miss walking into a party and taking for granted that we would be dancing together the whole evening. I miss knowing you’d be my back up date no matter what, that you would be my group partner no matter how aggravating we found each other. I cringe every time your girlfriends walk all over you with their pointy stiletto’s and leave you lying bloody, broken and pathetic on the floor. I hope the last two dire misfortunes have not driven you to suicide, that you have finally grown a thicker skin, finally grown better taste in women, and are finally working hard to realize the potential you so badly need to counter the terrible hand life has dealt you. I have to confess that only my little brother has managed to really piss the shit out of me as much as you have. That’s an honor. Really. Good luck where ever you are and in what ever you choose to become.

H: I am mentioning you here even though you really don’t deserve it. I confess that being the object of such intense adoration was frightening, but I’m human and I admit (albeit on my deathbed) that I was flattered by how I was the absolute focus of your extremely unhealthy obsession. We had fun, and I cannot forgive you pretending to be my friend only so you could guilt trip me into liking you back. That was low, even for you. but anyway, I hope your burn scars heal, and that you stop behaving like an awkward child and just come out and act less gangly and pretentious if you ever run into me. I will be kind, and not mention the incidents where you took to following me around campus, and the hours of painful phone conversations you made me suffer through. Or the time that you were extremely thrilled that I got drunk and spent the night with you guys at the apartment. I can magnanimously forgive you for all that, we were kind of vaguely friends once upon a time.

To my ex-stalker: well I know you’re a total freak, and that you are legendary for your skills of jacking off five times a day (which is STILL a *distressing* fact to know). I also know that you were stalking a different girl every quarter, and that you moved onto my poor friend after me. But I must confess it was a hilarious experience while it lasted. From the first stages where you were pretty much under the radar, when you felt up my advanced programming techniques partner Bilal in the advent of trying to “help” us with the assignment, to the final stages when you finally cornered me in the dark isolated hallway on campus and “asked me out to dinner” (I swear, you scared the crap out of me so badly that you made me forget all my self defense classes, all my heroics, all my false bravado on how I’m a kick ass kinda chick). There was also that point in the middle when everyone but nausheen knew about you, and she actually invited you to have pizza with her alone in the cafeteria because she can’t stand seeing people eating alone. Haha. She was so repulsed after she saw some of your better moments that she had nightmares about you for weeks. haha. I continue to look back at the events as hilarious, and pretty unique. May you whack away to some poor other chick who will probably be as repulsed by you as me and all other coeds.

i also want to confess that the story below actually had a very different ending. as if i would kiss someone in my own lawn with a million set of parents roaming around. really.
i just handled it in my own classic style. i hemmed and hawed and pretended i had no idea what he was asking.
denial is a subtle and carefully honed skill

oh and i won :)

and i've made sure i haven't played that game since.

quite a few people have gathered for the party, and i can’t really delay going down to the garden anymore. there's only so much slack my mother would give me, even if she is seeing me for the first time in six months.

i walk down, and i think i pick out his sillouette from twenty feet away. there's a spark and his face illuminates in the flash, confirming it. his hands are protecting the cigarette from the wind.

the gusts are brutal, but all seven families have braved the outdoors for this barbeque.
i’ve just gotten off a plane that morning. its been a long time, and i'm not exactly looking forward to this.

karachi is unequipped to handle cold. its unequipped to handle rain, hail or anything else either. i stick my hands in the cardigan which is not equipped to provide any warmth whatsoever, and decide to say my hellos to the aunties first. they've gathered in a semi circle, and i walk into my mother telling them about my event decoration prowess. they're all oohing and aahing at the stupid table centerpieces i threw together a couple of hours ago. i handle the meaningless small talk, and escape to the uncles corner. they all hail me politely, terrified i'll attack them and their fat cat drawing room talk. i'm amused, but have lost the appetite for drawing blood, so don’t talk politics. i'm tired, want to mellow out for a couple of days before boredom and holidays start to grate. i'll save my battles for when i’m feeling passionate.

i’m avoiding him and we both probably know it.

i head over to the bar. “she’ll have a straight cranberry juice, no ice”, says a voice near my ear. i turn, and he’s right behind me. damn, didn’t think he’d be done with his smoke so soon.
i can’t help grinning. “Hi!”. it feels good to hug him, and to smell his aqua di gio. “still using the same bottle i gave you ten years ago mr. stinky?” by reflex, i revert to my nickname for him when we were ten.
he grins, and shuffles his feet. “of course not poopface. at least i smell of something other than oil paint”, and grabs my hand, sniffs it exaggeratedly.
i snatch it away, because i have a horrible feeling that the turpentine smell might just have lingered. i can’t help laughing. “god, its good to see you.”
“likewise poop, likewise”
we grab our drinks and automatically head for the tree. we sit down face to face. he grabs my glass, startling me. puts it to the side. grabs my face. before i can get out a ‘whoa there’ he says “owl!”.
crap. haven’t played that game since we were six. it’s the game when you have to sit and stare at the person until one of them blinks. i always lost.
“beware the years have hardened me” i say, in my mock shredder (from ninja turtle fame) voice. i spoil it by laughing. my eyes crinkle, but i don’t let them blink. i guess i'll just have to show this sucker who’s boss once and for all. heh.
“so too busy climbing ladders to keep up with old friends?” he doesn’t blink either.
our breath condences white, then evaporates.
“only kept in touch with the ones who count” . i try to be smug, but i’ve been getting the same complaints the whole day. i suck at emailing. one downside to returning home and facing old irate friends.
because of the tree branches, we’re practically nose to nose. his eyes are deep deep brown, like the batter of the dark chocolate cake his mother makes.
“been working out have you? need to build abs of steel to lure in the women?” i hope i don’t sound bitter. my mother had mentioned a few escapades. my eyes are starting to dry out with the strain.
“still stuffing on chocolate cake to fill out in the right places” he quirks an eyebrow. guess my traitor mother’s been talking to him too. thank god its too cold for my ears to turn pink.
“why didn’t you come visit?” i can’t resist asking. i'd promised myself i wouldn’t ask.
“why didn’t you call?” he counters.
good point. i try to sound nochalant, “oh been busy, you know how it is”. i give my version of a suggestive wink (winks are excluded from elimination rules).

and just like that, his eyes get serious, “i hope he’s been worth it.”

i can see him suddenly focus right through me, and i know he’s reliving the night i left.
“well, he wasn’t. but i'm back now stankster, thinking of moving back home for good. done with all the gallivanting”. i hold my gaze steady, and that isn’t easy.

damn all contact lenses.

his eyes still hold the question he asked all those years ago. “what will it be then?”
i know what he’s referring to. we always did know what the other was thinking. i know i’m tired, i'm jet lagged, and emotionally incapable of answering any soul searching questions right now.

i decide to just stop thinking.

i close my eyes, and just for the hell of it, lean over and kiss him.

what the hey, i would have lost if the game had lasted one more minute anyway.

comments please

comments in my blog are like:

finding a uneaten piece of dark chocolate in my freezer
and then terribly missing the younger brother who would have eaten it had he not moved away

like standing in the wind on the edge of a cliff looking onto the green sea
and freezing because because you've forgotten your sweater in the car

like turning heads by wearing a tiny halter and tiny tassled skirt
and running into a greasy uncle from work

like camping for a week in snow with only one meal a day
and then eating a 1600 rupee steak at the finest resteraunt

like being unable to open the presents till all the guests leave
and then actually opening them

like making the same wish every year at your birthday
and then having it come true

omens, whispers of destiny

This was an assignment i did at college. its a pretty lame attempt at "visual poetry", and its a little long, so i apologize in advance. This is in memory of ms. hima reza, the best prof and writer i have ever known. hey ms. r, hope you're happy wherever you are.

strolling in circles to nowhere

i enter the jaded door to ennui

walk barefoot into a room

full of glittering strangers

i wrinkle my nose

at the stale stink of success

glare at the Familiar

and i think:

"

preposterous travesty

I must phone God and complain immediately

and have them put out of their misery

"

but i'm one cent short of a load

and no one picked up last time anyway

so i grin

as we mouth to each other

miserably animated

and i say

"hellohowareyou finethankyou"

an old friend comes along

smelling of moth balls as usual

the old geezer

and i stretch my lips across my teeth

and as we airkiss, i say

"howdoyoudosir I'mfinethankyou"

he winds up his fist

and rams it in my chest

mesmerized by the pain, i think

"

could he be the One?

will this cure the acidity of isolation?

will this stop the solitude?

"

i giggle, and say instead

"ohi'msorrysir i'mfinethankyou"

his fingers grope through ribs

and intercostal muscles

reach their goal

clutch my heart

it beats for a second

resists the walls of his palm

then surrenders greatfully

traitor

i bellow with hilarity

ohthankyousir i'mfinethankyou"

but before i'm finished

he yanks his hand back

i feel aorta and venecava tearing

lungs pumping into nothingness

a scream almost slips out!

very uncool to call attention to yourself

when you stand with naked feet

in a room full of crowded strangers

the man is amused

by my almost breach of etiquette

takes a bite out of the quivering red mass

black blood drips down his mouth

"it must be the cooks day off. this stuff is terrible!"

he mutters

spitting it back in my face

In the reverberating stillness, I think:

"

a 24 karat hole

in a gaping heart

really itches

where is that damn phone?

"

but the line is busy

disgusted, he throws the heart onto the floor

stalks off

grinding it beneath his heel

without even noticing

i hail to his departing figure

"pleasedtomeetyou wemustdolunchsometime"

i listen for the sound of his soul

it doesn't reply

so i continue to stand

and i wonder

"

is God screening my SOS calls?

or do i have the wrong number?

"

i mingle in circles going no where

in a room full of glittering strangers

hoping they won't notice

my naked feet

The room was pretty ordinary, if a little ugly. It had red walls and a black ceiling, a theme echoed in the table cloth and the chairs.

There’s a huge fat black candle in center of the table. And a red bowl. And for some reason, the candle is the first thing you notice when you walk in.

She walks in, and the woman is as ordinary and ugly as the room. The only thing that elevates her from every other Pakistani aunty is her black kajal overdosed eyes. They have a disturbing blood shot hint of madness. They’re the first thing you notice about her, as she enters and pins you to your seat with one look. “You’ll regret it beta”. Her voice is husky, like a man. I stare at her, confused, trapped by the kajal. Then she looks away to light the candle and I can breathe again.

The black candle: strange things happen to it when the flame hits it. It glows from the inside, as if it’s see-through. Yet it’s made of good old solid beeswax. I can smell it. And suddenly, the corners of the room shrink further back, the light from the flame being absorbed entirely by the black ceiling. There are patterns flickering on the red walls, and when I stare at them it’s difficult to look away. Suddenly I realize that there isn’t any grill or lattice work in the room. What’s making the patterns? I’m about to ask her, but she sits down in the chair next to me, and grabs my palm. Her nails, they’re painted black. I’m suddenly a little uneasy by the whole scene. I want to get up and run the door, when my three friends await their turn.

She sits too close, and then peers at my face from six inches away. I can only look to the door. I can’t move. Still holding my palm, nails digging in, she reaches up with the other hand, and picks off a hair from my sweater. She puts it into the bowl. I notice the center is black, but the outside is painted red.

Then I scream in pain.

I look to my palm, and her nails have dug right through.

There are four half moons of blood welling up across the center. I’m still looking at it incredulously, when she calmly sweeps up a couple of drops, and adds it to the liquid in the bowl. When did she put water in it? She swipes the remaining half moon, and then licks it. Madness.

I’m can’t open my mouth. The beeswax is choking. Her hand, it’s weighing my entire body down with that one touch.

She holds the bowl to my mouth.

I purse my lips closed, and pray to God. I really can’t drink that. Why can’t I move?

“Drink it”, she whispers. In my mind, the words are screaming loud. I can’t help it. My lips open, and the water, its hot. It burns my tongue, the roof of my mouth.

Tears run down my cheeks.

She’s still six inches away from my face.

“You’ll find him soon.” She says. I look at her; her pupils are like huge gaping holes. Her hot breath smacks my face unpleasantly.

Then suddenly, the candle goes out. The room is pitch black. I can’t see anything.

I close my eyes. I think I scream. In the second of her distraction, I wrench my hand away, and leap from the table faster than I’ve even moved before. I dive for the door, can feel a million invisible demons breathing down my neck, can feel her sitting six feet behind me. Can feel her eyes on me, even in the dark.

The door opens, and the line of women in the waiting room all look up at me in unison.

My friends, it takes them a second to recognize me. I guess ten seconds of hell changes one. The take a look at my face, and all three stand up in concern. I made quite a dramatic entrance I guess.

“Is everything alright?” “Why aren’t you getting the reading done?” “Is it over already? You just went in!?”

I look over my shoulder into the room, and the lights are back on. The Pakistani aunty with too much kohl is sitting at the table. She smiles and waves.

I take two steps back. My goose bumps are about to poke through my clothes.
“Yeah, its fine. Let’s get out of here”. I don’t want to take my eyes off that table and that room. I guess I blink.

“Beta, you haven’t paid.” she’s standing, right there in the waiting room, two inches in front of me. I think I scream, but only a strangled whisper comes out. The red and black room behind her, it’s empty. I notice that the roof of the waiting room is black too.

I almost back into a table. Then I can’t move any further.

My friends are holding one arm, wondering why the hell I’m treating this woman like she has the plague. I don’t care. I can’t get away fast enough. Since I make no move to open my wallet, one of my friends opens her bag and hands the woman some money. The lady leans over, takes the money in her black painted fingers, and says “I will get the change beta.” Then she murmurs something to her under her breath. My friend’s eyes widen, and she turns to say something to me, but I’m scuttling out the door.

The sunlight is over strong outside. I start the car with shaking hands, without waiting for my friend to return with her change.
And suddenly notice that I have no scars on my palm. Nothing. No blood, no cuts, nothing.
I’m still staring at my palm, and my friends are staring at me. Then the car door opens, and we all jump.

My friend is holding some currency notes in her hand. “That woman is totally bonkers. She told me to tell you that you’ll regret it. Did she mean because you didn’t get the reading done?"

The prattle is actually making me regain some semblance of normality. I almost smile, and feel ridiculous. I clearly hallucinated the whole thing. She probably had LSD in the candle or something.

Oblivous, my friend is prattling on: "If she didn't read you, then I don't know why she said you'll get sick and I'll save your life. Haha. I'm not the Florence Nightingale varity ok? I'm telling you from now. Haha."

I look at my friends. They're now having a giggling fit. There's a funny feeling in my throat. I can’t speak. I just put the car into gear and get the hell out of there.

Its been three years. I can speak about it now. And I can tell you: I did find him. And I do regret it. and she did save my life, but in a different way.

cold night
stars
wind

brilliant sunset
clouds
azaan

morning chirping
sunrays
early

secret silence
crickets
dark


there are times in a day when our different worlds overlap
times when we feel vibrations of countless other lives
coexisting within our own world
and others a heartbeat away

those are the times
i think we have been asked to pray

Malikeyaumideen
"Lord of the worlds"

Why do simple minded men make life so complicated

Why are there NO statistics in Pakistan

Why is trying to find out the numbers on ANYTHING in ANY SECTOR such a frikkin pain in the ass?

Why do people not give you time or information on the phone or over email? Do they need evidence of your english speaking skills and dress sence before they actually bother to part with any miserable information they might have managed to gain in their pathetic insignificant lives?

Why can some idiot trying to help just HELP and not TRY

WHY can my job just be WELL DEFINED
WHY can't someone just TELL ME what the EFF is on the EFFING mind before i attempt something and then be told to "do it this way"

WHY IS STUPIDITY RAMPANT
WHY WHY WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

You speak eloquently and have seemingly read every
book ever published. You are a fountain of
endless (sometimes useless) knowledge, and
never fail to impress at a party.What people love: You can answer almost any
question people ask, and have thus been
nicknamed Jeeves.What people hate: You constantly correct their
grammar and insult their paperbacks.

What Kind of Elitist Are You?
brought to you by

shhhhh

i did it
i listened to the voice
the one that whispers
the one that said i should do it
the one that said i should go crazy

i did it
i think i did a bad thing
shhhhh

i'll die one day
and won't even notice
i'll just keep coming back from work
and watching TV
for eternity

which is what i get for not saying my prayers and being a dutiful non-neurotic daughter

another why

i CAN write funny stuff as well
and a whole lot of other stuff

this blog brings out the the moaning meloncholy me
jut another thing about which to wonder: why?

such is life

i write a thousand blogs a day in my head
complete with editing and formatting and everything

when i sit down in front of the pc
a million things crowding in my head

crows circling the bloody carcass of my brain
and nothing comes to fruition but these pustulent maggots

the dead woman called it poetic prose
as she proceeded to rip it to shreds
slicing off and chewing pieces of my soul with it

those were the good old days
i miss hating them
just like i know i'll miss the good life at home
when i have a whiny brat to live with and cherish and nurture till death do us apart

such is life
a mucus filled pustule
as beautiful and transient as a just-burst bubble
exploding into psychedelic fragments of memory

such is life

stripped naked

why:
do i feel like i bent down
and someone got a glimpse of my panties
no
worse
that someone got a glimpse beyond my panties
shame

why?
when at the same time the closet attention whore in me
revels in it

what is it about me
that always pulls me in two opposite directions
in everything

born in pakistan
worshipping the glossies abroad

born in poverty
aching jealous of the designer pajamas wearing best friends

born in luxury
ashamed for the dirty black little kids living in the disgustingly filthy quarters behind my house

felt self righteously justified when i complained
about the kids who stole my chocolates once

died a million guilt induced deaths
as they howled as their chowkidar dad beat them senseless

kept a secret part of myself
completely separate from the world

that even my frighteningly shrewd best friend for 17 years
doesn't know that part of me

that the attention whore in me loves the exhibitionism
that the everyday me feels like a dirty rude obnoxious bitch
for revealing the worst thoughts i think
and having people accepting them

liking them even

why!

request:

long shiny silver acupuncture needle

punched through the forehead
pointy bits poking out the base of the neck

lancing through eyes
sticking out from back of skull

shoved under fingernails
protuding from broken knuckles

hammered into knee joints
shoved through hip points

puncturing walls of stressed balled guts
out through titanium spine

i take all of that silently
just please give me the right to whine

it hurts
again
just to breathe
again
walls closing in
again

cowering in the bed
again
fighting the choking lonliness
again

trying not to pick up the phone
again
spiraling back to stupidity
again

a mothers concern
just holding back the madness
for a little while
till i wake up
again

why?

our lives are like gossamer smoke
diaphanous
speading in nooks and crannies we never know about
reaching people far and wide

people who inhale our smoke

acquire a shade of our hue

get tainted by our existance without us knowing

i have lost all color .. faded to that one distant hue that i picked up those small instances

how can the death of that boy haunt me so much?
how can the tragedy make my soul ache
when i have so much trouble feeling
in day to day jaded existance

what will happen when the few people i do let in these walls leave me?
i can't get hurt again
i'll break and shatter
like the last time

and i won't be able to put myself back together
i won't

death of the day

maghrib just happened. i've always hated the twilight, the fading sunset reminding me of one more day where i didn't really do anything. i used to love it when i was little, it flagged the moment to end the exhaustive breathless childhood games we all played in the street, where it indicated the beginning of the end of the fun art of playing outside, after which mosquitos would come out, after which hunger, crankiness and resulting spats would set in. it means nothing anymore. it singals the emptiness of our adult lives, the lonliness as the azaan echoes through empty rooms.

today was my last day on the job. packing up one stupid pencil holder and one fake plant felt more momentous than my final day after 12 years with the same school and the same people, after four years of intese college, or even the first day i walked after three months of lying flat on my bed unable to walk from my bloody orthopedic mattress to the pot and back without getting so out of breath that i would see black spots before my eyes and have to sleep four hours after that to regain the strength to keep breathing. for some reason, it was much more than that.

maybe because today is also coincedently the janaza and soyem of the 19 yr old kid who died in that car accident. the kid who i saw incedental glimpses of in those 12 years of school, the younger brother of the girl who's face i practically saw everyday in those 12 years and who i actively disliked in every instance of it. maybe because in packing up the stupid pencil holder and in the process of walking from desk to desk saying bye and getting into the lift; the chain of events that would lead me to be delayed those 15 minutes that would make me catch bumper to bumper traffic that would make me hear the first strains of maghrib singalling the end of the janaza as i drove past the last green light and neared home, 10 minutes too far away to join everyone at the janaza.

there are echo's of sadness in this sunset. and tragedy. and guilt. and tears of the people i love. tears of my mother who fed him cerelac with he and my own brother were babies. my best friend who danced with him this summer, who spent the last two days crying. tears for myself, because of those damn fifteen minutes where i could have left the damn pencil holder and just done what was important, not been side tracked by stupid maningless insginificance and lost the chance to feel like i did something to assauge the huge weight of momentous tragedy so i can get back to my empty empty life hoping to never feel.

Superman (It's Not Easy) - Five for Fighting

I can't stand to fly
I'm not that naive
I'm just out to find
The better part of me

I'm more than a bird:I'm more than a plane
More than some pretty face beside a train
It's not easy to be me

Wish that I could cry
Fall upon my knees
Find a way to lie
About a home I'll never see

It may sound absurd:but don't be naive
Even Heroes have the right to bleed
I may be disturbed:but won't you conceed
Even Heroes have the right to dream
It's not easy to be me

Up, up and away:away from me
It's all right:You can all sleep sound tonight
I'm not crazy:or anything:

I can't stand to fly
I'm not that naive
Men weren't meant to ride
With clouds between their knees

I'm only a man in a silly red sheet
Digging for kryptonite on this one way street
Only a man in a funny red sheet
Looking for special things inside of me

I'm only a man in a phony red sheet
I'm only a man looking for a dream
I'm only a man in a phony red sheet
and its not easy

It's not easy
to be
me.

Ode to Sasha

Prologue: There are currently two categories of friends defined earlier, "1 - 3" and friends "A - F". Both categories are on different levels and equally important, and this third one "(i) onwards" are no different. I currently am only in the same geographical proximity of 3, D and F :)

(i): you know who you are. i respect that. you don't have an ounce of bullshit in you. if i was to slice through your center and dissect you, there would be flesh like a peach. Not over gooey, undercooked tissue like some oversentimental mindless reflections of people, nor the black empty starless void you would find in others. You understand me, appreciate me, make me feel sexy as hell. And smart witty and super intelligent. I am a dry sarcastic wit when I am with you. I am a beautiful heart breaking goddess when i am with you. I love it. I love the way you seem to bring out such a diverse secure sexy side in me. you are completely "safe". I will never fall for you, and you will never fall for me. you are a fantastic friend. you would be the perfect Will to my Grace (but you're not gay-hot) :) you're cool. you're like the natural born killers guy (a little overdramatic maybe, but a good analogy). we've weirdly managed to stay friends, and i'm at that stage where anyone who can understand me when i talk is a rare and precious commodity. so my rare and precious friend, i really really hope our relationship stays this way, or progresses to closer and better things. catch you on msn ok?

HOW NOW

Note from author: This post is s sequel to "How" published in this blog on July 2004

I stand outside the apartment with mixed feelings. I have a curious reaction to parties, and being co-host amplifies my ambivalence. I loved planning the party, the guest lists, the invitation designs, the food, the décor. I loved getting dressed for the occasion, the makeup and break from everyday sober colors and textures. I've loved dressing up since I've been very very little. I rediscovered the rituals of makeup and dress up in college, where sleepless nights and constant high grade chronic stress drove me to insane avenues of release. But the downside of the entire rain dance of getting dressed was that I get to the event itself and am suffocated by boredom within the first five minutes. I get out of my car, and people around me are already trickling into the apartment.

Shrieking pre-partying couples making me feel old, and remember the times when I too was once part of the same heady giggly carefree bunch. I am the host, I should run in and see if there is stuff to manage, things to fix, DJ's, waiters or bearers to organize.

I hesitate outside, don't feel like plunging in as usual, and decide to get a drink from the terrace first. I stumble into the dark patio, contact lensed eyes unadjusted from the starkly lit guarded porchway. The party planner in me double checks the fairy lights twinkling behind the bar (normal tape wasn’t strong enough to hold the up earlier in the evening). I had asked one of the other hosts to get duct tape and think about going to kick him for not doing the job. The lights seem to be holding up, even though some of the white tape is visible. I consign it to hell, no one but me would ever notice anyway. I can see the dance floor from where I'm standing. My immediate friends are all tearing it up in one big happy herd.

Some things never change.

I greet a couple of acquaintances around the garden, settle onto a sofa. I start people-watching from my vantage, enjoying the cranberry juice that never seems to be around on normal days. I notice a group of three a little to my left, a couple I know, and someone they’ve brought along. I’m slightly amused, because the stranger seems to be noticeably a third wheel. He bends down to the girl’s ear, and I get a flash of the side of his face, and my eyes narrow in weird recollection.

Could it be? I'm squinting and trying to focus, glass paused halfway to my lips.

I watch him give a friendly jab on the guys arm, and turn around.

Well well well. I think to myself. It is him. But how disappointing. No skipping heartbeat, no heart jamming in my throat. After all these years. The sonofabitch. I try to feel anger, I try to feel disappointment, excitement, anything. Can just come up with a dull sense of nothingness. How weird. For my first love, for my first kiss, for all the good memories and the bad, nothing.

I decide to not bother getting off the sofa. I'll probably bump into him and catch up at some point in the evening anyway. I'll enjoy my party watching for now. I continue happily with my cranberry juice, then decide to try to signal the waiter for some of the hors d’oeuvres.

“Hi”. I hear from somewhere to my right.

“Oh hi! Its so good to see you!” I exclaim. I hope that doesn’t sound too fake. I have a 32 smile plastered on in full force. Small chitchat with people who don't know you is so painful. “I’m here with work buddies.” He gestures to the couple behind, gives a little roll of his eyes. For the sake of appearance, I look and then give an “Oh” of polite comprehension.

Awkward silence.

Strange and disappointing again. We never ran out of conversation before. I stare at his chest. It looks good in the gray t-shirt. He's still wearing that taweez. He always did manage to look good in an other-side-of-the-bridge kind of way. And also always managed to look so much younger (immature) than the old bored has-beens guys the "appropriate" age used to be. I look into his eyes, and he's just looking down at me, a little dumbfounded, probably as awkward as me. I still can't tell what he's thinking though. I never could.

"Well I'll see you around then."

I guess I should go back to making sure the bartender is not stealing any of the alcohol and the DJ is keeping the dancers happy.

I turn around and get back on with my life.

I wonder if I'll ever be able to find someone who I won't be able to step away from so easily. It’s a question I've been pondering on for a very very long time.

And the answer still scares me.

chronicles of the super, sexy and single:
Tuesday/Day 3:
well its tuesday and i guess i'll stop counting the days Past Disaster Party (PDP) now
have a good job offer from yet another boring company
when i was in a school i didn't like.. i would cry and come home three days out of five (the days when friday and saturday were holidays and sunday was the beginning of a working week... how weird that that is now weird)
i feel like doing the same now (crying and going back home.. not starting my week on sunday)

when i eventually got enrolled in the school i wanted to (the one my sisters said was 'cool') i actually became the extremely well adjusted brain that i am today

I'm scared that i'll never get a job like that
a job i really like
a job i really want to do
what if it enforces poverty and hardship and i'll have to do it because i love it but i'll be miserable
can i love something that'll make me miserable?
i'll stop loving it
i'll lose it
i think i'll lose everything when that happens
thats all i've defined myself by all these years

so i continue to keep myself hidden away from the world
so the world can't destroy it

its pretty much destroyed everything else
haha
i guess i *used* to be well adjusted

dysfunctionality creeps up on us all

I try

Games, changes and fears
When will they go from here
When will they stop

I believe that fate has brought us here
And we should be together
But we're not

I play it off but I'm dreamin of you
I'll keep it cool but I'm fiendin.

I try to say goodbye and I choke
I try to walk away and I stumble
Though I try to hide it it's clear
My world crumbles when you are not near

I try to say goodbye and I choke
I try to walk away and I stumble
Though I try to hide it it's clear
My world crumbles when you are not near