Bain-marie: The Double Boil

With the Moon on their Wings

2009-10-12T00:45:00.004+06:00

In Loving Memory of Haris Sajid Malik...

Remember when we were kids and when we would play cricket in the garage or on the street and when one of us took the bat and got bowled over on the first ball and would start screaming No, No, That was the try-ball! Now that I look back and smile over that innocence (or lack of fair-play), the inner me, the sadder, wiser, inner me sighs and I hear myself wish a wish; that we could scream at life itself and refuse to play along and call our past a try-ball and ask for another chance. A chance to make amends. A chance to cut our rough corners earlier and become prudent quicker. A chance to strengthen friendships. A chance to tell them more. To listen to them more. To share with them more. More than we already had. Really, how badly I wish now I could get another chance.

A part of me has died today with the death of Haris. In my shelf there are books I borrowed from him and never returned. By my side I had a friend whose loyalty I had so overlooked. But that is such a cliché, no? You live your life all for yourself and one day through a devastating flick of its deathly wand, death reminds you that life is such a fickle friend. And then all you are left with is memories. And regrets.

Each moment of life, taken on its own, is imprisoned. So ridiculously obstructed. It is a fragment, and as such, orphaned from its meaning, like torn pages of a book scattered by the wind. Only and only with the profound affection, that comes with unyielding friendship, are we able to cohere the sense of everyday life. With friends, the mundane becomes marvelous. Simple looks spectacular. They give you reasons to hope for a wholeness in which all things would be redeemed and complete. With friends, we are transformed from ugly ducklings to wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings. But what happens when all of it melts into a dollop of disbelief and life sounds like a sham and you lose the will to take life for what it is? What happens when you lose a friend? Why didn’t they teach us that in school? Algebra, History – what about grief?

As the years pass, we witness death more often. And that is with everyone. So I learnt today, how everyone must learn to expect it. You can either do that, or else, live our day in pretense but some horrible day, you will be in for sudden shock, ludicrous denial, impractical bargaining, debilitating guilt, nauseous anger, lethal depression and gruesome resignation.

The hours spent in mourning are of course the saddest of our lives. Probably the ugliest too. Imagine a music professor who would start the class by playing a chord on the piano and asking his students to write down the notes. One day, he played the ugliest chord imaginable and none of his students could guess the note. Some even refuse to call it music. Many closed their ears. Then he played the entire piece. It was Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. The sounds fought their way into a crescendo of complexity culminating in the agonizing tension of that chord...and then smoothly resolved back into the sweetest baroque harmony of an end-weighted trajectory.

All the students gasped and shook their heads at their naivety. The work was probably the most famous of all Beethoven's piano sonatas. How could they not identify it? How could they have thought it was incongruous?

And that is what Haris, my dear friend, taught me through his demise. Death is congruent with life. It falls into the equation, perfectly. It teaches lessons to growing up kids and makes them shake their heads at their naivety. Death holds in it, secrets that life fails to tell us. It leaves behind grief, anger and denial. But also a reminder that their was no try-ball. It takes a person to eternal sleep. But also tries to wake up those who are left behind living and mourning.

The Wish Maker: A review

2009-09-10T16:18:00.003+06:00

When TIME magazine reviewed and recommended Ali Sethi's The Wish Maker, I knew I had to read this one. I looked at the cover jacket and I knew I had to buy this one just for the sake of the cover design alone.

The Wish Maker is ambitious. It is such an easy read and yet you keep feeling the writer is trying hard to reach the levels of an epic. A coming of age story that ,through flashbacks, spans several decades, it follows the lives of Zaki, a teenager in the '90s, his family and their struggles. The pillars of the story are the three women: Zaki's grandmother, mother and cousin-sister Samar Api who become vessels of a narration of a nation

A reason I would graciously give this book an extra star: it's set in Lahore. My Lahore. It is woven in such an effortless way, it takes you within itself, through the times, into a Lahore that I had grown up in. The author is so obviously in love with the city.

Admittedly, the book did disappoint me at some levels. Firstly, it was inconsequential. The characters grew. But they failed to evolve. The narration continues. But the story refused to resolve. There were junctures where I felt myself saying No man, don't do this. Stop the rumbling. Get to the story. I wish the story had culminated into soething more convincing.

Ali Sethi is a name to watch out for. His sophomore book, I hope, would be a treat to read; and I'm already looking forward to that!

My Salad Days

2009-08-21T21:29:00.003+06:00

My salad days

(Published in Us, The News International, Aug 21, 2009)

"Cheese has no place in a garden salad!" My two-thousand-rupees-an-hour nutritionist told me for the umpteenth time as I pleaded with her to bend some rules.

"But it's dairy! And very nutritious! For my bones…"

"But it does not grow in a garden…"

"Well, cows eat grass!"

"That does not make them vegetables."

My heart bled as she printed out my diet plan. Thirty days on a complete detox salad diet: to get my stagnant bowels going and to slash down the lipids that had happily colonised the fertile lands of my belly. And all this to a person who used to think eating raw food was the next best thing to suicide!

"And don't forget to wash your vegetables thoroughly…"

"Don't worry, even the maggots can't live long on that stuff," I grimaced and banged the door behind me.

********************

No, I am not spoilt. And no, I don't belong to a dysfunctional family of binge eaters. It's in our genes. Mine. Yours too. Our culprit: Evolution! Salad prejudice dates back to just a few million years ago when our untamed ancestors would kill beasts and relish the flesh. Only a bad day at hunting meant the family had to eat something that grew out of earth. And well, the bad hunters were no longer 'alpha' males. They wouldn't get any hot chics. And would die without kids. BAM! Nature's way to kick out bad genes!

But then, whatever brought the greens back 'in'? I failed to understand. And to find an answer, I braced myself for a particularly unpleasant and disagreeable culinary journey: "How to make a salad edible?"

My biggest concern, the cause of my insomnia, was of course the bitter truth that I had to be my own guinea pig. To like or to loathe, to adore or to abhor, to eat or to puke -- I had to first munch on the veggies. I felt like that man captured by savage cannibals, who had him tied up as their leader announced, "Council will offer you two choices: death, or salad."

The man said with surprise, "Salad? Really? Does that in your language mean some barbaric assaults using rocks and spears?"

"No, dumbo! Salad means lettuce, onions, tomatoes, cucumbers, bell peppers and carrots…"

"Carrots?" Screamed the man. "Give me death!"

"You got it," said the leader. "Bring the salad, guys!"

********************

Needless to say, the products of mother earth let me down. The tomatoes squirted blood; the onions reeked of ammonia; the carrots looked weirdly hairy; lettuce and cabbage, ordinary and bland; radishes gave me so much gas, I was airborne for the rest of the day. Downcast and disillusioned, I tried, in vain, to forget my failed foray into the world of cellulose. Strangely, the malfunction had added in my mind, a bizarre element of mystery and respect and reverence for the veggies. Salads must have suffered a long, hard time reaching the recognition as a full participant in our meal-time activities. Once demoted to just as a side dish for people who were either watching their figure or recovering from a medical problem, it must have taken quite a cooking revolution to pronounce salads as 'appetizers'. That, and a lot of persistence from salad makers and lovers that has really made the salad what it is today. Suddenly, I so wanted to enjoy my salads. I desperately wanted myself to feel good about not only eating healthy, but also about participating in one of the great culinary success stories.

With a new zeal, I decided to start with the basics. With loving hands, I selected a stunning, emerald-hued cucumber. With gentle moves, I peeled it off. With affectionate strokes, I sliced it into little discs of subtle freshness. A squeeze of lemon juice for the tang of mischief; a sprinkle of salt for the hint of politeness; a pinch of black peppers for the trace of warmth. With the fondness of a prince, I brought my tranquil princess to my lips. Keen to fall in love with it, I chewed it with concern; soaking up, taking in, every flavor, every taste.

And I spat out.

The cucumber was bitter!

***********************************************************

The Silly Joy over the Death of my Cells!

2009-08-10T20:25:00.003+06:00

Ah! An unparalleled friend, this happiness over the loss of 2 inches off your belly! Right now, this feeling could defy death's existence; purify sorrow's presence; strengthen my weakness; enlighten my strength!

Fitting into an old pair of jeans: this is something I had never ever experienced before! And for once, knowing that you are doing the right thing and feeling like doing it again and again; this too is new. And all of it, the death of my adipocytes; suddenly justifies the hours of treadmill and saying no to great-tasting, mouth-watering, artery-clogging food.

There's a looooooong road ahead. And I hope I don't fall complacent. But I'm happy; to rise on judgment day; I won't need a crane, now!

The Mentalist

2009-07-27T20:26:00.003+06:00

Rigsby: What is this?
Van Pelt: That is healthy and nutritious snacking.
Rigsby: I'm gonna die.

Patrick: Can't sleep alone, huh?
Fricke: Some people use cocoa and a good book. I use beautiful women.

Mrs. Elkins: How can you be so cold?
Patrick: Practice.

Philip Handler: I guess, uh, you must be bad cop.
Teresa Lisbon: I try.

(Crisp one-liners at their best!
~The Mentalist)

The "Tail" of a Graduation

2009-07-15T22:09:00.005+06:00

http://www.clipartguide.com/_named_clipart_images/0511-0708-1815-5115_Boy_Graduating_clipart_image.jpg

I am a graduate today! The University of The Punjab ("two" many "THEs") confers BSc. degree to Med students after they have appeared in an English Language examination, after two years of Med school. So...it's graduation day!

Not a very glamorous one though. No throwing caps, no family-shots, no speeches, no nothing. Just a very routine day. Guess what highlight-of-the-day was; A cat! In South Medical Ward, Mayo Hospital. Walking, strolling with graceful majesty, rubbing its tail with bed legs, meowing ominously to patients with Chronic Liver Disease or Pulmonary Oedema or Meningitis.

Thanks to massive renovations and extension works at home, World War III could take place and Ammi Abbu would be clueless. So I expect no celebrations, really. Ammi rather gave me a reality check this evening. There' s a huge pile of washed, unironed laundry lying on my bed, covered with a sheet. She actually thought it was me, sleeping. And kept scolding the laundry about missed prayers and wasted time.

Ker lo gull!

A Plateful of Memories

2009-07-06T10:34:00.005+06:00

Midday. The sun is so hot, so near to earth, it seems it would burn the edges of the day itself. Hot days like these remind you of the over-simplified stories your grade-2 teacher (Miss may I go to the washroom, Miss may I come in, Miss please get a side) would tell you about the creation of earth. "The sun used to be the only planet. One day it was so hot the sun blew up into small pieces. One of which was our earth"

Sigh.

Memories! It just struck me. Isn't it great that we don't have a perfect memory? Imagine running every second of your entire life in your mind, driving you nuts! I guess our memories are not basically for remembering details; rather almost everything we remember about our past is likely to be highly inaccurate in detail. Our memories are probably for telling ourselves stories about our past. It's all so flawed; a narrative filled with lessons, a filtered account of what amused or distressed us and nothing but... Definitely not a recording of what actually happened. What we remember is either what we choose to remember or are unable to forget. I

And hence I wonder what affiliation my daadi ma had with zarda. Even after the incurable dementia of Alzheimer's had dragged her into the blurred misery of confusion and language break down, she would remember the recipe of our traditional sweet rice. Really. All short and long term memory gone.

But what still remained with her, till the end of days, was almonds, raisins, cardamoms, sugar and ghee...

All but Death, can be Adjusted—

2009-06-21T23:55:00.000+06:00

Before every victory there's often a string of defeats. With every beginning there is a corresponding end. With the conclusion of things comes a start of new beginnings. Dun sets. Sun rises up. Some lose. Others win.

My daadi maa passed away tonight. The same moment, I watched the world coming down and the flags going up. Pakistan had just won the Twenty20 World Cup.

Daadi maa's demise still hasn't set in, I guess. The sheer sense of loss hasn't seeped in. I am more confused than sad. More apprehensive than devastated. I never enjoyed an intimate relationship with Daadi maa. Now that I think of it, I have no fond memories of her. None at all. I would respect her because of her rank in her family tree. Besides that, I never got to know her at all. And that's unsettling me now.

Chuchee told us last week, a baffling narrative. During the previous Shab-e-Baraat, Daadi maa kept praying 'may I never get crippled and may I just get fever and may Allah lift me genlty.' And that is exactly what happened. 2 months of high grade fever which just wouldn't get better. No amount of investigations would reveal an underlying lesion. The most potent, broad spectrum antibiotics, steriods, anti-pyretics: nothing was working. Things aggravated tonight. Daadi maa passed away.

Death! It's long shadows- evergrowing- can creep over you or your loved ones suddenly, at untimely oblivion and leave you dazed. Everyone gets what everyone gets. Life. And death. How we make our lives, break it, spend it, bend it, love it, hate it, how we win, we lose, we celebrate, we mourn- that we can adjust, that we can change. But as Emily Dickinson would put it -
Death—unto itself—Exception—
Is exempt from Change—

One day we'll all turn the corner and we won't be ready for it.

Yucky! Icky! Sicky!

2009-06-17T22:48:00.004+06:00

I don't know what's going on with this world! Instead of investing in famines of Africa or Stem Cell Research, they are busy creating the worst form of food-blasphemy! World's first canned cheeseburger is sold under Swiss Katadyn’s best known brand, Trekking-Mahlzeiten, a subsidiary company that develops specialist ready-meals for the outdoor, expedition and extreme athlete markets.

Really. Even if you are hiking. Alone. At the top of Everest. In the Alps. Or even if you are inside a volcano. Why in God's name would you like to eat this. Why would you hate yourself so much? I know it's very convenient...you simply throw the can into a boiling water container , give it a minute or two, fish it out, open the lid, and eat. Or if you have a working brain - just throw it away!!! Seriously this icky, yucky thing has a shelf life of twelve months without requiring refrigeration!

Imagine the kinds of preservatives and additives that'd have gone into the bread and meat (if it actually is bread and not cardboard.)

Hair. There. Everyhwere!

2009-06-09T18:29:00.002+06:00

Today, I found my first white hair.

My first reaction?
"!@#$!. Dammit. But I am still young!"

What was it? Am I going through the process induced by evolution into my genetic make up so that I may live to my healthiest until my reproductive age and die slowly and gradually thereafter? I must have stood staring in disbelief at that white hair for about three minutes. I have had rather fine hair.. Ok. Who am I kidding. I've had great, awesome hair. As compared to my friends at least. My best friend is almost bald. Has white hair that can almost reflect enough sunlight to boil a lake. The others in the gang; well...either bad hair. Or unhealthy hair. Or thinning hair. Or no hair. Either too much gel and too much spikes on an already large head. Phew. This is coming up as the most narcissistic blog entry ever but yeah till yesterday, I had hair that went perfectly fine with my Greek God looks. (Jeez if you think I'm being trashy, you should have stopped reading after the first line!)

My father didn't start getting grey hair until he was 53! And my mother won't even tell me about her hair history. Though I know she has been buying a hair colour for like 7 years now. Anyway.

What did I do? I have clipped that freaking pawn of Satan out of my head and put it into an envelope and dated it. 09/06/09. If you just change the dimensions of it, that date actually becomes 06/06/06!!! 666! Satan! I told you! This must have been a conspiracy of the Evil! It did unnerve me but I am determined to fulfill the prophesy.

I am hitting the treadmill tomorrow. And antioxidants. To combate age.

But it's Pizza night tonight. And Terminator Salvation on dvd!

Psalm 22: A Cry of Anguish and a Song of Praise

2009-06-04T17:07:00.004+06:00

The tragedy is that we stop longing for things that are ordinary. We are so caught up in our distracting life that we forget that below and behind, there's a sea of little moments, lonely seconds that can add to and make joyous days...

And then comes your birthday. The 22nd! And suddenly you realize man, the there goes another year. And there's lesser to time to live.

So...22 years, eh! And quite a day today! The students at our university suddenly woke up and started protesting for their 'rights'. Boycotted the classes. Condemned the administration. Because they had made life in medical college hell for them. (Yeah, right! Like it's not supposed to be so!) I guess it has become a fad now. Hopping on to the bandwagon. Hy Hy! Slogans! Bam Bam! Boycotts! Daikho daikho kon aya! You join us or face the consequences! Qadam barhaow! Unity! Aye Mard e Mujahid Jaag zara! Democracy! Pakistan ka matlub kya... We want justice, we want justice! OK fine, we have to register a protest but at the expense of our education and time? (AND ON MY FREAKING BIRTHDAY??!!!)
Really? How radical is that? And threatening the admin to reverse your failure in exams? What kind of doctors would such manipulators become...errr...

So. 22yrs! I was telling Awais that day. I would like to die on my birthday. It would seem like a grand gesture, you see. A complete circle. Just like Ingrid Bergman from Casablanca. And guess what. I was having lunch in this ridiculously expensive place on M.M.Alam Road and someone tries to ruin the Jalapeno Chicken by texting me "there's a threat of a Bomb Blast today in Gulgerg. Stay away etc etc." And I thought well, if I die right now the person who I like the most in this world would die WITH me and we'd go to hell, not alone (We were having lunch together). And we probably won't have to pay the bill. But my mother would be so angry I died without telling her. And my father would be so pissed off I died while he was abroad. See, I would be missed. So yeah, I hoped I won't die today.

My daadi ma isn't well. Alzheimer's. Full blown. When she is there but just isn't around anymore. She's lost so much of herself, she's just a blank paper. I never had a lovey-dovey relationship with her. There was a phase when I actually stopped meeting her, talking to her. And how badly I repent that today. For it pains me what passing years can do to you. And why you have to be grateful for what you have and what you are today. Who can tell what would come our way. Who knows what we'll lose. Or who we'll lose.

Ay aftaab hum ko zia-e-shaoor de

2009-05-15T18:27:00.002+06:00

A dramatic photograph released by NASA has captured Atlantis en route to Hubble, in silhouette against the Sun. The image was taken from the ground on Tuesday using a telescope with a solar filter.
How little man's proposals seem before the Divine Inventions, no?

Space Shuttle Atlantis caught in silhouette against the Sun

Woh aftaab jis se zamaane mein noor he,
Dil he, Khhirad he, Rooh-e-Rawan he, Shaoor he,

Ay aftaab hum ko zia-e-shaoor de,
Chashm-e-ekhirad ko apni tajalli se noor de

(The Sun which fills the world with its light, sublime
Illumines our sense and soul, our head and heart refines

Grant us the light of wisdom, O thou Light Supreme
Ignite the flame of reason with your dazzling beam?)
~Allama Iqbal

Mujhe Istemaal Karo...

2009-05-10T20:16:00.002+06:00

SJ: Writing it in Urdu might have helped...
SK: Iss qaum ko phir bhi aqal nahi aani thee...

Wo Hath Per Meray, Ungliyan Rakh Ker Boli ...

2009-04-29T22:17:00.006+06:00

Yassu Panjuu Haar Kabootar Doli...

(The Ainwaeen Post)

Differential Diagnosis

2009-04-23T22:16:00.002+06:00

"Kaalaa jaadoo ker dia uss kaali churhail ne..."

"Ectopic pregnancy bhi ho sakti hay..."

"Baita, Polycystic Ovary hay tujhay..."

"Koi baat nhy yaar. Banda ek kidney pe bhi survive ker leta hay..."

"Koi tumour shumor hoga..."

"Yaar marnay se pehle mera Birthday Gift de jyn please..."

"Kum khaya karo na..."

"Toilet aagya hoga tumhe zor ka..."

(My dear friends, the budding future physicians and saviours of the sick, giving opinions about the acute pain I had today in my left flank.)

Meckel Diverticulum

2009-04-21T23:05:00.002+06:00

She was there,
yes, she was
Blind-ended,
Asymptomatic,
And all so insipid...

She was there,
yes, she was
Gangrenous -
with the knowing of bloodless futility...
Like a useless little piece of black glazed paper,
which people would hate to buy...

And today,
she bled bad...
As we excised her out...
without
anaethesia...

Collapse of Curosity

2009-04-12T01:22:00.001+05:00

Have you ever wondered how all the presents are far more interesting before you unwrap them?

A portion of the Rainbow I have clutched...

2009-04-08T17:12:00.000+05:00

"Hill and vale once more under the poppy's lamp are bright,
In my heart, the nightingale has set new songs alight,

Violet, violet, azure, azure, golden, golden mantles-
Flowers or fairies of the desert, rank on rank in sight"

~Allama Iqbal; translation by VG Kiernan

An absolutely delightful spectacle suddenly appeared over the sky as the tired sun threw its last beams through the last drops of the anomalous rain we'd been having here in Lahore; a rainbow! Like God's inverted smile; like a lot of unreturned love; like a streak of a hundred million dreams; like hope...shining through the cold and grey clouds of fear!

Surgical Lessons on Qeema Bhare Karailay

2009-04-08T00:23:00.005+05:00

“In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed"

So said Charles Darwin.

You won't normally associate bitter gourds with surgery but there was no electricity and we had nothing else to do. So abbu and I decided to adapt and improvise and I ended up learning how to tie surgical knots on karailay; and as I like to believe, saved ammi from a lot of hassle.

It's not easy at all. The completed knot has to be firm but excessive tension breaks the suture and cuts the tissue. A big knot is a cosmetic no-no. The final tie has to be horizontal for better grip etc etc etc. And as a doc de nouveau my knots were pretty ugly. As you can see:

No beginner's luck for me, I guess.
:(

The Wheat Fields of Vehari

2009-04-06T12:52:00.003+05:00

There were no strings attached,
no memories,
no flashbacks
For it was like never before...

The walking stick; a Eucalyptus branch
And I, all alone, with me, myself
and a hundred thousand lithe dancers,
clad in gold,
dancing,
whirling
twirling,
making way for me,
from no where
to no where
and telling me,how somethings ought to be grand
without beginning,
without end

Some call it Flu — I call it hell!

2009-03-29T19:05:00.002+05:00

I weigh, I don't know, like 3 billion tons. And yet, I have to confess how defenseless, vulnerable and insanely nothing I am against germs mutating, multiplying, manipulating within my respiratory tract. The eyes are blurred. The spine is broke. The tongue is furred. The tonsils squeak. Everything tastes like grass. It's profane. Men; heavy-set and mountain-framed men, being rendered ill at the hands of viruses. So much for my spectacular ideas of becoming a Nobel winning Onco-surgeon. Right now I can just pray to see myself through. This Flu!

Heroes in Medical School

2009-03-28T16:14:00.001+05:00

There's a hero in everyone of my peers (and me!). There's a desire to display virtue. There's an ostentatious legend inside each of us that wants to be known for being courageous and noble and strong. And then of course, everyone loves to demand and command praise and respect and all the cherries that fall on the top. Someone around us would like to look chivalrous and and while handing vacant chair to a lady, would hit you on the knee. Keen learners would race ahead and 'catch' new patients to practice passing IM and IV syringes.
And I see my father, with his 30 yrs of saving lives and imparting knowledge and healing wounds and I wonder whether he still does have a desire to display virtue or is he really as emotionally placid and content with himself as he looks. Does he still nurture a legend within him? Or has he learnt about some Achilles heel: that part of himself that even the Styx of experience couldn't make formidable. What exactly is waiting for us down the road?What happens to everyday heroes? What more do they want? I wish someday, abbu would tell me that.

Champions!

2009-03-17T20:33:00.001+05:00

I've paid my dues -
Time after time -
I've done my sentence
But committed no crime -
And bad mistakes
I've made a few
I've had my share of sand kicked in my face -
But I've come through

We are the champions - my friends
And we'll keep on fighting - till the end -
We are the champions -
We are the champions
No time for losers
'Cause we are the champions - of the world -

I've taken my bows
And my curtain calls -
You brought me fame and fortune and everything that goes with it
-
I thank you all -

But it's been no bed of roses
No pleasure cruise -
I consider it a challenge before the whole human race -
And I ain't gonna lose -

We are the champions - my friends
And we'll keep on fighting - till the end -
We are the champions -
We are the champions
No time for losers
'Cause we are the champions - of the world!
~Queen

Aaj Mein Aagay - Zamana hay Peechay!

2009-03-17T19:56:00.007+05:00

Never short of colours, even amidst the smoke, noise and rage, Lahore's roads would always have their own comedy...

There is a road from the eye to the heart that clearly does not go through the intellect...

Round is a shape! I am in shape!

Wrong! I had bad tenses - God kicked me out of Hell

It's deliberate, baba! Wrong spellings are IN!

Zara Chehra tow Dikhaow!!!

Of desires

2009-03-09T00:34:00.000+05:00

We walk around carrying the heavy burden of our desires. And those with a lighter luggage are bound to fly high.

At the Edge of All Gloom; a little Beacon is always there!

2009-03-07T19:17:00.011+05:00

I am desperate to find something solid to stand on. A faith to hold on to. The serenity to accept things I can not change. Some knowledge within my heart, beyond the reach of proof. My common sense says not to but I want to,need to evade my fears. Fear of dying someday suddenly. Fear of watching my city lose its sheen. Fear of truth.

And look what I found in my Inbox...nothing like a dramatic redemption, of course. Just a smile. Flicker. Just a reminder Lahore had for me;

Whatever happens, Ill leave it all to chance...

Another heartache, another failed romance...

On and on, does anybody know what we are living for?

I guess I'm learning, I must be warmer now...

I'll soon be turning, round the corner now...

Outside the dawn is breaking

But inside in the dark I'm aching to be free

The show must go on!
The show must go on!

And so asks Lahore!

2009-03-05T22:09:00.003+05:00

What is it,
that I did?
What brings upon me
the wrath, the agony?
Ah!
If
only
you
could
let
me
show
again...
my
love
for
you!

Schmerz

2009-02-24T19:45:00.002+05:00

It's the sorrow. The grief. But it's different because it's the reaction that one accepts as one's necessary portion in life. And it's different because you just can not relate to it when you haven't had the loss. You fear it. But you never feel it. We are all apprehensive about when will it happen? How will it affect me? Will I survive it?But it's so personal. It's not for you unless it's in you.

Yes we sympathize with friends. We share. And become sad ourselves. But I guess we never feel the exhausting mechanism that would otherwise rob us of both physical and emotional energy. For a person in mourning, everything'll be so raw. So painful. But the schmerz would never take the real toll on our bodies.

It only pricks you, tears you when the grief is yours or once was.

And no mater how considerate and selfless we proclaim to be, we in the end are left with hollow condolence notes like life-is-an-acceptance-of-all-that-is...
has-been...
will-be...
And-will-not-be.

Dear Kate Winslet

2009-02-22T19:49:00.003+05:00

Dear Kate Winslet,

Look what an Oscar did to Nicole Kidman, Halle Berry, Renée Zellweger, Adrien Brody and Russell Crowe. It's your sixth nom, yeah. And this time at least you do have the right to reign victorious. But it would be such a shame if you get the naked golden man and end up banished to botox (Kidman), Catwoman (Berry) and mediocrity (Zellweger).

I am still putting my money on you. It's okay if you're labelled as "that actress who always gets her kit off". It's perfectly okay for your male fans, at least. But what's more okay is that you keep on pleasing us with films like The Reader and Revolutionary Road.

Hope you win it tonight. And evade the jinx of it too.

Good luck!

Hur ek din udaas din; tamaam shab udaasiyaan..

2009-02-21T22:51:00.002+05:00

Tell me, does that happen to you too? You wake up and brush your teeth and you don't know why. You slap your cheeks with the aftershave. You look in the mirror and you look away. Get dressed. And look in the mirror. Again. Breathe in you tummy. Do I look okay, today? Too tight, eh! And you shake your head.
Munch. Munch. Munch. Bread slices like wood. Egg? Rubber! Jam? Forget it!
You go through the day just like that. Put on a smile. Talk loud. Crack jokes. Never once feeling like it all. At all.

All this while, thinking. What that other person would be thinking. Doing. Saying. Anything about you? Any passing thoughts? Is there something behind the distance? A bafflement, perhaps? Absence? Something? Anything?

Tell me, does that happen to you too?

Decisions and Flirtation

2009-02-19T19:46:00.003+05:00

I realized that I wanted him to come inside. Which surprised me even more. A decision, any decision, tends to bring flirtation to an end. Marriage, a quintessential decision, being a good example.

~In The Cut by Susanne Moore

The passage rang some bells. And I revisited an old text message-conversation.

"Oy, are you flirting with me?
"Er. I am not! I guess. Kinda. Am I?"
"Well, obviously you kinda are! And you don't want to say it. That's it. Flirting!"
"Ahan?"
"Don't. Just don't. You suck at it anyway."

Books

2009-02-16T00:32:00.002+05:00

Little
shimmering
flasks,
with
Soft
golden
honey,
Enticing,
Inviting,
and
Delighting!

11

2009-02-13T23:32:00.002+05:00

I remember I's so ecstatic that day. Dada Abbu had taught me the multiplication table of number 11. And I was so glad something could be so simple. And so easy. And comforting. And smooth. I skipped around. And sang it loud. 11 ones are 11. 11 twos are 22. 11 threes are 33...And I'd stop at 11x9=99 and I'd start it again with 11 ones are 11...

I just didn't know 11x10=110 or 11x11=121...My world ended at 99.

Now that I look back, I think our childhood is just like number 11. When we are living it, it seems so simple. And easy. And comforting. And smooth. And then one day we enter the doorsteps of adulthood and suddenly its complicated. You find out the frightening facts. And you see the inner 11 of you transforming into a difficult entity. You find out it is the smallest two-digit prime number in the decimal base. Or that Sodium has an atomic number; 11. And the player wearing 11 will usually play on the left-hand side, as in soccer.

Just like life and time. You gradually come to know how the easier,simpler days are so over!

PS: Oh, and that the F11 key toggles full screen viewing mode in Mozilla FireFox. 11! The Panoramic View of Life!
:)

The Fish, The Flower and The Fan

2009-02-08T21:42:00.007+05:00

What better farewell to the passing winters than celebrate one of the best gifts of the chilly season: fried fish! So we said our eulogies at Haji Sardar Macchli Farosh (foodstreet walay) instead of shallow frying it in olive oil at home. Definitely a tastier choice, if not healthier!

Remember I bought those seedlings, ages ago? My first flower blossomed today! A deep velvety blue Petunia! And it did so overnight! My cerulean, cyanic trumpet! And I've a name for it. Jimmy Blue Devito. (More Martin Scorsese than Botanical, my apologies.)

I have no interests in antiques but this one has quite a history. Our mechanic-uncle (junior school lingo) showed me this today. It's a 67 year old exhaust fan. His father carried this fan and Rs.22/- from Amritsar during Partition. He had stolen it from an army school's toilet and was sure it'd sell big. But apparently, no one here had enough money to buy an industrial-size exhaust fan. It was finally launched officially in the small grocery store his father established in Mozang, Lahore. And now adorns the wall of his garage. Does it work? Yeah! Alive and kicking!

Dawn All About Lifestyle Exhibition

2009-02-07T19:25:00.010+05:00

It was an afternoon well spent, actually. And for a number of reasons.

1. The Lahore Nostalgia: A kaleidoscopic journey

Two of my Alma Maters, Government College University and King Edward Medical University adorned the wonderful collection of old and new Lahore photographs. The pride! And the magic of black in white!

2. Meeting Chef Gulzar

Hallelujah! The one single cooking show I actually get to follow regularly nowadays (thanks to WAPDA) is Live @ 9 on Masala. And to my utter surprise I bumped into Chef Gulzar at the Food Court. (Nouman later told me I was gushing buttery praise at him. Like the aunties who call on his show.) By the way, Gulzar promised to mention my name and make a cake for me on his show. As I said, Hallelujah!

3. The Dog Show

An over-agile dalmatian won the Best Dog Award. He wasn't my favourite though. A little dachshund should have won. The sausage. The hot-dog!

4. The FM Lady

A pretty lady from FM89 was doing a survey on their shows. And she filled my form for me as I munched a KFC ka Zinger in a very ungentlemanly fashion. But food comes first, na. She should have known. But she did hand me the 89voucher. And it had this Mondo Bizaarro postcard: my favourite show on 89! Tada!

5. Getting Lost
Oh yeah, we lost our way. Couldn't actually find where the whole event was hapening. Roamed the whole premises of Fortress. And finally came to know the arena was just behind the car park. Leh!

Hollywood, Here I come!

2009-02-06T23:00:00.008+05:00

I was watching The Reader yesternight and there was plenty in it that kept me awake till late after midnight. The guilt. The responsibility. Kate Winslet's haunting, haunting performance; the face, the pathos she carries within every fine line, every wrinkle! Reawakening of memories of reading Bernard Schlink's bestselling German novel (on which the movie is based) that last summer. The loss of innocence in Post-War Germany. The highly charged, exceptionally well-shot love-making scenes (make love, make sense!).

And a little bit of myself.

That's my university Roll Number. 215. And that's a scene from the movie. A very small glimpse. A single shot. Just a cameo. A guest-appearance, you see.

Ah! And how it felt working in a Golden Globe Award winning, Oscar nominated movie?

Well. I'm too modest. (I was so not ready for this, I hadn't prepared an acceptance speech...)

;)

Dear Family...

2009-02-05T13:27:00.002+05:00

Let's slice this life
into
what's yours:
simple.
true.
homey.
nice.
fine.
and what's mine:
enchantingly wild!

Lahore - The Fruit Chaat

2009-02-03T22:32:00.002+05:00

Ammi-Abbu returned from Islamabad and as always like true Lahoris they are complaining. The wide lanes, the hills, the sectors and the landscaped medians; no gaudy film-billboards, no donkey-carts, no over-decorated fat buses. And too clean. Too healthy. Like an apple.

I bet they had been missing the mixed plate of Lahore's traffic jams and spice of the noise...and the explosion of messy tastes; Ah! apna Lahore!

When there's nothing, there's mayonnaise, my friend!

2009-02-02T22:42:00.004+05:00

Ah! It took 2 egg yolks, 1teaspoon salt, 1/2 teaspoon powdered mustard, 1/2 teaspoon sugar, 4 teaspoons vinegar and 1-1/2 cups olive oil to cheer me up! Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you, my home-made mayonnaise!

Besides being the single most useful invention in the junk-food world (it really is), making mayo is therapeutical for you. Like a visit to a shrink.

You might like to think of it as the stuff they take out of your arteries after a heart attack. My parents are pretty sure it has terrorist origins. But I am still not convinced it is unhealthy. Slopping it in burgers and sandwiches is great. Making it? Even better!

Who could say this creamy emulsion of egg yolks and oil (ahem!) was this easy to make! And economical too. So here's my contribution in reducing the impact of the global economic crunch.

Make your on mayonnaise!

I cried at Pity -- not at Pain

2009-01-31T20:22:00.003+05:00

There's a lot of vague concern. Worries. Anxieties. And then there's chronic pain. My parents share 60 years of combined experience in medical profession among themselves and I find them helpless before the pain. No combination of drugs, not even the scary Disease Modifying Anti-Rheumatics, could resolve Ammi's arthritis. It's not acute; not stabbing or gripping she says. Just thumping. Alive. Living. Inside her. Living. On her. To think of that alone, is sad enough. But on top of that, the fact that contemporary medicine is failing right in front of me is painful. Pitiful. Especially when I'm foraying into it myself. Huh! The 'triumph of anatomy, physiology and pathology'! So much for that!

We are being trained in modern day medicine where there's a heavy accent on treating patients by specialists. Treating aimed at underlying causes. Drugs targeting infections. But right at home, there's this dolores vagi, qui nomen a sede fixa non habent (wandering pains, that do not take a name from a fixed site). Lassitude. Stupor. Malaise. Ache. Soreness. Pain.

The kind of pain that's not a mere symptom. Rather a disease in itself.

A Lesson in Apathy

2009-01-30T14:30:00.001+05:00

"I hate to break it to you, but there is no big lie, there is no system, the universe is indifferent."

~Don Draper in Mad Men

Ennui

2009-01-30T12:05:00.005+05:00

lavottgallery

Ennui

By Saad Javed

Listless and lethargic, I sit

And wait

For my turn at the barbershop,

I know the dexterous hands

Of the blathering barber

Would ruin my hair, too

For I would ask him to do,

The very same thing

I fail to even laugh,

At myself

Pity my catharsis comes through a haircut,

Pity my barber is my shrink,

Pity my falling hair teach me,

Growing affections too, are

To be cut,

Evil be nipped in the bud!

Pity I hang between what I know

And want to know,

What I feel

And want to feel…

Published in Poets' Corner (Us, The News)

Sohni and Alice Albinia's Discrepancy

2009-01-29T11:21:00.004+05:00

"I sit in a Sindhi village with the stars in the indigo sky the only light, the warm breeze blowing across my skin, the rustle of maize in the fields and the lowing of buffalo the only other sounds, listening to a farmer singing 'Sur Sohni' ...it is easy to mistake the century and be cast back to the dark night when Sohni drowned in the tempestuous, treacherous Indus."

So writes Alice Albinia in 'Empires of the Indus'. And it's historically incorrect. The tale of Sohni-Mahiwal took place sometime during the late Mughal period, in a town on the banks of the Chenab (and not the Indus!). The town is identified as present day Gujrat.

Secondly, Ms. Albinia keeps associating this tale with Shah Abdul Latif.Hasn't Fazal Shah always been considered a 'Heer specialist' here? Just the way Waris Shah made Heer a household name?

Here's a rough translation of Fazal Shah's magnum opus coming to an end:

It’s dark and the river is in flood
There is water all around me
How am I going to meet Mahiwal?

If I keep going, I will surely drown
And if I turn back
I would be going back on my promise
And letting Mahiwal down

I beg you (O pitcher!), with folded hands,
Help me meet my Mahiwal
You always did it, please do it tonight, too

(The pitcher replies):

I wish I, too, were baked in the fire of love, like you are
But I am not. I apologize; I cannot help

Tag: Eight Big Turn-Offs

2009-01-28T14:06:00.002+05:00

1. Referring to yourself in the third person. (One goes through life like a leaf falling down and one thinks...)Urgh!

2. Time checks on TV. (Tiinggg Dhiiing! This time check is brought to you by Khopra Candy!)

3. Kareena Kapoor's size zero figure. (No flesh, all bones!)

4. Crying babies and noisy kids in a bus-journey.

5. Talkative ricksha-walllahs

6. Lychee skin/peel (It has this weird reptilian feel!)

7. The Zoom Language (This annoying way of reading headlines; started with celeb-gossip programs like Page 3 on channel Zoom; being copied everywhere on Geo and Aaj and Express...like Shahrukh aur Salman ki hui fight! Karachi mein hua bijli ka bohraan mazeed sangeen! )

8. Chain smses with emotional/religious blackmailing (forward this sms to 12 people. Don't ignore/delete it! Warna 12 din tak unlucky raho gay.)

The Genius of A.R.Rehman

2009-01-27T09:36:00.002+05:00

I watched Slumdog Millionaire yesterday. And it hardly ever happens that you wake up and find yourself in a trance - like you can't believe what you'd seen last night. Or heard.

And that's what I feel right now.

A few days back when I watched him live, very shyly accepting a Golden Globe Award for the best original score in a motion picture, I could only appreciate the fact that he had done something Amitabh Bachchan, Shahrukh or Amir or no Indian had done before. But now that I have seen the movie and heard 'Jai Ho' and 'Ringa Ringa' and 'O Saya' and the edgy, upfront background scores...I have to say, A.R. Rehman is a musical genius. The songs melt into the story unlike the regular on-your-face sleazy item numbers. The movie (itself, an awesome buffet of heart-warming cinema and a modern day fairy-tale) was a tad bit too magical to be plausible.Yet it was the magic of it that stayed with me all night long.

The wizard here was of course Mr. A.R.Rehman.

Aimless, Listless, Sleepless

2009-01-24T16:19:00.002+05:00

Exams are over. And I am having trouble going to sleep. I can feel the mild ache of fatigue in my body but my mind is overly alert; as though it would never go back to the shut-down mode again. I closed my eyes and asked my mind to take me somewhere safe and calm. With smooth dark (expensive!) chocolate. And salted peanuts. And Reader's Digest in my hands. And Nancy Sinatra's Summer Wine somewhere in the backdrop. But nothing.

And I decide to tidy up my room instead. It's a total jungle right now. And there's this stench of textbooks. I know I have to get out of here. I leave is as messed up as ever. Quite house. Wall's ka ice-cream vendor and the jingle-tune. What next? Lums Olympiad? Lost, the Tv series? Bake a carrot cake? Sigh.

Now that the exams are over, I really need to set a new center of my universe.

Hope

2009-01-22T00:32:00.004+05:00

Hope

~SJ

Glimmer,
of new hopes
Hope,
for better days
Days,
that melt into nights
Nights,
with so many moons,
Moons,
pulling the tides of seas,
Seas,
of endless pain,
Pain,
of impending doom, of fear
Fear,
that tomorrow, there'll be blood,
Blood,
congealed, yet red
Red,
with anger and shame,
Shame,
on the wordless, heartless, ruthless world
World,
where millions throng to watch him dance,
Dance,
deaf to the noises of violence,
Violence,
And so much of it, it fails to surprise,
Surprise,
Or inspire,
Inspire,
or desire,
Desire,
for a glimmer,
Glimmer,
of new hopes
Hope,
for better days...

(In context of President Obama's inauguration)

The Worst Viva in Documented History of Forensic Medicine

2009-01-21T22:48:00.003+05:00

He said: What is fornication?
I replied: Sir formic acid is one of the toxic metabolites of methanol along with formaldehyde, responsible for...
He said: I asked fornication! Not for formic acid!
I replied: Sorry Sir. Sir, formication is the sensation of insects crawling on and under the skin, usually associated with chronic cocaine intoxication also called 'coke bug'.
He said: Bachay I asked you what's FORNICATION?
I replied: Sorry sir. Fornication means...adultery sir.
He said: Tch. You don't listen properly. You didn't study properly. Itna asaan sawaal tha, woh bhi ghalat! Tum logon ko aur chahye kya?

And how badly I wanted to say..."Sir buss ik naya connection chahye!"

Happy Birthday, Abbu!

2009-01-16T20:18:00.001+05:00

Look, I made you a birthday card! (coutesy MS Paint)
:)

These Exams: A parody

2009-01-15T16:28:00.005+05:00

They keep saying tomorrow's got something for me.
something they call joy,
but I confess that's a lie!

I've been messin' where I should've been studying
and now someone else is gettin' all my best.

These exams are made for killing, and that's just what they'll do
one of these days these professors are gonna shoot out our poo...

(Spoofed up version of...)

An advice...

2009-01-12T00:42:00.002+05:00

This, I received today from a family friend, all the way from Riyaadh. Thank you, Dr. Fatima, for the very kind reminder!
*frown*

A Case of Gratifying Kinnows!

2009-01-09T22:14:00.003+05:00

I always associate three words with winters; exams, coffee and kinnows (or kinoos). And Of all these, there's no question which one is the healthiest of all. There's this delightfully devilish melange of sweet and sour 'toothsome-ness' that comes with kinnows. And that alone makes it one of my most favourite fruits.

It came as a mighty surprise when abbu nonchalantly told me from behind the newspape today that kinnows are not actually 'natural' fruits! They are hybrids! And they are not a creation of ours! So I googled it and that's what I learnt.

"Kinnow was developed by H.B. Frost at the University of California at Riverside in 1935 by cross-pollinating the King tangor and the Willow Leaf or Mediterranean Mandarin. Courtesy of the parent stock, another name of this hybrid Citrus is Wilking."

Man, these firangis can be geniuses! Because, now that I think of it, these wilkings in the gentle winter sun can actually make me forget how lousy my exams are going...

Vicky Cristina Barcelona: A Review

2009-01-04T23:13:00.003+05:00

Now here's a crazy little thing I watched yesternight. I had heard quite a lot about Woody Allen but the only 'Woody Allen' I got to see (and dislike a lot!) was "Scoop" [2006] which I watched for Scarlet Johansson and not Allen.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona, on the other hand is an exceptionally well made flick. It's very very witty. And amusingly ambiguous. The style is new to me, at least. There's an economy of storytelling, confident underplaying of exuberance and a relaxed use of a simple voice-over narrative . The screenplay has subtle touch, as it was written for pleasure in one draft and just happened to come out perfect.

There's nothing to hide...that I can't disclose in a review. It's so simple and so intriguing all at the same time; Vicky and Cristina are two best friends who come to Barcelona to spend a summer and both fall in love with the same guy, Jose Antonio who's still in love with his ex-wife Maria, who had tried to kill him but is still in love with him. See? Simple. And intriguing.

All the characters are played beautifully. The thing is, they are all 'low-level' neurotics. And they have been played so unassumingly, the ambiguity they have, becomes their clearest strength as the movie progresses. Scarlett Johansson, as the adventurous Vicky, is never more fitting or appealing: it's like she breezes through her part like she doesn't even care. Rebecca Hall (never heard of her before!) is a good, strong yet shaky Cristina. Javier Bardem had to point to prove which he does: his Oscar was totally justified.

But what came as a surprise was Penelope Cruz as the crazy-bitchwife Maria. Man, she's hysterical! Where was she hiding before? It's like a performance and then an exclammation mark. (!) Woody Allen just turned her loose!

Effortless maturity. Minimal approach. Simple, small drama. Light comedy moments. Brilliant cast. Flawless direction. Subtle Cinema that serves no hefty, presumptious purpose. Vicky Cristina Barcelona was a total revelation of styles to me.

Kemcol 08

2009-01-03T18:50:00.007+05:00

The ripest fruit first falls, right? It wasn't falling and I had been waiting for too long now. And today, finally, our annual university magazine Kemcol for the year 2008 came out. And it's good. And it makes me really happy. I'm a very modest man, you see. [;)] I am not going to boast how many hours I spent editing the grammatical mistakes. I am too humble to actually write on my blog about the ordeal I had to go through at the printing Press, that too while fasting in Ramadan. I am discreet and prudent and graceful so I won't tell you about the day I sat with the composer, in tears, when it so happened that we almost lost all our data to a freaking virus and Awais wasn't around and I nearly had a major intestinal-hurry episode at the spot when we finally recovered it by simply restarting the PC. No I am too unassuming and coy to claim credit. But I have it in my hands now in black and white...and all the lovely shades of blue and I have to say the bread earned by the sweat of the brow is thrice blessed bread and is far sweeter than the tastless loaf of idleness.

The New Year Post

2009-01-02T01:04:00.004+05:00

I thought I'd write a real charming post. A wonderful, sugary "Oh-a-new-dawn-new-hope-new-life-new-year" message. But then, you see I had this insane urge to write a silly little crazy thing. Just for the sheer sake of it.

So I did that.

Naddi kinaray
baitha duddoo...

GHURRHUPP!

(Happy New Year!
:D)

Winter's Irony!!!

2008-12-29T22:04:00.004+05:00

Word verification

I just can't stop smiling! Look what just happened to me. I was posting a comment on a blog and the word verification...sardi!

:D

2008: My Bests ands Worsts ( II )

2008-12-27T21:34:00.001+05:00

Best Songs I heard in 2008:

1. Teri Orhe (Singh is Kingh)
2. I kissed a girl (Katy Perry)
3. Shake It (Metro Station)
4. Pehli Nazar (Atif Aslam-Race)
5. Viva La Vida (Coldplay)

Worst ‘kinda-songs’ I ‘kinda-heard’ in 2008:

1. Bhootni ke (Singh is King)

"Ek Tera Bhai, Hai Zyappa, Ho Bada Shadaye, Hai Zyaappa,
Ek Teri Behna, Hai Zyaappa, Bhainge Naina, Hai Zyaappa,
O Piyo Piyakkad, Hai Zyaappa, O Maayi Fakkad, Hai Zyaappa,
O Chaachu Langda, Hai Zyaappa, Aye Paave Bhangra, Hai Zyaappa,
Kehn De Tennu, Hai Zyaappa, Oye Door Pitte Mooh, Hai Zyaappa..

O Nach Da Sab To Aage Aage, Scent Laga Ke, Sehra Saja Ke
O Nach Da Sab To Aage Aage, Scent Laga Ke, Sehra Saja Ke
Uthe Bhaade Da Suit Boot Neeche,

Tennu Ghodi Kinhe Chadaya, Bhootni Ke,
Tennu Dulha Kinhe Banaya, Bhootni Ke,
Bhootni Ke, Bhootni Ke,
Ho Tennu Ghodi Kinhe Chadaya, Bhootni Ke,
Tennu Dulha Kinhe Banaya, Oye Bhootni Ke,

Zyaappa, Zyaappa, Zyaappa, Zyaappa, Zyaappa…"

2. No Competition! At ALL!

2008: My Bests ands Worsts ( I )

2008-12-27T21:13:00.001+05:00

Best Things I ate in 2008:

1.Tawa Chicken at Kukoo’s Den
2.Tripple Chocolate Brownie from Masoom’s
3.Beef Burger with Thick Cut French Fries at Gunsmoke
4.Stuffed Chicken Breast at Salt & Pepper
5.Al-Karim ka Bun-Makhan-Shaami

Best Books I read in 2008:

1.A Case of Exploding Mangoes by M. Hanif
2.The Kitchen God’s Wife by Amy Tan
3.The Adventures of Amir Hamza by Musharraf Farooqi (still just halfway through)
4.White Mughals by William Dalrymple
5.Blasphemy by Tehmina Durrani

Best TV Shows I watched in 2008:

1. Grey’s Anatomy Season 2
2. Heroes Season 2
3. Weeds Season 1
4. Grey’s Anatomy Season 3
5. Weeds Season 4

Worst Indian Movies I saw in 2008:

1. Tashan
2. Drona
3. Yuvvraaj
4. Karzzz
5. Krazzy 4

Worst Hollywood Movies I saw in 2008:

1. The Love Guru
2. Sex and the City
3. Disaster Movie
4. 10,000 BC
5. What Happens in Vegas

(contd...)

Have you Ever…?

2008-12-26T23:54:00.003+05:00

By Saad Javed

Have you ever gone up the rain?

Leaving behind,

The vows, the woes, the pain?

Have you ever climbed,

The crystal ladder of gentle droplets?

Have you cried

In the cryptic rain

And ever let the gems so dear

Take over the trail of tears?

Have you ever felt

The mutinous soul in you,

Turning tango, getting all wet?

Ever jumped barefoot,

In the mound of grass,

Freshly mown and moist,

Have you ever been in love,

With the rain?

Have you ever gone up the rain?

Poets' Corner, Us (The News)

There is always...

2008-12-24T23:36:00.004+05:00

I got this really interesting text message today (courtesy Haris). It was probably the only sms I've received in [i]months[/i] that I read and I smiled and I read again and guess what! It wasn't one of those Faraz jokes.

There is always...

-A little truth behind every 'just kidding'...
-A little curiosity behind every 'just wondering'...
-A little knowledge behind every 'I don't know'...
and...
-A little emotion behind every 'I don't care'...

It just felt like a satisfying ending line of an Amy Tan novel. Like a fullstop...a smiling one!
:)

The Whole Blah Damn Thing

2008-12-22T23:42:00.003+05:00

Silas: Yeah! Sure! Death is no big deal! Coz life is just blah, blah, blah?

Andy: Look, Silas. Life is just blah, blah, blah. You hope for blah, and sometimes you find it but mostly it's blah...and waiting for blah. And hoping you were right about the blahs you've made. And then! Just when you think you've got the whole blah damn thing figured out and you're surrounded by the ones you've blah-ed, death shows up! And...blah, blah, blah!

Silas: Alright, let's do this.

('Weeds' Season 4, Episode 3: The Whole Blah Damn Thing)

Hum bhool gaye hur baat magar…

2008-12-19T17:11:00.008+05:00

Saad Javed

"There are five steps,' he said, reaching for the platter, 'that make all the difference between the art of eating and the act of swallowing.' I watched Mr. Mazhar Udeen Mortaza with indulgent fascination and nodded fervently like the puppy-nerds who always sit on the front benches of the lecture theatre. 'First,' he smiled, 'mental preparation.' He took a deep breath and sighed. 'Next, the pleasure of the eyes.' He worshipped the auburn pieces of chicken standing like a majestic sphinx in a desert of golden red gravy. 'Now for the nose.' He brought his nostrils hazardously close to the hot curry and inhaled. 'Ah,' he smiled wider. I felt like a voyeur spying on a profoundly wild moment. 'Now for the delight of mouth, tongue and palate.' He deftly made a bite-size cone of the chapatti, filled it with the succulent chicken, held it in his mouth and chewed. With eyes closed, he swallowed and resumed. 'The final step is appreciation. Messages from the palate to the brain. Judge. Calculate. Let the food build memories. Mmm.' Eye closed. 'Awful!' He shook his head. Eyes still closed.

'But you cooked it!' I exclaimed with more horror than surprise. He finally opened his eyes. Blood-shot eyes. Full of pain and longing. And tears.

'I invented it, son.'

I was in Brick Lane, the East End of London, often known as Banglatown. I had refuted a once-in-a-lifetime visit to Madame Tussauds Wax Museum only to visit the location of Monica Ali's Booker Short-listed Brick Lane, the heart of London's Bangladeshi community where Salman Rushdie had set parts of his derided novel Satanic Verses; but more importantly the mecca of Anglo-Indian cuisine. Behind the windows adorned with sleazy posters of Zeenat Aman and Rekha and beyond the done-to-death melody of Lata's Inhi logo ne le lia dupatta mera, there were sights, sounds and smells I cherished more than the wax statues of Angelina Jolie or Adolf Hitler: gaudy Rajasthani tablecloths, patchy service, heaped dishes of prawn biryani, aromatic sweet yellow dhansak, sizzling Kashmiri hareesa and luscious palak paneer! Tempting though it all was, I was way too curious about Chicken Tikka Masala; which according to the former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, 'is now the true British National Dish!' So my quest had taken me to Spice Bazaar; the oldest, most revered curry restaurant of London, to meet Mazhar Udeen Mortaza; the restaurateur, proprietor and head-chef himself.

'So you want me to believe that you invented a dish which Britons now eat at least twenty tons a week?' I mocked.

'Well, yes but…'

'And you never got a legal patent, a copyright reserve to it? Or you never claimed your right to it? Or you never cashed…'

'Son, it was not an inspired creation to start with and-'

'Are you freaking kidding me? It's the shining example of Britain's multiculturalism…'

'NO! It was a reckless reply to an ignorant gora's complaint that my chicken tikka was too dry so I whipped a can of Campbell's thirty-pence tomato soup with yogurt and mirchi and provided a mongrel gravy.'

'Still, you say you are the pioneer…'

'No, I am a criminal! My curry tastes horrid but worse, it's not even authentic.'

'You could have your statue put up in Madame Tussauds!'

Silence. And then.

'Yes, I could have that. While the Death Squad was dumping my brother's corpse down the Brahmaputra into the Bay of Bengal. Yes, I could have cashed my chicken while vultures grew fat in my desh. Yes, I could have claimed fame while four hundred thousand women were losing their honour. Yes, I am the founding father of Britain's national bloody dish but I watched helplessly as Dhaka fell to one-fifth of its existing population. You see, young man, I was just a bit pre-occupied thirty-seven years ago.'

For a moment, my inside self and my outside self stopped to match. My compass needle was spinning around and around indicating the wordless direction of nowhere. I don't remember now how much time lapsed before I heard him speak again.

'There are random moments, boy -- tossing a piece of fish in hot oil, ironing the seams of the shirt-collar flat, standing at the hotel window and looking out at the rain -- when I feel a wavelike rush of pain; when I feel my past and my present are diverging like those geometry proofs where the two lines never touch, they just keep growing farther apart and how it'll always be like that. You shouldn't have asked; the old wounds have not healed. And the chicken itself may not be that awful. But it had built memories. Painful memories. Old. But still very painful.'

Happiness is just around!

2008-12-16T22:45:00.005+05:00

Once upon a time there was a small kid. He lived in a nice small home. In those ancient times, pharamceutical companies used to make really nice calendars and gave them to his father. He had one in his room and it had many cute paintings with little gems of wisdom. One of them showed many smiling flowers (not the ones I have pasted here) and announced"Happiness is just around!"

Unfortunately, the little kid was was too little back then to get the message. Even more unluckily, pharmaceutical companies stopped making such calendars as he grew up.

But today the kid read a piece of news and he knew what they meant when they said "Happiness is just around".

Here's the news.

Happiness is contagious, study says:

"...a new study proposes that happiness is transmitted through social networks, almost like a germ is spread through personal contact. The research was recently published in BMJ, a British medical journal.
'We’ve known for some time that social relationships are the best predictor of human happiness, and this paper shows that the effect is much more powerful than anyone realized,' said Daniel Gilbert, author of “Stumbling on Happiness” and a professor of psychology at Harvard University.
Their primary finding: People who are surrounded by happy people are more likely to be happy themselves..."

So you see, the little boy is making sure he is surrounded by happy people. And if not, then he will try spread the germ to those who are not.

The rose is a rose, And was always a rose!

2008-12-14T20:41:00.007+05:00

The seedlings I bought today from the nursery were shockingly expensive but I just couldn't resist. The very fashionably named New Age Herborium had this wonderful sly little catalogue that presented a variety of attractive flowers. I ended up buying young plants of dahlia (for their dazzling colours), petunia (the small trumpets), verbena (the purple-top confetti) and finally, five wonderful, already blooming healthy stems of rose (because the rose is a rose!).

I hope my little adopted kiddies would survive the winter chill, especially the roses (sorry for the bias, O flowers of inferior species!). I have my fingers crossed; let's see if my roses live up to all the hoopla their ancestors have garnered over the years from poets and lovers...

~verses; Parveen Shakir

The lost winter cantata

2008-12-14T00:02:00.004+05:00

Is there a way, I can count,
the cost,
of what I lost,
Is there someone, who'd sing,
the lost winter cantata,
whose sonata I hear inside me,
whose lyrics I know by heart,
whose themes stir my soul,
but the romance of it,
I lost,
to the wicked noise of
bullets,
bombs,
recession,
and
now...
the tidings of war!

~SJ
(The moon came so close tonight and still couldn't light up our lives...)

Eid Haiku

2008-12-10T22:17:00.002+05:00

My Eid yesterday
fit neatly, gently within
the TV schedule

~(My apologies if I've breached 5-7-5 syllable rule.)

Alone

2008-12-10T21:52:00.004+05:00

At the horizon, earth and sky suddenly reach a truce. There is a sudden transformation that engulfs our lane as soon as the muezzins start delivering the Maghrib ki azaan. The kids who had been playing so fervently in the street kind of vanish into thin air; they get 'called in' one by one. I noticed today, the first ones called were full of resentment.

But they needn't have been. As lively as those little kids have been, as much as you love a party; it has to end at some point of the day. Because today, I learnt, nothing ever happened after they left anyway. Things just ended in a slow motion. Like an autumn leaf falling through the air.

So you see, it isn't so bad to go first. To head towards the home. It's much better than being last, when you'd be left. Standing there.

Alone.

If you’re short of trouble, take a goat...

2008-12-07T13:06:00.004+05:00

I have a feeling about goats. They are invariably mischievous and they have an individual character and intelligence and that makes me uncomfortable around them. I go near them and they pause to stare with their huge vacant eyes and bleat sneeringly. And they well, they are ungrateful creatures. They eat [i]all day long[/i] and bleat throughout the night. So much for the things they associate with animals;( [i]reliable, many full of love, true in their affections, predictable in their actions, grateful and loyal[/i])!

God honest, this one has been giving me mean 'grins'.

Perhaps he knows I don't have an affectionate admiration for mutton. Anyway, Eid-ul-Adha Mubarak!

Psychology, anyone?

2008-12-02T12:26:00.002+05:00

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is an anxiety disorder that can develop after exposure to one or more terrifying events that threatened or caused grave physical harm. It is a severe and ongoing emotional reaction to an extreme psychological trauma; which may involve someone's actual death, a threat to the patient's or someone else's life, serious physical injury, or threat to physical or psychological integrity, overwhelming psychological defenses.

There has to be a Post-Exam Laziness Disorder. Nothing else explains my mental state. I have recently had an exposure to one or more terrifying events and my psychological integrity has been damaged. And in another month, the overwhelming trauma is returning with greater force. And I have a feeling 80% of the final exam will be based on the one lecture I missed and the one chapter I didn’t read. That;s what has been happening to me lately.

And I certainly don't like it like that!

Sunday, Bloody Sunday!

2008-11-24T20:05:00.006+05:00

'Human beings, vegetables or cosmic dust; we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible player.' Albert Einstein hence set the tone of my Sunday. But there was nothing cosmic about the dust that lay on spinach. And there was nothing mysterious about 'Desi Girl' that blew from the huge loudspeakers at Johar Town's Itwaar Bazaar.

There was so much fresh product from 'Mother Earth', it actually baffles you. The colors, the textures, the freshness...all sprouting from dust! (But as interesting as veggies may sound, they lack a sense of purpose that comes with a deep fried chicken breast or a beef steak.)

Salad Bonanza: The lettuce and radishes attracted the least customers, and the most flies

Almonds for your strong-memory! You'll never forget you bought 'Amreeki Badaam' @ Rs.800/kg
Safai nisf imaan hay; The rest, you can witness at the Sunday Markets!

Haggling, pestering, bargaining! That's Sow feesad (100%) imaan for these ladies!

Samosay! Finally something with a trace of meat! Ah! Best things in life come in small packages!

On the Red Carpet

2008-11-22T19:04:00.004+05:00

By Saad Javed

Her messy beehive hair,

The revealing chiffon gown,

The few extra pounds

And the sagging eye bags

Were all masked,

By her only saving grace,

The eye candy in her arms,

This season's must have accessory,

The hot Hollywood hunk…

(http://jang.com.pk/thenews/nov2008-weekly/us-21-11-2008/p20.htm#1)

The Best Medicine!

2008-11-13T20:24:00.003+05:00

"The dignity of a physician requires that he should look healthy, and as plump as nature intended him to be; for the common crowd consider those who are not of this excellent bodily condition to be unable to take care of others. Then he must be clean in person, well-dressed, and annointed with sweet smelling unguents that are not in any way suspicious...[...]...a man of uncontrolled laughter and excessive gaiety is considered vulgar, and vulgarity sepecially must be avoided...[...]...such then should the physician be, both in body and in soul."

~The Virtues of a Physician by Hippocrates

Dear Hippocrates, Father of Modern Medicine,
I'm very sorry. You should be disappointed in me. I know I have grown plump and not in a way nature intended me to be. I know I wear orange t-shirts with gaudy motives to the Outdoor Patient Department. I apologize if I am too lazy to shave the scruff of my face everyday. I am sorry for all that. But for all the laughter I laugh, for all the jokes I crack, for all the teeth I show; I am sorry but I am not sorry. I am not giving up the tranquilizer-with-no-side-effects. And I can only hope and pray that I keep laughing as much as I breathe, as long as I live.

Yours sincerely,
SJ

Happy Birthday, Allama Iqbal!

2008-11-09T16:46:00.003+05:00

[Though] the coming world is still covered with the curtain of destiny,
before my eyes its beginning is uncovered.
If I remove the curtains from the face of the [future] thoughts
the Western people won't face up to my songs.
The life that has no place for revolution is death
[for] the spirit of the nation lies in struggle and revolution.
The nation, which takes stock of its actions in each age,
develops into a sword in the hand of death.
All the imprints are incomplete in the absence of love and endeavor;
melody is like a crude insanity in the absence of love and endeavor

~Masjid-e-Qartabaa, written in 1918; Allama Muhammad Iqbal (1877-1938)
Translation: V.G. Kiernan

In The Hereafter, Too!

2008-11-08T19:03:00.004+05:00

In The Hereafter, Too!
By Saad Javed

The plane took off,
And he bade farewell,
To Karachi
He looked down the window,
And knew,
Among sinners and lovers,
Among poets and philosophers,
The hell would have,
A KESC,
A WAPDA!

http://jang.com.pk/thenews/nov2008-weekly/us-07-11-2008/p20.htm#1

Spam

2008-11-05T19:31:00.004+05:00

We never ask for spams and viruses and trojans. No one wants unwanted, unsolicited miseries that crash our daily routines, invade our thoughts and overwhelm our working. And finally, after a lot of hurt,we come to realize, we had no back up. No buffers. No safety-zones.
So it's terribly miserable to learn that I was wrong in putting all my emotional 'eggs' in one basket. But then I myself checked the 'YES' box that in turn sent me something that I didn’t need in my life, which I didn’t ask for, and something that is now infecting my system; corrupting my memory.

The Twelve Tasks

2008-10-29T17:51:00.002+06:00

In a fit of madness, induced by Hera, Hercules slew his wife, Megara, and their three children. as a penance he would have to perform a series of twelve tasks set by King Eurystheus, the man who had taken Hercules' birthright and the man he hated the most.

A traditional order of the tasks found in is:

1.Slay the Nemean Lion and bring back its hide.
2.Slay the 9-headed Lernaean Hydra.
3.Capture the Golden Stag of Artemis.
4.Capture the Erymanthian Boar.
5.Clean the Augean stables in a single day.
6.Slay the Stymphalian Birds.
7.Capture the Cretan Bull.
8.Steal the Mares of Diomedes.
9.Obtain the Girdle of the Amazon warrior queen Hippolyte.
10.Obtain the Cattle of the Monster Geryon.
11.Steal the Apples of the Hesperides, which were strictly guarded by a 100-headed dragon called Ladon.
12.Capture Cerberus, the guardian dog of Hades, using no weapons and bring him back.

Now had it been 2008 and if Hercules were at medical school, his twelve tasks would have been:

1.Wake up in the morning.
2.Despite everything, start afresh, armed with the belief that today would surely be better than the crappy yesterday.
3.Conceive that Propranol is prescribed only in Atrial Flutter and Atrial Fibrillation but not Acute Supraventricular Tachycardia or Ventricular fibrillation.
4.Be comfortable knowing that 300 out of 365 days of the year, you’ll either have a substage or a stage or a test or a wardtest or a surprise test or a practical viva…
5.Rotavirus has double stranded RNA while Norwalk has (+) single stranded RNA; remember!
6.Forget pleasure reading; start sleeping with text-books.
7.Remind yourself that you have to stop being a human to save human lives in the future.
8.Financial crisis, Presidential elections, power-shortage; stop worrying! You have a Professional exam ahead! Die thinking!
9.Out of thin air, conjure 10 imaginary patients and submit their medical histories.
10.Doctors serve the nation; so influenza is too trivial an excuse to stay home. And stop sniffing!
11.REMEMBER! Trimethoprim and Trimethophan are different drugs!!!
12.Go to bed at 4 am, armed with the belief that tomorrow would surely be better than the crappy today.

Bad Hair Day!

2008-10-26T13:45:00.003+06:00

What's with barbers? They literally have a scissors in their hands and inside their mouths - and handing away your head to a stranger, with your glasses off is NOT my idea of a lazy Sunday. The forced conversations with every sentence ending in 'hmmmmnn?' and your messy George O' Malley-look going down into the bin...someone take me to the Trauma Centre!

Really, some of the stupidest mistakes of my life have been haircuts (or lack thereof!).

My MorphThing!

2008-10-23T10:47:00.004+06:00

saad+donald trump= Saadump

Saad + Angelina= Sangelina

Saad+ Aishwarya=Sashwarya

Saad+Monkey= Samonkey

It's a weird thing they have at http://www.morphthing.com/. You can actually morph any two pictures together with amusing but not always very pretty resuts (saad+ george clooney = saa-clowny!) but still it came out to be a fun thing. Have a go!

Lights, Camera, Acne!

2008-10-17T20:18:00.001+06:00

Lights, Camera, Acne!

By Saad Javed

You can and you can’t. You will and you won’t. You’ll be damn’d if you do. You’ll be damn’d if you don’t. That is exactly how I feel, standing before the mirror trying not to look at myself and yet deciding whether to squeeze out the toxins or not. What is it? I try to make sense. The retribution of outraged nature? An experience of the so-called mortal mind? My fears made manifest on my face? My blood revolting against my body? Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I am an acne victim.
When I’ll be here no more and when my kids and their kids would go through the family albums, it might come as a nasty shock to them that their dad/granddad did not exist between 2000 and 2008…basically because he wouldn’t let anyone take his picture. Thanks to advances in digital photography, we are now one click away from deleting our puberty.
But if so, then what makes it so difficult? Why is acne plaguing my mind? Why the hell are these little, red zits making my life hell?
It’s not just the inflamed cheeks. It’s not only the yellowy hills on my forehead. My 'pizza-face’ is not my solitary rival. It’s a lot more than that. It’s guilt. It’s blame. It’s shame. It’s the fact that I feel five inches taller when I’m in public. It’s the idea that people stare at my face and make this face…what do you call it: revulsion-plus-sympathy-plus-despair. It’s the notion that no, unlike what my dermatologist says, it’s not normal and it doesn’t happen to everyone. It’s the undeniable belief cropping up inside me that it’s false to assume that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with inalienable blessings of life, liberty and good looks. Ah! And yes, if you haven’t noticed, it’s sheer anger!

And the world isn’t helping. Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to the media. You must all have seen the vicious animated infomercial of an anti-bacterial toilet-item where ugly, hideous and 'dirty’ germs are, in the end, overpowered by our very lame, Brigadier-Uncle-Soap. The moral of the story: You are sick because you are filthy. To some, it’s amusement. To some it’s education. But to me, it’s the purest form of commercial manipulation and gruesome heartlessness. Isn’t that the ugliest facet of the 21st Century? Cartoons squashing your self-esteem? And just to set the record straight, I swear to God I wash my face.
And then there are the hormones; the real culprits, they say. Our sweet, raging indicators of adolescence send signals to the glands on our skin to exude more slime to trap dirt, dust and germs and BAM! If you have a good imagination (and acne, of course!), in your mind, you can see 'dirty’ little bacteria dancing on your pimple and singing "O’ it’s a snug little island! A right little, tight little island!" Why is growing up this difficult? Why the acne, the drama, the hormones, the hair, the appetite, the mood swings, the crushes, the short days, the long years, the self-consciousness? Why can’t we mature into adults like little tadpoles morph into hopping toads?

So, would my puberty always remain a blunder, a cause for regret for me? Would I ever have the priceless feeling of forgetting about what my face looks like? If doctors can’t come up with a cure for acne, would I at least some day come across a pharmacy with a banner proclaiming "Self Esteem for Sale"? I still don’t know. All I know is I want to go to sleep and wake-up older, having outgrown my pimples. And till that day, I’ll be singing my remix version of Beatles’ most famous track.

All you need is love. And a definitive treatment for acne.

Published in Us, The News; 17th Oct, 2008
http://jang.com.pk/thenews/oct2008-weekly/us-17-10-2008/p5.htm

Have a Bad Day!

2008-10-13T20:32:00.003+06:00

You leave home without breakfast, the car needs a refuel, the lab-coat is crumpled, the sun slaps the back of your neck...
And your teacher tells you off in front of your batchmates and the whole Surgical floor, 'You are a goof. You are a useless goof. Everything about you is disappointing, except your handwriting. You did a flimsy job. I don't know about the others but you are a goof.'

What do we do with such bad days? How do we cope with such days? Accept our bad moods? Tell others? Look inside, try rememvering the good stuff? Assure yourself, this too shall pass and that you are never beyond God's grace? Take some quiet time and smile?

Easy said than done.
There has to be some excuse, some escape! They are giving Nobel Peace Prizes for Crisis Management Initiatives, I hear. Why can't the biggies come up with a formula to-make-peace-with-your-ownself and win the Prize?
Now, really!

Sin and the City

2008-10-10T22:34:00.002+06:00

Sin and the City
By Saad Javed

Amidst its layers of histories and cultures, with its contrast of crumbling monuments, bustling food-streets, sprawling gardens, broad avenues with rickshaw trumpets, red sandstone colonial buildings, serene canal-cum-dynamic-public-bathtubs, labyrinthine old quarters, high rise glass and steel towers and ancient city gates, Lahore has so many pleasures to offer, so many virtues to display. And so much to hide. To hide and to nurture, the biblical seven cardinal sins…

Lust
He arrived at the famed Salahuddin haveli and saw that the party was in full swing. Familiar to the quarters, he found his way through the dancing, swinging bodies and managed to be served with the right blend of whisky. And he saw her first over the top of an ambassador's bald head.
'Who's she?' he mumbled. 'Tania Qamar. Call her TQ - this season's must-have accessory." Someone replied from nearby.
It took him another ten minutes to reach her side of the room as he made his way through the mob of flirtatious, attentive men gathered like moths around the flame and Asad Sheikh, his colleague in the Provincial Assembly, finally left a space vacant after being dragged away by his wife.
'I expect you already have a dinner engagement after the party?' He asked before the vultures closed in again. 'No,' she replied and smiled seductively.

Gluttony
She smiled excitedly. It was hard not to. The buffet-fiend inside her was growling as she got carried away like always and had numerous helpings of the aromatic biryani, spicy qorma and syrupy firni. She wanted this meal to compensate for every paisa of the thousand-rupees-salami she had just presented to the bride on the stage. Really, at weddings, she needed someone to accompany her. She needed someone to dig their nails into her arm, pinch her rear sharply and hiss, 'Have mercy on your stomach ulcers, go slow!'
So she ate and ate and ate. Knowing that the next morning, she'd have to eat nothing but digestives and anti-diarrhoeals.

Greed
Eid morning dawned warm and bright. The Badshahi Masjid was packed with hundreds of worshippers, many of whom had been unable to enter the mosque and were praying on the grass. He sniggered. He was sure the crisply-dressed owners of those sleek cars would not be pleased to know that they had been praying on the ground that had been a regular abode and customary urinal of beggars, gamblers and addicts till the day before. Soon the prayers finish; stiff, starch fabrics embrace each other and prayer mats are being picked. In the ensuing frenzy, he confidently picks up a gleaming leather chappal, a pair of shining Oxford boots and branded, brown moccasins – all good ones, all new ones. Soon the shoes would get him his eidi. Plus, he felt lucky and was sure he could multiply his fortune with a nice game of Rummy. He sniggered as he hurriedly rode his bicycle to another part of the city.
Outside another mosque.

Wrath
The crowd erupted into a feverish roar: the guard had begun marching – well, he wasn't just marching. He stomped furiously hard, trying to burrow holes in the earth. A severely built man in immaculate uniform and a towering turban; he also wore an expression of cruel hatred during his brutal performance. Another one, similarly built and equally angry, followed him and reached the Pakistani Gate; the Baab-e-Azadi: an intricate iron work of green and white. A thick white line – the Wagah Border ran five metres or so beyond it and behind that, a similar livid drama was underway. High-stepping, glaring frantically and screaming military jargon, the mustached rogues criss-crossed each other fiercely; the Pakistanis in olive-black, the Indians in khaki. The obscenities thrown at each other by the neighbouring crowds reached a crescendo as a pair of guards from each side finally shook hands and the flags were gently lowered. With immense force and a mind-shattering clamour, the gates were slammed shut together. There was a sudden shocked silence and the metal rang in the ears. The metal and a lot more; muted accusations, silent prejudice and traditional cracks of bitter rivalry.

Sloth
I feel a slight breeze and notice that the window is cracked open. Outside, winter comes in spite of everything; after nine months of ruthless summer! There are moments when you think nature happens just for us. I smile as the warm winter morning rays fall into my Broome Hostel dormitory. Such a fine morning should never be wasted in the medical college where the ridiculousness of such lazy notions is exposed, I think. I pull the sheets over my head and go back to sleep.

Envy
The mood! The aroma! The hedonism! The decadence! All blurring, all blazing. I am looking for nothing, and strangely, finding it. The mood! The aroma. I shake my head and spin – no I revolve around myself, my murshid, my love! I spin – no, I revolve. I, the disciple, and my musrshid; the legendary Pappu Saeen. Ah, another Thursday night and another orgy of bhang and hashish and charas at the tomb of Baba Shah Jamal and both of us are in another assembly of inexhaustible drumming. I hit my dhol faster and spin wildly, shaking my long wet hair as my dhoti turns about my axis and the dense laden smoke reaches my innards. I am in my hands, I am inside my dhol. And now I don't care what happens to the rhythm or the beat or my murshid. I swing and I sway and I beat.
And suddenly I fall.
Headlong.
When I am back in this world again, someone tells me my murshid 'mistakenly' stepped on my flying dhoti. I am happy. I have learnt another lesson today. My guru, like me, is only a human and no selfless angel.

Pride
'Yes, you remember I looked like a real magician with the French-cut beard and it worked with the women, too, you see.'
'Leg-spin worked wonders, you see. Where the ball is not breaking, the leg-spinner can make it break.'
'Oh, no, no! No one else could get my leg-spin. My googly was original. My flipper was original. I can bowl the same ball in ten different ways, you see. I did miracles, samajh gaye?'
'Na ji! No coach. Never had any. And that Shane Warne is all bogus. What's a top-spinner? It's a lame term. Spin-bowling is all about extracting maximum out of variation and I told it to Kumble. See, he's still benefiting from my advice. Even your Mushtaq or Saqlain couldn't perfect this art.'
'These PCB-walas have destroyed the game. Dekho, your best bowler is out there shaking his rear with Eesha Deol. Half your team members have become mullahs. This will happen when they don't involve experienced veterans like us in the board. All my experience is being wasted on doing commentary. Not that I am begging them to appoint me as a coach, you see.'
'One last message? Well, I am nothing. What can I say to the youngsters! Except that my 30 years of experience as a leg-spinner has taught me that if a person is bowling from dawn to dusk, and he returns home and still has something left in the bag; he and only he, is a leg spinner, you see?' 'And kindly put an older photo with the interview. The one with my Frenchie. It works with the women, too, you see!'

(published in Us, The News, 10/10/2008: http://jang.com.pk/thenews/oct2008-weekly/us-10-10-2008/p22.htm)

That's why they call them Grandmothers!

2008-10-06T21:16:00.002+06:00

She was a little bit parent, a little bit sibling, a little bit teacher, a little bit best-friend and a little bit of a lover - and she was a gardener who grew a garden of love in her heart. She was my grandmother; my Naani Ma.

I t was painful going to her house and not getting to see her smile. It had been 2 years and still her heart - the patchwork of unconditional love - was what we sorely missed. Naani Ma's decade-long struggle with cancer and her demise and her loving memories and her grace and her pulaow and the little gems of wisdom she'd so nonchalantly throw at us...my visit to her home this Eid brought back all that. And a lot of tears.

They say it and they say it right. It's a grand thing to be the mother of a mother. That's why they call them 'grandmothers'.

Australia: The Movie

2008-10-04T20:55:00.003+06:00

Trailer#1:

Trailer#2:

Here's something I'm so desperately looking forward to; huge drama, epic proportions and hopefully, great cinema!

Thanatology: Of death

2008-10-03T18:12:00.002+06:00

Thanatology

by Saad Javed

He liked to think,
about her last night
that she peeped out,
from the curtain slit
one last time,
that she saw,
the new order of the old stars,
one last time
that something riotous
but heaveny,
moved into her soul
one last time,
that it,
and not pathology,
was what took
her
breath
away...

An Affair

2008-09-29T22:09:00.002+06:00

She looked my face up and down. 'Did you ever think about having an affair?'
'I guess everyboday does,' I said.
'No, not everybody does.'
'Wll, I have.'
'Why haven't you done it?'
'Well, God, think of it. Think of all that could happen if you got caught.'
'If the only reason you are not doing it is because you think you'll get caught, you might as well do it,' Ruth said. She bit into an apple, stopped chewing to say, 'Really.'

'That's not the only reason I don't do it,' I said.

'Uh-huh,' she said. What are the other reasons?'

I said nothing.

'You won't get caught,' she said. 'I can promise you that. I have been doing this for six years, Ann. It doesn't take much intelligence to not get caught...'

From 'Talk before Sleep' by Elizabeth Berg.

(This one's for you, Baby A.)

Book Review: A Case of Exploding Mangoes

2008-09-27T12:25:00.004+06:00

There are times when you start asking for reasons for your pride in your country and your countrymen. And I feel awfully proud now, that I have read and absolutely loved Muhammad Hanif's A Case of Exploding Mangoes, probably the best book I have read in recent times.

The book is exuberant. It's sharp and so terribly gripping that somehow reading it becomes the 'nucleus' of your whole day. It's amazing how a it's filled with one-liners and jokes and still there's a death at its center; that of Gen. Muhammad Zia ul-Haq, president of Pakistan from 1978 to 1988. Assassination is old business. Assassinating heads of states is a cliched theme in fiction.Reading it and being able to relate to it and unweaving the tangles of fiction and reality is the best this book offers. (This, and the witty guest appearances; Joanne Herring (played by Julia Roberts in Charlie Wilson's War; Osama bin Laden as OBL)

And the conspiracy theories beautifully ensnare you. Who's going to kill Zia? Ali Shigri, our protagonist? The CIA? ISI? RAW? A blind woman on death row? A Marxist-Maoist street cleaner?A crow? Snake-venom?Tapeworms? The snarl of events, the undertones of humour, suspense and tragedy, the Afghan jihad; every page announces the sure-footed, innovative account of the events that jolted our country in the summer of '88.

I was elated when I heard Mangoes had been included in the Booker Prize longlist. Now I feel like hitting the jury for not shortlisting it.

Congratulations, Mr. Hanif, for this fascinating, teasing debut! Way to go!

My old mates have gone stale!

2008-09-24T22:15:00.001+06:00

Which stupid person ever proclaimed that men are mystically united through a bond of brotherhood that makes all men one. And who said nostalgia is divine? And who believes all ugly ducklings grow into handsome swans? And why-oh-why don’t people understand that yes, speech is silvern when silence is golden – especially when you are a bare-faced jackass and my old high school classmate.

I had the sheer misfortune of attending a high-school reunion-cum-iftar-cum-feast-of-fools today and I successfully managed to ruin my evening. I have always always detested such get togethers and now I am a firm believer in the heavenly notion of following your inner voices and avoiding stuff you know you’ll end up hating.

There were faces I totally did not remember. There were characters I absolutely loathed to remember. And there were names that reverberated in my remote memory but failed to register any sentiments of ‘good old days’. I had forgotten what they were called…(was he Danish Asif/Arif/Atif???). I couldn’t recall whether I knew that horribly boisterous guy, who everyone was calling ‘Jawad’. And there was someone who had borrowed my practical copy 4 years back and still was brazen enough to remind me that ‘it’s safe and untouched’. There were pathetic attempts at lame jokes (someone has been watching those Indian stand-up comedy circuses!!!) Those who were silent enough had a reason. They were waiting anxiously to break their fasts and smoke tobacco! There dull, dull, dull mates with dull, dull, dull aur sunaow kya horaha hay aajkal?-type questions. And there was body odour.

And then there were my best pals;Hamza and Tayyab. Our trio was happy. Our treasure island was secure. Our laughters were genuine because we had so much to laugh at. (so much to bitch about?) We had in each other, the perfect cushion to fall on.

We had our better, nicer, sweeter memories to share.

My Favourite Vegetable

2008-09-18T17:04:00.002+06:00

And here, I totally agree with Dennis! But I wonder whether Dennis knows it or not; In 1981, the US Congress ordered the Department of Agriculture to issue new standards for school lunch programs and one of the proposals was to classify ketchup as a vegetable. The suggestion was widely ridiculed and the proposal was dropped.

The Big Bang

2008-09-12T20:28:00.003+06:00

The Big Bang
By Saad Javed

In less than a minute,
The universe
Was a million,
Billion
Miles across,
And grew further apart,
And in less than a minute,
The two hearts were

one…

http://jang.com.pk/thenews/sep2008-weekly/us-12-09-2008/p25.htm#1

Criticology

2008-09-11T11:29:00.003+06:00

Do only fools criticize? Is it really so that when we judge another person, it says nothing about that person; it merely says something about our own need to be critical? Does the term ‘healthy criticism’ even exist? For criticize them, and they may not like you. Ignore them, and they may not forgive you. So you end up flattering them because on those grounds you may not stand perpendicular yourself! It’s unfathomable. For the betterment of humanity, they should probably teach that at university level, you see; the study, discussion, evaluation, and interpretation of criticisms!

~Kemcaana Computer Lab; (right after admiring some positively ghastly comic strips sketched by a senior)

The Contemporary Cash Cow

2008-09-10T17:09:00.003+06:00

For more than a decade Damien Hirst has been one of the richest and most famous artists in the world. His The Golden Calf is headed to market at Sotheby's in London, where it will be the star of a much hyped two-day sale of 223 works by Hirst that begins on Sept. 15. This will be the first time any auction house has sold a quantity of work fresh out of an artist's studio.

As Time quotes, "The Golden Calf is a white bullock preserved in a tank of formaldehyde that's mounted on a high marble plinth. His hooves and horns are 18-carat gold. His head is crowned by a gold Egyptian solar disk. Seen head-on, he's a false idol whose headgear is simultaneously silly and mesmerizing. (Hirst is assuming his buyers know the Bible story about worshipping a false god, just like the one they are about to worship.) But the beast is best seen in profile, the view that leaves you to reconcile as best you can his hieratic gravity with the laugh-out-loud abundance of his genitals. When Hirst is good, he's good, and The Golden Calf is a nimble concoction, designed to all at once beguile, flatter and parody the big-swinging billionaires who are likely to bid on it."

Here it is. The false idol!

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1838681-1,00.html

Her kiss, her smile, her perfume...

2008-09-06T22:25:00.002+06:00

Hellen Keller once said, "Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousands of miles and all the years you have lived".

And how true that is! It's that one whiff that sometimes drives you crazy and oh, there's nothing, nothing that smells better than the person you are in love with.

And of fragrances, what beats Chanel No. 5? And the awesome commercial! And Nicole Kidman! And the wonderful voice over...

When did I wake?Into this dream.I must have been the only person in the world who didn’t know who she was.But my world will never be the same again

When she came into my life

It didn’t matter. I knew who she was to mr.

No one can steal our dream. No one

Goodbye.

And then she was gone.
Has she forgotten?
I knowI will not.
Her kiss.
Her smile.
Her perfume

08/08/08

2008-09-05T09:45:00.000+06:00

08/08/08

by Saad Javed

There are nine million bicycles in Beijing. That’s a fact. It’s a thing we can’t deny.

Like the fact that I am sitting before a brilliant display of fireworks and the thunderous percussion of 2008 ancient drums and still not feeling elated or overwhelmed; like the fact that this ceremony is reflecting the aspirations of one-fifth of humanity and I am not applauding or cheering them; like the fact that I have a mentally handicapped child.
It’s very hard to proclaim that, you see. Even just to myself. Does it embarrass me? No, not really. It’s just that sometimes, some things in life push you into a leap of acceptance and I am still unable to make that. Last night, I was brushing my teeth before bed and all of a sudden I burst into tears. I had a sudden impulse to turn quickly around, to see who was doing this to me but I could not leave the restroom with tears in my eyes and Colgate-froth around my lips. That seemed wrong. And unholy. The physiotherapist of the squad cannot weep; cannot wince. But the thing with any anxiety regarding your children is, you know it’s going to bend you into an emotional limp. And what hurts you even more is that no, it’s not you. It’s your child. Imagine being him.
Our son walked late. My wife and I didn’t worry. He spoke very late. Still we did not worry. Late milestones were not a problem because we savoured our pink little toddler and we knew that in no time, he’d be all grown up and gone. (And well, I read somewhere Albert Einstein didn’t speak until he was four.) Soon the kindergarten staff was telling us there was something wrong with his everything. He would not listen. He couldn’t draw anything. He didn’t know his colours. And he was hurting other children. So finally we planned to take him to a paediatrician.
And just one day after our squad landed in the city of nine million bicycles and just one day before the breathtakingly spectacular start of the extravaganza, our son was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. It broke my heart how I had to be so away from my son and my wife, as she wept over phone and explained why our little kid could never stand still, or speak a sentence that made sense, or ask to go to the bathroom every five minutes.
Who is to be blamed? Were there some bad, hidden genes? Did we keep our child malnourished or drop him and caused him brain-damage? Had we gone wrong in bonding with him and given him an underactive prefrontal cortex? Did we not love him enough? Oh, that hurts and in a bizarre moment I start envying people who drink; at least they have something to blame everything on. I finally sit in the warm splendour of the 'Bird’s Nest’ stadium and fold my arms around my knees as our team gathers in the centre.
Would my son ever be cured? Would he win over his distractibility and memory loss and impulsivity? No one knows. He might have to grow with it and it scared me to even think about my kid growing into ADHD. I heaved a sigh and vowed to myself that he’d inherit from me the inheritance of virtue – good name and unblemished reputation. Sanity may be wrested from my child but virtue will stand by him to the last. As the legendary Chinese gymnast soared through midair to light the Olympic cauldron, I smiled. I had to. We are twelve billion light years from the edge and there are six billion people in the world and nine million bicycles in Beijing. That’s a fact. It’s a thing we can’t deny. Like the fact that come what may, my son will be loved and loved even more. Until the dying day.

Published in US, Thew News, 5/09/08
http://jang.com.pk/thenews/sep2008-weekly/us-05-09-2008/p22.htm#1

What lies ahead?

2008-08-31T14:14:00.000+06:00

What lies ahead?
By Saad Javed

In times like these,

Anyone can be an oracle

For the painful ways

The puzzle-pieces fit

Against each other;

So simple,

So vivid,

And so very clear…

The threat of tomorrow

Poses no riddle,

To decipher

http://jang.com.pk/thenews/aug2008-weekly/us-29-08-2008/p5.htm#1

We share more tha just a wall...

2008-08-29T22:56:00.003+06:00

I overheard (not accidentally! I was trying to!) 'someone telling someone' that "I study when there's no electricity. There's nothing else to do"
And I couldn't help but wonder; why isn't everyone blessed with interesting neighbours like mine!

Designing Labels

2008-08-28T21:31:00.000+06:00

A chrysoberyl may look like an emerald from a distance. And just like that there are people who you have always imagined to be bright and endearing end up being routine and commonplace once you meet them in person. Who is to blame? Giving stranger tags is fun, after all. And I guess it’s certainly very well if the brilliant-in-your-mind becomes boring-in-the-real. After all, you can’t let your world become post-War Berlin where no one noticed no one and nobody cared to notice nothing

8 Peculiar Things About Me

2008-08-23T14:42:00.003+06:00

Awais tagged me and he snorted when I told him I had nothing peculiar going on. So I thought, well what the hell...

1. I can always tell when someone's staring. Even when I am not looking. Really! No kidding.

2. I hate jam. I detest marmalades. They just turn me off. (Too sweet; too synthetic!)

3. I am a textbook case of motion/altitude-sickness. I always get nauseous during our trips up North and it's so stupendously unpleasant.

4. I hate the sound of an old pressure-cooker. That chick-cheek-chick-cheek.

5. I get this weird lousy mood in the evening after an afternoon-nap. It drags me down. I'm not a big fan of dusks. Everything seems sad.

6. I like fresh bed-linen. Sheets, spreads, covers, everything. And preferrably white. And I spray air-freshner into my blankets in winters before going to sleep.

7. Crying, weepy babies: puhleeezz! a total no-no!

8. When I meet/see a person, I always notice his/her shoes before anything else. And at the risk of sounding pathetically judgemental, yes I like some people just because they have good footwear.
:)

In the midst of life we are in death...

2008-08-21T22:26:00.003+06:00

"Is death the last sleep? No, it is the final awakening. Why fear death? It is the most beautiful adventure in life. There is no death; the stars go down to rise upon some other shore. The last voyage, the great leap in the dark..."

Ah, rubbish! Romanticizing death and associating lyricism with it is becoming impossible with every passing day. It so does not seem like a final curtain call to a great play. No. Not anymore. Our ward batch witnessed our first death today in Mayo Hospital today and what was that left us muted? The heartache? The 1000 Watts shock of it all? The pain of observing God's finger touching the patient's soul? With the patient, what else died? Our pleasures? Our hopes? Our fears?

I haven't really figured that out yet. Living in a country where we get to have close rendezvous with death almost everyday; I think it's simply snatching the little poetic aura of the little sleep, little slumber, little folding of hands and that classical victory of the grave.

Basic Instincts

2008-08-16T20:17:00.004+06:00

Today a group of girls from our class gave a presentation during the Pharmacology lecture. And suddenly I noticed the guys were listening to the ladies so attentively; it was like never before. The prettier the lady, the more the concentration level among the guys. (And the applause too!). But soon we reached our saturation point and well...a man has to eat! So the chants of "Sir, BUSSSSS!" (Sir, that's enoughhhh!) started and no amount of attractiveness could rise our index of attention anymore. Pretty primal, eh!

Welcome aboard, kids!

2008-08-10T17:10:00.003+06:00

Dear Neha and Haris,

Yes, you two; the youngest ones! So? How did you find this world? It's intimidating, right? Wait till you go through your O Levels and your universities and your relationships and your own kids!

Yes, it's a tough, cruel world out there and yes I am sorry for being the first one to break it all upon you but then you see, you are lucky you have a compassionate, thoughtful, wise and witty uncle. I didn't have one. And look what mess I have got myself into. See? You would love to have a cool fun uncle and yeah as The Rembrandts sing; "I'll be there for you!"

And besides promises, I give you a lot of hope. Hope that when you grow up you get to learn how much your parents have always loved you; hope that with each birthday of yours you realize how many good things are happening around you without either of you noticing; hope that your mother's home cooked Chinese food would take you to the high of culinary delight; hope that both of you get wonderful friends and someone special to live your lives with.

You'd soon find out how different the two of you are from each each - in every respect. That happens with siblings all the time. Soon the eternal fight between the Mars and the Venus and the blue and the pink and the caramel and the strawberry and Batman and Barbie would drive your mom crazy. Come evenings, you'd be playing all by yourselves and then their would be evenings when there'll be so much homework - you guys would totally forget each other. Yes, studies (esp medical studies) brings an end to all petty pleasures of life.

Kids, I'll want to be around when you celebrate your 21st birthdays. I have never been to a twin-birthday-bash before. But really, I would like to meet you when the world would stop spinning just for you. I would like to see your shy smiles that would barely hide your exploding hearts. And I'll like to remind you that I once held you in my arms, at your Mamoo Nouman's place, and that though both of you were very cute, you failed to overwhelm me with any paternal instincts.

All, (well not really ALL!) my love,

Yours devastatingly handsome,

Uncle Saad