Why is it when men play they always play at killing each other?

The world’s gone mad, or perhaps it already was and I’ve started noticing it and worrying about its lunacy more often now. It simply isn’t worth the while to switch on the idiot box and tune into any news channel. One day as I put on Geo, a slide flashed by, announcing of blasts in Lahore. I called up at home, they did not even know of the blasts at the time, but calls were made all around and every one was fine. Then the other day I switched on the telly again and there was news of two blasts in Lahore again. This time I did not call Lahore, the blasts were too close for comfort, in Model Town Block F where Z’s khala lives. I called up Z instead who told me all was fine…and that people in Pakistan were calling him up to know that he was alright after the TV informed them of the 200 car pile-up on Sheikh Zayed Road. I switched off the TV. Later in the day we learnt that the FIA building bomb was a staggering 65 kg of explosives, that the Model Town blast was so strong that windows and shattered at khala’s place…and the death toll…the disturbing images of the the building about to fall any time, footage of the pick-up knocking down a constable to enter the FIA premises. All in a day. Trying to learn more about the Sheikh Zayed road inferno I landed on this.
Whether by accident or by design, or designed to look like an accident, when there is so little respect for the lives of ordinary citizens, when law enforcing and security personnel, when the very people who have pledged to defend you are ordered to take action against you and your family, what are you to do? When you see your loved ones die before your eyes and no reason else to live, suicide bombing must come easy.

I'm these days in a total feminazi, man-hating phase, and such news does not help in placating my dislike of man-kind. Then there is the political circus in Pakistan. How can anyone, even the most vegetatively brainy, intellectually challenged of men believe for even a second that the public believes in their shenanigans, their make up and shake up in the parliament for power? How can anyone one day show disdain for public office and then let know that they are in the running for the PM’s slot? And that's just one example of a total volte face men are so prone to. Not just in politics and in Pakistan, world over and in all spheres of life. I have so many examples handy, so much reason to hate men in general for the wretched state of things in the world, before I get any more vitriolic, I'd better stop...not advisable in present circumstances.

Baby Blues

So Churchill's Black Dog has paid sis a visit. It was due, PN, after all the euphoria of having brought a new life into this world had settled down and she realised that the li'l piece of being had taken over her life...nay, pushed her on the backburner and everyone would henceforth only focus on li'l D. I know I do, whenever I call sis, I'm hoping for a background music of D crying and then I have to hang up as sis has to attend on the little despot who's taken over her life. I also talked to M, SiL, today, she'd had a li'l one, H2, early December last year...I asked if she was well and she had just one response; that she had to be well, for the kids...I should've asked her about her PND experience but thought better of it. Mothers, however many kids they might've brought into the world, must feel overwhelmed specially in the first few weeks, if not months post-birth...add to it that general tendency of ours to ignore the mother and going ga-ga over the new entry...it's just so unfair...all the gifts are for the li'l one, all attention is for the li'l one...and only his/her needs are important. A new mom can bid farewell to sleep, relaxation becomes a thing of the past. I wish I could say this is temporary, but it becomes a habit...a mother worries, period. She starts worrying from the first moment she learns of her impending motherhood, frets first over the baby's movements in utero and then all through the child's life...It's a lifetime of worrying and fretting over the kid(s). Sleepless nights not limited to baby days, I know my mother stays awake till all her kids are home safe, soundly fed and in bed. And it's such a thankless job, no one has the slightest bit of consideration for the woman, at times not even other women in her life. It's as if we take it for granted that the moment a woman becomes a mother, she's become a super-duper woman who can manage feats unimaginable. Like being able to function without sleep or rest or anything even vaguely resembling rest (including some time in the shower), she's not allowed to get sick, or if sick, not allowed to rest till she actually drops out of exhaustion, no off days, no time out, nothing. And to top it all, everyone takes you for granted, the husband, even the thankless babes you've produced. If you're a lucky woman you'd have a husband with some sense of decency and consideration for your mostly forgotten human status, else you just have to put up with it. But who am I to say all this, I've been taking MY ma for granted for years...

See, sis is younger than me and my only sis, so I kind of ignore the itsy bitsy age difference we have and insist in calling and treating her like a baby (Actually I like mothering all my siblings and cousins...and siblings in law, can't help it, I'm the eldest or one of the elders in most cases, such a huge responsibility). And it hurts and kills me to think that my li'l sis now has to go through all that child-birth and post-natal grind-mill. She does not even have time to talk to me, her only sister, as her brand new baby starts bawling for attention the moment khalajan calls. I stopped calling sis altoghether so that the li'l tyke would settle into a routine and let my sis have some time to talk to me, but that is not to be. Early this morning I got a call from sis that she wasn't feeling well, she felt alone and wanted to talk to me...and when I call her, D starts crying, again. Where exactly is F, mean BiL, when needed to soothe a howling child, I ask? And where is the family army once so eager for the child? Can't a woman have some rest, some time off to talk to her sis? Should sis forget life as it was, write off family? I know woman the world over survive this phase of life and happily go for another stint at motherhood, multiple stints, but all teh same it looks so different when it's happening to someone so close to you. My sis is not all mine anymore, I'll have to share her with D from now on, and concede my priority status to the new arrival...I could fight with F, mean BiL, for the spot but how is one to compete with a 55 cms bald, bawling pink bundle? And how come I have it's picture as my desktop? Oh, I know, it was looking deceptively angelic wrapped in pink blanket and over-sized pink bonnet. I actually love the li'l D.

PS: I'm still wating for sis to call me back to talk off her blues

Brand New Khala

Sis' baby had to be the world's most eagerly awaited baby. We were to have a babe in the family after a long, long time. We, all of us, are crazy about babies. R, my brother, once actually borrowed a kid from a passer-by and brought it home to show us. All my brothers have at one point or another brought their friend's niece/nephew home to be admired by us all. And God help a guest's child hapless in our house...they'd take turns to play with it... and if te child was unusually friendly and did not cry at their antics (nothing torturous, bros just think that children should be afraid of them and cry at their mere sight, they are offended otherwise, except R, whom children take an instant liking to), they'd ask me or sis if it ever cried. They wanted a kid's all moods displayed before them in the few minutes they had their turn with it, the kid had to smile, laugh, play, giggle and also cry. The child had to be deposited with their mom/dad and if there was another one, they'd ask me to bring the other one (equal oppurtunity). When sis told me of my impending Khalahood, my first thought was, 'God help the child with it's mamoons! And nana, nani. It would be spoiled rotten!' Ma insists all our friends' kids call her nani/dadi. Ma and Pa absolutely adore kids (which explains why they have so many of us).
I know everyone adores babies but my family actually goes ga-ga over kids...they'd been deprived of a child for such a long time. A, the youngest bro was never considered a child by his elder bros, he was 10 years when he was 5 years and at 14 years, they consider him to be a fully grown man...A's attitude, come to think of it, is that of an uncle, but that's another family circus tale.
So, last evening, after a long wait, past EDD, and hours of calls later from the news of sis finally going to the hospital to get my niece, I got Ma's ecstatic call...I was a khala!
My li'l sis is a mommy.
And now I am waiting for pics and a video. I hate my bros for not sending me the pics yet, it's been more than 12 hours, all I get is smart-alec replies to my pleading sms'es for some pics...they've seen the kid and all, what would they know how terrible it is to wait to see your first niece...and I, the one and only khala only has a tub of Ben & Jerry's Phish Food Ice Cream for company. It makes great solace food, btw, B & J's.

May the world rot in hell...

or perhaps it already is. What started out as a wonderful girl's day out ended on a glued to the TV weekend. It was just a fluke actually, flicking through news channels with Pakistan flashing across all...shoot out at a PML-N rally...then came news of a bomb blast at PPP's rally after BB's address. intial reports said that BB was safe, later changing to her husband's plea for prayers for her safety...we were seeing our guests off when I heard that BB was confirmed dead...everyone returned and sat down awhile to hear and let the news sink in. and then it was tv marathon for the entire weekend. watching the same bulletins on a loop. worried over the safety of family and relatives back home...made frantic phone calls while watching reports of total chaos in the country.
BB was a leader, a good leader and politician. and i supported her, i voted for PPP in 2002 elections and i'd have voted for her this time too, if i were in Pakistan. i support her party, what her party stands for, not simply her family name. she could rally the masses unlike other puppet leaders...and her death, assasination was shocking, numbing...i still can't think straight...and the shitbags who run the Pakistani media aren't helping in the least. she's been declared a shaheed, a martyr...and there is a sickening glut of news reports glorifying her and her family...she wasn't a saint, her stints in the govt. were not sqeaky clean but all the same i mourn for her as a person; she did not deserve such a horrific death. Pakistan did not need a dark hour as this, the lawlessness, destruction, confusion and killings.
so much has happened in the past 36 hours that the mind reels...words fail...ab kia hoga, i should think 'ab kia hoga,' but on a personal level and then on the national scale, so much has happened and so fast, all i can add is a pithy curse at the general state of world rot...that's all it seems i can do, i refuse to think too dark...even at this unGodly hour with a world of worries keeping me awake.

I don’t mind marriages, honestly, I don’t; but weddings are absolutely abhorable. Why would two otherwise reasonable and passably decent people want to exhibit themselves is beyond me. If I were to say 'Physician, heal thyself' now, it would only be too true. We have the newly wed couple paying house-call on us, Ma and Pa and two mean bros have conveniently fallen ill to justify the two day doctors' stay. Me? I am too exhausted to even complain of anything but I do now that I am beginning to hate sis and my brand new BiL; a BiL who fits the 'bro' bill perfectly, the sly, mean, smugly vain specimen of mankind that he is...only my parents could have ended up with SiLs who rock the mean-ness scale and are a constant threat to their sons' elevated mean-green status.

I am not too tired to NOT kvetch, it seems. Oh well.

Certainly

The only thing certain at certain times is that you are full of uncertainty.

Listen to the Fox that lost its tail

I should have known it would take this path, this new name, iss-tarting anew. Somehow the names this blog sported did actually reflect what was happening in my life quite presciently. So when it was The Soliloquist, it was essentially a monologue, a conversation with myself to start off. And then it was Kvetch-log and lo and behold, there was so much for me to rant and rave about. Then came Spiral of Silence and I did spiral into silence. And now iss-tarting anew and trying not to spiral into silence…and surprise, no surprise, my life seems to be on the brink of a new start…

Flash backwards. It’s March 2001. I am at a function held in my honor, with friends and family. Apparently I have won some laurels one lucky one manages to attain every year. Still, the hullabaloo bothers me little. All the people were there, after all, to see me and they do see me, grinning like a thoroughbred Cheshire alright. There, that day, there’s a group of us, four, all Librans and SQ makes some comment on how gloriously gifted we all are and that we should all leave the country and go some place where marital status is not the only measure of success. On N’s announcement of impending loss of the ‘S’ status, SQ promptly shoos her out of our Spinsters’ Club.

Five years later. SQ is an expectant mother (and quaintly smug about it), N’s planning the arrival of her second child in November, A’s Amazonian figure has turned gigantic…and W claims over-the-net correspondence to have grown enough in size to sink a small Pacific island just by threatening to step on it. With all these fertility goddesses around, there’s me. Two of my cousins got married in August. My sister’s waiting in the wings to make F miserable for life by marrying him. Every time I turn my head there’s a person going the family way, if he/she hasn’t already, or getting ready to.

I went to a friend-in-passing’s wedding reception last night. I was as much surprised to find myself there as he was. After all, we were barely acquainted, being part of a large, boisterous group, friend’s friend’s friend kind of deal. He sent me out an invite out of courtesy as I was back in town. I went out of courtesy because he was considerate enough to think of me despite the shortage of printed invite cards. And also because there were chances I would get to meet other friends from the famous ‘Tour of 2000.’ Two of all those who'd gone to the Northern Areas, three including an absolutely pratty guy, were also reportedly single. (I'd be the fourth.)

Trust my luck in such circumstances. I got to meet two married friends, three including the one prancing about the shadi hall, but the single career women were not to be there. Anyways, it was fun, catching up with old times, when the two mom were not changing notes on their offsprings’ feeding and nappy changing times. I was at a total loss of topics. Yes we could reminisce but what would be there to fill the awkward conversation pauses. I may have gone places but not the labor room. My career may be stellar but it does not have fresh tiny-paw stains on it. I realized how different my life was from my friends’; I might as well have lived on Pluto all these years, and come back only because it was stripped of its planetary status.

Sitting in the university lawn in November 2000, I made all of our friends write ‘where I see myself six months later,’ and we decided to follow up and see if we’d met our goals. We had; those who wanted a career had one, those who wanted a family, were on the brink of starting one. And then more plans to meet later still, keep in touch and follow up. And then last night, where I learned how many had succumbed to an inevitable marriage.

The first time I felt bare was 1996, a cousin had gotten married; she was three rungs up the seniority ladder. Then the second fell and then the third. All the while I was ‘oh oh’ dreading the guillotine to land and chop my 'defiantly single' head off. I managed to wiggle away so that three juniors angled up and got taken away, cheerily, if I may say so. What can I say? To each his/her own.

I have been waging a war for the last one decade; a war to my right to live life my way, my right of self determination. With each year I grow up not only in calendar years, but also as a person, grow to live with myself, to appreciate my life as I have managed to create it, with my say in it. It's going to be excruciatingly hard for me to let go of my life as I know it. Just as it could a difficult period of adjustment for the other person. How can you live so long on your own and then be thrown out of orbit into someone else’s? The stakes this time were higher. I was set to lose everything and yet I stepped into the battle field. Was I to know my troops would dessert me? That I was to risk and let go of everything dear to me, known to me? I may have lost this one battle, but my life is still my own, my head still held high. I am what I am. I may be poised to start a new life but it's going to be mine. The smart, wily fox, dear folks, seems to display a willingness to be conned of its tail.

A state of general wretchedness

“How can I deny God, when I am deep in His hell?” – Naguib Mahfouz in Miramar.

I don’t feel wretched. Resigned, abandoned, forsaken, couldn’t care a hoot. There's something to be said for such a state. You want to but can't, won't bother to care. Want to but know you can't change anything to rid the pain, the suffering that wretchedness. You could set my head on fire and the rest of me wouldn’t notice, wouldn’t bother but it would hurt like hell. There that word again. So. I am in hell, deep and let’s leave things at that.

being me

*deep breath*

Every once in a while I get this irresistible itch to light up. Not light up as an attempt at arson, though I have to admit the idea does seem tempting, but light up as in a cigarette. And because it seems irresistible it becomes a challenge to resist it, or try to. So. The other day I got meself a pack of Malboro Lights (Mean bro once suggested that I write on the fact that NONE of cigarette companies have a web presence, I have done it here, not as he’d suggested, but it’s a close). And today, more than a month later, I gave in to the urge, at the terrible risk of smelling rotten, I lit up. What I actually wanted to burn was a stack of papers in front of me - it’s Monday after all – going through it seems more of drudgery than usual only because it’s so lame. What’s the point in having to wait for a whole laadidah month or more only to have such trash masquerading as project? I seriously fail to understand people’s excuse for sub-standard work. And I reserve the right to get offended, take it as a slap on the limited surface area that is my face, as an insult to my intelligence or what little remains of it on auto-pilot. The thing is I misplaced my brain during one routine cleaning of the cranium. Or perhaps it went off for a walk and forgot to return. My brain has always been a trouble maker. In fact the whole of me is. I’d say I Dr. Stranglove Syndrome but that would be putting it mildly. Being the supremely intelligent being that I am, each and every system in me has a nervous system and command center of its own. Imagine a bedlam. In me. So the brain routinely stages walk outs, and I function on auto-pilot and so it’s been months now since it decided not to return. Another reason could be the lack of space. How much of thinking matter can you cram into my skull? Space is prime property given my size. I’m not sure what kind of cells have shifted up there, but some sort must have made the move, my head seems well- balanced. For now. So, that would be my answer, I guess, for not blogging intelligent, for not commenting on others’ intelligent blogpourings etc. as I said on bhai’s blog, my only hope is that some retarded, starving, alley cat caught sight of my brain as it traipsed up and down a market, and ate it up. And died which would mean an end of my brain and hopefully the rest of me should now live happily ever after.

I never ever deliberately give a month or more's gap in post. it just happens. ther's not much for me to write. and i cant seem to find the effort to sit through an entire post. most of the times it's inanities like these that would end up on screen. perhaps it was teh name. isstarting anew sounded more like a dhukka start. and spiralling into silence i seem to have done already. should i change names just to see if being superstitious pays off once. i mean i change names and something happens that makes me post more often and hopefully, more coherent? yes, no, whatever, who cares waghera. and ends.

tag & whaaa?

Zack said "Whoever wants to pick it up" for this meme of four. Since I have nothing else to blog about (actually there is so much I can blog about that I can't), I'll take it up.

Four Jobs I’ve Had in My Life
1. Bratty Daughter
2. Bossy Sister
3. Boorish friend
4. Bookish student

Four Movies I Could Watch Over and Over
1. ET
2. Andaz Apna Apna
3. Roman Holiday
4. Keeps changing

Four Places I Have Lived
1. School
2. College
3. University
4. Work place (Keeps changing)

Four TV Shows I Love To Watch
1. Becker
2. Malcolm in the Middle
3. All old Pakistami dramas
4. Whatever's on on the idiot box; idiot because an idiot watches it.

Four Places I Have Been On Vacation
1. Nanajan's place
2. Dadijan's place
3. Khalajan's place
4. Phoopijan's place

Four Websites I Visit Daily
1. BBC news
2. NYTimes
3. DAWN
4. Best Crosswords, msn and yahoo games
5. A whole lot of others, blogs and etcs.

Four Favorite Foods
1. Sheesh Tawook
2. Chocolate is food
3. Nachos
4. Nanijan's parathas

Four Places I Would Rather Be Right Now
1, 2, 3 & 4. Lazing about in my own apartment; it's difficult moving back in with family after having known how much fun living on your own can be.

Four People Whom I Tag Next
I don't know four people. Any. Four. People. What kind of people these four people are anyways?

And this one was funny...a definite whaaa?!?! (yes, it merits the ! and ?'s)

The fertility business: Cupidity: A baby-booming business

Feb 16th 2006 NEW YORK
From The Economist print edition

THERE is no better time than the commercial orgy that is Valentine's Day to consider the baby business. So with impeccable timing, Debora Spar, a Harvard Business School professor, has just published a fascinating book exploring how “money, science and politics drive the commerce of conception”.

Happily, this is not an attempt by the management profession to reduce baby-making to strategic alliances and stretch values. But in “The Baby Business” (Harvard Business School Press) Ms Spar does take seriously the idea that there is enormous demand for better ways of creating children coming from those who find that the old-fashioned way does not work—or gives them too little control over the screaming end-product. This demand is creating a spectacular increase in supply of techniques, technologies and businesses that span everything from the egg to the mother.

Fertility treatment is a business with more than 1m customers and revenues of $3 billion a year in America alone. Top-quality eggs—from a female student, say—cost about $50,000. A surrogate mother costs about $59,000. Guatemala generates around $50m a year by exporting babies at around $25,000 a time. These businesses thrive, in part, because they are in a global industry that is regulated nationally, which leaves huge loopholes to be exploited by the customer willing to travel.

Thus, the Cryos International Sperm Bank in Denmark is the world's largest exporter of sperm (no news yet on whether an Islamic boycott has hurt business). Guatemala's baby exports are facilitated by comprehensive, but permissive, adoption laws. And America has become a global centre for fertility treatment, because—unlike in, say, Britain—the industry is largely unregulated.

Ms Spar, however, believes in the need for better regulation. She argues that governments confuse four different models of the baby market—the “luxury model” (buying a baby is like buying jewellery); the “cocaine model” (it should be banned); the “kidney model” (donation okay, trading not); and the “hip-replacement model” (some subsidy, some private supply). Instead, she wants governments to agree on regulations that curb abuses, but allow the market to function. However, given the political and ethical issues that the baby business raises, such a global consensus seems, well, inconceivable.

Idiot Box

I am becoming increasingly shallow; I prefer watching TV to reading a book! On the other hand, while books, at least these days, leave me as a case of information overload induced anxiety and devoid of any self-respect, all the TV fluff makes good blog fodder. As read below.

Digests are the Pakistani equivalent of mass paperbacks in Pakistan. From Urdu Digest to Suspense and Jasoosi Kahanian (Detective Stories) to Kiran (moon beam), Shua’a (sun ray) and Khwateen (Ladies) Digest, all monthlies sell like hot cakes. The former three are a collection of thrillers and the latter are all romance; a desi version of Harlequins, with as many veils and shrouds of morality as befits desiness, ahem. Typically populist fare which of course means it would be frowned upon should one be found curled up with a Kiran, Shua’a or Khwateen. And obviously one would love to be found in the compromising situation, ahem. To one’s credit though, on has never ever bought a new copy of the offending digests, it’s always borrowings, buying old ones, stealing it from cousins and other noble means of getting one’s reading supplies.

From one fluff to another, read above, usually channel surfing my stopover is longer at Pakistani channels, out of interest. There are so many channels coming up each day I wonder how they would sustain themselves over the period of time. Of course it also means there is a mad scramble for producing kitsch for the idiot-box; generous smatterings of Star Plus' Saas Bahu'esque soaps with garish make-up, elaborate gold tinted sets, a significant lack of acting, exaggerated histrionics and the like. Leaves a terrible taste and a sudden urge to purge the living room of the offending presence of a TV set airing such torture. In such a scenario it's always a welcome change to actually want to stop and sit through an entire Pakistani drama. Imagine my surprise when I found not just one or two but three watchable dramas on the local scene!

The first is Lahasil aired on HumTV, then there is Amar Bail that comes on TV1 and lastly a Mehreen Jabbar serial on Hum TV again. Jabbar does good work and her projects I make a point to watch. No nonsense, her dramas, and definitely worth a watch. Shame I forgot its name. The first two serials are based on serialized novels that regularly appeared in the frowned upon digests. I've lost steam and don't want to go any further now.

Then there was this TVC I caught on Channel V. A cartoon featuring a man staring at Mona Lisa. After a while Mona Lisa, turns to the man and says, 'Ae, ghar main maan behn naeen kia, *^&#$.' (Don't you have mother and sister at home, a typical response to disrespectful ogling men.) I loved the TVC, needless to say, and made it my life's purpose to tell it to as many men and women possible. *wink*

And ending this randomness and poor excuse of a writing/typing:

بربادئ دل جبر نہیں فیض کسی کا
وہ دشمنِ جاں ہے تو بُھلا کیوں نہیں دیتے

Cribbings

It is half past two in the morning and I am up at this ungodly hour to see to a task that just could not wait until morn. While online, here's an update:
I have a theory about myself. I am a first born, and I don’t blame my parents for all those experimentations I was subjected to while growing up. Here is what it was like. Picture a newly wed couple, all lovey dovey, and both absolute trouble makers in their respective families. Try to imagine the havoc their progeny were to wreck on the world. Knowing very well what they were in for, they prayed for a real good first child. A kid everyone could look up to and cite as an example of extraordinary achievements, behavior…the whole hog of parent’s boring expectations. Unfortunately for them, they were told the only specimen of mankind (tbdl) available fitting their timetable and a suitable hotch potch of their combined traits, physical and mental, was erm…slightly flawed, a wee bit dented in the brain, nothing discernible from the outside and if they took it, who knows what wonders their bringing up could do for it. And there was a huge amount of sawaab thrown in if they took in this particular model. And so they did. To this day I can’t make out if I was accepted because Mom and Pop believed in themselves enough and had hope that I could turn out right despite the dent or was it the sawaab factor that led them to my crib.
And so I was brought up and with each passing day Mom and Pop realized what a rotten deal they had gotten themselves into. Perhaps they should have waited for the next available model, which, it turned out, was not really any better than the first one. But forever optimists, they did not give up hope and did what they did best. Somewhere in between genes got mutated. And since all of us siblings had had a dip in the same pool, the effects manifested themselves. This theory of gene mutation is quite a consolation to my parents. How could all of their kids be the way they are? Oftentimes I find myself wondering how lucky Mom and Pop are to be blessed with us all, and look up to find them staring at each other in disbelief/horror/speechlessness at one of their kid’s recent antics. The thing is, we siblings believe we are just Mom and Pop short of perfection, and Mom and Pop refuse to partake in our idea of perfection, so that essentially means we are perfections personified each pending parent participation.
And did I say I had a theory, well, I thought I did, but see how my brilliantly brazen brain works? And did I say it was about myself? Well, one thing, erm… kid lead to another.
If I am lucky, which I am so far, no one from my family will ever get to this blog entry. Mom and Pop couldn’t be bothered and in any case none of the ideas expressed here would be new for them. My siblings have conveniently forgotten the existence of this blog and I want not them to waste their time reading all this. I am sure they would have better things to do, like run some errands for me, or listen to me talk about all this in person. Life is bliss, follow the loser, dear ones!
And for certain passive readers of this blog who fathomed not how Her Kvetchness could listen to Mahi Ve ad nauseum, here’s an update. I heard Atif Aslam’s Yaqeen on Indus Music and downloaded it from Sangeet Radio. It’s been playing on my laptop since, much to the musical annoyance of those who live with me…Hmmm hmmm, ho hooo, ho hooo, ho hoooooo…
There is something seriously wrong with Asian tastes in chocolate. It does not agree with me…or rather,I don’t agree with the brown slab they proudly call chocolate. I made a big mistake when I picked up these chocolate covered hazelnuts on a whim from the supermarket today. It was swiss chocolate and that more or less settles the matter for me, but when I came home and popped in a hazelnut in my mouth, I was devastated. Too much sugar. Just to be sure, I checked the package and it said, chocolate made in Singapore, packed in Malaysia for….Zurich. It is always the same back home too, any locally produced chocolate and it would be sweetened to massacre the very spirit of cocoa. There should be universal standards for chocolates. And I don’t care who wins the US Presidential Elections next week, as long as it is not Bush and as long as the new Pres. assures me personally that the strictest of AWK compliant standards would be maintained in chocolate manufacture around the world and violators would be assigned the task of writing speeches for George W. Bush.< Rab Rakha!

WHY CAN'T HUMANS HIBERNATE

Come winter and I am repeatedly found hurling this question at just about anyone who cares to listen to my meaningless ramblings and that does not include my family. Simply because they my inanities are not worth their ears. So I take on to the cyberspace. My family may argue that I try my level best to achieve that level of soporific utopia each winter but somehow the very thought of ambling out of the warm cocoon of my cozy bed and facing the cold winter wind thaperay is enough to rob me of any moment of genuine bliss nested within the quilt. And as my sister so considerately tells me, if a bear hibernates, it has accumulated enough fat to last it the entire sleep. Something I can’t even think of with my skeletal frame. But what about the frog, I ask her and she counters that I must already be a half-frog from the time I spend in bed each winter. Can't argue with that because it is the truth, for this is what my daily routine looked like this Ramadhan (the Muslim month of fasting, from dusk to dawn). Get up for Sehri, say the fajr prayers, then avail the lastest second of sleep and get up again to prepare for going to the office. Reaching the office late each day (and making up for it staying an hour late), while away the time there and yawn repeatedly, as much as possible. Come home some time before Iftar, stuff myself, say the Maghrib prayers and then sleep. Wake up for Sehri the next day… and so on. Now that it isn't Ramadhan and we had to revert to the same old tiring routine, I oversleep every day, refusing to keep an alarm to wake me from my slumber, and consequentially, reach office late each day