Certainly

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

What?

So I have worked up a snit. And it’s actually fun. So much so that it’s more fun than a snit is legally allowed to be. And that makes it a fun activity instead of a snit and then I work up a snit that my snit is not snitty enough. Or fun enough.

I am not a shopoholic

No seriously, I don’t think I have reached the stage where I shop like a maniac and end up buying things I won’t ever get to wear. I mean how much of me is there anyways? Just two feet and I can carry just one bag at a time. But I’ve had a bag fetish for as long as I can remember. Bags, the bigger, splashier the better. Only recently I’ve learnt how absolutely enjoyable shoe shopping can be. And this from a person who not so long ago wore Bata school shoes to work (at a leading fashion magazine, no less; and after having taken a nasty fall while practicing a ‘style-must-have’ myself) and still wears ugly clutzy half-mocs to work (with matching bobby socks of course).

I realised the other day that I do have a size-able collection of footwear. Dizzying platforms, clunky block heels, flirty kitten heels and a variety of flats. I have a fear of heights, so heels are actually a no-no (Ma pleads with me to NOT buy heels lest I fall and am bed-ridden for a couple of days) but I can manage a not so graceful splat in flats just as well. Why discriminate disgrace on the basis of heels? Equal opportunity and all.

Anyway. I am not a shopoholic because I don’t get an urge to go out ans spend money. But if I do happen to go to a place where things are sold…and they accept plastic, well, I don’t see why I am to blame. I take it a very serious responsibility, to keep the buck in circulation. And if some banks think I am financially solvent and trust-worthy enough it becomes a matter of living up that trust. I don’t think I run a risk of seeing my statements in red, my credit limit is kind of obscene.

So I am not a shopoholic. I spend within my limits. So I only buy books, online, and from bookstores and fairs, that I will read some time or the other in my life. And I’ve run out of book space in my room. If I invest in another bookshelf, it would not make sense to see empty shelves on it, some books to read and some to fill space. Of course any one else’s books mine won’t do, else it won’t be MY bookshelf.

I am still not a shopoholic. I mean it’s only common knowledge that you have to colour/shade coordinate your shoes and bags and wardrobes…and scarves in my case. So it’s actually a necessity in my case, an investment. Who knows when that ghastly shade of green chapal may come in handy because I’ve bought a suit with small flowers in the same colour. And I am a career woman, I need a good wardrobe. New clothes don’t remain new the moment you wear them…and woman should always have new clothes to spark up her mood. So.

I am not a shopoholic, every woman in her right mind knows it’s criminally insane and certifiable madness to step out of the house without a mascara. So three types of mascara to suit the mood and occasion are but a minimum requirement. And you do actually need eye liners in a multitude if shades and formulas…pencil ones, liquid ones depending on the look. I believe in being well-prepared for all situations. I mean what if I decide to wear a dress on which a bronzy blush would be definite no-no? So mochas and lilacs and pinks are other options. Most of the times I go for the no-make up look, because it’s easy and does not take time. (Wash face, step out, means buying facial cleansers and skin care essentials as skin moods dictate.)

See these are all but the bare essentials. And I don’t buy like crazy. All sensible buys. And I don’t have to hide my credit statements from my mother or smuggle new footwear in the house while Pa’s not looking. Or want to slap that silly smirk off my brothers face. In such times, I’m glad I have a sister who understands. Because she knows that I am not a shopoholic.

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.

Last time I titled a post Divine Humor, I got told off. That is not to say I ever thought of not putting it up, just that people I care about get offended and that I can't bear, not much anyways.
So. this time, no such title, even if the post borders on something ill-advised. What is to be said, this place has already seen me spiral into silence. How fair would that be? That I have a blog and I can't write all that I want, becuase it is not expected of me? And why? Am I not human? Do I not feel? I do and I feel, a bit too much even if all is not expressed. Where was I again? Yes, God's sense of timing and making things generally miserable for me. Of course I believe He cares for me, why else would He make sure life gets progressively unpleasant for me if He isn't looking after me. I am in a terribly tight spot, have stopped talking to family lest I say something nasty and regret it later. There is so much anger and rage bottled up and no chance of it getting out, and festering does rarely any good. So. I just want some ray of hope, some kind of light at the end of this bleak, dark, endless tunnel that is my life tehse days. Over the past one year I have requested so many to pray for me and now I wonder if I should have bothered them. It's not as if any of anyone's prayers for me are working. There. Another sign that God is watching for me, with that decided aim to deny me even the slightest good or ease to make life less unpleasant. It's like banging on closed doors till my hands bleed. Being beyond the point of caring whether the doors open or not, whether my hands heal or not. At this point, all I am left with is some half-hearted attempts at feeble knock with aching hands at doors closed shut in my face. It's not as if there's going to be any respite, as if any door would open, but it gives me something to think about other than the hopelessness and complete despondency. It's strange, hoping that their would be some respite in being utterly dejected. After all, what have I to lose?

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.

asked for it

It's funny. The fact that I do open up blogger and type in a few words and then close the window altogether because I have some other work to attend to. What would it take, how much of my time would be wasted if I just exercised my typing and puny writing skills just a bit? But this momentary stop to read through what I have already typed becomes, literally, my undoing as I hit the backspace key and conveniently forget releasing it till there’s nothing but a blank screen staring, blinking back at me…whoa! What happened here, it seems to say. It’s strange this mood, this feeling and existence I seem to have taken recently. As if I live day to day…I live towards 10 pm each day/night which is the time when I would retire with a book and eventually drift into sleep in half an hour, with a book and the lights still on. And then I sleep like a log before beating my cell phone alarm to wake up. And then I wait for the alarm to ring and hit it shut with a glee with the first peep of sound from it. Then I proceed to sleep, or pretend to, for another 15 minutes. What is it about growing up that you don’t have parents waking you up any more, checking up on you every few minutes to see if you are actually up and ready to start the day. What is with growing up that means you have to think so much that all senses get numbed? What is it with growing up and apart from your family? What is it with the pile of expectations heaping itself on you with each passing growing, gnawing day? What is it with a sense of hopelessness that sets on you when you set unachievable goals for you and slink into despondency when you haven’t met them by the end of the day? What is it with all this nonsense anyways? Update and that’s it. Just as we live because we have to and nothing else? What is it? Questions and no answers? Or answers and then a crazy search for the right questions? What is it? What is it with me?

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.