Confessing a Human Tragedy

Ages ago I had a book of quotes and one struck me then and smacks me in the face now:

"Every woman grows up to be like her mother, that's her
tragedy; no man does, that's his."

As I whiled away this time last year, Ma took it to her to drill into me what marriage meant.

Marriage, she said, is hard work, plain and simple; and it's upto the woman to make it work. In societies like ours, the man is never at fault, however much a beast he may be, it's always the woman who'd be put up on the stake of criticism. Marriage, Ma said, is compromise, not just by the wife, but also by the husband, but it's essential that you don't look at it as compromise, look at it as a decision that was reached mutually because your spouse agreed with you had to say. It takes work, 24/7 to make marriages last, 30 years plus and Ma and Pa still had to see through each day to see their marriage work. I've seen my parents grow old, I've seen them have their issues, resolve their issues, work around...I grew up seeing all that, even if I was presented with a child-friendly version of their tiffs, my view of how Ma made her marriage work may be juandiced, limited to whatever exposure I had of them. At the end of it all, I saw Ma and Pa as a team, whether it came to getting us kids ready for work, deciding life-altering things like relocating the family to Pakistan, they may have had their differences, but to us it came as The Decision. Pa's word was final but it never meant he would actually decide againsst what Ma had said. They'd reason around but the decision had to be mutual. They must have, in the long course of their marriage, been at odds with each other numerous times, one must have compromised, bent to others judgement, but for most parts, we were blissfully unaware of it all. Pa, the ideal man-figure that I've always looked upto him as (as most daughters end up doing, knowingly or otherwise), took years and years of being moulded into shape. He was a difficult man, Ma told me, but with time, he came around to being a family man. I remember once long ago Pa asking me and sis if we had 'ideals' or an idea of what kind of man we wanted to marry (Pa's that way, more of a friend than a traditional desi father), we were stumped, but sis turned it round and asked him if he had an ideal before marriage and he said, very seriously, that he was married to her. And he meant it.

Every marriage is unique, but the essentials of making it work remain the same; understanding, compassion and respect, the confidence that you can talk about anything under the sun and your spouse would understand you even if he/she disagrees. This, being able to talk and be understood is the foundation for marraige. It would be the foundation for every relaitionship but marriage it trickier. The moment you realise, or are reluctant or afraid to talk about anything to your spouse, you should know that your marriage has hit a rough patch. You simply need to connect, start over again, if needs be, but work over it. Love, passion and all that hoopla is trivial. Connect and how well you connect is what matters in marriages. With desi marriages, on the woman's part there is surrender. At least I argued with Ma that it was surrender and letting go of your being. I'm still learning about marriage and how to make it work. There are times when I marvel at all those people who've lasted decades with each other and there are times when I know for certain that I could be one of those lucky couples who grow fonder with each other as they age. If I have the will , strength and the sabr to make my marriage work. As Ma said, it's upto me now.

As I look back onto the months that have past since I've been married, I see how I have changed, how my priorities have changed. If there's one thing I like in myself, it's that I take complete responsibility for my decisions, with no regrets. I haven't ever regretted my marriage, it was, at the end of it all, my decision, I could've said no and no one would have pushed me into it. Ma told both me and sis, when we were getting married, that we don't make the mistakes that she made in her married life, if there is anything you find admirable in your parent's marriage, she pleaded with us, take that with you.

As I'm reminded of the saying above, I fear if I have indeed become my mother, down right to some of the mistakes she made in her relationship. I'd love to have the kind of marriage Ma and Pa have, but I don't want to repeat any of their mistakes (I'd rather have my own?). At times I find myself so insecure, so drained that I encyst myself, completely. It's not right, I know, I've seen Ma do it and how it strained the home environs. This is one of her mistakes she'd warned us about. At times you just need a sympathetic shoulder to lean on and it's such a shame that it is not your spouse's. The guilt of confiding in someone else than my husband kills me but I do it all the same. I should be able to talk freely and completely, why do I then hold back? The fear that there is something lacking, that I'm not doing enough to make my marriage work makes me restless, ruins my appetite, makes me mad, and I'm generally reduced to an emotional, mushy mish-mash of insecurities. All that and it hasn't even been a year.

Becoming Ma in her mistakes has been one of sis' and my greatest fears, she's talked to me about it (when she could talk to me), how nerve-racking it is, the realisation that you're making your Ma's mistake...and go on making it. I would want to be like Ma, as Pa has glorified her in the rare moments he reflects back on his life, I would like to be like Ma in all the good she's done and been as a wife and mother. If I can half as good a wife and mother she's been to us, I'd think myself lucky and utterly blessed; but her mistakes, I fear and dread. One most than others, her silent temper. Not talking at all, a blank face and a whirlwind of thoughts plaguing the mind.

Books NOT Recommended

I love reading books...actually I love reading, I'll read anything as long as it's in Urdu or English, the two langauges that I claim to be fluent in...and I mean anything, if it's readable, it has to be read. How long I take to read it depends on teh length of the writing, its format and portability (e-treatise have their limitations for instance, they can't be read before dozing off to sleep and picked up the next morning from the floor to be read again). When it comes to books, I confess I prefer fiction to non-fictitious works, but once I start a book, I have to finish it, irrespective of genre, it becomes a HAVE TO task. Sometimes though, there is a book that I start with all the steam of an full-throttled engine but somehow leave midway and those books are just relegated to an ornamental place in the paltry bookshelf I have here. (My actual collection is in Pakistan, indexed, maintained and subsequently, gradually taken over by kid bro, A.) Books like Orhan Pamuk's The White Castle (left midway), Umberto Eco's Focault's Pendulum (too esoteric and intelligent for my present state of being), or even Aag ka Darya and Naguib Mahfouz's Palace Walk, the last two I borrowed from Bhai last year. I always get some more books from his MA bursting at the ends bookshelf but rarely get down to reading any. In the meantime I'm beefing up my own shelf here, Z's ordering books online and buying books too (our tastes in books are poles apart and so far we've fought over only one book, The Leopard and The Fox), thus there is a whole stack of reading to be done...add to it the numerous magazine subscriptions that Z has and the amount of reading a person, who has teh whole day to herself, can do is staggering. Of course it won't and doesn't stagger me.

There was a time at school when I was reading two books a day, it took two math and urdu classes in a row for me to finish a Nancy Drew/Sweet Valley paperback and then I switched books with N, my classmate. I learned speed reading at school, I also learned math and urdu enough to get by. :)

Last time we went to the Sharjah World Book Fair, I did not buy a single book, even Z was surprised (he steers me away from bookshops, I think he fears himself at such places more than what and how much I would bring to the check-out counter; somehow his stack is always larger than mine). And then I slipped into Border at DCC some weeks past and did not buy any book from there either...I have resolved to first read up what I have before buying anything new, lest I end up with an enviable collection of books I have not read and bros are happily passing off as their possessions back home. How far I'm resolute in my resolve is yet to be seen, if I go to the House of Prose I might give in but that bridge is to be crossed when it comes.

The Kite Runner, I'd been reading so much about it and then I downloaded the movie too. I saw and brought the book back from Bhai's place yesterday thinking I'd read it first and then watch the movie. I shouldn't have. After My Forbidden Face and the Bookseller of Kabul, I'd decided to stay clear of any book on Afghanistan. It just dampens your spirit, these books, make you morose, depressed, melancholy to read all that has befallen the people of Afghanistan...I wonder if books have to absolutely trashy or really dank to become a best-seller. I started reading the book at around one in the morning last night...got depressed, let it go, tossed and turned, switched on the light, read some more, put it aside, tried to sleep, picked it up again...till about five in the morning. It was such a dreary read that I could not put it down...as if my hurrying through the pages and finishing off teh story would somehow lesses or at least quicken the suffering recorded in its pages. I finally finished it this evening, only getting up to fix something to eat. I'm glad that I did, read it off, not eat. However bleak and whatever travails and sufferings it contains, there was, literally, a ghost of a smile at the end. And I'll also watch the movie, there's no way they could've carried all that pain onto celluloid. And Also find and read Hosseini's second novel, it's been on the top ten best-seller list too long for me to have not read it. And perhaps I can start on Orhan Pamuk again. I brought all of his books here with me only to spite mean bro S, he loves Pamuk...but I forgot that he has my Kazuo Ishiguro collection with him, gah! they have all my collection with them that they're dishing out to their friends!

"Children aren't colouring books. You
don't get to fill them with your favourite colours." The Kite
Runner

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.

let the dead bury the dead

Why I'm Returning To Pakistan
Updated pics: BB shot before the blast
Telltale images expose fatal security flaws : Benazir’s assassination
A face in the crowd: Benazir Bhutto's assassin
Daily life on hold after Benazir’s assassination
And out came the wolves
Firing at JPMC: patients face terror
Opportunists rule while city mourns
State responsible for situation, say citizens
Karachi Chaos and aftermath updates
Lahore City Updates
There is so much on teh internet and on TV since Thursday, December 27. It's impossible to think of anything else...if I do think of anything else, I feel petty. It's as if worrying is the only honorable course of action left. That and outrage at what is now abounding in all media about BB's death. She was not a martyr, she was assasinated yes, not martyred. Martyrs would be all those unsuspecting victims who lost their lives in the destruction and chaos that followed the news of her death, for no fault of theirs. And the absolute state of fear the whole country is in even three days after it all. I pray everyone's loved ones back home are safe and sound.

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.

Marriage for Desi Women 101

Writers are a sensitive breed, they can only write to their whimsies, when they have something to say and the right selection of words to get the message across. They can’t be forced to write to a deadline with a gun to their head…or some marital equivalent of it…like a threat of not going out on the weekend.
Journalists, past, present and future, are tougher material, more used to delivering a decided word count ‘story’ by a given deadline…but they are also a spoiled lot, they expect to be paid for their words. Seeing their ‘by-line’ in print/new media, or a PTC on the electronic media is a high but all words come at a price.
Stay at home wives, home-makers or house-wives, are tough nuts to crack. They are used to multi-tasking; casting nervous glances towards the kitchen where a pile of dishes await their ‘sudsy’ ministrations, their surroundings which needs to be addressed and restored to order once the hubby has left for work leaving a trail of random items lying about en-route to exiting, think and rack their brains for the day's menu - that bane of housewifely existence…even before they get to brush their teeth in the morning (their morning which is usually late).
Now where do I fit? Formerly in the first two and presently smug in the last one, it is difficult and at times impossible to sit down and write something, anything, when there is a teacup in front of me and the kitchen tap dripping away at my senses…should I be forced to write and update the blog to a deadline that is now 90 minutes away when I have to clean up the house, cook, eat (its such a task, eating), and prepare for a night out with friends in the evening? So I was once able to multi-task, yes. But preparing a three hour lecture is cakewalk when compared to sitting at home just trying to work up the will to do something around the house…there is so much to be done you just don’t know where to start from. Home-maker is a well paying job, but no one tells you that you have to literally at times, break your back to do the job well…and there are no off-days, in fact hubby’s off-days mean more work unless you want to risk his knowing how the house actually functions in his absence.
I’m not sure if Z would actually carry out his threat and leave me to watch TV/movies and while way time online at home and leave for the weekend to RAK to visit with friends if I don’t update this blog; but I’ve shaken aside his deadlines so often and so easily in the past four months I have somehow lost the strength to do it again. Why does he want me to say on the blog anyways that I don’t and can’t say to him in person, considering he is now my only readership? I keep telling him that…I have a dedicated audience in him why should I even bother to find some other outlet to channel my thoughts? He says he was duped into believing that the woman he was marrying was actually intelligent and all he sees now is a woman who is uber lazy and considers thinking anything sane to be an affront to her womanly sensibilities. I tell him he’s lucky, the magnitude of error and misreporting is far less in his case; somewhere in the world a war has been waged on intelligence far sketchier than the one that had him tying the knot.
Marriage, there are many advantages for a woman, specially a desi woman, as I’ve worked out in the past some months, but each has a catch.
Porter: This is the first perk I realized, once you marry you don’t have to worry about luggage when you’re traveling. Of course it held true when you traveled with brothers too but recently I’d undertaken travels on my own and lugged around at least my sizable carry-on myself. Imagine my delight when immediately after marriage I had to take the train to Lahore with some considerable baggage and not in the least worry about how many rocks I stuffed in the suitcases! All I had to do was keep a count of the no. of items in my baggage list. Same while air-traveling, for the first time in my life I had someone to put my hand-carry away in the over-head storage and not stow it away under my seat. The catch, after a while the wife has to manage her luggage on her own, particularly ‘hands- off’ items like handbags and heavy trolley bags that she insists on stuffing with essentials in hopes hubby would handle it for her. Also once the chivalrous side has worn off and hubby knows that it’s a lifetime of lugging around and porting weights, he guilt-freely slides the slightly light burden on the wife…so if there are two trips to be made to the car to cart grocery to the apartment, be prepared for a second trip downstairs with hubby, just to save him the third one on his own.
Financer: It’s great to know that you don’t have to worry about how to pay the bills at the end of each month and/or shopping trip. There is a person solely responsible to finance your expenses. You could also think of it as a salary for all the house-work you have to do to get to it but living free of the financial strain is every bit worth it. You can’t really listen to your favourite song at the check-out counter of the store but you can do so while washing up the dinner dishes. The catch: you might be tied down with a hubby whose spending habits you have to monitor…each time you go to shop you have to keep an eye on him to see that he doesn’t slip in something exorbitantly priced but never-to-be-used in the shopping cart while bickering over the two pence item that you actually need around the house, like a potato peeler. It can become a matter of my-buys vs. your-buys before either of you gives in and your financial fate is decided: bankruptcy or affluence because of sensible buying habits. You can also not rely on hubby to knock some sense into you when you go into a shopping splurge, he’d be content as you come home and go through your buys and get into a buyer’s remorse…that occasional guilt-trip of yours is worth the expense for him.
Driver: I’ve never been keen on driving. If there is someone to drive me around I’m content to sit back and take in the scenery or traffic as it comes. I don’t even mind coughing up obscene amounts of money and call it cab fare, I can always have it reimbursed. It’s actually worth it to let your driver’s license mould away in some forgotten slit in your wallet and be a one car family because you can always call up your husband and ask him to pick you up if you can’t find a cab, don’t want to wait in the sun to get in the cab, or simply don’t want to go somewhere, hubby busy is a handy excuse at such times. The catch is of course that sometime you feel caged in the house with nothing but the idiot box for company, particularly when hubby has to work long hours and/or be away for week(s) on a trip his company has inconsiderately sent him on without his wife. And the only occasions when you don’t have your cab fare reimbursed by the hubby is when you have to spend a heart-breakingly large amount of money on commute.
Audience of one: this is my favourite perk of being a wife, I have a person whole and solely dedicated to listening to my ramblings. An emotional punch-bag that I can, boss around, nag, annoy, irritate, accuse, shout at, fight with, someone to take all the blame for everything that goes wrong in the world. Earlier I had my family and I had to actually ration out my monstrosities on each member equally so that none felt left-out. It also meant a dilution of my full scale meanness, making me more bearable. Now at last I have someone to be really nasty to whenever the mood strikes. The catch here is that you have to be ready to be at the receiving end for all the above mentioned as well. And really receive it, if you know what I mean!
At the end of the day, as I tell my girl cousins, marriage is not being yoked into a lifetime of servitude, everyone’s lucky to find a partner Allah has deemed perfect for her. It’s making the marriage work that takes all the effort. I first thought marriage chips away the core of who you are but I’ve realized now that it does not, it just replaces and improves on what you were to make you even better by the day. Each day into married life, you have a chance to become more of the clichéd ‘us’ where you are more defined than you ever were in your life. I know I have and it's every bit worth the effort, worth each pro and con I've or will ever try to list.

update

attempt 5 at update.
real attempts saved offline, to be completed one of these days and posted.

What me worry?

I got a call today, prospective employer; a prospect I’d never explored. I was still in bed when the phone rang and mom picked it up. She called out my name after a while. I carried my emaciated self to the phone stand to be told by a lady that I’d applied for a position at TPPL for a C. Manager and I’d been short-listed. This was out of the blue. I’ve been gloriously unemployed since December last year and while I did wish for a change of status, poring over the Sunday job pages and moaning how many good opportunities I’d not been giving a shot, I didn’t remember doing anything for a change of status. Sure I wished for a steady deposit of money in my bank account end of each month but that too was taken care of somehow as two of my checks due from the last company I’d worked at were delivered in January and February this year. So. I interviewed the pleasant sounding lady to learn that it was through bayt, the job website I’d registered myself on ages ago and never updated my profile, that they came across my particulars and now were interested in an interview. Of course I had to apologize and explain how even hinting of appearing for a job interview at this time might mean a vicious threat of maiming from my family. And then I had to tell (and stop just short of inviting) her that I was sitting mayoun tomorrow and getting married next week. Oh, she said, would you still be in Karachi after marriage, I told her of my imminent relocation to Lahore and then out of country. She was pleased at the mention of Lahore but I deflated her telling it was a temporary move.
So that was a nice, flattering start to the day. I don’t know how my hiatus from work would reflect on my search for a job once I am ready to enter the rat-race again. As THE day looms ahead I am full of uncertainties and doubts of how I would adjust to changes that a change in the m status demands. It’s given me insomnia and a severe indigestion, I’ve been on ORS for the past two days and only managed to crawl out of bed today. I’ve been having vivid dreams of eating aloo koftay with chawal and then wake up to a vile looking/smelling/tasting plate of kichri ma insists I eat. I taste steel in my mouth, black out at random, have a sudden flash of pain in the head…and I have to get well before tomorrow…and stay well, all hale and hearty, for at least two months.

I dream of going to the Bargain Basement at Liberty Books and browse through for hours, then going to Laraib and sifting through DVDs, stuffing myself with Jeddah's kabab roll, KU's biryani and double kabab roll and aloo samosas...visiting every relatives' house, shopping for gifts for my cousins, talking to and laughing like a loon with my siblings and telling them how much they mean to me, buying a spanking nifty new laptop, or at least getting my old one fixed...reading all the books that gather dust on my bookshelf, watch the movies Ibought but never got a chance to see...and all of sudden, there's no time left. This is how life as I know it comes to an end... and they say I should not worry?

Oh?

OK, so Orkut is three years, So how come I have been on Orkut for all of these three years (got onboard in February 2004) am a member of 79 communities and have only 25 odd/even friends on my list? I am on a networking site and painstakingly avoid/spurn fraindship offers.
and then there was an Oh! moment two days ago. While sis and ma were crying, I was trying to contain my laugh, so much so that sis realised and stepped back saying she would not ruin her mascara. Ha! Anyways, I did try to behave myself and keep a firm grip on my comments, i must have gnashed and ground my teeth by a good half by the time we were through. It it a tiring business, trying to behave.