Samandar-e-Bemaina - The Abbasnama

the cool thing about this birthday (apart from the fact that this was the fifth time that it was divisible by five) was that i spent it among a groupof people who were all almost exactly the same age i am - and have known me long enough to make the age factor inconsequential. i can be as mature or immature around them as i please. and that despite the fact that we meet around once in an olympic cycle.

ali's wedding last night was cool. it was more than cool. if i had been the marrying kind, i'd want to have a wedding like ali's. or maybe i just had more fun because there were so many old friends around. i mean i'd all but forgotten that danish hasan ever existed. rasheed has become the enterprising entrepreneurship-encouraging memon self that you would expect him to be, faraz and i felt right at home with our corny immature jokes, farheen hasn't changed at all and ali is well, ali. which brings us to a crucial grammatical question - is sara a linklet or a linkette? wierd how i still can't believe that he actually got married.

all in all, fun. even if they had to make a corny production out of wishing me a happy birthday on the stage.

oh and all the people who were trying to get me on my cell - well i'm on again, same number.

Posted by Xill-e-Ilahi at 11:23 PM | Permalink | Comments

sometimes you get bitten by the crazy bug. the risk of this multiplies exponentially when the three people who are hanging out together happen to be the turk, the stud and yours truly. they say that in a death free environment e. coli bacteria can multiply from being a single cell to four milion kilograms of the stuff in around 24 hours. when the three of us are together thats what happens with wild ideas.

take for example friday night. one of those rare occasions when the turk and i were actually free to go home at five. yes five. i kid you not. what we did was of course the exact opposite. we made our way to the stud's office, told him to give his team the vening off and then virtually kidnapped him and hijacked his car. and that's just the beginning. unable to decide on a place in karachi where all three of us would be willing to have dinner we got the bright idea of driving to hyderabad and trying out some palla machli - which is some kind of fish that is found only in the indus delta. and this is indeed craziness considering that the stud drives a suzuki khyber which does not have a jack in the trunk and does not exactly sport the most reliable set of tyres in the world.

anyways 10:00 pm found us on a lonely stretch of the highway around eighty kilometres from karachi, the teriyaki boys blaring their track from fast and furious on the deck, and the flashing lights of a highway police suv around a kilometre behind the car. which is when we realised that we did not have a driving license between us and that the car's registration documents were not in the car but in a file on the stud's desk back at his house.

shit.

yeah it happens.

the sane thing to do under such circumstances is to pull over and hope the lights aren't for you and if they are to beg and cry and attempt to bribe your way out of the mess. the crazy way is to pull a one eighty without slowing down and drift over the grass that serves as the traffic island and tear away back to karachi. no prizes for guessing what we did.

fortunately the suv wasn't chasing us anyway and we made it back without further adrenalin.

and meeruth is good enough for dinner fter an adventure like that. our legend grows. we now have the almost trip to hyderabad to add to our other asinine attempts at finding entertainment. as if the alaptops at the zoo and the ties at the beach weren't dumb enough.

i wonder if you know
how they live in tokyo
if you see me then you mean it
then you know you have to go
fast and furious ! drift, drift, drift
fast and furious ! drift, drift, drift....

i love being crazy.

Posted by Xill-e-Ilahi at 11:45 AM | Permalink | Comments

add to the list of things stolen from me: yet another mobile phone, my trusty sony ericsson.

i'm too incensed to write anything more now.

Posted by Xill-e-Ilahi at 7:26 PM | Permalink | Comments

this is the first scene of a play i'm writing. any resemblance to any persons living or dead is probably accidental. go figure. also let me know if its worth continuing.


the soliloquies

a play in 1 act

cast:

• abdullah shah karachvi – (the central character. a dark, overweight and generally unattractive young man. abdullah has an office job that he doesn’t like, a life which is going nowhere and a creative mind that he can’t use. he is obsessed with his childhood sweetheart, a beautiful woman named sassi who is now married and hasn’t seen him for the last ten years)
• sassi maroof – (the object of abdullah’s obsession. a brilliant young architecht, married for the past five years to a man her parents found for her. she has recently arrived in her hometown for a vacation.
• suroor zaidi – (a junior coworker at abdullah’s office. she is a tall, leggy, “blonde” with an incongruently sharp brain and something of a soft spot for abdullah)
• najeeb baig – (a classmate and close friend of abdullah’s from university. najeeb is a soft spoken, generous hearted, well mannered young man. the clichéd “good guy”)
• tazeen haider – (a relative of abdullah’s. she has been one of his closest friends since childhood and one of his only confidants)
• abdullah nawab – (abdullah’s classmate and best friend in school. abdullah nawab is everything abdullah shah is not; tall, fair, handsome, popular and successful.)
• shahid nizam – (another close friend from school)
• faizan mohiuddin – (a close friend and classmate from abdullah’s later school days. faizan and abdullah share a bond in the sense that they mapped their careers together on the same path. faizan is happy and successful today. abdullah is not)
• saif agha – (a colleague and close friend of abdullah)
• jamal siddiqui – (a colleague and close friend of abdullah)
• arafat niazi – (a colleague and close friend of abdullah)

time: the present.


scene 1:

(a small room with a window. the moonlight is filtering in through the grille work, showing the pensive form of abdullah shah sitting on his bed)

abdullah: (thinking aloud, calm reflective posture)

the reason i chose wrigley’s cool air over all other chewing gums is no secret. and boy, did i try them all. it is the simple little matter of the aftertaste. why would anyone sacrifice on taste for aftertaste? why not chew on wild berries instead of dreary old eucalyptus? elementary, my dear watson. when you eat something coated with flavours meant to please, you can only enjoy that for so long. and then comes the aftertaste. a clingy sensation on the palate that does not go away until washed away or replaced with some other taste. fickle things, taste buds.

but fate can be just as fickle. life is meant to acquire its own distinct flavour as time passes on. an identifying taste. something pleasant. like the khopra laden meetha paan you could get from the hawker at the corner of the street. of course, you have to factor fate in into the equation. and fate did not mean my life to be another cool air. oh hell no. it drags on and on and on like the sticky remnants of amoxil syrup they gave you when you were a kid. and that is where i am stuck. in the aftertaste. in the vacuum left between the future and the past. the future of me and the past of we. or you and i or we. in the air that hangs around after unfinished sentences and unanswered questions. in a comma in a sentence in a footnote of her life.

oh yes this is about her. you didn’t possibly think it wasn’t, did you? so why would i even think of her at a time like this? [giggles]

because she was the taste before the aftertaste. the light before the fade out. and aftertastes have to be washed away. i thought i just told you that.

[takes out a syringe from his pocket and injects a toxin in his arm]

maybe in this end there will be a new beginning. maybe i will live on in every smile she’ll ever flash. in every twinkle of her eyes. the very things that brought the flashes of colour in the black and white picture of my life. and maybe it will just be the roll of credits in the low budget flick that you shouldn’t have bothered watching after the first scene. it is at any rate the end. the end of a million years of happier minutes. of times when consequences didn’t exist. when futures could be extrapolated into what you wanted them to be. when worlds of meaning were conveyed with flicks of eyelashes and turns of a pretty little head. the end of a billion years of yearning after the end of the beginning or the beginning of the end. the end of a tale best left untold. like the cat she ran over on her first attempt at driving. like the reason for why there had to be a life after us.

[shudders and slips from the bed to the ground]

she will weep at my grave i know. and in the tears that fall from luminous eyes and seep through dirt and linen shroud, i will smell her scent again, taste her skin again. feel life again. immortality is just two tears away.

[body goes limp and lies on the ground as the light coming in from the window brightens to show a sunny day outside with birds chirping away merrily]

end of scene 1

Posted by Xill-e-Ilahi at 2:14 AM | Permalink | Comments

out of all the things that happened yesterday, one stands out as being more than mildly interesting. after ages of pestering each other, link 3 and i actually managed to meet up for fifteen minutes in front of habib bank plaza. and the "surprise", or at least part of it, was that link 1 was there too. it makes me feel like a really old "codger", as hugh would put it, when i realise that it had been thirteen years since the three of us were together again. jesus christ, man! thats freaking ages ago!

and if the re-uniting of the 1993 chain gang wasn't enough - the occasion was the announcement (and obviously invitation) to link 1's wedding which is going to take place on the day before my 25th birthday! which is something like three months after his if i haven't forgotten. and he's not even a memon! now when your friends, especially the "my type of guy" friends start getting married and talk of settling down you know your hell raising days have somehow slipped behind. dammit!! i didn't even realise they'd arrived.

i grow old
i grow old
i shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled

from the love song of j alfred prufrock (i think)

Posted by Xill-e-Ilahi at 8:42 PM | Permalink | Comments

when by the end of the working day (and night) your dustbin begins to look like this, it suddenly hits you that all the jokes about broad wheelbases begin to become decidedly unfunny, yet you grudgingly admit that kentucky boiled chicken would never have made it big.

screw you colonel sanders for making a fad out of cholesterol. and you mickey d's for making it an art form.

but i, yes i of the fat laden arteries, have reached a decision. i will become the first person in the world to simply will away the extra pounds. that this is partly inspired by the subconscious acceptance that there is no way in hell i am giving up on french fries is besides the point.

as the chinese guy said it, "where it is a will, it is a way". that, my friends is what we call the zen approach to weight reduction.

now excuse me while i finish my cheesecake.

Posted by Xill-e-Ilahi at 11:51 PM | Permalink | Comments

i know that this post is slanderous (or is that libelous?) to the extreme but losing a series to the english hurts. especially when that clown panesar takes wickets and a wanker like bell manages to get three centuries - to date.

and i know that the following 55ers don't make inzi any less of a batting god. i just can't accept that we lost fair and square. aaargh!!!!

so here's my take on what might have happened, 55fiction style.

I

"under fifty but not your usual run outs please."

"how else then?"

"i don’t know. be creative"

"tell your boss he can’t push me around. i could tell the police you know. this is extortion."

"no fatty. this is match fixing. go to the cops if you want. you’re just as dirty as we are."

II

he knows the pull isn’t going to work but he wants to show the man in the black hat and blue jacket that he wanted to get out. having to go this way smarts. badly.

but when you take money from the bookie, you go the way he tells you.

or your son simply goes.

II

he surreptitiously slips the cell phone back in his pocket and waits for the manager to take a bathroom break. “we have to lose this one” he tells the boys in the pavilion.

"but if i don’t score a big one now i’m off the team.."

"don’t worry about it. woolmer’s in on the take."

Posted by Xill-e-Ilahi at 9:37 PM | Permalink | Comments

here is an excerpt from e e cummings' introduction to his anthology, "new poems". you've got to love the screwy typography and writing style. insanity turns me on.

The poems to come are for you and for me and are not for mostpeople-it's no use trying to pretend that mostpeople and ourselves are alike. Mostpeople have less in common with ourselves than the squarerootof-minusone. You and I are human beings;mostpeople are snobs.

Take the matter of being born. What does being born mean to most-people? Catastrophe unmitigated. Socialrevolution. The cultured aristocrat yanked out of his hyperexclusively ultravoluptuous super-palazzo,and dumped into an incredibly vulgar detentioncamp swarming with every conceivable species of undesireable organism. Mostpeople fancy a garanteed birthproof safetysuit of nondestructible selflessness. If mostpeople were to be born twice they'd improbably call it dying-

you and i are not snobs. We can never be born enough. We are human beings;for whom birth is a supremely welcome mystery,the mystery of growing:the mystery which happens only and whenever we are faithful to ourselves. you and i wear the dangerous looseness of doom and find it becoming. Life,for eternal us,is now;and now is much too busy being a little more than everything to seem anything,catastrophic included.

Life,for mostpeople,simply isn't. Take the socalled standardofliving. What do mostpeople mean by "living"? They don't mean living. They mean the latest and closest plural approximation to singular prenatal passivity which science,in its finite but unbounded wisdom,has suc-ceeded in selling their wives. If science could fail,a mountain's a mammal. Mostpeople's wives can spot a genuine delusion of embryonic omni-potence immediately and will accept no subsitutes.

-luckily for us,a mountain is a mammal....

Posted by Xill-e-Ilahi at 9:38 PM | Permalink | Comments

apart from the fact that i am rapidly (yes i used the word "rapidly" as opposed to the "gradually" a couple of posts ago) inflating to the point where people have started describing me as, and i quote, 'the fat, balding guy who looks a little like olesugun obasanjo' - with due cause i might add - and that the bmi indicator widget no longer flatters me with "mildly overweight" nothing much worth reporting is happening. not that that was worth reporting either but then you get my point. i'm here to write, you're here to read so get real. no one really writes "i met maria sharapova" or "monica bellucci" and expects you to believe it. its not the done thing.

that of course is if you disregard the fact that my own humble blog was visited by a poet i have been quoting all over orkut. no not t s elliot - that would be too much of a stretch - i refer of course to stephen cree of polytetrafluoroethylene fame who now has a blog of his own on blogger with a humour rating that rivals that of our favorite stand up artist, sami shah. aaaaand he has become one of the very few people to actually subscribe to my own posts via the help from the feedblitz thing on the left of the screen.

way cool.

to get to something that has been weighing on my mind and by that i definitely mean its a case of the unfunnies we have the sad story of the suicide bombing that rocked karachi a few weeks ago. none of the newsstories i read focussed on the more dramatic aspects of the event itself, and of course why should they? gore is aplenty. you don't need the dramatics. the papers are selling anyway.

so the recent itch of 55 fiction has bitten again - and here comes my take on what might have happened.

I – the allama

“surprisingly low turnout today. i wonder what it is about peaceful coexistence that turns people off so much?”

his attention is distracted by the young man approaching unusually quickly – and in that instant of enlightenment everything becomes clear. “they knew it was my time.”

the explosion is a rude loud blast heard after its felt.

II – the guard

he had already turned back when the sound of running footsteps made him spin instinctively toward its source. “no! no! no!” is his silent scream as he runs towards the killer, knowing he’ll never get there on time.

“who will take sarah to school tomorrow?”

the explosion interrupts him before he can frame an answer.

III – the nephew

he hears the identifying double beep of the horn before they enter the street. he rushes down the steps and waits at the door as his uncle pauses at the gate. he can’t wait to tell him the results of his finals.

the blast that follows is more final than any exam he ever gave.

IV – the bomber

“this is the moment of truth” he realizes as he steps forward. “this is for heaven and the hereafter”, seeing the lie even as he pulls the cord that blows him to bits.

the last picture in his eyes is his mother’s face.

the one who’s cancer treatment bills can only be covered this way.

Posted by Xill-e-Ilahi at 12:38 AM | Permalink | Comments

kabhi kabhi yaad mein ubharate hain naqsh-e-maazi mitay mitay se
woh azmaish si dil-o-nazar ki, woh qurabatein si, woh faasalay se

kabhi arzoo ke sehra mein aake ruktay hain qaafilay se
woh sari baatein lagaao ki si, woh saray unvaan visaal ke se

nigah-o-dil ko qaraar kaisa? nishat-o-gham mein kami kahan ki?
woh jab milay hain to un se har baar ki hai ulfat naye siray se

faiz ahmed faiz


"You see missing you is a choice, not a compulsion, unlike life which is vice versa. I’d rather miss you and feel like a total loser who knows he got played because in believing that I also have to believe that for a sufficiently long period of time I was allowed to love like the books and the movies and the dreams that poets weave. And somehow, knowing that I miss you now because I want to as opposed to taking a dump when I have to gives me this surreal sense of purpose that has absolutely no real merit but it is my choice. MINE. You would want otherwise, I know. You practice otherwise, everyone I know wants me to stop this shit. It’s the mothafucking remix, huh Moody?. This isn’t what I’m supposed to do. But the teenage rebel in me is still breathing and he won’t let me succumb in this matter like I have had to in pretty much everything else."

sajjad in this awesome post.

the irony of the silent by choice. others sing his song with far greater passion than he ever could. would. whatever.

that of course is the reason why he doesn't jump. the reason why he never learned to swim, not because he was afraid he'd drown but because he was afraid he wouldn't. because to move on would be the lesser thing. and the only thing to hold on to is the one thing that should have been left behind.

but he always defined his own should haves. catch 22.

it's a deadlock then isn't it yaar? whoever she was, she's gone. you've got to move on. tujh par iddat wajib bhi hoti to guzar gaii! ji lay yaar

yeah

Posted by Xill-e-Ilahi at 12:32 AM | Permalink | Comments

underdone

he thinks of calling her all day but something keeps popping up. when he does get her on the phone she’s upset and only wants to vent. he tries his best but he can’t get her to relax.

my life’s a mess, she says.

it ends an hour later with him as depressed as her.


medium rare

he’s telling his team to wrap things up quickly, we’ll all go for a treat tonight. make the reservations. it’s not everyday we get appreciated by the partner.

the team needs an hour so he thinks he’ll call her.

the a r rahman ringtone starts and the caller id brings a smile to his face.


burnt

he watches the clock tick away at the bottom right hand corner of the screen, suddenly realizing what it must feel to be a junkie in need of a fix. he can’t wait till its time to call her again.

he picks up his cell and dials her number.

“you do not have sufficient credit…”

Posted by Xill-e-Ilahi at 3:12 PM | Permalink | Comments

dil wo hai ke fariyaad se labraiz hai har waqt
hum wo hain ke kuch munh se nikalne nahin detay

akbar allahabadi

Posted by Xill-e-Ilahi at 11:26 PM | Permalink | Comments

while i continue to gradually rot and decay (an also inflate) at hpml, it has been raining hard (yes hard - as someone said, farishtay tika tika ker maar rahe hain) in our delightful ruins by the sea. and on the first, and incidentally the worst, day of the downpours rehan of prl fame finally got be-nikkahed to mahive. or bhabive as we will now refer to her. and it was in this dooba dooba road situation that the motley crew of juniors met at various points on the way to become a part of the barat. interesting. well that was the only interesting thing about it. otherwise it was standard fare boredom.

the other thing about rain in karachi (ok so i didnt give a first thing but i'm too deep in this sentence to use backspace) is that it usually serves as a moodlifter. yeah i know we curse the broken roads (and when we speak of broken roads, hats of to saan t, or the way she handled mustafa kamal on metrolite), the powercuts, the parwanas that seem to come out of nowhere, but we still, stereotypically speaking, have a btter time. or am i just saying that because we're talking once again?

normally a long, dark, green carpeted corridor becomes a drag tens seconds after you step in it. whe its dirty it becomes a turnoff. and if u can hear the constant hum of the small exhaust fans combined with the drip drip drip of water in the plastic bucket placed under the leaking styrofoam - well its simply not something you wait for. nothing smacks more of wasted lifetimes and low budget movies than dark dingy corridors - even if they've got quaint legends about them being haunted. but this post isn't about lousy interior decor and office architecture. this is about how much i miss those whispered phonecalls and "can you talks?" of yesteryear. of how an hour seems like a second when i'm talking to you. of how you lift my mood more than any pouring cumulonimbus ever could. you were, once upon a distant time, the sawan ka mausam in my life, the breath of fresh ai. but that "were" in all the sense of past tense that it implies, is pretty damn final, don't you think?

so? so nothing. we'll be talking again tonight na?

Posted by Xill-e-Ilahi at 2:56 PM | Permalink | Comments