Samandar-e-Bemaina - The Abbasnama

transit visa

2006-12-20T01:35:00.000+05:00

until the twerps who work for ministry of telecommunication or information technology or whoever is inc charge of our internet policy (frankly i wouldn't be surprised if it were the ministry of agriculture), comes to its senses and unblocks blogspot or at least till the pkblogs or inblogs somehow revert to their trusty old selves, the poor saps who occasionally drop by can catch me at http://abbasnama.wordpress.com

yes i've moved. but it might just be temporary. who knows? or cares, for that matter.

so in case some of that didn't get through, you might want to catch me at http://abbasnama.wordpress.com .

urdu ka janaza hai, zara shaan se nikley

2006-12-15T00:53:00.000+05:00

to continue the rant against what seems to be the premature demise of my beloved mother tongue, albeit at a tangent, i present to you the classic case of the end of verbosity in urdu shairee. the class and style has given way to simple efficiency. much like sacrificing the pure talent and artistry of brian lara for the workmanship and efficiency of a ricky ponting. take for example the following couplet from everybody's favourite classic, mirza ghalib:

jab tak ke na dekha tha qad-e-yaar ka aalam
mein motaqid-e-fitna-e-mehshar na hua tha

now that has to be the classiest way possible to compare your beloved to doomsday, which is a very romantic thing to do in desiland, though i can understand it if my north american and european readers are totally bewildered here. however, you get the same meaning if not the same taste in the mouth with the following couplet, one i read off the back of a water tanker in s.i.t.e. area:

un ko dekh kar hamein yeh yaqeen agaya
qayamat kul paanch foot do inch ki hogi

i can see my poor urdu teacher pulling out his hair in agony. this however is a far classier effort than the standard tanker/bus/rickshaw poetry you manage to read while stuck in the smokey, smoggy karachi traffic jams which have become all too common. case in point:

bulbulon, ghul na karo, yaar hamara sotee hai
tum to urr jata hai, wo ham per khafa hotee hai

i once watched a tv show on which amjad islam amjad claimed that the future iqbals and hasrats would probably come through the ranks of these rickshaw-backside poets. excuse me while i find some rope to hang myself with.

let burger = wannabe gora

2006-12-08T19:22:00.000+05:00

there is the person who comes out and says yaar, itna halka paper to kabhi aya hi nahin. and boy do i hate that kind of person. then there is the kind that comes out with the export quality expletives, froth on his lips, chest heaving as he deals with his anger - well thats not exactly dealing with it, per se but you get the point. there is also the infuriating consumptive type who sits next to you through the 12 hours sounding like there's a truck starting somewhere deep in his chest. and its not easy to tolerate the geriatric invigilator who wears almost fluorescent suits and lets his bloody jingle bells ringtone ring in the exam hall.

i don't like them.

ok the guy who said mein icap ki @#$%$##%%$@!!!..... was mildly amusing.

but the most irritating thing you get to hear after the exams is someone saying dude, tera paper kaisa hua? i mean dude, whats with the dude? what happened to our old desi slang like yaar, dost, jigar and even boss? and this from people who seem more naturally attuned to star plus than starbucks if you follow my drift.

if you assume that your classic, for want of a better word, "burger" type is a gora wannabe, then a wannabe is a wannabe wannabe and these guys who wannabe wannabe don't wannabe burger are actually wannabe wannabe wannabe or wannabe cube to make it simpler. and the thing is spreading. i remember when passing by sir syed college for women at noontime in a bus would mean you'd hear some really interesting comments from the kids in the back. but the same thing gets modified every year.

2000: maamay, piece dekh!

2002: the relatively classier jigar, bachian dekh!

2004: oye yaar copy-aan check kar! confirm position!

2006: buddy, chicks check out ker!

i remember when even i, the self proclaimed linguist, would respond to something like that with oye hoye english! or something to that effect. but everything gets english-er and english-er everyday and sometimes i miss being guaranteed a taste of old style corny punjabi songs in a kali peeli taxi. but the guy today was playing juggy d. which is not that bad but thats not the right flavour. its like going to burns road to eat chinese. like the wierd taste left in the mouth by the movie guy who put bryan adams on the soundtrack of my cousin's wedding. i was the only one who noticed it wasn't normal.

maybe i'm just growing old.

ahh yes. ferguson...

2006-11-16T00:12:00.000+05:00

so, beta, what are you doing these days?

i'm working at ferguson's.

ferguson's?

the audit firm. we're the pakistan offices of pricewaterhousecoopers. you've heard of pwc obviously.

ahh of course. ferguson. the tractor company...

and that coupled with the doctored dilbert thingy there is the story of my life. woe betide thee oh ye who convinced me to become an auditor.

all ways are my ways

2006-11-11T23:48:00.000+05:00

as if to further reiterate the union council-ness of the library, a cat has actually brought her 5 kittens and officially squatted under the bookshelf labelled ikhlaqiyaat (ethics) - which, somewhat disturbingly, has orizio's talk of the devil: encounters with seven dictators in it. the regal attitude of the cat, reflected in the absolute confidence it has in its right of residency in the library displays the effect the karachiite psyche has on all its denizens.

i once asked a friend who'd been involved in the student unions in his college days why the name of his "student organisation" was always attached to what my nani would have called "ungentlemanly conduct". his answer was simple. "dude, badmashee is a karachi thing."

which is why neither one of us was surprised when the transvestite beggar at the signal deliberately scratched the side of feica's car with his/her (i'm never sure what to use here) bracelet after we refused to give him (her?) and his (her?) clapping partner cash.

ahhh karachi. when will you get normal?

anthony uncle

2006-11-09T03:36:00.000+05:00

he dresses like your average indo-paki middle calss senior citizen; grey trousers, navy socks, black leather loafers and the obligatory blue cotton half sleeved shirt with the first two buttons undone. he's got that arrogant swagger of the retired bureaucrat coupled with the disapproving gaze of christopher lee. only he's a dead ringer for anthony quinn. i wonder if they actually mass-produced a bunch of these guys in the old days or are they just genetically programmed to be this way. the quaid-e-azam model as we used to call them when i was a kid.

"ball kahan hai?"

"yaar mirza sahab kay ghar mein gaee hai."

"mirza sahab kaun?"

"yaar wohi quaid-e-azam uncle."

"achcha"

anyways this guy sits there from before 9:00 till what i imagine is his lunch time at 1:00 when he finally puts down whatever he's reading and leaves. and boy does this guy read. the pile he created by the time he left the library today consisted of dawn, the news, jang, akhbar-e-jahan, morning special, mag, newsweek, reader's digest, herald and khwateen digest. and yes he ogles at all the pictures of women modeling sitara lawn and nishat linen which is why i get irritated at his hypocritical disapproving glares at me bobbing my head in time to the beat on my ipod.

and whats the point of listening to listening to sean paul if you aren't going to be at least vibrating if not gyrating?

and to those who approve of my taste in movies you have to watch the departed. vintage scorcese and for once di caprio is looking like he can act. nicholson of course is at his classic best and wahlberg makes a surprisingly good cameo. its worth a couple of hours of your free time.

lost in translation

2006-11-02T02:34:00.000+05:00

the librarian at the tiny union council library feica and i hit everyday to swot for the exams has the annoying habit of pronouncing the urdu "yeh" as "yah". kind of like the effect you would get if you crossed arif lohar with martin lawrence. which is why his yeh lo (take this) comes out like yal-lo (colleagues, did the face of a former coworker, mustachioed and bespectacled, suddenly flash before your eyes?). and that is probably what was on my mind when i looked up from the variance analysis to see all the oldies (who apparently have nothing better to do than read the newspapers) staring at me. i realised then that i had been humming to the tune of the sixties beatles number, we all live in the yellow submarine. and to those of you desis who've heard it the stress on the "yallow" will have you laughing your asses of when you realise the pure english accent screws up the yellow the same way some of our brethren do it. fortunately this is more or less restricted to yellow. i shudder to think what my reaction would be if a gora said "twankle twankle leetal sitar/ hoe i wander whut you are" in the same way that the kids did in this really old mohammad ali/zeba starrer i saw on tv when it was not yet totally uncool to not have a dish antenna.

its interesting how the beatles got away with the stupendously ridiculous lyrics of the song. imagine timberlake trying to pull it off. not that justin is in the same league as john and paul but you get the picture. the same however does not apply to whoever writes the lyrics for the playback singers of modern day pakistani movies. consider for example the following lyrics from sarkar, one of the more successful flops of 2005, a movie i would deny having seen if asked.

badan badan pey khoya lapaitway
mein tujh pe laitoon
tu mujh pe laitway

(wrap [a certain kind of sweetner made from milk] over bodies
i'll lie on top of you
you lie on top of me)

at least thats what it sounded like. the sound was drowned out to a major extent by the hooting and catcalls of the classy cinegoers (i was watching it at a cinema named nargis in quaidabad of all places - but thats another story). now that is simultaneously nonsensical and vulgar enough (especially when coupled with the dance? moves of laila and urooj) to be one more never to be forgotten piece of music in my book. like afzal rambo pretending to be michael jackson in the early 90s movie, prince, while dancing on a dining table no less.

aap nay yaad kiya
agaya mein
na dikhaye mujh se zyada koi ack-shun
i am michael jaaik-sun

you don't want me to translate this one.

and no there was no intended point to this post. just felt like writing. fudge says i make more sense when i aim to come up with nonsense than when i'm being serious.

hmmmm. there may actually be something to that.

the fat lady has sung

2006-10-29T04:03:00.000+05:00

shola tha, bujh gaya hoon, hawaein mujhe na do
mein kab ka ja chuka hoon sadaein mujhe na do

jo zehar pee chuka hoon tum hee nay mujhe diya
ab tum to zindagee ki duaaein mujhe na do

aisa kahin na ho ke palat kar na aa sakoon
har baar duur jaa ke sadaein mujhe na do

kab mujh ko aiteraaf-e-muhabbat na tha faraz
kab mein nay yeh kaha tha sazaein mujhe na do

quit it. its not helping you. you don't need it. i don't need it. and strong as i try to be, i'm no superman. there are things i can't cope with. there are reasons why i've satisfied myself with a second class relationship and yes, i know the blame is all squarely on my shoulders and yes, you're fully entitled to hate me for it but there is a limit to the pain relieving capabilities of denial. and after that it harms you more than it helps you. for christ's sake you know this way better than i do. i mean who's the survivor and who's the masochist?

don't do this self-torture thing. you hurt me more than you hurt yourself.

better day

2006-10-24T00:46:00.000+05:00

the human capacity for briefly forgetting depression is amazing. just got off the phone after a pretty long conversation with nasir - something we've not done since he moved to london. nice talking to old buddies especially when it turns out they're still buddies and haven't drifted away yet.

also a meet up with the stud and the turk is bound to be fun. even if its an iftari at seaview of all places. for some strange reason we kept coming across the same battered 1963 corolla all afternoon and evening (and when i say battered i really mean battered. it was like a moving scrap heap. i swear the bonnet and trunk were on the same side) and we ended up having a race - us in reverse (i kid you not) and the poor guy going straight. the glory of iftar time is the empty roads that enable you to actually get into such a situation. we would have won if we didn't have to avoid the traffic undas loitering around looking for advance eidee.

the rest of the evening was spent around tariq road in a pointless attempt to see if it is possible to buy a black kurta on eid which doesnt look like its come out of a seventies musical a la saturday night fever. its not. also we spent an hour listening to a lousy track debating over whether the lyrics were in spanish or japanese. no consensus was reached.

loads of fun.

could've been perfect though. you could have been there.

ocular humidity

2006-10-22T16:55:00.000+05:00

that, i suppose, could be the new cool, scientific, dispassionate way of saying you're about to cry. "honey, that scene was so moving. my ocular humidity level is way up there..." or "i was laughing so hard at his joke that my ocular humidity increased to precipitation levels". who knows, it might just catch on.

sometimes when i'm talking to you my ocular humidity level increases to the point that i am in danger of being disqualified from the alpha male persona i keep trying to assume. not that you ever fitted me into that stereotype but then you get the picture. yeah old memories make me want to cry. sometimes. most of the time they make me want to kick myself for giving up on a good thing. and that might just be the understatement of the year.

why did it have to end so badly? i don't know. there is, of course, the argument that all things end badly otherwise they wouldn't end. so why in hell did things have to end at all? i don't know. if they had to end why did they ever start? i don't know. i remember a ramzan day eons ago when i was asked if i could carry this through to the end. " - warna abhi khatam ker do." when i couldn't why did i say yes? i don't know. what good is anything if it has to end in grief? is it really worth it? i don't know. i don't know. i don't freaking know.

it was awesome. every last second of a doomed relationship. one which took away all that life had to offer but still left us richer in its loss. ok that's a brutally honest admission. a thousand different yesterdays could have made a thousand happier todays but i wouldn't give mine up for anything. so whatever it was: temporary insanity, miscalculations, masochism or divine intervention it doesn't really matter in retrospect. the end remains the same. juliet pretended to die and romeo killed himself. only in our case it was julio who did the pretending and romiette who took the poison.

god. make me move on.

na paa lena teraa aasaan, na kho denaa teraa mumkin
musibat mein ye jaan-e-mubtila yun bhi hai aur yun bhi
(jigar muradabadi)

but thats me. and then there's you. the stories go on but the curtain dropped a long time ago. finita la commedia. makes sense actually. after all nothing really ends, does it? a man is born. he lives, he dies. then there is nothing. bullshit. he lives on in the millions of places his name existed. in the cancelled reservation at that family restaurant. in the yearbook picture no one belived was his. in the hotmail account microsoft closed down three months later. in the meories no one will ever be able to close down. so harsh though the wind is, the flame is still there. or maybe "flames" states it better. two candles lit with the same match. the legace of that match exists in both flames and in every other fire kindled by fires kindled by fires kindled by fires kindled by those flames.

even if they burn up the wax of different candles fighting different drafts of wind.

bulleh shah says,

heer ranjha de ho gaye melay (heer and ranjha are already one)
bhuli heer, dhundendi belay (but confused heer still searches the forest)
ranjha yar buhkal vich khelay (her ranjha is with her)
maenu sudh rahi na saar (and she doesn't even know it)

stop thinking. life goes on. i remain, yours forever.

"in the tibetan philosophy, sylvia plath sense of the word, i know we're all dying."

2006-10-19T11:55:00.000+05:00

i have this versace teeshirt which i bought in the summer of '99. its grey, with some italian gibberish on the front which starts of with the heading, "certificato di autentcia"; certficate of authenticity i presume. the writing is all faded now so i only ever wear it when i'm going to sleep or when i'm just lounging about at home. a friend for seven years, its adapted to the changing contours (ever-inflating?)of my body in a way that nothing else can provide me as much comfort.

except maybe for the sound of a voice saying "hi" behind me as casually as if it were just another day six and a half years ago. i suppose you all noticed the moony half stare behind my thick plastic lenses. i wonder if you sensed the storm behind the sunken in eyes.

but feeling comfortable by wearing the versace doesn't bring aftertastes of guilt with it. it doesn't make me wish that the years had never passed. it doesn't fill me with surges of wild, irrational hope or spear me with red hot spikes of regret. hell, its just a shirt. an old comforter, a personal favourite, but still a shirt.

and its competing with a voice whose magic has bewitched me these past eight years. the one which has the wierd effect of making you feel like you've just had a perfect swallow of the chocolate syrup on your caked alaska every time it hits your eardrums. ecstasy in stereo. its the voice that... oh hell. lets not go there.

i was talking about that old song last night. the one in french i always understood but didn't know the meaning of. i was browsing through my computer looking for an mp3. it turn out i have both that and a translation of the lyrics.

comme si je n'existais pas (as if i didn't exist)
elle est passée à côté de moi (she passed by me)
sans un regard, reine de "saba" (without a glance, the queen of "saba")
j'ai dit aïcha prends tout est pour toi (i said, aïcha, take everything, it's all for you)

voici les perles les bijoux (here are pearls, jewelry)
aussi l'or autour de ton cou (also, gold for your neck)
les fruits, biens mûrs au goût de miel (fruits, ripe to the taste of honey)
ma vie, aïcha, si tu m'aimes (my life, aïcha, if you love me)

j'irai où ton souffle nous mène (i will go where your breath takes us)
dans les pays d'ivoire et des baignes (in the countries of ivory)
j'effacerai tes larmes ou tes peines (i will erase your tears or sorrows)
rien n'est trop beau pour une si belle (nothing is beautiful enough for one this beautiful)

aïcha, aïcha, écoute moi (aïcha, aïcha, listen to me)
aïcha, aïcha, t'en vas pas (aïcha, aïcha, don't go away)
aïcha, aïcha, regarde moi (aïcha, aïcha, look at me)
aïcha, aïcha, réponds-moi (aïcha, aïcha, answer me)

je dirai les mots les poèmes (i will tell you words, poems)
je jouerai les musiques du ciel (i will play music of the sky)
je prendrai les rayons du soleil (i will take the rays of sun)
pour éclairer tes yeux de reine (to illuminate the eyes of this queen)

elle m'a dit: "garde tes trèsors (she told me, "keep your treasures)
moi je vaux mieux que tout ça (i'm better than this)
des barreaux sont des barreaux, même en or (bars are bars, even if they are gold)
je veux les mêmes droits que toi (i want the same rights you have)
du respect pour chaque jour (out of respect for each day)
moi je ne veux que de l'amour (i don't want anything but your love)

aïcha, aïcha, écoute moi (aïcha, aïcha, listen to me)
aïcha, aïcha, t'en vas pas (aïcha, aïcha, don't go away)
aïcha, aïcha, regarde moi (aïcha, aïcha, look at me)
aïcha, aïcha, réponds-moi (aïcha, aïcha, answer me)

"so?"

so i really am mad, na?

wacc (weighted average cost of capital) my ass.

2006-10-10T02:44:00.000+05:00

according to the modigliani-miller theorem, if there were no taxes, or bankruptcy costs or assymetric information (between parties to a transaction), and if it were operating in an efficient market, the value of a company would not be effected by its means of finance. the irony here is not that there are so many unreal assumptions in such a practically used paradigm. uh-uh. the irony is that the two idiots who came up with this piece of crap have both won nobel prizes in economics. that tag obviously means that the theorem is now sacrosanct and you can't attempt any question on capital structure without understanding its dynamics.

and to think i once thought that talking about investment appraisals and costs of funds and hedging of investment risks and capital asset pricing models gave a guy a kind of classy and cool (in a very worldly way) touch. should've known better. now i think there is nothing more boring than the stuff on cnbc pakistan when one egghead questions another on the ideal way to manage his company's working capital. to make sense of this stuff you have to be the guy who read the financial times in the eighth grade while you were ogling at sable's swimsuit pics in the wwe magazine.

this is a rather roundabout way of saying that i have been studying strategic financial mangement for the past five hours without a second's break. to pass the exam i have to be as comfortable with discounted cash flow as i am with the two times table. i don't know what scares me more, the prospect of succeeding or the prospect of failing.

"save me from the nothing i've (planned to) become..."

2006-10-05T11:51:00.000+05:00

penalties...

i had no idea these rules even existed in cricket. awesome. this is the closes the "dull" game of cricket can get to football.

what time is it?

2006-10-03T15:35:00.000+05:00

as dj shadow would have said....

at the starting of the week
at summit talks you'll hear them speak
it's only monday
negotiations breaking down
see those leaders start to frown
it's sword and gun day

tomorrow never comes until it's too late

you could be sitting taking lunch
the news will hit you like a punch
it's only tuesday
you never thought we'd go to war
after all the things we saw
it's april fools' day

tomorrow never comes until it's too late

you hear a whistling overhead
are you alive or are you dead?
it's only thursday
you feel the shaking on the ground
a billion candles burn around
is it your birthday?

tomorrow never comes until it's too late
tomorrow never comes until it's too late
make tomorrow come I think it's too late

until i actually checked in the paper i had no clue what day it was today. i guess life is getting a shade too monotonous. i only hope this bloody chartered accountancy thing is worth it..

tagged (unwillingly!) by xhra

2006-09-29T18:16:00.000+05:00

ok here goes, cuz.

am thinking about...

the irony in life that gives me less time to write now that i'm studying and gives more time to write to cousins who have only just started university...

i said...

that inzamam would never be acquitted of the disrepute charge, madugalle or no madugalle, and i was right. shit. i should have said something else.

i want...

a tall glass of iced orange juice - still an hour till iftari

i wish...

there was some way i could get through my exams without actually getting examined.

i miss...

no, i mister.

i hear...

loads of crows. i think one of them has died and there's a whole bloody army on the telephone wires outside.

i wonder

definitely. i was about to say so myself.

i regret..

not having kept in touch with sonya rizvi when she left school. now she's sonya jehan, big time actress, model and whatnot and i'm still plain old me.

i am...

therefore i think.

i dance..

to quote a classmate "like a drunk, blindfolded, one legged gorilla"

i sing...

pretty much the same way. only replace "one legged" with "laryngitis afflicted"

i cry..

a few times every twenty five years.

i am not always...

red headed. in fact i haven't been red headed since anand spilled the red ink on my head in fourth grade.

i write..

yeah. and i right.

i confuse...

deliberately. sometimes it fun watching other trying to make sense of the crap i've told them.

i need..

...oh the list is looong.

i should try...

kheer. but i'm not going to. ever.

i finish...

last most of the time. thats why i never race.

excuse me

2006-09-29T18:06:00.000+05:00

this is to apologise for the hideous new look of this blog but that's what happens when people who's only claim to computer literacy is a vague understanding of the vlookup formula in ms excel try to design blog templates.

in my defence, i had to do it as the pkblogs proxy wasn't loading the background pic on my last template (even though the inblogs proxy, for some inexplicable reason, was managing to do so perfectly).

but its not that bad if i do say so myself.

(readers you better appreciate the effort. i pulled out at least a handful of hair during the frustrating exercise of doing this. and thats a lot when you're already half-bald.)

the irish-pakistani named murphy

2006-09-27T00:28:00.000+05:00

i remember that around two thirds of my life ago i had a geography teacher named andrews, a scot who claimed he resigned a commisssion in the royal air force, who told me that to respond to a question without actually answering it was a very irish thing to do.

"have you submitted your assignment, young man?"

"are you grading it sir?"

"are you irish?"

"no, mr. andrews"

and so on so forth. there were two theories prevailing at the time: {i) that he had something for the pretty science teacher, eileen o'brien and she wasn't giving him the time of day; and (ii) that coach rees kicked his ass at some football game. well rees was a welshman and andrews could run rings around him with both legs tied. christ, he could play football. scotland's maradona. so it was probably ms. o'brien. either that or the irish really do infuriate you when answering questions.

if they do, they wouldn't be far off from most pakistanis. i mean who can forget that ptv ad:

"wasim bhai aap thaktay nahin?"

"nahin mein cigarette nahin peeta"

theres another similarity between the two races. they're both highly vulnerable to that great piece of legislation we know only as murphy's law. take for example the following situation. you have had a hell of a bad relationship with your immediate supervisor at work. this is compounded by the fact that you have had a heated argument with him (i use that term because shouting match sounds oh so unprofessional) the last time you have crossed each other. with one week left to the appraisal meeting in which your performance is to be evaluated, you decide to impress all and sundry at the team meeting today. so far, so good.

at precisely this moment the murphy chromosome decides to wag its tail. you oversleep after sehri and the time you had planned you would enter the office, fashionably five minutes late, is when you hit the shower. you leave home and after wasting ten minutes haggling with the taxidriver and getting a kiometer away from home you realise you forgot the laptop at home and have to rush back. you enter the partner's room seventeen minutes after the team assembled there and make a lame excuse about explaining something to the client on the phone only to find out that the client has left a message with the partner asking you to call him. half an hour into the meeting, there's a total standoff between you and the manager about the roles you're expected to play in the engagement. you can see the "interaction with the team" field in the appraisal sheet in your mind and it sends shudders down your spine as you shut up and listen to the crap coming out of mangoo's mouth....

one and a half hour later the meeting ends with you scarlet with rage - and that's no mean feat when your complexion is more like an african gorilla than drew barrymore - and mangoo smiling like a cheshire cat (which is something too gruesome to describe further).

now what in hell were you thinking when you said "no, mr. andrews."?

and that's part of why we all love inzi.

2006-09-19T23:33:00.000+05:00


to think that this is inzamam, who according to one author is "sometimes so laidback as to appear comatose". i think the ninth anniversary of this match is somewhere around now. found the video looking for a recap of the darrel hair incident recently. paki passion eh? thou shalt not mess with me.

"i am not a nut! i am not a nut! i am not a nut!"

2006-09-16T04:51:00.000+05:00

You Are 28% Paranoid Schizophrenic

You're pretty grounded, though you have your occasional paranoid moments.
Just make sure to ignore those voices in your head!

Are You A Paranoid Schizophrenic?

this is what you end up doing when you're still gettingyour stuff reviewed by the guy on the other side of the desk at 4:51 am in the morning. god bless the guy who invented laptops.

i am haunted by the ghost of chameleon roadkill

2006-09-15T20:07:00.000+05:00

when i was thirteen a chameleon invaded the boundary wall of my castle. where it came from noone knows. or frankly cares. it was the only instance of chameleon invasion i can recall. squirrels came regularly till about the time i reached puberty - though i'm sure there has to be a better reason for squirrels disappearing, after all this is karachi not quetta, but it is a coincidence. and as usual i've been sidetracked by the unseemly frustrated hormonal stereotype of an auditor.

anyways this chameleon was witnessed several times for two days among the crotons and kanghi palms and cacti and raat ki rani around the boundary wall before i accidentally (though not unthankfully) murdered it when backing the car out of the driveway. death by datsun. i used to think that the lizards of the world, particularly the chameleons would be shaking their heads in disgrace. it must have been like getting stuck on the wrong side of the river styx for chamyl or leon or emilio or whatever the darn thing was called.

and so, banished from the reptilian hall of heroes as it is, the ghost of chamyl walks with me waiting for me to descend into the world of hades myself. when the gecko that embarassed me by walking on my hand and making me scream in front of a bunch of snickering college girls disappeared in the bushes, i knew it was actually the ghost of chamyl. when i nearly killed myself swerving to avoid a cat that nobody else seemed to see i knew it was an apparition raised by chamyl. all the cockroaches and lizards and bees and dragonflies that have entered my life since then have been sympathizers of chamyl seeking vengeance.

and time, the great healer, has made me immune. the sight of a cockroach now is more likely to send me looking for a slipper to quash it with than to send me into a fright-induced coma. but chamyl grows wiser as i grow stronger. and so a new strategy has been introduced. chamyl now takes over the spirit of people i interact with. people who the discrepancies in cosmic balance have placed at a level superior to my own. people, in short, who shovel the shit i have to take. and that is why the knowledge that a sweet and sugary (or the closest thing that a freaky moronic memon male can get to that) mangoo is actually filling demigod's ears with crap about me comes as no surprise. dang did i say demigod? i meant partner.

office gossip has it that this change of colours is nothing new. when you work with mangoo, people say, you start the game with nine wickets down and shahid afridi as your batting partner. i cant put it any better. but apart from the random murder of a few dozen insects, lots of lies, plenty of backstabbing, "padding" of a few bills and the occasional unrecorded toil (time off in lieu), and missing of a high percentage of non-ramadan prayers, the sin ledger is pretty low. nothing to merit this kind of torture.

so as i spend another random hour in wait of the idiot who is supposed to call me to his desk to review my work i hear a wierd tick-tick kind of noise from air conditioning vent. maybe its in agony, feeling the stress of having to cool off another mangoo induced temper. or maybe tick-tick is what you hear when ghosts of chameleons laugh.

oh, how i hate him.

favourite dream

2006-09-11T22:48:00.000+05:00

this is the song that's currently totally on my mind. nice bluesy track with two very good things going for it, one that its a paki song and two that it is so damn heartfelt. it sounds corny the first two or hree times but it really grows on you.

she loved a brighter shade of red
i was the blackest of the blues
she never thought from her head
i always felt so damn confused

i close my eyes so i can feel her
this time please just make it real

here she comes to take me away, i
hope that this time she will stay, i
keep my eyes closed till i'm sure that
you won't ever let me go

she promised her soul to me
(and i lied to my heart offer her)?
she was everything i need
and i tried to find the way we were

i close my eyes so i can feel her
i can hear her breathing closer

here she comes to take me away, i
hope that this time she will stay, i
keep my eyes closed till i'm sure that
you won't ever let me go

i didn't try to make believe
i never wanted her to see
i'll always be out of reach
she really tried to wait and see
she never wanted me to leave
she'll always be in my dreams

come to me i'm begging on my knees
she's standing somewhere within reach
i know its never meant to be
she's the only one i'll ever dream

favourite dream

favourite dream

favourite dream

here she comes to take me away, i
hope that this time she will stay, i
keep my eyes closed till i'm sure that
you won't ever let me go

favourite dream

favourite dream

favourite dream

you can listen to it here http://www.media.ghmpsp.com/bilal/NQ-MFD.mp3

oh and aaminah haq directed the video. need i say more?

with innoculation comes immunization. yeah right.

2006-09-10T02:05:00.000+05:00

i remember when the boredom that comes from an overweight man's tired voice lecturing about something a guy already knew could be alleviated by a single glance outside the classroom door. my spectacled eyes saw nothing much - just recognized the euphoria that came from being smiled back at by you.

now there's nothing to see and those half smiles and longer-than-necessary inhalations and angled turns of a pretty little head don't belong to me any more.

i have, on my table, a faded picture of my cousin and i taken around fourteen years ago. it reminds me of summers, both dusty and rainy, long afternoon walks and tape ball cricket, of covert break ins into my uncle's room and excited handling of unloaded pistols and reading of his crappy romantic poetry, of whole happy lonesome morning spent playing on the stairs in my grandmother's house. that's a nice kind of memory, filled as it is with sepia shades of all things happy and distant echoes of childish laughter.

but that's not what i'd choose to recall even if i had any say in my sequence of memories.

instead my dreams are filled with seven year old flashbacks of college stairways and wooden benches and times spent on and around them. an unending sea of what ifs and if onlys. i live in the aftermath of ego's follies' war on romance. in the chernobyl that must be left contaminated. in the ruins of a relaionship that ended with a "should we?" and an "i don't think so".

i'll get over it someday i'm sure. but right now i'm just too depressed to call. and you can't help me on this one.

ghalib hamein na chhair ke phir josh-e-ashq se
baithay hain hum tahiyya-e-toofan kiye huay

"why?" she asked.

why indeed.

"crikey?" no i'll go with "feakin' hell!"

2006-09-07T23:50:00.000+05:00

dang.

double dang.

i know that i was the last person alive who watched animal planet regularly. so the news of the crocodile hunter's death being on everyone's mouths came as a bit of a surprise. maybe they heard of it from all the animals that were celebrating the departure of the one guy who wasn't scared of anything they could throw at him. well the law of averages got him in the end. its wierd how much life is like vegas.

or how murphy was probably the world's greatest legislator.

everything was going pretty good. i got the report signed and all and was looking forward to a few days of chilling in the office before the exam leave. and then the twin headed spectre of aitch ell and mangoo (may they rot in hell) just had to show up on the scene. not only has mangoo reinserted himself into the assignment - which basically means that i have to put up with ten tonnes of bullshit and at least a thousand wasted man hours, not to mention the wear and tear of my mental peace - but aitch ell in all his sagacity and wisdom decided to dock the leave to a lousy 67 days. i mean what the hell am i supposed to achieve in that time frame? these two are really world class tits. one is a universally accepted moron and the other is a prize asshole. may they both rot in hell.

i really hope steve's sting ray pays these two a visit before december.

in other shitty news england managed to win another match against pakistan. a one-day international for christ's sake! that is as pathetic as losing to goddamn zimbabwe. the only good thing about the match was razzaq's auperlative performance and apparent return to form. shades of viv richards. is the razzler going to razzle dazzle pakistan's way the icc champions trophy? i sure hope so.

nice birthday

2006-08-28T23:23:00.000+05:00

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.

of e. coli, us and the crazies.

2006-08-27T11:45:00.000+05:00

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.

not again...

2006-08-23T19:26:00.000+05:00

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.

old will may be dead but i'm still alive

2006-08-21T02:14:00.000+05:00

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

and senility isn't exactly far away

2006-08-16T20:42:00.000+05:00

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)

part of the reason....

2006-08-14T23:51:00.000+05:00

Copy 1 of Picture(40)
Originally uploaded by Xill-e-Ilahi.

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.

from king to clown

2006-08-12T21:37:00.000+05:00

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."

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

2006-08-10T21:38:00.000+05:00

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....

55 not-so-fiction

2006-08-10T00:38:00.000+05:00

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.

choice

2006-08-07T00:32:00.000+05:00

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

"i just called..." - life steaks (55 fiction by any other name)

2006-08-04T15:12:00.000+05:00

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…”

you might get this...

2006-08-02T23:26:00.000+05:00

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

akbar allahabadi

barish ka hai mausam... (updates on my life)

2006-08-02T14:56:00.000+05:00

24 hours later (almost exactly)
Originally uploaded by Xill-e-Ilahi.

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?

with apologies to the nightingale

2006-07-24T00:52:00.000+05:00

while the title of this post does indeed refer to the nightingale of india, sarojini naidu (specifically in her capacity as the woman who wrote this piece of magic), like any good dan brown reader, you're supposed to focus on the duality of meaning - so any other nightingales reading this can take this for an apology for the little outburst at the valima.

anyway that's settled then. i hope.

now that the days of the palanquin bearers has passed and all the mystery and magic of the traditional wedding has evaporated under the sunbeams of practicality, wedding transport is about as magical as the flush on your toilet. no grooms on horseback. no palkis for the brides. 2d, 1e, 4l and even 52a. the big black smoke spewing diesel engined road monsters of the day are the garishly decorated washed and scrubbed carriers of the barats by night.

picnic aur party ke liye says the sign on the back.

the bride, normally, waits for the perpetually late barat at the house, nervously sweating away under the layers of makeup and jewelry. and when the barat does arrive, shes rushed to the venue, typically with the driver and one of her aunts.

so the song changes...

the nervous bride

swiftly o swiftly to the crossroads i fly
i cant even breathe as my life passes by
i cant even speak when i want to scream
and they told me it would be just like a dream
gaily o gaily they dance and they sing
i dont even know what the future will bring

the harried aunt

lovely o lovely she looks like a doll
this driver cant drive, we're going at a crawl
she looks just as fresh as dawn's first drop of dew
just the right type of look when u start life anew
now i've got the nose ring, the lipstick and comb
oh shit i forgot the damn sehra at home

the forgotten driver

loudly o loudly they've yelled all day long
whatever i do - its got to be wrong
come here, go there, don't take long, hurry back
i've been working so long, i'm soon going to crack
i took her to school, she still calls me bhai
i'll be there when they take her with a tear in my eye

hulleye comes by.: taking a dump

2006-07-19T15:00:00.000+05:00

hulleye comes by.: taking a dump

"keep 'em coming"

2006-07-19T12:27:00.000+05:00

this is beginning to get interesting. and the comments recieved show how much into other people we desis all are.

the last table in the second row

I

she looks to her left deliberately ignoring the girl on the other side of the table. she listens to her neighbour’s gossip. there’s no makeup for the wrinkles on her brow.

“why did he have to say yes to just her? i showed him so many girls. now she’s stolen him from me, little witch.”

II

she looks to her right deliberately ignoring the woman on the other side of the table. the smiling hellos can’t hide the flow of thoughts broadcasted by the distracted eyes.

“if she hated me so much why did she bring me home? and he can’t even stand up to her. if only amma were alive…”

III

he sits in the middle tired, bored, frustrated. he’s been working late, avoiding the reality that is waiting at home. he’s nearly thirty and still no peace at home. he looks at the distant relative with the grandson in his lap and smiles ruefully, wishing they would understand.

“theres enough of me to go around.”

yet more 55

2006-07-18T13:13:00.000+05:00

the series continues...

guest 1

he’s been sitting for the past two hours looking for someone he recognizes. no good. “should i remove one of the thousand rupee notes from the envelope?“ he wishes the host had the balls to flout the law and serve dinner.

he leaves two thousand bucks poorer with a pocket full of uneaten chhuaras.

guest 2

she flits around from table to table. “you’re looking lovely!” “long time no see!” “oh this is your niece??!! she looks just like you!” hollow words - yet everyone follows the ritual.

she glances at the bride and notices the one piece of jewelry she can’t wear, hoping the mascara hides the divorced-ness from her eyes.

guest 3

he looks around nervously before sitting at a corner table. no need for introductions, just discuss cricket and the weather. the families are obviously large and from all over so its easier to blend in.

this is the eighteenth wedding he’s attended in this hall. he knows nobody but a free meal’s a free meal.

the many faces of muslim women

2006-07-18T13:07:00.000+05:00

this is a very good video i found on youtube. even though its singaporean or malaysian or something i feel you'll find all the five attitudes displayed in it right here in karachi. out of my few regular readers, mahwash and sheza you two might be able to associate with some of it...

more 55

2006-07-16T11:36:00.000+05:00

time, time, time! wish i had more time to write. until then tolerate my 55ers. and i'm continuing with the shadi series because of the shadi season. it seems kind of appropriate.

father of the bride

“i’ll ask them for an advance. payable by the end of the year. they know my daughter’s getting married and there are expenses. they won’t refuse. thirty years of loyal service.”

he clicks on the lotusmail shortcut it took so long to get accustomed to.

"we are sorry but due to the current rightsizing process…"

the qazi

for these thirteen minutes that he’s the centre of attention he feels power in his being. his voice gets louder and clearer as if filled with a resonance that is achieved only for the occasion. the groom signs the nikahnama, thanks him, and embraces him.

he is steadily ignored for the rest of the evening.

the waiter

he sneaks a glance at the girls dancing in front of the stage then looks around guiltily to see where his boss is. The one in the brown shalwar kameez and gold dupatta is so beautiful. Just like he always pictured his girls in his fantasies.

“sharfoo jaldi aa!” his boss calls out.

“aaya sahib”

55 fiction continued

2006-07-13T11:23:00.000+05:00

i found a really cool shorts site. and after what is typically icemanic in nature, an interlude that is so long its almost an epoch, i've decided to restart the 55 fiction thing. and syaing that takes some nerve whaen you consider i only made one post last time round.

anyways here goes.

mother of the bride

she watches with all the weary concern of a desi mother as the new in-laws do their own family’s rituals with the bride. face taut, nerves wracked. “that woman has no etiquette, she better keep my daughter happy”

the bride glances up, searching out her mother through the yellow chiffon. eyes meet.

“she hates me”

"hmmm"

2006-07-13T11:03:00.000+05:00

Xill-e-Ilahi: .... blah blah blah [ad nauseum]

N: hmmm

Xill-e-Ilahi: [pause] [pause] uh... khair.

i never liked the way people normally talk and chat nowadays. all the formality, the verbal flourishes, the "calculated to make an impact" stuff has gone. its usually just a statement in response to a statement these days. even the most impassioned of debators simply add inflection to what used to be the vocabulary of a six year old.

but every now and then our new mode comes up with a gem. "hmmm" she said. that word can hav so many meanings. so many contexts. yes, oh really, exactly, yeah right, whatever... you have to hear it to understand.

and sometimes bored people can be very interesting. hmmm.

who's your daddy?

2006-07-11T02:02:00.000+05:00

ok shoaib was already out. asif and sami are in doubt and to compound things rana is gone too. who's going to bowl? the umpire?

the good news is that federer is still the king. finally we have a proper tennis rivalry. read more. as my brother-in law was saying, the michael jordan of tennis.

which brings me to the subject of this post. who is the greatest of the greatest in his own field? would it be mohammad ali, the flamboyant boxer who was an inspiration to millions? or michael jordan, the basketballer par excellence? or even tiger woods, the mild mannered golfing prodigy? none of them.

it would have to be and i mean absolutely have to be our own down to earth jahangir khan. this is the guy who didn't lose a match for five years and eight months (five years!). a winning streak of an unbelievable 555 matches. and after losing that one match he had another undefeated run of nine months. he once won a championship without conceding a single point. i don't think any professional sportsman can match that record no matter what sport we choose. true hero. even if we don't always think of him when we list the major sortsmen of the past century.

gum hoon kahin

2006-07-10T02:29:00.000+05:00

there's actually a copy of the video on youtube, which i haven't imbedded here because i'm a bit nervous about the copyright infringement and other associated crap - but i am putting down the lyrics of the song which i seem to like more every day. even though i am so not a rock person.

madhosh hoon, gum hoon kahin
aao yahan, yoonhi kabhi

khamosh hoon, hoon beqarar
aao yahan tum aik baar

aansoo-on main chupaye hain saaray gham
chahat teri na ho kum, bus yehi dua

chup main nahi, na bayzuban
kuch tou suno, yoonhi sahi
keh do jo tum bus aik baar
meray ho tum, yoonhi kabhi

aansoo-on main chupaye hain saaray gham
chahat teri na ho kum, bus yehi dua

bichar kay bhi
alag na ho saka
mujh say too
teri yaad hai saanson main meri har dum
kabhi socha na tha keh kabhi woh qadam
chor jaingaye mujhe...

sadioun ki hai yeh lagun
kaisay kar doun main khatam
aagaye bhi hain aur jahaan
abb shoro hai nayi dastaan

aansoo-on main chupaye hain saaray gham
chahat teri na ho kum, bus yehi dua

bichar kay bhi
alag na ho saka
mujh say too
teri yaad hai saanson main meri har dum
kabhi socha na tha keh kabhi woh qadam
chor jaingaye mujhe...

chor jaingaye mujhe
bichar kay bhi
chor jaingaye mujheee...

call - bichar ke bhi

you have to hear it to feel it. as my man, the stud, would say, "yaar awaaz set karanee parey gee ye gana gaanay ke liye...."

in more disturbing news, zidane made an almighty mess of what was supposed to be his crowning glory and can arguably be blamed for costing france the world cup. shame on you zizou! to think i once called you the jahangir khan of football...

retards at shadis, nuts at work, and smiles in the clouds

2006-07-07T02:38:00.000+05:00

irfi has had the most boring love marriage i've ever been too. all the rasms were more or less come, sit, eat, go things. wierd when you consider the couple is positively radiating happiness. happy life buddy. hope its more fun than you're shadi. and may i never see the retard who spilled my mountain dew again.

my new paraa head has saddled me with the unwelcome but slightly motivating responsibility of review. this may not sound like much but when you consider its not just "review" but official documented "reviewed by" and all the associated shit it makes me wonder why the people in the other paraa don't have to do it. they should. the increased responsibility will definitely improve audit quality and isn't that what pricewaterhouse coopers in 2006 is all about. radical move. but its still unwelcome. largely because i then have to bear the brunt of mango and aitch ell's own review.

theres something awesomely amazing about sawan ki pehli phuaar. even when its accompanied by power cuts and a sweaty two hour wait for the fans to go on again. rain in karachi is bad. the roads (what's left of them) get dangerous, the electricity goes off, the poor thousands of homeless have horrible nights - and yet rain in karachi is good. its like every raindrop brings a smile to someone's face. like the water somehow washes away the sense of despair in everyone's lives. we love rain. and if its drizzling when you're listening to tina sani singing faiz's bahar aiyee, well then its simply magic.

bahar aiyee to jaise ek baar
laut aaye hain phir adum se
woh khwaab saare, shabaab saare
jo teray honton pe mar mite they
jo mit ke har baar phir jiiye the
nikhar gaye hain gulaab saare
jo terii yaadon se mushkbuu hain
jo tere ushshaaq kaa lahuu hain
ubal pare hain azaab saare
malaal-e-ahavaal-e-dostan bhi
khumaar-e-aaghosh-e-mahwashan bhi
ghubaar-e-khatir ke baab saare
tere hamaare
savaal saare, javaab saare
bahaar aiyee to khul gaye hain
naye sire se hisaab saare

faiz ahmed faiz, 1975

and that reminds me of another faiz gem. one he wrote in jail in the 1950s.

dil na-umeed nahin, na-kam hee to hai
lambee hai gham ki sham, magar sham hee to hai

nothing captures hope for a better tomorrow than that. nothing.

"it was pretty neat"

2006-07-06T15:20:00.000+05:00

N: the subject is veneration... i painted a picture of a girl once... theres a man's shirt hanging out to dry, quite obviously wet... she's sitting with her back to the observer holding up a glass and collecting the drops dripping from it....

now thats poetry. without even using words.

and she was discussing it with me to see if i could come up with some ideas.

and as if in response...

2006-07-04T02:17:00.000+05:00

apparently bitching about low readership levels on your blog is a good thing. not only did deevan of the rambling on blog fame give me some dilasa (beautiful word dilasa, just like bharaas and takalluf)but this guy named adil najam, who happens to be an assistant professor at this fancy american university, actually quoted me extensively on his own blog which is very cool to say the least.

just the thig to brighten up an otherwise dull day. as malik would have said, main bhi star banoon ga

familia

2006-07-03T13:01:00.000+05:00

familia
Originally uploaded by Xill-e-Ilahi.

and this is all of us after the dholki - all eleven cousins (for the first time in years), the first "through marriage" relation, and the next generation.

and for the record i'm not tall enough to earn that peechay wala spot, i'm standing on the dhol.

a waiter called jawwad

2006-07-03T01:29:00.000+05:00

tonight was fun. even though the day started with me answering mango's phone call.

we had dinner at the wannabe zone - taanbay ki kaitlee, because sheeba wanted to go there. been a long time since iv'e hung out with that crowd. sheebas daughter is an angel, mashAllah, sheeba herself is exactly the same as she was eight years ago when we joined college, roohama's as nuts as ever and sarah is well, sarah. no need to say more. and unplanned and unorganized as it was (and frankly the food sucked) we had what is becoming a rare thing for me, stuff i could throw my head back and laugh about - without it being part of the class clown facade.

the rest of the night was fun too. even though it was a dholki and i dont like stuff that has anything to do with weddings. i mean most funerals are more fun than shadis. try singing aaj jaaney ki zid na kero and mujh se pehli si muhabbat meray mehboob na maang to the beat of a dhol when you're a quartet of 20 something guys with voices like rickshaws - you'll definitely get a few laughs.

i sense my readership has gone down.... not good iceman, not good.

2006-07-02T04:15:00.000+05:00

Karachi Traffic Jam

this unfortunately, is becoming all too common.....

of chomsky and the hezbollah

2006-06-30T21:12:00.000+05:00

i,who hardly ever write on anything political, found this piece rather interesting. nice justification by the author. i could list a million people who would draw entirely different conclusions.

comments anyone?

my people

2006-06-30T20:22:00.000+05:00

i've been trying to write a book for the last three years. and the process has given me some insight into how difficult it must be for a mother to rear a child in a way that he fulfills all her dreams for him. writing, my friends, is hard! its harder when you're writing about something thats close to your heart,like the subject of my people is.

the book was intended to be an insight into what must go on in the mind of a suicide bomber. its not supposed to be an advocacy of terror tactics. nor is it an apology for violence. it is simply my opinion of how it must work. i am probably wrong in the assumption that i can even begin to understand the psychological state of a man willing to blow himself up for a cause. i am the guy who didn't go for juma prayers because it was too hot. but this book is as much an exercise into finding my own passion, my spirit and my faith as it is an exploration of the world of today. the world in which i have not only a right but a duty to speak out, to express and to protest.

i am going to use my blog to slowly showcase the book to an poor sap willing enough to read it. chapter by chapter, paragraph by paragraph. maybe the little critiquie i can get will help me in finally finishing the darn thing. i've usld "lack of research oportunity" too long as an excuse.

so here goes

epilogue as a prologue.

june 9, 2004

the roadliner he caught from zahidan pulls into the crowded saddar area and even before the door opens he can smell the unwelcome smell of home. the diesel from the buses mingling with the scent of ripe mangoes on the pushcarts. the sense of controlled chaos, of happy schooldays in the school a few hundred meters away, of the confused adolescence of years ago, the passion of youth, the pain of conversion. he decides there and then he will not stay the night.

the rickshaw ride to mevashah costs fifty rupees. he knows its too much but he's not focussed enough to bargain. he looks with pained eyes at the broken dome of the first mosque he sees on the way. "suicide attack kills 37, injures 143 in m a jinnah mosque blast" the headline flashes before his eyes. the bile rising to his throat as he thinks of the bitter futility of it all.

the potholed roads of mevashah distract him from his reverie. even after all these years he still knows the exact route to the jaffery bagh, a small cemetery within this large acropolis within the metropolis of karachi. the gate is still the same rusty orange, there is still a tanker parked at the broken hydrant right across the narrow street the same way it was when he came here so many years ago. he only difference is in the number of graves. there are so may more now. so many alleys have disappeared to make room for more graves. it takes him a few moments to recognise the peepal tree under which abbaji is buried. "three aisles down, corner plot" was how hadi had described it.

he steps slowly towards the grave. standing by the marble tombstone he is distracted at the realisation that right across the aisle is phuppiamma's old borderless grave. she should be happy, he thinks. haider bhai was always the apple of her eye. and now he's so close. the small smile fades away as he thinks the condition his brother's body must have been in when it was buried and it suddenly seems to him that the wetness on his aunt's grave is not the caretaker's watering but her quiet dead tears. a foolish thought, he knows. an unbecoming dramatization. but he sits down misty eyed on the side of his brother's grave, fingering the week old rose petals left no doubt by mukhtar kirmani who still comes every thursday.

"saheb, its a martyr's grave, don't sit on it".

the child is all of 9 years old, no doubt one of the caretaker's neverending flock. he's carrying a packet in which he's collected half burned incense sticks and disposed metro milan agarbatti boxes and some assorted paper garbage. obviously to sell to the small recycling plant down the road. he waves him off, absent mindedly and the child is obviously in no mood to argue.

the tears come suddenly, with great sobs shaking his chest as he finally reads the name on the tombstone. he musn't cry he knows. its the fulflment of an ambition he knows. its the eternal life he knows. but the name of his brother has too many memories associated with it, too much baggage. the urdu lettering seems to be moving through his tears and the wind blows through his hair he way his brother used to ruffle it in those long ago days of affection. he takes out a handkerchief and gently dusts off the dirt on the red lettering before wiping his tears.

haider sabr-e-abid (shaheed), they read.

flashbacks

2006-06-30T00:32:00.000+05:00

it feels wierd. the way even in your silence you open yourself up to her. the way the three years of not seeing her seem to not matter. the way the eyes you love break your breast bone, go through the ribs straight to the throbbing tired heart. the way it beats as if with renewed hope of succour. the way those eyes hold it, massage it, ease it, make its efforts worthwhile again. you feel again. almost as if for the first time in your life. the way the rest of the crowd disappears for that one brief instant. then you remember she's not yours any more.

you lie in bed alone at night, yearning.

you remember the book you told her to read and understand why jenny had to die.

-------

you're sitting next to each other during the literature tutorial. she's listening as moonface is discussing bathsheba everdene's character with the professor. she's rotating her pen with her left hand, tapping her foot impatiently as she waits for the forty minutes to end. she suddenly glances over at you, your eyes meet and for you the rest of the world disappears. she follows your gaze to her idle hand resting on the armrest. you reach forward, slowly, with a fingertip, oblivious to the professor droning on about hardy's women. she watches as you gently move it over the back of her hand, tracing designs neither of you can understand. she stays still as you play with her fingers, those lovely fingers, gently, tenderly as if they're the most fragile things in the world. as if she's a crystal figurine, as if she'll suddenly break and shatter and you'll wake up.

she's not breathing. neither are you. your finger touches the wrist that’s fallen to her knees, decorum prevailing even when you're both lost in the clouds. touches it as if to see if she's real. as if to test the color of her skin and see if it'll rub off.

"what do you think abbas?" the professor asks.

you both jump, you guiltily pull your wrist away and you say "i think she's the kind of woman who any man could love, and most wouldn't regret loving"

"i was talking about bathsheba" she says

"so was i" you lie.

-----

she sits on the bench in front of you, the sun rays filtering through the grillework throwing shadows of her eyelashes on her cheekbones. she shows you her yesterday's journal entry, a recounting of events from the way she lived through them, not what you built up in your mind. she has to lean really close to show it to you, because she's afraid you'll grab i and read the stuff you're not yet allowed to read. you have to look, and then smile sheepishly in mutual embarrassment as you see the faces of the friends with you whom you momentarily forgot about.

------

you congratulate your friend on his getting engaged to his childhood sweetheart. you're siting at a roadside cafe, everyone teasing him, everyone laughing. the shisha smoke everyone's exhaling, everyone but you because you feel smoking is a betrayal to her because she didn't approve, gets to you again as you think, "this could have been me".

she's saying "qubool hai" to the qazi, 18 kilometres away.

------

you've just come back from a wedding. you can't sleep because you're irritated.

so you write.

puraana gana

2006-06-30T00:27:00.000+05:00

yes i used to listen to ballads once upon a distant time. no that does not mean hip hop/dancehall isn't my genre.

i long for the warmth of days gone by
when you were mine
but now those days are memories in time
life’s empty without you by my side
my heart belongs to you
no matter what i try
when i get courage up to love somebody new
it always falls apart ’cause they just
can’t compare to you
your love won’t release me
i’m bound under ball and chain
reminiscing our love as i watch four season’s change

Boys II Men

thank you for calling. goodbye

2006-06-28T00:42:00.000+05:00

ever felt the emptiness that takes over in the split second after you put your tv on standby? that's life nowadays. like im somewhere far away looking at life from above. in the abstract. work pressures, studies, family things all seem to bounce off from just a few feet away. an invisible, insulating forcefield lies between. right now my old urdu shairi scrapbook, from the days when prepping for baitbazees was a serious affair, is my only refuge.

qataa of the day:

ley gae wo saath saree zindagi ki ronaqein
ghar ka yeh alam hai un ke rooth ker jaaney ke baad
jis tarah dihaat ke station-on per din dhalay
ik sukoot-e-muzmahil garee guzar janay ke baad

ahsaan danish. probably the only guy in the world to have recieved an honorary phd in the room which he painted himself as an odd job boy a few years earlier. (or so i recall) and that qataa just shows why.

i have discovered something new about myself. i do not like lewd comments about women i know. women in the abstract, i can take. but not women i know. uh uh. just another example of the hypocrisy that is abbas hussain. but thats the way it is.

N: ha aha ha! is that all you could come up with?

xill-e-ilahi: arghhh! you're incorrigible

N: humouring u?.....killin time is more like it...M BOREDDDDDDDDDDDD

N: and you're funny. there's something about the way you say things

and all i could get was a "you're funny". the comic aspect to an unfunny situation. the way the facade fools all but those who it should. the way i'm read as the man i never was. the man i never want to be.

quote of the day:

you aint no nice guy, larry.
(stephen king. the stand.)

and neither am i.

the bitterness beneath

2006-06-23T19:08:00.000+05:00

"...no wedding Saturday within the month of june"
stevie wonder (1962)

times sure have changed. not only do i have to attend a wedding on saturday, i also have to go on sunday, monday, tuesday and thursday. and let's not even talk about july. why does everyone have to get married in this heat? and why do people expect other people to follow dress codes? i mean why on earth would i be wearing a black suit at ten thirty pm in a shadi lawn on kashmir road when the temperatures around 31 celsius and humidity is up to 67%?

as abuzar might have said, "shadi mein aye ho kiya?"

ok that was a bad joke.

hino is officially underway and i should get at least half my team from monday so i think its safe to say that the pressure is upon us especially since mango appears to be more or less free these days - which means simply that he'll be drilling holes in my head for the next two months at least. i hope i can tolerate him till then.

as anticipated being in the office is a bore especially since mobeen is in lahore and i havent seen adil around either. being alone at hino these past two days was better - at least i could call fudge, which is always a mood-lifter. even though she's always dissing me. or maybe because she's always dissing me. or maybe because no matter how momentary it might be, she provides a distraction, a brief respite from remembrance for all of twenty minutes before the comparisons start. yeah. i always had a hidden agenda in everything. i always had that underlying motive that made all my relationships false, all my emotions farcial, all my relaities unreal. all except you.

you, and you know that you are the only you i ever refer to, the you who was once the "u" in us, were right. i still don't know myself enough to know what i need. but i know what i want. or wanted. whatever. if life were simple enough to figure out i would be too simple to figure it out. i promised you i'd catch up with you when you get here. but i'm not so sure now. my defences are still way too weak to face you like nothing ever happened. its still happening. and there's no end in sight.

hasrat, and boy can i associate with that takhallus said

nahin aati to un ki yaad maheenon tak nahi aati
magar jub yaad aatey hain to aksar yaad aatay hain

what bullcrap. how can i forget even for a second what you meant to me?

mean to me.

ayee hoon mein dil milaney ko....

2006-06-22T10:39:00.000+05:00

if nazia were alive i know she wouldn't have survived this.... and to think its supposed to be a "tribute".

withdrawal symptoms

2006-06-20T00:37:00.000+05:00

or am i back in remission?

through the stupor of antishstamines and paracetamol, dreams still manage to creep in. dreams of that which was and that which could have been. dreams of that which i couldn't dare to dream. of luminous eyes and mocha skin and silken hair and sudden smiles.

muddat huee is haadsa - e - ishq ko laikin
ab tak hai teray dil kay dharaknay ki sada yaad

why does a memory of that which never was haunt me so? why does forgotten loyalty prevent me from moving on? why does every face i see become just the face i want to see? why does life not allow for a second chance? why does rage still point fingers at you? why do the all my dreams, controlled and uncontrolled, still feature you in them? till when will the hope of a simple how're you doing continue to be my lifeline? when wil i really really get up and move on?

kahoon kis se mein ke kiya hai
shab-e-gham buree bala hai
mujhe kya bura tha marna -
agar eik baar hota

i don't blame you, you know. it wasn't your fault i fell so hard. have a happy life. and pray that i do too - someday.

Metroblogging

2006-06-17T19:05:00.000+05:00

Today marks my first post on the karachi metroblog. and like all my beginnings, it was crappy as hell. there is a masochistic streak in me somewhere that likes the punishment a scathing critical comment can have. but to quote the one and only aitch ell, jub tak khap nahi machti, kuch maza nahin aata.

hino from monday. mango is simultaneously the best and the worst manager i have ever come across. i wonder how this assignment will go.

Ilm-e-Urooz (for you, Sheza)

2006-06-15T23:24:00.000+05:00

most of the following is an extract from an article by a raza zaidi of rutgers university. you can contact him at mzaidi@eden.rutgers.edu

the basic difference between a nazm and a ghazal is that whereas a nazm can be a collection of couplets (or it can have triplets, quatrains, or no rhyming at all), the couplets of a nazm have to be on the same subject and any one couplet is related to all the others and the theme and subject of the nazm, but a ghazal's couplets are independent entities in themselves, they do not have to be on the same subject or even related to any other couplet in any way.

if and when two couplets of a ghazal are related to each other and are on the same subject, they have to be placed right next to each other, and are called collectively a qataa.

the ghazal itself will typically be a love song. indeed, the ghazal form was first used in arabic language, in which it means "to talk to women", more precisely, "love-talk with women". from there it was incorporated into persian language. in persian, ghazal's literary meaning is "the characteristic mating call of a particular persian deer". ghazal in persian retained its basic form and purpose of love-talk. ghazal's essentials include praise of one's beloved, his/her beauty, attitude, love, way of talking, gait, etc. generally a ghazal can not have adverse opinions about the poet's beloved except his indifference, "bay-wafai", "bay-rukhee", etc. while the mode of address always indicates the beloved to be masculine, there is no other hint (unless the poet is a woman)that the person being discussed is female. for instance, ahmed faraz says

bas ek nigaah se lutataa hai qaafilaa dil kaa
so rah-ravaan-e-tamanna bhi dar ke dekhte hain

(with one glance he sends back convoys of the heart
so the wayfarers of hope are also scared when they look at him)

indicating that the guy who does that is in fact exactly that, a guy - but he goes on to say

sunaa hai chashm-e-tasavur se dasht-e-imkaan mein
palang zaaviay us ki kamar ke dekhte hain

(i've heard that in the deserts of chance, with the eyes of imagination
even beds look at the curves of his/her waist)

which pretty much shows that the poet is describing a girl. to me at least. and the examples are endless. (by the way pardon the terrible translations, i'm rusty at this thing)

the best thing about the ghazal though is that it has no english, or more precisely, western equivalent. language was never developed as an art form to the extent that it was cultivated in middle east/south asia region. you've got to love that exclusivity.

and before you ask - ilm-e-urooz is the study of rhyme, metre and other associated technical details in urdu poetry. my urdu tutor's father was considered an expert in this field - which is the only reason that i've ever heard of it in the first place.

Country Cousins - More You Tube Hilarity

2006-06-15T01:35:00.000+05:00

this is another gem. our cultured country cousins, the denizens of the city of kings, conossieurs of art and all things classy - happily doing poondi (and actually recording it) while the babes go wild on the street.

what does the future have in store? charlie's angels in punjabi? hmmmm... charlie dee kuriyaan!

If Faiz were a woman

2006-06-15T01:02:00.000+05:00

while i'm still bitten by the urdu poetry bug; here's some incredibly sensual (for something written in the Zia regime, by a woman no less) stuff by Parveen Shakir. while i don't like the free verse style - i'm a stickler for rabt and beher when it comes to urdu shairi - i love the flow this pice has got. if Faiz were a woman...

sabz maddham roshni

sabz maddham roshni mein surkh aanchal ki dhanak
sard kamre mein machalatii garm saanson ki mahak

baazuuon ke sakht halqe mein koi naazuk badan
silvatein malboos par, aanchal bhi kuch dhalka hua

garmii-e-rukhsaar se dahki hui thandi hava
narm zulfon se mulaayim ungleeon ki chhair chhaar

surkh honton par sharaarat ke kisi lamhe ka aks
reshamii baahon mein choori ki kabhi maddham dhanak

sharmagaee lehjon mein dheeray se kabhi chaahat ki baat
do dilon ki dharkanon mein goonjti thi ek sada

kaanpte honton pe thi Allah se sirf ek dua
kaash ye lamhe thahar jaayein thahar jaayein zara...

Beautiful.

Pichhan hut sadee chhair na guitar

2006-06-14T23:02:00.000+05:00

after a brief hiatus, ok not so brief hiatus (i think that might be the only time i've used hiatus twice in one sentence - make that thrice) i'm finally back at my blog. and no it wasn't entirely my fault. you can blame the amazing combo of the newly privatised kesc and the newly privatised ptcl for collaborating on an ultra irritating mission to knock me of the information superhighway. yes i'm the only guy left in karachi with neither a ups for my pc nor a dsl connection for the net. and yes i use windows 98. gives me a classic tinge. the golden oldie a la frank sinatra if you follow my gist. and as usual ive started ramblind when theres so much to report.

first off - exams over. and thats enough said on the subject.

that brings us to the subject of humpty dumpty. from now on we will refer to the man as humpty (mhrih). which means humpty (may he rot in hell).

humpty dumpty has pushed me of the wall
he's pushed so hard i may not get up at all
and mr. boy blames me (he's got some pluck)
to hell with them both. i don't give a f***

the fat freak actually had the nerve to suggest that it was me (me!) who was responsible for the delay in work. i'd like to see him complete it at any deadline himself. boy am i pissed. i'm even more ticked off at mr. boy for believing that crap. i mean ive been working my ass off for 3 years now for mr. boy and it takes one 30 second phonecall from a lazy tub of lard to wash away all the hard work. and while i'm hurt as hell i can't say i have any regret at being more or less losing my place in his paraa. i mean whats the point of working for him when he doesn't value my work at all? anyways for the time being i've been picked up (after a great deal of political football) by mango and aitch-ell for hino. and thats not a bad deal at all. as i mentioned to mobeen, right now i'd be happy if i got gino's. hino is more than good enough. it might even turn out to be one of those haq mein behtar things inshaAllah. i've got my fingers crossed.

what with exams and loadshedding and broken down phones and things i've not been able to mention that my nephew is here!!! yes in karachi!! and while he's not yet mastered "mamoojan" he says "a-bbah-sss" better than several of my gora-ified classmates did back in school. he's busy redefining cuteness. mashaAllah.

by the way keep your umbrellas in handy the monsoon season officially kicks off on the morning of the fifteenth. it might just rain soon...

Bollywood - the Peshawari flavour

2006-06-14T17:45:00.000+05:00

And this is why pathans will always be pathans. ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ....

Realisation

2006-05-28T23:08:00.000+05:00

mein ne samjhaa tha ke tu hai to darakhshan hai hayat
tera gham hai to gham-e-deher ka jhagra kyaa hai?
teri surat se hai aalam mein baharon ko sabaat
teri aankhon ke sivaa duniya mein rakha kyaa hai?
tu jo mil jaaye to taqdeer nigoon ho jaaye
yun na tha - mein ne faqat chaha tha yun ho jaye
aur bhi dukh hain zamanay mein muhabbat ke siva
rahatein aur bhi hain visl ki rahat ke sivaa

Mujh se pehli si muhabbat meray mehboob na maang.

Faiz Ahmed Faiz

"You amuse me at times"

2006-05-26T01:30:00.000+05:00

N: wat makes u think that an artistic temprament generally is similar to mine?

Xill-e-Ilahi: well...

N: you amuse me at times. LOL

Xill-e-Ilahi: =) what's that supposed to mean?

N: ah well ***raises her brows***

N: =) never mind

Xill-e-Ilahi: ok. it didn't see mind-able anyway.

Funny how its sometimes a lot of fun making other people smile.

Life, otherwise, continues to be boring. Amma's back but I don't like cherries and she didn't bring chilghozay (what are they called in English? I wonder). The renovation shit is giving me major headaches and the NBFC rules are giving me bigger ones. I hope I never have to read them again. If any of you prays for me, please please please double the prayers...

Calypso, Calypso-oh!!!

2006-05-25T14:17:00.000+05:00

I remember how Zaheer Abbas once told me that for a true afficionado of the game, the West Indian team was always the best team after his own team. True, he was referring to a past generation. I suppose its Australia for most kids nowadays. The same way its Brazil for football. But for someone who felt that the best thing in the history of cricket was the four pronged pace attack led by the two Cs of fast bowling - a west indian victory even after their retirement is a mood lifter.

So the party's on, crew! one more and they get the series win.

"we be burnin', not concernin' what nobody wanna say
we be earnin' dollars turnin' coz we mind de pon we pay..."

woo hoo!

As an afterthought, I feel i'm getting a tad too excited. it's only a crappy one-day series. and thrillers or no thrillers, i still say down with limited overs cricket.

Also Jayasuria's decision reversal has served no purpose. he's not made the team.

and that's about all i could gather from the dawn sports pages that was worth mentioning. i've sworn myself off ten sports till after the exams.

Bravo to Bravo or Sunrises, Roosters and Lara

2006-05-22T02:08:00.000+05:00

I only watched three overs of the match (because I was studying - so don't ask, Fudge!!!) and they were the first two of the West Indian innings and the last one of the Indian innings. Awesome match. It almost made me reconsider my opinion that one day cricket should be banned altogether in favour of the five day version. But it wasn't that good.

Jeremy Coney on Lara's defensive technique - and this is seriously quote of the year material:
"Trying to get a ball past him is like trying to sneak a sunrise past a rooster."

And I just found out today that Gilgit is backward enough to not be accessible by mobile. Also that the Serena Hotel over there has an incompetent twit at the PABX which is why i had to call fifteen times before I could get through to my mother. Fifteen! Sheesh.

Also there are few things in life i would pass over in order to swot the foreign exchange manual. Even an evening with Adeel Noor would be more interesting. Well actually its not that bad...

Happy Birthday.

2006-05-21T01:42:00.000+05:00

cake
Originally uploaded by Xill-e-Ilahi.

Because you are there when I need you.
And because I always need you.
And because of the million and one other reasons I'm not going to go into ( mainly because this is beginning to sound like some of your favorite Hindi films)

Because, in a nutshell, you're you and that matters,

I wish you the happiest birthday of your life with even happier days to follow. May that smile never fade and the twinlke never leave your eyes.

Happy Birthday Fudge!

Chutkara and Jehanzeb kaun hai?

2006-05-20T00:09:00.000+05:00

Finally!!!!

My leave officially starts from Saturday so I'm away from ICI for at least two weeks. Not that this leave has any ayashi element whatsoever. study leaves in general stink. they stink more when they're shorter than required. khair. Allah Malik hai.

There is a certain degree of unease about leaving ICI too. I really doubt that the Doodhwala/Panwala combo will be able to handle Humpty on his return. Not that that's my problem but the way Humpty blows things out of proportion, any proverbial shit hitting the fan will eventually fall on me. Lets see what happens. I hope Humpty's ranting and grumbling voice doesn't enter the earshot range of Mr. Boy.

Important birthday coming up. I hope I remember when it's time to wish her. I know birthdays matter to her. How bloody irritating.

Random wrong number of the day:

Hello

Hello Abbas

Ji

Tumhari awaz ko kya ho gaya hai? Stop trying to be throaty!

I'm sorry I haven't recognized you yet.

Abbas! its me! Fazeela!

***totally mystified*** Fazeela who?

@#$!!# I think I picked up JB's cell by mistake. You're probably the wrong Abbas

***even more mystified*** JB? Who's JB?

Jehanzeb. don't u know him?

No

well he knows you. sorry anyway.

Interesting. and from an Isloo number too. so who in heck is Jehanzeb? Haven't got a clue.

Of Humpty Dumpty And Other Stories.

2006-05-17T23:05:00.000+05:00

Humpty Dumpty will enter his room
He'll turn on the swith and then - KABOOM!
All of ICI's horses and Ferguson's men
Will pipe bomb Humpty's ass off again...

Boy do I hate that guy. I hope the Lahore people bust a cap in his head. Danny De Vito will thank them for it. Poor Humpty aspires to be the desi De Vito. He's about the same height and weight, he's balding too and he taxes his peanut trying to come up with some innuendo laden response to everything. And the guy wouldn't know UK GAAP from Accounting for Dummies. And he thinks he's an expert on Excel because he knows how to insert comments. Even Jaffery Sahib can do that! I could go on and on and on but why bother? He's not even worth the mention on cyberspace. Compared with him, some of the guys on IWorkWithFools are absolute geniuses. Khair. may he rot in hell.

the only entertainment left in life are the telephonic conversations at lunchtime with Her Fudginess the Queen. talking about nothing is unexpectedly not a turn off. i hate to admit it but my recent immature phase is goint to be extended simply because im enjoying it so much. i feel like im back in my teenage years, playing the class clown and having genuine fun. wierd. i didn't think you could have that effect. hmmm.... (waise have u realised you've appeared in a lot of my recent posts? see? ici really is pathetic. or i would be happily discussing Monica Bellucci or Claire Forlani instead of you....)

on the gharailoo front, the world at large is pretty mad at O'Head. As Wodehouse quoted in one of his earlier books, the name of which i forget, "Silwood is a sweet boy, but he will not stand the bearing reign". Well people O'Head is also a sweet boy - and he has similar prejudices. Methinks its too late to do anything. Give him his space and tolerate him if you can, and if you can't well send him back to face the music.

Oh and Polo liquid orbs are better than tic tacs any day of the week. But Airwaves is the only breathmint that can be used all day.

Metrolite News and a rickshaw named Sharjah

2006-05-13T23:16:00.000+05:00

People on Metrolite have a particularly wierd way of structuring their sentences. and even wen Sana or Saan T as she is known in certain quarters, (who's not a regular)is filling in for the other girl, quratulain i think her name is, she lapses into the same metro style.

ab paish keraingay hum aap ko, eik report

afridi nay maara hai, aik chakka

bilkul bakwas hai, yeh andaz

I mean why does the subject of the sentence have to be the last word in it?

In unassociated news i saw a rickshaw called sharjah. which shudnt really be worth a amention from a guy who's also seen tehelka, akhri grenade and even Daith aaf de gaim. But the thing reminded me of the patriotic spirit that symbolises a paki. no matter how much u curse them wen they lose - u alway remember their high points. cricket team zindabad!

oh and just in case ure reading this fudge, i really was studying all day today. even wen u were out tafreehing with ure buddies at luch i was in the library parh-ing. which is no big deal since exams are right around the corner but since u keep asking im telling anyway. as the mentos ad goes. dobara mat poochna!

somebody asked me to name a person who i would be most excited to meet. now i've met Musharraf and Mahnoor Baloch. I've shaken hands with Miandad and Wasim Akram told me that in meeting me, the pleasure was all his. Ahmed Faraz once said walikum salam and i have actually mock-punched the great Mohammad Ali as a first grader (me not him obviously). But to be true, i can't hold my excitement at once again meeting my nephew. He shud be in Khi by the first of June. And he's learnt my name too now. Can't wait.

meira pyar

2006-05-11T21:55:00.000+05:00

meira pyar
Originally uploaded by kiran2000.

Yeah I plagiarized this off Kirna's blog.

But it is one of my favorite songs ennit? And going by Icemanic law, that gives me the right to reproduce this (even if I have to be a nice guy by giving all the credits to the owner and all).

Window to ourselves, boring weddings and the week that was

2006-05-09T20:54:00.000+05:00

Watching the antics of the KPMG kids across the half wall reminds me, surprisingly, of my own bachpan at Unilever. Farhaj, Fahad, Sameer and Adeel might as well have been Mobeen, Hameed and myself. The poor guy Adeel is ragged constantly – the same way Hameed was about two years ago. (Well Mobeen and I are still at it but at least the rest of the world’s stopped bugging him). I guess auditors are the same everywhere. They even talk about the same stuff: evaluations, promotion lists, idiotic managers, classes, work, and all the other regular crap. The most punctual guy gets in at 9:30 (only an hour late) and the rest of the team is in by around eleven. Now that sounds ridiculously familiar. One of them hogs the phone (like other members of his batch - who'll understand what I'm talking about) one is always working and one never is. Typical audit team. Maybe we PwC guys aren't as unique as we make ourselves out to be...

Strike one more off the unmarried first cousins list. The shadi was boring as hell even though I only attended two rasms. All I can say is thank you Nazim Gulberg Town, for having the sham-e-ghazal at the adjacent hall. The attempts to imitate Jagjit and Nayyara Noor were pathetic (but still more interesting than the shadi) except for the Wo ishq jo hum se rooth gaya thing which was simply awesome. Helped the time pass a wee bit faster - make that less slower.

Humpty Dumpty of ICI is beginning to really get on my nerves now. He's acting like a new job incharge with a bunch of probationers. In fact he's acting like Wali Muhammad Bhutto with the new kids. May dogs eat his corpse. The only good thing is that ZQ seems to understand how rotten this assignment is and has sympathized with me even if he's not done anything about it. The tragedy is that Zohair and I will probably miss out on the June audits.

Little else to record except that Fudge's motivational/nagging messages about my studies are taking their toll and I'm beginning to shift gears. Parh raha hoon na!

Sunshine

2006-05-06T01:37:00.000+05:00

Even the darkest clouds don't stop sunrays from peeking through gaps. you make me happy, when skies are gray. thank you, fudge. for being there when i need you. you redefine the word friend.

The time has come, the walrus said,
To talk of many things
Of shoes and ships and sealing wax
And cabbages and kings
And why the sea is boiling hot
And whether pigs have wings

Over a hundred messages this week. Most of them were to the same person. Few of them made sense. Am I an obsessive/compulsive type of guy? I think yes. Soulmates think not. Whatever. Its fun to let go and act like an immature jerk sometimes. Times, they are a-changing. I sense good days ahead. Maybe, for once, I'll be right.

Mona Lisa Smile

2006-05-03T20:33:00.000+05:00

Mona Lisa Smile
Originally uploaded by Xill-e-Ilahi.

I got this off somebody's Orkut profile and well, it was funny enough to blog

2006-05-03T20:00:00.000+05:00

Things I don't like about ICI

1. The location. Underneath the bridge may be a good opening phrase for a Nirvana song but it totally sucks when you have to go through one to look for some means of public transport.

2. The timings. Eight thirty is when I used to wake up or actually before my normal wake up time when I was at GTM. And I have to be here by then because I’m on “SECAWND-MAINT”. Why would I want to catch a worm anyway? To hell with early birds.

3. The work. I am so not cut out for starting things from the bottom and working my way to the end result. I’ve always started with the ultimate objective and worked my way back. Why can’t I use my own style? Because I’m on “SECAWND-MAINT” And its not even as if the work is interesting. It’s a totally crappy mix of data entry, consolidation and reconciliation. Which makes it about as much fun as a Rangeela flick. (not really an apt analogy – Rangeela was mildly amusing)

4. The “room”. That is so absolutely not the term for this place. Two and a half walls do not box in a room. And the half wall separates us from the KPMG people who I do not allow any interaction with because we’re from PWC and that makes them, well, untouchables at best. Not even close to us purebloods. Why don’t we have a separate room like normal auditors? You guessed it - “SECAWND-MAINT”.

5. The PC. A PC without internet access is about as useful as a gun without bullets. Why can’t I bluff about our need for an internet connection because we have to access PWC-Comperio and blah blah blah? Who would believe “SECAWND-MAINT” again?

6. The reception staff. I have no idea why people think I enjoy waiting while they do their girl talk about how “my mother doesn’t let me straighten it so I use my Panasonic to curl it and then use this clip to hold it high like this so that it looks nice and neat…..” etc etc ad nauseum. All while I’m waiting for her to hand me my swipe card so I can enter the damn place.

7. The guy I’m reporting to. He’s a cross between ZQ, EFG, Fakhar and Saeed Ahmed (KTF). Enough said.

8. The timeline concept. I’m not used to having deadlines for every little stage of everything I do. Give me one deadline for work to end and I’ll meet it. But then… “SECAWND-MAINT”!!!

9. The job period. Why in hell did this have to be planned so that my leave would fall right between it? A leave that I have been more or less informed is going to be CURTAILED because of this crap! Arghhh!

10. The emptiness. On the floor we’re seated, there’s something like 300 sq feet per employee. That’s lonely.

Randomisms 2

2006-05-02T00:11:00.000+05:00

The fan is placed almost exactly under the tubelight, creating that eerily ICAPpy effect without even trying. like the shadows in the abandoned housing block ajay locked us up in back in first grade. didn't think i'd ever think about it again. light, dark, light, dark slowing now that the loadshedding strikes. my watch is still ticking away wildly. hellboy pushes his chair back loudly, the scraping noise snapping me out of my reverie.

are reveries supposed to be pleasnt, Abbas?

snapping me out of my whatever then.

a couple of guys drop by, idle chatter, nothing said. thoughts flit over to the assignment. secondment. same difference. different bosses, same problems. pivot tables.

turn it around it might make sense

selbat tovip. it doesn't.

thoughts stop for a while as i try to make sense of the powers of the court.

Why does a section of the law have the word "etc" in it Abbas

CIA, sir

CIA?

Govt is covering its ass, sir

noontime shadows stream through the windows. shadows at noontime? is there even such a thing?

think of a thing and it exists Roofi

How do you know this is Roofi, not Roomi? theyre freaking identical for god's sake!

Easy sarah, f is for spectacles.

Ghufran is a better librarian than Jaffery. Or maybe i'm just quieter now. FOCUS!!
fan's moving again. 3 pm 3PM??!! i've moved on to investments in associates. way cool.

Lunch karega?

luch after three in the afternoon. sepia coloured scenes of college flick through my mind. like changing channels you want to stop and see. i'm not at ease. food tastes bad. we talk of papers, music videos, cricket and work.

work. ICI.

do you? I see us.

untitled

2006-05-01T03:53:00.000+05:00

untitled
Originally uploaded by Xill-e-Ilahi.

Somehow this really really fits my mood. Home all day. nothing to say. nothing happened anyway.

Blood pressure, Pathan blood and the week that was.

2006-04-27T23:33:00.000+05:00

Abba's BP spiked today and he had to rush to the hospital amid the usual heart related worries. The ECG, Alhamdolillah, revealed nothing to worry about and he's much better now but a couple of tests still have to be done. Here's hoping that all will be well, Inshallah.

I sit here having just read about Afridi's reversal of his decision to not play test cricket any more. Hah! Told you so.

I finally got released from the crappy Landhi assignment to go to the supposedly glamourous environs of ICI at west wharf and boy did it suck! The work is crappy, the guy I'm reporting to is crappier and the worst thing is he seems to expect that I'm going to be doing late sittings here. He even spoke to ZQ and had the goddam leave curtailed so all the effort put into getting HSA to work on the leave policy has gone down the drain. and exams ae just around the corner. and I don't even know how to use a freaking pivot table, let alone make one. This is already looking like the worst assignment ever! shit!

Memories of myrrh

2006-04-23T19:38:00.000+05:00

Hot summer nights with little to keep me awake and much to keep me from sleeping. a pause before the caller says hello and infinite heartbeats in the split second as the intake of breath becomes almost palpably you. interrupted magic, broken spells. dreams where deo-sprays smell like myrrh and and jasmine and sandalwood. where wooden benches feel like plush couches and faded college uniforms seem to be robes of shimmering silks.

Romanticizing memories? When the uncertain future becomes the past, the past in turn becomes uncertian.

Did you really happen to me?

You haunt my dreams, asleep and awake. I am in limbo, on the borders of Hell. My world at a standstill. I watch but I do not see. I feel but I do not sense. I listen but I do not hear. The silence is deafening. When will I exorcise you? I gave in to fate a long time ago so why don't you leave me in peace?

Peace.

When?

The walkways of the past retain your scent, like raat ki rani on a cool night breeze.

Why then does life make me choke?

Appreciating Landhi

2006-04-15T00:18:00.001+05:00

Now that my sentence here appears to reach its end, I'm forced to mention the silver lining on this cloud...

- People offering you a cup of tea and getting offended when you say you don't drink tea

- People offering you anything at all as opposed to asking how much time you'll take

- Client staff actually trying to learn from you

- Getting nods from everybody (and I mean everybody from the gatekeeper to the Company Secretary) on your way to your room

- Being able to eat cucumbers with chapatti for lunch without declaring that you need to lose weight

- Walking in at 12:00 pm and still leaving before 5:00

- Having the team do substantially all the work, and then brainstorming with Shahab as if you did it all yourself

- The team or rather the teams. Constant tafreeh in the Conference Room

- The various versions of Need for Speed

- Memories of the ultimate question, "Ab hoga kiya?"

- The trips in times past to unmentionable places and the laughs we had over there

- Singing Ali Azmat around half the city in Raza's car

- Being able to yell at the client staff and getting away with it

- The smiling billboard near Lasani

- Checking every Friday to see which movie is on at Gulistan Talkies

- Laughing, yelling and swearing like nuts in the conference room without worrying about what the client will say.

- Hearing even more raucous laughs, yells and curses from the adjoining room

- Unreconciled Difference

- The gunshot ring tone on the IP Phone

- Gevini's crappy biryani which is all the rage in Landhi

- Master measles-wali biryani

- Trying to convince KFC and McDonalds to deliver

- The bhains-ology lectures from Sajjad Nagori

- Sajjad Haider's "ho bhi sakta hai, ho nahi bhi sakta hai"

- Obaid's bullcrap

- Raza teaching the inventory guy how to conduct a stock check

- Taking pictures of the Ideas people doing their own stock check

- Buying kapra with Jafari over six months ago and still not going to the tailor

- Aleem's constant seriousness

- Lashari vs. Ali Ather

- Supervising with Ali Raza (read chilling while the bachas work)

I'm sure I'm missing out a lot here but this is all I can recall at the spur of the moment. Goes to say that for all our complaining, Landhi isn't really that bad. I hope I enjoy the remaining one and a half years too.

Randomisms

2006-04-14T16:34:00.000+05:00

Yeh aadhi raat ko churiaan si kya khanaktee hain?
Koi aata hai ya mairee hee zanjeerain chanakti hain?

They say that you can lose a won match just by letting down your guard for an instant.

Theres something about Urdu poetry that heightens feeling. Its like being on X. Emotion, be it love, hate, rage, delight or grief is magnified. Multiplied. Like looking through a kaleidoscope. The true beauty of words, as yet unappreciated by non-asian linguists is how a sea of passion can be summed up in one couplet. Something the more practical language of English can never hope to achieve.

Time to move on. Life is passing me by. So much to do. So much to achieve. so much to dream. As the Smirnoff ad goes, "Life is calling, where are you?" I know.

Why then do I want to hold on? To stay? To wait?

Na chhair ay nikhat-e-baad-e-bahari, rah chal apni
tujhe atkhailian sooji hain hum bezaar baithey hain

Almost history - cricketing notes

2006-04-14T02:22:00.000+05:00

David may have pulled it off, but the best bet is always on Goliath. Ponting as usual, pulled off another victory. However, for once, the Bangladeshis can walk back to the pavillion with their heads held high. This match truly showcased the birth of the next Asian giant. Welcome to the club. Read more here

In even more sensational news, Afridi has announced a temporary "retirement" from test cricket. To focus on his one-day game, he says. To spend more time with his family, he says. To be in form for the World Cup, he says. Something has woken the Pathan in him, that's what I say. Let's see how this turns out.

Tragedy

2006-04-14T01:22:00.000+05:00

The history of suicide attacks stretches back at least to the 11th century, when the Assassins, the disciples of the Persian master Alamut, conducted suicide raids on neighboring fortresses. The Koran forbids suicide, Mr. Post noted, but he added that suicide bombers often consider their deaths acts of heroism, not self-destruction, and believe they will be elaborately rewarded in the afterlife. Harvey Kushner, an expert in terrorism and chairman of the department of criminal justice at Long Island University, noted that suicide attacks are not condoned by most Muslims, but are espoused ''by leaders of religious factions within the Islamic community'' who have what he described as ''a contorted view of what is spiritually permissible.'' After their deaths, suicide bombers are often celebrated as heroes, said Vamik Volkan, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Virginia Medical School and an expert on interethnic conflict.
Attackers Neither Mad Nor Desperate, New York Times Service, Sep. 13, 2001

While I'm normally very skeptical of the US media when it's expounding on what it calls "Muslim beliefs", the fact remains that more often than not, particularly during the last decade, our fellow Muslims have managed to embarass Islam and everything it stands for. Whether by blowing up civilians, executing unbearded men, oppressing their women to the point of torture or otherwise, the deviation from the Sirat ul Mustaqeem is extremely alarming.

On Tuesday, May 17, 2005 the current government got a fatwa approved by a group of prominent clerics - as a follow up to the one issued by Mufti Munib-ur-Rehman in November, 2004 - banning suicide attacks within the state of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, most notably in places of worship such as mosques and Imambargahs.

Since then we've seen the blasts at Hangu, Madinat-ul-Ilm, the American Consulate, the violence in the Khyber Agency region and the latest is of course the Eid Miladun Nabi incident at Nishtar Park.

An interesting statistic to note is that in virtually every act of sectarian and relligious violence within the borders of Pakistan since its creation has been initiated by Muslims. Some have confessed, others found out, and others merely suspected but the bottom line is that they were all Muslims. This despite the fact that after every single incident the religious parties have always issued statements condemning the perpetrators and stating that the incident could not be the work of a Muslim. When does the hypocrisy end? These are the same parties, who in their condemnation of the government's operations in Wana and Waziristan, indirectly support organisations like the Al Qaeda network, who in their ideological and moral support of violence give leeway to the splinter factions of the Jundallah, the Sipah Sahaba, the Lashkar e Tayyaba, the Sipah Muhammadi, Jaish e Muhammad etc to carry out such incidents. Anyone who says that the tragedy at Nishtar Park wasn't a politico-religious attack on the Sunni Tehreek is full of it.

What I'm trying to say here, and maybe I haven't stated my point too clearly, is that it is our own house that needs to be brought to order. How do we do that? Frankly, I don't know. That I am able to see the importance of a peaceable co-existence between all sects does not imply that the brother of the guy unfortunate enough to be praying next to the bomber can. When he pelts stones at the police and goes on a rampage burning every car and petrol pump in his way, I empathise with his rage. The only thing that might appease the blood lust is a quick judicial result of the investigation. The government has to identify the guilty party and punish it - quickly. Time is running out. According to an estimate, Karachi loses five billion rupees for each day of shutdown. Even ignoring the massive death tolls that follow a sectarian fallout, can the government afford to drag its feet?

My Hell

2006-04-13T00:40:00.000+05:00

Shane Warne, Adnan Ahmed (KTF)
Circle I Limbo

Osama bin Laden
Circle II Whirling in a Dark & Stormy Wind

George Bush, Benazir Bhutto
Circle III Mud, Rain, Cold, Hail & Snow

Most Punjabis, Biharis
Circle IV Rolling Weights

Muhammad Irfan Mangu, Muhammad Adeel Noor Bengaliwala
Circle V Stuck in Mud, Mangled

River Styx

Shakeel Yazdani (Eni), Irfan Sarwar (PRL)
Circle VI Buried for Eternity

River Phlegyas

ICAP Council Members, ICAP Education and Training Committee Members
Circle VII Burning Sands

Nawaz Sharif
Circle IIX Immersed in Excrement

Director Examinations, ICAP
Circle IX Frozen in Ice

Design your own hell

I got this off Gaydeceiver, which admittedly I didn't discover myself - Yasir did (He of the farigh time, thand job, etc etc), and if you're as bored, frustrated and sick of it as we are, by which I mean to say if you're also an auditor, you might actually find it mildly entertaining.

And no Karsaz, my long-forgotten friend, the "comma walas" are not sponsoring me...

Ties at the beach?

2006-04-09T01:58:00.000+05:00

Ties at the beach?
Originally uploaded by Xill-e-Ilahi.

Sometimes sneaking out of the office to go to the beach doesn't really feel dumb. So this is the Turk, the Iceman and the Stud all desperately trying to fit into Mobeen's 6630. And given my ever-growing bulk that's quite the achievement.

Where else but in Karachi can you go to a slick-ravaged beach at two in the afternoon, with the temperature at around 37 degrees celsius, wearing your damned neckties no less, and still not attract more than a passing glance from the other bums at Seaview?

Underpasses or or no underpasses, I love you Karachi.

2006-04-09T01:37:00.000+05:00

Fellow PAki
Originally uploaded by Xill-e-Ilahi.

199 kids of the same guy on the wall....

Stephen Cree

2006-04-09T01:10:00.000+05:00

An interesting if not altogether effective way to distract oneself, as suggested by several self proclaimed sages, is to read or watch or listen to the crap that comes out of other people's mouths. Sometimes it can be quite artistic.

Ladies and gentlemen, assuming there are such people reading my blog, I give you the works of Stephen Cree. Specifically his ode to some sort of polymerous substance called Polytetrafluoroethylene, which I have been quoting unabashedly all over Orkut.

Maybe then

2006-03-17T16:31:00.000+05:00

Tell me what pain is all about. Some sort of sensory shock travelling along a complex network in the body? Or is it just a pit you descend in? a knife flying on the wings of memories to stab you from behind? A bunch of burning coals scattered along the walkways of life? Does it have a beginning? an end? Will I know when its over? Am I holding on to it or is it holding on to me? Am I falling or have I thrown myself in? What lasts longer, the rose or the thorn? What has more impact? More reality, more flesh? Where lies the truth? Is it in the glorious flight of the bird or the shattered, strangled death in the electric wires? Do I love you for the high highs you give me, the low lows you leave me in, or the journey in between ? It's been six years and I still don't know where I am. Taking a step forward or back ? I guess time will tell.

But why am I so down today? Perhaps I need me to be hidden for a while. If there were ever a place where I could lose myself, would it be in her arms, above the clouds, or underneath the ground ? Right now, I can't be in either and the helplessness of the situation is what hurts. So I just hide away and wait for another time when I'll need to be in that place. Maybe then there won't be a space between us.

Maybe then, for once, I wont be lost.

Chardeewaree

2006-02-18T00:39:00.000+05:00

Chardeewaree
Originally uploaded by Xill-e-Ilahi.

"Even the Catholic Church of the Middle Ages was tolerant by modern standards. Part of the reason for this was that in the past no government had the power to keep its citizens under constant surveillance. The invention of print, however, made it easier to manipulate public opinion, and the film and the radio carried the process further. With the development of television, and the technical advance which made it possible to receive and transmit simultaneously on the same instrument, private life came to an end."

(1984, George Orwell)

If I can do this for free, imagine what the agencies can do with their millions...

Who am I?

2006-02-17T19:29:00.000+05:00

ok so i'm the short dark balding fat guy who nobody looks at twice. except when they get that nagging deja vu kind of feeling which tells them i remind them of someone. "who is he?" they think. "where have i seen him before?" "who does he remind me of? is it Olesegun Obasanjo?"

ORRRRRR.... "is it Zayed Khan?"

heck i really don't know. i just hope the cia isn't using this kind of technology to track down al qaeda.

Yes we have no malaria

2006-01-10T23:18:00.000+05:00

It seems doctors can be as prone to sensationalism as, well, let’s see, auditors. Journalists aren’t that bad. Unless of course they write for rags like the Evening Special, which for some reason BM reads pretty religiously. Ho hum, I wonder what that reason could be… But I’ve gone off on a tangent.

Admittedly I had a pretty high aspirin resistant fever for nearly two days before I agreed to allow myself to be dragged to the emergency room. And yes I was coughing and shivering and had one helluva sore throat. But it was bloody 6.8 degrees out there. I’m used to lows of around fifteen. Anyways the quack looks at me, goes through the brief medical history thing, the pulse check etc and is acting normally until he learns I just got back from an official trip to a gas field in Dadu (which mind you is a desert and definitely not a place where anything other than heat stroke is endemic) and then he starts muttering, “malaria, malaria” nearly giving me a heart attack. Then the dude looks at my throat and says almost disappointedly, “It’s probably not malaria after all” as if I was just wishing that it might be. It turns out its some kind of bacterial infection. So the guy puts me on fexofenadine and levofloxacine for the infection and the usual aspirin for the fever and this ridiculously ineffective cough syrup the name of which has just slipped my mind. AND he puts me on the whole chloroquine phosphate regimen for a week just to be sure that I don’t have malaria AND he tells me I’m grounded (not in so many words obviously but nonetheless effectively grounded as I can’t get to work till at least the third day of Eid) AND he expects me to get my blood tested and report to him before I start going to the office again.

If I hadn’t been shivering from the chills that were overcoming me (my temperature was a little over 103) I might have said bollocks to his face and walked off but hey, who doesn’t start feeling a little sick when he’s in a hospital? So I’m playing the role of the merry absconder while the team sweats it out at the office though anyone who knows me will agree that I couldn’t care less about that.
But the update as this was meant to be is simply that I don’t really have malaria. It’s just that ridiculous doctor who thinks I do.

The economics of not having a car. Wall Street Style

2006-01-10T23:06:00.000+05:00

This is a really cool article about the economics of splitting a cab fare. How would you do it between three people who took one cab and got off at three different locations (in line with tradition that would be Raiq, Yasir and the Iceman himself)? Game theory or the talmud? Read and you will be enlightened.

(And before you ask, no I have not developed a taste for economics. I read this off a guy named Abbas Halai's blog, from where I unabashedly plagiarized it.)

55 Fiction

2005-12-20T00:32:00.000+05:00

Work is killing me , so I have barely been able to find the time to update this blog of late. However, work has never come in the way of my net surfing as my team-mates will no doubt testify and on one of these online jaunts, I have found the solution to the blog updating problem. 55 fiction is the new thing and after reading hundreds of short gems, I've decided to join the party. So here goes:

Just another Monday

He woke up at six like he did every Monday. The usual toast and eggs she served him were noticeably tasteless. The newspaper bored him and even the series victory couldn’t hold his attention. He slammed down his cup of tea, spilling it, and went outside to wash the car.

First day of retirement sucks.

2005-12-18T23:59:00.000+05:00

I've decided to keep the sob stuff out of this blog from now. This is just going to be for the general cricket notes, rants, rambles and memories. The usual crap. The attempts at being poetic are to be relegated to mine and Aliya's shared blog. So oh imaginary reader ( I so know that no one ever reads my blog anyway) enjoy yourself. Happy reading. Snigger, snort, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha......

2005-11-24T11:50:00.000+05:00

The King

2005-11-19T15:37:00.000+05:00

We won.