Musings on Monday Mornings

One often realises that real life is pretty hard to deal with. All this time we had been lamenting about what happened in America with Katrina, but subconsciously pleased that this was a result of America's wrong doings in Iraq. That God punised Bush ... then what happened in Pakistan. Are we being punished as well. Who are you to decide who is right and who wrong? Beyond a moral sense of right and wrong, remember that when the axe falls it always breaks something. Tragedy is tragedy anywhere, with or without oil. Feel for all humanity. We are the children of one maker.

Working as someone who is online 24/7……fine not 24/7 …… 10 hours every 6 days, the computer offers an interesting view of the time line across the world. All right, I confess, I am slightly obsessed with msn (as the only programme I do keep on) and everyone who comes online. The day starts off with the Aussie’s or the late night Americans. Slowly the Paki’s creep in, often to be disconnected repeatedly owing to back network connections or just plain lack of funds (READ: Azam). Then come the Brits and other Europeans, hours or minutes within each other. And finally we cross the Atlantic to the early mothers and young responsible adults in America. And strangely enough the cycle runs through out the day/ week/ month and (yes 11 months later) the year. Sitting like a fixture at this desk with the occasion contract-required running between production and marketing, one gets the feeling of everyone running about you in a buzz of activity. As it is, writers are cursed with reading too much i...

I've realised email is a curse. When people write you're not happy and when people don’t write you are down right miserable. Either way no win. I need more personal mails and less work-related mails. Am sick of reading generic things. Am lacking the warm and individual attention that comes from 'real' people. I want to go home and have my mother fuss over me, I brothers fawn and flatter me and people in general talk just about me and my life. Am lying at the bottom of an abyss, feeling murky and terribly self indulgent with pity. Want people to recognize me and share a smile because they know who I am and where I come from. I want aunties loaded in diamonds and wearing fake LV shoes and bags to judge me as to why I am wearing this or that, if I am happily married or not and why I still don’t have a child. I want Ashraf's Tikkas and chomps, where Moeed and Shanza go often with their friends. I want the pseudo atmosphere and pretentious appreciation of all the drug ad...

To me it has always been the symbol of the tide ... the floating like sensation of a Gump-style feather choosing its own fate. The causal-yet-cool shrug of the indifferent, feeling the concerns of the ‘broken,’— but fearful of the vulnerability ‘concern’ brings with it. Then again it’s just out of the norm: Who’s to say? There is that gnawing cat-like sensation strumming at the base of a low octave, somewhere within the single-cellular dimensions of something previously referred to as “My Heart.” There is was again. In the past many a wandering issue, invariably taking post outside my particular window have been attributed to this, but sadly now with age one must consign REAL meanings to issues. Hate all this objectifying of intangible feelings. Who really wants to know anyway: It’s not as if anyone can make any real suggestions. Then why need for perpetual rationale … to the self even? It was (wrongly) assumed that apple pie with cinnamon may take the twinge of melancholy away. Even a...

The ‘Twilight Zone’ was on of my favourite NTM (yes, this harks back to the days before cable) programmes. People caught in limbo in a nasty phase of their lives (horror, mystery, murder inclusive… GST + cover charges – go figure!!!) And it was sold to susceptible viewers (myself) as prime time entertainment. Now it scared the socks off me, but watch it, I did. The TV was in ami baba’s room and ami, dog-tired from a day of many responsibilities would be sound asleep. Baba (I get this from him) and I would watch it together. Every Thursday at 11.30 pm. Back then Friday and Sunday used to be holidays at the Convent. Aitchison had Fridays and Saturdays off, but we had to go in on Saturdays to take another holiday the next day. But someone said the “nuns do it better” and so we stuck to the nuns. One time the governor died on a Saturday… maybe it was a nun, I forget… but we got three days off together. Never was I so happy about someone dying. The weekend must have been spent in trivial pu...