Musings on Monday Mornings

I find myself flicking through pictures…some new…mostly old, while a playlist of old favourites plays in my ears. I’m walking a tightrope I know. It’s blatant provocation. A well of old memories. Mostly pleasant. Mostly beautiful. And home is so very far away. He drove relentlessly through the streets of a sodden city in hope of finding a shoulder, a voice that reminds him of home. I just drove. What is it that pushes us through the bareness of nothingness of find that one sensation that calms us? I look at old pictures. He went to a familiar home. Almost, but not quite. Time tethers on a fine balance. Having run its course it clears, granting clarity in hindsight. Always hindsight. It passes and its passing is felt more than seen. There’s a years worth of snaps that can’t be accounted for in seconds. They just are. And there’s the scars to prove the storms passing…but they’re not all seen. Those too are felt. Az, sometimes it’s good losing control and talking about not talking. Cold...

I think pretty much all of sub continental novels somewhere or the other draw upon the power and push of the monsoons. Like the lunar swelling of the tide. Something that is given. Something that affects deeply. Everybody. Today, somewhere near the Saharan desert, we had a morning that was geographically off. It got overcast and much like the monsoons, a gust of wind rose with lightening to shed on this dusty ‘shitsville’ a sprinkle of rain that smelt of home. Home, damn it. Home. Like fresh water on gravel. And for a few minutes we delayed going to work. Delayed donning the suit and the high heels and slowed the pace to sip milk over a heavily buttered jam toast. It’s at times like these when the mind invariably turns to a moment from before trying to recreate a feeling. Then it stretches it, tugging at the ends to try and make it linger longer. But sooner than later the sun comes out to reign down harsh and strong in a typical May-day desert fashion. You battle 6-lane traffic and dra...

6.00pm on a Thursday evening and the clock is taking it's jolly time crawling to close 9 hours of contractual labour...that too on May 1st. There's an irony somewhere in there. Still another 30 minutes to go. So here we are. A bustling, noisy and at times X-rated environment that is slowly beginning to grow in a nice familiar, homey kind of way. There are days ofcourse, but something comes up that makes up for things. Life also seems to be sorting itself out slowly (mash'Allah) and the stars a realigning themselves to resemble what was once life! There are ofcourse days there too...but. Azi, ditto. And thanks. I don't have to say it.

oye... you are my disney friend and my moulin rogue singer buddy.you are bocelli and fern gulli and knower of all things wise and true.you the watcher of last of the mohicans for the nth time with me.my dearest and closest friend!! may allah always keep you in his hifz o eimaan and may this day and all that follow be filled with happiness and glee. :D Amber the Goga! Happy Birthday!

June 1993 - April 2008: Requiem Tonight the sky above Reminds me of you, love Walking through wintertime Where the stars all shine The angel on the stairs Will tell you I was there Under the front porch light On a mystery night I've been sitting watching life pass from the sidelines Been waiting for a dream to seep in through my blinds I wondered what might happen if I left this all behind Would the wind be at my back ? Could I get you off my mind This time The neon lights in bars And headlights from the cars Have started a symphony Inside of me The things I left behind Have melted in my mind And now there's a purity Inside of me I've been sitting watching life pass from the sidelines Been waiting for a dream to seep in through my blinds I wondered what might happen if I left this all behind Would the wind be at my back ? Could I get you off my mind This time

Celebrities OD-ing on drugs—prescription or otherwise—is a not a new phenomenon to Hollywood. Elvis, River Phoenix, in addition to numerous others are a case in point, whose death left a tangible hole in the world of Showbiz. But they are long dead, distant memories, stars that have been immortalised on account of their young passing. But when Heath Ledger was found dead in his SoHo apartment in New York on January 22, it somehow hurt more … seemed more personal. Ledger moved to Hollywood after a few years career in Australia starring in TV soaps and a film that brought him localised attention. In his Hollywood debut in 10 Things I Hate About you in 1999 he played a self assured and independent iconoclast paid to date the college’s hell raiser. He gained popularity with teenage age girls, most of whom looked at him as the pin-up poster of the unconventionally-cute-but-deep foreign student they all hoped to find and fall in love with. His rendition of Frankie Avalon’s I Love You Baby, s...

There is perfection nowhere. It is in imperfection that we mark our individualities. I am a Pakistani, the product of what you see as years of flawed politics, feudal conspiracies, terrorist attacks, women indiscrimination and flagging institutions. But even when pigeonholed through a myopic lens coloured dimmer by a negative international picture of my country, I have never been more proud of being a Pakistani than I am now. We have come through one of the toughest years in our young history — tougher still because there has been no one tangible issue to blame everything on. We have been hit with drought, floods, mindless acts of terrorism, mass political instability and natural and infrastructural disasters. We closely avoid being bombed by the superpowers for one reason or the other and a few days before general elections in our country the entire world looks to us as a forgone conclusion. But even with a silenced media we speak. Even with the ‘rightful’ judiciary in abeyance we so...

I am so profoundly moved right now by some intangible string in the life stream. It may be the picture in today’s paper of starving ill babies in hospitals waiting for fuel to run out and mothers fighting for bread in Gaza, or it may be Death & Taxes playing my ear, or the cloudy skies outside, or the lack of what I think is rightfully- deserved appreciation. May be it is the lack of human connection in this pigeonholed existence or just shutting up and not talking. Either way, I am feeling it. Pathetic fallacy, Shakespeare called it. When the atmosphere and nature reflect your mood. I think mine is completely in tune. (Many puns … … I am laughing to myself). I wrote something recently in hopes of sending it to TFT. I live in hope that I might still send it. Till I do: I’ll let it rest here instead of the deep dark recesses of my computer: To Buy into the Dream (or Not) As one of those Pakistanis who ventured to Dubai for work I was more than enthusiastic about our new residence. ...