Musings on Monday Mornings

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. ...