Musings on Monday Mornings

I am always attracted to people who are integral enough to be inconsistent without discordance and who don't trail viscous threads of regret behind them. I don't think that it is on the threshold of life that one feels chaotic, it is when one has crossed the threshold that one discovers that things which looked simple and feelings that felt simple are infinitely more tortuous and complex. That it is only in inconsistency that there is any consistency.

Just realised that for someone requesting everyone else to talk, my mail was disgustingly sparse. :) Well ladies, I am generally well. I.E. my life is flowing along the natural course of inevitability. But having said that, life still bites me, out of the course of natural events, in my ass. And that though one has been bitten before it still surprisingly hurts in new ways. I still cry with the kind of tears one used to enjoy (luxuriously) in the early teens. Not so. One can still shake up that kind of emotion, which though exhausting is very purging. But as I grow I am realising consciously how much we self censor. No one says out loud that their heart is breaking. Slowly and painfully. Even if it is because we don't get the (hypothetical) bearded communist poet, or the kind of understanding we want reciprocated from a spouse, or the dream many years in the making, or the lack of truthful friends.........or many other 'ors'. I suppose one should once in a while fall in a t...

There is that scene from Forest Gump where the movie closes on a note of strange contentedness. Where the feather is seen floating into the final credits. In the film it evokes the perfect essence of peace. But in real life I think maybe things are different. Sometimes I wonder if being feather-like is good or bad. Can one just glide or float through things, through life? How unbearable is just 'Being'? Living in mediocrity without the additional responsibility of wisdom...the greater picture? There is that feeling of being light as a feather where one can glide. How consciously Insight (The Truth) brings us to willingly shoulder responsibility. Feel the weight of a thing greater than our comprehension. Or is it different. That in realising and acknowledging the Truth with our heart and mind we are lifting the weight of the world? Weights that bind us. I can't decide. Am faced with two sides of the coin and each one has an equal chance of being the right/winning side. Am fa...

I think the fans must be running now. Not on the higher speeds but rather on a slow churn that grinds the rims on every round and makes a noise that after a few minutes has its own relaxing rhythm. Where, very often the fan's breeze leaves one feeling hotter than cool for the air is disproportionately distributed in our houses. That's Lahore. Its more a feeling than something tangible. Its like a small gland at the back of your throat that salivates in the same way as some one hungering for a meal. The sun would be setting later now. And had I been still in college, younger, the shadows of the trees lining the canal would some in hues of darkness and light as I would have made my way home. The birds in the afternoon sun--a time when college is quieter--would chirp in a manner that only memory holds now. I forget the sound or perhaps I colour it too sweet to be the real thing. But that, is Lahore. Maybe at home the windows are open for longer. And the greenery in the patio is n...

I haven't been writing of late. Maybe I have been writing, but not on paper. My brain is looking like an ugly doodle now with no clean space for new words. It made sense some time ago, now it looks like lots of ants gone nutsy . So I had to turn to paper...Internet. Whatever. It rained in my desert and there came a rising tide that flooded all the sand dunes. For many days the waters poured down from the sky like Heavens dam was avenging itself on the world. Like a huge sigh that would not drawn air in until its previous burdens were lifted. And so the raindrops came thrashing down with mighty winds. And unperceptive bastards we are, we thought it was nice weather. Who knew that some small angel had had his wings broken and had fallen to earth in a mighty heap. And as it rained, God stirred the sands much like an old woman does with her wheat, sifting the clean, finer bits from the rough. God sifted the desert made a trough that filled with water for a lake that ran into the sea. A...

Ladies and Gentlemen of the class of '97... wear sunscreen. If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be IT. The long term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now. Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they have faded. But trust me, in 20 years you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are NOT as fat as you imagine. Don't worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind; the kind that blindside you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday. Do one thing every day t...

We played king of the mountain out on the end The world come chargin' up the hill, and we were women and men Now there's so much that time, time and memory fade away We got our own roads to ride and chances we gotta take We stood side by side each one fightin' for the other We said until we died we'd always be blood brothers Now the hardness of this world slowly grinds your dreams away Makin' a fool's joke out of the promises we make And what once seemed black and white turns to so many shades of gray We lose ourselves in work to do and bills to pay And it's a ride, ride, ride, and there ain't much cover With no one runnin' by your side my blood brother On through the houses of the dead past those fallen in their tracks Always movin' ahead and never lookin' back Now I don't know how I feel, I don't know how I feel tonight If I've fallen 'neath the wheel, if I've lost or I've gained sight I don't even know why, I do...

...And when he picked up that violin he played with the glory of triumphant heroes returning. The grace of a ballet dancer returning for the encore. And within the spell of that song he told his entire story. The poverty of his birth. The misfortunes of anonymity and the struggles for this success. He played, and the entirety of her life seemed to come alive. It seemed that all those 60 years she has lived for just this one moment--when he would play and she would forget everything else. Age, propriety and time seemed to disappear . As the chords hummed to the strokes of his youthful fingers she lost the grey that coloured her hair, the lines that defined her face. She was ageless. As young as him. He as old as her. It was a wave. A wave of love. Under which she drowned, gladly losing the last breath of sanity, maturity and rationality. Under it she was swallowed, comforted by the bleakness of unrequited love. It was a canvas on which she would paint a rosy picture for her days rem...

ANCA , C3, C4, proteinuria . Life altering. Growing up fast. Managing responsibilities. New house. Issues: blocked drains, dishwasher fitting Dhs 500, curtain designs. Weathering the weather. Missing out. Lunches and oranges...all for a penny? So many school boys. Home. Home sickness. Self censorship . Bottling it up. Maturity you say? Lack of friends. Social responsibility. Propriety. Good friends with time eccentricities. Saving grace. Traffic. Unsettled. Unsettling feeling. LONG nights spent tossing and tumbling. Physical pain. Dark circles. Plants do not buy happiness. Professor "Lupus". Knowing what I know. Research on the Internet. Too much information. Ignorance is bliss? Known evil is a lesser evil? Loneliness . Akeel makes "Chicken in White Onion." Food in 10 days. Living for the weekend. Responsibility. Silly girls laughing in cars, it seems so far off. Maybe they are not silly. This too shall pass (?)

I think I can say with a measure of confidence that ‘Streets of Philadelphia’ is by far my favourite song. And that too despite the fact that I never really took a liking to the film. There’s something about the lyrics—a strange reconciliation with the forces bringing you down. A pact with the inevitable: do what you have to do and be done with it. That this is it. The point where I cease struggling. I have seen Man, and my disappointments out weigh everything by so much that I stand at the point of No Return. And I come as I am. No pretences. THIS is me. I was bruised and battered; I couldn’t tell what I felt, I was, unrecognizable to myself, Saw my reflection in the window and didn’t know my own face. O brother, going to leave me wasting away In the Streets of Philadelphia I walked the avenue till my legs felt like stone, I heard, voices of friends vanished and gone, At night I hear the blood in my veins, It is black and whispery as the rain In the streets of Philadelphia. Ain’t no a...

Dancers I am told are born with a rhythm—or at least and ability to comprehend the music when it is playing. They feel the music within their bodies. They manifest the beat of the music with action, articulating the language of music with physical movement. And so, it is the rhythm that sets the pace, making you move. Stirring you, slowing you down, embracing you and make you move forward. Life is much like that, with cities directing the pace of the music. As people living in them one has no choice but to move to the tune and speed required…and if you don’t, well you just fall to wayside like quitters. And I have never been a quitter. So here I am in a new town dancing to a new rhythm. I am struggling to keep up with everyone else … while trying to maintain an illusion of grace. It will take some time till I get my moves down. And I know practice makes perfect. But it is so hard. And the temptation to not even bothering trying is so overwhelming.

And when I say red, I don’t mean the darker shades of red that almost don’t attract attention. When I say red, I mean jarring, in your face, Lolita-returns-with-a-bang, Angelina-Jolie-lipstick RED. This is a relatively new thing in a series of ‘things’. It first surfaced in the middle of the wedding season back home. And far as I know it was not motivated by something. You know, the vindictive-splurge-of-anger-that-is-directed-from-somewhere-else-but-cannot-be-expressed kind of motivation. This passionate fascination seemed to be born of a sheer reckless abandon. The freefall-fun-approach to life. I notice of late she is expressing herself more and more. We were pretty much alike a few years ago. Her name and mine shared the same words. She just seemed to be reverse. (She is laughing in my head). When I got married she didn’t change her name. She kept it as it was…and to be honest thereon, started asserting herself more aggressively. She’s the reckless one. She climbs trees and bears s...

Life is full of little details. The details that become inconsequential the moment they fall out of the parameters of a particular moment, but while a part of it, their importance is of great magnificence. It’s the little things that come haunting when you least expect them. Like the line from a movie you saw just once, that means so much just when you are ached, bending above the dishwasher to load the dinner plates. “First class—it used to be a better meal. Now, it’s a better life.” :) Ok, so I am deliberately misquoting to give a different picture. But something to that tune. You get it. However, more precisely, I am talking about the rubber band you were playing with during the course of an hour long conversation with a friend. But the second the call comes to an end you have no more use of the piece of plastic. It lingers, used and over. The entirety of its existence summarized in minutes. Its sentence pronounced and on the verge of being enacted. And yet, as you decide to throw i...

I find the fact that I am driving home at 12midnight alone on highway that brooks no traffic, in a town that is not my own, frightfully unnerving. My own emancipation scares me; the fact that I am responsible for my self alone, and alone responsible for myself. Life is comforting when seen from the lens of the things that bind us. Limitations are comforting. They edge the horizons of our universe, giving us the parameters with which we can exist and understand our world. Once those parameters cease to exist, or become increasingly permeable, the opaque fluidity of time, notions, values and responsibility muddle and fuzz dimensions. That is when we step, albeit unwilling, into the realm of Emancipation. Not all of us are looking to be emancipated. Some of us prefer our golden cages. (‘Cages’ is such a cruel world. I wish I could come up with something else as a substitute. But I can’t) Emancipation How one plays with words. (I sell them too cheap). What is emancipation to one is abandon...

In truth I have nothing to write, and am giving way to my fingers which can travel the course of any letter and word, conjuring sentences as they please. For once my fingers can be masters of their own destiny--the destiny deigned for them on paper. The mystics move to a tune (sometimes of God and sometimes the lover) and somehow words dance to the touch of the fingers, much like a choreographed dance, where the participants know the steps but do not know where the chemistry of the dance might lead them to. Different paths? A shared bed? Or just some simple, plain old dancing. Deviating from this somewhat sensuous and dangerous course these word and fingers (in collusion I believe) are painting, lets away to the realm of reality. Ah, but no fun lies in trying to talk in real terms. …………….the sun has begun setting early nowadays. It too marks the end of a long year with some early time off. Characteristic afternoons spent in the hammock—languid strokes of the foot, gentle swinging—in th...

As someone who chooses to live on the periphery of ‘home’ crowds—avoiding ‘women’s associations’ get togethers, the more-than-necessary dinners and most importantly the brain draining ‘ladies parties’ that are comities, one is at something of a disadvantage when it comes to ‘common knowledge’. A) It is common knowledge that EVERYONE has exhibitions. When you work the circuit, the circuit works you. You meet, rub shoulders, buy silly clothes that don’t suit you and which you’ll never wear…and voila, you are in. “Nosheen had an exhibition” “Did you buy anything?” “No…terribly expensive, but lovely things.” And thereafter follows much enthused conversation running two and fro. Meanwhile, I’m still stuck on Nosheen who? On average there are some 3 odd exhibitions every week. The Little Me still in the Convent frock vying to make friends quips: “Why didn’t anyone invite me?” B) Insider information. It turns out there is a guy who comes to your house to fix electrical appliances. One doesn’t...

I discovered that my obsession for having each thing in the right place, each subject at the right time, each word in the right style, was not the well-deserved reward of an ordered mind but just the opposite: a complete system of pretense invented by me to hide the disorder of my nature. I discovered that I am not disciplined out of virtue but as a reaction to my negligence, that I appear generous in order to conceal my meanness, that I pass myself off as prudent because I am evil minded, that I am conciliatory in order not to succumb to my repressed rage, that I am punctual only to hide how little I care about other people's time. I learned in short, that love is not a condition of the spirit but a sign of the zodiac.

I’m trying to kill hours. And while I would love a speedy expeditious death, Time seems to be lingering on endlessly. That’s the thing about evenings. The night continues, until creeping through the shadows comes the crack of morning sunshine. Ordinarily, I would saunter from one sofa to the other, but that indulgence does not make allowances for the laptop, which given its clinical functionality must be within the range of the wireless. Also, the words ‘saunter’ and ‘laptop’ juxtaposed in my metal picture do not evoke a comfortable thought. So here I am on the floor, next to the somewhat overgrown money plant, sitting on the marbled ground, under Sadiq’s chalk-white table with a flattened glutes that’s feeling the cold. But, I want to write—nothing, something—so I suppose one must brave the floor, overgrown plant et all. Today I found out Richard Moore died. He died in his sleep on September 4th, but the news caught up with me today. It was strange hearing of his death. He wasn’t one ...

So, through some massive last minute manoeuvrings, serious prayers and just a good-old kick from Fate in the buttocks, Shanz has managed Harvard. I count-- this dream has comfortably been 12 years in the making (With Honors [1996]). That’s a pretty long time considering how fast things change. So a kid and a husband later, actually a husband and a kid later (she did it the legit way), Shanz has initiated the dream. While there is immense guilt (she misses her kids first birthday, and insists she misses her husband) it appears dreams are not subject to reality. You can apparently pull them off. I guess it comes down to perseverance. As the Aitchisonians say it “Perseverance commands success.” But so far, there is no furniture though. She bunks with Nazia across the bridge. But who cares for trivial details like furniture while there are bigger dreams at play here. Hope springs eternal.