• Aik Shaadi ka aankhun dekha haal
• Baqar Eid ka aankhun dekha haal
• Aik picnic ka aakhun dekha haal.
• Mailey ka aankhun dekha haal.
• and what have you ka aankhun dekha haal.

Basically, what one was required to narrate in such essays was the event experienced in first person. So, you started with the murgh kee baang, without necessarily inking out Cock-a-doodle-do. Though at least one teacher thought it a nice touch in 8th standard, but then it was towards the end of the year, and by that time every year, one's Urdu teachers used to have fathomed the talent of their "honihaar" student, and would pretty much be able to see the creative genius in anything he submitted. Wifey says I ought to be a tad more modest when recounting my childhood accomplishments, especially since they are such rare moments in the history of civilization, and ironically because they have long been listed along with the dinosaurs in the existence chapters. Jalali Baba says, however, that precisely because they are such rarity, I should not miss out on any opportunity to make the most of them towards building a good impression of mine. He quotes his own example often, and I tend to agree more with him.

Back to "aankhun dekha haal", you started with the first thing you heard, said, or did depending on which one of the three was the least censorable, and recounted the whole day tilll you had got back home, and gone to bed with some corny promise to yourself to go to next occurrence of the thence stated event ASAP. Aankhun dekha haal, I am not sure if there is a synonym in the English language for this phrase. However, let me not be pulled away from the topic and purpose of this update.

So, yes. The much awaited bloggers meet finally took place this past Wednesday after much planning. Have I told you who the four bloggers were? I believe I have, and if you had not been paying attention in the past, you will have to make up for that by reading through the rest of the blog and finding out for yourself. There was yours truly of course, and there was JB, but there were also a couple of other gentleman as those with exceptional arithmetic talent will have figured out by now.

However, since this is to be an aankhun dekha haal, shouldn't I start with how I had woken up late that morning, hours after the neighbour's rooster had stopped with its obnoxious cock-a-doodle-do. They should get this &%$@#*& rooster checked, or hand it over to us for Friday Biryani. The foul fowl has its body clock all messed up, and mistakes 3 a.m for a little past 6:30 a.m. Now, I would not want to interfere with its flawed perception of time, if it did not interefere with mine so much. I am a very tolerant person, and am completely awake, no pun intended, to the possibility of people from different back grounds having different perceptions. For all you know the poor thing traces its ancestors back to Guangzhou, where they have morning 4 hours ahead of us, and gets all traditional about its sense of timings. I could even live with a 'baang' or two at the odd hour, but must it insist on everyone waking up and proceeding for Fajr prayers before it stops? Wonder what are the three dozen cats of the alley waiting for? They have devoured every other body attached to a beak in the area, why discriminate in his case?

Oh, well. This isn't going as planned, this way I will never get around to how the bloggers meet went that day, at least not in this post. Can we agree that I woke up late, ploughed my way through the rush hour of Wednesday morning, got into office late, enjoyed half a cup of tea, and finished the day's work precisely at 6:01 p.m? Because if we can't, I will have to tell you about what I had for lunch, and more importantly why I did not have what I did not have for lunch? Actually, if I do go into that detail, I will have to clarify why I did not have lunch that day, doing which will then demand that I also tell you how famished I was during the day, and how that had led to me taking the more crowded road to Abu-Dhabi, the rendezvous, just so I could stop over at the McDonald's along the way. So, are we agreed? Good. That should save us some time.

So, I got off work at a minute past 6 in the evening, which is late by my standards, because 6:00 p.m. is the time the office officially closes, and I have hardly been around to see what it looks like when it closes. I escaped by a whisker on Wednesday, and because I was leaving an hour later than panned, I decided to forgo the idea of going to Sharjah and changing into something more comfortable. Fortunately, I had me slippers in the car, and as long as my villager's feet are not bound in shoes, I am less uncomfortable even in official attire. So, off I pushed to Abu-Dhabi, but then I had to take the shorter, yet a lot more crowded, route because I hadn't had lunch, was famished, and thought I would stop over the McD's along the way. Wait a minute, I just had a deja vu feeling! Wow, I love it when that happens.

Anyway, the plan was to pick up Jalali Baba, who had had a prior meeting with HPN and knew his place in Abu Dhabi. HPN had also had a meeting with KK in Karachi, and therefore KK who was coming from Al-Ain was to meet him directly. I had spoken to both HPN and KK a couple of times, had found them both to be very likeable nice chaps. KK and my father had worked decades in Al-Ain in the same Government Organization, but in different fields, and even though we had both gone to different schools, we had been able to uncover quite a few mutual acquaintances. What made it all the more fun was the fact that we had met in blogistan, and meeting a fellow Pakistani blogger GCCian is always something of a rarity. While KK hailed from my birthplace Al-Ain, sort of a Chichon kee Maliyan in UAE in that one hardly meets people from Al-Ain, HPN had been around. He had studied in Al-Ain, Abu-Dhabi, Sharjah and where not. Guess he was too much of a bully, and they kept throwing him out of every school.

I picked up Baba as agreed. Baba, by the way, was travelling to Pakiland that same night, and was pre-occupied with concerns about whether or not he would be allowed to carry along his two hand carry luggage bags. One was an a standard hand carry size, the other was the typical Pakistani hand carry which is to say it had some 30 Kgs crammed into it. His concern was not that he would have to pay anything for his luggage, he was traveling light enough. His concern was that if he were not allowed to carry both the bags along, he would have to wait the queue for eternity on arrival at Karachi for just the one teeny weeny bag. I had some good fun psyching him up, but he was also Jalali Baba after all. He remained adamant that they would let him pass, and guess what? Eventually they did let him pass with both the bags in hand.

We arrived at HPN's place only to find that that HPN had gone to the bus stop to pick KK up, and was on his way back. They arrived in a short while in the nifty 206. I had these mental images of the guys I had been talking to, and the guys were exactly unlike what I had thought them to be.

HPN stepped out of the driver's seat, and I tried to make connection with the kid's image I had in my mind. That image by now had been scared to its bones by this well built brawny, bearded Mulla who stepped out of the car in his casual attire. As the image lay shivering in foetal position before it eventually vanished, HPN and I exchanged a warm Pakistani hug. I thanked HPN for sparing my bones, and apologised for any insolence henceforth. I had intended to elicit a non-violence pact from him, but he did not seem taken with the idea much. I stayed away from him for the rest of the evening. Any formalities between us were discarded that moment onwards, and the rest of the evening was spent pulling each other's fat leg. Momma, before you admonish me for misbehaviour, please do know he started it....

KK on the other hand had sounded brawnier on the phone than he turned out to be. Actually, he looked so young in his clean shave, and smart jeans, joggers and shirt that I had to remind myself a couple of times not to patronize the guy in any way. Thankfully, I had been reading his blog and knew how well read he was. Not to mention the fact that the guy was a physician by profession, and my parents have always believed that they are the only educated people on the planet.

The dilemma we faced then was that we had no itinerary to work with, and had absolutely no idea what to do now that we had met. The bigger dilemma was we could not stop talking, (Baba and I mostly), taking swipes at each other (HPN and I mostly) and staying quiet (KK mostly). After much pointless driving on the streets of Abu-Dhabi, we ended up at this Lebanese Restaurant, which seemed to be a favorite of both Abu-Dhabi walas, and HPN quickly ordered what almost became the main course of the dinner - Water. 2 bottles of Masafi and about an hour later, we were able to place our orders, and after a filling and delicious dinner were on our way back to HPN's place.

Knicq's special tea was served at HPN's spacious apartment, which by the way was relective of HPN's own dimensions in size. Humungous place fellas, one that did not seem crowded even with knicq, JB and HPN all crowded into it at the same time. Knicq was guilty of letting the tea boil over on HPN's Oven, but then HPN should have known better than to divert knicq's attention when attending to such crucial matter as preparation of tea.

Baba was getting late, so we decided to drop him off at the airport, and see to it that he did get on that plane at all costs. That needed a bit of speeding on Abu-Dhabi roads, and the only soul that sounded any less comfortable than the driver was Jalali Baba who was sitting on the front seat. I must admit his tense but firm grip on the door handle was cause for much motivation behind that continued quest for speed and pertaining ticket. Once Baba had been dropped off at the airport, and we got a chance to talk to each other, I felt it necessary to start with the introductions once again, but HPN insisted that they had been able to figure out quite a lot by themselves by then. Baba had in his inimitable style imparted the headlines of his 29 years on Earth in such a short while.

Our informal introduction, interspersed with Baba's update calls from various stages between entering the airport and being seated at the emergency exit, continued for some two hours after that.

At close to three in the morning, both HPN and KK seemed to have a heard a lot of me for a first time meeting, and I thought it best to let them regurgigate all that information for some time, so that they had completely digested this information inflow by our meeting the coming week.

With this thought, I left them at HPN's door step, and sped my way to Sharjah...where that darned rooster was at it again!

¶ 12/19/2004 01:15:00 AM