knicq

2006-04-17T02:49:00.000+04:00

Moved HERE!

Sands and Blizzards!

2006-01-26T02:45:00.000+04:00

There is entirely too much print space, if that is the word I am looking for, wasted on what is called ‘celebrity gossip’. The past few weeks, the newspapers have been replete with stories about the ‘celebrity’ gay marriage, and this in an Islamic country like the UAE, where Orkut and Naseeb are banned because they are dating sites, and where when recently police raided a ‘discreet’ gay party and made arrests, it was front page news. Prior to that there was Aniston pitted against Angelina, and not very long ago you could not start your morning without finding out what Bennifer had been upto in the preceding twelve hours. Today, once again, City Times, the tabloid-cum-sports pages of Khaleej Times, thought it necessary to splash A.Jolie’s semi-naked picture on its cover, and inform us that Angelina and Brad have had success at procreation. Its the Pitts, pun intended.

I subscribe to Khaleej Times, since long ago I had decided against spending any money on Gulf News because of its inherent bias against Pakistan in its coverage. Outisde of these two publications one’s options are still quite limited when it comes to mainstream newspapers. KT used to be quite a decent publication, with a balanced approach to news coming from both sides of the Pak-India border. More than that, City Times in its good old days did not carry the extra baggage of spots news, and was indeed looked forward to because of a certain humorist’s column on its last page. Bikram Vohra, who put a smile on many a face every morning, has long since left City Times, and has been recycling his CT columns in the recently launched Evening Post.

I have continued with Khaleej Times, more out of habit than anything else. The paper has gone to the dogs. The front page induces nausea with its “Your favorite and number one paper in the UAE, Khaleej Times, this…; and your favorite and no.1 paper in the UAE, Khaleej Times, that…” stories. I had half a mind to ask our paper boy to rip off the front page before delivering the paper at our place, but then I noticed that even the stories inside were not much better either, and if we continued with the ripping strategy, we might as well ask him to shred the damn thing for us as soon as he received it. He’s a poor chap, who works really hard to make ends meet, and I did not think, he would have been able to afford a shredder, so we continued to receive the paper every morning, and I continue to shred it in our office daily. On a positive note, KT did take lead in putting the officials of government organizations under the microscope, and often imitates the western publications’ tone in its ‘fight’ to bring forth the causes of accountability, and justice. This is a favorable development, since one felt that the officials in the Government departments, and quite often the expatriates in private institutions flouted the moral, ethical, or regional norms with impunity and with the least consideration for those affected by their behavior. With KT on the prowl to report such incidents, and other publications following suit, perhaps one can expect these incidents to reduce. On the whole though, the newspapers are disappointing, especially in their choice of stories to fill up their pages.

It has often made me think, however, why do they have to fill up the paper with such riff raff. So Elton John and his gay friend got married, and I can understand the inevitability of having to report the marriage too, but who needs the intricate details of the preparations for the wedding, and the celebrity list attending the wedding, and whatever else happened there. How does it hold any importance for the people of the UAE, for it to keep propping up in the newspapers on regular basis. So, Pitt and Aniston got divorced, and found other partners, whats the big deal? Must we have their daily lives forced down our throats? And what’s with the Jude law and Miller story? One committed adultery, tendered in apologies, the other forgave; and now me thinks they are playing the same story with the roles reversed. I can understand if this were reported as news, but when it becomes the topic for discussion every day, it gets to me.

Looking at above, you could be forgiven for assuming that I keep a close watch on the celebrity gossip. You could not, however, make a more fallacious assumption. I never read celebrity gossip, yet it is so in your face all the time, so omni-present, this celebrity gossip, that you can hardly not know whats been happening. The newspaper in the morning, the magazines stacked by the cashier’s side in your area supermarket, the TV news, the radio…its everywhere.
Who are these celebrities? What makes them such celebrities? What is their claim to fame? Their art? Their talent? I do not think so. None of these news, which clutter the information highways, subways, underpasses and overpasses, are about their art or their talent. All this news is about is their homosexuality, adultery, more adultery and still more adultery. Why should a responsible paper in an Islamic country commit pages after pages in print space to these inane stories? Why can’t these stories write about real people having real issues, people who need these papers to bring their plight to the fore, so they can be helped. Why can’t these papers write about those unsung heroes who toil day and night to eek out a living, and make life worth living for others?

They say gossip sells paper. Perhaps it does too, in a society whose obsession with the individual’s right to trample over another individual’s rights has blinded it to the cause of preserving the good in a society. In an Islamic country, in an Arab country, and that too in a GCC Arab country, a newspaper ought to exercise more caution and responsibility in its choice of stories. The GCC newspaper should realize that it has to take the same pride in its own self, which an average GCC national exhibits in his own thob and gatra. The GCC paper, I strongly feel, should write about the sands and the oasis in those sands, not about the blizzards in the west; only then will there be an international entity called the GCC paper.

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7 Responses to 'Sands and Blizzards!'
1Tariq January 4th, 2006 at 3:14 am
Salaams knicq,
I agree with you. Too much riff raff.
Maybe there should be a new newspaper in the UAE?
P.S. thanks for the update on Jolie and Pitt. I didn’t know they had ’succeeded at procreation’. I guess i’m uptodate now..
In addition: A very coherent and targeted post.

2hemlock January 4th, 2006 at 11:31 am
i hear ya! i hear ya! i hear ya!!!dude, gossip so does not sell paper.like, this one time at bandcamp…err, noi mean, incidently, i was in charge of the gossip page in my paper (dont ask) and for the longest time i carries this guilt over my shoulders because i felt responsible for what i was allowing to go into print… cuz ppl were reading it…so i took a stand, and cut out the trash. my ed would shout at me, i would shout back at him, tell him to do the job himself, which he obviously couldnt, so he would leave me alone until a later spasm.he. he. he.
btw: GEO is like the newest pakistani channel, BRILLIANT news coverage… hats off to them yeah?last night on GEO news:“Ashwaria Rai says 2006 will be her year”nuff said.

3knicq January 5th, 2006 at 3:56 pm
Tariq: W/Salaam. I agree with your agreeing with me. There are already a couple of new papers in town, but they have their job cut out for them…and unfortunately, they are as taken with the gossip news as the ’senior’ ones. As for the update on Pitt/Jolie ’success’, I am not entirely sure whats transpiring there, but I surmised from the headline that third time lucky meant something….
Hemmie: Bravo! Thats what all these people who put in those gossip news unwillingly ought to do…I have this feeling that no-one can willingly put that crap in papers under their name…it would take a really dumb person, if ot a really sick person, to be willing to share people’s private lives with the world. But it takes a brave one…I nominate you for the knicq journalistic personality award!
Oh, and I saw that GEO brilliance in news coverage too! It was one of their headlines…!!!
The Morons!

4HappySohail January 5th, 2006 at 10:21 pm
I just found out why knicq do not want us to read celebrity gossip stuff.
:D
You will figure it out after reading this excerpt from “Lie” magazine, “As per totally unreliable sources knicq was seen along with Christina Augilera at a famous night spot in Dubai…….”

5Anjum January 6th, 2006 at 5:42 am
bravo, knicq - what a great, targeted post! i agree with you that gossip is so prominent that even if you’re NOT paying attention you come to find out what’s going on in these ppl’s lives. and who ARE they anyway? what have they done that we should be so interested in their every movement and thought? acted in a movie?! gimme a break..
it is sad for me though to realize that this same prevalence of gossip is found in muslim countries as it is in the usa. i had high hopes for living in a muslim country but more and more, i hear that it’s just as bad, if not worse, than here.

6knicq January 6th, 2006 at 4:06 pm
Now, now Sohail…you should not believe everything you read in the “lie” magazine…as for that news, here’s my official position….”first of all, it was not me, second it was not a club, third the club was not in Dubai, and fourth it was not Chritina Aguilera but Salma Hayek in a disguise”.
Anjum: So good to have you here after so long. Sometimes, I think its all a big conspiracy…not the one that has th Hondas/Toyotas party to it, but one that has the fourth estate n cohoots with the powers that be…all this gossip is a diversion, people are conditioned to think they care, and should care about what a certain actor/actress/singer/dancer/director/etc., etc. had or did not have for break fast, so that there is no room left for the news that matter, on the front pages…so that people are not thinking about issues that matter…
If you start reporting the millions starving to death everyday around the world on those pages, sooner or later you will have people wondering about questions no-one wants raised.
Do you smell a conspiracy too?

7happysohail January 6th, 2006 at 7:03 pm
Here are my 2 cents on this topic:
There are three reasons for all these gossip columns showing up everywhere.
1) Globalization and American culture (culture of tolerance) being center of it.
2) The way we do business in this day and age; we got very very marketing oriented corporate juggernauts irrespective whether they are American, European or Asian. Films and other entertainment is a big part the global economy with Hollywood being the center of it. All these gossip columns are just marketing tools. There are people who read it and enjoy it.
3) Its all about choices, I never read gossip columns. But I will never demand that it should not be there as there are people who read them and enjoy that kind of stuff. There is enough demand for that kind of journalism to make it economically viable to be printed.
Trust me if there is enough demand for other kind of newspapers that you believe should be there then they will crop up soon as its an economic opportunity not to be missed.
Conspiracy what conspiracy? Sony is Japanese company and has a big clout over Hollywood (production of movies and music). We can not say that its Japanese conspiracy to control American youth. It’s a global village and we are free to move anywhere and share anything. I have been in USA for almost 7 years now and whenever I read online or other Urdu newspapers I burst in to laughter about funny and baseless news of discrimination against Muslims in USA. I and other friends from Pakistan who came from Pakistan never felt discriminated here. Is there a conspiracy going on in Muslim world against USA too? I think newspapers print what majority of their readers will like to read.
Again I just expressed my opinion; I hope no one is angry with me after reading this.
knicq please now please do not try to get a vodoo doll for poor me and try to torture it.
Love and peace for all.

Digression - The Rule.

2006-01-26T02:42:00.000+04:00

Its a conspiracy, and the Hondas, Toyotas, Mitsubishis and the Mazdas of the world are party to it. But, let me not get ahead of myself. Lets start from the begining…

Long long ago, yours truly used to eat an apple a day. It was,however, not necessarily the habit that kept the doctor away. What did keep the doctor away was a combination of various factors, chief amongst them being the fact that the doctors kept to their seats in the military hospital, which was a few miles outside the city. A distant second reason was the fact that Walid Sahib had a car and could drive us there whenever the need for doctor’s expert opinion to corroborate Manji’s expert opinion arose. It may also have to do something with the fact that doctors had long ceased to make house calls in this part of the world, unless of course the house call were made purely out of social obligation rather than professional compulsion.

The long and short of it though is that yours truly used to eat an apple a day. Sometimes, yours truly ate two or three apples a day too, provided the apples were crunchy and juicy. If the apples did not have, what one used to call ‘the crunch’ one supplemented the apples with almonds, which while did make the meal crunchier, was as bad a combination as they come, but yours truly was not, at the time, aware of the new precedents he was setting in bad food combinations. On the contrary, one remembers having rather relished the combination to a great extent. So much so, that there came a time, when if an apple turned out to be a good, and crunchy-as-a-good-crunchy-apple-apple, thereby making almonds totally redundant, one was rather disappointed.

It just goes on to prove that our senses are largely acquired senses. Haven’t you ever wondered about that cream roll you used to love eating when you were a five year old, but could not bear to take a bite of now? Granted, the said cream roll might not have been able to maintain its freshness after all these years, but hey, if you like something today, isn’t it rather rummy not liking it a few years down the road. I wouldn’t like it if Count Dracula went all watery mouth seeing the ‘well-rounded’ me today, and refused to partake of me, say thirty, or for that matter three hundred years down the road. Whats a few hundred years in a vampire’s life?

Speaking of Vampires, I have often wondered what would a vampire end up with, were he to sink his teeth in Jalali Baba’s fat neck? There are multiple possibilities that come to mind, and it is almost impossible to be entirely confident of which one is most realistic in nature. What one can be confident of though is that such an eventuality would be entirely to the detriment of the said vampire. JB, as I have often highlighted, is the reason why so many people in the tobacco business are still able to eek out a livelihood. He is also directly responsible for stifling the pesticide business in his area of residence.

Not very long ago, the municipality workers with their pesticide guns emitting clouds of smoke could be seen systematically going through the streets of that area, trying to ensure that the residents were rid of mosquitos, flies, and the like. However potent the mixture they used, their foes were always able to muster the resilience to survive through those termination campaigns, and almost always came back to exact their revenge on the residents through sheer numbers. The municipality appointed terminators were fighting a losing battle - that is until JB moved into the locality.

Fortunately for JB, and for the residents of JB’s locality, Mrs. JB is a doctor by profession, who forbids JB’s suicidal ambition to fill up as many empty pringles boxes with ‘Marlboro’ and ‘Gitanes’ ash, as required to set an enduring world record. JB is a highly intelligent and wise person, his attributes amply reflected in his choice of friends and devotees. He is gifted (or cursed, depending on how you choose to look at it) with a devious mind adept at spinning strategies to foil Mrs. JB’s best laid plans to keep him healthy and around for longer than his own modest target.

As soon as the pringles ban was clamped down on him, he experienced a rebout of his selective amnesia. Apparently, this selective amnesia had served him well in his college days, when he needed to step out and act out his part on the other side of the cigarette. For those who do not know, a certain gentleman, evidently extensively experienced in and deeply knowledgeable about such matters, has gone on record saying that a cigarette is nothing but negligible levels of tobacco complimented by generous helpings of that addictive agent nicotine rolled into a stick which has fire at one end, and a fool’s mouth at the other. I tender heart-felt apologies to any puritans who might have been irked by my-not-so-accurate reproduction of the said gentleman’s words. Suffice it is to say that I feel rather strongly on the subject and find it difficult to not offer my tupence worth, even if that means resorting to synthetic quotes.

Pardon my habitual digressions. JB, therefore, had to feign amnesia, when he went out shopping for the house. He would conveniently forget picking up such essential items such as powdered milk, diapers, mineral water, or whatever it was that Mrs. JB had underlined the importance of not forgetting to bring back. It would give him an excuse then to saunter around the block on the premise of going back and picking that essential item in a jiffy, and, of course, to light the fire at the other end of the cigarette. Little did he know that as he went around completing these household chores, he was cleaning out the neigbourhood of all insects, even the roaches. The poor things, roaches that is, found it the hard way, and fortunately did not live to alert their kind, that it is one thing surviving a nuclear holocast, but it is enirely another proposition surviving JB fumes.

Mosquitos, an Urdu humorist declares, are a gallant kind. They are not known to resorting to blitzkreig tactics, nor are they prone to stooping to shock and awe kind of warfare. They follow, and quite consistently so, the search, warn, challenge and attack line of offensive. Well, in JB’s case, they found the hardway that their tactic was flawed. Searching him was no issue, since he leaves a nicotinic trail behind him, and the paths leading to him are normally lined with insects of various kinds, sizes and shapes which have perished after falling in the line of JB fire. It was the warning part that they failed to do, they had to get near him to effectively buzz the warning-cum-challenge in his ears, and this proved a task they were ill-equipped to carry out. Perhaps, if they had the gas masks…!

They brought out the infantry once, and as scores fell left and right trying to bridge the distance between their kind and JB, some finally did manage to make contact with the enemy. The offensive was altogether anandoned, however, once they saw their valiant commandoes and marines wilting before their eyes after sipping from river of nicotine. It is rumoured that the mosquitos are working to train an SSG unit, where the young mosquitos chosen for the training are weaned on “beedi”, and it is a smart move too, since the only thing that stinks more than JB smoke is the ‘beedi’.

It remains to be seen, however, if this strategy will bear fruit. Apparently, too many young mosquitos have perished in this cause, and a certain group of mother mosquitos have got together and started protesting the very idea of launching the war on JB. Their point is that JB is headed the destruction way as it is, and the mosquitos should not have to mindlessly lay down their lives towards achievement of this end. Many believe that the head mosquito may just have signed his own exit from the dorms of mosquito power through his incessant and mindless gibberish about conquering JB and sucking him dry. A growing number of mosquitos and other insects are begining to feel that black, nicotine infested, blood is not all it is made out to be, and that it might not hold the key to enduring insect supremacy. There are, however, paddy field grown mosquitos and other rum drinking insects that have not allowed reason to interfere with their ambition, and they continue to espouse the insect way of live for JB, lions, elephants, birds, and plants alike.

Given all of the above, and JB’s record against other blood-sucking creatures, those vampires had better watch out.

Digression seems to be the rule of the day today. I think, I had better stop here. We will come to that conspiracy by the Hondas, Toyotas, Mitsubishis, Nissans and Mazdas in another post.
Ciao!

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11 Responses to 'Digression - the rule.'

1Maranello December 31st, 2005 at 6:56 pm
What did the poor apple do to be mentioned in this post then? Unless of course this was a subliminal reference to the fact that this apple is meant to be smoked through a sheesha with the ashes carefully preserved for posterity in a Pringles can…. hmm, yeh, that makes a lot of sense!
I am all for the odd (or in some cases, very odd)tangential comment aka the “jumla-e-mu’tarza“… however, yahan toh poori post hi mu’tarza hay…. Magar khair, it would be rude for one to be mu’tariz on your post-e-mu’tarza, so I won’t be

2Maranello December 31st, 2005 at 7:40 pm
Another thing… if “Digression is the Rule”, then what about change? Apologies for talking in cliches (and ghissay pattay cliches at that) but isn’t change the only constant? Or, to put it more eloquently, sabat siraf taghaiyur ko hay zamanay main… or words to that effect… based on which, taghaiyur should be the Rule, and Digression should merely watch from the sidelines, waving the odd pom pom. No?
PS: Seems like I am talking to myself here.. khair, someone has to (talk to me, that is) - so probably wise to inflict this misery on someone I know and vaguely trust (ie my own self)

3knicq January 1st, 2006 at 2:01 am
Maranello bro., you crack me up. You sure, you’ve never read Yousufi? you do seem to have Yousufiic traits!
I must clarify, however, that the apple has as much to do with sheesha smoking, as I do with the filling up of empty pringles boxes with ash. It found mention, because it was the first thing that came to mind, after “Long, long, ago…” I am sorry to discount the only thing that had seemed to make sense.
The tangential comment elongated into a post only depicts my blinking mind. As conciousness dawns, I strive for the nearest straw to stay afloat, and before long I find myself looking into the deep unblinking eyes of the creatures of the deep once again. From a distance, I must present the picture of a haplessly drowning person… up close it ain’t much different. When you are me, it is quite difficult to stay coherent and make sense for long enough to become less irritating…
Mashyat-e-Aezdi main muslihat ke kai pahloo pinhaan hua karte hain…jumlaha-e-mo’tariza, aur woh bhi tuwalat pazeer, kitni badi ne’mat hain, is ka andaza aap ko usee waqt ho sakta ai, jab aap ko ehsaas ho, ke agar jumla-e-mo’tariza nan aata, to aapko khurafaat ka sirf aik hee pehloo hazam karna padta…hazrat-e-insaan ka nizam-e-hazma aik hee jins se musalsal do-do haath karne se yaksar qaasir hai.
Khair yeh to jumla-e-mo’tariza ba-jumla-e-mo’tariza ho gaya…:)
You make an error in assuming that change and digression are mutually exclusive…if one is twisted enough, and has influences demented enough (hint: JB) one can actually get the two to work together. Fact is digression, as practiced by the likes of yours truly, is change itself. Won’t you agree?
Oh, and I love talking tomyself…I find myself to be the best audience. Looks like, i just doubled my audience, as did you…count me in as your friend in misery bro!

4BaptizedLucifer January 1st, 2006 at 2:37 pm
naye saal ki shubh kaamnaayein
5knicq January 1st, 2006 at 7:50 pm
Whoa! For a minute I read it as… “Nayee saas kee sub kanyaein!”
…and I was wondering, what the…?
Aap ko bhi naya saal mubarak…:)

6BaptizedLucifer January 1st, 2006 at 11:00 pm
looool, at least now we know whats goin on in ur mind!

7Maranello January 2nd, 2006 at 8:08 am
Shubh Kaamnaayein
yeh kon khatoon hain?

8knicq January 2nd, 2006 at 8:40 am
Yeh Shobha Kamnaayein kee choti bahan hain.

9knicq January 2nd, 2006 at 10:22 am
Bee Lucifer: Hmmm…I hate you for these trick comments that bring out the carefully concealed real me!

10happysohail January 3rd, 2006 at 7:04 pm
Hi kcniq:
Its strange I even do not know kcniq? Do let me know
Also you must put ur latest pic on ur website too.
Also I was expecting to see some New Year resolutions in your next blog. Please share ur wisdom with us.
U must be wondering why suddenly I have become so demanding, well there is a good chance I will be ur new neighbor so I want u get used to it. Now u know my plan so do not even dare to move.
I remember once you told me that u want to have a rock solid body by the age of 30. To be exact in second semester during MBA, Whats going on that avenue. You still have some time.
Take care.

11knicq January 3rd, 2006 at 9:11 pm
Oh Hi Happysohail,
Frankly, even I do not know kcniq, his name is striking similar to mine though…mine has a misplaced ‘c’…:)
My new year resolutions eh? Thats a good one. I guess we could sum it up in one line…lesser procrastination, greater compassion, and zero consternation.
Now, you coming here…isn’t that good news? Make that great news! So sawari baad-e-bahari ka ETA kia hai?
I am on local leave for two weeks after the Eid, and if you arrive here in those days, you will have a guide to show you around, and to accompany you on your qdambosi trip to JBland.
Oh, and about that rock solid body, which I have wanted to have since my school days by the way, I am quite close to my target…WE, (my wife and I) have achieved the rock part, and its a BIG rock…now I have to start working on the solid part. That picture…we’ll put it here as soon as we achieve the solid part. My doctor and the photographer both agree that for best results we should go for a little bit of blasting here and there…or may be hope for a few landslides…the photographer thinks this way we should be able to capture thw whole of me in a single shot!
:)

ANQ’s birthday, The Trio, and ANQ’s birthday.

2006-01-26T02:40:00.000+04:00

ANQ turned three today (December 16), Masha Allah. Madi called to wish, the gorgeous chachu that he is, and the lovely person that he is. May Allah bless him for his love, affection and kindness which he has always shown me; I have introduced him earlier in some posts, and I have perhaps already written that he forms the trio that I was blessed with in my college days, the trio that has stood by me like the Hindukush in my times of adversity.

This trio is comprised of Felicity and Fash in addition to Madi. True, Fash is the oldest soul outside of blood relations that has had to bear the curse that I am, and folks, I tell you 20 years of bearing this curse is a tad too much. However, there was this period of almost a decade when he and I were out of touch completely, and it was in college that we ran into each other again, so I am inclined to think of it as a rediscovery of a sorts - more so for me than it has been for him. He was also instrumental in bringing us all together in this wonderful friendship, where each of these amazingly special people have had multiple chances to prove their consistency in standing by me in my times of adversity, in my times of foolishness and stupidity, and in my times of going through I-should-never-have-been-born phases.

They have been stubborn in giving me good advice, patient in their consternation at seeing me do the exact opposite, and gracious and generous in not taking the didn’t-I-tell-you-so-again-and-again-and-again route when helping me pick up the peices. They have also been immensely generous in sharing their laughter, limelight and love with me. We are, today, in three different countries; which, come to think of it, is a huge improvement on the state of affairs a few years ago, when we were in three different continents; however, we are bound together by that most enduring of bonds which everyone calls friendship.Thank you God for great friends, and thank you for all your blessings - blessings, that not only include great parents, wonderful teachers, loving wifey, and adorable TNQ & ANQ, but also the many, many stellar, albiet eccentric friends, and patient colleagues, neighbors, fellow-drivers, and fellow citizens….

Thank you once again, and many times over, for TNQ and ANQ. ANQ, being ANQ, made the most of our birthday wishes this morning, and promptly put forth inquiries pertaining to a certain item that is automatically associated with birthdays - the birthday cake. We did not have the heart to turn her down, so we decided to get a cake in the evening, if she still remembered about it. Who were we kidding, she remembered very well, and repeated her inquiry as soon as I stepped back from a very tiring day out at the beach with “the guys”, the guys being HPN - the sand stealer, HPN’s father, HPN’s father-in-law - the newly crowned frisbee champion Sharjah beach, HPN’s BiL aka LHS on daMomma’s blog, Jalali Baba - who needs little introduction on this blog, Fash’s BiL aka O on KK’s blog, Dr.IK who was hastily roped in as resident doctor after KK, our regular and blogistan’s very own doctor, had to pull out to get ready for his flight tomorrow morning to the land of the pure, and yours truly - the logistics specialist held responsible for lack of plans, and poor logistics. More about that, however, in a separate blog which, as Yasmine warns in her recent comments, might take too long to materialize.

We, therefore, had to arrange for a cake hastily, light some candles on it, and get a hastily gathered crowd, which included a total of two guests, to clap and sing out of tune as ANQ blew the candles with some help from TNQ and cut the cake. I have hardly ever celebrated my own birthday, I remember we did get a proper birthday organzied way back in 1998, because we needed an excuse to get all the friends together one last time before everyone left to discover his/her destiny, and my birthday happened to fall just about the time. The point, at that time, was not celebrating the birthday. Besides, every present I opened turned out to be a shirt - I have been using them for seven years now, and I still have some left in the closet that I have never worn. Take it from me, it takes one a long time getting through 30 shirts that do not fit.
We never celebrated brithdays in our home, when we were children. It was just no big deal, once or twice we got called to birthday parties, and we did not know what to make of the proceedings. So, the guy was born years ago on that day, what’s the fuss about? Years later, when my own birthday was celebrated, I had felt so at a loss and so inadequate having all these people standing around me waiting for me to cut the cake…birthdays, as far as I was concerned, were for kids, or for other people whose day can be brightened by wishing them, but not for myself.

On a point of principle, we still do not celebrate birthdays in our home, the principle being simple… there is no Islamic precedence of celebrating this occasion. We did celebrate one birthday of TNQ’s and one of ANQ’s, but the idea was that the kids were too small to register the proceedings as an occasion, and we the parents were delighted that we had been blessed with our precious children on that date, and wanted to celebrate Allah’s mercy on us. Today, once again, we had this semi-party sort of a thingy, because our child had been asking for the cake, but also, and more so, because we are so so thankful to Allah for the blessings TNQ and ANQ are, and our hearts rejoice on the day Allah had blessed us with these children.

So, ANQ turned three today, and had Madi Chachoo call from Karachi to wish her, and had a strawberry cake to blow the candles on….May Allah bless her and TNQ, and may He keep them on the right path always, and may He fill their lives with Iman, joy, happiness and contentment, and He reward them with Jannah in the hereafter. Ameen.

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13 Responses to 'ANQ’s birthday, The Trio, and ANQ’s birthday.'

1Maranello December 17th, 2005 at 3:56 am
“May Allah bless her and TNQ, and may He keep them on the right path always, and may He fill their lives with Iman, joy, happiness and contentment, and He reward them with Jannah in the hereafter. Ameen. “
Ameen to that. And may He make them both a source of blessing for their parents in the dunya, and a source of blessing and forgiveness for their parents in the Akhirah, ameen.

2knicq December 18th, 2005 at 10:30 pm
Ameen to and thanks for your prayers brother….:)

3HappySohail December 19th, 2005 at 9:53 pm
Happy birthday to little kido, with all the best wishes.

4knicq December 20th, 2005 at 12:33 am
Thanks Sohail….juss getting around to making that call I promised you!

5HappySohail December 20th, 2005 at 1:20 am
I tried to call u again after posting, but it just rang, rang and rang and no one picked up. Now I will officially declare it, its easier to get Paris Hilton on phone than NKQ.
:)

6yasmine December 20th, 2005 at 6:06 am
Ameen to your dua for your children. And to Maranello’s. And may you and your wife be blessed and rewarded for the time, effort, and love you put into raising your children who are such a joy to you. Ameen to that as well.
My favorite part of this post, I must admit, was the references to HPN and KK and daMomma and daAbbu and Jalali Baba. It’s such fun seeing the ways in which Blogistan intersects.

7knicq December 20th, 2005 at 8:58 am
Hmmm…I had stepped out for a while, initially to answer the doorbell, but ended up playing dark frisbee, which is frisbee played in the cloak of darkness, so the pride of players stays intact, and the frisbee and the noses do not.
Came back to find a missed call from a Lahore number…was that you? Are you in someway able to call via Lahore? Or have you taken paris Hilton there to show her the ‘Yaadgar’?
Been calling that number, and a Paris-Hiltonish- voice keep telling me something about my matlooba number no longer being in iste’mal…I tried reasoning with her, tried explaining to her that it had to be in use for it give me that missed call, but she is not good on the listening skills.
Yasmine: Jazak Allah for your prayers sis. Your favorite part itches to transform itself into an independent post, but good old procrastination will have no part of it - the itching.

8Saadat December 20th, 2005 at 10:18 am
And I missed another birthday. *sigh*
Ameen to your duas and everybody else’s.

9A December 20th, 2005 at 10:29 am
why?

10knicq December 21st, 2005 at 8:36 am
Hmmm…Saadat, you would not have missed this one, had your enetation not been playing those ‘bouncer’ games with me. If I counted the number of times, it has bounced my comments, I’d need that abacus thingy to get the figure right.
You gotta work that thing’s prejudices out bro…:)
Thanks for the wishes.
A: In ANQ’s own trade mark one word reply to all why questions…Ish’liyey!

11Saeed December 21st, 2005 at 3:36 pm
Ameen to all the duas!& yeah, my bad, even i missed this one….& forget the plans etc, atleast you were able to spend the afternoon with all those people….just this sunday i finally met my buddy after a whole month (yes, we stay in the same city!).Yes, its definately a dampner when friends get seperated into different countries & continents…..

12hemlock December 27th, 2005 at 10:50 pm
ok… like 3 yr olds??? are the FUNNESHT to be with lots of hugs and smothering kisses to ANQ from umm… hemlock … errr phopo?lol but seriously speaking? is your kid ticklish? i love tickling kids… hehehe
birthdays in my household are such a huge affair, for like, the immediate family. just an excuse to celebrate (the whole affairs last well over a week), seeing as how life sux otherwise we try make the most of the little things in life.

13knicq December 28th, 2005 at 9:05 am
Salaams Hemmie…
I’ll convey your hugs and kisses to ANQ…phuppo just about sounds right
ANQ is not the least bit ticklish…TNQ is though…
ANQ is tickled, if at all, by our futile attempts at disciplining her…she then gets on with her agenda as royalty does in the face of commoners protestations.
These days her favorite threat is…”Main aap ko moon pe phaink doonga…!” It is normally issued immediately after old man knicq has put on his sternest face and handed down what he considers his harshest scolding….:(

On making a Jalebi...

2006-01-26T02:36:00.000+04:00

In the past few days, I have often made time to sit down and put a serious update up. I have strived to create the right conditions, which every serious blogger knows is most important - the creating of the right conditions that is, not the striving, though it would amount to criminal something to undermine the importance of striving. One must continue to strive, and strive diligently towards the achievement of one’s goals, even if the goal in itself is nothing but to achieve the highest standards of striving. That would, in fact, be considered the purest form of striving - to strive to strive.

I digress. The right conditions to blog vary from blogger to blogger; some must have absolute silence, a dimly lit place, and their favorite stuffed toy by their side before they can get down to the business of serious blogging; others must have the soothing light of a full moon illuminate the blogging sectors of their brain while they sit under the open skies typing out with their right hand while the left hand twiddles a lead pencil incessantly; still others must first complete a five minute mile before they can hope to get anything close to an update. About the latter, I have a theory. I think they are porous bloggers, whose ideas do not take the conventional route when seeking expression; these are ideas that seep out of their whole existences, and eventually find expression in words…

I have known people who must wear their school badges when they sit down to blog, and those who must have at least two sharp lead pencils, a pound of lined A4 sheets at their disposal, and a white board right in front of them, so that they can type out an update on their laptops. There is, of course, Jalali Baba who will not blog until his neighbor has smelled a dozen roses tinged with the smell of JB’s sautéd flesh, or until a yellow Hummer has overtaken a red Aston Martin on the dirt road leading to a highway in Nouadhibou.

There are less particular bloggers too, who need nothing more than a keyboard for a tool to get down to blogging, and those who find a hundred subjects in a sneeze, a sunset, a sunrise, or an alley cat to keep blogging for a month. I have heard about them, but I am quite convinced that they are the stuff of legend, and quite possibly do not exist in reality. I have seen cases that are close though - the blog celeb trio of Momma, Little Baji and Owlie are examples that come to mind.

Unfortunate as it might seem, I find myself closer in my blogging behavior to the former than the latter group. I must have the right conditions. The trouble, however, is that given the dynamic personality that I am, the right conditions for me to blog can ill-afford to be static. This dynamic disposition of the right conditions, while completely commendable, and absolutely impressive, has inherent flaws, or challenges if you may. The biggest challenge for me is to keep pace with the change. Quite often, I am able to figure out the current right conditions, and get down to laying the ground-work for what could possibly be a legendary post in blogistan; but before I can create the absolute right conditions, change sets in, with the result that when I am finished with creating what were until recently the right conditions, I must reconcile myself with missed chances and lost glory - once again.

It has been a cat and mouse game, with the mouse inevitably getting away, and the cat left to lick its wounds. I am not one to give up though, and try, try, try I do as I must. Success continues to elude me, as does that moment of glory when the right conditions are created long before a different set of conditions comes to be defined as the right conditions, and the perfect update is born. Perseverance, however, is seldom in short supply in knicqland. Its, in fact, the only thing that keeps the place going. Ah! The challenges legends-in-the-making must confront.

So, as I was saying, I have often sat down to put up a serious blog, and worked to create the right conditions, so the serious update might just translate into “The Update”. In so far as I can understand, there has been only one ingredient missing, and it is that most elusive of all ingredients that goes by the name “chance”. It takes many disguises, and would rather have me believe that it was an inconsequential fountain pen, or chilled can of Coke, or the right temperature setting that went amiss at that decisive magical moment when everything must fall in place to give birth to a worthy update, but I know better…I know what is amiss is nothing but chance. Luck has not favored me despite my arduous toil…blah, blah, and blah.

There! That is my explanation for not having updated in a century!
p.s. That recipe for making a Jalebi, here it is.

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11 Responses to 'On making a Jalebi…'

1hemlock December 11th, 2005 at 2:11 am
*waves right back*i like the way you think. except in all of this, you’ve forgotten to point one thing out. you almost always end up NOT blogging about what you had intended to blog about, having veered off the course, to either the south east, or the north west.

2yasmine December 11th, 2005 at 11:36 am
Man, I could so relate to this post, Knicq bhai. The problem with being a blogger (or at least, with being me) is that I’m constantly thinking to myself, “Oh! I should blog about that!” whenever something interesting happens/is said. And I start mentally composing a post right then and there. But if I don’t post it for reals within the next few days or so, then I’ll never get around to writing it. This would be alright, and I would just move on, except for the fact that the post is all half-written in my head already, and if I don’t get it out, it’ll stay there forever, reminding me, ‘Remember? You never wrote about me.’ So that’s a long-winded way of sharing the fact that there are plenty of things from like two years ago that are still just itching to be posted, and someday inshaAllah I’ll get around to it, because I really have no choice, as far as these words floating around in my head are concerned.

3Saeed December 11th, 2005 at 2:47 pm
excuse accepted!lol!& we really wouldn’t mind as long as there is a new update to read & comment on!U can strive for those right conditions as much as you like,& althou you may not be elated with the end result, we love it!I’m sure TNQ & ANQ give you enough incidents to blog about incase you cannot think of something when you’re at the comp???

4knicq December 12th, 2005 at 1:22 am
Hemmie: Here’s welcoming back to this place. I was beginning to think we’d lost you to cyberworld…that’s a potent observation you make…for as far back as I can see, I end up either not blogging about what I had set out to blog about, or not blogging at all. I guess, what keeps me going is the thought that if I do veer off the course to, lets say, South East, and continue going long enough, I’ll emerge, one day, from the North West to end up at the point where I had started off from…or vice verca. As long as you are at the same point, you can resort to what you had originally set out for…:)
Yasmine: Being a relative amateur at the blogging game, I seldom get past the “Oh! I should blog about that!” part, but you are right, I get to that part a dozen times in a day. It is what one might call the non-blogging-blogger’s syndrome. The trouble is when I sit down to blog, I can’t seem to recall one such moment…sigh!But hey! You’ve got to get those posts out of your system…you owe it to them, to yourself, and most of all to your fan club!!!We, here, are now eagerly looking forward to those floating words settling down in the RM land! Perhaps, that will give me impetus to move on to that I-have-half-written-posts-floating-in-my-head stage…:)
Saeed bro, you rock!You are right about TNQ and ANQ too. They conduct themselves in Urdu, so the essence of their actions/sayings can only be captured in Urdu, which is why I have long toyed with the idea of putting up an Urdu blog…ANQ has, however, picked up a most appropriate english phrase from TNQ, who for his part brought it home from school, but employs it to communicate with high-fliers only—literally. “Come back hea plane!” as she runs after an aeroplane…

5Saeed December 12th, 2005 at 4:14 pm
lol @ TNQ & ANQ’s antics!

6Saadie December 13th, 2005 at 4:03 pm
:), for me just motivation will do. when I want to write something I write and at times the urge of writing happens at the most oddest of hours errrr so I endup not posting at all.

7Anjum December 14th, 2005 at 5:58 am
salaam knicq! ahh, the classic blog-about-not-being-able-to-write-a-blog post always entertaining, despite the supposed lack of subject.

8hemlock December 14th, 2005 at 6:53 pm
how is it smart, travelling across the world to end up at square one?travelling for teh sake of travelling is one thing… but if square one is where u want to end up, why take a step forward at all?*ignore me, i tend to give myself headaches*

9knicq December 15th, 2005 at 8:48 am
W/salaaaaam Anjum. Where ya been sis.? Good to see you here…:)
Entertainment is often more fun when devoid of subject. It is then that it becomes PURE entertainment. e.g…ever been ticked off by one of those sitcoms with a message? My favorite is Sienfeld, precisely because it is black, and without any messages…not that it all has anything to do with my blog…:)
Hemmie: I think it is all about making an informed choice…you go around the world and ascertain for yourself that there is nothing better than square one…”I have seen the world, and I know now, my square, the one which is one, is the one. Breeds contentment, you know….
I have been known to give headaches to headaches…

10Maranello December 16th, 2005 at 3:07 am
knicq, if I was a Martian, had just come to Earth, and had not read any of your other very interesting and insightful blogs, then my thoughts after reading this particular entry could be summed up this:
Nach na jaanay, aangan terha . . .
However, as I am not one (a Martian, that is!), I have read your other blogs and know keh janab ko naachna toh bahut khoob ata hay (in this limited context only, I hasten to add!).
Hence, the more apt thought for my Martian alter-ego should be:
“Na nau mun tail ho ga, na Radha naachay gi . . .”
True, no?
Though of course, if I was a Martian, I probably would not know Urdu mahawaray…unless Mars is somewhere near Lucknow, maybe on the road to Kanpur, eh?
hmm… not sure why this comment is so naach-obsessed. Don’t blame li’l ole me, blame the ahl-e-zabaan who came up with the mohawaray!
And about the email… well, I hope its a case of neither (the mohawaray that is)

11knicq December 17th, 2005 at 12:32 am
Hmmm…so you have a great sense of humor, and write in a style that is close to my heart - yet to find its name, and if so far unnamed give it one - both of which qualities you displayed amply in that satirical eulogy you sent me about me by way of your introduction; and now you seem to not only have dastaras in Urdu, but if above is anything to go by, you have memorized the Kitab-e-Muhavra - if there is one called so, and nurture a fixation with ‘naach’, or at least naach-related muhavras.
You are one of the very few people I know, who know the Catch-22ish muhavra about Radha….that says a lot. So, here my friend, is thanking you for your kind words, and assuring you that the mail is a case of nither of those muhavras…it is actually more a case of me naaching tigni ka naach trying my hand at time-management, prioritizing and all those kind of things, because all those things refuse to get naaching at my isharas…if you know what I mean :)

Cricket and The Crown.

2006-01-26T02:33:00.000+04:00

There was a little bit of ambiguity surrounding the catch Sir Ian Bell had taken to dismiss bloody M. Yousuf, when bloody M. Yousuf had shown his impudent intent approaching his century. Thankfully, Sir Simon Tauffel was the umpire, and he took Sir Ian Bell’s declaration at face value, and ruled bloody M. Yousuf out. There was absolutely no need to refer the matter to the third umpire, since Sir Ian Bell, unlike bloody Rashid Latif is a gentleman, and would never have appealed for a catch, had he not taken it cleanly. Preposterous as it is, the bloody Pakis have been drawing parallels between the incident involving Sir Ian Bell and the infamous incident involving bloody Rashid Latif, and have had the audacity to even suggest an inquiry into the matter of Sir Ian Bell’s catch.

Bloody Rashid Latif was banned for five matches by the esteemed ICC for appealing for a caught out decision after what was shown by the TV replays to be a less than clean catch. Gentlemanly conduct does not come easy to the low-life brown people, and expecting them to display same under all circumstances is rather optimistic. Realistic approach demands that all appeals by the bloody brown people should be referred to a third umpire to ensure complete code of conduct of a gentleman is observed when the game of the gentlemen is played, especially by the bloody brown people with the gentlemen themselves. A gentleman’s word however should never be doubted, nor should a gentleman be slighted by referring a matter to a third umpire when a gentleman has already stated his position on the matter. It is because of this reason that any comparisons drawn between the incident involving Sir Bell and that made infamous by bloody Latif would in essence have to fall under fallacious comparisons. Apples may not be compared with dried dates.

There is then the matter of the decisions His Umpiring Excellency Darrel Hair has made. His credentials have been questioned by the insolent Pakis for having called bloody Shabbir Ahmed for chucking, or for warning bloody Kaneria for running onto the pitch, or sending Salman Butt back after he had visibly and intentionally run on the pitch while takng a run. His Umpiring Excellency is beyond reproach, even approach. That he should be requested to officiate in matches not played between gentlemen teams in itself is derogatory to him, and beyond the comprehension of yours truly. That he should undertake these assignments despite the low social stature of the ‘hosts’ in itself bears testimony to his dedication to upholding the cause of gentlemen.

His Umpiring Excellency does the bloody brownies an immense honour by often officiating in matches played by them, and at the same time ensures that the devious scehmes employed by the bloody brownies in their impertinent attempts at rising to the status of equals with gentlemen on the playing field are checked at all times under his scrutiny. If bloody Shabbir Ahmad thought he could jeopardize the English Gentlemen’s plans, he had another thing coming. In case, bloody Kaneria had forgotten his rightful brown place in the general scheme of cricketing things, His Umpiring Excellency was quick to remind him of the same; and for the impudent Salman Butt to think he could repeat his insolence of the past in the second test match was childish. His Umpiring Excellency knows a thing or two abour disciplining children.

What is beyond comprehension is the insistence of the bloody Pakis that His Umpiring Excellency did not have to refer the matter of bloody Inzamam’s dismissal by Sir Steve Harmisson to the third umpire. Some have gone so far so as to suggest that even Sir Steven Harmisson should have been reprimanded for shying at bloody Inzamam’s wicket in the first place, since, as they put it, bloody Inzamam was making no attempt at taking a run. A knighted gentleman to be penalized for exhibiting his exalted fury! What nerve, what impudence. Why, I ask, should bloody Inzamam not be ruled out when he has the insolence to take evasive action when a gentleman throws a ball at him. And to suggest that His Umpiring Excellency should have favoured Inzamam for this insolence, and that too after his 109- run defiance in the face of the exalted English attack. Who, by the way, was to ascertain that bloody Inzamam’s foot lifted in the air, and the other outide the crease was not a precursor to his attempt to take a run. Are we now to assume the best on the part of brownies?. Such amateur optimism can only spell doom for us all. Bloody Pakis know this well, but continue to expect us to give them the benefit of the doubt, and some even have the audacity to suggest that we play the game with them as equals, while many have been demanding that His Umpiring Excellency should be relieved of his duties.

Alas! The world outside the Empire, as well as beyond the realms of pure, white skinned people seems to have forgotten its place.

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4 Responses to 'Cricket and the crown.'

1Saeed December 1st, 2005 at 4:33 pm
will b bak to read later…..abhi bas “Happy National day!!!” lol!

2knicq December 1st, 2005 at 6:10 pm
…and a happy National day to you too bro…!

3Maranello December 13th, 2005 at 4:40 am
LOL..well said and well written.
I fully sympathise with your views ‘knicq’; however, am less sure about what can be done in this regard. Its not as if Their Imperial Majesties at the Imperial Cricket Conference still run cricket; no, we have in charge our very own Pak, Mr Ehsan Mani, FCA, formerly resident of the leafy suburb St. John’s Wood and presently enamoured by the bright lights and skyscrapers of Dubai. The ICC is no more Imperial; it is International, not only in name, but in appearance too - an Indian (Sunny G) heads its cricket committee; a Pak is the President; a Sri Lankan heads the powerful Match Referees Panel and another Sri Lankan was the Referee officiating in the Pak v Eng series; the four Asian countries have a near-veto in the ten-member voting group, and finally, the ICC itself is based in Dubai and financed by Indian Rupees and Dollars…
However, why do I do get the feeling that all of this is mere window-dressing? Cynical? Perhaps.. but leave aside the appearances and review the reality and it still is a game for the goras, run by the goras and officiated by the goras.

4knicq December 13th, 2005 at 9:05 am
Maranello…thanks first of all for that lovely email…I am looking for words to write a reply back, and should write back as soon as I have the first line ready….gimme a few weeks!
Now, I can see that you have stayed away from Pakistan, and from Sub-Continent for that matter, for long enough not to know that the whitest, racistest, imperialistest people of the world are brown people wearing suits, and doing white jobs!
It is no window dressing my friend…when faced with challenging times, the goras have brought their knights to the fore…and like I said, brown people are the best gora knights!
Sigh!

Monk Knicq

2006-01-26T02:29:00.000+04:00

I have obsessive compulsive behavioral disorders…if that is the term I am looking for. For years, when my mother and I were closer than we are today, she would stop me early, hence ensuring it did not become a habit. There are scores of habits that she saved me from, and there are still scores that she perhaps did not even know of - most of the latter ones plague me today. I have lost count of the relatively innocuous ones like nail biting, clicking my tongue, plucking my eye-lashes, and making a deep squeaking sound that could easily be mistaken for a stifled hiccup, every now and then . There were more serious ones at all times, but they kept changing (because mother would pounce on those more aggressively than she did on the other ones, and left me with no option but to invent new ones) and that is why it is easy for me to not remember them, especially when I do not want to.

I remember when I first saw episodes of Monk, I was terrified, excited, and amused all at the same time; because I knew exactly what was happening with him, I could identify with his compulsions out of personal experience. Thankfully, my compulsions were not that intense, and unfortunately I was never that brilliant, or anything close. But, I had my problems.

I could not look at a fan, when I was about five years old. It made me dizzy, and it frightened me. I distinctly remember going back to Pakistan from here when I was about 6 years old, and not going in to meet my relatives when they came visiting, because the fan in the room they were sitting in was revolving so slow I could follow each of its blades, and I did, and that made me dizzy. You would think a smart kid would figure out that part and not look at it again, but once I knew that it made me dizzy, I could not ignore it, not even if I forced my eyes shut, and then to be on the safe side looked at the floor with my closed eyes.

Actually, I could not look at anything that was revolving, so for obvious reasons, merry-go-rounds were not for me for a long long time. By the time, I was over that fright, I was too old to be seen on one of those rides. Who knows the latter might just have been the very reason I was able to overcome that fright.

A fly hovering too close to a dining table was enough to kill my appetite, which in itself was not a
very pronounced entity. Actually, I did have an appetite as most growing children do, but there was little that I ate. I did not eat most lentils, rice in any form, meat that came with a bone and most of it did come with a bone, and anything remotely green or classifiable as a vegetable.
Walid Sahib loves food, and relishes it in all forms. He also has a deep, personal disdain for anyone who does not share his love of food. Mother, though not entirely taken with food in itself, eats everything and anything that is halal, and edible. They were like that quarter of a century ago also, which I think is about the time I must have started acting up.

Ours was a house where not eating food served on the dastarkhwan was tentamount to nashukri - unthankfulness to Allah; you could have your preferences, you could also keep something really low on your preference list, and if something figured low on everyone’s list, it was seldom cooked or served, but if and when it was, it was to be eaten. Now, factor in the fact that I did not have a preference list, I just did not eat anything that was not curd, cheese, jam, or chapati with butter on it. Sometimes, I ate a few varieties of lentils, and that was that.

My parents’ initial strategy was the “take it or leave it” route, which failed to yeild desired results, since I would finish my chapatis/rotis dry, or by pressing them against the curry served to absorb the spicy oil from the plate. I do not remember how we ever managed, but as far as I can remember I was not eating what was cooked and getting scolded for it. Sometimes, they would give in, and allow me to eat with cheese, and when I say cheese I mean Kraft, and jam. In these moments of dastarkhwani bliss, all could be spoiled by one housefly hovering over any of the items served - even if I were not going to be eating those items anyway.

I have spent night after night plotting to wipe out the entire housefly population from the face of earth. My disdain for houseflies was not without reason - Pak Railways were to be blamed for breeding that hatred, because it was on one of our journeys aboard one of the tezgaams/expresses from Jhelum to Karachi when I had seen the flies covering a pile of dirt on another train next to our train at the station. The image stuck, and to me every fly was dirty, and anything they sat on was dirty, and utterly inedible.

Speaking of nights, I would not go to sleep for what seemed like hours after we were put into bed. It was a combination of fear of darkness, and over active imagination that kept me awake, and often got me into trouble. For when you are a seven eight year old, one of the most difficult tasks in the world is lying still in bed. It becomes an impossible task, when you have to lie in bed, petrified by the ghosts staring at you from all corners of the room, and insects crawling up and down all over you.

When your father is as light a sleeper, as Walid Sahib used to be in those days, all these factors can lead to a lot of trouble for you. Walid sahib found it difficult to go to sleep if the little green light our air-conditioner used to emit were not covered with a piece of cardboard…the little green light that indicated that the compressor was active. He could be startled out of his slumber by the noise of a television being switched on in the neighboring room…needless to say the volume on that television used to be turned down to zero. The best part is that the television used to be in the same room in which we used to be sleeping, because for a long time one room used to be all we used to have, and when you have lied down fidgeting in your bed for two hours, you finally decide to watch some cartoons! The peculiar thing about cartoons is that they are quite bright, and are set to a super sonic pace. When I think back to it, I realize Walid Sahib must often have woken up thinking he was on the dance floor of a disco; all that flickering lighting. The rest as they say is history, and I am not complaining it is.

Those days are long gone, Walid Sahib sleeps like a child under flash lights and with stereos blaring under his pillow. This has a lot to do with the fact that after 30 years of a 7-1 government job, he is putting in twice the physical effort running his gift items shop; and with the fact that he has lost hearing in one ear, and strains a little to listen to what is being said normally. But my habits are coming back with a vangeance.

No, I am not an insomniac, on the contrary, I am a hopeless hybernating animal. But, I am getting those little unsettling habits, new ones and hordes of them. The other day, I found it difficult to fall asleep on the couch because I knew my glasses were lying under the couch. I could feel them under me, and even though I was as sleepy as I always am, I had trouble dozing off…the presence of those glasses under the couch poking me in a remote area of my warped brain. As if that were not enough I could not lie down and watch the match the other day, because the remote control of the VCR was lying at a rather non-complimenting angle to where I was lying down - across the room on the table!

I had to get up, and correct its angle. Increasingly there are things that I do not really have to do, but I have to do, and vice verca.

I am headed the facility way….the mental facility way. Promise you will come visit…?

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4 Responses to 'Monk Knicq!'

1JB November 27th, 2005 at 8:33 pm
Dear Knicq,Your incident reminds me of a fairy tale I heard when I was young(that was a looong time ago). It was about the true princess who gets all black and blue when she sleeps on a heap pf 30 matresses stacked on top of a pea.
Mr. Knicq, by the powerd usurped by me, I dub thee: The True Prince.

2knicq November 27th, 2005 at 10:03 pm
Jalali Baba and The True Prince…kinda nice ring to it JB, won’t you agree?

3Saeed November 28th, 2005 at 3:51 pm
lol!relax….either this isnt something to worry about,or you’ll find you’re not the only 1 in the asylum…LOL!even i have such habits-like checking that the door is locked-i’ll b in bed, know that i probably have locked it, but i wont b able to sleep unless i’ve checked it once more….

4knicq November 29th, 2005 at 3:21 pm
Oh well Saeed, I have a fair idea I will not be alone in the assylum…JB with his warped sense of self, and warpeder sense of the world around him is sure to trace my steps to the facility pretty soon….there is Coori, who was blessed with a daughter Masha Allah last week, who will probably have ended in the assylum for his detergent optimizing ways, and who knows they might consign HPN there too for his obsessive compulsion on others to follow a queue in a SCRUMPTIOUS buffet at his home, and his wife for her multiple, varied and often succesful attempts to mortally wound herself…..
Just for the sake of comparing notes, do you lock yourself out also to be doubly sure that nobody can enter the place once the door is locked?

A month ago...

2006-01-26T02:26:00.000+04:00

This morning, at precisely 8:51a.m. PST, it will be a month since a devastating earthquake measuring 7.6 on the Richter scale struck the northern areas of Pakistan; or at least that is how most of us will see it. There will be some amongst us, who will choose to interpret it as 30 days since their fellow human beings were devastated by this calamity. However, for the three and a half million, whose lives were turned upside down on that fateful morning, all sense of time is lost. It is as if the earthquake broke all clocks in the region, and time now stands still with no needles to prod it on, no pendulum to help it swing from one minute to another. For most of these people, it has been one long painful moment of misery that refuses to pass.

Tragically, for many, as many as 73,000, time did stop that morning. Then there are those, who fervently pray for time to stop this instant, because every new second brings with it untold misery, unimaginable pain, unprecedented gloom, and new forecasts of doom. 73,000 dead is the official death toll, which has come under fire for being conservative to the point of understating the tragedy. The NGOs have near unanimously put the death toll in excess of 100,000 already; gangerine, pneumonia, diarrheoa and diseases of the respiratory tract threaten to kill untold numbers still, and looming over all of it is the harsh winter of the northern region which it is feared might freeze over a 100,000 people to death in the coming weeks.

Yet, these are not the gravest threats faced by the people of Azad Kashmir and Northern Pakistan. The greatest threat that these people face is human failure, our failure. Hundreds of hours have been lost in pledging this and that; in explaining why this cannot be done and why that is not feasible; in pondering if this might be the right course to take, or that; and in not believing that such a collossal tragedy has strcuk such a large section of the earth’s population. Countless hours have been lost in not pushing those who have the power to help and contribute to saving the lives of those struck by the earthquake and stuck in the face of fast approaching death. Innumerable failures have beset humanity as humans have struggled to put aside limitations they impose on themselves.

The earth has a population exceeding 7 billion, and every hour lost in not ensuring that those affected by this tragedy are saved, provided shelter, food and security is equivalent to 7 billion hours lost. I agree, it takes a utopian naivete to expect every person in the world to contribute to this cause, and that too with this urgency, but I wonder if it really must require a utopian world for each country of the world to take responsibility for the reconstruction and rehabiliation of a village, if not a couple of villages. The UN has 191 members. When something this tragic strikes humanity, humans must rise above themselves, and set new precedents with an urgency with which they would expect others to come help them if such tragedy befell them. I wonder if it is too late to set new perecdents now?

For to most of us, it was a month ago….!

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One Response to 'A Month Ago…!'
1Saadie November 9th, 2005 at 12:36 am
:), world may come or not but we have to be there, keep writing.

What if...?

2006-01-26T02:25:00.000+04:00

In a few hours from now, it will be exactly a month since a devastating earthquake rattled the Richter Scale at 7.6 in the northern areas of Pakistan. Baffling as it sounds now, the official death toll by the end of that day had not exceeded 100. Consequently, the world community’s response to the calamity was lukewarm, evidenced by the USD 100,000 pledged in aid by the US on the first day.

Earthquakes are devastating, and with the exception of earthquake prone Japan, which is one of the best prepared countries to combat earthquakes, an earthquake brings with it large scale death and destruction. Almost a decade ago, on January 17, 1995 Kobe, Japan was jolted by an earthquake measuring 6.9 on the Richter Scale. The earthquake had lasted 20 seconds, and the death toll from this earthquake was 5100 people. This in Japan, where afterwards Japanese seismology Professor Tsuneo Katayama had written that he “had opportunity to observe the damages causd by the 1989 Lome Prieta and the 1994 Northridge earthquakes”. However he had thought that Japanese structures would not collapse as the US structures had in those earthquakes. He was wrong, Japanese structures did collapse, despite the fact that they had been constructed under stringent earthquake safety regulations, and in so collapsing brought death to over 5000 people.

I wonder what were our poeople thinking when they spent the whole day covering Margalla Towers, when they knew full well that the epicentre of the earthquake was 90 miles to the north of Margalla Towers, and how did they arrive at the ridiculous figure of under 100 dead at the end of the first day, when they knew the eqrthquake had measured 7.6 on the Richter Scale? Did they think, our construction models were superior to those of the Japanese?

I just cannot stop wondering what might have been different had we reacted 24 hours earlier than we did…

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3 Responses to 'What If?'
1sh_guf November 8th, 2005 at 5:53 am
ٹیسٹ کمنٹ
2sh_guf November 8th, 2005 at 5:58 am
اور ابھی بھی ضروری ہے وقت پر پہنچنا۔۔۔ فوری طور پر جو نہیں کیا جا سکا وہ افسوسناک ہے تاہم اب اس وقت جو سب کرنے کی ضرورت ہے وہ اگر نہ کیا جا سکا تو ۔۔۔سوال یہ بھی ہے
3sh_guf November 8th, 2005 at 6:07 am
بھائی اگر یہاں اردو قابلِ خواندن ہے تو کیا اس ناچیز کو اس کاوش پر سلور میڈل کا حقدار قرار دیا جا سکتا ہے ۔۔۔ !

Blog Quake Day.

2006-01-26T02:23:00.000+04:00

Today is Blog Quake Day, well technically it was yesterday, but I have yet to sleep. I found out about BQD from Rambling Monologues, whose blog is one of the best blogs linked to your right, and who has written heart felt, informative and very useful posts about the earthquake, and how one can help the victims of the earthquake.
I do not know where to begin…that feeling of helplessness and uselessness, which first descended on me when I saw the pictures of that massive devastation for the first time, pervades my days and nights here as I, and pretty much everyone around me, otherwise go about our lives as usual. For the first time in my life, I share my parents’ unbounded disappointment at my not having got into a medical school; perhaps I could have been of more use, had I been a doctor. For the first time in my life, I am disgusted with myself for living the life of that anecdotal cricket who saved nothing for tomorrow; perhaps if I had been saving something in my bank, I could have put it into good use at this hour. Not for the first time in my life, I feel a total failure. I am wrong of course; I am what I was destined to be, and prior today I have always believed that saving is for middle aged people - if at all; my needs and wants have always been taken care of by Allah, and will be taken care of by Him always. I have never had ambitions to build a mansion, buy acres, or stock up on the yellow metal. I know I am not a failure when I look at the wonderful people, and whose love, Allah Almighty has blessed me with, family and friends alike. Yet, I cannot help but feel that way. that has been the effect this earthquake and its aftermath have had on most of us - they have jolted the very premise of our philosophies.
I am invaded by a feeling of guilt each time I spend a dirham towards items not essential to my survival, as it rears up images of those devastated, cold, hungry, and desparate people who would kill for each of these dirhams right now.
I shudder at the thought of being in their predicament…and beseech Allah to ease their suffering, and spare all His creations, including my family, any such suffering. I pray and pray and pray…
Yet, there is no denying the fact that those five million people affected by this catastrophe went to bed after Suhoor on the morning of eighth, with not the slightest hint in their minds that their lives, if at all spared, would be turned upside down in the next few hours. There is no knowing what lies in store for us, and it just underlines the importance of making the most of this time we have to carry out our mission on earth, and our mission on earth is to follow Allah’s commands, and He commands us to refrain from shirk, worship Him, and spend on and for the betterment of our brothers ans sisters in need, out of the bounty He has given us.
Donate, donate and donate, because this is the only way of loaning out to Allah, and Allah promises to be the best repayer of all loans. www.pakrelief.org lists the various channels through which donations can be funnelled into the affected areas, take your pick, but remember to donate as much as you can, and then some.
In the aftermath of the earthquake, we have all seen and heard uplifting stories of sacrifice and devotion from all segments of the Pakistani Society and from multiple sections of the world society. It is unfortunate to note that it took such a collossal tragedy to bring out this compassion and sincerity in us. Yet, there is a dire need to keep this spirit alive until the victims of this earthquake have been rehabiliated, until the women widowed by this earthquake are freed of concerns about how to go about the rest of their lives, and until the children orphaned by this earthquake are all provided the compassion, love and security that we all want for our own children. The Abdalians, alumni of the Hassan Abdal College, have shown this spirit and have adopted two villages and its people, vowing to cater to the needs of the people of these two villages, until those villages find their own feet. It is not possible to put a time frame to the life of this spirit, but it is easy to see that this spirit calls for more than just digging deep into pockets today - it requires for all of us to make a long term commitment; a commitment to continue to open our hearts and pockets for our people until these people, especially the old, the widows and the children are self sufficient. It could take years, and if it must, we must be ready to come through for those years.
Lastly, we must remember that this is not the last earthquake to jolt us humans, but it should be the last one that comes to jolt us into humanity.
Perhaps, then, there will be fewer earthquakes; perhaps then they will strike in unpopulated areas; and perhaps then, we will have completed our mission.

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9 Responses to 'Blog Quake Day'
1DesiPundit » Blog Quake Day October 27th, 2005 at 4:17 am
[…] Blog Quake Day Posts: Zack, Patrix, Ash, Navin, Raphael, Al Muhajabah, Rjputro, Pinstripe, Neha, Anthony, Balaji, Devious Diva, Charu, Gawker, Brad Miner, Sujatha, Pickled Politics, Daily Rhino, Cadmus, Pablo Halkyard, Sunil, Aisha, Anjum, Vikram, Rashmi Bansal, Rosie, Aswin, Nagu, Sohnii, Abinandanan, Basil, Rezwan, Lores Rizkalla, Kaushik-Bidisha, Indigo Jo, Sume, Monologist, Shirazi, Neha V, Mayank, Kush Tandon, Nicecafe, Daniel, KM, Michelle, Baraka, Robert Sharp, Joy D. Sepoy, David T, Yasmine, Gratisgab, eM, Uma, Chamique, Greatbong, Veena, Knicq, Islamoyankee, Aun, One more reason, Aparna, Mumbaigirl, aNTi, Peregrina, lawhawk, Anand, Elizabeth, Angelo Embuldeniya(Strav), Madhu, Shabina, Kaashyapeya, Oodles, Tobias, KAWyle, Jemgal, Zigzackly, Shenaz, Maria, Chai, DeGrouchy Owl, Shaheen, Nafiza […]
2newbie October 28th, 2005 at 5:42 pm
there is a update about the situation here
http://islamiblog.blogspot.com/2005/10/what-i-will-aim-to-do-in-this-post-is.html#comments
3Saadie October 31st, 2005 at 1:26 pm
you have wrote about everything I was thinking about, amazing post.
4Abez November 1st, 2005 at 1:39 pm
JazakAllahuKheiran and many many thanks for yesterday. Please convey that too Wifey, too.
5knicq November 1st, 2005 at 2:57 pm
Newbie: I have been reading many posts from ground zero, but none was as detailed, and as objective as yours. May Allah bless you for your efforts, and may He help you with malaik. Ameen.
Saadie: Thanks bro.:)
Little Baji: You are welcome Little Baji. May Al Shaafi shower His blessings on you. Ameen.
6BaptizedLucifer November 4th, 2005 at 2:31 am
holy moly batman! no eid post? this is blasphemy
7Saadat November 4th, 2005 at 5:37 am
Eid Mubarak, Bhaijan!
8Saeed November 5th, 2005 at 10:45 am
EID MUBARAK!!!
9knicq November 8th, 2005 at 7:28 pm
Lucifer: Whoever said there isn’t an eid post - its just late….
Saadat: You gotta teach your enetation thingy some manners bro…its been acting like a pretty secretary…there is an MBA term for it…”Gate Keeper”. Won’t let my comments in…
Saeed: …and a very happy Eid Mubarak to you too!

Test - theirs and ours.

2006-01-26T02:22:00.000+04:00

People have been saying, implicitly or explicitly, depending on who was saying it, that this earthquake was Allah’s wrath. Why are we so fatalistic, I wonder? I came across these ayahs in Surah Baqara recently, and I found an answer to all such deductions.
“155. Be sure we shall test you with something of fear and hunger, some loss in goods or lives or the fruits (of your toil), but give glad tidings to those who patiently persevere,
156. Who say, when afflicted with calamity: “To Allah We belong, and to Him is our return”:-
157. They are those on whom (Descend) blessings from Allah, and Mercy, and they are the ones that receive guidance. ”
Why do our people not understand that life in the world is not a fairy tale affair, where the princesses are pretty, princes handsome, and villians ugly. If it were that simple, everyone would be a believer, save the Abu Jahal’s of this world. No, faith is just that - faith, and it is tested by bounty as well as by tragedy, and it is not easy to fare well in these tests.
The earthquake that shattered much of Azad Kashmir, and parts of Frontier (Pakhtoonkhwa?) on the 8th of October is the biggest test we as a nation have had to face. It is a test of faith, and of character. It is a great test for those who have lost loved ones in an instant, and must now come to terms with injuries, hostile weather, hunger, disease, and uncertainty. “Sabr” according to the Quran is where they must find solace, in Sabr and in Salaat, in patience and in prayer. For in these times of suffering, in these times of weakness, shaitan will attack them from all sides, and create in their hearts doubts of all kinds, raise questions in their minds as to why did Allah choose them to be victims of this tragedy. He will remind them of their good deeds, and make them skeptic of their value and importance. He will ask them if those good deeds were all of any good at all? Through patient and perseverant belief in Allah’s mercy alone will the people be able to stand up to these devious attacks, and I know it is not going to be easy for them.
It is not easy to hold on to one’s sanity after a calamity of this scale, and under such circumstances, to hold on to one’s belief is all the more demanding, all the more daunting. It is much easier said than done, and I am aware of that. We, who start complaining at the slightest inconveniences that hinder our daily lives, can have no idea of how much faith, and how much strength of character this task requires. One can only pray that Allah’s unlimited mercy arrives for them from all sides, and brings them comfort, relief, and reassurance.
It is an equally great test for the rest of us, who have been spared the horrifics of the earthquake. While, those affected must delve deep into their hearts to find the belief and the strength to come to terms with the after math of the earthquake, we must realize that just as their response to this collossal test could bring them the rewards of heaven or more misery from hell, so will our response determine our place in this world and in the hereafter. As Muslims, and as fellow humans, it is binding on us to reach out to our brethren in need, to do all in our power, and more, to lessen the impact of this catastrophe on their lives. This entails not just opening our wallets and digging deep in our pockets to donate, but it calls for us to open our hearts and dig deep in our souls to sacrifice. Donations alone cannot and will not help 3 million people made destitute in a minute; no amount of money, not even the five billion dollars the authorities say are required to rebuild the devastated areas and their people’s lives, can heal the scars left by crashing ceilings and crushing losses.
The money is only one factor, just the begining, what is required are lasting love, timeless devotion, and above all sustained sacrifice. Because it will be love and devotion for our people which will enable us to empty our pockets for these people, but it will be the spirit of sacrifice that will keep us from putting this tragedy behind us in a few weeks, or months, and getting on with our lives. Today, we need to decide to sacrifice our relatively secure and carefree future for the betterment of our brethren affected by this earthquake. Today, we need to realize that our people will need our dedication and attention for a longtime, they will need our support until the time they are stable themselves.
We cannot absolve ourselves of all responsibility once we have made our donations. The money sent today will be spent tomorrow, and might not be there day after, but it will be required for months after that. What happens then? Today, we need to set aside a portion of our incomes for a long time to come for the victims of this earthquake. Today, we need to own up, and take responsibility for specific people, specific children, or families until they no longer need their brethren’s help. We are a nation of a 150 million people, which means there are a fifty people to take care of each person affected by this tragedy. Essentally, every person needs to take care of his designated person for one week every year. It is a simplistic calculation, but it should become the premise for a large scale initiative. Yes, any such initiative will need thinking out of the box, but we must realize that after 7.6 on the Richter scale there cannot be a box - all boxes get demolished in a 7.6!
A tragedy that eliminates all structures in a society, a calamity that wipes out an area’s civilization cannot just be grappled with by money. It requires a structured approach, and a sustained effort until new strcutures are developed.
So, let us take stock of our lives, do we have a week?

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9 Responses to 'Test - theirs and ours.'
1sh_guf October 23rd, 2005 at 6:38 am
…with all my little very little potential and energy (…I know that bhai), not a week but the whole stock of my life
2BaptizedLucifer October 25th, 2005 at 6:16 am
hate the mullahs especially since they are goin around saying all those ppl deserved to be punished. Great. now mullahs will play god and tlel us who is going ot hell and hw isnt. I rem reading a sahih bukhari hadith that the wrathe ofallah comes on all, even tho its meant for a few. And that each one ffected by it is judged accordingly when they are raised. So how come th emullas are deeming everyone a sinner? including innocent kids? None of em seem to be talkin about the test it is for all of us. The whole nation has united, magar in mullahs ko hain nahin, its a perfect chance for them to market themselves again. retards! :S
3BaptizedLucifer October 25th, 2005 at 6:17 am
im tired of collecting relief. ineed away from it for a while. before i go insane thinking of all those going insane over there.
4Felicity October 25th, 2005 at 12:42 pm
And someone should ask those mullahs if the Pakistani’s were greater sinners than the ido-worshipping hindu’s across the border. I thought God could forgive anything and everything except shirk. Not so, apparently, if you go by the mullahs.
This is just thier chance to revive the religious fanaticism that Musharraf has been attempting to put an end to. But it’s not as if their goals are noble and they really wish to see people follow the golden path of Islam… this is just their chance to rile the people against Musharraf’s governement and regain power. This is political propaganda more than it is a religious call. Had they an ounce of purity in thier cause,God would have helped them make something of it by now.
5Saeed October 25th, 2005 at 4:59 pm
if u were to believe my flatmate(who’s from isb,btw), d quakes were a result of subterranean nuclear tests.So were the tsunamis (US behind those,obviously),as for the quake in india in bhuj,last time’round, well those can be credited to pak!!!Oh, he even mentioned the illuminati somewhere in there…
6BaptizedLucifer October 25th, 2005 at 8:19 pm
saeed, u have some interesting company lol
7knicq October 26th, 2005 at 9:44 am
Sh-guf: Your spirit is uplifting…hope most of our country men feel that way…and you should under estimate the potential and energy a scholar like you possesses.
B.Lucifer, (as in Lucifer Baji )It isn’t just the Mullahs who are going around saying that kind of thing. It is most people who look at it that way. How are you channelizing the relief you collect. Perhaps, we can combine your efforts with another team that I know is working on it.
Felicity: Coming from that part of the land, I must point out that shirk is a way of life in these parts, actually it is so in the whole country. Idol-worshipping is not the only kind of shirk.
Shirk and bid’at characterize the Islam of Pakistan, what else is all that thronging to mazaars, dargaahs and peer dhakoslas. This is not to say however that I believe this earthquake was the wrath of Allah, and not an aazmaish/test. But, come to think of it, who can know? Maybe it is somewhere between the two…a warning of sorts for the rest, and an azaab for some and an aazmaish for others. Allah works in mysterious ways…
I do realize that I seem to be contradicting my own thoughts in the post, but after the sort of disturbing reports that have started trickling in along with those uplifting stories, one just never knows.
As for Musharraf, while it is a given that those fanatics and extremists were the bane of our society, and needed to be weeded out before they destroyed the whole nation, let us be under no illusions that the methods Musharraf had resorted to were anything but counter-productive.
Moreover, by presenting a westernized Islam, and egging on a westernized culture not in line with our own cultural, and religious values he has himself underlined what the ignorant Mullahs had been trying to say unsuccesfully all along- that the mullahs way is the only alternative, the real Islam, to the onslaught of the west. He started out well, and lost direction along the way.
As an average Muslim Pakistani, I am left as frustrated as before at the wrong depiction and promotion of Islam.
Musharraf has just taken us from one extreme to the other extreme, paving the way for the first extreme to return with a vangeance. Before long, a Khomeini will rise, and the people of Pakistan disgusted with the westernized and watered down Islam Musharraf and his cronies have been propogating will carry him to the “throne” on their shoulders - only to suffer under him until they carry the next Musharraf to the throne. It is a vicious cycle.
People need to understand that Pakistanis are a people who define themselves as Muslims, and because of the regional as well as religious influences will always be a conservative lot, which is to be differentiated greatly from an intolerant, oppressive and extremist lot. Their way of life aligns greatly with Islam in its true form, but varies infinitely from the extremist or the “moderated” Islam the Mullahs and Musharraf respectively are trying to force down their throats. The one thing that needs to be got across to our people, the one thing they actually need to be educated about is avoiding shirk. Nobody seems to be doing that.
I digress, out of habit. Its just that the Mullahs and Musharraf are the two faces of the same coin - the khota coin. The ounce of purity is missing in either agenda.
Saeed: I’d like to hear what your friend has to say about the hurricanes….what are the chances of him attributing it all to the construction of those Palm Projects off the coast of Dubai?
8Felicity October 26th, 2005 at 1:34 pm
You’re right about the shirk, and also that we really don’t know if this really was or wasn’t God’s retribution.
However, I don’t think you can ultimately blame the president for forcing the Pakistani public down a more westernized road. Pre-Musharaf Pakistan was already walking that route. We would be where we are today culturally, Musharraf or no Musharraf. It’s just easier to point a finger and put the blame on someone. It provides for a more convenient solution: get rid of the guy to get rid of the problem. It’s what we’ve been doing all along, blaming a person. We don’t realize that it’s not one person changing our culture. It’s all of us.
Back during the Zia-ul-Haq days when the Hadood Ordinance was introduced and when, essentially, these Mullah’s really gained power, assisted of course by the US-cause west of our border; it wasn’t as if things were really in control. We had a government advocating a very conservative Islam, but that didn’t keep our youth from still being fascinated with the west, or at the very least, the Indian culture, the movies etc, long before cable or ssatellite television was around. Where we are now culturally is where we would have been regardless of what government propogated what kind of religion. The allure of the open, less conservative western ideology is far too great. Protectionism wouldn’t have held us back. It DIDN’T hold us back. The only thing that could keep us rooted would be good parenting, good schooling, where we would learn of the virtues of what we believe in and then make that conscious choice to follow along that path.
My point is, lets not blame the mullahs or the Musharrafs for who we are. We are a nation of fingerpointers. We love blaming somone else for our misfortunes. In fact even reading through what I have said, given nothing else, I put the blame on parents for not doing a good enough job. We talk about our culture as if we’re the exceptions to the rule, as if we aren’t a part of it. We forget that we have our own job to do. We need to do our own soul searching and go beyond making heartfelt statements and having intellectual discussions. We need to act. We need to change ourselves and become better human beings, become more God-fearing. That’s the biggest charity we can give the world right now, by starting with ourselves and our own children and giving the world and our country better citizens.
This is the test. It’s a test of our spirituality, our intellect, our hearts and our ideologies. This isn’t just about how we can materially help others. This about how we can help ourselves.
Ignorance is not stupidity. Knowing what is right and still doing the wrong thing is. By that definition, we’re a nation of idiots, and if this earthquake doesn’t slap us into our senses, nothing will.
9knicq October 27th, 2005 at 3:08 am
You are so right Felicity, as always.
However, I would like to add that the leaders of a nation have a bearing on where the nation heads, politically, as well as culturally, and a responsibility to ensure that the nation heads in the right direction. You will note I often club Musharraf with his cronies. The captain must stay the boat, and where the boat heads eventually, does bear on his captainship.
Zia’s regime turned a blind eye to the monster of extremism, and look where it got us. Musharraf’s regime, by endorsing the handful who stray miles from the path of Islam in their pursuit of westernized way of life, is allowing the other extremism to take root.
Zia and subsequently Nawaz Sharrif’s era had their fair share of modernists, as you rightly pointed out. It is the nature of a people - they will resent, denounce and when opportunity presents itself go against what is forced down their throats.
Taking what you pointed out further, I would say that protectionism, of either kind, can never be the answer. “Amr bil maroof wa nahi anil munkar” is the answer.
At the end of the day, people should be provided with positive atmosphere conducive to making the right choice. None of our Governments has ever made that provision.
Here is hoping and praying that we all do change ourselves, do become more God-fearing, and give the world the biggest charity we can give. Here is praying that we be rid of our idiocy. Ameen.

7.6!

2006-01-26T02:14:00.000+04:00

I learnt about the earthquake, when Madi sent me an SMS from Karachi asking me to check on my folks back in Mirpur and Islamabad. Ironically, I got the SMS as I sat with the morning paper, reading about the tragedies of the day before.

Understandably, my reflex action was to start calling home, but all lines were jammed, and I could get through to niether home, nor my sibling based in Islamabad. There were moments of despair, and frantic praying, as attempt after attempt at calling home failed. Finally, I got through to both places, and was relieved to know that everyone in my family was safe and sound, and that our city Mirpur had been spared the severity which had jolted Muzaffarabad, Rawlakot, Baagh, Mansehra, Abbotabad, and so many other cities of the country.

Friends started calling in, and the duo M&K were the first two people to call, one after the other, may Allah bless them for their kindness, generosity, love and affection. I went about checking on the few other people I knew from the affected areas, and thankfully, no-one I knew was affected directly by this catastrophe. When I say affected directly, I mean no-one had lost any of their near and dear ones to the earthquake.

Quite a few people reported damage to property, and when at 10:00 p.m. here, I met Shah Saab, who hails from Abbotabad, and has family residing there, he told me that his folks were sitting out in the cold, under pouring skies, because till about half an hour ago, they had been getting the tremors at regular intervals. Abbotabad is up in north, and winter has already set in there. Nightime temperatures hover around zero degree centigrade, which makes sitting under the rain at night no mean feat. It was only then that the true magnitude of the catastrophe began to sink in. May Allah have mercy on people trapped in these conditions, and may He make the ordeal easy for them.

Fact is, I am still over whelmed by the tragedy, and the challenges it poses for the people affected by it. After the initial shock of casualties is overcome, and it is not a shock easy to overcome, thousands and thousands of people must muster the courage, and find the resilience to set out on the uphill task of rebuilding their lives - a task easier said than done, especially so for those people, who even before they were pulled into misery by the loss of their loved ones, and their homes and places of work, had little to celebrate. People, who after a lifetime of toiling and suffering had mudbrick houses for their ‘property’, and a change of clothes for wardrobe.

The live coverage beamed by the Pakistani channels had me under the impression that the worst consequence of the earthquake had been the crumbling of the Margalla Towers’ block. I can understand that MT was the easiest to access site of damage, and of course there is no undermining the tragedy that has struck the families residing in those 60 apartments. However, Margalla Towers was singled out in the coverage in such a way that it pretty much seemed like the epicentre of the earthquake had been the MT rather than an area 90 miles away. The President and the Prime Minister issued statements standing in the rubble of what was once the prestigious MT, and every newschannel telecast pictures of MT as it covered the earthquake. Sure, there were footages from the Muzaffarabad hospitals, and other places, but it would all come back to MT as if all else was secondary and the primary scene of destruction was MT. Perhaps, the coverage could have been more spread out.

The people living in those mud houses in villages are affected as much by this calamity as are the people of MT, and in times like these it is the poor who need additional coverage so there plight cab be brought to fore, and aid and assistance can be mobilized for them. Hopefully, the survivors from those luxury apartments, will have some sort of financial cushioning to fall back on, while people who lived in mudhouses might just have lost everything, and may need to start from scratch. Both these people, the poor and not so poor, have lost loved ones, and any surity of tomorrow they might have had prior to this tragedy, and in these times will need their fellow countrymen, their fellow Muslim brethren to stand fast by them, and to reach out to them with a helping hand.

This Ramadan, more than ever before, we need to exhibit the spirit of Ramadan - the spririt that requires us to empathise with those who have lost, and those who do not have enough, the spirit that needs us to sacrifice our comforts to bring comfort to those who have not seen it or lost it. This Ramadan our cause, and that of the affectees of this earthquake, will be better served if we make an even more concerted effort to stop our excesses, excesses that unfortunately have become synonymous with Ramadan, contrary to the very spirit of this holy month, and pour our resources in to help our brethren in need.

The morning newspapers today put the death toll from the earthquake at close to 20,000, and counting. There are four times as many injured. The sheer numbers are heart breaking. However, for those brothers and sisters, who are blessed with the means to donate, and/or the will to sacrifice, these numbers also represent the number of opportunities we have of redeeming ourselves - so let us stop and think, do we really need that extra pair of clothes we are about to spend money on? Must we wear new clothes this Eid? Is there a blanket in our house that would do better keeping a brother or sister back home warm? Are there any warm clothes in your wardrobe you can do without, but your brother or sister affected by the earthquake can’t?

From today onwards, we must realize that every penny that we plan spending might just have a better use in the earthquake areas, and that every dirham spent unnecesarilyt has an opportunity cost, our brothers and sisters in our country cannot afford.

May Allah guide us all, and give us all the strength and conviction to perform our duties.

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19 Responses to '7.6!'
1Saadat October 10th, 2005 at 7:28 am
It is so good to hear that your loved ones are safe, alhamdulillah.
And I agree, the collapse of Margalla Towers is sad, but people in the northern areas are the ones who are affected the worst. Rescue teams have started working in those areas, although they are late, but I hope that the people who survived the accident don’t have to suffer any more.
May Allah have mercy on us all. Ameen.

2knicq October 10th, 2005 at 7:38 am
Assalam U Alaikum Chotey Bhai,
And it is wonderful to know you and your family are all safe and sound. I have been trying to post a comment on your blog for ages now, but it just disappears everytime. I try thrice and move on. f5 does not help.
We have just got pictures of Balakot, the whole town flattened with hardly a building intact. It is all so heart-wrenching.
On the other hand, international aid has started ‘pouring in’ with the US pledging USD 100,000! They spend billions on destroying countries and nations, and when it comes to humaitarian aid, they cough up a measly 100,000, which is a fraction of what the UAE Expat Pakistani community alone is pledging.
Ireland on the other hand has pledged a million euros!
I wish our government could have appreciated the US government’s gesture, but politely declined the peanuts…I am sure the US can use this 100,000 in rebuilding New Orleans.
I am disgusted.

3Saadie October 10th, 2005 at 1:00 pm
Yea good to hear that your family is safe, alhamdulillah. But seriously I totally agreewith every word you have said, this is the time we need to do a lot. I think MT was covered more because first of all it was in the capital and secondly there was no easy access to northern areas specially in first few hours but yea scenes from northern area are quite devastating

4JB October 10th, 2005 at 2:34 pm
Furthermore, MT kinda reminds one of another smashed down with a powerful prez consoling his people, hence provides a really great photo-op.
When the helicopters of the govt bigwigs were hoovering over Muzzafarabad, Abbotabad e.t.c people below were still waiting for blankets/ medicens e.t.c. I wonder what stopped Mushi and Shoki to send a copule of balnkets and supplies by thier helicopters insted of flying around aimlessly and posing for the TV crew inside the chopper. Finally they were able to send 2000 blankets and 6000 kafans to muzafafrabad by PST:2200

5knicq October 10th, 2005 at 5:22 pm
Saadie: May Allah have mercy on all those affected by this devastating catastrophe. Thanks for your comment.
JB: The thought of those TV crews taken along so they could show the President and the PM glancing down at the affected areas is disgusting. Mushy, much like his retarded Bushy Bhai, seems to have lost it all…didn’t Bush ask his plane to fly a few thousand feet lower so h could catch a glimpse of New Orleans?
Mushy must be proud of himself - he got the coverage that Bushy had got in two calamities in one calamity.
Once again let me suggest a shift in focus here. Mushy and Bushy are inherent challenges the world must face as it goes about its business - for everything that Mushy has not done, there’s a hundred that an average Pakistani is doing or is trying to do. Let us take our motivation from there.

6yasmine October 11th, 2005 at 3:00 am
Knicq bhai, I hadn’t realized you had family in Islamabad, but alhamdulillah I’m glad to hear they’re safe. JazakAllah khayr for this post - you wrote so much of what I wanted to say, but so much better than I could have put it.

7Usman October 11th, 2005 at 3:04 am
Assalaam Alaikum baray bhai….
Alhamdulillah good to hear everyone on your side is safe. I cant add anythign more to what you’ve said except its time we dug in deep into our pockets and did what we should. Donate whatever and however much we can.
May Allah have mercy on us all.

8Saadie October 11th, 2005 at 10:39 am
“Once again let me suggest a shift in focus here. Mushy and Bushy are inherent challenges the world must face as it goes about its business - for everything that Mushy has not done, there’s a hundred that an average Pakistani is doing or is trying to do. Let us take our motivation from there.” Agreed

9Felicity October 11th, 2005 at 2:21 pm
Forgive me for not partaking in the Musharaf/Bush Bashing. Just to update…. the US revised it’s aid pledge to USD$50 Million.

Personally I think the initial reports did not accurately depict the extensive damage and loss of life that occurred simply because those northern areas were inaccessible, landlines were brought down and in general communication had broken-down. I don’t think that anyone had thought that things would get this bad.

Camera crews follow along the president not just to document him… but because his was the first helicopter flight they could actually get on to document the damage that had occurred. Once the news got out, people have been giving like crazy and oh so generously… but the problem so far remains that getting relief to those areas remains a logistical nightmare. What good would a couple of blankets do to a hundred people besides encourage a fight? That has happened…. as the relief effort finally got through, people fought with each other over rice bags. And before any relief could have gone underway… a survey was necessary.

So far the only means we had to get the appropriate amount of relief to those areas were by road. Those roads are treacherous. They showed a picture of one of the army trucks that the BBC correspondent says “tried to rush it” to get to the relief goods it was carrying to those mountainous locations…. the truck had a rollover on it’s way.

Lets not be naive. Lets judge the relief effort by the ground conditions that exist there right now. The terrain is deadly with all the landslides… not helped by heavy thunderstorms and rain in the area which quite possibly may make visibility poor. Lets judge it by the means we have or lack thereof to tackle it. The prez went on CNN practically begging for heavy-lift Cargo helicopters to transport aid to those damage hit regions. I know when things are bad people get emotional and especially when you’re under a make-shift tent, injured, have lost everything and possibly also family members and loved ones and having to spend the night in freezing temperatures and rain, nothing seems fast enough. But we must realize that the government is doing all it can. I came across a blog by an Islamabad resident who documented the time of tremors and the damage info he would hear about. For almost half the day, the info was sketchy and while there were some reports of villages being wiped out, initially it was thought these were the scantily populated localities. Initial reports did estimate the death toll to only be in the hundreds…. by nightfall they estimated it would near a thousand. I don’t think that anyone had figured it might reach tens of thousands.

We have friends here whose family home in Muzzafarbad is completely totaled. His grandmother and some other family members are injured and their house is reduced to rubble.This guy has an uncle in the military and for two days he has been trying to get two trucks filled with aid to Muzzafarbad and possibly get some people out of there but the roads are so bad it hasn’t been possible so far. I tell you this just to show that even those who have relatives in those remote areas and who have the means to do something about it haven’t been able to help them as fast as they would like. Unlike the failure of the US government to provide relief to the New Orleans victims, the failure to respond we face in our country is not a result of complacency or bureaucracy. It is a result of not having enough means or money. The president said he had enough manpower, he needed the equipment and he needed the money. The guy took advantage of being the Chief of army to immediately mobilize and utilize army resources.

Think of it this way, the President has accomplished more in the past three days in the way of clearing road obstructions and reaching the affected northern locations than the US had for it’s own people in New Orleans, considering New Orleans was waaaay more accessible than most of the earthquake hit regions of Pakistan, and the US had all the means in the world at it’s disposal to use… after all, it owns them. Lets give the President some credit. Lets not bash him simply for being a US ally, which, lets face it, is perhaps what most motivates this president bashing.

Why must we be a nation of finger pointers and bad-mouthers? Right now, even our neighboring enemy has offered us aid. It’s a time when the world is coming together, when all differences and lines of contention are forgotten and forgone, and here we are pointing fingers and bad-mouthing our own. I am one for raising our voices against injustices and frauds committed by higher authorities at the expense of the general public, but I firmly believe this is not the time, mostly because I don’t think the president deserves this right now. This has nothing to do with my opinion of his alliance with the US… it has everything to do with how I think he is fairing in providing relief given the country’s existing limitations. I spoke to my mother-in-law in Karachi and she says people are giving like never before. Lets indulge in the spirit of giving rather than in this finger-pointing game.

As far the US is concerned… lets first decide what we think of the US. we continuously bad mouth it. We wish to have nothing to do with it and that it not meddle in our affairs and after all that we expect that it help us out in the time of trouble. Like I said, I do not condone any wrong that the US has committed, and we have every right to express our disagreement, but we do go far beyond expressing our disagreement on to verbal abuse akin to effigy and US flag burning. Disagree by all means, Be angry by all means, but how much would you want to help out a person if he continuously badmouths you.

We’re Muslims and are supposedly to follow in the footsteps of the Prophet (SW) who showed kindness to the lady who would throw trash on him everyday as he passed by her house and went in to see how she was doing when one day she wasn’t there to throw trash on him as usual.But we don’t show any such kindness, but we expect that the “infidel” US should. Why do we expect the US to act more Islamic than ourselves? I’m not defending the US but I can’t join in the verbal bashing by people who themselves cannot claim the higher moral standards that they desire the US to exhibit.

On a personal note, I thought of you as soon as I heard the news… just never got around to writing to you. I’m glad everyone is okay and safe. This is so tragic. Entire communities have vanished. It’s painful to watch. My heart breaks and I cry so much as I watch the news. We cling to so much that’s material and we never realize we can lose it in an instant. I don’t know if this is a test for our nation or if it’s punishment. I don’t know if it’s fair or unfair. I just know it’s painful to know that those who have miraculously managed to survive have lost everything… their homes and their loved ones, and I sometimes wonder if death may have been a greater mercy on them. We take for granted the presence of our loved ones… we don’t know what calamity might fall and take them away from us. When you give to your fellow country men in this time of need, remember to give a call to your loved ones living away from you and a hug to those living with you. You don’t want them to leave this world not knowing how much you really love them. Put aside your differences and give to your loved ones all the love you have in your heart… while you still have the chance.

Take care and be safe.

10Felicity October 11th, 2005 at 2:22 pm
Oh… and sorry for taking up so much space in your comment page. I believe my comment is longer than your blog!

11knicq October 11th, 2005 at 3:01 pm
Thanks Felicity for your very well written, and very much required comment.
I am too drained emotionally by the footages we have seen on GEO and ARY, to even get started on a debate on whether or not the President has done enough.

But for the record, I agree with everything you have said about the ground realities in Pakistan, and the commendable job, given the circumstances, done by the authorities. My last comment was nothing but a vieled request to move away from this president/government authority bashing.

However, i adisagree with your analysis of our attitude to the US here. I do not expect the US to live up to the higher moral standards - I am just appalled by the disparity in efforts the US puts in in “liberating” oil rich people from ex Allies (Osama and Saddam), and in rescuing “third world” people devastated by natural calamities.

How is it that the US with its world renowned satellite systems that can track WMDs mounted on vehicles, was not aware of the extent of this calamity? USD 100,000, upped to USD 50 Million!!!

The UAE pledged USD 100 Million!

The US did appropriate billions of dollars worth of budgets to liberate the Iraqis, didn’t it? Iraqis, people who were not really in desparate need of that bombing campaign those billions went into orchestrating. They sent out the whole blooming US Airforce to bomb people - and now they could muster 8 helicopters!

I have no ambition of US bashing here…I just intend to underline the reason behind our ‘dissatisfaction’ with the US. I am out of words, short of breath. Hope you can see what I am trying to say here.

Thank you very much for the comment - I wish you would comment more often…you know that. Take all the space you want - your comments make for better reading than the posts anyway.

Remember us all in your prayers.

12knicq October 11th, 2005 at 3:07 pm
Yasmine: My sister is based in Islamabad, and the rest of the family in Mirpur AJK. Thank you for your kind words…I doubt there is anything I could write that you, or my friend Felicity here amongst many others, couldn’t write loads better…:)
Usman: Thanks so much for the comment bro. My dial up would not load your blog yesterday, and I was worried about you, and your family. I am so glad to know all’s well at your end too. Ammen to your duas.

Saadie:
13mnm October 12th, 2005 at 8:04 am
knicq bhai, glad to know all is well with your family. we have been hearing of ppl here losing several members in muzaffarabad too. may Allah have mercy on them and help those who have survived, and give us the heart and health to help generously.

14knicq October 12th, 2005 at 12:51 pm
Baji, many thanks for your kindness. It is a collossal tragedy, the magnitude of which is still unfolding…I am surprised we are still not hearing anything from Rawlakot, which was initially reported to have been severely hit.
Ameen and Thumma Ameen to your prayers.
I have seen acts of such genrosity which are hard to describe in words. e.g. A client of mine, hailing from Karachi, has asked me to refer to him at least one affected family, which has lost the bread winner, and he plans to sponsor them for life, or until the time the children are grown up, educated, and married off. He pleaded with me to revert to him ASAP. If most people bestowewd with Allah’s bounty followed suit, the magnitude of this tragedy could be minimized.
A well-off colleague from Venenzuela emptied her wallet to add to contributions, while a Palestinian sister donated big in cash and blankets both.
There are countless people going about collecting donations, and offering volunteer services.
There’s a Lebanese Christian client/friend of mine, who has asked me to just tell him when and where to contribute.
All of this, in these tragic times, gives one hope that all is still not lost.

15knicq October 12th, 2005 at 1:35 pm
On the other hand, just came across this, which was posted by a sister from AJK, residing in UK, I think…
Quote“do u people know wts happening around?at this hour, during so much hype and tension,when everybody has seen that life is so unpredictable.nothing works when HE decides to call u back*one person sold 8 coffins in Islamabad for RS 18000/-*in Karachi one coffin of 100-300 rs are now sold for rs700/- to 1200/-*In Mansehra group of gunned man looted two trucks which were taking goods for relief work,police did come to rescue afterwards to protect the remainig ones but they can’t do everything everywhere*In Muzzafarabad the professionals who bathe the bodies(MAYYATS) have taken away all the gold things of bodies*The buses which used to take Rs32-100/- to take ppl from Mirpur to Muzzafarabad are charging rs500/- and the buses which wud take 300/- to take ppl from Islamabad to Muzzafarabad are taking rs 1400/-Mu frnds they r no rumors as i m only writing down the authentic events which my frnds in Rawlakot and Muzzafabad reported back.I m not trying to hold down ur morale but seriously why don’t we think that the only thing which can save us now is the reward v may earn by helping these people. This is not the sign of QAYAMAT this is QAYAMUTTp bring you all uptodate now v need**Medicines-anti biotics,anti allergics,for TB cure,for fever & cold cure, Vitamins,painkillers,Gkucose drips**manpower to work at different camps and Base Faisal to organise the stuff**trucks to take things will someone please bear the expenses of trucks and make arrangements for the collected things at various camps to be taken awayDONT DONATE MONEY CONCENTRATE ON ABOVE MENTIONED STUFF.MAY ALLAH REWARD YOU BACK FOR ALL THE GOOD U DO AND MAY HE SEND DOWN HIS MERCY AND DIVINE HELP FOR THE VICTIMS AND HELPER”Unquote
Just when we were begining to think we had risen above our petty corruption…this is so sad.

16Saadie October 12th, 2005 at 6:38 pm
There are always black sheeps in a society, inshAllah everything will be fine.

17Abez October 15th, 2005 at 4:45 pm
HF told me everyone in your family was alright and I was relieved Bhai, and may Allah bless and guide us all to the correct course of action that earns His mercy and helps others in need InshaAllah.

18Saadie October 22nd, 2005 at 1:22 pm
updates?

19knicq October 22nd, 2005 at 3:22 pm
Saadie: I have been oscillating between hope and despair as on the one hand wonderful stories of selfless dedication have unfolded in front of me or reached me, and as on the other hand we have heard of those black sheep. It takes every ounce of my resolve not to curse those people whose blackened hearts are no touched even by the magnitude of this tragedy…:(
Litle Baji, Ameen to your prayers.

Circumference, Zany JB, and Nostalgia.

2006-01-26T02:11:00.000+04:00

1 Meter!

Its official. Knicq has breached the 1M barrier in circumference.

In the past, I have hovered around this barrier, but never really did cross it. My failures, however, were not due to lack of trying. I know now that everything must happen in its own time, and one must continue to strive for excellence in the face of adversity and failures. A 100 cms is a lot of me, and I knew I was on the right track when standing up straight, I could no longer see my size 9 shoes. Jalali Baba has always had reservations about the usage of the word straight here in the context. He believes half moon conveys a much more accurate picture, but I differ on technical grounds. The semi-circular image invoked by the half moon metaphor does not really fit me. As far as imagery goes, Jalali Baba says it is more a case of getting the China wall to stand vertically rather than lying around like a lazy python, and getting it to swallow the half moon just so it comes to rest in the middle. Of course, this is a ridiculous way of putting things. Everyone knows, walls don’t eat half moons, or full moons; and whoever heard of pythons lying around lazily?

Thats Jalali Baba for you. He will be 30 soon, and although he maintains otherwise I have this nagging suspicion that he crossed 1M long ago. It is common knowledge that he is on the wrong side of 100 Kgs. I remain on the right side by about twenty kgs. JB thinks my eating habits add to his weight, and his smoking habits to my girth. The more I evaluate the data available, the more sense this hypothesis makes. I guess, he is pulling me into senilepur along with him. He is senile, this part I have figured out. I have also got to the conclusion that he is fighting old age. You know you are fighting old age when you start believing you are getting old, because most people choose to fight old age rather than age gracefully. Before I tell you why I think he is fighting old age, let me tell you about a small incident that should have alerted me to JB’s condition years ago.

A couple of years ago, wifey and kids had chosen exactly the same time to go on a vacation, when JB’s family was in Pakistan. JB lives in Abu Dhabi, approximately 175 Kms from where I live. He used to drive down with a bundle of wood, and a makeshift tent, in the trunk of Saab-ki-Gaadi, and drive on another 100 kilometers to Dibba; where he would put up the tent in the ‘wilderness’, make a ‘bonfire’ 2 feet in height, spend the night there, and drive back to Abu Dhabi in the morning. This used to qualify for the ultimate adventure out in the open, away from the hustle bustle of cities and towns - the former employed to refer to Abu-Dhabi and Dubai, and the latter used to allude to yours truly’s city of abode.

He did this almost every week, and talked about it to me for the rest of the week. This has to be the explanation for my affirmative nod when he invited me to one such night of adventure. I find no other logical basis for this stupidity of mine. I am not an outdoors person. I am a Dubaiite, and like all fellow-Dubaiites, I would take the air-conditioned malls over the “wilderness” anyday. (After the trip, I would take malls on fire over a trip to the wilderness with JB)

I was ordered to pack in a copy of “Kuliyat-e-Iqbal”, while JB packed in OSK, who has until now been introduced as Fash’s BiL. We set off in Saab Ki Gaadi about midnight on an unusually cold night. Along the way, Jalali Bab tried to educate the lesser mortals on Iqbal, but lost interest when we could not even feign interest. Then came the punishment for this insolence. At two in the morning, with the whole world, including the road ahead plunged in absolute darkness, JB switched off the head lights - only for a few seconds, but for long enough to scare the living daylights out of the two of us. Our screams only encouraged him, and he did it for a second time, and stopped only when the two of us threatened to tell his wife about his smoking excesses(provided, of course, we made it back in one peice, but a provision we chose not to elaborate on at the time).

He finally found a place to stop the car, and put the tent up - a deserted spot between two hills, populated by nothing, save a few shrubs swaying suspiciously in the howling winter wind, and the omnipresent fear of grouchy ghosts woken from their slumber by our cacophony. To JB’s dismay, we decided against spending the night there, and forced him to choose another spot. The spot we did agree on was at the beach, the impracticality of which choice was laid bare when it came time to put the tent up. Somehow, the tent was done, and JB got down to making his ‘bonfire’. Here again was a challenge, since the winds were not conducive to getting the fire going; a challenge that was overcome eventually. We huddled around the fire to keep ourselves warm.

We had barely got comfortable, when a strong gust of wind brought a ton of sand to our fire, and chased on its way out particles of sand with their tails on fire. For a while, the whole place was lit up like the sky; in this while I heard JB scream and run after those fiery particles, it was only later that I realized that he was running after our tent, which had been uprooted by the wind. That put paid to the night under the skies.

A few weeks ago, JB was chastizing me for my reckless driving on blackey about a year ago, when I had done a little swerving and cutting while talking on my cell phone; and I had to bring up his switching off of those head lights. That shut him up. A while later, while sitting down in a traditional Yemeni restaurant for our dinner, I asked him what the dickens did he think he was doing at the time. His reply, ‘Saab, there is no thrill in life anymore’. I had to suppress my murderous instinct, but even the best restraint could also not keep me from going ballistic in his face in two public places - one the afore mentioned traditional restaurant, which refused to serve us food given my outburst; and the other which served us food despite the ballistic me.

I have figured out now though - JB is old, and he is fighting old age - some men resort to cheap thrills in this fight. There are those who switch off head lights while driving on a dark highway, or go bungie jumping, or join a gym; or remarry; and there are those who opt for a more enduring pain- they go nostalgic. The latter crop of fighters is a sad bunch of people; they find something wrong with everything around them, and long for days gone by, the miseries of days gone by, and the joys of days gone by. If they are any good with the pen, they write books about days gone by, and romanticize the past at the expense of present and future.

JB comes from a new breed of fighters though - this is a breed which thinks itself older than it really is, so while the guys resort to some or all of the switching-off-the-headlights thrills, they are disappointed to find that they can’t really get nostaligic because their days gone by are no so far off. They must then do the next best thing - they live in other people’s nostalgia.

It is a way of life elevated to an art form by the likes of JB. The method is simple. You read a few books on genuine nostalgia, and then realizing that what you are living through today, will constitute your nostalgia tomorow, just as the past turned into nostalgia for those writers, you start living your picture perfect nostalgia, for tomorrow’s sake. Am I making any sense?
I do not have to, I will be 30 in a year’s time, and I will be able to think back to today with a touch of nostalgia, think back to days when I used to fight the oncomings of old age with half baked philosophic psychoanalysis of my freinds who were living their nostalgia before they got to the logical age of nostalgia.

For now, I am 1 Meter fat, and JB is a 100 KGS heavy - these will be the days to hark back to!

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One Response to 'Circumference, Zany JB, and Nostalgia.'

1Saeed October 8th, 2005 at 10:19 am

great to have new posts from u!nice intro to fash.U’ve been blessed with such wonderful friends-& even have them close by…& lol @ big 3-0 now not as older as it used to be…& even U already have that nostalgic psyche & u aren’t even 30 yet!so do u guys still go & spend the night in d wadi/desert/beach?? & btw, i plan on doing the sky dive this summer, so does that make me…???or shud i leave it to be done when i hit d big 3-0?lol

Fash's 30th!

2006-01-26T02:08:00.000+04:00

In just about twenty four hours, Fash will, by the grace of Allah, turn 30 years old. He will be the first one from my friends to cross over into thirties. Not that it is of any consequence, thirty year olds today are so much younger than thirty year olds from my father’s generation. I should know. 30 year olds today are just about a year older than me today - they used to be something like 25 years older than me back then. Those guys used to be so old!

Fash has been a dear dear friend, the dearest, and he is also the oldest friend I have today. We first got to know each other back in 1985, when we started grade four together in school. I had just come back from Pakistan, after being gone for some two years, and he, I think, had come down from Abu-Dhabi. I don’t remember how we came to be friends, and after this long who really cares; one wonders if it really was out of choice since the gender ratio in our class was 26:4 to the disadvantage of the males; besides my memories from those days are rather painful. Fash has maintained a decent four inch vertical superiority over me all along. I used to think he had a superiority complex, until I found out he was the short guy in his cousins. This vertical advantage of his often resulted in horizontal consequences for me, owing to our daily wrestling matches before the morning assembly.

He has often laughed about the time he picked me up, and brought me down on his knee. I still attribute my back problems to that fateful incident. Another time, we were sabre rattling, only mine was a plastic scale, while he had that wooden scale that used to come with a blade - in my enthusiasm, I caught one of his ‘blows’ in my hand, and refused to let go…he just pulled the scale away - left me with four fingers bleeding. We both left that school after seventh grade, and were to meet again a good seven years later in Pakistan. It has been another nine years since, and Fash has introduced me to scores of wonderful new people in these years, amongst them Felicity, Madi and Jalali Baba.

Moral of the story: Great friends come to those who hold on to their first great friend.
I have learnt that the strongest of bonds are formed in the weakest of moments, under the most fragile circumstances. I have also learnt that one of Allah’s greatest blessings is a friend close by in turbulent times.

A few years ago, I was left bruised and battered at the end of a most trying day; Allah had given me the strength to plough through the day’s events, but I did not see it that way at the time. Despair, regret, anguish, and sadness were pulling me into hopelessness, when I found Fash on line. I was fragile, deeply hurt, and very tired at the time, and I am glad it was Fash I had found on line. He comforted me, reassured me, and kept me from completely disintegrating. I did not realize it then, and it was only months later when I came across that same conversation that it dawned upon me just how vulnerable and unwise I had been in those moments, and just how big a blessing of Allah Fash had been that day.

That chapter in my life tested a couple more of my friends, and Alhamdu Lillah each one of them came through. I could not talk to Fash after that, but Madi was with me for the next couple of weeks, and helped me and guided me as a friend must a friend lost in darkness. I got back online, and found an email from Felicity that had just the rigth words saying just the things I needed to be told at the time. After all that turbulence, peace and releif came to me through a precious few lines, written to me by a precious friend. Sure, I suffered, but I also discovered the wonderful joy that friends are.

This is turning into a song of friendship; I had meant for this post to be an introduction of Fash, one of my closest, dearest friends; but it is begining to read like a boring chapter from my biography. My apologies. It is, however, an undeniable fact that no introduction of a great friend is complete unless one elaborates on just what makes that friend great. To Fash’s disadvantage, what makes him great is that he has stuck around despite the boring me - and this he has done for over two decades now!

So, dear friend, here is wishing you a very very happy birthday, and many many happy returns of the day. May Allah shower His blessings on you everyday and every night, and may He reward you with joy, happiness and contentment for bringing joy to so many lives; may He give you the courage and strength to endure being my friend for all years to come.
Ameen.

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2 Responses to 'Fash’s 30th!'
1Saadat October 7th, 2005 at 3:57 pm
Happy Birthday to Fash!
And yay for good friends! I, on the other hand, need to learn something from the moral you concluded.
And Ramadan Mubarak!

2knicq October 8th, 2005 at 2:49 am
Salamz Chotey Bhai, and Ramadan mubarak to you too, and to your family.
So are you telling me, you need to go befriend somone who has held on to a great friend already?
p.s. for the umpteenth time, I cannot comment on your blog. It just does not show my comments, while it does everyone else’s - I try thrice everytime, and leave sulking.

Dubaiite Frustrated!

2006-01-26T02:05:00.000+04:00

Me and my big mouth. For decades, the people of this oil rich country have enjoyed low fuel prices, and the six and eight cylinder auto-mammoths that become but a logical option due to those prices. Then I had to go and spoil it for everyone. I had to declare fuel was cheap here, and someone was listening. Now the government has rectified that anomaly in the general scheme of things. The petrol just got dearer by 30% yesterday.
This can have grave implications in a country, where retailers and their suppliers increased the prices of goods across the board when the Government had announced a 15% increase in the salaries of public servants, so the poor sods could come to terms with rising cost of living; and not just any retailers, it was the Co-Operatives which are supposed to cater to the consumers’ shrinking wallets. What was even more amusing was the fact that this hike was effected right after the announcement of the salary-increase, not after the actual salary increase. Finally, the Government had to step in, and give the greedy rascals a rap on their knuckles. Cost-push inflation is but an economic phenomenon, it will be interesting to see how the retailers respond to this new development. It is generally, and rather less sarcastically than it should be, assumed that the landlords and real estate agents will find an excuse in this fuel-price hike to hike up the rents for the umpteenth time.
The only thing cheap in this country now is labor, which ironically is the one commodity that should not be cheap anyway, and especially not so in Dubai which is ranked higher than Washington D.C and Toronto on the list of the most-expensive, and hence the least desirable to live in, cities of the world. Increasingly, it is becoming a less desirable place to live in for the middle class. It costs an average of USD 1800 per month to rent out a two bedroom apartment in Dubai, which is (un)reasonably higher than the average cost of renting an apartment in more developed and high profile cities like Washington D.C and Toronto*. There are some who take this to be a sign of things to come, and a mark of how prestigious a city Dubai has become. Anyone who thinks Dubai is more prestigious and developed than the capital of the reigning super power is obviously living in a fool’s paradise. The only thing this twisted equation points to is flawed planning, and greedier real estate agents. The yardstick for the prestige and development of a city should be the satisfaction levels of its inhabitants, their lifestyles, and a growing middle class segment.
Just the other day, I was visiting a friend who lives on the 27th floor of a high rise tower in the upmarket Dubai Marina ‘enclave’. I stepped out into their balcony, and was mesmerized by the construction work underway at the site of one of the world famous Palm Projects. For those who have been blissfully spared the media frenzy surrounding these projects, the Palm Projects, and there were three of those until the last count, are huge palm shaped residential schemes for the welathiest of the world. The distinguishing thing about these palm shaped schemes is that the “palm” will be completely reclaimed land, protuding out into the sea. The “palms” will be visible from Neptune and Pluto, and aliens from other galaxies will also be able to see them on clear days. A fraction of the amount spent on these projects, if funnelled into constructing residential areas on the sprawling deserts of the country could have easily curbed the menace of rising rents. Ironically, one gets to see that sprawling desert in the other direction from the same point.
This brings me to another aspect of this developing- like- crazy-city that baffles me. Not a day goes by when we the residents of the twin cities of Dubai and Sharjah do not have to grapple with the tiring and frustrating traffic jams here. Part of the problem lies in the fact that when going to work all traffic is headed to the few pockets of high rises which house bulk of the commercial activity, and understandably the same traffic is headed out of these pockets at close of day.
I am no city planner, but tell me this, why do we have high rises? So that we can make optimum use of scarce space, right? Well, someone should get a bird’s eye view of this city, THERE IS NO SHORTAGE OF SPACE HERE! There are miles and miles of desert just waiting to be converted into commercial or residential areas. But, skyscrapers we must have, so Dubai can rank amongst the cities of the world that have what the newspapers here refer to as “a skyline”. One of my ex-employers, a Japanese gentlman, used to wonder about the speed with which new towers, buildings and other structures are constructed here. He was quite sure that similar construction projects would take thrice the time to construct in Japan. Again there would be some who would find reason to celebrate the ‘efficiencies’ of Dubai in this statement. What they do not realize is that Japan survived an earthquake last month measuring to the north of 5.0 on the Richter Scale with zero casualties, while a similar seismic phenomenon would leave tens of thousands dead, and losses estimated at upwards of USD 50 billion in this efficient little place…
Coming back to the traffic jams, if you had offices sprawling over a large area, you would not have all these people headed the same way in the mornings, or headed out of the same places in the evenings. There would be lesser, if any, traffic jams. The only thing required to achieve this simplistic solution would be a braoder infrastructure, which is not a cost this rich country cannot bear. Understandably, spreading the commercial activity will require more commuting between offices for salespeople like me, but hey fuel is still cheaper in this part of the world than it is in the rest of the world. Granted with the passage of time, the country will have to resort to sky scrapers, since it is not bestowed with unlimited space, but hey, why experience the agony of a space cramped city decades before it becomes space cramped. Plus, a broader base of infrastructure will only prepare the country better for such growth when the real need for space optimization arises.
I have no pretensions of being a planner, but if I can think of these solutions, surely people trained and qualified to plan cities can think more creatively than they are doing presently.
The people of this blessed country deserve to feel blessed living in it. Practicality, not exhibitionism, will help ensure that feeling.

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22 Responses to 'Dubaiite frustrated!'
1Fariha September 4th, 2005 at 6:26 am
Wow… how long have I been missing from the scene??? I seemed to have missed so much, it’s almost overwhelming! I have never been to Dubai and the last time I was in the Emirates was some 16 years ago. Hubby is in Dubai right now, though, for a Schlumberger dog-and-pony show…. a 2 day new technology forum at the Emirates towers. He says the place is bloody expensive, but for 400USD-a-night (company rate), the hotel is just awesome. Leave it to the arabs to define luxury. Leave it to the Arabs to define exhibitionism!
You complain of traffic jams.. hah! You don’t know Cairo. This has got to be one of the most congested cities in the world. There are probably more people per square foot in this city than dust… and this is the desert, you know. And we have the same roads the british built before the 2nd world war… okay so the tarmacs been refreshed, and they’ve added some overpasses here and there but honestly the roads aren’t enough to accomodate the number of cars here. they’re narrow and we’re limited on routes. And high-rises? If you took out all buildings with over 12 floors, there would be hardly anyhting left in Cairo nowadays. Any villas that remained have been turned into either commercial or residential buildings… and they don’t even bother to make them look good because the dust will make them brown anyway. And since there’s no real planning, the Cairo skyline doesn’t look anything like a skyline. A building can pop up anywhere, and traffic can flow in either direction on a narrow two lane road with rampant doubleparking on either side!
Hey thanks… you just gave me a good blog topic. I’ll get to it as soon as I finish my other unfinished blog topic that I have been pursuing for the past month and a half. Baby’s been keeping me busy!
Nice site by the way.
2knicq September 4th, 2005 at 10:42 am
Hey Ol’ friend, great to have you back. You have been away for over eight months now, and sorely missed all the while.
Hubby is here, I have emailed you my cell number, please pass it on to him. My office is a few buildings from Emirates Towers on the same road, I would love to show him around…
Oh, and Salman Gulzar of 18th batch is also visiting Dubai, and is put up in Fairmont right across from Emirates Towers. He is here for a training, which co-incidently is also being held in Novotel. Given that he specializes in Oilfield Finance, they might just find topics of common interest.
How come you guys didn’t accompany him? TQ and AQ would have loved to meet Sheheryar.
More later…gotta run.
3Fariha September 6th, 2005 at 6:37 pm
Hubby’s back. We didn’t accompany him because the trip was on short notice and the stupid thing about Egypt is you never can find seats when you want them. Humair got his seat and for the client accompanying him just a day before, after much crying, pleading and groveling. Not to mention that the price for a ticket to Dubai was the same as a ticket to New York!
Thanks for offering to show hubby around. I realize I have a horrible memory. I honestly can’t put a face to Salman Gulzar’s name. I think I do have a faint recollection of who is, but I can’t be sure. Oilfield finance, eh? What company is he working for?
Yes, i have been missing a very long time. Goodness, I’m usually so busy with baby I can’t even find time to download his photos from our camera and email them to both sets of grandparents. Hope to update my sites very soon.
4knicq September 6th, 2005 at 7:11 pm
Oh, he’s back, is he? Guess I can stop calling out his name in the lobby of Emirates Towers now…
Given the sizeable Egyptian contingent in the UAE expat community, it is easy to see how all flights to UAE would have been booked…people returning from vacations at the start of schools…
The Gulzar brothers, Salman and Osman, were both in Fash’s batch. Do you remember that “Crossfire” thingy where Sohail and I had gone head to head on whether women should work or not, and where I had made you stand up from the audience and share youer point of view from Sultana’s class? (I do remember giving you a great introduction, almost mentioned each of your scholarships separately I did)…Crossfire was a forum Salman Gulzar had started, and he used to moderate it along with Rana Rizwan.
He was also one of the comperes at the Avari function, when I had paired off Madi with you know who…
Even if that does not ring a bell, there’s the small matter of him being the topper in the 18th batch.
Given that he is also a chance visitor to knicqland, perhaps he can introduce himself a little here…
He is with Standard Chartered Qatar.
Our love to the baby…has he started attempting sucking his toes already? Or do they do that at six months? I forget…
Looking forward to those long, and I mean looong over due updates.
5knicq September 6th, 2005 at 7:50 pm
…and hey you must find us all at Orkut…I got out group together….
6Abez September 7th, 2005 at 5:42 pm
I hear you Bhai, the rent is ridiculous, and it’s all artificial inflation. No lack of space at all here, just lack of sense. I wonder how much greater a percentage of their lives UAE residents spend in traffic as compared to the people in those other US and Canadian cities (where it’s cheaper to rent apparently). I wonder if we can sue for damages, do you think they would pay us back in lost time?
7Fariha September 12th, 2005 at 1:19 am
I believe i need an invitation from a member to join… unless I’m missing something. Send me a link.
8knicq September 12th, 2005 at 2:54 pm
Li’ Baji: No lack of space…is a euphemism. To see what I mean just take a look at the aerial shot of the city that came as the property developer’s ad this morning with EVERY newspaper!
Fariha: Invitation sent your way madame…ssfara account.
9BaptizedLucifer September 14th, 2005 at 6:31 pm
sigh. u speak my mind. and that of almost everyday person who’s live din the uae long enuf to know how illogical some things are here. all the signs point towards a failing economy. the govt doesnt want to step in. everyoen knows about the cheap material being used for contruction. the new residential areas… dont have hospitals, police stations or fire stations! oh wait, thats coz we have a sepearet block of the health park! yeay! will we have a separate fire and security park too? idiots.
anyone who’s visited shj would know what crappy town planning is.
and then come in the inter emirate rivalries.. especially dubai/shj,closing down of routes… the entire mamzar park… all done on purpose… uffffffffffffffh.. bunda in sab cheezon kay baaray main sochay to pagal ho jaey! magar… bunda jaey to jaey bhi kahan! :S
10NJ September 17th, 2005 at 1:31 pm
NJ’s blog died on 11th september 2005…
11knicq September 18th, 2005 at 3:37 pm
Bunda jaana chahey bhi to traffic main phans jayey ga…behtar yahee hai keh ghar baith ka chain ke bansee bajae, aur Bold and the Beautiful daikhey, ‘cuz that is one program as crappy as the traffic, as confused as traffic, and takes longer finishing a sequence than it takes one getting home….hence one would soon start feeling blessed getting stuck in traffic than getting struck by B&B.
NJ…sis., what is this sad news? Will CPR help? Is there anything we can do to help save such a lovely place?
12Saadat September 19th, 2005 at 12:57 pm
You’ve been tagged, Bhaijan!(Caution: it’s a silly tag! )
13Abez September 20th, 2005 at 10:21 am
Oh Bhai, read in the paper today that there won’t be another price hike in petrol, is it true? *cheers excitedly*
14knicq September 20th, 2005 at 11:00 am
Chotey Bhai: Three failed attempts to comment on your blog, and finally gave up. I have told you before your commenting system does not like me. . Thanks for tagging me. One more reason to blog now…lets see if I can do the decent blogger thing to do, and respond in good time.:)
Salamz Sis. That statement was by ADNOC if I am not wrong, and they had made this statement the last time also when Eppco/ENOC had declared they were bleeding to death because of the very low retail fuel prices. ENOC is still going on record sayig they are losing millions if not billions at the current rate.One just wonders, how is it that ENOC’s counterparts in the other 5 GCC countries survive? Why is it that they are not heard crying…yet anyway, since a precedent has been set and its only a matter of time before they too get their Governments to budge.
One hopes ADNOC’s will be heard this time.
15BaptizedLucifer September 20th, 2005 at 3:16 pm
u watch BnB? LOL! I used to watch that when i was a kid, on 33. the last i remm is when brooke logan took over the company. i saw a glimpse of it a while back, and i stopped to watch.. funny how characters can grow on to u, felt as if i knew that “family”…. wanted ot know whats going on with em… hahaha too many new faces… khair i changed the channel in less than a minute.
ADNOC.. yeah it was them.. besides. abu dhabi’s rates have been lower. are they really losing in billions when they are exporting so much? what with all the tension in the middle east its the oil walay who are benifitting the most.. of course there are also the contruction walay eating away money
16Saadie September 26th, 2005 at 5:47 pm
:) good to find a fellow blogger from UAE and thats thanks to moiz or ziom as u may call him. and yea so true about this frustration, though I am in Al-Ain and traffic has no issues here, but I wasnt planing to stay here for a longer period and yea good to c we got some mutual blogging friends.
17knicq September 29th, 2005 at 8:51 am
Apologies to Baptized Lucifer and Saadie both for the delay in responding…and in the latter case accepting the comment.
Just not been around in blogistan (read connected world) for sometime.
Of course I do NOT watch BnB. I stopped right after I got e-vision. Prior to that I had no option…what with having just the one channel, and nothing else to do while waiting for the sitcom that followed BnB everyday…p.s. you can miss out on a year or two of episodes, and completely understand what’s going on as soon as you tune in….actually in a year or two, there’s actually an outisde chance that at leats one of the conversation that started when you stopped is over!
They are losing billions in unearned income…opportunity cost of selling it lower than they can.
Saadie: Another Al-Aini blogger eh? Wonderful. Thanks for stopping by..do keep visiting.
Whatever happened to our friend Moiz?
18Saadie September 29th, 2005 at 4:23 pm
Its ok dude and will keep visiting , moiz well he is not any more on blogy world but do visits connected world at times. anyhow “another al-aini” blogger ok who else is there, glad to know that .
19knicq October 1st, 2005 at 8:15 pm
Oh, did you never hear of www.karrvakarela.blogspot.com?
NJ, and now Moiz, why are people leaving blogistan? …and why aren’t certain others not updating as often as they would like to…?
20ayan October 3rd, 2005 at 7:23 pm
mm - personally I feel it is better to keep the land as is than to develop it to an unrecognizable extent. Plus im not sure how much the cost of developing sand is or anything, but I feel it would be a nightmare. Is there a rail system in UAE? I am assuming there is some type of subway - is there a legislature? Maybe they can reduce traffic by reducing parking availability. Just my two rupees
21knicq October 3rd, 2005 at 8:47 pm
Ayan, I see completely where you are coming from…unfortunately the developed land in this country, and it is but a small fraction of the total land, is not enough to house the population of this country…
Accomodating these people is however not a priority, and that is what my complaint is. Fleecing those that can be fleeced is quickly becoming the only priority.
The cost of developing sand would be high but would hardly compare with the cost of reclaiming land miles into the ocean…not to mention the fact that it would be a much less ecological disaster than those “palms” and “pearls” are.
There will be a metro/rail service in the UAE in the next couple of years, and your other assumption is false. There is however a legislature that suits the country just fine.
Oh, parking space is a luxury only a blessed few enjoy…the rest have mastered the art of converting saloon cars into 4WDs so they can park in empty plots, and sandy patches where available. Others pay by the hour.
Reducing parking space would help where people once discouraged by lack of parking space would choose other forms of commuting over driving themselves…but there are no other forms of commuting, save walking/cycling, and commute all must.
If anything now we the UAE wallahs have more than one topic for ice breaking purposes - after the traditional soaring ‘heat”, now we have soaring rents, traffic jams, parking scams, and last but not the least schooling expenses of the kids.
The writing is on the wall…and it is a misra by Iqbal:
Hai jurm-e-zaeefi kee saza marg-e-mafajaat.
The punishment for the crime that weakness is, is death.
22A October 4th, 2005 at 4:23 pm
Ramadhan Mubarak!Love to me darlings.

August - The Month

2006-01-26T01:55:00.000+04:00

I had planned to update on August 14th. It was to be a heartfelt post which would have explored my relationship with my motherland, my love for the green flag, given that I am one, the perspective of an Azad Kashmiri as a Proud Pakistani. However, work happened.

Actually, the day did not start that great, with I getting into a nasty tiff with my boss in the early hours of the day over some trivial stuff, like me not making my targets. It got better eventually though. The highlight of the day was the new radio station 104.4 Awaz, which played some of the best national/patriotic songs on the day. Their playlist included such classics as Tera Pakistan hai, yeh mera Pakistan hai, Is parcham ke sayey tale, the ever green Ae Watan, Pak Watan which has also been the soundtrack of my blog for the longest time, the more recent hits like Ae Jawan, Jazba-e-Junoon, and of course the second National Anthem of the country Dil Dil Pakistan.

I kept my tradition of buying sweets for all the office on the day, and not just any mackintoshi/galaxyic sweets, but authentic Pakistani sweets from Nirala. I was pleasantly surprised though when I found them to be almost sold out at around noon, when I had gone there to pick up a tray of habshi halwa. I had to settle for ladoo motichoor, which no-body had bought but which turned out to be a great choice in the end, since the awam at office devoured them like anything. They showered such praise on them that even a strictly non-ludoo eater like me had to try one, and then some. Hats off to Nirala!

The next day, I happened to saunter into HPN’s office after my day’s work, and we got around to talking about how I could club my posts under pertinent heads, and the ever-enthusiastic, techy-to-the-core, and hyper-enthusiastic-about-all-things-techy HPN ended up getting me a domain, and putting up this lovely lay-out for me. Fact is this place would have looked a lot more interesting, and would have been loads more informative and user friendly (user being me) had it not been for my constant suggestions to the contrary. Kudos to HPN for maintaining a civil and non-violent disposition through-out his ordeal, and props to him for getting it to look like it does despite me. His wife, Lil-Baji, had it easier when she had constructed the lovely and genuinely “me” lay-out for my blog almost a year ago - she did not have me around to find her way around. Subhan-Allah and Alhamdu Lillah for lovely and loving (read restrained and patient) friends.

August 17 is a sobering day every year, and has been so for half a decade now. This was the day five years ago when wifey had actually followed through on her “yes”; and when her parents had actually allowed us to drive away into the horizon in the back seat of a” just-married” car. It was a humbling day too this year, as wifey went ahead and added on to her list of achievements on this day when she got her “Valid UAE Driving License” in her first attempt. For those not residing in this country, allow me to elaborate so that the importance and gravity of this development can be better grasped.

UAE is a country with not much of a public transport system, the state of Dubai being essentially the only state out of the seven with any semblance of a transport system. Fuel is cheap, and so are automobiles. Cabs/Taxis are prohibitively expensive, or are driven by obnoxiously ill-mannered cabbies. The weather is not conducive to walking to any place. To top it all, driving without a license is a criminal offense, as it is in most countries, and the penalties can include hefty fines, and/or deportation for the offenders. (One needs to remember that almost 90% of the country is inhabited by expatriates, let me correct that, almost 90% of the population is comprised of expatriates inhabiting some 25% of the country. Deportation, therefore, is the scariest and hence the most effective penalty in the department of justice’s quiver.) All these factors make the need for what is normally called a “Valid UAE Driving License” most pressing, and the fact that getting one quickly is notoriously impossible gives people like yours truly, who got his in his second attempt, reason to boast about belonging to a superior race. It was a humbling moment. She is the second person and the only lady I know who got her license in her first attempt, and my only wife to do so. I have one - for the record.

Empirical data suggests that August 17th is a good day for my wife. She got me on this day, and she got her V.U.A.E.D.L on the day - both in first attempt. A colleague of mine, one I compete with every day for the elusive corniest-person-alive spot, cornily suggested that perhaps her getting the license in her first attempt on this day was divine compensation for ending up with me on this day. He is unmarried, so far, what does he know? Plus he is only the smartest person in the office, and a very very good friend with an excellent sense of humor, in that he gets my jokes and I do his - really cannot take such people’s comments at face-value.

August is also the month after which I will be left with just four months to deliver my targets, which means I will need to pull my socks up, start working late, and continue braving the heat - which by the way has hovered around 46-48 degrees but has been reported at 42-43 degrees celsius officially, but more about that, if at all, later.
Here is signing off for August - tentatively.

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9 Responses to 'August - the month.'

1Saeed August 27th, 2005 at 6:53 am
another new hindi/urdu fm??theres 106.2,89.1,(atleast 1 more i cant place) & now 1 more?Mabrook for the driver’s licence!lol @ both at first attempt & divine compensation!

2KNICQ August 27th, 2005 at 12:19 pm
Yeah, you would be surprised at the rate at which new fm stations are surfacing here. The one you could not remember is 101.6 City fm better than either 106.2 Hum fm or 89.1. The new one is distinctively Urdu, which sort of balances out 89.1 which is often distinctively Hindi, and quite often unkind to Pakistan because it borows its news and views from Zee TV.
101.6 was the happeneing channel because of its more balanced approach, though it has less Urdu than Hindi, and smart and less irritating RJs. 106.2 despite the very irritating RJs is still a preset because it is still the only channel that airs the Adhaan/Azan in this Muslim country.
The new channel despite having a complete Pakistani team does not air Azaan. Pity.

3Shirazi August 27th, 2005 at 8:03 pm
Wish to learn more of your prospective on different issues. I am tuned to you!

4doshes August 28th, 2005 at 1:11 pm
congrats on the new start..of yet another year of both the journeys…hurray for the first time achievers…

5KNICQ August 28th, 2005 at 3:53 pm
Shirazi: Thanks for tuning in bro….JB says I don’t have much of a perspective….hope you can convince him otherwise.
Doshes: Thanks for stopping by. Do keep visiting.

6Abez August 28th, 2005 at 4:10 pm
Laddoo Motichoor??! My father adores Laddoo Motichoor, and he refers to them as legendary and beautiful creatures that exist somewhere between imagination and bliss. Incidentally, I’ve never had one, and I’m wondering why if they’re so great, how come they were the only thing left at the store? Hmm. Btw, I actually had an excellent time at the YPPF dinner, though for all the wrong reasons apparently, hehe

7KNICQ August 31st, 2005 at 3:06 pm
Li’l Baji,
I think I should bring you Ladoo Motichoor the next time around…your hubby dearest has brought me that Ajmani Jalebi I love so much so many times, and it is only fair that I return the favor. Lets then leave it for you to place it where you wish to place it on the delicio-meter.
There were so many of them left at the store, because they are apparently an acquired taste amongst the Desi-mithai fanatics.
So, you didn’t like the food, were irritated no-end by JB’s sugar-high induced antics, and loved every minute of those glittering tributes everyone was giving everyone, eh?

8Anjum September 1st, 2005 at 12:23 am
great update knicq - as if we were sitting down and chatting about your last few weeks. i like your (corny ) style (”Plus he is only the smartest person in the office, and a very very good friend with an excellent sense of humor, in that he gets my jokes and I do his - really cannot take such people’s comments at face-value.”)
congrats to your wife, and masha’Allah to her for getting it on the first shot.

9knicq September 3rd, 2005 at 11:31 am
Thanks Anjum for your kind words. It was easier writing two lines about this and three about that, and present it all as an excuse for an update, than it would have been to put up an actual update…:)
About wifey getting it in the first attempt, I have theories of my own, but she says I am just plain jealous….which is not entirely correct, since I had got mine in the second attempt but five years before she did…why would I be jealous eh?

Moving on...

2005-08-19T18:14:00.000+04:00

Well, folks, fact is I have been up to something, not sure if it is something that falls under the 'no-good' category....how 'bout you tell me about it?

Here is what I have been up to (With tons, oodles, and dozens of help from Waleed...)

It has been a wonderful year at blogspot, and it is quite likely that blogspot might continue to mirror knicqisms.

It was a year ago when AWk had initiated me into blogistan. Lil Baji Abez had done a stupendous job on the current layout, and it seems only fitting that her hubby should put up the new place for me. Thank God for the wonderful gifts these great friends are, may Allah reward them manifold for their generosity, love, and friendship.

I must be the only one in blogistan rambling on and on when moving on to a new place...just goes on to show how attached I tend to get to my things.

News brews tonight

2005-08-18T00:46:00.000+04:00

(i'm not supposed to tell but i'll tell you that he's up to something, that no good pumpkin discriminating blue hating rapscallion. -yours twuly, waleed)

Yaum-e-Qayam-e-Pakistan.

2005-08-14T10:09:00.000+04:00

Of decisions, eggs, and soap bars!

2005-08-08T02:00:00.000+04:00

Some decisions one takes come back to haunt one; others start the haunting from day one.

The more I take stock of the decisions I have taken in my life, the more convinced I am of my extraordinary ability to push through with decisions against my better judgement; that is decisions taken by me against my better judgement, and pushed ahead with, yes! you guessed it, against my better judgement.

This is not to admit, however that I have mostly taken wrong decisions in my life. It just implies that my better judgement is not always the best judgement. It must rank amongst the most sophisticated and evolved defence mechanisms in the history of humans, this extraordinary attribute of mine to withstand, and often stand up to, the folly of my own under-developed intellect. Statistically, the possibilities of my choosing a potentially less hazardous of available options, while exercising my better judgement are minimal. Do not ask me "how?" I was never very good at statistics, but I have seen the term used often enough to know that whatever the possibilities be, and there are always possibilities - minimal or maximum, they are always more reliable and convincing when stated statistically.

One only has to look at the number of my friends to know that even minimal in this regard is a sizeable number.

There are other more tragic times, however, when I have taken decisions against my better judgement, and exercising all my above-mentioned talent have pushed ahead with that decision only to end up with egg in my face. This, however, proves nothing. I know perfectly well that had I taken the decision favored by my better judgement I would still have ended up with egg in my face. It just proves that there are times when there are no right decisions, and one must just wipe the egg off one's face and live with the stink until the faucets have some water to offer, and there is a bar of soap, preferably scented, handy. One must also remember that long after the soap and water have done their job, there will always be the memory of that stink, and of that icky feeling when one had hosted an egg (or two) on one's face.

Just goes on to prove that the chicken had come first. They had to; the annals of history are full of people who had ended up with egg in their face, and if so many eggs were so speedily being used up, the poor chicken would have had a tough time amasing enough numbers to help the chinese with the discovery of drum sticks. It was a survival thing for them; they had to come first.

Having said that, I am sorry for all the wrong decisions I have taken instead of taking the other wrong decisions I should have taken, and the consequent pain I have caused to people; most of all, to myself.

But hey, look at the bright side - the water bills are high, and the soap factories are doing roaring business!

Breaking News...

2005-08-07T22:42:00.000+04:00

We interrupt the serenity of this blog for an important announcement.

JB has updated. Actually updated this time. Blogistan just got more interesting.

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!

Knicq - from another life.

2005-07-18T17:14:00.000+04:00

Long ago, JB, myself and a few other friends were part of an msn community that aspired to, and for sometime before the below messages were exchanged did, represent the community here in the UAE. Along came a few interesting characters, and started bombarding the message board with an average of three to four messages a day. The' messages' were mostly copy-paste jobs from the net, and after a while it became quite a nuisance. We, being the good samaritans that we were, decided to save the board from this carpet bombing, and tried to talk some sense into the 'message' senders, but were met with strong resistance by people whose sole claim to fame we had inadvertently jeopardized. These people were subsequently classified, officially by the knicq press, as morons. What followed was an interesting exchange of messages between the two camps, so interesting (and so much) that the board managers decided it to be too interesting and deleted the board.

I was sifting through my documents folder and found the below peice, where the moron club's representative had replied to one of my not-so-nice messages, and invited another not-so-nice messages. This post is also to help dispel the false notion that knicq is a nice guy. Mr. Moron's message is in caps, just as he had chosen to paste it, and yours truly's response is worded in lower case. Below is for entertainment purpose only.

"
Oh, oh, oh ....

The pea-brain narcissist writes. Good first attempt KUGgu. I see you are getting more and more comfortable with the vowels now. Glad to have been of help.

Going through your message I see that you have probably done the same cut-paste thingy again - only this time you went to your own old messages. Had not an iota of freshness about it. But, let us take it piece by piece. I mean it is not every day you write, it ought to be given its due attention...

HAHAHHAHAHHAHA,,

What was this? Your evil laugh?
Or a depiction of your frustartion?

Tum itna jo muskura rahey ho
Kia gham hai jis ko chupa rahey ho???

Still saddened by that overwhelming response to your appeal for matrimonial interest in you? Bone-head, people are normally embarrassed after this kind of stuff - some ghairat walas actually go commit suicide. I suggest you try the route - you will be at peace underground.

BK AND KNICQ

FRANKLY SPEAKIN I WONT CALL U NAMES LIKE A CRYING KID .I AM WAY AHEAD OF YOU .

Crying kids do not call names you nincompoop. Irritated adults do.
You are way ahead of us, whoever could doubt that you moron. Haven't we all admitted you are the founder of the moron culture? You have been promoting it - for crying out loud. You converted me! Of course, you are ahead of us.

BUT I WOULD LIKE TO THANK YOU FOR AMUZING US ON THE BOARDS AND SHOWING THE DEAR READERS WHAT YOU ARE ALL ABOUT.

Is this the best you could manage pea-brain? Showing people we are about what? But then I do not expect you to know the answer to that one - when was the last time you were not ambiguous?

STILL AFTER ALL THIS I M ASKING YOU TO DIVERT YOUR ENERGY ON SOME THING PRODUCTIVE ,WHAT EVER YOU FEEL IS WRITE AND GOOD.INSTEAD OF ALL THIS.

Well, thanks for asking Kuggu. I think this is productive. It introduced a smug, ignorant, vowelically challenged nincompoop like you to vowels didn't it? What could be more productive? Copy-Paste disoriented data day-in day-out, or write constipated philosophy in language that has people wondering if they are dyslexic?

A VENDATA AGAINST ME DOESNT GET YOU ANY WHERE ,YOU HAVE TRIED IT SO MANY TIMES IT DOESNT WORK SO LEAVE IT.

Haven't you realized so far, you moron. It is not about you. It is about what you subject this board to. Do you even know what Vendetta means? I have given you the right spelling, go check the dictionary. You will find, to your horror, that it is something you are not worthy of. Unless, of course your narcissist traits lead you to flatter yourself.

We are trying to get you to leave the board free for some meaningful messages too. We know it hasn't worked in the past, or you wouldn't be making a further fool of yourself, would you now?

DO SOME THING GOOD AND CONTRIBUTE .DONT SET SUCH AN EXAMPLE.I BELIEVE YOU CAN DO BETTER THEN ALL THIS.

Thank you for your belief. You ought to believe in us, after all we taught you the vowels!

READERS ARE GETTING FRUSTURATED.THIS IS THE REASON Y READERS DONT WANT TO WRITE OR CONTRIBUTE THEY LOOSE TRUST AND HOPE AND THEN THEY DONT WANT TO CONTRIBUTE OR BE A PART OF THIS COMMUNITY.

KUG - now do this slowly. Stand up, wear your shoes, come out on the road, start jogging, work up a frenzy - and then shout: EUREKA!!! Repeat until you fall dead, or get arrested.

Yes Moron, Yes! This is what I have been trying to help you figure out. I could not have said it better myself. (On second though, I very much could have). Take a look at your threads, and see how many people actually care to even respond to those. You will find, again to your utter horror, that the above applies to you, and only to you.

IF ITS ABOUT WINNING AND LOOSING AND TO LOOK GOOD. YOU WANT TO SHOW YOU ARE ABOVE ALL OF US IN YOUR SKILLS OF WRITING AND READING .BY DEGRADING OTHER PEOPLES EFFORTS.GHALT BAAT HAI AISA NAHI KAR NA CHAHIYA.

Tsk. Tsk. (Shakes Head). Abey baghlol ghalAt hota hai, ghalt nahin. Duniya kee koi zubaan tumhen saheeh bhi aati hai?

Other people's efforts? I am presuming you are referring to your senseless and frantic copy-pastes here. How many times have I ever copy-pasted meaningless data on the board? If anything, you cannot accuse me of lacking clarity of purpose like yourself. So, how does that pit you against me? How does it become about winning and losing? Will you just stop flattering yourself you pea-brain narcissist! How long before you snap out of this self-hypnosis???

MAKKI,RAJA JALAP,SUHAIF,BABER BHAI.GUYS PLEASE DONT REPLY TO WHT EVR (there go the poor vowels again - could only sustain it this lonig eh?) THEY HAVE TO SAY .ITS ALL POINT LESS.STILL IF THEY FEEL THEY ARE DOING SOME THING PRODUCTIVE BY DOING ALL THIS ,LET THEM.

For your kind information, I do feel I am doing something really productive here. I am getting you to shut up. And you think, if you or any of the people you mentioned did not "let us", we the lesser morons would not do what we deem productive.
You have got away with stuff that was absolutely useless, and that too 222 times - I made an arithmetic error the last time I counted your copy-paste score - Perhaps I just could not bring myself to believe that the nice people on this forum have put up with your crap for that long.
Has that number gone to your head? You actually think it depends in any way on whether you let or not let people send a message?

THANK YOU.

You are welcome."

Differentiating Jalali Baba and Coori....

2005-07-09T04:41:00.000+04:00

I am starting out with the explicit intention of putting up a serious update today, and by serious I do not mean the "serious" damage that da Momma and the daughterly duo promise to do to their food, before they nibble a little at the food and begin congratulating each other on a job well done; I mean SERIOUS serious. Having been out of action, and hence out of practice for about a week less than a month, I am faced with the enviable dilemma of too many topics to blog about, and I intend on making the most of this dilemma.

Jalali Baba has been in Karachi for some three weeks now, which means I can actually blog about that gentleman he had met recently, one who had stated, drawing on his excellence in a pertinent area of expertise, that Jalali Baba was borderline psychotic, and something else equally disconcerting. I can blog about this gentleman, and support his deduction with observations and experiences of my own - in addition to those I have already blogged about, and not get an abusive call, or a not-such-a-surprise visit from Jalali Baba. Yes sir, that would make for an excellent and risk free update.

Or I could blog about Coori and the detergent episode, which is something I have been promising to blog about for ages. Oh, and for a couple of people who have at different times implied that Coori and Jalali Baba are one and the same person, I would like to make this very public clarification that the two are poles apart. It is just my luck that I am stuck with psychotic people for friends.

For instance, Coori would not know the first thing about Yousufi, unless of course you told him that Yousufi is actually a pathan of Yousufzai clan, at which time he could delve into the trove of historical facts about pathans that he carries in his grey matter and surface with a few interesting ones to share with the ignorant non pathan mortals. Jalali Baba on the other hand could easily be mistaken for a scholar when it comes to Yousufi. That alone sets the two apart.

That and the fact that Jalali Baba has enviable command over Urdu, which is more than can be said about Coori. Coori on the other hand speaks impeccable Pushto. Of course one might be forgiven for doubting the technical accuracy of the terms "enviable command" as well as "impeccable" , since the two are relative to your humble servant's understanding of the two languages, which can, at best, be described as moderate and negligible respectively for Urdu and Pushto. By negligible, I mean I know the meaning of sange, jodey, Khudae pamaan, ywa, dwa, dre and rasha. Though I must admit I am not completely sure if 'Rasha' means come or go. Under such circumstances, if one were to accuse me of exaggerating my understanding of Pushto, a language whose evolution can be traced back a few millennia and which is the pride of a proud and brave people, I would not exactly sue one for libel or slander.

Sure, Coori and Jalali Baba have their similarities. There must be some commonalities between people who befriend a bore, and I insist on this spelling, and continue to count the imbecile amongst their friends even after they know him as well as they do. They are not the same person though. Let us not forget also that we are looking at the two through the myopic viewpoint of one person, who is probably incapable to recognize and admire the other features that are peculiar to each of them and which set the two apart.

Actually that sounds like an idea. Why don't we try and figure out the other differences in these two dynamic personalities today? Where does one start from...? Appearance? Makes sense. They do look different, as must most people who are not one and the same person. They both have had something to do with beards, as I have explained in my earlier posts. Jalali Baba's beard, when he has one, is more a testimony to his lethargy than a concious religious choice, or a fashion statement. At some point it was also a fashion statement, a statement of bad fashion that is - we are talking about times when having a large beard, with "tao-able" moustache was considored fashionable. Tragic as it might seem the fashion had originated in the jungles of interior Sindh and interior Punjab, where docaits often supported such beards. The point in either case, the case of the fashion freaks and the case of the jungle freaks, was presenting a belligerant image. In Jalali Baba's case, it went well with his image of no-nonsense, demented, and cruel brilliant professor, an image that was the key to discipline in his class rooms.

Coori's beard was a matter of religious choice. He loved his beard dearly, and swore by it. It looked good on him too, but we did not know that until much later when we received his pictures without it from Canada. For as long as I saw him in person, I saw him with the beard. I am not sure if he grew one again, I saw him last some six years ago, and even if he did grow one, I doubt if it would have looked as lovely as it used to then. The 'maiden' beard, a prerogative of only those people whose faces have never known the touch of blade or aftershave, has a nobility about it that does not come easy to the beard that grows in tilled land. It is much like comparing the majestic beauty of the woods with the more controlled look of a field. Coori's beard was also a more permanent feature of his personality, unlike in the case of Jalali Baba where it comes and goes, at times leaving a silly, over-sized moustache behind.

Another point of difference is their interest, or lack thereof, in sports. Jalali Baba cannot be bothered with cricket, while Coori cannot be bothered with people who cannot be bothered with cricket. Jalali Baba is an IT professional, which he insists is an accusation because he calls himself a networking professional. As far as a non-techy, computer-wary person like me is concerned they are all IT people. Besides, if you cannot call Jalali Baba an information technology person who can you call an information technology person? I mean, the man is nothing but full of a little information about so many things, and the perfection with which he uses that little information about everything to disparage, denigrate, belittle, malign, and generally discredit me is nothing short of technology.

Coori, on the other hand, is an MBA, with majors in Marketing, Finance, Management, and whatever else they allowed him to major in. The one thing I am sure he did not major in was MIS. He shares my dread of, and hence the disdain for all pc-induced and Bill Gates-inspired specializations.

Coori was an accomplished cook eight years ago. He made tomato salan. Jalali Baba had his first cooking ordeal less than a week before he departed for Pakistan last month. The historic incident owed its occurrence to the fact that his wife and kids had left for Pakistan a couple of weeks ahead of him, and Bhabi had left him a few recipes to help him get oriented in the culinary domain. Since he was going to be cooking for just himself, she had left recipes for small portions that would last him a day or so, so that he did not just cook a cauldron of something and make himself sick eating stale food day after day.

Someone whose favorite movies invariably include a military angle, and someone who has always conducted himself as a psuedo commando, can be relied upon to do that kind of thing. He subscribes to the ridiculous school of militarist (read drill-masterist) masculinity where exercising caution in matters of physical well-being is often brushed aside as feminine, or worse still, civilian luxury. The only way to toughening oneself is through rigorous self-torture, and through subjecting oneself to the harshest conditions.

She need not have bothered though. Jalali Baba did not need food for the first three days. He had his first box of Pringles, and a dozen cartons of Marlboro to convert into ash. He had no time to eat. In her blissful absence, he could go about smoking to his heart's content and consternation in every nook and corner of the house. I have visions of him smoking freely in the kitchen, in the bathrooms, sitting at the dining table, in the sofas, in the closet, under the table, behind the lamp, in front of the lamp, standing at the dining table, on the sofas, in the closet as well as on the closet, on the table, behind the lamp, in front of the lamp, lying on the bed, under the bed, beside the bed, behind the bed, in front of the bed, and while hanging from the ceiling fans or out of the balcony.

I have these visions because I know he smokes as many cigarettes as he can before the Ramadan fast since he will not be smoking through the day. Knowing him he probably feels the need to smoke in all the places and in all the postures mentioned above because he knows he will not be able to smoke inside the house, and if Bhabi can help it, outside the house, once she is back. It was probably one of his secret fantasies to be able to smoke in the various parts of his home.

Anyhow, once he had made up for his domestic nicotine deficiency, and in the process made himself sick, he could not make use of those recipes for the next few days precisely because he was sick. He has a bad throat fortnightly, and each time he goes to his doctor the doctor tells him to quit smoking. He had a very bad throat and a very bad stomach this time. When I confronted him about the bad throat and clarified to him that the doctor's repeated advice implied that his smoking ways were to blame for his recurring throat infection, he brushed me aside saying the doctor just found in his infections an excuse to pursue his own sinister anti-smoking agenda. He said it in such a pitiable tone that for a while I sympathized with him and wanted to sue the doctor for malpractice.

AA, being a doctor, got to speak to him and suggested that bananas might help with his stomach problems. Jalali Baba called a few hours later to complain that he was going bananas with bananas. Apparently he had taken the doctor's advice on the stomach matter, and brought himself a dozen or so bananas. He ate a couple, and then ate the rest, because otherwise they would have gone bad, and in case he had eaten something else his stomach would have got worse. AA had to tell him to get off the bananas.

He did a similar thing with cooking when he got down to it finally. The incident is best narrated the way it unfolded in front of us. On a Friday afternoon, we got a call from Jalali Baba saying he had started experimenting with the recipes bhabi had left him, but was not sure all was going great. Wifey and I set out to help him, and asked him what the problem seemed to be. Apparently, he had had the meat and the water on the stove for quite sometime but the water was showing no sign of drying up in accordance with the prediction of the recipe. After a few straightforward questions, it was determined that there was too much water in the cooking pot. He would have no part of that deduction.

Instead he maintained that his measurements were mathematical and accurate. However, since we know him too well now, we pretty much suspected that the problem had to be with the mathematical calculations, so we asked him to elaborate on the matter. Turns out Bhabi had left him a recipe for four pieces of meat, but since he was going to be traveling to Pakistan in the next couple of days, he figured he could not leave any meat in the refrigerator, so he decided to cook all of it, which was numerically much more than just four pieces. As you might have guessed by now, he ended up increasing the amount of water in proportion to the increase in number of pieces. What he got as a result was a pot full of water that would take forever to evaporate. We helped him rectify the situation.

I called him an hour later to inquire what his first self-prepared lunch had been like, and was surprised when he told me he had still not had any lunch. Here is what had happened: after he had brought the water down to a more reasonable level, he had left it to cook, and gone to read a book. Half an hour later, when he had gone back to check on it, he had found the water to be almost at the same level as before. Now one has heard of stubborn beef, mutton or beans that refuse to yield to cooking attempts, but water???

He had been able to figure this one out by himself though. He had run out of gas, and that too some time soon after he had taken the water out of the pot, where soon after may be used interchangeably with immediately. He was, at the time, waiting for the gas cylinder people to arrive. I implored him to order take out, but he refused to budge and said he would eat what he had put in so much effort in. Eventually he did eat it, and as was to be expected discovered that he could actually cook better than most people who had ever cooked anything. It was Owlie, I think, who had remarked that somehow when men cook for the first time they impress themselves more than anyone else they have impressed, if at all, with their cooking.

Like I said, Coori used to make excellent Tomato Salan eight years ago.

Jalali Baba comes from Karachi, his parents came from East Pakistan after it became Bangladesh, and their parents had migrated from Bihar, India when Pakistan was created. Coori and his ancestors are rooted in Mardan, unless I am making a mistake here and it was actually Lala's family which was rooted in Mardan and Coori's had come from Persia or Afghanistan.

The similarity of course is that Jalali Baba loves Pakistan and everything Pakistani dearly because two of his previous generations have braved horrors of war and migration just so they can be in a country of their own and call themselves Pakistanis. Coori loves Pakistan and all things Pakistani dearly because it is the country he and his ancestors have always known as their own. I love them both dearly.

Disdain/Respect

2005-06-16T15:48:00.000+04:00

I have often wondered if this blog would have been the same without Jalali Baba. He has been the inspiration for no less than three updates, and his twisted logic has found its way in every alternate update if not in every update. The unhealthy mix of absolute disdain (his for me) and minimal respect (mine for him) that characterizes our friendship is so tangible, it would find its place under fixed assets on a balance sheet, were it not so omnipresent on this blog.

Its worth brooding over then, if this blog would have been the same without him around. What has been the world's greatest mystery, ever since Jalali Baba got himself a blog, is the million dollar question, " What will Jalali Baba write about, if ever he decides to update?"

It has been a KPI (Kep Performance Indicator) of mine to elicit an update out of Jalali Baba. My attempts in this regard have gone from suggesting, asking, threatening, ordering, requesting, cajoling, imploring, begging, and pleading to tagging him.

Well, the question has been answered, the mystery unravelled... Jalali Baba has updated in his own distinctive, twisted style.

Thank you Jalalio... *wipes 'tears of happiness'*

Tagging Wagging, II.

2005-06-12T21:45:00.000+04:00

So, we had this sales training today, and guess who was the charismatic management guru dispensing pearls of wisdom to a room full of three trainees? Frankly, I could have done a lot better, if only I had dedicated more than four hours to preparing for the first ever sales training I was to conduct!

Its been like that with me for as long as I can recall. Actually, sitting through the late hours of the night yesterday, poring over all that reference material, I was transported by the nostalgic tunes, which started emanating from the stapler, to a world I had thought I had left far far behind. A world where Madi and I used to wait until the eleventh hour before we would get started with the task at hand, which could be an exam in less than 10 hours, or a presentation in 10 hours, or an assignment due in 8 hours. Getting started, however, was a ritual. It included going down in Lahore's kadaake-ki-sardi winter to Barkat Market, picking up "Jolt Cola", and a few snacks to go with it, and getting back in an hour's time.

Barkat Market was not more than a kilometer away though. What took us that long was the irritating tendency of the Barkat Market walas not to stock up on "Jolt Cola". "Jolt Cola" earned the inverted commas during one of our quests to locate a 1 litre bottle of the drink. Madi had, on that day, decided to quit Coke and Pepsi both. His reason was simple. Our sole hope against the rising corporate dominance on our lives lay in supporting the smaller corporations, which had not yet attained growth of conglomerate proportions. Once the biggies had been driven out of business, and new conglomerates established on the back of our unwavering support, we could support a newbie to dilute the conglomerate influence of the new biggies. This, he said, established corporate harmony with the world, where constant replacement is the name of the game.

My objection lacked conviction as well as logic, "But, no one drinks Jolt Cola."
Madi made what seemed quite a valid point, "Do not start your sentences with 'But', and if no-one drinks Jolt Cola, how come they are all out of Jolt Cola?"

I was jolted into reality. In an instance, he was able to demonstrate to me, with empirical data on his side, that the whole city was in it with him, in his drive to send Coke and Pepsi packing.

We continued with our quest for "Jolt Cola", and find it we did. While the discovery in itself was close to nothing out of the ordinary, because if you look for something for long enough and hard enough, you do eventually find it; what was extraordinary was the exclamation that Madi uttered, rather more audibly than necessary, upon seeing crates and crates of Jolt Cola in a bakery,"Jolt Cola!!!Yahee to hai jis ki mujhey talaash thee!". Saying so, he grabbed one of the 1 litre bottles lovingly, and turned to face what can only be called collective amazement, and what I perceived as utter disdain, in the bakery. Being the perfectly logical people that we were, we decided "Jolt Cola" could never be seen without the inverted commas. We are still trying to figure the logic out.

When it was not "Jolt Cola", it was something else that stole an hour of our precious time right from under our noses. We would get back, and work diligently towards establishing an ambience conducive to us studying, which included opening our books at the right pages, getting the notes from classroom lectures in chronological order, and our ball point pens ready to roll. Half an hour later, when the ambience had been created to perfection, we would decide we deserved a breather, and one of us, yours truly most often, would doze off.

An hour later, the other would wake the sleeping study partner (SP1) up, who would then go brush his teeth, and wash his face, just so there was no chance of any of that neend sheend coming back to threaten his GPA. He would come back to the room to find the hitherto waking study partner (SP2) sleeping, with a hand written page containing ten points summarizing half the project/presentation/assignment.

SP1 would then get down to business, gulp down a couple of glasses of "Jolt Cola", go through the ten points, complete the ten points on the rest of the project/assignement, and wake SP2 up, just before dozing off. SP1 would then go brush his teeth, wash his face, lest he get sleepy again, and go through the ten points left for him. By this time, it would be an hour or two to go, so he would wind the clocks up, leave instructions for the household to wake us up (as a back-up plan), and go to sleep.

Oh, and if it were a presentation we were working on, we would be joined by NAB, also known as SP3. SP3 was good with powerpoint, so he would make the presentation, Madi would do the typing, formatting, and subsequent to my editing, printing. Because SP3's services were often not required till early morning, he could be allowed to sleep till three in the morning. It worked so well for us, we managed to score well on each one of our projects/assignments without so much as lifting a finger prior that one long night.

So much so, when for our Strategic Management course, where we were all in groups of six and seven, we managed to employ this division of labour and nocturnal bliss strategy and score an A. This despite the fact that at three in the morning, when the case study had been finalized and slides prepared, Felicity had called in to say she had reservations about our assumptions on that case study. With the very premise of our solution thrown in doubt by the most intelligent person in the group, we set about discussing the case once again, and came out with a totally new solution to the problem. Yet, we were able to catch up on our sleep, prepare new slides, print the report, submit it on time, and score an A.

Yesterday, as I sat here in my chair, trying to figure out how to pack three books worth of information in a two hour presentation, and then make powerpoint slides too, I was reminded of my amazing and wonderful friends. I got the data right, and managed to scrap by with a semblance of a presentation too, but I hardly slept at all, and there were no slides.

Anyhow thats done, and the next session is scheduled for Thursday, so if any of you guys pass by the Shaikh Zayed Road at four in the morning of that day, and see an almost bald, almost fat guy squinting at his monitor, you can wave. I will wave back.

Since it does not look like I will be getting around to responding to AA and Yasmine's tag any time soon, I think I should take this opportunity to complete this task here too. After all this has been due since March 30-31, 2005.

This tagging was done with the false assumption that I am a voracious reader, while it has been months since I finished a book I had started in the same month. Here goes:

You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?

Luckily, by the time I have got to responding to the tag, this question has been much clarified. I have not read many books, which has served to keep the number of books I did not like to a minimum. There was a book in Urdu I had read in my school days, thinking it to be a book of knowledge on the history of Prophets. It was called Qisas-ul-Anbiyaa (Stories of the Prophets, though I have seen a wonderful, wonderful book by the English title). It has to rank amongst the most offensive books I have ever read. The book aspires to dramatize the Prophets' lives, and in doing so, often borrows from 'fsanwi" themes and settings. Many an account has been embellished with stories which have no authentic basis, and some of the things I remember having read in that book border on blasphemy.

If I were stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, the one book I would want to be would be "Qisas-ul-Anbiya".

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

I don't think so. I was too busy having crushes left, right and centre in real life. If ever they had an exam about crushes, I would have passed with flying colors. Then I got married, and that was the end of it all. Wives, they say, come with these inbuilt antennae that detect a crush from afar, and if you are any smarter than the next guy who got the bailna treatment, you will know not to have any crushes...not even on fictitional characters.

Frankly, I should have had a crush on almost each of Naseem Hijazi's heroines. They were these brave and proud girls, who were wise beyond their years, and rode into the enemy lines with swords strapped to their waists at some point or the other in the book. Naseem Hijazi wrote some 19 books, 15 of them historical novels covering the rise and fall of the Islamic powers from the shores of Spain to the fields of India. But, I was twelve by the time I finished the last of those books, and I was too young to be having crushes on ladies older than me.

The last book you bought is...?

The Circle of Innovation by Tom Peters. For details refer the first paragraph of this post. AA and I discovered the one second hand bookshop in Dubai, and we bought quite a few titles from there. Mine included Catcher in the Rye, Three men on a bummel, and White Fang. This in addition to a couple of titles by Wodehouse, the Yousufi of English as far as I am concerned. I am sorry, I have not had the time to even open the books, so don't even know the authors by heart - how is that for ignorance?

The last book you read?

For the umpteenth time, Khakim ba Dahan, by Mushtaq Ahmad Yousufi. This is his second book, and I had first read it way back in 1991. It was also the first book by Yousufi that I had read. I had not finished the book then. It was 'too dry' for me, when compared with Shafeeq-ur-Rehman, Karnal Mohammad Khan, and Pitras Bokhari whom I had read by then.

In 1993, when I had rediscovered Yousufi with Aab-e-gum, his third book, I had gone completely crazy. Ever since 1993, I have not been able to read much Urdu literature. Nothing seems good enough, humourous enough, tragic enough, philosophical enough and worth my time enough. In the meanwhile, I must have read his four books, Chriagh Taley (1956), Khakam ba dahan (1962), Zarguzisht (1973), and Aab-e-Gum (1987) tens of times, and still when I read these books today they leave me wiser as well as amused. Jalali Baba, I might have got the years wrong, please do not crucify me for that.

Yousufi is perhaps the only common factor between Jalali Baba and me, it was definitely the main reason we became friends.

What are you currently reading?

The Circle of Innovation, Selling the Invisible, Jerome K. Jerome's Three men on a Bummel, and Aab-e-Gum.

Five books you would take to a deserted Island.

The Holy Quran with Urdu translation, preferably by Maulana Maududi, because in a deserted island that might just be my sole survival kit, my one guard against regression, and my only beacon of hope.

Saheeh Bukhari, because my heart will long for love and passion.

Aab-e-gum, Zarguzisht, and Khakam ba dahan bound into one, because I will need to keep my wits about me.

Collected works of P. G. Wodehouse, because he is in the same league as Yousufi for me.

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, because it is my favorite book in English, and will probably be so for a long time to come, and because at a deserted island, I will have ample time to empathize with Yossarian.

... and if I am allowed a sicth book after above, my blue book of Yawariyat, for one would like to see what one had felt when one was in the company of fellow men, and compare it with feelings when one has no company.

Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons) and why?

Jalali Baba, because he is a voracious reader, and his knowledge retention capacity far surpasses that of his unholy disciple's. He is also the closest thing to photographic-memory-made-hazy-by-Marlboro Reds, I know.

Da Momma, because she along with her blog-celeb daughters has, in the past month or so, gone through more books from my humble collection than I myself have in a year's time. Wonder if this family left a book unread in Isloo.

Half Past Nomad, because he is newly married, and has a job to go back to, and will hate being tagged. Also because he is a fellow Catch-22 fan, and that alone warrants his inclusion in this list.

AWK, because she is one other voracious reader that I know personally, and because she introduced me to Karen Armstrong.

Saadat, because he has one of the most wonderful blogs ever, and because he relishes being a blog-celeb, and enjoys seeing people beg him to update, before he comes back with one of his trade-mark, lovely, insightful posts.

Sh_Guf, because she is perhaps the only person I know who is better read than Jalali Baba is in Urdu.

More than three? There are still those who are left out...

There, I have, with this rather lengthy post, paid my dues bam'aa sood, as the proverb goes.

Tagging wagging...

2005-06-08T00:53:00.000+04:00

It was almost a year ago that AWK had ushered me into blogistan. She had told me at the time that I would get addicted to blogging, she had predicted that I would enjoy my stay here, which she had said would quite likely be permanent, and she had promised that I would find many wonderful new friends. She was right on all counts, but her Nostradamic attributes are not the subject of this blog. We will come to the subject shortly, provided of course my knack for digressing does not redefine shortly once again. What AWK had not accounted for at the time was my absolute incompetence for survival in the techy world, and had it not been for sisterly duo AWK and Abez, I probably would still have been around in the blog world, but mine would have been a place a lot more boring and drab than it is today.

Despite some tutorial here and a bit of coaching there, there is a lot about the ways of blogistan that I can be amazingly ignorant about. This does not reflect, in any way, on the coaching skills of the wonderful and kind tutor I had, it just goes on to prove my incapacity for learning the simplest of things when they must be learnt through what I call the complication machine, also known as blogging medium, otherwise called The Computer. This is also my excuse, and a perfectly valid one despite what Jalali Baba might have to say, for many an act deemed uncourteous or uncouth in blogistan. Gracious fellow bloggers have, now and then, discreetly pointed out the intricacies of blogger code of conduct to me. At other times, my tube light has taken a break from its flickering, and shone bright for long enough to illuminate a point or two for me.

Having been tagged for the second time, I am begining to figure out that there is a certain etiquette about this tagging business. An etiquette that requires the taggee to respond pronto...post haste...ASAP...etc. etc. A whopping 50% of the times I have been tagged, I have not responded in time. As things stand now, I have succesfully failed to respond at all dismal 100% of the times I have been tagged. Here today, I make amends:

Moiz, thanks for tagging me. I am assuming one ought to thank the tagger, though, personally, laddy I could make you read my poetry from '94 days for doing me this good turn, just to get back at you. I notice though that you have apologised at the end which, while is a noble act warranting your getting off the hook, is also an implicit admission that the turn you have done me is not altogether noble. But then, what do I know? I am totally pathetic when it comes to the customs and traditions of blogistan.

So, you want to know what I would be, would do, or for that matter not be and do, if I could be something else than an almost bald, almost fat, almost bearded, completely bespectacled forwarding salesman, eh? Wonder why would you think that interesting! Here goes:

If I could be an Athelete:

That's a big could. Given that the only time I had any serious physical activity in the past five years, they had called it a spasm of coughing and sneezing. Oh, and lets not forget, for a few weeks I was driving a manual transmission car too, and that required a lot of pressing the clutch and changing the gears. I did play a lot of scoccer in my school days, thanks in so small measure to the courtesy of my classmates. You see, I was not the weakest link in the chain, I was the paper tape my class fellows had courteously, albiet begrudgingly, used to tape the chain. Fortunately for me, the Soccer playing talent in our class fell one short of a full team, and I was the last resort option everyone would rather do without.

My absolute lack of talent did wonders for the new comers. The soccer team was desperate to rid their team of the edge other teams had on them, and any new comer willing to take the field with the team could help them consign me to the bench. I think the zest and zeal with which they approached the new comers scared the poor chaps away - after all, who goes about offering a place in the class soccer team armed with chocolates, cold drinks, and promises of more goodies and instant frienship to a guy who has been in class only 40 minutes. I suspect the new guys suspected a prank, and played it safe in not playing with them.

Nonetheless, I stayed on with the team long enough to disprove myself in every position in the field. They finally devised a brilliant strategy. They put me in the goal. It was a stroke of genius. Immediately, the margin by which our team used to lose was reduced by half, thanks in part to the goals I was not scoring on my own team, or helping the rival team score on my team, and largely to the chances that were not being squandered in the front and the middle. I was still conceding enough goals though to ensure we continued our losing streak.

The sports committee finally decided to acknowledge my presence on the field, and awarded the rival teams a handicap of "-5". That was when we were able to secure our first draw in three years - a game tied at 5/5. At the end of that year's tournament, not only had we not lost a single match, we had managed to scrap a win too, a narrow one at 0/-1. There were a couple of mediocre teams in our pool too.

The following year, we went in with a lot more preparation. Our captain had great faith in me. He was a firm believer in talent, and knew when to encourage raw talent. He requested me not to waste my time in any training since there was little value addition, he said, that any training would bring to such raw talent. He also said, he wanted to put twice the focus on our defender, and that he could benefit from me not participating in the training.

To cut a long story short, very short indeed, at the end of the next year's tournament our team was chosen for a consolation prize for not losing any match despite some "inherent drawbacks" they suffered; our defender was voted the player of the tournament, and I was awarded the most crucial player of the tournament. I had a tally of 99 goals from 11 matches.

Given this back ground, it is rather hard for me to imagine myself in the sweaty shoes of an athlete - if I could be one though, I would want to be a long jumper. "Why?", you ask? "Why not?", I say.

If I could be a Doctor:

I would be one, to the joy of my parents. You see, I am the eldest of four siblings. I am the one who is most likely to be chosen to be designated the future doctor in a family, and I was too. For twelve years, I told people I would become a dcotor when I grew up. In the twelvth year, I half disected a frog, and promptly emptied my stomach of any break-fast. I also did my best impression of passing out after that.

Following this incident, I never said I would become a doctor. My father stopped saying so after my HSSC results were announced, and my mother gave up after I fell short by about 200 marks the next year, when the results from my improvement exams came in. HSSC students had an option to sit the exams a second time, if they were not happy with the results the first time around. It costed them only a year of their lives.

I could be a doctor though. I have a doctor's hand-writing. Actually, given that only the most experienced chemists are able to decipher my hand-writing, I think I would have made a very senior doctor at an early age. We know I would never have made a surgeon, nor an ENT specialist. Psychiatry, though, might just have been the thing for me. Don't ask, why? I have people like Coori, Mari, VGA, and Jalali Baba for friends.

If I could be a Chef:

I would not be working at the Burj-al-Arab. Secondly, I would be a fat one.

If I could be a Lawyer:

Personally, I think I would make a great lawyer. I am argumentative, love to walk when talking, like to talk when walking, and enjoy John Grisham novels. I do not think I would have made a great defense lawyer, nor a criminal lawyer. Corporate Law? May be.

I have a thing against all these conglomorates, and the franchisees of the world. They have just stripped the world of its flavors, and made into one big assembly line. I would have liked to see what the world might have had to offer had the Coca-Colas, McDees, CKs, Givencies and Armanis of the world not already dictated a uniformity in food, apparel and lifestyles. If I could be a lawyer, maybe, I could be one who could take the Blairs and the Bushes, the UNs and the IMFs of the world to court.

If I could be a Marine Biologist:

I would not know what I was doing in the world. I would be amazed and stumped by the beauty of Allah's creation, and His miracles under the water; I still am, thanks to the National Geographic people, but I would not be a marine biologist for long. I would not be an alive one for long that is. I have this symbiotic relationship with all things Marine - what with me being a shipping person and all!

Fifty percent of the times I have ventured into the ocean, the ocean has tried to suck me in. Were it not for the life guard 14 years ago, and for Jalali Baba two months ago, I would have been consigned to the bed of an ocean, to be found centuries later by a team of marine biologists.
Jalali Baba differs though - he says, the environmentalists would have ensured I was pulled out of the ocean bed before I could contaminate ocean life. Thankfully, and understandably, we have not had to find out the truth of his hypothesis.

Time to pass the stick on?

Aasiya, because we have close to a decade separating us, and I doubt she is already a shipping sales person, and so would like to see what she has to say.

Jalali Baba, because he would be better off being any of these five than being what he is ... an IT freak. Also because if he had a job that required him to interact with more people, perhaps his focus on me; which entails correcting the linguistically challenged me, teaching the ignorant me, trashing the ridiculous me, dissing the irritating me, and hating as well as extolling the optimistic me, would be diluted, and who cannot hope for that?

AA, because he is already a doctor, looks like an athlete, talks as much as the marine biologist would under water, and could argue against being a chef.

da Momma, because hopefully she will be blogging soon, once that container that's coming to UAE via Mexico arrives, and also because she can, with the decades of experience behind her, bring a richness to this "I could be..." exrcise that no one else can.

Crayon, because she hasn't been in knicqland in ages, and she ought to pay for that.

I would tag a lot more people, but I am not doing it for two reasons:

1. For fear, they might tag me back asking me to explain what five cities of the world would I go to for vacation.

2. Most of them have already been tagged.

*Phew*

That takes care of 50% of the tagging I am due on, and leaves just 50% to get back with....

In time.

Of Time Management, Variables, and Relationships therein.

2005-05-30T18:37:00.000+04:00

I am terribly short on time. Cliche', you say. I agree.

It isn't as if I am bogged down by work, which, by the way, is not to say that I am not busy with work all the time. Its just that I am very bad with my planning, prioritizing, and in general, my time management. I sound like my managers, my teachers and my parents here, which doubles as testimony to the fact that these traits are not newly acquired. They have been honed over a period of time, and have been elevated to art forms in their own right.

A normal day begins with me waking up early, and going back to sleep until I am running late, and thus sets in the chaos that defines the rest of my day. Sometimes, I am able to tear myself away from the bed, force myself under the shower, and push myself into those articles of clothing that seem to be undergoing a continuous shrinking phase. Wifey thinks otherwise, and maintains to my chagrin that it is not the clothes that are shrinking; it is I who is "expanding". She has tried to prove her point by using that measuring tape, and showing that while the tape shows the measurements to be the same as the week before on those clothes, it continues to show a general increase in my measurements.

I have explained to her the importance of maintaining a scientific approach, and the need to remember that in an equation if one must have two variables, one must not discount any of the factors in that equation as a possible candidate to be one of those variables. More precisely, she must not discount the possibility that I may be the fixed factor here, while the tape and the clothes might be the variables.

Granted, it must count as quite an oddity that the clothes and the tape seem to be shrinking in tandem, if one may call the phenomenon so, but whoever said life did not have its fair share of oddities. Besides, who can say what intricate relationships can develop between measuring tape and cloth. They do, after all, work with each other a lot in their general course of life, or should it be lives.

A multitude of management gurus and trainers have been at pains to make me understand the importance of paying attention to relationships that develop with people you work with. What is there to suggest that non-human colleagues, like the two under discussion here, are not apprised of this importance by their respective management gurus? Note, how those officious words like respective, appraise and note have started making their way in this piece as soon as the management gurus are mentioned? That is because these words and these people, the management gurus, have a symbiotic relationship too, one that manifests itself as soon as one of the two is given some airtime (read blogtime).

I digress, and then I digress farther and further. I was telling you about how I have had to convince wifey that because of the relationship the measuring tape has built with the clothes, it has begun shrinking along with the clothes, which is why she cannot really deduce from the ever constant and ever changing measurements of my clothes and myself respectively that I am getting fat. Its just the clothes that keep shrinking.

In my heart of hearts though, I know I am getting fat, but because Little Baji Abez , Owlie, Momma , and Crayon collectively insist that I am not fat - not yet anyway, I must refer to myself as almost fat. However, one cannot admit to being less than, or for that matter, more than physically fit in front of one's spouse, I must subscribe to the theory of symbiotic relationship between my clothes and the measuring tape.

So, on those rare occasions when I am able to tear myself apart from the bed, and shove myself under the shower, and push myself into my clothes, I get complacent in the knowledge that I have woken up on time, and got ready in time, and end up getting late reading the paper before leaving, or driving too slow and staying too calm in traffic snarls. Inevitably, I arrive late to work, and invariably get pulled up for it, amongst other things. The one silver lining, of course, is that coming to work late habitually, sort of leads to low expectations on punctuality, and hence roaring applause when on that rare occasion one ambles in before time. One, being a self-proclaimed narcissist, is not averse to applause whatever the reason for such applause may be.

Jalali Baba says I have a knack for looking at the bright side, and this, he says, gives him nausea. Life is black, he maintains, and when it is not so, it is a dark shade of grey. Anyone who perceives any white in it, according to him, has yet to be plugged out of the matrix.

Jalali Baba has an inherent love for all things gloomy, and is of the firm opinion that his strong dislike for yours truly stems from the sunny disposition he finds me exhibiting on more occasions than he finds acceptable for a normal, likeable, depressed, and depressing human being.

Oh, and that thing about Jalali Baba and Matrix, and Jalali Baba and South Park, and Jalali baba and Dilbert, and Jalali Baba and Platoon, and Jalali Baba and Full Metal Jacket, and Jalali Baba and the old gentleman who made him gloomy in a sunny way...?

- That's going to have to wait.

The Swamp.

2005-05-13T16:57:00.000+04:00

It gets more and more difficult. Updating, that is, as more and more time elapses. Initially, it is just that you do not have the time to update, and you have a resonable number of topics lined up to blog about. Then, in a few days, when you do find sometime, you sit yourself down in front of a painfully slow dial-up connection, and as your computer struggles to find you that often stimulating, and at times depressing blank page you so love or dread as the case might be given your former or latter state of mind, you catch yourself wondering which of the topics to blog about first. Being the narcisisst that you are, you do not want to compress possible multitude of updates into one lame update, so choose you must.

From your vantage point in front of that addictive keyboard, you scan your mental horizon for an idea, a topic, to get started with. Then it strikes you. Your mind is a murky, and fatal swamp, where many an idea has perished after begging and pleading with you to save it for days. All this while, as the swamp was sucking those topics in, you were running helter skelter trying to get your gear in order, and by the time you did get it in order, those ideas were all but gone. Dejected and frustrated, you hurl abuses, and if you can find some, stones at the swamp, and look deperately in the dark to see if there is at least one lucky survivor you can redeem yourself with. Just when you are planning to give up, and walk away, you hear a sound, a cry for help, and you turn around excitedly and you look into the swamp with renewed vigor and rekindled hope. What do you know, there is someone to be saved, you strap your rescue gear on, and waddle into the swamp. There it is, a topic almost drowned, holding onto a low hanging branch for dear life. Your excitement wanes as you recognize your one redeeming chance to be that stubborn &$@*&@ who, you should have known, would not have let the murky swamp get to it, even if you had got late by another month or so. Time after time, as team after team of topics had lost battle after battle to the swamp, this one survivor of a topic had made it through until help had arrived. So much so, that even you begin to suspect if the bloody thing is in cohoots with the swamp itself. Why does the swamp excuse this pathetic excuse for a topic everytime - this aptly named "My excuse, lame or otherwise, for not having updated for so long" topic.

Should you initiate an inquiry into the background of this topic? Should you excuse it from service until its name has been cleared?

You tell me.

Inteha Pasand.

2005-05-11T17:06:00.000+04:00

Meri baton main zeher daikho,
Meri aankhun main qahar daikho,
Do qadam jo peechey hata hoon,
To kia samajh baithey ho?
Tsunami hun, meri uth'ti hai leher daikho!

Main nafrat ke markun main,
Kab se hoon nabrad aazma,
Mairey Allah ka Qahar,
Masajid tak main ja ke gira.

Main sheeshiyun main aag bhar ke,
Rukh-e-zeba jala doonga,
Jo lehrai ga gaisoo,
Main gardan uda doonga,
Main kitaab chupa doonga,
Main qalam chura loonga,
Likhney waley haath qalam karunga,
Main har press jala doonga,
Maulana jo keh den,
Main madrassun main bum chuppa doonga.
Haan... Main deeniyat sikha doonga,
Main la deeniyyat mita doonga!

Main intiha pasand nahin hoon logo,
Maira maslak Islam hai!
Main salamti ki khatir,
Salamti kee bali chadha doonga!!!

Surprising how editing can sometimes be such a simple job. Just removed a few words here and there, and a line there and a line there, and Voila!

The Interview Game, and The Answers

2005-04-30T01:55:00.000+04:00

Have I mentioned before my notoriety in meeting deadlines? Have I ever blogged about how one of my bosses almost had me sacked despite me performing quite well to my targets, because I would not meet deadlines? Does anyone share my inherent aversion to meeting deadlines? Is this a talent? Are these excuses enough for not having answered questions posed to me in an interview game started by dear sister Sanchez, about two months ago, and then not having answered Urdu questions put to me by dear sister AWK?

Long long ago, in a town now called blogistan, the inhabitants started playing a game called the Interview game, and following were the rules laid down by Sanchez at the beginning, and I quote:

"Here's how you can play the interview game:
1. Leave me a comment saying "interview me." The first five commenters will be the participants.
2. I will respond by asking you five questions.
3. You will update your blog/site with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions. (Write your own questions or borrow some.) "

At my request to be interviewed, and mine being one of the tens of requests she had got, she put me the following questions:

"1.Why would you believe that you're the only one with a dark side bhai?

Because Little Baji, I am the only one who gets affected by my dark side, who has to face it every now and then, and reconcile himself with its presence each time. If others have dark sides, they seldom show it to me, and I rarely ever am at the receiving end of their dark sides. Also because all said and done my dark side will always be the darkest than anyone else's for me.

2. Has marriage changed you much? Or were you always this weird? I'm asking that seriously. Do you feel you are the same person as you were say... ten years ago? From the era of Coori and the last red note?

Has marriage changed me much? It has, if you can call gaining over 40 pounds much. I never thought I was weird, but I have always felt the world is a weird weird place, and that belief stands tall as much after my marriage as it did before the incident. Oh, and I know I am almost bald and all, but really it hasn't been ten years since we got married.

The era of Coori and the last red note was a long time ago, almost ten years now, and I think I have changed a lot since then. I have become wiser in the ways of the world, and am therefore a lot less likeable than I was then. (I am a proud self-proclaimed narcissist, so my belief, and a staunch one at that, that I am likeable should come as no surprise to anyone).

In many ways, however, I have not changed at all, in my ability, for instance, to attract Coorish people as friends - Jalali Baba is a glaring example. The hadeeth stresses that our names have a lot of impact on our lives, thankfully my parents chose me a name that means friend, and in this they ensured that I have always had the bestest of friends around. I asked wifey if she thought I had changed any, and she said I had changed loads, and she did not mean in weight terms, though she could have had. I asked Lala and Mari if they thought I had changed a lot since those days of the last red note, and they said they did not give a damn - then again I had met them in a dream. I asked Fash if he thought I had changed a lot since those days in 1996, and he said I hadn't changed a lot from those days in 1986!!!

Fash oughta know, he is the only one around, apart from my immediate family, who have known me this long. Of course, it helps me not in any way that he thinks that I am, always was, and most probably will continue to be an absolute loser!!!

3. What role does writing poetry play in your life?

You mean apart from getting me thrown out of Mushairas? At times, being under that impression - that I can write poetry has helped me a lot. At others it has costed me dearly. Take, for instance, the case when I filled up sheet after sheet of my Urdu board exams with an essay interspersed with my own "poetry" and ended up scoring almost the lowest ever marks in Urdu. For a long time, I used to trick myself into thinking that the examiner gave me such low marks because from someone who could quote such great verse, he expected a lot better on the other questions.

It was some years before it began to dawn upon me that most people acknowledged as great poets; Ghalib, Iqbal, Faiz and the others had actually written better poetry than me, and that most other people who were not acknowledged as poets at all also did a better job of it than I did. In that way, writing poetry has played a humbling role in my life. In some ways, it has provided me with a vent to get rid of pent-up vocabulary, in rare others it has been my support system, my option of the last resort to discuss matters I could not or would not dare discuss with my peers or parents.

4. What is your favorite poem?

Tough one this. Not because I am very well read, and have trouble choosing a great poem from the so many that I have read, but because I have read hardly any outside the syllabus. One of my top favorites is Allama Iqbal's ''Budhe Baloch Kee Naseehat Baite Ko" which is a fiery advice by a warrior father to his son on the ways of a Muslim warrior in the modern world, as well as a great lesson in patriotism, and one of Ghalib's ghazals "Na tha kuch to Khuda tha, kuch na hota to Khuda hota".

Amongst my own, I like "Pas-e-Iraq" and "Chal Bhaag Chalen" more.

5. Does Jalali Baba know you ate his cookies?"

He suspects, but I have him in doubt. I point to that empty box each time he visits us and tell him that is his share which he can take back this time. Satisfied, he moves on to other more important topics, himself for instance, and I manage to skittle him out the door before he can remember about the cookies. WHEN ARE YOU GUYS COMING HERE??? I can't trick him forever.

I should really get going now. Need to work on those two first drafts for one thing, the second one especially, since it elicited just the one comment...:(

But KK, Yaz and Baji... fret not, the stick is up next!

Personality Test - The Farce.

2005-04-26T00:21:00.000+04:00

Either they are a farce, or I have just become even better at beating these tests....

What Famous Leader Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

First Draft.

2005-04-04T21:41:00.000+04:00

Tum ne kabhi poocha hi nahin,
Main batata...
To aakhir kia batata?

Tumhen kis lashkar ka khauf tha'?
Tum kaun bagal sun baithey the'?
Kis na bana daleen yeh itni buland faseelen?
Kaun darwazun pe qufal daal gaya?

Koi bhi to nahin tha...!

Kabhi jhank kar is paar dekh to laitey,
Door tak,
Ta hadd-e-nigaah,
Kuch bhi to nahin tha!

Bus ik jaanlaiwa khamashi thee,
Ik sansanaata sannatta tha',
Kabhi nan khatm honey wala din tha',
Kabhi nan aney wali raat thee,

Mairey pairun pe jamee,
Safar kee dhool thee,
Mairee aankhun main larzaan,
bujhti see ummeed thee,
Mairey seeney pe raqsaan,
Hasrato-yaas kee shuneed thee,
Mairey haathon ke chaley the',
Halaq ke kaante the',
Aur bhaari,
Bohat bhaari,
Woh zang alood, lahoo rung zanjeer thee...
Shal bazoo the',
Sookhey huwey aanso'on ka,
Sisakta huwa samandar tha.
Meri awaz thee,
Baaz'gasht thee,
Aur pathreeli,
Sungdil deewar thee!

Tum daikhtey to sahee,
Aur koi nahin tha...
Main tha!

Tum poochtey to sahee,
Bus main tha!!

Magar tum ne poocha hi nahin,
Daikha hi nahin,
Tumhen main karb batata?
Kub batata?

No name thought of as yet, nor am I sure how much of this original will remain once I can have a go at it again...if and when, but thought it a good idea to put it up and buy time before I can come back with a post, and answers to Sanchez' interview, and KK's stick...

For now, it is Main aur mera flu....!

The Stench.

2005-03-19T00:57:00.000+04:00

Dark side. Everyone has it. Or at least I think everyone has it, because I have one. It makes it more acceptable... tolerable, if you know its not only you, if you think everyone has that darkness element about him/her. The trouble is, I do not know for a fact if everyone carries the curse. Everyday, I get to interact with at least one person, who puts my whole premise to justify my own dark side in doubt.

Now, I have been a professional salesperson for almost half a decade now, and over time you learn to tell if the guy across the table took in a good first impression of you. You do that, trying to make a good first impression on new people, for half a day everyday, you end up learning a whole lot about people and their reactions. If you are allowed to stay a sales person for long enough, which almost always only happens if you left a good first impression on more than half the people you tried to make an impression on, you start looking at a different person in the mirror. This is the stage where the first signs of narcissism make an appearance. Its a downhill ride from there - fast, fun and possibly fatal. At the end of this ride, what remains is sales, what is dead is the person.

Do not get me wrong. This is not one of those tirades against the poor sales people. Most people subscribe to that stereotype of a conniving, fast-talking, not-to-be-trusted, unscrupulous second hand car salesman. It is not about salespeople as generally understood by the term. I know it is a cliche`, but it is also a fact, we are all salespeople, selling ourselves, our images, our self-portraits. Its about people, like yours untruly, who lose sight of who they are, and start believing their own lies about themselves - lies they have been telling others, so these others like them. You see, once you start believing those lies, you stop looking at the rot prevalent in you, because you are too busy admiring the beauty of your self portrait.

Then one find morning you are taken by surprise by the stench that emanates from one of your own comments. There comes a time when you are appalled by the crudity and ugliness of one of your own actions. One fine morning, the smokescreen you had erected is shattered, and you find yourself staring in disbelief at an ugly soul laid bare, a soul that you had come to believe was beautiful and fragrant. Its not as if you were not aware of its presence, its just that you had never thought you would come face to face with it ever again.

Your smirk, that hallmark of arrogant self-righteousness, is wiped off in a fraction of a second. The ugly soul sniggers, baring its fangs. You recoil, and you run. But there is nowhere to run to. It is inside you, and it is with you. But you run, and you run, until nausea takes over, and you bend over and you throw up. The ugly soul sniggers on, and the stench hits you one again. As the line between conscious and unconscious blurs, you see that ugly soul take up that brush and paint you another smokescreen. It leads you to believe that it was your strength of character that led you through the labyrinth of yourself to help you discover your own ugliness. You buy into that lie wholesale, because you need to. Soon enough you have taken up another brush and you are painting that self portrait more skillfully than the last time. Soon enough, that smokescreen, your portrait is complete.

There comes the morning after then, the morning you wake up and look at your smug self in the mirror, and hum a happy tune. Your transformation is complete. You have made the biggest sale of your life. You have sold yourself on that idea, and made a repeat customer out of yourself. The crucial metamorphosis of the "salesperson" into just "Sales" is complete, the person is dead, and what remains is the stench.

Coori - First impressions, tomato salan, and the last red note.

2005-03-15T22:27:00.003+04:00

I blog today, because I must.

I have been too afraid of blogging about Coori without being in the right frame of mind, without feeling energetic and nostalgic enough, and without having time enough on my hands. You see, he is that dear to me, that khabti moron. I write about my friends because this is my way of sharing some of my most prized possessions with you. I also write about them because if I did not, I would not have anything else to write about. These friends have defined chapters in my life, such has been their contribution to messing things up for me. Nonetheless, my life is apparently the only subject I seem to have better command on than any other mortal does, though there are those who would disagree with that too - my mother for one, and if I am to blog without bringing into question the source as well as the authenticity of my update, I had better stick to my own life.

Incidentally, I have just the one life - the same one which has its chapters defined by my friends. My alter egos, the siblings, make the headings, while I am the one constant on every page - the footnote in italics.

Hisaab-e-dostaan dar-e-dil, is a farsi quotation, which Yousufi had used to articulate what can never be completely said - a thank you to a friend for his friendship. I am afraid of opening this hisaab, and then not finding the words to introduce my friends to you. Coori is just one of them. There are so many others, some already mentioned and some not yet, but let this post not become an index now.

Coori's reputation, as I have explained, had preceded him. It was a long time, however, before I actually got to meet him. It was a strange meeting. Mari had taken me along to meet Lala, whom I had met once before, and who was put up with Coori. I don't seem to recall where exactly this meeting had taken place - what I do recollect is that Lala had all his belongings tied up in a bundle or two, and was perched atop those bundles. Lala was all of five and a half feet tall, and because of his frail frame, looked little more than five. The only thing that belied his age were his sturdy, strong hands that left your palm a little compressed after every handshake.

Mari had had a little something to discuss with Lala, which is why he had stopped there for a few minutes. We did get out in a few minutes, but I don't clearly remember if he ever got down to discussing his agenda with Lala. I do remember Coori and I getting into the "heading" of a discussion, because that was all it could be called, and parting with mutual respect and disdain for each other. The former is understandable, the latter needs explaining. It had a lot to do with appearances and first impressions. Months later, we were to exchange notes, and find that following were the impressions we had left on each other:

Coori's impressions of me: Scrawny, and awkwardly dressed in a chequered shirt that hung loosely from his shoulders that made a nice coat-hanger. 24'' flapper jeans atop saleem shahi khussas. Oblong, bony face hidden beneath a pair of extra large round glasses, and whiskers disguised as a stubble/beard. Patronizing Mummy-Daddy dufus, puts on an accent when interjecting unnecessary English words, hence subject to inferiority complex and low self esteem, and most probably speaks bad urdu (This coming from a pathan from Mardan - I almost killed him!). Might know a thing or two about Tauheed. Needs tweaking, but will do for now.

My impressions of Coori: Arrogant pathan Mulla (The skin under the beard had till then never been subjected to a razor). Ignorant too. Clad in Shalwar Qameez and khaidi - ain't getting past semester 2/BBA. (He was already in his final semester by then, maintaining a 3.8 CGPA), looks like being in a business school's gone to his head - either that or he was trying too hard to impress me with his management/marketing terminology, bet Meigs and Meigs gives him the creeps, should pass on M.A. Ghani to him and watch him squirm under debit/credit compulsions. Good Urdu for a pathan, and impressive enough English for a Mardan School product. Might know a thing or two about Tauheed. Needs a lot of work, but will do for now.

Coori had the focus of an elephant. There's nothing to prove that elephants have great focus, but then there is nothing to suggest on the contrary either. I am just assuming their focus is as good as their memory is rumoured to be. I need the elephant allegory because Coori also had the memory of an elephant.

Take, for example, the case when I had brought home my first semester books. He was in his last semester then, and was keenly interested in what curriculum PCBA was following as against his TIU curriculum. Turns out PCBA had chosen Keegan's book on Principles of Marketing, while he had studied Kotler's at TIU. His curiosity piqued, he requested to borrow the book for 22 days, the number of chapters in Keegan's book. I got him a copy, and he returned it to me after 22 days, with comments at the end of each chapter. His logic was simple. It took him two hours a day max to finish a chapter, and he could spare a couple of hours from his final semester preparation in the quest for superior and complete knowledge. He could be a geek like that. He could also argue in favor of TIU with any PCBA student after that, just because they had not recommended Kotler's book, and just because he had studied the two of them, and could tell for a fact that Kotler's selection of words in his 20 odd chapters was better.

There was also the time sometime before this when someone told him that the Khans were ruling Bollywood. He was not really into bollywood movies, but he knew a thing or two about Aamir Khan and Salman Khan - enough to disagree and argue that they were not such great actors after all. It was then that he found out that there was a third Khan too, and we are talking about '96 here, by which time Shahrukh Khan had been around for almost three or four years. He was quite surprised, and excused himself from that discussion.

I remember we were in the last days of the month, and almost all of us were broke, which actually had little to do with what days of the month we were in. After the initial three-four days of wealth, and absolute wealth at that, we managment students used to spend the rest of the month waiting for the next month's allowance to arrive from home. It did not matter, whose money arrived first. As soon as it did, the reciever promptly paid off his debts to the rest of the roommates, so that everyone was left with equally less amount to spend until the next guy's money arrived.

Such was the need for us to be taught some management, and such was our zeal to experiment with radical management theories of our own. Lala's tomato-salan/curry was a product of those days of poverty, all it took to make were a few tomatoes, which were not very expensive. The tandoor-wala used to give us rotis on credit, and TIU was just next door. I was the only guy, who had to go to PCBA which was not that close, but the van took you there, if the bike did not have petrol enough.

It was in one of those days of utter collective poverty that Coori had heard about this new actor on the block, who was a pathan originally from Peshawar, and was supposed to be pretty good. He had gone missing for the day, and when we returned home, we found him lying in front of a TV and VCR. We were delighted. We did not have a VCR in our room, and if he had been able to rent it, that meant we would be watching some movies during the night, and eating well, because it looked like Coori's money had arrived. There were still a few days to go before the end of the month, and we had all hit rock bottom in our finances. His money could not have come at a better time.

You guessed it, dear readers, the money had not arrived. Coori had rented out the VCR, and all of Shahrukh Khan's movies released till that date, with the last red note of the room. We could have killed him then and there, but he was quick to point towards two bags full of tomatoes lying in the corner. So, he stayed up the night to finish all the movies, and by the morning had arrived at the decision that SK was actually a great actor, and deserving of any prizes and awards he won, including Coori's last 100 rupees, and two good trousers.

Turns out, in one of the movies SK had done an acrobat act to land on his knees such that his trousers were torn at the knees on impact. Coori was much impressed with the stunt, and had been trying it since the morning. The results were successful, two out of his five trousers had obliged, and were now succumbing to their fate in a corner. Coori's knees kept him away from the library for a couple of weeks - the library was on the second floor, and there were no elevators in the college.

As for the rest of us, we were pretty happy with the way things had turned out. For one thing, we had hoped that Coori without the library would not be as potent and ambitious in his disagreements, and secondly there was the faint hope that perhaps the painful knees will help cure Coori's dementia.

Our joy was short-lived. Coori was able to employ a junior to bring him books and magazines from the library, and with the detergent maximization incident was able to defend the Khabti title bestowed upon him by his peers.

Coming up sometime in the future - Coori and the detergent maximization project!

Why I have not been able to update....an indepth and boring study.

2005-03-12T03:07:00.000+04:00

This beats my previous worst, doesn't it? The last time around I had not updated this long, ever since I became a blogistani citizen, was perhaps in the initial days, when I was learning the ropes. It was not as if I had run out of topics to blog about. Coori alone warrants another update or two, and frankly the intention had been to inundate knicqland with updates with Cooriisms. Not to mention the fact that UAE had been host to a blogger family everybody loves to love, and yours truly had been afforded the honor of hosting the family for about an hour, before being hosted for a SCRUMPTIOUS dinner at the groom's, and there was much to blog about, once the news of the wedding were announced.

However, two things happened simultaneously which led to an absolute lull in blogging activity in knicqland. I started work at the new place, where I was working before I had joined the old soodkhor company. Now, those who have been subjected to the intimate details of what went on, or to put it more precisely, what never went on in my soodkhor company job, will remember that there used to be little to do, and much not to do in that job. Whatever little there was to be done, never did get done because, lets put it this way, I was less than the diligent and ideal employee it takes to get a job done within two months after the deadline has passed.

Having spent all of sixteen months in that place I had somewhat forgotten the pace at which work is done in this new company of mine where I used to work before I had joined my old company. I do not know about you, dear readers, but I am having a lot of trouble introducing this new company of mine, where I used to work before I had joined that old company of mine, as that new company of mine where I used to work before I had joined that old company of mine. Perhaps, if I were an American, I could have found an acronym to define this new company....of mine, which probably would have gone something like this - NCOMWIUTWBIHJTOCOM, but hey lets face it, such an acronym is a bigger pain than that the sentence it attempts to abbreviate. What do we do? Why don't we just refer to them as the Finance Company and the Shipping Company?

Come to think of it, why not use acronyms for the two of them? Wonder why does it take me so long to figure out the simple things, which wouldn't be so bad if I could figure out the complex things in no time, but as things stand today I take longer to figure out the simple things than I do not figuring out the complex things. Oh, well... so, FC and SC it is. Just so everyone is clear, SC is where I have started work now, but where I used to work before I had joined FC.

Now that we no longer have to waste all that time referring to SC and FC in twenty words, perhaps I can tell you how joining SC has interfered with my blogging routine. For starters, I can hardly make time in the office to even look at a blog, mine or anyone else's. Updating from there is just not an option, while it was a compulsion in FC. You see there was only so much time you could spend gossiping, making tea, back biting, and talking to Jalali Baba. You had to do something constructive, and blogging was the automatic answer. On the contrary, I remember there used to be times during my previous stint with SC when some of my colleagues and I would wonder if there were enough hours in a day to just finish the jobs on hand. Its slightly better now, in that we do not stay back until after midnight writing reports and catching up on official correspondence. The operative word here is 'slightly'. I haven't got into the emailing routine yet, but I am trying to get back in the work-for-at-least-8-hours-a-day routine.

That is, however, not my excuse for not having updated. The excuse is that SC is located about 8-10 kilometers further down the road, which during the rush hour traffic can mean an extra 40 minutes on the road at times. The trouble is by the time you cover those 10 kms, everyone else also manages to join the party, so the same distance that it used to take you half an hour to cover in the past, when you had a head start on the rest of Charlies, takes you about 45 minutes now.

Cumulatively, it adds up to over an hour of driving in that bumper-to-bumper traffic coming back home, which would still be fine if home were a clean place with no clothes sprawled all around the place, or dishes stacked up (plate+glass+saucepan+tea mug)in the sink from the previous night, or an unmade bed. As luck would have it, home is not such a place. It has the clothes strategically placed on the various items of furniture for convenience, it has that sink overflowing with the afore mentioned kitchen items, and it presents a general picture of a place ravaged by a twister.

You see wifey and kids are in the land of the pure to attend a wedding. The date of the wedding coincided with my joining SC, and it meant two things:

I could not join the wedding.
The family would, thereby leaving me to my own devices, or to put it more aptly, my own vices.

My vices include a deep aversion to waking up early, or being anywhere on time. Overtime, wifey and I have worked out strategy that ensures that if I have to wake up early to get to work, I do so. It involves her waking up much earlier, and then toiling hard in waking me up. Her tactics can range from just pulling the blankets away to smothering me with pillows. Often enough the blanket trick does not work, nor does sprinkle-cold-water-in-his-face, and it boils down to smothering me so I have to wake up for dear life. I used to think she was cruel, but after having lived with me for just the last two weeks I have realized that she is perhaps the most patient soul I have known. I would kill me, if I had to wake me up.

I mean it has taken two alarm clocks working in tandem with the mobile alarm and the telephone alarm, all working on snooze mode, to get me out of bed by 6:00. The alarms start at 5:00, and this when I have been going to bed really early so that I can wake up early. No more staying up till 2:00 a.m. and all. Lights out by 11:00 p.m. has been the strategy, and it has still been perilously close to failure. 6:00 a.m. by the way is still late if i have to get to work by 8:00 a.m., but I make up for lost time on blackey.

However, therein lies the problem. With no one there to smother me out of bed every morning, I must get to bed early, and going to bed early means I cannot update.

How have I managed to update today at this late/early hour? No, the family is not back yet. Its just that I don't have work on Saturdays, and I have had time to catch up on sleep through out Friday.

There. I have clarified now, why I have not been able to update for this long. Time to continue on Cooriisms, but...*yawns*...

....maybe, tomorrow.

Coori, and Knicq Khabti.

2005-02-21T23:48:00.000+04:00

I was in the process of moving all my contacts from hotmail to gmail, and I came across what is now a defunct email address, coori@hotmail.com, and it brought back a horde of memories.

Coori, spelled as it might be, is pronounced Kori, and is quite possibly a derivative of Ghauri. It was the title bestowed upon one of the most intriguing personalities I have ever come across, and I can tell you this, I have come across a pretty decent number of intriguing dudes. I fail to fathom the connection between Coori and Ghauri though, because the gentleman who this name was given to, was not a Ghauri. His family name was Ghani. But then, there isn't much about Coori/Kori that is easy to fathom, or make sense of.

I was a student of B.Com in those days, and deeply in love. There was thus little that kept me busy, and when not writing pieces like 'Chal Bhaag Chalen' or bringing the temperature of Lahore down by a few degrees with my sighs, I could be found embroiled in passionate discussions with whosoever proved unfortunate enough to have got me started. Topic, subject, and subject matter were hardly of consequence, since I, as well as most of my victims, were admirably but indiscriminately ignorant about everything. Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention. The very necessity of keeping an inane discussion - often disguised as an animated argument - going led to a flood of creative juices, and many a new philosophy or 'set of well researched facts' would emerge as the positive externalities of these discussions. Not very surprisingly, my opinionated rantings and ravings had earned me the admiration of a discerning few, and the wrath of jealous, prejudiced, ignorant, opinionless, linguistically challenged, wayward youth - in short all my dear friends. Given that this lot had to put up with the various compulsive behavioral disorders I was affected with in those days, (Don't ask, too many to remember) it is understandable why I was adjudged the rightful recipient of the title 'khabti'.

I would be wrong if I said I was not pleased with the title. I looked at it as the lesser privileged people's way of admitting my superiority, and I basked in the glory of my own ignorance. While in the past, I had ended up in discussions with people, post-title, I would go around sniffing for possible 'discussions'. I used to wonder in those days why I could not find anyone in the cafeteria of my college, or in Mari's college. It was much later that I was told that they had these sentries posted at strategic points, and a s soon as these sentries would see me approaching, they would blow a whistle, or make a bird sound, or honk a certain number of times, and people would scram to their classes. No wonder, class attendance was at its highest in these two colleges during my stay, and academic results had gone through the roof. Come to think of it, I should have been nominated for a social service award by the city council, but I guess the buggers exploited my simplicity and ignorance of the ways of the world. You would think people would be more generous with their appreciation for a good deed.

Mari, by the way, is one of my oldest friends, and despite the passage of two decades, we continue to be fast friends. Perhaps, one of the reasons is that except for a short while when Mari did not know better and we were together in the same class, Mari has always maintained a safe distance from me. He was in Al-Ain when I was in Sharjah, and when we had both ended up in Lahore, he admirably left my college to me, and opted for a business school instead to inflict Mariisms. Almost a decade later, he continues to maintain a friendship-friendly distance from me. While I have the ends of my neurons melting here in the UAE, he is in the process of getting his unique brand of antagonism frozen in Canada.

So, one of those days, I went out to meet Mari, and as I approached the canteen, I was puzzled by the noise that emanated from the canteen. It seemed like a busy place, which it had not been ever since I had got into a discussion there about something almost a year ago. At first I thought there was an India-Pakistan match on, and people were all in the canteen to watch it on the telly. (Yeah folks, this college had a telly in the canteen so students could watch the matches there) But then, I realized there were no matches on.

So puzzled, I walked into the jam-packed canteen, and found Mari sitting there. I asked him what was up, and he told me the truth about the sentries and all. I was tempted to get into a discussion about the pros and cons of attending such 'saer haasil' discussions as mine, but then another thought occurred to me... the people had finally realized their folly, and had now decided to turn up in huge numbers to add to their learning. I decided to confirm my inference with Mari, and would you believe what he told me next?

The people were still not very keen on being subjected to my brand of knowledge, but they had been driven out of their classes by this new student from Mardan, who it seemed, was much better equipped in the art of 'khabtiism' than I was. The college would rather put up with me than be subjected to him. Mari was not entirely excited when he'd told me that I had finally met my match. I was, though, immensely excited. Little had I known then, what I was up against...

Coming up Next... Coori, the one and the only.

Chal Bhaag Chalen!

2005-02-15T13:38:00.000+04:00

Kitni door tak,
Main tera haath pakad ke aaya tha,
Kitni veeraniyan theen,
Jinhen hum ne basaya tha.

Jaaney kis ko shikayat thee hum se...
Jaaney kaun bigda baitha tha?
Jaaney kis ki dua main tanaffur tha itna...
Jaaney kaun itna bhara baitha tha?

Kiyun hanstey dilon ko saugwar kiya...
Yun muskurati akhiyun ko ashkbaar kiya?
Kiya gunaah kiya tha main ne...?
Jo is shiddat se tujhey pyar kiya!

Aaj khadshaat main ghira baitha hoon,
Ufaq par ubharti kaali aandhiyun ko,
Aur teri aankhun main chillati faryaad ko,
Main khali khali nazrun se dekh raha hun.

O janaan!
Teri aankhun ka karb...
Mairey dil main utra jaata hai.

Chal Bhaag Chalen!!

Dekh!
Toofan badhaa aata hai.

Magar yeh kiya?
Mairey paaon iss raet main,
Tairey paaon uss reet main,
Aisey kiyun jakdey gayey hain?

Mohabbat...
Gunaah to nahin!
Mohabbat, gunaah hi to nahin.
Magar jaaney kiyun,
Teri meri iss duniya main,
Mohabbat hi ko panaah nahin!!

Chal Bhaag Chalen...
Mohabbat ko panaah nahin!!!

I have been meaning to post this poem, I had written way back in 1997-98, for a long time. AWK, the kvetcher, had posted it on her blog once as a guest post, and here is thanking her for the encouragement. This is one of those rare poems of mine which even I like, one that does not get booed despite its bordering-on-scandalous title, and the only one I can recite from memory. Some six years later, I had written a sequel to this poem, which I intend posting soon....

It just felt the right sort of update when everyone seems to be exchanging roses....:)

Welcome Note and last minute check!

2005-02-14T15:39:00.000+04:00

On behalf of the UAE bloggers community, here is extending the warmest, red carpetest welcome to everyone's favorite blogging family, who arrive here for a short visit.

Notes to the Welcome committee:

Please confirm Airport decorations completed at all airports in the UAE.
Ensure Red carpets which were laid last week and have been recepients of rain over the last couple of days are removed, and new DRY red carpets laid out on all roads.
Have the school authorities been already informed - we do not want all the children lining the roads to wave Welcome flaglets. The first ten thousand get selected. Please be very polite and patient when declining the remaining children, and ensure Cadbury trays, Jumbo size, sent to each such child's home before the end of the week.
Kindly send regret letters to all hotels excepting Burj Ul Arab, and advise BUA people to make necessary arrangements to evacuate the hotel of all other guests in time. Do advise them to make extra arrangements to handle the hordes of fans....
Have all the Malls been informed of the possible need for all vendors to make personal visits to Burj Ul Arab with their merchandize?
Please enlist NASA services to ensure they keep Sun Alliance (SA) and Clouds Incorporation (CI) pacified at all times - the guests have expressed preference for Sunlight rather than overcast conditions, and an agreement to such effect has been brokered between SA and CI.
Escorts, Abu-Dhabi based as well as Dubai based, please ensure two-way communication maintained at all times, and the comfort and satisfaction of visitors given utmost attention.

GET ON WITH IT PEOPLE!

Dust Therapy.

2005-02-12T22:28:00.000+04:00

The house is a mess. Absolute mess. There is a thick layer of dust that has settled on everything everywhere. Actually, everything has assumed a new color. There is an antique feel to everything. Even the bananas on the stand present a mummified picture.

I mention the banana because to my knowledge it is the fastest rotting fruit. You bring it, you hang it, and if you don't eat it in the next 48 hours, you throw it. I am sure blogistan's own banana specialist Moiz will concur on this observation of mine. Why else would he be eating the fruit by the dozens at a time? It is simple, you don't eat it, it rots into this gooey paste that most people shy away from. What says you Moiz?

I digress. So, the bananas look mummified, because the dust that has been finding its way in every nook and corner of the house has shown immense discipline and skill when settling down. Not a speck less anywhere. Just a while ago, I was using the vacuum blower to blow away the dust from the keyboard, so this typingly challenged blogger could identify the letters he wanted to type.

I have been tempted to rummage through the children's toys to find that handy-cam we had once used to capture TNQ's first salat (aged a year and a half), and to not capture ANQ's first steps. The darned thing had gone comatose just about the time ANQ was taking her first steps. I had to do everything in my power to restrain my alter-egos from smashing that JVC handycam, and all other things JVC, to pieces. Its life was spared, but it was grounded for that spared life. And you guessed it, that was the last time I poured money into a JVC. Did I just veer off track again?

Apologies. You enter the house, and look around, and it does not take much imagination to equate the house with one of those King Solomon's Mines kind of settings, where the treasure hunting party has chanced upon this furnished cottage with all sorts of necessities spread around under a neat cover of dust. It was KSM wasn't it, where they find this cottage? They always find such cottages in treasure hunting novels. Now, I am not implying that there are maps to hidden treasures tucked away in that dusty chest of drawers in our house. There is a map wasting away behind the fridge, but it is a remnant from my first stint in the shipping industry - its a world map. Granted there will be many a point on this map with priceless treasures buried/hidden there, but this particular map offers no clue as to what points those might be on the map. So, you treasure hunting pirates, honorary or not, do not torture me to death asking for the route to those treasures which are not even marked on the world map, which is not a route map. Come to think of it, it is a route map, but it is a route map of the shipping company I used to work for, and that shipping company was never in the quest for hidden treasures. On second thought, the company was always on the look out for hidden treasures in human resources, which is why they had decided to choose yours truly - but then again, it should not be Captain Hook's premise to cut me open...

What's wrong with me today? I am sorry, I was telling you, I had this urge to go look for that handycam. Because, you see, with all that dust nicely and evenly spread over, under, and alongside the articles of the knicq household, one could always shoot that footage and tell wide-eyed grandchildren what a spooky place their grandfather's house used to be.... I suppressed that urge.

TNQ and ANQ had some good fun playing on what used to be our carpet about a week ago, but what had now transformed into the most complex dust retention machine known to mankind. They walked about the place, and giggled to themselves and each other when they saw the footprints their tiny feet made in the 'floor'.

Wifey has been sneezing non-stop, and is concerned she has got dust allergy now. She wants me to take her to the doctor immediately, but I have been delaying it. I kind of like her when she is sneezing...that's what knowing each other for a decade does to you, you are reduced to liking each other when the other is sneezing, coughing, falling on slippery turf, or cutting onions. Oh, and let me clarify. I like her when she is sneezing; she likes me when I am coughing because she thinks I look most pitiable then. She also likes me when I am falling on slippery turf, because she says it takes forever between me slipping and me falling. She likes me when she is cutting onions, because I am crying my eyes out sitting a100 feet away from the main gate of our house. Oh, and she also likes me when I am trying to manage my three push-ups a day exercise regime. She says, she is inspired by my grit and determination to try everyday despite the embarrassing failures I encounter everyday. And to think, I was eager to get married....!

Towzand apologies. I promise I won't digress this time. Let me just sum it up and put it down before I break this promise. We had a bit of repair work done on our kitchen and bathroom, which are in the middle of the house, and all that breaking and making over the last five days or so has generated enough dust to last us for the year, and some more. Thankfully, the work is done today, and the finishing touches will be given tomorrow.

Then, I can return to my daily blogging - provided wifey drops that 'we-have-to-change-these-carpets' monologue.

Phew!

Can't say, I ain't a man of my words, eh?

Mushaira, Blackey, and Knicq 22.

2005-02-05T01:43:00.000+04:00

There was an Urdu Mushaira here today, and yours truly was there by invitation - make that earnest invitation. They really really needed me there today, and they told me this in no uncertain terms. I put forth a condition that I could not be caught dead in a Mushaira if Jalali Baba were not one of the honoured guests there. They gasped. They said they had never known Jalali Baba was a poet too. I laughed. I told them he was not; but he liked 'sher' and appreciated a good one as long as it was not by yours truly. They said they would make sure he got the most sought after, the V.I.Piest invitation, and got the best seat too. I said I would consider then. They said there was no reason for me not to consider. After all, they said, it was not as if I were going to be reciting my work.

INTERROBANG!!!

Like, wha?

*Regains composure.*

So, I smiled graciously, and I said, I had considered, and that I would come. They said, they were thankful. I said they were welcome. The $&%*@$ shallalabumistikasters!!!

So, go we did, Jalali Baba and I. And it was a lovely evening. Actually, Jalali Baba and I agreed the young poetess was lovelier, but then it was an evening brimming with poetic paraphernalia. Jalali Baba kept repeating it was brimming with poetic justice too. I never for once thought he was referring to the injustice done to this legend in making by barring him from reciting his masterpeices. He insisted, he was.

It was difficult to get him to keep quiet. He, for his part, was brimming with these anecdotes from his Karachi days. The gentleman in the seat in front of us coughs, and off Jalali Baba goes about how one of his students used to cough incessantly during his classes, which reminds him how once he had seen one of his fellow professors hit the guy, who used to sit in the seat in front of the incessantly coughing guy, with a duster; which he had taken to be the disciplining norm for the faculty in that institution, and had gone on to apply this disciplinary tactic in his class the very day.

He then proceeds to tell me, how he had spotted one of his students in another class that day not paying attention to his lecture, and how he had fired a chalk missile right at his head. Here, he takes a breath, and then goes on and tells me how he was petrified when the student had gone down holding his hand to his eye.

The student, Jalali Baba explains, was the son of some high ranking military officer, and he had thought his career over as he had walked to the student. The poor thing had looked up at Jalali Baba, and Jalali Baba had asked him if he had been hit in the eye. When the student had told him he was not, a relieved Baba had told him that he had been aiming for it. At this point Jalali Baba guffaws and concludes his story telling me that he had never, after that, faced any disciplinary hiccups in his teaching career. This is all told to me, when some poor chap is trying very hard to get the hazreen-e-mehfil (audience) to shower some daad (appreciation) on his verses.

I tell Jalali Baba he is going to get us thrown out. He agrees, and slides into this time when he had managed to get four of his friends thrown out of a wedding party, which was funny to him because one of the thrown out guys was not only one of his closest friends, he was also the groom's brother! Now this reminds him of how when he was the groom, his friends had presented him with a bottle of Habib Cooking Oil as a wedding present, which reminds him of the old peon at his school whose name was Habib, and whose daughter was the best friend of the girl his best friend's cousin had a crush on, which reminds him ...

Its a miracle, they did not throw us out!

So, the Mushaira ended, and Jalali Baba proceeded to Abu Dhabi, while I left for Sharjah.
Oh, and on the way back, thanks to some brilliant team-work that Blackey and I were able to come up with, we were home in slightly under 15 minutes, having maintained 140 Kms/Hr cutting and swerving our way through the viscous weekend Dubai-Sharjah traffic at 1:00 a.m. It had been a looong long time ever since I had felt 22! Its been a long time since I was 22.

It feels great to know I can still be 22 behind the wheel, when I want to be...

Knicq goes Riba-free.

2005-01-31T01:16:00.000+04:00

Tomorrow, at this time I will have tendered in my resignation to the Finance company I have been miserable in for the last 15 months. I will then be required to stay here for the mandatory notice period of 30 days, after which I shall, Insha Allah, begin my second tenure with the Logistics and Shipping giant, I had left over a year ago because the former had made me an offer almost 60% higher in cash terms than I was getting in the latter.

I do not know why, and I do not how, but I was able to talk myself into taking this position. The money was good, but that was just part of the reason. The job was not half as tough, did not require me to put in late hours, promised a glittering great career in banking, and given my majors in finance, seemed to be the right industry to opt for. On the contrary, the shipping company while being very exciting and challenging was beginning to have its toll on me. The long hours meant that seldom did I get home before 10:00 p.m. So much so, my own daughter would not recognize me as easily as she did her Mamoons - I used to leave before she woke up, and I used to get in quite often when she had already gone to bed. Targets were steep, and meeting them was no cause to celebrate. Despite the best of your efforts, you never knew where you were headed career-wise, because you were up against another eight who were equally good if not better than you at everything you were good at, and then there were a couple who were good at all the things you were bad at. Finally, for all the efforts you put in, the money was only about half as good as the finance company.

It had seemed to be a good decision - at the time.

In reality, I do not think I was more miserable ever in my professional or academic life, and that, folks, is almost all of my life. Actually, come to think of it, I was never miserable before 2004.

Don't get me wrong. I am not being unthankful for Allah's bounty and mercy. Looking back, it was a fine year, and many many good things happened to me during this year, Shukr Al Hamdu Lillah. But, there was always this sinking feeling, which just dampened the mood. The thought of eating riba, and feeding it to my kids was disconcerting to say the least.

In all of my 27 years preceding this banking move, I had faced challenges as does everyone. Comparatively speaking, 2004 was easier. There were no new challenges, apart from the one mentioned above. Yet, in all of those 27 years, I was happier and maintained a sunnier disposition at all times. In all of those 27 years, (okay, subtract the five for childhood) when I faced a challenge, I turned to Allah, and then waited patiently, yet confidently, for His divine intervention, and took it forgranted as it always came.

Things took care of themselves, and they did so so well as if apologizing for having perturbed me in the first place. 2004 was a year when I was petrified that if such an ocassion arose, things might not take care of themselves. Thankfully, the only hits I took were financial, and will you believe it, they always amounted to round about the incremental difference I had got at the finance company. That was just the additional, and more tangible, proof I needed to convince myself to opt out.

Actually, I had decided to opt out by the third day of my stay in this finance industry. A nightmare I had a few days before I had joined here played no small part in helping me arrive at that decision. The trouble was the local labour law laid down that an employee would invite a six month emplopyment ban if he or she chose to tender in a resignation prior having completed at least one year of service with an employer.

I remember having searched for a job in the other five GCC countries, but it was all in vain. I think I was destined to complete a year here so that I learnt my lesson well, which I did eventually. And then just about the time I was completing my year, this opportunity presented itself to me to get out of this industry, and I grabbed at it with both my hands.

Sure, the money is not as good as the finance company, but the package is not bad. It is actually better than most I know Alhamdu Lillah. I think I have been rewarded too for having held on to the conviction that I had to leave that riba-infested industry. I am back at the same company I was at, and this time at a better position than I had left it at, and with more opportunities for professional growth than ever before.

Most importantly, my heart is at peace. I am happy. I am happy and thankful, thankful to Allah for forgiving my transgression, and for continuously giving me those signs in the form of small financial set backs that the income from riba did not have barakah in it. I feel fortunate that way, in that many a muslim today spends a life time in banking today without getting these signs, but I was shown the perils of staying there. For that, I am grateful.

I think it has a lot to do with the fact that my father never took or paid interest. He never took an overdraft, nor a credit card. He earned about one third of what I do, had twice the number of children whom he put through the best of institutions, and still saved enough to start a li'l something of his own after retiring. That is what you call barakah, and I think Allah did not will the son of such a staunch muslim and a simple pious man to go astray eating riba.

I have been wanting to write this for a while, but always checked myself because it seems a bit too much like saying I am the pious one. Because, frankly, I am not. I have my many short comings, and if I died today, perhaps only the mercy of Allah, and the prayers of my loved ones would keep me from landing in the hot country in the hereafter. But, I have decided to share this with all my brothers and sisters, so they know exactly how miserable I was in a riba-infested job, even though it paid me more, and asked me to work very less.

I checked around with my colleagues, and I found that each one of them was just about as miserable. Some accorded all their misery to riba, others just complained of their miseries, but they were all miserable. It was horrible, and an eye-opener. There was at least one who actually had so much going wrong in his life, but he was impervious to all that. He had gone that far away from deen - he did not even realize that he was headed to certain doom.

So, I tell you brothers and sisters, if ever you are faced with the prospect of taking up a job in the riba-based industry, have faith and turn it down. It will bring you no good. I know that this coming from a finance graduate sounds rather ironic. How else do I think will the system work? Well, I have no idea. What I do know it does not work by going against the dictims of God Almighty. What I also know is that the riba based system is not the only system there is. The rest is for us to work on and figure out.

In the end, I ask you all for your blessings, and for your duas that I do not falter in my commitment to stay out of riba for the rest of my life. Ameen.

Definition Distress, II.

2005-01-23T01:53:00.000+04:00

Wonder if anyone else has noticed the metamorphosis of Pakistani channels into what I am told is the International Channel look? It had been happening gradually in the last few years, but it seems to have gathered phenomenal pace in recent weeks - this drive towards the tolerant and liberal image of Pakistan.

Don't get me wrong, I must count amongst the strongest proponents of tolerance and liberty on the wrong side of our planet - the side it is okay to bomb every now and then on this pretence and that. But, I do happen to define liberty as something more than the freedom to strip in public, or not be dressed in public. Actually, my definition of liberty does not include the afore-mentioned acts.

Liberty, as I define it, encourages innovation, gives impetus to improvisation, and galvanizes creativity. Liberty, as I understand it, accords freedom to people to chalk out their own destiny, and provides security to people who dare to be different. Liberty, as I perceive it, should have set our society on the path to intellectual evolution, economic progress, and social well-being.

The same holds true for my understanding of tolerance. Tolerance, as I want in our society, should permit our people from the various religions and sects to co-exist peacefully in this country that belongs equally to all who are its citizens. I would eagerly contribute to the promotion of tolerance that would lead not only to religious harmony in our people, but which would encourage our people to 'derage'; to exercise their liberty to differ, but refrain from imposing and enforcing their own opinion; to understand that the world is a two-way road, and wherever they might choose to go, there will always be some people going the other direction; to make room for the possibility that what is different is not necessarily wrong. I would think that practicing such tolerance would bring us closer to the goals I have earlier mentioned, those of intellectual evolution, economic progress, and social well-being.

Inherently though, primarily because of the goals they set forth, my definitions preclude blind aping of other nations, societies, and countries. When I talk of evolution, I set a strong premise for the whole scenario. You see, while evolution is defined as a gradual development into a more complex being, it is never defined as a goat metamorphing into a giraffe. Essentially and fundamentally, the evolving being stays the same. The goat stays a goat, and the giraffe, a giraffe. My definition of Economic Progress is self-explanatory. It translates into higher GDP, higher per capita income, higher investment, higher purchasing power, healthier balance sheets, lower unemployment, lower inflation, a huge and happy middle class, a shrinking lower class, and all the other desirable highs and lows essential to an economy that can be termed as great.

My idea of social well-being is a society at peace with itself, proud of its heritage as well as progress, and firmly rooted in its ground, yet reaching out for the skies. You might have noticed that my goals do not include social transformation.

Now let me come to the point. I am much thrilled by all the interest our 'artists', 'intellectuals', and people I call the 'opinion benders' have recently exhibited in projecting a more tolerant and liberal Pakistan. I am disappointed, and often depressed by how these artists, intellectuals and the clan choose to define liberalism and tolerance. What I do not understand is that why must liberalism be synonymous with denouncing all religious and social norms. Surely, not everything prevalent in our societies needs to be changed. How is it that sleeveless (and much other less) clothes, which are alien to our religious (and that includes all religions, for all religions preach modesty) as well as social norms, are imperative to wearing one's intellectual evolution on one's sleeve?

Frankly, I look at such inane exhibitions of intellectualism as evidences of intellectual bankruptcy - for it does not take much to figure out that intellectualism is by definition a mind thing, and not a body thing. When intellectualism needs to be showcased in nudity and nakedness, it is less than lame. The definition of nudity and nakedness will vary from society to society. There are countries and societies in the world, which have worked hard to ensure that less and less is defined by these words, there are other which have already managed to purge these words from their dictionaries and conscience. We, Pakistanis, are not such a society - not yet anyway.

To evolve, we need to remember that we must stay the same essentially. Because, if we do not, we will soon metamorph into Kafka's cockroaches, and will then run on the walls and the ceilings of our rooms, hiding from the mirrors, and trying to figure out where we went wrong, and how we could undo the metamorphosis. By then, it will be too late.

Eid Mubarak!

2005-01-22T01:16:00.000+04:00

Eid Mubarak to the world.

It seems rather out of place to blog during Eid holidays, and not write about Eid. Eid in the UAE, as I had mentioned somewhere else earlier, used to be a not-much-day. There were no relatives to visit, or to be visited by, or to collect Eidi from. But, perhaps what made it all the more boring was that in my childhood, and that feels like ages ago - which actually it was, Eid used to fall in summers. Summer automatically translates into staying indoors, and watching TV during the day, and going out and visiting a few family friends in the evening.

Sure, you woke up, and went for the Eid prayers with Abbuji, and the brats; and you got back home to that peck on the forehead from Manji, and you pestered your sister, and you had your sheer-khorma. But then, you finished all that by 9:00 a.m. and then you had nothing else to do until the evening - except watch TV, which by the way did not offer as many options as it does today, given that all you had was two channels, and only one ran anything in the morning, and that one was in arabic. You practically had nothing to watch after the rusoom-ul-mutaharrika - arabic for cartoons, literally meaning moving drawings, were over. Unless of course, you enjoyed live transmissions of camel racing.

Eid used to be fun in Pakistan, with someone or the other coming by, and you not confined to indoors by the oppressive heat. The added perk of your pockets bulging with Eidi always came in handy.

Whenever I sit back and think about these things, and realize how much better I have it today as a grown-up, I wonder just what it is about childhood that makes people nostalgic. You need permission to do anything that is fun, and you hardly ever get permission to do anything that is fun. Even if you do get permission to do something you had asked permission for, you are categorically barred from doing the fun aspect of that activity. You are confined to indoors when it is raining, when it is hot, when it is cold, and when it is not raining. If you do get to go outdoors, you are supervised. You can't play your music loud, and there is always that darned homework you are threatened with - it never matters if you have already finished your homework, because you can always be made to write out pages and pages of khushkhati - handwriting practice.

Which reminds me, of all the things you hated, you hated khushkhati the most. The verdict on what was right or wrong was entirely subjective, in that you had never got it right, until Manji said you had. Now, one always felt, and one is entitled to one's skepticism, that Manji never gave you the nod until it was way too late to watch cartoons on the second of those two afore-mentioned channels, or call up a friend, or do anything but go to bed. I am reminded of evening after evening I had spent agonizing over 'Jeem' or 'Meem' or 'Laam' or 'Choti yay', or getting my 'y's and 'g's right....

Alhamdu Lillah, as a grown up, I can write as bad as I do everyday, and still just grab my car keys, and wife-permitting go out for a spin in the airconditioned coolness of my car.

Anyway, coming to the current Eid, its been great so far. Especially so because of the lovely, lovely weather. It had started raining just about the time I was finalizing my last update. It kept on drizzling off and on after that, and the sun has been, thankfully if I may add, staying indoors. The sky is filled with clouds, and even when there are no clouds, there is a nice grey sky as far as one can see. There is a mild chill in the breeze, and despite my sinus issues, and extreme intolerance of cold weather, I step out from time to time without any warm article of clothing on, lest it take something away from enjoying this weather, and take some deep breaths.

Wifey and some others have been complaining about the weather, and I look at them with wonder. In this land of four seasons viz., hot, very hot, humid and very hot, and pleasantly warm, I fail to understand how anyone could complain about a weather that borders on cold. Just how often do you get this luxury here? Give me this drizzling, these clouds, this grey sky, the muddy outdoors anyday over that scorching sun /airconditioned indoors. I will gladly opt for the former set of variables instead of that agonizing latter combination 365 days a year.

The first day was thus spent offering thanks to Allah for grounding sun. It had been a bad star for so many days, blowing hot and not cold. Lunch was an assortment of mutton delicacies with minimal bread to go with them. In the evening Jalali Baba landed at out kuttiya with his family, and the place suddenly became a city in itself. The ladies were in the kitchen, the boys busy ensuring the children's toys were strategically placed all over the house with special emphasis on the toys being equidistant from each other. The younger ladies were supervising the on-goings, and yours truly was basking in the unsolicited expert opinion of Jalali Baba on the benefits of spending a rainy day in the hilly domains of Hatta.

It was after much pleading that I was able to deter him from delving into the fun-filled details of their few hours at the Sharjah National Park, lest wifey over-heard a line or two and came after me with the saucepan for having slept through the day, while 'so many' people were out having fun on the holiday. My joy was short-lived though, as I overheard Mrs. Jalali Baba in the kitchen sharing just how much fun the family had had in their few hours at the SNP. I found myself lamenting the fact that there were still two days to go before office began.

Ah well, enough of my ramblings....

*steps out to take deep breaths once again*

Getting back, with back log...

2005-01-18T01:32:00.000+04:00

Assalam u Alaikum Blogistanis,

I am tempted to start with a "Ditcha miss me?" sort of a line, but then it is too Jim Carrey-ish, and I am not a fan. Not to mention the fact that it is hardly something to be skeptical about, I would think it's a given. I know there will be those who might have a different opinion on the subject, however my sincere advice to such not-so-discerning folks is to not be generous in sharing of their opinion. They are entitled to all of it, and should make the most of it themselves. The saner world will know better than to question a fact as well known as this.

I could delve into the plethora of excuses for not having updated in such a long while, but then I am reminded that some of the great, no wait - make that other great, bloggers do not update for months on end, if I were to take my liberties with a bit of exaggeration, and yet never give in to the basic impulse to justify their absence to their admiring readers - examples abound in the list on your left under "Impressed by...". Akvetcher, Felicity, BAQ, Jogia, and Saadat are names that spring to mind with alarming alacrity. Then there is Jalali Baba, who has had a blog for ages now, and is yet to post anything on it. His blog exists simply as a testimonial to the miracles of hope.

The long and short of it all, of course, is that I am not obliged, nor inclined to explain my absence - not now that I have been made to feel, as well as treated, like a royal celebrity by the likes of Abez, Momma and Shagufta. Contrary to contemporary, and I am given to understand historic as well, wisdom I believe in allowing your five minutes of fame to go to your head - its only five minutes, and time they say flies, how much damage then could it do in that short a period. Besides, if fly it must, what better and logical place is there other than the head in human anatomy to be used as a launch pad. Dr. KK, alias Dr. AA, and Dr. Chai are invited to share their concurring views.

If you insist though, as most of you - two to be precise - have been doing in your fan mail, that I divulge the details of factors which had hindered a more frequent update, I see no qualms in obliging either of you. i.e. Yawar and Secret-Admirer-Who-Wishes-To-Remain-Anonymous.

As more than "most of you" are aware, knicq truly had undertaken a short trip to the land of the pure. For the benefit of those who are finding out about this visit just now, the last post of the last year, which also happens to be the post prior to current, carries the news and details of this visit as provided to others.

Time constraints, combined with sapping energy levels, diving mercury levels, ebbing enthusiasm to update resulting from being curled up and wrapped up in all of one's wardrobe while perched on a not-so-convenient chair in front of the computer, and keyboard woes compounded by shivering hands; all conspired to dampen my blogging spirit in Mirpur. However, being the dedicated blogger that I am, I had devised this method of logging headlines to memory for future reference with a view to preserving data during my non-blogging days.
Once again time constraints; supplemented by a different set of variables this time, the details of which are not germane to the topic of discussion and hence will not be divulged purely with blogging public's benefit in mind; do not permit me to narrate each day of the visit in detail - not at present at least. Ergo, what follows is a reproduction of those log entries to the mind which were made at the end of each day of visit, starting with December 31:

Dec. 31, 2004: Early morning arrival at a very cold, but breath takingly beautiful Islamabad. Red Carpet Welcome accorded at The Khan Manzil. Introduced to delicious pancakes and spinach and cheese omelet by Momma and Abez respectively. Treated to peculiar Khan family brand of humor, the family ably led from the front by the patriarch. Introduced to the very bright crayon, and mood-brightening K.C and Narni her two kids. Thankfully, not introduced to the canine element. Overstayed, and missed meeting Saadat - the only downside in the day. Arrived Mirpur in the evening in time to surprise the family, and to be surprised by the Mirpur winter.

Jan 01, 2005: Woken up early, to help with brother's wedding's arrangements. Mehndi same evening. Made to dance bhangra by brother's friends - thankfully knicq's first public bhangra performance of his life not captured on tape.

Jan 02, 2005: No rain, thankfully. Still, barat leaves late as expected. Blown away by the beauty of Mirpur on three hour drive to Bride's village.

Jan 03, 2005: Sun. Walima day. Great food, great day. Knicq's tie knot found to be hiding in the right of his collar as a result of hugging 150 plus male guests at the reception. Discovery made on way back from marriage hall. All photographs expected to be goofy. Blame laid squarely on photographer.

Jan 04, 2005: Rounds to relatives' houses - to congratulate all who got married, jobs, promotions and/or kids during knicq's absence; and to offer condolences for all who passed away during the period.

Jan 05, 2004: Continued from Jan 04, 2005.

Jan 06, 2005: Rounds to the relatives' houses bidding good-bye.

Jan 07, 2005: Leave for Karachi, stopping over at the Khans' place in Islamabad with the newly weds. Made to fall in love with Momma's brownies, Narni's protests disguised as crying, and Choti's explanations/interpretations of her drawings. Introduced to Chai, and her fashion designer cousin. Thankfully, once again, not introduced to the canine fear sensing playmate of Khan family's maid.

Jan 08, 2005: Arrived Karachi at 2:00 a.m., picked up by Madi. Called NB and RNB, friend couple and batchmates from MBA, and now happily married and settled in Lahore to inquire the score in the Zimbabwe-Bangladesh Test Match at 3:30 a.m! Warmly welcomed to Pakistan after 5 minutes of polite swearing. Called them up again at 5:45 a.m. to ask the Fajr prayers timings in Karachi! Greeted with not so polite swearing. Caught up on old times.

Day started at noon, with a scrumptious breakfast. The eating and laughing did not stop until 2:00 a.m. on 9th, and was joined by AmA and her hubby, Fash and his wife, and Ali and his family.

June 09, 2005: Early morning taken to Shagufta's at the other corner of the sprawling city of Karachi by Ama and her hubby, where treated to a break fast and made to stay for 45 minutes despite pleadings to allow departure within 10 minutes of arrival. Also presented with own poem beautifully written in hand on a tile by Shagufta - very flattering. Dropped at the airport by sweet sweet couple AmA and hubby just in time to check in for flight back home.

Been sick, lazy and not connected ever since.

Raining outside at this hour, and only three hours of sleep available before the last day in office before Eid holidays begins. As a rule the last day before holiday, vacation, and exit interview is hectic, so for now I present the above few lines as an offering, with a promise that blogging shall resume from today....

Takers...?

Stranded?

2004-12-31T04:51:00.000+04:00

They had snowfall on Wednesday in the far flung town state of Ras Al Khaimah. Thursday newspapers carried front page pictures of this desert covered with a thin layer of white... Exiting stuff eh? Don't know what to make of it...we here in the UAE are getting our own little Murree now...YAAAAAY!

But, it makes you wonder about the changes this world is going through right now, doesn't it?

On the one hand you have hundreds of thousands, make that millions, dead, missing, displaced and aggrieved in all manners, and on the other you have desert people rejoicing at three days of continuous showers/drizzling/cats and dogs raining followed by a film of snow spread over the unlikeliest of places....

Second news... Knicq has landed in the land of the pure. Arrived 10:00 p.m. and was quickly given a crash course tour of Karachi city by Jalali Baba, and a SCRUMPTIOUS dinner at Fash's thanks to his angelic wife. Karachi by the way is soaked right now, and the rain/drizzling has hardly stopped since I arrived. JB was furious at the timing of both yours truly's arrival and the rain. The two, he said, could not be enjoyed together... I apologized for breaching the mutually exclusivity clause of the contract signed between the Rain, Jalali Baba and yours truly. It does not take a genius to figure out that the first two parties to the party were not in the wrong, and the brunt of this contractual breach has to be borne by Jalali Baba's humble servant....

In 30 minutes from now, I board PIA 0530 KHI/ISL. The next ten days promise to be very exciting...

There's the long awaited and very looked forward to meeting with the blogging family Momma, Abez and Owl.

There's the other eagerly awaited blogger meeting between knicq and ulta seedha.

There's the long awaited and very looked forward to wedding of the younger brother.

There's the taking to task of knicq by his parents, the only item on the itinerary not eagerly looked forard to, for past nafarmanis/disobediences.

...and there's the meeting of the hopelessly patriotic and nationalist knicq with his beloved, beloved country...

Let the festivities begin....

...ooops, they just announced that the flight is delayed by one hour due to bad weather, DARN!!!

Here it is...found my update :)

So now, the flight to Isloo ( I like this term of endearment coined by Momma for Islamabad), leaves at 0630 rather 0530, and I have been up and running around since 10:00 a.m. yesterday...

Looks like the blogger meets will have to be postponed until after the younger bro's wedding and my taking to task...if that leaves me not-sleeping-six-feet-under that is :).

I guess Jalali Baba is right, I ought to have been more watchful of that exclusivity clause after all...

An excuse with two good legs....

2004-12-26T15:43:00.000+04:00

Must be the holiday season... Is there another explanation for me not having updated in the past few days? I mean it is not as if I have run out of topics, or more aptly put, people to blog about.

There's Guiseppe who has been waiting in line for a dedicated update for over a month I think. There's Coori, the nut, who has to be introduced, complete with his obsession with optimizing the 7 rupee bag of detergent, even if that meant he had to ask for the room mate's articles of clothing, so he could wash those too. Coori's introduction would automatically lead to Lala's introduction, which would be incomplete without a mention of the phenomenon that Mari is. Lala, whose greatest regret could often be the fact that he had not seen Sargam the 9th time, or the brutal truth that he had befriended Mari; and Mari, who had helped me find my brand new khussa (Traditional Leather Shoe) I had bought to wear at a wedding by lifting his foot, with the khussa on it, out of the waist high flood water of Lahore.

If one were to mention Mari, it would be unfair to not talk about KT Bhai, and talking about KT Bhai will always include that visit with him to PCBA which had led to a reunion with Fash after eight good years of not knowing what the other was up to. Now Fash was instrumental in Madi becoming friends with me, and everybody knows this was a friendship that evolved during those joint study sessions of MBA. What everyone does not know is that often these study sessions could become unbearable ordeals when they were invaded by OT and OTness. Ergo, an introduction to OT would have to follow.

In all fairness you cannot talk about the bad study sessions and not mention the great study sessions that involved 2 hour telephonic brooding with Felicity on the other end of line, and Madi and "Tu Iddar Aa" guy taking time off their "Andaaz Apna Apna" to fume over the brooding. This would bring in the various episodes that involved Felicity, the TIA guy, or the both of them.

In short what I am saying is that there is no dearth of people to write about, implying that there is no shortage of topics - yet I have failed to update for ages...

Like I said, must be the holiday season...

What am I thinking...

2004-12-26T15:15:00.000+04:00

Zindagi tujh se har ik saans pe samjhota karun
Shauq jeeney ka hai mujh ko magar itna to nahin.

(Beautifully rendered in "Sajda" by Jagjit and Lata)

Madi, Joseph and Mansoor. Vol. II

2004-12-21T01:15:00.000+04:00

Joseph wrote me an email, and he signed it Guiseppe. It took me sometime to figure out that Joseph and Guiseppe are one and the same person. I am sure he will forgive me. After all, unlike him, I am not Italian.

I had met Guiseppe by chance. He was the third good thing happening to me on that day. Madi's visit was the first, my discovery of Mansoor's music was the second, and meeting Guiseppe was the third. It seems appropriate that I tackle Mansoor before I do Guiseppe. Mansoor is not exactly pronounced Mansoor, it is pronounced more along the lines of Maynsour, what with he being an Iranian and all.

A couple of years ago, a client of mine, distributor for a major Korean brand of cigarettes had thrown a grand party at the Dubai Golf Creek to launch a new brand of cigarettes. The party was followed by a grand concert, and because the M.D was in a generous mood when he met me, he handed me over a couple of passes to this concert. It was a concert by an Iranian superstar followed by a Lebanese superstar. I understood niether Persian music nor Arabic music, but it seemed rude to decline that invitation, so I took it with thanks. Besides, Persian and Lebanese are generally acknowledged as two of the most beautiful races on Earth, and I thought being in the company of that crowd could only do my eyes good.

Mine was a VIP pass, so I proceeded to the open air venue along with a couple of friends from the host company, one an Indian and the other a Pakistani. Our jaws dropped to the ground with resounding thuds, and our eyes almost popped out when we got to the venue. It was as if we had been transported to another part of the world in an instant - everywhere we looked we saw these men and women of exquisite beauty, and for as far as I could see I could see not a single abaya/burqa/scarf. Actually, the ladies were too liberally dressed even for a Dubaiite's taste. The concert was yet to begin, but the place was jam packed, and it was abuzz with the indescribable noise reminiscent of a huge beehive.

I tried to listen, and I so very much liked what I heard. Anyone who has heard either Persian or Lebanese accent of Arabic will tell you that there are few dialects that sound more amicable to the ears. There's of course the sing-song dialect of Singhalese that the Srilankans talk in, there is Swahili that my Kenyan friends seem to sing lullabys in, and in our own backyard we have sweet languages like Seraiki and Sindhi that are easy on the ears - but Persian, and Lebanese/Syrian Arabic are in a class of their own. Perhaps, it has something to do with the over all ambience created by the speakers of these two languages that lends them added beauty.

So there we were looking like kids in a HUGE candy shop, when all of a sudden, without any warning this bearded guy sprang on to the stage with a cry - and the noise that followed was nothing less than deafening. He mozay feghustay dostayed a little before he launched into his first song. The crowd went absolutely berserk, and I found it hard to convince myself I was in UAE. I know a lot goes on in UAE, but somehow that part of Dubai is not a part of the life we born and brought up in UAE Pakistanis normally live. The first song ended, and then without music this guy chanted something like "Deevooney Deevooney..." and half the crowd chanted back in unison. The other half almost killed itself screaming!

Turns out this was one of the most waited for numbers in the evening, something like a Dil Dil Pakistan in a Vital Signs concert. The noise as well as the frantic dancing of the crowd was beginning to get to me, perhaps because I knew niether the language nor the music at all, so by the end of the second song, I had made my way out of the venue, but for a long long time the "Deevooney..." chant was etched on my memory. I had wanted to get my hands on that music for sometime, but unfortunately, I had not taken the trouble of finding out the name of that band at the time.

Two years down the road, I had just sauntered into this Virgin Music Store when the DJ played "Deevooney". I recognized the tune instantly, and picked up a cassette. I still do not understand more than just a few words, but I love the music. The guy sings very well and our Jals and Jawads could certainly take a leaf out of their music. Its worn off now, but on that day the excitement of listening to something totally fresh had wanted to translate into words on this blog, hence the inclusion in the title of the post. By the way deevooney means the same as Deewana in Urdu, Crazy. Incidently that was also the name of the album - Crazy.

So there...

... Now all I have to write about is Guiseppe, who to date is one of the most inspiring peiople I have met... but you are going to have to come back to read about him.

Bloggers Meet, Crazy Rooster, and The Pursuit of a Speeding Ticket.

2004-12-19T01:15:00.000+04:00

You come back after a week-long hiatus, and its like you are blogging for the first time. Actually, its the same with everything that one approaches on the procrastination canoe - it gets tougher and farther with every minute. Remember that file I was working on waaay back in August, well guess what fellas? Never did manage to finish that one, nor that 167 page book I had thought I could breeze through in a jiffy. There's a plethora of other jobs I had to finish, errands I have yet to cross the finish line on, and making a list of those is not the purpose of today's post. So, let us just plainly agree that procrastination delays stuff more than we realize. :)

The purpose of this post is to narrate the "aankhun dekha haal" of the bloggers' meet held in Abu Dhabi, and hosted by Waleed, the half past nomad guy. Those of yous wondering what on earth "Ankhun dekha haal" is, please note that it is literally translated into "seen with own eyes". Those who had Urdu as a compulsary subject until they entered college, or after that will remember the oft requested essays in the board examinations with this appendage. The list that comes to mind at random goes like this:

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!

Oh, Mama.

2004-12-14T23:37:00.000+04:00

What started as a possible cold Sunday morning developed into a full blown throat infection by the night, leading to a handsome fever by Monday morning, which metamorphed into a dry cough before the sun departed...*coughs.

So, here I sit with a stuffy nose, watery eyes, a hoarse voice (more than ever), a spinning head, and a general feeling that the world is coming to an end. Walda has always maintained that I enjoy being ill, and hence the center of attention. I am pretty sure about the latter part, but I have my reservations about former. Wifey agrees and differs respectively with Walda and me. What I did enjoy in the good old days was the fact that I got to miss school and watch cartoons during the day, and not do any homework in the evening. Its much the same today. I got a chance to skip work, legally this time, and nothing is more fun these days than NOT going to work. I did not have to run along for any groceries, and I got to watch my favorite programs too. There's a long list of pending jobs to be taken care of though, a list that runs something like this:

Update.
Complete (Read start work on) file on this month's business, before M.D flies out Wednesday.
Update.
Send CV and Cover Letter to this hot shot company, I have been wanting to join for a year.
Read "Beginner's guide to HTML" so benevolently provided by Jalali Baba.
Update.
Finish that 167 page book I was supposed to be finishing last month.
Get through that manual of the Kashmiri lady's company, so that a chance at freelance work might be availed.
Update.
Meet Half Past Nomad, KK, and Jalali Baba Wednesday for a bloggers get together event.
Help wifey get well soon.
Update.
Oh, and go to office.

*Coughs*

But, right now, I have got weather all over me, and I am just soo under it. No offence to wifey who has been at one's beck and call despite her own poor health, but getting sick was fun when one was younger, and one had one's Walda tending to one's whims, without remarking what a baby one was...Oh, Mama.

*Coughs and Coughs*

Introducing Jalali Baba ... III.

2004-12-09T01:49:00.000+04:00

In about 20 minutes from now, Jalali Baba will emerge from the Abu-Dhabi airport a free spirit embodied in a 102 Kg nicotine-infested holy temple, about to become nothing less than a nicotine mine.

Reason: His family, which in his tech-savvy definition is the same configuration as mine, will have boarded a flight to the land of the pure. To a less than sufficiently tech-savvy person like his humble disciple, our families being in the same configuration is meant to indicate the fact that it is possible to explain the principle of one-to-one correspondence to 4th graders using the two families as examples. Hence, when the families get together, the members of the families locate their respective counterparts, and initiate drawn out discussions on matters of mutual interest/disgust, not excluding gheebat sessions.

So, while Jalali Baba is seen imparting worldly wisdom to his unworthy disciple, the ladies (elder ones) exchange notes (read brag about) on the irritating (lack of) talents of their husbands, the three and a half year old boys get into fist-fights over each other's toys, while the young almost two-year old princesses practice the essential girly art of giving each other the cold shoulder treatment. The last pair also gets into frequent arguments over establishing who is the "baby" around there. Either party insists on calling the other "baby", and takes lead at flashing a triumphant smile at the ensuing tantrum thrown by the other. One is reminded of two blogging sisters driving a blogging mother nuts with their 'U Turn / No, U turn' arguments on their road trip. Well, this argument if it were garnished with enough 'U's would sort of sound the same:

Princess 1: U baby!
Princess 2: No, U baby!
Princess 1: Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!! (Princess 2 flashes triumphant smile) NNO!U BABY!
Princess 2: WAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaa!!! (Princess 1 flashes triumphant smile) NNNO! U BABY!!

... and so on and so forth.

I digress unnecessarily. The long and short of it all is that Jalali Baba's family has gone home today, for at least a month, which is short as compared to the last trip which had lasted six months. In those six months, Jalali Baba had put some 50,000 kilometers on Saab Ki Gaadi, running up and down between Abu-Dhabi and the mountains of Dibba, Fujairah. For those unfamiliar with UAE's geography, allow me to explain that between Abu-Dhabi and Dibba lies almost all of the rest of the country. Those were also the six months in which he had made up for all the nicotine deficiency in his body.

Last year, when his family had gone home, the distance between Abu-Dhabi and any point in the country had been reduced to immaterial. Hence, it was often Baba who would descend at the disciple's cottage. Towards the sixth month, the disciple's family had also proceeded to Pakistan for a one-month vacation. It was in this month that the disciple was afforded a chance to visit Baba's exalted abode. The prelude to this visit was a Mushaira, which was to be held in Abu-Dhabi.

In months leading up to this Mushaira, Jalali Baba had heard my poetry a little, and liked it. He was subjected to it a lot more, and was courteous. He has amazing command over Urdu, and is intimidatingly well-read. Now, for him to approve and like my work counted as a big compliment, and I reveled in the limelight of his approval.

A couple of weeks later, we went to this All UAE Urdu Mushaira, where some of the best poets of UAE, and some more from Pakistan and India were reciting their kalam. We both traveled in my Jimmy from Dubai to Abu Dhabi, taking BIL with us to attend it. We got there before the mehfil had started. As the first poet, the youngest of the lot, recited his verses, I got an sms on my mobile from this exalted fan of mine, and it read thus: "Mian Choozey, ab apni auqat pata chali!!!" Translated, it meant something like this: "Chicken shit, do you realize your worth now?" I was shocked. My one fan had dissed me within the first five minutes of the Mushaira. Did wonders for my soaring self-esteem. He still laughs about it.

I continue to see the shrink.

Finished, we went to his apartment. It was a disaster. If I thought my room was unkempt, all my fears were dissuaded. The cushions that his son had thrown before he had gone to Pakistan six months ago were still lying on the floor. Laundry was piled right after the dining table, just before the mattress, where he had evidently been sleeping in front of the TV after the family had gone home. There were all sorts of books on all sides of the mattress. Some were even under the mattress, others peeked from beneath the pile of laundry. Amazingly, he could locate each book at the drop of a hat, provided you could help him locate the hat in a jiffy.

There were four boxes of Pringles lined on the side of the mattress just beside the pillow, and I presumed he had been living on Pringles ever since his wife had taken that flight to Karachi. I proceeded to open one of them to munch on some, and he screamed at the top of his lungs. Turns out, each of these boxes was functioning as the final resting place of what had been the contents of tens and tens of Marlboro packs. Whoever had the time to go empty the ashtray every now and then. Indigenous thinking had made those trips to the trashcan redundant, while at the same time making the final resting place of all those cigarettes into trophies in their own right. Bhabi, a doctor by profession, wasn't supposed to know he was still smoking, and he planned to tidy the whole place up before she came. I tried to reason with him - if you had had half a kilo of ash lying in a room for half a year, no amount of tidying up could rid the place of the stench. He seemed to believe otherwise.

The two bed rooms as well as the kitchen were uncannily tidy - it was as if no-one had been there in a long while. Actually, no-one had been there in a long long while.

I understand that bhabi had replaced the cushions in their rightful place before leaving today, so the place should be relatively tidier in 30 days - relative to what it had looked like last year.

Hence fellas, Jalali Baba has his freedom from today, and my guess is he is at a mini-mart right now, paying for Pringles!

Ghulam.

2004-12-06T01:26:00.000+04:00

Bohat arsa beet gaya,
Kisi kahani ka sira haath nahin aata.
Wohi zama'n hai...
Wohi hai maka'n bhi,
Magar koi khadsha nahin chillata,
Koi dard nahin cheekhta,
Koi jazba sar nahin uthata!

Main khidki ki aut se,
Sadkun par bhaagti daudti gaadiyun ko,
Aur bemaqsad zindagi ki saraab raunaqun ko,
Dekhta hun....

... aur kuch nahin sochta!

Khushk aankhun main,
Koi baadal nahin aata,
Pur sukoon sanson main,
Koi aandhi nahin chalti,
Zehan ke dareechun se parey,
Koi toofan nahin uth'ta,
Koi bijli nahin girti...

... koi kuvaad nahin bajta!

Jaaney kab zeest rau,
Behisi ke saanchey main dhali?
Jaaney kab maqsad kee tag-o-dau,
Thehri,
Thami...
Tham ke giri!

Jaaney kab qayamat aayi?
Jaaney kis pe beet gayee!!?
Main ne khudi ka zeena dekha tha,
Magar...

... bohat muddat beet gayee!!!

(December 14, 2000)

Abez, I tried translating this one to append the translation here, but failed miserably. Once akvetcher is back from her vacation, I shall enlist her permanent services to translate Yawar's work, who by the way is seriously considering a blog of his own. Thank God. For now, I am afraid I must subject all to this horrendous approximation below:

Slave.

A long while it has been,
I get hold of no storyline,
The era stays the same,
and so does the setting.

Yet, apprehension cries out,
Nor does pain register,
And passion nomore rears its head.

I look out the window,
at the cars running to and fro,
and at the mirages of a pointless life,
and no thought passes through my mind!

The eyes remain dry,
Not a cloud appears.
The serenity of my breath,
No tempest it fears.

The portals of my mind,
Niether a storm rages,
Nor lightning strikes,
Thought not a door, no window, it engages.

Wonder, what trapped existence
Into the unfeeling, obdurate mould,
Wonder when the quest for the purpose
Wavered,
staggered,
halted and dropped.

Wonder when doom did arrive,
Wonder who it descended upon.

I did see the way to me,
But...

... a long while has since elapsed.

Comment Gone Lengthy, CGL VI.

2004-12-02T03:00:00.000+04:00

*Very long post, even by my standards*

(Refernce: Comment box, CGL V.)

BAQ, thank you again for your valuable comments on the previous post. A reply to over 20 fragmented comments would invariably have come in the form of another 20 odd comments, if not more, and for the convenience of the chance reader of this blog, I have decided to post my reply as a new post. You have covered a lot of ground, and I wonder where I should start from?

Shall we start by stating out the objective of the original discussion? Having gone through your comments rather diligently I feel that my premise for the whole discussion was misunderstood, and my comments often completely misinterpreted. I cannot help but agree with almost everything you have had to say, yet because a lot of it comes on the back of misconstrued opinion, it is not completely germane, and I feel obliged to offer a few clarifications.

The objective of this post, or the comments that followed, was never to absolve the US of its crimes against the many peoples of the world. It was to shed some light on the oft criticized propensity of many fellow Muslim brethren to take severe note of, and issue strict reprimand for the actions of the US when they transgress the morals of humanity; but not to show the same fervor when reprimanding similar actions by people from our nation. Quite a different proposition, you will agree, from discussing the merits and demerits of a certain civilization.

Why does a US criminal act against our people elicit a more animated outcry from us? Yet, we hardly ever go up in arms against similar, or sometimes even worst atrocities, committed by our own people, and ironically on our own people. Why does it seem to give the impression that we are more comfortable being wronged by our own people? Isn't a crime just that - a crime? Does it matter who commits it?

By drawing a comparison between the present day civilizations of both the West and Islam, I had sought to underline the fact that the Americans as well as the Western world are doing at least some things right, while we are not doing anything right. This is the reason they are ahead of us in so many fields. I did not advocate blatant aping of the West, but merely wanted to highlight areas where we could learn from the West. One can, and actually will, always argue that the values, which are instrumental in putting the West ahead of us, are those espoused by Islam, and hence we should follow Islam in spirit. Well, I have two comebacks for that - first of all, isn't it a given anyway that as Muslims, we follow these values and teachings? Second, how many of our people actually follow those teachings? Worse, how many will follow these teachings after this implied, yet deceptively candid, admission that if we follow these teachings we could excel also?

Because we are talking of the values, which have helped propel these societies into world leadership, we are obviously not talking of the shortcomings of these nations. I know as well as you do that the US is not leading the world, because it has one of the highest crime rates in the developed and developing world, or because a mockery has been made out of the institution of marriage in the country. I do not need to be told that emancipation of women from their clothing; rampant drug abuse, domestic violence and many other ills that plague the American society have had no part to play in the development of the US Civilization. So, if we delve into these details, we are obviously digressing.

Our failures, ADMITTED OR NOT, are failures; failures that continue to haunt our daily lives. They cannot just be brushed aside - not when they can be addressed and rectified immediately. Unfortunately, we are quick to move on to condemnation of others after our own candid admission - as if this admission absolves us from the crime of having failed to follow the way of life we were ordained to adopt. Ironically, what would propel us to prosperity, and pull us out of our misery is not the blind and rhetorical condemnation of others, but an active interest in, and a direct effort at addressing these ADMITTED failures as you call them.

The objective, therefore, was to categorically state on the one hand that there is no justification for our people to treat or react to a crime differently based on the nationality and religion of the perpetrator, thus implying that when the criminals are from our ranks, we should take as much exception to their crimes as we do to US actions against our brethren; and more importantly, to show on the other hand that part of the reason the US actions elicit a stronger reaction from our circles as well as from world over is that the world looks up to the US nation because of the importance this nation attaches to the right ideals (Freedom, Liberty, Equality, Peace, Compassion...)

The world, therefore, least expects this nation to perpetrate such cruelty and such atrocities, especially with such disregard for international opinion. So, when this nation does stoop to bombing of entire nations on fabricated pretences, the world loses a sizeable chunk of hope in the future of the world. The whole world becomes apprehensive, and afraid.

It is simple to see why. If an acknowledged and self proclaimed savior of human values, however dismal its record in defending and upholding these values be, itself regresses into a remorseless monster, there is little one can expect from the already less humane people of the world, people who do not even have any pretensions of being morally correct. If you delve into the dismal record of this nation's colonial past, you will be surprised to know that even when the US forces were committing the worst outrages in Korea, Vietnam Chile, Iraq, and Afghanistan, to name but a few, the Americans genuinely believed that their forces were liberating the very people they were attacking. Stupid? Yes, very.

However, please understand that I am not defending the stupidity of a nation that buys wholesale into the excuses and farces its government presents in defense of its heinous acts elsewhere. I just wish to highlight the fact that as naive as they may be, these people have to be sold the idea that their government is doing the "right thing" before their governments go out and do the "right thing". The "right thing" the Americans often think their Government is doing is almost always different from the "right thing" the American Government has often actually done.

We are therefore talking about two different topics, hence the mutual feeling that the other digresses. You talk of the American history, the actions of the Americans affecting the world, and the moral decay reflected in rampant marital infidelity, sexual anarchy, domestic violence, and such.

I talk about the fact that the American people do actually believe that they should stand by the right thing, and are willing to offer their sons in doing that right thing for another nation. No American government has gone to its people, and told them the real motive of its latest invasion of a country. Even the crazy cow boy does not just stand up and admit that there is a lot of Oil to be had in the Middle East, that the Jew agenda needs to be carried out by the American stooges, that there will be monetary, financial and commercial benefits (Booty?) for the nation if it goes on rampage on another nation. He wouldn't be able to sell a war to his people if he did not tell them that they were doing the right thing - standing up for lofted ideals.

We can again throw a tangent here and digress into debating why do the American people buy into such blatant lies. However, it could only be pertinent to discuss if we could establish that the American public actually is discerning and knows the truth, is aware of the farcical pretences presented to them by their government to attack other countries, and yet lends its support to the government's actions and atrocities. You and I both know this is not true.

I have seen many a fool on Faramin's and Laura's blogs who thinks Bush and Co. are doing the noble thing in Iraq in "trying to bring true democracy, liberty, freedom, peace and what not" by bombing the country into oblivion. My discussion is not on how naive and media-affected (read infected) these people are, neither is it an attempt at justifying anything. My discussion is just highlighting the point that here is nation who if led to believe is doing the right thing, will do the right thing, and will be ready to bear the costs. Can the same be said about our nations?

You have often criticized the American nation for giving a second term to butcher Bush, but you have failed to extol the virtue of the nation half of which voted against bB. We cannot point fingers at them when our own people elected the likes of Nawaz Sharrif and Benzir Bhutto twice, and would gladly elect one of them for the third time, despite the fact that each had plundered the nation each time he/she was elected to office in the past.

The discussion, as I have explained was not about the merits/demerits of the American civilization. It was more a comparison of the present day American Civilization with ours. A comparison meant to bring out and highlight aspects where the Americans excel, and because of which are expected to be more responsible, and held more accountable. I do not think I need to defend myself against your charge of wizardry after the above clarifications. You will agree there were no diversionary tactics of the magician employed at any point. I think I have also fairly established that at no point did I wish to present any justifications for any of the US government's actions.

In the end I would like to sum up the discussion with a few specific clarifications for your comments. To make matters less ambiguous, I have colored your comments in blue, any of my comments you quoted in green, and have stuck to black for my own clarifications.

"Because at the end of the day, their leadership and their media consist of their own people..."

"So, now we have a full implication that the American people and their government and their media are all inherently ONE in this whole drama by any means!"

Not exactly what I had meant. All I was trying to say was that because the American leadership and media institutions are run by their fellow Americans, Americans are not skeptical of what they are told by these people, and that it contrasts sharply with the state of affairs at our own end where we take everything our leaders and media tell us with a pinch of salt, if not a handful of salt. The difference in attitude stems from a people's view of themselves. You have found a completely different implication in my statement.

"So if that's the progress we are talking about where the most educated fools are routinely produced from the best universities in the world, we wouldn't want such progress for our children, would we now?"

The progress I was talking about was one of going from a genocidal nation responsible for wiping out the native Americans to a nation willing to sacrifice its own in the name of upholding the freedom and liberty of others; of a nation unrepentantly "licking" people for their color growing into a nation that is exceedingly watchful of any discrimination on the basis of colour; and of a nation capable of putting its own president on trial for having an illicit affair. You may respectively argue that US actions have seldom brought freedom and liberty to a people, or that racism is still a reality in the US, or that putting a president on trial was more a political circus than anything else. But then you will miss my point again - the point being that the people of America on all three counts could not be found in the wrong. They will lend their genuine support to an action once convinced that it is for the betterment of another people, they will always be watchful of racism, and they were able to put their own president in the stand for what was or was not a crime. I hope you see the distinction I make.

Secondly, you may hold the view that the universities churn out the most wel-educated fools in the world, yet it remains a fact that a seat in these universities is coveted world over, that these universities churn out world leaders in various fields including Sciences, Arts, Literature, Music, Medicine, Economics, Psychiatry and Philosophy. You have yourself admitted these universities do provide an excellent education. If we wouldn't want such progress for our children, why pray do we continue to strive day and night to get them into these universities?

You make some very interesting observations in your reminders also, and I have a lot to add in that department, but given that this post is already exceedingly lengthy, let me try and limit my queries to just a few lines.

"Ever since, and because of weaker military capacities, at least in part, they lost out their nations one after the other to the inhuman, colonialist movement of the Europeans..."

And what do you think brought about the weakness in our military capacities when we were at the zenith? I would think it was our deviation from the ordained path, infighting, power struggles and distortion of the Islamic way of life. Who is to be blamed for this?

"So much so that it was the science and technology developed by the Muslims that became the guiding light that brought Europe out of the darkness and gloom of its 'Dark Ages'. "

This, I think, is a flawed argument. Actually, the implications of this argument are flawed. Often, our people present this argument implying that the West’s progress in the fields of science and technology would not have been possible without the contributions of Muslims. Well, a lot of scientific progress had been made by the earlier civilizations too, on whose work the Muslim scholars had based their work. Achievements of Muslim scholars and scientists in no way diminish the progress their western counterparts of later centuries made, just as the advancements in the previous civilizations take nothing away from the Muslim luminaries of the past. My question is much simpler: What kept from Muslims from benefiting from this "guiding light" themselves?

"The vices you mention are not only rampant in the US, they are equally there in our societies. The worst part is those vices are not all vices by definition in the US society, but they are so in ours. Moral and legal transgressions - and yet our societies indulge in many of them en masse."

"It must be confessed that at no point in Islamic history was there ever an entire community of Muslims who were regarded as immaculate angels by any standards. Not even was this so in the time of the Prophet for he had to contend with the hypocrites and the doubters within the community himself...."

I had not meant to make the unrealistic declaration that the Muslim society is totally free of all vices, though I believe an ideal one should be as close as possible. I am just drawing your attention to the fact that while we are quick to crucify the western societies for the moral debacle, we seem to forget that the very same vices are rampant in our societies. What is more, the western societies have removed the immoral or illegal tag from most of these vices, while in our societies they are still considered immoral and illegal. Hence while they are moral (or at least not morally offensive) and legal in the western society, they are immoral and illegal in our societies, looked down upon officially, yet these same vices are equally rampant in our societies. The emphasis again is on the fact that we are neither moral nor law abiding, so it does not do to point fingers at others.

"Add to this the fact that the western media, in its attractive projection of immorality directly into homes in third world countries, and we have one of the greatest moral catastrophes in man's history taking place right in front of our eyes. "

This fact might be mitigated simply by taking the decision not to watch Western media. We are not forced to watch these "Immoral" programs, and the West does not specifically make them for us. The brunt of responsibility thus we must bear.

'you are the best of communities raised up for mankind, (since) you encourage the Good and prohibit the Evil. And you believe in God.'

So all said and done, while we believe in God as one must, the developed nations at least at the people’s level seem to be doing the encouraging the good and prohibiting the evil part as one must.

Comment Gone Lengthy. CGL V.

2004-11-29T14:49:00.000+04:00

Felicity and Faramin,

I seem to have missed out on a lot lately. The two of you make some compelling arguments, let me try and see if I can help put my perspective across too.

Felicity, you have a very valid point. I will be the first one to admit that it is imperative that we put our house in order as a nation. Yet, I feel you are slightly off course.

Despite our flaws and shortcomings as a nation, we have a right to live - to not be bombed into oblivion, because a very powerful and insecure country two continents away from us has been led to believe that we pose a threat to that country. If this American premise to attack Iraq is justified, then perhaps another nuclear country might be just as justified in nuking US for fear that someday the US might nuke them. The reason no-one has done that so far is not because US has "taken them all out", but because factually speaking no country would want to get into a war with the super power. Theoretically, however, a country strong enough to "take US out" should take it out, because US poses a threat to it - as does every other country of the world to every other country of the world. Justifying this premise, thus, is plunging the world into war.

Yes, the US name does seem to come up more often than any other, despite the fact that there are actually some countries in the world where man has inflicted and continues to inflict worse misery on fellowmen. Yet, you must make room for the fact that the US is, if only on paper, the most educated, the most advanced, the most democratic, and the most just country in the world. The US has not become a super power solely because it has the largest stockpile of annihilation material, but also because it has led the world for over a century now in all walks of life. It is the seat of learning, the epitome of civilization and the land of ideals and dreams - or at least until very recently was so. That is the real reason for its being at the top. It is at the top, because the rest of the world looks up to it.

When this leader of the world turns into a vigilante, and then into a bully - the rest of the world cannot be blamed for becoming jittery. When the US, as the leader of human rights, attacks and destroys country after country, and actually takes high moral ground for having done so, the task of the smaller bullies becomes easy. The life of an average human being becomes so much more endangered.

By comparison, when in countries with less than 30% literacy rate, and rampant ignorance crimes against humanity are committed, they do not pose a threat to the rest of the world. They pose a challenge. The economic factors that have allowed these extremist outfits to flourish need to be addressed - not by anyone in particular, but by all who care. So that the next generation is not hijacked in the name of religion. Where I know that in the last 20 years media in our own country has had an intolerant rhetoric tilt, we both know that all and sundry revile the attackers of the mosques - be they sunni victims of shia attacks, or shia victims of sunni attacks. The silent as well as the non silent segments speak out against this outrage. But, that is a different discussion. What I mean to say is these extremist factions do not have any pretensions of, or claims to being the champion of the people. So, their crimes, while no less severe, pale by comparison to those of the US because the US and its respect for human rights were to be the epitome of hope.

Also, the power of those extremist factiosn when compared with this bull gone crazy is nothing in terms of the threat it poses to the world. Hence, one sees more people speaking out against the US actions than others crimes. In short, US actions have a deeper, much deper impact on the shape of things to come than anyone else.

I do not present the extremists' ignorance and intolerance-steeped upbringing as an excuse for their actions - I just hold US in greater contempt because it is better equipped to respect and defend humanity and does not do so. Instead, what one sees it indulging in is the worst kind of selfish manouvers - where a deemed threat to US lives, however preposterous, is reason enough to flatten a country full of people.

The two, Felicity, rooting out ignorance-induced extremism and stopping power-drunk bullyism are not mutually exclusive. However, for the threat it poses to the world, the latter needs immediate attention. Achieving the former might not be of much use, if the latter by then has got out of hands. Addressing the US problem might just make it lots easier to contain the extremism threat. Imagine, even if half the billions spent on bombing Iraq and Afghanistan had been invested helping poorer nations cement their academic institutions and structure, the last three years might have brought a sea chnge in the way the world looked at the US.

Instead, the world looks at this bully gone crazy with fear, apprehension, and despair.

For full discussion, please refer Faramin's blog.

Madi, Joseph and Mansoor. 1

2004-11-29T03:00:00.000+04:00

Now, doesn't that sound like an interesting topic for a ch'haar darwesh story? My posts may not be ch'har darwesh stories, but they are ambitious attempts nontheless. The title, I would think then, is apt. The CD stories are seldom containable in one post, or tome. At least, they always present that growth potential, and one ought to be optimistic about these matters, hence the "1". This "1" implies a lot more than it says. It tells you that the author takes it upon himself to help you manage your time better, and so will not be burdening you with the complete details just yet. It also asks you to make a mental note to come back again - for, for every thing that has a volume 1, it is implicit that there will at least be a volume "2", if not more. Thirdly, it makes it binding on the writer to keep his mental faculties operational by telling him that he might be in for a marathon rather than a 100m.

I am not very good at diary like posts, and often end up typing out lines after lines of boredom, as might have been guaged by discerning readers by now. Not that I think my non-diary posts are any better, but at least they do not imply that I am a boring old man with a boring penchant for boredom. At least, they do not advertise ...

Wait a minute! Where is all this going...?

Do you see now what I mean? I am talented enough to destroy the promise of a perfectly nice title. Well, not today. Not now. Hopefully, not often.

It has been an interesting day, and I have decided to try and see if I can manage to reflect that here... The day was interesting because of the three people, whose names give this post its title. They made a perfectly (read painfully) average day great, and I dedicate this post, and quite possibly some to follow, to them.

Let us start with Madi. Madi isn't pronounced the way it is written. It is pronounced the way it is not written. I guess, if it were to be spelled the way it is pronounced, it would be spelled Muddee - not with the "d" of mud, but with the "d" of Urdu dada, or Russian "Da", or for that matter the Arabic "d". Yeah that's right, the last one fits it very well.

Now with the pronounciation out of the way, let me tell you that Madi is the name of one of those courageous men, who chose to be friends with this imbecile many years ago, and have since stood by their decision, come what may. He was here from Karachi on some training course being conducted by his hot shot company, and we managed to meet up a couple of times to catch up on old times. Old times happen to be the 16 months we'd spent together in PCBA back in 1997-98.

There was a lot going for us then. All the nice, pretty and beautiful girls (are there any other kind?) were falling for Madi, and I was going around proposing to each of them. Actually, I got to them with my proposals, even before Madi got around to getting them to fall for him. The worst part is he just had to be there, and be the gentleman he is, to make them fall for him. The best part is not one girl accepted my proposal. Best for them girls that is. All this, when he was just half a kilo heavier than me. It did not matter what weight I was, he was always half a kilo heavier than me. I had a theory. He had this full sand-papery shave even back then, and that was the half a kilo of difference. Either that, or he did not cut his nails. Given a choice between the two, he would inevitably be more agreeable to the former option. Why? Beats me.

We found out we were on the same wavelength during our study sessions. It would often transpire that we would get together at his place for joint study. We would agree to meet at something like 8 p.m. and be through with our thorough understanding of the topic/assignment at 2:00 a.m latest. 8:00 p.m. used to be the time I would get to his home from my hostel. After having seen the latest episode of Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, we would let his mother treat us to a scrumptious dinner, and then proceed post haste to his room sporting studious looks as well as attitude. The time by then would often have whizzed past us to 10:00 p.m. The books would be opened quickly, but before we even got started with the first topic, we would drift into either a story from his past or mine. After, the first three sessions, it used to be only his stories, since I did not have very many left in the bag by then. The first break would come with tea and snacks at midnight, after which we would often agree that we were running short on time, and needed to focus on the task on hand. The task on hand would often be an impending exam, or imminent presentation.

This is how the first five minutes of study would go at 12:35 a.m ...

Madi: Oh, this is the one. I remember the teacher (names vary) had explained it with this analogy.
Me: Oh, yeah, and look here, these are Bilal's notes from the classroom... and didn't Felicity raise this point in the same case.
Madi: Oh yeah. See, this is how it applies to problem no.1... (followed by 30 seconds for explanation).
Me: Hmmm... the next ten problems/slides look the same.
Madi: They do? Show me...
Me: Yes.
Madi: Yes, they do.
Me: That takes care of half the chapter.
Madi: (Looking at the wall clock) We are still running behind schedule.

So, we would repeat the above five minutes for the rest of the chapter.

Madi: There, now we are ahead of schedule. Just need to get powerpoint ready. Shall we take a break.

I would give my consent, and we would drift back into Madi's stories and my poetry. At 2:00 a.m. we would realize that we had fallen behind schedule, and so would get down to work. By 3:00 a.m. the "work" would be finished, and we would be worried about getting up late in the morning. Madi would often suggest that he could skip shaving, and I could skip brushing in case we woke up late - or we could both skip washing our faces with soap, which would translate into massive savings in soap and water over the next 3349 years. However, in case we were running really late, we could always skip tying the laces on our shoes, and he would also not lock the car. So satisfied with our time management feat, we would stay up another half hour, and would be woken up five minutes later by his mother just in time for our half hour trips to bathrooms.

Upon reaching college, we would run to Felicity and ask her if she had studied anything the past night, and she would tell us that she had. In evidence thereof she would tell us the story of the latest John Grisham novel, or a review of the latest movie she had seen the last night. We would then send her into depression by telling her that we had been up till 4:00 a.m preparing. The grades were always the same, Madi and I would score in the high eighties, and Felicity in high nineties. We hated her. We did all the hard work while she watched movies and read novels, and she always got better grades.

Anyway, Madi was here, and we were meeting after over two years. In the meanwhile, he had got married, and had been blessed with an angel. Reminiscing was fun, and meeting after such a long time was even more fun. Hope you can make it for a longer period next time, ol' friend.

If I do not go to bed now, no amount of skipping will help me in the morning... So, Jospeh and Mansoor who made the rest of my day special shall have to wait till the next post to find mention....

Yaaaaawn! Shab Bakhair.

Comment expected to go lengthy.... CGL IV

2004-11-24T01:49:00.000+04:00

(This post is addressed to Jalali Baba. It is written in response to his comment on the previous post. It is meant to be a token of thanks to his highness for having taken time enough to post a comment on this infidel's blog. It is also meant to be repentance for impertinence shown by this infidel to that exalted comment in not addressing and replying to the comment properly.)

Jalali Baba, allow me to start by offering half of the hair on my head as an offering so you may look kindly at this token. I am also enclosing a turtle's egg shell, the left claw's imprint of the alley's black cat on the photocopy of my 10th grade mark sheet, a GM brochure of 2005 models, two party size KFC meals, and 24 Snickers' wrappers with Snickers bars packed in them as an advance repentance offering for any words of insolence that might find their devilish way into this token of repentance and respect post.

Having said that I would like to disclose that my first response to your kind remarks, worded rather unkindly, albeit typically, was to complete and upload the third installment of Introduction to Jalali Baba, which awaits its ending paragraph since the day after installment two was posted. I realized, however, that it was important to first make this offering, which is why I decided to postpone it for one more day. I hope to complete that installment soonest and upload it here for the world to see. I assure you Baba that I have already admitted your greatness in the way you have patronized Yawar over the last couple of years. I shall leave the rest of this topic to be covered in that post.

Coming to your exalted comment, allow me to take this liberty to break your comment into more manageable mini-comments, so I can do justice to the whole comment.

"You forgot to mention another sibling, the one inspired by Yousfi. Bhai meray, amar-e-waqia yeah hay kay mammolay ka shahbaz say awallen takraoo Iqbal nay karwaya thaa. tum nay phir yousifi ko khainch lia."

Baba, the sibling inspired by Yousufi is not part of the sibling rivalries. He is the good humoured elder brother whose purpose in life is to smile knowingly, to quote Yousufi, and when in doubt about any idea - to attribute to Yousufi. Call it his aqeedat with Yousufi sahab, and his unshakeable belief that it is safest to attribute all literary wisdom and excellence to Yousufi.

There have been inherent draw-backs in this approach, like the time when he had declared to an aghast audience that Yossarian was originally a character in Yousufi's books, but when Joseph Heller had stolen the idea and the name for his Catch-22, Yousufi Sahab had graciously renamed his character Mirza. In evidence thereof he had elaborated on the phonetic similarities in the two characters' names. Surprisingly, it was at this point that the aghast audience had changed into a not-so-aghast audience. He continues to believe that this was proof enough that they were convinced of this truth.

There was also the time when he had tried to prove that the only reason Yousufi's work had not been translated into any other language was that no other language had been gifted with a proponent with such impeccable command on that language, because of which no translation could do justice to the beauty of Yousufi's work. He still has me sold on the idea. Actually, he has the two rival siblings and me sold on that idea.

It was because of this reason that the Yousifiic sibling did not find mention in that post. Understandably, while the other two siblings fight for personal glory, this sweet soul endeavours to get Yousufi nominated for Nobel prize in Literature, because as he says, if Urdu ever had a chance at Nobel Prize, it was more because of Yousufi than anyone else. In this he conveniently sets aside such legends and geniuses as Ghalib, Iqbal, Faiz, Ashfaq Ahmad, Bano Qudsia, ... and the scores of others who have brought glory to Urdu. Nonetheless, I hope I have complied with your implicit command, and brought the third sibling to light.

Every one else supporting Yawar: Please have mercy on me. You have read 3-4 "works of art" by Yawar hence you like it. But every time Yawar has a new aamad, it is relayed 150 Kms to poor me on the phone.

Yawar is flattered, Jalali Baba, that you choose to refer to his humble pieces as "Works of Art" and choose to lay emphasis on this term by enclosing it in inverted commas - lest other infidels like yours truly overlook this award. Yawar undertakes to make an offering of 2 Fatayers with Jubna, 1 KFC Family Meal, a dead rat, and two alive lizards as a token of gratitude to you for your graciousness.

I would most humbly like to point out though Baba that the distance between your home and that of Yawar's is over 175 kilometers and not 150 kms. Actually, it should be stated at a real value of 213.52 kms because of your propensity to lose your way coming here, and mine to do same going to your place.
p.s. There have been times when the aamad had materialized while Yawar was sitting in Ajman, beng given lessons by the legendary Mr. Nazir Khan in newspaper reading in the car etiquette, on which occasions the distance would actually have to be stated at 275 kms, given that Yawar always takes the longer beach-side road coming back from Ajman.

(hmmm... Yawar also seems to be influenced by Yousfi: Professor used to do the same in his bank and relayed poetry to subghay)

Jalali Baba, given that Yawar works for a financial institution I am assuming that he is the Professor in your Yousufiic analogy (the Yousufiic sibling concurs). This would make you Subghay, in which case you have a lot more to worry about than just Yawariyat. You will recall Professor did find his way to glory, (not withstanding his falling for the left ear of his interviewer and his surprise at finding that the other ear was equally beautiful), while subghay was left to Magrudic devices... or the lack of those for that matter. While on the subject may I borrow Sharh-e-Ghalib from you once again....I promise to read it this time (Yawar concurs), and blog about the experience (knicq concurs).

To tell the truth, I have developed a lot of poetry based personality disorders because of Yawar. I have to listen to the latest "Kalam" and also have to say Wahh waah, mukarrar. I implore you: Have mercy!!!

Your sense of humour is caustic Jalali Baba, for you to ask for mercy from infidel blogistanis is nothing short of tafannun-e-ironic. Your greatness in patronizing Yawar is lost on no one Jalali Baba. May Allah reward you for this kindness. Yawar for his part makes an offering of road kill lotas of the motorway brought to note by Momma, doubly sugared cookies baked by Abez, and a 90 minute digital recording of dholki by akvetcher.

Yawar is humbled by your declaration that he has had a part to play in the eccentricities, which make you special and unbearable at the same time. He undertakes to make an additional offering of Dunkin Donuts' Family Pack, three and a half dried roses, two bottles of Spanish Olive Oil, a 100 stubs of Marlboro Red, and a Soehnle bathroom scale.

For my part, I thank you for your patience and understanding, and as a token of my appreciation, gratitude, admiration, and dissent undertake to make an offering of Introduction to Jalali Baba - III ASAP.

Sibling Rivalry.

2004-11-21T01:01:00.000+04:00

This post comes just so I do not slip into the complacent mood completely, and resort to posting Yawarnama on daily basis. Actually, unless Yawar comes up with something new and original, he shall have to wait at the sidelines from now on. Okay, maybe now and rarely then, he will be allowed to delve into Yawariyat and post something from the past. But hey! No way does he cannibalize knicqness with his stale old contributions... or so one hopes.

Yawar is all of ten years old, and is not used to having a sibling around. Knicq, ever since he came around, has taken a lot of attention and that does not sit well with Yawar. I am sure every now and then when no one is looking Yawar lands a few punches into knicq, and poor knicq is probably just not sure how to respond to that. He will learn though... everyone does.

It was not easy for Yawar y'know. He was persecuted like anything in his infant days, and had it not been for sheer grit and determination, he probably would have succumbed to his fate long ago. I can understand him getting nervous by this new arrival just when he was beginning to come into his own, just when he thought he could bask in his own glory, just when people were accepting his right to walk the street too.

Knicq, poor thing, for his part cannot be blamed. How was he supposed to know, he would make Yawar that uncomfortable just by being around? It isn't his fault Yawar did not have it easy. It isn't his fault, there were no akvetchers, Abezs, Saadats and Ayshs to steady Yawar's step and hold his hand. It isn't knicq's fault he has them. In all fairness, he hopes Yawar were this blessed too, at least the green eyed monster wouldn't have reared its head. Who knows if he had had them, he might just have done better too...

In all fairness, don't all these people who steady knicq's step, go out of their way and give Yawar a pat on the back too. For all his whining, Yawar should remember that he was blessed with personal attention from the likes of Mrs. Khan, the adorable and doting Urdu teacher in college. He was also in a world where the rules had been laid, and the path trodden. He just had to find the courage to walk that path.

Knicq comes in a world that is still discovering itself in many ways. There are not one but many paths, and he is stranded at every junction clutching his map with no co-ordinates marked anywhere. He doesn't have it easy either.

If Yawar should get his fair share of attention, knicq sure could use some moral support as well...

Sibling rivalries, how does one cope?

Two Rubayees, and a Nazm.

2004-11-18T01:46:00.000+04:00

Uryaani ab alaamat-e-irtiqa thehri hai,
Ahl-e-watan main ghairat na'n haya thehri hai,
Dukhtaran-e-watan se kia kahiyey keh unke liyey,
Burqa qissa-e-maazi huwa, chaadar saza thehri hai.

(October 1995)

Yawar, meri saqafat ka program dekha hota,
Dukhtaran-e-watan ko raqsaan bar-sar-e-aam dekha hota,
Itney baras kitaabun main kiya padhaa kiyey tum,
Jo PTV pe aaya, kal woh Islam dekha hota.

(March 1996)

c) Fauj-e-Yazdaan.

Raastey assaan bhi ho saktey they,
Musaafir jawan bhi ho saktey they,
Ghaasib akela bhi ho sakta tha,
Zaalim natawan bhi ho saktey they.

Har dua hee gar Yawar,
Teri maqbool-e-rehmat hoti,
Har roz hi gar,
Mo'jza roonama hota,

To sehal bohat mujaahidun ko,
Qudrat ke imtihaan ho saktey they.

Par tu....
Keh na Zaahid hai, na'n Mujahid,
Tu kia jaaney lazzat-e-talkhi ko,
Ramooz-e-diqqat-o-mushaqqat jo,
Ayan hotey jawanan-e-millat pe,
Woh fauj-e-yazdaan bhi ho saktey they.

(November, 2002)

Eid, then and now...

2004-11-17T13:27:00.000+04:00

Then.....

Eid, in the UAE, has become a loads better occasion today than it was a decade ago. At least in terms of the options we have today. Eid is also a melancholic affair, because it brings back hordes of memories. Memories of a childhood spent in this same house, of scores of Eid prayers offered in the same Eidgaah, of the anticipation of Eid holidays, and the excitement of not having to touch the books for three straight days. I hated studying. Loved reading, but hated studying. In the Qureshi household, the only days you did not have to study were the days on which you were not allowed to fast as per shariah - the eid holidays.

One sorely misses going to the Eid prayers with one's adorably simple and amazingly wise father, one is hit by the pangs of not having one's brothers around to hug after the Eid prayers. In a strange way, one fondly remembers being rushed in the morning, because one was inclined to taking one's own time when bathing, which on the special day of Eid could not be allowed, because it could jeopardize making it to the Eidgaah in time. Then, ofcourse, there was the coming home to that hug and the kiss on the forehead from Walda. It was more a ritual in later years than impromptu expression of affection. It was just what you got after the Eid prayers.

Once knighted so, the three ogres would proceed to the next ritual - the pestering of the princess. It is amazing how she managed to be in a foul mood on the morning of every Eid. It was part of the ritual I guess...

Her sharp, curt retorts were the icing on the sheerkhorma. On normal days, she would get reprimanded for unladylike behaviour I guess, for being impolite and what not. The ogres would probably find themselves serving the equivilant of grounding. But, not so on Eid. It had become so much a part of Eid mornings, even Walid sahab and Walida would enjoy watching their little lady fighting off the ogres. Princess had this habit of lapsing into English when pestered, and that was what the linguistically challenged ogres enjoyed most. Poor thing. Its been so long since I was with the family on Eid, too long actually ... I don't know if she wakes up in the same foul mood today, though it looks highly unlikely. She must get pestered the same though. Yours truly was never the more original of the ogres anyway - so one doubts if his services are missed much. Post sheerkhorma, and Eidi, Eid was much the same every year.

The limited options we had in television stations, only the local television stations, meant that we were at the mercy of the mostly arabic stations - as long as they ran special programs for kids (read Japanese and English cartoons dubbed into Arabic), we had something to do. Walid saab was very particular that he did not want us getting influenced by the "dish culture" so we did not have PTV either. Occasionally, he would allow us to rent a video, but as we grew up this occasion became less and less rare. Perhaps because we had stopped watching hindi movies early on, we had not developed the immunity which was required to sit through a hindi movie as a family. English movies, mostly action movies, were considered a better option because they were often completely sterilized by the censor boards of GCC.

After that it could vary from sleeping off the rest of the day, to reading a novel if available, to calling all friends, to entertaining an occasional guest. In later years when we had moved into this pre-dominantly Pakistani neighbourhood, we would go out with the one or two friends from the neighbourhood, who could drive - but were required to be back for the family lunch. Not that we would miss Walda's delicious experiments in the kitchen for anything.

Yaadein gehri hain itni dil doob jayey
aur aankhun main yeh ghum num bun jaye.....
(Aadat - Jal)

and Now...

Every Eid in the last 6 years has been markedly different from all the others. The UAE is a strange place in that it acts more like a transshipment hub (only a matter of time before I used a shipping term) for many people. People come and people go, so you cannot really be sure you would be spending your Eid next year with the same people you spent it with this year. More often than not, people you were with the whole day on Eid have gone home this year to be with family, or have family visiting them from home. So, when I talk about Eid now, I shall talk about the current Eid. It was one of the most enjoyable Eids too.

Firstly, it was announced on the 29th Ramadan evening, which had completely as a surprise to almost the whole country. Somehow, we had all had this feeling that it was going to be a 30-day Ramadan, so when the Eid was announced, people scrambled to the markets to finish the shopping chores they had post poned to the last day. The last day had come a day earlier, and now the roads were clogged with bumper to bumper traffic, and parking lots of gift centres and shopping markets were full. We were part of the same crowd, and while we were there we got this call from Jalali Baba, who insisted we had to do our Eid with them in Abu-Dhabi. After a little persuasion, we agreed to leave for Abu-Dhabi after finishing the menial chores the same night, and join them for Eid. Glad, we did.

I had to get this haircut, and get my beard trimmed, but I was in for a surprise when I got to the saloon lane. It was crowded like crazy, and there were these lads, mostly locals, getting all sorts of procedures done on their faces. I saw some wearing masks and sitting out and hoped they had not taken offence to what I thought was an imperceptible shaking of my head. Others were there for the same purpose I was. By the time my turn came, it was almost midnight, and by the time we left for Abu-Dhabi it was 1:00 a.m.

We got to Jalali Baba's at about 3:00 a.m. and decided not to go to sleep lest we miss the prayers. Until then it was talk, talk, talk. After the prayers, it was some more talk, talk, and then sleep. At a couple of hours after noon, we were treated to bhabi's wonderful Eid meal, and I had to come to terms with my first deviation from the strict diet control I had achieved in Ramadan. Spent the whole day feeling fatter, and resolving not to trangress my limits again - until the next meal, when I completely caved in. The only damper was the fact that Jalali Baba did not have E-vision, and we had to miss on the Pakistan-India match. Jalali Baba was the only one not interested in the outcome, but for the sake of the other three adults, I kept calling friends and getting live updates. By the 30th over of Pakistan's inings, when it was clear that it was headed towards a nail biting finish, I was kicking myself for not forcing Jalali Baba to visit our place instead.

Got to see the higlights yesterday, and it gave me the same rush it would have watching the match, even though this time I knew the outcome. The only damper was the very unsporting crowd at Eden Gardens. I remember Pakistanis cheering each Indian shot as vociferously as a Pakistani shot when the Indian team was visiting Pakistan earlier this year - even though we lost the one day as well as the test series then. Consider that it was the first time ever that a test series was lost to India on home ground, and it puts things in perspective. I am glad we showed more poise, grace and sportsmanship as a nation even when we had lost. But hey, we won the match at Kolkata, and nothing dampens that - does it?

We stayed in Abu-Dhabi for two days, and left only on the next evening because I had an office to go to.

p.s. There was one other downside to the visit to Jalali Baba's. We were so busy getting onto each other's nerves, we hardly ever got around to logging on and wishing Eid Mubarak to blogistan on time.

Come January 13th, we shall make amends.

Eid Mubarak.

2004-11-15T23:07:00.000+04:00

It rained. It rained cats and dogs, it poured, ... it rained.

The blessed ones living in monsoonic regions can hardly understand the significance of this one event in our calender year - if ever it graces a calender year. The last time it had rained was some three years ago, there was a drizzle here and there last year, and the year before that, but it had not rained. Today, it rained. VGA called from Dubai to tell us of a hailstorm that had Dubai's roads whitened, and its residents frightened. On checking with Jalali Baba I found that the poor guys in the capital have had to be content with lightning. Sharjah, it seems, had it best.

I was delirious, and so was the rest of the city, but I was not shouting at the top of my lungs as I so wanted to do, and niether was I sitting out in the rain getting lashed by the gusts of wind carrying tanker loads of water. Oh, I so so wanted to do that too. I really did not mind if that meant contracting a fever for the next week. Fevers come and fevers go, how often does one get a rainstorm here? The sole reason I did not give in to these tempting ideas was that this was the first rain the kids were getting to see, and I did not want them following their nutty old man into the rain, or getting the impression that every rain had to be welcomed with screams. I wanted them to enjoy the rain, which I think Talhah did too. Ayeshah was lulled into sleep by the rythm of raindrops.

So, we got into the car, and followed the rest of the city onto the roads. That's the only thing you do when it rains. There is not time enough for pakodas, because you never know if it will still be raining in five minutes. You just scram out, so that in the dryness of your cars, you can have rain all around you, and listen to its rim jhim on the roof of your car. Or if you can, you step out and embrace it. You look up and receive it all on your face, and let the tingling drops from the heavens wash your concerns away.

It lasted all of a half hour, and I found myself thanking the Almighty profusely every second minute. I do not think I thanked Him enough, nor do I think I can thank Him enough for this blessing (and all His other wonderful blessings). That was about 2 hours ago, but you can still hear the firecrackers some people have resorted to to celebrate the rain. I think they are just exhausting their supply from Ramadan, Eid and Diwali.

Oh, and in all the hoopla, Talhah insisted that he had to have his bereira, and it was almost after the rain had stopped that we realized that the poor thing was asking for an umbrella. He got his bereira alright, and so did Ayeshah - his purple, and hers pink. Hopefully, they will get other chances to open them under the skies this season....

Eid Mubarak indeed.

Kiyun Likhu'n? - The edited version.

2004-11-11T13:17:00.000+04:00

Kis baarey main likhun,
Main kiyun likhun?
Mairey alfaaz ki akhir...
Wuq'at hi kiya hai?

Kia Baghdad main goonjein ge kabhi?
Ya Kabul main kabhi sunaey jaen ge?
Fallujah ki kisi deewar pe raqam honge?
Ya Gaza main kahin barsaey jaen ge?
Ya bus...
Kaghaz hi ke seeney pe dohraey jaen ge?

Qalam ki sihayi se Yawar,
Jo kaghaz daaghdar karun,
Ehsas ke afriyatun ko,
Alfaz ka tabeydar karun.

Tarz-e-fughan chod dun,
Naalun ka toomar tod dun,
Nai tarz se guftaar karun,
Main har jumle se waar karun.

Mairey alfaz...
Jo dhadkanun ki taal bun jayen,
To azadiyun ki dhaal bun jayen.
Jo misl-e-shola bhadak uthen,
To ghaasibun ka ma'aal bun jayen.
Jo taaziyana bun ke lehrayen,
To aflak main wabal bun jayen.
Jo mujahidun ko izbar ho jayen,
To Mashreq, Maghrib ho jayen,
Junoob, Shamal bun jayen.

Magar Yawar...
Mairey ehsas ki akhir...
Wus'at hi kia hai?
In alfaaz ki akhir...
Wuq'at hi kiya hai?
Main kis dil se likhun Yawar...
Aakhir kiyun likhun?

Introducing Jalali Baba ... II.

2004-11-10T04:00:00.000+04:00

Saab Ki Gaadi.

Jalali Baba bought this dilapidated Pontiac, against his humble servant's sound advice, and promptly fell in love with it - the Pontiac that is. Half the things in the car did not work, but that still did not change the fact that the electronic seats moved eight ways, and that your hand landed right onto the gear stick if you rested your arm on the arm rest. What was also of consequence was that the hood of the car alone stretched a foot or two longer than his whole Daihatsu back in Karachi. It did not matter that the transmission was totally messed up, and would have to be overhauled anytime soon, nor did it matter that the automatic windows did not roll down on half the doors, I forget which ones. He was not even bothered by the fact that the air-conditioning unit's efficiency was inversely proportional to the altitude of the mercury.

It was high maintenance, there was no doubting that, but it was low priced. He was happy with it. I, on the other hand, pitied him. American cars have been so outdone by their Japanese counterparts here in the Middle East that the idea of buying a second hand American car is often ridiculed. For one thing the only air conditioning that seems to have any answers to the oppressive Middle East temperatures seems to be under the Japanese hoods - yet he was happy, the seats went eight-way, and the hood was larger than the Daihatsu. It was late in the year, and mercury was only taxiing before its imminent take-off.

Off and on, he kept discovering the wonders of the car, and would make a point of calling me up and letting me know about them. Like the time, he found out that the car came with a computer built in, a computer that when plugged into would give a detailed break up of what was or was not wrong with the car. He was not perplexed by the so many things that were wrong. He was amazed you could tell it all in a jiffy. Understandably, I got the call.

Then, he had this Patrol (a Nissanic cousin of the Land Cruiser) clip his bumper rather harshly. He was all worked up that day because he had been in Al-Ain with family, and the outing was destroyed. But, the next day he was delirious. He had been to the mechanic who had told him that the casualty in the accident had been this layer of protection fitted after the bumper to absorb any impacts headed chassis way. What brilliant engineering, he remarked. Again the reason to celebrate was not that the chassis had been spared in the accident, but the fact that the car was sophisticated enough to be equipped with such a crucial mechanism.

Once when he was going back from Sharjah, with the family again, this rock flew off the truck in front of him, and landed on the front seat next to him after going right through his wind shield. That was at around 2 a.m., because that was the time I got the call from him. Called me right when he was arguing with the truck driver, and told me the whole story, including the dialogue he had had so far with the driver. The ordeal finished a couple of hours later, and he went on to terrorize the insurance company as well the mechanic appointed by the insurance company for a complete over haul of the wind shield. Of course, I got every minute detail.

He had rightly nick-named it Saab Ki Gaadi (SKG). SKG was a multi-purpose term. It told you at once that the car was high maintenance, that it was not for the lowly scum to own or drive around - alluding to yours truly, that Baba could afford it, and that Baba was Saab - short for Bada Saab. He could choose to be humble too when it suited him, but the car would still be called Saab Ki Gaadi. In those rare moments of humility, he would plainly remark that he was these days looking for Saab. Essentially, the car was royal stuff, and an association with it was royal in nature. Effectively, Saab Ki Gaadi accorded royal status to Jalali Baba.

SKG showed at a couple of occasions though that it was gifted with the trait of "Mardam Shanasi" - the art of deciphering men for who they are, and provided ample evidence of its own good up-bringing in the process. This it did by showing immense respect to yours truly. Remember those windows that would not roll down, well half of those that did not roll down, one in all but numerical representation can sometimes fail to underline the magnitude of an eventuality, miraculously rolled down when yours truly's index finger dropped a rather not-so-subtle hint. At another occasion, when the same finger was fiddling with the controls, SKG revealed a pleasant attribute hitherto not known to Saab (Jalali Baba) himself - SKG was fitted with fog lamps, and they could be lighted. Jalali Baba was unaware of either of the afore mentioned facts, and hence was pleasantly surprised, slightly impressed with yours truly, and quite amused by SKG's concern for the feelings of the under-priveleged - the latter an allusion once again to yours truly.

Alas! SKG was sold last month. Jalali Baba is still in denial, and goes into a melancholic, meditative mood every time a Pontiac passes by him on the road. He has yet to reconcile himself with the fact that there is life after SKG. For now, he almost got thrown out of a Toyota Showroom for trying to find a computer under the hood of a Toyota Echo, for trying to move the Toyota Corolla's three-way moving seats eight-ways, and for almost breaking the Land Cruiser Prado's arm rest for its inability to connect his arm to the gear stick when the said arm was rested on the mentioned arm rest. Word has gone around the market, and quite a few showrooms are seen sporting Jalali Baba not welcome signs at their entrances. On the other hand, people at GM, Chevrolet and Chrysler have made Jalali Baba an integral part of their ad campaigns, and continue to implore Jalali Baba to endorse their products. They have actually offered to gift him their top-of-the-range cars also, but he has declined such offers after careful deliberation. Sure, the seats move eight ways, the hoods are all larger than Daihatsu Charades, and the arm rest and the gear stick are strategically fitted to suit his preferences. But, they fail only in one department - on all their cars, all four windows roll down at the touch of respective buttons. What is an automobile without Pontiacic imperfections? For now, Jalali Baba travels by taxis, and his favorite pass-time is dissing the taxis he rides in. Often, he has had to walk home.

How did he come to be called Jalali Baba? Now, that's another story. One that shall have to wait.

Kiyun Likhu'n?

2004-11-09T23:49:00.000+04:00

Kis baarey main likhu'n,
Main kiyun likhu'n,
Mairey lafzo'n ki aakhir,
Wuq'at hi kiya hai?

Yeh lafz ...
Jaam ban ke na'n to chalke'n ge,
Na'n kisi bartan mai'n sajaey jaye'n ge,
Na'n kisi dard ka madawa hi honge,
Na'n kisi marham ki patti banayey jaye'n ge.

Kisi baap ka sahara bhi nahin bane'n ge,
Kisi maa'n ki lori main na'n piroy jaye'n ge.
Kisi dil ki dhaaras bane'n ge...,
Na'n kisi dukhiyarey ki aankhun se bahayey jaye'n ge.

Na'n Baghdad hi main goonje'n ge yeh lafz...
Gaza na'n Fallujah main sunaey jaye'n ge.
Kabul main seena sipar honge yeh lafz...
Na'n Dal ki lashu'n sung bahayey jaye'n ge.

Mairey lafzo'n ke akhir...
Wuq'at hi kiya hai?
Main kia likhun Yawar...
Aakhir kiyun Likhun?
Kahan likhun Yawar...
Aakhir kiyun likhun?

Just finished this one. It should need some editing, but right now I like it quite a bit. Does that sound too full of myself? :)

I had actually planned to update Chal Bhaag Chalen, and Chal Bhaag Chalen II, but while the net connection played a fast one on me, Kiyun Likhu'n materialized.

Everything does happen for a reason :)

Introducing Jalali Baba ... 1.

2004-11-09T01:50:00.000+04:00

So, I thought he was a Jamatiya, especially because he kept appending Bhai to my name - something of a trademark of the Jamatiyas. I decided to ignore him. That was when I had met him for the first time, along with Fash’s soon-to-be-father in law (FIL), and soon-to-be-brother in law (BIL). The Jamatiya thug was, is, the brother in law’s old buddy, and I remember trying to figure out what common interests could bring a mummy-daddy nice IT boy like BIL together with a bearded Jamatiya who spoke articulately in Urdu in his deep baritone voice. We made a nice five some that evening though. Fash and BIL are so not into Urdu literature, but FIL more than compensated for them both. I knew Fash had portrayed me as the next best thing after Faiz, and tried hard to act the part out. Not a pretty sight when I look at it in hindsight. Damn Fash and his good intentions!

We were having our fair share of laughs, more than the sort of fair share you can normally hope for when in the company of a buzurg, and that too the susrali buzurg of one of the boys. Due credit to FIL for that. What a thorough (read thoroughly well-read) gentleman. The Jamatiya thug stayed silent for most of the first hour, except joining in the laughter now and then, and quipping in with a few sentences here and there. Now dear readers, any of you who has seen my profile, will know that I am HUGE Yousufi fan. To me, he is one of the best things to happen to Urdu, and to Pakistan philosophy. I also regard him a great contributor to world humour. Having read his four books innumerable times over the last decade or so, I am prone to quoting him every now and then. Apart from making me look good, these quotations almost always elicit a good laugh – if the audience is discerning and intelligent enough that is. So I did it, I quoted Yousufi. And the thug corrected me…ME!!!

He could not be a thug! Anyone who read Yousufi could not be a thug. Anyone who read Yousufi well enough to correct me was NO THUG!!! Heck, he was no Jamatiya either. Since when did the Jamatiyas develop the good sense to appreciate Yousufi. I looked at this bearded, "camouflaged intellectual" with a new found respect. We got on famously after that. That evening we formed a great two-some, actually a three-some with FIL, because FIL knew his Yousufi as well as any. By the end of the evening I was surprised to find he was an IT specialist working for some semi-government organization. Now, here was a paradox. This guy had to be special. He was an IT guy, looked like a Jamatiya, and knew Yousufi verbatim. There was less than one in a million chance of finding that combination again. IT guys, I knew, could hardly spell their names right in any language, no offence intended. This one read Yousufi. Heck, he knew him better than I did. This was an aberration, one that interested me no end.

We did not meet for a long time after that. When we did meet, the beard and the starched dress were gone. We discussed Yousufi, and somehow the discussion drifted to patriotism and nationalism. I was surprised again – the guy loved Pakistan more than I did, if that were ever possible, the dismal situation in the country perturbed him just as much as it did me, and to top it all he knew the history of the country so well, I started feeling like an ignorant slob in front of him. His family had migrated from Bihar in 1947 to East Pakistan, and then from East Pakistan to West Pakistan in 1971. He came from a family which had made sacrifices for Pakistan twice, real sacrifices, in a span of two generations. From then on when he spoke, I listened.

Comment Gone Lengthy. CGL III

2004-11-08T14:24:00.000+04:00

Two posts in a day? Not really. Posted my entry and went on to Laura's blog, and got started on this reply in this discussion and before I knew it the comment length got out of hands - again. So now I have coined an acronym for comment gone lengthy, CGL. This is CGL 3, which Saima you may want to overlook, and go straight to the post of the day :).

"James,

You evaded my query about the people of Sodom and Gomorra. The question is not whether or not the Christian states ban or do not ban homosexuality. The question is whether or not Christianity does. The support of an activity, or lack of objection to it, by a Christian state does not necessarily construe support for it in Christianity. The Western world has gone to great lengths to ensure the separation of state and religion, at least until Bush’s recent victory. On the contrary, in an Islamic country the ideal is to work towards a state which implements the egalitarian ideals of the religion, thus making religion intertwined with the politics and the business of the state. Yet, unscrupulous elements amongst us have led to the same situation where everything that an Islamic state does is not necessarily ordained by Islam. In this, the Christian and the Islamic states seem to face the same paradox.

I used the term *almost identical* because we both know they are not identical, or else we wouldn’t be having this discussion in the first place. We can now choose to stress the similarities, or overlaps as you call them, and work towards peaceful co-existence, or highlight the differences and continue to be the warring worlds we are today. You point out very rightly that Islam does not accord divinity to Jesus, didn’t I say that much already. To us, he is a Prophet/Apostle much like Mohammad (SAW).

As for the Jews, you are right – they were driven out of Madina. You are wrong, however, they were never driven out of Arabia. There were three Jewish tribes in Madina at the time the Prophet established the Islamic Government in Madina, and all three were treated as equal citizens of Madina. However, they continued to conspire with the Makkans, the persecutors and enemies of Muslims, and sided with them each time the Makkans attacked Madina. It amounted to treason, and their further stay in Madina was detrimental to the very survival of the nascent Muslim nation. However, Jews continued to prosper as Dhimmis, the tax paying protected, under Muslim rule for centuries to come. So much so that when the Crusaders took Jerusalem, the Jews found respite from persecution only when Salahuddin conquered it back. When Muslims lost Spain to Ferdenend and Isabella, the Muslims were not the only ones to suffer. The Spanish inquisition persecuted Jews like crazy, and the only place they could find large scale refuge in was Islamic Turkey – then Ottomon Empire. Actually, the earliest footages of Jews arriving in Palestine show Palestinians welcoming them at the harbor with garlands.

Anti-Semitism, my friend, was an alien concept in Islam – it was imported from the third monotheistic faith in late 20th century after the Jews had wrested Palestine away, with explicit support from US, UK and hence the UN. Unfortunately, five decades of violence and hatred following the creation of Israel in Palestinian land has led to a wide schism between Muslims and Jews.

You have often questioned the peace message of Islam, emphasizing some of the bleakest historical facts that blot our historical landscape. The same landscape is bloodied by the blood of millions of Jews gassed by Christian Hitler – am I to deduce that Bible does not propagate peace?

I am no scholar on Quran; I have read it over though, and I know this much that Quran advocates peace and harmony, and tells us that violence can only be a last option when our well-being and survival is threatened by a belligerent enemy. I am not aware of Islam teaching the turn-the-other-cheek doctrine, but it also does prohibit hitting the cheek in the first place.

You seem to be better read than I am, but when reading the Quran you seem to make the same mistake which the extremists and militants make. They take Ayahs out of context, and quote them to validate their own ulterior objectives. I am not sure if they do so out of ignorance about Islam or willfully, and I am not sure about that part about you either.

Perhaps, you could pinpoint an ayah for me, and I could look up the context for you.

For now, I continue to read as well."

Ramblings...

2004-11-08T13:03:00.000+04:00

The guy was bearded, well-built, had just arrived from Pakistan, and spoke excellent Urdu in his baritone voice. My analysis: Jamatiya, possibly a nazim or something, most probably a Punjab University thug, hence not worth my attention.

I was at the PU hostel for about a year, and was much disgusted by the antics of the PU Jamatiyas. I had arrived at the conclusion that the Jamaat had a good agenda and everything, but it had been infiltrated by many a village boy whose only chance at acting all important was to become a part of something big. Something like the Jamiyat. Once in the Jamiyat he became a thug, who derived his self esteem from asserting his Jamiyat endowed authority at people he thought did not fit in his Marxist/Communist scheme of things.

Now, that’s another thing. Have you noticed how in our part of the world the “ghareeb” (the politically correct English translation would be under-privileged) no matter how wrong he might be, is always presumed the mazloom, the victim, in a conflict between one and one not so under privileged. I am no capitalist, and I am a good Muslim who knows the importance of attributing equal respect and dignity to all people whatever their financial standing in the society be. However, I am perplexed by the stereo-types which have evolved in our young country over the last half century. Krishan Chandar (Or was it Prem Chand, it was the Chand who did not write Fasana-e-Azad), Manto and scores of writers after them have crucified the blood-sucking capitalist in their short stories and afsanas, and moviedom has happily followed suit. We are a nation weaned on the concept of evil rich man vs. good old principled but poor hero. Take a look at any of the movies of the last four decades, more often than not, this is how the hero-heroine meet each other for the first time.

Red sports car, top down, (Who drives those things in the Sub-Continent? I never saw any on the road) comes speeding around the corners, and rams straight into this 99 year old thela-wala’s fruit laden cart, who almost always decides to cross the road with his thela at the precise moment that car is coming down the road. Wham!!! The thela is destroyed, the ghareeb’s day’s assets splattered all over the road, and out steps the flashily dressed heroine to slap the thela wala for not having checked for incoming traffic before he decided to push his stupid cart onto the road. Still, she reaches into her purse and doles out a stack of currency notes to the “victim”. Enter, the Knight-in-not-so-shining-armor: “Memsaab, we do not need your money. A small dent on your car will get repaired in no time, but the scar your slap will leave on his dignity will not go ever. You in your smuggler, villainous father’s birthday gift car to you have destroyed the poor old man’s livelihood.” He rambles on about mansions built on poor people’s land usurped by the heroine’s father, the need for compassion, coup, and fund raising campaigns by Imran Khan. Then, he leaves with the old man and his cart, while the heroine slips into utopia where she prances around the world in Barbie customs with the Knight-in-not-so-shining armor in flashy yellow pants The audience claps.

The Same audience gets out of the cinema hall, and looks menacingly at any signs of prosperity and wealth. They presume any such wealth has been amassed at the expense of the ghareebs. Ergo, they have a right to hold these villainous fiends by the scruff of their necks should they now step on the toes of a fellow ghareeb. The irony is that most of these self styled ghareebs are quite well off but look at themselves as under privileged in relativity to those better endowed than themselves. It is a vicious cycle, which leads to a situation where everyone considers himself the wronged ghareeb, because there is always someone better off than them.

So, when a Land Cruiser scraps a poor Corolla, the Land Cruiser guy is, if without his body guards, held accountable for rash driving and lack of consideration for the ghareebs. (Ghuraba) Same equation applies to all of the following pairs: Corolla scraps Khyber, Khyber scraps Mehran, Mehran hits Bike, Bike hits Bicycle, Bicycle hits pedestrian. The latter party in all these pairs reserves the right to point the accusing finger, even if he were hell bent on colliding with the former.

And to think, I was going to introduce Jalali Baba. Well, maybe next time...