I have been in love, more than once. I have been in like quite a few times. I have had many crazy crushes...and by that I mean, bat-shit crazy crushes.
I have had bat-shit-crazy crushes turn in to "like'' and then into ''friendship'' and then into ''love''...
...and from all that I have experienced, I have come to the conclusion that monogamy is more of a need than it is human nature. Human nature is to reproduce and for that purpose it is not biased. I do not think monogamy comes naturally.
Its just a need.
Its a need because human beings are also very jealous. So we tend to stay monogamous as to avoid complications in our romantic relationships.
Also I think we would all be rather fucked up if our parents gave in to their polygamous , promiscuous sides. Although, to be honest me and my siblings turned out perfectly normal with two Momma-dears instead of the normal 'one', but that is beside the point.
So end of the day, the concept of "the one" is just their to sell Hallmark cards, Movie tickets and Popcorn.
There are plenty. Not just one.
And in a perfect world, where people did not get jealous and kids could grow up to be normal, balanced and productive human beings irrespective of how many partners were there parents juggling, I think we would all be leading much interesting lives. Full of late night booty calls and fiery "firsts"...
Before when i wrote, I just did it. Wrote. Without thinking about who would be reading it and what would they be thinking of me?...
Until I got this live-traffic widget.
There's a certain someone who reads my blog from Tanzania. He or She is probably the only one out of the entire continent of Africa.
..and Canadians dont like me much. I mean more people from US of A or Europe read my blog than them.
...and the South Americans. They are like so not aware of me. Until recently i had like no blip on that continent... then someone from Brazil discovered me.
... Someone from Afghanistan was reading my blog just the other day.
I wonder who they are? .. What did they think about my blog?.. Did they laugh, cry, smile, shake their heads?...
But the Tanzania dude/ - ette I am majorly curious about.
It was the after-dinner time, and my family was lazing around when we heard a blast.
and another one
and another one
and another one
and another one
By this time we stopped counting, wore shoes and were out on the street...
and so was every single person from our neighbourhood. The kids, the parents, the grandparents, the servants, the odd guests ... everyone was on the street.
and you could hear panic. The odd "Allah reham" (God, Have mercy) or "Allah-u-Akbar" (God is great)
We called our brothers, who live close by.. and they were as confused as we were ..
Nothing was being shown on the TV initially ... after a while one channel ran a "Rawalpindi may dhamakay" (blasts in Rawalpindi)
but no details ....
Everyone was freaking out. We were calling people. People were calling us. My mom was shaking. We thought it was a war, cause there had been at least 8,9 blasts...
It was half an hour before we found out that those weren't blasts. Those were cannon shots to honor the visiting Turkish PM.
In a small town, in another age, there lived a girl, with a fiery outlook and crazy curls.
She jumped and hopped and screamed and shouted and laughed a crazy laugh. Such was her life.
Everyone had to say a lot about her, but most of the time, the one word they chose for her was 'Bubbly'.
They all thought she would live like that! a big happy life. In their defense, there was no reason to think otherwise.
Growing up she learnt a lot of lessons.
Lessons of forgiving.
Lessons of loving.
Lessons of being the bigger person.
Until she met a boy.
Who she couldn't forgive, who she couldn't stop loving and who took away the bigger-ness from her.
But somehow the jumps got higher, the hopping became bouncier, the screaming got screech-ier, the shouting became more frequent, and the laughs became louder.
...and people continued believing that she was 'bubbly'.
...and I remember I cried and I cried. Read it many times.
There's something very sub-continentish about our ideals about love. The concept of pleasure in pain; The pain we experience from love lost. We romanticize about it. We find baykhudi in hijer. Our self-actualization doesn't start until someone comes and literally kicks us in our metaphorical balls. We love drama and tragedy. Happy endings are just not for us.
May ishq-e-kainat may zanjeer ho sakoun
Mujh ko Hasar-e-zaat kay sher say rehaiee day
So we read Meer-Dard, Mir, Ghalib, Faiz, and we wait to be torn apart. The Joy we find, in the misery we experience. All in the name of love.
So my 14 year old heart was touched. When Paul Strobe (the hero of P.S I Love Yoy, Book No 1, in the SweetDreams series) died, I could almost not bear the suffering of Mariah...and at the same time I dreamt of loving like that. Uncontrollably.
Hakh!
Uncontrolable love.
Hijer
Mehboob ki aankhain, Mehboob ki zulfain
Somebody should have intervened. Told me how that stuff drives a person bat-shit crazy. To the point where making a coherent argument seems equivalent to climbing Everst on an empty stomach...and how you loose your self respect. Your ego. Your dignity.
How you become bitter. Or the way pop culture sees it, you develop "commitment issues"...
How you talk about the power of positive energies and optimism, yet you know that you see everything more critically. Deep down inside you become a cynic and you remain one.
That stuff, "that thing called Love"... its not what dreams are made of. Its what makes up a Nightmare!
Overload comes out with their second offering "Pichal Pairee", which surprisingly is available for download ...
Hailing from Lahore, they are primarily a Rock band, but if I had to be more specific I would classify them as a Bhangra Rock band .... and yes, I just coined that.
Meesha's vocals will flirt with you; The music, the guitaring, the drums, the dhool , will unashamedly seduce you. Woe you. Charm you. I wanna wear a big frilly skirt, open my hair and go wild alternating between headbanging and doing bhangra. The music is stimulting in oh-so-many-ways, both right and wrong.
Having said all that, I saw them perform back in April. Since they had won an award for live performance, I had high expectations... and they did not come up to them. I hope they carry on working on their live act. They need to improve in that area.
My favorites: Saat Mein, Amjad Khan, Vichar Gaye and Dhol Bajaye ga.
Pichal Pairee is an interesting name, however the song wasn't all that... and neither was the video (minus the parts with the drummer in 'em)
Incase you're interested here it is
Disclaimer: My opinion might be a little biased. I had some major hots for Farhad Humayun (back from the Noori days). A suited dude, on drums can do that to you!
So many lines I have crossed in the past few years.
Some with cart wheels, loud yippies and hurrays, weirdly stalked with post yippy-hurray sadness, yet there was a strong sense of accomplishment.
Some with heart break and tears.
Lines which divided love from indifference, life from death, post-teenage from adulthood.
The lines I couldn't wait to cross and lines I didn't even know existed until they did.
I have noticed there's this gravitational pull in those line-jumping moments. Your mind keeps going back to them. You keep reliving those memories. Nostalgia, as they call it. Shackles and chains is what comes to my mind.
The way I see it if its memories of loss, of pain or of sadness, then you keep getting hurt, again and again; the same disappointment, or at least some fraction of it haunts your days and your nights, leaving scars which grow deeper and deeper...
If its the memories of good times then you keep comparing the present with the past. Lust for that same thrill, that same high might drive you crazy but it never gets you anywhere good... Again you find yourself, knocking on that big-bad door of disappointment.
These lines.
I know if I have to cross even a few more, it wouldn't be long before I cross that one.
It was after one of the long pauses. You were quiet, trying to find the right words .. or maybe cause you were hesitant.. and then you said
"Please don't hold it against me. but I can't live without you".
... and I was quiet. I understood the dichotomy of emotions. The hesitance and the love. The ugly beauty of it. You wanted to declare your love for me without paying the price for it. Putting up with the crap-side of romance, is not every one's cup of tea.
Long after you broke my heart and we were having one of our pretend-to-be-just-friends talk, I randomly asked you to make a blind promise... and I told you it wasn't going to be anything hard.
You said "I don't make promises".
"oh yeah, you don't".. I said with dripping sarcasm.
You laughed an unexplainable laugh and said "Shukernahikerti?'' (aren't you thankful for that) My love, you just didn't get it.
...that love in itself is a promise. a promise wrapped in forever, sprinkled with unconditionality and total acceptance. Its a promise of complete, no-questions-asked forgiveness. If you feel it, you scream about it from the top of the hills and you whisper it to yourself, late at night. Love is the smile, you smile, when you're sleeping.
..but you just didn't get it
So I sit here, eons later... and I pray that may you live with that innocence, which smells of ignorance forever. May you never wake up in the middle of the night and rethink your life and your actions. May life always be a straight road for you; no curves, no bends. May you never feel sorrow. May you never ever experience the hurt of losing someone you loved ( my definition)...
May you never have to stop in your tracks and look back.
Every second day I get a forwarded email. One day it will be addressed to the Muslim Ummah, asking them to stand-up and understand their 'place' in the world. (that of the international morality police?). Some days its about how muslims are being targetted all over the world, especially in the 'West'. During times when tensions with India are running high its videos of hindu extremists beating up muslim students, or some hindu Indian student giving out a patriotic speech, which in our part of the world means just yapping on racist and bitter comments about the 'neighbouring' country.
It all means the same thing. How today's muslims are tortured souls. Its just a We Vs them situation. They hate us. They want to bang our daughetrs, take our money and burn all copies of Quran. We will always be in a state of Jihad.
I find all this majorly repulsive, extremely high on hypocrisy, low on the spirit-of-Islam, rich with hate, bigotry and propoganda and utterly and completly void of the teachings of the Quran or Sunnah and not to mention, the biggest threat to Islam , there is.
This small incident comes to my mind. When we were young, we had christian servants. Once we had a few guests over who asked my mom, on the dinner table as to who had cooked the food. My mom told them that she had made the main dishes and how the servants made the chapattis. Then to our horror, they asked if there was any bread in the house, as they didnt eat food which was cooked by christians especially rotis as you touch it while you cook it. I can still hear the uncomfortable silence.
For me, on the risk of sounding pretentious, its very simple. I believe I have the right to live with respect and dignity, and that I have the freedom to make my own believes. I believe that I should have the freedom of speech and not be faced with bigotry or any form of discrimination from anyone based on the choices I make with respect to my life style. I believe I have the right to live in a just society, which is based on the humanitarian principles of equality, peace and love.
I dont think these rather simple and very universal concepts should be made available just for me. I believe every single person REGARDLESS of their ethnicity, religion, cast, race, language, social class, sexuality, political and social affinities etc has the same rights. No exceptions. No 'whats','buts' and 'ifs'. Every single human being under one umbrella.
Especially in Pakistan, the land of all things pure. We found this country on these very principles. We understood how it felt to be discriminated against. We sacrificed our lives, our families, our assets for this land because we believed in the importance of equality and justice.
Now the real slim shady please stand up and tell me how did we get from there to the Post-Blasphemy-Law Pakistan? To the Pakistan which allowed for Gojra and Shanthinagar incidents to take place? To the Pakistan which has, especially for the past 30 years, permitted ostracizing the Ahmadiayyas and robbed them of their basic rights?..
The Pakistan which could allow for the arrest of four innocent school going boys without even a pretense of justice, let alone a fair trial based on witnesses, proof, and .. a lil common sense?
Sometime back I caught this awesome show 'What would you do?' by ABC Primetime in which different mock situations are made and then through hidden camera the general reaction to those situations is recorded and later on discussed. They did a series of these on racism, and how people would react if they saw racism against Blacks, Latin Americans and Muslims etc. I am putting up the video, where a Muslim girl is denied services in a bakery, and the anchor, famous ABC correspondent John Quiñones then goes and questions different by standers about how they felt about the whole experience.
This video literally brought tears to my eyes, for a simple reason. No girl this age should be subjected to such cruelty. No one, for that matter deserves this kind of treatment.
Now if you show this video to the majority of our masses what will be the end result?
They will shake their heads, and cuss out the west and how the poor muslims have to put up with this kind of treatment everywhere.
Will this make them ever stop and rethink the way they treat the non-muslims around them?.. Does any of you know of a single Pakistani who is aware of the racism which exists in our own country? Against the Afghan refugees?..Against the Bangalies back in the 70's?.. The mahajirs?...The Shiates', Ahmadies, Ismailies, Qaddianies?...and what about the Hijras?
We as a nation really need to stop with this. Its weird how noone addresses how relevant this concept is, in today's Pakistan. How bad we need a serious reality check?
I remember the wave of repulsion I felt when I first heard the story of Mr Gul Masih. For those of you, who haven't
"In November of 1992, Gul Masih, a Christian, was sentenced to death after having remarked innocently about Mohammed’s marriages. His neighbor Mohammad Sajjad, a Muslim, had made a comment stating that the Virgin Mary must have been a prostitute. Masih, in turn, replied he had read "that Mohammed had 11 wives, including a minor." Sajjad decided to file charges against Gul Masih who was then sentenced to death.
It is notable that Gul Masih had made these remarks in a private conversation, without premeditation or any deep-seated malice, clearly without any political intent, yet received the death penalty. Gul Masih's comment had merely followed the remarks of Mohammed Sajjad, and were in keeping with the tone set by Sajjad. But while Sajjad was never charged with 'insulting' Gul Masih's Christian religion, Gul Masih's seemingly harmless and perhaps factually correct rejoinder had led him to a death sentence. "
It is time that we start doing something. (it was time a long time back, actually..maybe back in the 60's). If nothing else maybe talk to the people around us. Maybe start with a pinch of awareness and a dash of tolerance.
when I give myself the luxury of wallowing in the past. Lust for the times which can never be brought back.
I think about that one time. When i prayed for something crazily, the way only a 20 year old, in love for the first time, can... and about how he granted it....in that grand lavish way, only a God can; Making it all the more transcendent.
...and then taking it away like that too. Making an anecdote out of my entire life. My very first love.
I savour the flashbacks, which i play in slow motion. I have favorites.
Like this one time when we sat in the swing, behind your apartments and sang 'Can't take my eyes off you'.
...and the time we drove up to peersuhawa... there was nothing but just plain white snow all around. I was wearing chapals and it still didnt matter.
...or that one time when you talked me to sleep. You understood that i had to sleep and i had to ''not-hang-up'.
... or the million times you bought me Mentos and Big apple without me asking you.
...especially the time you surprised me on Valentine's. The corniness of it all. How you indulged me and graciously understood the romantic quirks and notions I held, you being my first love and me-being-me.
..but most of all, I keep replaying that last conversation we had. How mundane it was. How we had a mock argument about Scarlett Johansson. How you kept asking me to let you sleep and how i kept insisting on 'Friday night being an all-night-talking night'. How you told me that it was not Friday but Saturday. You had work on Saturday, na? I wonder if I had not talked to you for that long, maybe you would have left for work on time. Maybe you wouldn't have been inside. You weren't supposed to be at home.
...And the smile you smiled when I would do the "Saady, tum mujh say Saadi kero gay?''
So many of them ..
So today is the day when i go through my day, Half sniffling, half giggling. Today I let myself be the girl who worshipped you. Today I let myself be miserable and I let myself have another portion of my heart fizzle out. Today I let myself feel all that I had stopped feeling, some intentionally and some unintentionally, after you were gone.
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