Islamic University Blasts.

Two blasts in Islamic University, one in the girl's campus and the other in the boy's..1 girl killed, with many being injured.

this one hits really really close. I went to IIUI back in 2002.

Someone bombed a school.

this is just sick. plain, simple sick!

OverLoad's Pichal Pairee and my all-over-the-place album review

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.

So i think everyone should check it out.

The Official Overload Website

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!

Lines, Lines...and some more lines.

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.

The one which divides sanity from insanity.

Hey you! Here's a Love song, just for you....

(Gringo, this one is dedicated to you)

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 "Shuker nahi kerti?'' (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.

Yeh mera Pakistan hai, Yeh teray Pakistan hai?

I have wanted to write about this since forever.

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. "

Copy pasted from: http://members.tripod.com/~INDIA_RESOURCE/ifpakistan.html

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.

But something REALLY needs to be done!

Today.

its that time of the year again.

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.


Just for today.

Saad Iqbal

Died: October 8th, 2005

I am walking ... and walking some more

Not knowing your destination doesn’t suck all that much. No matter which road you take, you’ll get there one way or another.

Definitely, doesn’t suck at all…