Essay on Intizar Husain in Herald magazine

Honoured to have an essay on Intizar Sahib in the October 2016 issue of Herald. In no way the most qualified person to write on him, but Faiza Shah at Herald was so supportive and encouraging that I was able to cobble something together, and the editing team at the magazine did a great job of whipping it into shape. The issue is out on news stands now - do check it out, if based in Pakistan. Thanks, guys.

Update: online version here http://herald.dawn.com/news/1153560/everybody-loves-intizar-husain

The long view

Solom: Mama, I will now ask you a GENIUS QUESTION. You can only TRY to answer it.

Me: Bolo.

Solom: WHICH ONE OF THESE *pause for dramatic effect* IS A CRYSTAL? a) a raindrop b) a snowflake c) a hailstone

Me: Snowflake.

Solom stares at me in a displeased fashion, which means it's the correct answer.

Me: What does this make your Mama?

Solom: A genius. BUT YOU KNOW, MAMA, you SHOULD know this... it's only for CLASS THREE students. And you've passed CLASS SIX.

Son Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

Solom and Zain handed me this lovely envelope today.

Instant love. Opened it, to find this beauty inside. Apparently written by Solom but DICTATED BY ZAIN, WHO IS CLEARLY FEELING GUILTY FOR THE OTHER DAY HAHA.

Here's the text, for the optically challenged:

Dear Mama,

I love you Mama very much. And have a nice birthday, which is next year. It is okay if you fall sick, I will be there to help you.

*RAINBOW*

Bring it on, BAHU! Saasu Ma's ready, yo!

Good training has backfired.

Conversation between me and Zain.

Me: Zaaaaiiiin.

Zain: I love you, Mamaaaa.

Me: Zain, when Mama gets old and sick, will you take care of herrrr?

Zain: Yes, Mama, I will *kiss*

Me: And what if your wife says no, you can't take care of your mother? Will you listen to herrrr?

Zain: Ummm... maybe! Yes, I will!

Me: Why.

Zain: BECAAAUSE, I'm not ONLY the bossk of the home! I'm not the only bossk!


(A faint voice calls along the breeze, "Karmaisabiiiiiitch...")

Sorry aunty, wrong number

SMS conversation.

Friend: I ordered a chocolate cake from Nando's out of sheer depression. While I was devouring it, a colleague mentioned your blog and a great blogpost on it - 'woh Afia wali blog'. Guess which Afia I thought she was talking about.

Me: Siddiqui?

Friend: Yeah. 

Me: :-/

Friend: I didn't know she reads your blog.


And there you have it, folks! On my 100th post, please know that the chances of Aafia Siddiqui writing a blogpost out of captivity about Nando's cake are apparently higher than those of your colleagues in Karachi reading my blog. *bang*

From riches to rags

I just came back from a fundraiser for an organisation that's doing excellent work for girls' education in Pakistan. The event was a theatre play by a reputable French playwright, and although I'd already seen the fantastic movie based on that play, I picked up two tickets for the benefit. This organisation has a soft spot in my heart because I worked as Programme Coordinator for its nationwide programme for three years (2001 to 2004) and was intimately aware with programme details, right down to individual students and their families.

The play was good and I and the friend accompanying me were in near hysterics throughout. But certain things happened that I want to share because they took over the experience of the play, and in the ultimate analysis left me dejected rather than elated after a fun night at the theatre.

I don't know how best to put this, but you see, the elite exposed themselves rather badly tonight. At Rs. 2,000 per head the ticket was steep, so you knew that whoever was there could Afford It. That usually puts you in another category (that loosely defined but incredibly definite thing called 'class') in which different things are expected from you vs. those who, say, can't afford the ticket. You're supposed to be able to afford an education, for instance. And because of that, you're supposed to carry yourself differently. You're supposed to be civilised (isn't that why you're supporting girls' education?). After all, if you're willing to dish out for a night at the theatre, you must be a cut above the philistines who can't be there. 

Right?

I wish I could describe to you adequately the intellectual poverty I saw in that hall tonight. It was not clear whether more people were there to see the play or to be seen at the play. As the actors took the stage and acted their hearts out (sometimes well, sometimes not) to a script with biting wit and political criticism, most of the audience sat in a sort of bored and uncomprehending stupor. Laughs were few and far between, except for a scene where one of the characters went through a protracted vomiting session - that really got people LOLing. About twenty minutes into the play, members of the audience started getting up and leaving the hall in a slow trickle that continued throughout the performance. I'm not sure how many more would've left if the ticket had been less pricey. When the actors stepped up for curtain call, they were subjected to a meagre smattering of applause completely disproportionate to the energy and heart they had put into their performance. As my friend and I walked out slowly with the crowd, she said, "I don't think they understood it." I'm pretty sure she was right.

While we were standing outside on the pavement, a large-ish contingent of women began to collect on the asphalt driveway running through the compound, presumably to keep a better eye out for their cars than they could've done from the pavement two feet behind them. As the event had just ended, there was a long line of cars leaving the compound. Then a car, manned by somebody's driver, came in through the gate and began inching its way down the drive in the opposite direction. It was in the correct lane and moving at a perfectly appropriate speed. People slowly dispersed from in front of the car until it reached a group of women who decided not to move. The eldest out of them, a woman in pants and a smart shirt, gestured emphatically at the driver and called out, "Go back!" When he did not, she completely lost it.

"SHUT UP! SHUT UP!" she started shouting. "GET OUT OF HERE! GET OUT!"

'Horrified' doesn't even begin to cover how I felt. The women standing around this human loudspeaker, instead of calming her down, were nodding and murmuring encouragingly to her. None of them said, "Let's move to the pavement and make way for the cars." And of course they'd rather have been run over than to have said, "You were wrong to shout at that man; it was his right of way and he was doing his job. You were wrong."

This woman reminded me of another woman we had the misfortune of meeting on the first day I moved to Karachi with the kids (January 28th, 2011). We were in line to go to Butler's Chocolate Cafe when traffic was held up by a car whose driver (a young woman) was in deep conversation with the woman who'd just gotten out of the car (an older woman). Traffic started backing up until cars couldn't come out of the subsidiary street onto the main road. People started honking. The guy behind us, in particular, really leaned on his horn - and the lady standing at her car thought it was us. First she shouted, "Just wait!" at us and then, when her car finally moved out of the way and we were able to drive into the drop lane, she started yelling at my husband. She called him a bloody bastard and when he said, "We never did anything!" she shouted, "Shut up! You don't know who you're talking to." "You keep quiet!" Azfar replied hotly. So this woman who was old enough to be his mother told him to fuck off and said that he didn't know how to talk to elders.

Isn't that interesting, though? You don't know who you're talking to. You don't know how to talk to elders. Who are we talking to? What makes you better than us? What is the source of this status that you're throwing in our faces? Because you see, you're the one swearing like a sailor on a public street. You may have all the money and contacts in the world but you don't have manners. My husband, on the other hand, comes from a family that would rather be swallowed up into the ground than to be heard talking like that. And the people who lead the way on this - who show us by example how to behave respectably - are our elders.

You know what's sad? The woman outside the play reminded me of someone. She reminded me of any number of people who'd be in and out of my grandparents' drawing room when they were in the service. These were the well dressed, the cultured, the suave, the charming - those who proudly counted themselves as the civilised and well-bred cadre and then spoke to their domestic help as if it were a lower species. But it's they who are poor. They are immeasurably poor because they cannot see the riches in those around them. They are alone because they do not count themselves among normal human beings. And no amount of money spent on charities and benefits will change that sad, sorry reality.

The play was for a good cause, sure, but the people really in need of an education were in that auditorium tonight.

Music, Lights, Action

It's been an emotional week. There was some bad news from home, followed by some more bad news from home. Then I more or less missed my child's performance as a builder in the school professions parade. His father had lovingly stitched together a tool belt for his costume the night before, while his mother turned up late. The same afternoon he was diagnosed with conjunctivitis and put on antibiotic eye drops, which have been a nightmare to administer. And because he was infectious, I had to skip all the marvellous things we'd been looking forward to for the 23rd March weekend.

At 3.32 am on Monday morning, however, I'm ready to face the week with a great deal of enthusiasm. And it's because of the following people.

My husband's best friend was visiting from the UK this last week and he joined us for lunch one day. This friend has only recently been through a harrowing experience: his two-year old daughter has a rare condition because of which she's been having seizures since birth and her physical development has been slowed down. With every seizure, the chances of brain damage go up and so when no other intervention seemed to be working, her parents opted for brain surgery. It was, as you can imagine, a decision the likes of which no parent should have to take. There are no guarantees in brain surgery. And she is two years old. (Please allow that to sink in for a bit before reading on.) But they did what they had to do and what I'd like to tell you today is the aplomb with which they did it. When I told them that Solom said his first namaz to pray for their daughter, they took the time to thank us and said: 'They just started her surgery. We have left her in Allah's protection.' I remember being taken aback by the strength in that simple declaration of faith. As I told someone later over Twitter, I can't imagine having the courage to let my child go into the operation theatre. I don't think I could actually let either of my sons go, physically, into someone else's arms knowing that someone's about to cut open some part of their body. Even writing it makes me cringe.

And yet, a week ago when this little girl's father was sitting at our dining table, recounting the experience, he was not beating his chest over the horror of it all. He was searching for meaning in what had happened. And he was grateful. "There must be a reason for all this," he said twice. "She was getting the seizures, we didn't know what to do. My transfer to the UK came unexpectedly at that same time, so we could now get good healthcare for her. And think about it, Afia, my daughter was operated on in one of the best hospitals in the world, and I didn't have to pay a penny for it. And she hasn't had a single seizure since the surgery. There must be a reason. Somewhere, there is something I have to do to make up for the way things have worked out for us. I just haven't figured out yet what that thing is."

I very nearly forgot to eat while he was saying this. Because I'll whine and whinge at practically anything you can throw my way and here is this man talking about how he has to repay a cosmic debt because his daughter's been through brain surgery. I was humbled and it gave me some perspective. In the pathetically minor case of Solom not performing at his school parade as I was hoping, I had to remind myself to let go and be grateful that I was lucky enough to even have him, dammit. When looking at the trials others have been through with their children, who the hell cares whether their child says, "I'm a builder" the first, second or third time they're asked? Who cares whether they ought to have been a builder, a pilot or a butcher? Who cares how their school test or interview went? Every other consideration sounds like nonsense when one considers the fragility of this exquisite equilibrium, in which one can carelessly throw around words like 'family', 'children' and 'tomorrow'.

This doesn't mean that I suddenly went from being Mrs. Bates to Mother Theresa. But I spent time with Solom this last week, you know? I read to him more, talked to him more, played with him more. I didn't allow myself to obsess endlessly over his manners, his attire, his speech, his food, his TV time, his posture, his confidence, his performance, his safety, his social life, his feelings... God, the perpetual guilt of having to discipline and then worry about the child's feelings! And so, Solom and I hung out. And we loved being with each other.

It didn't end there. One of the things we'd been really looking forward to for this Saturday was a concert that our friend Azfar Ashary, owner of the Gloria Jean's franchise in Karachi, had helped to put together. Not only was Strings playing, there were also performances by Todd Shea and Lanny Cordola under the banner of Sonic Peacemakers, a movement to forge peace through musical collaboration between countries. I couldn't go, of course, but pushed Azfar-the-husband to make the effort (which he agreed to immediately... surprising, huh?). Anyway, he came back that night full of praise for the concert, the music, the things Shea said and above all, the production. Azfar-the-friend had apparently pulled all the stops out to make this a gorgeous event: comfortable seating, coffee and mineral water for the attendees, excellent music system, beautiful stage - you name it. There was also a four-CD set available (which is now for sale in all Gloria Jean's outlets in Karachi; proceeds all for this good cause) showcasing a mind boggling number of singers and musicians from Pakistan, all of whom had donated songs to this amazing 'musical movement for change'.

I couldn't help but marvel at the passion with which Azfar-the-friend had approached this project. He worked like a maniac to make it happen and showed the kind of attention to detail that only people who know the meaning of the word 'quality' show. As I was listening to the music today, I kept thinking, "Good for you. Good for you, Azfar-the-friend and Sonic Peacemakers, and the 50+ musicians who got involved with this." This was something to be proud of, something that - once again - gave some perspective. If you have to do something for the greater good, make sure it's great, not just good.

It's 5.28 am now and my attention span's wearing thin, as I'm sure yours must be. But I have to mention the two remaining people who made this week as inspirational as it was: my husband's colleague and his wife who've started designing and selling handmade lamps - just because, you know, they want to. Isn't that beautiful? A husband-wife team embarking on an entrepreneurial adventure in pursuit of a shared interest. We went to their company's (christened Tints & Flints) first little foray into the world of commerce tonight at Port Grand's basant mela and found them with their table, their shelf, their panaflex banner that kept falling off the table, and the loveliest lamps you ever saw on display. These two have a bottle fetish when it comes to their lamps, so they go hunting in Karachi's botal gali (bottle street) every week for pieces that grab their fancy and inspire them to create art. Hence there was an Absolut lamp with a gorgeous berry-twig accent, and there was a decanter lamp with a wrought iron accent. All the lamps were lit from within, creating an unreal ambience around their stall. And there they were in the middle of it all, hungry as hell and tired out of their minds but still excited about taking orders and working with customers to create beautiful lamps and, above all, radiating this warmth and love that comes with pursuing what you are inspired to do, with the person who inspires you.

So here's my announcement, in light of all the above. From here on, I am going to work hard to make every day count with my children and my husband. I do not know where fate will take me or them, and while we are here in this particular place in our lives, I'd like to make the most of it. I am going to aim for quality and beauty in everything I do, whether it's setting up our house or writing a short story. And I'm going to do something with Azfar-the-husband... something that we both love to do and that does NOT involve our children. We already have a project going but I want to make a public commitment so that we make sure we see it through. We are writing a book together - a collection of non-fiction 'stories' on a wonderful theme. I can't reveal any more here but some day in the medium-term you will see something out there with both our names on it, inshallah. Consider this a promise.

And on that note, I bid you a happy Monday morning.

My Beautiful Literette

Here is a blogpost I wrote this morning for Desi Writers Lounge about Hanif Kureishi at the first day of the Karachi Literature Festival. 


KLF 2012 - A Conversation with Hanif Kureishi

It's an uninspiring title, but I realised a little while ago that it gives the erroneous impression that I was in conversation with him. Ergo the title remains as is.

A Love Letter

DEAR NANDO’S,

This is the first time I am writing a love letter to a restaurant chain. But what can I say? In the words of a big-nosed fella: you complete me. And you’re about to find out how, in a little more detail than you might anticipate.

My son has a runny nose these days. And when he gets a runny nose, he gets a nasal drip. And when he gets a nasal drip, he coughs. And if he coughs long and hard enough, he throws up. Tonight was one of those nights, Nando’s. I am telling you all this because relationships such as ours must be based on complete honesty. I don’t have help in the house these days, Nando’s. And I am allergic to detergent. The skin on my hands is scaly and splitting because of the daily dish washing. My knuckles were BLEEDING yesterday, Nando’s, and I’m still washing up in the kitchen ‘till past midnight every night. Do you feel my pain? I knew you would.

That’s why I called you tonight. Just when I thought the dishes were done, three more popped up, and the very idea of having to pick up that sponge again near killed me with misery. And then I thought, what if I had an incentive to finish? And what better incentive is there in the world for a woman than chocolate? And how else could I get hold of chocolate at 11.30 pm unless someone delivered it to my doorstep? That is when I picked up the phone instead of the sponge and dialed the number for your delivery service. I did not have high hopes, Nando’s, but an authoritative sounding guy whose name I don’t remember assured me that you deliver until 12.30 am. This was legit; I was in through the door. So I ordered one slice of your divine chocolate cake to be delivered at my house within 45 minutes. I now had a deadline in which to finish washing up the kitchen.

It was then that I heard my son coughing. And I ran to the room as fast as my horizontally ample legs could carry me, but it was not fast enough. Do you know what it feels like to confront the grossness of your poor son’s puke at 11.30 pm and realize that you now have another half hour of washing and cleaning up ahead of you? Do you understand that feeling that creeps up on the most determined of us mothers – the “I will NEVER get my life back again, ever-ever-ever” feeling? Do you get it? I knew you would. Because tonight, it was only the thought of that chocolate cake that kept me going, beloved Nando’s. Even as I believed that I would be cleaning vomit for the rest of my days, I still knew that there was chocolate cake around the corner. You saved me tonight.

Thanks to you, I will probably never need to go into therapy. Because each bite of that cake is worth an hour on the leather couch. A therapist could only listen, whereas your cake paints my troubles chocolate (yes, that’s a colour). I will finish this letter with an appropriate ode – i.e. a marketing tagline:

There are others in this business who claim to be purveyors of happiness…

… but only Nando’s delivers!

Wah wah, if I may say so myself.

With thanks (and eternal love),

Me.

Nanny McFlee

Everyone beat their heads together now, because do I have news for you. We lost our nanny. Again. For the third time in a year. Shoot me now. (No really, I’m going through such nannyless hell these days that it might actually be a relief if someone were to grab a gun and oblige.)

It could have been worse. My Khala told me she went through eleven nannies in 1972. Now that’s commitment. I don’t know how many of those left of their own accord, though. Because that’s what’s just happened to us, and believe me, there is no closure in it for the employer. Saima, aka Third Time Lucky, was a dream come true. Polite, presentable, loving to the children, hard worker, pleasant. We knew she was engaged to be married but she had no intentions of walking down the aisle until she was done putting her sister through her education. So responsible and philanthropic too. How nice it all sounds, no? Waaaaaaaahh!!!

Anyway. There was one hitch. When we hired her, she could not provide us the number of her previous employer. She’d worked at a house in Lahore, she said, and she had lost their number. In the summer of 2011, we found out quite by chance (and this is an amazing coincidence) that Saima’s employers in Lahore were in fact relatives of ours. A little investigation revealed that she had been a superb worker and that they spoilt her to the hilt so that she wouldn’t quit, so much so that when she was going for her first long leave, they lent her a large suitcase and a mobile phone. She never returned, and neither did the case and the phone. No wonder she lost their number. Ironically, before we’d left for the trip where we found out this information, Saima had asked me to please buy her a medium-sized suitcase from her salary. She said she already had a large one, but that was too big for a five-day trip to Islamabad. No prizes for guessing where the large suitcase had come from.

ANYWAY. Despite finding out this information, we kept Third Time Lucky on. Because she really was a superb worker. And she was polite and presentable and loving to the children and… waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahh!!! What was I saying? Yes, we kept her on and kept checking on our baggage once in a while, just in case (I’m kidding… we’re not very good at keeping an eye on our baggage actually; it comes out of the storage with wheels missing and stuff and we're like, "Hain? When did that happen?"). Kher, it was all going very well. Then my cousin’s wedding came up in Lahore and here we were again, jetting off for a three-week trip to the other end of the country. We took Saima with us, which cost us an arm and a leg but also allowed us to participate in the wedding, frankly, so was worth every penny of the ticket. And… we lent her our suitcase.

Oh shut up.

While in Lahore, Saima said that she’d received a call from her brother in Multan, asking her to come there for some legal work. Earlier, when I had asked her how many days she’d want off for Christmas, she’d said NONE because she had no one in Lahore whom she would want to be with. Now she suddenly had six brothers and four sisters, all of whom were converging in Multan and she wanted to go for a week-long trip that could stretch longer, depending on whether her official work was done in time or not.

“Baaji,” she told me, “mujhe shayed dair ho jaey. Aap Karachi chali jaeya ga aur mein shayed khudi aa jaoon.” (I may get delayed. I might just follow on my own after you’ve gone back to Karachi.)

“Saima,” I told her, “mein ne aap ke ticket ke liye tees hazaar rupay diye hain. Aap ki soch hai ke mein aik khaali, pandhran hazaar ki seat ke saath baith ke Karachi jaoon gi.” (I’ve paid thirty thousand bucks for your ticket. If you think I’m flying back to Karachi next to an empty, fifteen thousand rupee seat, you’re sadly mistaken.)

So she promised she’d join us in Islamabad on the last leg of our trip. To cut a long story short, she didn’t turn up. She stopped answering our phone and finally her brother, whom we managed to get through to, told us that he couldn’t possibly let Saima go until their legal work was done. Fair enough, but what about our suitcase?!

We returned to Karachi with one nanny and one suitcase less, and with a vastly diminished appreciation of our own IQs. Both children were sick. The cook couldn’t come for a few days. And Azfar rejoined office immediately, of course. It was damn hard, particularly because of the children being ill. And for me, personally, there was an enormous sense of betrayal. I’d always been upfront and honest with her and tried my level best to be fair in our dealings. And Saima really loved my younger son, you know? I couldn’t understand how she could be clutching him and kissing him one day and taking off indefinitely with our suitcase the next day.

Anyway. A few days later we received a call from her ‘handler’ (the guy who had her placed at our house). Saima was getting married to her long-time fiancé. She would not be returning. And yes, she knew this when she asked for leave in Lahore.

Now Azfar has a very low threshold for such behaviour, particularly in professional relationships. He told the handler to communicate to Saima that she had an item of ours and that if it was not returned, he would lodge a police complaint. Lo and behold, Saima (who had not been answering our phone for over a week) called five minutes later. And the suitcase was returned to my aunt’s house in Lahore the following Sunday. Her wedding is on the 14^th. In other words, her jahaiz will now be sent to her husband’s house in another bag.

I remember coming to stay at my cousin’s place in Karachi for a month back in 2000. After thirty plus days of camping out in her room, befriending her dogs, attending her friends’ weddings, taking music lessons from her master saab and talking to her psychic adviser at 2 am, I went back to Islamabad. When I asked her hopefully on the phone, “How does it feel not to have me around anymore?” she said, “Well, the first thing I did was remove the mattress from the floor. And with that and your suitcase gone, I was like Ahhhh… space!!” Badtameez aurat. “But I do miss you!” she added a second later.

ANYWAY. Point being that that is exactly how I feel after Saima’s departure. I’m suddenly thinking what else I can do with that room and at some levels it’s actually quite nice to have the house back to myself. But I do miss her.

(Thank you, Mahwash B for providing the title for this post.)

Storytime: Goldilocks and the Four Bears

Gather round now, children, for it is time to hear a story.

Now you all may have heard of Goldilocks who ate the little bear’s porridge and broke his chair and slept in his bed because it was all just right for her. Forget that because it wasn’t real. The only thing you need to learn from that tale is that trespassing is illegal. And that sometimes people take things that are yours and somehow get away with it even though your parents are around and are SUPPOSED to be looking out for you and are bigger than the evil person taking those things from you but are STILL somehow unable to stop that person, mostly because they think the other person’s cute or sometimes because they are watching their favourite show on TV and are a little fed-up and think that it’ll be okay to just stop that person next time because it IS bound to happen again. Another thing you could learn from that tale is that you can only eat, sit and sleep in peace as long as baby’s out of the house. Which brings us to our real story: Goldilocks and the Four Bears.

Once upon a time, there were four bears: Baba bear, Mama bear, Baby bear and Little Baby bear. Baba bear told Baby bear the Goldilocks story once or twice before putting him to sleep. Now that we’re over the Goldilocks reference, we can get back to our main story. The four bears lived in Karachi and felt very hot in the summer. So one day Baba bear called an electrician and told him to reset the ceiling fan so it would run faster. This bothered Mama bear, who had always had a fear of fast ceiling fans because she was convinced that one would fall on her some day. Baba bear thought she was being dramatic and in any case he was feeling very hot, so the fan was reset at a faster speed.

That year Karachi saw a very long summer, which continued into the first week of December. The fast fan served the family well, even if Mama bear would lie awake at night gaping at it and thinking, “Ab gira, ab gira…” But then, summers passed and one day a great chill descended over Karachi. People began to wear medium cotton instead of thin cotton, and everyone agreed that winter was finally here. The nights grew cool but still the fan continued whirring madly over the four bears, making the room even cooler. And as we know, when baby bears feel cold at night, they pee.

One night, as Mama bear lay awake, thinking, “Ab gira, ab gira… GOD, it’s cold, must call the electrician tomorrow!” Little Baby bear started whimpering in his sleep. Then he started thrashing around to the left and right. After that he sat up and swayed around for a bit with his eyes closed. Then he fell back on the bed as if he’d given up a great struggle. Then he squirmed his way across the bed until he’d reached his father, after which he sat up again and then collapsed on his father’s chest, all this while supposedly still being asleep. Baba bear awoke because of the commotion, drew his arm around Little Baby bear and then said gruffly, “Aaf, he’s wet himself.” For indeed that was why Little Baby bear had been thrashing around.

When Mama bear was done changing Little Baby’s clothes and diaper and had finished cleaning the mattress and the bedsheet, she heard a sound from the cot where Baby bear was sleeping. Now Baby bear was thrashing around, moaning, “Mamaaa… garam duddoooo…” Baba bear and Mama bear took one look at each other (the only sort of look that parents are capable of exchanging at 3 am) and sure enough, when Mama bear went to the cot to check, Baby bear had wet himself too. She shook Baby bear awake. “Solom,” she said, shaking him. Baby bear did not wake up. “SOLOM,” she said, shaking him harder. Baby bear still did not wake up. “Get up,” Mama bear hissed, poking him in his privates. Baby bear opened his eyes and said, “Mama? Wonder Pets is sleeping.” “Yes, betay, they are the only ones managing that right now,” Mama bear replied and dragged Baby bear to the toilet.

When Mama bear was done scolding Baby bear while he was sitting on the commode and had finished changing Baby bear’s clothes and had stripped the mattress protector from the cot and replaced the sheet, she found Little Baby bear sitting up in the master bed, wide awake and looking very interested in everything that was going on.

“Aaaaeeee?” Little Baby bear said. “Shhhhhhhh!” Mama bear said. Little Baby bear looked at her with big eyes.

“AAAAAAAEEEEYAAAAYAAAA!!!” he exclaimed, as if saying, “Why are we pretending that everyone’s asleep?”

“What’s the matter with the two of you?!!!” Mama bear shouted. “Do you think I have nothing to do other than to run from bed to cot, cleaning up your pee??!!”

“Shhhh!!!” Baba bear said, who was still pretending to be asleep.

“Babaaaaaaaaaaa!” Little Baby bear gurgled, now that he was sure that Baba bear was in fact awake. So he stood up, took a few tottering steps across the bed, threw himself on Baba bear’s chest and started slapping his face. Mama bear and Baba bear exchanged another look. Mama bear determinedly took a step towards the bed.

“I will take him to the other room,” Baba bear said, sounding like a sacrificial lamb.

“Okay! Please turn the fan off on your way out!” Mama bear said and with that she climbed into bed, pulled the coverlet over her head and pretended to fall asleep. And they all stayed sleep deprived ever after. The End.

History in the Making

Something's in the works that I am really excited about. I'm helping to set up a small workshop group for writers in Karachi - sort of like an offline version of Desi Writers Lounge, only intentionally much smaller and more focused in terms of developing content. A friend who's a published writer threw the idea my way a couple of months ago, we recruited three other writers and today we had the first ice-breaker to help the group gel before getting started. There are two other prospective writers whom we've asked to join the fold. Our plan is to cap the number of members at seven so that things stay personal and workshopping is more intense.

It's not a new idea but there's something about this group of people that's got me really optimistic. I'm the only one who represents the management side of the literary circus, being editor of a magazine. Two of the other members are acclaimed writers, which I expect is going to increase the standard of discourse substantially. Another member, a good friend, has just finished her novel and is expecting to be published in the coming year (let's hope the Mayans got that date wrong). There is one other member who I hadn't met before today but had read in an anthology of stories by women writers from Pakistan. The energy at this first meet was excellent and while we were sorting out details of where to meet, how often to meet and how not to tread on each others' toes (artist log hain, bhai, kuch bhi ho sakta hai) there was an overwhelming sense of potential. I kept thinking, "Something good can happen here."

If we're able to inspire each other and discipline ourselves enough to keep writing, this'll be something worth remembering later. I had a three-second flight of fancy while sitting at the table during the meeting, in fact. I could see myself twenty years in the future, when I would finally have achieved the jaw-dropping feat of publishing a line or two. A pimply, intense-looking reporter with round glasses would be interviewing me and would ask, "So what's this secret writers' society I've heard rumours of from your slimmer... sorry, younger... I mean, early days as a writer?" And I would smile enigmatically and say something profoundly writery (I haven't figured out what just yet; we got into an accident on the way back so the evening sort of went into a state of epic decline after that, thus rudely truncating my love affair with myself).

I really want to finish this post with a song and for some reason, this one keeps coming to mind. The actual story behind this scene from Shehzad Khalil's unforgettable drama 'Ehsas' is a terribly sad one, but just for today, I will reimagine it. The pretty mother (played by Shehwar Rahim) is me, of course, after a happy evening full of possibilities. The two precious boys are mine, those are my in-laws at the back, Khaled Anum is himself but he's still a close relative (proven by the fact that he and I alone are able to sing on pitch in the entire group). And that's Azfar with the video camera... gazing at me with rapt admiration, even looking up to thank God for giving him such a cool wife. Enjoy.

The Aafster Life is competing in the Best Diarist category of the Pakistan Blog Awards! If you find my troubles and stresses as funny as I hope you do, take a moment to vote! Click on the button at the top right of the blog. Thanks!

Critical Reading: the Murder of Manto

Went to an excellent critical reading session at T2F two nights ago. With the help of Ajmal Kamal, we dissected the edited version of Manto's short story 'Naya Qanoon' as it had appeared in the Urdu textbooks in Sindh. The write-up on the event can be found here.

Explosive Hanif

He isn't, actually... I just needed a cheesy title for the post. When you meet him, Mohammed Hanif is somehow exactly what you might expect and nothing like what you'd have imagined. Don't ask me to explain that, please. All I know is, he's nothing close to as obvious and definable as an explosion.

We spoke for about an hour and a half about everything on the planet, only some of which was whittled down for inclusion in this interview for Papercuts Vol. 8. By the end of it, I honestly didn't know who'd interviewed whom. The man's a sponge. Now I know how he's managed to churn out two books in three years, and why he'll probably go on to write many more. What would you do if you had so much information going into your head and had a way with words?

   

Love in the Time of Heat Stroke

Ah, summer. Think summer, think holidays. Think barbecues, travel, monsoons. Think cousins, love songs, roof-top smokes. Ice lollies, air conditioning, movies, mosquitoes. Long afternoons, burning car seats, badminton in the garden. Everyone’s got an association with summer.

For me, the thought of summer brings back memories of nights spent in Islamabad as a teenager, living in my mother’s house. It was universally known that my room was the hottest in that house. It was a Southwest-facing room on the upper storey, which meant that it got the full beating of the post-noon sun in those never-ending days. To aid the baking process, my grandparents had put in massive ceiling-to-floor windows that put to rest any thoughts of insulation. And my mother, not to be left behind, had installed the oldest, loudest, most inefficient air conditioner on Earth, which threw out lukewarm air and made the giant windows rattle like there was a shuttle launch in progress. Mosquitoes were right in their element in those temperatures and I remember perfecting a macchar-killing technique that employed the concept of the sonic boom (you wait ‘till the mosquito gets close enough to your ear and then you clap your hand on your ear. The pressure kills it. Worked every time for me. No really, it did. IT DID. Just TRY IT.)

Minor inconveniences aside, the view from that room was great (as my grandmother never tired of reminding me from the confines of her cool, lower storey, Northeast-facing room) and in my teen years I was ready to brave practically anything for the privilege and complete joy of having My Own Space and My Own Bed. It’s something great to have your privacy at that age, especially if it comes with a phone. It was here that hours were spent talking to one’s best friend about nothing and everything, and the Nothings that seemed like Everything at that time in one's life.

Occasionally there were unforeseen challenges, but they were dealt with.

Best friend: “And then what did he say?”

Me: “Why are you breathing so hard?”

Best friend: “Who me? I thought that was you.”

Me: “Oh crap! Sssshhhh…”

*heavy breathing on line*

Me: “NANI WILL YOU PLEASE PUT THE PHONE DOWN?!”

Grandmother: “WHY ARE YOU ON THE PHONE AT THIS TIME OF NIGHT???”

Me: “Oh my Goddddd… NANI!!!! Put – the – phone – down!!!!”

Grandmother: “THIS IS NO TIME TO BE ON THE PHONE! ANNIE SHOULD KNOW THAT TOO!!!”

*extension receiver slams*

Me: “Where were we.”

*best friend snorting with laughter*

Yes, those nights in that oven of a room saw many heart-to-hearts against a backdrop of ballads groaned out by a National tape recorder (‘stereo’ would not be an appropriate word to use for that contraption, which would suddenly start playing the tape really fast or really slow and had to be kicked back on speed). For years, these soundtracked conversations were presided over by my friend Michael Jackson, whose image graced the bathroom door, my boyfriend Tom Cruise, whose face filled up the walls, and the perfunctory plump house lizard, frozen in some corner of the ceiling.

Summer was Richard Marx in those days. It was also Def Leppard, Bon Jovi and Madonna. It was perfect.

                                                                   ***

The biggest casualty of growing older isn’t your knees – it’s your sense of wonder. There was an intense romance to those days that cannot be recreated now – a feeling that the world existed only for you. A lightning storm lashing around outside used to be exciting and inspiring – now it could wake up the kids. And Def Leppard sort of doesn’t make the cut anymore (in fact, one has to wonder why guys their age were singing those songs even then). And I think if I were to call my best friend in the middle of the night to say, “Wassuuuup” she may... um... not want to be friends anymore.

I was thinking about all this incessantly over the past few weeks. Call it an early-30s crisis. I even gave my husband an unsolicited lecture on the topic while we were sitting on the roof, having our evening tea. “I miss those years,” I said finally. “Me too,” he said, “Things were so much simpler; the economy was better, conditions were safer, people had hope.” “Huh? That’s not what I mean,” I said, “I mean… my outlook on life was different. Everything meant something. Like, if I were to look up at these clouds moving across the sky when I was fifteen, they would signify something deeper. Now they’re just clouds. Do you know what I mean?” “Uh… hmm,” said my husband, burying his nose in his mug.

And then my grandmother’s sister called. They’d had a sudden crop of mangoes from the tree in their lawn and they were distributing them to the whole family. She was sending ten mangoes over.

I hadn’t had a Pakistani aam for over two years. When the fruit arrived from Nanni Nani’s place, I had it washed and refrigerated. The next afternoon, with the kids miraculously asleep and the maid busy in her room, I thought it would be nice to have a chilled mango while relaxing in the TV room. Didn't happen that way. The dense aroma of the mango and the unbearable heat of the kitchen went straight to my head. Suddenly, I remembered with enormous clarity being back at the dining table in Islamabad in the middle of June, waiting expectantly for the plate of mangoes to magically appear after every meal… not a care in the world, no diapers to change, no toddler salivating over my shoulder or infant trying to bite my knee, no plans other than to enjoy a mango (or two) and then retreat to my beautiful, hot-as-hell room – the room that was Just Mine.

I breathed in deep, sliced the mango and, without bothering to leave the kitchen or even pull up a chair, literally wolfed it down. Every bite was heaven, just as it used to be in a previous chapter of my life – a chapter in which responsibility was optional and I could more or less choose my burdens. Life had moved on but this, right here, was exactly the same. The sweet pulp; the runny, sticky juice; the joyful abandon of consuming a mango; the feeling of being free. This would never change.

And so, summer was perfect again.

Two conversations

I think if Thursday could be summed up in two conversations, they would be these:

1.

(In the Gulabo store at Park Towers, browsing through their gorgeous tea-pink silk pants)

Me: Okay, I want these. Where's the large size?

Salesgirl: Ma'am, these are only small and extra small.

Me (jokingly): No hope for me then!

Salesgirl (looking me over): No, Ma'am.

2.

(At home after impromptu shopping blitz at Park Towers)

Me: Aaaaaa, I feel like it's my birthday!!!

(Azfar lying on bed with wet face)

Me: Are you crying?

Azfar: Yes.

Me: Are you adding up the numbers in your head?

Azfar: No. That would take a computer.

A sense of be-lawn-ging

Here's the honest truth: I've never been too big on clothes. I've usually just been too big for them. As a child, I was probably the only one out of a crowd of cousins who was constantly wearing someone's or the other's hand-me-downs and had no issues with it at all. As a teenager, I was perpetually in awe of the girls in class whose uniforms always looked so bloody immaculate (somehow, I was never able to emulate that neatness... I still think it's because they had heavier irons at home).

One of my good friends in A'Levels told me that he'd noticed me for the first time during O'Level exams. "You stood out," he said. "Oh really?" I asked, flattered like nobody's business. "Yes," he replied. "All the girls were dressed like babes and we were like, 'Who's that maasi?'"

POINT BEING that dressing up - and the shopping associated with the endeavour of dressing up - has always been a bit of a chore for me. My poor parents-in-law patiently waited for three years for me to transform into a butterfly bride, which of course I never did. (Their next daughter-in-law did a far better job of dolling up post-shaadi, thank God, otherwise one would've laboured under the guilt of failed expectations for years to come.)

So lawn season meant nothing to this apparel novice... until this year. Nothing can prepare a native Islamabadi for the mind mushing, electrode-exploding advertising and marketing brouhaha that marks Karachi's lawn season. Indeed, the lawn itself becomes kind of secondary. Take Asim Jofa's massive ad campaign, for instance, which featured the biggest billboards in town with Iman Ali as the Brand Ambassador. Unfortunately for Jofa, the mammoth-size photos of Iman sullenly staring into the camera while stretched out in one strange pose or the other couldn't disguise one little fact: the prints looked God-awful! If he'd limited his campaign to, say, postage stamps I may still have made the effort to check the exhibition out. Not that it matters what I thought - the day after his exhibition there was a slew of massive Jofa billboards shouting THANK YOU all over Karachi. Iman Ali - 1; Aafster - 0.

Nadia Hussain's campaign, which was running around the same time, was utterly uninspiring, looking like a drama shoot from the 1980s. Nice earrings, though. Vaneeza followed up with an interesting spin on the classic chick-in-tight-bright-jora-with-dupatta-flying-in-the-breeze formula: she didn't do it. All her billboards featured just close-ups of her face. The most you ever saw of her clothes was a random brooch peeking out from the corner of the billboard, or a tiny patch of print on her shoulder. It was odd but nicely no-nonsense. "Hi. This is Vinny the Pooh-pooh. Yeah, you know me. See you there."

There were uncountable other campaigns, one of the more striking ones being Umar Sayeed's model in a stunning red and green lawn print draped over her like a sari (but probably most memorable for her freakishly skewed eyebrow). The campaign that won for creativity, however, was Junaid Jamshed's (J. lawn). Not a single bored/angry/sexy in a maladjusted way model in sight. Instead, we got balloons. Yes, hot air balloons. Beautiful, whimsy, mad coloured balloons. And little, colourful gift bags with elaborate designs. It made me think of festivity, tissue and great ideas.

And so I attended my first lawn exhibition ever in thirty-two years of... not attending lawn exhibitions. And I was not disappointed. JJ (we're buddies now, see?) had put together a really great collection of prints. Attractive colours; pretty, wearable, sane designs; excellent fabric; a price that put some stress on the wallet but didn't break the bank. Well played, JJoo darling (astaghfirullah, astaghfirullah, astaghfirullah!).

Under normal circumstances, HSY would deserve special mention in this blogpost for THE most elegant, suave, IN.YO.FACE classy billboard on Do Talwar, showing him in a dapper as hell black suit and announcing the HSY World of Prints with a series of uber cool adjectives listed along the side. But his exhibition sucked. It was actually worse than Deepak Perwani's. Let's just pretend we never had this conversation, okay?

So, ladies and ladies, yes I never made it to Sana Safinaz but having attended three lawn exhibitions this year I feel like I've had a bit of a breakthrough here, ya? The only person I've dished out money to so far: Hazrat J. (RA). Now you tell - whose exhibition did you feel most at home at? Where did you be-lawn-g this season?  ;-)

Breaking News: New Maid on the Block

The name's Zohra. Bengali origin. 40+ with references that checked out; not geriatric with dubious employment background. Definitely deaf in one ear. Friendly and hands-on with the kids (a little confusing for the kids, who are wondering who the heck this enthusiastic lady is). Scrubbing kitchen as we speak. Yahoooooooooo!!!!

Nightmaid on Elm Street

Disclaimer: The following story is not going to surprise anyone.

We let our maid go last week. This is the infamous Imtiaz who Suleiman claimed was my sweetheart. Anything but, as it turned out. She was hired a day after I landed in Karachi in January with my kids, exhausted and beleagured, looking to settle down again post-international move and desperate to get some rest. She immediately hit it off with my kids and came with the guarantee of someone who had the guarantee of someone else. So we hired Imtiaz.


We were initially a little unsettled by the new nanny's top-to-toe abaaya and nikab action. Who knew what hang-ups came with that garb? What if she refused to run to the store to get a packet of milk? What if we had to leave quickly and she was taking forever to get all the layers on? Even worse, what if she considered Azfar, the driver and the cleaner all na-mehram and I was doomed to have Darth Vader gliding around my house all day?


Our fears were misplaced. The moment Imtiaz's guarantor left, off came the abaaya and underneath it was revealed the most bejewelled, exceedingly pink jora I've ever seen in my life. I wouldn't be surprised if her previous employers are missing a chandelier. I'm still picking up the stray diamontees from that jora from around the house and am fully prepared for one to appear in Zain's potty one of these days. 


Next, a comprehensive collection of creams and cosmetics quickly got arrayed on her bathroom shelf. Imtiaz, as it turned out, was an early bloomer; and once she'd started, she wouldn't blooming stop. A week into her employment, Vader's dupatta was casually flung across her neck; two weeks later, it was nowhere to be seen. When she was going to her brother's house to visit, however, she'd appear from her room in Dark Lord mode. And when she would return from there, she'd bring more fantastic outfits with her. It was all extremely confusing.


One thing we realised quite early into her stay with us was that she loved talking on the phone. I'm pretty sure she must've had a post-paid connection because no phone card on Earth could let anyone talk for that long. (Our friend Sarfraz told us recently that his son's nanny has a similar issue and he is expecting her to grow an extra bone that'll help hold the phone between her ear and shoulder. He thinks it may lead to an evolved race of skewed-shoulder people.) Anyway, so we told Imtiaz that she should avoid the phone while she was working. We told her that it was unprofessional. She looked like she had no idea what we were talking about (professionalism? Whaaat?) but cut down on the calls. Now she would skip dinner and retire to her room early to talk on the phone.


By this time, I was beginning to imagine what might happen if one day Imtiaz's husband in Punjab, father of her five children, turned up at our door in Karachi to meet her and discovered that she'd absconded with a phone buddy three days earlier. Although technically she wasn't a minor, it was understood that because she lived in my house I was responsible for protecting her and her Virtue. (This is not an impossible scenario, btw. Another friend's maid ran off with the neighbour's driver one day and her family started harassing the employers about her disappearance, first lodging an FIR against them for abducting her and then going to a Minister to ask for justice. Unfortunately, my friend's brother-in-law looked like the classic villain you see on PTV, replete with white shalwar qamees and big moustache. Within a couple of days, there were television crews outside my friend's house, covering the tragedy of a young, innocent girl who'd been kidnapped by a rich man for his pleasure. The aforementioned rich man immediately pledged his cooperation to the police and, on HIS suggestion, when the police traced the girl's cell phone calls, it turned out she'd been talking to her family all along. They'd set the whole thing up to get money out of the employers. Yes, that was a very long incident to relate in parantheses.) 

(Ooh, wait, here's another one: yet another friend had an amazing nanny who worked with them for six years or something. When she left, they found out that she'd regularly been entertaining the neighbour's gardener and one other man in her quarter and had gotten pregnant TWICE during the period of her employment with them. There's no moral in this story; she got away with it.)


Things came to a head when Imtiaz suddenly took off on the 22nd of March with her brother, claiming that he was taking her to the doctor. After that, her phone was constantly off. When we got through to the brother, it turned out that he wasn't her brother at all... he was her cousin (if you're desi, you'll understand that that's a game changer). He wasn't even with her at the time and didn't know where she was. She didn't call again until the evening of 23rd March, which not-so-coincidentally happened to be a national holiday and the day of Pakistan's World Cup quarter-final match against West Indies. In fact, what really annoyed the hell out of Azfar was that she called right after the man-of-the-match ceremony!


We decided that evening that we weren't confident enough to keep Imtiaz as our children's nanny anymore. If we didn't trust her, we couldn't leave our kids with her. So we let her go.


What idiots! The house is in a mess, the children are upset, breakfast does not magically appear on the table every morning and lunchtime is complete pandemonium! Even the driver's annoyed because he doesn't get his tea on time (and sometimes not at all). We went today to an agency to check out another option for a nanny. We'd asked for a 40+ year-old with proper references this time and were confronted with a lady who was at least in her mid-sixties and couldn't remember her previous employers' name. It was extremely difficult to imagine this person trudging up and down the stairs with Solom, or sprinting after him in the park when he made his usual mad dash towards the road.


Bottom line: it's BEEN HELL! I've got work and laundry piling up and it's taken me eight days to write this blog entry! I'm drowning here! So if anyone in Karachi is migrating to Dubai or Chicago or wherever and is looking to pass on their amazing maid to a good household (yes, that's us) PLEASE LET ME KNOW.


And if you have a maid horror story, of course, do share so that I can convince myself that letting Imtiaz go was, in fact, the right thing to do and not the stupidest act on the face of the planet. Thanks.

The Unbearable Randomness of Stuff

 

It’s official. My favourite word is ‘random’. There was a point at which I thought ‘problematic’ was my favourite word, but really, there’s nothing I throw around with as much joyful abandon as ‘random’. And that’s exactly what this post is going to be.

Karachi’s been a ball so far, with just one exception. Okay, two exceptions because I think my maid may have a stalker/boyfriend/what’s the difference? Our neighbours do not have an intercom. I know this because every time they have to say something to a member of the domestic staff, they hang out of the window and call out to them. Normally, this may not have mattered, except the aforementioned window is directly opposite our bedroom window. Therefore the following scenario unfolds every second day:

Afia on the verge of putting Zain to sleep, counting down the seconds until she can dip into the biscuit box.

“TAJ MOHAMMAAAAAAAAAD!!”

Zain: Waaaaaaaahhh!!!

Afia: “3… 2… dammit! 1000, 999, 998…”

It’s not just the noise. When I was living with Amma, privacy was a non-issue. We had no domestic help, so it was possible to make that occasional dash to the kitchen in a towel. After I got married, however, it became unseemly to enter the kitchen without a dupatta. I was looking forward to reclaiming some of that devil-may-care freedom when we moved. Instead, we got neighbours with a direct view into our bedroom. What’s the point of living independently, I ask you, if one can’t go commando in one’s own room?

Let me tell you something else while we're in this deep, philosophical mode. I’ve concluded that the classic New Year Resolution is a thoroughly ill-timed phenomenon and therefore doomed to fail the instant it is made. Think about it: half the population of resolutioners is either drunk or hung over when the aforementioned resolutions are being made. The half that isn’t inebriated is obviously depressed out of its mind (why else would you want to set life-changing goals at midnight in the dead of winter?) So you see, New Year Resolutions are typically being made by a group of people who are NOT THINKING RATIONALLY! No wonder you still look like a blimp when the next year rolls around! What did you think: the awesome power of Janus would work those triple-fudge sundaes off of your thighs? Resolution smesholution.

The only thing to do is to resolve things at another time of year. Do it when you’re ready to make that change. If you hit rock bottom on the 3^rd of March and you decide you’re ready to get into shape, then your new year starts on the 4^th of March. I’m convinced this is the only way to make the dratted resolution work, otherwise it’s just like starting another useless diet every year, on the year.

So I met up with my cousin and friend Sara Jamil at Butlers Chocolate Café on Zamzama last Monday! (Where did you think the fudge sundae reference came from?) Tip for the uninitiated: coffee places in Karachi are open at 9 am. (I KNOW. Who would’ve thought, right?) That’s when the mommy crowd gets out to socialise, you see. Sad people like me, who are actually happier staying awake at night, are forced to be up in time to drop their children to school. Apparently, they make up for the inconvenience by complaining to each other over a mug of cappuccino.

In other words, Karachi cafes have reinvented Monday Morning. We MUST reward them by giving them as much business as possible. Support every mug of coffee with a double-chocolate brownie, I say! It's okay, the new year doesn't start on January 1st anymore, remember?