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.

In Passing

Me: I've decided I'm going to have an affair.

Azfar: Really.

Me: Yes. First, I am going to get into shape. Then I'm going to get myself some nice clothes. THEN I'm going to have an affair.

Azfar (looking relieved): Oh good! I'll be dead by then!

A Life Less Extraordinary

At the back of every educated woman's head lurks the suspicion that she's destined for greatness. That's why we went to college after all, when we could just as easily have been reproducing a year into our first period. That's why we learnt how to use the computer before we cooked our first meal. That's why we grew up hearing words like 'career', 'success' and 'balance' - and questions like, "What do you want to do?" We were supposed to make something of ourselves. We were supposed to be better than women who never imagined they could do anything other than rear children. A lot of money was invested in developing our brains so that we could... well, use them.

It's 3.37 am and I am writing this with the heady fumes of Dettol slowly permeating every valuable grey cell that inhabits this skull. That's because the better part of the last hour has been spent cleaning up the healthy portions of half-digested sausage that my son threw up in his bed, on the rug, just outside the bathroom door and then in the bathroom itself. Perhaps I'm writing this because I need an excuse to binge on chocolate cake in the wee hours of the morning. Or maybe the Dettol is clouding my judgement. Who knows. All I can say with confidence is that at this moment, my education is completely useless. The only trail I'm capable of blazing right now is the sort you might see if you threw a burning match at a woman reeking of disinfectant running down a corridor with a wiper.

And that is difficult to accept. It is a tough moment when you realise that after all the years of presuming that you'd become something, you have actually turned out quite ordinary. That your life, too, has been reorganised around the concept of birthday parties, quarterly assessments and macaroni with cheese, just like all those unbearably average women you were always so SURE you were never like. UN reports talk about women like you: they say you are worth educating because you're three times more likely to send your children to school. You too are a majority statistic - and in all likelihood you will stay one.

But is that so bad? What's so unbearable about being the lynchpin of bloody society, after all? Yes, there's no fame or fortune in it. Yes, much of your day is spent in what could only be described as menial tasks. There are no thanks to be had, no certificates of appreciation, no annual bonuses. But you are part of that silent mass of worker ants that holds things together, are you not? If it weren't for this army, fighting its small battles quietly in the background every single day, where would the world be? If we weren't content with playing this supporting role, the whole cast - hell, the whole dang film - would collapse. So yeah... motherhood. It's the most thankless voluntary work in the world, but this is one community service the world cannot do without.

At least that's what I have to tell myself at moments like this one.

One of THOSE moments

I'm the kind of mother who's constantly beating herself up for not being around enough for the kids. And I don't even do an office job. For what it's worth, I am home and available at a moment's notice should the need arise. But the truth is, there's a magazine to run and there are many times in a day when I realise I should've been with my sons for the last hour, playing with blocks, instead of monitoring the online stats on Papercuts or sending out emails to team members. And I feel bad about that - a lot. I know why my younger son starts crying when he sees me pull out the laptop, and why Solom gets agitated when he sees me zipping to the living room (i.e. the laptop's permanent abode).

This afternoon I was heading out to the salon for some quick work and I realised Solom did not want to let me go. We waved 'bye' to each other and I said, "I'll be back soon! See you!" and all the cheerful things one says, but he kept his eyes fixed on me and, with his arm stretched out and with utter distress written all over his face, kept calling out - "Mama? Mama?" He did not want me to go.

I had to go, of course, but I kept wondering why it was such a big deal for him. And then I realised, it's because he never sees me leave. You see, I'm based at home, out of choice, and because we're new in Karachi (and, let's face it, it's big ol' busybusybusy Karachi) I don't go out a lot to hang with friends. So this is what Solom sees every day: he gets dropped off to school by Mama. He comes out of school and Mama is there to pick him up. He goes to play, Mama's waving at the door. He comes back, Mama's waiting for him. So now when Mama was leaving and he was home, he didn't know what to make of it.

And that's when it hit me: I am there for my son. I am. And he knows it. Isn't that awesome?!

Amma, tussi vee great ho

So I called my mother and asked her to read the latest blog entry. Five minutes later, I received this text message:

The computer is dead. Long live the computer.

Isloo, tussi great ho

I’ve been missing Islamabad a lot lately. Not that there’s anything wrong with Karachi *stops, reconsiders that statement* but with my friends putting up annoying FB status updates like ‘Rain in Isloo, sooo beaaauuutiful’ and ‘Clouds over mountains *sigh* <3’ and ‘Romantic n rainy… wattay morning!’ my longing for ye ol’ pind has increased tenfold. 


Going back is always a mixed bag, though. Not that there’s anything wrong with Islamabad *stops, reconsiders statement* but the fact of the matter is that now when we visit the city, we’re visiting our parents… we’re not actually ‘at home’. And with a child on either hip, it can become complicated not to be at home. You’ll recall the famous saying: Home is the where the frickin’ playpen is.

It actually hasn’t been that long since we were there last – we’d just flown up in June to celebrate my 33^rd birthday. The occasion was ominously rolling around and Azfar and I were beginning to wonder what the heck we could do in Karachi with a total of four people living within driving distance who were actually willing to meet up with us. So we thought we’d take the ostrich approach and go to Islamabad instead. I nearly changed my mind, however, after having this surreal conversation on the topic with my mother:

Amma: Aafoo, I’ve decided I’m having your birthday party.

Me: Aww. Amma, there’s no need… really.

Amma: No it’s fine, I owe people dinners anyway.

Me: Ah.

Amma (forging ahead): The guest list is coming to about fifteen people. Mashallah, there are eight of us just among the immediate family. Then I thought I hadn’t gotten my friends together for a long time, so there’s Tahira, Nina, Kaisera and Imran, Cheem and Zafri, Nazo and Bajia. Asma may not be able to make it but I’m going to ask her, of course. You never manage to meet all of them when you visit, so this will be a good time.

Me: *waiting expectantly*

Amma: If you like, you could invite one or two of your friends as well!

Me: Hmm. That could be problematic, seeing that there are more than one or two of them and, um, they’re all married with… err… children and stuff.

Amma (forging ahead): Oh, I forgot. Kaisera’s son-in-law’s birthday is also on the same day and he MAY be visiting from Dubai on a surprise visit… we don’t know yet… so I have told her that I’ll also have his name written on the cake.

Me: MY BIRTHDAY CAKE IS GOING TO SAY ‘HAPPY BIRTHDAY AFIA AND ASIM’??!

Amma: Yes, I thought it’ll be a nice gesture.

Me (thinking quickly): Ma, Azfar is going to get my birthday cake.

Amma: AFIA. Don’t be SILLY. I’M hosting the birthday party. I will NOT ask your husband to buy the cake.

Me (conspiratorially): No, Ma, you don’t understand. I’m MARRIED now… it’ll look VERY weird that you’re doing everything and that my husband isn’t playing a role, you know?? What will my in-laws think? It’s just not DONE.

Amma (conspiratorially/totally-getting-it-ly): Ohhh… I see. Yes, you’re right…

And so we went to Islamabad for my birthday. Amma put a fabulous do together; so fabulous, in fact, that she was wiped out before it even started.  The food was AWESOME and Amma’s awesomer than awesome friends rocked the party like they always do. On our end, Zain spent the evening bawling for no fathomable reason. So one could say the party was being rocked on one end and wrecked on the other. But everyone agreed the food was delish. And Amma had put up these lovely balloons and streamers. And the cake said ‘WANT A PIECE OF ME.’ And I got very cool gifts, ranging from perfumes and bags to book vouchers and almanacs on Elvis Presley and Muhammad Ali (yes, you read that right). And Amma gave me a hilariously appropriate card that read:

NOT EVERYONE IN LIFE IS LUCKY TO HAVE THE MEANS TO CUT A CAKE! BUT YOU DO!!!

(inside)

Chalo Shabaash Cake Khareedo Aur Kaato! It’s your Birthday!!! :p

The last present was an anonymous-looking box wrapped in generic, totally forgettable, silver paper. “Who’s this from?” I wondered, opening the card. There was a pair of scissors made on the front with a smiley face on either blade.

With you being my other half, life seems so complete and better in every way

(inside)

 Happy birthday to my perfect match. To my wife!

I blinked. Then I rushed to the adjoining room, where Azfar was playing with the kids. “Thank you for the card,” I barely managed to whisper in his ear. “It was WHOLLY undeserved.” And with that, yours truly promptly started crying.

“It’s the best card ever,” I gurgled, tearing the wrapping on the gift open. “This is better than ANY present you could EVER give me. OHMYGODANiPHONEANDAKINDLE??!!!! WHOOOOOHOOOO!!!!! WHOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! *galloping off back to the next room* AMMAAAAAA… LOOK WHAT AZFAR GOT MEEEEEEE!!!!!”

Once the excitement had worn off, I got suspicious about the card. My peers will understand what I mean when I say that it was a little too perfect. Something was fishy in the State of Denmark. Later that night:

Me: You picked the first card you saw, didn’t you.

Azfar (sagely shaking his head): Nnnopes.

Me: Second?

A: Nnnopes.

Me: Third.

A: Maybe.

(thinks hard)

A: It was bright yellow…

Me: I don’t want to know!!!

Anyway, so in that incredibly rushed trip I remembered why it’s so goshdarned brilliant to have a home town to go to. In four days, I got more done than I’d been able to get done in six months of being in a new city. Got the tailor over to stitch my quota of summer clothes; got my bank issues sorted out; reconnected with most of our incredible friends (including two of my closest girlfriends, one of whom just had a baby a few months ago); had a birthday party; watched our parents enjoying their grandchildren; and sat on Amma’s roof.

Don’t underestimate that last point. Because when you’re from Islamabad and you move to Karachi (or Houston, for that matter) it’s almost a shock to return to that environment. You feel like a starving plant that’s suddenly been hooked up to an IV with chlorophyll. I sat on Amma’s roof, and I drank in that view and I feasted my eyes on those green-as-green-can-be hills, on the flowering plants and bushes in Nani’s lawn, the stretch of park just beyond – nearly choked with trees – and yes, feasted my eyes too on the clouds rolling over those hills, the sky so blue after the rain of the previous day. You see, I know what my friends are on about when they post those FB status updates. I know.

View from Amma's house - this one before the rain

And now I can’t wait for Eid!

Conversations with Calliope - Part V

Calliope: so, i weigh 102.6 today

Me:  That is so ridiculous.

Me: That's not a valid weight. That's, like, a fever statistic.

C: i should keep looking for apartments, seriously

C: i lost 3 pounds in 3 days

C:  "what diet are you on?" "oh, the homeless diet."

 

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?

   

That's the way, Habibi

In this multicultural, globalised world, it is so important to keep our children rooted. Today's conversation was a good example of why:

Solom: *sneezes*

Me: Al-hamdulillah! What do we say?

Solom: Al-bless you.

Counting is fun

While changing Solom's diaper:

Solom:  MAMA. Yeh Solom DIAPER hai.

Me:  Haan betay.

S:  MAMA. Solom FOUR diaper pehna hai.

Me:  Nahin betay, Baby Bhai is small so he wears # 4. Solom is big so he wears # 5. Okay?

S:  MAMA.

Me:  Haan betaaay...

S:  Baba number SIX diaper pehna hai.

Conversations with Calliope - Part IV

Calliope: i worked out yesterday

C: it took me 27 min to run 2 miles

C: how sad is that?

Me: YOU RAN TWO WHOLE MILES????

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.

Manic Mumday

Considering that until the night of 7th May I didn't even remember Mother's Day, it turned out to be one mother of a day.

It started just as a mother expects her Sunday to, i.e. exactly like every other wretched day. We were woken up at 7 a.m. by the well-aimed kicks of our younger son who, having slept soundly for the last three hours, was now ready to continue our never-ending meal together. By 8 o'clock, when he'd been nicely overfed and plonked in front of the TV and the driver had been despatched to Itwar Bazaar for groceries, I remarked to Azfar, "Chalo, not such a bad start, after all."

"Yes," he responded, bending to fix the feeding tray on the high-chair and instantly pulling a muscle in his back.

It was all kind of downhill from there. The maid, who was supposed to come back at 10 am after her day off, turned up at 6 pm. And I don't know which supra-muscle Azfar pulled but this one extended from the nape of his neck right down to the small of his back and halfway around his stomach (if a doctor or physio is reading this, do let me know whether you've ever come across this in a patient or if it is, as I suspect, a brand new medical discovery). So most of the day went by having conversations roughly in this vein:

Azfar: “Aaf, cream laga do.”

Me: “Okay. Let me leave Zain in the play pen.”

Solom: “Dudooooo!”

Me: “Solom, not now. Baba ko chot lagi hai.”

Azfar: “Aaaaaaarghhhh!”

Me: “What? I haven't even touched your back yet!”

Solom: “DUDOOOOO!”

Me: “Solom. SHUT. UP.”

*sound of Zain crying from the other room because he's wondering where everyone is*

Azfar: “Aaaaahhhhhhhhh... a little higher.”

Me: “Where's the pain?”

Azfar: “Everywhere.”

Solom: “Garam dudooooooooo! GARAM DUDOOOOOO!!!!!!”

Me: “Ab Solom ki pitai ho gi!!!!”

Solom (lying down): “Baba chot lagi hai.”

*Zain hysterical in adjoining room, thinking he's been abandoned for life or, even worse, been left at home while his parents have gone out with his brother*

In the middle of all this, my mother called to tell me that her sister had received Mother's Day orchids from her two sons. Great.

By evening, Azfar had had another spasm in his back, this one even worse than before (if that was possible) and was now being pushed around the house on a swivel chair, if you please. Somewhere along the way, my mother’s other sister arrived like an angel from the skies - only better, because while an angel might have come bearing something annoying like good advice or a warning for the future, my khala came laden with potato salad, spaghetti and leftover chocolate cake. The night looked like it might still be salvageable. Except Solom consumed two Turkish delights and half the cake and then spent the next three hours giggling hysterically, jumping like a Jack in the Box, and nearly giving me and Azfar a heart attack by demonstrating that he could now straddle the railing of his crib. This obviously woke Zain up, who also got infected by Solom's sugar high and started thrashing around the bed, making at least seven attempts to roll off it. By this time I was so sleepy and pissed off that I dumped Zain in Solom's cot, where he proceeded to kick the crap out of his older brother, who then had to be rescued from his own bed.

I don't really know when it all ended. But when I awoke with a start at 3 am, both kids were asleep. Storing energy for the next round, no doubt.

In a way, it was a very mothery Mother's Day, because I spent the whole day caring for three incapacitated human beings. Yet, even in the midst of all this madness, my two boys gave me something to be proud of (N.B. Azfar and I have spent the last three minutes trying to think of what he might have done to make me proud but we’re drawing a blank). During the daytime, while Zain was ineffectively wriggling on his belly in pursuit of something or the other, he suddenly lifted himself into a proper crawling position and actually held it, grinning at me like a chubby kitten. Big “OMG!” moment.

And while Solom was watching Episode # 354,276 of Dora, I saw him do something he’d never done before: try to answer a question that he didn’t know the answer to. (This particular proud moment was short lived because when he got the answer wrong, he jumped on the sofa and stuffed the corner of my beautiful, white silk cushion in his spaghetti-stained mouth).

Anyway, the good news is that everything I’ve related above happened yesterday. There are already nearly 24 hours between me and Mother’s Day 2011. Azfar’s back has improved greatly, I’ve eaten three cookies and the electricity just came back. The bad news is that it’s nearly 7 pm and the kids are about to come home from the park.

*Braces self*

Gone in 60 Minutes

My never ending take on the Greg Mortenson drama can be found here on the Desi Writers Lounge blog.

In other news, I have come up with a truly excellent title for my next blogpost. It's so good, I'm sure someone's already done it before.

Conversations with Calliope - Part III

Me: Such a strange situation... when my son's awake, I want to throttle him. When he's going upstairs to be put to sleep, I want him to come back down.

On hygiene

Solom and I were recently taking a short cut through an empty plot littered with all kinds of rubbish.

*Solom picks up a brick*

Me: Ugh, Solom, no!

*Solom throws brick a mile away*

Solom: This is DIRTY! This is GANDA! This is CHEEE! This is EEWWW! THIS IS GROSS!!! 

Me: *staring with mouth open* 

*Solom picks up another brick and walks off*

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.

This beats weight loss

I'm signing up for Swapna Krishna's 2011 South Asian Challenge! The challenge is to read as many books on South Asia or written by South Asian authors before 31st December 2011 - and man am I up for it!

I will be maintaining a list of the books that I've finished reading in this post. My aim is to reach the level of South Asian Guru (> 10 books). Wish me luck or, even better, sign up for it!

Aaf's super duper, ultra impressive list of desi books devoured for the year 2011:

1. The Reluctant Fundamentalist - Mohsin Hamid

2. Beautiful from this Angle - Maha Khan Phillips

3. The Life's Too Short Literary Review (it looks like a book, okay?)
4. A Case of Exploding Mangoes - M. Hanif
5. Unaccustomed Earth - Jhumpa Lahiri
6. The Wishmaker - Ali Sethi
7. The Marriage Bureau for Rich People - Farahad Zama
8. The Collaborator - Mirza Waheed
9. Our Lady of Alice Bhatti - M. Hanif
10. Husband of a Fanatic - Amitava Kumar
11. Story of a Widow - Musharraf Ali Farooqi

Many thanks to Shehla Wynne for referring me to Swapna's blog! And if you have any suggestions for books that I should be covering, let me know in the comments section.

Update (December 19th, 2011): I'm pleased to report that I've just finished eleven books by desi authors. You may now call me The Guru.  *bows* Thank you, Swapna, for providing the impetus for this and for getting me back into the groove!

Brb

Apologies for having dropped off the face of the Earth. Not a day goes by that I don't think, "Oooh! That'll make for a cracking entry!" But life gets in the way, the idea is shelved and, like other discarded blog ideas, it expires immediately.

I've been having a tough few weeks but am committed to returning within the next day or two to write up a proper entry and, hopefully, find something funny to report in the midst of all the madness.

Pick me up before you go, go

Feeling a little low today. Would love to hear some happy stories. O' silent readers and not-so-silent readers, if anything good happened to you recently, please share it. Let's hear something positive.

All Blue, no Wit

Faithfully someone else's

"Who is Mama's sweetheaaaaaart?"

"Solom."

"Who is Baba's sweetheaaaaaaart?"

"Solom."

"Who is Zain's sweetheaaaaaaart?"

"Solom."

"And who is Solom's sweetheart?"

(Pause for thought)

"Bacchi."

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?

Thanks a kilo!

One of the things I've discovered recently is that tracking blog stats is strangely addictive; more so than blogging, in fact. In the last few days, when the page views were beginning to lean towards the 1,000 mark, I started signing in almost obsessively - wishing, willing that 834 to become 900 and that 967 to become 1,000. Eventually, the 998 became 1,002. I did feel a little cheated at having missed the exact moment, which was also when I realised that I was acting like a paranoid blog freak.

Perhaps it's the curse of the baby blogger. You start posting, expecting no one to read but secretly hoping that your blog will go viral and be featured on MSN news by the end of the week. What happens in reality is decent enough and pleasantly so: you get a moderate number of hits that keep rising steadily and ultimately settle into a spike pattern that coincides with each new post, indicating that you've finally got a regular readership. Your blog isn't featured on a major news network, but it does make it to the lists of a couple of other popular blogs, most of them maintained by your cousins who are either trying to help or have succumbed to duress after putting up a half-hearted fight.

By now, you haven't quite 'arrived' in the blogging world but you are becoming conscious of the new public nature of appreciation for your writing. That's when you start monitoring the stats. It takes you a couple of days to become completely obsessed and to start judging the worth of your writing on the basis of the response it gets. When no one comments, you go on a chocolate binge. When someone comments, you google yourself. You start spending a disproportionate amount of time every day wondering what to blog about next. By 'you', of course, I mean 'I'.

And then, you hit 1,000 page views in six weeks, and you realise that that's far beyond what you ever realistically imagined for your little, unknown weblog. And in that moment, there's nothing to do really except to grin and accept the amazingness of it...

... after which you Facebook the news, check back obsessively to see if someone's responded to that, monitor the stats some more, fret about not having a new entry up, write one eventually and click 'PUBLISH POST'.

Faithfully yours

By now whoever's read this blog more than once probably thinks that it's a never-ending series of conversations, so I promise that my next entry will be a proper one, involving the use of paragraphs.

But first!

Conversation with Suleiman while trying to feed him dinner.

Me: Who is Mama's sweetheart?

S: SOLOM!!

Me: Yesssss!

S: BABA!!

Me: Hahaha! Yes! Shabash! Baba is also Mama's sweetheart.

S: IMTIAZ!!

Me: What?! No. Imtiaz is not Mama's sweetheart.

S: UNCLE!!

Azfar: Aaf, is there something you need to tell me?

In da hood

Yes, perhaps I'm rubbing it in, but there are some things that must be gotten off the chest otherwise the host body will implode. Please read my blogpost Mothers are not for kids! for some context.

Conversation with my mother over Skype today.

Azfar: Amma, we can't see you and we can't hear you.

(Amma calls me on my cell phone.)

Amma: I can see you and hear you. (accusingly) I heard you shouting at Suleiman.

Afia: Yes, I know you can hear us. But there's a problem with the apparatus at your end. Is your camera plugged in? Check at the back.

Amma (on cell): Okay. Can you see me now?

Afia: Nopes.

Amma (on cell): Wait, hold on... Can you see me now?

Afia: Yes! I can see you! Good going, Ma! I'm impressed! If you've managed to fix the camera, there are high chances that you can fix the mic too! What did you do?

Amma (on cell): I removed the hood from the camera.

(Azfar and I look at each other.)

Me: This is so going on my blog.

Conversations with Calliope - Part II

Calliope: i want a daughter

C: i'll die if i dont have a girl

Me: Okay. But keep in mind that you could die of plenty of other things associated with having kids, regardless of the sex.

Me: Even if you make it through the pregnancy and deliver, the post-delivery period will probably kill you. If not, the first year of motherhood probably will.

Me: And if you make it through THAT, wait for the teenage years.

C: im hoping i'll make enough money to be able to afford all the help i need to keep me calm

Me: Calm mothers are LIARS.

C: hahaha

Me: Are you a LIAR?

Me: ARE YOU?

C: no

Me: HUH?

C: no

Me: HUH???

Me: Say 'no' once more... it'll add a nice, even tone to the conversation.