Tabhisms

Wait, wait, WAIT!
You see the whole country of this system is juxtaposition by the haemoglobin in the atmosphere- because you are a sophisticated rhetoration intoxicated by the exuberance of your own verbosity.
My name is Maria Amir…

Having just experienced the post-delight that comes from yet another epiphany long, long overdue: I have a confession to make. I am, what the inimitable ‘they’ call a pseudo-intellectual: not particularly because I don’t know what I’m talking about (although that often happens, because I bear a lamentable tendency to confuse myself more often than I do others) but because I prefer to talk smart. Unless I’m on one of my sugar buzzes. Recently, I have had the long with-held pleasure of watching old Amitabh Bachan films. A much needed experience this cruel Saara Zamaana had prohibited me from during my childhood. By the way, the Pakistani version for cruel Saara Zamaana is "Zaalim Samaajh" (lest I be accused of being a dangerous anti-semite). The confession being…

The two-6-foot-legs-with-head-attached was a comical genius, folks. Seriously. There is an elusive charm that old Indian films and old westerns’ share: an intrinsic disregard for realism, even perverse logic. They are therefore a league unto themselves. When the young Amitabh slaps a man in ‘Sholay’, the said dude dies. Crap! Doth he put Arnie-Hasta-bloody-ass-Lavista to shame? Yep, that he do be. No guns in sight. Plus for some reason, the hero must always display utmost heroism with itsy bitsy guns sans bullets at the most inopportune moments, by resorting to use his fists. Fate it is.
When he says something to the tune of “Rishtey mein to hum tumhaare baap lagte hein!” he meanses, much business – more, perhaps than even De Niro and his “talking to me” mirror. The actual genius of the man, I now realise lies in the old-young, pre monochrome beard version, sans the presently put-on sophishto. It was never cheap: purely because it so blatantly was!
I mean, Dudes and Dudettes, that even Peter O Toole or Pacino’s “go to the mattresses” can in no way trump a blue saari ‘moti biwi, with a Bara naam, who replaces all mattresses ala carte’.
Hun bol, ki kehnda e?

In the infamously made famous “You’ve got mail” Tom Hanks told us of the intrinsic wisdom hidden in the manifold layers of the ‘God Father’. The I Ching of all masculine wisdoms: hence only the trifle few quotes - with mixed days of the week and the Gun replaced by the Canola. But you see, Tabhisms offer a more profound variety of Tapori lifelines, more re-usable than Godfatherisms. For much as we would like, we do not all have the bollocks (I did mean to say balls btw, but sheesh - I’m a ‘lady’, or something to that effect) to kill all at will. Tabhisms have their own diversity. They do, I tell you.

“You see I can talk English, I can walk English, I can laugh English, because English is a very phunny language” - For all of us, and I do mean ALL, who still need to prove a point to our colonial masters. We CAN TALK the English and are working very hard on the laugh and walk, wont you please let us in your great nation?

“Sir, considering the consideration to take the run, the consideration became an ultimatum and ultimately Sir, the consideration was re-considered. In the year 1979, when India was playing Pakistan in Bombay, Wasim Raja and Wasim Bari they were at the crease Sir. And Wasim Bari gave the same consideration to Wasim Raja and Wasim Raja told Wasim Bari “Look Sir, this ultimately has to end in a consideration which I cannot consider. Therefore the consideration that you are giving me must be considered very ultimately”. Therefore, Sir, in the run that they were taking Wasim Raja told Wasim Bari “Wasim Bari you take the run” and ultimately both of them ran and considerately they both got out. SIR!"
– Lightening speed delivery for whenever your boss doubts your command over the English Language or whenever he or she already has a headache and you want the rest of the day off. OR as a mere tribute to Wasim Raja who has recently left us and was very considerate.

“The race is ready to go” – for every time you have not yet completed a task you were supposed to.

“Aap andar se kuch aur, baahar se kuch aur nazar aate hein. Ba Khudaa, shakal se to CHOR nazar aate hein. Umar guzri he saari chori mein, saare sukh chein band zulm ki tajori mein. Aap ka to lagta he bas yehi sapna”Ram Ram jagna, paraaya maal apna” - for every politician you have met and have yet to meet.
Exclusion clause: The following statement is to be uttered out loud in the presence of powers that BE- only in a state of heightened drunkenness OR during a suicide mission.

“Khaike paan banaaras waala, khul jaae bandh akal ka taala” – A small price to try. Definitely worth a shot if it means breaking said taala.

“Daddu Tum?” – For when death comes a knocking. And you are momentarily speechless - having forgotten and misplaced, the exuberance of your inherent verbosity.

“My name is Anthony Gonzales (to be replaced with said or yet unsaid, proper noun/s). Mein Duniya mein akela hun. Dil bhi he Khali, Ghar bhi he Khali - is mein rahe gi koi kismet waali. Jisse meri yaad aaye, jab chaahe chali aaye. Roop mein he Prem Gali, Gholli number # 420. Excuse me please?” – Without a doubt the MOST original and creative pick up line ever.

“Maula kabhi mujhe chorna kabhi nahin,
Bhoola Tera ehsaan mein kabhi nahin. Kiya tu ne jo manaa kiya, kabhi naheen. Kabhi kisi ko phansaaya he kabhi naheen”. – A sycophant’s prayer. Maula I can personally vouch for the last part.

“YAMMA YAMMA!” – A desi’s barbaric YAWP to hail life with Carp-e-diem proclamations.

“In the English, the Bhairoon becomes a Baron and the Baron becomes Bhairoon because their minds are very narrow” – Now 'aint that the truth?

“Tumhaara kya naam he, Basanti?” _ “Ji Maria, Saahib”. I like to think this one was meant for me, not that I have a tonga or any remote aspirations to wed Dharmindar. Neither, do I harbour any subsequent regrets over not having done so.

‘Mere Angaane mein tumhaara kya kaam he? Jo he naam waala wo hi to badnaam he”. – Roughly translated: Mind your own damn business, F****** Asshole.

“Apni to Jese tese. Thodi aese ya vaise- Kat jaaye gi.
Aap ka kya ho ga, Janaab-e-Aali?” – The ‘Que sera sera’ matra for all the Lawaris’s of this ‘world he na world’.

“Lo kal lo bat” – The illegally blonde synonym for “Whatever”.

I thereby claim that this ancient Tapori gospel, despite its warped machismo, trumps the western version of un-fairy like God fathers. Times are a changin’ my friends amd 'us', wherever-the-hell-borned-still-forever-confused-desis (WTHBSFCD) have gots- ta- stick together and realign our minglish’s and mojo’s (couldn’t help it) eastward.

Keh diya na. BAS!

What a wonderful world!

I have never been here before.
At this oh-so mysterious hidden corner of my Hyde. I have never known a comfort zone that i have not had to manufacture. But there it is, at probably the most inopportune moment, in the midst of a Warwick University interview with an alleged (as in allegedly that is his name) Stephen Williams, talking about writing and art. I have never thought myself capable of breaking into song in 'public', the other variety is my very own insubordinate Casa'. But so be it.
Today i am more than the sum of my many alter-go's. I am Quasimodho, with the big-ass swollen lump of an optic-aid and a day of freedom: no gargoyles in sight except in the looking glass.
"So what kind of music do you like?"
Mostly accoustic rock.
" No oldies?"
Definitely. Armstrong is a genius.

Lo and behold! We- alleged Stephen and I, both break into a very vamped version of "What a wonderful world". And no dawdling single verse for us, oh no! I the interviewee and he the interviewer- a great divide indeed: break into a Calliope sonata.

"Maria, it really is a pleasure to meet someone like you. Unexpected, and a pleasure."


Fore- epiphany to fore-self: I just sang at an interview. I am a 'true' flake, as of today.

*After-epiphany to after-self*
It is a pleasure to meet me. Unexpected, but I am truly delighted Maria.

* After-epiphany to all selves: Perhaps the next interview calls for a 'King and I' reference.
Shall we Dance?
1-2-3 AND!

Backseat Boulevard

I am at loggerheads with myself. These are the days...the ones when I look in the mirror and see a different outfit, not the clandestine hues I wore 4 years ago, the bruises washed down with smiles and songs. I see color, but the face... that is still the same.
These are the days when I see the weakness in me.
Moreover I know it.
It smirks at me in the mirror capped in blue eye shadow and glitter earrings that I conjured up the night before with dried paint and copper yarn. Today I know that I am a shit load of talk and a heap of no goes. Tall dreams - thats what he said. "Thats all you are Maria, a silly girl who dreams and doesn't know how to 'DO'". Today I fear he may be right. His voice is louder today. Not the nocuous buzzing of 'as per usuals'. But hope springs eternal in Silly-girl-who-dreams-Land. A half-full glass of dapple vinegar. One last gulp to go.

Tomorrow is another day
on Backseat Boulevard.
Another corner at carwash dreams.
A new ode to left over casseroles in the fridge .
A last look at my rainbow poncho,
unravelling at the seams

Corrections for the "politically correct"

I stumbled accross something today. Amidst the myriad of letters I go through, that defines to the hilt, my un-affirmed journalista' non-aspirations, my vocational training and my current Job description. It seems of late that new rules of political correctness, have been devised by 'civilised countries' and the UN. Majority of these rules form cleverly concealed ad-libs for so-called democracy. But the developing countries of the world should take care to make a note, nevertheless. As should I.

Rule 1: In the Middle East, it is always the Arabs that attack first, and it's always Israel that defends itself. This is called "Retaliation".

Rule 2: The Arabs, whether Palestinians or Lebanese, are not allowed to kill Israelis. This is called "Terrorism".

Rule 3: Israel has the right to kill Arab civilians, this is called "Self-Defence" or these days "Collateral Damage".

Rule 4: When Israel kills too many civilians. The Western world calls for restraint. This is called the "Reaction of the International Community".

Rule 5: Palestinians and Lebanese do not have the right to capture Israeli military, not even a limited number, not even 1 or 2. This is called "Kidnapping".

Rule 6: Israel has the right to capture as many Palestinians as it wants. There is no limit; there is no need for proof of guilt or trial. This is called "War on Terrorism".

Rule 7: When you say "Hezbollah", always be sure to add "supported by Syria and Iran". This is called the "Axis of Evil".

Rule 8: When you say "Israel", never say "supported by the USA, the UK and other European countries", for people (God forbid) might believe this is not an equal conflict. This is called "Helping our Friends".

Rule 9: When it comes to Israel, don't mention the words "occupied territories", "UN resolutions", "Geneva conventions". This could distress the audience and is called "Anti-Semitism".

Rule 10: Israelis speak better English than Arabs. This is why we let them speak out as much as possible, so that they can explain rules 1 through 9. This is called "Neutral Journalism".

*Golden Rule*
If you do not agree with these rules or if you favour the Arab side over the Israeli side, you are in all probability, a very dangerous anti-Semite. You may even have to make a public apology like Mel Gibson. This is called "Democracy".

Fortune fairy

Today's fortune: If your desires are not extravagant they will be granted

Not in all the lands and all the Kingdoms has a thought more depressing been voiced. Yet the peripheral forum for us socially retarded took up the mallet. Thank you, Orkut for the extended reverie, cut brutally short! Your reality check shall not dwindle, nor shall it be forgotten.

Fairy Fairy quite contrairy
Dont let my dream castles grow
Bash them down and slather them round,
And put on a fabulous show!

Little Mermaid Diary

Entry: October,1991
Night Time.

Dear Diary,
I have decided that I want to fall in love now.
And I have decided that I want to be in love with Prince Eric.
I think I will marry him when I grow up.There are three reasons why I picked Prince Eric over all the other princes.
1) He has Green eyes
2) Ariel already has Sebastian and Flounder, and she shouldnt have all three. Yesterday when I wanted to go to Yummy's 36, Baba said that we cant have everything and too much of anything is bad for you. I think he's wrong, but I still dont think Ariel should get everything, as she already has red hair and is an under-the-sea princess.
3) Prince Eric doesnt wear girly blouses and tights like all the others AND he has a dog.

(Barring Yul Brynner and Johnny Depp, I stand by my decision. I do want to marry Prince Eric when I grow up.)

Malice in Yonderland

Backed into yet another corner by niggling doubt.
I believe today is the day to revisit my amorality. It's been a while, but I am sure that I can manage if I so choose. How does a vehement prude discard her scruples for the sake of some semblance of insanity?
A tango to tangle with an unknown tomorrow. That is all I ask of today.
Just enough of a shove to allow my head and heart to realign with the revised morals of a sacrament as old as time " a wasted youth better by far than a wise and productive old age".
I find myself deep in the midst of the solicitous yearning to prove myself. Most definitely unchartered waters. Unfortunately this particular brand of 'wish' merits an audience. Sowing the seed of consequence, it seems, no longer squanders a fate foretold...it only maps it. Naked on a stage for a spotlight? If that be the case, then so be it.
The impetus of my action once again bears the brundt of paternity. They say that every step we take is formed by our fathers left foot and our mother right. There is thereby, little wonder in the fact that I walk in shoeboxes, consistently colliding with myself. I dance circles around my potential and a rather remarkable fox trot over my tenacity.
My chronic curse remains to piroutte my verbs around alien nouns and gremlin faces. However, I have experienced an epiphany of sorts, shared with 'Material Girl' Madonna and a pack of MnM's, post midnight to a Blue moon: to frame my renewed disenchantment. A call to arms and amorality. I resolve as of now, to conveniently solicit my "to do's" with fervent fanaticism and yes, at present, a not-so-blatant expense of roadblocks and hitchikers. It is about time I excercised some passion! If not for mortals than for Mermaids, Matadors and Medusa's.

I hereby, solemnly swear on the salvages of my wavering conscience and all my religions- to raise Heaven and Hell on scroll as I see fit.

Anticipating unprecedented Malice in Yonderland.
So let it be written.
Let it be Done.

Good girls go to Heaven- Meatloaf

Good girls go to heaven
But the bad girls go everywhere

When the wind is howling through your window pane
It's not the only pain of the night
You're burning up in your bed, you got a fever of love
And there's not an anti-body in sight

Hey Jenny, Jenny, why are you crying?
There's a beauty of a moon in the sky
But I guess when you've been leading such a sheltered life
You never lift your head and look so high
You don't have a lot,
but it's all that you've got
And you can turn it into more than it seems
Just give it a shot,
Fantasize every movement
And imagine every inch of your dream

No one said it had to be real
But it's gotta be something you can reach out and feel
nowIt ain't right, it ain't fair
Castles fall in the sand and we fade in the air

And the good girls go to heaven,
But the bad girls go everywhere
Somebody told me so, Somebody told me now I know
Every night in my prayer, I'll be praying that the
Good girls go to heaven,
But the bad girls go everywhere

When the sweat is sizzling on your skin in the dark
And you're desperate now for somewhere to turn
Every muscle in rebellion, every nerve is on edge
And every limb has been erotically burned

Hey Johnny, Johnny, why are you shaking?
When a boy should do whatever he can
You've been nothing but an angel every day of your life
And now you wonder what it's like to be damned

Every time I try and dream you,
I can't believe how hard it's been to
Conjure up your face And trace your body in the air
All the seconds go on forever,
But the thirds and fourth ones are even better
Everytime I do it just a little bit longer
Everytime I dream,It's just a little bit stronger than real life
No one said it had to be real
But it's gotta be something you can reach out and feel, now!

It ain't right, it ain't fair
Castles fall in the sand and we fade in the air
And the good girls go to heaven,
But the bad girls go everywhere
Somebody told me so,
Somebody told me now I know
Every night in my prayer,I'll be praying that the
Good girls go to heaven

Eulogy

The night no longer grips my spirit as it once did. The magic moon and creeping vines as they lose all grandeur, form my overtly calm self. Relishing the night takes time, an epoch of rage and fear, culminating to the pinnacle of anticipation. The point where waiting for the fear to ‘kick in’ becomes the adrenaline rush that eclipses all others. Like tasting fine wine, the night needs to set in and marrow with bone.
A legacy of running from tick-tocks frames my subsequent growth. The night no longer pretty, the days no longer gritty - just a frameless smog of empty silences. Having faced those demons a long time ago, the silence is no longer beautiful. The calm before the storm, has come and gone and at present I find myself in the midst of an intense disregard for all things calm. I wade through desert sands in my dreams, copiously waiting for the morning sun to help the crack kick in.

And it does…
The sun bristles outside as the electricity conks out. I discover that there is no flavour superior to the sweet tang of sweat. To sit through each dreary drop coursing down my neck as I navigate my way through the stickiest day of my life.
Blissfully zoned out- enough to tune out the sense of discomfort. I am the quintessential junkie on his final trip. The one you wait for with every quivering, shaky breath. Every other hit becomes just that- the 'others', fated to bring me to the precipice. Now, there is only the wait. To savour the slow but steady satire of my demise. The mellow tendrils of an ashen joint soothing out the kinks in my soul, the battered scraps of syringes cased in coral blood coating my sea of memories.
And I hear you kiddo, as clear as life before death.

My sweet, pretty baby
After mama moved on and daddy left home
The sight of you all grown up in a cradle
With money and a rock and sugar on top
To rub in my betrayals

How does a masochist apologise? "I’m sorry kiddo. I linger in your four-year-old shadows everyday". There is no laughter to frame my face, no more songs to sing my pace, no more smiles to send your way. They all lie in your pocket purse, as I wait - bound forever to your withheld ‘get-go’. Just that kiss on the cheek to say “move along on your way, cause I’ll be okay”. But it never comes. I am marked with your granite glare, to slash my soul. You are the only God I pray to for forgiveness.

She left you long gone,
with a sketch of a song
And now you’ll swallow up souls for a living

Just one more chance at being a sodden saviour, kiddo. A colossal apology for a smile?
Believe you me, loneliness comes free. There’ll come a day when you will need me there to love you.

You and me and the Devil
make three
You wont need any other love baby

Just one last chance and one more dance. Even the nights don’t sing to me anymore. Just one last smile as I work on my wiles, for a calendar of your candy kisses baby.

Come lay your bones on my turpentine stones
Just you and me.

I don’t need any other love baby

Beautiful Loser

In the immediate unforseen,
How am I to navigate the course of wants and wishes with can's and cant's. The practicalities of things are hard pressed to hit home at present, and there is little denying that it is about time they do so.
So good. I am resolved to face my fate. I shall try and try again on my intermittent stumble, tumble, fumble of go-getterdom. My way, highway, byway- all in all to carve my own path. Camouflaging, non-chalance and faliure with color and wit, no longer makes the cut. No more running away: I shall trudge my road. Skulk and sulk the sign posts, but walk it nonetheless. Two pints nurture and four spoons nature, now call me to the point where the inpermeable 'twain must meet'.

Beautiful loser
Travellin man,
just do it once
while your able and can

Happy birthday Girl!

You see dear girl,
There is 'fiction' in this ache between these lines in font and my memories. A catechism unravelling at the seams: of you and me and the demon who dreams.
Blowing candles at each pit stop cake, of every birth and every wake.
I write it down, every word a truth.
But it doesnt mean that im not just telling stories.

A birthday wish spanning every age
to the seven year old me and her gilded cage

A birthday song for the long and gone
Seedy wanderer of slush 14 and moving on

A birthday card for the doomed to dance
through sweet-16 memories and one lost chance

A birthday kiss for the hard to miss
A stalking statue on the precipice...

Of Meece's and Frogs

It puzzles me to no end.
The fact that inherent genius placates itself, hiding under sublime layers of arcane comedy and banal banter. Then again for some reason in my eyes that is 'genius'...sans pretence. Out of all the Bob Dylan songs in the 'Great American' songbook, it is 'Froggie went a courtin' that strikes me the most - perhaps because its silly.
It is the blatant 'Old Mc Donaldisation' of the lyrics that gets me everytime.
Action-reaction-subjection-derision-deduction-induction-instruction-Action. From the Poet of poets: this is Dylan at his peak, because he writes without an agenda, unlike most of us who do. Come to think about it so does Dylan, he is probably THE polemicist of his age.
But with Froggie, not at all, there is no beginning or end to the nihilist nonchalance of this ballad. This dirge spans time and space, it is a run-on sentence and palpable cycle of never ending-dom to the finish. The romance of Mr Frog and Ms Mousey incontrovertibly trumps every Juliet her Romeo. A romance that inconsequently harps on about the manifold 'nothings' and 'everythings' of existence. The farcical tragedy of tragedies....of a fate fortold for us un-inhabitable mortals, who strive to break walls and glass barriers and glimpse haloed ever-afters.
Never again will a frog love a mouse.

It is us meece's who must wait,
wait...
wait
For the last piece of cornbread sitting on the shelf.

Homo-Escapian

It is often hard to harrow out the intricacies of being honest to the point of perfection. Is there such a thing? To be completely, unfetteringly, unflinchingly honest in ones' being and speech. I hardly think so, or I like to think not, since it dispells a notion which I find may be impossible for my ever-wavering capacities to conform to.
Virginia Woolf, in one of her many diatribes on feminism and the empowerment of all that is Yin in the homo-escapiens of this world, has spoken of killing the 'Angel in the house'. She has reiterated the need for the unequivocal demise of this sentient being that plagues the female psyche, to consider the repurcussions of their words and actions. Not because of the consequences that may indelibly occur due to this 'un-due' voicing, rather for the opinions that may frame in the minds of men, regarding these shemale 'perpetrators' of blatant, bold and boisterous speech. It is true that Woolf may not be one of the most objective caricatures to stand by, nor by any means the most sane (pun intended on all peripheral scales). However, the Lady does have her moments of grandoise epiphany, and this one is no less.

'Killing the angel' could most literally be taken as having no fear, and writing unflinchingly about everything. Taken in the literal context of the time, no-holes-barred sex-talk baby! However times have changed, it is indeed the 'best and worst' of them. The scales for judgment as it so happens, have shifted... slightly to the left. Women are now seldom judged for talking about sex, instead they are more often than not, judged for not talking abou it. The scale for judgement is far too complex, for who can tell what makes a woman intellectual and not ineffectual? Is it abstaining fastidiously from pop music and romance novels and seeking solace in political rhetoric via the Time and Newsweek? Then again, there is a difference in 'seeking' and 'finding'. Heresy once again compels me to strut it ' Seek and ye shall find' just isnt going to make the cut this time.
To seek intellect and admiration, through highly inconclusive jargon, is not necessarily equivalent to finding it. Neither is it in any way productive. There (unfortunately) ARE those who 'find' solace in a Britney Spears crink and in Elle Woods's euphamisms. What of that poor lot of 'lost flock', is their path to be condemned even if it works? Is trying to sound or act smart, in fact smart? How can it be admirable if it is pretentious? Then again how often is it not pretentious to be consequently admired?

An adop-duction of worlds it is, this flux of information and to pick and choose the right and left of it, is nearing impossible. The Angel's demise, therefore demands that we pick the 'Puck' of slurry silliness along with the abject geniosity of the Poe, it means we embrace the acids of Coke with the daintiness of wine, it means that we relish Grape Skittles with the same dedication we award to Caviar, it means we ferociously ( or less so) belt out Jackson moves to Billie Jean simultaneously reminicing to Rachmaninov rapture.
It is a 7-course meal of rainbows, my friends and the canvas tints both black and white. The Angel is dead, the looking glass simultaneously smudged and sparkling. For time will prove that there is little perfection in the word 'perfect'.

Paint the pallete of colors
to clasp a Kaleidoscope of flavors
All shades black
All shades white

Quit playin' games with my hide!

It seems infantile and slightly ridiculous that i still react to silly key words like 'gun-shot', 'punch' , 'lizards' and 'bruise'. When you've survived the train wreck, why let the smell of smog and sound of shrieks hound you? But it does, it is always the little things. Much the Pavlov puppy am I. Automatically cringing and barking to symbiotic signals that arent even 'signalled' specifically for my person.

The game's about money
It goes on for duplicity

Its' the bottom of the ninth
Batter up and smash it
'cause the game ain't funny.

The Wanderer

As I ponder a path yet un-foretold
of broken barometers to rage against the dying of the light.
As fierce echoes of foregone passions shrivel to squander,
a truth yet lied to death
And the crashing cries convulge cradles' that fall

The Acid priests in mighty towers, solemnly recall
The 'Aimless wanderers' of lonely caves
and lowly taverns of ill repute

A phalanx of pubescence, seeking answers to lost questions
"What is the color of intoxication?"
"What is the flavor of good intention?"
"How do the 'pure' savour pretention?"

Little do they know...
Not all who wander are aimless.

Not if ones aim in seeking wonder
...is to wander.

Yes Sir!

I do not know if I am any good at following orders, then again, I am consequently brilliant and subsequently a mess. I can conform to appearances and never to intent. Which always begs the question, how does one separate the two twins? I suppose if they can remove beings that share an intertwined brain and heart through cold hard metal, they can separate ideals and action through bitter euphemisms.
An 'adop-duction' of this world am I, bristling to call me an orphan after you meet them' folks. There they go, scampering off into distant horizons... the prophecies of lonely pilgrims and solitary travellers, merely travellin' through, passing on and sailing high...

Yes Sir, yes sir!
Three bags full sir,
Dont really give a crap about the other two
Just the one for the little girl
who lived down the lane

Just that one will do...sir.

My coping curse

A precipice of precincts that surrounds my being and my dreams. I do not know if they crumble, cross-multiply or carve on into new forays. However, they do change.
Completely.
Whether or not 'change' is a good thing, is a question I believe I am doomed to evade forever and whether or not that will 'break me' or 'make me' is something I am cursed to cope with. However like a dilapidated patch quilt I am oblivious to the new patches that will grace my old posture. Living in the brundt of my dreams, fading in the slow malencholy of hazy sleep and wallowing in the self-effaced characters of my own conscience is definitely not productive or practical. But it seems impossible to dodge.
I wallow now, consciously and consciencously in my depracating, dilapidated demons. For I blame all my failures and flaws on silver-screen sabbaticals and merry melodies. I blame, without guilt, the hollywood dreams and the silverscreen screams that barricade my being from quietly accepting and adapting to the bitter salt tang of reality. I blame every myth from taking away my will to say yes to "can be's" instead of "could have beens".
I blame them.
I blame them with all my head and none of my heart.

Once upon a Rhyme...

There are moments in ones' life when we come intermittently face to face with our mortality, the moments are few and far between, but they exist. I wonder, now that I see my life perpetually trounced by outward phantoms , that I am prone to live vicariously through my words.
It is not a writers curse, as I would so like to believe - rather a cowards penance. Most men and women, who write, string together the words to dictate a life already lived or conceived. I, on the other hand, do so to avoid the latter. My words are the substitute for the journey, I write, because I come to see now that I cannot live and the words make this epitaph seem prettier somehow. Inanely glamorous and tinted in a softer hue than abject failure.
There are some select few, who are destined to go through life and not around it, sadly I begin to realize that I am not one of them. Even when life has left me little choice - backed me away imperceptibly in an unbearably cramped corner, I wish my way around it. Never, do I merely walk the path stretching out before me.
I paint it in my head, choreograph it in my senses, but NEVER do I feel it run through my fingertips.

Is mortality being faced with death? Or is it waiting for it with a smile? Or more likely, something wedged uncomfortably in between. I suppose what irks me the most about ‘musts’, ‘don’t’s’ and ‘end’s’ is the black out at the base of each word; there are no windows to these words. Only tar and cement to plaster every tiny opening. Perhaps the shortest path to Heaven 'is', in fact, straight through Hell.

What do I want?

A mind exalted beyond mortality? For there is no such thing. Plato is dead and I hardly think it matters to him that we remember his name. Is it a run-on sentence that I wish for, perpetually flawed? Yes I suppose that may be it.

For I loathe the abject finality of ordinary words on tombstones' that are left behind to summarize the entirety of a soul. People use words like Beloved Mother, Daughter and Friend, just as carelessly and cause-lessly as they do 'Blue' or 'Dog' or 'Paintbrush'.
‘In loving memory of’….words that say less than nothing.
There are no run-on sentences for tombstones. None bother to voice “Beloved Mother, who made pancakes on Sundays and loved about- to-rain cobalt skies” or “In loving memory of my daughter who hummed the ‘happy days’ theme in the morning and a Sparkles anthem every night before she floated off into Neverlands, yet unbreached”. No, there are only monosyllables at the end. That and full stops.
It hurts me, more than I can say that people no longer start sentences with “Once upon a time” and end them with “And they lived Happily Ever After”. I fear, that they too, already realise that the few who believe them, are destined to be broken by both.

And were an epitaph to be my story
I’d have a short one ready for my own
I would have written of me on my stone
I have a lover’s quarrel with the world.

(Robert Frost)

Presumption Pitfalls

Again I face my proverbial 'writers dilemma'.
People ask me, so casually "what do you do?" and I always respond in kind, hard pressed to describe that I merely do what I am...
"I am a writer, I say" and the vibes unnervingly shift.
Presumptuous girl! thinks of herself as a writer! For some reason calling myself a writer is different from saying that I am an MBA or an Engineer, there are no degrees to prove the point and regardless of my quest for one, there will never be a degree to prove this particular point. I say so, because I wish to be nothing else. I never claim I am any good, merely that I am.

And now I fear I have lost my rights. I need to jolt my being yet again, with application forms and 'personal statements' to prove that I 'do' what I simply DO.

But 'Do' I shall, make no mistake about it. You always said that I should know my place and my worth and aim low in consequence. I fear that I cannot comply. I shall apply to Oxford, dear Father, if only to prove that I had the courage to do so and that I am not merely a waste of living space. I shall fail, in all probability, but not for a lack of trying as you anticipated.

You always said that I was an artist because I didnt have the capacity or brains to be anything else.
You were right.
I didnt.

Rembrandt Rhapsody

And they say it never ends...
The wheels keep on turning and the scars just keep on burning.

Why does it never end?
Why is it never enough?

I feel like a maxed-out credit card, an overused trash can for emotional dumping. At the same time I marvel at my ability to bounce back everytime I feel that the world and life has pushed me over the edge. I curse this 'so-called' gift. Infact I dont know if reality lies in the fact that the world never ends or my will, one of them SHOULD.

I feel too much like a Rembrandt painting, splashed to splendour with burning colours. Hardly any room left for detail or vision. And so the question begs the asking...
How can i paint more on the same canvas, without whitewashing or starting over?

Shall we Dance

It is the oddest sensation in the world to dress up and play 'doll' for a bunch of people to 'see' if your worth their sons. Odd, frightening, ridiculous, disparaging and downright depressing.

Fo the record: I hate the 'real world'.

All I see is a silk parade of life-long dreams frizzling away, unhinged and drappled at the seams. There is no Prince Charming.
There is no " You too crazy Marius Cancerius Newbus? I like crazy."
The sad part is I actually waited for him and giving up on 'the one' dream for 'the anyone' flack is a mean wake-up call. Plain mean.
There's only you sitting infront of strangers showing a face you dont wear well and a brain that doesnt speak at all.

We've just been introduced
I do not know you well
but something in the air just seemed to draw me to your side.
on the clear understanding, that this kind of thing can happen

Shall we Dance?
1-2-3- And...

*Plop*

?

Riddle me this...
Dear 'riding the riddle-dom rise and fall rollercoaster' Girl

What goes up, then comes down
then shows up and shuts down
What turns every spectrum color
only to revert to sodden flavor...

Dear Self, do not take offence. I simply needed to classify a class to which you cramp, crush and create my crumbling castles in the air.

Happy Budday Asma!

Testiment Paramout Panorama that awaits my frivolity-fractured-friend:

HAPPY BUDDAY
Many happy returns and dividends resulting ofcourse, from MY, my, MY "Super- deluxe Birthday package" await you.
*( I have decided to update deluxe status to 'sooper'/ southpark innuendo deluxe status: a) because i out did myself, and b) because i can, and i have pitifully few such moments of grandeur)

Dont you just pity Da fool! dontcha? Dontcha?

Anyhow may your new 'crown-jewels' jewellery CROWN your crowning 'glory' to crown great great heights for your highness on future thrones a many.

I wish I was a Mermaid

Silent tumors of my torrent dreams
I wish I was a mermaid,
sailing in a bathtub of midnight waltz's

But dreams get lost in tiny paper cups
The antichrist starves sitting in my kitchen
as I wait to slave away in garbage trucks

Mermaid genes elusive in an icicle tart
Silent years and screaming tears of raging rotten art

A 'special girl' sitting alone with her really deep thoughts
Tell me whats so pretty about 'really deep thoughts' ?
I wish I was a mermaid sailing silent shadow puddles

No quiet screams lost in my paper cup
No magenta clouded, choked fears of 'really deep thoughts'
No 'one more' casualty soul hitting solid rocks.

The sky is falling falling falling
And I hear my voice talking' really really deep thoughts'
smiling silent tears and pungent years

Turn me to stone, will you
Burn me to chrome will you
Take away all these 'really deep thoughts'
Because I wish I was a Mermaid.

Monkeyman paging Tweeter

I find myself yet again at the beginning of the end of the end of the beginning.
Proclivity uninvited.
I am the Monkey man, unbidden in my quest, but bidden by myself.
No Tweeter in sight: no self-effacing self to whitewash my self-depracating image.
Just another proverbial pickle for my persnickety person to ponder over. Perhaps what I fear most at present is the fact that I am dreadfully unsure of my calibre, in all things and in all questions. Why am I so apprehensive of my potential, or moreover of what that potential represents?

I am forever told by friends and foes alike that I have talent, should I choose to use it anywhere outside myself and my selfserving world. I am told that I even posess a degree of tenacity when I choose to acknowledge it, but this so-called gift remains the one thing I cannot find or see or crave for that matter. My Tweeter is doomed to lurk in shadows. I am a little too content in Monkey man cocoons, it seems. Moreover, I am not sure if this self depracation draws from some perverse, deep-rooted fear or a misplaced, innate calling for humility. What really is humility?

Is it pretending one is not talented or gifted, so that we appear likeable?
Is it the chitter chirping for "one more banana" all the f***** time? Or is it ignoring those gifts and talents till you believe the pretence? Because for some reason, it is easier to absolve ones self of responsibility for wasting ones' potential, when you convince your being there is no longer a 'self' left to lose.

The rolling winds will blow,
blow it all and row
But the Monkey man who knows
Will never Ever know

Why am I so ever-ready to comply and compromise my vision, simply to glean approval from all corners, even when the approval does not particularly hold much importance for me? Having just said so, i realise it isnt humility it is plain, reprehensible F-E-A-R.
Of what, I dont think I shall ever know.

And the walls came down all the way to hell
Never saw them when they're standing
Never saw them when they fell (Dylan)

Tracking 'Tiny Toony' times

A much needed blast from the past.
Yes, My past is much inbibed of blissful naivete'.

We're tiny, we're toony, we're all a little looney,
And in this cartoony, we're invading your TV!
We're comic dispensers, we crack up all the censors,
On tiny toon adventures get a dose of comedy!

So here's Acme Acres, it's a whole wide world apart,
Our home sweet home, it stands alone, a cartoon work of art!
The scripts were rejected, expect the unexpected
On tiny toon adventures it's about to start!

They're furry, they're funny, they're Babs and Buster Bunny,
Montana Max has money, Elmyra is a pain!
Here's Hamton and Plucky, Dizzy Devil's yucky,
Furrball's unlucky, and Gogo is insane!

At Acme Looniversity we earn our toon degree,
The teaching staff's been getting laughs since 1933!
We're tiny, we're toony, we're all a little looney,
It's tiny toon adventures, come and join the fun!

And now our song is done!

Varmin't Im a gonna...

Just one of them bad-mad-sad-mad again days, when all I see is red. Considering im a cancerian, not a taurus, that basically doesnt mean anything beyond the proverbial passive-aggressive I. So all that amounts to, is that fact that im damned prissy today!
No championing, raging temper.
No excessive tantrums.

Just the after note to foreself epiphany:
People are deth-picable!

Ego and I have decided as of now, to boycott humanity and try our luck in Dum-dum Land on yonder in a bloody ass galaxy - Far, far, far ass away... six-feet-under?
Perhaps.

But for now, there is no Looniversity, there is no glitter glue to put Humpty- fucking- Dumpty back together again , there is no silver lining.
Only mulch spreads and crappity-crap folk.
So I stand proud as I hope to YAWP this out loud....

"Varmint, I'ma Gonna Blow Yah'all T'Smithereens!"

The Pencil Monologues

She leads us on again, Dear Page.

Farther and further, through lurid landscapes and storm synagogues. I have yet to comprehend our journey. Is it really a quest as we always believed, or is it simply her passivity on scroll? Are we merely slaves to her blind scratches against unopened doors, are we only pawns in her cursed polemics directed at blind beasts?

Is she leading us, or is she being led by something more primeval and jaded than her dreams? I sense of late, that she doesn’t really know where she is going either. The former force of her convictions is missing, the grounded imprints I earlier scarred your surface with, even before she manoeuvred my placid form, are now markedly absent. I glide passively, wavering constantly upon words that she has yet to deliberate. I hang proverbially over emotions she is hard pressed to reveal. Is this really the same voyage, Page? Is this really the same Captain?

Have we both been led falsely? Set forth blindly in hyperbole typhoons and a torrent of tepidity, without any hope of finding a dream, hers or ours. I finally believe both dreams are the same, no longer am I content to merely float with her whims, to be sought out and blessed with the divided attention she casually throws my way. I seek the shores she seeks and I cannot stomach being led on so far, only to land back in the inane puddles from whence I came. She has shown me too much, I can no longer be content without seeing more.

Can we bear such a betrayal, Page? I know you have always been less concerned about the journey than I, but that is only because you are the canvas…doomed perpetually, to be the last to know, the last in the loop, the last to be taken in confidence. But I am the first, and so this impending betrayal stings bitterly. It is I who am the storyteller and tell me Page, what good is a storyteller without a story? More importantly, what good is a story if she has lost faith in it?
Page, I feel we are perched precariously at the precipice of her convictions and her conscience. She needs us now, more than she realises.

“O Captain, My Captain”
Your crew awaits…
Ready to set sail on the sea of your stories
Ready to pounce every port of your passions
Ready to re-shuffle every rise and fall of your being
Ready to storm through safe shores and stone walls

…Ready and waiting on your words, Captain.

Fi Fei Fo Fum

Resolution for life: Be HAPPY!
At all costs, at all prices and at all ends.
Inspite, despite and in respite from all those that surround me.

Fi Fei Fo Fum
Why so glum?
So glum chum...

will need to work on it.

I discover a truth- a-minute it seems. Ironic considering I have known few that believe in truths of any variety. Some elusive idea every moment, that is designed to shake me to my core if I let it and it appears that I do.
Of late it is the fact that I truly envy people their convictions. Their inherent faith and trust in the Almighty and the Powers that BE. Perhaps it is because my relationship with the said powers is proverbially 'on the rocks'? Is that why I am inanely resentful or regressively pretentious regarding those who find their paths in right, ritual and routine.
I believe... truly, completely and unquenchingly in His/Her existence, however, I simply cannot bring myself to believe in the 'systems' designed to bring us both closer.What is worse is the fact that I now, feel I often rub people off the wrong way when it comes to faith, perhaps I am merely defensive or is that I 'really' am judgmental?
Because the latter would contradict all I hope I could ever stand for.

It seems the world is made for intermittent fuck-ups, many of which seem to align themselves with my not-so-gracious presence at present.
No! I dont give a bloody damn if you think I should try to be more ambitious, im not. I do things in my own time, I am not idle and im not a slacker, I just dont have ladders to climb, I sail proverbially in my own pond and I bloody well like it. So for God's sake leave me be, I am content, reconciled finally with my mind, my heart and my multiple selves.
And if thats not bloody go-getter enough, I couldn't care less!

'Happily Never After'

Irony of ironies:
I find myself gunned down by vociferous grand-mommy, so to speak. Called in for questioning, for display on a pedestal put, marriag-iable material and ‘look at’ worth-ed by anonymous clan of clamouring marauders who have apparently very little expectations.

Grand-mommy: Maria he is rich and handsome AND he is parha likha!
Maria: OH-MY-GOD, are you serious Nano? Check, check AND check! You mean no rapist, murderer, marauder, philanderer on his CV. But that is ‘just’ too much, I don’t deserve such exaltedness, what am I to DO. How am I to ever match up!

I discover that my sweet, generally soft-spoken grandmother has multiple talents, which go far beyond her tremendous reach of frozen-food expertise, boiled salt cooking, brilliant house keeping and finishing school running. Yes! Them Gemini’s they never give it a rest with the coin tossingdom. So all of a sudden grandma is red, sweaty with non-light-sabre in hand, standing in front of Castle Grey-Skull screaming “ I have the POWER” and that she do. Crap!

Grand-mommy: Why do you never give people a chance? What is wrong with you?
Maria: HAH!

She-man glare (which is notch up from he-man, cause it has both tenses of the men-ses (hmm … am pushing with joke? Push!)

Maria: OK fine! What do I gotta do?
Grand-mommy: You just have to be nice, and meet them. Keep an open mind, and PLEASE don’t act like yourself!
Sheesh!

Maria: I’m not bringing in any tray!
Grand-mommy: But..
Maria: N-O.

Apparently I have She-ra genes, as it so happens, in small doses do they assert their assertiveness on occasion. But I never question them’ good things.

Grand-mommy: You never know it could be great, it could be a fairytale!
Maria: Ooh ooh! A fairytale! I is being Beentherella in Tritan seas with glass fin-slippers. Hoop La!

(Fade to Blue)

Rehearsal time: Night.

Hmmm…. What to iron for showcasing self for prospective fairy-tale in laws, hmm?
After much deliberation I have decided, colour is always key, and which colour? You see, the general yellow and crazy orange is too much in ‘I’ gusto, but much a rookie mistake would it be to be ‘I’. Much ala too much.
Hmm… am left with but two options, proverbial ‘Blue’ and ‘Pink’, however tragedy indicates that in ‘Sleeping Beauty’ (which just so happened to have the second-most handsome prince, since Eric from Little Mermaid, would mean me being going ahem ‘au naturel’…hmm, definitely not), so am left altercating between two hues which the ‘two’ good fairies, battled over.

* Pause film at THE END….YEYY!
Blue, it is!
Outfit……check.

Fairy tales need a theme no? hmm hmm…
Traditional mood music?
Consience:Maria “Froggie went a courting it was supposed to be!?!”
Maria: Hmm yes Conscience, but too ‘Old Mc Donald’ had a farm of 'would-be' masochistic reptiles that is, to be saving that for wedding march.

Hmm….“Don’t stand so close to me?” Definitely not! Very inappropriate teacher-student insinuation does that conjure.
“All I really wanna do, is baby be friends with you?”. Where is the fun in THAT?!

All hail moment of proverbial epiphany!

Proverbial Epiphany: “She wants me” Belle and Sebastian.Hoop la!
Mood music / Fairy tale Theme….check!

Cuisine is integral to prepare for Fairy Tale, ergo, calling for something sweet.
Hmm Hazelnut Brownies…check.
Bottle of ‘Elixir of Life’, in black, red and oh-so- white…check.

*Mommy calls

Mommy: I heard, your ok with this.
Maria: Did you know that this could be a fairytale?
Mommy: No.
Maria: Silver linings, mother!
Mommy: In that case, please Don’t be you. At least not the ‘you-est you can be!”

SHEESH!

Beauty sleep……checking, checking, checking….check.


Could-be, should be (damn them would-be’s never on my side!)…D-Day

Morning Alarm 1 pm

Snooze... check.

*Knock on door

Door opens to showcase frozen smile ear-to ear, middle aged couple, mid-laughter.
Grand-mommy- turning to she-man in front of Self (who is non- made up in blue) eyes by silently invoking power of grey- Skull.
Self looks at I. Navy blue T-shirt with three count em’ three moth holes in strategically-un-strategic places (whew!), Neon green Shalwar, dilapidated to prime-fine sleeping condition, sleep tousled hair ooh la la and morning breath…Bah.

Grand-mommy: (embarrassed smile) Meh, she just woke up!
De-frosted-smile couple: Hello, beta.
Maria: Why helooooooooo!

Maria: Fairy tale…Why, good byeeeeeeeeeeee!
*Sigh*

Maria: Self?
Self: Yes Maria?
Maria: Meet I.
Self: Hello I.
Maria: May you both live Happily Ever After.

She-man

Hell hath no fury like She-man
as S-he caves twice in one fight
Drinking and dancing the Holy night
To sadist Shambalah stage fright

Every bum in every corner
Out to chance her
then romance her,
later prance her...
never dance her.

As holy spirits cry at naked moons of mighty expectations
Beckoning snakes and ladders open forbidden doors
in lonely towers of lost sighs and winsome cries

Dread as Hell on Sunday morning
Dead as Heaven on Saturday night

Pagan bigot redemption to amend all warning
Mystery sins of freedom faded sight

Winds of change and the sands of death
to 'crunch' in time and 'steal' in stealth...
The ills of youth that aren't worth a dime

The lone damned sage goes crazy thrice
Once for the Devil and
once for Christ

But the Man aint in' to grade that jaded price

Both my Houses

A plague upon both my houses….
I feel I am truly ill equipped to deal with the loss of innocence and free being that age brings. Or is it simply that I prefer my denial to my revival? I am told repeatedly that ‘growing up’ means acting it, being embellished in some form or the other by a glossy maturity, a thin veil of stance that indicates an intelligence that is complex and not naïve.

I am forever struggling with myself, it seems. On a perennial quest to prove that I am happy, but I usually succeed. So I ask myself, even if my ‘happy’ emerges out of denial, does that make it any less real? If God doesn’t exist, yet I have faith, is that not still a worth wile pursuit for peace? Vile within and smile without?

Somehow my limited experience has brought me to the point where I need to create a touch of magic in everything. Somehow, anyhow…because I am near positive, that if I don’t see it everyday, it will cease to exist, or worse yet I will seize to place faith in it. It is my way or the highway, all by-way’s are blocked. My life is absolutely devoid of absolutes. I forever float in grey skies and swim in mulch seas, yet this is one ‘black’ that I need. My quest for happiness, real or not, must not meander, it must maintain itself.

Perhaps this is why, I devote so much time and energy in acting the fool …to see people laugh, to collect and intricately connect a series of manufactured moments, where I have played the wizard. Moments purely of my making, or so I need to believe. I Read horoscopes, bench personalised CD’s, dance and sing for people, crack inane jokes to yield even weirder responses: be they in the form of laughter, smirks or an extended impediment of eye-rolling. Regardless, they are still a reaction, and that is enough.
I suppose the real glitch of it is, that I am never funny or remotely interesting in person, the more time I spend with myself the farther the magic wanes and the dimmer its glow gets. That is when I lurch myself out of the Self and hurl my body into action; hunt for an ice-cream, watch an old movie, dance to the obtuse tangents in my head. Anything, to shine again, often I fear I haunt myself, far too much, for my own good. Making people laugh, isn’t taxing in the least, it is probably the easiest thing for me to do when it comes to a defense mechanism, and usually the easiest for others to stomach.

Yet I miss the old days.
The old houses.
The old you’s and the old me’s.

I long for the time when bad fashion and horrible taste was a given, when songs like “Hawwa Hawwa” and “Dil dil Pakistan” were anthems and Mitchells Bon Bon’s were staple foods. Times when PTV and NTM made sense, in fact the random themes of run around shows were gospel. I long for televised re-tabulations of An-kahi’s and Tanhayaaan’s, where ‘Kehne mein kya harj he?” and “Kabaacha’s” seemed cool. I long for the same adrenaline rush that only the Loony Toons theme and Thundercats could elicit. The thirst that only coke and country pine could quench. The wonder that could only be experienced when it rained and you were allowed to go out and get completely drenched. I long for ice-cream in its original splendor and simplicity: a Jet Sport ice-lolly and a Yummy’s Choco-bar. I long for the times when even in all their perverse irrationalism jingles for Naz Pan masaala, Dentonic and Diamond Supreme stuck and reverberated in your head for days. I long for times when the entire family had to sleep in the same room, because there was only one AC running. I long for the days when ‘play’ meant Barf Paani, Rang and Tip Top instead of Play ‘station’.

Yet I see myself now, ‘trying’ to stay true to myself. Always a self that meets the standards I have already set for an acceptable I. ‘Act silly Maria, but make it witty and snappish’. ‘Paint Maria, but make it a shape, no more silly rainbows’. ‘Watch movies Maria, but make them movies that have a point’ (luckily 7 year old me usually wins on this one). ‘Listen to music Maria, but save ‘Smooth Criminal’ for your head phones’. ‘Dress up Maria, but make sure you pull off, even your own patented bizarre- bohemian rhapsody’. ‘Eat up Maria, but please spare us with the Mitchell’s butter scotch and the quest for Yummy’s Panda’…

I suppose it is rather hypocritical of me, to long for the past that haunts me, to yearn for the life I hide from. Perhaps I wait for the day, when I will simply sit in my chair with a book and the lights fade lead to a wipe-out screen in a flash of dazzling orange halo’s and a magic marker scrawling…..
“That’s all Folks!”

"Little Mermaid Diary"- Entry: July 1991 and 1/2

My Birthday will come tomorrow, but I dont think im going to have too much fun. Everyone is here, and its too loud. Ahsan and I just had a fight and I think im going to write a will. Because when I die, and dont leave him my tape-recorder and cassettes, he will cry like a girl and baba will kill him.

My Will:
1. I will leave this Little Mermaid Diary and my magic wand to Mom.
2. I will leave my My little ponies to Dad, because he likes horses.
3. I will leave my Roald Dahl book and my Enid Blyton books to Salman, because he wants to write a book someday.
4. I will leave the Hershey's kisses in the freezer to Baba Faiz, because no one gives him chocolates and he cooks food all the time for everyone.
5. I will leave my purple, shiny, sweater to Fatima, because she wears ugly colours.
6. I will leave my make-up to Amna, because she likes make up.
7. I will leave my cartoon collection to Ami and Daddy (grandparents) because they never laugh.
8. I will leave my drawings and paints to Afshi Phoopho because she never draws, and is always angry, drawing helps.
9. I will leave my Rainbow Bright stuft toys for Wajeeha and Hamza, as they are the youngest cousins and never get anything, and they can fight over them.
10. I leave my coke bottle in the fridge to me, as I will drink it when I go to heaven.

(Atleast I was alwats consistent!)

Deliverance day

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!(perverts)
FINALLY the day comes, I can have coke today, and have it I shall.
We have decided henceforth that one week is a long long time. And its been one week since you looked at me, opened up and said that you saw me.
Opening sequence, alarm bell wakes me up much in its original splendour to have cell phone blaring "Dont stand so close to me" first thing in the morning. Switch off cell phone, brush teeth with colgate (we have decided Crest is out of our league, you cant win em all), go downstairs to iron clothes and there it is breakfast....black, sinful, carbonated copulation.
Yes! I feel my sage-dom reprieve vanish, no abstination today, no derivatives, no one-night stand diet coke substitutes. Today is a real day.
And I am a real girl, no wooden legs. No wooden heart.

Beasty and the Freak.

I know not, what plagueth me.
Ok perhaps I do, or I have the capacity to know, assuming ofcourse that my faculties still function on some base, infinitely finite level. But I hope and pray, and so comes the day.

I do know what plagueth me at present, it is the inertia of the present. Yes ego and I have decided to coincide and agree on this point, we BOTH reiterate blatantly that our inertia is screwed up. Much screwed up, it is infernally rickety on my end and racketed on his. Boring on my end and boisterous on his, loud on his end and listless on mine. All jumbled evasively in one insurmountable package.
After note to fore-self: Ego prefers being called in the He, My Yang, to put it much mildly. Yang which despite having opposing genitalia is still as much of a wuss as Yin, so big whoopee. Affirmative Beasty and the freak.

I discover, now that I actually am a self-boted journalist-a, that I dont really fancy politics. I particularly abhor the rationed bull-shit bravado of it all. Opportune moment, you say conscience? Well I aim to please!
I discover also my base talent for stringing syllables togther is evaporating fast and forward because of the abject crap I need to pretend I care about. So yes! my immensely complexed, small fascile self....listens to shit loads of Johnny cash and Joni Mitchell.... for doses of spiritual intellectuality. Reads Buddhist mantras for enlightenment and perennially pretends that the primary reason for my innate lack of direction in my direction, is the fact that I seek adventure and pathos, and not just because im too hard pressed to get off my rather sizeable (sheesh) backside and bother.

Cases of Faces

I am drowning in the rather odd sensation that I am losing all my principles. Everything I ever stood for or atleast everything I hoped I stood for, flowing down the pits.Yet again, full circle back, on another quest to please. Only the parent has changed, its hard when your best friend needs to see you a certain way to 'see' you. Its' rather irksome, this sensation that I have begun taking 'appearances' seriously.
Not that im an extremist who believes in absolutely letting myself 'go to the dogs', but do I want the focus of my person being directed by my mirror and my weighing machine. No I dont! Regardless of what anyone says, I agree with being healthy, I agree with being normal. But beauty has really never topped my list.
I used to pride myself on never seeing faces, or clothes....really never noticing them. They were never important. My face was just my face and my body just my body. Just that, nothing more...a slightly chubby, short and naturally confused frame, like everything else about me. Somehow I never noticed my reflection critically, which is surprising considering I know how many women actually do spend painstaking hours infront of a mirror, trying to find solace in glass projections.
I always thought that aslong as I wore a smile, the flaws would fade, people respond to smiles...cheesy as it sounds.I can't stand being this way, trying to pretend I care in the least about my weight, fashion or faces. I thought in the last few years that my 'GREATEST' accomplishment was being ok with me, atleast the 'overt physicality' of me. Its hard when those closest to you trump on about how THAT is never enough and you try to go along the ride. Its more than hard, its suffocating.
When people told me I was ugly I said 'Ah well too bad, so what? I shall be smart'. Now people tell me 'Im pretty and if I only lost a little weight...' (apparently there are many 'ifs' that sentence can bring about) and I flinch, hoping that they could bother seeing something else, anything else. But it seems they dont.
My worst fear is that perhaps that really is 'all' people can see?
A pretty face.

Zzzzzzzz's for Zombie a la carte

Im just beginning to realise how empty life can be, when it seems its most full.
I think the greatest bane of my existence is structure,routine, the endless drudgery of 'knowing' exactly what will happen everyday. I truly marvel at people who enjoy this, who enjoy a 9-5 existence mapped out for them.
Not that I have really great adventures when im not structured, sheesh! but i can still plan incessantly and dream erroneously. I hate this steady setting in of my primal fears, seeping into my existence. Being ordinary, mundane, wasted. Too lazy to look forward, think forward or do anything in a 'forward' propelling motion.
Is it loneliness that heightens the feeling, or is it just the acknowledgement of the feeling itself? What is it with me?
Why is it that I know exactly what im capable of accomplishing, but somewhere in the middle of it all I lose all initiative. Wasted potential?
More like potential put aside in pursuit of nothing...because thats oh-so interesting to master.

The Master

I lurk in a sanguine corner, forever waiting for my moment. And I see it every day as it drives on by, waving at me, the ephemeral mocking smirk…
“You coming, child?”
“Tomorrow.”
Always tomorrow: closing time curfews, crisp notes locked in my cupboard for momentary placation, leather bound pages to pave escape routes on a roulette wheel for a lost imagination. Ridden and riding a highway to hell, always haunted, always hunted by a face. There it goes, Master, walking down death road durges in my prison cell cerebellum. Or is it me? Is it I who is locked away in your head?

A flea-bitten cell, sans light, cramped needles, rocks, nails, nuts and bolts. A Garbage can of conscience and goth comedy. Tied up on a string, Master, ready and waiting for your redemption, yours mind it, but I always return all my borrowings. This is our temple tale, dear Dear demon, this is our cross dear Dear Killer, yours at the door and mine on the floor.

We are the shoulder where loneliness comes to cry,
We are the tree where bluebirds come to die
The dark deserted lobby of a 666 doors
The tiny glass shard of morning that you broke over my skull

Master, I obey.
I swear that I am still trapped.
I swear that I am still haunted.
I swear that I still think thrice before I smile.
I swear that I am still alone.

Rest assured you have not lost. I’ll dance with you in a river, wearing an ice-storm disguise. I’ll bury my soul in a scrap-book, with mask photographs on the fleece of your lies. Your face remains the face of many fears. Your laugh remains the laugh of my freshly cut tears. Your very own breath of brandy and death is an intrepid sea of lost dances we never shared. So take this waltz dear Dear Master its been dying a life for years.

Mirror Mirror, how i fall.

I have recently had the much talked about, to-date-alien opportunity of venturing forth into a parallel sphere of existence. Having been vehemently driven by my paling complexion (which is ‘so’ not in the white ergo complimentary hue, rather the corpse bride draconian grey context) and over inhabitant eyebrows, to set foot in what ‘they’ call a ‘beauty’ parlour. ‘They’ being the inimitable, definitive THEM that I admit I judge so very harshly for having the time, patience and inclination to spend shit loads of money on ‘their’ faces. Yes! I realise that I am being much the Judy Judgerson here, but seriously how is it that women can sit in the oversized amputation devices they call parlour recliners and have a team of ‘miscreants’ morph them into putty? Moreover how is it that they keep going back for it.

Even the likes of “I” can comprehend, the monthly trim, customary threading, and oh-so very occasional facial…what I cannot comprehend is this parallel species of parlour ‘aunties’, an intrepid breed of Pakistani women, who devote pretty much ALL their energy and passion towards improving their quintessential reflections in the looking glass, still unfortunately, not to much avail. At least not ‘much’.
How can I relate this diatribe of utmost authenticity, because it has been years since I bothered to step into this inner sanctum of beastly beauty? (I know I use this one too much)…but venture forth I did. Let it be written: this was no paramount crossover, to the Dark Side just a momentary splurge, and Master Yoda shall excuse me my transgresses, for learned from the experience I have much.

Apparently the most chronic of pathos that plagues this sanctum is that of urban legendry. I have now experienced an enormous epiphany: no wait for it……………………..............................
…..Women Talk!
Jes jes I know, pot calling kettle… but I mean as in gossip like hell talk, talk about every bloody ass person on the planet talk. In my one hour in this not-so- sacred order, I had the privilege of being a non-confidential confidant to three ‘original’ urban legend characters, the legends being formed as the tale unfolded, each linking the three parlour maids (in the least illicit sense of the word) and their subsequent fiance’s, lovers and boyfriends to the other. This I mean literally folks! PM#1 who was engaged to hmm …He-Man by the sound of it (and putting it as mildly and lady likely as I possibly can) had apparently run off with a dwarf (basically a no-man, again by the ‘sound’ of it) and He Man meanwhile took up with PM# 2 who, yes you guessed it was PM# 1’s sister! Meanwhile PM# 3 who regrettably really wasn’t as interlinked, as I would have liked to add element to the vaudeville of it all, was having an affair with some client’s husband but loved to talk about the husband in unnecessary detail, so I thought she deserved mention for her overt enthusiasm. I now know much more about the un-gentleman like gentleman then I could ever have foreseen likely or necessary for that matter.
The most engrossing and passive-aggressively depressing element of this epic is the fact that the conversation was disturbingly casual, as I was zilched in the ‘said chair’ of beauty manufacturdom, trying oh-so desperately to capture just a drop of the former, just to make myself feel nice for a day (I admit, sadly, that I have these days) the tales were flowing through my presence like pesto!

Barring the machismo of the He-Menses and the dilapidated charms of the SheRa’s, it irked me incessantly that the clientele also joined in on the stories. TRULY! I am not brain farting (for once)! They sat there, finding the opportune moment to ‘finally’ bitch about …well …other aunties and their spouses and daughters and in laws, because apparently men are boring to bitch about. Hmm now that really may be true…But I maintain that the Parlour Maids were better story tellers, and technically they were the first ever to tell stories, if you’re into gospel.

Anyhow having paid with my already pitiful soul and my even more pitiful pay-check.... I made my way back home still wondering what happened to the original Parlour Maid and the Dwarf, did they give birth to seven children and live ever after?

Who cares! My elixir of ‘fair fairdom’ is intact, enhanced even, by the gruelling event. I get home, face my proverbial looking glass, do my “ Mirror Mirror on the wall, can I even manage, just a little, at all?”.
And there it is, the bloody bugger, a zit straight on the conk, Rudolf the dumb ass lone ranger!

There are days, inspite of my being who I am, where there is no denying that I am alone.
The happy songs, the sodden smiles, the carefree banter with myself, writing, books, cartoons, nothing works.

I can't accept these days, they need to be phased out, ticked out of time and breathed out of my being, for if I accept them the bow shall break and the cradle fall.
A thin precipice, on some lost mountain, where I have so causally balanced myself, smile and joke in hand, shall shatter and I shall be just another goth morbid flake...who life struck out at the pier.

But those days still come, unabated by my warnings... I am 'one' lost soul swimming in a fish bowl, and today 'one' really is the loneliest number of all.

Wishbone

Having launched a battalion of beauteous beasts against Zen Phantoms
Having finally perched myself on spindle-prick needles of Svengali summers

Cast my lot in Everlots and Neverlots of complacent corpses
I have sailed my brown skies
I have swam my blue grass
I have soared my pink seas
I have run my green flames

I hear my sights and smell my sounds of acid flavours and dis-harmony
All the while crying at my mothers' lost echoes...
Daughter dont ever grow a 'wishbone'
where a 'backbone' ought to be

My Date with God

'Hi God, forever no see.''

Yeah I've been busy.'

'I guess, you could have called.''

Hmmm. You know you're gaining weight, How many times have i told you Coke is bad for you. I didnt give you a body just so you could abuse it.

''I forgot i already have a boyfriend, i think i need to go. Although i'll call before D day, put in a good word for myself''

Hmm it was something i said.

Having just stormed out on Him I realize mid stride that I may just have walked out on the only entity capable of making me lose 30 pounds, get an entire off-the-rack Minolo line AND get into Grad school with one tiny ‘Bibbity Bobbity Boo’. Crap!


“Aah you’re still here! I think I over reacted”

Well it’s not like I didn’t know you were going to come back. Plus it a no on the list, I don’t mess with ‘free will’…as you guys have finally figured out.

“But you could?”

Where’s the fun in that?

“Sigh~”

DON’T pout, and stop slouching!

Hmm frowns don’t really work for you either, I never gave you the eyebrows to pull it off, they kind of split off at a tangent. So stop that too.

“Is this what you do on all your dates?”

Well I’m seldom bored enough to consent to this, but with all the dish I’ve been throwing at you guys lately, I decided to lay low for a bit.

“So I’m the laying low?”

Don’t take it personally, kiddo.

“Hmm, God…I kind of have a question.”

Oh great, another interview, see THIS is why I don’t date! Fine!!

“Will I like burn at the stake or something for writing about this?”

Oh I don’t do the whole ‘stake burning’ thing anymore, it’s more fine seasoning and cooked on a medium flame. It’s all about the gentle flame this season. I know… OPRAH’s my freebie show.

“Oh! So will I be baked on a gentle flame? Cause that would be really unfair, I mean…considering that this is my First alter-ego speaking and that one is really tight with the conscience and both of them kinda’ get signals from a muse, so ‘technically’ you’re at all 6 ends of this conversation, if you bring in the shadow and Tink and ‘all that Jazz’”

For the record kiddo ‘All that Jazz’ is out. And nope I won’t bake you yet, I know the fine print, I wrote it. So go ahead. I know you have others; you all just wait for this jive don’t you? ‘If I just get ‘one’ chance to talk to God I’ll ask Him’….blah blah blah.

“Yeah well, Ok, umm how lonely is it at the Top?”

Don’t push it kid.
This date isn’t really going to work for me anyway and it would go better for you if you stuck with the small stuff.

“Why won’t it work? I mean besides the whole ‘you created me’ thing?”

Well personally I like blondes. Nicole Kidman was a nice piece of work and I DO say so myself. One of my better pieces.

“So you ARE officially male! Why don’t I look like her?”

That’s too easy.

“Ok, keep it small. Hmm. Why are men jerks?”

That’s too big, narrow it down.

“Ok why do most men tell you they like smart women, ones’ who think and then run after the big-boobed bimbos?”

Firstly DON’T generalize, I expected better of you. And to answer your question it’s not so much that the women with the big boobs are dumb, it’s just … the larger their boobs the less intelligent the men become. So don’t take it personally.

“Hmm… Ok why is it ‘so’ bloody important to be pretty, when ‘technically’ we cant really do much with what you gave us, and seriously you didn’t really believe in an ‘equal’ distribution of assets.”

Ok… unfortunately I was actually trying to see how the whole ‘inner beauty” thing will play out, and even I have pretty much resigned myself to being bored on that account. If I made an army of look-alikes the whole point of the exercise would be lost.

“Aha! And what is the point of the exercise”

Hmph, well among MANY othes, so don’t try to ‘spin’ this any other way… I needed something to do~ I am the ‘CREATOR’, so I created!

“So we really are puppets?”

No sweetheart! Puppets aren’t predictable.

‘Hmph!”

Don’t. Pout.

“Oh fine! Ok why religion, you know I had to ask this one, with my set of troubles?”

Yeah well I really did mean for that one to be simple, but well what can you do.

‘Simple how?”

Oh come on! They all say the same thing! It was so obvious... you guys were supposed to listen to the ‘sameness’. But you just seem so taken with conflict and I didn’t want to have to think up new crap for this all the time. Religion kinda’ evolved for every occasion.

“Isn’t that mean?”

Well I see why you think so, but seriously those of you who wanted to find me always managed and the others just became more interesting.

“Oooh Oooh, is Satan real?”

Yeah.

“That’s it”

Yes. He’s real, He isn’t really a peach and he’s kinda’ been getting on my nerves for a while now. Better?

“How much is ‘a while’?

Pretty much …’ a while’ after I made him.

"So… ‘long’ then?"

Long.

“So should I be scared of him, like all the time and throw rocks and stuff?”

You’re on a date with me, I’d say you’re doing pretty good so far.

“Thanks, But you know they say that when we talk to you we’re praying and when you talk to us ‘we’re schizophrenic”

‘You’ answer me this, who do you think ‘they’ are?

"The…’them’ everyone ‘but’ us."

And right now I’m here and you’re here, so why do ‘they’ matter?

"Hmm…you’re good at this".

I did write the Ten Commandments. I know they were kinda’ cryptic and shit, but seriously those dumb asses gave me one hell of a run.

“For the record, why’d you tell old Mo’ to take his shoes off?”

Huh?

“Well I mean the guy finally got the chance to talk to you, and you know, have it be all ‘legit’ and shit, go down in the books and all…and the first thing you say is “ Take your shoes off”?!

Well they were dirty.

“Come on!”

Ok fine, I didn’t want him to get all cocky, cause I agreed to the meet. So I was just getting him in the right frame of mind.

“As in, scared as hell?”

No! As in… respectful.

‘Oh! I’m losing major points on that one aren’t I?’

Not really, times have changed, I pretty much need to talk rap for kids in these days. Plus, you’re schizophrenic.

“Oh, does that get me off the hook?”

No.

‘Hmm. Ok, do you really love us?”

You’re asking?

“Well yeah, now don’t get mad, ‘cause I’ve heard you have one hell of a temper and…oops”

No worries my temper is pretty much how Hell came about.

“Sheesh! But anyway, I mean, sometimes the crap just gets too bad”

Yeah. And that’s pretty much when you bother to talk.

‘Hmmm I guess. But isn’t that depressing, having to put us through ….
Damn! I can’t come up with anything else!

Say it …HELL…

“…Ok! Having to put us through hell, just so we talk to you”

Yeah well, I guess that answers your question.

“Oh.”
“Yeah it does”

Happy?

“I guess.”

You guess?!

“No, I Am happy, it was just a big question.”

“You know what God, you’re pretty cool.”

No shit!

“I think this could work.”

Well good, cause I’m off. You guys still run on a clock.

“You know this was a pretty good date. Sure you didn’t buy me a Coke, but still not too shabby. You’re pretty hot in a cool sort of way”

Mmhmm.
You need to lose weight.

The Husk

One day to bring one colossal moment. A moment when you are eclipsed for a mere second into a parallel frame of focus, forced irrevocably to recognize the apathy of the other. Judgment Day in all its inordinate ‘lack’ of splendor.

You roll down your car window to passively stare at a wafer-thin husk of ‘once’ mortal proportions, flailing on the baking asphalt. Limbless, listless, restless; screaming and shrieking desperately trying to dodge between the dual stream of trapping traffic. Fruitlessly striving to preserve a life which both he and you are fully aware, is probably better off lost.

Just once lucid glance when your eyes, conveniently masked in black plastic and glitter panache, collide with his. The eighty-something, bag of bones, trying to maneuver his very existence with the rhythmic rotating of his palms. Shaking and shivering like a rabid dog in the middle of a cross-section current. Just the shocking paralysis of realization. The sheer enormity of parallels.

‘You’ who rolled down your window to cool off and ‘he’ who dances on the baked tarp to survive. Still you continue to placidly stare at the beggar, so plagued with his perils that he forgot to beg. Forgot to cook up a story, forgot to send you a wish of happiness and a good future, because he was too busy trying to work on juggling his own.

For once the guilt ‘does’ get the better of you, it crashes into your being, so fervently that you are forced to act. This is ‘your’ beggar, the one who is meant to telepathically channel some lost part of your humanity, even if it’s only for a passing second. And so you heed the call, you help the Husk.
Or so you repeatedly tell yourself, to crop conscience. You stop the car and help him to the shade, dish out whatever it is you consider an exorbitant amount for the likes of him and pat yourself on the back for being human. All the while the Husk cringes away from you, blaming you with his innate ‘being’ for being you. He shirks and shrinks from your touch, believing you to be just another jackal…only there to rip out yet another one of his rotting limbs.

You drive away, you drive on. Crying and placating yourself for being ‘genuine’. Doing all you could. For this guilt too shall pass.
It cannot be helped.
You go home, take an aspirin so you ‘don’t feel’ the headache, you take a shower so you ‘don’t feel’ the dirt, you take a nap so you ‘don’t feel’ depressed, you write an article so you ‘don’t feel’ shallow, you order Mc Donald’s so you ‘don’t feel’ hungry, you drink Coke so you ‘don’t feel’ thirsty, you switch on the AC (full blast) so you ‘don’t feel’ hot.
You do all you can, so you ‘don’t’ feel.
Because feeling means admitting you CAN.

Then you force yourself to smile sitting at your desk contemplating, praying, pretending to be ‘one’ with God in the moment. You look at the tack board on your desk, and you read.
“Life is a limousine. There’s a front seat and a backseat. And a window in between”.

A Window.
No Door.

rabid panic sodium sulphate ode to ebb moroseness:
Stalker germs from Candyland camp have pissed off Tongue Toffee tramps and now venture into the wooly mammoth cave of mooing mundanedum. Noah's avalanch of listrine lamentations is flooding over Moses on a motorcycle and old Abe dribbling a slamdunk in molar madness has accidently clobberred Santa claus' in a kibble of kung fu fighting. As rub a dub dub, glub, clamours in your ears and baa baa black sheep ba's in your rears (hah), many a tiny germosopes are dancing the hula to jambalayo!

Obsidian Flavours

Of the many flavours we are sent to savour, which can we honestly claim, takes precedence over love? As the shackled nuances and obsidian reprieve of words throws a plethora of diversions our way it is, so much easier to act disinterested rather than accept loneliness.
So we all choose to believe the delusion over the illusion.A monotonous list of ‘wants’ to combat the ache yet unaccounted for; I want freedom, I want independence (because we had to think of another alternative for freedom to make the list seem longer), I want family, I want success, I want to impress, I want fame and lets not forget (as if we could) I want beauty.


A perennial list of squabbles, mixed faith and misinterpreted impressions. But how does one deny that what we truly seek ‘is’ the illusion? That despite and in spite of our multiplex modern palette, we want to be rescued. We long for the illusion to beget all the ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’. The illusion of singing in the rain, Hollywood kisses and soul mate serendipity The illusion of one Kodak click crystallised in polaroid and for one silver screen fantasy to immortalise in 35mm. The ephemeral mirage of rainbow skies and stardust eyes.

And even though we insist ‘love’ is overrated and overused, it remains without question the one illusion that can never do justice unto itself.

The rebel needs it.
The sage needs it
The whore needs it
The prodigy needs it
The princess needs it
The dumb blonde needs it
The crone needs it
The punk needs it
The murderer needs it

And the murdered need it

Silly Saga

Gargantum stalking marshmallows have annoyed dancing camels to come together in a funky desert of primrose pringles, washing away the lime soapy water with waves of mouthwash freshness that the Dishwasher Gods have bestowed upon the earth!
And yet the lost prophecy of the upside-down custard crusader and tangerine troubadour tells of the day when the fruity-smelling hair will come bouncing along - strawberries will cringe, apples smile and cocounuts clammer. The Lord of the Fertilizer shall bequeath the earth with rich bounty bars and mnm rain, and men will cheer and smoke and drink their own CDs.

Beentherella

One minute more to 'pumpkin time' dear Beentherella
A panic mad dash to the alter of "I do"
A recurring sad rash to forever falter you

Graceful tales often retold to entice both mice and men:
A crimson mixture of transient Now
A jaded fixture of persnickety Then

Just another glacial glance
at a glass slipper trying to tackle a bolstrap boot
Just one last passing dance till
Prince Alarming altercates his alternate Route.

The Herd

'tis a fine fine sunshine day when we are coerced into the throws of all things we wish we were able to do, by those able to do them. Moreover, there is an odd sort of solace to be found in the exposure gained by absolute parallels in people, who one would never meet voluntarily. However circumstances force paths to cross and 'lo and behold' an accquaintance of questionable repute now ranks in your otherwise spotless charge sheet.

You are 'officially' interesting, because you can now rub shoulders with 'the popular'. So you rub the shoulders, walk the walk, talk the talk and act the act. Then you step back, stop and realise THAT is what makes you "UN-interesting", you are officially part of the herd, no doubt a popular herd. More of the pedigreed, pampered posse' than the working class dregs, but a herd never the less. You can now BAAAAAA! to your hearts content.

The solitary lion in you is going, going...gone.

Bite me!

I find it particularly vexing, how the few eventful, fun moments i have in a year turn into absolute nightmares the moment i get home. The facts are i have a curfew, jes jes treagedy of tragedies, but so what i respect the 10 o' clock home curfew, almost always. Its the 'almosts' that kill you, even if there are special circumstances involved. The perpetual downhill of living with grandparents who believe that only brothels and homes of ill repute are open after 10 pm.

And there ARE special circumstances, circumstances where you, who is a perpetual recluse is cornered by pop stars who are willing to be interviewed for your exclusive, a boss who is calling repeatedly asking if you got your 'scoop' and security guards who have locked the bloody auditorium so you cant get out. So you call and say " will HAVE to be late, PUHLEESE dont go ballistic". But nope nope nope, ballistic it is.
Sigh! so my one social homecoming is officially only a 'bloody come home coming'. UGH!

Isn't it weird how compliments make you want to bite people when youre in a crap beyond crappy mood.
"You look so nice today".
Bite me.
" Hey that was a good piece on the Freoz Khan thing!"
Bite me.
"Nice Shirt!"
Bite me.

'Im so hungry, im cranky!'
hmmm...i'll bite.

Gene Jenie

I now notice, how subtle the influence of genes is, how much weight they truly weild. No matter how much I try to hide from it, it haunts and plagues me. The tinesiest splinters of you, that I still carry. I often stop to ask myself why it embarasses me so much, all shreds of you in my person, but it does and so I do what I always do, I hide from myself. In a book, in a movie, in music...all back benches that you think are beneath me.

I downloaded a classic blues and gospel playlist yesterday put it on random play in the background and started cleaning, to clear my head. On comes Hank Williams with 'Jambalayo' and I stop, mid-dusting, sit down and burst into tears for the longest I have done in four years.
To think about it, I think it was a long time coming, my admission that I miss you, dad. That I need to cry, and not always smile inanely.
The irony is, its a funny song, silly really. But its the only thing that I have ever seen 'you' smile with - silly songs, country gospel, camping and horse riding were the only grey hues to your 'otherwise' black. It hurts more somehow to admit that you are human, and that you have good in you, that I could not bring out more. Perhaps if I HAD stuck it out, I could have. But everyone tells me that 'people dont change' and I have begun to believe them.

I dont know what has come over me, today I find myself walking through me. Passing through the hours, without any sense of consciousness or consienciousness. I feel as if 4 years of making a new 'me', considered worthwile by most, is collapsing. I feel shades and hues overlapping, and I see in myself the same maria of 4 years ago. I wore black today.
I never wear black.

Justice League:
Unidentified rebels walk in kind
minding their actions,
speaking their mind

Forever resolving to not play 'the game'
playing it nevertheless
only changing the name

Sad truths to be told...by the beautious and bold
Of the faces once young that never grew old.

A fine romance of words this is

Since I find myself the designated driver and back bench to formally archive this monumental event, here goes.
A Desi Writers' meet, my first has made two things, among many, many others... 'much' clear. The first is that as opposed to the usual; here we know the people behind the faces. It is the faces that are new. I guess I've seldom found myself more nervous, than meeting people who actually knew how ...(hmm how to say this politely, so as not to offend my conscience) 'odd' i was capable of being. The character had already been put to canvas, and you had seen it. 'Twas scary, but eerily satisfying, to not have to act proper (trust me i CAN do that, when required).

And second, I truly have realised the power of words. Even if they are sheer 'brain farts', because they open doors to people easier on pixel than in person. To carry off on what Mrs Cluck, said to the 'he who we shall not name' I can see why this is a cyber family, in much more concrete terms than most live ones.Everything we feel, and think comes out on this forum. The truly personal, the perverse, the primeval and the profound.

In many ways this community is a book being written onto itself, we are the characters and our posts are the dialogue. Think about it, if we do take up thunder thief's quest and archive all the pieces here by author, it shows a stream of thought and a growth as writers, that couldnt really have materialised otherwise. I guarentee it would be the best book most of us have read, purely because both the crap and the crux are honest.

Conscience Calling

Often the glass shards of my mind, contrive to form kaleidoscopes that blind me.
“No you simply scamper off shit scared in the opposite direction”

I wander aimlessly through memories that are not mine, merely an abstract collage of wishin’ and hopin’ hopefuls. Sing-along-song nonsense that I contrive to make real, by voicing the voices complete with accents and baritones of quasi-characters that I myself have put to canvas.

“Don’t bloody romanticise your perverse fears, don’t make your life out to be a crusade which it isn’t. Life sucks, deal with it”

I play god in a world that lingers in limbo, sometimes real, somewhere fragmented. Often the characters are tangible, people who I interpret in my mind to my taste and converse with on my terms. More often they are not, they are faceless captions waiting for me to complete and edit.

“It isn’t the headline, it’s the bottom line stupid girl”.

All friends, I wish I were friendlier with. All demons I wish I was still scared of. Only so that some manner of emotion could be extorted from my blank, barren existence by another human being, and yet I cannot. They remain others, and I remain practically oblivious to their existence.

“You are so bloody selfish. More than that you are self-involved beyond belief! ‘Real conversations’ scare you, ‘real’ people intimidate you, ‘real’ life choices deflect you. In short anything ‘real’ makes you run. Everyone likes to think they are more mysterious then they are, You are not. Get over it”

My loneliness is a brand unto itself. An overcharged ache, for friends who I can never for the life of me commit to. Foils I can use, when I am tired of seeing my own face and battered reflection, but never souls that I can side with. People who are just that… ‘people’. Why is it that there are no ‘persons’ in my life? Why is it that I find it so colossally hard to commit to another human being, for anything more than a transitory bypass on my ride home, to a book, a movie and an ice cream?

“And whose fault is that? ‘People’ take work sweetie. ‘People’ take preference. ‘People’ take commitment. In short, you’re just too fucking chicken to work on yourself. Too bloody mind-mighty to relocate the ivory tower and move down the ladder to dullsville.”

Am I that scared of emotion, scared enough to invent rather than invert. Are alien thoughts and ideas so threatening to my fragile capacities? Why is it that my entire existence is merely a vendetta to prove some worth, in my being? To constantly counteract that I am not stupid, that I am not ugly, that I am not worth being abandoned and designated to far-off corners, by all.

“Oh boohoo, isn’t my life just ‘so’ tough? Aren’t I just doomed to misery, because of my past? Aren’t I just the oh-so misunderstood waif perpetually lingering in the dark?”

But then again I ‘am’ left. I am in my corner, having already ridden my circuitous path till Kingdom come. Loneliness is not empty, it is safe, it is mine. I finally am King of my capricious castle. Having decorated it with all human emotion sans humanity. I have placed my life in the hands of all things intangible, all the untouchables that touch me.

“ Well, well, well… all hail the conquering spinster”

And then I ask: Why do I pine, why do I perish, why do I placate myself.
Is this not the smart choice?

“ No sweetheart, if you still have to ask….its the only choice”.

'Half'

Four years and everyday I wonder, are you safe?
Are you happy, are you living.

What am I to you now, the runaway, the bitch, the other, the ‘half-sister’. I think I fear the latter the most. “Half” as if somehow that made me love you at a demarked store rate.
Four years… you have both played the circle game from four to eight and five to nine…every day I look at your pictures and talk to your voices in my head, I answer the endless stream of questions I know you both no longer ask, I complete the mid-sentence thoughts I know you no longer think, I run wild with you. And then I stop short to realize you no longer run.

Does she oil your hair every Sunday? Does she let you watch TV till nine? Does she make French fries on week days? Does she do the voices in The Little Mermaid? Does she do the Hokey Pokey to Little Richard? Does she force you to read stories and tell them? Does she answer all the questions you ask, and all the ones you don’t? Does she tuck you in bed every night? Does she take pictures while you sleep? Does she sing 50’s be-bop?

Why am I so jealous of her, she is your mother after all? We both abandoned you, her first, me second. But I am, I am green inside out, to think that you aren’t dreaming any longer. To think that you no longer wear your hair long in pigtails, to think that you no longer wear pretty pinks and silly yellows. I am black thinking you no longer laugh as much, or break into song for no reason. I am beyond jaded to think that you are no longer children, that she constantly screams at you to grow up.

And then I think ‘who am I’? I am only the sister, who lived alongside you, who left and who you will forget in another four years. I can live with that, because I remember. I saw a picture of you both today, standing beneath the porch, in front of the blue Benz, waiting to go to school.
Neither of you are smiling.

This I can’t live with.

Finally I comprehend the sheer need for the "daddy's Benz driving, flashy cell toting, 'lets go to zouk' every day boyfriend". (I know... how thick of me to not have gotten it before), but in my defence, I hadn't seen them before.
Their absolute, ravishing leather soles and the feeling of corporeal bliss when I slip my fish feet in their spongy depths. Then I saw the 3000 rs price tag... shit fuck, fuckity shit shit fuck shit! Life is 'just' not fair, im a somewhat much odd, by all grandparent standards 'good girl', who cant afford to dish out 3000rs for a Clarks' pair of loafers.
THIS IS WHY you have boyfriends!!! My mother is finally making sense. The world is officially coming to an end, save yourselves, those of you who can.
Meanwhile I shall spend my last moments standing miserably infront of a window, gazing longingly at my unrequited, twin passion.

Shadows on my walls

I keep hearing your concerns for my happiness
Always walking
Always talking of my idleness
Sad returns to pester in me, a sense of consciousness

Don’t jump the gun
I’m having fun
Swimming in my recklessness

Counting shadows on my wall
Doesn’t bother me at all
Sitting on a beanbag made from carbon capers
Watching lost musicals and re-run trailers

Playing solitaire with a deck of 51
Writing 'loop-da-loop' scrawls sum in some
Yesterday I danced the tango with Mr much and Dr drunk
Loads of flavour, loads of laughter… loads of boastful spunk

Im doing fine
Just minding mine
No ‘where or care’ for two
So don’t you yell and don’t you bell…
That I’ve got nothing to do

The 'Dream Maker'

Dear shadow, sitting in your lonely skin- how do you bear your corner so well?
Always the 'one' unfinished. Always an incomplete canvas of halves and quarters.
How far are you from me, from us all? Your every glance, your every smile, your every sigh- all half-opened gateways, half-shut barricades locking you in and us out. All passageways of infinite flavour and tangible emptiness. You are a parallel of possibility to us all.
How do you dream Child?

Oblivious to the world around you, pervious only to your own. Help me, I pray only for a nature like yours. The 'Wizard of Is', Dr. Junk dancing in a circle of pink Ballerinas, Moses on a motorcycle. Tell me, what do you dream, Dream Maker?

As we all celebrate our mediocrity, paying in blood for all things free. Hunting ravenously for a bargain to buy back our brains. How do you sit so calm, sailing on your decade of dreams? Fighting the battering bullets with butterflies.

Teach me! I am floundering, failing, flailing... in this sea of nameless faces and faceless places. Echoing silently in this allegro of laughter and tears. Misting over in this kaleidoscope of blacks and whites. Forever going 'round and round' on the merry-go-round, when I know I must fall. We all fall down. Dont wake me up in the morning, because I am the girl they find impossible to forget and infernally hard to remember.

'All' sings to you. 'All' dances with you.
So, tell me child...
How do you dream?

I find it, unnervingly odd, how the opinions of random obsevers leave lasting impressions on me. Why is it that i take both criticism and praise with a pinch of salt? Forever ready to rearrange whatever it is in my picture-imperfect self to conform with the general consensus.
And at the same time i actively harbour the notion that i am a non-conformist, atleast in spirit...but what is the point, if that confidence is so transient and flighty?
Why is it that the desire to stand out and and fade in, vy for equal rights in my oh-so mixed up self, 24/7.
Be or not to be,
see or not to see.
sweet by and by
not one glance for free.

Am battling 'but-much' with my multiple identities these days. My iodized saccharine self when faced with family, my competent yet comical charade when faced with my "FOUR" yes count them... 4 separate bosses, my sarcastic scab sultriness online and my morbid, moody, quintessence in the mirror.

Juggling my many selves, was never hard, infact it was natural.
What has changed? I refuse to admit that 'growing up' requires a relinquishing of 'selves'.
I had been so precariously groomed to believe it depended on them.

He-man the Barbie

A weird thought...
(Ok a weirder thought than usual)

A random debate about men and women, yes the umpteenth attempt at understanding the 'oh-so' elusive dynamic, has led me to believe that if little boys were encouraged to play with barbie's and little girls were encouraged to play with X-men and Transformers, perhaps half of the worlds differences could be taken care of, and we could FINALLY make way for new problems, in our ever-elusive, ingenious manner.

Think about it, on some underlying level is it not 'fundamentally' distrubing that little boys grow up playing with tiny men and little girls with pretty women?! Does it not 'fundamentally' screw us up somewhere 'up' there? Thereby laying the groundwork for years of damage that 'should' be inflicted by actual people. Seriously these little plastic contraptions are stealing our thunder, vying for equal "im gonna f**** you up rights", which are the singular driving motivation to becoming a parent.
Moreover does it not encourage men to be even more machismo...if possible, and girls to be flambouyantly girly-girl, ergo widening the already existing chasm.

Were roles to be reversed...maybe the girly-girlness in a little girl could be balanced by He-man machismo, and the Batman broodishness of little boys could be softened by Care Bear stares... leading to a tidy blend of inherent genetic make-up and instilled counter agents.
hmmm..hum dum dee dum doo dum dee dum.

Hmm can I picture mini-me with my barretted pigtails, running around with a BB gun, while my cousins run around with dolly's?!
.......
.......
No.

(scratch it!)