Terror beyond Halloween!

Does anyone else finds this coincidence funny or am I the only one with a warped sense of humor?

                                          (Courtesy: Kalsoom Lakhani’s tag links on her blog)

An ode to the Doodle-Master!

Mehreen A. Kasana is an enchanting enigma, who has built a cult doodle-obsessed following on her blog and is now the epicenter of quite a few troll’s jealousy.

She often conducts doodle-prized competitions on Twitter @mehreenkasana to increase her followers, bribe policemen with lusty doodles and charms her lesbian professors with big bossomed doodlettes to get out of midterms.

Doodle-making is hard work, I tell you! So don't underrate her 'naik niyyat' of balancing this country on a doodle-happy equilibrium, even with a Zardari residing in it.

Reading twitters of everyone begging her of a doodle-this or a doodle-that, I thought, I'd be generous and bestow her with a doodle of her own!

So, here comes the greatest piece of art since Michelangelo's Lisa .....

P.S. I know it's nothing compared to Kasana's doodles, but as I said, doodle-making is hard work and I found out that I certainly don't have much patience for it!

Minesweeper

Life is like a game of Minesweeper. There are boxes where you know there is a bomb and you can calculate your steps and move safely around it, but at some points, there is no choice except to take the risk and gamble your whole game and statistics on that one click.

At certain reckless moments, when you just click around randomly, you do make blunders and lose games; those losses could have been avoided had you practiced restraint and care. It sometimes leads to a twinge of regret too.

Victory is always sweet, even if you didn’t break the time record.

But one thing to note is that whether you win or lose the game, you always have to start anew to carry on. It is a clean slate after every ending; the winnings of one game do not carry forward to compensate for the losses of another. You can either stop after that game and shut down the laptop, or you can play more games and better your overall statistics. The choice is all yours!

The Wait

Tick of the clock,

Sweating of the cold water bottle on the table.

The empty chair

The din of traffic outside

Sparrows chirping on the trees

My attempts at catching the stray fly

The growl of an empty stomach

Another wrinkle noticed beneath my left eye

An unread book

The echo of my sighs

The unpossessed remote control

The unoccupied bed

The rhythm of my heartbeats

 

Dampness

DAMPNESS

Freshly shampoo-ed hair

Green walls of the dungeon

Tropical forests of the Amazon

Just applied nailpolish

The start of my periods

Breaking of the waters

The morning dew

His breath on my face

The kiss

The cocoon of our bodies

The used towel

And the sweaty shirt

Crickets muttering and the frogs croaking

Yellow moon worshipped by the moths

Tear stained cheeks

Hands before an interview

Sticky fingers on a muggy day

Post rain aura in the monsoons

The crotch at the end of an xxx clip

(17^th May- 06 --- 11:23 pm)

Emotional slavery

The three tools that are the basis of human survival in the social enigma of Planet Earth are: freedom of choice, freedom of expression and freedom of movement.

Applying that to the women of Pakistan, you would be amazed that that specie still survives despite it being deprived of all three:

For instance, women are not given the choice of not wanting to cook or be a house maker. They are judged by the roundness of their rotis, rather than the soundness of their degrees. They are told to study a certain subjects because that will ultimately lead to respectable professions, which are not chosen by their earning value but by their ability to attract acceptable proposals for marriage. They have to get married at a certain age, have a baby before the first wedding anniversary and to keep deliberating until a male heir is produced.

A girl is often told off by her elders for being too loud or for dressing in any way that is not acceptable by the social norms. A tomboy-ish attitude is the bane of mothers. Girls are not allowed to express about what they want in their spouses. They are told to accept whatever is given to them, and to say yes to whatever their husbands tell them. Major household decisions, and at times, even the minor ones are not allowed to be taken by women, who are repeatedly told how dumb they are.

Lack of development in adequate public transport systems and harassment in public dealing due to high levels of illiteracy are some of the factors which add to the mental slavery of the women of our country.

They need to ask permission for stepping out of the house, from their parents, husband or the in-laws, till the last day of their existence in the country.  These authorities also have to approve the type and degree of clothing worn during the time spent outside the confines of their homes. In 95% of the cases, women are not allowed to venture out on their own, lest they be termed an awaragard. They need to be escorted by a male member, on in extreme cases, a trustworthy (read: married and older in relative age) woman or two.

Places like a car repair shop, a plumber’s workshop or a hardware shop is considered off limits for the fairer sex. They have to beg the male counterparts in their lives if anything is needed in that department.

This inhumane level of dependency of a woman, on the moods of a typical Pakistani man leads to high levels of non-productivity by a major chunk of the population. Not only do women find themselves invalid, it adds burden on the male section of the society who has to be available for their women and their homes at all times. With a whole lot of unskilled labor and brain drainage due to degrees only for dhang ka rishta, no wonder that the International Mental Health Day celebrated on 10^th October 2010 emphasized upon the rising ratio of mental disorders in Pakistani women, denial and lack of treatment of which is another case study in itself.

Unanswered questions

Q1) Why does women in this part of the world, need to prove their innocence constantly during their life?

Q2) What happens when a female starts to question chauvinistic social norms?

Q3) Can you be confused about the notion of confusion?

Q4) What does it feels like to a child to be trapped in an obese, ugly woman’s womb?

Q5) How many cans can a can-canner can?

Q6) Does open-media policy and the independent power of press leads to political instability?

Q7) The limits a man can go to, in order to make sure the woman is completely dependent upon him.

 

Boredom!

Tick tock,

Went the keyboard.

I was bored,

To the core.

Nobody online,

Even at nine.

Logged in at orkut,

Took a bite of Tuc,

Just two new scraps,

And that too, from the lover of rap.

The Birth!

The pains;

Mutterings of the doctor;

Wetness.

The catching of my breath,

The express train.

The big push;

I shat a football.

My baby had arrived!

Death!

*Tring Tring*

*Tring Tring*

*Tring Tring*

I picked up the phone,

And said: “Hello?”

I was told,

He had died!

Corny Guilt!

So when I failed my CFA Level 1 exams, on top of an abysmal academic year, which was a new experience for me, I didn't have the guts to admit my failures to my mom over long-distance telephone. Thus, I lied to everyone and said I've passed. Me being super-emotional (still am) and righteous (not anymore), felt extremely guilty and came up with this extremely corny urdu poem on 8th February 2009:

Khuhsiyon ki chah may jhoot ka jaal bichaya tha

Uss jhoot ko sach bananay may aik jhoot aur bataya tha

Tanhai kay unn pallon may aik aansu aur bahaya tha

Phir khud hi apni aasteen se, chehray se ussay hataya tha

Gunahon ki daldal may paiyr kuch aur dhansaya tha

Shaitaan kay perokaaron may naam apna kerwaya tha

Aagay qadam barhatay thay tu peechay hotay jatay thay

Nakaami kay aisay mor per aansu bhi kho jatay thay

Rangeen logon kay railay may tanhai ne saalum nigla tha

Zubaan tu saaf hui, per munafqat ka jhamela tha

Aaj jo qalam pakra, lafzon ne bair baandh lia

Jaisay hi dil azaad hua, khawahishon ne munh mor lia

Kuch paanay ki raah may kuch chahnay say bi haath dhoya tha

Jaisay khizaan kay nangay darakhto ka meri khirki per saaya tha

Jahan waqt aik qeemti sarmaya tha

Pura saal aik kursi pe jhooltay ganwaya tha

Ab khuda se yehi hai guzarish

Aqal, hidayat, seedha rasata, taufeeq ki ho baarish.

P.S. Kindly do not judge me on this. I'm not the same person anymore!

P.S.S. Everyone still thinks I cleared my CFA Level 1 and are baffled at why I'm not studying further.

Quotations!

Another bundle of quotations that I found scribbled here and there in my papers. They might have meant something at that time. For now, they are just old memories and meaningless words. Nonetheless, here they are:

Deeper natures never forget themselves and never become something other than they were ~ Kierkegaard

Music should strike fire from the heart of man, and bring tears from the eyes of a woman ~ Ludwig Van Beethoven. 

If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for passionate sense of potential – for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints; possibility never ~ Kierkegaard

Random phrase, from M's days!

(Hey, my title rhymes! :D)

People usually get songs stuck in their head; back in the days, random phrases just coined themselves in my grey matter and wouldn't go away for weeks. 

A similar phrase that came to me one day in Musharraf's enlightened moderation era and pinged me so much that I had to scribble it down at the back of my notebook:

"A socialist spray paint message on the walls of capitalism."

Tassalli to self!

The other day, I was going through old documents and found in them, tucked neatly, a scrap of paper with the following note written on it:

23^rd July 2006, 3:30 pm approximately,

J’s flight to London.

Underneath it, a wistful me consoling myself: ‘I would never fly out of Lahore in the middle of monsoons!’

A year of struggle, and I was following him to another continent. Spent two years and then followed each other back to where we started from.

Aptly put, by Amrita Pritam

Zindagi, faqt aadaton ki warzish!

 

Kis ko fursat keh mujh say behas karay.

Aur saabit karay kay mera wajood,

Zindagi key liye zaroori hai.

                 *sigh*

Cravings!

        This is how you twist your MP4 player's wire when you are having a craving for........


                                                                                                                                                              

                                            


                                                .......some Danish cookies!  *sighs

Caterpillar cold!

                                                              ~ :D ~