He’s back!!

“Saaj, where did you put my music system’s cord?”

“Get me something to eat…”

“Aaarrrrggghhhh! My desk is a mess!”

“Oooohhh! Brownies!”

“These are definitely not mine.”

“I’m hungry!”

“Where are the notes that I had left in a stack by my desk?”

“Anything to eat in this place?”

“Chchch! This is not the way my cupboard is supposed to be arranged!”

*SIGH*

The brat is back from South Africa… Can’t believe had been actually missing him!!

Hallow’s Eve Comes Early

So, there are days even in my sane little world

When the darkness beckons and shadows hold more substance than the light of day

When the moon gleams crimson and thirsts for new blood

Vengeance turns the air chilly

And the night breathes and festers with its scent

Fingers clutch at the soul

Wispy and feather like yet their cold callousness tangible

Their cruelty true

Sounds of laughter and memories ring in air so acrid and so stale

That it turns them to dust

The veil shivers, trembles; its threadbare countenance nary enough to conceal what she hides

The demons, the nightmares close enough

Sensing the new world beyond that will be theirs for that moment in time

Temptation whispering over nerves already taut, heightening the awareness

Each moment of time till the instant the shroud will give way

An instant when all will be blood

All will be dark

All will be death

And yet amid all the shades exists a single redemption

For that one moment when all worlds are one

An age exists for those who crossed to return

To breathe once more as they had in the world left behind

For that instant

Death will live

-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-

My mood: Okay I’m definitely weird today…

Listening to: Even in Death – Evanescence

Give me your reason to believe that you’re gone
I see your shadow so I know they’re all wrong
Moonlight on the soft brown earth
It leads me to where you lay
They took you away from me but now I’m taking you home

I will stay forever here with you
My love
The softly spoken words you gave me
Even in death our love goes on

Some say I’m crazy for my love, Oh my love
But no bonds can hold me from your side, Oh my love
They don’t know you can’t leave me
They don’t hear you singing to me

I will stay forever here with you
My love
The softly spoken words you gave me
Even in death our love goes on
And I can’t love you, anymore than I do

I will stay forever here with you
My love
The softly spoken words you gave me
Even in death our love goes on
And I can’t love you, anymore than I do

I’ll die but real love is forever

Big P.S. This be 104th post on my blog… I can’t believe I missed the 100 count! Actually can’t believe I reached it either!

Some Givens

Why is it that regardless of the occasion, or the incongruity of a remark, one or the other of the parade of people wandering into our house at Eid and such, usually one of my esteemed relatives will deem it fit to pass their oh so wise and oh so profound bits of judgement on happenings in my life?

Happenings that are not altogether pleasant and happenings that I hope to have buried somewhere in the deep, dark pit of my mind, at least enough to ignore and pretend I’m alright and I’m past it and yet knowingly they probe and say just one thing that makes all those nightmares live and breathe for me. More upsettingly, it brings them to life for my mama and she gets upset.

This in one of the primary reasons I have come to hate social occasions of any kind that involve my family getting together. Despite the fact, that they had fodder enough from Peshawar they needed to take a bite out of me and chew me down like cud and that if I think about it is a disgusting analogy.

Nonetheless, a note to a knight in shining armor, am pissed and liable to blow up hence my absence and inaccessibility. You be knowing who you be are. Just need to refocus a little. These holidays always leave me in a slight skewed position.

For the moment, am rushing. Have been eaten out of home and hearth (nearly) and need to drive mama to the market to restock. That reminds me, am stalely out of shampoo and my stock of scrubs and polishes is low. I think I have some eidee to splurge though… but books are so much more important than shampoo and such!

But wait, Mama’s b’day’s tomorrow, and although the dutiful daughter has already given her a present, there has to be something for the day itself, but what? Except that I have 2 friends whose birthdays are tomorrow as well…

Blogword of The Day: Miracle

I like to walk alone on country paths, rice plants and wild grasses on both sides, putting each foot down on the earth in mindfulness, knowing that I walk on the wondrous earth. In such moments, existence is a miraculous and mysterious reality. People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child–our own two eyes.

All is a miracle….

** The Miracle of Mindfulness, by Thich Nhat Hanh **

A couple of P.S or maybe more…

Number 1:

Why is it that the one eid I can’t, I have this unbearable yearning to wear bangles that go jingle jangle on my wrist?

Number 2:

Why am I feeling the insane urge to follow the promptings of my insane little head to bake brownies at this hour?

*sigh*

I need the chaos, the no time to think, feel spin of my routine back where I can truly appreciate the bliss of crashing unawares on my bed for slumber!!! Soon… please God!!

Days off are so unwanted specially when you get pegged with household chores guaranteed to make you go round and round on your heels…

*Bah, Humbug and all that…*

Yes, my childish moment of the previous post is over, gone, vamoosed… hawa ho gaya… aired, vented, otherwise long gone, used, abused and released and been overtaken by an absurder childishness to stick my tongue out at the notion…

Sue me!!

Eid Ayee! Eid Ayee! :)

And yes, in a complete turn around from my previous post, I am feeling just childish enough for just long enough to wish all of you a very happy eid! May your day be filled with sweet meats and sheerkhurma, hugs and kisses and lots of eidee and for those who get the spirit of it, the true happiness a Muslim deserves for celebrating a ‘khair’ wala end for Ramadan Kareem!

May the Almighty bless all your days and all your nights and all the times in between with peace and happiness! Ameen!

What be Mine Name????

I don’t know whether to say I’m weird, suffer from multiple personality disorder; am an accomplished actor or just a hypocrite…

How can I believe in so many things, act in so many ways that just seem to go against each other? I have an alter-ego; I guess everyone does but I don’t think those alter-egos have alter egos. Another aspect of one-self is how most dictionaries define alter egos. For me it is that personality which exists within each of us, perhaps all those reactions and witty euphuisms and kick ass answers that we can never recall or express in time. So an alter ego of an alter ego should be the me that is always stunned into silence but there exists another whose answers are sharper, whose reactions are faster and seriously hardcore compared to alter ego number 1.

I think I’m ill. People are not usually so difficult to peg down, are they? At least aspects of their personality could be defined enough to define them but I don’t really think my metamorphosis or would it be evolution, has come full circle just yet…

Eid is here in a roundabout way, again and as always I find myself surrounded by musings of me contemplating where that simplistic joy of waiting for eid to come around has gone. I have to admit I never was much of an Eid person anyway. The fancy, gota and kinari suits, the bangles, the mehndi was too much for me and as long as my mama could get away with squeezing me into an assortment of such confection she did, and then I learned the word no and my mama learned that her dear little princess is stubborn enough to stay in her room, or the store, preferring to remain shut in the bathroom rather than parading around in fancy, frilly, girly stuff. The point being I got my way and eid clothes were relegated to the category of rough, tough clothes that could take the abuse that they would be subjected to in return for the absolute given of the fist fight that I would get into with my cousin … This of course in the ultimate umbrage of relatives landing at our place for tea, a tradition that is followed today, with the extensions adding on in the form of married cousins and their respective spouses and kids as well. Our sane, quiet, organized house becomes bedlam. (We’re a loud lot!!)

But I so don’t enjoy it. For one thing, I am relegated to the kitchen a day before eid and by the time I get through with washing the dishes at the end of the day, my ingrown nails have ingrown nails and I’m tired enough to drop dead. Even while everyone is there, I am detached in my capacity as the resident baby sitter and watching as if from afar, mocking every smile, every gesture, and every word that is expressed. I stand there, almost in disdain watching an image of me playing with my assorted nephews and nieces, fielding off comments by cousins who persist in reminding me how they’ve seen me in diapers, or of some other childhood blooper that I committed (And I have the dubious distinction of being the World Record Holder in our family in the blooper category) that has been repeated by one of their own, and has been blamed solely and wholly on my head.

I would so much prefer having the day to parade around in my day old sweats without worrying about where my hair is going or when somebody may or may not end up at our place with their families in tow. The ultimate limit lies in that I don’t even wish to go visit my friends or have them visit me. That in itself is simple enough since I head to Peshawar but since we come back to Islamabad on the second day which usually is the first day of eid everywhere else in Pakistan, there is no day off for me and so I end up dodging calls all day and making excuses about how I can’t come over or how I’m too inundated with guests to give them time if they come visit. The ultimate Moi McScrooge!

I head back to Islamabad today from Peshawar. Mamoon’s passing and the circumstances after do not affect the status of the tea party to be held at our place consequently. On the contrary, our living room will be a chatter box paradise with discussions on the who’s and what’s and how’s and when’s of what has been happening over the past 10 days or so in Peshawar itself, and things will be hashed, and rehashed by all those present and accounted for regaling eye witness accounts guaranteed to put one to sleep or till I get physically ill.

As the Garfield would say, AAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!

Messy, Messy, Messy!!!

Blogthought No. 3: Because, somehow, it all clicks…

Sitting with a blank word file staring me in the face,
Screaming upon my failure to express that which bubbles within
Piles upon stacks of papers and reports clutter every available surface
Resembling a dusty, old government office;
Or the shrine of an attic in grandfather’s home
Yakhdaans, sandooqs too mystical to be labeled trunks
Untouched for an age gathering cobwebs to add to the tales they hold within…
Like an Arabian tale;
Or the present state of my mind! Take your pick!

It’s not right is all I hear!
I can’t make it…

How can I NOT translate something that is there fluttering just out of reach
Something I KNOW is there!
Reminds me of childhood days past
Like that ever elusive butterfly I could never catch
Or the flickering tail of a rainbow

And the head bows coming to rest on the only available surface that will allow it that space
And with closed eyes I ponder at the futility,
The blockades,
The embargo
Or was it a sanction
Imagining the joy of taking something to my head and bashing it in….

When suddenly the head lifts,
The fingers move
And bit by bit the fog clears; like random fingers picking it away!
And a smile blooms as everything falls into place!

Some hours and 5000 words later, everything is hunky dory peachy keen including me!

Nothing like that single moment of truimph when your words make sense to you

I’m ‘It’ Apparently…

And what I am considerably at the moment, is alone and kind of spooked…

It’s moments like these that put paid to any dreams I have of living abroad on my own, the very epitome of an independent, self-reliant woman who runs the world… Somehow I don’t think someone who worries about the house being too quiet because her parents aren’t home is going to cut it…

Why is it that whenever news of somebody’s death reaches me, it takes a hold of my heart, making it difficult to breathe and filling my imagination with thoughts and images of deaths and the what ifs after of my loved ones? Part of my waking sojourn tonight of course is that my parents left for Peshawar directly after Iftar to attend the funeral of my mamoon and will be back sometime in the morning Insha’Allah. It’s strange but due to whatever complicated, inexplicable family dealings that exist, I can’t fully recall what mamoon looked like. The last time I actually saw him was when he had come to our house nearly 20 years ago… An age! Nonetheless, another link in the chain breaks away. May he rest in peace, Ameen!

I have submitted the research proposal due today so one load off my mind but I’m still a little bothered for some reason. Of course, that is the ONLY reason I’m responding to the tag by Inspirex. Anything to distract me from the abslolute stillness and quiet that surrounds me…

Today

height: 5′2.5″
color: fair with a tendency to go tomato
piercing: 9 (:-D)
tattoos: 1 (paste)

Right Now

Time: Quarter past 1 in the a.m.

Mood: hungry and lonely!
taste: craving chocolate with a vengeance…
the weather: pleasant and cool…..
bad habit: procrasinating
current crush: Jughead (Archie Comics)
biggest regret: giving too much worth to the unworthy!
Perfume(s): Tommy Girl
Thing I want to do: Get this screwed week over and done with

Favourite

TV show: Friends!
book: Impossible to enumerate
non alcoholic drink: Coffee in all its variants
milk drink: Milk always
brand: L’Oreal
color: Blues and blacks for me
emblem: Beaconhouse Always!
perfume: Cool Water, Tommy Girl, Contradiction, Chanel’s Allure
designer: Varies
Chocolate: Godivo, Ferrero Rocher, Lions

Have I Ever

broken the law: Yeah
misused credit card: Am dead set against credit cards
skipped school: No
fell asleep in the shower/bath: Ahhh peace
had children: over? or for dinner?
been in love: Blissfully and miserably so
been hurt: like D-uh?????

Random

have a job: Yes
My CD player has what in it right now: Fort Minor
if I were a crayon, the color? Blue
what makes me happy? the first drop of rain, a good book, the sound of my amma’s voice raised in exasperation; my dad’s ever present patient smile and my bro’s pragmatic one liners echoing in perfect harmony in the house…

When/What Was the Last

I got a real letter: 2 weeks ago… actual snail mail from an old fashioned friend abroad
got an email: you’re kidding, right?
thing I purchased: BOOKS!!! and a brownie from Kitchen Cuisine
TV program I watched: Quantum Leap
movie I saw in the theaters: MI-III
hugged: Mama
song heard: MTV playing something arabic and spanish.. Khaled i think.. with babes dancing on a beach (if anyone knows the song i’m talking about, could you let me know what it was please?)
place I was [besides home]: University
phone call: Younger sis
was depressed: Friday night

What Comes to Mind When I Hear

car: Racing down a highway with the wind in my hair
murder: glamour, blackness and mists of mystery
cape: Fairy Tales
cell: Nightmares
fun: Bungee Jumping
shoe: My sneakers are worn out
crush: Ice
music: Expression
love: Overrated
chalk: I will not make ***** eat chalk again (1000 times)

So, who do I tag now? In2deep, and SaaD and anyone else who has the time and the inclination..