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!!