Blogword (on a Thursday) No. 38: You

“You teach me now how cruel you’ve been – cruel and false. Why did you despise me?.. You deserve this. You have killed yourself… You loved me – then what right had you to leave me?… Because misery, and degradation, and death, and nothing that God or Satan could inflict would have parted us, you of your own free will, did it. I have not broken your heart – you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine….”

– Wuthering Heights -

And for this beyond anything else shall you remain unforgiven…

Walking past or walked over…

Blogword No. 37: Time

“When your house looks like a tree that has blown down, it is time to get a new house.”

 

- Winnie – the – Pooh -

More Sadness…

We Pakistanis have always been an emotional lot and nothing quote brings that to the fore than cricket.  Even the most prosaic among us who cannot understand the logic of 22 people chasing one ball have a strange fascination with it if just to try and evaluate what it is about us that can move us through a maelstrom of feelings…

This week has brought it all.  For most of us, the anguish and horror at losing to a team that does not even have test playing status would probably be deemed the ‘IT’ of the worst that could happen.  Unfortunately, we would be wrong.  Barely 24 hours later and we hear the news of the death of Bob Woolmer, the coach of the Pakistani team.  Where hours before, people were commenting on how he has ruined Pakistan cricket and should be sacked, the tide has turned to people expressing their grief and offering tributes.

One interesting aspect that some people of my acquaintance commented on was that Woolmer’s death at least reflects the fact that he was disappointed by the loss and was pondering it.  On the other hand, this also reveals, as so many channels are now commenting on the incredible stress that coaching a cricket team in a country like Pakistan (and India) places on a human being.

It made me wonder when we forgot that cricket is just a game.  Maybe the fact that the absence of effort or spirit is so apparent in ‘boys’ when they play not so well makes it easier for the disappointment to become irrational anger.

Nonetheless, the World Cup of 2007 will be remembered by most for reasons that are not all that pleasant; Pakistan’s dismal exit from the tournament and Woolmer’s exit from the world, each made all the more tragic because of the other.

Rest in peace Bob Woolmer…  And for you a prayer I offer for all those who pass on, that may the next world treat you better than this one and the people you’ve left behind find solace in your memory.

El Tortura

Is there anything more difficult than waiting for Ireland to slam the nail in the coffin that was the remnants of any misplaced sense of loyalty and pride in our cricket team????

Depression galore…

Blogword No. 36: Know

“It’s best to know what you are looking for before you look for it.”

- Winnie – the – Pooh -

Easier said than done…

Nostalgia

An hour of watching a videoscope of Take That took me ten years back in time… To a party at Huma’s place, listening to Everything Changes and dancing to Relight My Fire… Huma’s a mother now, as are so many others who had been at that party where the only concern was whether any of the band members were married or gay… I wonder how many of us actually understood where we would be standing ten years from that moment would be worlds away from the places we dreamed of…

I suddenly feel every day of my years…

… Got a fist of pure emotion

Got a head of shattered dreams

Gotta leave it, Gotta leave it all behind now

Whatever I said, whatever I did, I didn’t mean it

I just want you back for good

Whenever I’m wrong, Just tell me the song and I will sing it

You’ll be right and understood

… In the twist of separation you excelled at being free

Can’t you find a little room inside for me

Whatever I said, Whatever I did, I didn’t mean it

I just want you back for good

Whenever I’m wrong, just tell me the song, and I will sing it

You’ll be right and understood

… I guess it’s time, I just want you back for good 

- Back for Good – Take That - 

If I Only Had a Brain…

Without a doubt, the Wizard of Oz is one of my favorite movies and I could probably sing along every song in the movie and dance my way along the yellow brick road along with the scarecrow, the tin man and the cowardly lion. Today, as I watched the scarecrow wistfully wisting about a brain, all I could think of was Bush and his no-braining so I took the song with a blatant disregard for any and all patents and copyrights and turned it into something… No way near the quality of work by The Olive Ream but my straw processes only so far…

If I Only Had a Brain (Inspired by the song of the same title in the Wizard of Oz)

I could ’splain away iraq
Split iran’s back
While i look for more
And my butt would be swinging
And my foot would be tapping
If I only had a brain

I’d do away Laden
Al-Qaeda a-leaven
Any one who’s a pain

(Advisors)
With the missiles that you got
You’d know what you shot
If you only had a brain

(Bush)
Oh i would tell you why
Thinking’s such a chore
Talkin’ to those who keep the score
God, meetings are such a bore

I would not be just a general
Knowing as much as a kernel
My head all full of oil
I would war without a worry
Life would be ding-a-merry
I only had a brain

A Return to Ye Olde

There are times when one needs to perhaps rely on words of others not to give voice to what roils within but rather to drown out the sound that heralds the coming of an eventual storm.  It’s rather like trying to tether a beast, furious and wild and untamed; lulled perhaps falsely by the stillness it holds before letting loose on its prey…

But I can try to calm the turmoil within… And yet even here, comes an innate snobbery; that nothing but the best would do… And the thought longers as to how to define the best even as the mind drifts through snatches stored here and there for that single moment of clarity where an expression will be the proverbial ‘ding’, exactly that which I need to remember…

Take, O take these lips away.
That so sweetly were foresworn ;
And these eyes, that the break of day,
Light that do mislead the morn :
But my kisses bring again, bring again
Seals of love, but sealed in vain, sealed in vain.

– Measure for Measure – Act IV. Scene I – Shakespeare

Blogthought No. 6: How it all began…

Every time my mama walks into my room now to look at my shelves groaning and moaning under the weight, and into my cupboards and every other available surface,

She lifts one eyebrow in blame at my father who smiles it away

And I….

I dream of the next pay check to blow away at an old shop, blissfully imagining the world that lies in wait for me!

The love affair of a lifetime to last a lifetime

And this is how it all began…

Holding onto my baba’s hand

I walked into a musty little corner store

And stared… at the stacks taller than my baba who was the tallest person I knew

And wider than the old man who sat at a desk on one end grinning widely with glasses perched on his nose and the bright yellow bulb reflecting off his head

Piles upon piles upon hordes of them!

My eyes going round as I gawked

I had never seen so many…

Bright and colourful as the bits of paper I had strewn in the living room the day before while making flowers

There were smells there… smells of mysteries and tales… innocence… magic and worlds far beyond what I had known…

I should have felt fear as my baba pointed me to one of them

And let my hand go

But my eyes could see too much possibility in what lay before me and I reached…

And took a step and then another till I could stretch out a hand….

Till one finger brushed it hesitantly, wonderingly… drawing back to look at my baba and the funny little man

And then looking back, reaching out and finally holding it in my hands….

A little later… I was the proudest little soldier in the world!

Walking out of the shop, in front of my baba this time…

Hugging it to me, a trophy on display against the bright red of my jacket…

The white hardcover, covered in pale blues and pinks proclaiming my first step into whimsy…

I still remember the smell and the feel of that first book so many years ago!

It is a sensation that comes back to me everytime I hold one now

And reminds me of just how much magic a book really holds for me!