Archive Page 2
‘tum eik “fast” larkay ho.’
that life is a roller coaster is a fact disputed by few people other than the idiots who voluntarily watch horror movies at the theater at midnight with their obviously terrified girlfriends/wives in tow. however, most people who have ever been on a roller coaster or are blessed with a basic understanding of physics or have had the common sense to realise that trimming mustaches does not make our president any less of a hoodlum will admit that everything on a given roller coaster moves at the same speed with the possible exception of the comparative heartbeat rates of normal humans like me and snake-handling, skydiving, street-racing psychos like this person because for pete’s sake, its the roller coaster that’s moving, not us.
but people, especially female ones (assuming that we are willing to concede that females can be considered to be people), are normally not blessed with a great deal of intellect.
and so it is not entirely beyond the pale of credibility that i ran into an old classmate who believes that i have somehow managed to out pace the speed of time and cross into the thirties while leaving her and the rest of the classmates three years in the past. when i pointed out the little loophole in her theory she countered by saying that its not her fault that i look more like i was her dad’s classmate than her own. that this begs the question on how her dad managed to sire her at the ripe old age of three is not something we will dwell upon but it just goes to highlight the point raised in the second paragraph of this post. however, i do have to concede that this is actually a recurring theme and not a one-off incident. in fact, if you were to go by the number of karachiites who express shock and awe at the rapid advancement of my age you would assume that it was only a couple of years ago that i was some main draw in the our version of vaudeville for all the “babyface” roles that are otherwise played by 49 year old midgets with thirteen facelifts and nine nosejobs on their CVs.
this is not the case. admittedly, i haven’t looked like i’m sixteen for several years now. but then i haven’t been sixteen for several years and i probably won’t manage it again because the resemblance to brad pitt notwithstanding, i’m not benjamin button (and wouldn’t want to be either – who wants to love a sixty year old cate blanchett when you’re eighteen?). and so to reassure myself that this is just a karachi-centric phenomenon particular to sentimental people who want to remember me forever as i was in my golden years; i have been running the “iceman as a senior citizen” experiment for the past few months.
the scheme is basically a simple one. someone asks me my age and i say 39. they give me an unbelieving stare and i say “did i say 39? i meant 36″. at this point they normally ask me to produce some id or tell me to go to hell and ask someone else how old i am. a few will linger on and offer bets on how i am not a day over 26 (very complimentary, thank you ahmed, ahmed and incidentally, ahmed) and a couple have asked me for the secret to my youth. the point being, that i do not look older than what i am. quad erat demonstradum. why then, do those who know my age insist that i do?
please elaborate.
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i have also been asked by those not in the know why i have been acting like someone stole my cow (a very urdu expression for which i have no history – i would not be depressed if you stole my cow, believe you me) and why i am currently undergoing a renewed qawwali appreciation phase, something apparently that gived credence to the belief of the iceman-is-over-47 segment of society. well frankly, qawwalis are probably the most underrated part of our cultural legacy and the only intangible substance capable of giving me a high.
with the possible exception of the scent of tommy girl coming from the right person.
and that, incidentally, is the answer to the other question.
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speaking of cosmetics and other related things, i am planning to dye my hair purple. it give a rather dignified air to gentlemen of my advanced age while keeping them within the loose bounds of what is defined as “with it”.
and if teen literature and ask abby type columns and the esteemed advice of my syrian barber, ammar, are anything to go by, a makeover is just wat i need to turn my life around. so purple hair will get me a new job with higher pay (probably as a bartender) and a bunch of new girlfriends (i think ammar was decribing the standard thirty-something lebanese hag who you run into every time you enter a lift, but hell, you can’t get much better than that when you’re a 53 year old mallu).
baby steps. but i’m moving on with whats left of life. no complaints.
Filed under: ramble, the sweet stench of life | 12 Comments
the plot thickens
the best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men,
gang aft agley,
robert burns – 1785
Filed under: fudge | 5 Comments
“hum faqat zaib-e-hikayat thay…”
as cycles go, few are more vicious than the one the self-pitier finds himself moving in. he pities himself into a state of misery and then the misery leads to fresh self pity which leads to more misery. et cetera et cetera ad nauseum. but thats just masochism. even the self-pitier knows that a shake of the head and a determined set of the jaw can change the world.
sometimes though, fate really does hate you.
and no, you can’t make me stop feeling the way i do. but there is a thing called tact.
Filed under: Uncategorized | 5 Comments
me tarzan, you jane
i don’t correct typos. this is an ego issue. and one of faith. what i mean to say is that checking for errors is the work of a lesser man than the iceman and, frankly, i just don’t believe in automated spellcheckers. plus that’s the only thing that keeps my works of art from being perfect and i know how jealous you all are of my achievements.
but – as usual – my first paragraph has nothing to do with the rest of the post. like the great grey giant who lived in the great grey castle on the great grey cliff over the great grey sea. nopes. this post is about confessions. yes i know that theoretically speaking you can see the tag but most of my readers are too myopic or distracted to notice these things so i had to put in print. also there is the fact that i have not yet framed the next sentence.
i should’ve been a spy. not just because i’m the dashing, debonair, bond type hunk but also because much as i pretend otherwise – especially when met in person – i’m addicted to profiling. those of you who have met me and have lame enough existences to remember our first meeting may have noticed my version of the karachi checkout head-feet-head searchlight glance. this, contrary to popular belief, is not a result of my astigmatism. it’s just a 15 year old habit of forming initial characterizations by choice of footwear. the eyes hover momentarily around the waist as well to take in the belt (if applicable) and finally refocus on the face to take in eyewear, headgear, jewelry, makeup, hairstyles and any other reference points available. by this time, 2.8 seconds into having made your acquaintance, the offices of hussain & co., professional profilers, have prepared a file detailing assumptions of ethnic origin, age, education (quality not quantity), family background, individual taste and estimated annual income. in the next phase, which lasts around a minute, data gathering is done through analysis of voice patterns and frequency of eyeball movement. this study corroborates or negates assumptions of ethnic origin and education and provides further insight into confidence levels, forcefulness of personality and personal integrity. in phase three we carry out a detailed study of body language including the way shoulders move when you walk, which hand you use to pull out your chair, which way you tilt your head, how you cross your legs and whether or not you fidget in any way. in stage four the analyst is given more leeway to exercise independent judgement in choosing reference points for analysis. and so on so forth. by the time an hour has passed we have a dossier on you that is thicker than the one interpol has on an old chap named osama something and its probably way more incriminating.
the problem with this is that other people do it too. and one knows this. so its virtually impossible to not be analysing oneself at the same time to try to get a glimpse of the file marked top secret in your head.
and this is where i always come short. consider. footwear: (sneakers, sandals or if you’re lucky, loafers = overly casual, laid back, potential to get too familiar too soon). thick glasses (granny’s favorite nerd – or gaming addict, whichever is worse), most probably sporting an unmaintained five o’clock shadow (slob), unkempt hair (slobbier) cut by the same stylist that cut waheed murad’s hair in the sixties (old fashioned/conservative/liable to slap a coffee table announcing “maa, mein b.a. pass ho gaya“)… and so on so forth.
the problem is that this assessment is wrong on so many different levels. about the only thing correct in it is the fact that i am liable to claim success in b.a. exams while slapping coffee tables, largely due to the facts that i don’t believe in coffee and am enough of an artistic bachelor to be called a bachelor of the arts.
and this shatters my belief in the infallibility of the hussain profiling matrix. which means that the frowning ape in flannel shirts and timberland boots i keep running into on the corniche could possibly be a better man than the axe murderer i take him for. or that the filipino waiter at my barber’s place who struts in his high heeled shoes in a manner reminiscent of 98,437 lebanese chicks that i can name (they’re all called either reem, oula, bana or haifa) and several that i can’t, is possibly not a snotty faggot. or that zardari is not, in fact, a donkey.
you see the dilemma.
so, like, i need another hobby. something i’m better at.
lebanese chicks, maybe.
speaking of which, zeenat has resurfaced. only she’s moroccan now – in the interests of realisticness (i’m about as likely to be a lebanese chick magnet as i am likely to be a, well, pakistani chick magnet) – and has achieved rebirth over a translation request. to cut a long story short, i asked for a translation of an endearment i overheard during my latest eavesdropping escapade and somehow it got attributed to my non-existent girlfriend who over the course of the conversation acquired moroccan nationality, french education and a liberal arts degree from the sorbonne, not to mention the rather unimaginative name of leila, which is no small achievement considering it took about two and a half minutes for that rich history to come out. what’s funnier is that arab dudes who know me actually believe the story and have been dispensing advice on how to handle these “modern moroccan girls” which include offers for background checks and telling me to insist that she master the jordanian dialect as that is the only one i will ever pick up. i have also been familiarised with the golden rule that i should never date a moroccan girl who works for the airline industry as apparently, if you’re a girl, moroccan and work for emirates, it goes without saying that your morals are as loose as a fishwife’s tongue.
the things you learn in arabistan.
Filed under: confessions, the father of dhabi, the sweet stench of life | 11 Comments
ee bholro aahay.
ulm, baden-wurtemberg, germany, may be the kind of backwater you never visited or wanted to, but people with i.p. addresses originating from there have wandered on to this blog so woe betide thee who disrespecteth the place.
even though it sounds like something my industrial sized stomach rumbles when the occupation rate dips below normal.
anyways, whether or not you have figured it out yet is irrelevant but the wise readers back in ulm (yes of baden-wurtemberg, germany) have realised that those who meet me and those who read my stuff are normally two distinct subsets of the human race and it is only very rarely that the two worlds are allowed to collide and unleash the madness. which is a roundabout way of saying that you probably haven’t met me in a professional capacity.
of course, the use of the term “professional” is a double edged sword. while it pumps one up and clouds the horizons of self doubt enough for a guy to believe that the mundanities of his life actually have meaning and that the draft from the airconditioning is not really the slipstream of the world passing him by; one must also wake up to the realisation that the fools one works with, or, to be more precise, the fools one works for (because it goes without saying that the said fools do not indulge in the colossal waste of time that we call “work”), are probably also blissfully under the same delusion that they are in fact professional in some sense of the word. but i digress.
what i was trying to say was that if you ever met me in a professional capacity and asked me to explain some obscure aspect of generally accepted accounting principles or international financial reporting standards, i would – assuming i could not convince you to ask someone else – probably employ what is known among elite mensa members as the “poultry farm model”. this basically involves a hen, an egg and a cage. these three things are then used to simplify the complexities of the never ending treatises known among the experts (and the idiots) in my field as the international accounting standard on employee benefits or or the amendment to ias 1 puttable financial instruments and obligations arising on liquidation – though, for the record, a hen is actually a biological asset as defined in ias 41.
the reason for this, of course, is that when you simplify something to an absolute extreme, the nitwit asking the questions cannot ask further questions without exposing himself or herself as a nitwit. and among auditors and accountants even people with intelligence quotients similar to the mean winter temperature of the south pole (i.e. negative) know that if you are exposed as a nitwit you are finished. so they abstain and leave you to relative peace which is actually just a lower degree of misery. for example, someone starts asking questions about the indicators of impairment of a class of assets and you say, “ya akhi, have you ever heard of a chicken with alzheimer’s?”
you create a successful poison for your enemy and you forget about creating an antidotes.
so when someone oversimplifies their argument or throws in ridiculously inappropriate analogies you’re often left gasping for breath much in the same way that you leave them when you’re explaining the finer points of accounting jargonese. so you’re talking to this guy about gender equality and he is vehemently disagreeing, claiming that such beliefs are not only the type that cast doubts over my masculinity – offering me some of that jinjeer herb which you get at every lebanese place and is supposed to be the absolute cure for what the hakeems in karachi call mardana kamzori and advertise cures for on virtually every wall in the city – but are also extremely idiotic. to prove his point he asked me a question which left me stumped by virtue of its absolute irrelevance – would you let a monkey drive your bus?
now i am not a posessor of buses, or of monkeys for that matter, and so this is a contingency that i am not exactly prepared for – but i do like to conform to accepted societal norms. as such, i probably wouldn’t let a monkey drive my bus if i had one. unless if it had cruise control. but how that is relevant or possibly linkable to the issue at hand is something that boggles the mind of even the author of the bemaina. but all joking aside, i found that offensive. i mean, i can’t speak for other people, but at least 50% of my parents are female. and i’m a staunch unbeliever in darwin regardless of gender so the association of women with monkeys left me baffled.
i’m sure at least some of the readers of this blog (other than the guy who logs on from ulan bator in mongolia) have somewhat similar perceptions on the place of women in society. i mean i know the highly educated corporate executive making in excess of USD 200k a year who describes his chartered accountant wife (love marriage, no less) as the woman who makes his chapattis. there is also the dude who explained that among the many faults of his ex-wife was her refusal to respect him (she tried to walk beside him instead of behind him where her rightful place was). so tell me, what exactly is the story with this macho crap? what is it that your dad does that your mom can’t? educate me.
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it was at this point in writing this post that i was interrupted by a phonecall from a friend trying to figure out how to download realplayer which consumed eighteen minutes of my time and totally ruined my train of thought.
girls are idiots, capable only of making chappatis.
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having said that, there has to be more than just chappatis to a species that can hunt for hours in a crowded shopping mall for that top while you just flop down on the bench and try to recapture your breath. gentlemen, trust me, when it comes to shopping, they are not the weaker sex.
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the title of this post encapsulates my entire vocabulary of the sindhi language and its grammar and delicate nuances. just thought you’d like to know.
Filed under: aurat, office cribs, ramble, the sweet stench of life | 20 Comments
the answer to most things in life has been found in literature. how one defines literature, however, is important when analysing the previous statement. if a variety of definitions didn’t exist, half the pseudo-intellectuals in the world who parade around bragging about their post graduate degrees in subjects which never got them more than an excuse to curl up in a corner and read a classic would lose their street cred. but that’s besides the point.
comics are literature. more than shakespearean classics can ever hope to be. i mean i have never, unlike macbeth’s wife, seen blood on knives and the like or, like shylock, pestered venetian businessmen for pounds of flesh. i have, however, often had trouble restraining my fist of death from turning a troublesome manager inside out and throwing his desk off the top of the office building.
when i was a kid my favorite comic strips used to be big nate and ziggy. not because one was about a smart loser or because the other was about a loser, period; but because they were hilarious. then i grew up and started understanding why the mothers in the family loved baby blues so much and why the working class citizens didn’t start the day without dilbert. and then after i grew up i became what people call a corporate leech when being complimentary and a lot worse when not. an auditor.
i don’t know much about scott adams but i think he was probably one of those recording angel types in a past life and spent most of his time around people of my ilk. there is no other way he could have known so much about my life. consider the following.
about the only thing wrong in that panel up there is that i don’t even try leaving at seven. its more like nine. yes, post meridian.
and then there’s this perfect explanation for my physical condition.
most appropriate though, is the following explanation for my perpetual singletonism. i don’t think shakespeare could have said it better.
if you too are a denizen of the corporate jungle, find your life chronicled at this site. enjoy.
Filed under: office cribs, picture, the sweet stench of life | 23 Comments
it has been said that attempts at creativity, like writing, revive, and occasionally even resurrect, the dying (or dead, depending on how deep your faith is) brain cells that are the collateral damage of the mental exhaustion that goes along with the husool-e-rizq-e-halal policy that is the bane (and also the salvation) of my brothers-in-faith and, more precisely, my brothers-in-faith-and-profession in the four to six month stretch we loosely call the busy season. there is also the fact that the loss of focus can be at least partly attributed to external depressants like that traitor called fate and his machinations to interrupt the orderly flow of my largely regretless single life by injecting large quantities of regret in the form of certain someones showing up where you least expected them – or wanted them; there obviously being more truth in the rule of “out of sight out of mind” than there is in the one which goes “absence makes the heart grow fonder” – but fate and its machinations are not something i like to dwell on not only because that merely shatters my own belief in my guiltlessness but also because the public image that i force myself to live up to is one of unbounded carefree-ism (if there is such a word) and happy-go-lucky idiocy since that, to put it in bollywood producer terms, is what the public wants to see.
i was assuming sentences in excess of 150 words like the second of those two would also help me get there, but sadly that is not the case.
and so, while random recollections of events in my life hardly qualify as creativity – unless of course you concede that abstract art is, in fact, art; and we all know that i will concede no such thing – writing this blog is about the only thing i do that garners public attention apart from my renditions of ali azmat in what can be most politely described as “the voice that came a generation too early” and perhaps more accurately as something that sounds more like ali azmat’s hair dryer (and yes i know he’s bald) than the man himself; i am trying to rehabilitate myself by writing this monument to inanity in order to revitalize body and mind which, if i am not mistaken, is the precise job description of that empty can of red bull in the dustbin.
at least i’m not the only one failing to live up to expectations.
(just so that you can’t say i didn’t warn you, red bull is not suitable for the species of man known as phenylketonuric. apparently, you’re supposed to know if you fit the bill.)
but we were talking of expectations. and dearth of talent in the performing arts. and someones who refuse to be forgot. and unconnected as they all seem to be, you can make a story out of that at any time of the week. yeah, we were also talking about creativity and bollywood productions. and even if i didn’t expressly mention it, of reality. which is just another creative bollywood production along the aforementioned plotline. even if it isn’t sponsored by red bull.
so you come to the point where it’s between the two people and the chapattis and ridiculously delicious paalak chicken. and the innocent seductiveness of those open tresses. and the eyes. and being in the same situation again where there’s so much to say and so much to take back and not doing either and bottling up what you feel just like you did ever since you were informed that such feeling are not welcome and cannot be reciprocated and should not mess with the order of life for the party of the second part. and the losing of balance that naturally comes with these things. and while “why regain it?” is the typically cheesy bollywood response that sounds appropriate at times like these, you don’t think that way after you’ve successfully negotiated teenage and “because i can” ceases to be a legitimate reason for things. and the way all these sentences seem to start with “and” as if the last one left volumes unsaid. which it did.
but i wasn’t going to write about that. not because its not writeable per se, but because there’s no point. and in any case these things look better coming from a ghalib or a faiz because they at least knew how to say what was meant to be said. no sir, madam, or whom it may concern; i’m supposed to be the funny guy. the guy who can be a phenylketonuric and still drink the red bull. the unsuitabilities which may result, of course, being solely for the entertainment of the masses. and so the recountings of my life as detailed in this chronicle are the ones narrated by the xill-e-ilahi in a parallel universe where everyone wears rose tinted glasses and everything is fun and even the marble tombstones in cemeteries have limericks inscribed on them.
i, on the other hand, am not made of marble. but that’s that.
let us look, therefore, at the funny side of things as we always do and move further back in history by two weekends.
my name, as most of you with intelligence quotients knee-high to a very short ant will have figured out, is not muzaffar. unfortunately, not everyone believes that. i always knew there was more to my never attending events in my parents’ social circle than just not feeling like it. there must have been some subconscious realisation that meeting a bunch of old fogeys who assume you know precisely what other old fogeys you haven’t seen for 13 years are up to will call you a muzaffar. now this might be totally acceptable if your name starts with saleem, ends with warraich and has a mustansar thrown in the middle. but when you have a name like mine, being called muzaffar is just not on. and even if that could have been forgiven, being addressed as “ama mian” is totally beyond the pale of acceptability. but circumstances always contrive to push me into situations where i accept invitations to gatherings of this sort and so i humbly expressed my consent when more or less ordered to show up at one of the old uncles’ places a couple of fridays ago.
now all this muzaffaring and ama mian-ing takes its toll. under normal circumstances i’m the guy who remembers you had a purple keychain when you were in the third grade that had a very taiwanese looking tom and jerry on it. but when i’m irritated i tend to mix up the “funerals attended” and “grandkids’ aqeeqas attended” index cards in my head. and so i very calmly told a bunch of shocked geriatrics that a certain ali rehbar passed away a couple of years ago. i then redirected my attention to the dum ka qeema and parathas which are the saving grace of such events before i realized that everyone else on the dastarkhwan had pretty much frozen stiff. a quick assessment of the situation led me to the realisation that infallible as i may be, i had made what my four year old nephew calls a boo-boo. even rowling admitted that magic cannot bring back the dead. so now that i had killed off a hale and hearty dude who looks irritatingly like jon voight would with a beard; i had to stick to my guns and keep him dead. these situations are not easy to maneuver out of. so i described in great detail the story of a sudden heart attack and shocked kids and the like, sparking a long discussion on the causes of heart disease and blood pressure and health care in desiland and of course a unanimous consensus on the virtue and many merits of the deceased. at this juncture, i casually interrupted asked the senior citizen who had raised the initial inquiry how he had come to be acquainted with the late great man.
he worked here with us, beta.
no he didn’t. he spent his whole life in karachi.
of course not. he was here for 13 years
which ali rehbar are you talking about?
which ali rehbar are you talking about?
and so the dead were resurrected. so much for jk rowling. rebirth is ridiculously easy when i’m the one who kills you.
i wish my own dead brain cells would realize that.
Filed under: desi, fudge, ramble, the father of dhabi, the sweet stench of life | 11 Comments
lost in transformation
for some unexplained reason – though it’s probably because i’m the personification of eternal youth – no one believes i’m 34 if i tell them. which i’m not. but that’s besides the point. of course no one really believes i’m 12 either but just so that i look dumb by association rather than dumb because one is dumb like the people who visit this blog looking for the late nazia hasan’s phone number or how to keep their shirt tucked in (believe it or not, that’s the most common google search for this blog after “nida aqeel’s paintings”) ; these people tag me to fill out memes or whatever the damned things are called. that i actually bother to respond shows that i celebrate be-nice-to-dumb-animals-week around 52 times a year. also that i don’t have anything bearing semblance to a life. but that is something i’d rather not dwell upon.
bottom line, in case it didn’t register, is that i’ve been tagged. whoopee-de-do.
fortunately, the theme is a familiar one. randomisms. the idea, according to owl, is to do the following
Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 16 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 16 people to be tagged.
like anything about the last 116 posts on the blog was not random.
anyhoo, here goes.
- i do not believe armed burglars can turn into goats. or anything else for that matter. i bring this up simply because this is a popular belief in nigeria and i have been told that apart from george clooney and arjun rampal, i also look like olusegun obasanjo. and thats not very charitable of the general public.
- i used to be the skinny, pimply nerd in high school.
- i am the decidedly unskinny, unpimply nerd nine years later.
- for the past 27 years i have pulled grass out of the ground every time i’ve sat myself down on a green patch.
- for the past 27 years i have sat myself down on a green patch a sum total of 371 times in daylight and 87 times at night.
- i quote statistics about my activities (or lack of them) with great conviction.
- point number five does not necessarily explain my complexion.
- my standard alias for crank calls, practical jokes and police interrogations has always been asif. if it was you who sang athra baras ki kanwari kali thi on the speaker phone for the sani-e-tina sani ki talash program, then maybe i owe you an apology. but, for the record, your voice sucked and asif and his buddies had a hell of a laugh.
- after decades of research i have made the discovery that socks are more comfortable inside out than er.. outside in.
- i can laugh in 47 languages, cough in eighteen but sneeze in only one.
- the first time i opened the batting for my team i made 64 of 23 balls including two sixes and four boundaries. i never scored more than 25 after that at any number in the lineup.
- fourteen years ago, i took two wickets in an over bowling slow left arm to a bunch of kids even more myopic and uncoordianted than myself. to date, they remain my total career tally.
- apart from my brilliant umpiring, points 11 and 12 remain the highlights of my cricket memories.
- i don’t like football because i never understood the offside rule.
- i am not half as funny as my writing and i admit that’s not saying much.
- i have allowed myself to be talked into a baking showdown next weekend where my chocolate cake will be competing against one of the best ever baked and i have no clue on how to bake anything but red clay bricks.
if anyone thinks i’m tagging sixteen people, they’ve got another think coming. anyone who reads this post is tagged.
you’re exempt if you can give me a doable recipe for chocolate cake.
to hell with it. i’ll just buy one, deshape it and claim its mine.
Filed under: confessions, tagged by somebloggerelse | 25 Comments
teri meethi baatein…
there are, among those who are in the loop, certain standards by which life is meant to be led. certain things that have to be accomplished before they die, appearances to be maintained, compliments to be received, etc etc. and these are all things of quality, which, when mentioned to educated, knowing audiences, inspire oohs and aahs of approval, nods recognizing a similarly ambitious soul and a general concurrence on the sanity of the individual.
if i was ever in the loop, i swear no one told me.
so my list of things to do before i die has a piddling three things on it, none of which i am ever likely to accomplish, viz. scoring a six off glenn mcgrath via a reverse sweep; winning a game of pool left-handed; and throwing a water balloon at sheikh rasheed’s face.
if that weren’t enough to throw reasonable doubt on my sanity, what is likely to have me straitjacketed in today’s world of psychotic dieters and ever spreading vegans is my unabashed and unfettered love for cholesterol. to further damn myself after admitting to this obviously cardinal sin, is my unabashed and unfettered hate for exercise. you’d think that if it was really all that important they’d at least make it easy to spell. but there comes a time in every man’s life when he decides that he really wants to get back in that pair of jeans which he has so lovingly folded and stored in his closet. and so, much as it my hurt him to do so, he has to either snub the cholesterol or dabble in exercise or both. now it is no secret that if pushed – or even if merely patted on the back – to choose between a chicken tikka and boiled broccoli i’d choose the tikka any day of the week. it is also no secret that i have attempted more or less everything that wasim bhai has been seen doing in public including bowling no-balls, swearing at teammates, faking an accent and voluntarily giving autographs (and yes, i only really came into my own when i attempted the swearing at teammates part). so i put on my thinking cap which incidentally turned out to be the hood on my er… hoodie and wondered exactly what he did that i don’t do and it hit me. he gave stupid answers to pretty legitimate questions while jogging around a park. and so i lifted myself up and placed myself on the corniche all set to tell anyone who asked me where the nearest atm is that i don’t smoke. unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. you cannot be sitting on a bench and have people come up to you and ask if you don’t get tired because by sitting on the bench you, for some reason i haven’t figured out yet, give rise to the perception that you do get tired. you have to actually do the jogging bit that wasim bhai did so famously back in those days in lahore.
and so i started jogging a couple of weeks ago.
this might’ve been an achievement if i actually managed to do it without sounding like a battalion of dobermen catching their breath after running up a hill. or if i managed to cover two hundred meters without looking like the hero’s sidekick in a punjabi flick who has been shot 38 times in the gut and still makes it across half of cholistan only to die at the hero’s house before telling him who shot him. or if i managed to cover two hundred meters, period. life, however, is a son of a bachelor, and there’s nothing easily regained that was so easily lost. and so if at two am you are for some reason meandering around the corniche and see what reminds you of the stereotype hollywood undead guy with the beergut coming at you rasping hoarsely, do not freak out. its only me. instead, come up and ask, “xill-e-ilahi, aap thaktay nahin?“
to which i will probably answer with the same words the legend had for mohammad yousuf when he ran him out.
“@##@&&^!“
_____________________
in case anyone was wondering why i named the post what i did, blame a certain extinct pakistani band that went by the name of music math for making a song of the same name which for some reason has entrenched itself in my head and refuses to get lost.
Filed under: ramble, the father of dhabi, the sweet stench of life | 11 Comments
if i were just average looking, that truly would have been enough.
but then, as paresh rawal would no doubt tell you, dainay wala jub bhi daita daita chhapar phaar ke. and so i’m saddled with these unbelievably good looks. yes you read that right. i used the term saddled. as if it were a problem. because it is. now you guys probably wake up in the morning, look in the mirror, shriek (or die of embarassment depending on how you handle stress) and run to the washroom to clean up and try to look more tolerable so that you aren’t saddled with a pg-13 rating by the motion picture association of america. don’t fret about it. its normal.
however, you guys obviously aren’t accosted by papparazzi or wild fans or teenaged girls. women don’t swoon at your feet. people don’t offer to come up to the bar and offer to pay for your drink (red bull, diet coke or orange juice). cute kids don’t come up running asking for autographs. stalkers don’t follow you home. crazed junkies don’t o.d. outside your mansion grounds. bollywood actresses don’t claim you promised to marry them. barbers don’t promise customers they’ll make their hair look just like yours. brand names don’t come up asking for endorsements. it’s not an animal rights issue if you run over a rabbit on the highway. bun kabab walas don’t use your picture on their menus. the guys at rainbow centre don’t release cds with you on the cover and dance mixes on the inside. you can shop for groceries without being mobbed…
… or at least without someone coming up and saying unday unday narilinday. or something to that effect.
fate has decreed that every idiotic fool on the planet – or at least every keralite on it - want’s to jorofy some rishta with me. admittedly, i have dark skin. my hair, or whats left of it, is wavy and black with heavy streaks of silver. i have weak eyes and some facial hair. well so does denzel washington for christ’s sake! why don’t you go and assume he’s from the coast of malabar?! i mean i was pretty chill with the “prince of makran” title that’s been saddled with me since high school – i mean they are my pakistani bhais – and i can pronounce their names too. but how can any (or every) damn unnikrishnan, shivaramchandran or laxmibalakrishnan assume that i have even remote ties to that state? especially after they’ve heard me speaking in urdu.
but as the saying goes, zaruurat eejad ki maa hai and frankly eejad ki maa ki … i now use the same formula i always have.
so like i’m at the counter and ask the dude how much i owe him.
him: inna binna taarilinnay
me: huh?
him: inna binna taarilinnay
me: chinga minga jhaarilinnay
him: huh?
me: chinga minga jhaarilinnay
him: sorry?
me (muttering while handing him a hundred dirham note): bloody fool can’t speak malayali
him: you speaking malayali, sir?
me: yes
him: but that is not malayali
me: neither am i
him: then why you speak it
me: i thought you said i didn’t
him: no, but, you said..
me: so you understood it?
him: no but..
me: so you don’t speak malayali?
him: yes but
me (getting loud): you speak it but you don’t understand it? what kind of response is that? are you making fun of me and my language?
him: no sir but you..
me (taking the change and leaving): you better be careful. next time i’ll report you.
and so on so forth. if i’m going to be the new mallu i’m damn well making sure the others aren’t called mallus any more.
Filed under: the father of dhabi, the sweet stench of life | 29 Comments
they say that there are few things more ridiculous than an accountant who does not possess a calculator. of course, they (whoever “they” is supposed to imply) overlook the fact that even more ridiculous is the idea of an auditor who does not possess a decent pair of earphones for his laptop. because there is nothing more obviously identifying the public accounting practitioner in an office than the twin cords leaving his ears jacked into the laptop.
however, we are not known for laughing out loud like twenty-something filipinas temping for fifty-something keralite secretaries.
not normally.
then again there is the bane of the workplace called youtube. the site is in many ways like one of those two bit chinese philosophers. they have something ridiculous for everyone in every situation they could possibly find themselves in.
which is why, on occasion, i laugh like a secretary.
and no i don’t have anything against secretaries. its just that they’re so.. secretarial. but without further ado, you must view this video.
Filed under: the sweet stench of life | 11 Comments
most respectfully i beg to say
in every fat man there is a thin man screaming to get out. in every colonial desi man there is a gora screaming to get out. in every fat colonial desi man there is a thin gora screaming to get out. which is why i have deep sympathies for the thin goras at barbecue delight last night who were given the treatment i would actually have been proud of giving them myself had i been the one playing the charade.
it is a well known fact that over the past three or four years if i have ever been spotted in a kurta, it has had a khaadi tag on the collar. however, it is also a well known fact that i am not really the poster boy for sartorial elegance and that even if i were; the whiz behind khaadi, shamoon, needs to go a long way before he can be described as the pakistani ermenegildo zegna. unfortunately for the poor italians, that is not what the very obviously islamabadi chick managed to convey. according to her, a khaadi kurta is the “real, traditional, national dress of pakistan”. it is also “extremely rare, hand made and a status symbol among the educated elite”. if barbecue delight’s soup hadn’t been the watery type excuse that is supposed to pass for a first course, i would have choked on it. but as a team effort it was fascinating. the rest of the pakis in the party were looking at the kurtas as if they were the golden robes of solomon (or the lacy secret of victoria, depending on which way you look at it) while the cameraman snapped photos in a manner i would only expect if giselle bundchen were giving away persian carpets. the italians were very happy and grateful and obviously wondering why, if these kurtas are such a hot thing, none of the men in the pretty large group was wearing something remotely resembling them.
i was tempted to call out “and it only costs around 50 dirhams a piece” but if there is one thing i have learnt in my life it is that you never mess with a group of pakistanis who outnumber you 6 to 1 – even if they’re from islamabad – and with a desi chick – especially if she’s from islamabad.
__________________________
heaven, it is said, is a bunch of beautiful gardens with lovely lakes and wondrous rivers, nymphs all around the place and a huge cricket field with a grassy pitch with wasim bowling from one end and waqar bowling from the other. but if our pukhtoon brethren make it to there (and i have no doubt that most of them will – there has to be some reward for fighting holy wars in afghanistan, building roads in the desert and driving taxis in dubai – especially driving taxis in dubai) they will only applaud politely for those two gods of fast bowling. however, if one mr. sahibzada shahid ali khan afridi, esq; nominally of gulshan e iqbal, karachi but with undoubtedly strong links to pukhtoonkhwa, so much as goes there to watch – they will go wild.
for the first time in my life i understand the pressure that that guy has to face every time he wears his kit. it is to his credit that he is actually still playing without his shoulders sagging every time akmal drops a catch or every time he mistimes a ball. not waqar, not wasim not even imran khan in his pomp were as much of superstars as this guy is – even if in stature they are far more than he can ever hope to achieve.
the day he disappoints is the day he doesn’t come out to play. until then, may the magic live on and may every crowd go into rapture at seeing him take the field. if he performs, great. if he doesn’t, neither you nor i will faint out of surprise. but as a battered, defeated, tired, depressed people we need something we can pin all our wild hopes to. someone who we believe can do the impossible, the unheard of. he is, at the risk of sounding ridiculous, the closest thing we have to batman.
so will the idiot who had the “afridi please don’t disappoint today” placard in the match please commit suicide?
Filed under: cricket, desi, fashion issues, the father of dhabi, the sweet stench of life | 12 Comments
i’ve never been to jamaica.
not in the physical sense anyway. but if i had, i would expect to run into a bunch of people with dreadlocks, boomboxes on their shoulders, jigging it up to sean paul’s finest on the streets. or another bunch of people, also with dreadlocks or braids in a low rider, smoking weed as marley croons on the stereo. or a bunch of tall, terrifying behemoths bowling bouncers at each other on the city streets. or even taller and more terrifying behemoths shooting hoops in someone’s backyard.
i would not expect to run into shazia khushk singing moto tillay rana or whatever that song is.
i’m sure there are others who feel the same way. but the god of destiny is probably a guy ritchie fan. which is why at 2:23 am yesterday, while peaceably eating cupcakes and drinking al marai apple juice on the bonnet of somebody else’s mazda 6, my friend and i were accosted by this white boy and a whiter-than-him arab boy who were obviously high on the same opiates that marilyn manson’s mom took when she was expecting him. they were tolerably normal while they asked my friend if they could borrow his lighter but the fun began when they saw my “karachi rocks” shirt.
arab manson: dude (that’s me), it totally does!
me (cluelessly): what does?
arab manson: car-aachi!
me (beaming): yeah it does really!
arab manson: yeah dude. i know lots of you pakistanians and they’re all like totally rockin’. metal rules the world!
me (clueless again): uh.. who?
arab manson: metal man! (flashes a devil or whatever that two fingers down two fingers up sign is supposed to represent) you guys have a real music scene right?!
me (realisation dawning): uh yeah! like totally.
white manson: you guys are so lucky. the music scene here totally sucks now…
(fifteen minute lecture by both guys in tandem on the evolution of metal in the emirates and the sorry state of affairs that arab manson is no longer playing ‘coz he now studies in canada)
my friend (as i cringe): yeah. i listen to a lot of metal. metallica, nirvana, pearl jam, backstreet boys…
arab manson (apparently not noticing): what do you listen to? i mean your influences.
me: oh i’m more into the pakistani scene..
white manson: which is?
me: uh basically indie-metal-jazz-asian fusion. mainly sufi classic death metal. you must have heard the steve vai/arif lohar/rammstein collaboration album. most of my own compositions are based on it..
both of the mansons: YOU PLAY TOO?!! way cool, dude. (another 15 minute rambling lecture on how the inner music always defeats the cramping cloak of the fake world)
the paki guys: yeah, yeah, totally, like totally dude, aint that the truth, etc etc
the thing could have continued all night. but we had work the next day. so when they were totally convinced that i am a percussionist who plays the bass dhol to lyrics inspired by the works of omar khayyam, kahlil gibran and badar muneer; and had celebrated the diversity of metal genres from multan to michigan by clinking their barbicans with our al marai’s we sort of said goodbye and let them leave.
there is a sweet ecstasy in defrauding innocent fools. after a very long time, i feel alive. yeah baby yeah!
Filed under: the father of dhabi, the sweet stench of life | 22 Comments
telling lies? no baba
i apologise. i have disrespected the pakilandish engish teaching system loud and long, with a special focus on the parha likha punjab. this was totally uncalled for and i now acknowledge that inzimam ul haq sounds like an oxford don when compared with some of his fellow punjabis from across the border. respect, also, to the superb marketing system of the indian media which would have you believe that most indians don’t understand any of the thousand languages spoken in their motherland and are more comfortable with internationalism than haifa wehbe is with skimpy western dresses.
this despite the fact that i encounter a hundred guys a day from the same state as sreesanth who would say that azharuddin “fix udd” matches (as opposed to fixed).
you must be wondering why i changed my mind. after all, we (and i use that as a translation of the urdu shahi “hum”), who rule the world are not known to vacillate when we have made up our minds. it takes more than a mispronouncing mallu to change our mind. and so, your honour, i present exhibit ‘a’, a video taken of a village class in haryana, punjab, india, potential world war 3 flashpoint, earth, united milky way of america.
of course, i’m not dissing the underprivileged. its harmless fun so spare me the you’re a snob, racist elitist, meanie comments please. i’m a desi too. just not that desi.
Filed under: desi | 13 Comments
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no we don’t
we didn’t even know her until six months after the deed is done. and we still don’t know anything about the 18 year old girl shaped void in this universe other than that it was created by hungry dogs and evil men. and unfortunately, that’s not even near to being the limit of our apathy. no. we’ll look at her picture in the newspaper today, not beautiful and not ugly, noticeable only because of the semi-smile hinting at a life not ending at six acre plots but full of wider smiles and wetter eyes and sometime laughs and sometime cries and milk bottles and rattles and toys and first words and first steps and school and books and clothes and successes and failures and mehndi on chaandraat and bangles on eid and all the seconds that make the minutes that make the hours that make the days that make the weeks that make the months that make a lousy eighteen years a life – and we’ll sigh and shake our heads and talk about the brutality just below the smiling exteriors of the most hospitable race on the planet and then having registered our displeasure at the way things were carried out we will move on and perhaps the only abiding memory of today’s newspaper will be the bad grammar of the ”let wind mill pay your electric bill” ad. yes, that’s what we do. like we did to a thousand other girls before her and like we’ll do to a thousand after her till the world will be full of nothing but eighteen year old girl shaped voids in the universe.
and maybe after the senate has strongly registered protest by the women members staging a walk out and then going on to get their hair permed or buying iphones or checking out the winter shawls in some rawalpindi bazaar, perhaps only the hungry dogs will throw up what they were forced to eat and after this act of contrition maybe the only nightmares that the eighteen year old girl shaped void in the universe still haunts will end. and maybe not.
milton was a moron. god damn those who only stand and wait.
Filed under: ramble, tasleem solangi | 18 Comments
