tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-51711884844614551052024-03-21T21:40:04.093-07:00Pilgrim GreyArse Poetica!Duckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07260336782916718641noreply@blogger.comBlogger82125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5171188484461455105.post-70332833461017735332013-06-19T19:38:00.000-07:002013-06-19T19:38:23.227-07:00Truth<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
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the truth,<o:p></o:p></div>
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as it happens,<o:p></o:p></div>
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a little<o:p></o:p></div>
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out of tune;<o:p></o:p></div>
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a lot, actually<o:p></o:p></div>
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very, out of tune.<o:p></o:p></div>
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the truth!<o:p></o:p></div>
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but who has ever<o:p></o:p></div>
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seen or heard or believed?<o:p></o:p></div>
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so, the point,<o:p></o:p></div>
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quite moot.<o:p></o:p></div>
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and that the truth<o:p></o:p></div>
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">is.</span></div>
Duckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07260336782916718641noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5171188484461455105.post-31891817184666078772013-06-10T08:45:00.002-07:002013-06-10T08:45:30.278-07:00Or Other <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;">And what if </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;">your ex boy</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;">-friend is a note un</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;">-noticed by the </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;">birds, gurg</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;">-led by a stream</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;">like the bang</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;">-ing of a spoon</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;">on a hollow metal </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;">dream, deep inside</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;" /><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; display: inline; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;">a well,<br />a-band<br />-one-d<br />by the thirsty<br />who no long<br />-er<br />care to drink?<br />And what if<br />you're in<br />-tent<br />on me<br />an' eye on you</span></div>
Duckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07260336782916718641noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5171188484461455105.post-16388705148312464412013-06-02T08:45:00.002-07:002013-06-15T23:11:53.732-07:00Spinner's Legs<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;"> you should swallow my pride.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">1. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I met a man who said the Taliban did not have open minds. so I showed him one who was willing to blow himself up. "Sir," said the Talib, "once I blow myself up, my mind will be very open, very open indeed; in fact, some parts of it will be so far removed from others, you'll never be able to find them. But I am not a selfish man, sir, when I open my mind, yours will open too."</span></div>
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<o:p><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">2. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">I met a woman who thought religion was oppressive and annihilated the self for the sake of some trumped up higher cause. I didn't really have much of a verbally communicable justification so I showed her a ballerina, and she said, 'Yes, but this is art; it humanizes.' I said, 'I think we should feed her and get her comfortable shoes.' She said I was an ignorant barbarian upon whom all refinement and culture was lost. I said, 'Umer, you really need to imagine better women to have pretend conversations with because this bitch is fucked up.'<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;">It isn't terrorism, fools! it's just art at its sincerest!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">3. </span></div>
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<br />
<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I met two women who said Islam did not prohibit homosexuality among women. They said the wrath of God fell upon the people of Lot because they were rapists and sodomites of the male sort, not because they were homosexuals of the female variety. "Find one verse," said one of the two, "that clearly states the punishment came on account of lesbians!" So I went home and decided not to. Perhaps it is for the best. I mean breast, I mean best, sorry!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">4.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Eventually, however, all our experts in the field came to the same conclusion: education could only help the educated - and was, therefore, utterly pointless. "Education is just plain, old rubbish!" said a senior Education Studies expert, "It's a myth, for the most part, and a waste of time too - unless you're educated, in which case you're already educated and so, don't even need it! I mean, you</span><i style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> see</i><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> how it's just dumb?" </span><br style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;" /><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">"Educated people, by the way, are quite condescending towards others, towards those who aren't; actually, they're even condescending towards their own kind, once they "specialize", but by and large they seem to think only education is important. Narcissists, all of them, self obsessed!" said Professor Abdus Salam (not related to obel nay ize-winner pray). He further stated that, "Maybe ignorance is really important. I mean, were the dinosaurs educated? Were they? No! Try to be a</span><i style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> little</i><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> less arrogant, for God's sake! I mean was God educated? Did God go to Harvard? No! Humanity clearly </span><i style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">pre-dates</i><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> education! So, let that be a lesson to you." </span><br style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;" /><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Education has, after much heated debate, been abolished and is no longer considered the bee's ankles.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">5.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 14px;">my side, center-right - leaning more towards the right -, is large in numbers but inarticulate. it is not impossible to defend it, but it is futile to do so because it is ignorant and self destructive - an elephant rampaging in a minefield. what the other sides, center-left and left, have, for the most part, is cold, and what appears to be, reason. what the center-right needs to regain is rhetoric, but rhetoric informed by knowledge and nuance - for cosmetic purposes. historically, rhetoric has always trumped reason. and though i find that to be disturbing, because of what that says about humanity, i have yet to find any reason that is not dependent or even rooted in rhetoric - for they too must rely on their poets and their martyrs! - except that it is always necessarily intellectually dishonest about it. ultimately, their smattering of statistics and sound arguments mean nothing to People. it all comes down to whose narrative creeps inside their gut and gives their soul a squeeze. victory, therefore, whatever it may mean in the times to come, is assured us. an insignificant minority will continue to scream bloody murder, but that is, as it has always been and always will be, ineffectual and unimportant. this minority exists only as a means of keeping us on our toes and must be treated with the kindness that any purveyor of free goods must be. it must be humoured wholeheartedly and generously allowed to flourish, because it simply cannot. it will exist to have lost, always</span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 14px;">. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">- facts are rubbish. they tell us nothing. life is much too random. facts are farts in a gale. </span></div>
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<o:p><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">6.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">I remember reading a parable about a lion and a cow or a rabbit and some other animal, perhaps a wolf and a mouse perhaps. And so, one day the cow or rabbit and the wolf, if indeed it was a wolf, and the mouse, chanced upon a tasty treat that was just lying there in the jungle. So they brought it to the lion because he was the king, and they said, "King lion, here is a tasty treat that we found lying over there in the jungle, and we thought we would share it with you because you are the king and we your loyal subjects." The lion looked at the tasty treat and then looked at his loyal subjects and then said, "So, how do you see it divided, this tasty treat that you have brought." The first to speak was the wolf, if the animal I am thinking of was, in fact, a wolf. "I say, my lord, your highness, that in the spirit of equality, fair play and justice, we should divide this here tasty treat amongst ourselves equally so that everyone could partake and be pleased and so no one feels left out or wronged or etc., and you know, it's for the best and harmony and yeah." The lion killed the wolf, that is to say IF the animal in question was really a wolf, because it may well have been a panther or something, and then he ate it. The bear, or whichever animal was next, said then, "Personally, your majesty, I feel that since, you're the king, you should have the largest share and then the rest of us should just divide the tasty treat in proportion to our respective sizes, respectfully. I mean, it just makes sense and you're king and some of us are large and have needs and others are smaller and have fewer needs, so, yes. That’s what I think, personally. It’s my point of view." The lion killed the bear as well and ate it. A third animal proposed a third means of dividing the tasty treat and things seemed to be going well for him till he started talking about his preferred methodology and of course the ontological and epistemological concerns etc., at which point the lion killed him too. Eventually the cow or rabbit or mouse or some such animal suggested the following: "King, you are the lion, I mean, you are the king, your highness, and the king is king, which is sort of tautological but what I mean to say is, who am I to say which way is best? You’re the king, yes? THE king! You decide whatever you want to decide. The tasty treat is yours. You keep the entire thing if you like. Nobody has the right to say anything about it. Just, it's yours. You. Yours. It’s so yours it's not even funny. You know what I’m saying? We’re just, you know, loyal subjects. So. You decide!" The lion was very pleased with the answer and said, "Yes, indeed. I AM the king." And then he divided up the tasty treat among whatever loyal subjects remained and he divided it in such a way that all were satisfied. That’s right. They were all satisfied. And they had better <i>be</i> satisfied. And they were.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">- Divine Logic</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">7.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The floor was made entirely out of glass. So, when the Queen
finally appeared at the King's court for the first time, she raised her dress
up to her ankles and took her shoes off. She had never seen glass before and
assumed it was very wet. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">'Must I get used to this," smiling all the time she
sighed inside.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">'Wait till she finds out it isn't wet,' thought the king to
himself, inwardly amused.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Quite so, this particular king was known as the smartest
king of all time. He understood life in terms of moves and thought of it at
least seven moves ahead of everybody else. He, at times, felt what is known now
as 'The Time Traveller's Guilt' or 'Do I Dare Disturb the Universe?'<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<o:p><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></o:p></div>
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<o:p><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">8.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">There was a candle there, on the table. Also, a man stood
there, with his head bowed over it, eyes closed. Some men's faces age nobly, he was one of those.
The spectre of a woman appeared, seated, beside the table, in front of the man
who had just now opened his eyes to see the woman who had appeared in front of
him, spectral and dark. Shadows managed to slip every which way to accommodate
the newcomer. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">"I was having a nightmare," spoke the spectral woman. She
was very bored.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">"Indeed?" replied the man. He was taller than most
things.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">"Yes, in fact, in that dream, I was sitting right
here."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">"Do you seek rest, then?"<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<o:p><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></o:p></div>
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<o:p><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">9. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">you wear it like a dress, so well,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">- a fancy one that you have found -<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">what they've been wearing b'neath their clothes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">except that theirs don't keep them warm<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">so sing your borrowed local poetry<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">make your outlook socialist.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">preach t' th' poor 'bout poverty<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">let them know what they have missed</span></div>
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<o:p><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"> 10.</span></o:p><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">"I find the views and sentiments expressed by Pakistani ex-pats, whether these are positive or negative, to be contemptible at best. They know nothing. I shit on their collective opinion. I say, 'Come back and say it in this climate or just shut up and keep sending dollars back home. That is your purpose, not commentary.'"<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">- Dr. Abdus Salam</span></div>
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11.</div>
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<o:p><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">some people you may know</span></o:p></div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">grow up in gardens <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">pluck up their courage<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">like fruit or like flowers<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">they harden their shoulders<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">and lift heavy boulders<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">some people you may know </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">fall off of mountains<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">and land in the desert<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">and walk to the ocean<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">then swim to the point where the sea meets the sky<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">some people you may know</span><o:p></o:p></div>
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12.<br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">"My religion allows me to kill people who think their religion allows them to kill people."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">- Zindagi to Tum Bhi Ho.</span><br />
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Duckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07260336782916718641noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5171188484461455105.post-85911278879812805542013-05-12T08:46:00.003-07:002013-05-12T09:00:40.295-07:00Heavy Lies the Crown and a Short Short Story<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<h2 style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But first, a word from our sponsors:</span></h2>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
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<h2 style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: small; line-height: 14px;">ZP Weed!</span></span></h2>
<span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 14px;">Our weed is specially selected from a fine crop of golden-dust-grown plants developed with the molten chocolate specifications of the customer in mind - and body! We pride ourselves in our understanding of your needs. And we leave no leaf unturned when it comes to acquiring private information about you - if that's what it'll take to get the job done, of course! </span><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 14px;">We know who lives on your block, in your house, in your home! <br />We know! What's Under the ceiling, Behind the two poster wall. We know what you know. How fat or how tall! And we know what you think! </span><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 14px;">We are always watching you, Dear Customer, because we are rooted in the soil you walk on, build on, live on and get buried in. Rest assured, we have been watching you for millennia uncounted with each of our careful approximations of you lasting no less than the span of the studious gaze of evolution itself - the mother of quiet deliberation and of all measured action. That's right! Each leaf is perfectly and</span><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; display: inline; line-height: 14px;"> uniquely suited to you. So, come on down and sample some of the home made stuff, the good stuff, the gone stuff.</span></span><br />
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; display: inline; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: small; line-height: 14px;">The Swirling Depths of Infinity!</span></span></h3>
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; display: inline; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; line-height: 14px;"><br />We promise you an endless barrage of colour, of motion, of don't raise your head right now or you'll get nauseous! and the wow that was brilliantly synchronized!<br />So, don't worry, don't be paranoid, turn left!</span></span><br />
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; display: inline; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: small; line-height: 14px;">Turn Left...</span></span></h3>
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; display: inline; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; line-height: 14px;"><br />...and reach out! Just a little farther. Just a little more dangling from the husk of your former self! Don't think about it foolish lovely! You are quite the foolish lovely aren't you?</span></span><br />
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; display: inline; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: small; line-height: 14px;">Mix That Concoction Won't You?</span></span></h3>
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; display: inline; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; line-height: 14px;"><br />The value of pie is three point quite yum two ate more pie this road is too long. If we decelerate any faster your internal organs will fly out of your chest in slow motion.</span></span><br />
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; display: inline; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: small; line-height: 14px;">Relax the Sky is Blue!</span></span></h3>
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; display: inline; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; line-height: 14px;"><br />The trip is almost over, almost but not quite! So, hey! Don't forget to shop at stores that shelf your favourite weed:<br />ZP Weed - the most ubiquitous weed never noticed!<br />Cheers! Complaints and Suggestions: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx</span></span><br />
<span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; display: inline; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;"><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span>
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<span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; display: inline; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">.</span></span><br />
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<span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; display: inline; line-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And now, back to the show:</span></span></h2>
<span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; display: inline; line-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
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<span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; display: inline; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #333333; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">by that time it was clear as day that survival beyond, say, ten, would be impossible, or, at the very least, extremely painful. by day fifteen, you'd be a sort of gooey meat smoothie in a wrinkly bag, leaking plasma as you sloshed around distastefully towards oblivion. by then, the Government stopped trying to calm people down - or just generally it stopped being a bother. It, that is to say Government, stepped down from the position of a vaguely unsettling abstraction and became people again. It was pointed out with odd, grim hubris how it took an apocalypse to bring that most desirable change about. </span><br style="color: #333333; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;" /><span style="color: #333333; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">i suppose, at the root of it, money was as valuable as cooking pot tops - actually no, it was less sonorous, and therefore of no worth at all. I mean, of course, it had always been rubbish but we stopped pretending otherwise, you see, and that made all the difference. although, admittedly, it made no difference at all at that juncture. </span><br style="color: #333333; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;" /><span style="color: #333333; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">i personally played a cooking pot top to great effect once the skins on musical instruments politely, but not gradually, vanished. much to my father's chagrin. chagrin is the kind of word you come to recognize way before you learn to pronounce it. the latter you learn by happenstance.</span><br style="color: #333333; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;" /><span style="color: #333333; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">you would assume incidents of mass looting or people holding hands and so forth, but no, not really. In fact, one of my best sisters went to a room that wasn't - in some ways, at least - even in our house, and did not say why, did not come back, did not laugh either. how do i even begin to explain this? i imagine there were throw pillows and colour, but that could not possibly be true since i went there and there was only a petulant shadow spreading its arms and lengths over all things - as if to say, 'mine!'. It conveyed nothing. </span><br style="color: #333333; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;" /><span style="color: #333333; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">i went up there with my friend - i will not pretend to remember him - and we met a man who sniggered, an older cousin who knew exactly who we were, once we told him who we were, and who got it all wrong for a joke, i suppose. he had muscles and smoked. at that point it was OK. </span><br style="color: #333333; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;" /><span style="color: #333333; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">we sat there in that room, talking about this and that, waiting that interminable wait for the inevitable sickness to set in, waiting for symptoms to become manifest, rather like waiting for a drug to begin its effect - the nervous excitement that entails being very aware of your own breathing and sensory etc. and somebody said we should probably go see what mother was up to. we found her strolling in the garden at night. she met us with all good humour and smiles and with parched lips said she wanted to go to the park. since that was where i was headed anyway, it worked out well. </span><br style="color: #333333; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;" /><span style="color: #333333; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">there were many veiled and sweatered women in the park walking in the brownianest of motion it seemed. identically attired, they were trying to be as disconcerting as reflections. i enjoyed their cheerful lady size steps as they traversed and conversed in "hello" and "hello" and were all exactly the same. that was the first time i realized that in every woman's closet there must be at least one ensemble that every other woman also owns. this could've been said better, but it wasn't supposed to be an aphorism. aphorisms had failed. </span><br style="color: #333333; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;" /><span style="color: #333333; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">i remember watching the state police drag a man all the way to somewhere between two motorcycles held aloft like so. almost as if he were being helped over a puddle it seemed. i was always a little concerned about being stopped or asked questions - but we drove in our lane and we turned when we were supposed to. my mother and i and driver. </span><br style="color: #333333; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;" /><span style="color: #333333; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">there was not much traffic. a fast car would pass us by like an arrow. but it meant nothing except a peculiar kind of lonely. it was just silly. perhaps, and it is quite odd to think of it, but my sister's self exile into the unroom was what made me feel that the entire planet was marked by a profound sense of loss. or perhaps that was just the apocalypse. she wasn't angry at us or anything like that. that is, or was, i suppose, how she wanted to spend her time. that time was quite unequivocally hers, i'd assume. perhaps that is, or was, what she had actually wanted. she was quite the dreamer, that one.</span><br style="color: #333333; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;" /><span style="color: #333333; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">i remember staring at my mother's fingers as her rings turned black and nails fell out. and i won't deny that it repulsed me and i won't lie that i did not hold her hand anyway. because why the hell not! my father disliked the noise of the cooking pot top. but he put up with it - barely, like a bear. he was relieved when the skin had melted off the percussive (this is how i avoid saying tabla - in fucking italics!) instruments initially but then this master told me to sort of hold the skin and stretch it over to play on like a weaver ant holding leaves, but eventually the skin just dripped liquid and so then the cooking pot top was taken out and i beat out this really nice melody that made the master speak in elaborate sexual metaphors. that, perhaps, more than anything else, bothered, no, no, it was just the sound. he hated the cacophony, my father i mean.</span><br style="color: #333333; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;" /><span style="color: #333333; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">the identical women in the park in their identical periwinkle knitted sweaters with identical patterns and their (the women's) dull grey veils walked in brownian motion around objects that turned, well, green. the kind that glows that is. and nobody fought. in the last days, everyone was looking inward and seeing out. it was patiently and desperately expected that someone somewhere would suddenly wake up and the nightmare would be over. someone else would wake up, you see. that was the key to a good last ten days. the quietest of desperation. the kind that stares.</span></span></span><br />
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<h2 style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="line-height: 17px;">A Song:</span></span></h2>
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<span id=".reactRoot[430].[1][4][1]{comment10151424724329422_26450918}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][1]" style="font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;"> </span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id=".reactRoot[430].[1][4][1]{comment10151424724329422_26450918}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2]"><span class="UFICommentBody" id=".reactRoot[430].[1][4][1]{comment10151424724329422_26450918}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span id=".reactRoot[430].[1][4][1]{comment10151424724329422_26450918}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[0]"><span id=".reactRoot[430].[1][4][1]{comment10151424724329422_26450918}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[0].[0]">heavy lies the crown</span><br id=".reactRoot[430].[1][4][1]{comment10151424724329422_26450918}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[0].[1]" /><span id=".reactRoot[430].[1][4][1]{comment10151424724329422_26450918}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[0].[2]">the king who wields the weapon</span><br id=".reactRoot[430].[1][4][1]{comment10151424724329422_26450918}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[0].[3]" /><span id=".reactRoot[430].[1][4][1]{comment10151424724329422_26450918}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[0].[4]">yet cannot command without</span><br id=".reactRoot[430].[1][4][1]{comment10151424724329422_26450918}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[0].[5]" /><span id=".reactRoot[430].[1][4][1]{comment10151424724329422_26450918}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[0].[6]">a clown to run his kingdom</span><br id=".reactRoot[430].[1][4][1]{comment10151424724329422_26450918}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[0].[7]" /><span id=".reactRoot[430].[1][4][1]{comment10151424724329422_26450918}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[0].[8]">he'd take the banners down</span></span><span id=".reactRoot[430].[1][4][1]{comment10151424724329422_26450918}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3]"><span id=".reactRoot[430].[1][4][1]{comment10151424724329422_26450918}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0"><br id=".reactRoot[430].[1][4][1]{comment10151424724329422_26450918}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[0]" /><span id=".reactRoot[430].[1][4][1]{comment10151424724329422_26450918}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[1]">and hope that in the end there</span><br id=".reactRoot[430].[1][4][1]{comment10151424724329422_26450918}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[2]" /><span id=".reactRoot[430].[1][4][1]{comment10151424724329422_26450918}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[3]">when his story's coming round</span><br id=".reactRoot[430].[1][4][1]{comment10151424724329422_26450918}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[4]" /><span id=".reactRoot[430].[1][4][1]{comment10151424724329422_26450918}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[5]">there will be words of wisdom</span><br id=".reactRoot[430].[1][4][1]{comment10151424724329422_26450918}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[6]" /><span id=".reactRoot[430].[1][4][1]{comment10151424724329422_26450918}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[7]">At least a word of welcome</span><br id=".reactRoot[430].[1][4][1]{comment10151424724329422_26450918}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[8]" /><span id=".reactRoot[430].[1][4][1]{comment10151424724329422_26450918}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[9]">though perhaps devoid of sound</span><br id=".reactRoot[430].[1][4][1]{comment10151424724329422_26450918}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[10]" /><span id=".reactRoot[430].[1][4][1]{comment10151424724329422_26450918}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[11]">but someone must've said</span><br id=".reactRoot[430].[1][4][1]{comment10151424724329422_26450918}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[12]" /><span id=".reactRoot[430].[1][4][1]{comment10151424724329422_26450918}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[13]">Hey, look! how heavy lies the crown!</span><br id=".reactRoot[430].[1][4][1]{comment10151424724329422_26450918}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[14]" /><br id=".reactRoot[430].[1][4][1]{comment10151424724329422_26450918}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[15]" /><span id=".reactRoot[430].[1][4][1]{comment10151424724329422_26450918}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[16]">heavy lies the crown</span><br id=".reactRoot[430].[1][4][1]{comment10151424724329422_26450918}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[17]" /><span id=".reactRoot[430].[1][4][1]{comment10151424724329422_26450918}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[18]">upon the brow that furrows</span><br id=".reactRoot[430].[1][4][1]{comment10151424724329422_26450918}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[19]" /><span id=".reactRoot[430].[1][4][1]{comment10151424724329422_26450918}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[20]">everytime he puts it on</span><br id=".reactRoot[430].[1][4][1]{comment10151424724329422_26450918}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[21]" /><span id=".reactRoot[430].[1][4][1]{comment10151424724329422_26450918}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[22]">though heavier sleeps the conscience</span><br id=".reactRoot[430].[1][4][1]{comment10151424724329422_26450918}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[23]" /><span id=".reactRoot[430].[1][4][1]{comment10151424724329422_26450918}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[24]">of the ego of the proud</span><br id=".reactRoot[430].[1][4][1]{comment10151424724329422_26450918}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[25]" /><span id=".reactRoot[430].[1][4][1]{comment10151424724329422_26450918}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[26]">a stroll there with the queen</span><br id=".reactRoot[430].[1][4][1]{comment10151424724329422_26450918}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[27]" /><span id=".reactRoot[430].[1][4][1]{comment10151424724329422_26450918}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[28]">to go survey the royal grounds</span><br id=".reactRoot[430].[1][4][1]{comment10151424724329422_26450918}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[29]" /><span id=".reactRoot[430].[1][4][1]{comment10151424724329422_26450918}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[30]">and look beside the courtiers</span><br id=".reactRoot[430].[1][4][1]{comment10151424724329422_26450918}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[31]" /><span id=".reactRoot[430].[1][4][1]{comment10151424724329422_26450918}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[32]">there are eyes that can be found</span><br id=".reactRoot[430].[1][4][1]{comment10151424724329422_26450918}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[33]" /><span id=".reactRoot[430].[1][4][1]{comment10151424724329422_26450918}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[34]">eyes look but do not see</span><br id=".reactRoot[430].[1][4][1]{comment10151424724329422_26450918}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[35]" /><span id=".reactRoot[430].[1][4][1]{comment10151424724329422_26450918}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[36]">appraise but cannot feel</span><br id=".reactRoot[430].[1][4][1]{comment10151424724329422_26450918}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[37]" /><span id=".reactRoot[430].[1][4][1]{comment10151424724329422_26450918}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[38]">that though light as light can be</span><br id=".reactRoot[430].[1][4][1]{comment10151424724329422_26450918}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[39]" /><span id=".reactRoot[430].[1][4][1]{comment10151424724329422_26450918}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[40]">just how heavy lies the crown.</span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span></span>
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<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">And now for the news:</span></span></span></h2>
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<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span></span></div>
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<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I do not understand smart people who are not smart enough to know that sometimes the smart thing isn't the smartest thing to do. (vote pti):</span></span></span></div>
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<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;">I</span><br style="background-color: white; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;">i wanted all points of view - perhaps because i wanted to know the truth or because i was afraid of being wrong - and for that i had to begin somewhere; so, i began with what interested me most. </span><br style="background-color: white; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;">you and i doubt if beginnings of this sort can ever be objective because etc but still, you and i understand that a beginning etc. </span><br style="background-color: white; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;" /><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; display: inline; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;">II<br />points of view are very hard to gain. they require you to scoop out nearly all your internal organs every time, set them all in rows in front of you to be stared at till they begin wriggling of their own accord and then you must patiently wait while they inch their squirmy way back into your body. this was a metaphor. also, those who begin with, "I for one..." will rarely not disappoint in their private capacity as organisms of interest. this is a point of view - but for some reason, not a good one.<br /><br />III<br /><br />some points of view are contrary to reason - which is not to say insignificant - and harder to stare at. their wriggling seems diseased. they are unsettling points of view and yet for you to pretend that they are steeped in stupidity, is stupidity, but a valid point of view - maybe.<br /><br />IV<br /><br />some points of view are just as valid as others and a choice between this one or that must be based on some brand of faith - which is not a dirty word. some points of view are unacceptable. you cannot have them. therefore you cannot have them.<br /><br />V<br /><br />Rocket Man is a brilliant song that was billions of evolutionary years in the making - as was Hips Don't Lie. And which of your Lord's favours will you deny? so many points of view. it is like a mattress full of fluff being shot at with an automatic weapon.<br /><br />VI<br /><br />because all points of view cannot be had simultaneously, we must huddle together, suspicious and perhaps obnoxious, and be alone.<br /><br />V<br /><br />honesty is da bezt polici.<br /><br />VI<br /><br />at any given time, you are a hero, the answer to the question of life, and also a complete fucking moron. this is a point of view.<br /><br />VII<br /><br />you are somewhere.<br />this may or not be where i am.<br />let us converse.</span></span></span></div>
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<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">That's All Folks!</span></span></span></h2>
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Duckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07260336782916718641noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5171188484461455105.post-90586489121532653382012-11-17T03:28:00.002-08:002013-03-13T15:56:01.667-07:00Moth<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 14px;">I, when I was a moth,</span><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 14px;">I went to the moon,</span><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 14px;">I planned a plot,</span><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 14px;">Alone in my room, a dot on the wall.</span><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 14px;">I, would the eye of a child</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Pluck out and steal, slip out unseen.<br />Surrounded by beams of a silvery hue,<br />I’d live, and outlive and then die on the moon;<br />Thrive on the whitewashed wall in my room.<br /><br />I, when I was a moth,<br />I took out an eye,<br />Replaced it with yours;<br />Then to my surprise did I see it all!<br />There were flies in the ointment,<br />And ears on the wall,<br />There were lies and lies and lies on the moon;<br />Some of them were false, while some of them were true:<br />Trying their wings in the light of the moon.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">(final version)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">iTroll</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;">Like a fly to a turd </span><br style="background-color: white; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;">I'm attracted to your stupidity. </span><br style="background-color: white; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;">I wish to settle on it, gently, almost unfelt </span><br style="background-color: white; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;">And then throw up all over it. </span><br style="background-color: white; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;">Then when my vomit has marinated your fecund little thoughts, </span><br style="background-color: white; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;" /><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; display: inline; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;">I want to suck them right up<br />Like shit from a straw.<br />No one knows how it works,<br />But I get to fly around being an asshole,<br />While you get typhoid or cholera or some such shit. </span></span>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Arse Poetica:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">I'm an asstronomer,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">In love with asstrology.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">If I were your asstronaut, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Would you put your </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Asstroname?</span><br />
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Iwuzgoing<br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 14px;">i was going</span><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 14px;">the wind was blowing</span><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 14px;">a cow was lowing </span><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 14px;">a breast was showing</span><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 14px;">the milk was flowing</span><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 14px;" /><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; display: inline; line-height: 14px;">and the farmer sowing<br />his wife was hoeing<br />the field was growing<br />the truck was towing<br />the car was slowing<br />the horn was blowing<br />like a crow who's crowing<br />at the all unknowing<br />and it started snowing<br />while the sun was glowing<br />on the boatman rowing<br />owing to the fact that</span></span><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 14px;">i was going</span> </span></div>
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Duckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07260336782916718641noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5171188484461455105.post-70868094801462738242012-02-18T08:10:00.001-08:002012-04-09T06:10:06.234-07:00Passel o' Moo<span ><span style="font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px;"><br /></span></span>Duckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07260336782916718641noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5171188484461455105.post-18650017712692567262011-12-15T07:22:00.000-08:002012-02-23T06:37:27.080-08:00To Animals<span style="line-height: 14px; "><span><div style="font-weight: normal; "><b><span>O' Noble Cat!</span></b></div><div style="font-weight: bold; "><span><br /></span></div><div style="font-weight: normal; "><span>O' noble Cat, nine times blessed, do tell:</span></div><div style="font-weight: normal; "><span>How dost thou lick thy balls in times as fraught as these</span></div><div style="font-weight: normal; "><span>With draught, famine, flood and fire? How canst thou be</span></div><div style="font-weight: normal; "><span>So dedicated to thy morning wood? Man has let his</span></div><div style="font-weight: normal; "><span>Wander to the ends of Earth but not as yet can he </span></div><div style="font-weight: normal; "><span>Do with his tongue what thou canst do with thine.</span></div><div style="font-weight: normal; "><span>O noble Cat, if I but could, you know I would lick mine.</span></div><div style="font-weight: bold; "><span><br /></span></div><div style="font-weight: bold; "><span><br /></span></div><div style="font-weight: bold; "><span><br /></span></div><div style="font-weight: normal; "><b><span>Tea at Ate</span></b></div><div style="font-weight: bold; "><span><br /></span></div><div style="font-weight: normal; "><span>- '...Sooner or later, Mister Alligator,</span></div><div style="font-weight: normal; "><span>They'll all make a line</span></div><div style="font-weight: normal; "><span>- A sign of the time - And walk on down</span></div><div style="font-weight: normal; "><span>Right into your mouth, past all of your teeth</span></div><div style="font-weight: normal; "><span>Move along your spine,</span></div><div style="font-weight: normal; "><span>Till they hit at the last, the end of the road,</span></div><div style="font-weight: normal; "><span>And you shit them all out! An insufferable load</span></div><div style="font-weight: normal; "><span>That thought that you were...that...Oh this, and that...'</span></div><div style="font-weight: normal; "><span><br /></span></div><div style="font-weight: normal; "><span>- 'Be quiet, Mister Cat!'</span></div><div style="font-weight: bold; "><span><br /></span></div><div style="font-weight: bold; "><span><br /></span></div><div style="font-weight: bold; "><span>Genesis</span></div><div style="font-weight: bold; "><span><br /></span></div><div style="font-weight: normal; "><span>The bird that sat </span></div><div style="font-weight: normal; "><span>Sneezed at last, and it was as if </span></div><div style="font-weight: normal; "><span>The tree had shuddered - but had not really!</span></div><div style="font-weight: normal; "><span>The snake that slithered round and round the massive trunk</span></div><div style="font-weight: normal; "><span>Slipped and fell upon the ground with a sudden thud.</span></div><div style="font-weight: normal; "><span>A sound was heard: the fluttering of wings, and other things</span></div><div style="font-weight: normal; "><span>A creature besides, far away, singing.</span></div><div style="font-weight: normal; "><span>An elephant lumbered its hungry way across the plain</span></div><div style="font-weight: normal; "><span>And everything else was much the same.</span></div><div style="font-weight: normal; "><span>But somewhere, up there, behind the starry skies</span></div><div style="font-weight: normal; "><span>A lot of gossip going on, back and forth, about right and wrong.</span></div><div style="font-weight: bold; "><span><br /></span></div><div style="font-weight: bold; "><span><br /></span></div><div style="font-weight: bold; "><span><br /></span></div><div style="font-weight: bold; "><span>O' Bed</span></div><div style="font-weight: bold; "><span><br /></span></div><div style="font-weight: normal; "><span>O' Bed! You lusty old fool! </span></div><div style="font-weight: normal; "><span>In whose soft embrace all foolish dreams come</span></div><div style="font-weight: normal; "><span>True! </span></div><div style="font-weight: normal; "><span>In sleep, when I all moral thought suspend,</span></div><div style="font-weight: normal; "><span>What lechery </span></div><div style="font-weight: normal; "><span>Wilt thou not for me portend!</span></div><div style="font-weight: normal; "><span>My Mattress Mistress, Misfit I</span></div><div style="font-weight: normal; "><span>Ready to come and ready to die.</span></div><div style="font-weight: bold; "><span><br /></span></div><div style="font-weight: bold; "><span><br /></span></div><div style="font-weight: bold; "><span><br /></span></div><div style="font-weight: bold; "><span>For Sale...But Not Worth It!</span></div><div style="font-weight: bold; "><span><br /></span></div><div style="font-weight: normal; "><span>O' you and I, we sell ourselves short,</span></div><div style="font-weight: normal; "><span>Afraid of advertising false; furious,</span></div><div style="font-weight: normal; "><span>When the would-be buyer falls for our honest pitch</span></div><div style="font-weight: normal; "><span>And leaves us there upon the shelf,</span></div><div style="font-weight: normal; "><span>And shuffles off in search of shit.</span></div><div style="font-weight: normal; "><span>Come, we shall our curious talent mourn</span></div><div style="font-weight: normal; "><span>And call a Heart a Spade.</span></div><div style="font-weight: normal; "><span><br /></span></div><div style="font-weight: normal; "><br /></div><div style="font-weight: normal; "><span><b>Mice</b></span></div><div style="font-weight: normal; "><span><br /></span></div><div><span><span style="font-weight: normal; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 11px; background-color: rgb(237, 239, 244); ">We tried to be modest...we did! </span><br style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 11px; background-color: rgb(237, 239, 244); "><span style="font-weight: normal; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 11px; background-color: rgb(237, 239, 244); ">But you were such a bad person</span><br style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 11px; background-color: rgb(237, 239, 244); "><span style="font-weight: normal; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 11px; background-color: rgb(237, 239, 244); ">That we collectively decided </span><br style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 11px; background-color: rgb(237, 239, 244); "><span style="font-weight: normal; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 11px; background-color: rgb(237, 239, 244); ">To rub it, our brains, in your face</span><br style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 11px; background-color: rgb(237, 239, 244); "><span style="font-weight: normal; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 11px; background-color: rgb(237, 239, 244); ">And to not even rhyme; </span><br style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 11px; background-color: rgb(237, 239, 244); "><span style="font-weight: normal; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 11px; background-color: rgb(237, 239, 244); ">But be better and more interesting</span><br style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 11px; background-color: rgb(237, 239, 244); "><span style="font-weight: normal; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 11px; background-color: rgb(237, 239, 244); ">Than you could ever hope to be.</span><br style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 11px; background-color: rgb(237, 239, 244); "><span style="font-weight: normal; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 11px; background-color: rgb(237, 239, 244); ">To be sublime,</span><br style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 11px; background-color: rgb(237, 239, 244); "><span style="font-weight: normal; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 11px; background-color: rgb(237, 239, 244); ">To steal your first born from its mother's womb,</span><br style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 11px; background-color: rgb(237, 239, 244); "><span style="font-weight: normal; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 11px; background-color: rgb(237, 239, 244); ">And leave a ticking time bomb in its place;</span><br style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 11px; background-color: rgb(237, 239, 244); "><span style="font-weight: normal; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 11px; background-color: rgb(237, 239, 244); ">Your wife, your cocoon, your analgesics,</span><br style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 11px; background-color: rgb(237, 239, 244); "><span style="font-weight: normal; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 11px; background-color: rgb(237, 239, 244); ">Your total and complete inability to perform...</span><br style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 11px; background-color: rgb(237, 239, 244); "><span style="font-weight: normal; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 11px; background-color: rgb(237, 239, 244); ">(We got your girlfriend off two stops back by the way) </span><br style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 11px; background-color: rgb(237, 239, 244); "><span style="font-weight: normal; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 11px; background-color: rgb(237, 239, 244); ">There she is, back there, alone, on the platform.</span><br style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 11px; background-color: rgb(237, 239, 244); "><span style="font-weight: normal; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 11px; background-color: rgb(237, 239, 244); ">Tell her where you've been...go on,</span><br style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 11px; background-color: rgb(237, 239, 244); "><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 11px; background-color: rgb(237, 239, 244); ">If you have the balls...tell her<br />What's wrong...<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><b>Talent? Addiction?<br /></b><br />Bottle full of sound.</span><br style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><span style="font-weight: normal; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">Drunk.</span><br style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><span style="font-weight: normal; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">Throwing up a melody:</span><br style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><span style="font-weight: normal; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">Dehydrated dissonance;</span><br style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><span style="font-weight: normal; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">Hungover on a Tuesday.</span><br style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><span class="text_exposed_show" style="font-weight: normal; display: inline; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><br />Rehab around the corner;<br />And I have found a corner.<br />Somewhere to belong;<br />Never sing another song!<br /><br />But the bottle full of sound...<br />Drunk!</span> </span></span></div></span></span>Duckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07260336782916718641noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5171188484461455105.post-16672275223262771812011-09-08T15:38:00.000-07:002011-09-08T15:53:48.035-07:00Join Now!<span style="font-family:times new roman;">Join now, we’re losing touch<br />These visions are for free </span><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">It’s all profitable, and diabolical<br />And so absolutely free<br /><br />Join now,<br />She says,<br />The internet for me.<br /><br />The alternative is no palliative<br />It’s too living breathing real<br />The people are politer here<br />They click it when they feel<br /><br />Join now,<br />She says,<br />The internet for me.<br /><br />Revolutionized and satirized<br />And cauterized and free<br />Remember that old friend who died?<br />He’s still online you see.<br /><br />Join now,<br />She says,<br />The internet for me.<br /><br />We're going places, leaving traces<br />We’re really moving on<br />We’re going meta, going fat<br />We’re going going gone<br /><br />Join now,<br />She used to say,<br />The internet,<br />To me.<br />---------------------------------------</span><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;"><br /></span><span style="font-family:times new roman;">Because indeed Richard A. was dying<br />And Ram das coming home,<br />The psychological mountain side<br />Rang up his telephone:<br /><br />"We’re calling you to let you know<br />To let you go, to let you go.<br />We’re making room from far away<br />And you’re no longer in control."<br /><br />And when Ram das rode in on his bike,<br />The rhododendrons sang;<br />The valley filled with life anew<br />And gushing rivers sprang.<br /><br />And do I dare sum up then<br />This miscellaneous event?<br />Ram das spoke thus to himself:<br />"And do I dare what I’ve done?"<br /><br />When Richard met him at the door,<br />They were then as good as one,<br />For he was dead upon his feet,<br />And Ram das had returned.<br /><br /></span>----------------------------------<br /><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;"></span><span style="font-family:times new roman;">I took a picture once last fall<br />a two dimensional affair that we had<br />you had different hair back then<br />I was not there in the frame<br />I was nowhere to be seen<br />but I’m sure I was involved.<br />I guess it’s ok after all.<br /><br />and in the background there it is<br />playing softly as it were<br />the song that played you out of scene<br />and that is just as it should be<br />and it has been<br />it has been lovely knowing you<br /><br />The desk is as it was back then<br />the books have not been rearranged<br />I couldn’t bring myself to wipe<br />any old coffee stains you left<br />but I don’t ever go in there<br />or maybe that’s just where I live<br /><br />and in the background there it is<br />playing softly as it were<br />the song that played you out of scene<br />and that is just as it should be<br />and it has been<br />it has been lovely knowing you<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:times new roman;">---------------------------------------<br />I’m a bear witness out here in the woods<br />Nobody gonna ever even know<br />Hell I shit out here or I dance the peacock<br />Ain't nobody here to watch the show<br /><br />I'm a free bear, witness in the woods<br />Lookin round at a crime or two<br /><br />I'm an old lion, main linin' a while<br />And my heroin's a gettin stale<br />But I rode the rails an' I done never fail<br />I gotta spot the trained gazelle<br /><br />I'm an old lion, main linin the woods<br />Ain't a bear here watchin me go<br /><br />I'm a sick soul on the forest floor<br />They just left me here to lie<br />And I spoke to the moon in the transition phase<br />She was just as lonely as I<br /><br />I'm a sick soul on the forest floor<br />Ain't a bear here watchin me die<br /><br />I'm a huntin' sport, tha's what I do<br />I got my trophies up on th' wall<br />I'm a bag me a lion, an a bear, an a soul<br />I'm a shoot at th' moon till she falls<br /><br />I'm a hunter man, an' I shoot to kill<br />All my problems is reasonably solved.<br /><br />-------------------------------------------<br /><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">Her words are alcohol<br />and I’ve been driving drunk<br />going round the bends at times<br />I was not too confident<br />but her words are alcohol<br />and she’s a friend.<br />when the evening turns to night<br />and the night becomes a strain<br />when I miss the morning bus<br />and the fiscal plan’s insane<br />I go to her and fuck it all<br />cause her words are alcohol<br />and she’s a friend.<br /></span><br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:times new roman;"></span>Duckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07260336782916718641noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5171188484461455105.post-85504449179045291872011-07-09T22:23:00.000-07:002011-07-22T21:58:36.666-07:00Translating Manto<span style="font-family:times new roman;"><strong>Black Shalwar<br /></strong><br />Before coming to Delhi she lived at Ambala Cantt where several white men offered her their custom. Because of her interaction with them, she had picked up about ten to fifteen sentences of English. She did not use them in ordinary conversation. But when she arrived in Delhi and her business began to fail, one day, she said to her neighbour, Tamancha Jan: “<em>This life…very bad</em> - I mean it’s a bad life if you can’t find anything to eat,” she explained.<br />At Ambala Cantt her business had done very well. The white men at the Cantt would come to her drunk and within three to four hours she would manage eight to ten of them and earn about twenty to thirty rupees. These white men were a lot better than her countrymen. Though there is no doubt that they spoke a language the meaning of which Sultana could not comprehend; yet, this ignorance of their language was actually quite beneficial for her. If they would demand a concession from her, she would simply shake her head and say: "Sahib, I cannot understand what you are saying.” And if they would ever torment her beyond that which was strictly necessary, she would begin cursing them in her own tongue. And then if they looked bewildered, she would say, “Sahib, you are the disciple of an owl, and a bastard – do you understand!”<br />Of course, whenever she said such things, she would not do so harshly, rather she would intone softly, with great affection – and the white men would laugh, and whenever they laughed they appeared to Sultana to be without doubt the disciples of an owl.<br />But ever since she had come to Delhi, not a single white man had come to her. She had spent three months in this great city of Hindustan about which she had heard so much; about the many Lord Sahibs who resided here and who went to Shimla in the summer. Only six men had come to her; only six, which meant two per month. And of these six customers – may God prevent a lie – she had only charged eighteen and a half rupees. Nobody was willing to pay more than three rupees. Sultana had told five out of these men that her rate was ten rupees, and yet, oddly enough, each one of them had said the same thing: “Bhayi, we will pay not a korri over three rupees.” It was a wonder why all of them had placed her worth at just three rupees. But so it was that when the sixth man arrived she told him at the very outset, “Look, I shall charge three rupees for each time. If you ask for even an iota less, there’ll be no deal. So it’s up to you if you wish to stay, otherwise, go.<br />The sixth man, after listening to this, did not argue, but stopped a while at her place. When after shutting the door to the other room he started taking his coat off, Sultana said: “Here, now give me a rupee for the milk!”<br />She didn’t get a rupee, but he did take out of his pocket, a shiny athhanni of the new king and gave it to her; Sultana quietly accepted it - thinking something, after all, was better than nothing.<br />Eighteen and a half rupees in three months – Twenty rupees a month was just the rent of the room, which the landlord referred to in the English tongue as a flat. This flat had a commode in which, by pulling at a chain, all the filth got washed away by a great surge of water, and it would all disappear down the drain with a lot noise. In the beginning she was terrified of the noise. The first time she had gone to relieve herself in the toilet she had had a great pain in her back. After having purged, when she tried to get up, she grabbed at the chain for support. Initially, while looking at the chain she had thought that since the building had been designed to accommodate very important personages, this must be what the chain was for: so that there would be no difficulty in getting up and one could hold onto it for support. But the moment she grabbed the chain and tried to pull herself up she heard a sharp khhat khhat and water appeared as if out of nowhere with such force and in such a large volume that she started screaming out of fear.<br />Khudabuksh, in the other room, was arranging his photographic paraphernalia and pouring hydroquinone into a clean bottle. When he heard Sultana’s scream, he ran out and asked Sultana: “What happened – did you scream?”<br />Sultana’s heart was beating hard. She said, “Is this a wretched commode or what? Why is there a chain hanging in the middle like on a train? I had a pain in my back; I thought I would use it for support. And I but touched the wretched chain when there was an explosion – and what more should I say!”<br />Khudabaksh laughed a lot at this and then told Sultana all about the newfangled commode system in which pulling the chain let all the filth get sucked deep down underground.<br />How Khudabuksh and Sultana entered into a relationship, is a long and old story. Khudabuksh was from Rawalpindi. After passing his Matriculation exams he learned to drive a lorry. Thus, for four years, he worked driving a lorry between Rawalpindi and Kashmir. And there in Kashmir he became friends with a woman. They eloped and he brought her along with him. Because he couldn’t find a job in Lahore he got the woman into prostitution. This went on for two or three years, and then that woman ran away with someone else. Khudabuksh found out that she was in Ambala. He came out here looking for her and found Sultana instead. Sultana liked him, and so they ended up in a relationship.<br />After Khudabuksh’s arrival, Sultana’s business suddenly picked up. Because the woman was superstitious, she assumed Khudabuksh was a source of good fortune, since his arrival had brought such prosperity to her. This sign of good luck then increased Khudabuksh’s worth in her eyes even more.<br />Khudabuksh was a hardworking man. He did not enjoy sitting idle all day. Therefore he struck up a friendship with a photographer who worked at the railway station taking photos with a one-minute camera. He learned the art of photography from him. He got sixty rupees from Sultana and bought a camera. Slowly but steadily he had a curtain made, and bought two chairs, and then acquired implements with which he could treat his pictures, and consequently he started his own independent enterprise.<br />Work went well, and so, in but a short span of time, he set up his own establishment at the Cantt. Here he took pictures of white men. Within a month he got to know most of the white men who lived in the Cantt area. As a result, he took Sultana there with him. Here in the Cantt, through the machinations of Khudabuksh, several white men became Sultana’s permanent customers.<br />Sultana bought earrings, gold bangles– worth five-and-a-half tolas – and ten to fifteen expensive saaris for herself; soon, the house was suitably furnished and, all in all, she was quite happy at Ambala Cantt. But all of a sudden, Khudabuksh got it into his heart to move to Delhi. And how could Sultana refuse when she thought him to be a source of such good luck? She gladly acquiesced. In fact she thought that in such a vast city of great Lord Sahibs her business was bound to flourish even more. She had already heard Delhi’s praises from her friends. And then there was also the shrine of Nizam-ud-din Auliah, in the blessings of which she had great faith. And so after selling all the heavier household items she accompanied Khudabuksh to Delhi. After reaching the city, Khudabuksh rented this flat at twenty rupees a month, and both of them began living there.<br />There is a long line of identical houses that runs down the street. The municipal committee has designated this area especially for workers so they would not erect their shops and stalls all over the city. The allotted buildings had shops downstairs and two-storey residential flats upstairs. Because all the buildings were identical, Sultana used to have a hard time looking for her own flat. But once the launderer downstairs put up his board squarely on the forehead of the building, she gained a permanent marker in the sign that said: “Dirty clothes are washed here.” She would find her apartment whenever she read this sign. Similarly, she had memorized many other convenient markers as well; for instance, the place where in large letters it said, “Coal shop” there her friend Heera Baayi lived who sometimes used to go to the radio station to sing. Where it said, “Arrangement of excellent food for gentlefolk available here,” there lived her other friend, Mukhtar. Above the bed-maker’s shop lived Anwari, who worked for the Seth – the shop’s owner. Because the Seth sahib had to keep an eye on the shop at night, he used to stay with Anwari.<br /><br />You can’t expect customers the very first day you open a shop; so, when a month passed and left her idle and useless, Sultana mollified her heart by thinking along the same lines. But when two months passed and not a man showed up at her door, she became curious. She said to Khudabuksh: “What could the matter be, Khudabuksh! It’s been two months since we came here. No one has even turned this way. I know business is slow in the market these days, but it’s not so slow that months should fly with not a face in sight.” Khudabuksh had been struck by this incongruity as well but he had remained quiet. But now that Sultana herself had broached the subject, he said: “I’ve been thinking about this for quite some time now. I have come up with some possibilities. Perhaps, because of the war, people have occupied themselves with other things and have forgotten the way here – or…maybe…”<br />He was about to say more when the noise of somebody climbing up the stairs reached them. Khudabuksh and Sultana were both drawn towards the noise. After a while there was a knock. Khudabuksh leapt to open the door. A man entered. This was the first man with whom a deal was made for three rupees, and after him five more came; that is to say six in three months from whom Sultana acquired only eighteen-and-a-half rupees.<br />Twenty rupees a month were spent on rent; the tax on water and the electricity bill were separate. Apart from this there were other household expenditures including food, drink, clothes, medicine and so forth. There were no savings at all. Eighteen-and-a-half rupees in three months hardly constitutes saving. Sultana was worried. All eight of the five-and-a-half tola bangles that she had bought at Ambala were gradually sold off. When it was time to sell the last one, she said to Khudabuksh: “Listen to me, let’s go back to Ambala. What is there here – and even if there is, then so be it, but this city does not suit us in the least. Your business went so well there. Come, let’s go back. Whatever loss we have incurred, consider it charity off your head. Go sell this bangle; I’ll pack our things and wait for you. We’ll leave by train tonight!”<br />Khudabuksh took the bangle from Sultana’s hand and said: “No, my dear, we won’t go back to Ambala. Here, in Delhi we’ll earn a living. These, your bangles, they will all return. Have faith in Allah. He can make things work. He’ll find a way for us even here.”<br />Sultana remained quiet. And so, the last bangle was also cast off. Seeing her arms left thus bared she was greatly distressed. But what could she do? The stomach has to be filled by any means after all. When the fifth month passed and the earning was reduced to a quarter of the spending, Sultana’s distress suffered a significant increment. Khudabuksh too was spending more and more time away from home. Sultana was grieved by this as well. There is no doubt that there were several acquaintances in the neighbourhood with whom she could spend her time, but to go every day and spend hours just sitting there was not to her taste at all. Gradually, she stopped meeting her friends altogether. She would sit in her silent house the whole day long, sometimes cutting spices, or mending her old, worn-out clothes, or sometimes she would come out to the balcony and just stand there leaning against the barrier, looking out meaninglessly towards the railway-shed at the motionless as well as the moving train engines.<br />On the other side of the road there was a goods godown spread out from that corner to this. At the right hand side, beneath an iron roof, there always lay large bundles and piles of all sorts of goods and material. To the left there was a vast open ground covered in lots of train tracks. When these tracks shone in the sunlight, Sultana would look at her hands, at the network of raised blue veins that bore a great resemblance to the tracks. In this great and lengthy open ground, engines and cars were always moving about here and there. The chhuk chhuk-phhuk phhuk of the engines and the cars was always resonating. Early in the morning, whenever she would go out to the balcony, she would behold such a strange sight: In the fog, the thick steam that issued from the mouths of engines appeared to rise like fat, bulky men headed towards the murky sky. Giant clouds of steam, accompanied by much noise, would rise from the tracks, and then within the blink of an eye dissolve in the air. But sometimes, when she would see a car moving about that had been pushed into motion by an engine and then abandoned, she would think of herself. She felt that she too had been pushed into motion on the tracks of life and then abandoned – and now she was moving involuntarily; other people were switching tracks and she was moving on and on and who knows when the day would come when the force with which she had been pushed would all be consumed and she would come to rest somewhere. At an unfamiliar place that she would never have seen before. And though seemingly she spent hours staring purposelessly at the zigzagging train tracks and the engines and cars in motion or at rest, but really her mind was filled with all sorts of thoughts. When she used to live at Ambala Cantt her house had been quite close to the train station. But there she had never seen these things in this way. Now, here, it had even occurred to her that this vast web of train tracks with all the steam and smoke rising all over the place was in fact a huge brothel in which there were many cars being pushed around by a few fat engines. Sultana sometimes fancied these engines to be Seth sahibs like the ones who used to come to her at Ambala. And then sometimes when she would watch an engine slowly move past a long line of cars, she would imagine it to be a man, looking up, strolling through a bazar beneath a brothel. Sultana felt that thinking such thoughts was symptomatic of an ailing mind; thus, when such ideas started occurring to her, she stopped going out to the balcony.<br />She pleaded repeatedly with Khudabuksh: “Look here, have mercy on me. Stay at home sometimes. I lie around here all day like a sick person.” But he would counter her every time by saying, “Darling, I go out only in search of a livelihood. If Allah so wills, our boat shall reach a shore in but a few days.”<br />Five months had gone by and so far neither Sultana’s boat had struck a shore nor Khudabuksh’s. The month of Moharram was nearly upon them and Sultana did not even have the means to have a black suit made for herself. Mukhtar had gotten for herself a Lady Hamilton suit of a new design which had sleeves of black Georgette. To match this, she had a satin shalwar that shone like kajal. Anwari had bought a very elegant saari of silken Georgette. She told Sultana that she would wear underneath it a white boski petticoat – in accordance with the fashion of the times. To wear with her saari, Anwari had brought a pair of delicate black velvet shoes. When Sultana saw all these things, the realization that she could not afford to get anything of the sort to commemorate Moharram pained her immensely.<br />When she returned home after having seen Anwari and Mukhtar’s clothes, her heart was full of woe. She felt as if an abscess had taken root inside her. The house was completely empty. Khudabuksh was away as usual. For a long time she just lay on a rug with a gao-takiya under her head. As her neck started to stiffen from the height, she went out into the balcony to exorcise all the sorrowful thoughts from her mind.<br />In front, there, on the train tracks, stood several cars, but there were no engines around. It was evening and the earth had been sprinkled with water – the air was clear of dirt and pollution. Such men had started strolling in the bazar as only look to pry and stare and then quietly head back homewards. One such man lifted his head and looked at Sultana. Sultana smiled but then quickly forgot him, for there, in front of her, an engine had appeared upon the tracks. Sultana looked intently at it and fancied that even the engine was wearing black. When she tried to expunge this strange thought from her head by looking elsewhere, she found the same man who had looked at her with licentious eyes standing next to a bullock-cart. Sultana gestured to him with her hand. The man looked here and there and then discreetly inquired in signs how to get to her. Sultana gave him directions. The man hesitated for a moment but then quickly came up stairs. Sultana seated him on a rug. When he had sat down, for the purpose of initiating a conversation, she said: “Why were you afraid to come up?”<br />The man smiled at this: “How did you figure this – what is there to be afraid of?”<br />At this Sultana rejoined: “I say so because you stood there for such a long time and then came here only after some thought.”<br />The man smiled again: “You misunderstood. I was just looking at the flat above yours. Some woman was standing there showing her thumb to a man. I quite liked the scene. And then a green bulb lit up in the balcony and I lingered for a while longer. I like green light. It pleases the eyes.”<br />Speaking thus, he began inspecting the room. And then he got up. Sultana asked him: “Are you leaving?” The man replied: “No, I just want to look around your house. Come, show me all the rooms!”<br />Sultana showed him all three rooms one by one. The man inspected the rooms in silence. When they reached the room from where they had begun, he said: “My name is Shankar.”<br />Sultana looked at Shankar properly for the first time. He was of average height with an average sort of face but his eyes were unusually clear. At times they even generated a peculiar gleam. He had a muscular, athletic physique. The hair at his temples were turning white. He wore Khaki pants. His shirt was white and the collar was raised up at the neck.<br />Shankar sat on the rug in such a way that it appeared as if Sultana, rather than Shankar, were the customer. This attitude disconcerted Sultana. And so she said to Shankar: “Say something.”<br />Shankar had been sitting; when he heard this he lay down: “What should I say; you say something; you’re the one who called me!”<br />When Sultana said nothing in response, he sat up: “I get it. Now then, listen to me; whatever you have understood, it is wrong. I am not like one of these people who give something before they leave. Like doctors, I too have a fee. Now that you have called me, you’ll have to pay me my fee.”<br />Hearing this, Sultana reeled, but in spite of that she broke out laughing. “And what is it that you do?”<br />Shankar replied: “The same as your lot.”<br />“What? I…I…I don’t do anything.”<br />“I don’t do anything as well.”<br />Sultana was annoyed: “This is not right – you must do something.”<br />Shankar answered her calmly: “You must do something as well.”<br />“I waste time!”<br />“I waste time too.”<br />“Well then, come let’s waste time together!”<br />“At your service – but I do not pay to have my time wasted.”<br />“Come to your senses – this is not a house of charity.”<br />“And I am no volunteer.”<br />Sultana stopped at this. She asked him: “Who are volunteers?”<br />Shankar replied: “Disciples of owls!”<br />“I’m not the disciple of an owl.”<br />“But that man, Khudabuksh, who lives with you, is most definitely the disciple of an owl.”<br />“Why?”<br />“Because, for many days now, he has, for the sake of improving his luck, been consulting a God-fearing Fakir, whose own luck is shut tight like a rusted lock.”<br />Saying so, Shankar laughed.<br />At this Sultana said: “You are a Hindu. That is why you make fun of our elders.<br />Shankar smiled: “The question of Hindu or Muslim does not arise at such places. Even great Pandits and Mawlanas, were they to come here, would become honest men.”<br />“Who knows what gibberish you speak – now then, will you stay?”<br />“At the condition I have already mentioned.”<br />Sultana got up: “Then go; find your way out!”<br />Shankar got up steadily, stuck both his hands in his pockets and while leaving said: “I pass through this bazar sometimes; if you ever need me, call me; I’m a very useful man.”<br />Shankar left. And Sultana forgot about the black dress and instead thought much about him. This man’s speech had lightened her heart. Had he come to her in Ambala, where she had been prosperous, she would have seen him in an altogether different light and would have, quite possibly, had him forcibly removed. But here, because she lived so alone, she had enjoyed Shankar’s conversation.<br />In the evening when Khudabuksh returned, Sultana asked him: “Where have you been gone all day today?”<br />Khudabuksh was very tired, and said: “I’ve come from close by the old fort. A pious elderly personage has stopped there for a few days. I’ve been going to him every day so that our days might turn.”<br />“Did he say something to you?”<br />“No, he hasn’t condescended yet – but, Sultana, the way I’ve been serving him, it won’t go to waste. If Allah’s blessings mix up with these present circumstances, things will look up indeed.”<br />Sultana’s mind was suffused with thoughts of commemorating Moharram; she whimpered to Khudabuksh: “You disappear out there for days – and I am here imprisoned in this cage. I can’t go anywhere. Moharram is almost upon us, have you considered that; I need black clothes. There is no money in the house. There were baongles once, but they’ve all been sold now, one after the other. So now, tell me what will happen – till when will you go ruining yourself after these fakirs. It seems to me that here in Delhi, God has turned His face away from us. Listen to me, start your work, it will provide us with some support.”<br />Khudabuksh lay down on the rug and said: “But to start this work requires some investment – for God’s sake don’t say such miserable things, I can’t bear them anymore. I really have made a bitter mistake in leaving Ambala. But whatever happens, happens according to Allah’s will, and for our own benefit; who knows, by bearing hardships for a little longer, we…”<br />Sultana cut him short: “For God’s sake, do something; steal something, become a dacoit, but get me enough cloth for a shalwar. I have a white boski shirt, I’ll get it dyed. I have a new white dupatta as well, the same one you got for me on Divali. That shall be dyed along with the shirt. Only just the shalwar is missing. So arrange for that however you wish. Look! upon my life, use any means necessary, but get it for me. Feast on my funeral if you don’t!”<br />Khudabuksh sat up: “Now, you’re stressing this for no reason at all. Wherefrom shall I bring it– I don’t even have enough money for opium!”<br />“Do whatever you like but get me four-and-half yards of black satin!”<br />“Pray then, that God sends to or three men tonight.”<br />“But you will do nothing – if you wanted to you could probably arrange for enough money. Before the war, satin was selling at twelve to fourteen annas a yard, now it would cost a rupee-and-a-quarter a yard. How much money will it take for four-and-a-half yards then?”<br />“For you, I suppose, I’ll figure out a way.”<br />Saying so, Khudabuksh got up. “Now then, forget these things. I’ll get some food from the hotel.”<br />Food came from the hotel. Both ate together and then went to sleep. In the morning, Khudabuksh went to the fakir at the old fort and Sultana was left alone. For a while she lay awake and for a while she slept. Then she went around strolling in the rooms. After lunch at noon she took out her white dupatta and boski shirt and sent them down to the launderer’s to get them dyed. Apart from washing clothes, they also dyed clothes there. After this task she returned and read film-books, which were printed books that contained all the stories and songs from the films she had seen. She fell asleep reading these books; when she awoke it was four o’clock – because the sunlight had moved towards the hole in the terrace. When she had washed and bathed, she put on a warm shawl and went out to the balcony. For about an hour, Sultana stood in the balcony. Now, it was evening. Lights were getting brighter. Down below, in the streets, signs of gaiety were becoming apparent. The cold intensified a little – but Sultana did not find it unpleasant. She had been gazing for a long time at the horse-carriages and motorcars that were coming and going in the street. All of a sudden she saw Shankar. When he had reached near her house, he turned his neck up to look at Sultana and then smiled at her. Sultana involuntarily gestured to him to come up.<br />When Shankar arrived, Sultana started worrying about what she would say to him. In fact she had merely gestured to him thoughtlessly. Shankar was quite at ease though, as if it were his own home; therefore, without any formality, just like the last time, he lay down with the gao-takiya under his head. When Sultana did not say anything to him for a while, he said: “You may ask me to come up a hundred times and a hundred times you may ask me to leave – I don’t mind such things.”<br />Sultana fell prey to a bout of indecisiveness. She said: “Not at all. Sit. Who has asked you to leave?”<br />Shankar smiled at this: “So then you have accepted my conditions?”<br />“What conditions,” said Sultana laughing, “do you wish to marry me?”<br />“What marriage? – Neither you nor I shall ever marry. These rituals are not for people like us – forget these irrelevant things, and speak instead of important matters.”<br />“Tell me then, what shall I speak of?”<br />“You are a woman – say something that would ease the heart for a while. There is more to this world than just salesmanship you know.”<br />By now Sultana had mentally accepted Shankar. She said: “Speak clearly, what do you want from me?”<br />“The same as other people.”<br />Shankar sat up.<br />“Then what difference would there be between you and other people!”<br />“There is no difference between you and me. But between them and me, there is the difference of the earth and the sky. There are many such things that you shouldn’t ask; just understand them instinctively, on your own.”<br />Sultana tried to figure out what Shankar had said. And then said: “I understand.”<br />“So tell me, what have you decided?”<br />“You win; I lose. But I don’t think anyone has ever admitted such a thing.”<br />“You’re wrong – you’ll find many simple women in this neighbourhood who would never believe that a woman could accept such dishonor as you have been accepting unabashedly for so long. But in spite of their disbelief, you exist in the thousands – your name is Sultana, is it not?”<br />“It is Sultana.”<br />Shankar got up and started laughing: “My name is Shankar – names are such peculiar things. Come, let’s go inside!”<br />When Shankar and Sultana returned to the room with the rug they were both laughing at who knows what. But when Shankar made to leave, Sultana said: “Shankar, will you agree to what I have to say?”<br />Shankar replied: “Tell me first what you wish to say.”<br />Sultana was a bit embarrassed: “You’d think I’m just trying to get money out of you. But…”<br />“Go on, speak; why did you stop?”<br />Sultana mustered up her nerve and said: “The thing is, Moharram is coming closer and I don’t have enough money to get a black shalwar made – you’ve already heard all my troubles. I had a shirt and a dupatta, which I have left at the dyers today.”<br />After listening to this, Shankar said: “You want me to give you some rupees so you could get this black shalwar made.”<br />Sultana immediately replied: “No, I meant that, if it were possible, if you could, get for me a black shalwar.”<br />Shankar smiled: “It is always an unlikely chance for me to have anything in my pocket, but I shall do what I can. By the first of Moharram you will get this shalwar. Now then, are you pleased!”<br />He looked at Sultana’s earrings and asked her: “Can you give me these?”<br />Sultana laughed and said: “What will you do with them; they’re ordinary silver; not worth more than five rupees.”<br />At this, Shankar said: “I have asked you for your earrings. I haven’t asked you for their price. Will you give them to me?”<br />“Take them!” and saying so, Sultana took off her earrings and gave them to Shankar. She regretted it afterwards, but Shankar had already left.<br />Sultana had absolutely no confidence that Shankar would keep his word. But, eight days later, at nine in the morning of the first of Moharram there was a knock on the door. When Sultana opened the door, Shankar stood outside. He gave her a package wrapped in a newspaper and said: “It’s a black satin shalwar – have a look at it, might be a little long – but now I must go.”<br />Shankar gave the shalwar to Sultana and left without saying anything else. His pants had been wrinkled. His hair was unkempt and ruffled. It appeared as if he had just woken up and come straight here. Sultana opened the package. It was a black satin shalwar, very similar to the one she had seen at Mukhtar’s. Sultana was very pleased. The grief she had harboured over the earrings and the deal had now been remedied by the acquisition of the shalwar and Shankar having kept his promise.<br />In the afternoon she retrieved her dyed shirt and dupatta from the laundry. When she had put on all three articles of clothing there was a knock on the door. When she opened the door, Mukhtar entered. She glanced at Sultana’s clothes and said: “The shirt and the dupatta are evidently dyed, but the shalwar seems new – when did you get it made?”<br />Sultana answered: “The tailor just brought it in today.”<br />As she said this, her gaze fell upon Mukhtar’s ears: “Where did you get these earrings from?”<br />“I just got them today,” answered Mukhtar.<br />After this, the two of them had to remain quiet for a while.<br /><br />Translated: July 10, 2011<br />Umer Khan<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><strong>Martyr-maker</strong><br /><br /><br />I live in Kathiawar, Gujarat. I’m a Bania by cast. Last year, at the tanta over the partition of Hindustan, I was completely redundant. I beg your pardon. I used the word ‘tanta’. But there’s no harm in it, because other words should always be allowed to add to the Urdu language – even if they’re Gujarati.<br />Yes, indeed; I was completely redundant. Except for a little cocaine side-business – that made just enough room for a bit of earning. When the partition occurred and people from there started moving here, and from here there, in the thousands, I thought, “Come, let’s move to Pakistan.” If not cocaine, then I’d start some other business. Consequently, I started from there and performing various odd jobs along the way reached Pakistan.<br />I had headed out, principally, with the solemn intent of starting up some fat business. Therefore, the moment I reached Pakistan, I started evaluating the state of affairs here and began the process of allotment. I was well versed, of course, in the art of flattery; I dealt out a few buttery statements – tied the knot of friendship with a couple of people, and got a small house allotted. This was quite profitable, so I went to several cities and made a business out of getting shops and houses allotted.<br />No matter what his line of work, a man has to work hard. I too, therefore, had to run around a lot for the sake of allotments. Sometimes I’d have to sweet-talk someone, or warm up someone’s palm, or invite someone else to dinner or a bit of song and dance. Suffice to say that there were a myriad inconveniences. All day I’d sift through dirt, as it were; go around after sizeable mansions, and search all over the city for a house whose allotment would be more profitable.<br />A man’s hard work never goes to waste. Thus, within just a year I had amassed lakhs of rupees. Now, I had everything God provides: the best house to live in, an inestimable maal paani in the bank…I beg your pardon. I slipped into the vernacular of Kathiawar, Gujarat. But there’s no harm in it; other words should always be added to the Urdu language – yes indeed, I had everything Allah provides: the best house to live in, lots of servants, a Piccard motorcar, two and a half lakhs in the bank, many factories and shops besides – all this and yet, who knows where my heart’s contentment had flown off to. Admittedly, even the cocaine business had at times weighed heavy on my heart, but now it felt as if I didn’t even have a heart anymore. Or rather, think of it this way: there was so much weight on it that my heart had been crushed underneath. But what was this weight all about?<br />I’m an intelligent man; if a question arises in my mind, I do eventually manage to find an answer. With a cool heart (even though nothing was known of my heart’s whereabouts) I started contemplating over this: what could conceivably be the cause of this impossible conundrum?<br />A woman? – It is quite possible. I didn’t have one of my own; the one I did had died in Kathiawar, Gujarat. But the women of other men were present; for instance, my own gardener’s. It’s a matter of taste. To be honest, a woman should be young, and it’s not important if she is literate or knows how to dance. Apun ko to saari jawan auratein chalti hain.<br />(It’s a proverb in Kathiawar, Gujarat that has no equivalent in Urdu)<br />I’m an intelligent man. When faced with a problem, I try to get to the bottom of it. The factories were doing fine. The shops were doing fine. Money was turning up as if on its own. I isolated myself to think, and after a long time came to the conclusion that my heart was troubled simply because I had done no good deeds.<br />In Kathiawar, Gujarat, I had done many good deeds; for instance, when my friend Baandu Rang died, I let his widow live in my house. And for two years I kept her from turning to prostitution. When Vanayek’s wooden leg broke, I bought him a new one. It cost me about forty rupees. Jamna Baayi suffered a heatstroke; saali (I beg your pardon) didn’t know anything. I took her to the doctor. For six months I got her treated regularly. But after coming to Pakistan, I hadn’t done anything decent, and that was the reason why my heart was troubled; otherwise, everything was fine.<br />I thought, “What should I do?” I considered giving charity. But one day when I went about the city, I noticed that near about everybody was a beggar – some were hungry and some naked. How many stomachs must I fill and how many bodies must I clothe? I thought about opening a charity restaurant for the destitute. But what would one such restaurant achieve, and where would I get the grain from? When I considered buying it off of the black market, the question arose as to whether it made any sense to commit a sin and act virtuously simultaneously.<br />For hours I sat and listened to people’s tales of sorrow and suffering. To be honest, everyone was sad; those who slept outside in front of shops as well as those who lived in lofty mansions. The pedestrian was sad because he didn’t have a decent shoe. The car driver was sad that he didn’t have a newer model of the car. Everyone’s complaint was justified in its own right. Everyone’s desire was reasonable in its own context.<br />I had heard a ghazal of Ghalib’s from Sholapur’s Ameena Baayi – God rest her soul – at a brothel. I’ve retained just a couplet: ‘Whose desire, who will fulfill.’<br />I beg your pardon, I believe this is the second verse, or perhaps it could even be the first one.<br />Yes, indeed; and how many desires could I have fulfilled when a hundred out of a hundred were desirous? And then I started thinking that perhaps giving charity wasn’t such a good thing after all. You may, quite possibly, disagree with me. But when I went to the immigrant camps I realized that charity had rendered all the immigrants wholly worthless and dull. Day in and day out they just sat idly with one hand upon the other, playing cards, indulging in jugaar (I beg your pardon, jugaar means gambling, or playing for money), barking foul language at each other and breaking bread for free – what could such people possibly contribute to help strengthen Pakistan? Therefore, I came to the conclusion that giving alms was most definitely not a good thing. But then what other avenue is there that leads to good deeds?<br />In the camps, people were dying on a regular basis. Sometimes there would be a diarrhea epidemic or sometimes an outbreak of the plague. The hospitals no longer had enough space to store even a sesame seed. I was overcome with pity. I came very close to getting a hospital built, but then I scrapped the idea. I had the plans all chalked out. I could’ve gotten a tender for the building. I could’ve gathered money for the admission fees. I could’ve started my own company and gotten a tender on its name. I thought I’d pledge one lakh rupees on the building. Of course, I would’ve had the building constructed for seventy thousand rupees and saved a full thirty thousand rupees. But this scheme of mine remained just that: a scheme. Perhaps because when I thought about it I started wondering how – if we were to rescue all the dying people – would the problem of overpopulation be solved and the numbers reduced.<br />If you consider the matter deeply, the entire lafrra is actually just because of the extra population. A lafrra means a quarrel; a quarrel which involves invectives; but I see I haven’t been able to clarify the full meaning of the word abundantly. Yes, indeed; if you consider the matter deeply, the entire lafrra is actually just because of the unnecessary, extra population. Now, if the number of people keeps increasing, it doesn’t mean that land too will increase side by side, or that the sky will start expanding, or the rains would fall more frequently, or that crops would grow in greater abundance. Therefore, I arrived at the conclusion……that to build a hospital was most definitely not a good deed.<br />Then I thought of having a mosque built but – may Allah bless Ameena Baayi of Sholapur who sang this couplet which I have just recalled: “If fame is asheptable to you, then make ways to binifit.”<br />She used to mispronounce acceptable and benefit.<br />“If fame is acceptable to you, then make ways to benefit.<br />Build a bridge, sink a well; build a mosque and a pool.”<br />What wretch would desire fame or recognition? Those who build bridges to propagate their names, what virtue really do they perform? Dirt! I declared the idea of building a mosque wholly in the wrong. Too many separate mosques could not be favourable for a nation, because they divide the people.<br />Tired, and at a loss, I was preparing to go on a pilgrimage to Mecca when Allah Himself showed me the way. There was a rally in the city. When it ended, disorder spread among the people. There was such a furor that thirty men died. When news of this incident was published in the papers the next day it was learned that they hadn’t died, they had been martyred.<br />I started thinking. Apart from thinking, I met a few Muslim clerics. And I discovered that those who lose their lives suddenly in accidents are given the status of martyrs, which is a status that has no better. I thought that if people, instead of dying, were martyred, how fortunate that would be. Those who die ordinary deaths, obviously their deaths go to waste. If they were to be martyred then that would really mean something.<br />I started brooding over this delicate matter.<br />In all four directions, wherever I’d look, I would see enfeebled humanity. Pallid faces crushed under the collective weight of anxiety, suffering, and the sorrows of paid labour. They, with sunken eyes, a lifeless bearing, and clothes in shreds, lie around, like the worn-out parts of a train in a shed. Or like animals without a master, they roam around aimlessly in markets. Why are they living? Who are they living for? And how are they living? Nobody knows. An epidemic breaks out. Thousands die. And if nothing else then hunger and thirst is sufficient to erode their lives away. They are frozen stiff in the winter, and desiccated in the summer. Someone sheds two tears at somebody’s death. But most deaths remain dry.<br />Couldn’t figure out life, that’s fine. Didn’t capitalize on it, that’s fine too…whose couplet is it, the one that – Allah bless her – Sholapur’s Ameena Baayi, from the brothel, she used to sing it in a voice with such pathos: “Where will we go if we won’t find peace after death?<br />I mean if life doesn’t improve even after death then damn the bloody thing I say.<br />I thought why shouldn’t these wretched, out of luck, socially rejected humans who are deprived of every good thing here acquire such a status in the next life that those who don’t even deign to look at them in this life would stare at them and envy them in the next life.<br />There was only way for this to happen: they mustn’t die ordinary deaths, rather they must be martyred.<br />Now the question was whether people would agree to being martyred. I thought, “Why not?” What Muslim doesn’t have a penchant for martyrdom? Why, even Hindus and Sikhs have embraced the concept, copying it from the Muslims for themselves. But I was greatly disappointed when I asked a withered sort of man, “Would you like to be martyred?” and he answered: “No.”<br />I couldn’t comprehend what that man planned to achieve with life. I tried to explain to him: “Old man, at the very most you’ll live for maybe another two and a half months. You don’t have the strength to walk; when you cough, you cough so much that you look like a diver, and it appears as if you’re about give up the ghost at any moment. You don’t have anything of value. You’ve never had a moment’s comfort in all your life. There’s no question about a future. Then what will you do with a little more life? You can’t join the army. So any fantasies about going to the front and fighting for your country are absurd. Therefore, isn’t it better if you could, here in the bazar or wherever it is that you sleep, arrange for your martyrdom?”<br />“How is that possible?” he asked.<br />I answered him: “Up ahead, there’s a banana peel. Let’s assume that you slip on it – obviously you’ll die and earn the rank of a martyr.” But he was unable to understand this concept; he said: “Why would I step on a banana peel that I’ve already seen with my eyes – don’t I value my life?”......Allah, Allah, what life? A skeleton of bones! A bundle of wrinkles!<br />I was much aggrieved, and even more so when I found out that that wretch, who could’ve very easily attained martyrdom, died coughing on some iron charpoy in a charity hospital.<br />There was an old woman, neither a tooth in her mouth, nor an intestine in her stomach. She was on her last breaths, as it were. I was overcome by pity. The poor woman’s entire life had passed in poverty and sorrow. So I picked her up and brought her to the train paatay (I beg your pardon, but around here a track is called paata). But Sir, the moment she heard the train coming she came to, sprang onto her feet like a wind-up toy and ran off.<br />My heart broke; however, I didn’t give up. A Bania’s son is faithful to his tune. The vision of a clear, straight path to virtue that I had beheld, I refused to let it vanish before my eyes.<br />Since the time of the Mughals there was a large empty plot of land. There were one hundred and fifty one little rooms there, in a very rundown condition; my experienced eyes surmised that with the first great rain all their roofs would cave in. consequently, I bought this land for ten thousand five hundred rupees and inhabited it with a thousand of the most impoverished people. I charged two months’ rent at the rate of one rupee per month. By the third month, just as I had guessed, with the first great rain the roofs of all the rooms caved in and seven hundred people, in which from the elderly to the children all were included, were martyred.<br />Simultaneously, the weight that had been on my heart was considerably lessened. The population was relieved of seven hundred people and all of them became martyrs. The scales on this side remained heavier.<br />Ever since then, I’ve been doing this work. Every day - subject to opportunity – I serve, as it were, two to three people the cup of martyrdom. As I’ve already mentioned, no matter what his line of work, a man has to work hard. For instance, in order to serve the cup of martyrdom to a man whose existence was as meaningless and useless as the fifth wheel on a jalopy, I had to spend ten days tossing banana peels at strategic locations. But I believe, as is with death, the day of martyrdom is also predetermined. On the tenth day he slipped on the banana peel on a stone floor and died.<br />Nowadays I’m having a huge building constructed. My own company has the contract. It’s for two lakh rupees. Out of this I’m going to pocket seventy five thousand straight up. I’ve got it all insured as well. My guess is that when the third floor will be erected the entire building will collapse all in a bang because of the mixture I’ve used. At the time there will be about three hundred labourers at work there. I have full faith in the house of God that all these men will become martyrs. But if somebody survives, it could only mean that he was a sinner of the most degenerate sort, such that Allah the Blesser refused to accept his martyrdom.<br /><br />Translated: July 15, 2011<br /><br /><br /><br /><strong>The Miracle Worker<br /><br /><br /></strong>Chaudhry Mauju, with great contentment, sat beneath the thick foliage of the old Banyan, smoking his chamoorra on a charpoy. Nebulous balls of smoke emerged from his mouth, and in the still, midday air, slowly vanished.<br />He had been plowing his small field since morning and was now tired. The sun’s heat was so intense that even an eagle would have left its egg, but he sat content, enjoying his chamoorra, which could dispel his fatigue in just a snap of a finger.<br />His sweat had dried out. So the still air could not provide him with any cooling, but the cool, delightful smoke from the chamoorra engendered within his heart and mind inexpressible waves of tranquility.<br />It was time now for his only daughter, Jeena’n, to arrive with roti and lassi from home. She always arrived at the right time. Even though there was nobody at home to lend her a hand. She had a mother whom he had divorced two years ago in extreme fury, after a much protracted quarrel.<br />His young Jeena’n, his only daughter, was very obedient. She took great care of her father for there weren’t many household chores to do. She acted quickly so that, in whatever free time she would find, she could work at the spinning wheel to make spindles. Or so that she could chat it away merrily with her girlfriends – of whom she had but a countable few.<br />Chaudhry Mauju’s land was meager but it was sufficient for him. The village was very small. It was in a remote area through which the train did not pass. There was an unpaved track which connected it with a larger, distant village. Chaudhry Mauju would ride his mare to this village twice a month. There were two or three shops there from where he would come back with supplies.<br />He used to be very happy. He had no sorrows. Although, for two or three years, he had been irked by the thought that he had no male progeny; but then, he became grateful, thinking that whatever was, was because Allah had willed it thus. But now, ever since the day he had divorced his wife and sent her to her maiden home, his life had become like desiccated earth. As if his wife had taken all moisture along with her.<br />Chaudhry Mauju was a religious man. Even though he knew only three or four things about his religion; things like there is just the one God, Whose worship is obligatory. Mohammad (peace be upon him) is His prophet. Obeying his commandments is mandatory; and the Quran is the word of God which was revealed to Mohammad (peace be upon him), and that was all.<br />He was beyond prayers and fasting. The village was too small and did not have a mosque. There were ten to fifteen houses. Those too were far apart from each other. The people remembered Allah frequently. Their hearts did harbor a fear of this Pure Being, but beyond that there was nothing there. Near about every house had a copy of the Quran, but nobody knew how to read. Everybody had wrapped it reverentially in a cloth-cover and placed it upon an elevated shelf. It was only put to use at times when confessions of truth were required of someone, or when an oath had to be taken for some purpose.<br />A Mawlvi’s face could only be seen in the village when a boy or a girl got married. Funeral rites, and other such things at a death, were pronounced independently in their own tongue.<br />Chaudhry Mauju was very useful at such occasions; his oratory had effect. The way he could expound upon the virtues of the departed, and then lead the prayer for his salvation, was his part alone.<br />Last year, when his friend Dinu’s young son died, after lowering him in his grave, he spoke with great effect:<br />“Alas! What a strapping young lad he was. When he used to spit, it would fall twenty yards away. His urinary stream had not a rival in any of the village communities around here, and he had no answer in wrist clenching. He would raise the cry of “Haye Ghassni” and free his wrist with just two fingers, the way one opens buttons on a kurta. Dinu, yaar, today the day of suffering is upon you…you won’t be able to survive this shock – yaaro, this man should’ve died – such a strapping young lad – such a handsome, robust youth. Even a ravishing but stubborn beauty like Neeti Sunyaari kept trying to enthrall him by means of amulets and strings. But marhaba Dinu! Your boy was staunch-of-underwear. May Allah make it so that he gets the most gorgeous houri in all heaven and even there may he remain staunch-of-underwear. Allah will be so pleased that He shall bless him even more. Amen.”<br />After listening to this small speech, ten to twenty men, which included Dinu, started wailing passionately. Chaudhry Mauju himself had tears streaming from his eyes.<br />When Mauju decided to divorce his wife, P’hataa’n, he had not felt it necessary to call upon a Mawlvi. He had heard from his elders that to pronounce talaak, talaak, talaak, thus three times, was sufficient to end the story. Therefore, he ended the story thus. But the very next day he had experienced great distress. He felt a deep regret and sensed that he had made a mistake. Husbands and wives are often fighting. But it doesn’t get around to divorce. He should have disregarded the matter.<br />He had liked P’hataa’n. Though she wasn’t young anymore, but still, he liked her body, he liked the things she said. And then, after all, she was his Jeena’n’s mother.<br />But now the arrow had left the bow and it couldn’t come back. Whenever Chaudhry Mauju thought about this, the smoke from his precious chamoorra would turn bitter and sting his throat.<br />Jeena’n was beautiful, like her mother. In these two years she had suddenly grown into a young woman whose youthfulness bloomed, as it were, in all aspects of her being. Chaudhry Mauju was now worried about getting her hands yellowed as well. This was when he recalled P’hataa’n. How easily she could’ve managed it all.<br />Chaudhry Mauju adjusted his sitting position on the charpoy along with his clothes, and after having inhaled unusually deeply from his chamoorra, he started coughing. In the midst of his coughing, somebody’s voice was heard: “Peace be upon you, and may Allah have mercy on you and bless you!”<br />When Chaudhry Mauju turned around, he saw an old man, clad all in white, with a long beard. He returned the greeting and wondered where this man could have come from. The elderly man with the long beard had large, commanding eyes, which were adorned with kohl. He had long hair. The hair on his head and his beard were speckled: more white than black. He wore a white turban on his head. On his shoulder, there hung a bright, yellow, embroidered, silk scarf. In his hands he had a silver mounted staff with a ball-handle. He wore soft, red leather shoes.<br />When Chaudhry Mauju looked this gentleman over from head to toe, he found his heart begin to fill with veneration for him. He got up from the charpoy with great rapidity and addressed him: “Where have you come from? When?”<br />In the Shariah approved, closely cropped lips of the elderly man, a smile was born: “Where would a fakir come from? They have no homes. There is no fixed time for their coming. There is no fixed time for their going. To wherever Allah commands, they move. Wherever they are ordered to stop, there they stop.”<br />Chaudhry Mauju was deeply affected by these words. He came forward and with great reverence took the elderly man’s hand in his own, kissed it, and then touched it to his eyes: “Chaudhry Mauju’s house is your house.”<br />The elderly gentleman sat smiling upon the charpoy and grabbing his silver mounted staff in both his hands, bowed his head over it: “Who knows which of yours acts has pleased Allah the Glorious one, such that He has sent this, His most trivial and sinful servant to you.”<br />Chaudhry Mauju asked delightedly, “So, Mawlvi sahib, have you come here under His directive?”<br />Mawlvi sahib lifted his bowed head and in a tone marked with a degree of anger remarked: “And do you suppose we have come here at your bidding? Are we your men or His in whose worship we have spent forty years to earn what little status we have?”<br />Chaudhry Mauju trembled. In his own uniquely rustic, but nevertheless reverential manner, he requested the Mawlvi sahib to forgive his error and said, “Mawlvi sahib, men like us, who don’t even know how to say our prayers, often make such mistakes. We are sinners. To get us forgiven and to forgive us is your task.”<br />Mawlvi sahib closed his large, kohl adorned eyes and said, “That is precisely why we have come.”<br />Chaudhry Mauju sat down on the ground and started pressing Mawlvi sahib’s feet. Meawhile, his daughter Jeena’n arrived. When she saw Mawlvi sahib, she let her veil drop before her face. Mawlvi sahib, with his eyes closed, asked, “Who is it, Chaudhry Mauju?”<br />“My daughter, Mawlvi sahib…Jeena’n!”<br />Mawlvi sahib looked at Jeena’n with half-open eyes and said to Mauju, “What purdah is there from fakirs – ask her.”<br />“There is no purdah, Mawlvi sahib – what purdah could there be?”<br />And then Mauju addressed Jeena’n: “This is Mawlvi sahib, Jeena’n. He is a special man of Allah. Why observe purdah from him? Lift your veil!”<br />Jeena’n lifted her veil. Mawlvi sahib turned his Kohl adorned sights to regard her fully, and then said to Mauju, “Your daughter is beautiful, Chaudhry Mauju!”<br />Jeena’n blushed.<br />“She takes after her mother, Mawlvi sahib!”<br />“Where is her mother?” once again, Mawlvi sahib gazed intently at Jeena’n’s adolescent form.<br />Chaudhry Mauju was at a loss as to how he should respond.<br />Mawlvi sahib asked again, “Where is her mother, Chaudhry Mauju?”<br />Mauju hastily replied, “She has died, ji!”<br />Mawlvi sahib’s sights were set on Jeena’n. Guessing from her reaction, he said to Mauju, sternly, “You lie!”<br />Mauju fell at Mawlvi sahib’s feet and in regretful tones uttered, “Yes…yes…I told a lie. Please forgive me. I am a big liar. I divorced her, Mawlvi sahib!”<br />Mawlvi sahib uttered a long ‘hmmm’ and then shifted his gaze away from Jeena’n’s wrap and addressed Mauju: “You are an inordinate sinner. What was the poor creature’s offense?”<br />Mauju was perishing with guilt: “Don’t know, Mawlvi sahib. It was but a trifling matter that went on and on until divorce occured. I really am a sinner. The very next day, after having divorced her, I thought to myself, ‘Mauju, what folly have you done?’ but what could be done then? The birds had already ruined the crop. What would regret have achieved, Mawlvi sahib?”<br />Mawlvi sahib placed the silver mounted staff on Mauju’s shoulder: “The agency of Allah, the Blesser, is vast. He is very merciful, very benevolent. If He wills, He can set aright any wrong. If He ordains it, then even this meager fakir will find a way for your salvation.”<br />Grateful and much obliged, Chaudhry Mauju threw himself around Mawlvi sahib’s legs and started crying. Mawlvi sahib looked at Jeena’n. Her eyes too were streaming tears. “Come here, girl!”<br />Mawlvi sahib had such a commanding voice that it was impossible for Jeena’n to deny him. Setting the roti and lassi aside, she moved up to the charpoy. Mawlvi sahib took her by the arm and said, “Sit down.”<br />When Jeena’n proceeded to sit on the ground, Mawlvi sahib tugged at her arm: “Here, sit close to me.”<br />Jeena’n gathered herself close and then sat near Mawlvi sahib. Mawlvi sahib put his hand on her back, pulled her nearer, and after pressing her closer into himself he asked, “What have you brought for us to eat?”<br />Jeena’n wanted to move away, but the grip was strong. She had to respond: “Ji…ji roti. Saag and lassi.”<br />Mawlvi sahib squeezed Jeena’n’s slender but strong back with his hand once again: “Go on, set the food and feed us.”<br />When Jeena’n moved away, Mawlvi sahib removed his silver mounted staff from Mauju’s shoulder with a light tap: “Up, Mauju, and get our hands washed.”<br />Mauju got up instantly. There was a well close by. He brought water and got Mawlvi sahib’s hands washed in a very disciple-like manner. Jeena’n placed the food on the charpoy. Mawlvi sahib ate it all and then ordered Jeena’n to wash his hands. Jeena’n could not disobey his orders for Mawlvi sahib’s getup, his tone, and his mannerisms were all rather compelling. Mawlvi sahib belched aloud and said, “All praise be to Allah,” with considerable intensity. He passed a wet hand over his beard, belched once more and then lay down on the charpoy with one eye closed and with his other eye he kept watching Jeena’n’s slipping wrap. She hastily gathered all the dishes and left. Mawlvi sahib closed his eye and said to Mauju, “Chaudhry, we shall sleep now.”<br />Chaudhry pressed his feet for a while. When he saw that he was asleep, he went aside, lit up some cowpats and after filling the bowl with tobacco started smoking his chamoorra on an empty stomach. But he was happy. He felt as if a great weight of his life had been dispelled. In his own uniquely rustic, but nevertheless reverential manner, he thanked Allah in his heart, Who had sent from His store, in the guise of the Mawlvi sahib, an angel of mercy.<br />At first he considered sitting close to Mawlvi sahib in case he needed his service, but when it started to grow late and the latter kept on sleeping, he got up and went into his field and busied himself with his work. He had not a thought for the fact that he was hungry. Rather, he was greatly pleased that his food had been eaten by Mawlvi sahib and had thus afforded him such delight.<br />Before evening, when he returned from the field, he was really upset to find that Mawlvi sahib wasn’t there. He cursed himself for having left. He should’ve sat in his presence. Perhaps he had left angrily, and had uttered a prayer for ill as he left. When Chaudhry Mauju considered this, his simple soul shuddered. His eyes watered with tears.<br />He looked here and there for Mawlvi sahib, but he was not to be found. The evening deepened and yet there was not a sign of him. Tired, he kept cursing and blighting himself in his heart. And so, with his neck hanging, he was headed towards home when he saw two, young, worried looking boys. When at first Chaudhry Mauju asked them the reason for their worry, they hesitated, but then came out with the true story that they had dug up an earthen pot full of alcohol from a hole in the ground and had been about to partake when a personage with an illumined countenance had suddenly appeared there, who then, staring at them with wrathful eyes, asked them what sinful acts they were engaged in. By drinking of that which Allah, the Blesser, had declared haram they were committing a sin that had no absolution! They couldn’t work up the courage to respond. They had simply run away and had not stopped to breathe till they had reached where they were.<br />Chaudhry Mauju told the two of them that the personage with the illumined countenance really was a man who had reached Allah. And then he expressed his fears, wondering what calamity would befall the village. First he had made the grievous error of leaving him alone and now they had made the mistake of taking out and drinking something haram.<br />“Now, Allah alone could save us. Now, Allah alone could save us my children,” muttering thus, Chaudhry Mauju headed home. Jeena’n was there, but he didn’t say anything to her, and sat down on his charpoy, smoking his hookah in silence. There was a storm razing his heart and mind. He was certain that the village was bound to suffer a divine calamity.<br />Supper was ready. Jeena’n had even cooked for Mawlvi sahib. When she asked her father where Mawlvi sahib was, he answered her in tones of sorrow: “Gone…! What business could he have among us sinners!”<br /><br />Jeena’n was agrieved because Mawlvi sahib had said that he could find a way by which her mother could return – but he was gone – now who would find a way? Jeena’n silently sat on a stool. The food kept getting colder. After a while a sound was heard in the entrance. Father and daughter both were startled. Mauju got up and went outside, and in a few moments Mawlvi sahib was inside the courtyard. In the dim glow of an oil lamp she noticed that Mawlvi sahib was stumbling. In his hands was a small earthen pot. Mauju helped him sit on the charpoy. He gave the pot to Mauju and slurred: “Today, God has subjected us to a very harsh test. Two boys from your village had dug up a pot full of alcohol and were about to drink from it when we showed up. The moment they beheld us they ran off. We were deeply dismayed: such a big sin at such a young age! But then we thought that it is precisely at this age that man falters from the path. Therefore, we wept and pleaded and prayed in the court of Allah, the Blesser, that their sins be pardoned. The Answer came! Do you know what the Answer was?”<br />Trembling, Mauju spoke, “No!”<br />“The answer came: Will you take their sins on your own head…?<br />I said, yes O’ Blesser…<br />The Voice came: Then go drink the entire pot yourself; We have pardoned the boys!”<br />Mauju was transported to a world that was a product of his own imagination. His hair at end, he was covered with goose-bumps: “So you drank?”<br />Mawlvi sahib’s slurring grew much worse: “Yes, drank! drank! To take their sins upon my head I drank! To prove my worth in the sight of God I drank! There is still some in the pot. This too shall be drunk by us. Keep it safe, and look here, make sure not a drop of it goes anywhere.”<br />Mauju took the pot, put it inside the house and covered its mouth with a cloth. When he returned he saw that Mawlvi sahib was getting his head pressed by Jeena’n and was saying to her, “When a man does something for others, Allah the Glorious is really happy with him. He is really happy with you right now. We too are really happy with you.”<br />And in this state of happiness Mawlvi sahib sat Jeena’n close to him and kissed her on the forehead. She tried to get up. But his grip was too strong. Mawlvi sahib embraced her tightly and said to Mauju, “Chaudhry your daughter’s fortune has woken up!”<br />Chaudhry was all gratitude from head to foot: “This is all from your good wishes – your generosity.”<br />Mawlvi sahib squeezed Jeena’n against his chest once again: “When God is generous, then all is generous. Jeena’n, we shall teach you a few prayers; recite them regularly, and Allah will always be generous.”<br />The next day, Mawlvi sahib awoke very late. Out of fear, Mauju did not go to the fields. He sat next to his charpoy in the courtyard. When the personage awoke, he helped him brush his teeth with a misvaak, bathed and washed him, and in accordance with his bidding, brought the pot of alcohol out and placed it next to him. Mawlvi sahib recited something, opened the mouth of the pot, blew his breath three times into it, and then chugged two or three cups. He looked up at the sky. Recited something, and in a loud voice said, “We shall not fail to measure up in all your tests, O’ Lord!”<br />Then he addressed Chaudhry: “Mauju, go – it has been commanded that you go at once and bring back your wife – we have found a way.”<br />Mauju was very pleased. Quickly, he saddled his mare and said that by early morning the next day he would be back. Then he told Jeena’n to care for all of Mawlvi sahib’s comforts and not fall short of serving him in anyway.<br />Jeena’n busied herself with washing dishes. Mawlvi sahib sat on the charpoy staring at her and drinking cup after cup of alcohol. After this, he took out from his pocket a fat-beaded rosary and started counting his prayers. When Jeena’n was done with her work, he said to her, “Jeena’n, look – go perform ablution.”<br />Jeena’n replied with considerable innocence, “I don’t know how to Mawlvi ji.”<br />Mawlvi sahib reprimanded her – with great affection, “Don’t know how to perform ablution! And what answer will you give to Allah?”<br />After saying this, he got up and helped her wash, and simultaneously advised her in a manner which best allowed him a view of every measure of her body.<br />After the washing, Mawlvi sahib asked for a praying rug. When there were none to be had, he scolded her again, but in the same manner. He asked for some bedding, then spread them in the courtyard and asked Jeena’n to latch the door which opened to the outside. When the door was latched, he asked her to bring the pot and the cup inside. She brought them. Mawlvi sahib drank half a cup and placed the rest in front of himself as he started counting his prayers on the rosary while Jeena’n sat next to him in silence. For a long time Mawlvi sahib sat thus, praying with his eyes closed, and then he opened his eyes. He blew his breath three times in the half-filled cup and moved it towards Jeena’n: “Drink this.”<br />Jeena’n took the cup, but her hands started shaking. Mawlvi sahib set an intensely imperious gaze upon her: “Drink it we say! All your troubles will vanish!”<br />Jeena’n drank it. Mawlvi sahib’s thin lips curled in a smile and then spoke to her, “We will begin our prayers again – when we signal with the finger of shahada, take out half a cup from the pot and drink it immediately. Understand?”<br />Mawlvi sahib did not give her an opportunity to reply, and closing his eyes, entered into a spiritual trance. The taste in Jeena’n’s mouth was awful. It felt as if there were a fire in her chest. She wanted to get up and drink cold water. But how could she get up? Keeping the burning in her throat and in her chest, she kept sitting for a long time. And then suddenly, Mawlvi sahib’s finger of shahada rose with great force. Jeena’n appeared as if she had been hypnotized. Immediately, she filled half a cup and drank it. She wanted to spit it out but couldn’t get up.<br />Mawlvi sahib kept passing his hand quickly over the beads of the rosary, just the same, with his eyes closed. Jeena’n became dizzy and then felt as if sleep was overcoming her. And then, in her half-asleep state, she felt as if she was on the lap of a beardless and mustache-less young man who was taking her to see heaven.<br />When Jeena’n opened her eyes, she was lying on the bedding. She looked around with her half-open, intoxicated eyes. And then, when she started thinking about why she was lying there and when did she come to lie there, everything seemed enveloped in a fog. She started to fall asleep again. But then suddenly she sat up. Where was Mawlvi sahib? And that heaven?<br />There was nobody there. When she went out into the courtyard, she saw that the day was declining and that Mawlvi sahib was sitting close to the washing area, performing ablution. When he heard her, he turned towards her and smiled. Jeena’n went back inside the house and sat on the bedding, thinking about her mother, whom her father had gone to get. There was still a whole night left before their return.<br />And she was famished. She hadn’t cooked or prepared anything. Her tiny, anxious mind was filling up with many thoughts. After a while, Mawlvi sahib appeared and then left saying this, “I have to pray for your father – I will have to spend the night at a grave – will return in the morning – I will pray for you as well.”<br />Mawlvi sahib reappeared early in the morning. His large eyes, which were devoid of kohl, were extremely red. His speech was slurred and his steps were marked with stumbling. The moment he entered the courtyard, he smiled at Jeena’n, went forward and embraced her. He kissed her and sat on the charpoy. Jeena’n sat aside on a stool and started thinking about the hazy events of the recent past. She awaited her father as well. He should’ve reached by now – and she had been separated from her mother for two years now…and heaven…that heaven…what was that heaven!! – was he Mawlvi sahib? But she had a foggy impression that he had not been a bearded man. It had been someone young.<br />Mawlvi sahib, after a while, addressed her, “Jeena’n, Mauju hasn’t come back yet.”<br />Jeena’n remained silent.<br />Mawlvi sahib addressed her again, “And I spent the entire soundless night over a broken, old grave with my head bowed praying for him. When will he return? Will he bring your mother back?”<br />Jeena’n only said this: “Ji, I don’t know. Perhaps they’ve almost reached. They’ll come. Amma will come too – but I don’t know for sure.”<br />And then there was a noise. Jeena’n got up. Her mother appeared. The moment she saw her, she hugged her and started weeping. When Mauju came, he greeted Mawlvi sahib with great reverence. And then he said to his wife, “P’hataa’n – greet Mawlvi sahib.”<br />P’hataa’n separated herself from her daughter, wiping her tears; she moved towards Mawlvi sahib and greeted him. Mawlvi sahib stared at her with his bloodshot eyes and then said to Mauju, “I spent the entire night at a grave, praying for you. I’ve only just returned – Allah has listened to me – all will be well.”<br />Chaudhry Mauju sat down on the floor and started pressing Mawlvi sahib’s feet. He was so grateful, he couldn’t say anything. Instead, he addressed his wife in tearful tones, “Come here P’hataa’n, you’ll have to thank Mawlvi sahib yourself. I don’t know how to.”<br />P’hataa’n sat next to her husband. But this was all she could say: “How could we poor people possibly repay?”<br />Mawlvi sahib gazed intently at P’hataa’n: “Mauju Chaudhry, you were right. Your wife is beautiful. She looks young even at this age – like a second Jeena’n. Even better! We will set it all right, P’hataa’n. Allah has given His blessing and mercy.”<br />Husband and wife, both remained silent. Mauju kept pressing Mawlvi sahib’s feet. Jeena’n busied herself with lighting the stove.<br />After a while, Mawlvi sahib got up. He put his hand on P’hataa’n’s head affectionately and addressed Mauju, “Allah has ordained that if a man divorces his wife, but then desires to have her back in his house again, then his punishment is that the woman must first marry some other man, and get divorced from him. Then she is legal.”<br />Mauju intoned quietly, “I have heard of this Mawlvi sahib.”<br />Mawlvi sahib raised Mauju up and put a hand on his shoulder: “But we have pleaded in the court of Allah that such a harsh punishment may not be exacted from such a poor man for he has made an unwitting mistake.<br />The Voice came: For how long must We listen to your advocacies. Ask for yourself what you will and We shall willingly provide.<br />I requested: My Emperor, master of land and sea, I ask nothing for myself. I have much of what You have provided me with. Mauju Chaudhry loves his wife.<br />It was Spoken: Then We desire to test his love and your faith. Marry her for one day. Divorce her the next, and give her up to Mauju. We can do this much for your sake, for you have spent forty years worshipping Us with your heart.”<br />Mauju was delighted. “I accept, Mawlvi sahib! I accept!” And then he looked at P’hataa’n with reddened eyes, “Well P’hataa’n?” But he did not wait for her to answer, “We both accept!”<br />Mawlvi sahib closed his eyes and recited something. And then after blowing his breath on both of them he raised his sights to the sky. “May Allah, the Blesser, help us succeed in this test!”<br />Then he addressed Mauju, “Well then Mauju – I must leave now – you and Jeena’n go somewhere else tonight. Come back tomorrow, early morning,” saying this, Mawlvi sahib left.<br />Jeena’n and Mauju were ready. When Mawlvi sahib returned in the evening he spoke but a few words to them. He was reciting something. In the end he gestured. Jeena’n and Mauju left immediately.<br />Mawlvi sahib latched the door and said to P’hataa’n, “Tonight you are my wife. Go bring the bedding from inside and spread it on the charpoy. We shall sleep.”<br />P’hataa’n brought the bedding from within the house and spread it neatly on the charpoy. Mawlvi sahib said, “Bibi, you sit here. We shall return.”<br />Saying so, he went inside the room. An oil lamp was burning inside. In a corner next to the tower of dishes was his pot. He moved it about to see. There was still some left. Putting the pot to his mouth he drank in several big gulps. He took his bright, yellow, flower-patterned, silken scarf from his shoulder, wiped his moustache and his lips and then shut the door.<br />P’hataa’n was sitting on the charpoy. After a long time, Mawlvi sahib emerged. In his hands he had a cup. He blew his breath three times on it and then offered it to P’hataa’n. “Go ahead, drink it.”<br />P’hataa’n drank it. When she retched, Mawlvi sahib patted her back and said, “Be well, immediately.”<br />P’hataa’n tried, and to an extent managed, to be well. Mawlvi sahib lay down.<br />Early next morning when Jeena’n and Mauju returned, they saw P’hataa’n asleep in the courtyard but Mawlvi sahib was nowhere to be found. Mauju thought about it. He must’ve gone out to the fields. He awoke P’hataa’n. P’hataa’n slowly opened her eyes, moaning. Then she mumbled, “Heaven…heaven!” but when she saw Mauju, she opened her eyes fully and sat up in bed.<br />Mauju asked her, “Where is Mawlvi sahib?”<br />P’hataa’n wasn’t entirely in her senses yet: “Mawlvi sahib…what Mawlvi sahib; he was…I don’t know where he went…isn’t he here?”<br />“No,” rejoined Mauju, “I’ll look for him outside.”<br />He was just leaving when he heard P’hataa’n emit a short scream. When he turned around he saw she was pulling out something dark from under the pillow. When she had pulled it all out she said, “What is this?”<br />“Hair,” replied Mauju.<br />P’hataa’n let the bundle of hair drop to the floor. Mauju picked it up and looked at it closely: “Beard and head hair.”<br />Jeena’n was standing close by; she said, “Mawlvi sahib’s beard and head hair?”<br />P’hataa’n, from where she was sitting on the charpoy, said, “Yes – Mawlvi sahib’s beard and head hair.<br />Mauju was immersed in a strange conundrum, “And where is Mawlvi sahib?”<br />But then immediately a thought occurred in his simple, sincere mind: “Jeena’n – P’hataa’n, you haven’t understood – he was a man of miracles – he has fixed our problems and left this sign!”<br />He kissed the hair, touched them to his eyes and then giving them to Jeena’n said, “Go wrap these in some clean cloth and put them in the big trunk. By Allah’s command, the house will be filled with blessings.”<br />When Jeen’an went inside, he sat down next to P’hataa’n and with great affection said, “I will learn to pray and I shall pray for that elderly gentleman who has reunited us two.”<br />P’hataa’n remained silent.<br /><br />Translated: July 17, 2011.<br /><br /><br /><br /><strong>True Love<br /><br /><br /></strong>Regarding the broad theme of love, Ikhlaq held the same notions that lovers generally do. He was a devotee of Saint Ranjha. To die in love was for him the greatest and most honourable of deaths.<br />Although Ikhlaq had reached the age of thirty; yet, in spite of all efforts, he had been unable to fall in love with anyone. That was until one day, whilst watching a matinee screening of Ingrid Bergman’s ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’ he felt his heart become partial to the burka-clad girl in the next seat, the one who kept swinging her legs the entire time.<br />When the screen lit up and the darkness receded, Ikhlaq glanced quickly at the girl. There were tiny beads of sweat on her forehead, and the tip of her nose bore several droplets. When Ikhlaq looked at her, her legs stopped swinging. And with great artifice she swiftly covered her face with the gossamer veil of her black burka. The nature of this act was such that it pleased Ikhlaq and got him laughing.<br />The girl whispered something in her friend’s ear and both giggled softly. After this the girl drew aside her veil, uncovered her face, subjected Ikhlaq to a quick, penetrating stare and then lost herself in the leg-swinging enjoyment of the film.<br />Ikhlaq was smoking. He felt Ingrid Bergman was an astounding actress. She wore her hair short in ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’ and when he saw her on screen when the movie began she seemed so very pretty. But after having beheld the girl in the next seat he forgot all about Ingrid Bergman. And although the entire film played out in front of his eyes, he saw very little of it indeed.<br />The girl was perpetually in his heart and on his mind.<br />Ikhlaq smoked cigarette after cigarette – once, as he tried to ash his cigarette, it slipped from his fingers and dropped onto the girl’s lap – but she was much too absorbed in the film to notice. Ikhlaq panicked. And in his panic he stretched out his arm, grabbed the cigarette from her burka, and threw it on the floor. The girl rose from her seat in a flurry. Ikhlaq explained at once: “I beg your pardon; the cigarette fell on you.” The girl stared at Ikhlaq and then sat down. She whispered to her friend; they giggled again, and then occupied themselves with watching the film.<br />At the end of the screening, as the Quaid-e-Azam’s picture appeared, Ikhlaq got up. God knows how but his foot bumped into the girl’s foot. And once again Ikhlaq became, as it were, an apology from head to toe. “I’m very sorry. I don’t know what has come over me today.”<br />The two friends laughed quietly. When they left amidst the crowd, Ikhlaq followed them. The girl with whom he had fallen in love at first sight kept turning to look at him over her shoulder. Ikhlaq paid no heed to her and instead kept following. He had decided he would find out where the girl lived.<br />Walking down the footpath on the Mall Road, near the Y M C A, the girl turned around again to look at Ikhlaq, after which she took her friend by the hand and stopped. When Ikhlaq tried to walk on and leave them behind, she spoke to him: “Why have you been following us?”<br />Ikhlaq thought for a moment and then rejoined: “Why have you been walking in front of me?” At this the girl laughed merrily, said something to her friend and then the two continued on their way. When she turned around again at the bus station, Ikhlaq said to her: “Perhaps you should stay back, and then I shall move on.”<br />The girl silently turned her face away from him.<br />At the turning towards Anarkali, the two friends stopped. Ikhlaq was about to pass them by when the girl said, “Please don’t follow us. It’s rather bad behavior.” Her manner was very grave. “Very well,” said Ikhlaq and turned around. He did not so much as look back at her after this. But in his heart he grieved for not having followed her till the end. He had felt this intensity of love after such a long time, and now he had let the opportunity escape from right within his hands. God alone knew if he would ever see the girl again or not.<br />Upon reaching the Y M C A, he turned around to look at the corner that led to Anarkali. But to what purpose! She had already walked into Anarkali the instant they had parted.<br />The girl had delicate features: a thin nose, a small chin, lips like the petals of a flower. When the screen had lit up and the darkness receded, he had seen on her upper lip a beauty mark that he had found extremely pleasing to behold. He had fancied that without it, the girl would have been incomplete. It was essential!<br />The way she walked, taking tiny steps, proclaimed her to be unmarried. And because she knew a man was following her, her gait had acquired an endearing awkwardness. And the way she looked over her shoulder was cataclysmic; all of a sudden, she would set her eyes upon Ikhlaq and then just as sharply turn away from him.<br />The following day he went to watch the Ingrid Bergman film again. The show had already begun. A Walt Disney cartoon was playing when he entered the hall. It was too dark inside; it would have been impossible for even a hand to recognize its counterpart in that darkness. Allowing the insubstantial light from the gate keeper’s cigarette to guide him, he groped his way into an empty seat.<br />Disney’s cartoon was very funny. Here and there several people in the audience were laughing. Suddenly, from somewhere nearby, Ikhlaq heard a laugh he could identify. When he turned around to see, he found the girl sitting there. Ikhlaq’s heartbeat quickened. There was, however, a young man sitting next to the girl. He appeared to be her brother. How could he possibly turn around now to look at her with him sitting there!<br />There was an interval. Despite his best efforts, Ikhlaq couldn’t quite follow the film. When the lights were turned on, he got up. The girl was wearing a veil. But behind that beautiful obstruction Ikhlaq could make out a pair of eyes that shone with mirth. Her brother lit up a cigarette. Ikhlaq stuck his hand in his own pocket and addressed the brother: “May I please have a light?” The girl’s brother let him have his matchbox. Ikhlaq lit his cigarette and returned the matchbox: “Thanks!”<br />The girl was swinging her legs. Ikhlaq sat in his chair. The remainder of the film began. Once or twice, he turned around to look at the girl, but, under the circumstances, couldn’t do any more than this.<br />The film ended. The crowd began to leave. The girl and her brother kept close together. At a distance, Ikhlaq followed them. Close to the parking stand, the brother spoke to his sister, and called up a horse-carriage. The girl got in but the boy moved into the stand. The girl looked through the veil at Ikhlaq and his heart began to pound. The horse-carriage headed out. Outside the stand there stood three or four of his friends. He grabbed a bicycle from one of them and hastened forth in pursuit of the horse-carriage.<br />This quest was quite interesting. A strong wind was blowing. The girl’s veil would often be lifted. The jet-black screen of georgette would flutter in the wind and reveal in glimpses her fair face. She wore large gold earrings, and her slender lips were coloured like red ink. And the beauty mark on the upper lip – and that essential, all important beauty mark!<br />A sudden and wild gust of wind blew Ikhlaq’s hat off of his head and left it rolling behind along the street till a truck appeared and beneath the heavy weight of its tire it encountered immediate defeat. The girl laughed and Ikhlaq smiled. He turned his head and saw the distant corpse of his hat and spoke to the girl: “It has acquired the status of a martyr!”<br />The girl turned her face away from him.<br />After a while, Ikhlaq addressed her again: “If you mind, I shall turn back.” The girl looked at him but offered no verbal response.<br />The horse-carriage came to a halt in an alley inside Anarkali and let the girl off, who continued casting unveiled glances at Ikhlaq before she went into a house. Ikhlaq, with one foot resting on a pedal and the other placed on the curb, stood waiting for a while. He was just about to leave when a window, on the first floor of the house, opened. The girl bent down to look at Ikhlaq, but then, embarrassed, she disappeared back into the house. Ikhlaq stood there for about half an hour but she did not materialize at the window again.<br />The next day, early morning, he showed up again at the same spot in Anarkali. He kept wandering about for fifteen to twenty minutes. The window remained shut. Despairing, he was about to leave when a fruit-seller approached - crying his wares; the window snapped open, and the girl, her head uncovered, appeared at the sill. She called out to the frui- seller:<br />“Fruit seller! Wait there a moment!”<br />And then her gaze fell upon Ikhlaq. Shocked, she withdrew. The fruit-seller took his basket down from his head and sat at the side of the road. After a while, the girl, with her head covered, appeared there. She glanced sideways at Ikhlaq, blushed, and without having bought any fruit, returned to her house.<br />Ikhlaq found this very charming and yet pitiful as well. So, when the fruit-seller glared at him, he decided to leave. “I suppose this should be enough for today.”<br /><br />Within but a few days Ikhlaq and the girl began communicating in signs and gestures. Every morning at nine, he would reach that same alley in Anarkali. The window would open. He would greet her. She would reply in kind. They would converse a little by signaling with their hands. And then she would leave.<br />One day, with a twirling flourish of her fingers, she expressed to him that she would be at the cinema at six that evening. Ikhlaq, using sign language, inquired, “Which cinema house?” She replied, but Ikhlaq failed to comprehend her signals. In the end he gestured to her, “Write it on a piece of paper and throw it down!” The girl disappeared from the window. A few moments later she reappeared, and after looking around to make sure nobody was watching her, she threw down a crumpled, twisted bit of paper.<br />Ikhlaq opened it.<br />It read: “Plaza – Perveen.”<br />That evening at the Plaza he met Perveen. Her friend was with her. Ikhlaq sat in the seat next to her. When the film started she took off her veil. Ikhlaq spent the entire time looking at her. His heart kept pounding. Just before the interval he extended his arm slowly and put his hand on hers. She trembled. Immediately, Ikhlaq removed his hand. As a matter of fact he had wanted to give her a ring - or rather to put it on her himself - that he had bought that same day. When the interval ended he put his hand on hers again. Again she trembled. But this time Ikhlaq did not remove his hand. A moment passed, he took out the ring and slid it on one of her fingers. She remained completely silent. Ikhlaq looked at her; tiny little beads of sweat were shimmering on her forehead and her nose.<br />When the film ended, so did this meeting between Ikhlaq and Perveen. Outside they could not exchange words. Both the friends got in a horse-carriage. Ikhlaq ran into some of his own friends. They stopped him. But he was very happy because Perveen had accepted his gift.<br />The next day, when, at the appointed hour, Ikhlaq showed up outside Perveen’s house, the window was open. Ikhlaq greeted her. Perveen answered him. On a finger of her right hand, the ring which he had put on her, shone brilliantly.<br />For a while they spoke in signs, and then cautiously, Perveen threw a package down. Ikhlaq picked it up. He opened it to find a letter within - thanking him for the ring. When he got home, Ikhlaq composed an extensive reply. He wrote his heart out on paper. He sealed the letter in a flowery envelope. He sprayed it with perfume, and then at nine in the morning he showed it to Perveen before droppingit into the letter box for her to retrieve.<br />Thus, a regular correspondence began; each letter a monument to love. Ikhlaq wrote one in his own blood, swearing that he would remain steadfast and stand by his love forever. In return he too received a composition in blood. Perveen swore as well that she would gladly relinquish her life but never take for a partner anyone other than Ikhlaq.<br />Months passed. During this time the two would sometimes meet at the cinema. They couldn’t find an opportunity to sit together otherwise. Perveen had too many restrictions from home. She could only leave her house with her brother or her friend Zohra. She was not allowed to leave the house at all with anyone else. Ikhlaq repeatedly wrote to her to bring Zohra along if necessary to meet him at the Bara Dari or Jehangir’s tomb but she refused, scared that she might be seen. Meanwhile, Ikhlaq’s parents started discussing the possibility of getting him married. Ikhlaq tried to delay them. But when they, in their frustration, approached a family without his consent, he lost his temper. It was a fiasco. To the extent that one night Ikhlaq had to sleep in the grounds at Islamia College. At her end, Perveen kept weeping, refusing to eat.<br />Ikhlaq was not one to give in easily. He was obstinate to the highest degree. Once he had left his house, he would not even consider returning. His father tried to talk to him, to pacify and assuage him, but he would not relent. He got himself a job at an office for a hundred rupees a month and started living in a rented apartment that had neither water nor electricity. And on the other side, Perveen was practically dissolving in tears, worrying about Ikhlaq’s trials. And once talk began in her house about her marriage, it was as if lightning had struck. She wrote to Ikhlaq that she was worried. He wrote back and told her not to fear. Remain steadfast. Love was testing their resolve!<br />Twelve days passed. Ikhlaq went to see her several times but Perveen was not to be seen in the window. Eventually he lost his patience, his peace, and then his sleep. He stopped going to the office. Once his leaves began to pile up, they terminated his appointment. He was not in his senses at all. The moment he received his letter of termination, he made his way straight to Perveen’s house. After a great lapse of fifteen days, he finally got to see Perveen, that too for but a fleeting moment. She dropped a package and left.<br />The letter was very long. The reason for Perveen’s absence was that her father had taken her with him to Gujranwala where her elder sister lived. For fifteen days she had shed tears of blood. Her dowry was being assembled, but to her it felt as if they were sewing together colourful shrouds for her. At the very end of the letter it read: The date has been fixed. The date of my death has been decided. I will die. I will surely poison myself and die. I see no other way out of this. No, no there is one other way. But do I have courage enough for that? Do you have courage enough……? I will come to you. I will have to come to you. You have left your house, your family for me. Then why can I not leave this house where they are preparing to celebrate my death. But I wish to live with you as your wife. You must arrange for us to be married. I will come with no more than three changes of clothing. I shall discard all my jewelry here.<br />Reply with haste. Yours, forever. Perveen.<br />Ikhlaq did not feel the need to consider. He replied instantly. “My arms suffer intolerably with the desire to enfold you in an embrace. I will not let your honour be compromised in any way. You will live as my rightful partner in life. I will always keep you happy.” A couple more letters were exchanged and it was decided that early morning on Wednesday, Perveen would leave her house. Ikhlaq would await her at the corner of the alley with a horse-carriage. It was still dark when on Wednesday Ikhlaq reached the spot where he would wait for Perveen. Fifteen to twenty minutes passed. Ikhlaq’s restlessness grew. But she came. Taking tiny steps, she appeared in the alley. There was awkwardness in her gait. When she seated herself in the carriage next to Ikhlaq, she was trembling from head to toe. Ikhlaq began to tremble also.<br />When they reached home, Ikhlaq lifted the veil of her burka with great affection and said, “For how long shall my bride keep herself veiled from me.” Perveen blushed and lowered her eyes. She was very pale and her body still shivered. When Ikhlaq set his sights upon the beauty mark on her upper lip, he felt the stirrings of a kiss in his own lips. Taking her face in his hands, he kissed her at the same spot. Perveen tried to say no. Her lips parted. The flesh between her teeth was putrefied. The gums were dark blue, utterly rotten. The stench of decay arose from within her putrid mouth and forced its way into Ikhlaq’s nose. He felt as if he had been violently pushed back. When another whiff of stench assaulted his senses, he backed away.<br />Perveen, in a voice filled with modesty and innocence, said, “You don’t have the right to do such things until we are married.” When she said this her rotten gums became apparent. Ikhlaq was in a daze; he had lost his senses; his mind was numb. The two sat together quietly for a long time. Ikhlaq could think of nothing to say. Perveen’s eyes were lowered. When she opened her mouth to bite at a fingernail, again, her rotten gums were displayed. Another whiff of the foul stench escaped. Ikhlaq retched. He was about to vomit when suddenly he got up from the bed, hastily murmured “I’ll be right back,” and went outside. He sat at the side of the road and thought. He thought for a very very long time. When nothing occurred to him, he left for Lyal Pur where a friend of his lived. When Ikhlaq told him his tale, his friend was furious and berated him over what he had done, ordering him to go back: “Return immediately, lest the poor girl commits suicide!”<br />Ikhlaq returned by nightfall. When he entered his house, Perveen was not there. There was a pillow on the bed. There were two round stains on it, wet!<br />After this, Ikhlaq never saw Perveen anywhere again.<br /><br />June 5, 1950<br />July 9, 2011<br /><br /><br /></span>Duckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07260336782916718641noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5171188484461455105.post-46528071562748909822011-06-20T11:31:00.000-07:002011-08-07T16:36:04.031-07:00Nocturne<div align="left"><span style="font-family:times new roman;">( i )</span><br /></div><br /><br /><br /><p><span style="font-family:times new roman;">They TP’d the city last night,<br />Like some drunk hooligans;<br />It looked magnificently tangled<br />Against the orange-black backdrop of the sky.<br />I followed one particular end,<br />In and out of twisted branches<br />Of all-night salesman. Hope<br />Wrapped around giant metal posts;<br />I was careful to tread like a tight-rope walker,<br />Passing from billboard to billboard;<br />And there were others I saw,<br />Stuck in their own Mobius strip. </span><br /><br />( ii )<br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;"><br />Night slinks from doorstep to doorstep.<br />Lipstick stained teeth smile<br /></span><span style="font-family:times new roman;">The grin of an old whore.<br />The stains, the rays, the remnants of days;<br />The sun will set at seven seventeen<br />And the bats are already abroad,<br />Their crescent bordered shawls, fluttering blindly,<br />Sniffing out scents of stale fruits and fresh blood<br />In the warm summer stillness.<br />Will her stout hooker’s spit dissolve this tint<br />And the darkness…will it be complete? </span><br /></p><br /><br /><br /><p>( iii )<br /><br /><strong><span style="font-family:times new roman;">The irrelevant applicant</span>:<br /></strong></p><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">The inevitable young man sits perspiring<br />On a chair that never sits still, not quite.<br />Eyeing them, his interlocutors,<br />With the sudden sharpness of a bird,<br />And, of course, the polished floor<br />Where his sole has squealed,<br />And betrayed him, to his mind,<br />While he, leaden-lung'd, flutter-stomach<br />Trades rancid spit, for a rotten rank.<br />Let the interview commence;<br />Let them question him on the purpleness of shadows,<br />On the pungency trapped between his teeth,<br />And the fatuity of this scene.<br />The sweaty young man with the walrus mustache:<br />The pliable, pancake, protégée.<br />His fat old soul smothered in too much coat;<br />The clammy excrescence of his sad little century.</span>Duckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07260336782916718641noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5171188484461455105.post-39229386419212587902011-06-16T07:05:00.000-07:002011-06-19T09:55:25.272-07:00eclipse last night<span style="font-family:times new roman;"><strong>the</strong> <strong>murderer</strong><br /><br />I challenge the moon to a lunar duel;<br />It takes my meaning behind the clouds,<br />Swallows, distorts, then spits it out,<br />And we are forced to sing a strange duet<br />Of incoherent dreams.<br />In the unnatural calm that illumines the night,<br />Several uncertain verses later,<br />Back against back, </span><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">The song begins again in tones of trees.<br />We take twelve steps then turn around<br />And pious panic peals to swell the note of fright<br />To the dull beat of a drummer’s heart.<br />Two shots are heard:<br />One, a taste of what is yet to come;<br />The other, an affirmation of what has been done so far;<br />Make no mistake!<br />The moon, in all its limitless glory, towered above us all<br />And we danced under pale yellow leaves in the night.<br />In the unnatural calm that accompanies fright,<br />I lure the moon quietly, nightly<br />To a sound setting dark green,<br />To a walk in the park, as it were,<br />But ‘tis already half past gone and lost<br />In the shadow of our collective sin,<br />Cast upon the sky. </span><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">Live or die,<br />Ice stains red rather rudely tonight<br /><br /><br /><strong>the</strong> <strong>murdered</strong></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">Hand soldered to his gun,<br />Barrel staring at the snow,<br />Unseeing, it gently rose,<br />Like the ghost-white vapor<br />At night seen rising<br />From the surface of the ice.<br />And it pointed impolitely at the backend of my neck<br />While I sat beneath the sky;<br />Sat staring at the moon.<br />And I think I must’ve felt it;<br />No, I’m sure!<br />What terrifying welders must have<br />Hardened his resolve when he said:<br />Like diamonds in the sky<br />Are the diamonds in her eyes!<br />And proceeded then to empty all his fire in my head;<br />Oh man, I should’ve known what he had meant<br />There and then; and I did, much too late<br />Comprehend his mental state, for<br />He shot me for a girl I’d never met.<br />What a fool! What a fool! What a sordid bloody fool!<br />I hope they send him to the butcher and then let him not expire<br />For as long as it shall take me to absolve;<br />And dissolve my desire;<br />To forgive and forget.<br />Merry met, dear friend, merry met. </span><br /><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><strong>the</strong> <strong>overview</strong></span><br /><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">Though Life should pause,<br />At every death<br />Take off its hat,<br />And though its vision<br />Should be now blurred,<br />Life lives on indifferently,<br />Suggesting not to have occurred<br />In single servings of humanity.<br />It would suggest,<br />Quite callously,<br />That, “there was naught there after all<br />Of consequence, except for me!<br />An abstract thought, a grand concept<br />A mountain, insect, minaret,<br />An incorporeal consciousness!”<br />So when Life stands here to undress<br />In front of full length mirrors<br />It sees itself and not the cells<br />That constitute its larger self.<br />And in its paws<br />We came and saw<br />And we were seen, and Life was lived<br />Somehow, somewhere, there in between,<br />And some were stabbed and some were shot<br />Make no mistake, of what I mean:<br />They were all forgot!<br />- Indiscriminately.</span><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"></span>Duckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07260336782916718641noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5171188484461455105.post-85005702684280450142011-03-26T03:53:00.000-07:002011-03-27T10:34:25.523-07:00GratitudeI am the books my father bought; <br />My sisters read; my mother taught; <br />And every thing I ever thought, <br />Or did, has roots in books I got. <br />When I held back, or when I fought, <br />The cornerstone for all and naught, <br />Was knowledge that in books I sought. <br />With mind at ease, or tempest tossed, <br />Therein I found what I had lost. <br />Before my bones begin to rot, <br />Aware that I can't write a jot, <br />Or for my children do a lot, <br />I’ll buy some books, ignore the cost! <br />So they’ll be books their father bought. <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /><strong>Grr-Attitude: </strong><br /><br /><br /> <br />If I could, I would, <br />Grant you every last glutinous drop of oil <br />That you have set your thirsty sights on. <br />Oh, I’d let you bathe in it and be baptized, <br />And let you drink it straight out of the soil <br />And be satisfied. With a vast and almost endless straw <br />Sticking out of your gluttonous face, <br />Let fossil fuels fill the empty space where your heart used to beat. <br />And when you’ve sucked it all up, <br />When you’ve finally, finally had your fill, <br />And worshipped fully your black mother goddess, <br />Who incites you thus to kill, <br />I will set you on fire; <br />I will set you on fire and watch your skies burn. <br />And I will not hate you. And I will not pity you. <br />I shall not think of you. With complete indifference, <br />I will stand with my back to your flaming carcass, <br />Writhing and shrieking in the pitch-scarlet night like civilian casualties.Duckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07260336782916718641noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5171188484461455105.post-41291880823198848482011-03-11T22:14:00.000-08:002011-03-11T22:15:56.904-08:00Taking Stock<span style="font-family:times new roman;"> At some crucial juncture in our past, we (and when I say ‘we’, I assume you know who I mean) severed ties with the man who ran the mosque, almost entirely. We no longer felt the need to actively participate in religion, except in passing, as a sort of polite nod to the fact that the constitution did after all call us an Islamic Republic. We felt that our children too need not be bothered with this meddling complexity while there were other, more important and lucrative pursuits. Education, that vital architect of outlook, became increasingly more secular because this shift promised better returns in terms of finance; and of course our post-colonial hangover dictated that we act more like the West at any cost – and when I mention the West, I don’t mean the relevant geographical continents with all their pros and cons but an empire as it takes shape in the mind of a slave who has lost all conception of ever having had a past, except one of shame. Thus, the man who ran the mosque was confined, as it were, to the suburbs of our social existence, allowed to assert his presence only at times of birth, marriage, death, the weekly Friday and biannual Eid prayers, which too for many of us (again, I refer to a particular social class) became optional or purely symbolic. For the rest of the year he was the ‘Mullah’, someone to be contemptuously ignored when not being satirized. Whether you believe he was himself responsible or not for the origin of his caricature is irrelevant. The fact is that we merely criticized without rectifying; we showed nothing but indifference towards our society and indeed ourselves when we relegated him to carry on without us a task that should have been taken up by the brightest and most privileged of us; the task of studying, understanding, commenting upon and disseminating our religious body of knowledge. But we, in our anxiety to remain unsullied in the eyes of the secular world by something as ‘superstitious’ and ‘medieval’ as religion, left no channels of communication open between the Mullah and ourselves. We ‘otherized’ the Mullah and all his followers so that we could delight in our own ‘enlightenment’ and simultaneously create a psychological cushion necessary for our increasing loss of faith. By making the ‘illiterate’ Mullah the sole representative of religion, we were able to justify our own departure from it, keeping ourselves satisfied with the knowledge that we were only distancing ourselves from ‘ignorance’ and ‘darkness’. But the truth is, while we were busy distancing ourselves from something whose significance we were too foolish to comprehend, we were doing nothing to illumine, as it were, the darkness that was gathering all around us. At what we arrogantly believed was the periphery, but was in fact the very centre of our social existence, something horrible was brewing.<br /><br />And thus, by having divorced ourselves from its charge, we relinquished our right to complain about what they were doing to or with our religion. Today, we are nonplussed by what is going on around us. People are dying because of a decision we made a long time ago to be irresponsible. And every time a man is killed, we frantically scan the Quran, not because we want to get at the truth, but because we want for it to validate our preconceived conception of it, to reassure us that Islam is still what we want for it to be. We seem not to understand that interpretation depends upon the interpreter. And we ourselves have installed interpreters. We used to be amused by the silly ramblings of the Mullah’s sermon. Now we are afraid of them. We did not want to do his job because we felt it to be beneath our stature. Now we wouldn’t know where to begin anyway. A friend of mine, who is researching the reasoning behind the blasphemy law, (something that we should’ve looked into decades ago) claims that it is impossible to have a constructive discussion with a Mullah. There seems to be too wide a gap in between the two for there to be a meaningful conversation on the subject. This gap, I believe, is of trust. Because if there is no trust, if the Mullah feels that he is being attacked by an outsider (for he no longer recognizes us) and not merely being questioned by one of his ‘flock’, and on the other hand, if the researcher feels that he is being misled by a hostile or ignorant man, how can the two move forward in a direction of mutual understanding? And one wonders, how is it that after all these years of co-existence, the two have not been able to develop a rapport of trust? Why does the Mullah feel that the researcher is an outsider? Why does the researcher feel that the Mullah is hostile? Why are questions about the blasphemy law being raised now? What have we been doing for all these years? It appears as if the gap which we created will widen until all there is will be swallowed by the chasm. My researcher friend should have always been a regular visitor to the mosque, someone whom the Mullah recognized and appreciated as one of his own. Then his questions would not have felt like accusations from a worshipper of the west. Then the possibility of dialogue could have been preserved. But it is still not too late, I hope, if we get our act together, if we start taking a genuine interest in what goes on in our friendly neighborhood mosque.<br /><br />There are so many articles nowadays in newspapers about Zia-ul-Haq’s Islamization, usually vilifying it, often and not surprisingly for the wrong reasons. More than anything it has become a copout: everything that goes wrong or seems to go wrong (the Taliban, honor killings, the blasphemy law murders etc) with the practical interpretation of our religion is stacked up on Zia as his burden. Or even more commonly, it is professed to be an evident sign of the inherent evil of all religions themselves. Writers target issues like the imposition of compulsory Islamic studies in the academic curriculum, equating it to a fascist dictum, and asking for the idea to be scrapped. I believe this to be an act of idiocy at best. I think these overzealous writers, who feel it’s always a progressive move to badmouth Zia, lack understanding about how one possibly negative move can on its own weight be turned into a positive one. Our best educational institutions could try to take the original initiative a step further and make the subject more than the unfruitful exercise in rote-learning that it is right now. If we make Islamic studies important, critical, and as relevant a subject as it ought to be, considering where we are living, there is a good chance that in less than a generation we will have produced brilliant scholars who can take a stand on issues that are otherwise exploited by the corrupt or the ill-informed simply because there is nobody around who knows enough to make an informed argument to the contrary. And if not brilliant scholars, we would at least have well informed individuals who know what they are talking about when discussing religious matters. All we have at the moment are random liberals yapping their traps about some sort of imitation humanism that they have borrowed from some bohemian utopia, which is just not going to cut it with the majority in Pakistan.<br />At the same time, we need to reclaim our religion. We have doctors, engineers and lawyers aplenty; a veritable infestation of civil servants and a plague of politicians/politically motivated mullahs. Conversely, we have a severe shortage of informed religious sense in this country. Of course, we are also ridiculously biased against anyone with a beard who doesn’t sport a fancy British accent. And we are biased against anyone who pursues religious studies. We need to grow out of that sort of thinking. After all, is there any logical reason why issues like the blasphemy law are not discussed in schools while race issues (almost entirely irrelevant to our region) are? The answer is yes; we borrow all the information we need on racism from America, where the issue is pertinent, but we are too ashamed to find a single reliable source to tell us how matters of Fiqh are resolved. We have been unwilling to invest in something vital, something that when left to rot has started decaying in our living-room. Our educational system has to be brought back to Pakistan, and made sensible and relevant again. If it has taken a lapse of several generations to bring us to the brink of civil war and chaos, it is not too great a cost if one generation’s investment might save us.<br />We can bring down the wall of mistrust that we ourselves have erected that has split our society into two. And when I say ‘we’ I mean the insufferable and pompous liberal elite and the upper middle class, both of which have let this country fall to its knees. These are those who have the resources to set things right if for a moment, perhaps for the first time in our country’s history, they could be persuaded to think unselfishly and grow up. Stop trying to pretend you are a sahib for a little while, and reestablish contact with the mosque.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">06/03/11</span>Duckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07260336782916718641noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5171188484461455105.post-61087375252658727772010-12-31T16:43:00.000-08:002011-02-05T06:56:25.044-08:00Nasri Nazm<span style="font-family:times new roman;"><strong>Shukr Hai Ab Duniya Azad Hai Tumse:</strong></span><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">Tum, jo raat ko sharaab pi kay hasstay ho,<br />Aur ultiyyan bhi kertay ho,<br />Jo choohon ki manand aik hi bill mein bastay ho,<br />Aur samajhtay ho kay tum to "left" ho, </span><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">Kay tum hi haq pe ho,<br />Aur tumharay saath hi ziyaadti hui hai,<br />Aur sochtay ho kay aik din duniya tumhe sajda keray gi,<br />Tum, jo do takkay ki...Insaaniyyat ho,<br />Shooder ho!<br />So yaad rakho:<br />Tumharay khoo'n mein keecharr hai, jo roshni ka dushman hai.<br />Aur tum andhay ho.<br />Aur aik andha aur aik dekhnay wala kabhi brabar nahi ho saktay.<br />To tum uss ki cheezon per andhi nazar kyunker rakhtay ho?<br />Hassad kyun kertay ho? Tum sochtay kyun nahin?<br />Tumharay ooper anay walay azaab se,<br />Kay jis se hum bhi derrtay hain,<br />Baykhabar kyun rehtay ho?<br />Haan tum jo raat ko sharaab pi kay raqs kertay ho,<br />Ahista ahista tum apnay hi aap thorra aur mertay ho,<br />Na samajh ho, aur na hi samajh saktay ho.<br />Aaj tum, apnay hi saayay kay humraaz, dertay ho,<br />Hum se bigarrtay ho, sub hi se larrtay ho,<br />To shayed aisay hi hona tha,<br />Shayed tum sahi kertay ho.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">So tumhe tumhara azaab mubarak ho.</span><br /><br /><p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">------------------------------------------------</span></p><p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"></span></p><p><strong><span style="font-family:times new roman;">Aray Tu to Paison Waali Hai!</span></strong></p><p><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">Ye unn ko jub pata challa to baysharam se ho gaye<br />'Jaanay na paye haath se', iss darr se 'tere ho gaye'<br />Aur duur se ab chal diye, jo paas hi mein rehte thay,<br />Woh jo paresha'n si shakal, aur haath mein ik phone liye,<br />Jo jaeb se nikaal ker, sarrak kay paar,<br />Ankhon hi ankhon mein, taaziyyat na kernay kay,<br />Bahaanay laakh soch ker,<br />Khaamoshion ki taar per (tujhe) sookhnay ko daal ker,<br />Sardiyyon mein dhoop ki si aas bun kay,<br />Ojhal ho jaaya kertay thay.<br />Woh baysharam se log aaj uth kay jo salam keren<br />To kyun na ho humein khushi?<br />Dekh ye karigari:<br />Ho rahay hain ehtemaam, aur keh rahay hain bar bar:<br />'Khuda hi ki ye shaan hai, jo shaan hai aaj aap ki!'<br />Kya aap ko maloom hai woh 'aap' ki ummeed se hai?<br />Munaafqat ki haamila guzashta naw maheenon se<br />Kuch aisi taqaaleef mein hai<br />Kay jinn ka hal hai aap ki tajoriyyon ki wussatein.</span></p>Duckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07260336782916718641noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5171188484461455105.post-63546897307553247542010-12-27T18:58:00.000-08:002011-01-29T04:33:17.284-08:00Chaperone to Risalpur<span style="font-family:times new roman;">Every wheel has a hub, every universe, a centre. And if you’re talking about oratory, then the centre of the universe is PAF Academy Risalpur. Not just because it’s one of the last decent Declamation tournaments left (with the added bonus of competent judges), but also because you get to ride a genuine Pakistan Air Force flying tub all the way to the tournament: the antiquated, non-sound-proof, and vomit-inducing C-130 is famous for transporting heavy artillery, farm animals, debaters, and for exploding with President Zia-ul-Haq onboard. Apart from that there’s also the food, the clean crisp air of Risalpur, the Super-Mushak “Joy Ride”, the neatly cropped cadets, more food, and of course, the trophy to look forward to.<br />Ummar and I broke the curse of not winning by winning the accursed trophy back in 2008, but then the great fiasco of 2009 occurred, which resulted in Dr. Haroon Qadir (In-charge GCUDS) stepping down as official permanent chaperone to Risalpur. At this crucial juncture it was decided that a fresh goat be prepared for decapitation in 2010. As it happened, I was conveniently found grazing nearby, and was shrewdly lured into a trap by the powers that be. Mr Siddiq Awan (Co-In-charge GCUDS) asked me to accompany team GCU comprising Ali Zafar and Saad ul Hassan this year as chaperone to Risalpur. It is generally and somewhat accurately held that I bring good luck to everyone except myself. And as the fateful day when I would accompany the new talent to their ultimate test came nearer, I couldn’t help but concur.<br />I was not looking forward to this trip at all because my earlier experience as chaperone had been rather unnecessarily painful. Ali Zafar, our humorous speaker for all occasions and the heir to my throne, had been disqualified on grounds of “vulgarity,” and I was being held responsible and therefore being harangued by the upholders of morality in Military College Jehlum for having allowed my student to use “this sort of filth to corrupt the innocent minds of their boys”. Ironically, Ali had used most of the campus material provided by students of MCJ.<br /><br />“I myself am a Ravian, sir!” claimed the indignant uniformed instructor after he had finally sought and wrestled me down during the post-tournament luncheon, “And I would have you know that I am shocked! Shocked!” he spluttered, and continued his less than flattering analysis of my person, going red in the face, and looking at me with piercing eyes that demanded an explanation but did not desire one. I tried to hastily piece together an inconclusive, noncommittal response, but in the midst of my self-conscious mumblings, the pompous old uniform with little remnants of what was once a man, held securely in between dry folds of starch, left me stranded in a vortex of ice-cold attitude. As if from a distant cave, far, far away I could still make out Ali Zafar whispering in my ear one of his ever-ready excuses: “But Umer bhai, I won at Lawrence College with this same material!” while I felt angry and miserable for having been censured in front of my boys by a creature who had no experience whatsoever of humorous public speaking, of the immense pressure or of the hard work involved. Plus, common decency dictates that if you wish to humiliate a chaperone, you do it discreetly, not in front of his charge.<br />Fact of the matter is that what is vulgar for some is perfectly acceptable for others. It all depends on where you are. And I had no idea where I was anymore. On the one hand there was my boy who claimed his material was perfectly all right, tried and tested, and on the other hand there was this vicegerent of ethics rebuking me for spreading evil in the land. All I knew now was empathy! I sort of understood why Dr. Haroon never really liked this chaperoning business, even though it seems so cushy from a participant’s point of view. It’s because it really is horrible, and quite frankly an unnecessary botheration. All sorts of jackasses with opinions come up to you and tell you what they think of you; they judge you personally on the basis of the performance of the participants you are accompanying irrespective of whether you have had anything to do with their preparation or not. You are made to feel embarrassed if the team you have brought performs abysmally. But what is infinitely worse is that as a young and unconvincing as well as seemingly impressionable chaperone I often find myself easy pickings for two kinds of people: (a) old Ravians who love GCU but hate everyone from GCU, and (b) non-Ravians who hate GCU and anyone from GCU. These were the two principle categories of Villain that I encountered in MCJ, and they were all mostly chaperones from institutions that GCU had a habit of beating repeatedly. Some chaperones were merely sore at me for having become, at so young an age, a lecturer at such a prestigious university. I did not find it tempting to tell them that I had not, and was merely an unpaid nurse.<br /><br />On the day of our departure, as Saad ul Hassan and I waited at the Air Force base with the other teams from Lahore, a Mr. Bahauddin, chaperone from Chenab College Jhang and knucklehead extraordinaire, showed up. And in order to impress upon me the importance of his existence, and to indicate how intimately he was acquainted with GCU (he was an old Ravian) he started telling me how GCU had gone to the dogs. As it happened, he found out, by overhearing a conversation between a Risalpur cadet and I, that Ali Zafar was not going to accompany us on the flying tub, but would take the bus instead as he was to participate in the Chief Minister’s Declamation tournament in the Post-Grad category on the same day.<br /><br />“What? Don’t you have more than one competent speaker?” ejaculated Mr. Bahauddin. “This is an outrage! As an old Ravian I must say I am shocked! Shocked! Has GCU fallen so low that now it can’t even produce two decent speakers to divide tournaments among? You send one boy everywhere?” he slapped his knee with feigned exasperation but was clearly delighted at this fresh opportunity to bash GCU, and to inform me that the Debating Society was crumbling in the incompetent hands of Mr. Siddiq Awan, especially now that the legendary Ms. Masooma had left for her eternal abode elsewhere on planet Ambition. I listened to him patiently, and then pointed out that he was a complete and total loudmouthed windbag and an idiot of the highest order, and then proceeded to substantiate my claim with a brief overview of GCUDS’ achievements since Ms. Masooma’s departure and Mr Awan’s entry. Saad ul Hassan was kind enough to provide information vis-à-vis the actual number of Ravians currently participating in the C.M tournament, proving that Ali Zafar was not the only speaker we had, rather a rare species of multi-tasker that Mr. Bahauddin could only ever hope to be. Though there is no doubt that he tried very hard: he had two mobile phones out almost constantly, both stuck to either side of his head as props that helped him appear busier than the devil on a hot day in June. As luck would have it, Mr. Bahauddin’s unfortunate team did in fact manage to reach the final at Risalpur, only to forget both their speeches mid-stream, embarrass themselves to death, and bring into sharper relief the caliber of Mr. Bahauddin who had felt he had the divine right to criticize not only my team and my teachers but also the university that had made him competent enough to be ranked among the incompetent. God only knows what he was before that.<br /><br />“You should listen to my boys, they’re very good,” I said at the end, “you’ll enjoy the lesson,” I added rather condescendingly. Aware of the distinct possibility of ending up with egg on my face, but with the wounds from MCJ still afresh, I was rearing to spill bile. To be honest, I was fairly confident about Saad’s Urdu serious speech. It was Ali Zafar whose speech worried me. English humorous is no laughing matter. Quite literally! Ali’s abominable humorous speeches were the limiting agents in this experiment. But he was confident, and I felt it my duty as chaperone to not tell him that I did not share his optimism. It was like watching a young man go off to war with a rubber gun. But so be it. More victories have been won by those who knew not the danger they faced than by those who did.<br /><br />Ali Zafar joined us at Risalpur that night after having stood second at the C.M tournament. One of our own, Umer Jee Saleemi, stood first (he along with Adeel Anjum were the perpetrators of the fiasco of 2009 that resulted in my being chaperone in 2010. Their defeat had discouraged Dr. Haroon from further excursions to Risalpur). News of Ali’s victory sent a nervous shiver up the collective spine of the participants in the rest-house that night. The fact that he was on a victorious rampage had the same effect on his competition as news of Ghengis Khan’s arrival had on the pious scholars of Baghdad. Now that the preliminaries were over, and I had met the chaperones and the teams, and all the fake pleasantries had been exchanged, it was time to strategize and go to war.<br /><br />The plan was a simple six-pronged affair. We had devised it soon after results were announced at MCJ.<br /><br />1. We would take the most tame, uncontroversial, impotent English humorous speech known to mankind. We would ensure that nothing at all could offend even the most puritanical of hypocrites present among the crowd. We would leave them no opportunity to disqualify us, in other words, we would bore the life out of all members of the student audience, and like true professionals, aim to satisfy the judges only. (As a humorous speaker it is really very hard to compromise on laughter. To stand there and be considered unfunny and boring is more painful than to be considered vulgar. But we strategize to get the team trophy. Individual ambition is unimportant. Ravians go in as a team and win as a team. And if boring is what it takes. Then that’s what they’ll be!)<br /><br />2. We would try our best not to pay heed to any of the thousand and one things that cadets come knocking on our doors about. The best way to relax when everyone is “requesting the pleasure of your company” at some official function or other, is to ignore the request until it becomes an order, and even then try to dawdle for as long as possible without getting disqualified from the tournament.<br /><br />3. Saad ul Hassan, if he forgets, or fumbles in the course of his speech, would be shot there and then. And his remains unceremoniously dumped in any non-specific water-body.<br /><br />4. Ali Zafar, if he felt the onset of fear when facing a crowd full of contemptuous yawns, and if that fear flashed on his face for so much as an instant, would experience the same punishment as above.<br /><br />5. I would dress to kill. And if anyone spoke to me, I would reply after careful consideration in a manner which was appropriate for one in my position, or perhaps merely gesture my response without having to resort to using my vocal apparatus (this was perhaps the toughest of all rules).<br /><br />6. We would accept the trophy with dignity, humility and graceful gratitude. (When I say “we”, I mean Saad and Ali. I would be sitting in the audience clapping with poise. In all honesty, being chaperone is an inglorious, thankless job.)<br /><br />The initial round’s speeches were divided into four sessions. Ours were in the fourth. We entered the great light-blue and downwards-sloping Academy Auditorium a little early to watch the tail-end of the third session in order to get some idea of what the competition was going to be like this year. The speeches were mostly atrocious, bordering on retarded. And when the president introduced a particular contestant as Miss Gorilla-Lala while announcing her topic, Ali and I burst into barely controlled, hysterical laughter that lasted till the end of the session. Relaxed and refreshed by the general level of outrageous hilarity I bade my young warriors good luck at the start of session four and took a seat from where I could observe them with ease while they moved down to the contestants’ seating positions onstage. Meanwhile, Miss Gorilla-Lala left the hall with her team mate and was never heard from again.<br /><br />I felt all the speakers needed work. A lot of work! They were all, barely comprehensible. Some were old hands who had only recently started winning, now that Ummar and other good speakers had stopped participating, and therefore had nothing against which they could be compared. As I sat there I thought to myself that perhaps I had become too cynical, but in my honest opinion, it seemed as if Declamation was dead. It had died a long time ago and we were all merely juicing a corpse. Trying to squeeze out what little glory there was still left in its rapidly drying arteries. Its death occurred once the private schools and universities realized that there was money in Parliamentary Style Debates and none in Declamation. Foreign universities patronize the former style of debating and accept students with that sort of training. A school that can boast of a good Parliamentary team can advertise the possibility of a foreign education and have hopeful parents flocking to have their children admitted. Simple economics has killed Declamation and now feasts in the halls of cut-throat politics as it tries to rake in as much money as possible without a clue to how meaningful this hijacked intellectual game could really be. I feel that both these art forms need to be merged into one again. Logic without rhetoric and rhetoric without logic are too cold and meaningless respectively. But it seems almost too late now. There are no orators left, only tournaments. Filled with incompetent copycats! Declaimers try to rip-off material written by Ummar and Iqrar and Sameer Ahmed or even Nasir Muneef. Parliamentarians copy Adeel and…well, just Adeel. GCU will keep trying to produce quality declaimers, because it must, but what’s the point? If the circuit is not going to have healthy competition, and if there’s nobody out there who really understands this art form anymore, then what are we but peacocks in a jungle, dancing to an unheard melody? Nobody knows what’s going on anymore. And so, good judges are harder to find now than ever before. To the untrained ear, the loudest voice seems the obvious choice for a winner. But yelling till your lungs burst was never what declamations were supposed to be about. Of course, as with most forms of art, there is no scientific or purely objective way to judge a declaimer. There is and always will be just the one test of a good orator: Can he/she raise the hairs at the back of your neck? And I for one couldn’t feel that at this tournament. And to make matters worse, they all fumbled and forgot. It was like watching a bunch of addicts making fools out of themselves. And it’s all because the competition and the drive have both vanished. There are no great orators left to inspire the new lot. I suppose the C.M. tournament is a good initiative to inject some life back into Declamation, but having tournaments without providing a means to adequate training for young orators is in the end fruitless. We need to get the schools interested again. I remember, Aitchison College used to host one of the most prestigious Declamation tournaments around, and so, produced some of the finest orators there were. Now it’s got the most rubbish tournament imaginable and has no declaimers to boast of. They’re tops in Parliamentary though, because there’s so much money involved in that. The only school in Lahore interested in Declamation currently is SISA.<br /><br />After the first round was over, we had a team meeting and decided there was little chance of GCU not breaking into the final round. We were a shoe-in! With that in mind we went to dinner. After which the results were announced. We broke in as the second ranked team. This was fairly good. Ali’s speech had bombed with the crowd but had worked wonders on the judges. And that was precisely the sort of suicide bombing we needed to win this tournament. Here I must add that Ali’s performance had been no less than admirable and outright courageous. The poor guy got absolutely no response from the dead crowd but he did not bat an eyelid. Surefooted as a goat he frolicked all the way to the butcher’s. Naturally, not everybody was pleased with the results. And someone struck the first blow to sabotage us.<br />An officer came up to me and asked me, “Where is the chaperone for team GCU?” I told him he was looking at him. “But you are a student!” he said. “No I am not.” I replied. “Yes you are! I know you, you’re a student!” “Listen, I used to be a student, now I am a teacher’s assistant at GCU, I’ve got the authority letter to prove it.” He took another look at me, perhaps to determine if he could sense a lie and then said, “A Ms. Aleena from F.C. College has called us and told us that you’re a student!” I laughed at this politely: “Yes, well, according to F.C. College, squealing cisterns like Fahd Kazmi are good orators. Goes to show that they’re all crazy there.” He eyed me for a bit longer and then left. This was not the end of it though. After every half an hour someone or the other would inquire about GCU’s chaperone and I would have to retell my story over and over again. “Weren’t you here as a speaker?” “Yes I was. Back in ’08 I won your tournament. Then I graduated…it happens, I’m sorry. I hope you can forgive me.” “They kept you on as a lecturer at GCU straight after your Bachelors?” “I’m a teacher’s assistant, and it’s an Honours degree, that’s for four years. I’ve got the letter of authority.” “That won’t be necessary.” “Then what do you want?”<br />While I was getting grilled by the Air Force, Usman Leghari from LSE showed up by my side. “Hey,” he said, “I heard they’re on your case?” “Yes,” I muttered, “somebody’s been telling tales about my ambiguous professional status.” Leghari dropped his tone to his favourite conspirational out-of-the-side-of-the-mouth drawl and said, “It was Israr! F.C.’s got nothing to do with it. Israr spread the rumour!” I had had a feeling this might be the case since F.C. wasn’t even competing this year; they had been sent back home from the base back in Lahore because they had failed to bring a chaperone. So it was Israr?!<br /><br />Israr-ul-Hassan, sort of famous for being the brother of the actually famous Iqrar-ul-Hassan, has had to live under the suffocating shadow of his elder brother’s status as a legendary orator, and was disappointed at not having made it to the final. This had been quite possibly his first and last chance to speak at Risalpur, and winning this tournament would have afforded him a sense of closure. First, his brother’s legacy had hung over him like a specter for too long, then, being marginalized by other more talented orators at the GCUDS had taken its toll on him, and then finally, his expulsion from GCU had left Israr a little bitter to say the least. Perhaps we were all at fault, his batch-mates who had been unable to help him deal with his predicament. Maybe we should’ve helped him improve. Lord knows those who could, tried. Either way, the fellow dropped out of GCU and was now representing Punjab University at various tournaments. Losing to kids many years his junior like Saad ul Hassan was perhaps the last straw. And though at the time I felt his reaction a little treacherous and unsportsmanlike, I feel sorry for him now. However, before we get to what Israr really did wrong, there’s the matter of the Joy Ride.<br /><br />One of the best things about Risalpur is the Joy Ride. They call it a Joy Ride themselves and it takes place early morning before the final round. Anyone who signs-up for it gets to fly in a two-seater plane called the “Super Mushak” with an instructor pilot for about fifteen minutes, and gets to see stuff from really high up. And if the pilot feels like putting you through your paces then you can also experience having your stomach sucked out of your skull while you watch yourself vomit uncontrollably all over your own face. It really is splendid. Of course, before they take you up, you have to sign a special waiver which states that neither you nor any of your descendants shall from this day forth ever articulate a nasty thought about the armed forces…ever, seriously. And also, if you die, it’s not the Air Force’s headache. Thus we all sell our souls for a Joy Ride. And let me tell you sir, it is worth it, except for this year. A non-specific cadet woke us up and told us we were very late and everybody was getting ready to go up, so we dragged ourselves out of bed and got dressed as best we could under the circumstances. We reached the bus just in time and this officer from the Education corps took a contemptuous look at us, frowned, and said: “You’re from GCU?”<br />I confirmed his suspicion with a nod and a faint yes.<br />“Is this how you dress?” he pointed his ball-point pen at Ali’s official GCU sports trousers and the random ‘upper’ he had put on in his haste. This man was not pleased with our attire generally. For some reason he seemed to harbour the belief that Ravians must always be stuffed full of starch and built entirely out of barbed wire. While I was rummaging up the wakefulness required to answer this man and point out the absurdity of such a criticism before the commencement of something called a Joy Ride, he informed us all of the reasons for his disgust: “I myself am a Ravian, sir! And I am shocked! Shocked!”<br />It’s as if they all have the same insufferable script. The moment they see someone from GCU they start telling them how worthless they are. I still couldn’t figure out what to say to him when right on cue he demanded: “Where is your chaperone?”<br />“I am the chaperone,” I said, woefully aware of the mound of indignity that he was heaping upon me and that this little episode had effectively ruined clause five of the six-pronged plan. He stared at me with suspicion and hatred for about three seconds in which I stared back at him with an excellent mélange of fury and boredom. “Go, sit!” he barked at us, and up we went into the bus that took us to the tarmac. They would never treat Dr. Haroon like this, I thought. Why do I never have anything good to say to these people to shut them up proper? I thought, therefore I suffered. Meanwhile Ali Zafar tried to placate me.<br /><br />It was there on the tarmac that it happened. Ali had been trying to catch the eye of a fair skinned lady cadet, Saad was being his usual uneventful self, and I was muttering obscenities under my breath, trying to locate a washroom and cursing the non-specific cadet who had roused us before my early morning purge. And then it happened. All three of us turned and beheld a sight no mortal was meant to behold. The lady cadet whispered something into an ear. The ear! And whose ear it was? There he was, glowing brighter than a thousand burning suns, the Greek god of flexing muscles, built like a weapon of mass destruction; his chest, a vast expanse of rippling strength. There he stood bathed in a light that fell upon his pure and noble form and scattered as it bounced off the many points of his regal mane, splitting into a spectacular rainbow of celestial colours. And as the three of us gazed at him in awestruck ecstasy we knew that a taller, more finely chiseled and glorious form of human had never before been seen by a mere Ravian. The fine aquiline nose, the high cheekbones, the distinctly Numenorian features. Here was a walking tribute to the ideals of male beauty! Here was a testimony to the creative genius of God! Here was trainee pilot, cadet Shigri.<br />Cadet Shigri turned around and gave us one sharp look of all-consuming fury and we were his willing slaves forever, liveried in his bondage, subservient souls till souls depart, we were struck down and brought to heel by the charismatic whiplash of his dreamy merciless eyes. They say if the Air Force ever runs out of fuel, cadet Shigri could simply jog up and down the runway thereby motivating fighter jets to fly on empty tanks. Men would attempt the impractical and achieve the impossible if cadet Shigri but hinted that it was his desire they do so. It is rumoured that with a single gaze cadet Shigri can make the coldest cats on campus conflagrate. And need I say I saw no cats while in Risalpur? And it was this miracle’s cousin that Ali Zafar had been trying to catch the eye of. One toe over the line and we would’ve all ended dead in a non-specific ditch somewhere.<br />Fact of the matter is, those Air Force people had kept us waiting for about five hours before finally officially announcing that there was just not enough “visibility” for the Joy Ride. So I don’t blame Ali for losing his focus. But Shigri? Good God! Were there ever three such fools as us? Flirting with death’s honour itself! Cadet Shigri could’ve impaled us with an eyelash! Skewered us like kebabs on a seekh! None would’ve been spared! And all because young master Ali Zafar could not keep his eyes to himself! There wasn’t much time to lose. We begged for, and managed to acquire, a spare bus and went off as quickly as possible to our rest-house. Once safely behind locked doors, it was time to prepare for the final round.<br /><br />That evening I asked Israr if he had spread the rumour about my being a student in order to sabotage my team. I asked him upfront because I just don’t deal with this sort of rubbish by plotting and planning. I ask outright. And I almost always know when I am being lied to. Israr denied he had anything to do with it. I felt unconvinced but there you have it. My word against his. Stalemate. So I let bygones be bygones and that was that. Once the final round began I was too busy chasing camera-flash after-images in my head to care about anything. But once Ali’s speech began, I noticed somebody coughing: An obnoxious and intrusive, constant and quite obviously rude, cough. Some people sitting behind me were coughing loudly and pointedly. Their purpose was evident: we’re going to keep doing this until Ali Zafar gets distracted enough to fumble. And Ali did seem annoyed. But he slogged through the trial with no applause and a lot of ghostly coughing. The coughing was disturbing enough to get guests from as far down as the third row to turn and see what was going on. It was Israr and his cronies who were at it. They wanted to disrupt Ali’s speech, and this time they had gone all out to do their worst. There was not even a chance of claiming he hadn’t done it after this shameless display. He had been seen. One never expects this sort of behavior from an old Ravian. I was shocked! Shocked! Either way, Saad’s speech went spectacularly well and at the end of the day, on account of being the best team in this particular tournament, because Ali’s speech had been safe enough to get us through after all, and Saad had won the second prize, GCU lifted the team trophy. And for that moment, as in so many other important moments in life, Israr became irrelevant. We had a decent post-victory dinner, went back to our room (coincidentally the same room where Ummar and I had stayed) and stashed the trophy in the closet just like the last time, and went off to watch the comedy skits that the Risalpur Dramatics Club was putting on in the hall.<br /><br />“Is your cough better now?” I asked Israr as coldly as I could the next day. Ali and I were going back to our room after breakfast and Israr and his boys were making their way to the mess. What I expected was for Israr to give his usual sheepish laugh and deny what he had done in his usual gutless fashion. Instead, he became belligerent. He accused us of accusing him unfairly, and so on and so forth. Fact is, I didn’t accuse him of anything; I merely inquired after his health. But the cat was out of the bag now. He was angry, offensive, and quite possibly, very much ashamed. Perhaps he hoped we would throw a punch at him. And that would have made what he had done seem worth it, justified. He wanted to hate us, or for us to make him hate us. But I didn’t say anything. Neither did Ali. We went back to our room without another word and he went his own way. I was hurt, of course. But I had found myself just as speechless at Israr’s outburst as I had been when confronted by the instructor at MCJ. I felt wrong-footed to be sure. I had expected an apology, or at least some sort of obvious victory to satisfy myself with. At the time I didn’t realize this, at least not until Ali pointed it out, but we really had won, and not just the trophy. Victory comes in many guises if you but have the sense to recognize it for what it really is.<br />This became evident a few hours later while we were waiting for the bus to come and take us to the flying tub for our ride back home. Israr came up to us and sort of apologized. He didn’t actually admit anything but just indicated that he wanted no hard feelings between us. And we graciously accepted his overture. After he left, Leghari showed up again (as is his habit to pop up at crucial moments)<br />“He came to me after breakfast, Israr did,” whispered Leghari importantly, “He said he had exchanged words with you guys?” “Yes,” I said “I asked him about his cough and he...” “Well, he felt bad about it afterwards,” said Leghari, “He told me so. And I asked him if it was his fault and he said it was, and so I told him to go apologize and that it wouldn’t make him the smaller man…quite the contrary.” “Leghari, you’re a regular Mother Teresa aren’t you?” I laughed. “Hey, I just try to keep the world running smoothly, he’s an old Ravian; you guys are going to run into each other everywhere, might as well patch up.” He winked at me the way he does. Leghari, by the way, got the first prize as an individual English speaker. Which is a pretty big deal, or at least, well, it used to be before the bane of ear-drums everywhere, Fahd "the high-pitched horror" Kazmi from F.C. got it!<br /><br />As the bus arrived, all four of us (including Leghari) stood watching Mr. Bahauddin of Chenab College Jhang, with both his mobile phones pressed against his ears, yelling “Sir! Sir! Yes Sir!” as loud as his personal measure of decency permitted. Here was a man who hadn’t been loved enough by those who mattered I thought. Otherwise why would he be doing this? Making a spectacle of himself just to gain some attention. To each his own, however, and if this works for him, then so be it. The poor guy hadn’t caught my ey<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPQjLASbfPPMSEpetqdWrIR2PlsN3QWQcAM1TquLKC0Ow5ulrK-EU0Ug5g9EGmxZ-aMo8syixyyxh937fEg1yXk318iKuPaIAnvcsZGqae_yVztKCZ0wHoB15EH3nTW15OR0jl4_ivcOFI/s1600/780px-Iceland_satellite.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5556048757352767602" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 240px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPQjLASbfPPMSEpetqdWrIR2PlsN3QWQcAM1TquLKC0Ow5ulrK-EU0Ug5g9EGmxZ-aMo8syixyyxh937fEg1yXk318iKuPaIAnvcsZGqae_yVztKCZ0wHoB15EH3nTW15OR0jl4_ivcOFI/s320/780px-Iceland_satellite.jpg" border="0" /></a>e since last night’s victory when he had come over and said to me, “So…it seems as if we’re taking the trophy home?” He was alluding to the rather weak fact that he was still a Ravian, and that since it was a GCU win, he was entitled to partake in the festivity. And I said, “Yes, it seems Mr. Awan really does know what he’s doing over there after all doesn’t it?” Mr. Bahauddin smiled an embarrassed smile, shook his head and left the hall. And now here he was with his mobile phones, secure in his private delusions.<br /><br />Like I said, I had not been looking forward to this trip at all. But I did go. For the simple reason that life is essentially an opportunity to amass as many interesting anecdotes as possible, I force myself not to miss any opportunity to do things I wouldn’t normally do and to go places where I wouldn’t normally go. In the words of the renowned science fiction writer, Kurt Vonnegut Jr.: "Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God." And though lessons always seem such a dreadful nuisance, we’re all going to miss them once college-life is over.<br /></span>Duckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07260336782916718641noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5171188484461455105.post-20029414116238713122010-11-17T12:59:00.000-08:002011-01-03T00:56:36.755-08:00Floccinaucinihilipilification*<strong>1</strong><br /><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">Come let’s try </span><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">To describe,<br />Come let’s try, </span><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">Do come!<br />A feeling really <em>hard</em> to explain:<br />The Human Orgasm.</span><br /><br /><br /><br /><strong>2</strong><br /><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">A swell of brown.<br />A dirt mound.<br />A Tree, Tall,<br />His Majesty,<br />His beard, a tire swing,<br />And we swung there carelessly:<br />Pendulums on a wooden clock!<br />It seemed as if we’d never stop<br />The Summer slowly pass us by.<br /><br />We never mourned the grey;<br />The wide world's torn sky,<br />The thunder flash, the big splash,<br />Her green lap, a cool pool;<br />We sailed the Earth in tire tubes,<br />And the dread rains passed us by.<br /><br />And in the Winter a crow died,<br />Maggots writhed around its eye,<br />Popping in and out of it<br />Smelling like the death<br />Of winters past that passed us by<br />As if we’d stumbled where their bodies lie.<br /><br />We warmed some stray pups with our hands<br />Then buried them in flower beds;<br />Death was just a circumstance,<br />A consequence,<br />A small word, it was absurd!<br />And who in truth cares for a bird? </span><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">Or a dog?</span><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">We jogged at dawn in winter’s fog;</span><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;"><br />It’s never there where it seems<br />Like finish lines, like happy dreams.<br />The hill is gone, the Tree was doomed,<br />But in the spring, the flowers bloomed<br />And I sat before the flower bed<br />And wondered if they’d howl the dead.<br />I whistled and made some chirping sounds<br />Then I got bored and left the grounds.</span><br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;"><strong>*</strong> The act of appraising something 'worthless'.</span>Duckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07260336782916718641noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5171188484461455105.post-60729222972613163532010-11-04T16:14:00.000-07:002010-12-26T08:36:57.922-08:00Grue<span style="font-family:times new roman;"><strong>Grue</strong></span><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;"><strong></strong><br />Man I’m going to the capsules,<br />To fall asleep a while.<br />Red space-suit, it’s been so hard,<br />For far too long,<br />For eight years straight<br />I’ve missed grue Earth<br />(Where now her seas are grey).<br />The fisheye stares out at black space<br />Where spiral galaxies burn all night<br />And light plays 'cross the windowpane<br />While I in my spaceship ... rush on.<br />No seasons change. No one decays.<br />The ice outside, once frozen, stays;<br />And I move on.<br />Some god has yawned,<br />And deep inside, inertia lies<br />Infinite, and tea and saucers fly.<br />The waiter stands unseen in white<br />And violins fret their golden marches<br />Steadily through the corbelled arches,<br />Heart in hand, I look around,<br />In outer space where there’s no sound,<br />No song, no hymn, no beaten gong,<br />But for one dull continuous hum,<br />Which could be me or else-one-some.<br />The sails hang windless, star-scratched, torn.<br />Somewhere a sun has burnt the sky<br />Where something’s just not quite alright.<br />Man I’m going to sleep a while,<br />Perchance to dream of Antichthon.<br /></span><span style="font-family:times new roman;"><a onclick="'CSS.addClass($("></a></span><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;"><strong>Arbitrary</strong></span><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">Words have come together;<br />Huddled tight in groups they seem.<br />To be in search of warmth,<br />In search of meanings that they’ve lost,<br />Words have clung together, stuck<br />Thicker than mud, more dense<br />Than the viscosity of darkness<br />Without interstitial spaces,<br />Without the threat of breath, or life or death<br />Words have intermeshed and morphed<br />And the Universe is poetry<br />The Sun is dwarfed by the Moon<br />And the Sky and the Sea<br />In letters three summed up<br />The Ocean is five. And so is Alive.<br />And Dead is one less. And Born is the same.<br />When Big is smaller than Small<br />Words have come together<br />To fuck with your brain</span><br /><br /><br /><br /><strong><span style="font-family:times new roman;">OtherWise</span></strong><br /><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">in my old age, I sat to teach<br />and saw a girl within the crowd,<br />that at the time had gathered round<br />to hear me preach in my old voice.<br />i saw her face among the class<br />and though I could but barely see,<br />she came, I saw, she conquered me.<br />my lesson fell apart mid stream<br />but I was not ashamed at all<br />for I did not feel young again<br />my heart beat fast and loose, and thin<br />my skin upon my hands, my chin,<br />it hung with age. I knew it all.<br />my bad knee softly smiled at me.</span>Duckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07260336782916718641noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5171188484461455105.post-84668633517189176072010-10-02T10:46:00.000-07:002010-11-19T18:27:35.741-08:00Kafka Kay Nietzsche Kya Hai? articles<span style="font-family:times new roman;"><strong>The Piss Wanker</strong> (Ali Sethi)</span><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">At first sight it appears as if somebody’s buttocks have exploded on good quality paper. Look again and you’ll notice it’s just a book written by an upcoming shining star of the Cosa Nostra crowd (Lahore’s answer to the Sicilian Mafia is the Sissy Mafia, which assembles in its most sophisticated attire at a low-key, almost peripheral eatery just off the Main Boulevard). Ali Sethi’s The Wish Maker can accurately be described as Horror-Fiction. Not because the plot is scary, but because of the number of people who have perished in the process of trying to brave this most diabolical tome. Few have survived…but only barely. A relief camp is being organized to help victims who have lost their loved ones to the mind numbing atrociousness of a book that seems to serve no other purpose than to massage the giant commercial organ that almost all Pakistani Anglophone writers are emotionally and financially attached to. If you thought The Mayor of Casterbridge was annoying, wait till you’ve gone through this one. The book’s title, The Wish Maker, is a direct reference to the state of the average reader who dares undertake the dread labor of reading the abomination. Research shows most readers (a.k.a. wish makers) start wishing they had never bought the book by the time they reach page fifteen, or the Threshold Point, as it is known in literary circles. Although research also shows that nobody actually reads this article, nevertheless, it would be inadvisable to quote anything from the book here since statistics provide a strong correlation between accidental exposure to the text in question, and recovering wish makers gouging their eyes out with spoons. It is our policy to hold sacred the welfare of our potential readers lest they turn into…The Wish Maker! (Cue dramatic music).<br /><br />Now that nearly a year has passed since Mr. Sethi first unleashed his literary hell-hound upon the dreary moors of his readership (presumably to strike fear in the hearts of those who were unfortunate enough to be able to read), the tragic repercussions of his irresponsible behavior are beginning to surface: A final year undergrad student, who wishes to remain anonymous (in case somebody he knows finds out he actually read the book), was assigned the task of wading through the soulless text to write a paper on it. He says, “After the first few chapters, I tried to kill myself by swallowing it. But it was just too long. Four months and seven buckets-full of laxatives later, it’s still coming out… page by page!”<br />Seemi Chapli, a recently orphaned teenager says, “My mother divorced my father after having read the second chapter of The Wish Maker, the one with the scene where the ridiculous girl discovers in a toilet that she’s a woman now. My mother said she could no longer be with a member of the same gender as the person who wrote that bit. She later committed suicide, ashamed of sharing species with Sethi. Why Ali Bhai?? Why?? Why did you do this to us??”<br /><br />Why indeed! Ali ‘Bhai’ Sethi claims his motivation for this first novel was to clear up the "American misconception that Pakistan was a Middle Eastern country". Evidently he believes the best way to go about clearing up such geographical errors is not by pointing at a nearby globe, but by pretending he’s a dull Jane Austen on horse tranquilizers. It’s lovely to see how people like Mr. Sethi are taking up the burden of representing Pakistan in the 21st century as a country full of really very boring people who do absolutely nothing for four-hundred pages, and whose fictional loud-mouthed mothers are neurotic hags. There is no doubt that Mr. Sethi spent a very long time, working extremely hard to compile a list of clichés that he could later incorporate in his book so that it would sell well in a post 9/11 world where certain West-approved stereotypes are encouraged. For instance: evil feudal lords, hordes of oppressed but enterprising ‘spirited’ women, girls and boys achieving puberty while Mr. Sethi looks on fondly at them from his disturbingly benevolent and twisted authorial vantage point, the concept of liberality and open-mindedness as features belonging only to people who drink alcohol and have premarital sexual affairs, and religion being a hindrance to all kinds of progress - along with the ever popular sport of Zia-bashing! He even threw in a token homosexuality scene to distance his Pakistan from the Middle-East, and also to strike up a little bit of controversy. Unfortunately nobody here cared because, firstly, Mr. Zardari is the president of our country (that is to say we have bigger problems than what Mr. Sethi scribbles in his spare time), and secondly, Mohammad Hanif had a far better homosexuality scene in his novel: A Case of Exploding Nubiles.<br /><br />Nevertheless, many people wonder why the book exists. The answer is simple. After 9/11, America suddenly realized there were others on this planet. In order to discover the culture and nature of these hitherto unknown inhabitants, local writers were encouraged to give a general account of life here on the other side of the internet. Established writers like Mohsin Hamid and Kamila Shamsie sprang into action and produced decent and abominable books respectively. Ali Sethi’s father had a lot of money too. So there was ample reason for young master Sethi to give the whole ‘I-know-what-it-feels-like’ a shot.<br />"Sethi's sharp eye, worthy of being an entomologist's, makes the book a steadily absorbing read, all four-hundered-plus pages of it,” says Time. So now we have two national entomologists in Pakistan: Fasi Zaka, popular among the Costa Nostra crowd for his liberal use of polemical metaphors, and this fellow, whose ‘absorbing’ book sucks you into a vortex of catatonia comparable with the handiwork of a Tsetse fly. And why wouldn’t a boy from Aitchison College who studied at Harvard, and who could afford music lessons from Mehdi Hassan, know exactly how to go about offering the ‘essential fiction of life in modern Pakistan’ in a language most Pakistanis can’t read? His book launching in France went well didn’t it? And who can deny France’s role in shaping Pakistan? If you can’t identify with any of the half-baked characters in this book, the fault is entirely yours, because like father like son, he’s got his finger on the nation’s pulse, and the blood of realism can never escape and flow past that iron clamp of representation. His knowledge is power. This sort of gnosis runs in his genes they say. He probably even knows what I’m thinking right now. After all, he knows exactly how a woman feels. Hence the four-hundred page abortion. </span><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><strong>The Learning Disorder</strong></span><br /><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">When the principal of Aitchison College Lahore, Pakistan, officially celebrates the Queen of England’s birthday by throwing a tea party on school premises, it becomes evident that the poor man suffers. The nature of his affliction can reasonably be classified either as a morbid identity crisis; a denial of events that culminated in the disbandment of the British Empire; auto-ethnophobia; senile dementia; a tendency to be a shameless toady; chronic constipation, or, as is most likely, all of the above. It is fair to predict that he’ll be handing out College Colours to students who excel in extending their pinkies when sipping tea whilst guffawing pompously at some joke they did not hear in the House of Lords. According to the Fasi Zaka Handbook of Social Entomology this sort of behaviour may or may not merit the label ‘Cockroach’. The Handbook warns the enthusiastic amateur ‘not to apply the label in case of potentially influential persons’, and rather to use it as a general term of address for the ‘impoverished and impotent’ (HSE 23-24).<br /><br />But this wishy-washy excuse for a man is not the only schizophrenic out there. And this sort of schizophrenia is not an unavoidable genetic mental defect or a result of traumatic domestic or social stressors. Its deep and sturdy root is planted firmly in the bountiful humus that is the national educational system. The word ‘system’ just suffered a mental breakdown: there is nothing systematic in the entire compost heap except perhaps its diabolical agenda to stimulate the efflorescence of brainwashing. As children what we learn in school about our country, its formation, its nature and its enemies becomes a vital part of our identity and worldview. Unfortunately this prejudiced instruction only provides a fragmented and distorted image of reality. For instance, to present a simplistic example, if I never knew that the first national anthem of Pakistan was not composed by a Muslim (Hafiz Jallandhari) in Persian, but a Hindu (Jagan Nath Azad) in Urdu, the problem is an educational system that cleverly eliminates any possibility from within a child’s mind of reconciliation between Hindus and Muslims. In most cases, what you learn at school is not just obsolete by the time you reach a university, it’s just plain wrong! All comfortable assumptions are questioned: was the two-nation theory really as irrefutable as they say or just a part of the greater British strategy to divide and conquer? Did the Quaid want a secular or religious state? Is Nationalism evil? Is Patriotism ignorance? Who really won the wars in 65 and 71? (In school books we lose Bangladesh but not the war!) Are the provinces really equal or is it all just a farce? Quite naturally, those who can, continue the search for truth, but why must they be fed factual inaccuracies to begin with? Meanwhile, others embrace doublethink and extend their pinkies to the matriarch of some other country while sipping their tea in this one.<br /><br />At the secondary level, the country is divided into two: O’Levels vs. Matriculation or A’Levels vs. Intermediate. The split personality disorder is strengthened with the help of two divergent streams. The average O’levels student (even if said student is not receiving enlightenment under the questionable patronage of the Queen’s Birthday Boy) is usually disconnected from his own country because his education prepares him to leave it at the first possible opportunity. The other stream does its best to stamp out any possibility of creativity from within a student by ensuring everything is learned by rote and assessed accordingly by people who don’t care.<br />The madness propagated by organized education is not limited to the primary or secondary level or to a particular sector. Public sector and privately run universities both have their own methods, ensuring paranoia and craziness.<br /><br />Irum Bhaensa, a second year Accounting and Finance student at LUMS explains how the cut-throat relative-grading and student assessment system requires that students be evaluated for class participation for the final grade. The result, she says, is quite similar to a pack of starving wolves, stuck in a cave and staring each other down, waiting to pounce on the one that shows a sign of weakness. “There is no spirit of brotherhood among the class; every individual’s survival is based on the ruin of another. Students sabotage and misinform each other or make temporary alliances; it’s like we’re stuck in season four of The Survivor!! And shyness is a sin!” An educational system that pits man against man in a battle to the death is disconcertingly reminiscent of gladiatorial games in the Roman Empire. I suppose the question here is not a simple one to answer, but is this really the sort of dog-eat-dog mentality we want shaping the future?<br /><br />Shagoofa Malik, studying Bio-Tech at GCU Lahore explains how the system does not distinguish fairly between hardworking students and those who merely compose volumes upon volumes of inane gibberish. “Extra-sheets! If you want to get a good grade on your exam paper, you’ve got to attach extra-sheets! It doesn’t matter what you say, it doesn’t even matter if you’re writing four words in a line or if those words are in any known language because nobody’s going to read it; if you attach fourteen extra-sheets the examiner will assume you know what you’re doing! It doesn’t matter if you’re attempting a paper on Mathematics or English Lit. Attach extra-sheets!”<br /><br />Both universities are currently imparting certain survival skills. One wants you to ‘make-it’ in a psychotic capitalistic set-up by demolishing everyone that gets in your way, and the other wants you to be able to fake your way through life by pretending you’re actually doing something. Neither university is empowering you with the tools to think, or even imagine a different system, much less improve the current one. Shagoofa Malik also points out that the GCU’s allegedly illegal Registrar (who apparently also stands accused for sexual harassment) is a prime example of what the university is currently striving to produce: “Regard the man from afar and you will notice a well-dressed, graceful gentleman who could pass off as Foreign Faculty. Strike up a conversation with him and you’ll quickly realize why this quasi-literate embarrassment is poison for the university. What nobody can understand is why the Vice chancellor so set on keeping this man?”<br /><br />In spite of all this, I would not say that the need of the hour is an educational revolution; one that gives rise to a curriculum that really does aim to empower a student with dignity, respect for the self and for others, a reasonable worldview free from prejudice, and the desire to make a difference by trying to contribute in an effort to fix what is vaguely referred to as ‘the system’, along with the hope that this is in fact possible. No, that would be too idealistic. Let’s put that on hold for a bit. Not everyone can devote an entire life to the cause of education the way Major Langlands did (an ex-British army officer who did not leave Pakistan after the Partition but stayed on to open a school in Chittral where he still works at the age of 92) even though he did not really have a stake in this country and could have gone home. Not everyone can be expected to care so much. Nevertheless what are necessary at the moment are more schools. Good or bad. Some might argue that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but I believe something, in nine cases out of ten, is better than nothing. In other words: support bacteria; they’re the only culture some people can have.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><strong>Kafka Kay Nietzsche Kya Hai?</strong></span><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">One, a self proclaimed Prophet of the Super Man, immortalized in his sermon proclaiming the Will to Power, and yet destined to live out his short and itchy life in the neurotic throes of a venereal disease; and the other, a disillusioned and disheveled young man who comes to recognize the working class and himself as mere cockroaches in disguise as he relinquishes his life to tuberculosis.<br /><br />Except for the tuberculosis part - remind you of anyone? Friedrich Nietzsche and Franz Kafka? Close, but not quite. I am talking, of course, about Zaid Hamid and Fasi Zaka, respectively. And to be fair, they are merely archetypes, representatives of a particular mindset (mustn’t judge!). With so many socio-political and economic inconveniences cropping up, let’s for the moment, step away from all that and discuss the reincarnation of two of the most influential German minds of the 20th century. Let us analyze how these two philosopher kings, brought together in the 21st century, work tirelessly for the glory of our nation and the bewilderment of the Facebook Brigade.<br /><br />Biographically speaking, these two have had almost nothing in common. For instance, one, when he was just a little boy, was given the gift of a special cap, a jaunty beret that stuck to his head and changed colours to reflect the levels of crazy he was currently undergoing; the spectrum ranges from white = ‘Batty’ to bright red = ‘Heil Mein Fuhrer!’. The other was cursed by a gypsy to never be able to bathe and who grew stodgier and more unshaven as his ability to discern between humans and insects diminished.<br />Today, both have reached their full potential, and they stand in what appears to be total opposition. One is as unkempt as a liberal hippo in the wild, and the other, sporting a red beacon of eternal holy madness on his head, stands far, far to the right of everything sane imaginable. And somewhere in between these two extremes is the average Pakistani watching a tennis match that exists in a bubble manufactured to provide entertainment during difficult times when tomatoes are too expensive and fuel hard to find.<br /><br />But are these two really all that different? The answer is no. They have more in common than they realize. In fact, only in collusion can they pull off any of the mindless schemes they devise in their spare time. Together they would have the cumulative intelligence of a full set of healthy buttocks able to churn out in between them enough excrement to leave the human mind reeling. Consider how Mr. Hamid has often expressed his personal desire to nuke India and Israel. Israel is a difficult target since we do not recognize its existence and therefore one must appreciate the tactical obstacles that abound in bombing a country one can’t even locate on a map. India on the other hand is quite close-by. We’re on good terms; we know them well enough to wager a nuke or two. Unfortunately, Mr. Hamid fails to see that an international border is merely an imaginary line and that nuking that not-so-far-off region would mean suffering the fallout here as well. This is where Professor Zaka comes in with his smarts. The only way to prevent a radioactive breeze coming hither would be by constructing around Pakistan the Zaka approved Wall of Shame. He says, “We are diseased, rotten to every brain stem, world please make an impenetrable fence around us, keep us all in so we don’t spread it to other people, other countries.” Note the genius with which he innocently claims sympathy for the rest of the planet; whereas, in fact this clever use of reverse psychology is precisely what is needed for world domination. This impenetrable fence is the only item that can successfully help carry out Mr. Hamid’s plan of action to the secret pleasure of Mr. Zaka! Meanwhile, Mr Zaka continues to claim that the degenerate Pakistani middle-class still holds that Osama and the Taliban are basically Robin Hood and his merry men. Although this is technically a fib, it works as a sort of ‘conversational lubricant’, by making it convenient for him to pretend that his target audience (those few who can read English in a country full of underprivileged uneducated peasants) is being benefited by his regular ravings. Neither of the two wants a school built lest Dr Mehboob-ul-Haq’s vision of a South Asian success comes true. Tis easier to point the finger than to preach; if the error be ignorance, why teach?<br /><br />On the issue of Kashmir, of course, Mr Hamid is persistent and advocates nuking, bed rest, and lots of fluids. His oversight is again clear: decades ago, the famous actress ShamimAra declared that the first soldier to plant the Pakistani flag in Kashmir would be her choice for husband. Naturally, the army decided not to risk it after all. And not just the Pakistani army; Indians too sit with their blood cold in their veins, waiting for someone else to make the first move, and the danger of inescapable matrimony to allay. If only madam takes her words back, a solution would materialize post hate. Mr Zaka, trying to one-up the crazy suggests that people in general should stop boring him with Aafia Siddiqui related protests because such things are basically a form of “catholic guilt”. Contradictory and post-modern to the hilt, he wants you to protest nevertheless (First rule of Roadz Scholar is: I is Smart). And since only he is the one with indubitable sources of intelligence in the world of media, the rest must wait for his signal and dance to his tune. Otherwise, he would whip out his sticker gun and plaster you with the word ‘Cockroach’ in bold print.<br /><br />Will the dynamic duo comprising the Shaheen-e-Iqbal/Ubermensch and the Roadz Scholar par insectellence succeed in baffling the Facebook Brigade? To protest or not to protest, that is the question on everybody’s twitter page. In the sheer confusion some of their fans have started protesting natural disasters and others are protesting Nietzsche’s views on God. How will it all end? Will Mr. Zaka take a bath now that there’s enough water in the country for even that? Will Mr. Hamid’s head explode exposing the tumultuous rainbow of schizophrenic voices within? The answer is still out there…but the philosophy is just too German.<br /><br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:times new roman;"></span>Duckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07260336782916718641noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5171188484461455105.post-26487960812209717602010-08-25T06:21:00.000-07:002010-11-16T14:51:28.059-08:00The Spirits of Hartshorn<span style="font-family:times new roman;"><em>- They drink of Firewater<br />And so too their tears burn<br />When tipsyfied on sal volatile<br />They dance around the world –<br /></em><br />In the name of the living dead man<br />I enjoin upon you fears and pasts.<br />- As I could not on those before you -<br />For your apparel: a white straight waist coat,<br />Fit for Kings and Men of the order of Dustbins;<br />A rusty spoon to be your sceptre key,<br />Your totem is The Fool.<br />Your ancestors fly out of imperial jugs<br />And hang upon the barren walls,<br />In bat-like tapestries,<br />Proclaiming all sorts of STDs.<br />And the Burning Bush is electric steel,<br />And the prophets come with thermometers,<br />And ask you how you feel. And how <em>do</em> you feel?<br />Your sins have caught up with you Woodwose!<br />And a droll mockery is your doom...<br />This is your Empire, your tomb:<br />A vast spread of unknowable ghettos;<br />Your kingdom of the cruel white face<br />That stares at night in a night that never ends<br />At an end that never is and where ‘to be’ is 'not to be'<br />So what is the question?<br />The Question is vital.<br /><br />Four strong-limbed and able men shoulder your chariot,<br />And carry it across the gravel and the ground,<br />And trailing behind, after them,<br />A crowd of no sound;<br />Meanwhile, the dowser’s twigs twitch,<br />His beard’s itch indicates the consecrated spot<br />- He wipes his mouth -<br />‘Unload the poor fool,’ he says, and spits upon the plot.<br />'We buy such god-awful things,<br />We buy such gods and awful things come trailing behind,<br />After them,<br />The crowds of no sound,<br />The carrion mute!<br />There shall be no need for the bald vultures,' he thought.<br /><br />Methuselah squats by the filthy river<br />That flows beside the old graveyard.<br />His thin wooden legs bared to the knee,<br />His under cloth pulled up<br />Held up by a string dangling in the dirt,<br />Trailing pictures and words as it writhes<br />And in his hands he holds a bone<br />And jumps up at the sight<br />Of the coming of the king<br /><br />‘This is Lord Abel’s bone,’ he says<br />‘The Devil’s tooth!<br />This is the only sacred truth that you can understand,’<br />Sibyl looks upon the man and shudders at the thought<br /><br />At dawn there was bread<br />And it competed with wonder<br />And we waited in wonder at dawn<br />For the man with loaf-large feet<br />- For he prayed by the clock, that man -<br /><br />The sun will not come out tonight<br />And it will rain for seven days<br />And graves will all be left agape<br />The dead will walk upon the mud .<br />This was no flood or quake; no raging storm<br />Destroyed this world; no it was something else,<br />Much worse than the deepest sorrow, or what else?<br />What else could cause such devastation…<br /><br />After it was spat out,<br />Rejected by the crust and core<br />The carcass of Holy Madness stood up and in anger remarked<br />‘Never again shall I wish for death<br />In such an inhospitable environment,’<br />And it whispered to the world those three little words<br />- And what is love but death?<br />Graveyard-dogs and lovers look for bones in others -<br />And whetting his sharp tongue on a tombstone, sat<br />And preached to the Boys in Love of the Poisoned One<br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">‘I bet my broken heart is more broken than yours,’ they said<br />And he put up his hand and spoke thus:<br />‘Every lady of breeding will eventually invite you<br />To apologize to her dogs;<br />Incite you t</span><span style="font-family:times new roman;">o decline upon your own peril...<br />Her method may be different,<br />Her approach, obscure. And what’s more,<br />You can never ever be sure about anything except<br />That somewhere up there atop the tedious tree<br />There is an old experienced dog, a pedigree,<br />Awaiting a formal apology.<br />Sometimes a dog is just a dog,<br />Sometimes it is a crotchless worm,<br />A father full of fiery pride,<br />Or it could just be her in disguise.<br />So unbosom yourself my sons,<br />When the time is right, kneel, reveal,<br />And then lick your wounds my dog-sires.’<br /><br /><em>Speak to us of the Reasoned man,<br />Tell us about the end of time.<br /></em><br />The Reasoned man, the Conscious one<br />The living dead man.<br />The self proclaimed, the self assured<br />The Compromise, Profane Divine,<br />The Reasoned man is the end of time!<br /><br /><em>Speak to us about his world, and of his gods.</em><br /><br />His world an empty echo is<br />Where some dead sun lights<br />A dying leaf<br />And there is no sky<br />No air, nor day or night<br />And day and night strange silhouettes<br />Like dull grey hordes of petrified trees<br />Appear to move like shades, drowning<br />In a sea of fog, like a ghostly breeze<br />to choke the breath of a twisted lyre.<br />His god, a hungry searching eye,<br />Never sleeps, it never weeps, it cannot die.<br />And It leers, always, and it covets life.<br /><br /><em>Speak to us of what he speaks, the Reasoned man.</em><br /><br />He says there is when there is not;</span><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">The truth forgetting by the Truth forgot</span><span style="font-family:times new roman;"><br />His presence only tries in vain<br />To oppose what it cannot contain. </span><br /><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">The conscience of the oldest man<br />The attitude of the Cumaean:</span><br /><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">'In these last days<br />This world will end</span><br /><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">This Fair, this Joke,<br />The forests without hope,<br />Without trees,<br />These endless wheezing factories.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">It was all meant to be.'</span><br /><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">'If in these last days<br />This world must end</span><br /><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">Make sure I enter paradise</span><br /><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">Or I'll drag you down with me to hell.'</span><br /><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">The Fool is both the beginning and the end.<br />Profane, Divine,<br />The Reasoned man is the end of time. </span>Duckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07260336782916718641noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5171188484461455105.post-9346514953951162852010-08-04T00:10:00.000-07:002010-08-16T01:52:34.015-07:00Over the Pills and Far Away<span style="font-family:times new roman;"><strong>Insomaniac</strong><br /><br />Are you up?<br />I will you awake,<br />To open your eyes, respond, reply,<br />For you must<br />And so I will you awake<br />Now…now…now<br /><br />‘You will not wake up’<br />- I stare at these words<br />And I swear<br />They resemble the essence of ‘Tulip’-<br />‘You will not wake up’ and ‘Tulip’<br />Are the same.<br /><br />Do you see?<br />Do you see how they’re the same?<br />When I saw, I felt<br />Something rise in my chest<br />A feeling perhaps, nostalgic<br />That you will not wake up<br /><br />I wonder is a Leviathan<br />Harsh is a Religion<br />Cold is someone taking a picture<br />In the winter,<br />And I am you is a Mountain Range<br />And a mountain is a horse<br />But Tulip…<br />You will not wake up<br /><br />Sunrise, Windows and Earth<br />There is beauty in these words<br />Earth and Queen, Fire of the East,<br />Desire of Disease<br />I wish for impossible vocabularies<br /><br />There are certain sounds<br />When whispered into ears<br />Have a peculiar effect:<br />A blush will spread.<br />It’s in the words, in their truth:<br />A soul that only seldom moves<br />And is seldom moved<br />Something very strange and unknowable<br />About whispers in ears:<br />Frighteningly powerful, mad to the taste,<br />But savoury, fulfilling; the sound,<br />Cannot be isolated, it cannot be found<br /><br />I have never whispered in anyone’s ears<br />Except once in almost complete darkness<br />To a girl I said, ‘There are cockroaches<br />In this room, and in my bed.’<br />But I was very young back then.<br /><br />Tulip. I may in fact just be<br />The most vainglorious of louts<br />That I have ever met<br />And anyone would end me, out of pity<br />For my inevitable loneliness;<br />There’s nobody like me<br />Except you<br />I keep on saying to myself<br /><br />And there is a strange pride<br />That I don’t pretend to hide<br />But the fact of the matter is<br />I still can’t decide<br />And that is all there is to it<br />That is all there is to us.<br />That is all there is.<br />But you will not wake up.<br /></span>Duckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07260336782916718641noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5171188484461455105.post-73238679884695030962010-07-29T09:47:00.000-07:002010-08-04T13:16:48.125-07:00Check Mates<span style="font-family:times new roman;">What bore this game we play!<br />You move, I move,<br />You stay, I stay;<br />And thus we always pass the day.<br /><br />Together now we bolt about,<br />Diagonal, straight,<br />Or side to side;<br />The world before us Black and White.<br /><br />I look at you,<br />You look at me,<br />And neither one does truly see,<br />What bore this game we play.<br /><br />'Check you say?'<br />'Not mate' say I.<br />And someday soon we both shall sigh.<br />Until that happy faithful day…<br />Let’s watch the Queen,<br />Take down the Rook!<br />Behold, the Pawn<br />Undo the Queen!<br />-Life is slow but not serene-<br />The Bishop falls before the Knight<br />The night must end, and all alight.<br /><br />We are two Kings,<br />Yes you and I,<br />We're face to face…<br />And eye to eye!<br />We chase each other,<br />Round and round<br />We're Black and White, </span><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">And wearing crowns.<br /><br />But the game is done.<br />-And was it fun?-<br />I clear my throat<br />And brush my coat.<br />(We stare at all the pieces strewn<br />The morning sky still holds the moon!<br />Captive he and captive we!<br />The ghost of tedium hangs between.)<br /><br />You say 'It's time.'<br />You say 'Good-bye.'<br />"But what these rules we play life by!?!<br />Who bore this game?<br />Was it You? or I?!"<br />You say 'It's Time.'<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:times new roman;">-------------------------------------------</span><br /><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"></span><strong>Ingsoc<br /><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"></span></strong><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">Imagine, if we could, communicate!<br />In one big burst of brain all thought transfer.<br />Would it be pain or pleasure, or a sin?<br />Would we then save ourselves for special ones?<br />In hopes that we connect and let them in,<br />But to be disappointed and found out,<br />Oufigured and entirely understood;<br />All mystery relinquished, all prayers revealed!<br />Would people who knew hearts be kind enough<br />To act as if they know not how we feel?<br />If so, it'd all be just the same as now:<br />Already we know what we want and how.<br />Imagine, what if there were more to us<br />Than 'polite meaningless words', and a 'terrible beauty.'</span>Duckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07260336782916718641noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5171188484461455105.post-10188300483880725482010-07-27T07:29:00.000-07:002010-07-29T14:40:57.872-07:00Of God and Man or Little Black Heart<span style="font-family:times new roman;">He plays me like a yo-yo;<br />My soul a string unravelled.<br />Until He calls me back again,<br />I don't know why I travelled.<br /><br />he plays me like a yo-yo,<br />Always has from the start:<br />he lets me go, I hit the floor,<br />I hate his fucking heart.<br /></span>Duckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07260336782916718641noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5171188484461455105.post-51806756723148780132010-07-21T04:47:00.000-07:002010-08-22T13:46:27.605-07:00The Water-Bearer's Song<span style="font-family:times new roman;">Are you thirsty?<br />I have in me calm rivers you may drink out of;<br />I’ve ocean ponds and running waters standing still<br />On plains and raining downhill all just as I will.<br /><br />Are you thirsty?<br />I shall flood your house down and cast it out so far!<br />Waves will wash and leave no sign, no sin, no crime!<br />And in the waterlogged mud, there, waves of wrath,<br />Landslides will be weaned from rest for new conquests!<br /><br />And I breathe satiety on your lips when you’re asleep,<br />And when you part them I shall kiss,<br />And rains will come by hard and soft,<br />And you will wonder have I drowned?<br />Or am I thirsty?<br /><br />Warm and dark my ocean blue,<br />The sky above azure and true;<br />The pond is frozen hard and light,<br />And all around the world is white;<br />The rains will come by hard and soft,<br />And you will wonder…<br />Enough! More!<br /><br />Behind the mountains lost in time the golden sun…<br />Vaporous clouds hang above a pleasant mist.<br />And grey and cool the lake, whose surface winter kissed,<br />And chuckling like a child, a stream is flowing down,<br />At once am I reminded of an evening-gown.<br /><br />There was a time when you and I, us two, were one<br />In thinking have we drowned or is it just a thirst?<br />Will I ever be satisfied?<br />The question, with your touch, is soon revived. </span>Duckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07260336782916718641noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5171188484461455105.post-17049348168820366982010-07-20T12:13:00.000-07:002010-07-28T09:06:21.228-07:00Encore (song)<span style="font-family:times new roman;">You’re playing so well,<br />So well, you’re playing so well.<br />By all the rules and all the codes;<br />By all the roads that you could roam<br />And linger on, you’re moving on.<br /><br />But You’re playing chords.<br />They’re cheating gods;<br />Their killer licks and sneaky tricks;<br />Their solo’s got you in a fix.<br />You’re gone! You’re gone.<br /><br />But you were playing so well?<br />So well, you were playing so well.<br />You must have always known,<br />Sitting there in the dark,<br />With the strings of my heart,<br />That you played so well,<br />With your simple chords.</span>Duckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07260336782916718641noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5171188484461455105.post-71938394397158816052010-06-22T07:09:00.000-07:002010-06-22T07:11:44.980-07:00The Black Tie Affair<span style="font-family:times new roman;"><strong>All:</strong><br />God save your majesty!<br /><br /><strong>Cade:<br /></strong>I thank you, good people—there shall be no money; all shall eat...<br />and drink on my score, and I will apparel them all in one livery,<br />that they may agree like brothers, and worship me their lord.<br /><br /><strong>Dick:</strong><br />The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.<br /><br /><strong>Cade:</strong><br />Nay, that I mean to do.<br /><br />-Henry The Sixth, Part 2 Act 4, scene 2, 71–78<br /><br /><br />It does not surprise me that English literature abounds in unflattering references to lawyers and their ‘profession’ (if indeed cannibalism can be considered a profession). From the times of Shakespeare, Fielding, Dickens, and Shaw, all the way down to the here and now, it has been duly noted by the greatest humanist minds that lawyers have but one purpose: to perpetuate business for themselves at the cost of any, if not all, tenets of human decency and honour, and if need be, their own souls. It is hotly debated whether lawyers really even have souls to speak of. For with most lawyers the word ‘soul’ merely offers alternative spelling for the word ‘sole’, signifying the flat bottom of their shoes, or an adjective, a synonym that reaffirms the supremacy of the individual, as in, ‘the sole benefactor: the lawyer’. To generalize, one might say that they are, at best, of the vilest and most wretched breed of parasite that feeds on human suffering and so gains nourishment and sustenance from ill willed manipulation and opportunist exploitation. Imagine a virus that infects a host and proceeds to multiply in disease and is itself disease with no consciousness of life but with the ability to survive even in a vacuum, in death, till such time, as it smells living blood. A virus is something so peculiar scientists even today are not sure whether to classify it under the general heading of ‘living’ or ‘non-living’.<br /><br />Like I said, that they are remembered in the history of literature as base and soulless grave-robbers does not astonish me. What astonishes me is the idea of a people, of a nation, so dead, so morally bankrupt, festering in the stagnant pools of corruption and depression for so long that their last desperate resort, their ultimate dying movement to at least look up from the murky depths of whatever unspeakable filth they are drowning in, is one that reveals to them no light of hope flitting about at the surface, but a lawyer. A nation that looks up to lawyers is a nation that is not looking up at all, that has forgotten what it means to look up. It has decided life is not worth fighting for personally. Such a nation does not wish to struggle for its integrity, to stand up for its rights, to change the system if the system is inherently foul. No! This nation of dregs wants a lawyer to stand-in, to intercede in its place and beg for scraps at the table of noblemen who have decided to exact prima nocta in a land where the sun never rises and the night never ends.<br /><br />But what makes lawyers unfit for intercession? Are they not part of the nation? No, they are not. The way vultures or hyenas are never part of the pride; they are merely part of the circle of life as eaters of the dead. What makes them ineligible for the task is the fact that they argue whatever side they get money for. A lawyer who cannot win is soon out of work. A lawyer’s survival depends on winning at all costs. Morality, the idea of right and wrong, good and evil, take the backseat when the question of survival arises. And who can expect any different from someone who is bound by his profession to not do that which is right, but argue what is arguable. ‘Truth is relative,’ the lawyer will say to absolve himself of any responsibility. The truth is that he is the excrement of a delusional society that believes a black tie is an institution; a society that has become so preoccupied with appearances that it cannot judge what lies behind a uniform, behind clothes and cover. Like a child when he looks at an albino of his own years with prematurely white hair and believes him to be aged - because white hair is for him associated with and can only symbolize old age.<br /><br />On the other hand, imagine a country where people have become so dejected, so lifeless, that even lawyers have stopped enjoying feeding upon them. Imagine a host that is not dead and yet so lifeless that a confused virus out of sheer frustration tries to revive it. ‘Live, that I may live on thee,’ screams the virus and tries what it can to indirectly ensure its own continued existence. In reality a virus would never do that, but would a lawyer? When a society falls into almost irreparable decay, it seems its lawyers stand up to protect it. True, they do so for their own sake but who can deny the temporary benefits (even if strictly imaginary) reaped by the society at large? The virus becomes the host, the master the slave.<br /><br />The delight of power can only be experienced in the practicing of it. To practice power enjoyably one needs a subject to exercise it on. A suitable subject is one who is at least moderately close in matching the power of the one who wishes to exercise it enjoyably. Otherwise, flogging a dead horse gains nothing and holds no entertainment value, at least after a while. The powerful, therefore, create imaginary foes if real ones do not exist. Osama bin laden, or the equally elusive Weapons of Mass Destruction, for instance, satisfied America’s lust for exercising power. Similarly, the lawyer’s movement, to uphold the ideals of ‘justice,’ served to provide the lawyer community in Pakistan with some means of expressing their remarkable ability to achieve nothing by making a lot of noise and show. After all, only lawyers can feel gratified and productive by causing needless traffic jams every Thursday on a road that connects citizens with places of work, with schools, colleges, and, of course, with hospitals. And we all saw them, those black and white throngs of apparently illiterate buffoons, traversing the Mall, laughing and giggling like a procession of idiots mesmerized by the hypnotic charms of a camera crew. These upholders of ‘rule of law’ are the same notorious people that even the Pakistani police force tries to avoid. They are like reporters for Geo News (uncouth, incorrigible and devoid of ethic) with questionable degrees in law and a laughable dress code. These are people who congregate in matching outfits and go about saying “Milord” to otherwise perfectly normal men - who get whacked on the head with rolling pins by their respective wives just like the rest of mankind. What compels them to take themselves so seriously, for they must be aware on some level that they are no different from children in fancy dress, is a wonder and a mystery unto itself. But what unholy spirit possessed the rest of us to expect anything productive from them may seem bewildering at first. Nobody denies that ‘the movement’ raised a ruckus that was overheard internationally but it was never really meant to achieve anything substantial. One of its greatest members (a self professing lawyer) refused to distance himself from a political party for the sake of the movement. The only thing worse than a lawyer is a lawyer who is also a jiyala.<br /><br />It ought not to be surprising though that lawyers are a symbol of hope for our sad and hungry people because we (and I am no different) have always relied on intermediaries. We did not even win freedom on our own. Freedom was announced one day. Some might say we never really wanted freedom to begin with and it was merely an idea we were fed for reasons that we cannot fully comprehend. However, that is an altogether different debate, one I believe is meaningless at this point in time. On the other hand, is it foolish to expect change from this nation? Will we ever represent ourselves on our own? Is there any hope left? Should we continue to wake up in the mornings? What can one really say when the father of the nation was a lawyer? A lawyer, a leader, a visionary who saw no ‘change’ other than fake coins in his pockets. And in the continual exchange and circulation of that counterfeit currency, and in the timeless tennis match between two equally corrupt and shameless political parties, distracted every now and then with a solo performance by a General, somewhere, in this sordid picture, there is ‘us’ (not the United States; you and I). And we keep on hoping that this time, this time it will be different. The lawyers will save us! I think not.<br /><br />“Liar, lawyer; mirror show me, what's the difference?” - Maynard James Keenan<br /><br /><br /></span>Duckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07260336782916718641noreply@blogger.com0