Friday, September 30, 2005
nano sheen
I visited a shop specializing in computer equiptment and saw the Ipod Nano. Yes, it's been a week since I gushed about it. What astonished me was the price these guys quoted for a 2 Gb Nano, which costs $199 in the US and shipping is easy enough if you pack a suitcases full of them and return to Pakiland. The total cost should have been somewhere in the neighbourhood of maybe 13,000 retail. However, the shopkeeper insisted they couldn't let it go for less than Rs. 16,500, which is, quite honestly, outrageous since I'll be sending a friend in the US Rs. 15,000 to get me a 4 Gb Nano. Just goes to prove my long-ago formulated theory that everyone's out to rip you off in this place.
Misha
at Friday, September 30, 2005
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milaadi
It seems that there's a Milaad at my university today. A kid from one of the classes I'm taking with the newbies just wandered in to find a bitching partner about the unfairness of having to attend the milaad when he doesn't want to. He was disappointed to say the least to find that I didn't
have to attend at all. It seems one of the teachers, a nice but very religious type, who's the main force behind organizing the milaad is determined to promote the forceful spiritual welfare of his students and has threatened to deduct marks from the newbie's class' scores if they do not all attend. The day kids start losing marks in a programming course for not attending a religious function is a pretty sad day for education in general.
Misha
at Friday, September 30, 2005
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Wednesday, September 28, 2005
Have not been blogging since tomorrow is my last hourly. Normally, this would not deter me but since it is a subject that I'm not very good in, i.e. Assembly Language Programming, I had best put all my recreational activities aside (yes, even playing GTA) and get down to some studying.
Tomorrow: Liberation for another four weeks! :)
Misha
at Wednesday, September 28, 2005
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Monday, September 26, 2005
Ghostly
Back to the micro view of my world, did I not mention I am hopelessly self obsessed?
As of late, I find myself absolutely unmotivated to study at all. Oddly, my usual study habits, which include opening up a textbook/notes 12 hours before the actual exam and going through the whole course in one go, don't seem to be working anymore. My personal theories (most of which are contrived in the loo, as thus naturally, full of shit) veer towards how I subconsciously set myself up to flunk because I know once my Bachelors are complete, I have to move towards my Masters, most likely abroad, and then I won't be able to run anymore from the inevitable "marriage talk". The eternal escapist strikes again. On the other hand, I may just be suffering from having too many other things to worry about and hence preferring the relatively entertaining escapism that reading and playing video games offers as compared to actually studying. Or maybe my teachers hate me. I'm full of theories, just running out of ideas.
Additionally, this semester, I'm the academia's equivalent of a ghost. I wander the campus wondering where these new faces came from and when and only other ghosts (my current classmates, twenty or so in number) can see me. It's not their fault really, I enjoy the translucent existence enough to encourage it.
Misha
at Monday, September 26, 2005
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Sunday, September 25, 2005
Bad parents, bad daughters, bad husbands, wives, and so on. What makes them "bad"? Is it the failure to live up to what other people expect of them as a result of thier social title? Does a father that does not provide for his family as he is expected to in his role as a father automatically become what is known as a "bad father"? A daughter that is not dutiful and obedient, as is the epxectation of daughters in our society, automatically a "bad daughter"? What if a father nurtures and takes care of the children while the mother goes out to work and provide for the family? "Bad parents" or just unconventional? If unconventional, where do we draw the line between labelling someone as a "bad (insert social label here)" and between someone who is just unconventional in that role?
Misha
at Sunday, September 25, 2005
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Friday, September 23, 2005
Misha
at Friday, September 23, 2005
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Click to view full-sized image
Misha
at Friday, September 23, 2005
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Rita
I got an email from someone dealing with the company I work for today. I had advised them to take some measures to fix the problem they were facing, in the reply to which she had appended:
Of course with the hurricane bearing down on me -- it just doesn't really matter anymore.
I guess the more comfortable and predictable your life gets, the higher the risk of losing it all when the time comes. Contrast this with Karachi where, everytime someone steps out, there's the subconscious fear of a bomb placed in a mosque or a local eatery you frequent that could literally be the death of you. Living very close to the sea, I've faced many moments myself when there was the chance a typhoon would be coming by and blowing through Karachi, plowing through my own home first of all. Of course now there is the additional fear of a tsunami sneaking up on us as we sleep, but nobody's going anywhere. We go on as usual, cheerfully even. A friend was telling me today about relatives in Houston who are cheerfully sitting tight in their homes as Rita draws closer with the rhetoric that if they are meant to die at that moment, they will, no matter where they run, and if not, the hurricane will pass them right on by. Even if they did try to bolt, they'd probably face a highway of jammed cars all trying to get out with as much as possible. All we can do is say a prayer for everyone in the path of the storm to be okay and stay glued to the telly, like we always are in the face of a large scale tragedy.
Misha
at Friday, September 23, 2005
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Thursday, September 22, 2005
defiance
As I passed by the ever-popular Abdullah Shah Ghazi Mazaar, something caught my eye. Normally there are nearly a hundred people meandering around the place at any time of the day, but today it seemed that their meanderings were devoid of any actual joy or purpose. A large crowd was gathered at the scene of accumulated rubble, uncharacteristically quiet. There was no shoving, no good natured insults and elbow jabs being traded, a sea of men and women stood side by side in the heat, staring. I realized then that the reason my eye had been drawn to a location I would normally pay no attention to, except to honk and wave my fist angrily at the droves of the devoted crossing the street at a leisurely pace: the emptiness. The line of Daig Houses that stretches out at either side of the enterance to the Mazaar has been sneakily demolished in the night. Owners sat hunched in the rubble, unable to comprehend where their shops had gone overnight. Frequenters, young, old, male, female, all stood in a loose semi-circle around the shell-shocked ex-shopkeepers in silent compassion, collectively still staring silently at the pile of broken walls. I watched them as I rounded the corner and disappeared to into my own life again, their silence seemed to speak the heart of anyone who has been up against the powers that be in this country and has lost.
Several hours later, I re-emerged from my busy life and passed by the Mazaar again. The formerly standing silent masses had now settled down to sit in the exact same spots they always did while the shops were standing: only this time they sat on uneven bits of rubble. Still, they sat right there, defying anyone to remove them from thieir spots, and nobody has.
Misha
at Thursday, September 22, 2005
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Tuesday, September 20, 2005
kill 'em all
A pretty shocking incident I heard about recently was of how a young lad in a certain upscale A levels institute went to a party at said school with his sister and his sister's boyfriend. Apparently, some lowlife attempted to force himself onto the young lad's sister, and boyfriend and lad intervened. As would be expected, violence broke out almost instantly and lowlife's friends arrived on the scene to back him up. At this point the brother and boyfriend of the girl whipped out their firearms and shot one of the opposing lads dead on the spot and seriously wounded another. In horror, the two lads tried to grab cash and their passports and flee the country as soon as possible, but were apprehended at the airport due to an FIR being filed almost immediately by the parents of the deceased and wounded students. I know this is all true, since I know the parents of the lad brandishing a pistol. What surprised me is that nobody else seems to have heard about this at all. I mean, look around, there isn't a whisper of the incident in the media at all. What disturbs me most about the incident is not that it happened amongst children of about 17 years, nor that its happening every other week somewhere or the other, although usually not to the extent that someone is killed, but that we've gotten so good at covering up our dirty little secrets to preserve this facade of respectability that we would shove something like the death of a young man at the hands of his peers under the rug and whistle and go about our business like nothing happened. Why is nobody angry about all this? Why does nobody even know about this?
I commented to a friend recently that if Pakistan managed to implement faster Internet connectivity, I would be happy to live here all my life. Unfortunately, thanks to the recent (past decade) increase in violence amongst teenagers, I'm drastically rethinking this statement. We all wonder what kid of hooligans are involved in incidents at local colleges where fights break out over girls and weapons (steel pipes, if we're lucky and guns if we're not so lucky) are whipped out and utilized to the point of having half the participants locked up and half sitting in the ICU wards at hospitals. Sure, we all wonder, until someone we know is caught and thrown into jail as his parents weep and try to get the money together for bail. Would you want that for your kid?
Misha
at Tuesday, September 20, 2005
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Monday, September 19, 2005
pandora's box
Is there a deliberate recklessness to this chaos? Did Adam bite into the forbidden fruit because he was flawed enough to know that not to bite into it would mean a life that was a little more ordinary and a little less messed up? Do we have a choice today, to choose to open Pandora's box, peruse its contents and effectively obliterate any chance of a blissfully simplified life, or choose to set the box aside and continue to ignore those half-suicidal maniacs who will eventually overthink themselves into madness?
What am I going on about? I see people everyday, in my own home. People who are satisfied with the world as it is presented to them. People who like to wear and accumulate shiny things and live within the preordained rules settled long ago by society. People who have blissfully uncomplicated lives because they decided, long ago, to set aside Pandora's box, to set aside questions of why they are here and simply survive. What haunts me is the image of others, geniuses in their own right, who thought too much, who chose knowledge and will inevitably have their souls crushed by the weight of that knowledge. They mock the blissful ones, but I know better than to think they don't envy them as well. So, the question remains, where do I fit in, and where can you draw the line between one and the other? Is it one book too many, one wrist slashingly depressing poem too many, one depressing truth too many?
Misha
at Monday, September 19, 2005
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Saturday, September 17, 2005
BS
I look around me and all I see is stress. People are so very worried about the littlest things. In class, there will be the people who always, always want to know about exams, the formats, the marking scheme, the contents and so on. I do wonder how the hell I managed to get here, in a good (and appropriately named) professional degree program amongst all these hardworking, severely stressed out people. I don't deserve all that I have and I'm bratty enough to want more and more each day... and get it. I feel like the economy class passsenger bumped to first class, afraid to touch anything since at any moment now someone in charge will realize the mistake and all hell will break loose.
How the hell did I get so lucky?
Misha
at Saturday, September 17, 2005
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personal management
Some would say it's what I deserve for taking my education so lightly, this stupid course about personal management involving three hour discussions on feelings, anger, anxiety, emotions, relationships and other such odd topics. Is it any wonder why I sit at the back sighing and rolling my eyes with every cliche rolled out by the teacher. Alright, fine, by now, many may be thinking I'm that pain in the ass, hard to please student who's always waving their hands in class and arguing about technicalities, but honestly, can any of you not roll your eyes when someone is presenting a lecture in which inspirational thoughts such as "a matchstick has a head, but not a brain" are plastered at the bottom of each slide?
Misha
at Saturday, September 17, 2005
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Thursday, September 15, 2005
flawed capitalist
My world view has received quite a jolt today. Friends jokingly refer to me as a primo Capitalist, since I am firmly of the belief that money, while it may not be able to buy happiness, can buy the most remarkably fulfilling substitutes. It was with this in mind that I figured what my mum needed after her stint in the hospital was a shiny new cell phone (spreading the gadget-love) to replace her ancient (and very solid) AMPS Nokia set. I would post a photo but I think Nokia have viewed it as an embarrassing throwback to the dark ages of AMPS and have swept the model under the rug like an embarrassing old relative. Anyhow, a shiny, sparkly new phone would cheer mum right up, thought I, and eagerly awaited payday when I could finally present my mum with said new phone. Today, at last, I got my much awaited moolah, and pranced about like a delirious pixie and harassed every cell phone dealer within a five mile radius of my home with ominous threats if they didn't get me a good deal. All was set.
This morning, though, mum sits me down and informs us all that she will be leaving next month to her sister's place in the US to put her name down for a liver transplant. She may be a while, since obviously US-nationals would be favored first if a liver were to become available. In the meantime, she would take my little sister along, as she was between educational institutions at the moment, having recently graduated.
Undeterred, I plowed on, of course she would need a cell phone in the states as well! I asked several family members who told me in no uncertain terms that a new cell phone was probably very low on her list of priorities right now. In a cleverly covert manner, I asked my mum if she wanted a new cell phone. The answer was no, beta, but it's sweet of your to want to get me something.
Brilliant. I spent the rest of the day walking about kicking dustbins with my paycheck in my pocket. What the hell do I do with the money now? It then occurred to me that all those ridiculously philanthropic sayings about how money only has as much value as what you can buy for others with it were not so cliche after all.
And so, here I stand, world view in ruins and with money to spare. I am now convinced this will be my double edged sword: getting tons of money and having nobody to spend it on. And you think God doesn't have a wickedly ironic sense of humor.
Misha
at Thursday, September 15, 2005
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shit happens
Someone wise (probably my grandma, she was full of grandmotherly sayings) used to say that whatever happens, happens for the best. After many years of trial and error, I completely agree. Admittedly shit happens and it happens far more frequently than most of us would like it to happen, but even shit happens for a reason and you're better off for it, in some way or the other, even if you don't realize it at that very moment.
Misha
at Thursday, September 15, 2005
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Wednesday, September 14, 2005
happy ending
Some people just aren't made for those giddy-squealing, bhangra-paoing, fairytale happy endings and the sooner we get used to that the better.
I am never going to have a happy ending, not in this lifetime. I'm willing to bet that the guy on the PC next to me checking out pictures of girls on the
British Council website is not going to have one either. Heck, I'm pretty sure Michael Jackson won't be having a fairtytale happy ending either. The trick is to get used to the idea and make do with what you have.
Misha
at Wednesday, September 14, 2005
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Monday, September 12, 2005
weekend blues
It's been an odd weekend. Saturday was spent in a daze, thanks to getting exactly one hour of sleep the night before and having two classes to get through. The good bit was that it rained, and god, how it rained! Whoops of joy and wet haired classmates trumped back into class once the shower ended. Initially deciding to bite back the urge to run around in the first proper deluge of the year, I stayed in the classroom, high and damn well dry. That was until a thick trickle of rain water seeped in to the classroom via the very door I was sitting in front of. As the little stream of water seeped into the soles of my shoes, I wondered how to change my seat and who the heck would agree to switch with me and sit in an expanding puddle of rainwater. One blessed young man agreed, and I gratefully switched seats, only to discover, a few dry minutes later that this seat was directly below a spot on the roof that had sprung a leak. The upside was that had I not been observing the droplets falling on my arm and mentally noting the probability of which side of my arm it would slide down each time, I would have not been able to resist rolling my eyes and sighing noisily when the teacher announced that the topic for the day was... (wait for it) "feelings"! Apparently, for a course named Personal Management, study aids include Barney Videos, because there is no way a teacher would otherwise be able to inform us, with a straight face that "Feelings" was a topic we were going to spend a three hour session on.
After getting home from my classes, I was given more good news: the electricity had been absent since nine a.m. that morning. As it was six, rapidly getting dark outside and we had no electricity, I flopped down on my favorite blow-up couch in the middle of the living room and went to sleep to the soothing patter-patter of rain falling outside. It seemed but a second later that my oversimplified dreams and I were rudely interrupted. It seems that while an air couch is second only to a floating cloud in terms of comfort for someone wanting to take a quick nap on one, it has an unfortunate downside, i.e. that if someone decides to violently sit upon the opposite end to the person sleeping on it, it has a nasty see-saw effect. Additionally, if the rude person on the other end should be your brother who wants to wake you up by bouncing up and down on the opposite end, it can only result in immediate wakefulness and even mild nausea at being forced to involuntarily bounce up and down in the middle of your nap. And it was thus that I was rudely awakened from my peaceful slumber.
When the electricity finally did come back around after thirteen hours, I was re-settled into my blow-up couch and firmly entrenched in dream territory, so much so that even the lure of air conditioning was able to entice me out of my new lodgings in the middle of the living room. Unfortunately, mum pulled the deflate plug on me and I ended up on an airless mass of plastic on the floor, which finally got me to get up and climb into a bed and go to sleep. Unfortunately, due to these exciting events, I slept straight through the launch of the new
Noori album and I haven't been able to find it available anywhere yet since.
Anyhow, back to work and class.
Misha
at Monday, September 12, 2005
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Friday, September 09, 2005
got tagged
Having been tagged by Saba, I shall now pass it on to five others (listed below). :)5 years ago: I had just gotten my O level results, pretty much the best academic results I have ever achieved, and was looking into various A level institutes for admissions. I recall being really saddened by the seperation from my friends/classmates of five years or more for A-levels, but somehow it ended up okay.
1 Year ago: One of my oldest friends was moving out of her apartment and leaving the country. I was appointed the official photographer and was assigned to following her around the whole day taking photos of everything and everyone in her old neighbours. At the end of the day, we snuck up to top of her building's roof, stared at the sea and talked until it was time to leave.
5 songs I know all the words to: Basket Case (Green Day), Elderly Woman behind the counter in a small town (Pearl Jam), Don't Dream It's Over (Crowded House), Moon River (Andy Williams), Everlong (Foo Fighters).
5 Snacks I enjoy: Pringles Sour Cream and Onion chips, Knorr Two minute noodles, Cucumbers, Amroodh, a packet of crushed slims.
5 Things I'd do w/ $100 million dollars: Buy my mum a huge house with all the trimmings, buy myself all the gadgets I could get myhands on, put aside money for my siblings' education, buy an RX-8 and buy a tropical island somewhere for myself to live on.
5 places I would run away to: rural Scotland, Ireland, Greece, Jamaica and Dubai/Sharjah (happy with either).
5 things I would never wear: Fur, shorts, thongs, sleeveless shirts (especially in winter) and a cap.
5 favorite tv shows: (In no particular order) Lost, Veronica Mars, Scrubs, the Twilight Zone and Smallville.
5 greatest joys: Having the cat voluntarily come sleep at my feet, when a new gadget is
bought, doing absolutely nothing with friends, the contentment of knowing I have all that I need, meeting someone and hitting it off right away.
5 favorite toys: The Bear Factory bear I watched being "born" (stuffed with wool), my ninja turtles action figure (Leonardo), my care bear action figure (Swiftheart, Okay, I'm officially embarassed), that miniature guitar I begged my dad for weeks to buy me and broke in one day and my oldest faded blue teddy bear (now lost/dead) which I first got when I was born.
5 People I'm Tagging: Reza,
Mobeen,
Aman,
Insiya and
Saady.
Misha
at Friday, September 09, 2005
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Thursday, September 08, 2005
livestrong
I don't know if it's just me, but it seems on every other wrist amongst the young and the restless of Karachi, there seems to be a LiveStrong" bracelet. These plastic bracelets come in various neon shades and are meant to fund various worthy causes such as cancer research and so on. For more information on the cause, you can google "livestrong" and get a whole bunch of links, but that's not what my rant is about today.
They don't sell these things legitimately in Pakistan, so by buying a cheap knockoff, you're not funding any cause, worthy or not, save for the pockets of the rip-off artist who made them. In fact, inspired by their fashion-sheep comrades, many people who have not managed to read the "Livestrong" lettering on the side blindly purchase cheaper knockoffs that say "Best Friends" or some such. I may be mnistaken, but isn't the point of charity to do it, not to be lauded by others for having done it, or show off your shiny "I'm so generous" bracelet, but just because virtue is its own reward. These little bracelets annoy me about as much as people who make hospitals and schools and so on for charity and them proceed to name them after themselves. With publicity and marketing being such a damn essential in getting any substantial charity off the ground, is there any chance of good old anonymous, "'cause it makes me feel good" kind of charity?
Misha
at Thursday, September 08, 2005
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The iPod Nano
Alright, alright, this is the very last bit of iPod gushing for a while, I swear to it. But, honestly,
look at it, it's just so clean and tiny and beautiful! Alright, enough, technophile mode off, seriously.
Misha
at Thursday, September 08, 2005
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Ipod Nano
I love the iPod series, I truly do. COnsider the gadget envy that rose up within me when I heard about the new iPod Nano. At the moment, there's a 2Gb and 4 Gb model, but I have no doubt storage space will rise higher and higher. Pricey, though, more so even than the earlier models when you take the size and storage capacity into consideration, since these nano babies start at $199 and work their way up. One of these days, we'll have a non-elitist iPod.
For more info: http://www.apple.com/ipodnano/
Misha
at Thursday, September 08, 2005
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Ipod Mobile
Some interesting news on the WorldCall Forum, the iPod Cell phone is now being launched. Details at the following link:
http://www.apple.com/itunes/mobile/
Misha
at Thursday, September 08, 2005
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Tuesday, September 06, 2005
road-trip
Every day (or every other day, depending on my availability), my siblings and I take the car and go visit my mum in the hospital. It used to be that every year, the three of us and my mum, we would pile up in old faithful and ride out to almost every area of Karachi, where we had relatives and wish them a happy Eid. I wouldn't like to say it, but they probably looked forward to our visits since the rest of the year, everyone is too busy to come by to their little corner of the world to just chit-chat and Karachi isn't exactly brimming with activities to fill up the days of retired citizen. In Karachi-logic, if you're lucky enough to be alive, relatively healthy, secure and with the creature comforts of a television and air conditioner, you should consider yourself pretty lucky and quit whining about how you have nothing to do.
Anyhow, returning to the topic at hand: our little road trips. I wouldn't admit it, but I enjoy those few hours we spend in the car each day, navigating through the various degrees of traffic in the city and arguing good naturedly about the "no trance in the car rule". When at home, we all have our own spaces, our little corners where we can get privacy. When you're young, you're not at all hesitant about grabbing your brother or sister and dragging them to some activity you want to take part in but need a second person around for, like a seesaw or building a lego model. As we get older, we stop imposing on each other's time in that breezy way we used to, which is just sad.
Now, though, the only time we get to actually talk about anything, pick any topic out of the air and put it up for inspection by the other two, is in the car. On those long trips with the radio blaring, three words and you have everyone's attention. "You know what?" Instantly, a slender finger will turn the radio down. And you talk, just talk, and for once everyone's listening.
Misha
at Tuesday, September 06, 2005
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Sunday, September 04, 2005
To round off a bad week, a friend pointed me to some forty-something idiot on Orkut who had added her, whose "About me" seemed oddly familiar to her. Yep, it was mine, the
plagarizing bastard. When confronted, the jackass claims it a coincidence that his interests and mine match and that he has written it himself. I lack the words to describe what I would do to this man if I ever catch him alone in a dark alley.
Misha
at Sunday, September 04, 2005
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Friday, September 02, 2005
deaths
So the invasion continues. Bobardments of phone calls at home, people asking the same questions, and I got sick of parroting the same old fact over and over again. Regardless of what the shrinks will tell you, it does not get easier with every telling.
Mum's stable now, the doctors are very optimistic as she was recovering nicely from her previous stint, and will be doing an endoscopy procedure today to figure out the source of the latest attack.
Yesterday, though, the absolute last thing I needed was encouragement to seriously start thinking about death, and that was exactly what I got. Two students from my university, Imran Habib and Hamidah Mansoor, passed away recently in a car accident. I didn't know Imran, but Hameedah was a casual acquaintence from my school days as we had been in the same primary school. Just one of those people who look familiar but you never get around to renewing acquaintences with. And now it's too late. The university had a mostly-impromptu dua for Hamidah, who lingered on in a coma and passed away on monday, unlike Imran, who died on the spot. Unfortunately, the dua consisted of staff, juniors who happend to be nearby in the same building, and teachers. I was one of the juniors, technically, since both were seniors to me. The teachers related stories about how studious and generous the pair had been, how Hamidah would take out time from her own studies to help out juniors and how Imran had been a scholarship holder and gold medalist during his academic career. And that was it. Very civilized, the funeral was, but I would be hard pressed to explain exactly why that word should irk me so, since normally, I hate the hysterical display of emotion in any public gathering. Save the tears for later. In fact, save the tears period. Anyhow, it got me determined to avoid death while at my university, since I have no real academic talents to speak of and the funeral would probably consist of teachers shrugging and hurrying it all along to the actual recitation of a dua. Two decades reduced to a gesture: *shrug*
Misha
at Friday, September 02, 2005
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Thursday, September 01, 2005
no rest for the wicked
"Sleep / Sleep / I could not sleep tonight / Not for all the jewels in the crown"A voice tried to break through my dreams. I put up a good fight, the dream was real, the voice was gone. The sound of retching, thick and quickly followed by plopping sounds, was what awoke me in horror. It began all over again.
In times of emergency, time slows down, and I fly. I flew like the concorde tonight, right to the still ajar door of the bathroom, from where I could hear my mum gasping. My father, who had never learned to fly, reached the door split seconds after I did, worried and at a loss. Steeling himself, he pushed the door open and went inside. Seconds later, "Oh my god!" and a quick exit. I hated him then, his cowardice and inability to face the unpleasant realities of life.
We had all thought she was getting better, the reports said so, the doctors said so, but apparently God had other plans. None of us deserve sleep, the way we abuse it, so now its rendered virtually impossible.
My aunt came in, typically in a state of mild panic. After a quick discussion, it was decided that she should be immediately taken to the hospital for a drip to replace the blood loss. The doctor would be called at six in the morning, not at the ungodly hour of four, and by then, she should be safely admitted.
If she's still alive on the way.
Shut up! Just shut the hell up. Nobody's dying around here today!
It would be an odd coincidence, wouldn't it? Born on the same day as her mother's birthday, and now...
SHUT UP!!
I looked at my father, now lying exactly parallel to my mum, who was resting her eyes and conserving her strength. Oddly, his pose reminded me of some playboy model on a shoot.
What the hell is wrong with you?!
A concerned, scared playboy model.
Leave me the hell alone, I don't have time for this crap right now.
My mum, insistant on decorum, got up weakly, swaying ever so slightly now and then, to make her way to the bathroom to change into suitable clothes.
What the hell is "suitable" for someone being admitted into a hospital?
Personally regarding it a very bad idea to let her close the door and change alone in this state, I held the door ajar, an eagle eye on her head, eady to spring into action.
My father, behind me, ordered by brother to get up and change out of his shorts to drive his mum to the hospital. Then he asked him for a cold bottle of water to keep by his bedside.
He could never fly, after all, and it has nothing to do with his mass. You know that.
I do.
It's all his fault.
It is.
Everyone is just a corpse walking around waiting for death to set in.
Yes.
But not you. You get to watch.
Which is worse, isn't it?
No, you get to watch because you know it makes no difference to you. Your indifference and your guilt at your indifference will kill you, but much later, after everyone else.
Why would you do that to me?
You are who you are. I am who you are. What kind of person would say something like that to themselves?
Shut up.
The cat must have sensed some sort of internal war and external tension in the air, because at that very moment, he started rubbing up against my leg. Absently, I bent down to pat him, reassure him, keeping an ever watchful eye on my mum's head. She finally emerged, on her own and quietly issued instructions of what to keep in her bag. Tiredly, she shook her head at her own regular use purse and asked me to fetch the other bag, the travelling bag.
Don't say it. Just don't.
Things packed, I held her arm as she descended the stairs. She felt so light. I prayed I would get to feel her weight against me again, strong and healthy.
Sure you will.
Unbidden, the image of my aunt's body, or what they said was the body, came to my mind. It looked suspiciously shrunken to me, as if the spirit had taken some actual mass along with it.
You can't stop thinking of the worst case scenario, can you? Go on, I dare you, think of something good, something optimistic.
I sighed. My bones were weary, my brain wouldn't shut up and my eyes were burning with unrequited desire for sleep. How could I sleep now, I wondered, as I waved to the car driving off to the hospital.
You will. Indifference will resurface soon enough.
I hate you.
I am you.
I still hate you.
Go to sleep.
Ane eventually, as I knew I would, I did..
Misha
at Thursday, September 01, 2005
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