- from Nietzsche's Daybreak,s. 147, R.J. Hollingdale transl

A line of ants moved swiftly across the plain, each with his eyes fixed on the reassuring mass in front of him. Each soldier knew his place and never desired another further up or lower down in the line. Unknown to them, a child ventured into the garden and spied the line of black ants, moving with a discipline he knew not. Such harmony is wasted on a child and sure enough, he brought together his thumb and middle finger and carefully poised it for attack. One swift flick and a link in the ant chain had disappeared. All was chaos.

The ants scattered, torn by the tragedy. They struggled to understand where their comrade had gone. What divine hand had strayed their way in anger, despite all their offerings? Why was the great one incensed by them?

Indeed, why was the very question the child's older, more sensible sister asked as she stumbled upon the child chuckling benevolently at the ants' confusion. Unable to get an answer out of the child, but for a calm smile in her direction, she picked him up and carried him indoors, leaving the ants to their fervent prayers.

How am I doing?

I am cowering under the pressure of having people who love me think I'm much better than I really am in every way. I am afraid to let them find out the truth.

I am constantly wondering why it is I belie the existance of a higher power in one sentence and thank Him in the next for letting me think that I have a choice.

I am a part of a society I don't understand and am not sure I'm meant to. I want to keep leaving and returning all over again, for the rest of my life.

I wonder why it is most of "God's noblest creation" is unworthy to be called so. If, somewhere in our dirt-drenched lives, our soul were tugged out of our bodies, would we have noticed?

I am still uncomfortable in my own skin but have accepted that I neither know nor care where I am steered to, as long as there are fantastic sights along the way. That is my little slice of contentment.

However, if you should one day ask, I am and will continue to be just fine. And that is worth everything, don't you know? :)

I had a distinctly unpleasant head-on collision with age recently. On the prowl for much sought after (and eventually sold out) tickets to the performance of Ayub, an ex Grammarian friend and I ended up at Karachi Grammar School on a tip that they were selling tickets. Unfortunately, the gatekeeper didn't quite like the look of the two of us and insisted we wait on the benches near the gate with various mothers awaiting the release of their children. I can't say I blame him, I'm not the most dazzlingly stylish people on a good day and going to Grammar in everyday clothes struck me as a perfectly natural thing to do, I mean, was I going to dress up for a bunch of snobby school children? My friend, having undergone a radical change in her world view, was covered from head to waist with a dupatta, taken over her jeans, so we made an odd and (to the gentleman in charge of admittance) suspicious pair. Anyhow, we were confined to the waiting area for nearly an hour, during which some A-level students had their games period and came out to play volleyball. During a lazy debate amongst ourselves over whether or not volleyball as a sport qualified as very manly and how the young athletes looking to make an impression on the young ladies should be playing soccer or cricket instead, I observed some of the students were not half bad to look at. Whilst admiring their barely rippling muscles and "interesting" hairstyling experiments, I realized, to my horror, that all these students were in the 16-18 age group and I, a 22 year old woman was oogling 16 year old boys! The smallest of the lot were six years younger than me and the oldest ones were a little less than five years younger. Doing an entirely mental version of the "ewww" wince and shudder as I vehemently brushed away the mental image of Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher, I not so much turned as whipped my attention to the drivers waiting by the gate instead. They didn't have the slightest hint of rippling muscles or noteworthy hairstyles, but hey, at least they weren't underage.

Youth is so very wasted on the young.

I happened to visit the Sunday Bazaar lately and, after a long time, decided to visit one of the books stalls for some idle browsing through the titles since it was conveniently close to the cold drinks stand. In a long line of saddening observations about our society, I would like to add the fact that we have little, if any, appreciation for the classic. At this particular stall, I found gems like Hardy, Charlotte and Emily Bronte, Dickens and the like, dusty and shoved into constricted spaces while on top of them lay the main attractions, three different Dan Brown novels. I left the very depressing sight almost immediately after.

An interesting story told to me by an old teacher who happened to study in Karachi Grammar School in the 70's as a young man was the very explicit class system drilled into the students. He mentioned having three separate "houses" called "A", "B" and "C". The students in "A" , of course, were the top of the heap, classified so by their top notch grades, and so on for the students in "B" and "C". According to him, if one was in "A", they were the absolute A-listers of the school, made to stand right in front at the assemblies and incapable of acknowledging the existence of the ones in "C", while there was tepid mingling with the "B"-housers. The saddest thing is that the teacher who narrated this story spent his early primary years there, which would mean that such inequality was being drilled into the minds of children (classes 1-7).

After a fun night of watching old Grammarians putting on a stellar performance of Ayub, I finally got home and collapsed on my bed and dreamed of dancing devils until seven, at which point I had to wake up and get ready for my eight o'clock session of Personal Management, a subject wasted on people who have been learning (the hard way) and implementing its principles for three years. Little did I know that the collective reward for myself and my cohorts would be to get unceremoniously asked to leave the class since they could not "accommodate" us and add to their class of 38. So here I am, waiting for the higher powers to arrive so that the mess can be sorted out.

A few words about last night. I enjoyed the play, despite its blatant religiousness, but found the end a bit predictable. I mean, come on, we all know the main character will not renounce his God, nor will be die. Only one way out, then, isn't there? The ticket pricing, however, I was less satisfied with. No matter how good a play is and no matter how worthy a charity the proceeds go to, 750 is still a bit much. Of course, there were tickets available to students for Rs. 400, but these, as expected, would have flown out of the box and even students would have been forced to purchase the ultra-pricey tickets. When I arrived on the scene, the show was sold out and off in the side a young man was noting down names and numbers for people who wanted to get in and would be willing to sit in the aisle for four hundred. Since most people were already on the scene, they were willing to sit on the floor for four hundred and we were one of them until we managed to procure tickets from another source. Rumors were rife that the cast and crew were planning to have one extra performance on Sunday due to the success of the play and the cancellation of the performance scheduled for Thursday.

Now, on to the cast. Jaffer Hoti as Yazid Aagwala is a treat to watch, honestly. He prances and giggles and dances into every scene and, in my opinion, steals every single one he's in. Sheheryar Kabraji as Ayub seemed a bit off because of the strictly upper-class British accent of the actor, which didn't strike me as the correct accent for a noveau riche but pious Karachiite, Ayub Siddqui. The Desi-ization of the original works brilliantly, with quips about everything from political leaders in the limelight to Lahore's landmarks to EFU thrown in with hilarious results. The only two female characters in the play are one-dimensional till the end, where we finally see Aisha, Ayub's wife, shed some of her comic relief base and show some depth. The daughter, while played well, is strictly only in it for the comic relief, as even the younger son gets more interesting lines than she does. This brings us to the older son, Emad, played by a young actor also named Emad. The boy has talent, but is just outshone by excellent performances by Mr. Kabraji and Hoti. Singularly loved by all, Hoti's performance reminded a friend of Peter Sellers at his peak. All in all, definitely a must-see, at least once.

In the middle of tapping out a mundane assignment in which we have to outline three goals we want to achive within the semester, I stopped and looked at what I had written. My god, I can tap out sublime bullshit when I get going. All you have to do is be "in the zone". The zone, for those who are unfamiliar, is that mysterious mindless state where your brain is just present enough to order your fingers to tap out sentence after sentence dripping with the saccharine goodness that forces teachers to smile and put a cap on that red pen. It's absolutely brilliant, exactly what they want to hear. What a good student, they beam. The trouble is when, in the middle of this zone, as you're furiously typing away your particular brand of glorious rubbish, you stop for a second and listen to yourself. I wonder if the people who write songs for the backstreet boys stop and listen to themselves and wonder how it is they ended up at the top of the bottom when all they wanted was to write a decent song.

"Al right, have a look", I conceded with a grin, extending my upturned hand to her.

She squinted at the middle of my palm, I tried to hide a smile at the concentration she was putting into this. It was a joke, ridiculous, of course. I'm a goddamn rationalist, I don't believe in this crap.

After an eternity of her peering at every nook and cranny of my fingers, she looked up, eyes dead serious. "You don't believe in this stuff, do you?". "No, of course not."

She relaxed, smiled even, albiet it was a smile of wax, ready to melt at the slightest provocation. "What it says is," hesitating slightly, she looked up at me, and there was that smile again, the one the slightest change in my mood would melt. "The arrangement leads me to believe that you will not... get very far professionally. Your career line is quiet weak... " I just stared at her, smile frozen on my face but rapidly slipping at the corners. She looked away, smiling reassuringly at my siblings, who were laughing heartily and, possibly my own perception, a little cruelly. How many times had I taunted them with words, wickedly delighting in my own verbal strutting? People, nature, life, love, they can all be altogether too cruel, just give them a fraction of a chance.

I stared at my hand after they all left. I felt like ripping out a line, carving out a new one like the kings of yore who would defiantly stand atop a cliff and laugh into the face of a tornado, "Is that all you've got?!". Trouble was there were no cliffs in this dark room and certainly no wind. It's easier to jeer in the face of the external, pinpoint and blame something howling outside as the source of your trouble and grab your armour and just go face it. If you lost, they would tell tales about you for generations to come and death would be quick and the herald of eternal peace to come. When the demons are inside and need no rest, they're harder to laugh at.

In the murky territory of the subconscious and the conscious and the damage we do knowingly and unknowingly to ourselves, I do wonder some of us have a little time bomb ticking away, awaiting only activation to start counting down to complete self destruction of its host. I also wonder if that day I activated mine and what's worse, that I brought it on to myself or that I did it knowing full well what I was doing.

Nobody should be as inept as social interaction as I. What do you do when people insist you are talented and you just want to tell them to go shove it because their sadly mistaken faith in your nonexistant talents only serves to rub it in that a lifetime of mediocrity awaits you round the bend?

I have recently concluded that most acquaintences have expiry dates. You can continue to meet them daily after the expiry date's past but it will have all the pungent flavour of continuing to drink expired milk. I'm full of lame analogies like that these days, so I'll shut up now until I actually have something interesting to write about.

I've waited here for you, everlong.

Nothing I can think up sounds anything but cliched. It's all been said a million times, it's all been done a million times, where do any of us fit in? Unfortunately, my brain has gone on shutdown as of late, thanks to the endless monotony of memorizing things. I fail to see the point of rote learning fomulae and procedures and code syntaxes. Why is it education teaches us what to think instead of just to think, period? I have often told friends off stories of "duh moments" in various classes where a basic lack of the ability to use common sense or any sort of analytical skills of ones own are on display, despite the fact the central characters in the stories are amongst the top GPA holders of our class. What does that say about education systems in general? The last time I was asked to actually use my own brain to formulate individual theories based on evidence from a given text and defend them in an exam and in front of classmates was in A level Literature. Since then, it's been memorizing various things without really understanding them and this is the sad bit. Thoughts?

This must be what it's like to be an optimist. I am filled, inexplicably enough, with the urge to hug walls and tree trunks at random and run around beaming at everyone and everything. My favorite classmates have joined me in my new conversion classes, my buddie M is in town and prodding me to go out somewhere every damn day, I have recently gotten back in touch with my favorite teacher/father-figure in the world and even bloody physics is within my comprehension! Today, the world feels like it's mine!

I'm so sick of people putting down Pakistan. The number of people who will readily spout a litany of exactly what's wrong with this country increases around the middle of August every year. Given the state of the world today, we could all be washed away in some stray tsunami, earthquake or flood tomorrow, so why not celebrate having gotten this far without self-destruction? Just keep dancing, dammit, and celebrate that you have the right to take off your shirt and dance atop a mini-bus.

Jashn-e-azaadi mubarak, everyone!

Fraaandshippers, ahoy! Today we shall be discussing that inevitable feeling that makes half the world act like idiots and the other half watch amusedly from the sidelines: lurrrve. I apeak mockingly of it, to be sure, but recently, a friend put the question to me quite seriously: do you believe in love at all? This time, I actually did stop to think about my answer instead of the automatic "bah" that pops up at the very mention of that word. I was also forced to seriously consider the fact that three of my closest friends have found "the one" and plan to marry their respective choices while three others are prancing about in marital bliss and one refuses to let go of his "the one" even though it's never going to happen. Getting back to the seriously posed question forced me to come up with the following theory (now tell me who can't pass bloody maths, eh?):

"love" = (x* lust) + (y*affection)

x + y= 1

Ta-da!

For the non mathematically inclined, I think that overrated feeling called love is a mixture of affection and lust and no more. Eventually, both fade and you're left irrevocably bound to someone you don't really like that much anymore but have grown used to so you spend the remainder of your lives speaking but not talking, words to cover up the silences. My problem, I have come to realise is that I recognize affection for what it is and lust is always fun, but not to be taken too seriously. If the basic ingredients are missing, there is thankfully no "lurrve" going to happen, and never shall, if I'm lucky.

plane-TV
Originally uploaded by Mishaone.

Having never travelled via Emirates before, I had assumed my siblings were kidding about me not forgetting about them as I watched TV on my flight. Turns out even economy class seats in Emirates flights have a touch screen TV on the back of each seat with dozens of movies, radio channels and TV shows to choose from. Due to my flight being barely two hours, all I could squeeze in was an episode of Scrubs, one of the last FRIENDS episodes and the opening sequence of the Lion King before the captain announced the flight was coming to an end.

About an hour into the flight, the stewards and stewardesses start to being down the food trolleys. Rubbing my hands in anticipatory glee, I kept an eye out for the trays to come to where I was sitting (aisle seat, unfortunately, the window seat was occupied by a thirteen year old girl with no appreciation of a fantastic view). When they finally showed up, I was handed a steaming hot tray of assorted goodies. Little Emirates chocolates first, of course, then the icy mineral water, then the mini can of coke found themselves disappearing rapidly and soon, it was time for the main course, which was hidden beneath the tin foil of a platter larger than the other little plates. Carefully, I peeled off the tin foil to reveal yellow colored rice with some odd geometrically shaped green chunks stuffed into the corner of the platter. Eh? I looked over at the mother of the teenager who was oblivious to the view from her window seat and saw her gingerly poking the (mystery meat?) green shapes with a plastic fork. I steeled myself for the worst and grabbed my own plastic knife and fork and started my own little poking party. Optimistically, I was still hoping it would turn out to be some form of chicken or even bits of liver. Unfortunately, resolutely pinning one of the green chunks down with a fork and hacking away at it with a knife revealed it to be made of (if I were to venture a guess) some form of elastic spam that refused to allow itself to be broken down into smaller, bite sized bits. Bah, I muttered and dug into the yellow rice instead and stuffed a forkful into my mouth. A few seconds of chewing cured me of my optimism with regards to airline food and I replaces the tin foil on the main course and turned my attention to the other little packs and sachets instead. In the end, I found a small round bun, which I cut into half and buttered and ate with my coke. And it wasn't half bad, I might add.

Soon after the tragedy that was the food tray, the captain announced that we would be landing in ten minutes, which brought me to frantically exploring the touch screen television to ensure I hadn't missed anything. This was when I stumbled upon the Plane-cameras. Apparently, Emirates planes have one camera attached to the very nose of the aircraft and one to the belly and passengers within can tune in to the live feeds from either camera on their screens and watch landings, take-offs and all the views in between. What an absolutely brilliant idea, I must admit. Completely made up for the lack of a window seat being assigned to me as I watched the lights of Dubai sparkling below the aircraft as we approached the Dubai In'tl airport and eventually as we skidded to a halt and were instructed to exit the aircraft.

Last night, helped along with KESC shutting off the electricity at one a.m and turning it back on at 10 a.m, I had the most uncomfortable night's sleep ever. Add that to odd nightmares in which I dreamed a succession of deams about a classmate dying on a solo hiking trip alone on the Himalayas and the rest of us meeting up and expressing how much we missed him. To top it off, on my first visit to the university, as I stood talking to a friend and catching up on the news, who should decide to welcome me back by sneaking up behind me and trying to scare me but classmate who I dreamed was dead, nearly scaring me, well, "to death". One of these days, I'd really like to have a day in which I am not reminded about God's "interesting" sense of humour.

airborne
Originally uploaded by Mishaone.

Having never attempted to travel even as far as outside the city by myself, I was a bit nervous about travelling to another continent altogether where I would be dependent on my sparse knowledge of Arabic to survive. Come late evening and I find myself being driven to the airport with my luggage and family in tow. Mum's nervous, of course, and keeps telling me the exact procedure to get through to the boarding lounge over and over, as well as letting me know to mind my P's and Q's when I get to my relatives' place and not leave my clothes all over. I turn up the radio and find myself singing along to an oddly squeaky voiced fellow singing "I'm so looooonely". The song proves to be addictive and is stuck in my head for the duration of my say in the UAE. In fact, even now if you should approach my friend M, who stayed with me for four days in Sharjah, and start singing "lonely" in a squeaky voice, she will run screaming to the nearest wall to bash her head in. Anyhow, I'm getting ahead of myself.

The airport looms over the horizon. I've never has such mixed feelings about seeing the golden arches that signal the approach of a McDonalds' franchise. Turns out there's still over three hours till my flight's takeoff time, so an early dinner at Mickey D's is on the cards, which turns out to be a blessing, considering the food they serve over at Emirates. Fast forward a half hour and it's time for the awkward goodbyes. I'm not much for the hugging and bawling in public places is even less welcome in my book, so I casually say goodbye and grab my luggage and make my way through the glass doors. Odd how it's instantly cool inside, even though the doors are open twenty four hours a day. I try to resist turning back, but it suddenly strikes me that I'm all alone now and an immediate "ohmygodimsoooooscrewed" rush occurs. Panic, pure panic. I turn around, locate my family and give them a wave that I hope seems confident and turn around and walk in. The last time I was in here, the very first customs check made us open up suitcases and poked screwdriver heads through the heels of my brother's boots. This time I'm waved through almost instantly, a fact I attribute to being a mostly harmless-looking female. With a burst of confidence, I check in my luggage and get my boarding pass and wave one last time to my family as I'm whisked through immigration. Once inside, I eagerly approach the little kiosks where I can use the Internet free of charge, after all this is the major advantage of checking in two hours early and waiting around in a boarding lounge. Unfortunately, the kiosks now ask for a valid email address to activate the Internet for twenty minutes, and even then only with browsing. Additionally, they have an clumsily made browser which is pretty much all you can access on the computers. I wrestle with the strange browser and give up after fifteen minutes and return to my seat to watch TV. Lady luck has abandoned me, it seems, because I now discover that they only have one channel available: the Airport channel, which consists of the same twenty monotonous advertisements being played over and over and over. Desperately, I look around for any entertainment at all and find only a snack bar that serves food for almost double the price it would be in a regular retail store, and now that you're trapped and deprived of any entertainment, you absolutely have to buy it. Two hours of waiting later, I am marvelling at the resilience of my sanity for not having left me by now when we're finally called in to board the airplane.

In between, unfortunately, a middle aged lady who was, judging by the tags on her carry on luggage, travelling via PIA to Qatar, approaches me and asks me if I would mind watching her luggage while she pops in to the loo for a minute.

I nearly go crosseyed in the next five minutes, keeping one eye on the lady's carry-on bag and one eye on the ladies washroom door to ensure said lady does not exit and leave me here with her potentially dangerous bag. To my relief, she exits and comes straight for me. I straighten up and look around casually as if I never doubted her return for a second. She sits down, smiles gratefully and checks her watch. Uh-oh, she says. It appears to be time for her prayers. Would I mind watching her bags for a few more minutes while she says her prayers? Torn between feeling guilty for thinking a harmless old lady could be a terrorist and the cynical voice insisting that the first time she came back to lull me into a false sense of security and this time she would not return, I say yes again. Lady smiles gratefully and exits to where my gaze cannot follow. God, I mutter, I will not ask you for an iPod again, please let her just be an innocent old lady who wanted to pee and then pray and not a member of an International terrorist organization praying on stupid people who agree to watch luggage for strangers. Twenty minutes pass by and I'm getting concerned about the lady's whereabouts. Surely she should be done with her prayers by now? The vague feeling of disquiet is not helped in the least by the fact that passengers for the PIA flight to Qatar are being invited to board the plane now and the lady may well miss her flight. My attempt to discreetly distance myself from her bag falls flat when a member of airport security approaches me (now at a bit of a distance from the lady's bag) and asks if I own yonder bag. No, I don't. Is the owner travelling with me then? No, I have never seen her before. Oh. I should be careful then, he says, nodding sagely as he speaks. I would be held responsible for the bag should the lady not return. I manage to smile and nod my understanding before letting out a string of words under my breath it is best not to repeat here. I walk off in search of the place for ladies to pray and, to my immense relief, find the lady still praying vigorously. Not really knowing how to interrupt someone in the middle of their prayers but wanting to let her know that her flight may be leaving without her and that I cannot watch her bag anymore, I clear my throat several times to get her attention. The lady turns out to have ears only for God because she completely ignores me. Screw it, I think, and return to my seat before having an attack of conscience and returning to find the lady and grab her right after her prayers end and tell her where her bag is. To my alarm, the prayer room is empty. I hurry to the place where I left the bag only to find the lady in question boarding her plane with her stupid bag hoisted on her shoulder without so much as a glance backwards to wave appreciatively. Good riddance, I mutter angrily to no one in particular and flop down on my seat to wait for boarding of my own flight, which happens twenty five minutes later.

Sunset from the plane
Originally uploaded by Mishaone.

at first sight
Originally uploaded by Mishaone.