Forays into Writing again: Part 1

Silently, from the back seat of my car, I made note of the telephone poles extending greedily into the clouds above, as if mimicking wooden poles that held up wedding tents, pointedly guarding against an accidental falling of the sheet of blue sky. It was a Thursday morning and I was on my way to work, like any other day, except that today, feeling slightly introspective and somewhat pseudo intellectual, I had noticed the telephone poles.

Who am I, you may ask, that I am ingraciously pawning off my thoughts and parts of my stream of consciousness on yourself, an unsuspecting reader who was simply perusing these first paragraphs? Where I come from, we call each other brothers in religion (even the women) and often impose on each other in this manner, with a “excuse me bhaisahab” said in the right mix of politeness and need.

Anyhow, let me not deprive you any longer of the knowledge of my identity. I am one who is claimed by the upper middle class recessed that live in the city of Karachi. I am decently educated, although I discard enough of what I am taught to be suspicious of those who claim authority on knowledge, and I am underpaid and overworked (as we all like to believe we are) at a modest Partnership Marketing firm which posesses delusions of grandeur and the soul of satan when it comes to making a quick million rupees.

My personal characteristics are not one that would set me apart if you should meet me on the street. Like most of my class, I speak both urdu and english with a modicum of proficiency and like most of my class, I would be more willing to claim an above average proficiency for english as opposed to urdu. Some may call me overweight, although I consider myself simply somewhat plump in certain areas that ought not to be posessing such plumpness. Unlike most women my age, I do use little to no makeup in my daily life, but I bend occasionally to societal laws to allow myself to be paraded at weddings and occasions with the right amount of makeup forcibly applied by my mother or my sister. I am also married, as evidenced by a thin, sparkling band on my left hand’s ring finger. Of this miracle I shall speak later. Suffice it to say that I am an ordinary person who, like all of us ordinary people, believes herself to be capable of extraordinary things, given the opportunity, and that I am indistinguishable from any one of my fellows who make their daily morning pilgrimage to work in this city.

So what’s the latest? Let me try to con …

So what’s the latest? Let me try to condense this into a short post:

A) My job sucks. I’ve been here for a good 1.5 years now and in that time while I learned a good bit about reality and how the world works and how life is unfair and so is your boss, I’m sick of it now. To top it all off, I’ve been promised that an employee evaluation will take place within this month, and at that point I had two choices: I would either accept that and say fair enough, I hope you hold true to your word OR call my boss’ boss a big fat (and ugly as ass) liar. Guess which I did?

B) Have applied with husband for an Australian Visa. Application looks good but even with the best case scenario, the visa would not arrive till end of november this year. So until then, I can’t quit my job, else I’d have nothing to do and no money to spend.

C) Inflation is killing me. Assholes at work keep putting off a raise till I eventually just leave the country and current salary is not allowing me to save anything at all in these expensive times.

D) My brother is an asshole who refuses to grow up. Talk about a goddamn Peter Pan complex. When will this guy learn that modeling and being a steward and partying all night will not get you anywhere in life and that you need to seriously focus on your studies and work to get anywhere? 24 and still a goddamn idiot.

E) My mother keeps encouraging my idiot brother to explore and find himself and not actually work hard at anything conventional if he doesn’t want to. Apparently I’m surrounded by idiots who think money grows on trees and that education, work ethic and focus don’t reap the same volume in benefits as partying, exploring your inner zen and bouncing around all over the place academically and professionally does.

F) People at work have begun to distance themselves from me slowly over time. I suppose I can’t blame them since they are stuck here at this workplace for an undetermined time until they can find a better opportunity, while I am more or less going to be off to greener pastures within the year. I do wish they wouldn’t broaden the gap quite so much before it’s even time to leave.

transitions

I dreamed of a hours I had left behind. As I peeked through the dusty windows, I saw within all that I had ever left behind and never missed. Until I saw it through that dusty pane. All my belongings that had been left behind, waiting patiently for me to return, like old friends.

death

 

There is little else that so appropriately sums us the existence of all that lives on this planet than the birth and death of a kitten. We are all born naked, screaming and terrified, clutching vainly at the delicate thread that binds us to fragile existence. We shakily gulp down a few snatched morsels of air from this world before we are forced into the unyielding darkness of nonexistence. From dust to dust.

RIP babies, we will miss all that you could have added to our own few pathetic breaths.

of Fireflies and the human condition

After reading reviews citing it as one of the most depressing movies ever seen by users, and with an IMDB user rating of 8.2, plus a top 200 slot in the IMDB Top 250 movies list, I finally got down to watching Grave of the Fireflies. Yes, it’s an anime movie (fairly short, about 80 minutes long) and while I generally get quite depressed over movies displaying the lamentable human condition and the general apathy of society to this condition, I was underwhelmed.

It saddens me to think that our species as a whole and myself as a single unit of said species may have, in the name of art that oversteps its own chalked lines in terms of depravity and pathos, desensitized itself to suffering in general. I cannot speak for anyone apart for myself, which is why I rarely bother speaking at all, but to be desensitized to the suffering of your fellow man, in my opinion, makes one confirmedly set themselves apart from the rest of the species as a whole and judge outside ourselves. In order to judge in this way, one must either me tremendously concieted, be the holder of delusions of grandeur of the highest order, or simply be mad. Which of the above most accurately describes my own condition, I have yet to determine, due to a lack of an objectivity about the self.

… work calls, as always. Musings to be continued another day.

expectation

When does the newlywed bliss wear off? I wouldn’t know personally. All I do know is that when a woman walks into an institution around which there has been such a hype built from birth (we’ve all been there, it is the rare Pakistani household in which there has not been jokes of marriage at every opportunity), there is an overinflation of expectations.

As the days go by, they slowly deflate to a reasonable size, and then deflate some more because men are really rather silly and we need to make room for a lot of silliness before we can accept them as partners.

I suppose what I’m saying is, expect to have great expectations and expect to have them chopped down slowly as you adjust to normal life. The grand gesture is not always coming, nor is it is always a fairy tale. Sometimes it’s just two people trying to adjust to each other and dig out a way of life.

ethos

Being in a relationship is more about developing habits than anything. Go a few days developing the habit of having someone want to know what you’re doing, what you happen to be thinking, ask for you to vent about anything on your mind, ask about your day and actually care and the next time they’re away or unable to be in touch and continue to reinforce the habit, you will find yourself oddly amiss.

The same can, however, can apply to the removal of a habit already formed.

Pre-Martial Bliss

Yes, people, it’s true: I am now officially engaged to longtime friend and future husband-to-be.

Last night our families finally went face to face in a formal setting and got to meet each other and formally “engage” us, so to speak.

More later on pre-marital activities.

evolution

Evolution is fact. I know it beyond a shadow of doubt now.

To grow and to change, to improve to adapt to our surroundings (after we attempt to make them change to adapt to us), it is only natural.

I can feel my own personal evolution, as I mentally map my physical and spiritual journey across the decades. The change I can feel at the tip of my nerve endings each day, that should be proof enough of a personal evolutionary process that governs our lives?

Yesterday, I would have risen to this bait. Today, I am immune to it, the part of my brain that made every casual challenge a matter of life and death is gone.

I am renewed and surpass my own shadow every day. Is this not evolving?

a chronicle of the admirable misdemeanors of the monkee emperor part 1

“Allow me to disperse, as I have done in many such establishments in all of England, a tale of much woe and misery, primarily for all save the protagonist, in exchange for ale and a warm bed, my good sir and fine maiden?”

“I see you do not protest, so I must begin my tale.

“There once existed an accidental mongoloid named Sir Timothy. An odd name for a Mongol man, you may say, but he was borne of a saucy young English maiden, widowed wife to a duke of considerable standing and dubious ancestry. He was, therefore, christened by his dying mother some years earlier to be properly announced at all fashionable societal functions as Sir Timothy Monk. The young man, at the tender age of eighteen, was malcontent with his unfortunate fortune and uncalled for sniggers behind his back when he spoke of his honorable family titles and decided to travel into the world and make a name for himself.

In the days of yore, as today, good master barkeep, much of the world beyond our own borders was shaded in mystery. Humans were thought to reside in Britain and animals and evil spirits beyond its comforting borders. It was in this unenlightened world that Sir Timothy of Monk went forth to carve for himself a kingdom, be it by conquest or trickery.

He gathered for himself a party of fourteen young fools, eager as he to look upon the borders of the natural world and sail clean beyond, and set forth on a rickety sailboat he found himself the owner of. It was after some days that the fourteen men ceased their censorious complaining about the food rations on board. One fine day a wholesome fight commenced in which every member of the crew managed to get in at least three well aimed fists to the face of other members, save for the captain who retained his dignity and sought refuge upon the crow’s nest without informing the rest of the crew, although it is secretly believed to this day that he climbed down after the men lay exhausted and half blind with facial puffiness on the fourth day’s end and did his share of walloping and retired innocently to the crow’s nest after the deed was done, the scurvy dog. But I digress from the tale, allow me a sip of this fine brew before I move forward with the story, good barman and maiden.

“Ah yes, much better. I spoke thus of the legendary fight that had erupted on board the S. S. Fortune (for the young lad opted to name the boat after that which he had lost to attain it). The consequences of the fight were many and for generations after the great adventure the descendants of two crewmen who had punched one another would still rather see a punch landed than a friendly word traded, but the primary consequence, if you will excuse my unlearned self making such proclamations, was this: they lost sight of where they headed and the S. S. Fortune drifted along with ne’er a one to pay mind to where she went or how many miles off course she traded upon the jovial sea. The fight ended abruptly when the ship halted none too gently upon a the shore of a strange island filled with trees as large as five men standing atop each other and animals that were clearly not to be seen in jolly England.

(to be continued, perhaps)