Tick tick tock!

Every time I read someone else’s blog I realize how inconsequential, insignificant and immature my own blog is. I immediately get intimidated by their big words, their well-developed points of view and their adept writing skills. All creativity and ingenuity leaves me and I have no choice but to re-edit and revise all my posts.

Every time I look through someone else’s face book and see their party pictures, travel anecdotes, career stories I start matching my achievements with them. I suddenly realize my life is ordinary and stupid compared to the multitudes of experiences other people have had.

Even with best friends aren’t we at all times judging who’s achieved it all. You know the whole package. Happy Marriage +Kind but Brad Pitt look alike husband+ 2 good natured kids Girl and Boy+ And of course a possibly large house decorated with an urn filled with dead mother in law.

We keep putting a tick every time we achieve one target. We secretly laugh at the other when they can’t seem to tick the one we’ve just ticked. An if horror of horror one of us ticks them all we all conspire secretly and start doubting her worth, doubting her tick.

Wouldn’t it be a better world if we’d all stop caring about each other ticks and concentrated on our own?

Leave a comment! :)

this is where i live...this is where i do my screaming

This is where I live…this is where I do my screaming”

Wake up. Take the dog downstairs to pee. Lazy Steps. Walk back up the stairs. Messy Hair. Aggressive toothbrushing. One long and hard look in the mirror. This is not how I imagined my life would be. Something to look forward to. Oh yea my personal haven. Mouth still toothpasty. A bowl of cornflakes in one hand. The paper in the other. I turn the Pc on. 10 New messages. Click-all spam. Click-Britney Spears Shaves Head instead of giving head. Click-Writing Website. Click Earning Report. “Still Unpaid”.

This is exactly how all my mornings have started since I graduated. After a few bad interviews I realized I didn’t want to apply ever again. Okay so I lied at an interview and they figured it out. Is it really important to know the course ‘Media Management’ for a media management company? I don’t think so.

Hell. My social life is non-existent. The friends I had made in college were too busy with jobs and mostly their own ‘grown-up lives’. My school friends had all gotten married and had actual real life babies.

Masters. Another thing on my mind. I didn’t want to study further. I didn’t want to spend two more years doing something I wasn’t passionate about. This is what I had initially thought right after graduation. After day in day out of sitting on the pc searching the latest celebrity breakups and meltdowns I’d now actually enjoy studying warehousing even. Anything to get me out of this dump.

When you’re a kid, every time you’re having your exams the best stuff comes on TV. I had always fantasized of sitting at home with no school or homework and just hours and hours of television. After watching re-runs of re-runs of friends Seinfeld and MASH, I have realized TV is just overrated.

Family huh? Parents. Both too busy. Sisters. Both working. My mothers a political-religious-freakavist. She spends all her time at home and outside campaigning against the Jews. “Can I go to the school party”…”No beta these parties are Jewish conspiracies to make our kids forget Islam”. My dad on the other hand is a very intelligent man, makes lots of money trading on the stock exchange. Though slightly KOOKOO. If you tell him you have a particular disease or an illness or even a headache. He’s going to tell you he has the same thing the same symptoms. Quite neurotic actually. Last month he thought he had glaucoma. He went to 5 different doctors took five different tests. Doctors told him he was perfect. He couldn’t believe it so he started the Glaucoma medication anyway. Last year it was some kidney problem, the year before his stomach. I’ve just stopped counting now.

My eldest sisters getting married. She’s this big career woman with “goals” and “objectives”. She knows what she wants in life and always gets it. And yes I’m completely and totally jealous of her. I can’t decide what shoes to wear let alone what I want in life.

The other one’s a party animal. She’s funny and smart and people genuinely love her. She has a million friends. Again I’m completely and totally jealous of her. Yea but her happy persona is all outside this house. When she comes back from work she’s just tired cranky and depressed. The last time I saw her laugh was actually never.

So we’re all living in our own little personal hells. Hiding behind happy masks. Waking up everyday hoping the next will be better. Pretending to be a happy picture perfect family.

Stranger than Fiction

I picked up Stranger than fiction on an utterly boring day. Let’s just say the big bad wolf had decided to close down everything in Karachi. With only one movie lying at home I decided to watch it anyway. Just to add to this list I’m not particularly a big fan of Will Ferrell. So I fully expected it to be another cringe worthy comedy like the Holiday considering it had another star studded cast. Contrarily, this film was quirky and incredibly ironic.

Will Ferrell plays a boring IRS agent named Harold Crick who takes no risks and calculates every decision in his life. He measures and counts everything from the brush strokes he makes while brushing to the steps he takes to the bus stop. Until one crazy morning when he un-expectantly finds a woman’s voice narrating his every movement, feeling and desire. Confused and angry he looks up at the heavens to make this voice go away. This is where Emma Thompson introduced to the audience. She plays a writer named Kay Eiffel with a severe writers block. She is half way through writing a book on Harold Crick without even knowing that he actually exists. She doesn’t realize that as she writes the book things move and respond in the same way in Harold’s Life. The only problem is that Eiffel only writes Tragedies. While she figures out how Harold dies she helps him change his views on life love and relationships in general.

Emma Thompson gives a brilliant performance in this film. Her soothing narration in the first half compels you to wait until she makes an appearance. Highly recommended for people who liked Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

The age of the airhead!

I have to admit, if I had to choose between reading about the war in Iraq and Paris Hilton, I would guiltily click on the blond drunk eyed DUI mug shot of Paris Hilton. We have all publicly called her names; made fun of her horrific music albums and laughed at her entrepreneurial skills as a clothes and bag designer. It is incredible how a person with absolutely no talent or ability can stir controversy and excitement in the media world everyday. Yet, there is something about this girl that mesmerizes and enchants the public..

Maybe, it’s the fact that she will one day own the Hilton Hotel and Real estate fortune of her father Richard Hilton that makes us, materialists, pay attention. It is estimated that she will one day own about $30 to $50 million for being oh-my-god Paris Hilton. Perhaps its her influential lineage that makes us care which club she went to last night. Her uncle and aunt Kim Richards and Kyle Richards were popular child stars in the 1970’s. Elizabther Taylor and Zsa Zsa Gabor are also related to her

In my opinion it is the “prom queen” phenomena that makes us love and hate her so much. She reminds us of the girl in school we all hated. As a teenage girl she lived in different hotels in Manhattan, Beverly Hills, and the Hamptons. She attended the best schools of California and New York. She was modelling since she was a young girl and by the age of 19 had herself signed up with Donald Trump's modeling agency, T Management. She had also appeared in many advertisements such as Iceberg Vodka, GUESS, Tommy Hilfiger, Christian Dior, and Marciano. After 2001, she was no longer only "New York's leading It Girl” but a worldwide epidemic.

We were forced to watch her dance on tables and make pouty faces on magazine covers. She was constantly on the best dressed and the worst dressed list at the same time. And just like Marlboro Man commercials made a generation of cigarette smokers, we are a generation addicted to the shenanigans of this waif. Men were captivated by her “acting debut” in One Night in Paris. She sweared that this leaked sex video was not a publicity stunt. However, the timing makes us think otherwise. It came three weeks before the launch of her The Simple Life series.

The show was extremely sucessful. It intentionally or unintentionally made young intelligent women believe that being stupid, beautiful and rich could get you out of any trouble. It was officially okay to act airheady and bimboish like Paris Hilton and her co star and ex best friend Nicole Ritchie. Being smart was now considered geeky. I saw this trend being following mostly by the tweeners. They all wanted to have blond hair, wear clothes too old for their age and use the infamous Paris line “that’s hot”.

Paris and Nicole also became the poster girls for anorexia. Many young girls wanted to be a size zero like them. Designers pushed this image and introduced the minus zero and zero sizes in their collections. Not only were women supposed to act dumb but they also needed to look like a bag of bones.
When I heard that Paris Hilton was sentenced to 45 days in jail I smiled to myself evilly. It was one of those smiles that you have when you see the most popular girl in school trip in her high heels. For a second she is embarssed and scared just like all of us. That’s how I presume Paris is feeling right now. However, in the back of my head I know that the paris hilton hungry, frothing at the mouth, reporters and fans will replace this attention seeking queen with another one. Better yet, reporters will climb prison walls and get million dollar pictures of Paris in her jail cell. She will appear ofcourse still as thin beautiful and perfect in her jail attire. Reinstating the fact that some people will always be famous for being famous.

The Lal Masjid Debacle

It was embarrassing to see Lal Masjid’s Maulana Abdul Aziz try to make an escape clad in a burqa. Heads were lowered, all hope was diminished and the (correct or incorrect) struggle was brought to an end. Television spared us no mercy and the image was repeatedly shown for days. The world laughed at our once respected religion, made an absolute mockery of the shariah and spat at the concept of burqa.

But hearing Nawaz Sharif hold opposition talks in London in an attempt to rescue Pakistan and restore our so called democracy was almost too hysterical and ironic. How easily we had forgotten traitors from the past and replaced them with burqa clad present ones! Wasn’t this the same man who had run away to Saudia Arabia from all the cases filed against him of corruption, hijacking, tax evasion, embezzlement, and terrorism. He left behind his trail of supporters, closest allies and friends in the middle of the night with no trace. And now he wants to come back?

I wondered some more and remembered our very own daughter of the east. Was she too terrified of facing more than 90 legal cases? Is she scared that she might face arrest if she returns to her dear homeland? Have people forgotten how she and Zardari laundered millions to offshore accounts all over Europe? And now she wants to come back?

And don’t even get me started on Altaf Hussein. The man who ordered millions and millions of Karachiites to die on May 12 while sitting comfortable in the confines of his million dollar home in London.

And so I wonder….why werent these people shunned…why werent the images of them leaving shown repeatedly on television. Why have we suddenly forgotten what they had done? Why have we forgotten their crimes? Why do the crimes of religious fanatics seem worse than the crimes of these brutal dictators?


Where were these guns, tanks, rangers and policemen that we see planted outside lal masjid on May 12.

Wasn’t the government hiding in a burqa that day?

So why oh fucking why should my brain be painted with images of Abdul Aziz Ghazi? I have too many images of burqa cald men and women escaping in the past already.

That too for bigger crimes.

And I do mean bigger than buring CDs, kidnapping Chinese and two policemen.

The Safe Mountain

You’re standing on the edge.

You can almost taste the feeling of the cool water against your body.

You want to swim and explore.

You want to look at the coral reef for hours.

You want to be on your own at the edge of the world.

You so badly want to JUMP.

But wait.

Someone or something stops you from leaping into the unknown.

They hold you back physically.

They convince you that its better on top of the mountain.

They tell you about the sharks that live in the sea and the rocks that could split your head wide open

Or they undermine your abilities. “You can’t swim”. “You could never survive a day alone”.

And then lady reality walks in.

You remember you have 3 kids.

You remember you have old parents.

You remember you’re not smart enough.

You remember you don’t have superman powers.

And you grudgingly step back.

The dream is over.

And you’re back on the mountain.

Not scared.

Not happy.

Numb.

But that combined feeling of utter happiness and terror is absolutely addictive.

So every once in a while you go on top and fantasize.

My recent fantasy:

One day, while I’m spending my kazillionth hour on the pc, I come across a website. APPLICATIONS FOR SCHOLARSHIP AT HARVARD. Study literature with all expenses paid. So I write an admission essay about my leap of faith. Harvard people go crazy. They think I’m the next Sylvia plath. Morbid and suicidal. So they ask me to join in foran.

The real clincher is that my parents freak out but they eventually let me go.

Wait wait…wait.

That can’t happen

What happens in real life is

They make me step back.

Reassess the situation.

And manipulate me into changing my mind.

So I’ve stopped coming on the mountains for the last few days.

The more I come, the badly I want to jump

And the more I understand I can’t.

Responsibilities never go away.

They just keep building on top of each other.

Some days its family.

Other days its financial constraints.

And on particulary bad days its religion.

But on truly horrific days its society.

P.S How often have you been on the mountain?
P.P.S What do you fanatsize about?
P.P.p.S What stops you?
p.P.P.S: If you see me there PUSH!

who says chivalry's dead?

Eve-teasers kill objector

By Our Staff Reporter

ISLAMABAD, May 27: A young man was stabbed to death after he tried to stop a group of men from teasing a girl at Soan in the jurisdiction of Shahzad Town police station on Sunday, police said.When Babar Shahzad, 25, a decoration shop owner, tried to stop the young men they got offended and exchanged hot words and then attacked and thrashed him.On hearing the screams, the shopkeepers of the market rushed to his rescue. However, the group attacked and injured him with a dagger before the arrival of any rescue.As a result Shahzad fell on ground and starts bleeding. When the accused saw people running towards them, they tried to escape from the scene, however, one of them was overpowered by the colleagues of Shahzad.Later, Shahzad was shifted to Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences where he died of injuries.



How many times have you stood somewhere...while men sat araaam se and didnt offer you a seat...

and to top it off.....stared ridiculously at your mid parts, your lower parts and then their eyes stayed glued for the next two hours on your upper parts...

until you felt so disgusted you wanted to twist their slimy necks until their eyes came out?

probably countless times!

How many times have guys stood up for you when you walked in...or went to the ladies?

probably never!

How many times have you been whistled, cat called, dog barked, wooo wooo wooo fied?

probably hundreds of times...

HOW MANY TIMES HAVE GUYS OPENED DOORS FOR YOU?

never in my case..

But when you read this news piece you realize that good guy breed that your mamma always told you about...ACTUALLY EXISTS!

...0.0000001 % of nice guys that your best freind always spoke of...HAVE SIGNS OF EXISTANCE!

Oh wait...but they killed one of them....are they anymore left?

I dont know...

But atleast this story gives me hope!

Some nice guys are living right here on this planet

I need to find one of them before they all get killed!