99 Rupee deals

I know I said I'd come back when I discovered an atom of constructiveness in me but I've discovered that I can be pessimistic to the point where it gets boring so I decided to drop by earlier. Besides I have a conspiracy theory to tell: The whole of the commercial world is out to cheat us with these two little numbers: 99. [Except for the IBA canteen, which doesn't even bother to put the 99 and jumps straight from Rs 20 to Rs 60.] I know about psychological pricing and how it's intended to coax (to use an euphism for fool) the customer into buying the product, so then why do I still fall for it?? Anyway, in order to save other little unsuspecting customers from falling prey to the 99-rupee-monster I've come up with a list of places where it can be found and thus avoided:

1. Gunsmoke: This is one of it's most trickiest dens. You won't see the monster creep up on you till you're safely ensonced in it's razor sharp jaws. This is how two typical visits to Gunsmoke would go:

Visit #1: (BC=befuddled customer)

Menu card: Burgers--> Rs 399

BC1: Oh wow, the burger only costs Rs 300!

BC2: You mean 400.

BC1: Oh, 300, 400, what's the diff?

Visit #2:

Menu Card: Burgers-->Rs 499

BC1: Didn't it cost 300 last time?

BC2: You mean 400.

BC1: Oh right. Wow, inflation doesn't affect this place does it?

2. Dunkin Donuts: They've recently plastered the monster on billboards all over Karachi which makes it even harder for the average befuddled customer to avoid them. So BC happily saunters into the store with a hundred bucks and thinks: "Two donuts for Rs 90! A dream come true." And when they walk out they're still blinking about how they don't have ten rupees left over the way they calculated.

So please, dear average befuddled customer, don't be fooled by the number of nines in a price tag. It by no means suggests that the object to be bought is cheap. Beware of the gunsmoke-tactic where a bundle of tax is added to the 399 and be even more wary of the Devious-Dunkin-Donut-Tactic where it's ninety nine, just like it says, but if you go in with a hundred rupees they will cough politely and say "We owe you a rupee, but we don't have change" and your hundred rupees will disappear in thier cash register. Imagine how much profit they could earn if they kept one rupee from each customer who fell prey to the 99-rupee-monster.

Stay tuned for more sightings, and in the meantime, watch your pockets!

Nooks and Grannies

My parents decided to go to China and since we're still babies, guess who came to baby-sit us? Our grandmother (paternal). And if ever a grandmother needed to be fed George's marvelous medicine this is the one. I think Cinderella only hated her stepmother because she hadn't been exposed to the company of a grandmother. Usually when she's coming by to spend the night I moan and groan and weep inside because I don't want her to get all my soft pillows, to have to give up my bed, to go around cleaning things I don't want to clean and to have to listen to her opinions about how I'm too skinny in all the wrong places and how I study too much. And this time was no different. Well, only different in the sense that I plastered on a fake smile since I didn't want to ruin the before-traveling moments of my second-honey-mooning-in-about-a-quarterofacentury parents.

So this entire week (okay, three days) I've been descending the stairs fearlessly even though I know that the moment she gets sight of me from her throne (the sofa in the lounge) she's going to call me to dial a billion phone numbers into the phone, to check a billion times if the maid is doing everything okay and if everything is okay in the courtyard, she'll make me open the fridge and replace everything in minimally small boxes and will ask me a hundred questions about my life and then not wait for an answer because she's in a hurry to regale me with stories about how things are back at her house. Not to mention that she'll ask me to repeat everything I say about a billion times because she can't hear very well.

So technically, I should be celebrating her departure; due in three days. But, as it happens, I'm dreading it. Why don't I want her to leave?? I think that in some obscure, complicated way, she's found for herself a nook in my heart.

Happy Independence day...?

So a lot of statuses are popping up on facebook saying things like 'I am disappointed with Pakistan'. I mean it's one thing to say that you're sad about what's happening, like the floods and the corruption. But to say that you're disappointed with 'Pakistan' is kind of... dumb.

Let me tell you why: Pakistan itself is not a Quaid-e-azam that can go around brandishing the swords of unity, faith and discipline. It's actually just a piece of land, and what makes it a nation is the people like you and me that populate it. So to say that you're disappointed with Pakistan is actually just to say that you are disappointed with yourself. So only you can do something about it.

And just because Pakistan has been hammered by a sausage-string of disasters (most of them, admittedly brought about by us) doesn't mean that there is no cause to celebrate the day of independence. Of course I'm not saying that we should be in a super-festive mood because that would just be heartless and disrespectful considering the troubles half our nation is plunged in. But what I am saying is; the independence itself was one of the best things that has happened to the Muslims on this side of the world. And no amount of corruption can change that.

I think one of our greatest faults lies in the fact that we take intangible entities and blame them for our problems. So if the Taliban are screwing up Afghanistan we say that we are disappointed in Islam; when to be perfectly reasonable it's not 'Islam's' fault. It's the fault of a couple of narrow-minded fundamentalists. Ultimately, the fault of humans. The same goes for Pakistan. It's our fault. We, who can't even let go of our extravagances for this one month of Ramadan. We, who talk about the bombs and the killings and the floods in our beauty parlors while eerie romantic music plays in the background. I mean the least we can do, is just admit our mistake. Because if we don't, someone else will just exaggerate them and then you'll see Pakistan's name plastered all over BBC and it'll get thrashed like some kid who stole the candy. I mean becoming rich and refined and looking down your nose at Pakistan won't really do much because the soil isn't going to stand up and fashion itself into men who will change everything. Pakistan will only ever be what we make it.

Haunted

I saw this word in the newspaper today; and it scared the daylights out of me. One minute you're yawning away the remnants of a cozy slumber and the next you're sitting stiff in your chair, a sort of stifling darkness creeping up in the air, with the word gently throbbing in your brain like a fading echo. Know the feeling?

That's the word reporters used to describe the probable future of all the flooded places in Pakistan. Right now they were a mass of swimming arms and legs being crushed and carried by the current, but soon, judging by the rate at which people were evacuating, nothing would be left but a few streamers of cloth and many many unmarked graves.

But I can think of a better word: cursed. I think the whole lot of us are cursed. Cursed with pain and cursed with such thick skin. So many horrible things have happened in the past couple of years to other Muslims, to fellow countrymen. To innocent people like Dr. Afia Siddiqui and all the people of Iraq who never did have those much flaunted WMDs. It's happening to the people of Palestine and Israel constantly. And yet I always feel like the pain of these events is isolated only to those with whom it's happening. We shudder to think about the holocaust which was years ago yet we can't conjure up those same feelings for what's happening in the present, in front of our very eyes.

That's not to say I am doing very much to help these people. I'm in the same boat (or perhaps even in a more damaged one) as you guys. It's just that I have this opinion that, at the very very least, news like this should make your heart sink. Does it make your heart sink? Maybe it does for you, and you and you too. But obviously not for all of us. Because if that were true things like these wouldn't even be happening.

I read this book the other day in which a magistrate sentenced a man to execution. The magistrate's son watched as the man himself swung the sword that beheaded the criminal. The boy was repulsed and his father looked equally sickened but he told his son that that was necessary. It was necessary that he kill the man with his own hands because "...If you would take a man's life you owe it to him to look into his eyes and hear his final words. And if you cannot do that, then perhaps the man does not deserve to die."

--quote taken from 'Game of Thrones' by George R. R. Martin

My Blog Says...

Obsession with court-shoes

So the other day my mother-in-law, who happens to be a non-cliche non-monster-in-law, ordered Mr. Mo (husband) to buy me a pair of shoes. So we drove to a shoe store near a whole lot of closed-down or about-to-close-down shops (yes, it is a very good shoe store. Which is probably why it is the only shop in that deserted place still running) with the gray sea yawning at us morosely. Once inside, I was gripped with a sudden desire to buy high heels. And high here is not just a figure of speech. By high I mean the kind that would raise five-foot-four me, teetering, to look Mr. Mo in the eye. And that's when I saw my ultimate shoe. A classy stream-lined silver with a sparkling zircon buckle. And triangle toed, just the kind of painful fashion I had the urge for.

"Can you bring these in one... no two... no three sizes larger?" I sweetly asked the shop attendant, hiding my step-sister-sized, uneven feet.

"That's the only pair left."

GASP! I grabbed the pair and jammed them onto my feet and hobbled to the stool. When I regained my strength I got up, (gracefully I'd like to imagine) and turned my feet this way and that in the full-length mirror. Not too small after all. It was like a fairytale. So while I gazed at the front of the shoe, Mr. Mo, in characteristic husband fashion, turned the shoe over and glanced at the price before grunting his acquiescence (okay, he doesn't grunt. he's not forty). So now I'm the proud owner of a pair of Jimmy Choo's (not really =/) that even Dorothy would be jealous of. Not to mention Cinderella. They're more sturdy than hers anyway. And then in my obsessive fit I scoured my house till I found another pair of court shoes. Less dearly loved than the silver ones but loved nevertheless. So I ask you god/google/ blog-readers (if there be any) show me more!

PS: Lightening just lit up the sky outside. It felt like for once Karachi had turned on its street lights. And then shut them off at the speed of light. This last is something I'm quite sure KESC is capable of.

Writing from the Bus

Monday, 14th June, 1:40 P.M

There will be days when I'll be staring out of my window wondering why the sun loves us so much that it can't stay away for more than half a day. Days when I'll be stuck in a traffic jam and wishing that the sea was a little further away so that Karachi would be a little less humid. Days when I'll wish I lived in the north pole. But those are just some days. All said and done I think Karachi has the kind of weather that people in all other parts of the world crave. A sunny warmth countered by a fresh salty breeze and the perfect golden tinge to the landscape.

Come to think of it, Pakistan as a whole is really a marvelous country. In the high north you'll find people who look like the Chinese; a little lower down you'll find people who look like Europeans; further down and you'll find those who look like Africans and to their left, people who look like Indians and Americans. All of these different races in one tiny dragon-shaped country; all because it's longer than it is wider.

In which other country do you find a city by the sea in Sindh, followed by the vast deserts and dunes of Baluchistan, followed by the lush greenery and fresh air of Punjab and the mild frostiness of N.W.F.P followed by magnificent mountain ranges home to the second largest peak in the world: K2. It is as if this remarkable piece of land holds a pinch of every bit of the world, preserved so far, in it's natural form.

It's struggling under an ugly mask. It is like it's trapped in a room of burning mirrors, forced to gaze unwillingly at the mask that corrodes its face. And every time it finds room to breathe it is pulled back under by those who dig their sharp little heels in its soil. But I don't want it to be a puppet anymore, forced by the rats who sit in its clockwork head to pace underground in frustration. I would rather snip away those threads and kick away the rats and push the dragon out of the cave. Even if there is a chance that it may hurtle to the ground. Because I really think that if it got a chance to spread its wings, it could soar.

Phet and Philosophy

Sunday, 6th June 2010, 12:00 P.M.



I woke up at four thirty today because my alarm clock was screaming and so was my sister. I dragged myself blearily out of bed and out of the room and walked into a world that was black and blue. Beaten black and blue by Mr. Phet to whom Karachi had apparently been the unwillingly hospitable host since three in the night. You could hear the reptilian sounds of dripping water in the distance. I felt like I was standing in an underground cave. And as I scaled the stairs in the darkness with my guttering candle flinging shadows on the wall I felt like a character in one of those Victorian 'penny dreadfuls'. I picked up the first book my hands found in the dark and went out onto the terrace. The place was flooded, ice cold water sloshing around gently, threateningly with a trace pattern of mud. I pulled my feet up on the wicker armchair and, in the vague blue light from the clouds, began to read the book I'd picked up.

Prejudice, that's the word. I'd always been prejudiced against philosophy. I guess it was because my grandmother used to say that if you start thinking about how there's you in your house, your house in a town, your town in a city, your city in a... well you get my drift, then you'll go berserk thinking about the planets in the universe and the universe in the nothingness. And you'll drive yourself mad wondering where it all ends. And who is at the end of it. But then with 'Sophie's World' (yes that's the book I'd picked up), I dove into philosophy and realized that it was really not that convoluted. Socrates (or Plato, or Democritus) must have found himself standing on a metaphorical terrace watching a hypothetical storm rage in the sky turning the weather into perfect misty cold and showering raindrops on the the unfurling blossoms of the trees and he must have realized that there had to be someone directing this whole act. And since nobody could tell him who that was and he was certain that it wasn't Mr. Zeus, Mr. I-want-to-have-sex-with-anybodybutHera coordinating this marvelous scene he had to do the thinking himself. And that's all philosophy is. A sequence of logical deduction to get to the answer of a question.

And that made me realize what our problem is. It's like when you're sitting in the dark and somebody turns on the light and you contentedly resume your work, unaware of where the light came from because you never had to wonder. But if you had been Thomas Edison sitting in the dark you might have racked your brains to invent the light bulb, or if you were Aristotle you might have taken out your telescope and ransacked the skies to find out where the sun is and what it does. Our problem is that somebody else turned on the light for us. It's like we are blind because we never felt the need to see since somebody else was planting the pictures of everything around us in our minds. And we can never be sure if those pictures are the truth because we didn't bother to train ourselves to see. I've noticed that people who convert to a religion are always more attuned to it than people who've been born in a religion. I guess that's because the former consciously discovered what they wanted to believe in. So even though I think my grandmother was right in saying that there are some things that the human intellect cannot comprehend, I think we should still, occasionally, wonder why things are the way they are, even if they're questions we can't answer. Because if we don't we'll never be the Socrates of our generation, we'll be the mob that fed him hemlock.

Disillusioned

My Psychology text book was the first thing that said humans tend to be short-sighted when it comes to their relationships. That is, if you ask them how their relationships will progress they'll expect everything to be hunky-dory. Except it's never like that. I knew that. I didn't expect that every-in fact, any-relationship would be full of laughter. But I did expect that there would be some people in my life whom I could completely and wholly trust; so that I wouldn't have to consider every sentence in my head before uttering it, so that I wouldn't have to wonder whether they've got my back in any situation, so that I could trust them not to leave me hanging just when their being there mattered the most.

But just lately I've been getting this bitter dose of I-don't-know-what-it-is but some may call it reality. I've realized that ninety percent of the time people think only about themselves. And I've realized that you may have thought that there are some people who will never take you for granted no matter how much you open up to them but you thought wrong.

Am I being very bitter? Like, am I misconstruing reality? I really really hope I am.

Startled by Death

Don't you just hate it when someone in front of you is inching along just when you're in a hurry on the road? I hate it. So what do you do? Honk of course. Which is what we did at the truck that was going so slowly it looked like it would never gain enough momentum to round the bend. We honked our annoyance. But that was before we noticed what was slowly drifting along beside the truck. When I saw that i cannot describe to you the extent of my mortification and horror.

A small group of people were slowly walking along mumbling something that rose up sounding like a funereal humming. They were walking towards the graveyard carrying something that looked too much like a coffin for my comfort. And the back of the coffin was open revealing the head of a knotted white blanket. At first it looked like a 'paghri' (a turban) and then I realized I wasn't thinking clearly. It was the edge of the shroud which was all that the dead person was left wearing.

I don't want to sound preachy, nor did the emotions I felt at that moment have a lot to do with religion. I just want to pen down the extreme fright i felt. I was gripped with this fear of and for that petrified body being led down into the darkness.

Given that death can come to anybody at anytime, I guess everyone should be prepared to expect it when they least expect it or whatever. But I wasn't. Prepared that is. That is not to say that if I died tomorrow I would come back as a ghost with unfinished business because I don't have any unfinished business that is worldly. What I mean by prepared is, I'm not ready to greet whatever fate awaits me down that grim road. What's worse, after yesterday's encounter I've realized I don't even like coming face-to-face with the idea. I'm not just scared, I'm kind of in denial. I think it'll take a while for the gravity of the situation to properly sink into me. But even then I don't think I'll have any answer to this question: What should I do to prepare for death?