Going the other way

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While CJ Chaudhry Iftikhar, Lord Nazir (the member of House of Lords who became famous for texting while driving and being jailed for it) and every PML-N politician is out to get our erstwhile President Mr. Pervez Musharraf, city district government in Karachi decided to go the other way and named a road in North Nazimabad Town after him.

If the presence of the PSO logo is any indication, they have even managed to get a sponsor for it.



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Life, as I have known it, has come to an end...

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Life, as I have known it all along, has ended for me last week.

From the day I was born, my very first identity has been that of a daughter. Even before I acquired my name, the baby wrist tag that they put on soon after the birth said that I was my parent’s daughter. I am no longer a daughter. My father passed away last week after succumbing to cardiopulmonary arrest. I have already lost my mother to cancer in my teenage years and now I am all by myself. I missed Ammi desperately every time things got a bit tough, but I got through it because I had Abba. Whenever things overwhelmed me, Abba would calmly tell me to not worry and say, “Beta, this too shall pass, you just need to hang in there,” and I would feel better and would somehow have the courage to take on the world. A couple of weeks before I lost my dad, I was told by my employers that they will not renew my job contract. I was depressed as hell and told my dad that I was about to lose my job. Abba was very ill and had several tubes going in and coming out of his body. He just held my hand and told me not to worry. He said that something better will come along, it always has and no one can keep me down for long. The minute he said it, I felt on top of the world and stopped thinking about the bad job market out there and minimal demand for my particular set of skills.

With Abba gone, I feel this acute loneliness; there is no one who will now call me beta and tell me that things will get better for me because I deserve all the happiness in the world, there is no one who will share my joy, my sorrows, my achievements and my failures with me.

All of a sudden, I have discovered that world indeed is a lonely place. With Abba, whatever part of the world I was in, I knew I had a home; Abba was my home. Whether I was in Tbilisi or Trincomale, I had to call home to let him know that I am still in one piece. Abba’s phone number was my emergency contact number no matter where I was. I traveled across the world and took on unnecessary adventures because at the back of my mind, I knew that there is someone who will take care of me if anything happens and even if I break an arm or two, I would be welcomed when I come home because there is someone who loves me unconditionally – even without the arms. That stability is gone from my life with Abba, there is no one in the world who loves me unconditionally anymore and it is perhaps the scariest, and loneliest feeling in the world. With Abba gone, I feel sapped of all the energy. I am limp and find it difficult to get by. I miss you Abba and I wish you were still here with us. 

Three cheers for halal ness.

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Damn the Jews!

They have beaten the more pious Muslims to it again. A new ‘kosher’ search engine called Koogle has been launched for orthodox Jews living in Israel, which will allow them to surf cyberspace without ever encountering unbecoming images or faith wavering text and keep the dangers of subversion and temptation at bay. Koogle will follow the religious standards set by the rabbis and is aimed at helping orthodox Jews stay on the stipulated path.

Apparently a jibe at Google, Koogle will filter out forbidden material and provide its consumers kosher bits and pieces from the net. This provides an impetus to our more religious-minded Muslim brothers to come up with a halal search engine or perhaps something even better: a halal browser. The halal browser could scan the web and act all big brotherly for the benefit of its devout and virtuous users.

Ideally, the halal browser will check out the halal quotient of the content in cyberspace. The browser could also label web content according to different levels of halalness. The varying degrees of halalness could range from barely halal to standard halal and extra or strictly halal and everything in between.

The barely halal version will only let the user know that there is dangerous content ahead and warn that if you want to keep your faith intact, browse no further. The standard halal version will not only warn you about dangerous content ahead, but will also distort the appearance of the browser and scream ‘haram haram!’ Anyone with even a remnant of faith will cease browsing non-halal content and will revert to halal content. The reward for clicking along the righteous path - Ovais Qadri naats in the background.

Meanwhile, the strictly halal version will not warn you about anything; instead, it will just obstruct the material deemed inappropriate by the maulanas. For instance, if you are on Facebook or blogging to your heart’s desire and you see adverts with a semi-nude woman with a lollipop (the ultimate test of your faith) asking you to buy this or that, fear no more. The new and improved halal browser, equipped with halal firewall, will take care of it for you. You can look forward to a situation in which only totally halal adverts for items such as halal chicken, halal chips, halal banking and Umrah tours pop on your browser.

If you are an online shopper and have indulged in shopping taboo items in the past, the new and improved halal browser will even curb your enthusiasm for all things forbidden and halt your purchase before you set up your Paypal account.

The only problem is that we do not have this halal browser right now. For a religious minded businessman, it is the best opportunity since halal foods and Shariah-compliant banking to make some solid dough. If Junaid Jamshed is done with modeling for a commercial in the guise of public service message, which, let’s be honest, is really a fatwa in favour of a commercial product, he can now invest to develop the first-ever Shariah compliant halal browser.

Of course, if you were already using the halal browser, this blog would have been blocked at the get-go.

Originally written for Dawn


PS: Please read the comments at the Dawn blog, you will want to bang your head against a wall.

A samosa stall in Fiji

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Last month, an American friend who has been living in Italy for quite some time packed her bags and moved to India to work as a human rights activist. In her former life, she was a dancer and performer and has taught dance not only in US, but also in Italy and South Korea.

Then I read this book called Kabul Beauty School by Deborah Rodriguez where a Midwestern hairdresser flies out to Kabul after her marriage ends and opens a beauty school in Kabul. She has now written a best seller about her exploits in Afghanistan.

Yesterday, I saw this amazing video story (New York Times) about Todd Shea, an American musician who came to Pakistan following the 2005 earthquake and then never left. From being a musician in New York, he now runs a charity hospital in the remote Chikar village in Pakistani Kashmir and lives in a ramshackle house.

A few moments ago, I got a call from my friend Anita in India, a hot shot banker who was making shit loads of money just resigned from her job. She has decided to leave India for the time being and will soon be leaving for Mexico to learn Spanish cooking and the language. Exciting, isn’t it?

Being the crazy, neurotic person that I am, I see a pattern here. I think it is about time I change my current line of work (which, by the way, sucks big time) and also change my current time zone. Right now, I am thinking about opening up a samosa stall on a Fijian beach. I can make some really kick ass samosas, I like beaches and Fiji is as far away from current life as anything on the planet can possibly be. If any of my readers have a better suggestion, please let me know. I will forever be grateful.




How would a samosa stall look here?