I’m still tired. Makes sense though, since I don’t get much sleep. Me and sleep, we don't get along. I don’t like sleeping. It’s boring. So I sit here, all cross eyed and nauseated from fatigue, but I’m not going to bed and no one can make me so nyah.
I had a thought. No wait, its gone. Oh, here it is....
I like religious people. Any religion is fine. Really. I really respect people who have the courage of their convictions and put themselves through difficulty in the hopes of doing good. When I see a Sikh with his turban wound firmly around his head, or a Mennonite in simple trousers and shirt, or a Jewish woman with a long skirt and snood, I can’t help but give them a sympathetic smile. It’s like, hey, I know what that’s like.
Though me and a Jew, or me and a Sikh, or me and a Baptist may believe fundamentally varied things, we’re both trying to do what we think is right, when all around us people have cast aside religion as outdated and pointless. We both have to deal with people thinking we’re crazy, pitying us for our supposed primitive beliefs. We wakeup in the morning and dress ourselves differently, making us targets of hatred at times, because we’re trying to please our lord and live our lives as we believe is right. We’re both struggling to live in this world in the hopes of making it someplace worthwhile in the next.
I know, me being a practicing Muslim and all, a lot of people would assume that I shouldn’t in theory like anyone who doesn’t believe as I believe. But I don’t. Maybe it’s because I’ve got such a mixed up background, or maybe it’s because my religion teaches me to respect others, to treat each non-Muslim as a potential Muslim and not to pass judgment on others. Or maybe this is part of my intergalactic weirdness. Who knows. But in my book, anyone who respects my faith and is trying to follow one too gets my respect as well.
Of course, I may not agree completely with the dogma of other religions, but I can’t pretend to know or be able to weigh what lies in an individual person’s heart. After all, a Muslim isn’t just a person named Muhammad or Mariam, it’s any person who submits to the higher will of God. I can’t and don’t know who is submitting and who isn’t. That's up to Allah to judge.
In high school, I had a mixed group of friends, but we all shared morality in common. One of my best friends was a Korean Jehovah’s Witness. There may have been a huge potential for conflict between us, but we got along great, and helped each other stay moral and keep true to our beliefs. We talked about what our similar beliefs and shared our feelings of alienation from the majority of society. Instead of going to prom senior year we hosted something called morp, the anti-prom, and invited other girls who didn’t want to be placed in the iffy prom scene.
I also hung out with a Hasidic Jewish girl and we talked linguistics and where to buy modest clothing and long skirts. We shared our experiences with hatred, and both shook our heads in sadness at the insane KKK guys who attacked her dad and the drunk white-supremacist who attacked mine.
My lunch table also had two very practicing Hindus, and we were unified in our inability to eat the Spam sandwiches the school served and go partying after hours and sat and talked about what it was like to be desi in the US. We laughed when kids thought they were Muslim, or I was Hindu, and marveled at the willful ignorance of people.
There were also a few Buddhists, lots of practicing Christians, some agnostics and of course, tons of Muslims in the mix. I did know a lot of atheists and people who felt no need for religion, but the subconscious connection that stemmed from being joined in our fraternity of faith wasn't there.
Hanging out with people who respected my need to believe in my religion, who didn’t pressure me to throw in my lot with all the crazies out there, who supported me when I had to make difficult decisions, who defended me when my scarf brought unwanted attention and who understood and empathized with what I was trying to do helped me make it through school with my sanity and dignity intact.
So yeah, lets hear it for religious people! I’d rather meet one of them in a dark alley at night than anyone else.
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WHADDAYA THINK?
The other day an acquaintence of my Pakistani-American mixed race marriage parent's was very shocked to see me introduced as their daughter. His comment was "But, she looks completely Pakistani!" Hmm.... I think that's the first time I've heard that. I'm not sure I like the idea of looking completely anything. I likebeing ambiguous and difficult to place. But I dunno, what do ya'll think? Does Aniraz look wholely Pakistani?
TAKE TWO SPRAYS AND CALL ME IN THE MORNING
This invention was inspired by the discussion that was recently on Bro Usman’s blog. I guess most of us of desi extraction have issues when it comes to marriage, and are all majorly irked by irritating aunties who are out to get us hitched to their sons/daughters if only to provide them with foreign citizenship, money, attractive grandchildren, better standing and/or a chance to move up the social ladder. Why these dudes/dudettes have to be so dang crusty, irreligious, retarded, and dull, I dunnae, but as a rule, there has yet to be an aunty who has offered a considerable candidate.
So, Aniraz proudly presents, for all your aunty-frightening needs, Aunty Repellent!
This is a do-it-yourself recipe, since I can’t be bothered to cook up batches of this stuff and send it around the world to you bums. Make it yerself!
Aunty Repellent
¾ cup teenage angst
2 cups rebellion (Caution: one drop of rebellion onto human skin or in mucous membrane can result in permanent loss of conformity)
1 heaping tablespoon sarcasm
Shavings of one hard nut to crack
2 quarts fear of commitment
½ cup distilled dislike of native culture (can be substituted with inability to speak Urdu, allergy to shalwar kameez, gorapun, kalapun, chinipun or gangstapun)
1 teaspoon for girls: Essence of inability to cook/clean/deal with or want children. For guys: Essence of lack of education (notably, lack of doctorate and lack of engineering degree) /inability to hold job.
Directions: Mix all ingredients in 4 quart sauce pan. Cook on medium heat for two hours. Simmer until repugnant. Cool and pour into spray bottle.
For use: Prior to weddings, parties, dinners, mushairas or shopping outings where one is liable to come across a meddling and scheming woman of the aunty species, spray on hair and clothes. Will work to wig out and drive off any aunties hopeful of hooking you up with some loserly relation of theirs who has heard only of your passport, wealth and family name. For greater effect, spray directly upon accosting aunty. Caution: mixture is unstable, handle with care.
And no, I'm not anti-marriage. I just think its far more serious a matter than these irresponsible old broads make it out to be.
MANGO MANGO MANGO, AAGAY PEECHAY MANGO
Once again, the electricity pulled a Houdini as I was typing my blog. No fair! I don’t even remember what I was writing. It can’t have been too good, since I’m so tired my brain is throbbing and the room is spinning. If I don’t update for a couple of days, it’ll be because my brain is broke and I’m working on getting another. Please pardon the inconvenience.
Hmmm….
As seen in an advert: "Summer is here! Cadburys must shut down its operations in the summer, so please, Enjoy the Mangos!" Apparently, it gets so hot here that real chocolate liquefies so Cadburys just shuts down for the summer. Some how though, I don’t think mangos for chocolate is a fair trade.
Announcement: Yep, so this means, mangos are in season! Time to come to Pakistan! I don’t know why, but Pakistanis, and probably other desis, are absolutely mad about mangos. You can take a Pakistani and shanghai him in some foreign country for decades, and still, every summer, he’ll wistfully long for his mangos. I know this cuz that’s how my dad was. He’s making up for lost time though now, and in the summer, he basically lives on mangos. I know a Pakistani/Indian couple living in the US, who, whenever they come visiting the homeland, they subsist only on fruit. Really, their entire diet consists of lychees, papayas, chicoos, kinoos, mangos and falsay. You can take the desi out of the subcontinent, but you can’t take the subcontinent out of the desi (or something like that).
Question: Does anyone know how to do that taxi-cab stopping whistle thing? I’ve been trying to learn forever, but all I manage to do is spit all over myself and make sad sputtering noises that probably wouldn’t stop a cab, though they may get some other attention (“Mommy, that girl is making ugly sounds at me!”). I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong, aside from cramming my fingers in my mouth in an effort to produce a high pitched shriek.
Update: I finally got water at work and I didn’t even have to go postal and bring a water gun and hose down all the bums who’ve neglected me. Whoa man, someone here has anger management problems and um, it may be me.
The world is crazy. Where is my mountain top? I’m telling ya’ll, its only a matter of time before I run off to be the Guru of K2.
I’m beginning to feel like a neglected hamster.
It’s been three days at work and I haven’t been given fresh water.
Sigh. Last winter, in order to keep warm (I made the mistake of telling my boss I’m anemic, so now they’re always worried about me freezing to death even in the dead of summer), I requested a cup of coffee a day. That worked for about three days before my coffee delivery got sporadic and then, so horribly disgusting tasting I couldn’t handle it, so told them not to bother.
Then after Ramadan I started getting chai, but that too didn’t last. They changed the staff in the kitchen, and somewhere in the shuffle, they forgot to tell the new guys about the quiet ‘madam’ (as I’m called, which is kinda shocking when you think about what a ‘madam’ is in the US) in the second office on the right who needs a cup of tea to stay awake, so no more tea either.
When it started getting hot, the office-walas provided me with a chilled bottle of water a day. I thought, “Ah, now here is something that doesn’t require too much effort, and it doesn’t requiring mixing, so they can’t mess this up.” But I was wrong, cuz for the past few days I’ve had about an inch of old, tepid water sitting in the bottle and nothing more. Sigh. Ya'll really know how to make a girl feel unwanted.
I know you’re thinking, “Aniraz, you big lazy cow, why don’t you go and get water for yourself?” Well, cuz they lock the kitchen and the water from the taps is burning hot and slightly salty. Now you’re thinking, “Fine, then why don’t you complain to someone about it?” Sigh again. Cuz, as shocking as this may sound, I don’t like complaining at people.
You see, as the token freaky Amreeki in this office, I’m expected to be loud, lewd, brash, demanding, ignorant, cocky and unkind. I’m trying to do my part to win back the reputation of the Americans (hah hah, I guess there be a wee bit of patriotism in me after all. Ew, get it out, get it out!) so I try not to be any of the above. And remember, Degrouchyowl is a non-conformist, so I do hate doing what is expected of me.
Plus, who to ask? The guy who I thought was the office gopher, and turns out he is the graphic designer, and this I discovered after having him catch cabs for me and deliver the mags to my desk every Monday. Or maybe I should ask the tall dude who is always blowing up my computer? But no, he’s probably the head resident techie or something. I am officially my boss, as I’ve been promoted to acting editor, so no point in asking the boss anything (I hear she’s a know-nothing doormat). The other lower-level office staff all speak tate Punjabi, the hard core nakagardabarda stuff that I can’t understand, so there’s no point in me trying to strike up a conversation with them about the fine points of freeze dried coffee and the many virtues of sugar.
And all the dudes in my office are WAY older than me, so I feel awful bossing them around, telling them what to do and what to bring me. I’d be fine if they just directed me to the kitchen and stayed out of my way, but that some how goes against the office code in Pakistan. The madam should not have to get her own stuff. Right. So instead, she gets nothing? Alas.
There was today’s chapter in Aniraz’s Mundane Life as an Editing Troll. Visit Amazon.com for your own copy of this page turning thriller.
I suppose now I should type something useful and whatnot. Bah. Let me get back to you on that.
Yesterday there was a hugely marvelous and awe-inspiring storm that uprooted trees, tore off roofs, broke windows, pulled down signs and basically put a stop to all outdoor life. The winds hit upwards of 140 kilometers an hour, so it stands to reason that our electricity lines, glued in place with spit and snot by the Wapda-walas (Pakistan’s grandly corrupt and inefficient electrical utility, which is actually the world‘s most loss-making state-owned electricity provider), would come down. Now, at 5 pm a day later, we finally have electricity, albeit, on and off.
It’s so strange to have the lights turned off on you. Suddenly you realize that you’re an amazingly pathetic person whose every means of entertainment depends on electricity. There’s no computer, no TV, no lights, no fans, no air conditioner, the light in the fridge doesn’t turn on when you open the door, so it might as well be empty it’s so dark in there, it’s too dark to read, and while the possibility of cheating madly at cards in the dim light usually would appeal to you, chances are no one would notice.
Work was more of the same. The bijli and I played hide and seek. It would show up for a few minutes and then run away, leaving me cursing my own stupidity for not having saved my files early and often (that’s the motto for the harebrained computer operator, so don‘t forget it). My mom finally came and rescued me, or rather, what remained of me after I sat in a stifling room stewing in my juices for four hours.
(Poetic justice for you, I typed my whole blog about this intermittent electricity thing, and guess what, we lost electricity again and I lost my blog. Who’s a big fat non-genius? Ooh me me, pick me!)
We got home and ate a coldish lunch in the dim light of the living room, which by default, has been upgraded to the ‘coolest room in the house’ by virtue of the fact that it has a breeze, and not because its just so rad and gnarly with its wicked ways. (Btw where’d all the wonderfully horrible slang of 1980s go? Kids these days with their bling bling and shizzle nizzles, bah!) After sitting around and staring at each other’s faces for another odd hour or so, we finally got our electricity back! Praise the lord!
The subconscious mind is a silly thing. It’s telling me that I’m being frivolous and wasteful, sitting in this room with a tube light, ceiling fan and computer on all for my solitary pleasure. I should be saving and hording up my bijli, it says, so it will last longer. Pshaw. In actuality, I should be wasting as much electricity as possible to stick it to those danged Wapda-walas for making me suffer so. Yes. Well. Right.
You know you’re a desi when: The heat is so stifling your eyes are cooking and your skin is starting to feel like roast chicken, but you still are driven, inexplicably, to wander into the kitchen and make yourself a steaming cup of chai. Yep, as I sit here, melting and dying, I’m also sipping on some tea. Call me crazy, or better yet, call me desi.
Where do bad cockroaches go when they die? To Aniraz’s office. For the past week I’ve been finding those 2.5 inch flying cockroaches in various degrees of theatrical death by my desk (yep, complete with the twitching and spinning in circles while turned-turtle and the wailing and the moaning and the gnashing of the teeth and the rending of the flesh. Them roaches are such drama queens, I swear). I don’t know what’s compelling them to make this mass mortal exodus to my office, but that won’t stop me from hatching some theories on it.
:::raps blackboard with riding crop::: Ahem children, settle down please.
1. The cockroach nation consider my office as some sort of Roach Hospital, where ill loved ones are shoved through the 1 inch slot under my door so that I may *minister* to their needs. (mwuhahaha). Little do they know, they’re getting something, but it sure isn’t medical help *cough-bug spray-cough*.
2. These roaches may believe the office of Aniraz to be a type of euthanasia clinic. They send their terminally ill comrades in cockroachiness under the slot so that I may disperse them to the great beyond with the aid of a) My big shoe b) Exotic Malaysian perimeter spray c) Death by pain of my high pitched scream when they make themselves seen.
3. Unlikely but interesting is the possibility that I have been mistaken as a sort of deity, like Vishnu or The Artist Formally Known as Prince, and the roaches I find are not unlike human sacrifices. The cockroaches may be offering me their maidens, in the bloom of youth and crunchiness, to garner my favor or at least induce a rain of salan grease, or whatever it is that roaches wish for.
4. And, last but not least, they’re probably coming up the drain in the bathroom next door looking for a party, and run into my office, across the perimeter spray on the floor, and thus die. Not as fun, but the logic is strong.
Hmmm... I hear thunder, so I’d better get this blog up before the bijli runs away again.
DAMN DIRTY APES!
I know why the English went out colonizing and the Americans invited all sorts of foreign people to their country (natives, what natives?), it was to save them from the dull, fattening monotony of finger food all based on mayonnaise, salt and black pepper. After a couple days of tea parties where most everything on the various menus consisted of mayonnaise in its many forms, I’m ready for some explosive biryani and nihari.
I’ve been to more tea parties over the past week and a half than I’ve ever been in my whole life. Funny thing, before moving to Pakistan, I’d NEVER been to a tea party. I’d been to tons of parties where tea was served, but I never received a phone call from some dear lady saying “Oh yes, and I’m having a tea party, I’d be so pleased if you popped in for some sandwiches and such.” Scoff scoff. I guess after that nasty Boston Tea Party mishap Americans just don’t ‘do’ tea parties,
You know, whenever I get all fired up to type a vicious blog against some section of mankind (yes, I think that’s all I ever do, aside from categorizing my own strangeness) I plop down at the computer, if its not occupied by Abez, or rather, Bravely Bold Sir Robin, as she prefers to be called whilst playing Stronghold, or my mum, I automatically open up the Spider Solitaire program and find myself playing game after game with no awareness of what I’m doing at all. I just wake up an hour later and find that I’m still sitting at the computer, but I’ve typed nothing, can remember nothing, and have done nothing except play solitaire. Abez thinks the game is addictive and hypnotic. I think she may have something there.
So that’s my complicated excuse as to why I’ve not written a blog all week. As ye all can guess, I was the kid in school always driving teachers nuts with artful excuses for why I was late (Got chased by a bunch of dogs, had to come the long way), why I was absent (Dear teacher, please excuse my daughter’s absence, she’s allergic to Mondays) and why I’d not done my homework (You’re a horrible teacher and you’ve taught me nothing). And yes, those are all authentic. Life is rather dull, you’ve got to spice it up to make it tolerable.
I’m torn, I really am. I don’t know whether I’m supposed to attempt to write something informative in this here blog-o-mine, or should I just let it remain as my sad attempt to structure my brainbarf into a mildly amusing bi-weekly editorial? I really appreciate the informative and fact-based blogs other people are running, but then I equally like the crazy personal ones. I guess mine is going to remain somewhere in the middle, since I’m not smart enough to keep up with an informative blog, but I’m too didactic to only write pointless personal ones.
Today’s declaration: I hate Pakistani liberals! BAH!!!!! They’re horrible, irresponsible, gluttonous sloth monkeys!
The English and electronic media here is run by self-proclaimed liberals. These are the type of people who think Islam is for the mullahs, who incidentally, are to blame for everything that's ever gone wrong with the country (no need to point out though that they’ve mainly been side-shows in the circus of Pakistani history). The most moral of them call themselves followers of recontextualized Islam, while the rest drop the facade and openly admit to being atheists, commies, homosexuals, womanizers and hedonists. And I’m not going to go and say that being any of those things necessarily makes you evil, but what really irks me about these guys is that they’re hell bent on converting Pakistan and its Islamic sensibilities to their way of living.
I read all the English papers at work, and they're full up of blatant editorialisation of usually objective pieces. An article on Pakistan exporting beer to India since its not drunk much in this Muslim country concludes with “And one well known journalist in Karachi thinks that the ayah in the Quran that says don’t go to the masjid drunk’ means that we can drink, but not to excess.” Since when are uncredited, unsited, unlearned journalists considered authorities on Islam? They tilt, spin and manipulate their publications to discredit ‘fundus’ (as we who choose to be consciously Muslim are called here) and laud those who are doing their part for ‘progress’ (this often includes lesbian artists, shameless fashion designers, graphic writers etc).
The wives and daughters of these illustrious bozos run lovely fashion magazines that publish extremely scantily clad girls and guys all in the name of art, and the odd one or two features that actually have words are chock full of innuendo even a priest would catch. They waste print space celebrating vacuous models, singers and actors, which they lump together as artistes (yeh, that’s artist with an ‘e’) . The most cherished among them are the ones who are brave enough to be bad and will openly talk about their sexual and social exploits. Even serious news mags, like The Friday Times runs a column that chronicles the party hopping of a ditzy fashion guru dude.
And the kids of this social class are ten times worse. Gaaah, I could go on and on about the horrible stuff I’ve seen since I’ve been here. The rich and privileged of the US have nothing on these upper class snots. They’re into heavy drugs, alcohol, promiscuity (and all that goes with it, including illegitimate births, abortions and venereal diseases) and some are even in crime (mainly, rape, extortion, bribery, drug trafficking and kidnapping). They live life in the fast lane and run down anyone who gets in their way, quite literally. At my kid brother’s school a female fellow student ran over and killed a pedestrian when driving her friend’s car. Her parents came, paid off the cops and took her home. She received no punishment and no penalty for her recklessness.
If these losers had their way they’d make Pakistan a mirror to the US, in all its moral deviancy and social decay. And they’re doing quite a good job getting us there. In the decade that I’ve been shuttling between the US and Pakistan, I’ve seen things spiraling downwards at a frightening pace. When I was here a couple years back, dating was uncommon in the middle class. Now its everywhere. Extra and premarital sexual relations weren’t alluded to on television, but now they’re part and parcel of most dramas, along with substance abuse and violence. And we all know art imitates life. If we’re watching something either its already common, or the widespread viewing and absorption of the dramatizations will soon make it so.
What makes them think their vision of the world is so great? From what I've seen, they seem more unhappy, more dissatisfied, more destructive, more angry and more hurt than we are.
Yep I’m painting with a broad brush here, but so are they. Fight fire with fire, no?