Thursday, July 09, 2009
knowing what odds and ends iknow about love and life i wonder still
why you won't let wonder be enough
won't let laughter be enough
won't hold the way i look when
i look at you
(all my life condenses into
one bright shining filament
of perfect joy)
in your heart's eyes and
never lose courage
never think twice
but go leaping over cliffs and into
the stars and skies,
singing the wings of your love
Mina at 8:26 AM
Monday, May 04, 2009
amma and K are sitting on the terrace in the rainy breeze. amma is describing the trees and flowers to her, and she's wagging her arms around and grinning- and listening, and coincidentally looking in the right direction too :)it doesn't take a village to raise a baby- the village WANTS TO! everyone! from the crusty guard to the grannies. the cook to the gardener, your mother's friends and friend's mothers wants to either a) give you advice b) show you how to do it or c) come and visit you (or you visit them). sometimes this is cute, and fun. sometimes you want to snatch your baby, yell "colic isn't nazar or the result of my eating aaloo!" and stomp away to the nursery. these days my grandmother is on the nazar tangent- K cries because she's nazarfied (not true), hence i must apply to the resident saint in S's family for a remedy (i haven't, i parho the anti-nazar things myself). before it was colic = mina eating anything that isn't boiled, and every time i would pass her door dadi would shake her finger at me and say, in a doomsday voice, "boti nahien khaani!". i grin and bear it, because she loves us both, but don't you touch my botis.
haha, K is asleep.
Mina at 4:48 PM
Monday, April 06, 2009
people say K looks like me: although this pleases me no end, i know this is not really true because she looks like S- S's dad, to be accurate. genes are mystifyingly interesting, and if i didn't see K be born i would wonder where she came from with her heart-shaped face, straight flared eyelashes, precise chin and rosebud mouth. maybe she'll be like me andar sae? haha! it's such fun to anticipate all the surprises in store for us :) so far K likes to be outside, going for a walk, being danced with and having her diaper changed (this is her number one delight in life)...but the best part about a baby is when you feed them and put them on your shoulder for a burp, and they snuggle their head and face into your neck and fall asleep, and you can feel their taiz-taiz breath on your skin. i would have a million babies just to be able to have that moment again and again. also, you can squoosh her because she belongs to you- and K doesn't mind either :)
this is K at four and a half weeks.
(she has a bit of an allergic rash on her face here)
(her eyes are still slatey grey, brown is very slowly creeping in)
Mina at 10:55 AM
Monday, March 16, 2009
so K is wearing her 'i love mummy' babygro and squiggling around on the bed doing her pouty mouth and stretching her legs- amma taught her to do it in a certain way and she remembers it :) i was supposed to write something snipey about unwanted baby advice but my short term memory is so short-circuited right now that it's flown out of my head. that, and sana's computer mysteriously turned itself off just as i was getting started so the idea also fizzled out. durrrhh. yeh kaisa post hai? hahahaMina at 11:25 AM
Monday, March 09, 2009
S and I are utterly delighted to announce the arrival of
Syeda Khairunissa Razia Hussain
born 25 February 2009
at 11.52 p.m
WOO HOO!!
Mina at 12:00 AM
Friday, February 06, 2009
i am a were-goat, stalker of
millicent bystanders, chomper
of innocent vegetation.
i follow my prey with stealth
and deception, clip-clopping my
Path Of Doom, my eyes glinting
with the light of veg-lust.
nobody is safe: neither your flowers,
your grass, and least of all your
veg compartments in the fridge...
beware, beware
i rise from my barn like air
and i eat ghaas-phoos somethin' fierce
Mina at 2:15 PM
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
it looks SO pretty i will take a verbal photograph of it here so i will remember it forever.this is my dining room.
some of the wall is olive green. there are my rajasthani prints on it, a miniature, a framed piece of parchment from an ancient farsi text. there is a chandelier hanging from the relatively low ceiling: it is tarnished iron and brass, with bits of light glittering from the places where i was able to polish through decades of tarnish. it is italian, and abbu lugged it across two continents in his little fiat as a present for his mother. it is mine now. the murano glass hanging from it glitters in the late afternoon light. beneath the chandelier is my table. it is about sixty years old, a lovely rectangle of teak with smooth clean lines. it has a burnished sheen to it, and you can see the lines of the grain swirling up and down the wood. on the table, in the centre, under the chandelier, is a mat: bamboo woven into some purple cloth. on this mat is a round, squat, high brown bowl and a cylindrical green glass vase that is actually a bottle with the top cut off, i think. in these two vessels are roses. the brown pot are two red and one pink rose, and in the green glass there is one orange, one orange-red, one red, one pink, one yellow and three apricot ones. they are in bloom; their petals are curled at the ends, thick beautiful petals nothing like the prissy squished ones flower-wallahs sell, big blooms on sturdy stems. these roses are grown by hand in flowerbeds for the pleasure of their prettiness, not to sell. and they smell like roses should- a hint of sweetness, a clean fresh joy.
Mina at 5:27 PM
Saturday, January 24, 2009
there is no other phrase to replace the vomitous 'coming-of-age'. what am i supposed to do? how can you review a book that is all about adolescent discovery of hormones and cross-class friendship without saying 'coming-of-age'? i will try my best to keep out of the clutches of this most treacherous of cliches.this week's Thing of Idiocy has got not one, but TWO items under it's belt! for your head-shaking pleasure, i present Number One (the coarser-minded readers of gorpy will be pleased to know that i am thinking the precise same thing, and also sniggering a little)
1. mobilink has got a new do-gooder campaign, presumably to disguise the fact that their billing system is execrable. you donate your old/discarded handsets to them so that they can.....give them to the pakistan society for the deaf. my cousin-in-law M says it's probably so they can text people.
Number Two (hyuk hyuk)
2. aforementioned cousin-in-law was channel-surfing during obama's inauguration ceremony and came across a local news channel that was broadcasting it, sans commentary or analysis. the only thing they had playing was kaala shyah kaala, mera kaala hai dildaar te goreyan nu paraan karo. gott promiss.
Mina at 1:37 PM
Saturday, December 20, 2008
eishi's gone. it feels a bit strange because like we were saying to each other yesterday, neither of us went away to study or anything extended like that, so we've never really lived in another place since we've known each other. obviously i'm thrilled for her, but feeling funny for me. i will still wave at her house when i pass it, though...how strange. what do you say in a goodbye phone call that can possibly encapsulate years of Everything? you just say 'i love you' and 'khush raho' and then laugh at each other because you've still got those cargo pants and she's still got your nigel slater and the dent in the cookbook is her fault but you don't mind and now she'll be more than a phone call away and so busy and happy- and so are you- that it won't be so bad, but when it rains who will you text to say 'yayyy'?Mina at 4:49 PM
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
i am wearing a soft cloud of a pink robe and eating oranges- musummi, really, i like their tough thick peel and the unexpected juiciness beneath such an unyielding exterior, much like many people i love- and the men are in a tizzy because they are pouring the roof for the new room, and in this utterly masculine task driver guard sweep supervisor and lout alike are united in the thrill of sniffing fumes from the medievally clanking roaring concrete mixer, of clambering up and down railings yelling directions nobody heeds- just the pleasure of pitting one's voice against the din?- and rushing in and out of my little feminine kitchen-haven where i am carefully sectioning a pale orange into a mardi gras bowl, feeling my life edging irrevocably, sweetly, quietly, seismically in a direction i know nothing of only that it is a path waiting newly, growing grass and dandelions to be stepped on or around and fields not yet run or moped through, and the breeze is cool and knowing against my skin so i know wherever this adventure leads i will go, and be happy.Mina at 1:03 PM
