Thursday, September 29, 2005
ho ho so much rebellion the mullick eldest is, not only did i not go to class (collective gasp, et al) my messenger bag is not on the shelf with the other bags, but sitting on the table next to me! ha! ha ha ha! (like mandark laughs in dexter)i am so bored 'tis unbeleeeevable. i think i will proceed with novel and screw the rest of the world but if i do that how will i get to go to NYU, please to be telling me? i am not yet enough liberal rebel to not have a degree, to drop out of college and write the Jreat Pakistan Digest-Naavel. i wish i had more gumption like that. mummydaddy wouldn't mind so much, they are by now inured to mina's Great And Marvellous Plans and better than that, never come up with dampening deadpan statements like 'if you go to school in spain your academics will be compromised'. mashallah, nazar na lagey.
i just calculated (and t'was a job let me tell you) all manner of statistical nonsense about a cricket team selection for maths (how quaint, someone once said to me, that you still call it 'maths' like it were an o level period), which i did. just as i was feeling very diligent and go-getter finder of solutions on my own and ho ho so excel savvy and all of that when i realised- 'count' chalaya jab- keh instead of ELEVEN people, my team had NINE people! the supah-stah got to B11, saw the 11 and said 'okay, i have eleven people now because the row number is eleven' and neglected to realise that the list starts from B THREE, not ONE. what the?! i'm not calculating everything all over again, the point is to do all the math gibberish and i done it and i 'aint doin' it again. neener-neener. sigma over mju into hundred, co'fishent of variation. stocostic (when it is in fact sto-chAs-tic) experiments. it's unbelievable that i should be subjected to such concepts. when i am a fascist dictator i will also make math an entirely voluntary subject to take once you know how to do enough math to get the mahiney ka sauda. you don't need to know how to integrate to live.
there's a CD (man alive i love to procrastinate) sitting here next to me that is bright blue and says 'MEGA collection' and purportedly contains inside its mysterious silver rainbows (volume 16), the following fillums:
ishq hai tum se
munna bhai mbbs
woh tera naam tha
plan
KHAKEE
TERA MERAA DIL
(the latter two are in fact in capital letters)
who names films anyway? woh tera naam tha? what're you talking about, an anonymous internet sms? 'ohhh, woh TERA naam tha, no wonnderrr'. and plan? plan? might as well have called it 'table' or 'chair' or 'dullerthanthebacksideofadungbeetle'. 'plan'. hnh.
the onion's latest edition has some absolute gems, my personal favourite is the article on the philo student who needs to 'shut the f**k up' in class hahaha which reminds me of the sad news tony told me. it is raining, my heart is paining like nobody's business. 'tis a sad, sad day when the biggest prat, the one person who never had an original, let alone coherent thought in class is the TA. and to add insult to injury...oh never mind. gorpy is so awami now that someone who knows said person will read this and then boo hoo mina is so evvvaaalll, so sour graaaayyypussss, minner-minner-minner. pah! i care not! time to eat sammich and be cheerful again. speaking of food, butt got me starburst and Allah Miyaan ussko superstar zindagi de because really. 'tis only fair.
(PS: K's kashmir jaunt was most successful, to make the fashion show a little more desi the models catwalked with a goat or two- asal main)
Mina at 12:36 PM
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
why is the time before someone goes away the sweetest? it isn't quite fair that each adventure is suddenly new, each private joke is funny again, small rituals remembered and alive once more in time you know is short. it isn't quite fair to be close again in the beautiful golden afternoon of nostalgia...renewing and comforting, but not wholly fair, because it will go away again. but there will be other goodbyes, other times to live again, new adventures to live; looping the loop in shapeshifting gyres. the borogoves are decidedly mimsy.Mina at 8:50 PM
Gullible's TravelsAmenbob is right; S. Morgenstern didn't write 'The Princess Bride'!!!! It was William Goldman all along!!! HAW! I'm actually kind of affronted! Not only is Cokepants right but the entire book is based on a LIE! BOOOOOOO! I don't care if Cervantes did it too, all the comfy goodness of the father edit-reading the book and the son's fascination with the story has been pulverized in one swift and lethal Google search and I am a little sad now. At least I don't have to believe that Alice in Wonderland is an acid trip. Because it isn't. Carroll was too much of a mummy-daddy for that.
No title ;)
Wilson Hammer blah-dee-bloo, tennis technicalities are much gobbledygook; good thing Gasolina and I had a little chat about ballay (I like calling all hitty-things ballay instead of bat and racquet..it makes for funner mental images hehe) otherwise I could have ended up with a monster heavy pro balla just because it was red in the picture and a fancy-shancy name like Wilson UberSupreme 6.7 Court Blaster Ninja Special. Is it possible to have a wrist not condusive towards playing tennis? The coach says I hold my balla wrong but neener-neener-nyah, holding it itna neecha like he says makes my wrist say 'abbaaaaayyyy kya kar rahi ho tuuuuumm?'
After going through Lahore with a lice comb looking for the perfect birthday present (a singularly unfruitful search, never ever allow your discerning taste to be molested by picky-picky friends, no matter how long you've known them or how many cinnamon rolls you get out of the entire process;) ) , I've found several things to spend my very-future birthday riches on. But someone please get me 'The Little Mermaid' on DVD, wrapped up sparkly. My video's been deceased for ages. And 'Amelie', because I love it and wish to see it a thousand times more.
H is coming, yeaay! Her CTS makes me worried but Inshallah she will be peachy fine. Why?Because I say so, achaw. And my granny says Allah Miyaan bachon ki dua sunnta hai and we are all babies, only look grownuppy and drive cars and laugh loftily at GRE word lists. Off to smack some balls around now *trying not to laugh pervily*
Mina at 4:28 PM
The line-storm clouds fly tattered and swift.The road is forlorn all day,
Where a myriad snowy quartz stones lift,
And the hoof-prints vanish away.
The roadside flowers, too wet for the bee,
Expend their bloom in vain.
Come over the hills and far with me,
And be my love in the rain.
The birds have less to say for themselves
In the wood-world's torn despair
Than now these numberless years the elves,
Although they are no less there:
All song of the woods is crushed like some
Wild, earily shattered rose.
Come, be my love in the wet woods, come,
Where the boughs rain when it blows.
There is the gale to urge behind
And bruit our singing down,
And the shallow waters aflutter with wind
From which to gather your gown.
What matter if we go clear to the west,
And come not through dry-shod?
For wilding brooch shall wet your breast
The rain-fresh goldenrod.
Oh, never this whelming east wind swells
But it seems like the sea's return
To the ancient lands where it left the shells
Before the age of the fern;
And it seems like the time when after doubt
Our love came back amain.
Oh, come forth into the storm and rout
And be my love in the rain.
A Line-Storm Song
Robert Frost
poetry in the morning, what a beautiful way to start a day!
a tip of the hat to sidrah, for the quote that caught my mind :)
Mina at 11:32 AM
Saturday, September 24, 2005
what a great surprise party, i'm so pleased :D and a pretty good lasagna to boot. good show. great big YAY!did i mention i got a present? i got a surprise present and it was a book with an inscription and another great big YAY! for that. it begins with a menu. bliss! blleeaasssss! great big kisses for the elfin one :)
Mina at 10:54 PM
Friday, September 23, 2005
Bombs in Lahore. But bombs don't explode in Lahore, they do that in Karachi. Karachi's the unsafe place, not Lahore. Karachi's got that smooth path or scar tissue on the road outside the Sheraton; Lahore hasn't any scratches and scabs like that. Bombs don't go off beneath jewellry stalls in Ichhra and the only people who die violent deaths around Minar-e-Pakistan are the people who're committing suicide by jumping off it. I mean, everyone goes to Ichhra, and Ramzan's close so lots of people do a significant bit of shopping before it to get ready. You can't just go and kill six people like that and send countless more to the hospital between 11 and 12:30 a.m. People are working, running errands, getting ready for lunch, praying Zohr around that time. Lahore is not the place where you look beneath your seat for a suspicious briefcase, Lahore's the leafy, laid-back city where rain or a car accident is the biggest instigator of a pronounced response to anything...not bombs. Lahore is not confusing like this.And a delegation of beaming, excited Amritsaris carefully stepping over the border into the city that houses all of their history; breathless with wonder, asking where Aitchison is and whether the canal was in fact the Sutlej and if they'd have to say salaam and walekumsalam and shabakhair to everyone. I feel proprietal, suddenly, watching them walk towards us from their lion-pillared gate, step through 'Toba Tek Singh land' and into 'our turf'. Our land, your land, it's just a white line on a stretch of concrete, it's only another country that's closer to LUMS than my house is. Lahore is their crystal ball, their real-life Scherezade, the place where their history books are born from. I feel proud, proprietal, nervous, wanting my city to please, to awe, to inspire, to leave an indelible kiss on the mouths of their minds.
I wonder what she's thinking, my city of gardens.
Mina at 11:15 PM
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
y'know how i've always gone on about what a waste of money wedding fancy-pants clothes and big dishy irrelevant 'dos all are? weeelll....today i spent an afternoon with my cousin surrounded by gorgeous designer bridals and gorgeouser jewels and all i can say that a girl can be REALLY tempted by an emerald green karma ensemble with a truckload of magnificent doo-dads....*blink* WOW! what utter and delicious fun to dress up so beeeeyooooootifulllll!Mina at 12:10 AM
Sunday, September 18, 2005
How weird is it to look up a technical definition of slavery online and find next to it an advert for "Unique fetish - BDSM jewelry - Stainless Steel Collar and Cuffs"?Mina at 10:06 PM
Thursday, September 15, 2005
go read fanon. go! go!NO CLASS AT 8:30 A.M! WHY? WHY? WHHAAAYYEEEEEEEE?
apple juice koi pila de...spent the last of my money buying chips for my bhooki miser sister
go read fanon, furrukh daantey ga
ali going today :/
i want a lovely crunchy apple (yapple? aeppel!)
whatisname hashmi was playing joni mitchell on the radio (on the radiooo o-o-o-o-o-o), 'hejira'. he said he'd play s'more later i hope i didn't miss all i want, j'adore all i want. but hejira...very moody sky these days...ha! 'i'm porous with travel fever' isn't that a great albiet debatable sentence
ali is going
read the damn fanon already
snow, by louis macniece
Mina at 9:40 AM
Wednesday, September 14, 2005
Several Things Mina Does Not Like: A Pissy Rant In A Few Succinct Bullet Points
- People who think they are being cool when they are in fact not.
- Not being asked enough questions.
- Potentially not having a job even though I have the grade(s). Again.
- Bi-polarity.
- Not having phone credit.
- People looking to see if my oyster tunic will in fact go transparent in the rain. No it will not you pervy freak, do you think I don't have a window to look out of when I dress?
- Lying photocopy men. Why are all photocopy men liars and jerks to you unless you give them what is quaintly referred to as 'a dressing-down'?
okbye. time to explain bacon to someone.
Mina at 2:14 PM
Monday, September 12, 2005
swimming with a concept: 'consider this'...it keeps tugging a familiar chord i cannot hear just yet. first go at an ear.jaan-e-jehan, each darkness
of the deserts that enfold me
twine in figures of your voice. the
corridors of my heart whistle with
the isolate wind of winter that
screams and
cries, wailing its hunger into the secret
moonlight. jaan-
e-jehan all the summer recedes like
one burnt, gathering to itself its flowers
and song when your song fades
Mina at 7:19 PM
Sunday, September 11, 2005
i wish to report that i have broken my first guitar pick. i was la-la strumming away really hard and having a ball doing it and the next thing i know the pick is broken. the only sadness is that it was one of the two picks jeeda terror gave me and i really liked it; thin picks sound better...now i'm using the stiff blue one that came with clarissa and i don't like it too much; it isn't bendy and it makes clarissa sound like a man :P is that true? does your pick influence the way you sound? i think it does. but i've kept the broken (RED! t'was RED) pick anyway. i'm such a memory pack rat, when i'm dead my grandchildren will be able to chart every year of my life from all the dated, preserved stuff i've had kept in trunks and drawers and boxes.deep purple's smoke on the water is gooooood. the chorus is so-so but i quite like the central guitar riff going on, and the funky vibe...and the solo, woo hoo for the solo! it'd be brilliant in the car, really loud...or in concert, ahhhhh! and the weather is so beautiful that if i knew hymms i would stand on the terrace and sing them at the top of my lungs.
Mina at 2:15 PM
Saturday, September 10, 2005
china-doll, your hair rufflesthick. serene
raven on a winter tree
and your mouth reclines above
your chin with the glutted
satisfaction of the opiated
dreamer, all of you
seems to float in idyllic
completeness, secretly
older skin aglow with
secret knowledge-
you have tasted of the
river and
found sweetness.
Mina at 2:14 PM
Mina at 12:12 AM
Friday, September 09, 2005
The light changed to green and four lanes of vehicles began their surge across the intersection. Well, at least three did, because the fourth involved what is commonly termed an 'urchin' by desi newspapers. Desi newspapers always manage to sound contrived when they aren't reprinting Reuters- babble about 'the woman of today' or who-went-to-whose-party or 'education of the masses', strange English-in-translation that is simultaneously endearing in an amusing way and annoying. So this urchin- 'street children'- was standing in front of a column of cars much bigger than he was, clad in sufficently urchinly shorts and shirt (and shoes, which is most un-urchinly). Eyes alight with mischief and laughter, he had put up a dark, thin left arm, palm open and facing the hulking sleek bullet of a lilac shimmer Civic, and brought an entire line of cars to a total standstill. He stood there for just about a minute, enough time to elicit red brake-lights but not have anyone miss the signal as such. And in that brief moment that ten year old was the centre of the universe, the most empowered little string of a cheeky, confident boy in the world! Mouth stretched in the biggest grin I've ever seen, dirty car-wiping rag fluttering in the post-rain breeze like a banner from battle, he sprung in front of the Civic, standing with his chest thrown out like an ice-skater showing off, made everyone stop and then skipped off the road and onto the divider like a tap-dancing goat. All of this happened in the few minutes it takes to pass by a held-up column of cars and flow into an intersection and it was the highlight of my week, this little Puck of the road...wherever you are, you've got my respect :DMina at 11:27 PM
Woo hoo! I'm tagging Reenie, Wendy, Ammar, Cheesoo and Sana :D5 years ago: Was doing my A levels, eating challiyan by the dozen and bunking Government and Politics to nap in the common room, only to be busted by my shoes... 'where's mina?' 'she's the lump on the couch under the dupatta, those're her shoes over there'
1 Year ago: Being bowled over by a boot pulled from a pond
5 songs I know all the words to: 'Kiss the Girl' from The Little Mermaid, 'You're Too Marvellous for Words' by Frank Sinatra, 'Extraordinary' by Liz Phair, 'Najar Laagi Raja Torey Bangley Pe' which is a shaadi song and 'Aaj Jaane Ki Zidd Na Karo' which is a ghazal. How's that for diverse!
5 Snacks I enjoy: Carrot sticks, pakoray, Hico apple ice-lollies, challies and fruit roll-ups ;)
5 Things I'd do w/ $100 million dollars: Live in Tuscany and Spain for a year and buy a boat and sail around the world. And buy some first editions of books I love, and a jacuzzi for Amma and several random presents like tha
5 places I would run away to: You don't run to places, you run to people...so wherever my run-to people are :)
5 things I would never wear: I seriously cannot think of anything I wouldn't wear at least once. Hotpants? Though I wouldn't wear fur, or a shahtoos, ever
5 favorite tv shows: Cow and Chicken, Who's Line Is It Anyway?, Taboo on NatGeo...I don't watch so much telly anyway
5 greatest joys: Yelling from the backseat for a change of song on the stereo and being indulged every single time. Still getting to sit in laps. Reading all day long. Candle-lit anything. Starry, cool nights.
5 favorite toys: Bubble mix, Barbies, cardboard boxes, our Fisher-Price kitchen and a playhouse
Mina at 10:21 PM
I am extremely pleased with myself- I found Lata and Mukesh’s (Mukesh hi tha na?) versions of Chandan sa Badan online, which is byoootiful; Nani’s favourite song. The only downside is that I can’t save it, it plays on its own little player thingamajig but it’s all right…if only our new internet wasn’t so abysmally bad! I’d be listening to Buble online too- his site’s fab, plays everything superduper quick even on dial-up. Speaking of music, y’all have got to listen to Omar Bhai on City FM89, he does a show at nine? p.m on Mondays and is pots of fun.Had a girly day with the Reens yesterday, mani-pedi thisthat, ate Nirala Snipz and rasmalai and the aunty thought my flask was a giant baby bottle hahaha...and Tom Yang Goong and I let Reenie eat all the shrimps otherwise December tak taaney sunnti about how Mina the sneaky-weaky ate all the shrimps and left her to starve on water and tissues *lol* And today Chatkhara which was great too, with Butt and Ammar and Reenie, fully fun spontaneous plan which also included debating the doability of red cars (extremely doable) and tramping up and down Defence Market looking for the world's perfectest, non-squashed, not-pink, not-flowery-with-'With Tha Bast Wishes Yours Ever Loving, not-strange-silk-cloth-looking-m0re-like-Quran-cover envelope for money...which we found, sort of. hehehe. End main R was getting huffy about us taking forever ('put it in this samuari jack poster! this one! this one!'), methinks A and I have unearthed the world's only way to beat her at her own game, LOL!
I have a class at eight-thirty AM- yes, that's right folkses, eight thirty in the morning, twice a week, a hundred minutes long. Evolution of Economic Development with Khurram Husain intelligent but over-driven man, maker of killer tests and teller of stories of merciless teachers who wouldn't give his students the one mark they needed to avoid a C that would get them drafted to fight in Vietnam (he agreed with this method 101 percent). T'was interesting, the way his voice faded in...and out....and in...and out....between people gabbling about western hegemony and random economics majors bullshitting about how to measure HDI. It's fascinating to listen to people making things up; I was marking CP the other day for my TA class and for the first time I realised that as a senior I actually do know something: college thus far felt like a great big jack of all trades kind of an experience....Intro to Philo is such a basic little course, I never thought of it before until I was sitting there listening to Dr. G prompt the class for what 'Euthyphro' is supposed to signify...and I felt very wise and old, but only for a little while...it's hard to be old and wise when your toenails are fire-engine red and you're wearing a t-shirt with a bloodied klashinkov toting Anjuman on it- 'honor kill this, baby!' (man alive I adore that shirt!).
Furrukh gave my copy of Maps to the photocopier!!!!!! My hardback, Chughtai-jacketed handled like a Faberge egg Maps for Lost Lovers has been GIVEN TO BE PHOTOCOPIED, I'm in utter shock at his treachery. He was extremely amused, but if I get a mangled book back plaster is going to be falling from the SS wing roof.
Going to go see art exhibition at Alhamra Art Gallery tomorrow; 53 works of art on display....9 to 5, ends this week I think. Pabulum, yay!
Our keyboard died yesterday, it just went into a coma and left me high and dry; end main I opened up the character map, picked out an emergency message and pasted that since only the mouse was working, hahahahah everything's falling apart in this house, everything's being relegated to the 'naye ghar main' section of life that thus far includes a new telly, random furniture and yummy things at Source and a new computer....hehehe utter madness, Ali's laptop came with a printer-scanner-faxer breadbox of a hp machine so we've got a techno gizmo hooked up to our ancient doddering computer...khekhe
Talking to Omer today, he wants to be a- drumroll, please- systems biologist, which is a fascinating jumble of math and computers and high-tech whizbang schnoodle that one can use primarily for disease research, specifically genetic because it tracks the chemistry going on in a cell and how fast it's dividing so you can predict the onset of diseases and their duration and things like that. Aldous Huxley would be jumping and waving pom-poms with the rest of the 1984-wagon gang with something like that.
Reading 'Life of Pi' (yes, finally, I've my own strange timetable of reading books) and I wonder how fun it would be to have a name like Piscine Molitor- something mundane but deliciously, insanely different because it's a name, like being called Apple or Phoenix or Anarkali (which I found a perfectly lovely name when I was younger. The expression of said opinion resulted in several minutes of hysterical laughter amidst my peers but I still think that it wasn't so bad. Same as 'chupkali', where in the world did a lizard get a poetic name like that? Hidden flower, hardly. hahahah imagine being called Chupkali Khan, for example. Chupkali Malik. LOL!). There's a kid called Bilal Chaudhry in the soph batch, he's in my philo class too...puura LUMS wonders what his parents were thinking *lol*
Gonna get Daddy to get me books!!!! *maniacal, acquisitive glint of faaren bookshopses endless possibility in eye* I discovered I have one more guitar pick than I thought but don't tell Tina because he'll try to pinch it; t'isn't my fault he melted the one I gave him :P
We're doing Prob and Stats on Excel. Wah. And Cadbury's Cherry Burst is not as gorgeous as the name implies. At all. And I'm falling asleep so g'bye until I next find time to blog; in the absence of internet and keyboards and computers I've taken to writing in real life about the strange furtive hoggy way the boy across me in the cafeteria was eating a sandwich today and how the girl across the aisle didn't fit together properly and also how grown-up my little baby brother looks wearing his glasses and tapping at his laptop even though I know he's playing Warcraft...and the fugue issue is still unresolved, 'tis bouncing about in my head like an escaped toddler from a bounce house who hasn't jumped its jiggles out properly (twirl, bebby, twirl:) ) and I must find a way to catch it in my net and pin it softly down long enough to brush some its fairy dust onto my fingertips...a wordidopterist, catching words instead of dreams (remember the BFG?)...and maybe both, sometimes when I'm lucky :)
Mina at 1:08 AM
Monday, September 05, 2005
i forgot what i was going to say : something about how anal people can be, how much i dislike grovelling for things i really need like a course and a job, and how much i find i dislike the way most people do things. that, and something about the word 'fugue' and a line from a poem- 'you answer the call of my isolate horn'. and playing clarissa, which is hard on the fingertips but good fun. and how the bling-machines look like jeweled fish. all to the tune of michael buble ('main tumhey leonard cohen suna raha hoon aur tum mujhey boob-lay ka keh rahi ho') and nelly furtado singing 'quando quando quando'. gosh, i'm tired.Mina at 8:30 PM
Friday, September 02, 2005
this is just for you, moieezee shaggy-man...i haff found some internet to use, hooray...afsos, the three years of free free freeeee internet are no more, we are all sad at home and if that wasn't enough, abbu decided to send our telly- which is ancient but has a nice big screen- to the telly-fixer, the sound was beginning to fade in and out. one thing led to another and we haven't had, in a nuthsell, a telly for about a week now. after sana spent three days in literal mourning, looking like someone'd broken her heart, taken her rubber collection and used her hairbrush we took pity on her and borrowed barri ammi's telly. which is older than all of us combined, one of those tellies that are encased in a wood structure, like old station wagons! and the remote is this huge block of faded buttons and it's such a funny television set but sana's chirping and singing and pinching my arm in joy because now rockstar inxs is hers to obsess over once more! yaay! hehehe my only sorrow is that i borrowed 'almost famous' from minu almost a week ago and i haven't been able to see it kyunke the telly is so old that the DVD player can't be plugged into it :O hehehe i love the quaintness of that.so i've been reading. no surprise in that, but classes begin monday (oh, the horror, oh the depression, i am so sad) and i'm hysterically reading like come monday my books will evaporate. before starting shantaram i set myself an ultimatum: no starting new book until old books are read to the end. so i finally finished *drumroll* maps for lost lovers and broken verses, and am presently working on the last segment of the unbearable lightness of being . mina of a thousand moods has recently developed the strange habit of not reading books to the end (there are several reasons for this that i will not expunge (expunge always makes me think of something that needs to be plunged clear) presently). so. i did it. more on that later.
babiieessssss! i finally got to hold alena who is the softest little marshmallow baby ever born :) and daaniyah is awake now so i think i will go and squish her awhile and watch tom and jerry. and we threw amenbob cokepants a lovely surprise although everyone didn't scream surprise (it was only me caterwauling in my flued voice) and only the Maq and I sung happy birthday loud enough (Mo did too but LOUDAAHHH BAY-BEE) (ooo Mo was one of the Three Stooges and she's got shaggy hair too HAHAHAA) and everoyne insulted the cake before gobbling it up *glower* matlab it's party rainbow sprinkle, white cake with colourful little yummy bits in it and matching icing and what does everoyne have to say? 'is that chicken spread on the cake?' 'is that cake?' 'didn't you find any chocolate?' i knew the plebs would say that but kheyurr. hum aisey hi hain, chocolate cake ke bachey. next time :) but it went well, balloons bhi aagaye in spite of the 'juma juma everything will be closed' smugness of ali and amma and cokepants was surprised so yeeaayayyyyyyy overall, i've been grinning all day. i love love love into infinity surprises.
Mina at 3:16 PM
