Saturday, April 30, 2005

happppyyy birthhdaaaayyyy mommmyyyyy :D

Mina at 12:27 PM

12 comments

Friday, April 29, 2005

happy birthday, babe. ten years, i still remember that laugh. love you- but you know that.

Mina at 12:20 AM

2 comments

Monday, April 25, 2005

they are the prettiest things in the world- boy, girl and the baby they made. they are complete in themselves, a separate sub-world that glows with soft lamplight. this is all either of them needs- they're complete, their happiness is a perfect orb of rainbow shimmer, seven colours of changing seasons. something bubbles over in me- much love, much gratefulness for such things still existing in the world, pure joy for their content. Mashallah. i hope it's like that for you alwaysalwaysforever.

Mina at 10:08 AM

3 comments

Sunday, April 24, 2005

breathe in (stopgap snagging on bone and pestiferous cilia, also
blood rushing breathless blurring-by)

oh how quiet, quiet the world can be
when there's just you and little me
everything is clear, everything is new

-pause for cutoff mustn't say really-
breathe out (much the same exhaling bright relieved
laughter)

unspoken: 'tis the face of
a
clock, intently axemurdering
seconds, minutes, days and tossing them,
gladiatorial,
into the

ravening crowd

Mina at 3:04 PM

3 comments

fringing on the deeps of sleep, i
sneeze around tissues and underline books onto my
fingers, making them mine like the reclaiming of blood from
mosquitos smashed onto my fingertips

(tasted metallic, sudden

violence)

Mina at 1:48 AM

1 comments

'just bowls of dust punctuated with the odd remnants of war'

~ zain on afghan geography. best sentence i've heard in a while.

Mina at 1:45 AM

3 comments

Saturday, April 23, 2005

oh dear, my darlings; 'tis such an amusement watching you two skirt around
the obvious as if it were candlelight to your moth-dust! i, who
lives in the atom, i of all
the people in the whole wide world can see into the corners of your eyes as you
look at each other surreptitiously, hiding behind
eyelashes. itchy
fingers, beringed, a little hairy, it's like
watching the birth of the
world, first rain of a new cloud, soles of babyfeet
something rare and
precious, old
as a jewel but infinite as the sky, endless
purity as you lean into her neck
to catch a whisper. you two smile misty
faraway upcurves.


love in the time of stats

Mina at 7:42 PM

3 comments

"In the new, superfine bliss, a peace superseding knowledge, there was no I and you, there was only the third, unrealised wonder, the wonder of existing not as oneself, but in a consummation of my being and of her being in a new one, a new, paradisal unit regained from the duality. Nor can I say 'I love you,' when I have ceased to be, and you have ceased to be: we are both caught up and transcended into a new oneness where everything is silent, because there is nothing to answer, all is perfect and at one. Speech travels between the separate parts. But in the perfect One there is perfect silence of bliss."

~ from 'Women in Love', by the much misconstrued D.H Lawrence

Mina at 7:04 PM

5 comments

Friday, April 22, 2005

there's a hole in my house. the cooler's gone to have mysterious things done to it so there's a hole in the side of my house. there's an aandhi rustling about in the eucalyptus. i like the hole, if there weren't a fan in the way i'd sit in it and dangle my legs out and wonder who else is looking at the moon right now

Mina at 10:48 PM

10 comments

the trailer for Hitchhiker- this one's for you, blueroses ;)

randomness: i love aunty n and uncle h, they're two of my most favourite people in the whole world! they are the coolest sister-and-brother i know, by a long stretch...they're just dasti. yay!

not mad any more. syds is a wise old bird.

Mina at 12:47 AM

4 comments

Thursday, April 21, 2005

*bleeeeeeeeeeeeeep* *bleepin' bleepity bleepbleepbleep* ohhh i'm sooo maaddddddddd

AND there's a STINKY FART sitting behind me, and his disgusting unwashed onion saraind is hanging in the air like a cloud of toxic mustard gas, EEE-YEW! they should send people who smell bad to jail :P you're not a poor homeless sod with no money but a rich asshole who's studying at the elitest, expensivest university in the province and you can't take a shower, use deodrant and wear clean clothes? how much does it take?! aarrgghhh i want to throw rocks at him YEH GUNAH HAI MUSSALMANS AREN'T SUPPOSED TO SMELL BAD AND I'M TELLING THE TRUTH :P

I HATE CONTROLLING MY TEMPER DEALING WITH SOMEONE WHO REALLY DESERVES A BLASTING (although directing that temper at someone else, i.e smelly gutter-man behind me is satisfying)!!!

AND THE STINKY ASSWIPE HAS THE SAME RINGTONE AS I DO! IT JUST RANG!

aagghhhhh this is exactly like the day i started using 'effer' actively, GRRAAHHHHH! cretinous maggot, i hope all your teeth fall out and someone chains you to a lightning rod next time it rains :P and to steal and modify slightly something a friend coined, i hope all your skin peels off and grows back and gets peeled off again with a...a...VEGETABLE PEELER :P a BLUNT one :P

Mina at 2:52 PM

7 comments

Tuesday, April 19, 2005

Well, then! New Pope, and I was there to see it. Yay! Took two days, this, but when 'they' were deciding on Pius XII, they took so long- thirteen days? something like that- that the meek who were set to inherit the earth got a bit ticked off and attacked the church and tore off the roof and stuff...hahaha that never fails to crack me up, I can so imagine a horde of irritated-as-hell Italians cussing and breaking the door down....abbay $%$^$^%$#&^%!!! Bana bhi do! The tension's killin' us! Grreaaayyaaahhh!!! hehehahahahaa

Mina at 9:53 PM

6 comments

Joseph Ratzinger, hot favourite for the job, henceforth to be known as Benedict XVI. About to come onto the balcony! I wonder if this is the cardinal who plays the sax and hobnobs with Bono, shall have to check that Newsweek out- here he is!

Mina at 9:46 PM

10 comments

they're about to announce the 265th pope, as we speak. any time now. history in the making! aaiee here he comes!

Mina at 9:39 PM

0 comments

Sunday, April 17, 2005

the day opens and it is mine; i
claim the silence, the God-breath of
one singing voice and awakening
world

all the pinkgold and bluemauve
turns everything it touches
into
newborn magic of the
beginning of
time

Mina at 11:44 AM

6 comments

Saturday, April 16, 2005

blessedness: there are new books, and trifle for dessert and tomorrow is still the weekend and there are poems on the way

:D

Mina at 7:35 PM

5 comments

Friday, April 15, 2005

mubarikain for izza and uzair, the cutest palindromes there are! may you two be the smugest of the smug happy plurals, hamesha :)))

Mina at 11:10 PM

7 comments

Thursday, April 14, 2005

afternoon lies heavy in the air here, swirled into peaks of coolness by swift fans, whirling white devotees of summer. somewhere down the hall, a flute trembles and shivers notes from a set of speakers into the languid, enchanted quiet. women move noiselessly in and out of open doors. some are asleep, some sleepwalk, some prowl quietly on a private agenda. outside the sun leans against the brick and glass, sighing bright, hard arid heat. but here, here it is cool beneath the moisture filtered through dark khas and a continuous drone; a blurred metronome of a lotos eater's consciousness.

Mina at 3:08 PM

5 comments

Wednesday, April 13, 2005

i don't like
(at all)

going
without; it
gives me a stomach
ache, and a
strange endless
thirstiness. too
many lemon
ades mean

much unbuckling the
green biker b
elt, it
makes me

feel salty (even
though i get to
touch the
leprechaun without
being called
a
pervert)


withdrawal symptoms

Mina at 6:13 PM

7 comments

Monday, April 11, 2005


my baubles, dubbed thus by syds...preedy!

Mina at 6:00 PM

16 comments


decadent :D

Mina at 5:56 PM

4 comments

Saturday, April 09, 2005

i want to eat like a mad, mad woman. i want cheese pizza with onions from the 'hut. i want spaghetti bolognese from italian oven in islamabad. i want a strawberry margharita from gunsmoke and OPTP fries. i want potato salad with chopped dill pickles, crusty garlic bread and KFC's squishy corn on the cob. i want baklava. i want some really good naan. i want an aalu ka paratha. i want a pina colada from Freddy's. i want tom yang goong soup. i want the Reenie Special. i want some dark chocolate toblerone. i want shahi tukre, the ones nana's khansamah makes. i want a cinnamon roll and a mocchacino. i want thai chicken noodles. i want those chocolates phuppo gets ammi, with the crunchy minty bits in them. that said, i'm going to eat good old regular dinner. heh.

Mina at 8:07 PM

11 comments

dark chocolate mnms. and twix. actually. being. manufactured.

dark chocolate mnms, a big big bag under the bough, a jug of wine, a loaf of bread and
Thou, beside me singing in the wilderness, O wilderness were paradise enow!

*dreamy blink*

'tis quite enough to make a body go spouting slightly modified omar khayyam every which where.

Mina at 12:00 AM

5 comments

Friday, April 08, 2005

saeed ghazi makes me feel like a bumbling philistine fool who accidentally strayed into his orbit of fantastic buzzing energy of standing slighty bent, rolling over his words with lip-smacking glee, reading a paragraph from the book he bends with abandon, caught in the grip of his passion for the word; putting the book down halfway through the selection and finishing the rest from flawless memory. gleh. it's quite one thing being good in a group of all-rights; 'tis quite entirely another to be the best amongst the best. my consolation is that saeed ghazi would probably make the literature chair at vassar feel like an idiot weaned on trashy potboilers and rhyming-rhyming the sky is falling hear me calling the children are dying they are crying.

Mina at 11:02 PM

3 comments

the singular clusters of purple
are back
in
bloom, back

to torment me
.

they roll, peaked cylinders.
bullets fortyfivedegrees of
colour against the lens,
dilating pupil, purple
bright and
luminously

invisible

the purple flowers are not
real

ah. summer
is here, season of
bright hard edges and
purple notquite to
gnaw at
me


the purple flowers are never real

Mina at 11:56 AM

15 comments

Wednesday, April 06, 2005

I'M STILL AT UNIVERSITY, IT'S BEEN ALMOST TWELVE HOURSSS, WAAAAHHHHH

Mina at 8:58 PM

12 comments

Monday, April 04, 2005

Arooj has a point when she says that when I be serious on gorpy henceforth, people won't take it in its true spirit because there will be a cape wala Grover on its head. This sounds like it can be true, but I'm sure Grover, like I, gets very annoyed when people don't take him seriously just because he is blue, furry and has a voice that sounds like a squeaky rubber horn-honk. Luckily I don't have the blue fur and the voice but you know what I mean.

The Pope died. He was the first non-Italian pope, being Polish. Inna lillah etc (don't want to mis-type it on the blog and lead millions astray, gasp)...acha hua, he was very ill and doddering ka maqaam aagaya tha. Every time I think of pope I think of the Borgias and the pots of scandal with them, khekheke...what a funny. What a farce. But at least Catholics have one central authority khalifa guy. We don't and we could do with one, methinks. Someone to crack a whip when needed. I was reading a nerve-wracking extract by Ian McEwen and it had a sentence about how democracy is useless in piffy situations. Quite right, anyone who's ever worked in a group should know. Which links to the things whizzing about in my head since yesterday's conference session....how Pakistan needs someone to take its reins and danda-fy everyone into shape. Ironically, who better than a military dictator to do so? But no, the military dictator is a scaredy-cat that leans every which where like a reed in a storm, quite content to twiddle his thumbs and chat with Hamid Karzai at the 23 March parade instead of focus on the slapping into shape of this country that he said he came to do. Talk is cheap, Mush. Sooli pe charhna hota hai, to bring change- which means yes, you could be hung, and the only person who came close to anything of the kind (other than really being hung) was Zulfiqar Bhutto. But you could also be the saviour of your country. Heroes have it hard, but what a hero leaves behind is bigger than anything you or I could put together. They leave behind hope, an example, the spirit of revolution...and a new sky from whence to go forth into that good night, fighting all the way. Quaid-e-Azam is still revered, and he gave up so much to bring this country to light. Never mind who did what, whether it was supopsed to happen or not, whether Congress cornered him into it. Whatever the reason, he saw it through, despite a personal life falling apart, despite tuberculosis. He's a hero. It doesn't matter if he was a liberal, if he couldn't speak a word of Urdu, if he drank or ate pork. He made something happen, and that is a phenomenon that will always be larger than life. The 'system' is irretrievable, decayed beyond re-construction. What we really need is someone to kick out the remains and put in its place a new way of doing things, which really makes me think that maybe this Communist wave will do Pakistan some good. After all, there's nowhere to go from here but up :)

Mina at 10:51 AM

31 comments

Saturday, April 02, 2005

surrrprrriiiseeee :D

Mina at 11:26 AM

20 comments

hanna had a 'do at her place yesterday...of course, half of it was a dance party being disco-lighted away by her sister and her friends, but i'm still glad i wore the flowery silk sari, barra maza aya. off white with pale green floral things and a hot pink border! fun, and all thanda thanda :D the driver's new, he's small and light-eyed and thought i was going to a shaadi...khekhekhe...interesting how people see sari and think :O! FANC-EEEE! not really, not necessarily...i have an aunt who wears them to gymkhana for dinner, so fancy doesn't really fit unless you're all jeweled and wearing something that involves sequins and jamawaar and blaady-bloo. kher! not the point! turns out that ayesha isn't the only one getting married in our A level batch....arjumand's engaged, goes in november, uzma (who'da guessed? little quiet uzma!) was beyah-ed right after the A's (bit of a shocker, that, 'tis too young), zahra's engaged and so is areeba, both to cousins, the former being a complicated vatta-satta because her phuppo is married to her mamoo or something to that effect, and the latter being a straight good old son-of-khala who she happened to lauwwe since she was a tiny tot, so good for her. he cooks too, made her parathas and chicken karahi, lol. so people're jumping the bandwagon, wot? had fun..looked at pictures from zahra's 'do, heard stories about going to college the next day wearing a rock- 'i was a little busy yesterday' (LOL). but engagements these days are like ruddy weddings, day before a friend of sana's got engaged and she went and it was all tent-shent, batti-shatti, shaadi clothes, photo-shoot...the full monty, and this is only sliding a ring onto a finger and that's not a patthar ki lakeer; engagements can be finished in a snap, a fight and a ring-flung-in-face (although i wonder if there were an honourable way to do that and still keep the ring heehee) (or hearth like eliza doolittle only she wasn't engaged to doc'saab). but really. what is all this? outfit by karma/umar sayeed/bigwig designer. makeup and hair by ather shehzad. photos by shahnawaz, by zaidis, by the KC photographer, jo bhi. tents and lights and dinners and crowds of people, half of whom you don't even know...that's what a shaadi is made of and it sounds like one were starring in a movie as opposed to getting married. sitting in a stage (gag, a STAGE) glittering like a movie star-princess hybrid for hours while your neck aches from supporting a decked dupatta on it, starving since who the heck can eat on a stage with makeup that cost a fortune on your face and king-kong's arse on your head? plus you aren't 'allowed' to talk because you have to pretend to be demure. most girls don't talk 'cause they're terrified anyhow. freaky, yaar. that's really freaky. but i have a plan, and 'tis a good plan, and i'll keep it to myself until i need it...but i will tell you, i 'aint havin' no photo-shoot! just the thought of some photographer trying to have me make like umraojaan and do stupid things with my bracelets and peek coyly from the side of my dupatta cracks me up hahahaha one photographer tried to make my cousin and his wife do this insanely stupid, totally filmi pose, and they just stood there and busted their guts laughing...and that is by far the prettiest photograph of the lot :)

Mina at 7:18 AM

6 comments