Friday, March 30, 2007

One hour to go and I'm no longer a full-time Simorghi. Ugh, I don't want to be sentimental about thissss!! I hate goodbyes :P

Mina at 2:32 PM

7 comments

Thursday, March 29, 2007

excuse my french, but wtf?

i'm so angry. i'm getting really sick of how dangerous it is to just EXIST in this country, being a woman. today's DT had this on the front page. read it and shake a fist. i'm religious enough to know what Islam is about and THIS is NOT it. i'm sick to death of mullahs and mullahnis with their incessant crap about morality and ethics. is it decent to attack a policeman with sticks? one against a mob? is it moral to attack someone in their house? the prophet said you should knock thrice before even thinking of going into someone's house, let alone breaking into it and dragging the women and babies out!! how dare these ignorant bastards use Allah and Islam as justification for their behaviour! how dare kidnappers and vandals and trespassers have the cheek to take such a decent, open-minded deen and turn it into something so ugly and closed and disgusting? jamia fareedia's maulana abdul rashid ghazi says his squad will jihad (jihad! JIHAD!?! jihad against corruption and greed and dictatorships! not FORNICATORS for the love of all things sane!) against twenty-two other brothels in the city. wah bhai wah. human rights atrocities are fine, honour killings are fine, stove-burnings and chief justice manhandling is all a whizz in the wind compared to gasp! people having sex! haan granted it isn't fair for the ISI to hold people either, but this is just too much. i want to break out into a string of punjabi epithets, but i don't know enough :P so now if i'm at work someone can break in and drag us all away to some basement because my dupatta is sitting on the back of my chair, my bosses are divorced, my colleagues smoke and we all drive ourselves to work so we MUST be prostitutes running a brothel. it makes perfect sense! or even better, my guy friends come over to have a cup of tea on the terrace (and in the process chat with my head-covering amma and read my tahajjud-praying abbu's latest article) so THERE YOU GO, HO-HOUSE IN ACTION!!! AARGHHH!! what is wrong with peopleeee WHAT WHAT WHATTTTTTT!!! this is the bleakest time to be a woman, a citizen of this state, religious in the sanest way and a person with a brain.

Mina at 11:12 AM

2 comments

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

the trouble with constantly converting experience to text in one's head is that often speech, which is spontaneous and does not benefit from thought or visual approbation, can come out sounding 'blah blee bloo' and grammatically very awkward. phooey.

Mina at 2:46 PM

1 comments

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

ladiss and gentilmain, for your reading pleasure gorpy proudly presents its first guest post:


So we've all heard it haven't we? Don't smoke up it'll kill your brain cells. Say no to drugs blah blah. As a (occasional)smoker, I could not disagree more. Marijuana is probably the best intoxicant out there. It's drinkers we should all stay away from. Remember the last time you were surrounded by a couple of pot heads? You probably just saw them laugh uncontrollably for a long time, then had someone order pizza or raid the fridge, after which everyone went home and slept. When was the last time you heard that a man got stoned and raped someone or that a man got stoned and ran someone over or that a man(or woman) got stoned and had sex with someone really ugly without even remembering it the next day. We've heard of beer goggles but have we ever heard of weed goggles? Stoned people can still spot a fat chick when they see one(and no, big is not beautiful for all you 'overweight' queen latifah wannabe chicks out there so stop thinking you're hot). Marijuana loosens you up, it does not make you lose control. Marijuana has also proven to have many medical benefits such as helping people going through chemotherapy. They can just smoke a joint and chill and forget about the pain. Marijuana also has great historical significance. I personally don't believe that the Vietnam war could've ended without the presence of marijuana. Rock n Roll wouldn't have existed. Great acts like Bob Marley and Hendrix would not be able to function without a proper dosage of weed and we would still be listening to shitty music as the people in the 30's did. Weed has contributed to our past much more than we would like to believe.

I personally think keeping marijuana illegal is a conspiracy hatched by the evil capitalists, and this is to appeal to the leftist monkeys who read mina's blog. Think about it though. Most marijuana and hash is grown in third world places like South America and Afghanistan . Even if it was legal, cheap production and labor costs would not allow the US to compete with these countries. Marijuana would be then be imported, which would not help the trade balance either. It would also harm the local alcohol industry as legalized marijuana would compete with stuff like Budweiser, Miller etc etc. Therefore, big business in the US would clearly suffer. Businesses related to alcohol, such as casinos, bars, strip clubs etc would also suffer greatly as people would just want to smoke up, stay home and order a pizza. Weed certainly could not be marketed in the same way either. I mean you can't really have 'weed light' or 'weed select' can you. The tobacco industry would also suffer as smoking a joint would more often than not replace smoking a cigarette, if a joint could cost as much as a cigarette i.e. If such a policy was ever implemented, it would prove disastrous for the developed world and their evil MNC's, and would be great news for impoverished countries like Afghanistan etc.

Lastly, I don't know if it's the same with you but drunken people just annoy the shit out of me(unless they are pleasant drunks, and yes there's some out there). They slur, they smell and they rarely have the capacity to carry out an intelligent conversation while under the influence. I have had the most philosophical conversations about life, love and money among other things while I have been blazed out of my skull. I still do remember what I talked about the night before. While I'm high, I'm very clear about who I'm trying to offend and who I'm not. Also, the smartest people I have ever encountered have been people who smoke ridiculous amounts of pot while I've never personally come across a smart alcoholic. Moreover, the hypocrisy of people who just drink and don't smoke also annoys me. I believe its equally immoral, and though I do not drink but I would not judge people who do. However, regular drinkers who don't smoke up somehow feel they hold the moral high ground. You just have to remind such folks that just because what they're doing is legal, that does not make it right. So folks, go light up a joint, put on some Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and think about what I've just said. I'm sure it will make more sense to you then.

Mina at 9:31 AM

10 comments

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Inna Lillahe for Bob Woolmer. Is terrible. Bauhat afsos hua, to chime in with cheesoo. And I can't believe we lost to IRELAND. As S rather aptly put it, it was St. Patrick's Day no less...lol darn Irish luck is all I can say to that. But I am SO upset about this World Cup business, we needed a World Cup this time round, more than anyone else in the world...what with the teargas and rocks and policemen with steel-tipped lathes, scuffles and fires and blood.

i wander the way i always do when i'm reading prufrock. i should have been a pair of ragged claws/scuttling across the floors of silent seas. sometimes i think it's true; then i go dancing. it isn't somehow right that it all ends up tied in me, and yet i feel entitled to it: to grab it by the lapels and say yes, to throw these odds and ends into my backseat and drive away a little too fast, to loll in my little pomes and books beneath a tree and defy the mermaids to sing louder than i. these are good visions to harbour sitting in an open window on a sultry night.

good on you, the former hon'ble mr. justice jawwad khawaja (sounds a bit like prince's naming odyssey) for resigning. you rock.

Mina at 9:17 AM

1 comments

Thursday, March 15, 2007

Over there on the left is what is being called the White Band for Justice. Click the image to sign the petition to reinstate the Chief Justice, have his house arrest removed and demand that any hearing be done in a transparent manner open to the public and media and that the Supreme Judicial Council be reconstituted in "a fair, impartial manner". These are dark times we live in- let's not have to look back to this year and feel like we didn't do anything to fight back.
Click here for a banner to promote.

Mina at 1:31 PM

2 comments

am writing a delicious sort of pome in the small windows of time between the various kaam and wedding things (as we speak i am due for a fitting and wondering when the hell i'm going to actually GO between bayan's last minute wrap-ups and rehearsal- i utterly refuse to ditch poor sinused O again)...am also germinating a little story. i have a beginning: a kitchen, a hot water bottle and a bemused inner monologue. this is mostly for my cerebral benefit, putting it down here.

gallivanting is such fun. i love it. of course, it always happens the night i don't keep my keys or take a shawl along, but what of it? H is fun- i finally got someone to do the pinocchio line :D

BUT

the good news i keep forgetting: calculus is OVER (lums eat my shorts, kiss my chuddies, etc)! WHEEOOO! the sproj has done pretty well for itself and the alhamra literary review is finally out and i'm in it [amongst other very talented writers who float about gorpy occasionally:) ] so yaayy! get a copy. i'm still hunting for some here *does little jig o' glee*

Mina at 11:47 AM

1 comments

Tuesday, March 06, 2007

alipur is gorgeous. i kept wanting to wear a frock and ride sidesaddle through the lanes, under the arching tree canopy and orange trees. oh for a shady dreaming place of singular history that isn't somebody else's, in another country!

okay, i can't wax lyrical with such a violent sort of patakha pome bouncing angrily around in my head. i think i will need a rewrite in a few hours. sunflowers, sunflowers! is this van gogh's disease? beautiful! thick paint, fast brushstrokes, self-combusting into starbursts on a navy blue sea-sky. amorphous, explosive, alight. impassioned, what a word!

Mina at 2:40 PM

8 comments

Friday, March 02, 2007

it seems a perfect day to die.

it is raining, water cold and just heavy enough to spatter a shawl through. the sky is a strange vibrant grey, and treeleaf stands out against it in a startlingly green indifference. i grasp her too-soft arm as she totters up the slick driveway. her flesh hangs down and my fingers grip more of her bone than her. my shoes are yellow like a piece of lego, hers are a dark brown. her feet are very small."one step at a time," i murmur. she keeps stopping, keeps trying to recoil from going inside and confronting what she knows is true. t mamoon's eyes are a little wide, like a small boy being braver than he feels. walking her to the door has become a small procession clothed in black and silence. it rains and rains, and the marigolds in the flower bed look beaten and rumpled. this is like a movie.

i help settle her into a chair and swiftly look about the room for faces i should salaam. sofas are pushed to the walls, white chandnis cover the carpet. there is a table in the middle of the room. ammi comes to supervise and as if she were my channel to reality, i realize with a startled shock that the table is not a table; it is a coffin draped with a white sheet. i want to say this to ammi but i blink furiously instead, my thoughts scrambled suddenly. i look back at bari ammi but she's telling someone about her fall in the bathroom. i look at s, who is reading a siparah, and feel exposed and cold.

it is difficult for taayi to cry. she is not an emotional woman. her beautiful hands hold a tissue to the bottom of her spectacles, catching tears. she doesn't make a sound, her eyes crumpled in misery. ammi's eyes become bigger, luminous, when she cries but taayi's shrink closed as if her irises huddled closer to her pupils for comfort. ammi's mouth is a little awry. i hope she isn't remembering other white sheets. i feel nervous, raw, as if a thin layer of my skin were peeled away. i want to fold myself up very very small and creep inside ammi, embryonic. someplace warm and solid and completely surrounded- no exposed back, no vulnerable shoeless feet.

you're meant to see the face, ammi says. i don't want to. i don't need to see it to be reminded of my own mortality. i would rather remember her as i do, a pale, downwards sort of woman, a kind of long sadness about her shoulders and running the length of her hair. her bright, expansively rouged cheeks, a flower behind her ear. she looked like the spirit of a woman haunting a lake, a rusalka, only mild and pale and quietly melancholic. a ghost wistfully watching men pass by instead of luring them to a watery death. someone lifts the sheet back, opens a flap to reveal a plastic sheet over her face. abbu comes and gingerly, reluctantly peers in. there is a gaseous condesation on the plastic, so he had to go around to the other side to see her face properly. his face remains expressionless, but his eyes dart anxiously back and forth, fluttering across her face quickly. a finger through a candleflame. t mamoon is next. he gazes down at his mother longingly, directly, and his fingers touch the sheet over the coffin almost unseeingly. he strokes it twice- two loving brushstrokes of farewell- and walks away.

goodbye, goodybe, she says, tears in her old glaucous eyes. it is still raining. there is an unconscious quality to it, as if someone were pouring from a teapot into a cup and kept pouring, distracted, as the cup keeps overflowing.

Mina at 9:20 AM

4 comments

Thursday, March 01, 2007

What are the top ten, twenty, one hundred things that you wish your city just let you to do? Email us your dreams for your city. Stay anonymous if you choose. We will create a wish tank on the blog where all your wishes will be announced and celebrated together!

Do feel free to ask the non bloggers- all the other women around you and mail us right away! Dont think too hard- imagine the impossible!



Do email us at blurtblanknoise@gmail.com. While we believe that there should no deadline for dreaming and wishlists, we would appreciate it if you start dreaming and mail us right away!

Mina at 11:56 AM

2 comments