I won't be able to get over you.

Sometimes, pictures can speak louder than words. At least here :p.

Zubaida aapa is the new Faraz.

Hey,

SMS frenzy has caught everyone like the first wave of flu in winters. One always observes new trends in the messages that are forwarded (read: bombarded) in abundance to your mobile. Every time, a new character or issue is introduced and then your mobile phone is full of such messages. 'Kisne kaha tha pepsi pe paanch rupay kam kerdo?' was the most repeated SMS this Ramadan. Other than that, Zardari, Sherry Rehman and other political personalities have always been a target.

One character that wasn't that famous a person as a poet, became extremely famous when SMS from his name were floated. Yes, I am talking about none other than Faraz. Faraz SMS won everyone's heart. And, to confess, I also became a fan. These SMS were funny, witty and totally out of the blue. I loved them.

My life was going happy when the TV personality I despised the most (with due respect) -- Zubaida aapa -- became the new face of forwarded SMS. And God, people screwed her totally :p. Like really. Zubaida aapa k economic totkay, cute totkay, charseelay totkay and God knows what's gonna happen next. Whenever I wake up, I at least have 3-4 Zubaida aapa messages. She's totally on everywhere.

I really liked one of the Zubaida aapa SMS, that said: "Agar aapke bache k payt mein keeray hojayen toh uske pamper mein biscuit rakhdein, jese hi keera biscuit khanay aaye usay pakarr lein". HAHAHA. I mean for Heaven's sake. Who can think of such stuff man?! These bizarre jokes make you laugh. One has to confess! And I don't mind if my phone is full of Zubaida aapa's messages. It at least brings a smile on my face. Thank you SMS spammers!

Being right and walking on the wrong track.

Hey everyone,

Yesterday was a busy busy day, even today. Which left me with no energy to blog. Anyway, I am back with a bang now. Well not quite so. Cuz I've been disturbed about something. I attended two mehndis yesterday. One was of my phuppo's son and the gathering was limited to only close family members. First blood relations. Anyway. The mehndi number two was of my father's college friend's son. It was grand. Like Grand with a capital G :p.

The arrangement and everything was rather extravagant. Probably they spent around 2.5 lacs to arrange all those stuff -- dance floor, disco lights, extremely pretty looking floral stage and the grand grand tent (I wouldn't want to call it a tent, it didn't look like one). The fabric was so beautiful. Off-white, flowy. There were mirrors around the place. The dinner had a wide variety. I only ate desserts though because I couldn't help but fill my gut with the chocolate mousse pastries and coffee. Lol.

Anyway. So, everything was wonderful. The atmosphere, aura -- everything. Just one thing got me disturbed. I was like whoa. What the hell. It was when they announced the audience to settle down because the dances were going to begin. All of a sudden, two hijaabis started to dance on Sheela ki jawani (yes, that lame song that I have discussed about earlier). I was taken aback. Like seriously. Not that I am being narrow-minded or something, I just feel like dancing in public is NOT for hijaabis. I dunno why. (And by that, I am not advocating dancing the non-hijaabis dance in public).

Actually, maybe, I know why. It's because, if girls decide not to show their hair and body parts to namehram, it should be a no-no for them to dance in front of so many of them. And the number wasn't even sober seriously. They were wearing these black hats incorporated with white shirts and black ties (over what they were actually wearing). And then they started dancing. Bleh. I felt those chocolate mousse pastries burning in my gut, lol. Seriously.

I didn't like the idea of dancing hijaabis. They just don't belong. Hhhh. Just when I was being sour on this, the music changed and other girls started to dance. Meanwhile, these hijaabis were getting ready for their next move. The music started again, this time it was an Arabic tune and these hijaabis had those tinkling belts around their waists for belly dancing. Sweet mother of nature, BELLY DANCING?!

I am against the so very concept of such awkward dance routines in mehndis. And hijaabis just added to my rage. I couldn't digest it honestly. The biggest reason being that I am also a hijaabi. I cannot see girls who do hijaab bringing such filth to the concept. Seriously. Again they started to dance on 'zor ka jhatkka haaye zoron se laga' and this time, it was a duo. They were booty-to-booty with guys. This just stirred this eerie feeling of anger/contempt/embarrassment/sadness in me.

I still cannot properly put my feelings into words. But the bottom line remains that if a girl starts to dress decently or decides to take hijaab, it becomes a responsibility for her to carry it out in such a way that she inspires people. Not confuse them obviously. Because they themselves looked confused. Bring right and walking on the wrong track. May Allah help us better understand the concepts and philosophies Islam has to offer.

DISCLAIMER: I am not a self-proclaimed best example of a hijaabi, I also have a lot of faults in me. These are my views, you might as though differ.

Night.

And then I woke up.

Morning!

I am a person who doesn't get to dream a lot. By that I meant literal dreams. But whenever I do, they keep haunting me till the end of the day. The dreams that I get are usually very disturbing in nature. For example, I'd mostly see burglars breaking in my home or I'd see someone snatching my mobile. I also see traces from my past. People that have gone from my life. I see their faces. I see myself interacting with them.

It somewhat leaves me numb when I wake up. I get weird feelings about the dreams I get. Because they just pull me out of my deep slumber. I lay soundless for hours, gazing at the roof, until sleep overcomes me again. In my dreams, to my surprise, there is never anything positive to mention. People say dreams come true but totally opposite to how we see them. Like people say, if we see someone dying in the dream, it actually means that that person will have a long life.

God knows how much truth do these notions hold but I guess I end up buying them in order to gratify myself. It's good for a jhooti tassalli. I don't share my dreams with anyone though. If I am rather too disturbed, I'd probably share it with my mother. I feel a bit light then. But my mother doesn't. Cuz mothers are mothers after all! She always tells me to keep my room clean (in case I am bugged by some supernatural being). I laugh it off. I keep telling her I am not pretty enough that a jinn would fall in love with me.

Hhhh, anyway. You know, such dreams are rare though, cuz dreaming as a matter of fact is a rarity for me. But they leave me disturbed. I hate waking up whenever I see such a dream. Cuz when I do, despite the fact that my eyes are burning, I cannot go back to sleep. I have to stay up till slumber creeps on me.

Also, my mother keeps telling me that you watch that hideous cartoon, Courage the Cowardly Dog, that is why you get such odd dreams. Ummm, well maybe her speculations hold some substance. But I don't think I am obsessed to it to a level that it can alter my dream patterns. I recite La Haul and wait so that I can sleep.

I wish sometimes, that if dreaming for me is so rare, I wouldn't have ever gotten dreams. Cuz they leave me disturbed, it's better if I don't get them anyway!

The ‘me’ness.

Hello people,

Today, I am going to blog about things that I like or like to do. Be patient and enjoy ()

- I like to sit on the swing and take it really high so that I can stain the wall with my shoes.

- I like to drink coffee even when it’s summertime.

- I like my rubber-ish mobile cover and all the stickers on it.

- I like Knorr chili garlic sauce. I can even eat it just like that. Without anything else.

- I like popcorns.

- When I am having off-days, I like to lie on the sofa and yawn all day long.

- I like to clean my room once in a while.

- I like to collect stuff that I absolutely wouldn’t need.

- I like shoes.

- I like watches.

- I like to dip Gluco biscuit in tea.

- I like to send SMS.

- I like to laugh about things that have happened when I remember them.

- I like this mithayi. I dunno what is the real name of it. I like calling it ‘shakar wala pairra’.

- I like to collect pink things. My room is full of pink stuff.

- I like black too. And silver and gold.

- I like cooking.

- I like thinking about making different desserts.

- I like the sea.

- I like chocolates but only a few. I am selective. I like mint chocolates, orange chocolates, hazelnut chocolates and snickers-like chocolates.

- I like this chocolate-orange cake at Gelato Affair.

- I like to travel alone.

- I like rains.

- I like corns.

- I like my family.

- I like to dip French fries in chicken corn soup and eat it.

- I like those white sugary biscuits. I dunno what you call them, but I like them a lot.

- I like to watch cartoons.

- I like to ummm. OK that’s it.

The end.

Munni badnaam hui?

Hello everyone,

The other day, me and my papa were waiting in our car outside a department store near my house as my brother went inside to get some stuff. It was off-time for schools, hence a lot of vans went past us. One of them however, seemed to be coming back from a picnic or something. There were students inside the van, ranging from ages 12-15 approximately. They seemed to be having fun and everyone inside seemed happy.

I was looking outside the car's window, smiling at them. When suddenly, my smiling jaw dropped after hearing the type of sleazy music playing in the van. The most repeated number, of course, was Munni Badnaam Hui. I was taken aback. I felt so bad for those poor little children and what sort of environment they are exposed to. After Munni Badnaam, the next song that played was Sheela ki jawaani! I mean for heaven's sake! Have singers like A-teens and Aqua died? Whose songs we listened to whilst we grew up. Or our Pakistani alternative used to be Koko Koreena and Ucchiyan majajan wali. Things weren't as bad!

OK, I am not from a very old generation but when I was young, we at least heard decent songs. Our generation didn't shake booties on Munni Badnaam or Sheela ki Jawani. They are far too vulgar, seriously! At this vulnerable age, children have sensitive minds which, when molded, can take up any shape you give them. If you want to shape them into good, decent and well-behaved individuals, you have to nurture them in the similar way. Not by getting them exposed to the lethal Hindi music with vulgar lyrics and even more vulgar videos.

This is actually the culture we are imparting in our coming generation. And if it continues to be so, we will have a much more maligned society than we have now. Because the corrupt society of today is a living example of how Indian culture is spoiling the young generation and the generations to come. Which also reminds me, last week, I went to buy halwa poori breakfast with my brothers. As both of them stepped out and stood in the queue, I saw a tuition academy next to it. Since I was waiting in the car, I actually got some time to observe how the new generation has become.

Checking out girls (or checking out boys for girls) was practiced during my time too but only discreetly and under the cover. It wasn't so open. I remember, if a guy wanted to come up and ask for friendship, he had to befriend a girl first and then send a message via her friend to you, to become friends with him. This long and tiring process at least saved up the dirt that surrounds the academies now. Teenagers seem to be having no other topic than dating and exchanging mobile phone numbers so that they can talk whole night long (thanks to the night packages).

The 'dhaai rupay ghanta' hasn't done no good to our innocent students and teens. Literally, when I was observing the girls, they looked far older than their ages, mainly because of the amount of makeup they had used and secondly, their shaped brows. I am not at all against shaped brows, but shaping your brows when you are still in school/high school was considered a taboo in my days. OK, before you burst out saying my days are gone, let me remind you that I did away my schooling in 2004 and my high school in 2006. So I am not as old as I might sound. The only difference is, the outburst and spread of vulgarity in the society has happened exponentially. The growth it has shown, and the penetration is massive. Really massive. It seems uncontrollable at times.

What I feel bad about is that parents have become numb now. I wonder what mothers are doing (with all the respect to each one of them) when their young and innocent daughters dress to kill when they are going out for tuitions or acquisition of knowledge. Or what are the fathers doing when they catch their sons red-handed with cigarettes or equally harming alternatives? Yes again, things like these prevailed in my time too, the only difference was that they were not as open as they are today, which makes the situation worse.

The parents, teachers and elder siblings should take a hold of the matter seriously now. Take these vulgar songs away from them so that none of the young 12-year old girls would like to dance on an item number like Munni Badnaam not just in front of the male class fellows, but the van drivers! And the situation is much more grave than what I have described here. Cuz whatever I have told or jotted down is mere observation. It's all on the surface. What lies under the ugly face of the facade might have another uglier story to tell.

God help us all! Please :-(.

Goodnight.

Where it went wrong.

Good day people!

Today with my cup of black coffee in the morning, I decided to skim through the classified pages from Sunday's Dawn newspaper. I quickly rolled over the ever-thinning jobs section. To my dismay, each time I open the jobs section, I find opportunities that are not within my reach. And it's obviously sad because the industry demands for people who come out graduating from the 'big names' of the education sector. Most of the ads you read have these words: ‘LUMS or IBA graduate required’. And if you don’t belong to these business schools, you’re definitely not their priority! The education fraternity in Pakistan is still malnourished. The standards of our universities do not meet the international criteria and do not qualify to be named in good words.

Only a handful of universities are deemed as 'good' universities and the remaining are considered as underdogs, and the students enrolled as underachievers. So what makes a certain university good and its students creme de' la creme? I guess the matter of the fact remains that the education elite of Pakistan is primarily those who can afford to be educated. The affluent can get themselves enrolled in the much-too-expensive universities or obviously they always have the backup plan ― go abroad and study there.

Now the remaining ones are those who can go to an extent to afford higher education or then there are those who simply cannot do it and end up at various ‘cheaper’ but obviously unequal alternatives. The middle-class people can take the risk of investing a great deal of their fortune in their children’s education reckoning that one day they will get the return of their investments and things will turn in their favour.

I used to teach in one of the biggest schooling networks of Pakistan and it was of a (pleasant) surprise to me that mostly parents that came to drop their children to school, usually used a bike or rickshaw as a means of transport. Initially, I used to think that perhaps bikes and rickshaws can zoom-in and pave their way in the traffic easily which is why they choose it as a means of transport, but later on, as I happened to go through the personal files of the children including their background information, I found out that it was totally different than what I used to think.

The families actually couldn’t afford to get their children enrolled in such expensive schools, but they did. Because they didn’t want to compromise on their children’s future. Well, I felt happy about it because in a way it is a very positive decision. But on the other hand, I would feel depressed for those people who cannot afford to take such decisions because their limited resources do not allow them to do so.

So now, what actually is the outcome of this disturbed equilibrium of the education system of Pakistan? We are not capitalizing on the current human resource. The employers keep filtering the potential candidates on the basis of the label they carry. IBA, LUMS, GIK and yadda yadda. The list goes on. The employers need to realise that there is an enormous chasm between the haves and the have-nots and some people can actually have inborn talent and an unmatched IQ even if they have not studied from a top-notch university.

Education is not ‘better’ for everyone. Better education demands affordability, not only in Pakistan but elsewhere too. Therefore, the employers should keep this notion in mind whilst hiring somebody, that Pakistan only has a handful of good universities and not everyone can afford to be there. Therefore, rather than labeling the human resource and defining their worth only by the university they’ve come from is mere foolishness. Capitalize on the given resources and we will definitely break the barriers.

When such criteria are put aside for sometime and unbiased, fulfilling jobs are offered, I guess we will have a better Pakistan to talk about and people will not have to leave their homeland for better prospects abroad!