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Freedom, independence and liberty are all synonymous with each other and with the evening breeze of the National Independence Day mingled with the aroma of Shashlik.

Cuz that's where the breeze is

What could be more invigorating than the feel of fresh air in your hair while you ride beside a daigh in a Suzuki and tantalize your taste buds with Shashlik in your cozy little niche right after iftaar? To me it feels like the perfect celebration of national independence day: the free breeze and free food in the Suzuki that's free of smooth brakes and protective barriers that are meant to keep you from falling off. Though I would like to uplift your spirits further with the good news that even if you do fall off you will not have enough velocity to escape the earth. In fact the whole situation seems rather royal to me. It's like your kingdom and the daigh your throne? Though I would like to reiterate your attention towards the fact that the walls are low and you should do something about that in order to prevent the likes of Trojan War. After all, the throne is very very precious.

NOM NOM NOM!

Rocking on four wheels, you roll on the road, nestled comfortably in your warm spot like a hen guarding the daigh like its eggs. The world gawks at you in awe, stares in discomfort and confusion. If you wish you can imagine some track from 'Lord of the Rings' playing in the background. Meanwhile you think "I must be the dragon warrior, hence NOM NOM NOM! Must make the most of the journey...eating, that will certainly help cool down the fire raging within me and I shall find my inner peace."

It doesn't matter what the man on the motorbike thinks while he's staring at you as if his eyes will pop out any moment. What really matters is the aroma of ketchup and peppers in the soft, steamed rice; the chunky chicken and your stomach's delight.

PAKISTAN ZINDABAD!

The sky so lovely,
The sun obscure,
The breeze so lively,

Your emotions so pure. 

Your nation will be transcendent,
Its buds mature,
You feel with dignity,
That the day hasn't been a bore.
You feel independent,
You feel so sure,
You feel so free,
Like Kung Fu Panda's lore.



And having written all that, I feel QUITE lame but happily so, hoping it made you happy too :)

Reminders

Just make the retainers an ugly blue!

Bluetooth is a really funny word. It reminds me of blue bubblegum sticking to the dirty teeth of a scary nanny. Like a really scary nanny. I feel sorry for all those children who have ever encountered any such nanny. An even worse image that comes to mind is that of an immensely annoying child having bright blue braces/ retainers fixed to his teeth, like Darla Sherman form 'Finding Nemo'.

This however, also reminds me that I do not know how to use Bluetooth. This does not mean that I'm illiterate, no. It just reflects my recently acquired fear of sophisticated technology. I'm sure it's because of the 'man vs machine' movies Hollywood keeps making. Or maybe not. And recently goes back to a year.

This also reminds me that my sentence structure and hence literary skills have been reduced to bits. I seem to now lack the ability to form coherent complex sentences. I don't want to blame it on CIE or even myself (since I haven't been writing). PEACE.

And I can't remember why I began writing this post.

The Phase of Red Haze

One day you wake up and switch the T.V. on to see a blast of red and pink and hearts and fur. If you survive that, you reach for the remote with quivering hands since most of your energy was lost when your eyes popped out and bled to death. By the moment you find the remote, manage to keep your heart beating and your lungs properly aerated (though I could be strangled for using such a layman term when I’m a pre-med), you realize that Valentine’s Day is just around the corner.

Poor old Saint Valentine (s). They could never have imagined they would be remembered centuries later in the ‘ultimate’ celebration of love. I don’t know if their saintly nature would permit them to be happy about it or they would just run off to a cave, take an oath of silence and spend all their lives praying to be redeemed of such worldly fame. However, if they didn’t have a nature quite so simple they could have realized that this fame could mean the success of their mission to spread Christianity, if used properly. As it turns out, they weren’t quite so fortunate because not only were they simple and faced severe persecution at the hands of the Roman dictators but the Catholic calendar refused to recognize their sacrifice and deleted their names from history!

Yes, I know their story is sad. But ours is grimmer. Every year, we set out to celebrate this day with an unwavering sense of responsibility. There are cards, gifts and God knows what not, perhaps all in the spirit of expressing unity with Christendom, because as they say “The spirit is universal!” But what if the whole idea isn’t Christian at all? We are expressing unity with Paganism? Plausible, but the problem lies in the fact that this isn’t even a real festival! It’s a mixture of Literature, imagination, confused history and mirch masala!

According to the Catholic encyclopedia, there are three saints by the given name who died on 14^th February in different years. The Encyclopedia states that Valentine of Rome died about 269 AD and Valentine of Terni died about 197 AD, all we know about the third one through this source is that he died in Africa. Notably, there are no romantic elements in their original biographies and this connection was created in the 14^th century. Those who believe that it was these martyrdoms that came to be celebrated by Christianity as the ultimate sacrifice for love are wrong for the following reasons:

1. Why would Christianity celebrate these ‘persecutions’ as the sacrifice for romantic love?

2. Christianity was not even prevalent at that time. The Roman Empire followed polytheism and roman imperial cult up to 380 AD. The reason why these saints were persecuted was that Christianity was unacceptable for the Romans. Why would these Romans allow a celebration that paid homage to a man they’d killed, when the killing was meant to demean his influence?

Clearly, Christianity had not by then decided to make such a big deal out of it, which is probably why they forgot to take enough notes about these ‘martyrs’. And maybe that is why these characters were an easy target to incorporate into a mesh of lies.

The first recorded association of these events with romantic love came in a great work of Literature in 1382. Geoffrey Chaucer, sometimes known as the father of English Literature made a reference to Valentine’s Day in the popular context in his poem “Parlement of Foules”. Chaucer wrote:

For this was on seynt Volantynys day
Whan euery bryd comyth there to chese his make.

["For this was Saint Valentine's Day, when every bird cometh there to choose his mate."]

This poem was written in 1382 to honour the first anniversary of the engagement of King Richard II of England to Anne of Bohemia, which had taken place on May 2^nd, 1381.

It is invariably assumed that Chaucer was referring to February 14^th as Valentine’s Day; however that was hardly the mating season for English birds. It is thus argued by reliable critics that he was instead pointing to May 2^nd, (the King’s engagement day) which is the saint’s day for Valentine of Genoa. Being a poet of inenarrable profundity and having a wild imagination, Chaucer used birds to symbolize the King’s union with Anne, (hence the origin of the phrase ‘love birds’) and made a historical reference to another saint Valentine, simply to record the event in history. However, Chaucer seems to have achieved a lot more than that.

It has been proposed by various critics since then that the connection between Valentine’s Day and sentimentalities was indeed built by Chaucer but over time it began to be seen in a different context – that related to Lupercalia. In ancient Rome, Lupercalia was a ritual practiced between 13^th and 15^th February to offer sacrifice to the Gods in order to ward off evil spirits and welcome purity, health and fertility. It’s sad that they were deluded into thinking that their wishes were granted because their limestone gods were pleased by their sacrifice and remained unable to figure out that spring – the time of earth’s fertility came after February anyway!

Since this was also the time when most of the saints named Valentine were executed and Chaucer had already introduced the idea, a confused bunch of people – who did not know history too well – decided to mistake Chaucer’s St. Valentine and its context for some other events and construe things into something they weren’t, all in the hope of creating Philosophy/Literature or a place in history. This is how we ended up with what we now know as the spirit of Valentine’s Day: hearts, furs, red and cupid, love calculators, ‘u r da luv of ma lyf’ and the (mostly despicable) likes.

How touching, right? If only I had a heart.

Note: It is not the least of my intentions to offend anybody or disrespect any faith. I have written this simply as a service to humanity because I strongly believe that we get pressurized by the ‘flow’ and do things just because everybody else is doing them, without knowing why. This attitude is not healthy for any society because it reflects that we have an individuality crisis and I simply want my readers to know why we do certain things and that we DO have a choice.

Laws of retardation:Theory Four -Taking over

World in order

I can proudly say that my plan to take over the world is now complete. It took me some 18 years to finally get here and I’m deeply grateful to the Venus-lings for all their motivation and support. All hail Venus!

On a lonely summer day, I realized I was becoming a vegetable because I could not frame coherent thoughts and my vocabulary seemed to be rotting away with a rather putrid stench. It was truly devastating and I set out to investigate the cause, which I was shell-shocked to find: It was part of the greater plan of the Venus-lings to mess with my head. They wanted to turn me into a vegetable so that I would become useless for the Earth and they could take me away to Venus and make me their queen. The question is, why did they choose ME of all people for this prestigious, yet immensely important role? The answer is as following:

1. I love Venus too much and they received these signals confirming that from my heart and brain and the apple-pie I’m going to use soon. They were baffled by those signals and couldn’t find any such signal from a single Venus-ling! I mean I had even written two poems on Venus! They were just overwhelmed by my mis-directed patriotism and totally ashamed that I wasn’t one of them so they decided I deserved to be their queen (there are no immigration facilities up there so being queen was kind of essential or the army would take me down).

2. They realized the Earth didn’t deserve me because it had become too sad for me to live in and my heart couldn't take it anymore, even the apple-pie would crumble away too soon. Nobody on earth except Subata Khalid understood what I said most of the time or not in full depth at least and most of them gave me a hard time about it, trying to put me off. The Venus-lings realized I needed an escape and the power to make things right. That would only happen if I was the queen of some other planet.

3. They were tired of watching the ill-health of the earth and decided it was time for change. I was the only one thinking of a revolution in my part of the world and people were being too mean to me about it so they decided I deserved a chance to lead the change. I also have a blog called ‘Floodgates’ for crying out loud! They just understood the ideology behind it and were too impressed.

4. They had to make me queen anyway so they decided to throw in the Earth complementary for good measure too. I mean what more damage could possibly occur to it?

Armor and artillery

First and foremost, whoever is willing to accompany me needs to have their heart replaced with an apple pie- that is the sole armor we require. We shall then order sets of cowboy boots, enabled with the most modern, efficient, and possibly high-tech spurs. This will be taken care of by Saba’s Babu and we are deeply grateful to both of them in advance.

I know I've mentioned cowboy boots and they have a more ruthless appeal to the barracuda senses but I prefer Jimmy Choos. They are just irresistible!

Mc Donald's has been especially helpful and provided us with  these fresh, juicy and very sweet apple pies at our special request (be grateful all you pie-lovers, Mc Donald's would never have had the idea if it weren't for me). I prefer these over my own because I don't have to work, they're portable and occupy very less space, also easily replaceable (all you have to do is open the window in your chest, pluck out the previous one and replace it with oven-fresh stuff).

There is a wide variety of spurs to choose from. Take your pick!

 

   

Then we need to cat-nap some caterpillars and pack them away in jars (with holes in the lids for Oxygen). Seems like I have learned to make a note of precautionary measures, courtesy of A level sciences. At least they have some courtesy. We shall feed these caterpillars with apple-pies so that they become venomous and then prepare for the major part of our plan.

The Climax

We elope to Venus and after basking in its enchanting atmosphere for a while, raid the world wearing our sparkling spur-enabled, cowboy boots. We grab a random person on earth and say “Take us to your leader, earth-ling!” This by the way needs to be accompanied by our signature action of pressing our temples with our fore-fingers and jerking the head from right to left, making a 180 degrees angle in a robotic manner. The earth-ling (we are superior Earth cum Venus-lings now) takes us to NASA. We unleash the inescapable wrath of our venomous caterpillars upon the NASA dudes, the caterpillars sting them and they die at the spot.

The fruit

We then set out to give quick, painless deaths to most of the lowly beings walking this beautiful planet called Earth, making it a little more blood-stained and dirty by slashing their throats with the spurs! Simple, quick, painless, peaceful, revolutionary, innovative and modern. The world is mine (or maybe ours).

Image courtesy: Subata Khalid, Bisma Farukh, Saba Iqbal, Atiya Rafique and Google.

Gossamer and Tulle

The romantic age that claimed of freedom and individualism and maybe considered to have given voice to feminism, popularized fashion trends that were contrary to these movements.

Quite intriguingly, the changes in clothing trends during this era basically revolved around the sleeves, implying that a lot of importance was given to the hands since they held the ‘pen’ which was considered the most powerful weapon of the Romantic revolution. The Romantic sleeves angled between various types of curves ranging from full sleeves tied at intervals with ribbon; the imbecile or idiot sleeve which is extremely full from the shoulder to wrist and the  ‘Demi-Gigot’ - full from shoulder to elbow, then fitted to the wrist.

These sleeves were accompanied by high waistlines and low, expanded necklines in order to give proportion to the body but the expansion, I believe caused women to look broad-shouldered and rather manly so it was soon ruled out. However, the high waistline that made the waist appear very small and fragile was supported with stays on the inside. These stays are what maybe considered contradicting the Romantic ideology since they majorly consisted of corsets which attacked women’s freedom to breathe!

The Imbecile sleeve

The romantics were fascinated by beauty- whether it was in nature, music, art or poetry. They valued emotion and sentiment, in contrast to the cold reason that was perceived to have driven the revolutions of the 18th century enlightenment. Since women were believed to be more emotional than men, it perhaps explains why the Romantics enjoyed such fashion trends. This style of dressing was designed to accentuate the beauty of the females by presenting them as frail maidens, which rather pushed them back into a more modest role, befitting the "weaker" sex, often described as delicate, fragile, and decorative. Women were also placed on a moral pedestal, and looked upon as the guardians of family and community virtue, and the educators of the children. This moral elevation of women would lead some to suggest that women deserved a wider role in public affairs. However, dress reflected the perception of women as weak and decorative, which smudges the comparatively exalted position women enjoyed in the romantic society.

The Crinoline cage

The Victorian era brought with it crinolines and bustles, initially liberating the ladies from corsets and frills. The crinoline cage, which substituted the numerous layers of frilly petticoats and ‘frou-frou’ used to puff up the skirts, was supposed to be a breakthrough in the history of fashion. It was a cage made either of steel or whalebone worn beneath the skirts to make them ideally puffed. It allowed the women to abandon corsets as the huge crinoline made the waste look unbelievably small anyway. However, it became quite difficult to manage while sitting and immensely humiliating when the wind blew because the ladies did not only have to sober the skirts but also save themselves from being tossed to a side under the pressurizing weight! Not just that, owing to the crinoline their lives were made even more miserable by living in constant fear of falling off horses! Almost a decade later crinolines were abandoned and corsets crept in again to accompany the ‘bustle’. It was a modification of the crinoline puffing up only the sides and back and was later enhanced by adding springs to make seating more comfortable!                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

The Bustles

            

Although widely accepted by the elite ladies, some considered the bustle immodest and disturbing to look at since it made the body look disproportionate, so it was soon ruled out. Towards the end of the Victorian era, power dressing became highlighted with elaborately tailored, straight-cut jackets, reflecting female emancipation. It is as if gossamer and tulle were used as silken strangles for women, which power dressing retaliated against. This could be seen as the time when women emerged from their specifically dainty and demure roles to explore their potential of actually doing something other than batting eyelashes and curtseying. Women are essentially dainty creatures but not fragile, where curtseying is a beautiful etiquette, it's not the sole purpose of life, and the ending Victorian era made women realize this soon enough to produce Madam Curie and the likes from this race. 

However, it is sad that women in my era have become too engrossed in everything other than their true nature to have forgotten about it. So, dear women of the world, do what you please, find your spot, but don't lose yourself on the way. Grace and intellect is a part of you, find it and treasure it.

Cyclops gone blind

I’ve witnessed how the arrival of Ramzan has become less fascinating and dampened with each coming year. There’s a lot to blame but I feel slightly less cynical right now so I’ll just go into the facts that aren’t glaringly obvious. Amiss all the gory, grisly, heart-wrenching bloodlust and hassle and all the other morbid issues, it’s the small things that are depriving us of the barkat and rehmat of this month.

Khatm-e-Taraveeh in a mosque is supposed to be a source of blessings for all living in the area but unfortunately those ‘living in the area’ deprive themselves of these blessings just for the sake of some extra mithai! The children are often seen stealing mithai that is distributed at this event. Ramzan, taraveeh- you would think we are supposed to learn to share and clean the evil of our intentions but it’s really sad that parents cannot impart this simple idea to their children. You don’t exactly need to be ‘Islami’ for it or even respect Ramzan! It’s basic ethics which are obviously non-existent in our civilized society. What’s wrong with us? Where are we heading? Our children are stealing, that too from mosques? After finishing Taraveeh? Is that how greedy we have become? Muslim children stealing from mosques?!

Our electronic media gives life to Ramzan these days, the life that’s trickling away due to our malice. But they also need to participate in the ruthless rat-race to break the news first. The Azaan began and was cut off at ‘AllahHuAk’ to give instant, at-the-spot coverage of the recent Lahore bomb blast. My family and I were shocked, with dates perched between our fingers in mid-air. That is how important it is to break some more bad news, how important it is to disrupt a peaceful Iftar and exactly how much we respect the Azaan. We are true Muslims who respect Ramzan by creating signature music-filled Naats each year.

Calmly, pausing for the desired effect of suspense, talk show hosts tell us that suicide bombers have infiltrated cities like Karachi, Lahore, etc and are preparing in full swing to bomb Eid prayers. It’s actually funny how all our security agencies know when, how, where the suicide bombers have landed but they can’t arrest them. I wonder if it’s because there are no suicide bombers to begin with and even if there are, they’re planted by our own security agencies to help the government and external governments cause more anarchy, drive more people insane with their frustration, possibly get some more to commit suicide without a bomb?

Recently some more target killing ensued at the Natha Khan Bridge near the airport and ambulances were stuck in the resulting traffic jam. Whoever plans all this is amazingly brilliant because they ensure that not only the supposedly targeted people are killed but others are targeted as well. So those who would have died due to diseases much more humble than these ‘humans’ could not have that peace.

In another village another boy who could have been saved by another police squad, died another tragic death when he was not indulging in another crime but actually trying to do something unheard of- saving lives. The young male drowned while saving two other children and eventually died when rescue tams (led by a police squad) deemed it impossible to continue with the rescue mission because it was getting dark! Yes, fire has not been discovered yet and we are apes who walk on all fours. I wonder why this sounds familiar. Oh let me guess, didn’t something similar happen at the site of the air blue plane crash? It did indeed. The rescue mission was delayed by six hours and stopped four hours later because it was getting dark. Consequences: 13 people’s body parts were never found because they were probably carried away by beasts overnight. Their families were deprived of burying their remains.

If only they could understand how much the dark (not just of the night), could swallow.