“A Woman’s Right to Shoes”

I think I might be obsessed with shoes right now. A pair of ankle length Steve Madden boots haunt my dreams and dainty Manolos with shiny skins compete against each other in my head. I dreamt about having a walk-in shoe closet last night. The kind where all my shoes are standing proudly in line, showing themselves off. Jimmy Choos and Colin Stuarts in all colors n shapes – even the ones in pink… what is this obsession with footwear!

Have I been reading too much Candace Bushnel or is it just happening to other women too? Every time something goes wrong (or right!) I feel like buying shoes. I just ordered a pair Steve Maddens and this Lahori summer isn’t exactly boot-wearing weather now is it? But I feel good knowing that if I did wear them someday, I would look good and they will be there.
I don’t even wear most of these shoes that I have bought and that is pretty sad. Some of them do not fit well, some are plain uncomfortable and some I keep aside for special occasions that never come. Plus it’s not like I can wear boots at my in laws next dinner! So why am I constantly buying shoes! It’s like a kind of food addiction – you know – the kind that one has with chocolate or cheese.
Perhaps it’s the fact that every woman really just wants to be a princess. And this is one of acting like one! Having costly shoes that I never even wear! It’s frivolous and I don’t have enough money to be frivolous I assure you. If they were easy for me to buy it would be a different story. But they are not! I go through enormous pains to actually make sure I have enough work and then get paid so I can buy these things! But somewhere in there Princess Cinderella just wont shut up! Biatch.

I know one fine day I will read this blog entry and go “how stupid and vain is it to blog about something like that!” but right now the urge to spill the proverbial beans is winning over. :p Besides, a blog is close to being a personal diary (only, not).

Whoever still thinks Meth is the saddest addiction should come have a few words with me so i can display my recently found Kick Boxing skills :p vanity thy name is LAME-ASS-NESS.

Queen of the Damned

Whether this title is due to my reborn allure for the blood sucking vengeance of Lestat, or due to the fact tht iv just finished reading ‘The Witch of Portobello’, no one will ever know. But one things for sure, ‘wives’ have an amazingly savvy sixth sense about their darling husbands. I can tell exactly what point during a meal it is that riz tries to catch a glimpse of fine ass, even if im half way lost in the world’s best prawn chowmein. I can also tell whether the person on the other end of the phone has an adams apple or not. Now seriously, thats gotta be monumental, right?

The argument remains that it just might be that he just isnt as cultivated at all this as some other husband may be, but heck, hes a guy – ofcourse hes ‘cultivated’. Then is it just me, or do women really do have what they call ’sixth sense’ about that kind of thing? I dont know. Maybe you could enlighten me.

Which reminds me of an interesting dialogue in Ally Mc beal about what kind of  human being wants to walk around in shoes that are tilting your feet at the most unnerving position, are extremely uncomfortable, can aid slipping n getting hurt, and give u back problems. The answer? Only a woman can. Which in turn reminds me of how stupid this whole deal is. Women get painful threading, waxing, and what not procedures to keep up the illusion that they are born that way. In addition to that they also learn how to make it look like lip glosses stay on for several hours (they dont) and how to get a home pedicure while cooking aloo gobhi for rizwan (they do). Now im not saying we should all go ‘au naturale’ whiskers et all at the next pool party, but can we atleast go low on the terrible heels!

And that said, isnt it freaky that women spend hours n wads of cash on manicures, yet men never remember the color of our nailpolish! The other day riz located my half hidden stash of nailcolors n i think he went blank for a while. ‘I dont ever see u use that stuff!’ ‘thats because i apply it when you r out!’ i say. ’see?’ i flaunted the freshly applied wine colored nails in front of him. ‘really?’and then, with a smile, ‘ thats just freaky.’ It seemed to me like he was saying “really? You were born without color changing magic nails?”

Then again not all men are like that. Some men do know about these things a little more than is neccessary.

We have a friend who is as obviously ‘happy’ (read; gay) as tom cruise has so obviously ‘lost it’. He does in fact remember every shade of nailcolor i have ever worn. He could do a better inventory of my wardrobe than i possibly could. But he likes to play a little game. The ‘i-am-straight-okay’ game. He tries to give out half hearted coos at women, he even throws gay jokes at other people. And the final straw came last week when he told us he was getting engaged- to a girl. This makes me wonder, what is he doing? Why do such ppl not think about the poor woman involved? Isnt this like a crime< God.

Anyway, im gonna cut this right here, and you guys wait for my next blog, which will be about the worlds most stupidest desi blogs. for real.

KARACHI DIARIES

HELLO PEOPLE!

YES IT IS TRUE, THE MUCH AWAITED PROLOGUE OF MY NOVEL IS OUT NOW :p YOU GUYS CAN PREVIEW IT HERE.

HAPPY READING.

KARACHI DIARIES – CHAPTER ONE

KARACHI – SUMMER 2002: KIREN OMER

ONE

She hated this sweltering heat of the tropical city afternoon. That was perhaps the only thing she didn’t enjoy about this city that she otherwise treasured with all her heart. This city that held past memories and future promises for her. If only it wasn’t so hot! She thought to herself, tugging at the lawn doppatta that covered her. And if only I didn’t have to take the bus today, she told herself. She didn’t really have to take the bus to university. But she liked the freedom of a bus over a van, and she couldn’t afford cab charges because she had spent most of her pocket money on the new shoes she would show off in the high school reunion this weekend. Riding in a bus for a few days was completely worth it.

Kiren glanced over at the lanky woman in the washed-out scruffy cotton sari who reeked of cheap detergent. She must have been a maid, like the one who worked in Kiren’s house. She felt sorry for the woman who was obviously quite old and looked so weary of life, as if living had exhausted her completely and she could collapse anytime. If a woman had to go do housework in this age she definitely had a lot of other unhappiness in her life as well. She wondered if the woman had done this always or whether she had come upon bad times later in her life. Either way Kiren was grateful for herself, grateful that she did not have to do what the woman did to survive. She was thankful for her dreams of marrying her Prince Charming, thankful for her good grades and thankful she did not have to ride in this rusty vehicle everyday.

Even Malika had taken the bus today. She must have bought something nice for the reunion as well, Kiren told herself. Was it shoes? What if Malika had gotten the same heels she had got? They would end up looking so stupid. But unlike her, Malika had so many stilettos already; she must have used the money on something else. Maybe that new tote bag she showed me in the magazine that day. She looked over at her and found Malika engrossed in the usual Mills & Boons paperback. Maybe she has bought herself more of those silly romance novels! Kiren couldn’t believe anyone would use their money so uselessly.

If Kiren ever bought a book it would have been something serious. She liked books that showed her a glimpse of the world out there or gave her something back like wisdom, faith or even hope. She had plenty of such books at home, books that told her about the charming romance of Paris, the fashionable grace of Milan, the exciting freedom of New York, the mystery of the Egyptian Pyramids and the ancient splendor of Athens. Her latest divulgence was metaphysics and there was a new title she had been meaning to buy, but this reunion came up and she couldn’t bear to wear the boring flats her mom was always buying her. So she had to buy the shoes. Because people usually cared what shoes you wore and she couldn’t go about wearing old fashioned loafers and tell everyone she had all those books at home. People didn’t want to hear about these things and she wanted to be to be cared about at the reunion.

The bus was full of university people so the crowd wasn’t too bad that day. Some days it was filled with foul smelling rotund men who gave her awful glares. They even smoked their cheap cigarettes and the stink became overbearing for her. She always ended up feeling nauseous when those types were around. She always wondered how their wives could stand to live with them. If there was anything she loathed more than cigarette smoke, it was men with mal-odor.

And if there was anything she loved more than Paris, it was men with the smell of Paris. She adored those grown-up men who constantly wore business suits and designer cologne. She wondered then why God had given her someone like him. He was the antithesis of all she admired with his rough charm, lack of knowledge and immaturity about so many things. He watched all those cheesy Indian movies. She wished he would try to read more books. But not corny romances like Malika of course. What she wanted was a man who could converse for hours on a number of different subjects – about world politics, social issues and Greek history. And more than everything she wished for someone whose life was more than his dad’s grocery store. She wondered how amazing it would be if she found someone who taught her something new! How nice it would be if there was someone she could have something to converse with for hours and hours into the night. With him it was always the usual boring stuff she didn’t even care about like cricket and local gossip.

She checked her cell phone for any messages or calls from him. But the clock on the screen glared back. She took out the fake channel mirror and checked her lipstick. Perfect, she thought and put the mirror back. When she looked ahead, out of the bus, she almost skipped a beat.

She was almost there. All of sudden she began to perspire, nervous and unsure. A part of her wanted to skip this ordeal and keep going in the bus until her own house came into view. But she knew he would be angry if she did that, and she couldn’t stand losing him. She remembered how Malika had defined him once – ruggedly handsome.

He was like one of the characters in those Judith McNaught novels she had borrowed from Malika. Tall, dark and roguish – just like Ms. McNaught described Royce Westmoreland in A Kingdom of Dreams. The thought of Asim in a dark ponytail wearing a 15^th century white cotton ruffled shirt, bare chest on show and old-style black pants made her giggle. The thought made her feel a little better about this. Sometimes she couldn’t believe her luck. She must have something in her that made him like her. He was twenty, and at Kiren’s sixteen years, that seemed a whole lot older.

She checked her cell phone again. Still nothing. If it was someone else she wouldn’t even have bothered to make this effort. But Asim was not someone else. Asim was Asim, her first love – didn’t they make all kinds of movies on this? ‘Kiren Asim’ she thought with pride. How good that sounded! Of all the girls who would have given anything to be with him, Asim had chosen her to be with him. But there were some things about him she didn’t like. Like he was such an introvert and liked to keep to himself. She on the other hand enjoyed parties and mingling with all sorts of people. But that was okay, she was sure if the time came, she would make all possible changes for him. It didn’t matter how different they were as long as they were in love. Judith McNaught said that too, didn’t she?

VANILLA SKY

There is absolutely, positively, assertively nothing worse than inviting seven guests over only to find the WAPDA management decided to change the load shedding routine that day. This basically means that you have seven hopeful guests and no blender, no microwave to help u out, plus tht happens to b the day ure maid decides to casually take the weekend off. Just when u wondered how things could possibly be worse, the little glass bottle of vanilla extract decides to wander off its rack inside the refrigerator and simply falls and breaks into a million pieces and most of the brown extract is all over my bunny rabbit flip flops – not to forget the overpowering vanilla scent is almost making u dizzy. Actually it was the mess that makes me dizzy but u get the drift. So now I’ve got seven guests, zero power supply and my house smells like a biscuit factory.

Thanking God the bottle broke in the kitchen and reassuring myself that iv read in COSMO somewhr about the pedicural qualities of vanilla I, inhaled deeply. And no longer did the burning desire to impress my guests with home made chicken karhai, italian lasagne and sponge cake dessert fire me up. I did what was necessary.

Ordered take out. So through the wonder of the credit card and Hallmarks scented candles my husband and I managed to throw a nice party. And what was more, thank modern day time management values that the guests arrived atleast 2 hours later than the invitation time, and by then the electricity n take out food both had arrived.

I kinda liked it when life was less gadgets and more home-made everything. For one thing we fell sick less often and the food was actually tasty. No no no people, I’m hardly one to blame technology. I don’t think not having a microwave is a blessing. I guess its just nostalgia.

Its wednesday and the sickly sweet, overpowering scent still lingers. I doubt I can ever even go near vanilla flavor.

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CARTOON

Hollywood has so far made fun of christians on the whole, catholics in particular, jesus, jews, buddhists, hindus, and what not – but denmark makes one cartoon and Pakistani people (not arabs, not african muslims, not even indian or middle eastern muslims) get killed for working in KFCs. The world mite not see it but its that fanatic-mentality being supported in Pakistan that’s creating all this bullshit. You wanna take your temper out? Go to denmark, find that guy and kill him for all I care.
And I’m not even giving the whole ‘free speech’ lecture here, which by the way, anyone who watches indian cinema, hollywood movies, american televison or geo tv for that matter, should believe in.

I talk about this right now, because there was a facebook group still getting its highs from this discussion. And some fanatic-followers were getting all emotional about something they know nothing about.
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TRUTH BE TOLD

Military regime ended and there was this coalition drama and the innocent nation believed in their hearts that now, things would be different. Truth be told we wanted to believe. We wanted to believe that there will be more electricity; we wanted to believe there will be no more people dying in the name of politics; we wanted to believe we will no longer have fatal bomb blasts. But right now I can only wish we were that lucky.

Whats with the delay on everything? They say they r handling bigger problems. Well I say deal with the human-related problems so they are alive to see ure bigger problems be solved! U made them an air-condition nation and took away electricity? What happens to a country in which its metropolitan city had a hospital that had to operate under a charging light cuz the hospital couldn’t afford fuel for generators anymore.

As a friend of my hubby puts it:
“DEMOCRACY can’t be imposed. It can only be protected.”

U can’t go around shouting the word democracy and then make the people go thru these bullshit times, and act like you know better. If u can’t think of a way to make the economy afford the country’s fuel usage then why u sit there in the first place is beyond me. U can’t get away with advising them to shut down their air-conditioning! The next thing we know we’ll be using donkey carts instead of cars so Mr.-in-charge-of-nation can sleep in his thousands of dollars worth VIP suite.

I don’t think the people of Pakistan have a lot of patience anymore. We’ve certainly been thru a lot already.

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