For as long as I recall, television has been the primary source of intrigue for me.
I have spent hours imagining what it would be like to see my ideas, my concepts, my imaginations on screen with my name under it. And with every little step i took on the way, it got better. From school renditions of MidSummer Night’s Dream to the completion of our production house’s first ‘dramedy’ its been an adventurous ride.
The first trailer can be viewed here:
hopefully its just a humble beginning. 
Sometimes it takes a bad group picture and guy tears to make u realize its the end of an era. Thats what highschool was. U made all those promises, u said to ureself ure about to win the world, u knew inside ure heart that u were probably never gonna see all these ppl again, but u told ureself there would be reunions.
But nothing lasted. Someone got a job, someone went abroad, someone got married, some were consumed by intoxicants and other addictions and some of us just wandered on, from one thing to another, hoping to conquer the world, and instead being consumed by unfair bosses, cruel love affairs and high cholestrol drive thru chicken.
Ure only on the verge of entering 30 years of ure life n already u feel old. U begin worrying about blood cholestrol, hypertension, death, afterlife, unexplained aches and pay cheques and doctors start prescribing prozacs and xanex. All of a sudden u realize u were somehow just pushed into adulthood. U complain to The Higher Power that u dint wanna be here in the first place!
It all becomes a little confusinG. One by one u try to organize ure problems and one by one u pick them up to try to solve them. And then someone else comes up and tells u they feel exactly like u.. That is when u realize its NORMAL to feel a little stumped at this point in time. Especially if u happen to hail from a third world country where even freedom has its limitations.
I say this cuz we are a generation raised on selective textbook history and multiple hour loadshedding. Its amazing how atleast some of us still find time to question historians and do wishful thinking on behalf of politicians.
My bathroom is filled with bottles my husband has never even read the labels of. My dresser’s cluttured with bottles half of which I know I will never even bother to use. Rizwan wonders why we need a handwash if we have soap already and I’ve often wondered the need of shower gel myself. But hey, I gotta have all those colorful bottles anyway!
That’s what our lives are like as well. We have cluttured emotions we don’t know what to do with. We have the exposure to a lot of liberties yet have enormous guilts our religions and traditional values have engraved into our minds. We r gays, lesbians, alcoholics, gamblers, addicts and we are not okay with it cuz basically we would like to go to heaven eventually, wouldn’t we? So we make our lives miserable to the point where things stop making sense and you end up waking one morning lying in someone else’s porch wondering why we were there in the first place.
We love our orthodox families and wish we could live with them, because we miss them so much. But by the time one workday finshes and you hardly have time for your spouse even, u wonder how to fit the rest of the family in.
That’s our dillema. The dillema of being a ‘cheap labour’ off a third world country and actually being proud of call centres.
We have no creative ‘INDUSTRY’ – well atleast not in the sense of the word; its technically not an industry if the govt. is not backing it up and providing lawful protection and loan sanctions. We have made a business out of education. An enemy out of our own religion.
We are a nation waiting for the right ruler but not doing enough to produce one.
But from within I see a ray of light emerging. A new thought tht seeks no cult formation. A thought so powerful it will eventually form those good leaders. Not from our generation it seems, but perhaps from the next.
U mite want to take out ure popcorn for that one.
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.
————————
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.
———
Far be it for me to ridicule PTV’s choice of program schedule. But a
friends’ four year old was glued to tv as if suddenly the teletubbies had
grown antennas – oh wait, they already have those. Well you get the drift.
To learn more about why I think teletubbies have antennas you should look
for a blog post titled ‘gross looking antenna beings – wht every cool parent
shud know about the teletubbies’.
For now lets just stick to why my friends’ four year old was glued to the
tv. I looked up at the tv and what I saw changed my perspective of national
television for ever. Standing tall and proud on the screen was a figure in
red, and two men stood around her pointing to various body parts with
explanations… Ha! Gotcha! No I’m not talking about pornography… What
part of ‘national television’ do you not understand?
Anywho. As I was saying, this aforementioned red figure is what oxford
dictionary terms as a ‘tractor’ and the whole of our rural people
endearingly refer to as the *traktar*. Now strange as it may seem this
particular four yr old seems to find tractors fascinating. On inquiring, my
friend sadly commented that her four yr old *Elijah* insists upon watching
this very channel only for his entertainment. So much so that he yells if we
ever try to switch while one of his favorite tractor shows are on.
Mesmerized I watched elijah smirk as a farmer looking guy touched the huge
tractor wheel reverently and explained why a tractor should never be used as
a golf cart. ‘ye traktar hai. Is ke chaar pahye hote hain. Is ke aage ke
pahye chote aur peeche ke bare hote hain…’ *pop goes the weasel*!
Speaking of weasels, I think indian soap makers should be held on trial for
instilling bullcrap into peoples’ minds.
Its not without reason why divorce rates in india r on a phenomenal high. I
mean, have u seen zee tv lately? [yes, I admit; sometimes as a part time
working housewife u *really* run out of better things to do] Apart from
being more of a gravitational dilemma than film azia’s – correct me if iv
prounounced it wrong- *sooha jora*, indian soaps r overflowing with women
who went out of date a couple of centuries back.
As if this wasn’t bad enough, the more they make heroines out of pony tailed
maids [aparently in india these days its ok to mate ure maid] n the
stubborn, stuck up n gaudy pre-feminism heroines, the more they raise the
bar for a normal working housewife to be accepted by inlaws. *Yes, kyunki
saas b kabhi bahu thi but jab wo bahu thi tab aur ab k fashion trends mein
difference hai yar*!! N wht is it with only the vamps wearing trendy
designer clothes!! I can’t believe how the seemingly secular, democratic,
liberal india is into these female stereotypes! I mean I’m all for the
eastern woman glory and personally don’t even vouch for the feminism
theories but even I don’t think every saree clad woman shud be considered a
* good bahu*. Its being judgemental *par excellence! * And don’t even get me
started on minimum jewelry requirements for a star plus *bahu*.
No wonder why even my lovely liberalist mom in law thinks I shud wear a
sequined saree to work just like parwati does. She frowns everytime I leave
my antique * sat lara *at home. And all my complaints are met with a ‘pearls
are a woman’s best friend’. Yes, second only to diamonds n business suits!
I wanna begin talking about why women my moms age watch indian soaps in the
first place. Mainly because they lack the careers that their daughters now
have. These women need something to hold on to when their children are all
going around having experimental lives at best, dining out everyday of the
week, having glamorous jobs and ending up having passionate marriages. They
think we have it all. Their kids never lived life to their rules and are
actually happy. They don’t know how that’s even possible. So they make soap
time *Their time*. No son. No daughter. No husband. No rules for atleast 2
hours. And they really indulge themselves into the lives of these soap stars
as if they were real.
So now if uve had enough of my behavioral psychology lecture I think ill
move on to why pakistanis are smitten with mica bellucci and why when Rizwan went to a video store in lahore and asked for a ‘foriegn’ film, he got presented with a bumch of pornographic dvds. Haha- that’s apparently the new code word. But I’m not getting into that… U really thought I was going to even try to venture towards such a controversy? Nope. Not in the same blog anyway. Ciaos¤
P.s. Yeah it was a little abrupt. So what? U see its MY BLOG! 
(alwez
wanted to say that).
Perhaps it all began the day my mom looked at my lovely little female cousin, all fairy-ish in her golden pigtails and a lacy pink dress she could only have gotten at some remarkably cheap costume store; and gave her compliments my dirt covered 6-yr old child clothing could never be accredited for. Since then ive gone from hair-bleaching bottles to a pink lacy something-or-the-other and yet, the 6yr old girl inside me refuses to completely change her dirt soiled playtime ensemble.
Guess i can no longer judge people for writing books like ‘mommy dearest’.
But before i begin pointing fingers at every parent on earth and waver from the point of this essay (whatever that might be) i would like to clarify that she was by far the least cause of the birth of a Ms. wanna-be inside me. Yes i admit, i used to be a wannabe once. And who knows some of that germ might be lurking inside me still. There, i said it.
“Did you check out that guy at the party last night? Seemed like the first time he was wearin designer perfume!” *laughter ensues* “what a wanna-be!!” everytime i hear that line, i hear a little voice inside my head that rebukes me, reminding me of my first bottle of Chanel. Who then am i to point fingers? I wasnt born with the correct pronounciation of Givenchy in my vocabulary either!
But even that little voice laughs at the hilarity of a 30yr old man using the word ‘cool’ 3 times in one sentence, and using a ‘d’ instead of a ‘th’ in his spelling diction. Worse still is when you r waiting to get your copy of a Guantanamo Bay documentary on dvd and some van damme fan begins his search for what he endearingly calls a ‘fighting film’ and you wonder: Are they still out there?
Trouble is you havenot heard the prize winning wannabe stories yet. The best ignorant wannabe award goes to the person who said this line: What urdu medium people! What the hell is gaalib now?
My bad.
Should have expected this from someone who has spent his entire childhood being bullied by trailer park kids for lunch money in the american public school system.
We have all had our wanna-be times even if we may deny that statement now. For some theres always going to be a better pink top down the row, or someone flaunting a better accent, perhaps someone who really does deserve an Armani suit- but one thing stands true, that kind of inspiration is what can drive us to get what we want in life. We all need a role-model, a father figure or someone we can look up to that motivates us. But its when your role model happens to be the black pajero-driving, Rado-sporting lad in the back rows of your math class is when the problem begins. Either that or when you find you’ve fallen for a fake australian accent is when you need to stop reading any further and stop giving a damn.
For the rest of you not-so-wannabe lot, It is an uncanny definition that this word wannabe seems to hold.
The line that differentiates between being classy and ‘nou-daulataya’ is so so thin. All you need to do is to find a way to not keep repeating in your head how much those ridiculous leather pants really cost.
To be fair, i say there’s a wannabe in each of us. Its how we deal with it which makes all the difference. That then, is a talent.. Its one of those God-gifted things that are by definition exclusive- somewhat like arabian marriages; no one can teach and no one can learn. Its either there or its not there.
Rememeber, you’re a wannabe only if u cant pull it off. =)
Is it just me or was there really a time when walking a straight mile in my good pair of shoes lookin into my boyfriend’s eyes (for reasons no one outside of cheesy romantic comedies seems to know) felt like a romantic thing to do? Is it wierd then why i cant even walk over my lawn now without complaining about foot blisters?
Im a sucker for first times. But when you r an age at which people (my highly paid salon advisor to be precise) say u need to start using lots of moisturizer in order to not end up lookin like MIchael Jackson’s latest surgery results at some point in the near future;
its time you realize life is just about as good as it gets and ure prince charming is no longer out there somewhere on a white horse, but cleaning his cute butt in the shower and using all ure organic facewash.
Now that, my friend, is when u panic.
This is where you stop n realize you know more about the word ‘organic’ than you do about life.You wonder is this IT? Am i really NOT immortal?? Surely, that cant be true! Right?
Slowly, all those doomsday conspiracies start making (non)sense. Hence the resulting boom in anti-depressant sales.
What anti-depressants have to do with questions of the afterlife is beyond the confines of this discussion but the point im tryin to make here is that at some level in life, people begin to suffer from irritations similar to midlife crises.
Whether it happened to u at age 27 or 72 depends on what you’ve been high on.
With any luck you may have never tried substance abuse and these thoughts may never have occured to u. Either way, the questions still linger. And if you are reading this sad little excuse for being an article to find some answers to those questions, trust me i cant say anything you havent already heard in those self-improvement-for-dummies tapes you bought last year or in those indian primetime soaps that make the word cliche sound fun.
One of the best lines ive heard so far goes: You dont have control over your death, but you happen to have some control over life which basically means we can question all we want, but would get satisfaction only when we stop expecting the answers.
hmmm. How about this one:
“Dont say to life WHY ME? Say TRY ME!!”
Which moisturizer do you think i should get this time?
Damn the Internet connection. I was all-ablaze with some rampant thoughts to put into writing when I hit reply and it refuses to respond. Rather miserably stares at me with the same page in all its irritating tardiness and dares me to pull off the networking chords in my resentment. But it knows I cant. We have been through this one before. It knows that regardless of how much malice the cable connection shows me I’d still hang on to it. And once the connection restores I would gladly forget all the anxiety it caused me, all the wicked grins it has grinned on me, and all the revulsion I had for it will be forgotten in the sweet tranquility of this sensation of being linked to the rest of the world. In that way, it is a little like life, don’t u think? The sense of connection over-powers all.Anyway, there I am again. Writing. Talking. This piece of writing space is my world and I’m its god, or at least its president, and I can do whatever I want with it. These words that have appeared out of my soul’s womb. Words that I have complete control over. Words that wont hurt, wont judge, and most of all, accept, me.Sometimes you get into that writing mode and all u get out of it are crumpled lines of ink on paper. And sometimes words rush at you with definitive vigor, forcing you to do something about it. Sometimes you can’t write when you really want to, and sometimes when you have sat back and accepted your writer’s block, something happens and I begin writing and it feels like there was never a quiet time.Anyway to cut a long story short this is just to say that yes, sometimes, it feels good to say without saying and sometimes to just not say anything at all. Are you getting any of this? Cuz I’m not so sure at this point myself if I’m making any sense at all.
Ok… peeps.. we all know Pathaans have a habit of sometimes looking like hollywood celebrities. I personally saw a waiter who would be Brad Pitt come next two years and a beard. Rizwan likes 2 blv pathaans are from some lost greek tribes but we all know what a vain pathaan he is
AnyWHOOOO… back to the topic.. Ajab Gul’s celebrity look a like.. the following assumption is going to sound ridiculous, but the next time u look at that guy doing this ridiculously-stupid show on Sun Tv, or dance around Reema with raybans that have FAKE written all over them…. u’ll know i was right!!
I wonder all the time what it would be like to be the prettiest girl in the world. In fact I wonder to myself what it would be like to be just pretty. Yeah yeah, insecurities, insecurities.
They say a woman never considers herself as beautiful enough, or sees herself in true light. I don’t buy that. What about those women flocking in front of display mirrors in glass-adorned shops wearing size 6’s and looking all Hottie… Ahem… Haughty.
I mean a size 6! What IS a size 6! Is there really a size numbered six? Or is this merely a way to insult women like me who as a rule never discuss sizes. Least not their own!
People say beauty is just superficial. Then why do office blondes get better bonuses and cosmopolitan who claims to be the feminist magazine, and a savior of women of all generations, is full of pages upon pages of 18 year old women in size 4 micro minis?
And the worst part is when you see someone pretending to be either ‘honest’ or ‘blunt’ or ‘I care about you’ stops you before you are up for a critical presentation meeting and starts “You know you’re over weight right?” Wow. So much for the presentation award of the year folks!
I’m not defending being over weight. (Let’s not call it FAT.) I just want the rest of the world to go and kindly get a freaking life! Also that I just renewed my prescription glasses and contrary to popular belief do have a few mirrors here and there in the house so don’t need your helpful eyesight-testing tactics thankuverymuch!
Anyway, let’s not get over sensitive about this. Even size 6 women (assuming that is, that they exist) have problems. Problems like career growth. Problems like finding Mr. Right. Problems like choosing the right shade of powder blue to accentuate their collar bones. What the color blue has to do with collar bones we might never find out. But women are strange that way.
We can talk about how’s and why’s of what Sana was wearing at the party last Saturday and wont know jack about who won the Premier League. And don’t even ask me what Sana was really wearing.
—“If women didn’t exist, all the money in the world would have no meaning.”
Aristotle Onassis
© Cultural Stupidity Concepts 2007
This is not one of those insanely enormous-budgeted Cola Ads.
This is my life, and it has become one gigantic advertisement.
Everything carries a price tag.All you really need to do is to find a way to keep those things with their price tags, in their right places. That increases the quality of your life.
When I was young, they taught me how priceless relationships were. How valuable emotions were. How love simply could not be bought. But what they don’t teach you in grade school is that everything’s value is specified by its price tag.
They fail to teach you those formulas that make life better.
From a diet cola to gold Rolex ® your life is dependent on ads.
We can no longer choose anything for ourselves. Our television sets choose for us.
We can no longer let our hearts decide. Cosmopolitan does that.
I cried when my favorite character left my prime time TV show. I couldn’t muster up a single tear at my grand mother’s funeral.
Am I being bitter? Oh no!I’m not bitter…. Right?! *SIGH*
But there is something lacking in this canopy of commercialism in my privileged life.
Perhaps that’s my problem. Something being amiss – but what is it?
*Titanic soundtrack*
I think I just found out what’s missing.
……………………………
*Titanic soundtrack* And then, it hit me. Or should I say she hit me,Cupid’s arrow hit me,Love, finally, hit me.
I don’t know what used to happen in Shakespearean times. But even in today’s times, you can’t buy love.
*PRICE TAGS EQUIVALENCY TEST*
*PERFECT MATCH!!!!!*
There was only one thing left to say…
*smiles, love, romance* …
“BILL PLEASE.”
© Cultural Stupidity Concepts 2007
