Homebody goes to watch Bol

As part of my new resolve to get-a-life, I decided to do take baby steps in order to expand my means of entertainment. For a homebody who considers a journey from bed to bathroom an arduous adventure, filled with turmoil and menace (my bathroom mat, for some reason, is OUTSIDE the door and hence I slip constantly and land face-down in my bathroom), a trip to the movies is like a trip to another universe. And so I went to the movies like a woman-of-the-world.

 With my mother.

I am ashamed to admit that the impetus for this excursion was my tenacious parent who had been telling me, for the past three months, what a bad daughter I was because I wasn’t taking her to the movies. It’s interesting how I was being henpecked like my had been father two years ago. To him, my mother used to say:

“Kitnay Kharab hain, Wasi! You don’t take me to watch the movies!”

And just a week ago she said to me:

“Kitni kharab ho, Shazaf! You don’t take me to watch movies!”

Abu’s strategy was to smile sheepishly and go play golf. Being a homebody, I don’t have that luxury. So I relented and said I’d take her (which means I’d accompany her) to the cinema. When I found out it was Bol, I regretted my decision and feigned all sorts of headaches, stomach cramps, dizziness, nausea so that my mother would give my ticket to a friend and leave me at home to watch Perfect Strangers. But I resigned myself to my fate while I was dragged down the steps with my hair and shoved into the car.

Onward ho!

Once I was in the cinema, I sat with an open mind. After all, it was a movie that everyone had loved and went to watch a second time. Khuda ke Liye, by the same director, hadn’t been that bad. And look! I was surrounded by people who hadn’t given birth to me! I was out and about. A veritable socialite! Good good! I even considered going home and finding other movies playing so that I could procrastinate about watching them at home. But this was progress. I was sure of it!

And then the movie started with a woman about to be hanged. The woman had a terrible father. The terrible father's wife had given birth to a transvestite – a sweet boy who wasn’t a boy. Boy got raped by truck drivers. Father killed son.

Now at this point you’d probably think that this plot line is enough for a very long movie. But at this point a SECOND story starts.

Father needs money to bribe policeman. He goes to heera mandi and impregnates a prostitute for money – becoming a prostitute himself. His second daughter wants to marry a Shia (notice yet another plot line out-of-the-blue). He wants her to marry a Sunni, even if the candidate is 40 years older. Prostitute gives birth to girl. Another daughter elopes with Shia boyfriend. Father gets angry and hits whatever woman he can get hands on. Prostitute gives girl to man to prevent daughter from a life of exploitation. But father tries to kill girl with pimp & co. try to take their ‘property’ back. Eldest daughter kills father. Goes to jail. Is hanged.

And then suddenly, lalalalalalaaa we have a happy ending. With father and daughter gone, mother who has been sniveling spineless sot staring helplessly in all directions suddenly becomes bold entrepreneur who starts a restaurant named after hanged daughter and President is kind enough to take note of hanged daughter’s plea after death. End with lots of women laughing, singing and celebrating in style, just two minutes after we’ve seen their sister hanged.

Throw into this equation an impromptu concert in which one daughter sings like a professional rock star before retreating into a burqa and daughters dancing to rap music in their free time; the entire thing becomes a bit absurd. The story line was depressing and the execution, although MUCH MUCH better than normal Pakistani films with buxom Pakistani women jumping in fields in front of angry looking fat men and throwing themselves chest-first into every fray, was actually rather bad. This was two movies condensed into one. Atif Aslam should NOT have been a part of this movie – and his music which didn’t fit with the theme or the mood of anything. The ending jarred and appeared a tad bit insensitive.

The experience was not made any more pleasant by the fact that I choked on French fries in the middle and my mother thwacked me and lectured me loudly on the importance of chewing my food while people in the front row turned around and told me to shush; not recognizing that the blue on my face was due to a lack of oxygen and NOT a radical new skin foundation.

So I came back home, suicidally depressed because my heart went out for Zainab, the one who died – yes, the movie was a tear-jerker in some places. My heart bled for Saifi, a transvestite who was hated and killed by his own father. I felt angry at the world and thought that being a home-body was not such a bad idea after all. In such a despicable world, it’s better to grow old in bed with a book in the hand or a headphone in the ear (once you’re blind).

So attempt at social life # one = GIANT FAIL! Perfect Strangers, here I come!

Homebody Goes Whooppaaa!!

I started writing this blog when I felt stuck. No, I’m not talking about weight any more. I’m talking about one of those times when it feels like the universe has placed a giant corkscrew to bottle everything in. Nothing seemed to happen back then; nothing was working. My inhibitions loomed like a giant brick wall hemming me in. I wrote my fears and frustrations and found a new passion in blogging.

Now, as the New Year approaches, the bottle has been unplugged and celebration is in order. Good things are happening and the universe seems to be saying: ‘here: take a break!’ And the best thing about the universe: its breaks, unlike Kit-Kats', are calorie free! I feel like doing a Greek dance and joining hands in celebration and generally going ‘Whoopaa!’ So here goes.

My friend Afia won the Best Diarist Award for her blog at the Pakistan Blog Awards. She nominated herself when she was stuck and then felt the magic happen and it culminated in victory last night. Whoopaa!

Another friend who’d been stuck in the city for fifteen months because the visa stamp on his passport had expired, just got his renewed visa yesterday. He took it as positively as one could and now he’s free to go. He gets to join his wife and start a life of marital bliss. Whoopaa!

I’ve started exercising; my back is no longer in pain. And the zipper on my jeans doesn’t roll down any more. Whoopaa!

I’ve started meditating again – feeling more unstuck. Om Shanti Om. (Whooppaa doesn’t quite seem appropriate here)

I’ve started reading again. I read half of Gerald Durell’s ‘Three Singles in Guiana’ which talks about petulant paccas, frothing ant-eaters, hysterical Amerindian with wives like Lady Godiva, Caymans, owls and other creatures. With the result that my mother checked on me in the middle of the night because I was letting out undignified hoots of laughter at fifteen minute intervals in the dead silence of the night; she thought I’d finally lost my mind. Whoopaa!

And finally, I gots the visa! I’s cans travel to the U.S of A! Whoopaaa!

If there is one common denominator in all these developments, it’s mobility. And mobility is the source of all empowerment. One person no longer has restrictions to travel to a country where his life is. Another has moved on to greater popularity, readership with a chance to do something really magical with her writings. I’ve started moving physically and the rusted cogs in my mind and soul are slowly beginning to turn. They’re creaking and protesting but they’re definitely in motion. The flow of life is definitely back.

So here’s to mobility and the New Year: May you ALL dance into a new, glorious chapter of your lives, singing, celebrating and going WHOOPAAA!

The Reluctant Homebody

If you haven’t already read between the lines, let me say it clear and loud. I don’t really want to be a homebody. Every time I complain about being forced to go out, it’s a farce. I’m actually glad to go out, even though the process of going out and being-with-other-human-beings-who-are-not-on-television is a point of considerable stress for me. I imagine I’m too fat, that I’m uninteresting, that I’m uninformed and that people are inviting me out of pity. Naturally, this points to my own natural sense of low self esteem. Therefore, I’m a BAD homebody. The kind who should be sent to stand in a corner and face the wall.

Which begs the point: are there good homebodies? Absolutely. I am inspired by a friend who took a sabbatical for a year to re-group her priorities, values and spirit. She spent this year mostly exploring the inner recesses of her mind – i.e. meditating, doing yoga, gardening, reading, writing and literally just contemplating the truths of the universe. I’m sure she ventured out and met with a select few people through this course of twelve months. But she lived in herself, with herself. And now she’s coming out of it with a fresh outlook on society, behavior and morality and sharing her brilliant insights with the world on her own blog. She’s the real deal. She comes up with these sayings that I think are from the internet but are actually her own. Such as: "Righteousness is often deep envy in disguise."Doesn't that make you shudder?

Case in point: she opted to be homebody and benefitted by relinquishing, voluntarily, the rigmarole of life and then reaching a point of centered-ness. She made a change, inside-out.

So what’s the difference between a good homebody and a bad homebody, you ask? I answer you: state of mind. My friend opted to be a homebody. I became a homebody automatically, primarily because it’s in my family’s script to be homebound. I woke up and suddenly realized I had become me, primarily because I was hedged in by fears, insecurity and also many, many bad hair days.

The problem with my lifestyle is that it doesn’t reflect the true me. I belong on the dance floor. I belong on the stage. My soul is a grinning woman wearing red lipstick and black leather pants riding a Harley Davidson across the desert, with the sun in my face and the wind in my hair. It’s me snorkeling along the Great Barrier Reef. It’s me belly dancing in Rio, meditating on the hilltops of Sri Lanka. I’m a traveler, explorer, talker, discoverer, uninhibited inside. But on the outside, I’m homebody.

So where does that leave me now? Well, right now it leaves me here, in front of my laptop, writing to you.

But it leaves me in a position to change all this. I will start by taking small baby steps. And hopefully, you’ll be there to read my journey and cheer me on when I crawl back into bed, discouraged.

Fasten your seat belts! It’s going to be a bumpy ride! Well, at least I hope so, anyway.

The Fat Homebody’s Conversation of Comfort

Three things have happened to drive me to despair today.

I had 8 sets of papers, 310 essays of bad hand writing and grammar to correct. I consumed 10 Kit Kats and three boxes of Ferrero Rochers in the process of doing so.

I tried to resume my video Pilates routine and pulled a muscle in my back, thereby rendering physical movement impossible. I was stuck with my increasing weight for some while.

The zipper in my jeans slid down every time I leaned forward and I fought a futile battle with it, pulling it back up and sucking my breath in every time I sat down, but to no avail. It went down, slowly, inevitable, inexorably. Every-damn-time.

I was fat, wedged in and in pain.

The universe conspired against me and transferred my back pain to my neck, so that the only movement I could make was to look up and down – which meant that apart from feeding myself and correcting papers, I couldn’t do much else. It was purgatory. And I could feel myself expanding. Gravity was pulling me downward so that I sagged and drooped most unpleasantly.

The ultimate blow came when my cleaning woman came and gently said: ‘Shazaf thori moti ho gai hai.’ It’s bad enough that she called me fat, but she spoke about me in third person while she was doing it. That made me seem even bigger – as if wasn’t small enough in size to warrant a single person narrative.

So I went through the usual route of dealing with my angst. I blamed my mother for giving me slow metabolism. When that didn’t help, I updated my facebook status, at which a very physically fit and thin friend of mine wrote an ‘Ha ha! Told you not to eat those Kit-Kats’ response which made me want to gouge his eyes out. Having received no sympathy from my facebook friends, I did the next best thing and chatted with my best friend and it made me feel better. I shall record the conversation so that if ever YOU feel fat, you can recall this and feel better like I did afterwards. Or not. Your choice.

The conversation went something like this:

HB: F, I’m fat. I’m a fat, bulging piece of despair. I’m hideous. I sit down and my stomach folds into a capital, curvy m. Things are very, very bad. What do I do?

F: Are you sure you’re not over-reacting?

HB: I’m sure. I’m a sad, fat bulge of adiposity.

F: Do you want me to be your Diet Nazi?

HB: Um. No. Should I take some kind of medicine?

F: You’ll grow a beard.

HB: So there’s no hope? *Weeps*

F: Stop being pathetic.

HB: Okay. Make me feel better. Say something nice.

F: You have a nice smile.

HB: OH GOD! THAT MEANS YOU THINK I’M FAT! Now I feel nasty.

F: Listen, I saw you yesterday. You’re not fat.

HB: I’M NOT THIN EITHER!

F: What we need to do is re-define the stages of physical development.

HB: Yes! Let’s see. What are the stages?

F: Well, there’s anorexic which you don’t want to be.

HB: True, but then I’d be able to eat all those Kit-Kats and that would be a good thing.

F: Shut up, please. Then there’s normal. Then there’s blimpesque.

HB: Blimpesque?

F: My new word *looks proud*

HB: Am I blimpesque?

F: In my opinion you have not gained blimp proportions just yet.

HB: This is already making me feel better, strangely enough.

F: Good. Then after there are Fat Momma Jokes. After that, you can’t fit through your door way. These are the stages of being fat. You are not even close to these stages.

HB: Yes, yes. Actually, we can break down the stages of from thin to fat, can’t we. First: anorexic, then thin, then normal. Then blimpesque. Then blimpesquer. Then Nigella Lawson. And then the fat momma jokes.

F: Nigella is totally hot. If I were a man, I’d lust after her.

HB: I’m not a man and I still lust after her.

F: Hmm. Perhaps you can sexily lick butter?

HB: Actually, I’m going Pamela Anderson in one direction and J-Lo in the other.

F: Hmm. Well, that’s not such a bad thing. Guys will want to make fraandship with you. In fact, I may just be persuaded to send some suggestive texts to you myself.

HB: I am not responding to that. What I need is to reduce my behind.

F: Did you know your behind is your gluteus maximus. J-Lo has a nice maximus.

HB: Yes. But mine is wobblier. I know. I need to make mine a Beauteous Maximus.

F: That sounds like a plan.

HB: Okay. Thanks. I feel better.

F: You’re welcome.

Homebody’s Bad Habit

Sitting at home makes you a bitter person with dark, annoying habits. Of late, I can’t listen to anyone’s pain without going: ‘pfft…you think you’ve got problems? I’ll tell you what problems are, brotha!”

I just realized that I do this all the time. One of the blogs that I follow wrote about an embarrassing wedding experience. And what does homebody do? She leaves a comment to the effect of: “So, you call walking to the wrong wedding function in three inch heels mortifying? Hello sista, I went to a wedding and got tangled up in ma gharara and fell flat on ma face! Beat that!” To which the sensibly irked blogger replied, “Each loser to her own blog, okay?”

So I thought she was in a bad mood and sent her bad vibes until a friend called.

“Shaz, I’ve had a really traumatic day. My two year old has a problem with his teeth..”

“TEETH you say? You know what problems are? Problems are when you’re single without a man in this universe and breast cancer runs in your family. Problems are when you lose all your creative writings in one fell swoop because a two year old vomits on your hard drive. Problems are when you could be fired because your students can’t get their grammar straight. Now, are you seriously going to tell me about your baby’s teeth? Why the hell does your one year old have teeth? Is that even normal?”

“Erm…you know what, I’ll call another time…”

And the last straw:

I update my facebook status: “50 papers left to check. The end is in sight.” And my adorably sweet cousin happens to write, in a fit of sympathy, “I feel your pain.” And my response is what? “Unless you have an aching back and neck coz you pulled a muscle exercising, and then you have to correct a bunch a paypas, you ain’t feelin’ nothin’ sista!”

I didn’t get a comment back.

So Mariam, this is my apology to you and to all my friends who have approached me with problems and have been shot down because I want to win the Loser of the Year prize. I’m going to snap out of it as of NOW!

*Snap*!

Homebody Goes A-Walking Part Two

Well, at least I tried.

Fresh with the memory of being chased down by an old woman asking for twelve thousand rupees, I decided to take a break from the trauma of exercise. But when I broke a dining chair by sitting on it, it was decided I should brave the colony once again for another stint at exercise.

At first, things went well. Nobody interrupted me. Primarily because I was waking up at five a.m in the morning to walk; I read somewhere that morning was the best time to lose weight and since I do everything in extremes, I went from no movement to movement early in the morning. And when I managed it for a month, I patted myself on the back. I was committed-disciplined-thin-woman-of-steely-resolve.

Then, I met Nawab Achan Mirza.

That wasn't his actual name, but he looked like a momento from undivided India’s past. He sat on a bench outside the colony mosque; his starched, white kameez unbuttoned till his navel to reveal a hairless paunch. He was anywhere for sixty to seventy years old. He had a head full of hair and beady pupils that glared at you from slanted eyes. His lips were permanently pursed with disapproval and were the color of red betel-stains.

The man wore kola puris at five thirty in the morning. That should have been the first clue.

One day, as I walked past, Nawab Achan waved at me. I waved back and walked on.

The next day, he waved again. I nodded, waved back and walked on.

The next day, he flailed both arms at me as if he were drowning. It turned out he had been waving for me to stop and listen to what he had to say. Again, headphones came out. I walked up to him.

‘Come tomorrow,’ he said to me cryptically. ‘I have to give you a piece of writing.’

I nodded, turned and fled. But then, I lectured myself. I was no longer homebody. With my weight I had shed my fears. Woman-of-steel would go to strange-old-man and see what he gave her. I told my mother about him, who told me to change my route.

“What business does he have accosting a young girl at a time when no one is about? Nahi! Don’t walk by him anymore, I don’t like the sound of it.”

This was, of course, what I had thought of originally. But naturally, because Ammi had opposed it, I had to go.

But then, fate stepped in. I fell ill. Didn’t walk for a week. Felt bad that Nawab Achan would be waiting for me. But no matter. I’d meet him in some time.

And when I resumed my walk, I turned the corner towards the mosque. And I saw him. He hadn’t seen me yet. But what he was doing when he thought no one was looking stopped me in my tracks.

He was turning from one side to another, talking to himself. He opened and closed his mouth, the inside of which was blood red. His tongue was brown like muck and he stuck it out every time he turned to talk to his imaginary friends. And then he started moving his legs round and round, as if he were riding a bicycle. The pointed edge of his kola puris sliced through the air, making C shapes.

I stared at him in stupefaction. And then he saw me and stopped. His eyes narrowed and then he beckoned with a curled forefinger.

And for the second time in the history of my exercise attempts in the colony, I fled home. The next day I got a belly dancing DVD. Homebody happy exercising at home.

Homebody Becomes Nasty

I have a secret.

I hate children.

Not my sisters’ or brother’s babies. Although they were super annoying until they hit puberty. My way of dealing with them was to tease them SO mercilessly that when the time came for my siblings to appoint me as baby sitter, their kids would scream and go lock themselves up in the room all the while sobbing hysterically. Not her! Not her! they would plead. Suckers.

Therefore, pretty early on, as youngest Khala of nine brats, I figured out this ingenious way to excuse myself from nanny duties and ward off all infant terribles. Tis an achievement I’m proud of.

But, for the most part, I can’t stand other people’s children. I get a little seizure in my head when parents dote over their babies and expect me to do the same. Case in point:

Mum: OOO look! Khala is here!

Baby: looks like androgynous wheat sack in trousers.

Homebody Khala: (in the awkward position of having to show some kind of appreciation so as not to offend hormonal mum): Hello there little girl! (Pat, pat gingerly on bald head while thinking of the term ‘egg head’)

Baby: (Infantile censors of evil-diabolical torture have locked on to this humanoid who clearly detests me) Godi!

Mum: Oh how unusual! She never wants to go to any one else’s godi! You’re special!

Homebody: (muttering) I’m cursed that’s what I am. (takes baby in arms. Obligatory cooing noises while secretly wishing it comes down with a rash and does the world a social service by not leaving its house for at least a week.)

Baby: (NOW I’ve got her!) WAAAH! POOP! BARF!

Mum: Aw! Look! She’s so comfortable with you.

Homebody: TAKE THE DAMN THING OFF ME!

Mum: (takes baby back and looks hurt) She’s just a child.

Homebody: (hyperventilating) IT’S THE SPAWN OF THE DEVIL.

Mum stalks off, offended that I have insulted her spouse’s sperm.

Babies, until they reach the charming age of 18, are fat, dribbling, sniveling, spoilt, noisy twits with obese cheeks which wobble when they smile, like jelly fresh out of the mould. Their beady eyes stare, taunting you with a ‘If you don’t tell me I’m cute my mommy’s going to hit you and I know this very well so I am going to make all kinds of retarded faces and you had better go awwww or else.’ And then they have this unnerving habit of staring at you that is just creepy. Then all of a sudden they’ll go and do something annoying, like put their foot in a commode and stare at you triumphantly, or tear your Master’s thesis which is the only evidence you have that you were once smart. Or they will hit you. They ALL hit you. And you clench your fists and sit tight, telling yourself it’s not polite to hit a two year old back.

If you think I’m being nasty and insensitive, let me end by telling you that I detest children because I used to be one. Seriously. True story. I was a disaster! A veritable nightmare! People STILL hate me because I pulled their hair and gouged their eyes out while Ammi and Abu went How Shweet! I have had to apologize to every single one of my relatives and say: ‘My brain was developing in fits and starts, you see and my parents were forty years old and just very, very tired. No, don’t duck. I’m not going to hurt you. I promise.’

I suppose I attract little monsters because of the law of karma. Oh well, so be it.

Homebody Goes A-Walking - Part One

Right. This was getting ridiculous.

I put on a kameez and got wedged in. I flailed about, knocking a few books off the shelves as I bumped and writhed and jumped to coax it down my bulging frame. The flow of oxygen to my lungs became constricted because what once had been a nice loose shirt was now acting like a noose around my torso. I finally managed to wiggle my arms through the sleeves and pull the kameez down, but it tore down the back. I was officially fat from sitting at home and hogging. I needed to exercise.

The dialogue in my head went something like this:

“But..Homebody no want exercise!”

“Shazaf, stop calling yourself homebody. You’re not that lonely.”

“But…homebody no want exercise. Homebody want to sit in nice airy nightie. Homebody want to eat. Homebody depressed. FOOD! Homebody need food!”

But Shazaf won and Homebody lost; primarily because Shazaf, who was the responsible one and went out and made a living, couldn’t afford a new wardrobe. So she’d just have haul Homebody’s behind around the colony for a walk.

Living in a gated community is a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, it’s safe, everything is accessible: we have our own grocery store, dry cleaner and tailor. On the other hand, it encourages homebodies to never venture in the outside world. And the problem with having clean, safe roads with minimal traffic is that you can walk any time. With the result that you walk none of the time.

But this time I had no choice. I put on my old sneakers and trudged off with a frown on my face. The Mp3 player played ‘Girls Just Want to Have Fun’ by Cindy Lauper and I muttered ‘Yes, but sometimes they have to walk instead’ as I panted along, cursing my hips for their tendency to expand. I mean, whatever happened to high metabolism? This too was a gift from my genes, courtesy Ammi. When I was young, I used to be able to eat a cow and not gain any weight. And now one chip and suddenly I resemble the prize bull at AKD’s bakra-eid extravaganza? Come on! Where’s the justice?

Lost in my mutinous thoughts, I felt a hand tap me on my shoulder. I turned around to see an old lady wearing rubber chappals. She seemed perfectly respectable so I took my headphones out of my ears and said, ‘Jee, Auntie?’

“Beta, I’m from Lahore. I was visiting a family in this neighborhood – no, no, I am not going to take their name!” (not that I was asking), “but they’ve kicked me out. No one respects an old woman. I don’t know anyone in Karachi. I need some money to go back home. Help me beta! Help an old woman who is like your grandmother!”

This is why I don’t like going out to exercise.

“Jee, I’m so sorry but I think you should go back to your relatives and ask them to help you return home.”

“Nahi, Nahi beta! Don’t do this to me. Don’t leave me to those monsters!”

What the hell? I didn’t leave you anywhere! I didn’t know you until two seconds ago!

“Just twelve thousand rupees! That’s all I need!”

“But a ticket costs about twenty!”

“Acha, theek, give me twenty thousand!”

Smart. Real smart, Shazaf.

“Jee, I’m so sorry. I can’t help you.” Oh crap, she’s crying. “Wait! I know! The President of the Colony Committee lives just here! Let’s go to him.”

“Nahi, Beta! I don’t want to cause dishonor to my relatives.”

Well you were perfectly fine dishonoring them to ME!

“Jee..I …My.mother.told.me.not.to.talk.to.strangers.goodbye.God.be.with.you,” I blurted and ran as fast as my pudgy little legs could carry me, with the frail old woman following me with an agility that was surprising for a woman of her age.

“Beta! I need your help! Don’t leave a woman in need! Beta! Sweet Beta! Come back here you wretch! You little witch! I curse you! You hear that! The curse of a woman whom you left alone and helpless! Curse you and your entire family! Just twelve thousand rupees! What’s twelve thousand for someone like you! You who live in this fancy colony! COME BACK HERE!”

I ran faster and faster. Other people thought I was jogging until they saw the look of abject terror on my face. But finally, I lost her. I sped home and crawled under the bed.

Oh well, at least my first walk turned out to be a run. Chalo, the occasion calls for a Kit-Kat to soothe my ruffled nerves.

Homebody is Ridiculous

Now let me tell you that exams can make you silly with boredom, despair and loneliness. After having checked about 22 essays in one day I needed SOME distraction, but since it was Moharram, there was precious little I could do. Ammi was watching a majlis on TV and I was on the internet when I came across THIS:

Films by Doctors:

3 Injections
My name is Saline
X-Ray ho na ho
Kaho na Bukhar hai
Hum Blood de chuke sanam
Mere yahaan operation hai
Kaash aap hamare patient hote
Mein Dettol ki deewani hun
Hamara Thermometer aapke paas hai
Kabhi Drip Kabhi Injection

And then I heard my muse, who’s probably a fifth-grader wearing shorts and a cap with teeny helicopter blades on top. He whispered to me.

“You can do this too, Shazaf. There is no limit to the stupidity to which you can sink. I shall help you by spraying insight on you through the water gun of inspiration: BLAST! Ha ha! You’re wet!”

And so I began.

Kabhi Amoxil Na Kehna

Get Injected or get out

Chakkar pay Chakkar, morphine kay dum say (inspiration – Satay pe Satta)

Will you be my chammakchalo – BLESS YOU! Will you be my chammakchalo – BLESS YOU! Will you be my chammakchalo – BLESS YOU!

Tumhari grammar mari tau main kia karun

Tumhay chotain lagin tau main kia karun

Go ahead. Make my bed.

Frankly my dear, I don’t give an enema.

May the Surgeon be with you.

You want the bed pan? You can’t HANDLE the bed pan.

You’re gonna need a bigger catheter.

I’ll be back .. for rounds.

And there you go. My muse has gone to spray other people now. If he sprays you, do share what you come up with!

Homebody Makes a New Friend

Do you remember how you became first became friends with someone?

I realize now, sitting in bed and trying to drown out the noise of screaming politicians on the talk show that Ammi is watching that I have some really good friends. Thank God. But mostly I can’t pinpoint the one time we actually made that initial connection. What happened in that one moment that made us friends? Can’t remember. I tend to just chance on the realization that I’ve come to like someone enough to share my thoughts, feelings, and inane babblings with them without fear of being judged.

But today, I made a new friend and this is how it happened.

Friend: ‘All men are bastards!’

Me: ‘But YOU’RE a man.”

Friend: ‘Be that as it may. They’re all bastards. They will lust, not love.’

Me: ‘I know some who don’t lust.’

Friend: ‘They’re emancipated.’

Me: ‘Wha?’

Friend: (slices hand through air) You know. Emancipated.

Me: ‘Do you mean..castrated?’

Friend: Oh yes. Castrated. Not emancipated. Or emancipated in the physical sense, you could say.

And there you go. Connection forged. I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Homebody Tries to be Inspired – and FAILS

So based on my second post, a good friend wrote the following comment:

Dickinson? Your example reads like egocentric claptrap to me!!!Unless we go out into the world even just to observe others how can we write? Shall I give you a three word challenge to make a flash fiction with? Okay in case the answer is yes, pleiades, lagoon, exchange. Now write me something including those words you very talented writer! At least 300 words.

Warning: what follows below is utter nonsense proving that my muse has abandoned me to stark raving lunacy.

The pleiades were petulant because they had seen their reflections in the cosmic lagoon. Each had seen her face in the water and convinced herself that she was the best looking. The problem arose when they all said, at the same time "I am the fairest in the Upperworld!" Of course, that did not sit well with the others who entertained that particular notion about themselves. What followed therein was an exchange as fiery as the constellation they were named after.

‘Take that back! You have a snout for a nose with a wart in the middle and the hair that comes out if it as thick as a tree on Mars!’

‘There are no trees in Mars you physically compromised nitwit! Esmeralda will agree with me.”

“Yes, yes,” pitched in Esmeralda, cleaning her nose – a feat of epic proportion because her thumbs were as thick as pokers and her nostrils small: kind of a camel through a needle-hole affair. “I agree that Lavinia is far from luminous and you, my dear Plutinia are a nasally challenged! Excuse me while I breathe – been feeling short of air lately….BUT, you know how it is. I shined the brightest in the lagoon!”

“Shone you dolt!” pitched in Sisterella, who had hair coming out of her armpits. “And it was not YOU who shone brightest. It was me!” She stroked herself under her arms.

“We’re not talking about lack of hair fall sister dear. And you’re being a bit of a grammar nazi. You sound and look like a shrew!” Purilenda jumped into the extremely heated fray.

“Yes indeed, indeed,” agreed the sixth sister. “Shrewish is as shrewish does. But a nazi kills people on earth. So you mean to say that Fervinia is killing her own grammar? But let’s not have this debate. Brains take away attractiveness in a woman and I certainly don’t want that to happen to me.”

The seventh sister listened to all of this helplessly. She was the fairest of them all but her tongue had been cut out because she’d once sung a Justin Bieber song and caused a galaxy to erupt. What she was also noticing, with growing alarm, was that each sister’s temper was causing them all to glow. And we all know that with the seven sisters, it was glowing, going, gone.

On earth, seven sisters who were about to lose their shoes and meet seven handsome men commented on how the seven stars shone brighter than ever before.

The End

Sigh. See what I mean?

The Uninspired Homebody

You know, being a homebody had its perks for different people in the literary world. Case in point: Emily Dickinson and Emily Bronte. I think it has something to do with the name ‘Emily’. These women were cooped up in their homes. They had very little else to do besides daily chores and a few necessary visitations to the local parish and some relatives. Despite this, they led rich inner lives and wrote literature that can blow your mind away.

That’s another reason I blame my mum. Perhaps if I too had been named Emily, I might have turned out to be a great novelist or poet – I’d have SOMETHING to redeem my sorry, sedentary, homebody existence. But seeing how our nation has a knack for distorting perfectly respectable, simple names, I don’t know how I’d react to people referring to me as ‘Imlee’. Just imagine how I’d have been teased in middle school:

‘Imlee kee chatni,

Cheeni dali,

Phir bhi khatti

Imlee ki chatni!”

But to get back to Ms. Dickinson. She always wore white (she was probably as averse to clothes shopping as I am; complicated affair, that!) received guests reluctantly (ah! kindred spirit who lived too soon!) and towards the end of her life, didn’t even bother leaving her room. She sometimes spoke to her guests from behind her bedroom door, not even bothering to meet them face-to-face. How great would it be to receive spittle-challenged visitors who can’t keep their bodily fluids in their mouth when they talk at bay! They can spray your door while you yell at them from behind saying: “Waw? Waw you say? I can’t hear anything but slurping!” But I write no poetry and therefore have no skill to legitimize my impertinence.

And yet, and yet, hiding in her room, this is the kind of stuff she wrote:

I felt a funeral in my brain,
And mourners, to and fro,
Kept treading, treading, till it seemed
That sense was breaking through.

And when they all were seated,
A service like a drum
Kept beating, beating, till I thought
My mind was going numb

And then I heard them lift a box,
And creak across my soul
With those same boots of lead, again.
Then space began to toll

As all the heavens were a bell,
And being, but an ear,
And I and Silence some strange Race
Wrecked, solitary, here.

Can you feel the passion? The anxiety? The drumbeat of the heart? She sat in her room and wrote the world, the rhythm of life and the knell of death. No wonder she had no time for tiresome visitors. There were muses enough to give her company!

Emily Bronte was a teacher and homebody just like me. She did household chores, walked the moors and then came up with Heathcliff, who said things like:

“You deserve this. You have killed yourself. Yes, you may kiss me, and cry, and wring out my kisses and tears; they'll blight you - they'll damn you. You loved me -then what right had you to leave me? .. misery, and degradation and death, and nothing that God or Satan could inflict would have parted us, you, of your own will, did it. I have not broken your heart -you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine.”

I re-read this and my heart is torn over and over again. And this comes from a woman who spent her time with sniveling snots and taught them Sunday school, only to return to arduous household chores. YET she wrote about a man who was elemental, passionate, turgid, earthy, wild and alive; a masterpiece who the muse introduced to the solitary Ms. Bronte while she walked along the moors. Perhaps he was the muse who wrestled with her as she struggled against the wind and passed the graveyard on the way back home.

Both these women were homebodies. They consorted with muses and they shook the world. Many critics say they wrote thus because they were homebodies.

And then there’s me. Little old me. Okay, yes, I’ve gained a few pounds, but I could still, technically, from one angle, be described as little.

Okay fine. There’s me.

I have no muse. I think my muse gave up on me a long time ago. I can imagine her (respectable, Shia, Syed homebodies like me do not receive male visitors in their bedrooms, even phantasmagoric ones, thank-you-very-much) begging me to get up and type something, whispering poems and stories while I just clean my ear with a cutip and complain of ‘that buzzing sound’ and spray the entire room with Mortein.

Oh well. Here’s to all the homebodies who didn’t turn out like Madams Emily. It’s okay. We still exist, even though the only thing we have to show for it is a sizeable behind.

Homebody is Hysterical

Worse than being a regular fat homebody is being a fat homebody teacher at exam-time with no life at all. You sit at the dining table (which is the closest you will ever come to having an office space) and pore over bad handwriting and grammar and then collapse in tears of laughter, hysteria and depression – in that order – over your students’ brilliant creativity.

Case in point: Describe a food and the memories it brings to your mind.

I am sitting before the table, staring at breasts. Not human breasts. Breast of chicken a la kiev. They are round. They are plump. They are chicken’s breasts. I look at them and then I decide to eat them. The desire of my mouth overcomes the desire of my eyes. I pick up a ---- (space left for me to fill because he can’t remember that ‘kaanta’ translates into fork) and cut into the bossom of the chicken. (Yes, you’re right. Bosom. Not bossom.) I cut a piece and put a dollop into my mouth. I am eating breasts. I am enjoying breasts.

Well, at least it’s written correctly, right? It’s better than this:

Write a story in which things begin to happen in slow motion.

She didn’t got time to climb the seerhi. She couldn’t breathe because hot air was passing. She needed to go up. She looked down at the stairs and then bent her neck (a remarkable feat of cervical flexibility) and then bent her leg and her hip and put her feet on the first stair. Then she singed to me: ‘Mohammad! Come help your grandmother! And when I come to help her, she finds it easy. She starts hovering like a hovering craft.

My the breath also begins to come in short gusts like a waterfall and the tears that flow from my mouth to my tongue like the wind of a fan. So I bend my knee and my ankle and spring up from my chair on which I am sitting and then walk over to the fridge and reach for a ‘Kit-Kat’ which is in inverted commas because I have decided I need to get marks on the punctuation as the well.

It’s homebodies like me who keep the chocolate industry going. You’re welcome, Nestle!

The Curious Case of Two Homebodies in the Night

The thing about homebodies is that we attract other homebodies. Most of my friends are stay-at-home mums, divorced or single. Or they are teachers and writers. All people-who-are-stuck, in one way or another.

I have ONE fun friend. Ever since she married, she ditched me. No, that’s not entirely true. She does generously take out time once a month to catch up with me, for which I’m extremely grateful. She is also nice enough not to tell me too much about her life, so that resentment doesn’t enter the equation between us.

So here I was, in bed, with my mother, my sixty-nine year old, conservative, be-back-at-8:3- mum, having left the house at nine to attend a mehndi with friends.

Kill me, just kill me, it’s come to this. Ammi’s the one dressing up and saying cheerio and prancing out the door while I’m watching a re-run of Vampire diaries because that’s the only darn Dvd that works.

So I called a fellow homebody, who answered her cell phone with a resigned, ‘Hmm.’

“Hey! It’s me, Shazaf!”

“Hmm…”

“Bad time?”

“No, I am depressed.”

These four beautiful words made me feel better instantly. I was not alone. My misery had more company than two handsome vampires and a girl with an unnaturally small waist. This was a real, live, breathing, talking human being, and she was all mine! And the best part about this was that she was in a homebody-mode, hence, there was no life to suck out of her. WE COULD BE OURSELVES! Hallelujah!

I suggested we meet, which was not too uncharacteristic a suggestion since my friend was also my neighbor. And meet we did. One look at each other and we decided that the only thing that could cheer us up was chocolate.

So we got into my car and drove off, giggling hysterically precisely because there was nothing to giggle about. Our conversation went something to the effect of:

“Oh God! We’re so pathetic!”

“Totally agree. BUAAHAHAHAHAHA!”

“Oh God! Look at that man scratching his crotch!”

“BUAHAHAHAHA!”

“Oh look! A baby in a pram.”

“BUAHAHAHAHAA!”

“Shall we drive into it?”

*Pause*

My friend, a mother of two, turned around to look at me. I looked at her, thinking I’d overstepped the boundaries. After all, killing of infants is a joke only single women find funny.

And then: “BUAHAHAHAAHA!” Apparently, mothers of toddlers find the thought of infanticide infinitely humorous too.

We drove to the grocery store in hysterical fits of cackling. And I realized I didn’t know how to park (problem with being a homebody, you don’t get out in rush hour and hence have no NEED to park). But what the hell? We were having an adventure! If a passerby were to walk by our car, he’d see two disheveled women in their thirties grinning maniacally at the pavement, threatening to kill it with my driving skills.

So I parked in the middle of the road and we ran inside. I picked up four Kit-Kats and a couple of Mars-Bars and drove back to her house and comfortably ensconced myself in her drawing room.

Another thing I can tell you: when two homebodies get together, you’re in for a great conversation. We don’t do much, therefore we think a lot. And analyze the hell out of everything. It’s delicious in a way that only other homebodies can understand. You know how it is. You’re curled up on a sofa with a chocolate in the hand, becoming all gooey and sticky on your fingers as you pour your heart out about what’s bothering you. And the great thing is that what’s bothering you is not much. No one is about to die (not that we know of) and nothing tragic has happened. It’s this niggling, New Age sense of something being not-quite-right that only women in upper-class homes have the privilege of experiencing.

We ate and spoke and ate and spoke. We paused only to drink water and talked some more. Before you knew it, two hours flew by and we had not said enough. It was perfect.

And instantly, I was reminded of the women of Kalash and ancient Greece. (You can get, from my digression, how post-modern our conversation was and how intellectual it made me feel). These were women who sat at home, tended to their husbands and children and worked a monotonous routine day in and day out. Then, for one month of the year, they dump their pots and pans and wailing infants and retreat, in a giant group, to a far off location. The Greek women went to an island, perhaps Lesbos, and sang and danced and ate and talked the heads off each other. They probably had sex with each other too, but that’s material for another blog. The women of Kalash also go off and braid each other’s hair and talk and dance and eat and give vent to all the emotions that do rise up because historically, women have tended to be homebodies. I’m sure men approved of this custom because their wives returned in much better moods.

By meeting like this, my friend and I were paying homage to an old homebody custom. Except in the modern world, it’s not possible to go off and braid each other’s hair for a month. We just don’t have enough hair. No, two hours would have to suffice.

I returned, refreshed, expecting to find my mother frantically looking for me all over the place: behind the cupboards, under the bed (true story, once, as a child, she DID find me under the bed) and braced myself for a tongue lashing. I saw her lying in bed quietly. I asked her if she was okay. It turns out she’d gone to the mehndi and returned an hour later – she missed my dad (who’d passed away two years ago) too much.

So, after spending a great evening with one homebody, I climbed in with another; one who was bruised, hurt and missing her man. I hugged her tight and went to sleep. Sometimes, being a homebody can be an infinitely precious opportunity: it gives you time to take care of the people who really matter.

Confession # 1 - I am Homebody

So I came to the realization yesterday that I’ve become a homebody. Not an exciting I-am-spiritual-and-have-to-do-lots-of-cool-things-at-home-body. My movements have actually been confined to the narrow radius between my bed and the television that’s about three steps away. Exercise consists of rolling to one side of the bed, beating up the pillow into shape so it can form the perfect back-rest, then beating it up again a few hours later after I have crawled-trudged to the television to put in a new DVD in the player and then collapsed back on the bed. I knew I needed help when I had a near existential crisis the moment I discovered I was on my last Tudors season. No more Jonathan Rhys Meyers jumping on the bed, literally and metaphorically.

Of course, when the high of Lays and Pepsi deserts you and Jonathan bows out with a cruel smile and you are left staring at your bloated reflection on the black screen of despair, you begin to indulge in a bout of self-pity. What brought me to this? How did I, who was meant to run an NGO, be an actress and record my own album, write my own book and win a Nobel Prize for Literature, marry a gorgeous man and bring up a picture-perfect family, end up like this? So I did what every mature twenty-nine year old woman who had seen a lot of the world does: I blamed my mother.

You see, my mother was the protective sort. All the Dawn headlines proclaiming theft, murder, arson where ingested by her wide-eyed person as she convinced herself that if she didn’t take care of every step I took, I would be the subject of such criminal violence. Ever since puberty hit and I began, in Gwendolin Fairfax’s words, ‘to develop in every direction’, my mother became super paranoid. I couldn’t go to the beach because I’d be raped. A bunch of girls from IBA had gone to the beach twenty years ago and had been raped while their male friends helplessly looked on. I couldn’t go to restaurants because once a man had fallen in love with a school girl and abducted her and taken her to his haveli in interior Sindh and had his way with her. I couldn’t go to the market after nine because the shopkeeper, seized with a frenzy of passion, would shut up shop with me in it and chase me around the counter while I fended him off with strepsils, makhi-mars and bunties.

I couldn’t go to night-spends because all my friends had brothers waiting to rape me. When I went to my first co-educational school for my A-levels, the boys, whether they showed it or not, were also waiting to rape me, hook me on drugs and then party all night. It took about two weeks for me to realize that men were normal creatures who didn’t think with their phallus all the time (well, most of the time) and so I began to make friends.

But then came the problem with my ten o’clock curfew – I couldn’t go to parties or hang out with my friends and so school and university passed perfectly respectably, without a single fling or romance. I studied, did my assignments, watched some television and then went to bed. With the result that I have now become a teacher. I GIVE assignments, watch some television, then go to bed.

So as I lie in bed and type this blog, I realize that I am a homebody. Always have been, am, and looks like always will be. My life has come full circle. And, looking at the effect of this sedentary routine on my figure, I feel it apt to say, I AM a full circle.

Confession # 2 - This Homebody Writes about Other Homebodies

Being a homebody isn't just something that's funny. There are women who are confined to their homes in the name of marriage. I have been such a woman, but luckily, I got out early. This woman didn't. This is her story.