Tales from the Kaava Place

Come have times when the quintessential Pathan and I have sat down in conversation where the gentleman from the ancestral north has broadened my horizons.

I was having kaava at a place near jheel park (which by the way has the best kaava ever) and playing with google maps on my stolen phone when the random man sitting opposite me engaged me with his sad countenance, almost pitying me.

Sidenote: the guilt is tearing me apart and I have to confess. I msWorded "facial expression" to get countenance. In my defense, countenance was right there at the tip and it was drilling a hole in my brain and I had to.

Anyway, the dude tells me that I should throw away my cellphone and landline and television and I'm sure he would have mentioned this very computer too had he known it existed, reason being that the airwaves disturbs "jo hawa mei hai". I, captivated with doe eyes, ask "khuda?" "Nahi...chirriya" he replies. Now I'm smiling but listening intently when he tells me how they get back at us by sitting on the wires that carry these signals and somehow disturbing us through these inventions. Now I'm torn in focusing between the conversation and the debate churning in my mind of what substance this man abuses. He was pretty thorough with the technical details and Pashtu jargon and the fact that a man of such complex thought be so confident in this bizarre a thought really liberated me. And in a very non-sarcastic way. That feeling of not caring about how the other person will think you're insane and saying what you really feel inside. I finished the cup soon after and went home a little wiser.

Neverland

There are things that we talk about but we never talk of them. We make a joke or two and during the laughter, hint at something and test the other person's waters. If the expression is stormy, we wait it out and sometimes, like George Clooney in a movie about storms, "it" dies. Sometimes a calm expression is expected and received with a furthering of conversation that gradually ends in something coming up and that something is talked about. It's essentially called beating around the bush. I would call it that too if it wasn't for the other person knowing exactly where the conversation is heading, so technically it's not really beating but more like "prologuing" the bush. It's a diplomatic verbal build up before a bomb of any size is dropped. One should not expect the bomb after small talk (for the sake of being civil and polite) but the truth is that the bomb almost always comes. The idea of the prologuer/bomber is to warm up the conversation before the payload is dropped on the now more vulnerable other. This should not be confused with the build up of a story that is hardly a bomb. And if I didn't mention before, prologuing a woman of your dream is understandable. Totally. A base example would be when a person you often dream about is standing in front of you and you can't help smiling. You don't want to be too forward, so you talk about the excellent time in the toilet you just had and how it makes you smile ever so. To contrast, it would be unwise to freak her out by mentioning how you keep seeing her in a surreal symbolic fashion and how you always wake up smiling when you do. Besides you have nothing to form a plausible picture to give weight to the vivid imagery floating in your head. Or even words that won't make a total ass out of you.
Now I understand the mechanism but it doesn't make it any less strange, even though I'm no stranger to prologuing. I think my brain development stagnated when I hit 18 so I don't, read: can't, appreciate these tools, among many others, that give us that refined mature sheen...that veneer of tact. When there's a favour needed, that two minutes of small talk just seem kinda fake and lifeless especially when at that moment you couldn't give a rat's ass about how the family and pet dog are doing. And when the person you're talking to is smart enough to recognize the prologue, then it's fake times two. I guess the other is then also smart enough to realize that prologuing's a standard protocol. But then again, I take the shotgun rule way too seriously.
My friends think I'm stuck in the '90s. Not that the shotgun rule was invented in the '90s, maybe because we used to adhere to such rules then. Then I happen to love bands from the '90s. Not all of them! It's not my fault Tool was formed in 1990. And according to wiki, Third Eye Blind in the early 1990s. Nirvana, I find out from the same source, was formed in 1987. Maybe they're right about the music. Apparently I dress '90s too, if there is such a thing. Did it really change so much for men? And then there are the stories and girls which and who only sometimes manage to date back to the '90s. But the whole idea gives weight to my original theory of being stuck at 18. That's supposed to either make me enjoy life like there is no tomorrow and full of youth and its follies or present me as a rather sad individual, stuck in the past, who shuns responsibility, to family I guess. Wow, the latter really brings out the duality of my Neverland. Who knows, even Peter Pan sometimes might have wished he would just grow up.


There are those times in my life when headlights are peering into and piercing right through me and the deer in me doesn't have a clue as what to do or say next. That's the Moment of Truth. And I go back to the mitti I came of.

A Modest Plan

"Now, a staple of the superhero mythology is, there's the superhero and there's the alter ego. Batman is actually Bruce Wayne, Spider-Man is actually Peter Parker. When that character wakes up in the morning, he's Peter Parker. He has to put on a costume to become Spider-Man. And it is in that characteristic Superman stands alone. Superman didn't become Superman. Superman was born Superman. When Superman wakes up in the morning, he's Superman. His alter ego is Clark Kent. His outfit with the big red "S", that's the blanket he was wrapped in as a baby when the Kents found him. Those are his clothes. What Kent wears – the glasses, the business suit – that's the costume. That's the costume Superman wears to blend in with us. Clark Kent is how Superman views us. And what are the characteristics of Clark Kent? He's weak, he's unsure of himself, he's a coward. Clark Kent is Superman's critique on the whole human race."

This is the part of Kill Bill just before Bill gets killed. I was thinking about this, staring at the big red "S" on the wall, instead of sleeping. Plant mechanics disallow me from shutting the big white light in my room until it's 6. And now that it's 6, I feel more like writing than sleeping.

Superman stands for truth, justice and the American way. What better way to market a lifestyle than God's human vessel dressed in red and blue. I think "they" got to me too. I happen to love Superman. He has heat vision and flies. Nothing penetrates his skin and nothing messes his hair. And faster than a speeding bullet, he becomes SuperVoyeur with the nifty X-ray vision. And unlike gods of today, it's not the powers that make him or the absence of a tragedy that define him. It's the utter disinterest in his passion for saving the world. He doesn't growl to himself about how it's his duty or his responsibility, he merely acknowledges his superior disposition and does his job. And then, he has the balls to go into human costume and deal with women and deadlines. I respect that.
Now if I had those cojonies, I'd march up to the northernmost room in the house and tell my dad that I wanted to keep Monty and that was it. What actually was "it" was that some time ago, a certain individual had an evil dream about me parading my snake on a leash and getting eaten by a cat. Much parallel, i borrowed from my cousin her weird glass art project and fitted in an energy saver, made it nice and sandy and put Monty in his new quarters, proud of my presentable snake. And then my dad, the analogous alpha billa, sees him and denies my pleas of letting me keep Monty. And for these reasons, juvenile later turning postal, I want my own place. Where I can garden and read, smoke and be free. And sleep comma dream.

For everything else

Exams have ended among other things and the dearth of things to do is frustrating. Monty needs to be fed but the idiot refused a piece of rare prime steak. Imagine the rich feces that follows. Very unlike my pockets at the moment.

It's the end of the month and I am broke. The reasons I tried to feed Monty a bite of my steak was because, a) borrowing money to buy snake food kinda reveals I have a snake and b) it's embarrassing asking her for money at this unemployed age. This tells me to get a job and be productive. But the kind of jobs that you get at my level of education are internships or volunteer work. Ironically, the kind that needs other motivation than monetary. I don't particularly love money but like a righteous hypocrite, I enjoy what temporary tricks it can pull off. Keeping that in mind, we can devise a theory that divides happiness in two: Consumer Happiness and Capital Happiness. The former will only take you high enough and suddenly you're hit with a vertical line on the graph relating price and utility where the price keeps increasing but you don't get any happier. Capital Happiness take a heavy one-time investment and probably a few repair jobs in the year but the peace of mind lasts for a loooong time. You can buy the latest levis from the store or finding your dad's old classic straight fit levis with your waist from 1985 during moving. Priceless. And it just occurred, from muttering that word, that Mastercard developed and pushed this theory way before me.

.Internet connection? Rs. 1500

.Consuming a cigarette while writing this? Rs. 6 and much of my health.

.Finding out that your very original idea is known to all and sundry and used as a slogan by a commercial giant? Priceless