International Gorillas

Slackistan almost became that movie that people talked of so much that you no longer want to watch it. It's not like they talked about it; just how they weren't able to see it anywhere. The censor board apparently have their knickers in knots about a story of young people figuring out their lives and have banned the film in Pakistan. But if that Islamabadi girl I knew of from school could end up on the internet without her permission, why couldn't this movie too? I was under the impression that there was no sort of intellectual property that you can't pirate on the internet and I used to smirk thinking that when the grand time did come for I and all my ego to find the movie, we'd find it. The 15th page of "slackistan torrents" had me quitting and checking "dealing with failure" instead.
The incident reminded me of another time when I was looking for another desi movie that was proving itself hard to find. It was International Gorillay (1990) starring the who's who of Lollywood back in the day. The quest for this movie led me to the shadiest part of Rainbow Centre and even then I couldn't find it. It was available for $15 from a guy in Arkansas who dealt in cult but he would take cash only and that kinda killed it.
The premise was kept rather simple where a band of crooks and thieves reform themselves and then set out to kill ... Salman Rushdie. This Salman Rushdie is like a crime kingpin who is hell bent on destroying Islam as we know it ... by building casinos and making Babra Shareef dance. This Salman Rushdie also dies at the miraculous hands of ... the trinity of holy books ... that shoot lightning. Now this could be the work of opportunists who rushed to take advantage of the anti-Rushdie fervour that was spreading at that time OR I had acid and dreamt all that. Unfortunately for all of us, it's probably the former.
If anyone does have the film or would like to meet a paranoid dude in Arkansas for this brilliant cause, you know where to find me.
Next topic: Whatever happened to Babra Shareef? And can her dance really kill Islam? Stay tuned...

Toilet Humor

The bathroom: say what you will, it still remains the most inviting room in the house. More often than not anyway. It's that one room where you truly appreciate the sanctity of privacy, that one room where you're comfortable enough to sing like American Idol gone bad. My bathroom has also became a temporary home for the laptop, the only place from where it gets a decent signal from the neighbors' router. Contrary to my friends believing the bathroom to have become a squalid porn den, it's the only room in the house with internet. Thus me sitting on the toilet seat, lid down ofcourse, trying to type from a foot away.
The Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited has decided to fuck itself with my DSL line. Like a man unable to come in terms with his erectile dysfunction (pun not intially intended), PTCL has refused to even admit there's a problem. So until complaint no. 135, 287 and 315 get sorted, I'll just have to keep using that annoying neighbor's bountiful internet. Yes, I just put in annoying so I wouldn't look so bad stealing a tax payer's internet.
But regardless of the presence of a computer noisily downloading torrents and alleged questionables, the bathroom still plays a versatile role in a young man's life. Some uses are as follows:

• It's that welcoming friend in the darkest and most desperate of times. Dark, as an expression.
• It's one of the best places to have a sandwich. It can be made airtight so the sandwich retains its delicious flavour and also has an electronic exhaust system for easy evacuation, should the aroma be not needed in an emergency.
• It's also the place where you can get your best reading done. Many a visits to my ghusl khana have prolonged to cover an entire chapter of the midterm syllabus. It's got quite the academic air about it. And wind.
• Talking to a girlfriend in the vicinity of hovering parents. Be wary of the all-revealing echo though.
• That last place to look for immediately needed stuff. My keys usually turn up by the sink.
• The perfect place to keep that secret pet.
• Appreciation of life. You don't know how good you have it until you defecate in a smelly hole in the ground.

It is, obviously, not restricted to these and it's interesting to think how other people would use their bathrooms in an non-obvious way. And while we're all not as innovative as the guy in Saw, it's seemingly hard not to be fascinated with this humble jack of all rooms.

Triptic

I have never been comfortable around tea. The very smell of it makes my skin crawl. Not the green kind. I love the green kind. I'm talking about the black one. To think of even coming into contact with such a hideous enemy makes me want to hurl. Or made my skin crawl and hurl. No preference in the order.
But then it happened. Countless times I've seen tea spill on people and I knew all that laughing I did then was going to get me in the bad with karma. The cup shook for a fraction, my life flashed before my eyes, it dropped with the loudest bang and in an instant my jeans...my precious jeans...were soaked in doodh patti. My worst nightmare had unfolded in a second. Now if I was in my room, I'd make a GASP!, then try to overcompensate by a fake grunt and then run to the shower. But we were in the middle of the desert and 20 minutes away from the comfort of running water. The running water in my bathroom that is. So I did what any other sellout would have done: I ran all those happy chai commercials in my mind and just kinda accepted I was being stupid before. You don't want the utter dissonance of the situation to get out of hand so you pretend to see the rationale of it all. Tea's not so uncomfortable anymore.
:(