August 28th, 2008

Languages made more fun.10
knicq posted in Knicqisms on April 5th, 2008

Learning a new language is always exciting. What make this exercise amusing are the faux pass which are inevitably part and parcel of any such exercise. I am reminded of this one incident many years ago, when my Arabic vocabulary did not exceed seven words, even including Yalla, Shoofi, and Marhaba - which discerning readers will know are the three words every expatriate, whether or not worth his visa, knows.

Rewind to 2000: I had just got my driving license, which I had interpreted as “License to drive like crazy”, and was busy leaving a trail of clenched fists and choice words in my wake. One not so fine morning, I was running late for office, and as was the UAE driving code (unofficial) rather than offense those days, I decided to swerve out of a painfully slow moving lane and back in closer to the underpass we were all crawling towards - after all I was running late, and the other people seemed to be well in time for wherever they were headed so patiently. Unbeknown to me though, there was a gentleman of the law enforcement department stationed at the said entrance to ward off exactly the kind of butting in I had planned. He was visibly amused by what must have appeared to be my total disregard for the presence of a man in uniform when breaking a ‘lesser known’ law, and decided to express his appreciation directly. He was more than amused, when I tried to pretend that I had not seen his invitation to pull over and accept a compliment form him. The diligent officer of the law that he was, he decided to step right in front of me to draw my attention to him. Not left with an option, I pulled over.

We were still going through the formalities of wishing each other a splendid day ahead, when something I said seemed to stir something deep inside the officer, and his expression changed just as I stammered, “Kuntu… kuntu…muta-akhir” which in Fusha should have meant “I was… I was… late…”. He cut me short with a curt (and mocking) “Shoo Kuntu, kuntu…” and issued me a ticket! My conversational Arabic has come quite a few furlongs since, but for the life of me I have not been able to figure out what it was that changed obvious adulation to express reprimand.

There have been instances though that have helped me understand just how that might have happened. As much fun as languages might be, the perils of communicating serious matters in a language not entirely within one’s grasp can hardly be over-stated. Take, for instance, the incident when HPN and I were half-way through a disagreement - and were already past the poking, interrupting, not-listening, and starting-every-sentence-with-a-firm-negative stages (all acts initiated, and carried out most professionally by yours truly) which mark the futility of any further discourse on a given matter, and underline the importance of discarding the discussion altogether lest it might become a scar on a valued friendship, when HPN in his trademark “Stephen Covey” inspired communication technique answered one of my more potent objections thus: “Merey bhai, main samajh raha hun tum kahan se aa rahe ho!”

It stunned me into silence. Then I almost died laughing.

I am afraid the hilarity of this incident cannot be translated, but here is what happened: HPN translated the rather over-rated English phrase ‘I understand where you are coming from’ literally in Urdu, and since there is no such expression in Urdu, my immediate response was to think where I was coming from physically while my sub-conscious initiated the signal telling me something somewhere was fishy. It took me a moment to figure out what had happened, and then of course the discussion was altogether forgotten.

HPN has a penchant for language gaffs; there was this other time, when Jalali Baba and HPN had found themselves in an Egyptian restaurant, and when the waitress arrived to take the order, HPN, who unlike Jalali Baba was brought up in the Middle East, and was hence expected to take charge of the situation when two desis ended up in an Arab restaurant, cleared his throat and proceeded very confidently to place his order in English after addressing the waitress in Arabic. Even today, four years after the incident, Jalali Baba recounts the horror of that day not without a hint of shudder. HPN had addressed the waitress as “Ya Akhi!”, (O Brother!). JB says the expression on the waitress’ face almost made her into an ‘akhi’ for a few seconds, until she realized what she was up against, and decided to let it pass.

The two HPN incidents cannot, however, be used to illustrate the point I am trying to make. The inherent flaw with these examples is that they involve HPN whose communication skills might be exemplary in the confines of an office, but are stuff of legend for all the wrong reasons amongst us friends.

This is why I must end this post with an incident that transpired in our multi-ethnic office. Quite a few of my colleagues in my previous office were from India, and about half of them hailed from the southern part of the country, where Urdu and Hindi are scarcely, if at all, understood. We spoke a mixture of watered down English-Urdu-Hindi combo in the office, unless of course the conversation took place between one from the north of India and yours truly, when we could shift into comfortable desi talk sans English. One day as a couple of northern desis sipped their coffee over a discussion about a genocide situation in Iraq or some such hot spot, one of our dear south Indian colleagues ‘G’ who had been listening in too, interrupted the discussion wanting to know what had cutting of mangoes got to do with loss of human life in a volatile part of the world. Blank expressions and a lot of blinking ensued. ‘G” sensed something was amiss, and proceeded to repeat his question, to which he got what should have been a satisfying answer - The cutting of mangoes had nothing to do with anything that was being discussed, and what did he mean by bringing up mangoes in the middle of a serious discussion.

“Did you not just mention cutting of mangoes?”, he charged.

“Absolutely not!”, came the reply.

“Then what was that qatl-e-aam about?”, he seemed to have nailed the audience. Because the audience did go silent.

Qatl-e-aam is an Urdu word for Genocide/Mass Murder, ‘Qatl’ meaning murder, “Aam” meaning ‘General’. Aam is also the word for mango, and our friend did a splendid job of putting two an two together.

Poor guy - genocide and mango festival have since become interchangeable terms in the office when he is around.

The Shame of a Nation.13
knicq posted in Knicqisms on November 16th, 2007

http://lahore.metblogs.com/

Imran Khan. The only time I saw him play was in the World Cup 1992, and we won that World Cup, the only time we ever did. Until we win the next world cup (Sigh!), as in when we next win it, for me Pakistan’s moment of cricketing glory will always be that picture of Imran Khan lifting the World Cup aloft.

On what was one from a succession of the saddest days in our history, Imran Khan arrived at the Punjab University, the oldest cradle of learning in the city of “Zinda-dilan”, to lead a protest of students against the imposition of emergency. Imran is in his mid-50s, and can scarcely lay a claim to being one of those students - but if generation after generation of Pakistani youth ever had an icon, it was Imran Khan. Mobilizing the student body is the surest way of de-stablilizing a dictator - hark back to Ayub’s 60s - and Imran is thus the nation’s best shot. He rules hearts. He may not be the greatest thing that ever happened to the political scene, arguable as even that may be, he is head and shoulders above the lot of them politicians all. Upon his arrival, he was whisked away by the goons of IJT (Islami Jamiat Talaba - the student wing of Jamat-e-Islami that party of bigots and ignorants who enjoy no popular support but lay claim to all matters of National importance in the name of Islam whilst their actions are summarily in contradiction to all tenets of Islam), who manhandled him, locked him up, according to some reports even beat him up with some assistance from the Government goons in plain clothes, and then handed him over to the police force, who are filing anti-terrorism charges against him for inciting trouble.

As someone who has seen Jamiat’s ghundagardi first hand, albeit at a negligible scale comparatively speaking, I have never had any love lost for these rascals - but this time they went too far, way too far. Whether one agrees with Imran or not, nothing changes the fact that he is a National Hero, one of the VERY few we have, and this episode of him being manhandled by goons masquerading as students is outrageous and shameful.

Not that we need indicators to tell us how quickly we are spiraling downhill, but if we ever needed one, this is it. It is ironic that we should be losing an ODI series in India after almost a quarter of century, and lets remember ODIs came along a little over a quarter of a century ago, pretty much about the time we were disgracing ourselves manhandling the man who was called a tiger (should be called a Lion now), earned us the image of fighting tigers who may be down but never out, and won us the ODI World Cup. It is not about Cricket, and that is saying a lot, since it is always about Cricket, just this once it is not, but this just isn’t Cricket - if you know what I mean.

One hopes this will mark the beginning of the end for Jamiat + Jamaat (and Musharraf too, not to mention the MQMs, Chaudharies, Benazirs et al) … one hopes, and prays ever so fervently.

I salute each of these students who has come out to protest this despicable transgression. May Allah see us through these turbulent times. Ameen.

Comment Gone Lengthy - Emergency.1
knicq posted in Comments Gone Lengthy, Knicqisms on November 9th, 2007

It is unfortunate, isn’t it? When we have to settle for a dictator as a lesser evil, when looking to choose a leader?

But I do think we need to guard against the impression that the economic development which came about in Pakistan had anything to do with Musharraf. We did not see much of that ED in the two years preceding 9/11. Fact is our economy was actually in doldrums precisely because of the sanctions we had been saddled with because of Musharraf usurping power from the civilian Govt. Post 9/11 the west chose to lift those sanctions because it suited their purpose, just as they chose to turn a blind eye to the farce Musharraf had held in the name of elections recently, because it suited their purpose. The lifting of those sanctions, the trickling in of foreign aid - trickling because Musharraf accepted peanuts for putting Pakistan on the front-line of a war which is not ours in the first place, combined with the Arab states deciding to invest their petro-dollar in places other than the west after 9/11 and the ready availability of investment avenues in Pakistan, ironically because of the infra-structure the Sharrif Government had put in place, is what had led to the economic prosperity. Let us not forget that the economic prosperity has come at a great cost - the law and order situation has deteriorated, we are fighting a civil war in our own backyard, and for the first time in our history there are elements in our midst questioning the two-nation theory, the very premise of creation of Pakistan.

I disagree with the notion that there is such a thing as too much judicial interference.  The very purpose of having a judiciary is to ensure that the rule of law is followed, and the rights of a citizen are guaranteed, and every single citizen is innocent until proven guilty. These are basic human rights, which if not guaranteed can allow draconian rule to tighten its grip on a people, a country. The judiciary is well-within its rights to demand an explanation for any arrests, to ask for arrested people to be presented before it and to be charged with an offense, or be released from custody.

The judiciary must be convinced that there was credible proof to black-list those black-listed.

Suicide bombers are a curse, a curse we must rid ourselves of, and a curse we must defend the image of Islam from. But the imposition of emergency has very little to do with controlling the suicide bombings. What makes a suicide bomber, and where are all these suicide bombers coming from are two very important questions, but they are not pertinent to the emergency.

This emergency has been imposed because a dictator wishes to prolong his rule, and because he foresaw the judiciary throwing a spanner in his works, and it must be fought tooth and nail precisely because it threatens and goes against every tenet of Islam, and every standard of humanity.

Bigger countries with greater problems have not only survived crises after crises without emergency, but they have also come out the stronger for it. No one institution knows all the answers - it is only through strengthening all of the institutions, judiciary being foremost amongst them that nations conquer crises and turmoil. What falls outside of judiciary is extra-judicial, and there are few bigger curses than a Government with rampant extra-judicial ambitions.

It is a black black day, when an extra-judicial government bundles the judiciary out for interference in its extra-judicial activities.

We both come from the same premise, we want the best for the country. Quite apparently though we differ in what is better for the country, and that is what is important we must all have our opinion, and we must be able to differ without having to fear that too much differing will take us half a century back in time.

Movie Review: Khuda Ke Liye8
knicq posted in Knicqisms on November 7th, 2007

I had seen “Khuda ke Liye”, the movie, some time ago. It was a disappointing experience and I had wanted to share that disappointment here in knicqland. Nothing led to anything, and the sharing never happened. Incidentally, when the movie was released here in the UAE, a certain euphoria gripped the Pakistani community simply because here was finally a Pakistani movie decent enough to take your friends from across the border to. I wonder when will our collective India-fixation leave us. (Sigh!) Perhaps just about the time the Indian media is liberated from its Pakistan-fixation. Another discussion, another time. Anyway, I ended up getting drawn into a discussion, and thought I might as well make it into an update. Here goes then, a response sent in two installments:

a) Not the best of times to be airing one’s opinions on movies with everything else that is unfolding in the land of the pure. But let me limit my response to the topic, which is this movie which everyone seems to be so taken with.I am afraid I am going to come in for a lot of flak when I speak my mind, so let me start by conceding that the movie is a breath of fresh air when compared with standard Lollywood movies. I will happily concede the facts that the music, and production quality in this movie were not bad. We continue to call them exceptional because we draw comparisons with the tripe that is churned out by our film industry normally. We really must guard against setting the bar so low - fact is in this case one feels the bar is actually underground. On technical merits, however, from a layman’s perspective, and here I humbly present yours truly as the very personification of that layman, the movie is more than a few steps in the right direction. With its fresh and imaginative music one hopes the movie will be able to set a welcome precedent. But here, the positives end.
The movie is a shameful reiteration of all the stereo-types an average Pakistani, and an average Muslim must grapple with in a hostile world plagued by Islamophobia. Rather than set the record straight and present the facts as they are, the movie chooses to adopt the simplistic and superficial premise that our religious scholars, enlightened as they may be in the ways of the world (The Maulana chiding the western lady in English when she herself states stereotypes at the beginning of the movie), are conniving, devious and often deliberately ignorant lot who mislead our ‘naive’ young men into the corridors of extremism. In a few scenes, this maulana goes from a Dr. Asraar/Dr. Zakir to being Mullah Umar. They are shown to be the two sides of the same coin. The other notable flaws:
  1. The one maulana who lifts the veil on the reality of Islam, and the true message of Islam is shown listening to music in the background as he performs his ablution.
  2. The girl’s father who is worried about her ‘berahrawi’ and marrying into non-Muslims is shown to be a bigot of the first grade, himself guilty of adultery all his life.
  3. One of the protagonists is shown being confused and apologetic about the Islamic injunction that a Muslim man may marry from ahl-e-kitab, but a Muslim woman might not. Not surprisingly, but completely unrealistically, the protagonist is shown professing his undying love for the US just when the US forces are torturing him senseless - literally.

In the end, the movie seems to close with the message that music heals all, as the newly re-united family sits around a campfire and the music breathes life into the paralyzed body of one of the members - just before the reverted-to-music-ex-driven-to-extremism protagonist raises the Azan.

Our media and the so called ‘intellectual elite’ must stop being so apologetic about Islam. They have a responsibility to break the established stereo-types and tell the world Islam’s perspective on life, not a musician’s perspective of Islam.

A much much better job is one here by someone more in tune with what needs to be done today to counter the western propaganda.

http://www.masud.co.uk/ISLAM/ahm/AHM-TradorExtradNew.htm

b) What that fanatic mulla is made to say in that movie is often atrocious, and pretty much mostly un-Islamic. We all know that. And herein lies the basic flaw of the movie. It fails exactly where it had the greatest responsibility. The movie had to differentiate line between the ignorant mullah leading our village folk into the death fields and the learned scholar bringing our youth back to the basics of our deen. This mullah in the movie starts out as a Maulana Tariq if not Dr. Asraar, when he logically and knowledgeably guides an educated Muslim youth away from an un-Islamic way of life, but then he quickly transforms into a jaahil mullah who abets the kidnapping and forcing into a marriage of a young Muslim girl. Here one wonders if Shoaib Mansoor is venting his own frustration at having lost his protege to Maulana Tariq’s efforts.

Yes, it is a fact that Islam’s PR department is today hijacked by a few ignorant mullahs. The world already knows that. The world also thinks that all Muslim scholars and religious community leaders are similar ignorant bigots. The movie and those behind it, when aspiring to bring to fore the realities had an inherent responsibility to underline the fact that such mullahs were far and few, and while we may have a leadership crises, we still have amongst our ranks the likes of Dr. Asraar, Dr. Zakir Naik, Dr. Farhat, and Maulana Tariq who are doing a stupendous job of guiding the youth as well as non-youth on the path of deen.

The movie seems to tow the secular/western line as it assumes an apologetic tone about the tenets of Islam in the institution of marriage. It goes a step further, and continues to subtly imply that Music is indeed not discouraged in Islam, and that in prohibiting it the Muslim scholars are indeed not presenting the Islamic perspective. Nowhere is this point more subtly implied than the scene where while the ‘right’ Islamic scholar is shown performing ablution with a record playing in his room. Imagine a Dr. Israr or Dr. Naik doing this!

The implication in this scene is subtle, yet simple. If the scholarly authority on Islam who saves the day can listen to Music, and that too just as he is preparing to offer prayers, it is most certainly mubaah, not just allowed, to listen to Music.

This movie was less a presentation of the realities we Muslims face in today’s world, and more a case for the acceptance of Music as a deeni tenet no less.

Shoaib Mansoor seems to have sat down to himself wondering, “So who are the people who oppose Music?”. Perhaps he drew up a list of all such elements, and then proceeded to present them all in negative light in the guise of presenting the Muslim Perspective in the post 9/11 world.

The end result is just this: Do whatever you want, just let us have our music.

We have a history in the sub-continent of not only including un-Islamic practices in our deen, but also making them divinely ordained in due time. A pertinent example is Qawwali for instance. The reverence reserved by some for an otherwise entertaining art-form will have, and often does have foreigners thinking the Qawwali, ma’az Allah, is one of the pillars of Islam.

Here I am reminded of what Mushtaq Ahmad Yousufi had to ay about Qawwali. He had no problems with Qawwali as an art form, worst things, he believed, were called art. His problem with Qawwali was that it had assumed the very personification of piety in assuming the role of an Islamic art-form.

I digress. But the point remains that when a Muslim speaks about Islam he must limit himself to what Islam says, not what he believes Islam ought to have said to accommodate his personal preferences.

Three Weddings and a Funeral. Part II.7
knicq posted in Amigos, Knicqisms on September 26th, 2007

Initially, SGR had planned to come on a Wednesday; but then he called in and said Wednesday did not look likely because of some engagements; he did not specify whether those engagements were of an official or a domestic nature. I hung up the phone and wondered if these engagements had anything to do with, or any bearing on what he intended discussing with me. After all, if it was something that warranted a clandestine trip down to a neighboring country to discuss it with a friend, it quite probably was the only engagement these days.

I found myself wondering about the nature of this ’something important’; it took me back to the conversation we had had when he had first called to ‘request my time and opinion, because he knew I was short on the former these days, and because he valued the latter so very much’; and I tried to see if he had dropped any hints as to what it was. There were none. It was quite apparent that whatever it was that SGR needed to discuss, he intended to keep it under cover until he got here. I wished he had given me an inkling at least of what it was just so I could perhaps be better prepared - when your friend wants your opinion on something that is so very important for him, and he is coming down specifically to seek your opinion, you want to be sure you do not end up being, well… not much help. Flattering as his confidence in me was, it was highly disconcerting too.

SGR is not just good at what he does, he is one of the best. He has climbed the corporate ladder much faster than anyone I know; fact is, he hardly did bother with the ladder, being more of an elevator-man; and is already part of a well-known MNC’s top management team in the region. In fact, it is the globe-trotting his professional responsibilities make mandatory on him which have enabled us to stay more in touch with each other across two countries than we do with some of our friends in our respective countries. For two simple reasons, it was quite apparent that whatever the matter was it would have little to do with his professional life:

He has just about as much chance of finding himself in need of professional guidance as the Sultan of Brunei has of falling behind on his credit card payments.

If by any stretch of imagination, and here one wonders if indeed imagination can be credited with such elasticity at all, he did find himself at such crossroads in his professional life, there was as much hope of my opinion coming in handy as there is of my yearly income coming in handy to make payments on the Sultan of Brunei’s credit cards!

Do we all not know that the Sultan of Brunei quite likely does not carry credit cards? And just in case he does, and assuming he has swiped the card a few times in the white house to buy a country or two, there is zero possibility of him falling behind on his credit card payments - which is all the point.

Was it then something that was afoot at home? SGR is deliriously married Masha Allah, and has two most adorable and extremely entertaining children. His brother is his best buddy, and his family loves him. As might be surmised from above, it was not that I did not bring my deductive faculties into play; it was just that those faculties seemed woefully out of touch. After the above few inquiries, I began to understand what the likes of Muralidharan and Shane Warne feel like after they have bowled a few deliveries at our batsmen - except I was playing against myself, and somehow leaving oneself clueless is not one’s idea of feeling good about oneself.

The next few days passed without much incident, and eventually I found myself at the airport waiting for SGR. We spoke on the phone, and he asked me to meet him in the departures building. I assumed he was headed for the departures section to make arrangements for his return flight immediately after the end of our discussion. Had it been a regular visit, I would have met him in one of his two favorite haunts - the Grand Hayyat or the Fairmont - and his flight itinerary would have been taken care of by his office. This was the first time I was meeting him at the airport, and quite apparently, his office was not involved in his flight arrangements. Was he considering taking up a job in the UAE? Was that it? Maybe that’s why his office was not involved in booking his flights.

I was delighted by the thought, but then also reminded myself that if indeed this were the case, and he were here to seek my advice on whether or not to take up a job in the UAE, I would have to ensure I stayed objective, and did not allow the excitement of him moving to the UAE to color my opinion. Dubai is not necessarily the best of options for everyone. It is too crowded, too expensive, too un-Islamic, and too-not-worth-the-hassle for someone who is well-settled in a relatively not so crazy city like Doha (Or even Abu-Dhabi for that matter, as JB would tell us all from his experience). I decided to wait until I knew what exactly was it that he was being offered - if indeed it were the prospect of a job change that were bringing him to Dubai.

I refused to entertain the idea that there could be other possible ’somethings’. The very first few thoughts that sprang to mind ensured that I decided on this inhospitable approach towards other ’somethings’. Thoughts, dear reader, are a strange phenomenon. They come in all shapes and sizes. There is the kind which has set its sights on entering our minds, and making itself comfortable once there. This lot’s ambition to find abode at the top floor is rivaled only by its diligence and dedication to this task. Irrespective of whether or not we give our consent to hosting these thoughts, they sneak into our minds through back doors and alleys at times, and come barging in at others, with scant regard for the barriers we erect to check their entry.

Compare this eager lot to the kind, who would rather be anywhere than in our minds; no amount of cajoling, reasoning, pleading, coercing or even patient waiting will make them accept our invitation to come visiting. There is at least one blog we all know of which suffers due to the aversion of these and such other thoughts to finding themselves within the confines of a mind. It was due to the persistent and persevering nature of the former kind of thoughts that some still managed to seep into my mind, and left me cold with a false sense of foreboding.

There was the terrifying thought that perhaps he was having an affair. People do that sometimes - get involved where they should not. SGR is not the kind who would go about philandering, but he is blessed with a loving heart, and there is no telling when the heart might decide to pull against the righteous forces of reason. What if it was some such development, and he were contemplating tying the knot - again? What would I tell him? Importantly, would he listen to me if I told him to not tie himself in knots through this tying the knot business? More importantly, how would he like it if he sought my opinion on such a matter, and I offered the kind of opinion that is seldom offered except to very near and dear ones - the honest kind? Where would that leave our friendship?

In such matters, I have already learned, people do not ask for honest opinions, they ask for assenting and consenting opinions; they go looking for an opinion that will alleviate the burden of their guilt, and help them let themselves off the hook. Unfortunately, offering an honest opinion under the circumstances can carry repercussions. There is always the risk that deafened by the noise of racing heartbeats, they will not hear the voice of reason, and will actually resent being reminded of the importance of adhering to reason over heart. I was about to get angry with SGR for getting himself, and me with him, into this mess; what infernal impulse had come over him to lose his marbles, and in the process his heart, like that? Why could he not have appreciated what he had been blessed with and be thankful for it? It was at this point that I realized that I too needed to adhere to reason over imagination. After all, SGR’s extra-marital indiscretions were nothing but a figment of my imagination, a reflection of my worst fears.

Scarcely had I drawn myself away from this horrendous line of thought, when my mind was besieged by another thought, another kind of fear. SGR is quite the movie-buff. What if he had taken the wrong kind of inspiration from one of those ‘Ocean’ movies? What if his sole purpose in coming to the UAE was to engage my services for a heist? Where, in the conducting of a heist, would I come in handy is of course anybody’s guess. Here one must make provision for the fact that people are often unaware of their potential, or at least less aware as compared to their contemporaries of what they are capable or not capable of.

Self-evaluation, after all, is not an exact science. Had it been so, I would have made partner in an MNC by now; unfortunately, most people seemed to differ from my self-evaluations during the part of my professional life when I was required to fill up a self-evaluation form periodically. There is, indeed, credible evidence in the form of a termination letter which supports the hypothesis that self-evaluation is not an exact science.

It is, therefore, entirely possible that I might have over-looked some hidden potential in me, which SGR might have identified in one of our meetings, the kind of potential that comes in handy in undertakings such as heists and other such clandestine operations. Granted I am no Brad Pitt, but then SGR is not exactly what you might call George Clooney. I was beginning to get worried that this line of thought was forcing me to identify the wrong kind of potentials in myself, and I decided to put an end to the soul searching before I discovered that I had, in fact, abundant talent to steal samosas from Pakistani restaurants, or shoplifting at Big and Tall.

The thing with thoughts is that they are much taken with idioms and phrases. ‘It never rains but pours’ seemed to be the order of the day. I was still fighting the urge to hold up an airport, and make away with the luggage of hundreds of passengers, when a most ridiculous thought presented itself to me: What if SGR had suddenly discovered that he was indeed better-half-material trapped in what we might refer to as the wrong kind of body? Why he would need to see me about such a realization was another disturbing question; but I was saved the trouble of pondering over these disconcerting questions when I spotted SGR’s familiar face at a distance. I could see that whatever the matter was, it had failed to dampen his spirits; his delightful smile lit up his face, and warmed my heart. I issued a silent rebuke to my mind for entertaining such ridiculous guests in the preceding few minutes, and waved at SGR to catch his attention.

As we walked towards each other, I prepared for the imminent lifting of the proverbial veil.

Three Weddings and a Funeral.9
knicq posted in Amigos, Jalali Baba, Knicqisms on August 22nd, 2007

It is, perhaps, a good thing - the fact that I have not written in a long time. But before you offer your consent, let me clarify that I have wanted to write, but have either been too exhausted to type out a few coherent lines, or too devoid of ideas. It was more of former and less of latter. There was also a lot lacking by way of motivation; not the kind of motivation one needs to start writing, but the kind necessary to finish what one has begun writing. No-one is more aware than I of how dismal it is when one has not written in weeks, even months. It is, therefore, perhaps a good thing that I sit here with the intention to complete not one post, but four. To ensure that I keep at it, and am able to follow up on this commitment I have decided to post all four under the same title. That the title is somewhat lacking in originality, and can hardly lay claim to greatness in improvising is something I am aware of, but shall choose to overlook. It is but a means to an end, the title is, and the end is entirely different from the source I accuse me of having borrowed the title from.

Perhaps, I should clarify at this point that there is little in what follows that will qualify to be called a wedding in the generally understood meaning of the word. It is more a metaphor than anything else, a metaphor for happiness; for what is a wedding but a celebration of and two hopes for eternal happiness. Sure, it is the coming together of two people, and the binding together of new ties between two families, but at the end of it all, a wedding is two people hoping to find happiness with each other. So, if you ask me, a wedding is one of the most apt metaphors for happiness - eternal or not.

Here are, then, the stories of three weddings and a funeral:

The First Wedding:

I got a call from SGR. He was coming to Dubai, he said, but he did not want anyone finding out this time. This was strange, because SGR lives and works in the neighboring GCC state of Qatar, and visits good old Dubai often for business. The business part he manages in the mornings, and the evenings we spend together talking of all things that friends talk about when they meet after a long time, and then some. Over the past few years, I have introduced SGR to my friends here, and now we all look forward collectively to his visits here. SGR has us all convinced that this looking forward is mutual.

I like doing that - introducing my friends to each other. There is a reason behind it, and a very selfish one at that. It has everything to do with making me look good. You see, when it comes to friends, I have always been blessed. Allah Almighty has, in His unbounded mercy, always blessed me with wonderful people for friends. It might have something to do with my own deficiencies, but they always seem to be more learned, more knowledgeable, and hence more impressive than I can ever hope to be. Invariably, they are better people than I am, but Jalali Baba believes that is easily accomplished since I present a meager challenge in that department; not that he has nice things to say about the challenges I might present in the knowledgeable/learned department. They, my friends, are my best possessions, and I like to show them off.

SGR and I go back to our college days, and that was a long time ago. We knew each other then too, but only in passing. I knew SGR because he was at the top of his class, and because he used to host this forum called “Cross-fire” where they used to have intellectually stimulating, grave discussions and ferocious debates about issues that have been having or could have lasting effects on the world. SGR knew me because I was not on top of my class, and because I used to bring comic relief to “Crossfire” by airing my opinion openly. SGR is too kind and generous, and it will be hard to get him to admit that what we had was less than mutual respect for each other - the deficiency being from his side. A few years after we had graduated, Fash, who was a class-fellow of SGR’s and a childhood friend of mine, called me up requesting me to show SGR around since he was tied down in his job at the Mall, and SGR was in town. I called SGR up, we agreed on the time and venue, and met up. We stayed up discussing God knows what till four in the morning, and we both had work to go to in the morning; the rest as they say is history.

SGR has been coming to the UAE very regularly ever since, and if he has committed the unpardonable sin of not letting me know, and not meeting up, he must be let off simply for doing a stupendous job of not letting it be known. Over time we established that SGR liked smoking Sheesha, and hated Dubai. We also established that we shared an unrivaled passion for good food. Our meeting points were thus defined: They must serve good sheesha, they must either not be in Dubai, or look nothing like being in Dubai, and they must serve great food. The quest to find such places took us around a bit, but eventually we did settle for a couple of places.

If we could help it, and if we had enough time on hand, which is to say if each of us could fold his official chores latest by 9:00 p.m. we would leave for Abu-Dhabi, so that we could be at Havana Cafe, Abu-Dhabi latest by 11:00 p.m. Havana Cafe is a lovely little spot at the tip of Abu-Dhabi city, located on what is a strip of reclaimed land protruding into the Arabian sea; it overlooks the magnificent Emirates Palace Hotel on the one side, and the lighted skyscrapers of the capital on the other; it is separated from both by what can best be described as a little bit of sea-water, which adds to the ambience of the place through the insulation it provides from the noise of the city, a few yachts and luxury boats moored by the side, and the shimmering reflections of both the Emirates Palace Hotel and the city bringing color to the dark canvas of semi-still water. The sheesha is great, even if it makes me cough after the third drag, dizzy by the fourth, and positively intoxicated by the fifth; and they make a great burger called Havana Special.

If, however, due to any number of factors either of us cannot untangle himself from the daily chores by 9:00 p.m. we settle in favor of Dubai Heritage Village, which is situated on the Bur-Dubai side of the creek. There have some good restaurants there, and they have tables lining the pavement this side of the grill which serves to keep the sea at bay. Across the creek, downtown Dubai, Deira stands in all its splendor. No sky-scrapers, but enough high rise buildings and enough hoardings and neon-signs to present an agreeable sight, especially when reflected in the water. The place is insulated once again from the noise and hustle-bustle that has come to define Dubai, and is lent a degree of authenticity by the loud Arab (read Egyptian) Music blaring from the speakers, and the floating ‘Dhows’. Dhows are wooden boats and launches, some of which are decorated with lights and banners and you know those are the ones that carry tourists around, while others are not so decorated and are laden with cargoes of various kinds. These are part of a fleet that continues to ply the sea-routes to neighboring countries and helps keep the centuries old trade relations as well as traditions intact. These restaurants serve good sheesha, good food, and stay open till late.

Jalali Baba, Moderate Enlightenment and a couple of SGR’s friends have become a regular feature of these meetings, wherever they are held. More the merrier is the mantra. Once the sheesha is served, the conversation is given a few revs, and then put in ‘D’. The topics can range from Religion to Politics, to Land-Cruisers (SGR’s almost sole passion), to books, to airplanes (SGR’s almost other passion), to knicqisms, to JB-bashing, to knicq-bashing to any-one else bashing, to Dubai-bashing (SGR and JB’s joint passion - one being from Qatar and the other a resident of Abu-Dhabi), to Abu-Dhabi-bashing (JB’s sole right by virtue of him being an ex-citizen of the city), to food (a common passion, or assumed to be so, irrespective of who is in attendance), to extolling Qatar and all things Qatari (SGR again), to just about anything. Irrespective of what the topic is, good humor and laughter continue to define and defile the underlying mood, and JB invariably comes in for some flak, simply because none of us would dare disrespect him on his own, and because we all know there is security in numbers; but mostly because one way or the other he ends up being embroiled in all kinds of things that make it impossible for him to join us in these meetings, and when in a subsequent session he does join, he makes for a good target thanks to the trademark ridiculousness of his excuse for his absence from the previous meeting.

Most recently, we discovered another spot in the UAE, which provided us the necessary ingredients for our meeting i.e. good sheesha, not Dubai, good food, and insulation from city-noise. It is almost equi-distant from both Abu-Dhabi and Dubai, and makes it possible for STK to join us, since she lives in Al-Ain. I had known this spot for sometime, since it happens to be in my place of birth: Al-Ain; but SGR and I had never really been able to make that trip down to this little city often called the city of gardens. The spot is at the top of Jebel Hafeet, a 950m mountain billed as the highest point in the country. There is a modest hotel at the top of the mountain, and while the food is edible, and the sheesha is almost good, it is the location of the spot itself that stands out - almost literally. The sheesha place is built like a majlis tent, and is aptly called Khaimah; it is built deliberately in a dark corner just at the back of the Mercuree Hotel, and on most days the howling of the wind passing by the mountain can be heard. Visible below are the minuscule maps which the city lights draw on the sprawling desert that is the city of Al-Ain.

So SGR called, and said he needed to see me about something important, and he needed to discuss something most privately, and would therefore appreciate if I did not disclose his arrival to the other friends. He said he would be coming only for a few hours, and would be in the country just so the two of us could turn the idea over and perhaps arrive at a solution. He made some very formal requests, and I began to get worried. We have been good friends for years now, and when I was in trouble a couple of times, I had been able to just pick up the phone, and ask SGR for his help. It had never occurred to me to thank him before or after I had asked the favors. Here was SGR thanking me already for time and opinion, I was glad he had the trust and confidence to ask for, and neither of which he had yet taken. But then, I thought to myself, SGR has always been a very classy guy; someone for whom no detail is too small. My intrigue was heightened, my interest piqued, and my imagination was working overtime to decipher the mystery, but he refused to part with any details until he had arrived here. Left with little other option, I decided to wait, and assured him I would not be disclosing his imminent arrival to anyone.

After this, I waited.

(Continued)

Spontaniety IS over-rated.4
knicq posted in Knicqisms on August 3rd, 2007

Sometimes it is best not to plan anything. Planning is over-rated. The opposite of planning, spontaneity is over-rated too, but it is not always bad. There are those who will argue that it was not the lack of spontaneity that prevented me from putting up the posts I was planning all this time, but perhaps an overdose of that distinctive quality which has assumed defining proportions in my composition; the quality which lends me the reputation of an eleventh-hour man, the quality which has eroded the confidence of my staunchest advocate in my ability to deliver the goods on time, which is quite a grave statement to make, a statement which is so wrong grammatically it borders on offensive, and so misleading in nature it could easily be construed a lie, which it is not - not entirely a lie anyway…

… You see, the word ’staunchest’ implies the presence of a bank of supporters led ably by a bench of advocates, if there is indeed a bench of advocates, just as there is one of judges; and one thinks it would make sense for advocates to have a bench just as the judges do, since the judges would find little going for them were it not for advocates, as was witnessed recently in the land of the pure; which is all a bit of an interesting discussion, but throws another tangent in an argument already marred by multiple tangents being thrown merrily as if tangent-throwing qualified to be a sport of international standing. We will refrain from delving into that interesting discussion about how the advocates played a part in getting a lot going for a bench or two of judges, and the relatively less interesting discussion about the need (or lack thereof) to have benches for advocates in keeping with the privileges enjoyed by the judges, and will go back to how the word staunchest implies the presence of a few advocates (whether enjoying the comfort of benches or not) rooting for me and my various faculties, when in reality my advocates are an endangered species whose numbers have quickly dwindled to one, from an all time high of… well… one.

There is the technicality about the inability of a number to do much dwindling if the starting point is not different from the ending point, but we have already decided to refrain from throwing any further tangents, have we not now?
No points for guessing who constitutes that finite number, but here’s a hint just so no measure of ambiguity obscures the identity of such an important individual who takes it upon himself to repose his confidence in my faculties (well, most of them anyway) and undertakes to stand by me, while those bent upon undermining my capabilities in various fields of life sharpen their tools, and drool at the thought of seeing me… undermined. That one advocate is not Jalali Baba, not that there should have been much doubt about the likelihood of Jalali Baba not being my advocate.

It is not a good thing when your staunchest advocate is also your only advocate, but it is worse, if your only advocate is you! It is worst, however, when you are your only advocate, and also your staunchest advocate, and along comes a quality that starts eroding your confidence in your ability to deliver the goods on time. Factor in the fact that delivering the goods, literally speaking, is what you do for a living, and the gravity of the situation begins to dawn upon you - and it leaves one wondering why it would take the gravity of such a grave situation so long to dawn upon one?

One is a fool. When the quality in question is procrastination, things can take as long as it takes to dawn upon one, and one should not wonder anything. One is given to wondering though, and finds it difficult to not wonder. The problem is obviously compounded when one is given to procrastination also, and might end up wondering today what he should have been wondering the day before, and procrastinating what he should be wondering today to the day after; which is all another tangent, and one wonders if it were a tangent that should probably have been thrown yesterday, which if is the case leaves one prone to wondering about the tangent he was to be throwing today…

Sigh! Spontaneity is over-rated.

TQ’s 6th.19
knicq posted in Knicqisms on May 29th, 2007

TQ turned six yesterday Masha Allah. He wanted a kitten for his birthday present. White. He loves cats, and I love that. I love cats too, but I am allergic to cats and cannot be around them; which is why we cannot have cats in the house. I tried explaining that to him, but then gave up. Allergies are difficult to explain to TQ, especially allergies which mean he cannot have a cat. I have a sneaking suspicion though that one of the reasons he wants a kitten is also because his brand new “Mumaani”, who lives next door, is petrified of cats; and I use petrified here for want of a better word. It is not as if he does not like Mumaani, or as if Mumaani does not adore him. Quite the contrary, in fact; they have a wonderful relationship and it is friendly enough for him to plan to scare her at will by producing the cat.

I will be honest here and admit that pretending there is a cat prowling the periphery of our house when she is around brings a level of delight that must border on devilish. One has just to look in a random direction and “shoo” once for her to freeze in her tracks; and as many times as we have done this, and by ‘we’ I mean TQ and I both, it just never fails to succeed. I guess she thinks it better to do the whole “freeze, gasp, widen eyes, and look around quickly to spot the marauding hordes of malevolent cats ” routine everytime than to take her chances not following the routine. She must have it on authority that this routine helps hold a pouncing cat mid-way (freeze), turns it around (widen eyes), and throws it a mile away after shaking it violently mid-air (look around quickly).

Like father like son, you say? Not at all!

Never have I run my hand up wifey’s arm and shouted “chuplee”, just so she jumps a few miles in the air and dives out boring life-size holes in the wall. ‘Chuplee’ is TQ’s pronounciation of “chipkali”, the urdu word for lizard.

Mumaani senior got a delicious black forest, and TQ’s face lit up with a 1000 watt smile. He has this goofy smile which stretches into a 1000 watt smile when he is mighty pleased about something. A couple of weeks ago, we had driven down to Khor-Fakkan. Khor-Fakkan is this lovely little town sandwiched between Dibba and Fujairah City, and after Al-Ain happens to be my favorite part of the UAE. It has the country’s second largest container terminal at the one end, rocky mountains on the other, and a lovely little beach connecting the two. It makes for a beautiful spot to spend time with family, and that time is enhanced by the motor-boat rides they take you out on over there. The motor-boats are often modelled on the Arabian Majlis, and the small trip they take you on while you sit in a semi-circle in the majlis is an experience most kids cannot get enough of. TQ got his first experience on this trip of ours, and he had that 1000 watt smile pasted on his face through-out the 20 minute ride. Delightful sight, I tell you.

TQ’s 6th birthday was a simple affair, the cake was delicious, Mumaani senior’s gesture even sweeter; but the most delightful of all was that goofy 1000 watt smile.

May Allah shower His blessings on TQ, and all the children of this world, and may He fill their lives with Iman, love, joy, success and contentment. Ameen!

This is Wrong! I am an Azad Kashmiri; I am 200% Pakistani!!!13
knicq posted in Knicqisms on May 15th, 2007

Arey, you are 72% Pakistani!

 

Vah jee vah, your inner Pakistani is thriving! Pakistani and proud, that’s what we like to see! You’re still holding back a little though - try eating a good biryani then aim for the top…

How Pakistani are you? (first class number one!)
Create a

ROT IN HELL.7
knicq posted in Knicqisms on May 13th, 2007

I stopped having an opinion sometime ago when I discovered that the world did not care as much about my opinion as it did about just about anyone else’s. But, today, I have an opinion, and it is not humble. Musharraf, and his cronies must all perish; in a planecrash, but then they are not worth losing a plane over. They must all die though. Horrible natural deaths, because they are not worth going to prison for, and someone will if someone decided to rid Pakistan of them. They are most definitely not worth the 30 Pakistani lives that were lost today. 30 lives lost are 30 too many for Musharraf and his goons; but then they were not lost for them, they were snatched away by them.

Musharraf, Benazir, Nawaz Shariff, Qazi Hussain, Altaf Hussain, MQM, PML (A-Z), ARD et al - may you all rot in hell.

All of this because the chief justice of the counry was to address the bar association..!

May they all ROT IN HELL.

The not so short shirt story. (Part III)4
knicq posted in Knicqisms on May 1st, 2007

I was reminded, at this point, of my recent findings pertaining to the uselessness of deep breaths when one requires shoring up of one’s aggressive spirit, and mustering of assertive courage. This reminder, in itself, of course was of little utility; but it did lead one into contemplating alternative techniques of shoring and mustering the requisite spirit and courage respectively. There are instances in one’s life when one must delve into one’s own pool of combative resources and surface with the essential tools that one needs to tackle salespeople who refuse to warm up to the idea of one needing to exchange a shirt for another article of clothing. There was little doubt about this being one of those instances, and the need to carry out the delving operation had, therefore, never been so obvious.

I made short work of such delving and diving, and did not fare badly at surfacing either; and were I to state that my exceptional skill at delving into pools and there-after surfacing gracefully had left me glowing with a pride that bordered on sinful, I would not be stretching the truth very much. The disappointment only set in when the realization dawned upon me that if there was one way to describe the pool wrongly it was to call it ‘a pool of combative resources’.

Talk of pools and the lack of combative resources therein aside, and the uselessness of the contents of such pools in tackling impertinent salesmen notwithstanding, the ensuing chain of events begs telling; not in the least because one thinks the ensuing chain of events to be of any importance at all, but because there is no telling what lessons a perceptive mind might glean from an incident that many would hasten to describe as a simple market transaction form everyday life. Who are we, the digressing mortals, to deprive such perceptive minds of lessons they might use to usher in new eras?

Where would modern Physics have been, had it not been for Isaac Newton and the laws of gravitation he had introduced the world to? Can we begin to imagine what the world might have been like, had Sir Isaac Newton’s attention been diverted away by a digression just when he had begun to contemplate the factors which had prevented that historic, and one hopes not so juicy, apple from landing anywhere but where it had landed - namely on top of the residential premises of one of the most perceptive minds ever? Am I, therefore, to refrain from playing my part in shaping the history of future by allowing petty digressions to prevent me from completing the narration of the ensuing chain of events?

Perhaps, it is misleading to label the remainder incident as a chain of events; for there is no dearth of puritans who might feel that ‘event’ is an eventful word, and that the incident being related here falls abysmally short of being qualified as a singular event, let alone a chain of events. On the other hand, there are those who believe in phenomenon like ‘the butterfly effect’, where every single incident irrespective of its stature is deemed to alter the course of all events to come, and hence every incident is, on its own, credited with setting off of a chain of events. Given the pressing need to complete the narration, and the new-found resolve to play one’s part in shaping the history of future, one must leave this excellent philosophical conundrum about what does or does not constitute a ‘chain of events’ unanswered.

One is given to philosophical broodings, and it is not too difficult to imagine how surfacing with no combative tools from that resourceless, and hitherto over-rated, pool might have induced one such philosophical travail; but one learns to keep one’s chin up, and so one did, and one learns to make do without combative tools in an exchange with a visibly impatient and chronically impertinent salesman in a garments store, and so one did.

Raising my chin to a most respectable, even defiant level, I cleared my throat and asked aloud if I may consider exchanging the shirt for, perhaps, a pair of trousers? I had intended for the question to be directed at the salesman, but it is entirely possible that my body language and tone of voice might have given the impression that I had had, what the salesman might have considered, a most silly idea, and had had the absence of mind to wonder to myself aloud. The salesman, being no novice, knew better than to offer his opinion on a question a customer might have muttered to himself.

Left with no other alternative, and emboldened by the thought that now at least the salesman had an idea of exactly what I wanted done with the shirt, I posed a direct question to the salesman, and inquired if he would not mind showing me a few pairs of trousers instead, since none of the shirts seemed to have been stitched with yours truly’s dimensions as the model dimensions. What ensued might have been called pin-drop silence were it not for the noise of blood rushing to the salesman’s head, and for the fearsome beating of my heart. When it was clear that niether of the noises would subside, and it began to sound as if it were my heart pumping blood to his head, the salesman rightfully decided to not wait for complete silence, and spoke.

To say that he was articulate would be simplifying matters much, and would not even begin to do justice to describing the oratory skills and the verbal prowess he so clearly possessed. Unfortunately, his articulate qualities chose to forsake him under such duress and despair, and his oratory skills were reduced to those of an average salesman in a PnC store.

“Why you want take trrousers?”, he despaired. A most germane inquiry, one must admit, since what is one to do with a trouser, if one refuses to purchase a shirt. Whoever heard of wearing just a trouser, when one could just as easily have worn a shirt and wrapped a bedsheet around the rest of the torso. I was most impressed by the dollops of logic his inquiry so visibly was topped with. As it were, I was impressed wrongly; his next inquiry made it clear that his first question had less to do with galvanizing the logic sectors of one’s mind into action, and more to with challenges of a more basic nature at a more personal level. “Then I haaf to make length, and alteration”, he explained.

Not that this was any less impressive; in eight words and a comma, he had reminded me how foolish I had been in assuming that companies which had not stitched any shirts with my dimensions in mind, would have flooded stores with trousers that would not only fit me very well, but probably would carry my name on them too. In a less ideal world, however, things worked differently. Trousers were bound to not fit me, and while some would require to be loosened an inch or two at the waist, and some would need to be shortened an inch or two to ensure I did not present the picture of a dwarf in a giant’s attire, it was to be assumed that most trousers stitched for normal people would need both these operations before I could hope to don them without sending people into fits of laugher.

Such a need would make it obligatory on the salesman to make arrangements for such alterations to be made, since my obvious indigence announced the tragic fact to the world that I was not one of those affluent kinds who have tailors and such skillful people at their beck and call at all hours, and who do not need to uncourteously burden poor PnC salespeople with the additional task of getting the requisite alterations made to the trousers. I understood his despair, and I readied an apology for the trouble I was sure to cause him in moments to come, but it was an exrcise in futility; being a gentleman who knew the perils of losing his temper in a most public place, the salesman chose to detach himself from the situation with immediate effect.

The name of the salesperson who strode in valiantly to occupy the difficult position very recently vacated by his more excitable colleague was Mohammad; and in the very first few minutes of our discourse with him on the subject of a shirt not wanted and a trouser most urgently wanted, we realized that Mohammad was ET - as in extra terresterial. Not just because he used his super-powers to find solutions to all of the ridiculous problems, which a salesman is guaranteed to encounter when dealing with yours truly, but because of a much more sinister and despairingly visible sign:

He smiled!

The End.

The not so short shirt story. (Part II)9
knicq posted in Knicqisms on April 21st, 2007

Then I took another deep-er breath. It appears deep breaths do a world of good to the constitution, physical as well as moral, of people about to plunge into more difficult aspects of life in general, and of a conversation about exchanging a shirt for something else than a shirt in particular. Appearances are deceptive, and so I found out when the deep breath did little for any of my constitutions, but I decided to take the plunge nonetheless.

I cleared my throat though, since I was afraid that my voice would quaver when requesting something that would quite evidently put considerable strain on the patience as well as good manners of the salesperson, both of which qualities he did not seem to have been blessed in abundance with anyway. There was also some evidence to suggest that the salesperson’s job description did not emphasize facilitating people with not-so-sound prior good judgement when such people brought back shirts sans original packing, and expected to go home humming a merry tune with something else than a shirt in their bags. There were factors galore, in other words, that could bring a quiver to one’s voice when stating one’s objective behind bringing the shirt back - and that too, mind you, without the original packing, and a clearing of one’s throat was hence well warranted.

After the throat had been sufficiently cleared, it occurred to me that instead of asking the salesperson’s permission to opt for another article of attire, one could perhaps adopt a not so straight forward course of action. It occurred to me rather suddenly that having a paunch in the dimensions I was blessed with had some inherent advantages, and chief amongst those advanatges was the fact that there were few articles of clothing that could look becoming when wrapped around the sheer girth of my equator - or what would have qualified to be my equator were I technically a circle. In all fairness I was guilty of not having paid attention to these advantages prior to that day. It was to be assumed that the salesperson would find it relatively less offensive were one to try out all the available shirts at the store with a vangeance and so arrive at the conclusion that none of the store’s products seemed to have been stitched with the sole purpose of flattering one into thinking that one could look good in an article of PnC clothing.

I proceeded with this plan of action, and asked to be shown a few shirts for size. The salesperson feigned surprise at my apparent ignorance and told me quite politely how very unlikely it was for the standard shirt sizes to have changed ever since I had last bought a shirt for myself. “Surely”, he seemed to be saying, “you have not gained all of that ‘prosperity’ overnight, have you now? Do not know what shirt size you are! Are you telling me this is the first time you are buying a shirt for yourself, all by yourself?” This is where I found out that I was dealing not with a novice but a professional, a finding that underlined to me the perils of under-estimating the enemy, and caused me to issue a harsh-worded rebuke to self silently.

My plan seemed to be headed for destruction unless I made a quick recovery, and make one I did - albiet unbeknownst to myself. The details are a bit hazy, but what I have surmised is that while I was issuing those silent rebukes to self, my facial expressions must have been oscillating between those of one issuing rebukes and those of one at the recieving end of such rebukes - and seeing that must have made a profound impression on the salesman. An impression that was not to last for very long, but did the job in the present quite well. The salesman proceeded to bring me a few shirts to try for size.

In the try room, a trial of a different kind presented itself to me. Suffice it is to say that there crept in another factor into the equation, which made it imperative for a new strategy to be devised and adopted at the earliest. As for the trial, allow me to leave a hint or two for the perceptive reader: It is normal practice at most stores to have a few shirts lounging about for people who are buying a shirt for the first time and need to see what size fits them better than others, or looks less inappropriate on them than others. Presumably the store has a strategy to tackle the challenge presented by people who are not bestowed with a necessary-to-buy-a-shirt-imaginative mind, people who know what size fits them well, but cannot for the life of them decide, without trying a shirt on and looking at themselves in the mirror from all directions, whether or not it might look as good on them as a shirt must for them to make a buying decision. One steers clear of unnecessary presumptions though, and leaves the store’s business to those who make it their business in the most literal sense. Whether or not a strategy is in place to tackle the afore-mentioned challenge, a store must have a few shirts in different sizes readily available so the less priveleged can make a more informed decision when they come in to buy a shirt for the first time and without the slightest indication of what size might suit them best.

The shirts deployed for such duty are quite often in colors that in a shirt one might refrain from classifying as pleasing to the eye, and in patterns that one can hardly be faulted for assuming were not the intended patterns when the shirts were being made. As long, however, as one does not intend buying those shirts and wearing them to the prestigious events in one’s life, and more importantly, as long as one is only expected to guage an idea about the right size so that one can invest in a shirt made in a completely different color and one that sports a perfectly non-hedious pattern, one does not mind donning such a shirt for a few seconds. The trouble, however, is that when a shirt has been worn by a few hundred people over the course of the past few days, it is likely to be equipped well enough to invade one’s nostrils from a mile..

When the salesman had initially brought me the hedious yellow shirt, I had attributed the revulsion in my senses more to the color of the shirt than anything else, but when the familiar revulsion returned upon being presented the blue shirt with the pink patterns in it, I knew it had to be more than just color. I also knew at that very moment that I had not the stomach to try on the other four possible sizes, so I decided to throw caution to the wind, and prepared to put my tackling hands around the salesman’s horns.

I took another deep breath, partly to expunge the invading forces from my system, and partly to strengthen my resolve to assert my right to buying a different article of clothing instead of the shirt.

(Contd.)

The not so short shirt story. (Part 1)4
knicq posted in Knicqisms on April 19th, 2007

I had a few shirts to return. One of them, I had bought from this well-known store that is on a “75% sale” all year round. The store thrives on volume-business deriving its margins from economies of scale, and has outlets dotting the entire map of the UAE. One could connect these dots in one’s freetime and get an intricate pattern that would qualify for some abstract, futuristic master-peice drawn from joining seemingly random dots. I had bought the shirt a day earlier, and needed to return it, but since there is a no-return policy pretty much everywhere in the UAE, my second best option was to exchange the shirt for something else that cost no less than AED 130.

So, accompanied by another milder mannered fellow blogger, I sauntered into the store - lets call it ‘pick and carry’ or PnC for convenience sake, and engaged one of the twenty odd salespeople in what I had intended to be a lively conversation. I began by appraising him of the predicament we were in, he and I: I had a shirt I had bought the day before, but did not see it finding a long-term abode in the intended wardrobe, and he needed to find me an article of clothing that the wardrobe and I would be more accomodating towards. To say that he did not seem entirely pleased with the said predicament would amount to grossly understating the unfriendliness of the gentleman’s demeanour, and also to an unfair undermining of the effort that he seemed to be putting in not concealing his utter disapproval of my lack of prior good judgement.

The knicq smile is not known to vanish in a haste, and nor did it do so on this particular occasion. That a smile was most unwelcome under the circumstances was a fact not entirely lost on me, but I was in good company - and one alludes here to the presence of a certain blogger on the scene, a blogger who whatever else it is he does to make a living does not work as an unsmiling salesperson at a well-known store that is on a “75% sale” all year round - and I refused to part with the smile however unwelcome it was in that store. We must all do our duty in thwarting the evil designs of these ridculously large stores, and resist the unsmiling cultures they are trying to force upon us through their over-worked and under-paid minions otherwise known as floor sales-reps. But, to call a spade a spade, the knicq smile was having a most difficult time resisting the charge of the frown lines as the conversation progressed.

One is not confident of one’s ability to maintain the integrity of a dialogue when reproducing it from sheer memory, and will hence refrain from quoting the dialogue, but one does recall that the conversation started with a clear stating of the afore-mentioned predicament. To this the salesperson, after inspecting in great detail the contents of the PnC bag which I had brought with me, responded with a query pertaining to the whereabouts of the original packing, which was sadly missing from the bag - the bag in which the subject of the whole exchange, verbal as well as non-verbal, lay awaiting its fate. Aware of the NLP pitfalls of introducing red words early in such a discussion, one steered away from plainly admitting that such packing had by now been recycled into more meaningful commodities by the city municipal corporation, and diverted the salesperson’s attention instead to the presence of the original purchase receipt, often billed by the competent legal authorities who look into such matters as the critical, crucial and generally the most important document in these buyer/seller disputes.

If one had hoped, however, that the salesperson were a rookie and gullible enough to fall for such diversion tactics, one was sadly mistaken. The salesperson had not only the temper of a matador bull, but the focus of a charging bull too. Perhaps some prudent readers might disagree here, and attribute the apparent focus of the bull to its inability to make sudden and unplanned diversions in its chosen course of charge, and to such readers I must admit that I am most taken and impressed with their ability to decipher the hidden truth in cliched similis and metaphors. So, the salesperson brushed aside my feeble attempts at diverging his focus, and I had little option but to come clean and admit that the packing material had been properly done away with and disposed of in the best and most environmental-friendly manner possible i.e. it had been consigned to the trashcan, from where it was sure to be picked up by the municipal authorities, who it must be said are the best and most resourceful people when it comes to disposing the original packing of shirts that cannot find space in one’s wardrobe and must be returned - albiet without the said packing.

Once again, if one had intended to strike an amicable note with the salesperson by exhibiting one’s concern for the environment and highlighting one’s recent contribution to conserving the earth’s environment, one had another thing coming. The salesperson upon being told of the possible whereabouts of the original packing of the shirt, and hence the absence of even the remotest chance of same being brought to the store at a future date - distant or not, went into a brooding mood. He completed with remarkable alacrity the formalities of scratching his head, shaking it sideways to express once again his disapproval of what he clearly seemed to find lacking in my prior good judgement faculties, and uttering the appropriate ‘hmms’ and ‘ahems’; and then proceeded to narrate our predicament to his superior.

He returned finally bearing the cheery news that the shirt could indeed be accepted back, provided I had the original receipt, which is where one began to develop a deep awe and respect for the competent legal authoriies who handle these matters. I fished the receipt out and handed it to him, and after throwing a cursory glance at it, he returned it to me, and invited me to choose another shirt.

This is where the matters really began becoming interesting, because up untl that moment I had purposefully refrained from disclosing to him that I had had an overnight change of heart about what article of my attire I was in more dire need of. If I had to return that shirt, which I had originally purchased as a gift for someone else, I did not think I was going to get myself a shirt, because… well… I have enough shirts as it is.

I prepared to drop this bombshell on the poor unsuspecting salesperson. It broke my heart to look into his eyes, and find them scanning the racks stacked with shirts, while I had my unbroken heart set upon buying a pair of trousers.

I took a deep breath…

(Continued)

Simple point(s).6
knicq posted in Jalali Baba on April 17th, 2007

Here’s the thing about headaches. They hurt. That is the one thing about them headaches I am not partiularly crazy about. That is saying a lot, since Saab will tell you, I am crazy about everything, and most people I am blessed with; about some others I am crazier, but then they are worth being crazier about. It is all besides the point of course, since it is my recurring headaches I intend making a point about, and the point is simple: They hurt, and that is the one thing about them I am not crazy about. The latter part of the former statement must sound like a point in itself, and it is one too, but it is not the simple point I intend making. The simple point I do intend making is about the hurtful nature of headaches, and everything else, whether or not it qualifies to be a point in itself, is but an extension of the simple point.

Here’s the thing about simple points though. They are simple - too simple, and hence it is very difficult for your average 40 watt blogger to build a meaningful post around a single simple point. Multiple simple points are a lucrative prospect but also carry the risk of complexity; and when you get simplicity mixed up with complexity all you get is an ideal JB post, since it is JB who finds simplicity in complexity and complexity in simplicity. What, one might be excused for wondering, is wrong in a post becoming an ideal JB post? One is a fool. Anything which even borders on an ideal JB anything is ambitious, unreal, hypothetical, and hence qualifies to be classified as nothing. Now, the thing about Jalali Baba is here - he has exacting standards, much too exacting to be practical and real. Only nothing can come close to be anything remotely like something that would meet Jalali Baba’s definition of ideal.

Ironically, Jalali Baba fails his own standards - in his choice of disciples and friends for one thing; which is a pity becuase it means Jalali Baba is more than just nothing. Given as intelligent as he is, it is quite likely though that he chooses bad people for friends - or at least one bad person for a friend - just so he qualifies to be more than nothing. I feel exploited!

People should refrain from choosing me as a friend just because I qualify to be a bad choice, and making that bad choice helps them qualify to be more than nothing because making a bad choice means they are not JB-ideal, and only nothing is JB-ideal.

Oh, and yes - my head hurts!

Watts ‘n flashes.5
knicq posted in Knicqisms on April 10th, 2007

I have not been able to think of any topics to write about in a long long time. At times like these I seek refuge in the Jalali Baba stories. He must hate me for this blatant exploitation of his eccenticities to keep this blog going , but then he hates me for so many other things that one more reason will scarcely alter the equation much. The equation, I am afraid, is hardly an equation. It probably reads “n reasons to hate = knicq”, where ‘n’ is not a finite number. Knicq on the other hand is mortal, and a physical entity governed by the laws of physics, biology, chemistry, economics, country of residence, Shariah, and those of the unknown; and hence finite in every sense of the word. An equation that pits a finite entity against an infinite value can hardly be called an equation. If at all it is an equation, it is not one that may be called fair, and in being so - unfair that is - it emulates and replicates life itself, proverbially and idiomatically speaking.

I used to be able to string together fragments of a few thoughts and make myself a coherent post. Then, I began to flatter myself. Somewhere along the road, and perhaps thanks to my blog-hopping of days gone by, I came to consider that I was capable of emulating some of the brilliant writing I had come across - writing which is characterized by that ‘flashes’ kind of feel, writing which reads like the public appearance of a glamour star. Have you seen one of those? The peculiar thing about those appearances is not the appearance itself but a hundred cameras flashing at the same time. Few would disagree that a ridiculously dressed guy, or semi-dressed woman stepping out of a car is hardly a mega-event until the cameras go flash, flash, flash!

Some people are able to write like that. Their prose reads like a hundred cameras going flash, flash, flash! I do not know if they are forced to write like that because their thought process runs at a speed much faster their fingers can ever type at, or because they set out to write their peices in little more than headlines. Someone like me, whose writing is more like the dim and boring light of a 40 watt bulb, cannot be blamed for getting very impressed with that flash flash flash kind of writing. Someone like me, whose writing is like the dim and boring light of a 40 watt bulb, should also never attempt to go flash, flash, flash. The trouble with 40 watt bulbs trying to go flash flash flash is that they hardly get to the third flash - more often than not, they go flash, ahem, flush, …er… phat!

Granted, there’s only so much of a hundred cameras going 3F that one can take in a day; there is little chance of getting anything done in the flashing light of cameras - be it a hundred cameras or in multiples of hundred. There is that exhilerating feeling that must come from being exposed to the bright and random flashes of a hundred cameras, but take exhileration too far and you have substance abuse on your hands. On the other hand, the light of a 40 watt bulb is good only to create a spooky effect in a perfectly not-spooky-at-all room; either that or you need the 40 watt light when you have had one red bull too many.

For writing that is easy on the eyes, it must take after the light of the good old 100 watt bulb. Ask any 40 watt bulb, and it will tell you it has tried to upgrade and illuminate its surroundings like the more illuminous 100 watt bulbs - pun not intended, but has sadly failed. So when I found that if I tried the flash, flash, flash writing one time too many, I would go kaput, I tried to upgrade and I attempted to write in that interesting manner which seems to come naturally to people like A, Yazzo, Maranello and Owlie (and so many wonderful other writers) - needless to say the 100 watt post is not coming through.

Knicqland is 40 watts, but knicq could tell you about this one time when writing seemed easy, but telling is not good. See that was knicq trying to go flash, flash, flash and ending up with flaphat!

- which could be a new kind of a hat, but who wears a hat these days?

Imhotep theme designed by Chris Lin. Proudly powered by Wordpress.
XHTML | CSS | RSS | Comments RSS