It’s Monday! Or rather the end of Monday which I am welcoming with open arms, as usual. The end of Monday means the rest of the week can’t be any worse than the day that has gone by. Kind of like when you have cramps and you think ‘okay, so this hurts but at least I’m not pregnant with a two-headed baby.’ Which, if I was, would be pretty cool because it would be like that story in the Bible about when Baby Jesus was born. And it would be ironic, because a two headed baby is exactly what I have wished on my ex-boyfriends, Ali, Ali and Ali. Yes they were all called Ali. I’ve never met an Ali I didn’t like (at first). This is probably why amma always tells me not to wish ill on others, because it comes back to you. She also says I will be married within the year, and that my pictures never get picked up by National Geographic magazine because they are too broody. (P.S. How can a shot of lions at the zoo be broody? It’s just lions; I am just a wildlife photographer, isn’t my job to document animals and nature as is?)
Suffice it to say, I take everything my mother says to heart, with a pinch of salt. Which means whatever. Basically I end up high-fiving Yasmin every time Bosszilla can’t make it to work because she has ‘a strategy meeting with key players in the industry’, but then take my high fives back because it’s rude to be happy about someone else having to work really hard and as it will come back to me in the form of …my own intense concept development meetings which are actually just cocktails with my friends?
Yes, I hardly know what I’m talking about, most of the time. But I gesticulate a lot and use words like gesticulate a lot and people seem to think I know my shit. That’s how I got through studying photography at school for four years. I would take pictures I liked and then plug in a concept somewhere and get standing ovations. Sadly the SO’s were always for the concept and never for the pics, which were always “very emotive” but too “obscure”. But as I always say, at least I got my degree. Of course back then I was going to take on the world with my tremendous, artistic take on Pakistan’s natural resources and urban wildlife. Now I have a take on anything but. Mostly my take is on severely important people like Justin Bieber and how to get great hair like his. Sometimes it’s about what cut jeans are totally in vogue. Other times I like to stretch myself and ruminate on the finer points of being married to a Scientologist. Basically, it’s life at Metro.
In case you don’t know what Metro is, may I please rent out some space under your rock? Everybody knows Metropolitan, the magazine that feeds on fashion and creates pink cloud shaped, gold-dusted stories of grandeur about it. Bits of it dabble in music and performance arts, and a slummy little space is devoted to comment pieces on celebrity gossip. Which brings me to my new role in the world: gossip um, journalist. Occasional commentator on whatever. When it comes to where I stand in life, you will find me using the term a lot. It rolls right off the tongue and can stand for you know, whatever. Everything and nothing. Photographer and voracious sleazy tabloid reader. Dying to put on a skirt and go dancing but can’t miss reruns of How I Met Your Mother.
So I end up doing whatever. In work and in life: whatever.
I ended up at Metro as a way to make some money while I waited for Nat Geo to recognize my genius. Or for someone to commission me for a BBC documentary. Sadly neither has happened yet. On the plus side I get paid by the 5th of every month and am totally up and up on who is hooking up with whom and also what Ted Casablanca thinks about it. One of my secret desires is to be Ted Casablanca. When I was a kid, I always looked up into starry nights and prayed to god to let me be a gay gossip columnist when I grew up. So life is good. I could well be on my way to become the first Pakistani paparazzo. At least I’ll be able to break out my camera every once in a while then. Right now after a busy day of sulking at my desk as I sift through all the tabloids online and in person, all I want to do eventually is drown myself in a tub of chai and sorrow.
Today for instance, had been meticulously chalked out by Yasmin and myself. Meeting at 12, over at 1, back to work by 1:30. What happened ultimately was meeting at 12, Bosszilla shows up at a little after, and meeting goes to hell in a pretty little clutch. Okay so I can’t be all martyr like about this one. Yasmin did all the talking. Mehreen and I pretty much spaced out and played a mental game of chess. At least that’s what I think Mehreen was doing because she was intensely staring into a space just above her knee.
Anyway, Fareeda, or BZ as we very affectionately call her, managed to drag the girls into her lair of smoke and vagueness around 2 p.m. at which point I decided I needed to finish my piece on what I think the RPatz and Kristen Stewart relationship means for the relationships their fans are in. It’s a very serious piece written with a totally serious face and I got quotes and everything from a behavioral analyst. I might have been voted worst girlfriend ever and forever more by the three Alis, but I can wax eloquent about other people’s romances at length.
But life isn’t just about Metro and Fareeda, although those are the top two things I dream about at night. Mostly life is about regrabbing that plan in my head I had of who and where I want to be. This painful question was posed to me at a party recently. Where do you see yourself in five years? Instead of saying, whatever, fuck you for asking such an unimaginative question, I laughed and said I don’t know. Wherever life takes me. Like life is a big adventure and I’m Jim Corbett. Just out hunting man eating tigers in Indian jungles.
Truth is though, I don’t know. I don’t know about so many things that it scares me. At 29, I should have a better answer than I don’t know. I planned for every eventuality in life early on, except for this one. I chose an alternative career incase Nat Geo never comes calling and I was always aware that circumstances change plans. I just never knew that the last week of 2010 would throw me deep into the bowels of introspection and make me climb out all uncertain about what exactly it is that I want to be doing. I still want to be Pakistan’s Ted C, and I still want to be lying on my stomach trying to get one good shot of migratory birds that gather around puddles in Phase 8, but there is something more I need to be doing. I just wish I knew what it was.
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