Dancing in the Dark: The Secret Life of An Emo Adult

There comes a moment in every woman's life when she must put her foot down and firmly state what it is she wants. A new haircut. A social life that doesn't require her to spend an upwards of two thousand rupees every weekend. Some alone time. Some non-alone time. Which really means that during the former she is trying on new eye-liner and wiping it off in her room by herself, and during the latter, her best friend is watching her do it. This in no way means that six out of ten women are not spending their alone time pondering the evolution of womankind during the ages and where, anthropologically speaking, they stand now. It just means that eye-liner may be involved a little bit.

As someone who usually doesn't feel entitled to demand stuff, I am pleased to announce that somehow life has finally hit that note for me. Ironically, what I am demanding is to be allowed to duck behind the bush of life, and wait this storm out. What storm, you might ask, and if your name is Danyal,  probably roll your eyes and spit out a heartfelt 'women!' and 'drama!' and several combinations of these two words, and I'd be happy to tell you, only I don't really know.

I think it all started a couple of weeks ago, when Yasmin walked in at work, and I said, 'Hi, you look really ni...' and started bawling, much to the horror of the collected grown up I like masquerading as. It really wasn't because I was sad, or miserable or anything synonymous with those words, it was just that, to put it super mildly, I felt like an emo 15-year-old. For the one thing, my parents suck! For another, the guy I have a crush on is very nice and I don't know what to do about it! For yet another, nobody understands all these deep feelings that reside within my heart. Did that make you want to throw up a little in your mouth? Yes? Now try imagining being the 30-year-old actually living with this unnecessary baggage of crap.

Before you judge me too much, my parents suck on a level which you will not understand till faced with questions of mortality. You never really think about these things too much, and I hope you don't, because I hope we're all too busy living to worry about kicking the bucket (there you go, my '90s child has spoken). So you spend decades thinking you have all the time in the world, to, say, ask your mom how she makes her scrambled eggs, because no one else's taste quite the same. Then one day there's just no time to ask anymore. You're all too busy just dealing with all these heavy life things, and eggs seems like a stupid thing to talk about. To reiterate an earlier emotion, I have absolutely no idea what I'm saying.

To further really mess with whatever moments of clarity I have these days, I have a massive crush on this dude. If you've read anything on this blog earlier, you know I have a freak radar. Pretty soon this intelligent, kind, talented man will turn around and ask me whether I work out, or make some interesting sartorial choices, like wearing Crocs, or completely disappear. Or, he will put on some Crocs, and as he's telling me my calves are weird, will turn around mid-conversation and disapparate. Because he's also a wizard and that's just how wizards roll.

My answer to all of this? Hide. Pretend there are no heavy things in life, and no crush dude, and all of this will pass. At the end of it all I'll be sitting by myself at a wedding and Rupert Everett will apparate out of nowhere singing something or the other. Because not only do I now live in My Best Friend's Wedding, there's been a Harry Potter crossover there too.

What I'm trying to say is, that day I went all girl on Yasmin, she told me to not worry about other people too much, as everyone's 'the hero of their own tragic story.' Here's the thing though - in my story, I don't want to exist anymore. At least for a while. Stop rolling your eyes! I know how it sounds, but I think I'm allowed this break. And maybe when I come back - maybe - all of the stuff I mentioned will have blown over. Or maybe it will be resolved, I don't know anymore. But I do know this, friends: Someday, I, yes I, will be Saturday night.

P.s. Will take a Friday too. Thursdays aren't so bad either.

At first I was afraid, I was petrified

The first time my heart broke was in the summer of 2001. It was June, and my very first true love was leaving my life. His name was Ali, the first Ali I loved. Probably the first man I fell in love with. We were going to wait to graduate college and get married. I was 19. This was one of those things that was probably never gonna happen anyway, but when things, whatever they may be, break into that final run towards the end, all you can think is of what may have been. The truth is, all I could think of was what might have been, had I decided to stay with the most fascinating human being I had known in all my years.

Ali and I never stayed together past that summer, but we broke up every few months for the next five years. It was a very short engagement followed by a terribly long goodbye, and no matter how many times we talked about it, we could never get enough of hashing it out. There was always an extra finger of hurt to point or a last favourite moment to grasp at. We had a whole six months of these moments together, after all. Never mind the logistics. Never mind the fact that 12 years on, talking about Ali reduces any linguistic evolution I have had since back to its 19-year-old version. Never mind the fact that the Ali that followed and I were together for most of my 20s. Never again did I hurt as much as I had hurt back then.

Suddenly though, I am back at 19, I am starting at 30, and I have been clubbed over the head with the following fact: The first man I loved as much was not Ali, my longest relationship to date with a man has not been with another gentleman called Ali, the worst kind of breakup is not one where you are self-styled star-crossed lovers who will not allow themselves to be together. The greatest betrayal, I have learnt recently is not where some dickwad cheats on you for the fifth time - it is when the one man you have trusted and loved most absolutely from the moment you breathed your first decides it's time to go.

How do you fight that? What is the parting shot you can take that will make him want to stay another minute and one-up you? How do you tell him he has to stay because you love him so much, dammit? Because you still haven't talked about everything. Because 30 years weren't enough. Because once he walks out, that's it. There's no coming back, pal, you walk at your own risk. It will be an entire lifetime before you can see me again. Can you live with that? Can I?

It's the natural progression of life, I've heard. It's the next great adventure, Dumbledore said. But how is it that none of that gets past the constant scream in my head asking him to stay. To not leave. To stay for one more minute, to stay here, for the kids.

Danyal: Where I Learn About Life, Lager and Comedy

There are lots of things that have to be factored into what kind of person you end up becoming as an adult. Your socio-economic background, your parents' socio-economic background, birth order, ethnicity, religious background, social conditioning...the list goes on, is endless, and very hard to memorize, which is why Sociology is not the best subject to pick for an easy A in your A-levels. Just sayin'.

Between Weberiansim and Marxism, which are the only two I actually remember a decade on, sociologists ignore a socialization of the third kind: Sitcoms. No? You don't agree? How many of you between the ages of 25 and 35 been labeled a 'Monica' or a 'Joey' by your friends? Exactly. I fancy myself a Chandler, in case you were wondering, and would totes date a Ross. Geeky fossil enthusiasts take note - no, not you, Crystal Harris! I mean real fossils! Like that gross snail-shaped rock your dad picked up on a hike in Hunza once. I have to say that being a kid growing up with parents who were gone a lot, the TV was my parents. My sister Zehra will kill me for saying this, as she fancies herself my parents as well. But let's just say for the sake of my story that the TV brought us both up, okay, Z? Zehra was a total Rachel, BT dubs. Always the hottie with the hot boys. If god hadn't made us sisters, we would not be friends.

Sitcoms have taught me loads of stuff, like when I get married my husband's no good brother will come live with us, and off us, which is why I made great friends with Ali's brothers. It wasn't so hard, they were great kids. They've taught me my parents can and will go bonkers one day. Too late for that one, sitcom mafia, mine have been a little off ever since I've known them. For instance, my mother insists on calling Yasmin and myself 'Bechari Bachis' and then laughs herself silly for  about 15 years. My dad doesn't have a sense of humour, so thankfully we're A-okay on the humiliating jokes front there. He does  know how to cut deep with his serious analyses of things though. How many of your own parents have told you you look like Sheikh Hasina Wajed? And I know, because of sitcoms, that it's okay if I'm broke and my job's a joke and my love life's DOA.

My friend Danyal has not benefited from all the sitcom watching though. For one, they've left him with an attention span which leaves a lot to be desired. If there's no punchline or laughtrack, Danyal doesn't want to hear it. He will literally fall asleep while you're talking. And I did not misuse literally here. Many a time I have been regaling Danyal with my stories, which are all very interesting, only to notice he blinked 20 minutes ago but never opened his eyes again. Thanks buddy. Wait till you're telling me about one of your Natashas or Sashas or Alaynas next. Watch me crack out my pipe and tobacco and copy of Time magazine. Just you wait. In case you wondered why all Danyal's girls have such exotic names, it's because they were born after the year '95 when normal names like Zainab became unhip. Okay, I kid. '90, maybe.

Danyal's a true romantic at heart, he loves long walks and candlelight, like seriously. And he comes up with these incredibly thoughtful gifts and surprises for all the ladies. Like once he dated this girl who was an actor, and he had a fake Tony with her name on made for her. But ask him if this is the one, and he'll say, 'yeah, I like her very much, but...'

Suffice it to say, Danyal is everything that petrifies me about men, and being friends with him means I'm forearmed and all those good things. Anyway, Danyal and sitcoms. Because if anyone has watched as much crap TV as me and listened to as much bad music, it's Danyal - and he is convinced of the truth of all the things he sees and hears, if Billy Idol is saying it, it must be true. However, because of all the pop music and pop television, he has a list of things he must find in a woman, and also must feel when he finds those things. What? So, what Danyal wants is to be like whoever it is that Charlie Sheen plays on that show with potential serial killer John Cryer, Two and a Half Men, and wants a girl like the chick from Big Bang Theory, who probably knows how to cook, and is smart but not a show off about it. Again, what? And he needs to feel the following:

•  Like he's found the key to open any door
• Like she's a candle in the window
• Like he'd hate anything to happen to her
• Like a virgin, touched for the very first time

The last bit's my assumption, but I'm sure he would agree.

The good thing about hanging out with Danyal is that I know which of my jokes will definitely work because he'll laugh. Otherwise he just yawns and says 'the fuck are you saying?' I'm very bitter about the falling asleep thing right now, clearly, but Danyal has been trying to explain it away as a Vitamin D deficiency. Okay, what?

I think there's a great article on Cracked about this, things movies need to stop teaching us about love or something. I should link it up here, but Danyal has all those ailments. And that makes me think, that maybe so do all of us. All of us watch way too much TV, as god intended, and listen to way too much music that makes us build our lives a certain way. I mean, Mr Tom Waites has convinced me I don't need a home as long as I have a head to lay somewhere. We're all looking for that big dream of fulfillment, which means we're never happy with what we have. I mean, what if the big dream involves your job in middle management and the person that keeps asking you out that you're totally meh about at best, but you're all caught up trying to be a literary genius with a proclivity towards men who like their accessories in metallic shades? Or maybe your destiny isn't to be known as the inventor of the toasted strudel but like, marketing? Jeez. The alternatives do not sound like fun.

Oh, and, Durkheimism. I remembered another one. This still makes no case for A-level Sociology.

Friday I'm in Love

Tuesdays are the toughest.

They always have been - back in the day they were the official hump day for Pakistan, and before anyone goes on a tirade about Zia-ul-Haq and all his ridic policies, allow me to calm you down by saying I don't really give a shit - and even when we sidled up to the rest of the world with the novel Saturday-Sunday weekend. Tuesdays just have that quality. Like conjoined kittens. They're there, staring up at you with three eyes [one shared] and two tails; might as well get them some milk in one of your mother's bowls. Tuesdays have that same, desperate quality to them. It's there; might as well trudge through it to the next day, to the end of the week, to Sunday, to next Tuesday. To another Friday. Jeez. This is not fun. Let me cut to the chase: Friday, I'm in love, and Tuesday, I'm starting to feel stupid about it.

Wednesdays are happier times. I immerse myself in all the joy that surrounds me in the form of the diverse humanity dotting the landscape of my life, or some less douchy version of that, and I forget all about that boy Hammad and his gold leather belt and insane laugh. It's not as depressing as it sounds; I'm not still carrying a torch for him as a) This is not medieval times, and b) This is not really about him. It's about the general things he represented. Like interesting people. How many have you met recently? I went to this raging GT last weekend and I pretty much spent my time hanging with Miraal which we could have done anywhere except we would be dressed down. This was not for a lack of trying to socialize with the others. It was because for about an hour everyone talked about calorie counting, and then for another they talked about, I don't know wedding outfits, and this was the men at the party! I kid. I really don't know what the guys were talking about. Ice hockey. Or Megan Fox.

Anyway, every Friday,my hopes are up like my neighbour's dog at 3 a.m. and I hope that there will be something new to look forward to next week - not necessarily romance, just something new; a song or a great talk with an old friend, or an injection of creativity at work. A lot of which requires some kind of inspirational interaction with other people. Every Tuesday though, I'm reminded of the fact that this is as good as it's possibly gonna get, for now.

Or maybe this is because Hammad is being ridiculously cute on his Facebook right now.

A girl can hope, right?

Shit Fashionistas Say

 We all know our share of fashionistas, and as far as the shit they say goes, there's plenty - there's also an other side to this story, which you can read on the Something Haute blog here.

She probably got it from Sunday Bazar.

Fashionista: In London, they’re wearing one bright colour with another, and another…

Friend: You mean colour-blocking?

Fashionista: Yeah, maybe.

She has no right to be sitting front row!

I can’t believe that has-been actress was a showstopper.

They copied that collection from Rizwan Beyg/ Maheen Khan/ Sana Safinaz/ Deepak Perwani.

[Insert name of person] ka tu buss chal raha tha ke apna Prada bag moon pe laga ke chaley!

Forget about clothes – that model has one foot in the grave.

All those blowouts have fried her hair – and her brain.

Your hair is…interesting…

That model is actually [insert politician’s name] mistress.

Yeah, I bought this outfit for Eid. Buss pachas hazar ka tha.

You know my MIL, babe, she’s mad I got her stuff from H&M because unko pata hai main khud Gucci se kam baat nahi karti.

A Birkin? What are you trying to be, Hina Rabbani Khar?

What’s up with this wedding?! There’s no WiFi, how am I supposed to live-tweet it?

Fashionista: So I'm going to London this week.

Friend: Oh cool, vacation?

Fashionista: Long weekend, yaar.

 Shit NOT fashionistas say:

[At the Hermes billboard] Hermes? Lagta hai kisi STD ki baat kar rahe hain.

Run Over By A Tea Trolley

I thought marriages were made in heaven and for sometime it seemed to be the case.

People whom I had never seen before would come to our house and were showered with copious amounts of attention and trays of tea time treats. I hadn’t seen this much adulation over someone we cared nothing for since our rich great aunt from India died (finally!). Khair, the point is I had seen all this hullabullo when cousins had people come to ‘see’ them. My cousins would never bring out a tea trolley themselves, it was always a servant.

“No use basing these relations under false pretenses.” These are not the words of a UN Secretary General but that of my very pretentious Phuppi. She has five daughters and one very devoted, doting rich husband; thus Phuppi can afford to be pretentious. For all her airs and graces, to put it politely, her daughters were married off one by one: summer weddings (to make sure all visiting relatives could take in the extravagances) and every two years, like clock work, in a fashion that Henry Ford would be proud of.

Those were the days but these days are very different. Marriages aren’t made in heaven but at schools, universities, workplaces, cafes. Who wants complete strangers to show up at their house? Imagine that! Or worse an ex! (Yeah, that happened. It was made worse when the intermediary was too clueless to understand the awkward silences and eyes glaring at her to cram the last piece of Bombay Bakery cake into her gob and leave.)

So what am I left with? No choice but my mom telling me in a subtle way that it would have been easier for me had I been slutty in college. This is the same mom that gave all my western clothes to the maid (what was she going to do with them?) when I was 16 for sneaking out at night and coming back with a hickey. Now that I’m 30 she’s all like, “You don’t like anyone, you might as well have picked out someone yourself.” Sorry, Mom, I spent all my life hiding guys from you, when you really just wanted to meet them. Make up your mind, woman!”

“Koi course kyun nahi karlaythi?” she suggests.

I finally shout at her, rather unforgivably, “I have a double masters! What ‘course’ could I possibly enroll in? Do you want me to go to Rangoonwala Hall to learn stitching and flower arrangement?!?!”

“Nahi wahan pay larkay nahi hothay.”

The Anatomy of Relevance

So I totally stole that from Yasmin, but do you blame me? That girl knows what she's talking about. She has got it goin' on. Etc. By some swoop of luck, Yasmin is also one of the only couple people in my life who think I have a broader relevance in the world. It's so completely arrogant to think you're relevant in any way, isn't it? Yet it's the one thing we're all crossing our fingers for constantly. Silently, because it would be so lame to admit to anyone you'd like to be more. More than you? More than now? I have a whole Filofax of rhetorical questions, but why go down that road tonight? Tonight I'm more interested in learning what fucking relevance actually is.

This being a brand new year, I'm actually feeling hopeful about what's to come, unlike the super grim conversation in writing Yasmin and I had had at the end of 2010. The world is a little older this year, as are we, and as people are so fond of saying, we're all a little bit more set in our ways. Which in my case would mean, I'm digging my heels in and standing by my choices a little bit more this year. The good thing about being a little bit older is that there's going be less opinions contesting your own. Everyone figures you know what you're talking about at 30, more so than at 23 or whatever.

But not always.

At 23 I was more serious-minded, at 18, even more so, at 15 I could have been a professional pallbearer, and so on. My life's plan was all chalked out by the time I was 20, and had things gone according to plan, I would be writing about the travails of being a 30-year-old mother of three. Or not writing at all. You'd probably find me brooding under that poster of Homeboy at Roadside Cafe while I scowled at people smoking sheesha, which my serious self as well as my fluffy, Kardashian lovin' self thinks is for suckers. Man up and smoke real cigarettes people! Or man up and say no to tobacco and nicotine! Either way, if you're smoking sheesha, we're never going to be best friends. On the other hand, you'd probably be looking at me funny because I had brought my toddlers to the smoke infested Roadside, which I love, by the way.

Anyway, as I've said before, life hasn't gone according to plan, but I kinda love where things are right now. Please don't quote back John Lennon at me. Unless you've heard every song on John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, in which case, feel free to quote Lennon at me any time of day. I keep digressing from relevance and its place in our lives. Somehow, in modern-day Pakistan, and I believe this to be a very Pakistani phenomenon, unless you're constantly saying very important things, you're not relevant.

But that would be the case anywhere! You might argue, and I agree. But see, Pakistan is the focus of a lot of the world's hoopla right now, including our own, and somehow, if it's not about what Amreeka pandering chors our politicians are, or how ridiculous the state of Pakistani cricket is, and how plain horrible things are right now, any contribution to conversation you make is irrelevant. I'm not saying everyone should chill out and get a mani-pedi, but I am saying, chill out. A little bit. And how will you do that if you spend all your time tweeting links to super duper important articles and opeds from around the world, which highlight all these problems? Moreover, if you're tweeting all this on the minute, plus your take on it, when are you actually reading anything? I am genuinely curious here. On the flipside is the other end of the social-intellectual spectrum: If you're not married and have a bagful of really, really bad marital issues, no one cares what you have to say.

So you see, I'm stuck in the zone of irrelevance. I don't like Imran Khan. I'm not particularly left or right wing, although if I had to pick, I'd lean more to the left, I have not read A Case of Exploding Mangoes, and left The Reluctant Fundamentalist midway. I did read Beautiful From This Angle, but I don't think it qualifies as chick lit on any level. Or as lit for that matter. I didn't change my Facebook picture to one of Benazir Bhutto post December 27, 2007.

I like red nail polish. I like Whistler and Pakistani music. I like intensely funny people although I understand they're possibly just very intense at their core more than funny. I don't adore the beach although I live in Karachi. I love life and have an absolute romance with people of all kinds. My name is Zainab, and I am irrelevant.

Burger Bachis crosses the border, Praise King Khan

The Sunday Guardian features the thoughts of a Burger Bachi on love and Bollywood, thanks to Big Pen Pakistan, and by the grace of all the Bollywood hotties I love so. Go, read, love.