and it was all yellow!

So, I am sitting here on my monstrous butt; monstrous, stretch-mark free butt might I add, the latter attribute, I am told, being proof that I have an extra ounce or two of celestial matter in my creation. Wonder then whether the loose hanging flesh that surrounds my posterior is the halo that is supposed to mark my divinity. I kid you not! After the first conjectures regarding the rather esoteric relationship between my bottom and saintliness were made, I decided to strip myself in front of a man-sized mirror and put my backside through a rigorous examination. The person in the mirror cut a very sorry figure: tenderly fondling his own bottom and craning his neck backwards to see with a highly sheepish grimace on his mug. At that moment, a million, ‘mildly’ philosophical questions invaded my head, a lighter one among them the one about the halo. Another nastier one was what if God had made this, the rear end, the functional end of a human being? As in, what if people ate and spoke through this end, and its present functions were assigned to other parts of the body? Hahah…now we say ‘she is so soft-spoken, uss k toh muun se phool jhartey hain!’ What would we say in the other case? ‘Uss ki g**** se phool jhartey hain’? Haahaha. But it wouldn’t really have mattered, I say. Human civilization would have evolved around that anatomy and everything would have been just as it is. ‘Ass’inine, such line of reasoning, I chide myself, the reserve of fools and no-good do-littles like me. So, I sit here on that which may very well have been something else compelling all of us to very literally put our asses where our mouth is, thinking about what to write in the way of a ‘decent’ blog-post.

Poor, long-suffering Michael Jackson kicked the bucket yesterday after 50 years of a life that changed color often, both in body and in spirit. Made me especially sad, his departing. I still remember my first ever exposure to western music was with the video of MJ’s ‘beat it’ back in the summer of ’88 in Okara. I watched it at my Mamu’s place with my cousins, and the machismo the moon-walking, break-dancing black singer was displaying in it had me completely bowled over. I asked for the tape to be rewound and replayed so many times, my older cousins finally got sick of me and deposited me with my mother for an afternoon siesta. But, at that time I mistook the ‘beat it’ in the song to be ‘peethay’, ‘peeth’ being the term used in my family for a child’s bottom. (With such an ass-centered beginning, doubt this post is going to be able to free itself from the yoke of the anus….blecch! this just keeps getting dirtier and dirtier). Anyway, I still remember asking ‘Mallo baji! Yeh peethay peethay kyun keh raha hai?!’. Still remember the laugh that went around the room. God it felt good to be funny as a child. And, another, closer in time Michael Jackson memory. It was my first year at college, a Monday morning, and an Uncle at whose place I had spent the weekend was to drop me off at my college. Now, as I was having breakfast while watching MTV, ‘In the closet’ started showing with Naomi Campbell’s sinuous figure gyrating all over the TV screen and MJ having the time of his life fooling around with her. Now, obviously, it caused a rumble in my underpants! And in the middle of all of that, Uncle came and said ‘lets go’. I managed a measly 'Ji!', while not budging an inch from the sofa I was planted on. He looked at me confused, then saw the TV and said smilingly ‘Ready when you are, Hasni Mian!’ That was one embarrassing moment. Yet, after that, I downloaded the video and now have every second of it burnt in my memory. So, MJ, you made for some good times. May your soul rest in peace!

On the personal front, I have been down with the sickness for more than a week now; a mild case of Hepatitis-A. The pupils of my eyes are dilated as if at some unseen horror, and seem to be floating around in two pools of yellow muck. And, as is the theme of this post, my ass-hole seems to have lost control over what it’s supposed to hold in, and at the most inopportune times, solid, liquid and gaseous emissions come gushing forth to strike the fear of God in my heart at even the tiniest commotion in my belly. An hour ago, my mother made me have three-fourths of a kilo of jaaman; jammu, in seraiki, for those like me more used to the desi name of it. Its fibrous insides are supposed to be very good for clearing one’s intestines of all sorts of filth. And I think its beginning to work. So, I better get going before I soil my shorts just sitting here. Wonder why I started this piece and why I am ending it?! Hope though, that this post is easier on your sensibilities than the previous one.

love, disowned!

I drank
by her hand
greedily, lustily

and in between unapologetic quaffs
I prayed, ‘give me that,
which in your cellar abounds;
for if I taste a vintage rare,
tomorrow, my thirst
all the oases of this wilderness
shall quench, nor sate’.

and she,
in whispers,
cautious and carefree
diffident and bold
expectant and aloof,
spoke:

‘yesterday this day's madness did prepare;
tomorrow’s silence, triumph, or despair:
drink! for you not know whence you came, nor why:
drink! for you know not why you go, nor where.’1

by her fancy,
I drank.

when my rapture
I could not contain
I cried, ‘No more’,
And, meant it not.

she put her burning lips to my ear,
and poured in the nectar of an otherworldly allure:

‘blossoming verse underneath the bough,
a bowl of wine, some bread, and thou,
beside me singing in the wilderness,
oh, wilderness were paradise now!’2

on her shoulder, my stupor did rest
without a thought, a care or regret;

and when I woke
there was naught;
just the scorching sun
to mock my lot.

my face I held in my hands
and through baffled tears
I wondered,
could it be just a dream?
a mirage?
or some unearthly game?

treacherous trickery!

thence,
however, it must be told
to my approach runs dry
every oasis
in this barren
irredeemable
godforsaken
zone.

and I waste away,
thirsty, forlorn
sans that which by her hand
I drank.

--------------------------------------

1 Omar Khayyam. Ruba’i 74.
2 Omar Khayyam. Ruba’i 6.

late last night

sit up with a start. eyes staring glassily at the muted TV screen lose focus for the first time in two hours. 'go to bed. go to bed! can't u see what time it is? go to bed this very instant!' what the hell for, dipshit?! 'it's a weeknight, asshole. you want to sleep through the precious hours of the morning? you want life, shackled and constrained, to wait for you while you get done with your beauty sleep? get up off your monstrous butt right now and go to bed.' oh. haha. jackass! nothing awaits me in the morning. nothing! neither life, nor death. just gaping nothingness. get lost, and leave me in peace. let me at least adorn this vaccuum with dreams of how it would be like to live, for real. fuck off! and don't u dare disturb my reverie again tonight, you paranoid fuck!