...Of Summer Trip 2.0

Before I start, let me say that “Kahin Dil Pe Na Jadoo Kar Jaaye” by Masood Rana is my new favorite song.

As I sit here writing this, my four month long exam ordeal is over.It has been an inhumanly exhausting and nerve racking experience. From the early reports, I don’t appear to be in danger of flunking any of my subjects, which is more than good enough. Examinifitications not being the pleasantest of topics, I shan’t linger on them for too long. The highlights of the three week long finals were I think,

- The beer-belly that munching on endless Cheetos brought about, and I’m trying to get rid of now.
- The beard that appeared somewhere during my pre-Pre-Finals break and now appears to be a fixture, and my mum’s trying to get rid of now.
- Watching Kung Fu Panda and the new Aamir \Imran Khan thingy the same day and enjoying both immensely.
- Late night laptop borrowings to watch Chori Chori and Fantasia. Yes the Disney one, not the Idol one.

As George Harrison (my favorite Beatle, dontcha know) sang, “All Things Must Pass”, my exams have passed and I hope to heavens that I do too. My attention turns back to the start of my Pre-Finals holidays and the Annual Summer Trip.

Twenty-one days had seemed woefully short to prepare for the 4th Year finals, what with there being two extra subjects and the holidays being at least ten days shorter than the normal thirty we get.. So I wasn’t very eager when dad kept asking me if I could spare three or four days at the start of the holidays for the Annual Summer Trip. It appeared that ‘round 18 relatives (and quite a few of them were very round indeed) were gonna be joining us this time and that the trip would be a very elaborate affair, complete with production numbers and chorus lines. The only incentive for me was the new 8 megapixel camera and remembering how great the last trip had been.

Road-trip-mixtape-making is one of my favorite things to do,but as anyone who’se done it knows, time consuming. And with the trip starting the very next day from the end of my pre-finals, it seemed that Road-Trip-Music was in danger. God bless the Chinese !! For apart from their child restriction programs and state approved exercise regimens, they also make those delightful little cassette thingies that you can plug an ipod into and with a few whacks on it’s side, play in any decent car deck. The added advantage was that I could carry all my music with me. The disadvantage was that I forgot my wall charger back at the hostel and so could only use the darned pod in the car and not anywhere else. Aah well…

A picture’s worth a thousand words, as they say, so I’ll just let the pictures do the talking. All the following were taken by me with the 8 megapixel camera and I’m pretty proud of them if I might say so myself….

……As I write this, I’ve found out that Bob Dylan’s new album, “Tell Tale Signs- The Bootleg Series Volume 8” is coming out on the 7th of October…..

A Bearded Chappie In White Trainers

A Bridge Over Troubled Waters

Mist Mountains

The Kunhaar




The Spider In The Mist



The Spider By Day

Saif-ul-Mulook

The Cold Stranger

The Three Brothers


The Three Sisters




Islands In The Stream



Songs Of The Week,The new Ahmed Rushdi\Saleem Raza CD.
Books Of The Week,"The Last Lion:Alone",William Manchester
Movie Of The Week,"The Bicycle Thieves"

....Of Jet Pilots

7/3/79



Dear Super Cool Jet Pilot.

Thanks for being here,you can fly me any day...



Pounded the streets of Oslo for 4 hours this afternoon (this idea that the cold in Norway is different from home is rubbish,it's just as damp and miserable).The Hotel is very nice and unbelievably warm.Off to the frozen wastes tomorrow - hope the sundecides to shine.Paid a visit to the Munch Museum & hope to visit the Park with all the nude sculptures on the return visit !!

Prices aren't too bad,so might not be broke when I get back.We're not exploring the night life of Oslo tonight- too shattered from walking (that's my excuse).Hope the cottage sorts itself out okay.See you soon,all my love (& more).

Fats XXXX

P.S XXXXXXX

........Found on an unsent postcard tucked in a secondhand copy of Kerouac's Dharma Bums..........

...Of Many Things

Let's cut to the chase here.This post is going to be a good old fashioned rant,like the earlier ones.No fixed topics,no hyperlinks and no pre-planned paragraphs.It's one o'clock at night,the last night at home after a four day weekend.I've just had my midnight marauding trip to the fridge and I have a pitcher full of coke (cold for a change).There's Dire Straits on iTunes radio,the windows are open ,letting in the summer-mountain air through the screen and I know that Bijli won't go again tonight (touch wood...). Bliss is made of simple things,like Mike Knopfler fingerpicking the night away....

I have two half finished posts that will probably never see the light of the day.There's a Dylan post that was supposed to be my first in a series on him.And then there's one on the Goons and The Goon Show,which for the uninitiated is the greatest radio show of all time.(DVDs available to give away).I wouldn't call it laziness,probably a mental block that prevents me from finishing them,and with the study schedule in the near future,I don't think they'll get posted any time soon.

Now they're playing Paul McCartney by the way....

So,I just finished watching "What Women Want".(Yes,I like RomComms,you got a problem with that??).I had rented it for the night,and watching it again made for pretty good time-killing. It got me thinking too.Now I don't pretend that I'm ol' Melvyn or anything,but one of the things that I pride myself on is the fact that I can sense what someone is feeling.Or at least I think I do.

Van Halen's Playing.Thought you'd like to know...

Trust me,this reading-between-the-words,it's not such a lucky thing to have.Ever since I can remember,I've been able to sense whenever there's been...say any tension in the house.Whenever one of my folks is slightly,or more than slightly miffed,I can sense it in their tones of voice,their body language and their bearing that something's up.That's generally my signal to lie low and watch my siblings do something to touch off a spark that ignites the volatile atmosphere...while I smugly snicker.

"While I Smugly Snicker".Sounds like something George Harrison woulda written,dunnit ??

On the subject of earaches.I think I've discovered the root cause,and it's the darned ipod earphones.I had bad,bad pharyngitis and probably the quickest fever cycle in history( from 98 to 103 to 98 in 24 hours) and it'll be at least two weeks till I stop sounding like bally Tiny Tim when I sing.I'd thought that that was the cause of these ruddy earaches.But the fact that they keep shifting to whichever ear is undergoing ipodtrauma.Sad,because I'm not giving up these earthingies for anything.Will have to learn to live with the earaches I guess.

They just played Cliff Richard.Heaven seems intent on spoiling me,and I'd be the last person you'll hear complaining...

Movie Of The Week,"The Last Waltz"(because I have it on my ipod now)
Song Of The Week," Jhunjhlaye Hain,Lajaye Hain,Phir Muskuraye Hain",Begum Akhtar.
Book Of The Week,"Wodehouse,A Biography" by Frances Donaldson.(just finished it,capital capital book)

...Of Men,Old And Old

(This is the second in a series of posts written in a single sitting to make up for lost time.)



-"In my heliotrope pyjamas with the old gold stripe..."

Read that line.Read it again and then tell me if it isn't the finest line you've ever read.Evelyn Waugh compared it to the best passages of Hamlet,Hilaire Belloc called it's writer "The best living writer in the English language".Plum wrote it.P.G. Wodehouse.



I sat down to write tonight after two horrid weeks of examinations.There had been divers things that needed writnhg,but, a) I didn't have time during the exams and b) they were tiny snippets of fleeting thoughts and afternoon-slumber-dreams that didn't warrant a full post.But the one thing they had in common was that they all were,how shall I put it....gentlemen advanced in years.



Old men.



This is a bit complicated.Most of the people I'm going to write about must have been young at some point in their lives (?),but my memory of them developed as old men.Take Plum,for example.Born in 1881,he must have been young till,shall we say 1921 (stretching it to breaking point),and I've got photographs to prove it.But the Plum I remember is ninety one years old.Living peacefully in Remsenberg,NY;working on his ninety-sixth novel.Aah well,that must be what Pavlov meant about conditioning.



What follows is a series of snippets about various men who have been profoundly close to my heart,and still are.Men I've grown up seeing,or discovered after they had passed away.Let me start with the youngest one first.



-Dildar Pervez Bhatti.I hope somebody still remembers him.I had a dream about him five days ago,during what might be termed as a power-nap.Strange,but not very out-of-the-ordinary,considering the fact that he was one of my childhood heroes.I was born a bit too late for his "Takra" days on PTV,(aah what stage shows they had on PTV in those days,sigh),but I was old enough to watch "Panjnad",and what a show that was.



Fronted by Bhatti,always in a blue Shalwar Kameez-dark waistcoat combo or something similar,looking half like a stock mad professor from a Hammer film,with his half bald-half Jewfro hair,this show was the tops.Considering it was considered part of the regional broadcast timeslot,the quality of the program and the guests that were on it were unbelievable.My favorite memory,also the funniest is of the time Munnoo Bhai was on the show.

I'm pretty sure it won't sound half as funny in English,but the exchange went something like this.

Dildar,"Tell me,what does your wife call you at home? Munnoo ??"
M.B,"Nope.She calls me.....dildaar !"

I don't have much to remember Bhatti by.There's a fourteen years old "Women's Own" magazine lying about my village home with Bhatti on the cover.

And then there's my crazy dreams...

......This series will continue intermittently,laziness permitting......

....Of Splendour In The Grass

(This is the first in a series of blogs written in a single sitting,making up for lost time)





It's purely by chance that truely astounding things get discovered.I can name countless examples.Wodehouse,Dylan,that wonderful Tikka shop near the hostels,Spike Milligan;almost everything dropped right out of the blue.Well,technically Khattak Tikka House doesn't count,because I was darned hungry.But two weeks ago,something similar happened.Sordid,but beautiful.



Every time I have exams,the impish desire to quit studying and do something a bit more howshallisay,worthwhile,gets the best of me.It's always led me to trouble.Case in point,finishing the complete Sherlock Holmes a day before my Matriculation Physics paper,thus dishing any chance I may have had of getting respectable grades.It was exam time again,and I was playing hookey like nobody's business.



It was Saturday night,exams in four days,and I was odling around online.There wasn't anything special to do,so I wound up at a forum.It was a place where I'd go for rare old Bollywood songs,and the folks there had always obliged.I was just sluicing among the topics when I chanced upon "Mubarak Begum Needs Help".

"It's just another chain message,hoping for some poor sod to click and get his PC infected",I thought.Usually I don't go poking around such messages but I thought,what the heck.As it turned out,it wasn't a chain mail,but something completely different.


It was a piece about an old Indian playback singer,Mubarak Begum,who had fallen on hard times.It seems she had sung a handful of songs back in the fifties and early sixties but hadn't been exceedingly popular.These days,she was living in utter squalor in Mumbai.Her son was a taxicab driver,and his meagre earnings,along with the little bit that some old fan sent along once in a while,were all that she and her forty year old Alzhiemer's ridden daughter were living on.


Now I think I wrote a blog post on how I feel about faded celebrities,or faded artists shall we say.So I read the piece with the usual cynical pity.Having read on,I learned that the folks on the forum( now that's a good name for a band,Folks On The Forum.Or a radio show...) were trying to get some money collected for her.


At the end of the page,there was brief mention of her two or three better known songs.It turned out I had one of them,but it was incorrectly credited to Lata.Having nothing better to do,I googled one of her songs,put it on download and went off for my midnight snack (which is usually more of a midnight banquet).It being Abbottabad and the connection being Dial-Up,I had finished my sizeable meal by the time the song got downloaded.


It was almost 3 AM,the witching hour,when I wrapped the blanket tighter around me and played the song.It started with a scratchy,haunting flute piece with background violins.On came the voice,and off went my senses.Goosebumps all over my body,I didn't have time to hitch up my sagging jaw as waves upon waves of that sublime voice hit me.It was almost electric,the tingling I felt.And suddenly,the reality of it hit me.This voice,this honest-to-goshdarn voice was the one that was down among the wine and spirits.Normally emotions need a face to associate with,with me it varies.I had seen her picture in the piece bout her,but apart from the aforementioned pangs of helpless pity,nothing else came forth.


But now I had a voice to go with that face,those termite ridden walls and that invalid daughter of hers.My normally lazy mind started whirring,a quick mental calculation of the contents of my bank account and I was decided.A modest wire transfer and my conscience could rest,while my ears attuned themselves to "Kabhi Tanhaiyon Main Yun Hamari Yaad Aayegi"...


Song Of The Week,"Raag Bhimpalas",Ustad Bare Ghulam Ali Khan.
Books of The Week,"Robbins' Pathology",J.E Park's "Community And Public Health",Renu Jogi's "Basic Ophthalmology".Dhingra's "Ear,Nose And Throat".