The Last Waltz is playig on my iPod as I write,with Paul Butterfield wailing on the harp.Wow.
Anyway,this post is not about the Last Waltz,although that's a great idea.This post is about my effort to get off my tush and get things done. With four days of holidays left and a new phone expected later this evening (fingers crossed), I got an idea that I should've had ages ago.
I think the fact that I'm socially awkward has been established.I make few friends, which is acceptable, but I keep in touch with none, which is not. The number of friends and acquaintances that I've lost contact with over the years is in the dozens. And all because of my laziness.Not answering phone calls, text messages, even letters (yes dear kids,I'm old enough to have sent and received letters) and avoiding contact wherever possible have left me with precious few close friends.
And with me turning 22 in March next, that's not an enviable situation (Clapton.Wow !!!) So going against my nature ( and better judgement),I've decided to take steps.A plan has been formulated and let's see what happens if I carry it through. The salient feature include :
1.Find all my phone contacts that I haven't contacted in the last three months and text 'em.Three months because that's the first thing that popped into my head, and text cuz I can't be bothered to call such a long list.
2. Look up all my social networking "friends" and send em some sort of generic message to see if they respond.
3. Try to meet everyone I know who lives in Pindi-Islamabad.
4. Actually make an effort to track down all the "best friends" I've ever had,and there were about half a dozen of those.
I wanted it to be a five point plan,but can't think of a fifth point. If anyone reads this( chuckle,right ) and can think up something else I can do, do let me know.Alright then......Thundercats Are Go !!!!
Movies Of The Week,"This Is Spinal Tap","The Other Side Of The Mirror"
Music Of The Week,"One Kind Favor",B.B. King
Book Of The Week,"The Good War",Studs Terkel
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Sunday, November 30, 2008
... Of Coccoons And Calloway
Coccooning.
It is one of the most primitive forms of survival,practiced by divers sub-genuses of the phylum Insecta.But see,there lies the problem.Humans, last I checked, do not belong to any sub-genus of the phylum Insecta.So I guess it must be one of those Darwinian sod-ups that cause species to share each other's habits.The poor Mantis found religion and I ended up spinning a (figurative) silk-and-saliva mantle around me to lie in a semi-vegetative state for three odd months.
There's something worse than ennui.It's lethargy,I-don't-care-a-whoop,mental block and winter-madness combined.I call it cocooning and it's bleeding terrible.Now that my final year of Med school has started and the moments of leisure are few and far between,I ought to start appreciating them before they run out.And run out they will,come February next year.Run out forever I fear.But instead, a queer listless sod-all-ness has gripped me.
As an aside....God Bless Rafi !!!
It started with the blog.There's tons of things to write,tons of ways to write em and tons of time to write 'em in.But it doesn't seem worth the effort.There's hare-brained schemes to be hatched, hatched schemes to be incubated, but all I seem to be doing is collect blue jokes.In that department,I'm proud to say,I am now self-sufficient !!
Although life is going on as smooth as it's ever gone,there's a clear scent of dry rot.It's insidious and it's bleedin' dangerous, but there it is.(If it wasn't for Rafi on iTunes as i type,I woulda left the blog as it is,shut down my PC and gone to sleep.So, blame him.) And as anyone wh's ever had to deal with dry rot knows,measures have to be taken or there'll be trouble.Well,it's about goshdarned time to take the goshdarned steps.There's a Mission Statement mapped out, a time-frame set and To-Do lists made.
I've spent the weekend revisiting Betty Boop.Thank heavens for Youtube,the uninhibited Bette Davis-Marion Davies-Gracie Allen mash-up is viewable in all her trippy fabulousness.But this time,it wasn't Betty that had me sozzled,it was this . . .
Originally derived from another song called "The Unfortunate Rake",this traditional tune has been done by many,but this Louis Armstrong version had my hairs stand up on end.There's many theories about what this song is about,but my favorite ones are that it's a song about a gambler who goes to the St. James Infirmary to identify his dead sweetheart and then goes off to gamble again.Or that it's about a man who sees his girl dead of Syphillis and knows that he's next ...
Either way,it's an incredible song, and Satch does it full justice.But take a look at this if you will ...
That's Cab Calloway rotoscoped as Ko-Ko the Clown from the Betty Boop short "Snow White".For the uninitiated,rotoscoping is a form of animation where the movements of a person are traced-around from a live action film and then animated.The backgrounds, the kooky dance steps, the voice, you don't see that any more.
From there to the two other shorts Cab Calloway did for Betty, to this ....
If that isn't enough to snap one out of a coccoon,I don't know what is....
Cheers !!
Song Of The Week,"The St. James Infirmary Blues",Louis Armstrong,Cab Calloway,The White Stripes.
Movie Of The Week,"M*A*S*H"
It is one of the most primitive forms of survival,practiced by divers sub-genuses of the phylum Insecta.But see,there lies the problem.Humans, last I checked, do not belong to any sub-genus of the phylum Insecta.So I guess it must be one of those Darwinian sod-ups that cause species to share each other's habits.The poor Mantis found religion and I ended up spinning a (figurative) silk-and-saliva mantle around me to lie in a semi-vegetative state for three odd months.
There's something worse than ennui.It's lethargy,I-don't-care-a-whoop,mental block and winter-madness combined.I call it cocooning and it's bleeding terrible.Now that my final year of Med school has started and the moments of leisure are few and far between,I ought to start appreciating them before they run out.And run out they will,come February next year.Run out forever I fear.But instead, a queer listless sod-all-ness has gripped me.
As an aside....God Bless Rafi !!!
It started with the blog.There's tons of things to write,tons of ways to write em and tons of time to write 'em in.But it doesn't seem worth the effort.There's hare-brained schemes to be hatched, hatched schemes to be incubated, but all I seem to be doing is collect blue jokes.In that department,I'm proud to say,I am now self-sufficient !!
Although life is going on as smooth as it's ever gone,there's a clear scent of dry rot.It's insidious and it's bleedin' dangerous, but there it is.(If it wasn't for Rafi on iTunes as i type,I woulda left the blog as it is,shut down my PC and gone to sleep.So, blame him.) And as anyone wh's ever had to deal with dry rot knows,measures have to be taken or there'll be trouble.Well,it's about goshdarned time to take the goshdarned steps.There's a Mission Statement mapped out, a time-frame set and To-Do lists made.
I've spent the weekend revisiting Betty Boop.Thank heavens for Youtube,the uninhibited Bette Davis-Marion Davies-Gracie Allen mash-up is viewable in all her trippy fabulousness.But this time,it wasn't Betty that had me sozzled,it was this . . .
Originally derived from another song called "The Unfortunate Rake",this traditional tune has been done by many,but this Louis Armstrong version had my hairs stand up on end.There's many theories about what this song is about,but my favorite ones are that it's a song about a gambler who goes to the St. James Infirmary to identify his dead sweetheart and then goes off to gamble again.Or that it's about a man who sees his girl dead of Syphillis and knows that he's next ...
Either way,it's an incredible song, and Satch does it full justice.But take a look at this if you will ...
That's Cab Calloway rotoscoped as Ko-Ko the Clown from the Betty Boop short "Snow White".For the uninitiated,rotoscoping is a form of animation where the movements of a person are traced-around from a live action film and then animated.The backgrounds, the kooky dance steps, the voice, you don't see that any more.
From there to the two other shorts Cab Calloway did for Betty, to this ....
If that isn't enough to snap one out of a coccoon,I don't know what is....
Cheers !!
Song Of The Week,"The St. James Infirmary Blues",Louis Armstrong,Cab Calloway,The White Stripes.
Movie Of The Week,"M*A*S*H"
Sunday, November 2, 2008
...Of A Few Quick Ones
This'll make do while I unclog my brain...
1. They say Modern Bob is Better Than No Bob.They're wrong.Modern Bob is better than almost anyone else out there.
2.Saigal appears promising.After a lifetime of giving him the miss,he's begun to creep into my brain one song at a time.
3.If anyone's wondering why my hair's turning grey at such an alarming rate,let them spend the last two weeks in my shoes.
4.Bill Gates and Tim Berners-Lee are the two people I'd like to meet in Hell.
5.Today my voice is better than I've ever heard it before.It sounds like a cross between (dare i say it) Saleem Raza and that guy "What's-His-Name".
6.Being home alone is always fun, but especially when it's clandestine.
7. I know it's too good to last,but two days without load-shedding makes me harken back to the pre-stone-age days.
8. I have to get it into my brain that this is my last year of blogging.
9. Remember the good old days when the only viruses came in USBs and didn't send out Viagra ads ...
1. They say Modern Bob is Better Than No Bob.They're wrong.Modern Bob is better than almost anyone else out there.
2.Saigal appears promising.After a lifetime of giving him the miss,he's begun to creep into my brain one song at a time.
3.If anyone's wondering why my hair's turning grey at such an alarming rate,let them spend the last two weeks in my shoes.
4.Bill Gates and Tim Berners-Lee are the two people I'd like to meet in Hell.
5.Today my voice is better than I've ever heard it before.It sounds like a cross between (dare i say it) Saleem Raza and that guy "What's-His-Name".
6.Being home alone is always fun, but especially when it's clandestine.
7. I know it's too good to last,but two days without load-shedding makes me harken back to the pre-stone-age days.
8. I have to get it into my brain that this is my last year of blogging.
9. Remember the good old days when the only viruses came in USBs and didn't send out Viagra ads ...
Sunday, August 3, 2008
...Of Erstwhile Homes
We move tomorrow.
I was born in 1987, (no, really) and that makes me what, 21 years old. In those 21 years, dad’s been posted to, let’s see…
Tabuk, Saudi Arabia,
Abbottabad,
Sialkot,
Islamabad,
Jhelum,
Sargodha,
Murree,
Rawalpindi,
Sargodha,
Jhelum,
Rawalpindi,
Abbottabad
And now, for the third time, Rawalpindi…..
Allowing for repeated postings, we have had to shift homes a dozen times in 21 years and now’s the 13th time (touch-wood). Calling it a hassle would be the understatement of the century. It’s really a credit to Mum that most of our stuff has escaped unscathed from all this moving about.. Now, the drill is being repeated again. Most of the stuff is in those ubiquitous little brown cardboard boxes, which will go into those rickety ol’ wooden crates, which will be wheeled up in those gleamin’ ol trucks and shaken, rattled and rolled to their new destination.
Practice makes perfect, and what usually took one week of frantic packing with at least half a dozen hired hands was done this time at a meandering pace with just two people working over two weeks. The whole shebang woulda been done and dusted two days ago had it not been for the 12 relatives who descended unannounced. That, of course meant hasty unpacking all the cutlery, crockery and at least three beds. How Mum kept the expletives in is beyond my imagination.
Anyhoo, the relatives are gone, all the stuff has been re-packed and all that remains to be sorted are two beds, a fewpieces of crockery….and my PC. This gets packed early tomorrow morning just in time to be loaded onto the waiting trucks.The two year sojourn ( one of my favorite words, along with gonorrhea) in Abbottabad has been a vital experience.
My grandfather died in Abbottabad, and I will be eternally grateful for the care he received at the hospital here. I lost my phone here (or it was stolen, depending on whom you believe), and bought this poor battered creature that’s been molested far more than what it deserved for it’s 13,000 Rs. price. I built most of my Dylan collection here, thanks to one of the best surprise gifts I’m ever likely to receive, namely the complete Dylan discography.
I’ve seen the price of a Pindi-Abbottabad coaster ticket go from 65 to 75 to 90 to 100 to 110 to 130 bucks in two years. The first real snowfall in ten years, the best homegrown peaches, apricots, almonds, and apples ever (In fact the ONLY homegrown peaches, apricots, almonds and apples), the delicious biting cold winters which my Mum hated, and the fact that even now, we only had 4 hours of power outages when Pindi had 7 have made Abbottabad one of my favorite places of residence. Add to this the fact that since I only came over for weekends, I didn’t do much socializing and hence no friendships to be painfully broken. Can’t say the same about my kid sister though…
I was born in 1987, (no, really) and that makes me what, 21 years old. In those 21 years, dad’s been posted to, let’s see…
Tabuk, Saudi Arabia,
Abbottabad,
Sialkot,
Islamabad,
Jhelum,
Sargodha,
Murree,
Rawalpindi,
Sargodha,
Jhelum,
Rawalpindi,
Abbottabad
And now, for the third time, Rawalpindi…..
Allowing for repeated postings, we have had to shift homes a dozen times in 21 years and now’s the 13th time (touch-wood). Calling it a hassle would be the understatement of the century. It’s really a credit to Mum that most of our stuff has escaped unscathed from all this moving about.. Now, the drill is being repeated again. Most of the stuff is in those ubiquitous little brown cardboard boxes, which will go into those rickety ol’ wooden crates, which will be wheeled up in those gleamin’ ol trucks and shaken, rattled and rolled to their new destination.
Practice makes perfect, and what usually took one week of frantic packing with at least half a dozen hired hands was done this time at a meandering pace with just two people working over two weeks. The whole shebang woulda been done and dusted two days ago had it not been for the 12 relatives who descended unannounced. That, of course meant hasty unpacking all the cutlery, crockery and at least three beds. How Mum kept the expletives in is beyond my imagination.
Anyhoo, the relatives are gone, all the stuff has been re-packed and all that remains to be sorted are two beds, a fewpieces of crockery….and my PC. This gets packed early tomorrow morning just in time to be loaded onto the waiting trucks.The two year sojourn ( one of my favorite words, along with gonorrhea) in Abbottabad has been a vital experience.
My grandfather died in Abbottabad, and I will be eternally grateful for the care he received at the hospital here. I lost my phone here (or it was stolen, depending on whom you believe), and bought this poor battered creature that’s been molested far more than what it deserved for it’s 13,000 Rs. price. I built most of my Dylan collection here, thanks to one of the best surprise gifts I’m ever likely to receive, namely the complete Dylan discography.
I’ve seen the price of a Pindi-Abbottabad coaster ticket go from 65 to 75 to 90 to 100 to 110 to 130 bucks in two years. The first real snowfall in ten years, the best homegrown peaches, apricots, almonds, and apples ever (In fact the ONLY homegrown peaches, apricots, almonds and apples), the delicious biting cold winters which my Mum hated, and the fact that even now, we only had 4 hours of power outages when Pindi had 7 have made Abbottabad one of my favorite places of residence. Add to this the fact that since I only came over for weekends, I didn’t do much socializing and hence no friendships to be painfully broken. Can’t say the same about my kid sister though…
Thursday, July 31, 2008
...Of Rafi And Family Curses
Its 28 years since Rafi died. It’s terribly shameful that I didn’t realize this till ‘round 7 pm this evening when I came back from jogging and there was a show about him on Geo. A pretty commendable show at that, comforting in the fact that even if the Indian film community, or at least certain members of it are deliberately trying to dilute his legacy, Pakistan hasn’t forgotten one of Lahore’s greatest sons. I don’t think I need to repeat how I feel about him, but to paraphrase; I think he was inarguably the greatest singer I’ve ever heard. And if I haven’t heard a greater singer, it’s not from want of trying.
The funny thing is that each day brings forth another gem that I hadn’t heard before. Take this, for example. A silly little song with Dev Anand as an Ice-Cream vendor, and a bunch of little kids (one of whom is in quite a state of undress) dancing around him. It is what was called a filler song, of little importance, but Rafi has sung it in his “special voice”. If anyone doesn’t know what his “special” voice is, here’s an example. I had bought a brilliant CD of old Pakistani songs from a roadside CD-wala in Pindi, which is pretty mind-blowing in it’s own right, but that’ll have to wait now. It’s Rafi for a whole week now, and nothing else.
…………………………………………………………………………..
The Lalis are an endemic clan, with Jhang and Sargodha their areas of greatest concentration. A storied tribe, with bloodlines linking them with Sultan Tipu, the Lion Of Mysore, as well as quite a few prominent Muslim saints. A few may have made Lahore their home, but the nucleus of the clan is the little town of Lalian, an hour’s journey from Sargodha on the Sargodha-Faisalabad road. Around a hundred odd years ago, their activities included bothering “peaceful” Sikhs and Hindus, having a go at Bhattis and Sipras, and during the World Wars, receiving the “Acknowledgement And Appreciation Of The Viceroy And His Britannic Majesty” for generous donations towards the Red Cross.
These traits have now been substituted with even more admirable ones like drug-trading, stealing canal-water and selling off huge tracts of land. But two things have remained with the Lalis form the days of Gaji Khan (Ghazi Khan, our oldest common ancestor) and those constitute the Lali Family Curse…..Obesity and Male Pattern Baldness!!
The main clan, the cadet branches, even the poor unfortunates who married into the Lali clan, all are inflicted by this curse. The baldness of course is the sole property of males, but the obesity is pretty equally distributed amongst both the sexes. In my case, the baldness stayed on one side and the obesity on the other side of the gender divide in case of my grandparents, but my uncles and aunts have been more equitably blessed with varying combinations of both.
So I’ve been aware ever since I was a tyke that one day I too would be struck down by any one, or God forbid, both of these afflictions. There was a faint glimmer of hope when my kid brother started losing hair like nobody’s business. A year later, the temples began receding, and now the poor sod is earnestly saving cash for a hair transplant. But though his hairline was betraying him, the waistline was above reproach. Sadly I resigned myself to the worse of the two curses (the curse of the two verses???), namely the potbelly.
I wasn’t too worried over hair-loss though, a benevolent Kismet (gimme another word for it if you can), and plenty of head-shaves in infancy had given me good hair, albeit with the consistency of obstinate barbed wire. I was beginning to believe that I would be like one of those lucky uncles of mine who went through life without a toupee to hide their shame. And thus I earnestly set out to achieve the second of the major family traits, and I’m pleased to report that a beer-belly is already developing and ‘tis but a few more weeks of hard work that keep me from a pot belly.
But the sense of security was a false one. Around the time my 4th year exam cycle started three and a half months ago, the unthinkable happened; I began to lose hair. And as it never rains but pours, began to lose ‘em aplenty. Now I’m a pretty strong hearted kid, and don’t get unduly alarmed by much (I think the snakebite and shotgun wound have something to do with that) , but I was darned well frightened. I consider combs to be unnecessary luxuries, and consider a few strokes of my fingers sufficient to make my hair presentable (the Oxford English Dictionary even has a pretty fruity name for people like me; “finger waver”). But now each “wave” of the fingers brought forth further follicular fatalities (hehehe).
I persevered as well as I could during my exams, losing many a precious hair in the process. Finally, as my exams ended, I faced a grim decision. Carry on in the same vein and be the proud owner of a shiny pate in a couple of years, or take the plunge. After a few days of hesitation, and much to my mum’s consternation, I took the ultimate step.
As of exactly 1200 hours today, I am officially a skinhead (no, not one of the neo Nazi, National Front, White Power twits) and I must admit, it feels ultra-groovy…
Now if only I could jog that waistline back to its senses……
The funny thing is that each day brings forth another gem that I hadn’t heard before. Take this, for example. A silly little song with Dev Anand as an Ice-Cream vendor, and a bunch of little kids (one of whom is in quite a state of undress) dancing around him. It is what was called a filler song, of little importance, but Rafi has sung it in his “special voice”. If anyone doesn’t know what his “special” voice is, here’s an example. I had bought a brilliant CD of old Pakistani songs from a roadside CD-wala in Pindi, which is pretty mind-blowing in it’s own right, but that’ll have to wait now. It’s Rafi for a whole week now, and nothing else.
…………………………………………………………………………..
The Lalis are an endemic clan, with Jhang and Sargodha their areas of greatest concentration. A storied tribe, with bloodlines linking them with Sultan Tipu, the Lion Of Mysore, as well as quite a few prominent Muslim saints. A few may have made Lahore their home, but the nucleus of the clan is the little town of Lalian, an hour’s journey from Sargodha on the Sargodha-Faisalabad road. Around a hundred odd years ago, their activities included bothering “peaceful” Sikhs and Hindus, having a go at Bhattis and Sipras, and during the World Wars, receiving the “Acknowledgement And Appreciation Of The Viceroy And His Britannic Majesty” for generous donations towards the Red Cross.
These traits have now been substituted with even more admirable ones like drug-trading, stealing canal-water and selling off huge tracts of land. But two things have remained with the Lalis form the days of Gaji Khan (Ghazi Khan, our oldest common ancestor) and those constitute the Lali Family Curse…..Obesity and Male Pattern Baldness!!
The main clan, the cadet branches, even the poor unfortunates who married into the Lali clan, all are inflicted by this curse. The baldness of course is the sole property of males, but the obesity is pretty equally distributed amongst both the sexes. In my case, the baldness stayed on one side and the obesity on the other side of the gender divide in case of my grandparents, but my uncles and aunts have been more equitably blessed with varying combinations of both.
So I’ve been aware ever since I was a tyke that one day I too would be struck down by any one, or God forbid, both of these afflictions. There was a faint glimmer of hope when my kid brother started losing hair like nobody’s business. A year later, the temples began receding, and now the poor sod is earnestly saving cash for a hair transplant. But though his hairline was betraying him, the waistline was above reproach. Sadly I resigned myself to the worse of the two curses (the curse of the two verses???), namely the potbelly.
I wasn’t too worried over hair-loss though, a benevolent Kismet (gimme another word for it if you can), and plenty of head-shaves in infancy had given me good hair, albeit with the consistency of obstinate barbed wire. I was beginning to believe that I would be like one of those lucky uncles of mine who went through life without a toupee to hide their shame. And thus I earnestly set out to achieve the second of the major family traits, and I’m pleased to report that a beer-belly is already developing and ‘tis but a few more weeks of hard work that keep me from a pot belly.
But the sense of security was a false one. Around the time my 4th year exam cycle started three and a half months ago, the unthinkable happened; I began to lose hair. And as it never rains but pours, began to lose ‘em aplenty. Now I’m a pretty strong hearted kid, and don’t get unduly alarmed by much (I think the snakebite and shotgun wound have something to do with that) , but I was darned well frightened. I consider combs to be unnecessary luxuries, and consider a few strokes of my fingers sufficient to make my hair presentable (the Oxford English Dictionary even has a pretty fruity name for people like me; “finger waver”). But now each “wave” of the fingers brought forth further follicular fatalities (hehehe).
I persevered as well as I could during my exams, losing many a precious hair in the process. Finally, as my exams ended, I faced a grim decision. Carry on in the same vein and be the proud owner of a shiny pate in a couple of years, or take the plunge. After a few days of hesitation, and much to my mum’s consternation, I took the ultimate step.
As of exactly 1200 hours today, I am officially a skinhead (no, not one of the neo Nazi, National Front, White Power twits) and I must admit, it feels ultra-groovy…
Now if only I could jog that waistline back to its senses……
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