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Originally titled “Kiss, kiss, bang, bang”
I still remember the first time I heard about anything like it. I was at my A level tuition centre and was talking to one of the boys from the junior, AS level who was waiting for one of his female friends to arrive. When she arrived, I discovered that she was an extremely skinny person, with perfectly straight, short black hair, kohl-rimmed eyes and an unsmiling mouth. But what actually bothered me was that on one side of her face, barely hidden by her hair, one could see a small bruise. She was 17 years old and I was told that her boyfriend (an A-level drop-out from another school), was responsible for it.
“I don’t know why she’s with him,” said my junior, “I’ve told her several times that he’s bad news but she doesn’t listen.” Needless to say I was shocked at first, but then felt sorry for the girl. I found out that other than hitting her, he would often yell at her, call her names, was extremely controlling and would sometimes make fun of her in front of his guy friends. Despite all of that, she continued to be with him. None of it made sense to me, she wasn’t bound to the boy for any legal reasons or otherwise, so why be with someone who treats you so badly? “What’s wrong with her?!,” I couldn’t help asking. “I don’t know…” replied my junior, somewhat miserably, “she calls me in tears whenever they fight and he’s mean to her. I talk to her and try to calm her down. She promises me she’ll get out of it but the moment the guy begins to behave himself, she forgets everything and goes back to him!”
Just a couple of years later, I encountered an oddly similar situation closer to home. One of my very close friends, Ms Z and I were talking on the phone one day while she was visiting her boyfriend. In the middle of the conversation, the line dropped (or so I thought) and I tried calling her back but she wouldn’t pick up the phone. Several minutes later, I received a text message from her which read “he just hit me”. Something snapped inside me and I immediately took the ‘risk’ of telling my parents and we all went to where they were. I ‘rescued’ my friend and made her sit in the car with me while my parents gave the boy (who was incidentally a visiting foreign-exchange student) a piece of their mind – even threatening to report him to the embassy and have him deported for assaulting a local.
Ms Z would never, in a million years, tell her own parents what had happened. She came from a conservative but incredibly loving family that probably wouldn’t respond well to the notion that their daughter even had a boyfriend, let alone a gora boyfriend. My parents assured her that even if Ms Z’s family initially got upset over the fact that she involved in a relationship, their next instinct would be to protect her against such ‘crazy’ people. But telling them was her decision. She didn’t. In fact, after all this had happened, she went back to him.
“He was incredibly sorry for the way he behaved!,” Ms Z tried to justify her decision, “he was extremely stressed out, he just wasn’t thinking. But he really ‘loves’ me. I ‘love’ him too!” She hit me with the infamous L-word – something I don’t think should be accepted as an excuse. The gora was a strange character. No one would believe that he was capable of hurting a soul because he kept up a very amiable, very polite public appearance. But as it turned out, when it was just Ms Z and him, he was a very different character: he often lost his temper, was extremely controlling of who she talked to, what she did, even what she ate at times… he would even display these two sides simultaneously when at one point he would be laughing at another person’s jokes and at the same time he would turn and tell Ms Z that she wasn’t worth anything and that she was lucky he was even spending time with her. whenever she’d had enough and would threaten to leave, he would become tearful and extremely sorry for his behaviour and she would forgive him. It was almost like a never-ending vicious cycle. A year later when it was finally over, I asked my friend why she chose to stay with him so long? “I was… I’m still afraid no other boy would be attracted to me,” she said, “I thought he was the best I could ever find. Sometimes I still wonder that.”
Out of curiosity and a need to makes sense of the abusive boyfriends mentioned above, I tried to do some research their behaviour and found out that where there are many reasons for it, simply speaking such individuals direly need both anger management and treatment for acute depression. Personally, I also feel they need to be taught how to respect another individual and the knowledge that their behaviour is not without consequence. Women on the other hand need to recognize their self worth and when to firmly say no to accepting such behaviour. The fact that they, despite receiving support from family and friends, continued to let themselves be treated the way they did, makes them just as responsible for it. “It’s not the physical scars that we’re afraid of, they heal with time” my parents had said to Ms Z, “it’s the emotional ones. They inflict more damage and take much longer.”
Note: This is the raw version since I haven’t been able to access the edited version from the website.
School can be a strange, strange place. While in school, parents and faculty members can seem like even stranger people. I don’t remember exactly when it happened, but I do remember experiencing that period of time when our principal decided to implement a rule that all of us students found incredibly amusing. In the middle of the final year of my A levels, our principal announced that she was going to implement a “three-foot rule”. That basically meant that students of different genders could not sit/walk/interact with one another if they weren’t maintaining a distance of at least three feet. Yeah, right.
What had happened was that our A level was right in the middle of the junior and O level block in school. Apparently a couple from the first year of A-levels had been sitting together “somewhat inappropriately” and had offended the sentiments of a parent who had been visiting the junior block. That parent was adamant that she did not want her offspring exposed to such ‘vulgarity’ and complained to the principal. The principal then decided to implement the three-foot rule.
How the rule could be implement effectively was another thing altogether. No one really took it very seriously, even the sports teacher who was responsible for monitoring on-campus behaviour seemed very amused by the idea, but as a part of the faculty member had to support it. Whenever we’d see him approaching us, we’d laugh and extend our arms to indicate the distance. If he caught two opposite gender students interacting at a distance closer than three feet, he’d quietly stand behind them, extend his hands and slowly separate them to the approximate distance. The students would all roll their eyes at this and the sports instructor could be seen chuckling every time he ‘implemented the law’. Eventually though, the school grew out of the rule and life returned to normal.
Recently a huge issue had been created in among the student body of a popular business school in Lahore where a student had raised an objection to the public displays of affection (PDA’s) that other students were engaging in on campus. She had complained that the PDAs were a little too ‘graphic’ and made other students at the campus that had to witness such displays, a little uncomfortable. Eventually, among the student body it turned into a question of freedom of expression vs. censorship of behaviour, personal freedom against a rigid, conservative, ‘mullah-istic’ point-of-view towards behaviour. The administration took notice and, as has been rumoured, decided to see what they could do about it. members of the student body were a little taken aback that the administration should chose to pick such an issue to attempt to fix, whereas there were other issues (pertaining to facilities etc) that the students had been complaining about a very long time that they had chosen to quietly ignore. Even today, no two people have the same perspective on the same issue.
I have come across school teachers who complain that when they chastise students who engage in behaviour that borders on vulgarity, they are accused of being ‘narrow-minded’ and in some cases, even jealous! Students on the other hand complain that faculty members and parents are a little paranoid and that for them, two members of the opposite gender sitting a little close is considered ‘vulger’, and what exaggerated behaviour did the parents/faculty members ‘imagine’ the students might be engaging in when seeing that? They also claim that they have a right to behave as they please with their fellow students and that faculty should limit their attention and focus on what they’re ‘supposed’ to do: teach. Whereas one personally does not feel that another persons’ parent, other students or faculty members have a right to dictate what another student does in their private space; the student should also be sensitive to the sentiments of those around him/her and maintain a certain level of decorum in their behaviour. If they don’t want to be chastised for a ‘personal’ matter, then don’t make it available for public viewership.
Printed as “Birthday blasts”
Growing up is hard to do. As clichéd as it may sound, we go from the warm loveliness embodied by our families who make us believe we’re the most beautiful, unique, smart and loveable people to ever set foot on earth, to actually going out into the real world and discovering that with the good, there is also the bad and the ugly as well.
I often see people host elaborate events on their birthdays, they’re genuinely happy about that particular day because they believe that that day is not only unique to them but also symbolic of what they are essentially – so deeply rooted is the concept of celebrating their birthday to their own personal identity. Having said that, what happens when a birthday doesn’t go as planned? Contrary to popular belief, birthday’s going badly happen quite a lot. This post is dedicated to stories about a series of unfortunate birthdays.
I once met a person who, during her early teens, had three consecutive birthdays in which none of her school friends showed up for the party she’d prepared for. As it turns out, her best friend at that time was partly to blame. She would host a get-together at her place on the exact same day. It was easier for classmates to reach her place since she lived close to everyone and at 13, your major concern is not only getting a ride, but making sure you don’t anger your parents by making them drive too far out for you to go and have fun. When the hapless birthday girl confronted her best friend (?), her best friend would act surprised and say something along the lines of “but I didn’t think it was that important!” and then promise never to do it again. But she did. Time and time again. “I was still friends with her because the idea of breaking our friendship over a birthday event seemed a little stupid. But things were never the same again. I was always suspecting her motives… in everything,” she says, adding that, “I think twice about inviting people over now. At the back of my head, I do wonder whether they’ll show up or not; even when they’ve confirmed their attendance.”
A birthday can go terribly wrong when too many people try to make it special for you as well! A certain Ms X suffered a true ‘series of unfortunate events’ on her birthday when everyone from her family to her friends set up a series of surprises that just went all wrong. With her birthday falling on a holiday, Ms X decided to sleep in late, because of which she ended up missing going to a small picnic with her friends that they had planned. Thinking that she could another time, she messaged in her apology. As it turned out, her friends had planned a surprise birthday bash for her at the venue which was ruined with her cancellation.
With having done nothing all day, Ms X decided to go have coffee with a close friend in the evening. She ended up having a small argument with her parents who wanted her to stay at home and somehow could not give her a good reason as to why they were so (strangely) adamant that she stay. She ended up leaving for coffee. Only when she arrived at the venue was she told by one of her siblings that her parents had planned a surprise birthday bash and were just waiting for the cake to be delivered. There was no point in turning back from the café; the mood at home had been ruined.
At night, Ms X had been invited by a restaurant-owning couple to their restaurant’s anniversary celebration which fell on the same day as her birthday. Feeling incredibly guilty for ruining her parents’ plans for her birthday and thinking that her attending the event would aggravate the situation at home, she decided not to go. Several hours later, she got a phone call from the couple who told her that they had had a special cake made for her as well since it was also her birthday and they had been hoping to surprise her with it. “From that day onwards,” says Ms X, “I keep telling people: I know you love me, but if you really want to show it, then don’t try to surprise me on my birthday!”
Growing up is hard to do. As clichéd as it may sound, we go from the warm loveliness embodied by our families who make us believe we’re the most beautiful, unique, smart and loveable people to ever set foot on earth, to actually going out into the real world and discovering that with the good, there is also the bad and the ugly as well.
I often see people host elaborate events on their birthdays, they’re genuinely happy about that particular day because they believe that that day is not only unique to them but also symbolic of what they are essentially – so deeply rooted is the concept of celebrating their birthday to their own personal identity. Having said that, what happens when a birthday doesn’t go as planned? Contrary to popular belief, birthday’s going badly happen quite a lot. This post is dedicated to stories about a series of unfortunate birthdays.
I once met a person who, during her early teens, had three consecutive birthdays in which none of her school friends showed up for the party she’d prepared for. As it turns out, her best friend at that time was partly to blame. She would host a get-together at her place on the exact same day. It was easier for classmates to reach her place since she lived close to everyone and at 13, your major concern is not only getting a ride, but making sure you don’t anger your parents by making them drive too far out for you to go and have fun. When the hapless birthday girl confronted her best friend (?), her best friend would act surprised and say something along the lines of “but I didn’t think it was that important!” and then promise never to do it again. But she did. Time and time again. “I was still friends with her because the idea of breaking our friendship over a birthday event seemed a little stupid. But things were never the same again. I was always suspecting her motives… in everything,” she says, adding that, “I think twice about inviting people over now. At the back of my head, I do wonder whether they’ll show up or not; even when they’ve confirmed their attendance.”
A birthday can go terribly wrong when too many people try to make it special for you as well! A certain Ms X suffered a true ‘series of unfortunate events’ on her birthday when everyone from her family to her friends set up a series of surprises that just went all wrong. With her birthday falling on a holiday, Ms X decided to sleep in late, because of which she ended up missing going to a small picnic with her friends that they had planned. Thinking that she could another time, she messaged in her apology. As it turned out, her friends had planned a surprise birthday bash for her at the venue which was ruined with her cancellation.
With having done nothing all day, Ms X decided to go have coffee with a close friend in the evening. She ended up having a small argument with her parents who wanted her to stay at home and somehow could not give her a good reason as to why they were so (strangely) adamant that she stay. She ended up leaving for coffee. Only when she arrived at the venue was she told by one of her siblings that her parents had planned a surprise birthday bash and were just waiting for the cake to be delivered. There was no point in turning back from the café; the mood at home had been ruined.
At night, Ms X had been invited by a restaurant-owning couple to their restaurant’s anniversary celebration which fell on the same day as her birthday. Feeling incredibly guilty for ruining her parents’ plans for her birthday and thinking that her attending the event would aggravate the situation at home, she decided not to go. Several hours later, she got a phone call from the couple who told her that they had had a special cake made for her as well since it was also her birthday and they had been hoping to surprise her with it. “From that day onwards,” says Ms X, “I keep telling people: I know you love me, but if you really want to show it, then don’t try to surprise me on my birthday!”
Where birthdays can be made into a special event, it is important to remember that they’re not the end-all when it comes to defining you or your identity. If you’ve a bad birthday, that doesn’t mean that the heavens conspired to put you down on a personal basis. Be happy about it, but also treat it like any other day – what makes a birthday special is not how big a hoopla you create while celebrating it, but realizing how much you’ve grown as a person and how far you’ve come in your relationships with people, your understanding of life.
There are many different kinds of women to be found slogging away at the gym. They include the obese; those who need to tone down their abundant figures in order to live a healthy life. They are seemingly a tad self-conscious, look at every other member from the corner of their eye while working out, and look away the moment you catch them staring. Then there are the chubby ones, those who know that by loosing just a couple of kilos they’ll reach their image of the perfect body. They seem to possess the most determination and approach their workout routine as if they were training for the military.
Last, but not the least, there are the self-obsessed, made-up ones. These women are neither chubby nor obese, leave their hair open and wear full make up (I thought that was a big no-no; doesn’t it block your skin’s pores when you sweat, resulting in huge, horrendous pimples?) and are more interested in checking themselves working out in the mirror more than anything else. The gym seems to render little use to them other than another place where they’d like to be seen.
The pressure to look good (read: skinny) nowadays has increased in enormous proportions from the time I was in school. For us, it was mainly about keeping our hair neat, making sure we smelled good and getting rid of any unwanted facial hair. At 14, I had a friend who constantly fretted about her weight (she still does. She also conveniently blames her tendency to gain weight on her Arabic roots rather than on her voracious appetite), who constantly announced that she was going on a diet (I thought only adults were allowed to do that!) and then would proceed to drown her sorrows in a bottle of soda.
When I used to watch my sister prepare for school, I would get both amused and admittedly, a little scared. She would get up two hours before it was time for her to leave, spend 15-20 minutes taking a shower, 20-30 minutes of that time on her hair (straightening/curling/setting), 20-30 minutes on her make-up (a weird combination of facial powders and what not, plus the eyeliner had to be put on just right) and the rest of the time deciding whether her clothes – and the overall combination – looked good on her. The end result: she looked perfect, almost doll-like. Her friends are just like her. Collectively, they keep a close watch on what they’re eating all the time so they don’t pack on any unnecessary pounds. On the flip side, that’s the only measure they use against weight gain, what happened to healthy exercise? But then this is not just limited to my sister and her posse, go to the mall, take a good look around and you’ll discover that you’re surrounded by a multitude of “mini-models” who sport the same haircut and overall look (they could be clones) and most of them, are incredibly skinny.
Where one thinks that there is nothing wrong with presenting oneself beautifully, but it does raise some questions: to what lengths is the current generation of teenagers willing to go in order to fit into a certain stereotypical image of the perfect-looking person? Secondly, by concentrating so much on their outward appearance, are they forgetting their most important accessory, the one thing that is known to hook people better than any lipstick ever made: their personality?
My mother had once said: you should know how to use public transportation so if the day ever comes that you don’t have access to a car, you’d know what to do. That, and coupled with the fact that I had several other demanding siblings at home and just one car meant that at times in order to get to destinations, I’d have to use a rickshaw. Since then, I have met many others who do too. These are my experiences; they are the rickshaw diaries.
Hailing a rickshaw is easy: all you have to do is extend your arm towards the street and wave it as a rickshaw passes by. The rickshaw driver will always quote you a higher fee than is reasonable, completely depending on how well-dressed and stupid he thinks you are. You bargain and bring the amount down by 30 to 50 per cent. You climb in, clutch your bag tightly to your chest (the ride will be jittery at best and you want to remain uh… ‘close and tight’), and say a little prayer. The first thing you will notice is the change in ‘street attitude’ when shifting from a car to a rickshaw: staring, which is a national male hobby (most consider it their birthright) will shift gears with those in cars indifferent to your presence and those in buses and motorcycles suddenly believing that you are in their league.
Occasionally being harassed comes hand-in-hand with riding in a rickshaw. Rarely will bus passengers make the effort to yell something at you, but on occasion they will. You probably can’t do anything about it: the window is too high up for you to get off and slap the harasser and if you wedge one foot on the rickshaw for leverage, there is a very good chance of you falling off when the traffic signal goes green. Remember: you are a strong… woman, not John Rambo.
Motorcycle wallas fall in the worst category. The ease and independence with which they can move gives them much confidence. They will do everything from riding their motorcycle beside your rickshaw and jeering at you to trying to follow you home (try to arouse the rickshaw drivers’ desi inborn concept of ghairat and he’ll work on giving the motorcycle walla the slip without additional charge) to actually just drive fast enough to be able to tug at your (flowing) dupatta from behind the vehicle. As most desi women are trained to either slap or ignore, this would be the time to ignore. The moment will pass. The motorcycle walla will get his kick and leave. Scream (you will do little more than to amuse him) and endure a second round of the touch-the-dupatta game.
I once ended up with a rickshaw driver who probably believed that he was actually a formula one car driver than one who drove a puny vehicle with very small wheels. Off we went, in the middle of a cold and windy Karachi winter, flying over every small rock, threatening to smash into every little hole in the road. I held on for dear life. By the time we got to one of our stops, not only did I feel like a frozen popsicle but the vomit that was building inside me this entire time was frozen as well. When I came back several minutes later I was told by the driver that “I don’t like to wait. I will gladly drive you to any end of the Earth, but I can’t stand waiting for someone. It’s boring.”
There was this one time I did not bargain the fare. That was because I was too shocked to argue. I absentmindedly started talking to the driver in English and he responded… in English! As it turned out, the driver held a masters degree in both Persian and English and had a vast knowledge of physics and math. He was very talkative and had an opinion on everything that passed by. I, only had one question that dominated my mind: how can a person having attained such education be a rickshaw driver?! When I did manage to ask him that, he looked visibly shattered, told me that was something he didn’t want to talk about and drove away. Since then, I’ve really learnt not to judge or stereotype anyone driving a ‘puny vehicle with small wheels’.
– Photo by Fayyaz Ahmed
Like most traditional South Asian families, my paternal family happens to be huge. I don’t think my grandparents subscribed to the school of thought that believed that “less is more”. In fact, all evidence points towards the opposite. Judging by the sheer number of their offspring (10. There would have been more had medical science been able to achieve back then what it can today), I presume that conceiving, birthing and rearing children was a favourite pastime of theirs. Add to this their children’s spouses and their children, and in some cases grandchildren, the number of immediate relatives numbers just under a 100.
The population explosion can be best observed in the wedding portraits of my parents and those of my father’s siblings. As a tradition, one family photo is printed, framed and hung on the wall of my grandparents house. As you progress from the eldest sibling to the youngest, you can see the family growing bigger and bigger. As of right now, there has come a point at which the entire family cannot fit on one shaadi ka stage and the wedding photographer has to walk a great distance just in order to try and fit all of us in the frame. After the photo is printed and hung on the wall, we’re just short of using a magnifying glass to figure out which one of those countless round heads smiling back belongs to whom.
There are both pros and cons of being a part of such a large unit. The advantages could include the fact that there is never a dearth of uncles/aunts willing to babysit you, you’re never really truly alone in the world and there are people watching out for you. But most importantly, you get a lot of eidi on Eid. You also have a large number of first cousins to keep you company. It’s even better when they’re all born in or around the same year (I have seven cousins who were! Yes, judging by the looks of it, it was a very fertile year for the family). The cons can also include that you’re never, really, truly alone even when you really, truly want to be. Whenever our parents are away, we’re literally drowned with phone calls and visits from well-meaning relatives, all of whom want to make sure we’re fine, comfortable and not getting bored. The latter would be impossible especially considering that we often spend most of our time responding to them.
Coming to the communication in such a large ‘establishment’; as all grandmothers are wont to, mine also has a little black book full of phone numbers of every conceivable person who can possibly be called a relative. At times that includes people related to us in such a complicated permutation, it would take an experienced and highly-qualified anthropologist to figure out and remember just exactly how. Miraculously, embodying the memory of a matriarchal elephant, my grandmother remembers each and everyone one of them. She can rival any journalist when it comes to not only keeping tabs on family members but spreading any potential news there is within seconds of it actually happening.
One doesn’t realize the scale of one’s family unless one sees it from the perspective of an outsider. A couple of years ago, one of my khalas was visiting from the UK and we happened to take her to a family dinner. When it came time to leave, she first looked around at the number of people she would have to personally meet and say goodbye to. Then she stood in one conspicuous corner of the room, waved her hand in one grand sweeping gesture and said “Goodbye O kin of my brother-in-law”. While making sure there wasn’t a single family-member that I had forgotten to wish, and feeling very amused at khala’s behavior, I couldn’t help but think: how convenient!
I recently tried to get in touch with a person (ms X) I had interacted with briefly during my stint in college. I was told by a mutual friend that she had moved out of the country, quite abruptly, in the middle of pursuing her degree. Baffled, I couldn’t help but wonder why? The answer shocked, angered and saddened me at the same time. It continues to even today, even time I think about it.
Ms X was the epitome of a good girl. She got good grades, dressed modestly, was very polite and friendly and had a good relationship with her family, friends and acquaintances. One had heard of a person that Ms X referred to as her long-time boyfriend, someone she had full intentions of getting married to once she was through with college. As it turned out, for whatever reason, she decided to end her relationship with the said boyfriend. He apparently didn’t take it well and set out to destroy her in a manner that (despite it sounding a little dramatic) I can only assume is unforgiveable. He posted some intimate, somewhat explicit photographs of her online that he had taken from his cellphone. Knowing how the internet works, they were copied and hosted almost immediately on almost all of the popular servers.
Everyone saw them. In reaction, the students at the university stopped talking to her and ostracized her. People working in the professional field where her classmates were interning, saw them and pretty soon, she developed a ‘reputation’ there as well. Her neighbours saw them and began to talk, sometimes giving outright hostile looks to her family whenever they would pass by. She changed her cellphone number and her mother would screen her calls at home. Eventually she stopped attending college, took her semester exams separately and she, along with her entire family moved abroad. I don’t know what happened to the perpetrator, I don’t even know who he was: in the media posted online, his face is (conveniently) hidden.
At a themed get-together, in my attempt to find the restroom, I came across a room in which an acquaintance had ‘passed out’ on the bed and another individual (who, it turns out was simply posing, otherwise he had no business being parked where he was) lying beside her. What disturbed me was that there was a whole group of guests standing over them, ALL of them taking photos of the two from their cellphone cameras. The girl would find it hard to escape her ‘embarrassing moment’ as it didn’t take a genius to figure out that the photos would be shared from friend to acquaintance, making fun of the girl and what not.
Incidents in which cellphone cameras are being used to take intimate photos which are then shared by the photographer between first his friends and acquaintances and then (perhaps, out of malice) online are becoming worryingly common. They are also used a means through which the photographers blackmail their subjects. Teenage boys have been known to scare their (somewhat stupid girlfriends for allowing themselves to get in this position in the first place) girlfriends in the same manner, often to scare the girls from ‘dumping’ them.
Where one feels that in part, such incidents are just as much of a fault of the victim since they willingly (and stupidly) allow themselves to be recorded in such a manner, one also feels that the person recording the media needs to behave in a mature, responsible manner and give due thought to the (sometimes irreparable) damage he/she would inflict on, not only the victim, but also on the victim’s family and friends. In this age of instantly recordable and transportable media, both need to consider the consequences of the media they are using, for what purpose and how it can be exploited.
The level of secrecy and sense of impending peril could rival that in any spy film. I arrive at the venue hoping to get access without having to stand in the street for too long for people to notice what I am there for. I try to open the door, but surprisingly find it locked. The chowkidar comes to me, asks my purpose, then knocks lightly on the door. Pretty soon, the door is unlocked and a person clad in his uniform peeks out, he looks around, lets me in and then locks the door behind me. The other employees work on handing me what I want, I pay them, and then I leave. Yes, getting a (forbidden) cup of coffee in Ramadan from a popular café pre-iftar can make you feel as if you’re risking your life for it.
Most restaurants and cafés in Ramadan now have a delivery or take-away only service that operates during pre-iftar hours. There was a time when they would (secretly) serve food in an inconspicuous corner of the venue, behind a purdah, but most places this time around seem to lack that option. For someone who’s not fasting, the question is not how to find food, but where to eat it, especially if all you’re looking for is a quick bite in between traveling from one place to another.
At a popular mall I went to recently, I was a little surprised to discover that the smell of freshly baked brownies still dominated the space where their little bakery/café is. Upon closer inspection, I noticed quite a bit of a rush on the counter where several individuals had gathered to take-away their orders. Move further up and yes, even on the other stalls, people were actively buying food and leaving. Since my friend and I came with the same objective, we ‘took away’ our order as well. For lack of options, we decided to have our food in the car which has removable window blinds and was parked in a corner of the parking lot. Looking around to make sure we hadn’t been spotted, we began to eat. Fifteen minutes later after we were done, we looked up to find almost all of the drivers in the parking lot standing together and staring at us. We had been discovered. Thankfully, we got away with it by giving apologetic smiles.
Another friend wasn’t so lucky. There are some fasting individuals who consider it a mortal sin for another person to indulge in non-fasting ‘behaviour’ in public. She was eating candy in her car while waiting at the popular Teen Talwar roundabout in Karachi. Within seconds of being spotted, a person on the motorcycle beside her began banging the window of the passenger seat. He then began kicking it. The door was unlocked and he opened it, leapt inside, the picked up the packet of candies and threw them outside before reaching out for my extremely frightened friend. Thankfully this behavior had attracted a small crowd which got a hold of the (crazy) individual saving my friend from further trauma.
They say Ramadan is hard on the regular fasters; it boils down to basic survival for those who don’t.
So far, it’s been 15 days into that time of the month, nay, year again. For 15 more days, your mother will wake you up in the wee hours of the morning, right when sleeping is at its best. Your meal is divinely scheduled so you keep glancing at the watch to see the time so you can calculate how much food you can consume before the inevitable siren sounds from the nearby mosque, telling you to stop eating immediately. The moment the maulvi calls for the azaan, you can’t help but think, “Perhaps I can squeeze in one more glass of water… just one more…”
Plus, there was always a need to squeeze in that one more hour of sleep before you had to officially get up and get ready for school. I can’t even begin to describe how deliciously the bed beckons (the sheets and the pillow just seem a thousand times softer) and how exquisite post-sehri sleep is – especially when it’s forbidden by your parents, who, if you’ve had the unfortunate luck of having Ramadan during exam season, want you to utilize this ‘extra’ time to invest in your studies. I happen to have such parents. But we managed to find a way around it; both my sister and I would take turns keeping a ‘watch’ while the other slept for about a half hour. Between you and me, I always felt my sister woke me up after only 10 minutes (and not the required 30 minutes) so she could take her nap.
“I was always careful not to get water into my eyes when performing the ablutions,” a class-mate of mine once told me, adding that, “if it was too cold, I’d just sprinkle water on my feet to give my parents the impression that I really had washed them. But mostly, I couldn’t wait to get back into bed.” I’m not going to confess whether I took similar measures or not, because my parents might read this, and I still have most of Ramadan left to ‘survive’ with them, especially if I can safely expect to get my share of aloo pakoras and doodh sawaiyaan.
Perhaps one of the things that amuses me the most about Ramadan was going to an eat-as-much-as-you-can deal at a local Italian food joint. Apparently, all of us had to two hours early to the venue and be there all at once or we couldn’t get a table together. The experience was oddly similar to how I imagine checking into and out of prison must be like. You are counted carefully by a restaurant personnel who notes down your details; you are allowed only to enter in a per-table group; when you are leaving, your waiter (read: warden) has to vouch for your entire group that they have paid the bill or the guard at the gate will not, under any circumstances, allow you to leave; and you have to leave all at once.
Fierce eating competitions would ensue among friends as well. If eating at a pizza joint, the amount you could consume was counted by the number of bread crusts you left on your plate. Some took the competition to another, although unhealthy level: someone once confessed that he’d go to the bathroom, put a finger up his throat, empty the contents of his stomach to make room for more pizza. Yes, this person really had a problem; although I am hoping it was limited only to Ramadan eat-all-you-can deals.
Eating in public places is absolutely forbidden during the holy month, except when done behind a purdah, seriously. Most restaurants have a hidden, separate section or put up a make-shift curtain of sorts during the day so that non-fasters can have their meal as inconspicuously as possible. However, what was amusing was this sign at the local cineplex’s food and beverages counter: “food for non-Muslims only”. Although the idea of watching a film in the theatre without popcorn and soda is absolutely inconceivable to me, but the idea of being denied food because I am ‘supposed’ to be fasting according to the norm (though there can be numerous reasons for not, both medical and physical), seems weirdly amusing. The sign, “food for non-Muslims only” almost made everyday food sound like the prohibited drink: for non-Muslims only.
“I had a friend, who lived on the first floor of her parent’s home and her parents hadn’t even been to her room in over three years,” said a male friend of mine from college while describing one of his female friends from Peshawar. Why not? I asked him, genuinely surprised. “They were really old and not in perfect health,” he responded as-a-matter-of-factly, “anyway, this made it very easy for her to sneak out of the house at night and sometimes invite some friends in as well.”
Up until this conversation (which I had had several years ago) I was of the opinion that stories about teenagers who snuck-out of their homes at night were a thing of the pre-internet, pre-café boom age, when there weren’t any venues as such for young men and women to interact. Apparently it still happens. And here throughout my adolescence I believed that all my classmates who went to late night get-togethers actually had ‘official’ permission from a pair of ‘very cool’ parents.
Personally, I grew up with a mother who had embedded in me a stories of her ‘legendary’ seventh sense – the sense that all parents have in which they know exactly what their children are thinking, up to and where they are that any particular point in time. I have always been one of those individuals who spent most of my energy fighting for my “right” (read: permission) to go out someplace, which would make my mother keep an even closer eye on me when I wasn’t granted the permission I sought, so sneaking out was out of the question. In fact, every time the thought of doing something even remotely naughty entered into my head, my mother would mysteriously appear at the door of my room, scan me with her eyes and simply say, “You are up to something. I know it.” Perhaps these were weird coincidences, but they served to fully reinforce that belief I held.
One of my friends lived in a two-story house, where both she and her parents had an attached balcony to their rooms, one on top of the other. When it came time to sneak out, she and another one of her sister would carry their shoes in their hands, jump from the balcony to the boundary wall and then jump down on the pavement from there. That was also the route they took to get back in.
One fateful evening, they decided to take their younger sister along. She was still wearing her shoes when she attempted to jump from the balcony, tripped and fell smack in the middle of her parent’s balcony. The ruckus woke her parents up and her father opened his balcony door to find his youngest daughter lying flat on the balcony floor. Needless to say, that was the end of their sneaking out at night: the parents promptly installed an iron net over all the balconies and a steel bar to further lock the main door.
Yes, with time, most parents end up granting permission for their offspring to stay out late now and then (mostly subject to a full disclosure of when, where, guest-list, emergency numbers etc), once they decide they are mature enough. And where incidents such as the above make for great stories to tell later on; I’m not opposed to the late timings, but when sneaking out without telling their parents where they are… haven’t the perpetrators wondered who they were going to call if ‘something’ happened?
