How to waste a day

Humankind has since the beginning of time inflicted upon itself the task of conquering the ever heightening mountain of self improvement. Every self respecting book shop stocks its own variety of the latest book on the latest formula to make one an efficient and productive individual. Deliberately avoiding books of this variety does not in any way mean that I do not bother maintaining a decently sustained “self system”. But every so often, particularly after a pattern of six days there comes a lapse, a power breakdown. A complete twenty four hour blank with a PTV signboard saying Intizaar Farmayyay. And with no particular effort to reset my mental progress satellites I set out to waste a perfectly good day.

Sunday morning begins with the competitive sport of who can out sleep the other, the main players being myself and my mum, with the loser having to get up and make breakfast. Not being the late sleeper sort, the winner is normally declared by nine thirty, ten. And of course, after breakfast the day is peppered with many sub meals like breakfast reinterpreted, brunch, lunch, lunch in close collaboration with tea-time, tea time so and so forth. All these excursions to the kitchen are made with a surprisingly minimum use of crockery and cutlery, Sunday being a masi-free day and every dish used has to be a dish washed.

There is quite a noticeable dress code in our house, and its noticeably noticeable on Sundays. Every Christian has a place in his wardrobe for his Sunday best, but in our house it works quite in reverse. For holidays we reserve our Sunday worst with only clothes with holes and mismatching shalwars. God forbid if a guest walks in then there is a mad rush to the bathroom to change.

Once in a while, I am stung by the uselessness of my weekly existence at home. At one point I took up reading Urdu literature, in order to improve my command over the language. But not wanting to start from scratch I picked up a literary heavy weight, and understandably –staggered! I was on page one line seven when I came across the word raizgari, which I had heard considerably but didn’t know the meaning of. So not wanting to thumb through the Urdu Loghat I asked my father what raizgari meant. He looked at me somewhat haughtily and replied Sports car. The sentence had been about a majnoo fakir giving the writer a handful of raizgari, and with the help of my fathers vocabulary, my belief that I was reading fiction was confirmed.

Other excursion into the world of fiction include my thumbing through the entertainment pages of the Sunday supplements, which are at their entertainment best when they have interviews of Pakistani Film actresses. If one were to digest all that they say they would make quite promising candidates for living saints. However I steer clear of all political/analytical/intellectual pieces not wanting to tax my mind for nothing.

On every first Sunday of the month my father makes his monthly pilgrimage to Itwaar Bazaar to replenish household groceries. At first my mother and I would view his diehard devotion to the bazaar with neither rain nor storm being an obstacle with suspicion, but on going there once myself I fell in love with the dusty haven with everything under the Sun. From vegetables to sitting room furniture, books and framed reprints of Picasso to second hand shoes, Itwar Bazaar looks like a tented oasis in a vast wasteland. And mind you it’s the place where I end up meeting more people I know, than during the weekday!

That is when one should make like a chameleon and camouflage oneself in a colorful stall. Buy nothing at all and stroll thorough the stalls musing over the variety of knickknacks one can buy for rupees ten. A bit of advice for the first timer though, at present there are a number of salespersons roaming Sunday Bazaar as well as a number of other shopping spots, who advertise their products by giving you a sample package on the condition that if you open the box and are named the winner of a prize you have to pay eight hundred rupees, and receive the prize. If there isn’t a prize then the sample is yours for free. Because each and every box has a prize in it, you will, no matter how hard you try not to, win a prize and end up paying a eight hundred for a three hundred rupee Moulinex blender. This happened to a friend of mine who along with blissfully wasting her Sunday ended up wasting rupees 1600 as well.

So much for being an “efficient and productive individual”, on Sundays I feel more like I have climbed out of my ‘individual’ skin and entered the furry coat of a cat , a species that I otherwise envy throughout the week. After all cats sleep sixteen hours a day and simply have to meow to be fed and what could be more pleasant than that?