White Charade

Urstruly

````Plus you gave me your reason(s) why you couldn’t attach to it, whereas ANNY just expressed her dislike.````

sweetie thora intizaar farmaain..and just for the record its not dislike..this piece is just nothing if compared to your earlier piece `when pinky broke my heart` which for some reason had gotten to me bad...oh, and its anNy

farzana are you coming then?

Masd #110

Amen.

Re Urstruly # 105

Alright man, as u wish!

regards

Irfan

Zahra #115

Junnon Ka Naam Khirad rakh Diya Khirad Ka Junoon

Jo Chahe Aap Ka Husne Krishmasaaz Kare.

Have you read poetry of Ibn-e-Safi.

Bil Akhir Thak Haar Ke Yaro Hum Ney Bhi Tasleem Kiya.

Apni Zaat Se Ishq Hai Saccha Baqi Sub Afsane Hain.

And.

Abhi To Jine Ka Hosla Hai.

Abhi Se Kiyun Shaam Ho Rahi Hai.

Fans of Ibn-e-Safi will be disheartened. And they are spread over both India and Pakistan.

URS:

Just a correction: Ibn`ae`Safi and Ishtiaq Ahmed were two different writers. Kindly do not confuse who`s who. Ibn`ae`Safi`s kutab were quite vulgar and full of rubbish[Unfortunately, I happened to flip through one], whereas Ishtiaq Ahmed had some sanity left in him :-)!

Take Care.

PS: Thanks for your polite welcome. I was indeed on mother earth exploring the world and its hidden secrets with my two detective eyes; watching the gulehris in different colors[black, I never knew that was also a gulehri color]and taking a careful jaizaa of their hurkaat-o-suknaat; being near the water to make sure I could get rid of my allergies, and last but not the least uncovering history and its monuments. Aside from that, there is a world outside of Chowk and one should take a leave every now and then to freshen up one`s perspectives otherwise it is pretty damn unhealthy. I am sure you can make sense out of my above ``e.n.l.i.g.h.t.e.n.i.n.g thought!``

Take Care.

Sindh is changing. Karachi,the capital of Sindh, has to play a leading role in the transformation of the fuedal society of rural Sindh into a more enlightened society based on merit and professionalism. The urban sindhi middle class had left for india in 1947 and now after the lapse of 5 decades an urban sindhi middle class is emerging particularly in the cities of Hyderabad, Mirpur Khas and Nawab Shah. This Urban Sindhi Middle Class has the same aspirations as the urban urdu speaking middle class weather living in karachi or in hyderabad. With the decline of agriculture in rural sindh and the shrinking opportunities of jobs in public sector the sindhi youth who has got higher education is looking for job opportunities in the private sector. Here lies the role for karachiites to come forward and impart the knowledge and provide the training to the urban sindhi youth in the fields of business so that they can become the impetus for change in the fuedal dominated interior of sindh. the time has come for the karachiites to explore new markets and make new friends in interior of sindh so that the new urban sindhi class which is emerging become successful with the help of karachiites.thus making sindh the most prosperous and developed region of pakistan,which it deserved to be!!!

In this we way we can put the bitter,painful past behind and build a peaceful Sindh for our future.

Sindh is changing. Karachi,the capital of Sindh, has to play a leading role in the transformation of the fuedal society of rural Sindh into a more enlightened society based on merit and professionalism. The urban sindhi middle class had left for india in 1947 and now after the lapse of 5 decades an urban sindhi middle class is emerging particularly in the cities of Hyderabad, Mirpur Khas and Nawab Shah. This Urban Sindhi Middle Class has the same aspirations as the urban urdu speaking middle class weather living in karachi or in hyderabad. With the decline of agriculture in rural sindh and the shrinking opportunities of jobs in public sector the sindhi youth who has got higher education is looking for job opportunities in the private sector. Here lies the role for karachiites to come forward and impart the knowledge and provide the training to the urban sindhi youth in the fields of business so that they can become the impetus for change in the fuedal dominated interior of sindh. the time has come for the karachiites to explore new markets and make new friends in interior of sindh so that the new urban sindhi class which is emerging become successful with the help of karachiites.thus making sindh the most prosperous and developed region of pakistan,which it deserved to be!!!

In this we way we can put the bitter,painful past behind and build a peaceful Sindh for our future.

Zahra #103, ``a very sweet and confident young lady from noth india, Raveena Saxena :)!``

you forgot to mention eternally PMS-ing.

sac #99, ``I am sure its just me but this NewEntrant writes just like urstruly......ummmm time for some IP tracing???? :)``

Oh come on, he`s bad but he`s not that bad.

Urstruly #104, ``Why are you angry at me for. I am under self-imposed gag order in case you havent read.``

Honestly, I think you`re taking this Hindu bashing

in return for Muslim bashing too seriously. Yes, I get angry at Islam bashing too and I make my point to the offender. But this ``all Hindus are bla bla`` mentality has got to go. You know better than that. I`m getting sick and tired of all the negativity. I think you need a vacation to some pretty place to dissipate negative energy. Or go outside and scream your vocal cords dry. That works too.

Urstruly:

Stand in front of a mirror. Look yoursef in the eye. Repeat ``Kill all Hindu evil Shaitan scum! Die Hindu Die!!``

When you are fully erect, relieve yourself with your right hand. Then relax, and pen another one of your overwritten s * * *ty short stories.

regards, Nazi Islamic scum,

Siraj

mind dump follows:

Urstruly sounds so much like NewEntrant and NewEntrant sounds so much like Urstruly....

could it be...

Nah, that would make Urstruly a psycho/schizo, but then again isn`t that what he sounds like sometimes...

Dear Farzana!

Thanks for your detailed response and critical analysis. Thanks for your time. And thanks for your consideration.

Allow me to answer some of your concerns that you have raised.

First your lecture part:

I don’t think that without self-policing and without some vigilante “justice” it is hard to maintain sanity on any board. There will always be people making bold political statements, expressing their bigotry, baring their souls, and feeding and strengthening their own demons. That’s what makes this world an interesting place. I also think that the concept and standard of decency is not universal. However, there ARE some aspects of decency which are universal; and that is the bare minimum that human race has come up with so far. Now, I think it is the bare minimum that we must maintain as a group. It is not possible without self-policing, watching each other’s back, and vigilante “justice”, I emphasize on “justice”. So what is a bare minimum anyway, one may ask. Anything above bare minimum is something that YOU wont like to hear if someone else has told you.

You said:

“So what were Shabana and Ruxana – good or bad? Why did they have to die? Why is this fight regarding good vs. evil invariably a macho battle, and I am not indulging in mere gender nitpicking? How ‘good’ was the protagonist? I understand your need to write a detective story, but then if you say, “the challenge was to make it more than a newspaper article”, you should not have editorialized at the end; that makes you as writer and narrator socially responsible.”

My reply:

Although technically it IS a detective story but as I said in my last post there is a political, ethnical, and a whole lot of collective psychology of the people behind it. The complications are augmented when the narrator/writer (that will be me) becomes a part of that experience. I was out there ducking when white vehicles used to speed towards me. And I was there when my classmates told me that they barely managed to careen the bullets that were fired on them from White Charade. There is a lot of other stuff that didn’t go into the story, since it was written on a short story format. Plus I was the one who had shook hands with the protagonist, talked with him, and heard the news of his death. So my personal involvement make this story a unique animal- a mix of truth and imagination.

And by the way this battle between good and evil is not just macho thing any more in Pak too. We have a lady police and people call it “Nath force” out of love. This force is usually used to drag lady political activists into police vans and they are also used to stand on one side while male police constables body search the hookers.

You said;

“I agree with you that reader-identification with the first-person narrative is always more, but as you pointed out (wrt dost-mittar’s observation) when there is “an imbalance between the moral character of police officer and his professional character”, would it not confuse the reader as well?”

My reply:
I will still insist that, that imbalance was deliberately created to get the reader out of certain state of mind. Or at least that was the objective that I had in mind. I think dost_mitter is not “confused” as a reader, but I think he wanted more of the moral character of the police officer. I just fell short of his expectations-that’s all-nobody is perfect.

Your comment :
“Gham or ranjh (as you later corrected), if it is a charade the way I used it – externalizing an internal dilemma – does not have the same potency if it were to be the converse; what Ghalib is talking about is about ghut-ghut ke mar jaana, where pain ceases because existence is of no consequence; it can also be the ‘sufiana’ concept of rising above one’s pain. Yes, it is all about demons, sometimes we fight our own AFTER we have adopted other people’s!”

My reply:
I think we should categorize pain in two compartments if we want to take this concept any further. The first class of pain is what we can call the ‘normal pain” e.g. you suffer a personal loss, like a loss of loved one, you feel pain, the pain becomes unbearable, it stays unbearable for a while, then it declines and then it diminishes to a level where it just becomes an occasional painful thought, accompanied by painful or loving memories etc.

The second category of pain is that which does not follow this pattern. It never reaches the unbearable state and goes steady at a plateau, and it never diminishes. The reason is that YOU want to keep it at this level. And by the way it wasn’t me but Buddha who told us that. One person asked him what the pain (Gham) really was. Buddha replied “You go on a war, you get wounded by an arrow, it doesn’t kill you but it takes longer to heal, so when it (wound) stays with you for a while do you fall in love with your pain/wound”. The person replied in negative. Buddha said “But it happens. Some of us do fall in love with their wound. And that is what real pain/Gham is. Everything else is a natural process”.

You asked for the translation of:
: “Half of our miseries are because of this #$% *&”?”

Translation:
: “Half of our miseries are because of this f-----ing mind? (Plz excuse my Hindi).

You said:
“I am rather peeved that while you have apologized to others over their disappointment”

Reply:
I feel like such a jerk to say it but I think you were more than enthralled and thrilled to read it ;). I am just kidding OK. Plus you gave me your reason(s) why you couldn’t attach to it, whereas ANNY just expressed her dislike.

Thanks for the dissection.

Best regards
Gagged and bound after unveiling of your veiled reference.

Aamir # 56 and Zahra

I have read Ibn-e-Safi some but it never became my thing. For some strange reason his plots were too predictable for me. However, I am a die hard fan of Ahmad Yar Khan (Main kisi ki baytee nahiN fame). He has written a number of detective and police stories in the perspective and background of Potohar Valley and pre-partition time. Oh! Boy are they good. I wished and tried hard not to reflect his style into my writing. But he is THE master of detective stories-better than any other white, brown, or black writers that I have ever read.

Dost_Mitter # 101

Good points. However, that is not usually in my mind when I name my main character. First of all I like the name Sami very much and second thing that I usually have in my mind is what they teach in acting/drama schools ``When you begin to act a certain character; the character first plays you, then you play the character, and finally the character becomes you.`` The final stage is the stage when masterpieces are created. I am desperately trying to achieve this last stage. In case you have noticed my writing style, it is more of circustantial type rather than an abstract one. So in order to write such writing I have to visualize the whole thing and I also try to become the character; and 1st person singular and Sami work best for me. Thats all.

Sinful Virtue

Dear Irfan I really appreciate your help but that was absolutely unnecessary. I always fight my own fights and I think I am enough for all of them (so I am told several times). But since yesterday, I am taking a new approach to look at things. I am told that the kindness will be returned with kindness. So I would appeal to you and any other sabre ratllers to at least for once let me experience my first paradigm shift.

Thanks.

Ahaa! Is it ZAHRA, isn`t it? Long time no see.

Talking about the personna, for some very strange reason I always visualize Hamidm as one of the voluptuous sluts in Daler Mehndi video with red hair, blue eyes and dark brown knee caps. I wonder why?

SAC

Et tu SAC. Not me for cryin` out loud.

SCOUT

Why are you angry at me for. I am under self-imposed gag order in case you havent read. Two of my guaranters have chickened out already-Peace keeping needs both character and teeth and both are hard to find.

Now you people are never happy, no matter what I do:----(