I Recall

i had to really struggle to read this. trite, meaningless, overambitious, too many comma`s.

which transitions between conversations? little is redundant in little pieces. Why is there a period after And then? Line breaks are jarring and break the rhythm rather than accentuate its flow.

Every utopia to its watery grave. Every dream...drowned. Zeeshan and then Zeeshan made easy? Needlessly repetitive rather than impressively esoteric.

But this nostalgia of youth is fleeting and dies quickly (dies quickly already suggested by fleeting). It does not resurface with an awesome superiority at the anticlimactic epilogue of our lives (awesome again a conceit rather than needed).

Perfect of light? Perfect light? Perfect in the light? Perfect despite the light?

Record Players, Old Radios, putrid cardboard of boxes boxing possessions from another time (why is it Old Radios and not Putrid Cardboard of Boxes)

And it just gets worse...i don`t really have the time to dissect this line by line. Perhaps bina or samina can help :)

???????????????????????????????????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Zeeshan: u made it :)

cheers

We live in a world of what ifs, we live in the past where everything went right and mommy could kiss away our tears and say everything will be fine bacha.

..trying too hard...yuck

Whats good about this piece:

``the smell of petrol as charmed young boys. ``

Everything else is too overwrought, confused/confusing, and metaphorically mixed. Also, water ``screaming`` seems a bit melodramatic.

You could do worse than one very good line.

zeeshan,

............. i am sorry, but i have to say it: this is garbage!..........i don`t know if you are serious or are you just trying to be cute by posting this meaningless jumble of one liners .......... what is it?........ how is one supposed to read it?... backwards? ......... there has to be a trick............ tell me, if you turned it in as a sophomore term paper, what would you get?..... an F and a spanking, if i had anything to say about it ............

.............after all the fuss you made about jawahara`s writing we were expecting a masterpiece that would razzle and dazzle us and turn us into mush............. but this?

......... here is the point - for all i know this might be the greatest piece of writing ever, and temporal might soon be handing you an award, but as far as i and some others are concerned it is ``trite, meaningless, overambitious, too many comma`s`` and, i might add, pretentious nonsense .............. even our resident juvenile rsaxena saw through this - ``trying too hard``, he says, and by god for once he is right ..................

............ but keep on trying - maybe one of these days you will write something half as good as jumpha lahri or zadie smith or jawahara .................

``Record Players, Old Radios, putrid cardboard of boxes boxing possessions from another time.``

How much more contrived can this get! God and this stuff is tedious. ATleast other do it in 10 lines ....

No, I don`t want to dissect line by line. But I did make a list of all the cliches. There are six. If you can spot them, let me know and you will win a prize from me.

Is this the guy who trashes every one’s writings? This piece of garbage is supposed to be an example of good prose. Mr. Z you need to take some a course 101 in elementary writing.

The whole piece is an example of an elementary student trying to use big words, without understanding their meaning. The sentence structure is haphazard and at times non-existent.

Here is a sample.

‘... It does not resurface with an awesome superiority at the anticlimactic epilogue of our lives. Right now, only the rosy memories of youth chug away like old trains, garish and ugly in their present, only lovely in their antiquity.

We stare at old furniture and outside our homes; in the perfect of light it seems just…

Ideal.’

Take the first sentence. ’Awesome superiority’, ’Anticlimactic epilogue’, high sounding words, but what do they mean?

Nostalgia is supposed to resurface with not only superiority, but awesome superiority. Superiority from what?

Do we stare at old furniture out side our home, or do we stare at old furniture and also the outsides of our home.

Also why is old furniture out side the home? Does Mr. Z live in a trash dump?

There is too much stuff in there, to criticize and no one has time for it.

not understood - may be I can only understand simple direct easy English

piece of garbage pal.

...can`t you people find someone your own size to whittle down. zeeshan is a genius, it is you ordinary folks who can`t visualise what he writes and encapsulates. it is an ocean within a fist ( koozay mein darya - for urdu medium) and having failed to understand his philosophic nonsense, all of you attack him like a pack of dingos. this was such a great piece that i was forced to reappear on chowk to record my accolade on this fine piece of bullshit. my advise to you sheeps (zeesh`s description of chowk interactors), lay off the Hole ( I lovingly call zeeshan Hole, because the Ass refused to be associated with him, and i respect the Ass a lot more than the Hole). I have a confession to make though: I used the dictionary for words like Visualise, encapsulate etc to sound erudite and learned. ;))

Zeeshan teri shan aalishan hai
koi Amma hai na Abba jan hai

Oscar Wilde once wrote:
``The old believe everything: the middle-aged suspect everything: the young know everything``

Sophistry is no match for substance. The problem with the obviously juvenile author is that he takes himself too seriously. Given the frequency of unsolicited advice he doles out to prospective writers at Chowk, one would expect better from the self-proclaimed ``ustaad``.

But, then again, as they say in Urdu:
Khaalee burtun meiN puthur pheNko to aawaaz zyaadaa aatee hai

I?m only inhaling
and getting high
on my own
supply.

What? Whaaaaaaaaat? I know fourteen year olds who write more coherently and make more sense.

Chowk must be real desperate for articles if they publish such juvenile crap. Or may be, some chowk editor has taken his or her revenge on the resident critic cum author par excellence.
Here`s my submission to chowk. Chowk Staff, please consider this favorably as I would like to see my name up on some internet site.
masochist, SADIST. abiogenesist ABSOLUTIST, abstractexpressionist, accomodationist, absurdist.
nazism, fascism, sexism, capitalism, abstractexpressionism, male chauvanism, feminism
ALL THAT
AND
Many Other BIG WORDS.

Thank you,
JG