Jolly Bhai

Engaging and interesting.

This narration reminds me of my days in Chicago as a student. Jolly bhai`s plight is not different from most of the cabbies` plight and I really feel sorry. When I started driving a cab in the summer of 2001 I was told this is a curse and most of the students end up driving cabs instead of going to school. I hated driving a cab and cursed myself almost every day during my brief three month tenure as the gratified cabbie. I remember waiting for the fare at the O`Hare staging area and listening to all cabbies gossip over coffee and egg sandwich. I figured out back then most of the cab drivers were in a habit of bragging about how much they make and living in this false pretense that somehow cab driving is the noblest and ultimate profession to make quick bucks. I specially remember a bunch of doctor cabbies who would run parallels between driving a cab and doing a 70k job and how cab driving is much more beneficial etc.
I feel a bout of nostalgia thinking about my nights working at a gas station in the south side on the corner of Roosevelt and Ashland, listening and uttering all kind of profainities even racial slurs to our kalla clientele and wondering what kind of people are these who would leave the comfort of home to walk two blocks for a 25c bag of dorritos. Then there were nights spend at a submarine making philly steak and double cheese burgers and figting with erstwhile customers over a can of soda or free fries. Back then the ordeal never seemed to end and it looked like coming to US was a grave error and somehow the spiral of odd jobs won`t ever end, working seven days and wondering who are these lucky people who sleep at night.
After graduating and getting a job, never got a chance to go back to Chicago, the city which defines where I stand now and which in the truest sense of letter and spirit taught me how to work hard.
Thanks Muzzamil for reminding me all I had somehow forgotten in the busy chores of everyday NYC life.

#67 by ahmedmadani

Ahmedmadani sahib, thank you very much for your kind remarks. I appreciate and value your compliment! Most of what I put down here is spontaneous. Ye mera marz la-ilaaz hai! I do not go about planning my words, and comes what may!

Please accept my best wishes regarding your health.

Sincerely,
BJK

Re: # 54

BJK..... Thanks for story. I had good laugh at end of story and brief end is brilliant.
You write good english ( its not compliment much as my English is in bad category).
I have liked only three stories published here and yours is amoung them.
Two other I liked by translations by Deb Sharma of bengali translation of MBBS doctor and other teming of the shrew. I was keeping not well when I read that and wanted to write of thanks so taking opportunity.
All the three have commonality being simple and has real ``story`` in that. Even with best penmanship if there is no story then its worthless.
Again great story telling.

Interesting article....
well narrated and i liked the abrupt ending...
gave me inferiority complex at times with the jargon though....

on another note....
the bjk spinoff was amazing... amazing narration and the last line had me laughing to myself like mad
should be honoured to grace the home page of chowk

Re: # 63 They were British people. Do not blame Pakistan people. The racism and oppression of dark colored people leads to such outrage and they become angry against helpless situation and took anger on relatives and women as women are are strong so they kill women in safety of house. They have to live in bad housing. This is danger signal to UK govt to improve condition of dark and brown colored people or fatricide will start. I think Bradford area will be battle ground just as people went on violence in France recently.
Its UK problem. NOT PAKISTANI PROBLEM. TIRED OF WATCHING Blaming without reason. Hope they punish guilty but same time take into consideration the father felt when his daughter cheated and brought bad name to everybody.
Good morning and good luck

Re: # 54

bj,

......... that was hilarious ! ..........“Ya Allah – tera bahot, bahot, bahot shukariya!!”

This is what they do in uk to those that step outside the bounds!

Sister is stabbed to death for loving the wrong man
BY STEVE BIRD
Children were made to watch an attack on a woman who was forbidden to marry outside her caste





Samaira Nazir was murdered by her brother and his cousin. Her father, allegedly involved in the attack, is in hiding


A BUSINESSMAN is facing a life sentence for stabbing his sister to death in front of his two young daughters in a so-called honour killing.
Azhar Nazir, 30, and his cousin, 17, used four knives to cut Samaira Nazir’s throat and repeatedly stab her after she fell in love with an asylum-seeker from what they saw as an unsuitable caste.
Miss Nazir, 25, had rejected suitors lined up to meet her in Pakistan and had been summoned to the family home in Southall, Middlesex.



The father, also called Azhar, Nazir and the youth launched the attack and at one point dragged her by her hair back into the property.
Miss Nazir, a businesswoman described as “strong-willed”, was heard to shout at her mother, Irshad Begum: “You are not my mother any more.” She was then held down as a scarf was tied around her neck and her throat was cut in three places. Nazir’s daughters, aged 2 and 4, were screaming and were splattered with blood. Police fear that they were ordered to watch as a warning to them. Neighbours called the police after hearing the screaming.
Nazir was found guilty yesterday of murdering his sister; a day after his cousin, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was convicted for his part in the murder. They were remanded in custody and will be sentenced at the Old Bailey in London next month.
The court was told that the 17-year-old believed that Miss Nazir had become a victim of black magic at the hands of Mr Mohammad, an Afghan asylum-seeker. Nazir denied murder but told police that his sister “had to be stopped”.
The father was also charged with the murder but fled to Pakistan, where he has gone into hiding. Charges against the mother were later dropped.
The court was told that Nazir and his father ran Rana Brothers, a successful grocery store on Southall Broadway. The son also owned a recruitment company, S & F Staffing, which supplied workers for the Hilton hotel chain and had made Miss Nazir a director.
She was articulate and well-educated and had studied travel and tourism at Thames University. She was described as the brightest in the family.
She clashed with her family when she told them that she wanted to marry Mr Mohammad, who become known to the family after he came to the country illegally.
After the couple fell in love,Mr Mohammad tried to ingratiate himself with the family by arranging to bring the 17-year-old cousin to Britain from Pakistan. Mr Mohammad and Miss Nazir kept their affair secret for years.
He told jurors: “We were as boyfriend and girlfriend for about five or six years. But we couldn’t tell her family because Samaira said her father was a very strict man who would not allow any female in his family to marry outside of his caste or tribe. We had discussed marriage. Samaira wanted to tell her family herself. Her father was very upset and said I was only after their money.”
When the couple announced their engagement, Mr Mohammad, who ran a stall selling phone cards, said the father went at him with a knife and threatened to kill him.
In April last year Miss Nazir was summoned to the home to be killed to protect the family’s honour. As she screamed for help one neighbour banged on the front door, but the father emerged claiming that his daughter was having a fit.
When police arrived they found a trail of blood from the front of the house to the back door and then to the hallway where Miss Nazir’s body was slumped in a pool of blood.
The amount of blood on the children suggested that they were only feet from the attack. A neighbour spotted Miss Nazir’s bloodstained arm emerge momentarily from the front door before she was dragged back inside and the door slammed shut.
She received 18 stab wounds and three cuts to her throat.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2229505,00.html

Re: # 54
amazing portrayal of -- ``black, not desi kala, but kalla black, with curly hair, flat pakora nose, thick fat lips`` -- even beats that hands down bj --

``have you considered submitting a a collection of short stories for publication?``...may beeee -- in Samna?..:)

BJK that was super. From the far side.

actaully NYC they know..thhey think calue is for colored

#54 by bjk

BJ Sahib, it was gripping. You have an amazing talent for narration. I`m sure you must be a writer of some kind, are you?

bjk,
that was hilarious, a good take on what `caloue` must have been thinking.

BJ..subroto..the koran effect seems lifted from khushwantsigh story .. the one in which the kashmiri student feeds ``him`` curry in a hurry ;-)

#54 bjk urf bjkumar urf beej urf ....
I think I said it before but what the heck I`ll say it again - have you considered submitting a a collection of short stories for publication? The picking up of the holy book is a bollywood moment though.

Re: # 54
Oh Lord, this is hillarious!