At Your Table: Gluttony

I am sorry to barge in like this, but Musharraf is in New York staying at the Roosevelt hotel. While he is here it is time to send him a message.

I am prepared to organize a protest against the infamous, immoral, discriminatory, and unIslamic Blasphemy law of Pakistan. As it is Applied, it is nothing more than a political insturment used for the harrassment of minorities.

One Military dictator introduced it as law, another should get rid of it.

I urge all likeminded people who live in the N.Y area to join with me within the next 48 hours. I have already spoken up against the Blasphemy law in Dawn: Letters to the Editor in the past, now its time to take action.

Please e-mail me immediately to join a coordinated protest. The moment is ripe to send a msg, while the eyes of the press are focused on New York & the U.N Millenium summit. The more people that participate, the better. If necessary, i will do it alone. I will respond immediately to all e-mails received with details.

Feel free to copy this msg, & fwd to anyone else in the N.Y area who might be interested, or repost on the web immediately.

OMAR MIRZA

knotyourcupoftea@aol.com

A wonderful literary meal (or was that
literally...?

Ras

``It is like swallowing a handful of sunshine on an early winter morning.``

How do you speak the sensations that are alive and unspoken inside us all?

Good God Jawahara, this was at a different level entirely, even for you. This one tops Corporate Battles and Sound Quest, my two favorites.

Hey Rehan, why don`t you start writing the script. I wonder what we shall call it? :-)

Temporal, I hear you, and I have been concerned about it as well. However, for this one, since it was being written on demand so to speak, I decided to stay with my strengths. I am in a dry spell and hope to break out of it when I am in India, which always seems to do it for me.:-)

Thanks Aakar and everyone else who expressed their enjoyment of this piece. It came out of the idea that anorexics are preoccupied with food, dreaming of it, experiencing it at so many levels except the obvious, yet exercising an iron control. So how I decided to write about an ultimate anorexic so obsessed with food (and perhaps sex?) yet fastidiously avoiding it, and actually hiring someone to eat for him.

Kind of sick, but that`s me I guess.:-)

Jawahara:

I must praise your beautiful, rich imagination as well as your choice of words.It was very well written and very gripping indeed.

The variety of food made me hungry but the story behind it was deep.

I wish you all the very best.

Jawahara:

Very morbid and intense - made me sick to my stomach, (maybe that was your intention or maybe because I just had dinner). But it was very well written. Liked the way you paid attention to detail without going overboard. Very vivid descriptions. The story-line itself was quite interesting as well. Sadistic in nature but interesting. Despite my worsening condition, this piece had my attention till its end.

- Lubna

dl #21 #14(?) Thanks for explaining Plato`s cavemen and croweaters. I really think you poets should be required to provide footnotes to such references just like firms are required to provide footnotes to their financial statements so people understand what those numbers represent. Otherwise how is a reader to know you are talking about the South Asia ``kawway khanay walay`` (as you meant) and not the US style ``croweaters`` (as I thought). But anyway, enough complaining: Now your poem starts to make sense. And dont mind Godot. He is just miserable because he still doesnt get it.

slv21 #19 Thanks to you as well for providing the extract from Plato`s Republic. I guess if these was Plato`s Islamic Republic the cavemen would be the Pakistani public as it watches shadows of military men run after shadows of politicians who run after shadows of dictators. But I digress...

Jawahara:

Beautiful...sad...languid with a sense of hope and simply a tale of rich imagery!

Has to be one of my favs out of all your works! Wish I had your talent of forging words into living breathing embodiments of the human expression!

Ciao!

People! This is what I call THE literature. The notion behind the whole story is astounding. At times my ADD (Attention Deficiency Disorder) kicked in and I had trouble visualizing the characters beyond some stick figures. Then I recalled the movie “Debbie Does Dallas” part XI and the whole thing made sense; though the characters in that movie were a lot aggressive than those in the article and they also wasted a lot of whipped cream, honey, peaches, and strawberries during the shooting…… anyway the best part in this story is the comment about the management of the meager cleavage.

It`s a good read and at times YUMMY.

I sometimes have fantasies like that during Ramadan.

Just Kidding. Nice story as usual. So the guy got off on watching a woman eat?

just a bit about the sunday mid-day anniversary supplement that this piece was written for.

jawahara`s (and rehan ansari`s) stories were published along with specially commissioned works by such writers as ruskin bond and mahasveta devi, also some others (shobha de, renuka shahane etc).

the supplement idea was sparked off after i read jawahara`s writing on chowk and i actually got in touch with her first and, after she agreed, then everybody else.

what a super story and what a wonderful writer.

regards

aakar patel

Read the first two paras, and could have sworn you were talking about my Golden Retriever. Read the next and knew different. Will have to come back to it later...

Jawahara:

Wonderfully descriptive with your unique, probing, dark angled touch.

Two parallel threads (no, make it three if we include the food) crescendoing toward their (predictible Jawaharish) end. The predicitible Jawaharish part is getting to be of mild concern. Perhaps we can take this up elsewhere?

Both characters stand out without your indulging in pathos or rustling reader’s empathy --- that makes you a daring writer in my books.

It is a funny coincidence --- last night I saw yet again, Gabriel Axel’s 1987 beauty Babette’s Feast. And on Zehra’s board someone commented on food metaphor’ s glut in her poem and she mentioned Alfonso Arau’s 1992 movie Como agua para chocolate (like water for chocolate.)

And coincidences galore ---am also reminded of a short poem.

APPLE

Cutely she enquired
if you get a second chance
how’d you re-live.
Reckoned for a moment or two
and said first of all
would burn down that tree.

SAIB

Poocha ik shaukh nay batlao
Gar mauqaa mila do’bara
tou kaisay bitao gay zindagi.
Kuchch souch kar kaha
nazr-e-aatish kardaiN gay
oos darakht kou sab say pehlay hum.


Contrary to biblical/mythical misconceptions it wasn’t a woman after all!


love,

t