A Poem Hi:

She may well have tried - we may not know the whole story. This may well be her way of writing an epitaph for all the times she has tried and failed. The first few lines suggest it might have been a typically abusive relationship (emotional rather than physical in this case), where the abusee keeps coming back hoping the abuser might have changed. It takes courage and a lot of strength to finally call a halt.

regards
dL

A Poem Re: # 6

how we love to judge ...

The Pakistani Who Thinks Ahead interactors: scintillating commentary by pakistanis safely ensconced in the proverbial derh inch ki masjid. the delusional pakistani - grand in a roomful of mirrors - will be the death of us. and a very slow one its proving to be.

Naz: good stuff but might have helped if your tone hadn`t be quite so gushing - it has put all your complexed readers in such a huff they may never recover ;)

dL

A Poem When life is vile - words provide the only sanctuary. Your words are the verbal equivalent of a cruel and bitter fight ... to the death. Soul-destroying.

dL

On Awakening ``don`t shout``. Why ever not ?

Why do midwives from the land of the pure insist on no epidural, no shouting, no acclamation of pain. I don`t care how many women before me have gone through the mind bending pain of child birth and I don`t care how many more well. I just don`t understand the smugness of the woman who looks at me askance as if to say ``you`re not really a mother then are you ... you haven`t been through the appropriate rites of passage``. Why is anaesthesia alright for heart surgery but not for child birth ?

But its all relative in the end. The cousin who opted for a caesarean as opposed to ``natural`` also looks at me askance as if to say ``what, are you stupid`` ?

An appropriate punishment for the ``buggers`` : wish upon each and every one of them kidney stones to be passed through ``naturally`` and preceded by a brazilian wax ...

dL

Compounded Waste When I initially read this article, I chose not to interact and then Curiousity and I wondered why. My personal reason was thats its all words mere words and yes, all writing is in the long-run just words (to paraphrase loosely) but Iraq (as Darfur, Togo, Congo, and the usual suspects Kashmir, Palestine et al) is just so tragically self destructing (albeit with a little help from above as it were) thats it just makes the ineffectuality of words that much starker. Its Palestine all over again. The BBC resolutely stood its ground for a while but lately even they have given up and I can`t remember the last time they reported anything from Israel/Palestine.

There is the mental and emotional exhaustion/frustration with Iraq ad nauseam in the media. And then of course is the bigger question ... how can we begin to fathom what drives suicide bombers ? Unless we either live their lives in the Palestine for instance or go through the brainwashing that the trained operators go through ? With the latter do we run the risk of being converted ? Perfectly sane, wholesomely educated individuals have turned. What makes us susceptible or not ? Is it the mind or the conscience ? How can we assume either was absent in the bombers ?

dL

Chandni Bar It was a fun read and a vivid description of how older men and younger women can have a mutually saitisfactory relationship with little harm to each other !!! (For the quick off the bat indignant respondees - the last half of the sentence was meant to be ... ). I missed the bits where the writer allegedly painted women as objects of desire (given that this was a blow by blow of ``one night in london`` - but to each his own I guess ;-)

However women are well aware of how desirable they can be - some choose to manipulate their desirability to their advantage (while others are forced into it for no fault of their own) - with or without the cruel husband and whinging child in tow.

re: intelligent writing

I didn`t realize writing style was a reflection of intelligence ... or are you suggesting beauty is more than skin deep ? Literary life would be a wee bit boring if all writing was ala ms minhas with every word placed just so ...

dL

Lahore Street Scene Re: # 1 Jang

Thats an assumption we so easily make about the poor and even the not so poor (though I`ve seen the choice of to have a child or not to have taken away from women across the board in terms of class). The choice is not always theirs to make. Domestic violence, rape, childhood marriages, forced marriages, complete ignorance with respect to contraception. The list goes on. The parent (and I deliberately chose not to say parents) in the social strata the poem talks about - if it can be dignified with such a term given the way society at large treats it or ignores it - rarely has a choice.

dL

Bankruptcy i reserve ``brilliant`` for the previous incarnation ... which I thought was almost hawthornish in its unarticulated twisted smile ...


:-)

dL

Nowhere In the end ... is (isn`t) that what poetry is all about ... to articulate emotions, impossibly idealistic, hopelessly romantic ... reminding us that we have all (or almost all) travelled these roads before ...

sorrows scream inside the caves of silence ... visions of gaunt demons stuck in eternal circles ... doomed.

dL

flying kites, playing flutes ... chess and pigeons ... ``let them eat cake`` ... mink and sable ... diamonds and rubies ... jubilees in sumptuous style ... blood and empire ... then there were none ...


dL

Why Am I An Agnostic Muslim? Hi Mubashir

You ask god (with or without a capital G) ``where were you when I needed you`` for all the men women and children you identifed and the multitudes like them. Maybe he`s watching the miseries unfold and asking the same question of the alleged sentient beings he created ... ``where are you`` ...

a random thought ...
dL

The Idea of Chowk Re: # 59

hey sac

i think chowk liked your ``country club`` idea ...

toodles ... dL

The “D” Word What I don`t understand is how all of you ended up in this sad muddle. You`re obviously well-educated independent individuals. Family pressures I understand but the number of people I have met who have given in to them only to get divorced a month ... a year ... five years down the line ... I don`t understand that – but that’s easy for me to say. On the other hand what’s encouraging is the number of women I have met or heard about in the last year or so who have married, had a child (or not) divorced and then remarried. How difficult it must have been and what they went through in the meantime only they know ... but as Saima said ... no regrets. You do it for the kids ... they grow up and get on with their lives ... and then you say but I did it all for you ... and what will they say ``why mom ... it was bitter, it was tense, we cried ourselves to sleep .. why did you stay``. And then there will be the ones who`ll say ``why didn`t you stay`` ?


I don`t for a moment mean to take away from the seriousness of the ``D-act`` and all that it implies for the woman, the kids and the families. Still if there`s only one life to live and all the “hurs” in heaven are for the men than hey what have women got to lose ... but their lives :)

Strangers in California Amrita

I read your post (15) and the word ``panache`` began to blink uncontrollably somewhere in my mind ... but putting it into a sentence sounded so terribly pretentious that I`ll stick to saying that was done with style ... :)

Hey Rahulmal ... c`mon ... ``coffee`` sounds so much better than ``wajibi`` ...

dL

Strangers in California Hello `t`

It is indeed ``I`` or should that be ``me`` ... I think Eats, Shoots and Leaves is getting to me ... Chowk is addictive and I have so much work to do ... :)

Would you believe I found the ``unpoet`` in a back-up folder tucked away in the virtual cellars of my PC ....

Everytime I go to Pakistan I come back with reams and reams of imagery ... filled with barefoot kids ... forlorn babies ... struggling masi`s ... and oily mechanics ... and I think to myself ...

cheers
dL