Strangers in California ``cute marie, real cute`` ... in case anyone is old enough to remember the Donny & Marie show ... well, you`ve got the M&B take on flirting down pat ... we certainly have consensus on that :) And it was a much more fun read. Its midnite and this was my quickie break before I start working ... and now I`ll be smiling in my head while I analyse some mind-numbing transaction ...

thanks .... dL

Premala ka Pyar I liked the title ... it reminded me of old world writing ... classic urdu literature ... primarily because of the name I think. Gracefully written .. a story for the sake of a story ... a day in the life of a million melancholy women ... in my limited experience education or lack thereof does not seem to be the principal determinant in the choices women make ... I enjoyed the story more than some of the other, er, more self-conscious writing on Chowk ...

Searching for Infantopia That was funny. I was talking to someone in Karachi recently and we were discussing toddler schooling ... she was in the ``interview`` phase and the maddest question she had been asked related to the kind of delivery she`d had. If I had been in her place, I might have smacked the interviewer. That would have given them an insight into how I`m ``rearing`` my little ones (as if they were cows you see) and that would have been that.

Meanwhile, my husband informs me that education is much too expensive and so therefore we can`t have any more than the two kids we already have ... little does he know but he has a point. How do people manage ...

My daughter started nursery at 18 months and I can still hear my father`s voice saying ``betay its too early ... uss key liyee buhat lamba ho jata hay din`` with the whole zalim maa` intonations. But she seems to love it so it can`t be so bad.

cheers
dL

Motherland Tales Hi Temporal

Good stuff there. Lot seems to have been said about it now and pretty much covers anything I could have added. Amazing how chowk adds nothing for aeons and the one week you go on vacation, theres a veritable deluge of new stuff!

To return to your piece, its the end thats key isn`t it? Looking up at the stars the other nite, I was reminded of a card a friend once made me which said ... the stars look like millions of candles - which reminds me its your birthday. And it got me thinking of your `Motherland Tales` (don`t ask me why - power of association maybe) ... theres more to beauty than just the superficial facade is there not? Maybe thats the problem - her paramours have never tried to get to her soul - they seem to have thought that by grabbing her hand and simply dragging her along by their side they could hope to hold her, keep her, even own her. Maybe all she needs is someone to look into her eyes, into the depths of all that she really has to offer, and to love her for who she is not what ...

And maybe all of the above is wishy washy, mushy malarky ... and ferozk knows best ...

cheers

dL

Desi: The False Ideology egalitarian_brahmin (620)

Thank you for the excellent post, be it idealistic, naive or just plain utopian ... at least the thinking still exists ... on either side of the national divide ...

as long as we remain bogged down in history and an us versus them perception of events, we have no hope of progress, no hope of addressing `real` issues affecting `real` people ...

some chowk interactors seem intent on proviing that ``we learn from history that we learn nothing from history`` ...

cheers

dL

Paki Students in the US: a Female Perspective sac #18

no they arent but that hasnt prevented me from accusing them of being so ... (hope you figured that one out) !!!

psycho (er babble)

that was rather funny and reminded me of way too many people !!!

cheers

dL

Loves loved {some not so loved} ``Does every woman have that one relationship that was so good, that it got even better 6 months after it was over?``

you must be one of those very few lucky ones ... i liked the nuances of your opening para ... i liked the thoughts running helter skelter through your words ... i liked the ``four cities too late, three golden opportunities too early`` choice of words.

Have you read Chandra`s ``Golden Gate`` ...

cheers

dL

The Sage Godot

exactly ... !!!

temporal ... i shall turn up in your pigeonhole as soon as my deadlines are taken care off ... meanwhile my parents are enjoying your writing ...

cheers

dL

The Sage ah ... sac`s response reminded me of your Desani query. I was not familiar with his Sage but found an extract on some Indiapage the other day ... of course since it was an extract the nuances were completely lost on me but now I shall now go and find the book ...

thanks for mentioning it ...

i popped into your pigeon hole only to realize a stretch of time later that I was spending too much time in it when I`m supposed to be writing a report ... so I shall have to explore on the weekend ...though I must say your day dreaming is rather productive ;)

cheers

dL

The Sage with Sadhna`s permission (which I don`t have but hope to be forgiven for the transgression) and lifted off of Panninis `Drive by Baggings` - heres the last peel in the onion ...

``And Lo! says Shankara, eyes bulging, verily there is no escaping Ultimate Self Realization or clueing-in during your cosmic journey. Recognize that sometimes you are the importuned passenger,

sometimes the leaky boat, sometimes you are the travelling and often you are the creek...``

dL

Drive-By-Baggings Sadna (24)

Hi ... I just had to borrow your last para ... and pop into the Sage`s interact ...

... it was just too good to resist ...

cheers

dL

The Sage Hi again ... `t`

sorry, i don`t get around to scribbling on chowk as frequently as I might like to - hence the delay. I`ll skip to your question on `baffling` to contend that `it` shouldn`t be baffling! Sure readers are secondary, we`ll forget about them for now, but some people write the way the surrealists used to paint. I read somewhere recently that they would sit in front of their blank canvases and wait for inspiration - so that their paintings tend to be similar to stream of consciousness writing ...

while I`m not comparing myself to Dali or anything you understand, I cannot just `write` for the sake of writing. Once or twice I`ve woken up in the middle of the night with the last two sentences of something I was writing in my dreams floating about ... and much as I would want to hold on to them ... by the time I put pen to paper ... those too would have disappeared.

So yes, the desire to write is there but my writing, when I`m not inspired, may still be decent, but if some of my other work ever makes it to chowk, you will find it to be very different from this one piece.

Besides the enforced discipline of analytical writing ... seems to be taking its toll...

anyway, enough ... i thought that `riyaaz` analogy was rather apt ...

Sac: I`m not sure I`d agree with you about practise making perfect though. Editing, punctuation, grammar can be perfected with practise. But innate writing skills - either you have `em or you don`t - at least within the context of the type of writing apparently being discussing here … I mean Manto and Patras Bukhari, Faiz and Iqbal and Mir Taqi - writing styles are widely disparate of course but there can be no questioning the innate (I think) appreciation of the `power of the word` - and I don`t think you can get that with mere practise?

Apparition: sorry didn`t mean to forget about you there … thanks for the compliment and your analysis - which is apt more or less depending on how many layers you`ve peeled off … of course people read all sorts of things into that little piece- I can see that in retrospect ;-)

cheers (!!)

dL

The Sage temporal ... hi again ...

``---this thinking is fraught with danger...first,…who is this ‘writer’?…a novice or an average writer or someone perhaps above average?…will agree if the writer you mention is the former…but if the writer is the latter…she would have a pretty good idea about her tools…words…their power…and how others may use and perceive the avalanche good word usage opens up…(as a percursor of ideas and thoughts)...``

if the writer writes once in a very blue moon … in a certain kind of way … and cannot indulge either her own desire to write or the readers desire to read … how would you decide whether you were dealing with a novice or not …

I was going to ask what defines a professional … but then I remembered your list of writers - though one would not call them professionals – but rather individuals inspired … by the context of their lives – but I am in danger of digressing myself … where some people consider rushdie`s and garcia marquez`s use of ‘words’ phenomenal, others find their writing unnecessarily complicated …

Inner demons … ``another word to more or less describe conviction, khalish, kurb, durd, turmoil, sensitivity to happenings around and beyond one’s control?`` and more … who am I, what am I, why am I … life seems to become suddenly far more complex when you begin to ask these potentially answerless questions … maybe that’s why those ‘inadvertant pasbaans’ slowly emerge as mere mortals … because the answers to those questions are too complex, their implications for life, love, desire, ambition far too demanding … not every one was a willing pilgrim … or were they (my recollection of pilgrims is nothing if not vague - though of course im assuming again that my randome references are being understood but then i think you were too ...)

Maybe its best to live life as the ever optimistic ‘gentle folk’ … at least you live in hope rather than in despair … the fine line between realism and cynicism seems to be getting ever finer …

But then again - so what if you get broad sided as an elitist … better that than a complacent, ignorant (in the broadest sense of the word!) hypocrite …

I want to say ‘hypocrisy can be a convenient cloak for ‘conviction, morality, sensitivity, conscience’… but the phrase actually means the reverse of what I want to say … does that make sense ?

dL

Why I Began Paper Making in Pakistan To anyone interested in contacting Mr. Tajima:

email: tajima777@hotmail.com

cheers

dL

The Sage temporal

you are right and i shall stop obsessing about the intro!

hope to read your piece soon and you are very welcome to use `my` board ... in fact thats one way of ensuring i get to read it ...

as for the tashreeh, i`d agree that writer`s can potentially become so comfortable with the context of their own writing they don`t realize that some readers at least will flounder. Still I wonder, do most people not have `inner demons` as it were, to contend with ...

thanks again for your support ... i`ll be keeping an eye out on the 13/14th of May ...

cheers

dL

The Sage re Godot and anyone else who gets caught up by the intro:

THIS POEM WAS SENT IN BY A FRIEND AND THE INTRO WAS WRITTEN BY HIM.

Please comment on the poem which is mine ... and leave the intro alone which is simply a compliment from one friend to another - nothing more nothing less at least to the readers of chowk.

Thanks