Revisiting Myself: a Once-potted Plant with a Dictaphone? RawDust, neither am I an adherent of Islam, nor Indian, nor eastern in any way. Islam, Indian and the east are not the only prisons esp for women, so come out of your myopic world views.

Lambasting motherhood isn`t humorous for most mothers. It shows a shallow understanding of what it takes to be a good mother. This writer admits that she`s toned down her lifestyle after marriage and motherhood. My question is WHY? She must have felt ``more liberated`` before is what I assume, hence that statement.

Revisiting Myself: a Once-potted Plant with a Dictaphone? Oh you write well no doubt, but still...

Revisiting Myself: a Once-potted Plant with a Dictaphone? I hope you speak just for yourself author! This article was a lamentable excuse to torch wife/motherhood and justify them as the reasons for your own intellectual laziness. Plus, sounds like you haven`t had sex in a while.

You admit to having servants too to do most of your chores, so exactly how busy must motherhood be keeping you?

`` am a 30-year-old married mother of two. That sentence alone suggests I am more barmy than brainy. Marriage is an uninspired, irrational human attempt to make nature subservient to economics. Motherhood is a natural, restrictive blockade of arteries supplying blood to the female brain by menacing fats cells hijacking them to ferry breast milk the other way. Marriage smothers impulses that, if followed through, might catalyze works of aesthetic and conceptual value. Motherhood lays the corpses of those impulses gently to rest and then dances on their graves.``

I feel sorry for the kids!

If anything, being a wife and mother ought to be a more liberating experience than anything else in life. Either you married the wrong kinda guy or gave into marriage and procreation plans too early.

I`m really not at all sorry for being downright outraged. This article has me howling.

Slavery Never Ends If (some) people eventually realize they are just spokes in an old wheel, what do you expect ``intellectuals`` to do? they`ll just reinvent the wheel.

I Miss You Chili Chips! Kids with US passports who are shipped to grow up abroad have this extra-large chip on their shoulders that totally shatters when they get back ``home`` and have to deal with dishing out ``would you like fries with that`` in their oh-so-not-american accents. Most speak hindi/urdu/bangla perfectly but just fake it (as if they can`t).

Pigeon’s Meat funny. what goes around comes around.

Echoes WHAT HAPPENED TO THE USUAL LOOK???????????????????????????

Updating without warning is like eating pizza for breakfast.................................

Halloween Party Beej, you have the talent to write. That is rare.

Halloween Party Beej, you have the talent to write. That is rare.

Black Pakistan and White Pakistan # 785 Mr Chauhan, before you say ``reverse the curse``, please ask the countless Indian youth under 25 if they would like to have a say in this magnanimity. people from your generation often like to believe people from our generation either do not exist or can be sidelined because we live under your roofs, eat the food you provide, and so should think also like you, and make the same mistakes and pass on the same curse in a vicious cycle.

Mr Ashtaband, does your canning facility discriminate between Muslim Indian, Hindoooooooo Indian, Jain Indian, Parsi Indian, Buddhist Indian, Secular Indian, Atheist Indian, etc.. or do you can everyone equally? A good chunk of those Alice who are no longer privilged to work on your Capital One account are also Alia, who you are denying a means of employment to, so they will be forced to take home no commission, get beaten by their Ali for bringing home less pay, or berated by Abbu for being born or endure screams from Ammi to get married to a local good-for-nothing Asad, perhaps get raped by Arvind or eye-scanned by Adamjee on the way home because they can`t afford an auto rickshaw and have to take a cycle rickshaw instead - all because people like you find Indians ``ugly`` (what in heaven`s name does that word mean???). And you are the same people who scream loud and forever about women`s rights, rape victims, female infanticide, frustrated poor people who could do a lot if only they were able to access the right resources blah blah blah. What is all that talk - just for show?

If anyone of you were really decent, before continuing this masquerade, you would apologize to Saima Shah for ruining her board.

Mistaken Identity Jingu morphed into Sid N? Nice strolling style. Mama not existing have anything to do with her failed marriage? I liked the nostalgic analogies.

Buta, Pattey and Allah Chowrangi this was amazing. a bit heavily allegorical but amazing... Allah Chowrangi sounds like a posterboard or something?

Black Pakistan and White Pakistan HAHA! Good write up Miss Shah!

Aftershocks and Afterthoughts ps to #13, though I sincerely pray, of course, that they all do go to Heaven, should it exist, and I don`t wish to sound callous in any way about such a calamity. (But that isn`t the thrust of my comment to #8).

Aftershocks and Afterthoughts Bina, If that forty-five rupee blanket bit stung that bad, I apologize.

I have no issues with your education or religious dogma. Just that you chose to expose it this way. You have not answered my question. Where is the aid money going? It is not hard for me, I have always acknowledged Pakistanis as human beings, just like everyone else on this planet. Your article though, made it clear that you yourself were just now beginning to see any merit to where you come from. THAT was sad. I also acknowledged in my earlier post, if you would read rather than skim, that it is human tendency, esp. for those humans taught to think of God above all, to instantaneously attribute all manner of evil to God, and not so instantaneously but in any case ultimately and oftentimes with some embarrassment attribute all manner of good likewise, to God. BUT, I made it clear, that to do so, should preferably not have been the misfortune of a more enlightened mind, such as yourself, who could also have resourced information on seismology among other things, access to which the Government of Pakistan clearly lacked as shown by their negligence in funding and paying close attention to scientists, rather than terrorists, who could have helped them come up with perhaps better living solutions for people, often poor, struggling to get by in areas rocked by seismic activity for decades.

Do tell me Bina, how much a blanket costs in Karachi. People`s applaudable relief efforts notwithstanding, the cost of goods needed to resuscitate earthquake survivors into a semblance of life will never equal the amount of money accumulating in Mr Musharraf`s Relief Fund, or 101 other funds. So in order that something does reach the victims expeditely and directly, people locally will give what they can, from whatever is readily on hand inside their homes or within their means, which is, and I repeat, forty five rupee blankets, four paisa tea biscuits...

btw, #5 must have gotten the idea that you support ``jihad`` activities from such badly phrased comments as ``And now that the area is crawling with foreign rescue teams and helicopters from everywhere, there is no way Pakistan can conduct its operations in secret`` .. as if you were quite peeved that medical rescue efforts were being made, rather than regular terrorist runs... surely we all realize that isn`t the case....

(btw, I`m thrilled to bits that you even so much as noticed my amateurish pot-boiler. Jazak Allah).

#8, I take it you are one of the faithful who believe that the earthquake victims, because they died during the fasting hence holier than the rest of the months month, are martyrs, and thus guaranteed Heaven? Please correct me if I am wrong, because if that were the case, rather than mourning for them, logic tells me one ought to be quite happy.

She took the frying pan out #10 I agree, it was too long. Actually didn`t write the story for public consumption, it was just a lazy hour`s yawn.. thought I`d put it out before hitting the delete button for once..
btw, p-trap drain eh? absolutely amazing...

#12 WooooooooooW. How utterly comprehensive.. ice cubes and lemon peels? guess it`s worth a try.. once I`m convinced the four boxes of baking soda, the 72 oz Tide with bleach, the bottle of white vinegar, the tub of whipped butter, the gallon of Drano Max and all eight tubes of KYjelly that I put in to clear the disposal today have not worked again..

#13 Zahra, I can do humor, but am of the opinion that seventy Homeric verses on the trials and tribulations of identical twin cockroaches that got lost in buffet melas and ended up reuniting inside corrugated tins of Goya pinto beans too sordid for most readers` tastes. however, I will solemnly endeavor to bear in fingers your comic expectations the next time..

# 11 close. I roast kids

of lamb.


#14 in the villages, the old method of washing dishes was with the charcoal and blue block of dish soap under the public faucet, where you have lines of women with their pots and pans waiting patiently behind you for their turn.