Pakistani Woman - A Different Perspective
This blog is about the everyday lives of Pakistani Women - not the sensational ones of suppressed, battered women, but normal lives, with regular urban issues and concerns - surprizingly similar to lives of many many women all across the world.
Sunday, October 20, 2013
Low Immunity
Love comes to them like
The common cold
Claiming the face, the body, the mind
Eyes hazy, senses dazed,
Breathing laboured
For the while it’s there
I envy them
Such easy lovers
For love departs as quickly
As painlessly
As it arrived
Leaving no trace behind
Just some faint fuzzy memories
It seems I have low immunity
because Love has come
Like raging Small Pox
Spreading slowly
Burning under the skin
It marked everything
Senses, Vision, Speech, Touch
It left me exhausted
Scarred with open wounds
Healing in slow agony
The craters on the face, on the heart
Never gone
I must have low immunity
because Love for me
was all consuming
Relentless
Leaving me marred
Carrying signs forever
Of my Disfiguring Love
Wednesday, June 26, 2013
The Land of Rasputins
I come from the of Rasputins
With crazed fervour
And glazed minds
they rape and plunder
My beautiful Land
of humming brooks and sun-kissing mountains and brown-sugar sands
The Rasputins
set alight the universities of
Reason
lest the learned become mighty
They cast shadows on
Intellect
So it remains chained to their beards
Alas my friend
I come from a land of Rasputins
Who multiply like 'Agent Smith'
till whereever one looks
One finds that all faces,
all minds,
Have become that of
Rasputin
(London, Jan 2011. On the assasination of Punjab Governor Salman Taseer)
The Tattered Comforter
Urdu in the air, children in the streets
The eucalyptus smelling sharper in the heat
Family, sunshine, rickshaws, mirth
Sweet scent of the monsoon drenched earth
Oh the sounds, smells, feel of my land
I belonged here, no place more grand
Like a soft comforter enveloped in love
Heaven on earth, nothing better above
Today my comforter is in tatters
Run by idiots and mad-hatters
Dismal, ruined, infested by vice
held together by blood sucking lice
Nothing remains of its warmth
Inhabited now by the foul stench of death
And tales of horrors foretold
Throughout its once fragrant breadth
(Karachi, June 2013, On the massacre of mountaineers at Nanga Parbat)
Love like Small Pox
Love comes to them like
The common cold
Claiming the face, the body, the mind
They can’t breathe
For the while it’s there
It departs quickly
Painlessly
Leaving no trace behind
Just some faint fuzzy memories
To me, Love has come
Like raging Small Pox
It spread slowly
Burning under my skin
It marked everything
Senses, Vision, Speech, Touch
It left me exhausted
Scarred with open wounds
Healing slowly, painfully
The craters on my face, on my heart
Never really gone
My love was like the Pox
Relentless, all consuming
Leaving me marred
For the rest of my time
With signs of my Disfiguring Love
(Karachi, June 2013)
Munni and the Man Eater
It tickles her
The kosherness
The almost platonic
Justification of it all
It pleases her
The harmless proximity
The unspoken possibilities
With a practicing seducer
She sees his charms
Flattered and amused
She delights with abandon in his company
Smiling at the subtle affirmations of her womanhood
Assuring herself of the
The safety net
So filmsily around them
Like foam in the wind
And thus
She allows herself
To enjoy the flirtation
The attention
Of a sexy face
And thus
She maintains her chastity
Munni
Revelling in her association
With the Man Eater
(Karachi, June 2013)
Random
Random friends
With laughter in their eyes
Across a table
Comfort
In the randomness
Random conversations
Between to-be lovers
Inter-laced fingers
Anything other than random
Seems inappropriate
Random kisses
With still-strangers
At the beach
With sea salt on their lips
Anything other than random
Is obsolete
While labels define
Randomness
Gives ease
Of letting things be
In the sweetness of now
(Karachi, March 2012)
Random
Random friends
With laughter in their eyes
Across a table
Comfort
In the randomness
Random conversations
Between to-be lovers
Inter-laced fingers
Anything other than random
Seems inappropriate
Random kisses
With still-strangers
At the beach
With sea salt on their lips
Anything other than random
Is obsolete
While labels define
Randomness
Gives ease
Of letting things be
In the sweetness of now
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