“In the car” was my reply.

“Roll paratha khanay ka mood hai?”

“Kha laitay hein!”

Hassan paused and I imagined his trademark wicked expression. “Khilanay kay baray mein kya khayal hai?”

I chuckled. “Whatever happened to paying your own bills?”

After some random nonsense about trying to decide the venue, Hassan told me that he and Rehan were on their way to the Jinnah Super Market, and they will be waiting there for me.

I must admit that when I had first heard of a roll paratha, I had found the idea to be quite funny. Mainly because it was a brilliant idea. It only replaced the regular bun of a burger with a paratha, but that gave it such a desi touch that people couldn’t help feeling a certain fondness towards it. I must also admit that despite thinking that roll paratha is a nifty idea, I have never really enjoyed it other than just on a couple of occasions. Maybe I am one of those people who always admire but never fully appreciate.

When I reached Jinnah Super Market, the sun was about to set in the western horizon. Hassan and Rehan were sitting around a table in the “eating area” — a sort of open-air place with benches and chairs and tables — and were listening to the constant growls of an electricity generator. Somehow, if you don’t hear the sound of generators when you are outside these days, you feel like you are missing something, no matter how irritating it might be.

Across the road on my right was a plaza, which sported on its first floor the wide glass wall (or huge glass window, if you prefer) of Pakistan Electronics, a “music” shop famous for its display of musical instruments, specially guitars. I had once visited this shop with Talha. He had been saving money for buying an acoustic guitar, and I tagged along with him because he needed a driver and some “moral support”. I lived in Rawalpindi back then, and both Talha and I had just a vague idea about Islamabad and its markets. Thankfully, when we asked a young man if we had reached Jinnah Super Market or just Super Market, he told us that we were at Jinnah Super. Finding Pakistan Electronics was then a relatively easy job. The trip back home, I am sure, was quite a sight: It’s not every day that you see two teenagers riding a Suzuki 100 motorbike, with a guitar wedged between them in a box that looked more like a miniature coffin than a guitar case.

Winamp sometimes tells me that Jon Bon Jovi’s guitar lies bleeding in his arms. I always try telling back that Talha’s guitar lies broken under his bed.

Anyway, last evening when I was looking at Pakistan Electronics and the row of guitars that was displayed in its glass window, I remembered my visit and smiled silently. I was about to mention it to Hassan and Rehan when I noticed something else.

A middle-aged man, dressed in the familiar dark blue uniform of private security guards, came into the frame of that glass window. He was holding a prayer mat in his hands. He paused, probably to take his shoes off, and then stretched that mat on the floor. As he raised his hands for saying takbeer, I saw that when he would prostrate, he would be right under the hanging guitars.

“Look at that, guys,” I said. “Saying prayer under shadow of guitars.”

“Wah!” Hassan exclaimed. “Saaz bhi aur namaz bhi!”

“Deen bhi aur duniya bhi!” I added.

It was only this morning that I realized that the image of a man saying his prayer right under guitars will remain burnt into my memory for quite some time.

Also, when I choose the slogan of arguably the most damned organization of Pakistan as the title of this post, I don’t mean it as a compliment to them. I mean it as an ironical device. Because, let’s face it, there is no difference. None whatsoever.

When I closed the public access to this ulta seedha corner about a week ago, I had a quick plan of action in my mind: Create backups. Upgrade to the latest version of WordPress. Upload the newly created theme. Make all those little changes as required. Install the plugins. Brush up the posts and pages. Write a new post. And open the access again. Plain and simple. Shouldn’t have taken more than 48 hours.

Except that PTCL wanted me to feel the difference.

The night I created all the backups, I slept and dreamed of a new version of Ulta Seedha that was smashing. The morning after I woke up and found the phone line gone dead.

“Sir ji, what can we do? The workers are all on strike. It’s been over a month.” A person at the local PTCL exchange office told me when I went there to “complain”.

I sighed and then told him that, strangely, I could still connect to the Internet by using PTCL Broadband. His face lit up, “Acha? You go and do this: There’s a dibbi through which the DSL line connects to your home. Exchange the wire of that dibbi with your regular phone line and it will work!”

I still have no idea what he was talking about.

I didn’t try to locate that miraculous dibbi, though. It turned out that the DSL connection that was running on a dead phone line was of no practical use. It kept on disconnecting after every 5 minutes (with a special consideration for mornings and afternoons, when it disconnected after every 10 minutes), and the only reason that FileZilla, the nifty FTP client that I use, didn’t jump out of the computer to slap me silly on my face, was that it was a piece of soulless software. Otherwise, I am sure it would have refused to work for a master who couldn’t even arrange a stable Internet connection.

Fast forward to seven days after the phone line went dead, and it was still dead. That dibbi person had now started greeting me with a sheepish smile and a sympathetic shrug. Then on the 8th day, he asked me to go and see some Chowdhury sahab.

I found that Chowdhury sahab, a man who didn’t look even remotely like a chowdhury, near the main gate of the PTCL building. He listened to me patiently, and then asked me who had told me to see him. He then motioned me to follow him and entered the complaint office.

The next five minutes were amusing. The way Chowdhury sahab scolded all those guys, including the dibbi person, was a perfect example of an officer gone mad in a Pakistani sarkari office. I did feel sorry for the dibbi person, though — he was always so polite. Within the next 10 minutes, a technician was fiddling through the telephone wires of our home, and the phone line went live. Just like that. I later found out that Chowdhury sahab was the SDO (Sub Divisional Officer, or whatever the hell it stands for).

Now that I think of it, there was a difference that I felt. I had to go to the upper management if I wanted my phone line repaired in the past, and I had to do it again. But this time, I was sent to an officer by one of his own subordinates. Feel the difference, really!

Anyway, feel free to extract a moral out of this story. I am just happy that I managed to do almost 75% of the work I had intended to do for Ulta Seedha. To users of Internet Explorer 7: The new theme will look jittery at some places, I’ll fix it soon. To users of Internet Explorer 6: Stop using it, you are destroying the World Wide Web. To users of Mozilla Firefox: I love you. And if you are one of those rockstars who subscribed to this blog’s feed, please update it to this one. (If everything is working fine, the previous feed will automatically redirect, but who knows.)

So this was the story of a different PTCL, and a different Ulta Seedha. Let me know if anything is not working as it should be, and I’ll try to fix it soon. Meanwhile, I’ll also pray that the remaining 25% of the work that I haven’t been able to do remains hidden from the visitors.

9. Why does the song, which took almost 45 minutes to download on your dial-up internet connection, turn out to have a quality inferior than your 15 years old tape recorder?

8. Why does the ice-cream/juice/salan/fit-any-sort-of-food-here has to fall on your white shirt?

7. Why is it so difficult to realize that the professor is talking about cache performance when he says, “If I have 5 misses, what is the penalty of each miss?”

6. Should I be worried that googling “nadia khan birthday special” directs people to this blog?

5. Should I be flattered that “top ten handsome of the world” is doing the same?

4. Why does an Apple MacBook Pro cost a hefty USD$1,999?

3. Am I the only one who thinks that telephone lines/mobile phone networks should provide the facility of electrocuting those callers who after hearing a “hello” respond with a “Who are you?”?

2. Why is the Earth round and not flat (so that we could push so many people off its edge)?

1. Does any of our so-called leaders give a damn?

You see, that’s the hardest part. Whenever I am asked to state my name so that it could be scribbled down on the top of a receipt, I usually end up stating it twice, thrice, or even — what comes after thrice, by the way? — and then ultimately spelling it. Some cheerful fellows chuckle when they finally get it right. Some seem apologetic. Some frown when they have to cross their previous understanding of my name. And some shake their heads in disappointment as if trying to tell me that I could pronounce my own name better. Yesterday, however, I was slightly surprised when that dry cleaning shop attendant listened to my name just once, nodded his comprehension by repeating it and appending a sahab to it, and then wrote it down.

It was just some moments later that I was staring at that receipt, trying hard to find my name on it.

Now, dear readers, I invite you all to click on the image below and enjoy the calligraphic fluency of that shop attendant…

I am sure you’ll be able to find more amusing things too (for example, the “highly detailed” description of my clothes, or the terms at the bottom), but for me, this remains as a monumental piece of paper with a highly unique rendering of my name.

Aur rahay naam Allah ka…

I had returned from the university and was munching an apple while looking outside my room’s window. It was a beautiful evening, with the sun going down in the western horizon, and the wind spreading that slight chill, the kind that whispers the arrival of winter. There was nothing unusual on the street — people were walking, cars were passing, the stray dog that wandered around the neighbourhood was doing his (its?) acrobatics. Everything was so normal, and everything was so peaceful.

And then, he came into my view. An old man, must be in his eighties, or at least, late seventies. Dressed in a shalwar qameez, sleeveless sweater, and a pair of jogging shoes, with a walking stick in his left hand. He was walking briskly, with his right, free hand swinging along his side as if he was participating in a drill. His steps were short, but swift, and despite his aging body, his gait was as youthful as could be mine — maybe even more youthful than I can ever manage.

He passed our window and then moved towards the little boundary of bricks made by our opposite-side-of-the-road neighbours to protect their little garden. He stopped, turned towards the road so that I could now see his face, and then sat down on that boundary, placing his walking stick beside him. Watching him through my window, his arms stretched and his wrists resting on his knees, I recalled that that was the same place where I had seen him for the first time.

It was a morning though. He was then accompanied by his wife and his son — at least they looked like as if they were his wife and his son. The son was the very model of obedience and, if I may say, saadat-mandi, with his hands behind his back as he watched his father walk with the help of that walking stick. When the old man decided to take a rest from his I don’t know how long walk and started to sit down on that boundary, the son was lightning fast in extending his arm to help his father maintain the balance. The three of them stayed there conversing about something I couldn’t hear, and finally when the old man caught his breath, they all moved on, the son helping his father once again to rise on his feet.

I have spotted that old man quite often now. Once he was accompanied by a person who looked like his servant. On other times, a teen aged girl was with him, who might be his granddaughter. On more than one occasions, I have seen that old man and that girl sitting on that boundary while I was returning home in our car, and I don’t know why, but I have always felt embarrassed. There was that old man, who was certainly under the delicacy that an old age brings, and he was still ambitious enough to walk around with the help of a walking stick, and there was I, a young man who hadn’t even seen 25 years of his life, and who liked to drive around in his car even if the market he was going to was just a little three streets away.

Last evening, I was watching him through my room’s window, and was recalling everything that I have known about him. It’s rather strange how I have never tried to know who he exactly is, or where he lives. Perhaps, I don’t want to know who he exactly is, or where he lives. Perhaps, just seeing him once or twice in a week is enough for my youthful streaks to get inspired. Perhaps, all I want to know about him is to see him walking briskly with his walking stick, and to see him walk in the company of his wife, his son, his granddaughter, and his servant. Perhaps, they are the real walking sticks that one can ever need in one’s old age. And perhaps, whenever I see him, I silently pray that my old age may not be void of such walking sticks.

And then, that old man rose again, placed his stick on the ground, and propelled himself forward.

چند سال پہلے چاندنی چوک پر ٹریفک کے یہ اشارے موجود نہیں تھے۔ صرف ایک گول چکر تھا اور اُس گول چکر کے درمیان میں چلتا ہوا ایک فوارہ، جو رات کے وقت جگمگاتی روشنیوں میں کافی خوبصورت لگا کرتا تھا۔ یہ اور بات ہے کہ ایک مصروف چوک ہونے کی وجہ سے نئے نئے ڈرائیورز کے لیے اس فوارے اور چکر کی موجودگی اچھا خاصا ہوّا تھی۔ خود میں نے پہلی بار اس چوک میں ڈرائیونگ کرتے ہوئے گاڑی کو چکر ہی پر چڑھا ڈالا تھا۔

“سِکستھ روڈ جانا ہے جی، سِکستھ روڈ جانا ہے جی۔” ایک کمسِن آواز نے مجھے چونکایا۔ ایک چھوٹا سا لڑکا، کمر پر بستہ لٹکائے اور سادہ سی شلوار قمیص میں ملبوس میری طرف دیکھ رہا تھا اور ہاتھ کے انگوٹھے سے آگے کی طرف اشارہ کر رہا تھا۔ میں نے چوک میں جلتی سرخ روشنی کو دیکھا، ” بیٹھ جاؤ۔” وہ لڑکا تیزی سے اگلی سائیڈ سیٹ کا دروازہ کھول کر بیٹھ گیا، ” مہربانی جی۔”

اشارہ سبز ہونے پر میں نے گاڑی بڑھائی اور کچھ دور آگے جا کر اُس لڑکے کی طرف دیکھا۔ اُس کی عمر بمشکل بارہ تیرہ سال رہی ہو گی۔ گاڑی کے فرش پر نگاہیں جمائے وہ اتنے مؤدبانہ انداز میں بیٹھا ہوا تھا کہ مجھے ہنسی آ گئی۔

“پڑھتے ہو؟ ” میں نے پوچھا۔

“جی؟ ” وہ چونکا۔

“پڑھتے ہو؟ “

“نہیں جی۔ کام کرتا ہوں۔”

“کیا کام کرتے ہو؟ “

“جوتے پالش کرتا ہوں جی۔ صبح قرآن مجید پڑھتا ہوں۔”

میں اس کے لہجے میں چھلکتے فخر کو محسوس کیے بغیر نہ رہ سکا۔

“حفظ کر رہے ہو یا صرف پڑھتے ہو؟ “

“صرف پڑھتا ہوں جی۔” اس نے میرے جوتوں کی طرف دیکھا۔

“مسجد میں؟ “

“ہاں جی۔” وہ رکا۔ ” آپ کے جوتے پالش کر دوں جی؟ “

” آں ۔۔۔ نہیں یار۔ خیر ہے۔”

وہ دوبارہ خاموش ہوا، پھر کہنے لگا، “بڑی مہربانی جی آپ کی، آپ نے بٹھا لیا۔” میری سمجھ میں نہیں آیا کہ کیا کہوں۔ وہ کہتا رہا، “ابھی میرے پاس چپل نہیں ہے جی، ورنہ پیدل ہی چلا جاتا۔”

میں نے پہلی بار اس کے پیروں کی طرف دیکھا۔ مٹی اور گرد سے اَٹے ہوئے، چھوٹے مگر سخت جان، برہنہ پیر۔

“سِکستھ روڈ پر کہیں بیٹھتے ہو یا ۔۔۔ “

“نہیں جی۔ ” وہ میرا جملہ ختم ہونے سے پہلے بول پڑا۔ ” پھِر ٹُر (گھوم پھِر) کے کام کرتا ہوں۔ وہ موچیوں والا ڈبہ ہو نا جی تو بیٹھ کے کام ہو جاتا ہے۔” اس نے ہاتھوں کے اشارے سے مجھے ڈبے کا سائز سمجھانے کی کوشش کی۔

“تو دکانوں میں پھِرتے ہو؟ “

“ہاں جی۔ آوازیں لگاتا ہوں جی۔ سارا دن چل کر ٹانگیں تھک جاتی ہیں جی۔”

ہم سِکستھ روڈ کے قریب آ گئے تھے۔ “بڑی مہربانی جی آپ کی۔” وہ پھر بولا۔ اس مرتبہ میں نے ہنسنے کی کوشش کی۔ “کوئی بات نہیں یار۔ میں نہ ہوتا تو کوئی اور بٹھا لیتا۔”

اترنے سے پہلے ایک بار پھر اس نے میری “مہربانی” کا شکریہ ادا کیا۔ گاڑی آگے بڑھانے سے پہلے میں نے دیکھا، وہ ھاتھ اٹھا کر مجھے سلام کر رہا تھا۔

گھر کی طرف واپس آتے ہوئے میں اسی لڑکے کے متعلق سوچ رہا تھا جب ایک مال بردار ٹرک موڑ کاٹ کر گاڑی کے سامنے آ گیا۔ اُس ٹرک کی پُشت پر، نمبر پلیٹ کے نیچے ایک بڑا سا مڈ فلیپ لہرا رہا تھا اور اس پر لکھا تھا،

“سب مایا ہے۔”

میں نے ایک طویل سانس لی اور اُس ٹرک کو اوور ٹیک کرتا ہوا آگے نکل گیا۔

I have always found taxi drivers interesting. This, in no way, means that I dream to be a taxi driver. Being a taxi driver has never been there in my ambitions. But I also think that many taxi drivers hadn’t dreamt of being taxi drivers either. After all, how can we simply know about the troubles they might have gotten through. Nobody can come to know about the story behind a person by just looking at that person, you see. We humans are just like that. Complex machines with complex backgrounds and complex problems. And as if this much complexity is not enough, we have our complex dreams with their equally complex elucidations.

Anyway, before this entry turns into a psychological analysis of people’s realtionships with their pasts, let’s move on.

After getting inside that taxi, I looked closely at the driver. He was young and quite a, well, mulla. I could see some cassette covers lying on the dashboard, and they were all about some bayaanaat by Maulana Tariq Jamil. Also present was a book titled Faza’il-e-A’maal. (I am still trying to remember where else I have seen it). The driver was in the habit of driving fast, and I really liked that since I was getting late. Also remarkable were his ‘cutting’ skills—the way he was making room between little traffic jams and leaving other cars behind (and, perhaps, creating more traffic jams. I never looked back to check.)

When I reached my destination, I pulled out a Rs. 500 note. The driver looked at me and sighed. After he arranged the change, I reached with my right hand to collect the change while giving him the note with my left hand. He stopped.

“Right hand. Always give and take with your right hand.”

A smile spread across my face. Simple and beautiful, I thought, I should have known.

I am going to close my eyes and have some sleep … so draw an eye on both of my eye-lids.
—Imran, while attending a lecture of artificial intelligence

I think girls are good at math.
—Hassan, comparing himself with his class-fellows

Does IT assure morality?
—Waqas, General Secretary of Barani English Literary Society, suggesting a theme for the topic of an English debate competition

There would be Allah’s law on the Judgement Day, not General Musharraf’s.
—Imam of the mosque near our institute, Baba ji, addressing before the Friday prayer

Where did you get this petrol?
—A service boy at the local petrol station, commenting on the colour of already present petrol in the transparent bottle I asked him to fill. I came to know later that the existing petrol was purchased by my elder bro from the same petrol station.

Remember, these are just like your own personal computers.
—An ending sentence of the list of do’s and dont’s for the computer labs in our institute

The moment I saw that needle, I thought, ‘God! This can be used for a buffalo!’
—Wse, before donating his blood

Don’t.
—Reaction of Bilal when Mr. Khattak said that he had started checking our mid-term tests

Whenever I get out of breath, Mr. Wilson, I simply take another one.
—Dennis the Menace, in a comic strip

Okay. Here I am. Back. From God knows where. All I remember is… er… nothing. I mean, all these days when I was “snooping around others’ blogs” and trying to “make my previous post a memory”, I was also trying to get myself with a topic, on which I could write something. And, as expected, I ended up with no topic. So here I am. Back. From God knows where. And all I remember is that I have no topic to write on.

Okay. Let’s just forget the topic. This journal is about my ulti seedhi thoughts. And ulti seedhi thoughts don’t need any topic.

Every day before sehri, I hear this sound which has become so familiar now. The sound of a dhol (a kind of drum), played by a person whose face I’ll see on Eid day. So who’s this person? He is the one who comes and wakes us up from sleep every day. Yelling at the top of his voice (utho rozay-daro), and playing his dhol loudly, he makes almost everybody wake up. And I can imagine, that on Eid day, his smiling face will be asking everybody in the street for a generous amount of Eidi…

Sigh. The world and its people. Its people and their stories. Their stories and their morals. Their morals and the world. The world and its people…

“Having a good memory is a remarkable thing,” Taya ji was saying. “I don’t have a good memory. Can’t remember anything… figures, names, nothing. I guess nobody has got such a 3rd class memory as I have.”

“Well, I can’t remember figures and names either,” Abbu ji added.
“And that’s a very big problem our family has,” said Taya ji.
“But for some people, good memory is a torment,” I said.
“Those are poets!” Taya ji smiled.

Very silently, I cleared my throat.

“Is my answer correct?” Taya ji’s voice was still smiling.

I waited for a moment, and then said, “No.”

“Why not?”

“Well, suppose you are trying to forget an incident, which always gives you pain when you remember it. But your good memory just doesn’t let you do that. What would you do? You’ll be suffering with more pain every time you remember it, and until your brain collapses, you’ll be feeling that pain increase every day.”

“No, no, no,” Taya ji shook his head. “The thing you’re talking about is something different. It happens with everybody. With me too. When my mind gets stuck on one thing, it just sticks. It doesn’t bother about anything else. What you are talking about is mainly concerned with the event itself, and the intensity of the event, and how you take it. It has got nothing to do with a good, or bad, memory.”

I continued driving.