Meet Jee

Introducing my comic's first character! This is Jee (Urdu for 'yes'), an obsessive tweeter who freely retweets. Based loosely on my friend @gulmeenay (follow her), we know little about her character yet. How about we all discover her character together? (I'm as eager to find out as you are, mind you)

Click to view larger image!

Beauty Parlours are Scary

Pakistani women, it seems, are just hairy. And so the quintessential Pakistani girl is an obsessive visitor of the 'porlor', a place, quite honestly, I am deathly afraid of. Not because I'm excessively hairy or because I fear getting my 'stache vaporized - but because of the people. All those ladies - old uns, young uns, 'beauticians' et cetera - are S-C-A-R-Y.

First off, I don't dress like any almost-eighteen-year-old girl should dress. I'm not wearing shalwar kameez, and I'm not wearing sandals either. I like to be mobile and travel without excess baggage, so I wear pants with lots of pockets to avoid carrying a bag and like big comfy t-shirts, and I'd rather wear any old pair of sneakers than pretty, uncomfortable sandals. My hair's tied back most of the time too, because unlike most girls who look like that villain-woman from Captain Planet, I value seeing out of both eyes.

So the old aunties, they glare. I'm too mod-ren for my own good.

The other young girls, they stare. How can I not want to look pretty (read prissy)?

The parlour girls, they despair. Why does this girl look so... unconcerned about her appearance?

But they're not the only ones disconcerted. For the most part I'm completely comfortable in new situations where I don't know very many people and need to communicate. At beauty parlours, though, I freeze up. My normally loud voice is a hesitant murmur, often a mumble that forces me to repeat myself over and over again. The 'laddiss' despair further - the child cannot even speak Urdu! I speak Urdu just fine, thank you. It's just all of your eyes boring into my skull, all you tall women with your heavily-make-upped faces and scathing looks that makes me forget what I came to do.

So yeah, laddie bucks, lay off. I'm not the one that steals special Chinese  orange-flowers from the beauty parlour garden that the owner of the house has been carefully cultivating. I'm not the one pointlessly getting my hair blow-dried to go to a casual dinner for 5 at my best friend's place. I'm not the one that hosts 'coffee mornings', a concept that I cannot, for the life of me, fathom.If anybody should be giving scathing looks, it's me, no?

So Misunderstood

I felt like experimenting today, so I made this comic. Very amateurish, I know, but hopefully I'll improve over time (do such things happen?) Click for larger view!

Conflict

Am I the big-city girl in search of doing what I love - music, art, literature, film, theatre, with flashing-lights New York as my stage? Or am I the girl that thrives in a small-knit community at a place dedicated to self-discovery? And are the two really mutually exclusive?

There are two people whose opinion I really value when it comes to determining my character, because they've figured out who I am. The problem at hand is, they've figured me out into two different people. And I'm not sure which one I am.

'At the end, Mehak, the decision is yours to take.'

Why can't someone decide for me? Why can't I discover who I am in a big school? Is there a rule that says re-evaluation of priorities and perspectives only comes in a small school setup? So many questions. Am I the only one with answers? Why is my writing so disjointed?

When we feel frustrated, why do we wear dark, warm clothes in the middle of summer? Do we really need to sweat out the exasperation, the irritation, that badly? I'm feeling like listening to John Mayer but looking like Motorhead.

Take A Deep Breath...

Life, it seems, doesn't get easier at all.

After all those tests and exam retakes and the scramble to get into college, I've finally been accepted. If it isn't a big enough shock that a university actually wants to take me, the fact that I have to make a choice between two is absolutely mind-boggling. To quote a certain Hillman from the recent Hitch Hiker's Guide installment, bejaysus.

The decision is tough. On one hand is an awesome small liberal arts school that is showing me plenty of love, and on the other hand is a college in the Big Apple, where I really want to be - except that it has no campus. Decisions, decisions...

Saib - our very own apple

30th March, I thought, was a fun day for news. My friend @gulmeenay concurred - this was her tweet for the day:

And Indo-Pak love story and an outing. It's been a good day for news :p

What's strange, though, is that most other kids don't feel this way. And what's stranger is that they don't particularly care about Sania and Shoaib. Their problem is (I kid you not) that there are far more relevant issues to be discussed - why must they make headlines? Why must they take away from our precious current affairs time?


I'm a bit confused. Aren't we the kids that have grown up watching the internet revolution thrive - are we not the very by-products of Web 2.0? And while I hate to bring the cliched internet argument in this, I'd like to ask all these people if they weren't a least bit interested in seeing the Rihanna-Chris Brown scandal through, and if they don't consider the goings on of Kobe Bryant or Shaq as real news. Being bombarded with information from so many different cultures, the Iranian Green Movement through twitter, the guys who used Facebook to win against Simon Cowell, The Taqwacores (look em up, they're cool) helping to reinterpret Islam, have we not been able to see that news constitutes more than just political affairs? The world is at our fingertips in terms of news and information available. Are we really going to be finicky about something like two people getting married?


And are Shoaib Malik and Sania Mirza really just a celebrity couple getting married? I thought there was greater relevance to their union. An Indian and a Pakistani getting married - big deal, right?  I don't think so. This particular couple are superstars in their own right. Shoaib Malik is a member of the cricket team that won Pakistan its first major title since 1992. Sania Mirza has won twelve doubles titles and is loved by her country (one not particularly concerned about the length of her skirt). Maybe their uniting will open up a new frontier for Indo-Pak relations? Aman Ki Asha is making an effort to do this too, but can they reach the masses at a grassroots level the way these two can? Is their unity not an indicator to the masses that the fear the Indians bombing is is an irrational fear? We lack strategic depth, and that implies that it disadvantages us, but it actually is working for us - were the Indians to decide to blow up Lahore, there would be a considerable fallout back home. There is not going to be a nuclear war anytime soon. I think Saib (as I fondly refer to Shoaib and Sania - I don't like Shoainia, sorry - it sounds too much like a country) may just help to put this idea across.


The issue that is arising now is - why are they taking up HEADLINE space? That's not real news. What is real news? Of course this is real news. Just because it's relatively pleasant doesn't mean it's not news! Besides, the elaborate Veer-Zaara comparisons and music medleys on news channels aren't geared towards you, or me, us elite kids living in Islamabad's little isolated bubble. It's the seventy percent rural population that enjoys melodrama, the people who constitute real, unfiltered Pakistanis. The ones who don't shy away from having a good time on weddings (which incidentally used to have more going on than just the prepared dances that are the norm now) and who are actively scandalised when Meera has a secret husband or when Adnan Sami Khan gives up his Pakistani nationality to live in India. They love drama! We love to put little 'Pakistan Zindabad' notes on our Facebook pages, but what does that mean to us?


Oh, but aren't there much more important issues to be discussed? Electricity, water, et cetera? Of course they're important. But I have two things to say. One, seriously, the ones complaining live in the diplomatic enclave of Islamabad, where the electricity doesn't get cut and there isn't a water problem. So really, what are you complaining about? Of course it's an issue in the rest of Pakistan, nobody's denying it, but I'm sorry if your wish to hear about other people's suffering is delayed by a few minutes.


My second point has been neatly summed up by my friend Naeha:

personally putting happy news on the front page to raise morale = good. we know what the problems are and they ARE discussed. maybe its time to take a step back and stop taking such a negative view about something which isn't offensive or fear inducing.

Basically, complaining about this isn't helping anyone. Just chill out, alright? Let us have our fun. It's rare and lighthearted and really isn't harming anyone. There is no need to be so bitter! Saib is our very own Apple - this is the pop culture that your kids will allude to thirty years down the line and you wouldn't really want to tell them it was a load of crap. Because it's not a load of crap. The world doesn't need more negative vibes!