What would you like to be today?

According to science, this is the ideal timeline through which I was created. 

[The heights are to scale. Yes I'm 5 ft. Shutup.]

Now personally I love animals and I don't have the sort of ego that would make me think having common ancestors with apes is anything shameful. But my own thought of belief is too totalitarian to conclude that we are either just the coincidental luck of natural selection, or the easy, deliberate miracle of God. I think we are more than the both. Here is what I'd like to believe how I was created. This is a very deep proposal so please embrace yourselves.

It is only after this timeline that you can actually conclude we are all equal, because honestly that word is flung around a lot today without knowing what it even means. According to this timeline, we are chemically the same beings, and as timeless as the first creatures of the planet. We can teleport our consciences into any being, plant, animal, or another human, because they're all the same thing, distributed in different forms. So at the end of the day, I am everyone, and everyone can be me. We don't get to control this new form we are in, but we get to experience what it is like to be that in the first place. You can return to your original bodies after you're content. I don't think life get's fairer than that. I personally find too many humans egoistic so I like to turn into other creatures instead.

I am horse.

I am whale.

I am baby dinosaur.

I am baby elephant.

I am nuclei. 

I am planet.

I am tomato. 

I am potato. 

 Who are you?

I saw a woman today with a full on grown mustache and bushy eyebrows and thought to myself, how awesome. You know what. We poop smelly shit and we fart and burp and we are hairy and we sweat and we stink. Some of you can pretend your poop smells like flowers and you don't pass any kind of wind because you are sophisticated humans and your skin is spotless but it's all lies, lies I tell you. Why are we embarrassed by ourselves, instead of made humble? 


My armpits are itching.

So bloody what?

Penguin Classics

The moral issues of Zoroaster, the cosmic greatness of Hinduism, the joy in Truth of Buddha, the spiritual victory of Jainism, the simple love of Tao, the wisdom of Confucius, the poetry of Shinto, the glory of the One God of Abraham, the harmony of Sikhs. 

Transporter III

I didn't bring anything special from Lahore, but I stored her food in my stomach and shat it in Karachi 2 hours later. I think that's more beautiful and less cliche than being at two cities at once.  

Daddy Cool

Stranger guy calling on my phone

"Who r u," he texts.

"Your daddy," I grinned. 

Never heard from him again. 

Nothing.

My nose was blocked and my taste buds had become numb for a week. Everything tasted like nothing. Because it tasted like nothing, I imagined what it tasted like and pretended the taste I'm thinking of is the actual taste. And in that moment the imagined taste became the real taste. Maybe it was tastier than the actual taste. And then I thought, why don't I do the same with everything else? And so I did. What I did does not matter. What you should know is that black holes and dark matter and pockets of vacuum and everything dark and silent and numb and still, are just as loud and just as alive. There IS such a thing as something coming out of nothing. And because of that, there is no such thing as nothing.

Trollololol

It didn't solve the problem, but maybe solutions aren't the point.

Mass Production Zone

Down with revolution and nationalism and your patriotic identity no one gives a damn about. Damn the dictators and the criminals and the corruptors and the inflicters and the critics and the philosophers and poets and writers and demi-gods and the boyfriends and girlfriends and best friends and your hobbies and interests and likes and dislikes and your degree and your education and your career and your marriage and the house you live in and the car you drive and the shows you watch on TV and your little clickety clack gadgets. All man-made, all self-invented. You need nothing but the raw, naked earth. The classes and the creeds are self-illusions to make you feel better or worse. The construction worker in his dirty gloves and the chief architect in his shiny suit are the same. The money we created and the money we can destroy. Everything on the web will vanish with the blink of the deadliest virus injected by the virtual Satan. Screw everything, don't panic. Look at the biggest picture there is to look at and suck every ounce of it into your neurons. Everything you ever wanted will be there in your mind. Screw everything I'm saying and just head bang to this song. \m/

Vroom vroom.

The real-life process of learning how to drive has taught me more than Need for Speed ever did. My brother can really scream like a girl and occasionally piss in his pants thinking I'm going to whack the car into a bus. Anyway my eardrums are still functional, all's well that end's well, and I can now officially drive through the streets of the 10th largest city in the world. If you can drive here, you can drive anywhere. 

Yeah I'm rubbing it in. 


Nothing can stop me now. 


Except the depletion of petrol or a bunch of emotional protesters burning up the car because it somehow fixes the shit they're going through.

You Use the Forces of Nature, the Forces of Nature Use You

I know for some of you finding your true love is an important deal, even worth all the pain and hurt you might give to one another in the process, but quite honestly -

Biology just designed all those love hormones so that you could end up reproducing and continue to raise the survival rate of the human specie.

Dance to Forget

It's okay. Feel stupid. Be lonely. Feel unimportant. Get hurt. Feel pain. Have your hopes and dreams collapse in the palm of your hands. Don't be afraid. Die a mental death. Be born again. Die again if you want. Resume re-birth as if nothing ever happened. A customized resurrection. Live multiple lives in one body and multiple deaths in one mind. See everything again for the first time. Be a tourist to your homeland.

Now close your door and turn off the lights and dance. Dance to forget. There'll be more to remember again, soon.

Welcome to the Machine

The secret to being selfless, is subtle doses of self-service when no one is watching. A quick humble meal for the stomach, a few thoughts to keep the brain busy and blinking; healthy laughter a few times of the day. Fuel for the magnetic core till it becomes inert and reaches maximum stability. Occasional portrayal of emotions to prevent alienation from rest of the world. Surpassing the traps that distract you from the simplicity of being alive. Nothing's complicated. Have no desire, no goal, no needs, no wants, no obsessions, no love, no hate, no blame, no judgement, no inspiration, no heroes. Synchronize with the simple fabric of space. Conquest of the self. The caffeine and the nicotine and the cold shots are shortcuts. No being sorry for yourself. Be your own reason of what you are. Don't become the machine. Become the master of it. And when you do, step up and ask them,

"How may I be of service to you?"

Zombies! Aliens! Vampires! Dinosaurs!

There's nothing more annoying than trying to cheer up your friend after a break up that feels like the end of the world for them. You end up saying things you don't believe in. Cliche things. Movie dialogues. For a while you'll feel stupid even saying those lines, but the person is so depressed the only person who knows how lame you sound, is you. [The victim of depression has been sketched so in order to avoid any resemblance with any real human being so that I do not get kicked out of my social circle. Yeh right you sadasses know who you are].

Time doesn't really heal. Cake does. 

It's not that you're special, it's statistics. There's gotta be someone you can find with mutual interests, out of 7 billion people in the world. 

Some ego-inflation should fill that puncture in your heart.

Here you will get an awkward reply, like "I don't care if there's anyone better than him/her, he/she is all I ever wanted." You will know deep inside that it is cake that everyone really wants because cake is not a lie, but they don't know that yet and it's okay.


You will find yourself trying really hard to cheer them up but they will slap your face with miserable bouts of failure.

It costed 40 Rupees at the canteen which I could've spent on four Aloo ke Samosay for myself instead.

Responses from individual male and female victims of depression.

Oh well a few hundred calories more into my blood system.


I even make phone calls just to make sure they didn't do anything stupid in my absence, which is a big thing for me anyway because I hate phone calls, mostly because they're full of unnecessary conversation to avoid awkwardness.

I must be a good friend, I must be a good friend, I must be a good friend.

Break ups suck. Not because it makes the couple miserable, but even our lives. Please love each other carefully (don't give me that "I didn't mean to love, it just happened" - crap) and until you heal again, eat lots of cake and buy yourself a puppy becomes there's nothing more reliable of your love, than a puppy. Unless it dies. Now that's sad.


Shit.

Energy Diversion

Stop it dude. Stop looking into the mirror again and again. In your home, in someone else's home, in the school bathrooms, in the coffee restrooms. Why is your image such a distraction. If you look good, you'll get a few upbeat remarks, feel good about yourself for a few minutes, and that's it. If you don't look good, no one will say anything and you can just move on with more important things. 


Stop fidgeting with your freakin' hair. It's hair strongly attached to your head, it won't fall off if you stop touching it. Stop being touchy about it. I will ruffle your hair or give you a nudgie if I want to, however neat your hair is that morning, so deal with it. 


Stop spending all your money on face washes. You know they don't work. You know the pimples will go when they want to go and there's nothing you can do about it so just let it go and let it be. 


Stop wearing clothes that are completely uncomfortable to wear but you wear them because they look good. 


Stop being so self-afflicting and fidgety and chaotic and self-conscious in all the wrong areas. Nobody cares about those insignificant things. Those who do just need to get laid. So calm down. You're pleasant when you're calm. 


Give your brain a rest. You must be tired. When you're done, there're way bigger things out there to worry about, worth the energy.

Dancing Dice

Do you ever have a good time with a stranger that you only met once, than you would with the people you see every day of your life?


I still think of this little girl back in Riyadh, sitting at her window, who'd vigorously flail her arms around to say hello to me in a language I wouldn't understand, and I'd wave back in a language she wouldn't understand either. But we randomly waved and smiled and laughed every time we spotted each other as if we had known each other for years. I still think of that old woman who sat next to me on a plane and told me about all her children getting married, leaving her to live alone by herself. I still think of that taxi driver who sang Akon songs in front of my mum for which she called him an ullu ka patha. 


Everyone doesn't always have to be in your Facebook list. You don't always have to know their names and phone numbers. Let half the people in your life be strangers that you only see for the first and last time. You will like the world more that way, and for some reason always think of them, even though they had no life-turning impact on your life. 


I'm so glad I don't know more than half the people following this blog. Take it as a compliment.

Orange.

If you went to heaven and found out you were the only one there, would you spend the rest of eternity all by yourself, or join the others in hell?

Silly Things

Television always told me that the calcium in milk is good for teeth, so as a kid I'd keep a mouthful residue of milk and leave it in my mouth for 5 minutes to be absorbed by my teeth.

What silly things did you do as a kid?

Guide to a Badass Galaxy

Hello class. Oh please no need to stand up. Do sit down.
Today we shall be discussing about all those badass things in the world, that have been given a reputation of being sissy and girly, by the television and virtual media that have succeeded in misleading you. Yes peeps. Today is all about unicorns, rainbows, skittles and butterflies. That's right. Badass - unicorns, rainbows, skittles and butterflies.


Let's start with unicorns. This is what they make you think a unicorn is.  

Lalala I'm a fake unicorn that plays with the cat in Hello Kitty and ponies from My Little Pony.

 This is what a unicorn actually looks like.

That's right. I'm the badass unicorn with a diamond-tipped horn that can fork out eyeballs out of sockets and turn them into eye candy. Get it?! Eye candy! Omg I'm so funny. 

 This is the unicorn Voldemort will use to sustain his partially mortal life. This is the unicorn whose horn holds the powers of eradicating cancer. But ah. Just when you thought it couldn't get better. Unicorns shall become more badass when I present to you...

The Black Unicorn.

Ponies love meh but I don't give lift cuz I too badass for fluffy pony. 

This is the unicorn that will not only save you from being raped, but even rape the rapist back. This is the unicorn Batman rides on when his batmobile is under maintenance. This is the unicorn that hides where even the werewolves won't find it, while it secretly headbangs to death metal and watches X-rated movies. 

Damn, ate too much Awesomeness.

Next we have, rainbows. An epic result of simple physics; I've no idea how it turned into a symbol of sissy. Since it is additionally made out of unicorn fart, and we just agreed on how the unicorn is badass, the rainbow naturally becomes a part of the badass family. If rainbows weren't badass, Pink Floyd would not have used the concept of the light spectrum on their album cover, and Radiohead would not have bothered labelling an entire album in its name. 

Dark Side of the Moon - Pink Floyd    /    In Rainbows - Radiohead.

Skittles. Also known as unicorn poop. The only kind of poop you won't hesitate to gulp down. The unicorn today is nice enough to have its poop processed into crispy nitrogen-filled packets for your convenience. But Skittles go way back, before the concept of packaging was invented. These pellets of unicorn poop were discovered in exotic Amazon rainforests and African jungles, by our ancestral tribes. It was these bullets of mysterious doodoos that they used to get high on while dancing around a fire, and thus transition into a trance-like state to communicate with their gods. Side effects included rapid cure from depression, extreme levels of rapture, uncontrollable jumping, and superhuman feelings of nothing-is-impossible which led to remarkable architecture we know today as great Egyptian pyramids and Aztec temples. Skittles is the only drug known today that won't cause trouble if caught in your pocket. 

Last, we have butterflies. They look like happy fluttering kites but taste like bitter venom. Yes, I have personally eaten them.    

With my colour combination of fire orange and death black, I am a symbol of hell's warning to mankind. 

These petty creatures have been known to have the flap of their wings contribute to tornadoes and hurricanes.

Bangladesh Cyclone, 1991, 138 866 gone.

Hurricane Jeanne, 2004, 5000 deaths.

Cyclone Nargis, 2008, 146 000 wiped out.

These butterflies are out to kill the crap out of you.

Thus ends our badass class for today. Your homework is to find as many other forms you can, of things that are badass but fail to be appreciated by us, or are sugarcoated in exaggerated layers of pink icing. Note: Anyone who writes "Barbie" will be personally slaughtered by my Black Unicorn. See you in next class. 

Aawish.

We find it natural to feel sorry for handicapped people, when it should oddly enough, be the other way. The more of the five senses you have, the more disordered you are. A blind man will always have a more colourful thought than the man who only learnt seven colours at school. A deaf man will never hear evil; a dumb man will never speak it. Their world will always be simpler, cleaner, free from the irrelevances that the five senses make our brains absorb.


It is our brain that can only go as far as the eyes can see and the ears can hear. It is us who are the handicapped.


It is us they should be sorry for. 

Vanilla Ice

I went to the polar ice caps last week. I won’t brag, but you have not lived completely if you haven’t been there. I tap danced with penguins under aurora disco lights and dipped my feet in icy cold water while baby sea lions nibbled at my toes; went to sleep where a polar bear might’ve hibernated last winter; woke up with crunchy icicles in my hair.   


Came back last night. The salt in my sweat from the heat here, tastes like the snow of the cold there. Weird. 


You should go too. It’s free anyway. The human brain can be a fun place to be when the physical world disappoints you.

Wisdom from a Children's Book

Being Nietzsche

Hearing range: 20 - 20000 Hz.
Visible spectrum range: 380 - 740 nm.


There's a huge possibility everything we see and hear is an illusion - it's just the same for all of us. 

Summer Shalwar

Since I'm still in the oh-my-God-I'm-in-love-with-Karachi phase, today we shall discuss the icon wonders of one of our national clothes - the Shalwar. For those unaware of the Shalwar, it's a pair of fluffy, airy trousers that look as if someone tore down their curtains and pinned the drapes together to make this bigass wearable thing, where 80% of the volume in it consists of air. Behold - my cartoon version wearing a shalwar. 

Quick Note: I'm not as hot in real life as I look in this picture. Please refrain from falling in love with me. 

Now we all know what a Shalwar is. Next - its wonders. 


There's a building on fire. Theres no way to escape but to jump from the highest story. It's a matter of life and death. If luck is on your side, you'd be wearing a Shalwar. 

Awesome shalwar transforms into parachute by providing abundant air friction due to its surface area and thus saves lives.

Next. A sailing boat has just suffered massive destruction after surviving a sea storm. No oars to row the boat; the sails have been ripped out by the wind. If luck is on your side, you'd be wearing a Shalwar. 

Awesome Shalwar transforms into makeshift sail - with its flexible and environment-friendly material, allows safe arrival of the boat to the desired destination.

Suddenly, Superman encounters a turmoil.

Awesome Shalwar saves Superman's reputation.

It's a moment the entire world is waiting for, watching every update on their television screens. Man is setting foot on the moon again. 

Awesome Shalwar acts as flag and prevents further competition between US and Russia. Shalwar deserves Nobel Peace Prize.

This summer, buy all the Shalwars you can, in the nearest store by you.

Banana

The other day I went to get my National Identity Card made. My brother reminded me how the place there would be full of culture-abiding people who wear traditional clothes and stuff, so I decided to fit in and do the same to avoid being unnecessarily stared at. Inspite of all my efforts, the she's-an-outsider factor still seemed to amuse all the people there. Since the damage was already done and my desi disguise had gone down the drain, I thought I might as well have some fun with it. Whenever a dude started staring, I'd go like:

Dudes are one thing. When women stare at you it's even scarier. So whenever a woman gave me the stink eye, I took it up a notch and asked:

I think Karachi likes me. 

Transaction

We were poor in a rich country, 
now rich in a poor country.

Pot Tea

Back in Saudi Arabia, we always used a shower thing after answering a call of nature, that looks something like this. 

Here in Pakistan, and probably in India, majority of us use Lota's. For those who don't know what a Lota is, it's a container shaped like a teapot except instead of pouring tea from it into a teacup, we pour water from it over our personal territories after answering the call of nature. Here have a look. 

The reason I admire these Lota's roots back to my obsession with saving natural resources and thus rescuing the planet from self-destruction blablablah. -[insert optimistic stuff that will never turn into reality]- 

See if you're using the shower thing instead, you're unaware about the amount of water you're using and since the tickling feeling of pressurized water is amusingly tranquil you'll leave the shower on longer than you require and thus waste more water. 

But Lota's? Awesome Lota's? They just get straight to the point. Keep it short, concise, definite. We should all have our own customized Lota's, like we personify our laptops and iPods and phones and other fancy stuff. Here are a few samples I made. Help yourselves.

This one's already mine. The Damnation Lota. 

The Simba Lota.

The Trollin' Lota. 

The What-a-beautiful-day-today Lota.

Make them teapots jealous. They do nothing brave.

Let your Lota define you. And may the Force be with you.