Exercise, Daddy and Other Musings.

Another, otherwise, peaceful dinner conversation disrupted by my disregard towards my health. I just don't see the point of going to the gym. I don't see why that's so unusual for my family to understand. I don't mind the flabs forming on the sides of my stomach. My father dubbed my likes and dislikes as 'ghair fitri' (unnatural). I don't see how wanting to get tired can be considered natural and wanting to rest be considered unnatural.

My father says he wants me to talk openly with him. He wants me to tell him my vision for my future, where I see myself in ten years time and what the purpose of my life is. He maintains that he's always allowed for us to openly express ourselves. I sit across the table from him and think to myself: 'What lies!' We don't speak about anything in this house. We don't talk about the time he beat my mother, we don't talk about the time he threw a slipper at my brother when he was 3 years old or the time he beat the butler for not bringing him and his friends tea.

I feel uncomfortable speaking about myself with him. In fact, I feel uncomfortable speaking about anything with him. I don't know when he's going to snap. I've learned to deal with him by keeping my mouth shut and just nodding at everything he says but he seems to have a problem with that too now. He has a problem with everything. He said that I should go see a therapist and all I could think about was how he needed a therapist more than I did.

That being said, I have a myriad of issues and I feel as though I do need a therapist. I sit on this blog, typing away, just trying to figure out my life but it isn't enough. There's so much uncertainty. So much I don't know. So much I'm not satisfied with. My father doesn't really understand my 'likes and dislikes' but to be quite honest, I don't know what they are. I feel uncomfortable when my father asks me these questions because not only am I uncomfortable with my father, but I also do not know the answers to the questions he asks.

I think my father and I have finally agreed on something: a therapist may be good for me. I desperately need someone to piece together the broken fragments of my life.. I can't do it on my own. I just need someone to make everything less confusing, to make some sense of things. I think my mother sums up my life more accurately than anyone else, she asks: 'Tum zindagi se bezaar kiyun ho?' (Why are you sick of life?), and I don't know what to say. I know she's right and I want to change, I just don't know how.

...

I look deep into your eyes, searching for your soul but I know that all that lays behind the lenses of your eyes is a retina that leads to an optic nerve. So I put my hand on your chest and try to feel your heart, but your heart is just a piece of flesh beating away, pumping blood through your veins. So I take a step back and I look at you and I search for the person I love but I know you are just bone covered with meat covered with skin and suddenly I feel more lonely than I ever did before.

You're saying something, I can hear you but I can't quite comprehend what you're saying. I know what the words coming out of your mouth mean as described in a dictionary but I don't know what you mean because you aren't really there. You're shouting now, I know you are, but your voice is fading away into the background just like the whisper of the ceiling fan above my head. I look around and see where I stand and although this room looks familiar, it doesn't quite feel the same and I realize that you're still there and I'm fading away.

I'm going to a place where I feel nothing but I already feel nothing because I'm not where I think I am. It's all in my head, everything. I don't see the world, I see my perception of it. There is no way that I can truly feel anything I can only feel my perception of 'feeling.' I'm all alone.

Hold me tight and remind me to come back. Remind me that I lay in your arms. Kiss me so I can feel your lips on mine. Touch every corner of my body so that I feel your hands sliding over my skin. Hold me tight and tell me you are real and I haven't just made you up. Write me a poem and read it to me to show me that you think the way I think and feel the way I feel. Please, just feel me and make me feel.

Shaadi season

Yes, It's that time of the year again. The time when the drawer is full of wedding invitations of relatives whose names you've never heard of. The time when you get the opportunity to witness the level of intellect and double standards present within our society. The time when you return home at 2 am, eager to take a seat on the commode only to pass out burning liquids. It's 'Shaadi' time.

This festive season kicked of with my cousins engagement where I heard a song whose lyrics roughly translated to:

'The groom is wondering how the bride will be' (because he hasn't actually ever seen the bride).
'Tell him the bride is like a piece of gold' (because women are shiny material objects, gifts of sorts).
'Whichever house she goes to, she'll make that house a piece of heaven' (God forbid she ever wishes to step outside that piece of heaven without the company of a male relative).

I think about how I sat quietly through the song and I'm impressed at my display of patience and maturity. My usual self would have either kicked the speakers till they became unable to play this damned song ever again or burst out laughing finding such ridiculous lyrics hard to believe in. But I realize that I must stay calm and maintain a certain level of discipline and continue to wear the fake smile on my face as I shake hands with relatives, whose faces I remember only vaguely, as though it's a great pleasure to meet them again. 

Despite the ghastly Parathas that have resulted in me spending a great number of hours each day in the washroom passing out God knows what, I've made it through the bulk of the season. I had an interesting discussion with my family the other night on our way to a 'Baraat.' The groom was a son of a close friend of my fathers and we were following the grooms car to a wedding hall. I'm not quite familiar with the customs of each function and I don't really care but in order to remove the awkward silence that persisted in the car, I decided to question my mother on the topic. She told me that during a 'Baraat' the 'lerkay wale' (friends and family members of the groom) go to pick up the bride and bring her home. I question 'Why can't the bride take the groom home,' and the car bursts into laughter and I sit there, puzzled, unable to understand the humor in my last statement. My mother jokingly asks if that's what I want for my wedding. I reply with a 'Why not?' and the whole car is perplexed by what I'm saying and alas, awkward silence continues till we arrive at the wedding.

I don't understand desi weddings. They seem so sexist, defining the roles of man and wife before they even meet. I'm not going to say they are very hetero-normative (even though they are; I can only imagine the confusion a gay couple would go through if they were have a desi wedding) because I understand that our society simply isn't there yet but to learn that our society isn't even willing to treat husband and wife equally is disheartening, if not infuriating.

My older brother doesn't want to get married anytime in the near future and although I understand, my mother seems almost unwilling to accept this reality. She tries time and time again to convince him to get married and after he refuses she jokes and says that one day, she'll pretend like she's taking him to a relatives wedding, but it'll actually be his wedding. For his sake, and for our societies sake, I hope she is in fact joking.

My Big Fabulous Gay Life

I feel like the words 'gay,' 'fabulous,' and 'pink' are often used as synonyms. When you are a homosexual, albeit in a country like Pakistan, the people who are most likely to accept you are almost unwilling to see you as anyone beyond the gay stereotype. You have to listen to Beyonce, you have to know how to dance your ass off and you have to be a fashioniesta.I don't mean to promote these stereotypes but I do feel as though many of these things come naturally to many of us, what does not come naturally however, is the supposed gay lifestyle.

We all don't get the opportunity to shake our bootylicious booties at gay bars, we can't all travel the world, not all of us enjoy sexual promiscuity (I'm not talking about myself here obviously) and we definitely can't all have completely hairless bodies at all times of the year. It seems not only pointless but also impossible to live that stereotypical lifestyle but I can't help but find my life empty without a touch of pink.

I exert a great amount of conscious effort to be as gay as possible. I gave a lap dance to a couple of my male heterosexual friends one night and it wasn't because I found it funny, or I just felt like it. I did it because I wanted to feel gay. I wanted to live My Big Fabulous Gay Life if only just for that one night. I know full well that this desire may just be the result of the way we're depicted in the media but I can't help but want to be as gay as Justin Beiber's hair (I don't even know what that means other than I can't think straight). I know I did not choose to be gay at birth but I feel as though I'm choosing to be super gay today.

Gay at birth, fabulous by choice.

Mummy.

I've seen my mother change from an artist to the typical Pakistani aunty right before my very eyes. My mother was a poet, a painter, a writer and an intellectual but nowadays she's too busy complaining about the 'beghairat masi' (disrespectful maid) to do any of those things. She was an avid reader of the English classics and Urdu poetry. Her shelf is full of Tolstoy and Jane Austen and she knows all of Faiz Ahmed Faiz's works by heart. But the shelves remain closed and she rarely recounts any poems because she's too busy having the kitchen made. She doesn't cook anymore, the 'beghairat masi' does, but feels the need to have a spotless kitchen, equipped with all the modern appliances that the 'beghairat masi' does not know how to use so that she has another reason to call her: 'beghairat.'

My mother and I used to share a special bond. It was as though we were the two ugly ducklings in a nest full of perfect swans. We never conformed, we just couldn't but lately it feels like she has. You should see how she speaks with all of her other aunty friends, planning 'rishtas,' making bets on how long Shabana's daughter's wedding will last and going 'HAAWW' whenever she hears mention of all the supposed indecent behavior 'aaj kal ki larkiyan's' (girls these days) display.

My mother isn't the woman she once was. Now she's just another pretentious desi aunty. I want her to look herself in the mirror and see the person she has become. The person she used to be would never approve. I love my mother no matter what but I can't help but hope that she returns too her non-pretentious self. I want her to be like me, I want her to remain an ugly duckling.

... Nothing

Not that I've been studying much. But these exams really need to end. I'm literally just waiting. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5... Yes, I'm counting the seconds even though I know I won't have anything to do once my exams end but that's the thing... I don't want to have anything to do. And I may not be doing anything but I want to not do anything and know that I will not have to do anything for a while.

I don't want to 'have' something to do. I want to do what I 'want' to do. And that's really stupid because I really don't know what I 'want' to do. So I'll do nothing.

Books will be published about me and people won't even know that the book they just bought is the biography Halal Meat. They think that they just bought an empty notebook with empty pieces of paper but what is my life but an empty piece of paper? I can't write on myself and I won't let anyone else write on myself so I'll just continue to be: Nothing.

Destiny?

The description of your path was carved in stone the day you were born. You will be surprised to know how elaborate and accurate this description actually is. Some call it 'destiny' or 'the will of God,' but God didn't carve this description. The people around you did. Your name, your clothes and your cradle had all been picked out long before you were snatched out from your mother's womb.

Soon after, you were brainwashed with teachings of 'propriety' and 'mannerism'. You still hold a knife in your right hand and a fork in your left. Your parents chose for you a school and you were taught 'responsibility' and you still fulfill all of your supposed 'responsibilities.' You do your homework, you do your chores and you try your very best to 'make your parents proud' and what makes your parents proud was written in the description that they and the rest of society carved for you at birth.

I'm nineteen, but I don't feel as though I've really made many choices. I fight for what I believe is right but I rarely win my battles. No matter how many tears I shed, no matter how much I argue and no matter how much I rebel, I cannot change what has been carved on the stone. I loose my battles because I am an empty piece paper and, despite the rules of  rock-paper-scissors, a thin sheet of paper stands no chance against a hard stone.

I realize now that what I want isn't going to change what I get, but that doesn't stop me from fighting. I refuse to allow the carvings define my life knowing full well that in the end, they probably will.