Claustrophobic

12:00 am and I'm wide, wide awake again. Last week's fever seems to have messed up my sleep pattern quite badly...I just hate getting up in the middle of the night, feeling absolutely refreshed and completely lost - not knowing what to do.  National Geographic and the History Channel have nothing good at this hour plus I'm also tired (and quite upset with myself!) of rummaging through Zoran's snack cupboard like a sneaky 4 year old!Just this morning he was eying me with suspicion when he asked me for some fudge cookies and I...well... coughed and said we'd run out of them. :/

Which reminds me, I finally got Zoran a pair of sun glasses (since he kept insisting that London had become too sunny for his taste and there was a "maslum" (problem) with his eyes and he just couldnt see in the sun!One morning as I walked him to school he, quite deliberately of course, bumped right into a lamp post and then shrugging his shoulders, with an air of complete nonchalance, said "See, its the sun!") Needless to say his joy knew no end. He kept wearing them the entire day; outside the house, inside the house, inside the bathroom, while watching tv, while having dinner and even while reading his bed time book until I threatened to take them away and give them to Wee Willy Winkee when he stopped by! To which he protested in extreme horror "Oh but Mama I look so handsome when I wear them! Im sure they wont suit Wee that well!" 

I also bumped into an old, old school friend on face book chat today. I dont know if friend is the best word to use here, she was more of an acquaintance. You know the sort of people you knew vaguely a long, long time ago but they're the first ones to add you on Face Book just because they simply love to know whats up with other peoples lives. Who went where for a holiday, how fat or skinny they looked in their pictures, what they got for their anniversary present, what school their child was going to. I'm quite brutal with such people when it comes to FB. As a cousin always says "I could never block and delete with such speed Baba...have you no heart!":P

So this snooty female started off with the regular haal chaal poochna. And then she goes on and on and on (please add another 'and on!!") about the lovely Lawn exhibitions in Karachi these days and how much I was missing out on by not being there. Uff this Lawn mania boils my blood to the extreme! I fail to understand women going insane over wretched pieces of cloth being sold at exorbitant sums of money just so they could win the goddamn race! I was the first one to wear laa dee daa's prints! Bravo! Three cheers for you! Nishan -e- Haider coming right up! And boy these exhibitions ARE battle fields of sorts! I'm guilty of having gone to just one such exhibition a couple of years ago and the madness was just too much for my liking. It really felt as though Id stepped right into a whirlpool - I have shoved around, pushed, elbowed by nasty old aunties and I also witnessed a cat fight between two extremely hoity toity women over a single piece of cloth. No they didnt care about their blow dried hair or their perfectly manicured nails - they were at it like animals! By the time I found my way out (empty handed ofcourse!) I had a splitting head ache and a nasty, nasty mood!

Anyway back to my ex-face book acquaintance. She proudly announced that she'd bought joras from every single exhibition she'd gone too and Sana Safinaz was just too good to be true. She spent 20000 on 4 suits without even realizing. Swiftly she also told me how her husband had got her Mediterranean pearls for her birthday. turning the tide towards me, she questioned how I was doing in London and what a lucky &^%$£ I was to be here. How she dreamt of moving out of that darn place too. The mehngaey was just killing her. Her servants kept asking her for a raise and she was thinking of firing one of her two cooks. Such buray halaat.

I seriously, extremely seriously wanted to some how get into my laptop, come out the other end and give her a real, tight slap!

What have we become? Who are we trying to impress? Why have we built this facade around ourselves where all that matters is how much money you have and how well you spend it - on your OWN self! No body talks about the war in the Frontier or the fire that rages in Karachi. Just today I was reading that in countless districts in the Punjab children have not been given their polio vaccines these last 4 years. Does any one realize whats at stake here?Does anyone even care? Baluchistan with the richest mineral and natural resources in the country is still the most impoverished area in Pakistan when it comes to literacy, health and infra structure. And all most of the people around me are concerned with is the dreadful Lawn joras. 

If only we'd realize that even in the midst of life we are in death.

Christina Rosetti says it beautifully:

"When I am dead my dearest,

Sing no sad song for me.

Plant thou no roses at my head,

Nor shady cyprus tree.

Let the green grass above me

with showers and dew drops wet.

And if thou wilt, remember,

And if thou wilt, forget."