Monstrous Act Three – The library period continues – Pornography begins with a Finger

29^th March, 2012 (Most pathetic memory ever!)

Grade five, Green- B*****h**** School System, Walton Campus

{Substitution in grade five, section green}

Continued...

A had been gone from the class pretty long now. I was sure he had gone to his mother but he came back with a smug look on his face and a book in his hand.

A: Look miss, I got The Ghost of Canterville to read.

Me: {Although I wanted to punch him in the face, I tapped his cheek} You’re such a good boy. {Surprisingly enough he started reading it at once and remained fully absorbed in the book no matter what H and his minions did around him.}

Since I was busy with A, H availed the opportunity and created a mayhem in the class. There were rubber bands flying all across the classroom but the rules of the prodigious school dictated that I tolerate and try to calm them down “verbally.” I applied the verbal method and being a blessed loud-mouth I managed to calm some of them down until something stung me on the back of my hand. Now I lost it and went straight to H and grabbed him by his shoulders. I brought him to his chair and started shuffling in all his pockets to find four to five rubber bands. There was not a single voice in the class; I knew I was not supposed to touch any of them. They did not know that of course but all of them knew something –out-of-the-place had happened. In a minute I had collected all rubber bands from H and his minions and had them comfortably wrapped around my wrist. Whenever one of them spoke I broke one rubber band. This was another good method of quieting them down.

YET ANOTHER PROUD MOMENT OF BEING A BITCHY TEACHER!

The class was finally quiet. H had his finger on his lips. A was reading his ghost book. Some children were quietly playing games. Others were drawing or writing. A called me towards him to ask something. He had difficult word “stealthily” and wanted to know the meaning and pronunciation. It took me hardly a minute to have a tiny conversation with him about the word when a girl from H’s cluster cried, “Teacher H is showing me the finger.”

Me: THE finger? {I was shocked out of my wits to know they knew about THE finger in grade five.}

Me: Which finger?!? {I didn’t want them to have the impression that I knew what showing THE finger meant and that it was a bad lewd thing.}

Girl: The middle finger, miss. You know it is bad miss.

Me: It doesn’t matter baita, It’s just a finger. {I cajoled her, although I knew how lame it sounded and glared at H to stop doing what he was doing. H gave me a malicious look knowing I wasn’t in the position of stopping him from showing fingers}

H: Miss what? I was just keeping a finger on my mouth like you told. {He actually puckered. H now put his middle finger on his lips and grinned out of the corner of his mouth. He turned towards the girl in front of him while he kept looking me in the eye. I was shocked at how that fifth grader was daring me to stop him. I had had enough so I went to him and pulled his hand off his mouth.

Me: Stop it H, STOP DOING WHAT YOU’RE DOING!!

H: Ma’am I was just saying, God is one. Allah aik hai. I can say that with any finger. Is that wrong?

What could I say to that?

To be continued...

Monstrous Act Two– The library period continues – Pre-pornography dilemma

29^th March, 2012 (Most pathetic memory ever!)

Grade five, Green- B*****h**** School System, Walton Campus

{Substitution in grade five, section green}

Continued from previous post:

{I turned towards rest of the class now}

Enter – H (A brawny boy who had his pockets filled with elastic rubber bands and was determined to hit every girl at every single spot which his sorry self was not supposed to be concerned with}.

Me: Baita! Please hand over the rubber bands to me. What’s your name?

H: H miss. Sorry miss. Please don’t call my parents miss. Sorry. Miss sorry. 

Me: Okay.

H: Bands miss?

Me: Here you go. Don’t use them again. Okay?

H: Sure miss. Sorry again. Thank you.

H didn’t use the bands again. He distributed them to his friends sitting in all four corners of the classroom. I still have no idea how he did that because he never left his seat once. Now there were elastic rubber bands flying across the whole class and little angry screams followed by muffled laughter arose every second.

In the class students benches were arranged in clusters of five or six. H’s cluster had only him and two girls so I took the fourth empty seat. He was the root of all disturbances in the class and if I engaged him others would find something else to do. This trick actually worked. He talked with me; his minions waited for him to resume the rubber-band war but on getting no response they busied themselves in tick-tack-toe and page-cricket.

Finally a moment to be proud of! Yay! <3 p="">

To be continued...

Nayee tahzeeb k ganday anday

Tuesday, 28^th March, 2012

Grade Six Red, B*****h**** School System, Walton Campus

Miss you’re from which college.

Me: GC University

Oh really? Wow. When I grow up I want to go there for my F.Sc. you know

Me: Oh please. People like you don’t go to Government College baita.

[Since the start of the class, they had been accusing me of using the “F word” and had not listened to a word of magnetic field I tried to teach them. A substitute teacher is not worthy of respect after all.]

Ha ha miss. My nana’s a brigadier. I’ll bribe my way in. What do you think?

Me: Dream on kiddo. Bribery doesn’t work at Government College.

Soch hai miss aap ki. This is Pakistan; everything works here. I know.

Me: Okie-dokie. Good for you.

If I were allowed to talk in Urdu, I would have said:

Patli pithi walay ullu k pathay, lanat hai tumharay baap per, tumhari maa per, tumharay nana per aur tumharay school per, aur Allah himat de humain is qaum ki anay waali nasal ko bardassht kernay ki!!

Mojee in Green

Mojee was rejected in Red, in Green and will be rejected in yellow too. He has fat cheeks, frizzy hair and red eyes. He can't let go of Red.

Metamorphosis of the elf

Close these eyes,

Shatter these dreams,

Scratch this skin,

Hide this smile,

Hurt these senses;

Until her shadow cries.

_______________

I may be a wicked elf,

But I have my dreams.

Kill me.

Don't wring my heart.

Crush my body to its smallest piece.

Don't let my passions die.

Let me hold these colors once;

Let me see the sky.

Let me love my dreams for a moment;

Before you take my hands away.

_______________

My fingers may be stubby,

My feet may be small.

I stand upright,

I do not crawl.

_______________

My eyes refuse to accept passive tears by Agnes-Cecile

Messiah paradox

Before tonight, the only doctors and medicine students I knew were my Phopos, Phopas and cousins and of course my dentist...[love her!!]. There is a huge number of the messiah brotherhood in my taber i.e., le famille, but I had NEVER in my life seen ass-moron-ish MBBS students as I did today on blogger. :D Funny people. I wish I could post their blog addresses here but that would be rude. There have been riots, processions, unattended patients and insensitivity to be seen on the part of doctors in Punjab. Very recently, in Punjab Institute of Cardiology, where irrespective of the people dying of cardiac diseases, the doctors couldn't hold their smelly farts and had to blow them out on the lives of people by not showing up on duties. Many similar events were seen a few days/months ago. How on Earth are these people analysed to be capable of helping the society. It's fun to see them coolly indifferent to their surroundings, not giving a 'fuck': as is mostly quoted to social conventions, being the paparazzi type and hippies during their student life, but I seriously wonder once they graduate, would they be as insensitive as they appear to be through their writings or is it just a way of venting out their academic tension.

I do pray it's the latter situation.

One of them definitely gave me a point to think and if I had not already graduated, Z and I would have spent hours dissecting her minds inside out. "Losing virginity without physical contact so you'll have only your heart to give to the loved one." Point taken as a good one but i'm still working on the technicalities of it. :P This was the only thing, which although being lewd, sounded 'sensible' among all the non-sense I read on the blogs of medicine students tonight.

Really nice poetry I came across on blogger.

http://21stcenturyverse.blogspot.com/2012/02/make-do-or-mend-by-fel-lennie.html

Posted by Maureen in twenty first century verse.

Mayfair

The butterfly may not be so sure,

She's nascent, blue and shyly pure,

I hang on her limp wings;

She carries me away.

They hang on to me

And pull her down.

Pull me down.

Let he go, they tell me.

Slowly, creepily they reach my knee

Up my shoulders and

And on my cheek.

I let go of her,

She let go of me.

I Killed My Mother

It had been 22 years of what D.H. Lawrence narrated in the ‘Rocking Horse Winner.’ I sometimes felt as if I had gained the third eye during that time. The exact words, movements, expressions, timings, moods, etc. of the members of the household were un-explainably predictable. Life was a consistent déjà vu.

When the weather is too calm, a bit too calm, you can hear its quietness maliciously gnawing and snaring at you. It tells you a storm is on its way. Relationships are quite the same. Too much constancy can lead to the arrival of eccentricities that all of us face regarding the beloved. After all, we know them too much. Pushing the truth away does not change anything. A bit of loathing in love does not harm it; it’s merely a fulfilling completion. Shreds of hatred lament the time when love would be gone altogether, and loneliness will bury its claws deep inside of you.

On a day like that, when things were unreasonably stagnant, I killed my mother.

There was nothing very special happening that day, just my father’s 60th birthday, my sister’s dinner with her colleagues and my exam preparation. Echoes crying for money reached my ears several times a minute. I didn’t care to see which of them came from the walls of the room and which from the flesh filling its corners. Somebody slid the cupboard. The television blared with the loudest sound possible, possibly a desperate attempt to tune out other sounds raging through the atmosphere. It was a war.

New clothes became the cause of dispute. My mother was bent on delaying sewing clothes for my sister. She needed some rest and said she’ll do them later. That pissed K off. K was the feeding hand of the family. Nobody held her off like that. A few minutes earlier she had added to my information that I had done a very mean piece in telling mother that the dinner had been delayed, which I had done most innocently, otherwise her clothes would have been sewn by then.

My mother walked around the house. Deaf. She was immune to the angry grumbling; opening, closing, smashing of the fridge; banging doors; tsk tsk-ing at the walls, doing nothing, something, everything, things. She did ‘doing’ until her veins gave way and sweat dripped off of her forehead. It was because of her children, us, and she lay down. It was time to knit another elegy in memory of the dead.

It was hard to study in those circumstances but I tuned out the quietness. It could tear me up otherwise. I safely collected all of it within me, had been doing that for years. “I need a glass of water.” There was a puff of smoke and stumbling smatters of ‘concentration.’ There are two people outside with you. Can I study in peace so I can bring sacks of green somethings for you as required?

“Water?”

I got up. It wasn’t abnormal. I had to. Religion implored me to do the same. I filled a glass of water from the tap and took it to the TV lounge where TV blared. K was lying on the sofa. Her eyes were not visible behind the sheen of her spectacles, but the lines on her forehead were obvious. Her mouth was tightly pursed, giving her ovoid face a funny look. She had the TV remote placed on her chin, other end of it resting on her chest. One leg sluggishly rested on the back of the sofa while the other was curled dreamily beneath a cushion. Y was enjoying social networking on the laptop.

“Did I have to come from the room, leave what I was doing, because you were busy doing what exactly?” None heard…Anger. Breathe, breathe, breathe. It’s a happy birthday; he’ll be home soon. Breathe.

I was her daughter. Not using the tongue was hard for me. “You could have told her to bring it. She’s not lazy when she needs clothes.”

The glass came flying towards me and landed near my feet. It shattered into a thousand pieces.

What was the matter if one of us used their tongue for a change? We could ask questions as well, say no, mock, moan. We had the brains to get mean too. She was a mother. We will be mothers someday. All of us are daughters, including her.

It was me who chose the largest shard of glass. A face came near. Panicked eyes screamed. Hands pushed me away as I stabbed her mouth, her teeth, and her tongue. I wanted her to bleed everything out, if there was anything left to say, once and for all. I wanted nothing to be left behind.

The world had gone quiet. Peacefully quiet. For the first time quietness didn’t plummet down into its own depths, it hung there, surrealistically serene and beautiful.

A moment had passed while I stood there with the glass in my hand. She took it herself.

It came out of nowhere, “You could have told her to bring it.” I stopped myself quickly and turned around to leave, as quickly as possible.

There was a loud crash. I turned around in a fierce attempt to retaliate only to find her staring at her feet. Expressionless. Shattered glass lay in my feet. Surprisingly a sigh of relief left my lips.

Predictability is good. Prescience can save life because accidents are first-time occurrences. Self-control comes from experience, whether in real or in intuition, it doesn’t matter.

9

[ACT ONE]

about 5:30 PM. RZ and I are sitting on the dirtiest stairs ever. B (IT man of my magazine) shows up.

Me: hey B!

B: Mje acha ni laga app ne text pe mj se kal rudely baat ki

Me: you guys annoy me!

B: App ko pata hai mai yahan ka (University ka) employer b hon ku k...

Me: APP ko pata hai mai app ki editor hoon?

B: THE smile. App ko pata hai mje yahan kamra b mila hai?

Me: App ko b pata ho ga library k sath wala kamra mje b mila howa hai.

B: app ko....

Me: aur app ko ye b pata ho ga k I can fire you from the magazine?

[ACT TWO]

Biotech class room for B.Sc Hons Final year; Government College University Lahore. K, F, Z, R and I sit in the first row. A comes to present his ass-ignment.

A walks up to the dais all pretty and shiny in his orange sweater. tilts his head very slightly, gapes a little while he takes hints from the piece of paper he has brought along. looks at the class for a second, turns around and takes a long unnecessary stride to write on the white board almost abruptly. The taapic of my presentation is...

Z says something to K. A turns around

Kia masla kia hai app ka? Chup kero werna class se baher chalay jao.

Z: Murmers. Kia? hum ne..kia? howa..? what?

R: Pehlay appnay doston ko chup kerwao!

A: mazaq banaya wa hai app ne. Shakes his hands to make his point clear. takes a step towards us. I am pretty sure from behind his thick rimmed glasses he isn't even looking at us, but seeing how the class reacts. gapes again after saying a sentence and makes a please-appreciate-me slash annoyed face. presentation de raha hon mai. bolay ja rehay hain app log. He shouts.

The 'teacher' finally intervenes.

S: Oye bas kero. itnay baray ho gaye ho phir b aisay lartay ho. khwateen se aisay...bla bla bla.

A ends his presentation and now makes for his seat. but the story doesn't end for him..(if only he could take off his shirt, pull one of us out of her chair, pin her to the ground and dance on her for the rest of his Godforsaken life..THAT could have given him the glory!!) He stops when he is going back and says to R (or may be the whole woman community) who keeps writing in her register (GO GIRL!) without looking at him while he does his 'bhonki'

A: Ainda meray doston ko kuch kaha na tau mj se bura koi ni ho ga. i'll slap you!

[ACT TWO B]

Z is talking on text with M, our class fellow and A ka dost.

Z: ?

M: han ye aisa hi hai.

[ACT THREE]

It is about 6:30PM. Z, Y and I are going to the bus stop. a man is coming from the opposite direction. he crosses us.

THUMP!

Me: kia hai Y (who is walking behind me)..I laugh. ku maara hai itnay zor ka mujhay.

Y: mai ne kab mara hai. She makes a sad face

Me: very funny. itnay zor ka maara hai.

Y and I both laugh.

Y: seriously i didn't.

Me: tum ne hi maara hai..pata hai mu..u..j...!! Uff!..did that man...? Haww... dude!! ITNAY ZOR KA MAARA HAI! and on my BUTT!?

we walk for some time silently. disgruntled.

Me: tum ne WAQIYAY mai ni maara Y?

Y: Laughs. oH bhai mai ni maarya tenoo

"My butt is aching," I whisper.

GO MEN! LOVE Y'ALL!

2

A: This is so..glug glug...uh..so..glug

Me: Well..do..

A: Glug..did you make..glug glug..it?

Me: ...please..

A: Glug glug glug

Me: ..not me..

A: Ah!..glug glug glug glug..more?

Me: Sure.

A: GLUG GLUG GLUG

There was lots of white foam with streaks of red in it, coming out of his mouth as he slowly became unconscious..probably for good.

A: (to all) I always wanted him to listen to me more.

The mop is coming..mop mop mop.

My "current" favorite song says

I should have left my phone at home
cause this is a disaster
calling like a collector
sorry i cannot answer

It's not only the telephone. Life is a big fat telephone and the people around you are the ringing tantrums. rr-rr-ing...rr-rr-in-g. They wont stop no matter how hard you try to shut them up. Switch off your phone, and they'll leave a message.

My life has always been like this. All thanks goes to my parents who have been staunch members of the genre of people that prefer to shed their own blood instead of sucking on somebody-they-should-not-be-concerned-with's blood. Fortunately i have the guts to talk my guts out against this life style but i am absolutely gut-less when it comes to following my own cynical advice. All i know is that they've been destroyed because of the people around them leaving us to suffer the consequences.

In the one and twenty completely hopeless years of my life i have been the weirdest person i have ever met because i have never been able to understand myself. There have been times when i was so sick of my own self that i would cover up all the mirrors in my room and bathroom just to avoid looking at my own face. But i would very composedly get out of bed, wash my flat face, go to the college and put up a perfect straight face, not meeting anyone all day and say, "oh yeah I've had a rough day..chemistry you know."
or the alternative;
"had to leave early dad was calling."

They always work.

But till now i have not been able to devise a way to completely pull myself out of the pudding of people around me. Alone I'd be sticky mass, and sooner or later someone will clean me up with a mop off the kitchen table.
So what happens?

I keep making future plans and i know some of them are in my hands and i can steer them the way i want to but what about the one's that make God laugh?! I can hear him laugh right now too, because he knows what I'm thinking.

The point is

Not that i don't like you, I'm just at a party
And I am sick and tired of my phone rr-ringing

It's my party and i want to be the sole dancer in it, the sole DJ, the sole waiter, the sole guard, the sole host and the sole guest.

R-e-p-e-n-t

Somebody please transport me to Saturn because things that used to make me happy aren't so shiny anymore. Give me a magic wand so i can bring my people back. These Shadows that drive my life were once really there. I never noticed them when they were flesh and blood, but this light is taking away my cover and now i know how much i need them to hold my hand and lead me through this land crawling with aliens, to a place that sheltered me when i was a lump of flesh, and shall shelter me when i need it no more.

It's An Understatement

He was dying and we knew he wasn't going to die painlessly. We could see it in his eyes. Once so bright, now they were dark with the curtains of plea shadowing them. I got up and left. Maybe I didn’t want to see him die or maybe I was tired of looking after him. Whatever the case was, as soon as I lay on my bed, I went to sleep.

My father came to me in the middle of the night, probably expecting to find me crying. He shook me; a bit annoyed.

“What are we supposed to do now?” He said in a harshly neutral tone.

I didn’t have anything to say in return so I pulled the sheets over my head and told him to switch off the night bulb when he left. He didn’t leave. I could feel him standing there. Although he wasn’t moving, I knew he was restless.

The next day I got up because of the usual disturbance from underneath my pillow. I hit the snooze button on my cell phone that I alternatively used as an alarm clock too. The best I could do now was to stare at the ceiling fan.

Alarm again.

Snooze again.

Now the wall.

Alarm again.

Snooze again.

The fan again.

After a few spins of the half-dead fan with a nearly burnt capacitor, it was time to hit the snooze button again but it never “alarmed” me. It was sick of me too. There was no more reason to remain lying on the bed, so I sat. My mind was unable to help my body in conceiving any other position. My back itched. I scratched it. Then I scratched my elbow too. I wanted my mum to come wake me up but she never came. Only fifteen minutes were left for me to get ready for school and...get out of my room.

Right from the bed I suddenly noticed that my sister had left my dressing room mirror unclean. I got up to clean it. It couldn’t get any dirtier. Dirt is bad. I cleaned it until my arms ached and it shone.

Four minutes left.

My cell phone vibrated from somewhere near my pillow. But that was an absurd place for a cell phone to be so I looked at more probable places first; the book rack, inside the cupboard, under the bed. It stopped vibrating, so I stopped looking.

Finally my mum knocked at the door. I was still in my Pajamas. Get ready was all she said.

Is that all? Nothing else? I went to the bathroom and looked into the mirror. My face was as skinny and as bony as before, but my teeth looked yellow, really yellow; so yellow that even I was disgusted. I moved my tooth brush to and fro, up and down, round and round, until my fingers ached and small bits of red started to appear in the white foam on my tooth brush. The part of me in the mirror definitely had a stained face. The mirror needed cleaning too.

There was a knock on my door again. I put my clothes on and grabbed my backpack. I opened the door, and surprisingly it seemed loose. I checked if it really was loose, or I was imagining things. It wasn’t. A deep breath came out of my lips. I adjusted and readjusted my backpack on my shoulder. My sandwich was ready for me as usual. I had to eat it as fast as I could. I realized I was getting late. Very late.

Nobody said anything. I half-wanted them to say something and half-needed them to remain silent. In less than a minute my sandwich was gone and hot tea gulped down, leaving a burnt esophagus behind. The only thing left to do was to put my dishes in the wash basin and then I could leave. I pushed open the kitchen door and hurried inside. My foot hit a small bottle I had never seen before. Mum never left medicines lying around; not on the floor at least. I picked it up.

I never had that feeling before. The transitions that it carried were undecipherable. It was so strong. I felt nauseous. There were butterflies deep inside my gut. A sigh of relief came out of my lips. I am sure it was a sigh of relief. But then deep anger took over. I had never been so angry. I still can’t comprehend that feeling I had on seeing the tiny skull printed on the little brown bottle. It made me want to tear the whole world apart. Every bit of it crushed right between my palms. I was angry at myself for not being able to do anything. I was mad at myself for being such a coward to let it happen. I wanted it to end for him. I should have wanted it to end for me too. If it were possible I would have hugged his cold body and never let go, for he was mine. He had been mine all along. And I knew both of us wouldn’t regret it ever. His pain was gone but he was gone too.

Everyone always told me that I cared about my “cats” and “dogs” more than I cared about my “human amigos”. But they never understood and they never will.

Black

It was red when i saw it first, and warm. I slept and thought i would be safe in your arms. I was. I am. No one will harm me, i know, but you. It was the pretty smile that made me smile too. We laughed and life lingered on, as i clung to my hollow beliefs. Then there came that moment when i touched your hand and it was cold. I smiled at the cruel joke and smacked your head to make you stop. The bright colors didn’t seem so bright all at once. Deep inside i became frightened. God knows of what; being alone or being without you.

***********************

Sharp sounds and lights frightened me, and the only person who knew this was her. Though i tried my best to keep it a secret. There was so much to do, so much to save and so much to think about. I didn’t have the heart to hide it all in myself, so i spilled my thoughts to her. After that i forgot she existed. And she forgot i existed.

************************

It was not so red, nor so warm any more. But i still felt safe drowned in it.

**************************

Big words and big letters. Big people and my love for them. Lights were not so scary after all, but certain sounds still made me go wild. Noise didn’t bother me. In fact i loved the way it hid the little disturbing echoes, so familiar but still so harsh. The red-ness had faded altogether, and all that remained was a hard mass of cells. It wasn’t warm. It was hot. So hot it made me cold. I had read about it, talked about it, bragged about understanding how it felt. But for the first time i knew how it felt like, to see oneself. The stones placed right on spot, and so charming. Yes! They had charmed the charming. Every curve was so subtle and i knew it before, when i hadn’t even seen it in the fairytale mirror.

***************************

Everything was perfect. Everything is perfect. Whatever Red-ness flowed inside me once made me feel things i couldn’t understand. I never wanted to know what the shadows said. But now i analyze the statistics. Black-ness has been a good teacher, and i am a thankful student.

**************************

The Empty Pipe Of Filth

Flesh grew under a thin sheet of skin, bubbling with the passion to be, and to conquer. I failed. I Got up.

************

Mock me. Despise me.

Today is your good day. One day it will be mine. I am a beast of mockery now; you treat me like a mule. I'll use my nails to carve your face, and my blood to paint it. My breath will dry every wet part of it to make you feel human. I may be too vulnerable to say all that I said and you may smirk as much you like, but when I spend my nights all blue, and you with your flashy tart, I learn how to endure and smile, while you learn to learn. Though I may be an uncivilized animal but I know what I can become. I stand under the sun and feel the scars that it traces on my back. I see the burns on my beloved's face. I see his pretty face. You want me to come join your league, so I can be a star. But all I know is the sapling in me, which was caressed by some weary hands. They nurtured me and taught me well. If I become a wolf; too wild, they'll kiss me and be mine. You'll fear me and pull a spear through my heart.

******************

What I have been is lovingly made, what you've been is a hollow mass, wound on itself. You're an empty pipe of filth. You rush water through yourself to remove the dirt, but what you do not know is that, it isn't under the skin you see but under the skin you hide, and can’t even see yourself.

**********************