back to basics

For some reason I couldn't log into my account for a while.

Anyway, I'm back in Delaware after a New York winter that included an internship at the United Nations, exploration of the Upper East Side, and a new year spent in a cab stuck in traffic on the way Times Square where I collected confetti and cardboard hats as souvenirs around 1 am. I am now an expert j-walker, a connoisseur of thin crusted pizza, and a regular on the down 6 express train. I went out, stayed in, and hung out with that guy living down the hall from me at Marina Auntie's who, rumor has it, was on parole after spending two years in jail for financial fraud.

But I'm back in the Mid-West, and I still don't have a job. Updates soon.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times

I haven’t updated in a while, dear readers, because there has been little of note, or at least, little appropriate, to muse about.

I’ve embarked on and am well into my search for that one opening in the US job market that will allow me, a college senior of foreign citizenship and competitive credentials, to squeeze through and enter the capitalistic jungle that is the professional world. Armed with an expected Ohio Wesleyan degree, work experience, and charm, I’ve been hacking my way through job websites and inside contacts, brushing aside rejection emails, and pouncing on anyone that seems even vaguely interested. It’s an exercise in self-discovery, an epic journey that teaches your flattery, deception, and self-glorification. By the end of it you convince yourself of your worth, your potential to contribute to society, only to wake up one Thursday at eight, the drawn curtains further dulling the gray sky, logging on to your Gmail, and reading the universally dreaded opening sentence: “We regret to inform you…”

Oh well, I’ll get the next one. But really, that’s all that’s been on my mind. Classes trudge at their usual mid-semester pace while anticipation of Thanksgiving break prods us along. I work, occasionally, and, as a senior, dutifully attend functions of my former organizations: Horizons, Sangam.

Around me, freshman frolic with first-year college festivities, while my friends and I, veterans of the game, celebrate and reminisce incoherently of the good times, of times to come. In the twilight of our tenure, we enjoy the security of the dorm roof over our heads, the food points on our card, the flexible attendance policies of our morning classes.

Eventually, when murmurs from home of successful peers and rising expectations filter through the phone, one starts to get a little anxious, the night's buzz wears off.

I caution you, dear reader, it’s starting to get real.

Ciao.

Monday, 10.04pm

Pakistan beat Sri Lanka, thoroughly.

However, Mathangi "Maya" Arulpragasam a.k.a. M.I.A., a Sri Lankan, produces catchy fusion music that I listen to.

I slept through all my classes today.

I did nothing productive over the weekend except tweak my resume a little and do laundry. But I don't really consider laundry a productive activity. It's a necessity, like peeing.

Oh I also worked, unenthusiastically, for catering. I'm getting too old for this.

My boss from CNN has not yet sent me my recommendation letter.

I’m currently procrastinating.

My class, Jewish History and Literature, is interesting, contingent, however, on the multitudinous reading involved. Again, I’m procrastinating.

Walk of Life by the Dire Straits is playing on my iTunes. It’s getting me pumped, in a very 80’s sort of way.

I realized today that I have one of the better views on campus: Bashford 1st floor facing Thomson, a lovely little part of campus (often augmented by the sun-bathing Bashford girls). I ruminated, however, that the Bashford 3rd floor room at the beginning of the hallway facing not only Thomson, but also Welch Lawn and the City Hall spire, must have the best dorm room view on campus. There’s a big tree in the way though. Actually, Ham-Will 3rd floor rooms facing downtown have a pretty great view too.

I want a great view in the real world.

Thomson store has been stocking Fuze Low Carb fruit drinks, which are in high demand and, I will confess, good. However, I wish they had a thicker consistency, more like the Orange Mango Nantucket Nectar you get at Chipotle.

I haven’t been able to watch Bourne Ultimatum yet, but I really want to. And it’s really starting to get to me. The problem is that the headlights on Matt’s car are broken resulting in the bizarre dynamic in which if I borrow it, I must return before sundown lest I tempt Delaware’s ever-vigilant traffic police. I missed the Bourne Ultimatum at the Strand, where I could have walked.

I’m going to go get a bacon-three-cheese from Welch.

I'm back with an important lesson: the grill at Welch closes at 9.30pm. I ordered a sub though, which will be delivered in about 20 minutes to my room. Good stuff.

“I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself.”

Dorm life at Ohio Wesleyan is a comprise. In return for a clean bathroom, one forgoes air-conditioning; independent living is stymied by the roommate; a kitchen in the basement is conceded, sleeping with a girl is discouraged.

Bashford Hall in particular is, architecturally, not as brazenly uninviting as Smith but humbly unremarkable in its own right. In fact, only Stuyvesant with its bell spire and red-bricked courtyard can boast any aesthetic ambition. Given the antique quaintness (Elliot Hall) and medieval grandeur (University hall) of the academic buildings, the dorms seem to be transient structures, serving as ad-hoc accommodations predestined for demolition.

However, dear readers, the more perceptive of you (i.e. of course, all of you) will accuse me of unjustified petulance, of even bad-temper. The dorms are of necessity an exercise in conciliation: their dynamics were crafted to lubricate the transition into the real world of taking out the trash and washing dishes that envelope us all the in slings and arrows of apartment dwelling. Their physical demeanor is superfluous to their function: Harvard and Georgetown dormitories look like the diarhetic excrements of the institutions' academic edifices.

Yet taken as a whole, moving back into the dorms after two years in a fraternity has been soothing, relaxing. I once again have food points, and, therefore, access to a resurrected OWU dinning experience; toilet paper is ever present, and the hallways are devoid of the weekend’s extravagances. Life, the process of living, is a non-entity.

So what does one conclude, dearest of readers, about the dorms? If you walk into your room and there is a desk, bed, and, most importantly, toilet paper, rejoice. 'Roti, Kapra, Makaan' was Bhutto’s slogan, ‘Food, cloth, and a place to live.”

I just wish I could smoke in here.

Transit

The prodigal son returns to central Ohio. Dear readers, Delaware, this time of year, is muggy and enervating. Luckily, however, classes haven’t evolved their usual predatory fangs just yet.

Just a quick update: I left Karachi with monsoon rains ravaging the city, spent a few liberating days in a recovered Islamabad, then five dark hours in load-shedded Lahore. I then took off at four in the morning for JFK, where, when I arrived three hours late and sleepl deprived, I scraped by Homeland Security and customs in a measly six hours. Next, an hour and a half subway ride with three large bags to Manhattan’s Upper East Side. A good night’s sleep later, I was in a Chinatown bus to Boston, from where I trekked up to Cambridge, home to Harvard and, currently, my brother and his wife. They’ve just produced a son, a gem of a boy named Babar after the intellectual Mughal conqueror of a fragmented India, with whom I developed a healthy uncle/nephew rapport. The next night I was back in New York after three hour delayed bus, just in time to catch my onward flight. On an average day in average weather with an average of 10 pounds of overweight baggage, I arrived, a little bewildered, in Columbus.

As you can imagine, dear readers, I’m a little physically and intellectually drained at the moment. However, weekly updates will be up and running very soon and OWU will be viewed through the very lethargic eyes of a senior. Happy reading.

Karachi

I went today to the Arabian sea, where it all began. Out of its red, raucous rage rises, roaring reckless, Karachi, home. Though I was born in New York, a city of similar temperament, Karachi is where I am from.

While Raf and Nadia, slippers in hand, pant legs rolled, sauntered along the sea, I stood on the sand in my suit and saw the red sun submerge into the warm, wistful water. Couples, hand in hand, sand squeezing between their toes, sighed, while Makrani
mares raced, manes flapping in the sea breeze, down Clifton Beach. On the horizon, a fisherman’s boat bobbed.

It was an incongruously serene moment in a city that has been called a ‘hotbed of international terrorism’ (Time Magazine), ‘crime capital of Pakistan’ (Seattle Post), ‘political ground zero’ (Dawn). On May 9, thirty people were killed in clashes between the MQM, the country’s largest ethnic political party, and supporters of the recently deposed Chief Justice. Last Friday, 5 kilograms of explosives were found at The Point, an up-market shopping mall; the same night, a speeding motor bike hit my own uncle, destroying his right leg and fracturing his skull. It is the city where Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearle was kidnapped and brutally murder, where one of the 9/11 masterminds was captured, where eleven French construction workers were killed in front of the country’s largest 5-star hotels. Indeed, Karachi lives up to the headlines.

But that’s not the whole story.

Karachi is too vast, too complex to be pigeon holed by sensationalist journalists. Of course there’s going to be terrorism, it is the largest city in Pakistan, a country that has been the eye of War on Terror storm; of course there there’s going to be crime, 14 million people in a third world metropolis are bound to bump up again each other; of course there’s going to be political unrest, it is the largest melting pot of cultures in the sub-continent. But all this is certainly not what defines the city, which, despite the tumult, has surged ahead unfazed, swallowing up its maladies, and taking the rest of the country along with it.

I intern on I.I. Chundrigarh road, Karachi’s Wall Street, for a multinational investment bank that has seen an explosion in its IPO and M&A businesses. From my office window on the 8th floor of UniTower, I can see Karachi Ports to the West, burgeoning with trade and commerce from across the globe, and the Hills of Nazimabad to the east, where a new and prosperous middle class is reaping the benefits of Pakistan booming economy. Below me, downtown Karachi thrives with activity as bankers and brokers rub shoulders with paan wallas and rickshaw drivers, where traders flirt with secretaries and Mercedes’ jostle with Suzukis. The city pulsates with energy.

Over the weekend, I danced, inebriated, to Europe’s hottest club tracks at downtown night club, watched a stand-up comedy act Purple Haze, saw an Indian movie at the four-screen Cineplex, and attended an open-air rock concert. A few days ago, I was whisked away by a friend to appear on one of Pakistan's seventy three private television channels, all of which have aired in the last five years, for a panel discussion on students studying abroad. Yesterday, I went to the Mohatta Palace for a Jamil Naqsh exhibit, followed by a visit to the gallery/house of Amin Gulgee, a charismatic gay sculptor, just in time to catch him before his exhibition tour to Malaysia. This weekend, there’s a Qawali somewhere in Kharadar, then a late night beach rave in Hawks Bay. Saturday is race night. 'Party to the city where heat is on.'

Dear readers, come to Karachi, come to my home. This page is not enough for me to describe its complexity, its beauty, but rest assured that this is one of the most cultural, complex, energetic, exciting cities in the world. It certainly has its problems, but then again, so does New York.

Islamabad: Death in the Midst of Tranquility

Islamabad: the city of Islam, roughly translated, is tidy matrix of residences, markets and official monstrosities. It sits neatly at the foot of the Margalla hills, themselves pretty little things with features of their more regal cousins up north, the Kharakurums, protecting the city from vagaries of the outside world. The climate is relatively mild, and the people peaceful in their concrete villas and imported vehicles. Foreign diplomats and native bureaucrats blissfully glide through the neatly carpeted streets and tidy sidewalks, browsing the overpriced bookstores and spending inordinate amounts of time at Shaheen Chemist, a hub of social activity. It’s a cosmopolitan place—no one is ever really from Islamabad—and , for the most part, an inviting blend of Pakistani cultural sensibilities and foreign sophistication. The city only really comes alive during the morning hours, when government offices throng with civic complainants, and the city’s tiny but rapidly growing businesses jolt into action. By 9pm lights are out and Islamabad becomes a serene village, a quiet suburb, the residents collectively stargazing on their thatched charpaees. In short: it’s a good place to catch up on your Rushdie.

Brewing recently, however, under this picture of tranquility was the bitter broth of religious extremism and moral intolerance. For months the clergy of the Lal Masjid (Red mosque), and the students of the affiliate madrassa, the Jamia Hafsa, had embarked on a Taliban-styled moral purge the capital. Bands of roaming students, both bearded men and veiled women, began to enforce their interpretation of a strict, ultra-orthodox Islamic society. After a series of kidnappings of alleged prostitutes and, more peculiarly, Chinese masseurs, as well as the harassments of local music and video shops, the otherwise apathetic citizens of Islamabad began to feel a little uneasy, not so much about the Lal Masjid’s objectives, but about the disturbance of their sacred peace.

On July 3, 2007, Pakistan Army Rangers set up camp outside the Lal Masjid premises as observation posts, ostensibly to monitor the movements of the students. Most security analysts now agree that the posts were set up as bait for the violently bent militias of the Lal Masjid, daring them to attack, and, thereby, giving the government an excuse to counter attack against what had become a de facto state within a state. The tactic worked. That very morning, a student from the Lal Masjid, in seminary's first show of violence, shot and killed a Pakistan Army Ranger. What ensued was a vicious gun battle that has escalated, in ensuing days, into war on the streets of Islamabad.

I came to sector G6 around 4 pm that afternoon. It was a bright, sunny day, a bit hot, but generally pleasant. The hills were hazy in the distance, but their presence a reassurance of Islamabad’s stability. I presumed that a cab would not be allowed beyond Polly Clinic, where the dead and injured were being brought, and I let taxi driver, who was angry more at the incompetant city administration for incomplete road work, than the Hafsas, drop me off in front of the hospital. Though the police deployment was heavy, there seemed to be no barriers to public commutes and general traffic; it was business as usual for Islamabad’s citizens.

In the distance, a gun shot.

I trekked on towards Melody Market, former home of Melody cinema which was burned down by religious extremists a few years ago. Life, however, in this part of the world, goes on despite political, social and economic vagaries: plans for a new cinema, complete with surround sound and laser projectors, are being designed. Anyway, reaching Aapara Thaana, the police station, I decided to take the long way to Lal Masjid, around the west side of the market. Islamabad Police was everywhere. Standing there in their hundreds, blue uniforms, laathis and all, the Islamabad police was doing what they have become know to do best: nothing. Me, a-barely-20-year-old kid wearing distinctive western attire, sporting a digital camera and Ray Ban shades, waltzed through Aapara police station and down Luqman Heekam road without so much as an official protest.

When I finally arrived in front of the main Melody plaza and, more popularly, Zenos Kabab House—delectable seikh kababs, really, I recommend them to anyone who is ever in the neighborhood—was when I first started getting that burning sensation in my nose and mouth that would become all too familiar as the day progressed. Though it’s called tear gas, the worst symptoms of being in 2000meter hit radius of a tear gas shell is the piercing sensation on your upper lip and the streams of mucus expelling from you nostrils. Not something you want to do everyday, really.

Momentarily hampered, I decided to move through the market towards the usual afternoon festivities of Islamabad’s newly christened Food Street. Unfortunately, that afternoon business was quieter than usual, and only the Islamabad police, in their eternal efficiency, could be seen lunching, accompanied by a group of balding journalists. I waited for the journalists to finish their meal and decided to stay close to them. An inviting bunch, they were just about as clueless about the whole situation as I was. Quite suddenly, like one of those literary signs from God, a loud explosion shattered the very Islamabadi calm that had settled over Food Street.
“Bhainchod shuroo ho gaya hai,” one of the journalists hypothesized, “They’re about to go in.”

A tinge of excitement sparked in our little band of journalistic brothers, and we all ran, cameras dangling, shades falling, towards the explosion. Weaving our way through Melody Market, we finally emerged between United Bank branch office and the Holiday Inn. Once on the main road, the show began.

Reporters, armored vehicles, concerned citizens, rioting mullahs, barbed wire, ambulances, fire trucks, rangers, semi-automatics, tear gas, fire, explosions, smoke. It was all a bit too much to take in really, I didn’t think I would ever be this close to the action. A little way ahead at the intersection before the final stretch of road leading to Lal Masjid, the police had set up a barbed wire barricade, the only hint of any official presence in the area. Following the journalists, with whom, by the way, I had no affiliation, we went past the barricade and into the inferno. Up ahead we saw a sea of people clad in kurta shalwar and sporting beards in various phases of post-pubescent development. As we proceeded, I saw local residents peering over their metal gates, protecting themsevles from stray bullets and inquisitive journalists. Gun shots could be heard emanating from a near by school. The students were in chanting in joyous procession. Occasionally, a bullet would ring out from their midst. I inched closer, being sure to stay among the crowd of onlookers that had gathered, at the threat of their lives, to witness the unfolding saga. At this point, I was in danger of my life: bullets were being indiscriminately fired from both sides without any discernable targets. Commotion from all quarters rang in my ears. Then, so suddenly that I didn’t realize what happened until after the event, three or four stray bullets whizzed into the crowd I was standing in. Panic. I could feel my heart wanting to beat itself out of my chest, I had never been so mortally terrified in my life. People ran in every which direction. The yelling and shouting become more instense, more desperate. Momentary silence ensured. When the dust cleared, a reporter in a blood stained t-shirt announced, tearfully, mournfully, but with a very Islamabadi calm, that Tariq, the photographer of the Daily Khabrain, had been shot dead. I am unequipped, dear reader, to describe how my body, let alone emotions, reacted upon hearing the newsreporter's news.

Stay tuned, it starts getting rough...