The Word of mAn[S]o0r

I’ve been off blogging again, as some may have noticed. Not that i have nothing to blog about, oh no.. quite on the contrary, i have had too much to blog about~!

And ofcourse, procrastination does reign supreme in life afterall.

But what got me to finally open up this page and write is this….

People are scary!

You read it right. People, the normal, day-to-day, run of the mill people you meet in normal life, are scary! I’ve grown up in a very sheltered environment, my parents shielding me away from any and everything bad about this world, the kind of childhood you read about in books. I grew up believing in the inherrent good of people. That underneath it all, there lies a good and loving soul within everyone. Circumstances just make them react differently and sometimes, in bad and horrible ways.

But its just a one time thing, right? Afterall, no one can be bad all their lives….. right?

This is what i believed in. And i refused to believe in anything to the contrary. Why should i? Everyone likes to talk about the bad in people, its like saying the good would somehow ‘hurt’ them and they shy away from it. Gossip sells more than the plain ordinary truth, and the more outrageous the story becomes, the more believable it is. So i gave everyone the benefit of the doubt. I didn’t believe in the rumors and the gossips and the stereotypes and believed everyone to be innocent until proven guilty.

Over  the years, you amass a lot of stories of the lives of people around you. Taken one at a time, they sound like abberations, freakish phenomena in the normal routine of things and you treat them as such, filing them away in the back of your mind never to recall again.

Until you do! and one by one, they all spew forth like a burst dam and you realize… just how horribly screwed up the world really is. I’m not talking about the gossips and the tantalizing stories told by my fellow man. I’m talking of the ones which were told to me by the teary eyed victims of the horrible act. The friend who got beaten up by her fiance, the other one who had to abort her rape-child, the friend who almost got murdered in cold blood by his best friend, the wife who has to live with her gay husband and his lover while raising ‘their’ child, the girl who was abused for 6 years straight before her mother rescued her from her husband, and the girl who almost killed herself and her children twice because her husband left her.

You read about these stories in the newspaper or hear about them on TV all the time, but it doesn’t affect you. The stories listed above are from people i’ve known personally from time to time, and some told to me in the strictist confidence. I’ve many more, but they are too weird to even mention.

Its really a horribly cruel world out there… and i dont know who/what to believe anymore.

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No one told me,
I was going to find you

Unexpected, what you did to my heart.

When i’d lost hope, you were there to remind me..
This is the start!

At the Beginning - Richard Marx and Donna Lewis

I’ve heard this song many countless times over the years, ever since the movie Anastasia came out. I never realized what these lines really meant until last night. It was the night, when even the first impression was trumped! To a news which was going to bring apprehension, tension, lonely nights and long distances, a news which i was dreading to break, which i was considering out-dating even before it became real…. she triumphed!

First reaction was all it took..

First reaction is after all, what its all about. The hours of talking afterwards only served to reinforced it, but it was the first reaction which affirmed it, confirmed it. I’ve never been surer of anything else in my life as much as im sure now!

And life is a road and i wanna keep going,
Love is a river i wanna keep flowing.

Life is a road, now and forever, wonderful journey.

I’ll be there when the world stops turning,
I’ll be there when the storm is through.

In the end, i wanna be standing, at the beginning
with you!

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after over a month of continuous travels, im finally settling back down to life in karachi. Maybe not for much longer, who knows, but atleast here for the foreseeable future.

Now that i have had time to think, i realized i have still not gotten over the shock of my dad almost leaving us… In the past few days since i’ve come back to the city, i’ve been eating like a madman! Heavy breakfast, lunch and dinner, which numerous snacks in between. I couldn’t figure out why i was so hungry, till i remembered the last time i was eating so much! Its my body’s natural reaction towards stress. Some people cant sleep, others get hyper and start shouting… i eat!

It was when i watched Greys Anatomy night before last that i finally realized i still hadn’t recovered from the dad shock. In an episode where Meredith Grey almost drowned, she had to be brought into the surgery wing of the hospital where she worked, with the top surgeons trying to revive her from the grip of hypothermia. All this while her boyfriend and friends stood outside, praying.. hoping.. crying.. and yet not wanting to believe this could happen. As the one hour twenty minute double episode played out in front of me on the screen, quite a different storyline was playing in front of my eyes. I was once again transported back to those two times, when mom called, and when the doc asked us to pray because they dont know what is going to happen, to the hallways of that hospital, the CCU and Angiography ward, holding on to mom trying to soothe her, when all i wanted was to breakdown too, it was all playing right back!

And it was in that instant that i realized, i really hadn’t gotten over the shock yet, that it hasn’t really had time to sink in…

Right now, i know i have to move on from the incident. God has been very kind and dad is still here. Nothing is lost, a lot of life yet to live out under their guidance.. but i cant seem to warp out that fear yet. I cant talk to my family about it obviously, since i have to be the support, the pillar and what not, its hard…

… but atleast now, i dont have to go through it alone. I have her, the goofy smile she brings to my face and the support she’s become for me. If nothing else, she’ll make sure i pull through… *drifting off to sweet sweet memories…..*

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PIA, no matter how much degraded their service is becoming, are still the best people to fly with! Everything said and done, they atleast get their air-craft off the fricking ground! The AirBlue (AB406) aircraft was called back from the runway after starting its journey down the strip (on July 1st) not once but twice in succession and managed to take off only about six hours later. And here’s the excuse and explained by the captain.

“Dear passengers, we would like to inform you that there is nothing wrong with the aircraft you are now sitting in. We have been recalled to take documents belonging to another aircraft in our fleet”.

Hello? Anyone heard of TCS?

Oh and FYI, and AirBlue is the ‘preferred(?)’ way for TCS to take shipments between atleast khi to isb, as almost on every flight on that airline, there is someone standing by who picks up large jute bags of parcels from the baggage claims area marked TCS. I wonder how they make it on time…?

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PIA, no matter how much degraded their service is becoming, are still the best people to fly with! Everything said and done, they atleast get their air-craft off the fricking ground! The AirBlue (AB406) aircraft was called back from the runway after starting its journey down the strip (on July 1st) not once but twice in succession and managed to take off only about six hours later. And here’s the excuse and explained by the captain.

“Dear passengers, we would like to inform you that there is nothing wrong with the aircraft you are now sitting in. We have been recalled to take documents belonging to another aircraft in our fleet”.

Hello? Anyone heard of TCS?

Oh and FYI, and AirBlue is the ‘preferred(?)’ way for TCS to take shipments between atleast khi to isb, as almost on every flight on that airline, there is someone standing by who picks up large jute bags of parcels from the baggage claims area marked TCS.

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The mantra “PIA kee service kharab say kharab tar hote jaa rahe hai” has long been a standard of domestic travellers on the countries largest airline. At first, i was a bit hesitant to accept this on face value alone, since no untoward incident had happened to me or the passengers around me in quite sometime.

The was the past, now however i am largely inclined to change my mind due to the following incidents.

Incident 1:  

They dont let me sleep anymore!! I mean what the hell yaar! if a passenger is asleep on the flight, leave him be instead of rudely awakening them and demanding they have their food! Damnit! i dont want food! i want sleep!!! Do you know how hard it is to go back to sleep once u’ve been jarred awake!!!

Well, not really an incident rather than a rant, but it peeved me to no end. Twice while on PIA flight, i was rudely jarred awake from my deep slumber and forced a meal upon. And once, it was just sandwiches! I mean, i would rather sleep!

Incident 2:

Imagine you’ve just finished with a sandwich the airline decided to grant you with, and now waiting for a coffee to wash the dry crumbs from the inside of your throat, the air-host cames with a coffee kettle, and asks you to put the cup on his tray so he can pour it. Just as you pick the filled cup of his tray, you notice the coffee level (which was half a cup to begin with) going even further down. Before you can consciously make a educated guess as to why its happening, the cup gets empty, and your starched brown cotton shalwar kameez becomes even a darker shade of brown with unsightly coffee stains around the groin area! Thanks to the moderate hot coffee served onboard these flights, you resist the urge to scream in pain and instead grip the side bar with all your might, and your sense of decency prevents you from shouting at the poor flight attendant who is looking horrified at what just happened to you, while apologizing profusely!

The culprit? A big hole at the bottom of the damn coffee cup!! This happened to the poor guy in the seat next to me on the flight back to isb to khi (PK-369) on June 28th 2007. I cant even imagine the horror of walking around with that stain through the airport area and back to wherever he lived.

Incident 3:

If you ever get ground-sick of the, well, ground when you are 36,000 feet in the air, fly PIA. The courteous food preparation service gives special consideration to ensure that you do not miss the hard concrete roads of the city life by presenting you with a souvenir with your meal. A hard, shiny black stone! And to add to the surprise of the moment, they don’t tell you its coming, they just put it right in the middle of your food!! I think they must be learning something from the cereal industry with the ‘free gift inside’ routine.

Idiots! I almost put a tooth out biting into it! (Happened on flight PK306 inbound to lhr from khi - July 1st).

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and i mean it in all the positive tone that can be generated.

Yesterday, i flew to Lahore on business. I was in karachi for two days following my fathers return home from the hospital in pindi, before having to leave again. My cousin, S, also was leaving on the same day to lahore from karachi. The only difference being, he was on AirBlue while i travelled (in style?) on PIA.

We took the ride to the airport together, went through the boarding/check-in rituals together and made our way to the departure lounge together. The plan was, once we both land in lahore (together) we would go out to dinner and then make our ways to our seperate residences in the city.

The last part didn’t quite work out as planned. My flight took off at 7 :15 PM, landed in lahore close to 8:50, went to the baggage area and to my utter surprise, there was no baggage line for aiblue..?

That surprised me to no end, and i actually went over the whole area (which surprisingly has only three conveyor belts :S) just to make sure. Then i switched on my mobile (which i didn’t for some reason as soon as the plane landed) and got the msg.

“I am envying you so much! flight got delayed till 11″. 

Poor guy got stuck in Karachi! While PIA took off just 15 minutes after it was intended to, AirBlue took off about six hours! He got in at lahore at 4 in the morning and as it stands, we dont have dinner plans this night either. Ofcourse, that doesn’t mean i didn’t have my share of fun with him. An hour of messaging him, gloating while he sat back in the (un)air-conditioned confines of the jet made the missed dinner worth it.

Whats interesting is, i was supposed to be on the same flight, but when i was booking the tickets, the airblue website decided not to respond to me anymore, and even after an hour of trying, i did not have any success. Since i needed to get the budget approved on the same day, i took the PIA flight instead. Sometimes… luck plays an immense role in your life.

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