The city of my youth

4031 Page Court, Pleasanton, CA.

We lived there, ages ago.

It was a cul de sac, and our neighbors were Bob, and his wife whose name I’ve forgotten except that it began with an M (I think). No wait, her name was Fran. Whatever, I was close. They were ancient, and when Bob died my mother woke us up at 6 a.m to tell us he was gone. Ever since then I’ve been terrified of being woken early, and late night phone calls. They never mean well.

Our librarian lived in our neighborhood. She had the tiniest, bitchiest dog possible. It would attack anything that moved, regardless that it could easily be squished by a pencil sharpener. It’s attitude would have been inspiring had it not meant we stayed in when our librarian was out. Of course, I never went out much anyway. That would require getting up from the couch. Yuck.

The school we went to was walking distance. We passed the local supermarket, Lucky’s, then my best friend Marcella’s house and then Justin’s, who, in retrospect, was pretty cute. If I wasn’t at that ‘boys-are-grooosss‘ phase I might have liked him. Oh well.

Marcella and Justin hated each other; which sucked because had it ever occurred to me to like Justin, he’d never have wanted to hang out with us. Our love was doomed from the start.

Principal Maher was great. I rarely saw him but he came up with kickass schemes like ‘ Be principal For a Day’. To win, we had to be the best we could for a week. We had to pick up trash, work hard at our assignments, be nice to losers etc. Every time we did something good, we’d get a ticket on which we’d write our name and class, and put it in the ballot outside the office. The more tickets you earn, the more your chances to win. There’d be a lottery on Friday and any two lucky kids from the school would get to be Prinicipal for the day. That meant you got ice-cream, were exempt from schoolwork, and had your picture printed in the paper. Not much, you say? Hey, ask a 3rd grader.

Anyway, here’s how dumb I am. This girl from my class offered me a deal. If I gave her my tickets, she’d buy me a fruit roll up every day for a week. A fruit roll-up. That’s it. I fell for it, and guess what? She won. Considering how Machiavellian she was, I’m pretty sure that was my ticket that got pulled out. To think, I could have been principal had my soul not been so easily corruptible.

I haven’t returned to Pleasanton after we moved to Karachi in 1994. It’s nowhere near Chicago or New York where the rest of my relatives live, so there’s never been a reason to go to California. I keep thinking about the house, and the schoolyard with it’s dry piece of fertilizer like soil, and the public  library which was the closest to Paradise I’ve been in my life and I wish to God that I could have one day to visit all of them again. See how they’ve changed, see if they still look and feel and smell the same. To be honest, I never believed I would get to.

Until now.

How I wish there was some way to tell the people at Google how much I love them.

4031 Page Court

Hello housey baby!

I found out that by double clicking an address on Google Map, you might get a Street View option (only for countries they weren’t afraid to go to- there’s nothing for Pakistan or Iran). Anyway, this saves me the near impossible task of downloading the Google Earth software- a job which nearly cost me my acrylic nails and sanity when I tried around a year ago- as well as gives me a way I can see my…

Donlon Public!

…School. Basically that’s the parking lot and the kiddy playground and the main building, but what is cool is that I actually managed to trace my entire ruote to school, which included passing

Lucky's- or where it used to be, at least

Lucky’s, and….

My best friend and the crush-that-could-have-been

Marcella and Justin’s house. Isn’t it ironic they lived right in front of each other?

Heaven knows where they are now. They probably fell in love with each other in High School and got married at 16, which led to a kid that they’re poisoning slowly on American fast food- ergo, the American dream.

Or they could have gone on to college, become dentists or lawyers, and are on their way to being the decent, respectable people that make the United States the great country it is- ergo, the American dream

In either case, they’ve probably forgotten me.

End of this post.

Love you all, folks! I’m off to walk the streets of Barcelona!

That was a rhetorical question, people.

Location, location and yes, you’ve got it, location.

Before I got married, I lived in North Nazimabad. It was a great place to live- everything you could possibly need was availiable nearby. It had the basic fast food and portuguese flame-grilled chicken joints and the neighbors were always invited to events. It was a good, balanced place to grow up. Nobody was poor, the middle class didn’t bother trying to one-up each other and the filthy rich didn’t know how to act filthy rich. But North Nazimabad scared the living hell out of everyone who didn’t live there. For them, it was next door to Altaf bhai and his crazies, and there were Pathans on the mountain, weren’t there?  Oh, and it was far away. Like soooo far away, you know?

Reach for the sky!

Truth is, North Nazimabad was a smörgåsbord of humanity and it never ceased to straighten your perspective of life and society because you saw, and suffered everything. You felt Karachi, and in turn, all of Pakistan just by living there.

I know this seems too general, but when you talk about the attitude of an area, you have to be vague and over-reaching.

Then I married and took myself, and my borya bistar to the General’s colony in  Gulshan.  I climbed a few more rungs up the social ladder. People didn’t hurry away when I told them my address any more. In fact, they asked me whether I lived near Ashfaq Kiyani’s house, and when I said I did, we became the best of friends.

Now, for the time being, we’re settled in Defence- the one place I knew perfectly well I would never fit into. Defence, for me, stood for all that is wrong with the educated in this country. It was a place filled with pretty, perfect people, with identical Oxford accents and a collective superiority complex which they didn’t even bother to mask. Don’t get me wrong; I loved going there. They had the best and most interesting restaurants, the roads were well  made, the houses were beautiful and there were no rickshaws and motorcycles swarming around your car at a signal; but it was a place unwelcome to those who didn’t walk, talk and think a certain way and after fifteen minutes of  being there I wanted to go back to my uncouth, but accomodating North Nazimabad.

Clean, but lonely

I still feel the same. Everyday I miss the the vegetable vendor at the gate, Hyderi  market being a walk away and the sound of Urdu. Defence is a wonderful place to live after I’ve retired; safe, clean and far removed from the world’s broad field of battle but it would be the wrong place for my kids to grow up. For what it’s worth, the dangerous, God-forsakenly far, tooti phooti streets of Gulshan and North Nazimabad are better teachers than the fancy schools of Defence ever will be.

Anyway, that’s how I get my husband to take me somewhere nice the next day.

Of course, maybe if I just asked him sweetly, it’d save me a night’s sleep but what’s the fun without the drama?

S. and I are basically stay-at-home sort of people. We’re the sort of people whose lifestyle will be barely affected by the entry of a kid- not that we’re planning one just yet. We sleep early, don’t have much of a social life, and are already an embarrassment to our relatives under 17. We’re the youngest middle-aged couple around. However, I digress. What I had originally planned to do was give you a rough, verbal tour of some of the home delivery services of Karachi. With my opinion of course. You wouldn’t want to miss up on that.

That’s what I was planning to lead up to eventually, though heaven knows how I’d reach it.

Here we go then:

Hira’s guide to eating in!

Arizona Express

Arizona fire steak.

Arizona Grill has got to be the most popular restaurant in Karachi. Everyone’s been there, and a lot of the newer restaurants model their menu on AG’s because they know it’ll work. However they forget that the real secret to Arizona (and Roaster’s) success is not the quality of the food- which is just average- or their service; but their portions. Arizona Grill is the only upscale eating joint in the city where you might actually bring home leftovers. Don’t expect that anywhere else, unless the food was really bad.

Khaer, no point really going into the finer points of their menu,  since you’ve all probably been there. However, for those who haven’t: everything on their menu is pretty edible. However, some things are better than others. A beef steak should NEVER be bread crumbed and pan friend so avoid the Italian steak, and don’t order the Mozarella sticks- they’re too thick to be eaten easily. They deliver everything on their menu and the burgers taste just as good a little cold. But one problem with cheese/ cream based sauces is that they gel up pretty quickly. Eating solid mashed potatoes and a jelly-like cream sauced, batter fried steak is a bit of a turn off. Just go to the place instead, yaar.

BBQ Tonight

Ok, one word. Slow. Or at least it seemed to be. We waited quite a long time for the food to arrive (almost double the time they said it would take)  and the food had gotten cold. However, it’s pretty cool having tikka, parathas delivered to your doorstep. I don’t know, it just never seemed possible. Half the fun, I guess, is waiting by the tawa and screaming out your order to people not interested in taking it. Khaer, that doesn’t happen in BBQ Tonight. They’re dying to take your order; they want to serve you fast so that you can leave as soon as possible. Personally, the last place I would eat out at is BBQ Tonight. I take hours to figure out what I want. The waiter waits. Then he fidgets. He looks at other waiters for help. Looks at Sayem. They both get bored. Then he leaves. And I feel sad and unworthy.

Khaer, about the delivery, once again, I won’t tell you what was good because this restaurant doesn’t really know HOW to make bad food. They stick to what they know and don’t have any pretensions. The malai tikka is the best in Karachi but what’s really kick ass is the grilled jumbo shrimps. Very mildly masala’d, with just a touch of lemon juice they are seriously  ’Oh wow!’, or as my devar says OH MY GOTT!

Chairman Mao

Am I not so pretty?

This is THE delivery service that started it all. Not Pizza Hut orKFC orMcDonalds; it was Chairman Mao that revolutionized food delivery in Karachi. Imagine receiving food so hot your fingers actually burn while transferring it to the serving dish. Chairman Mao ensures that their entrees are piping hot, and the dessert is ice cold, regardless of whether they’re delivering to Defence, Gulshan or Nazimabad. And trust me, I’ve ordered Chairman Mao in all three places.

The food itself is wonderful. I’ve skipped over the Thai part so I can’t help there but the Chinese and the japanese parts of the menu are exceptional and, may I say this, pretty authentic considering it’s Pakistan where everything contains just a little chaat masala to make it palatable for our cast iron stomachs. The chow mien was fried in peanut oil, there was generous use of oyster sauce and the prawn toast is OH MY GOTT in the extreme. S. loves their Thai soup   and I love their ice cream and everybody is happy. The servings are for four people; extremely generous and filling. I cannot wax more lyrical.

Espresso

No. Not a good idea. Why, I ask you, why would you want to have Espresso food home delivered? Personally, if I’m shelling out a thousand bucks per head, I’d want to have the fun of actually sitting in a nice, pretty-peopled place with a waiter or two at my beck and call rather than be plopped  on my bed in my jammies, with a wallet filled with the vacuum of money frivolously spent.

Anyway, since I never ask how much my bill is on the phone I got the shock of a lifetime when I was handed over a slip of paper along with the Mediterranean beef wrap and cheese sticks. Rs. 840! Really?! But the cheese sticks are cold! And there are only 4 of them! And they’re skinny! Can’t I get a discount? WHAT? You expect me to tip you too now? A-hole!

Yes, I’m a rotten customer.

Regardless, if you’re really craving Espresso then nothing I say can dissuade you. So plus points: a) They’re open til 1 am. Considering all decent eateries send their delivery boy home at 11, that means Espresso is your only option if you want a sandwich that does not taste vaguely of sawdust (yes, I’m talking about you McDonalds). And b: They deliver coffee. Piping hot Espresso coffee, or freezing cold Espresso frappes. They gave me cold cheese sticks but they say their coffee would have reached me hot. Go figure.

Mr. Burger

I love Mr. Burger. It is the best fast food burger around. The patty is juicy and flavorful, the bun is soft, the cheese is cheesy and there is plenty of ketchup and mayo to make the whole meal a joy to the world of senses. YUM. Put Mr. Burger down as a better alternative to McDonalds (if you’re craving a good ol’ fashioned cheeseburger). Their delivery service is pretty decent as long as you explain your address very very clearly and repeat your order to the operater at least twice. Their heart is in the right place, it’s just their ears and mind which are on the TV blaring loudly in the outlet.

Nando’s

Nando’s is good, solid food. And their delivery isn’t all that bad, if you discount the temperature loss. But one word of warning: pita bread dissolves. Literally. You stuff it up with a liter of mayo and some veggies and it breaks down and dies.  Not a good idea to order the pita meal at home. The best thing to have delivered is the chicken meal, and the peri peri rice. Potatoes don’t travel well either. Ok, have I made it very obvious I’m not a fan of Nandos? Now I have? Oh. Whoops.

Pitacos

Now they should have a cowboy as their mascot.

Pitacos wants to be Tex-Mex. It tries hard but the beef stroganoff gives it away. The menu is funny with a few racy numbers (Balls and More, anyone?) and though they serve burritos and tacos, they also dabble in Greek and Italian. They’re kind of all over the place- literally.We’ve ordered it twice with widely differing results. The first time we ordered it, we got fresh tacos in crisp, corn totillas with plenty of chicken and dressing. The stroganoff was decent, and the lasagna was good. But we were tricked! The next time we ordered, the tacos were soggy and the burrito was blander than Kristin Stewart’s face. The chicken lollipops were passable even though the black pepper was pretty heavy.

Avoid? Should I ask you to? Nah, go ahead and experiment and tell me which experience was the fluke.

Room Service

Shrimp skewers: remind me to try these next time

Oh how I love their name! The pure happiness of just saying “Hello? Is this room service?” could only be compounded if I was propped up on starchy white sheets and a gazillion pillows in an air conditioned room with a giant tv screen in front of me…haye. Khaer, anyway. Room service, like Chairman Mao and Pitacos  is strictly delivery which means the food reaches you fast, and hot.

We only ordered once on the night which prompted this post. Things took a turn for the worse but it wasn’t the food’s fault. It tried to make things better. Poor Room Service- it just caught us on a bad day. Anyway, we ordered the chilli garlic prawn, caesar salad, chicken souvlaki gyro, and the grande cheeseburger and they were all pretty decent.  Actually the chilli garlic prawn were really good, as was the burger. Some of their items are killer while a few are just so-so. I wish we’d ordered the fancy stuff. There are some pretty cool sounding things on the menu. Tell me how they are when you try them.

Simple Dimple Khausay Palace

Do you see the cowboy? Isn't he hot?

You’ve got to love a place called Simple Dimple Khausay Palace, especially one that has a cowboy on the delivery bag. I’ve never figured out why that cowboy was there. Khausay—>cowboy= how? Khaer, forget the cowboy. Focus on the food…it’s worth it, particulary for those of you who, like me, have memon friends always talking about khausay but never willing to share any. Even though they’ve promised you they would a hundred times. Cheapskates.

Khausay are basically noodles swimming in a wonderfully tangy curry sauce, with pieces of meat suspended in them. Lemon, chilli and chips are kept at the side making this a semi do-it-yourself dish. It’s food that’s actually fun to eat. Now I’ve tried all three versions; prawn, chicken and beef khausay, and it’s my personal belief that (unless you’re allergic) nothing beats beef in flavor, however the chicken is also very very good. Avoid the prawn khausay- and if you really can’t do without the sea food, just order the shrimp cocktail.  In fact, order all the starters and invite me over. A serving easily feeds 2. If Chairman Mao is No.1, this is 2nd place only by a nose hair.

Subway

Really? You’re leaving your custom-made sandwich to somebody else? And you’re ordering on the phone? WHY?!

I ordered subway on the phone once. The only thing they got right was the chocolate chip cookie order with the sandwich. Everything else they made up as they went along. Bad idea. Bad.

Whoo. There you go. I’m off to hibernate for another month or so. Ta!

There are also more realistic but still happy dreams of Cinnabon opening in Karachi maybe, of driving to Zamzama myself, of writing a column for a leading newspaper, of taking my sewing machine out of its box and getting started with a project- finally, of spending a day alone, sitting on the balcony and reading. Of having me time. Me time. I wouldn’t mind that.

Me time would entail the above balcony session, as well as the subsequent walk around the flats, followed by the extremely relaxing two hour bubble bath with a soggy book in one hand and a cup of coffee safely but unreachably perched on the ledge of the sink. And then the rare indulgence of watching a movie where nobody is blown up, and people amicably solve problems with a phone call and a run.

After that, of course, I will start missing the hub, and the dino-obsessed baby and his mom, as well as my mom, my sis and everyone else on this planet. I’ve had my fun people, you can come back now. Let’s return to the weekly routine of letting every day go by.

I’ve learned to appreciate every moment spent selfishly. Selfish is happy. Selfish and insensitive is bliss.

You’ll agree with this statement after you marry, you theoretical Mother Teresas of the world, even more after you have kids.

Solitude is good for one day, if spent well. It dilutes the bitterness.

Women are naturally vindictive. In anger, we tend to claw and maul and scream at whatever caused the pain and then dissolve like sea salt once the violent spell is over. Or maybe thats just me. I wonder if it wouldn’t be better if I just held quiet grudges for years on end.  Life would at least seem mildly civilized, and it would save me the mortification of apologizing just to get things back to normal.

I’m a hell fire and brimstone girl, not ice and snow. Loud, violent, hungry, burning everything in it’s path, causing as much destruction as I can before the anger finally dies. And remorse kicks in. Passionate, excitable, alive, vibrant; I am red in all it’s true-blue glory.

Until I hit an iceman.

When the rage is over, and the world is back in its place, I realize that I have to pick up the charred remains of everything myself. Wouldn’t it have been so much simpler to freeze? No cleaning up afterwards, just a happy melting over time. If only I had the mental capacity to remember the last time I burst into flames- it’s a mistake I make every fortnight after all, over the same issues, again and again. I’m not a fast learner- in fact I’m hopelessly optimistic. Maybe this time it’ll be different. Maybe just this once. Why don’t I ever apply my cynicism to myself?

Always have a happy place to go to. It could be physical, like Rose Gumbo’s tree, or just a memory of time well spent, but always have somewhere to go to when you want to  run away for a while.

Or specifically, the lack of it.

More precisely, the lack of an excess of money. I’m not penniless, just millions of dollarsless.

It is without doubt my greatest woe that I am not super duper, Lex Luthor rich. My second woe is that I’m inconveniently simple. See, after you get married, one thing becomes important: how well you manage everyone around you. If I was super duper Lex Luthor rich I could buy off all my critics, or have them killed; if I was even averagely clever I wouldn’t need to. No, forget it. I’ll still take rich.

My parents brought me up with a few simple principles: Think the best of everyone; always give more than you expect in return; and be sincere. We were taught to be instinctly honest. It was the ‘american’ way. Leave the deceit and politics to the government, just focus on getting through the day with nothing to be ashamed of. But now I feel our education is incomplete. You can’t survive in this country being straight- it’s asking for people to cheat you, take advantage of you and overall see if they can’t leave you in their dust. As pathetic as it sounds, but sometimes I can’t help wondering,why can’t we all get along?

Khaer anyway, it’s a dog eat dog world and unfortunately i’m one of those chihuahas that belong to old ladies wearing angora sweaters; doomed to lose, as well as suffer from the lack of self-esteem that I’m sure an average chihuaha suffers from.

Anyway, what lovely weather we’re having. Too bad I can’t see the sky from my office. Wouldn’t life be lovely if we could work under the sky, but still have a nice air-conditioned setting? Tch. One can’t have everything.

Five. How time flies.

Started work at City School PAF chapter. Worst three months of my life.

Moved from the navel to the small toe of Karachi’s left foot. We can now officially claim to have shellfish as our closest neighbors.

Got my devar successfully married off to his high school sweetie; successfully in the sense that I did NOT end up tripping on my saari, decimating the stage and ruining their big night. Go me.

And- you won’t believe this one- managed to find a decent job (withe the help of a friend) at a pretty big textile mill that lets me go early enough to get home before S. and robs me not of my Saturday.

Life is good I tell you, for a change.

So anyway, so much has happened that I couldn’t find time to update you all about everything that was happening. it would involve long rambling stories about kids who obsess over the WWE and cannot make a single sentence without mentioning one wrestler or the other; and painful sagas about a staffroom filled with middle-aged married women who suck the soul out of children and fresh new teachers to preserve their jobs. Posts would also dwell on the lack of creativity, spontaneity and talent of the average schoolteacher, and the excess of red-tape, bureaucracy and overall incompetence of an educational institute’s management. Stuff that you, and any other sane person, would not really be interested in.

I could also tell you interesting stories of life in an upscale apartment situated somewhere near Bikini Bottom. For example that time when the curtains fell off and me and S. woke at 5 every morning for a week to wretchedly watch the dawn and wish we lived in Alaska where the sun doesn’t rise at all; or the time a pigeon got trapped in the false ceiling of our bathroom and i was pretty sure it had to be haunted. Or the day we accidentally went up to the tenth floor of the block of flats next to ours, knocked on an empty apartment and confidently told the receptionist HE was in the wrong building.

There are also tales of marital disharmony, familial discord as well as the subsequent kiss and make ups.

Nothing particularly interesting at all.

A few days ago, I’m standing at Nike, Park Towers, and they don’t have the shirt that I want, so I ask whether they can get it from the Nike at Forum and the guy says “Sure! Why don’t you give me your name and number and I’ll give you a call when it comes?” I say “Woo hoo! You’re a Greek god” but then he asks me my name, and I’m blank.

For all of ten seconds- which is half as long as that tedious Zong ad- I can’t remember my name.

Then, in a fit of inspiration, I say “Hina”

After which I remember that’s not me, that’s my sister in law.

Woe. The end is nigh.

Today I finished my first book after my shadi. True it’s around a thousand pages long but it took me a whole long month- me, the girl who finished The Deathly Hallows in eight hours in front of a 1998 PC called Egbert, with frequent attacks by load shedding. And yet it took me 37 days to finish one of the finest fantasy novels of the 20^th century, Johnathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (highly recommended for all Potterheads, Mahw)- and you know what, I can’t think at all.

Ok, let me tell you the truth. I haven’t been blogging for a very good reason: I just can’t. Not due to lack of inspiration; I still compose posts in my head whenever anything even slightly interesting happens in my life, but I can’t focus at all. My desktop’s placed in the TV lounge, and usually when anybody sees me there, they decide it’s a perfect opportunity to hand over the responsibility of the baby to me, which means either

a)      I’m stopping him from getting entangled in the various wires coming out of the printer, PS 2, my desktop, the dvd player and the laptop chargers, or

b)      I’m trying to keep my sanity intact while my ears throb with “Walk like a monkey” and refrains of “Let’s go find the higgledy piggledy pear tree!”

When will Rayyan get over Barney and his Jungle Friends?

Khaer, this is not for long. I’ve got a strategy now. It’s called Hira’s plan for the future. Behold:

Mild-mannered Hira has basically one aim in life: Win the Nobel Prize. Since that is highly unlikely she will settle for a high-paying job with the minimum requirement of work- a lecturer at a graduate institute. For that she requires either loads of work experience or an extra degree, and in her current situation the second option seems to be the only option. The closest to a Master’s Degree that she can manage while staying in this city is the Post Graduate Diploma offered at Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture; which will cost her quite a bit of money that neither she, nor her hubby dearest has at present. So now let’s focus on the problem: how does she get the funds?

Simple: a job. Any job. The ends justifies the means.

Hence, mild mannered Hira has decided to be a school teacher for the time being. After all, if she can baby sit an 9 month old addicted to purple dinos, how hard will 12 year old monsters be?

In other words- at least I have something to do now