BOL Movie Review

I finally watched BOL last night after listening to mixed reviews from friends and family. It is a movie made on many daring topics. The storyline is shocking enough that you will not realize time flying by. It pulls you in and jolts you with twists around every corner. You will actually feel hatred for some characters and pity for the others. The end is a reality but I kept hoping it would be different as this was a movie and anything could happen.

Hakim Sahib is the most deplorable of the characters but we see glimpses of him in many around us. People altering their religion to satisfy their self-made egos, picking and choosing religious elements that suit their lives and using religion to suppress others and feel superior. The story of Saif is heartbreaking and his acting is excellent. Zainab is the only one with some sense in the movie. However in the land of irrational she had to pay a high price for her courage. Atif Aslam character seems to have no emotions in the movie or at least he is unable to express them.

This movie reminded me of A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. The stories are far apart however there are similar underline themes like suppression of women, right of education, preference of sons over daughters, child abuse etc. The most surprising similarity was the opening scene and the ending of the movie. One courageous person sacrifice can make path of better life for the rest of the family.

Anyway this movie is highly recommended. as it is thought provoking and captivating.

http://www.bolthemovie.com/interface.html

What would you do?

As a nation we could not be more ashamed of anything than the lynching of two brothers in Sialkot last week. I don't have the courage to see the uncensored video, as even the glimpse of censored video on GEO gives me shivers. It is traumatizing, sad and shameful. As a mother I cannot even fathom the pain their mother must be going through and as a human being I cannot imagine the level of cruelty one can come down to.

But on the other hand people get murdered all the time, some for revenge, some by mistake, some for greed and some for even pleasure. What really shocks me in this particular case is hundreds of people standing around and not one standing up to stop the brutality. Not a single person thought for a split second, that whatever the reason is, there is no justification to murder someone in this manner. The only thing they did differently than animals was not to consume the bodies.

I was heatedly arguing last night with someone that the sense of right and wrong is so important for each of us. We should teach our children not ever to follow the crowd but to think for themselves. They should be able to distinguish the ethically correct from ethically wrong. They should be taught to stand up for themselves and for others, otherwise the world would become a horrible place. The person, who should remain nameless, asked me calmly that if I was (God forbid) present at that incident, would I have stepped up and told the murderers that I think that it is ethically wrong and they should justify their acts.

It physically upsets me to answer this question – I want to write down “Of course! No Doubt!” But that's easier said than done and......it would be a pure lie. It upsets me because if I am not that kind of person than my children won’t be and it upset me that hundreds of people standing in that pack were just as coward as me. That is why two innocent lives were brutally taken.
There is no doubt that justice should be served for those murderers – but each of us should also step back and think about ourselves and our values. There is and was no shortage of brutal and coward people in this world, but the only reason there is some indication of humanity is because of the people who stood up for the righteousness in the history. Be it Rosa Park or Nelson Mandela

I don’t know if there is a shortcut to achieve that kind of selflessness. One thing is for sure religion has failed to enforce that sense of humanity in us - I have argued many times before that people who are “Just” are not because they are Muslim or Christian or Hindu and similarly people who are “Unjust” are not because of their religion either. I think the only way we can spread this phenomenon is to first set example by our actions and then teach our kids about the REAL heroes who changed the history by standing up for their rights. Teach them to be humanitarian first and anything else second.

Napoleon had once said: "The world suffers a lot, not because of the violence of bad people, but because of the silence of good people!"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-11062184

I Am Not I

I am not I.
I am this one
walking beside me whom I do not see,
whom at times I manage to visit,
and whom at other times I forget;
the one who remains silent while I talk,
the one who forgives, sweet, when I hate,
the one who takes a walk when I am indoors,
the one who will remain standing when I die.

-by Juan Ramon Jimenez
(1881 - 1958)

On his first birthday...

My little one, Zain, recently learned to point. I never realized how much one can accomplish by just pointing. When he wants go outside he will point to the door, this will continue till we actually take him out. We can try distracting him, or turn him in another direction but the finger will stay pointed to the door.

It is amazing how human brain develops and how they learn what they learn on their own.

He has also learned to move all the icons around on my iPhone, isn't that crazy? He is just one year old! Well a lot of credit goes to the brains in Apple for that, because you cannot make a device more intuitive than this (at least not in my imagination but that is exactly why Apple will not hire me). Ahad, who is almost four now, learned to use iPhone when he was only 16 months old, and when I say "learn", it means he was able to launch You Tube application, browse to his favorite videos, play, stop, go back, browse more, select more and so on. He learned a lot from that alphabets, counting, shapes, colors etc. Also iPhone in his case is the best baby sitter I have..he can watch videos for hours (not that I let him, of course not..sad that you even thought that way)

Anyways back my little one, one of the thoughts that keep me awake at night is that I am such a horrible mother for writing zero posts about him. Like how can I not document any things about his first year of life, it is like not taking his pictures every hour or preparing for months for his first birthday or calling the doctor when he sneezes more than twice etc (agh poor second kids). Well one good thing that he cannot complain about later is that most of his pictures are of him alone as Ahad refused to sit with him for more than a second. I say that only because my younger brothers always whined how in all of their childhood pictures I am standing next to them. And even though we did not have a big first birthday party for Zain, I promise him we will have a big bash on his wedding, isn't that worth the wait.

For now he hasn't started to walk independently, however he walks holding furniture and he can win any crawling race without doubt. It feels like trying to get hold of a rabbit when I am chasing him. He would hide in the tiniest corners and not chirp until he feels like or when he gets stuck there. Oh and he has just one front tooth, it is the cutest thing in the world. When he tries to eat an apple you can see tiny bite marks all around, only if he can understand that he need at least two teeth to bite of a piece.

He loves everything his older brother is playing with. He has access to all the toys during the day when Ahad is at school but somehow everything is more interesting when Ahad is playing with them. He will knock down the tower Ahad would build with blocks or ruin his puzzles or just try to snatch milk bottle from Ahad's mouth, holding his own in the other hand. My justification to Ahad to be patient sounds lame at this point and trying to tell Zain that this is not appropriate behavior is apparently more complex for him to understand than using an iPhone.

The strangest thing is the first word he learned to speak is "apple", how that came about simply beats me. As soon as he sees one he would start saying "aaapppl", does this signify that he has the same eating genes as his parents OR Could it be some how linked to the iPhone marketing stratgey? Some waves from the iPhone coding my son's brain to say APPLE, APPLE ... (at this I take back my comment about not having any imagination)

Moving on

We moved, finally!

After 5 years of traveling 120 miles every day, we decided to move closer to my work. The big deal wasn’t even the numbers of miles, it was crossing two New York City bridges each way and paying huge amount for tolls and gas and still sitting in traffic for a lot of unnecessary hours. There were times when it took 3 hours to reach work, 3 hours! Unbelievable and not only I went along with this arrangement for all these years, I spend both of my pregnancies commuting the same way and I worked till the last day before the babies were born. At the end I was even having hard time fitting in the driver seat. I think I was able to cope with that because my pregnancies cooperated with my commute.

Some people would call me crazy, some would say I was brave, some would say “you gotta do what you have to”. Seriously I don’t know what I was thinking; initially I was excited to get this great work opportunity and was ambitious enough to do whatever it takes but with each kid it became harder. I was getting less and less time to see them, I would leave at 6:30 am in the morning when they were asleep and not see them again till 6pm. I was spending only a couple of hours with them each day. Also it was getting physically exhausting as the time I reached home all my energy was gone, I would force myself to play with the kids. In reality all I wanted to do was to just lie down and watch some garbage TV and eat junk food.

However it was not all bad, I was mostly relaxed during the drive and I thought of it as my down time. Also it gave me an opportunity to listen to Audio books which kept my reading (or listening) up to date. I made all my due phone calls without any interruptions and most importantly I was able to think. Most the time thinking would make me more tired than the driving, and I don’t know if any good came out of that anyway. But I need time to think otherwise I feel frustrated.

For a long time it felt like we could never move, because we bought a house and we had family in that area. This was our first house, and there was hardly ever a talk about leaving. We put so much into it, and it had so many memories. Both of my sons were born there, and we had some really great times of our lives spend with friends and families over the years, on many different occasion such as my brother's wedding, New Year Nights, No-Reason Dance Parties, Birthday Celebrations etc (except for a few time when people started throwing stuff at each other, just kidding) .For some odd reason it felt like that the house defined us, and if we were to leave it we would lose our identity, we would be lost. And as much as we were comfortable with it, it was as contended with our presence. It felt like we were in “IT” together, comes good or bad times. So when it was time to leave, I went back in the house and silently bid my farewell. It was completely bare, there were no pictures on the wall and no furniture to fill the rooms. It was exactly the way when we moved in it the first day, the only difference was, initially we both were strangers and suspicious of each other’s presence. We were dubious of the sincerity the other one will show, we were dubious of the dreams that were build just by our moving into this house.

The whole project of finding a new house, packing, moving and other nick-knack was extremely stressful. I am not going into that detail however I am sure we couldn’t have done it without the help of our family and friends. Each person played a different role and always an important one. Someone was packing just the kitchen stuff while other was bringing in food, one was watching the kids while someone else was helping us sort out the stuff to throw/donate. There was so much stuff that I didn’t even know I had. I found a packed carton that we brought with us when we moved to this house 5 years earlier, how ridiculous is that?

Anyway we finally moved to our new house, 5 minutes away from my work, on July 25th, and now we are in process of making friends with it.

Ideal v.s. Typical Husbands

Disclaimer
Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental. May be too intense for some husbands readers.





Wife: We need to clean the house before the guests arrive
Typical Husband: It looks clean to me (switches on the TV)
Ideal Husband: Yes, let me know what I can do to help, vacuum maybe?


Wife: Oh God I forgot to bring the bib (baby is crying)
Typical Husband: Didn't you remember when coming from the bedroom to grab the bib *rolls his eyes*
Ideal Husband: Which one should I bring?

Wife: I have a headache
Typical Husband: Really I have one too, in fact my legs and back is hurting and you know what I think I am having chest pain as well
Ideal Husband: Tylenol or Advil? or may be a head massage?

What not to wear

We decided to have a BBQ on Saturday, DH is the one usually doing all the grilling I just help him finish the end product of his hard work. We realized that we were missing a couple of VERY important things (Soda and Corns) so DH asked me if I can go get it from the store . After making sure that he knows that this is a huge favor I am doing for him, I agreed. Please bear in mind this is a beautiful and lazy weekend morning and I am wearing a Shalwaar Kameez.

There was a dilemma, I did not want to change, I wanted to savor the state of laziness a little more, and changing cloths would have made that small chore bigger and me more weary. But then going out in public in that attire always causes frowns, raised eyebrows and no eye contacts. There is no denying that people demeanor changes interacting with people that have brown skin. And God forbid if that brown skinned person is dressed in a colorful three piece, three size bigger outfit, then that bonehead should always embrace himself/herself for stares, eye rolling, head shaking and some times derogatory remarks.

So the dilemma was what should I do? Should I spend a five minutes to change or just go out the way I was and not care about people. After all it is New York City, melting point of the world where multitude of nationalities live and prosper next to each other. Why can't I just walk out like I want to, without being so conscious?

Sadly the world is a different place compared to what it was when we were budding immigrants in this amazing city.

First of all in late 90's majority didn't even know Pakistan existed on the world map. Ironically I used to get annoyed by that, especially after confirming with people that I AM from Pakistan, they would still insist I looked Indian. I guess it was easier for them to categorize me since obviously India existed for them. Of course that has changed tremendously in recent times, almost every day we are in horrifying headlines.

During the "nobody knows Pakistan" time, I would receive compliments every time I went out in a traditional dress. But now if dressed "inappropriately", there are some who wouldn't come out of the car to pump gas, or go out to throw garbage, even if their life depended on it. I know a few who ditched their Hijabs, shaved off beards after 9/11 to avoid racial profiling. Sad but true.

Anyway you must be curious to know how I actually went out to grab that bottle of soda and corns. Take a guess!

Also I am curious to know what YOU think when you see a foreigner dressed in their traditional dress?