Venial Sin

I’m off to Lahore this weekend, so don’t be surprised if there isn’t a post up for a couple of days. At least this time, I can give you a reason for my hiatus Also, I may wind up running into U Mich boy while I’m there. Keep your collective fingers crossed, if you’d be so kind.

The pot/hash/weed/whatever-the-black-solid-stuff-is smoke had actually made me feel really gross and somewhat dizzy, so naturally, when I heard someone say “The drinks are here at last”, I bounced off my Corner Floor Cushion of Angst and made my way straight to where I could detect vodka (it was pretty easy, everyone was clustered around it). Karachi’s been pretty dry, booze-wise, for the last couple of months (since the December wedding season). Part of that is due to the fact that [...]

He had hands that could take the pain out of almost anything, and eyes that you could drown in without even realising that you’d run out of oxygen. Watching his eyelashes curl just before they ended, tracing the veins and capillaries in his eyeballs, meandering across his aqueous and vitreous humours, snaking into runes so complex that it was easy to ignore the extra sixteenth of an inch that his right eyelid drooped below his left eyelid. It just didn’t [...]

Not that the party didn’t seem like fun; there were some remarkably attractive young men of the male persuasion present (the reason for my specifications will become clear soon enough, I promise). And all the while, I was reeling from the traumatic realisation that some of my friends ARE right, and that the men in the Punjab ARE hotter than those in Sindh. By far. I mean, there were only a handful of mildly unattractive guys at this party, although [...]

Gentlefolk, I assure all of you with Haloscan commenting systems in place on your weblogs that I have been faithfully reading and attempting to comment, but can’t, since all the IP addresses that my ISP provides seem to mysteriously be blacklisted. Ergo, don’t take it personally if I can’t actually leave witticisms on most people’s blogs. It’s not me, it’s Haloscan. Really.

My first meeting with Über was relatively uneventful, despite the cloak-and-dagger element of it. It’s quite amazing how much one can be put off lunch by the other party’s peeking over menus and behind potted plants to confirm the absence of any acquaintances who may in the future, at some embarrassing moment, arch their exquisitely plucked, shaped eyebrows just that one-eighth of an inch to indicate that they know something potentially dramatic about you. Then again, it’s also quite wonderful [...]

Once Über, Diplomat Version 2.0 (a friend of Diplomat’s, but assigned to the Islamabad embassy) and I had recovered from our oxygen deprivation, the remainder of our trip in the mountains was delightfully uneventful. Except for the part where it was realised, over lunch, that I was far younger than either of my associates in laziness. Once Diplomat Version 2.0 had stopped spitting and hissing (also once the cheese grater was removed from within his reach), Über decided to relate [...]

[For the first parts of this story, check out the “Unforgivable Sins” link on the left sidebar, or use the search box.] Much to our chagrin, Diplomat and I discovered that the bottle of wine we had been forcing down our throats had been finished by an extraordinarily beefy man in the world’s ugliest, tightest leather pants. Since he was easily three times our combined size, we were about to turn Opiate loose on him, but he lurched unsteadily to [...]

I’m currently in Islamabad, sitting on Uber’s four-poster bed, which has what are possibly the world’s most crisp, pristine, white sheets. My capris are covered with hairs from the Beast, which is shedding at a phenomenal rate, and has apparently decided to be my new best friend, in the sadly-mistaken belief that I am somehow, somewhere, hiding food for him to chow down on. Islamabad is beautiful, with sunlight streaming in through Uber’s bedroom windows, the air-conditioner working silently in [...]

I would apologise for my bastard-like behaviour in having not posted for almost a full fortnight (at least, not having published any of my own work), but you all know how terrible I feel about that already, so we’ll pretend that it never happened, and just go straight to the good stuff. My brother was in town at the end of last month, along with my pregnant sister-in-law, which led to my spending many a day hunting down (and silently [...]