Abdullah Khan Afridi

There is still some goodness left in the people of this world.

My mom used to say that whenever she came across a good samaritan or witnessed an act of kindness. Today was yet another boring day at the library till this happened.

I just finished a block of questions and decided to take a break with the Economic Times shouting itself hoarse with the whole Satyam fiasco. There was this guy I saw from the corner of my eye but I stuck to what I was reading. A couple of seconds later I couldntt resist lifting my head up as this figure was slowly and deliberately looming in my direction. So as I looked up I saw this guy who looked well South Asian lets say. He came over to the side of my table as I took out my earphones and braced myself for the encounter.

Can you speak Urdu?

No.

Hindi?

Yes.

Well if you dont mind can I just talk to you for a minute.

Yeah.

Bhaijaan My name is Abdullah Khan Afridi from Peshawar. I am an architect. Just got here a month and a half ago. I am living in London as of now and came over to Toronto to meet with my immigration lawyer. Unfortunately though this afternoon my wife lost her purse with all our money in it. We are stranded now as we dont have enough money to get back to London. I have my wife and 21 year old daughter waiting as I am out here looking for help. I am new in this place and I dont know anyone. I tried going back to the lawyers office but found it closed. Someone there said that there was a mosque somewhere nearby where someone might be willing to help me. As I was walking by, you caught my eye and I just thought that in this foreign land I will take a chance and ask you for help.

Yeah, I guess. What are looking for?

I am short of exactly 35 dollars. Thats all I need to get my family back to London tonight. I was hoping you could help me out with the money. I promise I will be back on Friday, not this one but the next, and I will come back and repay you. Trust me brother, I know its awkward like this asking around for money but I dont know anyone else here and there is nothing else I can do. I am Pashtun and mark my word, I will come back and return the money.

I think for a minute. The man seemed honest and well as always in these situations, I am easily persuaded.

All I have got with me are 15 dollars and thats what I can give you.

The man hesitates and looks at me for a bit.

Bhaijaan I am not here to ask around for money. I promise to return it all. I wish that you could please help me out. There is an ATM just outside. I would be very indebted to you.

Alright I was going to give him the money. I just was going to. Sometimes I am just sold on certain things. There needn't be any particular reason. I just do it anyway. And this was one of those. I got up and walked out the library.

Allah, Subhanawata'ala will keep you well and will never put you in bad times. I will pray for you my friend. Thank you. Thank you so very much. I walked all the way from Union to here. We havent eaten all day.

Well you should just take the subway to Union on the way back. Its too cold.

Brother that would cost money too. I couldn't. All I need are 35 dollars.

A Pashtun's word? Alright. Lets not talk about it anymore. I am giving you what you want and lets both forget it, I think.

Outside the ATM is a BMO. My bank is Scotiabank. I tell him that. We decide to walk over to Bloor and Spadina. I go inside get my jacket.

It is -22 C. As we walk he asks me if all the buildings there belonged to the university. I tell him they do. Even that most of everything between Queen's Park and Spadina, and Bloor and King are university buildings. He says he has seen Western and it was huge. Well UofT was in the centre of the city and so was actually smaller than some of the university campuses I tell him.

What are studying? Finished medicine in India. Final Year? No I have my degree.

Mashallah! Congratulations brother. It is a matter of great pride.

I guess.

I am an architect. I have two Bachelors degress from the University of Peshawar. But people here tell me that my degrees are invalid, that I am unqualified. It is maddening. I regret coming to this country. My sister-in-law, my wife's sister, would call us from Vancouver every week and tell was what a great life it was and that we were missing out. May be she hated us. My family runs a garment factory in Peshawar, we make leather. I have two brothers who live in Germany. But I dont know why I came here. Once a woman had decided on something, there is little you can do to change her mind. My wife insisted. You get screwed. I gave 47000 dollars US to the immigration consultant to get us here and now I realise its all waste. I wish I never came here.

By this time we reached the ATM. He says he will wait outside. I draw 30 dollars. I think if I should just give him 40 dollars and be done with it. Then again he asked for 35 dollars and thats what I will give him. Money clutched in hand I walked out.

Thank you very much brother. Thank you. I will never forget this.

He leaned forward and hugged me.

I will be back to return this money to you.

Don't worry about it. Its alright.

No brother I couldn't. Atleast on that pretext we will get a chance to sit down for some tea. Please give me your number.

I do. He makes note of it in the Arabic script. And then my name too.

He points and asks if that direction was South.

I pull out my wallet and give him another 3 dollars and tell him to just take the subway.

He hugs me again and walks off around the corner still thanking me.

I walk back.

It will always be tough. One half doesn't believe it at all. The other wonders how many times total strangers have helped me and so may be if I owed it to this man. Well I gave him the money he needed. Thats all.

People will tell me that I got taken for a ride. That I got conned.

I gave the man money, it wasn't so much to make feel the pinch yet quite a sum.

I wish for him to come back, that we do sit down for that tea and that I make a new friend.

I don't need the money.

I want him back just to prove to everyone, to myself that we still have honest good men who will help one another, friend or stranger.

I need that.

On Olfactory Obituaries

Gee! That took quite a bit, didnt it? Well anyway I have some good news and bad news. The quest that almost inspired a copy-cat tome by your truly familiarly title " A Suitable Boot" has been completed. To an exalted Vikram Seth, there shall not be any further need for legal recourse in Boy vs Boot. And thats just the bad news.

After weeks, no months, of idle surfing and contemplation I have finally settled on a pair of boots. Well I had to if I didnt want to be held under the Patriot Act (I dont think Canada has one! But knowing the States and my old Nike shoes the borders would have been blurred.)on charges for conspiring to suffocate innocent civilians and causing havoc. Those damn Air Max 360s got so stinky that after a day of wearing them in the library I had to choose between braving the cold winds from the open windows or suffering the stench. The cold won and gladly so.

So a week ago, with renewed resolve after an self-degrading introspective bitch fest with Tharan on how stupid each of us were, I set out to the Bay as a last resort to find anything that could relieve the suffering of the genteel Torontonians. The store was pretty busy with no salesperson ready to help me right away. Looking around I chanced upon those cursed Timbaerland Chelsea boots. Damn it! $170. Screw that shite. I didnt think I was ready to shell out $200 for a pair of boots. Torontonians arent that dear to me. SO moving on I found a pair of Rockport boots that looked interesting and asked the Joan for a size 10.5 which ofcourse they didnt have. See thats the course of being an average joe. Everyone's got the same size. Not of everything though! You know what I am sayin'. Well anyway the lady had me try a size 10 wide and well they fit alright.

Joan was this nice lady with a crisp British accent, I'd say in her late sixties probably fighting obsolescence and dementia in the shoe store. I just love it how oldies here never settle down and always keep themselves busy. Makes me sad though, to think of the irepparable damage I might have inflicted on her already atrophying brain when she caught a whiff of soggy fungus laden shoes while trying to put down a new pair of the Rockports I'd asked for. See first rule, never buy the piece on display and second rule, never buy shoes if they dont match. Well anyway even the other pair had some minor faults that my OCD brain found. But under intense pressure from the helpless citizens I settled for them.
Ups: Boots, Waterproof(tear! yes they truly are!, Casual look(definitely dont look like them 6" timbas you know, 1 day break-in period

Downs: Not Chelseas, take longer to wear, $170!!!! Damn!

See the funny thing was I have wanted to buy waterproof chelsea boots for a long time now. Just couldnt find them in India. And when I finally can (they were even available at the bay, well only one style, the timberland earthkeepers)in the last minute I applied the stupid logic that the elastic gores on the sides may eventually loosen and the shoe may not fit so well. Stupid I know!

Well anyway after months of research and debate with everyone including Mark, Murali's Russian roommate, I am now the owner of a proud pair, and cause of the celebration of hundreds of relieved snouts.


Obituary: The Hudson's Bay Co. lost a valuable pair of senile olfactory lobes in a show a true commitment to the nation. Joan is a proud grandmother and continues to proudly serve the Canadian people.

(Rajma Mere Aona) "Waise Sharmao Na"

(My Rajma Come to Me, Dont Be Shy Like That)

So its 1 30 am in the morning. Waise Sharmao Na - Shankar Mahadevan crooning to the troubles of Anushka Shankar and Karsh Kale. Fantastic album I must tell you. Anyway couldnt think of a title for the post. So whatever. Anyway just saw this movie called The Life Before Her Eyes. Uma Thurman sees something all the time and I have to tell you though, the intention seems to be there yet one more time execution leaves something missing. I think someone else could have come up with a better direction on the subject. This, as it was, wasnt very impressive. 

Anyway in the humdrum of living in Toronto, I am for the first time truly putting my culinary inclinations to work. And well believe it or not I am surprising myself. See when I cook, I dont have a set recipe or a procedure. I start with a picture in my head. This picture will be of something I know I really want to eat. Like say today it was rajma. I had bought a can of kidney beans a week ago and they were just sitting there while I was working my way with the lentils and other things. Well anyway at Metro the other day I managed to find a can opener like the one we had back home and thankfully I hadnt had to rob a bank. Man sometimes I wonder when such a simple thing as opening a can got so painful that it needed motorized hands-free systems and all. Anyway so here I was with a can of beans and a picture of rajma in my head. 

The other day fooling around youtube, I found this guy's channel. Vah re Vah.com. So its some desi guy with a 'bet your left nut' southie accent making a very genuine effort at rajma made easy. Honestly though, it is a good idea. Most vids are about 5 or 6 minutes long and he gives you the essentials. So this time like never before I decided to follow VrV bhayya or should I say anna. Armed with an allegedly seven star chef's advice, I head right into it. I had it all. I picked up some italian strained tomatoes on the way back with one onion, whipping cream and other essentials. One onion? These damned leaves here are so big. Like a small pumpkin or something. Believe it or not by the time I got cooking more than half the pot was this one onion, and they are spicy too. 

Moving on, I started like a good student of my anna with some oil in the pot. Got to tell you though I washing up afterwards thinking to me my Black & Decker rice cooker and that Betty Crocker pot are like godsend, couldnt do anything without them. Best $50 bucks I spent in this country so far. So with the oil heating up I dumped some jeera and the chopped onion in there. Wait for them to turn golden and then add some garam masala. Well sabji masal was my substitute. Havent managed to go by little India down on Gerrard St so far. Anyway this does it for my buds. Then it was the turn of the ginger garlic paste and the tomato puree. Added some water and set it to gather a boil. Anna said to add some water strained from cooking the rajma beans. I was using canned beans and I wasnt ready to poison myself with all that preservative BS. So tap water it was. 

See around the kitchen I am almost can look like a star. Sometimes I think that everytime I cooked if I had a girl watching, I could do everything right to get her going. You know what I'm sayin'? So while the masalas gathered some steam I washed up the rice and set my B&D to the task. I washed up some corriander and chopped it up. Garnish man! Presentation is the strength of a good chef. By the way, I didnt know it was called cilantro as well. Or maybe I knew it but who cares to remember these things. So the corriander was ready. And so were the beans. Had washed them clean of all that slimy canned goo and made VrV da happy dumping them exactly how he showed me. And then you see things started to unfold. Everything till now was perfect. Alright agreed I hadnt chopped the onion so finely or that most of the jeera had been burnt by the time i saved their behinds with the onion but hey what the hell so far so good. Only problem was it wasnt really looking it.

Once I make up my mind, I tend to be in it for good. I dont know why I was thinking this in the middle of everything but it surely wasnt doing anything for my satiety centre. Well I think hunger being the basic instinct that it is got me thinking about other things and then it wasnt too hard to drift for a bit there before the jumping lid got me. Little Betty had too much steam building inside and the lid didnt have one of those little vents. So checking on my dinner, according to the international renowned Sanju(I baptised my chef, I dont think thats his name but he looks like a Sanju) I was ready to eat. Well definitely didnt look like it. 

See there wasnt the right consistency, the righ colour or even the right smell. When I cook, inexperienced as I am, I use all my senses to guide me. So you will see me peep, sniff, feel and taste all the time. I was talking about my food. And it seems now I feel convinced that I often do hear it right as well. But today none of these agreed. Well VrV beta now take a hike, Culti mar! This wasnt going to be my dinner. Not tonight and definitely not for the next two. Rule #434 in the Bachelor Handbook : If you take the pains to cook today, dont forget tomorrow. And the days after. 

I knew what I had to do. Some whipping cream will change it all. See I know thats what mom used to do. She would add some KDD thick cream into any of her culinary adventures to improve their consistency. Added to the taste as well, made them really rich. So in a hurry I fetched the carton of whipping cream I just bought, shook it up and opened the seal, held over the bubbling cauldron and tilted it. Pour, pour and pour. Damn!

See now thats another thing. In all the energy that a kitchen brings in, I forgot my amateur skill and go straight for it. That is, I rarely measure up anything. I just add as much as I feel I should. Thats it. And trust me, going by today that isnt very good. By the time I mixed in the cream, the rajma went from a cinnabar red to a light citrus. Not very heartening. And as if that werent enough it started to smell of cooking cream, you know that wierd unmarinated paneer smell. Shifting into damage control, I dumped some more tomato puree hoping to bring the colour back. The smell changed again. Damn!! So added some more subji masala. It did little. To the smell or the colour. If this were a cartoon, a little cloud over my head would show a bulb light up. 

Pataks Madras Curry paste. Another great product of modern day technology and market. So I scooped some of it mixed in some water and in it went. The colour had slightly improved now. It looked more like a kind of rajma I remembered eating at a dhaba once. So finally as I almost gave up, I went in for the kill. A taste didnt do too much. See my dad always did this, if you ever gave him something to taste, once wasnt going to enough. So go armed with half a bowl. The taste wasnt horrible but it surely wasnt what I was hoping for. It was initially bland, had a spicy aftertaste and then left you breathing like a dragon as it went down. I was missing something.

Salt. Now that is something that definitely increased the palatability of this mess I made. Still there was the dragon breath to be handled. I mean its one thing when it burns on the way out, but I honestly feel good food should never burn on the way in. So two big chunks of garlic butter it was going to be. Atleast all that butter would numb down the buds. Sadly there wasnt going to be much I could do for the behind, that fella was going to burn and I dont think I am ready to try two big chunks of garlic butter down there. 

Finally, it came to an agreeable odour, clour and consistency. And as for the taste. Well I have to tell you, before today I had my doubts but now I think we can make it official. I can work wonders in the kitchen. As all the ingredients settled down, everything fell right into place. Rajma it was. See I am one greedy, gluttunous SOB when it comes to food I like but I was so amazed myself that I dropped some of it off at a friends place upstairs before settling down to enjoy my work.

And as for the hallmark of a good cook. It all comes down to the presentation, even if it is for yourself. Eating begins with the Eyes.

Its not Over. Still!

Well here is an update for all those of you not reading, the climax over a pair of shoes runs on. The story rivalling many network saas-bahus is now nearing completion of its third month. But soon all the twists and turns will come to an end. I have decided to abruptly end the first and hopefully the only season. Today I will be going out to the Bay, probably as soon as it opens and will take one last look for a pair of decent shoes. If all else fails, Hush Puppies are going to save the day. Lets hope the $200 will turn out well spent. 

P.S.- Is it just me or are there no decent shoe companies other than timberland that make waterproof shoes on a regular basis? In Canada with all the snow and rain, I would expect a decent market for waterproof shoes of all kinds. By the way, to all those who didnt know and couldnt care less, here is another fact to flush. Canada has no Timberland stores. The closest one is in Buffalo, NY. Even Kuwait has Timberland. How wierd!?!

Avva Kavali Buvva Kavali!

(Have my pie and Eat it too!)

Sweat, rain, icy slush and maybe, some fungus? My shoes smell wonderful. I was sitting in the library the oher day, across from a quiet Chinese kid pracitising his ESL tests, cursing why my olfactory lobes were being assaulted. God! Someone tell this kid to clean up!!

Nike Air Max 360. Rs 10000. I bought them, umm, I dont know sometime back. I was in the Nike store with my mom getting impatient over my now famous indecisive rambling. I had been through tthe whole inventory all the while knowing that it was either the black shox or these 360s I was going to buy. After about an hour of fooling around, my mom got my game. She asked the sales guy who was fed up with this whole stupid son and patient mother scene that I bet he was hoping my mom wasnt there so that he could just throw my dignified rear out on the street. Anyway, my mom declared that she would buy me one of the two, the shox(which were the round about 9000) and the 360s. Now what was she trying to do? The whole time i spent looking was to avoid having to choose. And now my mom asks me to do what i hate the most. Choose? Are you kidding? Both My Father and my father have been very kind to me. But not so much as to entertain my idioticities. So I flipped a coin, shox won. I bought the 360s. Come on they were more expensive. Brag-worthy!

Choosing. Something I am not terribly good at. Growing up at home included lectures in Introduction to Economics, The Art of Spending and Cost-Benefit Analyses. Free! So I listened and as it happens in these cases, thanks or no thanks, I learnt something. And I think I made him proud. I have this tendency to look around so much that i surprise myself sometimes. Trust me thats not easy! Early years at surveying meant walking door to door, picking up brochures, flyers, quotes and what have you, with friday siestas lost to the post-prandial sugar surge to my cortex. Those were the days. (Mind you, being a middle/high schooler meant your surveys were for fun and what you said barely counted towards anything.)

Enter Internet. And once again I can go on about the boon/bane discussion. The internet has taken my surveys from the realm of fun to compulsion. Previously i knew only as much as the shopkeeper told me. Now the tables turned. I know more than any sales guy about the product I am going to buy. I often know already what I want and why, but the sadist in me often decides to humour the poor guy to make his pitch, offer off the record advice and persuade me. Come on, he's there for that, no one should get paid for free. Sometimes I play the ignoramus to start with asking the obvious while i slowly titrated my questions to his info levels. If he go cocky like he knew so much, Boom!! I'd take him down, lead him down the path of sales hell, cluster bomb him with all my research. Its not all fun though. Sometimes the game backfires. If I dont pick my lamb accurately I get slaughtered. It has happened more than once and it is not fun.

Anyway, so now with this whole internet thing, like so many other surveys, I have started to look for my shoes online. Surprising thing was that there were very few online stores that delivered in Canada. That hasnt stopped me though from looking for my perfect solemates. I think I have almost made up my mind on buying Timberlands. And somewhere along the line I have picked up this new fixation for waterproof shoes, which funnily are fewer and harder to find. No water resistant mind you, waterproof. There is a distinc difference. The other day made I fell for these King's Bay chukkas, goretex, waterproof, airport friendly. But just as I was about to punch those little credit card monies into the website, I found a liking for the new Earthkeepers line Timberland has launched sometime back. Suddenly I feel inclined to shell out for that boot style. Maybe its just the eco-friendly branding that seems to have taken hold of the save-planet-earth parts of my brain.

And so the forces win again. I like two different things. Budget dictates that I can have only one. I have to choose!

Yes We Can

Nov 8th , 2008

Watching Obama say these words gave me goose bumps. For the first time after a long time I actually cared about America and its people.  I don’t know when I forgot them. Must have been sometime through those eight forgettable years that have just gone by.

The earliest memory of America, though I have never been there, was the fateful night when I sat huddled in front of a TV set with a bunch of other Indian kids while the grownups watched from over their couches and dinner plates. The Iraqis on the streets couldn’t do enough to deter a resilient Indian soiree. Bush Sr was talking about the goings-on in the middle-east, the invasion of Kuwait. I still remember his wrinkled, meditative words heavily pouring out. War it was.

I am a child of the Gulf War. Americans were our heroes.  Play and chatter was abundant with the imagery of good-evil transferred to the America-Iraq scenario. America was the good guy. That was 1990.

Operation Desert Storm. Bosnia. Somalia. Kosovo.  Operation Desert Fox.  The ten years that followed were a series of conflicts relayed in a carefully reconstructed manner always readily identifying the bad guy. Of course we knew who the good guys were. Didn’t we? Growing up to these events brought on some questions. Yet one never doubted the intention. America meant no harm. They fought for the people, their rights and their good. Well there were other ways of doing it but no other would step up to the task so readily. That was America doing what it did best, playing the good guy.

Then came the new millennium and with it brought controversy, doubt and eventually, decay. Controversy over the how the man got into the office, doubt over his capability and judgment, and finally the decay of the American spirit and also the good will that America had fostered in minds like mine. George Walker Bush had done everything humanly possible to open the wrong doors, rub people the wrong way, all the while carrying a straight face of a man driven by vision and purpose.

9/11 forever changed the world we lived in. But Afghanistan and later Iraq were hasty responses to a blow on the very face of the American spirit. The need of the hour was determination, resilience and thoughtful intervention. What has come to be does not even qualify debate. Could it have been different? May be. Should it have been so bad? Definitely not. Four years ago, for reasons unknown, at least to many outside America, Bush was re-elected to the highest office in the most powerful country in the world. The second term of W is something I can’t wait to forget, and I am not alone. Bad policy is very different from ignorance. Persistent and worsening ignorance can only be judged as idiocy. God bless America became God save America.

As with all things, the Bush years have come to pass. Every American who voted Obama on the ballot represented the hopes of the entire world. People from every corner who directly or indirectly were beneficiaries or victims, as times have it, of American policy of recent years held their breath as America went to the polls. The world was glued to its TVs, radios and computers awaiting the outcomes of their suffering, the fruit of the hopes they had invested in the common citizen of the USA. And they weren’t let down.

The words of change the new president of America had on the eve of his victory were not for his people alone but for people world over. The man on stage in front of America today was not just a leader America voted for, he was chosen by all of us around the world who wanted to see the guiding light in new hands. Watching intently, I couldn’t help but smile to myself when I saw him speak with conviction and promise of restoring America to its lost glory.

Obama is not just a man or a leader or a president. He is an idea. An image of the power and will of the people, invested in one man. America has once again beat the odds and managed to make that leap of faith. Less than 50 years after Martin Luther King, they have elected as president a young, black man who has the tenacity to challenge, the will to persevere and courage to transform. He represents an opportunity for America to try something new, to show the world a new direction and to make possible tolerant and peaceful coexistence. It is a chance to abandon a rampant ruthless barbarism, both fundamental and state-sponsored, that is scarring the lives of millions of people and bring back an era of dialogue and non-violence. A man who does not carry the weight of years of electoral politics, who is not hardened by the unforgiving corridors of Washington and entrenched in the interests of the high and the mighty brings with him a sense of honesty to the table. This alone will give Obama what few other presidents have enjoyed, the respect and adulation of the peoples of the world and above all a chance, to break ice and foster brotherhood.

Economy. Trade. Healthcare. Foreign Policy. World Peace. Obama’s mandate, rather the legacy he stands to inherit, is unenviable to say the least. Yet even the longest journeys start with a small step. And with Obama, America has taken a giant leap. Four years on, I look forward to remembering these times as a period of great change when I stood witness as history unfolded and a new paradigm shift came to be in the way the people of America, the people of the world lived.

Mr. Barrack Hussein Obama, Yes we can.

Her Quest to End

She walks on, buried

By her years, the cold bites her heart

Hunched against the howl, of fading

Winds, pain weakened, her wrinkles carry

The weight of frailty, her years have rolled

On like the seasons, as she prepares

To brave the cruelty of another final winter.

Some fly, yet some wither, the fruit

Like the leaves, and the turning heavens

Grey, she has with her memories

Of the lost, hers fallen and theirs taken

By the world, with its times, have come

Clinking needles, the lonely chatter

Her yarns share her destiny.

Blessed young angels run amuck

In the warm summer sun, the crisp

Laundry, pie on her window sill, and

Her womb, for it bears more fruit, than

One, kind to her finds her, joy, not knows

No sorrows. This is to her, womanhood

A worship, for the labors.

It is a lovely morning, spring

Has found its way to the skies, to her life.

A chuckle, a subtle touch, sends the hearts

Fluttering into the chirp, the laughter of the children

To be, of infinite hope and dream. It is

In the song and dance, in the clutter of chairs,

To the bustle of kin, she has come to be, one.

As the apples redden, the cherries

Ripe, she grows, a cherubic smile

Flowing locks, in the darkest night

Dreams of moments to be, her luscious

Senses, her graceful splendor nurture

Swaying fields, her maiden youth.

She skips, falls, scrapes her knee

A bold girl she, can’t stop the tears

As she runs to her mother, suppressing

That quaint wail that escapes her pain.

In those tender arms that raised her

She rests, salt drying on her upper lip.

From dust to womb, a soul

She journeys, to another body

Endlessly yearning, to dwell in a moment of

Salvation, for eternity.