21.

I don't think there is anything our nation loves more than a good conspiracy theory, except perhaps biryani and cricket. Of course, when conspiracy theories are discussed over biryani while watching cricket, you have the formula for happiness. I doubt any of us are completely immune to the temptation of believing that either Israel or India is behind everything wrong that happens to this country, but some of us are worse than others, and some conspiracy theories are more creative than others.

One of my current favourite theories is that the Indus flooded because India made it happen. Bund breaches and badly-built dams aside, the idea that the Indian state was doing some kind of incredible rain-dance imploring us to have exceptionally heavy monsoons is brilliant. Clearly, Indians' ability to make it rain at will has not helped them irrigate their own land or feed their own people, but it's just so typical of Hindus to be interested in nothing but our downfall. What's more, they are able to infiltrate the ranks of our hardworking NGOs and play a sneaky double-game in which they offer 20 million rupees in aid while conspiring to kill flood survivors. Since India possesses such great supernatural powers, perhaps we should ask them to target specific militants the Pakistan army is after. That way, it will only rain on the bad guys, and everyone will be happy.

It's not just Indians who are out to get us, though. The Israelis want us all dead too, but I suppose that goes without saying. As a nation of unified Muslims, we are the Palestinians' greatest resource in the intifada. Our material assistance is of no importance, because what the Israelis really want is to eliminate our support for Hamas. That's why they decided to go for the jugular and defame our cricket team. Cricket=happiness=good national morale=sense of brotherhood=concern for our Palestinian brothers=nuclear ally for Hamas. Trust Jews, who have done nothing but persecute us since the very birth of Islam, to engineer false allegations against our national heroes through the media that they obviously control. Because remember: every powerful media company is owned by Jews, and every Jew is an Israeli, and every Israeli is a Zionist, and all Zionists want Pakistan to suffer. There's a page out of Zaid Hamid's book if you lack the patience to sit through one of his lectures. That is really all you need to know to be a fan of the guy.

Then, of course, there was America to blame for everything. Unfortunately, we are one conspiracy theory down because their role in our misery is not only obvious and therefore uninteresting, they've already acknowledged it publicly and are giving tons of aid in guilt-money. However, we need to remember that aid is never just aid. How do we know it's not being filtered to CIA employees, who spend their entire lives trying to convince us all that Al Qaeda exists? Our aid money doesn't just go into Zardari's real estate investments, it also goes into the bank accounts of Americans who are being paid to get OBL lookalikes to make fake videos about how he is hiding in Pakistan, just so they can remain in our country on an extended vacation. Obviously.

Don't get carried away in your hatred of all non-Muslims just yet. It turns out that our religious compatriots are in on the conspiracy to destroy Pakistan too. I heard only today that it's not Pakistani Sunnis who are blowing up Shias. Pakistan is in fact the site of a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Iran is trying to convert all of us to Shias, while the Saudis are venting their anger at a Shia nation becoming a nuclear power. This is also evidenced through the sense of love and brotherhood that has existed between sects in Pakistan since the 90s, when Shia doctors and professionals were being targeted by Saudi agents.

Understanding and accepting this world view is vitally important for adding spice to otherwise boring discussions in which we would otherwise have to engage in the dull task of introspection. I strongly suggest that if you don't already know these theories and at least a few more inside out, you get with the program. Remember: while you fool yourself with your feel-good, lets-change-ourselves-and-be-a-better-nation ideas, the world is trying to blow us all up.

20.

Answering people's polite queries about what I studied at college is something I'll probably have to deal with for the rest of my life. I'm trying to get used to all the ways I can explain and/or defend my choice when people give me the split-second blank stare when I say I studied history. South Asian history specifically. There are so many predictable ways that people respond to this I think it merits several essays, but I'll try and condense them all into one.

1) "Why didn't you study European history?"
I think it goes to my credit that I have never, ever replied to this with a lecture about post-colonial complexes or Eurocentric world views. As badly as I have wanted to, good manners prevent me from telling people that if they try very hard, they might be able to get past the idea that the only history worth studying is that of England and France. In the event that they succeed in doing this, they might even ponder whether students in Europe are ever asked "yuck, why did you choose to study your own history, you should probs learn about Latin America first". I should add that if I flip it around and say I studied how colonial policies influenced South Asia and therefore admit to having learned about British history in a slightly roundabout way, most people are relieved that that I didn't just study "Pak. Studies". Oh, Pak. Studies. I want to say more, but I'll save it for another day.

2) "Why did you waste so many years studying history? It's over. You could have become a doctor or something instead and done something more with your life."
This is not an adaptation of a likely question, these are the exact words I have had to hear from several people on different occasions. As sorry as I am that I didn't have the interest or the stomach to go to medical school, I resent the notion that I am doing nothing important with my life. I like to believe that educating idiots like above-mentioned questioner is a very important goal to have. Also, for future reference, history is not over. Just the fact that people are able to say that makes me cry a little on the inside and wonder what the world is coming to. Of course, I have a slightly better idea of what the world might come to than the askers of this question, because they are most probably too busy congratulating themselves on having picked a practical field to actually think about anything.

3) "Why do you like memorising dates?"
I don't. I haven't had to memorise a date since tenth grade, which was long before college majors came along. I have never satisfactorily answered this question though, for one that's so common. It leaves me completely baffled as to what people think History majors do. Do you really think we all sit with our little timelines and memorise a comprehensive list of when everything happened in the world, ever?? Perhaps you think my final papers for my classes read like a chapter from an almanac, in which case I completely forgive you for wondering why I studied history.

4) "Why would you study South Asian history in America? Isn't it all biased?"
No. Contrary to what you might believe about all Americans (Indians? Jews?) having a hidden agenda to teach us the "wrong" history, it's not nearly as "biased" as the nonsense you're taught in South Asia. In fact, doesn't the whole idea of bias get negated when you're studying something through a neutral third party-in this case, Mount Holyoke College, which couldn't care less what I believe Pakistan's true place in the world to be?

5) "What are you going to do with your life?"
This is probably the only response out of the entire list of Why-did-you-study-history queries that actually makes sense, and the only one I can answer. Oh, I have no idea what I'm going to do with my degree! Then again, dear Economics and Political Science and Biochemistry majors-do you?

19.

Coming hard on the heels of what has been a terrible year for this country, the Pakistan cricket team's match-fixing allegations seem like a great cosmic joke being played on us. There is very little we can do about floods, bombs, corruption and war, but when our national sports idols decide to make complete asses of themselves on the world stage, it feels like a kick in the gut.

Although I usually argue against the concept of national embarrassment, this is an instance where it is difficult to blame either Zardari or Mother Nature for the latest reason the world has to hate Pakistanis. Because you see, sports idols represent us in more ways than the government does. We may not elect them, but they are one of the few examples of social mobility in this country. They are looked up to because they are supposed to have earned worldwide respect through sheer talent. There are very few professions left in this country which children across all social stratas believe they have a shot at, and this is one of them. Who on earth would dream of being on the Pakistan cricket team now?

Aside from the completely unethical nature of what the team has done, I think they should personally apologize to every child who feels betrayed by them. I don't care about their careers and don't know enough about the sport to wonder what repercussions this will have for it, but I do care about disappointed hopes and hurt children.

Really? I mean really? I thought the national morale couldn't possibly get any worse than it is now, but perhaps we should thank the cricket team for showing us a lower low can always come. When other countries announce that cricket matches being held for Pakistan flood relief are being canceled for fear that our team will deliberately lose, it leaves you lost for words. This was really all that was left for us to hear on the news this week. Cricket seemed to be the only time Pakistanis could be flag-waving fanatics without being either violent or insane, but it seems we've been robbed of that small pleasure as well. It may not surprise us when the government lets children die, but when our cricketers let little boys' dreams get crushed for a few thousand pounds, the sense of betrayal is disproportionately greater.

18.

My name is Achee Beeja, and I am a ying twing. When I watch the part in Lion King where Simba and Nala look into the elephant graveyard and say "whooaa" I think of chicken corn soup. I shout embarrassing things loudly on airplanes flying out of Lahore and whenever I clean my room, I refer to how Julie Andrews did it in Mary Poppins.

If none of that made sense to you, that's okay. It shouldn't. There are very few people in the world who it should make sense to, and this essay is dedicated to them. More specifically, it is dedicated to people who will not stare at me like I am crazy when I play Monopoly and shout things like "Sit with monk and be a donk!" It is dedicated to people who make terribly ironic music playlists called "lymph". It is dedicated to almost 23 years of inside jokes, reliability and thinking it is absolutely normal to use The Sound of Music as a general guide on how to live life.

Sometimes, all of us need someone to write poems to that contain lines like "agar panties made of jean hain, unn pe discount thirteen hai". Because you see, that brilliant verse holds the secret to my entire childhood. Literally. It's the translation of our well-guarded password to being admitted to our very exclusive club. I'm only sharing it now because that exclusive club will remain that way forever. We finally realised that we never needed a password. A couple of decades of sharing blankets and toothpaste and crayons can easily suffice instead.

I wonder sometimes about girls who say they don't have close female friends. I guess I'm lucky enough to not be able to understand that. I have many groups of amazing female friends, and my membership in all of them relies solely on my experience with my first companions, the ones that taught me I can experiment with being pretty much anyone and always have a home to come back to. A home where I can pick up the phone and ask someone which of my sweaters is the googliest and if we can play a board game that says "the angel, is lington" and get a straight answer.

Friends and schools and jobs come and go. They float up and they float away, and they take away whatever you put of yourself in them. That's when you need to call people who will remind you that the fat man who floats up to the ceiling while singing "I Love to Laugh" didn't achieve that by being sulky. That's when you realise that one day, you will write at least an essay, if not a book, about how much you love them.

17.

Dear Irresponsible Journalists,
The recent trend of Pakistanis lambasting the entire nation for the tragic events that transpired in Sialkot last week is getting old already. It is true that when public lynching becomes possible-even probable, given the current state of anarchy we are in-a country is in a sorry state. It is also true that events such as these should inspire outrage and force us to question who we have collectively become. However, good journalism should rely on more than sweeping generalizations, however crowd-pleasing they may be in certain sections of society.

I would like to remind you that most of the so-called liberal intellectual elite of this country will staunchly maintain that there is no such thing as the "average Pakistani". I'm going to have to agree with that. There isn't. Unless you share anything besides a green passport with your chowkidaar/doodhwala/resident beggar, you can't possibly claim that there are any over-arching similarities between all Pakistanis. Therefore, it logically follows that all Pakistanis are not somehow to blame for every tragedy that falls on this troubled region.

Similarly, dear writers, please keep in mind that although your self-righteous anger and hatred of our uncivilized nation may extend to all Pakistanis, there are people in this country who have far more worthy things to do in times of crisis than point fingers at one another and insist that we stop "indulging in Facebook activism". Thanks to the global trend of hating this country and everything to do with it, a trend you so wholeheartedly espouse, we are in a position where most Pakistanis have become aware that nobody can help us as much as we can help ourselves. Please remember dear journalists: while you indulge in newspaper activism and seethe with anger at why we are not all wringing our hands, hanging our heads in shame and crawling into tunnels to die, there are tens of thousands of ordinary Pakistanis risking their lives and livelihoods to reach out to our flood-affected compatriots. There are tens of thousands of volunteers who drive ambulances, distribute food and pack relief supplies for victims of terrorism. For every mob that silently watches a crime being committed, there is another "mob" that will stand on the street and protest it, however futile they know it will be.

You are right about one thing: we should be ashamed today of the crimes we let happen. We should be ashamed that we are painting the mother of two dead boys with the same brush with which we paint her sons' murderers. We should be ashamed that we consciously edge out the unsung heroes that prevent this nation from imploding to indulge in seriously passe government-bashing. You are right about that I suppose, but I think you and I are talking about a different kind of shame here.

We have not collectively become a nation of anything, least of all cockroaches or Maula Jutts or whatever it is that the cool kids are calling us now. We have not been a collective nation in a long time. Today, crisis after crisis is encouraging (most of) us to put aside our petty, pseudo-intellectual babble and work towards a Pakistan that people like you will not be applauded for brushing aside in disgust. Your mid-life crisis may prevent you from seeing it, but every young Pakistani I know has done something for their country this week, whether it is mindless Facebook activism that you are so derisive of, going to Peshawar to work with displaced people, calling attention to the plight of minorities or spending their savings on medical supplies for the needy. Every single one, dear bitter journalists. Perhaps you are unaware that roughly 75 nation-states today are displaying barbaric acts of varying intensity as they struggle with the concept of unity and nationhood. Perhaps you are mistaken in believing that the genetic makeup of everyone between Balochistan and FATA encourages a love of gore.

I am going to explain something before I leave you to meditate on your disgust of all mankind in peace. I am in no way suggesting that Pakistan is either morally superior or more prone to acts of charity than any other nation on Earth (I know that this attitude is a pet peeve with you lot). I am only suggesting that in the name of responsible opinion-sharing, you retain your venom for a moment and consider the concept of balanced reporting on events that are too terrible to be shoddily covered. Perhaps what Pakistan needs isn't for all of us to jump in the Indus and commit national suicide, but the ability to think like rational, empathetic human beings, rather than bellowing Maula Jutts.

Yours sincerely,
A fellow writer.

16.

There is nothing that causes me to panic more, or more often, than my nonexistent sense of direction. This includes creepy rodents with hairless tails and difficult math questions, and both of these things cause me to panic substantially. Thanks to the fact that I don't live near open sewers and also own a calculator, my (lack of) sense of direction is a considerably larger barrier to my sanity than anything else at this point.

Nobody really understands my predicament. I promise I am not mentally challenged or completely zoned-out all the time. Even though I admit I may never win prizes for being observant, I am not a complete space cadet, though I am frequently accused of it. In fact, I am a reasonably intelligent, competent human being in other areas of my life. The fact that I am having to defend myself against the cruel accusation of being slightly stupid however, should tell you something about how often people doubt my IQ when I am asked to direct them anywhere.

People have attributed various reasons for my handicap: not bothering to read maps, not looking out of the window often enough when I'm being driven around, not knowing how to drive myself, having an underdeveloped left brain. None of these are (entirely) true. I do in fact read maps, and I try my level best to make sense of them. It completely escapes me as to why they should make any sense to me. Roads are never empty lines, no matter how I try to see them as squiggles and curves on a piece of paper. After studying a map of where I need to go, I can convince myself that I am capable of finding my way, until I am actually on the road. You see, real roads have cars and trucks and donkeys and pedestrians and billboards. Maps don't. I've been told I'm imaginative, but I cannot, cannot imagine a place in order to effectively minimize it and place it in a larger context. The debris of real life gets in my way and prevents me from doing it.

Another accusation I need to battle on a regular basis is that I am oblivious to directions because I am not a true Karachiite; I am simply a product of a sheltered suburb who chooses to ignore the rest of the beleaguered city. This doesn't make any sense if you really think about it. You see, I am as capable of getting lost in my own neighbourhood as I am anywhere else in the world. Also, thanks to a job that requires me to file city crime briefs for eight hours a day, I promise you I probably know more about what goes on in this city than you do. Just don't ask me to map the damn crimes, whether they happen on one side of Kala Pull or another. That's what specialized software is for.

Today I was absolutely sure I should not rely on my own senses to direct me to my own workplace, so I decided to use my mother's directions. That was a bad idea. My mother has slightly more confidence in my intelligence than others, and she seemed to assume that I can tell left from right and know one road from another. I can't. I don't. Not that I don't know where I work. It's where the DHA Bachat Bazaar signs end, across the street from the girls who are collecting donations for flood relief, near a Remaine billboard, where there are usually a few trucks and tankers and a lot of traffic. There is usually also at least one police officer harassing an old man or two there, and a big bridge which I can't name because I think of it as The Big Bridge, and knowing names of places never got me anywhere, anyway. Unfortunately, the vital flaw in my plan for remembering directions is that nearly everything I use to orient myself is movable. Is it my fault others are so unreliable?

I admit it might be a good idea to learn the name of the road across the street from where I live, just for the sake of general knowledge. The only reason I haven't bothered with that yet is because I couldn't put it on a map for you if you wanted, and I can easily direct you to my house because of the luckily unmovable mosque very close by. Please don't ever ask me abstract questions such as "so if I'm coming from Clifton Beach, would I take a right or a left from X road to get to your house?" Please spare me the humiliation. I know that this handicap/phobia/stupidity of mine is not commonplace and not understood by the average person. Nothing makes me feel as small and stupid as having to answer these difficult queries. Nothing makes the panic rise through my stomach and into my throat as fast as knowing that in a minute or two, any credibility I had as a capable adult will be destroyed. Just don't do it to me.

Also, don't worry about me. Don't suggest that in the absence of a vital understanding of roads and maps, I will be lost and floundering in the Real World like a sorry little girl who can't find her way home.

After all, the people and bazaar signs and police officers are almost always there when I need them to be.

15.

When I grow up, I am going to be a spoilt, bossy know-it-all. I am going to do everything exactly the way I want to. I am going to insist that my way is best-that it is the only way. I am going to live just the way I want to live.

I am going to grow so many indoor plants my house will look forested. I'll have a bouncing castle installed in one bedroom of my house and use it as a personal gym. I'll spend my evenings bouncing and falling on my behind in this new room. I won't let anyone tell me I am too old for it.

Every month, I will stock up on sugary breakfast cereals, not whole grain muesli. I'll eat breakfast for dinner and dinner for breakfast. I'll collect glow-in-the-dark stars and plaster them on my ceiling. I'll colour-code my wardrobe and alphabetize my books. I'll disinfect my doorknobs and label all my drawers. There will always be a notebook and pen by the phone.

I will have a swing in my backyard. I'll have a petting zoo of baby animals, and when they grow old, I'll build them homes to retire in. I'll have a library of my own. My books will be stored on sky-high shelves, and I will have a sliding ladder to reach them. There will be poufy armchairs scattered around. Not the orthopedic, ergonomic ones. Just poufy armchairs.

I'll have tents built around all the beds. At night, I'll zip up mine and forget where I am. My bed will be suspended from the ceiling, like a hammock. When I sleep, it'll swing by itself. My guests will come especially to sleep in my swinging tent-beds.

My house won't have a house-smell. It will smell like starched linen, or warm vanilla, or freshly-baked bread. The bathrooms will have tubs-germ and mildew free. The tubs will have claws. There will be a constant supply of bubble bath and Crayola bath pellets, the kind that turn your water blue or pink or turquoise.

There will balloons floating around at all times. I won't wait for a celebration. Helium balloons around my ceiling and regular balloons on the floor. There will always be a slice of cake in the fridge.

When I grow up, I will be lovably eccentric. Or perhaps I'll just have a lot of children and say they designed my life.

14.

There's a place in my head that is much nicer than the place we are all in now. I like to believe it's the remotest place on earth, although the actual remotest place on earth is an island somewhere off the coast off South Africa, and this place is not that island. It is simply antithetical to the place Pakistan is today, and it's a lovely place to create, to add details to, to colour in. It makes me wonder what kind of a place the country has become for it to be antithetical to an imaginative ideal. Watching Pakistan spiral out of control is like watching a close family member slowly wasting away. The waiting. The waiting for something to happen. The waiting for death. The guilt. Is this a genuine concern for the world, or is it a failure of my imagination? Is it a failure on our part to not be able to see a way out of this dark hole in our lifetimes?

People say that a new era will come. People talk about revolution, about glorious change, about an awakening of the masses. People talk about great progress around the corner. It makes me wonder whether it is only possible to imagine such brilliant outcomes from a position of privilege. From a position of being Sunni Muslim, wealthy, secure. When our great awakening happens, will it happen to all of us, or will the poor and the disenfranchised lag behind a century or two, as always?

Pakistan is a place where the social contract between citizens and the state no longer exists. This country has failed its Shias, its Ahmaddis, its farmers, its Hindus, its Christians, its women. An allegiance to the state from these groups can be either sentimental (I was born in this country and I love it) or defensive (just because I am not a Muslim doesn't mean I am disloyal). It is heartbreaking that this should be the case. It is heartbreaking to think that anyone should search for reasons to feel like their own country still belongs to them. When people speak of a day that will come when our country is on a better path, I want to know who this day will include. The top-down system of governance/wealth distribution/general privilege has grown tired and is creaking under the weight of injustice. Politics will continue, governments will come and governments will go, but the Proud to be Pakistani stickers that pop up around 14th August will remain a commodity of the wealthy, educated, clothed and housed population. People talk of how much this country has given us, how far behind we would be if we had not had it. This is true. Perhaps we would be far behind. Perhaps we would be persecuted. But it is difficult to rejoice in "our status today" as a DHA signpost proclaims, when our privilege is at the expense of everyone who is not exactly like us.

Forcing myself to imagine an idyllic remote island in place of this nation of tragedies is a failure of the imagination. Believing that great progress will occur and it will not be either bloody or unfair is even more so. Blessed are those who can afford to ruminate about change at a time like this, or escape to better places, even if they are only psychological. Unless our discourse about change and overcoming hurdles includes those citizens who have been traditionally disadvantaged as the foremost recipients of this positive change, our hopes will always be hollow.

13.

Writing one hundred essays in one hundred days is like chemotherapy for writer's block-it forces it out in the most aggressive way possible. Sometimes it has painful side effects (self-doubt, blank-page syndrome, obsession). Sometimes, it doesn't work. I think that's called writer's block. While I was worrying about this creative dead-end and my goal of ninety-one more essays, it occurred to me that the only logical way to treat writer's block would be to write about it.

I suppose not knowing what to write for a little while is not necessarily a terrible thing. It makes you notice things you might not have otherwise. Over the course of today's stupor, I learned that my living room fan is very noisy, I need to file my nails, there are some great recipes for cookies online, my blue kameez needs to be fitted, there's a lizard behind the picture frame near the computer, Thomas Jefferson was a Deist and it is possible for me to hum distractedly and loudly enough to get glares from my neighbour at work. Normally, when there is a blank page in front of me, I am too busy writing to observe, think or look up these things. It's amazing how much you learn when there is nothing else to do.

Ironically, writer's block has also given me something new to write about. When you really stop to think about it, the frustration of not knowing where to begin or how to say something is as describable as anything else.

It feels like having your head wedged between two rocks. It feels like one of those nightmares where you have to take an exam and realise you haven't studied. It feels like spending the whole week looking forward to Sunday and then having to cancel all your plans when it finally arrives. It's like rain at the beach, like wet sand and a cold breeze that makes your teeth hurt. It's a sinus infection that leaves you unable to move your head because of its heaviness. It's a mosquito bite on your ankle when you're wearing skinny jeans. It's a ketchup stain on your favourite white T-shirt. It's sitting down to watch a movie and having the cable go off. It's like a math test you don't understand.

It's the feeling that everything you want to say has already been said. It's the tea-coloured hue of life that's no longer interesting. It's the toe-curling irritation of wanting to write about something so badly you just can't. It's having a tune stuck in your head and not being able to remember where it's from. It's that face on the news you don't recognize. It's having something to say to someone you love and not knowing how to start. It's finding out your brother ate the last bit of Jell-O in the fridge. It's the now-what? feeling before graduation. 


It's about 600 words of revelation. It's a kick-start to writing about more important things than the inability to write. It's the frustration that makes you want to do better next time. I suppose it's an essay in itself.

12.

Of all the disturbing things girls say and do that betray the general trend of low self-esteem amongst our sex, the one that annoys me most of all has to be "I'm so fat." It ranks number 1, even above "She's such a slut" (female solidarity anyone?) and stupid statements made deliberately to sound fluffy and cute in front of the opposite sex.

"I'm so fat" doesn't annoy me because I am inherently opposed to healthy BMIs or an interest in maintaining fast metabolism and a healthy heart rate. It annoys me precisely because girls and women who complain about their bodies are least concerned with general well-being and most interested in achieving the frail, about to keel over and faint any second look. More and more often, I find girls who are blessed with naturally fast metabolism and dangerously low fat indices counting calories and trying their level best to resemble twelve year old boys. More disturbingly however, I find otherwise intelligent women pointing at well-built, well-endowed women who dare to pop up in the toothpick-dominated media and reviling them for being "fat".

Somewhere in the past decade or so, it became every woman's greatest desire to resemble nothing more than a coat hanger; a frame for hanging clothes off of without the slightest hint of normal female anatomy. I have several objections to this trend. Firstly, I am going to agree with our grandparents' generation and point my finger at the evil West and say They Did It. They may not be responsible for the degradation of the entire human race, but their values and fashion industries are most definitely responsible for our rejection of what comes most naturally to us-having breasts, developing hips and reaching for the breadsticks at dinnertime. Secondly, it irritates me how the ideal of feminine beauty today is to look like hairless, weakly-developed men. Finally, this seemingly universal quest for the ultimate size-zero, flat-chested appeal not only denies and rejects the enormous range of possible shapes and sizes the human body can come in, it makes girls like me feel like King Kong even while wearing size 2 jeans and maintaining generally good health.

Yes, this has become personal. Stop calling me "fat", because when you call yourself fat, you skinny cow, you are actually calling me fat. I've gone from being someone who never worried about weight or counted calories to someone perpetually worried about why my chest isn't flat and my thighs don't look breakable. The craziness of this hit me only recently-why on earth have I begun to wonder why I don't look like a boy?

The whole phenomenon of naturally curvy girls desperately trying to eliminate their waist-to-hip ratio and naturally slender girls desperately counting calories is beyond saddening. We're not just rejecting fat anymore-we're rejecting what was traditionally seen as the positive attributes of being feminine: warmth; desirability; fertility; motherhood.

I'm sorry to break the code of being a good girlfriend, but unless you are a girl trying to make healthier choices in life, I won't help you go on whatever crazy diet Oprah just endorsed. I will break out the tubs of full-fat ice cream and tell you men love a little extra padding. I will most likely do anything to avoid helping you nurture your insane obsession with being five foot ten and a hundred pounds. Just remember this: I, unlike the fashion industry, prefer real friends to coat hangers, and am therefore a reliable source of advice. You, meanwhile, should give yourself a break, allow yourself to eat breakfast, and stop calling me fat.

11.

With The Rest of My Life stretching out before me endlessly and a New York Times article demanding to know what is wrong with twenty-somethings and why they don't settle down already, confusion and frustration are reigning supreme. Confusion because I am determined not to be one of those twenty-somethings who are unable to handle responsibility, and frustration because the less preachy side of me is sadly acknowledging the end of an era.

I'm not talking about the end of selfishness, or freedom, or college parties. I'm talking about the end of a life where your friends push you through every crisis. Because let's face it; post-college friendships are never quite the same. The lines between friends and family become less blurry and the inevitability of everyone going in different directions becomes more apparent. It's now that I am starting to be assailed with panic at the silence at my door and windows: the sound of friends not knocking. What can I count on anymore-and will it ever be the same again?

Knowing that those of my friends who haven't already scattered will do so soon leaves me feeling oddly rootless. Knowing that I thought of myself in relation to several groups of others leaves me feeling oddly inadequate. How much can we matter to one another when we no longer need one another?

I know, of course, that growing up doesn't mean you stop needing your friends, or that you somehow become self-sufficient, cold-hearted recluses, but I also know that they are not-or should not be-your lifelines anymore. While we all make individual commitments-to careers, passions, romantic partners-we slowly sever ourselves from the Before, without much idea of what comes After. I used to like knowing what comes After. I like to pretend I revel in uncertainty now, I like pretending I am completely in control of my smooth transitions from one phase into another, but the truth is, I can't stop worrying about how much I will miss having someone's room to walk to in the middle of the night when I think my room is haunted. I can't stop expecting to see a face in my window, or a note on my door inviting me to share instant noodles. I can't stop worrying about how I will deal with this facade of being a put-together adult with my friends on about thirty different paths. I can't stop worrying about whether I am the only one worrying. And I worry about how much sadness, how much alone-ness comes with this supposedly exhilarating new phase of my life.

What is there to say? I can't get over the irony of how navigating adulthood would be so much easier if we were all doing it together.

10.

Like most Pakistanis who read the newspaper every day, I cringed when I read that the UN has attributed the lack of flood relief funds coming in to the country's "image deficit". That is an extremely diplomatic, albeit irresponsible statement for them to make. What a nice way of saying nobody likes us enough to care if we drown! The irresponsibility, of course, lies in the fact that the UN should be making such claims based on entirely anecdotal evidence. Yes, we all know the country's popularity ratings may not be soaring globally, but assuming that UN officials are educated to at least the undergraduate level, it can reasonably be expected that they know never to use information that can't be cited.

My gripe with this statement is on several grounds. Firstly, as mentioned, the obvious inability of quantifying an image-or its "deficit". Secondly, shrouding the cold fact of a lack of humane sympathy with diplomacy, rather than exposing it for what it is. Thirdly, the fact that the response to it in Pakistan has been a shrugging-off and acceptance of the fact that the global attitude to the crisis is Pakistan be damned, it's full of terrorists anyway.

Since there is very little I can do to help the UN spokespeople recall Speaking and Writing 101 where they learned to make statements they can qualify to be true, I'm going to leave them alone for now. Pakistanis however, I am more capable of speaking to, and one thing is for sure: if we are ever to pull ourselves out of this permanent state of crisis, we can't do it without first shedding all our internalised doubts about our own worth as a people. We defend the plight of the flood victims (it's not their fault our country produces terrorists) in the same breath as we agree with those who point fingers at us (it's true that we are a nation of terrorists).

Rightly or wrongly, nationhood entails a feeling of belonging that elicits both national pride and embarrassment, depending on the instance. Both these feelings are completely nonsensical in their own way. Whether someone chooses to train as a suicide bomber and blow himself up on either the Pakistani or Afghani side of the border should be immaterial. Whether the crime rate soars in Karachi or Delhi should also not matter, except as far as concern for one's safety. Whether Zardari makes an ass of himself or not should be a non-issue. Nationhood and nationalism should only be relevant as far as our own understanding that the nation-state and its mechanisms influence outcomes. Beyond that, situations which are out of our reach and control should not be valid cause for embarrassment-the will to act should be borne out of our humanity, not our nationality.

I fail to understand why I should be personally embarrassed about our venal, eminently hateable government(s) or the terrorism this country spawns. I detest them on the grounds that they are unethical; not because they are unethical and Made in Pakistan. The flood victims and tireless aid workers should not have to live and die beneath the petty concerns of how pretty or progressive Pakistan looks to the foreign media, and neither should we. There is nothing pretty and nothing progressive about this nation, but we need to move past our favourite hobby of cringing over how ugly we look, as if we were a twelve year old pre-pubescent adolescent, and so should the rest of the world. Until then, people are drowning in the ugliness of sentiments such as national embarrassment. Literally.

9.

Doris Lessing called nostalgia “that poisoned itch”. To me, nostalgia is less of a skin ailment and more like a head cold that comes on slowly, one symptom at a time. If you’re careful enough, you can kill it. If you’re not, you’ll spend hours or even days nursing the aches and pains, the stuffy sense of something being wrong with your insides. The thing about a head cold-and nostalgia-is that it insists on happening no matter how healthy you are, how physically or emotionally stable, how satisfied with your present. The past always comes back in irrelevant pieces and infects you when you least expect it. In fact, it has nothing at all to do with what you really want-it seems to be more a case of perpetual rehearsal in your brain, in case of sudden memory bankruptcy, in case of forgetting.

And we do forget. We forget so quickly that the smell of a familiar tree or feel of a certain T-shirt can surprise us with how recognizable it is. My conscious may know perfectly well that I have no desire to return to a particular time or place, but the number of times I revisit that place in both sleep and wakefulness would suggest otherwise. Nostalgia demands that we remember, and that we remember with a certain longing, which is why it is both surprising and annoying when I come across the all-too-familiar logo of federal financial aid services and find myself missing it. Not because I want it, but because I don’t have it anymore. I only want it because I don’t have it, not because any (sane) part of me would prefer to go back to haggling with financial aid officers. It’s the same with rain in dreams-I don’t enjoy rain. Or rather, I don’t enjoy getting my feet wet. But when the old head cold visits me in dreams where my socks are wet, you would think wet feet were a great love of mine, the way I cling to the feeling.

It’s been said that when you leave a place, you don’t miss the place as much as you miss who you were when you were there. That is the most plausible cause I’ve heard for being infected with nostalgia. I may not miss the physical roads or walls or stones of places I’ve left behind, but I do miss myself. That’s what nostalgia does-rudely remind you of how quickly you lose yourself in a time and place, or to put it positively, how much you give of yourself while you are there. I suppose head colds have a purpose too, if they shield us from forgetting who we were and how we felt before we had them.

8.

Every August and every December, Karachi rains. I don't mean it rains in Karachi, I mean Karachi rains; rains a flood into streets, rains riots into highways, rains fire into power plants, rains insanity; rains like the hot, dusty, violent rest of the year is crying to be forgotten.

There used to be a magic about Karachi rain; it left us along ago. Rain used to be getting off early in the first week of school to slip around outdoors and get soaked. Rain used to be singing on rooftops and sticking out our tongues to catch raindrops. Rain used to be our much-awaited relief from the heat before we all had generators. Rain used to be a good thing.

Somewhere along the line, rain became another bit of Karachi's grief, pouring into our homes and schools and TV sets. I suppose we grew up. Nobody ever wants to slip around outdoors anymore; nobody in their right mind smiles at the first fat drop. Any child over ten will tell you the rain will bring its annual unwelcome guests: power outages, burning tires, floods, collapsed billboards, death by electrocution. I suppose Karachi grew tired. Nobody wants another tragedy weighing down this city full of them.

Now, we just want the rain to stop. Watching it rain is like watching a tired episode from a sitcom you used to love and can't stand anymore, because you know it inside and out, because you have criticized it from every angle. Now, we just need the rain to leave us alone; to give Karachi a minute to grieve over one loss before embarking on another. Perhaps we grew up. Perhaps our city just grew tired.

7.

The post-colonial world, since achieving independence, has struggled with problems such as shaky or puppet democracies, corruption, poverty and civil war, all of which contribute to massive and frequent violence in many post-colonial nation states today. While the existing world order tends to favor Franklin D. Roosevelt's idea that "all good things go together", or the concept that decolonization, rising literacy and economic progress will automatically bring liberal democracy, the truth is that these very developments have often created illiberal and often violent states.

Popular nationalism is a two-edged sword; while it has its obvious benefits, in many cases it can be used to rally the energies of a majority group at the expense of a minority. This has proven true in the case of both India and Pakistan. In India, Hindu nationalism rose and led to the election of the extreme right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party in 1998, while in Pakistan, democratically elected governments have both allowed and incited violence against the Ahmaddiya, Shia and Christian communities, to name a few. Part of this is due to the challenges of maintaining a "national" identity that a vast, multilingual, multicultural body of citizens can identify with. Civic nationalism in societies which for centuries before independence were ruled largely by structures of class, caste, language and ethnicity is a difficult idea to generate and maintain. In a newly democratizing society, debate about who fits into the "true" national identity-and who does not-is both likely and common. Promoting unconditional freedom of debate, while an important ideal, often proves divisive.

The institutions of democracy, already weakened by a colonial legacy, class disparity and communal animosity leftover from Partition days prevent the theoretically great qualities of provincial autonomy and popular elections from being successful in practice. In an environment where democracy is not backed up by strong law and order, an efficient judiciary and other luxuries that post colonial states are generally unaccustomed to, debates about the status of Pakistan’s religious minorities, the rights of India’s Dalits and Adivasis and secessionist movements in both states can easily go wrong. The pogrom against Indian Muslims in Gujarat is only one example of the horrors that can be perpetrated in a democracy. In 2002, millions of Muslims were murdered, raped and looted under the watch of BJP member Narendra Modi, who is still serving as Chief Minister of the state. A free media fueled rumors about Muslims setting fire to a train carrying Hindu passengers, public debates allowed political parties to rally support for their cause of "Hindustan for the Hindus", and a democratic system allowed the government officials who had orchestrated the massacre to be elected back into power. This kind of “murderous cleansing” is not an atypical circumstance in a multicultural, post-colonial democracy. Arguably, it is a very modern phenomenon; it is a common aspect of the only acceptable form of government in today’s world. As Indian writer and activist Arundhati Roy said, “is it reasonable to worry about whether a country that is poised on the threshold of "progress" is also poised on the threshold of genocide?”

While democracy, decolonization and political autonomy are the most sacred of today’s political ideals, they are rarely questioned for the violence that they tolerate, support, and sometimes engender. The dark side of democracy in pluralistic, post-colonial states should force us to question Roosevelt’s outdated assumption, challenge the unrestricted power of majority communities in newly-democratic societies and create more effective protections for the status of minorities against whom violence is most often directed.