My revolution begins with my evolution

To paraphrase Mahatma Gandhi; I will have to become the change I wish to see around me.

The rhetoric of revolution has gained significant momentum in our politics of late. While globally the word may still be reserved to define bloody upheavals and decade long struggles, our political enthusiasts have never shied away from labelling a transition of power with the ‘R’ word – irrespective of its eventual impact on the lives of the people.

Whether it was a consequence of the arrival of a fiery cleric administering a large tea party in Islamabad, the heartthrob Kaptaan reaping rich dividends of his 17-year-long political struggles, or the disillusioning incompetence and corruption of the rulers passed, talk of change and a revolution have certainly warmed the air once again in Pakistan.

In the spirit of the forthcoming political activism, inspired by the excitement evident in society at the thought of a mass movement, and with hope of support from the readers of this piece, I have decided to bring about a revolution of my own.

I must warn you though – contrary to what might get your heart racing, this is not an exercise to bring the corrupt to the awam ki adaalat or hang anyone upside down. Instead, my revolution is an exercise of introspection.

At its inception, my revolution requires a realisation of what it means to be an exemplary human being, a productive citizen, and a righteous Muslim. From then on, much like the revolutions of the past, it’s a struggle – a struggle to reach that Utopian state.

The foundations are laid by bringing back the naïveté of considering a fellow being as inherently good unless blatantly proven otherwise – and even then reserving the right to my judgment but not of imposing it. The struggle then quite naturally transcends in to building tolerance which will help me respond to opposing views with respect, criticism with courteous defence, and insult with prayer.

My revolution is a constant self-examination of my actions and their contribution towards making Pakistan the country I desire it to be.

Accountability, much like charity, will begin at home.

My ignorance towards my social responsibilities, bestowed by virtue of being born in a privileged minority, will no longer be tolerated. My actions will have to be mapped against my ideals of society. If an educated society is stressed as a prerequisite for progress, then I must question how often I, in my own capacity, have served as an educator. If working hard for a living is to be encouraged, then I must question how often I have undervalued the efforts of the road side fruit wala by negotiating over Rs20.

If child labour is abhorred, then I must question how many underage children I have working under my own roof. If obedience of law is a sign of a maturing society, then I must question how often I have disobeyed when there was little fear of repercussions. To paraphrase Mahatma Gandhi; I will have to become the change I wish to see around me.

In essence, my revolution starts with removing the ‘R’ from the word itself. It is not an uprising from within the society, but rather an evolution of us as individuals to try and live up to the standards we hope to be upheld by the society in general. It is premised in valuing the power of an individual to infuse positive energy in his surroundings, and in the stark realization that our inability to do so may keep our ideals as a distant dream.

Here is to hoping I can get a cult following.

 

Want crispier and tastier fries? Try using sweet potatoes!

Sweet potato fries stay crispy and crunchy longer then regular fries, so don’t hold back- enjoy these tasty treats to the max!

Sweet potatoes; these nutrition packed starchy root vegetables are readily available in Pakistan. They are cheap, yet fairly neglected in our cuisine.

The only place we see these nowadays is on the roads where the one odd cart vendor sells roasted sweet potatoes, more commonly known as shakarkandi, outside schools and shopping centres.

Sweet potatoes have never really made their way to fine dining restaurant menus and are seldom even cooked at home! Owing to its tropical and mostly warm climate, Pakistan is blessed with this bounty of nature mostly from November until March.

Most of us associate this vegetable with possible weight gain owing to the fact that it is full of carbs. However, what we fail to understand is that these are actually good carbs! In fact sweet potatoes are high in fibre, very filling and lower in calories than any cereal with only 90 calories per 100 grams!

Sweet potatoes contain sugars that are released gradually into the blood ensuring a balanced and regular source of energy. This is done without increasing blood sugars that cause fatigue and weight gain. They also consist of a substantial amount of minerals including magnesium which is a relaxing, anti-stress mineral and potassium that helps regulate the heartbeat. They are a good source of vitamins, like B6, that helps reduce the chemical homocysteine related to degenerative diseases; it is also rich in vitamin C and D.

Over the past few years during my travels to North and South American regions, I was delighted to see sweet potatoes on many menus. From cafes to fine dining restaurants – including popular steakhouses and BBQ joints – Italian and American eateries all featured sweet potato fries and mashed sweet potatoes as popular sides.

Back home in Karachi, I could not help but crave a plate of sweet potato fries or a salad topped with grilled slices of sweet potato so I decided to experiment with them only to realize that they are equally good when puréed, steamed, fried, mashed, baked, or grilled. They add great flavor and texture to soups and stews, taste amazing when grilled and added as sides or to salad.

One of my all-time favorite recipes made with sweet potatoes that goes well with all kind of grilled, roasted meats or can be enjoyed entirely on their own, are sweet potato fries. I now regularly serve them as sides with many of my main courses that I cook and serve at home.

Here is how you can go about it:

Ingredients:

Sweet potatoes – ½kg

Washed, skin and cut lengthwise

Rub them in a bit of salt.

Deep Fry Batter:

-Corn flour- two heaped tablespoon

-Chicken or beef cube to make 1 cup of fresh stock

-Salt n pepper to taste

-One egg

Mix the batter ingredients in a bowl with a hand beater lightly until they are well mixed. The batter needs to be more on the dry side than smooth or runny. Roll the fries in the batter to coat them lightly but unevenly. Heat vegetable oil (two to three inches) to 375 degrees and fry them in a deep pan or electric deep fryer. Take them out when light golden.

Spread on a kitchen paper towel and serve.

Sweet potato fries stay crispy and crunchy longer then regular fries, so don’t hold back- enjoy these tasty treats to the max!

This post was originally published here.

 

What is love?

Love doesn’t always make you happy. But it makes you better. Happy too, but also unhappy. Because love knows that its central function in your life is to help you grow. Growth hurts.

Love is want. Love is need.

Love is impossibly imperfect.

Love always pays the bills on time but forgets your anniversary. It gets you frozen yogurt on the way home but leaves it in the car. It refuses to change the baby’s diaper but spends hours rocking the baby to sleep. It doesn’t write you poems or give romantic speeches but when you’re sad, it suddenly says that one right thing. It rarely thinks to buy you flowers but always thinks to plug your phone into the charger at night.

Love tries.

Love is forgiving. Love lets you get away with a lot. It grants forgiveness before you ask, but oftentimes makes you say sorry anyways, because it’s good for you to be humble. Love knows it will hurt you too. Love fails, time and again, but believes every next minute is a new chance to get it right.

Love is forgetful. It forgets old words and old wounds. And even when it remembers, it also remembers to stay kind. Love has the worst fight of your life with you and then, right after, shares a cold coffee and splits a plate of chaat. It will leave the last gol guppa for you.

Love understands your weaknesses. It doesn’t mock that you are scared of driving on highways or you get cranky if you’re hungry. It knows you have to drink your tea really, really hot. It will expect you will complain about your burnt tongue later. Love will be patient as you cut the tags off every shirt you wear because they scratch your neck unbearably. It will be quiet when you don’t feel like talking. It will laugh uproariously at your lame jokes during a party to save you from embarrassment. Love is loyal.

Love is your cheerleader. It believes in you. It goes along with your crazy ideas of writing a book, becoming a chef, launching an art business and tries its best to help you achieve your visions. It will edit poorly written first chapters, eat inedible crème brûlée and gasp amazedly at your blobs of paint on canvas. It doesn’t hold it against you when you fail. It encourages you. But because, you need it sometimes, it will tell you to stop when you are being insufferable and cut short your pity party.

Love changes perceptions of beauty. Love is fond of love handles and stretch marks. Love strokes your grey hair and remarks how distinguished it makes you look. Love sings, “I like big butts and I cannot lie” to your widening derriere. It knows that random chin hair become familiar friends, wrinkles and crow feet testaments to a life lived together. Love teaches you to find the ordinary, extraordinary.

Love is not a substitute for reality nor does it ask you to live in a more fantastic version of it because love lives real life. And in real life, love knows, there are good days and bad days. And a whole slew of so-so ones. Love gets through all of them, sometimes with style and pizzazz, other times with angst and bitterness. But it gets through.

Love flips your idea of humanity upside down. You think you know people and then you see what they will do for love’s sake, how far they will stretch the limits of themselves to care for the one they love and it makes you swallow, hard. Love will make you witness divinity.

Love is fluid. It changes with time in its expression and manifestation. It will be a spark, a raging fire, of flutters in your gut one day. Years later, it will be a steady burning ember, a sense of stability as solid as a rock and all flutters can usually be attributed to indigestion. Love will bring you Hajmola before you ask.

Love doesn’t always make you happy. But it makes you better. Happy too, but also unhappy. Because love knows that its central function in your life is to help you grow. Growth hurts.  Every day, love changes you to become a version of yourself you didn’t know existed. Expanded. Stretched somehow.

Love doesn’t ‘break’ your heart. It splits it open, so that more of what you need can enter.

Love is a choice. You make that choice every single day, every single minute.

Love is sacrifice, compromise, tolerance and a whole bunch of other scary words. It wants to leave you sometimes but it always remains. It wants to kill you sometimes but then imagines the subsequent loneliness. It turns away from you only to turn back again. It buries itself into the very core of you, so you don’t know where it begins or ends.

Love is a paradox. It is awkward and graceful. It is forced and natural, kind of terrible and absolutely hilarious. It is restful. It is wild. It is hurtful and healing. It is gentle and tough. It is confusion and clarity. It strengthens you and makes you vulnerable. It ties you down and helps you fly. It is as rare as a pearl and as common as breath.

Love is fierce. It is very often decidedly mundane, mind numbingly ordinary and easy to overlook, but still, if you know how to look at it, it’s really quite astonishing.

Love is beautiful, it is necessary, and if you allow it, instinctual, but it is never what you think it will be.

It is always much, much more.

 

I found a little bit of Pakistan in Hong Kong!

This post was originally published here.

I have been an expat for three years now and I still can’t get over it. My husband assimilates much better than I do. He is able to adjust to change in a way that is silent and not at all messy. He talks about the new place, adjusts to his new time zone and continues to talk about surroundings in a happy-go-lucky sort of a way.

His wife writes angry blogs and rants to fellow neighbours about the lack of dhaniya (coriander) and goes off in search of curry leaves to a place where no woman has gone before.

Okay, that last part was slightly exaggerated, women go everywhere in Hong Kong, but all the other information provided is a hundred percent accurate.

I am one of those idiots who can’t let go of their childhood and every time I smell cardamoms it reminds me of my maternal grandfather’s little steel paandan from where we used to steal the sweet, silver-warq coated betel nuts. I cling to the familiar and relentless search for ways to adjust by keeping the old memories alive.

So the first question I ask my husband before we are about to move to a new place is:

“desi food hai?”

(Will we get Pakistani food there?)

It’s fairly easy to gain access to desi cuisines and ingredients in the Middle East, where Pakistanis hold up half the sky. Ex-pats living in the United Kingdom and the United States are also just as comfortable.

And now, thanks to the massive changes brought about by globalisation, you can mistake identifying a photo like this …

This isn’t  Mini Market in Lahore or Gizri in Karachi.

This is Hong Kong, Special Administrative Region, China.

This little wet market down Peking Road is a glimpse of a world that seems impossible to exist on an otherwise busy, glassy street. Peking Road itself is filled with perfectly tall, designer-labelled, LCD-advertisements filled malls and hotels.

Take a turn down Haiphong Road and that’s a new dimension altogether.

The wet market begins in a quiet, unobtrusive way. It seems as if it does not want to get in the way of the busy, glamorous, air-conditioned lives of the malls and hotels. It begins under a shed, with small open kitchens, a handful of small stools; plastic tables are occupied by the young, old,  busy and the idle. Hot water flows in the background as broccoli leaves brush along your elbow and  the smell of boiled rice wafts directly into your nostrils.

This is where we begin our olfactory journey into the quest for desi mutton. Deep in the heart of this wet market sit meat and vegetable vendors who are happily dressed as if it is Chakwal and Mianwali and not Hong freakin’ Kong. They offer fresh Pakistani produce and thank you with a polite smile. To hear them speak in Punjabi amongst themselves is a reminder of how far away from home you really are.

Then there are the Chung King Mansions where you must stop to buy spices to cook all that fresh Pakistani mutton. Readymade masalas, desi herbal drinks, red onions, garam masala, you name it and it’s there. Even Urdu Digests, for those of you who are unable to let go of your guilty pleasures.

The food there is not fit to be eaten in a fancy ballroom gown- the roads are narrow and eager brown-skinned men huddle around you, in their attempt to sell a fake Birkin or even a genuine calling card.

But there is that distinct smell of biryani, chicken tikka, puri and parathas complimented with Urdu, Hindi, and Malayalam chatter. There is that occasional white tourist, the tall Mozambiquean, the half-asleep Bengali, the friendly Chinese woman peddling 10 dollar rings.

It doesn’t matter where in the world you may be.

It doesn’t matter how immensely French, Italian or Chinese cuisine tantalise your taste buds.

It really doesn’t matter.

Pakistan will always be my home.

 

The idiot’s guide to open-mindedness

Rational means everything that you think is right. Basically, it stands for all of these lovely open-minded merits of ours.

It is all about having an ‘open-mind’ these days. A mind so open that your brains might fall out!

Listen here, be open-minded. It will free you. From everyone you don’t like, from all things that bore you, from dogma, biases and irrationality.

Remember, open-minded people don’t condemn drone-strikes- even if collateral damage breaks their heart and makes them want to end this stupid drone business somehow – dead terrorists or no.

See, drones might kill innocent people. But then terrorists kill innocent people too. And this justifies collateral damage in a twisted way.

Now go figure. And don’t forget to Tweet about this.

And please, no mention of collateral damage when you talk of Malala. Your face must look like you just had a root canal- at any mention of that wonderful, wonderful girl.

You must pretend that you are not irritated by this grotesquely blown out of proportion hullabaloo. And try and write a love poem for her in Pashto.

No wait, someone’s already done that. Try Punjabi. Hold on, pick Spanish. Open-minded people don’t do Punjabi. Now Tweet this.

Also, you are Malala. I am Malala. My mom is Malala. Your mom is Malala. My dead grandmother’s long lost neighbour is also Malala.

They just weren’t as open-minded enough back then to realise who she really was. Tweet. And change your Facebook profile picture. Duck-faced pose is a must- Malala’s picture in background.

Of course dear, I believe in your freedom to choose. But somehow, because I’m so open-minded, I also know what more ‘intelligent’ people will choose. And I silently look down upon those who don’t choose what I think they should choose.

Call it a bias if you must. Biases are okay, everyone has them- part of life. Now, update Facebook status. And bark. I mean, Tweet.

Malala, it’s been so long since we mentioned her.

So hey, why on earth do you force your children to go to madrassas?

That’s just not how it’s done. What? You think Western education indoctrinates people? Oh my, you are so biased. I mean, yes I know, I’m biased too. But there’s a limit to how biased you should be. And only I know what that limit is.  And let me tell you that you’ve crossed that limit.

Don’t you understand? It’s impossible for children to be civilised and enlightened if they don’t read Shakespeare. And dear me, stop forcing them to read stuff- unless it is Shakespeare. Now Tweet about this.

What double standards? Look, you need to stop saying all these close-minded things.

Malala,

Tralalalala,

Oooolala. Wow. I’ll make one heck of a poet!

Most importantly, you must be well-read to be open-minded. But don’t trouble yourself so much with books. Here’s the shortcut; human history begins with the French Revolution. This was when a bunch of people refused to eat slices of cake. Then everyone became a liberal and began to import silk from China and spices from India and the global economy boomed.

What conquests? No, no, it was all through peaceful trade agreements. What you’re saying is all propaganda. God, you’re so gullible! Tweet.

Malala. Obama. Obala. Malama. Hahaha.

Human history, my dear, ends with Francis Fukuyama. Fukuyama was this very open-minded man who thought that ideological evolution reached its final stage with the triumph of Western liberal democracy.

Sounds cool doesn’t it? No, no. No need to read that book of his. What’s Wikipedia for?

Lastly, remember that being open-minded is the only rational thing.

Rational means everything that you think is right. Basically, it stands for all of these lovely open-minded merits of ours.

You need to memorise this word; rational.

Use it in conversations every day. And never mind its strict philosophical definitions. Just use it whenever you feel like you don’t have a good counter-argument. Okay? Malala. Tweet.

This post was originally published here.