I love it how people talk in taboos in this society. All hidden and covered. They won't admit the prejudices but they are there, thick and solid in this society. "Oh, she came home at 10pm? Was she alone? Oh ok, her brother dropped her." "Oh, it must be a love marriage, they were both studying in Manchester." "Oh,so you have finished your masters?" aka now we can shop you around for marriage?!

DISCLAIMER: Most of these don't apply to the shielded "goldfish bowl" upper class in Pakistan.

- Brides are told not to laugh too much on their wedding day. They should be scared, freaked out...of what? Of their deflowering, their wedding night. Aka, think a bit more and what they really mean is, if she is so at ease, then she has probably slept with her man or even worse, another man before because the only thought in her mind on her lovely wedding day should be the fear and pain of a first time penetration that is about to happen.
I know people myself where the in-laws have asked the girls not to laugh at their own wedding!

- Fair equals beautiful..these adjectives are sometimes interchanged. Even lyrics of songs etc will interchange a beautiful girl with "gori" or "oh fair one". So no matter how hot Naomi Campbell or Bipasha Basu are, my parents' generation and for that matter, some boys in my own generation do not see the attraction at all. Soooooo irritating, cuz that means, no matter how good someone else thinks I look, NO ONE in Pakistan will compliment me..if I look good, they will try to figure out why I am lookng good because I am obviously not pretty since I am not fair! I am not fishing for compliments here..just telling you how it is.

- Compliments..people don't compliment you even if you look dazzling. Or if they do, it is a return compliment or a seeking compliment.

- If you wear a hijab, you are pious. If you wear jeans, you are a slut. If you wear a tight-fitted oozing shalwar kameez, it is all right. If you wear a loose fitted top covering your ass on jeans, ummm..can you please change?

- Kids aren't allowed to mix with the opposite sexes all their lives, guys are never at home so won't go with their families to meet other families, only girls accompany their parents..even if there is a party, the men and women usually sit segregated or slowly segregate on their own...now all of a sudden, when they are to get married..what to do? And hence, now start the arranged marriage rounds...the boys are forced to see the girls and the girls are made to follow their moms around everywhere so that they are "marketed". They are asked to work on their complexion and weight..the two important keys to a man's heart in Pakistan..and obviously cooking as well....cuz the world over, the way to a man's heart is through his stomach.

- Even in this day and age, the middle class, and I am sure the lower class, can marry by just looking at pictures. I know people who are doing this. The girl and guy have never met, nor talked. They are just fully satisfied because obviously, their parents can't think bad for them.

- Certain people don't let the couple mingle too much after their engagement because that is condoning a cause for intimacy...hence, a couplemight cause more barriers if they announce their relationship because once it is public..they cannot really meet each other in private unless a third person is there. Basically, parents are scared that they will consider it fine to sleep with each other since they are about to be married so the guarding process after an engagement is even tighter and stricter.

- It is funny how most of these points are pointing towards sex..the biggest taboo in Pakistani society. Women cover their pregnant stomachs from shame...cuz that is a certificate that they have done it! How ironic, because in the West, people sell T-Shirts pointing to the belly..they are proud and not ashamed.

- If it is a love marriage God forbid, it is horrid...to the extent that mothers will hide it, "Oh yes, they were in the same school...BUT he was two years senior to her." Translation: They never met, hence they never dated, hence my daughter has not been in "Love". Hence, there was absolutely no chance of intimacy with a boy...She is pure...QED

- A girl or boy is 28 or older and does not care about marriage. Obviously they have had sex or they have been involved with someone or else they are not normal that they have no urge...I can see some logic in that.

- Mothers proudly talk about their sons going out and being obnoxious, out of the house all day. "He can't focus on his studies because he is so distracted with what is going on outside." Have you ever thought why mostly girls top all external exams in Pakistan..well cuz they have no life. All they are encouraged to do is sit and study and learn some home economics...whilst boys party and have a normal social life. Uggggggggggggh.

- We celebrate eunuchs and cross-dressers dancing and we laugh at their gay jokes. We even call them home for dancing on weddings or praying for a new born. But who on earth can be gay in Pakistan? It is just not natural...people in other countries are dirty and filthy and sex maniacs. Being gay is not natural...

- Men wear underwears in weight lifting championships on national TV and boys wear short shorts in public...noone says crap whereas in Islam, a man is not to show from his waist to his knees at all times. But no one will EVER comment on that...a woman should bloody wear a bedsheet all the time...they are beheaded in some parts of the country for being "obscene". People take the law in their hands when it comes to women...

- If a son comes home from work, the mother makes tea for him, treats him like a God. If a daughter comes home from work, she is to make tea for her brother and then food for the rest of the family. It is her duty...no matter that she is also winning bread for the family. Noone bloody rethinks this twice!

I am not a feminist...or maybe I have to sound like one because the balance is tipped so much in favour of the male gender in this society. It is disgusting. And mind you, I have never suffered from penis-envy, which a lot of girls do, in this society ..."I wish I was a man, life would be so good"...would never want to be a man...

Being a woman is so beautiful...I agree, not in Pakistan, though.

I love how people are so discreet in Hollywood. Insecure, nervous and mistrusting...sigh, what have I gotten myself into.

They won't talk to you but won't openly not talk to you so that one day, when they need you or you are head of them, they can say, I never didn't talk to you...

I love how when we become busier and busier in life, we don't want to know how to meet people anymore, we slowly retract into the few minutes we have to be with ourselves, our close ones and this is interpretted as arrogance.

You see the world unfolding infront of you and you can predict how things you did not understand while growing up, what you fought against while growing up, are so naturally opening up infront of you, so natural, that you can foresee it and it is scary, because you are on the other side. You don't want to admit it but you agree with them. Age, experience has taught you not to fight so vehemently but accept and maybe even agree to them.

I love how when mama says "he is a big man, he will not give us time", I have sat and been with these people in other societies where there aren't status differentiating lines, I have had more of a privilege to talk to them as peers, these people closer to my mother in age. How dare they not see what a rare, exemplified human she is? I hate how sometimes I know feel that I am respected more in circles than my mom...because people don't know her. She is always the one I used to be introduced through...now it is the reverse.

I don't like how nature is reversing everything. I still want mama to have all the answers, I still want to always look up to my parents to be the providers, not in material sense but in social and political sense. I cannot be the one ahead.

I have started feeling this tendency to hold my mother's hand and help her up and down the stairs. To serve food to both my aging parents in trays, pour cold water in their glasses, remind them of their medicines. I hate that they are not agile anymore. I hate it, or maybe I am just scared...I cannot lose them, they are my definition...they are my identity. I cannot be in the forefront defining myself...myself.

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Musarrat, our housemaid..yes we have a housemaid, it is the custom here...they need jobs and we need help...so beyond this surprise that some of you may have..let me start again.

Musarrat comes to our house everyday. She claims she is 25 but she looks 17 and apparently she has been married for 5 years to her first cousin, her mom's sister's son.

The first week, everything was rosy. This pretty girl finished all the work fast and well. Second week, she started feeling ill and would keep saying that her back hurt. In fact, would not say anything but when I would come by the iron stand, I would see her tired and sitting on a chair whilst ironing. I asked if everything was all right. She pretended to be fine.

The other day, when she started playing with my hair, her hand accidentally touched my shoulder and she was burning! I gave her tylenol right away and made her a sandwich and forced her to sit and rest for a while. After half and hour, she started working again...she doesn't eat in our house, she says she is never hungry.

Yesterday, I asked Musarrat why she doesn't tell her family that she is not feeling well. She responded, they say "nothing is wrong with you". This bugged me and so today, obviously I had to stir the subject again.

I: "Did you tell them you were unwell?"
M: "I did and my mother-in-law started yelling at me that I was making excuses to miss a day of work."

Financial causes...I kept quiet. But Iram can't stay quiet for long..call it my blessing or my vice.

I: "Well if they force you to fall ill, do they realize you will miss more days of work?"

That comment unleashed the dam. The dam of complaints, tears, sadness and everything else. Musarrat, which is a beautiful Urdu word that means "happiness" in Urdu...was anything but happy.

She was forced to marry her cousin at a child's age, did not know what was happening. In Islam, it is a woman's RIGHT to agree to marriage. One can't consider a marriage legal till both the bride and bridegroom agree. They probably waited for her adolescence before they unleashed their hungry son on her. She has had one child who died after birth...I don't ask details, I know it is hurtful. Maybe in this house where medical practice is shunned upon, the child died of a very basic illness because noone ever believed that he was ill in the first place...maybe, God knows...

Anyway, Musarrat doesn't complain about a forceful marriage, she doesn't complain about a child marriage or a bad mother-in-law, who is her mother's sister! All she says is, "The sad part is...he is like them. He only listens to his mother and he has told me. 'I will never do what you tell me to do.' "

I am just processing this information when I hear faint sobs. This young girl, with her head covered in a black dupatta, sobs over the sink whilst she does our dishes. I immediately make her drink some water and offer her some tea. I want her to sit down and tell me why she is crying. Here is where the problem comes...

I know, that she is hit at home and harassed all the time. Mental violence for sure...and I am bloody well sure, physical as well, but I am scared to ask...why, you wonder?

I am scared to ask because I know my limits. I can't do anything about it for it is not just her, it is the millions. We tried to intervene in the last housemaid's case and her husband forebade her to work in these "bad women's" house ever again. Right now, at least she can share her worries with me...if I intervene, she will bear more torture at home and they will withdraw her from our house.

Troubled, I think...then what is the solution?

Then I think of this amazing ceremony I went to the other day. It was "Mehergarh's" graduation ceremony where Dr Fouzia Saeed and Dr Kamran Ahmed, two well-educated social workers are training people, especially yourth, from all over Pakistan to solve various social issues in the home and at work involving bonded farmer labor, sexual harassment, domestic violence. The brilliant thing is that these people are from Musarrat's neighborhoods. They are not people like us, they are people who live a life like Musarrat. When more and more of these people will be trained, whose main focus is eradication of these issues and they will be people amongst these people, I can see some sort of hope for change.

There is only so much I can do with my one life. This is not an excuse...this is a pondered upon realization. I can try to do my best through a career I have chosen and along the way, do whatever else I can do.

In Musarrat's case, I thought and considered but then I realized that I was not the one to intervene...she will have to wait or better yet, just pray and hope that she will have the power to demand respect or find a way to grant this well-deserved right to herself.

wow, too much to write here but just two short points.

1) Whenever I move around in the Pakistani society, I am frustrated with the social taboos and stigmas but don't know where to start...it is hard to be optimistic and progressive and yet "fit in" the society...what freaks me out is when I see relatives and friends believing blindly in traditions and instruments of faith...where do I begin without automatically making them switch off their brains saying, "she is American, what does she know"...how do I access their brains...frustrating, very frustrating...but don't want to give up.

2) Mama says that one should sacrifice one's feelings for the betterment of society..aka if you love someone and you know that admitting your feelings for them will cause an upheaval...don't do it...I disagree wholly...can't believe she would say that but she is my mother and I love her regardless...but it makes me uneasy to realize we differ on such a basic point. I say scew the world, it is not worth sacrificing my life over...people draw towards whatever is hot at whichever time, so why worry about what they think, what they say...and the funny thing is, indirectly, she has raised me to be that way..but there is certainly conflict and rebuttal in her own thinking..but then again, who is perfect?

Written on June 30, 2007. Staring outside the window at the Mumbai Monsoon…

Day in, day out,
I wake up,
The same clout,
I run there and
I run here,
Trying to live my life.
The day passes by,
“I will live tomorrow”, I say
But I know it will be like today,
The hours pass, the moments fade,
I can’t hold on,
Farewell to everything I bade,
I am helpless.
I want to make the most of today,
Whilst knowing I won’t have time to sit back and relish this ticking time again.
I am told, there is neither loss nor gain,
For life is but a game.
But it is hard to believe,
For I want more,
A better future than before,
And so I wake up and go about,
Day in, day out.