if there's one thing i truly hate about abbas, it's his bhenchod paan. every time he has it in his mouth, which is all the time, he's constantly letting out these poisonous pichkaars.
when he does that, it produces this repulsive little sound, like a sharp hiss or a brief puckering sound, which rises during that brief moment when his lips tremble apart slightly, and a sharp sting of spittle pierces through the crevices within his teeth.
to be sure, if there is one thing i hate about that choot, its his paan.
now, this is no fanciful statement. abbas is a truly despicable human being, so there is a lot to hate about him.
to begin with, he is ek dam kala bhujjang - black as sin. i mean kala. but i don't mind that.
his heart is much darker than his complexion. he was the child who would use elfy on the cats and shut their eyes. he was the boy who would slap his sisters for fun. he was the son you kept your valuables hidden from.
and on top of that, there was his bhenchod bharham. i mean obnoxious level bharhams. constant bataein chodna. constant bravado. he was a spindly little lund, but he talked as if he owned the bhenchod city.
and as he kept talking and slurping his oral cesspool, he kept pissing out those pichkaars.
II
there are two boys, and they are standing under a tree. there is a thin dark one who keeps pacing and spitting pan, and waving his assault weapon in the air. the more muscular one remains silent most of the time. i cannot be sure if he is saying anything at all, because i'm too far, and the thin one doesn't look like he's stopping.
abid thinks that we should move. i know we can't get a good shot of them from here, but if anyone were to come by that road, we'd have a kutta shot of the whole scene. i tell abid to be patient.
the thin one has not put his gun against the pavement, and is using his free hands to make crude gestures. he accompanies these mathira grabs with thrusting his pelvis. soon, a simple narrative emerges from this dance.
the thin one seems to be saying that someone with large breasts encourages him to adopt a slow, languid pace during intercourse, so that he concentrates on kneading. but a lover with smaller breasts compels him to pinch and squeeze with wild abandon, a luxury which necessitates that he perform the act with a furious vigour.
abid tells me he didn't have time to re-charge the spare battery.
III
Asim thinks he's some bhenchod poet, some udaas aashiq who's going to take this randi world and hide all her oozing warts and fix her up so that he can marry her and take her to his gandoo village.
Saala lund.
he thinks like he's the guy who's on some mission to rid us of our sins, like he is some bhenchod avenger, like he's that gandu baazigar.
and oh how he loves to give me this chutia smug look. how he loves to takes these deep, meaningful breaths which he uses to cover up the fact that he's got lund to say. and then there's his taliban routine every juma, where he makes this big show of going to offer the only namaaz he does all week. but oh no - somehow that makes him some bhenchod philosopher.
fact is asim is just as much as a gandoo as the rest of us, but he's decided that he's going to ignore that. he's going to ignore the fact that he's a third class ghunda with mobile snatching as his primary vocation. he's going to ignore the fact that he is just as khwaar as all the rest of the qaum. because he is asim bhenchod ashiq. asim bhenchod hero, asim bhenchod leader.
Saala lund.
IV
The two boys now descend
Into a fight that never ends
Between them.
They speak of women they'll never see
Of how they would seduce them in their sleep
One Day.
One speaks of the goddess Katrina
Another extols the virtues of Kareena
Ad Nauseam.
Screaming, straining, pulsing
Throbbing, lashing, excreting
Screaming, screaming, screaming.
V
EXT. EMPTY ROAD, DAY
[We track across a wide, empty road in Garden, stopping bang
in the middle of the road. there is a slight haze, and its
cloudy and cool. The two boys are on the extreme right of
the frame, under a tree. we hear them talk, but not
audibly.]
CUT TO:
CLOSE UP of ABBAS:
[Abbas suddenly whips his head around. We can hear the faint
sound of a rickshaw in the background.]
CUT TO:
CLOSE UP of ASIM:
[Asim follows suit, and instinctively, grips and squeezes
the gargantuan gun he holds.]
CUT TO:
[We return to the original shot. The boys are now getting
animated, and we see a rickshaw chugging slowly towards them
in the vast empty road.]
ABBAS:
Chal bhenchod! Aaja beta asim teri
baari aa gayee hai! Chal gushtee
kay shurroo ho ja (lets out a
stream of paan spittle)
ASIM:
Lun Pay aa...
ABBAS:
(screaming)
Kya ho gaya hai lun ke siray? Chala
goli madarchod yeh wali Katrina kay
liyain! (breaks out into maniacal
laughter)
CUT TO:
[We now split the screen, with close ups of both boys. We
see Abbas screaming as a rush of emotions wash across Asim's
face. The background music, and general sense of chaos
continues to rise, until...]
CUT TO:
[We see Asim face on, screaming loudly. He opens fire, and
holds the gun with both arms between his legs. We see
bullets pulsing out of the weapon, with Asim's body
convulsing with each release of a bullet, each burst of fire
coalescing as an other-wordly experience on his face. His
mouth hangs open, his pupils dilated, his entire being
sublimated into the gun he holds between his legs, the gun
which continues to spit out bullets...]
CUT TO:
INT. RICKSHAW, DAY
[The camera is now within the rickshaw, which is a
smouldering, burning, bleeding carcass. We see both boys in
the background, with Abbas gesticulating wildly, while Asim
stands there, spent, in a daze.]
VI
Holy shit!
I turn to Abid and ask him if he got it, and he has. And although we both know its not going to run on-air, the confirmation has me elated. i was already nursing a semi having witnessed that first hand, but this is too good.
The boys continue to stand there. The psycho who completely ravaged the rickshaw continues to stand still, while the other prances about the rickshaw. I keep wondering whether I should move or go in, but Abid keeps me in check. I want to send a message to the assignments desk, but I have no idea whether to call this one ethnic or not.
I realise that they might have the same problem too. The rickshaw driver is fair, ruddy type, but his passenger, an old woman, looks much darker. The dark boy continues to run around their smoldering bodies.
Suddenly, the killer speaks. He seems to have made up his mind and barks instructions to the other. They grab the woman, and carry her corpse to the nearby gully. The fair one then returns alone, and stands by the rickshaw which he now begins to douse in petrol.
VII
More die as violence and arson continue in Karachi
KARACHI (Staff Report): The death toll in the city rose to 85 this morning, as raging gun battles continued through out the city, with the authorities continuing to be missing from the action...
... In Garden, at least two bodies were recovered early on Saturday morning. Aasia Ahmed, a 55 year old local resident, was found dead in an alley near her home, having been shot multiple times in the head and torso. Aasia's son was an activist in the MQM, and police confirmed that her death was a target killing.
Police also recovered the body of Asfandyar Khan, a 42 year old rickshaw driver from the same vicinity. His remains were found within his rickshaw, which had been set on fire. The authorities confirmed that they were treating his death as a target killing, pointing out that several bus drivers and rickshaw drivers had been similarly burnt alive due to their ethnic origins.
Showing posts with label Fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fiction. Show all posts
The Room
I had made a big deal of it when i had posted my first student film. I am going to be a lot more basic with this one.
The project for this film stipulated a 6-8 minute piece, shot entirely in one location with the location playing a central role in the film.
I personally think it's a better effort than my first one, and moreover this time around i did everything myself. which felt quite good. for those of you interested, there is no post-production work in here. no special effects either, unless you count animation as an effect. which no one does.
let me know what you think. please, if there is anyone still reading here, don't be as silent as last time.
While i'm here, some fun facts. during the stop motion, i made some major blunders like leaving in glasses or my hands in some shots, which led to some really shoddy photoshopping i am sure the eagle eyed among you can spot. the scissors used in the final sequence also kept hitting the lens, so that some of the shots have stab marks over them. but my favourite bit was that when i was shooting the books for the stop motion, one book kept falling down and was completely unreliable. yes, it was the afridi book. gotta love it :)
The project for this film stipulated a 6-8 minute piece, shot entirely in one location with the location playing a central role in the film.
I personally think it's a better effort than my first one, and moreover this time around i did everything myself. which felt quite good. for those of you interested, there is no post-production work in here. no special effects either, unless you count animation as an effect. which no one does.
The Room from ahmernaqvi on Vimeo.
The Room was made as part of my MA in Independent Film Degree. This particular film was part of a project which decreed that the entire film had to be shot within a certain location, and the location was meant to be a key character within the whole film. Everything, from the story to the camera and the editing was done by myself, using a rig and a tripod.
let me know what you think. please, if there is anyone still reading here, don't be as silent as last time.
While i'm here, some fun facts. during the stop motion, i made some major blunders like leaving in glasses or my hands in some shots, which led to some really shoddy photoshopping i am sure the eagle eyed among you can spot. the scissors used in the final sequence also kept hitting the lens, so that some of the shots have stab marks over them. but my favourite bit was that when i was shooting the books for the stop motion, one book kept falling down and was completely unreliable. yes, it was the afridi book. gotta love it :)
This Post is Not an Elephant
I
My wife has a Slovenian friend K who shares a flat with a man named S. S is coloured brown, and learnt his thickly accented English at St. Michael's but/and he assures all and sundry that he is British.
Till recently, S had the habit of hosting raucous parties which would end late, with S rendered comatose amidst an inglorious mess of pasta-encrusted dishes, half-empty beer bottles and bass-blasting stereos. However, after a three day New Year's blinder, S vowed to give up drinking and clean up his ways. As K awaited with bated breath, it appeared that S had changed his life around.
One Friday night, K arrived at home to find another party, with the alcohol replaced by a bubbling shisha. Without bothering to investigate the legality of the ingredients burning within, she went to bed. Saturday saw both flat-mates out of the house, and so came Sunday.
K was having breakfast that morning, when she noticed a black burn mark on the expensive carpet they had paid a 200 pound deposit for. Intrigued and incensed, she investigated further. The linoleum kitchen floor had a similar black burn mark, and the bin liner in the dustbin had a perforated hole the same size as the burn marks, while one of her kitchen towelettes was burnt as well. K would later discover that the size and shape of the burn marks in question closely resembled the circular shape of the specialized coals used for shishas.

And so she decided to confront S. When he came home, she pointed out the burnt carpet and asked him if he did it. And that was when K realised that despite all the distance S had put between himself and his past, despite all the calls with the 92 prefix he avoided, despite all his claims of being one with the west, there was a quintessentially P****tani core to him. And so to repeat, when K asked him about the burn mark, he replied with a straight face, without flinching:
"That wasn't me, I wasn't home last night. Maybe you did it?"
"If you think that a kiss is all in the lips
C'mon, you got it all wrong, man
And if you think that a dance is all in the hips
Oh well, then do the twist
If you think holding hands is all in the fingers
Grab hold of the soul where the memory lingers and
Make sure to never do it with a singer
Cause he'll tell everyone in the world
What he was thinking about the girl
Yeah, what he's thinking about the girl, oh
A lot of people get confused and they bruise
Real easy when it comes to love
They start putting on their shoes and walking out
And singing "boy, I think I had enough"
Just because she makes a big rumpus
She don't mean to be mean or hurt you on purpose, boy
Take a tip and do yourself a little service
Take a mountain turn it into a mole
Just by playing a different role
Yeah, by playing a different role, oh"
II
O wondered, much like the Simpsons for episode 138 "...so, it has come to this."
In a strange little island adrift of a continent, he sat on a perch within a rustic colosseum, wondering how exactly he had ended up with all this toxicity overcoming him.
Hadn't he been the one constantly reminded of how lucky he was? Didn't they all rub him for not doing real work, and yet be green with envy that he was living the dream? Hadn't this been what he wanted to do, to be here, in this stadium, doing what he loved? That boy who would be out playing in the cruel relentlessness of the Jeddah afternoon would have killed to be where he stood today, so why did he feel so pissed? Precisely because he had never seen it purely as work, but as a way of keeping that boy alive.
Well fuck that boy, because all that was left inside O at the moment was pure bile.
Oh how he had hated the cynics! Those vultures who gobbled up the free travel, and the countless passes, and the cheap tickets to seedy venues. Those vinegary idiots who stewed all day in their vile conspiracies, unable and unwilling to experience joy for even a minute, because they were too caught up in their unending quest to spark a fuse, light a fire, twist a knife. He had vowed he would never be like them, never let his passions cloud his rationality, never become overcome with the sheer desire to be a fucking bitch like them.
Well fuck that now.
He couldn't take it anymore. It was one thing being infuriated, frustrated, dejected, resigned, crushed, defeated. He had blitzed through hope and trudged through hopelessness, he had been stoic and he done the 'hiding his pain behind bitter humor' thing. But this was a new low. This was...
30 catches in six Tests.
Fuck. That.
His laptop stared blankly back at him so he decided to stumble for a bit. Had he bothered, he might have gone to his home page, and read the feature by the senior statesman of gung-ho Ozzie-ism, who summed it up quite nicely for him.
But he didn't check the home page. Instead, he thought maybe he'd try Smiling Buddha one last time. He had last spoken to him a week ago, right after the end, right when his stomach had felt like ripped up ribbons of meat in rancid acid - to put it mildly.
He hadn't the heart to rip into him then, so he had merely asked, why? Smiling Buddha had smiled sadly, and said
"What will a specialist fielding coach do? The same thing we are doing. This is a grassroots problem."
Smiling Buddha better have something different this time, thought O as he walked down the stairs to the field. Out by the boundary, crouched low, was the painfully slow Buddha in front of the Boy Blunder. Someone was tossing lollypops for SB to edge to BB. O stood there for 15 minutes, not saying a word.
When he had counted 50 throws, he turned back. The Buddha had managed to edge five.
O sat in front of his monitor, his by-line already formulated.

"The boat yeah you know she's rockin' it
And the truth well you know there's no stoppin' it
The boat yeah you know she's still rockin' it
The truth well you know there's no stoppin' it
So what, somebody left you in a rut
And wants to be the one who's in control
But the feeling that you're under can really make you wonder
How the hell she could be so cold
So now you're left, denying the truth
And it's hidden in the wisdom in the back of your tooth
You need to spit it out, in a telephone booth
While you call everyone that you know, and ask 'em
Where do you think she goes
Oh yeah, where d'ya suppose she goes, oh
The truth well you know there's no stoppin' it
And the boat well you know she's still rockin' it
The boat well you know she's still rockin' it
And the truth yeah you know there's no stoppin' it
You recognize the effect and the wreck
That it's causin' when she rocks the boat
But it's the cause hittin on the Cardinal Laws
'bout the proper place to hang her coat
So to you, the truth is still hidden
And the soul plays the role of a lost little kitten but
You should know that the doctors weren't kidding
She's been singing it all along
But you were hearin' a different song"
III
M stared at his tumbler. It contents were Amaretto, cream and scotch. They'd named a goddam cocktail after him.
His tumbler caught the sun's dying rays. That fiery bastard was going down amidst the hills on an island he owned, himself. His own goddam island.
There was a whole world out there that still, to this day, worshipped him. They swore by him in acting schools. They memorized his lines, sold his face on t-shirts, parodied and pastiched him, revered him. They goddam loved him.
So why did he still care?
He should do what Maria kept telling him to do - give up hope that they'll ever find her, get the scientists to make another one, another dozen ones if he goddam wanted, and live his life.
Why should he keep moping and hoping?
Because, M realised, there was nothing else he could do. Nothing could make him accept she was gone. Nothing left but to keep hoping.
Maybe they thought he was a fool, but what did he care? They'd been saying that about him for over thirty years now. So what that the Americans couldn't find her, the Europeans and the Japanese and the Chinese were all clueless, that even those Afrikaans mercenaries had given up hope of finding her in the thicket of the forest? He still believed, and that was why he had paid every last contender who promised to find his liger Tarita - his half lion, half tiger beauty that was perhaps every bit as monstrous and wonderful as him.
Maria knew that, and she looked out in to the jungle with a tear in her eye. She'd been through the good, the bad and the worse with M, and the worse was pretty hairy. But to see him, so desperate, so broken, so goddam sad - that was...
Suddenly, there was a rustle and a bustle, a bungle in the jungle...
M jolted up, and Maria looked with trepidation as figures began to emerge out of the bushes amidst a fearful commotion. Time froze as they waited, and watched.
And then...
A mighty elephant came roaring out, being beaten senseless by members of the Pakistani police, screaming "Haan main Liger hoon, main Liger hoon, Kassam Khuda ki main Liger hoon!"

Lyrics in italics for "The Denial Twist" by the White Stripes
My wife has a Slovenian friend K who shares a flat with a man named S. S is coloured brown, and learnt his thickly accented English at St. Michael's but/and he assures all and sundry that he is British.
Till recently, S had the habit of hosting raucous parties which would end late, with S rendered comatose amidst an inglorious mess of pasta-encrusted dishes, half-empty beer bottles and bass-blasting stereos. However, after a three day New Year's blinder, S vowed to give up drinking and clean up his ways. As K awaited with bated breath, it appeared that S had changed his life around.
One Friday night, K arrived at home to find another party, with the alcohol replaced by a bubbling shisha. Without bothering to investigate the legality of the ingredients burning within, she went to bed. Saturday saw both flat-mates out of the house, and so came Sunday.
K was having breakfast that morning, when she noticed a black burn mark on the expensive carpet they had paid a 200 pound deposit for. Intrigued and incensed, she investigated further. The linoleum kitchen floor had a similar black burn mark, and the bin liner in the dustbin had a perforated hole the same size as the burn marks, while one of her kitchen towelettes was burnt as well. K would later discover that the size and shape of the burn marks in question closely resembled the circular shape of the specialized coals used for shishas.
"That wasn't me, I wasn't home last night. Maybe you did it?"
"If you think that a kiss is all in the lips
C'mon, you got it all wrong, man
And if you think that a dance is all in the hips
Oh well, then do the twist
If you think holding hands is all in the fingers
Grab hold of the soul where the memory lingers and
Make sure to never do it with a singer
Cause he'll tell everyone in the world
What he was thinking about the girl
Yeah, what he's thinking about the girl, oh
A lot of people get confused and they bruise
Real easy when it comes to love
They start putting on their shoes and walking out
And singing "boy, I think I had enough"
Just because she makes a big rumpus
She don't mean to be mean or hurt you on purpose, boy
Take a tip and do yourself a little service
Take a mountain turn it into a mole
Just by playing a different role
Yeah, by playing a different role, oh"
II
O wondered, much like the Simpsons for episode 138 "...so, it has come to this."
In a strange little island adrift of a continent, he sat on a perch within a rustic colosseum, wondering how exactly he had ended up with all this toxicity overcoming him.
Hadn't he been the one constantly reminded of how lucky he was? Didn't they all rub him for not doing real work, and yet be green with envy that he was living the dream? Hadn't this been what he wanted to do, to be here, in this stadium, doing what he loved? That boy who would be out playing in the cruel relentlessness of the Jeddah afternoon would have killed to be where he stood today, so why did he feel so pissed? Precisely because he had never seen it purely as work, but as a way of keeping that boy alive.
Well fuck that boy, because all that was left inside O at the moment was pure bile.
Oh how he had hated the cynics! Those vultures who gobbled up the free travel, and the countless passes, and the cheap tickets to seedy venues. Those vinegary idiots who stewed all day in their vile conspiracies, unable and unwilling to experience joy for even a minute, because they were too caught up in their unending quest to spark a fuse, light a fire, twist a knife. He had vowed he would never be like them, never let his passions cloud his rationality, never become overcome with the sheer desire to be a fucking bitch like them.
Well fuck that now.
He couldn't take it anymore. It was one thing being infuriated, frustrated, dejected, resigned, crushed, defeated. He had blitzed through hope and trudged through hopelessness, he had been stoic and he done the 'hiding his pain behind bitter humor' thing. But this was a new low. This was...
30 catches in six Tests.
Fuck. That.
His laptop stared blankly back at him so he decided to stumble for a bit. Had he bothered, he might have gone to his home page, and read the feature by the senior statesman of gung-ho Ozzie-ism, who summed it up quite nicely for him.
Pakistan have long been the least willing of all the Test-playing nations to own up to their failings.
But he didn't check the home page. Instead, he thought maybe he'd try Smiling Buddha one last time. He had last spoken to him a week ago, right after the end, right when his stomach had felt like ripped up ribbons of meat in rancid acid - to put it mildly.
He hadn't the heart to rip into him then, so he had merely asked, why? Smiling Buddha had smiled sadly, and said
"What will a specialist fielding coach do? The same thing we are doing. This is a grassroots problem."
Smiling Buddha better have something different this time, thought O as he walked down the stairs to the field. Out by the boundary, crouched low, was the painfully slow Buddha in front of the Boy Blunder. Someone was tossing lollypops for SB to edge to BB. O stood there for 15 minutes, not saying a word.
When he had counted 50 throws, he turned back. The Buddha had managed to edge five.
O sat in front of his monitor, his by-line already formulated.
There is not a cricket-playing country in the world as backward and as resistant to not just modernity but simple, natural progression as Pakistan.
"The boat yeah you know she's rockin' it
And the truth well you know there's no stoppin' it
The boat yeah you know she's still rockin' it
The truth well you know there's no stoppin' it
So what, somebody left you in a rut
And wants to be the one who's in control
But the feeling that you're under can really make you wonder
How the hell she could be so cold
So now you're left, denying the truth
And it's hidden in the wisdom in the back of your tooth
You need to spit it out, in a telephone booth
While you call everyone that you know, and ask 'em
Where do you think she goes
Oh yeah, where d'ya suppose she goes, oh
The truth well you know there's no stoppin' it
And the boat well you know she's still rockin' it
The boat well you know she's still rockin' it
And the truth yeah you know there's no stoppin' it
You recognize the effect and the wreck
That it's causin' when she rocks the boat
But it's the cause hittin on the Cardinal Laws
'bout the proper place to hang her coat
So to you, the truth is still hidden
And the soul plays the role of a lost little kitten but
You should know that the doctors weren't kidding
She's been singing it all along
But you were hearin' a different song"
III
M stared at his tumbler. It contents were Amaretto, cream and scotch. They'd named a goddam cocktail after him.
His tumbler caught the sun's dying rays. That fiery bastard was going down amidst the hills on an island he owned, himself. His own goddam island.
There was a whole world out there that still, to this day, worshipped him. They swore by him in acting schools. They memorized his lines, sold his face on t-shirts, parodied and pastiched him, revered him. They goddam loved him.
So why did he still care?
He should do what Maria kept telling him to do - give up hope that they'll ever find her, get the scientists to make another one, another dozen ones if he goddam wanted, and live his life.
Why should he keep moping and hoping?
Because, M realised, there was nothing else he could do. Nothing could make him accept she was gone. Nothing left but to keep hoping.
Maybe they thought he was a fool, but what did he care? They'd been saying that about him for over thirty years now. So what that the Americans couldn't find her, the Europeans and the Japanese and the Chinese were all clueless, that even those Afrikaans mercenaries had given up hope of finding her in the thicket of the forest? He still believed, and that was why he had paid every last contender who promised to find his liger Tarita - his half lion, half tiger beauty that was perhaps every bit as monstrous and wonderful as him.
Maria knew that, and she looked out in to the jungle with a tear in her eye. She'd been through the good, the bad and the worse with M, and the worse was pretty hairy. But to see him, so desperate, so broken, so goddam sad - that was...
Suddenly, there was a rustle and a bustle, a bungle in the jungle...
M jolted up, and Maria looked with trepidation as figures began to emerge out of the bushes amidst a fearful commotion. Time froze as they waited, and watched.
And then...
A mighty elephant came roaring out, being beaten senseless by members of the Pakistani police, screaming "Haan main Liger hoon, main Liger hoon, Kassam Khuda ki main Liger hoon!"
Lyrics in italics for "The Denial Twist" by the White Stripes
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