On making and breaking engagements

Khatuba, Mangaitar, Fiance are the words used to describe that notional relationship between man and woman in Arabic, Urdu and English respectively. This is the stage of limbo. The two are not courting nor are they married. They are just stuck in the middle, where light conversations are acceptable but meetings are not.

The phone bills keep increasing. The emotionally numb start sending flowers, the miserly become spendthrift. Depending on the person you decide to engage, the conversations on phones can be uplifting or disastrous during mood swings.

Initial expectations of intimacy and involvement in each others lives over long distance wears out with one’s own drudgery of everyday work. And if you are Desi and live in a slightly more extended family setup, then you are done for.

This is even worse if its long distance. Either the two never talk and meet on the wedding night like strangers group hugging in a testicular cancer counseling group. Or they talk so regularly - That the passion burns out.

The stereotype fed into the Desi psyche is that the woman has to adopt tactics to squeeze as much out of her husband after marriage as possible and the husband has to flirt as much to get her to cook and gift her with an army of kids –until they fall in love.

The Desi girl wants to impose her own ideas of how life should be lived. The guy wants to be laid back and face each event in its own time or vice versa unusually.

Recently the writer had the pleasure of going through a break up. Alhamdulillah minimum pain experienced.

I also got the stuff/gift shift back from ex-fiancée. Any body wanna buy a used sony ericsson walkman mobile (excluding the sentiments) ;)?

My mum is worried that the ex to be mother in law has cursed the stuff with black magic.

So I just popped open a can of corn which for some strange reason mum gifted them.....err feel sick .my tongue has gone yellow. Help!!...gasp..Oh .its just the artificial coloring. !!!

Amar pa ji - u remember the 'Book of the Book' my valuable collector's item...she has not returned it!! :(

Never give book gifts to a Desi fiancée unless she holds dual nationality - the library card system has its benefits. In contrast to buying right off the pirated thela wala! (street Hawker) It teaches people the discipline of returning books to the rightful owner!

She could have kept the jewelry, but the book!! Sad! The jewelry will be sold to...who else the jewelers, who will melt the gold and silver - but the book cannot be even ripped apart and sold page by page to a raddi wala (recycler) as oh toilet paper?.because only approx 12/150 pages have text in it...yes the rest is blank, and its rough quality paper.

Oh Idrees Shah! Forgive this disobedient attempted but failed Sufi student for the charming tentacles of a woman made me lose what God never granted me....peace of mind.


Go in peace my friends.