*fall

.on the contrary i was quite safe. it was disturbingly calm. shadows of people walking in a damp streets towards a sighting. an event. like a mass exodus towards a point in the sky. i see people walking in that particular ramping-up street with long drenched raincoats. their backs towards me.

.finally. we were placed on the rooftop amidst the elite. with beautiful women and rich old men. there were sounds of some lounge music in the background. there was a hue of blue light in the atmosphere. all the faces i saw were not real, they had a hue that only outlined their forms. but i recognize them from my daily life. gradually i make my way to the to end of the rooftop as everyone looks in a certain direction. towards a horizon of built and unbuilt structures and they anxiously wait. like a countdown to the new year. and then it happens as we sense mild tremors and a we look at the explosion far away towards the barren, still, land with blue snow. there are cheers of acheivement in the air. some of the spectators like myself still kept our eyes focused on the explosion. the mushroom of an immediately recognizable form arose. while the clouds of dust were erupting and taking their form and spreading further. the people on the roof top were laughing and clinking their glasses to celebrate.

.until. there was a drizzle of a grey white ash. the rooftop which was previously believed to be covered with skylight dome made of glass like an observatory, was indeed an open rooftop now. suddenly. the clouds grew thicker and we were showered by white snow which were indeed flakes of ash. we covered our faces and sat down with hand covering ears and eyes and i held to the parapet wall to stretch my muscles. as if i had an inkling of what was about to take place. the showers became stronger until it was a thick fog and the blue faces became terrified red with dripping scars of white snow. the tremors shook us again and this time not mildly. the roof splits and i see people crushing at the back and the floor cracks and lifts up from my side and i clung to the parapet wall, like on a bus hanging (i remember the connotation i drew). watching the horror on their faces as they get further and further away from me. falling like snow themselves and diminishing. i could not feel the gravity in my muscles. no more. it was light.

ali alam .2.

Contd.. from ali alam .1. (and adding characters from ali's comments)

ali alam .2.

Characters

... there was another interesting couple of cousins... namely Obaidullah (aka driver, because he had a car and half of the college borrowed it and please note his name was pronounced Obaidullah with a 'd' as in Dalda) and his short and dark cousin realname: Khalid I think (but definitely aka 'zakoota' taken from the hit 'jinn' series remember "mujhe kaam batao... mai kya karoun...mai kis ko khaoun..." that zakoota... he resembled that jinn a lot and far more frightening)

... then there was Safwat who was a classic example of the most-efficient-in-the-class type... sitting in the first row... doing 'TCS' (the most official term in college times for students licking their teacher's balls to get good grades and so on...) Sometimes he too bunked with us and sat on the water tank...and he declared his nick as Viper (followed by the hash key... oh sorry followed by 'Viper' the hit series with a man who has this car and I haven't seen it ever... so...)

... not to mention Saleh... (and I know ali alam is smiling now reading this)... now Saleh is the best name to call out with a tone...because of its double-meaning status or should I say the single-meaning status the real meaning of the name was never explored... and the fact that his higher secondary school was ABC high school or something... and he wore a G-shock... and some G-shock incident had a connection with Harris (the feast) that ali alam would know more correctly as I fail to remember... but yes Saleh was a nice dude kinda thin guy whom you can depend on in hard times...

The Vague Idealism

I think the beauty of all these adolescents was that none of us... or at least 90% of us were not involved in rational thinking... in other words not involved as fully grown up 'bad habits' so to speak... we were extremely open to ideas, to understanding and misunderstanding of a variety of subjects, anything that came our way was an important piece of information and we somehow developed around it... and we believed eachother so much more... its amazing... we didn't care about money (not one of us had it then and we didn't care)... nor family... nor women... but yah we were very free I'd say... and I'd conclude the subject by saying: that more than what we studied at college it was actually the environment, the understandings or misunderstandings of these characters, the vague idea of getting through... not knowing from where, to where? that actually made us step into the third phase of our growing up, hence:

Education is only half as important as exposure and company of good-friends. Or even less.

p.s. I've just realized that by writing about these characters in detail, I'm doing a huge service to mankind... specially that everyone's college has these figures with some changes here n there but nobody remembers them or dont want to talk about them... and I'm sure half of them would be better off from what they started off as... and yes they are remembered for whatever reasons...

Some mention of the Teachers at DHA degree college for men.

1. First and foremost who didnt know Noori back in those days... the man behind the 'killings' metaphorically speaking... If you ever used to live in DHA you'd remember F!@# Noori written on every open drainage... yes, he earned that respect, every inch of it!

2. Yasmeen the most memorable decent chemistry teacher we remember or was it the other one who was not so decent... ali which one was yasmeen and what was the other one called...

3. then there was a fragile looking mathematics teacher... name can't remember but funny character, always knew we'd bunk the class but never caught us...

4. I vaguely remember any other teacher really, as I'd rarely attend classes... except for the Physical Training Instructer who was believed to be gay... and he used to take boys of his choice on Cricket matches in England or something... hehe

thats it for now...continued in ali alam .3.

next time in ali alam .3.

1. pre-IVSAA and after DHA degree college... the memorable trip up-north... also has special mentions of 'Ali the unbeatable champion of connect 4'... trip to the Jinnah supermarket... Ali's most impressive Khaloo or Phoppa...

2. the aspects of being class-mates...
3. the ups and ups at the IVSAA...
4. the women... and a lots of them after DHA degree college for MEN!!!
4b. the women "with and without" alam...
5. ali designs.
6. Ganda Banda and the 3d Cats rise!
7. trip to india and the play together (Alfonso de Leaf and also Duniya ka Button)
8. sector 12 and the evening sittings at the corner dhaba for chai and samosa.
9. hina p.
10. thesis and graduation.

and much much more... like the bonfire sessions in winter with alialam and his guitar... the most famous cellphone-dropping-incident... with special appearances by Nadeem Aleem, Ozi 'the bite', not to mention Sara 'Jam' of course, Zen the 'banana man', Sayem 'Ghaur' as Owais Hasin would call him, Owais Hasin also in a side side role, Cameo from Shahid saheb aka the 'blinking batman', the ever famous beautiful Duffy from her solo career to the duo in the Sultan sisterhood era with Alam's very own bhateejee Subia Wyne aka Tariq's sister aka Subs, Like Rabs, and Nads, the just-short Basket Ball player and the only all-rounder of sports Yasser Salehjee and his brother (special mention very few people who were never IVSAA students but will be seen everywhere in the school in off-peak hrs... even now I'd reckon...) going shorter: the dancer, the man, the performer: Omar Kasmani, and Urfa with her speeding car and her camera...

Last but not the least... the man who made us who we are and ruined himself in the process: the most respectable of all Sir Faisal Butt... I think I should do the next series on People vs. Faisal Butt...


in ali alam .4.

1. my thesis (2nd round)
2. Ganda Banda and the 3d Cats takes exit.
3. the mkkn sittings 1-3
4. Ali works for ASA
5. Ali works for Najeeb Saheb aka Ajeeb Omar aka F8 and the conspiracies of takingover the company. Special mentions of the Sami saheb era of Book group.
6. Solo alam.
7. I graduate and move to Dubai.
8. Alam weds Hina Pasha aka Hina P aka Hp (and both are die hard fans of 'hp' as well... not the printer)
9. I came specially for alam's wedding and sleep through it...
10. I visit alam in august (after a longtime we sat together)... during my annual vacation 3 months back.


and in the end... I'd like ali alam to remind me if I'm forgetting any aspects or events of our seasoning... and as they say: love to all who love ali...

ali alam .1.

The dude. The friend. The colleague. The singer. The band. The man. The husband.

Note:

I'm quite sure that propotionally speaking ali alam would have as much following as bono does. Just that he didn't get as lucky with some events in life that bono got lucky with. And I can bet ali alam would do a better job on the poverty-eleviation and the world-welfare program as compared to bono. Even though we've seen already that bono has not been too effective, he can appear at the best forums in the world but couldn't make a real difference. (I'll talk about on how to make the real difference, in some other blog, later...)

On alam and his early music...

He's been an excellent musician and had quite an insight on most of the music we heard together. At a point in time in our lives we used to listen to a very similar genre of music. But as I have moved to Dubai and even an year before that when we weren't in touch (as much). I stopped listening to the 'real' music and I think there was a bad music patch all over the world regarding production.

When we used to be in college together. Alialam had a band named 'Kolachi' and I happen to have listened to the only song recorded by them. We used to exchange a lot of music. He introduced me to a lot of great music that I did not even know of before him. I confess that I stole a lot of his tapes in the process as well. Including NIN and Offspring (for which he'll still kill me).

A scene out of a typical day with alam after college.

The scene is at the bus stop sitting on the side-walk where ali alam used to take Z2 or X10 in the opposite direction to my bus, on our ways back home after college. We used to sit together and chatted 'til the buses came. He would usually be carrying a V sack on his back... wearing blue sneakers with white soles... and I'd be wearing white uniform shirt pulled out, sleeves rolled up with black over-sized pointed shoes with metal heads... I used to have a denim bag I remember that I sometimes paired with denim jacket in winter... ok so...

(A car went hmmmmshewwwww... a man with a lot of white hair and black shirt or something. I didn't quite notice who it was but Ali did)

A: Oh that was Anwar mamoon in the car... you know, even though we live in the same compound, he'd never stop for me. Even if he sees me on the side-walk waiting for the bus, he'd just wave towards me and drive on...

M: Hmm...why...? (lost in thought...but looking at alam for a rational answer...with twitched forehead...)

A: (would smile with his big white teeth showing and taking his index fingers to his lips slowly with a shrug... raising eye-brows slightly...eyes widening...)

[the gesture means that it is interesting for Anwar mamoon to act like this and it shows a unique part of his character]

A: (he adds) ...you know when we came to this part of the city... it was a total desert (khyaban-e-bokhari)... and when the KESC guys came to put transformer in our street they did not know on the master plan what street no. was it.... so they just wrote on it: Anwar Maqsood street...


Friends at college.

We also had a lot of common college friends with whom we used to hang around... and sat at the back of the college on the water-tank... it was like a hide-out.... bunking place... we skipped a lot of classes... just because we were bored with teachers and of course it was part of growing old...(I'm sure ali alam wouldn't mind but I dont want to mention the nicknames we kept for eachother within that group sitting one day on the WT). There was a dude called Abbas Chagla (yes people who're wondering... he is the cousin of the infamous Ahmed Chagla of the IVSAA archives of misconduct... and Ali's former band member...) we were good friends with Abbas but he got addicted to interesting porn literature... and table-tennis... you can imagine his addiction from teh fact that we had saturdays off... and only the gym opened for a few hours and Abbas was there to get his TT practise in line... then we had another guy called 'Punch' I think he is still ali's friend and visits him...'Punch' was supposedly a good swimmer (or we heard he was or was it some other person)... and then we had Ali Kabeer and Khurram Noor Malik with whom we spent a very good time... and not to mention Hasnat who used to swear in the most awkward english ever spoken on earth... and he never used english for any other purpose but to swear... and then there was Harris (the rich cousin who couldn't go to America) and Mohammed Ali (the other cousin who was a. good looking b. good at studies but not as rich as Harris, but got to America before Harris did)... and there was a very famous story about Mohammed Ali asking me if I had a geyser as home? (its one of those jokes that only 'we' could understand in those times) the story is somewhat, like my-dropping-the-cell-phone-in-the-toilet episodes... obviously not as funny but it had certain elements of the same flavour... (that cell-phone event is also mentioned later because it has a lot to do with alam)

...ok back to college: I didnt want to share this detail but I'll have to: Harris had the most unique nickname in the friend's circle: aka Feast... because he had a lot of pimples on his face... we also had 2 brothers in our class Mohsin and Hasan... tall, over-aged bullies... last heard they got into the police and became ASI or ASP or something...

continues... on ali alam . 2 .

eid morning: namaz in 3 hrs

at home
back to
family.kids.eidi
kurta.chappal.pyjama.darzi
siwaiyan.halwa.kachuri.cakes
3 day short short visit
mom happy
to see me...
dad slight health issues
sara other issues...except:
chooriyan.mehndi.matching.darzi.
noba in isloo helping victims
missing her lots
abu playing
cards.cars.
and crunchie bars

very sleepy going to bed
happy eid to all who read.