I just cannot stop laughing…

Ashley Simpson whose song ‘pieces of you’ was enough for me to decide never to lend my ears to her brand of music, ‘allegedly’ had a nose job done. I am using the word allegedly because she has refused to be forthright about it.

When asked if she had indeed had a nose job done, she giggled and said:’ Maybe…who knows’.

Who knows? How can someone’s nose come in contact with a sharp object, modify the way they appear forever and not know anything about it. I mean come on!!! At her age, even the tiniest of pimples doesn’t go unnoticed.

The things people say in public!

I am working on a documentary about the repatriation program of Afghanis. While working on the script, I started thinking how much can a person’s life change. Living in Islamabad, I have come across many afghanis. Back when I was in school, I remember this old afghani lady who used to pick paper out of garbage cans. She used to be dressed in this big frock and used to come to our place quite often. My mother used to make lunch for her to eat and she would sit in our porch and try conversing with ammi and me in her broken urdu. One thing I distinctly remember is that she always kissed my mother’s hands before she got up to leave. I was in my pre-teens and couldn’t quite understand why she was like that. Ammi always told me to be kind to her and any other afghani I came across because she said they were ‘uprooted’ and ‘lost’.

Years later, I remember I was in college and going somewhere with bhai. We stopped at a traffic signal and this little afghani boy jumped in front of our car and saluted my brother. He was really cute so my brother called out to him and asked him where he was from. I still remember him sayin that he was from kachi abadi (a mud house village). My brother asked him again which country he belonged to…and he replied kachi abadi was his country. For the first time I understood why my mother called that woman uprooted and lost.

His was a generation without an identity.