Obituary of a Would-be-famous Writer

There was a young woman from Karachi

who had a date with destiny on Mai Kolachi,

they searched and they searched,

they did tons of research,

but they never did find

her soul.


Kaneez was a young woman of intelligence and promise; at least that's what the rejection slips from major New
York publishing houses said. They also advised her to try sending her work to smaller houses (for example just
around the corner in deepest Mongolia) where her brand of third world neurosis would be better appreciated. If
that failed they suggested she save up and have some printing press run off copies of her "cow uterus poetry;
boldly going where no words have gone before".

After much soul searching she decided not to take their advice and saved up the checks of RS 500 she received
for pieces in the biggest newspapers and magazines in the country to buy a new biro and a journal in which to
write her obituary. Long term strategy had never been her strong point, education in a Pakistani private school
and social conditioning administered by her fellow simians ensured that she believed only in immediate
gratification, and the 'thuk thuk' the journal made as she sat rocking to and fro on the floor bouncing it off her
head did indeed sound most satisfying.

(not quite as satisfying as the sound of success of course)

It was after opening the last rejection letter that the realization struck her. It dawned upon her what she had been
doing wrong. All those long, torturous years of effort and waste (23 to be exact) had come to naught because
she had failed to understand the way the world and the Pakistani system (If you want to be culture specific about
it) worked. She had been laboring under the illusion that one made ones own destiny, rather like one went to a
darzi and had a shalwar made (choosing the material and everything herself). Now it struck her that destiny was
a little of XL training pants running fully grown and wild across the planet, and all you had to do was catch one,
climb into it and hope it fit. Getting it altered was where the hand of the individual, free will etc came in. It could
be taken in and nipped and tucked for the conscious, confident ones to show of their state of metaphysical
perfection, or flatteringly draped on those who wished to hide the corruption beneath (for e.g. a blanket
statement such as "whoever it is tell them I'm innocent and I don't know where Osama is").

It took her merely a day to become sensitized enough to this concept to be able to see the destiny's other people
were wearing. That man in the starched latha with the bald head, the state airplane and the estate outside Lahore
had wrestled his to the ground only a while ago and still hadn't had it altered with the result that it hung loosely
upon his rounded frame, wrinkled and sagging and no doubt pining for 'twice the man he was'. The woman on
the cover of the Time magazine with the glasses, the dupatta and the slight accent had merely had to climb into
hers as an army of servants held it up at her birth. Her father had cheated his own for a time, hitting and running,
stealing the fates of the 'little people', till one day they had caught up with him in the pre-dawn shivers of his cell
and snapped his neck with the teeth of their accountability.

Stretching behind them both to a point too far in the distance to be measured was a host of smaller destinies in
thrall to their own, thereby creating a shortage of viable futures in the 'real' world. The laws of Servitude
apparently extended well beyond the planes of human existence.

The families in the shantytowns were all huddled into one, moths clustering to its fading light. It burnt brightly at
spots where small heads bent over books but already the cooking fires were throwing into sharp relief the
shadows of the rents where that one destiny had buckled under and broken down beneath multitudinous
pressure.

Poverty is to destiny what Bata is to shoes.

Entrapped by the error of her ways she mobilized all the resources at her disposal and set out to find herself a
spankin' new set of fates. Progress was slow, the battle uphill because of the fact that she was single (no destiny
blanket to share at night), a woman (no destiny could hide her mammaries from the eyes of the frustrated), and
middle class in terms of finance and family (they apparently stopped making that size in the late seventies). Miles
of shops and encounters and no spirit moved her, no hand helped her, and no possibility embraced her. She was
left standing on the pavement with her thumb stuck out as those of great means and little talents whizzed by with
pristine, assured futures bucking beneath them. The sons and daughters of bureaucrats and landlords,
industrialists and lawyers passed her by, grinding her pretensions into dust as they sped to the airport. She didn't
know how long she stood there by that road inhaling the fumes of other people's desires till they made her dizzy
and finally, she lost sight of her own.

As she dragged her weary feet home that night down the leaden rope of Mai Kolachi her foot struck something.
Bending forward to pick it up (thus prompting hooting from a passing police mobile doing rounds to protect the
womenfolk) she saw it was a tattered, dusty, well-worn destiny. Stenciled onto it in black in surprisingly clear
letters were the words " CANADA OR BUST".

She looked for a moment up at the sky, at the clouds which old men had told her could cradle her to safety and
prosperity. She looked behind her at the city, the angles and poor lighting muting its savagery and disguising its
bloodlust. She looked to her right at the swamp that could lull her into gentle and lasting oblivion.
She took the road home and barricaded herself into her room, where she remains to this day, writing. Her
themes and sentences are like dogs chasing their tails, self-condemned to a life of mediocrity and third person.
She plans for when Opportunity is going to come knocking at her door. She's going to tell him Destiny said
something really nasty about his mother.