The Jealousy Factor

I'm not someone used to being jealous of people. I do of course become influenced or impressed, but jealousy is just not my response.

Or so I thought, until yesterday.

The credit for my dress designing and stitching goes completely to my maternal grandmother [ نانو ]. Mama doesn't usually bear the torture of sitting with a sewing machine, but something made her make me a dress this time, yesterday.

It was a pink-and-white printed cotton dress, and large scraps of the cloth as well as some of the adorning lace were left over by the end. Mama wrapped them up into a ball and placed them in a shopper in case she might need them later on. She then began clearing up the place ready to prepare dinner. After testing the dress for fitting, I logged onto Facebook to check out the social network updates. I expected mama to be in the kitchen, and so the gentle whirr of the sewing machine came as a surprise. I put it down to her mending something as an afterthought. No worries.

Absorbed in the World Wide Web I realized only after 20minutes that the whirring was still continuing!

I got up to check up on mama. And what did I see? Mama holding up a white frock with pleated neck; the same pink-and-white cotton highlighting the shoulder joints; the white embroidered lace encircling the hem. A pretty girl-ish frock. That might not have been much in itself had I not seen the huge loving smile on her face. I was shell-shocked. I mean, who was that little dress for? We don't have a little girl that age for miles in our extended family, so why the dress?

Before I could speak a word, mama asked me how did the frock look? I said hmm, good, but who WAS it for? So she told me; it was for the daughter of a classmate from Quran class. Wasn't it pretty? How should she join the bow? Like the traditional two-tier thing, or the simple kind? She kept asking me these questions in quick succession but they were entirely lost on me. Yes, I was furious in my mind. Jealous. Of the little girl.

And on top of the cloth-ey business, she also mentioned that the little girl was one pretty thing and was a 'girl' true to the bone. That she usually wore the pinks and purples meant for little girls; had straight hair she usually wore in two ponytails; had a sweet voice one just wanted to hear over and over again. I'm sure mama didn't mean to point out my own un-girl-iness, but I felt the contrast hard.

Really hard.

Why was I jealous? Maybe because it was MY mother making a dress for ANOTHER little 'girl'. Because it's ME who's going to a different country in a week's time. Because it's ME who wants MY own mother's FULL attention. Maybe this. Maybe that.

 

I know it's hardly the response to expect from a university student. I mean, نانو makes the girls in her area dresses all the time as gifts, and I haven't once felt like this.

But, this time…?

I'm ashamed. But… but…*another bout of uncontrollable jealousy*

Fruit Symbiosis?

I hate household work. I dislike cooking.

But this Ramadan, preparing the fruit salad [ فروٹ چاٹ  : ‘fruit cha-at’ in Urdu speak ] for Iftar has fallen to me.

Quiet grumbling, mild protestations on being assigned this task on a daily basis for a month…not a day or two, not a week, but a whole MONTH…it was outrageous! I'd rather be sitting and doing most ANYthing else than washing fruit, carefully drawing up the imaginary lines of fruit-latitude-and-longitude, then choosing the right knives for each step of the cutting process!

Preparing فروٹ چاٹ is just NOT what I do! And yet I landed up with the job. I'm trying to be a slightly <emphasis> 'good' girl these vacations around, trying my best to act as mama's telling me, with some variation of my own of course! [I can't tell you how difficult it is for me to follow anybody's instructions :/], so I zipped up my mouth trying to shut all the words of protest just bursting to be heard.

So on the first day of Ramadan, I took up the challenge; got the fruit, washed, dried, got cutting. The pile I'd made was off-putting from the outset but once the knife was in my hand, I told myself: no turning back now!

First came the pineapple [thankfully that was already peeled and sliced!] under my torture, followed by 3pears, 2apples and 2bananas. Mama intentionally kept popping into the kitchen to see if I needed help; and did I ask for it? Of course not! I was just being adamant in not letting on the fact that I was dreading the inspection that would come later, the verdict mama would give if she'd passed the  فروٹ چاٹ   or not; that I was clueless if the way I'd sliced up the pineapple, chopped the pear + apple, quartered the bananas was right or not. And of course I just couldn't let my ineptitude show…no way!

But I kept going; chopping; slicing; squeezing lemon and pouring the juice to keep the fruit from blackening. The rhythm of my own motion eventually made me forget about the previously insistent hunger pangs. It took me 45minutes to get the bowl filled. After making layer upon layer of fruit, I got the spatula, shut my eyes, placed my left hand on the bowl's edge and started mixing.

All through the process I would just dump the cut fruit into the bowl without looking at it, so I saw the end result only after everything was done. I'd been expecting it to look nothing short of a mess and had full plans to drop the knife, wash my hands, and disappear from the kitchen till Iftar immediately after completing the preparation.

But I didn't. Because, because, because…the  فروٹ چا  looked amazing! It's just vanity, I'm sure, but I stood for a full minute just looking at what I'd made. The poking red faces of the unpeeled apple, mixed in with the tropical feel of pineapple dotted about with the pleasant scented pear was just *awestruck!*.

I felt strangely proud of my work. I picked up the bowl with caution and placed it ever so carefully on the mat to ensure the beauties didn't fall out. And was I glad when it passed the look-test! The fruits somehow felt my own, like I could identify with them in a certain way. I munched and savoured the crunch like I'd never before, all the while thinking, 'Look! It's me who made this!'

It's been 18days now that I've been making the فروٹ چاٹ  every day. I now look out for fruit promotions in supermarket catalogues and keep the fruit supply for the next day in check. I mix-and-match the fruit combinations according to which ones are in greater quantity; rotate the pineapples everyday to maintain their freshness, check the bananas for softness to make sure they haven't become too mushy and place them on a soft sheet so they don't blacken.

All this from someone who doesn't like cooking. Not to say I've changed my outlook on cooking, or that I'm going to start with other dishes now...not at all! 

But the fruit salad? It's mine now. We're in symbiosis - for the rest of the month, at least.

Change-ing NEMO

Mama asked us to clean up the CD rack after Iftar yesterday. My parents were in the other room and my sister was going through the day's Tabloid! not even bothering to look up at our frequent exclamations.

It's been ages since we used the CD's in any way, and somehow the rack always seems to go ignored every spring cleaning season. Out comes CD after CD, of games we used to play and cartoons we used to watch. Then a couple of pre-download-era software ones. After we've strewn about almost a dozen over the floor, an un-interesting one comes up; no label, just the BENQ plain original. I discard it and move on, not realizing that my brother has inserted it into his laptop.

All of a sudden the sound of a familiar tune fills the air. I place it immediately as belonging to the animated cartoon 'Finding NEMO', one of the very first of its kind. I whirl around toward the source, and there it is, filling the screen in Wide Mode. I know I'm going to sound like some kind of a brag in explaining its sudden effect on me, or may be like someone eager simply to exaggerate. But the flood of thoughts and memories the very first scene, the very tune brought out in me was astounding..

I was transported back to schooldays, a time when things were diametrically different from what they're now…and yet eerily, just SO similar.

Different because now I'm with new people. It's good to experience change as change is what spells growth. But confronting a set of bogus ideas strong as walls erected in the middle of nowhere, just to trouble passersby, isn't always the most fulfilling experience on Earth. The people, the setting, the whole aura of my life in a new country is the total opposite of life in the UAE. But, I'm still the same person. I'm still the girl full of opinions, albeit nobody wants to hear them now. I've still got the passion for books, but there's nobody to discuss and fuss over silly lines now. I'm still the person who wants to be helpful and 'good', but nobody has time to pay attention, to say that word 'thanks' which has the power to make a bad day turn sunny.

Friends are the glow-lights on the backdrop of life; connecting the dots completes a picture, lays down a path of companionship and manifests an idea. It seemed so simple before…just talk to the person next-seat, exchange the usual questions peppered with huge smiles and lo! you got yourself somebody to talk to, at least. Not so anymore. Think about this, consider that, oho! so-and-so is from that city, I should be careful what to say in front of them!

University has ceased to feel like the 'second home' we're taught institutions -> schools are. Everything seems just so fabricated, all the smiles concealing vitriol and hollow competitiveness behind them. Each look received is calculating; juicing; storing the gossip to be told later. It's much too much sometimes, and I fear turning into the sissy who's always moaning and complaining.

Change spells growth, yes, but it doesn’t always come easy.

Watching NEMO after a long time yesterday acted as an eye-opener for me. The tiny clown fish seemed to be saying to me: it's time to wake out of this gloominess, Alishba, and embrace the beauty within and without. That though some things may seem to be REALLY difficult, nothing is too difficult to endure because God burdens us only with what we can handle, never exceeding the crucial 'tipping point'.

God's symbols are strange sometimes. It's funny to think how much seeing the tiny clown fish again after a long time evoked in me; all I haven’t been able to understand in the past 2yrs conveyed in mere minutes.

So I've decided. I'm going to look for the silver lining beneath the clouds of my new skies. Moaning and complaining all the time is simply not giving life, this single chance we have, it's proper due.

The clown fish has given me a new lease on many things.

I'm beginning to smile already.

I will conquer; my life is my own to live, and who other than me to enjoy it?

“Change is inevitable, growth is intentional "

                                                                               -        Glenda Cloud