Category Archives: All-Star Crackstar Squad

Forks were invented for a purpose

All-Star Crackstar Squad, Conversations and Encounters

For Hashim: The better to stab you with
The better to stab you with, originally uploaded to flickr by yaznotjaz.

Last night, I joined ZMan and my sister and our friend F in Berkeley for dinner and dessert (gelato!) and a catching-up session. I’d not seen Z since our South Bay dinner back in November, and we decided it must have been a year (or even two) since I’d crossed paths with F.

The sister hadn’t been able to resist & refuse the Half Price Books down the street, so she came armed to dinner with a bunch of rocking books (including much poetry! and headwrap photos!) for us to flip through. Z was the mastermind (I mean, muthafuckle) behind this gathering, and celebrated his temporary return to Berkeley by calling us together on good ol’ Shattuck. Thanks to GChat, it didn’t even feel like it’d been so long since we last met. And F – well, F is by turns caustic, sarcastic, and hilariously inappropriate. Some people just never change, even though he would defensively retort, “No, I’m not!” whenever we groaned at his jokes and said, “Oh, F, you’re still exactly the same.”

Midway through the evening, after he had figured out I’m 27 years old, his response was basically along the lines of Whoa, you really need to get married. I just rolled my eyes and laughed, and F added with a wink and suggestive glance, “May you should just marry me.”

“Umm, you’re younger than I am.”

“But I’m taller!”

End of the evening: “Yasmine, let’s make a pact. If you’re not married in a year, I’ll let you be my second wife.”

“Dude,” I said, “what makes YOU think you’ll even have a FIRST wife in one month…err, I mean, one year?”

F: “I can get a wife in one month!”

I came home and changed my GMail status to:

still laughing about F telling me i need to marry a “rich man with a big army.”

As always, I love it when friends chime in with their own commentary:

Here’s HijabMan:

HMan: you do :)
BIG army.
china big.
not guam big.
me: hahahaha
WHY do i need an army?!
HMan: stabbing lessons.
me: ahhh, that’s right
so i can train the army, and then they can conduct the stabbing sessions for me, wherever necessary

Here’s fathima:

so when you say something that belies your height and someone demands “yeah, you and whose army,” you can be all, “my husband’s! that’s whose!”
and then make feminists cry

Here’s Adnan:

but then he’ll go out and marry a richer man, with a bigger army.
let him marry first, so you can get the last laugh.

Here’s Anjum:

Anjum: dude
you do not need a big army for that.
you need a ninja army for that!!
c’mon yaara
for ultra secret stabbing
this is why you should listen to me always
not HMan
well, let me know when you get an army
cuz i am a ninja in training.
me: you are SO my first recruit!
Anjum: success!

[+]

And one last, hilarious memory of last night’s dinner, a disapproving comment from F, who refuses to engage in physical contact and only gives me “air highfives” (and that, too, only after I harassed him): “If you’re going to go around highfiving guys, you might as well move on to dating them.”

This, coming from a guy whose conversation is peppered with double entendres. I was so flabbergasted, I really had no response.

Scent of lime

All-Star Crackstar Squad, Casa420 and Familia, Glorious mundanity, Loss and laments and letting go

I want a vespa the color of tangerines
I want a vespa the color of tangerines, originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.

Missed you much, Blogistan. Going through my Drafts folder now, and finishing up old, half-written posts I had never got around to publishing. Here’s one from last month; excuse the slightly disjointed nature of it. More are coming. I promise.

[+]

13 April 2008

We returned from sunny San Diego yesterday, only to find more than enough warmth in the Bay Area as well. I’ve been waking up these last couple of weeks to the scent of orange blossoms pouring through my open bedroom windows (from the tree in the courtyard outside my room), and I’d be hard-pressed to name a scent I love more than that of citrus. Lotions, perfumes, candles, leaves, even furniture polish and air freshener – always citrus.

It’s quiet without my mother puttering around the house. For now, I prefer it this way. She gets to spend a few weeks with family in the motherland, and I will have extra time to focus on, and actually do, the multitude of things I need to get done – or so I tell myself. I think back to the tense discussions – and silences – that preceded her departure. My father arguing that a country with now-regular suicide bombings and militant attacks was no place for her to be. My mother pointing out that her brother was sick, perhaps dying, even, and asking her to come.

“Do you understand how poor they are?” said my father. “They don’t need you there. They need money; that would be far more helpful to them right now.”

And my mother, sticking her ground for once, replying sharply, “Maybe if you had brothers or sisters, you would know what it’s like to want to be with them when they are so ill.” I can’t even conceive of how painful it must be, to lose one’s mother, brother, and sister, all within the span of just a few years. She wasn’t in Pakistan when her sister died, and regrets it still, I know.

And so, the battle raged for weeks – the daddy-o stubbornly declaring he was looking out for the ummy’s health and safety. The ummy being fierce about her intention to go one minute, then meekly backing down the next. And I, angry at having to be the inadvertent go-between for two people who just couldn’t seem to communicate properly, but mainly angry at my father for always professing to use arguments of logic and practicality yet failing to understand that some things are beyond logic.

“She hasn’t been back in six years; at least let her go and spend a proper amount of time with her family.”

“What are you, her lawyer?” the daddy-o tossed at me one day.

“Yes,” I said. “Since you don’t seem to think she can make independent decisions, I’m going to keep arguing for her.”

“Why do you always make me out to be the bad guy?”

If it had been my parents or my siblings, I would have gone in a heartbeat. I told him so. Why couldn’t he see that? Of all people, he was the one who taught me that family comes before everything, that whenever something happens concerning my family – whether happiness or sorrow – I’m supposed to drop everything else and GO.

He and I were not on speaking terms for much of the last few weeks. He thought I was being impertinent and illogical, not properly thinking through the logistics and safety of ummy’s visit to the motherland. I thought he would being his usual “My way or the highway” damn stubborn self. “Fucking ridiculous,” I raged to the sister and Somayya. Meanwhile, the ummy teetered between hope and despair for weeks, wondering if she would make it to Pakistan, and even if she did, would her brother still be alive?

Even after her passport photos were taken and the application submitted for renewal, even after the new passport was sent back via express delivery and arrived on our front porch less than two weeks later, there was no guarantee she was actually going until the daddy-o sent me a casual, concise email saying her roundtrip flight (he insisted it had to be roundtrip, not open-ended; this was another thing we fought about) was booked, and could I drive down to Fremont to pick up the tickets sometime that week?

I was more than happy to.

And I was happy for her when she finally left from SFO a few days ago. “Thay un sharaab dewun ne, tha thu akkhi, ‘Nay!’ ” called out the brother in Hindko. And if they give you alcohol, just say NO! It was his advice on how to respond to solicitous flight attendants. It was also the last thing she heard before walking away, and the timing was impeccable; he managed to turn her tears to laughter.

So, the ummy is finally gone. And the tension, too, is gone from the house. The daddy-o is outside in the yard right now, probably humming Pukhto songs as he fixes the sprinkler system.
Continue reading Scent of lime →

Because if I’ve done nothing else in five years of blogging, I’ve at least indulged in drug references as a form of public service

All-Star Crackstar Squad, Conversations and Encounters

Brick walkway leading up to our front porch

From an IM conversation with a friend:

M: bas yaara, sorry for boring you

Yasmine: dude, not at all, hope i helped in some way

M: I need some crack

Yasmine: crack is always good
just stay away from the real deal crazy estuff
i don’t want to have to tell your ummy i introduced you to that

M: No way, I already know that and tried that
Kidding
Actually, I didn’t know that and I was a shareef bacha
And you introduced crack to me through your weblog
I will sue you now

[+]

Dude, who knew I’d have to deal with liability issues related to “the Yasmine Vocabulary,” i.e. stalking, stabbing, and crack? If this continues, I just might wake up one morning wishing I had gone to law suckool after all. Vat drama!

Also, I have recently expanded my Pukhto vocabulary to include crack references as well. (My father will be so proud, I know.) I’ve learned that charsi means “crackhead.” And charsi janan means the beloved who is on crack (welcome to Pukhto songs and literature).

I’ve also learned that there is a restaurant in Peshawar called Charsi Tikka Shop. In deference to my love for food and crack, I must eat there. Someday. Soon.

The next best thing to putting stamps on sunshine

All-Star Crackstar Squad, Loss and laments and letting go

Evening at the Berkeley Marina
Evening at the Berkeley Marina, originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.

Back in mid-January, my friend A sent me a very short, simple note with the subject line reading, Salaam, crackstar, telling me his father had recently died.

Doomed to be forever affiliated with my disgruntled, fist-shaking references to “that poetry slam we never went to,” A is one of my favorite people in the world – one of the very few whom I always felt comfortable picking up the phone and calling at any hour of the day or night – time difference be damned – laughing at all his voicemails and text messages that started off with some variation of, Salaam, cracker!

It made me sad to think of my friend being sad. And – although this should not have been about me – it made me feel like a shitty friend to think that, nearly five months later, the item he had requested I buy for him in Chicago still leaned against the side of my bed, the side I’ve usually looked at only when shoving my suitcase against it to pack for trips in the past few months – Chicago again, Ottawa, Toronto. I think nothing of paying exhorbitant fees for last-minute flights, picking up and jet-setting cross-country, but I could not, for the life of me, package A’s gift and get my sorry ass to the post office.
Continue reading The next best thing to putting stamps on sunshine →

Headwrapping 101

All-Star Crackstar Squad, Resident Rockstar, Rockstar and Crescent

Headwrapping 101
TARGET dressing rooms have rocking red walls, originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.

Last June, my buddy A left me a voicemessage late one night after having watched the film, Paris je t’aime, which actually consists of eighteen short films by 21 directors, each of the stories taking place in different arrondissements (municipal boroughs) of Paris. Walking home through downtown San Jose, he talked into the phone about the short film with the Muslim girl – she trips and falls, her headscarf flies off, and a nice young guy runs over to assist her. “He tries to help her put her hijab back on, but he wraps it around her head like a bandanna.” Retelling the story, A started laughing. “Yaz, if your hijab fell off, I don’t think I would ever be able to help you. Probably, no one would.”

Listening to A’s voicemessage later, I laughed, too. And replayed the message a few times. And retold the story to several friends. My coworker-in-crime, B, pointed out, “Yasmine, your hijab’s pinned so tightly, I don’t think that thing could EVER fall off.” I ending up watching Paris je t’aime three times – once with A, the second time with N and AyeshaZ and B, and finally just last week with my sister, who had heard me mention this film often over the past year. Every single time, I have laughed my way through the short film about the Muslim girl and her hijab.

B is right – my hijab is its own free-standing structure. It has stayed put through running and rain storms and lecture-hall naps while slumped in my seat and roller-coaster rides at amusement parks and hiking (and hitchhikes) and skipping down the street and crackstar nieces crawling all over me while bombarding me with their botanical carnage.

HijabMan has harassed me for a long time about collaborating on a headwrap-how-to video. We briefly talked about it over IM during the last year or two, and in Philadelphia and DC in July, and in Chicago in August. I just kind of nodded along vaguely. “Yeah, okay, sounds like a plan.” But when I was stranded in Philadelphia for the night last December, on the way to DC after Ottawa, HMan and I hung out with his friends, then pulled J into being my model for a headwrapping session.

I was drunk off boulani and gelato and the incredibly rich drinking-chocolate from Naked Chocolate Cafe, apparently the best dessert place in Philly, J off her bowlful of chocolate chip cookies & milk; HMan was his usual hyperactive self. It made perfect sense to create videos past midnight. I was groggy and tired from what had been a sh*tty day of travel involving many expletives, but when rockstars come along and pick you up from the airport and take you out to dinner and made you laugh and open up their homes to you, you too would do whatever they want you to.

So, the headwrapping video that came out of that night is sort of a thank-you to HMan and Philadelphia for their rockstar hospitality and open-hearted lowve. It’s also a thank-you to every single person who ever stopped me and asked with genuine curiosity, “How do you do your hijab like that?” I’m honored they took the time to ask. The question came up at an ice cream shop in Washington, DC, last summer; at a conference in Chicago last October and at December hanging-out sessions in Ottawa and Toronto; and at a friend’s wedding just last week. Not to mention the grocery store, the sidewalk outside my workplace, places I stop by for lunch, and all kinds of events and gatherings I attend, as well as questions on flickr and facebook. Since I’m pretty ridiculous about properly responding to compliments or any sort of warm comments regarding the way I dress, I usually just laugh a bit and shuffle my feet a little and toss off my twenty-second explanation of how the headwrap stays in place. Then, I smile brightly and run away, usually to find food.

This, in contrast, is a much better explanation. HMan has posted the video HERE. Check it out:

I’ve already watched it about three times because:

1. I’m surprised I managed a pretty smooth explanation while doing J’s headwrap. Multitasking is usually not my forte, and the fact that I spent six minutes explaining headwrapping techniques while actually implementing them on someone else is slightly mind-boggling.

2. All the references to “stabbing” amuse me. J was so patient with me. I would have been freaked out if someone kept wielding safety pins near my head and cackling gleefully about stabbing.

3. My laugh makes me laugh.

4. My favorite part is my verbal smackdown of HMan.

Highfive to HMan’s camerawork!
Let us know what you think.

PS: If my hijab ever fell off, I now hope you would know how to help me with it, if necessary.

Fuckle your safety belt and welcome to the Purple Zone

All-Star Crackstar Squad, NaBloPoMo2007

Welcome to the Purple Zone
“Welcome to the Purple Zone”, originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.

The last time Z and I shared a meal, it was a year ago. He had switched, just a couple of months before, from being my co-worker to working in Palo Alto, and I drove up from San Jose to join him for jummah at Stanford and lunch. Or was jummah during a different visit? Regardless, there was food involved – we ate at a diner that, much to my excitement, served cranberry juice and Belgian waffles and french fries, and all I could possibly need in order to ensure I would never be hungry again.

It was only a few days after his attempted “ATTAAAAAACK” on the secretary’s chocolate stash, and, in sympathy, I presented him with a ziplock bag filled with some of my own leftover Halloween candy.

Walking out of the diner together, we stopped to laugh at the street sign under which I had parked my car: WELCOME TO THE PURPLE ZONE.

Months later, references to the “purple zone” (and our favorite inside-joke word: MUTHAFUCKLE) still grant us hilarity. A conversation as recently as August went like this:

Yasminay: we should write a book together some day, you and i
it shall be called – ready? ready?
Mutha Fuckles in the Purple Zone!
Z: what will it be about?
Yasminay: our escapades and general all-around crackheadedness
and tips and tricks on how to be as crackheadedly cool as us (but of course, no one would ever be)
Z: well, it could be advice on how to try
and not fuckle it up too bad :-)

Like all great words, MUTHAFUCKLE was born of typos. FICKLE became FUCKLE (became BUCKLE) became MUTHAFUCKLE, and a new addition to the all-star crackstar vocabulary was created.

Despite nearly-daily GMail conversations and the fact that he’s now down the street from where I work, we hadn’t managed to sit down and chit-chat in person in nearly a year. So, on Monday, Z and I finally met up for dinner at our favorite Desi restaurant, where we devoured…well, everything.

Thanks to daily instant-messaging, it felt like hanging out with a good friend (which he is) whom I see all the time (which I do not). Conversation flowed smoothly through topics including family, mutual friends, Pakistan, law suckool, cars, work, and – of course – food.

Driving home at the end of the evening, I was disappointed to realize I had forgotten to pass along some of this year’s leftover Halloween candy.

Meanwhile, though, I am still laughing at conversations like the following:

Yasminay: s/he uses convoluted jargon to sound all essmahrt
Z: haha
it’s funny cuz lawyers (like other technical fields) are supposed to write clearly to get the point across
everything you need, nothing you don’t
but there’s just some concepts you can’t express except with words that other professions don’t use
so, in conclusion, it is invariably a stereotype that those in the profession of conveying legal services, write or otherwise communicate in a convoluted fashion, to sound ishmart.
Yasminay: that’s RIGHT. INVARIABLY!
Z: INDUBITABLY
why you gotta obfuscate for
Yasminay: INCONCIEVABLE
Z: incontrovertible
Yasminay: what does that mean?
i like INDUBITABLY
Z: it means incontestible
Yasminay: ooh
nice word
Z: you and i have to play scrabulous on facebook

I don’t know how to properly end this post, except to say that the world is trying to convince me to play scrabble on facebook, and I will continue resisting and refusing. STOP IT, MUTHAFUCKLES.

I don’t know why I say the things I say, but I say them anyway

All-Star Crackstar Squad, NaBloPoMo2007, NineToFive outside the 925, Rockstar and Crescent

Let's go home
Let’s go home, originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.

By Tuesday or so, I had already realized this week needed to be over. My GMail status:

Dear God: Please make it be Saturday already, because this week kind of sucks. Thank you.
Love, Yasminay

The responses were hilarious:

Anjum, channeling God:

Dear Yasminay,
*sigh*, I get this request every week from you.
and every week from about 64% of the world.
If I jump to Saturday for you,
what about when Anjum here (who is channeling Me) asks for teh same thing?
*the (yes, God makes typos.)
So Yasminay
all I can do is give you a big hug
and perhaps some chocolate
and that should keep you going til Saturday.
chin up, buddy boy.
Love, God.


ZMan, channeling God’s executive assistant:

Z: God doesn’t care about your week, okay
he told me he doesn’t
Yasminay: hahaha shut up!
Z: you’re actually telling God to shut up
which he clearly doesn’t have to do
he could make you shut up if he wanted
like in the matrix
just delete your mouth

HijabMan, with prayers of his own:

Dear God: Please let yasminay send me some questions
before saturday
so i have something to write about
thanks,
love
HM :)

And, in sort of related conversation with Z again:

Z: you know what i was just thinking
it’s really good that I have internet here
and it’s working (most of the time)
’cause a lot of my studying is online
makes me realize that God’s not such a bad guy after all
Yasminay: god is awesome
clearly
Z: in fact God is pretty freakin sweet
Yasminay: i got my new darren hayes cds from amazon
and there’s a song called ‘conversation with god’
i like!
Z: is there a lot of cussing?
Yasminay: not that i heard
hahaha
clearly, that’s not your or my conversation
Z: f*ck no it isn’t

The things He has to put up with from us… Good thing God has a sense of humor.

Infiltration and brainwashing: You have a thousand serious moves

All-Star Crackstar Squad, NaBloPoMo2007, NineToFive outside the 925, Rockstar and Crescent

Chessboard (ii)
A chessboard awaits potential players in an Oakland park, originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.

The Lovely L Lady asked me this evening, “So, what do you do during this meditation?”

“Well. I just close my eyes and concentrate on dua [supplications] and dhikr and any other prayers I have memorized.”

“Oh, good,” she said in mock relief. “I thought maybe you’d gone and joined a cult, or something.”

[+]

How funny is it that, just a few days after I posted about my dinner/meeting at the Tandoori Cafe, I ran into one of the women at the Wednesday gathering tonight? They’re even infiltrating my meditation sessions now! The best part is, I couldn’t even be exasperated or annoyed. All I could do was throw my hands up in surrender, and laugh. Thanks, God; I always knew You had a sense of humor. Clearly, you’re the one winning in this sublime chess game we’ve got going on.

Someday, the light will shine like a sun through my skin

All-Star Crackstar Squad, Conversations and Encounters, NaBloPoMo2007

Mid-day meditation
Mid-day meditation, orginally uploaded by yaznotjaz.

From Wednesday, September 26, 2007:

D text-messaged me again late on Tuesday night: Can we please go to meditation group tomorrow? She is in graduate school now, and I detected a hint of desperation.

So, we did. And it was beautiful, as always. D drove down from Vallejo, S came from San Francisco. I had been nervous about how to integrate the Ramadan iftar (the breaking of the fast) into the meditation gathering, but it wasn’t much of an issue at all, since the former was at about 7pm and the latter began at 7.30. My favorite little coffeeshop by the post office was closed, so I stopped by at Starbucks – much to my own self-disgust – to pick up a slice of coffeecake and some fizzy clementine-flavored juice to fortify myself beforehand, in hopes that this would be enough food for me to hold out until the 9.30pm dinner. And it was – much more than enough, actually, since my stomach seems to have shrunk over the past couple of weeks, and a simple serving of fruit and a small helping of salad are enough to fill me up.

I was so focused on my own iftar. It humbled me to remember, much later, that Mrs. Mehta – who opens her home to host the gatherings every Wednesday evening – fasts that entire day, even as she provides home-cooked dinners for the dozens who show up at her doorstep and meditate in her den.

Meditation-time is in darkness again, which is comforting to me. The first time I went to meditation during a Spring month, sometime back in early 2005, I was blinded by the sun directly in my eyes and got lost and missed my exit off the freeway. The previously-familiar streets became strange and unrecognizable in daylight. But once again, sunset is earlier now – it was almost completely dark by 7.30, and I was reminded of those November evenings nearly three years ago now, when I first began attending the Wednesday meditations, driving there in two hours with minimal traffic so that I could sit in silence with like-minded individuals whose company brought me such joy.

Their company still brings me joy, whether they are people I know or not. Every Wednesday that I attend, there are new faces and stories and reflections and smiles. And what brings me even more joy is that this is really the first year I’ve regularly made a habit of telling others about the Wednesdays. To see the level of interest people have expressed in attending – and to see my friends follow through and actually attend – always make me smile inside on the days leading up to the Wednesdays…and even on the days after the Wednesdays, such as this morning, when a friend – who, it turns out, lives in the South Bay and regularly meditates himself – messaged me out of nowhere with,

Do tell about the meditation sessions. What have you been doing? I’m curious.

I joke that every time I go now, I have a different “entourage.” Why did I keep it to myself for so long? People love these gatherings just as much as I do – it’s something to be shared.

After dinner last night, we all stood around and chit-chatted, as always. Nipun dispensed hugs and highfives and pats on the back, as always. I laugh to myself whenever Nipun wanders by and throws an arm across my shoulders or gives me an exuberant little side-hug. It reminds me when I first began attending the Wednesdays; that was the year I wasn’t shaking hands with – much less, hugging – guys, and I’d politely fend off the highfives and hugs that came so naturally to Nipun. “I’m sorry, I keep forgetting,” he’d say, laughing (with Nipun, there is always laughter).

Last night, we talked about Karma Kitchen and the Disco Dishes write-up. (So many rocking stories! I can’t believe I haven’t made it there yet.) Afterward, I stood in the Mehtas’ hallway, talking to S, and was interrupted by Nipun calling out my name as he walked by. “Yes?” I asked.

He pointed. “Smile Cards!”

To my surprise, D was already there. While S and I talked, D had already joined the assembly-circle around the square table that unfolds so amazingly, and was busy chatting away with new friends and sponging envelopes closed. I inserted myself into the circle and joined the effort. Some of us counted Smile Cards in batches of ten, some of us inserted them into pre-addressed envelopes, some closed the envelopes, others added stamps. There is so much love in these simple tasks. It’s never about the numbers. And that’s the beauty of it.

Two years ago, D was the first person to ever accompany me to the Wednesday meditation. That evening, she took one look at the items (notes, magnets, cards?) on the Mehtas’ refrigerator and said, “They’re Gujarati!”

“How can you tell?” I asked.

“I just know.”

When I retold this story in the Mehtas’ kitchen last night, Nipun laughed and punched us in the arm and said, “Gujaratis are known to be the most generous, you know.”

We laughed and nodded, Of course, and I remembered the same night, two years ago, driving home with D sprawled in my passenger seat, smiling to myself as she babbled loudly and excitedly in Gujarati to her mother at the other end of the phone: Mom, I met this family, and it was so beautiful, I felt just like I was home!

“How do you meditate?” I had asked D then, baffled. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.

“You just kinda concentrate on your breathing.”

“How?”

All these years later, I still don’t know what to do with myself as I sit there for an hour.

But, somehow, the silence and stillness are always enough.

And the food, and the sharing of stories, and – always – the laughter.

[+]

The photo accompanying this post is one of my favorites, and I’ve wondered for months when I would add it to the weblog. It seemed fitting for this entry. And I never talk about the post titles (most are song lyrics, some are lines of poetry), but this one is from a piece by Brian Andreas at StoryPeople, a rockstar website which I love.

All facial hair should be ill-kept but not uneven

All-Star Crackstar Squad, Links to love

For Baji, my favorite robot monkey pirate
For Baji, my favorite robot monkey pirate, originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.

A few things, re. Talk Like a Pirate Day, which was on Sept. 19th (must mention them now, before I forget, because they amuse me):

one. My phone shows the following outgoing text message to Baji on August 11th, as I was walking down through San Francisco’s Chinatown (which is totally better than DC’s Chinatown) one afternoon:

Baji! Is today pirate day?! Interro-rarr! I keep seeing pirates everywhere!

two. My buddy, A, is perpetually bemused by my constant usage of the word “yaar” (sort of equivalent to “buddy” in various South Asian languages), and has been a good sport about sharing his confusion through emails progressing from May to August. Exhibit A:

you said “yarr,” made me laugh out loud. i pictured you on a boat yelling something at me and finishing it up with “yarr”….talking like a pirate and such.

Exhibit B:

when you write “yaar”, here is what i picture: you with an eye patch on, your finger in the form of a hook and a “pirate-ish” look on your face.

Exhibit C:

it’s friday, yaar. (finger hooked, voice lowered and walking on a peg-leg yaar.)

Exhibit D:

what language is “yaar”? i tried that this weekend and everybody i thought i was trying to be a pretentious pirate that talked all properly. dang the western world and their love for pirates, yaar.

three. My favorite pirate store is at 826 Valencia. Sadly, I have not been there yet, but here are a few of my favorite entries from the Store Log:

August 20, 2007
A customer bought a handful of mice — 6 to be exact — with a fistful of $2 bills. I mentioned to him he was a filthy, no good, lying, cheating excretion, and who is this …this Thomas Jefferson? Declaration of what? My mother? Why you…!

June 07, 2007
A gentleman lifted up the trap door that hides our toy snake.
“Why fake?” he inquired.
“You know, city ordinances,” I replied.
“Lawyers really do ruin everything,” he laughed.

May 03, 2007
Overheard in the store: My grandfather almost lost his eye a while ago. Apparently he mixed up the bottles for eye drops and superglue, and he squirted superglue onto his eyeball. At the hospital they just scraped it off and his eye was fine.

Glass eye book set? Anyone? Anyone? Don’t forget, though, the rules of the pirate store state, No haggling! Only bartering. So, stop trying to be all Desi, yaar.