Mommy?

There comes a point in life when after missing your daily dose of anti-biotics two days in a row, you realise that ammu is not screaming at you. Forget about screaming, she hasn't even noticed. Didn't notice that you just gulped down a bottle of ice cold water after getting over an episode of cough-and-blow-up-the-house. That you came out of the shower at 3:00 AM last night and both your fan and air conditioner were on at full speed throughout the night while your throbbing head and burning forehead clearly stated a raging fever. Or that the last time you went to her with pain on your face was when you came back home with a bone split into two and one half had decided to lodge beneath the other. A strange lingering thought is forced to dawn upon you… Are you old?

You remember the days when you'd have a small fever and your mom wouldn't let you sleep in your own room, fearing what might happen if the fever worsened in the middle of the night? How you'd wake up that very night to your mother sponging your body and forehead with sleepy eyes and how you would get irritated because your sleep would break every time she tried to check your temperature?

But as you dazed in and out of sleep, you would still be forced to wonder when it was that she herself got some sleep. And how even when she was sick herself, she managed to muster up enough energy to slice up apples in the middle of the night and feed them to you so that you didn't have an empty stomach when she gave you your medicines. You'd marvel at how even when that routine continued for several days without an end, never did she give away any hint of the slightest complaint. There would always be a loving smile on her face as you opened your eyes and she would always plant a soft kiss on your forehead and make you fall asleep again. You never knew how she did it and eventually came to the conclusion that mothers had super powers and left it at that.

“I don't go to my mom anymore when I'm sick. Except if I'm like sick and dying,” A friend of this writer let her know. Yours truly asked why and found that the reason was because the friend had become 'old'. He was supposed to be able to take care of himself, he said. This made the writer very, very sad because she realised that it was true in her case too. Everyone was growing old. Mommy was only to take care of you when you were little and stop as you grew older and learned to do it on your own.

Because a fever didn't mean the end of the world anymore and you weren't supposed to be sleeping all day and skipping school when you had it. You were too old to be fussed about and treated like a baby.

No matter how much you missed it

By Neshmeen Faatimah

I guess this is growing up

This article is not meant to be taken seriously. They are just random musings that swim around my head. Children are loud creatures. They are also simple and easy to please. Restaurants are trying for people plagued with impatience. Waiting for food is one of life's lesser pleasures, one most people would want to go without. Humans are creatures in need of constant entertainment to whom boredom is a fate worse than death. That is why lots of fast food joints at least, have some form of a small playground for children that would otherwise annoy the life out of the restaurant's other patrons. Now if you put the last few sentences together, that should give you an idea of what this article is about. For those of you who aren't very good at connecting the dots, this article is about me lamenting the fact that I am deprived of having fun in a pit filled with colourful plastic balls while we watch little snot-nosed mouth-breathing kids have the time of their lives. Damn them.

There exists this expectation that once a person is old enough to do algebra, they should forgo most of the pleasures of being a child. Playing with action figures or tiny cars, gorging down candy like there's no tomorrow; playing on a slide is deemed immature and passers-by question one's sanity for doing this. Every time I go abroad and enter a McDonald's ; I see them offering small plastic toys free with their Happy Meals promoting some latest movie. If it is a movie or a franchise that I like or even a toy that I think looks cool, I rush over to order a Happy Meal. This action is met with a look of incredulity from the cashier - who is probably near my age sporting a look that pierces through the skin and tells me, “What's wrong with you, man?” And then I am forced to slink away, feeling shamed, clutching my new little plaything, trying to extract even the slightest comforting reassurance from the toy that it was all worth it.

As mentioned before, people crave constant entertainment. If it takes 10 minutes for the food to arrive, we demand to be entertained for those 10 minutes. Boredom is in fact quite boring. I, for one, truly seethe with jealousy when I see kids going up in those little plastic slides and then coming down with faces filled with glee. And then I ask the guy standing in front of the play area if I can go in only to be met with a stern no and a face, once more, questioning my sanity. What is so wrong about wanting to play in a slide that's hardly 7 feet in height? I'm a kid too, you know (for at least the next two years). Where's my playground?

By Bareesh

SPOOF BOOK REVIEW

Concepts of Modern Physics
Genre: Sci-fi fantasy

“Can a mass-less particle exist? To be more precise, can a particle exist if it has no rest mass but nevertheless exhibits such particle-like properties as energy and momentum?”

You are the hero. You have the power to change the course of time, alter the visions of the future, diminish the hopes of the evildoers and hoist the flag of all that is good. Just imagine. You. The hero. Who can speed through time. Turn matter into energy. You. Behave like a wave. Produce light waves at will. Yes. YOU.

This book by Arthur Beiser has a unique approach to storytelling. Rather than inventing a typical hero who the reader looks up to, whose ideals motivate people through bitter ends, the author makes YOU the hero of the story. As the hero you start off solving the crisis of the whole universe. In the universe where classical concepts can't stay true longer than the air escaping from your bottom reaches the nostrils of your girlfriend, you bring in the breath of fresh air with your vigour and honesty. You start off as a novice in the way of physics. Notice, 'physics' here denotes life, universe and everything else. But in time you start to Understand. As time progresses, you progress too. And then you go back in time. Because the prophecy said-

A moving clock ticks more slowly than a clock at rest.
-Chapter 1, Section 1.2

You move so fast that time fails to keep up with you. And BAM! You become a transcendent being. You change into energy. You use gravity to warp space-time. More gripping adventure follows, for which you will have to read the book.

This book has a very nice cover. The cover picture shows the light rays produced when the Final Battle happens. Indeed. The Final Battle is too awesome. But as the lovable panda dreamed, “There is no charge for awesomeness.” So you still can read this book. Whether you go blind or gaga or truly evolve from being human and your previous self, is entirely up to your previous self. The self before you read this book, to be exact. Because this book will change the way you think, act, see and think. Yes. You will think more than ever. You might even think thrice. Because it is one of those book that leaves a tremendous influence on your mind. You just won't be able to think straight. You will think curved, wavy, criss-crossed, zig-zaged and overlapped. In short, you will think critically. That is essential, because in real life, solutions are not found on the straight road; they usually lurk somewhere around fifty miles away from the road. Inside an apple. Which is being devoured by a flesh-eating monster (food is scarce, even for the monsters living in the mountainside, you know).

The chapters of the book are very expertly arranged. It never lets the reader, or the hero, or YOU, to relax too much. Relativity, Quanta, Atomic Structure, Nuclear Transformation and the History of the Universe all are dealt with equal importance. THERE ARE NO PLOT HOLES. EVERYTHING MAKES SENSE. And the philosophy is on par with The Alchemist. But this book is better than the one by Paolo Coelho because it is not that serious all the time. There are funny moments, moments that make you guffaw so much that you are left to gasp for breath. This reporter, in particular, found the chapter on “The Big Bang” so hilarious that he let out a tremendous fart while laughing and left his table because he can't breathe methane.

So, should you read this book? Yes, you should. Is this a book to be thrown aside lightly after the first read? No. It should be thrown aside with a great force. You have my word on that.

By Jawad