10 things I hate about 2011

Supporters of PTI gather for the rally in Karachi on December 25, 2011. PHOTO : NEFER SEHGAL/EXPRESS TRIBUNE

1.    The MATCH. Whether 2011 was going to be a year to remember or one that was to be abided only through the haze of pharmaceutical aids depended entirely on one cricket match. Thanks a lot for that Misbah.

2.    My speed course in fashion. Being a journalist means I have to be adept at a lot of things: speedily writing down what people more powerful than me say, resourcefully doing Google searches to cover for my ignorance. I didn’t realise it would also mean having to recognise the price and provenance of hand bags dangling from our foreign minister’s arm.

3.     The lack of an international villain. On May 2, the US not only eliminated our sovereignty, they also took out the one consensus candidate we had for a James Bond-style bogeyman. Sure, Qaddafi and Kim Jong II could have fit the bill but they were too eccentric and, more importantly, dead for that.

4.    Loadshedding. Yes, this could be a perennial complaint but, for me, this year was the worst. I endured sleepless sweaty nights during the Karachi summer then went right around and spent the winter in Islamabad where gas loadshedding made a hot shower in the morning a purely theoretical ideal

5.    The year was such a tease. No one really wants a military coup but they sure are fun to live through. Remember seeing that awesome shot of Musharraf firing a gun, which appeared to be the only footage of the general news channels had on October 8? This year we were regularly told the army was about to take over. (Un)fortunately, it never happened.

6.    The rise of the PTI. Settle down, PTI trolls! I say this out of boredom not hatred. There are few duller things in the world than the low-cal speeches given by politicians at rallies. By becoming newsworthy, the PTI forced us to sit through hours of rally coverage. For that they should never be forgiven.

7.    Veena Malik’s hands. Because they covered what every man wanted to see.

8.   The ubiquity of the “Spring” suffix. We don’t have a spring in Pakistan, whether referred to seasonally or governmentally. And we don’t need one. We got rid of our dictator long before the Arabs so please spare me the rant on the need for a revolution in Pakistan.

9.   The Oscars. They’re so predictable that by now it should stop making me this angry. But the fact that Oscar voters are so dense as to choose a Best Movie that has been engineered to fit every Oscar criteria is maddening. The King’s Speech had it all: a period setting and a dude with a disability.

10.   Glee. A once fun TV show which decided this year it didn’t want to have storylines. Nor did it want songs that anyone would actually want to hear.

Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, January 1^st, 2012.