I requested a light movie, either a comedy or something where lots of things blew up, so we started with Date Night starring Tina Fey and Steve Carrell because TINA FEY and STEVE CARRELL, how do you go wrong with that combination? She can see Russia from her house! He’s like Mr. Miyagi and Yoda, rolled into one!

Yeah.

It started out okay with some snappy lines and good basic groundwork for a future plot… but then that plot arrived, full of canyon-sized holes and ridiculous contrivances. At one point Sher, sitting next to me, texted me to say, “This movie sucks” and I texted him back to confirm it had indeed lost me at the Police Station of Characters Doing Stupid Things to Move the Plot Along. That’s about when we gave up all pretense and started nitpicking the movie as it progressed. I’m not sure how this one ended up on any top 10 lists for 2010. The cast all around (Fey, Carrell, Wahlberg, Franco, etc.) were good, but the script just didn’t give them much to work with.

We were only supposed to watch the one movie, but we needed a palate cleanser after Date Night. I suggested Despicable Me because IT’S SO FLUFFY I’M GONNA DIE!! but Date Night had soured the room on comedies. After some discussion we settled on The Town, the Ben Affleck-directed thriller I’ve been wanting to see ever since it hit theaters in September.

There’s a scene where Blake Lively goes to see Ben Affleck in a hotel room, and in the course of the conversation his next job comes up, and all I could think about was DID BLAKE LIVELY SHUT THE DOOR ALL THE WAY? They hadn’t shown her doing it, so I couldn’t focus on the scene because why would you have a conversation like that with the door even a little bit open where somebody could walk by and hear you, maybe the FBI who you know is lurking around somewhere? When the camera panned around a few minutes later, sure enough, the door was not closed. I still can’t figure out if that’s because Blake Lively’s character isn’t smart enough to realize that doors should be shut when discussing armed robbery (but I think she is) or because Ben Affleck the director and his production staff do not have my level of OCD where it mattered to them.

But it matters to ME. Sher could not stop laughing at my consternation over something so tiny and (to be perfectly honest) ridiculous, but little things like that completely take me out of the movie so that I realize I’m watching a movie, and I hate it when that happens.

That one moment aside, this movie I understand being on top 10 lists for 2010. It was excellent, well-acted, and completely engrossing. It didn’t get into my head the way Atonement did, but I liked it very much and thought the ending might just have been perfect.

This was after appetizers but before the reception officially began and before our table frantically came up with rhymes in Urdu for Mansoor’s impromptu poem-slash-speech later that evening. Little did we know that it was going to be a night of poetry, with speaker after speaker taking a few moments to spout some Urdu rhymes.

Ours may have been the clunkiest, but it was also the most boisterous… and as Arif’s dad said, at least Mansoor didn’t sing.

I thought of him in taraweeh tonight, of how totally different things would have been if he had lived, and what he would be like today, and how next year we’d be planning his 4oth birthday party, and how the pictures of him at 3 or 4 look EXACTLY like the pictures of me when I was 3 or 4, which is something I can’t say for any of the other boys, and how life doesn’t end up the way we plan.

It’s from right before Aamir’s valima. This is what happens when I finally look at the pictures on my camera — I find one I love.

Tonight the Taj looked like this:

And I thought, oh no. Not again. Not my other city. Not the Taj, not the Oberoi, not Colaba where I go to buy shoes. I thought, I would like this to stop, please.

We called Mumbai, and they said they were fine. Holed up at home and not really wanting or allowed to leave, all the schools canceled and the majority of the businesses closed, but fine. And while I am so incredibly grateful that they are not hurt, and even more grateful that Mumbai is learning to keep its temper and no longer explodes in riots whenever something gets blown up, I still wish things did not blow up quite so often.

And really, I wish I could smash whatever gigantic chip these so-called Muslims have on their shoulders that they would hold a grudge for something, that while horrendous, happened in 1992. I am tired of Islam being the scapegoat for the actions of a handful of lunatics, and I resent those same lunatics for their continued insistence on upending lives and families for absolutely no reason at all. I want to line them all up and tell them, you’ve forgotten that God is watching because otherwise you would never have done this in His name, and how dare you. How dare you forget Him. How dare you do this.

Instead, I’m going to brace myself for the next time. And the next time. And to wonder, when I visit Mumbai again, how deep the scars from this latest bloodbath will be.

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Chicago, not Seattle, because Aasif is doing it in Chicago, and because Chicago’s closer and I’m just going to have to settle for lots of sunblock and even more water.

I’m nervous — about the fundraising, about getting into shape — but I’m also excited because it could potentially be so awesome.

THANK YOU to everyone who’s already donated. I really appreciate it, and the Komen Foundation appreciates it. I know the commercials are kind of dorky, but this is a community fight, and it’s so awesome of you to pitch in and help out. If you haven’t donated yet — you know you want to! Like AB says, giving makes you pretty! And smell good!

If you have a blog of your own, I’d love a link back to this post, please. The fundraising thing is part of the 3-Day, but just as important is the awareness thing. Plus, the more people who know, the more people who might be willing to contribute to the cause!

This is number 74… because everybody knows somebody who’s been affected by breast cancer.

I don’t remember him at all. My parents don’t talk about him too much, and I was eighteen months old when he died. I had never before been to see him. I went now because I needed to know where he was.

I’ve always kind of known where he SHOULD be. When I was sixteen, in my senior year of high school, and I was the first one looking at leaving home, he should have been there, with nine years of experience in being independent. When I was born, he had wanted a brother; he should have known that he didn’t just get one, he got three. When Aasif was born, he should have been fifteen. Today, he should have had kids of his own.

And now I know where he is. I finally know his birthday. It’s not like I suddenly know HIM, but at least it’s more than a photograph.

I took him roses from my mother because that’s what she wanted, and I took him lilies from me because I like lilies better than roses. And I called my mother approximately eighteen times because she hadn’t been able to go. I know she wanted to, and every time I looked at the headstone, I thought about how hard it must have been for her to deal with a child dying and a child being born, all in one week, and that if I have a space where he should be, she must have an entire cavern.

In the meantime, I know there’s a lot to pray about these days, between the Mumbai bombings and Israel bombing the hell out of Lebanon (if it weren’t for the computer problems, there’d be a whole thing about that in this space instead), but I’m going to ask for one more: it’s been a whole year already.

Aasif took this photo at the wedding, one day after the henna was first applied.

I love henna. I love it so much that I can’t stand to have it done badly, which means I often go without since I can’t bear to shove the kids out of the way to get to the mehndi-walis who do it well. It’s okay, though, because again, I would rather not have it if I can’t have it well, and I love seeing the children so happy with their designs.

Whenever I go to India, Saba makes a point of doing my henna. Traffic in Mumbai is horrible, and my cousin’s family lives in the suburbs, but Saba always comes, first to visit, and then to do my henna. I am her youngest khala (mother’s sister), only a few years older than her, actually, and she knows good mehndhi is hard to find in America. This is something she does for me, without fail, and look at how beautifully she does it.

The trip before this one, over three years ago, she was seventeen years old, and as she did my hands, she said, “Khala, when you get married, I’m going to come to America to do your mehndi.”

She’s older now, and she knows better what that would entail, so she doesn’t say it anymore. Also, my Saba has grown up. She’s graduated from college and works a full-time job. I can see the changes in her so clearly, but then, it’s easy to notice changes when you only see a person once every few years.

As long as I had some of the henna on my hands, I was still “just returned” from India. I would see that bit of orange on my nails (because your nails never get any darker than deep orange), and it would remind me of Saba doing them, of Khalid talking to me while she did so I wouldn’t fall asleep (we landed in Mumbai two days before the wedding, one day before the women all had their henna done, so I was still a little jet-lagged), of Shakira hiding behind Khalid because she was too shy to talk to me herself, of the general chaos involved in making sure seven women and two girls got both their hands done, front and back. We’d hired two mehndi-walis, but neither had Saba’s speed, and Saba herself had committed to doing mine. And then there were my other cousin’s girls, who had to go to school the day after the wedding and couldn’t get their hands done because the school didn’t allow henna. They sat and watched and pretended they didn’t mind that they couldn’t do it as well.

Three months later, though, my henna is gone (and the parasites are DEAD), and I am one hundred percent home. It’s good to be home. It was also good to be in Mumbai, and I can’t wait until I get to go back.