"APPNA"

Hi Everyone,

APPNA, the Association of Physicians of Pakistani Descent of North America, is an organization that most Pakistani physicians join here in United States. As a group, they do good work here for young Pakistani doctors and helps support a lot of charities in Pakistan. It sponsors scholarships for bright and deserving students for medical colleges in Pakistan as well. Hats off to them for that. The APPNA convention is held every year in a different state, and pakistani physicians from all over the United States and Canada come with their families to have meetings and to socialize. Despite of all these pluses regarding APPNA, in my books, there is plenty wrong with the social scene there. I have been to the APPNA convention only 6 or 7 times, so it does not make me a connoisseur on it but I think those few times were enough for me to tell you how my experience was every time I was there.

You park the car, enter the hotel, and start looking for your friends while, like bullets, dodging friends that you haven't recovered from the last time you were there. This is your first day so the excitement is overcoming your each and every sense, especially your common sense. You check your humility and modesty, if you have any, at the check-in counter as you check into the hotel. You go to your room, get (more) dressed while fighting with your husband (who despite of being a physician, still didn't want to come). You're yelling at your kids who don't want to hear your "stay in your limitation" lecture. Their logical argument of, "but mom they are all Pakistani educated muslims here" gets to you, because maybe they are too naive to know, but you are quite clear about what Pakistani educated muslims are capable of.

After having a "reality show episode" with your loving husband and beautiful children, you walk out of the room looking like a "perfect" happy family.........guilt free and not conscious at all since you are quite sure that in every second or third room couples and children had somewhat same reality show episode. You come down and as you enter the lobby you get overwhelmed with the raw smell of new money. Excessively accessorized doctor's wives are everywhere. Handbags from Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Fendi, and Gucci among many others are used as weapons to win the war of accessories. All these designers, if not dead yet, would die at the sight of Pakistani doctor's wives holding their bags as it is a lethal combination. I know it is a war, but com'on, you don't have to hold it as a hand grenade.

Although almost every woman who shows up there is pretty loaded, she still has the need and urge to judge you by the worth of your designer's accessories. As a result, you comply by accessorizing yourself to the outer limits. After being judged and judging, you have a small and insincere talk with few couples. Then some sort of ADD kicks in and you lose interest in this crowd in about fifteen minutes. Your heart and mind become incoherent to each other as one is telling you to stay and the other one is telling you to get the hell out of there.......you become oblivious to both of them since deep down you know that this is just the beginning and you are in for the long haul.

Most of the doctors you see there are generally middle aged and semi bald, who despite of having ample money, have a constant worried look on their faces. It could be because of the games their high maintenance wives and the Stock Market play with their money simultaneously. These poor rich guys are usually accompanied by a snobbish wife and bratty kids. Although I am a doctor's wife myself, I think Pakistani's doctors wives are a "breed apart".

In the evening there is a dinner, speeches and some sort of entertainment which everyone enjoys. Everything runs pretty late so you come to your room and collapse. There are a lot of designers and jewelers who come every year to hit this market: the market of insanity rolled with an insane amount of money. In the morning the ladies start running to the Bazaar, some to beat everyone else in getting the best designer jora and jewelry, and some with the notion that they are going to find a good looking girl for their son and their neighbor's son. The way they are stumbling on each other to get there, creating a stampede, you would think that their is a "buy one get one free" offer on beautiful rishtas on a first come first serve basis. This bizarre scene at the APPNA bazaar is more entertaining than the entertainment the night before. You can easily sell tickets for this circus.

After the bazaar madness dies down, there is the same lobby scene again. People are politing each other to death. Parents start their mutual courtship while their kids are already hating each other......there are bunches of unsupervised pre-teens who exhaust all elevators while testing the hotel's staff' patience on a yearly basis........you start socializing by having lunch with your old friends. This is quite enjoyable and theuraputic as well, as you see your old friends looking as bad (in some cases even worse) as you do. You start feeling good about yourself seeing that you are not the only one who has started to look old and miserable.

Later on, there is another dinner, followed by speeches and entertainment. By this time you are already regretting your decision to be here since you realize by the end of this day you have gotten more attention from ones you wanted to ignore, and ignored by ones you wanted attention from. You go through the dinner, go back to your room half dead trying to get rested to catch the bazaar scene the next morning. Since this is the last chance to get a designer jora and a "chand si dulhan" in same shot, and being the last day, on clearance, ladies usually compromise on their second choice on both counts. They walk out of the bazaar with the jora that might look horrible on them being a few sizes small, and the rishta that might even be less fitting than the jora and could pop in 6 months.

Thanks to my anti-APPNA husband(who I think has brainwashed me), we are as far and as removed from APPNA as any non-physician family would be..........I, who used to get infatuated with the idea of getting dressed up and go to these kind of events, have lost my appetite for it perhaps because I am too old to endure the madness of the bazaar and the relentless lobby scene.

Maybe in another twenty years, if I'm still alive, I will be ready to go endure another APPNA convention to scope out girls in the lobby for my baby grandson. Until then, I am still recovering from the last one.

Much Love,

Shehla