Anthem for doomed youth

In another world I would be making all the correct decisions right about now.

24th February 2006

I. I killed a cold just as it began but the universe threw it right back at me. The universe doesn't like me today.
It sends me forebodings.
It stubs out my coffee-induced, project-ending hyperness and gives me emptiness in my stomach, withdrawal symptoms.
I think I don't like the universe today. But

II. I step out and the wind rushes at me and holds me. It forces me to smile, to like it. I begin to miss it as soon as I get in the car, and when I get out a stray raindrop kisses my cheek. Inside,

III. My goosebumped self needs escape. And even with a heart full of sadness when we walk through the market, my clothes move against my skin, I inhale the freshly-painted markaz, listen to the music from Spiral and find a spring in my step. And still

IV. The persistent little sadangry spot returns and sits in my stomach. And though the raindrops leave my glasses specked and alive,
I decide that I don't like the universe today.

spring exactly

Every single branch smiling silently holding out two unfurling green leaves on the very very edge as a surprise poised offering them out to me as the branches sway gently and the new comers ride the wind.

Bathroom revelations: I swear something deep and meaningful swam into my head as I looked down into the sink in my sleepy haze in the morning smiling watching the water swirl down into oblivion and then wakefulness stole it away. Maybe tomorrow.

medium

There is a certain kind of perverse pleasure to be derived from missing deadlines, from googling yourself, from smoking-nonsmokerness.

Standing in Khaadi this morning sleep still stinging in my eyes I could almost taste the tangibility of moments coming my way. Smiling all the way to the car, to work, to tea and breakfast consisting of lunch I promise to be a better person, maybe just for the day, and it all seems to work out.

The morning after

When was the last time it ever occurred to me to call up a destination even before venturing out of the house just to ask if it was safe to come?
The ugly side of Pakistan has become so much uglier that I am almost tempted to disown it. As if having a mob rioting and pressing down against our building, breaking into the Diplomatic Enclave then breaking glass at Standard Chartered our next-door-neighbours weren't enough, teargas has to become the norm in Islamabad. Since when? I listen to Moeed tell the boss how sitting out in the Club was impossible because the teargas from Aabpara was wafting over to that side all day Sunday. Yesterday I saw the largest single movement of Rangers crawling from the Peshawar end of the city to the Pindi end that I have ever seen in my life, I never saw this in Karachi, not even when we used to duck down low driving over Shah Faisal Colony at any time after 10 p.m. way back when things were so ugly we used to wake up to 7 a.m gunshots sometimes.
I don't like this.



No memories of four monsoons' worth of rains could stand up against a paintbrush dipped in off-white. I find myself feeling suddenly empty looking out of the window at the boundary wall in the morning. I wonder if the wall will bear the same dusty brown pattern again, and if raindrops will still always follow the same course that is charted by the first rain drop of the first rain, like a tearstreak along the wall. I think about this, and about other things, and then I brace myself to face the day.

Outside the sun is cheerful, the city is normal. A man is getting a ticket for being on the zebra-crossing at a red light and I am delighted.

Three hour naps in the late evening and one day is effectively used as two instead.
Ammi comes back and the lights shine brighter. There is dinner on the dining table for the first time in many, many nights. We go up and down the house in every room as she inspects the paint job and all the furniture that's come during this time she's been away and Papa fumbles in his attempts to impress her, like he always does.
At work three Chinooks fly low over our heads, so low that I can see the pilots and their American-goray arms. Ali P. walks around the chatt with arms in his pockets muttering obscenities. I laugh at him, the way he always has a camera slung around his neck to take pictures of a random assortment of people out on the chatt during lunch everyday but not when the crows decide to put on a show of numbers all rising from treetops at the same time in thousands, or when the Chinooks decide to appear out of nowhere to fly over our heads and drop off Mr. Clinton at the American Embassy around the corner. I tell him that the machines were so close the pilots could have seen us waving extended fingers at them. He says that they weren't. I insist. He tells me to fuck off and I laugh.
Faiqa sets up a 'seat of learning' in my room. One floor cushion, two pillows and one smaller cushion make it impossible to access the bathroom without having to jump over her Tort books. I think it's a small price to pay for the Caesar salad she makes for us later, or for the beautiful things that she tells my friends behind my back.

breathing

Talking to Chacha as he drove me along Margalla Road I saw a cloud's shadow over the hill which nestles the Redco cricket ground and has a random mazaar-masjid on a terrace. The light green and dark green of the trees flowing with the curve of the hills became a frozen-fluid image in my mind and Faiqa's words echoed in my ears: How can you not write about this?