Incurable

He was bored to the bone

Never picked up his phone

Said he would talk to nobody

Plug out the speakers of your party

He was bored to the bone

Lazy hours went by too soon

Got up and on a long holiday

Big Daddy’s credit card could pay

There was silence in the crowds

His ears bursting inside out

New language hit the town

The world got upside down

He’s a wasted, lazy log

He ain’t got no paying job

Mama’s searching a rich doll

Happy to marry her slob

He was bored to the bone

Did nothing but whine and groan

Youth is wasted on the young

A case of philosophers’ syndrome

1974

The sky was beautiful that day. It was orange- but with a tinge of rust announcing the arrival of inevitable autumn. It was the time of the year that compels most good people to think of themselves as romantics, especially in the evenings. Hassan was a romantic too however in a way only he could be. It wasn’t always possible but that particular evening you could see it in his eyes the way he looked at the sky. Oblivious of all that surrounded him. As if amidst the waiter’s shouting, unabashed laughter frequently rising from the table behind and calls of fruit-seller across the road did not exist in the world he lived in and the only thing that really mattered was the question whether that little chunk of fluttering cloud would finally give in to its freedom and become a part of that larger cloud which had monopolized the far edge of the horizon in the north or not? Perhaps what mattered even more to him was that how long will that little piece who had declared rebellion will remain true to its conviction? But of course, no one in that busy and somewhat claustrophobic cafeteria had acknowledged that. No one could be blamed for such ignorance too for his pale skin, neatly cut dark hair that curled, thin lips, high cheek bones and frameless spectacles not just concealed the sentiments he secretly carried but also managed to make his impression devilishly shrewd which was also not entirely false. Something about his demeanor and squared shoulders made him look like a person who means business and nothing more but fact is much credit for such an appearance went to those frameless spectacles he wore which made it very hard for people to look in his eyes. For better or worse Hassan was too proud to make a display of his romantic inclinations in presence of another being. Or maybe he was too shy. Like so many other things about him this too could not be said with certainty.

Everyone looked at Gaiti as if expecting something. Gaiti was a young woman who was still struggling to understand the part that she was now a woman. She was the careless sort or that’s what most people said about her. Her short hair on which she wore a hair band, her long and loose trousers and the dupatta hanging most casually around her neck gave her a somewhat childish look. However, right now she could not quite comprehend why everyone was so cheerful and expected her to be so. She had her reasons to be cheerful of course but that she had not yet disclosed to anyone at home. She had just arrived home from her aunt’s house which was in another city. Ever since her exams had finished she had been anxiously waiting for the results which was due a week ago. She could hardly sleep at night and would wake up quite early in the morning. She would spring to her feet and run to the gate with her loudly beating heart every time the bell rang. Sometimes it would be the milk-man and sometimes it would be the maid. The paper-boy was never punctual. Gaiti suspected that he did it intentionally to add flair of suspense in this already cruel situation. For the past one week in her aunt’s house she never let anyone open the gate when the bell rang in the morning. She could hardly keep her frustration when she would finally be sure that the paper-boy had come only to find it’s the woman from the next door who had come to complete her usual round of all the houses in the lane and naturally to spread and collect the routine gossips.

He sat long enough at the only table by the window that day. The letter he had finished reading hours ago still lay on the table, reminding him of the constraints that came in the way of all he stood for. He hailed from the northern rural Punjab and had after graduating from the very notable university given the exams of civil services. He had done well and was only waiting for the interviews now. He had rented a place with an old friend in Anarkali, Lahore and this cafeteria which was conveniently near and cheap was where he was often joined by his friends. This was the third letter from home this month asking him to come home. He had not replied to the last two. Few years ago his sister was married to a first cousin as was considered the only appropriate match. Hassan was called home to marry his cousin who was also his brother-in-law’s sister as this too was considered the only appropriate match. Later on, his and his sister’s children will be hurled to marry each other. This has been the norm in his family for so many generations that people had started taking pride in it and to defy it was throwing away family honor. Hassan wondered how many more generations will continue this practice till this will be certified as an act of incest.

The sky was clear that day and it was unusually hot for the autumn was just around the corner. Six days of agitation had completely worn her out. She was sure she had flunked Islamic Studies. She was always weak in that. Her brothers used to make quite a joke out of that but it was her mother’s disappointed looks she dreaded the most. She could barely come to think of the consequence if she fails Islamic Studies yet again and that the result too should come at her aunt’s place. Her aunt and uncle would say encouraging things but with every letter written to anywhere in the family the news will travel. She was a very bright student in other subjects. She was exceptionally good at history. Where others found it infinitely boring she was fascinated to read the tales of people who had literally conquered the world and reached the heights of earthly ambition but in the end left nothing more than the dust and ruins. It made her feel somehow superior to them all to be reading their stories and of their generations and knowing how it all ended for every one of them.

The matter at hand wasn’t that hard to handle for a person like him. That’s what he had thought initially at least. He wanted to change the world. Make something extraordinary of his very ordinary life. He thought of those heated debates in his student life and some even after that where he discussed politics and the flaws in the legal system and then again mainly politics. How he had always been so logical and so hard to beat. He had dreamt of changing the system not just because he was naïve and vain but also because he was much applauded for having a remarkable ability and intelligence to do just anything and Hassan had never hesitated in believing that. But to realize it all he needed time. He was just not ready for a marriage especially the one without love. Beneath his cold and austere exterior he was a passionate man. That evening he did not know who deserved to have more sympathy: he or his intended cousin. He would marry her after all and come back to the city alone and pursue his dreams. The dreams of a glorious career in bureaucracy. He had other dreams too. Of a wonderfully married life. Of life with a woman who would really understand him but the presence of those dreams he had never confessed to even himself before. He had stood for courage. He had stood for not giving in. He had believed in himself so much and now somehow that was beginning to change. He knew that there will be a child each year for the first five years of his marriage and that will be enough to keep his future wife busy and eventually everyone will forget the idea of love. With a resigned look he saw the sky and that little piece of cloud had finally merged in with the larger part and was now travelling with the rest of its kind to rain somewhere.

Gaiti had hardly entered her room when her mother came in. Her mother was radiant which for some reason startled her a bit. She sat her down and not able to keep to herself anymore gave her in a very content and satisfied manner the good news that she had been engaged to be married to her cousin Hassan and the marriage was due in few months. Gaiti didn’t even get a chance to tell her parents that her result had come out and she had topped in her university. All her plans to persuade her father who was more lenient to her than her mother, to let her get admission for masters in history now seemed futile. She couldn’t say if she was really sad but yes she was disheartened. For many minutes after her mother had left her to unpack, she instead sat on a window sill. It had begun to rain.

(Alt+F4)

There was a soft knock on the door even though I had left it open. I only know one person who has the courtesy to knock even if the doors are open and he was standing just there- smiling. Knowing it’s him, I didn’t look up and so he came noiselessly in and sat by my side on the carpeted floor. It had just gotten dark outside and I had not turned on the lights. I love dark. The general notion about the dark is that it signifies sadness and horror but somehow, I have always found it to be soulful and liberating. It had just been five minutes when I came in the drawing room and sat in one corner on the cold floor. The wall opposite was dimly lit by the light coming from outside through the windows. I had come here hoping that no one will find me or come looking for me- but he always does.

His smile faded a little, but he kept looking at me still- now with an inquisitive look.

“What exactly are you doing here?”- not able to hold any longer he asked rather cheerfully. I can never fully comprehend why he becomes so cheerful around me. Sometimes I suspect he’s mocking me.

“Nothing”- I said. Still staring blankly at the wall.

“Nothing?”

“Precisely”.

 I don’t know exactly for how long I have known him. Maybe, forever but there’s always something new to be discovered about him and with that about me too. What I can tell you is that he asks many questions and besides that, it can be said that he is a man of very few words. However, no one is really sure of him being a man yet.

I turned to look at him for the first time now. “I’m trying not to think” I told him. “I have been doing too much listening, talking and especially thinking. It’s very exhausting”.

“Yes. It is”- he sighed. He wasn’t smiling anymore but I knew he understood. We didn’t say anymore. The silence felt soft and gentle. Like a warm cup of tea in winter evenings. In this silence we were comfortable. We sat there for around twenty minutes. After that he got up and left as quietly as he had come in. I followed. Everyone was sitting in the lounge and I was glad nobody asked me ‘where have you been?’

In that silence though, everything seemed static and unreal. Reality- I have found, is very dull and over-rated. People should practice being imaginative without thinking too much. It’s always so pacifying. I discovered that sometimes doing nothing means everything and also I had found peace with him that day. He- a figment of my imagination.

We go down the road, into the ditch. My suit is soiled and poorly stitched

It just doesn’t happen every day that you realize you are nineteen. That’s almost two confused decades on earth. You come from a happy family and generally surrounded by good friends and then it’s just some random moment while you are fretting over some test that you have to take, sipping tea, oscillating a pencil between your fingers and trying to concentrate on some complex mechanism which needs a lot of memorizing that your friend is trying to explain to you….and in that moment you are struck by the gravity of the idea that you are nineteen. Poor timing. Always.

Well, I want us to be together forever

But to wander wherever I may

I want you to be easy and casual

But still demand I stay

I want for you to know me completely

But still remain mysterious

Consider everything deeply

But still remain fearless

 

Fast forward 2 years……

You are smart, active and very charming which inevitably means you have had many opportunities to fool around. Your heightened sense of ego however prevents you from making a fool of yourself and so you are saved from any real trouble. The thought of future fills you with doubtless optimism. You marvel at the fact that you are alive and let the moments seize you unguarded. When you walk you do not look on the ground to watch your steps. You pay little attention to what you look like or how loud you sneeze and what you sound like when you laugh.  You find socializing and especially meeting new people very exhilarating mainly because everyone has a story. You like stories. You listen to them. You begin to listen to not just what they are saying but also what they are not saying. That makes you a good listener but a poor talker. You don’t know how to tell your stories. You are always at loss of right words to do justice to your stories and even more importantly there is hardly anyone who really wants to listen to you so you wonder ‘why even bother?’. Over time you have become quieter, calmer, a bit more patient and a lot more insecure.

 Climb to the top, look over the ledge

Dance barefoot on a razor’s edge

Reach for the stars, grab tiger by the tail

If I don’t try, I’ll never fail

If you go home, you’re rolling the dice

Can’t step in the same river twice

 

Fast forward 20 years……

It’s dinner time. You have been calling your daughter to come out of room and help you with the dinner but she’s a 15 year old smart girl who gets straight A’s and has a raging obsession with some no-sense-making, contemporary rock band which sometimes makes you wonder how smart she really is after all. You console yourself with the idea that it’s just the teenage hormones kicking in and she’ll turn out just fine. Meanwhile your daughter doesn’t like getting out of the bed and turning off her i-pod. She doesn’t particularly mind helping you out with the dinner or other house chores but it’s you she dreads these days. Your concerned and motherly sermons which you give doing these chores together, on how you have always looked up at her as an ideal daughter and how she must be cautious and very-very-sensible is what drives her away from you. You believe you are the mother so basically you know all about your kids is the arrogant assumption and you incredibly fail to realize the evil in it. Your husband comes home. He’s tall, bald and fat. He likes to have a decent dinner so you try to be very careful about that even though you had a bone-breaking day at work today. You are so much tired that you quit the idea of yelling at your daughter when she refused to come down for dinner saying she’s not hungry and almost slammed the door of her room on your face. You sit across your husband and your 10 year old son and start with the dinner quietly. You can hear the sound of your husband munching his food. It never ceases to irritate you. You try to ignore it and continue eating anyway when your son who has been playing with the peas on his plate starts to pick his nose. You give your son a quick sharp look while your husband looks disapprovingly at you. He doesn’t say it but it’s obvious that he blames you for whatever shortcomings he sees in the kids. He blames it on your career-oriented attitude because supposedly you didn’t invest in your family as much as you were obligated. You are a short, plum woman of 41 whose career is not extraordinary but still quite satisfactory, wife of a very successful man and a mother of two kids. The woman that you have become is worried about the dishes she has to wash afterwards and all she really wants right now is a bed so she can peacefully snore…..and she snores very loud too.

You love too much it’ll turn to hate

You never leave home, you’ll never be late

You eat too much, you’re gonna get fat

You buy a dog you’ll piss off your cat

 

Sometime afterwards……

You are dead. You have had an episode of angina before and the second time was the lucky time. In your last days you refused to go living with your son and his family as you didn’t want to leave the house where you had spent almost your entire life with your husband who had passed away some years ago. But your health had considerably deteriorated and you had to finally give up and move in with your son. Your grand kids don’t mind your presence and your daughter-in-law is also civil to say the least. They are considerate and polite to cancel on family trips and birthday parties for your sake but when they look at the clock and then look at you, you know what they are waiting for. You can’t complain mainly because there is nothing you can officially complain about and also because even if you tried, you never could since you don’t have the right words plus no one is really intent on listening so you wonder ‘why even bother?’. On your funeral there is a lot of gathering. Too many people who thought they knew you, have come up to pay their respects. They all have their excuses to come. Some are your relatives, some your colleagues and others just some old friends.In this crowd one of your grand-son who had some time back developed a crush on his far-off cousin has finally got a good chance to talk to her when she had come to give her condolence. He doesn’t get to see her very often so he takes the opportunity and somewhere in the conversation while they are ‘catching-up’ she just gave him her facebook ID. Today is the best day of his nineteen year old life.

So take a deep breath and enjoy the ride

‘Cause arrivals and departures run side by side

(Boyhood)

To My Dear Terrible Fellow Humans!

This is a hate speech; an incredible non-sense

The ugly fat man’s mustache curls on ends 

Sun got blinded by the dancing stars

How I would love to scratch your scars

The lamp with hanging moon burns hot

May I suggest you pick your snot?

The snails go climbing on flowers’ stems

I don’t like people with falling pants

crossroads

You could read my mind,

in a blink of an eye.

Oh my treasured friend,

what blessing to have you by.

I knew you once,

I knew you so well.

 

And then a queer moment of delusion.

We solemnly parted, without goodbye.

Your resolute indifference, my becoming blase’,

which was worse? I could never decide.

Suns kept setting, with no regrets.

Your reminiscence too, a tale gone by.

 

On Wednesday last,

I saw this lad.

With a cheerful smile,

he had nodded his head.

‘Who are you?

Have we ever met?’

 

just another year

Come, find new adventures,

Let’s fall for new temptations.

Cry again and hide again,

Laugh again, regret again.

Here’s to new highs and many blows,

Forget all, begin once over.

 

 

When the monster under my bed left without saying goodbye!

It’s middle of the night. You have had a long day but even though you are tired and cranky after all the work you have done today and more so, for all the work you still have not managed to get done with- you can not sleep.

You draw the curtains close, turn off the lights, punch your pillow and rub your feet together gently under the blanket which could not get more warm or comfortable. You can sense your back muscles relax as you lie while emptying your head from all thoughts so as to tell your body that you are about to sleep.

But just as you close your eyes, it’s as if all your sense have sprung into action. It’s now, that you can hear distinctly the cat meowing out there somewhere and you think about the light outside your room that keeps flickering.

Although nothing really provoking has occurred but you suddenly open your eyes and sit-up straight as if someone has punched you hard in the stomach. You can actually hear your stomach growl. You don’t need water, you are not even hungry and you are damn tired but there is an incomprehensible vacuum in which your head is hung and you cannot bring it back. In that moment of despair as you focus hard on ‘whats gone wrong?’ , you realize you need nothing, you want nothing and you are alone. It simply gets frustrating.

Gray

The first of lessons I ever got,

‘Listen carefully kid, and forget it not.’

‘There are only two colors that shall paint your life,

Black- when you do wrong, and white for the right.’

But time was the master who laughed and said, ‘Nay!’

‘Look a bit closer – everything is gray.’

There was Something in that Place to which the Mind could not be Indifferent!

The summer of 2014, I  happened to visit this place, I never knew existed, a few months back. In the heart of a street crowded with workshops and greasy mechanics, was the gate of this quiet place, whose inhabitants were absorbed in their own pace and visibly oblivious to the life outside. The building was said to be about a century old but I personally always doubted this information for a century old building could not be in such a good shape…..not when it is located where it was located.

Luckily I had a chance to meet a lot of new people and though it does not happen very often but, I wish not to forget the people I met.  

That sturdy, old woman with big blue eyes behind those big round glasses was a class of her own. A woman from a foreign land but her apprehension of the locals was remarkably astute.

The old man, short stature, bald and the kind of man who kept his half moon spectacles at the tip of his nose. Someone with not a very good sense of humor. His company I never fancied. A man of principles and discipline. But he valued his principles more than the people around. I won’t say his preference was wrong but it certainly did not match my taste. 

A man in his early thirties. Over- weight, curly black hair. He looked much like some afro-american except his thick mustaches that curled upwards from the edges. He was always good at making jokes and especially parodies. But otherwise, a shy person. 

I knew that ‘R’ was christian. She was a happy person who loved to talk. She seemed very animated when she told me about her experiences in Malaysia. I bet she regrets not marrying those Hindus and Sikhs who had proposed her but much as I can tell, she has a happy home. She was the kind of person who make the whole place come alive. 

The best one was ‘I’. That young skilled man who knew what he was doing and why he was doing. I must above all appreciate his patience as a teacher.

‘S’ was a good kid. I know I intimidated her because she never stopped smiling when I was around. I believe that was a good thing.

I always found it strange the way ‘S.B’ always fought and resisted taking her medicine and injections, but she never said a word to me and always did what I asked her to do. Although I was glad that she showed me some respect but her silence with me always left me uneasy.

It was hard to swallow that ‘R’ died. He was in a terrible condition. His leg looked awful. What still haunts me is the time his every breath had become visibly painful yet, when asked, he did not as much as complained. Not able to reply, he sufficed to smile. In the world where we strive to be heard. Trying in vain to make our insignificant selves sound significant. Crying at every little thing. There was this man, wise enough to keep his dignity when disease and poverty had taken the rest away from him.

‘N.Z’ , the pushtuun, also had incredible patience. That gangrene and daily dressing must hurt a great deal. I’m certainly not proud of it, but I could never look at his foot without getting nauseated every time. I once forced myself not to look at his foot. On the face of that old man was always this child like innocence. He always looked the way a child looks with curiosity and bewilderment at people, trying to figure out whats going on with all these  serious looking people.

I wonder who was the lady with the camera. I never got to know her. With her incomprehensible German, she sounded as if she is cursing someone while she was smiling as she talked. I imagined Hitler speaking like that, all the time she was there.

And I feel obligated to give honorary mention to the beastly german shepherd with whom my encounter was most unusual and thrilling but certainly not pleasant. I once happened to go to the administration block when I passed by an office whose door was open. Walking at my leisure, I was just passing by when I noticed a bull size dog staring at me from inside the office. The dog apparently did not like me much and started barking. As he stood up, he was as tall as me. For a second or two I just stood there trying to figure the magnitude of severity of the situation when I finally realized that someone was angry and someone was coming towards me and might actually bite me. I practically ran and did not look back till I was safe. I was terrified then but I must admit that I loved the adrenaline it gave me. And now to think of it, anyone watching the whole thing must have found it pretty hilarious.

For that place where I may not go again, I can borrow Metcalfe’s words that he had said about the Indian subcontinent in 1800’s, “There is something in this place to which the mind can not be indifferent”.