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Exoticism
Let me just say this: there is no good or bad way to travel – just as there is no “exotic” or “mundane” experience in it. Sometimes I wonder if consumerism is the sorcerer that conjures up this endless stream of ridiculous adjectives for something as simple as travel – something that doesn’t need them
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Voyeurism
Much of my knowledge about the world is derived from peeking through windows. They are made of glass and plywood, flesh and bone, brick and mortar, cast iron and air, and exist just about everywhere I have been, opening portals into other dimensions. It feels voyeuristic to look at something so intimate – someone so
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Metaphor
I search the mundane, looking for metaphors for life. Partly because life, in all its mind-numbing variety, is otherwise too complex to get a handle on. Partly because those who get to the end of it and see it for itself are no longer interested in coining a metaphor because it has no utility for
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Inconsequential
There’s nothing more contemplative than the quiet weekend mornings of my grandmother’s home where the solemn silence is only broken by the occasional distant bark of a stray dog or the delightful chirps of house sparrows inhabiting the twenty-year old Evershine tree in her front yard. It’s been over an hour since the fast has
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On Lost People
Some people just vanish into thin air after you’ve come to fancy them. Others don’t exactly vanish but they let something die / break / crystallize in them which makes them unrecognizable. Either way, you lose someone you cared about, a part of yourself and a possibility of being someone different through them. There was
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My Batman
My batman is not perfect. When he comes over to deliver groceries,he calls me enthusiastically to the doorto ramble about his old travels,majestic places he’s been to when he was a truck driverin the wild west of Pakistan,repairs that my old car perpeptually needs,or simply to tell me he saw me on my way to
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Surreal
Partly because the sleeping beauty resting in the snowcapped mountains looked stunning in her new white wardrobe, partly because the low hanging clouds huddled together to look like a giant fluff of cotton candy from the cockpit, partly because the piercing though strangely welcome cold was vaguely reminiscent of all the places I could have
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On Sea and Nostalgia
The Nani Ami’s house turns dark and cold in Karachi’s winters. Back in childhood, I could not imagine that sunlight would ever go scarce in a house that had large open verandahs on its front and back. When we visited from South Punjab during summers, the image of white curtains and bedsheets fluttering in the
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A Conversation on Love
Just wanted to post a tiny snippet of a conversation I had with my grandmother today. It may look like a trivial thing but quality conversation is so rare these days that I really cherish and try to preserve it when I have one. We were listening to Jagjit Singh’s ghazal, ہوش والوں کو خبر
Eastern Vagabond
Essays on travel, cities, memory, and the unnoticed textures of the world.