Eastern Vagabond

Essays on travel, cities, memory, and the unnoticed textures of the world.

Author: Muhammad Sarosh

  • The Professor

    My professor’s neckties hypnotize me. Some of you might like to call them ‘absurd’ for they’re very richly painted in colors too bright and patterns too strange that one gets lost in the weird tapered world. Trees, snowflakes, flowers, worms all splattered together in a mysterious cocktail. And while i am totally fine with his other equally eccentric neckties (except they make me think he is a Martian), i do take offence when he wears this floral one. And it’s not just about those brightly colored martian flowers curling and snaking all over either. There is an old-fashioned wooden ladder too that starts from the bottom and spirals up to his Windsor knot with all kinds of slimy worms hanging from its every nook and cranny. And the fact that he wears them in autumn makes his neckties look more like blooming off-season creepers which would soon wrap around his wrinkly neck and choke him to death. His withering hair look like waves in a tempest and you can’t stop theorizing how his space-ship might have abandoned him after a secret surveillance mission on Earth.

    When he threatens, his necktie swings ominously like a pendulum as he says “No cross talks or i’ll switch into another role. And you won’t like it, i am sure you won’t.” And then comes my favorite: “If you be nice to me, i’ll be nice to you and if you trick me, i am Satan.”

    Every time he says that, his deep voice trembles and for a tiny moment, a fraction of a second so small that one wonders if that was just a figment of one’s imagination, his eyes blaze, a wild flame gushes forth and blows out in eternal oblivion and what always follows is a long pin-drop silence and the reverberation, “I am Satan.”

    He has a knack of talking in a tone that nobody can understand. He speaks fine English though, is very audible and prepares his lectures quite well but he can still appear like calling out from the other side of our world, in a long forgotten language, in a tone that’s so typically martian but strangely soothing to put the whole class to sleep. And once that happens,

    It’s then he sings a martian song 

    in a language that is long forlorn

    the birds with him do chirp along 

    for no one knew where he came from.

  • On life and reading a book for the second time…

    Reading a book for the second time makes a good metaphor for life.

    Your pocket money runs out and you don’t have much options apart from dusting off your bulging shelf and digging out an old piece from a long assortment of pale, dog-eared books. You start off cockily, thinking you are few steps too ahead and before long, you feel the need to take a break. So you walk out and hang around a local bookstore, eyeing and drooling over their new collection. You walk down the lane to a nearby cafe, peep inside the coffee-shop next to it, and pass a bus-stand along the way and strangely enough, all you can see everywhere is glossy paperbacks and buried noses within. Some people, out of their general courtesy, make a special point in shoving their new books up your face such that you could almost smell the typical off-the-press aroma and you wonder why God chose you for the misery. Soon the night falls and you find yourself back home, lying in your bed, staring the humdrum ceiling with a pair of bloodshot eyes, trying to count the revolutions of a fan which mysteriously transforms itself into a Frisbee just in time in an attempt to conspire with the universe to make you feel perfectly miserable about your impoverished, insomniac existence.

    You think you were better off with the book you had started for the second time so you pick it up again anyway and suddenly there is that missed link, a cryptic clue you thought in your first-rush you quite got it but as it turns out you hadn’t really, that catches you completely off-guard and the whole story, almost dramatically, starts to fall perfectly into place, making a lot more sense making you believe it was all worth it. And you begin to think what a chicken-head you had been to be so stupidingly sure of yourself when the game had just begun and are in complete awe for the roller-coaster ride your journey turned out to be. It’s about time you have an incredible experience and some very wise words to tell the world out there when sleep gets better of you and your weary eyelids draw shut only to let every single detail of that marvelous night dissolve into a dream, a forlorn triviality in the worm-hole of time.

  • Once A Runner

    “From the crucible of such inner turmoil come the various metals, soft or brittle, flawed or pure, precious or common, that determine the good runners, the great runners, and perhaps the former runners; for those who can not deal with successfully (or evade successfully). The consequences of their singular objective will simply fade away from it all and go on to less arduous pursuits. There has probably never been one yet who has done so, however, without leaving a part of himself there in the quiet, tiled solace of the early afternoon locker room, knotting his loathsome smelling laces for yet another, jesus god, ten miler with the boys. Once a runner…”

    It was a usual December evening. The darkness fell early and a light crisp breeze sent shudders down the spines. I remember following the ritual, the same old ritual i’d been following for the last eight years; warming up, stretching, doing a couple of strides, looking down on my stop-watch marveling the vastness of one, tiny second and the eternities it seems to hold, inhaling a lungful of pollen-rich winter air of Islamabad and bursting out. It was a great run. I remember feeling the high. Everything felt wonderful except my shin – i had returned with a stress fracture!

    It took four months to heal. And as much as it seems, four months is a real long time especially when you can’t stop yourself from staring morosely at your neatly hung track suit and nike shoes in a dusty corner each day, convinced running is no more your thing. And when i was finally back on the track, though I could still plod miles after miles, the furnace was ice-cold, i knew, maybe the runner’s spirit was lost somewhere along the way. I’d look at my room’s walls and the training routines glued to them and wonder if that really were the same flesh and bones who could undertake such animalism once.

    But in the near-past, things have worked out one after the other in quite an unusual manner, making me think if some miracle is underway.

    Firstly, I found my long-lost registration form for membership of Islamabad Sports Complex. Training on the international track has been kind-of an old dream. Never knew it would realize all of a sudden some day!

    Plus, i learnt mid-foot running which obviously made me faster, taking lesser toll on my body which implies lesser injuries as well. Before that i thought only a duck could run like that. Now it feels natural.

    Thirdly, I came across former Pakistani Beijing Olympics Athletics Team Coach who happened to do his evening-walks on the same loop i chose for my daily runs and told me he saw in me what it took to be a pro. He even offered me his coaching services!

    Maybe Paulo Coelho was right about when-you-want-something-from-all-your-heart-the-whole-world-conspires-to-help-you-achieve-it thing. In the past few months, I too have been feeling like giving it a final shot, just needed a single little push and the fate gave me three massive ones. Looking forward to a new beginning as i leave for my home tomorrow. That marks a perfect start. Doesn’t it?

    It’s only when you’ve stopped doing something that you realize how hard it is to start again, so you force yourself into not wanting it. But it’s always there and until you finish it, it will always be!”

  • I am a Fikri now!

    Now when Ramadhan has taken a back seat to just about everything else and the old, disenchanted life slowly settles upon the days, shackling people into blitzy routines so they can once again get back to being the same, ever-complaining slaves to time and world, i look back in retrospect to find what impact the blessed days have made on my life.

    Daura Tarjumah Quran wasn’t something new to me but this Ramadhan’s was a no match. I was staying back in university for summer semester when i heard about Abbasi shb’s daura. Lemme tell you here that i’m the type of guy who rarely expects good out of things. Call it pessismism but that really helps; at least you’re never let down. But when i learnt the man was known to have been conducting the same program for the last NINETEEN years, i couldn’t help anticipating the wildest (if that’s the right word to say) things there. The daura was expected to draw in fikris from all corners of Pindi/Islamabad. As i was contemplating the distance (19km on the busiest roads of Islamabad) vs worth issues, i was appointed Naqeeb over the rest to ensure their timely arrivals. So, it wasn’t a choice anymore. Soon I found myself scrambling to find a balance between being utterly indifferent, overly demanding and any possible combination of the two towards my Ma’mooreen. You can either be strict and get things done or be good, sit back and get nowhere. That’s a precarious balance. I am no rope-walker but i must say, i did try to walk that fine line. It might not have made me a good Ameer but i’m sure it did turn me into a better Ma’moor.

    Anyway, the nights were more enthralling than i could imagine. Abbasi shb, like always, was amazing. The first time i saw him in those round-lensed spectacles and that off-white hat, i remember thinking, “Jeez, he looks a lot older!” But when i sat down i found he sounded a lot wiser as well. Or maybe that was the first time his wisdom was actually trickling down into my chicken-sized brain unlike his usual fikri lectures which make me feel like knocking my head and asking if  that’s really home to some wrinkly, redneck Mr. Brain. After all, fikr was never my strongest point. So i was saying, when he addresses the general public, he is very kind, polite and easier to understand. I found him opening things up, instead of bringing them to a close with a usual satirical remark which would later turn into a shared joke among his keen disciples who liked to talk about world politics, social injustice, secret cults and political Islam.

    Realizing that it was a one-off for me, I vowed not to sleep even if that means having to dream with open eyes, drinking gallons of water and taking consequent leaks and avoiding catch-up gossips under the cool night sky. The month-long ordeal paid off AlhumdulIllah. You see, I am a fikri now!

  • Oh Nostalgia!

    I saw a fleshy little insect on my study table today – an animate, miniature Sarcosuchus with a glittering tail full of scales or maybe i am imagining things. Couldn’t shake it off my head for a long time. It reminded me of how I once had a strange fascination for insects. When i was little, i would tirelessly sit through quiet, hot afternoons of our desert town in the living room without even turning on the fan, silently observing the ants as they slowly marched by. I often wondered why they moved in a single line and why they wouldn’t give way to another ant coming the opposite way without bumping into it first. I remember doing a running commentary on their funny “accidents”, sitting on the cool marble floor and my giggles reverberating in the living room. Laughter wasn’t an option back then because everybody else in the family was sane enough to sleep through the burning desert siestas and if i were caught laughing, Ami would get up to tuck me in the bed next to her, and a beautiful afternoon would be wasted.

    Back then, i was free to wonder and theorize anything and everything i saw or hear. There was nobody to tell me ‘hey, you have to have a PhD to have a say in that matter’ [which becomes more of a cliche as you get to the university]. I remembered how i loved to be a scientist. But unlike all the scientists, i had a deep fascination for fairy tales and mythologies. No wonder that of all the nursery rhymes, Dadi amma kehti hain, chand p paryan rehti hain was my favorite. The night-sky always triggered a spirit of unearthing the worldly secrets in me. I’d look at the planets, imagining how the life there’d be like and all sorts of imaginary alien life from abominable monsters to cute little rabbits would spin in my head like socks in a dryer until i’d sink into a tranquil sleep.

    Back then, life was serene. A gift to be treasured. An excitement that must not be lost. Though each day was placidly same, it would always unearth new mysteries and consequent thrills. There was no such thing as ‘boredom’ in life. Every summer we had that strange craze of inventing something. So we would set off with a bottle of Vicks and fill it with everything we could lay our hands on after much thought and determining the right proportions pretending to be some damn serious scientists at work. I remember one time when my bottle filled up to the brim, i brought it to my study table and pulled it open to see what the new invention was. The kids surrounded the table in excitement and anticipation. After a long analysis that included spilling it in the garden (to see if some unheard-of vegetation sprouts up), smelling and even tasting it (yuck!) when i couldn’t make out what it actually was, i declared it to be a perfume (FYI, the thing smelled like shit). My younger siblings made a whoopey and painted the town red with their noisy, innocent celebrations. I was a bit let down when Ami, like always, was too busy to feign any interest in my invention. But for as long as i was the star-performer among my siblings, there was little heed i paid to the rest.

  • On Karachi, Monsoon and Catharsis…

    Summer semesters are horrible because:

    1) Days are freaking hot.

    2) You have your classes in SEECS – school of robotic people with crooked sense of humor.

    3) It’s been almost seven months since the last time you went home.

    Each day is such a blitz that even if I manage to crawl out of it alive, later that day, i end up thinking about the most philosophical things in life. To begin with, what’s freaking me out is this recent realization that for an unreasonably huge part of the day, i am forced to stop being me. I am helplessly stuck in things which don’t really matter to me and my idea of life is only growing more and more obscure. I am not saying it’s not important to study or memorize the loathsome formulas or worse still, be a true nerd. It definitely is. Interviewers are often keen on asking such impossible little details of the four year degree program and then sneer at your miserable face. You ought to teach them a lesson and save the world. But if that makes you forget there’s more to life, you really need to think if it’s a life worth-living.

    I want to believe that the world i live in is a lot more bearable than it actually is. Plus, i seriously need to rediscover my lost self, to find my own little space in the universe around. My room also gets stuffy by night due to poor ventilation leaving me terribly cringing for some fresh air for my worthy lungs which let me complete my excruciating runs to allow me the only high through an otherwise miserable day. So a mishmash of all these reasons brings out the Buddha in me and so i set off for a post-dinner stroll to find a solution for humanity. Okay, a solution for myself. After all, that’s the most i can do for humanity.

    As soon as you come out you can’t quite resist the unmistakable monsoon charm suspended in the air and fall for it at once. Plus, the road is lovely. It runs up the hill to its very top. Yellow street-lights let out subtle, silent calls as if trying to bring back something to me; maybe it’s a memory that hasn’t yet surfaced but my heart at least speaks to me and for now i am content that it’s not dead not at least yet.

    Islamabad is always breathtaking from this hill-top and you wonder why it’s not the same when you’re down there commuting to work or bazaar. The city had to be buzzing with noise at this hour of night but standing on a hill in the outskirts saves you that part and what reaches you is only the sprightly colors of night.

    Sitting in a cafe at the hill-top, I had a flashback about how every year papa used to load all us four siblings in the back-seat of his Corolla 86 and so we traversed the most joyous of the journeys – the beloved annual trip to our homeland i.e Karachi.

    An airplane takes off far away and fades away in the countless constellations above. ‘Like a diamond in the sky’, a faint memory whispers in my ears as I try to hum the right tune. Few attempts and I’m there. It’s funny how sometimes ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star…’ is the only piece of poetry you seem to remember and still it has all the romance and nostalgia you want to fill a fleeting moment with. So you sing it to the city from the hilltop like a mad-man.

    And just then, a train chugs its way through a far-off meadowy suburb leaving behind a deafening silence. The whole world quietens down. Even the frogs down the valley stop croaking.

    And the only thing that runs through my head like a never ending song is Karachi.

  • Rant of a Karachi’ite

    So the question is, why do i miss Karachi? Is it the lights or the buzz or the language that’s so native?

    Last time when i went home five months ago, i remember getting off the bus at Ayesha Manzil and loving the feel of losing myself in a huge sea of people, looking and chattering the same way i do. Even though Urdu is the national language of Pakistan, widely spoken and understood, the dialect varies from place to place. Punjabis often have no clue of commonplace idioms. Living in Punjab also means quitting on your favorite slangs (like abay, tafreeh, bharam etc) which make more or less your every sentence. Same goes with the dress. The plain collar-less kurtas i like to wear get me a good number of reluctant stares. No matter how hot it is or how red your neck is of all the rashes you’ve successfully gathered through the summer, your kurta has to have a collar or it’s no kurta. While in Karachi, people have long since broken free of the shackles of Tradition. They go for ease, and then ease becomes the tradition there. That’s what i love about Karachi.

    In addition to that, Karachi’ites are warm and spontaneous yet quite nonchalant at the same time and that’s no less a blessing. Especially when you are tired of stumbling on the sidewalk bruising your knee and looking up to find an entire traffic jammed, staring at you, curious and entertained at the same time. That’s offensive and real embarrassing! That explains why Star Plus serials have such an overwhelming following in Punjab. People just can’t get over their curiosity!

    Islamabad though, is not precisely Punjab geographically. Nonetheless, it carries itself the same way. 80 percent of its Punjabi population makes it so typically desi.

    Well, i wished to write how much i am missing Karachi right now but this post turned out to be one of the usual ‘Punjab vs Karachi’ hassles. Haha 😀 No offence Punjab. You are lovely. Karachi is just lovelier 😀

  • The Last Warrior

    Not until i had actually plunged into that untouched valley, did I know there could exist such a divine beauty in the heart of the metropolitan. It’s quite hard to imagine an outback bordered by commercial city area on one side and a state-of-the-art university on the other. In my hunt to run and explore beautiful places around, i had almost given up on the idea of treading a hinterland ever. But last week just after Asar, as i casually walked towards one of the lost gates of the university which was more like a tall, rusty scrap of cast iron and opened to nobody-knew-where, i suddenly found myself face to face with that baffling phenomenon; you know, a-herd-of-cows-grazing-in-a-pasture-right-in-the-middle-of-an-urban-world phenomenon!

    I ran through the huge meadow, mud-houses and grazing cattle and climbed up a hill overlooking the buzzing city. The contrast was painfully stark. Just across the road, the icons of the civilized world stood tall. The meadow on my back was perhaps the last retreat of the handful warriors who were yet not ready to give in to urbanization – and if you get a chance to run through the scarcely inhabited settlement, you’ll know why. Urban life-style maybe too catchy for some, there still are people who just can’t resist the charms of primitive living. Standing there for a moment, i felt just like Jaguar-Paw when he stood facing the sea looking at conquistador ships anchored off the coast and Spanish people moving ashore. He had to decide whether he wanted to embrace the unknown, dazzling civilization ahead or retreat to his woods. Without a sign of remorse, he had quietly turned back. The setting sun that day, saw me doing the same.

  • A Weekend Out Of My Little Universe

    It’s not just everyday that you get to spend your weekend in so much peace away from the babbling about the upcoming assignments and the looming OHTs or the nerds ranting how smart they were to not fall for the glitch in the last quiz in spite of all the odds stacked against them, and the Gilgiti roommates just down my corridor who would never let go of those same gut-churning traditional tunes that have been flying about the corridors of the hostel for the last two years; perhaps they feel good pretending to be the last surviving comrades of an almost extinct civilization.

    The workshop was held in Quba Mosque, Humak Town. As soon as you step in the mosque, you enter some sort of parallel universe which defies all the theories of this physical world. Time seems to have slowed down. Some branches of a tree in the yard creep up to the old-fashioned window-sills and you can see the setting sun through the rusty grills that weave through it (and that makes me nostalgic for some reason). That window perhaps serves as a calendar and a clock because neither of the two did i find in there. The leaves can tell the season and sun, the hour and that is actually more precise of a time than the people there will ever need to know. Time goes by as slowly as does the sun and the concept of quantification of time fades away as does the tick-ticking of the clock. And so in a little niche of the modern world, time still exists as an infinite entity. The building seems to hold a peculiar medieval academic air, which almost magically vivifies the scholar in oneself emanating a yearning for knowledge. There was so much tranquility all over the place and on the faces of Mudarrisoon that i have never wanted more to quit everything else in the world for that.

  • My Long Run

    A rare picture of Kashmir Highway under-construction.
    A rare picture of Kashmir Highway under-construction.

    I have just begun. The road outside the campus gate is so steep, I can imagine it still running through those ancient mountains now been flattened to make room for the city skyline. Though it’s not prudent to do a long run against the clock, that’s the only option I’m left with when in a rush to get somewhere before it’s dark. Once I get past those initial steep miles, the run is predominantly steady-state. So you don’t have to do much except glide along on the windy highway. While gliding past the honking cars, traffic jams, slums and naked children with running noses, my mind slowly drifts off to a semiconscious neutral state and some of the most amazing things happen in there: weird ideas and secret jokes once shared between my old school-fellows which never got old enough through the ebb and flow of life descend my numbing mind in a strange harmony in an almost mystic fashion. A subtle smile creeps across my face. I look at the bewildered faces of the pedestrians passing by who see me running almost daily and yet can’t resist their impulse to find some furious, man-eating abomination chasing me every time I rush past them: they will never be able to make themselves comfortable with a lone guy running madly on the highway, I think, amused.

    The white fluffs of clouds dance playfully as the sky puts up a lovely show of colors. What a perfect adieu, I think while running placidly through the dusty orange glow of the setting sun. Soon the dusk will fall and the darkness will gradually envelop me. And I have always loved that for it always conceals my agony so comfortingly that I no longer need to pull up a nice face for anyone. The darkness is burgeoning swiftly. It’s late, I think and pick up the pace, and a sudden feeling of utter loneliness presses at my heart like an abandoned child waking up to realize that he may not make it back home ever. Racing the crawling cars and rickshaws and dodging the cyclists, off I kick through the final miles until the destination arrives. I look down at my watch. The sticky thing wrapped around my wrist, now dripping with sweat, tells me I have been all my myself for more than an hour.

    The suffering is immense but then that’s what being human is all about, I recall her saying and smile wearily. I might never run out of reasons to run.