Eastern Vagabond

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

Tag: Karachi

  • A Walk in the Jamshed Quarters

    Saadat was not an easy catch.

    Ever since he had left, he appeared to be on the run. Away from the familiar faces. From the dreadful “whys”. From a hauntingly good career that was bad in personal ways. From himself. Toward himself.

    It took me half a dozen attempts to eventually get him to see me over a cup of tea one weekend last month. The plan was to catch up on the past year and a half in my favourite place in Karachi, the TDF Ghar rooftop cafe, while watching the metropolitan sunset skies spanning over the bustling MA Jinnah Rd. As I showed up ahead of time to make a reservation, I was barred from going upstairs by a barista saying Saturdays were family-only. I chuckled to him that he’d sure as hell let me in if I paired up with one of the girls roaming about. He nodded back in all seriousness leaving no doubt in our deal being a no-go tonight.

    Saadat showed up almost on time in khakis and a tartan plaid button-down, carrying his usual charismatic smile, looking cheerful and vivacious; certainly not a deer in the headlights. I have visited old friends before, only to find out I did not recognize them anymore but Saadat was a relief to see. People perhaps take longer to change beyond recognition. It’s perhaps even selfish to expect they wouldn’t change when we don’t have the faintest idea of what’s going on in their lives. I cleared up my head clouding with philosophical queries. I had to be in the moment. For the sake of this rare weekend away from work, the sunset smelling of sea and life, the streets of old Karachi before me as inviting as a ripe woman and an old friend who’s still recognizable!

    Now that our evening tea in the cafe was down the drain, I remembered I had a shoe to be mended so we took off in the labyrinthine streets under the lavendar skies of Jamshed Quarters in search of a road-side cobbler. Our mundane conversation happened in the music of silencer-less bikes sputtering away, birds getting noisy on a tree beside a street-shrine of sorts and the melodious azaan for Maghreb prayers. Under the curious stares of street dogs, loafing teens and disapproving worshippers, off we walked and wondered if cafes and their expensive food were any better than the poetry of the narrow streets and the twilight shadows floating through them.

    Besides being a friend, Saadat has been a really interesting character to me ever since he has taken “the decision”. The way he risked his comfort, security and status, basically all he had deservedly achieved in his early twenties, over a ‘turn of pitch-and-toss’ is reminiscent of the poem “If” by Rudyard Kipling. He wouldn’t have someone dictate their terms to him which is quite bossy, if you ask me, and manly if you ask Kipling. It’s something that sets him apart from the crowd. I value this rarity in a man.

    Anyway, as the twilight gave way to the pitch dark of the night, and the familiar shadows started lurking in distance, we decided to call it a night. As long as he’s here, I look forward to seeing him as often as I can, or not at all if he can’t; but I’m more interested in preserving the endless meetups and conversations we have already had. They hold enough drama and humor to last a lifetime; as long as I’m able to preserve.

  • Beyond

    A younger cousin asked me this week.

    After school, graduation, a job, marriage, a child… Have you scratched the bottom of the well? I’m curious because I haven’t thought about much after marriage and a child. You’re already past that so what are you looking forward to now?
    Hope that all makes sense.

    Of course it does make sense. It’s hardly been a decade since I have crossed the threshold of teenage and this was pretty much all I could think of too. Back in the days, I visited Sufi meditation cults, joined discussion circles of idealogues planning on reviving the caliphate and attended resident workshops of a LUMS’ professor working for Muslim Renaissance in order to find my own, unique calling. I now miss those days for my cynic, firm and passionate religiosity but more so, for the freedom I had to pick a path and then change it. The freedom we all lose a little with every passing second by virtue of the very nature of time itself. The future looked daunting to me but also equally enthralling. I could be anyone and be anywhere. The advertisment of Turkish Airlines on the Readers Digest back cover always had me daydreaming of the future:

    Too many places to be
    Too many faces to see

    In spite of those days tinged with the delicious flavor of infinite freedom, I secretly yearned to settle down. I saw my university professors hard at work through their lab windows at nights and ached for a job to consume me and pay me well for it. Yes, it has been an eventful decade in that I managed to check off quite a number of items on the success-checklist (if there exists such a thing at all). Having scored a decent job and started a family of my own, it may seem like I have ‘scratched the bottom of the well’. Yours is an interesting question asking me what’s next. To be honest, I haven’t given much thought to it myself.

    I think as you move on in life, even if you get lucky and everything turns out to be amazing for you as it did for me, unfortunately you don’t get to stay there as you’re still moving on after all. The happiest moments soon become a thing of the past as the euphoria of an achievement gives way to a new normal, raising the bar. You realize happiness is a mirage and find yourself wondering if there’s a deeper purpose to life than chasing it. Plus, as time goes by, happiness too is harder to come by.

    As you climb up the career ladder, your job starts to encroach more on your family time and you basically find yourself juggling between that and family and any of your personal interests (for me, these are fitness and literature). Weekends become your only refuge from this tedium and exhaustion when you can actually give time to the latter two. Yes, sometimes, during a morning run while running on a splendid dirt trail into the rising sun, as the sky erupts into red flames raging in blue ocean, life does seem beautiful and intriguing. Even lovable, perhaps. You start to live from one such moment to the next.

    I once looked forward to ‘settling down’ but the routine is gradually wearing me down. The cost of my static, well paying job is starting to outweigh its charm. I find myself dreaming once again of traveling the world; of a stylishly dressed Turkish air hostess wearing a red beret and head scarf on an old Reader’s Digest back cover with a poetic tagline reminding me what I had forgotten for long – there were too many places to be and too many faces to see.

    I also think I have discovered a lot of things I’m good at but I’m yet to discover the one where I’d produce excellence. The very excellence that my university professors produced working like a bee in their labs. Their faces gleamed with a strange expression I could never put a finger on as they locked their labs each night and ventured glowing into the darkness. I think it’s the eternal search for the unknown which keeps us relevant; gleaming. The voyage is important and the destination, perhaps, just secondary. I’ve been waiting too long at the destination for miracles to happen. Now I need to plunge. From all kinds of comfort. Into chaos. To find my very own voyage and more so, the courage to embark on it. And for that, I believe, I’m ready.

  • Protected: Between the World and Me

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  • A Beautiful Mind

    My aunt is a lovely human being who I find smiling all the time. She graduated in genetic engineering from KU with a first-class-first (gold medal) back in ’80s and was appointed as research officer in DESTO Labs right after. The tragedy of her life was that one of her series of breakthrough researches on cancer was published by her professor under her own name. My phupho was an empowered, independent and vocal woman who didnt know giving up so she decided to fight back. But when she protested, she was harassed and terrorised by her professor’s hooligans. My papa was a well-built martial artist and remembers having broken quite some wrists when they bullied her with knives. But then papa wasn’t always around, and after a continual torture that lasted for around a year and consisted of phupho been catcalled in the streets when she left for work, physically attacked and harassed, she finally shattered like glass one day and only whithered with time. Now she spends most of her time reading, confined in one of the many rooms of my father’s house. When I was young, I remember having rich conversations with her on topics like plants, God, astronomy and of course biology, her favorite. So this time round, as I got a spare day or two from my job, I came over to visit her and had a nice and warm chit chat. She often trailed off like always, spoke of mysterious terminologies all the while letting a beautiful, beautiful smile play on her lips. So I put it all down on paper to keep it safe, forever.

    So phupho, when did you graduate from KU?
    We simply count LITE. It is said that in calendar, there are impacts with different worlds like shaker, anti-aging English world. Salts can favor us regarding this world. They say if you are load conservative, they will only tell you about calendar year. For example, you’re following blade platinum, press, brass or bronze plate which can also peep in your grid planted at your residence. If you are load conservative, reflecting yourself as a symbol, we will count you that you are represented by calendar of brass, bronze or simply paper telling you about either advertisements, sceneries, transparencies and different historical spots. Tourism too tells us about different spots for tours. Then we will tell you symbol is introduced with calendar i.e brass, bronze or paper. Usually on calendar it’s given that this calendar is produced with association of chemicals.

    If you get a choice to live in either Karachi or Rahim Yar Khan, what would you opt for?
    Admirably we would want to live in Karachi. Its a city of lights. Karachi is a city of lights (sparkly eyes). While RYK is z-cap.

    Where did you get your primary schooling from?
    I was first admitted into Presentation Convent School, Rawalpindi. Later the school was converted to Cantonment Public School. Rawalpindi was a source. From there we had previously planned to shift to Karachi. We planned to move to karachi because it was the city of lights. (Sparkly eyes, again)

    How old were you when you moved to Karachi?
    Rawalpindi simply counts how you stepped on this planet. Chemicals are volatile, they favor you, considering us age-less. They always ask us if we have knowledge about calendars, clocks, watches; i can favor you. You must learn about magnetic fields, watches, clocks, calendars, horsepower. For reading calendar, you have to have knowledge about working on barrels. For reading clocks, you have to learn magnetic fields and horsepower.

    Where in Rawalpindi did you live?
    We lived in our own palace; Paramount Palace. At sources there was only Paramount Palace. Later, there were many people who introduced their chips at Rawalpindi.

    Potato chips?
    (Smiling) No, chips of different planets.

    Okay, so how far was Saddar from your place?
    Sorry, i don’t quite remember.

    Do you remember anything about Rawalpindi?
    Any type of research which was related with recent hapenings alongwith need or requirement. We used to open our showrooms. There we used to sit for research and also used to collect our needs and requirements. Later after collecting it, we used to lock our showroom.

    How was Rawalpindi back in 1980s?
    We have not visited Rawalpindi. Once there was a tour, managed by university. In those days, i had viewed Rawalpindi and Islamabad.

    Do you have any memory about the twin cities?
    No i just viewed the city from bus. We visited University of Islamabad, i just recalled.

    Why couldn’t you remember it for the first time? Was that a faint memory?
    University said that tour bus would give you a ride through the city. You could only view the city from the running bus. Later we went to the univeristy. It will entertain you and give you hints for charming a bright future, will also give you hints of enchantments which can grab you if you strike them. It will favor your bright future but you must not forget that we will not tell you about any hymn or prayer or any type of words given by scientists or monks and nuns but tell you about chemicals, dessicate high chemicals which are evaporated due to heat. This heat can grab you, will reflect itself as a disease like heat stroke as that you can simply follow your laboratory research. When you have knowledge about dessication of salts, how can we collect volatiles in laboratory? How can we consume volatiles for research? Someone had expired because her spirit had left her body. Instead you worked on dessication of high salts and absorb yourself as a student.

    Did you watch television?
    In those days, we have memory about channels simply on letters, codes, literature, mining and music. They usually tell us that it looks that each and everything is in our hands but it itself is simply a box, music box.

  • Where Earth meets the Sky

    Three kilometers into the x-country, i decided it was time to gear up the pace. I looked up at the pacer to my left to check if he was ready for the blast. Raja had just taken his shirt off letting the September sun wash over his sculpted torso, his abdominal muscles gleaming like rippling waves of bronze and his pace perfectly locked with mine with the kind of natural synchronicity that I had doubted before could even exist. In the agony of a race, it was a delight to look at him – his body leaning forward, neck craning slightly ahead of his shoulders and gaze fixated firmly on the dirt ground that rolled beneath us in a flurry – he was strong and steady and didn’t seem like giving up anytime soon. Neither did I.

    Ever since i had discovered him, Raja ran like that. And I have always marveled at his style which is beautiful, child-like and allows him to run fiercely fast. Out of hundreds of people I have run and competed with over the years, he seems to be the only guy who reminds me of Pre. The same lightning quick starts, mid race burnouts and the devil-may-care attitude once the race gun fires. But so long as he is running, there’s no denying the fact that he is a moving, huffing and puffing masterpiece.

    I am a big believer in the fact that where you look at in your run tells a great deal about who you are in life. And if it’s true, Raja, with his eyes always dug into the rolling dirt trail beneath him, in fact, is an earthrunner. Humble, generous, caring and easy to be friends with. I, on the other hand, am a skyrunner. Cocky, cold, private and aloof. And how the two of us can get along so well in a x-country run is a fascinating mystery that I might never be able to solve.

  • Symphony

    Symphony

    There is a fable that once upon a time, right after the town-clock struck midnight, the gangsters gathered in the town-hall and fired pistols at moon. The suburban sky lit up, the stars faded in the brilliant firework and a sweet smell of sulfur filled the damp night air. The moon bled silver that night. The gunshots rhymed. The bats fluttered back and forth through the bullet holes in sky and sang:

    “Watch out. The gangsters make symphony tonight!”

  • 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 😀