3 am:
Like an uproar of stray dogs
in the quiet, shady downtown;
irrational, wild, intense.
Your remembrance.
Tag: memories
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The Childhood’s December
Yes, I remember
that childhood’s December.
When in shivering setting evenings,
sunshine would crawl down the back-yard wall.
The aroma of burning coal,
and on my rashed cheeks
the frozen tear-drops making lines.
Seeing the freezing fog of clouds
Mother would call us standing in the door
and we would all rush to our homes,
carrying those dirty marbles.
I’d look at the night sky
and secretly pray for the snowfall,
and in the early morning
pick up the starry flakes of falling snow in the yard,
gazing the snow-pouring sky
and imagining to be flying with those flakes.
Then you came…and the childhood’s December passed.
Then for hours under that crawling cold sunshine,
in those shivering setting evenings,
i kept decorating myself
with silvery snow tumbling from the sky
to catch your single glimpse,
and on that white sheet of Earth
all my foot-marks
came to your door.
Then that December passed too.
And look…i am still standing at the same corner of the street.
Shivering setting evening is there too
but golden sunlight doesn’t slither down.
Time seems to have stopped.
The snow flakes in my hair,
though pouring silver
can’t make them wet.
What a strange snowy evening this is
whose frost can’t freeze my tears.
The smoke of that burning coal
tickles eyes,
but has lost its aroma.
And look, the door of my home stands open but
Mother’s call is lost somewhere.
Why are all the roads to your house
so desolate?
How different this snowy evening is from my childhood’s december!
Hashim Nadeem
(Hashim Nadeem’s “Bachpan ka December” translated by me)
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A Walk Down The Memory Lane
The hot summer of Islamabad has become pleasant with a recent downpour, also the harbinger of the onset of a much-longed-for monsoon. Being alone in the hostel, far away from home and attending a not-so-important-but-still-a-good-excuse-to-stay-away-when-things-are-not-that-good-at-home workshop, in an extremely hot weather backed up by frequent power-outs is as uncool as it sounds. Anyway, with the recent change in weather the nights have become much more charming and broad black and well lit roads of NUST more inviting for a light stroll after the dinner. When you have spent a day doing absolutely nothing just willing to curl up into a ball and roll away into far-off meadows, you can’t just miss this opportunity to have a time-out from your seemingly meaningless life.
When I started with it, I did not have the least idea that this apparently aimless stroll will turn into a walk down the memory lane – one of the many things in my life i have always longed for but thought i didn’t have time for. Mud-scented breeze, long smooth black road, yellow street lights and the darkness all around cast a spell on me and memories came rushing…And by the time i came back, i had lived my life all over again. I wondered why keeping aside my pen and books for a while had been so difficult for me for so long, making me miss out on some tremendously fascinating things around me and within.
Funny enough, my desire to get some peace was destroyed by two chatter-boxes, we normally refer to as ladies, following me down the road. Thinking it to be utterly useless to expect them to respect my wish, I hastened away till I found myself in the quiet once again. On my way, I came to the highest point in NUST from where entire Islamabad and Pindi looks like a scene from some Van-Gogh painting. The rusty, creaky suzukis, noisy smoldering buses, yellow taxis which have turned gray due to the grime and smoke, on a far-off highway seemed like playful fire-flies flying after each other as if playing pakram pakrai. In short, the world seemed much more beautiful than the one I and most of us are familiar with.
Now look, engineering or medical is hard and the fact that you are studying this at NUST makes it even harder – I understand. Sometimes you don’t get the marks you think you deserved; sometimes you miss the deadline of an important assignment or a project; sometimes your friends don’t understand you or you don’t understand yourself; sometimes you wake up in the morning with absolutely nothing to look forward to, to crawl out of your bed – no matter how tough it seems; no matter how big a failure you think you are, just give yourself a chance before starting to hate yourself – yes, try a walk down the memory lane. And i bet you will realize so many wonderful things about yourself which you have long forgotten in the daily grind.You will learn to let go of some things clinging onto whom has only been a nightmare for you for so long and help you see the highway of your life as if from the highest point in NUST – all playful fire-flies… 🙂