Eastern Vagabond

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

Tag: nature

  • The Lake

    The Lake

    My mother-in-law had been pining for a trip to the lake since the day she had arrived so we finally decided to drive her up there and spend a night by the lakeside this weekend. It had been a while since I and Fatima had visited the lake anyway so I pushed my workout up from the usual afternoon to early morning and planned to set off after the Friday prayers.

    I like to keep my travel prep simple. The ritual involves going over three things: book, clothes and dress. The perk of traveling with my wife (apart from her cherishable company, of course) is that she takes care of everything else so I only have to worry about the first – a book that would go with the clear lake and skies, in this case. My bookshelf here is in a bit of a crisis since I’ve been lending out more books lately than I’m buying so it was to be a challenge to pick something uniquely suited to the occasion. But I soon realized I was mistaken when I noticed The Sheldon Book of Verse, an anthology of poems, tucked away in a dusty corner for God-knows-how-many years. I plucked out the paperback and took a moment to appreciate its handiness and vintage aesthetic appeal. Published in 1957, no wonder it was a relic from the past.

    As I drove down the M-9, the scenic Kirthar Mountains appeared on the driver’s side. It’s hard to ignore the distinctive mesas (i.e. flat-topped hills) standing solemnly in the barren wilderness. While I saw their distant figures behind the haze of smog every day while commuting back from work, it was a totally different experience to see them up close by the roadside. Ancient vagabonds riveted in space but traveling through time, I thought. For some reason unknown to me, the sight of these mountains in particular, and nature in general, is immensely liberating and awe-inspiring to me, offering a sense of humility and freedom from all that’s trivial. I rolled down my car window to take in the fresh winter afternoon.

    Stock photo of Kirthar Mountains

    Soon the wind turbines were visible on the passenger side. Hashir would be excited to see them but he was already asleep in his grandfather’s lap. As I got off the motorway and headed towards Jhampir, we realized we were snaking through the vast fields of wind turbines on both sides, their blades and towers now too imposing to take in a single glance. It took some five minutes of gentle patting on Hashir’s face to wake him up from the slumber he had drifted into during the past half hour, but the surprised smile that plastered itself on his dazed, still-sleepy face once he saw the giant structures made it worth the effort.

    The link road leading to Jhampir had several cattle farms belonging to Palari and Jakro tribes. A shrine (مزار شریف) would pop up every few kilometers reminding me of what M. A. Yusufi wrote about the shrines of sham saints in Sindh in his book, Aab-e-Gum:

    ان سے متعلق ہر چیز شریف ہے سواۓ صاحب مزار کے

    The road is surprisingly fine compared to what you expect a link road in interior Sindh to be like. But it gets deceptive further ahead as you find suspicious speed breakers in the middle of nowhere that can cause serious damage to your car if you aren’t vigilant. The link road culminates at a bridge over the railway crossing at Jhampir station. We were even able to show Hashir his first train up close while stopping by the same bridge on our way back.

    From there on, it’s a narrow 6 km road to the motel. The road is lined on both sides by acacia and sometimes, date-palm trees particularly as you head closer to the lake. Parchoon shops set up in tiny cabins and manned by stout, thick-mustached Sindhis donning traditional Sindhi caps make for an interesting sight. The peculiar, familiar scent associated with the sea for a Karachiite becomes noticeable much before the lake is even visible. Soon we are driving through the non-descript motel gate. The sun is still well above the horizon. We have managed to reach in time.

    The sun sets opposite the lake which means you can’t photograph the majestic lake sunsets you might have thought to capture on your way here. This can be a bit disappointing until you realize that it also means the sun would rise right above the lake the next morning. After a cup of tea and dinner, and a lot of sky- and lake-watching and mosquito-fighting in between, I snuggled up in bed with my book hoping to wake up to catch the first ray of sun the next day.

    I woke up in the morning twilight an hour before sunrise and headed straight out into the cold in my T-shirt and pajamas, anxious not to miss a single moment of the miracle that is a false dawn. Soon the fishing boats start to appear in distance; fishermen starting their day, rowing and setting up nets. Despite the biting cold none of us was prepared for (except me since my wonderful wife had packed in a hoodie), we gathered on the lawn in anticipation of the sunrise.

    The sun came up slowly and majestically from under the lake. Picture and video credits go to my sister-in-law who is a shutterbug and maintains an impressively artistic social media presence. Everybody basked in the warm sun while I and Fatima made breakfast in the rickety motel kitchen. In just a couple hours, the sun was high up in the sky and the lake began to simmer sending us back to our rooms. With the monumental event of the day over and the temperatures rising steadily, there was little else to do at the motel except pack our bags and get going.

    While the narrative of the story ends, the reflections, too many to recount here, demand a sequel which I will be writing shortly. Until then, Ciao!

  • 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.

  • 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.