Eastern Vagabond

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

Tag: nostalgia

  • Metaphor

    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 them. To me and John Green and all those who have a life ahead of them, however, metaphors are important.

    We don’t suffer from a shortage of metaphors, is what I mean. But you have to be careful which metaphor you choose, because it matters.

    John Green

    A metaphor, I think, is like a pretty-faced road-hostess employed by the Daewoo bus service in the early aughts for the first time in Pakistan in an attempt to offer the luxury of female companionship to the middle class man who could not afford to travel by air. The poor girl had the difficult job of serving meals from a two-feet wide bus-aisle (which became narrower with the protruding shoulders of wildly entertained men who had never before enjoyed such intimacy with a presentable woman) while scrambling for balance on a bumpy ride sponsored by the typically pot-holed roads of Pakistan. Too often, she would spill a drink on an angry passenger or fall herself in the lap of an elated one. Just like that, a metaphor has the capacity to upset or delight; and it never serves the meals alright but that’s not the point anyway.

    In the early aughts, the Daewoo bus service climbed to the very top in Pakistan by offering the luxury of female companionship to a conservative, middle class gentry.

    BTW did i just coin a metaphor for the metaphor?

    In the past, I have compared life to the experience of reading an old book for the second time. This metaphor is about the cluelessness of us all in the face of life’s exoticity and the value of experience. I also found rusting cars by the roadside dumps too metaphorical for life’s evanescence. Today, I am here, because I think I have found yet another metaphor. While going through my archives on Google Photos, I came across this video I shot of Bahawalpur Station as the train slowly chugged out of it.

    The vaults and arches accentuated by sensible lighting revive the dated glory of Mughal architecture in a magical summer Bahawalpur night. As the train whistles out of the station, it almost looks like a scene from Alif Laila. But it’s neither for the beauty of the railway station nor for the spell of the Cholistani summer night that I am recalling that moment rather for the accuracy of the metaphor that this fleeting glimpse can offer for life.

    Life is continuously drifting away, or maybe, it has always been there and it’s just us that are chugged away. Nevertheless, life’s heart stopping beauty is but there for a fleeting moment; never to be possessed but just to be beheld and wondered at. Its mysterious, colorful characters would remain shrouded in mystery and draped in colors and you would never be able to tell you know any of them completely even if they happen to be someone you’ve grown up or spent your life with. There would never be enough time to seek the hidden treasures the majestic palace across the platform seems to offer, unless you want to risk letting the train leave without you.

    The best way to live, if you go by this metaphor, is to look out the window, inhale the warm air laden with moisture and the sweet aroma of traditional South Punjabi food, wonder at the walking stories and be in perpetual awe. May be ask yourself if you wish to disembark and be lost among the Alif Lailvi characters for a while since there will always be the next train for you to catch.

  • 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 been and partly because the dome-shaped Gol Canteen’s hearty breakfast of anda channa and creamy tea with rainbow-colored froth warmed me up to the cold outside, I descended into a reflective, almost meditative mood after landing in Quetta and felt the urge to write. Sitting in the heated room with a vase-shaped lamp lit up dimly in a corner and an expansive window overlooking the dark, overcast day and a giant mountain just standing grimly and letting gray clouds float above it, I feel a mix of many emotions which, were they to be defined in a word, could be summed up in nothing short of ‘gratitude’.

    Strange how an encounter with Beauty makes one want to worship or at least, be grateful to some higher entity that afforded that encounter. It’s almost an involuntary reaction, as swift and natural as scrambling for balance when falling or crossing your arms when cold. I know the excitement is going to wane in my weeks of staying here, the welcoming cold would start to bite, the snow-capped mountains would become drab, and the sleeping beauty and her outfit would no longer look stunning, if I still trace her figure in the mountains at all.

    In fleeting moments like these, when there is no rush to get anywhere, the cognition of the surrounding beauty is overpowering, my mind is not drifting elsewhere and I don’t desire anyone or anything that’s not right before me, that I truly feel in the moment right where I actually am. I hope as the years go by, this blog entry reminds me of my early enchantment with the wintery Quetta and helps to preserve it for a little longer.

  • On Sea and Nostalgia

    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 seawind breezing through Nani Ami’s west-open house that lay before us drenched in a nice warm tinge always cast a spell on me and promised a summer filled with adventure.

    Times have changed and Karachi’s uncontrollable Frankenstein of commercialization has successfully turned the diverse neighborhood of low-walled houses painted in sprightly colors and adorned with trees and leafy plants into ominous uniform megastructures whose bold edifices look cold and alien, and block all the sunlight from the sparse independent houses that still remain. Wrapped in blankets, trying to fight off the melancholic gloom that accompanies the cold darkness, we curse the tyrannical manifestations of capitalism at our doorstep and long for freedom. Someone said, ‘Hawkes Bay?’ and we all cried in unison, “Yes, please!”

    Thanks to a rapidly piling list of epic adventures that our group of maternal cousins including their families had been logging lately, we were not afraid to pitch the idea to them first and see if it garnered interest. Their keen response sent us in a flurry of preparations necessary for a picnic on the beach. The night before, a Hiace had been rented, attires decided upon, a football packed in, and we were pretty much go for the day ahead. The cousins joined us the next morning with a cricket bat, badminton rackets and an assortment of indoor card and board games. Soon we piled up into the Hiace which, despite our doubts, proved spacious and sufficiently comfortable for our purposes. The formidable driver glided over the potholed roads of Karachi. A fateful turn towards the Turtle Beach proved disappointing with its nondescript beachfront and pocket breaking hut rents. We now turned to the Hawkes Bay, missed it once, almost barged into the French Beach but were fought off by the valiant guards protecting elite interests from commoners, returned once again to the Hawkes Bay and eventually found a budget-friendly hut with an exotic beachfront (after at least half a dozen hut evaluations). Without wasting a second, we offloaded, tiptoed over the round ocean stones and ran off in the warm sand to the shimmering blue calling waves.

    The sun shone brightly and we were so deprived that the kids rolled on the sand and made sandcastles, couples walked hand-in-hand along the waves lapping up against their feet, then we all played cricket and dodge-the-ball, and juggled some football. The fair ladies shrugged off the looming threat of sunburn and turned the beach into a show of colors with their spectacular cricket performances. The Biryani from the nearby hotel shack tasted delicious and so did the evening tea with baqir khanis. From the beach, a long brown rock pier trailed away from the sand and the civilization behind it, into the majestic sea now reflecting a deeper shade of blue in the slanting rays of the sinking sun. As it began to cool off, we all headed to the rock pier to spend our final moments reflecting on the nature and capturing it in our camera frames.

    Since Nani Ami believes in leaving a place better than one entered it which also strikes a chord with me, we did our bit in cleaning the beach and picked some 25 kg of plastics and fishing net out of the sea.

    The city remained in turmoil that afternoon as more protests erupted due to mass killings of an ethnic minority last month. I reached home safely thanking God for being given another day and wondering if all Karachiites develop some sort of religious disposition and learn to be grateful for, what the first world may consider, ‘as little as’ merely survival. As I continue to reflect on where I want to settle and put down my roots, Karachi remains a formidable candidate in a list of international cities. May be I can live and thrive and escape harm my entire remaining life in a city fraught with violence as I did yesterday. Regardless of what the future holds, this fantastic trip has largely allayed my crippling fear of moving with the family in Karachi for now, not because the security situation has gotten any better but because I’m finding it home.

  • Paper Boats

    I have four tabs open in Chrome. A Google Slide for a presentation coming up at work next week, a paper on macro-human factors in aviation maintenance that’s going to help me with that, a dense Cambridge university publication exploring the relationship between Marxism and Islamic Mysticism that I might give up reading halfway through, and Ghulam Ali’s rendition of Nasir Kazmi’s ghazal Dil mein ek leher si uthi hai abhi on Youtube; his vocal cords doing justice to the word, leher (wave), in eight different styles sweeping me away as if on eight musical waves.

    It’s already 10.30 pm; this day will end like all others. I just want to remind myself that it was a splendid day. What could be more splendid than a bowlful of Nihari for dinner with all its traditional condiments anyway? And a lovely family who’s visited from across the other side of the country to put some life into your painfully expansive apartment?

    I just wish I had spoken up at work when it mattered. When the self-righteous seniors were decimating the junior first-timer on the rostrum, my appreciation of his presentation could have gone a long way for him. But it was too hard to speak up then. And it’s harder still to forgive myself now for having taken the easier path. I think I’ll remember this pain and do what’s right the next time it matters. The world suffers a lot. Not because of the violence of bad people but because of the silence of good people. If not for myself, then for the world out there. I. Will. Speak. Up.

    I have an early morning speed workout with the boys. The competition will start Dec 2 so we don’t have much time left. Every mile is counting now. I have not been in such great shape in the past 5 years and if I sail through the 10,000m race, which I very much hope to, I am packing my bags for the Naltar marathon coming up in Jan next year. That would be exquisite; the master of all adventures. There are lots of ifs and buts at the moment. That I remain injury-free. That my boss understands what running the highest marathon in the world means to me at this point in time and spares me for the month-long high-altitude training preceding the race. They say when something sounds too good to be true, it usually is. Whatever happens, I have something to look forward to and that should suffice for a good night’s sleep.

  • Adieu

    A fond adieu to a beautiful home

    Leaving the service quarters temporarily allotted on an assignment after you are posted out to a new place should not feel as blue as this photograph of the pomegranate tree stannding just outside in the compund lawn.

  • Protected: On Unknowing

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  • Xoxo & Goodbyes

    One of my foremen used to wear a premium, jet black baseball cap with silvery bold letters ‘xoxo’ printed right on its front. The first time he wore it to my office, i studied his face for any sign of humor but all I could find was his usual, blissfully ignorant, childlike morning smile. From that day on, everytime he visited me, which was a lot of times in a day since he is my direct subordinate, I would find myself smiling. Our conversations would go something like:

    Foreman: Salam Sir

    I: Wassalam come sadaqat noticing the silvery xoxo and beaming ear to ear

    Foreman: Sir you seem to be quite happy these days. You’re getting married, I suppose?

    I: Not really. It’s just your cap. I like it.

    Foreman: Sir the moment I saw it yesterday in a jumble sale in Attock, I knew I had to buy it. Looks good on me, sir. Doesn’t it?

    I: Yes it does. It does still smiling like crazy

    Foreman: But sir you don’t smile like that, I smell something fishy.

    I: It’s just that I haven’t seen you wearing anything fancy like that before. You got taste.

    The man has just proceeded for retirement a couple of weeks before and the office is not the same anymore. As I go in to work each day and look at the sea of dull, weary faces around, I miss that refreshing child-like grin under the silvery xoxo front of a black baseball cap. I hope that smile, wherever it is, keeps shining through all the dullness around.

  • 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.

  • My Guide

    The Sabres were notorious in the college for running a daunting pace in rigid flight-formation at 6 am each morning (except Sundays), and the rule for the freshers was too simple to be misunderstood – lead us and if you stop, you’ll be run over by us.

    I still remember my first cross-country vividly. Merely an eighth grader then, i told my guide that i would literally die if i ran any farther. A strong runner himself, guiding me through the long, snaky track of my first cross-country, he informed me quietly that nobody had ever died running. He was right. I made it. Alive.

    The sophomores were appointed as guides over freshmen in their first year as pre-cadets, and though they retired from this responsibility after a year, i continued to look up to my guide for many years to come. There were many reasons for that. Most important of them all being, unlike most seniors, he would not treat me like a bloody junior. Naturally, when you are away from home and parents and a life that’s normal, at an age as tender as twelve, there is a vacuum inside of you so unfathomably great that it draws you into anyone who is least bit nice to you. This explains why i could not imagine running a cross-country without him. Besides, he had always made the ordeal look so easy. I don’t know if he always ran like that but ever since i started to run with him, he ran at a stride manageable for me to match – strong yet magically peaceful. Running with him always meant finishing at a decent place and saving your lungs some suffering.

    The years kept rolling by and we gained enough seniority to be allowed to run independently from the flight formation. So we often broke off in the start and ran ahead. And so did all the elites of the college. Though our paces had gained greater strength over the years, somehow we still fell short of what was needed to be the top-notch elite. Over these years, i noticed one thing though: running with Azeem had grown increasingly easier – almost effortless. I never told him that though, out of his reverence and besides, there was some kind of comfort in running by his side, so i let the things the way they were running on the track.

    One morning, when i spotted him running in his usual, favorite place – the geometric center of the broken pack, i hastened towards him, matched his stride and fell into the blissful meditative peace that he always carried about himself. That morning, my legs felt like freshly greased hinges, though – too fluid, too runny. A couple of wannabes blasted past us. I felt my adrenaline surging so i asked Azeem if he could pick up the pace a bit. He struggled but didn’t sustain it. Assuming that he did not want to run any faster, I asked if he would like to increase the length of his stride at least. He looked at me, gave me a subtle nod, opened up his legs and soon he was flying. What else could i want! I opened up mine and before long, we were overtaking the elite of the elite. I almost felt like a raven gliding – effortlessly navigating a step behind him through the throng, overwhelmed by the joy of our newly discovered speed.

    The track had a rigid hierarchy firmly established by years of cross-countries which had taken place on it and though upsets kept happening, they were often very small and everybody generally finished where they had been over the years. Now imagine you manage to destroy that revered hierarchy and are being gaped at by boys in total awe. It was euphoric. It didn’t last long, though. Azeem slowed down to a slog, all of a sudden. When I looked at him questioningly, my worst fear materialized: he was grimacing in pain. The only thing he said to me was: keep that pace.

    When I broke off from him, it almost felt like i was betraying the camaraderie of several years. But disobeying him was out of the question. I told myself he had wanted me to do this. So i gained my focus back and ran really hard. That day, for the first time in my life i caught up with Zargham – the most furious runner of the college. Though he sprinted away in the final stretch anyway, having reeled him in from such a lead was some feat!

    Azeem had seen the duel from behind and was really happy about it. He said he always knew i had it in me. I asked him angrily why he had slowed down, and that i couldn’t fathom he too had limits. He laughed and said, all flesh and bones had.

    That day on, he never ran with me.

    But you hear that, Azeem? I call you my guide still!

  • Remem-Trance

    Remem-Trance

    3 am:

    Like an uproar of stray dogs

    in the quiet, shady downtown;

    irrational, wild, intense.

    Your remembrance.