The Journey

-
What does it mean to grow up? 
I don't think we ever fully realize we're shedding little pieces of our childhood day by day, until the time comes when you're watching a scary movie or you get a random message from someone who you gave up on long ago and you suddenly realize you're able to sleep soundly through the night and aren't afraid of your own shadow for weeks afterward, that you are able to formulate a clear-headed response to a text message that might have evoked hormonal reactions had you received it a couple years earlier. 
I am scared of it. I am scared of how easy it is for a human being to forget that they too, cried the first time they fell off a bike, that they once were just as inexperienced and warm and open to love as a child is. I am scared and ashamed of the disdainful look I bestow upon a child asking his mother silly questions on the bus, or the disgust with which I regard the kids running around in the park chasing sunlight. 
That was me a decade or two ago, and to forget where we came from is nothing short of vanity.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Waiting For Afternoon Chai

-
I'm sitting in my verandah right across from that big, beautiful neem tree, anticipating my favourite time of day in this city. Karachi is lovely in the afternoons.  When I'm in my balcony in an ugly plastic chair, or upstairs on the roof where the view is blocked by rows of apartment buildings, leaking sewage and other by-products of domestic life, and especially, yes, ESPECIALLY when we're driving towards Malir (preferably Cantt) or just heading towards the airport, and the sun hits everything in exactly the right place making the buildings look like they’re going up in rosy flames, I feel like I'm on top of the world. Literally. The world can't possibly be more beautiful than this. And all the ugly hatred, all the bitterness of this century is forgotten. I only see glorious, ancient Karachi. And I feel tremendously nostalgic. I guess, 20 years of this life are enough to look back on and I'm nostalgic for each one of them. For all the places I've ever b
Read more

Thank you, Mark Zuckerberg!

-
I facebook too much. Signing in every hour, hoping for a shiny, red '1 new notification' (or inbox message if I'm lucky)-arghh, I'm going to HAVE to sign in right now!!-is facebooking too much. Feeling like an idiot when you haven't got any new notifications or inbox messages or friend requests or event invitations (application requests don't count in my book), and then logging out in disappointment, vowing to never visit the darned website again (WTH, it's been four whole hours and she STILL hasn't replied to my wallpost but she's had time to like all his pictures) is facebooking too much. Thinking about your next status update while you're supposed to be cramming for your C-language test is definitely facebooking too much. I hate it. But I can't stop. Sometimes I wonder if this is what being a smoking addict would be like. Going to bed promising to never ever EVER do it again, and in the morning you're still strong, but as the hours
Read more

It's time to be a big girl now...

-
Image
What astonishes me the most is how nothing around me seems to change. The world goes on unfeeling, unmoved, the way it's always been, oblivious of the changes that occur inside us. Most times I don't notice it because who even has time to think given the busy busy schedules we've made for ourselves? But sometimes, when my brain is stuffy because of the suffocating Karachi heat or my family arguing over something or the other, I escape to the rooftop. It's not much of a view. Just a whole bunch of old apartment buildings towering above me, a deserted mall missing some of the glass panes in its roof on the street opposite, my favourite neem tree that just grows and grows regardless of the weather and my neighbours' palms, the Commecs sign blinking blue and white from far away. That's pretty much it but it's beautiful enough for me. I start thinking about where I am, who I am, and what I've become in the past couple of years and I can't believe it. I
Read more