How Red Sneakers Changed My Life

Frere Hall, Karachi There’s something unforgettable about Karachi. There’s something raw and sensuous about this city, something that unfailingly tugs at my heart and always manages to hit a nerve. It is my home town after all. The sight of a familiar restaurant or just the sun setting over the city is enough to draw out memories I thought I’d had enough of. When we’re driving down Shahrah-e-Faisal, past the surprisingly tidy roadsides and the palm trees swaying in the ever-present Karachi breeze, and we pass the PAF Museum flags fluttering in the cool air and the railway track beyond which is easy to miss (unless of course, if there is a train barreling down it) and the green shrubbery-probably the only greenery you’ll be seeing for a while-then on past the formidable Air Force Base gates flanked by armed guards and the Quranic verse inscribed on one of them ‘…prepare any strength you can muster against them’ which never ceases to impress me, I feel an overwhelming emotion r...

I feel I should go to Norfolk Virginia and drink gin with sailors on leave from the Alabama , talking baseball and Polaris missiles and Steve Martin movies, another gin with lime juice, then Balto, Balto, hitch-hike in and out of Baltimore for days back and forth for days in a row discussing the jobs of whoever gives me rides, salesmen, shippers, small-time dispatchers of the much that can be dispatched. For the ACTUALITY of it! Books dominate my head. I read in them, I read at them, I'm well into my thirties. What about real life? The woman in the light-blue skirt on the cigarette billboard has such big thighs! What is it about thighs? Smooth and weighty, weighty and smooth: you can tell there's really something there. And to think that the woman must really exist, it's a photo after all not  a painting, she is somewhere in America - and to think that some guy gets to lie down on her and her thighs…She's a model, she probabl...

Today is the 25th of December, the Quaid-e-Azam's birthday and Christmas. I've gotta admit I haven't been feeling too good today. I'm trying to be optimistic, I'm trying to think positive, I'm trying to convince myself there's hope for this country yet. But maybe I'm being a gullible fool, thinking that this country can miraculously pull out of the downward economic, lawless spiral it's gotten sucked into.  Consider this,11 people died in Karachi today according to Dawn.com ( http://dawn.com/2012/12/25/karachi-violence-claims-seven-lives-3/ ), but that's nothing unusual, right? Pick up the City News ANY DAY of the week, and rest assured you'll find at least three or four violent deaths (murders? target killings? Is there a difference?), if not more. And it's always the same 'two unknown armed men on a motorcycle' who descend out of nowhere, do their dirty work and always manage to 'escape', to 'flee the scene of the...

Where to begin? I haven’t written about anything that’s happened for too long. I’ve probably been MIA from my own journal for a year or so, okay, fine at least half a year. Sometime during 2012, I stopped turning my thoughts and emotions into words. I suppose this implies that I’m not an emotional wreck anymore.  At least, I’m more stable than I used to be, Alhamdulillah. My emotions aren’t much of a rollercoaster ride either, and that’s because I made a much-needed internal change. I made an effort to return to Allah SWT and THAT has made all the difference in the world. Obviously, I’m not the person I used to be. And I slowly begin to see the pieces of my life falling into place, like a clouded up picture that’s beginning to clear. I won’t say I’m in a position to see it completely, but I perceive the shape it’s likely to take on at the end, Inshaa Allah. When I started my blog, and wrote that first post talking about how it was going to be a story where red sneakers ch...

" It is the road to God  that matters now, the ragged road, the wood...W ould   that first world, bared now to the word  God,  wade  with you, through wood, into the weald and weather   of the stars?" The Road Home - Gillian Allnutt Tall, sweeping trees line the sidewalk, leaving me to duck under their branches laden with red and yellow and brown Autumn leaves as I make my way down the street. It's a quiet, sunny afternoon and a slight breeze is in the air. For once, I am whole and unbroken. For once, everything around me is startlingly clear, and detailed, and I can see each groove carved in the aged tree trunk beside me and the patterned veins in the dead leaves that lie at my feet and I can hear the silence of this street and the sound of my blood pounding through my ears and the buildings have never seemed so square and the cars so glaringly bright with the sunlight bouncing off their roofs and the people never so solid. The world around m...

I was thinking about the effects of globalization thanks to technology, and what it has managed to do to our world. There's a lot of positive, of course. Distances have been shortened, hell, thanks to video-calling, they're virtually non-existent, we're more aware of what goes on outside our own domain in the wider world, and information of all kinds is readily available for free. You would think that all this socializing and  online sharing would make our world more united, but apparently not. I know this planet has always been teetering on the edge of doom, barely hanging on by a thread and all that, but just take a look around you and you find yourself wondering if things have ever been worse. The downside to globalization is impossible to ignore. It's so easy to commit fraud online, and cheat people out of their money, to hate on others and be downright rude to them on public forums only because their opinion is different from yours, accessing 'illicit sexual...

The sun is relentless on this side of the world. I  wake up to blinding sunlight and crows cawing and when I check the time, it's only 7am. There isn't much to do here, say the more fortunate of my friends, home for the holidays, visiting from Canada or Australia or America, conveniently forgetting where they were born, where they started out from. Yes, I admit there isn't much to do in our city. We go to school, or we go to university, maybe get a job if we're lucky. We eat. We sleep. We blame the government for the target killings, the sectarian violence, our houses, our selves getting robbed, the power outages, the cars that stubbornly drive the wrong way on a one-way street, and the cricket matches we lose to India. We parade our faith on the streets when its threatened two continents away, and we will fight to the death to prove a point. We will bathe our city in blood to show our enemies what we can do, and we will bathe it in green for the same reason....

So I was going through my old journals and I remembered this. I wrote this ages ago. It seemed incomplete at the time, and I thought I'd get back to it later. I never did, and now I kinda like it this way. all I associate with you Formula 1 pit stops and tattered Marvel comics stained with last night's anchovy pizza the rising and setting of the sun every day  flowing and ebbing around you and the sound of your voice Malaysian supermodels and Eminem rapping about Haylie to this indifferent world. Waking up alone and wondering if it'll ever be different someday

"Take any emotion-love for a woman, or grief for a loved one, or what I'm going through, fear and pain from a deadly illness. If you hold back on the emotions-if you don't allow yourself to go all the way through them-you can never get to being detached, you're too busy being afraid. You're afraid of the pain, you're afraid of the grief. You're afraid of the vulnerability that loving entails.  But by throwing yourself into these emotions, by allowing yourself to dive in, all the way, over your head even, you experience them fully and completely. You know what pain is. You know what love is. You know what grief is. And only then can you say, 'All right. I have experienced that emotion. I recognize that emotion. Now I need to detach from that emotion for a moment.'  I know you think this is just about dying," he said, "but it's like I keep telling you. When you learn how to die, you learn how to live." -Tuesdays With Morrie

It's so easy to get hurt on this planet. Human beings are imperfect, and they're rarely able to get from each other what they truly want. Relationships are messy. No matter how close two people might be, in reality I feel they're still alone, because it's impossible to truly stand in the other person's shoes and actually know what they're thinking and what they expect from life, what they expect from you...and isn't that how people get hurt? Because of this unbridgeable communication gap that can never really be overcome? What are the chances of having someone in your life who can give you exactly what you want? If you have someone like that, I'd say you're pretty darn lucky. I sometimes wonder why things seems to work out so easily for some people-they don't even have to try-while for others, no matter how much they give, it's never enough. But then I think everyone must have their fair share of problems in life, we probably just don't ...

What does it mean to grow up? I'm 22 years old, and yes, I have matured in many ways over the past couple of years but I still don't behave like an adult, let alone feel like one. These years in NED have flown by so quickly...maybe this is what it means when people say life is short and slips by so quietly you don't even notice it's gone until the end. By the time our minds catch up with all the physical growth our bodies are doing, it is late enough and we're well into our thirties, finally coming to grip with the cold hard reality of adulthood. We spend the rest of our lives footing bills and working hard to make ends meet, preparing our kids to do the same mindless, inane tasks later on in their lives. What is this? This can't be what humans were created for. It's just depressing. And what's worse is that I REALIZE all this, or at least, I do most days, but I don't DO anything about it. I'll be 23 next year and seven years later, my twentie...

This is definitely my favourite cover of Somewhere Over the Rainbow because IZ sings it with a lot of heart and soul.  As someone has so rightly commented on the Youtube link for the video, this song...this song makes you feel safe.  I pray we all make it somewhere over the rainbow someday. 

"So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they're busy doing things they think are important. This is because they're chasing the wrong things. The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning."  ~Morrie Schwartz from Tuesdays With Morrie

Those of you who know me well are probably aware of my insufferable lack of patriotism. It's inexcusable. It's shameless. But it's the truth. Now before you guys start hating on me and/or judging me, and telling me to pack up and leave since I obviously don't belong here, hear me out. The thing is, patriotism is an emotion that I have never understood. Wikipedia defines it as a devotion to one's country. It sounds simple enough, but I can't help thinking that it's based entirely on devotion to a country you just so happened to be born in (generally, anyway...I'm not talking about dual nationalities right now!).  I could easily have been born in Zimbabwe or Namibia or China, and would have been expected to offer up my affections to either one of them simply because I was born there. We don't get to choose our families or our countries; we take what we get and that doesn't necessarily mean they're always the best for us. (Okay, I love my fa...

Just when it has seemed I couldn’t bear one more friend waking with a tumor, one more maniac with a perfect reason, often a sweetness has come and changed nothing in the world except the way I stumbled through it, for a while lost in the ignorance of loving someone or something, the world shrunk to mouth-size, hand-size, and never seeming small. I acknowledge there is no sweetness that doesn’t leave a stain, no sweetness that’s ever sufficiently sweet… Tonight a friend called to say his lover was killed in a car he was driving. His voice was low and guttural, he repeated what he needed to repeat, and I repeated the one or two words we have for such grief until we were speaking only in tones. Often a sweetness comes as if on loan, stays just long enough to make sense of what it means to be alive, then returns to its dark source. As for me, I don’t care where it’s been, or what bitter road it’s traveled to come...

When I finish a book, it's not the story or the characters that stay with me long after I've put it down, but the way it made me feel. I buy books faster than I read them, and ever since I found out about www.kitabain.com  (a refreshingly cheap online bookstore that delivers straight to your doorstop and is cool with payment on delivery), I can't stop. So now I have piles of half-read books at home which I'm determined to finish this summer. Believe me, nothing makes me feel more guilty than leaving a book unread. Currently I'm reading A Song for Summer by Eva Ibbotson. It's set in Austria during the years leading up to World War 2, so yes, even though there is mention of Nazis and Hitler's unsettling regime and the persecution of Jews as any World War 2 story inevitably must have, it's still one of the most different books I've ever read. You normally read about girls trying to break free from an oppressive atmosphere at home and taking on jobs t...

So I've moved on from watching Gossip Girl to The Vampire Diaries. When I told one of my old school friends about my current interest in TV shows (mainly GG, TVD and Glee), his reaction was 'WOW, what happened to you?!' But I need a break, and indulging in chick flick teen dramas can't be all that bad! And anyway, The Vampire Diaries is nothing like Twilight, thank God. I'd pretty much given up on vampires after finishing the Twilight Saga and (painfully) watching its first three movies. Thanks to Stephenie Meyer (the author for all you lucky people who've been fortunate enough to not read the books), the prospect of any sort of relationship between a vampire and a human just made me sick. Seriously Bella Swan is the worst female protagonist EVER. She's supposed to be smart, and she reads impressive books like Wuthering Heights but she doesn't have a personality!!! And any hopes she had of actually getting one are ruined once she sets eyes on the myste...

I stir up dust particles swirling lazily in the sunlight as I hurry down the hallway. ‘Late to class again’, I think triumphantly. Since the second term of school started-make that my final term in this educational establishment-I’m no longer the nerd I used to be. It’s been a gradual change but aren’t those the ones that are the most permanent? I no longer study days ahead of a test but prefer cramming the night before, taking back-to-back classes makes my brain rot, and I look for reasons to bunk at least once a day. And I’ve got one now. The door to A2S4 is firmly shut, and I can see our Physics teacher enthusiastically drawing another of his detailed diagrams on X-ray equipment and the like on the soft board. ‘Whoops, too late’, I think happily, assuaging the slight nerdy twinge of guilt with a well-I-did-try shrug, and turn around to face the empty school hallway. For once, all is quiet. There are no shouts from the throw ball crowd that normally dominates the court througho...

Um, David Guetta looks so in the moment here, doesn't he? :P I'm not a big fan of his...how can I after he's helped release something as tragic as Where Them Girls At (Go get them, we can all be friends! Yeah, right), but this is so beautiful, it makes me cry. 

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 ...

This is just part of a story I'm working on. Hopefully I'll get back to writing as soon as these exams (ugh) are over.  It's a coffee house; just another franchise that's about half as old as the country we live in. But this is Karachi and every time a new brand name opens up, whether it's a restaurant or a sporting goods store, Karachiites will faithfully flock to it in droves in hopes of discovering something-anything-novel. This one is no exception. Never mind if the coffee is drab and shockingly overpriced, the place is upscale enough to brag to your one-dimensional friends about. And it has some redeeming points. The parfaits. The ambience. The décor is perfect. If I were an architect, I'd probably describe it as a fusion of the classic and the contemporary, or something equally fancy. There's a wood-paneled wall across from me fitted with a bookshelf housing covers ranging from Charles Dickens to Herman Melville. I'm tempted to go over and c...