How Red Sneakers Changed My Life

Humans are one clever species. Having spent about two million years on planet earth, I guess we've managed to pick up a thing or two on living. Like how to justify everything life throws our way. If things are going the way we want them to, then we tell ourselves we deserve it, no doubt about it. And if something bad happens, we find a thousand and one reasons to assure ourselves that it was ultimately for the best, or to use Dumbledore's words, that it must have been for 'the greater good'. But the question is, was it really? Are we ever really in a position to judge what could have been better or worse for us when we don't even know what never happened?  The other day, my cousin was talking to me about parallel universes, about how each of us has got a double living in some alternate dimension who does the exact opposite of what we do in the real world. So if I go left when I'm walking down a street, my double goes right in his world. Okay, so as cool as th...

Abbu and me - USA 1994 I'm learning to live with my dad again. As much as I've loved my father, for some ironic reason, I've ended up spending that much of my life away from him. When I was about 3, he went away to America for his PhD. I obviously don't remember much from that time but my mom tells me I used to cry in my sleep because I missed him so much. We eventually moved to the US a couple of years later and basically the dozen years or so we spent there together were the only uninterrupted ones I got with him. Man, did I look up to my dad. He was everything to me, and I wanted to be exactly like him. I wanted to do engineering, get really good grades, and earn a doctorate degree. When my mom got mad and yelled at me, I'd go running to my father. He never hit us and he never raised his voice. Sometime later, he started work in Saudi Arabia and we came back to Pakistan. It's only been a year since he-finally-came home, and it's been the bes...