How Red Sneakers Changed My Life

The further I wade into the engineering world, the more firmly I believe in God. The best part about completing a degree is when you're done with it, you have struggled your way through a number of courses, you have touched upon so many subjects...barely skimmed through them as it were. But you begin to see the way it all fits together in the end, how all these parts combine to form a whole, letting our computers and laptops and mobile phones communicate with each other seamlessly. You look around your room and count the number of man-made things in it...each one imagined into existence by a brilliant human mind, shaped and fashioned by human hands or dare I say it, a CONTROL SYSTEM. It all gels together; the electricity that fuels our world, the digital electronics that control our gadgets, the billions and billions of bits that our digital machines decode and follow as if by magic. What makes all this work? A set of mathematical rules and laws, some of them complex, some of them...

If I look through my posts, sift through the garbled mess of my half-written stories, I find a pattern emerging. I can identify the aspects of life I care most about, and the things that captivate me the most on this lonely planet...the sun setting over a chaotic Karachi road, a blazing orange disc in the sky, the buildings lit up from beneath with its yellowish warmth basking in the afterglow of yet another sunset, the solidity of the apartment buildings that enclose our rooftop, cutting off the view of the skyline altogether so that all you can see are rows upon rows of bright windows, each one permitting you a narrow view into the room beyond, each one a story separate and distinct from the next, unaware of life on the other side of the wall, the loneliness of the human existence and the futility of the world's many machinations which leads me to God, as everything always does in the end. We come full circle to God, to God, to God. The Beginning and The End.  Why do all my pos...

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 ...

The hotel room is unsettlingly familiar, as if I've drawn a ghost memory out of the earlier faded pages of my life and breathed it into existence. A blue flowered quilt cover hugs the wide double bed, the assortment of throw pillows and cushions and the creamy folds of the sheet beckoning my tired body. And ah yes, customarily there's a picture hanging over the bed as every respectable hotel room is wont to feature. This one is a framed shot of a stretch of beach, the waves frozen as they rise up to meet the sand. A bedside lamp throws warm yellow light over the bed and the beach. It could almost be cozy, yet…yet, there's something nagging at the back of my memory. I walk over to the window and pull back the matching blue curtains. The Malaysian sky is stormy. A strange blue light seems to emanate from outside the window, and the glass is streaked with angry rain. I look at my reflection and quickly pull away as the faintest hint of recognition crosses my face. Have ...

In the beginning though, I was completely and utterly miserable. I don't remember exactly when the depression began to settle in, or much about the first few months I spent at NUST which is the university I joined before NED. But I do remember how I felt when my closest friends began to leave Karachi, flying off to Canada, America, the UK, Malaysia, Dubai, one person at a time heading off to a life of adventure and excitement that new lands and foreign universities held out as a shiny promise. To me, their futures were crackling with colour and sparks, the glint of gold, wide blue skies and impossibly beautiful sunsets, and there were fireworks exploding above it all, spelling out SUCCESS and HAPPINESS in neon blue and baby pink lights, their faces lit up with the afterglow. That's when the consequences of the choice I had made fully sunk in. Because I wasn't part of this exclusive group who had success woven in their fate before they'd even hit their 20s. No...

What I learnt this summer, aside from frying an egg while keeping the yolk perfectly gooey, the taste of loneliness and how to do my own threading,was the hot and immediate comfort of holding you, pressing a baby cheek to my face, watching you absentmindedly curl your small, moist hand around my finger while you stared out at the cars driving by, thrilling to the way you learnt to trust me one glance, one step at a time, until you had faith enough in me to follow me anywhere, to trust me to pick you up and wipe away your tears when you were sick in your own clothes that one time. Everytime I brushed back your dark hair or watched you fall asleep - what does a baby dream? - I wanted to stop time, turn back the hour hand on the clock, knowing that each moment I spent with you was precious and irreplaceable. You see, I will never get any of them back. Because the next time I see you, even if it is only a couple of months from now, you will never be the same toddler that you are now. Yo...

Electronics Department, NED-UET Karachi, Pakistan So I'm sitting here marveling at the end of the NED era, this sudden, abrupt conclusion to yet another phase of my quick, quick life. The truth is, the end had always seemed far enough away when I first started here, and even up till a couple of days ago, I was complacent, knowing that I had another class to attend, yet another test to take so much so that now that it really IS over, I can't begin to fathom what's just happened. I simply don't KNOW what to do with myself now. And I find myself returning again and again to those first few months in NED and the circumstances that swept me there, how the only thing I now know as true is that man is hasty and impatient, and it is in our nature to only appreciate something with the power of hindsight. When we are in the moment, very rarely do we think about it. We spend most of our lives either mooning over the past or feeling anxious about the future. But momen...