A monsoon of Khayyam

Pray tell who has not transgressed Your Law?
Pray tell the purpose of a sinless life
If with evil you punish the evil I have done
Pray tell, what is the difference between You and me?

If I ever get around to having a son, I’m going to name him Khayyam. Shotgun. No one else can use the name. I’m completely lost in Samarkand, the book by Amin Maalouf. Beautiful quasi-historical narrative. A breathtaking recuperation from reading the highly disappointing Broken Verses. I’m beginning to think that Shamsie’s swansong was “In the City by the Sea”, all subsequent books have been this contrived mishmash of trying to link up political changes with upper class angst (I love depictions of upper class angst, I just don’t like contrived ones). I have developed a new reading schedule. Do it in the car. Karachi traffic has reached metaphoric levels, if you ever want to describe a sensation of dripping despair, of Chinese torture where you suddenly realize that a life affirming routine that you took for granted is now beyond your reach. Strongly reminiscent of the 26 hrs of travel during trekking when I almost cried when I got home (LUMS) because I was so happy to see clean bathrooms. Or like this time when I was trying to come to Khi and I didn’t get the 6 o clock flight, then got RQ-ed on the 10 o’clock flight, then finally booked the morning 7 o’clock flight and slept through it because Munchie and I had been watching Gilmore Girls through the night. It can single handedly drive you to the brink of faithlessness and dunk you in. It took me one hour today to get from my home to work. I mean I could have driven through half of Europe in that time. Karachi and Karachi people have never been my favorite entities to start off with, (with the exception of the sea, Espresso and Liberty books) now I have one more reason to hate this bristling concrete neurosis. Clifton, the much vaunted home of the elite resembles the bread on which penicillin was grown. The last massive rainfall was on last Thursday, water is STILL up to knee level in some places here.

I saw one street that resembles the culture/counterculture (?) of the north of the city. It was a little residential lane with two storey houses packed on each side, threaded to each other by a crisscrossing stream of electricity and phone wires overhead and leading off at one end to a little alcove of a store that catered to the grocery needs of probably the entire population of the street. It was Asr time so little children were throwing their bikes at the sides of the street and following their grandfathers or fathers to the nearby mosque, often just to accompany them while their mothers poured down instructions from terraces in the middle of waving and nodding greetings to each other. It was little sloping street and the abandon with which gates were open and people milled purposively lazily was refreshing. I have yet to see this happen on the developed side of the city where houses are like fortresses and you don’t know who your neighbors are and you never hear the cries of the anday wala, clanging the little bell of his cart at night, selling boiled and salted eggs.

I want stilettos. It’s been ages since I’ve worn stilettos. I don’t even know if I can remember how to walk in them. Every time I can’t figure out what’s disturbing my peace, I deflect it to material wants. Retail therapy then takes time working off, by them I’ll have delved into some work that requires intense concentration. My mother and aunt opine it is marriage. I differ, it may be sex but it’s not marriage yet, why go from the frying pan into the fire, into a whole jangling jungle of competing needs and demands. I dread the day where something outside of me will be usurped as the central topic of my focus. At a better point in time I would have qualified that statement (it’s a bit more extreme than I feel) but right now because I haven’t done a mite of work, I feel guilty and will leave the statement to that to get back to policy recommendations on schooling for working children and the girl child.

Half an hour later: I swear I need to get cracking on work. Lol. I haven’t done a thing!! I am such an efficient jackass. Lol. 2 pancakes, one cappuccino, 2 cups of tea and a biscuit later I feel like taking my Technicolor rug and lying in front of a nice heating grate surrounded by all kinds of books and writing material. (It’s freezing in the office and that used to be my winter routine in the common room at LUMS.) Uff bus, no more bukbuk else I’ll have to thrash myself. Graphic image. Hmmm. Not kinky.