The Scent of Rain

The thunder woke us up.  The sky outside glowed blue, purple, white and the light and thunder poured in from our bedroom windows and the open door across, shadows jumping all the way from the adjacent room windows, across the short corridor, toppling onto the carpet into our room.

Our pale curtains billowed out and then sunk back into the window alcoves, a giant practicing deep breathing – we could hear the rain falling in waves, the drunken trees dancing without abandon and see the lightning glow in the distance, rapid, short lapses in between, just long enough to let the clouds clang their response.

The thunderstorm (the very first I’ve seen in England since we moved here almost three years ago) took me back home – the sheer life of the rain was just like the storms we have in Pakistan.  The rain in England, as I have droned on many times, is terribly mundane routine wet boring.  The rain in Pakistan – much like the country – is chaos and madness with roads flooding and people wading in the streets, children jumping around for joy, schools out - ! Moms sweating in homes without electricity frying up pakoras as families sit outside, munching on samosas and drinking tea, enjoying the beautifully cooled air, a respite from days of heat (melting sweating in Karachi and burning dry scorching in Lahore/Islamabad).

A definite contrast from the blasé hardly an eye-roll oh its drizzling again reactions here!

It will be three years in September, since we moved to Nottingham but I’m relieved to say I still get homesick.  Pictures of rickshaws and fantastically painted trucks, the beautiful smooth roads of Islamabad with the misty blue Margalla hills in the background, the lofty leafy posh restaurants in Karachi, even the less romantic busy traffic scenes and dusty blackened apartment fronts with clothes flapping in their balconies, make me nostalgic. 

I don’t know how long it takes for one to get so comfortable in their new homes and countries that they start to prefer it to where they are from, but I just hope we don’t stay in England long enough for that to happen.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a fierce nationalist and although I like to say I’m proud to be Pakistani, a cursory look at that statement shows how ridiculous it is – why would you be proud of something that you had no control over? I mean, as a general rule, babies don’t choose where to be born.  So yeah, you may be like I’m glad or grateful I was born in XYZ, it doesn’t really make much sense to be proud of it.  

Pride should be associated with things that you put a lot of effort into – say, I’m proud I left half a tub of ice cream for my sister instead of finishing it in one go, maybe be proud of the sweater you knitted all by yourself or the boy you raised to be a gentleman. 

I do, however, believe in being respectful of where you come from, and especially in the case of places that have traditionally been highlighted wholly negatively in the world media, to be a good ambassador and explain that there is always more than one story – like closer to a hundred thousand stories.

You don’t have to paint your religion or your culture in a completely positive light but neither should you completely forget all the traditions and customs and brand them as ‘archaic’ and ‘conservative’, hence not worth continuing  - especially the ones that make you a better and more interesting person. 

It always riles me up when people pretend that life abroad is some perfect bubble that everyone in developing countries must aspire to.  It really isn’t – especially in the case of middle and upper-middle class Pakistanis who (admit it!) live like mini princes and princesses back in their countries, lounging in bathrooms bigger than their bedrooms abroad, driving (or being driven around) in cars compared to queuing up politely for buses or the subway in their new countries that will never truly give them the love and comfort and confidence of their home countries.

Anyways, one of the things you don’t get anywhere else but Pakistan is the smell of rain.  It is usually the first hint that a storm’s a brewin’.  The first drops of rain hitting the dry dusty earth – it is the most intoxicating beautiful fragrance, earthy, wet, fresh, sweet.  I don’t know why it never smells like that here.  Maybe it’s because the ground is so hot and dusty in Pakistan, or maybe the earth in the sub-continent is just special.

I haven’t been very good with my resolutions this year – despite that I only really had two.  My plan to get a driving license has been thwarted midway by a horrible instructor who has no idea how close he came to me shoving him out of his own car and running him over.  I need to find an instructor with a bit more knack for teaching someone who already knows how to drive the rules and ways of driving in a new environment.  And as for my writing a blog every month ... well, I think I am just about four months late.  So what if that’s like 1/3^rd of the year.  Nobody cares if you fall short of completing your resolutions – they’re too busy falling short of their own expectations! And the world is too busy exploding – wars, famine, global warming, presidents who rule countries in a way that’s too bizarre to be true except it is (when reality is more ridiculous than anything a creative script writer could come up with – kind of like the Cricket World Cup Final this year!).

I blame Netflix and social media for my inability to take my laptop out of its purple sleeve and plugging in the charger to bring the poor sweet 10-year-old machine to life.  The thing with writing – like any other hobby or skill – like going to the gym! – is the more you delay it, the harder it gets to restart.  And why try to grease your mind and untangle your thoughts when you can just push it all back and watch a documentary about how digital life has robbed us all of any privacy and is actually influencing our decisions and making us consume more and act in certain less than favourable ways ...?

Not to get into the dangers and cons and side effects of our pervasive digital life, I must say the only people who strike up conversation with me in public spheres, like outside a shop or maybe on the bus, are older people who have more confidence and social skills than our generation that would much rather scroll through Instagram and feel bad about their mundane life than talk about the weather or cute dogs with a stranger.  The thing is though, the real life conversations with real life people seem to make me feel much better than a fake news article on Facebook or those Buzzfeed quizzes that never make any sense. 

Interesting, eh?  

Anyways, it is time to log off and read my book while my phone charges.  And try not to think of how sweet the mangoes must be in Pakistan this time of the year.