sidewalk scribbling

It’s tough being a moderately well-off Pakistani millennial.   Little do you know that if you’re seemingly fortunate enough to go to one of the top universities in the country – like LUMS or IBA (inserting IBA after LUMS with a benevolent smile on my obnoxious face, because if I genuinely believed both institutes to be equal, would I even be a real Luminite?) then you’re actually setting yourself up for a lifetime of excruciating decision making.   Life becomes   really hard – choices open up like randomly labelled doors in front of us with little indication about what any of them will lead to: Behind Door No. 1 is FURTHER EDUCATION, and behind Door No. 2 is a JOB YOU MAY BE HALF QUALIFIED FOR ... Come to think of it, life after college pretty much involves a dilemma after every 1-2 years.   Do I still like this job? Am I being paid enough? Why am I still in Pakistan when half my friends and cousins are already in Dubai – or, even better, in the Western World ...

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 ro...

You can tell by the sideways look your two-year-old nephew is giving the little girl playing with his up until-a-minute-ago-uninteresting plastic truck that there is a storm brewing.   “My truck,” he says loudly.   He lets go off the blocks he was playing with and looks you in the eye. “ My truck.” Toddlers, you may have noticed, have more important things to do than bother about extra adjectives or verbs (let alone something as useless as prepositions).   “MY TRUCK!!!” (It was also a toddler who created the wise saying about persistence being the key to success).      “Come on, you can share,” you may try but then thunder lightning rain and tears are upon you so you cave in to the fury of a tiny being and sheepishly cajole the little girl into giving you the truck in return for,   I don’t know, say five bucks or maybe a Barbie with shorn hair. “Here you go,” your reproachful look slides off the nephew’s adorable head like the skate...

“But seriously, don’t you think the MeToo movement is just a bit over the top?” says a 31-year-old Pakistani man with his feet up on the coffee table, flipping through the TV channels as his wife stands over the stove in the kitchen, cooking dinner.   “Well maybe- ” begins his mother only to be interrupted by his father: “Of course.   That is the problem with today’s generation.   They’re just complaining all the time and turning small things into big issues.” “Things have changed you know, I could see women crying about equal rights before but we’ve pretty much achieved equality now,” the 31-year-old man continues.   “Honey can you hurry up with the food, I’m starving!” Isn’t it delightful when you’re in the middle of a situation so saturated in irony it’s almost unbelievable that you haven’t slipped and broken a collarbone yet? It may be a difference of opinion but you know what, I don’t think equality of the sexes has been achieved – not in th...

Nottingham might not be as quaintly English as Lincoln with its shiny cobbled streets and old toffee shops, nor as flippantly grunge and artistically gritty as Bristol – definitely can’t compare it to the magically majestic Edinburgh or the chaotic mad land-of-the-fast walkers-and-shovers-move –aside- where-did-all-the-polite-Englishmen-go-London ... It may not be haughtily beautiful like Oxford or Bath, nor situated along the coast of ancient white cliffs from the era of dinosaurs, not hipster like Norwich nor posh like Brighton – Still, there is something about the city that makes me quite happy we have chosen it as our tempoary home. It’s got a quirky mischievous character, somewhat hidden between the standard high street stores and the more grimy alleys with shops nursing cracked window panes and sad wayfarers looking for spare change to buy a bus ticket or perhaps more likely, another beer instead – You can always expect a place to be much bigger than it seems f...

They say the world is a much smaller place now – with faster airplanes, safer sea routes, phones and apps that can help you stay in touch with your best friends 2,000 miles away, all the while giving you the option to put on bunny ears and whiskers – because let’s face it, communicating is much easier when you can distract yourself and your 7-year-old nephew with magic hats and fire-vomit filters. In some ways though, the world doesn’t feel very small at all.   My family is split over three continents and four countries, my cousins and best friends are strewn across the globe in a wide arc so that no more than two are in the same city and while it is great to have a place to stay if I’m planning a trip to Netherlands or Toronto or Dubai or Boston or St Louis, it would be much nicer still to have one of them idiots a ten minute walk away so I could actually poke an arm and share a coffee in person. The mad quest to leave our country for brighter horizons – higher ed...

You slip into the comfort of your own country so seamlessly you don’t even notice it.   It’s like wearing your favourite sneakers – you don’t realise how important they are till you buy new shoes and have to break them in.     We landed at the shoddy little Islamabad airport – Daewoo bus stations are better than the Islamabad airport, as my uncle put it – and I walked out into the crisp cool morning of home,   donning on a coat of smug confidence that was held up by invisible fairies right outside the plane door.    It’s that confidence which makes you stride with your head held high, pushes you to say “ex CUSE me!” loudly and indignantly to the aunties and uncles that try to cut the line in front of you, that helps you strike a conversation with a stranger on a bus, or offer help to a young mother with her antsy baby without blinking.   It’s the confidence of belonging to a place without filling out paperwork and supplying bank docum...