sidewalk scribbling

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...

It could be a song or perhaps a photograph, or maybe someone else’s story.  But it’s usually out of the blue and it grabs at me like a strong hard tug on my arm.  Kind of cool how a thought can have such a physical impact.  And so it may be that my eyes glaze over during a Zumba class because that song reminds me of a friend who deleted all Avril Lavigne tracks from my laptop and had a playlist titled ‘Aisha’s playlist’ on her computer, which she would put on for me while I lay on her bed and she sat by her desk, letting me angst out my blues. Or it could be a random photograph of the university library that some random stranger has posted on Facebook, and it pulls me like a rolling whirling black hole into memories of blue sneakers (that I would sneak out of Mariam’s cupboard and probably wore more than she did – and the gray t-shirt which she just ended up giving to me), and the feel of the concrete sidewalk against the soles of my feet, the sidewalk that I wa...

It could be the fire alarm that has been jangling my nerves for the last 30 minutes, even though there is obviously no fire raging (had there been one, the entire building would be ablaze by now).  Or it could be that my hair has been falling like the leaves will fall two weeks from now, or that I have to sweep the house almost every day because of all that fallen hair (enough to make 75 bird nests I think).  It could be the dry skin or the dishes that incessantly sneak into the sink every time I turn my head around. It could be that I just want someone to make some daal chawal and put on Downton Abbey for me.  In any case, it just happens that I’m going to be blue for a few hours (before I decide to get out of bed and just vacuum the entire 400 square feet of our apartment). I’m generally an introvert (no way, really!).  I enjoy solitude and I start getting antsy if I’ve been chatting on the phone for more than 30 minutes.  I mean, one of my favorite ...

July 30 You know those bright plasticky toys with lots of colorful buttons, big enough for little kid hands? Every button you press, something cute or creepy pops out, and too often there is a loud obnoxious nursery rhyme that follows? Some are educational, a cat jumps out from a square and meows, while others make no sense at all, mooing sounds from stars that change into a poem about roses or chirpy sentences in a voice so squeaky and shrill it doesn’t sound like any language I know. This time around I went to Lahore, I felt like I had walked into a gigantic toy keyboard, everywhere I looked, a hologram, a memory, a sound, conjured itself and followed me for a few seconds, and then popped, like a soap bubble only I could see.  I think the reason I loved Proust was because of the madeleine-induced prose that painted his past in pastels all around him in such a way that he had no choice but to pen it down, calm the writhing images and sounds and guide them into the pa...

March 7 I can remember the hysteria I tried to suppress inside my chest, like an overstuffed suitcase you have to get your friend to sit on so you can zip it shut, or a sandwich that threatens to spill out all its contents. It’s never easy to pack up and leave for a new beginning, especially if you can’t bring some of your favorite things (fiancé, best friends, monsoon rain fragrances) along for the extended trip. But despite the bouts of loneliness and the sneaky panic that would shoot up throughout my body at random moments in the first few weeks in St Louis, I think I was pretty determined to make the most of it. I always have a special place in my heart for cities. Like an earnest young professional, I have the highest expectations from a new place. I do my research, start specialized bucket lists and slowly and determinedly, fall in love with the quirks that make each city unique. I like St Louis because it doesn’t put on many pretenses. It has its problems – ra...

September 8 Sometimes the universe seems to be a giant puzzle in the making and you stand above an empty, gaping space for hours, quite positive that you will never find the missing piece because the vacuum cleaner ate it up and it is now slowly disintegrating at a large dumpsite with sad, discarded heaps of stuff. And then, one day, suddenly, it appears and falls in smoothly, like it was meant to. The other day we were waiting for one of my roommates to come back from work so we could go to the Hispanic Festival, and when she finally came back, she told us she needed to cook… and just then we heard metal trays clanging in the heavens, a giant hand moved curtains of leaves aside, sweeping them across the sky, and soon the sound of rain surrounded us, gaining momentum, joined by the sharp, hard knocks of hail. “I’m glad we had to wait for you,” I told my roommate as we all rushed to the backdoor in the kitchen and peeked out, venturing into the covered patio, feeling the co...