sidewalk scribbling

From where I’m standing Right now, It’s not really clear; I see some clouds And a grey fog Perhaps I can lean over And draw Some silver linings Around The dark A box of crayons Always by your side Reds and blues and greens And the brightest yellow And while it may be Too easy To let the box drop And drown In the gray It might be better To lean over And draw silver Around The dark. Hello, new year, another year. I think at some point I stopped owning the years – you know, how when we were younger and in school, we’d start off the new year by always writing down last year in the blue and red margins of our notebooks – but then eventually, we’d grow used to the actual date and our margins would stop being all smudgy.  For some reason, now when another year steamrolls into me, there are two thoughts that come one after the other (like a race between two close runners, with one leading and then the other overtaking and you don’t know wh...

I woke up today to complete silence.   Later, when I sat near the window I heard the sweet twitter of birds, faint, polite, cute.   Quite a difference from the loud caw-cawing of the crows that came to perch on the AC right outside our bedroom window in Karachi and wouldn’t stop their yelling for several long painful minutes. We’re in Nottingham now – currently moving from one AirBnb to another, nomads wearing the same pair of jeans for the last eight days, realizing how useful a washing machine can be and wondering if we will ever be able to wear sandals or open-toe shoes again. From the comforts of life in Pakistan to the start of a brand new story in England. When did time slip off its clunky wooden shoes and replace them with silver roller blades? Sometimes it feels like if we’re always chasing after time, our arms outstretched but our eyes glued to our TV screens or phones or laptops, making it difficult to catch up. And I bet Time rolls her eyes, mutterin...

Nothing makes you feel more like a giant than sitting on small wooden chairs surrounded by tiny first graders in their classroom.  For a classroom observation, we are supposed to slip into a class quietly and just sit in the back. We’re not to make any comments and neither is the teacher supposed to pay any attention to us. The idea is, of course, to observe a class as would be without your presence. My favorite class to observe is always in the pre-primary section where the students weigh almost the same as their chunky book bags and want at any point in time to color in their workbooks. The children are curious and bright-eyed, they keep peaking over their shoulders and giggling when they catch my eye. “Are you our new teacher?” they would often ask (in their minds all females on school premises are teachers). There is one special memory from these classroom observations that  sticks out and makes me smile even now. The teacher was walking around the classroom, tal...

Karachi Scribbles V I love the locations of our schools*. We enter a labyrinth of narrow, dirt roads, over open sewers and past little kids grinning cheekily from street corners, poking at our dabba -van as it rattles within inches of them. Houses and shops crowd close, built almost into each other, side by side, sharing boundary walls and cups of tea over neighborhood gossip. The shops are numerous and tiny, almost identical, and I see them at every other turning, with their plastic jars of biscuits and candy and bored keepers, their customers usually under the age of 10, making well-balanced, slow decisions about spending a rupee or two. Sleepy dogs and small children looking after even smaller children scatter the unpaved lanes, every now and then there is a long trail of garbage, plastic bags of blue, black and pink, peels of potatoes and squashed tetra packs. It’s in these neighborhoods that I realize where the actual population of Karachi lies. If you think “ Aa...

October 22 It was a really small office, and as befits a research nonprofit organization, it was located in a residential area in Karachi, had ugly, beige walls, old computers and unflattering white tube-light. I usually sat by myself in a room away from the other staff, entering data about important social issues. I have to admit, I wouldn’t have scored very high on a job satisfaction survey. I must have seen the chotta (who often is not a small boy as the nickname indicates but in fact a grown-up individual) bringing in a tray of cups that had something very creamy and frothy – not tea. What’s that? I asked him as he passed me by and he told me it was coffee for “sahib jee”.  Interesting. Could I have some too? Sure, and some minutes later I had my own cup of sweet but strong milky coffee with enough froth to make a mustache. One day I decided to go up to the kitchen to ask for coffee myself, probably because chotta was too busy or on leave. The kitchen was on th...