#EmotionalRantWarning It has only been three weeks since I have been away from you. Things are nice here and this is not permanent but I miss you so much, Pakistan. I love you with your road horrors and your middle-of-the-night celebratory gunshot sounds and scheduled/unscheduled power outages. Im chill with your minimum-as-shit paying jobs and your bribe-taking tullas and throat-clearing muezzins and your tens of varieties of paan & lassi and the stereotypes associated with consumers of either. I miss dodging cricket-crazed kids hitting sixes on busy streets, and going to places to shop and eat on both sides of the bridge, and being called Baji by a 60-year-old and a 16-year-old kapra walla alike. I miss pools of water that collect in underpasses -- puddles that hold testimony to rain that fell a good 3-4 days ago. I miss being scared for my life upon being bitten by a zebra-printed mosquito, and being bothered by text messages from poetic strangers wishing me a very ğÔöd mõrNínG. I miss the thrill of crossing roads in panic, not at the ease of pressing a button (which, my rational self says, is pretty great too). There are no charsis, faqeers or izaarband vendors adding character to pedestrian bridges here and I dont have the luxury of buying sweet smelling motia gajras while sitting in a parked car essentially anywhere in the city. I stay up late thinking about how soothing the breeze would be on the roof of Nani Amis house this particular night, or how bearable the walk to my apartment would be, depending on whether one of the stray cats has knocked over a trash bin. Ive been away from home for years at a time before but this time around, it is different. I miss Karachi unbearably, and though there is a good chance I might get mugged/shot/cut by a bunch of lean, fast-talking motorcyclists thirty minutes after I land, I simply cannot wait to be home again.
Posted on: Tue, 08 Apr 2014 05:49:11 +0000
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