Practical Journal

Smudging chocolate ice cream on your shirt should not win you the title of being clumsy because there are things that are beyond our might. On the more serious note, I am going to accept the fact that more than half the things that happen in my life do so without my slightest intervention. One tries looking outside the box only to be stunned by the intricacies. The immeasurable depths of the world and I, the underdog!
The reality of being the underdog as compared to previously holding the self proclaimed crown for supporting them can be achingly cumbersome. However, such a realization only grants us the fervor to move forward.

Experiencing merely the superficiality of our presence leads us to be self proclaimed champions. As the visualization ascends to a level of comprehension, it becomes vivid that narcissism lasts as far as the least distance of the literal distinct vision and we brutally fail to grasp the amalgam we our selves are. Then making the effort to discover what our personalities are eventually becomes a phenomenon too dull or perhaps impossible which leaves us searching for others to reverberate in the valleys of our mundane hollows. In the attempt to bewitch people we selfishly synthesize temporary attributes that are alluring. With the taste of being praised and adored by those who pulled over we then strive to praise and adore.

On the journey to find personalities worthy of praise we come across people of caliber higher than ours. This renders us to be the underdogs. Since the desire to be the mightier breeds within us, it drives us to conquer them and their throne. The cycle goes on as we continue to confront, fathom and overcome those providing us with the gradient toward a level they posses. As for those who fail to do so shall remain underdogs until they vanquish us, or perish by the wrath of the mightier.

Strangely enough, all of us would settle down neglecting many such gradients; one often grows tired, oblivious or satisfied and grateful under the umbrella of fatalism. This settling is with a sense of complacency either actual or delusional. Delusional complacency would be to assume a rival, a potential stronger being, to be dormant or dead. Actual would be to assume him to be in ambush. If we are still talking about rivals how is this complacency? It is because the thought of having rivals, apart from being a soothing one, is also a smarter one. How is assuming to have rivals settling down? It is because we prepare for them and maintain our positions at the elevated levels we have reached and anchored after voyaging through and battling down the tunnel of life that runs a predetermined course governed by the Mightiest.

Opinion

Recently, I have met people walking down the street with an opinion that is staunchly against the Pakistan Military. I have been thwarted by many men that have devoured books of history and what not. They tell me that I stand in no position of speaking on such a topic. I can't help but agree. Living for two decades and showing interest in things far from my domain doesn't automatically instill within me the understanding of such issues. Although, the average man that dwells on the worn out roads of this country carries an opinion. As for me, I am afraid to form one being so ill-informed. However, that does not stop me from coveting such a collection of knowledge.

Long live the power of not breaking down under pressure. I continue to maintain the tradition of picking the books up during the final couple weeks before exam. These days are meant to be exclusively for my books and I. Every second bears importance of caliber unmatched. I cannot afford any hindrance, distraction or thing.

"I am taking your red shalwar kameez out, change into them before the guests arrive," mother spoke to me with her back to us while she dug my closet.
"Guests?" I questioned staring at Guyton.
"Yes, some people are coming."
"Why do I need to be there? I have an exam. I can't possibly waste time. You know how crucial this time is for me Maa."
"I know, but we can't just say no to people who ask to come over."
"All right, who are they?"
"The guy is a military man, a possible suit for you, his family is coming over."

The expression of disapproval that Mania and I were initially exchanging spontaneously changed to one of twisted excitement and a thumbs up from my side and a wink from hers. Of course, amma still had her back to us.

"I know it's considered inappropriate for girls to be questioning too much but who referred them to us?" I fluently asked before amma could walk out of the room.
"Your Maami."
"But weren't they against the army?"
"That's not important," saying that amma left.
"This certainly proves it ain't a matter of significance," I uttered to myself in sarcastic ambiguity and was distracted thinking about the stance of Army and screwed my text book for Physiology.

Brown till death

When abba jee asserts his love to you and makes emphasis upon young men that he meets and how courageous and hardworking they are, you know it's time. Tying the knot is naturally a very fascinating phenomenon to you and me, but it becomes slightly too fascinating to the elders of the family. I mean, sure, the amount of love you extract from a desi setup-ed family is ridiculous and just crazy dear to you, but things do get intimidatingly annoying.

So, one blatantly ordinary day abba jee sends out the hukum. Now, hukum ain't no joke and the humor in it is that the hukum never reaches you directly. Amma jee, undoubtedly, will be the messenger. For Aman ki fakhta, she got the hukum from the head of the family channeled through the entire family after they had discussed it with utter excitement for at least two days.
"What?" Aman ki fakhta squealed.
"Kiyon? Koi masla hai?" The ladies questioned her sounding a little abased blended with a lot of quiet muttering and whispering.
"Nahi, masla kiya ho sakta hai, jaise aap ki marzi," Aman ki fakhta didn't dare discuss.

Aman ki fakhta gets engaged with a man who she has seen all her life and never thought as someone she'll be marrying. As a matter of fact, she hasn't really ever given marriage a thought. Being engaged with him was meant to be an absolute oblivion to this fact because of her theory: Being engaged doesn't guarantee marriage. Five years of ultimate silence and the time finally comes and also the time for one of her final exams for medicine. Thrilling as it may sound the marriage ended up being on the very day of the exam; two very important days already clashing.

"You'll do it!" I ensured her.
"Dude, I haven't studied anything, you don't understand," she whined.
"Here's the deal, you give it three hours of maximum concentration and then go for your appointment with the beautician," I threw the idea to her over the phone.
"In case you haven't noticed, IT'S MEDICINE we are talking about! And I still haven't gotten my jorha's fitting tested," she freaked out.
"I know. I know. Look, since there is no way out of it, you do it. You have to do it. That's it." I concluded hanging up on her.

It was one of those times when a woman was left alone to tackle education and at the same time having all the support for marriage. Both being very important to her. They couldn't change the date for the wedding because in Karachi booking clubs for marriage is no piece of cake and then there are the tickets of relatives making in from places far away. She was to be taken to Hyderabad after rukhsati. The next being a day free and the day after that her Valeema ceremony in Hyderabad and simultaneously the next O.S.P.E in Karachi.

I stepped in the gates for the exam knowing that she wasn't going to be here. After the exam I walked down to my car and there she came running.
"Oye! Hold up."
"You freaking made it!" I yelled with sheer surprise and hugged her tight.
"Yea, my man drove me, he is great," she explained.
"Masha Allah."
"And whined about the long drive I made him do," she finished her thought.
"Haha, whining is all part of the charm," saying that we walked down to my car.

They set the example of how marriage is supposed to be the best example of teamwork. How it's meant to move on with life and not put an end to it. They made history. Everybody gets married, but how many of us get to be married and appear in finals on the same day specially being a brown woman? Well, Aman ki fakhta, I stand proud of you and your man by your side.

May Allah bless the couple with happiness, togetherness, affection and all that is fair.
Ameen.

Perceive

It was chodween ka chaand yester-night. It looks a complete circle tonight as well. It's a circular pore in the sky, the only pore. At the moment, it appears to me as the only communication that we have with the illuminated heavens behind the dark night. The city stands still mostly because I cannot perceive anything as the electrons wouldn't cease the cease to flow. K.E.S.C rules!

The word 'perceive' takes me back to the anatomy dissection hall where each week I would sit in the front row almost definitely at one of the ends. My head would wobble at the mercy of gravity and my sternocleidomastoids because I would step into slumber every now and then. In recurring periods of less than ten seconds I would catch words tumbling down the crack between her permanently stretched in a smile lips.
"Perceive beta, you must perceive, believe it, draw a picture."

"Doctor sahiba, would you like to explain to the class the two origins of vagina?" She called out to my wobbling head.
"Um, aaaa.. yes ma'am," it took me the longest five seconds to perceive the situation,"the sinovaginal plate or nodes or I think they are called the bulbs, I think, and the other, umm, the other, it's the, the ureteric bud."
"The Ureteric BUD?"
"Yes." I confirmed confidently this time.
"How many structures arise from this ureteric bud, doctor sahiba."
"Umm there is the ureters, collecting system of the permanent kidneys, major, minor calyces, renal pelvis..."
"Yes and vagina?"
"Ummm, no. I mean, yes. I think."
"Doctor sahiba, do you know what gives rise to the uterus?"
"The paramesonephric ducts."
"And the vagina?"
"The paramesonephric, of course, my bad!" I slapped my forehead flat with my sweaty palms.
"And not the mesonephric ducts, mind you," she emphasized with bulging her eyes out in absolute circles.
"And not the mesonephric ducts, ma'am, because the ureteric bud is an outgrowth of the mesonephric duct. I am sorry."

It was one of those experiences that not only highlighted the importance of snoozing in class but also almost exclusively taught me to perceive. Her words never slipped through her lips and hit the ground ever again during the remaining few classes we had left. Before they could bounce away, I'd pull them and draw myself the developing structures of a floating fetus. New structures were formed and the old ones caught up as the fetus silently floated in the hall, followed me to the library, trailed across the roads of Karachi behind me and bumped into people's head and they never could perceive it.

It floated very much like the moon tonight. Suspended by nothing, shining, a connection to the heavens. At the end of first professional year of medicine it was like the chodween ka chaand. Just the way all of us are, chodween ka chaand, at birth. We then grow only to regress like the chodween ka chaand.

Circadian rhythms and clocks, orbits and rotations. Telomeres and senescence, shadows and vacuum. Initiation and termination. They are pretty much the constants: Determined and calculated. Their prevalence was discovered to be engineered and programmed. Though, man would interject. Whether for good or for evil depends upon how he perceives them.

Bummer

There are some mornings when you wake up with oozing romanticism. The spirit of life makes you pop out of bed and into someone's arms, embarrassing them with the oddness of it. Less often, more imprinting and disturbing of evenings occur. When there remains no point of having a smoking cup of tea over some chit chat. The air would stand still, almost frozen. Inhale! But the lungs remain deflated with nothingness and you choke. The insects crawling in the pit for your grave would then probably be in for a  meal. Their meal that previously had been your flesh.
*sigh*

I see her gliding through the slits that remain between the glass covering my window. She is whirling nonchalantly through the key holes and any nook or crevice. Her spinning white icy hair languidly dance to surround everything. She touches only slightly over the surface of things, weighing them down. A streak of chill runs down my spine and I stand face to face with her. My average red-brown fierce eyes watching her reverberating gray silver lackadaisical bays for eyes. She hisses her song. I wince in a debilitated attempt to stay unaffected. And fall.

She would just enter into every moment of your life without a permission. The most boggling of the truths, however, is that she is beautiful. Somebody's dream. Somebody's companion. Others cherish her so much that they prepare for the time of her arrival. I, on the other hand, don't like her.
Winter!

Zip it

I can multitask. I can get so much covered working on so many things at the same time. Of course, the only condition being that none of the tasks must require me to talk.

Nonsense

I love getting mail from family. The recent mail that I received possessed the question in golden words; how is your favorite auntie with a mole on her back that you love to stare at???!!!???!!!

Initially I laughed until a fistula developed in my umbilicus. I had to push the protruding gut back in with my hands.

Next, was the flashback!

It's Sunny's wedding. We are bored to hell. I look like a person from the trans gender movement as I am given a compliment that sound something like "OMG! You look like a woman!"
[Replay] OMG! You look like a woman!
[Again] OMG! You look like a woman!
That one was a real shocker specially when I am known for the aggrandized chaadar I wear all the time at home. What made me look like a woman? Perhaps the fact that I am a woman. It must have been that smaller embroidered dupatta on my head as apposed to the chaadar. In that case, exposure made me look like a woman. Real smart.

The two of us are sitting in the little corner on chairs side by side. We are making plans of annihilating the world by inserting micro-chips in dolphin's puny brains and have them walk on shore seducing people to the waters and eventually drowning them. Once everybody was dead the two of us would rule the empty planet earth and wait for aliens so we can have some friends.

We conquered the world. We are struck with boredom again. We start staring people down. The land of my vision is suffused with the sight of my-about-to-be-favorite-auntie. I notice the lineae albicantes on her stomach. She pulls the blouse to her saari down. Needless to say to no avail! And she turns her back and there we go the mole, squished, being partly under the fringe of her blouse and partly dangling in the air.

Flashbacks are my favorite multimedia presentations that this life has to offer. Organized, broken into pieces emphasizing on important events in chronological sequences, slow and articulate. Made for me. I can go back and forth prodding aspects of interest, pause and investigate.

"My favorite auntie is no where to be seen, but I guess she and her sticking out mole must be doing all right, hopefully." I replied to his question accompanied by a lot of nonsense.

Son of Adam

The limit to which man can push his boundaries away from their original mark intrigues me. Man has been adamant as ever about maintaining boundaries and abstaining from the infarction of them. However, nothing beats the taste of how he melts before the grandiose walls that he cements himself ever so passionately. If he fails to build them he consequently also fails to prove to the world that he is driven by his inherent righteousness. Righteousness that is the essence of being human. Righteousness about which the world must know.

Sensational is the time when he breaks down before the concrete and pleads; pleading is not one of his cherished characteristics. He pleads nevertheless. He pleads for these walls to move away. This breathtaking imploring is within himself, hidden from the world. Dear to him and him alone. The boundaries are then pushed, sadly so only to an extent.

Ah! The vulnerability. The vulnerability of this being to melt!
Ah! The weakness.

It's raining paint drops

She had some paint stains on her black triangular hijaab that she wears on her head almost all the time when I see her.
"How did you get paint on your scarf?" I questioned her.
"I was doing the laundry back in the gali," she went on continuing with her jharho,"when this man painting the house behind ours started going crazy with it, he must have gotten the impression that I would enjoy some raining drops of paint on my clothes."
"That is so very wonderful of him. Did you look up after he did so?"
"No, I got the impression that he was interested in disrespecting me so I didn't feel the need to do such a thing."
"Of course."