Boscage

Today's cold wind sneaked through the main door that Ali had left asunder. Every other swoosh would push the creaking door open, it would then gently slam itself on the threshold causing me to shift in my blanket, waking from my slumber. I got out of bed scratching my head and walked in to the living room where the rocking chair rocked an infinitesimal somebody enjoying the dry, cold whiffs blown from Quetta. I helped myself into the kitchen slippers to get water and sat on the stairs to enjoy it. My stair-landing craved for rays of sunshine that refused to fall upon us, today. A day without sun in my book of acceptable-s is only when the sky decides to bedew the arid soil and parched skin which it did to some extent when I had walked out the gates of Jinnah around four thirty in the afternoon.

The day before yesterday was really cold too. The same day three years ago, I was having a creative discussion with a friend when we were told that Benazir Bhutto was shot in the neck and a bomb had set off in the election rally in Rawalpindi. We had rushed to make phone calls to family members out on work. I was worried about my siblings getting stuck in their institute under a nationwide 'red alert'. Cars burned in hundreds down the road that he had to dodge in order to reach to the closest house of an acquaintance. We called them to go get the girls from their coaching center. They swung their bikes, rescued the girls, sliced the heart of an air that reverberated of rifles. This city had seen terrible times. That was apocalypse.

Self contradictions. I still haven't stopped myself from them quit just yet.
Despite being a male chauvinist 45% of the time with 30% of female chauvinism and 25% of none, I learnt today how women are underrated and overrated at the same time in the most misconstrued way. Yeah, okay, sexism was never my domain. Blah.

Machli achi hai kaisay pata lagatay hain?
Us kay galpharhay gulaabi hongay, chamakdaar hogi, aur dum se pakrho to uffqi halat mein aik so assi kay zawiye per paae jaegi.

Today, life had a new face. Perplexed, I tried contrasting what so far had been the reality to the surreal reality life just thrust-ed forward. It was a down day in terms of my energy and brain. It was a slow day too. But an eventful day, a very eventful day indeed. I hopped over the blood stained floor, my mind boggled for a second before confirming what I had witnessed was really the reality. Complexities, however, are finally disclosing themselves. They are setting in the compartments of my brain, segregated, clear and arranged in alphabetical order.

Soliloquy,
What were those techniques of Neuro-stimulation the guy talked about the other day for depression, bipolar, O.C.D, schizophrenia, tremors, tinnitus, epilepsy and Parkinson's?
Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) was a noninvasive method, had something to do with changing magnetic field, induction and depolarization.
Deep brain stimulation (DBS) according to him was very fascinating as the electrode that is planted in the brain, under local anesthesia with the person being awake with his brain functions analyzed, causes no pain since brain can't generate such signals.
Vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) is achieved by implanting a stimulator on the left vagus since the right vagus innervates the sinoatrial node and controls the parasympathetic innervation to the heart, decreasing the rate.
Then some one had said you must differentiate between bipolar and unipolar. 
Then he had said that patients should be advised to be patient with these treatments.

Beep boppi billi boppin!

Mohtaram Ustaad

After being frozen in time in a terrible traffic jam in front of Regent Plaza for at least fifteen minutes, I jumped down the bus and started pacing my way up to Jinnah probably for the twentieth time. Hafsa stood waiting for me outside the ward. We strutted to the new place of our dwelling for a while, after the lovely E.N.T experience. We watched our steps down the spiral stair-case and ended up being in Ward 8 where the officer told us to go where the Casualty is to find what we were looking for.

It wasn't much of the direction that had led us to the labor room but only the fight outside it that had pulled us in, revealing only accidentally that we were where we wanted to be. I peeped in to find a doctor walking our way, she told us we needed to change into our O.T slippers. The lack of which deprived us of the possible experience and pointed toward the exit. Although, we did go in to find the place refuting our conjectures about it.

"Karachi University mein bomb blast howa hai!" Someone had hissed in a worried tone as we walked past the two formerly fighting men finally paying attention to the woman in pain. Phone calls were made with the exact co-ordinates of where one stood being briefed to nervous family members at home. Then, we walked into Forensic Medicine.

I then met a man so pungent. So absinthian. So severe. So successful. So hated. So heartbreaking. So understandable. So obvious. I might get ostracized for teaming with him as not many fancy him for he has a crude, boorish touch to how he deals with things but one reason for that obviously is our narrow perception. The difficulty in showing agreeableness to a strong man who knows exactly what he is doing only without refinement and with exaggerated emotions is that it gets crusted with sympathy. You want others to get him.
The adversity in approaching such a man is lack of confidence, dearth of alignment of thoughts at my end, scarcity of words to utter when he showers his disappointments despite all the glory, when he feels victorious but defeated.

When you see him fail to have the crowd grasp his point. When you see him struggle so hard to put his message across by making intimidation the prosthesis. When you see him take himself to a level of vulnerability unimaginable, you become equally susceptible to showing your frustration. I tried keeping the lava restricted to the glass of my eyes while another man walked down for what ever reason after serving the country for so many years and encountering sheer deterioration. And the malfeasance on my part that I can assure him of is the lack of a promise, the lack of a promise to be equally strong.

The divisions

A one year old me was requested to accompany him to his house where his sisters would wait for my arrival so they could play with me. They would comb my hair, dress me up, entertain me with goodies, even change my diapers if the need be. A three year old me would skip my way to the little tuck shop at the end of the street to get Chocco Chum. Some day I would lie down on the big mountain of sand outside some house and stare at the blue sky. A four year old me chased him with my gang, terrorizing, covering ground as fast as we could, and ending up being rescued by him after we got stuck in an unwilling situation.

"We live in the past," I remember Doctor Imtiaz say to us this one day.

I brought a foot out of the limits of my car to stomp on the wet night soil of the land that has claimed its maternity over me. It hummed my favorite lullaby. It was cold. Wrapping an edge of my shawl around the bottom half of my face I walked through the old post-partitioned lanes that breathed silently under a dark hood. The sullen, deserted street with houses that closely arranged themselves almost overlapping and forming an irregular but obvious distinction with the thick sky stood meticulously scanning me. I remembered them and I could tell they knew who I was, as well.

"Tum log sab nostalgia mein phansay ho," Aunt said to my father, Chacha Ahmed and me, last night.
"Ammi ne naam rakha tha Majid ka!" My father continued with the nostalgia.
"Daadi jaan Baoon Pesh kiya hota hai?" I questioned my grand mother repeating the word Baoon Pesh.
"Aray woh aaen baaen bohat karta tha," she answered.
Dad and Chacha Ahmed slammed their palms together in a loud thud, laughing and harassing their brother who wasn't present. I had to laugh.
"Aur aaoon baaoon kar kay pesh pesh bhi rehta hoga phir," Chacha Ahmed assumed.
"Nahi, pesh pesh to Shahid rehta tha."
"Doctor Majid Ali Syed Baoon Pesh likh kar laga detay hain un kay clinic kay bahar," I proposed.

The night towered into a fountain of laughter. We had food and sat in the living room when the vagary of discussing something other than the past had befallen upon us.

"Haan bhai, kis temperature per Celsius aur Fahrenheit baraber hotay hain?" My dad sat with my uncle discussing something, tilted his head upward and questioned Aunt who had just walked into the room.
"Aey bhai parhi likhi batein na karo abhi," Aunt uttered in a sixty year old tone and sat with her back to the two Philosophers.
"Haan bhai, parhi likhi batein matt karo." Chacha Ahmed seconded and dramatically shifted his position to one that emulated Aunt's, and I do as Chacha Ahmed do. We laughed slamming our hands, clapping here and there. We had dissected the party with only our united-backs that had been purposely turned against the Philosophers.
"Oye larhki, ek inch mein kitnay soot hotay hain?" Dad questioned my back turned against him. He decided to educate us any way.
"Soot?" I had never heard the term before.
"Is ka jawab dega ek jahil aadmi!" Chacha Ahmed announced being manipulated by the Philosophers and turning his back on us. We had lost the strongest member from our forward block.
"Scale pesh kiya ja-ay, bachi ko soot nahi maloom," Dad commanded and I was explained every detail from soot to a cubic meter.
"Yaar bajjo, har waqt pakwa deti hain aap!" Ali complained punching me in the arm as he whined while Dad and all the elders explained things we weren't really interested in and the actual divisions of the party remained as one being those that are from that generation and the second being us.

New Era

I modified this post to take the spotlight off of you and I know you are going to hate me for that. So, in the previous unmodified version of this post I talked about how third year has commenced with immense zeal and zest and the fact is commemorated every day at school specifically during the clinical postings. I also mentioned how I am loving the feeling about all this, the magnificent flavor, the grandeur. Now, the purpose of this post is no longer Anum so I am going to distribute it amongst a couple other highlighted people of this new era.

Maria is this one normal, cognizant, supposedly sane person around me: Good influence. I will look at her, examine her features, she will cut my sentence, give her verdict. I have never had a long, serene, philosophical conversation about anything with her. She speaks in sentences that are habitual of delivering her message and that is it. Straight forward. We tried studying together in the first year, it didn't happen much again. She has firm ideas and they are concrete but there is no way she will clash those with yours; she will only conclude and walk away. She is absolutely indispensable for her worrying about others. She is rigid too, there is no negotiating, there is no reasoning. She means business. She wants the work done and she will remind you of the fact often. Perhaps drives you to the completion of a task way before you would ever imagine a slug such as yourself to accomplish.

She is the over thinker. She doesn't think out of curiosity though. It is always an objection. She will then think of an otherwise, more appropriate, upright thing to do. Her serious nodding in agreement with a lot of things about people amuses me the most.
"Haan, bilkul sahi keh raha hai."

Then there are things she says to me.
"Apnay baal baandho, sar dhaknay ka faida kiya hai tumhara?"
"Nahi bhaee, tum pata nahi kiya kiya kehti rehti ho."
"Yeh tum ne bohat ghalat kiya."
"Mainay tum se ye umeed nahi ki thi."
"To?"
"Tumhari ghalti hai saari."
"Tameez se parho."
"Mainay tumhain is rup mein kabhi nahi dekha bhaee."
"Tum itni barhi baat itni asaani se kaisay keh deti ho?"

We pointlessly laugh our heads off everyday when gathered down in the seminar room for E.N.T. Anum Iftikhar is my partner in crime in the making of all the clamor and racket. She perhaps outshines me at it, but she has her reasons. There is nothing in common between us except moments that I infest in order to emancipate from my recluse self. We have ourselves a complicated situation; it is mismatched, bizarre, abnormal but significant. She is like air. She is like my drinking fellow, my bar mate. When my need for being with a human peaks, I'd find her, selfishly. When I am with Anum Iftikhar, I am nothing but an escapist.

She has an undying, perennial urge to be noticed, talked about, thought about. If she knew I was scribbling on my blog about her she wouldn't be surprised as she is rightfully worthy of it. The topic that is to be raised most of the time we are together is how Anum is different. Setting aside the fact that everybody is unique in their own way, the element to be insisted the most upon lies desperately within how she is different in a certain way only a degree greater than my highness. Although, she does take the lead when it comes to the killer sense of presenting oneself.
"Tum versatile ho?"
"Tum marriable ho."
"Tum?"
"Main."
"Main."
"Tum?"

We goo-goo-ga-ga about a lot of things, most recent being our hypothetical, alleged, unclaimed, uncanny and absolutely doubtful love for a baboon and some more for another creature. I told her about our future in which I will steal and marry the man she marries in love, take him to Venus and eventually ditch him just to prove I am better than her which I am. He will then come back for her with a son after fourteen years to find that she is a complete psycho-path and her daughter a complete train wreck.

Qaid-e-Tanhaee.

I have been a parasite to her, Anum Iftikhar, feeding upon her facetious demeanor, and amplifying it with big chunks of nonsense radiating from my end, breeding ludicrousness.

Nasir and I are just there. We don't need to see each other, talk to each other, up date each other and then we meet and it triggers it. We worked as shackles to one another. I for her innocence and absurdity. She for my madness and clangor. We grew together. She from a sweet heart and an absolute party person to a calmer, sober, smart young woman. Me from an out of control, confused being to a dependable and aware out of control someone.

A child standing before the tremendous magnitude of her surrounding points curious fingers, asks questions, seems perplexed, babbles a lot. Why mustn't she babble? Everything around her seems so magical. She talks a lot about it and talks to anyone about it. People around her ask her to quit with the balderdash. But she can't. The magnificence of everything just won't allow her to. She then ascertains a new dimension that leads her through the portal of observation. She becomes even more ostentatious now that she can make sense, relate and understand.

It's like I wanted to speak it all out to make sense out of the jungle of thoughts creeping inside and Nasir was that someone who listened, absorbed it, tolerated and contrasted. She and I are ridiculously different and it works. And now that we are done tormenting ideas, babbling and brainstorming, we are at the level of this sagacious silence. The silence that is forcing itself to dominate our personalities.

A Day Off

Her neck ached as she sliced the two ends of her comforter apart to stick her face out in to the coldness that immediately fed upon the tip of her nose. She recited the Kalima and stretched her hand to the side table in search for her eye drops.

"Na tu bata yaar!"

She found the drops and was almost smitten by someone speak outside her window.
Na tu bata yaar! Na tu bata yaar!
The incredibly sincere manner in which the words were uttered and the tone, almost sung. She heard the man finish his conversation that rendered her linguistically challenged, not getting anything but 'na tu bata yaar' from it in terms of words. She could play around languages and decipher what is being uttered to some extent. This one was Seraiki. Meethi zaban.

Her mother walked in to the room after a while.
"Tum phir ulta seedha soeen? Uth jao!"
"Assalam O Alikum maatay!"
"Wa Alikumussalaam, aur durust alfaz istemal kiya karo," her mother advised her.
"Jee Waalida."
"Uth jao aur baara rotiyaan pakani hain aaj tumhain dupehar kay liye," her mother informed her.

What! She rebuked in the head.
Then the battle.
No, don't whine, do it. Come on! Don't whine! Just say yes. Abay yaar! It's not like you got anything better to do, why lose the opportunity? You know what you have to do...

"Sure Maa!"
"Aur aata bhi ghoondna parhega pehlay," her mom hesitated a little.

The hesitation made her realize what her mother was doing there. Her mother was playing hard on her.
Fine, I get it! She exclaimed in her head again.
"Jo hukum," she told her mother.

She tied her hair in a messy bun like something, wore her dupatta, lunged herself to the bathroom in the other room and splashed water on her face.
"Can some one pull my toothbrush out from my drawer?" She yelled to no avail.
She walked up the stairs to her room to get it herself.

Eleven minutes later

"What are you doing?" Mania questioned her.
"Making rotiyaan."
"You are going to have to do the aata first!" Mania walked upstairs with a grin.
"I know."

Fifteen minutes later

"What are you doing?" Saria questioned her.
"Um, making roties," she said in an 'isn't it obvious?' manner.
"Aw! Poor little bachi has to do roties!"
"Yes. And if you want to see some really awesome roties, I suggest you check out roti number 9 and 10."
"I have seen enough awesome roties, I don't need to check 9 and 10 out," Saria said indifferently.
"You don't know what you are missing out on."

Five minutes later

"What are you doing, dad?" She asked her smiling father.
"No, no, continue," he walked out the door.

Half an hour later

"Amma, what is Jo doing in the kitchen?" Ali yelled to their mother.
"I am making roti for you, meray piyaray haseen bhai!"
"Kiya howa?" Their mother asked Ali.
"Aap in se kiyun banwaati hain rotiyaan?" Ali asked their mom.
"Achi hain yaar, khaeen hain nahi, pehlay se dramay bazi matt karo, aur oper se naween aur dasween roti kha lena."
"Beta achi honi chaheye!" Her brother threatened her.

Five minutes later

"Yaar Jo, dispenser ki botalein nahi hain, paani ubaalna parhega, ubal do!" Mania said to her.
"Blah!"
"Kar dein na yaar."
"Chal ja, ho jaega tera kaam," she told her younger sister.

Fifteen minutes later

"Naween aur dasween kahan hain?" Saria came to inquire.

Awkward

Doodoo climbed up on to one of the largest branches sprouting out of the trunk of an old gum tree in Imtiazatown. The citizens payed attention sitting on the fresh green grass while she stared at the Mayor's glinting crown. After having one of the most severely sober meetings with responsibility, she had grasped upon the fact that she needed to change and attain stability.

Doodoo could climb without ever fearing that she will fall and break her head on the spot. Although, she always knew that falling is a possibility a micron away from not. She will climb and may as well fall, she will climb again hoping some day she will walk tall. Doodoo fell countlessly all the time. She broke her head, broke her nose, broke her tail and broke her toes; she was pushed a couple of times too, but the most that she could do was attempt to move on without turning behind.

She hung from the branch, swinging, when the giant Mayor tail pointed to her face. She was chosen to perform the ritual in order to ace. She was new in the race as many were, and wanted to perform before the Mayor. Her fellow citizens would analyze her too, and correct her where she faltered and missed out on things in her usual hasty hullabaloo. She leaped and hopped in front of the mehfill, and straightened up to taste the adventure without being skilled.

Since the ritual is meant to be performed in twos, she was given a partner who was a friend she let loose. She gasped and sighed, though her chimpanzee ears errect and smiled with her bright puny eyes. The ritual began and she forgot her part, but the mehfill guided her for they are smart. Her partner was to climb on to her head gracefully and sing; Doodoo would then play the violin.

But her chimpanzee fur was ripped, her eyes were poked, her neck scratched.
The song was never completed and her partner fell upon Doodoo, the poor little brat.

Fangs

It goes back to some where in Saddar, Karachi. A ten year old me holding my temporary Principal's hand in one of my baby palms and the other was clutched upon by Ramla, my friend, the Principal's daughter. I think Mania was with us that day but those were the blissful times when I had been oblivious to Mania's existence and she would never declare the same for me. Don't you just love her!

I helped myself on to a giant chair that wore an umbrella of all sorts of machinery and tools, as I remember it.
"Open your mouth please," the man in white gloves asked me.

The wasted indistinct fragments of memory collected by me from my hesitant combination of synapses have released the information that my mouth, that day, was then filled with something like chewing gum or may be that is what it was or it could just be Polyvinyl siloxane; it tasted like strawberry to me or it could have been flavored. Emphasis was put upon obtaining the impression of my canines. I had no questions to ask. The Principal had met us last night or the night before at Ramla's place and the next thing I knew my canines were taken the impression of.

A week later or so, after maghrib, I walked behind a scattered group of people pacing down a dark lane. I knew the people very well. The houses that stood on that street looked very rich. I paced, hopped, ran a little. Why I was there has always been the craziest of questions left for me to decipher.

We turned to a house that was under construction or maybe it was haunted. It looked haunted to me. I became nervous. I was afraid of being the last one in the crowd. I started fearing the unseen lurking behind me so I made sure one of the people from the group was. The snaking single file of people slithered up the broken, undone stairs.

I was then presented with my fangs. I embraced them and a mortal neck was bitten.

Right. Left. Right. Left.

So I end up being accused of introducing two wrong bunch of people to one another, yet again. I have got to learn to mix the right people together. That's one zone I clearly fail to master. Not that I take this particular case seriously. Well, it has been a while ever since the diagnosis of having people create too much raucous about too little things was first made specifically about the bunch I stick with.

While issues arise in one bunch of people I enjoy my life with, the other bunch never lags behind in giving me great reasons to share my days with them.

He took the run to bowl to the batsman who was anxiously tapping the ground with his bat. I am not a fan of his bowling action but he takes wickets; 'takes' is too decent a word for what he can commit. It stands absolutely understandable that once you dive in something you crave from the deepest crepitus of the falling apart pit of your soul, the world surrounding you matters not. He was in one of those trances. Bowling is his passion. And while at it he almost missed her head. She flipped, yelled and ducked with her hands covering her face. I sit here laughing at the thought and feel a little guilty as I just retreived my finger tips from the keys of a stolen cell phone, retiring from sending her a text with a film of sympathy. It is pointless to laugh at reflexes but if the glimpse of them were caught by your arch nemesis, life becomes a little uneasy.

Iqbal

O Abeer!
O Abeer!
I just tore another light brown paper so I can write to you.
I want to.
I hope I do soon.
*sigh*
Maut ek chubhta howa kaanta dil-e-insaan mein hai