Let’s go back for a while.
After the busy last months of 2022, with hospital visits and
an aced preparation for CSS, 2023 promised to be a relatively lighter year, at
least at the beginning. As per our star too, things were about to get lighter
when the month of Ramadan was over; your star would find its spot and stop, so
the mullah said. CSS arrived, I appeared, what a week. And then I called
trouble upon myself by replying to her email; yes you called it upon yourself.
After shedding a few tears and aching my heart by approaching, it went to back
to normal. The new normal, actually, as the lot of us found our shelter at
Ali’s. Days of unbothered existence: the weather unchallenging, the loneliness
unavailable, activities here and there, cricket matches and indie games,
outdoor visits, and cooking meals… we had it all. I also tried cannabis for the
first time, it was calming. But something else didn’t come to fruition for it
wasn’t in line with my fate. Fate, something I started to believe in more
firmly by having a presence of it in my consciousness all the time and thereby
allowing myself to flow with it. Not only did I stop protesting or getting into
conflict with whatever happened, with whatever that happened I sought meaning
and tried to view it in light of a greater plan – happening to me not by me. I
claimed sainthood in those days. I cried without shame. I fed the cat and
befriended it. I acted on the belief of friendship. I upheld myself in all that
unfolded in those days. Dare I say – I evolved.
No more am I saint, as no more I am in our shared shelter.
Life distributed us on our separate paths of fate, and each of us now are
propelled on our individual journeys. As I was exiled out of one shelter, I
tried to find another one: that of teaching. I was rather pumped about teaching,
buoyant about its possibilities, and excited for its rewards. I can’t remember
anything about the first days now, and it’s only been a few months. Unbeknownst
to its later challenges, I involved myself into one school, than an English
academy, and then another school. I left the ‘another school’ now, but the
damage has been done. ‘The fewer your relationships, engagements, the freer you
are’ was along the lines of a quotation Sir had sent me the other day. But
afraid of being on my own, I squandered that freedom pretty ruthlessly, and by
will and with pleasure as well. May be it is too late to break off the chains,
since for longer than a certain period, you become obligated, attached, and
would prefer to walk in chains than to take the trouble of breaking them. This
shelter hasn’t proved to be saintly.
The replete, and tiring towards its end, month of Ramadan,
where we chatted extensively on philosophy, walked a good deal, drank tea and
smoked, played football, and eventually reached to our last support in those
testing last days, the chess game. It was a good month; its highlights weigh in
balance with some of the best months of Ramadan that I’ve had in my life so
far. I liked the walk that we started on from 2am to 4, I liked the ice-cream
that we had on our way, the laughs we shared. Kethli was our shelter for this
month and it didn’t disappoint. It was there on the boring nights, the nights
it rained, and the nights we wanted it to be there for we had no place else to
go. It finally ended, that month, and Eid was upon us. But something much
larger loomed, dominating, nay constructing, upon the never-fading promises of
Eid: the brother’s arrival. 11 years and 3 more days, after their flight
getting delayed, on that fateful day before Eid, Akram was finally here.
‘khoshi’, I wrote in that day’s journal in Daylio app. And ‘Khoshi’ it was that
spread all over, everyone was happy, excited, busy. Our family had come alive.
We now had family chats where previously idleness was norm and we mostly kept
to ourselves. It wasn’t, or has not been, only his arrival but his earnest,
non-fading, intent, and admirable stamina and commitment to glue back our
at-distance ties.
Personally, I was rather muted in those first days. I
couldn’t find, nor create, the opportunity to talk to him. There created a
space between me and them in my mind, and I remained unable to space-it-out.
Maybe it was the robust busyness, the excitement of Eid sprinkled in there,
that dimmed my introverted wits. Or mullah’s foretelling might’ve come forth
and my star had found its spot, and with its lack of motion now, I too became
rather dismissible. There were other things going on as well. Fareshta showed
me some hope, on which I excessively acted, only for it to come to nothing. Yet
zooming out, I can see that it was rather too much that was happening, and my
quiet adulthood life hasn’t been used to such ‘big signs of life’. There’s a
first time for everything, they say, and maturity is in keeping a calm and
resolved self for every new thing that keeps coming your way.
It is beginning to get to scorching levels, the summer heat
here. Better never than late, summer is here finally. The weather, ever since
winter started to fade away, has been a crowd pleaser. It was beautiful at the
start to Spring, nowroz, and remained so till later. With intermittent showers
and breezy atmosphere, life was pleasant on the outside and I ‘did’ notice it.
But then our town started to show its true colors. As soon as the rain spells
were over, it has gotten dusty, warm, pinching, tiring, and eyes always hurt
and itch as a result. While my body is always reluctant to function up to its
par. Comparing to my days of sainthood in the fading winter, the dismal and
miserable state that I am in now is both sad and embarrassing. I had only
started to rise, alas.
Brother is leaving this Friday. I have left London school.
I’ve stopped enjoying, in my head that is, teaching at the academy and mostly
find myself worrying about it. I should’ve left it too. Or I will in the coming
semester. I am tired. My neck hurts, my back hurts, my stomach gives me moments
of sickness, the fapping accounts for a lot weakness than it did in winter (I
am also more used to it). I am going to Karachi on this Friday as well, hoping
to meet the beginning of some new projects. It cannot let life get more mundane
than this. Yet the irony is that I need to cut short on my engagements, not add
to them. It is conflict between what I should do for my mind to stop worrying
and quickly finding myself ‘bezar’ about how empty my life has become. What
next? I know my mind would ask. But what next indeed? I think that what I am
here to answer.
My general answer has been that I am waiting for my result
and also waiting for other exams to attempt. Meanwhile, I thought, to keep
myself busy and starting teaching. It has become more a burden than a light
engagement. We will write about teaching in detail if we ever found the
inspiration to. But quitting teaching would both subtract from my problems, but
also add to them. It will add to them by giving me more time, of which I find
very less these days and I believe it to be a mind trick, during the long
summer days, where I would fap, feel tired, and with almost no friends
available, slowly drift into depression. Familiarity is bitch; The earnestness
for novelty a disease; and failing to understand this is a shame. Karachi shall
clarify somethings, but would it? What if not? What is it that we are betting
our cards against? Summer is here, autumn arriving, winter shall soon follow,
the end of another year is here.
On a saner ground (since we evolved to keep a check on our
intrusive, formerly uncontrollable flow of mostly bad emotions) I would say
that it would be, hopefully, a choice between CSS and masters abroad. But it
could easily be a choice between nothing. We could fail at CSS, which sounds
unlikely but prepared to be hurt, while also being stuck and confused about the
admission process for master at Australia. But like the bird who put its on its
wings, you too should look inward and extract hope and resilience. That you do
not need to hurry (especially that now you’ve stopped looking for an immediate
nikah, something we forgot to discuss), that things ‘will’ happen, that you can
read books again, that it is worth reading books while not careering, that you
are now, mostly, okay with being single, that life will happen outside of you
as well, that you don’t need to worry since not everything will depend on you,
that you believe in God and His better judgement, that His plans will come to
fruition regardlessly, that it is okay to do nothing and just spend days not
going insane but saner.
Summer is here and it is going to stay for a while. It is a
calling for you to stop worrying and enjoy whatever bits of it you can. Maximum
effort isn’t always necessary, a relaxed attitude is. Summer will be over, and
with it your current problems. Try to make most of what you can do today:
books, masterchef, a good impression on students, songs, some lonely time,
relax…
May 22, 2023