4:00 am on a Saturday morning and I'm groggy beyond belief. My third night in a row that I've sashayed around the house like a spirit unable to sleep. Suneel says that I just need a white sari and a candle in my hand and *drum rolls* you've got a ghost. I know, so not funny.
Last night, with my throat feeling as though it had been clawed by wolverine and my head spinning faster than one of those Ben 10 tops that Zoran has, I sat up all night watching a documentary on Scotland's most evil murderer - Peter Manuel. NOT a great idea. I kept thinking I heard foot steps in the house and went around checking the doors and windows making sure they were locked. Did I mention I had very high fever too? You do tend to go a bit a cuckoo when you're feverish, now don't you?
Tonight however is different. Its a warm, breezy night with a clear sky. For once I can actually see a cluster of stars twinkling in the great beyond - they still have an hour or so before the sun comes out to shoo them away. The river spreads out like a wrinkled layer of inky-black velvet - ominous, yet inviting. Theres an old, abandoned boat tied near the shore which creaks everytime the waves come to lap at it. I'm feeling better already. Theres a rhythm to tonight. The whispering wind, the gentle caressing waves, the annoyed, creaky boat ,an occasional gull crying out in protest and Tina Sani singing Dasht-e-Tanhai in the background. Cant get better than this cant it?
Maybe...just maybe it can. Karachi mornings have a rough, edgy beauty to them too. 6:00 am and you are awoken by a variety of horns blaring away- the school vans are on a rampage. Half-asleep children, carrying bags the size of tents board the buses half-heartedly as their mothers frantically shove the last of their cheese sandwiches in their mouths. Akhbar-wala bachas, with their tingling bells swerve and maneuvre their bicycles, throwing the rolled akhbars with a giant thud. Doodh-wala uncles, with their rotund bellies, huff and puff along the gulleys as bad tempered housewives yell to their hearts content "yeh doodh hai ya paani" "aglay mahinay say doosra doodhwala rakhlaingay."Come to think of it, it has been ages since I last had a glass of that smelly, greasy peela peela "fresh" doodh. My Dadda firmly believed that all the power and good health in the world had somehow been miraculously transferred in that one glass of stinky milk. Ah the torture of gulping it down as fast as I could as she would pinch my nostrils shut with her hand. Each morning we'd have a mini-war. "Im telling you Im going to throw up in the bus today. Imagine the embaressment." To which she would cheekily retort "Hota hai tou honay do. Waisay bhi roz kehty ho hota kabhi nahin hai. Uddham zyada kaam kum.":)
History does repeat itself. Zoran will be up any minute now. And then my ordeal shall start. He'll start feeling nauseous, he'll clutch his tummy writhing in pain, he'll start feeling dizzy and sometimes he'd even have fainting spells (and all this while I thought girls were drama queens) just to save himself the horror of having that one glass of milk.
Someone very rightly said:
"Your first rainbow, your first butterfly, your first dinosaur - in sharing your childhood, I'm actually reliving my own."
Last night, with my throat feeling as though it had been clawed by wolverine and my head spinning faster than one of those Ben 10 tops that Zoran has, I sat up all night watching a documentary on Scotland's most evil murderer - Peter Manuel. NOT a great idea. I kept thinking I heard foot steps in the house and went around checking the doors and windows making sure they were locked. Did I mention I had very high fever too? You do tend to go a bit a cuckoo when you're feverish, now don't you?
Tonight however is different. Its a warm, breezy night with a clear sky. For once I can actually see a cluster of stars twinkling in the great beyond - they still have an hour or so before the sun comes out to shoo them away. The river spreads out like a wrinkled layer of inky-black velvet - ominous, yet inviting. Theres an old, abandoned boat tied near the shore which creaks everytime the waves come to lap at it. I'm feeling better already. Theres a rhythm to tonight. The whispering wind, the gentle caressing waves, the annoyed, creaky boat ,an occasional gull crying out in protest and Tina Sani singing Dasht-e-Tanhai in the background. Cant get better than this cant it?
Maybe...just maybe it can. Karachi mornings have a rough, edgy beauty to them too. 6:00 am and you are awoken by a variety of horns blaring away- the school vans are on a rampage. Half-asleep children, carrying bags the size of tents board the buses half-heartedly as their mothers frantically shove the last of their cheese sandwiches in their mouths. Akhbar-wala bachas, with their tingling bells swerve and maneuvre their bicycles, throwing the rolled akhbars with a giant thud. Doodh-wala uncles, with their rotund bellies, huff and puff along the gulleys as bad tempered housewives yell to their hearts content "yeh doodh hai ya paani" "aglay mahinay say doosra doodhwala rakhlaingay."Come to think of it, it has been ages since I last had a glass of that smelly, greasy peela peela "fresh" doodh. My Dadda firmly believed that all the power and good health in the world had somehow been miraculously transferred in that one glass of stinky milk. Ah the torture of gulping it down as fast as I could as she would pinch my nostrils shut with her hand. Each morning we'd have a mini-war. "Im telling you Im going to throw up in the bus today. Imagine the embaressment." To which she would cheekily retort "Hota hai tou honay do. Waisay bhi roz kehty ho hota kabhi nahin hai. Uddham zyada kaam kum.":)
History does repeat itself. Zoran will be up any minute now. And then my ordeal shall start. He'll start feeling nauseous, he'll clutch his tummy writhing in pain, he'll start feeling dizzy and sometimes he'd even have fainting spells (and all this while I thought girls were drama queens) just to save himself the horror of having that one glass of milk.
Someone very rightly said:
"Your first rainbow, your first butterfly, your first dinosaur - in sharing your childhood, I'm actually reliving my own."
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