Karachi Meri Jaan

Hi. I know I have been absent for a while. No, I am not abandoning the blog again. This has become my favorite pastime surprisingly and Dubai inspires me enough to keep it going. I was visiting Karachi and was a victim of the crappy internet connectivity. I took my laptop along hoping to keep posting regular updates but turns out being a newly married couple is a 24/7 job. Ok maybe not 24/7. Maybe 7 hours out of the 24 from which I spent 12 hours sleeping. The point is we have a tradition of throwing daawats for the newly wedded couple in Karachi. I am unaware if it happens anywhere else with the seriousness it happens here. We were frowned at by those whose invites we turned down only due to the lack of time. I personally loved accepting invitations. I couldn’t wait to adorn my bari and jahaiz dresses that I never get the chance to wear here in Dubai. Karachi-1 Dubai-0.

Karachi was amazing as always. We came around the time the PSL fever was at a high therefore we got to see Karachi lit as never before. It was truly beautiful and I came to respect my hometown even more. I know some people were crying about the extreme security measures. Ironically these were the same people who complain why cricket stays in Lahore only. The ‘chaand raat‘ of the match as most of us liked to call it, was a sight for sore eyes. It had been a long time since I had seen people celebrating on the road, clicking pictures without worrying about gunpoint snatching and laughing with life-size cutouts of Boom Boom Afridi. I personally loved Wahab Riaz’s cutout, with his hilarious mooch and people mimicking his famous expression of stroking it on the field, LOLOLOL.

Another new for me was the amount of respect I received from my siblings. From ‘main nahin laakr dungi remote’ to ‘Aymen apa, kuch aur khaen gi?’.  It was a shocker for me. I was asked what I would like for Dinner and my opinion was given preference. My younger sister took an off from her beloved university  & friends to spend some quality time with me. My younger brother ran to do his Maghrib prayer without me having to list down the jaza and saza like every other time. It was magical. Until, I asked one of them to heat my food and they quoted: Apna khana khud garam kro. Alas! I knew it was too good to be true.

In one of these visits to my maika, I somehow convinced my father to watch a movie with us in the Cinema. Abu hates the cinema. It took a lot of effort and blackmailing to finally get him to agree. I had to use my takya kalam from before my wedding days:   ‘phir main Dubai chali jaongi‘ to finally convince him. So we all go the cinema to watch Cake.

I come out embarrassed, not quite meeting Abu’s eyes, wondering how I can correct all the crap this film managed to pull for the past 2 hours.

My younger brother comes out making a list of all the swear words he managed to learn throughout the movie and then nudges me to ask what Lesbian means.

My younger sister comes out shamelessly blaming me for choosing this film for a family outing to the Cinema with all the : Haye Aymen kuch tou sochti and laughing at my embarrassed worried face while I whispered insults to her.

Abu comes out unimpressed, convinced for life never to come to the cinema again especially if your married daughter blackmailed you and fuming over the 640 rupees he spent on four cans of drink, that being his major concern by the way.

(I do not want to share my thoughts on the movie. I can go on and on about the issue with it but I’ll save it up for later)

Anyhow, as in any desi household, the story of our terrible experience was shared with everyone. We warned everyone about Cake but most importantly about the overpriced cans of Pepsi you dare not order lest you be looted as well.

It was therapeutic; spending time with family and friends, sleeping in my room (which by the way is disputed territory now), relishing in the company of familiar faces, familiar jokes, familiar surroundings, meeting neighbors and house maids and cooks and listening to their troubles and comforting them by sharing our own. There was a certain newness to all the aspects of life I had spent 25 years experiencing. There was also this torn feeling I was unable to put a finger on initially. I couldn’t decide where I felt most at home. Throughout the last 3 months, I missed Karachi crazily. And when I was finally there, I yearned to return to Dubai. And now that I am back here, I am missing home again. And I understood that we can’t really decide which place is better or favorite. You leave a little bit of home everywhere you go.

There will always be a yearning to return to the place where your home is. And we humans are so so glorious, so welcoming, so keen to create familiar out of the strange and to embrace it and miss it and yearn for it.

Sigh. I will leave you now with my thoughts and we shall soon meet again because this space is too dear for me to desert. Take care ya’all.