The Juggling Continues

I'd meant to post something other than a list. In fact, I have two ideas brewing that I want to blog about. But I can't seem to be able to find the time to pause long enough to do so. On the other hand, I was itching to blog primarily because of all of these ideas. So the substitute is a list of what has been happening since I last made my way over to LTLWI:

April 18:
a) Daily house cleaning and other chores.
b) Dissertating from 11 am - 3 pm with intermittent breaks.
c) Surprise party logistics 3 pm - 6 pm.
d) College friend in-transit from out of town. Dinner and chit-chat followed by a trip to the airport and back.
e) Too wired at midnight; dissertated for a while.

April 19:
a) Big day - surprise bash for parents' anniversary :-). Went well but most of the day went in cleaning, setting up, organizing stuff, baking the cake [a cross between a plain chocolate ganache and a sacher torte - if anyone was curious], and making truffles [just felt like it although it was pretty time-consuming].
b) Party in the evening...went well I think...not too many people, not too little, just right...yay Goldilocks moment!
c) Caught up on dissertation reading at night.
d) Remapped dissertation.

April 20 thus far:
a) Daily house cleaning.
b) Dissertated 10:15 am - 12:39 pm.
c) Quick lunch break.
d) Working on remapping of dissertation. Hmm I wish it'd stop behaving like a moving target because I'd really like to be done!
e) Get it all done before heading out to a workshop and then dinner.

The rest of the day, like the rest of the week-end, is going to be equally nutsy but what I'm looking most forward to is a lunch at our place on Sunday which is going to be a very mini school-reunion. One of my dearest childhood friends, A, is visiting from out of state along with his very sweet wife, H, and too-cute-for-words daughter, I. If I'm not mistaken, A was my first "male friend" after I left Montessori; we've been friends now for about 19 years now. I'm meeting A after about 7 years or so and I've never met his wife and daughter. Joining the fun - another dear and close friend from school who I haven't seen in a few weeks.

Okay back to work before one of those balls falls down. After all, I have to get this chapter written in the next 2 weeks and it won't happen unless I open that file and start typing.

Have a great week-end all!

Prayers and Thoughts....

Over here at LTLWI, our thoughts and prayers are with the VA Tech community - particularly those who lost their lives and their loved ones who are forced to cope with this tragedy.

As someone who is in academia and hopefully close to becoming a professional academic, the tragedy hits home in a completely different way. As a professor/instructor, how does one address something like this in class and with one's students? I think part of our job is to be there for students in ways that go beyond imparting the subject matter. I'm sure what happened at VA Tech is unnerving for students and teachers alike no matter where they are. I can't even begin to wrap my brains around how the professors at VA Tech will handle this once classes resume. I'm not sure what to make of the 'profiling' that ensued of the perpetrator. Yes this student was disturbed as his writings reveal. He was also referred for counseling. The implication in the way this aspect of the story has been covered is that these were clues that we should have been more attentive to. On the other hand, having had some years of college teaching under my belt, it seems to me that there are plenty of students that are disturbed and coping with a whole host of complications in their lives. Not all of them act in this way. Perhaps he was more disturbed than the students I have come across but I can't help but think that not all students act out in the same manner. So the question is as professors/instructors how we do we know when to act and the appropriate action to be taken? I don't think we can control it all but I guess we remain on the lookout. That there have been plenty of hoax calls on campuses the day after the massacre at VA Tech is also worrisome and in poor taste IMHO...makes me think about what would be classified as part of the worst side of humanity...not as heinous as the actual act in some respects but, in others, perhaps equally and even more reprehensible.

Speaking of which, in a strange way, I was also touched by the best in humanity that I saw as a result of this massacre. When the news broke, I happened to be flipping through channels. Watching the reactions across the nation of the newscasters when the death toll was in the single digits, I felt happy to be living in and be a citizen of a country in which "5" lives meant something and counted for something. I couldn't help but compare it to Pakistan where I was born and grew up. In the late 80s when riots in Karachi had become common, I remember hearing how it was just "5 people" who died. They remained anonymous. They remained irrelevant. The event became banal. To be completely fair, I think it was probably the only reaction of a people, of a community that could preserve any sanity amidst the ongoing and endless cycle of violence. Then again, while I understand the need for desensitizing oneself I wonder if that move is the beginning of the end? After all, what remains if emotions, passions, empathy, and the reason as well as the action they inspire disappear into an abyss of complacency and neglect.

I have to end here...this is just too darn depressing to keep thinking about :-(!

Guru Bhai, Go to Hell.

I managed to see Guru a few days ago. I am not going to comment on or review the movie. I am not even about to tell you whether I liked it or not. I will get straight to the point and write about the funny nay ironic realities of the subcontinent corporate culture.

First of all, we now know that we can officially do whatever the hell we like to make money, because two wrongs in our world certainly make a right. Let’s talk about ethics and values in our corporate culture or, on second thoughts, let’s not.

Secondly, you are innocent until proven guilty, and a hero when you are proven guilty. This is the type of heroism that is quite popular in our part of the world because it gives rise to the courage to break away from the "system". It has its roots in the eternal suppression of the common man, but ironically it gives rise to even more suppression of the masses. Not a new thing in bollywood flicks, but what the hell. I want to be a "dada bhai" in my next life.

Thirdly, you can sell anything to our nations, if you show them the dream of world domination. Tell them they are working towards making the company the world’s biggest corporation, and they will do anything. I spent three days trying to spot the difference between this and other such dreams of world domination. I failed. Your turn.

If you are working for a company like Guru Bhai’s, God bless you because you are bound to be extremely dumb with your sole quality being your ability to say yes and work like a dog. You cannot possibly be an intelligent man. Learn to live with it.

Apparently the movie is made on the life of Dhirubhai Ambani – the founder of India’s Reliance Group- the largest private sector organisation in India. If it is, I do not need to make a point here. If it is not, well I still do not need to make a point. I mean how did Dhirubhai do all of it and yet managed to create what he has? I feel like defending him… should I?

1971: an initial and haphazard wondering

In the midst of doing my dissertation work, which looks at, among other things, the emergence of a sense of Pakistani-ness over the decades there is one thing to which I keep returning. A neglect of the importance of 1971 that seems to have been carefully cultivated to the point where its significance, especially in the post-war era, has only been reduced to little more than a mere mention of the fact that part of what was Pakistan was lost. This is not to say that this event hasn't been engaged with at all but that we remain woefully detached.

I don't mean the traditional revisiting of the two-nation theory that some scholars have suggested. [To shorthand it for those of you not in the know, questions continue to be raised about the legitimacy of the state of Pakistan by this contingent given that what was originally part of its territory is no more. Hence, the two-nation theory on which the claim to Pakistan is based is presumed falsified since East Pakistan broke away from its Western counterpart to form present-day Bangladesh.] What I mean is processing the violence that took place amongst ourselves so that we can begin to reinterpret and navigate what it means to be Pakistani. 1971, as far as I know about it beyond traditional historical narratives and largely through oral histories, was about discrimination. Nothing new there. But what these oral histories also point us to are the actual contours of the debates over authenticity and how the boundaries between 'inside' and 'outside' are continually redrawn. "Who is (more?) Pakistani?" is a question that keeps coming up in everyday political life in Pakistan. Instances like the riots between Muhajirs and Pathans in Karachi in the late 80s are constant, more stark reminders of this struggle over defining Pakistani identity - i.e. who belongs and who doesn't? The brewing and mounting sense of unrest in Pakistan today over issues such as the rights of women, the rights of minorities, the place of Sharia including the recent standoff at the Lal Masjid, increasing economic disparity, the violence at the Pak-Afghan border, lack of social unity, and so on and so forth all pose that question.

Why 1971? In recent years, authors like Sorayya Khan ("Noor) and Kamila Shamsie (Kartography) have ventured into a territory that remains flattened in Pakistani memory: the everyday experience of living through 1971 and being shaped by the goings-on of that time. We remember facts that we're quizzed about in our exams but know next to nothing about the relevance of this period in (re)forming Pakistani identity and the country's trajectory...the grand narrative as it were. The silence makes sense. After all, it requires confronting our own inhumanity and brutality. I'm not quite sure where I'm going with this yet - hence a blog post to begin talking about it in the hopes that some of you might have questions that press me in more fruitful directions to develop my thoughts on this and articulate them so that they're clearer. I can't help but feel that paying attention to 1971 will provide us with some answers only if we have the courage to ask 3 simple yet important questions: who are we? where are we going? how will we get there?

For now, three passages from Kamila Shamsie's "Kartography" that might communicate to you what I mean more clearly than the words above:

Passage #1:
"Between our birth in 1947 and 1995, dead bang between our beginning and our present, is 1971, of which I know next to nothing except there was a war and East Pakistan became Bangladesh, and what terrible things we must have done then to remain so silent about it. Is it shame at losing the war, or guilt about what we did to try to win that mutes us?" (270).

Passage #2:
"When we do refer to those [speaking of the 1971 war and the time leading up to it] events, it's as personalized stories. ... We tell these stories and make war personal - but not in the way it should be; not in a way that makes it touch us personally. We make it personal in a way that excludes everything and everyone who was not part of that four-line story about the war days we tell over tea and biscuits. ... What happens when you work so hard to forget a horror is that you also forget you have forgotten it? It doesn't disappear - the canker turns inwards and mutates into something else. ... I am terrified, Maheen, because this country has seen what it is capable of, and we should all be spared that on a personal and a collective basis. It has seen what it is capable of, yet not paused to take account, to reach inwards towards that swirling darkness and hold it up to the light. ... We act as though history can be erased. Who can blame us? The cost of remembering may break our wilted spirits. But if we allow for erasure we tell ourselves that things can be forgotten, put in the dustbin. We tell ourselves it is possible to have acts without consequences" (311-313).

Passage #3:
"Karachi at its worst is a Karachi unconcerned with people who exist outside the storyteller's circle, a Karachi oblivious to people and places who aren't familiar enough for nicknames. What I've sometimes mistaken for intimacy is really just exclusion. But Karachi is always dual. Houses are alleys; car thieves are the people to help you when your car won't start; pollution simultaneously chokes you and makes you gasp at the beauty of unnatural sunsets; a violent, fractured place dismissiveof everyone outside its boundaries is vibrant, embracing, accepting of outsiders; and yes, selfishness is the consequence of love.
No simple answers in Karachi. Just when we decide that intimacy is exclusionary, a man at the airport turns round and gives us his car-keys, a motia-seller calls us his 'sister' and adorns our wrists with flowers, families fling open their doors and avert their eyes and help us make our way to places of worship; at its best, Karim, Karachi is intimate with strangers.
If I am truly to call myself a product of this city, how can I not find it in me to learn that much easier lesson: how to be intimate with my intimates.
This is not just an epiphany, it's just the start of an attempt to be brave enough to think about certain things that terrify me. There's a letter that we've both read which urges me to face the terror. What my father said and what he wrote were part of both our pasts, and to pretend the matter can be easily discussed and resolved is to deny how deep in our marrow consequences are lodged. We have to every day live with the truth and every day find a way towards unblinking, unsentimental compassion that renders forgiveness irrelevant." (331-332).

[PS: What is it about literature that doesn't shy away from confronting uncomfortable facts? That is to say, beyond the literary license that this mode of expression affords.]

On overprocessing....

I'll speak only for my ilk (draw the boundaries around that category as you will :-)!) for now....it seems to me that lots of women I know or have across spend a lot of time "processing" (as my friend MI just referred to it a few minutes ago) their romantic relationships, particularly when they're unsure where it's headed (read: when it's not headed towards marriage), but not enough time "doing" as it were - i.e. not taking the lead by saying what we think without wondering endlessly whether he thinks/feels the same way. If there is the slightest doubt, then nothing is to be revealed.

Question is why do so many smart, confident, simply superb women whom it would be impossible not to love chicken out when it comes to telling someone they're romantically inclined towards how they feel about them or where they'd like their relationship to go? We make important decisions all day in various capacities but there seems to be this fear of "losing" this special someone that holds us/them back. That sounds strange considering we wax poetic about how we want to be with the someone whom we're meant to be with - alluding to a higher power that will hold us together no matter what because it's fate, it's destiny, it's meant to be. So if we're meant to be with this person then one could conceivably screw up monumentally without rocking the boat. So why process, rather, to be more precise, overprocess?

Three things that I think get in the way and encourage this behavior:
1. Templates of the way guys are according to all our gal pals we confer with. This is the one that I think actually annoys me. Each individual is different and so is each relationship because of the configuration that emerges when the personalities/persons in question get involved. Hmm sounds a bit Weberian. Maybe I am becoming freakishly intellectual about everyday life. I don't think that's a bad thing though - I'm probably saying the same thing everybody is but it'll just sound markedly different.
2. It provides a kind of safety net. It's like planning for every contingency. But if we spend the entire relationship in planning for what might happen are we compromising what could have happened instead (whatever that might be)? After all, if we're processing more than interacting are we really in the relationship and letting it flow as it should given the people involved or forcing it into a framework ... again guided by the template.
3. Familiarity - we do what our mothers, grandmothers, aunts, and sisters did. They do it for the same reason. I think this makes the most sense. It's the flip side of the cookie cutter approach I took issue with in #1 above. It's what we know to do. And there's something to be said for traditions. In other words, I'd much rather prefer the guy make the first move. Call me conservative, call me old-fashioned but I think it works better. On the other hand, if he isn't making any move or further moves and if you'd like to take the relationship elsewhere I also think one should take charge.

Where am I going with all of this? I'm not quite sure in the sense of forming a stand or a position. But I do want to say one thing. Shouldn't we throw some caution to the wind, expose ourselves to a little uncertainty, and stop playing guessing games? I think our lives would be much less complicated if we stopped trying to unearth the "hidden messages" and followed our gut instincts. After all, when we process and act in balance we seem to get a lot done at work, at home, in our friendships etc. So why not go about love the same way?

I think that question provides the perfect opportunity to shout out a big hearty congrats to my friends J & S who have decided to get married after being together for most of their 20s. Having written this post, I'm particularly glad she was the one who popped the question. Here's wishing them a lifetime of happiness! Cheers :-)

Quote of the Week

I subscribe to a daily quotations service. Some people read their horoscope or favorite newspaper in the morning. I read this....IMHO it's a good way to start the day and, presuming the quote has resonance for me, it can potentially provide a creative spark. Even better when one is dissertating [which is really code for "it's not the writing that's difficult per se; it's the sitting down to begin writing that's even more challenging"].

Anyhow, for the past few weeks most of these quotes have been pretty good. So I figured I'd pick the one I liked most from the previous week's lot and post it on Mondays from now on. Or, that's the plan.

So here's this week's edition: "Think wrongly if you please, but in all cases think for yourself." - Doris Lessing.

I like that because it suggests to me a thinking that is organic to an individual and every fibre of his/her being rather than something detached and herd-ish. A thought then that is more a belief, a conviction. Something that one would stand by yet change as something about the 'self' in question changes.

Aaargh!

When I woke up this morning, I was planning to post something a bit more substantive..something we could grapple with a bit together or at least chime in on. But then the day happened.

Have you ever had one of those days when you wish that someone had been kind enough to plant a warning sign somewhere along the way to watch out for traffic coming at you head on? Today was kind of like that. One thing after another...there were lulls punctuating the madness but it would have been nice if they'd lasted longer. That I'm a person who would rather not be engaged in a confrontation doesn't help much. Hmm that might be a bit off. I can handle a confrontation much better when what is being engaged in is a healthy discussion where two or more sides agree to disagree...implicitly if not explicitly. That I find manageable...even fun. But I, probably like most others, suck in situations in which communication is pretty much a downward spiral. So that's what today was. From the banal to the significant/life-changing stuff, the more earnestly I tried to explain myself the more it backfired in a variety of settings. Part of me is glad that I held my ground without coming across as obnoxious or losing my cool or playing the "just because I say so" card. On the other hand, perhaps a tantrum would have been therapeutic...even if I were still being misunderstood at least I wouldn't be trying so hard to explain myself without getting my feathers a bit ruffled. Part of me didn't want to be the grown-up who takes a lot of crap with this funny-in-the-tummy that makes one feel miniscule and just plain lousy. Kind of like an emotional free-fall in which you know you have no option but to drop down and submit to the gravitational pull of others around you while another part of you reacts instinctively to try and find a way to control the fall somehow, to some extent.

I'm a big believer in the whole "it takes two to tango/clap" saying. I take full responsibility for feeling this way to the extent that I should and for finding myself in all of the situations that I did today. But I can't possibly be the only one to blame for the way things transpired. Yes I know I'm being cryptic. It would help if I gave an example. Not sure if I'm comfortable putting that out there - in the blogosphere or elsewhere - or that I necessarily want or need to dissect everything and relive all of today. I'd just rather put it behind me with this tiny little virtual rant so that the feeling vanishes.

If any of you out there would like to rant about something, or simply vent feel free to join the party.

Hmm between this post and throwing myself into cooking dinner (hmm that I turned to cooking to get away from the suckiness of today might explain the chicken biryani and apple pie combo) I think I'm ready to move on :-). Thanks for listening/reading.

Who would've thought...?!

I'm taking care of a friend's three-year old today because she went into labour prematurely and needed someone to take care of her daughter. I love spending time with her daughter who is just too darn adorable - love kids in general, love being around them, want to have my own someday (yes my uterus also does that beat-skipping thing..metaphorically speaking of course). But I have to admit that it's been a while since I've baby- or toddler- sat for anyone so I was a tad apprehensive about my abilities to do this well. Why? Because I think I've gotten increasingly scattered since I've been focusing all my energies almost exclusively on finishing my dissertation over the last couple of years. Scattered individuals, IMHO, do not make for great adult supervision. Even if I do say so myself, it's going much better than just well at this point. Things that have surprised me about today:

1. Apparently you don't have to have the correct answer for every "why" question. An answer will suffice. I'd prefer it to not be completely off base - there's the academic in me - but I'm happy to gloss over and invent completely fabricated, fairy-tale answers to the "where do babies come from?" and "does the baby hate mommy and that's why her tummy hurts? - i hope i didn't hurt mommy when i was born - do you know?" questions.

2. They take fairly long naps. And if you can control the anal-retentiveness while they're sleeping and resist the urge to straighten up, then you can totally work on dissertating.

3. I can whip up kid-friendly meals without having a recipe to follow.

4. I miss crafting.

5. Having a child around really does put so many other things into perspective.

Okay break over. Back to the dissertation until she wakes up. Then we're going to bake cookies. I'm so looking forward to full-time mommy-hood [when the time comes]....not that I was devoid of maternal instincts earlier but it just felt more concrete today than it has in a while :-).

Quick postscript/relevant aside: anyone who says that writing a dissertation is like having a baby couldn't be more deluded if they tried (myself included, but I've only said that to people nagging me about being in my 30s and unmarried]; not that I don't take pride in completed chapters but you can't love a dissertation and vice versa. Plus it doesn't have that neat baby smell and I don't particularly fancy taking it out to the park or cuddling it!

Rejection Shmejection

Yup not the most upbeat title. Got a rejection from a fellowship for which I'd applied so today was kind of a bummer. If this was last year, I'd probably have ranted, obsessed, etc with almost all of my close friends by now. But I guess 2007 marks the beginning of growing up? So here's what I did after I found out:

1. Felt bummed. Shared the news with my parents, my dissertation committee chair, and two friends. All of whom were very supportive and didn't let me wallow or obsess - thanks :-).
2. Obsessed for maybe 20 minutes. Hmm okay more like dwelled. Unfortunately I got distracted from my writing goal for today but I did get most of it done.
3. Decided to take the afternoon off.
4. Bubble baths rock, especially if you shift your audio-listening equipment to the bathroom. Candles can be soothing.
5. Afternoon naps tie with bubble baths.
6. Had enough of bumming around and needed to do something else that wasn't remotely connected to the academic part of my life.
7. Made dark chocolate truffles. Probably even more soothing than either #4 or #5....something I hadn't expected. Watched a movie while I made them...if anyone wants to know which one, it was Dhoom: 2. Yes I love that film (post on that some other time).
8. Reorganized my closet and the side-shelves in the refrigerator.
9. Retail therapy - a trip to Origins and a local CD store for the soundtrack of a new film that was released either today or yesterday (which is a bit blah but who cares).
10. Cooked dinner....stir-fry with chicken and mixed veggies....the highlight though was the sauce even if I do sound immodest...the base was apricot preserves. Nopes I had no clue what I was doing. Why apricot preserves then? Apricot sounds like it should be in Chinese food but, more importantly, it was almost finished and I really needed to get rid of one bottle to have the refrigerator shelf look organized and very ad-like..somehow that seemed like something to aspire for at that time.

I think this worked out much better than ranting, obsessing, and wallowing....hmm maybe I could call the combination rantsessow? This way there was none of that negative energy consuming my entire day. And it was a good reminder of the fact that I have other hats to wear than simply the professional/academic one. I like that. I feel happy...not ecstatic necessarily but calm. No sense of impending doom on the professional/academic front - I guess I've (finally!) grown up. I feel like Martin Sheen's character on "The West Wing"....I forget which episode it was but there was one in which they encountered one obstacle after another...very rough...but the last scene shows him saying "next" and going about his business. That's pretty much how I feel.

Now I'm off to take a stab at writing so that I've met my goal for today. Next :-)!

Insomnia-Induced Rambling

I can't seem to go to sleep. Even worse because I'm vehemently opposed to working after dark if it can be at all helped, I've been dissertating rather than flipping channels or watching a DVD for the last couple of hours. Okay not quite "worse" because I would like to be done and I'm a bit behind on my self-imposed deadline for this chapter but still.

Three thoughts running through my head:

1) I can't believe we might get flurries tomorrow. It's April for crying out loud!
2) Must get fresh flowers even if tomorrow is going to be a dreary fall-like day as opposed to spring. Hyacinths or tulips will definitely be involved. What might the tie-breaker be? If I can get the tulips in a light Myer lemon-y color then I shall look no further.
3) Is it just me or do other ABDers also find that as they get further into the dissertation the less capable one becomes of stating, with absolute certainty, precisely what their next step will be? My stock response as of late seems to be "I just want to finish and then I'll think/plan". This doesn't mean I don't know where I want to head but I think there's something about dissertating that's a peculiar animal all on its own. With an undergrad, you count off credits and you know when you have enough you'll get a degree. The Ph.D. process is more drawn out and fraught with uncertainty. It doesn't mean I'm not motivated to finish or that I'm noncommittal about it all. Far from that. But still, until it gets written, defended, deposited I think I'll continue to feel like an imposter of sorts. Funny how so much is invested or, to be more precise, I seem to have invested so much in 500 pages that it's blocking my view. I know what I want yet there's a fear lurking in the background about having it all fall into place exactly the way I want. Then again...I'm a die-hard optimist who believes in persistence, trying your best, and God.

Time to try to go to sleep. Good night for now blogosphere.

A Little Karachi Nostalgia

Speaking with a friend a few minutes ago we got to talking about Karachi that inspired me to write this post [thanks Im :-)]. Some things that pop into my head that are part of a Karachi that I know I'll never find anywhere else and that make me continue to think of this space as 'home' even though I haven't lived there for more than 3 months at a stretch during the last 17 years. Part of that Karachi goes with me wherever I am - you can take the Karachiite out of Karachi but not vice versa - but there are some things that need to be experienced physically in that space. This post recollects some of those things that I always think of fondly. In no particular order of preference, these are:

1. The 'do talwar' (two swords) roundabout. I used to love going for drives in which we passed by the fountain at this roundabout. That it was always lit differently on my birthday when I was growing up made me feel very special. (Of course that probably had something to do with the fact that Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto's birthday fell right around then but I kind of relish my little childhood fantasy. Birthday cakes and colorful lights that made the fountain look even prettier - a perfect birthday!) I remember walking around the fountain with my father. Also revisiting it several times during one night with my parents as we drove around post-dinner.

2. The artwork on minibuses and rickshaws. I know we all made fun of the 'gaudiness' of it all - which was entertaining in and of itself - but truth be told the landscape of Karachi seems alien without them.

3. The daily night drives we took as a family. It involved a stop for a nice cold drink of Apple Sidra or Rogers' Raspberry drink and a quick stop at the paan (betel leaf) shop (Famy on Tariq Road or PIDC) in between driving to Clifton Beach, then the airport, and repeating the same route (chakkar for those of you that recognize the word - route seems mechanical to me; chakkar seems like it has the right rhythm) at least once.

4. Mr. Burger....cheeseburger, fries, and raspberry slush. Yum.Continuing with the food theme a little longer, the gola kababs (the ones with the string that you had to remove) in Delhi Mercantile, Bundu Khan, Kaybees' or Spinzer's icecream - my personal favs included the cold coffee with ice-cream and the vanilla-coffee combo with mango thrown in to spice things up a bit, milk toffees from the canteen at St. Joseph's, halwa puri from Tooso, nihari from Burns Road, Party Slims, the cakes from Sasha or Dinoo's, pizzas at Kings and Queens, ras malai from the Bengali shop whose name I forget, Saeedullah's flying saucers, the gola ganda in Dhoraji, and Shezan Surprises! Yummy again!

5. Playing hopscotch and badminton on the street outside our home.

6. Going to a secluded and undeveloped beach area a little further down from French Beach. We'd go there for a breakfast picnic almost every week-end. I've never done that after my parents moved to the US (they moved permanently in the 1990s whereas I joined them in 1994...long story...another post, another time). Whenever I think of those times and that space, my enthusiasm to visit Hawai'i, Belize, Goa, and Sydney is disrupted...I can't think of a place and time more pristine, more heavenly even if all of those places look picture perfect. Nothing compares to that beach IMHO.

7. The smell of the air on a cold, dry winter night....and of course the peanut guy (it was always a guy - at least in my experience) walking through the streets with his cart full of winter goodies including warm peanuts and what we call "gajak" for which I have no English translation. (Anybody else know this one?)

8. Thursday afternoon treks to Video Cottage and Sangeeta - both video rental stores - once school let out and the week-end began to get the latest American sitcoms on tape to watch over the week-end.

9. Eid holidays. I loved the hustle and bustle of staying out late the night before preparing for the next day. Buying glass bangles, eating barbeque, and then onwards to buy 'mithai' (sweets) and flowers. Waking up early in the morning, getting ready, new clothes for the next 3 days, consuming insane amounts of the most amazing food, going to visit everyone we knew that we were fairly close to, collecting Eidee money :-), Eid lunch at our place.

10. Funland :-)!

11. The walks to raise funds for The Kidney Center.

12. Watching movies at the drive-in. The sound was bad, the mosquitoes were plenty, but the experience of getting so many people together that we needed 4 cars to go watch a movie in was awesome. I enjoyed the togetherness and that it was taken for granted that we'd always go together....so there was never really the need to plan per se.

13. Having family and friends be an integral part of our lives. Of course I'm not foolish enough to romanticize that - I like not having everybody's nose in my business 24/7/365 and then some. But I do miss having so many people around for dinner not because it was the week-end or we were celebrating something but just because.

Anybody else have any Karachi memories they'd like to share? Or perhaps anything from this post that resonates with you even though you grew up in a different city or country? Please feel free to share :-).