When the Baby of the Family Got Married

“You just watch when Monty gets married,” he’d said as he brushed away his tears, “Then I’ll really cry.” This was vintage Sher Alam. Over the years, in multiple retellings of this incident, which happened when the eldest of our four siblings got married, the love and genuineness that Sher Alam, self-titled as Baati, the baby of our group, wanted to convey has never been lost amidst the laughter and mirth. As sisters and brothers-in-law, nieces and nephews came, they all developed their special equations with ‘Baati Dada’. I won’t lie; when the announcement of Sher Alam’s wedding finally came, there were definitely mixed emotions.  On the one hand, there was elation, excitement and curiosity even as to how the erstwhile kid, who, until recently, […]

BOOK LAUNCH: HOME #ItsComplicated

Each time I come home, it’s with a foreboding sense that this time I won’t experience the same ecstasy and bliss of returning to an innocent and purer cocoon that still binds and bonds me to my childhood. Each time, I’m happily mistaken. The airports and points of departure continue to keep pace with my journey of self-discovery, but my mooring, my anchor, remains steady as ever. Despite the changes to the scenery and the people, there’s a part of Pakistan that all of us carry within us. It’s that part that calls us when we’ve been away for too long. And it’s that part that always makes me feel like I’m walking back in time to an era where everything seems to stand still. […]

A little kid wearing a fake moustache and glasses while his mother looks on.

Accepting Who I Was Allowed Me to Change My Life

For the longest time, I kept a secret from everyone, including myself. I always wanted to be a writer but felt that sweeping it under a rug would allow me to be happy. I was so wrong.  Don’t you sometimes wish there was a chance to go back and rewrite history? Granted, if that were possible, one would want to give Hitler a wedgie or prevent colonization. But if there really is such a thing as the ‘butterfly effect’, I’d rather start small and just change my own past. Or, at the very least, one teeny tiny decision.  Out of Sight isn’t Out of Mind Our brain is a funny animal. It plays tricks on us all the time. And the way it does that […]