An elderly couple talking to a young man.

How to Raise Your Parents 101

After more decades than I care to recall of rinse, lather and repeat, I can now say for a fact that mornings are not my thing. Clarity has no fixed timeline. But this much I know; if waking up is hell, Monday mornings are the cherry atop the icing on the awfully-tasting cake, I prefer to call office. But it’s all good. I’m a pro by now. Even if my physical body consistently rejects the process, muscle memory helps me do the bare minimum to make it through the day. Heck, way before ‘quiet quitting’ was a thing, I was already doing the beta ​version. But I digress, back to the morning ordeal. Before I decide to haul myself out of bed, my mind is the […]

Man sleeping on couch

Love in the Time of Corona

As love affairs go, ours wasn’t the ‘love at first sight’ mushy-mushy type. Heck, I hadn’t even helped my wife pick her out from the furniture store that had just announced a ‘Black Friday’ sale that transformed genteel ladies into blood-thirsty Amazonian princesses. I had instead, followed the line of my fellow caught-with-no-excuse-to-get-out-of-it-husbands as they made a bee-line for the nearest corner, away from the eye-gouging and cloth-tearing feeding frenzy. Even when it had been delivered to our apartment the next day, I hadn’t paid much attention as I munched down my double patty beef burger with a glass of lemonade. Our love had evolved more organically, as all true romances do. And for that, I had a bat to thank for. While Corona raged […]

A man wearing glasses speaking on the phone.

An Exposition on the Anatomy of a Government Officer

‘Funny,’ she said eyeing me up and down, the double lines of lipstick around her nose and chin wobbling in sync with the corn cob that she chewed, ‘You don’t look like one’. The line of children standing beside her nodded in unison. The identical clothes of the girls and boys acting as a camouflage of sorts, hiding the productivity of their parents who had, apparently been celebrating Pakistan’s success every year. There was the famous miracle victory of ’92 Cricket World Cup. She was the oldest, the most in the mould of her sceptical mother. Hockey World Champion ’94 was tired from standing so long and couldn’t wait to go home.  Atomic Bomb ’98 was hissing, not at me but at the world in […]