I Cried

I cried hard entering the world

Mom cried harder delivering me

Rest were elated

Celebrated my arrival

I cried when felt hungry, sleepy and wet

Mom fed me in her arms

Clung with her chest, recited prayers

And changed my diapers

I cried trying to sit, stand and walk

She screamed in euphoria on every instance

I cried when she left me alone in school

She was holding back her tears, waving her hand

Years went by; I grew into a man, she grew old

She cried when I yelled;

At her, my wife, and children

I cried in disgrace, in solitude

I cried profusely when Mom left forever

She looked serene in her last journey

I cried relentlessly on her eternal abode

I cry when I relive her

Time never stops, I’m growing old

Have become susceptible to crying

Someday my loved ones will cry;

For me, over me!

Reflections

The term “reflection” instantly takes me on a virtual flying carpet to my school days whenever I come across it. While studying Physics in Class-9 I learned two specific elementary science terms beside plenty of others; reflection and refraction. I vividly remember doing experiments on reflection and refraction in science laboratory with the help of a small mirror strip, some paper pins, a blank drawing paper, lead pencils, geometry box and the most indispensible tool; eraser.

Decades down the road we are moving to a stage where it requires reflecting upon every aspect of life; childhood and young age, grownup and ageing, parents and children, family and work, friends and foes, love and hate, home and house, accomplishments and failures, inspirations and enervations, rewards and punishments, bosses and co-workers, money and wealth, religion and sects, nationalism and ethnicity, patriotism and emigration, etc.

Recalling any of above facets, even randomly, would put you in deep ponder with varied moods, emotions and sentiments. For instance let’s go through our life long targeted goals versus achievements and failures. Forget about being grateful over “what I do have” and/or “don’t have”. You will notice that not everything you desired or longed for could be attained. And even if some goals were realized those were accomplished at such a belated stage where they lost their value in our minds, excitement in hearts and sparkle in eyes.

What about those dreams which still remain unfulfilled? These are real heartbreaking things; always making us feel remorseful, leave frustrated and stung. Nature plays its own tricks with everyone; be a poor or wealthy, healthy or deposed, intelligent or ignorant, handsome/beautiful or plain/ordinary, and so on. Nature always leaves one discontented on one account or other. Besides, it keeps us on a trail of unquenched and unending desires and wishes.

The material world keeps us on toes to earn bread and butter and to work hard to make both ends meet. This phenomenon lands us live away from our family, especially parents. The irony is that we often left with a choice to live either with parents or own family (spouse and children), and most of the time we prefer to live with the latter. Blessed are those a few who don’t have to choose either of them. Reflecting upon your choices and options at a later age when parents are no more alive sends shivers through the spine. Similarly some friendships that once considered staying unbroken and everlasting remain totally forgotten now. Reminiscing one or two such instances make us poignant too.

At this point in age when we have ample time to reflect upon the entire length of our life the most hurting thing that recurs in mind is that we wasted too much time on either doing nothing or doing things less important and insignificant ones. Alas! We could have had more meaningful and productive life; could have studied more, worked harder, devoted quality time for the family, took extra leisure to travel frequently within and/or abroad, helped more people, made more good friends, hated less people, etc.

Lastly, while we have covered longer part of the road and “ultimate” destination is within our sight we would certainly like to reflect upon how it went through. Irrespective of our faith or religion every one of us would want their end with; more pluses and fewer minuses, ample kind acts than sins, much helping than creating hurdles, devoting and loving figure than a hating and troublemaker family member. Although we can never payback our parents’ love and care, however, we can extend the same to our children and grand children.

Age of Married Life!

The other day I watched a movie named “The Intern”. After a few days I ran it again; less because of legendary actor Robert De Niro and charming Anne Hathaway, more because of the lovely, entertaining and gripping script. It’s all about a single (widower, in fact) 70-years old retired gentleman trying desperately to live a lively life through making himself engaged in various activities. Luckily he intercepts a flyer sticking on a wall regarding some senior intern positions in some company. He applies, gets the job and during the course of working there helps his boss, a 24-years old beautiful married girl, in overcoming her ever expanding office woes as well as helping save her married life.

Let’s recapture a moment from “The Intern”.

Boss Girl: Let’s talk about your wife

The Intern: She was lovely

Girl: Long marriage?

Intern: Not long enough. Only 42 years!

So how long is your age of married life? At my age, crossing into upper 50s we all ought to have spent more or less 25 years of our married life. It’s been a pretty long span. While looking back at this point in time, it appears to have passed in a flash. We never realized during all this long period of life that when we were concentrating relentlessly to improving our quality of life; solving our everyday issues, raising children, struggling to settle down, taking care of ageing parents, and maintaining relations with extended family members and friends, etc., the time never stopped and the clock kept ticking away.

We have had tough times; our past speaks of perseverance and endeavors to realization of targeted goals in order to reap and comb up the luxuries of life. And while we chased down our dreams we forgot or ignored to fare well with our spouses all along. These ladies deserved our better treatment, more than our luxuries. Fulfilling their needs and demands were important but that’s not all we were expected to do only. Spouses are not machines or robots doing chores from dawn to dusk, and in between when we get together we keep discussing the issues and problems that have been solved and those that are still lingering on. Instead of showing and expressing our love and care we prefer hitting the bed to fall asleep instantly leaving them despised, frustrated, and insomniac.

Men are an ungrateful entity. Some of you may disagree over my “sweeping statement” but it remains the harsh reality that while wives remain faithful, truthful, sincere and romancing with their respective husbands, the creed known as husbands takes their better halves for granted. We always remain friendly, helping and throwing our crooked smiles to all other ladies coming in contact with us sans our spouses. Allow me to confess that having mere religious liberty to marry four women at any single time in our life gives us an unparalleled domination over our wives to dictate rules of married life games, indirectly leading to threatening and emotional blackmailing. We may infrequently express to our wives our aspiration of marrying other women while sporting a farcical smile on our faces but deep down within us the very desire of going for second marriage keeps kindling, never subsiding.

Nevertheless, after being together for decades, the loving, friendlier or mere pulling-on relationship between husband and wife gets stronger naturally. They become habitual of their habits and routines. Things flow at ease between them, with minimal arguments and almost negligible disputes. They know each other’s ailments and remain vigilant of medicines-taking times, eating behaviors, sweating smells, sleeping patterns, snoring absorbing/avoiding techniques and most importantly, when to demonstrate patience.

The long bond between the spouses makes them inseparable albeit death. Perhaps, death of the partner is the moment when the other undergoes a revelation that the life spent together has been cut short by nature too early, and that living a lonely rest-of-the-life at the old age would be the most toughest and difficult thing ever to happen.

What will happen to our age group after 15 years from now? Those who do not survive need not worry about it. The couples surviving till that time would be the luckiest and loveliest, and those without having their spouses living around by 2030 should be seeking senior intern job positions!

Saal e Nau

Ae saal e nau

Khush amdeed

Tujh se hain waabasta

Gaye baras ki tarah

Kuchh waldain ke khwab

Rizq me barkat

Baiton ka achha rozgar

Baityon ke naik rishte

Apna chhota sa ghar

Kaaba ka tawaaf

Hijr aswad ko bosa, aur

Aaqa (pbuh) ke dar pe haazri.

Bus!

Is baar bhi agar

Ye tamanayain, ye aarzooain

Khwab hi rahe

Tujh se waabasta rakhaain ge

Yehi tawaquaat phir

Agle baras!

More the Meds, Merrier the Men!

Anyone still out there who’s not on regular medicines? If the answer is in affirmative, you deserve a 21 Cannons salute. Considering that our age-group is still in mid 50s, it looks highly unlikely and with a faint chance that you are not taking regular medicines. We all are and must be one way or other put on some meds by doctors for diabetics, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, arthritic, gastrointestinal disorders, asthma, and least but not the least, thyroid etc.

In 1996 I took my wife to Executive Clinic, Agha Khan Hospital, Karachi for a random health checkup. For the sake of fun I also registered myself for the checkup too though I considered myself in great health and fit as fiddle. The test results were shocking; I was running high cholesterol level. Doctor advised me to reduce and control the cholesterol with physical activities; brisk walk, games, exercises and swimming etc. He also advised me to cut on red meat and egg yolks. Much to my embarrassment my wife’s results were within normal range. The very next day evening I was jogging on the footpath of the main road of our residential colony. And most importantly my eating habits went through transformation, forever.

When I turned 45 the text before me started dancing blurredly. I couldn’t read vividly, and use computer to write unless the font size increased to 16 plus. The result! I turned bespectacled for the rest of my life. In the meanwhile, around the same period and still under 50, I fainted twice, briefly though, on different occasions. It was diagnosed that fainting was owing to my lower body sugar level. Around 53 I started feeling migraine frequently. The painkillers gave relief but it remained recurring. Finally, I was given the news that I was carrying persistently high blood pressure. More detailed examination and tests, and doctors put me on regular medicines for blood pressure and cholesterol. The doctor has told me that these meds will be life long, if I want to live long. And recently, I started feeling pain in my left knee while offering Namaz (Salah). Arthritis is knocking perhaps.

In addition, irregular intake of medicines keeps growing with the age too. Throat infections, gastrointestinal disorders, thyroid, stomach ulcers, flu & fever, etc., invade us with more frequency as our body weakens. We have gone long beyond the prevention stage and struggling in remedial stage now. Hence, medicines on our side bed table are adding up to soothe us.

Ageing process never stops. This is what I want to emphasize here, no matter how physically you feel fit.  The medicines keep growing with the passing years. Body goes through changes without notice, and sometimes with visible signs. Mental and physical harmony gets disturbed and miscommunication takes place between them. For example you may consider physically fit to jog for one kilometer but you give up after 300 meters panting heavily. You may think you can run across the road while fast approaching vehicles are visible in your direction but …… don’t ever try this. It could be extremely fatal.

While we live mentally active and smart all the life our physique begins giving up slowly. The synchronization of both can be achieved to some extent with "Dua and Dawa" (Prayers including meditation and Meds). I feel it sometimes depressing over this changing phenomenon but the reality is; our time is coming up. We have already lived much of our lives. The rest of our life demands regular intake of meds to survive with some degree of “managing things ourselves” rather than “remaining dependant on our young family members, nurses or to the worst; old homes”.

So, the message is: Never feel agitated to add up meds with each passing year. Be happy and live lively till the last.

 

Part VI - My Adolescence Memoirs - Larkana in 1970s

Part VI

I attended Government Pilot Secondary School from class 6^th to 10^th during 1970-75. It was a real fun time at secondary education level. Good teachers (often punished us on incomplete homework), neat & clean, wide airy rooms, learning, chatting, gossiping and playing went all along. During winters, most of the classes would run in open, under the warm sun, in the parks and gardens in front of the school building.

Break time or recess was anxiously awaited when all pupils would rush to the side gate of the school where they could buy ample eatables like Chholay, Dahi-Bhallay, RahaaN (boiled beans), toffees, Layee (a sweetener with a shape of flat sheet about half an inch thick), peanuts, etc. within 5 or 10 paisa coins. I used to get 10 paisa pocket money which later increased to 50 paisa by the time I completed secondary schooling. When the school time was over, we would all run to the railway line (built on high embankment crossing between Jinnah Bagh and Civil Hospital) to watch a train with steam engine chugging on the track from Sukkur. It was not mere watching and enjoying the train, we used to put coins on the track to see them overrun and get inflated under heavy and huge train wheels. 

It was (it is) a grand and beautiful school building with a large playground. Regular sports (athletics) activities, cricket and hockey tournaments kept our afternoons very busy. Besides, regular Scouting Camps held almost twice a year when students-cum-scouts turned from all over the country to Larkana. Being a very shy boy I never participated in any of such activities but loved to see my elder brother Munir in almost every such event.

We, I and Munir, used to commute school on a Sohrab bicycle that our father had bought us. We would go together in the morning but would often return separately; one of us would take the bicycle back home. Once we both forgot to take back the bicycle to home thinking that other would ride it. In the afternoon when we needed it for buying some grocery, we found it missing. We ran to our school for it and found it parked alone in the Lot.

My two classmates who were cousins to each other; Kareem Jamali and Aijaz Jamali commuted daily on their respective bicycles from Jamali Goth, about 3 miles away, on eastern part of city outskirts on Aaqil Road. This area is brimming with Guava and Date orchards. Guava of Larkana is famous all over the country for its sweet taste and flavor. It ripens in cold winter season. As the temperature drops, guava gets sweeter and tastier. Aijaz was my best friend and therefore, we used to visit his orchards on weekends plucking guavas from trees and enjoy eating them. Usually he would guide us which one to pluck as we could hardly recognize and differentiate a ripe and sweet guava from the rest. He would also lead us to the lone guava tree in his orchard that bore seedless guavas. That was the sweetest and tastiest breed.

As we, brothers, moved into class 6 and 7 respectively, our father arranged a tutor named Mr. Narayin Das who would come at our residence in the afternoon/evening for teaching us English and Mathematics predominantly but Science as well. Mr. Das was an excellent teacher but very fearsome too. He spoke hoarsely and his hand was quite heavy. When he would slap us across the face it left his finger marks on our cheeks. Besides, the room echoed with the slap sound. On one such occasion our Mom could not resist, dashed into the room and complained to the teacher as to why he was hitting her children so hard. The teacher felt embarrassed and tried to justify that her kids were being inattentive and obstinate. From next year onwards Mr. Das taught us at some other place near Surhiyo Padhar where he could slap us across our faces at his liberty.  

It’s worthwhile to recall that during our schooling time the favourite hobbies a good student could have were; collecting postage stamps, having pen-friendships, recipient of international magazines and relevant printed material (free of cost) and be a member of some children’s social organizations. I poked my nose everywhere but nothing doing. Wrote many letters to all embassies in Islamabad for sending me some literature about their respective countries, only China and Saudi Arabia responded but that too only for a couple of times. Tried to get into pen-friendships but remained successful only once, that too from an aged person hailing from Mastung, Balochistan who used to write in very difficult Urdu. Our Classmate Mukhtiar Shaikh (Works in Customs, Karachi, I reckon) was a genius one in getting involved in all of the above activities with enviable degree of success. With the help of Mukhtiar I remained, for a short while, member of a children committee running under a Sindhi Children Magazine called “Gulan Jehra Barira” meaning “Flowers-like children”. Such committees existed in almost all cities and towns of Sindh. 

In mid 70s while preparing for our board examinations i.e. class 9^th and 10^th I along with three classmates namely Najeeb Bhutto, Owais Laghari (now lives in US/Canada) and Khushal Das (migrated to India) would visit Circuit House Park, Locomotive Shed Park or Gyan (Zulfiqar) Bagh in the wee hours of the each day for study. Our preferred place was however, Circuit House Park. Loco Shed Park was usually crowded with boys hailing from Darri Muhalla (most of them belonging to Shaikh and Hindu communities) while Gyan Bagh was not ideally located (near a graveyard). We all were average students and mostly relied on cramming books and notes, though my friends considered me as better among us at studies. We would hardly study for half an hour sitting away from each other in the different corners of the Park, and then resort to playing, exercising/stretching, doing athletics; long jumps, and high jumps over bicycle or going to the nearby Rice Canal to enjoy bathing in its shallow water at one of its banks.

We also happened to be in the same cricket team called Shaheen Cricket Club Rialy Bagh where Najeeb used to live. Our team consisted of Najeeb’s 5 other elder and younger brothers named: Ashfaq, Riaz, Rizwan, Irfan, etc. Owais was a good all-rounder, Najeeb, a good batsman while I (considered myself better at bowling and fielding) and Khushal (we called him Dhukkai, a fluke hitter) were just there to fill in the gap and to make a team of 11 players. Continued ……

Part V - My Adolescence Memoirs - Larkana in 1970s

Part V

I studied class 5^th in P.V. School near Kennedy Market. This market was a modern and beautiful commercial building named after slain US President John Kennedy. Some of my classmates I remember in Class V were: Aijaz Jamali (not sure he was there!), Farooq Gaad (Died in 2010), Sikandar (gave up further education due to poverty and became a Tonga driver), a girl named Zaib-un-Nisa, etc.

With simple life and abundance of time (remember that no one owned Refrigerator, TV, Telephone, etc.) we would spend much of our time playing various games, like; Gilli-Danda (Deeti Dakar, in Sindhi), Pithoo, Wanjh-a-Wati (In Urdu they used to call it; Palay Palay) and Kho-Kho. It was a girlish game that we, boys and girls, used to play together. Later after growing up, we started playing it separately. My young sisters would play Ball-Pikklay. It was like tossing a Ping Pong ball in the air and catching it before landing while picking seashells (coffee beans shaped called Kaudi) cleanly from the floor. The best place to play Gulli-Danda and Pithoo was a wide but deserted street along Girls Primary School near Post office. Other advantage of playing there was that it had a small open drain on only one side of the street i.e. we would not have to retrieve the Gulli and Pithoo ball from filthy drain frequently. Few other games were Rope skipping, and Hop-scotching; marking lines and squares on the floor with a piece of coal or chalk, throwing an object in the last pattern/square and retrieving it while hop-scotching without touching the lines.

Our youngest of siblings Noor was born in 1970. His birth was awaited since long because parents wanted to have 3rd son before they stopped further production. He was named as Noor about 5 years ago. In between my two sisters Nasim and Yasmeen were born. Until Noor I was adored more than anyone else among all siblings. Nevertheless, the whole family was delighted on arrival of Noor. As he started growing up, our house got flooded with toys, not costlier though. When he turned 3-4 years old, father bought him a toy-car with paddles that he instantaneously learned to drive. Father, Munir or me; one of us would always run behind him in the streets as he drove his toy-car almost every day. In the late evenings one of us would also take him to the railway station as he enjoyed watching moving and stationary trains. At times we would make him sit in the passenger car of the train as it stood briefly on the station.

Our grains, onions and some other traditional vegetables for home consumption usually came from the ancestral village where we had some land holdings. Sacks of wheat and rice remained stored in our house. Mother would wash some wheat to cleanse it from dirt and other impurities almost every month. We would help him wash it and then keep it for drying upstairs on Charpai in the sun. Once dried completely she would give either of Munir or me in a canister contained about 10 kg of wheat to get it grind into flour from the Chakki (Grinding machine) located at some distance from the home. We would put it on our shoulder on both ways. Regarding grocery, I would usually be assigned to buy vegetables while father or Munir would buy Mutton, chicken and fish.

Our evenings both in summer and winter were also of routine chores, and predictable in the sense that everyone at home knew what their duties were; during hot summer when the day would begin cooling down we would go to upstairs, line up the Charpai (beds) and lay the bedspreads so that by the time we returned for sleeping the beds get cool down. Father would bring mangoes while returning from the work or anyone of us would buy in the afternoon and these would be immersed into a bucket full of water. Once Mom would prepare rice in the supper we would take the mangoes out of bucket and eat them with rice. Sometimes Pakoray would replace mangoes. Every one of us, siblings, would get four Pakoray to consume with a plate of plain rice. Sometimes we would play tricks; conceal a Pakora in rice and pretend to Mom that we got one less than our share or would hide it for the purpose of revealing it later and enjoying when all had already eaten up their share. My mother would prepare “the finest parathas of the world” that we took in our breakfast before leaving for school.

Around 1972-73, father bought a used motorbike because he was getting it difficult and tiring to paddle bicycle on long hauls. It was a yellow colored 110 CC Honda (or 100 CC Yamaha!) fully loaded (with extra garnishing, lights and a radio transistor installed). Father started learning and driving it simultaneously. A few days later after buying the bike he came home with his hands, arms and knees badly bruised, with some bleeding marks. After getting First Aid he told us with a pale smile about what went wrong with him: While I was driving the bike in the city center an acquaintance waved at me and said hello. I replied back with a smile and waving hands. Here I fall tumbling down on the road injuring myself.  We loved it and laughed back at him. Continued ……