Korea and other dreams

So who ever thought I’d wind up in Korea!  I for one, certainly never thought I would.  Just last year I was contemplating going to see Y in Japan but decided the airfare was too much and here I am this year, just an hour and a half away from Osaka, having spent pretty much the same amount for airfare and meeting Y in Seoul next month!  God is infinitely kind to me and most of all for having given me those 6 years on my own in America.  It was those 6 years that me believe it is possible to make our dreams come true.  It started with London and I remember how I managed the trek to London on student loan money to meet my first major love interest but I made it happen.  I remember talking to my really lovely gf at the time, with both of us gloating over how we’d made life happen for ourselves, with such little financial support from family and all the bull headedness of women who just wanted so badly to live life to the fullest!  We realized too that it was our fearlessness that made us so scary and so undesirable to the regular Pakistani man.  We’ve paid the price, we’re still single, but hey it’s been worth it!   As much as I would’ve wanted a baby at one time, I wouldn’t ever trade this for it.

For: Cat Khan (and for him, who will never read this)

Cat leaps up on her hind paws to rub her head on the hand that dangles nonchalantly by my side. I see her going to every possible end to be petted.  She knows what she loves and she seeks it unabashedly.  In her mind, that’s all that really matters, to be loved and the tenderness of touch is promise of it. Whether or not I’m running late for work or trying to avoid getting her shedding fur on my pants, she would really much rather I got over my human idiocies and sat with her in the garden.  I love Cat and nothing hurts more than walking away from her when she trusts me so completely with her vulnerability.

In walking away from her, I reenact the hurtfulness of him walking away when all I really, so badly want is to be with him.  His work and commitments seem like such mundane excuses when the bliss of lying in his arms and kissing the afternoon away is incomparable.  And it ends so quickly always, and so typically, with him wanting sex and me never going far enough and then suddenly, it’s all done and over with because all that loving is only about the ultimate end … whereas for me it’s an end in itself.

Cat, I love you… even when I’m being a jerk.

Reconnecting

There are very few people with whom one randomly picks up where one left off even after many years and as I sit here trying to let my fingers type up a frenzy, I’m thinking my blog is not one of those “people” for me.  For one, I really don’t remember why I was blogging last because this is by far one of the most boring blogs I’ve ever had.  Much of the content has been more cathartic than reflective and even so the experience of writing it has not been therapeutic, hence the irregularity in maintaining it. There has been an excessive use of the personal pronoun which grad school is supposed to have helped one transcend and so this blog bears witness to a regression of sorts.  Regression, mediocrity, self-indulgence are national traits and so if there is a positive spin on this, it is that I have acclimatized quite well.

I can’t be sore at you for long because I have deep affection for you and also because after a while hurting too is consuming.  So I’ve shed my tears and I’m feeling alright again.

Is this what women are conditioned to do or is it ontological – this hurting and pulling oneself back together and going back in the ring to get socked some more and continuing with this masochism because … well what other choices are there?  Someone has to make buckle under and make it work and we do, fight after fight, injustice after injustice and then when we’re completely spent and throw in the towel, they tell us we haven’t learned to compromise.

hurting

Burning, throbbing, inflammation, increased frequency and urgency…can the symptoms resolve without antibiotics?  Hydrotherapy takes its toll.

We’re still a very Victorian society. To be considered of any worth, it’s important to have been rich for at least 3 generations.   Mine is not a family that can be counted as one of the “good families” in this system.  It is not a family that’s been rich through the generations and nor is it one with a military background.  Not even do we hail from the literary circles.  In the social clique I’m expected to work past these days, my background is entirely uncompelling.  Good businesspeople turn their perceived disadvantages to their selling points.  Now how do I do that is the prime question.

Irony of our current existence

The city is on high alert and we’re in the office fretting over whether or not we will be able to get our space ready for installation on time.

It’s another afternoon of blowing smoke rings out of the first floor window, watching men lay out prayer mats in the parking lot below.  He has probably left for the airport by now.  When the Friday khutba emphatically resounds through the premises he may already be comfortably seated in the lounge waiting for his flight.  What lives are these that seek respite with children in other countries rather than with significant others of many long years?  Marriage is a terrible thing, it can only be tolerated once, they say.   I smile because I know that most who say that are truly committed to their families but too consumed with bravado to admit as much and yet I wonder about this need to get away every so often.

Azadi Mubarak

National Identity is a construct.  When I recognize that, I accept that there is nothing ontological or natural about the ties I feel to a piece of land, populated by a set of people, and given a certain name.  Even so, I must also accept that accepting its construction does not necessarily mean having to negate it the way we have had to negate gender constructs.  Negating this particular construct does not serve to set me free in the way embracing it does.  When I embrace it, I can value the carnage on BM’s last train from Amritsar, I can enjoy a Cricket Match in a way I could never enjoy American football, I can cherish the magnanimity in the philanthropic endeavours around me, I appreciate that had I not been Pakistani, I’d have been Indian and 62 years down from that particular moment, I know I don’t want to be called Indian.

And yet would I rather be called American/British/Australian/Canadian?  The transnational/immigrant reality flashes before my eyes momentarily.  I’d much rather have that life but I wouldn’t want to be any of those nationalities.  For all the dilutions in my acculturated pot of being, of all the labels I could fall under, I think I can deal with “Pakistani” most comfortably,  perhaps if for no other reason, for the fact that I was born with it, in much the same way that I was born with my name.  I’ve disliked my name for years but I can’t swap it for any other.

It is only when I embrace the construct that I take ownership and only then does the path of active citizenship open itself to me. To negate the construct is to be in transit.  In 2009 I do not celebrate freedom from the British, I celebrate the freedom to unpack my cases.

So she asked me what it was that I really wanted and for a second I had nothing to say.  I thought for a minute but I still didn’t have anything to say.   So I thought a little longer and still nothing!   She wonders how I survived on autopilot for 2 years, with absolutely no goals in mind, no desires, nothing to wish for and I tell her I don’t know.  I really don’t.  What is unsettling for me is that I have yet to resurface from the limbo.  I know that the time is now but how does one do it?