Aqal sawaal uthati hai ishq amal pe dorata hai.
By now I have thrown away more things and (almost-)neatly packed the things I am saving back in the drawer. Can’t say it’s done but sure feels lighter.
Besides that [literally] grey old diary that I didn’t bother reading, there are all these papers – mostly poems that I wrote (even those sad Urdu ones), and then other handwritten accounts of things like our regional Spelling Bee contest that we won, my ninth grade result, an essay on “My most memorable day of life” where there is McFlurry by the sea, last school exam and a really fun night ending with dramatic sentences like ‘I bid farewell to my family and the full moon.’ Not just mine but I also used to give my brothers topics to write on, then I would check them and sometimes reward them. That was a whole system. Look at this part from Ibad’s story about a ‘mejician’s whose spell was ORAME SIM SIM where O is for Omnivorous animal, R is ramp, A is and, M is maar do, and E is eel. The omnivorous animal walk on ramp and eel eat the omnivorous animal. And magic were not worked the people laughed. He did spell 3, 4 times but his magic did not work. Moral:- We dont want to be a mejician.
There’s also a super adorable sorry card. Lined paper and pencil, a highly decorative spelling of my name, a bag of 5o rs drawn as a gift. You will accept such apologies with a kiss.
I used to write essays and speeches. There is this one I won a competition for. Starts with a stanza I learned from Sam and very much adored. I had read it with a lot of energy.
Then I am looking at these goals I had, and it’s neither saddening nor surprising but there but there’s still a hole – and you wish it was big enough – that we don’t think like that anymore. There are more screens and more individual chaos than deeper thinking, or better yet, practical anything.
And I think you feel it too
What I no longer try to hide
It’s buried beneath the scars
Truth behind the lies.
7 July 2019. My most recent material in that drawer is a bag of gifts and Eidi. The space that wasn’t there before reeks of maturity.
Randomly Abstract 