Familiar tracks

It's been a while hasn't it, nearly a month. Have I been too busy, or just plain and simple "just" busy? Not really, I mean the usual day or two of utmost insanity, followed by the mundane rituals of monotony. But things have generally been following an expected path of events and lack of events. I guess it's just that I didn't feel like writing anything, that would also explain my falling behind on email correspondence.

So what's up! Well I guess the most important event of an adult life. I shall be getting married in exactly a month from now. Wow! Me getting married! I guess some part of me would always feel like that semi-hippie college student who would never find out the meanings of the words like relationship, belonging, responsibility! Some part of me would always want to feel like those little white flowery things, I don't know what you call them, that you find floating around in the air in the summers, taking the ride of their feathery lives even when there is no wind at all. But the most important thing is that most of me is actually looking forward to this event, every moment of every day! Most of me really anticipates this stage of human evolution, where you go from the me to the us.

What's wonderful about all this is that I really cannot say exactly when, how or where was it that the most of me changed its mind to begin wanting this change. So I move on to this wonderful moment in my life, with my head held high, and brimming with a truly great kind of hope. Just like you'd look for warmth out in the cold in a January night of Islamabad.

Don't laugh, but marriage for me is like sharing your lunch. You get less of the lunch for yourself, but actually enjoy the eating together more then the food you eat.

And it relates on so many levels. See living alone (like eating alone) you can have all of your life to yourself, in your own terms. But when you share your life you live less of it doing exactly what you want to be doing at every particular moment, but you actually end up living your life. Like when you go out to eat with someone, and it doesn't really matter where you go to eat or what you order!

On another level, just like you need to grow up to appreciate the worth of sharing your meal (I mean who remembers enjoying sharing their favorite chocolate as kids), you need to grow out of yourself to embrace this concept of marriage. To accept the wonder you get from it with open arms. To realize that even though you're not having all of the wonderful leftover chicken sandwich, you're also not gobbling it down to get it over with!

Marriage is a lovely proposition to all of us who belong to the part of the world we call East. We actually begin living together after we get married, so after marriage the highs of the sudden change almost always over shadow the lows. There's always this sense of mystery, this constant state of finding out the little nuances of another living being.

Compare that to the scenario where you've already been living together, have already tasted all the highs and lows. In this situation a marriage wouldn't really signify anything, but a legal agreement to be allowed to fight over a stupid coffee mug if things go wrong. With an added incentive to get to know some wonderful lawyers in the process! Charming people, lawyers...really!

Spoke to my parents yesterday, and the white wash is almost complete. Funny thing is that a white wash has become as much a part of our weddings as the mehndi or the dholkee! But I'm sure the parents would be totally exhausted by shifting around all the stuff from one room to another to accommodate the 21st century artists who come in smelling of stale tobacco and turpentine!

Spoke to Alina the day before, and she's doing pretty fabulously juggling the semester with all the wedding mayhem. Still running along very gracefully. I doubt if I can ever be as composed in such circumstances!

Spoke to Babar the day before the day before, and he was just chilling out at a beach with Osama, wondering what the whole world was doing on their weekend! Keep it up brother.

Zeeshan's still stuck in Karachi, and I guess would be there for the wedding for just 2-3 days. Seems like this whole world has gotten busy all of a sudden, including me!

Oh and I read this wonderful book by Michael Cunningham, "A home at the end of the world". Finished it last week, and still cannot get Claire, Bobby, Jonathan and Alice out of my head. I'm sure most people I know would burn the book half way through, but it struck all the right chords, I guess it was the reality of the characters which was just too unbearably real. I don't think I've ever read a better study of human emotion, and I've read some.

So long then...