Scattered lives

The time I set the foot back on Canadian soil I felt that my life is scattered. Scattered on each continent like small grains and I am unable to collect it. I have lost my centre, my home, the feel which pulls you back to a destination. I am scattered in the hotel rooms I have lived for few days and sometimes few months. I am scattered in the countless projects I have managed over the last five years. I feel desolated, dissolving in each day. Stepping with each dawn I feel more alone and alienated.
I live in many worlds and I don’t live anywhere. I live on the lost memories of bygone days and I live on the frugal phone calls of loved ones. I live on prayers and on the lack of prayers. I live on love and the mere yearning of love. I am lost like a small kid in a crowd finding its way.
And this sunny afternoon I am feeling more depressed in some way. I spot my brother waiting impatiently outside. It takes me only few minutes to get the luggage and place it in the back of his trunk.
How many days will you stay in Burlington?
How many days are you in Burlington?
I cross question.
3 days maximum, I have to go back to work. He answered silently..
Yes work.. and I am silent on word work.
I am not a doctor neither I am a lawyer. I hated business and I still wonder why I do risk analysis.
During my high school I started believing that a life that cannot create change is worthless. I am running for a meaningful life for others making mine worthless in this process. People usually do not understand what I do.
And I usually answer patiently “ I am a consultant”. No I am actually a civil servant who has taken oath to be faithful to the queen. A new product of post colonialism. Iam one of those lucky ones who are send as doctors are send to wounded enemy camps. We reconstruct and analyze economies which are dysfunctional. The war zones of afghnistan, the restructuring in Iraq, the poverty chaos ridden areas of Bolivia. I have a long list, of refugee camps and landmine zones. I have given my mom a constant headache and depression which stems from my work. I some times feel she hates me and she hates my work more.
Get married, I am..
I will answer..in my monotone
I am married with work.The work I love. The work which pays but not so well. The work which has created a survivor in me, the old warrior spirit I inherited through the blood lines.
I am not anti marriage. I was never anti marriage. I fell in love when I was 18. Young stupid naïve.
The kind of love they depict in old bollywood movies. The messages on small papers and late night phone calls.
It never grew out of that, and the end result was his mother at my parent’s house. It never worked out because of problems which are so desi in nature that it still nauseates me. The issues of language and blood lines. But I guess it was all economics, which at that time in my mere naivety thought was traditionalism. He went to Uk after that episode, writing emails of locums and long work hours. I graduated from one university , then another with my clock’s needle still struck on him.
Some where I believed that it will happen. He was perfect but not perfect. The only thing which made him desirable was the fact that he had desired me. Desired to the extent that his mother had actually humiliated my mother in the confinement of our own home. I hate him, I hate myself for loving him and I hate my mother more for loving me that much to allow that women to humiliate her. So it was a usual story. I laugh on it now. I laugh on a wasted life for a man who had the heart to love but lacked the spine to stand for love. He married another woman. The woman I have known, there was nothing special about her except her credentials. And I learned my first lesson that year. Lesson that we all are on sale with different price tags. He sold himself for something I cannot fathom. What I saw was a plain woman with a tag.
We never talked again after that year. I killed his memory by deleting everything from my life which reminded me of him. It was so weird that I never spend a whole day with the man I supposedly loved. Not even a complete hour except that tea evening in our own home.
I had created a perfect love story out of nothing. Or was there anything about him to love?or not to love. To remember and then suddenly not to remember.
So I step in today celebrating my 31th birthday. There is a little difference in being 30 and 31. I am happy in my own way. Life has given me so much that when I look back I smile. My sister and brother in law are also sitting in my parents lounge. I don’t like my brother in law. My sister is exactly 4 years younger to me. She married a man of my age. It was a perfect campus love story. They had bumped into each other in the library. She is doing her phd in math, pregnant with twins. A baby and her thesis.
Things are same. Struck as the day when I left Toronto 4 months back. I am enjoying the mundane ritual. Iam loving it. In spite of the jet lag I am again in kitchen smiling and cooking. My brother in law is kind of rude. When are you getting married?
I want to get out of this conversation. “Remember I am antique in age of minimalism so find a good buyer.
That is the only way to shut his mouth, for a while. I guess he does it intentionally. The bantering and the criticism on food. Both ensure that he gets the witty response and spicy food.
I guess my sister is suffering from some Freudian symptoms. The one which imply that we fell in love with kind of men who resembles our fathers. I do not find anything common with Mehroz and abu.
Except that my sister was born to urologist and she married a nephrologist. Pretty near and pretty bore.
I am trying to escape the greek my father and my brother in law are speaking. Gone are the days when I had fascination for greek. Now words like PCNL and dialysis makes me cry. I lost my best friend to renal failure. Nothing could have saved farhan. Thus I hate every one who is related to this field. I feel as if it’s a lie. The same kind of lie we speak when we write reports. Lies that doctors speak..transplants are successful. Ya sure..
I am just bitter. Bitter about life as whole. I meet the same kind of people. The kind of people Mehroz abu , bhai are..the kind he was..greek speaking men. Men with the word superiority written on their face. It is so weird that I have started hating those men. The same kind who makes the warp and weft of my own life.
I am unsure about men as a whole. They are more complex than an arch model. I am wary. I feel relationships are over rated.
And yes today in this very evening I call him again. The only him which is permanent in my life. The him who is just a friend. My 38 year old friend Talha usmani. I had the sameold feeling that he was in Toronto.
I don’t dislike him, neither do I like him. I am indifferent. Being indifferent is good if you are a student of economics. How are you? He is all excited.
I am silent.. Home.
The word resonated in my ears..home?
Is it actually home?
Yes I am back..for 2 months until CIDA finds funding.
So can we meet? He asked again.
He can read me..my words my thought. We had the comfort zone which develops after years of knowing a person. He knows small trivial details about me. The fact that I drink ice tea with the food. I order cheesecake as desert. I love strawberry ice cream . And that I weep when I eat sushi.
Trivial , small details we remember about friends and people we love.
So where I ask him again?
Same place same time..
Yes same old place.
It is an old overpriced restaurant in down town. We talk more and eat less. And sometimes I forget what we talk. He always have stories about his girls, his work and usual politics. I hear and sometimes answer him.
He tolerates my comments. He hates my assertiveness and he hates the fact that I live in his world but I belong to another world.
I find makeup similar to money neutrality. We try to hide the faults, wear a mask and fool other around us to get the required results. My sister is still at my mother’s place. I occupy a single room on second floor though I have my own house in the town I live.I don’t live in that room but my presence live there when I am away. My presence in the leather bound journal. The over stacked rack and old wardrobe.
I ask her. Chanel or H and M. Chanel. Will I look over dressed?
I am scared of looking too modern or too conservative. The covered shawl, dazzling earrings and makeup clad face. It is a new look out of old women.
The evening is usual. I have looked towards the idea of meeting him. The kind of excitement you feel while you meet an old friend. I am actually excited not indifferent.
How is New york treating you.
Like a faithful mistress…he smiled in his usual way.
Mistresses are never faithful so be careful.
He orders and I listen. I don’t have to say anything this evening. I know he knows my taste in food. We talk of old days and old friends. Talha and I have a weird relationship. I know the number of women he had dated in last 7 years. My sister claims that there is not a single woman in whole greater Toronto area who is eligible and has not met Talha.
He is a pariah in my household. There is a weird episode years back. He narrated the story of 18 year old he met on star bucks. I knew he was preparing for bar those days. There was nothing unusual about the story. It was one of his usual conquests. He had criteria for women. A very simple philosophy. Date young ambitious women. The kind who are eager to change classes. The kind who can smell money.
The formula worked well. But yes on a certain sample. I am also a woman but certainly not the kind he dates. A chicken in his collection of chicks. Too old, too independent and some one who is not impressed by his business card. Or wait..probably I am.
I am infatuated with him in a weird way. If men are arch models women are garch. I am suffering from bad boy symptoms. So that 18 year old.
She was my sister’s class fellow. She found him on my facebook , on my facebook and thus it was chaos and drama. Cyber world can do wonders. The malice of real life is converted into drama in cyber space.
I know my sister’s friends . Most of them. She was a usual girl from her high school. But then to balm my ego I will say that he dates usual girls. Those who smell money.
So I am silent. I am waiting for a story. I know he wanted to meet me from 2 months.
Bolivia suits you. The tan suits you. Are you implying I am more dark?
I answered with a smile.
He is not talking.
He is smiling. Alarm…
I am trying to indulge in the shrimp alferado he has ordered. Food especially good food is heaven.
There is something wrong.
The time cheese cake arrived on the table, he is smiling more.
Alarm..Run..
The same sixth sense is shouting.
He gets a small pouch out of his pocket.
Listen, I a m not 30 any more and you are no longer 23 year old.
We both are old. And we know each other. I like you and I guess we should get married.
The man who changes girl friends with each season was proposing me. I am all lost in another world.
I feel I have eaten cockroaches. It was suppose to happen one day sooner or later.
I am silent.
I move outside. He looks and say think..
Queasiness,
Apotheosis.
Silence.
I am judging him. The way I have judged all other men in this situation. There is less time to think. What does I want from life?
He is giving so many things in plate.
I love kids ..i might have one of my own..
Instincts and desire are overwhelmingly capturing my rationality.
I move I am home.
My grandmother use to narrate folk lore when I was a kid. Women are like animals. Some are tigress ready to defend their cubs, some are bitches true in their nature bite and run away.
I found the lore boring and fabricated. I am home, waiting for next assignment.
My director emails, to send reports. I can walk out or resign. Or I can just file a sick leave. I need to run away from the whole chaos. Mehroz and his sick humor. Very pregnant sana and her tantrums. My own scattered self.
I need to run away.
I wrote a small email. I need a break if I can have vacations?
It needs two weeks to pack and sublet?
But where?
I open the pouch Talha had given me that night. It had a ring, small plain the kind I love. The kind he knows I love. I remove the ring and place address of Lahore in pouch.
I call the travel agent. One ticket for Lahore.
I am a cat. Cat who always find the way back to home.
I mailed Talha the pouch with address. I am thinking to settle with my promiscuous friend. Or should i?
The plane is landing on Lahore airport..and I feel I have collected a grain of MYSELF