A night in December

You observe the fumes of the hot coffee getting dispersed into the evening air, with a blanket wrapped around your legs, at this moment watching your favourite show with your sister on the couch seems like the best thing in the world. Just as you take the first sip of your coffee, your mum appears from her room giving you two a strange look. Even before you could open your mouth to ask her what the matter was, she snatches the remote from your sister and turns the TV off! You can sense “Get ready ASAP” written all over her expression and realize it’s your cousin’s wedding this very night. Your sister lets out a groan but gives in to your mum’s wishes nevertheless. You feel too heavy to be able to move yourself; your mom helps you in doing so by flinging the blanket you were wrapped in across the room, you beg her to let you finish your coffee first.
After sipping off the large mug of coffee and almost burning your tongue, you get hold of the dress to be worn for the night and make your way to the iron stand. An hour later you still seem to be struggling with your makeup, the best thing about winter makeup is that it stays for hours and hours.
Your family finally has to drag you out of the house for the wedding with you finishing off your make up in the car.
You start to shiver after getting out of the car, having forgotten to keep a shawl in a hurry; you try to suppress the shivers. Your eyes glitter in all the little lights hanging under the marquee, you soon are taken up by the hordes of cousins with only the frequent aroma of kebabs distracting you. The night goes by with a lot of laughter, food that warms you up and some more coffee. The function goes on till 1 am leaving your feet dead in the stilettos. Thanking God for the next day being a Sunday, you leave for your cozy home, taking off your shoes upon settling down in the back seat of the car. With your sister almost lying down beside you, you hardly get any space to spread yourself but never complain, as her heels had been 2 inches longer than your own giving her the right to be more tired. Your parents seem too tired to make any conversation and quietly turn on the car radio tuning in to some station playing old songs. You roll down the window to gulp in the cool night breeze, knowing it makes you fall asleep; you soon enter your world of dreams.

You know its December when you cannot lift yourself out of the bed in the mornings, when coffee turns into your favourite beverage, when you enjoy walking in the sun and when you get a wedding invitation every week. Winter is my favourite time of the year and probably yours too if you live in Paki land especially in a city like Karachi, we barely get rid of the humid, hot weather all year. You wish you could go back to your school days and enjoy having those most awaited winter vacations, waking up every morning for office is not much fun!! The nights are never ending but somehow end sooner than we expect them to.

Loosen up

You have been sitting on the rock hard seat of the minibus that has left your bum numb and now you are having fears it would never be able to feel anything ever again, you are sandwiched between a rather fleshy girl and the tin-like, only harder, inside of the bus. You have been trying very hard to eavesdrop on the hushed up and obviously juicy yakkety-yak of the girls seated behind you, on your way back from your evening classes in university. With the blaring noise of the traffic creating hurdles for your ambitions to overhear the gossip, you put off eavesdropping for sometime later and instead crane your neck putting on the glasses to aid your vision to find out the magnitude of the traffic ahead, your eyes witness several endless lanes of stationary cars, jerking your head back dejected bumping it onto the shoulder of the girl on the right, whom you had started to refer to as jumbo secretly in your head, she churns in her seat letting out a groan, you quickly readjust your head so as to shun any physical contact you could have with jumbo. As you return your concentration back to the prattle, the girls seem to have lowered their voices even further probably detecting your hidden agendas, taking a deep breath accompanied by toxic gases you take your phone out of the bag only to discover its dying battery signals ,a couple of missed calls from home and an unread message, you opt to read the message, it's from dad, saying '' your mother is really worried , call her right away!''.

You give a sympathetic look to your perishing phone flirting with the idea of calling your mom risking the death of your phone listening to her hysterical concerns, taking the safer route you settle for sending a text message to your dad (mum was still not used to texting you see).

The thought of the consequences of not informing your mom of being stuck in the most dreadful traffic jam in the history of traffic jams was sending chills down your spine. You are transported to a scene where your father is delivering a sermon over your head declaring you utterly irresponsible, for that one second when you had missed out on informing mum about the details of your activities while you were out, discussing the cons of your attitude along with the dangers of the world and explaining how hard it is for your mom to let her delicate little daughter(yes they refer to you as such in a case like this) out of her sight, you open your mouth to argue and the words coming out are instantly drowned by the wails erupting from mum who immediately steals the show leaving you shamefaced with your brother laughing in the background. Brushing-off these ridiculous images you make a mental note of churning up an article or maybe a book "The Ultimate Parental Guide on Gender Bias" a much needed supervision for conventional parents who let their boys bask in the liberty of being able to go anywhere anytime while withholding such luxuries from girls which meant you couldn’t even dream of slumber parties, movie nights with girls or anything rash for that matter.

You toss your phone back into the pit of your enormous bag and try reading a book just borrowed from the library. As you proceed with the first chapter you discover to your horror that the story revolves around a woman caught up in a midlife crisis (you used to think only men had to deal with such phenomena but maybe this concept should be chucked into your head and made the subject of your next book called "The ultimate guide to midlife crisis for both genders").You begin to have doubts about your decision of selecting this particular book for a lighthearted and fulfilling weekend read, OK so you don’t want to dedicate your valuable time to reading a book that leaves you down in the dumps by the end of it. Settling for the only option that would save you from troubling yourself with the worries of a fictitious woman you decide to jump off to the concluding part of the book, skipping all the pages in between you arrive at the last chapter named "the final agreement". Indulging yourself in the tragic end of the story you come across several terms that you suspect were put their to challenge the vocabulary of the reader along with his/her patience, you reckon by the end of the book that it was a rather clever decision on your part to have opted to skip all the chapters that lay between the first and the last as the end clearly proved how unworthy the book was of your precious weekend time. Such seemingly deep books were not meant for you surely, the author's name however succeeded to find a place in your mind for future references regarding 'what-not-to-read'. You unfix your eyes from the book in your hands and sense ‘Jumbo’, the one squashing you from the right trying to sneak a peek into your book, you play with the idea of lending the book to her for the weekend as an act of revenge for almost suffocating you in the bus, but drop the idea at once now that you feel more mature after your read. To make good use of the time, you make attempts of devising a plan of dealing with mum dad's tantrums when home, you even consider divulging information to them about your brother's online associations with the "Equal Rights for Gays" group, afraid this might call for a ban on the use of internet altogether at home, you are forced to drop the idea, but make a note of the topic

"Dealing with Enraged Parents, the Ultimate Teen Guide" for yet another book. The journey back home you admit has been very fruitful so far with you discovering three brand new titles for your upcoming master pieces that would soon earn you a place in the hearts of many.

Looking out of the window on your left you see the familiar locations signaling your house being not far away now injecting you with some much needed dose of hope. You sense the hushed up conversations at the back have now seized, being unable to turn your head to look back given your disconcerting position you are forced to reason that the girls might have gotten off while you were still struggling with your book. The bus stops to let Jumbo out, you say a quick prayer to thank the Lord of the heavens for relieving you from the painful situation you were in, although you are aware you would have to perform quite a few stretching exercises once home to ensure the vitality of your strained muscles. For the time being you allow yourself to spread out in the seat and make little movements to test your bum for signs of paralysis, (an image flashes through your mind where you are found crawling out of the bus on your bare hands with a semi paralyzed lower body) , after a few minutes you are almost washed over with a wave of joy at the most awaited sight of your home. As the bus comes to a halt at your gate, you find yourself scrambling off to your feet which to your relief were able to hold you up, stepping out into the open air, and being welcomed by your father found standing in the courtyard ready to reunite you with dear mum.

Live It Till It Lasts (Part 1)

 You will be 27 this year and don’t really remember getting this far. You’re old enough to be trusted by your dad with his brand new Toyota, you have a Blackberry which was purchased only after they had made it clear that it wasn’t only for the men in black and even your mom has stopped waking you up in the mornings, as your cell phone isn’t after all only a communication device.
 On your way back from the office, you stop at the florist to buy a bouquet of pretty red roses in preparation for the night ahead. It’s your school friend’s engagement this very night and you want to be on time to avoid the nagging of all the girlfriends who demand of you to be there before the guests and take part in their giggling and frolicking. Being the only single girl, or should you say lady perhaps, would only get you some looks of sympathy from all the mothers present there. You are in the middle of a traffic jam and the guy driving the car next to yours doesn’t help matters by taking to a constant stare at your profile. Suppressing the urge to show him the finger, you increase the volume of the radio trying to distract yourself from your ogling neighbor.
After putting up a fight with the heat and traffic of the city you congratulate yourself on finally reaching home. You quickly shower and put on a neon dress in contrast with your dark mood hoping it would bring some color to your cheeks. After straightening your locks and putting on some shades of Maybelline, you give an approving nod to the mirror and pick up the roses and your shimmery bag on your way down the stairs. You find your mom already sitting in the car waiting for you to finally take her out somewhere.
 You hop into the car and once again dive in to the sea of cars on the busy roads of the city. Nearly an hour goes by before you pull over at the venue gate, the dazzling lights nearly blinding you. After victoriously emerging from the powerful embraces of all those who were told to greet the guests enthusiastically at the entrance, you join your girls and notice your mom receiving quite a few sympathies by all their mothers on account of your single hood.
 There begins a series of photo shoots with the ‘unphotogenic’ you managing to look nauseated in each photograph making the females demand quite a few extra clicks, not willing to let you ruin their picture. The food is served much later than what you could have hoped for, making your tummy growl disgracefully along the entire length of the photo shoot. You take a plunge into the pack of wolves attacking the food, trying not to knock anyone off their feet while gracefully taking in their periodic elbowing. You surface after some time with a gleam of victory in your eyes holding two equally piled up plates in your hands, the other one for your mom of course. After a fulfilling meal and a series of goodbye kisses taking longer than the time it took you to put on your makeup, you realize your mom is nowhere to be seen, making you curse yourself for losing her in the crowd during the goodbyes.

Users and Losers

 The first day of the first semester of your bachelors degree, you enter your brand new accounts class and get a burst of cool freshening air onto your face blasting off from the nearby air conditioner, your body temperature struggles to adjust itself from the heat outside to the cooling inside the classroom, you look around along the dimensions of the room and on spotting no familiar faces resolve to sit in the front row carefully choosing the chair that is placed right in front of the rostrum. Placing your notebook and pen on the desk in front, you obediently switch your cell phone to the silent mode as per the rules dictated to you earlier. There’s a girl in the row behind you watching intently the face of every pupil, her eyes lingering on each face for the span of several seconds as if searching for something that is of value to her which she might find stuck up their noses. As the bell finally seizes to ring, a tall figure rises from the far end of the classroom taking long steady steps, reminding you of a rabbit that is just released from its cage, he travels the entire length of the classroom finally reaching the rostrum, turning his face towards everyone now, he raises his eyes to take a look at the whole class, the noise dies out as the students stop talking directing their attention to the stern looking man standing ahead.

 The session commences after a series of brief introductions from the teacher and then in turn from each student, you are too busy taking in every word uttered by the instructor and noting it down on the first page of your freshly bought notebook fearing that you might miss out some crucial information, your writing seems to be gaining significant speed with the passage of every second. The girl behind you observing your nerdy behavior now has her eyes fixed on the back of your head wanting to weigh the brain that you have hidden in there. After a while you hear the rustling of papers as she collects her things and scurrying off to her feet briskly makes her way to the front row, of which you were the lonesome occupant moments earlier, she then noisily places herself in the chair beside you making her presence even more obvious just in case you had earlier missed the noises she had made while leaving her chair at the back. You throw an awkward glance in her direction and see someone who has obviously made much more effort in dressing herself up than you ever could have done had it been even your wedding day, you see her smiling at you as if you were one of those good looking guys who have that kind of effect on girls, you jerk those glasses up your nose and return your attention to the instructor.

 The session eventually comes to an end and so does your vigorous scribbling on the notebook which if prolonged could easily have burnt your paper down to ashes, avoiding the stampede comprising of the students rushing out of the classroom door, you stay back for a little longer than what would have been deemed normal only to find your fellow occupier of the first row standing beside you looking for something in her oversized and most probably also overpriced bag. A triumphant look sweeps her face as she gets her cell phone out of the bag, your amazement reaches its peak as you find her asking for your number. Not quite believing your ears you still try to make use of all your senses hanging on to every word of her, trying to save this moment in your memory in the same way as you would have done to one of your favorite movie scenes, only to later recall every second of it to narrate to your friends who think of you as one who is too dull to encounter any such situation.

 Two days go by with nothing special happening to you, the night before your second class you doze off while revising whatever you had noted down during the class in your notebook.

You see numbers jumping on your head and talking to you in their own language, you are transported to a country where there are calculators for cars with the big numbers driving them rushing past you on a highway where you seem to be driving your own calculator car, you can hear a whirring sound coming from far away, you think it’s the police trying to track the over speeding calculator that just rushed past your slow moving vehicle, the whirring gets louder and louder and you are too scared to look back. With a slow movement of your head and fluttering of your eye lids you wake up and realize it’s your cell phone dancing on the bedside table and vibrating as there is an incoming call from an unknown number. You pick up and answer the call only to find that familiar feminine voice responding to your “hello”, seemingly apologetic for troubling you at this hour, after you accept her apologies she adopts a lets- get-down- to-business tone asking you for some help in the assignment that is due on the next day. You end up giving more than what would be termed as ‘help’ and no more feel sleepy after tutoring the girl who wasn’t really willing to learn anything but merely wanted you to dictate to her the assignment, with the whole conversation leaving a bad taste in your mouth, you spend the rest of your night sleepless twisting and turning around in bed.

 The next day again you find the same girl in class, this time you find her already seated in the front row and notice that she even took the pains of reserving the chair beside her for you. The whole semester goes by with you helplessly trying to explain things and the girl looking even less interested to understand. You also end up getting yourself invited for a whole day to her place just before the final exams to put into her head all those concepts that were covered during the course of the entire term, a task that the instructor had failed to accomplish and now the responsibility of completing the unaccomplished task rested on your shoulders.

With you failing at it too, you are reduced to letting her copy the answers that you had provided in your answer sheet that were originally meant only for the eyes of the examiner to see.

 She deletes your number from her cell phone after the final exam and you hope never to hear from her again too or God forbid end up in the same class as she.