Love Like Wine

February is almost half gone and I have not yet made good on my promise to write about the ubiquitous and rather hackneyed topic of "love" this month. That was the challenge, you see - how do I write something about love that will make you want to read? Is it even possible to offer a new perspective on this age-old theme? Then, I realized that it doesn't have to be new. There are so many cycles and stages of love that I can probably draw inspiration from things all around me, or more specifically, things I have read recently. 

The February issue of Real Simple Magazine featured a supremely uplifting story titled "Four love stories for the ages," which highlighted four couples who found love later in life.  Some of them had been married and had lived through divorce or the death of their spouse. Others had just not found the person they wanted to settle down with. And they all had this in common - they found each other in the most unlikely circumstances, and many of them actually wondered, "Should I be doing this at my age?" But they persevered - because in love you have to - and ended up together. We all agree that one can fall in love at any age, but how often are these stories really told? And how often do people actually believe that love can be waiting for you at any age? In our twenties and thirties, and let's please not deny this, we are driven by the desire of finding a partner, someone who loves us, someone whom we love, someone to share our lives with. Much of this is dictated by the underpinning "biological clock" and "procreation" reasoning. But we all operate with the realization that we will find our epic love now, in our youth. No one thinks about the development of love, how it matures, or whether it matures at all. No one factors in sickness, death, divorce, or simply falling out of love. And evidently, heartbreak comes to us as it must in one form or another, and we find out that love, actually, is not as everlasting as we thought it was. 

I know you are thinking, this is supposed to be a post about love, why is she talking about depressing things? I am getting to the good part - just stay with me, OK? So then, if we know that our love stories are fragile and have the potential to get fractured by choice or by design, then aren't the stories of people finding love in their sixties and seventies wonderful and encouraging? Isn't it such a joyful thing that even after six decades or more of being hardened by life and its realities, we are able to retain a degree of vulnerability? We are able to open ourselves up to the heady excitement of new love when we have (statistically speaking) lived the majority of our years already - this is something to celebrate. I believe being in love gets better with age - and I have to use the obvious simile, forgive me - like wine. As we become more rooted in our personalities, in both our strengths and weaknesses, we also become veterans of love as we age. Our capacity to love and be loved improves as we grow older, regardless of whether we have loved the same person for most of our lives with the good fortune of continuing to love them in our later years, or we allow ourselves to fall in love with someone new later in life. We often hear about love stories that are rooted in youth, but develop to old age, but I wish stories of persevering in a new love at an old age were more common. Finding love in any age bracket should be the norm, not the exception. There shouldn't be a possibility of cultural or familial criticism accompanying it. There shouldn't be the nagging presence of a question, "Should I be doing this at my age?" The giving and receiving of love must be celebrated regardless of age (and any other artificial barriers). After all, it is one of the few beautiful things that the human spirit relies on for support and nourishment while there is far more in this world that can ravage it.

Photo by Rebecca McCue

Publications!

I want to share some good news with my Goll Gappay circle!

Two of my poems, Smoke and My Story Was In That City have been published in ARDOR Literary Magazine along with my interview as a featured poet! Please go and check it out!

Another poem, Wading Into The Ocean has been published in The Bangalore Review.

Yay! 

A Celebration of the Weather

Perhaps I should wish in writing more often - it has been raining all day. It started as a drizzle in the small hours, I imagine. When I left for work, it was falling at a steady, gentle pace, like one's speed when one is taking a stroll. Coming back from work, it had become more like a brisk walk. Right now, the rain is how I love it most - I just heard the distant rumble of thunder and the vent pipes clanging loudly in the chimney because of the wind. It finally feels like winter now. 

I know a lot of people don't like this weather - it confines you. But that's what I love about it. I have always associated it with happiness. It feels like a celebration. I take it as explicit permission to do my favorite things. Today, I read some poetry, wrote a poem, watched The Lion King and a chick-flick that will remain unnamed, spent a lot of quality (cuddle) time with the baby, and did some cleaning and organizing. I know this spurt of activity was not because of the rain, but I also know that I am happier because of it, which is in fact conducive to productivity - at least for me. 

I probably shouldn't admit this, but just because I am thinking I shouldn't makes me feel like this story is worth telling, so here goes - I also associate rain with romance. I know, I know, Bollywood left a deep hypnotic mark on me when I was a child, all those musicals with women in beautiful sarees dancing in the rain like there's nothing in the world better than that while their brooding beaus stood awkwardly beside them, seemed to my impressionable mind the epitome of romance. But it's more than that. In Pakistan, when the summer monsoons came, my sisters and I would play on the rooftop, get soaked to the bone, and hurry downstairs to be toweled off and admonished by our mother. We often had relatives staying with us and someone would invariably suggest we go to the market to buy samosas. But the roads would be flooded with water reaching up to our knees or even higher. So, we would resort to scavenging ingredients from the pantry and the fridge and somehow manage to make a helping of breaded fries or potato fritters or chana chaat or  even goll gappay. Sometimes, if my father had an outdoor assignment, it would get postponed because of the weather and we would sit together in his room watching movies all day as he wrote, or he would decide to cook something for us and two hours later, the kitchen would be in disarray, spice jars scattered, pots and pans lining the floor, my mother just standing back, enjoying herself, enjoying him at the helm of the stove. How did it not drive her crazy, I wonder. How could she stand him poking around in her kitchen like that? That says something about me, doesn't it - the way I say her kitchen. The rain used to give us an excuse to bond as a family. And I didn't realize this back then. I didn't know that those were some rare opportunities for us to spend quality time together as a family - it happened naturally, organically, much like the rain. We all came together in the kitchen. Or we huddled on sofas and cushions and my father played vintage Bollywood films for us. It was a happy time for us kids, but I think it was romantic in its way for my parents. They each had their own career to worry about, so a surprise break from work and a relaxed day at home must have been such a welcome delight for them. 

Now, here in Northern California, there is no question of playing in the rain. It's February and still the middle of winter. But the rain still has its way of making me happy. There is no water flooding our streets, but I have these old habits that mandate a day at home when the weather takes a surprise turn like today. I sit on my sofa underneath my fleece blanket and hear the raindrops hitting the kitchen window. We chose to stay in tonight and play with the baby. My husband offered to put the baby to sleep so I would have a few moments to myself. When you have had a busy week at work with a particularly irritable disposition, and you've spent a lot of effort masking this sour mood because you would hate to admit that it's because of the lack of rain, and then you're rewarded by not just the first real winter storm of the year, but also your husband offering to take over bedtime, well, that's pretty damn romantic if you ask me.

And perfect segue into....February - yes, it's February, the official month of love and romance. Goll Gappay will once again honor this month with posts about love and loved ones, so stay tuned.

I'm off to admire the rain while it graces my balcony so I can bottle up some inspiration for the proverbial rainy days (although, I have already demonstrated that as far as I am concerned, any kind of stocking up is required for dry weather only). Good night. 

Photo by Rebecca McCue

Wishful Thinking

I am moved deeply by weather, which is why living in Northern California is such a beautiful thing. We get one or two heat waves over the summer, but living only an hour's drive away from the coastline and within viewing distance of the gorgeous mountainside has a calming effect. When I first moved to California, I was completely unnerved by the winter rains. I was used to the fierce monsoons, the temperamental storms of humid summers that caused power outages and floods. But here, the rain was different. It raged from time to time, goaded on by one cold front or warm front or something of the sort, but usually it just fell at a steady pace, often for several days in a row. Even the rain in California was temperate.

We are in a drought this year. There has been almost no rain, and water conservation efforts have taken on a new importance and urgency. The winter has been uncharacteristically warm and dry. I wonder if the lack of rain somehow caused a drought in my writing, too. I have felt disconnected from it. While this is ordinarily a cause for alarm, this time I have just been apathetic. This morning, though, the clouds shivered ever so slightly and we got a tiny bit of rain. The roads were slick in the morning as I pulled out of the driveway later than usual. In the office, I was quickly swept into meetings and discussions, having very little time to appreciate the view from my window - the overcast sky, the juxtaposition of vibrant and muted colors, the brief rain making everything sharper while the haze in the air and the coverlet over the sun making it all distant, almost sepia colored. But now, I have a momentary reprieve, and I find myself getting drawn to this blank page (no longer blank), some odd compelling force swelling inside me, willing me to write - anything. And so, I do. 

I find myself wishing for a real winter storm, for the clouds to erupt and end this drought, end this state of unease and disuse in me. I am wishing for winds and heavy rain and thunder and the sound of all of it, the whistle of the wind, and the prattle of the rain, and the deep cough-like hum of the thunder. And as I wish for this I close my eyes and imagine the smell of such weather wafting with the wind through the kitchen window, a pine-scented candle burning on the counter, a steaming mug of cardamom chai, my baby playing with her books, the Food Channel playing in the background, and the death-grip suffocating my writing finally loosened because of the sudden release of winter rain.

Photo by Rebecca McCue

"I miss you," I say

When you tell someone, “I miss you,” you are usually not saying that you miss the person, but something that is probably lost forever. We are changing constantly. When you move away from each other, you morph into different people, and since you’re not changing together, the difference can be of great magnitude. So, when you tell someone with all the conviction you are able to muster, “I miss you,” you’re really telling them, “I miss all those summers we spent on the cement terrace of that old house sucking out the pulp of countless sweet mangoes and talking about young heartaches.” You don’t miss the person as much as you miss the time, the lost time, the time that wouldn’t exist if it weren’t imprinted in your memory - that piercing sunshine, the soft flannel picnic sheet underneath your chunky thighs, the rich scent of mangoes peeking through crumpled newspapers stuffed inside a wooden crate, the recitation of cliched precocious poetry, lazy summer afternoons.

“I miss you,” I say over the phone. “I miss you,” I type in my emails. I miss so many people so badly that when I utter this hackneyed proclamation over and over and over, I feel it blooming deep inside my belly, becoming full-mouthed and drooping like a wild rose in Spring. It threatens to suffocate me. It slows things down, my breath, the click of the second hand of the clock, the change of light in the clear blue sky from sharp yellow to syrupy orange, the passage of the cumulus clouds that linger on the horizon like soft peaks of whipped cream. “I miss you,” I say with vehemence. I put all the scent of the wild rose burgeoning inside me into the word, I pour my memories into it, a jigsaw puzzle of recollections, evidently with missing pieces… I try to paint the images of my childhood on its surface - crisp cotton sheets on Eid mornings, soaking up the first rain of the monsoons, men and boys swimming in the canal on hot June afternoons, their shalwars ballooning in the water, swallowing mouthfuls of goll gappay on the street, walking through sugarcane fields around the farmhouse, and buried in all of these misshapen memories, the feeling of being so certain about myself, the absolute assurance of who I was, and the acceptance of it, the pride of it.

“I miss you,” I say, but I mean so much more than what these three words can conjure in your mind. When I say this, I see you, whoever you are, in a particular moment we shared, or one that I witnessed. If I say it to my father, I see him lounging on the sofa, his pen moving across a legal pad with such ferocity that it both fascinated and scared me. If I say it to my mother, I see her lying on the floor on her stomach, her hair fanning across her back, her chest raised from the ground, a book before her eyes. If I say it to my sisters, I see us as children playing school or house or talking before drifting off to sleep in the same king-sized bed. I said it a few days ago to my husband while we were driving home. The moon was large in the sky, our daughter was talking to herself in the car-seat, and the car was winding along the hill towards our neighborhood. There was something present in that instant, the cold gleam of moonlight or the swarm of moths near the streetlight that transported me, hurtled me through years and across continents and oceans. “I miss you,” I said, and he looked at me with his bemused smile. We left it at that. But, I meant I miss those days when we were consumed with a singular focus - each other. I miss the way I was, I miss the things we said, the things we did, the kids we were. When I say these words, I see moments and seasons and years and sometimes I don’t see people at all, but something associated with them. A tube of lipstick. A bottle of ink. A jewelry box. A pair of shoes. A basket of bruised jamun crushed in a plastic bag, sweating from a long journey between two cities. A garland of roses wilted around the edges reminiscent of the one who wore it.

There is so much that I try to encompass in my voice when I say these words, plaintively sometimes, and savagely at others, “I miss you.” What I am really saying is much deeper and far more selfish than what I am able to communicate. Yes, I am unhappy that you (or the version of you monopolizing my thoughts at the moment) are not present in my life right now. I long for you - to see you, to speak with you, to hear you, to love you in that old way again. But it’s more than that, you see. I am wistful for a bigger reason. I miss the moment, that small capsule of time we shared in which I was someone different than I am today. I miss the way I was in that fine grain of time - with you.

Photos by Rebecca McCue

The Conflict of a Reader

I am listening to The Jungle by Upton Sinclair these days narrated by Casey Affleck whose performance is strong, clear, and very moving. I obviously don’t agree with the customer reviews on audible.com in which Affleck’s performance has been called anywhere from “underwhelming” to “poor.”

It is a brave thing I do, playing this book every morning when the sky is still fractured with tinges of gray and orange and if I listen carefully, I can hear birds chirping somewhere just out of sight. Deciding then, when I should be celebrating every vestige of peace, to be transported into the bitter winters of poverty, hunger, disease, and suffering in early 1900s Chicago stockyards takes courage.  It is also easy to do - cocooned as I am in my car with the heater on, the January sun slumbering on until well past 7AM in the unusually warm California winter that allows me to not even reach for a pea-coat when I get out of my car to walk to the office building.

I have read some articles on how this book has made others feel. The horrors of the meatpacking industry laid bare by Upton Sinclair have the power of turning an attentive reader into a vegetarian for life. Shock, disbelief, sadness, disgust, compassion – I am sure readers have felt all this and more for the characters in the book. And I, too, feel all that, but I also feel gratitude. I am grateful to be born in a time when it is important to people to live well and learn what kind of food they are eating. I am grateful that I have had a very different (positive) experience as an immigrant compared to the characters in the book. I am grateful for having an education and to have had the opportunity to choose what to do with my life rather than being a passive spectator of its passing.

There are corruption and discrimination and oppression still in the world, but I am grateful that there is at least some degree of accountability, too, disproportionately present, but there.

There are suffering and poverty and hunger still in the world, but I am grateful that there is a more crisp awareness of all these deprivations, so at least there can be a stronger hope for help to come.

As I continue to read the book, about the squalor and starvation and lack of humanity, I choose to think that this wouldn’t be possible now. I am fooling myself - I know that. The conditions mentioned in the book still thrive, perhaps not in the meatpacking plants, perhaps not in Chicago or in the United States, but in sweatshops and factories all over the world and…I have to mention this…war-zones. I choose to be grateful because I should be. I have seen no despair in my life, not real despair anyway. And when I park my car and pause the book, my jaw is set. I walk out of my comfortable car my heels click-clacking on the asphalt of the parking lot, and I enter my centrally heated office with its large glass windows overlooking a beautiful patio with comfortable chairs and round picnic tables. I choose to be grateful for all this because I have good reason to be, along with the ability to walk away from the book, the impulse to nurse the notion, “Surely this doesn’t happen now.” This, I tell myself, was a long time ago. Those were other people. And what do I know? The winter is never bitter here in the Golden State.

We are in This Together

For the last two years, I have been adjusting my thinking. Since I have had Jahan, change has happened to me as though it is a seasonal cold. It has taken hold of me so many times, debilitated me, and challenged me. In order to conquer the change that has come about in my life, I have had to come up with a defense mechanism. I let it roll over me now, submit to it completely, allow it to lead me wherever its willful heart desires. Then, after embracing, absorbing, and emulating all that comes along with said change, I tell myself, "This is my life now. And it's perfect because I have chosen to live this way today. This is what my life will be from this point forward until another bout of change comes along." 

Motherhood is challenging. There is no denying that. It is also the most wholesome, selfless, and satisfying thing I have done in my life. And it is scary. It never stops being scary. I can envision the most troubling and absolutely catastrophic scenarios before drifting off at night and startle myself awake, hugging my daughter close to me, making her a promise, "I am right here." Every morning, when I leave before sunrise, I check the gas stove three times because my precious ones are still asleep in the house and if I don't do this, I will keep wondering for an hour on the road about any number of accidents that could take place in my absence. I get to work and text my husband, "Please FaceTime when the baby wakes up. I miss her." In my head I add, "Already." Motherhood is the biggest contradiction I have ever lived though - it is simultaneously the most strengthening and weakening experience. It is unfair to the mother to love someone to a degree of madness and have no control over the feeling in order to simulate it another way. By the same token, being a mother has trained me to be exceptionally accountable for my thoughts because they have had a singular focus without competition for the last two years.

Jahan is two years old, and I am beginning to celebrate small acts that are readying her for her graduation into the conversational world of adults. Saying gibberish. Counting from 1 to 5. Attempting to say the alphabet. She is a little girl now - no longer a baby. I am learning too fast that I should enjoy the rare days she lets me baby her, carry her in my arms, swing her, lead her down the street, because pretty soon she will be doing all the leading. And this, I think, is the hardest part of motherhood. Letting go while having an appreciation for the past, present, and the future. Letting her become her own person, while being exceptionally proud of her and desperately sad for the sweet, undemanding baby she will never be again.

A baby is going to keep changing and keep demanding that you change with her. Keep up with her pace. Keep up with the degree of change she is experiencing. I have told myself now that for the next several years, Jahan and I are together at the reigns of this parenting thing. It will always be the best compromise. She will want things a certain way (extra play time), I will most likely want something different (strict routines). We will probably meet halfway (extra 30 minutes some nights). On other occasions, like when I take her somewhere so she can enjoy herself, I will have to let her decide the itinerary. She may not want to go into a particular part of the mall that I really want to check out (because of the sale). She may want to stay instead near the flower beds or the fountain. And since this is her day out with her parents, I must let her decide what she wants to do and be OK with it. Mothers and children are constantly testing the boundaries of parenting in different ways. I have told myself today, "I have an independent little girl. If she wants to lead the way and there is no harm in it, I let her lead the way. This is my life now. And it is perfect because I have chosen to live this way today." And I get a gorgeous smile as my prize. 

My Writing Life

­I have been told by a very loyal Goll Gappay reader several times to do a post on writing – why I do it, why it is important, and what’s my process. The reason I was very reluctant to write this post is because I thought it would be presumptuous. Who needs my opinions when there are real writers out there whose words on these topics actually matter? Do I think I have more to add to the ongoing conversation about writing and the writing life? Me? When I don’t even have a consistent writing routine? Then I realized that even this line of thought, all on its own, was impertinent. What gives me the audacity to even ask the questions I have listed above, to even compare myself to real writers? My thoughts became more and more convoluted and self-critical, and I stayed far, far away from this post.

I want to circle back to it, a rather abrupt development, because today I opened up the first draft of a story I wrote several weeks ago. I decided to get started on the second draft. I tabled it long enough that upon reopening it, I was able to slash weaknesses and modify the plot, whereas when I first wrote it, I couldn’t even dream of making any changes. This was how I had conceived the details of the story, the mechanics, the characters, and this is exactly how it would unfold on paper. Before getting started on this rampage of editing that is quickly shaping up the second draft of my story, the working title of which is “Alone in Each Other’s Company,” I was completely lost. I had no idea how to approach it, where to start, what to do. It wasn’t until I was in the thick of it, and I mean knee deep in the story, in the middle of the characters' conflict and walking all over their emotional space, that the writing happened. The writing did itself. It’s ironic, you see. I waited for weeks for something to come to me, crawl on deft spidery legs and climb up my arm, send my fingers into a flurry of motion over the keyboard, but it wasn’t until I actually made myself get back into the story, back into the act of writing, that the writing actually happened.

I experienced a similar incident a few days ago. I have had a pretty dry spell. The last poem I wrote was in October. It’s hard for me to absorb this, but yes, three months ago was the last time I was able to write a poem. I was waiting. Waiting for something, anything to appear. Waiting for the muse to start whispering to me. Waiting for a word, a phrase, an image, anything, dammit. There was only white noise. This has happened a few times before and will continue to happen, I expect. Whenever I go through something like this I tell myself, “This is it.” I convince myself that I am not a writer (of any level) - I have done all the writing I had in me and am all dried-up now. I fall into a depressive state characterized by general moroseness and bad temperament. So, I don’t know what made me sit down with the intention to write a poem – any poem – a few days ago. I sat and stared at the blank screen for a few minutes. The cursor blinked and blinked and blinked. Then I wrote a line. Then I wrote five stanzas. Then I had a draft. And a second draft. And a third. Then I sent the poem out into the world.

I learned some things over the last few days, things I had already known to various degrees of certainty, but never acknowledged. I may not be a successful writer in terms of the number of sales I have made, but I am a writer. I am a writer deep in my bones. I am a writer because. Just because. There is so much promise in that word. Because. It’s a heavy word, pregnant with possibilities, a carrier of reasons and excuses and qualifiers and justifications and arguments and declarations. Because. I could never not be a writer. I was a writer when I was born , I was a writer when I was eight years old and I wrote my first poem, I was a writer when my father said, “Here is my eldest daughter. She is a writer. And isn’t she beautiful.” He said it so often and with such conviction that I believed him with all my heart back then. And then I forgot. It’s a journey, you see, winding up and down through known and unknown lands. You fall. You lose hope. But you get up again. You are used to the life of a wanderer. It could be no other way. You must keep wandering, and finding and reaffirming yourself in the process. So I am doing just that.

I am more myself when I write. I am pleasant and mild-tempered when I write. I am happy when I write. It pervades every aspect of my life and relationships. I need to write – to feel completely like myself. If I don't write, I stop recognizing who I am. I lose a part of my identity. Who are you? I am Noor. I am a writer. I am a writer. I am a writer. I am my father's daughter and so I am a writer. I live so I am a writer. I am a writer because. Just because.

I also learned that I cannot sit and wait for inspiration to come to me. It’s fickle. I have to go and grab it by the neck, wring some sense into it or caress it into submission, and carry it back to my desk. It’s a rigid beast, but surprisingly compliant with the slightest effort. I’ve got it by the neck now. And I am not letting go.

Photos by Rebecca McCue

Impossible Pursuits

This blog post contains spoilers pertaining to the book (and film) Atonement by Ian McEwan. 

If you have not read Atonement, you should be reading it instead of reading this blog post. It is a phenomenal book.  Go on, pick it up, this can wait.

If you have read the book, good, come, sit, let's have a chat.

But the heresies died when he read her last letter. He touched his breast pocket. It was a kind of genuflection. Still there. Here was something new on the scales. That he could be cleared had all the simplicity of love. Merely tasting the possibility reminded him how much has narrowed and died. His taste for life, no less, all the old ambitions and pleasures. The prospect was of a rebirth, a triumphant return. He could become again the man who had once crossed a Surrey park at dusk in his best suit, swaggering on the promise of life, who had entered the house and with the clarity of passion made love to Cecilia - no, let him rescue the word from the corporals, they had fucked while others sipped their cocktails on the terrace. The story could resume, the one that he had been planning on that evening walk. He and Cecilia would no longer be isolated. Their love would have space and a society to grow in. He would not go about cap in hand to collect apologies from the friends who had shunned him. Nor would he sit back, proud and  fierce, shunning them in return. He knew exactly how he would behave. He would simply resume.
- Atonement (Kindle edition) by Ian McEwan - Page 213

There was a crime. But there were also the lovers. Lovers and their happy ends have been on my mind all night long. As into the sunset we sail. An unhappy inversion. It occurs to me that I have not traveled so very far after all, since I wrote my little play. Or rather, I've made a huge digression and doubled back to my starting place. It is only in this last version that my lovers end well, standing side by side on a South London pavement as I walk away. All the preceding drafts were pitiless. But now I can no longer think what purpose would be served if, say, I tried to persuade my reader, by direct or indirect means, that Robbie Turner died of septicemia at Bray Dunes on 1 June 1940, or that Cecilia was killed in September of the same year by the bomb that destroyed Balham Underground station.
- Atonement (Kindle edition) by Ian McEwan - Page 350

Robbie Turner was innocent. You know it, I know it, and god knows Briony knows it, too. The three of us, you, me, Briony - and of course the lovers themselves - wanted Robbie's name to be cleared, wanted to see him with Cecilia, free at last, and "without shame." When I reached that scene in Cecilia's rented room, the scene wrought with anxiety and relief and the image of that old woman with her cart outside on the road on whom Briony focused all her attention while the lovers kissed, because Cecilia asked Robbie to "Come back to me" and he did, he really did, it was like a personal triumph. Reading alone in my semi dark room, I felt I had been through too much with this book. With Robbie and his thirst and his wound and his blisters and that bomb that vaporized a mother and son and that ominous line, "Wake me before seven. I promise, you won't hear another word from me." With Briony and the French boy with half his skull missing, with her hand scrubbing and her bedpans and her story Two Figures by a Fountain and subsequent rejection and...I needed to put it down. Robbie was home, he was safe, he would resume, they would resume. I could sleep well. I walked barefoot into my cold kitchen, filled a tumbler of water and finished all 16 ounces of it without taking a breath. It was a good thing, putting down the book at that point, dozing off with the image that Briony saw of Robbie and Cecilia together outside the station, because the next night, well, the next night I would finish the book, and there would simply be no question of sleep. 

In life, as in good novels, you hardly ever get to "simply resume." Robbie and Cecilia didn't resume, did they? They died. They never saw each other after Robbie left for the war. Before he left, they had a few minutes, a quarter of an hour, not even an evening of entertaining the possibility of love and a life together, and then what happened? But, wait. Let that sink in for a minute. Robbie went to jail based on the false accusation of a precocious and imaginative thirteen-year-old-girl. Robbie and Cecilia did not have epic love to sustain them through their separation; they had a few minutes alone in a library, the mere idea of allowing their love for each other to flourish, simply that and nothing more. And then what? They wrote letters to each other while Robbie was incarcerated. Letters to keep alive those few minutes, that memory, that faint possibility, those words Cecilia uttered before the police took Robbie away, "I will wait for you. Come back to me." Robbie was released from jail on the condition of joining the army four years later, met Cecilia in a restaurant, kissed Cecilia outside the restaurant, and then what? War, more letters, Dunkirk, injury, septicemia, death. And for Cecilia, all of the above, except bereavement in lieu of septicemia before death. Do we ever resume after life, time, circumstances, limitations, situations, distance, desolation, desperation, helplessness...after all this hampers, nay, shackles us from doing so? Nobody simply resumes, no matter how attractive the notion of resuming might be. 

We say those cliched words, you know, those of us who have faced a few things that have tested us, clawed at us, or simply unfolded in front of us, as though life is just happening to us, exerting on us like an external force without our control or cooperation. We say the words, "It is like no time has passed." "We will start where we left off." "Nothing about us has changed." "We are still who and what we were x years ago." But we're not, are we? Even in the most mundane matters, how could we possibly simply resume our lives after substantial change has derailed us? For instance, I can't ever decide to be that girl I was ten years ago even if I wanted to be. I wouldn't know where to begin tracing my way back to her.  I don't even know who she was - I can't tell you one thing I know for certain about her. She was so...unremarkable...there is nothing that stands out about her, even to me - and I was her! Or maybe she was absolutely extraordinary, but it doesn't matter, because I simply cannot reach for her in my memories. She is too far away. So, how can I, using myself as an example, simply resume even if it is the easiest and most coveted direction in certain situations? 

The fact is, we don't resume. We never can. We continue to move farther and farther away from the point of divergence, from the point where we "stopped," from that point we would have to toil and scratch and dig our way back to, if at all it were possible, to resume.  

Cognitive Dissonance

January 1, 2014
12:01AM

Cognitive Dissonance or Nostalgia Revisited or New Year Blues - yes, this is one of those posts, sorry, happy new year, and thanks for reading. 

I welcomed the new year sitting in my home office with the space heater on, huddled inside a shawl and a fleece blanket, mulling with my sister over whether my baby's plush sofa should remain here or go back upstairs to the living room. We decided to keep it downstairs. I want to have a welcoming space here for my daughter to come and play while mummy works. It's a coveted reality - this image I have in my head. It inspires me to work harder and better. The only time she has been here while I worked was a few nights ago when she proceeded to painstakingly take apart a post-it pad and stick post-it notes all along the coffee table edge. 

Photo by Rebecca McCue

I have been a little unnerved by the text messages, phone calls, and Facebook announcements of how people are ringing in the new year. "Good bye, 2013. Helloooo, 2014!" I am unable to muster the same enthusiasm. The thought I have had for most of the day is not that I have been through a great year (which is true), and I must welcome another one with hope and excitement, but this, "Dammit, only 5 more days off before life resumes." This is why when the clock struck midnight on the West Coast, long after the East Coasters had posted photos of fireworks and wine glasses and the-obligatory-kiss-at-the-end-of-the-countdown, the biggest problem in my life was deciding whether a turquoise baby-sized sofa will remain in my office space or not. 

Now, about a quarter of an hour into 2014, I am thinking why I become so defensive about my disinclination to celebrate the milestone of having lived through another year. During my childhood, this used to be one of the most celebrated days of the year. My mother used to love visiting the tombs of saints on new year's eve. Even close to midnight, we used to find traffic on the streets. We used to buy garlands of huge wild roses to hang on the doors of the tomb. My mother would distribute food among the homeless and poor in the area. We would then go to a local ice-cream parlor to share a ginormous sundae (no joke). After coming home, I would sit for hours listing my resolutions for the year, first with a lead pencil on a piece of paper, and then in pen, transcribed neatly on the first page of my brand new journal (probably stolen from my father's stash of diaries - I did that a lot, and got caught constantly). 

I am so different now - surprise, surprise! I prefer to stay in and watch fireworks rippling through the great expanse of black sky over this city. From my vantage point, I am also able to see the lights sprawling all across the city. It is breathtakingly beautiful, but my heart is not in it. To me, this is just like any other day. I am spending a quiet evening in my home with my favorite people. My daughter has thrown a tantrum today, which is out of the ordinary, but it was short and she was back to her smiling self in no time. That was the most notable part of my day. It is just another day, another good day. I have caught myself so many times today from spiraling into a thought maelstrom- why are people celebrating, what is happening, am I missing something, it's just another day, justanotherday, justanotherday...

Photo by Rebecca McCue

Perhaps if I were in that city, you know, the heart of which sells rose garlands on cold December nights, where men cook rice and lentils in large cauldrons so visitors to the tombs of saints can purchase meals for the poor, where steaming sugary chai is sold in chipped ceramic mugs on roadsides laden with fog, where ice-cream shops stay open until 3 in the morning, where a stack of journals old and new is maybe waiting for me still...perhaps I, too, would celebrate, because who cares if it's just another day, right? In Lahore, you celebrate everything, every day - or at least that was the Lahore I grew up in. Is it still the same, I wonder as the sound of fireworks dies away in the distance. The sky above me is dark again. What does it look like in Lahore? Just another day, just another day, justanotherday...