Saturday, February 14, 2004

Why anarchy? Why...anything? Why is anything necessarily 'wrong', asad?

Staring out my car window, on hot, sweaty karachi afternoons. The air conditioner's broken again. I'm staring at the same intersection. Shahrah-e-Faisal, Sindhi Muslim. Carpet Inn. Roma Computers. Khokas. General stores. Motorcycles weave their way through the gaps between cars, like ants threading their way through a particularly difficult piece of terrain. Beggars, showering their blessings on you, and then sometimes rapidly taking them back and damning you to hell if you didn't have that rupee to spare. Fathers telling you about their sick daughters, for whose medicines they have not the money. Apparently. Truth or Lie? Do you dare make the choice?
Staring.
Did you ever feel that maybe, somehow, you could figure it out...maybe it was just something excessively simple staring at you in the face. Did you ever feel the thought slip away just as you thought you'd gotten your mind to twist quite that way?
I have. Every time i passed that particular intersection, incidentally. almost everytime. other times id close my window, id be living my life, not staring, and be too busy to care.

Everytime i wonder if something really is wrong, i think back to Sindhi Muslim and Shahrah-e-Faisal. If everything really is fine, and everything really is meant to be this way, then why did a 13yr old kid who had no right to think life was imperfect keep thinking he saw a truth turn a corner before his mind could get to it?

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