He can take her and her bubbly laugh. Her terrible grammatical errors. Her airhead comments. Her way of never taking herself seriously. Her constant compliments. Her puppy dog eyes.

This is me and I'm not changing. Too fucking bad.

What should be part of my mission statement...

I am never going to get married. This is not me being ridiculous, non conformist or just plain old inexperienced. This is me begging you to take me seriously. It seems as if it works for most people and I sure as hell can't think of an alternative but marriage is a lie for the most part. Unless you're extremely lucky and manage to find someone who will compromise for you as much as you're willing to compromise for them.

However, my expectations of people are not that high and never will be. At the end of the day, all you have is yourself and what you did with your life. And that is how it should be.

Well, for me anyway.

attempts to define

This is me and this is you and this is how it's been. I'm going to pause here and hope you imagine a blank because the truth is, I don't know how it's been exactly. I can't simply categorize it and then push it away indifferently. Seeing everything you do and analyzing it in terms of my classification. My narrow minded, depthless opinion of you. No. Not anymore.

So how has it been in terms of feelings? I'd quote Shakespeare. Something about Caesar and the stars. But I can't remember it right now. It was beautiful though and the first time I heard it (You walked in, silenced us all, looked straight at me and said it out loud) I couldn't understand it but I felt like crying.

People shouldn't be cynical about Shakespeare but that is another story.

But you and I, we're not another story. We go beyond any sort of classification, any secure category. We are the times you tell me about your day. We are the books we've both read and learnt from. We are the laugh we share after I have said something that somehow manages to be incredibly mature and naive at the same.

We'll laugh like that again someday.

But for now and for the record. I really miss you.

Looking Past It

So, Islamabad.

Not that I haven't done this before. Same fancy hotel and nine am breakfast. Same gloomy-ish weather and one hour drive to Murree. The foreigners, the sauna, being around my family almost constantly. Yeah.

Not that the foreigners aren't fun with their their easy smiles (especially Europeans, they smile and you can't help but think racial profiling is a myth and nothing more) and their inability to pronounce any word that requires soft syllables and Eastern accents. The twang is harsh be it American or British. More formal when it's British and more -how to put it- naive(?) when it's American.

I've been here three days. The first two days were spent in luxury, to the point where I should feel slightly ashamed of myself. The third evening we got into a metro cab and drove to a part of Islamabad where the roads were no longer level. Houses were squashed together and there was no electricity. Nor could I recognize the hum of a generator because no one in the vicinity owned one. The entire area was flooded in darkness and so we found the house with difficulty. My mother's cousin opened the door and we were greeted warmly. But she didn't interest me much and neither did her kids. Although I liked her well enough. Her father-who three years ago had smiled and said he senesed wickedness in my eyes- was my grandfather's older brother. He sat there in the corner and winked at me. A kindred spirit of sorts.

The lawyer husband entered and all polite conversation ended. Everything he said merited a laugh. And he was informal. In a country like Pakistan where the only attention girls get from distant male relations is a nod and sometimes a smile, to have an uncle sit next to you and tell you all about his profession, the cases he handles, the people he meets and how Aitzaz Ahsan is a lying little reprobate (his words, not mine) is unconventional. He peppered his Urdu with enough four syllable English words to let us know he could speak both perfectly. Imagine. In a house where there is no generator and kids who were doing their Matric, there lives a man who casually tosses the word 'vernacular' around.

Being the daughter of a doctor, perhaps I tend to romanticize law. But the fact of the matter remains that at the core of both politics and law lie values. Freedom, justice, equity. What we dismiss as idealistic and cynically roll our eyes at but still aspire to and are excited by. The French Revolution may have been a gory, bloody mess but at the heart of it lay the cries of liberte, equalite, fraternite (the last one, I may be slightly opposed to) which despite everything still manages to uplift even the most jaded.

At the end of the day, all any doctor can do is tell you how to take care of yourself.

before the last exam

I am impressed by my ability to time myself. Half an hour of studying. Five minute break. Check Facebook. Listen to the song that got stuck in your head mid way through the first chapter. Back to studying. Do the first section by three, second by four thirty, third by six and then sleep for an hour. Wake up, revise till eight then go take the exam. Get back from the exam. Sleep for four hours.

Is it just me or is life getting monotonous already?

Lesson for April

Aerobics equals pain.

Even I can do that sort of maths.

Irony

So

Can you actually read my mind? Not in a Killer-esque manner, my expectations aren't that high just yet. They probably never will be either. But what if I screamed a thought? Yelled it right out loud? That should wipe the smile off your satisfied face, should properly halt the conversation, you may even turn and never look back. There would be an awkward pause in the very least. Except there won't be. Because (some sentences should just start with reasoning) of course, the screaming will remain in my head.

Funny how I'm always telling other people to be more expressive.

It doesn't matter much. Minds aren't meant to be read anyway.

Just because

Today I spoke to someone who I thought used to mean a lot to me. I say 'thought' because he still does. It wasn't awkward at all despite the fact that I always find Skyping awkward. He still knows exactly what I am about to say which is something no one else really does.

I didn't realize before I spoke to him today that I miss him. I think he knows that. And I'd quite like to think that he misses me too.

Sometimes I'd fool myself into believing that whenever he looked away into the distance it was because he was actually thinking about something and not because his eyes were losing focus. I'd tell myself that what I had said the day before had just slipped his mind for a moment and hinting at it slightly would make him remember. I would convince myself that he dreamed dreams that would make me smile if I heard about them.

And I would always be wrong.

Off stage

When I saw her later I couldn't quite believe it was her. She was wearing far too much eye makeup for one thing and it made her look gaudy. When she was on stage, the make up wasn't even noticeable because her eyes were distracting, sparkling wickedly whenever she made the audience laugh. Her clothes had seemed alright on stage too but they didn't make sense now. All that unnecessary glitter. I noted that she had lines on her face that makeup couldn't hide, her hair was a mess which is funny because I swear, it had seemed fine when she was performing.

She sipped her coffee, completely unaware that I was looking at her. No less than ten minutes ago she had been full of energy. She had stood on stage, used her hands a lot and successfully held an audience's interest for a whole hour. Hell, she had made them laugh almost non stop for a whole hour. Not an easy feat.

She was just a performer and was bound to do normal things like sit alone, drink coffee and look tired afterwards. But there was still something oddly sad about the whole thing.

rat racing

It is six in the morning.

I have a History mock in five hours.

I need an A in said History mock because if I do not get an A then I will not get an A overall this year. And then I will shoot myself. Because I have, successfully, entered the rat race. And I want A's. They are pretty. They assure me I am intelligent because I possess the ability to write down useless facts about nothing much really and then analyze those facts and link them back to the question. Yes. As in, how many battles Napoleon fought because after all, WHO cares about why he fought them or how it is fate really that made him as great as he was. And really, what defines greatness?

Never the philosophy behind the things people do because that's not part of our history syllabus.

So HERE'S an idea. I'll move to New York and write for the stage. I will only deal with drama in the literal sense of the word. And then eventually come back and write plays here. Political plays. In urdu. I will be able to write in Urdu by then. And no degree will ever matter. What a plan.

Okay back to History.

Benassi

He's going to dazzle and daze me really. There will be bright lights and sunsets. Fireworks and looks across rooms. Careless whispers and less glorious moments. Times when I'll be driven to distraction. When I won't sleep nights but somehow stay awake mornings.

And he won't even know.

There are times when I am overawed by knowledge. The depth of it. The diversity. The shades and colours.

The fact that I lack it on so many levels. And the impatience that comes with knowing that.

I should scold myself for such pretentious writing.