an itinerant observer

The confusion arose when I came across the following by Tennessee Williams: "I f the writing is honest, it cannot be separated from the man who wrote it.”   “Well said Mr. Williams...”, I said to no one in particular, “..but might it not be of benefit, if prior to writing, one sorts out a working definition of ‘honesty’?”  I was thinking about any material that one writes; let's say you think about something, feel passionately about it and then write about it 'from the heart' ...is that honesty, or being too transparent? Are honesty and effective writing intimately connected? Why write at all?    I remember asking a friend what he thought about my pre-writing dilemma. He launched into a somewhat academic tirade. According to him it was important to decide whether one was writing with a readership in mind or for oneself. “If you're just writing for yourself, to clarify an experience or go through a specific thought process, then being honest and just put...

Around the turn of the century, Y2K was ushering in a doomsday scenario. I, on the other hand, as a young physician-scientist, was quite excited. You see, I was quite confident that knowledge of our genetic heritage would be the panacea that the world was seeking. I think the lure of genes and genomes was merely an obsession for me. However, once I realized that, on a global scale, sustainable health for kids was not going to come from the deciphering of genetic codes, I had to switch my trajectory. First came the awareness that I could no longer be an indefinite graduate student. That realization was made all the more potent when Ayesha, my wife, threatened to enroll in graduate school for English Literature in lieu of her relatively better compensated psychiatry residency. In order to determine what I wanted to do, clinically and academically, I remember asking myself a few hard-hitting questions. The most crucial was: “Where can I make the most difference or have the most im...

“Baba, my friends were saying that little kids died in ‘Conticut’ !” Noori, the 1 st grader, was quite charged when she related that to me. I, as usual, was oblivious to that factoid although I work in mainstream America. I mostly work night shifts so when I picked Noori up from school it was technically bedtime for me. Some blame could be laid on the 3 rd flu-like illness I was suffering through in a 5 week period. Being an ER doc in a busy children’s hospital, the frequent colds were the necessary evil I was exposed to. I had loaded myself up on multiple medications to control my symptoms partly in an attempt to survive that night‘s shift in the ER. The 1 st query that arose in the dazed and drugged mind of mine was: “Noori, what or where is Conticut?” The massacre of the children took a back seat for the moment. “I don’t know! But there were lots of guns and blood – Ella said so”. Ella was Noori’s equally excitable and worldly friend. It was then that my mind gained s...

Have you ever wondered why hospital lobbies, unlike hotels, do not routinely house pianos? I don’t know but they should. I think it would be a great service to the patients and staff to hear music wafting from the lobby to the nether regions of any dingy and dreary hospital.  As lady luck would have it, my hospital not only has a piano parked in the middle of its lobby, it also works! It is an old, black, chic grand piano that beckons to me in the wee hours of the night as I pass it by. “Come play! Caress us or strike us, if needed, but play you must!”, invited the piano keys, last night. I am a closet pianist and I don’t have the courage to come out to all as yet. The graveyard shift ensured lack of an audience, and that boosted my confidence to play. Although tentative to begin with, I threw caution to the wind as I got to the few pieces that I thoroughly enjoy. I paid homage to the dear departed Beethoven, by playing ‘ode to joy’. That was followed by, in quick succes...

My relocation to Karachi around half a year back took an interesting turn when all kinds of festivals came into awareness.  In a short span of a few weeks over the past month alone I was regaled by invitations to events to ‘experience’ food (for a food festival), books (for a literature festival), clothes (for a clothes festival), and culture (for a provincial language suffused ethnic cultural festival). Now Karachi, as you are well aware, is a very interesting city.  Among the volatility and religio-political grandstanding, all sorts of festivities and festivals are being rolled out as alluded to above. I am interested in food, books, clothes, culture, and so on, but not necessarily in that order. At the festival the thrust tends to be not only the said item per the title of the festival, but also other things listed there. Therefore, the non-specificity of said event makes me happy. And yet the events do create attendee confusion in me, along with attendee fatigue. ...

As the 1 st  year of relocation from Houston to Karachi drew to an end, I wondered what I could write to mark that milestone. As happened over the past, whenever faced with a writing conundrum, I would ask the muse.  “Write about failure, and put it in a relevant context”, said the muse this time around, without hesitation. “Who’s failed frequently enough and could be the protagonist of this story?” I asked her. No answer. And then it occurred to me that the person whom I needed to write about was closer than I'd envisioned. I am a story of failure.  I have failed a lot. In fact, I have failed so often that I will fail again just trying to quantify my failures. Below, somewhat chronologically, I relate my choicest failure stories: One of my earliest, and repeated, failing situations led to my inability to get into an elite, legacy-based school in Karachi that my older siblings and cousins had attended. I failed the entrance test for another private sc...