an itinerant observer

I watched The Life of Chuck on a flight out of JFK. The plane had just lifted, and the movie found me. No distractions, no wandering thoughts. It landed inside me faster than Flow had on another journey . I came of age reading Stephen King. From the haunting darkness of Salem’s Lot , The Shining , Cujo , and It to the unexpected humanity of his short stories adapted into The Shawshank Redemption and Stand by Me , King shaped my sense of how worlds can collapse, and how small, luminous acts still matter. The Life of Chuck felt like the natural continuation of that arc: not horror, but mortality seen through wonder. The story runs backward. Death first. Then middle age. Then childhood.  The world itself collapses into darkness, only to reveal the celebration of one man’s life, Chuck’s. Thirty-nine years written as if they were the span of a cosmos.  When he dies, the lights go out. That is the point: each of us carries a universe inside, and when it ends, so does the world ...

We shared beginnings - different years, same places: Karachi Grammar School and Aga Khan University. A thin but sturdy thread in the doctor fraternity. We also shared the country club in Karachi, and in its gym is where we often crossed paths. Not to spot each other’s lifts but to swap maps of the world. Like the time I was heading to San Francisco for a conference and Nadir, between sets, gave me a street-by-street guide to the city, covering both work and after hours. He could have been moonlighting as a tour guide. That trip of mine went fantastically.  He was never my official career counselor, yet we had enough one-to-one sessions in the club’s garden to make it seem otherwise. He would talk about being at AKU, then moving away, shifting between academic medicine and private practice. When I spoke about my own trajectory in similar terms, he was always gracious in his mentoring. Later I realized he was like that with many others too. His funeral, with its sea of people ca...

Seven years. That’s how long it’s been since he left - though it’s a complicated kind of absence, more presence-in-absence than true departure. My father, Abu, was not the type to explicitly guide or advise. He was not a mentor, and certainly not a friend in the typical sense. We did not have those deep, heart-to-heart conversations. Instead, he was this quiet, steady presence in my life, sometimes maddeningly so. A provider? Yes. But as a father, in the conventional sense - someone I looked up to, leaned on, shared my struggles with? Not really. And yet, in some strange way, he was always there, quietly shaping my life choices without interference, accepting whatever I was doing, however unremarkable. I have often wondered if he would approve of the decisions I have made, like the time I signed his code status as Do Not Resuscitate . I remember standing by his side, grappling with that decision, feeling both alone and strangely anchored by the quiet figure he had always been. An...

  T oday heralds beginning of an era Not of interest to meaningless minds Regardless, this story must be told. On the anniversary of death One year later, Back from his journeys – inner outer. “You are no different!” says Shams The one - teacher, friend, lover Assumptions? Narcissus’ Shams - sun, mirror, lover And in that love’s reflection With many layers shed Love One year before, On the eve of death Girl on the second floor Who was she to Narcissus? To Shams everything And yet he wishes to turn back time To eliminate the darkness by the sea? Have you really not fathomed those indecipherable tattoos? That can be seen but not felt; if felt then not heard. And yet palpable to the eye and ear In the darkness by the sea. Pain Of continued separation. But what’s done is done And what’s done cannot be undone. One year was all it took For one to become one And in that one year, perhaps… This esoterica from an insomniac’s dream mus...

T oday heralds the beginning of an era Not of interest to meaningless minds  Regardless, the story must be told. Narcissus was fond of looking into mirrors, That perhaps comes as no surprise. But recently his attention had moved to photographs Unlike images in mirrors, photos didn’t talk back (as yet). What great photos! He marveled at what he saw: A plethora of well-dressed young pretty women and handsome men Smiles, frowns, joy, mirth, silliness. All captured for eternity “Ah! The unending possibilities of youth”, said his heart “But wait! Did you not notice that there was something missing?” said his head. For you see, there was a dearth of old people in the photographs Where did they go? Were they whisked off to someplace momentarily? Maybe a nursing home? One voice inquired, the loudest in the cacophony. His heart mused but for a few seconds and then kicked in, “More likely that the old folks have been relegated; To dark corners of the...

My ER shift started in chaos. “Does it have something to do with today being Friday the 13 th ?” I wondered, although not really being all that superstitious, I knew it was just a momentary thought. On bed 13 lay Aleya, a 13-year-old previously normal and healthy girl, youngest of 13 siblings. To add insult to injury she got ‘tubed’ (intubated), unsurprisingly, at 1300 hours. But I get ahead of myself, so let’s start at the beginning.       For the past 13 days Aleya had been running ‘very high’ fever, not confirmed by a thermometer. “Jism bahut garam tha” [body felt really hot] said her 18-year-old brother, repeating the fever-detection-by-hand story that I must have heard over a thousand times already since starting work in the pediatric ER, just a few years ago.  I didn’t say anything to Aleya’s brother then as I was tired of getting on the soap box about inaccuracy of that approach for fever detection. “Get a thermometer next...

It didn’t happen Hasan. There was no   6 am   phone call on the   12th of January . We didn’t tell Amu, who became numb with shock. We didn’t jump into the car and make our way to the hospital; our sobs turning into moans of bewilderment. I didn’t see your mother walk out of the gate, turn around and see me running towards her, as if she was sleepwalking. I didn’t see her stunned face crumple in disbelief I didn’t catch her as her knees buckled. The four of us didn’t huddle on the dewy road outside the hospital, crying, watched by curious bystanders. I didn’t get in the ambulance with your shrouded body; stroking your covered hands and face, trying to memorize the feel of you. I didn’t stare at my sister in anguished silence as she looked into my eyes uncomprehendingly, desperately, saying   ‘maaro dikro* …maaro DIKRO!” I didn’t hear Lumyah crying out,   “But he’s only thirteen.” You didn’t just die in your sleep Hasan, my...