an itinerant observer

“Baba, today you may pick me up early and take me to the zoo”. And thus Noori had spoken. Noori the kindergartner was obviously having some withdrawal symptoms since she had not been to the zoo in over a month. Noori and Baba frequented the zoo, at times twice a month, albeit for brief visits. Having a yearly membership to the Houston zoo enabled such frequent jaunts to one of the most favorite shared activity spots for the daughter-dad duo. What was more likely though: Mowgli’s spirit had entered Noori that morning, the way she was rattling off about the characters of the jungle book. After school I took Noori straight to the zoo. Hence, the jungle book, without offense to Mr. Kiping, was re-drafted by Ms. Noori. Mr. Sher Khan and Mrs. Sherni Khanum were ignoring each other. They had an argument about who was arranging dinner that night. Colonel Haathi was brushing his tusks after a huge meal of elephant chow. Bagheera was pacing up and dow...

  “If you ever had to adopt a baby then whom would you settle for?” This was the question that I posed to myself recently. Not that I had to nor wanted to adopt a child. I have two of my own (biological ones, so my wife tells me), and they are more than a handful. It all started in Karachi one fine morning while I was working in the ER. A young couple had brought a two day old baby girl to me. The ER triage slip simply stated “baby adopted” as the reason for coming to the ER. I had never come across that as a presenting complaint in the ER, so my curiosity was piqued, irrespective of it being early moments of my ER shift without adequate caffeine in the system. It turned out that the baby had been picked up half an hour before, from a major orphanage in Karachi. The baby had been delivered the day before, per the orphanage staff’s speculation, and she had then been left at the doorstep of the orphanage. Although babies being abandoned there might have been a normal occurre...