an itinerant observer

I had been living with the song and its images for years, long enough that they had become part of the background hum of my thinking. They never demanded attention. They simply stayed. It was only recently that they sharpened, prompted by two questions that arrived gently and without ceremony, asked by the same person who has a way of doing that. What was it like to help settle a child in college? What was it like to solemnize my child’s marriage? Ordinary questions, really, the kind people ask without realizing they are asking about time more than events. A muse, in the truest sense. Not an object of inspiration, but a presence that tilts you slightly off balance, just enough to make you look again at a room you thought you had already left. I tried to answer well. I sent voice notes that wandered, doubled back, repeated themselves. I could hear myself circling, offering coherence without quite arriving at precision. I spoke about logistics, transitions, perspective, the mecha...

Prologue: Grounded in Houston – A City of My Many Lives The delay begins in Houston—a city etched into my identity. It’s where my kids were born, where I spent fifteen formative years, and where every return feels like both homecoming and farewell. Today, it’s a five-hour layover that stretches into an eternity. “Why this flight? Why me?” I mutter. The minutes bleed into hours. Airports have a peculiar way of amplifying existential questions, as if the pause in transit reflects a broader pause in life. When I finally reboard, it feels less like travel and more like drifting—an uneasy sense of being uprooted and untethered. In-Flight Double Feature: Cinema at 30,000 Feet Somewhere above the clouds, I scroll through the in-flight entertainment and land on Mother, Couch —a bizarre, dystopian family drama. A mother anchors herself to a couch in a furniture store, refusing to budge. Her children orbit around her, paralyzed by her immobility, tangled in invisible threads of expecta...

Dance, when you're broken open. Dance, if you've torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance when you're perfectly free. -Rumi “Dhum-dhum-dhum…” The drumbeat started plaintively at dusk. I felt someone tap me on the shoulder. As I turned around, the sights were to behold; orange, purple, yellow, green and blue fairy lights adorned the tomb creating a riot of colors. The chadors being handed out for draping around our necks were lal – red – the color attributed to the Saint. It wasn’t just the sights and sounds that were captivating. Incense sticks generated a pleasant aroma. Typically, I would’ve been irritated by the cloying Metro Milan  agarbati  – but not this time. The nasal senses were heightened as much as the others, if not more. As if the sights, sounds and scents weren’t enough, a tingling sensation made itself felt all the way from my fingers and toes to my center. It felt like a warm embrace. ...

I have always been the kind of girl who believes in true love. When I was little, I couldn’t wait for my own “happily ever after.” Dreaming of my own wedding, binge-watching romantic movies - all that jazz. My definition of love now is different than it was when I was fifteen; or even then it was just a month ago. To me, then, love was a perfect force between two people capable of healing all the hatred and violence in the world. To me, now, love is something too great and complicated to put it into words, but I’ll try. Love is interactions. People. Places. Events. Feelings. Colors. Love is the way my Nani (grandmother) reminisces about my Nana (grandfather). Love is my Abboo’s (father’s) embrace as I cry into his shoulder. Love is strangers offering you iftaar during Ramazan . Love is smiling at yourself in the mirror when you feel radiant. Love is a mother seeing her newborn baby for the first time. We are all bound by love; we are all connected in some way. That’s what’s so ...

Dear Karachi, Ptooey ! Did you know that’s an onomatopoeia? A written sound, in other words. Or more precisely, per the Merriam-Webster dictionary :   Definition of  onomatopoeia T he naming of a thing or action by a vocal  imitation  of the sound associated with it (as  buzz, hiss ). Ptooey! That’s the commonest written version of the sound that is presumably made when you spit. Why presumably, you ask. Well because the esteemed composers of the dictionary obviously did not travel to our city prior to drafting that onomatopoeia.      Paan -splattered flowerbed outside the ER where author works Why do I say that? Simple. Have you ever spat on a wall here? You don’t have to. You don’t need to. Simply look around and you will observe several fellow Karachi- wallas spitting away as if participating in a well-orchestrated symphony. And not just on walls, but also on footpaths, roads, grounds, gardens, flowerbeds, schools, col...

We do not claim to be experts on Narrative Medicine ‘criteria’ - particularly where the reflective aspect of the writing is concerned. However, based on our experience of reading and writing reflectively, we provide the following 15 key suggestions for effectively written medical narratives. Keen observation  is very important. Medicine is fast paced so taking time to reflect on every day happenings can make way for some very interesting narratives.   Have a central ‘message’  that needs to come across without sounding didactic / academic, lecturing, holier than thou, etc. Think of this as a subtle point you’ll be making to the reader by the manner in which you narrate the happenings.   Honesty is important  because it is difficult to pretend when you are writing. Sure you can but when you write about real things it shows.   Be creative and purposeful  in writing. Is the purpose to advocate for the p...

1.       The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien “One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all And in the darkness bind them. In the land of Mordor, where the shadows lie.” [The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien] And thus started, during my teens, a lifelong love affair with this epic trilogy – probably, the most popular work of all time from within the fantasy genre. That there can be reality in fantasy accompanied the realization that Tolkien’s Middle Earth is no different from the world that I inhabit. As happens in Middle Earth, there are hobbits, elves, dwarves, mythical and magical figures or creatures around me and in me – yet the beauty and evil, light and dark, of that human entity is paramount. I would like to call upon the  Tolkienian  in you to recall the conversation between Gandalf the wizard and Frodo Baggins a hobbit, and the presumably inconsequential ring bearer, in the 1st part, ‘...