an itinerant observer

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...

“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...

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, ‘...

What’s the chance of a bad outcome,lik e death, in Karachi? Based on anecdotes circulated on social media and what you read in the news, you might assume that chances for a series of unfortunate events remain high in this city. This prompted a friend to do some calculations to gauge chance of an unexpected death in Karachi, compared to any major metropolitan city in the U.S. Assuming how the percentages were arrived at was fairly accurate, the bottom line, if true, was intriguing: the likelihood of an untimely, unexpected death was similar in the two places. Delving into death rates in Karachi vs. elsewhere was perhaps meant to be an intellectual discourse following the meaningless death of a colleague’s sister in Karachi. Being gunned down outside a famous restaurant after a meal there is hard to rationalize as an expected outcome of a botched cell phone robbery attempt. But this is Karachi. And such occurrences are unfortunately all too frequently heard and shared. Ev...

Photo-credit: Saniya Kamal, AKU MBBS ' 18 I was doing a rotation in anaesthesia. Standing in the pre-operative area, waiting for the next patient for our operation room to arrive, I overheard perhaps one of the most significant conversations of my life. There was a young patient and her Obstetrician / Gynecologist (OB/GYN). There was some talk about removing her uterus, perhaps a cancer or something else threatening her life. I couldn't really hear everything nor was that the intention. Simply stated, I wasn't paying much attention to it. They were going to remove her uterus to save her life. That much I could tell. And then she asked her doctor a simple question. A simple yet bone chilling question. "Meray paas bachadani nahi hoge tau mujh se shaadi kaun karay ga?" (If I don't have a womb, who is going to marry me?) The doctor paused. Smiled reassuringly. "Beta, shadi bachadani se thori hoti hai." (Child, it's not the womb one marr...

Photo-credit: Saniya Kamal, AKU MBBS '18 How do you tell an eight year old the worst news she will ever hear?  What can you say to her, to make her feel that the idea of dying isn't that bad after all? Marium doesn’t have her parents with her. She’s with her phuppi aur phuppi ka susar (aunt and aunt's father in law). Wow! Worthy intimate relations present to offer emotional support? As these initial medical interactions usually go, I take the full history from the 'close' relatives and perform the exam thoroughly just to go the extra mile to impress my attending. In all the forty or so minutes it takes for me to gather information and study scans, Marium keeps drawing my attention. She's sitting in a corner, just observing everything I do with those big eyes, those big katora (cup) eyes. Every time she blinks, they look bigger than before. The eyes are full of fear and confidence at the same time, asking me so many questions. Yet, she's ...

Today marked week three of relocation to Karachi from Houston.  My family comprising my wife and two young children, aged eleven and six, respectively, had finally taken the plunge. We had moved back irrespective of the predominantly discouraging comments of well wishers in both cities – their basic contention being that it was not the ‘right time’ to move to Karachi given the volatility, insecurity and unpredictability inherent in that city. Initially, my rambly writings had helped me tremendously in settling down, or at least that’s how it felt. Each week I had attempted to write on something related to Karachi that could be compared and contrasted with Houston. As I had mentioned in a previous entry of the Karachi-Houston diaries, finding something to write about was not always easy. I would scratch my head aplenty and if that didn’t help then I would beseech the muses, more in my heart now, to reveal to me my next writing mission. That morning, I had walked out on to the...