Escape on Ferozpur Road

My grandmother’s house is built on the corner of one of the streets that branches off from the busiest roads of the city. Nights that I spend at her house are often sleepless as she likes to leave lights on throughout the house. Try to find simple and effective ways to escape. So I stand in my mother’s former bedroom, and look out from her window onto the street. Its 3 AM. I stare out at the trucks rolling by. I put my hands onto the windowpane, and feel the vibrations for this grand causeway. For a few seconds, my mind hears Lahore’s diabetic frequency.

There’s an epidemic in the city. We, I try and speak of the common Lahori and not all countrymen for reasons I don’t have... we Lahori’s are addicted to our cellular phones. The poorer we are, the more phone calls we seem to receive and get to hear the happiest Indian songs instead of the common beeping waiting for you to pick up the phone. It’s not about it being entertaining, or cheap, to manage a cell phone. It’s all about the momentary fragmented escape. So call me, my ringtone is Lahore’s song.

It has been four days that no one has called me. No five actually. Its 3 AM, the new day is here. Since the 27^th of September, I have sent a total of 8 text messages. I did however go to a wedding, where I made small talk about clothes, the weather and the dreadful sugar crisis gripping the departmental stores of Lahore. I have to have tea at noon with some of my mother’s friends. I hope they talk about sugar as well. My dialogue is well rehearsed. I need to talk to someone I hardly ever meet; it relaxes me, there is no pressure... Hello instant web messenger. How have you been today? What your favourite flavour? Strawberry? Mine too. Such lies.

It is Monday. I stare at cement carrying trucks at night. It is Tuesday. I lie in my driveway at 10 pm and try to see the stars through the November haze that grips Lahore and makes it hard to breathe. It is Wednesday. I stare at the progress bar of my download manager, watching the download speed change the time left, second by second. It is Thursday. I close my economics textbook, wait for 4 am to happen, and light up in my bathroom with the exhaust fan on. It is Friday. I come back from a family dinner, and try not to think about why the boy I liked couldn’t like me back and think about him for two hours while listening to the music we used to listen to. It is Saturday. I have my period, I have an excuse to mope, I sit in the dark and fantasize about dying, hospitals, and anorexia. It is Sunday. My baby sister falls asleep in my bed, and I stare at her for an hour, marvelling at how tiny the pores of her skin are.

Mornings are hard. We eat at night, we dance at night, we sleep at night, we meet at night, we stay at home because we are conservative at night, we get high at night, we sit with ourselves and get to know ourselves at night. Daytime came, and made me give three exams in one day. It was morning when my aunt just bled to death it the hospital. My cook, bless his ghee laden soul, slipped on a paratha, and broke his hip. It was high noon when my best friend’s boy friend decided to drown in his own bath tub. Ever remember Lahore being bombed in the middle of the night?

There is a story in here somewhere; I am trying to say what I need to say. Lahore I love you. But let me escape for more than just a few moments at a time.

Nirala has closed down. Nirala had the best sweets I have ever had. He has stopped talking to me, he is never online anymore. He also had the best sweets I have ever had. It should be a crime, to make a Lahori so used to something and then take it away. I replace mithai with chocolate. I’ll replace all the hes with a husband. It wedding season, those who can’t choose, wait to be chosen. It is most perverse. This is not the story I want to tell. It would be self defeating. Like the cramped supermarkets, the decadence of the drawing rooms, the fake accents and millions of rupees spent sending you to Georgetown and me to St. Andrews, the Karachite making fun of you, the rude beggars of DHA, the security barriers off Sherpao bridge, the seven overlapping aazans five times a day, the children on the street without shoes, the obnoxious empty towering buildings sprinkled all over you, the men on the street scratching themselves nonchalantly, the bus driver spitting pan out the window onto your feet, the officers gone for Friday prayers while you wait for two hours, the extra tuition fees to make up for inadequacy of schools. Yet, Lahore is vibrant, historical, rich and blessed by the Sufis. I need to escape to my bathroom, to have a smoke. I am not a smoker.

In Lahore for 21 years, I have never touched the Minar-e-Pakistan. As a child I was awestruck by it, reading about it in Urdu and soshial shtudies textbooks. Then one day, on the way to Islamabad, I drove past it. It was small. It was out of place. A colonized columnar minaret. It symbolized escape, but it was conflicted and trapped. A planned coincidence that you sand there, like a concrete dandelion. They soon built a better escape out of Lahore. It’s a highway that ignores everything on the sides.

So I go blind. I refuse. I stop thinking about mithai at Eid. I turn off the wi-fi. No one calls anyway. I delete any nostalgia producing music. I stop comparing Minar-e-Pakistan to Data Darbar’s magnificence. I stop listing to the man with a beard, on nine channels of cable television. I stop listening to the 25 anchormen all telling me Lahore is burning. I nod my head at whatever my mother says. I am left with myself and I have no way to get away from me.

Its Monday again. I try to tell you about my escape.