I Spy

I am convinced that the job of a primary school teacher is one of the toughest in the world. And I'm not saying this just because I am one myself. You are basically a substitute parent with the added responsibility of educating these wild things. You are also constantly switching roles from bad cop to good cop, from friend to foe, from an entertainer to a serious, frown bearing, glasses wearing, nose wrinkling lecturer all the while functioning as a dictionary, an encyclopedia, a mentor, a model and well...the list doesn't end. I mean, there is a reason I take four hour naps after coming home from work. But with all this drama, you get to have these incredible moments that only childhood innocence can give you. 

The school where I work, the faculty bathrooms share a common wall with the students' bathroom except, since ours has its entrance from the faculty room, most students have no idea that we are so close. We can pretty much hear every single conversation that goes on in there because of the air vents. Some of these conversations are hilarious. Six to eight year old children convene to complain about their day, or how harsh their teacher is or what they got for lunch and what they are willing to exchange (they actually have a proper barter system in place: one brownie for two bananas and a chicken nugget, two cookies for four nuggets, the list goes on) 

A couple of days ago I was chilling in the faculty bathroom, trying to get away from an incredibly boring teacher who loves to give religious talks to all and sundry. I was sitting and reading when suddenly, one of my student's voice drifts in through the air vent. She was basically bossing the first graders around, telling them off for not using soap, discussing lunch break with one of her friends...the usual. I was just listening to her when I had one of my "Edison" moments. I stood under the air vent and called out

"Umamah, get back to class this instant. This is a bathroom, not a club."

For a few seconds there was complete silence. And then..

"How does she know everything?!"

"Told you. She's a witch."

Heaven Under Her Feet

Just out of curiosity, do you have a tattoo?

No.

For God's sake, why would you even get a tattoo?!

Ami, I don't have one.

Yes, but why do people want them?

Ami, I don't know. Who cares.

Hmm.

Just out of curiosity, what would you have done if I did get a tattoo?

Khabardar. I absolutely forbid it.

You can't tell me what to do anymore you know...

9 months of carrying you and almost 30 hours of labour followed by a surgery and lifelong scars suggest otherwise.

A-0 Mom-1

Blessed Are The Oblivious

Time is strange.

A year ago, I thought I would never recover from my loss.

And today, I can't even remember what I lost in the first place.

I think time is beautiful.

Bleed Green

Their tea was getting cold, but they were oblivious to it as they sat on the balcony, under a canopy of green and white paper fluttering in the breeze of a warm August afternoon. She felt overwhelmed by wave after wave of nostalgia as she watched the children on the street run around with their little flags, every single one of them wearing some shade of green, bellowing out one national song after another, with an occasional shout of "Pakistan Zindabad" thrown in during those awkward minutes when no one could come up with a song. She remembered her own childhood; being woken up to watch the national parade, the whole family standing up to sing the anthem, the tears in her grandfather's eyes.

She had once asked him about it.

"When your heart is in two places at once, you'll understand."  

Wise old man. She missed him. And the Independence Day breakfast. Oh how she missed that. The oily parathas and the chickpeas gravy that made you feel groggy all day long. But it was the unconditional love and pride and the purity of those feelings she missed the most.

She turned to look at him, he kept watching the celebrations. She looked away and closed her eyes; she could still see the ocean of white and green. He reached out to hold her hand when she sighed, making her smile.

"I wish I could be seven again."

"What the hell for?"

"I don't know. Look at that joy. Look how happy they are. I want to feel that way again."

"That isn't joy. It isn't happiness. It's living a lie. This blissful ignorance will shatter soon enough"

"Uff! Why do you always have to be so morbid."

"It's not being morbid. It's called growing the fuck up. It's called a reality check. Look around you A. Do you really want this blind patriotism? Pretending nothing is wrong, that everything is perfect?" 

"Sometimes."

"Now you know why this country is going to hell. Half of us our drowning in an ocean of blind faith and the other half is doing their best to keep those idiots under"

"It can't be worse than this emptiness where you realize that you have nothing to fight for at all."

He just rolled his eyes as he got up and picked up his cup of tea. It would be the last thing he would do before a stray bullet fired to celebrate independence would find its way into his skull, the blood splattered flag behind him mocking him as he fell. 

Children of Flame And Ash

R: How do I move on?

A: You stop trying to pick up the pieces, let them fall and light one up as a symbol of good riddance.

R: Ugh. No. I want to find a way to move on, not kill myself in the process.

A: Meh.We all die young, little one. 

R: Haha! You are so full of shit.  

Yellow Diamonds

It's like being permanently stoned on low grade marijuana; a few brilliant highs in between terrible lows, gut wrenching headaches with  moments of total clarity sprinkled in intermittently; the world is grey, the world is a rainbow; and by the time your head clears up and you figure it's time to clean up your act, you're already six feet under.

But You Don't Really Care For Music, Do You?

He wakes up mid afternoon, owing mostly to the electricity..rather lack of. The sunlight is barely visible behind the thick velvet curtains and the room is suffocating because of the summer heat they have trapped in; the room smells of stale smoke, whiskey and sex. This is why he hates spending the night at her place. The curtains make the room feel like a steel box in the middle of a desert.
However, the sex here is just so much better. She's like a wild animal in here; the room is her terrain and she works it beautifully, and with it him.
She stirs next to him, half covered by the thin blanket, in her pink snoopy shirt and black shorts, beads of sweat rolling down her collarbone. She never sleeps naked. He asked her about it once, expecting some complicated answer like she usually gives. "If I die in my sleep, I don't want people to find me naked." Quite simple really.
She shifts and faces him, placing her hands between her thighs. Fuck. She doesn't even let her defenses down in her sleep. Most girls change positions just so they can subtly put their arms around the guy.
He stares at her intently, studying her, as though trying to see into her dreams. Her eyes flash open and she stares back, but says nothing. He isn't even sure if she is awake, but he breathes easy when she smiles her groggy, morning smile; frowning, tiny twitch of the lips and a wrinkling of the nose. She lies on her back and stares into space. "Thinking about him again?" he asks, the irritation in his voice evident. She smiles without looking at him, throws her blanket off and goes to brush her teeth. This was another one of her little habits; she never spoke in the morning unless her breath smelt she'd swallowed a whole mint bush; "Common courtesy," she said.
She comes out and kisses him lightly on his forehead, He hated that; it felt more like an act of condescension than one of love. Sitting on the couch, she lights up a Dunhill. "You can open the curtains if you want."

And he knows she had dreamed about him. She hated sunlight. The curtains were her way of apologizing. She felt guilty for the dream.
"I don't understand women."
"Let's not have this conversation."
"Why always the bad boys? Why always the damaged ones and your need to save them?"
She smiles again, flicking the ash on the carpet.
"Who said anything about saving them?"
"Well then, what else can it be? She looks at him for a moment as she inhales and sighs.

"Because they appeal to our sense of impending doom," she answers, crushing the half smoked cigarette on the table, her signal that the conversation was now over.