Monday, September 25

I'm not sure about you in this din

Tuesday, September 26

He cannot sleep.

He was not going home!

The man at the khoka pours his chai into a chipped glass mug, milk blooming downwards and outwards within amber gloom. The man at the khoka calls him saheb. He leaves him his last 20 rupees.

Wednesday, September 27

2:56 a.m. He dreamt of his mother again after a long, long time. She stood at the window of his old house in Quetta and pointed at the sky. One by one, from the north to the south, every star in the sky fell, until the hemispheres were starless.

He woke up, but I don't think he did. I don't think he's ever really awake. The lakes in Quetta do not have names; they have myths. The mountains have names because there are many, many mountains. They let him sleep in the garden of their small house that night, the woman and her daughter.

Some time in the night, he dreamed of billowing red cloaks upon the sands of Thar and women singing, perched on the crumbling walls of some abandoned fort in Rajasthan. They give him roti in the morning. The daughter gives him her chappal. She calls him bhai and asks him to bless her. He thanks her and tells her she needs no blessings.

Thursday, September 28

There is no solace in Sindh. Un-dead bones of priests and poets cry out from beneath the ochre earth of Chaukundi. He leaves knowing that the dead sleep uneasily. The company of their ancestors does not make eternity any easier to bear in this necropolis. On Makli Hill in Thatta, he turns his face to the wind and smells spring. The sea is a dying siren; its voice holds no allure. The midnight moon only exposes its putrid façade even more. The cry of the dolphin is a death-rattle and he will not hear the deep sorrow of its loss any more. He lies down beside the river, this dream-snake coursing through our land like sinuous silk. The gentle cadence of its whispering tides tells him to rest. But then he remembers Harrapa and he knows the river is a liar. It may not be as temperamental as the Tigris but neither is it as faithful as the Nile. Sindhu, the river-- one you call, the Indus. He is tired. He longs for sleep with no dreams. The river weeps. Blind dolphins cannot console it. In the village, a woman's screams rend the night. Her husband has returned from the war in Kargil. They leave the bodies at the doors of their homes in the dead of the night. Her husband will be buried at dawn and this land is not kind to widows. The voice of the Punjab is a distant, slatternly song. He will let his feet sink in her muddy bosom, a queen-whore embracing her every conqueror and poisoning them in their sleep.

Equinox - Midnight, Friday, September 29 and Saturday, September 30

…barefoot upon

Sunday, September 31

He jolts awake. The bus takes another cataclysmic lurch and hurtles to a halt outside a raucous bus depot on the outskirts of Lahore. A man, his face all leery smiles, asks him where he would care to spend the night. A little girl, her left hand cup-shaped and pleading, is singing in a voice both piping and weeping. 'Bahaar', she sings, 'bahaar ai.' He watches maggots swarm across the scabrous stump of her right arm. In the phone booth next to his, a woman is saying "… and I said something that sounded ridiculously like love and oh God, I was so afraid of her laughing in my face." He calls his sister and cannot say anything when she says "Hello?" She says, "Bhai..?" and he hangs up. Heera Mandi sprawls languidly beneath his window. He watches a painted woman give roti to a man with matted hair and wild eyes. A walrus-man with lassi clinging to his moustache pulls her away. The wild-eyed man watches and does nothing. A door bangs shut. He falls on his knees by the fetid gutters; weeps. A muezzin calls the faithful to sunrise prayers.

Monday, September 32

I'm not sure about you in this din

– Inspired by Neil Gaiman's short story, 'Letters found in a Shoebox...' from his