The Sunday after

 I sit here today as I try to ponder on the inner workings of my mind on this silent afternoon, the Sunday after my escapades. It is something I often do after a long bout of extroverted-ness, my chronic condition of expanding more energy than I would care to on various musings of life. So much has happened in the past three weeks, but most of it too private to tell-tale on a public blog.  But know this: there's a bitter coffee to my right, just within reach, and then the ever pervasive sound of the ceiling fan running as my mind tries to count its rotations with accuracy. I sit donning a jade shalwar kameez, buttons of the sleeves in place, back straight as it soothes the pain, I am back in the confines of sunny equatorial Lahore, the city of gardens, home to guardrails of the Punjab.  I am reminded, suddenly and somberly of my grandfather, typing as I typed, with both hands on his keyboard, fingers pushing buttons, the learnings of his typewriter days being translated to the memo
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2.99

 Guess what you can buy for $2.99?

A cup of coffee or 8 hours of this man’s life.


Sounds crass, but its true. This breadmakers name is Ifftikhar, he’s over 50 and I’ve known him for 10+ years, and there are millions just like him, working weekends to support their family, for literal pennies


It’s Sunday, and today I sit and think of where the world is going. Something is horribly wrong. We don’t need time machines to travel back in time, we just need an airplane


That’s how I felt moving from the US to Pakistan in the early 2000s - like I had travelled back in time - more than 2 decades later I still feel the same way. Social media has helped expose things but the intertia here is too high, I don’t anticipate the lives of such people changing even in the next couple of decades


While the world struggles with thinking about robots taking over their livelihood, people like Ifftikhar can barely comprehend what they’re talking about much less relate, because their daily lives are so untouched by these technological chnages


Life is incomprehensibly different for people in different parts of the world and you’ll never understand this unless you’ve lived in multiple places over the course of your life


Underlying systemic issues that cause such problems do not evade me, but they seem out of our control


Education then might be the equalizer, this seems to be the only somber realization I can come to


Just something to contemplate




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