multiple indirecshun

wrote this 2 years ago. how life has changed. post-midlife-crisis - have quit my job, my marriage and my earlier life. never thought this was the path my life would take, so drastically.


you never really think about how your life is gonna turn out. You just have a vague idea/hope/blind conviction that everything's gonna be just ok. ever after, riding into the sunset and all.

I don't quite know what's worse: your life going off-track, keeling off the bucket list or never really having a plan in the first place. Somehow, I've always been the latter: kind of a happy-go-lucky (how ninetines can you get) type, who does all the regular things that one's supposed to be doing: getting good grades in school, graduating college with a job offer, crushing on cute boys but marrying someone who's more than just a cute face. Hitting 26 without ever really having smoked, or taken illegal substances. 

No, this is not an early mid-life crisis (I'm so sure they have a better term for those these days, given the frequency). This is me, writing about living in a city with which I have a love-hate relationship. 

A city which I really do want to escape from, most of the time, but which I'll make non-feeble attempts to defend in front of most Lahoris

1. The Beatles - Here Comes the Sun
2. The Replacements - Can't Hardly Wait
3. Stone Roses - She Bangs the Drums
4. Moody Blues - Emilys Song
5. James Taylor - You've Got a Friend

i thought i was dreaming of her, but i really can't be sure. all i remember is a sad expression.

when people talk politics, i zone out. maybe because i don't know enough, or don't care to. it seems to be a hot topic. it seems to irk nerves. i never quite understood what good talking about it will do. but then, someone could just as easily ask me why i bother talking about

the title's not sentimental, it's just about flickr. i can still roam around it with somewhat ease, but the days when i belonged on it were pre-face-recognition, pre-photoclubs, just shooting. pre-self-consciousness.

some days, it's just panic that something's going by without proper documentation. that somehow makes all of it realer. dreams, told to husband in a half-awake daze, quickly before the day begins.

That's what marriage is. You're not supposed to be touched physically, mentally or spiritually by anyone else. It's not natural to find anyone else of the opposite gender more interesting. Or exciting. Or thrilling.

Does it qualify as cheating if

come with me, and we'll travel
i'd like to be buried next to you
it was something i only wanted to share with you
only if you're driving the bike
i want to see it again with you

do you want to take a break from being married or being the girl who you once were?
aren't they the same thing?
no.

it is this state of mindless procrastination that finds me in an empty house, a friend who's gone to an all-too familiar city. So i do what i've come to be familiar with. Watching foreign films (the subtitles only add to it, never take anything away) and smoking lonely cigarettes. The smoke blows the wrong way in Punjab, so I smoke with my eyes closed.