personal and collective

After a couple of weeks of suffering from an inexplicable pain deep inside my lower back (that arose from doing mobility exercises of all things) I have diagnosed myself with a slipped disc. Apparently, the problem resolves itself with a bit of rest and tlc, two things I seem to be requiring more of with each passing day.

Summer is in full swing , high u-v indices keeping me firmly ensconced at home during daylight hours. Not that I am ever to be found otherwise. However, since a few days I have been feeling a bit too isolated for my own good, despite the fact that the thought of meeting anyone or having conversations feels impossible. What a conundrum. I wonder if this conflict between dual aspects of ones’ nature afflicts everyone. As I figure out what it is that I truly want, I am spending all my time exploring a variety of creative pursuits. Crochet has taken a backseat as I pull out my scraps and threads and put together a little sampler of patchwork and embroidery. It is a slow, aimless kind of stitching, with no end goal in mind. As a recovering perfectionist, it feels like an exercise in letting go, of relaxing, of not judging the mistakes and flaws in my needlework.

Are Pakistanis generally a loud people? Every thursday we are subjected to a litany of naats over a loudspeaker at a religious leaders’ house right next to where we live. This nonconsensual usurping of communal airspace worked me up into quite a tizzy recently, and I don’t enjoy sitting with rage. I wouldn’t be upset if the voices were soft and melodious. It bothers me that there is no concept of quiet reverence in our culture. Even the guy in charge of making announcements every evening at the mazaar of Abdullah Shah Ghazi across my home, drones on in high-pitched tones. Sadly, the double-glazed windows we installed to block sounds also block the sea breeze that keeps the air in our home in circulation.

Uncomfortable feelings need to be alchemized, or else they land you in more misery. I marched into the kitchen and whipped up some hummus, using tahini straight from the holy lands. Amazing how the frustration of achieving a creamy consistency drowns out all unpleasant noises in the outside world.

But all of this is nothing. There is an underlying anxiety that pervades the air, it cannot be wished away. As I write this, there are leaflets being dropped on Rafah by the Israeli army, ordering thousands of already displaced Palestinians to evacuate immediately. The stress and the horror reach me here, as I reflect on the fact that there are no safe spaces in Gaza for the people to evacuate to. Empathy moves painfully through and coalesces in tears. This bearing witness feels like a ton of bricks on my lungs, it’s hard to breathe when you are aware that there are people being crushed to death in an open-air concentration camp. The only thing giving me any heart these heavy days is the huge shift that seems to be happening in the collective. You’d have to be a hardcore Zionist to deny it.

A few months ago, I was invited to a party. My friend was coming all the way to Karachi from the United States of America to celebrate her mother’s 75th birthday and she asked me to join in the festivities. But when the day came, I was shaken by the news emanating from Gaza and the idea of putting myself in an environment of celebration felt inconceivable, so I didn’t go. I spent the day letting my tears flow unchecked. Later, my friend expressed her disappointment at my not showing up. I told her quite honestly how sad I was feeling, and she said she understood, but that we have to carry on living our own lives and celebrating our own joys, and she’s right in her own way. I don’t really think she understood how I felt though, and understandably or not, when my birthday rolled around, there were no wishes from her in my inbox.

It’s been 212 days, and there is no ceasefire in sight. How is this all going to end? With the complete eradication of the indigenous people of those lands? When will justice be served? is peace in Falasteen a pipe dream? Where has my hope fluttered to?

Chaos

The zen stillness I was able to access for a couple of days while Huz was away, was shattered the day he returned when in a moment of mindlessness I caved in to Minnie’s insistence to be let out for a romp. Lately, she doesn’t seem to like being inside all the time and when I think about it, she is a captive animal after all. Would she have been a happier cat if she was free to roam and explore, be the feral cat I sometimes glimpse? I do wonder. In my minds’ eye, I see her happily rolling about on the sun-baked steps, pottering about the plants in the courtyard before settling on a low table to look lazily up through the tree twitching her ears to the sounds of flitting birds. It isn’t even beyond the periphery of the building, that isn’t too much to ask, is it? My mistake was, I did not chaperone her little excursion because I was too distracted by all the Levantine goodies Huz had brought back for me: za’atar and tahini, and those iconic Palestinian scarves.

Moments later, my blood curdled to the sound of two cats grappling viciously. I didn’t think the horrible gray tomcat was occupying the courtyard this time of the day, waiting to brutalize Minnie if she dared show up. Key words: I didn’t think.

Huz and I flew downstairs in a panic to rescue Minnie, hearts already sunk with the knowledge that our efforts to disengage them wouldn’t work until Minnie was left battered and bleeding. This tomcat is some kind of demon, a killing machine, built like a solid tank. No matter how many times or how hard we thwack him with a stick (or a watering can as it may be) he is unaffected….the only cat I have ever come across that I think of as truly Dangerous. He simply Does Not Back Off. The skirmish seemed endless, escalated blood pressures, dilated pupils, racing heart.

Life is strange. From one moment to the next things can change from peace and tranquility to violence and utter chaos. The tomcat loped off over the fence, leaving a trail of overturned pots and broken plants in his wake. Minnie, bruised, scratched, subdued and in obvious pain, limped back into the house and spent the rest of the day in a corner of my bedroom, licking her wounds, blue eyes downturned like the day we found her. The stress of the morning dissipated slowly. I went back to my khubz, spreading it lavishly with a mix of za’atar and olive oil. So delicious. I ate it with my new keffiyeh wrapped around my neck. While students across the United States bravely protest against the complicity of American universities in Israel’s genocide in Gaza, this is as close to solidarity as I can get.

The day Huz left for Jordan, Billoo the new kitten stepped out into the balcony for a bit. When she realized she couldn’t get back in due to the screen door being closed, she tried to get my attention with soft little meows that I couldn’t hear. I was peacefully reading a book elsewhere, oblivious. I did hear some funny sounds, and figured she was whacking a ball around, playing with something as she often does, happy little kitty. Little did I know she was trying to get back in the only way she knew how with the only tools she had….her claws.

When I took a little break and stepped out of my room for a snack, Billoo was back in. However one glance at the screen door was enough to tell me what those mysterious sounds were, the ones I ignored.

Smithereens, an evocative word, though I had no clue as to its etymology as is probably the case with most users (it comes from the Irish word smidirini, meaning ‘little bits’, I googled) Little Miss Edward Scissorhands had torn the netting in a way it had never been torn before, many little tears and one L-shaped gaping rip that she finally managed to make her way in through. In the absence of Mister Fix-it aka Huz, my stop-gap measure (pun intended) was to take some safety pins, pin a piece of cloth over the holes and hope for the best, i.e fool the mosquitoes.

Huz returned from his trip in five days, and immediately skedaddled to the hardware store to buy new netting. We spent the afternoon replacing the old with the new, a painstaking job involving precision and dexterity, physical and mental. Those being my forte, jobs like these are usually handed over to me, even if they’re not really my job, and I usually end up, thankfully, rising to the occasion. My arm ached by the time we were done putting it back up, but the satisfaction of the end result made it all worth it.

Tired, I went back into my room for a little lie-in, only to find it smelled a bit off. I picked up some clothes that were lying on my bed to put them away and they felt wet to the touch. Even after all these years I still feel disbelief when I sniff something and know instantly why it’s wet. Minnie must have been in too much pain to make the effort of dragging herself all the way to her litter tray, with the result that she eventually peed on my bed. The next half an hour were spent cleaning up.

The next day, due to unforeseen circumstances, Billoo was stuck in Amu’s room with no access to her personal litterbox. I suppose Amu’s hats were deemed a good spot to deposit a little pile of poop as a surprise for her when she got home.

“If Thich Nhat Hanh had to save his pet cat, he would have thwacked the tom too,” says Huz. It gave me pause to reflect. Indeed, what would the greatest mindfulness teacher in the modern world have done? What would Gandhi have done?

“The cats keep us on our toes,” he said another time. “Imagine not having a reason to keep working.”

Imagine indeed, I think wistfully.

Knowing thyself

Today I did a little exercise in letting my intuitive self take over and give me a clue as to what I should write about. I was sitting at Huz’s desk (since he is away) My gaze flickered over his books (around twenty current and ongoing reads) and my hand (of its own accord) reached out to pull out a collection of poems by Langston Hughes. When I opened the book to a ‘random’ page, the poem that emerged was short and sweet, the message clear.

Final Curve

When you turn the corner

And you run into yourself

Then you know that you have turned

All the corners that are left.

How funny and strange to receive such a confirmation out of the blue. For the last week or so, I have been immersed in exploring the Gene Keys, a book that delves into unlocking the mysterious higher purpose hidden in our DNA, giving looking within a whole new meaning. How and why did I arrive here?

It all started some time last year with Amu urging me to find out exactly what time I was born (her being a big astrology enthusiast) so we could figure out my natal chart. All I needed was the location, date and time of my birth. Hitherto, I had no idea what time I was born, I thought that information had gone on into the next world with my mother, a thought that made me feel so sad and defeated. Why did I never bother checking my birth certificate? There it was, in plain sight. It only took me fifty years to find out.

Star signs, or Sun signs and the various characteristics associated with each have always piqued my curiosity even when I hadn’t even heard of the word archetypes.

In the spirit of fun, I dug around my personal planetary placements and found out so many new things about myself that I wasn’t aware of before.

There are many aspects of having my Sun in Sagittarius that I can relate to, but there are quite a few that I cannot. So it was so interesting to find out there’s so much more going on, how much of an influence the moon has, and Venus, and Jupiter, and all the rest. I never knew I had so much Scorpio influence, or that my Ascendant was in Leo….and life began to make so much more sense after reading a book by Debbie Frank (well-known astrologer of awakening) called What’s your Soul Sign?

While exploring the things I incarnated here to be, Amu asked me if I knew about the concept of Human design, which combines elements of astrology, the Chinese I Ching, the Hindu chakra system, Kabbalah and quantum physics to create a highly personalized framework for aligned living……so of course I had to find out my Human Design profile. What was interesting was how everything overlapped and coalesced.

Doing all this self-discovery in cahoots with Amu meant we had each other to bounce these new ideas off of, reading things that sparked introspective conversations for weeks on end, feeling seen, in ways we never had before. What more does a soul ever want?

I have always thought of myself as a hermit, even when I had no awareness that the hermit archetype makes up the entirety of my conscious line, which is the 2nd line in my HD personal chart. I didn’t understand why I gravitated towards solitude so much when I unconsciously loved and sought more connection, something indicated by the 4th line (the opportunist) Such a dichotomous life. We all have our conscious and unconscious aspects playing out in us and we don’t always know what’s going on, what makes us tick. You can try and make sense of it all here, if you so wish. It could turn out to be as delightfully  validating and self-revelatory for you as it was for me . How nice is it to relax in the knowledge that you have the liberty to be completely and unapologetically you.

Which brings me back to the Gene Keys. (Did I mention I found out my hologenetic profile too? You can get yours here.)

It talks about who you are and why you are here, what makes you feel alive, why you don’t have to look outside yourself for truth. This book needs to be read slowly and organically, perhaps like an oracle, like the 64 hexagrams of the I Ching, which it draws upon for inspiration. The premise is that every single person has something beautiful hidden inside of them, which needs to be brought forth. These are your Gifts, coiled inside your DNA, waiting for the light of awareness to be shone on them. Your journey begins when you come to understand that your destiny is shaped by your attitude to life that tells your DNA what kind of person you want to become, not the other way around. So it is that every thought, feeling, word or action is imprinted in every single cell of your body, causing your DNA to contract or relax depending on the quality of your thoughts and emotions, a process that goes on all the time, from the moment you come into the world to the moment you leave.

So here I am, discovering my shadows and my gifts according to this revelatory book. I am taking what resonates and composting the rest. It’s been a bit difficult to try and elaborate on something that is too big for this little blog post, but I thought it’s a good idea to touch upon some of the things I’ve been dwelling on/in lately.

To have the time and space to do this kind of reading and reflection is a real privilege, to turn down and tune out the distractions of the world, to make time to contemplate, an imperative. It feels a lot like freedom. Like turning a corner and running into yourself, and knowing you have turned all the corners that are left.

Shenanigans

It is past 10 pm, and I have just quenched my thirst with a fortuitous coconut stashed in the fridge. Huz never paid heed to it, until of course, he spotted me trying to sneak past his eagle eye, said coconut in hand. It was so darned sweet, how could I possibly share? Emptied of its watery contents, it will go back in the fridge till tomorrow afternoon, when I will take my trusty axe and smash it open, Tarzan-style. Nothing like the taste of sweet young coconut meat, so soft it can be scooped out with a spoon.

I have missed witnessing the full moon in Virgo altogether, so far have I come from those days when I’d keep track of moonrises and moonsets and strive to find good vantage points. Tonight, it is an 85% waning gibbous, and I have spent the last three hours happily crocheting on a freshly made bed.

If anyone asks, I’m a serial hobbyist. My interests spin like a lunar cycle, and all I can do is heed the call, faithful like the tides. These days, it is the weaving of yarn that pulls me into its spell. I used to watch my mother crochet, but never once thought of asking her to teach me how to do it. I didn’t think I could ever possibly learn, it seemed too difficult, too beyond me, something only my multi-talented mother could do. The apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree though, and here I am now, as old as my mother was when I was twenty, churning out granny square after granny square, hatching plans for all kinds of ambitious crochet projects, baskets teeming with colorful yarns. It is a rather absorbing, bordering-on-obsessive hobby, and one must remember to get up and stretch every once in a while.

There is a very particular kind of bodyache that occurs when one has not exercised in some time, then proceeds to do a 30-minute full body workout, chock full of weighted squats. It’s all good though, all part of the plan to be Strong at Sixty. You’re only as old as your spine, and mine is calling out for some twists.

Twists are fun, esp when they arise in plots. There is a tiny grey tabby-like kitten in our lives all of a sudden, clamouring for a lot of food and a lot of love, and here we are, ready and willing to supply both. I have a strong suspicion it might be the runty offshoot of the Terrible Tomcat that terrorizes Minnie and Mowgli….in which case we are harbouring a snake in the proverbial grass. In any case, the kitten is very cute, and behaves like a much-less-poopy version of Jimmy, our beloved cat who disappeared without a trace.

Who are these mysterious beings that just plonk themselves into our lives to wreak havoc on our hearts and our furniture?

The last full moon was in Leo, my rising sign, and it coincided with the birthday of my favorite Aquarian friend. We are the nature buddies we always needed, living in the same city but never meeting.  She and I share a propensity for nature trails and frogs among many other quirks. I can safely say I have never had as much fun as I’ve had in the last eight months of knowing her. I love how she pulls me into her sphere of energy and enthusuasm, so  in the spirit of reciprocity,  I suggested we go on a hike to celebrate her 48th year of existence in this concrete jungle that we so desperately need some respite from. What better way to spend the day than walking on a trail on a faraway beautiful beach?

The air was cool, the water calm, and the beach stretched empty in all directions. There wasn’t a soul in sight, a yearning we aren’t even always conscious of. Donning our hats, shades and walking sticks, suitably fortified with a post-drive picnic, we proceeded to traipse our way across the beach to the headland that juts into the sea. All the way till the last point, admiring the wild plants and violet seashells, where we sat and watched the sunset amid conversation and coffee. Our eyes expanded in all directions, absorbing the blues of the Arabian sea, the cloudscape above, the landscape around us. The moon rose as we made our way back, a pale luminescence that grew brighter as it got darker. I had no idea it was going to be a full moon night. It made the rest of our walk even more captivating, as we neared the shrine and entered its  circular space festooned with prayer flags. It could have been a temple in Nepal, the land that could possibly have been my homeland in another lifetime. We sat there for a while in the quiet, glad for the reassuring presence of the other, she already wearing the floral stole I gave her as a birthday gift. It was the mystical power of the moon that churned up some deep emotions, , sometimes that’s all there is to it. I felt my heart open, and all kinds of  obscure sorrows, fears, gratitude and joy  came pouring in. I put my face in my hands and let myself cry.

photo courtesy, the inimitable M.

We walked back to the car and shared a doughnut, reluctant to leave, yet afraid to stay much longer. The unspoken trepidation of being out-of-contact with family back home, the lack of signals, the Tracker time limit. The road back to civilization was long and riddled with hazards, but the moon stayed close. The day was already a bardo. My friend and I, we have a shared love of soft, bun-like substances. And chips. We also eerily often express the same thoughts or use the same words at the same time. I dunked wedges of kinoo in kala namak and handed them to her as she drove us both home.

I have read a whole book by Pema Chodron since then, it’s called ‘How we live is how we die’. That’s where I learned a little bit about bardos. It’s a book that addresses the fear of death, to put it baldly. It scared me at first, much like life does, much like death does. Yet I kept on reading. It was a wonderful read, and I should probably quote some bits from it here, but I can’t remember any of it now, even though I read it with attention and intensity, by which I mean I read it with a desire to imprint it in my brain. When I was done, I thought I’d dwell in my newfound wisdom for a few days. Instead, I immediately downloaded another book by Pema. It’s called ‘Living beautifully’, but I abandoned it after chapter two. It’s too soon.

A very lovely white-haired woman, well-known in some circles as an artist, a sculptor and a writer, recently asked me at a classical music recital, what do you do? I fumbled with my reply as usual, searching my brain for something I do that would redeem me in her eyes. ‘Well, these days I’m learning to crochet!’ My friend, we shall call her M, was asked the same question in a gym elevator by a person she prefers to avoid. Despite being a lovely filmmaker and an ardent animal activist, she is loathe to define herself thus. These days, she loves visiting a lonely island called Buddo, with her dog, in the creeks around the coastline. Sometimes, she takes along groups of people, sometimes they will be a bunch of young boys from Hunza, and maybe they will sing some Wakhi songs, and play some music, and perhaps she will record them for her yt channel. Sometimes, I will go along with her, and I will be the country mouse to her town mouse, buffeted by the relentless winds, and we will turn our backs to the skyscrapers and walk all the way across towards the ever-shrinking, ever-growing mangroves. We shall elect her the mayor of Buddo and she will clean up all the trash and plant hundreds more trees, and save  all the bubbler crabs, hermit crabs, marine snails and mudskippers, and there will never be any ‘developments’ of any kind.

The time turner

Around three weeks ago, a childhood friend of mine made up her mind to go visit our old teacher from the Mama school days and announced it on our class group chat, urging those of us who live here to join her on this expedition. No one responded, including myself. Some of us who live elsewhere in the world said they wished they could, and expressed their great regard and respect for said teacher, sending their love and good wishes. I was reminded of our collective, unspoken acknowledgement of the profound and lasting influence this teacher had in our lives. Old memories started to creep into the present.

I knew it was futile to hope I could slip through the cracks, for the next day my friend messaged me separately to tell me how excited our teacher was at the prospect of meeting up, and asked me to join her. Asked so directly, I didn’t have the heart to say no. So I responded with an overly enthusiastic ‘yes!’ to make up for my lack of actual enthusiasm, and even tried to rally others on the group to come along. In the end, it ended up being five of us, a decent number.

There were many days to go till the actual event, where I swung from kicking myself for not saying no, but also strangely animated by the prospect. It had been thirty three years after all since we last saw each other as teacher and student, and safe to say a lot of life had happened. Last year though, she got to know through my friend about my thyroid cancer diagnosis and subsequent surgery and I was surprised out of my skin when I received a concerned and loving message from her out of the blue. It was so strange to feel a sense that she cared, when I didn’t even expect to be remembered.

Ms. T turned up at my school from India when I was in class 7, to teach us Geography and English literature. My batch was her very first experience as a teacher in Pakistan, and she saw us through for four years or so till we sat for our O levels and passed out of school. She was a young woman in her early 30’s, carried herself with a graceful ethnic air that was all her own, bangles on her brown forearm, beautiful cotton saris she seemed to float down the corridors in, shiny dark hair swept into a low bun at the back of her neck. She would bend it ever so slightly while gazing at your face and listening intently before responding to anything you had to say. Her smile often looked as if there was something sardonic going on in her head, quintessentially enigmatic. But it was the way she enunciated her words and her unfloundering grasp of her subject that held our respect. The way she explained topography, or the trickier passages in multiple Shakespeare plays, and Jane Austen. I don’t think anyone could have done a better job at making us not only understand all of it, but also enjoy it. Being in her class made us want to do better, be better, her approval was all-important, whether we knew it or not. I was never as ashamed as I was when I inexplicably flunked a Geography test when it was one of my favorite subjects.

So it made perfect sense that after leaving school, I never wanted to see her again. I didn’t want her to judge me for not making anything of myself. It goes to show how much of a failure I thought I was through my twenties and thirties. I honestly felt like my biggest achievement in life was giving birth to Amu (I still think it is.) I don’t think I could ever have imagined that my child would grow up one day and be taught English literature by the very same, albeit older, Ms. T.

Apparently Ms. T had resigned from my old school after eleven years there and switched to teaching at the college section of the school Amu was in. I was thrilled when I got to know, for I wanted Amu to experience the greatness of Ms. T. However, Amu seemed to have a very different impression. The Ms. T she experienced wasn’t the impeccable, charismatic creature from my memory. This one was old and old-fashioned, the subject of cruel teenage derision in her class.

This was a rude shock, an invalidating blow to my ego, a personal affront almost. Could it be true that Ms. T was no longer cool in this very different world? I spotted her at a parent-teacher meeting, a long line of parents waiting to discuss their child with her, and it upset me a bit to see her in this environment, as if she didn’t belong here. I stood in the same line and you can call me strange, but I didn’t want to meet her in this way. What if she couldn’t recall me? I would melt into a puddle of disappointment and shame. I remember trying to catch her eye from a distance, ready to wave with a bright acknowledging smile on my face if she beamed with recognition in my direction. I imagined it to be a moment like in the movies, time standing still, nostalgic music on cue.

But she was totally preoccupied with the parent stream in that huge hall, and I quietly slipped out the door without making the effort to meet, a strange mix of regret and relief. Relief because I wouldn’t have to answer that dreaded question… ‘What do you do Munira?’

I can’t believe I once used to be the class joker. No one in my class remembers me as ‘the quiet sort’. Hence, no one can fathom why I’d be squeamish about meeting up.

But when the time came, I went with the flow, dressed up and showed up. My friend picked me up to go to Ms. T’s house, partly so there would be no way I could back out last minute. She had bought a bunch of flowers and I put together a heaping dish of my signature dahi baray to take with me. We picked up some more goodies and another one of my classmates on the way. Ms T. had provided a very detailed set of instructions to her house as she didn’t quite know how to send a pin. I almost wore a cotton sari to honor her legacy and this special occasion. It was adorable and touching to know Ms T. was so thrilled to have us visit her, she had insisted on cooking lunch for us.

Her door was wide open when we reached her place in a sprawling apartment complex on the other side of town. I half expected to find her wearing a sari, but she was in a shalwar kameez, apologetic for not getting up from her seat, the first indication of her age. I reached down to give her a hug, holding her hands while she asked how I was. She was probably as taken aback by my appearance as I was by hers, but we both covered it up rather well, and it soon felt as if no time had passed and we were all still who we always were. We may be 50 years old, but we would forever be her class of giggling teenage students.

The five of us ended up spending a delightful afternoon reconnecting with Ms. T over a very delicious, lovingly prepared lunch. She had made each and every thing herself, from the biryani to the mango chutney and raita she served with it, and the huge bowl of fruit custard for dessert. It was so delightful and gratifying to eat food actually cooked by this woman we idolized, to hear this idolized woman declare that we were always a special lot to her, as were all the batches she taught in her eleven years at our school, superior even, to the students she came across at the more prestigious school that she switched to. How do teachers have the capacity to remember not only the names of long ago students, but also their idiosyncrasies?

As for me, my fear of being judged for my own perceived lack of worldly accolades was gone. It simply didn’t matter anymore, it never did. What mattered was that I wanted to meet Ms. T for her sake, to know who she was. What mattered was my presence, that I could tell she loved my dahi baray because that’s all she ate, that she noted the tarka of rye and karipatta I made the effort to do. It mattered to know that she grew up in Calcutta, the place where my husband was born, to witness her aging body and her grayed hair, to meet the elder sister she lived with and listen to their teaching stories, their experience of life, to know that she loved to cook for guests, that she was fierce about retaining her strength and ability to go on, to continue navigating life post retirement. That we could never ever address her by her first name, as a friend, that her entire identity and self worth was tied up in being called Ms. T.

I went to this meetup with trepidation that there would be nothing to talk about, and I left with reluctance because so much had been left undiscussed, like a portal had opened up to allow us in momentarily and it was poised to close behind us the moment we left Ms. T’s home.

Mysteries

It’s been a week since Jimmy and Minnie had a very physical fight, the kind which leaves behind clumps of fur, detached claws (!) and puddles of pee in its wake.

It has also been a week since Amu brought home a very pathetic little malnourished puppy. He was standing by the road all alone, dazed and weak, looking rather abandoned. So we cared for him as well as we could, figured out a way to feed him, bathing him gently with baby shampoo to remove a multitude of fleas, keeping him warm, cozy and safe from the harshness of the streets. It felt good to see him so clean, to watch him sleep, at peace without the relentless fleas. But he remained inconsolable, crying in a most human-baby-like way. He had such soft ears, such potential to grow up and be beautiful, such an unusual gray coat. And how extraordinary to be fostering someone other than a cat, much to the horror of our resident lot. Except Jimmy of course, who was unfazed by this new presence.

Fading puppies exhibit signs, and this one showed them all. We found his mother and slightly healthier brother close to where he was found and placed him on the sidewalk to see how he would be received. The mother sniffed him with recognition but barked loudly if he tried coming close. His little brother did totter up to him to cuddle, and that was heartwarming, but the mothers treatment of him simply broke our hearts. Of course, her rejection was quite natural; this little puppy was not healthy, and she herself is rather thin and bony-looking, so she had to conserve her scant resources for the survival of the fittest as it were. We had no choice but to take him back home for the night, and he cried himself to sleep, fading some more, only quiet if he was cuddled. Of course I was more than happy to cuddle him, but sadly, he needed his own mother. His bowels finally released everything that he had eaten, and that was the last sign.

Puppy and Jimmy

There is always a lot to think about in situations like this. Sure, we can rush to a vet, get x-rays, blood tests, drips, medicines….but the understanding has always led to this: sick little animals come to us for some love, and in doing so they help us feel the depth of it. It’s not always about trying to save them, they’re usually beyond saving anyway. We live an urban life, but we are part of Nature, and we will all return to Mother Earth won’t we, hard though it is to imagine. I visualized him melting back into Her. And so it came to be that we wrapped the puppy in soft flannel and placed him back where he was found, in a heap of leaves. Let his mother hear him cry, he belongs to her, and we don’t need to tear ourselves up witnessing his slow death. We lingered nearby for a long time, just being there for him a little longer, reluctant abandoners, mommy dog still invested in the other one. As we finally turned away to go back home without him, I don’t think I was mistaken in sensing her gratitude for our kindness to one of her own, even if he wasn’t destined to live. I wonder if his only purpose in this short life was to make us be kind, to make us love him with all our hearts. I didn’t expect to see him again, but one of the last things we saw him do was get up and try and get closer to his brother, tiny tail wagging, and then he fell over and crawled back to flop again on his flannel cloth. He wasn’t there anymore when we drove by the next day.

“We’re all just walking each other home.”

Jimmy, our cherished outside cat also came to teach us how to be kind and loving more than a year ago, but has been missing for a week now, ever since that skirmish with Minnie. I’m beginning to think something strange and mysterious happened between them, for ever since he disappeared, she has taken over the courtyard, almost as if their higher selves came to some sort of agreement about exchanging lives. It’s hard to explain, really. All we know is, he was last seen with another cat.

One should stop looking for lost cats and start looking for the other half of their shadow, said Haruki Murakami. That’s kind of what I did when Minnie got lost a couple of years ago, and came back a whole month later as if from the ether. I don’t know where Jimmy could possibly have gone, he has simply vanished into thin air and I don’t know how to feel anymore, for as lovable as he is, taking care of Jimmoo has been a fraught and often expensive affair, full of drama and stress. For the first time in a year, I have a poop-and-pee-free outside area and it feels rather relaxed. I admit I have often wished him to simply be gone…and now he has. I won’t be going looking for him. He appeared out of the blue, and back into the blue he has gone. If he ever chooses to return, I will probably feel something somewhere between relief and despair. If he doesn’t, I will never forget the abundance of love he bestowed on us, the simple joy of his companionship.

What’s strange is how quickly Minnie is back romping her favorite spots, almost as if she knows he won’t be back anytime soon. Are all these cats in cahoots? Is Minnie really in on what’s going on behind the scenes?

Life seems to be in great flux from day to day, one never knows what’s going to happen next.

The great reset

It’s a peaceful time of year, it being Ramadan, and Amu and I are surprising ourselves with a willingness to fast which heretofore did not exist. Methinks this willingness has a lot to do with a dawning understanding that it is not a punishment after all, but a gift we have the ability to give our bodies. To be fair to myself, if I had known the science before, my spirituality might have kicked in sooner.

Somehow, miraculously, my migraines aren’t getting triggered this year, and I wonder how much of this has to do with setting true intentions and keeping a very positive mindset. I don’t know man. I had to figure out the best time to take my hormone pill (optimally an hour before eating anything, once every 24 hours) so I set my alarm for 3:30, I pop a pill with a glug of water, go back to sleep for another half an hour, then get up and organize sehri, which has been strangely fun, maybe because I have such companionable company, and a lot because of the greater focus on mindful nutrition. I don’t know what it is, but we’re halfway through the month, and we’re still at it, not giving up. Clearly, there has been a Great Shift.

Of course it helps that iftar is reeeaaalllyy something to look forward to, and I spend a large portion of my afternoons thinking about and preparing lovely simple meals. Most people would probably be greatly disappointed at the lack of pakoras and samosas on my table though. Early on, I decided fried things didn’t quite see eye-to-eye with my gut biome, appetizing though they were, as the cheese balls I happily gobbled on the first evening ultimately made me quite nauseous the rest of the night.

I surprise myself by beginning to see why people are so sad to reach the end of the month. I’m weirdly enjoying this upheaval of my entire day-to-day, sleeping away the mornings, awake most of the night. It all feels quite special, no stress about anything at all, and no obligation to be performative. It’s an inward time of feeling, and healing. I continue fetching-water-chopping-wood, delighting in the sunny blooms of the loofah vines.

At the beginning of the month, Sis #1 happened to get her legs x-rayed, to find that her bones were totally out of alignment. We had all been witness to her increasingly unsteady gait after a couple of knee dislocations, for years we watched her walk like a wobbling duck, but none of us thought of taking her hand and marching her to a good chiropracter, simply took her word for it when she insisted she just needed to lose some weight. These x-rays have proved to be a wake up call, prompting her to finally give herself some love, some rest, some intensive treatment. I’m putting my faith in her body’s ability to re-align itself, so that she doesn’t need both her knees immediately replaced as per the doctor’s advice.

Sis #2 had a wake up call with her teeth and gums, which were in desperate need of help. But there is a tendency in many of us to put things off till push comes to shove, heaven knows I’m ignoring my lower back as we speak. Who the hell knows what’s going on there? In her case, it was shaky teeth and a very painful mouth which finally compelled her to go see a dentist who diagnosed her with gingivitis, something if left untreated can cause serious permanent damage, so it’s very good that she is now looking after herself more.

Meanwhile, Minnie injured her mouth while chewing a bone and before things went from bad to worse we took her to the vet where she received a few shots and was very much better the very next day. Jimmy Choo has a spasming urethra and not crystals blocking his passage as we had first thought, but he needs some ALP to relax his muscles so that he can urinate easily. It is not easy to medicate this particular cat. All three cats have fleas, and the price of the only effective flea spray in the market, already expensive to begin with, has tripled, like most imported goods. We still have to buy it of course, as there is no local alternative.

The baby sparrow fell out of the nest and died a few days later, something we realized when the sparrow-couple abandoned the nest. The balcony fell quiet, until another sparrow couple took up residence in the other birdhouse, but I’m trying not to get emotionally involved this time.

The friend I felt disconnected from, left the city and I didn’t say goodbye. It is possible we may be estranged. I set some energetic boundaries and she sensed it and stepped back. No explanations asked, none given. And I’m cool with that.

March 20 is World Sparrow Day!

I did not know this when I wrote about my sparrow sanctuary yesterday! Therefore it is most necessary (for our collective enjoyment and honoring of sparrows) to share some stellar photos of our resident nesting couple taken by Amu 3 days ago.

An awful thing had happened while we were in the process of moving out of our home in 2020 and had to remove the external unit of our split AC. A couple of sparrows had made a nest snuggled in a card paper bag I had wedged into the narrow space on top of the unit and there was a little fledgling in there, which tried flying in panic and ended up falling. The man who was doing the AC work seemed to be as regretful and horrified as I felt when I got to know, and it was him who immediately ran downstairs to bring it up to put back in its nest bag. Sadly, baby bird didn’t survive the trauma, and died after a day. The parent sparrows were my friends, and I should have been more mindful and protected their home and lone child, so I carried the guilt in my heart for many days afterwards, continuing to feel the occasional sharp arrow of it every time my mind went back to that incident. I tried not thinking of it as an omen, but everything is, isn’t it?

Fast forward to 2023, it’s been almost a year and a half since we moved back into our old home, and the same split has been put back in its old place. Perhaps it is in the memory of that little fledgling that I crafted a proper little birdhouse. Perhaps it is a full circle moment, now that there are new little sparrow babies, safe and protected in the same spot.

Sparrows tend to live in urban settings alongside humans, but their populations in the world have been on the decline. This thought always comes to my mind when I see sparrows now, and they feel more dear than ever.

I’m not one for proselytizing, but I honestly believe that our lives become so much richer, more in harmony, when we live with awareness of other beings and share an actual space with them. Go buy a couple of cute wooden birdhouses and put them up somewhere high around your outside space, because sparrows need homes too. ❤