I had a Migraine headache and now I cannot account for two days. They are lost in the fog. Forever.

Migraines  are so debilitating! Even after the vision has cleared and you can let light come in the room, even when you can raise your head from your pillow and have a peak around from under your eye pads, your status still amounts to “invalid”  Because there is still pain around the eyes and they are still sensitive to the light. Your forehead, facial muscles, teeth even – they all hurt and throb. There is nothing you can do except recline on a pillow and try to convince yourself that everything is fine and under control. But is it? really, is it?

You cannot read neither can write. Cannot watch TV nor can you surf the net. Facebook? no. Chat a bit? no

Drawing or painting for relaxing your nerves? oh no, not even that. Heck, you cannot even go bake a cake or make your family fave Vegetable Lasagna because doing all these wonderful, everyday things, you need a happy, healthy pair of eyes.

So what do people do when a migraine headache strikes? I want to know. Really want to know.

When there is no compulsion, I can sit motionless and let my mind drift. Or go out to admire the front yard, after the handyman has cut the grass and a nice cut grass smell is hanging in the air. Watching the bees making circles around the flowers in search of nectar. A lone butterfly flitting in the bushes. Or, some white Heron standing in the lake on one leg, with neck tucked under the wing and yet aware of fish breaking the  lake’s surface and  catching it in one swift motion.

Life is so beautiful and these are just a few of its gifts. Eyes being the most precious of all. I wish you never get a migraine headache!

A few days back I posted this on Facebook:

“Its so darn hot out here. We can make a perfect sunny side up on these roads. Really. Not making it up. Then I forgot the first line of Meer Anees couplet from a Marsia. Second line is –  par jaain laakh aable paaie nigaah mein  –   which I wanted to quote in support of my claim.
What is the first line? Anyone!”

Didn’t get even a nibble. Then I asked a dear Professor in Chicago. He said he remembers the marsia but not this particular line. Disappointed, I pulled my post back.

I used to own two volumes of Meer Anees marsias. A friend borrowed and never returned. Then we came here and those books became history. Did I learn anything from that experience? No 🙂

Now after two days I am putting it on again, here, for better luck.

I remember even today, that whenever I was sad, my nani ma would sit me down beside her and listen to my woe with a kind hand on my shoulder. Then she would make me look at her , in her eyes and tell me to listen to her carefully. I cannot forget her words. They still resonate in my memory. ” listen my beti, light of my eyes, suroor of my heart, there is always another day. If  it didn’t happen today, maybe you will get it tomorrow or maybe day after. do not get disappointed. Everything happens for a reason …. ” For a young and innocent heart this probably was a heavy duty consoling but I never argued.

Sometimes she would say  … ” you know what? sometimes we can also change things if we wish and pray hard.”

The kindness and assurance  exuding from her words always had a calming effect on my bruised psyche’.

Once sitting in a majlis, listening to the speaker, I thought what nani ma had said that we can change things if we wish and pray hard’ . I looked at the speaker with a hope. But those were the days when hearts were young and innocent. And young and innocent hearts have a tendency to get distracted easily.

Today is one of those times when nothing looks good or makes sense. I will not say more than that for fear of a cliche’.

21 Ramadhan, 1434.

I saw a picture today. A man’s picture. My husband’s friend – The Zonal Officer of a bank at that time. He attended our wedding. If I bring out my wedding album, you would see him sitting next to the groom with his hands raised like other guests, praying for love and prosperity for the newly weds.

His wife? a petite, most beautiful woman, was a perfect match. She was intelligent, sociable and a perfect home maker in-spite of having a busy schedule of an MD. It was truly a couple made in heaven; successful, friendly, caring and so in love with each other.

I love these markings. I take out the book when the mood strikes. Find a quiet corner and immerse myself in this spiritual ‘reflecting pond’ :

Sleepless questions

In the small hours:

Have I done right?

Why did I act

Just as I did?

Over and over again

The same steps

By : Dag Hammarskjold

Sometimes looking for an opening sentence spoils the feelings you want to save in words for other evenings, to read and enjoy. This is exactly what is happening to me. The feelings, the emotions, the happiness is so complete and wholesome that finding the right words- words, able to carry the essence of the moment- remain elusive.

I can hear them laughing. Laughing with a care-free abundance. Peal after peal of happy, contagious laughter. They were playing a game of  Wii… Chacha and his two nieces, age ten and eight. Chacha is their father’s younger brother. They love him and wait eagerly for his weekly visits. Every Monday they come home from school and after they’ve  change their uniforms, rested and had their afternoon snack and are ready for a daily cartoon watching on the TV, they come to me and ask, “Dadi is Chacha coming tonight?”. And once reassured, they return to rest and relax after a hard day’s work at school. Sometimes there’s a slight change. Instead of a Monday, he would visit on a Tuesday. And the girls would be duly informed.

After dinner the girls usually have a window of half an hour to forty-five minutes to do whatever they would like and then off to bed for the next day of school. When Chacha comes rule relax a bit and they get a bonus half an hour.  But after that, one call from their Mama and they would leave whatever they’re doing and go to their room. No complaints at all.

Tonight also, after everybody was done with their food, one of the girls came to Chacha and said in a very nice and soft silken voice “Chacha, can we play a game of Wii? ”

“Yahss” or something similar to this sound was Chacha’s yes;  the game started and with that a happy jingle of laughter indicating how much fun they were having.

I was sitting at the kitchen table, listening to these heavenly sounds and smiling. Very much aware of a heart brimming with gratitude for such blessings; and thinking about a far away time still fresh in my memory like it happened only yesterday.

I love my afternoon naps. They rejuvenate my mid morning sapping energy. I sometimes call them my “beauty sleep”. So one afternoon I was trying to have a little shut eye session when my boys – age ten and seven – started playing “…this old man” on their harmonica. They had two of their friends with them who had come over after school (mothers being friends, it was not unusual when other children were allowed to come over and spend some time at our house until the parents would come in the evening to pick them up again.)

So, these boys were having a riot of a fun time. Usually the pulling force were computer games but that particular day, they were certainly a little hyper. Singing, talking loudly, taking turns on the harmonica and making me toss and turn in my bed, in my room, upstairs and behind a closed door. Can any one imagine what was going on?

At one point, when I thought enough was enough, and someone had to put some sense in their carefree brains, I got up, went to the staircase and holding on to the banister, I was about to give them a piece of my mind when with a sudden blast of music, one of the boys finished the last line on top of his lungs  “…this old man came rolling home ” and then another blast of carefree, happy and wholesome laughter. I even heard our house-boy’s amused chuckle.

I stopped. Hands on the banister, feet rooted in the marble stairs, mouth open to tell them to behave. Slowly that scowl turned into a smile. “No, how can I spoil their fun? I will talk about it later, but not now. Time passes so quickly and I won’t plant a bad memory in their hearts. No.”

And went back to my room and opened a book instead.

So, tonight I was listening and reliving a long gone time, acutely aware of their happy laughter, laughing with carefree abundance. I was also acutely aware that the old man time neither stops to take a rest nor slows down to let others have one. A moment lost is a moment lost.

Good Night.

Last night, the twenty first night of the month of Ramadhan, I listened to the Munajat of Imam Ali and cried a million tears. It humbles me every time I read or listen to it. I mean, think for a moment that this is Imam Ali – the epitome  of piety and spirituality, of knowledge, of bravery, humbling himself before Almighty Allah. Seeking His favor and asking for His forgiveness.

“My Master, O my Master,

You are the Giver, and I am the beggar,

and who can have mercy on the beggar except the Giver.

My Master, O My Master

You are the Authority and I am the one examined,

and who can have mercy on the one examined Except the Authority …..
“..and when the servant ( of Allah) turns to His master in the middle of the night and does Munajat, Allah will illuminate his heart..”

I am thinking about Wah again.

It is a feeling, a sensation, a fragrance that follows me around.  It happens once or twice – every year.   Suddenly I would feel transported to a place called Wah.  For days after that I live in a parallel world that once was.

Wah – my beautiful city where I spent most of my formative years. Where I met my husband and got married to him. Where I had my first born and thought life was so beautiful.

Wah in Urdu – means Wow, amazing, wonderful, lovely… it means all of it  put together and more.  To me it also means waking up on beautiful mornings listening to the birds chirping in my mother’s fruit trees. Or coming home after school in the afternoon feeling the cool air on my neck and listening to the rustling sounds of tall slim and handsome poplar trees. And it most definitely means the whole family gathered around the table for the evening cup of tea and spending quality time in each others’ company. Yes, I am thinking about Wah.

In “Tuzk i Jahangiri” –  the chronicles of Mughal Emperor Jahangir –  it is noted that once the Emperor was coming back from Kashmir; it was getting late and the army was tired. They decided to look for a place to put up their tents for the night. A few soldiers were sent on to look for a nice and safe place and report back to the Emperor.  In their search, the soldiers discovered a place, all green with lush grass and covered with wildflowers … a valley surrounded by mountains. The soldiers reported back and gave this news.  The first word that the Emperor uttered when he reached the place was WAH!!

So this place became Wah for eternity.

Wah had all four seasons. Autumn, Winter, Spring and Summer, all so unique and distinct. All of them so beautiful in their own ways.  Sizzling hot summers and then the first rains of Monsoon. Fall and forlorn, naked trees. Then winter and howling winds or rain silently falling on the roof, or a thunderstorm like no other with such force and ferocity. Foggy mornings and hard freezes crunching under the feet. And then Spring – the glorious spring. when the whole city would be wrought with all shades and shapes and kinds of flowers. The air so clean, so fresh and fragrant. One had to be there to experience the magical Spring!

I remember waking up in the mornings and tip-toeing barefoot on the wet, lush green grass, towards the flower beds to see and smell the beauty.  Have you ever smelled the sweet peas? Seen the variety of colors they have?  My mother and our gardener Zarin Khan always discussed and planned before planting the saplings. The neat and disciplined person that my mother was, Zarin Khan would never do anything in the garden without consulting her. It was amusing the way he would come to the back veranda and sit on the stairs, waiting for mother. Meanwhile Rehmat Bi would bring tea and something to eat for him. Then mother would come out holding her cup of tea and sit down on the takht (a kind of a settee) and talk about flowers, seasonal vegetables and if any tree or the hedges around the front and back yards needed trimming, cutting or pruning. The seriousness on their faces was priceless.

My favorite place in our back yard was between the two rows of sweet pea flower beds. Just lying there and watching the sky was soothing.  Zarin Khan never liked this. The first time he gave me a warning –  “Kho tum achha nain karti. Begum saab hum pe bigarta he!” – “This is not good- the mistress will be very angry!” He’d let me go but the next time he caught me, he complained to mother. I will not say what happened next but I knew I was at fault after all! But this doesn’t mean that I stopped visiting!

Here in Florida, every time I went to a nursery to buy some plants, I would check the seeds racks. In Spring when buying annuals, I would look for sweet pea saplings. It was only this Summer that I happened to see the pea seeds. I thought, once the frost was out of the way, we would plant the seeds. But one afternoon, my dear husband happily broke the news that he had planted the seeds while I was taking my afternoon nap. I was a little apprehensive but they survived the hard freeze!

When they were a feet and a half high, I started looking for the buds. Yesterday I spotted some. They will be blooming by the end of this month. I hope and pray they have the same sweet fragrance.

I love Petunias and Marigolds too. Actually it’s the yellow color of Marigolds and the purple of Petunias that make me happy and feel alive. Have you seen a purple colored sweet pea flower? It’s a beauty!  But, here the tampering has perfected the beauty of flowers and fruit, but robbed them of fragrance, and even the taste in the fruits’ case. My purple petunias have no fragrance, they are just pretty. I hope its different with the sweet peas.

Narcissus, sweet peas, marigolds and petunias are a few of my favorite flowers.  Yellow of  marigold and purple in petunias and sweet peas; I absolutely love them.

And I love the timeless times where memories reside.