Family

The past few days i have been making regular trips to an elderly uncle's residence for some help translating an architectural manifesto initially penned in the French language, but soon to be published in 14 others, Urdu included.

There is a lot to be said about the joys of sitting with an elderly family member, the youngest and most alive of my grandfather's siblings, one who now spends his days writing about the experience of Partition, his political leanings thereof and resurrects, in vivid photographic prose, ancestors long dead and buried. i find myself putting off the actual work just to hear him quote Ghalib, Azad, Iqbal, Bernard Shaw or whoever else he draws upon at any given moment to elaborate his literary understanding of the world around him.

Something about the combination of a conversation independent of time and superficiality, a reflected expression of my own hopes, dreams and sensibitlites, of familial bonds and a sense of rootedness, of heritage, spread within me warmth, peace, and an awareness of belonging. I am seized with a strong desire to grasp this new understanding, to sweep out any cobwebs in my head that arise from the dislocated fragments that have been my education and conditioning to date, to subsume myself in the very thing i sought to flee. Was i frightened by its beauty?

Everything i aspire to has been arrived at by the people that populate my familial landscape through the cultivation of those very traits i seek to understand.
It's been done! This is the direction to take, to build upon! It is as if i am a child again, led by the hand through one of the many garden parties we had at home, being patted on the head approvingly by great aunts and uncles, grandfathers and grandmothers. This is who we are beta, how we do things and why. This is why YOU are the way you do.

Funny thing, life and living. Occasionally, certain joys choose to unfurl their petals and surprise you with the capacity of their modest,latent, passionate soulfulness. Makes me want to close my eyes, breathe in deep and smile.

Rising from the grave

Now Son, Here's how it's done....


Heil, mein Führer!