Have you ever seen a sunset after rain; especially in my city Islamabad? Have you ever gone out on your terrace and the entire city is nothing, nothing but a myriad of colors? Shades of orange that sunlight can’t, won’t, and shouldn’t really be able to encompass? Have you ever seen the sky bathed in the softest pallets that yellow, pink, and teal can spell? If you have then you might understand what the inside of her heart looks like. If not, then I’ll try my best to give aid to your imagination.
The emotions in her are like the colors in a sunset, transitioning from one to another quickly yet subtly. The conversion is very smooth. It doesn’t alarm a person but leaves them awestruck. Her sadness and anger are like this city’s thunderstorms on an August evening- loud and out of control, yet short-lived. Her happiness is like the warm rays of the sun on a December afternoon- calming and reassuring. She knows when to express and when to stop; exactly like the seasons of this city, I’m in love with.
But there’s also the city of Lahore that describes what’s inside her mind. It is like the chaotic bazaars; eventful and always busy in the race of new ideas and notions. The genre of her thoughts? Historic and modern, co-existing like the mosques and temples, the old and new Lahore. There are constant new developments of course, but the old relics are kept preserved too. Her thoughts are like a woman in a tuxedo with a piece of antique Mughal jewelry on her forehead. Her mind would sometimes remind you of the children playing cricket in the streets of old Lahore; naive and reckless. But also sometimes of that nomad sitting at a corner of Data-darbar, hiding a whole desert of wisdom underneath his old clothes and wrinkly face. The only word which would do justice to this city she calls home & her mind would be ‘free’.
A sensation of wholesomeness and transparency takes over your body as you enter the city which they call the one of light: Karachi. It is a reflection of her soul. If you come here for the first time, you’d get lost between the busy traffic and the humid air, it takes patience for you to get to the parts which are worthy of all the admiration. In between the loud noises of car horns, the azaans from different nearby mosques, and the indistinct chatter of people, you observe a pattern. It’s something I like to call ‘the flow’- an unbreakable flow that resembles her life. Obstacles and hitches of all sizes and intensities have been a part of her life. However, no matter how big or significant the hindrance was, she has always protected it. One achievement that both this city and she prides herself on is that they never let anything get in the way of the flow.
She is a passerby. She belongs everywhere yet nowhere. These cities reside in her heart more than she resides in these cities. She absorbs the essence to create a feeling: home. She is her own home.