Self-discovery

The Karachi Voice and The News published this story as well http://www.thekarachivoice.net/arts-culture--fashion-desk.html

http://blogs.thenews.com.pk/blogs/2012/08/of-nostalgia-and-living-abroad/

Sending an eighteen year old girl to study abroad, fresh out of A levels, is a really big deal for most families in Pakistan. So when my parents decided to send me to Canada for my university education, they were met with shocked and horror-stricken responses by some factions of our diverse khandaan. Frantic aunties called my mom to advise her against this nefarious and deadly decision. The most common line was:

Haye Allah! Larki ko akelay bhejo gi baahir parney! Bigar jaye gi!

(Oh God! You're sending your daughter alone to study abroad. She will be led astray!)

However, despite the hoo-ha and the voices of dissent, my parents strongly believed that it was vital for me to become independent and learn some of the harsh lessons of life. Shielded from most of the responsibilities of cooking, cleaning, doing my own laundry and leading a pampered lifestyle, my mom believed that it was time for me to pack up and leave and go on a journey of self-discovery and learn what the real world is all about. Well, okay, the “self-discovery” bit was what “I” hoped to achieve. I think my mom secretly hoped that I would learn to start cooking and cleaning and become the role-model perfect daughter that she always dreamt she had but could not find in me. Despite her constant lectures on how important it was for me to learn how to cook, to clean and to behave like a lady ought to behave, I refused to step into the kitchen. It was the realm of domesticity and female submissiveness, the feminist inside me argued persistently. Well, okay. That’s kind of a lie too. It was more about me being too lazy to actually learn how to cook and I had servants to do all that for me anyway. So why worry about cooking when I could dream, when I could go out and explore the world? My naani obviously disagreed and asserted the significance of cooking as a fundamental quality that every woman ought to learn and master. 

“Why?” I asked. Because:

“Shaadi kaisay hogi agar khaana pakana nahi aaye ga?”

(How will you get married if you don’t know how to cook?)

My answer to that was quite simple. “My husband will cook naani. Don’t worry,” I reassured her with a grin on my face.

Anyways, so I set off to the Great White North to explore the world and discover what I wanted from life, and uncover the answers to the existential dilemma of what the meaning of life is. Contrary to what my friends in Karachi think and what I thought initially myself, living abroad is not all about glamour, parties, and all that hunky dory lifestyle that everyone dreams of having. And no, I don’t live a life out of Gossip Girl just because I get to wear boots, leather jackets and fall coats. It’s bloody cold out there for God’s sake! And it’s a tough world out there too.  

At first, everything was like a dream come true. Staying up till four am in the morning during Orientation week, wandering around the magnificent campus (I sometimes pretended I was at Hogwarts), walking by the lake, eating like there is no tomorrow and actually shopping as if I really was living the life of Serena or Blair out of Gossip Girl was like living in a blissful bubble of heaven!

However, as the cold winter months kicked in, I gradually started aching for the warmth and comfort of home, my family, and Karachi. I never could have possibly imagined that I would miss all this. Moreover, I started becoming aware of a keen sense of identity and responsibility. I couldn’t shop till I dropped here because frankly speaking, my family was literally paying through their noses for my education here.

The first awareness of this nagging sense of individual identity and responsibility came about when I was living in a dorm during my first year of University. This was when I was exposed to people from all sorts of different cultures, backgrounds and ethnicities. Living in a gora town, I was often asked amusing questions when people discovered that I’m from Pakistan. 

The most famous one was, “How do you know how to speak English if you’re from Pakistan?”

“Well,” I would explain. “I went to schools where the curriculum and the mode of instruction were all in English.”

This reply was usually met with confounded expressions and more questions such as:

“Why are your schools in English and not in your own native language?”

“How is your English so good?”

“How come you know all about the latest American television shows and movies?”

Initially, I didn’t know how to properly answer such questions. It would actually provoke me into anger and I wanted to simply shout out, “Hello! I’m not from a primitive village and Pakistan does not thrive in the era of the Old Stone Age!”

But when these questions were flung at me, I started wondering. These were some things I had never really thought about myself. Why was my English better than my Urdu? I wondered. And getting angry was not the solution either. People were simply curious about what my country was like and my inability to answer their curious questions properly gave me an awareness of my identity and my country. It was also very hard to explain that while the majority of Pakistanis are illiterate and poor, there is an elite minority that knows how to speak English and everything about the western world. Such gargantuan class inequalities are almost non-existent in the West. It was hard to explain to people that this was all the result of years of British colonialism which has left a lasting legacy and a deep imprint in India and Pakistan.

Such questions ignited a deep love and passion for my culture, language and heritage within me, and I remember how much I missed Karachi. I would often read Kamila Shamsie’s Kartography or Salt and Saffron, which completely captured the essence of my nostalgia as I pondered over some of the problems facing my country and city; class inequality being one of the most prominent ones as Shamsie writes in Salt and Saffron:

“I hadn’t really thought about it before but affluence and lack sat cheek by jowl in Karachi. Between the large old houses near Mohatta Palace...past streets where shiny cars and designer shalwar kameezes and English speaking voices all but disappeared, replaced by tiny storefronts...children selling vegetables or fixing tires or chasing each other along roads without pavements.”

These small, curious questions that were thrust at me regularly made me value the little things about Karachi that I previously never contemplated, thought about or noticed. The value of my mother tongue was the first thing I realized. I missed conversing in Urdu which is quite ironic since my friends in Pakistan all conversed mostly in English and in fact, it seemed odd and funny when one of us would occasionally say something in Urdu. But now, my Pakistani friends in Canada and I ached to speak in Urdu and in fact, preferred to converse in it at all times. Whereas previously, I stayed away from Bollywood movies and Urdu dramas because they were overly-dramatic and useless, my friends and I now yearned to watch cheap bollywood movies and songs. What I realized was that I missed my culture, language and heritage. I missed the heat of Karachi, the halwa puri at boat basin, the flies that twirled around your food, the little street children selling roses on the streets, the biryani, chaatmasala, golagandas, wearing shalwar kameez...practically everything that defined a Karachiite. I missed my maasi who would cook and clean for me, I missed my driver who would take me around anywhere from sea view to Clifton to French Beach.

Speaking of the beach, I missed that as being such a prominent fun place in Karachi every summer, with the sand melting between your feet, soothing you as the scorching and merciless heat of the sun thundered upon your face, almost giving you sunburn. I missed the comfort of the waves that frolicked across the muddy, brown sand and licked my toenails and tickled my feet.

There were numerous things I disliked about living abroad. I hated learning how to cook, I hated apartment hunting, and I hated having to get down on my knees on the bathroom floor and scrubbing it until it gleamed. I hated doing my own laundry and the constant rain and the snow and taking out the garbage every week. I hated having to get a job so I could pay off my rent every month. I hated taking the bus and the subways all the time and not having a car or a driver. I hated learning to be responsible and being scrupulous with how I spent my money and keeping a vigilant eye on budgeting. Oh, and I hated the constant yapping in English which made me miss Urdu more and more. I resisted the urge to accidently spill out Karachi slang words and I even once said to my white friend, “Scene on hai yaar,” during a conversation. Since that was half English anyway, she failed to notice.

But gradually, as the days flew by and I adjusted to the cold, the cooking and the cleaning, I learned to love and appreciate my life in Canada. Lake Ontario became a substitute for French Beach as a soothing place for me to relax and unwind after a hard day of work and studies. Going to the gym became a regular habit because everyone over there was/is a health-conscious freak. And the best part was the multicultural essence of the place; meeting and mingling with people from all sorts of backgrounds, cultures and religions. Daily chores gave me more of a sense of individual responsibility and independence instead of being grinding tasks of frustration and despair. Attending cultural events and dressing up in “desi” clothes became the highlight of the year there. Snow was no longer a pain that made the ten minute walk from my apartment to campus seem like an eternity; it was no longer an atrocity but a winter wonderland. Fights and disagreements with my housemate were now dealt with an air of maturity, reconciliation and compromise.  And yeah, sometimes I did feel like I was living a life out of Gossip Girl when I brought the latest pair of trendy high heels from my own work money- (without feeling a biting guilty conscience gnawing at my insides, pestering me to not spend voraciously).

And did I find myself and solve the existential crisis? Well, I believe the answer to that lies in what Betty Friedan once said, “It is easier to live through someone else than to complete yourself. The freedom to lead and plan your own life is frightening if you have never faced it before. It is frightening when a woman finally realizes that there is no answer to the question 'who am I' except the voice inside herself.” 

P.S: My mom still doesn't believe that I occasionally cook, clean regularly and do my own laundry over there. Sigh! Some things never change.