Inward Introspection (On What Was Once Home)

When done one place stop being home and another starts being just that?

When exactly is it that you take yourself away from one life (one place, one set of people, one set of reponsibilites)and start another and then it's as if your current life is the only one you ever had?

The past few days in Karachi have been very inwardly introspectional for bakpakchik.

I have come to the realization that in my four or so years in DubaiI have learned so much -and unlearned an equal amount.

Once upon a time, I used to be the girl who introduced so many of her peersto Karachi's public transport system. I knew the bus routes like the back of my hand. I knew the roads, the roundabouts, the landmarks ... you ask me, I could take you there.

During this trip, I was lost.

I honestly, sincerely, could not recall how to get form my house to my former alma mater. A trip I made twice a day, everyday for two years. I forgot it all.

No longer could I - in my head - draw a mental map when people told me to go down Tariq Road towards Sindhi Muslim and then take the first roundabout left or something along those lines.

I felt lost.

I alos felt sweaty.

Perspiration was something I thought I had grown out of. Heh.

For the first time in a long time, my clothes smelt of sweat. For the first time in my life, I found myself recoiling at my own BO.

For the first time in a long time, when I washed my hands, I saw trickles of muddy brownnes make its way into the realms of Greater Sewage.

Uff.

I can't stand the thought of coming back and living in Karachi now.

And once, this place was all I knew. A place I longed to come back to during a two month holiday in Dubai - the greater part of which was spent with me sitting in the windowsill glumly looking over the Clocktower.

These days, it's a place to buy cheap DVDsand get your eyes operated on without busting the bank.

"Human beings are creatures of habit," writes Arundhati Roy in God of Small Things.

Hmm.

Even my hair doesnt behave like it would in Dubai.

*sigh*

Dubai my high, Dubai my low
To Dubai I must go.