Forays into Writing again: Part 1

Silently, from the back seat of my car, I made note of the telephone poles extending greedily into the clouds above, as if mimicking wooden poles that held up wedding tents, pointedly guarding against an accidental falling of the sheet of blue sky. It was a Thursday morning and I was on my way to work, like any other day, except that today, feeling slightly introspective and somewhat pseudo intellectual, I had noticed the telephone poles.

Who am I, you may ask, that I am ingraciously pawning off my thoughts and parts of my stream of consciousness on yourself, an unsuspecting reader who was simply perusing these first paragraphs? Where I come from, we call each other brothers in religion (even the women) and often impose on each other in this manner, with a “excuse me bhaisahab” said in the right mix of politeness and need.

Anyhow, let me not deprive you any longer of the knowledge of my identity. I am one who is claimed by the upper middle class recessed that live in the city of Karachi. I am decently educated, although I discard enough of what I am taught to be suspicious of those who claim authority on knowledge, and I am underpaid and overworked (as we all like to believe we are) at a modest Partnership Marketing firm which posesses delusions of grandeur and the soul of satan when it comes to making a quick million rupees.

My personal characteristics are not one that would set me apart if you should meet me on the street. Like most of my class, I speak both urdu and english with a modicum of proficiency and like most of my class, I would be more willing to claim an above average proficiency for english as opposed to urdu. Some may call me overweight, although I consider myself simply somewhat plump in certain areas that ought not to be posessing such plumpness. Unlike most women my age, I do use little to no makeup in my daily life, but I bend occasionally to societal laws to allow myself to be paraded at weddings and occasions with the right amount of makeup forcibly applied by my mother or my sister. I am also married, as evidenced by a thin, sparkling band on my left hand’s ring finger. Of this miracle I shall speak later. Suffice it to say that I am an ordinary person who, like all of us ordinary people, believes herself to be capable of extraordinary things, given the opportunity, and that I am indistinguishable from any one of my fellows who make their daily morning pilgrimage to work in this city.