Zaby Khan

I would watch Lollywood films playing as Eid specials on TV, then change into colorful ‘pants & shirt’ and walk the Main Bazaar, buying a 2-rupee qatlama placed in a piece of crisp newspaper, a 1 Ruppee spiced murgh daal, 7-rupee Pepsi bottle, and twice a year, on Eid, a 10-rupee Wall’s Chocbar ice cream, whose warm-toned commercial showed a woman on a bean bag neatly chowing it down as Take My Hand, the UB40 version, played on her VCD system. My siblings and I would watch other kids, dressed in gaudier clothes march in packs through the baz…

resse…warmed the streets to cover the open sewage lines and to lay concrete on the dirt-and-brick ground. The dirt-and-brick ground we grew up on and the sewage lines we fell into many times over ruining our Eid dresses. My aunts and mother made halva and pooris to celebrate this ‘development.’

Not only that, but you enhance the areas of your life where you’ve already developed deep mastery. You get to re-experience the beginner’s high and humility. You get a new perspective of yourself and the world.