Homebody Takes a Driving Test

I used to think that I knew how to drive; that it was a skill I had acquired when I braved the traffic of Shahrah-e-Faisal for 4 years in order to get to and from Karachi University. I was a hoyden on the road: racing buses and trucks and rickshaws – but studiously avoiding motorcycles. These last are a highway menace: swerving like broken pendulums on wheels as if the road was their little practice lane. If  you collided with one of them the class argument was sure to be whipped up:  YOU were the car owner and THEY weren’t, so naturally, everything was your fault.

So when I was told I’d have to pass the UK driving test and it was really hard, I pooh-poohed the notion. After all. How tough could it be? I was a Karachiite. I was a road demon. I laughed in the face of the UK highway code.

 The theory test was a breeze. I read a short booklet containing about 300 odd driving rules that were far easier to forget than comprehend; did some practice tests and then  passed the online test in 20 minutes. The examiner – a Pakistani Briton, said, ‘Ab Shazaf Shadaab ho gayee.’ I took a bow and headed off home, proud as can be.

When the day of the practical test rolled around, I was the picture of confidence. My driving instructor told me I had it in the bag if I could just hold my nerve, and I was grabbing on with iron fists. The examiner was a short, bearded man who explained the rules, asked me to take the seat and told me to show him how the windscreen would be de-fogged. Easy-peasy. Then it came time to drive.

I cruised along merrily, chatting, waiting to be told to turn right or left, or keep straight. And I jabbered away: did  he know I had been doing this for a while – that I was from Pakistan where driving was far harder, that I was thinking of doing a PGCE and also, fun fact: the man who executed Saint Albans was purported to have gone blind once he beheaded him? My examiner – Brian, nodded politely and continued with his instructions.

 ‘No seriously, the executioner’s eyes popped out. There’s a depiction of the scene in several glass paintings in Verulamium Cathedral’ I insisted while expertly leaving a roundabout on the third exit, checking the mirrors and indicating at all the correct times. Brian nodded politely and made me reverse round a corner, go up a hill and down an underpass and eventually returned us to the driving school.

I switched the car off and beamed at him. He coughed, looked down and declared I had failed.

My face and heart plummeted to the ground.

Failed, had he said?

Yes. I had failed in the first 5 minutes of the test because I hadn’t seen a pedestrian on a zebra crossing and that is a major offence. A stupid woman walking a stupid Dalmatian had crossed the road and I hadn’t waited for her to get completely off before driving ahead. Plus a portion of the Dalmatian’s tail was still wagging above the white line.

I had failed by the tip of a canine’s tail. (But then all those stripes and spots were a hazard for any erstwhile test taker.)

I was driven home in utter humiliation. If I hadn’t talked so much, focused more on the road, if I’d just slowed down, I’d be with a license. But now here I was: waiting to take another test to go through the process again in three month’s time because the test centers in the UK are always busy. I imagined Brian going into the little driving examiner’s coffee room and saying, ‘Man this woman wouldn’t shut up, and she almost drove over a dog. Failed in the first five minutes. Kept referring to her Karachi driving – apparently they like to run each other over on a regular basis there.’

People were nice enough about my test. They all said everyone failed at least once, so not to worry. I gave myself a pep talk and continued to lug heavy grocery bags uphill – with decreasing patience and growing resentment.

By the time my second test rolled around – I was not keeping my cool. I was nervous and hysterical and my driving instructor – a lovely man named Haj told me I would be okay if I just breathed. I snapped out that it was all too much – walking and sitting and breathing and driving – there was a limit to multitasking. And then I saw my examiner – a smiling old man named Gregg who called me Shaz and told me it would be okay and that I should stop hyperventilating otherwise he wouldn’t be able to continue the test. I didn’t talk. I gulped and coughed and repeated and confirmed every instruction before executing it. And all was well until, in the last 5 minutes, I exited a roundabout and made the car ahead slow down.

Here’s the rule for learners – you can’t make another car slow down on a test. The Karachiite woman driver in me doesn’t get it – I slowed people down all the time and they seemed to expect it and gave way accordingly. But here, as a learner, slowing traffic down instead of waiting for it is a major offence. I failed. Gregg didn’t help matters much: he kept going ‘Shaz… Shaz…Shaz…you almost had it. The pity of it! The pity of it!’ By the time the test ended I was comforting him.

People weren’t so kind this time. ‘Second time fail? Haw hai. I passed in the first go.’ It didn’t help that it was mostly my in-laws who said this – they are all expert drivers. I clenched my teeth and said nothing and went back to walking around trying to figure out the suburban bus network – since I was obviously never going to drive in the near future.

There was no reason for me to fail my tests, really: I had the most ideal conditions – prime time of no traffic at 9 a.m., fine, sunny weather and good health. The third time – everything was a mess. There was after-school traffic and the roads were jammed. There were harried mums and irresponsible school children jay walking everywhere. I was sick with the flu and nauseous. The half hour test lasted for one hour because all routes were jammed. And I had my first examiner – Brian – again, though he didn’t recall who I was which was lucky because I had no desire to be remembered.

I gave way. I waited. I manoeuvred all the while trying to retain the contents of my stomach. As we turned into the driving center’s car park (one which I was beginning to hate) we stopped and Brian looked at me. I looked at him, waiting, preparing for the worst. Maybe there was some stroller flap the breeze of my passing car had whipped up at too high a velocity or something ridiculous like that.

He whispered conspiratorially – ‘You’ve passed.’

I screamed and promptly started crying. Haj, who’d been waiting outside, saw me break down, ran inside and shook my shoulders. Brian coughed and looked embarrassed and filled in my pass certificate. I was driven off – triumphant but exhausted. I had done it – I was a UK driver. Which was fabulous, because I would boldly go where everyone went all the time – but on a freaking car this time! Yeah man!

But then, when your car is a Mercedes and you have a navigation system out to kill you – driving can seem a much more daunting experience. But THAT is another blog post.

HOMEBODY MISSES HER MOMMY

Back when I first started blogging, I often struggled with bitterness over how I had ended up fat, divorced and stuck. But when days got really terrible and positivity was elusive, I scoured my brain to figure out what I had that other people did not. And the answer I always came back to was the same: I had my Mommy. Arthritic, hypertensive and opinionated she may be, but always the light of my life.

Not that we were at peace with each other. We were too alike. You see, once you return home after you’ve been married – a struggle takes place. Your mother is ready to take care of you but you don’t need her in that capacity. You don’t need limits set on how to dress and where to go and what to say, you don’t need the ‘I told you sos’ and you  certainly don’t require the lectures on how to properly conduct yourself with modesty so as to best attract further proposals so that you can get married again as soon as possible. It didn’t help that my dad had died six months before I ended my first marriage – so my mum and I were two grieving women, suffering loss in different ways and not quite knowing how to grieve.

There were fights – unbelievably cruel accusations were hurled by both sides. I remember the worst night was when I physically pushed my mum out of my room and told her that she was miserable and hateful from behind my closed door. She yelled right back and told me that I was selfish and disobedient and deserved everything I was getting.  What followed was a deathly silent night before I went back to her room, crawled into her bed and hugged her in the early light of dawn. She hugged back because, like me, she too had spent a sleepless night regretting her words and anger.

We hated and loved in equal measures. What got us through it was the knowledge that come what may, we were in this together and if anyone tried to hurt us, we’d band together and forge a united front. But in the absence of a common enemy, we were lost.

This time, this horrible, fractious time changed something very basic between me and mum – we realized that to actually establish a genuine relationship, the struggle for power had to go away. I see many of my friends with their mums – chained to them – their approval, their scorn, their responsibility towards them. I see mothers guilting their sons and daughters into obedience; unthinkingly limiting their lives and opportunities because it is a widely perceived notion in sub continental culture that a daughter or son is a future investment for a parent: old age becomes a loan on which interest is owed whether the principle is available or not.

But that was not the case with my mother. She realized she no longer needed to ‘take care’ of me – three joint therapy sessions made her understand that. But that meant that I also had to accept her as a separate human being – with needs and wants that didn’t involve me. It was a joint separation into maturity.

Women, as Nancy Friday once said, can be each other’s greatest jailers and liberators. A relationship becomes free only when manipulation ends. Mothers manipulate their daughters into adulthood and daughters learn the same game in inverse – knowing which strings to pull and pressure points to press to hurt and guilt into getting what they want. But Ammi and I stopped becoming mum and daughter – we became friends. I was freed from all obligations to ‘take care’ of my mum in her old age – partly because it wasn’t needed, partly because I saw her as another individual who, like me, needed to make it on her own because I couldn’t possibly carry her weight and still live a full life. She took baby steps too:  letting me drive at night and go to strange places and meet strange men whom it was necessary to meet for the purposes of marketing my novel. She realized that her fears were her own and imposing them on me wasn’t parenting, it was smothering.

When I decided to get married and settle in London, I was gutted because it meant leaving a woman who had given birth to me, taken care of me and then gone through the very difficult process of letting me go (it is the last process that most parents can’t endure and therefore avoid).

And yet, she is the only woman in this world who is as interested in me as I am. My presence is her Eid, Diwali and Christmas all rolled into one. She prays for me, hurts for me and roots for me all the while telling me what’s wrong with me. The highlight of coming home to Karachi is to walk out of the arrival gates at Jinnah and see her, tasbeeh in hand and dupatta on head, anxiously waiting for me to walk out, beaming when I have done so and then immediately handing her cell phone to me to call the driver because when I am present, all mobile related duties will invariably fall on me and she no longer needs to bother with ufone and bad signals and the mystifying world of smart phones for a week or two.

By the same token, leaving Karachi means hugging her goodbye, watching her stand alone behind the railings, knowing that she will return to an empty house and feel empty for a while. To call her after immigration is to realize that she has regressed from being a physical presence to a voice on the phone. Returning to the UK, I skype her and am gutted when I realize, as the wonderful poet Noorulain Noor puts it, that her sky is different from mine.

It is a mini-death, this separation.

But Ammi has given me the gift of letting me know that she not only will she be fine without me, she’ll live life to the fullest and enjoy herself. And in the process, she has become a role model – someone comfortable with separation and loneliness and still managing to garner enthusiasm and joy in life. I can cry in the shower and miss the scent of her perfume and our chai sessions in her bed – but  I know that happiness – not residual but whole-hearted, full-throated laughter-kind,  is still possible. One just has to exert oneself, like she does.

Ammi is a woman comfortable with discomfort and she’s helping me become the same. And in being a strong woman, she has given me the greatest gift any mother can give to her daughter.

HOMEBODY SQUEEZES INTO BRITAIN

With my expansive girth, I find London a very tight fit. My husband lovingly calls me a hobbit – and it’s not because of hairy feet. I waddle along well below the national height average but still get stuck between doorways, payment tills and public places which my taller, slimmer compatriots have no issues navigating.

Yesterday, for instance, we went to see the Chinese New Year celebrations in Trafalgar Square. We reached a half hour early, but were told that there was no more space for newcomers – fine hundred attendees and the place was full. In the distance, I saw a large stage on which a Chinese diplomat droned on in extended monotone. A colourful dragon stood behind, waiting for him to finish so that it could start its dance. But we were not to witness the excitement, because London has very little room for Londoners. So we followed the easily-resigned hoardes into China Town. The main road (road is a misleading term – in London they are basically the size of a suburban American footpath, dutifully carrying the full load of taxis, double decker buses, cars, bikes all at once) was clogged with more bodies. I moved into a side-lane and promptly got stuck between blonde Nordic men and women who towered above my head and would have stepped on me had  my beloved husband not whisked me away into a Turkish restaurant (which was roughly the size of my mum’s bathroom in Karachi). I ate a baklava and waited for the cobbled streets to clear before returning home.

Space is my one constant enemy here. My fridge and freezer are the size of small side tables so that grocery shopping must be done in bits and bobs. There is room, for example, for 3 onions and 5 tomatoes and perhaps 2 lemons in the vegetable section. To introduce a cucumber or aubergine into the mix is to incur violence upon the plastic drawer that has since cracked in my efforts to make it hold something a little more substantial. Items have to be piled precariously on top of each other on the one shelf I have: and some forgotten tube of passata invariably oozes out after a few days so that the entire refrigerator has to be emptied and cleaned and the whole rigmarole of putting things back starts again.

I am told my apartment is large by London standards. Huge, in fact. But I had an Audrey Hepburn moment when she, upon entering Gregory Peck’s modest studio in Roman Holiday, imperiously asks whether they had entered the elevator. I was not quite as ignorant – I just walked into our bedroom and exclaimed ‘Nice closet.’ When my husband told me that this was our bedroom and that another closet needed to be fitted inside it, my mind immediately started wondering how I’d fit all my stuff anywhere.

The real luxury of my living situation, apparently, is that I have two bathrooms. But they are not called that: here, we have wet rooms – boasting the singular quality of not drying after a two minute shower. Why living in the land of constant rain a wet room is a selling point for a property I’ll never know. But they are compact and one can shampoo one’s hair and reach for the toothbrush above the sink and flush the toilet without necessarily extending one’s reach. Everything in Britain’s houses is an arm’s length away. Provided you have very short arms.

So precious a commodity is space that washing machines are provided without driers. One would imagine that the dryer would occupy a sacred space in the British household – garlanded and enshrined for being a shelter of warmth in a dank, cold world. So I stare at wet socks and bras all day and by the time they dry, I have a new load of dirty laundry to wash and put in its place. And there’s no discreet balcony to air these items. You have a corridor and a small clothes’ stand – that’s all.

My body too suffers under the very necessary squeeze of Western clothing. Summers here are like the coldest Karachi days and layering is really the only way to keep hypothermia at bay. So every day I put on underwear, thermals, clothes and then a sweater. And this is if I’m indoors. To go out – I must put on a five tonne puffer jacket, a woollen scarf that wraps itself around my nostrils like an anaconda and a woollen cap to make sure my ear-drums don’t freeze. I venture out like this – a moving pile of clothing that joins other mounds making their way on footpaths-called-roads trying to squeeze into tooth-paste shaped trains called Tubes, inhaling arm-pit fragrance and trying their best not to stare up into other people’s  nostrils.

It’s been a squeeze, to say the least. But things are getting better. I no longer get stuck behind the kitchen counter – nor suffer attacks of claustrophobia when I enter my house – my brain has oriented itself to UK dimensions. I have shrunk and am glad this cold, dark country has accommodated itself around homebody – who is just beginning to wriggle around and make her way in it.

The Return of the Homebody

Okay, okay. You said I'd come back, and you were right.
So a lot has happened - I've published a novel  and it's done quite well. I've sort of transfered this blog onto wordpress here and I do hope all you who read this come back, even if it's just to say, 'I told you so!!'

Homebody Discovers a Lost Blog Post

Was just deleting some old files when I came across this. I hope you enjoy. No, there aren’t any more unpublished posts. Hope all of you are doing well!

I’m growing old. This bothered me five minutes ago. But now it doesn’t. Here’s why.

So this year I turn thirty. I am told that thirty is the new twenty. This is a sweet little lie because even homebody is not that bad at math. Not anymore. Thirty is the new thirty. (Ms. Soares will be so proud of me; she once banged my head against my desk and then hers against the wall when I once wrote 2=3 as the answer to an algebraic formula and delightedly demonstrated my conclusion to her at the end of the period.) Fact is if I was living a hundred years ago I would be ‘on the shelf’. I’d be dead in a decade; while today I have about forty more years to go, if all goes well. So I’ve lived almost half my life – unless I live to be eighty or ninety. In any case, there’s no point speculating. The fact is: homebody is ageing.

Age, for me, has manifested itself on my body. I used to be flat. Blissfully sexless, which was so comfortable because I didn’t have to wear a dupatta everywhere. But now, I’m bootilicious, which is not a dream come true because I want to hold on to that pre-teen anorexic look that represented the old days for me. It made me feel comfortable, that I was still that little girl whose father was still alive, who watched Captain Planet and ran mad over the house, not worrying about thunder thighs and support bras and other items of clothing to make sure not everything flung itself all over the place with every step I took. Now, I have to make sure I’m more, shall we say, contained.

And the thing about weight gain that most gets you down is that you don’t fit into all those pretty clothes that hang in your closet, waiting patiently to be worn. You could wear them six months ago, but hormones kicked in, metabolism kicked the bucket and gravity started its magic. You begin to spread and spread until one day, your clothes suddenly go taut on you; despite the fact that you’re holding your breath and sucking your tummy in until you burst a kidney. And there’s that ominous ripping sound when you sit down.

So, five minutes ago, I cleaned my closet and took out the outfits that I hadn’t worn for a year, because I was waiting to be thin enough to wear them. I thought there would be three, maybe four.

There were TEN outfits. Beautiful ones. With the most exquisite hand and needlework. And I’d only worn them once and then kept them aside for ‘special occasions’. Royal blues, reds, greens and maroons. And oh. That one beige, glittering masterpiece of chiffon and silk.

I lay them on the bed and examined them. I would probably be able to fit into them if I exercised diligently for a month. But I had been telling myself this for over a year. My body was changing, the pre-teen look wasn’t coming back. Ever.

But as I stared at these outfits, something clicked. I took them off their hangers and folded them, lovingly. And I put them in a bag and gave them to my cook, whose son is getting married next month. He took them stoically, he doesn’t like being in a position where he needs help. So I kind of sidled up and put them next to him and told him he should take the ones he could use. He took them all.  

And five minutes ago, I checked my closet, which is emptier than it has ever been. There are no longer countless clothes; each kameez hangs solitary and proud. And suddenly, I feel deliciously free – empty but full of possibility. I have aged and this is my new body and those clothes were for an old me. There’s more of me, physically yes, but also in terms of the experiences and tidbits of wisdom that I like to think I’ve gained. The old me had a lot of hopes and dreams which were no more. The new me has new hopes and new dreams which need some more breathing space.

My ten year old self was precocious, my twenty year old self was uncertain. But at thirty, I’d like to think that I’ve settled into who I am. Which means that I can truly BEGIN to live life on my terms: terms where I have space, where I am independent and where I can breathe freely and deeply,  just like the clothes in my closet. . After all, homebody just created space for who she is about to become. Which is terribly, terribly exciting, don’t you think?

Homebody Writes Her Last Blogpost

This is my swan song. The last entry. The proverbial cherry on the cake which has been sufficiently baked and to overcook it would be a shame.

You  see, most bloggers start out enthusiastically and then months later fizzle out slowly and inexorably; so that a year later you realize that you haven’t read anything from them recently; and you click on their link and you see a notice to the effect of ‘last updated three years ago’. And that notice fills me with sadness, it’s like seeing a dead cat on the side of the road, or like tea that’s left too cold in the cup on an ignored side table and you’re forced to drain it down the sink. I love this blog far too much to do that to it. I hope you have drunk your fill; enjoyed what you have tasted; but this is a gentle notice that there will be no more refills. I think the start of a project is auspicious – why shouldn’t the end of it be also?

I write this post with great sadness. Not because I’ll miss blogging – which I probably will, but because my decision to end comes concurrently with the news of someone’s diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. One day this person was fine, the next day this person was operated upon and the doctors discovered that the cancer had spread its tentacles to surrounding organs. And I thought to myself, if that ever happened to me, what would my reaction be? I couldn’t rejoice in my safety and temporary immunity from bad news – thirty years on the planet have taught me it’s no consolation to know you’re okay when someone else is suffering. Even if that someone else isn’t terribly close to you. I just sat and thought about what I would feel if I would die a year from now and I realized that I would be filled with regret that I hadn’t written more stories.

I have a very strong suspicion that I’m a writer. I think there are many stories within me that I need to tap. But just as pressure builds before a volcano erupts, just as silence precedes the storm, these stories will unveil themselves to me only when I give them the creative space to become. Right now, my creative climate is very dependable – regular showers that wash the pavement, soon to be forgotten. My blog posts are precious but also trivial – they don’t allow me to feel the longing and anticipation that will allow for a more significant piece of writing. A friend, mentor and writer told me that I must feel the ‘silence within the soul’ before the stories come. These blog posts interrupt that silence and I don’t want that to happen anymore. So I must pave the way.

So what has blogging taught me? It’s taught me that you write when you are fundamentally discontented with what is; it’s a way of figuring out who you are and why are things the way they are and also a way of coming to terms with the contrast therein. It’s taught me that it can bring you a lot of joy. It’s taught me that there are a lot of wonderful writers around me, whose blogs I’ve read and enjoyed and will continue to do so. It’s introduced me to a wonderful online community, who I met at a dinner party in a beautiful house that reminded me of the Von Trapp household in The Sound of Music. It also taught me that the instant gratification of readership and comments is the ultimate confidence building machine – writing is a lonely process and to embark on it, you need to have a supportive group that reaffirms your inner suspicion that you are, in fact, a writer, even if you aren’t published yet. And when you have been in this group, you can start venturing out alone, on your own. You have the emotional strength to go on a journey that’s frustrating and quite arduous.

So I end by thanking my readers. Some of you I can thank personally, others I thank in this post. You have given me confidence, praise and a lot of happiness and I hope your dreams come true.

And therefore, ladies and gentlemen, homebody takes her last bow. It’s been a pleasure.

Where Homebodies Dare…

Another thing about homebodies – they like to travel. It sounds paradoxical, doesn’t it? Not really.

Living carefully, prudently, hedging in your desires means that once a year, or once in a while, you yearn to break loose from all boundaries and inhibitions and do something that is completely different. And with a biker-chick soul, I want to occasionally do something that is outrageous along with it.

Last year, I went to Turkey. I had made plans to be completely imprudent: I’d dance on table tops and kiss Turkish men and go dancing at night, all night. I would be repressed-but-now-out-of-control-Pakistani-woman-of-the-world-without-mum. I would be a force to be reckoned with. I’d drink alcohol and eat EVERYTHING. I would ‘live’ to the fullest, like I hadn’t ever before.

But reality was a little different. You see, homebodies lack spontaneity and their sudden yearnings for freedom aren’t necessarily coordinated with my own. This meant that none of my homebody friends were ready to come with me. So I booked an escorted tour on which the average age was 55. And my dreams of indiscriminate hedonism went down the drain.

There was no one to sleep with, although Frank, a sixty-something darling said to me, in front of his face-palming wife that he’d flirt with me if he’d just brought his Viagra with him. I was adopted by a lovely Indian couple and Yogi, as we called him, wouldn’t let me splurge on ridiculous trinkets because he said that as surrogate parent (he was baby-sitting me throughout the trip; quite successfully in fact) he found he couldn’t allow me to waste my hard-earned money. And then when I wanted to take a sip of alcohol, a seventy-something kindred spirit named told me about his son’s experience and said, ‘Now, do you really want a glass of wine?’ Another beautiful friend from Britain encouraged me to take a sip and told me she’d take care of me, but remembering the warnings, I desisted. Besides, a sip and then being taken care of is hardly hedonism, right?

And yet, and yet. Turkey is permanently lodged in my soul. Not just because it’s a beautiful country - a hot air balloon ride above the rugged ridges and exotic rock formations of Cappadocia, with the sun on one side and rain on the other, is quite possibly the highest point of my life, literally and metaphorically. But that’s not why Turkey was amazing for this homebody.

Turkey was my first stint at independence. Despite warnings that I’d be bored, or get lost, or get raped, I still traveled alone. It was planned, financed and executed by me. I went thinking I’d see interesting new things, which I did. But what made the trip for me was the people.

I met some of the most beautiful people who have ever existed – a man who designed gems and grew flowers and who loved his wife, another woman who wrote her soul and giggled and learned to cat-whistle in Taksim square; and another who designed the most amazing costume jewelry for craft fairs. I met a woman who was discovering her rock-star soul at sixty, after having left an abusive husband. I met two gay ladies who were passionately in love even after twenty years. I met a man who mourned his dead wife still; so much that he was trying to walk his grief out along the ruins of Istanbul.

I remember thinking one night, in an Italian restaurant at Taksim which served the most amazing Spaghetti Bolognese, that all these people had once been homebodies like me, they were probably still homebodies. But they still had a sense of adventure, a zest for life that showed in warm smiles and shining faces. And there you go, epiphany hits: being a homebody is a really cool thing; much cooler than dancing topless on table tops. The freedom of the soul is much more important than anything else, and these men and women taught me that. I felt blessed to be among this wise, funny, inspiring group of people: they were spiritual rock stars and biker chicks and infinitely cool people.

And now, like Vianne Rocher from Chocolat, the wind changes for me too. I feel the same tug to dare to travel to another land. Last night, I dreamt of Andalusia. I think it’s time for homebody to venture forth again.