My high school experience felt like an operatic disaster. That magnificent scale, the oscillation between the feeling that you are having the best time of your life and the worst is, we all know, simply part of being a late adolescent. Your body is new to you, your mind is new to you, thoughts, experiences, hates, likes, loves - all these are discoveries. You are treated like a new person and are now desperate to discover who exactly that is. It was stressful and I am suspicious of anyone who made it through that metamorphosis without some kind of lasting scars that can become fodder for self-help books or rom-com movie flashback montage scenes.
But for all of its swirling symphonic pain, high school ended for me with a mundane thud. A few weeks after my final examination, I received a torn-off half page from my school. “This is to inform you,” it began tersely, “that you have been officially withdrawn from the active records of the school. Sincerely, School.” No ceremony, dinner or farewell, no formal acknowledgement (to be fair I was looking for an apology) of the role that school had played in your life up until that point. Not even a cursory nod that they hope your future didn’t combust in flames. None. After 13 years I was left with a photocopied piece of parchment implying that I was a burden that has been relieved. Like a kidney stone. It was, I imagine, akin to a prisoner release form.
“Well, screw you too, HellMouth!” I thought to myself, throwing away the paper.
The release was palpable though. Release from the schooling and drudgery that accompanies the faux-colonial educational system. But also, and perhaps more importantly, release from social imprisonment. No longer would the same tired group of people have to be forced to spend time together, as we had all had to do since we were little children. There would be new friends, new enemies, new experiences, new group dynamics and new excitement. A whole new world, as Disney would put it.
If you grew up in the same city that you live in now, you are basically surrounded by many of the same faces you were in school. There is something existentially suicidal about that kind of stagnation
This has turned out to be less true over the years than I had hoped. After a brief period of expansion in the people I knew when I moved back to Pakistan several years ago, the faces of people I have seen grinning at me from across dinner tables and centerpieces has remained near constant. I have been back in Pakistan for a little over a month. Since it is winter, there are lots of weddings and parties going on, and I’ve enjoyed being back in fine weather and seeing familiar faces. That euphoria began to wane after the third week because I kept seeing the same faces in different outfits - so often that it became comical. Art openings, weddings, mehndis, cocktails, dinners - it didn’t matter. There they all were. Most of them have been super nice, and genuinely engaging, and it’s nice to catch up. But honestly, how much more can you catch after the fifth time you’ve seen an acquaintance is five days?
Day 1: *excited smile* “HI! How’s it going? Acha, so you’re here now?”
Day 10: *polite smirk* “Hi, how are you? Still here?”
Day 20:” *po-faced stare* “Hi, how have…the last three days been?”
Day 30 *dead eyes” “What do you want from me?”
The strangest part is that most of the people I see are extensions of the same social groups one used to meet/stalk from afar in high school. Except now most of them are married-to/divorced from each other and have produced a generation of kids that they force to hang out in over produced themed parties. The more left wing of you will say: “No Fayes, you are just meeting the wrong people. Diversify.” But think about it, if you will. If you grew up in the same city that you live in now, you are basically surrounded by many of the same faces you were in school. There is something existentially suicidal about that kind of stagnation.
New start after high-school? Only for those who want one, the author believes
Despite the fact that the major cities of Pakistan rank in the literal millions of people, the chattering classes make it feel like you’re in a small town where the residents never leave. This includes you too Karachi. I know you think you’re chic because you live in apartments and don’t mind the smell, but no.
It was with some surprise that I got a message about a reunion happening at my high school this week. That’s an exaggeration. I didn’t technically receive anything from them but got a call from someone who had been invited asking me if I wanted to go (I know for a fact that the place hates me as much as I do it, locked as we are in a karmic cycle of mutual loathing destined to replay itself across time and space). I gave the invite (?) about four seconds of thought before realising that, for the most part, I keep running into people from school anyway, so what is the point of a reunion? Living in Lahore - any place you call a hometown really, but for me especially Lahore - feels like a never ending high school reunion. I know people who find that familiarity a comfort, who love the constancy of it all and even go so far as to seek it out. We are not alike, they and I. Perhaps I just have Stockholm Syndrome that keeps me coming back to the location that disturbs me the most. Or maybe my opera just needs a change of scenery every so often to keep the trauma moist. But there is one thing that Lahore teaches me every time I come back here: For some people it doesn’t get better after high school and those are usually the ones that like it that way.
