Like that magic internal awareness that allows you to sense a pimple about to form days before it actually erupts, I began this week with the dull sensation of something brewing. I couldn’t place it, but it felt like an absence. Had I forgotten to turn the oven off? Is my mercury retrograde affecting my emotional circuitry? Has my caloric deficit finally caught up with my pituitary gland, forming a powerful new alliance aimed at my waist and hairline?
In order to establish what I was actually feeling – a surprisingly difficult task, all things considered – I began writing in my diary. A few pages in, I realised that what I was feeling was most likely a pang of nostalgia. Specifically, a nostalgia about home and Pakistan. It isn’t surprising that I think of home every so often, though I do confess that with writing about Pakistan’s seventieth birthday last week it has made me think about it more than usual. But it has been long enough since my last visit that I have caught myself romanticising the homeland recently. Ah, I thought on my sticky crowded subway ride home, to feel the coolness of a monsoon breeze right now while sipping on a sweet nimbu paani.
Nostalgia is dangerous. This is a truth I have known since I was seven years old, when people would tell me how lucky I was to be a child. No, I’d think to myself, I am not lucky. I have no access to independent funds, I have to wake up at 6 am to go to child-prison/elementary school and I think the world has vastly underestimated how difficult square roots can be to work out for developing minds. I couldn’t wait to grow up, and having done so I can tell you I was totally right. It is way funner to be an adult. Even at seven I sensed that there is something in the passage of time that allows adults to filter their memories, like pictures on Instagram: brushing over that fight there, skimming over this death here, until what they are left with is a rosy picture of a sunny past that never really existed. That’s why I keep a diary, to remind me of the truth of what I was feeling when I was feeling it so that in the future when the details have sunk to the bottom of my mind, I can have a treasure map that leads me to all my grievances.
The author is currently in the middle of a writing project
As a child I had no access to independent funds, and woke up at 6 am to go to child-prison/ elementary school
The other reason I think I’m feeling nostalgic is because I am currently ensconced in a writing project that I hope will become a book. I tell you this for two reasons. One: it is my hope that by making it public I will now be shamed into completing said project. Two: I want to impress upon you how terrible it is to write. It isn’t at all a pleasurable activity, at least not for me and not for the long stretches of time that I have been doing it for recently. Writing for me means turning off the TV/music and sitting in a room alone with my noisy thoughts for long periods until one of the vibes in my head takes over. It’s a wretched thing to do voluntarily, especially if most of you inner voice is mean and condescending. (Tangent: I have only recently realised that the voice in my head that narrates books or words is not my own. Whose is it?!)
I was talking about this recently to someone at a dinner party whom I had only just met.
“So what are you working on?” the woman asked.
“Oh,” I replied, “I’m working on a project.”
“And? What kind of project?”
“A writing project.”
“A book?”
“No,” I said, “Not a book. A book-length writing project.”
She looked confused. “So, not a book?”
“No,” I said, “it’s book-adjacent. Like it’s rented in the same neighborhood as a book but not in so big a house that it can claim to belong there, you know what I mean?”
She didn’t. “And what do you do?” I asked.
“I’m a novelist,” she said.
“Wow,” I said, “I envy you your ease and confidence. Novelist! Boom. Well done. And how many books have you written?”
“Two.”
“God, that’s good,” I said, impressed. “I’m just trying to get some good bathroom reading out there.”
“I’m sorry.”
“A good bowel movement is better than any review, I’d wager. But do you like writing?”
She tried to reply but I interrupted her again. “It’s like drawing blood from a rock, isn’t it? Did your books do well?”
She began looking around the room. “Er – yes, well enough. I was lucky that my second book got some attention.”
“Oh really! What sort of attention?”
“It won a prize, actually.”
“Good for you! Well done. Would I have heard about it? Probably not, I am so bad with names. What was the prize?”
“The Man Booker. Would you excuse me?”
In my defense I didn’t hear her name when she was introduced to me. Furthermore, I think that hosts should make it clear when you are meeting someone like that to add in: “This is world famous author and BOOKER WINNER so-and-so!” rather than a simple “Have you met my friend K?” It’s misleading and cruel and is exactly the kind of memory that I will write down in lurid detail in my diary so that I never repeat the mistake.
In any case, I am now cured of my nostalgia. I woke up and realised there is no internet or TV in my Lahore house. So like a movie character I am writing this column in a noisy café. The agony of writing is one thing, but it is quite another to have to write without hourly visits to Facebook and Gmail. That’s just silly.
