The rain changes everything.
It is hard to explain my love-hate relationship with rain in Karachi, which feels so different from rain anywhere else in the world. It doesn’t come often and every Karachiite looks forward to (and dreads) the monsoon season. It comes as relief, yet a destroyer; it creates puddles to play in, but also floods homes; it washes away the dust otherwise blatantly visible to the naked eye, but also brings injury. I remember once discussing the appropriate amount of time taken for a shower with a Canadian friend – my 10 to his 30 minutes. He had never known what it is like to not have access to water. He was amazed I had had this problem – I was amazed he had not. In a water scarce city, seeing water fall from the sky feels almost holy.
Over the last year, my never before realized sense of adventure awoke and I started taking road trips to the outskirts of Balochistan with a group of wanderers. For someone who’s spent the better half of my childhood in Balochistan, it is only now in my thirties that I have actually found it. These are dry barren lands with little shrubbery and you have to wonder why anyone would live there. Once you get off the road, there are people residing in tiny shacks with even tinier windows. There is no electricity and no cell phone signal. On an average day, as you drive off road into the austere lands, over big boulders and rocks, small dirt passages, skirting through deep mud, and sometimes crossing Olympian pool-sized water bodies, all you feel is the sun and ubiquitous dust on your face. Your body sways violently and without control in the car as if you’re on a sinking ship caught in a storm. In spite of this, there is a sense of serenity in being away from the city of lights. Sometimes, when camping the night in the middle of dry Kherari river, attention diverted from the phone screen, you can see the Milky Way and stars shining ever so brightly in the pitch black.
My most recent off-road trip was to Sassi right after it had rained. Mounds of dry dust had been replaced by little sprouting greens. The cacti, commonly found all over the dry land, were no longer a shade of brown; the sun hiding behind the clouds and a cool breeze blowing. It was the same place I had visited many times before, but this landscape and experience was new. It took me some time to fall in love with the endless scorched grounds of Balochistan, but the love I felt for such green, especially when it’s usually so sparsely found, was without effort. I have always perceived of these harsh places I so frequently visit as struggling – to grow, to survive, to thrive and deprived of their full potential. Now, just after a little rainfall, these same acrid grounds gave a glimpse of their bountiful potential to flourish.
This journey, now made almost every other week, is not without the pains of preparations. It starts with concerns of health for the car (I refer to it as the Beast) – deemed very important to get to a destination unknown. Immense deliberation is given to bedtime and setting an alarm to get the maximum amount of sleep. Arguments ensue about Lara’s (the dog) hair infestation that would occur if she were to accompany and further arguments about shaving her for the trip and yet further arguments about how many seats should be removed to make this old dog sit comfortably. Lengthy discussions are held on the menu and how many Hobbit meals will be consumed. In reality, hours slept amount to 5; frantic activity to get to the closest select shop at the gas station for snacks and drinks; menu includes McDonald’s and then some more McDonald’s; Lara is shoved into the car with a compromised one seat removed (for now) and, of course, unshaved.
Once, for an overnight camping trip, we forgot to take our tent.
The journey to witness the glamor of Balochistan regions is also not without lethargy. The drive takes hours and landscapes after landscapes merge into each other. I normally sit with an open book in my lap, but captivated by the scenery, I never actually get around to reading anything. Thought after thought rolls out and yet, if anyone were to ask me what I think about on these drives, I wouldn’t be able to answer. It is on these trips that I realize how important is it to periodically cut myself from my every day life; work, endless whapsapp messages, netflix binges, breaking news stories, mindless chatter and instead to connect with another human being sitting next to me before resuming the same mechanical cycle.
Everything about these excursions, rain or not, is an experience to be cherished and remembered. I have witnessed a flash flood and a whole river come to life when the river itself didn’t have a clue that it was supposed to be filled with water. I have swum in rivers and dams; seen strange insects and other wildlife; sat with my feet in water watching sunsets; been a part of an otherwise unlikely community that formed simply through a collection and connection of people present in that time and space.
I have loved every minute of it because out there, every minute is truly mine.
The Everything Blurps. 