Dil Beparwah is playing on the radio and we are playing cards.
Mama says chaman gheela hai, abhi bahir naa jao.
Lekin it’s february and the winter sun prickling my skin coupled with the feeling of wet grass in between my bare toes is something I have longed for since we moved to this neighbourhood over an year ago.
My friend says she’s worried about how she feels like she’ll never move forward in life.
Another says she’s sure she’ll get where she wants to be but might never find happiness.
One fakes a laugh and jokes about how uncertain her life has become;
And one doesn’t say anything but we all know she feels heavy under the burden of what everyone expects her to be and achieve.
I worry too. About all of that.
And paradoxically the more we try to outrun our fears and worries
the greater and more frightening they seem to get.
So we cry. And we laugh. And we joke about how Faiz said that,
dil naa-umeed to nahīñ naakām hi to hai
lambi hai ġham ki shaam magar shaam hi to hai
But the man never bothered mentioning that
it’d be one of those shaam’s that feel like a lifetime.
Someone once told me that to love is to be weak;
And I believed him so I shut everyone out because I thought all I needed was myself.
But then I realized that,
Kabhi kabhi mujhe shaam mein dhar lag jaata hai;
And that I need my friends.
And sometimes they need me too.
So while we all sit on a twenty-years-old wet chithaayi in my front yard,
playing cards while sipping rooh-af-za made with the freshly squeezed lemons we picked from the tree at the park,
And laugh about how none really know how solitaire works;
And we learn that sometimes feeling just okay is more than okay.
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