Migrations are always difficult: ask any drought, any plague; ask the year 1947. Ask the chronicles themselves: if there had been no migrations would there have been enough history to munch on? Going back in time is also tough. Ask anyone back-trekking to Sargodha or Jhelum or Mianwali and they’ll tell you. New faces among old brick; politeness, sentiment, dripping from the lips of strangers. This is still your house, Sir. And if you meditate on time that is no longer time – (the past is frozen, it is stone, that which doesn’t move and pulsate is not time) – if you meditate on that scrap of time, the mood turns pensive like the monsoons gathering in the skies but not breaking. Mother used to ask, don’t you remember my mother? You’d be in the kitchen all the time and run with the fries she ladled out, still sizzling on the plate. Don’t you remember her at all? Mother’s fallen face would fall further at my impassivity. Now my dreams ask me If I remember my mother And I am not sure how I’ll handle that. Migrating across years is also difficult.
