Karachi Diary: Sleeplessness & solitude

I can't remember when I got a good night's sleep this last week. It certainly wasn't on the day I landed but in the days since, though I've had an opportunity or two, I can't say I've caught up on lost sleep.

For one thing, rising early is a hard habit to break. I'm up with the azaan no matter when I go to bed. Unfamiliar beds, the light all wrong, snoring neighbours heard loud and clear through remarkably thin walls - many things make a good night's sleep impossible.

But mostly it's the reluctance to wind up the hanging out. 

Yesterday, over different conversations, I said and heard others say how important solitude is to them as writers, how they are essentially people who are not just happy to be alone but actively prefer it.

And yet, at lit fests and in the days here before this one started, there's scarcely an hour in the day where we've been free to just stare out at the water, read, make desultory notes in the journals I'm sure we've carried with us assiduously everywhere, even moving it from bag to bag where necessary.

At the festival, there are more crowds than at Goa or Hyderabad during the festival and it's rather scary to be amongst so many people. I scurried away to my room between sessions and was immensely grateful for being able to do so. 

I intended to spend last night alone in my room. I managed to get two hours to myself. This is not a complaint.  

When I'm home, I go for days without speaking to another person except my mother. My phone is always on silent and if there were a way to mute construction sounds, where I live would be the perfect place.

But when I travel, I don't expect to be left alone and I am happy to pack in all the conversations I don't usually have, into those three or four days when I see other people. 

And I don't know how other writers do it but I'm generally socially awkward so making conversation is hard in the company of people who tend naturally to silence. Asking questions is one way in but by themselves they don't constitute a conversation. I've been finding it interesting to watch how we all construct our public personhood via the few anecdotes we recycle for public consumption, how little or how much we give away even in broad, potentially fraught subjects such as politics.

I tell myself there's a time for solitude and that time is not now. I'm trying to be an accurate recording device but without my batteries recharged with enough sleep, it's hard.

Karachi Diary: Placeholder

My S10 is more than ten years old and is now on its last legs. The photos it can manage are grainy, even in adequate light. There were reasons I couldn't bring my SLR but since the reason I'm not blogging in words today is because there's barely time to sleep, let alone process things and blog about them.

So here's the creek by our hotel. Early morning and at around sunset.

Creek. Early Morning. Karachi.

Creek. Sunset. Karachi

Karachi Diary: Day 1

Before Karachi, there was Hyderabad. Hyderabad, India, as I'm growing used to specifying; not Hyderabad, Sindh.

At the Hyderabad Airport, first the man at the ticket counter and then the man at Immigration, took a long look at my Pakistan visa. They called their superiors, claimed they were too new and had no experience in handling Pakistan visas. They took copies of my documents. They asked me to say what I did and where I wrote. I wrote out a list of places where my work has appeared. (This blog did not feature in this list).

It is now nearly 6pm in my lovely hotel room in Karachi. I have just returned from my police verification where there were more copies of documents made, more genial questions. This seems worth noting, that at none of these places were people actually hostile. They were merely taking note of where I was coming from and to and acting accordingly.

Of the 24 hours between the ticket counter in Hyderabad and the police visit in Karachi, I can tell you very little. Moments of anxiety that come with any form of international travel: will I make my connecting flight? What time is it there? (there being unspecified) Will my baggage arrive? In one piece or several - bite your tongue on that thought!

The lack of sleep. I have slept for maybe four hours in the last 36, in snatches of two hours or so. I am light-headed with lack of sleep and yet I daren't lie down just now. There are still things left to do before tomorrow and if I sleep now i will probably be up at 2am and in no condition to do anything tomorrow.

But these are not the things you want to know.

You want to know about the airport at 4am, with the unexpectedly cold breeze, the yellow full moon setting, the hordes of people with rose garlands wrapped in plastic, waiting for their people to emerge from the maws of immigrations.

You want to know how wonderful and gleaming the roads seem after Hyderabad, how they're still shiny at noon and later, though clogged with traffic as any road might be in this part of the world.

And how the air feels like Bombay and the trees feel like home though there are some I cannot identify. My friend says to me, "If you find someone in Karachi who can name these trees, let me know." I can name ashoka, neem, peepul and banyan, but there's a shrub-like tree that reminds me of something I can't remember the name of. Then, in conversation about habitat, it occurs to me: it must be a variety of mangrove tree. I've seen leaves like it in Pichavaram. 

There was shopping. I have a list of requests but it seems likely that I will buy even half of what people say they want. One, because there will be no time, and two, exhaustion does not sharpen the eye. Nothing I saw pleased me enough.

The place where I bought shoes, though. They gave us chai and chatted with us and gave us discounts. They called me their mehmaan. I can see I am going to get called this often, and I preen a little inside when they do.

Then the sea. A sight of the creek from the hotel room, a quick drive by the beach - not enough but it will do for now.

Tomorrow and the day after, I will do a poetry workshop with people at Habib University and Kavery Nambisan, who is also with me on this trip, will do a fiction writing workshop with other young people.

That and other things in the next post. If I continue now, I will scatter words here and there more for sound than sense. I'm not even going to read over what I've written because I might not reach the end of it. Please excuse typos and incoherence. I will gather myself by and by.

Spaniard Goes West

A little more to the West as Calculus might have said.

I am off to Karachi for the Lit Fest and after that, to Lahore for two days. Of course, it's impossible to make the short hop from Bombay to Karachi in the civilised hour or so that it should take, so I will be jetlagged with a day-chewing couple of flights, but hey - I'm westward bound!

Unexpectedly, for me, I think I will blog as often as time permits. I won't be able to take my SLR because baggage rules about one bag are very strict and I really can't stuff a camera into my laptop bag. There will be another camera, though it's old and the images it produces are rather grainy but that can't be helped.

What has been interesting has been the reactions of people to the news in the last two days. 

"Why are you doing this?!" one person said. "You'll never get a visa to the US again." 

"Karachi? Oh! Oh!" said another friend. The second oh was both exclamatory and silent. I could tell.

Another misheard me and was puzzled. "What?" I asked, maybe a little aggressively. When she asked what I'd said and I repeated myself, she said, 'Oh, Karachi! I thought you said Karate."

One friend of my mother's has just been and back and she had much advice to give me. We've made a date to compare stories once I return. Another sounded wistful; she had tried so hard to visit her sister for a whole year and at one point it looked like the visa might come through. But then it didn't and her sister died.

Visas. Let's not talk about them.

Let's talk about PACKING!

(Actually, let's not. You lot know me and know it was and continues to be epic. One day, I will inaugurate a new genre of travel writing that is almost entirely told via the packing for it.)

Maybe let's talk about shopping instead? Or things I absolutely must do and see in both these cities?

Suggestions, please!