When the Redheaded Wench came to visit me in London, she looked at my apartment and later that night over an episode of Absolutely Fabulous turned to me and commented on my uncanny ability to somehow always land on my feet.

“What do you mean?” I asked her, nominally distracted from the antics of the manic Edwina and Patsy.

“I mean,” she said, indicating my flat with a broad sweep of her arm, “that for example, you’re a student living in a place that most people twice your age can’t afford and would envy you.”

I got to thinking about that tonight. She’s right. In a lot of ways, many more than I generally ever stop to recognise, I’ve been absurdly lucky. I got to Karachi at the end of 2003 and met the Opiate, who is now such an integral part of my life that I miss her company and her perspicacity (not to mention neuroses) on an almost daily basis. I got to London where I’ve finally started managing to heal the strange breach between my brother and myself, a rift that has to the best of my knowledge, existed for close to a decade if not more. When I came out in Karachi at the age of 11, I did so to friends who were not just willing to keep my secret, but supportive of me and let me assure you that for barely post-pubescent Pakistani males, that’s no small feat. When I went to college in the US, I had fucked around so much in my last two years of high school that I didn’t expect to get in anywhere, but I managed to ace the standardised tests and get admitted into a school that many people would kill to attend. Hell, even when I was cowering with depression and failing classes, I still graduated with a very respectable CGPA and a slew of academic awards in my field.

Coming back to Karachi, I got rocketed to a high position in my industry of choice with very little effort on my part, and little-to-no rationale for such occurrence other than my happening to be in the right place at the right time. And at the end of the day, I’m a lucky sonofabitch for being financially viable enough to actually take a year away from working and get a degree that most people sweat blood and tears for three years to attain.

It’s not really odd that we don’t recognise how wonderful things are; rather it’s amusing how often we forget. Amusing and a little bit sad, but mostly just entertaining.

I don’t know why I’m thinking of all this now. Maybe it’s because for the first time in many years, I’m happy to be in Karachi this winter; my flight back to London leaves in just over 24 hours, and for once, I’m genuinely sad about it. This city is, for better or worse, my home, and no matter how much I struggle to convince myself otherwise, those invisible umbilical cords of birth and identity are never really severed. If I were to be forced into living in Karachi for the rest of my life, I’d probably rant and rail against it, but truth be told, it’d probably be an instinctive reaction predicated on how I think I should behave rather than on how I actually feel about it.

When I’m in London, I can’t imagine living in Karachi. Not being able to nip down to the local pub, or throw down my books, don a spiffy outfit and run off to Soho, or go to play with my nephews, all of that vanishing through a quirk of geology (not to mention theology really), is inconceivable. But when I’m in Karachi, so much of that pales in comparison to my life here, to the people I know, the things I do, the places I see.

Watching your parents grow old is hard. Watching them age is nowhere nearly as bad as watching them become slowly helpless or limited though. Intellectually, I realise that I can’t care for my mother and aunt forever, or even for a little while, that basing my entire future on what I can do for them in the short-term jeopardises a significant number of my long-term prospects. But the heart is an uneasy thing at the best of times, and frequently tells my brain to fuck off and gain some perspective, to take advantage of the years that I do have left with them instead of selfishly indulging myself elsewhere. I finally understand my brother’s admonishments when he insists that I spend a great deal of time with my mother and aunt when they’re in town or when I’m around them, because that time goes by so fast that it’s difficult to even catch its traces in hindsight, never mind that hindsight is perfect. But once again, that battle between the heart, the mind and its confluences engages me, making me think, rethink, guess and second-guess everything that just a few months ago seemed to be carved indelibly in stone.

At moments like this, I wish I were straight. I honestly don’t understand why people like my brother or my cousins, none of whom are fraught with the perils of an essential deviance react so negatively to the idea of moving back home. For me, the greatest fear of being here is not that I’ll miss career opportunities, or the chance to make something of myself—it’s that by being here, I’ll commit myself to a lifetime of loneliness, that my chances of finding the person with whom I want to spend my life will dwindle rapidly, and that while I may live contentedly ever after, happiness may not be an option. Even more than that, I find the idea of having to suppress who I am and what I am terrifying in the extreme; I don’t want to have to find a corner to hide in on New Year’s Eve when I’m at a party and the clock strikes twelve, just so I can kiss the man I’m with. But I don’t want to spend the rest of my life welcoming the advent of another year in a city that I can’t truly call home, or in a place where I’ll always be an outsider.

I may be an outsider in Karachi in some ways, but in others I’m more a part of this world than I ever thought I would be.

I’ll probably change my mind in a few weeks. But for now, I’m glad that my options post-law-degree are fairly limited. I’ll either get a job in London and put in a few years there, or I’ll graduate and come back to Karachi to work here. The payoffs, as Uberhomme pointed out to me, are time-delayed over here, but they do accrue, and they’re not insignificant. They may not be quite as substantial as they would be elsewhere in the world, but given their context, they have no small degree of authority. I’m fortunate to be adaptable by nature; I’m sure that I could make myself happy over here if I had no other option, but then there would always be the “what if” factor kicking in. That exists outside of Karachi as well, especially given the ages of my family members and the simple fact that the very thought of their growing old alone and without their children around is something with which I empathise immensely, to the point where it has clouded my judgement on many accounts. It’s hard to walk away from easing the pain of a future you know will most likely be your own. There’s perhaps nothing quite as awful in the gamut of human experience as being lonely, powerless and (even from a particular perspective, admittedly) forgotten.

If I don’t remember them in the here and now, who will remember me in the future? And even if no one is there for me, does that validate what is in effect an abandonment? Where does the line exist between being true to those who have sacrificed much for you, and following the dictates of what you know will be right for you?

Happy New Year.