The Rogue Students

Dear Mahrosh,

I write these words before I lay my eyes on you, before I hear you for the first time. All births are special, but some are more special than others. Your arrival marks the first time any male member of our family has been blessed with a child. This makes for quite a lot of interesting changes. Your paternal grandparents, who have had nearly two decades of experience as “nano” and “nana” have been raised onto the pedestals of “dado” and “dada”. Your eldest aunts, who are mothers of sorts for me, who have long standing careers as the cultural favorite “khalas” are now suddenly the culturally disliked “phuppos”. Several gentlemen who had grown tired of becoming “mamoo” for years on end have had a pleasant respite in the form of the hitherto invalid title of “chachoo”. Most significantly, the delight of your great grandmother i.e. your father’s maternal grandmother, knows no bounds since she has long awaited the day when her grandsons would become fathers. And in this way, the blooming of one little flower perfumes the entire garden.

So much for you. And who am I? Well your father and I go back twenty five years, which is as long as I’ve been in this world. His father and my father go back over half a century, which is of course, twice as long as I have been here. It is then no surprise that the majority of the best memories of my life involve times spent with your father, who taught me pretty much everything I didn’t learn from the books. In reverence, I call him “ustaad”. From the time when he convinced me two decades ago that a mile has over a hundred kilometers, to the time when he guided me on the entrance exam of a university, I believed him no questions asked.

Many a winter night was spent sitting or walking with him under the orange glow of the sodium street lamps, intensely discussing abstract and not-so abstract ideas to our heart’s content, usually but not always coming to some sort of conclusion. A lot of unchartered brain territory was explored in such nocturnal sessions. I remember we were discussing the concept of “dream within a dream” and the relative nature of reality, years before Inception ever came out and made these concepts a mainstream idea recognized and understood by everyone.

Our nocturnal sessions weren’t always intellectually productive moments – we set some of the finest precedents of risk taking at times when the sun was nowhere to be seen. The most quoted case, which I’m sure you will have heard before you read these words, is of the time when your father and I were trying to evade capture by the police at midnight. Also infamous is the time when we were racing on the GT Road and almost brought a bike rider to an untimely demise, particularly at the hands or rather, the wheels of your father. But not all of our activities were shared with the rest of the family. Like that one time we were walking through a not-so respectable section of the city at great peril to ourselves late one night because I insisted we try the shortcut.. Or that time when I insisted we hike downhill from our guesthouse all the way to the Hunza River around 1 o clock one freezing cold, pitch black winter’s night, because I felt like it. And I’m thankful to your father for agreeing to accompany me because I have never spent a more thrilling time, while suffering from high fever, than then.

I am a man who values privacy like very few others, whether it is my own or someone else’s. As such, I hardly ever share matters I consider personal, let alone secrets, with other people. But the rare times when I did choose to share something with anyone, I chose your father. I have shared more right and wrong with him than anyone else. For he is not only the son of my father’s most intimate comrade, he is not only my own cousin; he is much more than that. He is my brother, my oldest closest friend.

I still cannot entirely comprehend the realization that one of the bad boys of the family (the other being...*cough cough*) is now a father. Matter of fact I can’t even get over the fact that he is married now. It seems only yesterday when he held my air gun while I shot at a sparrow, because I was too young and hence weak to lift an air gun by myself. It seems only yesterday that we were spending lazy summer afternoons riding on his bicycle with me sitting behind him. It seems only yesterday that we were doing the same thing on his bike. It seems only yesterday that I heard the news that he would be married soon. It seems only yesterday that I attended his wedding with tremendous joy albeit a rather heavy heart, because I realized it meant a lot of things would never be the same for both of us.

And now. Now he is a proud father. And I am a proud uncle. We have a couple of proud paternal grandparents and a flock of proud phuppos. And life continues to go on. So I wish you the best of luck in yours. May you always create and receive ease and conveniences, in this life and the next.

A significant amount of love,

Uncle Zain.