Flash Backs.

I was searching through my 0ld files and suddenly came across a very old 'introduction' that I had written for myself to put up on my orkut profile back in 2005, when I was 15 years old. It brought back so many memories :P gosh, our lives revolved around orkut and all the gossip oozed out of people's scrapbooks- we'd come to know who's going out with who, who someone hates and all other kinds of shallow stuff. It's funny how some things from the past just make you laugh so much until you have tears in your eyes and trust me, this is one of those few things. Whenever I read it, it makes me feel how much I have changed as a person. I'm a totally new Sidra with patches of an older version...

I'm a very laid-back person, no high and mighty impressions, no sir. I love post its, they are like ALL over my books, my mirror, my bulletin board and my desk. And no, absolutely not the "heart" and "leaf" shaped ones; because I think they look gay. *screws face*.. I simply adore souvenirs- with those big slogans, make me feel a sense of achievement :P.. Dark colors totally intrigue me, bring me black, maroon, purple, brown, or you name it, and it's MINE!! :P.. I HATE coffee and I don't quite understand how people can take in such huge amounts of caffeine into their body everyday! *gasp* the very smell makes me gag. I can make the very small things matter and the very big things pushed away to a corner. I love criss-crossing dates on my calendars. I'm so not interested in the latest gadgets and technological advances UNLESS it's in the field of medicine and if there’s a new msn messenger in town.. *smirks*.. I love interacting with people, but there's this really fine line I've drawn that puts me at a safe distance. I am a major "man hater" :P.. I hate many people without any good reason, but that's me. I don't believe in role models or ideals, because everyone is destined to be someone different, not all of us can be Martin Luther King Jr. or Florence Nightingale, we do need some variety in this world. To me, change is important but not always welcome. I love a change in the form of a few strokes here and there, but major changes distress and disturb me, whether positive or negative. I don't understand what's so great about body piercing? They look freaky. *shudders* Ears are still okay. Friends make up a major chunk of my life; don't know how I'd live without them. I consider shopping a major sport and I happen to be an active player. People who hate life should be slapped hard across the face and thrown into the Pacific ! *hmph* Life is beautiful! I love living; the mere satisfaction that each breath brings along elevates all the stress and pressure around me. My mood drives me the whole day. My moods are very contagious, and I can send very strong vibes to the people around me. I sting, beware. If you're in my good books, then you’re lucky. If you're on my black list, then you’re still luckier. I try to help people as much as I can, but I don't know why I end up getting all "plastic-ky" in front of the ones I'm not that fond of. I don't mind if you hate me, I probably would beat you to it anyway. *sticks tongue out*. It may seem that I look very simple and straight-forward to understand, but mind you I have a whole world to myself on the inside. *tosses hair out of the way*. I can laugh on the lamest things ever, and the same applies on the crying part. In times of uncontrollable fury, I can go up to the extent of throwing things here and there, and screaming my lungs out at the person (victim) without a care in the world. So you better not go to my other side. I firmly believe that you make your own life; nobody can tell you how to live. Life goes on. It takes you along to places where you'd never even dream of going. I don’t understand "love", I think it just means that you get used to each other? There's no concept of "natural beauty” anymore, except maybe in places where they still respect the "Powhatan Confederacy". Politics is interesting. It's the 'dirty-ness' about it that makes things spicier. If you want to show me airs and your attitude, then sure do. I don’t give. If life were all about minding your own business, there would be no news. This is not an opinion, but a fact. I don't like being nosy, but I don't mind being updated with the going-ons. I’d love to learn everything about everything. I'd love to write a whole book on my life- an autobiography. I rock at screwing things up in seconds. *snaps fingers*. I am in love with myself, so it gets a little hard for me to love people around me. But I'm not a hag, at least that's not what I feel. *raises eyebrow*

~Oh yes, even if you read this entire “mother-of-an-about-me”, you still don't know a LOT about me.~

Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry.

if tears could talk, i'd go deaf.
if love could drown, i'd be dead.
if happiness could fly, i'd be alone,
if pain was wax, i'd be all made of stone.

if scars would bleed, i'd be a fountain,
if sorrows could grow, i'd be a mountain,
if feelings could die, i'd be hollow,
if life could bounce, i'd just be a yoyo.

if distance could fold, i'd be so near,
if the night sky would glow, i'd have no fear,
if the sky could shelter, i'd have a haven,
if the sands could hold on, i'd have a cushion.

if dreams could fly, i'd be so free,
if obsessions could rot, i'd be merry,
if fears could sleep, i'd be so happy,
if sobs could lull, i'd be so groggy.

I'm in a weird mood today. I wonder why. I don't think I know the reason myself. sighs. I had an amazing weekends, details of which I will publish whenever I get the time [the entry's still incomplete]. I talked to my brother on the phone today, it felt like I hadn't talked to him in ages. Each detail he told me about his senior year reminded me of my time, 2008, now known as "last year". My instructor didn't know why zonula occudens were continuous in the brain vessels and not in other blood vessels, but I knew. So I felt a little smart for a change. Two three days ago I knew what SIDS stood for, "Sudden Infant Death Syndrome"..another self-placed feather to my hat. As usual, I fail to understand people. I tell myself not to think about them, yet I'm so unable to let go and busy myself in other things.I'm still very much the same 'Sidra Chaudhry' and yet so different. I miss my oldself and sometimes I yearn to change. I'm parked in the wrong lane in the wrong place maybe? I don't want to think too much, so I will stop right here.

I Miss.

I miss being crazy,
I miss being wild,
I miss scraped knees,
I miss being a child.

I miss the sticky candy,
I miss the pretty dolls,
I miss the sound of rattles,
I miss the late night calls.

I miss sitting in the shade,
I miss staring at the sky,
I miss the stories you told,
I miss how days would go by.

I miss kneeling on the cold floor,
I miss watching it snow,
I miss listening to the breeze,
I miss seeing the stars glow.

I miss all the hugs,
I miss the keep-sakes,
I miss the successes,
I miss the mistakes.

I miss waiting in the rain,
I miss wandering around,
I miss listening to the silence,
I miss each and every sound.

I miss the old times,
I miss the old days,
I miss the sweet clouds,
I miss the golden rains.

[To be added to, later, Insh'Allah]

Comings & Goings.

When I heard the thick accented Arabic pronunciation of “Ali” instead of the very Pakistanized pronunciation of “Ali”, I knew I was home. The corners of my smile almost touched my ear lobes, meaning I was smiling from ear to ear. As I boarded my flight SV 733 from Lahore to Riyadh, I literally felt like holding the Saudi Airline crew in a hearty embrace to express my happiness and gratitude towards returning back to the land of the Saudis…or more precisely the land where my heart dwelled.

Now it has just been three days since I arrived here, the country where I opened my eyes, cried for the first time, learned how to walk, went to school and graduated from. Each grain of sand in this arid zone of the Middle East held a memory to it. The warm sun, the golden sands, the unbreakable silence, the lazing camels, the flock of random sheep in the dunes, the palm trees… all seemed to be welcoming me with open arms. The blue and green sign boards with Arabic directions and labels all seemed to be glowing a little too much. The policemen in their earthen-toned uniforms were familiar faces. The dry and rusky leaves of palm trees seemed to bow down and sweep the sand off the road to make way for me. Each gust of wind blew sand grains here and there, rearranged the dunes and shaped the desert into another memory from my past. As I watched caravans of camels being led by a Bedouin, I felt as if this were a pictorial model of how my memories from Saudi Arabia followed me around the world for the past two months… as I wait over here to start another phase of my life, I’m forced to scrutinize my surroundings and learn from them. Currently, I’m the only one in the kingdom; none of my friends is here yet. This gives me more free time to ponder over stuff that I would so conveniently dismiss as crap otherwise. College starts in December and I leave this kingdom again in November to settle into Islamabad, my future home. So many premonitions, apprehensions, fears, excitement, and expectations make me giddy. I’m sure that other than that massive luggage I will be hurling from King Fahd International Airport to Islamabad International Airport, I will be carrying a baggage full of the fondest memories that I had related to this place I called home for eighteen years of my existence. I was born here, in Jubail, on February 17, 1990…I learned how to talk and walk, I grew and lost all my baby teeth here…I learnt the alphabet, memorized nursery rhymes and perfected my hand writing amidst this heat and sands. From a baby, I became a girl and from a girl, a woman. Everything took place here. I made friends, enemies, acquaintances of all kinds. I enjoyed the best part of my life, my school life, in this very country. Each time I think about my life, I can’t do without thinking about this wonderful country I was part of since the very beginning. The pettiest things bug me… Will I find Al-Marai yoghurts and laban in superstores in Pakistan? Will I ever see camels walking with such pride on roads? Will I ever make the same kind of friends like I had in school in here? Will I have the same kind of friendly teachers like I did back in school? Questions attack me from all sides. Seriously, thinking has no bounds…

The other day I just glanced at my calendar and noticed all the scrawny criss-crosses and circles indicating important dates. Although all the marked dates had passed by one by one, I saw them as a vivid reminder of how fast things were moving forward around me. I felt like one of the grains of sand that a simple gust wind could displace wherever it pleased. A grain, which shone under the sun, but seldom, was visible to anyone else. A grain that sometimes settled on a Bedouin’s brow, sometimes on a camel’s hump, or sometimes on a metal flask of pure boiling Saudi coffee...

for my FRANDS. <3

each and every step we took...
we took it together...
hand in hand...
never letting go....
through thick and thin
and crazy times...
we laughed, we cried...
the fun never died...
the special bond we shared,
the way you all cared,
will never be forgotten,
i can still hear the laughter,
i can still see the smiles,
no matter what the distances,
whether inches or in miles..
the memories are etched,
deep in my heart,
from my mind,
you guys will never depart...
even after a million years,
we will remember the joys and tears,
on the shore of time,
we will count the tides.
i will cherish you all,
from the core of my heart,
may God never pull us apart...
you gave me wings,
you taught me to fly,
you taught how it feels,
to reach up the sky.
when i was down,
you picked me up,
when i felt low,
you gave me a hug.
no matter how tall or big i grow,
whereever i go,
one thing i know,
i never want to say good bye to you.
you were my circle of light,
you helped me decide wrong or right,
i turned to you in times of need,
special is what you made me feel.
i have had crazy times with you,
little did i realize, time just flew.
now here i am missing you,
the fun of it all and the times too.
i love you to bits,
and thank you too,
for every single thing,
your God's best blessing.

ps-

This is dedicated to all my friends from
school. =]

Anam, Naseeha, Nawal, Hibah,
Samir, Cherry, Imad Badran, Imad Patel,
Samir, Daliah, Nashwa, Yasmin Abduljawad,
Abdul Aziz, Kulsoom, Amir,
Nida, Najwa,
Luqman, Hina, Ahmad Zia, Hisham, Jumanah,
Samy, Jowel,
Ayesha Javed, Marilyn. Please
forgive me if I forgot any
names. =\

You all were family to me.

Thank you so much
for each and everything you guys did
to make
me whatever I am today.

I love you and miss
you all! <3

Time Capsules.

The wilting carnation hung its head down, bowing in humility…its petals thirsty for a single drop of moisture…its brittle stalk bending under an invisible weight and its leaves pretending to be alive…

I really think it’s time to step out of the time capsule I have trapped myself in. Each time I browse through my saved chat logs, my sent folder on hotmail or my pictures, I step back into time. My mind races to the times when that specific event took place, what I was wearing, what I was thinking, how I was feeling, the date, the time, the place…everything runs in front of my eyes like a vivid chain of memories…each firmly linked to another. As I sit and watch each and every contact in my msn messenger sign in and out, I’m reminded of the most random memories related to that person, positive or negative, or sometimes even both. During my conversations with people, I always end up saying “time flies” or “I miss the good old days”, both these expressions paired up with a long sigh of acknowledgement and longing. Eighteen years of my life-- each of them laden with rich clusters of memories, like a vine of fat, pulpy grapes, bending under the weight of fruit. I always had this thing for details. Everything in life was a souvenir to me, a tissue paper, and an empty ink pen, a broken pair of glasses, wilting carnations and outdated stationery. I heard people call me “crazy”, even sometimes a “brooder”. But I just smiled because to me my memories were my everything…

Often I sat down by myself and wondered about things. What things? The answer is “every single thing”. I found myself trying to answer questions that I never found the true answers to. I can still remember the way I used to sit down in my room, lights dimmed, door closed, letting random thoughts travel through my mind like a lazy whirl of smoke through a smoke stack…

Haphazard; a word that aptly describes what my eyes see. A mahogany desk bearing the weight of various knick knacks – colored ink pens, a pencil holder, a copy of “The Kite Runner” and “A Thousand Splendid Suns” stacked neatly over each other, an empty carton of a cough syrup holding a wilting carnation, a box of binder clips, a pad of paper-- all were visible evidence of the fact that I had been working and not sitting idly in the recent past. I can still picture myself sitting on this very desk and working out derivatives, balancing chemical equations and studying the parts of the endocrine system… it all seems like yesterday… Forgetting to give my chair its due credit for tolerating a load of 55 kilograms ever so often, would be highly unfair of me. I can still vividly remember each and every time I graced the chair with my presence and rested my elbows on this desk to ponder about things, in a way this desk has been through everything with me—guilt, sadness, joy, shock, or mere loneliness. Ironic as it sounds, the desk became my imaginary friend, my pillar of strength…

As I run my hand over the smooth top, I observe the intricate chocolaty swirls that cover the surface; each swirl telling a different story as if competing for the best story-telling award. My eyeballs have to struggle to follow the mischievous crests and troughs of paint strokes to observe the pattern. Each of those strokes of paint bears witness to the changing emotions in my life--the tumultuous waves, the rocky truths, the bizarre revelations, the dips in pools of memories and nostalgia, simply everything I went through physically or mentally.

Darkness. That’s what people see when they close their eyes. But I beg to differ. Whenever I close my eyes, I am greeted by a very warm flood of memories. Each memory struggling to catch my attention first, like a basket of tangled wool, each spool attracting you and so interconnected to the next that you couldn’t do without tampering with everything in the basket. I randomly choose a memory and breathe deeply. I’m taken to unknown realms of places that were familiar to me a very long time ago…June 5, 2006, Haji ads, ‘lights, camera, laughter’…Luqman, Nida, Fariha, Hibah, and me, the time when my sophomore year was just ending. June 8, 2006, Luqman’s graduation ceremony, nostalgia, longing, sadness, drama and such emotions taking toll of me. I remember everything. June 11, 2006; when I waved good bye to people, who meant a lot to me, with a very heavy heart. June 8, 2008, my high school graduation, how nervousness was in the air, how everyone was shivering in the long line of graduates as we made our way to the stage, how our blood-maroon gowns and blood-drained faces made the perfect combo. Everything, everything comes flowing back to my mind.

Old ticket stubs, photographs, chewed pencils, broken glasses, tissue papers with writings, torn diaries, decorated shoe boxes, used prepaid mobile cards, wilting flowers, a decaying leaf, notes passed in class, T-shirts, and old shopping receipts. I kept everything dear to me. Sometimes I feel like preserving the air around in a jar, trapping the ambience of a certain moment for myself to savor or look back to in future. Yes, label me as a fanatic. But that’s me and my memories. I often feel that my memories and my fondness for me stunt my emotional maturity, but how can I leave my treasures of good and bad behind so easily? How can I bury everything as if my life consisted of “lack of eventfulness”? I’m often left alone to ponder upon this. When I look at certain people, who I remember so much about, and see there lack of interest in the past we shared, it hurts me deep down inside. I am sometimes made to feel as if I’ve spun a cocoon of comfort out of my memories and that I have refused to come out and face the changes around me. But that’s absolute nonsense. I hold my memories dear, not because I refuse to accept change, but because I feel a sense of achievement when I look back and see what I was and what I have become. I hold my memories close, not because I’m a brooder, but because I feel that my roots and origins deserve due importance and grace. Alhamdullilah, I have had an excellent life, full of its ups and downs, but I had friends and family to pick me up after every fall. I had my God by my side to guide me to the paths that I never thought I could cross alone. I’ve come a long, long way and I am fond of looking back at the long road I have walked on, to think of the hurdles that came my way and how by the grace of God I surpassed them all.

I thank you God, for the immense treasures of blessings You have showered upon me. You carried me through the roughest times only to help me grow wings to fly free of fear and limitations in this world of Yours. Thank You, I could never thank You enough.