I Am Wierd

See I'm weird. I think I always have been. 19-year-old girls don't sit at the beach and pen their thoughts. They stay in the hut and help mommy and the phuphos clear up the mess after the Biryani and Qeema lunch while the men play cricket. They then go down to the beach and dip their feet, scurrying back lest they get burnt. I'm weird. I can feel the sun hot on my right cheek as I sit on the sand some 30 feet away from our hut. One side of my face promises to look like a rotten tomato for the next week. An uncle and auntie walk by giving me weird looks; auntie says something in hushed tones, the kind of tone we used as children when playing chuppan chupai. Uncle tries to read over my shoulder. I glare at him. Phupho strolling down in her pink polyester chappals wants to know what I'm doing. "An assignment". I smile till the two points in my forehead are about to explode. She gives me a blank look and walks off with her hubby with the huge tummy. The amrood wala gives me a toothy grin as he walks by. I grin right back. I'm not supposed to do that either.

Amma worries about me. She never really says so but it's really quite obvious. See, according to my phuphos, khalas and Auntie Shezan down the lane I should start thinking about getting married. After all "this is not my real home". I'm weird because I feel like screaming till the back of my throat hurts and smashing their empty skulls when they say such scary things. Things that erode on the happy layer in my mind creating little cavities of doubt. What gives these silly women the right to tell me the only place I've ever known as mine is no longer mine? Just who the hell are they to tell me I'm a mehmaan in my beautiful beautiful havaeli?

I must not speak of my well wishers in such a tone.

Every rishta that comes along instills a fear deep within me. "You couldn't possibly get a better rishta". They’ve said this for 12 yet. I hope to god I do. But I'm so weird. I'm not like other girls. Would anyone want me? It would take a very weird man to accept my monstrous appetite, moronic friends, disdain for poetry and love for waxing. And even if such a weird man were to pop up on my doorstep one fine Sunday, what guarantee do I have that it'll work? I'm scared too, besides being weird. "It's a gamble," Amma says in her pseudo intellectual tone. "Everyone is making it work. Where have you come from? The sky?" 'Everyone' here is my various cousins and family friends reared to be nice sweet girls from the second their precious little brain cells started working. Oh no doubt my parents tried too. But I don’t fit into any mould. I seem to overflow from them all, resulting in a weird, highly distorted shape. Amma fears I'll waste my years pursuing a degree and then when I'm ready for marriage there'll be no one who wants to marry me. I couldn't have been bothered a year back. Now I feel the pressure.

Pa just came to ask if he could borrow my pen. He knows I'm the only one who'd get my stationary box to the beach. The other girls get walkmans, sunscreen, shades and Fair and Lovely. He's a good man. But I worry him too. Once he let slip out "Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat wondering about what will become of you". Poor man. Doesn’t deserve a weirdo offspring like me. My brother tells me I should 'do something' to my face like the other gals. I tell him to put a sock in it. I hate make up. Makes me feel sick. Its not a 'I'm nice without it' thing. I just don’t enjoy applying any so why should I? Why should I feel incomplete or not good enough just because I don’t want a man by my side just yet? Are the people around me really so shallow? Can't they just let me get my degree in peace without making me feel like a misfit? Or am I just weird?

Maybe if I scream out my queries from the chath one day I'll feel marginally better. "Nothing like a little hysteria," as brother puts it.

Some times when I really get down to thinking about it I feel scared. So scared. These are my loved ones. To think that these small, shallow, narrow human beings are a part of me. This is the society that forms an integral part of me, my being. I couldn’t throw it away even if I wanted to. But why would I want to throw it away? I'm weird, you see.

Have to run now. Amma needs me to help with the tea. I'll probably burn it.

A 19 year old student of journalism at the University of Karachi, I'm

really quite weird. I haven't submitted my full name for fear of being shot

at by all the above mentioned (or married of to some cute lil yuppie for

that matter)I write for anyone who'll print my ramblings and have a feeling

I'll soon die of gluttony.