We read James Joyce together and wrote comedy sketches together.

John Green in a Vlogbrothers video says that about his friendship with Ransom Riggs. It's so peculiar having to live with this personhood that you have. It's a very basic question and yet there is an interesting sense of calmness to it.

My writing is very reminiscent these past few instances. As if I'm living life in rewind and fast-forward mode and there is very little time of stillness. Calm, ripple-less water. Birds chirping at a sunrise on a mountain top. Foreign, foreign feelings. And yet, I will allow it.

Do not be a coward. This craft is old. This struggle is ancient. This hesitance is normal. There is failure, and there is success. Start with simple words. The beginning is that first sincere emotion. That feeling in your gut, in your throat, of there being something that needs to get out. You have tried to contain it, you have tried to ignore it, and yet it beats its chest until you acknowledge it. Bleary-eyed, one foot asleep, fingers hurting. Thoughts jumbled, running, doing cartwheels. Like little kids at trampoline parks and daredevils at NASCAR tracks. Everything is happening at once, and everything demands your attention. How do you sift through? An image of your mother sifting through the flour to take out impurities pops up in your mind. What a mundane task. What a mundane life.

How do people live like this, you ask. It is curious, how we prioritize moments. Choppy, abrupt flow of this writing. Choppy, abrupt flow of ideas. Choppy, abrupt flow of life.

Either you process it or you experience it. There is more to come. There always seems to be. But you are not learned enough. You do not yet have the right to walk on this path. You do not have the right equipment for it yet. You will starve. Blisters will form on your feet and you do not have a change of shoes. Give it time. Build up your strength. Slowly. You will get there.

A Few Thoughts on Grief

Being born and raised a Pakistani woman, I know a bit about grief. I hail from a country that faces terrorism everyday. I have personally known people who have been victims of terrorism. In eighth grade, there was a bomb blast five minutes from my school. I was in class. My classmates and I heard it. We went into denial mode and hoped it was a transformer. The mosque my family attended was attacked in 2009, a year after we had moved out of that place. It was pure luck. This is not to say I know what it feels like to lose a family member or a close friend to terrorism, just that it is impossible to be Pakistani and not be touched by grief.

It's surreal. Life goes on smoothly when you're across the world. You're expected to smile and make a joke, be patient in your everyday endeavors, move on as soon as possible. It's heartbreaking, this expectation. I am of the belief that there is no right way to grieve. Our grief is as personal as our beliefs. Be it through tears or whiskey, remembrance is remembrance.

So this is my way of grieving. Living a little more. Being kinder to those who don't deserve it. Making more jokes than usual. Smiling a little more brightly. Striving for justice a little more passionately. Creating art a little more profoundly. Working a little harder to live a better life. To me, this celebration of life, is the best form of remembrance. Live for yourself and for them. Create for yourself and for them. Learn for yourself and for them. Spread kindness and love, for yourself and for them.

Thoughts with Orlando today. Peace, love, kindness.

Undergrad in Restrospect

Today, I took my last final exam of my undergraduate career. I have officially finished the coursework for a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics. All that is left is my graduation on Saturday.
When I tell people I studied Mathematics by choice, people give me this funny look as if to say hello, junkie! share the coke. Yes, it is true I decided to pick the tougher major. It is also true that I have hated my life more often than not since then. And there are days still that I wonder if I made the right decision. Frankly, I don't know. All I do know is what I have learned as a student in this field for the past four years which is as follows:

1. If you give me a problem, I can probably figure out a way to solve it. It may take some time, it may take some learning of new ideas, and it most certainly will require trial and error but I can figure it out.
2. I know how to reason through tough situations. When you have enough professors riding your ass for not providing sound logic, you learn to think ten times before making an argument/approaching a situation. More than Literature, Math has taught me the weight of each word. One small difference between 'and' and 'or' can change your entire argument/disprove what you're trying to prove. So what you say matters. What you do matters. And how you think matters. 
3. A good 90% of what I learned has no real life application (until you master it, of course) and still I know how to appreciate a good argument.
4. To be wrong and to fail is both heartbreaking and exciting. Heartbreaking because it's fun to be right. Exciting because you get to reroute your brain and think from a different perspective trying new variables and different dimensions.
5. You can give me a sample of something as boring as owners of lawnmowers and I can get excited about it. You can also give me the most interesting topic to think about and it can bore me to tears. It all depends on how authentic your resources are. 
6. The most fun classes for me have been the ones where the class averages were consistently in the 30's/40's and everyone failed together. Simply because it's comforting to know that no one knows anything and once that formality of preconceived knowledge is out of the way, you can sit down and come up with creative ways to solve a problem. 

As I think back to my time at my university, I know it's important to be thankful for what was given to you in however small form it was but I also think it's important to not paint it with a whimsical brush that takes away from its flaws. It's equally important to think critically about what went wrong and figure out what can be done to fix it. So this is my hope: those of us who did well in university-may we keep doing well, those of us who did poorly-may we find a way to turn things around, and those of us who couldn't quite get there-may we find the courage to begin again.

Congratulations and much love to all the graduates!