You tau know what a lively light-headed person I am. Always partying shartying, maza karoing. Everybody says to me kay bhai you tau are life and sole of every GT. But suddenly, I don’t feel like it anymore. I’m feeling so depress, so depress that I want to whale and scream at the top of my voice.
I was getting ready to go out for lunch, putting on my green contacts and diamond studs when Kulchoo came running into my bedroom, yelling, ‘Put on the TV!’ Janoo looked up from his newspaper. ‘Everything okay?’
‘Oho baba, what’s happened now?’ I asked thinking maybe Taliban Khan has done another jamming session in Lahore.
And then me and Janoo, we both looked at the TV and saw the news of the children dead in Peshawar. No, not dead. Murdered. Gunned down as they sat in their school auditorium. They started showing pictures of the murdered kids. A boy posing for a selfie, head cocked to one side. Was that his last picture alive? Another boy with a shy sa smile and a soft si moustache, you know the type of moustache that hasn’t even done hello hi with a razor yet? That boy was 13. Was he planning to shave on his next birthday? And there was another one with curly hair scowling at the camera, like a moody type teenage hero. Kulchoo scowls like that when he wants to show me he’s all grown up.
And suddenly me and Janoo we both looked at each other and we thought: what if this had been Kulchoo? Our Kulchoo with his lopsided smile. Our dog loving, cricket crazy, vegetarian Kulchoo who worries about global warning and carbon remissions. How would we go on if anything were to happen to Kulchoo? How are those parents going to bury their children in Peshawar? How are they going to go on living? How will they look at each other again? Feel whole again? Laugh again? So you see why I can’t go on laughing and joking and enjoying? Because sometimes you just can’t. Sometimes all you want to do is whale and scream at the top of your voice.
I was getting ready to go out for lunch, putting on my green contacts and diamond studs when Kulchoo came running into my bedroom, yelling, ‘Put on the TV!’ Janoo looked up from his newspaper. ‘Everything okay?’
‘Oho baba, what’s happened now?’ I asked thinking maybe Taliban Khan has done another jamming session in Lahore.
And then me and Janoo, we both looked at the TV and saw the news of the children dead in Peshawar. No, not dead. Murdered. Gunned down as they sat in their school auditorium. They started showing pictures of the murdered kids. A boy posing for a selfie, head cocked to one side. Was that his last picture alive? Another boy with a shy sa smile and a soft si moustache, you know the type of moustache that hasn’t even done hello hi with a razor yet? That boy was 13. Was he planning to shave on his next birthday? And there was another one with curly hair scowling at the camera, like a moody type teenage hero. Kulchoo scowls like that when he wants to show me he’s all grown up.
And suddenly me and Janoo we both looked at each other and we thought: what if this had been Kulchoo? Our Kulchoo with his lopsided smile. Our dog loving, cricket crazy, vegetarian Kulchoo who worries about global warning and carbon remissions. How would we go on if anything were to happen to Kulchoo? How are those parents going to bury their children in Peshawar? How are they going to go on living? How will they look at each other again? Feel whole again? Laugh again? So you see why I can’t go on laughing and joking and enjoying? Because sometimes you just can’t. Sometimes all you want to do is whale and scream at the top of your voice.