Notorious. If that’s the word we can safely employ for the current population here. Forgive me, dear reader: it’s hard to reserve judgment on the diversity of the minds, culture, mannerisms, culture and academia of people I meet every day. And you can be perfectly insensitive to these judgments if you carry the ‘I don’t care’ phrase to delusion yourself but it helps only so much if you believe ignorance replaces peaceful intervention with the self. Wait. Am I translating the image as bothersome? It is interesting. And quite beautifully so.

In a place where you are deprived, not completely, but marginally of child eye-candy; life is mature. Yes, morning make-up sprees and handbags that speak of contingency plans emit maturity of volumes. Then there is the Jumma lookout where some pretty satisfactory and enormous numbers of not so appealing shalwar kameezes find religion.  From the real life that all-nighters dedicate to khokha versus the pseudo-real life that the out gate sees, life is quite fickle for us all. Check - Zambeel, newly cleaned rooms, laundry timings, more importantly the laundry received, keys, flash drives, cards, fancy ATM machines, shawarma taste, time takes to get to anywhere on  campus from F4. There are others - the varied levels of wholesomeness in sleep promised by slide shows. However, what carries particular permanence for me, are the hearing lessons. Like a tape off the recorder, they play the words I was initially taken aback by, awestruck by during the second phase and now I stand in such a position of amusement and acceptability, that there is hardly any more space for a new judgment except mimicry.

Coming up north from the Arabian Sea, I find loudness and the charming native pronunciations quite glorious in their totality. Also, the upper crest of slang on the cake of conversation that is sweet in all places outside classes helps Academic block feel important or sadistic, (in all means metaphorical). I mix up English tenses, rarely though but yes, I do now. I am proud because there are core replacements for words like ‘Epic Failure’ and I quite have been advised on favourable adoption of norms. They say it is unwillingly eventual. Takes over like a spare part replacement. Adopt? Pardon me, I have made generous allowances and I decided to drop the Os for an As.  I have adapted. Quite willingly already. In my Econ classes I only questioned whether the letter S is a doppelganger of the letter Y or is it the other way round? I like to measure out conventional ideas for walk-in pronunciations. Disregard the candid confusions I face, I am habitual of easily tangling my mind wires.

Tongue tiers, mind wires.

 Rhymes? I laugh a lot generally, it helps. 

Reminds me of my literature classes. I solemnly loved Eliot. He said what he did, and it applies to me now: “Because I do not hope to turn again/ Because I do not hope/ Because I do not hope to turn.” (Ash Wednesday, pt. 1) Of all the new experiences one sees right from the time they enter, I had one that took over my mind to calm some of its questions for some eternities at least. I have come, sat, seen, heard, walked and walked, and eventually gave up on some thought on the way my university - LUMS - played a wonderful two sided game. It took south water and almost froze it up north and for the winter clothing collection I am grateful. For all else I have an observation. I judge, not so much now, not language, vocabulary, army, civilians, Punjabis, landlords, cars. I have learnt one thing that happened to me - I realised I was embraced. I reciprocate.