Deep inside.. there… deep that way.. I am nevertheless the same person that you abandoned years ago. Yes, the looks (and looks alone) have changed a little.
Increasingly bald, rather heavy and somewhat like the one who is frequently chased-and often overtaken by remarks such as “Uncle! Park your car this way”.
But I am still in the same scene that I was in twenty five years ago. That nineteen-year old boy – even in his fifties – does not wish to be twenty!
There was a time when I was in love with you. Then.. throughout in the Post-You era, somebody’s presence became my need. My needs needs then, would kept on changing. Soon enough, that need.. became a habit.
I had heard in an advertisement, “Clothes don’t shrink, children grow up.”
But not me; my clothes grew while I shrunk and became smaller day by day!
My ill habits have become my needs today, and I am in love with them. But you.. You are neither my need nor a habit. You are the one T-shirt from my childhood that I can neither wear nor plan to discard; I just show it off to people as a proof of my elegant sense of apparel.
An Extract from my autobiography, “Love is an Irritation” By Saleem Mirza (Translated by Fatima Saleem)
