When will it Dawn on you that if you don’t Express yourself you’ll be yesterday’s News

Bilal Lakhani - It was love at first sight. I suggested we sign on the dotted line immediately. Kamal Siddiqi was only a stumbling block.

Nonetheless, I was optimistic it would all work out. We had the same vision, same sense of colour, space, what mattered in life. We had both seen what was out there and knew that our coming together would put all of the others to shame.

Oh people warned me. “He screams and shouts,” they said. “How are you going to tolerate that?” I’ll admit, I was nervous at first when contemplating taking the plunge. After all, this would be it, the last one. The Big One. (One year on Gibran Peshimam scoffs at my argument that this would have been the last one ever on the scene. That’s not what Pakistan is like Today, he says. But if anyone has seen what Pakistan is like Today, they will agree with me that you don’t need an international tribunal to give you the same verdict. Hasn’t this ever Dawned on anyone? I mean, it’s not News).

Bilal was perfect from the start. He promised me whatever I wanted, money was no issue, I could have anything I needed to run a good house. I went home that night and dreamt about what a great story it would be to tell. Sigh. Once we were together, the sub-editors would be soon to follow. The pitter patter sound of their feet in the newsroom, rushing to the page-making room and back would fill our lives.

“Please say yes,” he said to me. “We have to do this. I know you’re the one.” And what a romance it has been, despite the killings, the bomb blasts, the broken sewers, the dead animals in the zoo, the Grammar school plot. I don’t have to cook, clean or wash. And he is just as adorable one year on.

Sure we’ve had our fights. “You can’t say that!” he cries often and in exasperation, distractedly sweeping his black mane away from his eyes, “Yes, I can!” I fight back. “I’ve done it before. Nothing happened.”

I know how to handle him, you see.

At first our family was small, in fact so small that people said that we had the wrong idea. Surely you can’t do it all alone, they said. But they didn’t take into consideration the simple fact that Bilal already had a huge family with 138 members - from Mithi to Shahdadkot. He assured me that they would all be nice to me, and indeed they are. Whenever I’ve been in trouble or didn’t know something, I’ve called them up and they’ve Expressed nothing but eagerness to help me. But eventually, God blessed us with our own family. Bilal knew I had dealt with children before. He was supportive. In fact, he’s let me practically raise them on my own. We have 10 now. And now I mostly spend all my days cleaning up after them. They go out and get fed something and come home with diarrhoea. They vomit all of it up as well and I have to be there each day to clean it up. Extra stuff, dangling participles, floating prepositions, useless information all buries the real thing they ate, which is usually a great nugget or kernel.

I don’t see much of Bilal these days. He’s left me alone to run the show. I have the whole city to myself. The sub-editors are all grown up now and manage on their own, so do the reporters. Oh, I still clean up their mess, advise them on what to spend their time on. But the initial hard work is over. I can tell Bilal is happy, he doesn’t scold them as much. And even then all I have to do is feed him something good and he quietens down.

He’s actually pretty fond of chips. And since I feed the kids a lot of treats he stops by to dip in. In the early days, I would smack his hand away. “Those are for my kids!” I’d say. “They’ve earned it.” “I pay for these kids!” he’d retort.

Once he came to my spot and there was a piece of chocolate cake on the table. I saw him eyeing it. Our eyes locked and we both knew what was coming next. We both simultaneously lunged for it, but I got there first. I stuffed the entire slice in my mouth so he couldn’t get it.

“You’re so mean!” he shrieked before turning to look at the kids. They just shrugged. They know I’m their momma. (In fact, I have such a tight hold on them that once one of the adopted kids from Peshawar, Fawad, unconsciously called me Mummy in front of everyone. The other kids were mortified but I said that it just went to show how well I looked after everyone.)

I’ve grown old now, been doing this for a long time. Some days I get tired and depressed and want to quit. But then I think of how much I’m in love and I stay.

The writer is City desk Editor, Karachi pages.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 12^th,  2011.