An Energy Orb Swinging On A Chinar Branch

My cherished Eid Gah has been renamed Janazah Gah, brandishing a name-board with a new name. Like my life, it seems to have been bestowed with a melancholic change.

Eid Gah was our favourite place on every Eid in our childhood, swinging for Rs 10 or 20 on the swings hanging from a branch of the mighty chinar right in the middle of the ground.

Memories float.

I used to have a classic short boys haircut until age 11 or 12. Dressed in a grey suit embroidered in black one Eid, I remember feeling mortified when two boys walked past me and laughed,“She is wearing a boy suit!”

When I am told of my childhood, it comes across as one where because of some paranormal intervention I have found more love than any other child.

From being told how my neighbours would walk me to school to how my teachers requested that they wanted to give me a new name, which became my official name, to impressing my father's friends with my quick wit to being told often how I am my father's favourite child.

He almost turned me into a matriarch.

With all the faith everyone had in my intelligence, Abu had high hopes in me. I looked like someone within whom pooled all the maternal and paternal ingenuity (I say without either shame or pride).

What they were not going to see until very late and until it would have already done a lot of harm was that I was also carrying a huge energy orb of a cursed generational trauma and my intellect was not going to get invested into studying my favourite mathematical formulae but into a struggle for mere survival.

In my room lies my first grade Urdu book. It is placed in between my fiction and non-fiction books like a souvenir and a prize, reminiscent of the fact that I used to be a student.

While indeed gifted with strong mirror neurons which made me pick up many talents, I also pick up many energies in my ecosystem that basically do not have much to do with me. It is almost inevitable. I am an involuntary noble disciple of an infinite number of subjects and forces surrounding me.

One day back in my 12th standard, I spent quite some amount of energy in solving a tough calculus problem which our math teacher told the class not to attempt because he had not taught us the method. I have always been a stubborn child and I spent almost 24 hours bringing the problem to the desired answer without knowing the so-called method. I remember sleeping in between and finding myself doing calculus in my sleep as well.

Having the knack for creativity and coming up with new ideas, my brain has invested most of this potential into making my mental health issues creative. The sharpness in my senses also means that I have sensitive and hyperstimulated senses which in turn mean that they pick an overwhelming amount of information and stress from the surroundings, consuming much of my stamina and consequently I suffer from fatigue. Ah, the way I have become my own case study.

“Along the line a child is born whose job becomes to feel it all,” I heard someone say about generational trauma. This child was going to be born in Gen Z, a heavily anxious generation, and she was going to be a big sensitive feeler. This was going to be when awareness was less. She would have to bring herself to a radical acceptance that no one was going to understand the pain she was infused with.

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