Number 2

By Aisha Hasnain

There is nothing poetic about the title of this article the way there was nothing poetic about the book “The Art of War” by Sun Tzu. To my dismay, the book was actually about war. The title of the book was not a metaphor, unlike I had assumed, and Master Sun was not an artist but a military strategist. Anyhow, the book is beautiful. No metaphor again. The black hardcover version is beautiful looking. The title of this article has to do with it being my second article.

Last Friday, which was the first Friday of Ramazan 2025, I woke up to two firsts of my life: My first published article (or any write-up for that matter) and the first cake I have baked in my life. Both are highly valued by the saint in me. This time I have been given six days to write this article, thereby you are more than welcome to judge me (judging someone is a sin). If I fail to deliver, I will go back to take refuge in my first article. I have no immunity here.

Sometimes I take my OCD for a ride and give it a treat. After my last (first) article was published, I noticed that in one sentence I had mistakenly used the present-continuous ‘starting’ where I was supposed to say ‘started’. Two years back, I would have cursed myself twice for making this grammatical mistake. This time – since I am healing – I gave the error away to my OCD to do salsa with it! I am learning to leave mistakes on purpose wherever I can, besides doing tasks with a sense of urgency to combat obsessive-compulsive thoughts. OCD makes it so burdensome to carry your work that you end up doing nothing. Every job swells to tenfold its size, an unsettling reel of obsession over the details of the object of the job at hand is run by your neurons and for the same, your body stamina is devoured by the brain. The brain makes the body go through this distress just to feel at ease by matching in practice the unattainable standards it has set for things. But it is a momentary satisfaction. “Unattainable” means something. If left unaddressed, obsessive-compulsive thoughts only aggravate with time. You have to rob your subconscious of its power by selfishly telling it that you are totally okay with cleaning your hands once, ah, the way my little sibling told me he was happy with his ‘beautiful’ calligraphy and tossed my constructively critical opinion about his artwork into the dustbin after he came to me with a smiling innocent face, like always, asking for remarks and I thought I should start giving him some guidance for improvement. He didn’t give a hoot. He continues to experiment with art with as much fervour as ever every now and then, without caring about the mess he leaves behind.

Charity begins at home. Home starts with you. This Ramazan, when you extend some charity, ask yourself if you are kind to yourself. The human has been charged with a duty to be kind and given the luxury to be inadequate. 

My maternal aunt narrated a story to me once. She said there was a man who had enough food for eleven months. Hence, he decided to not eat for the first month. He died. There is some quantum of truth to the hypothesis in physics that time is an illusion. Anyhow, another time, my paternal aunt narrated another story to me. It was before she got married. She said that there was a man who tried to escape death by going to live at the bottom of the sea. There he accidently stabbed his palate with a fork while having food and he also died. While it is a statistical fact that more deaths happen in male category than in the female category, this story has a lot of physics to it. How can a Homo sapiens survive under water where s/he cannot build a house in the first place (which I am also not sure can stay solid under the pressure of the seawater) and where s/he cannot take electricity to charge their smart phone? Not every story told and every advice given for wisdom makes sense. My personal favourite story is the non-fiction one which Granny Aisha narrates. She says when she was a little girl, one night she was sleeping in her father’s bed. Her father woke up for morning prayers and little Aisha asked him to give her his keypad phone so that she could play her favourite game. Her dear father lent her his phone. Under the sheets, as little Aisha was solving the jigsaw puzzle game, she noticed through the corner of her right eye a shadow of a little thingy on her right shoulder. A small creature was leisurely resting its two little legs on her shoulder and looking at the phone screen totally baffled by it. A mouse! “Aaaaaaaaaa!” Little Aisha jumped out of the bed. My my! Even at the age of 26, Aisha marvels and giggles at how flabbergasted that little curious mouse was by the glowing phone screen. This here is truth stranger than fiction.

My cake tasted good. Figuratively, they say that someone ate and left no crumbs. In the literal sense, I am that someone who feasts on crumbs. If I were running a bakery shop, crumbs would be one item on display. While designing the photographic setting of my cake and the unintended muffin, I was cleaning the crumbs on the tray and in consequence, some crumbs stayed on my finger. Subconsciously, I put my finger in my mouth. “Ptui! Ptui! Ptui! . . . Thu!! MY FAST!” The traumatic shock.

• The author goes by her pen name, Aisha Hasnain. She can be reached at aishahasnain02@gmail.com

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