Chaklala Scheme 3 Part 2

Still in August 2006,

After leaving the airport and arriving at my Mamoo’s house, there was a moment of silence which irritated me immensely. Just in four hours and something minutes I was way away from my loved ones and feeling like a complete stranger with absolutely no one to talk to. My relatives didn’t know me that well, since it had been four years when I last came to Pakistan. Nervous as I was, I failed to shut the silence that was haunting me. But as I constantly found out in my time in Pakistan, the more perilous the situation became, the more I rose up to the challenge. I decided to end this silence and went out of my room and started chatting with my “unknown” younger cousins. My sense of purpose was reignited and I felt motivated once again.
After a couple of hours I went to the roof of my house to just feel the air and analyze what my home country ,Pakistan, was like .My first impressions of Pakistan were somewhat mixed. I could not stop observing the apparent vast difference in attitudes. In Pakistan there is a breed of people who are stuffed with haughtiness, insolence, arrogance and then there is a breed who is humble, kind, helpful. As much as I liked the natural ambience of Pakistan, my feelings for the artificiality that existed within a certain segment of Pakistanis was the exact opposite. Perhaps this was to be expected considering the vast difference in the quality of life that existed within the society in general.
Chaklala Scheme 3 was the place where I was to spend the next 2 years of my life. From the famous ayaan bakery to the maghroor shop (as we called it) , this was a market centered in a community filled with active and former army personnel. This was the place which I was to call home. People told me that my university was supposed to be somewhere near Scheme 3. On my first day I couldn’t locate the university (the reasons will be obvious in the coming posts ) but in general , my first day in Pakistan started what was to be truly an eventful, momentous part of my life that I could never really have anticipated at that time.
It was to be my first steps towards independence and these were the moments which I was to cherish the most in the later part of my life.