eid in bhakkar

ushi: "i retire......i am never going to go to bhakkar again"

baba: "the only way you can do that is if you get married"

ushi: "dang!!that means ive gotta find someone before next eid -ul-fitr"

i never thought that i would grow up to be one of those irritating travellers who start throwing up right when everyone has snuggled in theri comfortable positions and gone to sleep in the car, or the kid who needs to use the bathroom fifteen minutes into the journey, or the nuisance who complains about not getting enough room to get comfortable while she has her legs in her sisters lap and her head on her mothers pillow....... so began the seven hour car journey to bhakkar, but we had to stop in sargodha coz my dad's mamu had passed away.....well that detour made our journey twice as long....ten hours on the road was no feat specially while all of us were fasting...... so it was aftar time and we had to reach jhang in order to have a decent meal.......the first place we entered was this the smell was unbearable so we moved on to the next hotel which was atleast was smell free........the food was good but the accomodations were not.. solitary confinement cell not polished and kept for 50 years doesnt even begin to cover it. so the next thing we had to face was fake pepsi.how did we know it was fake

mina: "oyay yaar that coke bottle is fatter than the others"

td"oh yeah, look at how thick it is, see for yourslef" so then after that began the trip in the desert and alas my poor stomach could not take it, so as usual a packet was found and as always it had a hole in it,.....so we stopped in the middle of the desert at night and while i threw my guts out everyone played with my chachas gun.yay for alkaida!!!

honey: "look at ushi she has gone crazy she is throwing up and laughing"

ushi: "shut it, its better than crying and making everyone miserable"

so we reached bhakkar only to be informed that eid had been postponed and we had to keep another roza...... the roza went well and right on que after aftar i had to go throw up again, and indian style bathrooms and throwing up dont go together....so u can all imagine the mess..... and then i had to go milk that mean old cow. it was great fun, i made sure everyone milked her tied along the out house which we once used to use where now flies live and insects crawl, near the cow dung cakes left out to dry in the sun.... well where else were we ever gonna do it? not in lahore we werent...i will put up the actual pictures once i wrestle them from my cousin. Then came everyone sleeping on the floor and frankly speaking i am a snobbish city girl and i know nothing about sleeping on the floor without a mattress, luckily i had my trusty pillow with me.anyway eid was great with us collecting money and eating sawayyan. Mehndi was another feature of the eid along with colourful churian and ofcourse the ring lali gave me as a present for my upcoming birthday. so on went the tradition of eid in bhakkar where we all g to eat icecreams dressed as ninjas (covering our faces and all because of the parda that is observed in bhakkar. Then we played pitthu goal garam….i was the woman of the match, I broke the most pitthus, made the most pitthus and did the most anda baccha goal that is where ur whole team is out because of one catch….. while coming back from bhakkar yearning for my own bathroom I realized that I needed to go to the bathroom right in the middle of the desert.i am still traumatized coz the bathroom i had to use was so horrid that if u imagine a dirty athroom (the worst u have ever seen) multiply it with 50 that is how dirty it was, it was either that or the open desert.......shudders!!!!! i cried when i came home and saw my own bathroom, saw my own bed and smelled my own house......i love eid at bhakkar but the travel always kills me. i can fly by plane or go by bus (hopefully) but by car its the worst.....heres to eid at bhakkar, a place where time remains still a place where everything is the same nothing grows old, only people change