A One Week Trip To Murree

I recently went to Murree for like a week to visit my sister(Hooria) and my brother-in-law(Abbas). This was done more out of guilt than anything else as I had just learnt that my sister was quite upset when I had refused to go with my mom and dad, when they had been to visit. Usually this would be a day-by-day account but since my routine didn't differ much, I think I can wrap this up in one go.

We set out around 10:00-ish on tuesday in a car that belongs to my brother-in-law's brother, who is also my cousin. It was a red suzuki Margalla, with no air conditioner and no sound system. To top it off, there were also two babies and this little kid who's supposed to play with the babies occupying the backseat. The alarm bells in my head were strangely silent. All was well I guess, except maybe for the heat, until we were on the Burhan Motoroway, where we blew a tire. This turned out to be a bigger problem than I had first anticipated because the trunk was totally loaded with stuff. To get out the spare, we had to get everything out, spend a good fifteen minutes talking to a police officer and convincing him we were alright. Finally got the tire fixed and I was screwing in the bolts when the (oh joy) mobile workshop arrived. 'Hogaya hai sir' is all he said to me. I've often been told I have a very deadly looking glare. I was like 'What the hell do you think asswipe?? I'm tightening the nuts on a tire. Obviously HOGAYA HAI'. I just thought that of course, I'm a fairly peaceful person and I didn't want any trouble. Had a hell of a job putting everything back in though. Broke a couple of plastic rods that had something to do with a babies chair or a plate holder. Don't know now cos we couldn't make head or tails of everything when we unloaded.

Stopped in Islamabad for lunch and had a pizza at Rahat Bakers and I must say, it was delicious. Leaves Pizza Hut dead and buried in the dust. Plus, they make it right in front of you. I also found out that carrying a baby in a crowded place has some benefits:

1) Gets all the chicks to check you out, cos you have a cute baby in your hands.
2) You get to check out chicks while they're checking the baby out.

After that it was on to Murree. The air progressively got cooler as we climbed higher and higher and by the time we got to Mall Road, it was properly cold. The house itself is well placed. Five minutes up the road and you get to a cool little amusement park and five minutes down the road and you get to Mall Road, which is all there is to see in Muree besides the trees I guess. There's two bedrooms, a lounge, a kitchenette and a drawing room. The coup de grace is delivered posthumously by a terrace that overlooks a huge garden with a solitary tree, standing right in the middle. It's a beautiful view and it's stunning when it's snowing. I had left my trusty laptop at home and the only links to my tech savvy world were a TV with cable, which enabled me to keep upto date on Premiership matches, and my cell phone.

Life was beautiful and I quickly fell into a routine. I would wake up, have breakfast, stretch around a bit, play with the babies and then watch TV, while messaging people. Then I'd have lunch and would proceed to go out for a smoke. I would walk around a little and then come back and watch more TV. Around 4 - 5-ish my brother-in-law would come back and we'd go out somewhere in his company car, which happens to be a kick ass pick-up truck, cos you need those things to go to far-flung places in Murree. After that he would go off to visit some of his friends and I would either accompany him or just roam around on Mall Road. During one of these visits, I happened to visit PC Bhurban's Electricity Meter (You see, my brother-in-law is a Sub-Divisional Officer for the Islamabad Electrical Supply Company, so he gets to do cool things like that). That thing was pretty awesome. You needed like a special key to activate it and then it would proceed to tell you what date it was, what time it was, followed by Kilowatt Hours consumed and a bunch of other numbers. Their electricity bill came out to be 850, 000 Rupees. The game arcade was probably responsible for half of that amount. Then when it would get late and we'd realize it with a 'd'oh', we would both set off for the car and buy the food for dinner. It was off to home and after dinner, while everybody else was asleep, I'd be watching TV, while the open windows let a cool, calm breeze play around the drawing room.

This was all part of the break, I had decided to take earlier. There's nothing better than getting away from it all for like a week and just letting all your old habits fall into desuetude. It wasn't all peace and calm though, at any given second, my nerves could come under attack from one of nature's most lethal weapons: A little baby screaming at the top of it's lungs. Either one of the two buggers could start bawling in a split-second and cause you to forget every human sensation, process and feeling, except for, maybe, bladder control.

The older of the two is called Umar. He doesn't look like a overly-developed one and half year old; he looks like a retarded three year old, but he's a smart little baby. He's very sensitive (a bit like his uncle), very curious (ditto) and ONLY plays with Annie, who happens to be the only female baby in their little neighbourhood (what? I told you he was like his uncle). He doesn't like Murree too much though, because he grew up surrounded by the infinite love of his grandparents, whom he loves to bits as well, and two dozen or so other relatives. He feels strangely out of place in Muree where there are only a measly 6 people in the house. Only 4 of them are family and out of that 4, 1 is too young to count for anything. So nobody can blame him for resorting to random acts of naughtiness (his bib says its all: Zero to Naughty In Sixty Seconds). Murree isn't too big on basic necessities like gas or clean running water in some places, so to be on the safe side, my sister boils the drinking water. Muree is high up, and in other dimension, so it takes quite a while for water to boil. We were guarding the boiling pot against Umar, who feels his presence is a ceremonial appurtenance wherever there is boiling pot of water or a boiling pot of anything. For the longest time, he used his tried and tested methods to shift our attention (basically these methods are: pointing randomly, rubbing his tummy, holding his head, making little purring noises and embedding his head between two pairs of knees) but having failed, casually made his leave of the kitchen and set about kicking a ball. We thought no more of him for the damn pot had finally started boiling. My sister announced that it would now sit there until it cooled down, so we went off on our ways, me to watch TV and she to her room. After some five minutes, I made my way to the kitchen so I could move the contents of the pot into a water cooler and various bottles.What I saw was not pretty. Umar, in his adoring, sweet, child-like curiousity, had wanted to see what happened when you mixed pee and water (not really, he just likes liquids falling into other liquids, thats all) and was in the process of, ummm, relieving himself into the pot of the, now, cooled down water. I knew his mother's wrath would be quick and furious. I would have gladly have taken the blame for him and said I had done it, had she not walked in at that very moment. I'm an arrant supporter of not hitting children (atleast not before they're three) but there's nothing you can do once a mother decides its time her little brat had better have a smack or two. So poor little Umar had to take his medicine. He was screaming his head off and emptying his vocabulary into that soul-less, God forsaken screaming. As I carried him outside, he started 'Deega (kick) Ball (ball) Baba (his grandfather) Na-nun (his grandmother) Alaa (his mother) Aba (his father) Bolo (his belly button)'. Having exhausted himself, he then went to sleep. He's the bestest little baby in the whole world. It's true :).


The younger of the two buggers is called Aye Noor (Turkish for Light from the Moon). She's about 4-5 months old and there's not much I can write or say about her, because she only feeds, burps, poops, cries and goes to sleep, then she wakes up and repeats the cycle. She also got smacked one, but from Umar and that's a funny story too. As I mentioned before Umar is quite a sensitive little child who hates seeing people and other babies cry, so his parents, God bless their twisted souls, hit each other and pretend to cry. This activates Umar's 'Na' ability (when his 'Na' ability his activated, he starts saying 'Na' in a like a million different tones) and he tries to make them stop, which ofcourse they don't, until he starts to cry. Then they both cuddle him and all is good. This one time, after a hearty little dinner, Abbas and Hooria started up on their little game again and drove the poor child into a maniacal baby-ish rage. He went up to Abbas and slapped him a couple of times, then he went over to Hooria and tugged at her hair and, finally, he went over to Noor, who was probably dreaming of poop again, based on the vacant expression on her face, and hit her as hard as he could on the side of the face. Then they both started to scream and cry. They're living in one dysfunctional family but they get all the love in the world, which is the important thing.

This, my dear friends, is how I spent a week of my life in Murree. I came back on the 8th day. I still don't know why I did that.