"There is no way in which to understand the world without first detecting it through the radar-net of our senses."
-Diane Ackerman


Touch

The material of Pakistani boutiques in the afternoon. Visiting them gave me a rough idea of the fashion industry and advertising, which is a main influence in body perception among the youth. There were silky embroidered flowers, golden flecks on maroon damask, paper thin cottons, and my favorite--the airy chiffon that flutters about and kisses the skin. I didn't hesitate to touch every fabric, closing my eyes to escape for a second. I liked best a Mughal-esque empress dress, which felt royal and regal on my wrists with a high beaded collar and a pair of silk trousers to match.

In between the shops, we walked the roads, eyes following our movements while dirt caked our feet and slipped between our toes.

Hear

The deafening roar of generators because the power always goes out. The exacerbating tap-tap on the windows by the beggars outside. A bird that makes sounds of holy rapture at sunrise and sunset. The call for prayer five times a day. Plastic fans struggling to whiff about the stagnant air in the cramped sawdust shops.

Taste

Some fruits that we bought from a scrapwood cart on Zamzama Road. They were ripening in the blinding sun and were growing swollen in the daylight. Swarms of flies danced along their wet seams. We purchased pounds of jambu which are deep purple and leave your mouth a little numb. Small and addictive, they filled our mouths until our bellies emulated their plump skins.

Smell

The desert dust, the clouds that rise up in the windy streets. And if you're extra aware, you can smell the musky jasmines bloom in the heat of a late black night.

See

The Karachi sky is sweeping, vast, magnificent and proud. Sable with a Muslim moon, it is turbid with the city pollution. Last night I looked up and felt lost in the expanse, then a little more connected to the earth. And then, I planted my feet firmly in the Karachi soil and thought of all the connections to be made in this vast wondrous world and how many more lives and buildings and histories that remain for me to sense like this.

"Our ideas are the offspring of our senses; we are not more able to create the form of a being we have not seen, without retrospect to one we know, than we are able to create a new sense.

He whose fancy has conceived an idea of the most beautiful form must have composed it from actual existence."

-Henry Fusili