Tender is the Night

Soft velvety darkness accented by an Asian moon filtering its sheen on everything, tender is the night, and magical, poetical and enveloping. I love the strains of blue nights in Karachi, its cool caressing breeze not yet made heavy by vapors, it is like a seductive woman, enticing, but, from a distance.

The night just doesn't come in Karachi it descends slowly like a enthroned pasha from his high castle, it slowly manifests itself rising forth from a magnificent and fiery sunset. The sea blazes with the dying sun, the water shimmers and the sky bursts into feisty colors imbuing everything in a surreal light. The sea heaves its bosom to meet the moon, playing and teasing, the sound of the rising waves crashing the shore is musical. The wind picks up, refreshing the hot ground, easing the burdens of the soul and soothing it in a strange nostalgic way.

So much has changed in my life, so many events have unfolded in this city shaping me and my life, but the nights have remained the same, the moon with its silvery disk is as brilliant as ever, as captivating as it was when I was a young impressionable girl unbeknowest of what the future held for me. Long, endless Nights withholding secrets mysterious, lustering every thought and movement bloom and blossom, and ephemeral, the night proceeds but in slow motion, hours lazingly come into their own, being and then slowly passing!

I love the nights in Karachi, and wherever I am come evening I yearn for the heady scent of raat ki rani and motia infusing my city, enveloping the sordid, the turbulent, the fetid machinations and festering wounds of the city, and for a full 12 hours giving us respite from the ugliness and harshness of a cruel life in a cruel city.