Ms. Hendi
In her memory
We loved you, and feared you — in equal measure.
She taught us our letters and our literature, kept the back rows honest, and set a standard none of us has quite stopped trying to meet. Wherever the years have carried us, a little of her classroom came along.
— Her students, then and always
I · School Days
Grey uniforms, green ties
Karachi mornings, the assembly bell, and the particular trouble that only a class of friends can invent together.
II · The Reading List
Everything she made us read
The books that passed through her classroom — and somehow stayed with us.
How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world.— William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act V, Scene 1
III · A 1990s State of Mind
What we did after the bell
Cartoons before homework, wrestling on the weekend, quarters in the arcade, and an encyclopaedia on a single shining disc.
IV · Our Karachi
The city outside the gates
Stone and spire and market noise — the backdrop to all of it.
V · Where We Are Now
Scattered, but never far
Two decades on and several continents apart, we still find our way back to the same table.
