By Anjum Wasim Dar
From Rawalpindi, Pakistan
New Years Day brought joy and excitement because the schools would close. Cold hazy mornings would be filled with breakfast gatherings in front of the fireplace. The low table [in height like the Japanese tables,] would be laid with specially prepared meat dish called Hareesa. The famous Kashmiri breakfast delight eaten hot, with baked naan served with kebabs and pink salty tea or Namkeen Chai.
All these breakfast items needed effort. The meat would be prepared with a variety of cereals, and cooking would begin in the evening and continue through the night. When it was ready it would be like a thick paste.
These winter days are the last week of December and the first week of the New Year, this time was rather quiet generally. I remember we looked forward to the new books, the radiant reader with stories of Baron Munchausen, The Barmecides Feast, Tom Thumb, and our last days in school would also hold the annual stage play. Cinderella was a memorable one, the stagecoach and the pumpkins, then A Midsummer Nights Dream...
I wonder where all the stage plays went. Gone are the beauties of literature, the pleasure of poetry and also the method of making Hareesa. Well times have changed with technology. The meat is now prepared in the blender [a mixer chopper machine.] Ah! The true aroma, the freshness, the sincerity of family breakfasts
The New Year would bring good cheer and glad tidings but, Well... I am not so sure now. There goes another flash of a bombing in my own country; and we were told it was a land of pure peace.
Anjum Wasim Dar is a freelance writer from Rawalpindi, Pakistan.
Published in U S Magazine January 2005
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