Naveed Mulki

My niece Zo asked me, with a seriousness that can only be held by a nine-year-old, ‘Chachu, what do you do?’
‘I am a writer, filmmaker.’ I replied.
She looks at me unimpressed & asks again.
‘Chachu, what do you really do?’

I am eavesdropping, eavesdropping all the time. The last I heard was ‘Sheila isn’t fit to be the president of (a not to be named) city club. To be fair to Sheila, she does the work, but what she lacks is a certain flair.’ I nodded despite not being part of the conversation, as these clubs never allow me to enter them in my Hawaii slippers. Zo asks me if this club is on a beach. I pretend I don’t hear her.

I am falling into rabbit holes. I slip my last fascination into Zo’s ears as she tries to educate me on the endless possibilities of a Labubu blind box. I tell her the boxes are cool, but has she heard about the Deccan traps. I tell her that volcanic eruptions once trapped softer layers like river beds under them. Even delicate dinosaur eggs turned into fossils & were preserved intact. ‘Isn’t it beautiful, Zo?’ I ask her. Gentle things safely preserved under hard fiery times. She ponders for a moment and says ‘Ya, it’s cool.’

I tell her that I get moved by an idea, & then the idea slips away. ‘Uhum, uhum,’ she notes. I tell her that it takes time to write, that I spend four hours being bored before writing a single line. ‘Uhum, uhum.’ That sometimes my expressions repeat themselves. ‘Uhum, uhum.’ That sometimes I take 17 years to write a book. ‘Uhum, uhum.’ That sometimes fellow artists give up on me because I have a backlog as long as the Labubu store queues. ‘Do you think I should get one blind box & one revealed?’ And then finally, there is a rare moment, where I write something, shoot something and it sings in perfect unison with how I see and feel the universe. ‘You know what I mean?’ I ask her. ‘Of course,’ she says. ’It’s like it is your birthday.’ ‘Are you telling me Zo, that I need to work like I am reborn every single day?’ I say excitedly. ‘You are weird, Chachu,’ she replies.

‘So yeah, I am a writer, filmmaker, Zo.’ I tell her.
‘You are on Google! And YouTube!’ she screams. I tell her she can be my 310th subscriber. #40