OP-ED: Pitstop on a snowy eve

Why Qurbanir Eid is a time of transition
I still remember that time, the Qurbanir Eid of 2011. I was in class eight. It was during the middle of JSC exams, something that had been used as a bogeyman ever since we entered high school. Leading up to that, I had always had this strange intention of freezing up time for a year or so, and then letting it back up again. I had different reasons back then, sillier reasons, but the seeds of temporality had been sown inside of me. 

It was the middle of November. Most of the exams were over, and the ones that remained didn’t pose much of a challenge for me. Unlike the Eid before, I had a relative degree of freedom, as long as I at least showed an effort to study from time to time. Bhoot FM started the year before, and it was one of my favourite ways to spend Friday night. 

Before that, due to the schedule of the show, I was only allowed to hear parts of the show, and the nights I did manage to catch the whole show were spent with the fear that my parents were going to yell at me any minute. But during that time period, when I asked for my dad’s mobile phone, he happily handed it over to me and went to sleep. 

Not only that, I had free rein over the phone for the whole night, which led to me staying up till three in the morning and listening to music to calm my nerves. And when I could sleep in until 11 the next day and still get away with it, I knew that the dynamics around me had changed.