Daily Times

Alamgir Ice-Cream in Main Market has become a store called Waffles now. And it stings slightly, to see a place I once loved change into a place I no longer recognize. And perhaps it’s natural for things you love to be unrecognizable after a certain time.

We are all one heartbreak away from learning the consequence of love. I have walked into relationships knowing exactly what the end of them would be like, but walked into them anyway?-?hoping that perhaps I can love someone into correction, even though I have never been loved so much that love alone entitled me to someone and I am sorry that there is no way to describe this that is not about agony or that is not about someone being torn from the perch of their comfort. But perhaps the only hope is to cherish the moments we still have with someone who may not be here in the future.

And I have been part of those that do not feel the passing of moments when they are in them and long for their romantics after. And that is precisely the case with me and this ice-cream shop. I perhaps miss the romantics I shared with the place more than the place itself. The way that the younger me, still drunk on childhood would excite himself to the sight of Alamgir Special Waffle Cone on a Monday of the summer of 2006 – the melting ice cream meeting sweat as it slowly drips down to my hands. Or is it perhaps the memories when I was slightly older, when I was part of the group of teenage boys that would sneak out at night for ice cream and share stories of how they first kissed a girl or went beyond kissing a girl we all knew. And how we always also all knew they were lying but pretended to believe each other anyway, or how once we staked out for a friend when he made out with his girlfriend and then when the police found them he ran outside of the car and into the streets without pants finding his way home. I miss how Minahil became my sister that day when I lied to the officer saying that our parents will kill us if they found out. I saw the boy running home that day, crying to his mother with an oversized shirt and no pants, like a cartoon bear and the next day when I hear this story, I will think about what it means for someone to become naked two times in one night to rush into the warmth of two women, once becoming a man and once becoming a boy all over again.

And I have been part of those that do not feel the passing of moments when they are in them and long for their romantics after. And that is precisely the case with me and this ice-cream shop. I perhaps miss the romantics I shared with the place more than the place itself. The way that the younger me, still drunk on childhood would excite himself to the sight of Alamgir Special Waffle Cone on a Monday of the summer of 2006 — the melting ice-cream meeting sweat as it slowly drips down to my hands

And this is what it was like to be a boy in the early 2000s to always pretend to be someone we were not. And even now how we like talking about flowers but would rather talk about the hot girl we saw at Coke Fest and how her leather jacket did not cover her curves well enough or if it wasn’t meant to. But I’ve always been more interested in flowers, growing up with a lawn full of them I consider flowers to be a part of my childhood. And when we talk about flowers we really must know that we’re talking about something that is born dying, as we all are, but finding reason to be beautiful for as long as it can. And that’s what I’ve felt every time I’ve been with someone I knew will only last for a while but I stayed anyway because it was about how the morning explodes over two people in one bed who didn’t know each other the night before, when alone was the only other option and their homes had too many mirrors for all that.

I do wish though that Alamgir would be called Alamgir once again just to serve as evidence that the memory I fall back to was real enough.

I wish for the boys to know the weight of heartbreak as well as the weight of a promise. I wish them to sleep in where the emptiness is just a reminder that it was not always.

I am sitting up in bed writing about heartbreak and waiting for a friend to take me out for ice-cream at Alamgir. Oh excuse me, to Waffles. It’s only a contradiction if you think of it.

The writer can be reached at ammaarwrites@gmail.com