What to do when it's the end of the world?

In the last two months, I have painted nearly everything in sight green. That’s an exaggeration. But most things of importance, green. My room walls are green. As of last Tuesday my home studio is light green. As of yesterday my desks are also green. I bought olive green and ‘greige’ chalk paint and mixed them together and it ended up being basically the exact colour of the walls. I’m not sure what the obsession is or why it is there, but I’m rolling with it.

Last week, after the painting of the studio, I was quite preoccupied with doing something I’ve never really done before. I have been feeling a lot of grief in response to all of the destruction caused by this year’s flooding, especially in Gilgit-Baltistan, perhaps, no definitely, because of my close affinity and connection with that place. I was there earlier this year, and two years ago, and five years ago, and my world has only broadened and expanded as a result, in ways I feel privileged to have experienced. So to see the restaurant I sat in in Gulmit, for breakfast after a musical evening with the boys, then the morning before our strenuous two day trek, and then two years later again in a serendipitous encounter with a kindred spirit - to see it be completely destroyed in seconds by the sheer force of water, of boulders and trees falling… has been sobering.

So one afternoon, the day before the torrential monsoon in Karachi, I had an idea and the idea was to raise funds for flood-affected communities using my paintings of Hunza, that I made in June. Interestingly, I never tried to sell them, because a part of me felt wrong to be making money off of the beauty of their land. I won’t go into whether this was a right or wrong way to feel, but in this moment I felt I should sell them and the money should go to them at a time when they need it. First I thought of selling the paintings, then mum suggested I do prints, which made a lot more sense because they would be much more accessible to more people. So I did it, I made the Google form, and I reached out to a contact in GB who was helping the ladies whose restaurant (Bozlanj) was destroyed. I initially intended to send all the funds I made to them, but then the floods in Ghizer happened, and there was so much more destruction and need.

After about five days of sharing the post everyday, the amount raised came to just over 70,000. I wasn’t expecting any more than 30 if I was lucky. Given the scale, it’s not a whole lot. But it’s something and it gave both me and my art a sense of purpose in the world for that little while.

So this had me thinking about purpose, and the individual, unending search for it. I wonder if purpose can come from unexpected, maybe even tragic, places, I wonder if it has nothing to do with satisfying a selfish need, or everything to do with it. Someone else’s suffering, my sense of purpose - that doesn’t sound so nice. Or maybe the two are intertwined.

But also it made me wonder what business we have wondering about our individual purpose in the world when the world as we know it feels like it is ending? After the flood-hype subsides, will I go back to my self-serving tendencies? Just like after tragedy on tragedy in Gaza became too much, I stopped looking at it? Pretending it doesn’t exist? Manifesting my own dream life once again?

What good is a dream life in the mountains if a glacier melts near my house? And what good is any life once it comes to an end, which it can, at any moment? What happens to the universe within each person, each animal, each tree?

I’m still grappling with these questions.

Last night, we buried a kitten that was run over outside our gate. I knew no one else would do it, so we did. I hated the world for a while after that. I wish I had rescued it when I heard a small meowing outside the day before.

Life is such a mystery. Like deep water. Something about going underwater in the sea with goggles on that freaks me out, so I don’t do it. I don’t want to know what’s under there. Maybe that’s why we stick to our self-serving ways. The mystery is too much to bear.