Sugharean Sath

It's amazing how strongly nostalgic the sense of smell can be sometimes.
Today I went to ada Arshad's (my lawyer cousin) office in Saddar for some informal advice on a corporate issue. As I went inside the building, just beside the stairs some people were unloading stacks of a new magazine issue - that smell of freshly printed magazine paper transported me to over 15 years ago when my mother and aunt got together to launch Sugharean Sath - a Sindhi magazine on women empowerment. For about a year and a half my house was a makeshift office and a storage area for the magazine.

This smell is associated with hard work and courage - the frequent meetings that they used to have with various stakeholders, the constant running around to gather material and pick up articles, endless writing, editing and proof-reading sessions late into the night, letters and mails from readers all over Sindh, the constantly brewing tea, sales and marketing efforts, and towards the end of it all, the tension around the ethnic riots that impacted operations, the ensuing lack of funds and the final stop to the publication work as they ran out of the money they were putting in themselves to sustain the effort.

I would love to be associated one day with a publication - or a similar worthwhile effort with a cause.