For most of my childhood, my grandmother's bright red Camry smelled faintly of J. perfume, old leather and sometimes McDonald's fries that we had eaten hours earlier but somehow could still smell. The air conditioning was always slightly too cold. The radio was never loud, just enough for us to hear old Coke Studio songs as we sang along, completely off-key and without a care in the world. Outside the windows, Karachi moved past in its usual chaos. Motorbikes were squeezing through impossible gaps, rickshaws were rattling alongside us and street vendors were balancing baskets of ambrood. Cars honked constantly, as if noise alone could clear the traffic. But inside that Camry, it always felt calm. And somewhere between a red light on Shahrah-e-Faisal and a slow crawl through Clifton's never ending traffic, my grandmother would begin telling stories. "You should have seen Karachi back then," she would always say, with the kind of voice that made it seem like another lifetime. They were never about which cousin was getting married or which drycleaner to go to. They were about an Old Karachi that I never got to know. A Karachi that felt like a whole different world to me. She fondly talked about quieter roads, about dressing formally even for ordinary outings and somehow, in every story, she always talked about her excitement whenever she received some money, and the immense pride she felt when buying anything, even a simple juice from the grand Agha's supermarket. Sometimes she spoke about places that still existed, but in a way that made me wonder if the places are still the same. It was strange hearing about a city that I lived in as if it belonged to another era. I think that's what fascinated me most. Not just the stories, but the fact that the same place could exist in two completely different lifetimes.

Back then, I thought these were simply ordinary drives. But now, I know they weren't. When you are young, you never really think about your grandparents getting older. They just seem like they will be there forever. Like certain voices, traditions, and places. But now, my grandmother is turning seventy-six. And suddenly, those drives seem completely different. Not because we were going somewhere fancy or important. Honestly, I can't even remember any of the destinations. Yet, what I do remember is her hand tapping slowly on the steering wheel, perfectly synchronising with the beat of whatever song we were playing. I remember the exact way that she laughed whenever we ruined a song. The feeling that no matter how chaotic Karachi was on the outside, everything inside the bright red Camry was perfectly steady.