Breathing in smoke in Pakistan

It's taken me a while to actually get to this stage. I'd decided to get to this, a while back, but then there's usually been a slip between the cup and the lip... in this case, it was more like, I just forgot the cup was waiting to be sipped. Well, the coffee (or tea) didn't quite lose it's warmth, so I decided to go ahead and taste it anyway.To explain the title of this post, I'm actually in Pakistan, sitting in a press box, watching the second test between India and Pakistan in a city (actually a village masquerading as a city) called Faisalabad. It's about a couple of hours west of Lahore, and isn't really much to offer besides a few textile plants.
Perhaps, the most surreal part of all of this is that, the last time this happened (when India were here), I was in the US covering how the NRIs and NRPs are following every minute of the action, regardless of time of day. And right now, I'm sitting here watching Rahul Dravid caress Abdur Razzaq through the covers. It's quite something. I can honestly say that I am sometimes overawed with how close to the action I've had an opportunity to get. And what baffles me even more is that I'm here, which means that people back home are probably (being the operative word) listening to what I have to say about Inzy's back or about the pitch or about just anything I want to feed them. And I'd like to think I do a semi-decent job of it... but that I guess only time will tell...
Time will tell me a lot of things... the days in Pakistan have told me a few things for sure, that life isn't always about trying to shut out your past or it doesn't necessarily mean that what's happened before is all bad... it's just that whatever is happening in the now, in the present, is so precious, it's quite literally worth immersing yourself (in a very John the Baptist sort of way) for the moment itself. Life is now. Life is today. Life is this full stop that's about to follow. Not this one. This one.