Off you go, 2020!

 

The year is over, almost over and I feel like I ought to say something, for I was audacious enough to crack a joke about an apocalypse in 2020. 

Well, well, well, look who is the joke now?

 

Speaking of apocalypses, I always wondered what it'd be like to live through one. But of course, when I imagined apocalypse, it was more adrenaline rush and less of a, well, no rush whatsoever. Besides, the rotting brains in my scenario were of the zombies, not myself stuck in quarantine.

 

Of course, I am just calling out on quarantine for the sake of it. My whole life has been more or less the same. Anyway, now that the year is finally on the close, I have but no words to express what it has been. Gradually getting worse by the day, what hopes does the new year offer?

 

After all, time is but an illusion.

 

I wish to crack a joke, I really do. I wish to end this tragedy of a year on a lighter note, but the truth is, nothing about the year was actually light.

 

Sure thing, it started off as a joke. At first, it was just China's problem, you know. Damn you China and your stupid bats. Who cared? I'll tell you who didn't, I didn't.

 

And then it started seeping in. Closer, and closer and closer.

 

As if death itself stood outside the door, ready for you to open it.

 

When it started inching in towards us, it felt like an alternate reality, sort of a hazy dream. But it didn't feel like a big deal even then. After all, when the pandemics hit before, humans were ancient. We are advanced, we have the technology, and we would magically be able to whip out a vaccine overnight.

 

So, when I stood with my friends, outside the cafe, bidding them farewell, because the institutes might close for 2 weeks and my friends asked jokingly for one last hug, I shrugged them off from a distance. 2 weeks. We've been apart longer than that.

 

When the screen started flashing numbers, it started putting a little weight on my heart. Like a brick, and soon, it was a stone and then a feather, and then before I knew, every time, the screen flashed a number, my eyes would just go out of focus.

 

Then death started knocking on doors, loud enough for everyone to hear. Families, friends, neighbors, it was everywhere.

 

The year is on the close. The virus has evolved to the worst it has yet been.

 

So even though I wish to somehow turn it into something hopeful, what am I ought to say at this moment?

 

Life sure is different now. Be it the pandemic or adulthood, whatever the cause is, the blissful days of childhood are long over.

 

Time is an illusion, and so is life.

 

I know the pandemic will settle, sooner or later. Life would be set to a new normal, no matter what it feels like at the moment.

 

Man was never invincible, and he never will be. No matter how much he evolves, no matter how advanced science may get.

 

Life will carry on, for as long as it is meant to go on. But the inevitable truth now reinforces itself in my mind. The truth that life is going to go ahead, leaving us behind. One by one.

 

So, when the year is on the close today, I stand here, far away from that frozen frame where we all stand together, one last time.

THOU WARRIOR OF THE DARK

For you, with love 

You carry the weight on your shoulders so well,

It feels unlikely you ever stoop, 

Light as a feather,

You tread so carefully, 

as if on a glass, 

Your beaming smile,

Your hearty laugh,

You laugh as if there's no care in the world,

And I follow your eyes,

Where your smile never reached,

Say how many days

Do you walk around fighting the tears back?

How many nights

When your world falls apart,

do you seek shelter in a battered camp?

How many times

When the burden gets too heavy,

Do you try to catch your breath,

And it comes, unlike your own? 

Painful, in bits and pieces? 

Oh warrior of the dark, 

Bless thy heart, 

For you're stronger than the tempests

In the sea of your life, 

Oh warrior forget not yourself,

When you pay your debts to the world,

Pay yourself with kindness,

For no one else sees your bleeding scars,

Hold on to yourself with love

Till the storms last, 

and the storms do last,

Hold on, 

till you see the dawn

breaking through the edge of the sky.

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE!

Here's to the 72 years of freedom that we have earned, wait, correction, our ancestors had earned. We, on the other hand, have done our best jobs to damage it and we have served well. Now I apologize if I came down on the patriotic mood of yours. I meant no offense.

Our beloved homeland has made it to 72 years, all bleeding, all scratched, all withered but nevertheless all beautiful. Our roads are loaded with charged patriots. We love our land. We are happy, happy to be free. Happy to have been bestowed with the gift that our ancestors presented to us. And what did it cost? Blood. Sons, daughters, fathers, mothers, grandfathers, grandmothers, the unborn.

See, I share your spirit too. I don't share your way celebration, perhaps. This day isn't a happy day for me. Of course, I am grateful for it. When I think about the ‘what ifs’, what if we never had won? Where would we be now? Dead? Caged? At war? Maybe we'd be coexisting peacefully. But that's a far-fetched maybe. And I am talking Timbuktu far. When I think about the lands that are not quite free. The ones at war. The ones where human life has no value. Kashmir, Syria, Sudan, Yemen, Iran… The list goes on. And what breaks my heart even more is the fact that it has only just begun. Peace takes years and years of blood to prevail and it takes one moment to break it.

Wars, on the other hand, wars are easy. Hatred is easy. It doesn't hurt the way caring does. Political games.

And when I think about them, I feel relieved to be here. And I hate myself for feeling it but there is nothing wrong with it. It's human, if not really humane.

So when the day comes, it's a blend of emotions. I am happy to be here. But it breaks my heart because the day is always sad. The aura is always sad. Because the sacrifices never faded. The horrors never ceased. Maybe they never do.

Maybe someday I'd talk about the irony of this situation but not today. Today is about independence, the happiest sad day, or the saddest happy.

While we have the independence, that we owe to Jinnah and Iqbal and the ones who got wrote down in the history and the ones who never made it to be known, they all did it for us, selflessly. They knew they wouldn't make it, but they had faith that we would. And so we did. But we ruined everything along the way.

Happiest Birthday Pakistan. Long Live my beloved homeland. We're sorry to have failed you, to have failed our ancestors. We're sorry to have taken the sacrifices, that were already beyond our bearing, for granted. And in doing so, we have made them heavier. We're sorry that our patriotism wakes up for one day, or when we're challenged but sleeps all the other days. Because we're so ready to defend but we are not ready yet to amend.

We can lay down our lives for the country but that's about it because working to make it better is a bit much to ask.

Dear beloved, I wish you recovery for we have damaged you a lot. Dear beloved, I wish you the best people because you deserve them.

I wish we find it in our hearts to do something for this country, and for our people suffering in our neighbor land. They came so close to being with us, and they're still suffering. Our land maybe diseased but it's not rotten yet. It's survivable. May Pakistan live long. May Kashmir be free. May all the lands be safe. May we find it in our hearts to do more than mere talk. May God be with us all.

REST IN PEACE?

Amidst the desolated terrain of the broken, the stories have etched themselves in the sound of the wind, a wind so hollow that even the rustling of the leaves reeks of death. Oh, how the atmosphere is filled with the foul stench and yet there is no smell. How the silence shrieks of the cries it has so cunningly but dutifully engulfed in itself, as if paying its respect to the deceased. Oh, how this land is diseased. And yet it appears as nothing but promising of peace. Death has been looming over the horizon. Death has been scattered over the ground. And in here, steps a man with spirits as high as a mount where he masks the sense of foreboding with a sense of accomplishment. Nay, it wasn’t a quiet death nor was it quick. It was slow and painful, where the wails echoed for a time so long, it felt like an eternity. Humanity. Humanity died a long time ago.

It is easy to walk in a place and not hear nor sense the devastation it has once witnessed. If it were the case, it would have haunted man forever. Here’s a funny thing about cruelty, it is often attempted with a process of cleansing. Where the mess has been taken care of, and the broken replaced while the scars, hidden, who would hesitate to step in it again?

Who said “war” is how matters are taken care of? It’s not patriotism. It’s hopeless romanticism we have associated with the concept of war. War as a concept, ay, what a notion! At what point does a man decide that spilling of blood would solve a crisis? At what point does a man decide that taking a life equals eliminating a threat? You see threats have this ability of rooting themselves deep in the surrounding. Sins sprout up as a fruit. And sins don’t fade away easy. Your ritual of spilling blood, of sacrificing for the cause of fending off this demon, this immortal beast of a sin will never succeed. Violence is never the answer. It’s a cause. A lost cause.

It’s not funny. I find no humor in a situation where lives are at stake. How is strength associated with who gets to kill more rather than with who gets to save more? When did we become so lost, so deluded, so failed that we stopped seeing the suffering. When did killing more people become a notion of victory? When did the greatest of all creations descend so low that they found peace in destroying lives?

You think war is fun? Snap out of the fantasy. This is not where the heroes you have so idealized fight off with all their skill and might and bring victory to home sweet home. It’s not where a few days of darkness are followed by the sunshine of freedom. War does not free you. It chains your mind for as long as your heart beats. Because you die the moment you are touched by the war.  

Don’t you know what it does to people? You think there are survivors of war? That’s the biggest lie. Truth is, nobody survives a war. Nobody ever comes out of it alive.

See they say, writers have this inner eye where they can just see. And yet after all this time, I have never once managed to even catch a glimpse of where war is an answer. Guess what I am trying to say is that it is, indeed, good to have the spirit to fight for your nation, for your loved ones, for protection but why do things have to reach that stage? Why do humans always try to bring others down while attempting to climb up? Why can you not lift them up with you? All for what? HATE? Should love not be stronger than this? We have misplaced our love, in love for violence, how have we misused this emotion to the worst cause ever. Agendas. What the sung and unsung heroes died for. AGENDAS.  

Consider me naïve but I will tell you this, War is a lose-lose situation. Nobody, NOBODY wins a war. There is no victory, there is no success. There is only loss and causalities and suffering and dread, it is the dearth of the souls, it is the end of a whole world. Those who lived, lived in vain. Those who died, do they rest in peace? Oh the silence after war isn’t peace. It’s the dread. It’s the loss of sound. It’s the loss of all.

IF I MAY

Remember how we all thought 2016 was the worst year but boy, oh boy, did 2018 take up the competition. Now I don’t know if it was just me or did you guys also sense that 2018 was cooking up something really rotten before the year even began? Then January took up most of the year and the rest of the year, I don’t know where it went. But it still feels like ages have passed since we last saw each other alright. I would, most willingly, pin this all on growing up but why is every single person messed up? Did someone jinx the even numbers? It was always the ODD numbers that made you uncomfortable. But as the years are turning up to be, 2020 is giving me a big fat scare from around the corner. What has it in for us? World War III? Zombie Apocalypse? Alien invasion? WHAT?

Now as I sit down to scribble these messy thoughts of mine, I don’t know if I saw more marriages or heart breaks this year. Has some cloudy wave wandered off of my thoughts so that now I see how broken every other person is? Or is it this year? I am gonna repeat my favorite statement again. I.DON’T.KNOW.

What I am trying to say in the middle of all this blabbing of mine is that, I know how this year messed all of us up. We lost, all of us, something, some part of us. Maybe it was the alienating friendships that tore us apart; maybe you had some worse experience. Maybe you failed at something you never thought you’d lose. Maybe you didn’t understand everything that happened to you. Maybe you got tied up into something you never wanted. Maybe you had to let go of something you wanted too much. Maybe you lost your support system. Maybe you bled because you held on to something too tight. Maybe you got tired of holding on for too long. Maybe your faith quivered. Maybe your heart, with all that pain, shivered. Or maybe you just sat back and witnessed how everybody around you fell apart and broke down into pieces while all this time, you couldn’t do anything, couldn’t say a word of comfort, couldn’t offer the perfect advice, even though you’re always the one with the right words. Somehow we were all not okay and somehow that was okay.

It’s not over yet. It’s life. Nothing lasts here anyway. Maybe what I am trying to say is that now is the time we lose our stupid grudges. Now is the time we all feel each other, understand. Maybe now is the time that we all help each other out of this crisis. Maybe we are already in the middle of an apocalypse. This? Not knowing, this anxiety, depression, heart aches, distances? Aren’t these apocalyptic enough for us? We are all fighting battles to get through. We are all aiming at survival. By our choice or otherwise. Be kind. Be kind to each other.

You know what matters the most? Keeping faith. You can scoff, call me naïve. Maybe I haven’t walked in your shoes and don’t understand your problems. But at the end of the day, what matters is keeping faith. You have to know this. You have to know Allah is there for you. You have to believe it. Maybe you won’t see it today; you’d see it one day. Maybe you saw it before and it’s all vague now, but the clouds do pass. The day does get clear. Life is a test and you will survive. Reach out, seek help, it is your right. Reach out, help others, it is your duty. Let us all try to find life again. Be naïve, give life another chance. This may not mean much, but I wish you, all of you, a life of faith ahead. It might not really be okay but you will get through this. Hold on. 

DEAR PATRIOT.

First of all, I am going to apologize for all the hatred I might spring in your heart as I offer my ignorant and “jahilana” views because they’d be different from yours. And I am saying this now because it’s all about to be over. Or I certainly hope so. And with all due respect, I’ll say I do not want “naya Pakistan”. No, I don’t. I don’t want renewal, I want revival. Laugh at me for my orthodox thinking but I want what Pakistan meant at one time. I want the passion and the spirit where people didn’t think twice before sacrificing their lives for the sake of this country. I want the determination where people were willing to let their blood nourish their land, fight a real battle for what mattered, not some stupid social media troll war, where bashing and trashing and abuse wins a war. But above all, I want the country that was made in the name of love, and not the hatred. I thought love is what wins us above all but oh sure Lord Voldemort, you can disagree.

Our generations were capable of hating. I realized it when it hit me that our ancestors never hated India, it was us. They loved the land, the people, and everything about it till they had to divide the land because of the conflicts between the people. But they never hated it.

 For the past few years, I have seen nothing but escalating hatred. And I am sick and tired of the abuse and the intolerance. How are you so absolutely sure about your choices? Why are you so convinced that you are the educated, well-reasoned, understanding intellectual and everybody else is a dumb retard? I mean really dude? That much arrogance? Have some humility brothers and sisters. Part of being human is our ability to be wrong. Sometimes, awfully wrong. So settle down, please?

Pakistan has suffered too much but I tell you it’s really hurting. I don’t think this much hatred was foreseen by our ancestors, or they might have reconsidered their decisions. You want democracy yet you cannot stand your fellow countrymen with a different opinion. They love this country as much as you do. Just because you have considered yourself a die-hard patriot doesn’t make you one. If you did love Pakistan as you have been claiming (which, of course, you do), you wouldn’t be so intolerant towards other people. It’s not just our politicians, our leaders, our rulers that are damaging the state. It is us. Our politicians are merely our reflections staring back at us but we refuse to call them that because we cannot accept how we have wronged the state and each other. We have divided and hated on each other. We have turned a blind eye to the matters that should have shaken us to our last cells. And we have stood there with the audacity to call each other a liar, a thief, a fool, all in the name of wanting the better for our country.

You want change? Well, change yourself. Accept the differences. Give people the benefit of the doubt. Stop ruining your relations over stupid politics. Politics has a lot of dark pathways you are not even aware of. Love each other. And oh, you call for change when you still think calling someone a “khusra” is a joke. What the hell is even funny in that? They are people like us. Better than us. They are not a joke. Minorities aren’t a joke. Somebody having a different religious point of view isn’t kaafir. We are all humans. We err. We sin. We are flawed. We have differences. Accept that. Be loyal to your country and do your duties because we all love to cheat a little when it’s not threatening enough (be it on an exam or a little lie we have just told). FOR THE LOVE OF ALMIGHTY, STOP THIS NONSENSE, THIS HATRED, THIS DISGUST. STOP IT. I don’t know if you can’t sense the pain we are causing Pakistan and might even think I have got a flair for the dramatic, but I am telling you, Pakistan is hurting. Because I have felt it. So I request you, please, please, for the sake of our beloved land, stop this, dear Patriot.

Peace.

HEAR, HEAR!

Even if you do enjoy your reputation as a mysterious Pandora box, at some point in your life you’d want to be understood or accepted or at the very least, heard. And it’s a beautiful feeling knowing that there is someone you can rely on, to shower down your rants on, because you know they’d listen, they’d understand, they won’t judge. As a return, you’d offer them your ear. In short, you’re there for each other. But are we though? (If you don’t get this reference, I hate you.) Anyway, the point is, why are we all so miser to offer our services to a limited few? The world is in chaos. Moral, psychological, emotional chaos. You’re not the only damsel in distress. There are ones who are suffering and they don’t have the kind of support you do. Maybe you’re one of them. See the point is, we are so drenched in our own oceans of tears, we barely notice someone who is one step away from tearing apart. We might assure someone we are there for them, we may even listen to them, but why do we keep failing to hear it? The desperate need to be actually heard? To be helped? To be held together?

We are losing too many precious people. Because we didn’t see it. They weren’t the type to do such a thing as to kill themselves. Hey, you know what? Maybe they weren’t the type, but we weren’t the type to kill people either but our actions, our neglect did let someone to take their life. And we are okay with it? Because we have ourselves convinced it wasn’t us. It’s like handing over a loaded gun to someone and saying it was them who pulled the trigger. So your honor, might wanna consider hanging their dead body for it?

Yes, suicide isn’t the solution. It’s not the answer. A person committing suicide is as much responsible for his death as are the other people. When you let your thoughts strangle you, choke the life out of you, when you swallowed the pill of your self-created poison, when you removed the safety from the gun, knowing that there is a weak point. Maybe you self-designed that bullet of your doubts; maybe you polished the blunt of your knife with the edge of your self-esteem. Now I apologize if I sound too insensitive towards your struggles, or depression or anxiety. I am not being insensitive. There is an underlying truth. And I apologize for being carried away from the point, it just seemed important.

Okay, let’s just leave the worst case scenario behind. There are lots of reasons we need to hear out other people. If you wish to be understood, try to understand other people as well. In that inside out world of yours, maybe you’re always the right one, but let’s face it. There are times when you are wrong. Stop being so rigid and take other people’s point of views. And respect them enough to at least agree to disagree. Trashing people around for having different views than you is not making you a better person. In this world of social media addicts, it’s so cool to be a savage troll. Oh, you don’t care about other people? You must be awesome. And stop. Just stop fooling yourself by saying it’s just a joke. If you’re leaving behind respect, going around telling people what ignorant fools people are for holding a different political perspective than yours, you're a horrible person. Because they don’t support your leader, it’s okay for you to bash them with anything that comes in your mind. Oh, they are not even real football fans. Well, congratulations, 10 points for your originality. No, STOP! Shut up and let people live. Stop being such a bully. HEAR THEM OUT. 

And when you start to actually hear people, when you respect them enough to try to see the point of view from their perspective, life would be better. I mean you’d be willing to do it if it was your crush, wouldn’t you? Hell, you’d even hang upside down from a tree branch to see it from their perspective. Why not let it sink? If you still don’t accept it, respect it enough; at least tell yourself they are different. Hear them out. Hear yourself out. When your own soul is screaming for attention, not of others but yours? Give it the freaking attention. And once you start hearing with an intention to understand, you’d even hear the silence.