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. 

SILENCE

In the sky rose the screams,

The shrill wails roared,

A drop landed on the soil,

Another,

And another,

A blotch appeared,

As if a painting,

All in red,

The evil shrieked somewhere in the background,

A chaos broke,

The buildings crumbled,

An image of a broken land appeared behind the dust,

The dust trying to mask it,

Humanity suffered another blow,

Its roots staggered once again,

And long after, silence prevailed,

Everything appeared to be normal

yet nothing was normal,

When the cries faded,

Silence echoed,

Louder than the howls of evil,

The silence screamed,

And when nothing spoke,

Silence did,

The tales that vanished,

Silence carried them all.

When there was nothing to say,

Silence said it all.

THE UNDEAD

In the dimly lit room she sat, her eyes gazing in the dark as if it carried all the wonders of the world. Anyone entering the room would have suffered from a sheer sense of claustrophobia but somehow the boundaries didn’t seem to bother her. She sat so still as if posing for a portrait, or if she were a statute. She was a piece of art, so magnificent that she carried a thousand tales within her. It’s not always the words that dictate the stories, sometimes it’s the silence. Sometimes the silence screams louder than the words. Sometimes not saying says it all.

The absolute stillness was broken by a loud thud at the door. Someone had brought her back to the reality as if some paint splashed over the portrait, or the statute came crumbling down to the ground. Her eyes widened. An expression crossed her face but lasted only a moment. Silently, she slipped out of her dungeon into the living room. It seemed like someone had tried so hard to give it signs of life, all the artificiality failing to provide so. Twenty seven years!

Twenty seven years ago, she had decorated this very room with her beautiful bony hands. Even when everything seemed to be falling apart, even when her dreams shook under the immense weight of the reality, even when every promise, every hope seemed a fallacy, she worked. She worked to beautify her castle, the castle she was a prisoner of, the castle she was meant to never leave again. Somewhere in the darkness, she waited like a princess, like Rapunzel hidden away from the world. The only difference was, there was no one coming for her rescue. Twenty seven years ago, if you had seen her, you’d be baffled. If you had bumped into her younger version of twenty seven years ago, you wouldn’t have recognized her. Twenty seven years!

Pacing into the kitchen, she turned on the stove, her hands following the rhythmic patterns as if encoded to do so. The spark of the fire lit her eyes for a moment and faded. In the background, someone was loudly talking. Provided she was the only other person in the house, it was directed to her. Her demeanor didn’t change. Her hands worked at the same pace they did before. Years ago, she would have panicked, her hands would have moved faster, her heart would have thumped louder, but now, there was no rush, there was no panic. The speaker was standing in the doorway now. He did not look happy but her serenity never broke.

The steam escaped the kettle as she poured the tea in the cup and at the moment, it was the only thing that seemed free.

Some order had been directed to her, to which she had silently complied. She was back in the dungeon which was now lit with much more light than the tiny room could afford.

Her now wrinkled hands reached the cup-board, flashing it open like a gateway into the past. The red dress glittered before her eyes, hitting her with a sheer nostalgia. Twenty seven years! Twenty seven years ago, when she had first set her eyes on this dress, she had beamed with such pleasure, she could have gone hysteric. Her mind had wandered off, far away into the wonder land. She had so excitedly chatted about her wedding day, and the life she had planned afterwards that her elders had to silence her.

On the day of her wedding, she had carried this dress like she had carried all her dreams, fancy and sparkly. She had been, without a doubt, the prettiest bride there ever was. Not because her beauty was unmatched, but because she had that glow, the spark of life. Her smile had shone brighter than the jewels around her neck.

A curt voice shook her out of her memory lane, the very voice that had shaken her out of her dreams years ago. There was no evidence of violence because she had never been physically hit. And that was enough for the world to confirm her safety. Because invisible scars, no matter how deep they penetrate, never burst out on the surface, because no one wants to see them. Her hand shifted from the red dress to a dull grey one. She closed the cupboard shutting with it, the small hints of life.

Once again, she had to go out pretending to be alive, because to the world, she wasn’t dead, not yet. Because to the world, she was still scar-less, bruise-less, only old, withered out lady. The world was only willing to declare her dead, once she would stop breathing, once her heart would stop beating. Little did they know, she had stopped living a long time ago.