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.