Helpless…

… to do anything but weep and feel that knot of fear being pushed higher up in my throat along with the helpless, useless, impotent anger at the apparent worthlessness of our lives…

Today, my city mourns.  Innocent casualties of war and the death of our spirit and self.  With the burial of those perished today, will be the laying to ground of the death of our identity, morality and our faith.  Not we ever had any of these things to begin with but at least there was hope.

Students were killed today in another link of an alien war that has been brought to our country by those for whom we are no more than pawns.  Students!  Young women and men conversing about studies and class mates and books and games, maybe some had a wedding to go to or to arrange… Some may be sitting there thinking of the things they need to do when they get home… Some simply thinking how hungry they were…  And the walls came down on them along with debris, fire and scraps of metal that silenced their dreams, and their ordinary concerns…

And left forever echoes of screams and agony in the hearts of the parents who were seeing their future in those bright eyes that are now closed; who were now seeing that hardest labor of love coming to fruit…  Parents who will now bury those dreams and hopes under dust and dirt and leave a piece of themselves with them.  I can visualize the agony that is going to scream through the minds of those families today and wonder how people can not think of the repercussions of what they’re going to do?  Self sacrifice is all good and noble where you’re concerned but slaughtering others… Spare a thought, you miserable brainwashed machine!

How can any cause justify the death of this innocence?  Do these people truly feel that targeting innocents and civilians is going to make an iota of difference to those who sit in the seats of power?  As if we are worth that much!  And how many of us truly care anyway?  We will be saddened for a while, be worried a bit about maybe this being us but in the end we move on; going on with our ordinary lives.  We are conditioned to be cold now.  We have no feelings of remorse nor guilt nor retribution.

We have no sense of self.  Those who have died have done so in vain.  And those they have left behind will cry and mourn their loss.  And we will go on as we always have in the face of everything done to us.  We take it.  Here are our collective asses… Stuff whatever you can up them.  We can take it and more.

As to those who believe they are carrying out the Almighty’s will, why is it not Allah’s will that the oppressor dies a painful death?  Is it open substitution?  some kind of macabre play where the understudies for Zardari and Chief of Army Staff or Musharraf are always on stage to take the bullet both literally and figuratively?

Bloody bastards, if you must do something to right the wrongs committed against you, then do so against the perpetrators?  Go on and blast Musharraf and Zardari and Altaf Hussain and all the rest so your revenge can truly be complete!

Frank Herbert said: “If you think of yourselves as helpless and ineffectual, it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be your master. The wise despot, therefore, maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual.”

I don’t even want to blame the USA.  Why should I?  I have no right when I know that the fault lies within our on money grabbing, power hungry little hearts.  But DAMN!!

People say that standing up to the US and its imposition of rules and bills; drone strikes and elite forces would eliminate all this.  Saying it is rather easy, but doing it requires spirit that understands sacrifice.  Not the free for all, kill one-dozens free kind of spirit but the spirit that maybe we need to re-evaluate our lives.  Some comforts, some luxuries that we could do without, if it could mean breaking this narcotic hold that money has on everything we do.  It is money and silken sheets and crystal decanters that prompt the drive for governance in our country.  Never an actual spirit of changing the system.

I’m random and I’m ranting…  and everything has gone uncomfortably numb!

Broken

It’s like splintering into pieces from within…  Shards splitting from the center into slivers fine and sharp…  The kind that burrow in and make you bleed and you can’t get them out.  The fine edge just slides over your skin, through it leaving a sting sharp enough to make your breath catch…  Imagine thousands of those shards slicing through you inside out at the same time… so you don’t quite know where to hold the pain first…. you don’t quite know how to make the blood stop… even as you fade… all you feel is the agony…  all you see is the red…  all you feel is the helplessness of knowing that all that waits is darkness…

Referencing kills

All those people who invented bloody styles of thesis writing and referencing, should be thankful that they’re dead…  Because they would surely be dead now if I ever laid my hands on them…

Aaarrrrgggghhhhh.. khud mar gaye and museebatein hamare liye chhor gaye!!  Ufffff!!!

A Teeming Mind

… And yet, no possibilities.  Today as in so many days, I don’t see much to get me out of this eternal rut that I’m stuck in.  I had read and heard about the realities of life getting one down but never really experienced the helplessness that one endures in their wake…  

Money is oh, ever so important.  I look back at the feeling of having lived in a house owned by my parents with the kind of yearning that can make me double with pain.  It’s been around ten years that have seen us shift every few years into one rented house from another.  I dream of the day when I’ll have that peace of knowing that this floor beneath my feet and the roof above my head belongs to no one else.  But damn it, I don’t have the money for that luxury.  It’s shocking how rent money eats into your savings, with no return, leaving you empty and hollow…

You know, my parents are getting old.  In a couple of years, my papa will retire.  Mama has always been unwell.  Nothing critical but progressively strong medicine to treat migraine over the years has led to hypertension, blood pressure, osteoporosis…  She jokes about how her insides are probably degenerating but it sends a cold chill through me that makes me jerk back physically.  I’m a real mummy daddy bacha who even today at the grand old age of 30, sleeps best in the afternoon curled up next to papa, or whose day isn’t complete until every last, little detail of the day’s happenings is not repeated as it occured.  On the other end, I know my parents rely and trust on me far more than they do on my brother.  Where I am proud to be worthy of that trust, the pressure that I’ll disappoint them is also greater.  Right now, there is something alive and kicking inside of me that makes me just want to do something so I can make that little house where my parents can live…  But damn it, I so don’t have the money.

And then there’s my bro.  Bless him, he’s fine as brothers go but he is an intellectual of today.  He looks and treats all with the same kind of pragmatic, unemotional practicality that can really pinch at times.  Example being, if papa asks him for a loan, he’ll say something like he won’t be giving the household expenses for the next 3 months so that the loan can be recovered.  What is this, a bank?  They’re your parents.  They are the ones who sold their house so you could go to America to study.  They are the ones who spent hundreds of thousands of rupees on your wedding because that is what you wanted.  And this is the attitude you show them.  It hurt to hear that papa asked bro to bring medicine and he didn’t bring it because he was too tired to take the detour to the market on his way back from work and it was hot by the way.  It was the first time my father actually said something to the effect that this is where the difference comes between a parent and a child.  My parents never let lack of money, time or resources be a reason to refuse us anything.  We had the discipline that allowed us to study and study well, get jobs, have a reasonably well mannered countenance but we also knew, rather know that there is nothing that our parents would not do for us.

And then there is him.  Ugh!  The bane of my existance, or my entire world, I so don’t know.  Rationally, my mind knows the limits and possibilities and is prepared for them, somewhat but damn my heart drives me crazy at times.  He talks about all these things, futures, possibilities but there are so many what ifs…  His age, his dependency on his family, his youth and immaturity (not necessarily the same thing) and his damn emotional nature…  His decision making is so based on what his heart tells him to do that his brain has little or no role to play in it whatsoever… You cannot live like that in today’s world..  Besides, to my fault, let’s just say the heart’s decisions aren’t all that for me…  I end up thinking of things like so his heart likes me today but what happens tomorrow when his heart falls for someone else…

I want another job.  I love teaching but I want something different now.  Something more regular and less tiring.  The mileage I cover in a week, driving between the universities I teach at is physically and mentally exhausting.  It’s made me short tempered and irritable where I’ve developed a tick in the side of my eye when my fuse blows.  I want a time out but damn it, I want peace of mind and I want things settled for my parents.  And for that I need money and dayam, I so don’t have it!!

Self-Defense

I can feel the wall building within me. 

And my mind is spinning…

For the Love of Parents?

To say that I am stunned at the depths that children sink to today, would be an understatement.  No matter what the conflicts with one’s parents, surely one needs to consider that they are parents and deserve respect.  

To be told, that a father and son disagreement gets to the point where a 33 year old son actually gives an application to the police station, nominating his parents as the primary perpetrators of his grievance is disgusting.  How can you do this?  To imagine an old couple in their sixties forced to pack up their belongings in a bag and walk out of a house where their son lives in the darkness of the night to maintain some semblance of respect and dignity?  Yet, I wonder what dignity is preserved when they would have gone to their brother’s place at that hour?  What would they have said?  And leaving that aside, what must they be feeling?  The heartache?  This is who they gave life to?  I always believed that children never really grow up for their parents.  The agony of being made to realize that this is what their worth is to their child must be so unbearable.

Parents give their all for their children.  They disregard all morals, all rights, abdicate their own pleasures for the sake of the one they give birth to…

And in our world today, this is what they get.  As with everything else between our lives and our faith, the teachings below also lie in tatters around us along with any claim we may have to being worthy of Allah’s blessings.  

RIGHTS 

Allah  is our Creator and  it was through our parents that He created  us. This is the reason why He has given so many rights to the parents. It is stated, “Allah has ordered that do not worship anyone but Him and be dutiful towards your parents.” 

OBEDIENCE 

Hazrat ibn Abbas  narrates from the Prophet  that a person whose parents are alive and he obeys them, listens to and respects them, then Allah will open two doors of paradise for him. But if one of his parents is not happy with him, then Allah will not be happy with him either. Then someone asked the Prophet , “Even if they are oppressors?” The Prophet  replied, “Yes, even if they are oppressors.” 

DISRESPECT 

It is said, a person who disobeys his parents, or disrespects them and does not listen to them, Allah will open two doors of hell for him. And if he disrespects only one of them, then Allah will only open one door of hell for him. 

VIRTUES 

Helping your parents is better then performing Jihad. Abdullah ibn Umar  narrates that a person came to the Prophet and said, “I have intentions of going on Jihad.” The Prophet  asked him, ‘Are any of your parents alive?’ He replied, ‘Yes.’ The Prophet  said, ‘Do Jihad by helping your parents.’ From this we can gather how important parents really are.TOP

STORY 

A man came to the Prophet  and asked him, ‘My mother is very old. I feed her with my hands and I help her do ablution and I sit her down on my shoulders. Have I done enough to repay her for the things she has done for me?’ The Prophet  said, ‘No. You have not even repaid he a bit. But Allah will give you a small amount of deeds for what you have done.’ Such is the value and status of a mother and this is because nothing can compensate for the chores she has born for her child since pregnancy to his upbringing. 

STATUS 

Bahys ibn Hakim said that he heard from his grandfather, that he had asked the Prophet , ‘Who should I do a good turn?’ The Prophet replied, ‘Your mother.’ His grandfather once more asked the Prophet , ‘Who shall I do a good turn?’ The Prophet  said, ‘Your mother.’ His grandfather repeated the question a third time. The Prophet  said, ‘Your mother.’ After repeating the  question for the fourth time, the Prophet replied, ‘Then your father and then in order, your relatives.’ 

IMPORTANCE 

Hadhrat ibn Abbas  said, ‘At the time of the Prophet , there was a young man named Alkamah. He used to work very hard and give his earnings to charity. One day he became very ill. His wife sent a message to the Prophet . The Prophet  sent Bilal , Ali , Suleman  and Amar  with these words, ‘See how he is.’ They went and found that he was indeed very ill and close to death. They spent some time trying to make him read the Kalimah, but something was holding him back. Hazrat Bilal   returned to tell the Prophet  about his condition. The Prophet  asked, ‘Are his parents alive?’ Bilal  replied, ‘His father has passed away, but his mother is still alive.’ The Prophet  told Bilal  to call his mother and if she couldn’t come then the Prophet  would come to her. As soon as Alkamah’s mother heard, she grabbed her walking stick and came right away. She did Salaam and the Prophet  returned it and asked, ‘Tell me truthfully, if you don’t, then I will learn by revelation. What sort of deeds did your son do?’ She told the Prophet  that he was a very pious man, that he used to read prayers consistently, fast constantly and give alms abundantly. The Prophetasked her how he was with her. She said, ‘I am upset with him. Instead of me, he gives preference to his wife. He used to disobey me and listened to his wife. The Prophet  said to her, ‘Your displeasure has stopped Alkamah from reciting the Kalimah.’ The Prophet  then ordered his Companions to gather some wood and to burn him. The mother asked whether they were really going to burn her son in front of her? The Prophet  told her, ‘Allah’s punishment is much greater. If you want Allah to forgive Alkamah, you must first forgive him yourself. His praying, fasting and alms-giving will do him no good.’ His mother raised her hands and said, ‘I have forgiven him.’ The Prophet  sent Bilal  to check on Alkamahh. He was reading the Kalimah. Alkamahh died that very day. The Prophet  arranged his funeral and led his Janazah. After that he stood up and addressed the people. ‘The person who prefers his wife rather then his mother, Allah’s curse be upon him. His faraaidh and nawafil will not be accepted.’ 

Quoted from: “Rights of Parents“

Eeee-Gads!!

The way I’m handling my new laptop makes me wonder if this is how first-time moms feel with a new baby to care for…

Taking Sides

What do you say when you see someone’s relationships fall apart? Not the relationships we form with our own will, but the ones we are born to…

Someone who matters to you is suddenly telling you how his home is no longer that and how the people who live there and are a part of him are no longer his own…  Consciously walking out of the door, knowing it’s going to close behind him…

How do you not feel guilty?  

The final strike may not have been yours but you know, you were where the decision to stand on two different sides started…

And that said, how does one do anything but give a promise to stand by them and support them in whatever they do….?

Are ‘WE’ wrong…?

… Because everyone else seems to think so?  

Do they know something you and I don’t?  Or is it just the fact that it’s us that is so upsetting for people?

There are rumours I know, of you and me.  After all, how big is this town where we live anyway?  People talk as they always do.  

Yet, whether in a guise of giving me well meaning advice, or straight out questions of what I’m doing, why is it that these conversations end in my being told that I’m wasting myself and not to do that anymore.  

That you or us, is not worth the effort.

To move on.

Is it you or me or is it just the ‘US’ that is wrong?

What if I don’t care, either way?

I smile when you’re there, and even when you’re not, the thought of you carries me through…

I cry tears of anguish at the impossibility of us, but you do reach out to wipe them away…

When it’s not you, it’s a sense of you that carries me through the day…

Why is it that I am forced to think of ‘HOW’ and ‘WHY’ we are so wrong, because the people around us believe it?

Insomnia

For a while she just lay there.  Her eyes open wide, trying to calm herself, taking rapid breaths of air with a hand over her mouth lest he awoke.  Not that she was afraid of him.  He knew of her nightmares.  He would spend hours holding her till the trembling was gone, talking to her about nothing much, trying to calm her down till she slept again (or pretended to anyway).  But he worried and fussed and questioned to find out why.  And when she wouldn’t be able to answer him,  he would associate their return with something he had done…

She rolled away from him and went to stand by the window.  Like so many other nights.   She would been standing there for hours it seemed…  A lifetime maybe…  In the cold window frame misting over with her own breath, she could see all that had been…

Some she blamed on others but there were so many moments which she knew could have ended differently had she but…

Raised a hand up to stop…  Or said maybe just one word.  

And today had just added to one of those moments.

Except that she had said one word… and not just once…

How was it then, that like all those other moments, she was awake wrestling in a court of a thousand stars and one dark night…

And he lay there behind her, as peacefully asleep as always.