Are we immune?

• A very sad and disturbing reality of the present day is this: No one is interested in listening to any more bad news.
• Just look around yourself.

1. Who cares about the Gulf oil spill?


2. Who feels the pain of the nurse in Rawalpindi?


3. Who cares how many died in bomb blasts in Iraq, in Lahore?


4. Who cares about the target killings that have sadly become a norm in Karachi?


5. Who cares that 49 people in Latin America and another 70 or so odd people died in Russia due to bad weather?

• Let me tell you who cares. Our dearest TV channels. Of course they care. Because this is the way they sell. This is the way they get the ratings. This is the way they make the big bucks.
• But today I don't want to talk about them because frankly they also have their bread and butter to worry about.
• No, what I think is the problem with many of us (including myself) is that none of us want to get out and observe whats happening around us. We are extremely happy to live in the cocoon of our parent's house thinking to ourselves "Oh, that blast. Well what can I do?" or "Please don't talk about that nurse case. Its merely a publicity stunt."
• Is it this so easy today for us to ignore these things? Have we become so immune to bad things happening around us that we don't give a damn as to what happens to others? Or is it because we are scared to admit that something like this could one day happen to us also?
• Don't be alarmed. I'm not suggesting you to stop living your life. Certainly not. No one has the right to tell you to stop living and start brooding. On the contrary I'm completely in favor of everyone trying to live life to its full capacity. And if someone does tell you that you can always tell them back that its your life. You have the full and final right to lead it the way you want to.
• But this does not mean we are completely exempt? Even in our small capacity we can do at least two things. These two things today might seem very insignificant to you but as the squirrel learnt in the beautiful poem by Iqbal We can move mountains by our small gestures.
• So now what can we do in our capacity? Things within our grasp:
• The first thing that you can do is think once in a day or at least in a week or at least once in a month. Take out 5 minutes of your time and ponder upon these incidents. Just think what would you have done if you were in their place? Is there any way you can help them? Also try sending out warm, happy and comforting thoughts to those who are suffering. I am a firm believer of thoughts traveling and taking our emotions with us. Trust me it really works. Its just like the fact that when we think confidently while giving a paper we tend to do much better than if we were nervous.
• The next thing that you can do is pray. Always remember that when we pray for others who are in trouble disregarding our own needs our prayers are more likely to be heard in the heavens. Also pray for yourself because you may not be as immune to these incidents as you believe.
• So next time you hear something bad, don't turn your eyes away. Pray for those who suffered and pray for yourself so that you are spared from such ordeals .
• Remember in this trembling earth you never know what might happen the next day.
• As Keith Barton rightly said

Anxiety overcomes and takes me down

A path of uncertainty I've never found

Vulnerable and scared I dare to move

In this strange place one cannot prove

Finally I yield and gasp for air

And succumb to a world of hope and prayer

When Is It Enough Part 3

• So, last I left you, it was quite a long time ago. We were journeying through the old lane of past days, memories of long and dark days.
• Well, it WAS dark (that day I wrote part 2) :) .
• From grade one, where we were last present, I stepped onto the next rung of the primary school. Although nothing of note happened it is suffice to say that the early fears of my teachers of me being never good at English were never fully realized. Infact I turned out to be somewhat ok in studies and although I never seemed to put much effort into it (to quote my mother), turns out my peers were putting even lesser ones. So although I continued to come out on top I always knew it was more due to luck than anything else.
• One important thing that did happen during those early years included my friends. It was strange and yet not so strange how easily I started making friends. Once I had shed my early fear of losing my privacy it turned out that friends can be loads of fun. And trust me they were good friends! Not the other kind. Although now that I think about it most of them were my friends probably to copy my notes, get help from me or something like that. However, today I dont resent any of that because frankly in this day and age who has not used someone else for their own benefit? And anyways if it hadn't been for those friends I never would have learnt how to make friends in the first place.
• Later on when I was in 4th grade I was made prefect. Now this was something I was initially vry proud of but later realized was a double edged sword. I found that although being a prefect was
• I did learn in the very beginning that it is easy for any one to form opinions and put people in boxes. (Something that I also talked about in one of my earlier entries). This point dawned on me more clearly once I started making friends and hanging out with them. As it turns out not eveyone is happy with the type of people you hang out with. Either they want to be your friends themselves or they have too much free time on their discretion to make fun of people. So what do they do? They end up name calling, back-biting and expecially bullying you. Sadly it gets no one anywhere. Trust me, none of that bullying ever affected me or stopped me from doing what I wanted to do. And that was to live life as magically, as gratefully and as happily as possible.
• In 4th grade I was thrust with the responsibility of being a prefect. At first I was very happy and proud. However, later I realized that being a prefect was truly a double edged sword. It had both its perks as well as its pitfalls. On one hand you were really admired for your status especially by the teachers but on the other hand those that came under any strict supervision later turned nasty and took revenge in as much innovative ways as possible.
• In that very same year there came an opportunity for me to take part in Urdu and English Speech competitions. Now, everyone had told me that I was a chatterbox. So it seemed quite natural for me to delve myself into this area. And delve I certainly did. And so, began a love between me and public speaking.
• This helped me in several ways. But that is a story for another time, another day.

When Is It Enough Part 2

• After facing the terrrors of Kindergarten we finally stepped into the world of actual education with prpoer curriculum.
• Oh the horror of it all.
• The first shock came when I was told to wear that awful thing we call uniforms. But that was just the beginning. Not only did I endure that awful attire but when I stepped into the school premises I learnt that all the other kids had been subjected to the same torture. And now we all looked like copies of each other.
• Anyways when I entered grade one section D (which I have to admit I always thought was never right cuz of my name I should have been in section A... my naive days) at my primary school the thing that hit me was "Oh no. That is what we need to sit on. Those ugly, brown things covered with a top so much so that it almost felt like a prison. And then came anotehr shocker. Not only were we supposed to sit on them but we also had to allow someone else to sit beside us.
• I was apalled at the idea. How could I let someone else come within my own personal space? Afterall space is one of the important things that matter to a young kid (Well it mattered to me). While contemplating my future seat partner I was thinking whether it would be a girl who could not stop talking or a guy who loved to show everyone how strong he was by beating the person who came in reach of his arm.
• As it turned out most of my fears were just that.......fears. The next few days were spent by everyone trying to find that perfect someone with whom you were ready to share the next 1 (or in some cases 5) year. Trust me it wasn't all that different from the modern tactics of matchmaking. Every move you made was carefully measured and referenced by your prospective seat partner(s). It was like a stage play with much higher stakes. Eventually we all settled down. My seat partner for that year was a girl. She was alright but compared to her I felt like a midget. I had to turn my neck all the way to 90 degrees if I wanted to talk to her. I wish I knew that this would be something I'll be doing for the rest of my life.
• The next problem I encountered was strange. When our English teacher (whose name completely escapes me at this point in time) told us to write a small paragraph on our very first day, I thought to myself....This is easy. I jotted down my thoguhts in no time but when I went to the desk so that Miss So and So could assess my effort I did not know how much trouble I was in.
• After giving my essay a fleeting look she gave me such a dismal stare that I thought someone had died. On full inquiry I found that according to Miss So and So my life ahead will be fraught with difficulties especially in the art of English language. She said that my writing was completely illegible and instead of letters I drew shapes which resembled the whole animal kingdom (according to her). Now if someone told me today that my writing is bad I'd laugh and forget about it but to a 5 year old this was serious stuff.
• And now my poor soul is crushed after reminiscing that sad sad fact and from that day onwards there began a legendary hatred between me and most of my English teachers. So now I'm going to skulk off in the secret and let anyone (if anyone is actually reading) tell me what that 5 year old should have done in that situation.
• What I actually did is a story for another time.....another day.

When Is It Enough? Part 1

• Life is a rapid and fast paced journey through time.
• This seems like a sentence one would hear in our dear Logic class, (which by the way I'm being forced to take once more by my dear institute) but it sadly carries the world of truth behind it.
• There was a time once when we were barely conciuos of this world. We were happy to play with our toys, cry when hungry and sleep whenever we wsanted. Then came the time when our parents decided to send us all to that horrible place which we later came to know as "The Kindergarten."
• Each day we were waken up from our comfortable beds, we tried our best to plead our case in front of mommy and daddy and appeal to their better nature but it was all to no awail. Some of us were shipped like cargo to these places through cargo loaders aka mini vans while others were lucky enough to be driven their by their parents.
• As someone who was fortunate enough to be ddropped by his father to the "Terrible place" I know how dreadful it all felt when I stepped out from the comfort of the car into the "Real World." All the while thinking to myself what use could possibly come out of this. Why am I being forced to go to a place where all the teacher wants you to do is sit there and color stupid drawiings (which by the way I was never able to do. Somehow the color always went well past the borders fo the picture in consideration)
• But even though all this may have been a terrible ordeal for some, for many others it became the first time where we met some of the first friends of our entire life. Some of those lucky among us even hold these old friendships to this date. This was a time when we first experienced that "classroom culture", the "studious group which later came to be known as the nerds" or the "ones who had whatsoever no interest in whatever was put infront of them to look at or even consider putting any effort", some later became the soprty ones, some the cool kids and some well some just didn't fall into any group and were left out of the "Esteemed social circle of the dear old Kindergarten."
• For me this was probably the first time to see how a person looks like when he or she is bored. It was customary to see a boy looking completely blank and staring at a picture of a bear with brown color pencil in his hand and drool dripping all over him. Or maybe a girl who wants nothing more than to go back home and play with her toys but is being ruthlessly forced to stare endlessly at those mind boggling things we later learnt to call numbers and alphabets.
• This was also the first time for us to realize that there exists such a thing as competetion in this world. We have to compete in obtaining praise from the dear "Miss" (the title bestowed to our teachers) or we have to fight to be the one who gets all those goodies and prizes (usually a storybook or a coloring book) by coming first in the class.
• Slowly and gradually we all go through those first three years of Kindergarten and on various stages of this phase we realize "Man, I'm stuck with this for the rest of my life." We all probably knew this beforehand but Im sure none of us gave up hope that one day dear mommy and daddy would realize their own mistake and tell us "We don't want you going away from us to that jail each morning anymore" but alas those wishes never came true.
• What happened instead was that one day it was announced that now we were old enough to move into the next phase of terror and go to someplace called "school."
• Uptil now life had been full of colors, laughter, songs, games, and hours and hours of doing nothing in the classroom but just playing but now was the time to be someone else.

• What was that? No one could imagine? What would be the new horrors? Will it be better than this or will it be worse? Who knew?
• But that is a story for another time, another period...............................

Boxes

A very common occurence for everyone of us out there is something that we like to do on a regualr basis. We try to put people in boxes. It doesn't matter what kind of a box it is we want to do it to make the processing of our mind simpler and so we do it.

Look at yourself and decide when you did this last time.

Box # 1:- When did you last think "Oh, she is a complete blonde. No sense at all"

Box # 2: Or "He is a complete nerd. Don't bother inviting him."

Box # 3: Or "She is freakishly tall. She must be a dominating person."

Box # 4: Or even further "She is of so and so race/belief. I can't be friends with them. They might convert me."

And the list is endless............

Oh, the horror of the exposure that we all have. We just don't want to jump out of our own skin and put ourselves in someone else's position before making any final opinions about them.

Is it really all that annoying to look at people and not pass judgements without even properly interacting with them. Will it waste so much of your time to first get to know someone before you start putting them into boxes?

And while we are on that subject is it really important to label people? Can we not make some extra effort and put our sensory mechanisms to test and try to process infomration in a rational manner? Is it really that difficult?

Ask yourself this the next time you judge someone:-

Is it really necessary? Is it something you would like to be done to you? And have you felt the intensity of that emotion? Because trust me it doesn't take long for these Boxes to convert themselves into full forms of prejudice and discrimination.

The Balance of Life

Everytime I wake up I have a feeling that I forgot to do something, talk to someone or be with someone.

Why is it all so difficult?

Why can't we choose one path for ourselves for ourselves and ramble on it as we please. But then I remind myself that if it had all been that easy life would not be what it is now. A road full of surprises, twists and turns everywhere.

Maybe this is why not everything in life is supposed to make sense and its probably best that we cannot always manage to balance everything as much as we want to.

Here's to another day full of surprises............

The Irony of Eid

Salam everyone out there.

First of all I want to wish everyone a very happy eid and may all the blessings of Allah be with us.

Today I was sitting by mysaelf, pondering on my own how life can be so tough and yet so easy for us at the same time.

Let's take Eid for instance. At one end there are there are the extremely well-rich endowed Muslims. They have the resources, income and ability to enjoy as much as they want but still most of them seem almost bored with the concept of Eid.

Then there are those among us who are not so well established. They can't even afford to have 3 square meals everyday. And yet they enjoy an event like Eid as much as they can.

This is not only restricted to Eid. You can find this phenomenon everywhere be it Diwali, Christmas, Hannukah or whatever.

Has lfe become so important for us that we forgot how to enjoy these precious moments? Or have we just gotten bored?

Maybe its time for us to start thinking of sharing our happiness with those who can't enjoy life like we do.

Always remember, "Life is not what it IS but rather what you MAKE out of it."

EID MUBARAK