On passing time.

As you grow up, the crowd around you shrinks. That care, love, and support you have been cherishing since your birth starts reducing slowly because the givers are not there anymore. Some die, some leave, some get too busy, some find other distractions but your inner child stays in denial for a long time, clinging on things too hard that the grip hurts your palms and blood oozes out. You hold so tight that it digs in your skin and leaves deep scars.  Every goodbye, every heartbreak inflicts a mark on your heart, like a diamond cutting through glass. You cry on some, scream on others and sob silently on most of them because you're forced to come out of your warm, comfortable cacoon and face the cold winds of emptiness. That's why adult life is so challenging psychologically. Oblivious to the cruelty of time, you get attached to faces popping up in that comfortable maze around you and get blown away when they fade or disappear soon. Time makes it happen, it makes people grow out of your maze and fly somewhere else. The circle goes on until every wrinkle on your body has a story to tell. A story of pain, a story of parting, a tale of laughing and forgetting, a tale of crying and loving again. Yes, loving again, growing fond of those bleeding wounds and chasing butterflies again because time may be cruel, it may take dear things from you, but it gives too. It leaves a beautiful souvenir of healing. That's why wrinkles are said to be full of wisdom because they have endurance hidden in them gifted by time.

Bliss of Solitude..

The best thing you can do to yourself is getting comfortable with your lonliness. Embracing it not as a liability but as a blessing, with open heart, because desire for companionship is like being tied to numerous invisible ropes, with their other ends attached to beings surrounding you. An insidious tug makes you fall at your face, bleeding from places it hurts the most. One little jerk in attempt to gain freedom can spread to the other side and come back to clench your own heart. But once you learn to be comfortable with being truly alone, you get rid of the repressed anger, broken expectations and insatiable need to depend on a friend, mentor, lover or anyone, everyone. You convert it into this magical, delightful bliss called solitude. It's not about building walls around you, protecting yourself or hiding from people. Its about eliminating the need for building walls altogether and coming out in the open fortress of love for your own soul. Because, once you roam that field of happiness, you truly achieve validation of existance and begin to look beyond it, persuing universe in all its glory, with steps that are unshakable and gait that reflects grace embedded in fierceness and strength.

Killing healthy dialogues!

What's with this opinion-shaming?  I've often seen people making fun of and mocking those who are vocal about their opinions for being "wanna-be experts" on the subject at hand. The trend of being vocal has upraised due to availability of social media. So, if there's any terrorist attack and public at social media discusses its causes- it's an attempt to become scholars on religion. If there's a shooting and people participate in discussing gun laws-it's an attempt to become political analyst. We saw it with wife beating fiasco and Hamza Ali Abbasi incident. The most recent is Brexit (UK exists EU, Big news!). Masses are merely expressing their respective views but there's a group who doesn't participate in anything productive. Instead it retorts to mocking others who consider it important enough to discuss. I can quote plenty of examples but I think it would suffice saying that some ignorant and lazy individuals with a notion of high intellect just sit behind their keyboards and judge others for raising a voice and think that they are making a difference. Like their own selfies, emotional rants and travel logs are only crucial things that world needs to know about. You say writing long Facebook posts won't help anyone? Let me teach you a thing or two about how power of masses works. Raising a voice is initiation of process that stirs a change and having a productive discussion is first step of staircase of betterment. But how will we ever know that? We are Pakistanis, remember?

It's a curse of totalitarian society where raising a question becomes an anomaly. People reach a level of self-loathing where Stockholm syndrome kicks in and everything looks like a rainbow. When flux of information is controlled by a certain fraction, ignorance seems like a strength. Does it ring a bell? You got it right! George Orwell's 1984 is still relevant.
Our society is immature and intolerant to its core because of same lack of dialogue. If you don't make it comfortable for people to say their hearts out, how will you learn being tolerant to others views? But we are not ready to learn this lesson yet. For now, we find it entertaining to humiliate people who try to indulge in dialogue by calling them attention-seekers and laughing at their desperateness to look cool. Anyone who dares broadcasting an opinion or holding a discussion is seen as an outcast striving to jump on a bandwagon. People call him madman! Maybe being sane in insane times is itself an insanity! But mark my words, this mockery is nothing but satisfaction of your fragile egos. It's just another way to validate your ignorance or lack of willingness to say something that world deems important. Anything that happens in the world can be discussed, should be discussed and there is no shame in it. Only shame is doing nothing and airing a sense of superiority in ignorance! 

About time!

My eyes closed, my body awake

I felt softness touching me somewhere

Something running down my spine

Sweetness making its way into my body

Pleasure seeping into my mouth 

My breathe trapped through my lungs

Something thumping against my chest

In a brief moment of vivid consciousness 

I recognised the taste of your lips

My mind numbed with rhythm of your breathe

And body smiling with touch of your hand 

Soul cherishing your ethereal lips

And my hands caressing silk of your hair 

We housed heaven in our little world

And wrote our story in the book of memories

With the pen of our lips and hands and bodies

Intertwined with each other, singing songs of desire

Melodies of love enwrapped us in that moment

We found each other and lost ourselves 

Body stories

The bed sheet felt comfortable against her bare skin. She tightened the blanket against her torso to keep herself warm. It was a particular December evening outside. Forlorn, dark and cold, her favorite kind of weather. Her side table still had a pack of cigarettes and an ash tray. The ash tray bore witness to her companion who had now left but his half burned cigarette was still there. She made a mental note of getting rid of it but not just yet. Not so soon. First, she wanted to see these trophies of her rebellion for a little while longer. She partly thought it was an attempt to make herself believe that she had finally done it. She closed her eyes and thoughts came rushing. She remembered how she was tired of demons that lived inside her. The demons in the form of guilt, fear, insecurity and conditioning haunted her as long as she could remember. She used to think she was free, she had a choice and she was making it happily and willingly but no matter how much she repeated this mantra in her mind that her body belonged to herself, it was empty noise. It wasn't hers. Its pieces had their stings attached to someone's honor right from her birth to her death. It belonged to men in her life. Her brother, her father and when she finally gets handed over to her husband, it would be his to protect.  She was supposed to embrace it, swallow her pride and wrap her mind around it because that's what good girls do, that's what chastity demands.

Her desires were slowly choked and strangled in a tender age by women surrounding her. Right there, at time when her innocent mind couldn't register that little spark inside her, down there. She was taught to hate it, kill that itch or it would taint her honor. Their words, subtle and tightly woven, gnawed on her natural instincts, piercing them, shredding them into pieces until she became oblivious to their existence. She forgot her recognition. They never died but she starved them to a point that made her believe they don't exist anymore. They became faceless. Time and again, there came men who fed them just a little to make them purr again like a baby who wanted to grow. They wanted a share but she was taught to protect it for someone she didn't even know. So, she never let that happen. She never allowed them to swell because she believed if she lets them swell, they will eat her tortured soul. Twenty one years she did her duty diligently, fending off men politely and restraining herself forcefully. Those demons were hooked to her body, sucking her liberty, snatching  her right to blossom under someone's love. She was scared and tired of living a double life, running between her tortured pieces of body to a free soul. It was costing her sanity. But then, she met a man who taught her to gently probe her tattered soul and uncover her power. She learned to accept herself a little. She managed to believe that she had a right on her own flesh even if no one was ready to give it to her. She had to choose a side and the one she had been towards for the past twenty years gave her nothing and cost her liberty. So, she decided to rebel. She had finally done it. She stripped her demons layer by layer with every touch of him. It was like she sucked them out of her soul with every kiss. She was light as a feather. The sin tasted like heaven. That ash tray with burning ash and her bare shoulders still feeling his touch were witness to this treason. She bought her liberty at a risk of her life. It was tragic but life is unfair especially to women who seek liberty. It was a heavy cost to pay but what is the point of  living anyway without freedom? So, she smiled while lightening the last cigarette and and saw her demons puffing away in its smoke. Through the smoke she looked at the door he left partly opened behind him and decided to open it more often for him.

To the boy who roams in my dreams

Oh dear boy who roams in my dreams

Never you worry about my admirers 

They are no more than strangers in a crowd 

Faceless men 

Awed by my smug face, bold words and composed silhouette  

Oh sweetheart, they only see my shadow 

Upright and spotless

Not my wounds but the glittery scabs

Not my tattered soul but embellished patches holding it together 

Not my scars but the light coming from them

So, my dear beloved 

When you see them displaying their awe

Treating me like I've grabbed their hearts

Don't you compare yourself with them 

Not for even a slightest of a moment 

Because my soul longs for you only

My breaths escape my lips only to leap towards your ears

And my heart has your name etched on it 

Oh my dear beloved

I'm yours 

And they are just faceless men

Moving beside me in a crowd

Oblivious to chaos inside me..

Love has it all? Think again.

One of my friends recently got engaged and he chose his fiance by himself. We got into a converstaion about this romantic setting and he shared a thought that love is overrated and compatibility and friendship are actually glueing factors in a marriage. That got me thinking on the subject and here's my two cents.

The prevailing model of marriage endorsed by our society, where parents set you up with a stranger (unless it's a cousin marriage), has been complied by majority (for the sake of it or because they have no other option) but it wreaks havoc on many. The element of uncertainty and risk is too great to accept for some. For that rare fraction, it seems like sometimes there is no way out, except damned celibacy because conforming to ideas and ideologies of a person who gets an instant ticket, out of nowhere, for controlling your life is upsetting at so many levels. Patriarchy gives considerable edge to male members of the society but it would be unfair to say they don't face this dilemma at all. Resultantly, many think love marriage can solve such problems because being head over heals in love with someone before getting into bondage of marriage makes it easier. While it's true that knowing a person long before marriage gives you a fair idea about what are you opting for, does love marriage has it all? Although it doesn't have fear of unknown, it is a marriage after all and there are some practical grounds where marriage differs from a love affair. To make the idea clearer, the point I'm trying to make is that love marriage doesn't have it all for us either and marriage is difficult, no matter arranged by your family or chosen by yourself. 

Besides complications of marriage, I've plenty of other reasons to doubt success of love marriage. Lack of compatibility for one. Now, one can argue how a love marriage can overlook factor of compatibility? But here it does and this is why:

First, Pakistan has a ridiculous dating system. Individuals are rarely open about their partners and most of them never get to sleep or even meet with each other much. This seldom helps individuals in making mature decisions because most of the times they have no idea of what they want or what options do they have. They stick to what they liked and found with some effort and try to make a marriage out of it. Same like Rahul did in "Kuch Kuch hota hai". 

Second, Our idea of love has been completely sabotaged by unrealistic romance as it's wholly based on that "kuch kuch" you feel (you'll find a lot of kuch kuch hota hai referances in the post because I've watched this bollywood romance for a million times). It's not surprising, considering the concept of love promoted by our media and literature but this dramatic approach leads to failure of love marriages. For instances, romance doesn't mean losing the sense of individuality but not many couples here subscribe to this belief. The minute they express affection and accept each other as partners other people, specially opposite gender, become a forbidden or at least disputed territory and this grey area is justified with possessiveness and romance. Is such romance any good? Does a relationship brimming with insecurities, lacking friendship and compatibility reap any fruit? No!

In my opinion marriage or partnership is a lot more than loving a person and filling their physical satisfactions. Its about financial stability, respecting personal boundaries, sharing and understanding the choices of your partner and striving together for a world both are happy in. It's about wrapping your mind around the idea of individualism that both man and woman tying a knot into a marital bond used to have their individual lives as well and this demands strong connection. A connection beyond romance. But in love marriages, I've seen couples losing that personal space. I've seen married people ditching their friend to appease  their counterparts. I've seen husbands pushing their wives into facing pointless antagonism from their side of the family for the sake of a stable marriage. Not that I think marriage shouldn't have an element of compromise or love in it, my only point is never get blindsided by your romantic attractions. Give yourself a reality check because marriage is something bigger than flowers and hearts. Couples face real life problems which idea of love alone cannot solve. It demands a bonding more than the kind of love Bollywood movies have been feeding us since long times. 

Yes, I always hated Rahul for choosing tina over Anjali! 

Think about it, does mantra of "love at first sight" makes much sense once you have signed a contract of sharing a room for whole life and raising offsprings together? It demands more than a romantic setting. It asks for sense of security, commitment, understanding and celebration of each other's individuality and a relationship devoid of compatibility can never provide that. So, if an arrange marriage can be scary, a hasty love marriage with scarce compatibility can be equally damaging. In a nutshell, introduce a bit of rationality while taking a relationship to marriage because it's not necessary to marry a person you are in love with but It's absolutely necessary to have a partner who understands your needs other than romance as well and strive to let you make a life you've wanted for yourself. Yes, that's the idea of compatibility.