Thursday, April 7, 2011

She was born in black and white.

Chipping off her red nail paint,
Thinking about her beauty;

As vulnerable as her,
Breakable, fragile and trivial.

She knew she was born in black and white,
The hue of this world was not for her.

She wanted to be one of them,
Yearning for the sense of belongingness.

Caught by the tide of destiny,
Encircled with dreams.

Dreams of breaking free,
Dreams of being free.

Wanted to come to terms with herself,
She was blinded by the light around her.

Sharp, vivid, blinding.
Deafening, alluring, allusive.

Now she cries in that little room,
Yelling out that she was born in black and white.

The hue of the world stole her element,
She realised she never belonged.

But tell her if she knows not,
Her beauty was vulnerable.

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Our demeaning little circle.

Hey,

There comes a time in your life when you have too much on your plate that you are just not able to decide where to head next. People say, the best decisions are those which are made at the spur of the moment. Wrong. At least, that has never been the case with me. Whenever I take decisions in haste, they always end up as a catastrophe. Don't blame my foresight for this, but this is the case with most of the people I believe.

Since I am jobless these days and currently spending my days within the four walls of my room, I get to think a lot. Well obviously, since I have nothing else to do, it's always better to contemplate. Now now, don't start thinking highly of me or start imagining me meditating, I just keep thinking about random stuff. Of how things and people hurt me in the past and why they did it. Even though, we don't want the same things in life, but the memories of past keep haunting us.

Although, being spiteful over the past is momentary but it does affect your future decisions too. We make this lens, through which we keep seeing and judging people. Let's not go too far and take an example of my own family. My family is a broadminded one and thinks much like any other Pakistani. They think, jumping on the bandwagon and following what the world is doing makes one liberal. I beg to differ. I believe liberalism is the embodiment of the idea of 'live and let live'. It doesn't necessarily mean you follow the pop culture or not.

Formerly, I used to think the same, to be honest. I used to label people. 'Abaya wali', 'daarhi wala' were one of the key labels. Why, as in why we keep judging people over their attire? We keep following the West, but always forget the culture there. Nobody bothers anyone else at all. Everyone takes care of their own business. Sadly, like the inception of Pakistan, Pakistanis are also a confused nation (patriots and nationalists please pardon me, I don't intend to say anything bad about Pakistan).

Why I said such a thing is because Pakistan was incepted solely on the idea of an independent state where Muslims can practice Islam freely, without anyone infringing. If that's the case, the half-naked lot of Pakistan should be lamented whereas people who follow Islam should be encouraged. Which is NOT the case at all. We discourage people who are staunch Muslims, we think they are good for nothing pea-heads and excuse me when I say, 'we are scared of them'. We think they are going to blow themselves up or maybe going to take you as hostage. So why are we on the rebound? Aren't we just too confused?

The other day me and my mother went into an argument over marrying a person who keeps a beard. My point of argument was very simple and to the point. Don't judge people with how they look, period. But my mother kept telling me that such people are extremists, they are this they are that, yadda yadda yadda. And my confrontation was only restricted to the point that not everyone's the same. Even people who call themselves as liberals are at times just liberal to themselves, they don't treat their wives that way.

At times, I become completely exasperated. Why can we just not let people do whatever they want to? I have seriously seen great people who are not religious at all and then I have also seen some staunch Muslims who are not good human beings at all. So why not we keep the prejudices aside and see in people more than what just meets the eye. Why can we just not live and let live?