Here is another piece of poetry that I wrote in 3 nights. I tried to write something different this time, perhaps giving it a touch of romanticism. I have been reading Parveen Shakir these days so it might look like bit of her influence too.
Its called..
SHIKWA!
Mujhe Maloom hai tum Be-zarar baatein nahi karte.
Tumhare geet mere aks ki roodad kehte hain.
Mujhe tum ab bhi raahon mai kaheen awaaz dete ho.
Jo mera naam lete ho..
Tou sannaata kaheen chehre pe mere aa bikharta hai..
Mujhe bas thaam leta hai..
Mujhe tum youn satane ki ziyafat kiu nahi karte..
Muhabbat kiyun nahi karte?
Mujhe maloom hai tum mehfil-e-jaanan ki ronaq ho..
Jo mujhko hai nahi manzoor..
Kisi mehfil mai jo tum bin piye behka diye jaao..
Tou mere hee tasawur se tumhe mehsoos yun hoga..
yeh mera lams , mere qurb ka labrez pemaana..
Meri khushbu tumhe tab is qadar mehsoor ker de gee.
Ke tum apne tasawur ko bhi na pehchan paao ge..
Mujhe tum dagmagane ki shararaat kiyun nahi karte..
Muhabbat kiyun nahi karte?
Kabhi mai rooth jaaun bin bataye tum se aye janaan,
Ke soz o gham se meri ankhen bhi pur-namm si ho jayen..
Tou yeh mehsoos hota hai ke tum aa ke manao ge.
Wo mera haath thamo ge, mujhe banhon mai bhar lo ge..
Magar mai naaz nakhron se tumhe pal pal satau gee..
Mai sab kuch bhool jau gee..
Jo tum shiddat se meri godh mai sar apna rakh ker yun,
Buhat ansoo bahao ge..
Mai tumse rooth jaau tou shikayat kiyun nahi karte?
Muhabbat kiyun nahi karte?
Mujhe maloom hai ke tum bare be parwah raahi ho..
Kaheen rokay nahi rukte..
Na tum ko manzilain manzoor hain na raaste manzoor.
Ajab hai daastan yeh bhi..
Tasalsul torr do is waaste ke mai behel jaau,
Zara see mai sambhal jaau..
Woh umeedain, woh ranjishain, shanasayee-o-bandishain..
jala ke mai bhi jal jaau, pighal jaau..
Mai marr jau..
Mujhe tum bhool jaane ki Himaqat kiyun nahi karte?
Muhabbat kiyun nahi kerte?
Muhabbat kiyun nahi karte?
I think there is no point in apologizing over and again because I will keep hiding from you all when you ask me why have I stopped enlightening you all with my positive thoughts lol.
So today I will talk a little bit about this fear that I have developed during last few months and I think it has nothing to do with my marriage or certain changes in life. So this fear is about looking at myself in mirror and trying to identify darkening complexion, messy hair, puffy eyes and dark circles and precisely the whole idea of taking care of my own self. I just cannot look at myself anymore because it scares me to death that how miserable the other person is who I am looking at. The very next moment I am out of my own sight and start wondering about tons of other things happening around me.
I have always been one of those people for whom spending luxury on one’s self was the last thing on the plate. Everything else would come first and if there is something remaining, bingo! I am lucky enough to get that. To change the thought process of years and years, it takes some time or may be quite some time to overcome the mindset you already have about yourself and come out of that ‘Kia farq parta hai’ zone. It had always been family and friends and now husband and in-laws to take care of. So its hard to actually keep myself away from them and do something on my own for my own self too.
I don’t read, I don’t write, I listen to music only when I hear something good. I am not passionate about home making. I rarely cook. Since I am away from Radio, I don’t have anything of my own to do. Perhaps that’s the reason why I feel so empty. May be this is one of those self evaluating phases that will change my perception about myself. The best part about the whole emptiness game is the fact that I can pray now and that too in time. This always gives me a chance to vent to GOD as much as I can and thank HIM too for his blessings. I think this is a chance given by HIM to me to strengthen a bond between us and fill those empty gaps of my brain with the love and affection of HIS existence :)
P.S I concluded this post on a positive note and I had no clue I would be able to come to THIS conclusion. Who should I thank this for? Whoever is reading this post :)
I realized today after reading some of my own posts that I have disconnected myself from expressing my own views and emotions, wondering constantly about the reactions I’ll receive. The fear of answering negative feedbacks has taken over a good chunk of my personality and I need to get over it for sure.
Life has come to a whole different deal now. I’m no more someone who I used to be. I cannot categorize it as a good change or bad change because it would be too early to judge myself in a different scenario. But the highlight of my personality change is the fact that I’m more of a silent listener now rather than a talker. I only respond to what is being said. And perhaps that’s the best way to go about it when you start a new relationship with new people. Gradually things start lying in the place and the outcome is fairly in your favour.
When you get married, you ultimately develop an association with people known by your spouse. You become a part of casual conversations , formal events , on weddings and deaths and perhaps on birthdays too haha. Pretty much everything seems special. The art is to handle the attention well and respond to it gracefully. A lot of it might be just pure observation to get to know you. So yeah its all about handling with care :-)
I’ll pause it here which means that the next post is going to give you an insight of what has been up :-)
Sunday Morning is always different than usual weekday mornings. Not only the Joy of staying in bed for couple of hours longer helps you get away with 6 sleepless mornings but the complimentary Pathan hotel ka paratha or Halwa Puri ( that me and my friends call HP :P ) makes it even worth praising. I hardly talk about my family but most of the time my Maa is the highlight of all family related posts because she manages to create this magic after every other day that ends me up either in tears or makes me laugh with Joy.
Let me take you some 20 years back. I have seen myself growing up in an atmosphere where Maa would take the lead in terms of household management. Despite the fact that she has not even completed her secondary education, she would do all the maths in Urdu digits, write the daily grocery list and even read the newspaper in her spare time with her glasses sliding down her nose. She has always been a learner and till date she likes learning about new things. She would always tell us that she would have been a doctor if her studies wouldn’t have stopped because Nana passed away when she was quite young.
Time went by. All of us grew up. Maa happened to go through severe incidents of depression and severe health issues that took almost 10 years to heal. In the middle of fighting for her own survival and coping up with depression, she lost interest in pretty much everything. Household management was taken over by the rest of the family, divided responsibilities and things couldn’t lie in place the way Maa used to keep them. No more writing numbers, no reading newspapers, no more household chores for her because her health and mental status wouldn’t allow her to do any thing.
Today after so many days, when all of us were sleeping, she took out a pen and paper and wrote few things that needed to be given to our chawkidaar so he could buy. Ignore the grammar, Ignore the hand writing but the intention of getting back to her habits to own the place and see its management all over again, left me in tears. :’). Although she is 64 years old MashAllah but far more active, far more focused and competent than all of us because she has been brought up with the notion to stay strong and independent till she can.
Try to understand how your parents feel at old age. They never like asking their kids for anything. Know why? Because they fulfill their responsibility in bringing the best out of their children and expect them to return the same to them in their oldage. We, the kids, may not even understand how our parents feel when they have to bug us for their needs and we being so engrossed in our own social circles completely forget that we owe them our lives. Perhaps another life too if we had one.
According to our egghead pals over at Wikipedia, the onion has a long and glorious past. For instance, get this:
•Ancient Egyptians used to worship onions. That's right -- they believed their spherical shape and concentric rings symbolized eternal life. They also used to bury their dead with onions, figuring that the strong smell would eventually bring them back to life.
Trust me or not but everyday I try to write something or the other , yet I fail to do so considering the crazy work schedule I am having these days. But today, I was meant to tell you all something I have started believing very strongly in. A simple living.
I have been going through a life changing phase these days. All my concepts about life in general and the purpose of living are changing somehow because of the influence of people around me has changed. There is a dilemma of how people treat other people. Emotionally , mentally and physically. When I look back 10 years in my life, things were far more simpler for me. You know why? Because I knew less about the world. With that limited knowledge of mine, I was leading a happy life. I had woes of my own that won’t matter to anyone but those were less intense as compared to my woes at this point in life.
The constant thought of everyone looking upto you, judging you for whatever you are going to say, questioning you for the sake of egoistic issues, arguing with you so your reputation could be put down in front of the public and tons of other things that become associated to you when you are in the eyes of public. All it does is to make you naive about little moments of happiness you used to feel good about 10 years back. Constant ignorance of what is being thrown towards you , makes you quite emotionless , affecting your personal life that you want to live on the principles of simple living.
As far as my belief is concerned, all of us are the simplest of all beings from inside. Deep down, all of us share this insecurity of fulfilling the expectations people have from us, hence we land ourselves in the complexities of life that make our lives complicated and the simple person inside us starts to die slowly. Things you used to object about, that used to bother you, will still bother you if you hold on to same value system you have been brought up in. But if you mould yourself as per the principles of society and people of influence around you, you might just ignore what you felt was wrong 10 years back. Hence it gives birth to the belief that says, May be it is meant to be that way.
Seen how parents and grand parents are? My maa, she is the same old simple person she was 30 years ago. For her, the world and the reviving concepts of freedom and popularity never meant anything. She laughs on the simplest jokes on TV, she enjoys cutting fruits and serving them to us, this being her ultimate moment of happiness. She wears what she feels comfortable in, carrying the same grace that existed 30 years back.
I on the other hand, am fighting with my own beliefs of living a simple life and learning to embrace happiness by what I liked doing in past. Pushing myself to become the sane and normal person I had been, having less things to worry about. Compromising on the newly developed desires and emphasizing on what is more important.
Amusing fact : While writing this post, I had to think twice before writing a sentence if it would be perceived positively by the readers :) Sigh!!
I know I should be hanged to death for not being the same old regular blogger that I used to be but something so unusual happened today that I couldn’t help myself from stopping by and sharing with you all.
Today I decided to just take a random tour of the city, hang out with friends I missed talking to and just spend some quality free time away from all work worries and worried people around. When I reached to meet couple of friends for lunch, found one of them really sad. Oh before that, I slipped on the entrance of the cafe but thankfully nothing harmed me lol. So yeah this friend who I consider a very strong head girl, was just too blown away and she needed to let it out and talk. Offered my services and listened to all the intricate details she had to share. I had to see a dear friend at the mall so took her out to mall with me while giving advices, got her chocolate, gave her a hug. Got her thank you text with a smile and felt so relieved ! Stopped by at another place to see my other old group of friends where I ended up seeing another sad face. So this friend texted me while we were sitting and talking and I made sure that I end up making him laugh before I leave. So we all played ONO and I read out the instructions of ONO in Urdu in the typical advertisement style of Farzana Dawa Khana Dastagheer Number 9, Karachi :). That was fun! And I left after spending a good time.
When I reached home, I logged in to my gmail, finished up reading a very good blog that I have fallen in love with and then a chat window popped up of another friend who just wanted to talk about his life changing decision and his anxiety regarding that. Kept everything aside, listened to what he had to say. Gave a couple of advices and I guess they were quite sensible ones to start a healthy relationship :) Just was when I was about to sleep, I ended up checking my watsapp and boom! this friend whom I had met in the evening was really ticked off by a family concern and I could not help lending a shoulder to her to cry on and just sorting things out step by step. Hope it works out for her!
I was told earlier today that I am a great friend, I listen to all my friends and I try solving their problems. I don’t know to what extent but I was genuinely missing good emotional conversations with folks I care for. There was too much of talking and listening today. But I felt that you always need a sane person around you to take care of you no matter how strong you are. You fall. You feel fragile. You feel so shattered to just hold on to your tears for long and want to pour them out unlike ever before. I’m happy today that I was of some use to my friends. My purposeless visit turned gave me this blog post today and good listening. May be I should do it often.
Spreading love! As always!
I happened to be one of those people who would always volunteer to support good causes in town. Ever since I was in school, I wanted to do something or the other to create a platform for people where they could come up, address their issues and get immediate solutions to them. Having an experience of spending time with special children to teaching in flood affected areas in different parts of Sindh, from rebuilding a school in Alipur , Muzaffargarh to packing ration during Ramadan for flood survivors coming to camps, some way or the other, it has been about supplying food and fulfilling one of the basic rights of human kind.
Despite of the fact that Pakistan is a surplus country that produces ample food supply for 180 million people, its sad to know that a lot of food gets wasted in different forms. Also the floods of 2010 and 2011 resulted in the region’s worst agricultural and infrastructural damage of the century. The magnitude of under-nutrition has reached to a level that Global Acute Malnutrition rates amongst children under five now exceeds the WHO critical threshold of 15 percent, while close to 44 percent of children in the same age bracket are stunted and 32 percent are underweight.
The Government of Pakistan has recently established a dedicated Ministry of National Food Security and Research (MNFSR) and launched a nationwide Zero Hunger programme in collaboration with World Food Program. This initiative supports WFP operations in areas of Pakistan to address the issues of malnutrition, poverty and hunger. The government would be making in-kind contribution of 500,000 metric tons of wheat to the WFP operations running in the country. This way the flour produced by this wheat would be utilized to make products for country’s most vulnerable and food insecure areas.
I must appreciate the community based initiative taken by WFP by the name of ‘Acha Mum’ that is taken under the community based management of acute malnutrition (CMAM) programme. Its a locally made supplement food that gives energy and nutrients to kids ageing between 6 to 59 months in acute nutrition areas of Pakistan.
I support the program and the kind gesture by World Food Program to help Pakistan fight against hunger issues. All of us can work hand in hand with Pakistani Government and WFP in eradicating poverty and hunger in the next 5 years. You can contribute your efforts via donating, volunteering to visit areas having malnourished children and young women, raising awareness about this issue or just by simply not wasting the food on your plate at any cost.
Together we can and we will make a difference.
For WFP operations in Pakistan, please visit www.fightinghungerinpk.wordpress.com
photo courtesy – Fursid
