If only…

When I was younger, about twenty

I used to think innocently

Oh, let me just get that job!

Then I would never sob!

After getting my heart broken by plenty

I used to think innocently

Oh, let me just get married!

Then I would never be single and harried!

I now have a job, I make good money

I am now married, a mother of a baby

I still sob well, I am quite harried..

Truth is, I am lost, almost buried

Beneath the burden of responsibility

I have forgotten my true identity

All I wished for was love and joy

But all I’ve amassed is bitter foy

As the present seems bleak in pain

My heart still pounds in vain

Hoping for a brighter day ahead

I wake up each day and make some bread

I wear a smile all day, all gay

Hoping that good comes my way

And I bid farewell forever

To those memories that run a dagger

Through my heart and soul, and scatter

All the good in me away

To nothingness, vacuum and dismay.

Love humanity

It is easy to love someone you know, or you have formed some form of attachment with. But it is difficult and worthy of applause when we develop ourselves to love humanity. This love can stem only when we detach ourselves from our own tiny world and focus on the bigger picture we are surrounded by. This is probably the driving force behind my company’s latest CSR campaign this Valentine’s day: ‘Celebrate love by donating’ ! My company rarely impresses me by their activities, but this one has truly attracted my heart and soul! It is a very unique and inspiring thought indeed.

U.A.E has declared this year of 2017 as the ‘Year of Giving’. Subconsciously, this thought always pricked me that I am not doing anything for the greater good. My life is so entangled with my own relationships, both personal and professional, that I never really paused to think how my existence could impact people positively. Time and again, I am nagged by my conscience that my life is really unproductive. We love some people in our lives so dearly, we give them our all yet at some point of time, they hurt us. They puncture a hole in our heart every time they do so. And they even walk out without warning. We mope around for a few days, months, or years and replace those people with a fresh set of people. But the cycle of heartbreak repeats. It is a part of life. I have decided that I do not want to replace people with people to attain happiness. I have tried that multiple times and somehow, always failed. I always wondered where I am going wrong. I expected, that is where I went wrong. Now I want to channel all my love, care and attention towards humanity. I want to nurture my soul by giving all I have to the desperate and needy creations of Allah, without expectation of any return from them. Maybe then I can justify my presence in the world. Maybe then I can sleep peacefully at night. Maybe then I can silence the tug of war in my heart between my duties and desires.

Love is friendship

There are relations we are born with such as those of family and there are ties we create of our own accord which are categorized under a term called ‘FRIENDSHIP’. So today celebrates this bond and I became aware of that only when one of my Whatsapp contacts wished me a ‘Happy Friendship Day’. I am not one who is against celebrations or oppose tying friendship bands or such but I guess my negligence could be due to the fact that I celebrate friendship everyday. In fact, I would not like to call it ‘celebrate’, rather I ‘live’ by friendship every single moment of every single day. Although I may not be one who has a very active social life but I can be proud of my tiny and precious collection of the friends I own. When someone asks me who my best friend is, I really am put in a dilemma because I am the type of person who forms bonds that are really strong, each with their own touch of magic or I do not form them at all. Ofcourse I am cordial and approachable to people in general but I may not make the effort to call everyone of them. And that, according to my mother is a quality I possess that is actually my weakness.

There are many people I am close to, whom I can count on anytime of the day. I have a soul sister who can relate to every emotion I feel because our fate has somewhat been intertwined since we met. We go through the highs and lows of our life almost always together. When her life is taken over by a storm, I always know by intuition that its going to rock my boat soon. That is something I have never experienced with anyone else. Then there is a very dear friend of mine who is the most mature of our group and makes sense of things when everything seems hazy to me. I also own a sweetheart who always sees the best in me and uplifts me literally to cloud 9 by her almost diabetes-inducing words of praise. Then there is this childish, stubborn girl who has a very loving and caring heart for those who dig in through its crust. She makes me feel responsible for her and even though she is just a year younger than me, I always feel concerned and protective about her. The last piece of my treasure box is a physically distant yet heart warming girl who is one of my oldest friends. I am sure she has her own collection of friends, but no matter many days,months or years space our conversations, I am sure I am the crux of her collection, just as she is mine. We always know what to say to the other when we need each other.

As you see, this post was dedicated especially to my friends. The ones who have sailed in the same boat as mine, those who have sailed adjacent to me, providing me the luxury of companionship amidst the staggering waves of time and also those who continue to journey alongside me despite their own priorities and struggles. I thank Allah for these blessings. Happy Friendship Day!!!!!

Painted by: Leonic Afremov

What is inevitable

They say the only thing that one can be certain of facing is DEATH. Yet when it strikes your loved one, why does it shock you and traumatize you beyond repair? We watch the news and see millions of people departing from the world due to poverty, sickness and terrorism but that barely manages to move us for a minute but when a dear one of ours passes away, we feel like its the end of the world, not only for us, but for everyone. The world becomes eclipsed by an unseen phenomena. We wail and cry till our eyes can no longer support us. We struggle to breathe through that constricted, suffocating windpipe. We feel that we have the right to demand everyone’s sympathy and compassion towards us. And when people do not reciprocate in the expected manner, they become cruel? What we fail to question ourselves is, ‘were we any different’?

Where on one hand, death’s hand cruelly takes away a part of us, its intensity of pain can re-unite ties that were severed long time ago. Its ominous presence ironically shines light upon the path of forgiveness, love and care between bitter relations. A whole lifetime does not suffice to teach us the importance of love, friendship and unity, the way death so brutally does. And for those who still ignore its teachings, death renders them with nothing but regrets. Regrets for not making up when there was time, regrets for acting so foolish, regrets for acting so selfish, regrets for not regretting earlier.

Although, as much as we loved those who pass away, we learn to cope up with their absence over time. We begin to smile, laugh and even love again. I wonder how those up in the heaven feel when they gaze down at us, laughing and loving again, without them. Do they think, ‘after everything I did, this is what they do’? Or do they really feel selflessly happy for us?  Does the goodness of heaven diminish the worldly attribute of jealousy?

There is no doubt that life is short. Whether you live for a staggering 100 years, a strong 50 or an innocent 15, as they always say, its not the quantity but the quality that matters. Why do we spend so much of our life struggling with hatred, jealousy, greed and enmity when we can spend the same time with love and compassion. The answer is because we somehow believe that we are immortal. We believe that our healthy diet, exercise and our fixed deposits are going to be our everlasting elixir of life. Just embracing the fact that this world is temporary and that we have to leave everything behind one fine day is a powerful factor to keep us grounded. This is the solution to every fight. Yes, this is what we need to ultimately achieve what is called World Peace.

Dear Readers

It is said that a good writer is always a good reader. By a good reader I do not necessarily mean reading good books, but I mean reading a lot of all sorts of books. However, I hate to admit that over the years, my frequency of reading has deteriorated due to so many other commitments. But I can never hesitate in confessing that when I start daydreaming in the middle of a long and boring report-writing task, I always see myself reading a good book while sipping on a cocktail, sitting in a private garden far away from the city. The reason I am suddenly writing about my passion of reading today is because I just finished  reading ‘The Book Thief’, and the best seller touched me in so many ways. There were a few characters in the book who instilled a sense of humanity and compassion in me and then there was Liesel, the young Communist girl who could not read or write, but became ‘the book thief’. I could relate to her so easily. I could feel the thirst she had  for reading books, the awe and delight she felt when she first saw a library, and how, in times of stress, reading calmed her nerves and inspired her to read for other people. 

I now remember the joy I experienced when my dad bought me my first book, it was Snowhite and the Seven Dwarfs, I think. How I kept re-reading it till I got another set of books. And then of course, how can I forget the magical Harry Potter era when my imagination knew no bounds and I embraced the world of fantasy. 

School is never a student’s heaven, but I remember loving it once a week when we could visit the school library and borrow a book each week and return it the next week. I can still feel the pleasure of brushing through rows and rows of books trying to find the best one to read. During my middle school, I had become addicted to the Goosebumps series which were written by R.L. Stine. Curling under my blanket at night, with ‘The Headless Ghost’ in hand, I used to enjoy the shivers that used to run down my spine. 

By the time I passed out of school, I had become a more mature reader, having read the likes of books such as Pride and Prejudice, To Kill a Mocking Bird, Diary of Anne Frank, and the list goes on. 

 Each book I have read makes me marvel at the power of words and the unique beauty with which each author strings them together. Each book opens up with it a new world of possibilities and brings with it a ray of hope. Every book I read inspires me to write. Read. Write again. And as such the cycle shall go on until the day my soul departs from this world, because every life has a story and every story wants to be heard.