Compassion: An Unfortunate Evening

Note: Article sent by Anonymous volunteer.

The child in panic desperately looking for help, his grandmother instantly realizes that something is wrong the only words the child can utter are AMI!!!! She quickly marches and finds his mother in bed crying and shivering complaining of palpitations, she tries to get her up and take her to the hospital but she refuses to be taken to the hospital saying I don’t want to end up like HER!!!!

But who is the SHE in question? She was sweet, kind hearted, funny, and full of life yet to begin the best years of her life. On a reunion with friends my phone beeps and the words left me in utter shock. “She is in a comma!” I excused myself and moved to a quieter place trying to make sense of what was happening. I stood there in silence thinking about how? When? Why? She was perfectly OK the last time I saw her not long ago.

I left in a hurry and started the long drive back to my hometown. The next day I went to the hospital to offer whatever little help I could. What I found out filled me with an even deeper sadness and anger. It was gross negligence that had brought this beautiful person into the clutches of death. Something that could have been so easily avoidable was the reason that a life full of prospects came to a tragic and sudden end.

Diabetes ran in the family and as to why all the apparent signs were ignored is beyond me. And perhaps should be left alone as it will only inflict more grief upon the family. Before the night in question 2 am at night she became extremely uneasy, stressed and had a panic attack. What her family did next was what anyone would do to get help and took her to a hospital. The doctor was informed that her sugar level was very high as revealed by the test conducted a day prior.

Lack of competence, lack of compassion or maybe just to get her off his hands at 3 AM at night the doctor told the family high sugar level has nothing to do with it and it is just plain old stress. He pumped her with a vial of valium pushing her into the beyond. It was indeed the last nail in the coffin, as what little strength her had left to fight was taken away from her and she succumbed to sleep.

Her brother picked her up and took her home into her bed, the concerned mother stayed by her daughter’s side the whole night and dozed off next to her. Her eyes opened at 5 A.M and noticed her daughters lip color to be a horrifying blue shade. She rushed to wake up her son and they rushed her to another hospital this time. Even over there she did not get the required care and our country being our country. She only started to get the required care when phone calls were made by someone who knew someone. Alas it was too little to late even though the best doctors tried continuously the next 48 hours but they eventually had to pull the plug. As what was left of her on that bed was only a body full of tubes surrounded by the beeping sounds of machines. What made her truly is she was dead.

Why has life become so cheap in our country? Why do we have to use contacts to even get the most basic of human rights? I often think to myself if we can’t even trust hospitals and the doctors in them, what are we to do if tomorrow some other loved one needs desperate help. It is indeed a sad state of affairs; I can’t understand why we as a nation lack compassion. We gobble down a 5000 rupees meal at a fancy restaurant and feel so mighty upon giving the poor waiter a 200 rupees tip. Maybe it is not only the doctors that are to be blamed. Maybe it is all of us. Maybe it is the whole nation. Maybe we all could contribute to make someone else’s life better in some way but are we to self-centric to think outside our little bubble?

It was indeed a very tragic evening and even though our interactions had always been very formal yet it moved and affected me in a way I would not have expected. Maybe it was that she was yet a child. Or maybe it was because it was something so very avoidable. I will never know. All I can do is hope for a better future for me and for everyone everywhere. As tragic is it was and when all is said and done I find solace in the verse.

“Surely to ALLAH we belong, and to him shall we return”

Stuck with Fashion Freaks!

At a family gathering, this girl shows me a yellow summer dress on her profile of so and so ‘good-for-nothing-ridiculously-expensive’ brand. While munching on my vanilla-cake I pretend to look all interested, like “Nice”. Yep, not a good faker, neither she cared. Then as usual she told me how badly she wants that dress but can’t afford it. Then to make her feel better, I am like, ‘Who wears countless enormous laces in this heat’. That wasn't a sour grapes strategy, I was just being honest. Funny how two days later I see this girl wearing the same fancy YELLOW DRESS! Wow… so much to learn.

New summer dresses would come with a change you can hardly see. An addition or subtraction of a tiny little lace from the dress and BAM! Now it’s brand new and twice the price it was last summer. Shucks why didn't we chose to be a designer! But then again you and I wouldn't have been that mundane. Plus for hard working people like us it would be sad to put all our creativity in one dress. In which dress someone else can just change a button and wins the race. How frustrating!

More frustrating is being around Dresses-maniacs and fashion freaks. Whatever name you call them they’d still consider themselves more superior and ‘Fashion Aware’. Which is a good thing, I agree. It’s just they take it beyond sanity level. People who would spend hours surfing brand after brand, learning new trends, bothering everyone around and what happens next? They go to the market place, find a better dress of another unsearched brand and buy it. Oh give me break!

And then I get a phone call from a far away city, “Tayyaba, what do you think I should wear for the wedding next week?” My response?  I just bang my head on the wall.

With all due respect fashion freaks, keep you freakiness to yourself. Not every girl has a complicated relationship with their clothes. Some keep it sweet and simple.

Different Cultures, Same Goals

Note: Article sent by volunteer, JAVIER from Mexico

It’s amazing how more differences people have from one another in relation to customs we are still the same. The interesting and beautiful thing is that we pursue the same goal: HAPPINESS

For now I’ll give you a hint: “to love, be loved and to be happy”. Moreover we purse all under the same premises, I mean we all fall in love, don’t we? We all make mistakes too. Then we either learn from them or maybe go back to commit them again. I think the only thing that sets us apart from each other is the motivation to do things.

The reasons are many, yet very seldom we do something that ‘WE’ like or desire. As very often we chase dreams only to seek the approval of others. It seems as we live in what other people think of us. We lose our desires, our dreams, everything to others. Leave our burning motivations and passionate dreams in the hands of other people. Who neither matter nor care.

The secret to happiness is we have to decide and we have to act. We must do what we like. What we want to do. We have to find our mission in life, in our life, and not of the others.

I leave you with this phrase my friends, “Work and discipline conquers all.” Have the courage to have discipline. Any goal you have you have in life. No matter how small the goal is, it is still a goal. Your challenge is to finish it. For solely your pursuit of happiness! 

You Keep Running Away...

Today the dream seems so distant and lost in the abyss. The bubbly aggressive soul with the vision is now tired. You confront the unpleasant transfer of leadership to a forever mute servant. With a heart lacking wishes, desires or need. How it holds the burden of the largest graveyard on earth. Buried alive, suffocated or killed, you don’t care anymore. The fear is still worse than the shovel in your hands.

Seasons sink you in the dust of delusional fleeting happiness. Wounds turn to scars. Then again scars are only the wounds we eventually become used to.

One day that lost desire knocks on your door. You bang the door on its face. However the call won’t stop. They keep coming in all possible forms, vivid enough to make you pounder. Badly disrupts your comforting layers of calmness and leisure.

You figure it’s time to run, but unfortunately away from it. For you still see it as tiresome efforts down the drain. The sky-high depression GIANT still keeps you surrendered sign after sign. The war started long time ago. Sad fact, this time you stand tall, next to your fears... and against yourself.

The height is when you literally see your fear stand there with a smiling twisted handlebar mustache. And you lie on the railway track with a calm heart. The one person you always had the support of is nowhere to be seen. Wishes, hope, faith, grudges, all starts to fade with the increasing sound of the train.  
Midst all that craziness you’d find, life never cease to surprise the exhausted soul. That long forgotten tiny spark ignites an endless adrenaline rush. Numbness is there for your defense. Imagination is a gift you were made to control, stop using it in reverse. This rush is inevitable regardless of the constant denial.

Like that one rain in scorching heat is enough to turn around the entire season. Stop looking for it in others. For you are that First Summer Rains!

Addiction: It's Haram...!

In an attempt to ‘GO GREEN’ I decided to replace morning tea with green-tea. By the evening I could literally feel a crazy Giant walking around in my head. Stumbling on my way to the kitchen like a drug addict I heard the phone ring. It was my sister; the more she talks the worse my head pound. In between the stomps I struggled to grasp and reply to whatever she asked.

I like tea that tastes a little bitter. So that you really feel your tiredness wash away on every sip. Yep caffeine and I have a past, had to stay up every exams night for good grades. Did I mention ‘primary school exams’?

 It’s weird when I offer kids a cup of tea and they shake their heads in negative. Well at least caffeine addiction is less harmful than the addiction of social media. That makes you take pictures of every meal instead of eating it. Anyway the real bad caffeine addiction is when a person like me is introduced to energy drinks!

It took them only two free energy drinks on alternative days to get me hooked on it. A well known company that hits every university to supply free energy drinks to cast the magic spell. Energy drink is a bad addiction in so many ways. Worse is when you have to cut on your expenses to afford it on daily basis. Yes Daily basis! For a long journey home it was Spinach for Popeye. 

On other hand my friends would slap me with a long list of side effects regularly. Like ‘It’s bad for health, especially women blah blah blah…’ 

Never considered it until one of our professor discussed the “effects”. Actually he knew an easy way; he said it’s Haram in a very, very, VERY convincing way. I didn’t believe it. Yet all that guilt of drinking something that might be Haram, kept me from looking it up on Google.

Surely the unavoidable dreadful several stages of SEPERATION did sneak up on me. Expect that obsession fades away faster when you have a better substitute. Even if it’s Halal any addiction that costs your health and tons of money, is BAD. Let’s stick to our cup of MASALA CHAI for at least we know what’s in it.

Escape: Truth About You & Me

Made your life’s most important decision and finally found your love. Married them and started to live like royalty. This is what you always dreamed of. Roaming new places, made new friends, and buy expensive goodies for fun. New dresses, news shoes, new perfumes, and gadgets add to the overloaded junk you own. The blame is not on you though. Surrounded by the posh circle of friends, would keep anyone’s nose in the air. 

However you do see the flip side of that royal coin. Hate to be alone for the conscience is ridiculously mean to you. So you watch other people fight and cry on TV in the name of entertainment. And unconsciously start to mimic the negative conclusions grasped from the shows. Everyday let it weave more insecurity in your faith.

Then Complain about everything and everyone for you failed to understand satisfaction. Actually satisfaction appears as only a fad for it fades out fast. Truth is: the new wardrobe has become a stale distraction. Fight with the spouse who took off from work to spend a day with you. Just to find an escape. 

It kills to the extent that you don’t mind talking to the people who are supposed worthless and inferior. For you see them having that one thing you lack. The more you talk the more it frustrates you, as the clue isn't there. Now you lower the guard and open up a bit more. Finally the denial escapes when you accept, “I am depressed”. The naive, no-value ‘happy people’ understands you. Thus they try to motivate, tell you about their own failures and progress in life. Stories of the bright side and the bright nights! Long talk about dreams being timeless and possibilities limitless. You do feel the moment of change.

 Sadly you lack the special ingredient required to listen to someone: respect. The only change is now you find them dumb idiots who are happy for no reason. Next day you go to spend more money, to buy a little more of fleeting happiness again… 

Hey Mr. D.J, Please Leave...

We all go through the age where you can’t do anything without the beat. All you need is your favorite playlist and there you are in euphoria. Then there also comes an age when music only appears some meaningful words put together in rather silly way while an intolerable noise plays along. For some extremely insightful souls this age hits earlier than average. Friends excitedly share that one relatable song in every new album. And just to fit in you pretend to like it, even when you find it terribly exhausting. Actually you find it highly disturbing, for the fact that you relate to it perfectly.

There are many reasons to hate music, or let’s rephrase that. The reasons we listen to it, are messed up in the first place. Now we break it down in steps. Music is one exclusive incredible shovel to the long buried memories. It identifies and makes it all obvious in seconds. (We are talking about meaningful music, to be clear the music you love.) At this point denial becomes harder so you start to accept your failure. Failures, which were long forgotten by the present success in other areas. However this unlocked rage triggers various hasty rational motives to quench it. Since music didn't account for a cure.  

What music any broken soul would prefer on a gloomy long drive? To be honest even a happy, crazy party song is enough for a man to deliberately BANG into a cargo truck on the freeway. Yep such is the connection of some beautiful rhymed words with your heart.  Okay maybe an over exaggeration but both ways the damage is equal.

No matter what mood you are in, music can turn it upside down without you realizing it. We already have enough exposure to it in the places we cannot avoid. In malls, stores, public transports, TV, radio, and what not. Why in the word you’d want to kill the peaceful time you get alone with the same distracting noises? 

Turn it off to give your best to the work you love and respect. Also when you manage to get the happy hour, it should be about you without the intrusion of any foreign influences. Turn it off ‘cause your success story has its own awesome background music…!