Mistakes

I'm not your first heartbreak, and you won't be mine, so we both know we will live. A broken heart keeps beating, strong and sure, despite the pain. Human beings have the capacity to live through greater losses than merely the death of Us. And I don't know, if I walk away, that you'll even be heartbroken. You are very self-contained, immensely resilient. I don't think you'll care enough. 

And that is the problem. 

I don't think you care enough to even fight if I walk away now. I don't think you care enough to fight for me if anyone else hurts me. Or maybe care is the wrong word. Perhaps it's just that this is who you are. You don't have the capacity to be moved beyond a certain mark, and you have full faith in my ability to fight for myself. Actually, you have full faith in my ability to fight for the both of us, whenever I'm needed to. You don't see that that is tiring for me. I will go to war for you, but then that is what I want from you, too. You don't see that every time you leave me to speak for myself, I see it as desertion. 

Aao ke karein bazm pe zar zakhm numaaya'n

Charcha hai bohat baysar'o samaan'iey dil ka

Come, let us bare our wounds to the world

There is much talk of the barrenness of my heart 

People

I have decided that the only way we can get rid of the hatred in the world now is to escalate physical human interactions between people of various backgrounds. It sounds simplistic, and in theory perhaps I always knew this. But the last two years has brought it into sharp focus for me.

In these two years, I have met a thousand different people, from all sorts of walks of life. I met, and fell absolutely in love with: Peruvians who mothered me; American Jews who  messaged me their support every time something went wrong back home and truly cared; Christian's from a variety of countries who are among the most pious people I know; Atheists who showered me with respect and were phenomenal friends; Indians who took me for ice cream when I was down, and stayed at the hospital with me over night when I burnt my hand, even with a final the next morning; Australians who became among my most valued friends.

People, whose backgrounds and religions I don't even know, who sent me boxes full of everything brand new that they thought I would need when I first came to the US, without ever meeting me, and drove many miles to come welcome me at the Boston airport; Chinese, Thai, Colombian, Vietnamese, Mexican, Canadian; People from Iceland, Russia, Greece, Chile, Venezuela, Argentina, South Korea, Italy, Guatemala, Kenya, and so many more.

I found that Latin American culture is very like my own in terms of gender roles, and that Jewish mothers are as involved in their kids' lives as Pakistani mothers, and every person I met was a Good Person.

I met an infinite combination of religion, country of origin, orientation, and socioeconomic background, and every single one of them was a Good Person.

More than the places I went, the food I ate or the adventures I experienced, I am thankful for these people that I met, for it has taken away any excuse for racism that I could ever have had in my life.

- Boston, 2015

No more forevers.

Forevers are for teenagers and first loves. Somedays come true with the second loves, or the third loves, but you've lost forever forever. 

Changes

In any relationship, it makes no sense to be scared of them finding someone else. If that is even a remote possibility, you shouldn't be with this person. Maybe we need to be more worried about them finding themselves, and whether we would be able to handle that and accept whoever they may become. Love is, perhaps, the ability to handle all the phases and transitions. 

Free

Have you ever felt free?

I have lived a beautiful, blessed life. I love my family and friends. I have done almost anything and everything I ever wanted to do. I was presented by great opportunities, and was supported by my family is taking up any that I wanted. I have never been oppressed, never been held back.

But have you ever felt free?

What does that even mean? Of course I was free. I chose my university, I chose what field I wanted to go into. I chose where I wanted to work. I chose whom I wanted to get engaged to. I was never bound in any way. I have always been free.

Just not like this. 

No, not like this. Not the way I feel right now.

I went to school, college, university. Had friends, lost friends, found love, found a job, got engaged, so on and so forth. Just your basic, amazing life. I was extremely happy, very very comfortable. I never wanted it to change. If it were up to me, I'd never have left. But due to one amazing person in my life, I did move, and my life, as I knew it, seemed to suddenly fall away. First came the homesickness, the longing for all that was familiar - and it's still here, because I don't think I'll ever let go of it completely; but then came this heady rush of freedom.

This freedom is not freedom from people, because it was never people that held me back. This freedom comes from within me. It is the realization that the world is huge, and I am infinitesimal. The understanding that what I considered my universe was but a tiny piece of the whole, and for once, the whole is within my reach.

It is a beautiful feeling to be able to look at a map of the world and accept that there is no where in the God's world that I can't go, if I try hard enough. I hadn't looked at a map in forever. Why would I, I had no need of it, I wasn't going anywhere. Now when I look at it, I'm fascinated. There is just so much to see.

There is freedom in being able to talk to people from Australia on a boat in Key West. There is freedom in discussing God with a stranger on a bus. There is freedom in standing in the Atlantic ocean and feeling oh so small. There is freedom, and there is magic.

This freedom has a price, though, and the price is loneliness. I wouldn't want a lifetime of this, it would kill me, but for a while, a very little while, when the twinges of solitude are still bearable, this freedom is perfect.

"Now more than ever do I realize that I will never be content with a sedentary life, that I will always be haunted by thoughts of a sun-drenched elsewhere.”  ― Isabelle Eberhardt

This blog is my way of capturing what I'm feeling right now to savor it forever. I hope that someday, when I'm back home and at a different phase in my life, perhaps feeling bogged down by a thousand other things, I will be able to recall this feeling of freedom, and remember that it has to come from within. There will always be places to see, all you need is the desire to see them. 

Loving Faiz

This February 13th was the 103rd birthday of Faiz Ahmed Faiz, my answer to the question 'If you could choose anyone, dead or alive, who would you want to meet?'. It would be Faiz, always Faiz.

Why do I love this 103-year old dead person so much? There are a lot of poets in the world, why am I obsessed with his work? The work of Faiz has the power to move me like no other. His cynicism, his sarcasm and wit, his vulnerability, everything is reflected in his poetry. It makes me cry, and it makes me smile, and I cannot resist it. Ever since I stole my friend's copy of 'Nuskha'haey Wafa', almost ten years ago, I can flip it open at any given point in my life, and find something that makes me feel as if Faiz wrote it specially for me.

But even more than that, it is his passion that I aspire to. I love Faiz for his words, but I love him more because I know bits and pieces of his story. His poetry, which can be translated to mean what ever you want it to mean, was actually rooted in his love for his country. The lover Faiz talks about is my beloved Pakistan. I may not agree with the doctrine he followed, but I respect him for his bravery, and his suffering. He was sent to jail, and he was exiled, but his heart continued to ache for his country, and his love never dimmed. More than that, he never stopped fighting. He could never be suppressed. I love Faiz for his perseverance, his tenacity, for never giving up. Even his darkest poems end with the message of hope at the end. Understanding that this is beyond individuals, and that, even if the revolution doesn't end with us, we will have started the process of change, and the flames we light will be a beacon for generations to come.

I love Faiz and I am envious of him. I envy him, one activist to another, for having the sheer guts to take the stand  he did. I envy him for feeling so strongly about something that nothing else mattered. In today's age, with our vanilla lives, there is barely anything left that is worthy enough to stake ones life on. When Faiz says 'if no one else will, let us march to the gallows', I wish I had something or someone that meant enough to me to do that for.

I envy him because he found something that was worth living for, and worth dying for. I love him because he did.

Unhien ke Faiz se bazaar'e aql roshan hai
Jo gaa'h gaa'h junoo'n ikhtiar kartay rahay

...

Kis qad'r ho ga yahan meh'r o' wafa ka ma'tam
Hum teri yaad se jis roz utar jaein ge