Today I am gonna address you as a human being; not as a girl, not as a boy. Today in this disturbed era, an atmosphere of utter disappointment we have failed as a nation. Before I begin, I have a question for you all, forget about who you are or what you do. Are you satisfied with the life you are living? I am positive most of you would have expected satisfaction associated with your gender. "I am a girl, why should I do all the chores? Why should my brother study while I prepare for my teenage wedding?" "I am a boy, why should I carry all the shopping bags? Why crying is not manly? Why should I work my heart off while my sister stays at home?" One way or the other we all have a bog question mark on our integrity. Water, shelter, food and oxygen are considered as the basic needs of a human being since this world came into being. What about respect? Love? Value? Justice? Rights? Responsibilities? The books of history contain remarkable and enthralling advancements, great inventions, great great inventions. We surely nailed the materialistic world but degraded ourselves in ethics. No page of history can recall about us, human beings, gaining and improvising knowledge about how we treat mankind. You talk about gender equality? Equality is a wild goose chase as long as you can't even do a little bit of a justice. Humans' potential is something beyond infinity. No scale can measure human capabilities, but there are some certain virtues that demand protection. Yes a girl can study, but that won't make her superior. Yes a guy can cook, but that won't him useless. No a girl is not obliged to sit back home, but how is her man carrying her shopping bags after a long day of work justified? No a boy is not obliged not to hold back tears but how can his beating to his wife for not cooking in time justified? Why should the other bear the outcomes of every flaw? Like every other natural being a boy and a girl both have a heart. They are one specie. One creation. Working with the same momentum. Feeling the same degree of pain and happiness. The same ambition for their dreams. Why are you snatching your son's youth by making him work at such a young age? Why are you placing a huge burden on your daughter by getting her married at such an innocent age? Why are you forcing your son to be an engineer and making him kill the writer within? Why are you dreaming about your daughter being a doctor while the muted cries of a painter within her is failing to attract your attention? Why are you abusing this girl for being so liberal? Why are you criticising this guy for cooking so good? Why did you slap this girl for being such an amazing entrepreneur? Why did you kick your son out if he is so good with designing your clothes? There are thousands of whys here, but no justified reason. Its not important for a girl to walk shoulder to shoulder with a boy. But it is important for a girl to feel wanted. It is important for a boy to feel loved. I want you all to take an oath today. Promise yourself that you'll forget what is a man's job or what is a woman's responsibility. Promise yourself that you'll help your friends; children; siblings to polish their diamond, regardless of their gender. Promise yourself you'll not kill the soul of a painter, a singer, a writer. Promise yourself you'll make everyone feel one of a kind. A dead body can be buried, but a dead soul wanders for ages and.. Trust me you'd regret being heartless one day.


Photo Courtesy = Saleha Adnan

The thought of survival in such a victimized planet sounds insane lately. I call it insane not because we are continuously under the threat of death, but because we look for the inevitable not the self-caused fatal cases. An accident? A heart attack? Cancer? But does it scare me? Is this enough to make me run away from dying? Nah. Dying is easy, for you can not stop it. Its living. It is living that scares me to death. Being barely off age, this harum-scarum world has left me ponder hard on the fact that how much everyone of us is longing to die; to end this unpredictable torture in the name of living. Such a place where we are enemies of ourselves, where we ourselves are choking us to death, how can living benefit us here? We have stopped living you know. We have stopped striving to become better for ourselves. We have got ourselves so preoccupied in struggling hard not to satisfy our souls, but in fact show our rivals how very sane we are. To compete in the competition of life is what we are struggling with, neglecting our concise for good. We are nothing but fools. Fools in the name of humans. We built dreams on sands, and when the water waves wash it away, we lose that little bit of sanity too and start the blame game. We forget that things move in circle. We run away from things we fear, and they welcome us on the finish line. We have to stop being so harsh on ourselves. Because this makes me furthermore fear my life. Battle lines are not always drawn where you want them to be, and I am losing to life here. But who to blame? Myself? Or what the society teaches me? I guess, someone should have warned us right at the start of our lives that we are dying, then we might actually live life to the limit of everyday.This is when this thought triggers, that we should have fulfilled certain dreams long ago, there are only so many tomorrows you know. But again, living.. Ahh seems tiring than soldier's workout. The same monotonous old routines each day. Trust me, and I know you would because you just can't help it but agree with me that when you are successful, things have a momentum, and at a certain point you really can't tell whether you have created that momentum or is that momentum creating you? Relate this with the kind of life you are living today? Is that you? Ain't you scared of what is happening around you? Well I am I am scared of this And its life itself. This is sad, how badly we are feared. When I die, will they remember me Not what I did, but what I haven't done? It's not the end that I fear with each breath  It's life that scares me to death.


Photo Courtesy = Saleha Adnan