An Unfinished Portrait

You know what’s annoying? When the unforeseen circumstances spring out of nowhere and hinder your plans. My exams are continuously getting postponed and I am frustrated! I’d say again, like I have often said before, why is it that time crawls like a snail when we want it to pass by fast? I have been counting every second till my exams get over to finally sigh out what I’ve been holding inside since so long. Heart begins to sink when it is loaded with a bulk of things. It can contain in it only so much. And so to keep it afloat, it is important to let a few things out. And what a terrible mistake it is, to have no one to talk you out of your despair. Like I read in one of Mitch Albom’s books, you need to keep people close.

A year ago, my life was free from stains of abandoned promises and broken expectations. I was a happy, enthusiastic person like I’ve always been. I remember talking endlessly and laughing at and cracking silly jokes. I remember my hunger attacks; I remember dragging my friends to the cafeteria and then wondering what to eat. I remember readily believing in everything people told me about themselves and how they appeared, it was the simplest thing. I remember how I always believed that people are essentially good. I remember enjoying and gaining something out of each day that passed. Now when I look back, it seems like I’ve come so far since then. I don’t act much now. Don’t feel like talking, don’t feel like eating. I don’t feel anything at all these days.

Or *felt.

Things have been coming to me since the very beginning, only I was a fool to deliberately overlook them. Because that is what you do when you want to save your relationship, no? It came to me only later, that you make sacrifices only when there is hope; it is otherwise an act of dishonoring your own self. A few of the incidents that happened during the course which helped me find my way back are worth mentioning.

A couple of weeks ago it rained in Karachi. I have never identified rain with despair. It has always been a source of joy, contentment, and tranquility for me. I remembered how I always texted everyone telling them it’s raining outside; knowing that it need not to be told that it’s raining, that it’s obvious, but that was just another little thing that I loved doing. That was just another thing that made me ‘me’. This time for some reasons, I didn’t feel like texting anyone. I remained in my room, inhaling and absorbing the scent of verdant earth. My phone vibrated, and much to my amusement, simultaneously came the texts of two of my very old friends. Both asking me why haven’t I texted them yet about the weather like I always used to. I missed myself. But that wasn’t it, a while later, my phone rang and it was my Chachu on the other side, and the first thing he asked, after I said hello, was if I was OK. “Yes… Why?” I asked, puzzled by his question. “It’s raining outside. I kept waiting for your text exclaiming it’s raining or ohmygod look at the weather; but it never came. Are you OK, little one?” My heart sank… Really? And that was when I realized that people miss me too. People who care. People who have always cared. And I have been very unjust to all of them.

When people who really love you come to you at unlikely times, you find something truly important which teaches you to live again. Down came to Karachi few of my old cousins almost a month back. I grew up with them and together we have shared a childhood that I will cherish forever. Being beach lovers since always, we went down to sea view a number of times, and talked about old days and reflected on what life has become today. Sunsets and the sound of sea waves induce nostalgia, does it not? From each other, we learn to live. All of us, if you look closely, are trying to save each other from falling apart. Where words can act like injurious weapons; they can also function as healing catalyst to the same wounds. A cousin come best friend, in her far off tone told me a few things that I wished she hadn't told me, but also for which I was really thankful. It was a state of ambivalence. She said it cannot be love if doesn’t make you a better person. It cannot really be love which requires you to get on your knees to win it. How could a person claim to love you, when he is trapped in his public persona? If he cares more of how people would judge him should he hold your hand, you know where you stand. If a person has his way only with words but doesn’t have the courage to come up and ask for your hand, you know what you gotta do."What good is love if it is uncommitted, no? You have always settled for things lesser than you really deserve. Love needs courage and honesty. It needs to be genuinely felt. People who treat it as just some emotion easy to walk in and give hasty promises in their temporary feeling only to conveniently walk out of them, are not worth it. There is always a reason why a person ends up alone. It’s not because love didn’t come to him. It is because he didn’t treat it well when it actually did. Don’t always sympathize with those who are alone. Sometimes they really are at fault. Sometimes, they really deserve being alone. You must know that those who always see others at fault are the ones who are at fault themselves. Your simplistic views don’t change the fact that half truths are more or less similar to lies. Your fanciful approach to life doesn’t change the fact that one sided stories are… Well. Just remember, losing yourself for those who messed up your happy life just because they couldn’t have one of their own is not justifiable. Because that is unfair; to those who still wish to see you the way you were, and also to your own self. Pull yourself together, revisit the memory for one last time and destroy it, so you could accommodate new ones, pleasant ones.  Let it hurt you all at once than allowing it to kill you in episodes. Do what you are being signaled to do. You’ve been given several chances, why does it not occur to you that Nature is trying to save you? Why does it not occur to you, that this is an answer to your prayer, to your letters that you’ve written? Where did all your faith go? Everything, everything happens for a reason. Do, what you must."

I pulled up a smile, and stared back at the vast sea that stretched endlessly before me. There wasn’t a single word that did not make sense. It all did. Only I wasn’t ready to accept it. That is just how nauseatingly obedient and convinced I was. The waves kept coming back to the shore, they hopelessly kept coming back. And with them, they brought questions that I was, and still am, yet to answer. Should those, who you loved so dearly at one point in your life, deserve to be despised regardless of how they treated you? Should those who made a mess of your life and abandoned you deserve forgiveness? Should moments that you once cherished, deserve a woeful reminiscence? And most of all, is it really time?

You know, while something is happening, we don't realize how grand it is until some time passes, and then we look back at it with great fondness. For me however, certain events were already so 'grand' while they were happening, I didn't require time. I was well aware in the moments, and felt every bit of em just when they were happening. I felt it when I was entering 2014 that this year will be a life changer. I felt it when I walked bare foot in pouring rain soaking the water of heaven in my bones. I felt it when I bunked the compulsory 8:30 class with my friends for the sake of our little adventure to a dhaaba for halwa poori ka naashta. I felt it when I laughed at the most ridiculous jokes with my friends until my stomach ached and I couldn't breathe. When I first experienced a new emotion and decided to take a leap of faith, I felt it. I felt it walking down the parking lot on a drizzly afternoon of August. I felt it when I made a choice and decided to fight for it. I felt each bit of it. I also felt the intensity of those certain moments that came to me time by time showing the transition of life right before my eyes, and transforming me into somebody I was sure I'd never be. Sitting there, absorbing the sound of sea waves, I wondered again, is it really time to put an end? I sighed.

...And I heard myself say yes.

Prior to that, I also got certain of my wrongly stated facts corrected from the most unexpected sources. I remembered what Naani always told us, Duniya gol hai. Never truly understood the correct meaning until the time came. The contradictions were striking, so was the disappointment. But I chose not to go into details to spare myself of knowing anything else. Whatever the story maybe, what did it matter anyway now? I had endured enough. What felt bad was how my sincerity was mistaken as stupidity; how even being a curious and an intuitive person, I remained silent to the obvious lies and contradictions which was sadly mistaken as my dumbness. I was filled with a number of ambiguous emotions. But of all, the most powerful was of gratitude. To The Lights. I then found the courage to add final strokes to an unfinished portrait. I shrugged off all my prejudices against people I didn’t even know. I shrugged off my dislike against people I always saw through someone else’s perspective. It felt silly. I was never this person.

It is very amazing how a little daring act can bail you out of a number of burdens that were not even yours to carry in the first place. I did what I believed was right. Like it is said, a graceful refusal is better than a lengthy promise. I have heard and read a thousand narratives of how Imams kept their promises and what it is meant to give a promise. I set about keeping the ones I had given, regardless of how the ones I was given were broken. I was sincere, that made me weak. I was hurt, that filled me with anger of despair. But in my anger, I did not forget who I am. Because had I been brutal with my words, that would have made me no different. It wasn’t easy, but it did dispel the phantoms that turned me into an emotional wreck, and helped me break free of a vicious circle of twisted mysteries. All those years when I was growing up, I listened in different majalis how God doesn’t forgive the one who has hurt you as long as you don’t. I grew up with Naani telling me that we must forgive people who hurt us so that God forgive them too. We must not inflict such a curse on someone. She said forgiving people only makes us better and raises us in the eyes of God. All that time, I thought I am capable of forgiving people. It was only now that I learned I’m not. I don’t have the ability to forgive those who walked out of my life as conveniently they had walked in giving away hollow promises in sheer haste. They might be mere words for them, but they weren’t for me. I don’t have the capacity to forgive those who were ‘kidding’ themselves all along, and in that they created a mess of my life. Forgiving is a right, and it’s up to me whether I use it or not. And I choose not to. Not anywhere soon at least.

Another significant thing that I learned, was how wrong I was in timing myself. I had only limited myself to time-marks blindly believing that things will work out only after my calculated time. I wouldn’t do what I must do until so and so month. I wouldn’t start working to get myself back until this date. I wouldn’t blog until the exams get over. And so on. What I didn’t realize, despite being well aware, that time is fluid and life is happening. By the time you cover a certain milestone, a lot of unforeseen incidents take place and plans ultimately change. I had only bound my actions to unnecessary time-posts that only delayed my peace. I didn’t do what I should have done earlier just because I had timed myself. I didn’t do what I thought I’d do when I will find the will to completely let go, and then it was too late. It was only after how a friend told me, that what I cannot do today, cannot be done tomorrow either. "What can be done tomorrow, can also be done today. Find the will. Only you can change your life." Where words are capable of depriving you of hope; they also serve well to fill you with inspiration. I really sometimes fail to believe they are my friends, how do they do that? Because surprisingly enough, she had me convinced. Something... Clicked.

So. I broke my time marks, and the membrane of vulnerability. My exams are still on, and I posted a blog. Because I had decided that after I write a post about it, I might get some closure. I will no more look back at it with regret, that wouldn’t be fair. I am slowly getting back to socializing and practicing more talking. The last week has been quite well. Chachu was leaving for Dubai again, this time for a long stay, so I had a good family time when we went over to stay at his place and then planned a grand farewell dinner for him. And then luckily, the people I hold very dear, the people who had flown thousand miles away, are back for vacations to where they really belong –Home. So I spent most of my time with them, going out at night to the beach or watching seasons of Friends and ordering food or simply talking all night. I feel amazingly healthy. And you thought right, I do have my exams going on. Yeah well.

Tomorrow there is Milaad and Niyaaz at home, so everyone will be here tonight, keeping up the tradition of making meethi pooriyan together. I love how traditions tie us in a strong bond. I love how family’s support helps you get over every sorrow. Life feels a lot less dreary when you have such a family that knows how to value relations and adhere to traditions, and a handful of genuine friends who keep you from falling apart. They didn't give up on me even after how hopelessly I gave up on myself. Having felt their concerns so closely, I am truly grateful. And this had to be confessed, 'cause gratitude that is not expressed is of no good to anyone.

The dreams however have completely stopped appearing. But in due course, I am convinced, they will appear again. There are a few more updates, but I will keep them to share later. I am writing after some time, so I've tried quite hard to make the post appear cohesive. Hope it does. I will also share the pictures of the food and milaad as well in my next post.

…It is only now that I realize what my portrait really consists of.