23rd March...we need a resolution again!!!

Hey look its 23rd March again... and guess what its on Friday this year and that means a long weekend! WOW what fun. Face it this is how most of us think about this holiday. I am not spoil sport or someone who wants to ruin your fun, its nice that something historical is marked with a holiday and its a time for some relaxation and fun.Yet it is also a time for soul searching and to take a moment to ponder have the objectives been achieved. On 23rd March 1940, a resolution was passed and coupled with an iron will and untiring struggle the resolution became a reality.
Today faced with corruption, hunger, lawlessness and staring down a never ending abyss, we need a new resolution. But before that we have to conquer our fears, our political affiliations, our linguistic borders. Today we have to become one, we have to become the people if not unified by any affiliation. But at least we are united by pain, by agony and by the frustration that is growing with every passing day. We blame these feelings on those that have power and are in the high and mighty positions and yes they are responsible and in time would have to pay their due share, but the truth is that the responsibility of the situation we find ourselves in lies with us, each and every one of us!
But why have we found ourselves in this place where we see nothing but darkness, it is due to fear. We have always sacrificed our liberty, our rights and our freedom because of our fear. But whenever even for brief fleeting moments in our history we have forsaken fear and have believed in ourselves we have achieved things, against the worst of odds and have rescued hope from the very jaws of the abyss that grips us today. Be it the cornered tigers of 1992, be it the single unit that stopped the charge of a whole brigade on BRB in 1965, be it Abdul Sattar Edhi, be it Jinnah, never has fear seemed so powerless than when we have donned the armor of belief and  have decided to devote ourselves to a cause, to an ideal!
Today we need this resolution once more, we need to forsake political sympathies, we need to forsake fear of the high and the mighty, we are the people , we are the power!!! And the sooner we realize it the better. But this power does not mean an utter lawless and destructive approach, it requires a systematic upheaval of the system that was made for slaves and not free men. It requires the devotion to this ideal and a state of constant evolution to make ourselves worthy. It requires unity, faith and discipline.It requires the belief that throughout history to make a difference only a few committed people are required, we need to change ourselves and prepare ourselves. We need a new resolution to make Pakistan free of these blood thirsty animals, who feed on human flesh, dreams and hopes of the people. We need to get rid of them all, from those who clad themselves in a veil of religion to carry out their high handedness to those who use modernity in all its nakedness to relieve ourselves of our rights. We need to rid ourselves from all those who follow a doctrine of necessity, their necessities at the cost of the people.
If you do not rise today, if you do not make a promise, then years from now, you may have a life but you will not have a meaning to it, Just like today you have a holiday but no understanding of its meaning!
Happy Pakistan Day to All of you!

Of roaming ghosts and a semblance of peace within

Today a piece of news brought me to writing this piece, and it said "A year after whole neighborhoods full of people were killed by the Japanese tsunami, rumors of ghosts swirl in Ishinomaki as the city struggles to come to terms with the awful tragedy" 

Yes a whole town flooded with ghosts, ghosts of those who died in that one instant... in that one flash. The reasons complex, intricate yet interesting build up many theories. Some say it is part of the healing process as society comes to grips with this great tragedy. Others link it to the great sense of loss and some say it is due to the sudden and intense nature of the grief suffered by the residents. They fear going to parts of town that were wiped out completely. 

Yet i ask myself, i was not there then why do i grapple with ghosts and fears of my past everyday of my life. These ghosts that roam corners of our heart, haunt our soul where do they come from. No tsunami hit the shores of my soul and wiped out the residents, it was but the normal waves that lash the shores everyday! 

Today those grieved citizens, me and may be some of you also see those ghosts but isn't that because all of us are but in search of that true inner peace. Humanity today strives in a tiring en devour to latch on to some semblance of inner peace. Today don't we search for some semblance of belief with which we can cling. For ages we have credited our success  to our hard work, yet never for a moment we realize that whenever a power has become too strong, a counter balance either by luck or some calamity has always existed. Whether we believe it or not there is a power far greater and stronger than us. 

Yet that semblance of peace will not arrive by virtue of messiahs, it will only arrive when humanity again starts to be humane. When humans are not commodities, numbers or statistics, only then will our souls darkest corners shine, only then will the haunting ghosts peacefully pass on to the other side. We have ceased to be humans, our true cause and soul lost in lust, greed and relations based on need. We have willfully ignored the quality, that was being a human and treating a fellow being as one and have lost our inner peace. Ghosts haunt us, pain drives us to insanity, fears roam free every moment. In the debris of our soul and crumbled abodes of our hearts ghosts roam and we fear to go there. Yet our only solace is to reach deep within a grasp the last shreds of humanity left in us and then sow a new crop, build a new abode. Only then will the souls gain an easy transition to the other side where they will shine like angels, smiling down upon us from the heavens above.