My Bubble

The world is a bubble with millions of bubbles within it – a small portion of which is visible, the rest all virtual. But I don’t plan to write about the bigger bubbles now but the one small one to which I have kind of confined myself to –my bubble.

Heuristically thinking, I always found myself a ‘good’ person who thought well, who wanted to do something for the kids forced into beggary by mafias, women abused by their in-laws, kids rotting in juvenile jails for the slightest of crimes, uneducated masses in our country, etc. I always had a strong self-esteem which made me like myself by telling me that I am an educated, informed and mentally healthy individual, hence a responsible citizen as well who contributed positively to the society. But it seems that I should be getting my assumption rechecked –the assumption that being educated, informed and healthy made me a responsible citizen who contributed positively to the society.

Now, trying to think of things objectively rather than heuristically, I shall very honestly write about what I do on a typical day, which indeed is an embarrassing thing to do, yet I shall. Better out than in.

Wake up in the morning or rather fifteen minutes from the time I should be leaving for college at, fail to get ready in those fifteen minutes and leave ten minutes late, get ten minutes late to class everyday (all the teachers for the first period this semester are lenient), spend the class hours listening well mostly, crave for the bell to ring, leave as soon as it does, get home at 1.30 , get to the laptop, give it some time, - some meaning a couple of hours, say zuhr, get back to the laptop, eat food at five watching something the laptop shows, say asr and then maghrib closely, get back to the lappy, eat dinner, say isha, sleep with my best friend –my lappy. These were the typical days. Things I do other than usual are playing with my cousin’s kids on Fridays till 8 after coming from IBA, doing assignments early in the morning, the day they are to be submitted, writing my diary, acting on impulses –such as cooking a new weird dish, taking a shot of something boringly ordinary for others with my camera and then transforming it to something worth looking at (not always successfully though), doing a Dars for kids at Sundays, doing Iqra work, visiting my mom for the day eventually doing nothing at all, all the while I am there, sketching and I don’t think I should mention things I do once or twice a year like cleaning my cupboard or serving the guests.

So, that’s about it. It took me twenty years on this planet to realize that just being an ‘educated’ citizen doesn’t make me a responsible individual –it only stops me from doing bad which I am not supposed to do in the first place. Responsible people, I think, are people who go out of their way to contribute to the society and lend the needy a helping hand. Yes, there are famous people like Abdul Sattaar Edhi and Dr. Adeeb Rizvi who have devoted their entire lives for a cause, yet there are others, not so famous ones, who lack the same capacity, power or motivation to do so and yet they donate parts of their lives – a couple of days, hours, at times only a few minutes for others because they believe they CAN bring about a change, irrespective of the magnitude of their contribution.

Our country is deep in crisis today –crisis of mind, body, soul and almost everything. May be the crisis is real or may be just an illusion but it is affecting us in a way we certainly do not want it to. And I know only one thing, when such a misbalance in a society exists, apathy hurts more than anything else and that the left scale that has so badly gone down can only come up if apathetic young minds, such as mine, wake up and at least try checking out how stepping into the right scale feels like.

Its-Little-Black-Boxness

Once when I was 10, I went to this hospital where the lights were pretty dim and nana wouldn’t let me read the Sherlock Holmes book I had brought with me. I was pretty bored and the book was exciting, so I just peeped in every now and then. And how blissful it felt, just to forget everything around you and just be in the world of the author. To forget the bully at your school, the friend who you just found out to be your backstabber, the parents who fight every other day and make your home hell, the teacher who beats you just to let her frustration out because her husband dislikes her because of the big mole on her lips.

Today, I am 20, I don’t carry my books with me and I don’t care about the lights being dim either. I have a magic thing in my pocket, actually in my hand most of the time. It’s smaller and lighter than my Sherlock Holmes book and even more magical… or so I have begun to think. It’s what people call a cell phone… or a mobile. I love my mobile more than any other of my possessions not because it’s cute or expensive but because of what it gives me 24/7 –it never lets me be alone. Hold on! oO... *Realization strikes*

Yes, it never lets me be alone in all senses possible. Everybody in the entire world has every right in the universe to inform me about things I wouldn’t wish to know about at that particular moment. Such as a teacher who upon getting an academic rush upon his clock striking 12 at night passes it down to the CR who delights us with the news of a quiz the very next day… hellO!

Second, it makes me an utterly irresponsible person in people’s sight if I don’t reply to their messages within an hour or so –‘wow, that was a quick reply’ is the sarcasm-filled response I get from people I reply to an hour later just because I fell asleep replying to their last message which inflicted me with utter boredom by its lameness. And man, I think I have much better things to do than to clutch that small black box like a kid who holds on to his teddy bear at moments of insecurity.

Third, it nullifies the whole purpose of a time-out kind of thing. E.g. I go get locked in my room to ‘get some fresh air’, after a while someone knocks, I ignore, pretending to be asleep, after a minute my cell rings –wth! What did u say; I should have turned it off before? Err, I don’t think I can use the same excuse of the battery running out or the phone being on silent every time!

Off course, the littler the little black box gets, the cooler it seems however, I think the cooler we think the box to be, the less cooler our lives become for various reasons, a tiny number of which I just mentioned above.

Indeed, it turns out to be a super saviour at many a needy times –I bet you can remember a dozen of them right now –when the little black box comes to the rescue but I think we need to rescue ourselves from depending a little too much upon its-little-black-boxness.