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.