It was my convocation today.

Dear Little ones,

It was my convocation today.  The day we strive for. The day our ammi abu look forward to.

The day with century old tradion of draping in robe and receiving your degree. The moment when knowledge acknowledges and presents you to the world. The day when you can see the pride in the eyes of your parents and realize it was all worth it. You know the day that you won't ever see.

Today, standing here and receiving condolences, I realized it’s the day when I have failed you. When the system has failed you. When the God trafficked at lower prices turned out to be faulty.

For I stand here while you are mourned. For I could have stood up, fought and combated the faulty version of God that was fed to create monsters. For I could have stood up and saved you years before you were born.

It took your deaths to make me realise that there stands just one type of Taliban today.

The one that kills justifying the killing as revenge.

The one that refuses to condemn citing reasons of various sorts.

The one that brutally repeats the massarcre, disecting the bodies of innocent ones by presenting faulty wisdom, conditionalities and justifications for your killings.

The one that plans to the one that executes to the one that downplays your significance by getting stuck in the egoistic debates over vigils versus Quranic recitations.

The one that stands as psychologically infertile, unable to think beyond his own brand of religion.

Today, there is no good taliban and no bad taliban. There is only one kind of Taliban for me.

Dear Little ones,

It was my convocation today, the day you will never experience. I killed your chance of experiencing the day by letting the psychologically infertile minds target you.

Dear Little ones,

It was my convocation today and I am sorry for I have nothing to offer besides dedicating this day of knowledge to you. As you died, you opened my eyes to the only kind of Taliban that exists in my country today.

You died and with you died my fear. You died but gave birth to realisation.

Remembering a verse

* The words below is a piece of writing I came across recetny; amid various expression struggling to express about the Peshawar attack, this one seemed to resonate with what I was struggling to express. With permission from the writer (Zain), sharing the post as it is.  

 "More than 100 kids were killed today in Peshawar, Pakistan.

Muslims use the verse from Quran, Inna Lillahi wa inna ilaihi raji'un in times of death. This term, translating to "We belong to Allah and to Him we return" is used to share the feelings and ideology of being grateful and thankful to Allah for whatever happens.

More than 100 kids were killed today in Peshawar, Pakistan.

Perhaps Muslims have forgotten another verse, which says, "Bi ayyi dhambin qutilat" (81:9), translating to: "For what sin was she killed?", related to some young girl.

More than 100 kids were killed today in Peshawar, and ask the parents, they are crying the same verse: For what sin were they killed? The young ones - who are yet to learn ideologies.

People in Pakistan, who have soft corners for those who talk of the contemporary ideology of Jihad, and have soft corners for these brutal animals who kill kids because they believe it is a "retaliation" of the drone attacks or Army operation, they need to open their eyes and learn from Quetta blasts and killings. When the Quetta blasts happened targeting Hazara community, as retaliation, nobody was harmed, the bodies were put to the grounds asking for justice, something that is hard to get in Pakistan.

More than 100 kids we killed today in Peshawar. Would the parents or anyone else do a sit in and shut down to ask for justice? Probably not.

Shut down, sit ins, and rallies, are usually to secure political or religious ideologies. We have seen sit ins and shut downs in the case of Quetta killings in the recent past, but that was from a minority group, with a set goal of imposing a state of emergency and removing the provincial government.

More than 100 kids were killed today in Peshawar, and no, it is not the time of patience. It is the time to actualize who is the perpetrator, to find the institutions where soft corners are kept, where people confuse these as reactions to drone attacks and Army operation.

More than 100 kids were killed today in Peshawar, and if you still have any kind of soft corner or confused logic in your mind that this was a reaction to drone attacks and army operation, then you may wait till you lose people from your own immediate family and realize all this.

More than 100 kids were killed today, it is not just the time to say Inna Lillah wa Inna ilayhay raji'un, it is the time to question ideologies, to question the way Quran does; For what sin were these kids killed? To take up this verse and question those who justify killing as a reaction."

- Zain

Look around.

You see these humans walking around in the park?

See the lady in that pink jacket playing with her little kid near the swings?

See that old couple sitting and staring somewhere far on that bench?

See that young couple that just walked by, entangled in each other's arms?

That little teen in blue jacket on that bench with books and macbook?

This girl in late 20s or early 30s who just cycled by?

You see. Some of them are alone. Some with another human. Their age, older or younger.

Issue is, each one of them is gazing into the wilderness of what the other has or doesn't have.

Each wants another human, another job, another activity or something "another" that they don't seem to have at this moment in time.

Issue is, sitting here and interrupting the intensity of their gaze to make them realize is difficult.

For no matter how hard you try, it's only after running a whole track of losing and gaining people, jobs, money and other things that a human comes to a realisation.

A realisation that for you to eliminate loneliness and vacuum, you don't need to focus on what you don't have. Human, out of the shere pain of internal vacuum, often succumbs to positioning the lack, the pain, as a misery; consequently often striking a deal, getting what it wants and acquiring temporary fulfillment.

Ask that old couple sitting on that bench. Have they gotten absolutely what they wanted? They'd say, eventually yes.

Now ask them, did it come to them through how they positioned their vacuums, needs and miseries to the world or did it all come to them in its all due time?

Eventually you get everything you want. In due time. You get exactly what you need at exactly the moment you need it. Not a second more. Not a second less. Not a thing more. Not a thing less.

Trying to acquire something is different from obsessively wanting something. The first stems out of an understanding that having something doesn't make you complete. The latter stems out of a shere compulsive delusion that the acquired thing will make you complete.

We love portraying ourselves as passive victims of this world, of this society. Often a times, in our effort to bargain a better deal with the world. And if not with the world, then with ourselves. For the self pity of the words of the situation we are in soothes us and resonates the reassurance of our role as a victim.

The world is unjust. Indeed so. But doubting His justice to his people or His spread of appearant/nonappearant suffering/blessings is like confining Him in our little books of accounts.

In doing so, are we forgetting the Creator who created the very concept of Justice? In running after the world are we not trying to fill the vacuum meant for Him by everything apart from Him.