Nah, that’s Impossible

From this…

To this….

Everything changed, while I traveled from that to this…

So I used to hear a phrase, ‘the word impossible is not in my dictionary’ and I used to think, what kind of a crappy dictionary do these people own? I mean, there are a lot of impossible things in this world, no? You can not fly like a bird, can not just reach out and touch the sky, can not pass one day without shedding out tears. It’s just impossible. I defined impossible.

But turns out, the word ‘impossible’ somehow got erased from my dictionary as well. At least how my mind used to define impossible sure is changed. If I was the same girl who would sit on the desk in that first photo, the girl sitting on the desk in that second photo would have been a marvelous strange character of some piece of fiction.

Now that I sit on that second desk in real, I can’t stop thinking about that sad, miserable little girl who would when ride her daddy’s or later husband’s car never by any chance think that she would own her own car one day. Who would when spend her daddy’s or husband’s money to buy stuff for herself never think that she would buy stuff with her own self-earned money one day. And, her fingers which would press these buttons on the keyboard just to let her sadness and pain out would ever write programming code for UK’s largest travel agents. Still sounds funny to me, I swear. I never thought I would achieve all this, but I sure used to dream it like a dirty little fantasy.

In this short period I have made my parents proud a couple of times, I think. At least they show me off to other people and that’s a big thing to me. As a matter of fact, I have proved it to the world around me that yeah I can do something on my own, that I am capable of doing more than what they thought of me. And believe me, they thought very little. It’s even a little fun to look at their faces when they find out things about me. I feel proud. I have proved myself that maybe, when I used to think I am worthless, it wasn’t so true after all.

Big achievements is not a thing, it’s the teeny tiny steps you take towards those achievements that matter. My achievements may not sound much to you, you may think this woman has gone crazy, but these are big for me. I know how much I have struggled, and how ready I am to struggle a hundred times more.

You may not even read this rant of mine that sounds like I am in heaven , or that I am high. Same thing. I am not. I am the same, just a little more plastered on the wounds than you expected me to be. However, it’s still a long way to go.

 

 

 

 

Wandering Venture

Grey Street (Credits: This)

‘Is this a dream or reality?’ I am sure some of you, if not all, may have asked themselves the same question in an intricate day-dreaming state of mind.

I am standing right now beside these tall ancient buildings, asking myself the same question. The buildings are dark brown with just the right amount of golden shade that adds to their glory. Its not easy to look towards the top  without straining you neck, but it is worth it. Doing that makes you feel small, almost too tiny to meet eyes with your own conscience.

I am confused. I can’t decide whether to reflect myself in the magic of these buildings that are connected to each other but feel so apart, that they seem lonely. Or to look at people, walking hand in hand, in pairs and in groups, with smiles on their faces talking to each other, enjoying each other’s company better than the silence of these buildings. And listen to the stories being told by their eyes casting sorrowful shadows that are mismatched to the big upward curve of their lips.

At places between the main road with tall buildings, there are narrow streets that emerge out of nowhere. Strolling on these streets is a totally different experience. I feel like I am inside a historical Hollywood movie, in which wars are fought and traditions are preserved. The walking paths here are made of bricks and carry small vintage cafes, pubs and restaurants that give out a strange homely feeling. Everything is perfect, the architecture, the colors and the classical smell. I walk closer to the wall along one of a vintage cafe with old furniture, some torn up books and a piano in it’s window and touch it. And wonder if it is just me, ……or anyone else can also hear sobs?

Well, may be it is just me. I am a traveler not a tourist, so I tend to feel things no one else can. I am not even sure if those things are real or is it just my own reflection that I see in places that own footsteps of people from thousands of years ago.

I pause for a second and take a deep long breath, trying to take in the air that smells of the past. Standing there right beside my eyes; Centuries pass, faces walking along these paths change, some colors fade and some are brightened, spellings on the name boards at the front of little shops are shuffled to form other words and melancholy… it lingers in the air of these streets. And Within a blink of my eye, it all comes back to the present. Its just a street, a normal street that quite conveniently takes you to your destination. Right. But where would it take you if you don’t have any destination at all?

After wandering around for the whole day it is time to go back. But the strange thing? My heart. It used to be active, mostly to cry and be sad but it was active. Active is being alive, no? And right now, after seeing so much, I feel like I have seen nothing. Do I feel sad now? I do, yes. Do I cry and ask for help? No I don’t. Because there is no one. Absolutely no one. Just the silence and empty heart beats. I laugh now, I tell jokes. I am funny. Because, I guess I have no other option. Not being funny asks for someone to listen to the reason of not being funny and there is no one. So hey there lifeless buildings and silent streets, You are about to be discovered some more by a traveler who is not alive anymore.

 

 

About A Dream.

Dream. ©Lala Rukh

There is this beautiful garden fenced in by tall trees. Some flowers along the sides, a bench in the corner facing the setting sun. The kind of bench in tales. Where you dream to sit with the one you love, staring at the peace lingering in the air. Where leaves are somehow greener than usual and where flowers smell better than most expensive scents of this world. Where birds chirp to compose melodies so soothing that you wish time to stop there for a while. Where grass dances with the wind and tickles your feet. And where we, us together, sit and stare at the sun trying to hide away in the clouds, being brighter that ever. Diffusing warmth inside our hearts. And where our hands touch,meet, as if they were made to be in each others embrace forever.

Perfection find it’s meaning here. May be it’s heaven.

May be it’s a dream.

But then. Something, may be reality, yanks you to life. Or may be it was life itself.

You discern. You realize.

This place. This beautiful place. That felt almost enchanted to you, it’s not special. It’s ordinary. Nothing is perfect here.

You realize, perfection lies only in dreams. And you remember, your dreams were always meant to shatter.

The air, that you imagined holding peace, suffocates you. The leaves are not so green either, they turn black, they wither and fall right in front of your eyes. Birds here don’t sing. They mourn. Flowers smell of burning desires, grass doesn’t dance either. It moans with it’s head down.

The beautiful garden, is not beautiful anymore. Not so perfect. It’s ugly.

The sun, it’s burning everything alive. It always burns. You were wrong to expect warmth from it. You were wrong to expect at all. Expectations are meant to be failed.

Your hands, sitting comfortably in each others embrace, shiver, are pulled apart.

And then you realize, you were all alone there. Always alone. Forever alone. The person you love was never meant to be a part of your dreams.

Your dreams, huh, your dreams. Dreams which were shattered once, so hard and so painfully, that your eyes would quiver with fear before thinking of watching them again. Dreams that once injured your heart and your soul so bad, that blisters there would ooze blood every time you took a breath. Dreams, that you promised yourself never to watch again.

How dare you break that promise? How dare you see a beautiful dream again.

It was meant to be shaken up, broken and shattered. It was meant to hurt you once again.

You realize, doing the forbidden never brings Love. Just tears. And tears are words that need to be written, after all.

 

My Childhood Home

Alone beneath the shadows © Lalarukh

 

With her back leaning against the wall, she sits down on the ground. It feels cold to her palms. Despite the fact that it is really hot out there, with sun at its peak in the noon, and with almost forty five degrees temperature, there is a row of trees behind this wall that keeps the passage way where she sits a bit cool with their shadows. And she has her history with deep shadows and darkness.

It’s ironic. Right in front of her, with the opposite wall she used to make a home with long sheets and pillows in her childhood. She’d make a kitchen with small plastic utensils and some snacks and then invite her little brothers to have tea. And she had this pink box with small clippings of extra cloth drops and pieces of laces and threads and a needle and she’d sew these things together to make random designs and what not. And she’d sit there all day busy in her little chores. It felt amazing.

The pink box is gone along with her childhood. Her brothers are grown up and living far away places. Those tiny plastic utensils, her mother safely placed at the shelf in her room along side other useless items she used to play with. Her mother dusts these daily but never ever thinks of throwing or giving away. Mothers. They have their own ways.

A bird chirps from the trees above. Their is a mud pot placed right beside her, filled with water for the birds to drink. It is really hot out there. This house, it used to be filled with laughter and shouting and excitement where a strange kind of silence and sadness resides now. Her mother and father, they have grown old. They look tired when they smile.

Tear, a tear rolls down her cheek and falls on the ground, cold enough in the presence of summer’s bright sun. May be its the tree’s. It’s their way of grieving. Over beautiful lost memories and a cheerless future. Or may be it’s the coldness from inside of her heart. It’s dead, after putting up with so much pain and faking happiness for so long, it’s finally dead. She is scared, this home with all it’s memories and charm, what if it wakes up her heart again? But then dead can’t be woken up, can they?

She thinks of her room. It feels haunted to her. She remembers when she was little, she had an art wall in her room. She would make drawings,paintings,scribbles and art and then stick those to the wall. Her drawings and art work improved as she grew up and it was all there at the wall which she was proud of. And then once while the house had to get painted, she had to remove her art from the wall with her own hands. She was sad. She was a teenager at that time. A long cupboard with lots of shelves was then placed alongside her wall. That cupboard now contains fragments of her childhood and they get dusted daily by her mother.

Those albums with her baby photos, school functions and their family day outs, that car which saw her and her siblings grow up from children to teenagers and then adults, that same TV they used to watch cartoons on, the fans the ceilings the walls, nothing’s changed, everything haunts her. The memories are beautiful. It’s the fact that nothing like this can happen in future that wrings the heart and wrinkles the soul.

She weeps. Head in her lap, hands wrapped around the knees she weeps. Her shadowed self, this mud pot, all these trees and those countless memories that crowded in her mind and flowed through her veins while sitting here, this scene, it would freeze in her eyes and would be a valuable treasure for the rest of her life to come, away from her home.

That day, she buried herself right there, in the passage way, beneath the shadows and under the weight of good old childhood memories to live inside them forever.

 

 

 

An Open Letter From a Dead Child To His Mother On His Death Anniversary

A mother crying on the death of her child- Peshawar School Attack 16 December 2014, Pakistan.

Ma!

It’s 16 December. The day you saw my blood stained dead body. The day you died along with me. It’s our first death anniversary Ma.

I can see your red swollen eyes today, you didn’t sleep Ma, I know it. I can see your hands tremble while you make tea for Baba. I can hear that painful unspoken conversation between you and Baba. When you look at each other and say nothing, your silence tells me all. The wails of your heart and the cries of Baba’s eyes, they pierce my heart. It’s been a whole year since that happened, but you still live in the moment I died. The days after that, they didn’t pass for you.

I know you can see the wound of bullet on my head bleeding again today. The very place where you used to kiss me before sending me off to school. My white shirt which you used to wash with such pure love, It’s blood stained forever in your heart. You clean my books, my toys, my chair where I’d sit to eat and my plate everyday, with your scarf. Today when you clean, I know you can hear these weep with you.

Remember Ma, the day when they entered our school with big guns and started shooting at the children. There were cries everywhere. I was scared. I called your name. You were not there. You were running in the street towards my school without shoes.

My friends with whom I’d play everyday, they were crying and falling down while bullets hit them. I saw a pile of small bodies on the ground beside me Ma. I was standing in a pool of blood when a bullet hit my arm Ma, It was so painful. I fell on the ground. Your little kid Ma, your baby. I remember how you wept when I once had my arm broken while playing. I had a bullet in it now, I knew you’d come to save me.

They fired up my teacher who tried to save us, she burned to death alive and we saw it. It was all so scary. I wanted to hug you and hide in your shawl. I called you Ma. I tried getting up and run to you but I couldn’t. One of them saw me. He came towards me and put his gun on my forehead. It hurt so much Ma, so much. I looked him in the eyes. I wasn’t afraid of him, he was a coward. I did called you and baba for the last time before he fired the bullet.

I saw you from up there, when between blood stained books and misplaced shoes you searched for me. When in the hospital Baba showed you my little cold body. When you touched my face, brushed my hair and fell down. Hysterical, crying, unconscious. The eyes that you saw shining in the morning, they were dark. The tongue you heard speaking, singing poems while having breakfast, it was silent forever. I felt your pain Ma. I felt the pain of 132 Mothers that day.

Please don’t cry Ma. Do you know, with every tear that sheds from your eyes, a beautiful flower blossoms here in our garden. Oh did I forget to tell you? We are here Ma in this magical garden with green grass and so many beautiful flowers. They smell of you Ma. We play here and laugh. We have Allah here with us, who love us like you do. He takes care of us and He tells us that you and Baba will be here one day and then we’ll live together in peace. No bad people can enter here with their guns.

I want you to be strong Ma. We’ll meet one day. You can kiss me on the forehead then and wrap me up inside you.

Till then, With Love.

Your Brave Son.

 

From this….

To this…

 

 

 

 

Thoughts Of A Stormy Night

Sitting there on the floor in the middle of the night and staring at the fog covered window, she looks like a complete mess. She has sore red skin around her nails and her back aches like hell. Tears are rolling down her cheeks that sink into her messy hair making them a bigger mess. But she don’t care. Nothing matters anymore.

Everything around her is awfully silent. This carpet, the walls, the golden vase in the window, the overly caring sleeping husband, the ticking clock, one of the two hearts in the room…. Everything. Except that scary gust of wind that shoos away the silence from time to time. Reminding her of some nostalgic moments back home and of the fact that she is awake. Not sleeping. It’s almost midnight. And she doesn’t have insomnia.

There is no moon today. Sky is all dark and red and frightening. Like in horror movies. Where suddenly a vampire jumps at an innocent victim to suck blood out of it. Only, the difference here is, the victim is already devoid of blood, and life. There is just a lot of hollowness and quiet. This much quiet is dreadful.

Why isn’t this fog disappearing? And why isn’t time moving any faster? And why isn’t this mind shutting up already? It has to do a lot of thinking tomorrow. Once again. Lots and lots of crap. About her painful past. And fruitless present. And fearful future.

Oh and I forgot to mention, she does just go with the flow. Smooth. Because you know, only the dead can go with the flow. The alive, they fight. Till the last breath. And she? She hadn’t took a breath in for a long time. Along the road of breathing through an oxygen mask somewhere, she forgot to do it on her own even when she had a chance. Some things we can choose to forget, some things we can’t.

Oh and did I mention, that that ‘she’ is me? Right now? I think I should get some sleep. This sound of rain, it makes me feel dizzy. Stormy gushes were a lot better !

I Find Myself Scattered…

I find myself scattered amid times age-old

In myths beyond expression, In tales untold

In sinful thought of a saint with heart unsure

In glare of kindness that emits from a whore

In pure love between a couple,weirdest of all

Man as tiny as a dwarf, Girl so fat and tall

In the winds that blow away veil of a wise girl

With face painfully ugly, eyes green like pearl

I find myself scattered amid times age-old

In myths beyond expression, In tales untold

In wildest fears of Syrian Refugees in a boat

In eyes of Peshawar child, knife at his throat

In the fire that burn Gaza’s screaming new-born

In bullets fired at her mother with ripped womb

In hopeful eyes of tiny girl fighting with Cancer

In ungratefulness of healthy finding no answer

I find myself scattered amid times age-old

In myths beyond expression, In tales untold

In the Kaaba of my soul, In Prayers unheard

In pleasant sounding sad chirps of a caged bird

In emptiness of Namaz, In pleasures of Love

In finding Him in heart, not in the sky above

I find myself scattered everywhere but in me

Help me gather up myself, Please let me BE!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fire, Water And Humans !

A fire festival in Fukushima.

Fire and water, two opposite forces forever lost in epic revelry. Fire seems to be the destructive one, which strangely proves out to be  the most fruitful while providing food to humans. Water be the constructive one, floods away civilizations with it. Isn’t it strange ? What force urges these to change their entire nature ?

That was the question that hopped into my mind a couple of weeks ago. It was 7 in the morning and I was sleeping in my room with air conditioner turned on when suddenly a pungent smell entered my nostrils and woke me up. It took me a while to figure out what had forced me to wake up and when I recognized that smell, I turned my neck back and here it was. With all it’s glory it was fiercely shoving it’s orangish-yellow sparks up towards the roof as if it will consume everything coming in it’s way and turn it to black ash.

I hadn’t seen such a big fire live in front of my eyes before. I am so afraid of fire that I had never lit up the stove for cooking food by myself ever in my life. Witnessing this kind of fire that closely was a night mare. I got up and ran outside shouting for help. My room was all covered in thick black smoke and when I opened the door that smoke started spreading all over the TV lounge. My dad figured out what has happened and turned the main switch off. My mom and brother filled up buckets with water but when electricity supply was cut off, the fire extinguished slowly by itself. I stood there with shivering legs and thumping heartbeat and it took me some hours to get back to being normal.

Our Ac got burnt but there was no other loss by the grace of God. The story may be told dramatically, but it is hundred percent true. That scene still give me shivers whenever it flashes back into my mind. If I wouldn’t have got up that time, the smoke would have made me unconscious and I might not be with you right now, telling you stories.

Children affected by flood in Pakistan, waiting for the rescue teams.

On the other hand, there is water, which has recently played havoc and drowned whole lot of  villages and cities in Pakistan. Watching footage of families standing on roofs of their destroyed homes, waiting for getting rescued, watching their animals and luggage flowing away with water. Watching a mother crying for her daughter whose dowry flooded away– It breaks my heart. Army troops are still busy rescuing hundreds of families affected from this devastating flood.

We sit here and watch them suffer. Say some sympathetic words and change the channel. And we are Humans.

What force urges things to change their nature ? I have no idea but, if this force is strong enough to change HUMANS, It sure can prove out to be a weapon of mass destruction.

 

Cracked Pink Mirror

Holding a small cracked pink mirror in her right hand she would stare at her bald head for hours. Her lifeless stone eyes would feel focused and concentrated as if they were trying to break the mirror into pieces with their melancholic gaze. Left corner of her bottom lip was swelled with bruises and clogged blood on it. A similar kind of wound could be seen at the center of her neck near the collar bone. Sometimes when she couldn’t stare at the mirror, her hands could be seen scratching her wounds with her sharp nails. It was impossible for her to rest her hands even for a few seconds. That’s what her Mother would say, three years ago, when she would keep herself busy in doing unnecessary chores along with the necessary ones. Three years later, her habits were more or less the same.

Close your eyes and think about the happy moments in your life if you want to end your depression, a voice would echo in her head. She would close her eyes but she could see nothing except the haunting black darkness. You come alone in this world and you have to return back alone. At some point in life, every relation fades away from your life. It is you who are left, hanging alone between the sky and the ground. Just start living for yourself, the voice would continue. She would look around gently and smile. He would smile back. She never was alone.

Thick tear drops would come out of her stone eyes and get absorbed in the pillow when she would yell and cry her throat out. Her feet could be seen rubbing against the hospital bed. Her fists clenched, struggling with immense pain. Eyes, closed so tightly as if they would crack themselves from inside, like her cracked pink mirror. She had to go through the same, everyday for three years. Her cracked pink mirror wasn’t broken yet. He always gives you the amount of pain that you can bear. She sure was made tough enough.

It spread in her blood through her veins, like the same way love spread once. Suffering was the same. The only difference was that love used to kill her everyday while this would kill her once and for all. Waiting for death is awful. Waiting is always awful. Death on the other hand is comforting. It gives life. It completes the cycle.

Love was necessary, so were the departures.

White is life, black is death. Living in the shades of grey is always painful.

She has Him. Who knows He would hold her hand gently and walk her to the black meadows or He would let her rejoin white.

Only in the darkness can you see the stars.

——————————————————————————————————

 

 

 

The Realistic Fiction – A Memoir

One of the other gloomiest nights wears on to a morning. She rolls her fingers over her already half-opened eyes and pulls her husband’s arm softly aside to get out of the bed. After a while, she was fastening the laces of her pink Nike trainers and ready to jog ! She knew, she’d run so hard today that her feet would feel wounded and her legs would hurt like hell. Her breath would feel irregular for hours and her heart would beat in her ears for long. And after all that, she won’t still stop. She’d jog until all the energy inside her body would be drained out. And today wasn’t different from the other days that had been creeping slowly.

Why such torture on her own self ? She had no concrete answer.

With his head filled with confusions, he turned the page. He had started reading this fiction written on a beautiful white leather covered diary but after reading only the first page, he felt some things strangely familiar. As if, he actually knows the heroine of this story…. As if….

May be, to trick her mind into thinking about her tired body rather than her ruptured heart full of fears of the future and guilt of the past. May be, to get rid of those painful anxiety attacks and depression disorders. Or maybe, just to distract herself from her own self. Sometimes, the un-satisfying reasons you give yourself are not important enough.

“I can’t have a child. I am not able enough to bring a new life into this world. For all my life I have done nothing but to hurt my loved ones. I can’t be a parent I am a total mess”

For years, these small sentences were often followed by painful cries while she’d go to sleep at nights, with needles tingling all over her body and rapid breaths getting out of control. Her husband would sit aside holding her hands and pushing her head against his chest. Sometimes, silent presence of a loved one is better that a thousand empty words. He was her doctor, her friend and her faith.

The day when their baby was born, her eyes smiled while staring at his eyes with pride. The pride of winning the battle against anxiety and depression while fighting together, the pride of loving and being loved innocently and purely — and most importantly, the pride of being a Mother !

He couldn’t find himself strong enough to read another hundred or more pages. This fiction was not a fiction, as this diary was not just a diary. 

————————

I am sitting in my bed today watching Mother’s day programs on Tv. He comes rushing towards me and hides himself  in my embrace, as he used to do when he was a kid.

“I love you, Mama ! I won’t be able to thank you for the priceless love you have given me in all these years, and I want to tell you that you are important to me more than anyone in the whole world. Everyone loved you mama, they just didn’t express their love the way you needed. I don’t want to be like them“

Saying these words, he hands me over a copy of this famous magazine. I open that half folded page in curiosity and there I see, my 25 year old story published in a neater version with my name.

I recalled, I was scared of writing diaries because the thought of getting exposed and judged frightened me. That’s why I started giving my daily anecdotes a color of fiction.

He understood my ‘fiction’ when nobody could. I wonder, how many more strange habits had he taken from his father ?

Inspired by The Daily Post.

I Am That Little Girl Today…..

I am the 8 years old me today. Thinking about the time when I was laying in my dark lonely room and when for the first time I cried, not for some childish wish to get fulfilled but with pain… because of intense pain that I felt in my heart. For the first time when I was 8. When I saw one of my brothers sleeping on one arm of my father and the other brother on the other arm. I stood there beside the door staring at them while he told them stories, of fairies and brave commandos till they fell asleep. I stared at his arms and wished for sleeping there for once, only for once but that wish never got fulfilled. Wishes have been abandoned for me since then. Instead of telling my father what I wished for that night, I came to my room and cried. That was my first real encounter with tears. Tears, that have been my friends since I was 8.

And then I remember the time when I was 15. My uncle gifted me a cell phone and I used to send random jokes to my friends when one day I met a wrong number. That wrong number remained a wrong number for me, besides he would talk to me and I would listen. I never knew his real name or who he was or where he lived. What I knew was that he was the one person in my life who would listen to whatever I had to share with him. Every problem, every change in my life, every reality revealed… I would speak and he would listen. He became my one best friend. Back then, I didn’t know that my society don’t understand or accept this kind of friendship. All I knew was that I have got someone who understands me.

And one day my mom caught me texting with him. She read our texts and all that she understood by reading them, was that I was talking to a boy. That was the first time when I got cursed. At the age of 15. My mind will collapse if I’ll try to think about what happened next but all that I remember now, is a miserable me, sitting next to my mother and staring at her lap with a boiling wish of putting my head in there and crying out loud. But I never was able to gather that much courage to do that. I used to crave sharing my matters with her and cry on her shoulder but never got a chance. I wasn’t strong enough to tell them who I am. I was afraid they would abandon me if they’d know the real me.

Every night is a night in hell for me, since then. These nights taught me how to fake emotions and how to wear a smile in public. They taught me how to collapse in the dark and weep till I gather strength to stand up in the day light. I admit, I am emotionally weak and I craved emotional support since I was 8. Yes, I am selfish because I never got expression of love that I wanted and every illusion of love felt real to me since then. I admit that I am hateful because I forget every other thing when a little ray of love strikes my heart. For all my life I have begged for love and care, I have rubbed my heels on broken stones to get a single second of peace and serenity.

I may have done thousands of sins to get a little satisfaction of being cared, but I am not that bad, am I ? Every time I loved, I ended up empty-handed. I am shedding tears in this very room of mine for 14 whole years and I am tired now. I understand that I am hateful and you have every right to hate me. I too hate myself so much that no one can even imagine. I understand that I screw things up for everyone whether it be my parents or the person I love, or the person that I was meant to love. I am tired. If I get to bear the same pain all over again, I would die. And that pain has started consuming me once again. It would have been better if it wouldn’t have gone at all, in the first place.

I really wish memories could be erased just like that…. with a little push on the button of backspace. And I really wish I could sleep one day without the burden of endless regrets, pain and guilt on my shoulders, In tranquility !