Sacred

Bundled up in a pretty pink flannel, a perfect winter day  born on a sweltering summer night, oblivious to the perils of the world that she had arrived in, to all the pain and heartache that awaited her.

Days turned to months and yet she had no name, dolly or baby anything would do. Till one day a distant relative came to visit, looked at the girl and named her, “like the moon.” Little did she know what an impact these syllables will have on that infant’s life, how she will forever have this urge to look up at earth’s satellite with awe and wonder. How through all the turbulence in her life she will derive her strength from that lunar body suspended in that vast expanse. Or maybe it was pre ordained that this girl will forever be drawn to the moon like the tidal waves, losing her sense of reality, in its cold blue light.

The first time she had to change her name, she realized how much she loved it. How much her name complete with her surname described her, defined her. She never before realized that it was not two names rather one entity.  She realized that she bore that name with pride but this new name, who was this person?  She couldn't relate to her. She felt alien in her own body when it was called, she didn't like it. She couldn't own it.

Many moons later she sat there on the roof of her father’s house, scarred and battle weary and looking at that moon promised herself that no one will again take her identity away, “no one will divorce me of me; no one shall take my name.” 

Purgation

Unable to continue any further, she fell to her knees. A long drawn prayer escaped her lips, “I will not continue to live in shame, I refuse to.Either it’s a life of honor and dignity or nothing. I will not, I will not”. It was a supplication and yet none off her words were submissive. It was as if her soul was on fire and she wanted her cries to pierce through space and carry each laden word to His throne.

She had paid heavily for the gamble, paid for it with her soul. She gripped the soil in her hands as she spread them on the ground, palms upturned like those of a beggar, she begged and then felt them forming into clenched fists." The sun will rise in the east and set in the west but not without Your will. Turn this dreary night into a bright day, let the sun of a new day throw its light on my dark soul, let me be risen from these ashes like the Phoenix. Dear God, help me, help me attack this jabberwocky and slay him, for he has me as captive in his tower of shame. Let my sins melt away and purgate me. ”

"Give me a sign", she whispered," give me a sign", she moaned.

At the exact moment when she raised her head from the ground, she felt the oppressive weight crushing her soul lifting, making way for light and she knew then. He had heard and He had accepted.

The Dark Side of the Moon

A full moon and a crisp London night. Its my 35th birthday and I feel as if a new breath fills my soul. I have shattered all  the shackles that held me fast,finally I am here. I take a look out at that moon and start pouring all this jubilation running through my veins,never again will I forget all that I knew that I had forgotten. All that I had gained was dust,all that remains is what I always knew. 

The only person holding you back is you. The only person stopping you is you.  Break the walls of pretension , the sound of that shattering glass will set you free. Free from approval, free from pretence, free from the oppressing weight of expectation.

Believe in your intuition, it will never lead you astray. Don’t let your mind colour how you feel, don’t let reason put that primitive compass aside.

Dream dreams wild and strange, dream dreams that make you soar, let your soul breathe in your imagination.

Be mindful of the present, live each moment in its entirety. In that moment there is no future, there is no past. Breathe in the here and now. Feel the bark of a tree, the damp in the grass. Look at life in all its glory, find joy in the simplest things, a gentle breeze, an apple tree.

Let go of people, of memories, of things that haunt. Understand the root of each negative feeling, accept the pain. Let go of envy, of jealousy. Let go of hate and make room for tolerance, make room for empathy. Make room for contentment; make room for the difference in you and me.

Be honest with yourself, be honest even if it cuts and bleeds for only then will you heal. Be honest about your weakness, about your sins, about your humanity.

Accept yourself; accept your pain, your mistakes, and your scars. Accept your ugliness; accept the reality of your being. Accept the grand scheme of things.

Forgive the darkness; nothing will convert that darkness into light except forgiveness. Forgive yourself, forgive others. Forgive their ignorance, their deceit; forgive their darkness and their schemes. The darkness within makes them blind, they injure no one but themselves.

Love fiercely, love passionately, love like a fool, love like the wind. Don’t rationalize, don’t think don’t reason. Love changes everything, it transforms everything. Don’t wait to receive love, give love unconditionally without reason without fear.

Travel far and near, climb a mountain, sit under a maple tree. Let nature heal you; let it hear your stories, let it whisper in your ears. Marvel in Allah’s creations, their beauty, and their simplicity. Let the wind cleanse you of your oppressing weights, let the water purge you of your sins.  Let the moon shine its light and fill you with awe.

Live each day as it were the last; tell your loved ones their place in your life. Don’t leave things unsaid, undone, don’t procrastinate in spreading joy. Don’t let your ego dictate and blind you. Don’t let regret haunt you; don’t let fear hold you back. Death is an ardent lover of life, waiting just a breath away.

Learning to Fly

I am marketer by profession,goes without saying that I am driven by a consumerist culture. In today’s world you are what you own. You are the car you drive, the watch you wear; you are the brand of shirt and the brand of shoe. You are everything that is quantifiable, measurable. No wonder then, even when we know it’s a fake Gucci and Polo, we would still rather wear the fake for otherwise how is anyone to evaluate our social standing in the hierarchy of things.

I am no more above this culture than any other average woman; rather I admit I have always had a taste for finer things, not so much as to define my social standing but because I  am slave to my own habits. I look back with little satisfaction at my role in spreading discontentment among my peers; as a marketer it was a job that applied to all aspects of my life.  The person who has little experiences the worst inferiority complexes, borne much out of one’s own lack of self worth; than a derogatory intent proposed by the others. Neither is happy, the “have-nots” rotting away with the thought of the unattainable; the “haves”, forever in a quest to maintain their social positions. The trouble is that this rat keeps chasing its own tail till tired of its useless pursuits its finally succumbs.

There is an interesting story on why I started analysing with dismay my consumer habits and their impact on my life and it all started with a Bag.

There is a rather weird chemistry between me and things; I say weird because I have not been able to understand a most remarkable phenomenon; which is, Every time I covet something subconsciously (otherwise it does not work), it somehow materializes in my life. I mean I don’t buy them they just drop in (I know incredible right!). So one day roaming around town I saw this Bag, which by all standards can be called the father of all designer bags and as I said earlier, subconsciously I admired it and thought well that’s one thing I am not spending money to get but it is amazing.

Fast forward six months and friend come to visit after a very long time; bearing a box. And yes, there it was in all its glory sitting on my table; the very Bag…..

….The first few days I was quite excited and overjoyed but with every passing day it started to feel like a burden. I was so conscious of spoiling it and ruining it (before I had a chair; it had to sit). Initially I didn't mind the attention it got, but gradually I started having mix feeling about carrying it around.

In my personal life this was a time of dark days followed by dark nights, I was battling depression and anxiety followed by the Autism diagnosis of my little boy. It was also the time for making new choices and shedding an old skin. If ever there was a blessing in my life it is having someone like Sheru. He changed the very lens of my world and this world in all its glory I started seeing in brand new colours. Sheru was able to forge open a window that no text I had ever read could. He has taught me and continues to teach me all the lessons that no great Master could have taught. With Sheru I am learning humility and patience; I am learning unconditional love and acceptance.

And while all this was taking place here was this Bag and all that it symbolized; ambition, wealth, power, success.  How it begged to be looked at, how it begged for approval. I didn't have it because I liked it I had it because of what it embodied; What it said about who I was, where I was. It was a badge that I wore that allowed me to enter a certain mindset, a certain Diaspora of people. It allowed me to feel worthy of having such a thing in my life, It allowed me to bask in those admiring glances of other women. It made me feel superior and important. It earned me a place on the table of high- powered- discontent. It belittled my soul and reduced me to the status of a fickle materialistic snob, who neither knows better nor does better. It made me spared discontentment among those who could not have it; it endeared me to those very rats chasing their very tails. And so this is what it boils down to; all those theories of altruism and selflessness. All that charade of being content; the mirror that the Bag held to my face had an ugly face in it. It showed a scared woman, a woman who wanted the wrong people to approve of her existence to validate her life. It showed a weak woman whose words and actions were at a tangent. It showed a shallow woman who judged people by their covers.

The next day “Khala” an elderly woman who helped around the house was seen taking her everyday groceries in that very Bag. Entirely unconscious of the nuisance value of her new procession; content that all the veggies were secured. 

A way to become good again

At the bottom of all pain there is only one trigger; to be loved and to be accepted. As a child it is our first and foremost desire to be approved of by our parents. We compete with our siblings and constantly try to push ourselves to gain approval, needless to say herein lay all our deepest psychological problems. You can become a world renowned whatever but If your dad didnot approve of you as a child; the whole world will chant and you will never believe it. Deep down your feeling of unworthiness will never abate. We carry this longing to be accepted as a cross throughout our lives and this loneliness is a barren land. I have seen people punish and push their selves to the hilt; so that they can conform to what their families and society at large expects them to be. Not being accepted for who you are creates a weird hollowness in your life and you continue to berate yourself; albeit unconsciously in most cases.

Is there a way to overcome any hurt that you may have experienced intentionally or unintentionally?, to accept who you are and appreciate yourself in a different mindful light? 

“There is” as Khaild Hosseini says in The Kite Runner “a way to become good again”. The answer lies in a phenomenon we call “Sila Rahmi” or “unconditional forgiveness”. What it means is that you forgive the hand that hurts you without any expectation. “Sila Rahmi” is a reward in itself, since it takes you to a much higher plane in the realms of the soul. The unconditional forgiveness frees of you of the immense burden of hate and negativity; it frees you from the cumbersome emotions of disappointment and resentment. It means that you mindfully forgive the people who have caused you pain; made you feel unworthy of love and acceptance. Does that sound weak? I fear not. Only the strongest heart and mind can accomplish a feat as amazing and great as forgiving unconditionally.

The first step to “Sila Rahmi” is kindness, random acts of kindness. Once you start tuning yourself to be kind to random strangers you will have crossed the first barrier towards the highly protected road leading to your ego. The second step is kindness to people connected to you, this process is in reverse only because years of conditioning otherwise makes it hardest for us to be vulnerable to the ones that we care for the most; where we are afraid we will get hurt the most. So we start with the people in the larger periphery of our existence, visiting the elderly relations, sending a kind message to the old school friend you haven’t spoken to in years, visiting a sick colleague, taking time out for volunteering for a good cause, It is astounding the effect these random acts will have on your well-being, how light you will feel, how full of joy.

Once we addict ourselves to the opium of kindness, we move towards the inner “Labyrinth” and there; like Sarah chants to Jareth, we repeat to the hurt that we are so afraid to confront, “You have no power over me”.  It is not easy in the case of one very dear to me, it has been a hard uphill climb with quite a few landslides on the way. You are repeatedly reminded of the callousness and the excruciating pain that you endured and yet despite all your painful memories you push forward,armed with kindness  towards that ultimate reward,“inner peace”.

It may take a moment or may take a lifetime but the journey is worth much more than any castle that we may build on our insecurities, the freedom it entails too intoxicating to be given up by surrendering to base emotions such as fear and control.

Love's Labour

Becoming a parent is like stepping in a new dimension. All your adult life nothing can prepare you for what you are about to experience. I used to want to have kids, yes; but not till I held my first born in my arms did it hit me, the responsibility it was to have a small and fragile being completely dependent on me for everything. It was daunting; I was at once scared and over joyed. My son switched on a person in me which was till that point in hibernation mode, from a woman I became a Mother.

I don’t think that anything can make you feel and act as you do for your own child. I will not generalize by saying that all parents are self-sacrificing creatures and everything they do is right; but nothing can explain the endless love you feel for your child. Sometimes you may express it and most times you may not, but you are so strongly bound with this person in ties of love and need that nothing in the world can strangle that bond. It is not surprising then, that all our deep rooted issues are tied up in our childhood and somehow tied up in our relationships with our parents.

It was not with an easy mind that I noted that my second born baby boy was not following the regular milestones. My father started asking me why Sheru didn’t look when his name was called or when something was pointed to him. I shrugged his remarks off lightly, but deep down my mother’s intuition knew that he was right; something was wrong. When Sheru turned 1, I feared that he may have hearing loss and this must explain his lack of interest in his surroundings but then there was Barney, he could watch his favorite toons on the tele for any length of time. It was the humans around him, he didn’t interact with.

The first time I read the word Autism online I froze. Sheru displayed all the symptoms; he had no eye contact, he didn’t respond to his name and he had perfectly fine hearing. I read it, but I couldn’t believe it. It is not happening to me, Sheru will be fine, I told myself and prayed. 6 months later I could not hide behind the fact that he will “grow” out of it. I started my quest, to know what I was up against but even when I read these words “non-verbal” “sensory issues” “no social skills” they didn’t sink in, they were just words. There was a beautiful boy running around with fat cheeks and watching Barney; surely they were talking of other kids, it cannot be my boy.

December 2011, I travelled from Quetta to Lahore, both my boys tucked under my arms to hear my worst fears confirmed. All my life I have talked and now uttering one word was painful; being told that maybe my son will never say a single word.  I don’t know how to describe that moment, there is no correct vocabulary invented to articulate the feeling that I had ; maybe it was as if I was hit by a train and everything broke and still I was conscious, maybe I am not sure.

But I know that I fell in a dark hole that day, a hole of self-pity and remorse. A dark pit of immense guilt and regret. I started blaming myself for having “done” this to my child, my precious boy. If I had not done this, if I hadn’t done that; surely God was punishing me for my sins. It has to be my fault and I am going to pay the price for all the evil deeds I committed, rather my son will pay the price. What a befitting sentence my Maker had sent my way; inflict pain on my dearest one.

Despite my inner battles, I knew that time was of essence and I did not have the luxury to grieve. I started looking for therapies to help Sheru and to educate myself. We started behavioral and speech therapy when Sheru was 2 and half. We travelled to any door that could help us doctors, faith healers and parents with Autistic Children. Sitting in hospitals and waiting rooms; I pray that no person ever has to carry their child to such places looking for answers, for there are none. Autism has no cause and no cure.

Going into the therapy center was a whole new world for me. Children of all ages, small and big with mothers so dedicated, so brave; striving to make their children’s life better. I met with such brave people that all my complaining seemed nothing in comparison. My pain looked trivial compared with theirs. Parents with two or more kids on the spectrum, women whose spouses left them for having special needs children. Where there was so much pain there was also incredible and unconditional love.

Sheru started responding to his name at age 2 and soon after started looking at me, sometimes for a few seconds. Gradually he started connecting with me; but there were no words. He had no connection with anyone or anything around him. Sheru would wander off and I lived in constant fear of losing him. Once we were at a dinner in a public place, I lost sight of him for a few moments and next he was gone. The ten minutes that I spent, again only a parent can understand who loses a child, they may have been ten minutes or a century I don’t know, it was too surreal like living in a nightmare. What I know is that maybe I came out of that trance only when I saw a cousin carrying him in his arms.

There were times when I would wake up in the middle of the night and start fighting with God. “No You cannot do this; give me expression and deny my son a normal life; You will not do this to my child, punish me if you will, make me sick, but don’t deny my son a normal life”, soon my banter would turn to groveling and begging and these nights, I felt as If He was there and He was listening. The next morning I would feel calmer and stronger, I know it sounds strange to a rational mind, but this faith in a higher power has probably been the only thing that has kept me going.

Sheru’s autism has been different from day one; he has been slowly improving and coming out of his bubble. I realized that all that the therapists told me was not correct; there is no way that anyone can define what a person’s autism is like. One therapist told me that when your child turns three, his symptoms will become so bad that you wouldn’t know what to do. I started dreading every second that led to his birthday; what will happen when he turns three. Three came and went and Sheru didn’t not fall apart as I had been told, rather with every passing day he surprised me till last September when one day he looked at me and said “Mama”.

This is just a word, one small word for any other mother maybe; but not for mothers of autistic kids. This one word means everything. I heard his voice and again I couldn’t believe it; Sheru knew who I was after all.

From a desperate parent out to “fix” his autism, I gradually made the transition to a parent who accepts their child for who they are; he was never in need of fixing. All he needed was acceptance for who he is, I didn’t need therapists to tell me when he will get better. Sheru is limitless like the rest of us and no one has the right to put a cap on his capabilities and his strengths. So he is not like a normal child, who is normal anyway and who defines normal?

I have learned that it is not for me to try and control his future, to live in dread of tomorrow. What will happen five years later, no one knows. All I know is that this boy has changed us as a family and changed me as a person . I have written this article today on his 4^th Birthday, my gift of acceptance; so that one day when Sheru reads my blog (and I am sure that he will) he will have some understanding into the journey that has been mine.

Happy Birthday Sheru, May Allah bless you always as we are surely blessed to have you.

Cross Roads

Many Years ago, I was faced with a crucial decision. Since I deemed myself too young, I decided to formulate a Council of seven people. People who I believed had my best interest at heart and knew me well enough to take a decision on my behalf. I further fool proofed the process by soliciting Divine guidance by the popular methods employed at the time.

The Council and the Divinity pointed in one direction; here it is worth mentioning that in the first “Blink” moment my instincts guided me against it. Regardless of the fluttering in my stomach I overruled my gut by sheer rationale; The Council and the Divinity cannot be wrong, I am young and my experience limited.

The outcome of that decision was a disaster. The shattering of one glass led to the subsequent shattering of all other glasses. I started a quest to know myself better, to know how I could have been so wrong in my judgment. This journey took me to many doors and one such door was that of a wise old man in Karachi. I arrived at his doorstep a tangled web of questions about life, about fate, about destiny. I kept asking, he kept listening; then asked me join him for a stroll in the courtyard of a mosque.

He said, “tell me, when you made that decision was your heart content?”, I fell silent. “See Allah has blessed you with many guides to light your way, you don’t need to seek Him in dreams or in books. All you need is to listen to your heart, if you make a decision and your heart is content; know it is the right decision to make, fear not the consequences, Dil ka itminan sub say bara Istakhara hai”. “Donot blame Allah for the bad decisions you make, He blessed you with a rational mind to think but a mind is prejudiced, listen to your instincts and you will never be led astray”.

The only person who is going to live with the consequences of your decisions is you, and where there are people who one should consult in matters of great importance, the only deciding factor in your life is your inner voice. I have made some pretty radical decisions since that day which seemed crazy and impractical at the moment but in hind sight they are the source of this inner strength that never ebbs. My mistakes are my own, my life not a borrowed ideology of someone else’s notion of right.

Society designs laws to curb this very impulse of honesty, whenever we lie to our-self it is only for the benefit of others, however a person not honest with oneself cannot expect life to embrace him. A person willing to let others take the helm of his life must live a borrowed life. To relinquish this precious freedom is a form of mental slavery so in grained in us that we keep looking around for approval.This approval will lead us down a secure path indeed but not necessarily the right one.