Karachi bleeds

My city is bleeding yet again. Like a silent spectator, I watch it from the sidelines. I watch the city that is venomously torn and battered by the wrath and carelessness of certain people. The gashed wounds, the blood stained visage, the carcass-like state of my beloved are all too vivid in front of my eyes. I feel like a mother who is listening to her child’s last incoherent words before he finally succumbs to the last stages of a fatal illness. I feel like a vulnerable and helpless child who doesn’t know where he will go after his guardian, his provider is brutally murdered. I feel like the doctor who can put her fingers on a dying, emaciated patient’s pulse and feel their heartbeats synchronize, yet cannot ignore his heart’s futile struggle to keep the blood pumping.

I remember reading a line somewhere; ‘This is Karachi. We have a good time while we can, ‘cause tomorrow we might not be so lucky.’ A viewpoint that triggered a plethora of emotions inside me and one that took the phrase, stream of consciousness, to new levels. Living in Karachi certainly hasn’t been the clichéd ‘walk in a park.’ In fact, it would be more apt to say, it has been almost, ‘a frantic scurry in a battlefield.’ We wake up in the morning and read the headlines only to be baffled over whether this city will finally implode or not; whether we will manage to make it through the day or not. The uncertainty and contingency surrounding life in Karachi can most certainly be exhaustive.

But in spite of all the ambivalence, Karachiites share an assurance of birthright. And it is perhaps this conviction of ownership that best defines the contemporary citizen of this distraught city. It is perhaps this love for its soil that will save Karachi from the ravages of circumstances and the brutality of its enemies. It is perhaps futile to be optimistic in the eye of a storm, but it is only what my city has taught me – to hope for the best when no hope remains; to give it my best shot, no matter what the odds; to come out alive and victorious when the world thinks you've breathed your last.

Solitude

Emptiness and loneliness - two words that leave one in a bland madness of angst and trepidation. But life and circumstances can force one to find strength in loneliness, fulfillment in emptiness. If one tries hard enough one can discover independence lies in loneliness and fearlessness in emptiness.

After all, what fear of loss can cultivate when one's hands are empty? Who can one fear to lose in engulfing solitude? Yes, the key to contentment are loneliness and emptiness. That sliver of pure nothingness. That bizarre detour of freedom. Those evanescent moments where one can hear the staccato bursts of silence.

There is ownership in loneliness - not possession. No, the two words are not synonymous. Possession is a feeling - it stems from a plethora of emotions. Ownership is a fact. It is an affirmation. It simply is. Loneliness fears no exposure. There is no negotiation. It obeys.

Loneliness and emptiness are not as negative as we make them out to be. Really. Only the meditator who has found peace within himself, who has made reconciliation with body and soul has the luxury to enjoy solitude; to dialogue with the silence, to embrace loneliness as his friend, to claim emptiness as part of his being.