Epiphany

It all started when the Kasur Incident broke last year. It was devastating to see children in our rural areas and towns being exposed to sexual assault and the being made to suffer humiliation and pay for this atrocity by being blackmailed by the perpetrators. I had long wanted to do social work, first getting a taste for it when i helped people during my time on field postings as a civil servant in the administration. I saw with my own eyes how weak our links are with the vulnerable groups in our society, how limited is the governments ability to reach out to them. I had toyed with working for poverty reduction, women empowerment, as these are subjects close to my heart. With this incident, I decided that children should be the ones i should work with. Call it fate, call it epiphany, but it dawned upon me that day that this is what I am meant to do.

My sensitivity to children began early, I was always too attached to them. I endured an unhappy marriage for twelve years, only for the sake of my children and their need to have a wholesome life, not one in splinters. When the end came, my heart broke, not for myself, but for my children. I wrote down on a piece of paper that i would never claim for their custody and gave it to their father, this is how much i wanted them not to go through any pain, not to have them have to choose between mother and father. I tried in the last four years since my divorce, to make the fall as easy for my kids as possible, to make them as happy as possible. In the last four years, me and their father have been able to provide them with all the love and affection, and the best life that we can, as divorced parents. I think this is what I am proudest of. That i never forgot my children, and never abandoned them. They are the reason that I go on, despite all sorts of difficulties.

After my divorce, I began looking at children more closely, thinking more of what they need to be happy, and to grow up as well rounded individuals. In our society, it is appalling how little we think of the physical security and mental well being of our children. We produce them mindlessly, we use and abuse them at will, but we don't do our duty towards them. And the most vulnerable are the homeless and orphan children.

With my decision, Panaah finally arrived. This is a small charity organization that I have started, which provides clothing, books, food, and education to children. We support their school fees, and try to fill in the gaps that exist in their daily requirements. Panaah means shelter, refuge, safety from harm. This is what i want to give, not only to my own children, but as many others as possible. I m doing it on a small scale which my donors , mostly private persons, and I can sustain with my other commitments. I work with existing orphanages and edhi centres. When I think of how much difference I can make with this, I tell myself that if i can make the life of even one child better than it was, and make them smile as I like to see my children smile, my efforts are worth it.

Wrinkles

Women are afraid of wrinkles. Not sure about men because they won't admit to so many things in any case, and tend to keep their fears under wraps.For women, it is the first sign they are aging, that they will not be as desirable, as attractive as they were in the effortless bloom of youth. The face is slowly wilting, drying, losing lustre and vitality. Men also think that a more youthful appearance and a tauter body is more attractive. Perhaps it is, in a basic, carnal way. But there is another dimension to attraction , which resides in the soul , the mind, and the heartWomen are afraid of wrinkles. Not sure about men because they won't admit to so many things in any case, and tend to keep their fears under wraps.For women, it is the first sign they are aging, that they will not be as desirable, as attractive as they were in the effortless bloom of youth. The face is slowly wilting, drying, losing lustre and vitality. Men also think that a more youthful appearance and a tauter body is more attractive. Perhaps it is, in a basic, carnal way. But there is another dimension to attraction , which resides in the soul , the mind, and the heart. Wrinkles do not affect it at all. 

Memories are embedded in wrinkles. Memories and experiences. The life that we have lived keeps writing on our face, laugh line by laugh line for happy times, wrinkles for cares and strings that we have felt and sustained. Like life, we can see wrinkles any way we want to, lines if we are thinking wistfully, laugh lines if we look back happily. Each feeling, each struggle, each ordeal is engraved on our face. The fights that we have won and lost, the ideals that we stood for, successfully or unsuccessfully, the life we have lived, sometimes happy,sometimes difficult, the people we have loved, adored, cherished and despised, felt envious of, tried to hurt, or those that hurt us. They leave their imprint. Why do we then try to hide these wrinkles? Why do we use creams, treatments, even botox to make them disappear? Why do we strive so hard to keep our faces looking like the clean slate of a baby's mind? We like to hide all the ravages of time and travail, and present to the world an innocent, untouched countenance, not sullied by experiences, not damaged by hurt. Fresh as ever and open to new experiences. perhaps that is why we hide wrinkles, because we do not want to appear like damaged goods that nobody would want. It is true, who would want to write on a slate already cramped with writing by others? We would have to wipe it clean, to start a new story on it. 

Those who look back on a life well lived, stages of life successfully passed, do not want to stay at a particular stage. They are done with it and have evolved. But those who feel they have not been able to make a success of some part of their life, they want to do it over, so they try to make themselves over too, to match their efforts. They do not deserve pity, it is just that they want to make a go of it. But nothing makes a person more attractive than ones who embrace their past life, wrinkles and all, and feels confident of themselves for the future also. If you have lived, your experiences just add to your mystique, they add depth to your personality. Embracing your past, whatever it was, engraved on your face as wrinkles, is the only way to face the future with confidence and poise. I look forward to wrinkles as they come with new feelings, new experiences, reflecting the life force that is never still.

Don't Lose Yourself

This week a feminist issue again, which is close to my heart, but about relationships. Women are supposed to be the fountains of compassion, symbols of sacrifice and epitomes of self abnegation, for their loved ones, family, children, significant others. It is so, we are capable of a lot of sacrifice, and can bear a lot of pain and hardship for the sake of our loved ones. But in romantic or conjugal relationships, there is always a question of domination, subjection, and balance. It is of course a man's desire and nature to be in the dominant position. That is how he is designed to be: to take charge of the situation, to protect the woman , to take responsibility of the family. But mostly the devotion to her man makes a woman give in too much, retreat too much, sometimes at the cost of her own self respect. In the long run, it is neither good for her nor for the relationship. 

Its true that you must show the person you love that he or she means the world to you, but if you show somebody that you cannot exist without them, they will start taking you for granted. Somebody who is totally dependent is instinctively less attractive than an independent mate. And many times the man thinks that he has been able to fool the woman, otherwise how could she think so highly of a no good person like him. It does not cross his mind that she may be overlooking his faults and indiscretions to maintain the relationship. Once he thinks he has fooled her, he looks for others to fool, he thinks he can pull it off. Here infidelity creeps in. 

A woman can take a lot for her man, as long as she believes he is true to her, that they both belong to each other. But when you start feeling that what he is doing is not for you, what he is saying is not for you, there is somebody else on his mind and near his body, you do not feel like tolerating his tantrums, indulging his whims and desires , or making any extra effort for his sake. in your heart, he does not belong to you anymore. many women will refuse to look this feeling or intuition in the face, because it hurts too much, and its always better to exist in the la la land of contrived trust, because facing the reality of a beloveds infidelity breaks you yourself. So she goes on, not caring anymore but not facing it, nor letting him know, that she knows. 

But all this self abnegation or delusion doesn't get you anywhere. The moment you lose trust, you must react and ask the other person to renew it, otherwise its just a farce after this moment. It is not worth anything to live in a relationship which is against your self respect. If you lose your self respect, you lose yourself, you lose your way in life. And the person you compromise it for will never appreciate your sacrifice, in fact will rather hold you in contempt for being the weakling that you have become just to hold on to him.  I always tell myself, that the one who truly loves you, will never put you in a situation where you will have to do anything against your self respect. 

Love him as much as you like but don't lose yourself in your love. Nothing is as precious as your self respect. If your lose that, you will soon lose your love also. If a person has lost your trust and confidence, you can try to rebuild it, if you both want to continue. One loves a person for what he or she is, not only for looks or material trappings. But don't let somebody trample your spirit.Nobody is worth this much.