Manufactured Idiot

I like the cold; tea, jackets and gloves and I like the rain; long boots, umbrellas and mud and I like the mountains; foggy, cold and misty-eyed and I like people; straightforward, opinionated and kind and I like the village; simple, ignorant and noble and I like the city; hustling and bustling and I like the world; grey, obscure and depressed💢

If you like to travel, be in a city for at least 24 hours. It’s what they deserve. Go local if you don’t have a car or cannot drive. Listen to a good podcast on the way. Gain something. Fill your mind with wonderful things. Be kind to strangers on the way and when you arrive in the city, walk a little, will you? Walk with your friends for miles; on pavements, in bazaars. Have some pizza. Enjoy an ice cream. Talk about things. Savor these little moments. Be grateful for them. They are golden. Find beautiful mosques to pray in. Check out the overrated and underrated places. See for yourself what they are all about and in the evening, go to a random park and sit on a bench and call your parents and ask them how their day went. Search the internet for festivals and buy tickets and look around and see all these different kinds of people and how they have these separate lives and drink tea and eat burgers and sit around a fire and enjoy the cold. Life is good like that. You will finally realize what you were missing all these days and when it’s late at night, go straight to the fanciest restaurant in the city and spoil yourself a little and when it’s time to go home, you will become tired of waiting on uber and careem, so walk for a bit. Cruise the streets and grab a Bykea even though it’s cold but it will not matter that much and when you get off, you give the guy his fare and some ludos you had bought earlier and you talk with him for a while and then grab an expensive taxi and go to the guest house and don’t sleep until the morning and have an amazing breakfast. So long🏮.

I give my number to an old man and I note it in the back of my mind that if I ever get old and grey, I’ll cut in line for sure. Force young punks to give me their seat. Now boys and their barbers are a special bunch and I particularly like this guy. He is about the same age as me and very good with his hands. I sit down and he starts doing his thing. 2 mins into my haircut, he asks why I seem sad. I laugh. “I am not sad,” I say. I am blessed. He tells me that I always seem sad. I laugh and tell him it’s just my face and I just had my exams and that I am always thinking about something. He is relieved. He asks me if I will have tea. I do not refuse. He is direct and I like that. He tells me that he like poetry and though he can’t read he likes to listen to what other people have to say. He asks me if I know something good. “I am an old player”, I say. He laughs. I say some couplets of Faiz Ahmad Faiz. He likes it, repeats them for me. I realize I never asked him his name. He doesn’t give me his name, says this instead.
“You know about our situation right.”
I say, “no, I don’t.”
“Huh”
*a few seconds pause*
“Nabeel”
I know he is lying. I just know but why would someone lie about their name? I ask him about the band that he is wearing. I say a Sikh colleague from college wears one just like it. “You have a Sikh colleague?” I nod a yes. He then tells me all. He is Christen. Everything makes sense now. Now to give you guys a little bit of context. I am his regular and I just remember this tiny detail that whenever there is Azan, he tells his younger brother to go and offer namaz. The lengths people go to fit in and the happiness they feel when they are not judged, just accepted. I saw the whole thing clear on his face. I saw it light up when it didn’t matter to me if he is Christen or whatever. He opened up like a flower, happy almost that he confided in me. We chatted for a bit after that. Everything from childhood to death was discussed. It was a good day and I realized that we just want people to be careful with our fragile parts, that's it🔅.

Nehru wrote hundreds of letters to his daughter educating her about world history while he was in prison. Such a grand and noble gesture. Can’t help but admire the courage this guy had. Faiz Ahmad Faiz wrote most of his wonderful poetry in captivity and I imagine myself in their shoes, jailed 24/7 and I think about what I would do and It doesn’t paint a pretty picture. If someone knocks down my door right now and slaps me on the neck and cuffs me and leaves me in a 4*4 box indefinitely, I would wallow in utter despair. I would curse my life in the day and lay awake in agony at night. I would complain and hate every second of my restrained existence. I am pretty sure I would murder my mind in a week. But people have courage and patience and they can do great things. I think we should work on ourselves to the point that we are able to write lovely letters from prison. It is good for you and me that way🏮.

I admire tall buildings and fast cars as much as the next guy. I like money and all the convenience that comes with it. I don’t hate expensive clothes and eating in fancy restaurants and I am fond of luxury but there is a superlative degree of affection that I have reserved for nature; both humane and inhuman. Trees, sun, rivers and lakes. I want to die on a hill somewhere. I want my life to be full of wonderful human connection, good conversations and love. I like the strength it takes to be straightforward. I want to be grateful to God. Take care of my parents and improve myself till the end. I want my heart to be big as the pacific ocean and my mind full of wonderful and creative thoughts and if I have these things, then does it matter if I am not a millionaire and random people don’t like me that much. I doubt it will bother me to eat at a random dabba or go home to a modest house. Hell, I will be happy to sleep on the floor💢.

Walk up the hills with your friends while drinking something cold. Pick a nice spot. Gather dry wood together. Watch the sun set. Start a small fire. Put a tea kettle on the side. Now all of you gather around. Don’t mind the smoke. Cover your selves with tiny blankets. Start saying things you wouldn’t normally say. Reminisce about old times. Discuss your present. Sip tea. Plan for the future. Argue. Laugh at each other’s stupidity. Be idiots and uncivil for a while. Forget your normal routine. Become unstuck. Feel immense joy. Revel in the small moments. Look at their faces and remember their names. Thank your friends because they are your escape!

It’s exactly like you are on an open road and its empty and you are walking alone and you can see for miles and the vastness of the road and the clouds and the sky overshadows your sense of self and you can finally feel with some clarity and see your problems all framed out, organized like they are all spread out for you to observe /understand/ figure out. During all this, you are surprised, they are so few. You had overestimated their figure. Made a mountain outta a molehill. They are nothing Yara! I am blessed, aren’t I? We all are. I am the luckiest young man in the world. But then you ask, “If they are so little, then why is my heart heavy? Why does it feel like I am suffocating? Like where is my normal brain?” It doesn’t matter really. You are here, aren’t you! I am here. You are alive. I am alive(almost 😅). Let go of the sad habits dear. Look at the trees. Look how tall they stand. They almost block out the sun! Look at the sky. Look at the clouds. laugh. Imagine success. Imagine the pure joy. Feel and enjoy it the moment all good things are happening to you. How wonderful is it? I am missing nothing. And all the while thinking this, I finally start hearing a song- a song for this very open road.

“The unit had a very kind Canteen Manager. He asked how we were and seemed genuinely interested in our lives. He talked a lot about his son and when we went out, the ground was full of crows that flew above our heads and caw caaed at full volume and we saw kittens that were lazy and fat and sheep that grazed on the grass in front of the barracks. Different kinds of trees, young and old stood erect. The sky was cold and full of clouds. The rain was imminent. And there were huge cactuses and tall oak trees too.
The mess was alright and the soldiers were gossiping and lighting ci******es. There were a lot of ci******es and the smoke, it made my head hurt. But It’s kind of culture there, I guess. And also, It was my first time sleeping in a sleeping bag. We joked about it and pretended like we were dead. We watched a match and then danced for a very long time. A few of us didn’t know how to dance but we tried anyway.”

When you are reading this, you can only picture what is written. I read this and that whole trip flashes before my eyes. It’s been four years and I remember it like the palm of my hand. I remember the bus, the herds of sheep I saw on the way back. I remember the weather like it was yesterday. I remember the rain on the window sill. The lectures and empty threats of the strict faculty when we were late. The voices and the moves and the hip hip hoorays of the boys in the bus and the unit. The food and the walks and all the fun. I remember the dangerous rides in the park. I remember the fear and the thrill of a dangerous ride. I remember seeing the sky and the stars upside down, while on that ride.

I don’t remember all this because I have a swell memory and I wrote these long paragraphs to talk about that. I wrote all this to convince people to start keeping a daily/weekly/monthly journal. Keeping notes has helped me a great deal. For example, I remember all this because I wrote a small part of my journey in a diary and because I took my time to write about it, my brain registered it as something important. It’s that simple. Then my brain also gave value to other events associated with it and made sure I didn’t forget about it. See, keeping notes on your phone or a diary is like playing tricks on the mind. It will keep the drawers in your mind full of things you don't want to forget. Whenever you long for a moment, you just have to open the right drawer. It has a lot of other advantages too. It will help improve your writing and your life in general. It will keep you rooted in your interests and it will keep you interested in your life. It will encourage you when you are feeling down and it will you tell who you were in the past. It will help you gain a real perspective on life. And it will make sure you remember all the right moments. It will be like you have a friend in yourself.

There are many options. You can squeeze your whole day into one line and write a line every day or you can start writing a paragraph every 2-3 days or write a page once a week, whatever suits you.

I was making a tie for my brother and I realized that it’s been almost two years since I made a tie for myself. It’s like “day by day nothing changes, and when you look back, everything has changed.”
We can never understand time, can we? Sometimes everything moves so fast and sometimes it all kinda’ slows down. Anyway, I talk to my army friend after a long time and it’s like no time has passed. It’s when he specifically mentions that you realize that the last time you talked, it was months ago. He jokingly complains about sleepless nights, physical and mental stress, and a tough routine. I tell him, I understand and that it must be very hard getting paid for all his troubles. He laughs. He tells me how I must be enjoying life. I laugh.
When you are a little kid, you look at people a little older than you and assume they have their lives figured out. And when you are older, you look at people your age and assume that they have their lives figured out. I believe we will never be able to figure it all out. We will keep learning until we are in the grave. And it doesn’t have to be a hopeless or bad thing. We just have to deal with it as we deal with things we don’t know everything about but still find ways to enjoy.
I tell my friend to not compare and that I too have my problems. He asks what kind? I tell him that if our lives were movies, his life would be a two-hour movie. Full of drama and excitement. Jumping off helicopters and the like. Where my life on the other hand is a 6-7 hours long movie. I am not complaining but sometimes even I get bored. Everything moves very slow down here. I spend my days doing ordinary and mundane tasks. I find joy in small things. I am hurt by small things. My actions are insignificant in the national or international context. I tell him that I live for myself and that he lives for all the people in his company or platoon. He has a lot of responsibility and he is handling it well. And I don’t know if Medicine is better or the Army. To make an accurate judgment, I or someone has to become both a doctor and spend time in the army and I don't know if our fears and ambitions and feelings are at the same level.
I don’t have anything to compare It to.
Is my fear of the second-year course equal to the fear my friend feels when he is about to jump from a helicopter or when he is faced with certain death? I don’t think it is. But I doubt he thinks about it that much. Thinking is for people who have a lot of time on their hands - like us.