Ant Power

I'd just got back from watching TV, catching up on national news. My ECD textbook was open at Chapter#11 just where I'd left off.

I crouched on the flattened pillows I sit on nowadays to study. Picked up my pencil, bent low and started reading.

I'd reached the last line of the page  when I spotted a moving brown scrap along the outer perimeter of the book, the side closest to my face. It seemed quite strange to see the small piece of peeling from the roasted chickpeas I'd had earlier on moving on its own. Curious, I bent almost to the 90o angle to see the source of it's motion: that's when I spotted the brown ant.

It had somehow travelled up to my book and found the small piece lying along it's open spine, picked it up in it's 'jaws' and begun to traverse down. The downward journey was the more difficult part since mobility was being compromised by the occupied jaws. But, the ant didn't give up.

Moving her tiny butt up and down, she somehow didn't lose hold on the page boundaries and neither of the small piece she held. At one point it looked like she was going to fall off but she regained control almost immediately. Down, down,  down she moved until she finally reached the book cover, turned a 120o and began to crawl away. I  followed it's movement till it finally disappeared beneath the sofa.

Just before I'd got back to study I'd been watching the motivational clip on TV of a guy who started as a waiter in a dingy hotel. And now? The owner of a large company providing start-up funds to small businesses. It was part of the educational campaign launched by Jung Group of Publishers and boosted by their TV channel, GeoNews: 'پڑھنے لکھنے کے سوا ہ ،پاکستان کا مطلب کیا؟?' (What is the meaning of Pakistan, if not to seek education?)

Watching the ant-episode while my ears were still ringing from the background tune of the campaign seemed more than a coincidence, somehow. It seemed to endorse the fact that with proper education under your belt like the guy's, and with extreme determination like the ant's, nothing can stop you from fulfilling your dreams. And that with a little extra attention to surrounding, success stories like the guy's, and that of millionaires like Sunil Mittal, are created.

Small events sometime start the domino effect towards a bigger chain.

The ant didn't know it, it's mind was probably too small even to process the significance of the effects it's innate search for food had on others.

But, it's given many hope around the globe. Like it's given me. Like it's given to countless primary school kids who read it's story in the Urdu textbooks every year.

Maybe the guy had read it too.

Scream II: The Sajda

After that ferral scream comes the moment of silence. You have released it all out and now there is left a void in that space.

You look around you, feeling like it's finally over. But it's not. For suddenly, there is an overwhelming urge to cry, be protected, to be near your mama. You want someone to just 'understand' the rapid fire of emotions in your heart. You wish someone to hear you out patiently, just you talking and them listening and nodding in recognition.

That is when you fall into a 'sajda'. For who is closer to man than God? Who else is there that loves you more than 70 mothers' love pooled together?

Our Prophet [PBUH] emphasised multiple times the importance of sajda: the point at which you're closest to God.

Once in sajda, you lose yourself. God is your listener now and you can talk all you want. He has infinite patience.

So you let your sorrow flow and let the tears come, and share it all with God for there is no embarrassment, no secrets there. There is no care for the use of tenses, for flowery vocabulary. There is no care for sentence structure and grammar. There is no care for the word limit and the use of linkers. Linguistic boundaries fall apart and there is no need even to put it all into 'words'. For when you're with God, nothing else matters but the core of 'you': he understands it all. He is the final refuge when all else feels like a lost cause.

You go on talking, complaining, asking, praying, crying, wishing, all in the same moment, setting in motion the Big Bang of peace. This time, there is no looking back. What has been started, must end.

And the void that was begins to fill up with hope.

You gradually begin to come out of the sajda and sit up; take a deep, deep breath.

Glance at your hands and flex them to rid yourself of the remaining negativity.

Look up and feel empowered.

Pick up the phone and call mama.

You have just gone through a miniature version of the process of re-birth. These are designed by God to act as eye-openers and for us to not lose touch with reality, and to remind us that we are not alone: God's hand is always there to guide us when we fall. Setbacks come but they too are structured to make us 'learn' and 'grow' (not the Blue Band way!).

Rejuvenated, let life resume!

*Although prostration is the right word for 'sajda' in English, it somehow doesn’t contain the right connotations and spirit of the word. I prefer 'sajda' over it's translation.

Scream

*scream*

I'm sorry you didn't hear it.

It feels so good sometimes to just scream. Sounds crazy, doesn't it? I mean, who wants to be caught doing something as irrational as shouting like a 'baby', the aaaa-baaaa and the ultimate show of frustration?

A scream contains all the notes of the most beautiful music on earth. It embodies all the poetry we compose just to 'express' those strong emotions. A scream portrays perfectly the total frequency response of your mind at the time and the impulse response is the 'you'.

When you reach your breaking point and begin to get an overload of frustration and anger and remorse and the many more emotions and feelings, a scream is the ultimate floodgate to release it all. Your target may not be able to hear you at the time, but you still somehow feel 'lighter' after releasing those pure animal notes.

What you actually want to do is maybe bash the person up, shake up an institution, throw a plate on the wall with all your force just to get the 'thing' out of you. But all this is not always the practical option. In such situations a scream is the perfect outlet for excessive pent-up energy. If it could be visible, your aura would perhaps shimmer with such high frequency at the time as to startle the onlooker into fixation.

Sometimes you want to scream the scream that reverberates in the mountains and startles the birds; the 'animal' you bursting to be let out. It's so difficult to contain it all in your small skull, yet surprising how much we can hold in the tiny bone-sphere; how the neurons in your brain maintain functionality even when your heart is telling you to get ready to burst.

Music and writing are the perfect outlets for expression. Or so it is said.

It takes time and effort to compose a 'good' piece of writing/music. But when you let out the scream, you're composing the best music and literature and with the speed and fury deserved by the strength of the irk; there is no need for a pen, a violin, a mike; just your throat, your mind, and the opening of the channel to throw it all out into the world.

To release.

And be released.