I have seen enough of the world to have realised we are not the best people. We are not even the nicest. We are not so different from others either. I stand between this cultural crossroads where i see all roads going to unhappy people. Some are unhappy because they wanted things they dont have. Others are unhappy because they found out that they have things that doesnt make them happy. Maybe happiness is an illusion. Its a myth and its too hard to find it but for me this very moment is happiness. To be able to stand on this crossroads and talk with people on their way to other worlds. They fascinate me and irritate me at the same time. Their curiosity makes me feel young and their complaining makes me chuckle about their hopes of the light at the end of the tunnel.

Its once again time to leave a good friend. A friend who has been my courage, my muse and my shock simultaneously. We hugged and he just left and i sit here alone, regurgitating 2 years of our vicissitudes. I get my new passport on 27th and then i book a flight back. I honestly dont know however, who am i going for ? Is it because i want to sit in silence by my moms grave or for the family that i dont have and i dont belong to ? Is it for me or is it for the hope of finding huamnity and culture again ? I dont know how is that any different from backpacking just another country i have never been to before. I know home is where the heart is, but guess i just have one problem left to solve. To find out, where the heart is.

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They say if i wasn’t the way i am, you know, the comparatively over-educated, traveling, feeling and thinking type, i would have been a seaman. I guess that has a truth to it regardless of how hard that seem to me or to someone else from the life i’ve had. My friend for so many years, and some of the people who could explain things about me, that for myself have been a grey area, told me that. I am a man who make things deeper than they should be. I detest Valentine’s day, i dislike international sports and all similar expenditures of tax money. I look up to prototype strong men, with a sense of sacrifice, kindness, honor and veneer of refined-roughness. Maybe because some of them were around, when i was being raised. Their strength and courage had a reticent tone to it. Their foresight and aura was spell-binding. They spoke when they were invited to speak. They did things without the fear of what other people would say or think about it. Their lives were simple, their demeanor was honorable but there was nothing simple about their stories. The two sides of the times that i have lived made me think about the very standards by which i was grown up. The men whose wisdom and valor was seen as an example for the children to follow. These same men now are forced down the ladders of society to live a life of mere existence. I know through history, that when nations begin their journey to extinction, they start losing their brave and wise people. Its like a cardiac arrest. When your heart stops pumping the lifeline, the body goes into an arrest, begging for something to live on, with all functions paralyzed, with heels as vulnerable as Achilles. I heard something the other day Orya Maqbool Jan said. Its a hadith. Once prophet (peace be upon him) was told by one of his companions, that he loves the path that He’s laid him on and he loves Him for that. The Prophet (pbuh) asked, Do you really love Me ? he said. Yes. It was a very common way of prophet (pbuh) to ask thrice if he wanted to stress something. So He did and the answer He received was yes. He finally said, People who love me, will have a rush of problems, like a rush of water in a pit.

For those of you who don’t have the attachment with the greatest man i’ve read about, the traumas attached to loving him doesn’t only mean loving him as a person, but it relates to the values and principles he stood for. A man who changed barbarians into most civilized and compassionate rulers to be the example of justice and peace as long as the human history goes, doesn’t need a word to prove that and it is also my personal opinion so i will leave it to that. Its the very definition of a man that is elicited from what He did in his life, that makes rest of us, as men to follow it and not found oneself between the crossfire of primitive barbarianism and feminist metrosexualism. A man who works hard for his living, is simultaneously a concrete wall against invaders for his family and a shelter for unprotected. A true man is a master piece of a consummate and strong woman. An educated, chaste, iconic, and mettlesome woman. A woman with no patience and soft corners for sons when it comes to manners and societal obligations. Someone with ruthless moral codes and an ability to freeze you in your tracks with a look. I am a supporter of education for women, with all the might i have in me, although definition of education here is the keyword. Somehow, women are born teachers. If you teach them well, we all would end up being educated.

Lets accept that. We men are wild horses. Fuming and steaming through our nostrils in our rage and power. Our heights, strengths, and perceived obligations to enter into manly world makes us miserable souls. We are these wild tarzans with all the gifts to rule the jungle, but ruling is not about ruling with instincts. Power, rule, influence and governance comes with a responsibility and obligation. Its about caring people and being accountable for what one does. Its about taking caring of the weakest and reigning the most powerful. Its about abolishing the privileges and help the weak up on their feet. This is something a strong woman teaches you. Men teach you strength, but only a wonderful woman tells you things to unlearn. What she does is similar to how you open the doors. When you have to turn the knob to right and you break the knob turning left, thats where a woman comes by, turns the knob on next door, on the right and leaves with a comforting smile, leaving you having doubts about your ability and a knob in the hand. It could be your mom, it could be an elder or even younger sister, your wife or your 5 year old daughter. It could be anyone with a story that you took a minute to ponder upon. I used to teach kids and at times i would give them groupwork to do and sit back and watch them. Its these weird vibes between opposite gender that make most troublesome boys in the class to behave like they were gentlemen. Reticent girls had little to say but those very little things that they said had so much weight in them that it seemed to have taken over all the group work. Their respect for mutual decision, choice of words and standing by it amazed me. I have observed that aura in all inter-gender communications throughout the life cycle of people. I maybe am from a society where women are acknowledged for their priceless contribution to our lives and social structures make them privileged in some ways, but in so-called egalitarian western societies, you could nose out these uneasy moments of silence and gender-only-topics. With their fight against the nature, this world has gone too far to look at the misery (for me) these women go through in their daily lives, believing the myth of feminism and equality. Having to share our dirty toilets, male doctors, cumbersome work and abuse that the weaker men have heaped on them, is gruesome.

Maybe western women or the women in the process of this enforced westernization feel they are contributing to this ground-breaking feminist movement, supporting their families instead of males, shaping a better and more open world, but for me it has always been and will always be tragic how women, no matter how smart, how potent and how strong they could be, can be convinced into doing work exponentially more absurd than we men do. I have never been a man supporting that. I have always been the primitive, born in the wrong century kind of man but i somehow am forced to share the ignominy that my gender has brought to women, or at least according to my old ideals. While the shameless metrosexual men write the words of equality and gender emancipation, these women have to live up both to their families and their work. You keep pushing them to manage the balance that you never found for yourself. Through industrialization, cheap food places, bulk production and artificial ways of producing food, you eat unhealthy junk and live unhygienic lives and convince these women to do not only the same but to keep providing for you also. Its an honor to be respected for your human traits and role in society. We are made men and women for a reason. Its like a gizmo that works when the two parts are connected and they have to be different in order to be considered TWO different parts of a machine. When you become alike, it stops functioning. When you change the composition of a chemical to make it something else, it doesn’t work the way it is supposed to. These women are unfortunate. They don’t know in their daily lives how it feels to be given way by a gentle man. How honorable that is to be offered a seat, to be able to pay your bills first even when the queue is long, to be respected for the very traits they are born with being a woman and not for their bodies. What can a woman born in such a savage jungle of us men can teach their sons about humility and respect? Who needs and respect these men anyway anymore? huh? World has changed into something so drastically corrupt that it scares me. However, the wonderful part about being these women and men is their living by their standards. Aloofness with the contemporary world and indefatigable struggle. Its becoming rare to find men and women like these, but when you do, hold tight to them and learn from them, because a touch of gold, turns you into gold and nothing changes after that.

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