سجن دے ہتھ بانہہ اَساڈی

The message read:

AOA leenah, hope you are staying safe . I have a question and you are one of the two ppl I'll ask this . Where is this all heading ? Is our time up ?

I wrote back

Wassalam      , Apki mohabbat hai.

What does it matter if we know where this all is heading?
Qabar ka question paper bhi wohi rahay ga, Akhrat ka evaluation criteria bhi. Main aur ap fikar main ghul kay wo waqt aur energy lose kar dain gay jo Connection ko behtar karnay main utilize ho sakti thi.
Humain ilm ki illusion is liay chahiay hoti hai coz it feeds our need for control.

"Sajjan de hath baanh" wala maamla hai, dil ko samjha lain.
Shah Hussain ki kaafi hai ye: سجن دے ہتھ بانہہ اَساڈی ، کیونکر آکھاں چھڈ وے اَڑیا

Jahan Maalik lay jaey, Us ki marzi. Jab Wo curtains close kar day, Us ki marzi. Hum apni taraf say best foot forward rakhain gay. Bus.
Wo janay, Uska game plan kia hai.

The return mail read:

It all comes back to total submission . I hope I learn that before the curtain closes .

I think I relate with this concern a lot. I think many of us relate with this concern strongly.

I wrote:

Have you read Mufti's Labbaik,      ?

In the book, he narrates the scenes when people are leaving Arfaat, before the Maghreb azaan, during Hajj. He felt restless for not being among the ones who left earlier, since all the religious manuals talk about heading to Muzdalifah and offering Maghrib and Isa there. He found Qudrat ullah Shahab extremely calm, despite the delay and felt even more out of place. Shahab sb said to him, "Baat point of time ki nahi hai. Period of time ki hai."

When I read this, I was still studying at the university. I was as restless, impatient individual as Mufti. I had related with him in most of his musings. For some reason, Shahab sb ki ye baat meray zehan main atak gai. No, not as a lesson learnt. But more like a puzzle. :) Like you keep wondering time and again kay iska matlab kia hai.

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Now lets park this here, and let me take you to my school :)(lemme know please when I tend to get overbearing)My father was posted to Pindi when I was in 9th grade. I did my matriculation from there. Among the worst things I found with this move was my new Urdu teacher. I was smarter and ahead of my class in my language skills. And the acute realization of this made me even more resentful of the Urdu teacher, an elderly wife of some retired brigadier sb. She would come to our class with a course book Guide and literally dictated us answers from the Guide. Verbatim. Outside the Guide, whatever was asked from her was always answered in the most silliest of ways. I felt very strongly that I deserved better. However, despite my shadeed strong dislike for her (and continued campaigning against her in the class - including mimickery of her), I was the most respectful student in her presence. She adored me (much to my horror), and would ALWAYS spare me when she'd punish the rest of the class.

Since she was often hooted at and boo'ed in our class (much thanks to my campaigning and influence as the Prefect), she'd often be yelling at the class: "Jis ko ghar walay adab nahi sikhatay, usko zamana sikha deta hai." We wouldn't pay heed to it, of course.

I passed Matric, scored position at board in FSc, landed at a boarding university. She was left far far faaaaar behind. I no longer remembered her. It was here when my acute realization of being a smart cookie got challenged for the first time. I barely scraped through the first semester. I felt inadequate, dumb, alone and sinking. I'd recall all the times I had felt invincible in my own right, and winced at the recollections.

In my last year at the university, I had a dream. This was right after I had performed Hajj. My quite young mother (still in her 40's) was at deathbed in Lahore. My in-laws to be were asking about the shadi dates. My FYP was in shambles. I was unsure about the person I was getting married with. And all that was keeping me going was reciting darood whole day long. I had effectively turned into a mute, with my weight dropping to its lowest in my life. (I went from wearing Generations L size to XS, WITHOUT any attempt at dieting during those 4 months).

And one night I had a dream.
In it I saw her. My Urdu teacher from 6 years ago. She walked me through a collection of tents, jaisay kisi qaaflay ka parao ho. It's night time in my dream and there are various tents and bonfires at regular intervals. She knows the place like the back of her hand and guides me through, until we reach a massive, elaborate tent. She asks me to stand and wait outside and goes in. She returns after a while and says to me, "Hazrat Muhammad (saw) nay mujhay kaha hai kay tumhain paighaam day doon, tum jo darood roaz parhti ho, wo un tak pohanchta hai." And she smiled at me.

I woke up with the memory of her face and smile so fresh that I was literally jolted to my core. The first thing I did was calling my very social friend from school, in Pindi. I asked her if she had any updates about our ex-Urdu teacher. She did not, but she said that she could let me know later. That night I called her again.

"Tumhain kuch pata tha kia?" she asked. "Unki parsoN death ho gai hai."

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Jo adab (intezaar, submission) khud nahi seekhta, usko ye sab sikhaya jata hai. She had been right all along. Baat point of time ki nahi hai, period of transformation ki hai. Baybasi humble hona sikhati hai. Humble insan abd banta hai. Abd ko Ma'abood qabool karta hai. Bus itna sa process hai.

Hum apni daanist main ye samajhtay hain that it is we who do things, who BECOME humble. It might be so in the case of chosen few. Most of us are too set in our ways. We don't become. We're taught. Every time you stumble across a wall, you can't will it away. The wall shall remind you of your limitation. The more the walls, the more the reminders. Little by little, all these reminders grow into a massive avalanche of realization. That avalanche takes place soundlessly. We are being tuned to a certain frequency all the while believing that a certain point in time aik magic spell humain KABOOOM change kar day ga. Kaboom nahi hota. Transformation occurs silently.

Ap dua kijiay. Dua qabool kranay Wala sunay ga. Have faith.

If this doesn't make sense to you, please forgive me. I may have been carried away. 🙏

The person wrote back very Kindly:

I am speechless leenah . Thankyou for this . Thankyou for being so patient with my questions . Allah aap ko wo de jo aap us se mangti hain .

Putting it up here as a reminder to every heart, including my own, in their dark night of faith.