Goodbye 2016.
Life taught me the most this year. I lost my sister, my faith in many friends,
recognised my real friends and foes, witnessed unexpected demise of people who
were there with us and became a part of past in no time. I learnt the way to
stand stronger in composing my crumbled self back, and how to muster my courage
to withstand the toughest circumstances, and show to people that I am just
normal, to smile in front of the camera and cry when I was back in the darkness
of my room, in the solitude, missing my sister. But nonetheless, I am thankful
to Allah for showering countless blessings on me, and putting me in this trial
of time...I pray to have a more blessed year 2017, and years ever after...
My brother Immu (Imran Abbas) posted the above on his Facebook
wall on the evening of 31st December 2016. It moved me. Not because Immu was my
brother, but because what he was expressing was the truth that many feel, but
are rather too anxious to admit. I would have flown out to wherever he was and given him
a hug, but since that was not plausible for the moment, I messaged him – I know bro. Loss does that to us; makes us
relook at everything in life. When I see people around me dunked in their ego,
I wonder ke ek din hum sab ko jaana hai (we all have to die one day), then why
this arrogance. The least we can do is love everyone around us. We can do for
them what we wanted them to do for us. There is such strength in giving that
it’s actually indescribable. And I love you for that one quality you have: to make
people feel loved, and this, those who have only been hurt deeply can
understand. So yes, what is lost cannot be replaced, but we can make someone
else happy by being us. Api will be proud of you wherever she is, as we are proud
of you right now, and right here on earth.
After I had messaged Immu
those words, I thought to myself that indeed life is so frickin ephemeral. What
we take for granted can be taken from us in a blink, and yet, we fool ourselves
into thinking that we are indispensible. Barely had I recovered from the
resonance of Immu’s words when my eyes fell upon a video of a song he had sung (link
included below). As I watched that song, I was unable to contain my tears.
That is when I figured our life science, be it of Immu, or
Ali, or Danyal, or me – that when we feel, we feel all that we feel most
deeply, passionately and intensely, or not at all.
So, for that fleeting flash, the pride of seeing my
brother doing so much, and most humbly, of knowing that I was not around him to
be his support when he was going through the lows of life brought me to tears,
and yet I knew that he knew that I was with him in deed and thought even if I
was not able to be there next to him in person.
That is when I also figured that our job here on earth is
not to judge. Our job here on earth is not to figure out if someone deserves
something. Our job here on earth is to lift the fallen, to restore the broken,
and to heal the hurting.
Imran, Ali, Danyal and I; we each live with this thread
uniting us, and will do so until we each exist.
