A Note To My Teacher

"Dear Teacher,
Thank you for reading this. I just wanted to let you know that I remember.
I remember when you took my hand and walked me into my very first classroom. It didn't look like one though, it had toys all around. I remember you encouraging me on the day of exam to remember what came after Eleven, i remember repeating One to Eleven so many times and yet nothing helped.
I remember you in my first grade, when you taught me to read. I remember you showing me how to write "Footpath" and "National" I remember you helped me draw an Orange.
In second grade you gave me a scrap book and asked me to bring five types of leaves during the summer break. You taught me names of the planets and their order, and weathers and fruits and the national map.
In third grade you gave me homework to write an essay on my home and I cried because I thought the house was too big and had too many things to write about. You taught me what a computer was, and you promised to let me use it next year. You taught me about cardinal directions in easy words.
In fourth grade, you had me ready to read on my own, write whatever i wanted. You encouraged me to speak in the class and to ask outside the class. You fulfilled your promise too. And, also, taught us to use fountain-pens. You advised us to use fountain pen in homework.
I fifth grade when I'd have trouble in memorizing history you'd tell me stories of those people. You talked about them like you knew them from back in time. And I believed you. You scolded me for not being attentive and changed my seat to the front. You were mostly angry.
In sixth grade you got me confused in square roots and algebra. But you told me it will be alright. You advised me to practice it. I drew paramecium and plant cell and you checked it. I remember you told us about the greatness of our ancestors from the other lands. You taught us how many pillars and articles of faith I was supposed to have. You dictated the answers so I could copy.
In seventh grade you gave me some space to use my own skills. You told the class to write about ourselves on a piece of paper, I couldn't. You took us to the lab and showed us the preserved insects and asked us to memorize their forms and structures. I remember you told us about "the East and the West".
In high school I read a foreign author who wrote our history, for the first time, I was excited to know what others have talked about us. You gave me more homework and lesser dictations. You taught me how the blood circulated in veins and how our body coordinated. I remember you asking me about Organic Chemistry, something I couldn't explain. I remember you warning me about how weak I was in Math.
In College you taught me how to deal with and understand things conceptually for one exam, and then memorize them for another exam. I saw you were as confused and irritated by this as I was. I remember you gave us examples from your life to make us understand. I remember you advising me to pay attention to the diction. I remember you told me you had faith in me.
In University you questioned me and let me question you. You asked me about the East and the West. You left me with more questions in my mind. You showed me how similar you and I have always been. You let me disagree with you. You asked about what I thought and never forced your 'right' on my 'right'.
All my life, since I started getting into the system, you helped, assisted and gave guidance. You made a huge part of what I am today. And I know you will continue to be there. Thank You, Dear Teacher."

پهر سے

پهر سے کوئی آئے گا

کسی توہین کے الزام میں

.دوسروں کو جلائگا

پهر کسی کے ہاتھ سے

.قلم چهینا جائے گا

پهر کی آغوش کو

.ویراں کیا جائے گا

جس کی 'اکبر ذات' نے

کوئی سزا نہ سنائی

ایسی اک خطا کےنام

.سر کاٹ گرایا جائے گا

پهر سے, وہ لاشوں پر

'رقص 'اللہ اکبر

.کر کے چلا جائے گا

اور هم چپ چاپ

خاموش بمثل آب

بہتے چلے جائیں گے

چلتے چلے جائیں گے

جیتے چلے جائیں گے

...مرتے چلے جائیں گے

- کائنات حميد خان

میرا جواب

پہاڑوں سے نکل کہ هم جب منظر میں آتا ہے
تو برحق ڈٹنے والے هم مشعل و ملالہ ہے
یہ تو تم مانتے ہو کہ یہاں قانونیت کم ہے
ہمیں سوتیلوں کی طرح پھر کیوں جهٹلاتا ہے؟
سمگلر پر بهی ہنستا ہے چرواہے پر بهی ہنستا ہے
مجهے ایسا کیوں لگتا ہے تو بس مجه پر ہی ہنستا ہے؟
تمهارے "سا را گا ما پا دا" کا ہم ریاض کرتا ہے
مرے سنگیت پر تالہ ہے، لیکن پهر بهی گاتا ہے
کبهی 'اتڼ'، کبهی رباب ہم سے چهینے گئے هیں
مگر ہم پهر بهی ہر اک ساز اور ہر سر میں گاتا ہے
ترا یه میل دل اور زنگی سوچ سے بدبو آتا ہے
مانا تم دن میں تین چار بار پانی سے نہاتا ہے
صفائی کا ذرا گر ہو سکے تو سبق دے ہی دو
کہ ہم پہ ہنس کہ کیسے ہاته تم صاف کراتا ہے
مذاق وه تها گر، تو یہ بهی ہے. ناراض کیوں ہوتی ہے؟
گرتا ہے شہسوار وہی جو ایسے جنگ لڑتی ہے
  
(میرا جواب)

 - کائنات حميد خان

 

Recently a poet tried to create comedy by humiliating Pashtuns in one of the Eid Transmissions on PTV, Pakistan's national TV channel. The poet makes fun of the bombs blasts in Pashtun areas of the country and receives a round of applause when he mocks the lack of law and order in the these areas on behalf of the state. He also found this amusing that some Pashtuns smell like sheep, and ridicules them by saying that they take a bath once a year. He also laughs at Pashto music saying that all Pashto songs are composed in one tone. And they don't have a sense for music. While reading those verses, the poet also used a specific tone and made deliberate grammatical mistakes, stereotyping the "Pashtun accent"of Urdu. Different people are reacting to it in different ways. Many activists in the Pashtun community demand an apology from the Poet and the national TV channel. The above poem is my answer to those controversial verses.

Top Ten 'Three Ways To Pakistan'

A few days ago, I had a random discussion with a bunch of students in university. I told them about my blog and my research on "Three Ways of How To" in national context. They agreed to answer my questions. I wanted to share the experience. Following are responses of the respondents.

Three jokes a Pakistani will forward happily

• Jokes about Pashtuns and Sardars
• Jokes about Politicians
• Jokes about Teachers

Three ways to earn a name (good or bad)

• Talk for/against the clerics
• Talk for/against establishment
• Talk against politicians

Three ways to die a natural death

• Eat healthy
• Drink healthy
• Avoid going to public places like Markets, Schools, Universities and Hospitals etc

Three reasons you can expect love

• Belong to Middle East
• Shoot a bunch of kids and blame somebody for buying you the gun

and recently discovered

• "Be a Pakistani" 

Three ways you can tell the truth

• Whisper it to yourself
• Tell it to someone who does't understand the language
• Tell it to a tree

Three ways to use freedom of speech

• Say what they want to hear
• Never speak against them
• Don't speak a lot.

Three ways to get away with a murder

• Call the dead a sinner
• Blame the neighbors
• Fly to Thailand

Three ways to die a hero and leave a legend

• Kill the person you are paid to guard
• Claim something or blame someone
• Fly with a crate of mangoes in the luggage.

Three ways to call an Afghan in Pakistan

• Respectable brothers just like our owns, living abroad? No. Muhajir
• Harmless people facing phobias by other communities they live with, just like us? No. Mushtaba Afrad
• A larger community that is expected to apologize and compensate  for something offensive that a minority among them is known to be standing for? No. Kala ba zay.

Three ways to survive after messing up with the flow

• -
• -
• -

(They said they'll think of a way)

They promised to meet me on the same spot the next day but no one showed up. I suspect they lie.

Who Are You?

(The following is something i wrote last year in the month of April. A year has passed and I can say another thing or two about it but this would still be the base. Also this was my first attempt.)

...

"Who are you?", a question differently answered by individuals at different times. We were asked by our Professor in the first lecture, an introductory class rather.
"And you have two years to figure it out, that's the time you will spend with us.", he added.
And then after a pause, "And the rest of your life". That smile on his face though.
That's when my journey began. I listed down all i could think of. Following was the order:
My cast
My name
Gender
Religion
My parents (Father mainly, as in my sense of belonging with them)
Country
A human.
"But all this is so common", I thought. Everybody has an origin and humankind is, well obviously, all humans. So what was special about me? Where was i different? Not that i wanted to be different but where does any of these details describe me as me?
I began to think about my identity, and my originality.
This journey on the self knowledge has been a year long as i keep analyzing the same things about myself over and over again. And i have been changing my answer every now and then. But it has been a month or two that i feel 'settled' about where i have landed.
It was hard not to notice how everyone was almost everything that i was. And i started feeling insignificant. I felt so unimportant in one phase. There was nothing i could wear as my "identity". Nothing I could refer to as "me". Was I nobody? Of course, I was. Technically, I WAS somebody. But did anyone care? Did it make any difference?
Whether I was the youngest, the eldest or the middle child, what was my contribution in that? My name, my features, or in anything that could be referred to as 'me', I saw none of my contribution in it.
More like suddenly, all the badges fell down and all the labels flew away. And I started to look around me. I started identifying myself with everyone in my house, students i would see outside, people at my university, people waiting for the bus on the stops. Not everything would be relative but sometimes this other times that. I began to see bits of myself in such bits of almost everyone.
An infant now appeared equal and equally important to me as any adult including myself. Mistakes of everyone started reminding me of my own. And I rarely felt any anger (that i abundantly practiced before). The only thing that would provoke rage in me would be when people would overlook one's need and rights for someone else. Even if they would overlook themselves, i'd feel disturbed and react.
But that (reaction) too has changed now. I guess I started to understand why they'd do so. I do know that one thing we as humans need the most, and that we lack the most in knowledge. Knowledge about ourselves, awareness rather. We need awareness. And with that might come our tendencies to accept others, other cultures, other religions and others' identities.
This realization changed me in some ways. I now accept, for example, a religiously devoted person of any religion as much as i accept a not-so-devoted person of any origin. By accepting them i mean recognizing them as they are and respecting them (i.e. not resisting or threatening or fearing them) and theirs', however it is.
They are as right as I am, as important as I am and as precious as I am. They are as original as i am. They exist, like I do. So none of us is significant if he/she tries to separate himself/herself from the rest of us. Together, as an entity, we are all significant, important and special. And each one of us is equally significant too, equally worthy.
So I'm either nobody or I am what my fellow beings are, in my own way, but still the same. The labels attached to me, the appearances i carry, the way of life, the faith system and the ideas I have may be different but not better or worse than anyone else's. Rather, they are equally important to be concerned, as any other person's.
'But who is the enemy then?', was next in my head. Am I my own enemy? I thought. If i don't condemn destruction and violence of any/all kinds on any/all levels, then i am my own enemy. Self destruction is still destruction.
If I am OK with suppression of one of us or a group of us by some others among us, the yes i am my own enemy. If i don't allow the rights to others, those rights that i demand for myself, then i am what's wrong with the world.

You have no rights to copy, or plagiarize. Thank you.

Celebrating Everyone

Imagine all the roses

And the flowers and the trees.

Now color them all one,

Any color may it be.

Imagine all the fruits

But give them taste the same.

And if the Earth was all a desert

Or one ocean, or one plain.

Imagine nights without the moon,

And no sun to bring a day.

Or all stars if shone like sun

And all life a melting day.

One flavor and one scent

And one weather uniform.

If the differences do end

Will this world have any Charm?

Diversity

-By Kayenat Hameed Khan

One of my classmates was giving a presentation on William Wordsworth on 3rd of May last year(2016). She referred to  "The Daffodils" as an example of what Wordsworth called "spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings". And meanwhile, I thought what if all the flowers were daffodils or what if all the plants looked alike and had one color, and i wanted to puke. And that's when it struck me. 

At that moment, i was still in trauma of an incident taken in our department. When a group of students with some policemen 'visited' us because the students were playing some sport past the class timings, in the department lawn. The visitors could not cause any trouble but that led me to a very sad realization. Being students, being students of they same university, we were alienated by many groups and they were equally alien to us. And i felt like if we don't celebrate our differences, we will continue to mourn them. If we don't love, we will hate. If we don't accept each other, we will resist each other. If we don't let live, we will kill.

I am not that much of an artist but i have a point to prove. Somebody once argued that God wants us to live in one particular way and that ideal would be the entire Human society believing in one truth, dressing in one particular way, speaking one honorable language etc etc. And since it's a lot to be real, It will be in heaven.

I don't know about heaven. But regarding this world, I am sure God loved differences and so He created them Himself. If God wanted all of us to think alike, dress alike, be alike and live in one same way, He could have just created clones and given us same brain rather than giving each one of us such a different one. God created diversity and Nature supports it. So if I try to hate, resist and/or eliminate everything that is not me or for me, than i am going against nature. And thus, i decided to post it finally.

You have no rights to don't copy or plagiarize. Thank you.

The Greater God?

God is Great.

But you doubt it.

That is why

You pick His fights.

Like He needs

Your arms and feet,

Like you can

Save Him from man,

Like He must

Have you for defense,

Tell me then

Who is your God?

The one you save,

Or you the Brave?

For you have been

Like you're Supreme.

But if you are not

To yourself god,

Then stop the call

Of unasked war.

And let Him deal

Then with people.

He won't hesitate

To love what He creates.

So let Him be

What He is- Great.

The Greater Gods
- By Kayenat Hameed Khan

I wrote this poem on 14th of April as the first reaction to the sad incident of Mashal Khan, a student, brutally killed by fellow students in Abdul Wali Khan University, Mardan. I had almost forgotten about my Blogspot and i didn't think of uploading it anywhere then. But the previous day i.e. on 25th of April 2016 we arranged a peace walk in our university campus in remembrance of Mahsal Khan. And i thought anything we do to continues to remember Mashal Khan is worth it. So I thought of posting it.
Mashal was accused of blasphemy, and without any confirmation a mass number of students from different political student federations on the same campus, joined hands in killing Mashal. And Killing him was not all. He was shot. And then beaten up to death because the bullet didn't kill him. And when he finally died. They tried to humiliate his body. And then these young men celebrated, under the slogans of Allah-o-Akbar (God is Great), with Mashal's body lying on the floor in front of them The entire incident, the hideous crime this "mob" did, the fact that all the killers were students and those who gave orders are reported to be the teachers of a University is so painful. It sadly reminded me of "Lord of the Flies" when it was talked about during a conversation in my class.
Mashal's death and the manner of his death and the reactions from across the country has been the news flash in the national news channels, even if it was for a few days. The politicians showed full support with Mahsal's family and condemned what happened to him, even if reluctantly. And the people of Pakistan who continue to remember him, remember him not only for what happened to him, but also for "why" it happened to him. They stand for his cause. Mashal was a humanist, he preferred humanity over any difference and celebrated diversities of every sort among humans (anyone who goes through his Social media accounts will agree on this) He spoke against the corruption of university administration. And he spoke publicly against problems students were facing on the campus. Reports, and confessions of those who got arrested in Mashal's case confirm that the university administration gave the orders to the students to take care of Mashal and his friends.
 But the problem doesn't lie there alone. The motivation used to provoke all the students into killing a fellow student so brutally and then celebrating his death, was framed in a religious outfit. And all of a sudden being responsible for taking a life was not a problem anymore. There's this big question mark on the education system in Pakistan where hate speech is very common and normal in the text books. Mashal was not the first case, neither the last case where a human was killed, by more than one person usually, after being accused of blasphemy and before the trial. With in the next few days of lynching of Mashal Khan, three women killed a man in Sialkot and during the interrogation they accused him of blasphemy. The interesting part was when they said the man had committed blasphemy in 2004 but they never got a chance to kill him then. Believing what they said, these ladies had been anticipating about the killing another human being for about thirteen years. This is what a sick mind sounds like. Something more similar to Mashal's case was going to happened in Chitral where a mentally disturbed person was accused of blasphemy. But the religious cleric of the local mosque did not support the mob and tried to stop them, in reaction to which the mob turned against the cleric too. Police was called, and then the army approached to the mob. This is frightening and very disturbing. If incidents like these continue to happen, i don't want to imagine what my country might become in the next few years.
People of Pakistan are frustrated. There is a strong need of putting an end to the hate narrative. Human life, above all differences, should be taught to be valued. Or better, just stop the hate narrative things may fall down in their own places eventually.
A human killed is a life taken, forever. And when it is done deliberately, that is the most unnatural and inhuman thing a human can do to another human. Nothing justifies it. Religions usually do not promote violence except when they're misunderstood and no law justifies lawlessness except when it is abused.
And let's say that blasphemy is really a sin that needs to be punished. Even if it is so, I still have a few questions in my mind. Who are we to judge, punish, or reward anyone based on their relationship with God? If we are trying to punish someone for a sin they did against God, are we trying to do what God is supposed to do, aren't we messing up our own faiths there? Because it has to be either us or Him, both can not be in charge of punishing and rewarding. And if we can punish, can we reward too? And can we punish everyone on the planet that sins against God? The answer may vary to some. But I believe it's humanly impossible for us to do so. That has got to be God's job to punish us for sins.
Crimes are different. They are against society. And society is supposed to have a system where crimes are less likely to occur. Those who commit crimes can be punished because there are laws for it, in every society. And these laws are to make sure that lesser violence is committed by ensuring that those who commit violence or do something criminal are punished.
And even if blasphemy is a sin that needs a human-punishment/ human reaction, Prophet Muhammad(peace be upon him) gave a very different reaction to incidents that we call blasphemy. My earlier blogs show how the Holy Prophet(peace be upon him) reacted to those who threw trash at him, mocked him, called him names, threw stones at him, tried to kill him, killed his beloved uncle, made it impossible for him to live in his hometown and did worse to him. He forgave people who might have been hanged in our society by now. He prayed for those whom we in our society would have stoned to death. And he treated them with kindness. And in most cases they apologized, changed and accepted Islam. That was the Prophet(pbuh)'s way to deal with people who fit into our definition of blasphemers. Then what we do in the name of defending religion, does the religion justify it? Does religion need defense anyway? And are we in the right position to judge others?