Owl and the Parrots – Short Story

Once upon a time there was a couple of parrots who were flying across a dark, barren and destructed jungle. They kept flying all the day and thought to do some rest as the darkness had started to replace the bright day. They landed on an old tree that seemed to be like dead one- without life.

He-parrot took an aerial view of the whole jungle and said to her wife. “Have a look at the jungle; it’s so lonely, so life-less and I bet that this jungle must belong to owls.” Before his wife could make an opinion, an owl who was sitting nearby branch interrupted with his hoarse voice saying “Welcome to our jungle- it’s been so long that nobody has visited us. I will be really honored if you accepted my invitation to host you.”

Both the parrots looked at each other and were happy that they found some native who can afford to take them to his home. When they reached owl’s home, owl showed great generosity and did everything that one could expect from Hatim Tai. He presented delicious fruits to the couple and gave very comfortable bed for them to sleep on.

On the next day parrots gave thanks to owl and they said that they were really thankful for his hospitality and sought his permission to leave. When they were about to fly Owl grabbed she-parrot’s hand and said “where are you going my wife”.  He-Parrot was shocked and couldn’t believe what he heard. Parrot went furious and thought to appear in the Jungle’s court to get justice. After all the proceedings court came to the conclusion that she-parrot was actually owl’s wife. Owl rejoiced and parrot busted into tears for this final stroke which hurt him so badly.

He- parrot now thought to fly alone but owl came soon after him and said “ I have to tell you something so let’s go home. I know your journey is long and that you must have some food with you so that you can’t survive because as you know this jungle is barren and you will die out of hunger.” Parrot thought that now there is nothing else that this mischievous owl could do him. Owl had already snatched what he had. So he agreed to go with him.

When they reached owl’s home and he was waiting for the promised food. Owl appeared with a lot of food hampers and his wife the she-parrot. He saw her, now parrot’s ex-wife, and thought he is seeing her for the last time.

Owl said in a friendly tone “ Now you would be thinking that’s too much to carry for a single bird like you. So don’t worry you both are going together. She was never my wife and I did this for a purpose to make you understand something. This was just that.” He-Parrot shrugged his head and said “ What the purpose? I couldn’t understand”.

Owl explained to the couple that when you came into our jungle you thought that it is so barren, so old, so lifeless just because owls live here. But my friends it’s not because the owls live here but it’s because we have no justice here. You saw yourself that how I won your wife even though she was not of my family. It was a self evident fact that she- parrot can never be a wife of an owl like me. But still I won the case and she was legally called my wife. In the last I would say that please convey my message to your countrymen that if you want to live happily and that your country may prosper then do ever justice. You will be never ruined”

Both the parrots thanked him and flew away.

 

A tour to hometown.

After eight months I again planned to visit my hometown village. It was again a lot of thinking because I had not that much money. One thought was to go and the other thought was to drop the idea. But somehow I decided to go and went there.

Luckily, I got the front seat along with the driver and I was happy for that. I always want to be on the front. So that I can see vehicles moving at the first place. I enjoyed the drive a lot and also was quite relaxed as I had a big seat.

At around 2:00 am we reached at ‘Hala’ where we stopped to get some refreshment. I ordered the tea and found it utterly tasteless. While I was taking the first sip of my tea one  man came to sit with me, he also ordered the tea. After some gossip I got to knew that he is my relative. But I have never met him before. It was enough to know that he is my relative so I paid the bill for him too. When I reached at the reception table, I thought that I should give the owner of the hotel some feedback and while giving him the bill I said, “Don’t mind, but the tea was frustratingly tasteless”. He said ” Because its now summer time so we are facing problems in purchasing milk, and whatever there is available is not pure. Small contractors are mixing water in it and we are forced to purchase because we have no other option at our disposal.”

I then came out of the hotel and lit a cigarette, that man , who was my relative as I told you before, again interacted with me and said ” Why do you smoke?” I said ” I just smoke without reason”. He continued – “Its injurious to health”- I said- ” There are many things that are injurious to health.”  I also witnessed an insect which was like spider in structure but unlike spider it was huge and had many legs. I thought that Animal Planet’s people must know about that insect. I also thought that I must have captured a pic of it if I had a camera phone. Opportunity Missed!

Soon after all the passengers took refreshment we again  moved on and finally I reached home at 5:00 am. I saw sun rising after a long time.  My Grand-Father was offering prayer when I reached there. I just threw my bag and fall asleep for an hour till 6:00 am and then I met with all the relatives who were present at home. Soon after that conventional hellos and hi, I found four cups of tea coming from all the kitchens of my uncles one after another. Actually its the one home but there are separate kitchens for every uncle in it. I took two tea cups and excused for others.. Tea was amazing. Because they had their own cows, buffaloes, goats.

At around 7:00 am my father in law called me and asked me to drop my wife for the exam myself by arranging my own vehicle as he was going somewhere. I requested my uncle for the bike and I went to my father in law home. I found all the smiling faces including of my wife. She was very happy to see me. But we didn’t hug or kiss. We just shook hands and exchanged hellos. I also noted that she was looking a bit changed. Her complexion was a bit darker and I thought that probably its because of hot humid weather of our village.

I then took her to her college, dropped her at the college’s gate. Soon after I realised that I should meet Abdul Jabbar who is the owner of City Gate Hotel. When I reached there I found someone else sitting at his place. I inquired about Abdul Jabbar and they told me that he has sold out this hotel and has relocated to some nearby location. I reached at his new hotel but he wasn’t there too. His son greeted me and insisted that I should take a cup of tea atleast. I said no thanks. That guy was looking quite old although he is younger than me.

I reached my grandfather’s home back and I found my grandfather , grandmother and uncle  sitting in a adobe like room. My grandmother has gone though some Eye-Operation and she was wearing black glasses. She was looking good in it. My grand-father joked that she is looking like an engineer. (He meant to say that someone who is rich and have a good personality). Then I did breakfast with tomato gravy and Lassi. Lassi has a tranquiliser effect so I fell asleep soon. But before going to sleep I had asked my cousin to awake me at 11:30 am. I felt like its just minute after my sleeping that my cousin awoke me. I said I just slept and you have awoken me. He said look at the time, its 11:30 am. I just said – ‘oh’ and hurried to wash my face and found that the bike in which I had filled petrol is now disappeared. I arranged another one and I filled patrol in it again. When the petrol filled at petrol pump I was trying to close the cap of the petrol tank. But I couldn’t close it properly because its lock was problematic. I requested the patrol-man to close it for me. His hands were strong and he tightened the cap with a brutal force. It was now 11:50 am. I rushed and accelerated the bike to fourth gear and finally reached there on time i.e 12:00 pm. The day was hot and I was waiting outside the gate to receive my wife. I thought to turn my bike towards the city, with the idea that as soon as she will come I will go ahead. without any interruption because there were lot of bikes who were causing jamming the road. After 05 minutes I found my wife who was searching me and she came and we then headed towards her home. I asked her about the paper. She said she had done all the questions. I was riding the bike slowly at first because I am a slow driver.  I was chatting with her during the travel and I was also singing some songs, especially the Dhoom song as it was properly fitting to the situation. Dhoom songs accelerated my enthusiasm and then I tried to ride the bikes faster, in style like the hero in Dhoom films do.My wife said don’t be dhoom-guy we may have an accident. I laughed and tried to be like some risky, but then I realised that I should slow down and ride on bike in my own natural slow style.

In 20 minutes we were at her home. My Mother- In Law greeted us and she then asked his son to catch the chicken in honor of me. I asked them not to slaughter that sweet chicken because I wanted her to live. Instead I offered them to have some sweet dish and that I will pay for it. I gave Rs. 500 to my Brother-In-Law and asked him to purchase sawiyaan, coconut, kishmish, milk. My wife added that she also wants to have some biscuits. I added it to the list. After half an hour the sweet dish was ready. We ate it and then I left their home.

Next day, early in the morning, I again went to my mother in law’s home. This time she again was adamant to have chicken for me. My all attempts to let the chicken live were failed. We ate that chicken. And then we talked till one an hour and at around 10:00 am of 08th-May -2014 we , husband and wife said them good-bye and left for Karachi.

 

 

MOVEMENT FOR ANTI MOBILE PHONE MARRIAGES IN SHAR COMMUNITY OF MIRWAH

This appeal is addressed to all the senior citizens of Shar Community, literate individuals, doctors, engineers, scholars, advocates, magistrates and to everyone who has influence over his community.

But before going to the heart of my appeal, I would like to take a brief historical context of our Shar Community. We know that our ancestors were brave men and belonged to Baluchistan territory. We are proud of their being honest to their commitment. They were people of moral character values. They were people who honored their own Ghairat and were the guardians of their fellow beings. They preferred death over disgrace. As unfortunately in domestic battle the all adult male persons were killed. However, our grand-grandmother rescued the remaining little boys and girls and some other women of her family and sought refuge in Mir’s kingdom in Sindh is also a well remembered incident of our mutual history.

 

It is now a worth-proud legacy that our forefathers had lived a life of vagabonds and were barbarian. The rise of Shar community is a living story of from rags to riches. As being a new coming family in the shadow of an old woman we have overcome all the obstacles which were instilled by both nature and the circumstances. So now the other community’s people know us as the most literate and well- to- do community in our region. The point which I want to make here is that we have the capability, capacity and strong will to overcome all the hindrances which may limit us from moving forward smoothly.

We have together surmounted material difficulties and now it is the time to face moral discrepancies. It is the undeniable fact that our neighbor casts are wary of our inaction over the number of incidents that have occurred in recent past. As we are in the majority number in our surroundings so the weight of responsibilities also lie upon us for being more responsible, answerable and co-operative towards other brother casts living with us.

Nowadays it has been seen that run-away lovers’ cases are occurring intermittently by our some passionate, irresponsible and immature young boys who are falling in love on mobile phones within and outside Shar

Communities. These love birds, escape from their parents and make marriages in courts without any information, discussion or suggestion with their both sides elders. This act of wrong doing is very dangerous to the peace and harmony of our whole Shar Society.

There is no way to return especially for the girls who took that step to run away with her lover. Soon after getting married the girl realizes that she has done a big wrong. She finds that life is not as good as she had fancied. And the lover for whom she risked her life is actually not what he had promised or pretended to be, because the magic of love is very temporary. I am the eye witness of many such unfortunate girls and women. I have personally interviewed someone, too. I assure you that none of the lady, who put her life at stake is happy with her runaway marriage life.

Those unfortunate ladies do want to go to their parent’s home and wish that they could be accepted by their family and community, but those run away girls now have no chance that they will ever see their father, mother or home village streets. They will never take any part in their parent’s happiness or sorrows. They will never meet their childhood friends and fellows again. All the windows and doors are closed up for them forever. So they are very much more worried about.

Therefore, we the sensible and responsible persons of Shar Community understand that it is the violation of basic human rights of these non sense and huge mistaken girls.   

The need of the hour is that we should communicate and educate our children and let them realize that their act is heinous and harmful and they have to suffer till they are alive. We have to be good with our neighbors because neighbors can never be replaced. We are living with our neighbors since centuries and will keep on living in future too.

It is an uphill task but if we take it seriously and don’t just make a joke of this challenge, I hope there is much to learn and act on it by strengthening each other and with mutual understanding. It is a bomb that is buried right underneath of each one of our home. Nobody is safe and secure and if we couldn’t overcome it then anybody can be the NEXT victim.

So please come on, sit together, join our heads and look into the serious matters.

Yours

Muhammad Moosa Mirwahi.

AL-KHAIR WELFARE SOCEITY

Mobile No.     0302-2604913 & 0315-5926057

E-mailAdd: Waqar_optimist@hotmail.com

May 5, 2014- Karachi

The Death of Benny Paret —Norman Mailer

Paret was a Cuban, a proud club fighter who had become welterweight champion because of his unusual ability to take a punch. His style of fighting was to take three punches to the head in order to give back two. At the end of ten rounds, he would still be bouncing, his opponent would have a headache. But in the last two years, over the fifteen-round fights, he had started to take some bad maulings.

This fight had its turns. Griffith won most of the early rounds, but Paret knocked Griffith down in the sixth. Griffith had trouble getting up, but made it, came alive and was dominating Paret again before the round was over. Then Paret began to wilt. In the middle of the eighth round, after a clubbing punch had turned his back to Griffith, Paret walked three disgusted steps away, showing his hindquarters. For a champion, he took much too long to turn back around. It was the first hint of weakness Paret had ever shown, and it must have inspired a particular shame, because he fought the rest of the fight as if he were seeking to demonstrate that he could take more punishment than any man alive. In the twelfth, Griffith caught him. Paret got trapped in a corner. Trying to duck away, his left arm and his head became tangled on the wrong side of the top rope. Griffith was in like a cat ready to rip the life out of a huge boxed rat. He hit him eighteen right hands in a row, an act which took perhaps three or four seconds, Griffith making a pent-up whimpering sound all the while he attacked, the right hand whipping like a piston rod which has broken through the crankcase, or like a baseball bat demolishing a pumpkin. I was sitting in the second row of that corner—they were not ten feet away from me, and like everybody else, I was hypnotized. I had never seen one man hit another so hard and so many times. Over the referee’s face came a look of woe as if some spasm had passed its way through him, and then he leaped on Griffith to pull him away. It was the act of a brave man. Griffith was uncontrollable. His trainer leaped into the ring, his manager, his cut man, there were four people holding Griffith, but he was off on an orgy, he had left the Garden, he was back on a hoodlum’s street. If he had been able to break loose from his handlers and the referee, he would have jumped Paret to the floor and whaled on him there.

And Paret? Paret died on his feet. As he took those eighteen punches something happened to everyone who was in psychic range of the event. Some part of his death reached out to us. One felt it hover in the air. He was still standing in the ropes, trapped as he had been before, he gave some little half-smile of regret, as if he were saying, “I didn’t know I was going to die just yet,” and then, his head leaning back but still erect, his death came to breathe about him. He began to pass away. As he passed, so his limbs descended beneath him, and he sank slowly to the floor. He went down more slowly than any fighter had ever gone down, he went down like a large ship which turns on end and slides second by second into its grave. As he went down, the sound of Griffith’s punches echoed in the mind like a heavy ax in the distance chopping into a wet log.

 

Understanding ‘Qualifier’ Words

Understanding ‘Qualifier’ Words

I just gone through this handout about Qualifiers. I found that I am also habitual of using too much qualifying words in my written text. An excellent guide. 

 

Why cheat?: Cheating, not teaching! By Waqar Ahmed Shar Baloch

Why cheat?: Cheating, not teaching! By Waqar Ahmed Shar Baloch

My aticle published in Daily Dawn on the topic ‘Cheating’. How cheating works, what are its causes and how people see it.

“My friend, the…

“My friend, the things that do attain
The happy life be these, I find:
The riches left, not got with pain;
The fruitful ground; the quiet mind;
The equal friend; no grudge; no strife;
No charge of rule, nor governance;
Without disease, the healthy life;
The household of continuance;
The mean diet, no dainty fare;
Wisdom joined with simpleness;
The night discharged of all care,
Where wine the wit may not oppress:
The faithful wife, without debate;
Such sleeps as may beguile the night;
Content thyself with thine estate,
Neither wish death, nor fear his might.”

Knowing Nelson Mandela – A long Walk to freedom

I have recently finished Nelson Mandela’s book – “A Long Walk to Freedom” .

I was born on the eighteenth of July, 1918, at Mvezo, a tiny village on the banks of the Mbashe River in the district of Umtata, the capital of the Transkei. All told, my father had four wives, the third of whom, my mother, Nosekeni Fanny, the daughter of Nkedama from the amaMpemvu clan of the Xhosa, belonged to the Right Hand House.

In African culture, the sons and daughters of one’s aunts or uncles are considered brothers and sisters, not cousins. We do not make the same distinctions among relations practiced by whites. We have no half brothers or half sisters. My mother’s sister is my
mother; my uncle’s son is my brother; my brother’s child is my son, my daughter.

In the hut in which we slept, there was no furniture in the Western sense. We slept on mats and sat on the ground. I did not discover pillows until I went to Mqhekezweni.

I was no more than five when I became a herd-boy, looking after sheep and calves in the fields. I discovered the almost mystical attachment that the Xhosa have for cattle, not only as a source of food and wealth, but as a blessing from God and a source of
happiness. It was in the fields that I learned how to knock birds out of the sky with a slingshot, to gather wild honey and fruits and edible roots, to drink warm, sweet milk straight from the udder of a cow, to swim in the clear, cold streams, and to catch fish with twine and sharpened bits of wire. I learned to stick-fight — essential knowledge to any rural African boy — and became adept at its various
techniques, parrying blows, feinting in one direction and striking in another, breaking away from an opponent with quick footwork. From these days I date my love of the veld,of open spaces, the simple beauties of nature, the clean line of the horizon.

I learned my lesson one day from an unruly donkey. We had been taking turns climbing up and down its back and when my chance came I jumped on and the donkey bolted into a nearby thornbush. It bent its head, trying to unseat me, which it did, but not before the thorns had pricked and scratched my face, embarrassing me in front of my friends.

On the first day of school, my teacher, Miss Mdingane, gave each of us an English name and said that from thenceforth that was the name we would answer to in school. This was the custom among Africans in those days and was undoubtedly due to the British bias of our education. The education I received was a British education, in which British ideas, British culture, British institutions, were automatically assumed to be superior.

There was no such thing as African culture.

Africans of my generation — and even today — generally have both an English and an African name. Whites were either unable or unwilling to pronounce an African name, and considered it uncivilized to have one. That day, Miss Mdingane told me that my new name was Nelson. Why she bestowed this particular name upon me I have no idea.Perhaps it had something to do with the great British sea captain Lord Nelson, but that would be only a guess.

 

 

Bagfuls of Burden

Bagfuls of Burden.

Bagfuls of Burden

Bagfuls of Burden

I have got my article published in Daily Dawn with the title Bagful of Burden,

 

The culture of heavy schoolbags is rampant in Pakistan. Many educationists mistakenly believe that the more books that they prescribe, the more knowledge they’ll be able to impart.