Music: 'admiration or veneration'

Music gives us life and melody brings soul to it. Melody is everywhere, in the drizzling drops or the rustling autumn leaves, in the honking cars and in the heartbeat of each and every human. Music is the only medicine which takes humans into a trance like state. A state in which all one can see is the pictorial illustration of the lyrics and all one can feel is the rhythm with the thumping beat.

No wonder, music has become an essential to loosen ourselves from the daunting and hectic lives of today… and this ‘urge for music’ has given rise and power to the singers of today. Internationally ruling the charts and hearts of people, these top celebrities in fact have the strength to make or break a notion!

Songs, give birth to notions and every celebrity rises with a humongous fan following of his own ‘style’. The fandom these days reaches the pinnacle where people literally worship the star. These celebrities inspire and instigate the youth with their lavish lifestyles, provoking thoughts and exciting messages. Their thoughts, messages either open or subliminal are accepted since the youth is too naïve to object. Further elaborating naïve, these ‘devotees’ actually start living in the trance which the music and celebrity creates. Neither understanding the meaning nor the true significance, they just follow, proving the extremity of their ‘fanship’.

Now, focusing on the youth of Pakistan, where do we lie in this queue of this blind veneration?

We lie at the top!.. Totally intimidated by the celebrity power our youth has actually lost the power to understand before adoring. With complete adulation, our youngsters vouch to completely follow the footsteps of the foreigners. Each and everyone of us has a crush on one of those hot stars and we tap to their music. Rock, pop, R&B, soul, country, jazz etc. you just name it and even children will name the top most stars of these genres. But do we understand that how strong the impact of this unsighted devotion has been on our minds? Do we get the meaning of the song before putting it up as a status of facebook? Do we actually reckon the disrespect when we try to be as minimally dressed as Rihanna was in her video?

No! we don’t and infact we don’t pay a damn to such useless thoughts. Life is here and life is today! This is what we believe, but is this what our norms, values and religion has taught us? Our religion has treated this world only as an exam to pass for the world hereafter. Imagine an exam where we all know the answers taught us by the Almighty Allah, but still only a few etch the write steps to clear it. This is what we all do, we all know the answers but we seldom ponder because we have been brainwashed by the messages taught and conveyed to us by these celebrities.

Let’s, take a look at our lives now. Every girl wants to be ‘Material Girl’ and every boy wanders saying ‘It’s my life’. Awe struck by the ‘Good girl gone bad’ trauma we all want to be bad. We put black nail polishes and cat woman outfits to just copy the bad attitude and style. Every teenager sings ‘toxic’ and ‘piece of me’, without realizing that this is not what we were meant to be as Muslims and as Pakistanis. Listening to songs like ‘seduction’, ‘pump it’, shut up and drive’..we have transformed from the great humans to useless commodities which might appeal but seldom inspire.

We all want to be rockers, studs, hunks, hotties but do we ever desire to be the best person? Have we ever thought about those who gave birth to us?..No! When we don’t even think about the Almighty who created the world then why would we care about our parents? We say life is too short to be unhappy, so let’s have fun. But do we realize that life is also too short to make the Lord happy, so let’s start from today. Our minds have been jumbled and our focus has been busted. Our attention is only diverted to the present and we have forgotten about the judgment day. Thinking all day long about money, fame and fortune we rarely think about the values, norms and morals. With boys doing their maximum to cheat, disobey and be wild, do they actually become the shoulder of their old parents? And girls fishing for the attraction from the opposite sex… do we in fact gain respect and reverence anymore from the society? Our nation built and rendered as the representative of Islam..Will it survive the map with this level of indecency?

This article could go on for pages and pages, but bringing it to an end, the only thing I’d like to point out is that it’s high time to start thinking before we lose it all as a nation!

The color Pink!

"The feminine woman is forever static and childlike. She is like the ballerina in an old music box, her unchanging features tiny and girlish, her voice tinkly, her body stuck on a pin rotating in a spiral that will never grow" By Susan Faludi

For the past 18 years, I have been taught as a girl to be shy, honest, loving, caring and at the top silent. Loving as a human but silent as a commodity, a commodity which serves and serves and nothing is there which in return it deserves.
The atmosphere, the environment, the movies, and the relatives all guided me to be a subordinate because I’m a girl. A girl who studies to serve, marries to serve and who if earns is also to serve, her life should be spent to make others happy no matter what she gets as an outcome.
And the most weird thing is that I followed these norms, the norms of the so called experienced, the norms made from but against religion. The norms which sometimes make our women feel not human. I followed them blindly like every girl does in our society. I played with dolls, made houses, dreamed about pink dresses and tried to be a master chef. I didn’t care if this was what I wanted to do, didn’t bother if my instincts, my passions were suppressed somewhere dying to perspire.
Then I passed school, went to college but life didn’t change. Same old girls obsessed with the way they look externally. I began life there with an effort to pursue admiration for beauty, clothes, jewelry and desire to look the way they did. I forced to live a life where no body will call me a manly woman.
But as the time passed by I realized that I’m not one of them. Not the one who loves jewelry, who wears pretty bright clothes and certainly not the one who looks at the eyelashes and complexion rather than the real soul and expression. And yes! That was the time I discovered myself. I didn’t love the color pink, I didn’t wish to live a fairytale and find my prince charming who will climb up my braided hair. I wanted a life filled with adventures; I wished to explore my inner self. I’m not an object to be dressed and utilized rather I’m a full-fledged member of the human community. That was the time I started following my dreams.
Since then I have been challenging myself at every point of life and testing my stamina to the maximum. When people see me deviating from the stereotypical “girlish” standards they call me manly, when I cut my hair they call me insane, my efforts of independence are seen as obsolete by them. Thus they try hard to break my confidence and make me feeble. But I can see the hidden fear in them, fear that one day I will discover those strengths that every woman is supposed to repress, fear that my denial will encourage others to breakthrough these shackles of rules webbed around us. But don’t mistake this as my desire to break my religion rather it’s an effort to rule out those norms made in the name of religion.
I’m neither a feminist nor a member of male hatred community instead I like to have my share of space in the world, the space that every woman deserves just like any man. Briefly, I do whatever I feel like doing instead of whatever others want me to do. And if after going through this article you find me tomboyish or a manly woman then surely you’re influenced deeply by those stereotypes created by our ancestors to degrade anyone who dares to survive in this wretched world.