Shadows

Exams are over, and after sleeping for 10 hours straight I did what I really wanted to do: read a good book. At the insistence of a friend, I picked up A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, and finished it off in one non-stop go of 6 hours.

Does the above sentence seem like a dream come true to you? Hardly, right? I mean what's there in that sentence that's even worthy of being called a dream?

The "doing-what-i-wanted" part.

The story is about two women protagonists from Afghanistan and how their lives changed because of the turmoil that the country was in from the eighties till the early 2000's. They went through the Communist rule, the jihad, the Taliban, and what not. I'm not going to give you the story or a review of it here. It's a good book, maybe brilliant even. But if you want to know more about it, read it. What I want to talk about here is what has been in the whole book, like the far-away smell of rain just before the monsoon: always there but never in-your-face.

It's a well established fact, at least for me, that life changes in an instant. I've been there-done that, so I know it only too well. And after things change we wonder: what why when where how and all other possible questions, trying to find answers to what-if's and but's. Everyone in life has problems and everyone has eyes only for their problems. We tend to forget the good things that we can still enjoy, because of the bad circumstances that we find ourselves in.

Leaving the house when you want to, eating 3 square meals a day, wearing the kind of clothes that you like, living with your family, living in land that is not constantly war-ravaged, where you don't have to go to sleep everyday wondering whether you'll be alive the next day or no: these are a few things that we tend to take for granted. This is the way people in Afghanistan have been living for the last three decades or so. We're talking about three square meals a day? Sometimes I have six. My problem feel so inconsequential compared to what these people have been through. Not one family, I repeat, not one family has been spared the ordeal of seeing a loved one die. Some have seen their entire families being obliterated. And they still find the courage to move on. What right do I have to complain about my problems? I have a roof over my head, a loving family, food to eat as and when I want, whatever food I want, clothes to wear, the kind and color that I want. I even have the right to tell my father, when I don't agree with what he's saying, "Dad, what crap are you saying." And that too in so many words. Women in Afghanistan didn't even have the right to look into a man's eye, forget not agreeing with him, and that too, definitely not in so many words! They'd probably get beaten till they bled to death, and then the man would go around saying that she deserved it anyway. This is a not a man versus woman, and woman is suppressed but still better than man naari mukti morcha that I usually support. This is much more than that. This is about humanity, about strength and about shame. There are people out there who have problems. Real problems. Death due to starvation, being abandoned by family, being orphaned, being in a war-torn country etc. Let's not belittle their problems by giving our inconsequential problems so much importance. So big deal if life is not what it used to be. At least there is still life. So what if you don't have that much money as much as you'd like. At least you have your family. Intact (touch wood) and all yours.

Children being orphaned at the age of 16, going from being a teacher's daughter brought up in a relatively modern way to being a shoe-maker's wife, a man who is over30 years older than you. Can you imagine yourself in that kind of situation? And worse yet, can you imagine still living, everyday, for the sake of your unborn child. A sixteen year old – a child herself – sacrificing peace in the form of death for her own child, choosing to face abuses and get beaten up every day, only because the child has no fault that it was born. And I crib because life's been a little unfair to me? Am I shallow or what. These people go through pain every day. They have nothing to fall back on, no support system. No food, no family, no future. And yet they have hope. And we? We have a family, we have food, we have clothes, and we have everything. But no hope. Only despair. I need that job. I want that promotion. If I don't get that raise, I won't be able to buy that nice expensive car that I've wanted all along. I want- I want- I want. All the time. Never looking at what I-have.

Words fail me now, to describe the shame that I feel; the guilt for being so shallow. For being ungrateful of whatever God has given me: always mourning what he has taken away. For thinking that a small hiccup in life is the end-of-the-world. For always seeing the thousand shadows, instead of seeing the thousand splendid suns that caused them.

What is worse is that even though this book, its story, has touched a nerve, all I can, or rather will, do about it is cry when I read the book, and write a blog about it.

Somehow, I really don't think I like myself today.

Though nothing can bring back the hour,
Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower,
We shall grieve not, rather find,
Strength in what remains behind…
-Wordsworth

Until next time…