Children Of A Lesser World

The world has two faces, one of which is very bright, pleasant and kind. I saw this beautiful face of the world when I read the news of transformation of San Francisco into Gotham City for a day to grant 5-year-old cancer victim’s wish to become a superhero. Five-year-old Miles Scott, from Sikiyou County, near Oregon, assumed the persona of ‘Batkid’, donning a mini cape in his crusade to rid the city of its fiercest foes, the Penguin and the Riddler. Thousands of volunteers signed up to help cheer along the boy, who is in remission after a four-year battle with leukemia, as he enjoys his dream day granted by the Make-A-Wish Foundation. When the charity, which grants wishes for ill children, asked Miles to name his dream, his answer was simply: ‘I want to be Batkid!’ A whole scenario was created for Miles in which he tried to fight the evil foes and save the city. Moreover, around 1,000 special edition ‘Gotham City Chronicle’ newspapers were handed out at Union Square, with the headline: ‘Batkid saves city.’ This should be appreciated a lot and is a very impressive effort.

I see this shining face of the world whenever I see the organizations of the world feeding, clothing and educating the deprived children. Every year, the wishes of thousands of children are granted, who are suffering from fatal and incurable diseases. They are given hope that they will survive no matter how much serious their disease is. In every country, effective steps are being taken to provide education to children so that they can become a useful part of the society. Their talent is recognized and promoted. Huge slogans are raised everywhere to put an end to child labour and efforts are made to terminate child abuse by making laws and getting them implemented. Orphanages are being opened to help the children who’ve lost their parents. The children affected by war are a main focus of many organizations. They do their mental counseling and provide them with basic facilities of life to clear their minds of the fear of war.

The world is doing brilliant job for some children. But this world, as I said, has two faces, the other face is dark and frightening. At one side, it’s raising the voice of Children’s Right , while on the other, it is bombing innocent children, forgetting its own slogans. According to an estimation, 168 – 197 children are killed by drone attacks by 2013 (reference: wikipedia).By late October 2013, the opposition activist group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported the number of children killed in the conflict had risen to 6,365. While, according to Huffington Post, Somalia Famine killed 133,000 children under the age of 5. Among them, may be children who were orphaned or suffering from chronic diseases. They had already been badly affected by war and instead of their mental counseling, they were targeted by heavy weapons. Where are the world Children’s Right organizations? Why do they not get up for the rights of these children? Are they not as innocent as Miles Scott? Are all the children not the same? If you are striving to give children their right, than why didn’t you strive to fulfill the wishes of these children? Why were they not given a right to live? They are not given educations and their schools are destroyed. This proves the Children Welfare efforts of the world are just limited for the children of a particular community and territory.

All the children are the same. They are all innocent, small and mischievous. Children are like flower buds which, if given suitable conditions, transform into colourful flowers which spread their fragrance all over, otherwise they may wither and become totally useless. As all the children are same, they must be given equal opportunities to get educated, fed, clothed and developed. They must also be given the right to live and their wishes should be fulfilled instead of ruining their lives through bombs and drones.

In Newspaper

What PEACE are you talking about?

Peace is the most common topic talked and written about, in this 21st century. Countless discussions are held every month all round the globe to give peace a chance and make people realize that disharmony is the main threat to human civilization today. Even I can talk for hours about the importance of peace and write bundles of papers about it. But, is it really what the world today needs? Are all the world peace problems going to be solved just by discussions and articles telling people that we need peace? Definitely No!
To solve any problem, the first key step is to find the root cause and study the problem from grass root level. Who and why is spreading disharmony and disrupting the world peace? Yes! it’s all those lunatic Syrians, Iraqis, Afghans, Chechans, Palestinians, Bosnians and Kashmiris who’ve got so worn out minds and lack of patience that they can’t bear any peace, right? My answer would definitely be YES, if I were not one of the above. But say it fortune or misfortune, I’m a Syrian, an Afghan, a Kashmiri, a Chechan and all those who you call ‘peace destroyers’ of today!
You tell me to keep calm. You advise me and lecture me everyday to make peace. You tell me I should become a source of peace for this world. Do you expect me to lose all my dignity and self-esteem and exhibit patience every time you shed my blood?
I’m a Syrian, you bomb my house and my buildings everyday killing and orphaning hundreds. When you are not satisfied with the amount of violence, you bury alive my people warning me not to ask for independence of expression again. But, I strive for my right. I protest for my right and as an extreme measure of warning, you throw all those chemical bombs on me. You break into my home at night and when I shout against the violence, you say such an enemy of peace I am. And you expect peace from me.
When I’m an Afghan, I get killed by NATO forces for no fault. But I still keep peace. I beg you not to kill my people, not to snatch away their dignities but you use heavy weapons on me and keep bombing and firing at me unless each part of my body is so damaged that it no more remains recognizable. Your drone bombs my lands and when I go and see the destruction, I see those militants you bombed, I find a mother who had been asleep holding tightly her small child and find both dead. I congratulate you and your drones, such ‘dangerous terrorists’ you killed!
When I take hold of AK47s to save my people’s lives and dignity from the armed men wandering through my streets and to protect my home from the attacks of machine guns, you say I don’t deserve peace because I can’t keep it!
I am a Kashmiri, who you define as a hurdle in the way of peace. You say I destroy peace. But why do you expect peace from me, when I’m in habit of seeing dead people before going to bed everyday? I see you breaking into my homes with my sisters and mothers inside. I come to streets to protest for my freedom of expression and every time I get shot. I still don’t violate peace. I ask for my rights in every possible peaceful manner I can but you keep treading upon me. I tell people to remain stick to their religion, I advise them to keep asking for their right of self-determination and freedom of expression and speech and you bomb my entire home saying I was destroying the peace. Why don’t you blame the armed forces seven of which surround a single Kashmiri, not giving him the right to even breathe by his own will?
I’m an Arab Palestinian, a Bosnian, a Chechan and an Iraqi. You (Israel, Serbia, Russia and America) are the world peace-keepers, right? So much peace you are creating that you deserve applause! I’m such a non-sense that I always complained about your bombing policies. The policies and rules which allow you to widow my sisters and mothers, to orphan my children, to make my old parents carry the coffins of their children at a time! Those policies acting upon which, you destroy hundreds of my homes in a second, leaving my people gasping for life. I’m such an idiot that I never knew that these were all your peace keeping policies! Indeed I am a destroyer of peace because I always shouted against your policies because that was only I could do.
So you want world peace. And you expect me to be the most important part of it. I can do nothing but laugh at your thought of expecting peace from me when you’ve snatched away everything from me. I wonder how do you expect flowers in response to bombs? Why do you want peace from me when you’ve destroyed all the peace I had? After seeing what the world peace-keepers are doing, people still search for the causes of unrest in the world. The only way this world can achieve peace is not by blaming the oppressed for the unrest but those who are actually a reason of it.

In Newspaper

When Weakness Becomes Strength!

Are you going through the same thing? The food is made with all taste yet it seems tasteless.The day is full of sunshine still it all seems dark? The sun is warming the air but the environment is so cold and lifeless.The joys are still the same but the lips find it too hard to curl into a smile.The foreheads are just as they always were, only with more lines and furrowed brows.The eyes are more watery than before and on the verge of tears.All the facilities are just the right way that you wanted them to be, yet they're lacking that charm with in them.Festivals and occasions are coming and going but the hearts are still dissatisfied and heavy...

These are all, the symptoms of a weakness.A weakness that is causing pain and unrest in the hearts of all those who care.It is weakening all those hearts who beat for others irrespective of  religion, caste, creed, skin colour or anything.It's affecting all those who still care for the ones not cared about anymore.This weakness is called humanity.Humanity is a weakness, isn't it? Yes it is! I don't know what is your stand on it but I know that every bit of good is a weakness in the time overwhelmed by evil! It is a weakness because it's rare.How can you even imagine humanity flourishing in a world where you need to launch social media campaigns for hours and hold massive protests just to tell the people out there that those dying in Gaza and Palestine are no other-planetary-creatures but humans? Humanity is a weakness in a world where you constantly have to remind people that those who are dead or injured in a way that left them in a worse state than death, could've been their own loved ones! Humanity is indeed a weakness in a world taken over by brutality.

If you are suffering from this pain inside your heart, if you have this strong desire to help that child who just lost his father who went to market to buy his family food or that woman who's lost the only child she conceived after 24 years of marriage or that man who lost all those for whom he lived, you are really weak.A really weak human being you are then! Just because you have humanity deep in your heart - the biggest weakness of the present century, a century where you'll see humans everywhere but humanity hardly anywhere! You are a really weak person to have lit a candle within your heart and not  let darkness penetrate your insides.You are weak enough to not take the news of 100+ people dying in a day in Gaza as a boring casual news!

But you know what? It will not remain a weakness forever, humanity.No matter how weak you feel now, there will be a time when this weakness will overpower the evil of this world.I believe, as I have every right to do so, that a day will come when humanity will overcome people's lust of spilling blood.That day might be too far from today.That day might come after we're resting in our graves.But on that day, a person as weak as you will be remembered as the strongest man of history for possessing a heart full of humanity.