The Inconspicuous Desire After Origin Met Beauty In Secrecy

By Ruqayyah Khawar Minhas

It sounds odd but sometimes we are living in a place, where we were born, where we went to school and spent a third of our life but yet, it still doesn’t feel as though we belong. Sometimes there is a connection far away with a part of ours, which we never noticed. It’s the small desire of origin and to recognise this it needs almost a decade. When I was young, I never noticed the deep connection with my roots and my home country, although I visited Pakistan yearly. It was kind of a mix of formality and holiday, through the fact we mainly visited our relatives, friends etc. But later on, I felt something missing when my body show me that I needed a change from this ‘living in the moment’ life. I would describe this stage as self-confrontation with my identity. I started to know myself and what I want in life, what I was and want to be. For that I had to start from the bottom, where everything began. So, I could know why things happened the way they did. Therefore, it was the perfect time to travel to Pakistan again after a long time. A time where I was given the chance to consciously deal with my environment and self-identity, for the first time. All in all, I become a lover of my origin and learned to see that even the smallest and most inconspicuous creation has its own unique importance in our lives. Even a tiny thing can fill the big lack in our life.  To describe my feelings, I wrote a poem: I asked the people of Gujrat, What is special about here? Someone grinned  Someone laughed  Someone kept silent I asked again My ego felt ignored  I spit  So the silent one has been said It’s pointless to tell somebody about the magic of this place if he is not able to perceive it by himself. It’s visible in each corner. I could talk about it for ages and you wouldn’t believe a single world.  The one is believing The one is satisfied  The one is understanding, who experienced it with all his senses. So come wanderer Come again and again  Don’t try on a compulsive base Let yourself go  After years of realising I came to a result  Every day, every minute and every second I discovered a new beautiful aspect to fall in love again  I was obsessed like Zulekha and feared the blindness  See the market lights at night  My beloved ram talai chowk  Taste the sugar cane during harvest season  My hospitable land  On the one side, listen to the sound of the Chenab and on the other feel the cool breeze of the Jhelum  I found my Laila  I found my Heer  I became Ranjha  I belong to the city and the city belongs to me Ready to eat the poisoned Ladoo if it comes to the crunch.