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It Is a Heart, Not a Rock or a Stone (Urdu) - Moizullah Tariq Malik Moizullah Tariq Malik works in an airline industry. He says reading and writing are more than a hobby to him. Click here to read Moizullah Tariq Malik's poems on SAWF.

A brief excerpt from the translated article by Sahar Syed. Sahar Syed is doing masters in Computer Science from Karachi.

The title of this article: Dil Hee To Hai ..Na Sung-o-khusht... 'It Is a Heart Not a Rock or a Stone'

It is a fact that though stones can contribute in making a house but definitely not a home, as people who live there make it a home. Without anyone there, these houses  become deserted and deteriorate due to our indifference. There is something weird about the bonds that tie human beings together. They link people in a way that is  invisible to the eyes. Even minds cannot construe them properly. The links ... the bonds ... the  feelings remain somewhere deep inside our hearts …so deep that sometimes the person himself cannot feel them. And when these feelings are discovered they become  intense to an extent that is unbelievable.

When I was a freshman at Government College Lahore, my uncle was in final year of B-Pharmacy Honors at the old University campus. We used to meet almost everyday .He was a well educated, very  generous and kind-hearted person. He  was the son of my mother's aunt. He had other brothers and a sister but he was the most dedicated in his studies. His father was a Police Inspector. One of his brothers was very much involved in political scene of that area. His mother-in-law used to live at Mohallah Sathaan, which is in interior Lahore.

Though our home was not very far away from their house but his mother used to stay over at our house whenever she visited us. It was perhaps the love that she and my mother had for  each other. Whenever she visited, we used to spend the whole night talking and eating. She was a very good cook and used to cook items not that common these days. We were all fond of eating those dishes. The charm has vanished now. In yesteryears, there was a saying, 'path to the husband's heart passes through the kitchen', but the trend has changed now. The path now a days might be through fast food restaurants.

The political conditions were changing rapidly in Pakistan. President Ayub Khan's fall had started. Mass destruction and corruption had caught its roots in the society. The degree of tolerance in the country that was already very low was further lowered by the political conditions. The political oppositions turned into personal rivalries. Murders that were usually committed for social reasons increased in number now due to change of reasons. Political reasons gave rise to murders in the country. The situation further deteriorated due to government’s poor supervision and lack of control in such cases.

For political sense to be developed, a stable financial structure is required because this is the only thing that can stop people from making fool of themselves. Political stability, especially in the third world, is difficult to achieve without people being  financially stable. This instability gives rise to stinginess and selfishness. That might be one of the reasons that dacoits are selected as leaders to get rid of this sense of economic insecurity and instability.

My these ponderings are not nonsense or irrelevant. The violent atmosphere of the politics is responsible for my uncle's death. He was a handsome, young, straight-forward and kind person who used to keep himself aloof from the politics. He was reading a book in his house when an attempt to murder his uncle was made. Instead the bullet hit him and he died on the spot.

I was at his funeral. Many political personalities attended the funeral. His death had a political touch. But the tragedy itself resulted in a tragedy in social and human aspects .The next day, political big shots came to his house for condolences to his father. I was sitting beside him. Though he was very calm and quiet but tears were rolling down his eyes. When someone told him to endure the pain of death of his son  with courage, he replied: 'dil hee to hai ..na sung o khusht'. (it is a heart, not a stone or a rock and has no resistance against pain) That was the moment that I realized the  meaning of this verse of Mirza Ghalib the great poet of the subcontinent. In short his father and mother couldn’t bear the pain for long and they too died soon.  One of his brothers, burning from the heat of revenge, died of heart attack. The other lost trust in judicial system and made murderous attempt on the person who was declared  guilty in his brother's murder case. He was arrested and later died in the jail due to heart problems.

A single murder resulted in so many deaths but no one was penalized NOT for a single death.

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