Hyderabad Wedding Sins

So you’re from Hyderabad! Are you a foodie? Do you like Biryani? YES?! Chances are that you ABSOLUTLEY relish on going to get together-parties and weddings throughout the city, don’t you? I mean reading this you would be like: “Who wouldn’t?” After all, the parties and weddings are rich, full of happiness and masti, smiles, hugs, congratulations, great food, meeting up with your cousins and of course lots and lots of photographs.

Well, here you are reading this. Why? Because I wrote this and why did I write this? Because I want to say something and you might probably want to read it. And that would be?

Well “I” feel that they are so many things fundamentally wrong with the weddings here in Hyderabad.

One of them is that, especially Hyderabad weddings are made a very expensive affair. But I guess, that’s okay as long as the host is doing this as an expression of happiness. But the problem is, the general people EXPECT it to be made a big affair.

Why? Well that’s just what everyone expects and plus we want to show how rich and cool we are and we don’t want people naming us, would we?

The next thing is the incredible amount of food that is wasted, we live among people where it’s a MUST to have big fat wedding but it’s completely okay to waste food.

We live in a society where its shameful and a matter of deep embarrassment for women to wear less gold but its completely awesome to stuff our plates with food, compare ourselves and later discard the food off.

The irony that I once saw was that in a recent wedding, I saw "heaps of rice and food" rolled in plastic covers and thrown away but “heaps of beggars”, dusted and so thin that their skins were sticking to their very bones scavenging for food. I felt that what has made the world come to his point of inhumanity. Wasn’t the purpose of wedding to feed people in an act of celebration?

The other thing is that for every child, the parent gives away, it must be almost a traumatizing event in his/her life. First they are giving their baby girl to someone for a mere hope that perhaps she settles down to have a happy married life. He/she invites people who eat and throw food, laugh around, gossip, backbite and still keep names. 

Last but not the least, what disturbs me is that how people push each other when the call is made for the food.

It makes me think that despite their rich traditional sherwanis or khurtas or sarees or whatever their other best clothes are, they are slave to one of their basic instincts: “food”. I guess, it’s only natural for manners to take a back seat at times like these. If we only had a culture where we could speed up food delivery or start dinner on time. These things can slowly with time disappear. At the end of reading all this, you might think. "This is NOT the solution. To complain or find faults."  My assurances, my intention is clearly not this but rather that you, the reader, gets aware. Perhaps a “wave of general awareness” can prompt an action if not this piece of writing. PEACE.

The Muslimah!

I dedicate this poem to our muslim girls and women. The princesses & queens of our hearts!


THE MUSLIMAH

O men! Bear my plea,
Heed me,
I’m the Muslimah!
I’m the half of the Ummah!
The Ummah that the beloved prophet left behind,
The equal portion of mankind.

I’m stronger than you think,
I’m a bonding link.

If you marry me or my sisters, I’m your half deen,
Does not that make me your queen?

I’m your beautiful angel daughter,
When you come home tired, do I not offer you tea or water?

I’m your sister, do I not protect your secrets?
I wake you in Fajr,
In Ramadan, I cook your Iftar.

I’m your wife, beautiful and blessed,
Have I not been source of relief in your distress?

I’m a mother, the future of Muslimeen are in my womb,
So I shape and teach these rising stars, so they can later bloom.

Were you not advised to treat me fairly?
But a lot of you not do it rarely?

Honor & dignity are the jewels of my crown,
By Allah, it is safeguard and bestowed down.

Know Her?

She is beautiful. She is shy. She dances and sways. She falls down and crashes, she rises up to a dawn.

Throughout all these centuries, books, arts and movie cinema have captured her essence and portrayed her in various forms. Writers, artists, musicians, architects and historians are her guardians.

You can feel her in a tune, a warm song. In the environment and in nature. She is in the raging seas, she is in the calm waves washing over a shore. You can feel her trickling pass your fingers near a fountain. She is nature’s sweet illegitimate child.

She is within animals too. She is the half of basic animal instinct to survive. Naturally it’s in our instinct as well. She is like a fuel that drives us when we are ineffectual.

In the greatest glory full battles of mankind to heart wrenching tragedies of human history.

She forms a strong emotion. Her mix with mankind’s other emotions has changed the face of world and mankind itself.

She is between lovers.

She is the bond between the creator and creation.

She was the divine promise from the holy men.

She is in a mother’s touch, in a father’s eyes.

She is glory and in defeat. 

She is in kindness and in despair.

For she is hope. She is hope…

Creative Evolution in Writing

When I first penned down my initial novel, I had a clear road map of what I was about to write and how everything was going to proceed. However I was up for a surprise! As I wrote down the narration, I found that my characters started to evolve with passing time and situation which I had presented to them in the book. Not only that but the situation itself needed an amendment for them to grow and expand. Even as a writer, it really baffled me to observe this peculiarity. 

For example, narration was decided to be only restricted to a few characters in the book. But for me to write and convey a proper story, I did (and that too badly) needed a point of narration from other characters as well. And that eventually led to the significance of these other characters. By the end of the book, they marked themselves as one of the main casted character.

And their evolving personality defined and distinguished them, conclusively showing that their features are now trademarked to the personality itself. It is very mild surprise for me to discover this.

Do other writers feel this way as well, that the plotline they initially planned never turns out to be the same?