The whole childhood was spent in this meaningless and purposeless melody. We only knew that if we did not reach school before that, our visit would be red. Apart from this, the correct words could never be known. Not only this, the national anthem, naats, poems, songs and ghazals, whatever was remembered, were meaningless.
Today, after living a lifetime, gradually everyone has started to understand that such and such thing was and its purpose was this. We forgot, we just kept listening to these things in our childhood. Now, if I become a teacher, first of all I should explain the terms of daily life to the children.
As a child, we used to have an hour on Fridays before Ustad Ji’s lecture. All of us friends got ready and dressed in white kurtas and pajamas and reached the mosque first and recited broken verses of naats that we remembered, chanting on the speaker, and did not stop breathing, while the echo of our voice when With the smile of his maternal grandmother falling in our mothers’ ears, our homes would be lit up like a Christmas lamp.
We used to laugh at Babaji and scold him for wasting our time. Because one of our innocent thoughts used to think that someone other than our mother would be waiting for us to hear and yes, maybe she would also smile.
Babaji has passed away, we have passed from childhood to boyhood and from boyhood to youth. Those mosques, those friends, those thoughts, those imaginary hearings and those our mothers, were moving away from us parallel to these destinations. The difference was that now prayers started coming to the lips, the national anthem started to be understood, naats started crying, songs and ghazals started to make me sad. Knowledge is a termite that eats youth!
One day, while passing through a village, the melodious voice of a Naat Khawan on the tape of a distant tractor, “Beda Muhammad Wala” was melting in the ears. The charm of the sometimes dull and sometimes loud sound on the dosha of the winds froze it there. Each word was felt to go deep in the heart. The eyes were washing automatically. I don’t know if she wanted to see her childhood or she was tired of thinking about how to spend her days “waking up early, sitting and fasting”. How will the eyes rise in the proximity of this entity? What will happen when they see us?
The person who kept crying for us, how much did we listen to his hadiths, the verses of his Lord, how much did we ignore them? My body trembled more than Babaji’s voice as a child. If a current Uthman had been with me at that time, he would have laughed at me and perhaps this would have been the reason for my forgiveness.
Hajj is such a holy and pure duty that my Lord has made obligatory on those who can afford it. In our childhood, people from remote areas of Frontier Province and Punjab used to go to a nearby city, from there they would travel by train for two days to reach Karachi, from there they would reach Saudi Arabia in seven to ten days by ship and perform Hajj. These facilities of Hajj were not available then. After the sea journey, then the hardships of Hajj, most of the pilgrims find out after two months that they died there.
This was the fleet of that Babaji with Muhammad. People used to mention the name of this fleet with respect. And before boarding it, the family members and dear relatives would meet for the last time that there might not be a return, maybe the fasting Pika would be his guest. Whoever was a guest there would be lucky and whoever returned would make decisions from him in the panchayats. During these two months of travel, there was no contact with the family. That would have been the time of pure Allah, the Prophet and the servant.
The rich people coming from there would only buy a camera-like thing in which the pictures of Makkah and Madinah Sharif were magnified through the lens, which the boys would look at in the toilet and the girls would look at them with their chins on their heads. Then it seemed that we too sat down to fast.
We should also make Hajj purposeful and meaningful, and not distort its original spirit. Today’s Hajj and the presence of the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) has also been made a commercial. The one who goes first considers it his duty to photograph each occasion. Increasingly, it has reached the point where people are taking the entire world to perform Hajj live with them on Facebook. And focus is only on mobile and camera.
Attendance means to be present before our Prophet. If they were in real life, would they let you do that? And who has not seen Makkah Sharif and Madinah Sharif today? If you have gone, then do your work, we have seen these pictures in HD result as well. May God forgive me, I don’t even consider it respectful. Let’s make a half picture in each place so that you remember, but don’t make such movements. By Allah, many times I can’t watch the video of Haram Sharif or Masjid Nabawi, where are these places. Standing there in front of the net, it all boils down?
If not ours, greet yours properly. You are lucky, you have money, you have success, you are gone. Many simply leave with regret. Spend this day only for yourself, not for the world.
I was thinking that people would be recording videos even while praying, so today I saw the video of actress Meera offering prayers in Masjid Nabawi, which she is also recording herself. God’s refuge! Now what about Panchayat, if such a Haji Sahib appears in any business, people do not buy from there.
