a nation, an army, a herd of dried, aired, paper-thin, crisp and wispy excuse for souls!
We have nothing intrinsic, nothing elemental, nothing substantial to support our souls. Our insides are barren, deserted, vacuous, empty and infertile. We are shadows of ourselves or what we could be as human-beings for nothing touches us, because there isn't anything inside us worth touching!
Our essence is missing. We are the "hollow men" Eliot wrote of, we are a conglomeration of void spaces, passing through this world with our senses devoid of all stimulus, incapable of feeling, seeing, believing and acting. We travel the designated days of life in a passive slumber, in an unconscious state, unmoved by all that happens or does not happen around us and to us.
I know my questioning the state of our souls is repetitive and unanswerable, yet my heart keeps butting in and keeps wondering why is this so, and how come a whole set of people are so life-less, unfeeling, and cruel to say the least. We have come to a point of no return, we neither are shocked by any excess or any violation or any act of brutality, nor are we moved by the helplessness of our own fellow citizens or for that matter any one in particular. Our aim is to keep our interests safe, our lives guarded, our homes safe and our means of livelihood secure - what all happens besides and beyond this pale of our interests has no bearing on us and we can comfortably ignore it as such.
We are a people who can indulge in festivity, dance and frolic, be happy and celebrate whatever it is that we want to celebrate despite the very cruel fact of people dying randomly at a distance of 15-20 miles. what happens in Orangi Town, the mass killings, the incessant firings, the pulling out of homes suspects for police interrogation (we know the horror of that) the displacement of hundreds of families from the affected areas, their loss of life and property all of this may as well be some news coming out of distant Iraq or Lebanon, and not from our own backyards! All we do is, if we have the time, pay a customary nod to the plight of the common man and nothing else - an acceptance or passing acceptance and show of irritation - at the still unruly situation of the city! Besides this nod, nothing else.
What does this make us? We aren't selfish, or unfeeling, because that supposes a kindness, a selflessness - we are incapable of these feelings for we are only a void inside, hollow, dark, and empty like an well devoid of water - dried up, possibly, no, probably, poisonous now.
Will we ever get out of this slumber, this semi-comatose state of not being able to be moved or respond or feel? I don't know for all I meet and come across are people empty of themselves, mere, vessels carrying nothing, souls shriveled and dried up.
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