Young Age
Powers and Desires of Young Age
The beauty of nature surrounds me. The green trees are all around where one tree is above the other and at the same time its pride is broken by a taller and heavier one. Among these silently competing monsters of beauty are the taller structures of dates-trees where the wetness of the recent shower on them makes them blacker and darker. Below them is the rampancy of green layer of the ever succumbing plants of maze crop as if someone has spread a green blanket on the mother land. The greenery is so exuberant that it seems The Creator Himself loves it; it’s why he instilled the love for it in our nature and then made it available everywhere so as to include us too in the whole game of love. The blood of the greenery-the humble and prideless water that resembles to our blood today because of rain on some reddish mountains- flows down in the stream making happy sounds as if it is smiling. And the sun is helpless behind the clouds-the crazy clouds, some going west and others going east. And the chirping birds, the twittering nightingales and the nonstop songs of small insects... Oh God, which one to listen to and which one to ignore? What to look at and what not?
Yes I am young; have all the senses intact; I can see things very far away from me; I can hear all sounds around me; can walk or run; can feel the byte of ants; can smell, sing, or think. With all these powers and hence the desires of young age, let me inhale the beauty; let me see it with eyes which a few of us have; let me think for a while how long will all this last? But the old man, who is part of scene and completes it, is walking steadily, with caution, trying to focus with utmost care on the ground where he places his stick and is unaware of all the things that I see and appeal me. Doesn't he like all these? Has he got different nature? Or the strokes of life have taken away from him the powers and desires to feel what I feel? Or he has been part of this scenery for years and now this has become a trite for him? Whatsoever, he is senseless to what I see or feel.
Oh God I want to make all this beauty and the love for it in my heart somehow permanent; how can I stop the flow of moments? The beauty will replenish itself every year but my senses will fade away every year. One day I will become that old man and these things of beauty will betray my eyes, ears and hence my feelings. At that time I will wonder whether something of beauty even existed here. I wish I inscribe every bit of this beauty in perfect language on some stone that is too heavier to be moved from here and too hard to be broken till my last breath then that will serve as a strong proof to remind me that I was young and all this beauty existed here.
Why is this, Allah! that those who have sharp senses for happiness, joy or beauty also have sharp senses of fear to lose the same? Is this a way of natural justice to equate these people with others.
Attaullah Shah 2006