Milestone

We all, at some point in our lives, have come across disabled people. The first feeling evoked in us is that of sympathy. We sigh at their miserable condition, being dependent on others, that we, the well-functioning robots cannot fathom how they bear it. Some of us usually cringe from interacting with them, and this was precisely how I felt. However, I finally dragged myself. Huddled in the car with my three friends, one of them Maria who happens to be visually challenged, we set off for Milestone. The car pulled over to a government building, the part of which was given to Milestone. Piles of pale buildings met our gaze.

As soon as we entered, we were greeted by a lad on wheel chair who had recently come from Lahore. He looked beaming with smiles and quite nattily dressed, wearing chunky rings and below shoulder hair. This was Tayyab Bhai. Quickly, I registered a change in my friend’s attitude who was acting like she has come home. She was no more like the fish out of water that I sometimes feel in her demeanor. The poster on the wall near us read You can’t make the world safe for democracy, unless you make it safe for diversity! I heard the orchestra of sounds from the room and as we were shown in, everyone became quiet and smiled at us. There were five to six people couched on the sofa and some working on computer. Hey Maria, we were supposed to meet disabled people. But, it was like a family sitting together chatting and having the moment of their lives. Maria gave our brief introductions that garnered another row of smiles at us.

The first person I met was Uzma, who had a subtle resemblance with someone I know, but could not really figure out. She had such a serene and hopeful face and elegance in her disposition that I cannot really put in words. She was on the electric wheel chair and clad in pink. She told me she had muscle dystrophy, and on observing our blank reaction, she rhapsodically started explaining it. It is basically a disorder in which the muscles weaken with age and there is no cure for it. Once you have lost the power, you cannot replenish it anyway. Seemingly, the person is normal, but there are major difficulties in mobility. She was ten years old when she got to know about her illness. At that time, she did not know there could be other people having the same disability. Coping with school was really hard for her. She could not carry her bags. But, her father was persistent on having her educated. She used to be dropped off at school quite before the start time, to escape pushing and crowds on the way which might hurt them. In her tender age, she was very shy of her disability. She would wretchedly cry about it, and went into self exclusion from social events, avoiding family gatherings and going out in recess at schools. At weddings, they stayed behind in the car and had their foods while their parents attended it. She told me that she needed an attendant virtually for everything from toileting to combing, and they could not take a step outside the room even without her aid. Later, she went on to do Masters in Computer Sciences and also taught tuition till BSc level. At university, she said that the departments were far off, due to which she used to reach the class late while the rest of the students made on time. Her strength was gradually fading away. She said that the people around her did not accept her condition as disability, rather they thought of it as an illness, due to which they were never provided wheelchairs, which were necessary for her condition- to save from further loss of strength of muscles.

The fear of remarks from society, embarrassment and the almost nil mobility made her feel that her life has come to a blank wall. However, she thanked Allah and her parents for helping her become this person exuding confidence and optimism. But the stimulus was provided by Milestone, to appreciate herself and also to help other’s survive. It was 25th July 2006; she remembered clearly, when milestone came to her life. She respectfully mentioned the name of Shafiqurrehman, the President of Milestone who helped her recover psychologically and explained to her about her disability. She felt there are people who knew what she has to go through, and she could make them understand her experience. By the end, she was again cheerful and related to me how she has become so suave in talking after joining Milestone, whereas she used to be very quiet at her home. She feels now she has found the purpose of her life.

After that, Tayyab Bhai ushered into the room. Maria asked him to talk and initially he sounded a bit hesitant. I asked him about his name and he said Tayyab Bhai, to which I asked if Bhai is the part of his original name, he said yes there should be a stress on it. We all laughed. He had Polio from the age of five and was ridden to permanent wheel chair after having several unsuccessful treatments. He had done ACCA and was doing a job in government as well. One of the remarkable things about him was that he had written a book Dhundle Saaye which was the confutation of Dhundle Chehre written by a renowned author. Currently, he is working on his poetry book. He rapturously told me that he had done everything what people consider normal. He had enjoyed his school, college and university life as a bright student and made lots of friends. He said he had been engaged in this organization for around seven years, initially coming for sports competition. He happily expressed his service in earthquake 2005, acting as Assistant Program manager in Muzaffarabad and Mansehra. He provided wheelchairs, mobile phones, white canes and training for attendants for the disabled people. I asked him about his hobbies and he said he loves reading books which are Islamic and present a different outlook of life. In the end, he passed the recorder to us and started his round of questions which was very humorous.

Finally, we had a group photo and Maria saw us off. I walked out as a different person, putting my troubles on the backseat. Those gleeful, charming, serene faces, encouraging and making each other’s time pleasant, living for a goal higher than their own self, remarkably changed my philosophy of life. I wondered who are actually disabled. Isn't it us who cannot overcome our petty problems, who believe in only taking, or is it them? My heart pleads yes.

Hard Times

“Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but facts….Stick to Facts”.
What is a Fact, but the wrecked refuge of Fancy? What is the principle of Fact, but profit and inequality? Why stick to Facts, and shun fancies and sentiments?

Most of us condemn the materialism around us, leaving no space for human expressions and sentiments of love and empathy. Dickens’ Hard Times is also a didactic criticism of the system of education based on Facts and reasons that paved the way for profit-oriented capitalism and utilitarianism. He draws out a plot and characters that we can easily relate to in our own society today.

Capitalism is the new raging phenomena. Dickens exposes its harsh and demoralizing effect on humanity. He laments about the inequality and exploitation of workers. In the wave of Industrial Revolution, the factories got flooded with workers. Though, this brought prosperity to the owners, the ‘Hands’ producing comforts worked in extremely appalling conditions. While it carved out new cities, those humans-turned-robots only breathed denser smoke under the rusted chimneys, engulfed by the ‘serpents of smoke’.

He laments that the owners remained oblivious to the sufferings of the workers and the perils in factories. As we learn that when Louisa went down into Coketown, she was baffled by the ghastly scene it presented. Paradoxically, the utilitarian economists make a never ending list of calculations, trying to maximize profits, through any means possible. They can shrewdly tell ‘how many hands in the mill or how many steam power horses are needed for hundred units of production’. But, these vertigo causing calculations of National Treasury are impotent of measuring the capacity for good or evil, for love or hatred, or for the corrosion of virtue into vice in these oppressed souls.

This is the ruthlessly selfish side of market-spurred capitalism.

However, the owners and the bourgeois have turned a blind eye to the injustices and disharmony of the system. They zealously pursue the education system which promotes it thus, perpetuating the vicious cycle of ever-growing inequalities and reinforcing the status quo. The ‘ologies’ they study day in and out strictly focus on the statistics that leave their minds enervated of affections and sentiments.

Thomas Gradgrind is the founder of education of reason and Facts. He is described as ‘eminently practical’ and he sees things by way of practicality. Sentiments and Imagination are considered delinquency. Dickens has shown this education system to be dehumanizing and bound to collapse. It is against the grain of fanciful nature of mankind. His children are strictly raised under the same system. Gradgrind reproaches Sissy for indulging in fairytales. He proceeds in life with the formula that two by two is four. He tells his students to ‘settle everything by addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, and never wonder!’

He considers things statistically and value by how much profit they can reap. Thus, he statistically makes viable the marriage of his daughter to his friend who is thirty years senior and whom she is incapable of loving. Human nature is a mixture of different sentiments and desires. The happiness of the soul is not only in the material, but in the intangible expressions of sincerity and love. However, this was obscure to Gradgrind who taught complex calculations only and converting them into money.

He formed a mind of rules and lines. But, the heart devoid of humanity! He envisaged a society, where things are ‘settled by the law of supply and demand, where wheat is pinched when it becomes dear’, where fortunes are made at the plight of weak. Thus, the rich gets richer and the poor gets poorer. This is what happens in the pursuit of statistics, of seeing progress in terms of only rates and percentages.

This education made Louisa rebellious while Tom became wayward. Both are extremely dissatisfied with their lives. Tom makes sense of things in a mathematical way. He indulged in gambling and squandered his life away.

However, Louisa is always in search of the one with whom she could share her fancies. While she is at her father’s place, she gazed at fire for long hours morbidly. She was forbidden to yearn for any kind of amusements. Her father makes the marriage proposal of Josiah Bounderby, whom she loathes. When she questions him if she could love Bounderby, Gradgrind draws out all the utilitarian aspects of the marriage. He never quite understands her soul desires. He is more inclined to abide by his devised system. This shows the barriers in Louisa-Gradgrind relationship. The people who had exhausted all their lives and energies cramming Facts could not learn the essences of human relationship. With his unbending utilitarian mind, he asserts the prospects of wealth, name and status, but forgets the imperative i.e. love.

Tom is portrayed as a mercenary. He is derisively named as ‘whelp’. He makes Louisa marry Bounderby so he can get his money through her not valuing the enduring love that she has for him. The feminist world will sue him or simply ram him up the wall when he says to Harthouse that a woman can be married off anywhere, regardless of her will. Her wishes can be sacrificed at the whims of man. When Louisa was no more able to embezzle money from him, he irately disowned her.

Harthouse manages to gain trust of Louisa. She finds him tender and someone who has a luscious heart of feelings. The relationship reaches a near tryst. However, she refrains from going further down the ‘moral staircase’. Here, she cries in distress to her father and blames his system. At last, Gradgrind saw ‘the pride of his heart and the triumph of his system lying, an insensible heap at his feet.’

Conversely, we are filled with sympathy and awed by Stephen and Rachel. In the midst of materialism and hypocrisy, we find these two utterly compassionate beings. Though, fortune is relentless with them. The reader is on the verge of tears at finding Stephen fallen in a mine. Yet, their lives were ornamented with true love, sincerity and sentiments. They stand in stark contrast from those whose souls are cold and impoverished of romance.

In the end, the triumph is of Fancy i.e. Sissy Jupe, who absurdly remarked that she would carpet her room with flowers. The world is not to be ruled by digits and rates. Let’s color it with beautiful emotions and fancies. Let’s wonder and learn about human nature, passions, hopes and fears, struggles, triumphs and defeats, joys and love. Let not the humanity turn into the serpents of smoke!