Zindagi Gulzar hai - Life is a Flower Garden

24 October - Kashaf

Today my exams have finally finished and tomorrow I will go home, even though I don't want to go because that home is full of worries and trouble. No one can stay happily there but I must go. And although I'll have sleepless nights there, due to all the my worry, I can't just forget my brothers and sisters. I have to be there for them. Once again I will have to repeat those lectures, which I'm tired of repeating again and again. Whenever I think of the way my sisters ignore their studies, I get worried. I don't know why they are so carefree and forget their responsibilities.

Not even the poor state of our small home is enough to make them worry about their studies so that they can help me in taking care of our home. Their carelessness worries and scares me because I know that not only do I have to hold up the house on my shoulders but also the matter of their marriages and the proper upbringing of my young brothers is upon me. If my sisters were any good in their studies, I'd have some consolation that someone would help me in caring for our home but that is not so. The boys are too young that I can't even have dreams about help from them. If God had to put so much responsibilities on my shoulders, wouldn't it have been better if I had been born a man? I would not have to face as many difficulties. Why didn't God give me any ease in this world? There are only difficulties and problems in my life.

I am always surprised by the fact that my sisters are content with their lives. What is that makes them so happy that they think everything will be alright without having to work hard? Their satisfaction makes me angry but then I think that it isn't their fault. Not everyone is crazy like me and not everyone can kill their wishes as I have done mine. They are in the age in which every glittering thing seems like gold. When they see the things belonging to the children of our relatives, they wish for those things. Without even thinking that will never be able to have them.

Sometimes I wish that I hadn't been born as the eldest child, that someone else was in my place and I was careless like my brothers and sisters. I wouldn't have to worry about anything. Being the eldest child is really difficult and full of burdens. Life is useless, I wonder how people fall in love with it.

Is there no one in our home who would make everything right? Are the people living in that house so sinful that God doesn't listen to any of their pleas? And is the one who doesn't answer our prayers, actually God?