(22): We are Individuals; they are also Individuals (II)

We are, yes, individuals. But we are, sometimes, stupid individuals. Perhaps you and I are among the latter group; who knows? Forgive the affront and don’t take any offence. None is really intended. It’s baffling, to say the least, what we humans sometimes do with our lives. I firmly believe that we are all endowed with one or another intellect with which we lead our soul and body toward certain mental gratifications, such as eating to quench our hunger and thirst; wearing clothes to cover our nudity; and communication to express our feelings and wants, etc. But yet, we tend to do other things that are glaringly self-destructive for no constructive reason whatsoever, in the name of fashion, passion, and thingamajig. I am not moralising or sensationalising anything, for that is, or can be, relative and subjective; I am instead rationalising them. Often it happens that we utter: to each his own. I shake my head at this pomposity and respond: to each his ruin.

It was only a few days ago in the prequel to this piece that I extolled one baby-faced teen girl named Veena as the “most intelligent girl I have so far come across since my first day in India a year ago”. She, of course, is, but she’s equally the wildest, the least cautious and highly heedless girl I have met. Never in my life have I known any girl of her age who smokes. Yes, she smokes cigarettes. This is, at best, pathetic and, at worst, pathology! I think you must accept my words in the above paragraph, for I can’t help but wonder where the intelligence, the conscience and the foresight she supposedly possesses are. A simple question: why does she smoke? Give me a single medically proven benefit of smoking, and I will start it today. Smoking is incontrovertibly deadly and is morally, socially (and religiously too) an aberration. But why? I can’t understand. Veena has her life laid out before her, yet she deliberately sets out to destroy it. A quick inquest, however, reveals to me that many other Indian girls in urban areas are taking up the same habit. The liberty guarantees to us in this 21^st century does not mean permission to commit a slow suicide. 

Nonetheless, as the saying goes, we are the architects of our lives, un-fatalistically speaking. And I say: we are the drivers of our lives, whereupon the control of, say, the car could sometimes get out of our hands. So we are always given instructions and guidance for a safe drive. Thus, one instruction says: don’t drive recklessly as “fast drive maybe your last drive”. It’s the same with smoking. It’s enshrined in its international marketing regulations that a warning: “tobacco kills” has to be boldly written on its package, sometimes along with a pellucid picture of a damaged lung. It is up to its consumers to believe or not.

On other developments, first, I met another Indian who, yet again, reshaped my view. His name is Gurnoor, a 25-year-old in the Indian Navy. He knows so much about Africa and likes it, especially the western region where their merchant ships navigate its coastal ports. Moreover, he told me that their Chief Officer was born in Kano, my state, in Nigeria. I literally felt euphoric. Second, among our workshop attendees is a Muslim girl named Anam Kazi. But one can’t figure out anything ‘Islamic’ in her. I only learned that, sometime, I had finished prayers (sallah/namaz) beside her, and she asked, “Are you a Mohammedan?” I answered in the affirmative and added that I am Muslim, correcting her usage of the misnomer. My being called Muhammad by everyone didn’t ring a bell to her that I was Muslim until that day. Thus, I had to quiz her to verify her claim that she’s also “Mohammedan”. Individualism is multifaceted.

Why would I care about all those above? You might have asked. I am not a saint, nor a pious person. But I often look at things dispassionately, offer a particular analysis, and express my opinion. I may be right or wrong, like any other human being. We are taught in Islam to correct wrongdoing in any of these three ways: (i) by hands (instituted authorities do that); (ii) by words of mouth (which I do), and (iii) to feel sad about it, which is the weakest of the trio options (I also do that). This is the main motivation behind this and similar write-ups. I can’t do more than that. Veena’s life, for instance, is hers and hers alone. We may never meet again, as the workshop was completed, but I know for sure that she can hardly forget me or my words. That’s why I stake our friendship, which I, in fact, think I overvalue right from the beginning.

Anyway, I will accept any correction; likewise, any constructive criticism or censure on whatever I say on this blog. Always.