Well, I am on a trip in a village near Lahore. Right now, I’m inside a sleeping bag placed in a field, where just a month or two ago, there was full grown wheat. I’m gonna fall asleep in a wheat field right after I write this. It’s 08am.
It was a momentary decision and I’m totally loving it. Travelled from 9pm to 3am to get here with a group of around 40 others. Already there were many camped here, busloads more keep arriving even now. This place gets alive once an year, for a week. People come, cook, clean, entertain, pray and play, living a nomadic life. When I first set foot inside this walled village, it felt like Qayamah tbh. It was around 330am today. Fluorescent lights in the fields far out were giving eerie look to the camps. Also the camps which I’m talking about, they are just small square curtains set atop bamboo sticks, with tube lights on some of the bamboos. The place itself is huge. All I could hear when I stepped inside was just a loud periodic thumping of numerous feet on the bare ground, those lights shining strangely, heads and turbans and caps and chadrs of people passing right by me, left and right, yet unknown. Waves upon waves of strangers coming and going, passing me like I was nothing. I felt like this was the start of the day of judgment, the morning. That this is how it’ll look, this is how everybody will be a stranger, this is how there’ll be an ocean of strangers, each worried about his and her self, like here. I felt afraid. I felt so afraid until I found other people here from NUST.
We searched and searched for the place we had booked, in the fields, for our camps (bamboos and curtains). The place was huge so we had a little difficulty, but we found that patch of land about half an hour later. We rested our stuff up and some went to do wudu for fajar. Water was far away. Water also was in the very fields we were walking through, so my socks became wet. It was already so cold. I began to feel how exactly this trip was going turn out. Actually I’m looking forward to it.
We prayed. Then we had breakfast, cooked ourselves. No body added salt but fortunately, salt dissolves at any stage of cooking or later, so we just added it after when we were eating. We made ‘sfed chane’ and ‘halva’ and some people made proper ‘gol gol’ rotyan. I just had that all and about now … I’m in my sleeping bag right now.
While I was doing wudu around 4am, I overheard a man. Riaz. He drives a wheelbarrow for a living all day, everyday, and earns 400/500 per day. He feeds his wife, himself, and 6 children with the same amount. I am looking forward to new miracles as I wake up.
And yeah there’s no charging ports here. So I’ll go after Maghrib prayer later today to get the phone charged from outside this place. I will walk around 2 Kms. But that’s not a problem. I’ll have to ask someone completely strange to allow me to charge my phone for an hour. That’s gonna be a problem. May Allah ease good things for us all. Amen.
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I am writing this part right after jumma, still on the prayer mat. This is also my sleeping bag, my prayer mat, my napping pod and what not! Anyways … so I met another amazing person here. He’s a business man, in Rawalpindi (RWP). I kinda met him before briefly but never knew he is actually interested in such nomadic trips too. But then, I didn’t know that about myself too. The amazing part is he is a business man who drives a rickshaw there in RWP. Before UBer and Career, he used to drive a cab. Before that a bus driver within RWP. And before that, he was a petty conductor on Faizabad-Mandimorr (via Churr Chowk) bus route. And all this time, he did actually had his business running full scale too. Some restuarants and a hotel. And … well I asked “Why?” His answer: “So I won’t feel like “something” beta, I won’t be “something”.
Now .. it’s RWP I am talking about. I got his contact information too, because I want to visit him there and atleast once travel in his rickshaw. At this point I remembered how Iqbal had said years ago,
کہ دانہ خاک میں مل کر گل و گلزار ہوتا ہے
We have been divided into 8 groups of 5 individuals each by our group leader. It’s our group’s responsibility for tonight to cook and serve food. So I guess I will get busy right away. Have a nice rest of the day y’all.
Today is the last day of this trip. Tomorrow around 10am, we’re gonna leave this place and head back hostel.
Today in lunch, our team was assigned the cleaning duty. So, after namaz today, (which we pray in one jamaat here), “me and 4 others” (feel the Facebook:) will head over to clean lunch dishes, In Shaa Allah.
The previous 30 or so hours, I’ve been so relaxed. No phone, no annoying what-to-do weekend boredom. You and your friends and a huge load of gpshp. Friends all those who actually call you in and make you feel comfortable, and listen to you for the sake of listening, not replying. And doing all this without keeping a count, as a favour. I laughed a lot in these two days. I smiled that under-the-lips smile some countless times. I wish I can come to these trips more often, for more long.
How are you? …. I think tbh, I got so much content, or atleast ‘direction’ from here, that I can write another complete book on it…. I’ve to go for Asr. See ya.
I’ll be heading back tomorrow. Gonna sleep. It’s 2322.
Well … I want to start another book, exclusively about this trip. I can write a whole lot more and better if I know I don’t have any restriction on the amount of content. Instagram or Twitter or even novels etc have limits. Books are freestyle sentences. I want to start another one exclusively for this event in my life, and not to include it in the one I am already working on. May Allah guide and ease the right way for me. Amen.
How are you people? This has been the best weekend of my life, no exaggerations. I made around 5/6 new friends in NUST. I got so much purposeful information. A friend I made here is trying to start a low-profit business-kinda service, and that is my favourite kind of activity to participate in. So … This and other I got so many activities to do over the next part of my life.
Can we just say we’ll go to this trip once in our life? I mean yeah, there is no proper place to rest. No proper food. You’ll clean and cook your own. You’ll sleep just 4 or 5 hours in a day, on bare ground, and your chadr uptop on you. To wash your face, you’ll have to go a kilometre or so out, again and again in the day. But you’ll also get to see real life miracles and people who you never thought can be on such trips. I met yesterday, a PAF, a Navy, and some Army officers. I can’t mention their identifications obviously, but if you knew, you’d come. There were businessmen sleeping like homeless in streets. And a deep sleep too. There’s this skoon here, you can never experience in common daiy life. Who’s texting who? Can I do this or that thing? What will (s)he respond? GPA games, assignments and quizzes, profits and losses, shoppings and shor, how much activity, chaos, do we experience daily? Don’t you feel like you should just let it go? Don’t you want to throw all this burden on someone else and lie down to breath? Believe me, you’ll meet that “someone” here. Waiting for your burden. He is actually afraid lest you may crack your back under your daily burden, before getting here to rest. Do these visits. Go outside. Go often. Both men and women can, and I’d rather make it a must if i could, visit and rest in such places. Just … Take care. I can’t write more in an Instagram post.
It’s 0809am. I’ve packed my stuff. We’ll be eating our last meal here soon, and then traveling some more kilometres to board a bus, which will get us In Shaa Allah Infront of Gate 4, NUST.
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