We are the hollow men, we are the stuffed men. (Article)

We are the hollow men, we are the stuffed men ! (by Nadeem Pinsota English Department) 
HOLLOW MAN and STUFFED MAN are close associates to each other because they occur in the same metrical line of a renowned poem. Though thesaurus disagrees, they are synonym to each other. One's mind is stuffed with vain ideas and other’s heart is hollow with supposed life leaving large cavity for irrational ideas. Away from true realities of life, they exchange apparently their scholarly views. Let's have a glimpse of their conversation. For the sake of ease, we would call them HOLLOW and STUFFED. HOLLOW becomes victim of melancholy discloses the matter to his short sighted friend, STUFFED, who urges the former to live life with positive attitude. Their talk thus begins: Hollow: I just feel depressed unable to find my right place on Earth. Stuffed: You just lack in determination and reconsideration of your core matters of life. Instead of seeking escape, learn to stand against harsh winds; they will make you soar high even against the odd winds. My dear! Humans’ right place is not on Earth but in earth. We are not worried to think why we were not born some centuries back. Why to worry about staying on Earth in some particular century. If contemplate deeply, worldly life is just an insignificant play based on vague story, gaining or losing nothing in the end. Redefine priorities and act accordingly. Hollow: I have spent whole of my life in struggle while others don't do so. Stuffed: Working hard is not struggle but the best alternative to avoid boredom, improve immune system, keep aloof from backbiters, restrict your mind to think only in one direction, refine your manners, keep your self respect intact and able to get engaged in multi tasking. This is not struggle. The patients fighting with fatal diseases and victims of natural disasters are struggling. Victims of war and oppression are struggling. Those innocents are struggling when proven guilty wrongfully and spending lives in prisons away from the suffering families. Those mothers struggle whose children get kidnapped. Those children struggle whose loving parents are dead and are living in orphanage. Those old souls struggle whose children ignore them because they don't need parents' support now. Those unemployed are struggling who have received ’YOUR SERVICES ARE NEEDED NO MORE' by their employers. Those family members are struggling whose dear ones have been wrongfully killed by violent groups who just seek power by spreading fear. Those women are struggling who have been sold as slaves to some brutal men. Do you really struggle? Kindly stop assuming that you are struggling. Just get busy in work and be honest to your duties. Hollow: I earn my bread and butter by offering my services. I never have any decision to make? Stuffed: To make decision means keeping the "PROCESSOR" of your mind at full functionality without fail. To be follower is easier approach to co-exist among similar creatures. Decision making may ultimately lead towards dictatorship, arrogance, stiffness and rigidity of heart and torment for conscience later if decisions go wrong. Let the Maker be the Decisions Maker. It is hard to be answerable for ones’ own actions, how can one be answerable for the actions of the "whole"? Be content on making small day to day decisions. Moreover, true happiness comes from serving, sacrificing, giving, helping and supporting. Serving Allah's creation is also virtuous deed. Suppressing or harming by wrong decisions is a sin. Hollow: I feel insecure and unsafe. Stuffed: The planet, where we dwell on, is not safe itself. How can it provide safety to likes of you? The depths of ocean, the crust, mantle and core of earth, the peaks of Himalayas, the orbit of moon and orbits of satellites, the basements of houses, the heights of towers, the holes of the earth, files in offices, containers on roads, Androids in palms, servers of Google, HDDs of computers, bits of data and the hearts of others, what is safe? You can't place even a single uttered word anywhere safely. I don't know why modern man says Ben Gurion is safest place on Earth? Hollow: I feel depressed when it is time to feel happy. Stuffed: Why do you want to be happy after all? It has happened just an absurd idea to many successful souls on our known Earth. Do you think all great people were happy themselves? Life is just a dark space full of sufferings, sorrows, miseries, tragedies, pains and dreadful events. Nevertheless, we see patches of happiness also which glow randomly appearing now and then glowing. One just need to be conscious to find these sparks of light and collect ones' share of joys, pleasure and happiness from such situations without fail. Just stay vigilant and wait for smiling moment to knock at the door of your heart. Hollow: I need to borrow money constantly. Stuffed: Perhaps, you are living your life constantly. Otherwise, you won't need it. Less is better, more is worse. Just focus on necessaries or necessities. The most valuable things in life are free of cost. Money is just a black hole sucking every human virtue in it. The more you think about it glittering surface, the more rapidly you fall in its pit. You have less, means you have more relations, better sense, sincere friends, honest mind, tender heart and humanly approach towards solving your issues. Money may add some glitter to your life if used frugally, if wasted; your everything noble is gobbled by this 'virtue-sucking-tube'. It can just give you a feeling that you are 'rich'. In fact, anything can be 'rich'. Beautiful objects are rich, brain with noble ideas is rich, paintings with balanced colours are rich, objects with symmetrical geometrical patterns are rich, birds with velvety feathers and hooked beaks are rich, animals with stripes are rich, sky with twinkling stars is rich, parents with genius kids are rich, students with high scores are rich, a friend with lofty ideas is rich and food with nutrition is rich, soil with fertility is rich. Only money doesn’t make rich, my dear! Yes, a heart with true love and kindness is rich! Hollow: People enjoy feasting while I starve even for bits of their remains. Why? Stuffed: The renowned medical history bears evidence that eating has claimed more lives than starvation. Eating more will make you just another plumb capon, not a solid man. Current man needs fasting to survive, an authentic doctor says. Obesity, metabolic disorders, malfunctioning of vital organs, reflux action of stomach and fatty liver are nothing but bitter fruit of luscious foods. Hollow: My children have nothing to play with, no PC, no tab, no mobile, no PSP. Don't they have right to play? Stuffed: You mean they have no screens, or smoke screens. They are better than the virtual kids devoid of vision and vigour. How can they know taste of looting a kite, running after bikes, charm of street fighting. Hollow: I don’t know about currents affairs of the world. I have no TV. Stuffed: TV is just a mechanical device to hide the things happening around by showing mirage instead of spring of water. Today’s TV viewers know nothing even about their house affairs, what about the world affairs! Hollow: I am poor so family members don't love me. Stuffed: Core of domestic life lies in affectionate attitude, prudent management of personal affairs, mutual understanding to co-exist. Material gains do not correspond with matrimonial life. The world is full of miserable kings and jocund beggars. Who has ever proved Alexander the Great at domestic fronts? Dictatorship kills relationship. Very often millionaires have committed suicide because they won outside but failed in winning courtesy at home. What is like to be a guest at one's own home ? Hollow: I don't think if I ever had any friends on social media. Stuffed: You are worried because you don't have lots of friends on social media. You don't receive 500 Likes. Man, a Tipu Sultan has said “A real friend is better than a thousand virtual friends on Tracebook." What is the benefit of a friend who clicks Like on every word you say but actually dislikes you, sheer hypocrisy? You live, Liked. You starve, Liked. You lost everything, Liked. You died, Liked. Do you still like this world of Likes? You want to express yourself through social media, you have chosen wrong platform. You are exposing yourself on a place where you need to conceal. Misled! Hollow: The world has made progress but I'm lagging behind in terms of progress. Stuffed: What progress has this world made? It is round. We are just revolving in our orbital. Everything composed of electrons, protons and neutrons, just combinations are different. What on Earth enforces you to make patterns of your own choice? Are you yourself maker of your own pattern? A mystical game of cohesive forces, matter, anti matter and black holes with ultimate goal of "Extinction" of physical world and "Existence" of apparently abstract entity. Where do you want to destine a world of deterioration and decay moving fast to fall into its nearest black hole? Hollow: I have turtle kike slow conveyance. Stuffed: You don't have a car, just means you don't have sofa with wheels. If my sofa doesn’t have wheels, it is not matter of insult. I think sofa should never have wheels! Hollow: I have no liberty. Stuffed: You are not free. Don't take it so solemnly. No one on Earth is free. Those who look absolutely free just live in mesh of restrictions, internal or external. Their faces glow but hearts melt with suffocation they feel. You will never understand unless you occupy their place. What is humanly in occupying others' place or possessions? Happiness comes from contentment, not from possessions. Hollow: I am bound to live in small hut like house. Stuffed: To own a large bungalow just means you have a comfortable and luxury bed rooms. Focus on room or Rome, you will be happy. Dreaming of big house means to have a tower visible from miles away. Better to make a hut on cool, grassy slope. It will serve the purpose better. Large house will gulp all your life and eventually you won't be able to visit even your own house. What a pitiful house? Large house will just satiate you desire to see harmonious geometrical patterns. Simply you want abstract art but remember it will turn your entire life on the stake of "Abstraction", a body without soul. Hollow: People don't respect me. Stuffed: You wrongfully mix 'fear' with 'respect'. Respect is generated from sense not senses. Why do you think that people should lie about you all the time? Imposed "respectable" serves as synonym to "fearful". Hollow : What’s harm in acquiring what really has charm in it? What else can be more charming than wealth? Stuffed: Instead of charms better to consider harms. The luster of coin will eventually devour all your relations isolating you just like a statue placed in a frozen society of puppets and skeletal filled with aching strained muscles. Roses of progress will bring thorns of starvation. Chill of terror will be felt to the end of spine. Care free bold, dainty figure will become hair free bald mime actor providing live entertainment to the entire city. Every cell of body will get busy in struggle to compete and beat the opponent by hook or by crook. Sleep will be affiliated with pills. To hide the inner decay of stagnant soul, bodies will be immersed in perfumes. Hypocrisy will prevail and ,eventually, great humanly figure turn into artificial robotic structure. Objects will be the only objective. Dream of possessions will embark you in recession. You will be foreigner even inside your homeland wearing imported dresses, driving foreign vehicle, watching extra terrestrial media, eating foods just wrapped locally, follow rules made in the country but sanctioned outside, feeling humiliation on being your own. This will be a world of artificial manners, business ethics and crooked courtesy. Fruit and vegetables and vegetables would be just names of multi national companies dealing in chemicals in the name of food, medicine and drink. Breathing will be recorded, gestures monitored and skin stamped and retinas scanned. You entire system, if called so frankly, will run on cards: cards to purchase, cards to sell, cards to be treated , cards to indentify, cards to drive and even cards to beg, if mass begging needed. Corruption will touch heights of non-sense; patriotism will be just a nice topic of discussion. What needed to be concealed will be revealed just to refill the card. The ruled will rule you and the Fair will be Unfair to you. Gigantic storms will arise in the cups of tea. Man will no longer be among other humans, "man versus humans" will emerge as the only way to avoid extinction. Man will fight with monstrous devils but be beaten with microbes. So herein lies the real charm: c-harm! HOLLOW:I have no places to visit. STUFFED: All places are same for contemporary countrymen. Today's Dravidians and Aryans are just living in better painted Harappa and Mohenjo Daro. Their Monotonous lives based on monopoly and exploitation remains the core objective within the prevailing phenomenon 'status quo'. Rules of hatred, tradition of enmities ,ways of governance , rules of grammar syntax, themes of literature, repetition of history, noisy music, forgotten ancestors, all are same. Everywhere mortal souls striving to be immortals deities capable of distribution of resources according to will. Though fortified with iron Romans, Mughals, Abbasids, Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great, all were prone to decay. Current man proved champion in architecting entire green planet into plastic civilization. What do you want to see? Moutains of garbage , storms of dust , clouds of smoke , chilling cold wars without battlefields. Everywhere artificial flavour of artificial life dominates. Their broader tactics have resulted in narrower vision. The engineering revolution has marked the end of evolution with a note that humans will be cloned in future to avoid the “ War of Independence 1857”.Instead of human virtues, electronic chips serve as their identity, everyone holding cards to breathe in life. See if your conscience is not guilty. See you your mind dreaming. See your heart beating warmly. See your eyes have tender look. See you ears listen the pathos and suffering around. Observe a war raging within you urging you to be on the right side. See your sense still reads between the lines. Hollow: Your ideas mismatch with the true philosophy in vogue. Stuffed: All my ideas seem ambiguous and vague. Perhaps you want to be just another scavenger. Better, you go to Scandinavia. I have heard a modern saint calling it “the happiest country" in the world.