Windshield Cleaning Kids

Just stop at a busy city road signal till it becomes green and your vehicle is swarmed and stalked by various vendors cum beggars of all ages, of all genders. Some sell car sunshades and pieces of clothes for cleaning the dashboard, others flowers, jasmine garlands, bracelets, newspapers and prize bond results while many sell ball point pens, pencils, and even azaar-bunds (belt for shalwar/pajama). And there are numerous beggars and beggars in disguise, like women showing fake medical prescriptions to win sympathies and earn alms. Some real crippled/handicapped beggars also have their permanent dens on such intersections and signals. Word is that they were crippled in their childhood by their masters to grow into more effective and well-earning beggars.

But the emergence of an eye catching development at these signals in recent years is; Windshield Cleaner boys and girls. You stop at a red signal on a busy downtown road, and while in waiting till it turns green you take a peep at a missed call at cell-phone, suddenly just out of nowhere your windshield gets blurred with a foam-brush applying detergent on it. Without unrolling the glass you wave at a boy or girl trying to clean the windshield and yell in anger from inside the car that windshield was already clean and stop doing it. Unfortunately, within seconds, the washer boy’s brush had already started removing the detergent with the thin rubber attached at the other side of brush making the screen look cleaned and sparkling again. The signal turns amber and you begin moving the car, the cleaner boy now walks along the side of car expecting cleaning charges from you that normally range between 5 to 10 rupees; even peanuts for a hired car driver, let alone car’s owner. Since the boy or a girl cleaned the windscreen without your consent therefore you prefer to punish them and drive away rudely without paying them. Now this is a very common sight taking place repeatedly on each of four roads at an intersection throughout midday till midnight.

The above scenario depicts a normal behavior one would observe frequently on busy city road signals on daily basis. Nevertheless, there prevail some extreme situations too; the driver getting flared up on a cleaner and starts misbehaving with them using loud foul words, and sometimes trying to hit them too. These cleaner children, mostly and might be hailing from beggar parents do sometimes turn reactive. You would overhear them murmuring and cursing these rich car owners like; shame, you can’t afford a labor of 10 rupees, cruelty with poor, and alike. I too, sometimes fall prey to misdemeanor and rebuke such kids but then never speed away without having paid them their cleaning charges.

The other day I stopped my old jeep adjacent to a car at some city intersection road signal. The cleaner boys and girls ran up to the cars, they thought whose owners would pay them cleaning charges, carrying dirty old mineral/soft drink bottles filled with liquid detergent in one hand and small windscreen cleaning brushes in other. A boy started applying detergent with foam on windshield in spite of resistance and protest from the car driver. The gentleman looked perturbed but still asked his wife sitting along with him in the vehicle to look into her clutch some coins to pay the cleaner. She started searching desperately but it looked as if she failed to find them. In the meanwhile the signal turns Green from Amber and vehicles behind this particular car start blowing/honking horns to move. Finding the scene interesting and in a bid to help resolve this petty matter I shout at the cleaner, while moving my jeep slowly, and show him a 10-Rupee Note for his cleaning services rendered to the car. The boy is perplexed at my offer but still runs to grab it while I watch in amusement the stunned family in the car.

Without feeling myself a generous fellow, I tried to perform similar so-called ‘feat’ on other occasions too but due to traffic rush, chaos and noise at intersections I failed to do so. Hope, someone gets inspiration from reading this piece and repeats it.

Afala ………

Every new baby grows up following parents’ religion. Everyone sticks to the belief and faith of their own religions without reflecting upon the truthiness of such religion or even contemplating of converting to another one. I was born to Muslim parents, and therefore I grew up following my parents’ religion i.e. Islam and I too take it for granted that I’m following the righteous path without any doubt. In spite of being grateful to Allah (Subhan-hu Wa Ta’ala) I do at times find myself at crossroads failing to reply questions cropping up in mind, like:

1) What would have happened if I opened my eyes to non-Muslim parents!

2) If I were born to a nonbeliever family would have I converted to Islam?

3) If I were born to a Christian or a Jew family would I ever consider reverting to Islam?

The quest for satisfactory answers to above queries would probably lead me to put myself into the shoes of a “convert” or a “revert” to Islam and feel the hardships of life they were subjected to in respect of social boycott, financial squeeze, and the irreversible impact of torn blood relations, forever.

Qur'an is the final Book of divine guidance, revealed by Allah (SWT) through His Last Prophet, Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him). Each and every word of this Book is from Allah (SWT), the Creator of the Universe.

Being Muslim is a matter of great pride but I must confess that we hardly make a concerted effort to comprehend fully the religion of Islam and the responsibilities conferred on us through the revealed Book Qur’an and Sayings of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) called “Ahadees e Mubaraka”.

We read / recite (Tilawa) verses from Qur’an almost every day in early mornings, before going to bed in the night or anytime convenient to us. Similarly while offering Namaz (Salah) five times a day and during other informal prayers we recite by heart the verses from the holy Book.

Everyone reads Arabic Qur’an with a variety of level of understanding and comprehension. Most of the time we aim at reading a particular passage of Qur’an e.g. a Surah (Chapter) or a part of it without concentration and try to finish it in haste because our minds rest on settling and solving scores of everyday problems.

During the month of Ramadan, the recitation of Qur’an increases many fold on daily basis. And we have made it a ritual to recite complete Qur’an at least once in Ramadan. With years of reading the same Surahs repeatedly in Namaz etc., we also know by heart the meanings of these Surahs but we largely remain ignorant of knowing real philosophy of each and every word, phrase and sentence of Qur’an.

Allah (SWT) keeps reminding the readers of Qur’an that they hardly mull over the contents of the last divine Book and raises questions repeatedly that why don’t they think over them. For example the word / prefix “Afala” appears 60 times in as many Aayahs (verses) of Qur’an wherein Allah (SWT) reiterates to; then, will you not understand, be grateful, muse upon, reason, hear, see, and reflect on the signs of Allah’s creations in the world/universe?

Some of such Aayahs are reproduced hereunder:

Surah	Translation (Sahih International)	Aayah
2:44	Then will you not reason?	أَفَلَا تَعْقِلُونَ
32:26	Then do they not hear?	أَفَلَا يَسْمَعُونَ
32:27	Then do they not see?	أَفَلَا يُبْصِرُونَ
36:35	That they may eat of His fruit. And their hands have not produced it, so will they not be grateful?	لِيَأْكُلُوا مِن ثَمَرِهِ وَمَا عَمِلَتْهُ أَيْدِيهِمْ ۖ أَفَلَا يَشْكُرُونَ
36:68	And he to whom We grant long life We reverse in creation; so will they not understand?	وَمَن نُّعَمِّرْهُ نُنَكِّسْهُ فِي الْخَلْقِ ۖ أَفَلَا يَعْقِلُونَ
37:155	Then will you not be reminded?	أَفَلَا تَذَكَّرُونَ
47:24	Then do they not reflect upon the Qur'an, or are there locks upon [their] hearts?	أَفَلَا يَتَدَبَّرُونَ الْقُرْآنَ أَمْ عَلَىٰ قُلُوبٍ أَقْفَالُهَا
88:17	Then do they not look at the camels - how they are created?	أَفَلَا يَنظُرُونَ إِلَى الْإِبِلِ كَيْفَ خُلِقَتْ

And I feel drenched in shame when Allah (SWT) points out at my obstinacy and effrontery in Surah An-Naml:

27:62

Little do you remember.

قَلِيلًا مَّا تَذَكَّرُونَ

Let’s pray to Allah (SWT) to shower His mercy upon us for we will remain blind, deaf, ignorant, stubborn, ungrateful and sinful, as ever.

Relations

Do you remember travelling long distances (on bus, train or plane), getting into conversation with the passenger sitting adjacent to you on various topics, converging to subjects or hobbies you both like the most, and before reaching the destination you exchange the contact numbers to stay in touch in future? There are scores of such journeys one can remember where they interacted with the co-travelers, became friendly to each other and made promises of maintaining the contact in future. However, that friendship didn’t run anymore. Once you step out of traveling mode and reestablish links with the people who really matter in your life, all short-term (brief) relations get vaporized.

Another category of relationship that lasts longer than travel-relation is on-the-job colleagues; association with people you meet at workplace. Since one keeps changing job every year or so, therefore, it becomes less likely to remember all those you meet with in the line of duty during the entire job-age of nearly 40 years. Working in large organizations throughout or major portion of your job-age may provide opportunity to make friends on sustainable basis but again, frequent transfers from one office to other workplaces prevent creation of lasting relations. As a result, a few people come and stay in your life as you grow old. You keep on forgetting old names and adding new ones in the contacts list. A peculiar relationship always exists between an employee and the employer i.e. subordinate and boss. But this relation is often based on hate, backbiting, sarcasm, smarmy and hypocrisy terms.

Friends are forever. This sounds reasonably true. You can never forget your friends that grew up along with you; beginning from neighborhood to preschool to college/high-school to university. You can never forget those friends with whom you did many “first” things, like; watching first movie from the money theft from Abba’s wallet, viewing first hot magazine, first fight, first bike accident, first cheating in exam, first food in a restaurant without payment, first smoke, and first slap from a young girl over indecent gestures/comments. One always recalls their names vividly and likes to spend leisure time with them whenever opportunity strikes. Friend in a need is friend indeed; this proverb is evergreen because once in a while one faces a situation in their lifetime when friends turn up and help with their time and other resources. These are pretty good, enviable and lasting relations.

Here comes blood relations; parents are on top of the list, followed by siblings, and then first cousins. Of parents, mothers occupy the most important position. Mother is a complete love package without limits, conditions and prejudices. It’s a unique character of endeavors and endurance. She is a source of protection from all evil forces for her children. She is with the most powerful prayers and is believed to holding powers to jolt skies and heavens. She’s a pivot of integration for her children irrespective of their age. Her annoyance, scolding, smacking at the back, and sometimes, running with one of her slippers in the hand to hurl at disobedient kids, are actions of pure love for her children.

A mother is capable of absorbing all wrongdoings of her children without making complaints. She remains the role model of all children, especially daughters, and happens to be first informal school for her children imparting education in multiple disciplines; from ethics to religious values to behavioral sciences. Mother is the best friend of her kids, forever; children share happy moments of school, confide in little fantasies and frustrations, and always find mother agreeing to fulfill their dreams, desires and demands. Children consider their mother immune to heat and cold, electricity and lightening, weathering effects and diseases, tiring and ageing, and most of all, an insomniac machine ready to prepare meal at any hour of clock.

Blessed are those children who payback to mother’s love, prayers and care with their time, respect and resources in her lifetime to reap up her prayers for this world and hereafter.

Fathers are the natural protective force for the family from the hostile world. They remain a strong basis of inspiration to kids in our society because, generally speaking, they tend to be the sole bread earners for households. Fathers play a key role in designing the career path of their children and most of the time children follow fathers’ chosen route for their future. As the children grow, they usually become argumentative leading to heated debate with their parents on certain issues. Mothers have the capacity to ignore such provocative behaviors but fathers can’t tolerate them and therefore they remind children of being disrespectful to them.

And blessed are those children too who behave as cane or short staff to their elderly fathers.

The relation among siblings is one of the cutest in early childhood era when they begin sharing their smiles, cries, eatables, colored pencils, toys, and playing hours murmuring in their jargon. Next phase is about fighting, teasing, hair-pulling, pushing down on the floor and printing scars on each other’s faces. As they grow they make many friends but remain intimate to each other sharing every petty detail of schools, classrooms, classmates and liking/disliking of teachers. Finally it transforms into love, care and respect for each other when they begin living independently. Young girls and boys always try to copy their elder ones, and they remain highly inquisitive to learn what lies in elders’ wallets/clutches, copies, novels and bags. Young siblings always need to know the passwords of elder siblings’ cell phones and internet social sites for which they exploit mother’s intervention successfully.

Perhaps the most delicate relationships are between husband and wife, and between a wife and her mother-in-law. The first one is of a private nature and must not be touched while the other is a highly volatile one. We would discuss the latter some other time, hopefully. 

Dear Lord, I’m baffled!

If you dwell in our hearts and minds

Why do You then generate terminal diseases within us?

If new born babies verify You are not dissatisfied with us

Why do then cruel slayers on killing spree are overlooked?

I’m speechless over the extent of Your compassion and blessings

But baffled too, when watching children and young die painfully!

All of our dreams and desires never come true in real

Why do we still chase restlessly to realize them?

If we were to live a life free of sufferings and ordeals

Did we still cling to a seesaw of hell and heaven?

Dear Lord! Had there not been a temptation of 70 virgins

Would suicide bombers have still carried out the blasts?

And, everyone knows they live a mortal life

Why no one gives up? All fight till last!

What’s in the Name?

My late parents once revealed to me that I was born on wee hours of Eid-ul-Adha. The elders of the family unanimously decided to name me after this blissful Eid day. So, I was named as; “Eidan”. My Dad, an educated person to school level, and a lower cadre employee in a government department did not agree with the elders’ advice, and said: I plan to take my children to a town for education and to a city later for higher studies too, therefore, this ‘village name’ would not suit my boy, and he would not like it when gets educated.

Hence, I survived, not being called after Eid as Eidan.

We all know that purpose of name is to identify one from another. Therefore, everyone has name and all love their name regardless of the fact that it’s given to them by parents. This practice has been going on from the creation of very first man i.e. Aadam (AS) and he was given this name by Allah (SWT).

The human names in the primitive times were borrowed from objects of the nature. Interestingly they are still in vogue around the world. As the societies grew culturally and advanced in education and literature, new and modern names came into existence and they largely replaced old names putting them into extinction, especially in urban areas. 

Culturally and traditionally names in the villages and small towns are very simple and reflect some historical or memorable events, and new born babies are often named after some non-human things. Traditional names in Sindh province of Pakistan are usually taken from week days, Islamic months, trees, flowers, fruits & vegetables, jungles, mountains, and other objects. 

Some names are listed hereunder:

Sindhi Names	Meaning
Aachar	Sunday
Soomar	Monday
Jummo	Friday
Muharram	1st Islamic Month
Safar	2nd Islamic Month
Rajab	7th Islamic Month
Sha’ban	8th Islamic Month
Ramzan	9th Islamic Month
Mevo	Fruit
Amb	Mango
Zaitoon	Guava
Sono	Gold
Kandero	Thorny Tree
Mithoo	Parrot
Mor	Peacock
Jabal	Hill
Pahelwan	Wrestler

Similar traditional names also prevail in rural areas of Punjab, and rest of the provinces. I have poor knowledge about them. Some of the Punjabi names collected through my Punjabi twitter friends are given as under:

Punjabi Names	Meaning
Charagh	Lamp (like Alladin’s)
Channan	Moon
Gulabo	Rose
Boota	Tree Plant
Sohni	Beautiful
Laddoo	Golf ball sized traditional sweet
Billo	Damsel with Cat-like eyes
Makhan	Butter
Jannat	Heaven
Sherdil	Lion hearted

One peculiar habit / trend that prevails since long in Punjab is about parents, elders and friends giving nicknames or shortened / distorted original names to their kids out of sheer love so that these look cuter and easy to pronounce. When children grow up these nicknames look funnier and create embarrassing for them. Here are a few of such distorted names:

Punjabi Nicknames	Real Names
Peeno	Parveen
Peja	Parvaiz
Sheeda	Rasheed
Pheeka	Rafiq
Jajee	Aijaz
Jaka	Razzaq
Phujja	Zafar / Fayyaz
Bali / Balla	Iqbal
Sooda	Maqsood

Nevertheless, people living in cities, big towns and other urban areas across the country, with educated background, prefer to adopt modern names for their children that are used in novels, literature, TV Dramas, and borrowed from Arabic, Persian, Hindi and even English Languages.

There are scores of common names used in Muslim, Christian and Jewish world, though with a small twist of accent and spelling but having similar meaning. These religious male and female names are taken from the names of prophets that descended from Prophet Ibrahim (AS) or before. For example:

Muslim Names	Christian/Jewish Names
Ibrahim	Abraham
Ishaq	Isaac
Ismail	Ishmael
Yaqoob	Jacob
Aadam	Adam
Moosa	Moses
Yousuf	Joseph
Nooh	Noah
Dawood	David
Ilyas	Elijah
Suleman	Solomon
Sarah (Sara)	Sarah (Sara)
Maria	Maria
Hava	Eve
Maryam	Mary
Jibrael (Gibril)	Gabriel
Zakaria	Zach
Haris	Harris
Daniyal	Daniel
Haroon	Aaron
Elishba	Elisheba

Interestingly like our traditional names, English names i.e. Christian and Jewish, also refer to their relation with objects, earth, trees and plants, professions, etc. A few of them are:

Bush, Tree, Goldsmith, Potter, Blacksmith, Silver, Fish, Ocean, Olive, Apple, White, Black, Cave, Hill, Snow, Love, Onion, Fox, Wolf, Star, Stone, Pearl, North, West, etc.

While writing this blog and getting help from Google and Wikipedia on  ‘Names’ I got to a realization that it can lead me to making a full-fledged document on the subject because there are plenty of unavoidable relationships in finding a name. For example, bordering countries carry similar names due to frequent interaction and travelling of people between the two nations. Moreover, since US and Europe have been subjected to massive immigration after WW-I and WW-II respectively, therefore, these countries have names from all regions of the world.

The preferences for religious names over primitive names in the Muslim World are getting momentum in big cities, and especially within immigrant Muslims in Europe and North America. “Muhammad” is by far the widely preferred first or second name for boys and “Fatima” for girls. The name ‘Muhammad’ is considered as the most famous name in the world.

 

The combination of old village names, nicknames and modern names are likely to prevail across the globe. Regardless of improved literacy rate, modernization, globalization, and religious influences in our country, old names and nicknames like; Sher (lion) Khan, Mithoo, Bakhto (lucky), Pheeka and Sheeda, and Eidan would continue to appear in our society/culture, perhaps for ages to come.