Sohaib

On Sohaib

By Snehashree

When a man is killed, it is just a man.
But then the man becomes a religion, a legion, even a tribe.
Avengers grow out and kill whoever seems fit to die.
The Hindus kill the Muslims and the Muslims kill the Hindus.
Jews kill, Christians kill.

My family got killed by Muslims.

Question is, does Gods kill?
If they do, who do they bribe, and seal?
Or do they sit on the table calmly having their pie?
The tribes on different planets might be fighting too- earthlings and Xanadu’s?
They charge- Kill Bill, Kill Bill.

If it is a real God they would be creating.
And real God does not kill Bill.

Real God creates but sometimes creates wrongly.

Now real Gods are scared.

Real Gods are scared of the mankind they left behind.
Real Gods are busy trying hard to grow a thick hind.
Real Gods don’t care of our wars.
The cat fights don’t matter to men and the men fights don’t matter to the Gods.

 

But what is coming will bring order.

Restore the lost glory

Solve what remains unsolved

Create in destruction.

Raise in barrenness.

Live and thrive.

The age of Gods when all this would make sense.

When men will make way to the Gods again.

Since they will lose fights, the real ones.

Not the ones they ace.

But there is still hope for some, those that will rise amid Gods.

 

Domination needs to be tackled by domination today.

But in some cases, with subjugation too.

Hatred with love and tolerance

Violence with response

Criticism with conversation.

The balance is wobbly and yet

one needs to know when to use the sword and when not to.

When to use the pen and when not to,

When to love and when to not love (but not hate).

 

Here is a tale that will shake you.

I leave you to read this piece of beauty by Subham Ranjan Patra.

It is beautiful and if you can only see the hearts in the tale, you will know it is always bigger than anything in this world.

• Snehashree Mandal

 

SOHAIB

– Subham Ranjan Patra

Sohaib had never uttered anything ill about the world that had not been kind to him. Words had been thrown at him like spears greased with hatred. But all I knew about him was that he was a poet. A poet strongly abiding by his morals.

“A poet is one who does not seek for love in the world,” he used to say, “as a poet knows he is being loved. Every time the needles of the clocks swipe an inch, a poet knows he is being loved and blessed.”

As a mere listener, I had first taken this statement as a sign of optimism in him, as I somehow heard him saying that God loves all in a poetic manner. But what he was actually saying was a language I learned to transcript much later.

“In the mirrored world made by the painful glasses of hatred,” his sayings used to go on, “one might see himself being condemned for various wrongdoings and even being misconducted as guilty for a crime he has not committed. But when one sees with the eyes God has blessed him with, love can be seen in every action of the earthly sphere!”

I walked through the crowded streets that led me towards his house while having his words ring in my head. He and I had not been very close friends. But the time we spent together was glorious enough to be remembered till my last breath.

His poetry had a sense of togetherness. A sense bound not by words, nor by the meaning they proposed, but by an aura indescribable by any worldly language.

I still remember some lines of his masterpiece poetry. Word to word. Soul to soul.

 

Allah has sent me with a task:

To love the world like a child loving his mother!

The world doesn’t love me, still

My love is for the world and for none other!

 

He used to advocate the belief that love is not something one shall seek to be returned. If it is returned, it would mean your love could reach the intended person. If it is not, it would mean that your love could not make it through the whole distance between you and your loved one. In that case, according to our Sohaib Ji, “Send more love. Who knows other than God the amount of patience and hard-work it would require for one to make his love reach its destination? Thus, being a blind player, I never step back to lose the game. Love the world. It may seem like the world is hating you. But that is all when you look at the mirrored realm of hatred. When seen in the real world, no-one hates. All love!”

The sixty-seven-year-old poet had a different level of optimism. Every word of his poetry felt like a hug that would embrace the whole world into good times.

Once, while having a word with him, I recited a poem written by me, which ended as follows.

 

Still a hope is there

That the old days would venture back.

And that hope is thus dead,

Hence this verse ends in black.

 

While I had feared the opposite, my poem did make a great impact on him. But he did not disclose his mere thoughts upon it just after hearing it. He had an expression that suggested he was in deep thought. He did not say anything about it that day. I bid him good-night and walked home.

The next morning, I got a phone-call from him, “Son, I pondered upon your poetry yesternight. I have some words to recite too.”

I smiled wide, having heard a legendary poet like him recite his words inspired by my poetry.

 

“Hopes go red, hopes go black,

In the human journey that ends in the soil.

When the soil itself is not hopeless,

Why is the lad being torn hopeless like a voile?

 

“The voile that one sees through

Represents the medium hatred sets.

You see the rues when looked through it,

Without it, you see the real love one gets!”

 

I would not have heard my soul for a moment before screaming bravo to the wonderful words Sohaib Ji had just cited. But seeing his seniority in both age and prestige, I could not bring up anything other than a bright smile. Even today, I don’t know if he ever got to know how I had reacted to his live poetry. But keeping this aside, I have no other way to describe my feelings about that time than by saying it was the moment I had lived to be mesmerized the most.

Now, walking straight towards his home, I had my eyes a bit moist. So were the eyes of the crowd that I was walking through.

Sohaib Ji has been busy lately attending programs and speaking against religious demarcations in society. He used to have a lot of followers. His path was considered to be righteous and inspiring among the youth. Most recently, his political speaking had been at its peak. He had always been someone ready to face all the backlashes from those who held conflicting notions. But by today, these backlashes had become something different.

Today, I had joined the crowd of his followers around his bungalow only because of the result that these backlashes had produced.

The world had now learned to blame our Sohaib Ji for something he was not guilty of. His name.

A war between two countries far away from where we live had impacted the thinking of our countrymen too. The terrors of Islamophobia were proposed to be heightened in Indian society, which was once sung as a secular heaven.

While receiving all the threats and backlashes, he still used to attend political and media events, advocating a world bedecked with togetherness. Once, during a political speech, he cited:

“People say my blood is aggressive,

They say my brothers worship violence.

People say my thoughts are regressive,

My breaths are noisy in the air of silence.

 

“People say I live in the wrong nation,

For I’m one of those who murder innocents.

But dare not classify my land by my religion,

I may be or may not be evil; that’s not what my name represents.

 

“You call me a terrorist,

I say you’re one too.

As terrorism is spread by a vector called aggression,

And that vector is given birth by you!

 

“My apologies if my words strike

As attacks made against humanism.

I just mean to point out

That communal men from any religion… are pawns of terrorism!”

 

Among all his poems, this one stands out as the most disturbed and the least optimistic. For the first time, I could find anger in his words. And this did not only shake me, but lakhs of his followers around the world too.

This event had a deep impact; in a way, not so good. Alas, life had not been truly optimistic upon its turns like Sohaib Ji.

Sohaib Ji’s image fell terribly. Since the time his words in the aforementioned poetic piece went viral, he has been accused of advocating hatred. Of course, this was done with cut-and-edited social media reels.

Sohaib Ji, for the first time I had seen him, was struggling to find peace. Much recently, I had tried to connect with him in order to have some words related to the latest controversies based on his words, but I was unsuccessful in that. For the first time, I had heard his agents say he was busy! I could bring out a mere laugh at this for the situation’s irony, but I knew the situation was too serious.

The times went bad enough for him to receive death threats. This was all happening for the very first time in his career. I was playing his turn of being optimistic, hoping it would all end soon. Good days will play back again.

While it was me praying for the poetic comeback of his good times, the rest of the world was witnessing religious demarcations rising to their utmost. Islamophobia has now even become a topic being advocated for kids by their parents! Islamophobia had now even become a topic being advocated to kids by their parents! Islam had become a favourite pun among teenagers, and younger kids started fearing any Muslim man they encountered. This sparked not only fear, but something that Sohaib Ji was himself fearful of too – aggression. More the verbal aggression thrown by people upon the followers of Islam, more the defensive aggression was proposed by the Muslims. And just as our Sohaib Sahab had clearly said, aggression brings out terrorism. Thus, terrorists were being born… among both, the attackers and the defenders.

Among all this, I had only one hope. If this could be stopped by anything, it had got to be Sohaib Ji’s poetry. I was truly optimistic about it. A few fine verses written by him would be enlightening enough to make this dust of hatred fade.

But Sohaib Ali – the once optimistic poet – had now worn the veil of fear. Still, I was confident that he would return with a bang to the literary world, bringing this trend of communal hatred to an end with a shining poetic piece.

Many such days passed. My concerns for Sohaib Ji went sky high. It was merely my fondness for him that made me so utterly curious and fearful about what might his next words might be. Any more misunderstood word to society, and God knew what the world would have called him next.

But this all lasted until the previous night.

On the third of December, the news shook the whole nation: Legendary Poet Sohaib Ali, 67, Committed Suicide Inside His Quarters.

Today, the morning next to his death, I was among the hundreds of his followers who had swarmed around his bungalow, silently reciting prayers for peace for his soul. Inside my thoughts, I could not stop my aggression and was condemning the people responsible for it.

I learned the meaning of hatred, the evils of hatred, and now! Now I was myself a follower of hatred. And I could not keep the fact from my mind that, as per the definition provided by Sohaib Ji, I had become a terrorist.

But the most remarkable thing amid this all was that Sohaib Ji, even after going through this all, never became a terrorist.

A few hours after his death, a piece of paper was circulated through social media – this time, without cuts and edits. It was the last writing – the last note – one last piece of poetry – left behind by Sohaib Ji for us.

 

O, Allah, forgive my soul,

For I failed to look into the world gifted by you.

I could not help myself from looking into hatred’s mirrored world,

That showed an image which wasn’t true.

 

I felt I was being hated,

I believed what I saw without efforts.

But in this globe that you created,

Love is all what even the bleeding wounds spurt!

 

Love is all around,

Stupid of me to be not able to see.

Flowers kiss from the ground,

While hugs are given by the lively trees.

 

It got too late for me to realise

That hatred I saw was mere illusion.

But when images went honest to my eyes,

What I saw was a true vision.

 

The wrong is not in the people,

Instead, it’s in the way we see.

Notions change as perspectives do,

And all notions of love are what embrace me.

 

People may say they hate me,

But deep inside I know-

Hatred is the shell that’s been temporarily made,

And love is the voice that will always glow.

 

Maybe I fail to explain myself,

But I truly am a human like you.

Maybe I fail to express my gratitude and love,

So to the world, I say – I love you!

 

A man so truly devoted to love ended his life with notes of love. It was not like he had nothing to complain about. But he was not a man who knew how to hate or complain; instead, he was versed in only love.

Since I could never be like that legend, I have some thoughts that are not so optimistic. And I believe he is not going to be the last Sohaib Ali to die like this.