THE LIGHT OF MY CANDLE……..

A memory from my childhood…….……………

I am waiting in the wings, in line with the other school children with my candle. The stage under the shamiana is set for the school play celebrating March 23rd.

It is the date on which the Pakistan Resolution was passed.  A date on which my young mother, a minority Muslim student in a Hindu majority college in undivided India was endangering herself by openly being jubilant.

I do not remember how old I am, perhaps in kindergarten or first grade, I just know that all the students in the tableau are older than me. As I look across the stage it appears to be huge to my young eyes.

In the tableau illustrating this poem, I am the flame that lights the world with ilm (knowlege of Deen that helps us live in a humanistic manner). I do not understand the nuances of the poem, but each word is embedded in my brain, to surface much later in life.

I have to walk almost half way across the stage with my candle at a particular part of the poem………..My mother is in the audience…looking out for me and all the other kids in the tableaux.

Suddenly the light is dimmed, that is my cue.  I am nudged to walk onto the school stage. I slowly begin my walk, my candle flickering, and my eyes on the curlicue of the paisley of the Persian carpet in the middle of the stage.

I have to reach the designated point in the design of the carpet halfway across what seems to be a humungous distance, without letting my candle go out. Instinctively I know that in order to keep the flame burning I have to walk very slowly. Something that life has taught me to do if I am to be steady.

Little do I realize that I will be walking with this prayer in my heart half way across the world and eventually all over the globe, slowly allowing it to actualize in its essence.

At this time with the candle in my hand, all I am concentrating on is to keep it alight. I reach the designated part of the middle of the stage where I have to turn and return. I slowly begin my return to the wings of the stage, carefully protecting the flame of the flickering candle. Without understanding the significance of the light of the flame in the prayer……….

Many years later I hear the poem again and the entire meaning sinks into my heart like water sinks into the parched earth which has been devoid of rain for a long time.……bringing out from the cynicism of this materialistic world around me, the hidden idealism of the child with the candle.

So here it is for you, a memory of  the little girl in Pakistan endeavoring in the gusts of the winds of cynical and skeptical times, to keep the flame of her candle from going out.

with english subtitles:

The school girls in Pakistan, in urdu only: