Sunday

Rizwan MAqsood
Sep 3, 2018 · 3 min read

I woke up and went to the Punjab University for the Amal session. Most of the city was still asleep, city that looked like an asphalt jungle and clogged with automobiles most of the day is tranquilized by the morning breeze.

The activities at Amal were very productive and useful, when I was giving a mock interview I truly felt like a changed person. The words that are coming out of my mouth seems real to the interviewer and the flow was natural. I was confident that whatever questions the interviewer is going to ask me, I know how to answer him and what he actually meant from the question.

After the session, the fellows decided to go for a fundraising activity for the Edhi Foundation. Edhi Saab is one of the very few people that I genuinely respect. If it was a normal day, I would not even give it a thought to join the fellows in the activity. Everything inside me said what are you doing, this is not you, you are not made to have fun with other people, you have done with your weekly quota of human interaction, but as I have been advised I choose to join them. It felt really strange to stay there after the session ends, I’m very bad at starting conversations, so I just scrolled through my phone. I had lunch with Amal fellows at PU. Finally we went to the Lahore Zoo, it was weekend and the zoo was packed with people. The crowd were so diverse and came from different cities of Punjab. I have been to Lahore Zoo when I was small, but I can’t recall any memory of being there, the only thing I remember is Suzi, but she is no more there.

For the first ten minutes we thought that we never going to collect any funds from people, we were scared, shy, and filled with fear of getting embarrassed. We divided ourselves into two teams. Finally, we mustered some courage and asked a family that we are collecting funds for the Edhi Foundation and received our first donation of Rs. 100. As one wise man said, the step of the journey is the hardest one. After receiving the first donation we were ready to get embarrassed and even humiliated. We got better after few attempts and all the nervousness and anxiety vanished. We were having the smooth sailing then one of the fellows accidentally asked for the donation to the zoo’s official. He inquired about who allowed us to collect donations from Zoo’s premises. He took us to the zoo’s director. Director was having a lunch and we waited for him in a meeting room, many fellows were scared about what will going to happen next, one fellow out of the blue started taking group selfies in the presence of zoo official, and the other fellow started posting them on WhatsApp, the tension that was built in the room was dissolved and everyone started to talk to each other and started coming up with cool captions for the photos. I was amazed to see them having fun, I think that they did what is necessary, they started taking selfies and having fun and it gave very strong signals to the zoo official that we are not guilty of anything. The director asked us to collect the funds outside the zoo premises and we were politely escorted by the official.

I never thought that I would spend a whole day interacting and hanging out with people. It is not like I’m not open to experience new things, I like having new experiences but mostly I do and experience things alone. After spending some time with people I start to have this impulse to run away and to go into solitude. The more I interact with people the more mentally drained I feel. I found it very hard to connect to other people like they connect with each other. I saw so many people having fun there, families enjoying and smiling. I thought will I ever going to feel like I belong to someone, to something, will I ever going to develop a deeper bond with the people around me. I know I have failed to develop that bond with my family and people that I have met yet. Normal people laugh at jokes and get excited about things, but I find it hard to laugh at their jokes and to get excited about things that most people find excited.
I will give myself more chances in future, as Ma’am said: “you haven’t tried all the things in the world yet.”