Pen is mightier than the sword

Sobia Khatoon

Writing under the sounds of guns and barrels, on the moat beautiful hell (hells too have the beauty in their own way) which is known to people by its nickname- the paradise. I try to sleep and as soon as I close my eyes, another shot and I open my eyes again which thankfully have not been yet hit by pellets! I never want to write about why this nicknamed paradise is referred to as a war torn area and if there is actually a war, how it started and if it started, when it shall end and so on. If I know about the causes, history and everything about this war, I would never want to share it and if I don’t know anything, I would never want to know it.

All I know and believe in is, "Beneath the rule of men entirely great; pen is mightier than sword.” (Edward George Bulwer- Lytton British politician and playwright)

It is from the very beginning that we are being taught about the universal truths in the English grammar and we know that such statements are not meant to get changed in any case.

I admit that "pen is mightier than sword" is indeed being accepted universally but only when the universe doesn’t include Kashmir. I wish this word would have been accepted here too, we would have been forced to talk about the beauty of a hell. The beautiful hell where sword has overtaken the mightiness of a pen.

People are forgetting the mightier value of pen and dumbly switching to sword which is thus adding to the beauty of this hell. So far as I have been hearing from my elders is that i should not comment anything when I don’t know about it. I have been hearing that people have to take up sword when pens don’t help and then I wonder, why is it like people tell me that I don’t see and understand how pen is being used. If I am childish or mature enough, whatever it is, to see that swords are being given much value than pen, why on this earth cant I see that where and how and when the pen is being used. I admit that I love pen but gratefully in my case love is not blind and not yet hit by pellets.

Had this truth been accepted in this paradise too, we too would have been having only Sunday as a weekly holiday like everywhere else.

Alas! Sword here is so mightier than pen, that for days we keep waiting to go to schools. Had pen been mightier than sword, then people living in this hell would consider it a victory for themselves that their children are waiting for Sundays, the only holidays.

But, stupidly, victory is considered in children taking up swords and stones and not attending their schools, which obviously remain closed for most of the days of week. Mothers might find it up easy that they don’t have to pack our Tiffin’s daily, not wash our uniforms and all the other chores that all mothers across the universe but yet again without this beautiful hell, perform daily.

Teachers might find it equally beneficial for they don't have to shout and scream. But thankfully when it comes to the subject, i.e, the children, we are by the grace of Allah by now able to understand that these extra prolonged holidays are no use to us rather by this the beauty of this hell is being added and more over what we pay daily for our studies is not in any way being subtracted.

So, implies that our parents are not running out of money but we are running out of literacy and more than that education and now see there will be a vast number of such students who would have missed their classes when being taught about the difference between education and literacy because missing our classes is said to be victorious.

With all my heart, I stand with the pen. The universe has accepted this fact and not just my beautiful hell, which still loves sword, blindly.

Let the people of this beautiful hell save stones and switch to pens.

Let's keep choosing pens unless we are not deprived of the ink and when we are actually deprived of it, then lets choose sword, only to get that pen back.

Raise your words, not voice; its rain that grows flowers, not thunder (Rumi).

The writer can be reached at sobiakhatoon65@gmail.com