Today, the heart is in tumult; its aching consumes it as if we are nearing doom. A thousand questions keep nagging me; they disturb me like random, irrational words that a child types on the keyboard. I want to ask questions to the people who have taken the yards of religion and discuss and debate in their sermons morality, moral science, ethics, and so much more that the ink of my pen will dry. I want to ask the question to those who are called the builders of the nation: have they failed in their respective jobs to build the nation and its pillars high, as they were assigned the jobs by the country and were hired for the same? Have they failed to bring and inculcate in budding ones the concepts of morality, discipline, ethics, and so much more that could have made the nation proud and would have enhanced its pride?

Something forces me to recall the poem written by a transcendentalist, RW Emerson, Nation's Strength, for he discusses in detail the parameters of a nation's strength and finally reaches the conclusion that only its men can make its pillars high and its foundation strong.

And then comes a big but: do we have young people in whose hands the nation is safe? Since it's the young people who are the future of the nation and who have to run the country tomorrow, will they be able to lead the country? Are they patriotic enough to defend its borders? Are they morally upright, and do they have the moral courage to call a spade, a spade?

I'm lost. I try to find refuge, but I find it nowhere. I go to the mosque to listen to the religious sermons, and I find that a ‘waiz' is more interested in buying tiger that he loudly and loftily expresses on the pulpit of the mosque. I also observe that his subjects, who are under the cast of his love, have forgotten everything between right and wrong, and they reply to it with ‘Subhanallah.’ Soon, I ask myself, Jameel, will the likes of him be the change of renaissance and reformation? And my conscience replies with a big beautiful ‘No.’

I turn to the other man, who wears a long cloak and knows his subject well but is in conflict with the other men of the same and asks his subjects never to visit them, as what they utter is a sweet blasphemy. We, as ignorant people, say Subhanallah here too.

Tired at heart, I seek the final destination and visit the educational institutions, where I find the builders of the nation counting the years of their service and their recent increments, indulging in bizoo, and least concerned about the grooming and imbibing of good deeds among the future generation—sadly, the job they have been assigned to.

With the pieces of broken dreams, I ask the parents the whereabouts of their children; unfortunately, they give blank looks and say they don't listen to us and that they too have failed in instilling morality and discipline in them. “We too have turned empty like that barren land that yields but no crops."

Hence, dejected and deprived, I seek solace but find it nowhere. Thus, finally turned off, I take my cell phone to make a call, but the news pops up at the top: "A 16-year-old boy has killed a 45-year-old man in a romantic relationship." Turning everything off, I get the notion that we've got the premonition of doom.

(Author is a Columnist and can be reached at: Mufti.jameel97@gmail.com)