(I started writing this blog two months ago. I could only write a few lines when I had to stop. I remained so busy during those past days that couldn't get a chance to look back at the blog. tonight, I began writing the remaining part and finished quickly as I was full of enthusiasm to share my thoughts with you- I hope you will enjoy reading it)
Like all my blogs, the title doesn't simply go to the most straightforward meaning and has nothing to do with my scheduled visit to Pakistan. As you go on, the title would become comprehensive.
Last month, my nephew visited me in Netherlands. We had a great time together after almost 5.5 years. Because of him, I traveled so much that I had not done in past two years time spent here. Nephew had a very unplanned sort of visit and we were making very spontaneous decisions regarding our visits, shopping, eating, hanging out and that was the most exciting and fun part of being with him. Like rest of plans, our visit to Paris was also sort of unplanned. I was planning for Barcelona but we ended up in Paris; the city of love, the city of lights, the city of fragrances and I would add my own given names to Paris later. From Paris, the only image popping up in my mind was Eiffel Tower. For me, meanings of Paris were confined to a big tall tower standing in the center of the city and nothing else. I had some preconceived ideas about Eiffel Tower itself and these were creeping in my mind due to the noble work of my countrymen who had visited it before. According to them, if a person had ever seen electric transmission grid pole, he/ she doesn't need to go to Paris. Eiffel Tower is just like a transmission grid pole. These were the words from few people who had visited it before and the words were cruel for a person who had always dreamed to see Eiffel Tower. Also, it raised serious questions to the fact that Eiffel Tower is the most visited paid monument in the world. Since it is also among the seven wonders of the world, I was highly surprised by such a description of it. Anyways, the journey begun and we took a night coach to Paris. The journey was sort of difficult as it was an overnight journey and it was a chilling outside. We finally made our journey to Paris early morning. Another evidence of our lack of planning was that we didn't even take a city map of Paris. We were expecting that Eiffel Tower would come to welcome us on the bus station ( No it isn't so, we expected that we would get city map from tour guide on the bus station). Anyways, we came out of the bus station and started looking for an enormous, tall architecture somewhere and headed towards some unknown direction. We were in fact moving away from the tower where a charming French lady guided us the way to Eiffel Tower. Before that, we had heard many stories about the French people that they do not speak to you until you talk to them in French. The first lady negated all those (un)fabricated stories. After a walk of like 2 KM, we eventually saw something. Hurray... that was the Big Tower. Wow. We made it. We were congratulating each other for making such less efforts to search it. But, we didn't go to see the tower. Paris was amazing. Whatever street we were taking, it was pulling us so much and attracted our attention such vigorously that we thought this would be the most amazing place of Paris but it wasn't true. Before going to France, I had visited some tourism inductive places like UAE, a couple of cities in Germany, Belgium, almost all famous cities of NL and Luxembourg, but I was never so much intoxicated by any sort of Beautiful Architecture and Magical Sights. If I start to write everything, then my blog will be a travel log and thats not what I intended to write before starting this blog.
After some hours of rigorous walk and seeing almost all famous places of Paris, we planned heading towards Eiffel Tower before our energies end up and we would need to call it a day. The area nearby the tower was full of immigrants selling the French souvenirs and trying to talk to you in Hindi, Urdu, Spanish, Malay (whatever you tell them about your nationality) and trying to be-fool you by charging more than double the price of each article. Every time some corps popped up, they started the relay race to get away from them. There were so many tourists like us and this made us to think that it might be some special day of celebration, although it was just a normal day. I saw Eiffel Tower. The simple description was that it was huge, and its top was reaching skies. I had no plans to go to the top, partially because there was no lift on that day and one had to take stairs and other reason was that I wasn't that much impressed by it (as my mind was already polluted by the fellow colleagues). Suddenly my nephew drew my attention towards someone. He was a "Desi" guy, having one big luggage bag in one hand and another even bigger handcarry and a laptop bag on his shoulder. With all this burden, he was busy taking the photos of Eiffel Tower with a professional camera. My nephew told me, "look at this 'Ready to Airport' guy". "He would have a short stop over in Paris, and he is quickly making the photos to show to his family and friends that he has been to Eiffel Tower. Just by making photos from so far, he would be fooling people that he has actually visited it. What do you see from so far, without experiencing it by looking from top to down rather than the site from down to the top". I was burst into laughter by his impulsive remarks but I started making it clear to him that I won't to go the top either. My nephew is often over-bearing and highly stubborn. He didn't stop until I took the way to the queue buying tickets to take the stairs. We started climbing up the stairs and an Italian couple was behind us. They started a competition with us to see who moves fastest to the second floor. It wasn't an easy job, as even reaching the second floor needs you to take more than 700 stairs. It wasn't Ovais who gave up, but I decided to separate myself from this competition as my legs started to get out-of-control, shivering, shaking moving here an there. This was the time when I started "feeling" the place. Looking at it from inside and taking different angles to view it, it was something more than awesome. We were amazed by the fact that this tower was built in 1890, and despite the fact that lightening struck it many times but a wonderful piece of architecture was standing on the earth with all its pride and magnificence. I simply have no words to express how I felt after actually experiencing it. At one end, you see the rivers and canals moving across the city and from the other side, you see Napoleon's tomb and church, and another view takes you to a beautiful park of Sacre-Cceur Basilica. and further views catch your attention towards the marvelous architecture of the city as a result of the vast mid-nineteenth century urban re-modelling. The more I write, the more I would feel the urge to give you the nicest view of the city but before I become too boring for you, I stop describing Paris here.
I said to my nephew that if I had not experienced to go up and observed it with my eyes rather than the eyes of camera or camcoder, I won't have the same feelings. Thank you for being so bossy to take me up. He felt a little bit overconfident at that time and was also happy for me that I proved to be a nice companion and despite my knee problem, I made it to the highest point we could reach.I would never forget this experience ever in my life.
The purpose of telling this big, long story is that there are many people around us who we have some preconceived idea of. We judge them from our own angles. No matter how smart we think we are in recognizing people, but we are bounded by our weaknesses. We miss many good people from our lives who would otherwise be our friends. We judge them either through the eyes of our society or their appearance. Once we have a beforehand opinion about them, we don't try to know them, to experience them, to dig them or to come closer to them. We never realize that every society has its own weaknesses and every society has some binding forces like culture, religion, social norms etc. which frames the way a good person should look like. Once that person doesn't fit into that frame, we consider him/ her to be an alien and we expel them from our society by actually not making them part of our society. Although heterogeneity is the beauty of every society but we want all homogeneous masses around us. I would emphasize the need of knowing people through your own lens, learn them, give them chance to change your thoughts. Perhaps, in their lens, you yourself are also not fitting very well and thats the reason they keep distance from you and you keep distance from them and the vicious cycle continues. If you don't believe me, ask your best friend what he/she had thought about you before actually coming closer to you. I am sure their preconceived ideas about you would bring not a smile but a laughter on your face. Don't miss good people from your life as life is a "One Voucher Gift". If you do not make most out of it, you will be a looser. Just like the "Ready to Airport" guy who would go back tell his friends that Eiffel Tower looks like "Electric Transmission Grid Pole", you might have some ordinary thoughts about some exceptional people around you.
Cherish every moment of your life because it will never come again. "Being Happy doesn't mean that everything is perfect. It means that you have decided to look beyond the imperfections". Stay Happy and wish you a nice time ahead.
