When we wake in the morning,
Tomorrow suddenly begins to blink
On the screen of our phone
Like an unexpected SMS.
Nisar Banbhan
Hailing from Village Mir Muhammad Banbhan, Taluka Mirwah, District Khapurpur and based in Karachi, the capital of Sindh, Nisar Banbhan is a seasoned professional with nearly 25 years of multifaceted experience, encompassing 3 years in journalism and over two decades of service in a public sector organization. His extensive expertise spans content creation, scriptwriting, screenwriting, lyrics, poetry, and storytelling across multiple languages, including Sindhi, Urdu, and English. Nisar has honed his skills in writing articles, columns, and short stories, contributing to various national and regional media outlets. Additionally, he brings a deep understanding of program development, educational advocacy, and strategic planning, having led initiatives that promote quality education and foster community empowerment. His passion for literature and education merges seamlessly, enabling him to craft impactful narratives that resonate with diverse audiences while driving meaningful change in society.
We Put Our Life on Tomorrow
When we wake in the morning,
Tomorrow suddenly begins to blink
On the screen of our phone
Like an unexpected SMS.
Another calculation,
Another worry,
Another task that has not even happened yet,
But somehow
Has already arrived
And is standing at the door of the heart.
A thin line of sunlight
Slips through the curtains
And whispers,
“Get up… today is yours.”
But we keep listening
To the footsteps of tomorrow.
On our way to the office,
The expenses of home
Travel with us
Like stones hidden in our pockets.
Children’s school fees,
Household needs,
The expenses of a wedding yet to come,
The dream of having a roof of our own,
And that little fund
Left behind in the bank
For the years of old age—
Sometimes we look at it
And quietly ask ourselves:
I wonder…
How will the remaining days of this life
Find their way home?
At night,
The city puts its exhaustion
Beside the roads
And falls asleep.
But our old wounds
Come and sit upon the rooftop
Like silent birds.
Sleep comes close to our eyes,
And tomorrow morning
Calls it back.
When do we ever live?
We simply carry our worries
From one moment
To the next.
Perhaps we have mistaken life
For a long queue—
A queue
At the end of which
Peace is supposed to be waiting.
As children,
When the school bell rang,
We thought—
Once college came,
Life would change.
College came,
And the university
Looked like a distant lamp
Calling us from far away.
We reached the university,
And a job
Seemed like a house
Where peace would finally live.
We got the job,
And thought—
Perhaps now
Life will finally reveal
Its real face.
And now,
With only a few days of work left,
I open the old cupboard
And find my dreams
Still folded there,
Layer upon layer.
Some dreams
Are still waiting
To open their eyes.
Some dreams
Want to fall upon the roof of our own home
Like the first rain of the season.
Some wishes
Want to place their happiness
In our children’s hands
And live long enough
To see them married.
And some anxieties
Are burning at the doorway of old age
Like an old, tired lamp.
I wonder
When our feet
No longer carry us
The way they once did,
When mornings
Arrive carrying fatigue,
When evenings
Begin to grow longer,
When medicines,
Needs,
And silences
Come and sit beside us
Then?
On what shoulder
Will this life rest?
And then
The heart almost smiles.
Peace?
We had given that too
A date somewhere in tomorrow.
We drank our tea,
But never really tasted its fragrance.
The cup was in our hands,
While the mind
Was turning the pages
Of some future bill.
We laughed too,
But the laughter reached our lips
And stopped there
Like a bird
That sees an open window
And is still afraid to fly.
Our children were sitting beside us,
And we had travelled so far
Into the worries of their future
That we forgot
To belong to their present.
Yet having our children beside us
Is itself a blessing.
Hearing our name
Inside their voices,
Being the first person
They remember
When something goes wrong,
Watching our eyes grow moist
At their success,
And sometimes
Having them simply come
And sit beside us
Without saying a word
This too is life.
We kept building homes
For our children,
While they
Were quietly teaching us
What it means
To feel at home.
We spent our lives
Trying to secure their future,
And failed to notice
That our own present
Was sitting inside
Their laughter.
Sometimes, in the village,
I lie beneath the night sky
On the rooftop,
And the moon
Still looks exactly the same.
The same moon
That, in the nights of childhood,
Looked like a little white button
Slipped from Mother’s hand
And stitched
Onto the shirt of the sky.
The stars are the same.
The wind is the same.
Even the silence of the night
Sits there
Wrapped in its old shawl.
Only we have changed.
We mistook the clock
For time,
And tried to hold time
Inside our fists.
Then one day
We opened our hands
And found only
The lines of our palms.
Time had already slipped away
Like sand
Through our fingers.
My friend…
Life is not a railway station
Where we spend every hour
Waiting for the next train.
Life is the platform
On which
We are standing right now.
This breath
Burning quietly inside our chest—
This
Is ours.
The next moment
Has not even been born.
Its face
Is still with God.
Then why do we keep placing
The weight of the future
Upon the shoulders
Of the present?
Build your own roof.
See your children
Settled in their lives.
Save something
For old age.
Leave the doors
Of tomorrow open.
But…
In the middle of all this,
Do not let
Your today
Become an orphan.
Drink your tea.
Let its steam
Stay close to your face
For a little while.
When it rains,
Leave the umbrella at home
Once in a while.
Sometimes
The water falling from the sky
Can wash away
The dust inside us too.
When a child laughs,
Search for your lost childhood
Inside that laughter.
Place your hand
Upon the child’s shoulder.
Say nothing.
Just feel
Beneath your hand
Your whole life
Is breathing.
When your children are with you,
Sit with them.
Tomorrow,
Perhaps this same room
Will still be here,
Perhaps these same chairs
Will still be standing,
But their voices
May belong to other cities,
To homes of their own.
When Mother calls,
Leave everything
And go to her.
Some voices
Do not return.
And when you kneel in prayer,
Take off all your clocks
Before entering the prostration.
No tomorrow.
No day after tomorrow.
No coming morning.
Only a servant,
A prostration,
A beating heart,
And God.
Perhaps
Life was always this small.
As small as a cup of tea.
As tender as
A child’s laughter.
As fleeting as
A mother’s voice.
As delicate as
A single drop of rain.
As quiet as
A tear falling in prostration.
We kept searching for life
Inside great days,
While it was walking beside us
Through little moments,
Holding our finger
All along.
We kept telling every moment,
“We will live tomorrow.”
And tomorrow
Never answered.
So today,
Live one moment
That carries no other moment
Upon its back.
No shadow of tomorrow.
No ashes of yesterday.
Only this moment.
Hold it
Like a drop of water
Resting in the hollow of your palm.
Look at it fully
Before it falls.
Worry
But do not let worry
Become your breath.
Save
But do not spend your whole life
Saving life for later.
Shape your children’s future,
But do not take your eyes
Away from their faces today.
Build a home,
But remember
To live inside it yourself.
Put something aside
For old age,
But write today’s evening
In your own name too.
Because perhaps
Life never really left us.
We were the ones
Who kept sending it away
To the house of
“The next moment.”
And when we finally turned back,
There was a clock
In our hands
But no time.
There was breath
But no life.
Then we understood:
Life is not the name
Of some grand, distant day.
It is a garland
Made of small, ordinary moments,
And we kept dropping
Each precious bead
From our hands,
Calling it
“Tomorrow.”
Life is not something
To merely get through.
Life…
Is what is sitting
Right in front of you.
Look at it.
Take its hand.
And for the first time,
Do not call it
Tomorrow.
________________
Read: Sindh First, Sindh Forever
