International Day of the Girl Child

International day of the Girl Child, which is celebrated on October 11, aims to create awareness about the rights of a girl child across the globe. One of the basic rights every child has is that of getting equal opportunity to acquire education, which in a country like ours is usually neglected, especially in case of a girl child. According to a report published by UNESCO, Pakistan ranks the second with the most out-of-school children in the world with only Nigeria ahead of us. It also revealed that Pakistan is in the bottom 10 countries in terms of the proportion of poor girls who have never gone to school. It stated that 62% girls in Pakistan, aged between 7 and 15, have never spent time in a classroom. These stats are much higher in comparison to 30% in India and 9% in Bangladesh.

Educating women, in particular, has unmatched transformative power.  

Educated mothers are better informed about everything! 

To create awareness regarding the importance of girl child education, SOC Films in collaboration with Chime of Change, created a series of short documentaries on young girls who want to achieve their dreams and aspirations to seek excellence in various professions in future whether it's sports, literature, science, math, activism, or so on and so forth.  

Areeba Fatima, a student of Dawood Public School, one of the biggest girls’ school in Karachi,
is also featured in one of the documentaries where she expresses her desire to become a diplomat to be able to represent Pakistan at the UN and paint a positive picture of the country.

#EducateOurGirls
#Pakistan



Chime for Change - Areeba's Dream from Sharmeen Obaid Films on Vimeo.

Nine-Eleven.

It’s always been a sad day. There’s something morose about September on the whole. It’s undefined. It’s not really summer, but it’s hot, it’s not at all winter, but it sends chills down my spine, it’s not really autumn because the leaves are just beginning to change colour, and it’s not spring at all… because there is nothing new in sight, everything is old by the time it is September, everything is sorta dragging like a dog with one leg that doesn’t work but remains attached to the dog.

I can’t remember a single good September in my life.

 

 

This 9/11 I will especially remember. I’ll relive it over and over again in my mind and with my soul:

I was the twin towers and I was the planes that flew threw them, splitting everything down to rubble. I was the people inside the towers who couldn’t go anywhere and knew they were going to die. I was the people who panicked and jumped to their deaths. I created my own 9/11, in all its glorious death and destruction. I made my own ground zero. A giant hole in the ground, as deep as it is wide.

The thing about tragedies is that we only remember our own.

If you were to ask me about the actual 9/11 I would not have too much to say – I'd share the same recycled info, the stuff already been through the news on loop, the things that were posted on social media, I wouldn't know anything more... because it was not my tragedy. It was not my pain, I didn't "feel" it, it was a little less real for me. But my own tragedy… my own destruction I remember in great detail. It's like a tube stuck in my nose, it's like a thorn in my foot, I feel it constantly... I remember how every single molecule of me felt then and how it feels right now, my head, my heart, my hands, my feet, my legs, my eyes, the inside of my throat where tears seem to be collecting even now as I sit and write this, even when I thought I had nothing more left inside me to make these tears. My eyes should have felt dead by now with all the crying that I have done… but no, my eyes are even more sensitive than ever before. Everything hurts really, in every possible way... the light hurts, the air hurts, and making eye contact hurts.

I hurt. All of me hurts.

 

We all go through our own Nine-Elevens. People tell me I'm a "survivor", that I can get through the bad stuff again and again; just because I've survived some extremely terrible things in my life doesn't mean I excel at enduring pain. If anything, I excel at smiling and making others laugh when my insides feel like the ground zero rubble of the twin towers after the collisions, I excel at standing up even when my legs refuse to, I excel at putting on my kajal even when my eyes hurt, I excel at remembering good things and I excel at understanding that everything changes.

 

Wake me up when September ends.

~ JB

Hold it.

I was laughing and smiling and dying inside. Parts of me were hurting badly, out of fear and exhaustion, and all I could think of was holding your hand. And you just couldn't do it.

I so badly needed you to hold my hand.

Just remember not to hold my hand when I'm dying.
I don't want to then.
It will make no difference at that time, to me. It will be for you, when I'm dying and you want to hold my hand, it will be to make you feel better, like you helped me in a difficult moment. So, don't.

Hold my hand now, today, this week, now - when I'm alive. When I need to know you're there, and when I need to know you're holding my hand. When I need to know you are there with me.

When I'm dying it will mean nothing to me that you were holding my hand.
It won't make me feel better then.

~ JB

LoveIsADemon

 

At its strongest and wildest and most authentic, love is a demon.
It is a religion, a high-risk adventure, an act of heroism.
Love is ecstasy and injury, transcendence and danger, altruism and excess.
It is a divine madness.

~Cristina Nehring

Ergo... I am happy.

People say the funniest things when they are trying to show they are better than you.

“Be who you really are!” someone said to me today. But they forgot to add, “…but be the version of you that is acceptable to me…” they also forgot that they are who they really are… ummm… on selective occasions that suit their needs.

I am who I am. That is the beauty of me. I love who I am. And I have to. Because no one gets me… okay, maybe parts of me… but not all of me, not the details, not the little things that make me happy or angry. What about sad, you ask? I don’t count sad – because parts of me are always sad, life is like that. And anyone who says they are 100% happy 100% of the time – is lying! Yes. Lying to you, to themselves, and to everyone and everything else. Carl Jung said it before I did…

 

Stay happy, but stay real.
Not just when you need to be real, but accept your ugly parts too
– instead of just pointing out the parts of others (that maybe only you) think are ugly.

~ JaneBravo

GO GREEN - #CelebratePakistan

The year is 2014. It's August, the weather is typically hot in the sun but cooler in the shade, and the wind in Karachi screams "we need a monsoon rain"...

14th of August is the day Pakistan "happened".
We're 67 years old and still learning how to walk and stand tall.
We're 67 years old... wow... that's old in human years, and (well, pretty much) dead in dog years... but in "country" years it smells like teen spirit. Two parties own Pakistan now - the Mullahs and the Youth. And the politicians know this. This is why they can't seem to figure out their political strategies - one end they need to cater to conventionalism, fundamentalism, and on the other end to the Youth... an ever-changing, hormones-raging, trigger-happy lot. I'm personally rooting for the Youth.

If anything can bring revolution - it is this hot blooded generation alone. If anyone can be a symbol of true Democracy - it is the Pakistani Youth.
Unfortunately, I doubt they know how much power they have...

I've been to nine different countries, I've lived in four; but nothing feels as much as home as Pakistan does. Like any 60-something country, it has its growing pains, the political drama, the rebellion, explosions, and killings, and well a whole plethora of problems... one for every single citizen... approximately 182,589,000 people. Among other positive things for a country to promote, family planning has not been promoted enough.

But all this aside, I do love Pakistan.
Yes, I do, and I will continue to complain about the electricity outages, and the broken roads, and the garbage everywhere.
But I will still love what is there to love, and I will still #CelebratePakistan with everything I've got... Freedom is Life.

#CelebratePakistan ~ JB

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x23npx1_independence-day-celebration-celebratelife-celebratepakistan_people


http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x23npx1_independence-day-celebration-celebratelife-celebratepakistan_people" target="_blank">Independence Day Celebration. #CelebrateLife...
by http://www.dailymotion.com/jubileelifeinsurance"

antidote

I feel like I've broken out of a metaphorical solitary confinement of some sort in the last few months. It hasn't been easy, it isn't easy even now, but I want to stay here. It feels hard but it feels brighter ahead.

"I know about the antidote that will free me of my pain,
But I cannot owe indebtedness to the one who breaks the chain."

~ JaneBravo

So help me God.

Dear God,

We talked about a lot of things in 2013. Seems the whole year went by like it was a week or ten days total and now 2014 has begun just like a gunshot fired at midnight in Karachi.

I woke up on the morning of January 1st, 2014 with very mixed feelings; there is such a big backlog of prayers I have sent to You, and I am wondering when You will respond to them? I mean I get it, that You know best - but are all the things I pray for bad for me? 

I want to kill all my Hope. 
The last twenty years are proof that Hope is nothing but a disease bordering on becoming an addiction; that feels good but makes you sick and kills you slowly. 

You know, better than anyone, that I have survived several painful crushing things in my life. Things that left me dead inside for years. Things that have killed parts of me that will never wake up again. Still, I think that this is your greatest blessing on me... that you did not let me die, that you gave me little rainbows in every storm and for that I love You tremendously. But I want big rainbows now, and no more storms.

They say the light enters us through our wounds, but all I feel in these wounds is darkness. 

You know, better than anyone, how damaged I am. You promised me that you would not burden me more than I can take, then why does it feel like I am about to split in two with the weight of this life on my shoulders? 

When I was a little girl crying over something terrible that happened to me, someone said to me: 

God has said He will love you seventy times more than your mother loves you. Is that true.

I am so confused, to be honest... if this is seventy times more than my mother loves me, then I think my mother doesn't love me at all. Because I do not feel loved by You.

Please show me a sign? 
I need you to forgive my sins, fight my demons, and send me a guardian angel for the rest of this life. 

Thank you for 2014 - I love life - let this be the beginning, not the end, of me.

Love,

Jane