By Shazia Anwer Cheema
You are doomed if you do not fight and die fighting, fight for your life and for the life of others, the only way to go to Walhalla.
I know a town symbolic of Norse mythological Walhalla; which has an underground labyrinth, icy cold and dark just like Niflheim where darkness impaired the visibility and ice numb the sensations, its depth is immeasurable, once you are in it, there is no possible way out of it. Who wants to go there willfully by an informed decision? palpably no one, but the town which resembles “hall of fame” where all the victorious reside side by side has slippery roads marked by slippery names, such as “pleasure by roaming into power corridor”, “ecstasy of being civil servant after grade so and so”, “fame by media-repertoire”, “thrill of being bold and beautiful”, “exotic attires ”, “privileged by lust”,” vigilante by being a pretentious social rebel”, “cure from the boredom of wealth”, “ambitious to jump to upward social class”.
The moment you put your first step on any one of it, it is obvious you meet someone on the way who can become your best support to take you right to the bottom of the road, after that neither you nor your support could be of any help, on the road to go to your destination which could be any of among, ambitious to jump to upward social class or fame by media-repertoire or something else, you meant to end up and get stuck into the dark maze of Ice.
There is practically nothing wrong with striving for better and good but success has no shortcut. No slippery road can push you to your designed future. All those who are already enjoying the sweet goblet of that hall of fame would never let you enter in it, all those prosperous will never tell you the secret of their prosperity instead they have designed a maze for all the newcomers, no rank or grade can be given to you in a one-night stand and no matter how much ice you bare. They themselves have reached there via a very bumpy road, any promise of slipping you to your ambition is not worth freezing to death in a miserable dark dungeon.
There is a saying that power desires pleasure, the city of Power that has an attire of safety, but no one is safe there, for an outsider, it is a trap, by out-sider I mean one who does not fit in —-to fit in, basic requirements are excessive wealth, higher rank, or worthy background, worthy of trade to something.
But for a commoner there is no welcoming place in this city, he/she has to trade-off by must stepping foot on slippery roads that leave a common person with only one choice, either try slow and steady and choose hard way or take a shortcut but for the shortcut, you need to trade something, for an outsider only one commodity left to trade and that is his or her body. That makes the major population of this underground ice land, those human bodies are commonly known as “fresh” and “not much used” are those ambitious predominantly women who come to the hall of fame to become a valuable part of it but end up doing a deal with the devil, ambition vs lust. For a normal human being, this is the most difficult decision to take, for that you need to ease your agitation and numb your senses and Ice is the perfect solution for that. Now flying on ice you spend few months in the beds of prestigious and powerful and after that, your dependency on ice and monotony of your body pushes you towards the lower ranks and the process goes on. All the victorious do not want to buy sex that makes them feel ugly instead they acquire an ambitious body with false promises and provide ice to add additional value of ruthlessness and the game of the throne starts.
This city of sparling mountains that contains stones that can make anything gold by a touch, therefore, attracts an exodus of young men and women who wish to find a superior future but usually are consumed, leaving fables of agonies.
This lusty city having an aura of calmness keeps volcanic disasters beneath its surface particularly for those who are unguarded and novice to understand the farce of cruelty. Demand for pleasure is too high so as the need for supply. Newspapers of this city show that driving SUVs with over 120km an hour under the influence of Ice regularly crushes young and old but drivers are above the law because they are too powerful either to influence the law or to buy the families of the deceased. Recovering of dead bodies of young and middle-aged women in thick forests and gushy nullahs are no more news that can make someone sad about the fate of the body because this feature of crime has become a routine.
The scene that starts from the teakwood beds usually ends up at a mortuary table, standing parents outside, and finding ambulances to carry bodies of their ambitious offspring to their native towns.
Norse mythology says that if you die fighting you will go to Walhalla (Heaven) a warm sunny place with warm food and drinks and if you die peacefully you go to Niflheim (Hell) a dark cold place where only eatable will be ice. What an irony of the situation that all those who fight all their life to reach somewhere to become something but end up in Neflehen even die fighting for their life. This trago-comedy could only be seen in my town. What a waste of courage, bravery, and sacrifice.
Note: The writer Shazia Cheema is an analyst writing for national and international media outlets. She heads the DND Thought Center. She did her MA in Cognitive Semiotics from Aarhus University Denmark and is currently registered as a Ph.D. Scholar of Semiotics and Philosophy of Communication at Charles University Prague. She can be reached at her: Twitter @ShaziaAnwerCh Email: shaziaanwer@yahoo.com
The views and opinions expressed in this article/Opinion/Comment are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the DND Thought Center and Dispatch News Desk (DND). Assumptions made within the analysis are not reflective of the position of the DND Thought Center and Dispatch News Desk News Agency.
