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My everyday routine is all about school, home – and on weekends markets or family restaurants – but everything I see within a week makes me detest this society. Be it school or out on the roads, something is always bothering me. I am stuck in a labyrinth and there is always this restless voice at the back of my head and it is time to let it out.

I can be someone happy-go-lucky but thanks to the flaws of our society, I am not. I live in a society where shallow people try to fill their emptiness by the number of likes. I live in a society where people put up their posts on ‘friends of friends’ to make sure they pop up in multiple newsfeeds and are eminent. All social media gives me is revulsion. I have begun to dislike my own friends.

I live in a society where I am judged on the basis of where I live, which brand I wear and where I go for my vacations. As a famous Urdu narrative ‘Overcoat’ by Ghulam Abbas says, we all are hiding ourselves under overcoats. Are we who we pretend to be? Why do we compare? Why can’t we get out of this perpetual loop of longing for everything we don’t have?

I find exuberance in eating gol gappay at a street stall, not in taking selfies at FRIENDS café. I ache for new experiences, not for new cars. I enjoy playing ludo with my cousins instead of going out, just to put a check-in on Facebook and I am sure it is not only me but thanks to the developing inferiority complexes, we cherish every new fad. I live in a society where everyone is pilloried, from people who are dating because that is ‘un-Islamic’ to those who attend weddings with an abaya because sharayi parda is just ‘awkward’.

I can be a party animal, and relish every moment of my student life but here I am thinking about the man who was scanning me from head to toe at the market or the man who followed my car (and no I do not go out with make-up – which shouldn’t matter in the first place). Are Qandeel Baloch’s videos are not enough to enthrall them? I can go focus on my career opportunities but I am thinking about how messed up this society’s members are. For instance, the aunties who were talking about Metro trains and were asking me about my O’ Level grades at a funeral as I sat in front of them, grieving at the loss of a loved one – when all I could do was to wish one of these trains to smash them.

I should study and ponder over doing something extraordinary to make my parents proud but instead I am forced to think about how my Chemistry sir told me that I might know about how thick a mixture of flour and water is but I can’t know about welding metals and stuff (because boys should know this). I can focus on my grades but I am too busy cursing institutional politics at my school which affects the teachers while advantages the high-ups.

So, you tell me, from home to school to roads to academies where can’t I find something to hate this society? But yes, I am the society and I might be as shallow as all the other people around me but at least I can confess.