I recently re-read George Orwell’s 1984. It wasn’t an easy read and maybe I might never have re-read it had it not been the October selection for the DWL Karachi Readers’ Club which I moderate. If you’ve read it you’ll immediately understand why it’s a difficult read. It is a bleak, dark book which depicts the worst in all of us. It makes you cringe with fear and doubt because of the one question that seems to scream out from every page - what if this happened to me?
The book covers torture in detail and though nothing gruesome is described, there is enough to make you wonder what happened to the prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. One of the torture methods described in the book is taking prisoners to a place called Room 101. Here the prisoners are made to face and experience their worst fears. It might be the fear of drowning, of fire, of starvation or like in our protagonist’s case, a fear of rats. The book shows how a human being is willing to go to any length, is willing to betray anyone, is even willing to have his family slaughtered rather than face his/her worst fears.
My worst fear, for the longest of time, was numbers. Any mention of math froze me. Studying math was my worst nightmare. Math exams felt like facing a shooting squad. Discussing the paper afterwards felt nothing short of an interrogation. I think if I was taken to Room 101 during my student life, I’d have come face to face with complex mathematical equations.
Fear can be of anything. Growing up another fear I had was of the video camera. This was during the 90s when mobile phones existed only in books or movies and the handy-cam was all the rage. My cousins had one and their favourite thing was not just to make a movie of get togethers but also to immediately connect the camera to the television and make everyone watch it. I was never photogenic and a combination of bad skin, frizzy hair and ill fitting clothes made viewing myself on a large screen even worse. When the handy-cam used to come out at family gatherings I tried to avoid it as much as possible, ducking into another room or covering my face with a book or a newspaper. I never fully escaped it though. Big Brother always managed to get me.
I was never afraid of the dark or of sinister creatures hiding under my bed. I was afraid of being judged and criticised. I was afraid of sharing my writings - both prose and poetry with others and this fear is still there. For the longest time I was afraid of not blending in with the majority.
Unlike vampires, witches, zombies, ghouls or banshees, these are solid fears. These fears can actually shape us and if not checked, can define us. Now my biggest fear is parenthood. Whether I’m doing right by my children and being a good mother to them? It’s very easy to tell them the boogie man is coming if they mis-behave but inculcating fear into them of other creatures who are different can plant a seed of distrust which can snowball into something more complex as they grow older. My daughter is already a bit scared of the dark - I don’t know how it happened but it has and now I have to, somehow, help her overcome it. She isn’t afraid of dogs. Nor is her brother. And the way they play and run after our pet cockatiel makes us worry about the safety of the poor bird!
Fear is not a bad thing as long as it doesn’t take over our lives. Being afraid isn’t a handicap as long as you have the courage to address that fear and overcome it. And what I’ve realised is that one cannot live a wholesome life if there is a fear of failure or judgment haunting us at each step. So, this halloween, tell all the scary monsters to go away.
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