Abid Ali Mir
In the aching heart of a city “Brugaz” torn by stark contrast, where dusty alleys of the forgotten touched the marble courtyards of the powerful, the Bourgeois had accumulated wealth and land that lay idle for years untouched, unused, and unbothered. These vast tracts of fertile soil, once the life veins of old generations, now lay fallow under the command of those who had never held a sickle, never known the rhythm of seasons, and never tasted sweat as labor’s reward.
The Bourgeois flaunted not just their affluence but also their disdain for the very hands that built their empire those fractured souls of the underprivileged, who in hushed resilience referred to themselves as dharkan, meaning the pulse the unseen heartbeat of the city. The dharkan had been echoing a simple, sensible plea: “Let us use the idle land for agriculture. It will not only feed us but also breathe life into your cold estates.” But the elite dismissed them with a curled lip and hollow laughter, perceiving farming as a rustic pursuit unworthy of their silk-clad identities. Yet for the dharkan, farming was not a retreat to the past it was a leap into survival.
These laboring classes, mostly born in rented decay and dying in debt, worked tirelessly in stone quarries, factories, and palaces of the rich. They earned wages so insultingly low that the very idea of upward mobility was a satire written in their blood. Each day, they stared at idle land like a starving man looks through the glass of a bakery, while their children grew up counting coins and skipping meals. Their aspirations were no longer grand they simply wanted to upgrade their income stream, escape the spiraling well of debt they had inherited like a surname. But the city was not designed for their dreams.
The Bourgeois ran it not through merit or vision but through the currency of legacy, power, and luxury. Their opinion shaped policies; their moods built or razed neighborhoods. Their lives were manicured while the dharkan were forbidden to bloom. Participation in civic decisions or local governance was an illusion for the dharkan, because status here was measured not by intellect, integrity, or service, but by the glitter of one’s dwelling, the shine of one’s car, and the brand stitched on one’s shirt.
In this toxic ecosystem, the city suffocated. Progress was defined in glittering towers while hunger grew in the shadows. Amid all this, humanity stood not in the seats of power, but in silence. It gathered quietly in a shaded corner near the city’s grand place of worship. Ironically, this sanctuary too had long been dominated by the Bourgeois. They controlled its trusteeship, led the sermons, and even set the topics of reflection. There, existential inquiries why are we here, what does it mean to be human were carefully avoided. Instead, the discourse was sterilized, pacified, and made palatable for those who ruled. The suffering, the systemic injustice, the rotting ethics of the city none were mentioned. People came and left with hearts heavier than they arrived.
The dharkan, too, came to this corner, not for salvation but for a quiet sigh. Humanity, it seemed, was a ghost that haunted the peripheries of sacredness and never found room at the center. Then, on one ordinary day wrapped in dust and despair, a man stood up from among the dharkan. His name did not matter; what mattered was that he stood. His spine had stories of generations bent under burden, but that day, he widened his chest and decided to confront the numb city. With voice trembling not in fear but in contained fire, he called for a replacement of the existing order not with another regime or ideology, but with Humanism.
He spoke of dignity, of shared earth, of a life where the sun must shine equally on all. His stance was not a rebellion, it was a reclamation of soul, of soil, of sacred truth. Naturally, society pushed back. Whispers turned to warnings, and some friends to informants. The Bourgeois scoffed, others accused him of disrupting peace. He was not welcome in drawing rooms nor in the worship place, now closed to his kind. But he did not flinch. He carried a sacred book, dusted by reverence and forgotten by practice, and opened it with trembling hands. In the city square, before the marble courthouse and cracked homes alike, he began to read not in dry recitation but in thunderous clarity. He let the truth rain over the myths, the verses over the vanity.
With each word, something ancient stirred perhaps the city’s conscience. The book spoke not of vanity or hierarchy, but of justice, kindness, equality, and shared stewardship of the Earth. The Bourgeois, who had long monopolized both scripture and scholarship, were shaken. The philosophical tide he unleashed did not attack it washed, it questioned, it disarmed. He did not scream revolution; he whispered remembrance. He reminded the city what it had once known: that a human is not to be measured by possession but by compassion. In time, some among the elite began to listen. Some among the dharkan began to hope.
And while the system did not fall overnight, a fissure had been made a visible fracture in the cold mirror of oppression. That man did not seek fame. He sought fairness. And his courage planted seeds not just in soil, but in minds seeds that would grow into conversations, cooperatives, and perhaps one day, a city reborn. The idle land, too, would eventually be touched not by bulldozers of greed but by the fingers of those who had waited their whole lives to touch earth not as laborers, but as owners.
In this new light, the city would remember him not as a prophet, not as a leader, but as a reminder. A reminder that humanity, though often silent, never truly dies. It merely waits for someone to read it aloud.
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or real events is purely coincidental. The characters and situations depicted are entirely imagined and intended to reflect broader social realities, not specific individuals.
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