English version:

What is this helplessness, this despair, and this compulsion? It’s 1:30 at night, and the cold in Karachi has reached its peak. I’m sitting quietly in my room with the door shut. Even the fan is off because the chill has truly settled in, especially during the nights. Yes, it has arrived after years, but this time, it feels different—it pierces the soul.

My duty is currently at Jinnah Hospital, in the Maxillofacial Ward. Here, every moment, day and night, injured patients are brought in. Their faces, their wounds, their pain—everything is so overwhelming that it breaks you from within. Our job is to be at their service 24 hours a day. But this post is not for those patients, nor is it for myself.

This is for those unfortunate souls who bring their loved ones—their sons, their wives, their parents—hoping that perhaps these doctors, this hospital, can give their loved ones another chance at life. Maybe we are their last hope after God. This is a burden, a colossal responsibility, that we carry on our shoulders. O God, make it easier for us.

This is for those people who stay awake through the night, praying, crying, holding on to hope. They don’t even know if the patient lying on the hospital bed will ever come back to them alive or not. These are the people who wander the streets barefoot in this biting cold. They have nothing but a thin sheet to cover themselves, no roof, no shelter. And yet, if the doctor tells them to fetch medicine, they forget their hunger and exhaustion and start running around.

I glanced outside the ward and saw countless people scattered, each one lost in their own struggle, each face telling a different story.
There was an elderly man whose eyes carried such profound helplessness that it shook me to my core. Who might he have in there fighting for life? His son? His wife? Or someone else without whom his world feels incomplete?

Then there was another person, wrapped in a sheet, trying in vain to shield himself from the light. Who knows what storm he was hiding in his heart, what hopes he was clinging to?

A question haunts me: Are our worries and small anxieties greater than the pain of these people?

Just yesterday, I lost over a hundred thousand rupees in trading, and I spent the whole day distressed. But was my anguish greater than that of the man outside, sitting in the cold, hoping that the father fighting for his life inside would survive, just so he could embrace him once more?

Why is life so cruel? Why are we humans so ungrateful? These questions burn my heart, and perhaps writing these words will ease my pain a little. But the truth is, this world is filled with helplessness and despair, and we are mere spectators in its tragic theater.