शहर तक सबका है अंजाम जल कर राख हो जाना. भरी महफिल में कोई शमा या परवाना हो जाए.
These lines linger like a whisper from someone who learned the truth the hard way. Not a warning. Not wisdom. Just a quiet confession about what it costs to want to matter.
People often talk about burning as if it is a romantic thing. A kind of noble fire. But the truth is rarely pretty. Most burning happens slowly, quietly, in rooms where no one is watching. A person gives a little of themselves each time someone needs them, each time they chase a dream, each time they try to hold an identity that keeps slipping through their fingers. What remains looks like smoke more than flame.
And yet we keep doing it. Something inside us insists we must shine. Be seen. Leave a mark. Even if it takes a part of us, we cannot grow back.
“Some people set themselves on fire just to feel visible in the dark.”
Everyone carries a version of the shama and the parwana within them: the light that hopes to guide others, and the restless longing that makes us rush toward anything that glows. Sometimes we are one. Sometimes the other. Often both.
We learn early that attention feels like approval. Approval feels like existence. So we rehearse our smiles, polish our achievements, and pretend the applause fills the spaces where we are hollow. In public, we glow a little brighter. In private, we gather the ashes of who we were before the performance began.
No one explains how draining it is to keep shining. How heavy the mask becomes when everyone believes it is your face. How the praise that lifts you one day can flatten you the next because you fear you cannot live up to it.
There is a strange psychology to recognition. It offers sweetness only in brief moments. Once tasted, we chase it again without knowing if it feeds us or starves us. It becomes a loop of longing. The more we want to be seen, the more we bend ourselves into shapes we barely recognize. The more we bend, the more we wonder who we are without the eyes watching us.
Identity becomes a fragile construction. A performance. A careful arrangement of what we hope people will value. But beneath it, there is a quiet anxiety. The fear that if we stop burning, if we stop offering light, no one will notice us at all.
“To be known is tempting. To be known at the cost of yourself is a slow undoing.”
This undoing shows up in different forms.
The ambitious burn through sleep and softness.
The empathetic burn through emotional reserves they never had.
The people pleasers burn through boundaries until they become silhouettes of obligation.
The lovers who love too much burn through their own heartbeats to keep someone else warm.
Everyone is trying to be something for someone or for the world. But few ask what happens when the fire runs out.
The paradox is cruel. We want to belong. We want to be individuals. We want to be admired. We want to be untouched. We want the spotlight to hold us. We want escape from it. We want to shine without suffering, but suffering often becomes the currency of our shine.
In the tension between being seen and being consumed, people make choices that shape their inner lives. Some embrace the burn and call it passion. Some deny it until the smoke gives them away. And some, exhausted, let themselves dim hoping the world will still accept them without the glow.
But dimming feels dangerous too. It threatens the fragile storyline we tell ourselves about our worth. Recognition becomes a mirror we return to again and again because it feels safer than facing the possibility that without the light, we may disappear.
We rarely ask the deeper question.
Why is being seen so tied to being valued?
Why does applause matter more than quiet acceptance?
Why do we believe that only a burning life is a meaningful one?
The mind resists these questions because their answers unsettle the core. If meaning is not in the fire, then where? If identity is not in the glow, then who are we when the lights fade?
There is a psychology to impermanence that our generation struggles with. We archive every moment, chase every opportunity, try to outrun forgetfulness itself. But the fear of being forgotten makes us burn harder, faster, more recklessly. As if the quickness of the flame could guarantee the memory of it.
Maybe this is why the shama and parwana metaphor holds such power. It captures the essence of human contradiction. The desire to be the source of light. The desire to surrender to it. The desire to glow. The fear of burning. The ache of not glowing at all.
Many people crash into themselves trying to hold these contradictions. They carry the exhaustion of being everything at once. Their minds run on fumes. Their hearts fight between wanting to be held and wanting to stand untouched. Their identities stretch thin from the weight of expectation.
And yet, despite the exhaustion, something within insists on trying again. Some instinct whispers that meaning must be out there, perhaps just beyond the next sacrifice. Perhaps after the next achievement. Perhaps with the next person who finally sees us fully.
“Recognition is a sweet poison. You know it’s killing you, but the taste feels like truth.”
The challenge is not to avoid burning. That would be unnatural. Fire in small doses is part of being alive. Passion needs sparks. Love needs warmth. Ambition needs heat.
The challenge is to notice when the flame stops giving life and starts taking it. To notice when you are lighting yourself simply to brighten someone else’s room. To notice when applause starts feeling like an obligation instead of appreciation.
And maybe the deeper challenge is to learn how to be seen without handing over parts of yourself you cannot reclaim. To learn how to glow without dissolving. To learn how to belong without losing the outline of who you are.
There is no perfect balance. No neat formula. Life rarely gives us that luxury. But there is a quiet truth, often learned late, sometimes learned painfully.
You can be the shama without turning every admirer into a demand.
You can be the parwana without mistaking every light for salvation.
You can burn without disappearing.
You can shine without being scorched.
Because in the end, the city of life will always have enough flames, enough ashes, enough stories of people who burned too quickly. What it needs more are the gentle fires. The steady ones. The ones that warm without consuming themselves. The ones that glow long after the crowd has left.
And maybe that is the real courage.
Not to burn the brightest.
But to remain.
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