"Hopelessness is Pakistan's staple diet and, unlike electricity, flour or sugar, it is here in plenty."
----by Masood Hasan, The News, July,6,08, SUNDAY.
I read the article this sunday and was forced to think about the reality it so boldly expresses.
No doubt, Mr Hasan is right about the grim situation. Pakistan is "plummeting swiflty to oblivion". It was his 100% correct criticism of Mr Aziz (Short-cut Aziz who is happily living abroad now) that made me a regular reader of his columns and here i am being forced to commend him on his great thoughts and writing. I am attracted to his satirical tone, his realistic stating of facts and his concern about Pakistan. I just can't resist the temptation of quoting all his statements in his current article. Any body who missed it, please grab The News' edition for 6 july 08 and read it all till the end. It so poignantly reminds me of thinking about "wiping off our past mistakes as if they were written on a slate using a chalk". But Alas! as Mr Hasan says "those were slates and that was school", we are unable to do so.
This gives us a lesson which is almost too late to learn that we should take every step with extreme caution.This caution never came into the mind of our leaders. And we- the nation- suffer as a result.
I remember the day our frustrated physics teacher kept on speaking about the present scenario with depression in his tone for almost half an hour. He talked about the massive loan we have taken from the world bank and countries like U.S. Making us almost their slaves. He said he became so tense when he thought that every Pakistani has a debt of about 17000RS upon him even those who have the sky as roof and earth as floor. It was a shock for all of us. We had never thought about our country's loans in that terms. 17000RS is not a small amount for thousands who are living below the poverty line. Those who are unable to eat a complete meal even once a day.
A friend of mine asked about what to write about in an essay about Current Problems, even without thinking my mind was flooded with scores of crisis and problems(severe ones) faced by Pakistan.
I hope without any hope that for Pakistan peace, progresss and prosperity will not be forever out of reach. I hope against all hope that one day we will not have hopelessness as our staple diet and sounds of blasts as music for our ears but pleasure,contentment and laughter instead.
7 comments:
Is it that bad?
And HAPY BIRTHDAY!!!
a little late, maybe, but better late...
cheerios!
well...
u cn only know when ur here...seeing everything go frm bad to worse infront of ur eyes....
neways
thnx for the wish
cheers!
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everyone wants to say a lot abt these things that they can write a book or books abt them....
i have many feelings 4 that..but i hate articles like that....
i will comment on that later...
but i just like d keats part of this article ;)
the original article is down there.....
In school we had black slates and white chalks. Later, as technology progressed, there were coloured chalks! We could laboriously write out the alphabet on the slate and simply wipe off the mistakes with our elbows or palms and write again. But those were slates and that was school. A pity, then, that with Pakistan you cannot wipe away what has gone horribly wrong by simply rubbing it off. How many of us have wished so many times in our 60 uncertain years, if only we had a slate and could perhaps start all over again. We have made huge mistakes again and again that have brought us dangerously close to the edge of the fall. Some say we don't have the advantage of being on the edge any more, that we are now plummeting swiftly to oblivion.
It is also a fact, heartbreaking as it may be, that there seems nothing remotely on the horizon which can prevent the fall. Too many small men and women have made too many mistakes blinded by personal ego, gain and absence of any nation-building sentiment. Hopelessness is Pakistan's staple diet and, unlike electricity, flour or sugar, it is here in plenty. We are imploding like a black star self-destructing from within, and all the prayers, the intonations, the devout pilgrimages, the shrine-hopping dutifully enacted by the leaders of the day, have failed. We have all, collectively, wilfully or otherwise, actively or passively, ruined what was once a governable and viable land. Now we can't even guess where we will be tomorrow. If ever there was a country without vision and with a self-destruct death wish, this one is it, citadel of Islam, or whatever plumage you wish to adorn this exotic bird with. There isn't any writing on the wall any more. Someone broke the wall and ran off with the bricks. And that was a long time back.
The nation's electronic channels are full of sermons delivered by a strange and motley collection of men and women. They pontificate and they drone on in flat monotones, boring the living daylights of anyone so unfortunate as to be at the other end. The channels have given generous opportunities to these armchair critics and soothsayers to sit and analyse, analyse and analyse. They have arrived from nowhere it seems, even termites emerging from rotten woodwork would look better, men and women whose names are just as unfamiliar as those lucky journalists and writers who win awards and prizes every year from the government for outstanding achievements in literature and journalism. Long, boring discussions on the state of the country leave most distressed viewers further distressed, and no one after hours of low-grade intellectual bombardment is any the wiser. To add to the tidal wave of confusion that already has brought down the electricity poles, turned cities into swamps and caused mayhem far and wide, the arrival of this hotchpotch army of philosophers adds more misery and clouds even on issues that, miraculously, still retain some distant clarity.
Truth has taken a big hit in all this. A few nights ago, a war image from besieged Hayatabad in Peshawar flashed across millions of homes in the country. It showed a steely-eyed jawan of the Bahadur Fauj staring dead ahead with a vicious looking machinegun keeping him company. Behind him, on a gaily painted road marking a section of a main Hayatabad boulevard, rumbled an ominous convoy of APCs and jeeps overflowing with armed-to-the-teeth commando types. The commentary said that things had returned to normal in Hayatabad! If this was normal, had Pakistan's think tanks manufactured a new language, or was it the same old lies dressed up as second-hand truth? But wait, the Pakistan Army is not in Hayatabad, so say senior government functionaries – perhaps it was the prime minister who uttered this polished gem that is if he got some time off from laying floral wreaths at the mazaars of saints and dervishes. If it's not the Pakistan Army in its many disguises, who is it? More confusion, more tearing of hair, more gnashing of teeth. This is a strange operation since all it seems to do is blow up empty and deserted homes with not a single piece of furniture or any evidence that these were indeed occupied at one time. If anything, they look like having been uninhabited since the time of Alexander. But maybe Mr Boucher is happy to count the demolished bricks and report success to DC. It is now an established fact that he arrives with more regularity than the sun rises in Islamabad, and when he does, we put on a song-and-dance extravaganza complete with fireworks and demolition handymen showing off their skills. When he is gone, the actors melt into the shadows, only to return when a new dance routine is to be presented.
For a country as poorly governed as Pakistan, the last four months have been simply amazing. Who is running Islamabad, ask bewildered citizens? For well over a year now, the worn out national hit has been croaking on and on. Judges to be restored, the president to be impeached, democracy to be ushered in. None of the three have happened and none are likely to happen. Nawaz Sahib is naraz and unhappy because he and Asif Zardari can't get this judge caper sorted out. AZ is hardly here, flitting in shadowy flights across the land and well beyond it. First it was his children, now he is advising other countries. On what? The art of doing nothing? He and Nawaz Sahib have declared their solidarity so often that no one is buying this record any more. The Indo-Greek chorus with apologies to the Greeks, fills in the blank periods with verses that all indeed is well with the coalition, God is in his heaven and the sun is smiling on the land especially chosen by God himself. The president, who like Dr Nasim Ashraf simply refuses to budge, carries on regardless. He is not going anywhere, except for a game of presidential tennis. Most federal ministers have gone home, some rumours claim sneak in and rifle through the odd file or two. In normal times nothing ever gets done in Islamabad. What can be happening now cannot even be imagined. No wonder that the miserable sods, the Paki commoners, get shafted for Rs90 million because some dodo got the CNG price wrong. If it wasn't so grim, it would be side-splittingly funny. In a sense, who can blame them? They are changing the prices so frequently that no one can quite recall which price was when. Given that only those blessed with the IQ that logs of wood are well known for, make it to the top echelons of the land, who should be surprised? But we are. In all this, making and unmaking alliances at the speed of light, the new Mr Fixitall, Mr Rehman Malik, who I am delighted to learn is after all from Sialkot – "hello birader" – is a man who can be at many places at the same time, including Karachi National Stadium where he moved in a phalanx of security men and fawning admirers, waving back to a bewildered crowd which had never waved any kind of welcome on the royal procession. Bring back Chaudhry Shujaat I say.
In college we read John Keats' "Ode to a Grecian Urn," where a youth chases a damsel through eternity because she is always out of reach. Although it would be downright insulting to a man of Keats'
Ode on a Grecian Urn by Keats
THOU still unravish’d bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fring’d legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal - yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!
Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearied,
For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d,
For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy’d,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.
Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e’er return.
O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,
«Beauty is truth, truth beauty,»- that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
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