We put our eggs in a basket, stamped a visa on it and sent it out into the world, hoping for some boomerang action
Why, they ask you, should you expect to be doing any better than you are? Think about it, what is the last piece of good news you heard? I’m not talking about the token ‘Kushkhabri’our 9PM news bulletins carry every night to stave off the impression that they’ve making money off the misery of others. I mean a real, honest to goodness, piece of good news. Like winning the world cup of anything. Or achieving a landmark in fields of the arts, sciences and everything in between. Perhaps even positive political tidings would count, something that affects the entire country as a whole. Maybe tidings of fiscal good fortunes. Think about it. Think really hard. And if you can think of anything, leave a note in the ‘Comments’ section on the website, because for the life of me I can’t think of anything. Not a single piece of information that has been relayed my way, save for births and (some) deaths, has been ‘good’ in the sense that it has brought me a genuinely euphoric sensation, unaided by pharmaceutical products. That’s quite sad, don’t you think?
Begs the question, what are we doing? I don’t mean just the government, or the people, or the institutions, or even the man on the street. I mean us, the people who run around in hamster wheels all day long in the hope that we can make a change, or, failing that, make some spare change along the way. The young professionals of this country who were supposed to ‘take over’ the reins of our country’s future. Who were groomed to lead and be led in the defence of our geographical, ideological, linguistic, social and economic frontiers until the dream of a ‘Glorious Pakistan’ was no longer just a dream? Where is this highly educated crop of people who were the shining stars of yesteryear, setting academic records, toppling global hegemonies in Model UN contests and presenting eloquent rebuttals of arguments more sophisticated than the fuel injection system of the new Ferrari?
Conspicuous by their absence are the people who, growing up, we thought destined for greatness. In their stead, we see mediocrity, creeping like a parasitic vine, up the paternal tree of dynasty. Free-loaders, becoming glorified noblemen and women riding on the shoulders of their family’s good fortunes, political and otherwise. Today, at any political conference or rally or academic moot, the teeming multitudes come and take in minutes upon minutes of fertiliser (sometimes Fauji, sometimes not) being sprouted by a village schoolmaster of an intellectual – insecure in his beliefs and jealously protective of their stability. Where questioning the established narrative once drew scowls, now any wise-crack about the real purposes of the ‘greater game’ afoot on Constitution Avenue can elicit the full wrath of the most faithful of religion and democracy’s Crusaders, thanks to social networks such as that infamous outlaw, the Twitter Bird.
So, to borrow from the American country singer, where indeed have all the cowboys (and girls) gone? They can’t all be married and reproductive. Some of them must survive to further the country. After all, the survival of the species has always depended on the sacrifices of the few.
Let’s be honest with ourselves here. We did count our chickens before they hatched. We put our eggs in a basket, stamped a visa on it and sent it out into the world, hoping for some boomerang action. Only, in the real world, things don’t really fly back to you, even if they do love you. Actually, if you love them, you would never wish them back. You would have them live in upstate New York or downtown Chicago rather than come back home to Model Town or KDA. You would do all of this because you love them, and wish to keep them in the dark about things such as load shedding, fuel prices and the cost of a 12kg bag of flour. You will seek to keep them away from televisions that broadcast uncouth images of unkempt parliamentarians yelling at each other. On the assembly floor and off it. You would also seek to keep them free from the clutches of the justice system, lest they have to contest a messy property dispute in the civil courts. You will do your best to shelter them, in the hope that they will have a more fulfilling life than you ever had.
But in doing so, you will be depriving them of a real education. Lessons that Harvard Law and Virginia Tech cannot teach them, things which do not exist in the rest of the world. Your precious little ones will then be no better equipped to venture out into The Real World Pakistan than a 13-month baby would be. Drooling from the mouth and running to daddy at the first sign of adversity.
The point, as so many of you love to ask me, of this article is simply this: parents should push their children into the deep end. They should let them lap up the misery and the experience of an unfulfilled life in Pakistan, so they may have the fear of God instilled in them. Let them ride the hideously overcrowded buses and go to sessions court. Let them wander the back alleys of your colony and let them come home with a few bruises. That’s the only way we will ever have people who ‘own Pakistan’. Otherwise, it’ll just be people out to own us. And that’s never a good thing.
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