I went home to my village. Not far from Peshawar. Homecoming is always sweet. Family, loved ones, known faces, with centuries of acquaintance in every eye. I am a kind of a celebrity over there. The guy from the city who made it without the help of his village roots, his family name and his father's pride. These are bad times for landowners. The money modern luxury, or even comfort, requires couldn't be found toiling the land. This is the Pashtoon heartland, inhabited by people who love family feuds and losing their sons in them. Loss is a cultural thing. Loss is a sense of pride.
But this time around I saw a woman working at home. I saw her earlier also. She had this calm and quiet demeanor, something that aspires respect and sorrow at the same time. She didn't have the tongue in cheek attitude of the housemaids. She had that deep sorrow in her eyes. Quietly doing all she was asked to do. I asked about what she earns a month. "500 Rupees and food," was the answer. "And she works all day long, till you ask her to leave," I asked. "Yes, she is a good woman," came the compliment. I was told the woman had a home and land of her own. The family had lost it. They had to come from nearby village to secure a few meals, and this is what she got.
Her eyes followed my kids, my wife, and myself with appreciation, sadness, and solemnity. "What is she thinking." Nobody need to be an Einstein to solve the riddle. Her own kids' hunger, her own haplessness, and uprooted life compared with the homecoming of the city guys. I can't enjoy anything. I just sat there. My wife came to me, whispering in my ear,"she looks different". "I know," I told her. She had never served as housemaid before. She had lost all she had and is new into servility. "We should help her," she said. "Sure", I told her, "This is the least we can do."
Individual philanthropy is good, but it is never an answer to such an enormous question of poverty. It never retrieves self respect. The begging bowl doesn't vanish with the magic wand of individual philanthropy. It satisfies the ego of the giver, while puts a loaf of bread into the mouth of the needy, without the guarantee of this arrangement being permanent. There is also a difference between philanthropy and generosity. Generosity fulfills the needs of the needy, or it doesn't but gives some support, without necessarily feeling empathy for the needy. It thus never rehabilitates. It never helps the needy regain her/his self respect. Philanthropy on the other hand is a helping hand with a heart. If one can't see the need of ones own little children in the eyes of those in need, there is little hope that the people in need would ever be able to rise above subhuman level.
Is our society ready to take this step towards humanity? This is the question all of us have to ask ourselves. This is nothing to be taught, but something to be felt. It is the process of sublimation among individuals as well as social units, the society as a whole. The excuse of being in trying times and under immense pressure from all sides is not a valid one. It is, in fact, during the worst times that the greatest achievements in humanity could be made. If this is true, our time is ripe.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Sunday, May 1, 2011
A Nation Losing Hope
Pakistan is one of the countries we euphemistically call “transitional societies”. The transition has gone rotten due to the apathy of the society and state to get out of the transition phase into a stable life cycle.
What are the people of this land thinking? They live in a constant fear of death, their own, that of their loved ones. Rising prices of the everyday subsistence commodities is spiralling everyone down into the pit of poverty. Joblessness and social inequality is pinching harder every passing day. The unholy silence of all political actors to bring any positive change in the country has become unbearable. The mainstream political parties are busy in personal vendetta, forgetting the mandate of the people altogether. This is the narrative of a situation, which the common man directly experiences in the shape of terrorism, corruption, social and political inequality, and the loss of faith in life and its humane cycle by the youth of the nation.
This is the present of Pakistan. The present has become too painful, because it has a sordid past. More than a decade of terror-ridden environment, endemic corruption from the very onset of the national existence, and the abysmal living conditions for many of the hapless for many decades has really taken its toll.
People don’t trust anybody. They are not even thinking about change. And this is dangerous. If a people lose all hope, they naturally decide to take desperate measures in desperate situations. Civil wars are an outcome of such anarchic life situation. If nobody helps, lets help ourselves. Take the control of things into our own hands. When small sections of a society are forced to think on these lines, they decide to go for and Armageddon, the final battle between good and evil; with the conviction that they are destined to win. They are convinced of the rightfulness of their action. This is a partial truth also. Their grievances are justified and their struggle is right. But the problem begins with the very modalities of the struggle for emancipation and the final victory of truth.
The people of Pakistan are truly the victims of atrocities by design. But the problem lies in the way they decide to tackle their misery. They don’t have a clear perception of the root causes of their problems and there is no intellectual leadership to spearhead this analytical-strategic movement for the ultimate victory of the right over the wrong. The superficial media analysis on TV talk shows is the only intellectual asset the poor people have right now. The political leadership has already been discredited and the number of sacred cows is on the rise everyday.
Where do we stand as a nation? In a void. The country is really divided into the haves and have-nots. The whole world is being run like this in one way or another. But across the globe either there is an institution called government that stands between the haves avarice for power and the larger populace yearning for justice. Or there is a relationship of benevolent autocracy ruling the interaction between both sides of the divide. Pakistan was an example of the latter until lately. This is no more. The haves are busy cobbling up newer alliances to retain as much power as possible, be it being in the government or the phony role of the opposition. They are but not mindful of one thing. The alliances and manoeuvrings are for the sake of ruling the masses, through carrot or stick, whichever works best at a given moment.
But the problem right now is that there is nobody to rule. People no more believe in the sham called democracy. They are on their own. They are living in an anarchy that is not yet declared as one. The dangerous side of the issue is that nobody accepts the abyss gazing back into our eyes. There is no more room for pretentions. This is the moment of truth. The governance structure’s failure is no allegation anymore. Trust deficit is not an issue anymore. Nobody cares or thinks about the trust issue. People are convinced that there is no government, despite the TV appearances and the money sucking buildings known as pillars of the state, home of the most corrupt in the land.
The loss of faith in everything civil in this country is the most dangerous turn in our national history. It is no more child play, as most of the self-beguiling spin-doctors still try to believe. I won’t like to end the whole discussion on a pessimistic note, but the reality facing us squarely allows no other way of defining the present. The present quiet among the masses in Pakistan is the immanent sign of an unprecedented upheaval to happen. Something that won’t be controllable through any means known to the national gurus and the international big brains. To avert all this needs honest action. There is no more time left for soul searching, the euphemism to buy time for doing nothing. The trillion-dollar question is “who will get into this action, who will make the move.” There is none to answer this question. The question confront us belligerently while the clock is ticking.
What are the people of this land thinking? They live in a constant fear of death, their own, that of their loved ones. Rising prices of the everyday subsistence commodities is spiralling everyone down into the pit of poverty. Joblessness and social inequality is pinching harder every passing day. The unholy silence of all political actors to bring any positive change in the country has become unbearable. The mainstream political parties are busy in personal vendetta, forgetting the mandate of the people altogether. This is the narrative of a situation, which the common man directly experiences in the shape of terrorism, corruption, social and political inequality, and the loss of faith in life and its humane cycle by the youth of the nation.
This is the present of Pakistan. The present has become too painful, because it has a sordid past. More than a decade of terror-ridden environment, endemic corruption from the very onset of the national existence, and the abysmal living conditions for many of the hapless for many decades has really taken its toll.
People don’t trust anybody. They are not even thinking about change. And this is dangerous. If a people lose all hope, they naturally decide to take desperate measures in desperate situations. Civil wars are an outcome of such anarchic life situation. If nobody helps, lets help ourselves. Take the control of things into our own hands. When small sections of a society are forced to think on these lines, they decide to go for and Armageddon, the final battle between good and evil; with the conviction that they are destined to win. They are convinced of the rightfulness of their action. This is a partial truth also. Their grievances are justified and their struggle is right. But the problem begins with the very modalities of the struggle for emancipation and the final victory of truth.
The people of Pakistan are truly the victims of atrocities by design. But the problem lies in the way they decide to tackle their misery. They don’t have a clear perception of the root causes of their problems and there is no intellectual leadership to spearhead this analytical-strategic movement for the ultimate victory of the right over the wrong. The superficial media analysis on TV talk shows is the only intellectual asset the poor people have right now. The political leadership has already been discredited and the number of sacred cows is on the rise everyday.
Where do we stand as a nation? In a void. The country is really divided into the haves and have-nots. The whole world is being run like this in one way or another. But across the globe either there is an institution called government that stands between the haves avarice for power and the larger populace yearning for justice. Or there is a relationship of benevolent autocracy ruling the interaction between both sides of the divide. Pakistan was an example of the latter until lately. This is no more. The haves are busy cobbling up newer alliances to retain as much power as possible, be it being in the government or the phony role of the opposition. They are but not mindful of one thing. The alliances and manoeuvrings are for the sake of ruling the masses, through carrot or stick, whichever works best at a given moment.
But the problem right now is that there is nobody to rule. People no more believe in the sham called democracy. They are on their own. They are living in an anarchy that is not yet declared as one. The dangerous side of the issue is that nobody accepts the abyss gazing back into our eyes. There is no more room for pretentions. This is the moment of truth. The governance structure’s failure is no allegation anymore. Trust deficit is not an issue anymore. Nobody cares or thinks about the trust issue. People are convinced that there is no government, despite the TV appearances and the money sucking buildings known as pillars of the state, home of the most corrupt in the land.
The loss of faith in everything civil in this country is the most dangerous turn in our national history. It is no more child play, as most of the self-beguiling spin-doctors still try to believe. I won’t like to end the whole discussion on a pessimistic note, but the reality facing us squarely allows no other way of defining the present. The present quiet among the masses in Pakistan is the immanent sign of an unprecedented upheaval to happen. Something that won’t be controllable through any means known to the national gurus and the international big brains. To avert all this needs honest action. There is no more time left for soul searching, the euphemism to buy time for doing nothing. The trillion-dollar question is “who will get into this action, who will make the move.” There is none to answer this question. The question confront us belligerently while the clock is ticking.
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