Back and forth

In the past, one would never have reckoned to either film or share videos of burning bodies on board a moving train

We were docile, calm and a well-mannered comity of people. We remained so for quite some time before we turned into intolerant, mercurially reactionary and uncommonly obnoxious people. Nations develop, we eroded. We are stuck in or perhaps estranged in the “time-line”!

For most nations, their present is better than their past and the future is hopeful as well. This is at least how the cycle works in nations that develop. Ours is the opposite; if only we somehow keep aside the element of pessimism. Our future, as it seems, is unpredictably innominate. Whereas our present is stricken with social diseases in which we really do not want to remain in. But there is a mystifying notation in this symphony, which is that our past is more attractive. One yearns and longs to travel back in time to get the taste of the much-good old days.

Contemplating the past, one would never have reckoned to either film or share videos of burning bodies on board a moving train, which resulted in the death of 74 people. Again, it would be an unconscionable act to film the dead while scrapping off the cloth covering their burnt bodies. Similarly, how could someone dare kick a young girl outside a local court, especially “law-knowers”, in the past, despite it being a predominantly male-dominated era! How could we think of promoting vulgarity through various social media apps and forums and dragging our youth to the abysmal depths of low character, less resolve and sick-visions?

Our past is so full of romance and fascination that one craves time to shrink back and stop. We reflected ourselves well through various mediums. There was a society and there were proper means for making up the social catharsis. We produced thought penetrating literature and people loved books. We had so much to read and so many people indulged in reading. We were book lovers and our cafes used to be brimming with people who discussed the Platonic discourses, defied the laws of nature and proposed theories out of pure intellect. We were once people who identified our indigenous issues and joined heads to find indigenous solutions rather than importing solutions for local problems. We were then people of deep thoughts and high resolve. We could easily say there were high moral values and people possessed impregnable moral characters and principles.

Whatever we used to do in the past, we did it with perfection. If it were producing socially rooted television dramas, we produced infallible dramas. For writers, we had the iconic names of Haseena Moeen, Bano Qudsia, and Ashfaq Ahmed — only to pick a few from the galaxies of talent we had. We followed the Aristotelian definition of literature that learning came with joy and we were formally taught things as much as we were entertained.

But then things began to change. The remaining is the sob story of how we regressed. We lost social respect amongst each other. The teacher-student relationship was emptied of mutual respect and restitution. The social responsibilities on each one of us, we clandestinely forgot. Social media came and with it came many new social issues and sanity was compromised at the expense of insane social vulgarity. The reason was progressively replaced by reaction. Logic, discourse and theoretical differences were decided through knives and swords rather than pens and tongues. The social institutions of marriage, family and neighbourhood fell to the lowest ebbs of trust. Social work and volunteerism were lost to the oblivious substitutes of profit and self-interest. We started becoming self-centered, selfish and highly in-human beings.

This is how we reached our present; one which we do not want to remain in.

This narrative may be labeled as highly pessimistic, darkly negative, timid and a failure of determination. But this is just one narrative and expressively attracts one to go back to where one came from.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 10^th, 2019.

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