The one word that describes us best

Recently, I was asked to describe my country in a single word on an international online panel.

I was stumped!

When people think of Pakistan, they think of a monolith. But it’s not like that at all. Every corner has its own flavour, culture, and savoir-faire.

One feels intense energy in Karachi. A short drive up north and everyone calms down. Along the coast it’s like people are still fighting the British. Whilst in Punjab, it can sometimes take 30 minutes to get change from the neighbourhood grocer.

Even political slogans seem to evolve by geography. In Karachi, things remain intense with the “live free or die” variety doing the rounds. Whilst, in Lahore and thereabouts, it’s the more sedate “agriculture and commerce” type that features more prominently. Most slogans in Lahore don’t even have a verb associated with them. Inaction, zindabad. That’s how big the contrasts are.

Yet, I struggled for that singular word that truly described our national ethos, spirit and soul.

Ask foreigners what they think of Pakistan and there’s a sense that we spend our time donning pyjamas, behaving like gentlemen standing up for ladies and not staring at them like veritable x-ray machines (women do it to women too), happy and content to live the “live and let live” mantra we personify abroad.

This is far removed from reality, because when it comes to “live and let live”, Pakistanis slot nicely between Israelis and the leopard seal that kills penguins for fun.

We hate everything and we make ourselves miserable as a consequence. These are facts!

PIA is dysfunctional, Pakistan Telecom unreliable, Karachi Electric inept, Misbahul Haq ineffective, Islamabad nightlife non-existent, Lahori accents inutile, Sindh Police idle, politicians hopeless, deodorant usage non-functional, The Express Tribune Pakistan… no they print my gibberish without censorship.

That’s when it came to me like an epiphany for the ages. The one thing I have observed that defines our Pakistaniyat is ‘unhappiness’.

I wish I could employ the word ‘inventive’ instead.

However, technology seems to be making us worse. The internet is dumbing down our people faster than our politicians and television dramas. Second hand stupidity is a real serial killer. Yet we go on spewing, reading and sharing nonsense.

If we compare ourselves to countries like Japan the difference is all the more apparent. Japan has always represented the future. Everyone is polite, conscientious, resourceful and inventive.

The Japanese were the same unhappy bunch that committed rape, torture, pillage, human experimentation and other travesties across South East Asia in World War II. So, when one wonders how they transitioned from brutal criminality to Pokemon, Hello Kitty and posterior washing technology, in one generation no less; the answer lies in just one word — serenity.

Perhaps, if we too find our Zen modes, we might discover the cure to cancer or invent something useful. In the interim, ‘inventiveness’ or ‘ingenuity’ will need to take a backseat.

I wish another word I could employ to describe us, was ‘patience’.

Unfortunately, we’re at the other end of the spectrum on that front. We need to stop being acutely impatient from this moment onward for that word to even bear a slight resemblance to us.

We will need to get over our “give it to me now” mentality as a national movement. Queueing with adequate physical distancing will need to no longer represent a disgusting chore.

Anyone who has spent any time at a traffic light in Pakistan would have tasted this “my time is more precious than yours” sandwich.

Signal turns green and the boors can’t stop honking or wait for the traffic to naturally move. Who in their right minds wants to hang out at a traffic light anyways?

Anyhow, since ‘inventive’ and ‘patient’ no longer apply, I would have settled for ‘ambitious’.

Some might say I’ve nailed it. But I would say, we’re ‘avaricious’.

We’re a nation of plutomaniacs. Our imagination and thought periphery, our dreams and ambitions commence and end with money. To change that, we will need some wholesale societal changes.

We could begin with career ambitions we harbour for our children. Most Pakistani parents want their children to be doctors and/or engineers — and lately TV show hosts. It’s a national obsession and it’s insidious. When Pakistani parents want their kids to be doctors, helping people is on the bottom of their list of reasons. It’s only about the money and prestige. This is partly explainable by the poverty in our nation.

It’s all the more bizarre because Pakistani parents are also the last group to be convinced to see a doctor despite there being reasons for doing so.

Whilst my mother has spent her entire life obsessing that I never went close to biology, she needs to be emotionally blackmailed to see a doctor. Usually the YouTube self-help videos, WhatsApp forwards and some tea-like concoction suffice.

Truth is Pakistanis love money. More than the rappers, Arabs and the Indian Cricket Board. We love giving it, receiving it, throwing it in the air, parading it, making garlands out of it.

Pakistanis love money more than happiness. If Pakistanis were asked to limit their ask of the Almighty to one thing, it won’t be health, peace, joy or happiness.

Take Eid ul Fitr, when families allegedly come together to celebrate and share love, when in actuality our kids can’t wait to transition to the real business of “eidi please”. Suddenly the sullen miserable Uncle Khushnood, who they would never wish to visit at any other point in time of the year, becomes an all-important vital pitstop on their eidi-collecting tour.

Since ‘avariciousness’ will be hard to dethrone as a national mindset and ‘ambition’ as proven, doesn’t apply, I’ll move on.

How about ‘selfless’? That would be brilliant, no?

Sadly, for that to fit, we will need to stop taking other people’s time for granted like it’s our divine right to do so.

How many times have you been blocked in a lane by a lunatic who blocks traffic until they’ve had their fun staring at everyone or being served whatever they have ordered? I’m sure, many.

This one time, I could actually hear an ambulance at the back and I’m certain the blocker in front of me could too. Desperate to give the ambulance way, I started looking for inches to squeeze my vehicle into without success. The gentleman had clearly done his cost-benefit analysis — his need for cigarettes exceeded the medical needs of a patient.

I tapped out. As a consequence, the ambulance tapped out and humanity too.

That’s the problem with Pakistan. Too many civil liberties (sic). Every jock owns the street and everyone else on it. Because in Pakistan it’s not the system, but the people that make the difference!

So, it’s settled. The word that describes us best is ‘unhappiness’.

Good luck to all concerned. Best wishes to all those who suffer from this affliction and those around that have been affected by it. I’m working towards acknowledging my own powerlessness and acknowledging the power of Allah to restore me to a peaceful Zen-like condition.

With that will come the realisation that serenity is the ultimate recognition of: accepting the things one cannot change, having the courage to change the things one can and the wisdom to know the difference between them.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 1^st, 2020.

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