The mad who drink their own blood
The possessed inhabitants of this haunted city wake-up every day to a new emotional circus. It starts with BlackBerry and text messages to some sentimental reporters, analysts and anchors. And hence starts the grotesque screeching cacophony of political rumours and news reports. And then we all go mad again.
Consider how easy it is for anyone to make us go mad. An American citizen (yes, I mean Mansoor Ijaz) writes an article for a foreign paper mentioning a secret memo and not only do we go mad, the director-general of our premier intelligence agency travels to London to meet him and collect evidence. A failed Pakistani actress goes to India and decides to model in a nude photo-shoot and we lose our marbles.
Just like Arthur Dent in Douglas Adams’ Restaurant at the End of the Universe, who by travelling back in time discovers that the humanity on Earth did not descend from apes but from a shipload of mad people exiled from the planet Golgafrincham, at times one wants to travel back to see if that exactly was the criterion at the very inception of this country. What bigger proof of madness do you need when our brothers, our flesh and blood, are blowing themselves up? This legacy of loss is only compounded by the insanity of the soul. In this silly, chaotic, anarchic world of evolution some amount of blood thirst was inevitable. But only mad ones drink their own blood
At the very least the memogate scandal has exposed the deep-seated fault lines within our state and nation. We lack respect for institutions, suffer from an unending trust deficit and lag behind in working on minute details of codification of law and procedure. And these weaknesses are not peculiar to one segment of the society or a single branch of the government. The media, the executive, the judiciary, parliament, the armed forces, and the federating units, all suffer from the same malaise. Bloated egos further diminish chances of confidence-building among various pillars of state and segments of the society. And to make matters worse, we take ourselves too seriously.
If today, however, by any lucky chance, all powers that be in Pakistan decide to mend fences and overcome the trust deficits, will any future government ever again be accused of writing a secret memo to foreign powers? Or will an intelligence chief be alleged of seeking blessings of brother Muslim countries to bring about a regime change? I think not. Similarly, if procedures are fully developed, will any government be asked to produce written copies of agreements between it and the US? Absolutely not.
Mendacity and fecklessness have become part of our national character, dear readers. The precocious few who have the temerity of promising change ought to focus more on these deathly flaws rather than indulging in further narcissism. We all need to come to our senses and start answering these questions. We can earn the respect of others when we prove that we are not mad and deserve some respect.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 23rd, 2011.
COMMENTS (10)
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@rshad Khan
Agree with you fully. But prayers alone are not going to be enough. It is time for planning and action.
That we need to change is obvious, but what needs to be done, and how, is not clear. The only way forward for us is to first examine why we have reached where we are today; what are the mistakes we committed since our birth. Once we have gone through this exercise, and only then, we shall be able to see the right way to our future. This will be a time consuming process, and we will need to throw up a wise leader endowed with clarity of thought and foresight.
People like the writer of this post should get together and form a think-tank for the purpose.
It is because we have no true and sincere leadership to lead the people and command respect from inside and outside of the country. Further, no sincere efforts have been made to make us a nation and we remain a
Ghole(a big crowd of different people) and this is in the interest of exploiters, one after the other. May God bless us with good and proven leadership.And that is why democracy is so important for evolution from a autocratic, idolatry system to the level where people can respect other people even though they may disagree.
So true - Fully agree with whats been written. Now I only wish that those mentioned in the article were to read this & reflect on what has been said.
great article.
Well said. Agree with your observation. But I must also highlight that when dealing with human beings, you have to look at series of developments preceding the event in order to understand their behavior. Unless you watch out for forces pushing people towards a tipping point, you will always be surprised.