Indelible blood
One thing should never be forgotten that we live with great courage despite torrents of terror and tyranny.
Bomb blasts and killings in the city of flowers are now a routine. The people are emotionally dead and we often see blood, brain and bones carpeting our roads and streets, without inviting more than a cursory look. Few people have a memory strong enough to retain these images?
I sat in my office and wrote about the twin suicide bomb blasts that took place in the lawn of the All Saint’s Church (founded December 27, 1883). I think of the crowd flowing out of the church building after their Sunday prayers. I know that more than 80 people died and many more injured. Wounded men, women and children were shifted to hospitals. People talked about how many people were injured or dead but they remained silent on the number of those who have been left mentally shocked and emotionally traumatised. The news sources, too, are silent on that figure, probably because that part doesn’t make the news spicy and sensational.
I do not have any statistics on the number of people who have been psychologically affected due to tragic incidents happening around us every day. But as a part resident of this society, I can say that more than 80 per cent people face psychological problems of one kind or another. I think about the future of such a great number of mentally and emotionally marred human beings.
Speaking of life during the fifties, historian Dr I H Qureshi wrote in Pakistani Way of Life (published 1956): “Pakistan is an orderly, disciplined and well-organised country, with a sound economy and stable currency. Her budgets are balanced, her granaries are full, her shop windows replete with consumer goods and there is generally an atmosphere of prosperity and well-being.”
People half a century later have trouble believing that this was ever written about Pakistan. It reads like a utopian dream or of the distant past.
What is happening today or whatever comes in the future, one thing should never be forgotten about our people: they lived with great courage although they had faced torrents of terror and tyranny. They loved life even when it sparsely existed. They loved each other as they braved cruel times, and they lived by hope in days of despair. They suffered, they sustained injuries and they died. They lost their lives but they won their cause. On the sands of time, they wrote their history with indelible blood.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 26th, 2013.
I sat in my office and wrote about the twin suicide bomb blasts that took place in the lawn of the All Saint’s Church (founded December 27, 1883). I think of the crowd flowing out of the church building after their Sunday prayers. I know that more than 80 people died and many more injured. Wounded men, women and children were shifted to hospitals. People talked about how many people were injured or dead but they remained silent on the number of those who have been left mentally shocked and emotionally traumatised. The news sources, too, are silent on that figure, probably because that part doesn’t make the news spicy and sensational.
I do not have any statistics on the number of people who have been psychologically affected due to tragic incidents happening around us every day. But as a part resident of this society, I can say that more than 80 per cent people face psychological problems of one kind or another. I think about the future of such a great number of mentally and emotionally marred human beings.
Speaking of life during the fifties, historian Dr I H Qureshi wrote in Pakistani Way of Life (published 1956): “Pakistan is an orderly, disciplined and well-organised country, with a sound economy and stable currency. Her budgets are balanced, her granaries are full, her shop windows replete with consumer goods and there is generally an atmosphere of prosperity and well-being.”
People half a century later have trouble believing that this was ever written about Pakistan. It reads like a utopian dream or of the distant past.
What is happening today or whatever comes in the future, one thing should never be forgotten about our people: they lived with great courage although they had faced torrents of terror and tyranny. They loved life even when it sparsely existed. They loved each other as they braved cruel times, and they lived by hope in days of despair. They suffered, they sustained injuries and they died. They lost their lives but they won their cause. On the sands of time, they wrote their history with indelible blood.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 26th, 2013.