Me and mine

I want to be trapped in a mine in Chile, left alone for two months with nothing but my thoughts to keep me company.

I want to be trapped in a mine in Chile. Just lowered down there and left alone for two months with nothing but my thoughts to keep me company.

As I am writing this, two miners have already been pulled out of the tiny rocky coffin they have shared with 31 other men and hopefully the rest will be pulled out as well. This will, of course, completely put an end to my speculation that only one obese miner would emerge, burping guiltily. They will rise out of the dark hole, blinking into the sunlight, hug their relatives and be put on the same nutritional and exercise recovery packages as astronauts climbing out of a space capsule. Then they will read the newspapers and discover that terrorism is still rampant, environmentally we are one exhaust belch away from melting into human puddles and Lady Gaga is still a celebrity. My advice is to plug up that mine shaft before they can jump back into it.

This is the world we live in. I can’t choose a topic to focus on in this article because there is so much to mock and ridicule and hate that aiming my bile at just one subject feels like a disservice to everyone else. Should I mock the PML-N for threatening a long march in a time when their efforts would be better served helping flood victims? Maybe they can march all the way to a flood relief camp and start working there. Or should I mock the PPP government for overloading our cynicism by appointing a NAB chief who is so blatantly chosen for his sycophancy he probably has a “I heart Zardari” tattoo on his navel? Just days after his appointment he issued a statement that the president’s Swiss bank accounts are empty. Did he spend all the money? Maybe the cash is now hidden away in secret vaults behind paintings in a chateau in France. Can someone check under the mattress please? At least ask for a bank statement.

Nato helicopters bomb our frontier posts while the US scratches its head over why we don’t like it. And we respond by allowing the bombing of Nato trucks with a precision that is disconcerting considering we are supposedly at war with the Taliban.

Our ISI still supports terrorist elements, it would seem, having decided that civilian casualties are outweighed by the benefits of having your own pet terrorists. Can someone please check the math for a displaced decimal point?

The problem is there is no refuge anywhere from the constant noise. The newspapers are depressing and filled with agendas. TV channels have become pulpits for a menagerie of grotesqueries. Every time I go on online I am sexually confused by women telling me where they like to put their handbags. I can’t go for a calming walk without preemptively handing my wallet and cell phone to everyone on a motorbike who passes me by. The bookstores are flooded with Bob Woodward’s latest potboiler that features Pakistan as a collective Bond villain, stroking a cat in a white suit while plotting the destruction of all that is good and pure. “Choose your next witticism carefully Western Democracy, for it may be your last!”

Every old person I meet looks at me with eyes full of despair and guilt, burdened by the knowledge that the nation they are leaving their young in is worse than the one they inherited. Every young person I meet is obsessed with spreading their narcissism into the ether. The world won’t end with a bang, but a tweet.

So lower me down into the mineshaft. Let me sit in silent contemplation for a few months. Let me fill the dark with ideas uninterrupted by the pinging of my BlackBerry Messenger and trilling of my Facebook alerts. There used to be a time when solitary meditation led to enlightenment. I just want some silence.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 14^th, 2010.