Reality check

Let’s not get too excited. The country is not falling apart. The ripples of revolution have not spread much beyond a small area in the heart of the capital. Admittedly there is some occlusion of the national jugular, but Liberty is off having a cup of tea somewhere and not storming barricades today. And no, democracy is not under threat. Parliament is functional — inasmuch as it ever is — and although the economy has taken a hit and the measles vaccination programme in Isloo looks like it is going to fail to get off the ground yet again — there is what amounts to an almost eerie calm across the country.

The Punjabi Taliban declare themselves committed to converting us all rather than blowing us to smithereens, the floods are still ongoing and have taken a dreadful toll but no, it was/is not 2010 all over again. There was brief excitement on the interwebs when Rehman Malik might have pushed the protocol envelope a tad too far — might, the precise circumstances of his failing to board PIA flight PK-370 get cloudier by the minute — and no, it is not going to trigger wholesale usurping of generations of genetically embedded entitlement. Millions have voted with the remains of their common sense and not flocked to Islamabad (shortly to be renamed Naya Jallozai if the semi-permanence of tented encampments is anything to go by) and stayed at home and murder, rape, robbery and corruption remain high on the national ‘to-do’ list.

But hist … bend an ear to the breeze Dear Reader because there is very definitely a whiff of something-or-other in the air. Could it be that Leviathan is stirring? Goaded by the pricks of pins wielded by a brace of men whose connection to the real world is decidedly tenuous at best?

Whether one is pro or anti any of the parties involved, be they mainstream and ossified or the recycled newbies that were only new very briefly and a long time ago, it has to be conceded that there is a quickening of the pulse of that most elusive of giants …The Masses.

If nothing else the Robespierres of Containerland might have touched a national nerve. Their methods are arguably clumsy and crude and undemocratic to a fault, their rhetoric flagging and flaccid, but though they are not going to achieve their aim in the short term of unseating a government that has never in truth been threatened by them, they have taken a mighty bite out of its underpinnings.

Parallel to a little al fresco political cannibalism there is a hoeing of rows and a planting of seeds. A goodly number of those seeds are female. The participation of women in the protests has been notable in that they come from across the social spectrum, and some that have been interviewed have expressed their satisfaction at living in an unsanitary car park for several weeks, this being preferable to the four walls and kitchen that was their previous exclusive abode.

The other large group of seeds, cast either side as the sower walks the row, are young, male and female, educated, articulate and digitally adept. They are not yet sufficiently numerous or powerful enough to, by themselves, topple the Walls of Jericho, neither do they have much by way of decent trumpets, but there is a glint in their eyes as they line up the mangonels and pot-de-fer and consult Lao-Tzu.

And if there is a glue that binds every one of them together, young and old, men and women, rich and poor, it is the determination to reject the old political narratives that have dominated from the very birth of the state. In a country where change — real change — is anathema to most, the desire to do it differently may have at last been catalysed. It is not only the merry campers that have received the news that yes, they can make a difference, it is the countless millions who watch from their homes, quietly with their families.

There is a growing realisation that the Old Order must pass, and the Titans of Containerland represent the writing on the wall, though not — yet — the final nail in the coffin. Watch this space.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 18^th, 2014.

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