The Eternal Flame

Today Lahore will rock to the beat of the PTI. A roaring, raging sea of red and green flowing into Minto Park, washing the Minar-e-Pakistan with fiery zeal and pumped-up passion. It will be a show like no other.

Young and old, rich and poor, these men and women have come here in search of a dream. They believe this dream can become a reality; that they can actually make it happen — together, here, now. This is what drives them; a flame deep inside burning so bright it propels them to move; to act; to speak and shout; to demand; and if necessary, to fight. Yes, to fight for the dream they have dreamt so often. This is not politics. No, not at all. This is something deeper; something so intense it’s almost as if it can trigger earthquakes and make mountains shiver.

And it is so human. For what burns brighter than desire? It is a desire to taste the dream; to smell the dream; to actually reach out and be able to touch the dream. It is a desire to never let go of the dream; to wake up and still not lose the dream; to do something — anything — everything — to possess the dream. Forever.

This dream unfolded here, right here, in this very Minto Park. Yes it was a dream witnessed in living colour under the Minar on October 30, 2011. On that balmy Lahore evening; the jalsa transformed into something never seen before; a collective mourning of a dream lost; then a celebration of a realisation that lost it may be, but the dream was still alive. Yes it was reduced to a flicker, but was still burning deep inside our hearts.

The dream called Pakistan.

The Pakistan that we were supposed to have, not the one we ended up having. While the Founding Fathers fought pitched political battles across round and square tables; while they wrestled with documents and proposals and crossed swords with the ego of the Raj, their followers dreamt with their eyes open. They dreamt of a land that existed not on those round tables and square parchments, but a land that lived in their hearts and in their minds. In the end, a new map was etched — not in ink, but in blood.

See those haunting and yet inspiring images now. The black and white footage cannot hide the colour of pain and promise. See the hundreds of thousands of men, women and children trudging towards the Promised Land; lugging whatever is left of their belongings. Families rent asunder; countless butchered in a maniacal frenzy of manufactured hatred. And all for what? For a dream that was to be Pakistan.

Never had so many dreamt so much. And never were so many to see their dream so quickly ravaged and crushed under the burden of small egos nurtured by smaller men. The Quaid held on to the dream, but could not hold on to life. Darkness descended on the Promised Land. The raging fire within the hearts reduced to a flickering flame. And there it burnt, slowly, quietly.



The Great Transformation never happened. The new nation was born in hope; but hope does not feed people; hope does not clothe them. Today all around us we see the debris of the Original Promise scattered across this land. Children begging on the streets, while the rulers are whisked around in luxury vehicles; millions living in shanty towns as the Masters recline under shimmering chandeliers; citizens being whiplashed by injustice as the mighty trample law under their manicured feet. You see this, and you shake with rage — a rage burning like phosphorous and growing stronger over the decades. This is wrong. This is unjust. This is unacceptable. And this cannot go on any longer.

It is time to reclaim the dream.

Yes, we are ready. There is a brave new world out there, and it is fertile for change. In this new world, that little girl you see at the traffic signal, this little girl will go to school and build a future for herself and her family. In this brave new world, that fat cat in the taxpayer funded luxury sedan, he will fall on his knees to serve that little girl — and her brother. In this brave new world, justice will be served to one and all. And in this world, nurturing souls will trump nurturing vanities.

This fertile land is fertile for new ideas. It is a land full of wronged people ready to snatch their rights. Imagination now has been uncaged because here, in this Promised Land, we are downloading dreams and uploading reality. Traditions will crumble, archaic values will shatter, and suppressive social structures disintegrate when decades of pent-up desires collide with a dying system. Hear that roar? It’s happening.

No it’s not the PTI or the PAT, or even the PML-N, or the PPP under the new Bhutto. The transformation is bigger than all of them put together. It’s not the dharna, or the rally, or even the bricks and mortar prosperity running on Metro tracks. It’s not even a zero-sum game locking Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan into mortal combat. No, not at all. This is an awakening beyond containers, and parliaments and system-reboots. It’s a deep rumble from within, groaning back to life at a time when the world is spinning into a new trajectory; when global awareness is flooding gated minds and inundating dormant imaginations. 3G weapons are locked and loaded to fire 4G bullets. The war to win back our dreams will outlast the nihilistic impetuousness of Imran Khan and the outdated governance of Nawaz Sharif. It will outlive the selfish politicking in parliament and the petty agenda-setting of tradition-bound state institutions. And yet it will keep on unfolding month after month, year after year, decade after decade, until that small flickering flame will explode into a giant bonfire consuming decades of decadence within its fiery embrace.

So you ask who will win at D-Chowk? I say, who cares. The future is already ours.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 28^th, 2014.

Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.