Auto Destruct

AUGUST 1997 - When was the last time you went to somebody’s house and spent the better part of the evening talking about a book you had read, a great film you had seen or a particularly moving piece of music you had heard ? Probably a hundred years ago. Maybe more. Pakistani society is unable to shake off the shackles that this violent and culturally barren society has imposed on itself. We who inhabit this land no longer have the power to escape the dragnet that has entrapped most of us, if not all of us, in its deadly, choking embrace.

In this our fiftieth foolhardy year, there is despondency all around. Perhaps it is because we all tend to read newspapers out of habit and once having opened the pages, are transfixed with horror seeing the depths to which we sink daily without a murmur. Mercifully, television is no longer burdened with giving the news. All it can now muster is one inanity followed hot on its heels by another, each successive one overtaking the other till it is hard to remember where it all began. It’s even harder to comprehend the mental capacity of media controllers who obviously only have contempt for the collective intelligence of the people of this unfortunate country. But even if one were not hooked to the news such as it is, how can one escape or ignore the terrible ordeal we are put through daily ? All around us, everyday, everything is crashing down so fast that even the destruction is a blurred and out of focus montage of senseless and tragic events over which no one seems to have the slightest hold. The pledges of the leaders are like the bleatings of lambs as they are led to their feeding troughs. The entire country is incensed with a stupid remark made in the USA. One wishes that the entire country would instead rise to protest over what is happening here, but of course that is not to be.

It is now pretty certain that everything here has collapsed or is about to. The new century may see the world reaching out for an age unlike any we have known, but here in the land of the faithful run by the faithless, there is only anarchy of a frightening kind. As we kill one another daily and now without any pattern, on the slightest of pretexts and over the silliest of causes, it is hard to believe that this was once a very peaceful and civilised land. There may not have been much affluence or education or progress, but the bulk of the people lived fairly simple lives, worked reasonably honestly and settled disputes with well-reasoned and sometimes not so well reasoned arguments. Such is no longer the case, which I confess may be the under-statement of the year. Icons of pride and steadfastness have collapsed like paper maiche dolls overnight. The PAF of the Ray Banned dashing pilots that we all admired has been reduced to an institution whose every move brings it into disrepute. The unfettered smuggling by its Shaheens, the shady Mirage deals, the clumsy heroin operation that went bad, the tragic and senseless murder of two young men, the pre-occupation of the airforce with everything but the airforce, has brought it down like a stone. In each case, rather than rise to the heights it has so unabashedly trumpeted as its credo, the airforce has hidden behind lies, half-truths and official gobbledygook, blaming vested interests for plotting against it and using every means to take flight from the truth, if you’ll forgive the expression. How wonderful would it have been for my old class fellow to have put down a letter of honourable resignation since surely the buck stops at his gleaming desk. But it was not to be and he has continued to fly through the turbulence proving once more that the new culture which rules the land has no culture at all.

The Golden Jubilee has nothing golden about it and the only jubilee we might have is a chocolate by that name though given the inflation and the runaway prices, it is hard to believe that many of us can afford it. Sheikh Rashid, the unlikely culture czar - or perhaps he is the right choice given the state of things, may have much to delight his heart seeing that he has extended the revelries to 23rd March 1998, but I doubt that any of us would have the stamina to survive the revelries that assault us daily. If it’s the sun, we fall like flies. If it’s the rain, we sink like rats. If it’s neither, we are gunned down by motorcyclists at every crossing. If the terrorists (that’s what they call them) spare us, the police even us out. They shoot us from the back, lock us up without cause, raid our homes without legal sanction, and if we are women, gang rape us to their heart’s content. Last week the brave cops gang raped their colleague. Allah be praised.

Perhaps the ultimate comment on this our sad fiftieth comes courtesy Bobby Riaz who says that Nayyar Dada went to a Rawalpindi restaurant the other day and spotted this humungus banner inside, which said the usual Golden Jubilee this, that and the other. Under this ran the words Unity, Faith, Discipline and below them, three other words: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner. There seems little point in adding anything to that.