Hopeless but not serious

DECEMBER 2000 - Pakistan has more or less been shut down for the last week following a month of fasting, where everything in any event, slows down. The shut down is thus quite logical, but as the country has enjoyed the long break, combined with Christmas – for some, and Eid for just about everyone else, what are the common thoughts that occupy our minds? To round off the season, there is the 31st looming out of the light mist and the start of another new year. This is no ordinary new year either and resolutions must take on more significance this time because this is the first year of the next thousand years and we are poised on the edge of it, precariously one might add.

It is unlikely that profound thoughts have entered into our heads these last few days. Most have taken the welcome break and simply slept or dozed their way through it, occasionally indulging in such intellectual activities as watching television when too much sleep and too much food had begun to take its toll. Most others may have caught up with friends or relatives, read the odd book, though increasingly Pakistanis don’t take to books at all, and others may have even taken a trip out of town, but it is unlikely that introspection featured highly on people’s agendas. It is not that we don’t think; it is simply a fact that so immense are our problems and so daunting the way ahead that most people cannot decide where to start from or if indeed, anything they might have to contribute could make the least difference to anything.

In fact, if anything, we are far too preoccupied with our state of being and at every gathering, all that people seem to talk about endlessly, is how things are going wrong, why things are going wrong and who is plotting against whom and who is going to be doing what next. Just about every one in the country seems to have inside information on the latest international conspiracy that is going to be the end of us. There is also no shortage of people who will quote from conversations they have had with the US Ambassador or the Chinese envoy or a member of the European Union or an insider working in the IMF and armed with this lethal information, are able to pronounce a verdict on why Nawaz Sharif was allowed to leave with cooks, suitcases and family baggage of the other variety, who is propping up Imran Khan and which generals are openly disagreeing with the CE. There is also no shortage of people who were more or less present in the last Corps Commanders meeting and there are still others who can tell you what was the hidden agenda under which we lost to England in Karachi. Those who don’t fall into this category will air their theories but give it the necessary weightage of the World Bank, the ADBP and for more localized information, the Governor of the State Bank. In fact we are far too involved with our dismal state of affairs and because of the overall uncertainty that has gripped us since 1947, are no longer able to get the right perspective on any issue. This can perhaps explain the reason why all debates and discussions on the future (or lack of it) of Pakistan is brought to a halt when one or more will simply pronounce the final verdict on our demise that’s round the corner. Another show stopper is when it is proclaimed that nothing can be done about the country and we will lurch from one crisis to another, one set of rulers to another and worse, one lot of looters to another. That about ends all debates and people take out their frustration on the poor bottle lying in the corner or, the great reality of Pakistan living, calorie and cholesterol loaded food and which latter preoccupation may explain why, culture etc aside, the shalwar kameez will never go out of fashion, for men or women. Which other dress in the world can offer such shifting standards of measurement?

It must be an over simplification surely, but Pakistan is more and more, a land of compromise. It seems to be the only truth that operates here with any degree of permanence. Everything else, Democracy – Ayub’s Basic variety and Mian Sahib’s awami heavy mandate type, roti, kapra, makkan and Islamic Socialism (does anyone remember that one?), all have failed. So have concepts like the army is best suited to run the country – it should perhaps be reworded as best booted, and now the new bug bear that is going to run its course, devolution or whatever that is, whose success can be determined by the fact that most people can’t even spell it, leave alone understand it. But it will be touted as the panacea of all our ills and it will live happily till the next lot take over the high ground in Islamabad when another harebrained scheme fermenting in some pot or the other, will become policy and will be beamed to the land and the confused people who happen to live there. To add to the confusion and that’s never too difficult in Pakistan, there will be splinter theories and concepts which will be croaked about from various points across the land by whoever has a mouth and vocal chords in reasonable working order. They are now openly recruiting volunteers for holy wars and where all that is going to lead us, is beyond the grasp of most except that it is not going to be the solution for all our problems. If this is the way, why are there no windowpanes in Kabul, but then what use are windowpanes when forces of evil have to be taken on?

No, the only reality we have is compromise and most Pakistanis are now fairly proficient at it, having more or less perfected it after years and years of misrule. Compromise features in daily lives more than anything else. The common folk, in whose interest incidentally every drama is enacted and who are miraculously never affected by things such as increase in prices of food, utilities or gasoline, are expert compromisers. Their day begins with compromises and ends the same way, every year. They have to compromise because there is no survival without it and they compromise with the fact that they may wake up to find no electricity provided they were not robbed the previous night, they may step out only to find that public transport is not plying having been hijacked to haul crowds of ‘supporters’ of the government to a public meeting where more insincere promises can be made, or that a strike for increase in fares is on the anvil or that another crackpot call of a ‘wheel jam’ has infected the country. All this before they have walked ten paces. The rest of the day is in the same mode. Those who are better off, have to make their compromises at another level and with higher stakes. Value systems, fragile and half damaged as they are, are constantly adjusted to survive. In all this the country cannot progress and is stuck at every step. We are in a deep well of despair and there is no way to climb out. People lead their lives as they are programmed to do, not thinking beyond making it through the day. They cannot plan beyond tomorrow, and collectively, neither can the country. In this strange state of being, we can all look at the sun as it will rise on the morning of the first day of the next century and wonder where we all will be, long before the century comes to an end, but wait a minute, this isn’t our new year is it? There we go again.