Pakistan on 14th August, 2047

As an independent Pakistan, we have completed 63 years of a very interesting existence. No one can argue that we are far from where we should have been. 

It is time that we thought long and hard and planned for what we need to accomplish in the next 34 years. Or we will still be here when we are a hundred; or will we even?

We Pakistanis are a strange lot indeed. Hundreds of things divide us. We disagree on everything.

Seriously literally everything. And yes we all have an opinion on every conceivable subject.

Politics: We disagree on the very system of government that we should have. Who is/was the better leader, how we should be lead, by whom? Should army be involved? Who should have a right to candidacy? How to structure our local governments? What is the most optimal number of provinces? What should be the level of autonomy give to them?

Culture: We can not seem to converge on what makes a Pakistani culture. What is an acceptable code of conduct for our women? How should we educate our children? Should we have a Arab culture or an unapologetic Indo culture is consistent enough with our beliefs? What is a Muslim culture in the first place?

Foreign Policy: We love to argue about how we should meet India; our significant neighbor. Are U.S. our friends or really our enemies? Are Arabs sincere to Pakistan as a state? Are we part of the Middle East or Asia?

Yes even on Islam; most strongly on Islam; I will not even attempt to list out the various factions and flavors, formal and informal, amongst the Ummah of Pakistan. I still shock our Maulvi Sahib when I turn up for prayers in my jeans ... loose jeans mind you. He loves to don an Arab style full length shirt.

There is one thing however where we all are alike; Every time that the Pakistani nation is faced with a threat or a calamity, we change into someone else! We unite and form a People in an almost Transformer'esque manner, not recognizable from the original; or is THIS the original and we are mostly in disguise?

We display a spirit of self sacrifice that astonishes even the most charitable.

Raising funds is nothing, we can raise billions and I don't just mean from begging for it but from within ourselves. Time and time again we have risen to the occasion. May it be the time of formation in 1947, the war of 1965, the earthquake of 2005 or the Floods of 2010, we have done it and we will do it again insha'Allah.

So good job Pakistan once again! We are all proud of us!

But now what? We need our thinkers now as much as we need our doers.

There are multiple levels at which we need to be thinking:

1. What should we do now about the current calamity of floods? Beyond collecting emergency relief.

2. What could have been done to manage this situation better? Readiness

3. How can we change as a Nation to have a better readiness or planning? Temperament.

To disagree is very Pakistani and that is a property that we should be proud of; but we need to agree on something now. We need to agree about what we will look like on the eve of 14th August 2047. We need a concerted thought process to prepare for the next 34 years.


Every Pakistani today is living Iqbal's dream. What dream will the Pakistanis of 2047 live? 

In the next few blogs, I will be offering some of my thoughts on the questions. I look forward to your comments to guide me.

Today's Wordle

Created using Dawn.com RSS and Wordle.net on 21-Aug-2010

Mein bhi Pakistan hoon ... Tu bhi Pakistan hai

Facebook is a phenomenon; technologically very simple but socially very far-reaching.

One of the things you can do on FB is "tag" people on pictures. Initially intended to let people know that they featured in a picture, now people tag a picture with your name simply because they want you to see it.

I too was tagged in a picture recently which of course did not have me in it. Or so I thought.

It was a painted picture. It was a bleak picture.

It had two portions; the left half with a caption saying "Day", showed people struggling in flood waters while the portion on the right was captioned "Night" and showed a mass of black. The idea was, that Pakistan was moving into a dark future.

The picture was published on FB on this last August 14th; Pakistan Day.

Needless to say it spawned a rather spirited discussion on the subject.

There were two groups; those who said that this kind of view was just depressive and did nothing to fix anything. While the others had a list of complaints against Pakistan which they quoted to support their viewpoint.

The debate went on and I soon started feeling a bit inundated with all the emails telling me that there was a new comment on "my picture".

After two score and ten such emails, I thought enough was already enough and that this had gone on for quite some time and that I had a right not be "spammed". After all I had nothing to do with this picture nor the discussion. I logged on to FB with the intention of removing my tag from the picture so that I will not be spammed anymore.

I almost clicked on the option for removing the tag when a part of me took over and started speaking back to me. The insolent me spoke to me thus:

"It is you", it said to me.

"Does it matter if you think that the people in the flood waters don't look like you?

To everyone else who is not a Pakistani, it is you! For are you not Pakistan?"

And that of course brought back memories of the countless times, that I sang along with my friends, with a lot of relish, the famous song.

Who is this degenerate, corrupt, unjust, cruel, huberistic being that all of us seem to be sick of? Who is this Pakistan that we are all so mad at?

I realized that I was indeed that Pakistan. Pakistan is not the name of the rivers and the mountains within a geographical boundary. Nor is it the bricks and mortar that we plastered on it to build it up.

Pakistan is me. It is you. And therefore it was indeed me in that picture in the reeking flood waters.

What shall I do? To decide upon a course of action, I have to first have an opinion. An opinion is a pre-cursor to action.

So of the two camp, who is right? The people who think Pakistan is a collection of everything that is wrong with the world or the ones who say that everything will be alright with Pakistan?

We need someone to tell us that something is wrong with us. We need them to be bitter, we need them to shout. We need them to jump up and down and wave their hands in the air pointing to everything that is wrong with us.

We also need those with a lot of optimism, with Mega Joules of energy; those who can be cheerful in the face of the fastest floods and the quickest quakes and the crookedest corruption. We need those who can then go and fix everything that this former group points to.

We need both. We should cherish both.

Does this start and stop at these two clubs only? No, there are others ... countless others:

We need our young to do it

We need our old to show us how

We need our educated to figure it out

We need our un-educated to help out with everything that they can muster

We need our Shias, we need our Sunnis and everyone in between

But most of all we need all of us to know that we need the others.

Mein bhi Pakistan hoon

Tu bhi Pakistan hai

/Slash

Aaloo Qeema

One of the greatest dishes that the ancients invented was Aaloo Qeema.

Aaloo Qeema; the essence of life itself.

And if you don't know what I am talking about, then you are missing something that should have been profound ... something elemental in your life.

Aaloo; Potatoes

Qeema; Minced meat

Sound simple? Not by miles! NOTHING could be simpler.

Spice; An ounce ... no ... a microgram more or less and the magic is lost.

Salt and pepper; a vapor more here or there and you may as well just upend the cooking pot in the black (bio unfriendly) trash bag.

Mint and coriander; a flake makes the difference between going to bed well fed or with a still rumbling stomach.

Well I am happy to report that I made some killer Aaloo Qeema. And this cat is definitely going to bed with a large grin on his face.

Bon Apitite and Good Night!

Happy Birthday Daddy

I grew up as the first child to my parents. My mother is very kind and loving and my father was very kind and loving and strong headed. You never said no to my father. He had a particularly strong mental composition and had an opinion about everything. These things, I now realize, are are neither good not bad, but are just things that define a man just as my father's kindness, wisdom and his loving and forgiving nature also defined him.

True to the norm of the day, my relationship with my father was based on fear and respect. That also meant that I was never really close to my father (in the modern sense), although I was closer to him than he himself ever was to his father.

It was only very late in my life (and his) that I was able to look at our relationship with any level of objectivity. It was then that I realized that the fabric of our relationship actually put the onus of defining our relationship on me. I realized that I had to turn it around and go back to basics. So I started expressing. I would drive him around, share my inner fears and ambitions with him, and I would hug him a lot. In the corporate language; I basically started "communicating actively" with him.

That was the good thing. The bad things was that when I finally started bridging years of this communication divide, it was too late. My father passed away a couple of years later leaving me with so much that I still wanted to tell him.

I sit here today on his would-be 67th birthday thinking what can I do now that he is gone. The answer thankfully is very clear and quick to come. I can stop this from propagating further through our generations. I have to start "sharing" with my son who is now 19 and is quite a strong headed young man himself. I have to start expressing, share my inner fears and ambitions and hug him a lot. Oh I would do better to leave the driving around to him now that he has earned his driving license.

We live through our children; our sons and daughters, and I hope that my son will not be sitting thinking the same thoughts when I am gone because that will make me very sad. So my present to my father for his birthday today is a special email that I sent to my children.

Happy Birthday Daddy! May you live for ever.