You would never know you are in a flux unless you are in one. More like falling in love, I’d say.
And I know now that I am. In a flux. I pick up the newspapers, see the news and ‘read’ the opinion pages and I find myself dumbfounded.
How removed from reality can I be? Do I really not understand the implications of the Nishtar Park tragedy? Do I really give a damn about the dams the Government is planning to put up? Is there nothing in it for me if the agriculture of our agri-based economy is still pre-modern at best? So what if the local governments are functioning at half-capacity even or not? So what is the big deal if our ‘parha likha Punjab’ is just that, a tag line? And seriously, see if I care if more than seven thousand chicken ‘mysteriously’ die in a single poultry farm within a time frame of ten days… why should I? What difference will my difference make? Can I seriously be OK with such a flawed mindset?
Have I, unconciously or conciously, trained myself to be indifferent to anything that is even slightly outside the domain of my direct circle?
Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you the biggest disease to hit our nation EVER. Not Aids, definitely not Bird Flu. I give you Indifference.
No one cares anymore. Not enough anyways. Give a damn about a dying soul 3000 miles away, and dont bother enough for the one dying in your own street. Worry about the US poking Iran into submission, and be oblivious to your poverty-ridden 80 percent of the Pakistani populace. Complain about the ‘Western’ and Zionist conspiracies, and turn that big, round beautiful BLIND eye towards your own moral and spiritual standing. Burn a couple of effigies of foreign presidents and go home and mix poison into your own milk so that your children can grow up to be not only mentally and morally weak, but physically mundane as well!
Take out a Mercedes with bullet-proofing, let people die in the traffic in your wake and then announce another dam. While let me lease out another one of those German cars, sit with my friends in air-conditioned restaurants and complain about the traffic just so that I can feed the clinically-dead activist in me; that yes, today I made a difference, today I set the society right, today I beat up a poor ol’ ‘cycle-waala’ for swaying in front of my mean-machine, or perhaps today I complained about the Western attitude towards Iran and hey, I didn’t even stutter at naming the Iranian President. Yes, I am one of you, yes, I seek comfort in little things. Yes, those little things are usually too little and too meek. And no, I am not a bad person. So what am I?
I am, like all of us, in a flux. A surge here, a screaming high-voltage shock there will do the trick. But when? But how? What better place than here, what better time than now…
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Note: The above is a typical blog-entry, where the thoughts keep thinkin’ and the keyboard keeps keyin’! :) If anyone’s sensibilities have been offended by the above, then thank you, that is exactly what this train was supposed to wreck.
I am sure we need to wake up and smell the coffee. I presume we all are up, but somebody has stolen our coffee. Or we yet have to find our drink and make it.
And yea, the exact replica of the above post can be found in my personal blog as well here, which I wouldn’t mind if ye kind folks will read once in a while, punctuating your visit with a comment or two.
Peace on ye all…ahaan!
