मेरा Pakistan

There are certain evenings which become a part of memory. You think about the time and wonder that whether it was true or just a fragment created partially out of memory and partially out of the story maker every human has in them. Being a Punjabi (by blood, by culture, by language) I find certain traditions very amusing. We distribute sweet rice (zarda) on both occasions, death as well as on times when we need to celebrate and dance.
The things other than firecracker, the jubilant faces of people I loved and continuous phone calls, I remember my nani making and distributing zarda. Today when I look back and think about that time I find it a bit inhuman. We on the eve of august 1988 were celebrating the plane crash of Zia ul haq.
The dictator, who was responsible for the judicial trial of Bhutto, the 2 years political imprisonment of my maternal uncle and yes the afghan war. I was too small at that time to understand what does democracy means for usual individual lives. During those days cycling in the huge compound of civil lines and collecting toads were the best pleasures life could offer. I as a naïve kid had looked heard and then memorize the tit bits of those days.
I can’t remember much. I ask I listen I try to remember. My parents had returned to Pakistan after working 5 years abroad. I guess my mother hated the hospitals and work load in Pakistan. I wonder why she took the decision. Woman at times is helpless in front of their husbands. It was a new dawn. My parents were one of the few couples of that generation who have left their exuberant paying jobs and had moved to work in the infested infrastructure of Pakistan. My father never regretted it. And I guess Pakistan has given him more than he has given to Pakistan.
After that evening there were many more evenings to mourn and to celebrate. The election campaign, another election campaign and yes then another campaign. I grew up in 90’s in the election dominating era of Pakistan. Elections were like a game, a play a drama. We all waited, like the next cricket world cup. The tents being enacted in the lawns of my maternal home, the election office and tamasha unfolding in front of the eyes.
There was hope, then there was no hope and then there was more hope. We are from the last 20 years in state of the same cycle. Dictatorship, then corrupt politicians, then again dictatorship. It is like a whirlpool which is pulling the whole nation down.
The only thing which has changed the topology of the country is the religious landscape. In the last 40 years Pakistan who was made in name of religion by leaders who were not very religious to a state which has become synonymous with intolerance, suicide bombs, racial killings and religious bigotry.
The seed of religion which Zia ul haq planted has become a full-fledged crop over the last decades. He had not only destroyed the civil institutes, introduced drug culture but had developed madrassas as the grounds for a new intolerant version of Islam.
We had the first bouts of religious riots in Pakistan. Unlike the warmongering evil India on our borders, which we all believed killed Muslims, we Pakistanis at large made a fame in international media for killing Muslims. In the early decades of 90’s the first shai Sunni killings became a headline.
Unlike riots in other countries, the one in Pakistan should be labeled more as killings. Who killed who is still a big question mark? There was a visible political divide governing the social landscape of Pakistan.
I have rough time in my life for shelving thing which were religious to the one which were cultural. I come from a family where value system is based on a concoction of religion and culture. A society, which still believes that divorced women are a taboo. Polygamy is a nefarious act (though Islam allows 4 wives). A culture which over the years have allowed their daughters to have access to equal educational opportunities but had issues with them as decision makers. I come from a value system where I wear a duppata as a respect for an elder uncle, brother or father. Where acts of modesty are well defined in black and white. Yes I became a feminist later because the man who brought me up is a feminist.
In the same context I had problems with the religious issues which were folding in front of me. Who is a Shia?
Are they non Muslims?
In Muharram there was a ban (still a ban in my family) to buy new clothes. There was sadka done a lot during the whole month followed by at least 3 khatums (those who are not aware khatum is the act of cooking and distributing food in name of Allah). I have loved, to fry puris on “kondon ka khatum”. Later on I came to know it was a Shia practice. I still have no idea how did it enter a family where daughters were taught madoodi when they graduated from high school.
This was tolerance I know. This was tolerance I was brought up with. I revere people with their own believes because that is what an average Pakistani is taught. A value system which is based on cultural and religious values amalgamating with each other.
I had hard time to be politically a Marxist and then a practicing Muslim. It had taken me time to understand what I am and what I really believe in. Today I saw news where a group of students were expelled from a medical collage on basis of being Ahmedi. I was shocked by the name of the school given I have some personal affiliation with that place.
Where are we heading to as a nation? Embassy bombed, mosques conquered, students labeled as Muslims / non Muslims (academia has only one religion which is curiosity to learn).
Some times I feel that the whole nation is going through identity and political crisis. Nations born out of believe which died on the eve of 1971 when Bangladesh came into being. A nation which is struggling to survive on issues which it believes and does not believe.
Islam is not a problem of an average Pakistan. His problem is that he should feel safe when he goes out to work. He has food on his table, and he has a proper stable job. I never agreed on Marx on issue of religion. “Religion is like opium”. It was quoted again and again in my own circle.
I still have very middle class Pakistani morality. Where praying is part of being who you are.
But when I see Pakistan, going through the process of dis integration step by step I question..
Pakistan was made in name of Islam and it will die in the name of Islam...
I have fears to write this word out because I am a Pakistani...and when your own home is burning then you can understand what pain is all about.