Daily Times

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way. It is Charles? No, it is Pakistan.

The lengths to which one man has come to deliver a nation, one nation that stands on its knees, is beyond belief, and perhaps even the regular truth we have known for many a decade. The said nation stands crumbled but not without ignorant pride, not without blind love of an ethnic root that cannot deliver.

Fear of the other is natural and so is despair of failure. But what will say regret like the rejection of the truth, like the rightly misguided buttressing of the status-quo, like the brandished sword that cuts your own languishing body? Nothing and May11.

The king-makers and their kings will always be fiends, but nothing precludes the existence of a particular fiend who shall arise from the void to deliver, a fiend only because the right job is meant to be done by the wrong person, one who will compromise on the lesser moral for a better one. Power corrupts and the forced fiend may become an actual fiend, but that is not a reason enough to deny the truth and honour in the present.

Love alone cannot save nations; nations are structured on passion but are to be built with rationality. What are the limits of rationality? Rationality does not dictate defaulted personal debts, pillaging of the legal system, consorting with constitutional brigands, absconding in the eye of the storm, and more importantly, blood that is stale. There is no cure for blood that is stale except to let go of it, or to stab with political finality.

Life is about finding relationships of verity, walking along paths of meant direction, about stopping once in a while and feeling part of the social fabric. Our social fabric is torn by bombs and bombers, hypocrisy and hypocrites, theft and robbers, death and the reaper, crooks and leaders, and desertion. Do you see it? It is but a torn rag, holed and black, almost on the verge of being useless and it is the status quo that tore it.

Then, when chance and fate themselves marry to present an option, a hope at that brink of abysmal debt, abysmal deaths and abysmal debilitation, it makes sense to reach out to hope. But some do not and will not. Because both the wrong and the right find a rationale, each touting the other’s wisdom as foolishness.

As a nation we have risked worthless friendships, seen splintered boundaries, lived next to relentless enemies, taken sides in alien wars, begged with splendour and squandered with even more splendour. As a society, we have served as a living tribute to disarray and stoutest exemplification of anomie (even the old Durkheim would have written on us). Yet we are still afraid of newer horizons and a turn around a brighter corner. Refusal to see the light does not deny its existence; even blind men live to feel the heat. What more do we have left to lose?

We stand here today at the limit of resilience, our core left with nothing more to offer. There comes a point in every play from which there is no return; is it known that we stand there today as the seventh most dangerous country, 33rd most corrupt country under a national debt in excess of Rs 5,595,000,000,000 (Rs 5.59 trillion, yes twelve zeroes amount to that). Did we not bathe in such purity at the luxury of our nonchalant status quo? Each Pakistani owes over Rs 33,000 of debt yet on average earns less than Rs 10,000 per month, sans the power to save. Bravo-dom.

In 22 years of almost observant existence, I have seen elections that were mere façades, a few days of buzz, or I should use the word distant trickle, which the rich saw as a holiday and the poor as need of displacement. But May 11 will be an outlier because a vote is no longer seen as a drop in the ocean, but the drop that makes an ocean. The rich will come out and so will the poor, and alongside there will be those who have worked to win and those who shall do anything to win.

Exactly why it is the best of times and the worst of times. Charles Dickens would now have us go to heaven or the other way. In light or dark, I have found the one who will deliver me. To Sir Charles, I must say that presence or absence of light does not matter really. It is because facts are heard, not seen. That is how I found my man, that man.

The writer is studying at the Lahore University of Management Sciences and can be reached at k.alizubair@hotmail.com