Last July, I had a brief stay at Pakistan to visit my ailing mother who was admitted in the Bahawalpur Victoria Hospital. It was a sizzling heat and was almost unbearable. My mother was living in a private room of the hospital that looked like a dungeon. The whole ward, where my mother was admitted, smelled rotten. The adjoining bathroom had no taps, the odor was unbearable. Later, I learned that sweepers of the hospitals were assigned to doctors’ private homes and hospitals, and the administration was minting money by not purchasing phenyl for sterilization. The medicines were to be purchased from pharmaceutical outlets outside the hospital. Briefly, the whole government hospital had a miserable look with the depleted buildings, unkept lawns and waste of the hospital all around. That’s how we look after our ailing citizens. The doctors had agents to convince people to visit the doctors in their private clinics. The poor people were wandering in the corridors with empty eyes, empty handed with a complete look of Les Miserable. There was none to listen to their miseries and none to guide them. There was no counter in the hospital to guide the poor people. The nurses had a withdrawnlooks who were shouting at the patients non stop.
Outside, the city was choked with traffic. It was a complete disorder. The roads were teeming with beggars and streets were swarmed with people; the gift of overpopulation. I couldn’t find a better place to take my morning tea but a stall to sit on a bench on the road side to take a very sweet tea. I was lost in the miseries of the people around suddenly I found a bearded companion who started buzzing in my ears about the difficult time I would have in life hereafter if I don’t follow the true preaching of Islam. “This world is transitory, think about eternal life” That dingy man with bathroom slippers in feet whispered in my ear. I had the same sermons almost everywhere I went. “What are these/ so wither’d and so wild in their attire, / That look not like the inhabitants o’ the earth, / yet are on’t?” Says Banquo to Macbeth.
I was lost in the miseries of the people around suddenly I found a bearded companion who started buzzing in my ears about the difficult time I would have in life hereafter if I don’t follow the true preaching of Islam
For some urgent matter I approached the senior police officer to redress the worries of a widow but he had no time to listen to the wows of the widow since he had to arrange a gathering in the police line that evening for the sermons of Maulana Tariq Jamil to enter with grace in the life hereafter. He also invited me to join the sermon. All these years the nexus between the Punjab police and Maulana Tariq Jamil has been an unsolved mystery for me. Our police is corrupt and inefficient and it is a decided fact that the ethical sermons of Tariq Jamil go unheeded since morality is no more a metaphysical nuance as moral values are sprouted from the land. In fact, it was industrialization in Europe that asked for the rule of law on the contrary the Victorian age is remembered as the age of hypocrisy. Even in medieval era the merchant in the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales was keen to have safe seas for his business. “He [the merchant] wolde the see weree/ kept for any thyng/ Bitwixe Middleburgh and Orewelle.” (He wanted the sea were guarded at any cost/ Between Middleburgh and the town of Orwel.). To me, Tariq Jamil is entertained in the corridors of power and the police officers with his help and being in his ‘clan’ are well placed to enjoy absolute power and money. Policing in the modern age demands efficiency and the rule of law and Pakistan lacks both.
Moreover, you don’t get the facts in Pakistan for all is murky. The evening TV talk shows are nothing but a hoax to decoy the gullible people of the country. Two or three so-called politicians are invited and they start a brouhaha while the anchor enjoys the brawl which gives him/her a good rating.
People are not interested for they have to eke out their existence on daily bases.They are not political being any more. Whereas, in my youth, in the draconian era of Zia ulHaq, I would see people charged politically. There prevailed a political culture. Now, “nor a mouse stirs” It is a great success of the concerned who have made our society such where headless people are walking on the streets and to me it was an “unhappy Mansion”
The writer is English Language Instructor at Taif University KSA