Daily Times

Ever since I was a child, I have been hearing that our country is going through one of the most ‘sensitive phases’ in its history. Our country needs a saviour, a leader, who would come and rid us from all our miseries. While 68 years have gone by we are still deeply plagued by this strange syndrome. Only the intellectually dishonest can sell this fantasy, and only the equally jaded can buy it, and wish for this imaginary saviour to emerge from somewhere.

For our younger readers who have not experienced a war, very luckily in their times, all I can say is it is one of the most horrible experiences of your life, where fear of the unknown keeps you up at night. As a child, I witnessed the 1971 war when we lost our eastern wing. Our ‘saviour’ at that time was General Agha Yahya Khan. Oblivious to what was really happening in that theatre, we would pray and hope that our valiant soldiers would defeat the enemy. December 1971 was an extremely painful month. As an anxious teenager I had to accept that not all prayers were answered. At this age, and what I know by now is that I am utterly grateful that God paid no heed to my cries. Our saviour handed the baton to the first-ever elected president, and retired with all perks and privileges.

Point to be noted here is that when need for real saviours was upon us, most of them were distracted by other ‘urgent and pressing matters’. A very senior writer calls it the death of the real idea of Pakistan. If that was going to be the turning point in our history, it certainly did not emerge as one. The country moved on and so did the people. Had the eastern wing not voted in favour of this country in the 1940s, this country perhaps would have not been able to emerge on the map of this world. A very few of us want to accept this bitter truth.

As odd as it may sound, the very first elected president, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, had to also become the very first civilian martial law administrator in our history, to act as another saviour. According to his vision and understanding, he went on the mission of rebuilding what he had termed as the ‘New Pakistan’. Needless to say he made his share of blunders, and was unable to save his own life. So for those of you rusty on the bitter lessons of history, we were at another crossroads of our history when a self-righteous general by the name of Zia-ul-Haq took it upon himself to seize the reins of our great country. Only God knows what went through his mind, but he wanted to save us from this sham lullaby of a western concept of voting and elections. Those who dared to disagree were awarded lashes in public. That was to remind us that the general meant business, and would not nudge or budge one bit. In 1988 his life ended in a plane crash near Bahawalpur.

The decade of 1990s saw some truly toothless saviours, and finally, a gentleman, a commando, a real saviour emerged from the Karachi airport, and took the pledge to save and rid us of all evils. The rest as they say is history. Some of you may say, well, what about the ones prior to the legendary General Yahya Khan; those inquisitive minds, all of the ones prior to Khan were before my times.

Going into these oft-repeated and well-known details have a logical reasoning. We the people are always looking for an imaginary saviour, the hero who would emerge from somewhere and will make it all right. You will find that in movies and, unfortunately, real life does not run on reels. No matter how many lofty promises you make or how passionate your speeches are, all of those go through the test of real time. Time, my friends, is very ruthless and does not discriminate against any one.

The print and electronic media repeats a slogan, as it is chanted at most political rallies. “Kaun bachaye ga Pakistan?” (Who is going to save Pakistan?) I cringe every time I hear that hollow slogan. Every political party claims that someone from their party can ‘save’ Pakistan. I often wonder if someone is ever going to ask: save from what? Even the so-called educated, enlightened and well-read, who yak their brains off at talk shows focus on only one aspect: corruption. According to their flawed thesis, if it were to be stopped, there will be milk and honey all over.

To those ‘bright minds’ that sell this lullaby to empty skulls, one often wants to ask: you move your magic wand and do it, how do you handle your internal and external existential threats? How do you tell your hostile neighbours like Afghanistan and India that you mean well? How do you instil a sense of safety in the general public that all monsters and zealots are eliminated? Perhaps the rallies and drives against the ill of corruption will do that magic. Perhaps the golden eggs hidden in offshore companies of Panama will do the trick. Or we can always look towards the skies for another saviour to emerge from somewhere. There are many who hope and wish that a saviour emerged from our twin cities.