Expressions like that denote a gentle intention to speak about things that need to be spoken about. This phrase falls into a different category of figure of speech, which carries a definite tinge of earnestness, an underlying urge to share and a desire to convey to an attentive ear. That is for a select and more often an exclusive audience. However, earnestness and warmth normally touch people. A soul in distress, struck by grief, poverty or want has a mellower heart and if unaddressed is open to loathing and rebellion. Not that our fundamental social values of goodness, charity and compassion have changed but it is that their keepers and practitioners have been distracted and overtaken by the greedy, the unscrupulous and the cruel. It is this putrid environment where troubled minds convolute into vengefulness bent upon destruction and self-annihilation. In order to sense the rising disquiet one has to be able to hear the ominous rumble before it shakes society’s structure. Here are a few decomposing cherries from the bowl full to give one an idea of this insidious decay. Bestiality and cold disregard for human life is becoming pervasive in our society, fully commercialised by our poisonous crop of sectarian killers, Taliban terrorists and their sponsors. We have made human life quite meaningless and have added related crimes like kidnap, rape, robbery and arson as part of the devil’s package. Rule of law and provision of police security to the citizens have been crippled and discredited almost beyond redemption. Those with means are creating their own little fortresses of security bristling with armed deterrence to protect their families and homes while a vast mass of poorer people are turning towards local Tajis, Ranas and Gullus for protection. This means an evil cycle of crime, fear and criminal protection has been established outside and over the ambit of the eroding writ of the state. That is also why one sees the reappearance of jirgas and panchayats (tribal courts) sitting in session passing medieval judgments, crime bosses plying the roads at break neck speeds in their daunting bullet proof SUVs with menacing armed guards riding double cabins shooing off lesser fellow commuters with utter disdain. Just park yourself along the Islamabad Highway or the Mall in Lahore and witness the vulgar cinerama of the arrogance of undeserved power. Be sure you are out of harm’s way or else the consequences could be serious. Young Shahzeb made the fatal mistake of overtaking such a royal caravan (honourably acquitted Kanju’s) and paid for this with his life. It is immaterial now if the Chief Justice (CJ) of Pakistan expresses ‘shock’ and corresponding inability at his mother’s public refusal to pursue the case by the Supreme Court (SC) because she has long lost faith in the judiciary and the state both just as eyewitnesses were wilting off under coercion. Once again crime and its crude power have triumphed. There is nothing more indicative of drastic administrative and judicial paralysis in the country. But for an hour or so of flashy coverage of this truly horrible state of affairs, our voracious media conveniently forgot about the dreadful tragedy as they had other attractions like the juicier Ayyan Ali case and scandalous Dr Asim proceedings to drool over. While we make merry and sip our cups of abundance, this expanding torrent of burning lava might soon hit the rest of us and then there will be nobody to gloat over the Ayyans, Asims, Uzair Balochs or Saulat Mirzas nor will anyone care how grand a metro bus project was, how high is the pile of our dollar reserves or how lofty the SC and sacrosanct the Parliament House. Palmyra and Persepolis were grander when their occupants ruled the world; jackals and reptiles roam the ruins now. Our uncritical embrace of privilege and power too has started to stink from miles. Failure to dispense justice is an unforgivable atrocity against humanity. There are no exception clauses in the laws of nature either. Has anyone ever thought that a father could kick his 11-month-old daughter to death and why? The other shoots his two teenage daughters to clear the way for a second marriage and an uncle kills his 13-year-old nephew for a measly piece of property. Then there was a case of an unsuspecting girl with a Master’s degree lured in by her trusted colleague, molested by a gang of his friends, killed and tossed out of a third floor window in Rawalpindi. Such heinous disgrace; how come? I think an Indian bench of justices was far more courageous when it observed that Muslim men’s practice of polygamy as an ordained right is erroneous. A concession once granted becomes a right with practice and so is the case with polygamy in Islam. One wishes our justices of the lofty Shariat Court or the self-satisfied Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) could show stronger moral mettle. That our hoarse religious, political and chic social activists could stand up to male licentiousness and the nightmarish oppression of girls-must-get-married syndrome in our society. Life is not all about getting married only; persona is more important than the person. The dignity of a person matters intrinsically more than the compulsion to practice rites. In our society, the Muslim male is privileged to the nth degree; he has the royal right to select his bride out of a herd of eligible girls with complete disregard for the self-respect of those whom he rejects literally publically. He is allowed to maltreat his wife and throw her out whenever it so pleases him without any recourse for her to any legal counsel, fiqh based or social remedy. This literal female lynching and liquidation must stop. One has to visit family courts to realise how divorce cases have mushroomed uncontrollably. In Lahore alone, divorce and dissolution of marriage cases in courts jumped from 75,000 between 2005 to 2008 to 1,24,000 between 2008 and 2014. As a result, close to 2,59,000 marriages were dissolved in the provincial metropolis alone. Just because the Muslim male is not accountable on this score and our society has abdicated its collective responsibility to set up responsible parenthood to the crow eaters. We may be at the verge of an implosion that can destroy our society completely. (To be continued) The writer is a retired brigadier of the Pakistan army and can be reached at clay.potter@hotmail.com