Monday, March 16, 2009

"Pakistan in 2020" -SpeechCommunication

On just another typical day of my life, I was skimming through a really old photo album in which I was just a little thumb sucking brat …in that I came across a picture of me with my aunt and my uncle…my uncle had a long beard with the mustache being clean shaved and my aunt was wearing a long black silky dress and her head was covered with what we used to call hijab just a few years ago……
and at that moment it actually occurred to me, that you never see men with beards in Pakistan anymore!!

And women don’t wear these dresses nowadays at all……barely anyone has their head covered, let alone covering their body with that long piece of black cloth…..why is this so?? What happened to the people around me in such short time?? The album that I hold in my hand would be at max just 30 years old……and 30 yrs is not a very long time… for cultures and societies to change themselves!!!

This thought got me thinking…that everything has just changed around me….even me a 32 year old woman is now working and living alone without any troubles…totally independent….something that was not found in our country, our culture, our society even less than 10 years ago……

’10 yrs is nothing, it’s a very short time’ I remember perfectly my college graduation cuz it wasn’t so far back…..yeah it was the same year ………2011………….when it all started happening in Pakistan……..the bombing…and the war on terror.. got so out of hand that people started questioning our own religion….we blamed people with beards for the extremism…and for the unstoppable suicide bombing… the masses started protesting against all violent acts…..the rich and the powerful used all their powers..to get rid of the so called mullahs from our society…..they used all means necessary to persuade the govt. to do the same……thousands were killed……millions went into hiding or ran away to Afghanistan……….

All of this sparked a revolution in the country which caused most people to forget the words under which Pakistan was made “ la illaha ill allah”. This did not only mean that there is only one God but it also meant that we should’ve followed what God told us to follow. I knew what these words meant but somehow I barely had time to bow down in prayer to Him, these words weren’t an integral part of my life anymore.

How did Pakistan become a place where men and women could live together without getting married……where women would walk on streets dressed in the least moderate of ways………where men and women would have so much competition amongst each other in the job market they would give up their families and religion just to succeed…….

Then it came into my head and struck me like bullet….and I thought this isn’t actually bad….or is it??? In fact was it actually our religion Islam that was holding us back from all this liberalization, this development?

I shut the album and kept it on the shelf. Looking through 10th floor apartment window, my gaze swept the city below me, the only thing I remembered being the same all my life was the setting sun. At one point in time I used to have 3 cars at my disposal, now I, like the masses used the Monorail. Petrol was a luxury and only the richest 10 families in Pakistan had access to it.

There were no shops in the urban setting where I live because everyone shopped online. Shope did exist in the slums though. But how does it make sense to go out shopping for things? I remember doing so myself back then too….well… I must’ve had a lot of time then….As the glittering lights became brighter over the twilight I thought of the days I used to spend in the dark when there was loadshedding, well atleast some evils were now eliminated!!

These thoughts depressed me. I didn’t have time to think. I had a lot of work to do. How did my life become so busy that I couldn’t spare myself a good 10minutes to just reminisce about the past? I must get to work, for I was just a part of the system now. A mere “cog in the machine”.

xoxo

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