Is Pakistan among the Luckiest Nation in the world

By Omar Javaid ...

I often think that Pakistan is among the luckiest nation in the world! … Surprised? Or thinking that the author must have gone nuts? Lost his senses perhaps? … Please hold your judgments for a minute and go through a couple of lines before jumping on to conclusions. Have you ever thought why we often jump on to conclusions despite realizing that the information we have isn’t sufficient enough … impatience perhaps? And Pakistanis are impatient indeed … haven’t you driven across the busy streets in Karachi or any other metropolis?

I was thinking, why so? We drive frantically and yet we are mostly late on our commitments! How many the people you know qualify as punctual ones? … Are we too busy or overburdened? … Too busy to not let the ambulance pass by on a busy street … too busy to block the traffic by parking our car at the wrong place … or to stop on the read light (in Karachi at least) … or to make judgments without sufficient knowledge … or to get any where on time … but hey I was to explain how we are among the luckiest nation on this planet, when I am gona do that? … hold on dear, are you too busy as well to wait a couple of minutes before I make my point …?

Dear readers if you need an answer then you must allow me to solve this riddle i.e. why we seem too busy and yet we miss out many important things … but hey it can also be our carelessness … we lack the civic sense that is needed … it not necessarily because we consider ourselves busy … or perhaps it is our arrogance, Nawab mentality i.e. considering ourselves above the law, even moral law … hmmm may be that’s the reason, we only act as if we are too busy … perhaps this also explain why we consider it as our right to park our car in the center of the road and blocking the flow for hundreds of car behind … or consider it our right to import and drink tea of Rs. 2.2 billion per year, i.e. caffeine despite realizing that it has more detriments then benefits … or consider it our right to sleep as late as possible and waking up as late as possible despite realizing that our this behavior alone burns out hundreds of megawatts of electricity … or consider it our right to elect the same politicians who have venomously bitten us many times already … or consider it our right to increase prices of products when public needs it most, like during the month of Ramadan, like the fares of taxi and rickshaws when its raining, like price of mineral water bottles at railway station particularly when the train gets late … or consider it our right to watch Indian channels without realizing the influence it’s creating on our morality, traditional and cultural values … or consider it our right or even take pride in speaking English despite and consider those who doesn’t as inferior … or consider it our right to loot, plunder and destroy property of public in protest of a bomb blast or murder of a politician … or consider it our right to immobilize the whole city in the love of our Prophet (SAW) again on his presumed day of birth or destroy public property on his (SAW) insult … the list can go on and on and I am sure that the readers can add to the list, only to provide more proofs in favor of hypothesis that ‘we as a nation are slowly on a course of collective suicide’ … the citizen of this nation are like termites gone crazy, eating the foundation of their own abode in order to survive … and I haven’t yet counted the external threats being faced by Pakistan today … hasn’t been this our national character since many decades?

If so then why shouldn’t I call this country among the luckiest nation despite it being on the course of suicide since a very long time, is still alive and holds strategic significance on international fronts …?

Or perhaps I am too naïve … or perhaps I don’t know that nations take more time to collapse … it’s the last year or perhaps the last decade we are living in … or may be not …

I don’t claim to know everything, that’s why I can’t give a definite answer, but who can? …  what I do know is that something is keeping us alive till date … why we haven’t experienced something as yet like what Bosnians did during 1990s, or like Chechens, or like people of Darfur, or like Iraqis, or like Afghanis, or like Tajiks, or like Palestinians experiencing today etc … may be the endogenous or exogenous circumstances they faced were unique … wait, wait, wait …  Kashmir is a part of Pakistan and the people there are suffering no different then Palestinians or like Bosnians did some years back …

Hmmm … can we assume that Kashmiris are paying off for our national sins? Is it due to their sacrifices that rest of Pakistanis are still at peace though relatively! …

Imagine if Kashmir wouldn’t have been a bone of contention among India and Pakistan, then what kind of relations India might have with Pakistan? I know, some of you would never dare to think that in absence of Kashmir issue Indian attitude toward Pakistan would be much more aggressive because Indian would have a huge battery of resources available for a greater cross-national mischief! … a recent survey by an international research agency has revealed that majority of Pakistan consider Indians as the greatest threat to the country … but perhaps the same majority elects all corrupt politicians! ... then how can we trust the majorities opinion … or perhaps the politicians don’t get elected by majorities opinion!!! Which of these two points are correct?

We were trying to find out what’s keeping Pakistan safe … I must rather ask, should we really need to find it out? This ‘Something’ which is keeping Pakistan away from a fatal catastrophe is perhaps serving its purpose only because it’s hidden either within our souls or within the boundaries of our nation … no it’s the not the Nukes stupid … that ‘Something’ is perhaps even guarding those nukes … no it’s not the army or ISI or any other agency or institution, stupid! … that ‘Something’ is even keeping some of these critical institutions or agencies to perform duties, or perhaps they are also not aware of it … don’t try to guess it … that ‘Something’ is serving its purpose only because its hidden away from majority of the population … and that ‘Something’ must be very precious because it has the power to keep this nation away from a fatal catastrophe … and that ‘Something’ can only serve its purpose only if remains hidden unless majority among us develops the ability to protect it; rather we as a nation have a tendency to plunder and squander every good thing we get our hands upon … or sell it off against pennies to our international masters ... so it must remain hidden! ... Only those who have the ability to protect it know what it really is, and that’s only few of us … and at least I am not among them!

It is this ‘Something’ which is making this nation among the luckiest nations of this planet, and I only intends to point your attention toward this ghostly thing only to remind you that Al-Mighty hasn’t already become hopeless from us … if you are intelligent then you must have guessed it … the time for us to confess and repent is not over yet … and as a nation we still have a chance … but if we don’t chose to wakeup and fix our attitude and character then what really our Creator (SWT) would do to save us from becoming the next Bosnia? ... The choice has always been ours.