An Afterthought

Taking advantage of a rather long weekend my cousin’s family had come to spent their Sunday with us. With them was their beautiful little daughter who barely started speaking a couple of months back. Like most Pakistani families this past Sunday, we spent most of our day huddled around the television watching the developing political situation, listening to the rumor mills running all day long while having our own seemingly endless discussions. In the midst of our clueless talk, we literally forgot little Ayat for a while, she was roaming around the house on her new found legs, trying her best to keep everyone and herself some company. She was busy with herself when her words suddenly caught our attention, the words ‘dharna hoga dharna hoga’ uttered in broken Urdu were coming from a 27 months old who happens to be a 4th generation Pakistani child, not knowing the significance of what she just said. It had an impact! Suddenly, everyone fell silent as her words echoed in the room and perhaps, somewhere in our consciousness too. I looked at her father to see his response, he was staring at his little child rather impassively, then he got up and switched off the TV and I knew that was the end of our discussion. Soon afterwards, when everyone appeared to have forgotten this otherwise minor incident, I asked him what was he thinking and he said, ‘I was wondering what she’s inheriting from us?’ I added, ‘not just her but her whole generation’ and he nodded.

In a way, I had a first hand experience of witnessing the same old legacy that made us to suffer for more than 60 years, being effectively passed on to a child representing a generation that as yet, is oblivious to its past, present or future. The painful part, is the fact that, I’ve no idea about the number of children who would have got poisoned and polluted by this national legacy. Our sensationalized media onslaught and its indifference towards the people have added a reason to add to this pollution. Being a third generation Pakistani myself, I feel that so far my generation [including myself, of course] with our predecessors has failed this country. We as people, have made this a habit of failing and then absolving ourselves by expecting from others to undo our mistakes. I grew up listening to elders brooding about their past and hoping the next generation might turn the tide and would in the process also redeem them. That’s what our first two generations did and I hate to say this but I am afraid, this might well be the case with us.

I don’t know what would be our legacy when we die or may be, that would be irrelevant to history but we need to realize that we’ve to be responsible of ourselves and whatever little space we occupy around it. In all this heat of the excitement of making changes on the political horizon, we must not forget its social repercussions and the effect it leaves on the society as a whole. We have to be sure and mature to act and react responsibly, its not just us, it’s the children too who are affected because we have compromised them, their innocence is at stake here. We need to be very sure that what we consider to be progression is not regression, or even suppression, in disguise. This country cannot afford to lose another generation, we need to redefine not just ourselves but this mindset we have carried enough to know it won’t work anymore. This forged political and social culture has to mend its way before it gets too late.

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