Intellesctuals Corner

 BY NISMA CHAUHAN 
https://www.facebook.com/UROOJ.RIAZZ     

            Because the glass is half full – a tale of an overseas                                               Pakistani (part2)

Having lived abroad I always thought it was my responsibility to build a positive image of my country. So I followed the rules I had learned while growing up:

·         Don’t discuss issues of your country with strangers. (By strangers I mean non-Pakistanis)

·         Always and forever understand that whatever is happening in your country is mainly because of outside forces.

·         Believe everything that you see isn’t true. Media exaggerates!

·         Never give up on your country. After every heavy rain there is sunshine.

And so I happened to follow these rules religiously. But only later did I understand that if I don’t talk about Pakistan to my mates I have grown up with, which happen to be mostly ‘strangers’ , I am hiding away a part of my identity. Yet, I never questioned my rules and went about them.

When I came back to Pakistan to pursue my bachelors degree, my conversations about my daily life to my friends back in Muscat included, ‘Hey, I was stuck in traffic for hours, because of a protest against load shedding.’

‘I am early from university today. There was a gang fight.’

‘Let’s talk tonight. No university tomorrow. The city is shutdown.’

Le friend: ‘What’s that noise?’

Le Me: ‘A bomb just exploded, I am going to call you back!’

And so that image I was trying to build all these years of my life just got ruined. So, that is how the cycle continues, over and over. People ask about issues in your country. You try to defend it. And on it goes

Honestly, at times I do think if I wasn’t born a Pakistani, may be just ‘may be’ life would have been a little easier. I wouldn’t have had to face all those queries and interrogation. I wouldn’t have had to deal with load shedding, protests, riots, gunshots, bombs, and what not.

I try to find answers for it all. So, if I were asked about the ‘whys’ and ‘hows’, I could at least withstand a proper argument. So I turn up to my elders and question them.

When I ask them ‘why’ things turned out to be the way they are today, they usually spend an hour telling me ‘how’ things turned haphazard and that external forces were involved. BUT my question remains unanswered. That ‘why’ that haunts me, laughs at my face! It reminds me of a dialogue from a movie I had watched while growing up.

“Don’t tell me what caused the cancer and its symptoms; instead tell me why it happened at the first place.” If you are Asian, you know what movie I am talking about.

How am I going to throw a counter argument and try to make Pakistan look innocent and others the bad guys? How am I going to make everything fall into pieces and stand head high? Am I still supposed to follow those rules? Or perhaps delete the word Pakistan and anything related to it out of my conversations?

No. I can’t. In fact I know I can never have all the answers!

 However, building a positive image isn’t my responsibility but what I choose to do. So I am just going to consider the glass half full!