But what sort of way is this, to prove one’s love and dedication? Burning up cars and trucks, breaking shops and people’s faces, terrorizing others around you – it all symbolises a nation submerged so far deep into frustration that it would take nothing less than a supernatural force to drag it out before it drowns. And what we do within the boundaries of our lavishly decorated homes, while watching this on TV is shake our heads with disappointment at the conditions of our country. Curse the politicians, curse the people, curse the country, then have dinner and plop down on our beds for a good night’s sleep. Oh and then when we cannot find the excuse for the occurrence of the event – cannot find enough witnesses to blame it on – we blame it on Islamic extremism. Yes of course, our brother by religion Osama sitting in some god forsaken cave of Afghanistan – the Director of world wide terrorism – is always ready to take the blame! Some video or the other miraculously appears out of no where just in time to prove to the world that it has INDEED been Al-Qaeda that blew up some random truck in a random part of the world. It is this kind of a supernatural force – one that conjures up videos on the nick of time and knows EXACTLY how to manoeuvre the media – that our country needs to steer itself towards sanity.

We are a nation, numb – devoid of any feeling whatsoever towards the agonies constantly being inflicted on our society as Pakistanis and as Muslims. Every time an incident occurs that could be classified as miles apart from humanitarianism, our television channels are bombarded with the most retarded of songs and video clippings to commemorate the loss of whatever it is that has been lost. Television channel logos go black and white to represent the supposed grief our nation feels. Three days later, it is back to the same old half clad girls prancing on television to sell the most unnecessary of products and worthless TV shows that make our lives miserable rather than easy. If we were not so numb, such events would have easily triggered an unstoppable revolution that would have reached far and wide affecting us positively and leading this nation-gone-astray closer to sensibility. I am not saying that we live forever inundated by the tears of grief for the destruction around us, keeping aside everything else. Life has to be taken as it comes, but at the same time what is happening should NEVER stop affecting us. Things need to be done individually and collectively. It is exactly events like these that caused the Third Estate in France to rebel and bring about a revolution, discarding the monarchy, corruption and uneven distribution of wealth that plagued the country. Burning and breaking what belongs to our country and people is not what will lead to the revolution. It is intelligently using our strength as an unstoppable mob to bring down the selfish, power-thirsty individuals that are constantly struggling to force us into a hypnosis of helplessness and poverty of money and free-thinking.