PENSIEVE: Death of an optimist —Farrukh Khan Pitafi

The argument that the scope of devastation could not be foreseen is absurd. So is the lame excuse that when great powers cannot fight natural disasters, how can we. It is our country and we should have done enough to set our home in order

Temporal anomalies, eddies of time, never cease to amuse me in terms of literary speculation. If we were to ever develop temporal technologies I am sure my country could benefit from it by altering important existential issues created at its very birth. For instance, the Quaid could be requested not to engage in ideational debates, never leave behind for us any quotes that could be employed by the extremists/fundamentalists to hijack our polity in the name of religion, and oh of course in his name. Likewise, perhaps, some heed could be paid to planning and development. But the sad part is that such time altering technology does not exist and given the fact that our advanced physics institutes keep fighting the menace of plagiarism, nor is there any hope of us ever achieving it. So, in the current state of affairs I have practically given up hope and carried out a dignified funeral of the optimist in me.

Once upon a happy time I was quite an optimist. Whenever someone said that there was no hope left for us I would spontaneously come into action and try infusing the talk with my own glimpses of the brighter side of life. Before his death, some 18 years ago, my late father used to spend countless hours sharing his worldview with me. I am thankful for those exchanges because while I did my best to resist his views, purely intellectually of course, today they define and shape my everyday life. He was not a cynic but he was also not an unrealistic optimist. At his funeral, I buried my resistance to his thoughts along with him. This year and this month when due to the devastating floods his grave was submerged along with my village, my optimism too sank under water.

Here is a nation that could have been great by now. A nation that could have been an example of developmental triumph in the world of underdogs, but alas it is not. The floods that have ravaged our nation provide a classic example. After speculating about imminent droughts and water wars with India, nature proved our cynical obsession with the endgame wrong and inundated us with water, and yet after destroying our homes and lives, where would the water go? To the oceans where there is already no dearth of water. I can only wish that we were able to build dams and water channels that could irrigate our lands for ages and help us in controlling such disasters. Yet that we will not do because we actually never want to change. There is no limit to shame-faced euphemism in the Islamic Republic. When you try reflecting on the countless number of souls that perished in the catastrophe and the humungous number displaced, people rush to remind you of Hurricane Katrina. What they forget is that ineptness in one case does not justify incompetence in another. This water could have been put to better use and we could perhaps have saved countless lives. The argument that the scope of devastation could not be foreseen is absurd. So is the lame excuse that when great powers cannot fight natural disasters, how can we. It is our country and we should have done enough to set our home in order. It is not a calamity like the earthquake, which is spontaneous or impossible to anticipate. Had all departments been doing their bit, the country would have clearly taken maximum advantage of the showers. By using Katrina as an excuse we try to avoid the accountability of the incompetent responsible for the current state of affairs.

But if this disgusts you, hark what disgusts me more. Every day, I come across people who think that God is punishing us for our sins. But if that were true why would He not punish those who are exploiting the current situation to their advantage? Why kill and destroy innocent people when you could destroy with one whiff all the hoarders, black marketeers, looters, plunderers and the opportunists in power, elected or otherwise? I think this has nothing to do with His retribution. The fact of the matter is that when we want to hide from the mirror we take refuge in His invisible form. As a nation what we are discussing today is obnoxious. Gossip, dear readers, will not get us anywhere. If you want to taste the bitterness of reality then know this fact: recently we tried to gather some relief goods through a televised relief campaign. Interestingly, the number of callers was great, but most of them wanted to comment on the situation rather than making any substantial contribution. When I thought that a similar exercise by other broadcasters, thanks to their better vision, might have borne better results, and hence checked, I was disabused of this notion too. We have become a disgusting group of couch potatoes, apt at commenting but doing nothing for our fellow citizens.

Nation-building is not accomplished this way. If we ever want to be anything more than a beggar nation, we will have to learn to move our fat backsides and do something for a better future. Our misery is such that we do not find even young poets writing angry poems on the sad state of affairs. Now do you want me to remain an optimist? I am sure you are mistaken if you do.

As a citizen I have been obsessed with my country. My friends and relatives always kept asking me to go settle abroad because there was no hope left here and I always quarrelled with that. But today it is almost unbearable to look at their smug faces and hear words like “We told you so.” The prognosis of this nation’s maladies is that we as a nation do not want to mature or learn anything. And I can only hope and pray that when the day of maturity comes, it is not too late already. And I have selfish reasons behind this too. I do not want my lifelong passion, love and suffering for this country to go down the drain.

The writer is an independent columnist and a talk show host. He can be reached at farukh@gmail.com