Every generation boasts of certain kinds of men and women, of course, it is a result of the times one lives in, it shapes individuals and personalities, it gives impetus to certain traits to flourish in the people who live in that time. What is the character of Pakistani women and men in the beginning of the 21st century? Who are the twenty-and thirty somethings in Pakistan today and what do they think about? What motivates them and drives them and how are they raising their families if they have any. And, then what of the older generation who have seen a different Pakistan also, one that was relatively safe and secure place with no polarities of caste and ethnicity and also between the rich and the poor.
The women in this country, ranging from young to the old, across the whole society are FAST and by that I don't mean what it used to mean in the old days, of loose morals, no, I mean they are cunning and calculating. Why this blunt accusation you may very fairly ask? Just see around yourself - gone are the servile, gentle, kind and nurturing images of females, and the soft women of my mother's generation. Now we have what is usually called the 'assertive' woman. She knows her rights (oh, yes) and is all out to protect them, this isn't just in the upper echelons of the society its found at all levels and in every income group. She is a little ahead of protecting her rights, but, the rights and liberties of person she has come to discover have no relationship to 'dignity' and 'pride' in oneself and has all the manifestations of ruthless 'self-preservation' and looking out for oneself at no matter what cost.
Now the twenty and thirty years olds do not look for love in marriage they look at statistics and bank-balance. They want to have the lifestyle of the rich, and if not that at least be comfortable. And in this process if they bag an already much married man, of wife and kids, so what? all is acceptable! all is doable in the 21st century Pakistani society. The cell phone has done for women's lib here what no women's movement could have even dared to presume to have achieved in the next 100 years, suddenly, as though with a flick of a magic-wand the chadar and chardiwari, that is the domain of women (segregation and protection within the four walls) have disappeared. Now, every woman has access to the outside world, and of course to that forbidden of all things - strange men! so, we have maids having affairs over the cell, and texts being received when they cannot be read, and we have middle class women having trysts on the phone that were impossible before. I must give these women that much credit, they have used the upcoming technology to their advantage and what was a race of demure women have suddenly transformed into neo-amazons.
We have forward women, who are taking the plunge, but the plunge sadly is in only one direction and that is to safe-guard themselves of a husband or a sugar-daddy, why can't women in this day and age come to respect themselves a little more and stop relying on men so much! why must all their fastness and shrewdness be focused on hooking up the right man so that then they can put their feet up and be 'kept' just like a cow or a dog!
So as far as I am concerned, the women' lib here has totally gone askew. And women instead of empowering themselves have used their charms to better catches, to richer husbands and even richer boy-friends. And in this search of all searches, no one is spared, no other woman is sacred. Women go after best friend's husbands, other women's husbands and fiancee's and of course colleagues who are married and spoken for. All is kosher, and the thing is that people around them accept these dangerous liaisons as being most acceptable and correct, as if it were the most natural of things for a husband not to bring his wife out in society, but attend functions hand-in-hand with women friends. We do not 'mind' say if a woman is in the public process of snatching another woman's husband and wreaking havoc on a family, all is done in the name of that elusive of feelings - love - which evaporates at the first sight of real life. So our women are empty in the head and quite full in other aspects, they are rich of things and poor of thoughts, they have coquettish nonsense for slow and stupid men who fall for their ludicrous charms and all the more ridiculous ways!
If women have become predatory and are out on a hunt whats with the vapid and insipid men of today's Pakistan? They are definitely not a catch, with or without money, with or without a wife or a girl-friend and certainly can win a contest world-wide on being most boring, ill-read, uncouth, sloppy, vacuous of idiots that ever trampled the earth in all geological times. What can our men talk of? HMMM not much besides, fast women, even faster cars, and the fastest ways of making money. And it amazes, me, with all this fastness going on around them, how they still manage to stay oafish.
Men, here, have no conversation worth mentioning, because they actually believe reading comprises of a glance at front-page of a daily paper, and conversation of the 'breaking-news' broken every 30 minutes on the hour by multitudes of news channels. And wonder of all wonders, this ill-read and un-informed men actually take it as god's own truth that they are the best thing that could have happened to this planet since the extinction of dinosaurs.
My humble request to these strange shadowy creatures who have the responsibility of raising a generation, is, please have pride in what you are and not what you own, for in the end you are what you believe in, what values you live by and you can live a true and authentic life by believing in the truth that we are not what we own or possess!
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