We are facing one. And that too of a gargantuan proportion. Who exactly are 'we' as people? How does one define what a 'typical' Pakistani is all about? Or for that matter is there even a thing called a typical Pakistani? Well we are all a bit confused, aren't we? about what constitutes a Pakistani, what are his essential characteristics and what things set him apart from other subspecies.
I can't think of any peculiar attributes that make a person Pakistani? how weird is that? how very strangely improbable and downright impossible. I have been thinking and racking my brains to come up with a list of things that Pakistanis are generally known for but for the life of me nothing comes up! I have after constant thinking come up with a negative list - of what we are not? perhaps that would shed some light on what we are??? albeit negatively??
1.Pakistanis are not practical people. Ground reality escapes us. We see things in large scale and forget the here and now, what is and what ought to be. The fact that we are tearing at the seams and are piling one on top of another like sardines squashed together means nothing to us, every woman wants a huge family and of course every man wants to see little clones of himself repeated infinitely --- population explosion be damned.
2. We lack the ability to empathize. We can only relate to us, ourselves, our families and our friends. A very restricted circle makes our world, and what happens to strangers, people living in the other parts of town, people being mauled and killed a distance of half hour away, concerns us not! for we are xenophobic, we have no capacity to think of others. Our world is a limited restricted world having no place and refuge for those who do not belong. People from lower income groups dying away every day over meaningless issues and turf wars are mere statistics to us, numbers only that we proudly confess not bothering us since it happens all the time.
3. We don't have any pride in ourselves. We are intolerably complexd. In fact we are totally humiliated on account of being Pakistanis. Unsure of our place in this world, not confident of our larger image (for we don't have any) we are ashamed of being a Pakistani! Our origins, our country, our background appalls us and we are very very worried and ashamed of who we are! especially when traveling abroad. We don't want to be searched from top to toe, we don't want to be suspected of terrorism, of cheating or of being a part of a jihadi group, all understandably so, but we have no recourse to fall back on, no positive attributes that we can call for in such situations because we are forever trying to shrug off our nationality!
4. We don't believe in dignity, integrity, honesty, humility. We are self-serving, self-preserving myopic nation who only looks after our own limited interests and miss the larger picture.
5. We as a people do not value our elders, our stories, our histories, our legends, our language, our folklore, our literature, our unsung heroes.
6. We as a nation, do not respect our women - foreign women we sometimes are in awe of e.g Hillary Clinton, Lady Diana, but our women naaaaaaaaaaa! why should we? Where is the need? We still lament the birth of a girl, we still feel that men- sons are the true carriers of our names into posterity, we still nurse the illusions that sons will take care of the parents in their old age - as if.
7. We are not clean - either in heart, soul or our intentions. We are forever lying and scheming in ways that 'dissimilitude' has become second nature to us. We think saying half-truths, feigning, and giving the wrong idea about something to another is part of life and must be adhered to.
8. We are not kind to our animals.
9. We are not kind to our children, long live child labor!
10. We are not true to our own selves.
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