With a temperature of 45°Centigrade, scorching sun was giving a false speculation of some volcano which was about to erupt without any prior intimation. This extreme weather condition was casting direct effects onto the already inappropriate behavior of a group of people who would never give consent to stand in a queue even in cool breeze and rather, would go for some short cut. Hence, everybody was just quarrelling to get packs of utilities on discounted rates in the first place. In the meanwhile, a man apparently belonging to a mediocre family just crossed everybody else by pushing them aside and asked the distributor to give him 15 packs urgently by tactfully putting a note of 1000 rupees in the pocket of distributor and was on his way back home in next couple of minutes.
Scenarios like the one mentioned above are a common insight in our milieu, where we are either ignorant to following a culture of proper methods similar to other civilized nations or just consider following a ‘rule of thumb’ as an attempt to lowering our self-esteem. Though Pakistan is the only Islamic country which is a nuclear state yet the achievement of this status has also put certain liabilities on us as a nation.
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter – Dr. Martin Luther King Jr
The ignorance to these mandatory obligation can result in (and is already resulting in) catastrophes from getting our nuclear arms controlled by militants to imposing of various sanctions by VETO countries. On the part of administration, though producing nuclear arms is also equally important particularly when your neighboring country India is also a nuclear state, whose annual warfare budget is increasing incrementally yet, serious effort is needed to curb this this rat race of armaments and to give due importance to the development of other sectors.
Nation is not something whose formation takes place in a day or two. So, if a nation keeps on sticking to its mundane behavior of shifting of responsibility onto the shoulders of others then, we must remain mentally prepared that somebody would soon give us the title of a ‘herd of cattle’ instead of a nation. Together with this, instead of hockey, “blame game” has become our national game where instead of fulfilling our own duties; a cancer of shunning our accountabilities has become widespread.
Being under matriculate and pretending to give an expert opinion about the political system of Pakistan and holding government accountable is a piece of cake of for us but nobody even wants to bother about the individual roles and responsibilities for bringing our country at par with the international standards of excellence. The same has also been captured by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and I quote that “our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter”. His quote is the true depiction of our behaviors.
How can a nation question its administration about power failures when it spends millions of rupees on lightening of houses during spendthrift weddings? Nobody would have come across with such an insane nation who attempts to hoard cuisines of various
cultures on dining tables and then complain about the inadequate supply of natural gas. We come across with two extremes in our nation, either the misers or the spendthrifts. Instances of spending extravagantly on our celebrations, births, deaths, funerals, religious celebrations, cultural celebrations, obsession of brands and brand consciousness from needles to diamonds is making us poor psychologically as it has blocked our thinking capacity where we don’t want to think other than the pre-defined lines. When the basis of these ridiculous acts is probed then, the reasons constitute of psychosomatic dilemmas of proving others from lower financial backgrounds and maintenance of our fake aura of showing off our wealth.
The stance that I want to make over here is that the biological ‘law of diffusion’ says that the constituents move from a region of higher concentration to a region of lower concentration. In the same way, these habits of extravagant expenditures have raised their radius to all walks of life and as a result, we have become blind folded towards several other issues of national and international importance.
It is our individual behavior of not getting our children vaccinated against Polio which is resulting in sanctions on our travelling to other countries. It not the government but we the people who despite being aware of water scarcity are in habit of keeping our taps running while taking bath or brushing our teeth. In short, it is these little drops of water which can make the mighty oceans as per the poem of Julia A. Carney.
In the same way, even the developing nations like India are sending their space missions whereas, we are still struggling on the sight of moon and celebration of 2 Eids (religious celebration of Muslims). Similarly, conflict prone country like Sri Lanka has raised its literacy rate to above 95% whereas, our parents still quarrel with each other that which university would be more suitable for their children.
Talking on religious grounds, though Islam is the religion of peace where it stresses upon the tolerance and harmony yet, we as nation have become so intolerant to individual differences that clash of timings of Salah (prayers) and not getting desired seat in an airbus ignites our sectarian and inter-group clashes respectively. Likewise, starting our office routines as late as 09:00 am in the morning results in wasting of 4 precious hours of day light whose efficient usage could have resulted in addressing energy crises on individual the level.
When coming to roads and parking our cars, every one of us wants to park his or her car under the shade of tree but when it comes to planting new trees or responding to call for plantation of new trees during plantation campaigns, we just become deaf to such calls. In terms of eating, we all are fond of enjoying delicious delicacies but when it comes to disposing off of wrappers in dump bins, we become of the view that the tag of ‘use me’ on bins is for some other creature. Spit trails of pan masalas on roads, violating red signals, paying least regard to punctuality of time, absence of ownership for the maintenance of public properties and lack of room for physically challenged people are the few instances which are directly antithetical to the habits of economically stable nations.
Concluding with an excerpt from Julia’s poem, I would like to restate that
So our little errors
Lead the soul away
From the paths of virtue
Into sin to stray
In a nutshell, these are going to be our individual acts which are (will be) be the real cause of our devastation and lagging behind in the row of respected nations of the world.
