someone sent me this text message today:
a man died and went to heaven . there he saw a large wall of clocks.
Man: “what are these for?”.
Angel: ” these are ‘lie clocks’.every person has a lie clock. every time you lie, the clock moves.
Man:” whose clock is that?”
Angel: “that is Muhammad Bin Qasim’s clock. its never moved, showing that he never lied”.
Man: “where is Zardari’s clock?”
Angel: ” that is in our office. we use that as a CEILING FAN”.
regardless of going into the humor of this joke, I Was looking at it from another angle. it portrays the general psychology of our nation. it shows us several things about our nations attitude towards world in general.
the first thing is to thrash everyone and anyone who is running the country at the present moment. be it Ayub Khan, Nawaz Sharif, Musharraf, or any other person we have always criticised without giving any alternatives.the personality does not matter. had it been any other person other than Zardari, the joke would have simply replaced his name with that of the other. our whole energies are wasted on getting the incumbant out of the office and getting someone new into it. and once that has happened, the circus repeats.
the second thing is the way we dont really have any Heroes and we try to snatch them from other nations, usually Arabs. to become a hero, the test is simple. one, he should be an Muslim. two, he should have been an Army man.think about Ghaznavis, the MB Qasims etc. little wonder that Armymen have enjoyed the most ruling time in this country. psychologically we are prepared for an Army man to be our hero.
the third thing is that we dont have heroes of our own. so we have to borrow them from other nations. and if we produced someone in this nation, we have made sure that they either go into self-exile (Dr. Salam) or are imprisoned ( Dr. Qadeer). I mean as far as the above joke goes, we could have replaced the name of Muhammad bin Qasim with someone who was much more relevent. I am going to tell you his name: Malik Miraj Khalid. he was from PPP, he had humble backgrounds, and he was an honest man. if you just want to see a former president, try Ghulam Ishaq. whatever his flaws, the truth is that he was an honest man who never made single penny for himself while he was in the government. even his opponents his do not have anything bad to say about his fiscal responsibility. so we have our heroes. we just ignore them and dont give them the proper respect they deserve.
so, this in a nutshell, shows the dilemma of our nation. we have not been able to tell whether we are Pakistanis first or muslims first. we have not sorted out our priorities. we dont know whether we want to be secular or religious. and if religious, what kind of sect? and i think that is the reason we have been behind all the nations.
certainly we have failed in helping to catapult ourselves to the top tier of nations. God has not been of much help either, because after all he says that he helps those who help themselves.
VOXMOODZ 