Never has the plight of that nation been changed which doesn't want its lot to be changed...

that's the best translation i could come up with of the Quranic verse which has also been put into poetic word by Iqbal, but for all those who know it in urdu and th way it goes, take my word..i mean every word of what i just wrote.

This sunday our street was abuzz with VIP activity. It was learent that Shaukat azia and prolly musharraf was going to pay a visit to this extremely sycophantic of all journalists around, rather a newspaper owner who happens to live just two houses from ours. Five sweepers instead of the regular one were busy scrubbing off the road, truckload of gravel was standing nearby to fill in any of the small ditches in the street; fortunately for them, not a lot of work was needed since our street is pretty well maintained already. Wonder of all wonders, they piled back this truckload of concrete that my father had ordered for the repair work going on on our roof since that pile full of concrete would have scraed the president to death. Work was put on a halt cuz security demanded no movement on the roof tops.

Everything mentioned above is a routine affair in pakistan. That day it was, earlier it used to be someone else and tomorrow some other tax paying citizen of this country would be disgusted into cursing the system, the country, its leadership for sucking the blood out of us, for destroying the lot of the decent hard working people of this country and may seriously contemplate running off, abandoning everything, adopting some identity which would atleast afford him/her the pride of association, the satisfaction of recognition, the confidence in the leadership, the responsibility and stakes of ownership of the state. The rest, that unfortunate who couldn't make it out for some reason or the other can sit back, suffer and get used to the dynamics of a social order gone berserk.

But no one would take the responsibility, realise the stakes involved. My idea of hanging a black flag on our house as a sign of protest at the arrival of a usurper of OUR rights, a dictator, someone who gets scorned at in every drawing room of this sector where I live, was brushed aside. Who, When and How will then we register our protest? When will we assumne responsibility and own this country? For how long will we look to providence for miracles. Wasn't the Bandladesh debacle enough for us. As someone noted, Pakistan ceased to exist as the Quaid's Pakistan, the day we broke up and the meagre existance that we pledge our loyalty to on every 14th of August since then was wiped off legally by the suspension of the constitution on the 3rd of November. Are we still going to keep waiting???

caught in the bud or success atlast???

I thought people were just ignorant towards everything that's happenig in Pakistan, the mockery of law that's being made so vehemently and blatantly but after our black band move being subjected to taunts and jeers and reduced to a mere fashion statement and shugal by a vast majority of students, I have come to the sad conclusion that most of us have become sooo immune to being treated like animals who are content with merely the presence of basic necessities that we don't consider the absence of that chance to question, to doubt, to think as an anomaly at all and those few who do raise their voices are the lowly outcasts, the "ahl-e safa, mardood-e haram" waiitng in vain for their turn to be seated on the "masnad".

The loud cheers when one bus crosses the other on the Islamabad Highway or the mock "inqilab zindabad" and the "Go musharraf Go" placards that they held just for that one photograph and to make fun of our silent protest are a few of the sorry spectacles that they made of themselves out of sheer ignorance and apathy. But probably calling that ignorance is just an excuse;it's almost a justification for their behavior. It wasn't ignorance, ignorance is an innocous tool of the innocent. It wasn't innocense; the depolitisisation of educational institutions in the Zia era have turned a whole generation into a bunch of expedient, disoriented crowd which demands that right to breath, that right to education, to food, to shelter, to profits and material benefits but leaves its intellectual berth docked.

Anyways, it came to a temporary end with the VC calling us in. We talked and chatted and aughed at any random spill out of emotions but all in all it was a triumph. We talked in the VC'S office on politics. We tried to challenge the depoliticeised environment of the uni and we managed to break through that stiff, military air that hangs around the campus and guess what he booked us in on a discussion on politics. And though many tried to bog us down with their stares directed towards our arms bared off their black bands, we came out happy and jubilant.

We didnt win, the thinking, inspired human being in us did, the silent concience, the wailing intellect won.

reflections under emergency...

I'll live a sad life and die a tragic death; death of wasted passions, of quelled spirits. Hah! someone may say, did the world lose anything??? the wasted passions and the quelled spirits had to rot eventually.

But I'll say what I always say when I screw up my Structures quizzes, "Atleast I knew the concept...". Wonder if I can say that with such assurity about life. But c'mon, I wouldn't have spent my time milling into trash books or watching trash movies for life. And fine, even if I didnt (could not) march out on the streets to face emrgency and martial law and military coups, and mush-Bush and every other blemish on the face of human genius that is perpetrated in OUR name, (for heavens' sake...watever!) or even if I didnt always justify the rebel in me, there atleast was a conviction strong enough to get me labelled one.

And a correction needs to be made. I am not living like the rest of us. I SULK!

that's my REBELLION!!!