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???