3rd March. Lahore, Pakistan

3, March. Lahore. Pakistan. The Great Tragedy of Sri Lankan Cricket Team.


A friend of mine observed how sad and gloomy was weather. A chill in it of horror and guilt, of mourning. Everything was shaken. Students' faces. Teachers. Hearts. Walking foots that were stumbling. Tongues constantly stammering. Whole existence of ours, 'stupefied, mortified and petrified'. No less terrified. As if everyone was watching nightmares happen in real life. Nay, we were watching it, everything that happened from my campus not even a complete mile away. How would you feel? Proud of your country? What country? Whom is it about? Who is affected other than a handful number of people, nay artists and beholders? Every bad thing happening, for instance, in the "troubled" areas of Swat cannot be referred to as 'security lapses' when the protectors themselves are being transported out of the normal consciousness to a reign from where no man to our knowledge has returned. Utter death. Eternal freedom. Austere. Ruthless. Coldblooded. All in all.

I pass almost everyday around that gorgeous, nicely built roundabout, flourishing with flowers and fountains of exotic design. I pass form that roundabout to the Readings bookshop to meet with my friends books, and coffee sometimes. 'Are you talking about the same roundabout where our guests were entrapped, where those devils were openly chasing them and hunting them down in a 360 degree open space?' Yes, but with a heavy heart.

After all of this event had happened, well recorded by media, I could not even take the pain of sitting before the Television. Without Television, I felt nothing could be imagined. That everything would be as dark as black holes, who ain't black after all. I used to think how oblivious man would be without that stupid box. I was wrong. I could see the great tragedy as vividly as possible, no matter scarce information I had. But through the eye of my heart. Black holes ain't black.

'What country is this?'
Again the question pops in the reflective mind.
Who matters?

Country is nothing but a piece of land administered and ruled by a number of people. Cultured people, civilized or uncivilized. Beings, who have developed, and who possess material and non-material culture, a way of living in a community unlike any other communal system of other species hitherto known to us.

Nationalism is nothing but being paranoid about everything that lies outside from you, when in reality nothing is inside nor outside. All it has got to do at a general, comprehensive level is the society in control of that area or piece of land. If its state, an organized platform of administration, fails to do its job, fault lies with it. But my countrymen, whether a snobbish English muttering puppet on Lahori FM station or anybody else, you are concerned with 'unique visitors' and foreign traffic. Three words for this business you're lurking for: Hell with it.

Hell with Cricket matches. Hell with capitalists. Hell with foreign investments. Hell with five star hotels. Hell with all of it. Reputation of thousands years of Indus man is at stake. Almost abolished. The legacy of Sher Shah Suri is at stake. Is Indus saga a complete fable, a fiction? Do we possess nothing to offer to our guests? I have perplexing questions, as do philosophy. Do have I have the answers?

I think I knew the conclusion. It came to me... Let me guess... Let me recall... I should have memorized it... I now think it may just be a fake stimulation, a burst of certainty... An effort by the brain to reduce anxiety and despondency, to cope with it... Maybe it is time for action... Maybe it is the time to stop uttering hollow words, and to go to my study desk... To enlighten my soul first and than the world... I am pointless... Help me out.