Misfortune comes not alone

I am a great advocate of Voltaire’s famous suggestion in his landmark work ‘Candide’ that “one must cultivate one’s own garden”, implying simply that all battles are not meant to be fought and that one should first devote one’s time and effort to personal improvement before picking up trouble with every other issue on the street. If there is unrest far away in the distant lands, you are not always obliged to beat your chest and roar your fist to the heavens. A bit selfish but nevertheless a very healthy suggestion. Still, having said that, I don’t believe that human genius, despite all soaring heights it has achieved, has yet founded means of producing a steely armor of defense for emotions. There is no such insulation method contrived as of present. No matter how insensibly you occupy yourself in cultivating your own garden, there are things still which touch you on the raw. Therefore, I will set down things which I reckon have touched me acutely on the raw, there being no greater relief except to put them in the written word.

Art, literature, and music, the classic and higher forms of them have always enjoyed elite ownership in this country. Folk and other vernacular mediums of expression, championed by the general run of masses. It is no mean tragedy that everything vernacular is also vanishing in the shades. This appropriation of sublime mediums of artistic value, and systematic erasure of such delights from local life, in a society as deeply steeped in ignorance and poverty as ours, is criminal. But then our masters of fate have devised other meaningful delights, unique recipes of disaster for the beaten and poor of this land. A sharp blend of nationalistic and religious fervor to keep them guessing all their lives. A musical chair comedy, a theatrical display of madness, which they so love watching and debating. Many have made employments out of this self-created mess. Whenever a debate arises on Ticktock, a disease so common in our climes, this half-baked progressive elite expresses its democratic sentiment as to how useful this app is for local entertainment. One sees them wishing every scourge under the sun for the poor. If Ticktock is this much entertainment, they should first inject this madness into their own children. If such is their measure of edification, they should first line in the cue to have the foretaste of the same sickness plaguing a vast whole of poor. A wise counsel on happy diversions of life must be first tried and tested on oneself. This, furthermore, should lead to deeper introspection. Why not exercise your privilege and promote music, art, poetry as an everyday and common affair? Why not lift the local culture, revive our own rich heritage, from the abysmal depths it has reached? Shakespeare in England is not a luxury for the rich alone, but an entitlement of all and sundry. In France, the Hugos, Balzacs, and Molieres are romances of every other Parisian. Italian Renaissance was driven by the patronage and pelf of the rich and powerful. If the streets of Florence today whisper so much music and breath so much art, then part of praise and glory, if not all, goes to the MEDICI family who, for all their sins, were chief patrons of art. There is no shortage of Medicis in this country, but since they are victims of meaner passions, they have much worthier and meaningful goals to pursue first: a fanatical love affair with real estate and a never-ending fascination with plots. Wealth is the supreme virtue, the highest good they desire to attain. Verily, whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad.

If all this was not enough, if the imported versions of distant Turkish ghazis didn’t suffice the taste of the power elite, the nation is now gifted with another comic-opera diet of Single National Curriculum, a subtle method to keep them guessing all their lives. The wheels come to full circle again. A Single National Curriculum for all the disillusioned and defeated, after Aitchison, City School, and Beaconhouse, the Meccas of their own children, decide to opt-out of this scheme. The architects of this scheme, and others in this tribe, have now safely immuned their own children from this plague. Seizing a good slice of bread while tossing the rotten crumbs away is a typical Pakistani elite way. Misfortune, as experience tells us, comes not alone.

For its sheer disregard of common plight, the elite of this country has no match. The Ceasars who crafted the Single National Curriculum, all have tasted the rich wines of the leading educational institutes of this country. But the poetry they came up with is astonishing. It did not live up to its promise. After the German conquest of Czechoslovakia, the Nazis took grave pains as to the future course of governing this land. Besides the terror instituted by Nazis in order to consolidate their hold, Hitler advanced following caution to his inner circle: “Education is dangerous. Every educated person is a future enemy. Religion we leave them as means of diversion”. If the authors of our misfortunes are warm admirers of Nazi methods, let there be no surprise about it. In all the fateful and grim tragic-comedies suffered by this country, the so-called English-speaking classes were the leading accomplices. For the luckless poor, condemned to ticktocks and a febrile mixture of religio-national diet, life is too big a struggle in the clutches of poverty to ponder over the high-flown questions such as ones their fellow English-speaking countrymen have undertaken to resolve. Far away from the madding crowd, with fortunes smiling on you and the dice keep rolling to your favor, life is a different story altogether. The poor of this country must march to healthier tunes. They deserve better.