Yeh Pakistan Hai Boss

An early Independence Day gift! Long live Pakistan

 

Spiderman Homecoming, the long awaited reboot of my childhood favourtite webslinger, was being played at the sorry excuse of a cinema - the Centaurus Cineplex. With a few clicks left on the minutes hand of my wristwatch till show-time, I found myself in a long a*s queue for the tickets as my friends eased back and enjoyed the show; the typical "pick hum kar leingay khwari tu kray ga" arrangement. So while I was being hurled forward towards the ticketing booth via a rhythmic wavelike momentum generated by the rowdy crowd, a wild bozo appeared out of nowhere and rampaged through the crowd. This initiated a melodious tune of insults and disgusted looks all aimed at this ghareeboun ka daredevil. Somewhere someone in the crowd breathed "heheh yeh Pakistan hai”. At the time these words didn’t really register with me more so because I had heard them being thrown around rather callously and all too often. But after a few days had passed I found myself browsing through my foggy memory for where before had I heard this phrase. So please afford me the pleasure of recounting several other instances where I did. At the gym: my trainer utters these golden words as he cracks up " we see a guy running on the treadmill wearing formal dress shoes. On the roads: Seeing people haul trash out of the car window, somebody usually sighs and says "woh dekho **@@%……Pakistan hai isliye” Taking the piss out of the boys, men, and legends meme " yeh Pakistan hai. Having your chappals vanish from the stairs of a mosque the first instinct is to shamelessly blame the country. No we will not use the shoe racks. How dare you question our intelligence?!

Now let’s suavely tread onto some more mature stuff. I remember the excitement when I was finally old enough to attain a driver’s lisaans (license), as we call it; I’d been practicing parallel parking in between dumpsters on the sidewalk. Disappointed with my performance, the test conducting officer, a rather sleazy looking fellow hitting rock bottom on personal hygiene, calmly suggested that clearing the test is a mere formality and if I could simply slide in some dough they’d more or less home deliver my license. Appalled, I grinned at him and broke into an innocuous laugh as his lips emitted the magic words "Boss, yeh Pakistan hai yahan sab kaam aisay hi hotay hain” " roughly translating to this land is immoral and corrupt and the only way you’re legally driving is by first illegally attaining your license. Again, the land is the stress point, the protagonist. The people well…don’t say nothing to the people. Immorality stems from the phosphorous present in the soil of Pakistan, yep. Ask why so often a guy from the villages is not judged for marrying and running off with a girl whereas the latter is hit with damning charges of immorality and shambolic character and they’ll hit back with the same golden words only this time the words are bathed in a certain male domination flavor too. How about something more relatable: overseas Pakistanis ridiculing the country and saying this piece of land didn’t give them s**t. Well boys please rephrase and/or shoot your grievances to the relevant people, the establishment or maybe even yourself (God forbid). This land doesn’t owe us anymore than it owed our forefathers. Why is a lifeless stretch of sand, soil, and rock mercilessly made into a scapegoat to account for every iota of failure that hits us? This problem is so deeply ingrained that it’s formed the forefront of our default reactive mechanism. This mindset is everywhere from shops to offices and all the way to deep within our beloved educational institutions. Yeh Pakistan hai is like the new trendy version of the useless “whatever” " whenever logic fails we tend to locate safe haven in "whatever” but we’ve now graduated onto 'yeh Pakistan hai'. Brownie points for imagination still.

Society hit the ebb when a friend wanted to buy a pack of cigarettes off the shady khokha and asked for some fancy a*s brand. Upon inspecting what was tossed across the counter my friend smirked and exclaimed "Sirf Pakistan mein hi jaali suttay milein gai” " only in Pakistan would one be sold a fake pack of cigarettes. We have always managed to mask the fault in our stars with ease, perhaps the only success some of us have enjoyed. We devise new and innovative ways of justifying every wrong. 'Yeh Pakistan hai' is the ultimate fan favorite simply because it is jacked up on patriotism and nationalistic feel……… I look forward to the day a counsellor for the accused party in a court of law would retrieve an inflated polythene bag marked "Air" and parade it in front of the jury, claiming Pakistan’s diseased air made his client commit 3^rd degree murder. And of course, just for the kick, the verdict to hold Pakistan accountable for the murder of so and so. Viola Davis and all the others involved with the hit series 'How to get away with murder' please look to Pakistan for ideas. We’re pissing on your current storylines.

Yeh Pakistan hai yahan sab chalta hai is the one common uniting factor of every crime and every societal shortfall. It represents a sorry state of affairs where nobody accepts responsibility for their actions and ends up blaming the dirt upon which they tread. What has this land ever done to us that we accuse it every chance we get? We need a reality check, all of us. We need to accept our shortcomings and hold ourselves accountable. Yeh Pakistan hai needs to change to Pakistan k log! Or better yet Pakistan k KUCH log. Everybody should not be a shareholder in someone else’s crimes. Our failures are not so extravagant that they be attributed to every countrymen or worse to the country as a whole. I pray that when we hit the grave we Pakistanis would have deserved to live and die in this country and that we learn to attribute our failures to ourselves alone (or other people if the blame to self is too much for our ego to take) and our successes to ourselves and our mentors (because nobody is born with absolute knowledge).

 

Yeh Pakistan hai aur is ka bohat scope hai " dedicated to the boys.                       

Author's Note

Quite a few native Urdu dialogues have been used - encased in bold and/or italics.

Reviews

[nefalnumair]

"Yeh Pakistan hai yahan sab chalta hai is the one common uniting factor of every crime and every societal shortfall" The bitter reality. Loved the message at the end!