Pakistan's Pseudo Pride

www.pakpositive.com Born to a family that migrated on a train's roof top I was brought up in an environment of patriotism and in the echoes of the tales of heroism. I was told it was a matter of great pride to be born on this green holy land.

This is the land of the braves and the winners they would say. I too have a few bleak happy memories of mine. The memories of me carrying the flag with great honour on the national days, saluting the photographs of Qadir Khan after the 1998 blasts and running with my arms wide open trying to copy Shoaib Akhtar after watching the 1999 world cup final.

But as they say every child looses his innocence on day.

I lost mine when the realities dawned on to me.

The mughals ruled us. The colonials ruled us. And now the Americans rule us. It seems as if we are a breed of people who have a genetic trait of getting ruled. We tell each other the stories of pride to satisfy our souls.

We tell each other how hard we kicked the Indians in 1965. How hard we fought in 1971. And what hallmark we achieved in 1998. All until we need our next dose of food. The pseudo-pride perishes because it never existed. And then we stoop in front of our masters.

Like a herd of goats that stays happy to be beaten by sticks on their backs as long as they get plenty to eat. We kill our own people to please them. We sell our own people to collect booty.

The sense of pride exists no where in our acts. It just comes back only after we have been fed well and then we all sit together and boast of things that never happened.

The fact of the matter is that we did not win in 65'. We lost 60,000 soldiers in 75' and we made a mockery of our hero of 98'. The last time we ever won was way back in 47' and it has been an all loose story after that.

And we will keep losing till the day we start telling our children the truth. Till the day we start accepting our faults. And till the day we stop telling each our false fiction moral boosting stories. And till the day we stop satisfying our souls with a false sense of pride.

Every day I wake up I see this country withered with the blows of hardship, staggering in the glooms of darkness and buried under the sand of hopelessness. And I wish I could get my innocence back one day, because I want to smell the real pride in the air again. army www.pakpositive.com