Regarding the country of Pakistan, about 25 years ago, leaving behind the attitude of despair, I began relying on hope. I am not unfaithful/fickle, I am content/fulfilled; I keep searching for the lotus in the mud. In pitch darkness, when everyone is describing the evils of darkness, I am searching for that lamp which, as soon as it lights up, the darkness will vanish. Everywhere there is talk that everything is falling apart, but within this breaking, something new is also being formed. Finding a lotus in the mud can be a habit, it can also be called averting eyes from facts, and the allegation can also be leveled: why do you want to show black by turning it into white?
Whenever this topic comes under discussion and people are giving arguments about the destruction of the country and society, everything breaking, and the darkness, my response is that every individual and every household of Pakistan in the last 25 years has seen economic improvement in this pitch darkness, this breakdown, and mud. The standard of living of every individual and household has improved. If someone was a bicycle rider, he has moved to a motorcycle; if he ate meat one day a week, he now eats it three days; if one pair of clothes was present, now garments of seven different colors are present. Earlier, if he spent summers in the shade of trees, now he sits in an AC. When Pakistan was formed, there was one university, now there are 400; earlier, the female literacy rate was one percent, now there are more girls in universities. My belief is that undoubtedly there are a hundred evils in society, but in an imperceptible way, we are still moving forward; the society, where it was 25 years ago, has now advanced beyond that.
Humans of every region are affected by their environment, geography, and history. Changes in human genetic structure and thinking are also linked to these elements. We are experts in the field of grief, sorrow, pain, separation, and despair; the art of observing death the way we know, hardly anyone else knows. In America, storms, rains, and natural disasters occur every other day; if something extraordinary passes over us, we remember it in folklore for years and weep. In our collective thinking, joy, hope, comfort, and expectations have very little role compared to the rest of the humans in the world. This is the reason it feels to us that we are the worst in the world, our rulers are the most tyrannical, our society can never become right, politicians are the most corrupt people in the world, and all journalists are sold out. The seasoning of despair has turned the mud spread around us into quicksand, in which, in place of hope, despair has become the prevailing social currency. But if lotuses are not seen in the mud, then mental peace, national stability, and the country’s future all get jumbled up. Come, let us search for lamp-in-the-darkness and lotus-in-the-mud stories.
In our collective memory, PIA is preserved as the best air service in the world; that is why PIA’s decline and its faults have been part of national debates and news headlines of newspapers and TV, and will continue to be so. The real fault of PIA was its government model. In the world now, government business, and especially running an airline, is no longer profitable. Decline did not come only upon PIA; under a similar government model, Air India and British Airways also faced the same decline. When Britain and India privatized their airline companies, they began to work; Pakistan, even if late, has followed this successful model, and its positive results will also come, but people want transformation overnight, which is not possible. According to my information, even if a decision is made to change the seats of aircraft, it takes three months to implement it. At the end of next month, four new Boeing Dreamliners 787 will be included in the air fleet; these four new aircraft will be allocated for the UK. It has also been learned that the decision for a new uniform for PIA has been made; in this uniform, the color of the green crescent flag will be prominently visible. To finalize the new uniform, four fashion shows were arranged across the country, and after these fashion competitions, the uniform was decided. The genetic structure and thinking of the people of India resemble ours; out of jealousy, malice, and enmity, they mocked these fashion shows by saying that the seats are broken, but the focus is on fashion shows and uniforms. The new owners of PIA took this satire very seriously and said jokingly that just as we hit the Indian Air Force, we will give a similar reply to their airline company as well. A white CEO has been selected to run PIA, and he will soon come to Pakistan and take charge of affairs. If PIA succeeds, Pakistan will succeed; every hopeless person will get hope. Lamps will start burning in the dark; this is what is called a lotus blooming in the mud.
Ever since the current setup came, there has been a clamor to groom the Pakistani economy through mineral resources and Petro-dollars of the Gulf; however, so far no big good news has been received in this regard. According to received information, a foreign company was taking out gold from raw deposits, and not even a fraction of a tenth (a tiny portion) of it was being disclosed to Pakistan. But when that company’s international assets came to light, there was an increase of billions in them within a short span of a few years. When this matter opened up, Pakistan then decided on its own through private institutions to purchase those machines by which raw gold is separated from pure gold. The import, installation, and commencement of work of these machines will take three years, and then the country will start receiving its rightful share.
There is no other cure for those who spread despair about the country, except that they can be given a crushing reply by mending Pakistan’s economy. So, those people who have burnt their boats in Pakistan and gone abroad neither have an awareness of the sorrows of Pakistanis nor can they properly remedy our sorrows; those living inside Pakistan have to change their destiny themselves. Individually, we are very intelligent and successful, but we are incapable of building a collective system and running it. Here, the best constitution in the world exists in written form, but implementation of it and acting upon its spirit is not becoming possible. Nations move forward only through a collective system of a disciplined constitution and law. In our country, political instability and army-civilian contradictions are the biggest problem. If in 1973 we could succeed in unanimously creating one of the best constitutions in the world, defeat India—five times larger than us—in war, and individually our doctors, engineers, and wealthy people can earn a name across the world, then we too can overcome our mistakes and make the lotus bloom in the mud.