A different view

A couple of days back I got to meet the young, inspiring “youth” of the country after a very long time. Though I myself am a part of the country’s youth but there was some age difference between the kids I met today and me. Even though they seemed to have a solid family background or at least some respectable financial standing they on the whole disappointed me. Some of these individuals had dreams and a plan to secure themselves a respectable future but they are totally void of the sense of belonging to their country. For them its like Pakistan doesn’t exist, or they have never even heard of the place. All they have to talk and say about our country is that “man this place is sitting in the past” and “urdu, it is where urdu comes in that everything sucks ass”.

Arite, guilty as charged; I am not that big an urdu fan nor do my latest plans include living in the country professionally (this ofcourse is not the final verdict and can and I am pretty sure will change over time) but the serious lack of belonging these kids showed today was to say the least, shocking.

Moving on from the patriotism speech it also seemed for some reason that these kids either never had any values taught to them or they forget them long time back and for them this word doesn’t even exist anymore. I mean they seemed so damn superficial. These burger kids have studied at the best of schools; at least the most expensive of them in the city, had respectable grades; meaning they aren’t brain dead or leaching of their parents money but that is where the so called “class” in them ends. They just didn’t seem like part of the Pakistani society; living in a world of their own, constructed by them to function the way the please and the rest of the 14 million population of the country equating crap. Not to say how over protected they all seemed. Classic hypocrites, have a tough ass act going on the outside but not even sure of how the transport system of the city works. No knowing it would come at a later stage, for them people who travel in those buses are not even people in the true sense (but this again points to the superficial part)

Looking at these kids and there enormous superficial nature I got to see myself in a different light, the light in which I suppose my parents might have been seeing me for the past few months. I saw a part of them residing in me. I saw myself as a burgurish superficial asshole who has only himself to think of and for whom the rest of the world means crap. The truth is that I was never bought up this way, these were not the values my parents taught me and this is not the person I am. Its correct that this country has shown lots of injustices to me but at the end of the day they are nothing compared to how millions of others have to live their lives. It is correct that we don’t have a system but then if everyone with a bit of talent is going to run away who the fuck is going to build a system to begin with. I still don’t know if I plan to stay in Pakistan, but I do know one thing; this is my country, this is where I belong, it has given a lot to me and just cause a few people are only interested in looting and plundering it doesn’t mean I have to abandon it. If the only people left will the leeches who is going to pump new blood in the system?

Now just cause I met a few kids who displayed that kind of behavior doesn’t mean I base the entire generation thinking on them, but the sad part is that they are the kids from the educated families, from family with position in the society, kids who get the opportunity to voice their opinions. But if this is the voice that will be expressing the opinion of an entire generation then we might as well not have a voice at all!