If the youth of Pakistan is the future of Pakistan, then the future doesn’t look very promising to me. Let’s analyse the people on whom Pakistan’s future depends, shall we?
I think we can safely place the age range of the youth as 18 to 30 years. Maybe we should even lower it to 25, hence considering the students of Pakistan.
At every gathering I attend, some uncle or the other is always ranting on about how the youth needs to mobilise, how they need to take active part in politics, how they need to do this, do that, and on and on.
Enter uncle’s son. Baggy jeans twice the size of his legs, pants nearly falling to the floor with beta dear barely managing to cling on to them, sunglasses in the darkest of rooms, bling the calibre of a rich bride’s dowry. I am left marvelling at the potential chaos my country could be thrown into should young people like him snatch the wheel of our political fleet, God forbid. Beta dear then swaggers over to the sofa and plops down with his Guitar Hero and strums away on some rowdy, heavy metal beat. Actually, he might not be so bad a military strategist. Noise pollution like that would send any terrorist running back to where he came from.
But it would be unfair to point all fingers at this poor young man only. People like him exist all over the country. Whether I’m at school, or university or a wedding or even a religious event, I am struck by the irony of the future of Pakistan and its holders.
How are these strong young men expected to pick up a gun against enemies, if their idea of picking up girls is blowing smoke rings into their faces during final exams? Not that I condone picking up girls, mind you, but it is the principle of things that bothers me. How are these young men and women supposed to lead the nation in international affairs if they blindly follow anyone who can incite their emotions enough? They were so easily manipulated into contributing sweat and tears to the Lawyer’s Movement but where is the youth now that the CJ has been restored and injustice continues unabated?
How, and this is the thing that bothers me most, will Pakistani youths help attain salvation, gain independence from American aid, work up the country’s economy, bring peace to its Northern areas, educate the lower class and bridge the gap between rich and poor if most of them spend all day on Facebook taking quizzes designed by pre-teens with too much time on their hands? Are these 20 something year olds really getting all excited about the initials of the person they will marry, the Bollywood actress they resemble most and the number of times they will fall in love??
Do they really have the gall to project deep philosophies as their Facebook statuses and think they can save the world from the comfort of their bedroom? Do they think its encouraging hearing them discuss Brangelina and Ash Rai as if they are personal friends whose love life is a matter of concern for humanity?
How in the world do you expect me to believe that they can conserve their own sense of reality, let alone a whole nation?
Us Pakistanis, even us young ones who aren’t supposed to be senile yet, have big opinions on everything. Yet, no knowledge about the opinion at hand. We have only one problem but this problem is the trunk of the tree that has come to symbolise our country’s tragedy. Our problem is that we are not free-thinking individuals, despite how many of us brag about our liberal atheistic beliefs or fake British accents. Our free-thinking is defined by whatever Western media gives us the green-light to believe. We talk about New York rave parties as if we have been born and raised Yankees and as if New York is the universal yardstick for progress and enlightenment.
And it’s funny and sad but we always end up adopting negative Western notions but we never learn how to be polite, hard working and civic like they are. So we kind of deserve everything we are getting. God is just. We haven’t proven that we deserve anything better yet. And if the youth and future of Pakistan continue their immature, sometimes baffling, antics, we might never come around to deserving it.
Romesa Khalid
July 7th 2009
First published on July 7th 2009, on www.pak1stanfirst.com
I think we can safely place the age range of the youth as 18 to 30 years. Maybe we should even lower it to 25, hence considering the students of Pakistan.
At every gathering I attend, some uncle or the other is always ranting on about how the youth needs to mobilise, how they need to take active part in politics, how they need to do this, do that, and on and on.
Enter uncle’s son. Baggy jeans twice the size of his legs, pants nearly falling to the floor with beta dear barely managing to cling on to them, sunglasses in the darkest of rooms, bling the calibre of a rich bride’s dowry. I am left marvelling at the potential chaos my country could be thrown into should young people like him snatch the wheel of our political fleet, God forbid. Beta dear then swaggers over to the sofa and plops down with his Guitar Hero and strums away on some rowdy, heavy metal beat. Actually, he might not be so bad a military strategist. Noise pollution like that would send any terrorist running back to where he came from.
But it would be unfair to point all fingers at this poor young man only. People like him exist all over the country. Whether I’m at school, or university or a wedding or even a religious event, I am struck by the irony of the future of Pakistan and its holders.
How are these strong young men expected to pick up a gun against enemies, if their idea of picking up girls is blowing smoke rings into their faces during final exams? Not that I condone picking up girls, mind you, but it is the principle of things that bothers me. How are these young men and women supposed to lead the nation in international affairs if they blindly follow anyone who can incite their emotions enough? They were so easily manipulated into contributing sweat and tears to the Lawyer’s Movement but where is the youth now that the CJ has been restored and injustice continues unabated?
How, and this is the thing that bothers me most, will Pakistani youths help attain salvation, gain independence from American aid, work up the country’s economy, bring peace to its Northern areas, educate the lower class and bridge the gap between rich and poor if most of them spend all day on Facebook taking quizzes designed by pre-teens with too much time on their hands? Are these 20 something year olds really getting all excited about the initials of the person they will marry, the Bollywood actress they resemble most and the number of times they will fall in love??
Do they really have the gall to project deep philosophies as their Facebook statuses and think they can save the world from the comfort of their bedroom? Do they think its encouraging hearing them discuss Brangelina and Ash Rai as if they are personal friends whose love life is a matter of concern for humanity?
How in the world do you expect me to believe that they can conserve their own sense of reality, let alone a whole nation?
Us Pakistanis, even us young ones who aren’t supposed to be senile yet, have big opinions on everything. Yet, no knowledge about the opinion at hand. We have only one problem but this problem is the trunk of the tree that has come to symbolise our country’s tragedy. Our problem is that we are not free-thinking individuals, despite how many of us brag about our liberal atheistic beliefs or fake British accents. Our free-thinking is defined by whatever Western media gives us the green-light to believe. We talk about New York rave parties as if we have been born and raised Yankees and as if New York is the universal yardstick for progress and enlightenment.
And it’s funny and sad but we always end up adopting negative Western notions but we never learn how to be polite, hard working and civic like they are. So we kind of deserve everything we are getting. God is just. We haven’t proven that we deserve anything better yet. And if the youth and future of Pakistan continue their immature, sometimes baffling, antics, we might never come around to deserving it.
Romesa Khalid
July 7th 2009
First published on July 7th 2009, on www.pak1stanfirst.com
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