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Mirror Mirror on the Wall


I have often heard from non-Pakistanis about what Pakistanis are like, ‘You know, you are not like that and I have seen that Pakistanis, individually, are very nice people, some of my very good friends are Pakistanis but collectively they are/have...’ And then they proceed to tell me what ‘these Pakistanis’ are like and these vary of course, depending on the nature of their encounter but invariably a distinction is made between Pakistanis ‘individually’ and ‘collectively’. And, yes, this description is quite insulting and presents a stereotypical image. So I tried to remember from the almost three decades of living in Pakistan to see if I could locate this collective that behaves in this identical manner but I could not place them and that’s when I realized that maybe things have changed in the decade that I have been living outside so every time I visit Pakistan (which is every year, without fail) I try to look for this ‘collective’ that would represent the now almost 210M Pakistanis. But no, I have not come across them yet. I see, Sindhis, Balochis, Pathans, Punjabis, but actually no, I don’t meet them, I meet people from Karachi, Hyderabad, Multan, Islamabad, Rawalpindi, then again, I don’t think so, oh yeah, I meet Muslims, Parsis, Christians, who am I kidding, I have never really known their religious leanings, well of course, I meet the gaon wallas and shehr wallas, hmmm, not entirely sure about that either because these distinctions are not so clear, people who live in Shehrs often come from some village and continue to have strong affiliation. So where does this collective reside?

I think it simply boils down to one thing that at any given time, one can only represent oneself and if we are honest we will admit that if we are called upon to say WHAT we represent, we wouldn’t know. It takes so much self reflection, basically a lifetime of reflection. Mystics tell us that the more you reflect, you reach a stage where nothing exists, there is no ‘I’ and without I there is nothing else either. All is subsumed in the ‘One’. I ask the people who point fingers at others and tell them that they reflect on others what is inside them because one's sight is restricted by the prejudice that comes from within. You can only see what you anticipate. Maybe this ‘collective’ resides in you and not outside and maybe it is you who needs to break free from this collective. Maybe then you will see the good in each human being and yes, in Pakistanis too!

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