Broken Thoughts

Disclaimer: No accidents were involved in the making of this blog post. ;-) Oh and I don't own any of the pictures... :P :P Internet rocks! :D

A/N: (Says in the calm voice of an air-hostess) Before we commence our journey, I would like for you to know that yes, this is indeed a rant post. I rant a lot, it’s a hobby, get over it… :P Oh and I do tend to exaggerate at times… Only sometimes… So get over that too… :P :P So fasten your seatbelts coz here goes… 

I always knew that traffic in Rawalpindi was crazy. I know that traffic in Lahore/Karachi/Faisalabad/InsertRandomCity is too (so please don’t give me all the ‘Abhee tou Lahore/Karachi/Faisalabad/InsertRandomCity ki traffic dekho, lag pata jayey gaa’ Lag gaya pata bhai, aur nai lagana, thank you)! But what I did not know was that no one gave a rat’s-ass (Sorry for the blatant use of profanity, but I don’t have any word that would describe the situation better. Actually this is the LEAST profane term I could find, HUH) about anyone else. They have a simple motto in life:

I GOTTA GET THERE AND I GOTTA GET THERE FAST AND OH DID I MENTION MY DAD OWNS ALL THE ROADS IN THE WORLD!! (In other words: Aye meray piyu dee sarak ay! Prablem?)

And do you know what is worse? It is not one person’s piyu (dad) who owns the sarak (road), it’s all of theirs!!! And when there are more than one owners of anything, they fight, and they fight dirty. So in simpler words, Pindi’s roads are a battlefield, and every driver (if they could even be called that) is waging a war for power, desperately attempting to get the upper hand. Every man for himself! Oh and every woman? Well, she is just crazy, who in the world let her loose on the road? SHE MUST BE OVER-TAKEN!!! Yeah... I. Ain’t. Kidding… :/

So, where does poor old me come into the picture? Well, you see, my new job is in Pindi-the horror! Oh, don’t get me wrong, love the job! Pindi, erm, not so much… :/ So yeah, poor innocent moi (me), doesn’t know any of that on the first trip there. Aaaaaaaaaannnnnddd, well it was not the best of days for me. Ya! No… I probably looked like a retard trying to drive in my lane in a land with no lanes, for starters. Everyone kept on intruding. A car from the left trying to get chummy with my car, a bike from the right trying to tell my car to back the hell off and the van driver behind was all HONK HONK HONKITY HONK! I was like: where the HELL HAVE I COME? And all the time I was thinking: Dude, I AM in the slow lane, where do I go from here? Overtake from the right, if you are in a hurry! STOP HONKING! Blurkh…

Then there are these rickshaws! Oh lord, the rickshaws… They are like rats, literally, they are. They stop, sniff, start, go right, go left, stop, sniff, start, right, left, right, left, stop, sniff… It goes on… And it drives you crazy! They. Don’t. Look. They. Don’t. Care. Just. Avoid. Them. Left, right, stop, sniff… AAAAAaaaaarghh! *Starts pulling out her hair*

And don’t even get me started on the LTVs (pick-ups, vans etc) and the HTVs (busses, trucks blah)! They are an abomination in the name of vehicles and their drivers have no eyes, no ears and well, they simply don’t give a damn. These light and heavy traffic vehicles think they have some sort of swag as they saunter closer and closer into your lane. Your poor car also, clumsily, tries to get away from them, insinuating that it is not interested in any of their advances. Yet they keep at it, clueless to any norms of decent social behavior. There is something known as personal space. But who cares, right? WELL, MY CAR DOES! It is very sensitive to matters like these. So please, huge intimidating things, STAY AWAY! Pleaaasseeeee... Of course, saying all of this is not really possible. As a result, I honk! And THAT is the worst thing in the history of worst things that I could have done. Yes. I. Am. Not. Kidding. You. :@ 

It is here that being a woman on the road has it’s disadvantages. You think you have equal rights and you believe that a woman can do anything a man can do, and better. But you are wrong! You cannot honk. You just CANNOT! Don’t! DON’T YOU DARE! (This does not apply if you are honking to another woman or some elderly uncle. Or you own a really BIG/posh car! In that case, go ahead, feel free. =P) If you are a woman, driving a teeny Suzuki and you press the horn annnnnnnnnnnnnnd the person you are honking at is not another woman or some elderly uncle, you are SCREWED! You wanna know why? Simple human nature. The big bad LTV/HTV loses its mind! You, being the sad lowly creature of God, have just hurt its godforsaken ego and you are going to PAY! After that it is a matter of survival. =(

The LTV/HTV, having lost its mind, will start behaving like a madman, speeding like mad to get ahead of you, honking away like there is no tomorrow, till at last, you give in and let it go, your ego and self-esteem bruised to no end, thinking: Go dude, you go, I’ll be alright (or Jaa bhai, tou lung jaa, sadi khair aye).

Then there are the traffic signals! Nobody cares about the traffic signals! No one! It’s a simple story of positioning. Imagine the traffic signal to be the teacher and the cars to be students (I know, so please don’t). The teacher says GO, but all the students in the front row are busy taking notes or asking the right questions at the wrong times and all the student in the back rows are alert, ready to ditch class. The back row students start complaining and screaming, let’s gooooo 0.5 seconds BEFORE the end of the class, but the front row students won’t budge till about 10 seconds AFTER the end of the class. The only catch is this: all the students have just 30 seconds to get up and leave. Also, only WHEN the students in front move can the students at the back imagine moving. Additionally, if the students do not leave within 30 seconds, they will have to STOP and take the next lesson with the newcomers. The irony is that the front row students, with all their lagging still manage to make it out of class, but the backbenchers, with all their vigilance, end up getting stuck for the next lecture. This causes frustration; so some backbenchers just lose it and decide to run out of the class screaming, GET THE HELL OUT OF MY WAY, I CAN’T TAKE THIS ANYMORE! In the process, slamming the door right in the teacher’s face: TAKE THAT! The rest of the backbenchers? Well, the moment they get upgraded to front row position, they automatically switch into lag mode… And the story continues…

Last but not the least, considering we are talking about Pindi, we CANNOT forget the Pindi boyzes, now can we? Especially, the bikers… :@ They are the lifeblood of Pindi’s roads. I don’t what it is that does this to them, but they have this amazing confidence! They continuously are under the impression that they are in some cool action flick and they are the stuntmen! YES. I know it is clichéd. NO. I do not care. YES. It is true. They would be driving just fine one second, and the next, zig zag zig zag zig zag. Zoooooooommm, look, I am a jumping jack… Zum Zum zummm… look at me, no hands… EEEEEEeeeeeeeeeee... Bhurum bhurum… look, one wheel… OH YEAH!

I will never understand the point of that atrocity. Whyyyy would you do that? If you like crazy rides, there is a place and a time for that… Go to a theme park, leave the roads alone. I beg you. It’s for your own good. Coz while you think, you’re being all coooool, the rest of world is shaking their head sadly, and murmuring in dejected tones: The poor kid, lost his mind… (Bichara, demaghi tawazun khoo bethaa hai)… 

A/N 2: That’s all for today, folks… I know I am not the best of drivers… Not even close. But I do know one thing… These traffic rules are there for a reason… My A-levels physics teacher once said, ‘They stop you from travelling at 180 km/h on the highway, not for the million times nothing happens, but for that one fatal instance when something could!’ So for your own sakes, stop playing with your lives and that of the others. Try sticking to at least some of the rules, just to be on the safe side. You never know which day might contain that one unlucky second for you… Stay safe, Live happy… :D 

The Pakistani Dream: Thoughts after attending a motivational lecture by Asad Umar

 

Asad Umar

Asad Umar came to the National University of Sciences and Technology yesterday and gave a motivational speech to a congregation of 250+ students from various departments within NUST H-12. For all those who do not know who Asad Umar is, first of all, “Hawww :O” :P. Secondly, fine I will give you a very short introduction(:P): He was the former CEO of Engro Corporation and the man who made Engro what it is today, pioneering ventures like Engro Foods and the World’s Largest Single Train Urea Complex at Daharki run by Engro Fertilisers! He resigned from his position as CEO in 2012, and is currently serving as the Senior Vice President of PTI, continually moving his vision of positively impacting the economy of Pakistan ahead.

Now that you know who he is, let’s come back to his motivational speech. During the talk, his emphasis remained on instilling in his audience the true meaning of success and the concept of the correct pathway towards it. He maintained that if a person wanted to be truly successful in their life and career they would have to do two things:

 Mr. Umar further stressed that a good vision/goal again comprises of two things:  

All this talk of developing visions in, at least the upcoming generation of educated Pakistanis, got me wondering… 

With all due respect to Mr. Asad Umar, who really did inspire his listeners today, I do not completely agree with his allusion that Pakistanis’ lack vision and that their problem is the projection of their failure to achieve onto the society and country as a whole. To tell you the truth, Pakistanis’ do have a vision, but it is a distorted, misplaced and quixotic vision. The idealistic Pakistani dream is not really a Pakistani dream at all, but a foreign inspired American dream. Do not get me wrong, I am not arguing for or against westernization etc here. I am just stating what I, personally, have observed in our educated class.  

The Pakistani dream is not inspired by our local art, culture, literature, religion or even society. It is inspired by American art, culture, literature, electronic media, fashion, law, business, social norms (Yes EVEN social norms: I am shocked at admitting this myself) etc. You name anything American and you will find someone in the educated class of the Pakistani society agreeing that it inspires them. Although, our dream is essentially to be like an American in every possible way, yet we will never concede to this. To be very honest, we would deride anyone who would even suggest such a thing and begin to quote various ways in which our society is sooooo much better than the western society.  

However, one has to face the facts here. We say that our society is better because of our social values. For example, we argue that the Pakistani society has a more stable family life, where parents are taken care of at home by their children and not thrown away in Old People Homes and the sanctity of marriage is kept alive, considering a comparison of divorce rates with the west. But recently, Old People Homes have sprouted rapidly in the Pakistani society and the divorce rates keep on escalating. So where does that bring us? I am not suggesting that we are moving along the same path that the western society took, but we do seem to be heading towards a similar destination.

No matter how much we might spout hatred towards the American policies and their impact on our country, whenever we get a chance to get education, job etc in America, we jump to grasp it! This sanctimonious behaviour is the root of most of the confusion brewing up in our nation. We do not know what to accept and what to reject and we keep on oscillating to and fro. Such a flaky dream can only result in a confused and distorted vision. “To be or not to be Americanized?” That is the question. And the answer is simple: We all stand conflicted.

Our nation might have overwhelming amounts of talent, great minds and a huge number of ideas, but we lack the will to accept who we are and what we want. Until we figure that out, there is no point in blaming the government or a bunch of politicians for all our problems. The problem lies within us, because a confused nation will only ever generate an incompetent leadership.

Asad Umar’s experience says it all. He admitted to rejecting a profitable job in Exxon, Canada, and an offer of a job in Singapore that would have paid him a million dollars just as a signing bonus, because it clashed with his vision, with what he wanted to do with his life. His vision required for him to stay put in Pakistan, to stay put in Engro at the time.  

As a nation, we need to stop complaining about how Pakistan can never progress and we can never progress in Pakistan, and start realising our calling in life. The trick is to be honest with yourself, even if your dream ends up being an American dream, it is still yours, for until you don’t realise your dream, your life is going to run along the path of a lost man’s nightmare, winding its path eventually towards failure…