Welcome The New Year With A Prayer

New Year is upon us. 2018 had been a tumultuous year for Pakistan. It was like a live volcano continuously rumbling with potentially destructive eruptions, everyone was on its wit’s end and on the edge.That created an environment of bitterness, uncertainty and foreboding.
The country had to endure self created and foreign imposed hardships and even slighted.We did not deserve this degradation brought about by dishonest and incompetent leaders. Thievery, pillage and gainful manipulations were raised to the level of art and merit slaughtered for nepotism and graft.A culture of vulgar richness, brazen plunder , callous wastage and distasteful show off like decadent kingdoms was promoted.Society suffered and was shattered by these deadly blows and citizens exposed to the whims of the vicious and the vile.
Criminality began to pay , connections overpowered the system and the lower courts proceedings against fair judgments in cases under considerations. Jails became state guarded vacations spots for the powerful convicts and their protected bases to direct their crimes empires.
People in the street were made accustomed to foul language, destructiveness and free lunches at the rallies and bribed with petty amounts to fill up political, sectarian and law breaking processions.Political, religious and social correctness in public ,private and commercial dealings was diligently erased by respective leaderships from individual and collective conduct and perception.A pervasive cookery and most regrettable unreliability was seemingly power injected into the society on purpose. Consequently each one of us views the other with suspicion, distrust and subject to possible exploitation.There is hardly any reliability in our craftsmanship, product or any preparation.Ready and innocent trust has been replaced by deep suspicion.State power ,for that matter any power, is taken as a license to loot and amass personal gains.Those who don’t are considered timid , foolish or simply novices and invariably ejected out of huge profit making band wagon of corruption and undeserved privilege.
Security and safe keeping of one’s person and property and with that the sense of social wellbeing has disappeared long ago. Everyone is fending for himself both against the robber and the police alike.Minor slips cause severe reactions and resistance to petty crimes like mobile snatching results in killings.Sorrowfully wanton, heartless and the arrogant are respected out of mostly their capacity to harm or benefit and the upright and the honest shunned as non profitable and irksome.Entire air is filled with the acrid smoke of wrong doing, oppression , falsehood and tentativeness. It has become so difficult to breathe healthy.
Society’ weaker members like women, children and the aged have become more vulnerable.Maltreatment, deprivation, trafficking and all kinds of inhumanities are inflicted upon these defenceless creatures and there is no help or relief in sight. Occasionally higher judiciary, some NGOs or an odd politician take up their cause but not fully.There is a horrifying quiet among powerful quarters upon excesses against women and children which is damaging our social fabric beyond repair.We are headed towards a society of aborigines or may be wild beasts.
There is another more disturbing but essentially a product of the same vitiated society phenomenon where men and women behave like unthinking slaves and dumb doormen.They say aye to whatever the master says and nay to whatever he or she dislikes.This is without any pain or remorse for impropriety or question of fair or foul. This mentality has severely polarized opinions behind largely tainted and shoddy leaderships and given rise to needless clashes, destruction and strife in the country.
Despite remarkable successes of LEAs there is still a large part of our society in troubled flux in which extremists, militants and terrorists fish out affiliates for target killing, suicide bombing and sabotage.Their narrative is being challenged but not as fulsomely, which keeps giving them and to certain vocal proxies space to exist.
This is a very heavy load to carry into the new year.Lets put our hands together and pray hard for deliverance from this painful baggage.Lets resolve to stand up to the oppression of sum of our total environment and work for individual and collective dignity and poise.Compassion, sensitivity and care for others would see us through the storm. So be it God.