The problem with Green

Patriotism is a funny thing: too little and you’re branded an ingrate; too much and you’re a zealot

Every year, sometime in early August, someone in your household probably goes out and brings in a host of patriotic paraphernalia: flags, buntings, badges, pins, stickers, hats, face and body paint, green-and-white confetti and a whole lot of spray paint. Your entire family, including grand-aunts and great-uncles, then sets upon the task of putting these decorations to good use and, before you know it, your house looks fit enough to welcome the president of the Punjab chapter of the Pakistan Peoples Party at a moment’s notice.

My house used to look like that once. I loved the sea of green I could see above my head as I ran along the driveway, clutching a sabz-hilali parcham tied to a rudimentary bamboo stick. The 90s were a simpler, happier time. But then I grew up and stopped caring about such things.

Patriotism is a funny thing: too little and you’re branded an ingrate; too much and you’re a zealot. I guess the cynicism in the preceding lines would paint me as the Grinch of Independence Day. Unfortunately for my detractors, that is not the case. Indeed, green is so deeply entrenched in my being that if you were to slash my wrists, green radiator coolant would flow out instead of B+ blood.

This year, I will not be buying a flag. Or a pin. Or a bunting. Not because I’m using the ones left over from last year, but because, quite simply, I have no money to buy them with. Skyrocketing inflation has meant that even my sizeable paycheck – once I’m done with things like house rent and car payments, utilities and credit card bills, groceries and a few days of eating out – is reduced to a microscopic roll of pennies.

The cost of living in Pakistan, then, has risen beyond the stratosphere and is now somewhere in earth orbit. Dips in fuel prices serve only to remind us of happy days long gone and make us long for times when we would take family holidays in Murree and Nathia Gali every year. Today, driving from Model Town to Faisal Town is a decision that involves a lot of complex financial calculations. Life for the average Pakistani, then, is currently harder than Calculus.

Enter the liberals. Especially those who think that Pakistan’s biggest problems are the maltreatment of minority groups, persecution of marginalized communities and deforestation. For them, circular debt, a crippling power crisis, a teetering democracy, warring national institutions and an economy on the verge of going the way of Greece are superfluous – the real tragedy is that Hindu families have been forced to migrate to India and that minority members are forced to convert to Islam in national TV just to be accepted. The cricketer formerly known as Yousaf Youhana, then, should be the poster boy for the cause championed by such individuals. You’d be surprised.

There is something inherently wrong with this strain of thinking: it presupposes the condition of the ‘majority’ of Pakistanis. This ‘majority’ is predominantly Sunni, male, middle-class and lives in the major urban centers of the country. Ostensibly, they have made it and are living the American dream, somewhere in Nazimabad. It is these people that have taken it upon themselves to make life miserable for everybody else: everybody who’s the slightest bit different from them. Anyone whose opinions do not match theirs, are cut down to size. Sound familiar?

Actually, it’s just a case of selective perception. It is easier to paint the few as the downtrodden. Stories of oppressed minorities sell newspapers and draw ratings. The plight of the average Pakistani, no matter how loudly each channel may proclaim to be the champion of their cause, never really makes the final cut. TV channels and newspapers aren’t run on mundane stories, editors will say. They are run on the unique, novel, heartrending and (sometimes) exaggerated stories of unspeakable horrors. You need to be able to sell your story like Shamsul Anwar, or have a disputed marriage like Rinkle Kumari. If you’re a regular rickshaw driver with too many dependents and a monthly income that is below the minimum global poverty average, you’d be lucky if your story makes it to a single-column on page 11.

The problem is not with attitudes or perception, or even ideology. I’m sure none of the people who tend to trivialize our problems has any malicious intentions (except the ones that do). It all boils down to a lack of nuance, of context. Pakistan is more than the sum total of Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad; or indeed, Punjab, Sindh and KPK. There is a lot more to us than meets the eye. There is a sea of green out there waiting to be explored. Liters upon liters of blood, sweat and tears have been spilt by Pakistanis: not just minority or majority-group members. It’s time we take off the colored lenses and look at our problems with the naked eye. The green is not the problem. Nor is the white. Nor is the crescent or star in the middle. The problem is the people holding that flag. That would be you and me.

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