Cockroaches of Pakistan

The profane political culture of Pakistan has shown no mercy to anyone

There was a ballroom with twinkling chandeliers that illuminated the majestic grand hall where the roach threw parties to show his grandeur and splendor

The story begins with a cockroach who wanted to be emperor. He wanted to reign like none before. He wanted his subjects to bow down to his every whim, fancy and desire. To fulfill his nefarious scheme, he developed a system, the system which would inject into the minds of his subjects the information and commands he desired to be obeyed in order to subjugate and harness them. Nobody retaliated, nobody would – nobody could. The selective feed destroyed the sheer intelligence that once danced on the corridors of the swarm. Thought process of individuals died a slow death. The challengers faded and the concept of questioning the authority perished. A pseudo society came into being, the society embroidered with extravagant beauty but hollow as ice.

The king roach was flattered every day. The artificial gratifications gave him delusions, the delusions underneath which he laughed haughtily. Everybody bowed to him; such was his splendour and magnificence.

His subjects were not insects like him; they were humans, humans without eyes, ears and brains. They knew deep inside their hypnotised minds that they are being ruled by a roach but their slumbering conscious created such an impenetrable blockade that stupefied them to unfathomable limits. The roach, taking advantage of the ultimate stupor of his subjects, tyrannised them every day and in turn they endured the oppression. The roach would give vibes to his antennas every day in sheer arrogance, but in the deepest darkest core of his heart, the roach knew his secret. He knew his own reality – nothing more than a filthy slimy little cockroach.

There was a ballroom with twinkling chandeliers that illuminated the majestic grand hall where the roach threw parties to show his grandeur and splendour. Intoxicated subjects pair danced as the evening fell. Amidst the bright lights of ballroom, the faces with dead hearts smiled and laughed. The roach inebriated with the power overlooked these parties with the pride and conceitedness through a magic crystal ball, which was a gift to him from the god of hope and lust. This crystal ball also illuminated his portrait as an emperor, a commander – a supreme being. During the course of time, the subjects paid their homage by kissing his feet and in exchange he enhanced their miseries, but his diabolic plan was not challenged.

This charade continued till the time the lust of power and authority coupled with unconditional submissions gave him illusions – the illusion of being a god. His power was ever increasing, and to top it all one night amidst the sparkling lights of ballroom, amnesia struck him like a bolt of lightning and he forgot who he was. He even forgot the old saying, nothing lasts forever.

Seasons changed but time halted in the kingdom, as if it was gripped by the roach and his machinery forever. A status quo prevailed to the utter satisfaction and amusement of roach the emperor. Little did the roach knew that time is a nasty adversary, which always takes its toll at snail’s speed. The roach was slowly dying his own death and on one wintery night when the gloomiest wind was blowing this realisation dawned upon him. This was the darkest day befallen upon any roach; it was a day of unmatched catastrophe in history.

To add to the impending doom, a wizard suddenly materialised out of thin smoke and in his hand, he held a gold wand – a wand drenched with the blood of oppressed, held up tears, broken dreams, miseries, anxieties, anguish, agonies and shattered hopes of the masses and with one sharp blow of the wand the majestic wizard shattered all that roach possessed – the mystic crystal ball, the dreams of highness, and the god of hope. Everything that roach once possessed was destroyed in a blink of eye, broken into a million pieces. This was the time when the secret of roach which nobody knew but himself was no more a secret. This was the time when roach finally saw his true self. In each glittering piece of his shattered dream, nothing but a filthy cockroach he was, he is.

True is the saying that history repeats itself. Now, at present, this is the story of Pakistan, where the roach has been struck and Pakistan has to rebuild itself; it would not be constructed by those who are destroying it but by those who still have even slightest degree of enlightening conscience left.

The tugs of war have started in every square of Pakistan if not at ‘Azadi Square’ or ‘Revolution Avenue’. The profane political culture of Pakistan has shown no mercy to anyone. The culture has not left even Quaid e Azam alone. It’s the time when we have to decide. The decision of fighting the roach that if not rules our country; it rules our minds, because in real life, the wizard doesn’t come to the rescue.