We were seven siblings, of which two were sisters, second and third from the bottom in their order of occurrence. This meant a continuous rumpus of playing, teasing, mischief, and minor earthquakes within our mother’s home kingdom. Her peacekeeping arsenal was simple but very effective and was strategically stored in the spacious kitchen. It included various sizes of fully seasoned large wooden cooking spoons, an iron pipe blower for coal and wood fire, a heavy iron ember tong, and most awesome of all, the bat-like wooden clothes beater, which had a menacingly longer range and a more salutary effect when used.

This was a formidable weapon stockpile with which she ruled over an unruly mob like us with great style and majesty. We resented her partiality towards our sisters, for whom we would willingly run various errands to the bazaar, the dyer, and elsewhere. They would invariably become the king’s witnesses when we were in the dock before Her Majesty the Mother. Father would invariably not interfere in her ready dispensation of domestic justice and her stern rule by the clothes beater.

Father was a Punjab Canals Department Sub-Divisional Officer and was posted in the Kehror Pacca subdivision. Around the vast, very well-irrigated, and lush green canal colony were mostly sand dunes, and beyond lay endless fields of cotton and wheat in their turn. When canal water was let into irrigation channels of the neighboring fields, it would soak the sand on their banks. We would make various little structures like a chicken pen, a small house, a tower, footprints, and whatnot, competing with each other and, with a carefree swing of the hand, demolishing them. We would then begin to rebuild something else, time permitting. Orders were to return home before sunset, which was usually the reptiles’ outing time. There was a child’s achievement and joy in this innocent game of construct-destruct.

Time flew. We grew up, parents aged, and we went out first for education and then to chase our various professions. Meanwhile, a sea change was taking place in the country’s socio-political environment, value system, quality of character, and general way of living and thinking. Honest men and women in official positions and elsewhere were being slowly pushed into a corner.

We were in Gujranwala when President Ayub was contesting elections against Mohtarma Fatima Jinnah. Late Ghulam Dastgir Khan was a candidate from President Ayub’s party. I am not sure if he knew or not, but in his constituency, Mohtarma Fatima Jinnah’s pictures were found hung around the necks of stray dogs, and loudspeakers blared, calling her a traitor.

There was a time when, in Lahore Cantt, among sixty or so official residences on Sarfraz Rafiqui Road, only one window AC could be seen, which the officer had bought on his return from a foreign course. In the late '60s, a few cars, more Vespa scooters, and motorbikes, and the rest on leg-powered bicycles were all the traffic we had. A Morris Minor taxi cab would charge two rupees from Cantt to Alfalah Cinema, and a very expensive cup of tea served in aristocratic style at Falettis Hotel cost one rupee. They charged two hundred rupees for the same some weeks ago.

There were no PCs or Sheratons then. The lone petrol pump in the Cantt would issue fuel on a chit, an officer’s word was respected, and his integrity unquestioned. We had just defeated a very large Indian military offensive against Lahore in particular, with a superlative display of grit and bravery in 1965. Except for the Mall and Gulberg Main, every other road in Lahore was single, including the GT Road.

Sadly, a few years later, under the Yahya-Bhutto combine, Pakistan met a crushing defeat in East Pakistan and split into two, bewildering the populace and deeply injuring their decades-long and painstakingly built-up image of the Armed Forces. The entire catastrophic episode was brushed under the carpet, and everybody, including the Armed Forces, was made to believe as if it never happened.

This was a gigantic and very unfortunate national deception with horrific consequences. This self-deception was a major result of the decay in our value system that started in President Ayub’s times, which was later vastly expanded under Gen Yahya, then late Bhutto, and epitomized under late Gen Zia.

From this brief recap, one can see that today’s comprehensive crash of our value system, character, law, and constitution, inflicted with perfect immunity and aplomb by the powerful and then by their camp followers, did not happen overnight. It was not merely by the inauspicious advent of the Gen Bajwa-Sharif syndicate but had its beginnings far back in our regrettable national history.

What is worse is the pervasive culture of showcase piety, faking concern for the people, rote repetition of patriotic clichés, and unmeant allegiance to the constitution and law practiced at almost all tiers of our society, officialdom, and politics. That makes the entire system look like a sham and a vast smokescreen against the people.

The cheer, pride, and abandon with which our officials and leaders rubbish law, constitution, and decisions by the superior courts remind one of the childhood pleasure of dismantling our sand towers and houses built on the banks of small irrigation channels. But that was innocent, harmless, and without malice. These fellows are malicious and ruthless destroyers of life, property, law, and good sense—more like the gruesome Mongol legionnaires of Helagu Khan wrapped around by Chanakyan and Machiavellian wickedness of mind.

Each one of us carries the burden of our past, pleasant and painful both. It is only that contempt must not overpower one’s compassion.

By Brig® Mehboob Qadir
Email: clay.potter@hotmail.com