The Pakistani Spectator

Two days ago Lahore was rocked due twin blasts at one of the busiest market of Lahore, Moon Market. I was surfing Internet at that time and my twitter deck was giving me all the updates and views of the people whom I follow on twitter. That attack was a horrible indeed. The voices coming out from the educated class at that time was something which gave boost to the optimistic vision of mine.

Soon this whole enthusiasm ended like foam of water. At that time I was not the only one happy to see people raising voices against such incidents, as one of my icon was almost in the same state. I am talking about Faisal Qureshi, TV channels were busy in covering the incident and he did not get the air time. He started taking opinion on his U-Stream channel via phone calls.

Luckily I was the first one to call in. while talking he asked me that how many people, in my opinion, are there who speak in favor of such religiously coated extremist activities? Well he helped me in answer by saying hardly a hundred, but the next question was quite tough to answer; as he asked me that how many people are there who actively speak against such people?

As I said it was a hard question to reply I was not able to answer it properly. He told me that we have to speak against such people we must rise voice so that the good opinion over come the spoiled one. He also appreciated my opinion and try of breaking the science. Jahan Ara and Sana Saleem also called in after I was done with my call. I remain in that conversation at U stream till 2am and till that time (It was started about 11:40pm) only 6 or seven people called in. Faisal gave this situation a name: “Silence of the Lambs”.

He was right in saying that as a few hours ago there was a hue and cry situation everyone on Internet was acting as an analyst of his own class. And when there was a chance to speak in an organized manner there were only few people who showed up.

Yesterday I remain cutoff from the cyberspace whole day and all the credit goes to WAPDA. In the evening when I logged into twitter a tweet from Faisal Bhai was there:

@calyps @Sadiyahmed @ammaryasir @DrAwab @faisalkapadia @rai_azlan @anumvighio @tazeen @jehan_ara who will sit w/ me on bangedara tonight?

As per me, I was late in replying that message and had no idea what is the process to sit in the show while being in Lahore. I made an excuse of my location, but it does not mean that I have joined the class of “Silent Lambs”. I am still ready to talk, in fact I am talking and raising my voice, my opinion and my views wherever and when ever I feel to do so. Its true that I have missed a chance to avail last night while I was offered to have a platform to send the train of my views on a successful journey.

I am also sad and almost disappointed as no one showed up, in the show, who was mentioned in the tweet which I referred. I personally believe that things can only change when a common man or in the words of my great friend “Mango Man”, come up and perform his part. It can be a physical struggle or even rising the opinion. Change also demand the educated class to join the effort, but sadly in my land the so called educated class have many other things that might be far more interesting then the problems prevailing in our surroundings. The fire has almost reached our door steps when will we wake up out of this dream which keep us far away from the reality. We must understand one fact

“education means understanding values not the so called facts and trends”.