I took the one less traveled by

Five year ago when I was about to leave this country for my doctorate, I had all the zeal, the will and the hope to return. Until then, I had always taken pride in being a part of this nation. My analytical abilities, for whatever level of maturity they had reached by then, would tell me that ours was a nation which, in spite of all its inherited and self-inflicted hardships, was gifted with a colossal potential to rise and prevail. To those who’d condemn this nation for its atrocious leanings and me for envisaging a return, I’d rebut that the mighty survival instinct of my 160 million people has got them this far, won’t it ultimately lead them to domination?

I returned in May last year. But for ample reasons, I have been thoroughly disappointed with my people this time round. The people who surround me are no more the ones I’d feel a gush of vanity each time I’d relate myself to them, now they are people who’d stock wheat, rice and what not when millions of their fellow countrymen are at the verge of dying out of starvation in front of their eyes. I see a people who not only find it imperative to violate every law of the state but also to go boasting about it. They have turned into a people for whom corruption in its every obnoxious form is just a norm. I have seen every evil rampant in this society, with apathy at large and not the slightest fear of even eternal damnation. And I see no hope, no redemption for this nation of launderers, of maniacs.

I am leaving again, for a year or may be two. But a voice within seems to be hell bent on convincing me that that this time there’d be no coming back. That’s what all my friends, family and acquaintances speculate too. They consider me a fool for even thinking of returning. Besides, with more exposure and more professional experience, as my horizons broaden and the opportunities escalate, the resolution to return is bound to attenuate over time. Nonetheless, all this leaves me nostalgic already. I have spent fewer years of my life in this country than I have spent abroad, yet I find myself utterly unable to curb my timeless association with it. Perhaps because the years of my life I did spend here were the most crucial and exuberant ones: late boyhood and early youth. I belong here.

This nostalgia, however, is accompanied by a feeling of guilt which insinuates that all the grievances I have with my people are just a pretext to escape; that if anything has changed over time, it’s me. After all these years of resentment and restraint I have finally given in to the ease of life and the petty luxuries that every country on this planet has to offer but this. Actually, there might be yet another reason why I find myself culpable and seek emancipation: I earn better than millions of inhabitants of this country; at least twenty times our national per capita and a gazillion times our national minimum, yet I carry an air of indifference to the plight of the very millions below me. I see them in tatters while I shop at international brand outlets. The more I stay here, the more this guilt will mount on me.

And I thought I was a nomad by instinct.

Meray dil meray musafir
hua phir se hukm saadir
keh watan-badar hoN hum tum
kareiN rukh nagar nagar ka
deiN gali gali sadaeiN
ke suraagh koi paaeiN
kisi yaar-e-namaber ka
her ik ajnabi se poochhein
jo pata thha apnay ghar ka

sar-e-koo-e-nashanayaaN
humeiN din se raat kerna
kabhi is se baat kerna
kabhi us se baat kerna
tumheiN kia kaheiN keh kia hai
shab-e-ghum buri bala hai
humeiN ye bhi tha ghaneemat
jo koi shumaar hota
humeiN kia bura tha merna
agar aik baar hota

~Faiz Ahmed Faiz