HAS PAKISTAN COME? by SAWJ [COL. RIAZ JAFRI (RETD.)]

I just read this on a blog and it is very moving.

"....I had just passed my matriculation examination from Bahawal Inter College, Bahawal Nagar and in the hindsight I can only pay a rich tribute to the otherwise oft-condemned British Raj, for not only holding the exams in time but also announcing the results on the dot when everything in the subcontinent was in the biggest turmoil that one could imagine. Quite a few of us students had formed impromptu social work groups, with make shift equipment and apparatuses to render whatever help we could to the refugees and immigrants and whenever a train was to arrive we used to gather at the railway station.

On the fateful evening, word went round that a train was arriving around 9 p.m. What we didn’t know was that it had been attacked near Fazilka (India) by the miscreants and most of the refugees on it were in a very bad shape. Blood was all over the compartments, many lay dead, most unconscious breathing heavily and a few were half conscious. We were frantically trying to save as many lives as possible. All we could do was to carry the unconscious and the semi conscious on our makeshift stretchers to the waiting tongas and a very few vehicles (no ambulances) to be transported to the district hospital.


It was here that when we were carrying an old man - badly battered bruised and injured and barely conscious, that he opened his half closed hazy eyes and asked me in a barely audible low voice but with an expectant look, “Putr, Pakistan — aa gia hai?� (Son, has Pakistan come?)


I replied enthusiastically, “Yes Baba, yes. You are in Pakistan and everything will be alright now.� Hearing it his head slid to the side and the Baba had gone. To me it appeared as if he was just waiting and trying to keep himself alive to reach Pakistan – reach Pakistan to take a breath or two of the free air of the free state of Pakistan. And having fulfilled his desire he contentedly left for his heavenly abode.

It was some 61 years ago, but Baba’s last words still haunt me. Yes Baba, Pakistan has come. Yes Baba, we lost half of it too in 1971. Yes Baba, we are hollowing the foundations of the remaining Pakistan too by looting and plundering it every day. We are doing all that what our Quaid asked us not to. We have thrown to the winds his Unity, Faith and Discipline. Yes Baba, Pakistan had come. Pray Baba, it doesn’t go!"

http://pakistan.teabreak.pk/