Mindsets, Mercy and the Qatra Effect
By Dr Mahjabeen Islam
Toledo, Ohio

We might be witnessing a tectonic shift in Pakistan’s socio-politics. Prime Minister Imran Khan’s address to the nation was so ambitious that some think he has promised the nation the moon.
In individual lives and those of nations, idealism is a good thing, particularly when it is backed up with a solid action plan. In goal setting you shoot for the stars and settle for an average or slightly above average result. Cynicism and supercilious criticism only perpetuate the status quo. And if there is one nation on earth that cannot survive the status quo it is Pakistan.
Imran Khan had an exhaustive list and dealt with education to agriculture, corruption to climate change. His reading glasses are testimony to the fact that he had a thought-out plan of action for each item. As an aside, I must say, that his reading glasses have to go. During his oath taking, it was hugely awkward to see him flip out his sherwani and dig out his glasses. He needs a quick visit to an ophthalmologist who will fix him up with trifocals so when he talks and then reads, he doesn’t have to go from handsome to grandma; he would just keep the trifocals on and rest his arm from the back and forth, and sport a scholarly look all at the same time.
The changes that Imran Khan lists are only possible with a change of mindset. Seventy-one years of explosive population growth, an imploding economy topped with baffling corruption has served to fashion the Pakistani psyche. Time was that the middle class, the classic perpetuators of morality, maintained integrity and faced adversity with the rules they grew up with. But who can live on love and fresh air? Especially over the last thirty years or so, you see survival of the fittest on full display.
My first brush with corruption was in 1982 when the clerk in Dow Medical College’s office demanded money for release of my mark sheet. But 2016 will go down in my family’s history as giving all of us PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder. My mother, my daughter and I had traveled to Karachi so that Ammi could collect my late father’s pension. In current day Pakistan, your two options to get anything done are doling out money or applying influence. Those government servants know how to break you. I chose influence application to greasing palms. And my distress was worsened at the plight of the many desperate faces roaming those halls that didn’t have the connections I did.
The trend is set at the top. Everything, small or substantial, matters. To his credit Imran Khan knows this. His ill-fitting sherwani caused a buzz on social media and it seems a regular tailor stitched it. Brave to wear a Peshawari chappal at his inauguration. Wearing that chappal, Imran Khan gives many messages; he is thumbing his nose at Western culture, showing pride in our own and underscoring simplicity. When there is no fear of retribution and the Whistleblower Law comes into effect, there will be a nationwide movement to self-correct. Or else get turned in.
That Islam insists on honesty and principles becomes an empty lecture when leaders drive away in bullet and bombproof Mercedes and BMWs, not one but fifteen at a time, into mansions with 500 servants and food to feed a squadron. A three-bedroom home with two cars is a great start! Changing that mindset that has been groomed and nurtured for decades is the challenge. Except for the elite one senses a national enough-is-enough frustration. How and why is life so difficult at every step from the time one gets up till the day is done?
There is in fact a danger of the pendulum swinging the other way and the elite and corrupt getting street justice. Imran Khan assiduously avoided vengeance. And it is important to maintain this. A mindset change has to happen, but it must be modulated to achieve results and not revenge.
I was very touched by his repeat explanation of creating rahm or mercy in our hearts. One really notices its absence in Pakistan. How do people live with themselves spending millions of rupees on a wedding outfit and the many wedding functions, when all around them are starving children begging on the streets? Mercy has been squashed out of our hearts and we’re blind to the misery around us. I was looking through clothes at a boutique on M. M. Alam Road in Lahore in July 2013; most of the outfits were Rs 25,000 and above. The power went out and the generator quickly hummed in. Under his breath the salesman said that the power outage didn’t matter to him for his six children sweated in the day and studied by candlelight at night. I asked him how much he made and he said Rs 25,000 a month. I left the store and cursed our nation’s inequity.
Qatra qatra darya ban jaata hai - drops coalesce to form a river. The cost of the Bhasha Dam is estimated to be Rs 1,450 billion. The small Rs 10 SMS donation created by the Supreme Court, and then larger donations from Pakistanis and Overseas Pakistanis, can be the drops that can easily coalesce to give us the dam.
All of us, within and outside Pakistan should do at least one thing to change things. Plant a tree, clean your street, educate a child; the opportunities are limitless. Imran Khan has great minds in his cabinet and advisers. In five years if we achieve even half of his “lofty” goals, we will easily see Naya Pakistan.
(Dr Mahjabeen Islam is an addiction and family medicine physician practicing in Toledo, Ohio. - mahjabeen.islam@gmail.com . This article was written in August 2018)