Post By: Supe (http://supersizeme.wordpress.com)

I can’t recall whether the country’s always suffered from an image crisis or whether it’s a notion only as new as the day I kind of stumbled upon the realisation that we’re ‘not a particularly loved nation’ across this planet, which was approximately a year ago fyi.

Who’s to blame for this supposed spiral downwards, I wonder? Well for starters it’s an amalgamation of media claptrap, inherent ignorance, the inane or tragic situations we get ourselves into and then we will always have our clever little selves to blame too.

I have been curious for a while as to why even the utterance of the  name ‘Pakistan’ can put non-Pakistanis on edge. OK, the major reason is religion, that’s basically me stating the obvious there, but then there is that ’something’ else there also. From my own observations, I feel Pakistan lacks the cutesy, warm, cuddly, welcoming factor, ”please come to us, we’ll lick your ess” vibe some countries’ nationals manage to give off successfully. But us? No, we are too just too damn ‘real’ to faff about with any of that. Aren’t we?

And does all this image and people’s perception of us truly faze us and deviate us from our objective? I’ll let the reader answer that.

What annoys me, is how quick we are to plonk ourselves into the sheep category (guilty as charged), by doing so we instantly deplete any progress we make intellectually.  Sheep? That is something Pakistanis as a whole can never be. If there ever was a more diverse nation of people, Pakistan is it!

From colouring, we range from the Makran folk who were African settlers to the blonde haired Kalash tribes of northern Pakistan.  Ideologies range from extremes like Zaid Hamid to Nadeem F. Paracha, entertainment tastes run from complete abstinence from music and film (in a religious sense) to full blown headbanging rock gigs and I could just go on.

The kind of dreams we see as a nation are for those kind of populations that can reach a consensus, a common goal, but the fact that we are so diverse a people, it works against us, just as much as it works for us.

But then the amazing thing is, this divided nation still elicits surprise when Pakistanis come together to celebrate the cricket, as they did with this year’s T20 world cup celebrations, or during this year’s Independence Day as was witnessed on Twitter today. Maybe underneath our unique facades, if we scratch under the surface, we are one? And that we share the same anxiety-ridden spirit of ‘Pakistan’.

I highly doubt there is another country such as ours where we feel everything we are doing in all fervor and zeal, little or large impacts heavily on the country as a whole, and where the smallest of our actions by compatriates can make us cringe in embarrassment or preen with pride. We have the utter disasters like– (fill in the blanks) or glimmers of brilliance from Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan to the Badshahi Masjid.

We procrastinate, we whine, we curse, we clumsily stumble, we get hurt easy, we lie, cheat and beg, but all’s well that ends well, as they say, because somehow, somewhere along the line, we do the right thing too and eventually things pan out just fine.  They generally do, and then we laugh, sing, dance and make jokes about it until we make a boo boo again. And that, friends, is the spirit of Pakistan, it doesn’t matter whether you leave the land behind, you never quite leave the spirit behind.  You can’t deny we all have it, call it a curse, or a blessing, as you wish.

Funnily enough, coming back to image factor, there are folk out there who also possess this ’spirit’, this obsession, this strange attachment to Pakistan without actually being Pakistani. There may not be a lot of these people around but they do exist. So, quality vs. quantity? Genuine vs. fake? Anyone? Ha! My philosophy entirely!

Happy 62nd Birthday Pakistan! We rock and we just know it.