Why I Should Love Pakistan

How difficult it is to find justifications for one’s love. We often have to justify out needs, requirements, demands etc, but we are hardly ready to be questioned about our reason to love. It is emotion that runs through the veins with the blood. Since I developed my sense of perception in the early childhood, I knew I was a human, I was a Pakistani. It was, and is still my identity. I started reading books, newspapers and magazines and started making sense of people talking around me and on television etc. From every corner the message was conveyed to my young mind, that Pakistan was a positive reality. It became a source of my inspiration, it gave meaning to my life and gave sense of living for me.

I entered my teenage and voices from every nook and corner came condemning my beloved country. What was for me a beauty symbol, my heart beat for which I wanted to write the most beautiful, poems, was being called bad names. People called it “Terrorist State” , “Rough State”, “Banana Republic”, “Migraine for entire International Community”, “Failed State” and what not. It all causes a lot of heart burning, but one positive outcome is that it accentuates my emotional association. It may be treated by everyone as doormat, but for me it is my beloved country.

Four martial laws, corruption, insincere and selfish leaders, apathetic citizens, illiteracy, pollution, resource mismanagement, may have become striking features of my motherland but I know none of it is original. An untimely loss of leadership and an antagonistic enemy triggered these misfortunes. I have a passion to wipe of these scars from the pretty face of my beloved.

Fields of hockey, cricket, squash, snooker and chess are witnesses to the capabilities of people in this land, a leader of unmatched caliber in the region or perhaps the world, the land of roaring rivers, entotic valleys and beautiful deserts.

This land opened its arms for all races and religions. Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism etc. The message of love for humanity is the crux of all these religions and my land absorbed all this love.

The land which produced literature depicting love, classic masterpieces of Waris Shah, Bhitai, Rehman Baba, and Sachal Sarmast etc. definitely cannot be breeding place for terrorists!

I love my country because it taught me to love.

Saad Azhar

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