On Being Free (Part Two)

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The second (and final) of two parts of a paper written for a class on Creative Nonfiction. The first part can be found here.

A year ago, I met someone who was around twenty-two years old, and was just starting his intermediate education. He wasn’t unable to study further because of any constraints, but because he chose to do so. And no, I don’t mean he chose to slack off. What he chose to do was experiment. He told me that he didn’t believe in there being only a specific path to follow for his education, and so he was expanding his horizons by getting involved in different activities to assess his strengths. He ended up putting off studies to volunteer his time to NGOs and children’s charities that were in dire need of manpower. Time constraints did not allow me to get more details, but it did leave me thinking for days. Would anyone in a Pakistani society allow their children to put off their education, even if temporarily? This guy was one example of very faint hope, and it was incredible to see him be bold enough to take that risk. I concur with his actions though; education doesn’t have to be followed as religiously as our society expects us to. It is a good idea to try something different; it might actually end up being worthwhile.

In his Presidential address to the Mathematical Association of England, Alfred North Whitehead said that “in scientific training, the first thing to do with an idea is to prove it.” By using the word ‘prove’, he does not mean that scientific methods need to prove an idea by experimentation, but simply to prove an idea’s worth. The same applies to an education. Regardless of the subjects of study, it is a good idea to prove the worth of one’s education. This is fairly easy, because education itself has an intrinsic worth. Why, then, do we in Pakistan classify some education as ‘good’ and others as simply ‘useless’? What is interesting to note about Whitehead’s lecture is that he delivers it to a Mathematical Association, and yet he talks about the basic nature of education before moving on to its practical uses.

‘Practical uses’ is something that we Humanities majors often see as being used as a weapon against. “So you can write and understand History and can quote so many Philosophers. That’s good. But what is its practical use?” is a question that I have come across one too many times. The truth is, it has no practical use (unless I choose to become a teacher), or at least none that I can tangibly point at. My practical use of my education lies in the kind of person it is helping me become. Its practical use lies in making me capable of thinking out of the box. Its practical use lies in getting me acquainted with many intellectual topics that are easy to have a conversation on with anybody (such as, say, a person interviewing me for a job). Its practical use lies in teaching me how to work in groups for projects and how to write better papers. But of course, why would a Pakistani society consider any of these skills worthy if they don’t end in the words, “and will help me get a job”?

In one of my Philosophy classes, we were asked a question about who we would give a car ride to out of the three people: an old woman, an old friend who once saved your life, and the man/woman of your dreams? It was quite the unusual question, but the variety of answers heard from the class was quite interesting. Some of us actually put in a lot of thought in answering this question, analyzing it from all angles. However, more interesting than the different answers themselves was the instructor telling us that a year after she gave this question in an exam, one of her ex-students came back to tell her that a similar question was used in a job interview at an MNC. Guess who got the job? The guy who answered the questioned by analyzing it from a deontological and human nature ethics perspective, two branches of moral philosophy that a stereotypical Pakistani society will never let its offspring study about. How, then, can we say that Humanities is useless?

Existentialism is a topic in Philosophy that deals with the ‘I’. Existentialists believe that there is no right or wrong, good or bad. An act becomes good only after I choose to do it; an act gets value because someone chooses to perform a particular act. Perhaps if the Pakistani society gave up its clichés and embraced the existentialist viewpoint, it would react a lot differently towards people choosing to diversify their scope of education. Perhaps I chose to pursue an undergraduate degree in Humanities as opposed to an MBBS because this holds greater value for me. Why, then, should my society judge or berate me for it, when from an existentialist standpoint, I am not wrong in choosing something that holds greater worth for me? All the existentialists ask for is to not infringe upon anyone’s rights, and if a person is willing to break the norms and study something else, who is he hurting by doing so? Maybe my society is just looking out for me, but the way I see it, they are overstepping their boundaries. We talk about grand notions of freedom; why then should I not be free to choose my own path? I have a right to my own choice, and if my choice conflicts with the opinions of the masses, I’ll call it an experiment and go through with it. In fact, if the experiment doesn’t work out, then the only person I will have to blame will be myself; why, then, is it so hard for society to accept it? I spent many years of my life convinced that I would fade away into an abyss of rote learned texts and an avalanche of numbers – perhaps it is time now to get out before it’s too late.

Pakistanis teach their children to read a lot, but never to write. When we grow up, we read books written by Mohammed Hanif and Mohsin Hamid, but nobody around us would support us when we float the idea of becoming a writer. We watch movies such as Bol and debate over the many critical issues it touches upon, but people would be appalled if we ever expressed a desire to become a filmmaker. It is considered acceptable to study something that has been the model for Pakistani societies since ages, and stay jobless after that. But it is unacceptable to follow your own wishes and study something different, because Humanities then becomes synonymous with ‘useless’. My question is: why view everything in black and white? It’s not either a Doctor or an Engineer. As noble and renowned professions as they may be, they’re not the only ones. Why not let someone explore the grey area in between? Who knows, we may have an aspiring Gates or Zuckerberg amidst us, someone with the talent and the potential but being repressed by the standards that the Pakistani society has set for itself.

It is good to stick to a set of principles, but where the Pakistani society fails is that it goes deaf at the talk of a world other than those principles, blind at the mention of seeing anything that does not adhere to their set of rules. Anyone choosing to follow their own career path may be as good as ostracized. But like the albatross, those who follow their own ways are not something to be executed, because they may just be showing people the right path to follow. In the end it comes down to a question of happiness. Would we rather choose to follow a life of grind and make a decent living but live our lives like machines? Or would we want to give up these undue pressures and expectations and succeed at something we like? Like Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “To laugh often and much…This is to have succeeded.” How many laughs can we give ourselves if we turn our lives into a fixed routine, something along the lines of ‘Punch, type, click, enter’?

I am a writer. It is what I do best; it is the only thing I know how to do well. And I say it with such conviction after a long process of experimenting with various things, trying to find out where my strengths lie. I’m the happiest when I’m constructing a story; give me a writing assignment and I’m in my niche. My goals and dreams center heavily on my writing skills. I don’t see myself as the next Dickens or Hemmingway, but I definitely see myself trying to come up to those impeccable standards if given a little push. It is true that authors don’t earn so much, but the satisfaction I get from writing is something that I cannot place a price on. No amount of monthly stipend from a job will ever measure up to the pleasures of writing for an audience. It is where my creative juices flow, and in this moment of self-praise, I see myself improving with time. If I can ever gather even a small bunch of Pakistanis supportive to my cause, I will consider it a sign of good things to come. I will see it as a hopeful sign of freedom of choices for the next generations, finally free from the shackles of societal pressures and conventions. If I ever felt like I was fading away, then writing provides the perfect means to immortalize myself. What we say and do can be forgotten, what we put down on paper can be passed from person to person, read and respected duly.

Globalization may just be the solution to Pakistan’s educational woes. While it will be wrong to say that everyone is part of this bandwagon, it will also be wrong to say that only some are on it. Many are still opposed to the idea of a freedom of choice when it comes to careers, but people are finally starting to accept the need for change. An integrated global village is making us realize how far behind we’re lacking, and since we can’t beat the world, we can join it.

It makes me happy to interact with fellow Humanities majors, knowing that they, too, chose to do something new, something different. If I convince a person to opt for this major, I consider it a personal victory, not just for myself but for this underrepresented field of education in Pakistan. I am by no means here to bring about a revolution – I am not even close to it – but a person converted is a small step towards brighter prospects. Pakistan is trending under the banners of political revolutions this year, but the biggest hope we need for our country is in the field of education only. Start at the grassroots, and then move up. Let a student study Political Sciences to understand these political manifestos. We can produce a country of Mathematicians and Doctors and Economists, but what we can’t give them is the ability to think. And that is where I will always advocate for my major, which will, initially, force you to think but will eventually end up refining your cognitive skills to the highest degree.

It often makes me wonder whether I’m being harsh on conformist areas of study or am glorifying my choices beyond their worth in a self-obsessed move. Society, of course, presumes the latter and is equally harsh for that, but this isn’t a game of retribution. When snowflakes reach the ground, they integrate to form layers upon layers of ice. However, every snowflake is different from the other one, coming together to form a whole phenomenon, which we call snowfall. I like to think of an ideal society as snowfall – assimilated together, yet every person is an individual crystal; they mix to form a beautiful image, like a photographer’s best shot or an exquisite Christmas card. We retain our uniqueness, yet know how to live in harmony. But my perception of a Pakistani society will be a different snowy picture. Beautiful to look at, snow is a cold and slippery slope once you step on it. Indeed, we might also appear as a unified community from the outside, but there are layers upon layers of this union that one would not wish to navigate; layers that will fall upon the individual crystals and crush them in the process, reducing them to nothing but mere water in the end. Such seems to be the revulsion of this unadventurous Pakistani society to these new means of education. Am I being judgmental in my claims? I guess so. Is society really that harsh? Pretty much. Is it wrong of me to choose to be the snowflake that wants to stay on top of these layers? No.

I will admit that despite certain changes, looking for a massive nationwide change is something quite premature. Maybe by the time I have children, they will also be locked in this endless battle of angst against society. But in the year 2030, when the world will have moved forward and we would still be cemented to the same place by clinging to our precious ideologies, at least my children will have the option of choosing their own path for education. Perhaps they might be able to do then what I would’ve been unable to do now – just make people see that we aren’t useless. Just like things disappear in the black hole, so do Pakistani individuals. Our society engulfs us into this unending chasm of darkness without any hope for return to the light. Eras later, I do not wish for Pakistani students to still be stuck amidst thoughts of “Get me out of here!”

What better way to start than by giving the future generations the autonomy over their own education? One family at a time, and the cycle of stereotypes may finally end up getting broken. Humanities majors may still be the smallest and lightest stroke of paint on this canvas that our society is, but at least they will have their own place in the end.

On Being Free (Part One)

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The first of two parts of a paper written for a class on Creative Nonfiction

Jean-Paul Sartre said, “Man is condemned to be free.” He believes life to have no a priori meaning, and that what a person chooses to do is what gives meaning to his or her life.

Perhaps regrettably, this does not seem to be the case anymore. Sartre is not wrong in implying that we make a lot of mistakes in being given this freedom of choice, but what better way to learn than through our mistakes?

When a Pakistani child is born, his or her fate seems to be sealed. Of course, the child is considered to be lucky to have so many well-wishers debating about his or her future, trying to ensure from the beginning that the upcoming life is nothing short of opportunistic. But what if, one day, the child suddenly decides to stop walking the path so eloquently carved out for him, and choose a different one? Robert Frost said, “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one less travelled by, and that has made all the difference.”

I chose to follow Frost’s advice, and in doing so I learnt that breaking away from the orthodoxies of a Pakistani family is much more difficult than being asked to replicate Pheidippides’ act. A four-year struggle to prove that the road less travelled was, in hindsight, the right choice for you, is nothing short of a four-year marathon to stay ahead of those who doubt you.

The age in which our parents lived was one where they were deemed to have little, if any, autonomy over themselves. But it doesn’t make sense to be stuck in the same rut decades later. While the rest of the world seems to move eons ahead, Pakistanis stay stagnated – they refuse to move forward; they refuse to change.

Growing up in an immediate and extended family teeming with doctors and engineers, I was convinced there were only two career choices for me. Now, it feels less of a conviction and more of a lack of exposure to diversity. Having a certain aptitude towards Biology, my prospective career choice seemed pretty monochrome. It only made sense for me to study all Sciences during my A-Levels. I was never the best at what I chose to pursue during both my O-Levels and A-Levels, but I got by decently enough to convince everyone that I was destined to tread the path of medicine – the path that was not the less travelled one.

The only person I was unable to convince was myself. Was I fine with fading away, disappearing amongst the labyrinth of people who devour books and cure the ailed?

A choice of career did not have to be so binary. That was all I believed, and what I stood for. When it first came down to selecting a college other than a medical school or an engineering college, I felt a little apprehensive. Perhaps it was not wrong of others to plan out my bachelors for me, because the sheer process of choosing a path got overwhelming. The conditions were simple: it had to be a well-renowned place in Pakistan. It was later revealed that the conditions were only simple on the surface. There are plenty of big name institutions in Pakistan, but what good will a concentration in, say, History be? I had to deal with a throng of such questions, until I finally settled on a place where I wouldn’t have to worry about such things for at least a year more.

If I had thought that choosing a college would be the hardest bit, then I was in for a pretty brutal wake-up call.

I spent my first two semesters at LUMS convinced that I would choose a major that had some portion of ‘Economics’ in it. After all, if outlandish amounts of money were being spent on my education, then it only made sense for me to pursue a major that would guarantee a job with a six-digit starting salary. Little did I know that I was in for a revamping of my entire thought process.

It would be boorish to mention how spectacularly I tanked in the Economics courses I tried my hand at. Math courses were a similar deal. What became the saving grace for my freshman year GPA were the courses listed in the SS (Social Sciences) stream, something that I did not really comprehend at first. When sophomore year started, I declared myself to be a Humanities major, and have never looked back since then.

Price Pritchett said, “Change always comes bearing gifts.” Given his role as a business advisor, he may have been speaking in purely monetary terms, but the quote is, nonetheless, something to ponder on. I never expected a change to be anything particularly ground-breaking, but I did have faith in the proclamation that it would yield some rewards in the end. It would’ve been downright senseless of me to think of change to be anything other than a struggle, but I also didn’t agree that it wouldn’t showcase its advantages in the end.

There was so much that I didn’t know. I had always enjoyed any Literature classes I had had during my school days, but nothing matched up to the ones I became acquainted with. I was introduced to new authors whose works I am now besotted with, learnt new ways of reading the text closely, and began writing my own works to be discussed and critiqued as opposed to deconstructing the works of famous names only. History became more than just boring names and dates and sheets upon sheets of facts that had to be memorized, and actually became what I had always heard it to be: a story. Long texts that never made much sense were no longer what Philosophy was about, instead choosing to make me think a little harder, analyze a little better, and understand that Philosophy did not have to be about Greek names and Latin texts.

But then the question becomes: so what?

The Pakistani society likes putting this question at the end of every anecdote about choosing an unconventional career path. It is quite interesting to see a person discover a new side of the Arts altogether, but so what? What good is it? Where will such a degree lead you? What will you do with your education? Where will you use it? The list of questions is never ending.

The last one particularly irks me. Clearly it is not enough to say that my education is providing me with the necessary set of skills needed to make a better person, that what I choose to study is actually honing my analytical skills and skills of critical thinking. Hospitals need Doctors, companies need Engineers, and MNCs need Economists and Finance Managers. What sort of a place needs a Humanities major? While this may be a valid concern, where we are lacking is in thinking that a specific place will need Social Sciences majors. What our society fails to realize is that we cannot point to a specific sector not because there isn’t any, but because there are too many.

When the CEO of a reputed MNC mentioned in a talk that his Finance Manager was a Social Sciences major, a lot of people were stunned. And these were students like me – my classmates, my colleagues. That alone was enough to give me an idea of what our society’s mentality is. If I am to be completely honest, in my penultimate year at LUMS, I have yet to figure out where I want to apply for jobs in the upcoming year. But it is not because of a lack of options; it is because I am just overwhelmed by the many options I have. People often ask me if I’m scared of not knowing what to do or where to go once I graduate. The truth is, I am. But it’s the good scared, the kind of scared that a new employee feels on his first day at a new job, or an athlete feels before a big match. Maybe I am a little unsure of where I plan on ending up, but I am definitely excited at the prospect of finding out. Trial and error is how we learn, and if we take the safe route, then where is the risk of discovery, the thrill of adventure? We are not robots who can go through our lives in a mechanical way; we are living flesh and blood with feelings and emotions, and once in a while we may like to let go and set those emotions free. How can one expect robots to do that?

My plans don’t even think so far ahead as to weigh out potential job prospects; they are more short-term, choosing to gloss over what courses I would want to take in upcoming semesters. The way I see it, every course is in itself an entirely new journey – there is so much to learn, yet so much to be discovered. So why think about where to go and what to do upon graduation when I’m not even done with this current journey? It is good to plan ahead, but in doing so, I would not want it to overshadow the present voyages of discovery into the works of different authors, the history of different places.

The problem with our society has been that we have adapted to the stereotypical culture our forefathers set for us. We look at workaholics and promise to produce more, which means we should force ourselves to take courses that teach us potential money-making schemes. If a student clocks up enough hours of sleepless nights, submits an infinite number of assignments and reproduces his or her text books in the exams, said student is said to fit the bill for the perfect candidate for a job. If the formula for producing a hard-working individual was that easy, then I would consider myself a front runner based simply on the number of sleepless nights spent. It would be wrong of me to say that this does not create a hard-working individual. But it would also be wrong to say that this individual is any different from the many other hard-working individuals. What this ends up producing are clones of the same traits; workaholics who can follow a given set of instructions to the core but will falter at the merest thought of surviving a day without those instructions. Charles Darwin talked about the theory of evolution, which gave form to man as we know him today. What a Pakistani society is doing is fighting with the very laws of evolution. Evolution considers things to be different from one another, but in producing these clones, we are ensuring that all our people are the same. What, then, will become the identity of a person? Individuality, which is the highest forte for every human being, is ultimately lost.

The Science that our society holds so dear conducts its experiments on lab rats. What is it that makes human beings different from rats? Perhaps the fact that those rats are all the same, while humans aren’t? If that is the case, then Pakistani human beings are no different than rats. We all want the same things and we all end up competing for the same things, a prestigious college degree and a good paying job being two of the supremely important things on that list. We are caught up in this incessant rat race to be ahead of the others, but what we don’t realize is that the problem with the rat race is that even when you win, you’re still a rat. The race to be the fore runner is nothing short of the survival of the fittest, an idea that Science guises under the banner of ‘natural selection’ but which, from a Philosophical standpoint, is nothing short of jungle culture. Isn’t it about time that we stop behaving like animals and accept our humanity?

I feel like I would disappear if I get caught up in the furrows of job seeking; stuck in a trench, unable to get out, my voice not heard outside. I want to work after college, but I don’t want to go back to the same trench to work, and be still caught in endless progressions of morning coffees and numbers that reign supreme. I don’t wish to be another alias; I wish to have my own identity.

Why I hold a degree in Humanities so close to my heart is for this precise reason only: it allows me to embrace my individuality. I have learnt that there is no single correct answer to any question. Every student produces a different answer, and their work is graded on the quality of what they produce. I never have to worry about what the person sitting next to me in an exam may be writing or whether my answer is as long as the one written by the smartass of the class. What I know, and almost worship, is the fact that the answers I generate reflect the person I am, and just like no two answers can be the same, no two persons can be the same either.

Maybe it stems from the fact that Pakistan is a third world country, but our society’s obsession with everything monetary is disconcerting. A college degree is looked at specifically in terms of the extrinsic (read: monetary) value it can provide, as opposed to the intrinsic value of an education. Four years of grind come down to nothing more than being evaluated on the basis of the number of zeros on a person’s first paycheck. A New York Times blog article said that “…college is to nourish a world on intellectual culture…Otherwise, we could provide job-training and basic social and moral formation for young adults far more efficiently and cheaply, through, say, a combination of professional and trade schools, and public service programs.” This is, perhaps, something that the Pakistani society fails to understand, that college is much more than just training for a decent job. Students are not pawns to be polished for prospective employers to have a bidding war over. They are people; individuals who deserve the right to choose their own path. We produce more of these identical prospective employees than there are job placements, but when are we going to accept that we’re making a mistake in doing that?

Whether it is the many Philosophy courses I have taken or just that I chose to do what I wanted, but the fact of the matter remains that I’ve become immune to talks about the monetary worth of my college degree. Every time someone mentions it, I have a mental image of students holding up their degrees in their hands while an auctioneer tries to sell them off. It is depressing, to say the least. I refuse to be put in a spotlight and scrutinized by people – the sight will be no different than when looking for sacrificial animals of Eid-ul-Azha. And whatever the case may be, at the end of the day, we are not animals. Sea pearls are sometimes encased in oysters, and it takes removing the outer oyster to expose the beauty within. Perhaps it is boastful of me to think of students as pearls, but we do seem to be trapped inside a mollusk – our society’s stereotypes.

Rene Descartes said, “I think, therefore, I am.” What is paramount in his evergreen quote is the use of the word ‘think’. Why produce more Doctors and Engineers who can recite an entire page from some obscure text book, but are baffled when it comes to creative thinking. We can produce good workers, hard-working people, but where do we go when we need decision-makers and managers? In shunning any unorthodox form of education, what the Pakistani society is doing is limiting creative thinking and putting a stop to the advent of new and innovative ideas. Consider the example of Bill Gates. He did not become a billionaire by finishing college. Or Mark Zuckerberg did not create Facebook by sticking to his college courses. What these people produced are examples of how far innovation can take you. They did not create Microsoft and Facebook while sticking to societal norms of finishing college. But why we can never expect any such phenomena to take place in Pakistan is because no one breaks free of the standards that society has been functioning on since the advent of time, it seems.

Geographical Boundaries

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I am a citizen of Pakistan, a country which has been, needless to say, blacklisted by many others. And why wouldn’t it be, when terror attacks anywhere in the world somehow – miraculously – manage to incriminate a ‘Pakistani’ in them. But even if we look at it on a nationwide level, the country is the victim of ‘acts of terrorism’ by its own citizens – apparently; events that are covered by the media worldwide. In the face of such barbarity, it makes sense for Pakistanis to not be given visas to travel to a lot of countries.

However, is there any way to justify this?

Because we live in a blacklisted country, it may be quite difficult for us to travel to a lot of places. The growing trend in Pakistan involves many people having at least one (in a lot of cases, more) relative out of the country, mostly in places like the US and UK. While modern technology provides us with some very good ways of keeping in touch with our loved ones (exhibit A: Skype), what does one do when we want to meet them? How do you go meet people when citizens of your country are mostly denied visas?

Yet another rising trend in Pakistan is the marriages of girls to boys living abroad. While the men have visas or even international passports, it sometimes takes their spouses well over a year to reach their preferred destination. The catch here? You belong to Pakistan.

The distinctions of land allotments for various countries stand in the way of people being able to meet their loved ones as often as they’d like. Countries need to relax their laws to allow people the ease to travel. If people want to be together, things such as visas should not be the deciding factor – especially when the deciding factor is in the hands of a third party that does not share, or even care for your sentiments. It is particularly irksome that geographical boundaries come into play even when boundaries of the heart disappear.

But then, I am a citizen of Pakistan…

The cycles continues.

Thoughts of a Humanities major in Pakistan

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Disclaimer: This post is only meant to portray the thoughts of a frustrated Humanities major in Pakistan. The thoughts represented may not necessarily portray to the general public.

Stagnation. That’s the word.

I am a reader, a blogger, a writer. Give me a novel and I’m in my happy place. I blog when I’m bored, when I have a sudden creative spark or simply because I want to. Put me up with a topic and a deadline and I will make sure I give everything to the piece I write.

I say stagnation’s the correct word because creativity seems to be dying out.

Pakistan is a country of stereotypes. If a student does not decide to become a Doctor or an Engineer, he or she is degraded to the category of useless students who can’t really do anything. I am not saying that the aforementioned two professions are derogatory in anyway – in fact, they are truly excellent careers to undertake – but they are not the only two choices we have. A student interested in studying Biology should have more options than the sole one of becoming a Doctor. This is where we fall into a stereotype – the stereotype of studying anything technical.

The single most question asked is, “What will you do with your major?” Being a Humanities major, I have the options of undertaking a wide variety of careers; anything that is people-oriented goes. But of course, since I can’t specifically point out a company that will hire a Humanities major, my education is considered useless.

At LUMS, I have come across a truly remarkable Social Sciences faculty. It truly makes one wonder why this creativity is not considered worthwhile. Take a look at our writers or our soaps and one can gain an insight into the creativity rampant in this country. We are by no means a monochrome nation, yet we will be if we keep on following the stereotype of a technical education. Education is not about getting into the best colleges and studying something that will guarantee a good paying job. It is about doing what you like and undertaking a career you enjoy, regardless of the number of zeroes on your first paycheck. The problem we face, in this country, is that we are often unable to make our best abilities our primary means of education because it does not fit into the conventions we are forced to follow.

Liberal arts is one of the most competitive majors in the United States, and when researching my major I came across an article that talked about how the number of Philosophy majors has been on a rise there. In Pakistan, despite the enormous budding talent and creativity we have, it is one of the most underrated and undervalued majors.

We need to move forward. We need to rid ourselves of our conventions and stereotypes. We need to allow the generations after us the options of choosing to study what they want to, rather than what they are forced to.

We need to stop ourselves from stagnating.

Is cricket our only hope?

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Cricket crazy fans

The above picture shows the sports complex of LUMS packed with a bunch of cricket crazy fans. The picture is not at all representative of the fact that more or less the entire LUMS population was present for the screening of the ICC Cricket World Cup semi final played between Pakistan and India. Given all the hype and buildup to the match, the turnout was not unexpected, but it does raise some interesting insights to ponder on.

The frenzy was there, the atmosphere was one of anticipation. The place was literally overflowing with the colour green. A nation that worships cricket put aside all their differences and came together under the national flag to support their team. It was not just a cricket match anymore; it was a matter of national pride.

Never will Pakistan see such a display of unity as seen for a cricket match, especially one against India. The last time such a phenomenon was seen was when the Pakistani cricket team won the T20 World Cup in 2009. Such a win guarantees that people will put aside all their differences to come together as one nation – however temporary it may be. It goes on to show that the feeling of solidarity is not dead. How often will one hear thousands of people singing along together to Hum Hain Pakistani?

To a nation getting increasingly frustrated with every passing day, cricket provides a pleasant departure for everyone. With the things to smile about decreasing everyday, the cricket crazy nation gets something to rejoice over.

It is almost blasphemous to say that Pakistanis are not patriotic. What the general affairs of the country cannot teach us about patriotism, cricket takes the reins there. On the shoulders of eleven men lie the dreams of 170 million people. The metamorphosis of the nation is visible; people dare to dream, to hope, to actually see the shreds of optimism – that silver lining that seemed so far away.

Nothing unites the Pakistani nation like a game of cricket does. No politician can do what a cricket match does. We are a cricket loving and a cricket crazy nation. The fanaticism for cricket is present in every Pakistani’s blood. We become one under the banner of cricket.

Is cricket our only hope?