Are we Afraid to be Happy?

Chero­pho­bia is the fear of hap­pi­ness and felic­i­ty where peo­ple are afraid to express their hap­pi­ness and to have fun. Are we Pak­ista­nis col­lec­tive­ly as a nation the patients of this psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­or­der? We are afraid to have any form of mer­ri­ment or joy. Have we bar­ri­cad­ed our­selves by build­ing such walls around us that noth­ing from the beau­ti­ful and vibrant beau­ty of nature can pen­e­trate them, choos­ing instead to live insipid and dry lives. Not able to express our­selves ful­ly, show our hap­pi­ness, ful­fil nat­ur­al desires and unable to adapt new ide­olo­gies, we are slow­ly being asphyx­i­at­ed to death in a quelling soci­ety rapid­ly becom­ing devoid of the cul­tur­al diver­si­ty, plu­ral­ism and inclu­sive­ness which it was once renowned for.

We have imposed super­flu­ous con­straints on our­selves by con­fus­ing our cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty with the sandy & the bar­ren Arab cul­ture, choos­ing to live our lives in a man­ner devoid of all hap­pi­ness, expres­sion and mul­ti­for­mi­ty. Pakistan’s quest for iden­ti­ty led the ide­o­log­i­cal cus­to­di­ans of this coun­try towards the camel filled deserts of Ara­bia, far away from its own cul­ture which was more than 5000 years old. In order to make Pak­istan as Islam­ic as pos­si­ble, we have com­plete­ly failed to real­ize that cul­ture tran­scends reli­gious and polit­i­cal divides. To solve the iden­ti­ty cri­sis of Pak­istan, we import­ed Arab heroes, Arab folk tales and Ara­bic text­books into our coun­try in order to become as kosher as pos­si­ble by estab­lish­ing our place in the pan­theon of Arab coun­tries. More than six decades have passed and this nation is still fac­ing an iden­ti­ty cri­sis.

Cel­e­brat­ing and enjoy­ing is con­sid­ered an abom­i­na­tion in the land of pure with restric­tions placed on sim­ple human desires like danc­ing and singing in mixed gath­er­ings. Free­dom of speech, press, and media are on a steep fall in this banana repub­lic where fat­was and blas­phe­my charges fall like rain and cen­sor­ship laws pre­vail in order to detect any mis­chief that may have a hint of dis­tort­ing and cloud­ing the holy image of Islam­ic Repub­lic of Pak­istan. An archa­ic code of con­duct has been imple­ment­ed in the soci­ety where patri­archy and misog­y­ny pre­vail by con­ve­nient­ly brush­ing away women from the social sce­nario into rooms hav­ing win­dows with shades on them lest any eye fall on the hoor and her vir­gin­i­ty come in dan­ger. Min­gling with women is deemed inde­cent and char­ac­ter­less and the extra mile is gone in order to keep both sex­es sep­a­rate and safe from each oth­er. Music has been deemed haram and of course any­thing that even remote­ly resem­bles the Indi­an cul­ture is con­sid­ered taboo auto­mat­i­cal­ly. By doing so, we have detached our­selves from a big part of our cul­tur­al her­itage.

The young gen­er­a­tion bears the brunt of this ide­o­log­i­cal and cul­tur­al dis­so­ci­a­tion from our open and inclu­sive soci­etal norms and val­ues. Devoid of any chance of min­gling with the oppo­site sex, with restric­tions from the soci­ety and house­hold mem­bers, the bub­bling hor­mones are tak­en care of by indulging in unsafe and unsat­is­fy­ing activ­i­ties. In our soci­ety, the cri­te­ria of decen­cy are restric­tions on emo­tions and feel­ings, and piety is the name of nega­tion of the true beau­ty and essence of life. Youth is the peri­od of life where one enjoys all the beau­ties and diver­si­ties of nature, but here we have made that peri­od of life as dry and devoid of any ray of light as pos­si­ble in the name of pre­serv­ing our ‘moral’ val­ues. A sim­ple meet up for cof­fee can be cost­ly for you if any local cus­to­di­an of Pakistan’s ide­ol­o­gy chances to look at you, with mar­riage cer­tifi­cate being demand­ed by the police. After all inter­jec­tion in people’s pri­va­cy is legal in Pak­istan. John Lennon right­ly said, “We live in a world where we have to hide to make love, while vio­lence is prac­ticed in broad day­light.”

The state and soci­ety have left no out­lets for the peo­ple to express them­selves with the result that peo­ple have become extreme­ly deprived and sex­u­al­ly frus­trat­ed. Con­se­quent­ly, it seems our peo­ple seem to take great plea­sure in acts of vio­lence and destruc­tion with their faces show­ing a sense of lib­er­a­tion as they get a ‘free time’ out of their mun­dane and pathet­ic lives by resort­ing to such mad­ness. These ‘seem­ing­ly’ nor­mal peo­ple do not waste a moment in becom­ing sadists and liv­ing the moment. The entire Pak­istani nation seems to be afflict­ed with Sadis­tic Per­son­al­i­ty Dis­or­der. On the oth­er hand, the elite class enjoys all the perks and pomps for­bid­den to the mid­dle and low­er class­es. Booze and booty, both are aplen­ty for the Pak­istani elite with them being above the social and moral restric­tions nec­es­sary to pre­serve the Islam­ic cum Ara­bic cul­ture of Pak­istan. This huge dis­par­i­ty in the moral and eth­i­cal stan­dards of dif­fer­ent class­es shows that hypocrisy is the law of the land with all the laws and ethos only for the com­mon man.

We would have to seri­ous­ly recon­sid­er whether we are head­ing towards total obliv­ion, tak­ing steps to ensure that a spir­it of debate and dis­course ensues with tol­er­ance for dis­sent­ing voic­es in a soci­ety that is at peace with its cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty and cel­e­brates its plu­ral­ism and diver­si­ty by accept­ing its past. What we need to real­ize is that we can­not deny our past and impose a for­eign cul­ture upon us with­out the cul­tur­al stag­na­tion vis­i­ble in our soci­ety today – an out­come of Arab cul­tur­al impe­ri­al­ism. Let us cel­e­brate life in its var­i­ous forms and beau­ties, that’s what life is about. We are already lag­ging far behind in this world and if we con­tin­ue our habit of look­ing to old tra­di­tions as solu­tions to our new prob­lems instead of using ratio­nale, going back in the cen­turies, then there is no way that our today becomes bet­ter or our future becomes beau­ti­ful.