Happy Birthday my Love!

August 14th, 2008. 61 years old. In human terms 60 is the age where you retire and look back at all your accomplishments. In terms of a nation, I feel 60 is our 20. A mere exit from the violent and uncertainty of the teenage years. Just about graduating and looking onto the kind of life you will be leading. Today I don't want to get into that. I don't want to discuss where we are, and where we're headed...

I just feel that I am blessed to be back in the country I adore, that too on her birthday. I'll try to do what a very dear friend always asks me to do...simplify things. So I will try to simplify my emotions.

I love the national anthems, new and reworked playing all day on TV. I can listen to Amanat Ali singing "Aye watan pyaaray watan...paak watan..." forever. His voice, the poetry, and the tune, stir up things inside you, that you never knew existed! I feel proud to be a Pakistani every time I listen to this milli naghma.

I love the big flags tied on cars and motorbikes (even though the realist in me feels they are quite unsafe). I love the way these flags flap in the wind as the motor speeds down the highway. I love the jubilant expressions on the faces of the drivers of these cars and bikes. For one day, they forget all their worries, and just go out and celebrate.

I love all the kids in my street who buy little paper flags strung on strings, and decorate their houses with them. And then put up the biggest flag they have on their house. I love they purity of these kids. They love their country, and grow up thinking it is the best place to live in.

I love the elders in my family, who tell stories of partition, and every year make us realize what it meant to leave everything to pursue an idea. What freedom means, I feel all of us, who were born free, can never truly comprehend. For can one truly understand love without losing it?

Above all, I love Jinnah, the man and the concept. I love watching his stock footage on TV, I love the way he talks. I love every quote of his that is displayed proudly on all our channels. I love the heavy drawl in his voice. I love the way he stands, and then moves his hands while he speaks. Heck I even love the way he smokes his cigar. If only all our nation took to him, and tried to mold themselves in his ways. For you never have to be perfect, and you'll never get everything right. But as long as you're pursuing your beliefs honestly, it doesn't matter what those beliefs were. You get where no one thought you'd get to!

I love his sister, right besides him, always. A notion of utter equality and respect. That too in the 30s and 40s, a time when the free world was still stuck in segregation and gender crushing. I love the confidence she exudes, and the confidence she gives Jinnah, you can see it in all the grainy footage. I love the stable head on her head. If only all the men and women in our nation molded themselves after this lady.

I love the fact that I still hope to see this country as probably Jinnah and Fatima saw it. I love to be able to see her true potential. I love that I still have hope, for at the end, it is always hope that prevails.